Elevator.js – A "back to top" button that behaves like a real elevator - <AUTHOR> http://tholman.com/elevator.js/ <comment> cool-RR The "back to top" functionality is so useful in web pages. I wish they would make a dedicated button on keyboards that just takes you to the top of the page. Better yet, it can work in other apps too! It could, for example, take you to the beginning of a line when you're writing text.

 _Edit:_ Wow, I thought I was going the extra mile to make the joke obvious by saying the key should also take you to the beginning of a text line, but I guess it wasn't obvious enough for the first 3 commentators.

<comment><USER2> Hacker News attracts a lot of smart readers, so I'm kind of surprised that your comment actually 'fooled' people. It was very obvious sarcasm.

<comment><USER3> Plenty of Mac users out there without a "Home" button.

<comment><USER4> If I'm not mistaken, Fn + Left Arrow is Home on a Mac. Similar to Fn + up/down is Page Up/Down, and IIRC Fn + Right is End.

<comment><USER5> It still amazes me that people tolerate that as a substitute.

It's a key combo that requires two hands, for what on a regular keyboard is one finger.

Perhaps Mac people never hold a cup of coffee in their hand while using a computer?

<comment><USER6> Accelerated scrolling makes the home key superfluous. Just scroll "fast".

<comment><USER7> I use both home and end constantly while coding. Writing text not so much, but it still does happen. Sure, you could do without, but...

<comment><USER8> On a mac you'd use Control-A and Control-E to navigate to the beginning and end of a line. IIRC Home and End navigate the document, not the line.

[https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT201236](https://support.apple.com/en- ca/HT201236)

<comment><USER7> Hm, that would indeed be an alternative. I never tried hooking up a (windows-) keyboard to a mac, but don't see why it shouldn't work. Question is if the software or editors support the key layout.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is pretty funny, but God do I hate back to the top buttons.

I'm reading a story on a page with a back to the top button. I get distracted in real life and change the grip on my phone. I look back at my phone to continue reading and I'm at the top of the page. Now I have to find where I was again.

I've probably lost more time from accidentally hitting the back to the top button than the button has saved me time. This has made me paranoid about those buttons and I definitely prefer sites not to have them. Sometimes I switch to desktop mode on my phone just so I don't have that button on the screen.

<comment><USER10> I _really_ hate them on iOS, because the system comes with back-to-top functionality so all these buttons are doing are looking ugly and covering part of the page. And don't even get me started on when AMP breaks scrolling…

<comment><USER11> For anyone else who was wondering, you can tap the top of the address bar on iOS Safari. I think it has to be expanded first. I didn't know that and hope it helps.

<comment><USER12> It works just about anywhere, actually. Just tap the time (or tap the earpiece, on a notched phone) to scroll to the top. Works in Safari, Chrome, Messages, Reddit, Tumblr, Twitter... the list of exceptions is short.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> "back to top" is just such an epitome of how out of touch some modern design is.

We had buttons on our keyboards that did this for half a century now. As for phones it should be up to the web-browser to implement it, nobody wants to use your idea of how scrolling should work. My machine already knows how I want to browse my content, don't pretend you know better.

<comment><USER14> > out of touch

This is ironic. The vast majority of users don't know about most of these functions. They just use their mouse. Even for basic things like:

\- navigating & selecting text (words, lines etc.)

\- switching between windows

\- opening search (like spotlight, if they use it at all...)

\- opening & closing windows/tabs, saving files etc.

The list goes on. UI design is not about teaching you how to use a computer. And you certainly cannot expect users to already know.

That said. I think fixed position "back to top" buttons are terrible as well and I would put fixed position header-menus in the same category. They just add clutter and worsen the UX, even for those who almost exclusively use the mouse (as you can simply drag the scroll-bar).

<comment><USER15> True. Whenever I sit and watch people use the computer (just watch when they are giving a presentation/screen sharing), I often cringe.

Many don't use the scroll on their mouse/trackpad - they literally look for the scrollbar, click and drag to scroll.

Many are blissfully unaware that the keys Page Up and Page Down move the page up and down or that Home and End move the whole page to the beginning and the end.

BUT, they do know about the Back button on the browser so they end up resubmitting forms/double posting, etc. lol

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It woke up my wife, as I tried it on my phone when the stupid elevator music played it out loud :/

In all seriousness, I hope this will not become another 250kb JS framework we use in our projects..

<comment><USER17> First if all, fuck webpages that play sound unexpectedly. Secondly, what percentage of elevators even play music these days?

<comment><USER18> _Secondly, what percentage of elevators even play music these days?_

Pretty much every elevator I've been in for the last ten years. I note it mentally because spirit of the music is always at odds with the messages on the display screens.

I think the only elevators where I haven't heard music recently are in residential buildings.

<comment><USER19> Maybe it's regional, as I've never heard music in an elevator before.

<comment><USER17> Same. Weird. I never imagined something so seemingly consistent as elevators having regional dialects.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Nice one. Something important missing in this framework is a logic to check the number of people in the elevator. You should use webRTC to count the number of users using the elevator. And if it is more than 8 it should sound alarm!

<comment><USER20> So the modified algorithm will be as follows. When the user clicks elevator, it first sends a distributed query to all browsers and each browser replies with 0, if elevator is not being used, or 1 when it is used. After the polling is done, it sums all responses. If sum_resp_elev<8:move() else Ring_alarm()

<comment><USER21> Nope. When you're at the bottom of the page, you should first have to call the elevator. Then it should stop at all those levels at which other people have also called it before coming to your position. Then you get a chance to be kicked out for being overweight.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> How many other people are quitting web development after seeing this? I think the work is done, there isn't anything else needed here.

<comment><USER23> What's the opposite of development?

I think we need web un-development to get us out of this javascript tar pit.

<comment><USER24> Clearly it would be velopment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> A lot of people already mentioned here the Home button. Anecdote: for years we kept getting users asking for a back to top button and we always told them to just use the Home button and they thought it was the most amazing thing ever. Most of our users are on Windows.

Anyway, we did end up having to put a Back to top button. It was clear that users just don't get it. Most people really don't know what the Home button does.

That, and you should never use the Mailto: link without writing the email as the text itself. Thanks to webmail, most users do not have their browsers configured to open mailto: so they complain that contact email links on their pages don't work. Sigh....

<comment><USER25> I don't know why this is "thanks to webmail". At least firefox can handle this perfectly fine.

That being said seeing the email is nice anyways in case you need to share it with someone or type it into your phone.

<comment><USER15> To clarify, all browsers CAN handle the mailto link as long as the user configures it to open the correct email client. That's key because there's many oblivious users who don't even know about this setting (we know from the number of support requests we get from users angry that the contact link they created on their websites "don't work"!). :)

Because of the prevalence of webmail like gmail (most of our users are on gmail) there's many users who aren't aware that it needs to be configured to open the said webmail page, so the mailto links does nothing. A "Contact me" or "contact support" mailto link won't open anything, or it will open the default mail client like Mac Mail on Mac....On Windows in the past it would open outlook express lol. :)

<comment><USER25> I still don't see how webmail has anything to do with it. In fact opening Gmail prompts me to make it my default mail handler.

Users can fail to configure mailto links to point at their preferred email client irrespective of it being web-based or native. (Unless it is the default for the platform I guess)

<comment><USER15> > Users can fail to configure mailto links to point at their preferred email > client irrespective of it being web-based or native. (Unless it is the > default for the platform I guess)

That's more the issue. It's just misconfiguration and users who are oblivious to that setting. In the past, I don't believe that Gmail prompts you to make it your default handler, and from the number of support requests we received due to this issue, it's clear that a good number of users do not have their mailto handlers configured.

Cheers!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I was expecting the button to light up and having to wait before being taken to the top. Maybe an improvement for version 2.0!

<comment><USER27> And then you have to select the floor before it's going up, Ha!

Joke aside, maybe add a feature to allow user to pause/suspend the "Lifting"? This will give user a chance to "Hey! oh wait" when they "Passed the desired floor by mistake".

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Warning - There's elevator music as well!

Wish this was mentioned on the page, it was a bit embarrassing when it started playing in the middle of our daily standup!

<comment><USER29> I respect that it put you in a bind, but a warning would have totally ruined the joke for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I have never needed a "back to top" button in a web browser. However on almost all sites that offer one I've been missing a "jump to where I just was before I misclicked" button.

Those endless, highly volatile feeds that often can't even keep the ordering of content between page refreshes are annoying.

</comment><comment><USER31> Back to the top buttons are a symptom of the system-within-a-system feature of Web. The Web page isn't a document: it's a system, a virtual machine. Just like running another OS in VirtualBox implies bad interoperability and a lot of duplicated effort with the host OS, so too does running web pages. In a quest to be everything, Web became a bogged down, developer-time devouring beast. It can do almost anything, but you don't want to do anything on it.

<comment><USER32> It means _universal_ , think smalltalk. Has ups and downs - not much integration with a host comes with independence from a host. IE was created because Microsoft feared web would make OS inconsiderable. There was bold claim even before Netscape's Constellation [1]. So everything goes like it was predicted years ago.

[1] [https://people.apache.org/~jim/NewArchitect/webrevu/1997/02_...](https://people.apache.org/~jim/NewArchitect/webrevu/1997/02_07/developers/02_07_97_2.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Is there any way to tell Chrome not to make sound unless I explicitly want it? Maybe I have less tolerance than most people, but I just can't stand it when my computer makes unexpected noise.

<comment><USER34> Right click mute tab (i think it might be experimental)

<comment><USER35> Haha, it used not to be, but then Google crippled the feature. Firefox is looking better by the day.

<comment><USER36> Google changed it for "Mute website" when right-clicking a tab and it's not experimental.

It's better than "Mute tab" because it's persistant over multiple sessions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> For those that didn't get it, turn your sound on.

<comment><USER38> I didn't realize I had my volume all the way up. Scared the crap out of me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Very good, but it should also be non-functioning 60% of the time due to repairs and/or inspections.

<comment><USER40> I'm trying to think of times when I've seen a non-functional elevator and can't think of one.

<comment> 52-6F-62 Come live in my building... we're usually operating at half-capacity. Presently we're down to 1/4 elevators for a 32-story residential building. It's a little on the frustrating side.

Our elevators break down quarterly, and for some reason the wait for Otis- approved parts is weeks to months at a time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I think other than being kitchy, the part I love the most is NO FRAMEWORK: plain js. No pre/mid/post/art-deco processor that turns 4 hours of work into 40 hours.

<comment><USER42> I've been developing some games and frontend on my free time for fun. I've been using typescript and Pixi.js but other than that nothing else. As a backend engineer, I've always thought about learning a frontend framework but I've never actually had a strong need of it.

So question if you're a frontend engineer: Should I? I never felt the need of a framework despite I render quite a bit of dom elements. Do I have a need that I just don't know right now?

<comment><USER43> If you want to get a job as a frontend engineer, you should learn React because it's a tick-box on a lot of job postings these days.

If you just want to make personal projects, it depends a lot on what kinds of projects you want to make. React won't really help you with the sort of 2D-game-type programming you're using Pixi.js for. On the other hand, if you think the Reddit redesign is really good and you want to make a website that works exactly like that, the React community is a good place to start.

But one of the main benefits of using React that I've heard about is that it forces all the members of a development team to organize (certain parts of) their code the same way. This isn't really an issue on personal projects. Personally, I spent about a year working with React for a job, but I continue to write vanilla JavaScript on my own time.

(You can learn other frameworks than React, but React is a good starting point because it's the most popular one. Then you can learn about Framework X by reading "how is Framework X different from React" articles online.)

<comment><USER29> > if you think the Reddit redesign is really good

Conversely, if I think the reddit redesign is horrible, I guess I should stay well away? ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I thought this was going to scroll up to each heading and stop scrolling if you touched the screen. Now that would have been useful. Otherwise I tend to hate scroll to top buttons. I'm always accidentally touching them and usually they won't stop till you're at the top. It's terrible.

</comment><comment><USER45> I was hoping for a Koyaanisqatsi-esque visual interlude as the page scrolled back up, but this is still satisfying.

</comment><comment><USER46> In a few years mankind will "discover" the scroll bar and the inventor will be hailed a hero.

<comment><USER47> and few years later they will re-discover the Home keyboard key.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> I thought "behaves like a real elevator" meant that it would make stops along the way. Oh well ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

</comment><comment><USER49> Nobody went through source and noticed the Dalek hiding in the comments? Made my day.

<comment><USER50> I did.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> This is so useful and silly I love it. Would have been perfect for my late 90s geocities site, had the functionality existed back then.

</comment><comment><USER52> Scrolling back to top like an animal? No thanks, I just refresh the page instead as a civilized person would do.

<comment> just-ok Which only works if haven't hit any in-page anchor links ;) otherwise, you'd snap right back to a particular section after a refresh.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> This gave me a good laugh. Great project.

</comment><comment><USER50> Is there any way to make this work as a bookmarklet that I could just click to use on any site?

=== On a side note: There is an alternative to this that does far more. Vimium is available at:[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/vimium/dbepggeogba...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/vimium/dbepggeogbaibhgnhhndojpepiihcmeb) It's based on Vim commands so It helps if you have some familiarity with that. It allows you to perform all basic features you would use in a web browser, like scrolling, refresh, forward/back etc; using only keystrokes.

</comment><comment><USER54> I don't like "back to top" buttons because they take visible space and could be anywhere (if any) depending on the website. I don't like Cmd+Up keystrokes either on my mac.

Instead, it would be great to have something:

\- That works on any website

\- That can scroll to top, to bottom, _and back_ to the place where you've scrolled from.

\- Doesn't alter the websites appearance.

So I've created a tiny Chrome extension that solves all of this: [https://github.com/sv3k/topscroll](https://github.com/sv3k/topscroll)

After some time, you get used to it on reflexes level.

<comment><USER50> vimium does that & a lot more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> Had my volume turned up, Christ this nearly gave me a heart attack.

</comment><comment><USER56> There is a bug when it's finished and you instantly scroll down and press the button again that it then won't play the arrive sound if it arrives.

</comment><comment><USER29> We need a "ding!" sound effect when you get to the top!

<comment><USER57> It does?

<comment><USER29> Huh, that didn't play on my iPhone. The music just stops.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> That was charming. Always a fan of little doodles like this that are completely unnecessary but you're glad they exist.

</comment><comment><USER59> Made me laugh! Would be way more awesome if gates closed above the page like an old school elevator before it went back up

</comment><comment><USER60> Clever, really is a better experience. I'd love to see this used more. I haven't seen anything like this in a long-time.

</comment><comment><USER61> Can we just go back to buttons that _jump_ straight to the top instead of scrolling? Please?

What problem is this even trying to solve?

<comment><USER62> That's what I did on my blog [1]. I tried different methods and realized that it should be a simple link that jumps you straight to the top and nothing fancy. The only JavaScript used it to determine when to display the link.

[1] [https://www.primative.net/blog/how-to-get-rid-of-the- flash-o...](https://www.primative.net/blog/how-to-get-rid-of-the-flash-of- unstyled-content/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> I expected a few stops along the way

</comment><comment><USER64> Don't use it in case of a fire

</comment><comment><USER65> I prefer rockets to elevators: [https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-353](https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-353)

</comment><comment><USER66> What, no closing doors? ("The little lights, they're not twinkling.")

</comment><comment><USER67> Just in case author reads this...

Movement is _janky_ on latest Firefox on Win10, 4K screen. I don't know if that matters much, but I'll leave it here just in case you actually wanted feedback.

</comment><comment><USER68> "Elevator" and "JS" reminds me of Elevator Saga. [https://play.elevatorsaga.com/](https://play.elevatorsaga.com/)

<comment><USER69> I was about to write the same thing. The perfect puzzle for a programmer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> Hahaha. Nice one. As soon as the muzak came on, I had to chuckle. :)

</comment><comment><USER71> I'm on mobile, does this framework at least disable the home button? I would consider that a must-have for elevator frameworks.

</comment><comment><USER72> Feedback: The back to to top button gets obscured by the navigation keys on iPhone. Also, the page would benefit from a more fitting viewport on small devices.

</comment><comment><USER73> For those that don't know: on iPhone, touching the top (like near the front facing camera) works like a jump to top button in many contexts.

</comment><comment><USER74> A real elevator would have stopped at each level.

</comment><comment><USER75> Wow that button is like a portal straight to hell, well done I guess. Most soul destroying thing I have yet encountered.

</comment><comment><USER76> Just wondering, is it possible to add a global 'back to top' button on mobile? Shall the browser implement it?

</comment><comment><USER77> This is so pointless I absolutely love it

</comment><comment><USER78> Implement this on infinite scrolling sites with sounds of crying and screaming, then we're talkin'.

</comment><comment><USER79> I expected it to stop at each floor. :(

<comment><USER80> Not enough procrastination already?

</comment></comment><comment><USER81> I love stupid fun stuff like this.

</comment><comment><USER82> And here I was thinking that websites didn't play sound without a nag prompt on iOS...

</comment><comment> globular-toast Ugh, I thought I had tabs muted by default in my browser... Clearly I was mistaken. Turns out I need an extension for it. But now I have ugly mute symbols on every single tab which isn't "default" at all. What I want is sound symbols on tabs that I have expressly un-muted.

<comment><USER83> With Chromium based browsers you should be able to set every website to be muted at first. You'll only see a mute symbol on the tab when the tab tries to play sound.

If there is no sound at all, there shouldn't be an icon.

<comment> globular-toast That does sound like what I want. This is the first time I've heard of a compelling reason to use Chromium over Firefox. Hope I can find a decent solution for Firefox.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER84> This both absurd....and seems more natural than most browser experiences...

</comment><comment><USER85> That's the point of this library ?

It scroll up slowing, harmful to my eyes. I'd rather "teleport to the top" or quickly scroll to top on my own than watching the animation…

And I cannot cancel the scrolling in the middle of process if I accidentally click it.

<comment><USER86> He did it for fun. From the Github:

> Finally, a "back to top" button that behaves like a real elevator, by adding > elevator music to quietly soothe the awkwardness that can ensue when being > smoothly scrolled to the top of the screen. This is very serious stuff, > here's a demo!

<comment><USER85> I missed the music! This is awesome

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER87> Gosh, I could press that button all day.

</comment><comment><USER88> wow. When I have the time I'll have to add a janky gate that closes but you can still see the text passing by.

Can also be a bit bumpy when it passes "floors".

</comment><comment><USER89> Cute, but the movement actually made me feel nauseous.

</comment><comment><USER90> If this were a chrome extension, I'd be down.

</comment><comment><USER91> That's fun. Take that infinite scrolling pages!

</comment><comment><USER92> I love the Dalek Easter Egg in the js source code

</comment><comment><USER93> Growing up in a post-communist country I have very different expectations regarding how an elevator operates, namely that instead of a smooth start/stop it should have two speeds - the slower used for stopping exclusively.

</comment><comment><USER94> I have just found a website for author: [https://www.usa.gov/find-a- job](https://www.usa.gov/find-a-job)

</comment><comment><USER95> The demo page needs a lot more floors.

</comment><comment><USER96> Could have done without the music in a coffee shop right now. :)

I normally always have my laptop on mute, because I'm paranoid about bothering people.

<comment><USER97> I think the music was the punchline.

</comment></comment><comment><USER98> This is fun, but on the serious note, we should not be modifying the scroll behaviour of the browser in any way. It is not as usable.

<comment><USER86> It's not a bad argument. Similarly, I think everyday life would also be confusing if the laws of physics changed depending on what restaurant you walked into.

</comment></comment><comment><USER99> Now we need a go to bottom button.

</comment><comment><USER100> Playing music is a terrible idea.

<comment><USER97> That's the punchline.

</comment></comment><comment><USER101> I love it!

</comment><comment><USER102> sound alert really needed there.

I was shocked, but that was a fun one, I laughed too.

</comment><comment><USER103> Thanks, you made my day.

</comment><comment><USER104> with fucking music, I wasn't prepared for that

<comment><USER105> Well, I just clicked the link to see if this also includes the Girl from Ipanema…

</comment></comment><comment><USER106> This is entertaining. HN continues to pleasantly surprise me.

</comment><comment><USER107> nice tune though while going to top !!

</comment><comment><USER107> nice tune though while going to top

</comment><comment><USER108> scared the beejesus out of me haha

</comment><comment><USER109> double tap the status bar on iOS

</comment><comment><USER110> Cute gag, but why is this top story? Not that there's anything wrong with /r/ProgrammerHumor but I go to HN for different reasons.

<comment><USER111> Because a few hundred people upvoted it over the last few hours. That I know for sure, though I can't speak to their reasons for visiting HN in the first place.</comment></comment>


Socialbrowse (YC Winter 08): Don't Surf Alone - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/socialbrowse_dont_surf_alone.php

<comment><USER2> I don't want to sound like a grumpy old man (I'm a bit young to be old, I'd hope), but all this newfangled attention on "social" seems a bit misleading. Social shouldn't be a constant distraction. It should be more laid-back. More fine-tuned.

I love Facebook, but I love it because it helps tie together my campus: before I started college last month, I'd given up Facebook as a needless distraction. Now there's a relevant use for it. Similarly, this isn't doing anything other than wasting my focus even further. It's like StumbleUpon only it's always in the sidebar and it updates without my clicking a button.

I'd love to see somebody devilsadvocate me, though. I'd like to see a good argument as to why something like this is not only useful but important.

<comment><USER3> As you point out, "social" can be done multiple ways: as a distraction or as a true value add. And I completely agree with you, it must be laid back and natural to be effective. That was our goal from the start for Socialbrowse: not to change your browsing behavior, but to enhance the way you already browse, and improve the sites you like to visit.

Socialbrowse is realtime, but doesn't require your attention. It's like a human powered RSS stream, so you can pick and choose which links you take or conversations you participate in. Or you can choose to ignore them completely if you're busy. We developed Socialbrowse to be there when you want it, but not to interfere when you don't. That's why it feels very non-intrusive, yet when you take it away, the web feels lonely again.

<comment><USER2> I haven't tried Socialbrowse, since I haven't messed with Firefox. But is there anything that happens visually when you get new stories, or do you manually refresh it? Because I'd imagine that there's something that catches your eye and distracts you when you get new information.

I might check it out, though. You have the right view on the issue, and that's a good thing.

<comment><USER3> The sidebar feed is updated automatically in real time. You can close the sidebar at any time, and receive small notifications in the corner of your screen, or you can toggle updates off completely. I do encourage you to try it out for yourself!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> You know... I don't really like the idea of sharing my browsing activities with my friends. It just feels creepy. It makes me feel self-conscious about what websites I _can_ visit. If I want to share a site with you, i'll let you know via email or IM. Having said that, I do like the annotated links feature.

Sharing music with friends is great though. I thought the best aspect about Napster wasn't the fact that you can get any song you want online but that you can peep inside your friends' hard drive and see what songs they have.

The current soclal music apps like Last.fm just doesn't feel as lively as Napster was.

Having said that, doing a Napster now would be a bad idea. I don't think anyone would bother to download a software to share music when there's sites like imeem.

<comment><USER5> SB is more like IM. With this addon you don't have to share anything at all if you don't want. It's just a single button-click to do so, though, for any site you like.

It just makes it easier to send it than email if your friends are also on SocialBrowse (or Twitter now).

<comment><USER4> Oh I see. So it's different from Me.dium.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Liking the new performance. Glad you were able to work in the SQLite support.

Now all we need is a way to get a Chrome extension...

</comment><comment><USER6> A skim of the article reminds me of me.dium, and I had trouble finding that name, after forgetting it for long enough. Maybe SB is different (I don't know -- I'm not the target market)?</comment>


City of Brussels to halt 5G due to health effects - <AUTHOR> http://www.brusselstimes.com/brussels/14753/radiation-concerns-halt-brussels-5g-for-now <comment><USER2> Note that this is Brussels-the-city (Region). Not Brussels as a metonymy for the EU.

<comment><USER3> Indeed. I thought at first it was a EU-wide resolution. Maybe the title should be edited for clarity's sake.

<comment><AUTHOR> Changed "Brussels" to "City of Brussels".</comment></comment></comment>


Women who are pioneers in the security field - <AUTHOR> https://permeter81.com/blog/people-in-cyber/female-security-pioneers <comment><USER2> Honestly these are hardly role models in InfoSec and definitely not pioneers. The companies they have founded are relatively unknown in the space, and the women listed are generally "entrepreneurs" as the article shows, not technical security people that would be classed as pioneering the security field.

For real female InfoSec role models check out: [https://twitter.com/Fox0x01](https://twitter.com/Fox0x01) [https://twitter.com/malwareunicorn](https://twitter.com/malwareunicorn) [https://twitter.com/itszn13](https://twitter.com/itszn13) [https://twitter.com/maddiestone](https://twitter.com/maddiestone)</comment>


Minnesota's largest measles outbreak in nearly 30 years due to vaccine deniers - <AUTHOR> https://www.vox.com/2017/5/8/15577316/minnesota-measles-outbreak-explained <comment><USER2> I think labeling this denialism is disingenuous and unhelpful. Vaccines have positive exernalities, but they also have personal costs, both medically recognized¹ and those outside of medical consensus (by a variety of degrees). As I think the majority of vaccine decliners would not argue that the vaccines have _no_ positive externality, what we're dealing with is more of a tragedy of the commons, worsened by the scientifically unjustified fears. I think the difference is important, because it affects how we deal with the problem. The solution to denialism would be to convince people that the positive externality does exist. The solution to fear of the direct effects of the vaccine may be more difficult. In the country of Tuskegee, of Holmesburg Prison, of the PolyHeme tests (2006), of the ADS "pain-ray" tests at Pitchess Detention Center (2010), can we really blame people who aren't (privileged) for not trusting the government to have their health in mind?

[1]: From the article: According to the CDC... fevers after the MMR vaccine occur in one out of six people, and mild rashes, in one in 20.

</comment><comment><USER3> Please get yourself and your family vaccinated. The benefits to yourself and society far outweigh the rare (and temporary) side effects</comment>


Eternus – Supplement claims to use complex systems science to increase life span - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/beautiful-minds/can-a-pill-really-help-you-live-longer/ <comment><USER2> I am an avid fan of nootropic and life extension research and products.

However, is anyone else sceptical of "complex system science" as an analog to Artificial Intelligence used more by Product Marketing than Research, Development, and Production?

How do we find nootropic and life extension signal in the marketing noise?</comment>


Ask HN: Is it possible to maintain privacy while owning "smart" appliances? - <AUTHOR> I've been resistant to using smart appliances like speakers, plugs, lights etc due to security and privacy concerns. Plus, I have no issue with hitting a light switch when I walk into a room, I think it's a pretty natural UX.
Now that I've moved to an apartment that doesn't have very good light switch setup, I've decided to try using smart plugs and Dash buttons to simulate a light switch.
As I tried to optimize for privacy (not purchasing plugs/lights from Amazon and not using an always listening voice assistant) I found out the smart plugs I bought are made by a Chinese company that grabs all my data, including my wifi network name and password. I was having a little fun playing with these switches, buttons, and a Pi but things aren't as customizable as I had hoped (I can't make the dash toggle the lights, only on or off) and the privacy issues make me want to scrap this whole smart house thing altogether.
Anyone have similar experiences? Is there currently a way to maintain privacy and have functional smart appliances or will they all report back to some big brother somewhere? Seems like I should just be able to use devices that just talk over my local network (or even a web server I maintain) but maybe that's naive thinking.
What is your smart home setup? <comment><USER2> For smart speakers there is [https://snips.ai/](https://snips.ai/) (I think founder is HN user, but I might be wrong.) Not sure about other smart appliances</comment>


Airmail – A Real Sparrow Alternative? - <AUTHOR> http://mac.appstorm.net/reviews/communication-review/airmail-a-real-sparrow-alternative/

<comment><USER2> I've been trying this out side by side with sparrow for the day, and I like it's looks, though it seems to be a little choppy (I do have a rather sizable gmail inbox), here's hoping the developers keep up the good work!

</comment><comment><USER3> I wish it had the ability to collapse width down to one column like sparrow does (cmd + shift <\- || -> ). That's probably my favorite thing about sparrow.</comment>


Personal services get business flavor: Xobni and SugarSync - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-19882_3-10389266-250.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-5

<comment><USER2> Stay away from SugarSync on mac. After 3 months of using them, I've had to reset my entire sync library 5 times after the shitty client gets corrupted and takes over the CPU and ram.</comment>


Particles observed in Antarctica could be evidence of an alternative reality - <AUTHOR> https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24532770-400-we-may-have-spotted-a-parallel-universe-going-backwards-in-time/ <comment><USER2> Original reporting from January

[https://www.sciencealert.com/standard-physics-has-been- ruled...](https://www.sciencealert.com/standard-physics-has-been-ruled-out- for-neutrino-like-particles-slipping-through-our-planet)

[https://www.livescience.com/antarctic-neutrino-mystery- deepe...](https://www.livescience.com/antarctic-neutrino-mystery-deepens.html)</comment>


New Record in Scripted Shows in 2016 - <AUTHOR> https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20161225/22534736346/i-thought-piracy-was-killing-entertainment-new-record-scripted-shows-2016.shtml <comment><USER2> There is a few things that has been repeated since napster.

Exposure has shown to be very profitable. Having no viewers is much worse than not getting 100% payment from everyone. Viewers is what allows revenue in the first place, and if 10% of pirates pay through direct purchase or for streaming, then that is much more than 0%.

Entertainment budgets don't generally go down for people who pirate media. Each time I have seen a study there has been a positive correlation between pirating and spending. It show that if people care enough to pirate movies, TV and music, they also care enough about movies and TV to watch and buy such content later in their life. I would guess that a person who has a strong habit to watch a lot of tv/movies as a poor student, also carries over that habit when they get a good job and get a good budget to spend on streaming and cable.</comment>


US legislation would eliminate overtime for CS professionals - <AUTHOR> http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=s112-1747 <comment><USER3> So? Most IT staff (certainly programmers, etc) are classified as EXEMPT and don't qualify for overtime anyway.

<comment><USER4> Every full time position I've had has been exempt... I've never gotten overtime.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't understand the legislation's effects. Would this eliminate paid overtime? Unpaid overtime? How would this affect salarymen?

</comment><comment><USER6> Since I started working as game developer, crunch has been always around. I won't comment on whether it's good or bad, whether it should be paid or not. Just this:

If you have worked more than 12 hours, and sometimes 20 - how the fuck one drives 20 miles back home? I have a friend (also game developer) who rides from Santa Monica down to Carlsbad every day - ~100miles each direction. And they had to crunch a lot.

Hopefully for me, and everyone around I'm just a mile away from work...

<comment><USER7> Yeah, I have concerns about this also. At work we're crunching towards a release for the past few days. Last night I stumbled home on the train at 11pm, my brain was completely shattered. I couldn't even parse sentences from the book I carry around for the commute.

How people are able to drive themselves home safely in this condition is beyond me.

<comment><USER8> Hopefully it will simply result in fewer crunches. When forced to choose between pushing a deadline, or paying overtime to programmers, I imagine most employers will lean towards pushing.

I think it will have the most impact on startups where perpetual crunch is closer to the cultural norm, instead of the outlier. Any thoughts on this?

<comment><USER6> Maybe I misread the bill, but isn't the bill saying no overtime payment for anyone getting 27.63/hr? That used to be $41.00/hr for California in 2001 (probably was $47/hr last year).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> US business practice eliminated overtime for CS professionals decades ago. What is the point of this proposed legislation?

Hours mean nothing; complex problem solving happens on a background thread anyway. A well-managed CS organization demands overtime rarely or never.

</comment><comment><USER10> The last part of (a)(17) was changed from:

who, in the case of an employee who is compensated on an hourly basis, is compensated at a rate of not less than $27.63 an hour.

to:

who is compensated at an hourly rate of not less than $27.63 an hour or who is paid on a salary basis at a salary level as set forth by the Department of Labor in part 541 of title 29, Code of Federal Regulations. An employee described in this paragraph shall be considered an employee in a professional capacity pursuant to paragraph (1).

The law as currently stated implies that a non-hourly worker (i.e. salary) is also considered exempt regardless of their efective hourly pay rate.

The proposed change just makes this explicit and clarifies that to be considered as a salaried employee, the person must be paid a minimum of $455 a week (see TITLE 29 541.600(a)).

This change effectively reduces the effective hourly rate from $27.63 to $11.38 ($455 * 52 / 2080).

</comment><comment><USER11> "hourly rate of not less than $27.63". Why hasn't the gov't figured out inflation adjustment yet? Laws are supposed to make sense indefinitely. In 30 years, that may be less than the minimum wage.

<comment><USER12> Fun fact: it used to be codified as 6.5 times minimum wage, but was changed in 1996 to be fixed at 6.5x the current minimum wage of $4.25, which is why it is such a random seeming number. If the law had not been changed in 1996, the current value would be $47.12 per hour, which would exclude many more hourly workers.

<http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c101:S.2930.ENR:/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Question... why are such exemptions legal? I understand that it is codified in law, and hence "legal" but why is the underlying law not considered discriminatory to deny someone overtime based on their existing salary and or job classification?

<comment><USER14> I think the original idea of exempt employees was that you were paid for your work, not your hours. There was a trade-off; you couldn't be required to work a certain shift, but neither would you be paid for being present for longer than your shift.

In reality, of course, this often leads to the expectation of longer hours, because why not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> 99% of the time if you work almost anywhere in the core business of software in Calfornia or the US you will never see a dime in overtime pay. I don't think too many folks consider overtime pay but when/if you have friends or family who are lucky enough to be in a profession where overtime is granted you'll realize that we are missing out a bit in our profession on this one. (Granted there are many other exempt professions as well.) After getting run through a few death marches over the years, I now work 9-5, politely decline pressure to stay late, and go home being that I'm not paid overtime to stay. (Note that I don't work for a startup and am trying to moonlight so those free hours matter a lot to me) Ive also learned that pressure to stay all the time is usually an indicator that something is going wrong in the business.

</comment><comment><USER16> I don't understand this. Which part of the linked page outlaws paid over time? As a college student I don't have a lot of experience a) reading legalese and b) with getting paid.

Also, what are the benefits of laws that outlaw overtime? Is it a form of income redistribution? Why computer professionals specifically? Is it because the jobs are not physical and overtime is thus supposedly less taxing?

<comment><USER10> The change doesn't outlaw paid overtime. The law, as written, exempts an employer from paying overtime if the employee is an executive, administrative or professional employee.

If an employee cannot be considered exempt (under the law) then it is illegal for an employer to NOT pay overtime.

The change (as proposed in the link) would appear to make it so that an employer could include more of their IT staff in the EXEMPT category.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> In BC Canada this happened in about 2001 as a parting "gift" from of all parties, our departing left pro union and worker New Democrat Party.

<comment><USER18> But in Canada software engineers aren't professionals - because they aren't engineers!

That's why in spite of my Oxbridge PhD I'm not an exempt employee, have to belong to the union (teamsters) and can't supervise anybody. While a 21year old 'environmental-engineering' grad is exempt

<comment><USER19> It's illegal to refer to yourself as an engineer in Canada unless you have an Engineering degree/are certified by the appropriate professional organization.

<comment><USER18> I don't mind that - I object to that it's ONLY engineers that are 'professional', science PhD = janitor.

In fact I don't think engineers should be allowed to use any of mechanics, statics, thermodynamics, solid state electronics, etc without getting a professional physicist to approve it.

<comment><USER7> Uh... I'm having trouble grasping what you're getting at.

The only limitation to having an engineering degree vs. not is whether or not you can legally call yourself an "engineer". It makes no difference in any other respect - there are *plenty of software engineers in Canada who do the exact same job without the title.

There is no legal prohibition against you performing engineering work - <USER2> is allowed to engineer (the verb), but not everyone is an engineer (the noun).

There's also no classification difference merely based on what degree you have. The word "professional" AFAIK has no legal meaning, in Canada, in the context you're talking about.

Engineering is considered a professional degree - but that has no bearing on whether or not you're allowed to be hired into an engineering position, or have to join a union, etc etc.

<comment><USER18> Many companies and ALL government jobs segregate on professional or union. Since the only profession they admit is engineer - anyone technical, however well qualified, who is not an engineer is treated the same as the janitor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> How does this impact California? I understand that they have their own law related to IT staff.

</comment><comment><USER21> If we had a union for software engineers they'd be lobbying against this.

</comment><comment><USER22> never been a better time to move to australia :)

<comment><USER23> I second this sentiment but perhaps for not the same reasons.

I work as a programming contractor on short term (3-6 month) jobs and right now the job market in Australia (Melbourne specifically) for coders with a demonstrable track record is fantastic.

<comment><USER24> as a local melbourne programmer (american expat), I'm curious how you land your contracts. I currently work for a small interactive media company, who sub contract to me. Im happy with our relationship but id like to find a second source of projects when they don't fill my time. Also, do you mind sharing what you think a fair rate is these days? (100/hr)? id love to pm you but hn seems to lack that feature.

<comment><USER23> So far they've all been through job postings on local user groups or contacts. I've poked around Seek a bit but not had to apply for any there as yet.

The rate all depends on what you are doing and what your experience is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> The bill doesn't appear to "eliminate overtime" but "eliminate the requirement to pay overtime rates for overtime work." In which case there is no change since pretty much everybody already earned too much to qualify for overtime pay anyway.

As if the US govt would pass a law protecting workers. It is to laugh.</comment>


Create your own store in minutes with Rails & Spree - <AUTHOR> http://blog.crowdint.com/2013/08/27/create-your-own-store-in-minutes-with-rails-spree.html?utm_source=blogpost&utm_medium=ynews&utm_campaign=railsspree-0827

<comment><USER2> I was considering using spree, but integrating an existing application (authentication, theme, etc) with spree looked to be a nightmare.

Any thoughts HN?

</comment><comment><USER3> Non-UTM'ed link: [http://blog.crowdint.com/2013/08/27/create-your-own-store- in...](http://blog.crowdint.com/2013/08/27/create-your-own-store-in-minutes- with-rails-spree.html)

This is pretty much just a slight distillation of the Spree GitHub page, and really only describes creating the skeleton for a catalog. In development mode.

Note that "crowdint," is a Rails consultancy, so it would seem to be a conflict of interest for them to actually teach anybody how to make a production-mode site. NB, and all that.

Be nice if HN had a participation-limiter for accounts that are obvious submission engines like this one. I'm guessing all the upvotes (currently 5) are controlled by them as well.</comment>


Web Analytics Illegal in UK after 26 May? Crazy - <AUTHOR> http://h30565.www3.hp.com/t5/UK-Edition-start-here/Richi-s-Rant-Web-Analytics-Illegal-after-26-May-Crazy/ba-p/2892 <comment><USER4> If you read right to the end of the actual guidance from the ICO it says:

\---

 _We only use analytical cookies – if nobody consents that will seriously restrict the amount of information we can get to improve and develop our website_

The Regulations do not distinguish between cookies used for analytical activities and those used for other purposes. We do not consider analytical cookies fall within the 'strictly necessary' exception criteria. This means in theory websites need to tell people about analytical cookies and gain their consent.

In practice we would expect you to provide clear information to users about analytical cookies and take what steps you can to seek their agreement. This is likely to involve making the argument to show users why these cookies are useful. Although the Information Commissioner cannot completely exclude the possibility of formal action in any area, it is highly unlikely that priority for any formal action would be given to focusing on uses of cookies where there is a low level of intrusiveness and risk of harm to individuals. Provided clear information is given about their activities we are highly unlikely to prioritise first party cookies used only for analytical purposes in any consideration of regulatory action.

\---

My interpretation of that is: tell your web site users clearly what you do with analytics and why and we are very unlikely to bother coming after you.

<comment><USER5> Frankly, their policy seems sensible and I'm having an hard time giving a fuck about the webmasters (is this still used?).

If you want to track, do it properly with a package installed on your own server. stop subjecting your users to Google's All-Seeing Eye just because using their Analytics is easier for you.

<comment><USER6> I am currently a webmaster (and I don't know if that's still used either, doesn't feel like it), and this is going to be a huge pain in the arse. The main reason it is a pain is the vagueness of the legislation, nobody has any idea what they can and can't do.

Sure we can follow the ICO and put a pop-up on the site asking to accept cookies or not (which if you select 'not' ironically creates a cookie), but as other people have pointed out that's laughable (for a huge number of reasons) and would push online trade away from uk sites. Easiest option for me would be to shift hosting outside the EU, take the SEO location hit and get back to work as usual (EDIT: it appears I am a little behind on the legislation as last time I read it hosting overseas was a loophole, looks like I need to refresh things).

Alternatively if I could dispense with cookies and shift tracking upstream to a CDN that would also save me the problem and at that point I should be getting even more data such as IP addresses.

Users need to take control of their browsing and privacy, they need to be aware of what they are giving away when they join a site or go online in general. Currently they are clueless and that is what needs to stop, force a prompt for all cookies regardless of country, evens the playing field and make people think for a change (if you're a chrome user "Edit this cookie" is an invaluable plugin for monitoring and removing what each site is placing on your machine).

It's also a bit rich saying that tracking cookies are bad whilst trying to pass a law attempting to track almost all communication:

[https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/04/uk-government- proposes...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/04/uk-government-proposes-law- monitoring-every-email-phone-call-and-text-message)

<comment><USER7> On the ICO's site (<http://www.ico.gov.uk>) there is no "don't accept cookies" option. You can only select "accept" or not interact with the form at all. If you don't accept cookies then the form is shown at the top of every page.

<comment><USER6> I stand corrected, sorry about that, originally it did, which was the cause of much amusement for a while. Obviously they fixed it.

<comment><USER7> It's amusing that the "fix" is making the user experience much worse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> NoScript, RequestPolicy, Adblock Plus, RefControl, UAControl, Do-not-track cookie-disabled Mozilla Firefox user here.

Regulating Internet technologies to this level of pedantic granularity will ensure that spammers, scammers, crackers and fraudsters have an effective monopoly on privacy-busting technology. The incentive for software to implement correct technological solutions will be taken away if an honesty box Do-not-track approach is considered adequate. I want my browser to have a maximal number of reasons (including a multi billion dollar advertising industry) to address the technical concerns highlighted by Panopticlick[1] or privacy experts that "get it"[2]. These technical problems _will_ be exploited by unwanted parties on the Internet. Exploitation will occur legally in other jurisdictions out of reach of EU laws.

The full text of the directive can be found at §66 on page 20 of Directive 2009/136/EC at [3].

[1] <https://panopticlick.eff.org/>

[2] <http://33bits.org/>

[3] [http://eur- lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2...](http://eur- lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2009:337:0011:0036:EN:PDF)

</comment><comment><USER9> Disregarding the implementation details (which will probably evolve and adapt if this ever gets mandatory) I think it's a totally sensible thing as far as the user is concerned. I have the right to know how the information I send you is being used. If you'd like to track me, I'd rather have to opt _in_ than opt _out_.

<comment><USER10> I believe you are in the minority - most people, even on HN, are probably comfortable (or apathetic :-) ) enough to accept the status quo.

If you are really serious about protecting your privacy online, I imagine you already have your browser configured to deny all cookies except those which you explicitly accept. The tools to solve this problem already exist - <USER2> built in to the browser, or easily available as extensions.

<comment><USER11> I think you are seeing this from a limited viewpoint. There's lots of people out there who don't even understand what the internet is, you'd be lucky if they know what a browsers is. The EU is proactively protecting those people, much like has been done for decades with offline data protection.

<comment><USER12> Protecting them from what exactly?

I'm genuinely curious about this - what do you think gets done with a browser cookie that actually causes real harm to the user? Perhaps that should be regulated instead of the mechanism for it.

<comment><USER11> Protecting them from commercial use of their personal data - without explicit consent. In the US it's more of a free-for-all and businesses can get away with much more; in EU countries, their governments prefer to protect their populations from businesses (before anything bad happens). Just a different philosophy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> My company is going to ignore the law until someone pull's us up on it. This law will severely restrict our ability to analyse how users are interacting with our product. This law will compromise our ability to further improve our product and disadvantage us against foreign competitors.

Our company doesn't track users off the site, we anonymise data so it cannot be tracked back to an individual... as far as we are concerned the law shouldn't apply to how we make use of cookies.

The fine is up to £500k. Realistically.. the fine for a small company is more likely to a few thousand. It would be better to pay a few k a month in fines than lose 90% of our user data. If we implement this we might as well stop developing our product.

<comment><USER14> I'm not disagreeing with you, but you might want to reword this post. The internet doesn't forget, and you never know when some old post might be used against you.

<comment><USER13> I don't post any personal information with my JohnnyFlash alias. I like my privacy :)

Thanks for the warning though.

<comment><USER15> There's still a risk. Assuming you have done a good job of keeping your personal information away from "JohnnyFlash", no one will find your company through your posts here.

However, what about the other direction? Suppose your company comes to their attention through some other means, and they start investigating. At some point, you could find yourself answering questions under oath. It's conceivable the questioner might go on a fishing expedition, and ask "Have you ever posted on HN under the alias Johnny Flash?" (he might ask that at every company he investigates).

Then you've got the annoying choice between telling the truth and making your company's case for accidental violation much worse, or lying under oath which, if that is discovered, could bring serious penalties.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Who is forcing users to go to a website? I consider a website the same as someone's house. While I'm interacting with their server its obvious they'll want to know what I'm doing.

Its tracking people outside of a website's scope that should be allowed only with consent, such as facebook tracking people when they go to sites with a like button and so on

<comment><USER5> A site is much more like a shop - private property, but a public place, and therefore it has legal restrictions if you want it open to the public.

<comment><USER17> Even if that argument holds, and I want to analyze which sections of my shop or store are frequently visited, how often users buy goods, and effects of various changes that I make, I don't see why that should be illegal except in cases where I actually ask permission from every customer who walks into my shop.

<comment><USER5> This doesn't prevent you from analyzing which sections of your shop or store are frequently visited or how often users buy goods - that can be analyzed using the server logs.

Now, should e.g. Wal-Mart be able to put an RFID tag on you so that they know who you ware the next time you come in? And more importantly, should they be able to contract a third-party, which can then know when you enter _any_ store with which they have a contract?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The most likely impact it will have is that it will drive more advertisers to closed platforms like Facebook where gaining consent will be easier. That's not to say Facebook won't be impacted, given that they won't be able to passively collect analytics using the Facebook like button on sites.

In terms of workarounds, here are a couple that I have found:

* Don't be a UK based company

While non UK companies are encouraged to respect these guidelines, they are not required to do so. From the guidelines:

"An organisation based in the UK is likely to be subject to the requirements of the Regulations even if their website is technically hosted overseas. Organisations based outside of Europe with websites designed for the European market, or providing products or services to customers in Europe, should consider that their users in the UK and Europe will clearly expect information and choices about cookies to be provided."

Anyone care to guess what happens if a US company has a US based website but also a based UK presence?

* Get the 3rd party to get the consent. The following wording says that if the 3rd party cookie provider has gained consent from the user, it's the website will not also need to. As in:

"The key point is not who obtains the consent but that valid, well informed consent is obtained."

i.e. Facebook may only have to gain consent for it's Like button once for any particular user, same for Google analytics etc.

This is going to be bad for a whole bunch of folk:

* Display advertisers

* Sites that need analytics

* Sites that use 3rd party widgets that require state and those 3rd party providers (discus, Facebook like buttons, etc.)

<comment><USER19> Facebook probably will continue to collect data from Like buttons as it is the site owner not them who has to get consent...

<comment><USER18> It's a good point but the wording in the guidelines suggests that both the 3rd party and the site operator share responsibility to get consent (ignoring the fact that Facebook may just sidestep this, being a US based company):

"The person setting the cookie is therefore primarily responsible for compliance with the requirements of the law."

and

"Where third party cookies are set through a website both parties will have a responsibility for ensuring users are clearly informed about cookies and for obtaining consent."

It opens up an interesting liability issue. I suspect terms of service agreements for companies that provide services based on 3rd party cookies may be updated shortly.

<comment><USER19> I guess as Facebook deliberately designs the Like button to track this makes sense. Although maybe it will be ok as it will only track Facebook users, who will presumably have consented.

Facebook is legally an Irish company in Europe so cannot ignore this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Stalking is illegal, for obvious reasons. Online stalking is equally illegal, for equally obvious reasons.

Just because said stalking is automated, used for commercial purposes and has been renamed with cool souding euphemisms doesn't suddenly make it acceptable. Neither is the fact that it currently happens on such a large scale that it affects virtually every website.

These laws aren't crazy, they are a gradual return to sanity. The EU isn't crazy either. The directive sets the baseline for what is and what isn't allowed _in principle_ , allows for plenty of wiggle room and the way it is actually implemented and enforced will be a gradually process.

All this over the top ranting without showing any self-reflection or attempt at self-regulation is exactly why this is now forced upon us from above in the first place. The EU and various government en consumer organisations have repeatedly called for the industry to keep itself in check.

Instead, the industry has gone completely mental under the motto "we do it because we can", and as a result we now have a commercial surveillance network that surpasses anything any totalitarian government could have ever dreamed of. And which on top of that blatantly violates already existing privacy laws.

Congrats. Well done. We've awoken the beast of government regulation, and we only have ourselves to blame. You can't keep pissing all over consumers and civil rights without it resulting in some kind of backlash.

</comment><comment><USER21> We went through all this in Sweden a while ago, based on the same EU- directive. What has happened since the law passed here?

Not much. A few government-related sites have started showing an explanation about what a cookie is and does, and gives the choice of accepting or declining the cookie.

Other sites, despite the law, continues to function like normal. It's simply unenforceable on a large scale.

</comment><comment><USER22> Question : how do you remembers that users say no without cookie?

<comment><USER23> You remember the ones who say yes. As for the ones who say no, you ask them every time until they say yes. So I guess the system works.

<comment><USER24> What you're suggesting sounds like a dark pattern to me.

<comment><USER25> He's joking.

But like all good jokes there's an element of truth since I suspect that's exactly what some websites will do.

<comment><USER26> He's not joking.

Take a look at what the ICO themselves do - they show a consent box at the top of every page unless and until you opt in:

<http://www.ico.gov.uk/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Wouldn't it be better to mandate that sites honor the Do Not Track* HTTP header, rather than require each site to explicitly seek user consent?

* <http://dnt.mozilla.org/>

<comment><USER8> §66 on page 20 of Directive 2009/136/EC at [1] seems to explicitly allow the use of Do-not-track header as an opt-in mechanism:

      Where it is technically possible and effective,
      in accordance with the relevant provisions of
      Directive 95/46/EC, the user's consent to
      processing may be expressed by using the
      appropriate settings of a browser or other
      application.

[1] [http://eur- lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2...](http://eur- lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2009:337:0011:0036:EN:PDF)

<comment><USER28> That seems to imply that if you have 'accept cookies' and 'accept 3rd party cookies' checked, you can be tracked. Those boxes exist for _precisely_ this reason, are they not consent?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> The site focuses on the UK implementation of the law, but unfortunately the directive is EU wide and individual member states are hence supposed to put it into law, too. I say supposed because as in typical EU style, the member states are lagging, or doing their own thing.

[http://www.dlapiper.com/files/Uploads/Documents/DLA_Piper%20...](http://www.dlapiper.com/files/Uploads/Documents/DLA_Piper%20_%20How_the_EU_has_implemented_the_new_law_on_cookies.pdf)

Who are screwed: Austria, Latvia, Lithuania, Sweden and the UK.

The actual law says that _any non-strictly-needed_ cookie (or whatever you use to track users) MUST receive PRIOR opt-in from the user. It also clarifies that non-strictly-needed must be read in the narrowest sense possible, so that even _saving user preferences_ is considered non-essential. As far as I can tell this means that even normal use of session cookies is outlawed.

There seem to be some posters here who think the law only matters for analytics, and hence as users it's not their problem. You couldn't be more wrong, there is no such restriction in the law! This will effectively make the internet unusable unless websites start grouping login/cookie access. Like with Google/Facebook/Twitter account login systems. If the intent of the law was to hamper those companies, it will effectively achieve the opposite by hurting the smaller players disproportionally.

And of course, you might not have to care because this will likely end up mostly unenforced. But as a site operator, it's still a Damocles' Sword hanging above your head if you ever get Kafka'ed. The fines are not small.

<comment><USER30> As some one who works on major sites having analytics is a strictly needed cookie - other wise how do we optimise the site and if we can't do that in a cost efective manner and the site loses trafic we have to make peopel redundant - and my employer has done that in both the USA and the UK

Are you going to ban in store CCTV and Footfall analysis next?

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> This really is crazy, most analytic applications track users anonymously anyway so there isn't really much privacy concern.

It's basically the same as keeping track of the number of customers a physical store gets in a day, or maybe the time customers spends in the store. This type of analytics is essential to offline and online businesses.

As a citizen of the UK I'm extremely disappointed.

</comment><comment><USER32> The title is a little overly broad; as far as I can tell the only part of analytics that'll be impacted is setting cookies solely for tracking purposes. Lots of other kinds of web analytics will be fine. For example, you can do statistical analysis of your Apache logs, or of _other_ cookies that you set in the regular course of operating the webapp.

<comment><USER29> No, you cannot. Just read the law. ANY kind of cookie requires PRIOR permissions.

<comment><USER32> Well, yes, but presumably you would ask your users to set those. For example, if you use Gmail, presumably you will agree to let Gmail set your login cookie. Then Google can do web analytics keyed off that; the law doesn't actually ban doing analytics.

<comment><USER29> Right, so the majority of websites are now required to display the warning and request opt-in.

You don't see how this is a major pain?

You can already get this behavior in your browser by changing user settings. Just try to surf like that for a while. It's horrendous, and what's worse, it doesn't make the user any wiser, really.

<comment><USER32> Yeah, that's a pain, I'm not disputing that. I'm just disputing that this law makes "web analytics illegal".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> It's about as unscary as the various disability and accessibility laws in the UK and EU. They make lots of demands too and have scary consequences for inaction, yet hardly anyone follows them to the letter and I've not heard of anyone getting punished either (although I'm not suggesting no-one has, it's just not common).

I suspect most companies, other than those with the budgets and public visibility to run scared, will just ignore this law until it becomes a problem. Indeed, they haven't done a good job of promoting it either - it's been in a few news stories.. woopty woo, I bet the _majority_ of webmasters haven't even heard of it.

</comment><comment><USER34> Wouldn't this be easier if browser companies blocked all cookies by default. Users wanting cookies turn of blocker? A lot less browsers than websites?

<comment><USER5> Possibly, but how is the ICO supposed to regular browser vendors?

<comment><USER10> The exactly same way there are attempting to regulate website owners - <USER3> passing a nonsense law that will do nothing to solve any real privacy concerns.

The ICO has the power to force browser vendors with a UK presence to implement this at the browser level. I wonder why they didn't? Short-sightedness? Or perhaps they knew that Google/Mozilla/Microsoft are more capable of presenting a unified front to fight this, compared to however many thousands of web developers are affected.

<comment><USER6> More likely those companies already lobbied the hell out of the situation and got people to make it someone else's problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> We're a UK business with our web server in the USA. Do these new laws apply to our website?

<comment><USER36> yes

<comment><USER10> To provide a bit more detail:

"An organisation based in the UK is likely to be subject to the requirements of the Regulations even if their website is technically hosted overseas. Organisations based outside of Europe with websites designed for the European market, or providing products or services to customers in Europe, should consider that their users in the UK and Europe will clearly expect information and choices about cookies to be provided."

So, as a UK-registered business, you will be subject to this law.

My startup is registered in the UK, but all servers are outside of the UK. I am actually planning to just ignore this ruling and see what happens. If it looks like they are seriously going to go after startups that don't follow these rules, I will simply register the business in a location with less idiotic rules.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Gov enacts a law, but says don't worry they won't enforce it in some cases? Ludicrous.

</comment><comment><USER38> Goodbye UK Ltd, hello Delaware C-Corp.

</comment><comment><USER39> there are cookie free analytical tools out there which can be used for same purpose.

</comment><comment><USER40> These four documents appear to be the main source material. I have extracted a few bits I found interesting.

Information Commisisoner's Office - Enforcing the revised Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (PECR) of 25/5/2011 [http://www.ico.gov.uk/~/media/documents/library/Privacy_and_...](http://www.ico.gov.uk/~/media/documents/library/Privacy_and_electronic/Practical_application/enforcing_the_revised_privacy_and_electronic_communication_regulations_v1.pdf)

Information Commissioner's - Office Guidance on the rules on the use of cookies and similar technologies of 13th December 2001: [http://www.ico.gov.uk/news/latest_news/2011/%7E/media/docume...](http://www.ico.gov.uk/news/latest_news/2011/%7E/media/documents/library/Privacy_and_electronic/Practical_application/guidance_on_the_new_cookies_regulations.ashx)

"Check what type of cookies you use and how you use them"

"If the information collected about website use is passed to a third party you should make this absolutely clear to the user. You should review what this third party does with the information about your website visitors. You should tell people what you are collecting and how you are using this information."

"Even where the clear cookie rules do not apply you must consider the DPA [Data Protection Act] whenever you are collecting information that builds up a picture that could allow you to identify an individual."

"... the Commissioner is therefore unlikely to prioritize, for example, first party cookies used for analytical purposes and cookies that support the accessibility of sites and services, in any consideration of regulatory action."

"... we would expect you to provide clear information to users about analytical cookies and take what steps you can to seek their agreement."

Directive 2002/58/EC of the European Parliament of 12 July 2002: [http://eur- lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:...](http://eur- lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:32002L0058:EN:NOT)

"(25) However, such devices, for instance so-called "cookies", can be a legitimate and useful tool, for example, in analysing the effectiveness of website design and advertising, and in verifying the identity of users engaged in on-line transactions. Where such devices, for instance cookies, are intended for a legitimate purpose, such as to facilitate the provision of information society services, their use should be allowed on condition that users are provided with clear and precise information in accordance with Directive 95/46/EC about the purposes of cookies or similar devices so as to ensure that users are made aware of information being placed on the terminal equipment they are using. Users should have the opportunity to refuse to have a cookie or similar device stored on their terminal equipment. This is particularly important where users other than the original user have access to the terminal equipment and thereby to any data containing privacy-sensitive information stored on such equipment. Information and the right to refuse may be offered once for the use of various devices to be installed on the user's terminal equipment during the same connection and also covering any further use that may be made of those devices during subsequent connections. The methods for giving information, offering a right to refuse or requesting consent should be made as user-friendly as possible. Access to specific website content may still be made conditional on the well-informed acceptance of a cookie or similar device, if it is used for a legitimate purpose."

Directive 2009/136/EC of the European Parliament of 25 November 2009: [http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2...](http://eur- lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2009:337:0011:01:EN:HTML)

"(66) Third parties may wish to store information on the equipment of a user, or gain access to information already stored, for a number of purposes, ranging from the legitimate (such as certain types of cookies) to those involving unwarranted intrusion into the private sphere (such as spyware or viruses). It is therefore of paramount importance that users be provided with clear and comprehensive information when engaging in any activity which could result in such storage or gaining of access. The methods of providing information and offering the right to refuse should be as user-friendly as possible. Exceptions to the obligation to provide information and offer the right to refuse should be limited to those situations where the technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user. Where it is technically possible and effective, in accordance with the relevant provisions of Directive 95/46/EC, the user's consent to processing may be expressed by using the appropriate settings of a browser or other application. The enforcement of these requirements should be made more effective by way of enhanced powers granted to the relevant national authorities."</comment>


Death and Suicide in Universal Artificial Intelligence - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1606.00652 <comment><USER2> Nice title for something that is mostly kinda boring.

Basically this is saying the reinforcement learning systems (and other ML systems?) can get stuck in states from which they cannot escape. They label these states "death"

They go on to define various agent behaviours, which given starting states lead to different equilibriums. The ones that actively lead to certain death they label "suicide"

</comment><comment><USER3> Can somebody explain this?

Also, I wonder if a hypothetical human who has never been in contact with other humans or living organisms would ponder about death and suicide. I think this human would not even know these concepts exist. So why would this hold for an AI?

<comment><USER4> The idea is that you can make an AI system that gives up if it gets too smart, which guarantees that you don't get a world-eating AI singularity explosion.

The alternative approach relies on putting tripwires in the system, so that the AI gives up if it tries to do something you specifically don't want it to - like launching all the world's nuclear missiles, or maybe getting its own Hollywood agent.

The problem with tripwires is that a really smart agent can modify itself to bypass them, or at least find the loopholes you didn't think of because you're not as smart as it is.

The systems mentioned - AIXI, etc - are all formalisms for understanding/modelling general AI systems.

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

<comment><USER2> Hutter (one of this paper's authors) is the inventor of AIXI.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Isn't this basically a computer science approach to Hamlet's monologue? If so, it's kind of cool.

<comment><USER6> I don't think the agents ponder being. They are not self aware in that sense i don't think.</comment></comment>


Speculative History & Future of H.264 & WebM  - <AUTHOR> http://syntensity.blogspot.com/2011/01/completely-speculative-history-future.html

<comment><USER2> WebM can't just mutate to become "better than" H.264 just because it's "open" — and if it did, then the hardware support and old or fragmented software for WebM would fail, wouldn't it? How can you see this happening, especially without infringing upon new(er) video patents? Much has been written on that topic already.

</comment><comment><USER3> My god that sucked.</comment>


Ask HN: When does it make sense to reimplement a system? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> If you're the product owner, when there is demand for fixes or features _and_ the current architecture cannot be evolved to meet it.

If you're a consultant, when the customer has the cash to pay for it.</comment>


Things Got Weird for Stablecoin Tether - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-04-26/things-got-weird-for-stablecoin-tether <comment><USER2> Lots of smart people have been claiming since 2015 that Tether was a ponzi fraud, that it didn't really have dollars to back the Tethers.

 _But in fact Tether did have the money, at a real bank, and at this point that bank was Deltec Bank & Trust Ltd. in the Bahamas._

Amazing, Tether actually was fully backed by dollars in an actual bank!

But then Bitfinex took $625k of Tether reserves to make up for a separate fraud or government asset seizure.

 _Bitfinex took $625 million in real money at a real bank from Tether, and in exchange gave Tether back $625 million in fake money at a fake bank._

The real mystery to me is why rational traders continue to buy Tether at $0.9926, less than 1% from parity with USD. Why wouldn't people sell?

<comment><USER3> People trust banks, even when the fiat in banks isn't fully backed. Usually the reserve ration is backed to something like 10%.

To my understanding tether is just like a bank, except the accounts are kept on Blockchain instead of private database. So, it is rational to use them if you think they habe enough reserves to keep them liquid. Full backing is not needed, as it isn't needed with banks as well.

<comment><USER4> Banks generally have full backing, verified by frequent auditing, it just may not be all cash or cash-like assets.

But then again, not all of bank's liabilities are cash either. E.g.: CDs.

Things get hairy when their long-term assets go down in value and/or there's a sudden demand for withdrawals triggering a mismatch between short-term liabilities and long-term assets.

We have strikingly little audits from this stablecoin. Do assets match liabilities or not? For a bank, they always will or else they get shutdown before losses become too great.

<comment><USER5> Actually they don't quite get shut down. At least not in the USA. Instead they get taken over by a more stable bank, which receives some money to make the transaction make sense. People with deposits in the bank do not lose their money.

This is how FDIC insurance actually works in practice.

However there is a systemic risk if the entire system cannot absorb the bad banks. According to multiple people involved, in 2008 we came within a few hours of the whole banking system having to be shut down with no idea how much chaos that would cause. This is why TARP got passed.

<comment><USER4> I get that. When people say "they lost their house", they still know where it is, it's just not theirs anymore.

When your bank is forcibly taken over by the government and the assets forcibly sold to someone else with nothing going to the owners of the bank, most would say the bank was shutdown.

In 2008, since TARP recipients didn't wipe out their shareholders and sell shares to new owners (perhaps .gov), I would say they had plenty of time left before needing a bailout.

The gov should have created an express bankruptcy protection process instead of bailing out shareholders and boards that took too much risk.

<comment><USER5> The problem wasn't that the banks were unsound. Most of them were sound. But each bank didn't know which others were solvent, and that fact was about to shut down the ATM and credit card systems.

Once the government stepped in, everyone was sure that normal operations were safe, and chaos was averted.

In fact, as [https://www.americanbanker.com/opinion/tarp-was-not-a- bailou...](https://www.americanbanker.com/opinion/tarp-was-not-a-bailout-and- the-governments-profit-was-huge) points out, the government actually made a $30 billion profit on TARP in the end. (It can be debated how much of that profit was a result of other Treasury actions, like quantitative easing.)

<comment><USER4> A __$15b __return on $400b invested in 2008 /2009 over ?5? years is a terrible return. And it conveniently ignores management costs.

That was "close down your hedge fund(s) and change your name" embarrassing level of return.

Your link's source for its $30.7b profit figure is unsupported by its linked treasury.gov press release

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Although I agree with the author's position that an awful lot of sketchy things are happening, and I'm sure happy I don't own any of this so-called stable coin, this line bothers me:

> If everyone redeemed their Tethers today, it is not clear how Tether would > come up with the money

This is true of banks, too. In fact, if everyone took out all of their money from all of the banks, there isn't enough real money in existence to cover it.

With Tether, it is at least plausible that the money still exists and is simply frozen due to some terrible business decisions. With banks, the money doesn't exist.

I'm sure this isn't news to anyone on HN. The pros and cons of Fractional Reserve Banking are well known. But it seems unfair to hold Tether up to a higher standard than even our most established banks.

UPDATE: This is one of those can of worms things. A lot of you are making similar arguments, and rather than answer one by one, let me just say:

1) Comparing a run on Tether to a run on ALL of the banks was a poor comparison on my part.

2) Y'all might be right that it wasn't UNFAIR of the author to make the claim above. Tether did make that promise to their customers.

3) Y'all have way more faith in fiat currencies and fractional reserve banking than I do.

Cheers.

<comment><USER7> It is different though. The FDIC would force the bank into receivership and return the insured money to account holders. That doesn't exist for tether.

<comment><USER6> > The FDIC would force the bank into receivership and return the insured money > to account holders.

Fair point. If a run-on-the-bank only occured at a single bank, that would work. And that's probably a more fair comparison to my example of everyone taking out their money at all the banks.

But for clarity, my statement was that the money to cover everyone's deposits at all the banks simply doesn't exist. The FDIC can only cover so much insured money before they just plain run out.

<comment><USER8> And if the FDIC didn't have enough money, the government would start printing it like crazy and the US would start looking more like Venezuela in a very short period of time.

<comment><USER9> Bank collapses happen during times of deflation. In that environment, printing money like crazy just returns the financial system to normal, low levels of inflation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It may be baffling that Tether hasn't collapsed yet. But consider the drawn- out drama of the Mt Gox collapse.

It took weeks for Mt Gox to unwind. In the time leading up to the finale, many people (who should have known better) insisted that the exchange was secure and fully capitalized. For example, this guy:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UP1YsMlrfF0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UP1YsMlrfF0)

When incredible spreads started appearing between Gox and competitors, the gullible asked "How can I arbitrage this?" rather than "Where are the exits?"

Then they became irate at their inability to withdraw the funds they deposited to make a quick buck.

There were others who simply refused to believe the facts staring them in the face.

I expect the same to happen here. Settle in, this is going to take awhile to unwind.

</comment><comment><USER11> The craziest thing to me is a lot of people have been claiming Tether was a fraud for _years_ , but according to this it may not have actually had any issues until ~6 months ago.

So they decided to prop up Bitfinex with Tether funds long after they were first accused of fraud, even having that spotlight already shining on them.

If they wanted credibility they should have completely separated those two businesses, but I suspect Bitfinex makes more money than Tether, and perhaps they wanted the Tether funds as a sort of insurance policy for Bitfinex liquidity.

<comment><USER12> It seems so weird. If they had the backing at a reputable bank all along, what was with the constant song-and-dance show around not providing a simple external audit proving that point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Summary of Tether's risk, in the author's own comedic gold:

 _Saying "our stablecoin is backed one-for-one by U.S. dollars in a bank" is not quite the same as saying "our stablecoin is backed by an equal notional amount of three-year dollar-denominated loans to our affiliated crypto exchange, much of whose cash is currently frozen."_

</comment><comment><USER14> One thing that has been confusing me about the recent news: $850M is more than "crook" levels of money: It is well into the realm of state-actor or kingpin levels. When that kind of money goes missing, I would expect whole armies of unsavory characters get dispatched for asset recovery. Coincidentally, everyone in those armies is named either Guido or Rocko.

So the idea that Poland or Portugal or any other state-actor beginning with the letter "P" might have seized the funds at least provides us with a rationale for how the money remains unrecovered.

</comment><comment><USER15> This is a good contextualization of the news we read yesterday, especially since it brings out some of the humor in it. (All of which is _schadenfreude_ , but still.)

Can we agree that the most priceless phrase in all this is _" a (believed to be) Panamanian entity"?_ Not a bank, but an entity. A Panamanian one. Which already sounds shady enough, but then we're not even sure that's what it is. It gives me LOLs.

</comment><comment><USER16> The sad reality appears to be that Tether was fully backed dollar-for-dollar by USD in a reputable bank, but that the associated cryptoexchange owned and operated by the same people got robbed by a government entity and left them insolvent.

I blame the Tether guys for not declaring the exchange bankrupt at that point and keeping the Tethers entirely walled off.

Tether will have, in part, been brought down by a government agency (assuming that the whole Crypto Capital thing isn't entirely a scam/front/honeypot).

If customers lose funds in this, it traces back to whoever has the Crypto Capital money.

It's not at all surprising that the government would ultimately be responsible for bringing down Tether, since it's clearly illegal to operate per AML/KYC/FinCen regulations.

In the end the entity that confiscated the billion dollars could offer restitution in exchange for an IRS audit. I would guess many would gracefully decline.

<comment><USER17> > The sad reality appears to be that Tether was fully backed dollar-for-dollar > by USD in a reputable bank, but that the associated cryptoexchange owned and > operated by the same people got robbed by a government entity and left them > insolvent.

Crypto Capital provided no evidence that the funds have been seized by governments.

<comment><USER18> Bloomberg have the responsibility to confirm it regardless, that's the job of a journalist rather than blindly parroting whatever a company tells you.

They are still publishing articles not mentioning the fact despite Polish media confirming it. Low effort journalism.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Can someone explain the need for and uses for a stablecoin in the world of cryptocurrency?

<comment><USER20> If you want to sell crypto coins quickly, getting dollars is hard. You have to go through banks, or trust that the "USD" in your crypto exchange account is really there. Getting crypto tokens out of an exchange is pretty easy, but you're just jumping from one volatile asset to another.

So someone had the idea that you could create a coin that would retain its value but you could easily swap for crypto coins.

<comment><USER19> Thanks for explaining!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mt._Gox](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mt._Gox) Mt. Gox reported 65 mln dollars missing when declared bankruptcy. 8 years later Tether / Bitfinex reports 650 million dollars missing.

I wonder what would happen in next few years if so called "decentralized" currencies really become mainstream.

</comment><comment><USER22> Strange how USDT only loses peg temporarily when the news broke. Why is everyone still holding USDT? [https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/tether](https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/tether)

</comment><comment><USER23> Tether's payment processor has seemingly swiped the funds.

A similar thing happened to Full Tilt Poker. Its payment processer stole its funds and the business collapsed.

</comment><comment><USER24> Matt Levine is a national treasure

<comment><USER25> He's the role model of how to get dialectics right without succumbing to bothsiderism.

This article is a perfect example: he dismisses the nihilist's "everything is a fraud" perspective while still heaping some rightful schadenfreude on these shenanigans. Then, he turns it around (again) by mentioning how this situation is partially caused by Tether's inability to find partners in traditional payment providers.

Throughout his work, he never succumbs to either blind love or hatred for anybody or any group (government, media, Musk, Crypto enthusiasts, banks, that Pharma bro). When they are universally hated, he will invariably highlight how creative or entertainingly brazen their exploits were, while still managing not to excuse them. Where others see individual moral failings and call for pitchforks, he looks at the structural issues in law or society that enables them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> LOL at communication logs between Merlin and Oz.

</comment><comment><USER27> New York AG: Tether lost $800m and then funded it from their crypto exchange.

Bitfinex: Poland seized half a billion, Portugal nearly all the rest.

Is it really beyond Bloomberg to actually go and ask the Polish or Portuguese government this rather than play he said, she said?

There's so many Dunning-Kruger comments/opinion pieces on the matter and years of HN threads about tether that it's all a bit tiring.

Bitfinex doesn't serve US customers, people have been calling it's imminent implosion from day one, there's now All-American stable-coin alternatives that surely want their business, ulterior motives could be anywhere.

For anyone with yet another confident assertion of it's demise, please jump in and short it against USD right here: [https://trade.kraken.com/markets/kraken/usdt/usd/1h](https://trade.kraken.com/markets/kraken/usdt/usd/1h)

Put your money where your mouth is :)

<comment><USER28> > Bitfinex doesn't serve US customers

A large part of the contention is that Bitfinex, unlicensed to operate at all in NY, has NY-based employees, and customers, even after its "No US customers". That was the initial driver for the NY OAG to go after them.

<comment><USER27> Someone getting a loan and falsifying all the documents is the one facing prosecution, not the bank. All seems to be a bit upside down here, given the prevalence of mortgage fraud and who ends up in court.

As for remote employees living in NY I guess that probably does constitute operating there, then again I'm no lawyer with a knack for arguing semantics. Does this count for someone living in an Brooklyn airbnb for a month and working from their laptop?

<comment><USER28> Not quite that simple. If you're not licensed as a business to trade in a state, and you accept a customer in that state, then you're on the hook (yes, if customer falsifies documents, then that's on them). Tether/Bitfinex didn't always forbid NY customers, and didn't always forbid US customers, and the OAG's allegation is that they continue to knowingly serve NY customers (the US prohibition is a business decision, not a regulator).

KYC/AML says that you must make a good faith effort to verify documentation/ID, etc. The contention is more that they're doing so "under the radar". Just like "friends of Bitfinex" \- employees/friends who have agreed to use their personal bank accounts to enable wire transfers on Bitfinex's behalf (I mean, WTF...).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> The solution to tether existing is for the US government to release a fiat convertible cryptocurrency pegged to $1 with all of the compliance of traditional banking. Financial institutions would use it, the government could tax it, and all of the kyc/aml could be enforced. It's not even hard to do.

Until that happens, there's a rational economic narrative for companies of all shapes and sizes to offer these kinds of synthetic dollar-like instruments (and it will also remain rational for regulators to be interested in these enterprises).

It's an interesting time to observe this market (I guess crypto will be interesting for a while).

Edit: I guess it's impossible to have a nuanced discussion about cryptocurrency on HackerNews right now. For those of us who have participated in these markets from an institutional level, there are obvious reasons why these synthetic instruments exist beyond evading regulatory controls (which is why Coinbase, who is the most regulatory compliant entity in the industry has a synthetic dollar instrument). There are real technical advantages to having a synthetic instrument that go far beyond regulatory evasion, just ask anyone who operates a regulatory compliant entity in this industry.

<comment><USER30> Tether exists at all because exchanges don't want to follow regulations around USD. A government-approved fiat convertible cryptocurrency wouldn't change that.

<comment><USER31> Tether exists because Bitcoin "exchanges" (who are really broker/dealers) are so bad at paying out USD. If I sell stocks via my US broker and tell them to wire transfer the proceeds to my bank, the money shows up the next day. Sometimes the same day. Try to find any crypto "exchange" that does that.

<comment><USER4> exchanges would love to be able to do that, but can't if they get cutoff from the banking system at every turn.

<comment><USER28> In many cases they're being cut off because their standards for KYC/AML are lax to non-existent, or they don't have money transmitter licenses.

<comment><USER4> Seems like a best case scenario. Either all exchanges have KYC/AML problems (possibly) or a lot of banks think of crypto like my school librarian did about the internet in the 90s: it's all bad because anyone can publish with it.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>