How solid is Tim's plan to redecentralize the web? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@shevski/how-solid-is-tims-plan-to-redecentralize-the-web-b163ba78e835 <comment><USER2> People are lazy and don't care. They're happy to let Facebook host and own their data if they can comment and like friends' videos for that. That's basically fine. From what I can learn from the history the web has mostly been centralised and will continue to be so. To think, all business domains tend to converge into few large companies/services, and finally into duopolies and monopolies if left to their own devices.

What I'm worried about is actively preventing decentralized, small-scale or hackership services.

If some guy has to effectively stop hosting a forum because of GDPR, or I can't host my own email server, or serve HTTP out of my home box, or get decent bandwidth for a private virtual network, Tor, I2P or IPFS while Netflix works at full speed, or do about anything else than initiate HTTP/HTTPS connections to known big company grade services or be flagged as a malicious endpoint, then there will not be a decentralised network living within the same infrastructure as the centralised behemoths. And that is the death people are talking about.

A marginal decentralised segment of the current internet is still larger than the whole decentralised internet in its early years. As long as the old ways of networking can live, develop, and grow along with the FANG & co that's fine. But it might not be taken for granted, eventually.

<comment><USER3> >If some guy has to effectively stop hosting a forum because of GDPR

GDPR does not prevent people from hosting forums

<comment><USER4> The new Copyright Directive may have that effect though.

<comment><USER5> GDPR is worse, actually. Both laws are making site owners liable for hosting certain types of content (personal information and copyrighted materials, respectively). However automatically detecting copyrighted materials is relatively straightforward compared but automatically detecting personal information is probably impossible.

<comment><USER6> _> However automatically detecting copyrighted materials is relatively straightforward_

Sure, that's easy: everything is copyrighted. The difficult part is determining whether the uploader can legally share the copyrighted material, which is just as likely to prove impossible to automate with accuracy and precision as the detection of personal information.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> A lot of folks seem to think this kind of technology needs to be marketed or launched the way a hip Silicon Valley startup should be. I understand how the argument that critical mass is the necessary ingredient for success would appeal to people, but it's not like the Internet succeeded that way. In fact, it's probably better if foundational technology like this is developed and grown more slowly and deliberately. I have no idea if solid will take off the way the web has, but it stands a fighting chance. More than being a "viable competitor" to the web, it needs to be a platform that people _want_ to develop for. As with the web, cloud and mobile ecosystems, the platform that developers _want_ to support is the one that wins. If you want to see something like solid take off, play around with it for a bit. Try making it go and share your experience.

<comment><USER8> > the platform that developers want to support is the one that wins.

This is very hard to believe. Developers hate apple, facebook, and countless other platforms that are doing very well. Adoption is the fundamental problem, not what developers _want_ to support. The platform with the most users is what people will develop for.

<comment><USER7> This is pretty clearly not the case. Apple and Facebook are companies, not platforms. The platforms these companies develop are wildly successful and loved by developers.

I think you may be too focused on how developers decide a platform that is already successful. In that case, yes, which one is already adopted the most deserves strong consideration. However, when it comes to actually _achieving_ adoption, it's the platform that developers flock to that tend to succeed, all else being equal. We are talking about relatively fresh terrain here. There isn't already a huge federated system like this that has a lot of mainstream adoption.

<comment><USER9> > However, when it comes to actually achieving adoption, it's the platform > that developers flock to that tend to succeed, all else being equal.

Perhaps, but I struggle to think of two comparable platforms with similar user adoption and significantly different developer interest, outside of there being different sets of developers that hate/love each (c.f. iOS and Android). I'm definitely not aware of any examples indicating a platform can be saved or damned by developers loving/hating it: e.g. most developers hated developing for the PS3 initially but it didn't fare badly in the console wars. Xbox One however did do much worse than the PS4 because fewer users wanted it.

<comment><USER10> Arguably, Linux owning the back end development space so completely is due to developer preference.

But I think you do have a point. It's not just developer preference, there are other big factors like feature offered and ease of entry that determine likelihood of success.

<comment><USER11> > Arguably, Linux owning the back end development space so completely is due > to developer preference.

and why is that possible? it's because the backend is decoupled from where the users are.

<comment><USER12> Because commercial UNIX companies decided it was cheaper to commoditize UNIX on their hardware than keeping on investing on their own.

Linux would hardly be where it is without the help of Intel, IBM, HP, SGI, Hollywood studios, ...

<comment><USER11> completely agree. i'm just saying it mostly isn't found on the desktop, neither on the iphone and you could argue neither really on android, so not in places where 'normal people' look. these people don't look at the backend so developers are free to pick whatever they want - Linux, Windows, unikernels, it doesn't matter for the end user.

<comment><USER12> Which is also one of the reasons why GNU/Linux failed as desktop OS.

The lack of focus on UI/UX and a full stack experience for frontend developers (native/web).

Hence why Android and ChromeOS succeed at it, while hiding what kernel they run on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The man deserves credit of course for helping create the first browsers and promoting the early web and his work for W3C. However, Tim's track record is not great when it comes to backing new versions of the web. E.g. Semantic Web never happened and arguably this is his latest attempt at flogging that dead horse. So, my prediction is that this won't get very far. It seems the website is a bit hand-wavy on the actual substance or vision and from what I'm seeing there's not actually a lot there. This looks like a research prototype to me.

I like the idea of decentralized as much as the next geek. However, there's a tendency of complex decentralized stuff being something that normal people don't really grasp or see the value of. Also, a lot of this value is not very tangible or even real. Most p2p systems have a hard time competing against a well run centralized system.

A lot of these decentralized Facebook/Twitter alternatives are being populated by people that, well, aren't that social. If you are like that, the empty room problem (you have no friends until world + dog joins) is not a big problem. You might even consider that a feature and not a bug. However, solving the empty room problem really is the key problem for social networks. How do you get all the social media whores, self pro-claimed influencers, etc. from endorsing your super duper decentralized platform and wanting to be there? Mostly that never happens.

<comment><USER14> "Mostly that never happens. "

Might be because there are no decentralized competitors to facebook, who offer the same possibilities bugfree. Never seen that.

<comment><USER15> Same isn't good enough. You need a killer app to get people to switch.

<comment><USER14> When you offer the same technical possibilities, but coorporation free, that is enough difference to get a critical mass of people to join.

Signal for example still can't compete with WhatsApp on everything, but is good enough now to get some traction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Given the tendency for wealth and power to concentrate, is it possible to design a competitive, and efficient system where all the actors are sufficiently prosperous without the formation of any monopolies/duopolies/oligopolies?

Edit: a follow-up thought. If the answer is no or "it's too hard", then is it possible have something along the same lines, is it possible for the proposed system to self-correct away from monopolies/duopolies/oligopolies should they form?

<comment><USER17> Your second point is the critical one, and I'll add to it — there must be an _incentive_ to decentralize, and it must outweigh the numerous incentives to re-centralize.

We need to centralize around protocols/standards and decentralize ownership of data. If somehow each piece of data on a user were exponentially more expensive to keep, that might be possible. But that would be a very strange law…

<comment><USER18> >> If somehow each piece of data on a user were exponentially more expensive to keep, that might be possible. But that would be a very strange law…

Dave and I agree with your diagnosis, and we would like to propose a solution. Who is Dave? Well you know him, and I know that you know him and I know that when we both talk about Dave we must be talking about the same person.

(mLuby I probably don't really know you, this is just a hypothetical).

A casual observer could not approach our common understanding by adding more data. There's so many Daves after all. In fact they'd need to subtract all but the right data.

So the solution is a protocol in which increased data adds noise faster than it adds signal. Such a protocol requires 1000s times more plausible yet incorrect noise for every signal. Digital chaff.

<comment><USER17> I don't understand. If Eve (who we don't know) adds data like location, age, interests to her profile on our Dave, people will want to access her profile on Dave. This creates an incentive for Eve to aggregate as much data on as many people as possible.

Are you saying that nobody can know _which_ Dave we're talking about unless we identify him as Dave-with-cell-5551234567? I don't think that's true, since human social circles are pretty easy to figure out; see the humorous hypothetical collection of data about US Founding Fathers. [http://www.newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/phone-spying- paul...](http://www.newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/phone-spying-paul-revere- and-colonial-social-networking/)

<comment><USER18> Yes. That is what I am saying. And I agree that the protocol must be so designed that more data does not increase specificity, but rather increases noise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The problem with your personal data store is that it will be impossible to stop the large companies like Google/Facebook from simply copying and caching a copy of all the data they need to access. You give them permission to handle your email and calendar information and bingo, they have a copy of your entire set of emails and appointments. If you use multiple services from Google/Facebook then they will end up with a good copy of your entire dataset and can mine it of value just like they already do.

<comment><USER20> On the other hand, what would stop the rise of email UX companies that provide a PAID service that links to your email with the explicit promise of never caching it? They wouldn't need to mine it to make money as google does, as they are being paid, even though the per user cost payment could be quite low to support a profitable email UX company.

<comment><USER21> How could you prove/trust that they never cache the data? I think the only way is if the "app" actually ran on your PDS (Personal Data Store) instead of somewhere else. Of course that brings other challenges.

<comment><USER22> Ideally you'd pay them and that would be part of the contract. Otherwise demand a legally enforceable promise (via promissory estoppel).

<comment><USER23> I also think there is a need to figure out how to enable community-controlled SaaS platforms in addition to this. LibreOffice, for example, has essentially released an online office suite. But it has decided not to actually operate and offer this suite to the public in ready-to-use fashion. From what I understand, it is just too difficult and resource-intensive to do that. So it's up to companies running paid platforms to do it (or you can spin it up on your own server/instance and run it yourself). There's nothing inherently wrong with this. But it seems to me that there's a "next step" to take by figuring out how to enable fully community-controlled platforms so that a project like an open source G Suite (running at scale with an iron-clad privacy guarantee that is backed by community audits) that you can just go create an account on could become a reality one day. This seems like it would require a non-profit organization akin to Mozilla. How great would it be to have a community-controlled non-profit organization operating a trusted cloud platform, perhaps even audited by a group like the EFF? Very challenging, for sure. But it seems humanly possible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Isn't this plan the same as the last plan (the name of which I can't even remember - app something. There was a kickstarter), just with Tim Berners- Lee's name attached to it?

My main concern is that this project is DOA for the same reason that the last few have been - too much of an academic focus tending towards navel-gazing, not enough network effect to draw hobbyists, and zero money to attract businesses.

The PDS needs to be a personal cpanel. Something with powertools for the enthusiast but enough shiny for the tech hipsters to use it even if they don't know why. It needs to be designed with an Apple-like mindset from end to end, and willing to make fundamental and architectural compromises (or sacrifices) for user aesthetic.

That probably wont happen.

If the effort around this was instead used to make something like Mastodon better, we might see much more widespread adoption of that platform. You could probably find non-profit funding for sufficient centralized infrastructure to kickstart a healthy mesh network.

<comment><USER25> The issue from a hosting provider is the platform has to be 100% sandboxes; cpu, heap, network and file system access. Lua is the only runtime that provides this level of control. SQLite can do massive multi tenancy and acceptable performance if used correctly.

<comment><USER26> Agree it has to be 100% sandboxes. Note that TC39 has a proposal for realms that is moving along. It is meant to allow sandboxing in JS.

[https://github.com/tc39/proposal-realms](https://github.com/tc39/proposal- realms)

<comment><USER27> See also [https://sandstorm.io/](https://sandstorm.io/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> "redecentralize founder" writing a post on medium.com, oh the irony

<comment><USER29> It's like everyone forgot you can host your own blog

<comment><USER30> It drives me nuts when friends and associates write long form content on other people's/organization's platforms.

The purpose of FaceBook, Twitter, Google+, etc. should be as a place to put a link to your content in your own domain.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> These projects could seriously backfire in unanticipated ways. There are a lot of important matters to explore in this space by law and philosophy wonks. I think that Solid and the other emerging platforms are more likely to create new revenue streams for those already in the business of selling PII than helping individuals protect and manage their PII.

If each of us can control personal information about ourselves, the Supreme Court may rule in favor of this information as property. __The __problem is that this is not a realistic scenario. Most of our personal information involves parties other than ourselves. Counterparties can rightfully stake a claim to information they helped to create. Why wouldn 't they? There is no clear breach of ethics by doing so.

So, let's assume the world adopts Solid pods to manage this data. Is each pod really a single source of truth? Any pod organized by an individual could just as easily be created by a counterparty, with some modification.

Then, suppose a marketplace exists for this information. Who is dedicating effort to monetizing their pods? How will individuals, who work for a living, compete with organizations mandated to maximize pod revenue? Both have legal claims.

My prediction is that contrary to what Lee, Pentland [2], Mazzucato [3] and others envision, Solid and its growing number of equivalents will spawn a new generation of business models and go even further than they do now, by introducing financial products linked to monetization. The main beneficiaries are those already monetizing personal information and those who will securitize them.

[1] [https://enigma.co/](https://enigma.co/) [2][https://www.technologyreview.com/s/611489/lets-make- private-...](https://www.technologyreview.com/s/611489/lets-make-private-data- into-a-public-good/)

</comment><comment><USER20> It seems the author is missing the point in advocating big government solutions and government regulation to somehow fix the privacy problem.

Imagine if you owned and controlled all your email vs. gmail reading it all? For companies, owning their proprietary data is an enormous market. I'm planning to launch a Solid service on top of Allegrograph in the next month or two to service my business customers.

<comment><USER32> I don't think they're missing anything. The article mentions that even though you "own" your data in Solid, companies will still cajole you into "consenting" for them to data-mine it.

<comment><USER20> For the email example, people will have a choice of paying a small amount for a cross-platform private/encrypted UX service, or _free_ by allowing a company to read and datamine all of their email. I'm guessing a surprising number of people will pay a small amount for privacy given how badly things are going in the silos today.

And that UX service can easily import a users entire email history from google and others, and then use the graph to expose relationships and browsing not currently available in google and other services.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Can anyone name one for-profit company that wants to build software on Solid?

<comment><USER34> It's not like the early Internet was a haven of for profit companies in the early days.

Early on most of the profit was in providing the access, not the content.

<comment><USER35> This would be competing against the existing internet though, where there are a lot of for-profit companies fuelling the content (for the consumer). If I'm a business I need to decide whether to back a scrappy startup infrastructure with no users or to go with the established internet with a vast potential customerbase. If I'm a user I need to decide between the existing internet with vast swathes of content and huge numbers of different services and this new network with better protections for my privacy but basically none of the above.

The early internet was innately disruptive and extremely different from anything that was there before. This doesn't have that advantage as far as I can see.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> In my view Solid is trying to provide a technical solution to a problem that isn't technical.

The internet and web are already decentralised technical solutions.

But self-hosting is not a feasible solution for people and network effects mean that they'll gravitate to a few platforms.

That's simply the way it is.

Google, Facebook, etc. naturally emerged and similar near-monopolies will emerge with any other technology providing a decentralised network, including Solid.

</comment><comment><USER37> By reading the Solid website I was wondering if it was not basically what OpenID tried to offers 10 years ago? [https://openid.net/what-is- openid/](https://openid.net/what-is-openid/)

> OpenID allows you to use an existing account to sign in to multiple > websites, without needing to create new passwords.

> You may choose to associate information with your OpenID that can be shared > with the websites you visit, such as a name or email address. With OpenID, > you control how much of that information is shared with the websites you > visit.

Is Solid having the NIH syndrome?

<comment><USER38> There are some similarities. But the key difference are:

1) Solid is designed for you to store large, complete sets of data you care about over the protocol. OpenID is mainly about identity, and the associated bits of metadata are small and can't be written to by the OpenID protocol.

2) Solid separates the data storage from the application provider. So _all_ your data could be in your Solid personal data store, and none in the application provider. (This was normal on Microsoft Windows in the 1990s, so think of it as a cloud version of that model of application development / data storage).

This is a high level quick answer - correct me if I've misrepresented something. Quickly looking there are lots of OpenID-related standards that I've never read or used, and I bet some write data!

<comment><USER39> In that sense, I think it's more like [https://remotestorage.io/](https://remotestorage.io/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Why didn't we have these problems back in the days when telephony got started?

Shouldn't we go back to some of the core values we had back then?

Also, when the internet started, universities and government institutions were inventing and running the internet, while companies were just providing the hardware. Seems like a better model to me in principle, although we need stricter privacy regulation.

It seems stupid to hand our data to ... the entities that have an incentive to abuse our data.

</comment><comment><USER41> The average person prefers convenience over decentralization because 'it just works'. Decentralized services right now are slower and harder to use so I don't see it take off until the usability and performance becomes just as comparable to centralized services

</comment><comment><USER42> Yes, Solid is something to looking forward to.

Many years ago, we face the vendor lock-in problem from the software giants, due to proprietary data formats. Thanks to Tim, W3C, XML and open source community, that is less of a problem today.

But now we face the problem of vendor lock-in, not due to proprietary formats, but due to cloud-service lock-in. With all the software giants, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Amazon, ... offering their services primarily as cloud services, this cloud lock-in issue is going to become more severe in years to come.

It's a new war the software industry needs to fight. It cannot be addressed just by one person, one project, one organization. It needs collaboration from the entire community.

</comment><comment><USER30> I enjoyed listening to Tim and others talking about systems like Solid at the 2016 Decentralized Web Conference.

I liken projects like Solid to be similar to permissioned blockchain where small groups (people or organizations) use a private platform with lighter weight consensus algorithms than proof of work. Success can be had for small focused communities if there is enough value for users.

After trying to get friends and family to use a private Apache Wave instance for shared communication, and failed due to lack of interest on their part, I now don't underestimate how difficult it is to move people off of centralized platforms.

</comment><comment><USER43> Obligatory cynical comment: It won't work. For the simple reason that if it is successful commerce will find a way in. A large enough group of people will _always_ be marketed to in one way or another. And once that happens the budgets will follow and before you know it you are in the next phase of centralization. I would not know of a way to side-step this effect, unless the plan is to create something that only few people will ever use.

The internet already is for everyone - everyone with an internet connection, that is - and that is precisely the problem. So unless you are willing to drastically limit the influx of users sooner or later there will be a swing back to centralization, for instance by companies that require you to give up some of your rights in exchange for hosting your data. And then you are more or less back to today, only with lots of little data-stores that can be merged at will by whoever controls the storage facility after you cough up your keys in return for something shiny.

<comment><USER44> It's not about avoiding marketing. It's about ownership and control.

If I want my stuff to be analysed- I let that happen- it finds business or social matches- awesome. I just need the option to turn that off for things I don't want greped- like banking.

I too am in favor of paid for services. Because that is what happens eventually. You pay for it. I'd rather make a decision and choose who I pay, as opposed to having my choices and VIEW-OF-THE-WORLD limited because everything is "free" but funded by marketing.

<comment><USER43> I would love to 'own' all my data. But companies offering services will win out because they do not have to play nice with you or your data store. Take Gmail, Facebook or Google docs as examples. In principle that's _your_ data. But Gmail has successfully convinced people that Google is able to run its mail service better than you or your corporation ever could. In return for 'reading your mail', and vast amounts of corporations and individuals seem to believe them.

Ditto for Facebook and yet another encore for Google docs.

Once established economies of scale and network effects will do the rest. A new system would have to fix a lot more than _just_ the security angle because it is well known that security is always going to be secondary to convenience, a factor that large entities will find much easier to control than many small ones.

So, I really hope they will manage but I'm not going to hold my breath until they do. Note this comes from a guy that does not have a Facebook account, no smartphone, runs his own web and mail server.

<comment><USER15> What is going to prevent everyone on Solid from getting constantly hacked by 0-day bugs and all their data read?

<comment><USER43> Wrong thread?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> I'm still not sold on this idea. I ask why help John/Jan Doe Net Shopper protect their data? If Net Shopper X is that concerned about said issue a little research and implementation a Net Shopper X can privately and securely shop. However my constituents feel it's our obligation to use our skills and knowledge to help Net Shopper X because they are to stupid to do it themselves. Like a Shepard needs to protect the sheep from the wolves. So at this time its still just conversions rather then actions in my circle.

</comment><comment><USER46> my biggest worry is that the "granular permissions" just won't work. People already just say "Yes" to give away their data, this actually seems to make it easier to get to a lot of personal data because people will just say "Yes" to whatever is asked for when they want to use a service.

</comment><comment><USER47> I would be happier in a decentralized network staying connected with other sheeple and have my own options of sharing information.

This is an attempt to doom it before it was even tried.

<comment><USER48> Facebook / gov can import all your data from Solid, rendering your options of who to share info with a cruel illusion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Not solid. To build a good user experience you need to have end-to-end control. If you don't control the hardware your product will suck.</comment>


Show HN: Coding WebIDE goes open source – The WebIDE Community Edition - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Coding/WebIDE <comment><USER2> Thanks a lot for this project, I've been thinking about coding in the browser for a while, but you guys went much ahead... it is just sad for me to not understand Chinese, but hopefully it will get translated to more languages soon now it is open source!

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi there, both the Community Edition and the Cloud Edition WebIDE provide English Language support, you can give it a try;)

<comment><USER2> Cool, but how can I sign up? -> [https://coding.net/register](https://coding.net/register) (I don't understand a thing)

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, since the i18n is still in progress, you can try the Cloud WebIDE via GitHub: [https://ide.coding.net/login?return_url=https://ide.coding.n...](https://ide.coding.net/login?return_url=https://ide.coding.net/)

Or open this Live Demo: [https://ide.coding.net/ws/?ownerName=duwan&projectName=WordP...](https://ide.coding.net/ws/?ownerName=duwan&projectName=WordPress&isTry=true)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Hola ~~ Nice opensource project goes internationa ~

</comment><comment><USER4> Good Job!

</comment><comment><USER5> oh my god</comment>


#pretzel2018 – Bootstrapping my first SaaS from 0 to 50$ MRR - <AUTHOR> http://www.blechi.at/ <comment><USER2> Best of luck with TaskZen.</comment>


Ask HN: How to transform event/clickstream data into personalized user metadata - <AUTHOR> I would like to capture every time a user views a brand, seller, or listing on our app. Then I would like to have a method that returns a list of their brands, sellers, or listings based on the ones they visit the most.
I see a lot of software like mixpanel allows you to capture click stream data, but that seems more like "business analyst wants to track x stat against y stat in the last 30 days."
Requirements:
- relatively low cost (we're small-medium scale)
- can't use postgres extensions like pipelinedb (on gcloud managed sql)
Current idea:
Create an event record in postgres (e.g. user_id, "viewed", entity_id, entity_type)
then write an sql query to fetch their favorite brands, sellers, etc.. based on the aggregation/sum of their events in real time.
Concerns:
a) Should raw event data be stored in postgresql? Won't it just cause an unnecessary amount of writes, and requires involvement to maintain performance. We would probably have 10M events every few months.
b) Moving to something like big query, red shift, or whatever "analytics" db seems like the wrong tool / overkill. We would like to rapidly query the data for user facing apps, gather personalized stats for users on the fly (e.g. "my favorite brands"), these tools seem like they're more for generating reports, big data analysis, etc...
c) this leads me to believe that raw event data should be stored somewhere like s3, and aggregated offline, and the results be stored in postgresql for rapid querying
Am I over complicating this? <comment><USER2> I'd suggest using a service like Segment or MetaRouter.io to collect the event data, then use Airflow to prep it.</comment>


How much does a startup cost? - <AUTHOR> http://opani.com/dirk/crunch-acquisitions/results/#key=(reduce) Some crunchbase data mining that comes up with a simple model for pricing a startup. <comment><USER2> Back during the 2000 bubble, folks started companies where the payoff in the biz plan was based on $1M per employee. Therefore the goal became hiring, and salaries/signing bonuses became stupid.

The bubble bursting was actually a boon for companies with honest-to-god businesses.

</comment><comment><USER3> Yes, you have been using R to do the stats, but please, take a look at the results, not a single significant parameter! This is a bit sad, because it looks like you are doing something great at Opani, but this post is not really showing it.

<comment><USER4> t-values above 2 typically correspond to p<0.05. Employees are an important factor: p(t=2.98, df=62)=0.004, raised capital is not: p(t=0.27, df=62)=0.78. Standard errors of the estimates are also reported.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Does anyone know if this panel was recorded? Curious to hear or read a transcript.

<comment><USER4> [http://www.orricktotalaccess.vidcaster.com/FRq/ma-acqui- hire...](http://www.orricktotalaccess.vidcaster.com/FRq/ma-acqui-hires-panel- event-1062011/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> We all witnessed one example where the start up "cost" about $200,000, and failed.

How long is a piece of string?</comment>


Google's CEO is 14,400 times richer than you - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/google/2016/02/09/googles-ceo-is-14400-times-richer-than-you/ <comment><USER2> see if they paid taxes they could probably only afford to pay him 10k times as much as the average US pay check. I doubt he'd work for that pittance.</comment>


File manager nnn v3.0 is released - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/jarun/nnn/releases/tag/v3.0 <comment><AUTHOR> The latest release has some interesting features like handling list of files as input, PCRE support, more readline-like bindings at the in-built prompt, lazy unmount, auto-proceed on open option (very handy when you are opening files one after another).

The keybind `e` to edit a file in `EDITOR` has been restored on multiple user requests.

Along with pre-built packages there's a static binary to download and run `nnn` without installing.</comment>


Forged memory fools antimalware: A new development in rootkits - <AUTHOR> http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/security/forged-memory-fools-antimalware-a-new-development-in-rootkits/5443

<comment><USER2> This does not look like a new development in rootkits. If I understand the article's summary: there's a rootkit that sets a hardware breakpoint on the memory it overwrote in the kernel, and checks to see if access are normal or abnormal; for abnormal access, it subs in fake value for the contents of that range of memory.

If you want to see where the state of the art in rootkits was in 2007(!), read:

[http://i.i.com.com/cnwk.1d/i/z/200701/bh-dc-07-Rutkowska- ppt...](http://i.i.com.com/cnwk.1d/i/z/200701/bh-dc-07-Rutkowska-ppt.pdf)

...noting that this is Joanna Rutkowska explaining how to reprogram MMUs (here with MMIO remapping) to defeat _hardware DMA memory forensics_.

<comment><USER3> Due to the lovely fact, if I recall corectly, that there's two TLB[1], one for instructions and one for data. So you can subvert one or another in order to execute a hidden payload.

If you read the data you think you'll execute, you will be fooled. [2] This is a pretty nice trick.

[1]: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Translation_lookaside_buffer#Ov...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Translation_lookaside_buffer#Overview)

[2]: [http://uninformed.org/index.cgi?v=6&a=1&p=21](http://uninformed.org/index.cgi?v=6&a=1&p=21)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Once your trusted space is compromised (the kernel space in this case), trying to detect or fix the compromise from that same space turns into a game of Core War: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_War>

Scanning for rootkits from a hypervisor would solve this problem... as long as your hypervisor isn't compromised itself!

<comment><USER2> This is indeed the direction the industry seems to be heading: extremely lightweight sidecar security hypervisors.</comment></comment>


Getting started in data science - <AUTHOR> http://treycausey.com/getting_started.html

<comment><USER2> While all reasonable points, his resume doesn't actually list any experience in industry. There is certainly a lot of data analysis skills that can be learned while at academic institutions.

I would argue, however, that a skill that is often not put on these lists of 'what you need to become a data scientist' is some time being at a real private sector company. In my experience, there are quite a few differences between writing academic papers and coming up with the terse, actionable information that is useful for a profit-driven company.

<comment><USER3> Trey is a data scientist at Zulily. Think he's been there for a few years now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is actually a very timely article to pop up for me. I'm currently a Sales Analyst at a big Telco in Canada. I landed the job with no previous analyst experience, but years of programming behind me. I never had any formal programming experience, and everything I know is from years of experience. Because of this, I'm fairly confident that I can get anything done, but I have no schooling to support me. Don't get me wrong, I don't consider myself a highly skilled or knowledgeable programmer, but I know how to break down complex tasks and produce results. I've been writing functional PHP my whole life since I'm unable to focus on learning a new language long enough to actually do so (and because of this, I have lots of self doubt that I'd actually be able to learn a new one if I wanted to).

I consider my 'Sales Analyst' role an intro to data science. Essentially, we're collecting all types of data from different sources and producing reports on them. How many products were sold? From what channels? From which sales persons on which team? How many customers did they talk to? How many of their booked installations failed? Were successes? Whats our market penetration like? Where are we seeing trends in disconnections or connections? Why? We're dealing with millions of records, from half a dozen data sources, often with no unique key matching the data up.

It's a very interesting job, but without any previous experience in the field it's all been self taught. I've looked into a few data science programs and books, but I've felt that everything I see and read is so far above me that I can't even get started on the books or courses. My math skills are pretty basic, but that's never stopped me before as I've always been able to find the results that I'm looking for. I know that with the proper knowledge and experience I'd be able to land a data science job and get a 30-50K raise at the same time, but just don't have anything on my resume to qualify me. Nor do I know what an -actual- data scientist does, so I lack the confidence in even pursuing any openings I see around. I'm getting married next year, have a seven year old daughter, and bills to pay like anybody else, the job security I have in my current role definitely acts as a deterrent from taking a leap into the unknown as well.

<comment><USER5> _I consider my 'Sales Analyst' role an intro to data science. Essentially, we're collecting all types of data from different sources and producing reports on them._

 _I know ... I 'd be able to land a data science job ... but just don't have anything on my resume to qualify me._

Who uses the reports you produce? What decisions do they make as a result? How often do they make these decisions? What is the impact?

If you want to build on your current role as a way to become a data scientist, in your current company or elsewhere, perhaps you can look at ways to:

\- Generate recommendations based on the reports you've designed

\- Automate some decisions that are being made manually now

\- Figure out a way to influence additional teams who could/should use the data you're analysing

In short: figure out a way to generate additional $$$ impact, or improve/automate an existing process which requires manual effort, so that those people can focus on stuff which cannot easily be automated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Pretending to be a scientist without doing the academic work means you are essentially a trade worker. Autodidact? Fine, but you better have put yourself through the equivalent of at least a masters or phd in statistics along the way.

We need vocational education to let semiskilled workers use statistical modeling tools in an informed way, but why do we then call them "scientists"? They are technicians.

<comment><USER7> In the US it's perfectly alright to call yourself an engineer or scientist. You're welcome in professional organizations like IEEE and ACM, you may submit articles for journal publication, and attend our even present at conferences. As long as you don't try to fashion your own PE or PhD out of nothing all the rest is fine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The problem here is, IMO a semantic one.

"Data scientist" is giving people the wrong impression. What this demand really is is companies now have a lot of data because everything is digitised. They need people to do stuff with that.

The actual demand for data related work is to data science like the actual demand for computer related work is to computer science. Statisticians, analysts, database engineers.

</comment><comment><USER9> >And certainly not quickly enough to be qualified to get a job as a data scientist before the data scientist salary market comes crashing back down to earth.

Do you think it's worth it to pursue if you're legitimately interested (as opposed to primarily attracted to the $$$)?

</comment><comment><USER10> Great resources, was just about to buy a book on Linear Algerbra & ML before I read this.

<comment><USER11> Consider this book by Toby Segaran:

[http://www.amazon.com/Programming-Collective-Intelligence- Bu...](http://www.amazon.com/Programming-Collective-Intelligence-Building- Applications/dp/0596529325)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> What are people using Linear Algebra for in Data Science? Aside from the stock representing words as N-dimensional vectors I mean?

I ask because I do this kind of work as my J.O.B. and every skill he refers to I totally see the necessity of except this one.

<comment><USER13> I am actually _very_ puzzled by by this comment because its the polar opposite of a point of view that I would have expected. In fact I can think of very few datamining and machine learning algorithms where linear algebra does not play a role.

Representing features of a datapoint as a vector, pervades and populates every pore of this field. Without an understanding of linear algebra you wouldn't have support vector machines, no kernel methods, no neural networks, no perceptrons, no gradient descent methods, no Newton / Quasi-Newton methods, no multi-dimensional (or as they say in statistics, multivariate) Gaussian random variables, no matrix factorization, no Pagerank, no Markov chains, this list can go on and on.

Take the simplest of data science problems: you have one variable x and another variable y and you want to predict the value of y given x. Usually x is not a single scalar but n scalars (called a feature vector). Simplest thing you can do here is least squares and that is as linear algebraic as you can get. There many fancy ways of dealing with this problem but almost always it is reduced to solving a related linear system.

The bottom line is this: we understand very few things. Thankfully linear algebra is one of the few things that we do understand, so almost every analytical problem is reduced to this case (if, but locally) and then solved.

I would be very curious to know how you have been able to avoid linear algebra. It will give me a new and valuable perspective, because apart from "click button, didnt work? ok click the next button" data analysis I find it hard how one can do much data analysis without it. So please break my bubble, I will be thankful for it.

Canned packages often do not work out of the box. The knowledge of linear comes very handy in analyzing and debugging why is the model not working" "oh I see this matrix is near singular, thats why my estimates are off the park", or "oh these two variables are very correlated, that is why gradient descent is having so much trouble converging fast", "ah I see why I am getting NaN here" etc etc.

EDIT: darkxanthos, appreciate your comment. I would say it is a bit like driving. Knowing the internal mechanics is neither necessary nor sufficient, and hardly correlated with good driving skills when things are going well. But sometimes when things are not going as expected, it helps in debugging.

Let me try and pique your interest: Note that the decision boundary of naive Bayes is actually a linear function of the log conditional probabilities considered all independent, with LA you can now also consider the case that they have dependence. Consider updating multi-armed bandit problems, the updates are variants of gradient descent, and its nature is indeed characterized by the eigenvalues of Hessian of the thing you want to optimize. Consider K-means clustering, one way to get very close to its global optimum is to solve the same cost function using linear algebraic updates (called spectral graph partitioning). By trig I think you have the dot-product of two vectors in mind, the related analysis actually does not rely much on trigonometric properties but heavily on the linear algebraic properties, in fact this what allows one to escalate affairs from simple linear feature vectors to extremely non-linear ones because even though they are nonlinear in the data space in some other space they are linear so people do the math in that space (called the kernel trick although I find that term quite silly) ..This thing, linear algebra, lurks everywhere, I tell you :)

<comment><USER12> Thanks for this comment. Just to be clear I am not saying it isn't necessary but am genuinely curious what I'm missing. I think a big influence on my comment is using ideas that touch on linear algebra and possibly even doing the computations one might end up doing via linear algebra but without knowing it.

For example- Least squares regression. Totally use this. Even took a semester in college on just regression. The linear algebra underpinnings though haven't never been shown except for a quick blurb in my linear algebra text book. I still understand the concepts of fitting a model and when it's a bad fit (such as non-normal distribution of residuals, co-linearity) but the theoretical underpinnings are more fuzzy to me.

Representing features as vectors, sure. But that's also a pretty superficial use of linear algebra since from that point forward I'm using something on the trig side to compute results (at least in clustering).

I also tend to lean rather heavily on probability and bayesian approaches to many areas. So Naive Bayes classification is a love of mine, finding ideal parameter values given data coming in becomes an online updating multi-armed bandit problem to me (which also doesn't require explicit linear algebra). A lot of my work is also in experiment design and analysis and for this I use a mixture of Bayseian and frequentist statistical testing.

Canned packages out of the box with parameters to tweak that I can cross validate to evaluate how well my model is working. If I happen to venture out to other models I'm probably reading up on common pitfalls and how to test for them.

To me, it's entirely possible that the gap between you and I is due to experience and even just differences in training/learning (including but not limited to the quantity of it). These discussions are important for me since they help to inform my future learning aspirations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> "The reason I'm skeptical is because I believe in the science portion of our field's name. One of the primary things that separates a data scientist from someone just building models is the ability to think carefully about things like endogeneity, causal inference, and experimental and quasi-experimental design."

What exactly _is_ a 'data scientist'? Shouldn't scientists be the ones analyzing their own data, instead of 'data scientists'?

<comment><USER15> My reply to this would be that everyone has to do some sort of statistics and modeling in their studies.

Data science tends to be more about having good software engineering, understanding how to interface with production systems to pull data out, and enough modeling experience, almost specializing in it, to be able to make inferences about different kinds of business activities affecting revenue, or other parts of the business.

You can get away and even grow in to a data science role as a statistican or software engineer (probably leading towards data engineering more than data science).

Source: students of mine get hired by companies like facebook[1].

So: to summarize, data scientists get hired for roles at companies to focus only on modeling, data quality, and data advocacy, and assisting product roles.

Edit:

[1]: [http://zipfianacademy.com/](http://zipfianacademy.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> You'll need a Mac, some thick rimmed glasses, and an unshakeable belief that what normal people have been doing for 20 years with 2 clicks in Excel can in fact only be done on a Hadoop cluster "in the clouds".

<comment><USER17> In practice I find the bigger problem is from analysts/actuaries/statisticians who have a disdain for programming, which sometimes is viewed as a task for mere technicians.

Typically your excel model/analysis has not even solved half the problem of a datascience system. It needs to be repeatable, it needs to be open to change (source control!), it needs to be integratable with the wider system.

These things need to be considered upfront. There are plenty of reasonable software tools for this. Yes hadoop shouldn't be your first step, but taking 5 minutes to put something on a server in ec2 (omg, the cloud) is not unreasonable.

There is a swallowing abyss between excel and production. That is where datascience projects die, its a shame.

<comment><USER18> I've never met a statistician who either uses excel or has a "disdain for programming". R or Matlab are basic tools of the trade

<comment><USER19> I talk a lot of people who've had trouble with "data scientists" who are strong in statistics and know some matlab or R or something like that, but know nothing about the craftsmanship of programming.

By that I mean skills like using version control, writing software that is maintainable, working with a team that uses project management software, things like that.

A common kind of workflow is that a data scientist develops an algorithm and makes tweaks to it, and that this gets baked into a production system.

If the data scientist throws something over the wall and it takes the developers a few weeks to get it ready for real use, the "real time" productivity of the team is going to be awful. The closer we come to the data scientist checking the changes in and that's that, the more valuable the data scientist is.

<comment><USER18> This is absolutely a fair comment, coders but not software engineers, and is the same problem that's permeated bioinformatics for the last decade or so. (As an aside, it's fun hearing grand claims about data science revolutionising medicine in 10 years [0], when the same claims were made about bioinformatics 10 years ago.)

[0] [https://twitter.com/HanChenNZ/status/473825783874859008](https://twitter.com/HanChenNZ/status/473825783874859008)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Forget $3B In Revenue: Things "Don't Look Good" For Facebook - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/forget_3b_in_revenue_things_dont_look_good_for_fac.php <comment><USER2> If the worst news you can find about Facebook is a few rumors that they might miss a revenue projection, a prediction that their ad revenue growth rate will decrease from its current 60% (note: ads are not the only way FB can make money), and a random class action lawsuit, then Facebook's prospects look about as good as any company's ever get.

This amount of badness is background radiation. You could scrape together at least this much about any public company.

<comment><USER3> It does raise the question "What is Facebook's Killer business model?". They have defaulted into ads because that's what Google did and that's what works for many other businesses. But I've never clicked on a Facebook ad and I don't know anyone who has unless it was research. I'm seeing highly targeted ads based on my interests and demographic and I just don't click because I'm too busy social networking. Whereas with Google my intent is "search" and so I occasionally click.

After recently starting to use them again I'm blown away at how useful and engaging the app is. But the revenue just seems to be hobbling along considering their scale.

They've tried so many models and none really stuck like AdWords for Google. Long term I just don't see the same kind of revenue growth that companies like Google and Amazon have had and continue to have. For any investor in public companies that's kind of terrifying when it's not clear how revenue will grow.

<comment><USER4> >But I've never clicked on a Facebook ad and I don't know anyone who has unless it was research.

I often hear this on HN and from other techies. I bet you've never ran a serious Facebook or any other Ad campaign and measured effectiveness (in terms of business ROI).

I used to think like you, but they do work (even 0.05% click thru rate is considered effective!) and hence these companies make billions of dollars. Please stop making such ignorant statements. $3 billion revenue is not a small number.

<comment><USER5> In my experience, click-through rates aren't that great and conversion is really pretty bad. I've worked at 2 decent size ecommerce companies and the CPO hasn't ever really been profitable for social media ads especially compared to Google and Bing ads. Their advertising is really more comparable to traditional display or remarketing ads at this point which are generally less efficient for marketing spend and hence less profitable for FB's customers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm kind of smelling some negative press push here about the IPO. A lot of the stuff doesn't seem to add up - despite supposedly solid leaks about documents, etc.

What this might be an indicator of is a dedicated effort to push the stock price post-IPO lower so that various traders/funds can make a nice chunk of change off a rebound post-earnings.

I'm fairly skeptical of this sort of conclusion - especially about supposed ad revenue or other issues - due to my personal experience using the platform. I have spent a small fortune (of my own money) on online advertising as an affiliate for several years. Out of all the various ad networks and venues, the most consistently profitable has been Facebook, bar none.

On a typical campaign, I'll net a 200-300% profit on my ad spend. Compare this with 60-100% on Google AdWords and 50-65% on Bing. Don't even get me started on buying display ads. I'll spend any free ad budget on FB before any other network, simply because I _know_ I'll profit from it - the risk is far lower and the margin far higher.

I guess my point is, like when Google started, people just don't get the power that FB holds when it comes to advertising. Storefronts in FB were never the point - what is far more important is engagement and interest.

Facebook is king when it comes to that.

<comment><USER7> Since your evidence is anecdotal I'll point out that there have been a number of "unhappy ending" stories regarding Facebook advertising on the front page of HN over the last year and a half. Perhaps your niche works well with their offerings, but it seems like you're the exception and not the rule.

<comment><USER6> Well, most of the unhappy endings have suffered from one or more of these problems:

1\. The advertiser does not put enough money in to fully test the product/niche/demographic

2\. The product targeting mix is not well thought through, targets too many people or doesn't take in to account other factors.

3\. The advertiser is not testing enough ads to find what gets people to respond.

There are many more reasons as well, and I won't try and cover them all here. Suffice to say, most of the time people don't really put enough on the line to find where they can succeed with FB ads. This has kept the market fairly clear for people like me - I'll happily drop $1k to test something, because if even 1-2 ad/target combos is reliably profitable, I know I've hit something.

A very broad range of products work quite easily, you just have to break out of the old mold of thinking in terms of direct interest -> product correlation. For example, you aren't really going to sell jeans to people that like "clothes".

Think broader - target people that like home improvement and give them ads that say "Toughest Jeans Ever / (pic of dirty as hell jeans) / Work in the garden or change a sink, it doesn't matter. Save $20 with coupon FB20OFF today only!"

These are the ways to succeed on FB, but you really have to be willing to put it on the line.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Some advertisers are getting _much better_ results with Facebook ads than with Google AdWords -- for instance, see [http://jeffmatthewsisnotmakingthisup.blogspot.com/2012/01/is...](http://jeffmatthewsisnotmakingthisup.blogspot.com/2012/01/is- facebook-killing-google-no-but.html)

(Money quote from that link: "...according to a friend in retailing, the average Facebook woman updates her relationship status to 'Engaged' within two hours of the guy actually proposing…so Facebook sells that relationship status information to retailers who have bridal registries. As my pal told me, 'We've been looking for this for fifty years.'")

<comment><USER9> <http://www.facebook.com/legal/terms>

"We do not give your content or information to advertisers without your consent."

<comment><USER8> ...which consent most consumers will blindly give by clicking on whatever button they must click to get to their Facebook page... without ever reading such legal terms.

<comment><USER8> ...which in turns reminds me of this classic incident of regular people trying but unable to login to Facebook: [http://ryankuder.posterous.com/facebook- users-think-readwrit...](http://ryankuder.posterous.com/facebook-users-think- readwrite-web-blog-is-fa)

[Update: I'll submit this as a link. It's a classic.]

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Doesn't sound too bad at all, frankly. Someone is just trying to add a little drama to what is otherwise a big success story.

It is certainly true that usage of Facebook is rapidly shifting towards mobile, and that currently Facebook doesn't have any ads on mobile. That has got to impact revenue growth somewhat. But ads coming to Facebook mobile sometime soon is about as obvious as can be - and I'd bet on them doing it in a way that takes advantage of that platform's strengths and makes their company even stronger.

<comment><USER11> > _"Someone is just trying to add a little drama to what is otherwise a big > success story"_

It's a fallacy to conflate "success" with "hype".

Facebook is going to make money and be successful, barring some unforeseen craziness. They made a billion in net income last year! However, where it seems that the tech world and the investment world diverge is in the expectations. $1BB (or 2,3,4,5) isn't enough to buy in at the anticipated price.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Facebook's PE ratio is around 100 last time I checked. If a 'good' valuation is in the 10-15 range (e.g. Microsoft, Apple, Google), then either Facebook's profits earned needs to increase by 10x, or it's share price needs to fall by 10x.

If Facebook's percentage revenue increase is 'only' double-digits, and shrinking, it will take years and years of earnings growth before it becomes a 'good value'. It will take 5 years at a sustained 60% yearly earnings growth rate to reach the same PE ratio Apple has today.

</comment><comment><USER13> Anybody who puts a column graph showing billions and overlays a downwards trend in red showing slowing growth is essentially lying.

It's irrelevant that they have a point with regards to high P/E ratiom slowing growth and missing targets. Anyone who makes a graph shaped and coloured like that is belittling their readers.

</comment><comment><USER14> > _"Expect more ads as Facebook tries to meet revenue projections."_

As I've commented here before, I access Facebook in its own VM. The past couple of days, I have noticed a significant uptick in the number of ads displayed. However, the odds of my clicking one is no higher - just because I accepted a friend request this week from a politically conservative person who I went to high school with decades ago; it doesn't mean I want to buy a USS Ronald Regan hat.

</comment><comment><USER15> I agree with PG that this is "fake news" What few people realize is that Facebook does $3B in revenues while not monetizing two "real estates" that could add $3B each (or more) in the future: \- Mobile is still not monetized at all and we are talking about 400M MAU!!!! \- Facebook does not leverage the huge breadth of data it has garnered about users through their "like" actions on other publisher's website to create a much need competitor to AdSense. These two opportunities are $B opportunities easily...

My only concern for Facebook would be that they focus too much on their short term earnings to justify their very bullish P/E multiple... and lost sight on consumer satisfaction. On the other hand, by doing so (like Google has in the past 4-5 years) would open the door to new startups that could start gaining some great momentum!

</comment><comment><USER16> FB will always be able to monetize their users. It's just a question of what premium. Since most people on FB have no intent on buying anything, the amount they can net per user is very very small compared to Google. In a sense, it's just like a glorified TribalFusion, where eyeballs are worth .01 each.

<comment><USER17> This seems right. Users are much less valuable for companies on Facebook b/c of user intent. What Facebook needs to figure out is how to channel higher value users to ads. One fix might be to create a separate search tool that focuses on "stuff" since the main search navigation is useless for finding anything except your friends.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> The graph in this article shows revenues continuing to go up over the next 3 years... Just at a slower rate. That doesn't sound like "things don't look good" but more like "things don't look as amazing as they did, but still look pretty good." Of course, I have no idea about the validity of the underlying data in that graph... But still, it totally doesn't match up with the analysis of the numbers presented in the text.

Not that I'm a facebook investor or anything... On the contrary... :)

<comment><USER11> When your P/E is greater than 100, people are expecting _mad_ growth in the future. Growth slowing already? That's bad news for people looking at investing.

<comment><USER19> What would you call a P/E ratio over 9500? <http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=CRM>

Both the stock and the P/E ratio has been growing for years.

<comment><USER11> I'd call it an unsustainable-bust-waiting-to-happen.

The P/E ratio is growing because the share price is going up and they aren't making money. That's not a good thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I would not be surprised if the government directly began to subsidize facebook, just for the incredible amount of personal information they could mine. Another scary thought is a company like equifax, buying into facebook.

<comment><USER21> They're called the Carlyle Group and they bought in nearly at FB's beginning.

EDIT: Looks like the Google News Alert has reached Carlyle Headquarters. Expect silent downvotes.

<comment><USER22> I downvoted you, because:

1\. You didn't provide any source for this (and I can't find anything online to back it up; granted I only searched for a few minutes). Facebook isn't listed in their portfolio, for example: [http://www.carlyle.com/Portfolio/Alphabetically/item8774.htm...](http://www.carlyle.com/Portfolio/Alphabetically/item8774.html). And I couldn't find any mention of the Carlyle Group in the Facebook S-1 filing, either. You could be right, but I'd like to see the evidence.

2\. The Carlyle Group is a huge private equity firm that owns all or part of hundreds of companies around the world. Suggesting (without any evidence) that they own these companies as some shadowy method to share private data across them is ridiculous. Your edit makes it even more clear that you're more interested in some kind of conspiracy theory than the obvious truth, which is that the Carlyle Group either didn't invest in Facebook or did so because they thought they'd make good money. And if they invested early, like you say, then they were right.

<comment><USER21> Thanks for the reply. I'll try to look up connections, but for right now it seems to be impossible with Google SERPs including Facebook mentions of Carlyles the world over. That is, search for anything "facebook" on Google and you'll get a million FB pages due to the word "Facebook" in every page title.

Sigh, Google.

<comment><USER23> Why not exclude facebook.com from the results? "facebook carlyle -facebook.com"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> It's always amazed me that a company's outlook can look bad even though they're profit/revenue is growing, just because said growth isn't as big as it was in the past.

I can sort of see why from an economics perspective, the stock price is based on profit growth projections and if those projections don't hold up the price will naturally drop.

But it still seems crazy that we continually expect and pressure our public companies into growing their profit at a rate higher than it was previously growing, otherwise they aren't hitting performance expectations. I'm sure someone with more economics knowledge can explain it in a way that makes sense, but to me that seems like a logical fallacy. We expect what amounts to continual exponential growth.

Edit: Typos

<comment><USER25> The reason for that is simply that expectations are already factored into the stock price. If expectations aren't met then the stock is overvalued.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> "predicting Facebook's advertising revenue growth will slow"

They are talking about second derivation here, right?

</comment><comment><USER27> This is exactly why Facebook should not do an IPO. Regardless of whether or not these rumors are true, hungry public investors will demand _significant_ revenue and profit growth regardless of long term plans and prospects.

I'm afraid that this IPO is going to be a mess.

This might be where we see Zuckerburg get in over his head.

</comment><comment><USER28> Things look amazing for FB. Seriously. So many opportunities for growth.

Imagine FB credits at local merchants... Imagine FB Social Ads for content publishers... Imagine FB running their own mobile ad network...

Sure, FB is kind of AOL all over again, but this time around FB (unlike AOL) has no intentions of cashing out to some media conglomerate.

Facebook is more like this decade's Google like Google was last decade's Microsoft.</comment>


Should browsers still allow users to disable JavaScript? - <AUTHOR> https://dev.to/ben/should-browsers-still-allow-users-to-disable-javascript--211d <comment><USER2> Yes. Duh? It's my machine, and I will decide what code I do or don't run on it.

If some browser maker thinks they know better, well, I'll simply decide not to run any of their code on my machine.

</comment><comment> java-man yes.

</comment><comment><USER3> Definitely.</comment>


U.K. unveils sweeping plan to rein in Big Tech - <AUTHOR> https://www.axios.com/uk-unveils-sweeping-plan-to-rein-in-big-tech-66890d68-cb69-436c-90fd-b011c6b91b2b.html <comment><AUTHOR> > The proposed regulations would apply to any company that allows users to > share or discover user-generated content or interact with each other online.

> That means the rules would apply to most of the internet's biggest players, > including social media sites like Facebook, public discussion forums like > Reddit, messaging services like WhatsApp, and search engines like Google or > Bing.</comment>


Realtime visualization of Wikipedia edit streams - <AUTHOR> http://inkdroid.org:3000/ <comment><USER2> Wow, this is really cool. Watch history as its being rewritten! (small wikipedia joke) Now I need something that shows in what category things are being changed (deltas) and then what linkages are being added or removed (connectivity). Lots of ways to go with this.

</comment><comment><USER3> The speed of the stream of edits makes you realize how traditional encyclopedias have zero chance of competing with Wikipedia with respect to the quantity of information...

</comment><comment><USER4> Thanks for all the comments! I did give wikistream a hostname, <http://wikistream.inkdroid.org> which is probably better to try to use than the port 3000 one, since I might end up having to change the port at some point. So if you want to update the link in the title I would appreciate it!

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't think, as a submitter of the link, I can now edit the link. If it is possible, please someone let me know. I would be happy to oblige.

<comment><USER4> ok, no worries ... I guess I can probably issue a 301 redirect to get crawlers to update their bookmark...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I also recommend looking at his other visualization, WikiPulse - <http://wikipulse.herokuapp.com/> \- also built on node.js.

</comment><comment><USER6> Holy cow that's fast. I had no idea it was so actively edited, even when you restrict it to >= 100± characters it's still more than one per second. And so many more registered users than anonymous!

In the about page:

> _Hopefully wikistream provides a hint of just how active the community is > around Wikipedia._

Mission accomplished.

</comment><comment><USER7> Brilliant! Care to elaborate on the implementation?

Edit: Found some details on the about page <http://inkdroid.org:3000/about/> and everything else at <https://github.com/edsu/wikistream>

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the interest! I wrote up some high level notes at <http://inkdroid.org/journal/2011/11/07/an-ode-to-node/> if you want to know a bit more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Previously:

WikipediaVision (beta). Anonymous edits to Wikipedia (almost) in real-time. (<http://www.lkozma.net/wpv/>)

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2923946>

</comment><comment><USER9> Neat! But careful, NSFW! The first image to come along the background was of male penis, balls, and anus, hair and all. Perhaps this was because I noticed an article scroll by with the name of male perineum?

<comment><USER4> Yeah, the images are what are being uploaded to wikimedia commons ... it refreshes every 10 seconds or so, and you might end up with something NSFW...

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> The stream consists of edits only in major languages on Wikipedia. It doesn't include all the languages in which Wikipedia exists. If such edits are also included, imagine the rate at which new knowledge is being created.

<comment><USER10> I'm guessing it would look 99.99% identical to these 36 top languages.

<comment><USER11> Maybe not to three decimal places, but it's true that the top languages do dominate the edits.

See stats.wikimedia.org if you are curious. Here's the table of all edits per wiki.

<http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesDatabaseEdits.htm>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> great socket/node proj, visited earlier <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2661457>

</comment><comment><USER13> Wow, there are a lot of people on the Internet now.

</comment><comment><USER14> This thing froze FF8 on W7 rock solid. Be warned.

</comment><comment><USER15> cool, all the concepts for this type of stuff i've seen in the past have been very heavy on the browser

</comment><comment><USER16> this is so incredibly beautiful.</comment>


My Web Beacon Finder - <AUTHOR> http://davidcancel.com/2008/07/01/my-web-beacon-finder-updated/ <comment><USER2> At first I thought it said "My Web Bacon Finder" and got really excited.</comment>


Iceland Kicked Out FBI Agents Who Flew in Unannounced to Investigate WikiLeaks - <AUTHOR> http://clevelandleader.com/node/20013 <comment><USER3> That's to be expected. They have no jurisdiction there.

Edit: There's been numerous news reports all over the world about FBI/CIA agents doing police-work without reporting to local authorities in countries which are not the US, where they have no rights and no jurisdiction, as if it was their own turf.

CIA operatives have been charged in numerous European countries for kidnapping and abducting people not guilty on anything by local laws. Because the US wanted them silenced, because of "terror" or whatever.

I'm going to pressume this is what happened here as well.

I can assure you that if anyone had done the same in the US, they wouldn't merely be kicked out, they would be jailed for being in violation of the law.

<comment><USER4> > CIA operatives have been charged in numerous European countries for > kidnapping and abducting people not guilty on anything by local laws. > Because the US wanted them silenced, because of "terror" or whatever.

As a European, I'll bet you whatever you want they were doing this with the full knowledge of the government and intelligence departments of the aforementionned countries.

<comment><USER5> Indeed, relevant people in Italy were roasted for it.

Just because you are the secret service, it doesn't mean you can ignore the law.

<comment><USER6> It does pretty much. It means you can abduct people and torture them, that's pretty much everything a secret service would ever want to do.

Google Murat Kurnaz. There was a whole network of CIA prisons with torture in Europe.

<comment><USER5> Nope. That's why pretty much everywhere, in civilized countries, foreign and domestic spying are done by separate entities: the laws they have to follow are different, and there is (usually) a different degree of oversight.

Secret services are hardly all about "abducting people and torturing them", that's actually an aberration of their role. Most of what they do is signal- intelligence of various sorts, and the most silently they can do it, the better. "Abducting and torturing" are all but silent activities; you are basically shouting at your enemy to go fuck himself, the intelligence equivalent of yokels shooting in the air. Abducting and torturing is what a _secret police_ does, the sort of stuff you see in clueless dictatorial countries. Albeit it might be considered effective in the short term, it makes you powerless in the long run, when you've abducted/tortured/killed all the enemies you knew but you don't know anything about the _new_ enemies.

<comment><USER7> Nope to what? One of the biggest problems with the CIA is that they are intelligence, secret world police and paramilitary all at the same time.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_rendition> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_site> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_Chapman_attack>

etc.

<comment><USER5> Yes, but that doesn't mean this is what it _should_ be. In fact, most other secret services are _not_ like that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Wow what a weird map. No state in Europe is labeled (except Denmark in Greenland and Russia in Asia) whereas most but not all of the others are. And Europe is divided on Europe and European Russia-Asia. Russia is labeled up there in the upper right corner. The map's scale is in Libya. Only prime meridian, arctic circle and tropic of cancer are shown. And there are some weird blobs west of Portugal. And Kosovo is still part of Serbia

<comment><USER9> Taken from <http://www.worldatlas.com/webimage/countrys/europe/is.htm>

Hilariously bad mapping for a geography web site. The weird blob west of Portugal is supposed to be a marking where north is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> is this because it's illegal to work without a permit [edit: no, not needed for 90 days for americans]? or is it just detectives that cannot work there? or is it that they claimed to be local policemen?

if i were a market analyst who flew to iceland (private plane or not - <USER2> has that got to do with it?) to study local opinions on some new product, say, would that get a similar reaction? would it be ok as long as i didn't ask to speak to govt officials?

is there some kind of international convention / agreement that says that policemen don't work abroad? is it that the request for cooperation was at too low a level? [edit: ok, i added this just as it was suggested in a reply; thanks]

i'm having a hard time understanding what the problem was here from the article, which seems to assume that something was obviously wrong.

[oh noes - someone asking questions! better downvote! sigh...]

<comment><USER11> In general it's a problem in pretty much every country when official investigators fly in and start investigating without prior notice. The US administration would do the same if the german police sent an investigation team over to collect evidence in a german case. The official procedure is to request help or permission from the local government and only send investigators if granted. Such requests get denied in some cases, for example if the alleged crime is not a crime in the country that you're trying to investigate in.

<comment><USER5> Note that this is not arbitrary, it actually makes sense: while in a different country, any police force would be expected to follow that country's own laws, including things like what you are allowed to ask, how you can ask, what evidence you can collect or take out of the country, etc etc. A bit of oversight is required, hence they need to ask for permission, and be assisted on the ground.

This, incidentally, is one of the outrageous elements in the raid of Kim Dotcom's house: US authorities pretty much disregarded all local New Zealand laws on the matter (and somebody in NZ let it happen, they were only slammed in court during subsequent appeals).

So you have a pattern: federal US authorities investigating copyright "crimes" will blatantly ignore traditional jurisdiction rules. The Hollywood Empire does not recognise any equal power, so to speak.

<comment><USER12> How is investigating WikiLeaks, "investigating copyright crimes?"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It seems reality doesn't work quite like Hollywood movies, where the FBI just walks in whatever country and starts flashing their IDs, while random local citizens soil their pants.

<comment><USER14> Here in the UK the FBI are generally seen as a bit of a joke by people in similar lines of work.

Source: relatives and friends who have had to work with them.

<comment><USER15> There's a hilarious scene in _The Guard_ (<http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1540133/>) where all of the Irish Garda are trying to seem very respectful of Don Cheadle's FBI agent, except for Brendan Gleeson's Garda who mercilessly takes the piss out of him. Later he says, "Now I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, these men are armed and dangerous, and you being an FBI agent you're more used to shooting at unarmed women and children."

<comment><USER14> Not sure how I missed that film; that's going on my to-watch list!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It would be like the Malaysians going to America to investigate and arrest George Bush due to alleged war crimes. They wouldn't get particularly far unless they OK'd it all with the relevant local authorities.

P.s I've no idea if the story is factually correct. I'm just using it as an example. [http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2012/05/12/bush- convicte...](http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2012/05/12/bush-convicted-of- war-crimes-in-absentia/)

<comment><USER17> Is that why they got kicked out? they were trying to arrest people?

I'm not sure why gathering information would be a serious problem if they followed the laws.

<comment><USER16> It's undermining a countries sovern rights. Most countries don't like this

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> While I have no sympathies for those at Wikileaks, and I do not support them at all, we as Americans need to stop having this grand delusion that our Government and its agents can do whatever they want whenever they want, as if all other countries' laws/governments can just be disregarded.

<comment><USER5> In a way, it's a mindset that, sometimes, I get to admire. It's the supreme confidence in your own right: that everyone else in the world is equal (or, more often than not, inferior) to you.

The UK used to have something similar; British law specifically said that no power on Earth could be superior to (English/British) Parliament in any case. Albeit originally meant to nullify papal (and aristocratic...) claims, so to speak, that provision came to define the UK approach to foreign policy for centuries. Nowadays there are umpteen exceptions for EU, UN and whatnot, the British Empire is gone and with it the hubris, but coming from a much "weaker" country, I feel that approach can be quite beneficial in many ways.

<comment><USER19> > The UK used to have something similar;

British imperialism didn't work well for anyone. I certainly hope America abandons its imperial pretensions. As an American, it doesn't make me proud.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> It's not every day that the top story on reddit.com/r/conspiracy is also the top story on Hacker News.

<comment><USER21> And most comments are about as juvenile as the ones on Reddit.

<comment><USER22> HN: The place where redditors go, when they want to feel like they aren't on reddit?

<comment><USER21> To be fair some subreddits have great comment threads, its just that politics & news seem to attract all the loud fanatics. Here too..

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> It seems that Iceland is a proud country that doesn't hesitate to say "No" to the US. I recall that in 2008 they gave to Bobby Fisher the Icelandic nationality to avoid him been prosecuted by the US (on the motive that he made Iceland famous for playing his world championship match there), which, as maeon3 mentions, is another very useful way to occupy the US police forces.

</comment><comment><USER24> I think it says a lot about the U.S. and its world police attitude. Coming without notice to another country on a private jet demanding full cooperation. That's the height of arrogance. I can only praise Iceland for such swift and duly response.

</comment><comment><USER25> I have to say, between this and their big middle finger to the banks wanting their taxpayers to bail out banks' bad loans, Iceland is currently my favorite country. They are well-run organization.

<comment><USER26> While I half-agree with you, it's really not all as wonderful as you make it sound. Please take a look at this Wikipedia article: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icesave_dispute>

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> While FBI Agents are busy flying to Iceland working on Hollywood's vision for the future of who owns the internet, data, and computers, the following is allowed to happen:

1\. Guy with a court date for menacing with a weapon is allowed to keep the weapon, shoots up a bus and abducts a kid: [http://www.cnn.com/2013/02/01/us/alabama-child- hostage/index...](http://www.cnn.com/2013/02/01/us/alabama-child- hostage/index.html?hpt=hp_t2)

2\. No Executive anywhere on the planet has yet to do prison time for any action, decision or behavior relating to the largest manufactured Financial Crisis since 1929. Because when prosicuting the best and brightest who use the law to subvert justice, it's like trying to nail a vapor to the wall: [http://www.propublica.org/article/why-no-financial-crisis- pr...](http://www.propublica.org/article/why-no-financial-crisis-prosecutions- official-says-its-just-too-hard)

But on the plus side, there hasn't been many terrorist attacks as have been in the middle east, so they're doing an upstanding job there. Who checks the power of a dysfunctional FBI and smacks them around when they step out of line? What's the process even if it's only possible in theory? I know the FBI has to be irreproachable enough to resist the collective action of Mafias and cults/sects, which would make it a tough system to get rid of, even if it devolves into the Ministry of life/Ministry of truth (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ministry_of_Truth>)

<comment><USER28> I'm wary of comparisons like that- the implication is that if the FBI weren't busy in Iceland they would have caught the child abductor. I don't see any evidence to suggest that is the case.

<comment><USER29> The implication was that the FBI has better things to do than to assist Hollywood in turning the world into a police state because they don't want to adjust their business models to fit 2013.

There are lots and lots of people in the US, for example, who _should_ be prosecuted for their financial crimes, but are not, and will not be because that's how the world works these days.

<comment><USER12> What does WikiLeaks releasing _US Government_ secrets have to do with _Hollywood_? This just seems like a, "Hey this story is about the FBI, and I hate the FBI! Everybody let's pile on and bash the FBI for completely unrelated reasons!"

<comment><USER29> The GP talked about FBI and Hollywood. But to be more specific, the FBI represents the US government, and there are plenty of reasons to hate it.

<comment><USER12> The GP also said that the FBI investigating WikiLeaks in Iceland was somehow pushing Hollywood's agenda, which is a pretty weak position.

<comment><USER29> Sure, it may well be. I just clarified why _I_ was talking about FBI and Hollywood together. But really, Hollywood _has_ actually changed the Western world towards police states. That's bad, regardless of what agencies or "channels" they've done it through.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Sounds like the plot for a "Team America: World Police" sequel.</comment>


80legs Web-Scale Apps Competition - <AUTHOR> http://www.challengepost.com/challenge/80legs-web-scale-apps-competition

<comment><USER2> Instead of a thinly veiled advertisement, how about some information on the capability of the hardware: histograms of RAM size, hard drives, CPU units (equivalents of some known CPU) and network speed/latency for these "50,000" machines?

Without a reasonable description of hardware, any ideas would be just hand waving.

<comment><USER3> The problem is that 80legs works to a trojan/malware type model - the runtime is installed as a background service on apps like Digsby.

It's fair to say that many people who are using these apps don't know that their machine is being given tasks to work on in the background.

Aside from the unknown bandwidth/cpu/throughput unknowns IMHO there is an ethical question of using this software. From what I can see there is no opt- out other than not to install the software the runtime is bundled with. And that assumes you even know it's being installed.

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually all Digsby users are told up-front during the install process about Plura. And you can easily turn off Plura from Digsby.

<comment><USER3> Hmmmm. I would respectfully disagree.

I'm somewhat conflicted as I have interests in a rival product in the twitter app space but IMHO it's not clear to your "average Joe" user what is going on. Further more, from my own experience, once you tell someone who's using an app that has Plura running what it is doing, people tend to be quite concerned and certainly not wanting to have it on their system.

JDRock: I also believe you work with/for 80legs but can't see any disclosure in your posts.

Not wanting to be a d*ck but if you are going to say that it's obvious and easy to turn off (and de-karma me for my comment) I think you should state whether that's from a NPOV or whether you're actually involved in the product.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think it's fairly obvious from my posts that I work for 80legs.

If you try out the latest Digsby installation, you'll see that they've changed the install process. So while I suppose I am biased, it's also a fairly objective thing to observe. Lifehacker even posted a follow-up article applauding Digsby for the change, if I remember correctly.

What I've seen is that if people are told about Plura up-front and have the option to turn it off from the get-go, they have no qualms about it. Digsby didn't do an awesome job about this initially, but they've corrected it.

Also, I wasn't the only that d-ked you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'd love to enter this if it wasn't just Java. I understand _why_ , but it's still an unfortunate hurdle!

<comment><USER5> Where does it say java? Afaik you can use any language that compiles to the jvm so languages that compile to it (e.g clojure) are fine. Not as much choice, but better than just java.

<comment><AUTHOR> We're exploring the use of other languages that work in the JVM, but for now it's just Java.

The problem with other languages is that they all make use of reflection to get themselves working, which Plura's security sandbox does not allow. If anyone knows a way around this, please share!</comment></comment></comment>


How to Write a Condolence Letter - <AUTHOR> https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/01/21/how-to-write-a-condolence-letter <comment><USER2> > "I'm not opposed to preprinted cards," Cunningham said.

I think it's worth avoiding pre-printed cards. If you know the bereaved or the dead person well enough to want to express your condolences, then write a letter or note. It doesn't have to be more than a few sentences, unless you want to write more. Yes its a hard thing to do, but it's also necessary. And in my experience it can help the writer too.

<comment><USER3> Second that. What counts is a personal gesture. A plain white card will do. Write it by hand and put an envelope around it. Don't worry about the text too much. Make it short and respectful. And don't try to be too original, which might come across as intrusive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I like the advice to not overthink it or try to write a perfect letter. I have this same problem, especially when it comes to condolence cards. I recently signed one with several coworkers for another coworker and I tried so hard to write something profound that I ended up writing something that I felt was really awkward to read. I should have just said what I felt: "I'm so very sorry for your loss."

</comment><comment><USER5> Sometimes it is enough to tell people that you're here for them, to simply be present and acknowledge their loss. It is difficult to write such letters when you've not experienced loss yourself, and then when you have, you know how a good letter reads. The best are simple, hand-written notes that contain a brief sometimes funny story about the person you lost. Lastly, you make friends and lose friends during these periods as some expect you to get over your grief and others just hang in there with you.</comment>