Heroku clone for Django? - <AUTHOR> http://djangy.com/

<comment><USER2> So, this is my site. Yep.

I forgot to turn debug off. Yep. And i'm using sqlite3 to accept email addresses. Yep.

I can assure you the quality of the ACTUAL project is far better :-)

I have a working prototype and am working my ass off to get something scalable up and running asap. keep checking back for details!

<comment><USER3> Regardless of the criticisms, if you need another beta tester, you'll find my email in your sqlite database. ;-)

Seriously though, best of luck, and godspeed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> How seriously can you take a service if developers forgets to disable the DEBUG flag :)

<http://djangy.com/admin>

<comment><USER5> Use of SQLLite too - does that scale and perform well against something like postgres?

I think what we're seeing here is an email/hype-grabbing attempt with an interesting vision, using the Heroku name for leverage.

Would like to see it materialise, but they really should have hardened something as simple as a signup form. I've emailed the admin telling him to lock it down.

<comment><USER6> To be fair, you wouldn't need much more than SQLite to gather emails. It's more than sufficient (I would say it's absolutely _amazing_ for most use cases, but the _one_ thing I am not sure about is how well it handles concurrency, if at all).

I tried SQLite for a few things, and it has _always_ come out a champ. I would not hesitate to use it for most of the semi-static websites I make (web apps would be pushing it), if I were sure it can handle more than one connection (I'm not, sadly).

I am very, _very_ impressed by it. Seriously solid database.

<comment><USER7> SQLite is a file and thus uses file-level locking and does not have row-level locking. Data can not be read the same time anything is being written, so it is usually not great for multi-user applications or web applications.

Development, or 1-3 user web app it should perform OK. It doesn't scale and you will get db locks and retries if its under too much load.

To speed this up (if you must use SQLite), use a solid state drive as I/O performance is the biggest bottleneck.

<comment><USER8> <http://linux.die.net/man/2/fcntl>

actually it could use row-level locking since it uses row-oriented storage and fcntl locks can be applied to a set of bytes within a file. it could also do file-level locking on tempfiles with names derived from the table name and primary key of the row.

anyone with actual knowledge of it care to chime in with what it _does_ do?

<comment><USER7> I have actual knowledge of it. The product I work on uses it as the production database because we distribute the software as a desktop application (and MySQL has licensing issues).

It _COULD_ do row level locking, but it doesn't. SQLitening is the closest thing to performant SQLite you will get. And it only runs on Windows.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Never write form confirmations ("Thanks for your email") in red color. Looks like a warning. If a form is processed correctly, it should be black or green.

I hope that usability of djangy service will be better. Can't wait to try it :)

Btw, isn't Heroku itself planning anything for Django?

<comment><USER10> > Btw, isn't Heroku itself planning anything for Django?

Has that ever been mentioned or rumored before? Is that even feasible given Heroku's technology stack?

<comment><USER11> I was throwing around startup ideas and I emailed them in late june 2010 to ask if they were considering it.

The response was quite clear that they had no plans to enter the Django market.

<comment><USER10> That's what I'd expect. They're only still in the early market penetration stage of the Ruby market; it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to complicate their product offering. (Particularly when App Engine is available for Python/Java.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Will it work for Flask? Any plans?

<http://flask.pocoo.org/>

<comment><USER13> Hopefully it will work with any WSGI application because even Django applications might use WSGI components and thus have a custom WSGI application object.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Finally it arrived :) I love Heroku and was looking for something similar for Django for ages now. Can't wait to give it a try!

</comment><comment><USER15> Is it just Django, or will other Python frameworks work?

<comment><USER16> They really need to support more than Django. The Python world isn't centered around one web framework, the way Ruby is.

<comment><USER17> Actually, Heroku supports any rack application - that means most of the ruby web frameworks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> How do they plan to compete against Google App Engine?

<http://www.allbuttonspressed.com/projects/djangoappengine>

<comment><USER16> App Engine is a pain in the ass, and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. Heroku is so simple to use that I've many times felt that someone needs to build a Heroku for Python.

The only thing really wrong with App Engine is the datastore:

\- It's very different than anything you've come across before \- The docs are not sufficient for it's complexity. You end up having to read lots of blogs and watch lots of videos to figure it out. \- It is ridiculously difficult to learn (one of the hardest things I ever had to do) \- Important parts of your stack won't work, like Admin \- You can't just add the fields you like to an object. Instead you need to meticulously plan _how_ your data is going to be accessed. This is exactly the wrong thing for a startup, since you can't get up and running fast. \- You can't iterate fast, because any schema change is very risky and very slow. \- If you don't get everything exactly right, your app will be very slow. \- There isn't much in the ecosystem.

By contrast, none of these are true for Heroku.

There are some things that are pretty good about App Engine:

\- the tools are pretty good. Not as good as Heroku, but good. \- the billing is spot on. They give you about $1 per day of free stuff, which can maintain a site with hundreds of thousands of users. And it's pretty cheap from there on. \- They scale it automatically. On Heroku, it's really hard to tell how many "dynos" (whatever the hell that is) you need, except by trial and error. I would expect that nearly all Heroku apps are overprovisioned. App Engine just nails the scaling - it happens automatically, and you specify a maximum amount to pay per day, with lots of different dials to control it more precicely if you like.

I hope Djangy takes the best of both worlds.

<comment><USER19> While I do agree that the App Engine datastore does require for some planning above what you're used to from a traditional RDBMS, I think it really just reflects a learning curve that comes with any new technology: as you use it more often, you get better at it. I think calling App Engine a pain in the ass and that you wouldn't recommend it to anyone is a bit over the top.

<comment><USER16> No, I truly meant it. Everything related to the datastore is difficult and tedious. Goodbye to incremental development, goodbye to knocking out a feature in an hour. Every single change you make has to be planned.

Adding a field to an "object"? Where do you use that object? Is there somewhere that you don't use that field which becomes too slow?

How are you going to migrate that new field? There aren't tools to help you migrate. Generally, you have to change to an Explando, add the field, load every single object from the datastore, then save every object back to the datastore.

These are two examples off the top of my head. Every change you want to make in App Engine has similar questions raised. I really did mean it when I wouldn't recommend it to anyone.

I think it's a much different learning curve than with any other technology. I'm plenty adept at learning new things, but this was just unnecessary complex, with nothing to redeem it.

<comment><USER20> I'd have to agree that Django on appengine is a big pita for the reasons you mentioned. Django is a large framework, and was simply not designed with interchangeable backends in mind. Getting it to work either requires a lot of black magic monkey-patching or foregoing the majority of built in features.

On the other hand, I have found the datastore api (and most of the other apis) to be well designed. It works _very_ well with lighter frameworks such as tornado.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I would _love_ to hear more about this. I'm currently in the middle of a Django app, and this would be a godsend. I like doing sysadmin stuff, but there's no way I will have time in the next year.

If you guys can pull this off, I will be a very happy customer.

</comment><comment><USER22> Would be nice if there were something like this (like Heroku) for Java. I know that there are several "cloud" solutions for Java, but I haven't found something as simple to manage/extend/deploy like Heroku so far :(.

<comment><USER23> yeah there are, <http://www.stax.net/> for Java EE developers.

another, <https://www.playapps.net/> for play apps., those written using the playframework.

<comment><USER22> > <http://www.stax.net/>

I used Stax during beta, and it's nice, but it's no near the Heroku ease of use (puls it's little helper Nezumi <http://nezumiapp.com/> when on the way). With very small restrictions, one can install anything on Stax, so it's very flexible, but just not that easy to use as Heroku'.

> another, <https://www.playapps.net/> for play apps.

Unfortunately Play framework is not based on a servlet container (something that 99% of java webapps are using).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I've been working on my Heroku for Django (or Python more generally) for a month or two now. It's good to see somebody else thinks this is a good idea.

<comment><USER6> How does it work? How do you handle persistence and parallelism?

<comment><USER24> The front end dispatches requests to a Varnish, which is in front of a router that queues up requests and sends them to available copies of the desired application. Persistence is Postgresql, and delayed and scheduled jobs are handled by celery over RabbitMQ.

My number one goal is to provide a deployment environment with as few additional restrictions on the developer as possible.

<comment><USER6> That sounds quite good! So most of the parallelism is on the view processing layer? Is the postgres setup parallelised as well?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I like the idea. But make sure to differ from what AppEngine offers or you have a very strong opponent.

</comment><comment><USER26> I really would love to see this for clojure or smalltalk.

</comment><comment><USER27> Sounds like a contestant in the AWS Startup Challenge.

</comment><comment><USER28> Intersting!

</comment><comment><USER29> can't wait for trying it!

</comment><comment><USER30> I wonder why Dave Paola (apparently admin at djangy according to DEBUG view at <http://djangy.com/postreceive> ) used room606 instead of his regular account endlessvoid94 for submitting this.

<comment><USER16> Because he doesn't want to be outed, for whatever reason. Outing someone by calling out their real name is a dick move. It used to be that HN recognized the occasional need for stealth pre-launch, instead of this braggery.

(Disclaimer: same thing happened to my company when we pre-launched.)</comment></comment>


Statistics for Hackers - <AUTHOR> https://speakerdeck.com/jakevdp/statistics-for-hackers <comment><USER2> This talk was great, especially its focus on non-parametric techniques. A lot of people are mislead by the traditional statistics approach, where it looks like stats is about memorizing a relatively short list of (really scary) formulas that let you compute one or another thing. People do not think about how these formulas come about, and the simple ideas behind them.

On the other hand, I think there is not enough written about how to do statistics with real, large, complex data sets. I tried to write something like this ([https://pavpanchekha.com/blog/stats1.html](https://pavpanchekha.com/blog/stats1.html)) but of course the difficulty is that investigating a complex dataset is by definition too complex to really fit into a blog post. In a large dataset, the difficulties are the how and when you make decisions about _what_ to analyze.

<comment><USER3> Every textbook on math I have ever read always start with intuition behind the idea, and then present definitions and proofs. Only some reference books, intended for look ups only, only enumerate formulas. I never understand why anyone claims that they only learn math by memorizing formulas.

<comment><USER4> Because they learn math in junior high where they really don't care about the subject, so it gets boiled down to "remember this to pass the exam", regardless of what the book says.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> For people who are interested in learning more about simulation, permutation tests and bootstrapping, the three techniques that the slide deck discusses, check out Allen Downey's Think Stats: [http://greenteapress.com/thinkstats2/](http://greenteapress.com/thinkstats2/).

It really is a pity that introductions to statistics spend so much time on analytic approximations and so little on the underlying concepts.

</comment><comment><USER6> Can we please stop putting "hack" on EVERYTHING?

It isn't a hack to present mathematics in an understandable way - it's a pedagogical improvement for introductory works, not a "hack".

<comment><USER7> The hacking here refers to the approach of "just compute it" rather than using an analytical approach.

<comment><USER6> Then it's even worse than "not hacking" \- it's not useful.

Any idiot can run a simulation, or compute "something". "Something" is only useful in context.

"If you can write a for loop, you can do statistics!" Ugh. Can nobody read anymore? It has to be a "slide deck"?

Jesus, pick up a book and ask some goddamn questions if you're interested.

<comment><USER8> Why are you so angry? He gave a talk and released the slides because he thought people may benefit from it - given Jake's (the speaker) background and skills, I would say he's doing everyone a favor by publicly releasing this.

Calm down.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> What books would y'all recommend for someone who has taken a couple of college-level proof courses but never took anything on probability and statistics?

<comment><USER10> I've said this elsewhere, but I recommend Casella & Berger's Statistical Inference. It will take you from probability theory to statistics... all the basics. I found it to be a very readable text, and it is used for many first graduate courses in stats - for me it was used for a 2 semester sequence first focusing on probability, then on statistics.

<comment><USER5> I like Casella and Berger, especially because it does so well at showing the connection between probability and statistics (first five chapters or so), but it should be noted that its approach is very different from the one in the slide deck above. Casella/Berger is purely frequentist rather than computational or Bayesian, and it spends a lot of time on likelihood theory and treats e.g. bootstrapping only very summarily.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Anybody have a link to the actual talk?

<comment><USER12> There is none. [https://twitter.com/jakevdp/status/644863206339379201](https://twitter.com/jakevdp/status/644863206339379201)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Bootstrapping deserves to be much better known. The fact that it works is miraculous.

<comment><USER14> It doesn't always work, it has its applicability but it's wide enough.

<comment><USER5> "It doesn't always work" really is not a very useful thing to say unless you elaborate on when exactly it doesn't work and why.

Bootstrapping doesn't work for very low n (e.g. n=10) because the resamples are not smooth enough and it doesn't always work that well for estimating quantiles. But analytic methods fare pretty poorly in these circumstances too and in any case people are mostly interested in confidence intervals around the mean anyway.

<comment><USER14> You are assuming that distributions we work with are normal, and the sampled values are independent. If you take a fat tailed distribution (for example Cauchy), bootstrap wouldn't work. If values, are dependent it wouldn't work either.

See also here: [http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/172920/bootstrap- me...](http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/172920/bootstrap-method- downsides) They give example of non pathologic distribution for which bootstrap doesn't provide good estimate. It's unform(0, theta)

<comment><USER5> That's nonsense. The entire point of the bootstrap is that it does not require the either the original or the sampling distribution to be normal. (For that matter, due to the Central Limit Theorem, neither do analytic approximations like a t-test for comparing different group means.)

You misunderstand the point about the Cauchy distribution in the answer on Cross Validated. The Cauchy distribution is a degenerate case, mostly interesting as an academic toy because it has infinite variance. Of course that's not going to fare well.

Dependent data can be tricky to deal with, but you can bootstrap such data by removing the dependence, bootstrapping the independent data, and adding the dependence back in. This sounds hard but is usually as easy as running a regression and subtracting/adding the component (x*beta) that leads to the dependency. Alternatively, for timeseries there's window methods.

Of course a short slide deck like the one linked to in this thread is not going to teach you all the finer points of bootstrapping and you can definitely do it wrong. But compared to all the assumptions that frequentist statistics makes to generate confidence intervals and the fact that you need a different method for every different scenario, bootstrapping is about as robust and idiot-proof as it's going to get. "It has its applicability" is beyond selling it short.

<comment><USER14> > For that matter, due to the Central Limit Theorem, neither do analytic > approximations like a t-test for comparing different group means.

Actually, it doesn't. You need a confidence interval, and central limit theorem doesn't give you a confidence interval. It just says that the distribution is close enough to normal at some point. In some cases, it might take a very large n before it become close to normal.

<comment><USER5> And exactly how long it will take for the approximation to reach a certain level of accuracy can be ascertained by using the other technique mentioned in the slide deck: run a simulation. And so we have come full circle :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The talk is very explicitly a tutorial for a few good statistical methods for those without a statistical background, using simple tools "hackers" are familiar with and are occasionally necessary, especially in the case of bootstrapping. This isn't hacking in the sense of "growth hacking," thankfully.

</comment><comment><USER16> Coin toss is a bad example to take as coins can't be loaded. However, very interesting.

<comment><USER17> Coins can be biased, they just need to be bent so far out of shape that it's obvious. Here's a fun example:

[https://izbicki.me/blog/how-to-create-an-unfair-coin-and- pro...](https://izbicki.me/blog/how-to-create-an-unfair-coin-and-prove-it- with-math.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This needs to be a course. I'd pay for it.

</comment><comment><USER19> The term hacker is just so overused at this point. Does it just mean someone who is good at tech in the Bay?

<comment><USER20> How so? I see anyone who refuses to accept things as they are, coupled with an innate curiosity and a drive towards getting to the root of a problem; and finally changing the rules to make it fit their prerogative, a hacker.

George Bernard Shaw would refer to this individual as an unreasonable man, but I prefer hacker.</comment></comment>


A single smartphone can DoS federal wiretaps - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/security/news/2009/11/a-single-smartphone-can-dos-federal-wiretaps.ars <comment><USER2> The funny part is that they could probably sue you for preventing their wiretap on you.</comment>


Lack of Taste in Games - <AUTHOR> http://deadpixel.co/2015/05/learn-to-play-a-lack-of-taste/

<comment><USER2> I'm re-playing Super Metroid from the Super Nintendo glory days. Part of the entire charm of the game is repeated exploring of previous areas of the game with new tools, always looking for new secrets and areas. I do not wish Nintendo had applied the advice "never make me repeat a level" when designing the game.

This game (along with sprawling later-generation Castlevania titles) helped spawn an entire popular genre of games, "Metroidvania" that have been very successful.

<comment><USER3> Isn't that different from "[repeating] an experience", though? No one complains that, in an RPG, you revisit areas of the game. But that's because frequently you're unlocking new content in a region when you revisit it. Those are new experiences, not a repeat of existing ones.

If you made me pass through a level a second time just because, well yeah, that'd be pretty annoying.

But having me pass through a level a second time with a whole new set of tools, skills, or experience to draw on (preferably making the old obstacles trivial to overcome so I'm not wasting my time... think being able to avoid repeating a tricky and frustrating platform sequence by using my fancy new jetpack), is IMO perfectly reasonable, and even brilliant, when it's done well.</comment></comment>


Maxwell's 1873 "A treatise on electricity and magnetism" - <AUTHOR> http://www.archive.org/details/electricandmagne01maxwrich

<comment><AUTHOR> Maxwell wrote this more than a 100 years ago, it's the basis of most of our current technology, and we can flip through the original text in PDF and marvel at it's visionary, technical or just its typographic beauty. Gotta love the Internet!</comment>


Is it really helpful to talk about a new generation of "digital natives?" - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/science-technology/technology-quarterly/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15582279

<comment><USER2> Good article. My kids have grown up surrounded by Internet-enabled computers and, while they're skillful with them and I've always boggled at the notion of people for whom Google has always been available, they're not qualitatively different from anybody else I know.

Idiocy like the cited suggestion of having professors deliver their lectures on Facebook (because God knows lectures are _just like_ idle chat) has always bothered me. It just makes me think the suggester has no fricking clue about the Internet, but wants to be seen as a visionary.

</comment><comment><USER3> I work with a great number of people who are younger then me. between 10 to 15 years younger.There is a great number of them that treat computers with suspicion, if i bring up the terminal (on osx) they are often in shock.

A good amount of younger people, are not tinkerers, and i feel tinkering is the impetus that drives many people who become developers or other IT oriented workers.

The curious thing for me, is that i have an unverified suspicion it was different before, there was less of this suspicion when i was young, probably because the assumption that "it just works" was viewed as marketing, and not reality (blow on those cartridges, and DJ on the floppy disk to skip bad sectors, you remember that?)

</comment><comment><USER4> This false meme is one of my pet peeves, nice to see a typically restrained takedown from the Economist.

The comments are good too.

<comment><USER5> > The comments are good too.

 _The only difference between generations is that my students write incoherent sentences on paper and the internet._

I have this sinking feeling that an average ninth-grade graduate of fifty years ago (basically what it took to be a secretary, if I've got my bearings right) was about as competent and educated as today's college sophomores (present company excepted, of course).

So, extrapolating from two dubious data points, we're extending childhood by 5 years every 50 ... 29-year old "minors" coming up by the end of the century ;-)

<comment><USER6> Any real data to support this? Would sure be interesting to know.

<comment><USER5> Education schools may have the data, but it's probably in their best interest to bury it deep ;-)

A search for "infantilization" may get you something. I hit this: <http://infantilization.blogspot.com/> \- apparently short lived, may be a start.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "A recent study by the Pew Research Center, an American think-tank, found that internet users aged 18-24 were the least likely of all age groups to e-mail a public official or make an online political donation."

E-mailing public officials is a decent point. However, I don't necessarily think you can hold them not making donations against them. The 18-24 age bracket is probably one of the poorest as well.

<comment><USER8> Young people are generally not politically engaged, either.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think 'digital native' is actually a pretty good way to classify a member of my generation - I've never not had a personal computer in my home. I would imagine this has greatly shaped the way I locate and consume information.

However, what the term 'digital native' tends to connote is an intricate and intuitive notion of the underlaying principals of modern technologies (how does a computer work, what is the internet) - and this is certainly not the case for nearly all members of the "Net Generation". For most, technology is a black box; just as mysterious as it is to our parents - it's just more familiar.

In my experience, most kids' technological proficiency extends to Microsoft Office. Most have very little interest in actually understanding the technology they use.

<comment><USER4> In my experience I find that there are _at least_ 50 people misusing Office for every one using it in any sane manner. I would be surprised if this was any different for the so-called _digital natives_ , (of which I am at the older end of the age range).

The other appalling thing about the "digital native" meme is that it originally had a very specific meaning (basically that we should rip out and replace the entire educational infrastructure because the existing system is very broken--which I generally agree with--but only because kids today are in some way different from their elders--which I don't) which has been lost and now it's basically meaningless and reduces down to something like "computers are hard, they scare me, kids today scare me too."</comment></comment>


Oracle set to merge Java virtual machines - <AUTHOR> http://www.networkworld.com/news/2010/021810-oracle-set-to-merge-java.html

<comment><USER2> Sigh.

Step 1: Write a (proprietary) hybrid VM merging Hotspot and JRockit with lots of difficult-to-implement, succulent features.

Step 2: Modify the JDK 7 spec to include these features.

Step 3: Wag tail as OpenJDK slips into obsolescence.

<comment><USER3> It's really a shame that Java has fallen under the shadow of Oracle just as alternative JVM languages were starting to get really good.

<comment><USER2> Agreed. Of course, people were content with Java because it was open source... could this divert mindshare into a truly open source system? LLVM or Parrot, perhaps?

Here's to hoping it happens in a constructive way rather than becoming so fragmented it's no good.

<comment><USER3> A lot of the value of the JVM comes from the libraries and tooling that have grown around it over the years. Replacing both the JVM and all that support code is going to be a hell of a lot of work.

I hate to say it but a lot seems to depend on the ability of Oracle to make the smart move here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> _"It's not an easy problem taking the best of each, figuring out what the long-term convergence plan is."_

That's an understatement. The complexity of merging two fairly distinct VMs while trying to maintain feature parity with both separate previous versions, and taking the best features of both? Eighteen months seems optimistic. I also hope they have some incredibly good way of producing a combined test suite, because this seems like the most promising way of introducing myriad subtle bugs I can imagine.

<comment><USER5> I doubt it was the developers who are responsible for the merging who came up with an 18 month estimate. Invariably it's not going to happen on time or if the 18 month milestone is hit, it'll stay alpha for quite some time. JDK7 + merging of 2 distinct VMs? Sheesh...

<comment><USER6> Oracle certainly has money to throw at the problem. The question whether the problem is one that can be solved by throwing lots of money at it will be answered in 18 months.

<comment><AUTHOR> Throwing money at it probably won't solve it.

<comment><USER7> ... especially considering that quite a few of Sun's star engineers have already left.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> So what would happen if a large company in Redmond hired/contracted a bunch of ex-Sun engineers to make a java->.Net compiler so all this stuff ran on the CLR

As Oracle makes it harder and harder to use the JVM people are forced into the waiting arms of MSFT

<comment><USER9> <http://www.ikvm.net/> ??

<comment><USER10> It's VMs all the way down!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Where does this put OpenJDK? I doubt Oracle is thinking of open sourcing JRockit parts...

<comment><USER12> What was the relationship between OpenJDK and HotSpot ?

<comment><USER13> OpenJDK contains the HotSpot JVM

<http://openjdk.java.net/groups/hotspot/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I present you teh plan:

(Hotspot+JRockit)-Zombie = Enterprise JDK with paywall

OpenJDK = Free JDK without the fun/fast/secure/... stuff

</comment><comment><USER15> Anyone knows how this would affect JRuby?

<comment><AUTHOR> Or any of the other JVM-based languages such as Scala, Groovy, Clojure...?

<comment><USER7> It may become impossible to get the newest JVM under an open-source license, which would mean that they wouldn't benefit (much) from Sun/Oracle's future development efforts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Just a blah-blah-blah.</comment>


Ask HN: How can I make YouTube load very slow and buffer a lot? - <AUTHOR> My son spends an insane number of hours daily on Youtube. How can I slow it down and make it buffer a lot so he hopefully gives up? <comment><USER2> I suggest that you have a direct and honest conversation with your son about a habit that you believe to be harmful.

<comment><USER3> ^ This is good advice.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I tried an honest conversation but he is back to his old habits. I like to see him happy and I like him to feel unrestricted but he watches these teenagers everyday and some of them speak pretty bad and do bad stuff. All I want to keep him away from this.

<comment><USER4> I have an 18yo boy and 2 pre-teen daughters. Kids will do what you allow them to do, youtube isn't the issue cause he'd just find a different site/game etc.

I am no yard stick for anyone to measure to, but I would suggest that your desire to have him feel unrestricted is the issue. Kids need boundaries, they need restrictions, they need discipline (not beatings, just rules and limits). Do they complain about it? Sure, they do. But they crave it, because without it there is no guidance to show them what is right and what is wrong. Also, how do they develop healthy habits unless you push them to have them and take away negative habits? They won't, they'll do what is fun and easy because most kids are all about instant gratification, although there are those that are just internally super self disciplined. I am pretty positive you don't let him write on walls or swear at adults or be disrespectful to you, so why is computer time different?

For my kids, they get a limited amount of electronic time per day, e.g. iPods, iPads, PC etc. For the pre-teens, they get no more then 90 minutes during the weekday and no more then 4 hours on a weekend day for "electronic" time. It may sound harsh, but that forces them to choose what they want to do with that time wisely. As the get older, I'll expand/adjust it. Also, I don't include them doing homework assignments in that time, that is always allowed. I also allow them to research something if they have a question etc, it isn't like I hammer them at the exact time, but it is a limit that they respect. And they always ask before starting up a PC etc. Even TV is monitored, but not strictly limited. But by doing so they choose to go outside and play, they choose to still make up games to play etc.

For my 18 year old, he had the same type of restrictions too, but as he got older they of course got less and less to the point I let him do what he wants now. He spends too much time in my opinion on youtube, hulu, netflix etc. But he has great grades and has a social life etc, plus now he's an adult with a new job and college coming soon, so he's gotta figure out some new balance.

<comment><USER5> I am not trying to tell you how to raise your children of course but here my two cents.

I am 21 and growing up my parents also limited my siblings and I's computer time. They'd go as far as hiding the mouse or the power cords. I don't blame them BUT at the time (14-18) I used the computer to experiment with programming and it seems like my peers who did the same but had "unlimited" access to a computer had a great headstart.

So I think the time kids spend on the computer should factor in what they use it for. I'd secretly monitor their activity to determine that.

<comment><USER4> It is a fair point which is why I allow them to use it for research or learning without many limits.

But honestly even if they started programming and doing that type of activity I'd still pull the plug on them daily at some point. I did to my son until he hit around 16-17.

Everything in moderation is generally ok or neutral. Anything to excess almost always comes at a price not worth paying.

Just my opinion of course but a computer can't teach you to deal with adversity or people. Sure you can read about it but doing is always a better teacher.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Youtube is not the problem, it's the symptom. You're looking for a technical solution to a psychological problem, it won't work imo.

But I realize I'm not helping you much here, good luck ;-)

<comment><USER7> > psychological problem

I would suggest also possibly a social and or economic problem. There might even be a "magic bullet" where a single change can reap huge rewards. More allowance, less allowance, different school, after school program, later wake up time, the variables are myriad.

I would suggest looking into kinesthetic intelligences (sp?). Moving around. Sports, music, karate, track and field, etc. Positive and creative physical discipline.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I am on the phone so I haven't tested these.

[http://www.net-peeker.com](http://www.net-peeker.com)

[https://www.netlimiter.com](https://www.netlimiter.com)

[http://freenet.mcnabhosting.com/python/pyshaper/](http://freenet.mcnabhosting.com/python/pyshaper/)

Like others have pointed out if this is just a symptom of another problem you'll only be teaching him how to be more patient and thus result in more wasted hours.

</comment><comment><USER8> I setup the wifi AP to block youtube for his computer for certain time period.

Also, I reward him with game time / RC air plane building project time with me if he did certain % of Khan Academy each weekend. He's 4th grade and finished 35% of 6th grade math himself and did some javascript program course on Khan Academy.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting, my son is in the same grade, 4. Would you mind sharing the Khan courses your son follows? Maybe I can get him do some coding. I'm a coder myself and I know this can be fun. Thanks.</comment></comment>


Goat Invasion in GIMP - <AUTHOR> http://gimpfoo.de/2012/04/17/goat-invasion-in-gimp/

<comment><USER2> Well this is new. Some developers inadvertently convert most of an app to an entirely new way of doing things, and without knowing it make everything backward compatible?

I think I can count on one hand the number of times I've heard of something like this happening...</comment>


Why didn't the Universe become a black hole? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/starts-with-a-bang/ask-ethan-50-why-didnt-the-universe-become-a-black-hole-f4da68466e21 <comment><USER2> Summary: Because the energy of the Big Bang was moving, and the Schwarzschild radius is for stationary mass.

And I'm sorry, but this explains _NOTHING_. Even for moving mass the density was enough to make a black hole.

So presumably the density never actually got that high, or there is some other explanation we are not aware of.

He should have just said: We don't really know. Because we don't. Why is there this requirement that science be able to explain everything?

Is it because it's held up as an alternative to religion so people are petrified that if there are any holes people will say "sciences knows nothing, back to religion"?

(Now that I've setup my strawman I'm going to knock it down.)

First of all Science and Religion are not competing for adherents. You can believe that God created the universe and still want to investigate how he did it, and what the details are. Even if you believe the Big Bang never actually happened (i.e. it's an off-camera backstory), you can still be interested in investigating it because if God made it look like that then it's important.

Second the whole point of science is saying "I don't know", otherwise it's a religion, not science.

<comment><USER3> It's actually not that at all.

This image tells it all: [https://d262ilb51hltx0.cloudfront.net/max/953/1*QXypiHUwjJZr...](https://d262ilb51hltx0.cloudfront.net/max/953/1*QXypiHUwjJZrMtdhAQcpZA.png)

What he was saying is, if there was just 1 gram per cubic cm less mass in the original universe, then it would expand too quickly to form any complex structures and the universe as we know it would not exist. And if it was just a few grams per cubic cm _more_ massive, then it would collapse immediately as in the original question.

The reason our universe did not immediately collapse is not a mystery. It was a tiny amount less massive than would be required for such a collapse.

The reason it was perfectly on the line is no mystery whatsoever: if it were one gram over, it would collapse, and we would not exist, and thus we would not be asking the question. Same if it were one gram less; the universe would be too sparse for life to organize.

This is not a miracle or a mystery, it's simply fact. Billions or trillions of universes might have sprung into existence over billions or trillions or perhaps even infinite aeons of time, each with different masses and parameters of physics.

The one that produced an observer was observed. That's us, and that's it. No miracle, no mystery.

It's like someone winning a lottery. The chances of a specific individual winning are next to nothing, but the chances of _anyone_ winning are 100%. If a news crew then goes and finds the winner, they will surely find an astounded, surprised, and very lucky feeling person. But the news crew will not be surprised, since their observation is entirely expected and even guaranteed.

Humanity is both the winner and the news crew in this situation, by the simple property of our ability to observe our own existence.

This is called the anthropic principle. It also applies with zero modification to the question of why Earth appears to be such a perfect planet to support human life, especially as we begin to discover that there are literally trillions of planets in our universe. We should not be surprised that we observe the one that happened to have the conditions conducive to the evolution of a sentient observer. But you could be forgiven for feeling very lucky that you're one of them.

<comment><USER4> I like this sentence...

> The one that produced an observer was observed.

I wonder if it applies in other contexts, specifically, er, quantum decoherence?

<comment><USER5> You need to be careful with this line of reasoning if you mean what I think you mean.

I've found that when speaking with laypeople about quantum decoherence, a very common misconception comes from the use of the word 'observer' (see: [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0399877/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0399877/) ). If you say "A quantum system can be in a superposition until its wave function is collapsed when it's observed.", a layperson can easily interpret that to mean that a sentient being needs to look at and take note of the system for it to count as being observed, when in fact all that is required is that an external particle interact with the system and carry away some information (energy).

There's nothing special about humans (and their ability to observe) in this context.

<comment><USER3> Yes. Observer in my post above specifically refers to a sentient being; observer in quantum computing specifically does not. However given the context, the two are (very) roughly similar. One could (again, very roughly) think of the universe as a giant quantum computer solving for the variables that lead to sentience. The observers are inside the system in that case, but it's the same idea: create every possible state and select for the solution that solves the problem.

Only an analogy, of course.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "one part in 10^24, which is kind of like taking two human beings, counting the number of electrons in them, and finding that they're identical to within _one_ electron"

I hate to be pedantic... wait, I LOVE to be pedantic.

If you consider a human being to be a 50kg bag of water, that's 2750 moles of water, or ~1.7 * 10^27 molecules. Each molecule has ten electrons, so this factoid is off by about four orders of magnitude. More if the person had a big bowl of electrons for breakfast that day.

<comment><USER7> I'm not sure a 'bowl of electrons' would be that great an example either ;) (density, etc)...

Just being pedantic!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Superficially interesting article, but it didn't actually answer the question very well. As near as I can tell from this article, the answer is basically "because it was expanding". It then went into a discussion about the possible behaviors of the universe over time, i.e. expanding indefinitely, having its expansion rate become static, or collapsing. But this discussion is tangential to the question.

I also don't like how the discussion at the end was phrased. It started talking about fine tuning and making a mathematical argument as to the chances that our universe would have exactly the amount of mass it does (which I believe makes the assumption that the mass in our universe is random, though it was never stated). The problem with this is it's basically the argument that our universe must have been made by some external entity (i.e. "God"), without actually saying as much. I say this because there's no other good reason to try and make claims about the statistical likelihood of our universe having the initial conditions it did. And of course, it completely failed to mention that _of course_ the universe's conditions are just right for it to have produced stars and planets and eventually life, because otherwise we couldn't be talking about it. There's a pithy name for this, but I forget what it's called. It also failed to mention the trivial solution to getting a universe that's fine-tuned just right, assuming random initial conditions, that doesn't require invoking any kind of supernatural being: infinite universes.

</comment><comment><USER9> > _What's remarkable is that the amount of fine-tuning that needed to occur so > that the Universe's expansion rate and matter-and-energy density matched so > well so that we didn't either recollapse immediately or fail to form even > the basic building-blocks of matter "_

Or perhaps there is an infinite number of Universes and big bangs out there, and ours was just one of the possibilities, while billion other big bangs "failed" in recreating our conditions.

<comment><USER10> A question: So how far more complex, and fine tunned must be the outer universe so it could fork inner universes? Because then the outer universe purpose is build universes. And must be solid enough to not be corrupted by the inner universes badly laws. So, a operating system?.

This make the answer far more complex, just to try to avoid the fine tunned of the universe, methinks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> IMHO, that was a very long-winded non-explanation. Basically the "answer" comes down to this:

1\. _We really don 't know_. We don't understand the rules of physics well enough to model the behaviour of stuff in such "extreme" situations.

2\. If you still insist on asking that question, I could give you a plausible explanation of why the question is not really the right thing to ask: "small" black holes tend to evaporate very quickly through the process of Hawking radiation -- in effect producing photons, matter, and every possible kind of "stuff". So even if there was something akin to a black hole, early in the universe, (and if we could apply our rudimentary understanding of gravity and quantum mechanics to even talk about black holes and Hawking radiation) it wouldn't trap the stuff for long... in fact it would be spewing out stuff in copious amounts, and very quickly at that.

</comment><comment><USER12> Doesn't this question have something to do with uniform distribution of matter and energy in the early universe ? The details elude me right now, but I heard a talk/panel discussion about this - basically the hypothesis presented was that in the early universe, matter had a very uniform distribution as it was confined to a very tony space. This means a black hole could not have formed since there was no point whose gravitational force was greater than any other point.

</comment><comment><USER13> Maybe the OP is saying that at the big bang, there was our present universe, and it was small, maybe the size of our solar system, maybe a baseball, maybe smaller.

But, whatever, it was small, and, most important, that's all there was. There was nothing more. It was not a very dense, very hot chunk of matter-energy, whatever, inside some larger space. Instead, that's all the space there was.

Then the OP is saying that in that context, where the whole universe was just that ball, the old arguments on forming a black hole don't hold. Instead, what happened was, space itself, that is the whole universe itself, explosively expanded. And it's still expanding.

So, what was that universe 'inside' and what has it been expanding 'into'? Either these are poorly posed questions, or we don't know, or, for the question in the OP, it doesn't matter.

Maybe that's what was going on in the OP. Maybe.

<comment><USER14> That then begs the question, could you destroy a black hole?

If we had the ability to alter the fabric of spacetime, could we shrink that fabric so that the black hole either imploded or exploded?

<comment><USER13> I thought that the question was, why didn't the universe collapse into one black hole right at the beginning?

With the argument I tried to outline, there was no black hole. The reason is, in short, the _situation_ was not like where black holes are formed since then.

The big difference is that, (1), now, the matter-energy for a black hole is in some region of space in our universe where that region is surrounded by the rest of the universe, and (2), then, the matter-energy filled the entire universe that there was, even if it was only the size of a baseball. Then, that matter-energy filled the _whole thing_. For that whole thing to have created some small black holes, the thing would have had to have partitioned into separate chunks. But apparently what happened is that the space expanded explosively, really before anything could collapse. Or, maybe the expansion was so fast that quarks, as close together as in protons now, soon were being separated faster than the speed of light and, thus, had no choice but to generate more quarks and, thus, more matter. We're talking really _explosively_ rapid expansion.

Or maybe the gravitational field of some matter-energy wanted to propagate at the speed of light, reach out, and connect with more matter-energy, but before that gravitational field had moved even 1 mm, space had expanded so much that the other matter-energy to be reached had already move to a few light years away. We're talking _explosive_ , so fast that speed of light is so slow as to be nearly standing still and irrelevant. At least that is my intuitive understanding.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> If our universe was inside a "black hole" seen from the outside, how would we ever know?

For al we know the percieved timescale of the big bang and the time since it is just timedialation, and that black hole might even exists in more than 3D.

</comment><comment><USER16> What if the universe _is_ a black hole, with a very big (and growing?) Schwarzschild radius? That nothing can escape a black hole does not mean nothing can't exist within a black hole ...

</comment><comment><USER17> Maybe there are millions of other fecund universes where their big bangs did fail for lack of enough mass or enough energy to move fast enough or too fast to form atomic bonds.

So just like life in our galaxy may be a one in million chance, our universe it itself may be a one in a million chance.

</comment><comment><USER18> "Because while the laws of physics set the rules for how a system evolves over time, it still needs a set of initial conditions to get started. "

I thought it wouldn't evolve deterministically? So what is he talking about here?

</comment><comment><USER19> Related video:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XkV6IpV2Y0&list=PLFs4vir_Ws...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XkV6IpV2Y0&list=PLFs4vir_WsTwwb2zqmtE2WTEFdc7AQHnc)

</comment><comment><USER20> So basically,is he saying that the universe we are in is an "unlikely outcome" of a phenomenon? So basically the universe was created "by chance"?

<comment><USER21> I think it's not a probabilistic matter, but more a way of framing Occam's razor. If you allow enough "tunable" variables with just the right values you can easily make a theory fit any observation. For this reason theories including variables requiring a lot of precision to generate our universe are looked with distrust by physicists, I believe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> simpler question - the Universe's end game - given currently observed dynamics does it lead to one gigantic black hole inside very thinly expanded very cold vacuum (with CMB temperature practically 0 instead of 2.7 degrees K today) or to many of such black holes and what would be their distribution?

<comment><USER23> Black holes eventually evaporate due to Hawking radiation. The current thinking for the very-long-term fate of the universe is the "Dark Era:" nothing except photons, neutrinos, and the occasional electron or positron.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Pretending like we even have a clue of what happened at the beginning of the universe... blah...</comment>


TalkTalk hack: Police arrest second teen - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-34675235 <comment><USER2> The fact that the 2 arrested individuals are teenagers is all you need to know about the complexity of the attack on Talk Talk.

This was a script kiddy attack, no more no less, a lot of people claimed responsibility from ISIS to chancers requesting ransoms but ultimately this was due to talk talk having incredibly poor security. That they have recently been hacked a few times just confirms that they are a soft target with lots of customers data.

The fact these kids are kids is not the defining reason this was a simple attack, there are some smart kids out there, but I imagine anyone with some decent skills would have obfuscated their tracks enough to not get caught. These are the LHF of hacks.</comment>


Coders who don't read - <AUTHOR> http://www.supercoders.com.au/blog/coderswhodontread.shtml

<comment><USER2> _The answers to this are often vague and non specific; "Oh, err, umm, well I read Slashdot. I just go to articles. I don't go to any specific sites._

Kinda sad, really. The author decries the death of reading and yet doesn't understand the utility of a news aggregator.

</comment><comment><USER3> You can use an aggregator and still be able to name a dozen blogs you regularly read. Not even to mention books that have influenced you.

There's one other clear indicator: Are you active in a user group or are you a contributor to an open source project?

<comment><USER4> I use several aggregators and read a lot of tech stuff, yet I can't name a single blog I read regularly, since I don't. I've yet to find a blog which posts consistently good stuff which isn't covered by the aggregators I hit. Why should I keep track of blogs when other people will do it for me.</comment></comment>


Serverless Frameworks on Kubernetes? We Deploy OpenFaaS, Kubeless – Suggestions? - <AUTHOR> https://banzaicloud.com/blog/openfaas/ <comment><AUTHOR> We use both mainly because of architectural differences, but would love to learn what are others using on Kubernetes and what is their experience?</comment>


I Downloaded the Information That Facebook Has on Me - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/11/technology/personaltech/i-downloaded-the-information-that-facebook-has-on-me-yikes.html <comment><USER2> I just downloaded my Facebook data archive. _It is incomplete._ They are leaving out one of the creepiest aspects: Your search history.

Click in the search bar on Facebook. On the right is an Edit button. This shows the search history they keep on you -- all the people you've looked up. _Says a lot about you._ It goes back years, unless you clear it. (And who knows what "clear" really means.)

This would be a rather unsettling thing to see in your archive. They totally left it out.

<comment><USER3> More missing:

\- Likes on everything I liked on FB and external

\- Shares via Share Buttons on external websites

\- Websites I visited and where I was tracked because of Social Media buttons

\- Time spent on FB

\- Status updates I changed or dismissed

\- Mouse hovering behavior to train the feed

\- Data like my phone number that wasn't put there by me but correlated through my friends address books

\- Metadata through WhatsApp acquisition

\- ...

<comment><USER4> Do you really think they're obligated to provide you absolutely _everything_ they know about you? I don't.

I would say if they provide everything you've _directly_ provided, they've fulfilled their "obligation."

Obligation is in quotes, because I don't actually believe they should even be required to do this.

<comment><USER2> _> I would say if they provide everything you've directly provided, they've fulfilled their "obligation."_

Post likes, shares and search history are all examples of data you've directly provided that they're omitting from the export.

As for your principles, when you ask the FBI for their file on you their obligation is not limited to data you've directly provided.

<comment><USER4> According to [https://www.facebook.com/help/405183566203254?helpref=faq_co...](https://www.facebook.com/help/405183566203254?helpref=faq_content) likes, shares, and searches are included.

The FBI is subject to FOIA. FB is not, obviously.

<comment><USER2> No, that actually says it's _not_ included in the Downloaded Info.

It's in the Activity Log, which is omitted from the download. This is not obvious and misleading. In fact someone asked whether they could download their activity and Facebook directed them to the Downloaded Info, which omits it.[1]

As for FOIA, you're missing the point. Of course FB is not subject to such a law. The whole debate right now is whether it should be. If you request an organization's "file" on you, it should be comprehensive and not selectively omit the creepiest stuff.

[1] [https://www.facebook.com/help/community/question/?id=6345563...](https://www.facebook.com/help/community/question/?id=634556393223841)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _Why should Facebook remember the people I've cut off from my life?_

For one reason, so they aren't recommended to you as a possible friend in the future. Seems like a minor thing to be upset about in a possibility space of major things.

<comment><USER6> Seems reasonable. I can see the <insert perpetually outraged millennial news site> headline now: "An open letter to Facebook: How dare you recommended I be friends with my rapist"

<comment><USER7> To be fair, that situation sounds like one that would be better served by using the Block option, rather than just inference from the defriending action.

<comment><USER8> But that's still "data" that needs to be maintained for you.

<comment><USER9> A "block" list is different from a "people you unfriended" list. I see the point of keeping track in order to not show those "on this day" posts of someone you want out of your life, but the block feature was made for that purpose and should be used for these situations.

<comment><USER2> I am overall critical of FB (see my top comment on the omission of search history) but in this case I can see this as a good faith design decision. Yes, ideally users should distinguish between:

\- "block" (keep track of them so they don't appear in your feed)

\- "unfriend" (erase the connection; they might reappear)

But this also adds complexity which can lead to UX failures. Probably a lot of users were using "unfriend" when they really want to block someone. So then their abuser shows up in their memories and Facebook suggests they become friends or whatever and then there's a scandal because look how insensitive FB is.

So the UX designer's choices then are, try to educate all your users about the distinction here and get victims to use a block -- which is not going to be 100% successful -- or err on the safe side and just make "unfriend" work more like a block. I can see them making the latter design decision in good faith, and maybe I would too.

Note: It is _very common_ in more technical circles like HN to just implicitly blame the user here for not understanding the options. I.e. if less than 100% of users understand "unfriend" is not a "block" then, well, they should pay more attention. (This is very common in security discussions.) But good UX design means owning the outcome and how users interact with your interface in the real world. And so simplicity often is the better route, even at the cost of some tradeoffs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> By contrast, I found that my Facebook dump was extremely devoid of information. Sure, a few advertisers have my data (but much fewer than in the article, < 200!). Beyond that, the dump contains very little information that I didn't explicitly provide to Facebook (such as Timeline posts, images, etc). At most it assigned a very broad category to me ("Established Adult Life" — OK, duh).

Of note, it did _not_ contain any record of phone calls or SMS conversations I've had. This is probably because I didn't give Facebook permission to collect this data, when asked.

Of course I'm under no illusion that this is the only data that Facebook has on me. Based on my (even sporadic) activity they must be able to infer lots more (and then there's all that tracker data). They just don't make the interesting bits downloadable.

<comment><USER6> For a while I had enabled Messenger to handle texts on my phone, because it kept nagging me to do so, and also the one built in to the phone was terrible. So that means for a time they saw all my github/gmail authenticator login codes, delivery notifications, etc. I'm sure that's all somewhere.

<comment><USER11> I can't even imagine how terrible that phone app was that Facebook messenger was a viable alternative. The floating head thing was truly awful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> _On a brighter note, I downloaded an archive of my LinkedIn data. The data set was less than half a megabyte and contained exactly what I had expected: spreadsheets of my LinkedIn contacts and information I had added to my profile._

Somehow I'm unwilling to believe that Linkedin is really an exception here. More likely they don't include all the data they have on you.

I downloaded my facebook data, and the only thing that I was surprised at is that they actually give you so much of the data they have on you. I expected them to redact most of it. Is it really reasonable to think that they don't have even more data than they let you download? They're not required by law to give it all to you, are they?

<comment><USER13> Linkedin is worse than Facebook in terms of privacy. So many dark patterns on their site - someday their reckoning will come just as facebooks. Easier target too since it could hurt people's jobs and careers.

<comment><USER14> When Microsoft acquired LinkedIn I suspected they will go for the top talent with this. Think about it:

Based on users' data and behavior, one can anticipate whether or not he/she is going to quit/leave his/her current job. Microsoft recruiters can then swoop in and offer him/her a job.

Or for example, Microsoft can essentially map all the top IT talents network and use this to its advantage.

The list goes on...

<comment><USER13> I had forgot the MS acquired it! Honestly it's probably less bad than it was. Maybe in a few years we'll hear about all the scrubbing they had to do to keep MS safe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I also downloaded my data and deleted my account.

I have known for a long time, even before the scandal, that my time on the socalled social media site was coming to an end.

Being a software engineer I believe I am aware of a good deal of what is going on behind the scenes at Facebook, in terms of collecting data etc.

Talking to people which has no technical insight around privacy, and what data is collected as such, frustrates me to a whole new level than before.

It amazes me that people don't sit down for a couple of hours and tries to understand how the company works and what their business model is based on. And what data is collected from them, with or without their knowledge.

I am happy to be off and I will try to convince my peers to understand why.

<comment><USER16> If it were only social media companies that might be significant, but every company we interact with is doing the same things these days. For example, did you know that employers are selling weekly paycheck info to credit bureaus without consent? Unbelievable it's not illegal.

For some strange reason Americans only care about privacy regarding medical info, but everything else is totally up for grabs. Never understood that dichotomy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> >More important, the pieces of data that I found objectionable, like the record of people I had unfriended, could not be removed from Facebook, either.

The article somewhat alludes to this practice as nefarious so that Facebook can serve better ads. Through a different view, one where you don't assume the worst, you could argue they keep a record of who you unfriend, so they don't recommend them as a friend again.

We are currently in a place where everything Facebook does is bad. Let's be a bit more rationale at times.

</comment><comment><USER18> Sorry but I fear the horse has already bolted.

Even if you were able to delete yourself entirely from Facebook. You have been "consumed" already.

Your data was valuable in at least 2 ways: \- Monetize to companies such as Cambridge Analytics. \- Train Facebook's AI models using it.

What was probably happening, was that Facebook was selling your data to other companies so that they can train AI models/make conclusions etc. In addition, Facebook itself is using this data to train AI, make conclusions etc.

Facebook will no longer be able to Monetize to companies as much after this media.

However, and this is the big one, if they use your data to train their models to target individuals (and therefore "take advantage" of them), then they can claim that your data was not used. And then they sell the models, or the results of the models. Its like indirectly selling your data.

This could be a big win for Facebook, because if Facebook does not dish out our information to other companies, it will *uniquely" be placed to provide such services to the rest of the world.

And this will be almost impossible to regulate.

<comment><USER19> > then they sell the models, or the results of the models

Meh, the models will be worthless in a few months, and that is if they aren't already worthless right now.

All those black boxes with magic coefficients from inputs to outputs are inherently unmaintainable. Toss them a black swan, and it all goes pear- shaped.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Too bad this is only a small portion of what Facebook collects. For example, it doesn't include information they have purchased from third parties.

<comment><USER21> do they do that?

<comment><USER22> It appears they've been doing it since 2012: [https://www.engadget.com/2016/12/30/facebook-buys-data-on- us...](https://www.engadget.com/2016/12/30/facebook-buys-data-on-users- offline-habits-for-better-ads/)

Assuming this is up-to-date this tells you who they buy from: [https://www.facebook.com/help/494750870625830](https://www.facebook.com/help/494750870625830)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> It's interesting to note that the data Google stored was more alarming, though was taken up at the bottom of the article and with less detail. It also didn't make the headline. This is because bashing Facebook gets more views currently. This is a good example of how media bias can distort opinion, while maintaining that all data stated is accurate.

In other words, it's not enough that media is accurate. Bias is just as important.

</comment><comment><USER24> An additional concern is an attacker phishing a user's email/Facebook password and downloading this dump to aid with identity theft or blackmail.

</comment><comment><USER25> No, they downloaded the portion Facebook is willing to allow them to download. This is absolutely not everything Facebook has.

Note the wording here, which is similar to the misleading wording Zuckerberg used to avoid honestly answering certain questions in recent days:

> "allows people to see and take out all the information _they've put into > Facebook_."

This doesn't include data such as:

\- Data your "friends" have "put into Facebook" about you, which could include SMS/call records of your communications with those friends and various other details.

\- Data Facebook purchases or collects from data brokers or public records

\- Data Facebook collects on the broader web via "like" buttons, etc

<comment><USER6> Exactly. I downloaded mine and there were entire chat histories missing, and some of the ones I explored were incomplete. I could see more data in the actual browser chat interface than what was in the download. It didn't include posts I made on other people pages, all the likes, shares, and the thousands of gifs I've sh!tposted. It also did not include data from the pages I manage/own.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> These dumps of all the stuff that is in the service about you is super dangerous. If they get your account they can then download everything you have ever posted almost effortlessly. I can imagine these will be on sale in the dark web.

</comment><comment><USER27> Missing from the list is any way to find out what some of these listed entities mean. For example, under "Advertisers who uploaded a contact list with your information" is claimed "Nebula Mars". What exactly is that? I can't google it and get any useful result. It both meaningless in its terminally symbolic state and deeply meaningful as an indicator of where my data is truly living in the world.

</comment><comment><USER28> I left Facebook years ago for this kind of privacy scraping antisocial greed (and LinkedIn et al), but one thing I'm curious about with this latest 'revelation' is whether or not you can get information about your shadow profile.

Presumably that doesn't mean an email address, they actually collate information about you the individual - what's the process of having a look at that?

</comment><comment><USER29> You downloaded the information Facebook shared with you when you asked for the information they have on you.

Tracking cookies, personal profiling, and several other trails would probably never be exposed.

</comment><comment><USER30> I wish that I could download all the information that Google has on me, but I was stupid and I asked them to hide it from me...

<comment><USER31> [https://takeout.google.com](https://takeout.google.com)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I did this last night and the only surprising thing about the data they had were contact details from ~8 years ago.

</comment><comment><USER21> Can the US government please make such a tool for foreign citizens?

<comment><USER6> If you believe Conspiracy Theories™ , and have a comfy tinfoil hat, this is it. There was something called Lifelog. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_LifeLog](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_LifeLog)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Can anyone explain to me why FB and Google surveillance of me does not violate the 4th amendment? "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated..."

<comment><USER34> Because Facebook is not a governmental agency for starters...

<comment><USER33> The amendment doesn't say anything about the government agencies. It says about the unreasonable search.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> >The social network had even kept a permanent record of the roughly 100 people I had deleted from my friends list over the last 14 years, including my exes.

How useful is the info one can even get from this?

I mean even if you interpret unfriending as enemying (which is a leap), possibly revealing interests you _don 't_ have, associations you _don 't_ have.... it's a lot weaker (to advertisers) than positive information.

<comment><USER36> As mentioned elsewhere in this thread, it's probably so they don't recommend those connections in the future. I think the average user would be much more upset at facebook recommending they add their ex as a friend (because of course you have a lot of mutual connections, tagged pictures, and other flags that might indicate a strong bond) than just keeping a black list of people you've chosen to remove.

<comment><USER35> My bad; that's social media 101.</comment></comment></comment>


One woman's stolen identity exposed a system of exam fraud - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-53316895 <comment><USER3> This is enraging. Identity theft in the United States can be a headache, sure, but in most cases the financial institutions are the ones taking the brunt of the damage, and even that is probably covered by some sort of insurance scheme. This woman had her entire life stripped away from her, not to mention making her doubt her own abilities by implying she "failed" the exam.

How do these people live with themselves, especially the daughter of the CCP official who assumed the stolen identity? I'm sure financial criminals justify their behavior by telling themselves that in the end corporations suffer the cost of the theft, but in this case a single individual was forced to bear the brunt of this fraud for the rest of her life considering how important and life altering a good exam score is in China.

It boggles the mind that people can live with themselves and can carry on living with such guilt. Then again, maybe it's my western sense of morality that tells me the perpetrator should feel guilt. Perhaps they don't...

<comment><USER4> The western sense of morality didn't stop the admissions scandals to all top western universities like Harvard Stanford and so on.

Chinese universities as far as I know don't have things like institutionalized legacy admissions.

I'd like people to reconsider the view that western societies are somehow inherently purer or less corrupt. Often it takes different forms.

This can be seen in the way sanctions are imposed for companies using slave labor in Xinjiang but there is not nearly as much reflection on the vast amounts of prison labor in the US mostly of people unjustly given heavy sentences. In fact the number of people in American prisons rivals the number of people in Soviet gulags. Yet there is no shortage of sanctimony or moral rectitude.

Anything wrong with western society is an unfortunate flaw in an otherwise just system but anything wrong outside the west is a civilizational failing that can only be fixed by adopting some theoretical enlightenment values which the west itself struggles to practice without hypocrisy.

We can criticize others and ourselves without essentializing or casting ourselves as inherently moral.

<comment><USER5> Yep I'm sure that their universities have no concept of letting in children of a major donor or political figure with influence.

<comment><USER6> Chinese universities do have this concept -- certain students are marked VIP, so that professors will know.

But the concept of granting _admission_ based on such status, as opposed to extending special treatment to an admitted student, is very much muted.

There are ways of getting in to a university without passing the gaokao threshold that would ordinarily be required. But those generally involve receiving a point boost that the college has the official discretion to offer, or doing well on an alternative test -- someone scoring 303 out of 750 would obviously not pass a lower discretionary threshold either.

Note that when "officials in Shandong say new processes are now in place to make sure such incidents will not happen again", they are correct -- it's already possible to look up both your gaokao score (this girl's score wasn't falsified; rather, her identity was stolen) and the 分数线 that applied to you when you applied to a school. The problem would be instantly detected[1] by anyone who felt bitter about what happened -- and this is quite likely, since you have a strong idea of what your gaokao score will be before you actually take the test. (You have to, because you apply to colleges before you get your official result.)

[1] Well, detected with probably a one-year lag.

<comment><USER7> Official VIP students... wow that's horrifyingly corrupt. Clearly admissions is also letting things slide, just with less official backing as fewer people need to be involved.

In the US, collages have more or less rigorous programs rather than simply letting people slide through.

<comment><USER6> > Official VIP students... wow that's horrifyingly corrupt. Clearly admissions > is also letting things slide, just with less official backing.

I do not think your conclusion follows from your premise.

<comment><USER7> You just said: "There are ways of getting in to a university without passing the gaokao threshold that would ordinarily be required."

VIP students is a way to communicate across the university. Otherwise professors have no way of knowing who they need to give extra leniency to. I know collage professors at several schools and we really have nothing widespread like that.

<comment><USER8> College*

Not to be a jerk, I just saw you make the same spelling mistake a couple times

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Back in the days when electronics records were not the norm there were a lot of these things especially in less-developed provinces. Nowadays it's better but I'd suspect there are still things similar going on.

In the less developed areas of China the so called "Cheng Guan Wu Ju Tou" (The five masters of the town, usually includes the party secretary, the town mayor, vice mayors and maybe a couple of other important officials e.g. the head of the finance bureau) holds a lot of power over the general populace. Their family members also hold other important positions and they have been living in the same areas for maybe centuries.

Historically the central government had to rely on these local masters but nowadays it's getting the upper hand and a lot of these things are being reported publicly. It's kind of difficult to do the same thing (as in the BBC report) nowadays as electronic records are everywhere.

<comment><USER10> >Back in the days when electronics records were not the norm there were a lot of these things especially in less-developed provinces. Nowadays it's better but I'd suspect there are still things similar going on.

Like some Chinese criminals with money hiring body doubles to serve their prison term for them.

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

<comment><USER9> Yeah heard that too years ago. I remembered back in maybe 5 years ago marriage information is not shared among the provinces so technically you can marry multiple times in different provinces and not got caught...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > Until today, the imposter's colleagues still know her as Chen Chunxiu, say > media reports. Her degree has since been revoked and she has been sacked > from her job. A government report says she is still under investigation.

Is it nuts to anyone else that the more powerful, socially connected person stole the poorer but better scoring person's identity for not only school, but continued to be her professionally for years after?

I was reading and wondering what good this did if someone else got the degree, and was flabbergasted to see that the imposter just decided to take over the identity in perpetuity. I would assume in the west that usually only happens when the imposter's original identity is problematic (a criminal, poor and trying to hob-nob with elites, etc). In this case we have the child of an obviously well connected (and I assume well-off) official willing to take over someone else's identity.

<comment><USER12> Well-off people sometimes turn to thrill seeking. Apparently financially stable stay-at-home housewives are a big demographic in loss prevention because they steal for fun.

<comment><USER11> I can see that, but I also don't expect those people to take over the identity entirely. Financially stable stay-at-home housewives have a lot of things tying them to their real identity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This story reminds me of the stories that were common on my country of origin in South America. We had free high level education, but there was a system rigged to preserve nepotism. I was in Russia for the World Cup in 2018 and heard the same crap.

<comment><USER14> The US has evolved a similar rigging for our privileged. We supply various obscure sports accolades that can be purchased for the children of wealthy families to obtain admission to our leading universities. Unfortunately our schemes have also been exposed and a number of people are being prosecuted. So for the moment one must resort to investing in rather costly facility construction or similar expansion projects while we develop low cost alternatives to replace the now compromised schemes.

<comment><USER15> It's even simpler than that, the US has a codified system of nepotism in place called legacy admissions, which has been in place for several decades [1].

> In a deposition, Rakesh Khurana, dean of the college, said a legacy > preference can foster another kind of diversity: placing people with deep > Harvard experience alongside those without it.

They refer to nepotism as "deep Harvard experience", that's the only difference.

[1] [https://www.npr.org/2018/11/04/663629750/legacy- admissions-o...](https://www.npr.org/2018/11/04/663629750/legacy-admissions- offer-an-advantage-and-not-just-at-schools-like-harvard)

<comment><USER11> I view the legacy stuff as a but more nuanced. Universities want to admit people that really want to go there, and that will increase their prestige later through some combination of espousing the benefits of that school, becoming famous, or becoming successful. It's not hard to see how the legacy systems tick a few of these boxes automatically, making those candidates seem slightly better than others (if nothing else, the candidate probably really wants this as their college over any other choices, and will likely have more pressure from self and family to complete college and do well).

The problem then, as I see it, is not legacy consideration _helping_ people get admitted, but legacy considerations _overriding the other criteria_. If legacy considerations where only a 15-20% in applicant suitability, I think most people wouldn't be that upset about it. When it leads to wholly and obviously unsuitable people going, that's probably when the legacy system has gone out of control.

<comment><USER15> More nuanced nepotism is...nepotism. You're basically saying that whether or not your parents went to some school should positively influence as much as _one-fifth_ of the consideration of whether you could go to a school or not.

That is, if you scored this in a rubric, some kid whose parents went to Harvard would score 20 and I would score 0. That is wrong on a fundamental level. It's a bit like anti-affirmative action.

I am fine with this system as it stands. However, it is wildly inconsistent with the pearl-clutching top comment (I know, not you) spewing stuff about the "Western sense of morality".

<comment><USER11> > That is, if you scored this in a rubric, some kid whose parents went to > Harvard would score 20 and I would score 0. That is wrong on a fundamental > level.

Is it? Why?

I think it depends on the amount of government funding they get. For a completely private university, is it wrong? I think it's wrong for a university that gets a majority of its funding from the state to act this way, but for universities that have giant billion dollar endowments? Sure, let them manage at least some of the admissions somewhat as they would as if private.

> It's a bit like anti-affirmative action.

It's exactly like affirmative action, except to benefit the university. I think being able to apply this on some small percentage of the students, maybe five percent, is acceptable.

It's going to happen, why not account for it and control it rather than make everyone involved act like it isn't happening and then we just have a vague sense that it happens but little info and control over it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> What's nuts about this how tons of people from all levels of government/society participated in this conspiracy.

It says a lot about the general attitude of Chinese people.

(I'm chinese, btw)

<comment><USER17> To be more specific, I think it says a lot about the general attitude of people that have grown up under the CCP, and the 'take what you can get or starve' environment they've fostered.

It's seen in other ways like lack of queuing, littering, and the general corruption throughout all levels of bureaucracy.

The attitude is far less pervasive in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, or other countries with significant Chinese populations.

<comment><USER18> I'm not sure it's fair to place the blame solely on the CCP. A lot of the less desirable behavior stemmed from scarcity of resources, especially when the country was poor.

Can't comment too much on corruption as I don't have much experience there, but I have noticed things like lining up and littering get better as the standard of living has improved over the years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm curious as to how these tests compare to the US SAT. You can take the SAT multiple times and submit your best attempt. In this story, the test seems one and done. You get 1 attempt and you either get in, or you don't.

Also reminds me of the story from India like 1 or 2 years ago where a test had faulty answers and people thought they didn't get into university because of that

<comment><USER20> These exams differ from SAT in three major ways.

First, they are offered once a year. Didn't do as well as you hope? Try again next year.

Second, the material is significantly harder. Take math as an example. The exam questions are a lot closer to AMC/AIME than to SAT. In fact, suppose language is not a problem, many Chinese middle schooler would do pretty well on SAT's math section. Also you are not allowed any calculator.

Finally, for the vast majority of students, the test score is literally the only factor deciding whether you get into college. Basically, you will provide an ordered list of preferences to colleges and majors, and the student with top score's request would be satisfied first, then the second, the third, etc.

<comment><USER21> India has similar systems as well.

One 'neat' tweak that the Indians take is the publication of the scores. You find out how you did because your name and score are printed in the newspaper, along with everyone else's.

So all the gossipy aunties and your folk's friends know your score and you know the scores of everyone else in school.

The social pressure to do well is _insane_. Your score reflects on your family, not just you.

<comment><USER22> Publications of scores doesn't happen any more, atleast for the exams similar to the gaokao, which would be the JEE. It happened only for localised exams AFAIK, where almost all applicants were local, and the pool was small enough to be printed on a newspaper. In the pre internet era, it might have been necessary though, since it wouldn't have been possible to mail all scores and expect perfect delivery in the rural parts of the country. But the internet has ensured almost all test results are online now and not published openly.

<comment><USER21> Thank you for the update!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Sometimes it's no better here in the west. I know of a situation where a Chinese student fabricated every source for a paper. Completely made up everything. The professor saw right through it immediately and failed her. But the university big wigs told the professor to give the student a passing grade. The student graduated university.

<comment><USER24> IMO this whistle needs to be blown because as who knows how many dangerous engineers, doctors, or whatever other safety critical professions are being graduated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> > The Ministry of Education has also announced that any students found to be > involved in identity theft will not be allowed to enrol in university.

Yeah that seems like the risk for screwing someone over is not so low - <USER2> outcome as if you hadn't committed this atrocity.

<comment><USER26> The ministry of education only has so much power.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I think this is a good opportunity to discuss on what would be the ideal process for selecting students for higher education.

China's system is probably the fairer one compared to US. I don't know the system at Europe India, or any other nations ranked high in intellectual competitiveness. Would be interested in learning the details.

Additionally, conventional higher education is mostly obsolete. Technically, one absolutely can access the same quality education outside of a typical 4 year university. That is a sea-level change compared to that in 10-20 years ago.

Prominent institutions today primarily serve as social selection process to find the compatible individuals and assimilate them into the elite class.

My observations identify that as obvious in US. China also have similar setup in Tsinghua and Beijing university. Especially since Hu Jintao's presidency, while the majority of the standing committee of CCP Politburo are from these 2 institutions. And the culture aura attached to them is also purposefully cultivated by CCP and the government.

Now, what is the proper mechanism to prevent the small fraction of elite institutions from inbreeding, and make sure a diverse and representative student body be admitted into these institutions. For example, it was a huge problem in China that the students into the better higher education institutions have <10% from non-urban areas, while the total population has 57% in non urban areas. This number used to be >20%.

This type of inequality is the most problematic.

</comment><comment><USER26> So, how well did the imposter do at her job? Maybe these exams are not a great measure at all?

And how could you possibly repay the poor woman and her family for this?

<comment><USER28> >So, how well did the imposter do at her job?

You're unlikely to find any accurate measure of that, since she likely has people propping her up well into her adult life.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> > At China's parliament meeting last month, there were calls for college > admission identity theft to be criminalised. One delegate said it was "much > more harmful than [monetary] theft".

It's not already criminalised? I would expect fraud to be illegal.

</comment><comment><USER30> How can the system rely on "no response is construed as failed"?!

Bad design right there.

<comment><USER31> It's not exactly like that. For example, university official will track you down (through phone call, through help of local official or your high school official/teacher) if you didn't enroll. This is done to ensure people (especially from rural areas) don't give up their admission due to difficulties (for example, economical ones).

Obviously these doesn't help when some one takes your identity and enrolls on your behalf.

Even if there is rejection letter. It probably wouldn't make a difference to the subject of this article. A fake rejection can be easily fabricated (especially if the recipient doesn't know what a real one should look like.)

Also, the subject knows his/her score. The university has limited discretion to deny admission of people above the score threshold. At the end, it all comes down to low social economic status and corrupted officials working against the subject.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> > Her case is just one of 242 student identity thefts that took place in > Shandong province between 2002 and 2009, according to recent media reports.

Either there haven't been many cases or not many have been revealed. But why only until 2009?

> Local authorities have launched an investigation into Chen Chunxiu's case > and 46 people have been punished.

That's a lot of people necessary to steal an identity!

<comment><USER33> Perhaps they're discovered stochastically, so the number of known recent ones is much lower than the number of known unrecent ones.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> The unstated assumption in this article is that only college graduates deserve to have a decent life.

<comment><USER35> Something I've heard from Chinese people online about the difference between the US and China is that in America, you could be a plumber/auto mechanic/skilled trades and still have a middle-income lifestyle and a decent amount of societal respect. In China, working with your hands puts you on the lower rungs in society, hence everyone wants to get into college.

<comment><USER16> The kind of cultural attitude you describe reflects the supply and demand logistics of the economic conditions that were responsible for modern China as it is today.

Modern China was built off the backs of Cheap Manual laborers</comment></comment></comment>


The AudioKit Synth One is a pro-level iPad synth that's completely free (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2018/7/1/17518380/audiokit-synth-one-professional-ipad-synth-free <comment><USER2> The Audiokit Synth One homepage: [https://audiokitpro.com/synth/](https://audiokitpro.com/synth/)</comment>


I'm working on a podcast about the history of Frank Herbert's Dune - <AUTHOR> https://andrewliptak.substack.com/p/announcing-new-worlds-the-story-of <comment><USER2> This sounds awesome.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! It's been fun to dive into the history of how the entire thing came together.</comment></comment>


A response to Linus Torvalds on C++: You suffer from the C-hacker syndrome - <AUTHOR> http://warp.povusers.org/OpenLetters/ResponseToTorvalds.html

<comment><USER2> You don't write good code or make compelling arguments by taking extreme points of view. Everything has flaws (and by the way, so does hardware; those bugs can mess up "good" code very nicely).

It's your chosen _subset_ of features and available techniques that decides whether or not you are a good programmer who can be trusted to build something important in an efficient and maintainable way.

Parts of these rants sound like project managers who can never figure out when to blame themselves, too. If your code was butchered because someone misused a programming language then _you_ didn't assign the right programmer to the task or you didn't set expectations properly (or heck, maybe you just didn't pay enough). It's never as simple as "this language sucks".

</comment><comment><USER3> Really I think this guy comes off as being just as biased as Torvalds. He basically states upfront that if you have "The opinion that C is a much better language than C++" then you're obviously wrong. Then he accuses those people of prejudice!</comment>


Help us rebuild postgresql in rust, one extension at a time - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/4mtmq4/help_us_rebuild_postgresql_in_rust_one_extension/ <comment><USER2> What is the background story of this? The readme doesn't tell...

<comment><AUTHOR> Perhaps I should have a better readme, or suggest one. This allows you to develope postgresql extensions in rust</comment></comment>


Former Huawei employee detained for 8 months after getting severance pay - <AUTHOR> https://cntechpost.com/2019/12/01/former-huawei-employee-detained-for-8-months-after-getting-severance-pay/ <comment><AUTHOR> Here is a dialogue with the employees: [https://technology- info.net/index.php/2019/12/02/dialogue-wi...](https://technology- info.net/index.php/2019/12/02/dialogue-with-huawei-detained-251-days-ago- employees-not-actively-exposed-hope-to-communicate-with-huawei/)</comment>


Mail-in-a-box: feature rich single-click self-hosted email solution - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/mail-in-a-box/mailinabox <comment><USER2> I appreciate your effort and I don't mean to be sarcastic. If Mail-in-a-Box is similar to iRedMail and Modoboa, why create it in the first place.</comment>


Facebook plans to design an open-source switch - <AUTHOR> http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9239035/Facebook_plans_to_design_an_open_source_switch

<comment><USER2> As a network engineer, not sure this is actually useful. The idea is to use good and stable gear, not "new" gear that requires lots of doodads and programmability. Frankly its hard to beat Juniper who've integrated puppet into their switches. Most good network vendors also support netconf (even though its horrible to use) so its not like there's no programmable interfaces for network equipment.</comment>