New disclosures to our archive of state-backed information operations - <AUTHOR> https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2019/new-disclosures-to-our-archive-of-state-backed-information-operations.html <comment><AUTHOR> The actual archive is here: [https://transparency.twitter.com/en/information- operations.h...](https://transparency.twitter.com/en/information- operations.html) and the data added today was about 5,929 accounts from/by? Saudi Arabia and 1.3Tb of media they uploaded

</comment><comment><USER2> We recently released a dataset for NLP / disinformation researchers around similar content found being posted on YouTube instead of Twitter which contains images as well as text.

[https://media.plasticity.ai/youtube-disinformation- report/](https://media.plasticity.ai/youtube-disinformation-report/)

People interested in the Twitter dataset might also find these results useful.

<comment><USER3> How come there are no information on your site about the founders, team, investors, etc.

It's hard to take you seriously as the arbitrators of transparency when there is no disclosure about your own company.

<comment><USER2> We're a YC backed company (YC S17). Nothing to hide, there's plenty of information on us online (CrunchBase, blog posts, TechCrunch, etc.)

<comment> shaki-dora If there's nothing to hide, why not publish it where people would check first, i. e. on your website?

There are countries where that's required by law. And while that may be on the rather too heavy side of regulation, I have on occasion rage-quit a vendor's site because I couldn't find this most basic information.

<comment><USER2> We're based in the United States, there are no such regulations. Many companies don't post information about their founders and investors on their homepage (Stripe, Airbnb, Google, Apple, etc.). You should be able to find information about us just as easily as any other YC company / SV company. We haven't taken any additional steps to hide anything. I'm not sure I understand your concern about this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's a pity that they don't tell users that they have interacted with a spam account. Would it be helpful for you to know that you inadvertently shared propaganda?

<comment><USER5> The cynic in me is concluding that twitter have measured that this would actually cause users to leave their platform.

Again I have no data to back this up, so this is purely anecdotal - the amount of people I see sending re-tweets of probably-a-bot bullshit has me convinced that a huge part of twitter's "success" is built on it.

<comment><USER6> Twitter in ~2007-2008 was an amazing place when you interacted with actual people.

But now the "frog has boiled" and the humanity has long left Twitter. Practically every interaction between entities on Twitter now is generated by some kind of bot or script that you're essentially trying to communicate with nothing. If there weren't Twitter API limits it would consume more energy and data storage than all the crypto coins combined (slightly hyperbolic). I've left Twitter and I have no desire to return.

However, if Twitter decided to "embrace humanity" and use the API limit system (which already exists) for accounts to increase the value of an interaction they might have a chance to bring back that earlier magic. Scarcity would increase the value, and if you could only post 5-10 new tweets per day you would certainly spend more time considering what you do on Twitter and make it easier for Twitter to identify the sources of noise in the signal.

<comment><USER7> That would ruin both the "live commentary on TV" and "giant thread" twitter genres. If it includes replies as well .. well, you might as well remove the reply feature entirely and save everyone a lot of pain.

I find it OK, but I'm fairly selective about who I read and liberal with the block button. 500 follows on the regular account, 100 on the Eurovision one (more used for reading hashtags)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Is it even legal for Twitter to disclose activities of US-based intelligence agencies? (I assume that most worldwide agencies play on Twitter in one way or another)

<comment><USER9> Considering some of the confidential things that have accidentally leaked into the public sphere in the last few years, I think it's fairly safe to assume at this point that US/Western government(s) and tech firms have a fairly collaborative relationship.

Some people even suggest [0] this relationship extends into strategic, multi- domain operations, but since such ideas are obviously conspiracy theories (and therefore conclusively false, as per the epistemically infallible Occam's Razor technique), they should be considered only for their entertainment value.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_Operations_(United...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_Operations_\(United_States\))

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOTYgcdNrXE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOTYgcdNrXE)

<comment><USER10> Occams Razor doesnt have to be right.

I dont mean to talk about your speculations, but its not bulletproof method of reasoning

<comment><USER9> Wait, surely you're not suggesting Occam's Razor is merely an abductive heuristic or something like that, are you?

<comment><USER9> Sometimes I wonder how much more effective/impactful HN could be in making the world a better place if the hyper-competent people here could maintain a sense of humour while expressing their beliefs, _or even consider_ the possibility that there _might_ be some utility in that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Why is it so easy to create fake accounts on services like Twitter? If they really wanted to provide a service to humans, what is with making it so that a single group can create 88k fake accounts on a whim.

<comment><USER12> I'd challenge your entire premise that it's easy to create those accounts.

The market price of low-tier bulk-created Twitter accounts seems to be $160/1k accounts. That's not bad. It's in line with services like Linkedin ($175), Hotmail ($150), Yahoo ($120) and Facebook ($150). The only large provider that does significantly better is Google ($300).

<comment><USER13> Do these account creations require to supply a mobile phone number?

<comment><USER14> With [redacted subset] it's possible to use an account creation path that doesn't trigger a phone number requirement. A single misstep or threshold crossed, though, and even that path will trigger the requirement.

<comment><USER15> > [redacted subset]

why?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > on behalf of — but not necessarily with the knowledge of — their clients

I get that twitter has to cover its assets, but how likely is 5000 troll strong army working on your behalf, as vocally as possible, and as a country with heavily monitored internet, not notice. The razor of fuzzy logic falls in the obvious place.

<comment><USER17> The 5000 is just the sample in the dataset, taken from the full 88000 accounts that were part of this operation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I hate that you have to have a Google account to access/download this data.

</comment><comment><USER19> > Dec 2019 Saudi Arabie - Media (1.3 TB)

.. thats a ridiculous amount.

</comment><comment><USER20> I love the new oxymoronic phrase: "aggressive liking". I had to first get past the hilarious opener: "Transparency is at the heart of everything we do at Twitter."

<comment><USER19> To be honest Twitter are WAY down on the list of offenders.. Case in point are articles like this

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think most HN'ers can appreciate the idea that the way we read technical news articles is distinctly different from how non-technical people (say, your Grandma) would read them. Two different parties can read the exact same article, but come away with very different interpretations. (Some of the reasons for this are obvious, but depending on the topic there are also others that are not so obvious.)

In the spirit of cultivating understanding of the differences between individual people with the goal of working towards a more harmonious, peaceful future, and also just for a little tongue-in-cheek fun on a Friday morning, here is a bit of insight into how (eye-catching key phrases excerpted) a distrustful-of-all-authority, possibly insane, unapologetic conspiracy theorist hyper-critically reads articles like this...

> Transparency is at the heart of everything we do at Twitter.

"transparency", "everything"

> _That's why_ we routinely disclose datasets of information operations we can > _reliably link to_ state actors.

"That's why", "reliably", "link to"

> Today, we are sharing comprehensive data about 5,929 accounts which we have > removed for violating our platform manipulation policies.

"Comprehensive"

> Rigorous _investigations_ by our Site Integrity team have allowed us to > _attribute_ these accounts to a significant state-backed information > operation on Twitter _originating in Saudi Arabia_.

I wonder what the terms "investigations", "attribute", and "originating in Saudi Arabia" mean, precisely? Is source code available so we can see for ourselves what they actually mean? What with transparency being at the heart of everything they do at Twitter and all.

> In order to protect the privacy of potentially compromised accounts > repurposed to engage in platform manipulation, and in response to researcher > feedback requesting that we pre-filter unrelated spam, _we have not > disclosed data for all 88,000 accounts_.

Hmmm.

> In the interest of offering meaningful transparency, the dataset we are > disclosing includes a representative, random sample of the fake and spammy > accounts associated with this broader network.

"Meaningful" transparency.

"Representative, random" sample.

"associated with"

> Our investigations have _traced the source of the coordinated activity to > Smaat_ , a social media marketing and management company based in Saudi > Arabia.

"Traced", " _the_ source"

> Our in-house _technical indicators show_ that Smaat appears to have created, > purchased, and/or managed these accounts on behalf of — but not necessarily > with the knowledge of — their clients.

"technical indicators", "show", "appears to have"

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-----

Now, an obvious shortcoming (in addition to the obvious mental health issues) contributing to my ludicrous interpretation of such articles is my lack of knowledge in current, (known) state of the art capabilities in spoofing identity on the internet (all criticism welcome), as well as the confidential processes and capabilities within Twitter.

For the latter, there is some PR-speak information here:

[https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2019/informati...](https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2019/information- ops-on-twitter.html)

> How do we do it?

> Our Site Integrity team is dedicated to identifying and investigating > suspected platform manipulation on Twitter, including potential state-backed > activity. In partnership with teams across the company, we employ a range of > open-source and proprietary signals and tools to identify when attempted > coordinated manipulation may be taking place, as well as the actors > responsible for it. We also partner closely with governments, law > enforcement, and our peer companies to improve our understanding of the > actors involved in information operations and develop a holistic strategy > for addressing them.

"identifying", "suspected", "potential", "a range", "proprietary", "signals", "identify", "may be", "actors responsible", "improve our understanding"

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-----

Possibly related:

[https://toinformistoinfluence.com/2012/06/15/images-a- matter...](https://toinformistoinfluence.com/2012/06/15/images-a-matter-of- perspective/)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistemology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistemology)

[https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann- amnesia/](https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-amnesia/)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_address_spoofing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_address_spoofing)

[https://theintercept.com/2017/02/20/how-to-run-a-rogue- gover...](https://theintercept.com/2017/02/20/how-to-run-a-rogue-government- twitter-account-with-an-anonymous-email-address-and-a-burner-phone/)

[https://www.expressvpn.com/support/troubleshooting/spoof- loc...](https://www.expressvpn.com/support/troubleshooting/spoof-location- google-chrome/)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Snowden](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Snowden)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/4g7jay/updated_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/4g7jay/updated_compilation_of_confirmed_conspiracy/)

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-----

Meta: How a non-conspiracy theorist might read this comment:

"So what you're saying is", you believe that this article, and all articles like it, are 100% fake news, that _everything_ is a vast conspiracy.

Possibly related:

[https://reformedperspective.ca/so-what-youre-saying- is/](https://reformedperspective.ca/so-what-youre-saying-is/)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logic)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_distortion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_distortion)

[https://medium.com/datadriveninvestor/we-human-machines- hall...](https://medium.com/datadriveninvestor/we-human-machines-hallucinate- our-reality-in-diluted-states-of-consciousness-90a15e94834d)

</comment><comment><USER21> I don't believe this can be ever solved. I think the best thing that can be done is wait 1-2 generations; by then nobody will believe anything they see in the media or in social networks.

<comment><USER22> Do you think that future world where nobody knows anything will be better than the current world?

<comment><USER8> Knowledge inequality is growing the same way as economic inequality is growing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Yet nothing about the American spam accounts doing the same thing in American politics.

<comment><USER24> I was also curious about this as when I first looked at the link it said 'state-backed' which immediately put the NSA and the likes in my mind. Then it went into Saudi propaganda. But if we look at even recent HN headlines with the likes of Facebook [1] we can see that political misinformation is a big problem in the US as well and I wonder why this article focuses on the Saudis and not state backed information operations as a general world wide problem. My guess is that people don't consider your average politician buying fake news ads to swing an election to be 'state-backed' where as if the president was caught they would.

[1] [https://thehill.com/policy/technology/468216-zuckerberg- doub...](https://thehill.com/policy/technology/468216-zuckerberg-doubles-down- on-facebook-political-ads-policy-after-twitter-ban)

<comment><USER25> > ...when I first looked at the link it said 'state-backed' which immediately > put the NSA and the likes in my mind. Then it went into Saudi propaganda.

> ...I wonder why this article focuses on the Saudis and not state backed > information operations as a general world wide problem.

This is an announcement of a specific disclosure of information related to a state-backed influence network from Saudi Arabia. Not all statements and articles about state-backed information operations need to be general, and it's actually very helpful to have ones that focus on specific instances.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> "Transparency is at the heart of everything we do at Twitter."

[https://transparency.twitter.com/en/information- operations.h...](https://transparency.twitter.com/en/information- operations.html)

"Enter your email to access the archives:"

Transparency by putting up roadblocks to access?!

</comment><comment><USER27> What's "transparent" about showing subjectively flagged posts? Even using words like 'disclosures' comes across quite fishy considering these are posts marked on belief and some subjectively developed algorithms.

<comment><USER28> That's not what they're doing. Very clear these aren't just "flagged posts" and that twitter evaluated where they came from.

> Our investigations have traced the source of the coordinated activity to > Smaat, a social media marketing and management company based in Saudi > Arabia.</comment></comment>


What are those little Xcode tips & tricks you wish you knew about 2 years ago? - <AUTHOR> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/146297/what-are-those-little-xcode-tips-tricks-you-wish-you-knew-about-2-years-ago <comment><USER2> In case you're wondering (like I was)...

      Xcode is the complete toolset for building Mac OS X and
      iOS applications

<http://developer.apple.com/technologies/tools/>

</comment><comment><USER3> Locked by the SO Gestapo.</comment>


Ask hackers: what books have you read lately and would recommend me? - <AUTHOR>

Hackers, i just got an awesome book entitled "Founders at Work: Stories of Startups Early Days".
I'll soon be finished with it, can you recommend me  (and us, other hackers) more?
Thanks! <comment><USER2> Here we go again...

<http://searchyc.com/books>

[http://www.google.com/search?&q=site%3Anews.ycombinator....](http://www.google.com/search?&q=site%3Anews.ycombinator.com+books)

</comment><comment><USER3> Javascript, The Good Parts.

One of the most clear, logical, well-written programming books I've ever read. Douglas Crockford covers more ground in 153 pages than I ever thought was possible in a tech book. An absolute gem.

<http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596517748/>

</comment><comment><USER4> Some of my favorite books:

\- Moneyball. A really engaging story about how game changing startups can turn a centuries-old industry on it's head....er...it's actually about baseball, but the other part is true too.

\- Crossing the Chasm. It's a roadmap for introducing a new product. Gives a framework for thinking about the "who" and "why" of a new market.

\- Sales Learning Curve by Mark Leslie. It's actually not a book but rather a short paper. Shows how the sales learning curve is similar to the manufacturing learning curve.

\- Extraordinary Popular Delusions & the Madness of Crowds. Why do otherwise intelligent individuals form seething masses of idiocy when they engage in collective action? Why do financially sensible people jump lemming-like into hare-brained speculative frenzies--only to jump broker-like out of windows when their fantasies dissolve? We may think that the Great Crash of 1929, junk bonds of the '80s, over-valued high-tech stocks of the '90s and real estate bubble of the past few years are peculiarly aberrations of our time, but Mackay's classic--first published in 1841--shows that the madness and confusion of crowds knows no limits.

\- How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. The title pretty much says it all, huh? Oh, this book was first published in 1931...

\- Hiring Smart. It's a book that takes about an hour to read and provides practical tips on how to interview someone (as opposed to the other way around).

\- Art of the Start by Guy Kawasaki. Good read with some nice tidbits (particularly on fundraising).

\- Patton on Leadership (as in General George S. Patton). It's pretty cool...nothing too touchy-feely.

\- Green to Gold: How Smart Companies Use Environmental Strategy to Innovate, Create Value, and Build Competitive Advantage

</comment><comment><USER5> Nothing startup related... but I just started reading Mastering Regular Expressions and am through the fourth chapter. It's such an amazing read and I'm punishing myself for never starting it earlier. For what the content is worth, the reading is not dry and makes the topic enjoyable.

You might want to read or reread Mythical Man Month, if you're looking for startup books. While not a startup book per se, its usefulness in the aspects of the programming environment is tenfold.

</comment><comment><USER6> Engineering your start-up, Swanson and Baird [http://www.amazon.com/Engineering-Your-Start-Up-High-Tech- En...](http://www.amazon.com/Engineering-Your-Start-Up-High-Tech- Entrepreneur/dp/B000P5XIM2/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1217299944&sr=1-8)

Old school, published when 'startup' was still 2 words. Good book to read and provides a guide in many situations one may encounter in a startup.

</comment><comment><USER7> I just read Richard Branson's autobiography, _Losing My Virginity_ , and thoroughly enjoyed it.

</comment><comment><USER8> I just finished Cryptonomicon. I know I'm almost a decade late, but boy that's a must-read.

</comment><comment><USER9> Intellectual Property and Open Source. It is a must-read for anyone starting a business or working on an open source project.

[http://www.amazon.com/Intellectual-Property-Open-Source- Prot...](http://www.amazon.com/Intellectual-Property-Open-Source- Protecting/dp/0596517963/)

<http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596517960/>

</comment><comment><USER10> Fooled by Randomness or The Black Swan, if you're interested in probability/statistics as it applies to describing our knowledge of the real world.

</comment><comment> dan-kruchinin Knuth, "the art of computer programming"; Knuth, "Concrete mathematics"; "GEB (Gödel, Escher, Bach)"

<comment><USER11> +1 for GEB. I'm reading it right now, it's mind blowing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Mr. Bunny's Big Cup O' Java

[http://www.amazon.com/Mr-Bunnys-Big-OJava- Bunny/dp/020161563...](http://www.amazon.com/Mr-Bunnys-Big-OJava- Bunny/dp/0201615630)

</comment><comment><USER13> The Monk and the Riddle by Randy Komisar

I'd say it's a must read for any aspiring entrepreneur. It gives you a lot of perspective and a decent introductory exposure to the process.

</comment><comment><USER14> Life and Def ---Russell Simmons... A little preachy but at it's core a good read. Nothing beats hearing how to hustle from a NBH. natural born hustla

</comment><comment><USER15> How about The Road Ahead - Bill Gates. I loved that book and saw a different personality to Bill Gates other than showed by Media and masses.

</comment><comment><USER16> I too thoroughly enjoyed Founders at Work. Straight after, I read Hackers & Painters by Paul Graham, which I found equally inspiring.

</comment><comment><USER17> I read Cormac McCarthy's The Road recently. I found it compelling and disturbing at the same time. Definitely recommend it.

</comment><comment><USER18> I just finished "The Pixar Touch"... pretty good read on the evolution of Pixar

</comment><comment><USER19> I'd recommend "The Cuckoo's Egg" by Cliff Stoll. And of course, "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman." And...

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=85840>

</comment><comment><USER20> I'm reading K&R 2nd ed and thoroughly enjoying it.</comment>


Six Cryptocurrencies for 2018 and Beyond ($ADA $AST $CND $IOTA $UP $XEM) - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@bitcartel/six-cryptocurrencies-for-2018-and-beyond-139c7ba4fb39 <comment><USER2> "Six Beanie Babies for 2018 and Beyond"

<comment><AUTHOR> ACM fellow leading research and development, stock exchange running pilots, access to a platform of 1 billion people... there's serious work going on in these projects. It's a bit unfair to label them as "Beanie Babies".</comment></comment>


Kola Superdeep Borehole - <AUTHOR> http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/kola-superdeep-borehole <comment><USER2> The article kindly submitted here mentions

[http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/kola-superdeep- borehole](http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/kola-superdeep-borehole)

as a source of more information.

<comment><USER3> Thanks. Changed from [http://www.slate.com/blogs/atlas_obscura/2014/05/08/kola_sup...](http://www.slate.com/blogs/atlas_obscura/2014/05/08/kola_superdeep_borehole_is_the_world_s_deepest_hole.html)

Submitters: please don't submit content that's lifted from some other source; submit the other source instead.

<comment><USER4> The Atlas Obscura blog on Slate is by an employee (the head writer) of Atlas Obscura, so it isn't lifted. Either link is fine IMNSHO.

<comment><USER3> You're right, that's not as bad. But it's still better, IMO, to link to the original site.

<comment><AUTHOR> Personally, I liked more the Slate version from an editorial point of view. Since there was no lifting involved and the Slate version is stuffed with links to the original version, I made a choice. Ironically the Atlas Obscura Facebook page links[0] to the Slate version.

[0] [https://www.facebook.com/atlasobscura/posts/1015244661763772...](https://www.facebook.com/atlasobscura/posts/10152446617637728)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> xkcd had a comment showing relative depth of the oceans and lakes. The kola borehole was also on there.

[https://xkcd.com/1040/](https://xkcd.com/1040/)

<comment><USER6> Can someone explain the David Bowie and Freddie Mecury reference?

<comment><USER7> The two of them did a song called Under Pressure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Much more at wikipedia: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kola_Superdeep_Borehole](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kola_Superdeep_Borehole)

<comment><USER9> If it is that hot down at the bottom - ~200 degrees C depending on where the bottom is, is there no way to economically generate power with some type of steam turbine dropped down the hole? If you could get the steam turbine to power the drill then you could make it all the way to 'China' by teatime...

<comment><USER10> That would be a heat pump: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_pump](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_pump)

<comment><USER11> Not a heat pump, simply a heat engine (if you're taking the work) or heat source (if you're using the heat). "Pumping" implies going against the gradient.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Reminds me of Kim Stanley Robinson's usage of Moholes for ore mining and energy production in his Mars trilogy:

[http://kimstanleyrobinson.info/w/index.php5?title=Mohole](http://kimstanleyrobinson.info/w/index.php5?title=Mohole)

</comment><comment><USER13> FYI: Exxon recently surpassed the depth of this hole while drilling in the Chayvo oil fields. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sakhalin-I](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sakhalin-I)

<comment><USER14> Exxon's borehole is longer, but not deeper: Kola is 12.6km deep, and Sakhalin-I is 12.3km.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> So how is the drilling actually conducted? Is there basically a miles-long, rapidly-spinning, articulated shaft with a drill bit at the bottom and a motor at the surface? What sorts of weird and wonderful engineering challenges do you run into with that sort of setup, especially as your giant drill grows larger than 10 miles in length?

<comment><USER16> Generally, the shaft would rotate with a drill bit at the bottom. But, it seems in the case of Superdeep Borehole, they developed a new mechanism to rotate only the drill bit at the bottom of the shaft[1]. They pumped pressurized "drilling fluid"[2][3] down the shaft to spin the drill bit.

[1][http://www.ritchiewiki.com/wiki/index.php/Kola_Superdeep_Bor...](http://www.ritchiewiki.com/wiki/index.php/Kola_Superdeep_Borehole)

[2][http://www.supertightstuff.com/03/18/featured/kola- superdeep...](http://www.supertightstuff.com/03/18/featured/kola-superdeep- borehole/)

[3][http://www.damninteresting.com/the-deepest- hole/](http://www.damninteresting.com/the-deepest-hole/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Watching Cosmos last week had me thinking about how deep we'd drilled to date. I meant to go look it up but didn't. Thanks for posting.

It saddens me/blows me away we've only gone 7.5 miles (into the 22 mile crust). It also reminds me how fragile our biosphere is and how little we really understand it.

<comment><USER18> Any picture of the Earth should have a giant fucking question mark right in the middle of it. That scientists and publishers egotistically declare their theories as truth actually drives any sense of wonder out of children contemplating a life of discovery. It's sick and irresponsible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> How has no one removed the cap by now? I would be extremely tempted to throw stuff down the hole.

<comment><USER20> I think it was welded shut precisely because they didn't want people doing that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Why does it have a metal cap?

<comment><USER22> Falling in wouldn't be very pleasant, I suppose. :-)

<comment><USER23> That's a long fall, 3/4 of a minute if I'm not mistaken.

<comment><USER24> 120 miles per hour is terminal velocity of a falling human being.

120/60 = 2 miles per minute

Skydive fall from 15K feet is over a minute free fall.

<comment><USER25> Repeatedly bouncing off the edges would probably slow the fall, and make it significantly more painful. That is, if the hole were wide enough to fit you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> A video about this, for folks who would rather watch/listen than read: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zz6v6OfoQvs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zz6v6OfoQvs)

</comment><comment><USER27> I can't help but remember a certain Art Bell episode: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvnxeX2SQso](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvnxeX2SQso)

Art Bell was awesome..

</comment><comment><USER28> Thanks. Now I'm hooked clicking through different articles on this site.</comment>


Facebook has blocked Dreamwidth - <AUTHOR> https://andrewducker.dreamwidth.org/3861716.html <comment><USER2> Hi all! Co-owner of Dreamwidth here.

Pretty cool to see my project hit the front page of HN, but definitely a bit of a /shrug moment on the subject itself. "Facebook gonna Facebook" I think is approximately how we feel about this.

I know here on HN we're used to hearing stories about scrappy startups trying to carve a piece of the pie big enough to exit on, but that is pretty much the exact opposite of what Dreamwidth is. Our motivations are very different, so this FB block is mostly a curiosity to us.

Dreamwidth is a small, neighborhood corner store kind of site. We're run by a couple of dedicated part-time staff (who have other jobs/responsibilities in life -- I personally work for Discord!) and a cadre of amazing volunteers who donate of their time and energy to make a nice little corner of the Internet that isn't driven by the cycle of VC and growth and user monetization.

We do not have any goals around growth, we don't advertise, and we ultimately don't care that much what the other platforms do. Our goal is to give people a stable home where they don't have to worry about their data being sold, their writing being monetized. Users choose to pay us for a few more advanced features (like full text search), and we support ourselves entirely off of that.

We are home to a large group of online roleplayers, Hugo Award winning fiction writers, Linux kernel developers, parents, security researchers, artists, activists, recipe bloggers, educators, and everything in between and around the edges who would rather work with a service owned and run by people who are motivated by something other than get-big-and-exit. Large communities of online roleplayers who get together and build whole worlds on Dreamwidth, who tell stories together. I'm constantly impressed by the creativity of our community.

Anyway, it's super cool to see Dreamwidth on the home page here. It's been my side project for over a decade now, and I'm quite proud of it. Even if modernizing a 20+ year old Perl project is a hellish undertaking at the best of times... but we keep going. :)

<comment><USER3> _This might come off as a little rude, but it 's sincere advice from someone who used to work in anti-spam (not at Facebook):_

I had a quick look through Dreamwidth's "latest" page ([https://www.dreamwidth.org/latest](https://www.dreamwidth.org/latest)) earlier today, and a major portion of the posts on there were blatant spam for things like credit card scams, "Work from home and make $1000/day!", and so on.

You seem to be hosting a lot of spam, and those spam posts are also far more likely to be getting linked externally on sites like Facebook, since that's the reason they're being created.

Because Dreamwidth is effectively free website hosting along with a free new subdomain for each account, blocking individual subdomains is futile, and it's difficult for external sites to distinguish between spam and legitimate blogs.

I'm sure Facebook will unblock you fairly soon, but unless you get the spam on Dreamwidth under control, this will probably happen fairly often with different sites blocking it. It would be easy to end up with an impression of Dreamwidth being a spam-hosting site, and decide to block it (either manually or automatically).

Blogspot has always been in a similar situation and would get blocked from a lot of sites due to the sheer amount of spam it hosts.

<comment><USER4> Controlling spam used to be about stopping unwanted messages _sent to users_. Now it has morphed into this idea that every site has the responsibility of content-policing their own users, lest what they publish be used to facilitate spam. Your advice may be pragmatic, but it shows how far we've slid down the slippery slope.

<comment><USER5> > Now it has morphed into this idea that every site has the responsibility of > content-policing their own users, lest what they publish be linked from > spam.

Not sure what you mean here. The problem Deimorz was bringing up wasn't just about users writing something, and spammers linking to it. It was that this site was being used to _host the spam payloads_. By spammers, not by actual users.

And this is how a lot of the early spam fighting worked: by finding hosts that allowed sending spam and publishing their IPs on blocklists. All mail traffic from those IPs, even if legit, would then be rejected by a large proportion of mail servers that subscribed to these blocklists.

<comment><USER4> > _this site was being used to host the spam payloads_

Calling these "spam payloads" is incorrect. The spam payloads are on Faceboot's servers. These are sites that are linked to by the spam, ostensibly for the purpose of funneling to whatever the spam is trying to market. Trying to police generic web pages, rather than the spam itself, seems like an exercise in futility given the basic philosophy of the Internet.

> _And this is how a lot of the early spam fighting worked: by finding hosts > that allowed sending spam and publishing their IPs on blocklists_

The situation has a similar shape, but there is a distinction as Dreamwidth is not actively _sending_ spam but rather responding to requests from viewers. Still, we can look at the outcome of what happened to the email ecosystem - increased centralization of providers - for a warning of what's to come.

<comment><USER6> Malware and childporn reduction efforts also often go after the hosts of that content. I'm not sure why calling the folks hosting this stuff what it is incorrect. Sure, childporn folks don't actually necessarily "send" child porn, they just respond to requests from viewers. But they host it.

These scam sites are like that - do you really think you can make $30,000 a week working 30 minutes a day from your home computer if you just send these idiot $25?

<comment><USER4> You're just listing the earlier stops on the slippery slope. Make hosts responsible for policing information when it's viscerally-revolting child porn. Then make hosts police content when it's directly harmful to people's computers. Then make hosts police content when it's an attempt to scam.

There's already a call to control political information when it has harmful effects on society. Next up is "your website was blacklisted because you allowed a user to link to Plandemic". I agree _Plandemic_ has no redeeming purpose, but censorship is not the answer.

<comment><USER6> I'm explaining why sites that HOST but do not necessarily send content are blocked.

I've got no problem with their operation, but YOU are going down a VERY dangerous and slippery slope by saying I can't block domains that clearly host trash because they might host something else.

On my network I can block child porn, malware sites, scam sites and even entertainment sites like youtube. If you are running a service that mixes the content together, then you may be blocked by folks (like me) who don't have time to chase down every (free) subdomain you allow scammers to create.

That is my right. Period. Full stop. That is not censorship.

Folks here get censorship confused. The govt does virtually nothing to stop these scam sites - so they are certainly not being censored. I'm fine if govt does nothing, as long as communities of people can block these places.

And yes, if you run a site on the internet and don't make it slightly difficult for scammers to use your site to host crap, then other folks in the neighborhood will move the heck away from you.

<comment><USER4> > _Folks here get censorship confused. The govt does virtually nothing to stop > these scam sites - so they are certainly not being censored_

It seems like _you 're_ getting confused on what censorship is. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship) . Censorship can be done by the government, and it also can be done by sufficiently powerful private entities.

Also, nowhere have I argued that anyone shouldn't block whatever they'd like on their personal infrastructure. Although if you do it to your kids, then you are indeed _censoring_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The same thing happened to my domain name about a month ago. (I also posted about it here.) This is happening more and more frequently, and the fact they block entire domains rather than a specific subdomain is really poor design.

I finally got it unblocked, but only thanks to a former colleague (engineer) who now works at Facebook. If that didn't work, my next step was going to be filing a lawsuit, just to try to get their attention.

A summary from spending a month trying to get this fixed:

1\. The "Report" link doesn't actually do anything, or if it does, you have to get loads of people reporting to surface it to a human.

2\. The best resolution may be through Ads billing, by trying to post an ad and reporting a problem displaying an ad.

3\. This affects a lot more than just blocking links. It also affects messages in private DMs (including from a Facebook for Business inbox), links on Instagram, any Facebook APIs you may be using, and even getting password reset emails to that domain.

For more context, here's my post: [https://watilo.com/facebooks-community- standards-censorship-...](https://watilo.com/facebooks-community-standards- censorship-has-far-reaching-consequences)

<comment><USER8> It seems likely that what's happening here is some combination of:

1) Spammers using one domain and multiple sub-domains

2) A poorly calibrated ML model for spam.

It is worth noting that FB get probably the world's largest amount of spammers, fraudsters and general bad people due to the fact that they have an absurd amount of users.

Honestly, though, if this stays on HN it will get fixed, but it's deeply concerning that if this is happening a bunch of times (and it probably is) but those sites don't appear on HN, then this will not get fixed.

It's also possible that someone has weaponised the FB spam system against dreamwidth (which seems less likely to be me, to be fair).

<comment><USER9> _> It is worth noting that FB get probably the world's largest amount of spammers, fraudsters and general bad people due to the fact that they have an absurd amount of users._

Yes, and they make a ton of money from those users as well. So the question is why the Facebooks and Googles of this world don't have proper procedures in place to deal with these things in a sensible way.

If a decision gets reversed only after exploding on Hacker News or Reddit it should be considered a bug.

<comment><USER5> > If a decision gets reversed only after exploding on Hacker News or Reddit it > should be considered a bug.

The problem is that we only see the cases that go viral. We don't see the cases that didn't, and thus can't actually judge how many cases get reversed via the official escalation channels.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Interesting place, never heard of it before.

> Dreamwidth Studios is an Open Source social networking, content management, > and personal publishing platform. Our mission in life is to make it easy for > you to share the things you make, and easy to find the people who are making > the things you want to enjoy.

> We have all the features you've come to love in social networking sites, > including privacy and security features, community interaction, content > aggregation, multimedia support, and more. We're committed to adding > features that you'll find useful and relevant, as well as working to > integrate our site with the other Internet services you regularly use.

> Dreamwidth Studios is based upon the LiveJournal codebase offered by > LiveJournal, Inc. We've taken the LiveJournal server code and updated, > modernized, and streamlined it -- and we make all of our changes available > under an Open Source license.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, it's an actually good blogging site.

Main thing it has against it is the lack of an app.

(And that Facebook has just blocked it)

<comment><USER11> The lack of an app is something for it. Literally every app of some website has the worse experience. Even worse the website will keep begging you to install their shitty app.

<comment><USER12> I'd say Apollo (or Reddit is Fun on Android) is a heck of a lot better than new Reddit, and about as good as old Reddit. And Google Maps' app beats their site by a county mile on iOS.

There's no good Hacker News client for mobile though, at least one that's better than the web page. Not that I'm saying someone should make one either, the site is responsive as heck.

<comment><USER13> Apollo is a bad example since Reddit purposely sabotage their website so you use their app.

It's perfectly possible to write a good Reddit web client; they chose not to

<comment><USER14> > It's perfectly possible to write a good Reddit web client; they chose not to

Good for whom? "Good for the user" does not mean "good for Reddit".

<comment><USER11> I'm not really sure how you could interpret that comment as anything else then "Good for the user".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Adding my own story to the article... I get where they are coming from...

I had to deal with the Facebook developer platform support recently, it was (still is) a nightmare... We only have 100 or so Facebook users, but dealing with their app approval process, review process, and repedative re-review process, has probably cost me 4 weeks of "maintenance" work in the last year to keep OAuth working for them.. And here's the best part: we request no additional scopes! We get first name, last name, email address, profile picture, the minimum to OAuth... No post read/write, no photo permissions (aside from profile picture), no friends access, nothing. We are literally the lowest risk app to end users that you can make on Facebook's platform...

They started a review on us a few weeks ago, we reported saying we needed more information (their wording was unclear)... They acknowledged the request for information, then a month later banned us without ever providing the information. We had an outage for Facebook users for 2-3 days while we waited for their support to read or appeal again asking for information. It's now been 7 weeks, and both requests for the same information has not been answered, I'm afraid they are going to ban us again in a week it two still not working with us...

Facebook is a nightmare to work with, we have no developers that actually want to keep working with them. It's offensive to most our developers that we have to link personal accounts to our work Facebook application.

<comment><USER16> Thanks for sharing this, I was considering using Facebook for OAuth login, but now I'm not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> In the past there was a news about Paypal banning Dreamwidth. Not sure if its related:

"About six months after opening, PayPal -- our payment processor at the time -- demanded that we censor some of our users' content (mostly involving people talking about sex, usually fictionally, in explicit terms) that was legal and protected speech but that they felt violated their terms for using PayPal."

HN discussion on it: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15099761](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15099761)

<comment><USER18> "Protected Speech" means that the _government_ can't censor it, not private corporations.

<comment><USER19> In 2020, Facebook, Google, Twitter, and Cloudflare are bigger gatekeepers of free speech than any government.

<comment><USER18> _any_ government?

Tell that to people who live in China, N. Korea, or any country controlled by a theocracy.

Even in the US some states ban doctors from talking about abortion and/or force doctors to give women seeking an abortion false information.

<comment><USER20> China has 1.4 billion people.

Facebook has over 3 billion users.

Gmail has over 2 billion active users. All their products combined probably have more than 3 billion.

US has 350 million people.

By those numbers alone, aren't tech companies more powerful arbitrators?

But that's a bad metric. We should talk about enforcement rather than raw numbers. Government's interest and design won't allow it to censor expressions in the same way that private companies [0] do. Private companies can _filter_ anything and since tech companies are digital, the enforcement itself can scale a lot more than government. Government maintains some sort of appeal system while tech companies don't have to.

Algorithms responsible for gmail _filter_ billions of mails daily probably. Obviously, not all of it can be called censorship as majority of it is spam but anything wrongfully filtered is _censorship_ , no? That's going to be a huge number that can't scale offline in enforcement.

0] [https://theintercept.com/2020/03/16/tiktok-app-moderators- us...](https://theintercept.com/2020/03/16/tiktok-app-moderators-users- discrimination/)

[1][https://www.campaignmonitor.com/blog/email- marketing/2019/05...](https://www.campaignmonitor.com/blog/email- marketing/2019/05/shocking-truth-about-how-many-emails-sent)

<comment><USER18> _Enforcement offline is hard to scale and limited even for china._

You don't have to tell 1 billion people in China not to say F%%% China". You just punish a few and the rest fall in line.

Once you punish a few, the rest self censor.

<comment><USER21> Imagine if Facebook or Google started doing this.

"Oh, you're friends with someone who says X? Welp, you must be a Bad User and your posts will receive a lot less visibility and the validation that you desire. But if you were to stop interacting with your Bad Friend, you could become a Good User again."

And oops, "Bad Friend" no longer gets invited to real-life parties because most people still consider FB the most convenient way to organize them and people only rarely remember to forward the invites.

<comment><USER22> It already does work like this with Facebook and Twitter controlling which posts are displayed for you.

The enforcement works better when you aren't aware of it. Being covert means you don't protest so loudly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I wonder how long it's going to take for small developers to draw the line and stop voluntarily feeding the beast that is facebook and other centralized media companies. The feedback loop is continuously going to be against them, since they are basically training their users to use social media for discovery instead of visiting them directly. I moved my former facebook games away from their platform and even from their login to have peace of mind. A smaller community is healthier, and it will still be there when ordinary users get their brains completely fried from online bickering.

<comment><USER24> I think a lot of content producers have solved the problem by creating presences on many platforms and asking for donations. Developers are in the position of being able to host their own content (although you lose push notifications if you tick apple off which is something this site probably would do.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> If you use FB's url debugger it gives the message:

"We can't review this website because the content doesn't meet our Community Standards. If you think this is a mistake, please let us know"

So an unhelpful; start but a start to understanding what may have happened.

Link: [https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/?q=https%3A%2F%2...](https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/?q=https%3A%2F%2Fandrewducker.dreamwidth.org%2F3861716.html)

My guess is that FB should have blocked a sub-domain but instead blocked a whole domain because of a small set os users.

<comment><USER26> Of course you need a Facebook account to use the Sharing Debugger. As if I needed /another/ reason to hate this website. D:

<comment><USER27> I believe that this kind of unfriendly UX helps companies like Facebook only in the short term. Long term these minor annoyances add up and people eventually go to a different platform.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> If Dreamwidth has any aspects of a social network whatsoever, I am sure the AG preparing anti-trust litigation against Facebook would like to hear about this blocking.

<comment><USER29> Don't most sites have those features? Some of the hate sites out there that much of the Internet applauds being blocked also have much of the same features.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Dreamwidth is a blogging site, an offshoot of Livejournal, I would expect content on it to be across the full spectrum of both opinions and quality. Banning it as a domain makes about as much sense as banning Wordpress or Blogspot.

<comment><USER31> Facebook has banned Wordpress' autocrossposter for years, nobody following me on Facebook ever sees any of my posts any more because I just cannot be bothered to manually cut and paste an excerpt and link to my WP-based site.

<comment><AUTHOR> Facebook banned automated posting to personal accounts a year or so ago.

You can still manually post links to any site that isn't banned though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> If anyone knows someone at Facebook who can get an explanation of why, that would be great.

This is a blogging site with tens of thousands of users, around for years.

</comment><comment><USER17> 1\. Is Facebook also blocking creation of new posts with links to Dreamwidth?

2\. Are other Facebook users with posts linking to Dreamwidth also experiencing this deletion of posts?

Edit: Yes and Yes.

<comment><USER32> I tried to create a new post including the dreamwidth link, I got no error but its just not getting posted.

I bet it was added to some spam list automatically because some ppl really used it for spam.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> If you want to be the centre of the world, if you want to be a public utility, if you want to be the front page of the internet... then you have to have a proper complaints procedure, a proper independent appeals process. Yes it would be very expensive, tough luck.

<comment><USER34> How about federating censorship (/curation).

That is, anyone can pick who gets to censor / curate their stream. And Facebook just provides the platform. Maybe, for legally required censorship, the platform can still take action. But for anything else, let people pick their censor.

<comment><USER35> Then Facebook quickly becomes a platform of super-bubbles, and their influence on humanity becomes 100X worse over night. Content management policies exist because sometimes the creators of these platforms don't like them being used for evil.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I'm afraid I can't remember the exact example, but I think about 4 years ago there was some open-source-y, privacy-focused Facebook alternative that got blacklisted in a similar way. Private messages containing the URL or name just wouldn't go through.

<comment><USER37> Based on a previous post like this, it not only disappears the existing messages but reaches into the past and memory holes every message that's contained the link in the past!

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I suspect that DW has some interesting stuff.

At first blush, it looks like LiveJournal 2.0. There's probably some pretty...interesting stuff, but it's not aggregated and promoted, like FB. It looks like each account is pretty insular.

<comment><USER39> That's exactly what it is — they forked the LJ codebase.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I bet Matthew Garret of Linux Kernel fame is going to be ecstatic about this.

[https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/](https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/)

</comment><comment><USER41> This is why I'm so cynical about the Zuckerberg's stated stance on "free expression". You can't go around positioning yourself as if you're the last bastion of free speech online[1] and then turn around and block large swathes of indie content because they are hosted on a particular domain.

[1] [https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/10/17/zuckerb...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/10/17/zuckerberg- standing-voice-free-expression/)

<comment><USER42> Those are different things though. You can most likely write whatever you want to link to on Facebook, so they're not really censoring speech. They censor some off-platform links.

<comment><USER41> I could see an argument for this if:

1\. They limited themselves to blocking content that was decidedly harmful (phishing sites, malware, etc.), AND

2\. They were transparent about what links they blocked and why.

It seems that neither was the case here.

<comment><USER42> The limitation might be there, but bans are usually not surgical. If you have a thousand subdomains of some domain hosting spam, you'll likely block the domain if it's not a major player like wordpress.com.

Transparency would be nice indeed. The argument I keep hearing against it is that they believe it would help the spammers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Time to contact your local AG.

<comment><USER44> About what? FB can block anyone they want for any reason they want.

<comment><USER45> About abusing its monopoly power to prevent users from linking to a competitor.

<comment><USER34> Interestingly, if FB censors some one/thing that isn't a direct competitor, that means anti-trust doesn't apply. At the same time, the problem of a forum essential to public discourse censoring speech persists. Even worse there is very little appeal possible against the censoring.

So, whilst anti-trust might help sometimes. It is not the best tool here. What we need is legislation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I was not aware that Facebook blocked users from posting links to specific domains. Is the list made public anywhere?

<comment><USER12> It's not a public blacklist, but this thingy[0] from another comment seems to tell you what's up with a specific site if you give it a URL. At least, I think it does, since you have to sign in with Facebook.

0: [https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/](https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> I just navigated to dreamwidth.org/latest and got a seriously NSFW picture. I assume this is not normal?

<comment><USER22> Dream width is where people go to post stuff that isn't allowed elsewhere.

So while explicit imagery is not the norm, nor is it normative, it's not unusual and is to be expected.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Reminds me of Apple and Amazon.

These gatekeepers flexing should be a huge red flag, akin to the BP oil spill in the tech world.

This might be the last straw for me to delete my Facebook. I would be a bad capitalist if I didn't.

</comment><comment><USER48> Reading that page gave me k5 flashbacks

</comment><comment><USER49> What is dreamwidth? Why was it blocked?

</comment><comment><USER50> @AndrewDucker: I'm curious to know why you picked the "eye in the pyramid" as the icon of your post, which is also known as the symbol of the Illuminati.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's my default post icon. Because it's being silly about the Illuminati. No real reason it's my default except that it amused me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Dreamwidth contains lots of spammy blogs.

<comment><USER51> You think this is a justification to do this? On Hacker News? Really? I do not understand the mindset of some people

<comment><USER52> If it causes them more trouble than it's worth it's understandable. Someone else pointed out that there was a lot of questionable sexual content on the site and you can't really expect Facebook to micromanage every subdomain.

<comment><USER53> I don't see why Facebook needs to censor "questionable" sexual content. Individual users and groups have adequate tools to control what they themselves see.

The only point of Facebook's censorship is to control what the willing can see.

<comment><USER52> because asking the average user to fine tune their experience to avoid questionable sexual content is going to piss a ton of users off who expect this to be the default experience on the site. So Facebook does a calculation and the result is that removing that stuff is easier than having a million people complain about being exposed to it and that's that.

The same reason any other forum or platform moderates their content and usually removes sexual content, you want the default experience to be good for the average user on the site.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Defcon 22 Badge Contest - <AUTHOR> http://elegin.com/dc22/

<comment><USER2> This is pure crazy talk -- I love it. Just enough coherence to follow the progression, but chaotic enough to give the feeling you experience when chasing difficult problems through the rabbit hole. Truly a brain dump, as close as one can perform. I bet it felt incredible not just to solve the challenge, but then to try to extract the event from an exhausted mind and write it all down. A tad bit envious if I don't mind saying so.

<comment><USER3> I agree, truly some of the thrill was conveyed through this post.

The organizers of the challenge seem delightfully evil and I imagine it is a blast to organize.

The Google Translate deciphering from latin was probably the most amusing part to me and no longer seems to work? [https://translate.google.com/#la/en/lorem%20ip%0A%0ALorem%20...](https://translate.google.com/#la/en/lorem%20ip%0A%0ALorem%20ipsum%20dolor%20si%0ALorem%20ipsum%20do%0ALorem%20ipsum%20dolor%20s%0Alorem%20ipsum%20ama%0ALorem%20ipsum%20dolor%20sit%20amet%0ALorem%20ipsum%20dolor%20sit%20ame%0A%0ALorem%20ipsum%20dolor%20sit%0Alorem%20ipsum%20ips%0Alorem%20ipsum%20lor%0Alorem%20ipsum%20lo%0Alorem%20ipsum%20lorem%0Alorem%20ipsum%20amat%0ALorem%20Ipsum)

<comment><USER4> It's defcon, I think they could've pulled in a favor from google.

<comment><USER3> I do wonder if that's the case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There's also this [0] write up, if you're looking for a more straight-forward read.

[0] [http://potatohatsecurity.tumblr.com/post/94565729529/defcon-...](http://potatohatsecurity.tumblr.com/post/94565729529/defcon-22-badge- challenge-walkthrough)

</comment><comment><USER6> > The first tidbit is "PERRIN" this is referencing Perrin numbers. I 100% > confident that we are the only people to ever hit that wiki page, ever.

Almost: I was on that wiki page while waiting in line around 3 am Thursday morning (speakers got badges, etc. early, and a friend of a friend was a speaker). We just didn't have the time to stick with it.

<comment><USER7> I read it as "we" being everyone working on the badge problem instead of his group specifically

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Awesome write up! I love the defcon badge challenges

</comment><comment><USER9> Who is lost?

<comment><USER6> 1o57 designs the DEFCON badges every year.</comment></comment>


Elegant JSON WebService in Swift - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/s4cha/ws <comment><USER2> This is awful looking Swift code. It looks like a JavaScript dev got into Swift and didn't fully understand the fundamentals of Swift. I know it's doable, but as someone who works entirely in Swift this project looks different than 99% of the frameworks that I use.

One of the major issues I have is with the module name and object names. import ws? I mean come on. What happened to verbosity? It seems like the go to these days is to shorten everything and just use acronyms everywhere. Terribly confusing in large projects.

Finally have a look at existing frameworks such as SwiftyJSON and ObjectMapper. Much more elegant.</comment>


Google used a tax loophole to shelter $19.2B - <AUTHOR> https://www.engadget.com/2018/01/02/google-dutch-sandwich-tax-maneuver/?sr_source=Twitter <comment> super-serial Bloomberg likes to write about how "tech companies do this" whenever it's something bad.

The fact is all companies do this... it's well-known every industry is doing the same. Walmart, Exxon and Pfizer are just a few companies that tax-dodge just as much as Google. It's estimated $700 billion in taxes are dodged so singling out Google's $19 billion seems strange.

[https://americansfortaxfairness.org/corporate-tax- chartbook-...](https://americansfortaxfairness.org/corporate-tax-chartbook- how-corporations-rig-the-rules-to-dodge-the-taxes-they-owe/)

<comment><USER2> Yes, but they don't have the "don't be evil" motto, or executives claiming some vague moral superiority to rest of the corporate world in "making the world a better place".

<comment><USER3> There is no moral obligation to pay additional taxes beyond the minimum that tax law permits.

<comment><USER4> I think you mean there is no _legal_ obligation to pay additional taxes beyond the minimum that tax law permits.

Whether your moral obligation lies above or below the legal minimum depends on your viewpoint.

<comment><USER3> Your thought is incorrect. I mean precisely what I said.

There is no moral obligation to pay more than your legally required amount of tax. The presumption would be that no moral obligation exists until one is proven, for precisely the reason you mentioned (it depends on your viewpoint, so we cannot begin with any one set of norms), so if you would kindly propose one, I will disprove it.

<comment><USER4> Assume the moral obligation lies at exactly the same point as the legal obligation. Now assume the tax law changes. Has your moral obligation changed?

Edit: I wasn't saying there's a moral obligation to pay more than the legal obligation. I was saying there's not _necessarily_ a moral obligation to pay even the legal obligation. They're orthogonal issues.

You implied that there is a moral obligation to pay at least the legal minimum, and I'm saying that's not a moral obligation but a legal obligation.

Edit further: imagine living in a regime with 90% income taxes, and which takes that money and uses it to do terrible things. You have a legal obligation to pay those taxes, but I'd argue at least that you _don 't have a moral obligation to pay_, and perhaps that you actually have a moral obligation _not_ to pay. Therefore the legal minimum tax payment is not a moral obligation but a legal obligation.

<comment><USER3> > Assume the moral obligation lies at exactly the same point as the legal > obligation. Now assume the tax law changes. Has your moral obligation > changed?

I don't actually believe that this assumption is generally true (nonpayment of taxes can be a form of civil disobedience; Henry David Thoreau did this in opposition to the Mexican-American War), but let's say that we believe in the principle that "any entity has a civic duty to follow the law, and if it is unjust, to protest it and endeavor to change it rather than simply disobeying it." In that case, yes, the moral obligation changes, because it is based on following the law.

> You implied that there is a moral obligation to pay at least the legal > minimum, and I'm saying that's not a moral obligation but a legal > obligation.

I don't believe I implied that. I just said there's no moral obligation to pay more than the legal minimum. That is true even if there is no moral obligation to pay taxes at all.

> Edit further: imagine living in a regime with 90% income taxes, and which > takes that money and uses it to do terrible things. You have a legal > obligation to pay those taxes, but I'd argue at least that you don't have a > moral obligation to pay, and perhaps that you actually have a moral > obligation not to pay. Therefore the legal minimum tax payment is not a > moral obligation but a legal obligation.

OK, so even in this situation, there is no moral obligation to pay any more than the minimum legally required tax. I fail to see where we disagree.

<comment><USER4> If you didn't mean to imply that there's a moral obligation to pay the legal minimum, then we don't disagree :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There are no such things as tax loopholes. There is compliance with the law as Congress has written with all of their agendas, and there is noncompliance.

<comment><USER6> Exactly.

Do you think shareholders would stand for a company paying $19.2B more in taxes than they should? That would be absurdly negligent on the part of everyone leading the company.

Would an individual pay $500 more in taxes than they are required to out of the goodness of their heart and belief in the American government?

Don't indict corporations for following the tax code, change the laws.

<comment><USER7> > Would an individual pay $500 more in taxes than they are required to out of > the goodness of their heart and belief in the American government?

I've done it. I also let the shopkeepers make "mistaken" change when I visited Nepal. Sometimes I tip $5 even when I buy less than $25 worth of food at a restaurant. Maybe I'm a moron, but I think of money as a tool and when I can afford it I am happy to help others accomplish their goals. In the case of taxes many of the government's goals are aligned with mine so I'm even happier to contribute.

<comment><USER8> I think disposable income is great! I like having it as much as the next person, but gosh do I waste it! If I saved all the cash I've "donated" in tips and excessive spending I'm certain I'd have a couple $1000 more in the bank and would be much closer to building that track car I've been fantasising about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> When this loophole exists, it's tough to blame Google for not taking advantage of it. You may as well ask them to donate their profits to the federal government.

<comment><USER10> Consider that most of Google's political positions lean liberal, in subsidizing government services by raising taxes. For this same company to be participating in a scheme designed to deprive the government tax revenue, while advocating raising everyone's taxes to pay for things...

Suffice to say, this is not a company "doing the right thing", as their code of conduct suggests they should.

And bear in mind, this is not a loophole in our tax code, it is a loophole in international tax handling between multiple countries, and the primary result of this is that all of those billions get stashed in Bermuda instead of coming back to the US where it can enrich society.

<comment><USER11> Corporations literally have a legal obligation to attempt to pay as little tax as is legally possible (really, to maximize shareholder value, which might even mean paying less tax than is legally possible, as long as the expected value of the gambit is positive).

The issue is not corporations taking advantage of it, the issue is that we have a system where an actor is obligated to optimize for certain variables within the rules of a network of systems, but the network of systems is not coordinated in a way that prevents "abuse" as everyone would like to define it, but strictly speaking, haven't.

<comment><USER12> Exactly this. The term is "fiduciary responsibility". Their directors could be sued for paying unnecessary tax, against which "doing the right thing" is not a legitimate defense. ("Right" in that statement having different moral and legal meanings.)

Or, put another way, it would have been _illegal_ for them to have _paid_ that tax.

<comment><USER13> >Exactly this. The term is "fiduciary responsibility". Their directors could be sued for paying unnecessary tax

Directors have a responsibility to the corporation, they have no fiduciary responsibility to shareholders.

No shareholder would win a case against a corporation for 'paying too much tax' any more than they would win a case against a corporation for paying the directors or the CEO too much money.

This myth needs to die already.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Related: the new GOP tax bill makes it much cheaper for US companies to bring that money back in to the country while paying minimal taxes on it. Google's been playing offshore accounting games for 10+ years waiting for this moment of tax holiday. [http://www.businessinsider.com/trump-tax-reform-plan- repatri...](http://www.businessinsider.com/trump-tax-reform-plan- repatriation-14-us-companies-with-most-cash-overseas-2017-9)

<comment><USER15> The problem is companies keep getting these holidays. Investors were starting to get antsy about having all this cash tied up overseas and were starting to pressure companies into repatriating the funds.

I suspect that, had Clinton been elected, many of these companies would have bit the bullet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> tl;dr. Being an asshole isn't a crime.

Analogy to put this in perspective: at your daughter' school, there's a collection for a new electronic whiteboard. Everyone pays their share. Except due to an old / obscure rule families below poverty line are exempt. One rich parent figured out how to hide all their income and qualify.

There are different ethical standards for corporations & individuals. Companies get to navigate these quite cleverly.

<comment><USER17> Your analogy doesn't hold too well. To be more accurate

1\. The collection would have to be a large percentage of all wealth, not a fixed and small sum.

2\. A caveat being your child might not even use the whiteboard, and not paying means you get kicked out of school.

3\. By 'hiding', you mean something legal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Does anyone have more context on why Ireland's loophole will take so long to close? I suspect they're worried about externalities and retooling costs for entities obeying the spirit of tax law but it seems like they could put monetary thresholds that lower yearly rather than an all or nothing in 2020.

e.g. Why not say "new tax code applies to any company doing >$1B worth of business in 2018, >$500M in 2019, and all companies in 2020?"

Just curious if there's well-thought out reasons that this doesn't work.

<comment><USER19> This source (in Dutch sadly) [1] might shed some light. In short a `coalition of the unwilling' consisting of The Netherlands, Ireland, Cyprus, Malta and Luxemburg are impeding tax reform. In public they talk the good talk. Behind the sense they stall under the guise 'Need to ensure proper implementation'.

[1] [https://nos.nl/artikel/2206095-nederland-ligt-nog-altijd- dwa...](https://nos.nl/artikel/2206095-nederland-ligt-nog-altijd-dwars-bij-eu- aanpak-belastingontwijking.html)

<comment><USER18> Thank you! That explains a lot about what's going on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> "regulatory filings show that Google shielded €15.9 billion (about $19.2 billion) in 2016 using the popular "Dutch Sandwich" tax trick, saving it about $3.7 billion in taxes."

<comment><USER21> Must've been hell of a sandwich.

<comment><USER22> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16029384](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16029384)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> In Iowa, the City of Waukee was bribed $100m by Apple to abate $170m in property taxes. Think about that. You pay a $1000 bribe to the city and they nerf $1700 of your property tax; screwing the local school district/county/state.

Massive brazen tax fraud.

Apple even bragged about the $100m bribe in their press release calling it an "endowment fund".

[https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2017/08/apples-next-us- data-c...](https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2017/08/apples-next-us-data-center- will-be-built-in-iowa/)

</comment><comment><USER24> > Google is "using tax loopholes that obey the letter of the law, but not the > spirit of it."

Absolute hogwash. So minimizing your taxes is somehow going against the "spirit" of tax law? What should the spirit of tax law be? Pay as much taxes as possible?

I would love to see what deductions this blogger takes and see if he complies with the "spirit" of tax law. Typical socialist/communist viewpoint that anything that a rich company does is somehow immoral.

<comment><USER25> > I would love to see what deductions this blogger takes and see if he > complies with the "spirit" of tax law.

It's likely that he takes exactly one, the standard deduction, as most people do.

<comment><USER24> No, since the author is Canadian, not American. He probably is also claiming business expenses since he's a contractor, not an employee.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> The morally reprehensible with this is not a cooperation acting in its own interest, the moral reprehensible is a cooperation not investing into possible risky ventures with these gained riches and instead using them to find zero days in the tax law - and bribing devs to put them there.

Innovation should be the only acceptable tax haven.

</comment><comment><USER27> As a side note, I wonder if this is why Eric Schmidt left Google: [https://citizensagainstmonopoly.org/](https://citizensagainstmonopoly.org/)

</comment><comment><USER28> I never understood how this isn't interpreted as tax evasion. The SEC has wide athority to interpret the intention even if it's not written in law. I don't see how the IRS should be any different.

</comment><comment><USER29> They've got the best programmers, the best lawyers and the best accountants apparently.

</comment><comment><USER30> Awful headline. There is no "tax loophole" and billions are not being "sheltered".

</comment><comment><USER31> Good for them :).

There seems to be a lot of people in the world who get "enraged" that companies are greedy (and they are), but never care if governments are greedy. Why is it okay for governments to be greedy?

</comment><comment><USER32> This is actually good thing. I don't know about you, I would rather Google keep more money and invest with it than handed the money to any government. What would the government do with your money? They most likely wasted it with 0 accountability.

At least when Google failed, they go bully up. When government failed, they get rewarded with more money and resources.

<comment><USER10> Google isn't using or investing this money. They're hiding it in a bank account in Bermuda. Whereas, if it was brought into the US, it would both get taxed (with which the government could help pay for things like your healthcare), but Google could also invest it or spend it here in the US, improving our economy.

<comment><USER33> IIRC companies with offshore profits in Bermuda invest it in stocks/bonds/etc, rather than having it sit there and do nothing.

<comment><USER34> Yeah, they'd lose big time if they let it sit in an account for ten years.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Everyday Authoritarianism Is Boring and Tolerable - <AUTHOR> https://tompepinsky.com/2017/01/06/everyday-authoritarianism-is-boring-and-tolerable/ <comment><USER2> TL:DR; screw basic income, let's talk direct democracy.

I think the article presents a valuable point of view, but most "democratic" choices in countries involve very low fidelity choices between largely indistinguishable parties in a way that is not particularly different from long term autocratic rule.

This might be due to "flight to the centre" in terms of major party policy, but I like to think of it in terms of the fact that essentially 1 bit every few years is not really enough input into the whole system. There is a lot of "bundling" in terms of policy which means that in the process of choosing the least worst thing amongst the available options, you are forced to legitimise a status quo.

Worse than that, you think you're voting for something and then the thing you get turns out to be something else. The customer service is pretty bad too unless you have a lot of money.

I think it's time technology caught up with "democracy". We have the technology to do things which look a lot more like direct democracy. Eftpos and credit card terminals would work fine as mini voting systems. And they're everywhere. If we determined that we could keep fraud to less than say, 4%, that's accountable for by setting thresholds conservatively.

There are a lot of issues (media capture, short term horizons, moral panic, lack of big picture / inability to budget if people have too much control over laws)...

But while basic income gets debated all the time, I hardly ever see anyone proposing modifications to "democracy". Which is weird, because I see all this big picture stuff on HN all the time but it seems to me there's not much questioning of the larger order of things.</comment>


Google's Encryption Choices with Allo - <AUTHOR> http://daringfireball.net/linked/2016/05/23/allo-encryption <comment><USER3> > They should call this "private", not "incognito".

Heh, I agree, but the reason they didn't do that is most likely because then more people would be using it, because in reality _most people_ want "private conversations". It's just that when it's not within their reach they give in to convenience. Google wants you give in to convenience and not use "Incognito" chats very often.

Also, calling it private would inevitable make more people think "wait - <USER2> what isn't labeled _private_ , isn't actually private?!" And Google _definitely_ doesn't want that to happen. They don't want even more people to start questioning what is actually private.

I also agree that "normal" conversations should be the private ones, and the others should be "AI-enhanced" or whatever. Conversations should be private by default. That's how they are in the real world, too. Google, Facebook, and the like want the opposite to be true in the digital world, because then they can analyze every word you say to increase their ad revenue, and also hand you over to the police when there's request for that data (secret [1], or otherwise).

[1] - [https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the- issues/2016/04/14/keeping...](https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the- issues/2016/04/14/keeping-secrecy-exception-not-rule-issue-consumers- businesses/)</comment>


Readspike – Simple news aggregator - <AUTHOR> https://readspike.com/ <comment><USER2> Author here – I can't believe my humble little pet project has made it to the hackernews front page!

I cobbled it together for myself 5 years ago to aggregate my favourite news rss feeds. I'd be amazed if the server holds up! Feel free to ask any questions.

<comment><USER3> Here's a souvenir, if you haven't grabbed it yourself :P

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

<comment><USER2> BoingBoing too! What a lovely surprise, thanks

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I can't stare at white text on black with no visual hierarchy and get anything useful from it without really forcing myself to concentrate hard. Which is exactly the opposite of what I want from an aggregator.

<comment><USER2> I used to have a day/night mode but my analytics said 0 people used it, so I removed it to reduce cruft. Maybe I should put it back!

<comment><USER5> perhaps the problem was that the control wasn't obvious. agreed, can't use it with white text on black background.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I prefer the "river" style layouts as well.

Two examples for financial news that are quite usable:

[http://www.marketwatch.com/newsviewer](http://www.marketwatch.com/newsviewer)

[http://cmwire.com/](http://cmwire.com/)

For the MarketWatch site, link is just to their own in-house write-up, but you have the option to mouse over and bring up stock charts, etc. On CMWire, lag in updates is every three minutes or so, making it very timely.

Mobile-wise, HN News remains my go-to reading experience ;)

<comment><USER7> Since you mentioned MarketWatch and river of news, I think these folks do a good job:

[http://seekingalpha.com/market-news/all](http://seekingalpha.com/market- news/all)

However, it does seem unnecessarily javascript-heavy when we are talking text, and it aggressively auto-reloads (sometimes when I'm in the midst of reading!). There seems to be a usability mismatch among people that use 1 browser with one tab open vs. people that utilize multiple browsers and/or multiple tabs.

edit: I, personally, use multiple browsers, some with multiple windows, and some of those windows with 5-60 tabs (i.e. HN). Graceful degradation used to be a concept highly regarded among developers that addressed these usage scenarios, but now we cater to the lowest common denominator only.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> FYI: If you want to build your own little news aggreator page or sites, try the open source pluto planet tool (gem/library) [1] it incl. a top theme [2], for example. Happy planet. Cheers. [1] [http://feedreader.github.io](http://feedreader.github.io) [2] [https://github.com/planet-templates/planet-top](https://github.com/planet- templates/planet-top)

</comment><comment><USER9> Nice to see that other people besides me like having their news presented this way. I will be launching my own iGoogle clone in the next couple of months. It will be easy to create and move around different feeds and there will be tabs as well - although I call them pages in my app. I built it using React/MobX/TypeScript.

<comment><USER2> Yeah I think I made it when iGoogle and google reader died, I'll not kill it off like they did

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I love this, I like how it's not image heavy. It also seems to aggregate all the sites I like to read :)

I really like the responsive multi-column, as someone who increases the text on webpages all the time , i find a lot of a more shinier things out there don't like 150%, your site scales nicely.

[https://imgur.com/BPc1gvx](https://imgur.com/BPc1gvx)

What I would love would be a section at the top that just has all the news feeds, merged, in reverse chronological order.

<comment><USER2> Thanks Charles! Speed was my main goal, it should load in well under a second. Will look into the merged idea

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> It seems that this is the source for it: [https://github.com/kultus/ReadSpike](https://github.com/kultus/ReadSpike)

<comment><USER12> I guess it's the admin interface, so perhaps not public facing. But, uh, lots of SQL injection issues...

[https://github.com/kultus/ReadSpike/blob/master/crud2/index....](https://github.com/kultus/ReadSpike/blob/master/crud2/index.php)

<comment><USER13> Just had flashbacks to writing PHP. Considering this is still an idiomatic style of writing PHP speaks to the problems of the language. That SQL injection venerability is also plain as day.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Great, now add some more predefined pages (or allow customizing) and let me invert the colors and I'm good to go!

<comment><USER15> If you want to quickly invert the colors, simply paste this in a custom Stylish userstyle :

html { filter: invert(100%); } img,svg{ filter: invert(100%); } body { background: white; }

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I hate multi-column layouts. The only reason they exist is to provide a narrow text width (easy to read) on a wide page without wasting tons of paper. Scrollbars exist, there is no good reason to have a multi-column layout for an electronic document.

There also doesn't seem to be any way to customize which RSS feeds are shown. That means I'd still need a second reader for anything not included (and have feeds I'm not interested in). That makes it even more useless.

This feels like the author's personal project. The feed categories are quite specific (London & Brighton) and fixed. I'm sure it's just what they want, but it's not exactly a general purpose news aggregator.

<comment><USER17> I disagree about muli-column layouts, as I tend to like them. I think it just comes down to preference. The best solution would be to offer multiple views based on user preference.

The rest is spot on though. A little too specific and un-changeable for my personal use.

<comment><USER16> Multi-columns work if you don't have to scroll to read the info as well. If you can get to the bottom of the column without scrolling (like on a printed page) it's fine. If you have to scroll they're horrid. You wouldn't print a book with a multi-column layout where each column continues through to the end of the chapter, and then you have to turn back to the start to read the next column. Yet people do it with digital documents all the damn time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I am already used to this view, credit goes to android and web app of feedly. How about showing trending youtube videos. By the way, it is awesome. Loving it. It would have been great if I could personalise the feeds with my opml file.

</comment><comment><USER15> Suggestion : Let me click on a source to front it on the top of the website. Simply store it in a cookie or localstorage. Even better, let me drag-drop to reorder or mute sites I'm not interested in seeing.

<comment><USER2> I should make a public trello board, good suggestions!

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Looks like a dumbed down version of [http://alltop.com/](http://alltop.com/)

How is this on the front page?

</comment><comment><USER20> Great website. A few wishes :

Would love to have a PWA for it. Web platform daily doesn't work anymore. You could parse the content of the weekly issues in [https://github.com/simevidas/webplatformnews- weekly/tree/mas...](https://github.com/simevidas/webplatformnews- weekly/tree/master/issues)

<comment><USER2> Thanks! replaced it with developers.google.com/web

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> A simple news aggregator for someone, just not for your news

</comment><comment><USER22> I'm sorry but this website doesn't provide some innovative news feed, all I can find here is a simple RSS reader.

In my opinion this post shouldn't be on the front page. I guess it's all about the author's karma (or other users who upvotedt it).

<comment><USER23> Maybe it's karma powered, but yeah I feel a bit sad about this on the frontpage, not because I don't see the merit of it, but because I've tried to promote my feed that was tracking hundred of startup blogs and tech giants, and I was just able to get like 4 points in the 3 occasions I put it on Show HN. It's already water over the bridge and it's not tracking any more news, but anyway, sorry for this mini rant.

<comment><USER2> Readspike has been live for 5 years with only a handful of regular visitors, this is totally out of the blue for me! No idea who submitted it, I thought my site had errored when I saw it listed on itself

<comment><USER22> Ok, sorry for my comment.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Creativity, Madness and Drugs (2013) - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/mind-guest-blog/2013/11/22/creativity-madness-and-drugs/

<comment><USER2> I'm surprised to see this sort of article from Scientific American, maybe I shouldn't be. If I didn't know better, I'd have thought it came from RollingStone. It's an interesting read, but binding successful creativity to mental illness and drug use ignores the majority of people who suffer from mental illness or partake (and sometimes become severely addicted as the article gives examples) to drugs without any sort of creative outlet or benefit to society.

Would we really not have had Poe's the Raven had he been treated for bi-polar? Did the disease so affect the writer that he would not have been a writer without it? Maybe he would have written something else even more profound.</comment>


Decrease of White Matter Integrity in Obese Adolescents [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://press.rsna.org/pressrelease/2019_resources/2121/abstract.pdf <comment><USER2> What's the causal direction here? Do teens get obese in part because their impulse control centers malfunction? Or does being obese for years cause those parts of the brain to stop working correctly?

<comment><USER3> Richard P. Bentall makes convincing argument that happiness is a psychiatric disorder.† Notably Caesar was said to prefer the company of fat men, with the implied causation that happy -> fat. One also sees this in the weight gain usually caused by SSRIs. At the same time obesity has well measured effects on many metabolic processes, so it is likely there is some effect on the brain.

† [PDF] [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1376114/pdf/jme...](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1376114/pdf/jmedeth00282-0040.pdf)

<comment><USER4> I was going to joke about happy stoned people, but:

Recreational marijuana use impacts white matter integrity and subcortical (but not cortical) morphometry

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4925620/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4925620/)

<comment><USER5> Can someone please ELI5 on the meaning of these things? Googling around just sends me down a scholarly rabbit hole of more words I don't understand.

<comment><USER6> I did that once to a paper that I don't understand. That is, I read and look up stuff until I think I understood things.

I learned a lot by doing that. But it took a lot of work, and I forgotten most of it if it wasn't added to anki. Good thing that I wrote it down in my notes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is purely anecdotal.

I have found that obese clients have a much harder time grasping the theoretical foundation for diving than fit fit clients. I am not talking about the fitness tests, but understanding the underlying physical principles of the sport.

This has become enough of an issue that I ask about level of fitness prior to scheduling courses due to need to budget additional time for unfit clients in the classroom.

I cannot attribute this to grey matter, it is just my experience that overweight people take significantly longer to teach basic theory before even getting into the water.

<comment><USER8> If you do not use muscles regularly the nerves that control them won't fire intelligently and you will stumble around like a buffoon. I've certainly never met an obese person with precise body mechanics.

<comment><USER9> I know obese people who are really great dancers. In the social dance world heavier people are typically above-average or great dancers. This isn't to say obese people are better dancers in general - just that people are prejudiced against obese dancers, and anyone who can deal with that kind of prejudice has to be really good and motivated to keep showing up.

<comment><USER8> Yes this is a survivorship bias I would say.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Mountain View's unusual rule for Facebook: No free food - <AUTHOR> https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Mountain-View-s-unusual-rule-for-Facebook-No-13096100.php <comment> polski-g This sounds like a violation of the first amendment right to association.</comment>