List of Printers Which Do or Do Not Display Tracking Dots - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/pages/list-printers-which-do-or-do-not-display-tracking-dots <comment><USER3> I wrote this article/originally created this list, and I would like to emphasize that there is a second generation of this technology that probably uses dithering parameters or something of that sort, and that does not produce visible dots but still creates a tracking code. We don't know the details but we do know that some companies told governments that they were going to do this, and that some newer printers from companies that the government agencies said were onboard with forensic marking no longer print yellow dots.

That makes me think that it may have been a mistake to create this list in the first place, because the main practical use of the list would be to help people buy color laser printers that don't do forensic tracking, yet it's not clear that any such printers are actually commercially available.

<comment><USER4> What is annoying is that the user pays for this. How much more yellow toner do I need to buy because my print outs are covered in yellow dots?

I wonder how many million extra gallons of yellow toner and ink are wasted every year printing these tracker dots?

<comment><USER5> On some printers, this is the reason why the printer will refuse to print a BW-only printout while the only empty cartridge is the color one.

<comment><USER6> That needs a citation or a sarcasm tag.

<comment><USER7> Does an anecdote count? My Samsung refuses to print b&w when a color cartridge is empty.

<comment><USER8> I've always assumed that is just lazy design (some resources that _might_ be needed are unavailable, report and refuse to print withut checking if they are _actually_ needed for the current job) rather than due to a security (or even ink selling) measure. I've seen the behaviour as far back as the first colour photocopier I ever used.

<comment><USER9> I've seen that as well a long time ago on a black+red photocopier, no yellow and probably no tracking patterns since red would have been quite visible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The Lives of Others, which takes place in East Germany and includes a typewriter which is not registered with the government; was one of the best movies I've seen in a long time. And it's ultimately the live we'll live as tracking technologies continue to get better.

<comment><USER11> When we start evoking the Stasi in a discussion about this surveillance, it always feels a bit like a Godwin point. But the reality is that all of this surveillance is exactly what the Stasi used to do and what the west was fighting the communist block for. If I had told people in the 80s that shortly in all western countries, all communications will be monitored, it will have become illegal to have any discussion that the government cannot eardrop on, the state will be compiling a file on every of its citizens and want to have a list of every book and article every citizen reads, they would have thought that the russians invaded us.

<comment><USER12> Pedantry mode: All of this surveillance is exactly what the Stasi _dreamed_ of doing.

(I fully agree with your point; however, I'd argue that the (relative, back then) lack of digital storage and communication made gathering of information much, much harder back then than it is now - even for the Stasi.)

<comment><USER13> The Stasi would've likely loved these tools, but I'm not sure they're necessary. The point of the Stasi behavior was to instill fear in the masses, to turn neighbor against neighbor. The fact that the average citizen today is hardly even aware of things like printer dots means it's serving a different purpose.

<comment><USER12> Then again, it could be argued that the need to instil fear in the masses arose precisely as they didn't have the resources to scrutinize all the people all the time. (

So they needed to make sure all the people expected to be under surveillance all the time, to keep them from doing anything undesirable (to the state, that is) while not being watched.)

IIRC the Stasi had a hard time connecting the dots (pun not intended) as the massive data sets mostly existed on file cards.

Today's problem is somewhat different: You've got loads of data, you've got the means to rapidly search and index it - but still, for some reason or the other, massive data collection doesn't appear to lead to much by way of desirable (to the populace, that is) results - actual terrorists apprehended, actual conspiracies unearthed, etc.

A cynic would assume that means the data is collected for other, more nefarious purposes. Cough.

<comment><USER14> I agree. Without moralizing on the motives, it seems like the objective of establishing an institution like the Stasi is control. If you can have that control with a velvet glove and spare the resentment so much the better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It would be neat if there was a privacy printing app that added random yellow dots to a document to obscure the info.

Perhaps simply printing a single yellow dot through a few different printers would be enough to accomplish the same thing. Then using the resulting paper for "real" prints.

The more I think about it, this could even be a service. "Preprinted" paper that went though a bunch of printers, each adding their own unique identifier each time, then sold and distributed.

That or just paying cash for a printer.

<comment><USER16> I hate to be the security is not important if you aren't doing anything wrong guy.... but I use a printer to do things like print a picture for my kid to color. What the hack are you doing with you printer to need pre dotted paper?

<comment><USER17> Your kid, enjoys the nice things in life in part thanks to the thankless work of activists. Lot's of freedoms we have today are because of people who put themselves under great risks to benefit the rest of us. They might be printing pictures for their kids or evidence of powerful entities doing things they shouldn't be doing.

So it's nice that you print stuff for your Kid, but what about those who print for societies sake?

<comment><USER18> That's the most important argument. The second has to do with the vast number of different kinds of abuses that will occur--that you previously couldn't even imagine would--when we give up our privacy^1

[1]-[https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/2016/09/police- ro...](https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/2016/09/police-routinely- misuse-state-federal-databases-stalk-romantic-interests-business-partners- family-even/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I just realized something.

\- Office IT maintenance all hate printers

\- I'm sure you've gaped at the control software that came with the little $40 inkjet you bought (or had to use) at some point

\- Even the creator of MINIX cited "buggy printer drivers" as his rationale behind prferring nanokernel architecture (all drivers run in userspace) instead of monolithic approach (all drivers run in ring 0; printer driver sits next to crypto keyring).

So. Printers are terrible.

Remember Brinks' fireproof safes that were absolutely rock-solid but were running fully _un_ patched WinXP and had a USB port on the side of the keypad for "security updates"? Hackable with a keyboard stuffer that looked like a flash drive. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9961024](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9961024)

I remember reading (somewhere) a conclusion that went along the lines of, Brinks are awesome at making safes - and this safe was truly amazing - <USER2> they weren't a software company, to a profound extent.

It's clear to me that printer companies are similarly really, _really_ bad at software design too.

So, reverse-engineering the firmware to figure out what things printers are doing use probably wouldn't be all too difficult.

The printer companies were told to write the code, not write it perfectly and make it impossible to unravel as well.

Of course, if anyone actually take a crack at this (excuse the pun) that'll make things change a bit, but printer firmware is probably at the "open sesame in a big way" stage right now, and the printer industry is huge and slow to change, which suggests reverse engineering could remain trivial for a little while, even with publishing.

<comment><USER20> I was actually discussing this the other day at work (I work in a relatively small laboratory of about 50 people and we don't have a dedicated IT department so most of us contribute a bit to keep the IT infrastructure).

It is incredible how fickle printers are, all the hassle they give, printing problems, network connection problems, special drivers to install even on modern operating systems, paper jams (one would have guessed by now they should have at least solved the paper jams) even on our quite expensive printers.

It's like everything but the print quality got stuck in the year 2000 and never again evolved.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> It could just print the mac addresses of all the nearby wifi networks. One subpoena to google's mapping service and you know exactly where the paper was printed. Yay, surveillance.

<comment><USER22> Seems like a lot of data to print. I suppose just unique id would be enough. If the printer has access to wifi or internet connection in general (even through usb drivers) it can report the details.

<comment><USER23> Well, modern printers print with 100s of ppi, which on doing some maths suggest around 100 dot in a box of side 1 mm(in 250 ppi, most printers print with more ppi), enough for displaying 64 bit number with hash, even if it only works in binary mode. If more that just on/off can be detected, it can store much more.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> The real question you should be asking yourself is how hard it is to fake these. If I get hold of someones copies, can I use them as template?

<comment><USER25> I think this is an excellent example of why security through obscurity is a bad idea. Now that we know they are there, it's only a matter of time before they are all broken and duplicated. How hard is it? I don't know, but I can't imagine that its impossible. Given time and technology, someone will figure how to forge these without difficulty.

They were clearly betting on the fact that no one would notice they are there. What scares me is we're just finding this out. How long have criminal organizations and rogue nations known about this and what have they used it for?

<comment><USER3> I'm confused about why people consistently think that this was a total secret, no matter how many waves of press coverage it gets.

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

There were press articles about it by 2004 (and I think some earlier), we had written the tool that Rob Graham used to decode these scans by 2005, and I gave a number of TV interviews about it during 2005. A small number of manufacturers (maybe worried about European data protection laws) also alluded to the existence of the technology in their user manuals. Some of the people from industry who contacted me also said that this was common knowledge to people in the printing industry since at least the turn of the millennium.

<comment><USER26> None of those are enough. Unless the spying feature is directly marketed to consumers, e.g. a TV ad that says "Buy a color printer THAT SPIES ON YOU today!", >92% of the population will never learn about it. (That estimate being from the # who don't read license agreements: [https://measuringu.com/eula/](https://measuringu.com/eula/))

Generally, anything that less than half of the population knows abut is a secret (e.g., menstruation is still called a "secret" in some circles...), so you shouldn't be confused, just disappointed at how gullible / uninformed the average person is.

<comment><USER27> >Unless the spying feature is directly marketed to consumers, e.g. a TV ad that says "Buy a color printer THAT SPIES ON YOU today!", >92% of the population will never learn about it.

Heh. The tagline for this car HUD ([http://www.jbl.com/connected- car/CP100+LEGEND.html](http://www.jbl.com/connected-car/CP100+LEGEND.html)) says, "Now your car can be on the grid too". That's getting pretty close to your tagline.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> FOSS seems to be the best, if not only, solution. (As usual, when it comes to freedom and privacy...)

<comment><USER29> It's likely any tracking mechanism would be implemented inside the hardware, not as part of drivers.

<comment><USER30> It would be in the firmware. It should be possible to hack a printer with open source firmware.

You could even make a printer with open source hardware - something like this, but higher resolution: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zX09WnGU6ZY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zX09WnGU6ZY), or think [http://reprap.org/](http://reprap.org/) \- home made 3d printers made only from commonly available and 3d printed parts.

<comment><USER31> > It should be possible to hack a printer with open source firmware.

You'd think so. After all, Stallman created FSF in part because of his frustrations with a printer!

> In 1980, Stallman and some other hackers at the AI Lab were refused access > to the source code for the software of a newly installed laser printer, the > Xerox 9700. Stallman had modified the software for the Lab's previous laser > printer (the XGP, Xerographic Printer), so it electronically messaged a user > when the person's job was printed, and would message all logged-in users > waiting for print jobs if the printer was jammed. Not being able to add > these features to the new printer was a major inconvenience, as the printer > was on a different floor from most of the users. This experience convinced > Stallman of people's need to be able to freely modify the software they use.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> We could just sell "tracking dotted white paper", with 150 different patterns on it.. Or just release a pdf that has them embedded so you can print that first.

</comment><comment><USER33> Paying cash for the printer should mitigate things. At best they can tell something like that the page was printed by something that passed through a BestBuy warehouse in your town in the first quarter of last year, and that's it.

Buy a printer hundreds of miles away from home while on a road trip, pay cash, and then do whatever you want with it: print yourself a hundred million dollars and enjoy your print-irement. :)

Simply the _awareness_ about the possibility of tracking goes a long way.

<comment><USER34> If your printer is on a network, it can 'phone home' in most cases. They now know which IP address the printer lives behind. Get compromising document > look up serial number from dots > look up IP address from serial number > get address for IP from ISP (through means fair or foul). Payment option is irrelevant.

<comment><USER33> In those "most cases" when it's not blocked from doing so by your firewall.

If you were paranoid enough to pay cash for a printer somewhere far from home because of the tracking issue, you will probably block it from sending messages outside of your LAN.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Here's how you decode them [https://w2.eff.org/Privacy/printers/docucolor/](https://w2.eff.org/Privacy/printers/docucolor/)

<comment><USER36> _This information is the result of research by Robert Lee, Seth Schoen, Patrick Murphy, Joel Alwen, and Andrew "bunnie" Huang._

Does bunnie do any non-cool projects?? He inspires me more than any other developer/researcher today.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> If your printer has tracking dots, this doesn't tell the people reading the tracking dots on the printout anything, unless they either

\- already suspect you, or

\- can trace the serial back to the purchase.

Conclusion: buy your printer second hand and don't get caught.

<comment><USER38> \- in cash

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> My cursory research into this topic (this morning...) lead me to believe inkjet printers may be uncompromised (not printing steganographic dots). The NYTimes believed this to be the case as well back in 2008 ([http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/24/technology/personaltech/24...](http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/24/technology/personaltech/24askk-001.html)) - anyone with more knowledge of the subject have information about this?

<comment><USER3> I wrote the original article, and that consistently matches what we've learned and heard. However, that doesn't mean that forensics can never identify the printer that printed a document (there's an entire lab at Purdue that's been studying possible ways to do so for over a decade!), just that the printers are not intentionally engineered to track their users.

Edit: It looks like the Purdue lab was only publishing research from 2003 to 2010, or hasn't updated its web site.

<comment><USER40> So they perfected it and received a gag order under the State Secrets Act.

<comment><USER3> Good thing this country doesn't have a State Secrets Act!

(Maybe [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invention_Secrecy_Act](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invention_Secrecy_Act) if they filed for a patent.)

<comment><USER40> That's what I was referring to. Thanks for the clarification.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> We need an open source / hardware 2d printer

<comment> apk-d I love the term "2d printer". What a time to live in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Is it possible to add yellow dots or the opposite of yellow dots (assuming they are additive?) to the printed content such that the existing dots become noise?

<comment><USER43> Just a guess, but I would be willing to bet that some of these manufactures ensure that the tracking appears outside of normal printable boundaries.

<comment><USER44> Buy two of the same printer and they'll scramble the code!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Is there an open source printing platform that allows the printer to be sure no codes are inserted?

<comment><USER46> I guess you can use a 3d printer as a 2d plotter...?

<comment><USER47> We're halfway to going back to tablets, in the literal sense.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> So if we swap our yellow and (say) blue cartidges then these dots will become more apparent?

<comment><USER49> if you find a printer which accepts it... (haven't tried, but I fear it won't be this easy)

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Time to start printing full yellow background instead of white. Con: lots of yellow toner needed. Pro: no tracking.

Or maybe never refill Yellow toner and then dots fail to appear.

<comment><USER51> ..or a return to dot matrix printers? Good thing I never threw those away.

<comment><USER52> I think that might make you easier to track. Even driving slowly round the neighbourhood listening carefully would ferret you out.

<comment><USER51> LOL I'm still not throwing them out. Nostalgia. They'll sit on a shelf next to my Nintendo and typewriters.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> > _the source of documents produced with other printing technologies are also > possible, but, as far as we know, other kinds of printers do not > deliberately encode their serial numbers in their output._

To clarify, _other_ here refers to anything other than a color laser?

Also, are color LED printers included as color laser? (I would think so).

<comment><USER3> > To clarify, other here refers to anything other than a color laser?

Right.

> Also, are color LED printers included as color laser? (I would think so).

Yes. We could also perhaps say "color printers other than inkjet or dot matrix".

Also color photocopiers (using the same codes).

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> For people wondering what the dots looks like: [http://static.snopes.com/app/uploads/2017/06/printer_EFF_dot...](http://static.snopes.com/app/uploads/2017/06/printer_EFF_dot_code_fb-865x452.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER54> Why not just use dot matrix printers?

Can be had for free from business throwing them out, ribbons are readily available, plus they can be used as generic printers (limited graphics capability, but supported both on windows and CUPS) or by writing directly to /dev/lp0

<comment><USER55> Someone from Purdue (I think) did research on being able to identify printers that used stepping motors due to unique characteristics in various models as well as individual printers.

I'm not sure if dot matrix was in the study (I want to say it was inkjet?) but the principle remains the same.

Not as precise as embedded serial numbers with watermarking, but it could get a whistle blower identified.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> Time to start reverse engineering printer firmware :)

</comment><comment> amiga-workbench Are there any known forensic marking methods used by monochrome laser printers?

<comment><USER3> No, but it may still be possible to tell them apart in some ways.

It would be good to start with

[https://engineering.purdue.edu/~prints/publications.shtml](https://engineering.purdue.edu/~prints/publications.shtml)

and then see who's cited them in the last few years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> It's basically impossible to rule out that an image (or anything rasterized) is watermarked.

The best way of ensuring this isn't to test it, but to simply ask the producer whether they would do this. If they say "no" or refuse to answer then don't buy that product. Not even if you had a printer from a manufacturer that had public firmware and driver code could you be sure by just inspecting the code and the printed output.

If they clearly say they don't watermark output then you probably have to trust them or simply not use printers.

</comment><comment><USER58> Discussed in 2010: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1408510](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1408510)

</comment><comment><USER59> So... Maybe people should start printing some documents directly in yellow paper?

I wonder if printing a blank page and then double printing the document on this page would distroy the pattern

It seems that there is an opportunity here for creating a program able to print a random layer of light yellow points to a blank page.

</comment><comment><USER60> this is why open-source printers are so essential.

</comment><comment><USER61> I don't understand what could be done by governments with this kind of information. Please enlight me.

<comment><USER62> An NSA contractor leaked information about the Russians meddling in the 2016 election to the press. She had been identified using these techniques.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/06/us/politics/reality- leigh...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/06/us/politics/reality-leigh-winner- leak-nsa.html?_r=0)

<comment><USER3> Note that the Times qualified this with: "And there may have been an even more glaring telltale that the F.B.I. did not mention in court filings." (So they were more cautious in that respect than other journalists, unfortunately.) In particular, the government has not acknowledged having used this evidence.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> I wonder what is the motivation for printer manufacturers to implement this kind of tracking?

<comment><USER64> I wonder what is the motivation for consumers to care?

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> Even without deliberate watermarking, it is probably provable that an x document comes from a y printer, based on the way how letters look under microscope. Relevant, for example, if one would be dumb enough to print secret documents at home.

<comment><USER66> Yes, it probably is. But it is a very big difference that someone can prove that a specific printer they are in possession of was used by comparing the printed papers, or if they can just look at the paper and get the serial number and time the document was printed. (And if they have a database of who purchased the that printer, they know where they should start to look)

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> I wonder if printing the exact same document on the same paper might mess up watermarks

</comment><comment><USER68> ICYMI this is linked to this thread from yesterday:

"Secret Dots from Printer Outed NSA Leaker"

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14494818](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14494818)

</comment><comment><USER69> Makes the following book pretty fascinating reading:

[https://books.google.com.au/books?id=1XKqCAAAQBAJ](https://books.google.com.au/books?id=1XKqCAAAQBAJ)

</comment><comment><USER70> Has anyone here tried building a laser printer following Horace Labadie's book _Build Your Own Postscript Laser Printer and Save a Bundle_?

</comment><comment><USER71> Why create such a list? It seems like things like this should just be in the background to be used by people who may need this information in the future.

</comment><comment><USER72> The best bet is to assume that everything is traceable. Best you can do is do ocr on what you've printed and pass that on, i'd say.

</comment><comment><USER73> Matrix printers may suddenly get back in fashion.

</comment><comment><USER74> This seems to be only color printers. Does that mean B&W printers are too hard to add the tracking information to?

<comment><USER75> The ostensible reason for this tracking feature is to deter counterfeiters (of currency). Since no currency is B&W, there would be no defensible excuse to coercer the manufactures into complying.

</comment></comment><comment><USER76> Would printing on yellow paper solve the yellow-dot problem, or would the still be detectable?

</comment><comment><USER77> There might still be statistically significant alterations that allow tracking; I'd be very careful.

</comment><comment><USER78> Do scanners also add unique identifiers to output, that seems like the low- hanging fruit in this space.

</comment><comment><USER79> Samsung printer business was just sold to HP, so there goes that option.

</comment><comment><USER80> Is there a reason that this would be a bad thing, pragmatically speaking?

<comment><USER81> Not necessarily. In fact the Stasi thought it was a swell idea!

</comment></comment><comment><USER82> can I just use up all my yellow ink to solve the problem?

<comment><USER83> Then your printer will stop printing & demand that it be refilled. (At least some are known to do this now.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER84> anyway to make it print someone else's dots?

</comment><comment><USER85> Thanks, handy to know for my ransom notes.

</comment><comment><USER86> Privacy printer startup anyone?</comment>


23 Killer Lessons From Shark Tank - <AUTHOR> http://www.bradaronson.com/shark-tank/

<comment><USER2> lesson 24: Don't go on Shark Tank in the first place. ABC takes 5-7% if your company, even if you don't get a deal.

Don't get me wrong. I love the show, but the majority of the people on the show that do get deals get screwed out of a very large percentage of their company.</comment>


The UK's sole refiner of gold and its biggest private vault - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/dec/26/the-pots-of-gold-at-the-east-edge-of-london <comment><USER2> >>> It is impossible to achieve 100% purity and 99.99% is the closest refiners can get.

Try again guardian. The Canada mint has been famously issuing 99.999% (5-nines) coins since the 90s. Anyone familiar with gold knows this. At least Google your facts before printing them.

And if you are really into gold as an investment, the Krugerrand is where it's at. They are an interesting design choice. While only 91% gold/9% copper, they are manufactured overweight so they still have exactly one troy ounce of gold. The copper makes them stronger, better for use as currency than the more shiny and decorative bars. Bars are for looking at. Rands are for buying things under the table.

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

</comment><comment><USER3> >Under almost every machine is what looks like a cat litter tray. But there are no factory cats

I once worked for a manufacturer of biological measuring instruments that utilised platinum for electrodes, the lathe used for machining and polishing the platinum had a similar setup to catch dust. All platinum waste got weighed in periodically, not with Bairds though.

</comment><comment><USER4> How much electricity do they use?

</comment><comment><USER5> I created a very early website in the 90s for Baird & Co, running under Netscape Enterprise Server and Illustra/Webdriver. Graphically it was hideous!

</comment><comment><USER6> Impressive taking ~40% purity gold and refining it to 99%.</comment>


How Schopenhauer's thought can illuminate a midlife crisis - <AUTHOR> https://aeon.co/ideas/how-schopenhauers-thought-can-illuminate-a-midlife-crisis <comment><USER2> >It is no accident that the young and the old are generally more satisfied with life than those in middle age.

I was sitting in my car looking at a stop sign the other day, and all of the sudden it started shaking uncontrollably. Immediately I knew it must be a child shaking it, as there was simply no other possibility. No other person would just stand there and shake a street sign for no purpose beyond its' own sake. There is no benefit, no reward, no ultimate reasoning beyond 'I want to shake this street sign". As I looked down, I was right, and the kid was grinning like crazy.

We lose the ability to think like that as adults. It's not even that we _have_ the thought and then consciously decide against it; we're incapable of even conceiving it. To just 'play' in life. And I think it's the most important aspect of our humanity. It is the very genesis of all our innovative and creative ideas, yet we treat it as something to be expelled in the process of "growing up".

<comment><USER3> Shaking a red sign that says "STOP" seems infinitely more satisfying than shaking any other kind of sign.

I get a perverse pleasure out of setting my GPS destination far in the opposite direction of where I'm actually driving, so it constantly tries to talk me into turning around every exit, just so I can enjoy the simple pleasure of not doing what it tells me to do.

<comment><USER4> Ha, literal rage against a machine! I find it interesting that you enjoy injecting artificial anxiety into your life. In contrast, I try to continuously minimize minor daily annoyances.

<comment><USER5> Just the opposite if we read the comment again. Its enjoyable, not anxiety- inducing.

<comment><USER4> I got that it's enjoyable for OP - but it would bug the hell out of me. I found this difference surprising.

<comment><USER3> Try working for TomTom for a few years. Then you'll have a different perspective about those accursed "personal navigation devices".

They didn't appreciate my proposal to develop the TomTomagotchi: a PND with a simulated personality that begs you to drive it all around town to various points of interest it desires to visit in order to satisfy its cravings and improve its mood. I'm sure there's a revenue model getting drive through Burger Kings and car washes to pay for product placements.

Here are a couple of short hidden camera one minute movies about frustrated robots we made at the Stupid Fun Club.

Stupid Fun Club's "Servitude" One Minute Movie about Robot Servitude, written by Will Wright. Robot brain and personality simulation programmed by Don Hopkins.

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

Stupid Fun Club's "Empathy" One Minute Movie about Robot Empathy, written by Will Wright. Robot brain and personality simulation programmed by Don Hopkins.

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

And if you thought recalcitrant robots were hard to control:

Pet Rock Remote Control

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SG0FAKkaisg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SG0FAKkaisg)

(If you want your pet rock to be obedient, you just have to carefully choose which commands you tell it to do.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This piece hits close to home, as it's really clear to me I am going through a midlife crisis and have interesting parallels and contrasts with the author in terms of my career and next steps.

What seems to me to be the heart of this piece is the telic-atelic distinction, which seems useful and deserving of more attention. There's some parallels, it seems, between the telic-atelic distinction on the one hand, and the distinction between more stereotypical "western" goal-oriented notions of success or happiness, and recent foci of mindfulness and other things having a kind of Buddhist bent. To me the telic-atelic distinction seems useful if for no other reason than to provide an additional historical and philosophical context to something gaining in the public consciousness. The atelic ideal seems similar to the mindfulness goals, but framed differently, in terms of types of rewards.

For me, although useful, I'm not sure this explains all of the midlife crisis. Maybe a big chunk, but for me personally at least I'd say more of it is about feeling like I took a wrong turn with certain choices, and feeling like there's no way to get out of it due to the limits of lifespan and sociocultural failings (e.g., stereotypes about age, gender, and profession, and ability to change, etc.). For me it's been less about asking "is this all there is?" and more like feeling like I've come to the conclusion that my vocation is a fraud, or that I'm not a good fit, and that humans in general are far more flawed and darker than I realized. There were similar feelings about other things in my early adulthood, but I always felt I could change my life, improve things, and move to something else; the difference is now, I feel like the change is more substantial due to the costs and investments involved, and I feel like societal stereotypes and failings make it harder. There's also the limitations of lifespan which are very real and make things difficult.

I feel profoundly disappointed in life and people, in the sense of being wronged, not in the sense of being bored. I don't want to feel this way, but am not sure how to get out of it.

<comment><USER7> I also feel like I made some wrong turns in my life and turn in the right direction is almost impossible now: career- and, what is the saddest part, family-wise. It just feels like it's too late for everything to get back on track. Damn. I'll be 35 in a couple of months :(

<comment><USER8> There was a story on NPR a while back about a guy that became an oncologist at 50. Major career change from where he was in life.

Any time I feel on the wrong track, thinking of this guy makes my course corrections seem more doable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Years ago I accidentally came across a really good book that explores Schopenhauer's fascinating worldview through the lens of psychiatry and personal development, called "The Schopenhauer Cure", which got me hooked on Schopenhauer (and a lesser extent Nietzsche): [https://www.amazon.com/Schopenhauer-Cure-Novel-Irvin- Yalom/d...](https://www.amazon.com/Schopenhauer-Cure-Novel-Irvin- Yalom/dp/0060938102/)

I highly recommend it to people who would consider themselves on the logical/intelligent end of the spectrum and who tend to pursue their work, accomplishments, and gaining knowledge above all else in life.

It's also a great soft introduction to his work, without having to read dense 19th century philosophy.

One of the most useful lessons I learn from Schopenhauer was to look beyond structuring your life around trying to be "happy" and avoiding being "sad", and instead seek some deeper meaning beyond some fleeting emotional chemical reactions in your brain. It makes me laugh now when

I now laugh when I hear people say "money doesn't make you happy", not so much for the money part, but the fallacy of using an emotion like "being happy" as the measure for a quality life.

<comment><USER10> > I now laugh when I hear people say "money doesn't make you happy", not so > much for the money part, but the fallacy of using an emotion like "being > happy" as the measure for a quality life.

Oh come on. You know what they mean, you're being deliberately obtuse in order to characterize someone else as ignorant. Which only reflects badly on you.

That old cliche may be trite and simplistic, but it's making a simple point that sometimes needs to be made; money won't solve all of your problems.

Of course it does solve a lot of really bad problems, so it's also a bit of a myopic view.

<comment><USER9> > you're being deliberately obtuse in order to characterize someone else as > ignorant

That was merely one example of the phenomenon of our culture being obsessed with 'happiness' as the measure of success. There are countless other examples I could have used which doesn't require reading into someone's 'real meaning' when using a cliche. The general point still stands, 'happy' is still frequently used interchangably with 'a good life' in our culture.

I can't count the amount of times I've heard people negatively judge other successful people's lives because they seemed dour or aren't walking around laughing/smiling all the time or some other surface level measures. That to me is what is arrogant.

Nor because I laugh (in my head) when I come across people chasing temporary emotional highs or measuring the quality of other's lives based on that doesn't mean I'm belittling them or looking down upon them because they haven't made the same realizations or made similar psychological/philosophical/personal investments in their own life. I spent a big portion of my life doing the same, doesn't make me better.

<comment><USER11> Your position is close to Seneca's stoicism. There are some books on that I don't have handy. Thought you might want to know this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> My wife loves finishing a picture puzzle, the sense of accomplishment at creating order out of chaos helps her relax. I can't stand them, they are dull and repetitive and in the end you just have the same picture that was already on the box. A decade ago, I built a simple set of wooden stairs to replace the existing, poorly built concrete set. To this day I get a little burst of joy when I use them. People are different and get satisfaction from different goals, that's pretty obvious to most people. However, it can be difficult to find out what you actually gives you joy. Some of the people I know struggling with midlife issues went through life believing some great goal would be worth it, but once achieved, the found it lacking. It would be like if I spent 20 years building a great picture puzzle. I'd be having a major crisis when it was done. Academia is a big offender because you can't know if you'll be satisfied until you get there, and getting there takes a decade or two.

Furthermore, what you get satisfaction from can change. Build a bunch of puzzles or stairs, and you may find it dull and unrewarding. I don't find actual coding as rewarding as it used to be, but I find design and problem solving much more interesting.

I think the young and old part is misleading. People can get in such a malaise at any time. The key is finding the trick and techniques to get out of it, or even better, avoiding it in the first place.

<comment><USER13> Being a craftsman is one of those never ending goals. You can always perfect them, or teach them to your kids.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I've got this bad, I am (or at least was) the stereotypical high achiever. I even have a sports car in the garage (don't do that, btw :).

I've decided to slow down and focus on my family and myself, in pursuits that have no real reward except the enjoyment of the experience itself. "Being present", they say.

Ultimately, I'm planning on getting out of the Bay Area to find something with less stress. I had a good run but the constant battle to climb higher just seems so silly now; I finally recognized the pattern of not having any real lasting happiness upon hitting some big achievement (the raise, the promotion, the qualification, whatever).

My new modus operandi: Work to ensure there is money in the bank so I can retire as I'd like to, and then focus on family, friends, myself.

<comment><USER15> hey, don't forget to enjoy each day as it comes. loss can come at any time. focus on your family, friends and yourself THEN work. you can get everything you need done OK.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> As a programmer approaching mid-life, I haven't found myself succumbing to this crisis. I wonder if that is largely due to the fact that gaining and maintaining expertise in programming is much more akin to these atelic activities he discusses. You can never really be done improving your skills.

Projects come and go, but the buzz and hum of the new is constant and unreachable. For an autodidact like me, the thrill of learning something new is also a process I enjoy.

</comment><comment><USER10> You have to enjoy the process of whatever it is you're doing. If your enjoyment relies totally on goals, that's how you end up in the situation Schopenhauer believed we are trapped in.

Goals are good but you have to enjoy the journey. This is no big mystery. But it's something a lot of people overlook because choosing a goal is how you get started on a journey.

<comment><USER17> True, and I think ultimately it is merely a fault in our thinking. Many people think "I'm going to suffer through this process because the end goal is worth it."

Where they are wrong is equating a process that does not necessarily bring pure pleasure and joy with "suffering."

You must be able to change your state of mind to see that there is no concept of pleasure without pain, there is no warmth without cold, and there is no joy without sadness. When we are sad, we should embrace it and revel in it as a natural part of life.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> _> then the solution is to invest more fully in the process, giving meaning to your life through activities that have no terminal point_

There has to be a potential endpoint or else there's no meaning. Pick a _hard problem_ which you find intensely meaningful and take small steps each day towards solving it.

As Karl Popper put it:

 _' I think there is only one way to do science – or to do philosophy for that matter; to meet a problem, to see its beauty and fall in love with it; to get married to it, and to live with it happily, till death do ye part - unless you should meet another and even more fascinating problem, or unless indeed you should obtain a solution. But even if you do obtain a solution you may then discover to your delight, the existence of a whole family of enchanting though perhaps difficult problem children for whose welfare you may work, with a purpose to the end of your days'_

<comment><USER19> Popper was a fan of Schopenhauer - while he rejected Schopenhauer's metaphysics of the Will, he positively quotes Schopenhauer in Open Society and its Enemies (especially in regards to Hegel). There's also evidence that Popper's interpretation of Kant is through Schopenhauer: the Principle of Sufficient Reason, the first book of World as Will and Representation, and the appendix to the first volume also function as a good emendation of and commentary upon on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason and Prolegomena.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I've gotten to a point where to me "results-oriented" is a four letter word. It's just a bad way to go about your life. Both for your sanity, and because it's more often than not just a wrong-headed way of thinking.

<comment><USER21> I often have to remind myself that life is a series of processes interspersed with end-points, if you don't enjoy the process of getting to those endpoints you'll basically live in a series of panics.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Many middle aged people are giving their entire lives to the generations older and younger. That general happiness curve over a lifetime seems to correspond with the level of responsibilities one has.

But I suspect also that we are very much more programmed as far as our values and goals than we realize, and middle age as a natural point in life where depression sets in, a subconcious rebellion/angst against a life we are living that is fradulent not in tune with our true selves.

<comment><USER23> >a natural point in life where depression sets in, a subconcious rebellion/angst against a life we are living that is fradulent not in tune with our true selves.

This is interesting because I feel like after the war I came back a middle aged man at 24 due to this feeling. I went through the motions in my professional career, but it all seemed so empty compared to what I used to do... so I spent the last ten years or so of my free time my career supported trying to study geopolitical and geostrategic issues because I found meaning in trying to understand why things are/were so damn fucked up, so perhaps as a problem solver I could fix some of them. (I have what are probably ridiculous aspirations of a presidential run someday.)

So I was living a half fraudulent life in order to live a half self-true life, and the tension between the two was palpable.

Near death (and near life) experiences really have a way of breaking that societal programming fast though. It's like when I went through what I call my Descartes reset. I took the red pill with the concious decision that I wanted to know the truth no matter how ugly it is... but that doesn't negate much of just how much impact the ugliness of truth can have on a person. Many people seem to have a subconcious awareness that they would prefer the beautiful lie due to that, but for some reason middle age tends to be the point in which those two forces butt heads, and sometimes people change course at that point.

That's why I used to joke I was getting my midlife crisis out of the way early. The joke was on me though, ten years later I still struggle with that dichotomy. I'll finally be 35 in 2020, so do I pursue the grand purpose path and just try my hand at a run for POTUS despite my trepidations or do I focus on establishing a more down to earth life and focus on just living it while I can!? I don't know yet, but I do know that at some point soon I will have to make that decision and follow through with it.

The real point is that I think we should self-analyze enough to make these decisions conciously before the uglier side-effects of dealing with them subconciously rear their heads in often desctructive ways, such as a midlife crisis.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> At least one answer to the conundrum of "not getting what you want is suffering; getting what you want is, too" that Schopenhauer identifies is serendipity.

life/the universe/fate/god/chance/whatever will cause positives (and negatives) in your life that you didn't actively want. Since you never sought them out, not having them wasn't suffering. Now that you have them, appreciate them!

</comment><comment><USER25> Another book recommendation:

How Schopenhauer Got Me Through My Mid-Life Crisis by Charles Alonso [https://www.amazon.com/How-Schopenhauer-Through-Mid-Life- Cri...](https://www.amazon.com/How-Schopenhauer-Through-Mid-Life-Crisis- ebook/dp/B00QXNB5PC/)

It's fiction, funny, philosophical, about middle age and a quick read.

</comment><comment><USER26> I think an adult extracts joy from other sources, which kids (or undeveloped adults) can't appreciate yet. The kid shakes the sign because for him it's a novelty, a new experience. He is curious about the world and discovers it through little 'experiments'.

But adults do the same, they learn new things, they have hobbies, visit new places, try out new foods, learn new languages, work on personal projects...

</comment><comment><USER27> While even Scott Adams will tell you to never take life advice from a cartoonist, his post on the meaning of life is a slightly different take then the one in the article and I find it inspiring.

In a nutshell, we need to give more to others as we age.

[http://blog.dilbert.com/2014/11/18/a-life-well- lived/](http://blog.dilbert.com/2014/11/18/a-life-well-lived/)

</comment><comment><USER28> >the solution is to invest more fully in the process, giving meaning to your life through activities that have no terminal point

Are there such activities? Even the more process-oriented ones, lacking final conclusions, have terminal milestones. The juggler will eventually master 4 balls; the violinist Paganini, etc.

<comment><USER29> Activities like preparing food for the homeless, tutoring poor kids etc., seems not to have terminal milestones to me. Please do correct me if I am wrong

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Philosophers have had a lot to say about middle age!

 _European_ philosophers may not have, but the works of Confucius etc are almost entirely all revolving around middle aged men.

</comment><comment><USER31> tldr: it's about the journey, not the destination.

<comment><USER32> Which perhaps explains the purchase of a Corvette?

<comment><USER33> No, you can just finally afford one during Middle Age.

Big suprise. Unlike the rich kids when you were young.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> ok, so live in the present. thanks.</comment>


Making my Ruby test suite faster without touching a single line of code - <AUTHOR> http://developingandstuff.blogspot.de/2013/08/speed-test-ruby-193-vs-193-railsexpress.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Update: I switched to ruby-2.0.0-head, and got a 131% improvement from the base case.</comment>


Why BuzzFeed Should Pay My Invoice For Copyright Infringement - <AUTHOR> http://revdancatt.com/2013/09/10/10-good-reason-buzzfeed-is-going-to-pay-my-fucking-invoice-for-copyright-theft/ <comment><USER3> This happened to a bunch of flickr photographers and me for a Toyota advertising campaign. [http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505123_162-42743425/toyota- and-s...](http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505123_162-42743425/toyota-and-saatchi- used-images-from-flickr-without-permission/)

When Toyota's ad agency Saatchi was confronted about the misuse, they offered a flat fee of $500 (if I recall correctly ) for each photo. Several of the photographers took the deal. A group of around 10 of us hired a lawyer and settled for much more (withholding amount was part of the deal) per infringement.

<comment><USER4> Wow, $500 is an amazingly insulting offer. Statutory damages for willful infringement are $150,000!

<comment><USER5> That is the maximum for the willful infringement of an image that is registered with the copyright office [1] and awards are highly vaiable. [2]

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statutory_damages_for_copyright...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statutory_damages_for_copyright_infringement)

[2] [http://www.ipinbrief.com/whyitsdifficultpredictstatutorydama...](http://www.ipinbrief.com/whyitsdifficultpredictstatutorydamages/)

<comment><USER3> After the infringement was discovered and before the settlement, I did have to register the photo with the US copyright office. It was a simple procedure and I think I paid $35. This was done to establish that I did indeed hold the copyright Toyota and friends infringed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Good! I find it depressing how sites like that sponge value off of actual content creators.

<comment><USER7> It is very interesting business idea. No original research/thought/idea/journalism of their own. Scout common websites (reddit on top), find tidbits, use other people's work (their idea, photos etc.) and post lists. Get your blogger to dilute the content to pander to the most of web so that the virality factor increases, and the author should use "interesting" language. This formula gets you pageviews, and you are on your way to explosive growth.

<comment><USER8> OK let me start by saying... I really despise buzzfeed -- I think it's a waste of space on the web and notorious for stealing content and just re-flavoring it. I have created a little self-righteous boycott of the site where I refuse to click on anything from their domain. A man has got to have a code...

 _HOWEVER_ \-- I think it would be REALLY fun to write for them -- I think the challenge of trying to figure out what's hot on the internet and what has people's attention and then trying to get as much traffic as possible would be a ridiculously fun daily challenge.

Would I ever actually consider doing it? Not a chance in hell

<comment><USER7> Oh definitely, it is a challenge to figure out how to gauge readers interests and more importantly to generate constant readership. But getting content by vetting internet forums, and regurgitating stuff is also not a taxing task. Let's see:

What is author's contribution in this article? [http://www.buzzfeed.com/samir/drug-addict-robs-a-store- and-a...](http://www.buzzfeed.com/samir/drug-addict-robs-a-store-and- apologizes-a-decade-later)

Or this one:

[http://www.buzzfeed.com/regajha/diesels-new-ad-campaign- feat...](http://www.buzzfeed.com/regajha/diesels-new-ad-campaign-features-a- model-who-is-both-topless)

Ha a post contributed by a community member:

[http://www.buzzfeed.com/emilys123/15-signs-you-did-a- musical...](http://www.buzzfeed.com/emilys123/15-signs-you-did-a-musical-in- high-school-eahu)

Or the cliched magazine cover story:

[http://www.buzzfeed.com/jessicamisener/23-cringeworthy- magaz...](http://www.buzzfeed.com/jessicamisener/23-cringeworthy-magazine- cover-photoshop-fails)

Or let's see what is hot on imgur: [http://www.buzzfeed.com/bennyjohnson/obama-asks-the-hill- to-...](http://www.buzzfeed.com/bennyjohnson/obama-asks-the-hill-to-bomb- syria-as-explained-by-the-hills)

But looks like brain does some research:

[http://www.buzzfeed.com/briangalindo/15-celebrities-you- neve...](http://www.buzzfeed.com/briangalindo/15-celebrities-you-never- realized-released-albums)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> And this is an example of one of the many, many reasons why intellectual property in the age of the leviathan state is a terrible idea, terribly executed.

As a practical matter you can't own public, unencrypted arrangements of bits. All attempts to enforce ownership of public, unencrypted arrangements of bits are forms of rent-seeking or forms of begging or, at the pleasant best, forms of politely asking other people to go along with your view of the world for a while.

<comment><USER10> What? Not everything on the Internet is public domain. Just because I put a photo on the internet that's not encrypted doesn't make it fair game to go sell my photo.

Maybe I just didn't understand what you were trying to say...

<comment><USER11> His position, I'm guessing, is that when a good has no natural scarcity (pictures and music in digital form, for example, or compiled code), society should not be creating an artificial scarcity in its stead (ie. compelling others not to reproduce it through force of law). He views the idea of this compelled scarcity to be, basically, rent-seeking behavior codified into law.

I'm not entirely sure, but I suspect the "you can't own" portion of his statement was a point of possession and direct control, not necessarily law.

exratione, please let me know if I'm misrepresenting your position here at all, and I'll correct my post. (I'm intentionally leaving out my opinion, just trying to clarify yours. :))

<comment><USER12> The thing is, most physical goods no longer have natural scarcity in rich western societies like the UK or US. A bottle of water is not at all scarce, but it's still illegal to take it from a store and use it without permission.

<comment><USER13> That's not what scarcity means. There is a limited supply of bottles, and it costs real pennies to get some and transport them full of water.

Low-cost is not no-cost, and digital copies made by someone else are actually no-cost.

<comment><USER12> For any practical purpose, there is no limit on our supply of plastic bottles. They are incredibly cheap to make and the raw materials are incredibly abundant.

> Low-cost is not no-cost, and digital copies made by someone else are > actually no-cost.

They're not actually no-cost, it's just that the costs are indirect so it's easy to lose track of them. For example, I'd be interested to see someone make and use a digital copy without a computer and electricity, both of which cost money. Distribution takes an Internet connection and servers, which cost money too.

<comment><USER13> >For any practical purpose, there is no limit on our supply of plastic bottles. They are incredibly cheap to make and the raw materials are incredibly abundant.

The raw resources for bottles are abundant, but it requires labor to make and transport them. Labor is not free, so bottled water remains scarce. If robot swarms will refill and restock bottles for you, _then_ you can take one off a shelf.

>They're not actually no-cost, it's just that the costs are indirect

None of those come out of the pocket of the person being copied. I guess I was too unclear about specifying _made by someone else_. When we're talking about a '''theft''' scenario, the burden imposed on the person being '''stolen''' from is very important, and when it comes to digital copies they are uninvolved in the action and have no costs at all.

<comment><USER12> You're not playing fair with your comparisons. In the case of bottled water, you want to count all the costs of making the bottles, filling them, transporting, them, etc. In the case of digital content, you want to ignore the cost of producing the original, and focus only on the subsequent copies.

When you take a bottle of water, the cost of inventory (which captures the entirety of the amortized cost of production) is less than half of the harm to the shop keeper, because the markup on bottled water is well over 50%. The primary harm is the revenue the shop keeper will forego because he cannot sell that bottle.

In the digital realm, using a copyrighted piece of content without permission causes the copyright owner--who did have to invest in the original creation-- to forego revenue as well.

<comment><USER13> >You're not playing fair with your comparisons. In the case of bottled water, you want to count all the costs of making the bottles, filling them, transporting, them, etc. In the case of digital content, you want to ignore the cost of producing the original, and focus only on the subsequent copies.

With bottled water, I want to count all the costs to the manufacturer of making a specific bottle: materials, wages, property taxes, equipment wear, etc.

With digital content, I want to count all the costs to the manufacturer of making a specific copy: none.

I'm not saying that unlimited copying of work is fair, I'm just saying that there is a qualitative difference in scarcity.

I don't really want to argue about what hurts more. I'll just point out that using nothing, or purchasing a license to work A, or purchasing a license to work B, can _all_ be looked at as causing the creators of A and/or B to forego revenue.

<comment><USER12> There is no single manufacturer of digital content. In that respect, I agree that there is a qualitative difference.

The difference is that water bottle manufacturing is centralized, while digital content "manufacturing" is distributed--each person "manufactures" the digital content on their personal electronic device. That is, they use a device and energy that they paid for, to turn the IP into something that is physically consumable (sound, images, etc.)

So the concept of scarcity is different too, but it doesn't go away. There is still a physical cost to digital content, it's just unbundled from the act of creation.

You could not give infinite amounts of digital content to everyone on Earth, because you'd need to first give everyone an electronic device that can store and play it, the power to operate that device, and a means of digital distribution (network connectivity or shippable media). There are physical and cost limits on all of that.

Digital content only looks free and infinite if you ignore the required infrastructure.

<comment><USER13> But infrastructure is paid for separately. I'm ignoring the cost of the highways for water bottle shipping, because highways are needed with or without them.

Basically, since people already have computers and power for them to do things completely unrelated to getting this media, the 'cost' of a copy is in the same range as asking for one. Tap your phone against someone else's and you're done, for example. And if you think asking is a real cost then you've defined things so that it's impossible to be past scarcity, so I reject such a definition.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> BuzzFeed is notorious for STEALING content from other websites. Using pictures without permission isn't the only bad thing they are doing. They even copy/paste chunks of text verbatim into lists without attribution (For example "13 Things You Probably Didn't Know About the Movie 'Clueless" is comprised almost solely of sentences copied from the IMDB trivia page for Clueless, with no sign that they are anything but his own words.). Also their lists are rehashed from other blogs.

[http://gawker.com/5922038/remix-everything-buzzfeed-and- the-...](http://gawker.com/5922038/remix-everything-buzzfeed-and-the- plagiarism-problem)

[http://www.theatlanticwire.com/business/2013/03/buzzfeeds- ha...](http://www.theatlanticwire.com/business/2013/03/buzzfeeds-happiest- facts-all-time-were-mostly-plagiarized-reddit/62918/)

[http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2012/06/...](http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2012/06/_21_pictures_that_will_restore_your_faith_in_humanity_how_buzzfeed_makes_viral_hits_in_four_easy_steps_.single.html)

</comment><comment><USER15> From the article: "On Slate Jonah Peretti goes on to say "would love if every image contained some secret metadata and a way to license that image. But the practical reality is that it is pretty challenging"."

Now there's an interesting startup idea.

<comment><USER16> It already exists: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganography#Digital](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganography#Digital)

Unfortunately, it's easy to thwart. (just transform the image slightly)

<comment><USER17> Not at all. Enough methods, such as spread spectrum watermarking, survive a multitude of digital deformations and 'analog' attacks like printing and physically deforming. Action from 1.30 and German, but the demo is pretty clear. [1]

[1] [http://www.3sat.de/mediathek/index.php?display=1&mode=play&o...](http://www.3sat.de/mediathek/index.php?display=1&mode=play&obj=11689)

<comment><USER18> I can't watch the video, can you please provide some information/source about the technique.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> As you mention in your article, copyright infringement is not theft. You have a legitimate claim against BuzzFeed, but don't start using the terminology of MPAA/RIAA , unless you want to be hated as much as they are.

<comment><USER20> MPAA/RIAA aren't hated for abusing terminology. They're hated for extorting exorbitant payments from people (some of whom don't even own computers, let alone download copyrighted material) by abusing legal process (threatening people with lawsuits that are probably groundless, but which the defendants can't afford to pay a lawyer to defend). I doubt that the author of this article could ever deserve that amount of hatred.

<comment><USER21> Yeah right. They're hated because they look at the people ripping off their stuff and sites like ThePirateBay profiteering on their content and try to stomp on that sandcastle.

<comment><USER22> And also subverting the public domain (the Disney extensions) and trying to force everyone on the internet to do policing for them (SOPA). And pushing for much harsher IP laws both in scope and penalties.

<comment><USER21> The Disney thing is largely unrelated, the amount of content even a decade old being pirated is negligible compared to the latest whatever.

<comment><USER23> Are we discussing why they are hated, or why people use sites like The Pirate Bay?

Because Disney is sure as shit related to the first.

<comment><USER21> I'm talking about the Copyright Extension Act in 1995, largely attributed to Disney, that makes really old stuff almost nobody is pirating remain copyright and out of the public domain?

The reasons they may be hated _for that_ don't bear much relationship with copyright infringement which focuses _almost exclusively_ on newly released things that would be copyright regardless of Disney's lobbying.

<comment><USER23> The Copyright Extension Act in 1995 is a significant part of why they are hated. It is _anything but_ irrelevant or unrelated.

 _You_ are the one attempting to insinuate that only people who use The Pirate Bay object to their perversion of copyright laws and discussion. Multiple alternative reasons to be angry with them have now been presented to you, but you just claim they are unrelated because you assert that the real reason is that they are just interested in pirating recent things. In discarding these alternative reasons because they they don't mesh with your already unsupported assertion, you are begging the question.

People _are_ in fact upset with the MPAA/RIAA for their abuse of terminology and all that it facilitates: the corruption of copyright laws, weaponized lawsuits, and the shackling of (frankly _ancient_ ) culture.

Pretend that people are only upset with their abuse of terminology because they want to pirate things all you want, but you are _dead wrong_.

<comment><USER24> If that were really true, then there should be markedly less piracy of content from publishers not affiliated with the MPAA or RIAA, but that doesn't seem to actually be the case.

<comment><USER23> How do you think that follows? I am not asserting that people pirate MPAA/RIAA content because they hate those organizations, nor do I think that is the case. That would be a foolish thing to assert.

I think that people pirate primarily opportunistically. _Some_ of these people try to justify their piracy by saying they hate the MPAA/RIAA and pirate for ideological reasons, _other pirates do not_.

People, sometimes people who pirate, _sometimes not_ , hate the MPAA/RIAA for a wide variety of reasons that have been beaten to death in this thread.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> "As the kids grow up I've been collection various "Parent Hacks" were I've discovered useful ways of doing things, with the aim of one day producing a "10 Neat Things I Learnt While Being A Parent". Now one of those things has been splashed all over the internet, which kind of devalues the usefulness of the list I was planning."

The above is the thing I find most amazing. If you are compiling a list so that you can one day produce "10 neat things I learned" etc. then the last thing you should be doing is putting that info _anywhere_ on the internet. The saying that comes to mind is "possession is 9/10th of the law".

By posting it online, multiple small parties will potentially take it, spread it around, and you will never have enough legal resources to police it. Effectively it is gone forever.

<comment><USER26> > The saying that comes to mind is "possession is 9/10th of the law".

The saying was never really that - only through bastardization and a gradual veering away. In fact, it was that "possession is nine /points/ of the law".

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Am I the only one who think the OP may have overreacted?

<comment><USER28> No, you're not the only one.

I totally get him, but I think the way in he expressed his belief came up as just whiny.

Also I believe the problem is with copyright laws and not with BuzzFeed. They are not selling that image, they are just illustrating their content and the same article without his image would have exactly the same value.

But beyond all, what pisses me off the most is the blue background on those link, good lord!

<comment><USER29> I am not selling your code, I am just using your code verbatim without your permission to make money and compete with you.

<comment><USER28> I do open source software released under GPLv2 so, literally, be my guest.

<comment><USER29> Oh, you mean you gave the world permission in advance through a formalized licensing agreement? Just like the article's author didn't?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> BuzzFeed bothers me as much as the next person, but how mad can you really be at BuzzFeed for linking back to the _wrong page_ , according to how you see it, that still contains the original picture and is publicly viewable?

<comment><USER31> One thought that comes to mind is in the line "So all those 4 million plus views who may click through, will they count as "Views" on my Flickr page? No."

Bear that in mind - if this is accurate (and the guy once worked on Flickr), then linking to the download page avoids bumping the photo's view count up, which might indicate to the photographer that the photo's been featured on a highly trafficked page.

<comment><USER30> That sounds like a Flickr problem more than a BuzzFeed problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Keep me updated. Really fascinated by your quest to get back the $75 they probably owe you.

My god it must be nice to have something like this actually be a problem in your life and make you mad.

<comment><USER33> * $500 to $5,000

<comment><USER34> This is worth 500 to 5000 in the same way that the Winklevoss twins should own half of facebook

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> In general there are many companies out there who create entire biz models on ripping off photographer's photos and compiling them into lists that sit side saddle to paid ads. I have lots of personal experience with this, and if a photographer registers his or her copyright, such companies are very much liable for compensating the artist. These companies know this. Most photographers don't notice the infringements or if they do haven't registered their images. If more photographers registered, the pool of stolen images would be full of many more legal torpedoes, so to speak, and the companies who are less risk averse would spend the 30 minutes it would take to brainstorm a system for getting images legitimately. (Hint: Cracked.com has accounts with Getty and Corbis. It's not that hard.)

</comment><comment><USER35> I feel your pain. On the plus side, you take great photos and now I'm aware of your work (I know, I know — doesn't do much to help).

</comment><comment><USER36> This is good to see. Too often the scum at Buzzfeed get away with blatant infringements.

</comment><comment><USER31> It doesn't have to be this way, does it?

Yes, if BuffPo were to agree some payment for photo or writing reuse, they'd have much greater outgoings. However, they'd also then become legitimate channels for syndication, rather than incidental leeches.

I do profess some grim amusement in noticing that serial infringers - <USER2> Daily Mail comes prominently to mind - are never punished with anything greater than a nominal fee for whatever work they've lifted. Given these are outfits that are entirely based around profit (rather than simply linking to them in a personal journal, for example, with no money involved), surely the consequences for copyright infringement ought to be amplified, rather than diminished into inconsequentiality?

Imagine a BuzzFeed that shared the ad revenue with the creators of the photos involved. It wouldn't lead to anyone's early retirement, I'm sure, but we have the means to make such happen, very easily. Shouldn't such sites be working toward helping creators be rewarded for what fuels those very sites?

</comment><comment><USER37> Now in Bulgarian! [http://agronet.bg/agro-news/interesni- novini/874-2009-02-09-...](http://agronet.bg/agro-news/interesni- novini/874-2009-02-09-06-10-58.html) Tineye seems to be out of date, but google image search comes through with a wealth of copies out there.

</comment><comment><USER38> This guy has a great claim to some payment, anywhere from $500 to $5,000 (or whatever he can settle for). The usage without permission is not in doubt. The case for payment for this type of usage is well-established. The only question is how much. Buzzfeed is in the wrong and they should pay up, pronto.

<comment><USER39> He mentioned that many of his other photos are CC licensed and this is one of the exceptions. Isn't there any way they could have seen the CC licenses on his other photos and mistaken this photo for one of the CC licensed photo?

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I asked Jonah about this very thing a year ago. His response was lacking IMO:

[http://cdixon.org/2012/07/24/buzzfeeds-strategy/comment- page...](http://cdixon.org/2012/07/24/buzzfeeds-strategy/comment- page-1/#comment-596874688)

</comment><comment><USER41> As an amateur photographer I've actually been in the same boat, but with an unnamed newspaper in the UK, it's an interesting process. It's also ridiculously common for media companies to use photography without licensing it properly, and whilst I've heard the argument of "don't post it if you don't want it using" it just doesn't work. The world would be a poorer place if creatives felt that they had to sequester their work away to maintain their own rights of control over their product.

Plus most of the time if you approach a photographer first you're going to get a much better deal than when you've decided that licensing it properly wasn't important.

</comment><comment><USER42> I'm running into a similar problem with a trademark I hold for my brand (that I created and am developing). People have fast-followed with different (similar) Twitter accounts, but are calling themselves my trademark (thus diluting the brand). The problem is, I reached out to Twitter and they said that these accounts weren't in violation. I spoke to a lawyer who referred me to someone else. Should I pursue it further or just be flattered that they are promoting the name? The problem if I do that is that then everyone thinks it'll be okay, so the trademark is essentially useless. Any ideas? By the way, some of these accounts have > 400k followers where I only about about 5k.

</comment><comment><USER34> What was the invoice amount for? You list all those reasons why "it's not worth a lot" is not a good argument...so what are you arguing it is worth? I have to say, your "I was going to use it" argument sounds a lot like "I had that idea first" argument for start ups. In the end, buzz feed can just execute with that photo better, your idea (no offense) was never going to touch 4.2MM views.

Definitely not saying you necessarily deserve nothing, but what amount did you put in your invoice? Want to know what you think the value is

</comment><comment><USER43> Well Reverend ... I think your claim has merit but I'd be interested in knowing what denomination ordained you with language like that. I'd recommend you avoid curse-words like that in your court filing and in the event you talk with officials involved in your case.

<comment><USER35> Where is it written that a Reverend shall not use such language?

<comment><USER44> Religious arguments frequently don't work like that. Where is it written, for example, that Catholics must not use condoms?

<comment><USER35> That's pretty much my point.

<comment><USER44> I think the GP has a fair question - the stereotype of people who label themselves 'Reverend' includes a considered reluctance to use profanity. It's not saying that reverends can't do this if they're 'real', but it is far enough out of the stereotype to ask just what kind of denomination is the author a reverend for?

Whether or not it's "written" somewhere doesn't mean that there isn't a stereotype as to how 'holy' men (it's always men...) should behave. Witness the confusion when Westerners got into Indian religions in a big way, then couldn't quite square the way some gurus shagged themselves silly - 'holy' men were 'supposed' to be celibate, if not in actuality, then at least in behaviour. It isn't the done thing to have your Anglican priest bragging about his last shagging session with his wife, for example.

Or is the author using 'reverend' as a joke appellation, without seriously being one?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Someone needs to create a new internet where everything that makes it way onto it is automatically Creative Commons "by Attribution". If you can read it, you can use it (as long as you give credit).

<comment><USER29> This would not work, as it would be difficult to impossible to distinguish legit content from content uploaded by liars, thus breaking the trust model you are trying to create. Here, I uploaded the entire Harry Potter series via ebook, it must be Creative Commons; right?

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Good luck.

</comment><comment> o0-0o Congrats, buzzfeed! You just made my hosts file.</comment>


RIP Digg - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/19/rip-digg/

<comment><USER2> Am I the only one hoping for a "RIP Techcrunch" any time soon ?

She just completely throw Digg's work into the trash like useless fastfood plastic bag.

This is what happens when you don't know how to create anything productive in your life, and you spend your days talking sh __about other's people work. I don't care if Digg is losing visitors, it was a new concept back then, and it was successful, show some respect for the people who are/were still working for it.

I'm seriously hating TC everyday a little more.

<comment><USER3> I wholeheartedly agree. I'd be lucky to have been even close to as successful as someone like Kevin Rose. People make mistakes -- you never know how successful something will be until you put it in action. I remember years ago when I was watching Diggnation and reading Digg all the time. I've never had near that level of influence over that many people. For that, I have massive respect for Digg and its creator(s).

EDIT: Hell, Digg was probably what shifted my focus from just tech news to actually starting programming and learning to start my own company -- it was almost an inspiration. There's a lot more to its legacy that's unsung, unappreciated, and undervalued.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't know how anyone takes Sarah Lacy seriously. The bombast, the myth- making and self congratulation, but most especially the complete disregard for any annoying facts that get in her way.

" And Digg? Well we got Digg exactly right. We said it could sell for between $150 million and $200 million, and over the next few months and years there were several negotiations and at least one solid offer in that exact range. But Digg — unlike peers like Flickr and Delicious– said no, and its best days seemed ahead of it."

Presumably she is talking about the google talks, because that would be the only "solid offer" in that exact range. And guess what, it was google who walked away according to Techcrunch.

[http://techcrunch.com/2008/07/26/google-walks-away-from- digg...](http://techcrunch.com/2008/07/26/google-walks-away-from-digg-deal/)

_Exactly Right_

<comment><AUTHOR> It seems like tech journalism itself is experiencing a bubble.

<comment><USER5> Tech journalism has ALWAYS been this way. Ever hear of John C Dvorak?

<comment><USER6> Thouh the numbers could have been exaggerated, its a fact that digg could have been much more profitable had kevin thought of selling when there was a market for it. Its one of many examples of how founders enamoured with their ideas tend to push the startup past the prime. Groupon just did that a few months ago. I can see myself reading a similar headline about them a few years from now.

<comment><USER7> the diff is that groupon is a cash machine. digg never was

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> _The entrepreneurs were the exact opposite of the kids today seduced by the promises of Y Combinator, easy cash of super angels and lure of TechCrunch headlines._

Is she talking about the same Digg that had the founder on the BusinessWeek cover?

Edit: Fascinating, _this_ very writer of the blog post put him on the "controversial" cover. And then she wants to talk about a time when kids weren't seduced by "easy cash." Defies logic, really.

<comment><USER9> There's nothing people love more than an article romanticizing the good old days.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I thought this was going to be an analysis of Digg's current problems, but seven out of ten paragraphs are about Sarah Lacy's BusinessWeek career, her book, her current whereabouts, etc.

Much of what she does have to say about Digg and the history of Web startups is questionable (for example, _"The entrepreneurs were the exact opposite of the kids today seduced by the promises of Y Combinator, easy cash of super angels and lure of TechCrunch headlines. They were doing something that still stank of broken dreams and evaporated billions. And they were doing it for one simple reason: they couldn't stop themselves."_ )

Sometimes TechCrunch does well (particularly when it gets a real scoop) but "R.I.P. Digg" is poor, in my opinion.

<comment><USER11> It's not only the entrepreneurial kids of today that want to be rockstars; it's the "journalists", too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's a shame we live in a society the likes to kick people when they are down. These are the same people who were cheer leading when digg was on a roll.

</comment><comment><USER13> Digg was awesome.

I remember when I created an account on the site. A friend kicked a link my way from Fox News of all places ... that mentioned the site alongside Slashdot. In my job at the time, crowdsourced sites focused on technology were very useful. I left the site about a year after they decided to open up to general news. My fear was that it would become what many of the emerging Web 2.0 news aggregation sites became: a political activist haven. Within several months (not overnight as I had feared), it had ceased being a useful resource. The breaking point was when there was no way to configure my profile to filter out crap-political-commentary. I wrote them to have my account removed (something that couldn't be done with a few clicks at the time).

I had taken it out of my daily "sites to check on" in 2007, but after reading some commentary about how "all of the Web 2.0 sites had become BIASED! (OMG!)" in early 2009, I visited the front page (now without an account with filters setup). The top stories of the day were dominated by nearly everything that a former female candidate for vice president had made.

I love Hacker News because despite its growing popularity, it has maintained civility and avoided (most of the time) entries focused entirely on politics.

</comment><comment><USER14> Digg died long ago when the spammers won.

</comment><comment><USER15> Poor Digg staff.

I hear Reddit is hiring engineers...

<comment><USER16> Actually, Digg is hiring too. We are looking for some great engineers and sales people to join our team.

<http://jobs.digg.com>

<comment><USER15> Well good! I enjoy Digg and would hate to see it go down like the article implies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Maybe it's also time to separate what is an interesting resource or tool from what is an interesting business.

150-200 million is a lot for a company that seems to have earned very little if anything. It's one thing for a Groupon to walk away from a deal, but Digg should have cashed out.

I'm hardly ever on Digg anymore, but I am Hacker News a lot. I'm not sure if Hacker News was ever constructed to be a business - seems like it was just designed to be an interesting place for people in the community to get together and share information - and that's just fine. Not every great idea is necessarily a great business.

<comment><USER18> Click on the little Y in the upper left hand corner to see where Hacker News comes from.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I don't understand what the boob autographing picture has to do with the article whatsoever.

<comment><USER20> I think it's kevin rose signing an autograph.

<comment><USER21> Yep (linked to from the TC comments).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> What's the exit strategy for Digg? With Kevin Rose out, but a lot of investment already in it, can they just shutter it and write it off?

<comment><USER23> 9m uniques monthly is still a decent amount, whether or not the company is profitable is yet to be seen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> My 2 cents, Digg.com user since April 2005.

I don't know if it was spam or all the format changes, each time a format change occurred users complained - a lot, yet changes were implemented anyway.

The highlight of Digg's history I'd say was the HD-DVD encryption key everyone put in posts refusing to back down I think that brought the users together.

Then one day the user-base seemed to suddenly shift rapidly to the right almost overnight from a more centrist point of view, that cause a lot of friction and comment wars.

Telling the people who use your website, some of who practically lived on the website, what they should like and not like design-wise instead of listening to them was disastrous and may have been the cause of Digg.com being abandoned by most of its user-base.

<comment><USER25> I was there for about the same time period. In addition to the shift in the community, around that same time the front page began to be dominated by mediocrity (daily mail anyone?). If you checked the history on any of the front page submitters it was obvious they were all in massive vote-collusion rings.

Articles in these rings would instantly hit the front page with 200+ votes. The front page became irrelevent, and on Digg -- as opposed to its competitor Reddit -- there was not much else.

I stopped visiting months before the v4 fiasco, but even then it was already long apparent that the essence of what made Digg special in the beginning was long gone.

<comment><USER24> Even places such as Slashdot are hard to get submissions accepted but I'd say that's due more to the sheer volume of submissions, not as much in past years but I'm sure Slashdot has a large user-base they've got at least a good eight years experience over Digg and Reddit. I mean even Anonymous users can submit at Slashdot.

I'd say it's more than having your funny cat picture or that article everyone has seen 20 times posted because it's new to you it's the fact you can submit your post and let the community decide what to do instead of having everything outright rejected instantly - it makes for hard feelings and no sense of community.

Believe it or not I think Digg is actually getting better community-wise, it seems the rats have left the sinking ship. edit: I certainly don't mean Kevin!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> <http://www.google.com/trends?q=digg.com>

I used Digg for a while, and it became apparent over time that the quality both of the news and also the comments was tanking. Once I discovered HN I stopped using Digg altogether.

</comment><comment><USER27> What is with the photo chosen for this article? Some random dude signing a girl's chest?

<comment><USER28> That's Kevin Rose. You can't tell because he's backing the camera.

<http://www.flickr.com/photos/thomashawk/167663907/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I stopped using Digg a long time ago, but the nonchalant way Sarah throws 6 years of work from hard-working people at Digg really pisses me off.

</comment><comment><USER30> I can't help but think that starting a new website with the RSS that they removed wouldn't be such a bad idea. Keep running digg, but take all the ideas and stuff the current digg community hates and build a new site (with different theme/terminology obviously).

</comment><comment><USER31> I agree that she probably tried to sensationalize it. However, it is still an insightful read about lessons that can be learnt from Digg, if you can hold your attention long enough and look past the tabloid journalism elements.

</comment><comment><USER32> Poor Twitter is getting all the blame from TechCrunch these days.

<comment><USER33> That's funny to me because I feel that TechCrunch was the BIGGEST twitter cheerleader for many years. I even started a twitter account just because they felt that it was so important to the web and this was before the everyday man and celebrities created their accounts.

<comment><USER34> Looking back, it's easy to get influenced by talking heads. For God's sake, I used to listen and nod my head to Bill O'Reilly (for shame!)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Nice that they still have a Digg button at both the top and bottom of the article.

</comment><comment><USER36> IS there room for digg-like-sites that cater to specific verticals? For a while, it was trendy to do digg clones and now they have all disappeared- is voting based news site like digg still a good idea for news and information.

<comment><USER37> Hacker News itself is rather Digg-like and quite focussed.

Reddit is also quite interesting in how it lets you subscribe to reddits that interest you (and unsubscribe from those that don't), as well as allowing anyone to make a new reddit. It prevents (or delays) the need for site migration, like what happened with the Digg to Reddit exodus, by giving you reddit migration. Don't like /r/pogramming? Go to /r/coding! Etc.</comment></comment>