Why the Drudge Report is one of the best designed sites on the web - <AUTHOR> http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1407-why-the-drudge-report-is-one-of-the-best-designed-sites-on-the-web

<comment><USER2> This is survivorship bias. A ton of similarly ugly sites launched in 1997, one, for whatever reason (possibly the content quality) survived this far without changing. And then we get his "staying power" paragraph.

<comment><USER3> You also have to look at unique events, if drudge hadn't been part of breaking the the Monica Lewinsky story, would the site have had the staying power it appears to have?

He milked that story for all it was worth, and it got him hooked into the right wing welfare club which led to some very lucrative alliances between him and various radio hosts, which allowed them to use each other to push dubiously sourced stories into the mainstream media...

<comment><USER2> Yeah, having broken that story was certainly part of it. It was the first major story broken on the net.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Another great trick on Drudge is to group stories with opposing views next to each other. For example, an article about the horrors of global warming directly above an article on global cooling - this is usually done using the subtle lines on the site for grouping - a good graphic technique.

</comment><comment><USER5> I think the biggest argument for the design of the Drudge Report is that their biggest political/media rival, the Huffington Post, has borrowed their "one giant headline and photo" format. <http://www.huffingtonpost.com>

I remember when the huffpo first came out, and it looked more like a traditional blog. I can't help but think they kind of gave in and started to use the ugly-but-effective-with-the-masses style that Drudge has been using for the last ten years.

<comment><USER6> You say "effective-with-the-masses" like it's a bad thing, but I think it actually just works on a psychological level for anybody. You don't have to be a mouth-breather to appreciate something that is simply straightforward and readable. "Whitespace" and "clean design" are just aesthetic trends that have little positive correlation with readability or usability.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is like saying McDonalds has the best tasting food because they sell the most of it.

<comment><USER8> Funny, there's another topic on the front page about the taste of McDonalds food. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=369249>

<comment><USER7> Yes, there is. It's an interesting read. But McDonald's justifies their claims for "best fries" by volume, Burger King justifies their claims via blind taste tests. I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to determine which is more persuasive (independent of the biases any particular consumer has).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> While I don't necessarily agree with everything he wrote, it's hard to argue with the results, traffic and revenue of Drudge Report.

I also really enjoyed his take on "Breaking News".

<comment><USER10> I love it when people say things like this. Remember, Drudge really only writes headlines, and he doesn't claim to be an unbiased news source. He only occasionally writes something, and when he does it is usually an email he got from someone else.

Drudge is of the same concept of the Huffington post. It is news that is not normally highlighted on television. Both, places are successful in pushing stories they feel newsworthy into the main stream press.

<comment><USER9> Say things like what?

No one was arguing against the points you made. When I said "he" I was referring to the 37$ignals Dude - not Drudge.

<comment><USER10> No problem. I was referring to Drudge. I just often here people talk about how people don't like him because he is slanted. That is the point of drudge. Sorry for any confusion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Very similar story to the plentyoffish guy. One person, low overhead and massive revenue.

I wonder if this is because they've been around forever and have a brand on the web, or, if you could launch something with barebones design and replicate their success NOW.

<comment><USER12> Well there's Drudgeretort.com (a similar site) and it doesn't have the same reach or revenue. Matt Drudge's readership goes a long way back..

<comment><USER10> The thing with Drudgeretort.com is that it is just a knock off trying to attack the original. How often is the knock off as successful as the original. For those that would say that Google wasn't the first search engine, miss the point. Google created something different and better, Drudereport just tried to copy and paste their way to success, I however do think that Drudgeretort likely makes a descent bit of money, just not as much.

I however, do think that it is more the name, and the fact that he has always tried to show something different to the Main stream media that have lead to his success. He also knows his audience very well. I really don't think the design is the biggest element to his success, it is just a help to his success.

<comment><USER13> I hadn't visited the DrudgeReport in many years. The DrudgeRetort actually looks like (from what I remember) what the original used to look like. Interesting that www.drudge.com points to the _retort_ , not to the original.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Not to be a troll but the design is terrible sure it's organized (kinda) and headlines have different style, etc...

But it's barely readable... It's so busy...

<comment><USER15> But 37signals argues that the busy layout is what makes it thrilling. And they agree up front that it's an ugly site. But they say that that's a part of what makes it so good.

<comment> a-priori I rememembered reading something similar about pizza flyers, so I looked it up:

[http://www.underconsideration.com/speakup/archives/002462.ht...](http://www.underconsideration.com/speakup/archives/002462.html)

They argue that pizza flyers are good design because they all fit the viewer expectations about what a pizza flyer _should_ look like, and that the cluttered layout tells the viewer "we're too busy making cheap pizza to make this thing look better", thus implanting the idea that they're getting cheap pizza.

Perhaps a similar phenomenon is at work here?

<comment><USER15> Yeah, very similar. If you make something look stylish and snazzy and they aren't expecting that, then your design is missing out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Drudge Report = a supermarket tabloid for cubicle dwellers

You know better but you can't resist.

He's found an virtual substitute for an outrageously successful physical phenomenon. Not a bad way to build a business.

</comment><comment><USER17> the first screen i see when i get to this page gives me no indication of its purpose.. only when i scroll down by half a page do i see any text.. dunno how that is considered good design

<comment><USER18> I went (for the first time - never heard of it - seems pretty much a US website - 95%+US according to quantcast), saw 3 images that looked stupidly misplaced, scrolled down, saw some horribly illegible text (What _is_ that font), and left.

Sorry, it didn't work for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> And now, Drudge is linking to this story on 37 signals. :)

<comment><USER20> Linkbait pays off.

<comment><USER21> Wait! I thought SEO tactics were bullshit/dead...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Blogga please. It reads like a tabloid. Visual communication is non-existent. The reasons people read Drudge are: 1) they love gossip, and 2) they hate non- conservatives. It's not because of the (lack of) design.

I hereby openly dare anyone at 37 Signals to do a blog post that _isn't_ contrarian.</comment>


Stay home. SF is requiring people to stay home except for essential needs. - <AUTHOR> https://sf.gov/stay-home-except-essential-needs#main-content <comment><USER2> Comments moved to [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22596539](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22596539).</comment>


Porn site xHamster blocks North Carolina users to protest anti-LGBT law - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2016/4/11/11410956/porn-site-xhamster-north-carolina-block <comment><USER2> Here's a simple idea that would render these "bathroom bills" null and void. Neuter them, if you will.

Stop building multi-occupant public restrooms with a gender designation, and instead build several single-occupant public restrooms with no gender designation.

Added bonus: Not only do we disarm these attempts to discriminate against transgendered people, we also avoid all the social awkwardness that comes from multi-occupant restrooms. Like the loud person talking on their cell phone. Or the smells of other people doing their thing.

(Retrofitting would be expensive, but don't make that part mandatory.)

<comment><USER3> We had single-person restrooms at my previous work, shared by multiple companies.

In one building they were gender neutral. As far as I can see, everyone was fine with it. Then we moved to another building where the bathrooms had gender pictograms on them although they were identical in every other respect. Some males eventually went to the female-stamped bathroom when the other was occupied. And someone attached a note in the female bathroom to remind everyone that this was a female-only bathroom…

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I can't see this having a big impact on law makers. Is porn in limited supply now?

<comment><USER5> It's about raising awareness by generating headlines just like this one. Porn is a taboo-ish topic, so the news loves to cover it. More coverage of and negative pressure on these reprehensible laws is only a good thing.

<comment><USER6> The people introducing this bill aren't going to be the type to be sad that porn is being blocked in their state. If anything they'll see it as a win/win.

<comment><USER7> I'm willing to bet there are pro-porn people that also want to enforce the status quo on public bathrooms.

<comment><USER5> The status quo _is_ what we had before. This law changes which bathrooms people are allowed to use: [https://twitter.com/JayShef/status/712845760287494144](https://twitter.com/JayShef/status/712845760287494144)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Wouldn't the better stab at NC be to just offer LGBT porn in the state?

<comment><USER9> Would restricting people to lesbian porn even be considered a boycott?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Would be more fun if xhamster required a certificate of sexual orientation before allowing you to switch to straight or gay porn.

<comment><USER11> What I haven't seen discussed is the real objection going on is that NC insists you use the bathroom as defined by your birth certificate, and you can change that post-op. So people think that's too onerous, so what _should_ the standard be? Should you simply file something stating you are whatever gender? Do you have to present as the gender to some degree? Who decides if you are doing it enough? Etc.

<comment><USER12> The problem with that approach is that not all transgender people elect to have operations, so making that the minimum bar is unreasonable. A much more reasonable (non-fear mongering) approach is to use the gender the person identifies with. I don't know how you set that bar, maybe it's obvious, maybe it requires a note from a physician or similar.

I think it would be fairly obvious to discern someone who's actually identifying with a given gender versus some guy who wishes to get into the women's restroom.

<comment><USER13> The problem with that approach is women don't feel comfortable using the bathroom with a man, regardless of what he claims to be. So who's rights are more important? The born women's or the born man's?

<comment><USER14> So then you introduce someone that has female genitalia, but looks from all outward respects to be male (possibly including facial hair if they're on hormone therapy). By law in NC this person is required to use the women's restroom. Does that increase comfort for either of them?

Example: [https://twitter.com/JayShef/status/712845760287494144/photo/...](https://twitter.com/JayShef/status/712845760287494144/photo/1)

Frankly, while I like being comfortable, one should always think twice before passing laws purely for the purpose of increasing comfort. (Particularly in this case, where the discomfort appears to be far more theoretical than common). When I think of the society my grandparents, or even, heck, my PARENTS found "comfortable", I would feel very sad to live there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> according to reddit, its not actually blocking users. It displays a popup that can be dismissed.

</comment><comment><USER16> Assuming this is a positive development, I wonder where else xHamster is also blocking access - what about large parts of the Middle East and Africa?

<comment><USER17> Shouldn't we all hold US to higher standards than MENA, etc.?

<comment><USER18> Because...?

<comment><USER19> if nothing else, the US tends to have fewer existential concerns diverting it's attention (economics, infrastructure, etc).

<comment><USER18> Seriously? I'll give you Africa of course, it makes sense. But the Middle East? Saudi Arabia, Qatar, etc? All these countries are almost literally wiping their ass with money.

My question got downvoted a lot, but I was quite serious. Why would the US be upheld to "higher standards" (whatever it means)? Are we supposed to believe in some form of American exceptionalism? And are we just talking about Africa or should the US have higher standards than, say, India, Australia, Italy and Argentina?

I just wanted to understand the parent comment.

<comment><USER19> > _Why would the US be upheld to "higher standards" (whatever it means)? Are > we supposed to believe in some form of American exceptionalism?_

here's an example: i think most people would agree that every country should have a strong, maintained infrastructure to support their country's operations. but it is clearly a different situation for an economically challenged country to have bridges in disrepair, than for a rich country to have the same issue despite it having the resources available to it. "higher standards" doesn't necessarily mean "superior".

that said, i'm not completely clear on what the post you replied to was expressing.

if i were to guess, it was about so-called "social progress". north america/europe generally provides a better opportunity for LGBT peoples to live their lives as they see fit than other regions. MENA (such as Saudi[1] and Qatar[2]) have traditionally been seen as decidedly unwelcoming to LGBT, perhaps even supporting violence against LGBT, but this isn't exactly unique to MENA.

MENA's disinterest/lack of "progress" in this area is rooted in cultural, historical and religious norms. as such, it's perhaps "unfair" to hold them to the same standards (achieving "higher progress") of how they treat LGBT people.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_Saudi_Arabia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_Saudi_Arabia) [2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_Qatar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_Qatar)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I applaud their commitment to a good cause, but this seems kind of like a double victory for the moralizers who passed this law.

</comment><comment><USER21> You say that like it's a bad thing.

<comment><USER22> Do you mean the law or the porn?

<comment><USER21> I mean the porn. It seems like a non sequitur to withhold something ideologically compatible and inessential, plus the notion of pornographers fighting for equality is a joke.

<comment><USER23> Why is the notion of pornographers fighting for equality a joke? XHamster seems to have a pretty progressive corporate view towards sexuality. Obviously not all the content on the site is that way, but you seem to be implying pornography is inherently bad?

Besides, you're naive if you think the Republican lawmakers who push this type of legislation are actually so wholesome that this is totally irrelevant.

<comment><USER21> I'll go further than imply, and outright state that pornography is inherently and irredeemably bad. Enough has been written and said about it, so I'll leave that to you to sort out. I think though that for one of several dozen companies to shut down services just means that people will get it elsewhere, republican or not. They're just trying to look progressive, but real progress is fundamentally incompatible with their business.

<comment><USER5> > I'll go further than imply, and outright state that pornography is > inherently and irredeemably bad.

While I don't agree, I also think this is a reasonable stance for someone to take. I would encourage others who disagree with this comment to avoid downvoting it simply because you disagree with it.

<comment><USER24> Personally, I disagree with his tone and "you do the research for why I'm right". It doesn't contribute to this discussion in any way.

<comment><USER21> I realize that not everyone accepts that pornography is inherently harmful as a medium, and thought to avoid that discussion (which has been going on for longer than we've been alive) in favor of discussing how futile this act of faux solidarity is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> What's next, whores say they wont provide prostitution to a state that bans prostitution?

"You can't fire me, I quit!"

<comment><USER19> seems like a faulty comparison.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> The lack of self-awareness is pretty funny.

Setting aside moral judgements, consider: a state passes a law based on traditional religious morality, and a company that violates traditional religious morality then refuses to do business in it as "punishment".

At some level, I guess it's good. The Big Sort continues apace.

<comment><USER27> It may seem like a lack of self-awareness at first, but I'm almost sure this is because NC is one of the states where lesbian porn is among the top searches, according to PornHub's annual map[0].

So really, it's more just xHamster trying to cut down on hypocrisy.

[0]: [https://timedotcom.files.wordpress.com/2016/02/rolfkdrqf5pg2...](https://timedotcom.files.wordpress.com/2016/02/rolfkdrqf5pg21auxwsh.png?w=560&h=414)

<comment><USER28> Exactly. Not that it would work, but if you could manage to cut out all porn from NC, it would serve as both a protest against them while also making them suffer in silence. Afterall, i doubt most of these conservative anti-gay groups believe porn is okay - it's an immoral sin, just as being gay is.

As i disclaimed, it's a big if, an impossible if. As much as i'd love to see these people suffer in this uniquely funny way, prohibition never works.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> So a porn website (by far, the most effective mean to objectify women) is protesting a law that adds a new layer of social pressure towards women and girls. I don't see men having a problem with women entering mens room. But I do see women feeling uncomfortable with a man entering woman's room. No matter how far will the theory of subjective gender go, it will take decades, if ever, until women and men will simply ignore physical gender. If that will ever happen.

My concern is two fold. One, for transgender persons, who will fear the reaction they will get every time they enter the restroom. And second, basically any person can claim to be of the opposite gender, and walk in to fulfill a sexual fantasy, even a mild one.

I simply don't understand what is the huge effort in using the restroom appropriate to your physical gender, and simply avoid the psychological conflict with the rest of the population. Especially considering the high rates of mental illness and suicidal thoughts and attempts among transgender persons. This, for now, will only add to that. Do they really need to be subjects in a future study that will show the impact of such laws? Or used as ammunition for 'transphobia' accusations in the media or elsewhere? Will the victims of the first line in the war of imposing a policy in the society be really worth it, especially if that increases their chances of committing suicide?

<comment><USER5> > I simply don't understand what is the huge effort in using the restroom > appropriate to your physical gender, and simply avoid the psychological > conflict with the rest of the population.

I suspect you haven't really been paying attention and are just submitting your gut feeling here. For example, in attempting to prevent your hypothetical "sexual fantasy" scenario, here's one real consequence of this law:

[https://twitter.com/JayShef/status/712845760287494144](https://twitter.com/JayShef/status/712845760287494144)

The simple fact is any real problems caused in bathrooms are already covered by harassment laws. These new laws take away a freedom people already had, and I'm not really aware of any real problems caused by people having those freedoms. Are you? What problems have these laws solved? Hypothetical situations don't count.

<comment><USER10> That tweet espouses way more stereotypes than it's supposed to mock.

<comment><USER19> Care to elaborate?

<comment><USER10> That a man entering a women's restroom is something to be feared of (!), that a woman's loyalty depends on somebody shielding her from strange men and that a husband's duty is to shield her

By the same logic, mixed restrooms are dangerous.

<comment><USER19> this is the stance of the legislators. the point is to show they're fully in the "good intentions paving the road to hell" mode. they didn't want dudes in the ladies' room, so now they have dudes in the ladies' room.

<comment><USER10> I believe it's women who are more concerned about this than men.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


OKCupid to Firefox users: "Don't use Mozilla software" - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/business/2014/04/okcupid-to-firefox-users-dont-use-mozilla-software/

<comment><USER2> I wish OKCupid would consider the tremendous amount of work Mozilla has done and continues to do to further the open web before trying to tarnish their brand. The latter which will cause significantly more harm than whatever they hope to accomplish with modal dialog.

</comment><comment><USER3> Keep it here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7504296](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7504296)

</comment><comment><USER4> So not only did he create the abomination that is JS, but he also hates gays? He's a good candidate for trial at the ICC!!!</comment>


Project.json is dead. ASP.NET Core goes back to MSBuild - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/davidfowl/status/730219570783363073 <comment><USER2> I loved project.json but the justification was acceptable in my opinion.

There are literally billions of dollars of existing customer software built with CSPROJ files.

Moving forward with ONE file type and one set of build tools is the best for the long term ecosystem.

Even if it isn't the favorite choice.

Msbuild is open source, so there's nothing preventing a community member from adding json support back in.

Oh! I should add that they've committed to keeping "the good bits" of project json withing the .NetCore project files.

They'll be shorter, they won't require you add all existing files for compilation. Some other nice stuff (I hope NPM and SCRIPTS stays for example!)

Anyways, sad to lose it but in the end I think most people "get it"

<comment><USER3> The main feature - for me - was the ability to use the same project.json to compile a project for multiple frameworks. Sad to see, that they ditch project.json - especially after the overhaul one or two weeks ago, which was a necessary cleanup. How will they be able to release the rc2 on May, 16th, week they change a critical part of the build chain again? Does this mean, that they are ditching dotnet CLI too?

<comment><USER2> No, dotnet CLI is coming along for sure.

I was watching the community stand-up on Tuesday where Scott Hanselman and Damien Edwards discussed the reasoning in a little more detail.

They were pretty clear that they wanted to make sure they adapted and kept _all the things_ they liked about project.json

And then rattled off a list.

I'm sure the single-file for multiple frameworks would be on the list of things they want to keep.

The shift to CSPROJ for them actually sounded (relatively) simple.

The current project.json becomes a PropertyGroup and they put everything inside that.

So they switch the mustaches for triangle brackets, but they did mention wanting to keep it "light weight"

I also know that Damien said something to the effect of "we loved project.json probably MORE than many members of the community, but the choice had to be made"</comment></comment></comment>


I'm selling Zetapush: realtime back end as a service - <AUTHOR> Hi there,
I'm sick of France! Technological innovation cannot find an investor here. After 4 years of effort, a platform in production, customers, innovations by hundred, I'm fed up.
What does ZetaPush do (www.zetapush.com)? It is a platform that allows you to connect all your devices in real time, in Web, in MQTT,... In addition to the real-time connection, technical services are available such as NoSQL storage, SQL, search engine, email, push notifications, etc. The platform can be installed on any cloud or any baremetal servers. And the platform can be sold On premise with a licence server.
And finally, ZetaPush's technical services can be extended with JavaScript / TypeScript and even our proprietary language, Zms. Developers work is reduced by 50 %!
If you are interested in the full techno ( source code of ZetaPush, 400 k lines of Java, Spring, fully documented), make me an offer by email to morvan (at) zetapush (dot) com
Mikaël Morvan, ZetaPush CEO <comment><USER2> Sounds similar to Firebase. Can you provide some financial/user metrics for potential buyers?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi,

Yes, It's like Firebase with more turnkeys services, serverless capabilities, and with the ability to host it anywhere. Can you send me a mail for financial requests ? morvan (at) zetapush (dot) com

Mikaël

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Can you explain to me what your SaaS product does like I'm 5? I looked at the website and am a bit confused. Is this a PaaS like CloudFoundry?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hello,

When you need to create a Web or mobile application, you have to create your backend, you must set up servers, set up databases (or possibly take them to a hosting company) and you must code your server code.

To do this, you need to hire an architect, a backend developer and for your web or mobile application, Fronts developers. It's very complex, it takes time and developer costs are high.

ZetaPush offers turnkey services that are instantly deployed on ZetaPush infrastructure. A front developer is autonomous, he does not need to have knowledge of software architecture or backend: only JavaScript. One developer versus at least three! It makes the difference! In short, ZetaPush saves companies a lot of time and money when they choose us.

Hope you've got your answer Mikaël</comment></comment>


Equifax Suffered a Hack Almost Five Months Earlier Than the Date It Disclosed - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-18/equifax-is-said-to-suffer-a-hack-earlier-than-the-date-disclosed <comment><USER2> > One possible explanation, according to several veteran security experts > consulted by Bloomberg, is that the investigation didn't uncover evidence > that data was accessed. Most data breach disclosure laws kick in only once > there's evidence that sensitive personal identifying information like social > security numbers and birth dates have been taken.

There was one company (very well known) I know of that was breached, but their logging and general security infrastructure was so poor that they had no direct evidence that customer info was breached, so they didn't have to report the hack. They only found the intrusion due to excessive load the intruders caused on some services.

Customer info was certainly accessed (the attackers where everywhere), it's just there was no record of it as the records they kept where so few and far between.

Part of me thinks it's a pretty clever workaround to such laws.

<comment><USER3> Sure, that combined with the fact that courts simply refuse to refer to anything involving software a 'negligence', no matter how extravagantly negligent it might be, would make that a pretty good strategy. The only flaw in it, really, is that it would also open you up to things like the Sony hack which actually had them shut down operations for awhile. As much as companies REALLY do not want to ever admit it, no matter what they do, their software IS their business in every sense. Without it in a working state, they have to shut their doors. So I suppose you have to strike a balance... secure enough that things keep working, but not so secure that it actually costs money...

<comment><USER4> Maybe this is the unintended benefit of companies like domino's claiming they're a "tech business that sells pizza". I'd love to see that language used in an agument that the company has made tech it's core competency and that lowers the bar for negligence.

<comment><USER5> I imagine it would depend on the nature of negligence: were they to leak customer data, they would be treated as a tech business; were they to poison customers, they would be treated as a pizza business.

<comment><USER6> The pizza is probably produced by others, in the spirit of the gig economy. That way the company can defend any lawsuit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I do performance / app triage work, but see the same thing. Often I walk in to a supposed "emergency" only to discover the problem has been occurring for months, if not years. Often, there is a significant cost (IE: in the millions) but either the organization isn't willing to remediate, or isn't even aware of the full scope of the cost (IE: "It's not my budget so I don't care"). In at least one case, I came across a security problem where the response was "oh yeah, we've known about that for years". Sigh. Sadly, too often unless companies have a very large customer who gets angry with them, or they are publicly shamed for a problem, they just let it magically go.

<comment><USER8> I came across a "hole" in the design of a vendor I was evaluating. Their fancy Java UI actually just downloaded plaintext root credentials to their MySQL database. All security was client side. As a bonus the root credentials were debug logged to the user's local computer.

Making it worse, they actively sold this as a multi-tenant platform to be used with mutually untrusting parties.

When I met with engineering and started to explain, they started smiling and said "this is a known issue and we're going to fix it in our next version."

Quite some time later I ran across people using it in the wild and they had not passed a lot of the glaring holes. Even their newer version had a hidden input field on the edit profile page named "IsAdmin". This did exactly what you think.

They ended up having a successful exit as far as I know and I've never heard anyone speak ill of them security-wise.

Telecom is a mess. These holes are easily exploitable for direct profit. But there's so much more low-hanging fruit, I don't think people bother.

<comment><USER9> This stuff is really the ultimate technical debt. Fixing it seems to provide zero benefit today. But there is a significant chance that one day it's an extinction event (or just a billion-dollar blunder, if you're big enough to survive it).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> IMPORTANT: The date of disclosure is ALSO the date that demand for hacked data explodes.

It's good practice to have a staged-disclosure procedure for leaks of this nature.

For example: your bank should be told to start fine-tuning its anti-fraud capabilities BEFORE the entire world is made aware that you can be defrauded in this particular manner.

<comment><USER11> That's really interesting. We noticed a statistically significant number of declines on debit/credit cards roughly 1 week before Equifax publicly disclosed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Here's a question. What if based on this hack and others, someone decides to publicly post all the details they are aware of. So basically I can go on a website and look up all the hacked SSNs and the person and their information associated with that. How will the US cope with that?

The reason I ask that question is that it's definitely not gonna happen. But it's arguably a lot better than the situation right now where we have a few malicious actors who do have that information. If the data was completely public I feel you'd have a huge effort to fix the problem bwcahwe your neighbor can look up your credit worthiness. Yet I think the situation right now is worse because we won't have that effort to fix the problem yet 95% of the people who would have caused you problems have that data.

<comment><USER13> What would I do with that though? As a resident of a country that's affected, if I hit a profile that happens to have fraud protection, I go to jail. Now, if I was in a country not so friendly to the US I might have a shot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> If they had an outside security firm helping them starting in March, and another breach in July, that doesn't say much for the capabilities and competency of the security firm.

<comment><USER15> It's quite possible the security firm was asked to audit their systems, but not asked (or paid) to fix them.

<comment><USER16> A lot of people want you to come in and find a quick answer and fix, rarely allowing a full proper investigation. Many times they're adverse to spending money and want to cut corners where they can. It's actually disheartening. Much like one of the posters above, I've seen people purposely stop investigations because if the investigation reported on _known_ issues it would open up more questions about other wrong doings.

The Irony is their actions on remediation are almost exactly in line with the decisions made that often times lead to the incident. It's cyclical.

<comment><USER17> So you can't do this with accounting audit, so laws should be updated to make security audits the same!

<comment><USER14> I suppose the difference is that in accounting, any irregularities or shennanigans are quantifiable in dollars. Security breaches maybe sometimes are, but often are not. I'm guessing there nobody able to _prove_ that his or her identity was stolen as a result of this breach, to say nothing of being able to specify a dollar amount of loss that can be backed up.

With often vague or only theoretical damages, it's harder to muster support for draconian consequences.

Also people can sort of understand accounting. Dollars and cents and balances are something most people can comprehend. Computer software and security breaches, on the other hand, are much more of a black box for most people. They can't intuitively understand what's sensisible and reasonable and what would constitute negligence when it comes to protecting software sytems and data, other than by relying on what other people tell them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I think it's good news- if your identity has not been used, there's less chance that it will be, because the data has been already out for that long.

<comment><USER19> I was told they usually aren't used until at least a year after the fact, because this line of reasoning. Not sure how true that is.

<comment><USER20> I would probably wait at least until everybody's free fraud protection expires, which is usually a year.

<comment><USER16> This is exactly how it works. Passwords can be changed, your personal details can't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm sure this looks good for the insider trading news.

<comment><USER22> > Pros for not prosecuting:

The size of the sells were truly negligible for all executives involved, in proportion to how many shares they have and routinely liquidate. The same argument that there were any sells at all would been made regardless of the number of shares.

A company that size will always have material non public information.

Equifax's OPSEC was horrible all along and a gigantic leak was bound to happen, so the extent and ramifications of this fairly routine breach were eeeeehhhh not considered.

> Cons for not prosecuting:

The execs did it on the same day.

Something something the people something want blood.

<comment><USER23> _A company that size will always have material non public information._

If you're in that position, then wouldn't you make sales regularly on scheduled dates? (say quarterly)

Otherwise theyre asking to get prosecuted, if not for this sale then the next.

<comment><USER22> Right, and these execs did that as well. I mentioned that in the "routinely liquidate" part, but I guess it wasn't clear, they do liquidate shares on a schedule.

Sure, doing anything out of that schedule is always a risk, and doing things on that schedule doesn't mean there isn't insider trading still happening. A successful prosecution under these equities-specific market sanctions will rely on more than that.

<comment><USER24> I'm under the impression that these were not 10b5-1 sales.

<comment><USER25> I am too, since I read TFA and it says -- twice, I think -- that they weren't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Why do we trust corporations over government again?

</comment><comment><USER27> Sounds like good news for my short position.

</comment><comment><USER28> This emphasizes why companies need to post bonds in case of a breach. They shouldn't have to be sued after the fact. Security should be priced in up front so they have massive financial incentive from the get go to protect confidential government data.

</comment><comment><USER29> Kaspersky?

[http://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/350949-new-russia- su...](http://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/350949-new-russia-suspicions- about-kaspersky-cybersecurity-five-things-to-know)

</comment><comment><USER30> The timeframe isn't unusuall unless they've also have not reported it to major stakeholders and regulatory bodies.

That said this might absolve them of some responsibility if 5 months ago that vulnerability wasn't disclosed to major companies.

</comment><comment><USER31> I thought this was already known? Is this a new revelation?

<comment><USER32> The headline is ambiguous, but it's not five months before they disclosed, it's five months before the July date they originally disclosed they were hacked.

<comment><USER22> > In a statement, the company said the March breach was not related to the > hack that exposed the personal and financial data on 143 million U.S. > consumers, but one of the people said the breaches involve the same > intruders.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Just let me know where to sign the class action.

</comment><comment><USER34> Side bar: is anyone buying insurance from them in the wake of this hack? They seem to be giving it for free for a year.

</comment><comment><USER35> The plot thickens.</comment>


SpaceX makes history with successful first human space launch - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2020/05/30/spacex-makes-history-with-successful-first-human-space-launch/ <comment><USER2> Much discussion here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23361987](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23361987)

<comment><USER3> Yes. We've merged most of this thread thither.

</comment></comment><comment> jerome-jh The first man in space was launched by the russians almost _60_ years ago. That was history.

Then the americans sent men to the moon, that was history too, and _50_ years ago.

We realized sending human into space was not really useful, so that more or less stopped. The ISS was an international endeavor with questionable scientific goals, but still it was fun and an unprecedented global collaboration. The Mars rovers and some other space probes (Viking, Venera) were true scientific achievements too.

What we see here is a private company re-learning how to send men in space and calling this "history". No doubt it will be used to send highest paying customer in space. It will also be used to send a large, low orbit satellite constellation without the slightest amount of collaboration or concerting with other space users. Other companies will compete to send their own constellations, some of them will certainly fail in a few years and leave their junk in space for tens of years. It has even been used to send a car into space, although many scientists would have loved to send a useful payload even in a test flight.

All this is financed by investors lured by the "dream" of sending men die on Mars, and by a government that has lost the sense of reality. How great.

</comment><comment><USER4> Mods, any chance you can give a boost to the launch coverage that is NOT from TC, but from a bit more relevant and notable source?

Here's one from Ars, which had an excellent space coverage for ages - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23364529](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23364529)

<comment><USER3> I don't see anything wrong with people posting TechCrunch articles to HN. All these sites have their downsides and different users have different preferences. But this is a duplicate of an earlier thread, so we'll move the comments thither.

It's always worth changing the URL to a better source, though, so maybe we'll use your URL on that one. Edit: it doesn't seem particularly substantive to me either. So far I haven't seen an article that seems good enough to swap out the main URL at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23361987](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23361987), even though that livestream is past its best-before date.

<comment><USER4> For what it's worth and from where I'm sitting TC pretty much lost all of its edge post-Arrington. It's now a mediocre source of regurgitated news on ridiculously formatted pages with one of the longest list of 3rd party trackers across all news sites. It's just... junk.

The live stream video should indeed be THE main thread for the event, no argument there. It was just jarring to see it mid-page and the TC thread sitting at the first spot.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, that's an artifact of the livestream spanning many hours while the lifespan of HN submissions being measured in hours, so by the time the big moment happened the thread was already halfway down the page. I've rolled back the clock on the submission now to accommodate that.

I hear you about TC and will pay a bit more attention to that in the future, but really we judge this by article quality rather than site quality ([https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20%20%22article%20quality%22%20%22site%20quality%22&sort=byDate&type=comment)), so your best bet is always to propose a significantly better, specific article. I'd have been happy to use the AT one instead, but it has other problems: its first half is a photo collection, which is ok in principle but raises other issues which I can explain if anyone cares; and its second half swerves sharply into a political direction that would likely act as flamebait here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Great, but would prefer to read this from pretty much any source other than TC

<comment><USER6> Yes, the company, including Crunchbase, has little integrity. Trust me.

<comment><USER7> Please elaborate.

<comment><USER6> I once pleaded with Crunchbase to remove a person from my former company's public-facing page, due to a legal and personal obligation I had.

They refused, pronouncing the integrity of their data. I lost a very valuable friendship over that insignificant datum.

In addition to my loss, the person I requested to remove must now have this page at the top of their google search results, which is a shame, especially given that I added them to the page without their consent, which at the time did not have such apparent consequences.

For what it's worth, it was a small, two-person company. In my opinion, they should have respected my humble request.

After this experience and others, I do often question the integrity of the data-centric, journalistic community in NYC.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Elon Musk is the greatest American alive.

<comment><USER9> he is not american though.... he is from South Africa...

So, yea +1 for 'smart immigration' in the US.

Edit: Elon has South African, Canadian and US citizenship... so, what he calls/considers himself, it is up to him.

<comment><USER10> He's an African American, but still American.

 _Edit: why the downvote? Is he not?_

<comment><USER11> Honestly... it's complicated. As I understand it, African-American is one of the more recent ways of saying (with the intent of being polite) that someone is a black skinned and ethnically African and is American.

The term was not meant to extend to corner cases like mine - I'm white, but one of my ancestors grew up on the African continent in an island in the Atlantic and spoke Portuguese.

I suspect that this term will fall out of favor soon and be replaced by another.

<comment><USER10> By that logic, does American Asian only refer to people with certain facial characteristics? And are American Europeans only those with a white skin color?

I mean here in Europe we have plenty of Europeans that are not white. So, if a black skinned German went to the US, people would suddenly label him "African" American, just based on his skin color?

That seems quite a racist use of those terms tbh.

<comment><USER12> Americans of European descent tend to refer to themselves by nation of immigrant origin (eg: Italian American, Irish American, etc.)

However, because African slaves brought to the New World were denied the ability to culturally identify with, or even know (after generations) which African nation or tribe they descended from, the only common cultural identity they could form, apart from that which slavery had forced upon them, was as a diaspora from "Africa" as a whole.

"African American" is a term with a specific cultural and historical context behind it linked to the identity of the descendants of slaves and to black immigrants from Africa, and there is controversy about its use even within the black community, but it isn't going to correctly refer to the descendant of white Dutch colonizers in South Africa even if it does _technically_ fit. Or at least not without coming across as racist itself.

Consider that racist if you like, but race and culture are messy and complicated everywhere, not just in the US.

<comment><USER10> I will consider it racist, yes, I prefer a "colorblind" world. Btw, every person in South Africa is the descendent of a "colonizer", black or white.

<comment><USER12> "Colorblind" often means pretending racism no longer exists and ignoring it, or worse, considering it racist to do otherwise.

While it might be nice to live in a "post-racial" world, it should be obvious that we don't, yet.

<comment><USER10> Racism will exist as long as people look at the skin color or other generic markers to judge others. If you think it's okay to do so, that's sad.

Fighting racism with even more racism, will world three opposite result. It's not the first time in human history, that people mean well and create hell. It's just a different topic this time.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Facebook is down - <AUTHOR>

Facebook is down. The main page returns a 200, but no data. <comment><USER2> Posts like this are mostly useless beyond a couple of minutes of their posting, as the issue is often resolved quickly. They might even be irrelevant to you if you are in a different geographic locations. So why bother? There's Twitter for this kind of ephemeral stuff.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, it does look strange, I was getting a 200 but no data.

</comment><comment><USER3> For me it's now returning a 500 and an empty body.

</comment><comment><USER4> It returns data, but it's not useful.

</comment><comment><USER5> Not down in UK.</comment>


Extending Watson to Interpret Medical Images - <AUTHOR> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/ibm-watson-radiology_55cbccf9e4b0898c48867c56

<comment><AUTHOR> The statistical hierarchical nature of Watson could be exceptionally useful when determining the probability of an anomaly's existence.</comment>


Ask YC: For the hackers, what's your favorite part of development? - <AUTHOR>

... aside from finishing, of course. Thinking up the original idea, planning, building, refactoring, showing your project off, etc. For me, it's definitely refactoring. <comment><USER2> Damnit, I was gonna say "finishing". ;-)

Aside from that, it's the incremental refinement that happens after you have a basic architecture, a useful app that puts stuff up on the screen, and a small userbase. Changes are usually pretty easy at that point (if you did the architecture right), and there's the instant gratification of writing a feature and having people immediately use it.

I find that most projects follow a "ski jump" happiness curve. Thinking up the initial idea is a lot of fun, as are the first few planning stages. Then you come up against all the little details that are absolutely necessary to build something useful, yet not really fun to deal with. By the time you're about 2/3 through with building it, it looks hopeless. Then you start cleaning things up and figuring out an architecture that reconciles all the different concerns. If you haven't made _too_ many tradeoffs by then (or skipped the step entirely), the launch and refinement process is kinda fun.

</comment><comment><USER3> What lures me to programming is an obsession with progress. While I've learned to appreciate the process of programming, the elegance of properly done code, and the seeming lack of limitations, seeing day-to-day, week-to-week, yearly progress is huge for me. I like looking back and saying 'wow, my robot/program could not do this two weeks ago'. Maybe it's just because I am vain!

<comment><AUTHOR> Not at all vain. Perhaps this is a more accurate refinement of what I enjoy about refactoring: progress. There really is an undeniability to constant and measured progress of programming as a whole. ie - Two minutes ago this wasn't possible, now it is. Constant gratification.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, I like that: 'Constant Gratification'. I think that is in essence what keeps coders going.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> In bottom-up design, the most fun part is implementing the lower strata.

Runner-up: when you've just blindly written 1000 lines of Haskell code, then you run it through ghc and it typechecks on the first try.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm definitely happiest when I'm in the middle of creating something I can't wait to see finished. The other really fun part is standing back and watching others use it. Every time I create something that's truly useful I'm as satisfied as if it was the first time I'd ever done it.

</comment><comment><USER6> Each little well thought out part that works, and what I learn from novel situations that I've not dealt with before. Seeing progress and seeing the solution unfold as I explore the problem domain in greater depth and breadth.

</comment><comment><USER7> CODING! My work must be 99% debbuging legacy code and documenting, or modifying code to work with the test environment, and only 1% actually coding something new and useful, but this 1% make it worthwhile.

</comment><comment><USER8> The proof of concept stage, where you create something and show that your idea works.

That's where the 80/20 "rule" comes into play - 80% of the work is getting that last 20% right.

</comment><comment><USER9> Seeing it work the first time. Maybe this is just because I haven't built all that many things, but it's always been an incredible feeling so far.

</comment><comment><USER10> for me, planning is my favorite part... :/</comment>


Ask HN: Are Ryzen processors good for development? - <AUTHOR> Coming from years of mac-only computing, I'm a bit lost as to what I should be looking for in a laptopt PC.
I see several laptops that use AMD Ryzen, they look like a cheaper option, but I don't know if it has any impact on software compatibility, specially on the development side, precisely front-end technologies like Node or PHP.
If you have any recommendation, it would help :) <comment><USER2> If you're going for a low cost development laptop most likely the pinebook pro is a better option than a cheap ryzen system. I have a cheap ryzen system, a dell inspirion its locked into windows 10 and doesn't handle virtualization but I use this thing for music production rather than development. It does a better job at media production than a pinebook pro could but actually the pinebook pro would be a better system for doing development with node and php than windows 10.

<comment><AUTHOR> I do need a Windows system though, I ocasionally need some Adobe programs to work for exporting assets, and I'm not ready to go 100% with Linux in my "work workflow".

What do you mean by "doesn't handle virtualization"? Do you mean running VirtualBox or a similar tool?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Yes, Ryzen 4xxx are the fastest for development and they are very compatible.</comment>


Ask HN: Memory management in go - <AUTHOR> Following a recent thread on HN about the Zig language [1] and a remark in a video presentation by its author Andrew Kelly to the effect that it's impossible to write perfect software in some other languages including go due to incorrect memory management [2], I was skeptical but did some digging. The go language documentation seems to soft-pedal the whole issue, so the only straight answer I could find short of reading the runtime source code myself was a single post on Stack Overflow, which no one has disputed [3].
I ask this question as a person who really wanted to like go. Since it's impossible to believe that the old school Unix guys who designed the language are naive about this issue, what game is Google playing when it flogs a purported systems programming language in which any code, however carefully written, can crash unpredictably? Do they want the remedy to be unlimited memory, which you can have by signing up for their cloud services?
We're told that Google uses go internally. A related question is do they have a hardened version of the runtime that they keep to themselves, or do they rely on an army of devops geniuses and redundant systems to keep it running? (Replies from Googlers are most welcome.) Would it be reasonable to interpret these developments as a part of planned effort to steer programming language design toward a future where reliable software services are feasible only for large organizations to provide?
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17057207 [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4oYSByyRak [3] https://stackoverflow.com/questions/30577308/golang-cannot-recover-from-out-of-memory-crash <comment><USER2> Linux memory management is broken in general due to overcommit (and if you turn off overcommit it's broken in a different way) so I don't think languages have much hope when running on Linux.

</comment><comment><USER3> Go isn't a systems language in the sense C is. I doubt anyone on the golang team would recommend writing an OS in it.</comment>


'My iPad has Netflix, Spotify, Twitter...': why tablets are killing PCs - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/dec/19/why-tablets-killing-pc-ipad-apple-microsoft <comment><USER2> Maybe one reason for these overstated headlines - "the PC is dying" and similar - is the investor's attitude: if a product or market is not _growing_ then it's _dead_ and must be abandoned immediately.

Another reason undoubtedly is media eagerness to write up any trend tendentiously, to get page views and appear to be on top of things. Intelligent readers recognize that things get exaggerated in this way.

Yes, PC market share will decline, but anyone who does a lot of writing will continue benefiting from a physical keyboard, and anyone doing complex or creative computer tasks (softare, science, CAD/CAM, video editing, more) will still need a big monitor with multiple windows onscreen.

Possibly a side benefit will be that PC interfaces will finally evolve to be more friendly for expert users, if they become the target userbase for PC software, while the prevalent "dumbing down" imperative may hopefully move to the mobile devices and no longer impair PCs as much as it has done in recent years.</comment>


Pakistani Startup secures $5 Million funding and gets a mention by Obama. - <AUTHOR> http://tribune.com.pk/story/631651/up-and-coming-pakistani-startup-raises-5m-from-venture-capitalist/

<comment><USER2> I was expecting a disease cured or on the verge. Instead I saw a social network for enterprise...</comment>


Crypto Rebels (1993) - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/1.02/crypto.rebels.html

<comment><USER2> All 14(!) pages together: [http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/1.02/crypto.rebels_pr.htm...](http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/1.02/crypto.rebels_pr.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> Where are they now?

<comment><USER4> Cypherpunk went corporate a while back.</comment></comment>


Stop Firefox from Sending Data to Google - <AUTHOR> http://www.elperfecto.com/2010/09/11/stop-firefox-from-sending-data-to-google/

<comment><USER2> This is the Safe Browsing API not a cozy relationship with Google but instead use of an API that many browsers use to ensure downloads are not embedded with malware to protect the end user and also to make sure you don't inadvertently go to a phishing site and get owned.</comment>


The Real Student-Debt Crisis - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-real-student-debt-crisis

<comment><USER2> You'll know real reform is coming when they start taking a "GED for college" seriously.</comment>


Google Search Results: Dictator Not Found - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2014/05/dictator-not-found.html <comment><USER2> [http://www.bonkersworld.net/forgetting/](http://www.bonkersworld.net/forgetting/)

<comment><USER3> For the EU requirement to check if information is in the public interest, we have to have guards against the system being abused, such as wealthy people removing information about themselves.

This implies some sort of public record - to provide transparency of the requests and check for abuse. This could not be indexed either because it would reveal the information that people were trying to stop being revealed.

Dilemma.

<comment><USER4> Are these guards against abuse anything like the "guards against abuse" that the English presumably have to prevent abuse of super-injunctions by multi- millionare footballers?

<comment><USER3> It would seem that applying a law in spirit is incompatible with human nature.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The proper way to handle such mess would be a "right to be forgiven", not a "right no be forgotten". But then, some things are easier to forget than to forgive.

<comment><USER6> The only connection with "such a mess" and the EU court ruling are the word "forgotten" and a Spaniard.

The rest of the article is just manipulative association that would make Godwin blush.

The EU court does not disagree with you, no matter how hard the anti-privacy lobby tries to make it look that way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> What about internet archive, then?

<comment><USER3> Good question.

While the right to forget is socially beneficial for society, there are technical problems that make it inconvenient. There is the problem of whether it is censorship to force a neutral party whose mandate is merely to store historical copies of data to remove it. Or is it Google's responsibility to just 'forget' that the copy exists in the web archive?

Do defaced websites get indexed by the internet archive? Does illegal information get removed from the internet archive?

<comment><USER8> What exactly is "illegal information"? In the US for the most part, we have a distinction between the information and how it was obtained. Daniel Ellsberg may have done something illegal when he released the Pentagon Papers, but once it was in the hands of journalists, the US could not stop its publication.

I also disagree that the "right to forget" is socially beneficial. It may benefit individuals who have negative thing about them that they want expunged, but for society as a whole, we are the worse off because if everyone can have their image cleaned of their past, predators and destructive people will have an easier time hiding and preying on others.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I feel like this could be abused to remove competitors' content from Google results. Couldn't this be a problem?

</comment><comment><USER6> Baseless scaremongering by the New Yorker. That's really a new low in American anti-privacy propaganda.

The first paragraph alone reads like the kind of paranoia I would expect from the Tea Party.

 _" Google has to scrub any material that a user wants taken down, as long as removing it doesn't hurt the public interest."_

It's a lot, a lot more nuanced than that.

Also, the EJC is nowhere near the equivalent of the US Supreme Court. The EU is not a federal state.

The rest of the article basically goes into a Godwinesque directions, only for this occasion we're using Franco's fascists instead of Hitler's Nazi's.

<comment><USER10> The Spanish high court deferred to the European Court of Justice, and there's no one for them to defer to after that. That makes the Supreme Court analogy pretty apt as far as judicial rulings are concerned in this matter.

If you read the entire article, you'll note that the post-Franco era discussion is mostly backstory for how the whole issue of public forgetting is particularly relevant in Spain, and in fact why this test case came from Spain. The article itself then goes on to mention how no fascists have (yet) asked for a Google scrub, however it does imply that someone might eventually try.

And it's a good point to raise, as all this "nuance" will require some sort of system of rules and arbitration to decide what is "in the public interest" on a case by case basis. Such a system could be quite burdensome, or prone to abuse.

In contrast, countries with strong free speech protections have a rather simple set of rules for when you're allowed to force others to remove true statements from the internet: you dont.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is a strawman argument.

It's blatantly obvious that a historically significant event such as a dictator needs to be kept as part of the history books because of the impact it had on many different people.

At the end - the argument that anything that is published and is true as a reason why we should not allow people to delete things about themselves is deeply disturbing and sets a dangerous precedent. Just because something is true does not mean it should be broadcast for everyone to hear and see. If you go to the toilet and leave a big dump - not everyone needs to know this, when you did it, its mass.

Lossless public record is something that people do not understand the full implications. I am predicting a collision course with the precedence from this case with anonymous gossip sharing applications like Secret. No good comes from allowing people to publish things about others with the intention to harm and no recourse for victims.

What the forgetting laws is for is to help a young person delete embarrassing content from the modern day equivalent of Geocities or Bebo. People are screened for employment online - why should a child whose transgressions in a previous generation would have been transient be stored for eternity? What utility does that provide?

EDIT: If you disagree - use the reply button.

<comment><USER11> > People are screened for employment online

The solution here is to regulate hiring practices, not access to information.

For example, in the US, it is not legal to base a hiring decision on whether an applicant is married. Anybody can search newspaper archives for marriage announcements, but we don't ban newspapers.

<comment><USER12> You can't regulate this. How do you know why I didn't _really_ hire you?

<comment><USER11> The legal system,

[http://www.eeoc.gov/facts/qanda.html](http://www.eeoc.gov/facts/qanda.html)

[http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/lawsuits-based-the- hi...](http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/lawsuits-based-the-hiring- process.html)

[http://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/employment_discrimination](http://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/employment_discrimination)

<comment><USER12> My point still stands. How do you know that I didn't hire you because I hate gays but I tell everyone I didn't hire you because of that one Java question you got wrong. It's very very hard to prove and can be expensive to take to take to court.

People like you with your rosy view of the world make it hard for people with real problems to get by.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Just wait until the first Facebook-generation presidential candidate — the right to be forgotten will be considered a 'human right'.

<comment><USER14> Unfortunately, this likely won't be the case. Millennials I know who harbor desires to run for president some day are so boring, that they have nothing incriminating on their social media accounts to even be worried about. They will just use this kind of information against their potential and actual competitors. I suspect that it will take at least another generation before we are willing to accept a candidate whose colorful youth comes to light before they're elected.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> It is bewildering that Europeans think this is a good idea or even remotely workable. Maybe some EU company would like to take a stab at operating under these kind of capricious rulings.

<comment><USER16> _It is bewildering that Europeans think this is a good idea or even remotely workable._

It is bewildering that you can't see why Europeans might think that personal privacy might be a significant issue.

<comment><USER17> I think personal privacy is a significant issue, but I also think this is a bad idea, and not even remotely workable.

<comment><USER16> I'm not saying I agree with it as an idea, but Google has a history of doing hard things (indeed, was founded on a hard thing), and what about the American 'can-do' attitude when it comes to hard things?

As for personal privacy, new-world Anglo countries (where I am, and where most of the people on this site are) don't hold a candle to the history of pogroms that old-world countries have had, with the exception of treatment of first peoples. It's not just the Nazis and the Holocaust here, but a long history of terrorism and vigilantism. Europe still has wars (and similar) based on ethnicity - for example the Balkan states in the 90s, or eastern Ukraine going on right now. The last significant internal conflict in the new-world Anglosphere was 150 years ago. Europe has had a significantly different experience, which should be taken into context when understanding their decisions around privacy.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Elon Musk shares first full-body photo of SpaceX's spacesuit - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/08/elon-musk-shares-first-full-body-photo-of-spacexs-spacesuit/ <comment><USER2> I think its more a decompression-safe flight suit.. But cool never the less..

<comment><USER3> It does seem really thin, but as you mentioned maybe it's just for flight and not for surviving conditions in space.</comment></comment>


Transparent public toilets are a stroke of genius - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/suzannerowankelleher/2020/08/16/why-tokyos-new-transparent-public-restrooms-are-a-stroke-of-genius/#246d1534211e <comment><USER2> There is one particular restaurant that has these installed. It is a very weird experience that takes some time to get used to.</comment>