BuzzFeed Raises $50M from Andreessen Horowitz - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/11/technology/a-move-to-go-beyond-lists-for-content-at-buzzfeed.html <comment><USER2> _> "Most of BuzzFeed's revenue is derived from BuzzFeed Creative, the company's 75-person unit dedicated to creating [ads that pretend to be news stories]"_

Maybe BuzzFeed has cracked the code for online "journalism" being profitable. But if this is the method, I feel bad for consumers.

<comment><USER3> I like to think that consumers will eventually develop a mental immunity to BuzzFeed-style headlines, and then they'll be a bit stuck.

There's only so many times a human can click on "Ten Amazing Things About Something Or Other That We Bet You Won't Believe" before it finally clicks in their brain that _hey, wait a minute, last time I read one of these it wasn 't _that_ amazing..._

<comment><USER4> Take a look at the August 1985 issue of Cosmopolitan and see how tired they are of the formula. The Chilling Lure of Cocaine - Could You Be Hooked? The Bottom Line on Office Sex. 25 Ways To Ignite A Love Affair.

Seriously, all real titles from one month picked at random.

<comment><USER5> It never ceases to amaze me how long unsustainable things stick around for

<comment><USER6> If something's been around for a long time, it must be somewhat sustainable.

<comment><USER5> True. But knowingly using up finite resources doesn't seem to deter people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> So I went to buzzfeed.com and was expecting misleading headlines. Instead I was met with "23 Adorable Quokkas That Will Instantly Make Your Day Better", clicked the link and saw 23 pictures of Quokkas.

Most of the stuff on the site seems to be these kind of lists, which I honestly have nothing against. They are linkbaits, sure, but not misleading and I'm seldom disappointed after clicking one. I don't see BuzzFeed claiming to be The Economist or about high quality journalism at all. They seem to focus on serving articles that are easy to digest and sometimes that's exactly what I want.

<comment><USER8> In one of the experiments, there were two groups: One was asked to write a original creative essay and other was asked to use a template created by an expert and just fill it out. One of such popular template comes in the form of "X number of reason why Y is not true". Although these bullet points doesn't seem such a "creative" content, in the experiment these kind of template-based approach won hands down VS asking people to come up with something original. Why? Because most people suck at being original and creative. It requires years of experience + some level of genius gene and avoiding pitfalls and keeping delicate balance to be original. So if you can't hire 75 Oscar Wilds, then your best bet to create the popular content is follow the templates.

BuzzFeed's model is simple. You can hire pretty much average Joes who can be assigned some interesting topic everyday like "Cheap Private Islands". These Joes will then do research on Internet for few hours and fill out the template with what they found: "25 Amazing Private Islands That You Can Rent Now". Is this click worthy? Absolutely.

I think people who frown upon this don't get "entertainment industry". When you want a TV series or a movie, the goal is not to educate you but entertain you. To provide you some amusement and excitement in your day - however short living that may be. If you click on BuzzFeed's link and if you found it did provided you amusement, they did your job and in return you gave them some CPI. This is no different than watching a soap opera. In other words, Internet is replacing TV as the source of entertainment and BuzzFeed is now a core provider of content in this arena.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> BuzzFeed are the Zynga of journalism. Great at getting you in, but lacking in substance.

When their current social network-driven linkbait approach starts to fail I don't see how they can differentiate themselves from other news sites. Zynga tried to turn themselves onto a destination and failed miserably.

<comment><USER10> Is there anything to learn from Demand Media's trajectory? They wrote search- engine-bait rather than social-network-bait, but didn't bother to create cover traffic / quality journalism.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Quality wins in the long run and BuzzFeed is not focused on quality. Their company should be called Linkbait, Inc. They're the problem, not the solution. I'd bet against this if I could.

<comment><USER12> Disrupters rarely start with quality. Mini mills were strictly inferior to integrated steel mills, web-based software was less powerful than desktop software, digital photography was inferior to film. (Many of these are from Clay Christensen.)

The history of progress & technology is of fast, simple, low-end solutions getting better over time to the point where they're strictly superior to the legacy alternatives. I have little doubt that Buzzfeed, or another upstart media company, will someday be able to do "real" journalism better and faster than the NYT.

(If anyone else believes this, come help me make it happen: [http://www.cafe.com/developers](http://www.cafe.com/developers))

<comment><USER13> Journalism is not a technology. It serves an important civic and moral purpose that isn't accounted for at all when you frame it as yet another case of 'disruption'.

<comment><USER12> I absolutely agree that it serves an important civic & moral purpose, but that is precisely _why_ journalism needs to adopt new technology to reach people on their level.

<comment><USER14> I'm not seeing how BuzzFeed is adopting new technology nor how adopting new technology is what journalism needs.

I see BuzzFeed as a company that's found a way to exploit people's pull towards instant gratification. But it serves a terrible purpose which has short term benefits for the company but little benefit for others.

They're similar to payday loan companies. Many argue that they're meeting a market need. They maybe but they're doing it in an exploitative way. That's bad for everyone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The part that caught my eye is that Ze Frank is working there, and is leading the Motion Pictures division.

That's... incredible.

I'm looking forward to what they produce, video-wise, simply because Ze Frank is there to shepherd their efforts.

<comment><USER16> I want to support Ze but not Buzzfeed, this is causing conflicting emotions for me :-(

<comment><USER10> How many "quality journalism" articles or content pieces must an outlet produce per month, and to what level of traffic exposure must they promote those quality articles, in order to recruit more talent like Ze?

<comment><USER16> I don't think it comes down to "quality journalism" it's all about money. That's what online "journalism" is ... ad revenue from clickbait titles. I have yet to see anything of high quality investigative journalism from Buzzfeed/ViralNova/Upworthy/etc. They're click-bait farms and they provide no real "journalism" value.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> An interesting thing I think nobody seems to be talking about with this deal is the marriage between media platforms and venture capital [1]

There are big incentives for investors to take part in media plays. Look at some recent patterns:

\- PandoDaily backed by Peter Theil, Tony Hseih, SV Angel Lerer Ventures, etc…

\- BusinessInsider backed by Bezos, Marc Andreeson, RRE, and more (to the tune of $30M+!)

\- Washington Post owned by Bezos

\- BuzzFeed itself was co-founded by Kenneth Lerer of Lerer Ventures (same team behind HuffPo)

Even if there are firewalls and a commitment to journalistic autonomy/integrity, when you invested in a media company, your interests align with theirs from the very top.

[1] [http://crewlab.net/buzzfeed](http://crewlab.net/buzzfeed)

</comment><comment><USER18> Reminds me of The Onion's spoof of Buzzfeed called Clickhole [http://www.clickhole.com/](http://www.clickhole.com/)

</comment><comment><USER19> FWIW, here's Chris Dixon's blog post on the subject, which includes additional context on BuzzFeed's technological chops:

[http://cdixon.org/2014/08/10/buzzfeed/](http://cdixon.org/2014/08/10/buzzfeed/)

> _BuzzFeed has technology at its core. Its 100+ person tech team has created > world-class systems for analytics, advertising, and content management. > Engineers are 1st class citizens. Everything is built for mobile devices > from the outset. Internet native formats like lists, tweets, pins, animated > GIFs, etc. are treated as equals to older formats like photos, videos, and > long form essays. BuzzFeed takes the internet and computer science > seriously._

The last line, about taking "computer science seriously"...maybe BF doesn't have a dev team of the likes of Google and Facebook, but it must certainly be one of the best in the media business. I've looked through their job postings from time to time, and unlike most major media companies, the job descriptions treat engineering/dev positions as the complex, specialized fields that they often are...what I mean is that at a news company, a dev is expected to do many different things...not because the news company really wants a "full stack" developer or will pay the salary for what that entails, but because there are so many legacy technologies to juggle, and since the traditional news company has only so much money to spend on tech...a Java developer could be expected to crank on the CMS and also figure out video delivery solutions for the media company's bespoke legacy system...and maybe also do some front- end design. At BuzzFeed, even though it seems the organization is relatively flat, with not many layers/walls between tech and editorial, when they want a MySQL developer, they just want someone who can do some serious administration and performance hacking...not a MySQL dev who also might also be expected to hack on some animal quiz code.

I think besides the quality of their CMS (which is pretty damn good, no matter what you think of the editorial content)...one of their most impressive feats was rebuilding the entire site, basically from scratch, during the week that Hurricane Sandy flooded their servers in lower Manhattan. In fact, I believe Gawker had their servers in the same area, but was reduced to creating a Tumblr and posting to it for some time after the hurricane.

edit: Also, another thing I admire: despite their technological chops, they tend to be fairly conservative about how they push the constraints of the web. Their lists are simply lists that work in any browser, any device...because text and static images _work perfectly fine_ in conveying a message. Even their gigantic longform stories don't do crazy shit...for being a "gimmicky" tabloidesque site, BuzzFeed seems to have great confidence in the power of plaintext and big photos...compare this to major news organizations trying to parallax-scroll everything for every occasion.

</comment><comment><USER20> Interesting, but not particularly surprising. Despite many people's hate for Buzzfeed they are quickly building up a powerful journalism team. I suspect they will be the biggest media/journalism/content powerhouse online within a few years (they technically already are).

<comment><USER21> Watch John Oliver's Last Week Tonight video segment on native advertisement [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=E_F5GxCwizc](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=E_F5GxCwizc) (10 min long). There is a bit on BuzzFeed where he points out that many of the posts that are "top" are really from paid advertisers.

Saying BuzzFeed is developing a journalism team is probably not the best wording. I would suggest BuzzFeed is building up a great PR, advertising, and marketing engine. They will make money. But is it journalism?

<comment><USER22> They are developing long form features and op-eds, no?

<comment><USER23> Without a very thick, tall, barb-wire-topped wall between editorial and sales, BuzzFeed will never be a respectable source for journalism.

So longer as they are running ads as content, no amount of long-form writing and New Yorker-esque vocabulary will move them from the "clickbait" side to the "journalism" side.

<comment><USER22> Oh, so you believe in free and objective journalism? I have bad news for you...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Quantcast, based on direct numbers from Buzzfeed, shows Buzzfeed's traffic essentially flat this year - [https://www.quantcast.com/buzzfeed.com](https://www.quantcast.com/buzzfeed.com)

Is this a concern? What is the future growth potential?

<comment><USER25> this is not 1999, "eyeballs", I mean, "traffic" growth means little when you are able to monetize the traffic you have and grow that (even if your traffic isn't growing)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> This is interesting, especially in the context of this interview Andreesen did in Stanford Graduate Business School: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYYsXzt1VDc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYYsXzt1VDc) where he talks about consuming news and how current news is ripe for disruption because it exists on a fragile framework of selling "objectivity", and he seems genuinely interested in how this can be changed.

Buzzfeed has the audience, but maybe only a tangential focus on what we are used to as 'news', I wonder if this is the result of that thinking, ('what we know as news is changing') or something completely different.

</comment><comment><USER27> Marc Andreessen, in March of this year, explains his perspective on journalism & BuzzFeed in the video below at 41:00 minute mark.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYYsXzt1VDc](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYYsXzt1VDc)

He covers topics like:

\- why objective journalism started due to monopolies

\- technology in journalism

\- content creation

This video should answer most of the questions in this thread as to why he'd make an investment.

Edit: formatting

</comment><comment><USER28> The most puzzling part about this article is that apparently BuzzFeed has an editor-in-chief.

</comment><comment><USER29> When will advertisers understand that linkbait/clickbait is more effective at attracting bots than humans?

Or do they already realize this? Does anyone have any metrics on where Buzzfeeds CPMs trade versus other news sites/blogs?

</comment><comment><USER30> Buzzfeed should pay a load of that to "Reddit"

</comment><comment><USER31> Relevant: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_F5GxCwizc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_F5GxCwizc)

</comment><comment><USER32> You won't believe what happened next.

</comment><comment><USER33> I want to believe BuzzFeed has found the future of sustainable and profitable news.

I get how being a full-stack tech news startup can do things like create great lists/linkbait.

But I don't understand how the tech gets you profitable journalism and news.

<comment><USER33> I wasn't trying to be incredulous... genuinely looking for understanding in to how they get an advantage in journalism with modern tech!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Note: Original article title is "A Move to Go Beyond Lists for Content at BuzzFeed", which is not particularly explanitory, which is why I changed it in the submission.

<comment><USER34> Honest question: How do we as users know when it is ok to editorialize headlines and when it isn't?

<comment><USER35> Does it matter? There's no punishment for having the title of your submission changed beyond wasted whatever effort you put into coming up with a new title. If you feel your title is better, submit it and see if the moderators agree.

<comment><USER34> Then why do the site's guidelines specifically state "Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait."?

I'm fine with the mods changing the titles, but I don't like the fact that the rules don't apply equally to everyone.

<comment><USER36> The rules apply equally to everyone. The article's title is currently "50 Million New Reasons BuzzFeed Wants to Take Its Content Far Beyond Lists". That's obviously linkbait, so we didn't revert the submitter's title.

<comment><USER37> > _That 's obviously linkbait_

This is a whole new meta that my brain is really having a hard time grokking.

<comment><USER36> Sure, it's a meta ironic reference to Buzzfeed linkbait by the NYT, but the point stands. If I ironically mimic somebody screaming, I'm still screaming.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> As a result, any company invested in by Andreessen Horowitz is now of lesser value, lower integrity, and less worth of promotion in my opinion. We can talk and discuss and debate "free market" and monetizing content and whatever other rationalization you have for this investment, but in the end, BuzzFeed is not real journalism and does not conduct itself ethically (looking at you, BuzzFeed writers taking content from Reddit and only sometimes giving credit), and as a result, I think that's a message AH is sending, "integrity, ethics, and quality is not important, just $$$"

Edit: once again, anything that goes against the grain of the HN-hivemind is being downvoted without explanation :-) For a site that prides itself in not being Reddit, HN sure acts like Reddit wrt downvotes.

<comment><USER36> It's against the HN guidelines to go on about getting downvoted. Please don't.

Complaints about the HN hive-mind are also tedious. And they're (mostly) evenly distributed across ideologies, so they say more about the complainer than they do about HN.

<comment><USER16> > It's against the HN guidelines to go on about getting downvoted. Please > don't.

Technically it's not, it's discouraged, direct quote:

> Resist complaining about being downmodded.

I have no qualms with downvotes, but I do have issue with people not explaining their rational for either up or downvotes. By simply downvoting/upvoting and moving on, discussion and debate cannot occur and no one can have their opinion challenged.

<comment><USER38> There are an order of magnitude more votes than comments on HN. Asking people to supply a comment with every vote would quickly degrade the signal, overwhelming it with noisy "I agree" or "you're wrong"s.

People occasionally explain downvotes. They are not obligated to.

<comment><USER39> Good observation. Why aren't they obligated to?

You don't have to ask people to supply a comment for every upvote. But you can ask them for downvotes. There are an order of magnitude less downvotes than upvotes.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Schneier on Security : Flash Cookies - <AUTHOR> http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/08/flash_cookies.html

<comment><USER2> I think it would be nice to register FlushCookies.com and have it provide information about how to kill off Flash Cookies with a prominent link to the rather obscure page on Adobe's site: [http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplay...](http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplayer/help/settings_manager07.html)

Unfortunalely, I'm too busy to set up that site, but feel free if you've got the time.

<comment><USER3> Got it. I'm a bit busy, too, so give me a couple of days ....

By the way, I'm not especially interested in throwing money away, even if it is for a good cause. And I'm rather clueless about some aspects of web etiquette; I occasionally see people screaming about ads for reasons that I fail to comprehend. So: Would it be a bad idea to put AdSense on the site, to help pay for it?

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> The Wired article Bruce links to was submitted here last week, but some of the commenters on Bruce's site have useful advice, so I figured it was worth linking.

</comment><comment><USER4> I was looking for the "read more" link on that post, but those two paragraphs is the whole thing. Nothing new, just ordinary linkjacking?

<comment><USER5> The comments Schneier's blog generates are sometimes worth a read also

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> schneier writes about how evil the flash cookies are, but he doesn't mention how to deactivate them. I did it (<http://giu.me/s/ngaf8k>), and that's how it went down (note: some flash applications won't work anymore after you deactivate the flash cookies!):

first, go to the _Website Storage Settings Panel_ by following this link: [http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplay...](http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplayer/help/settings_manager07.html). while there, hit the _delete all cookies_ button.

next step, visit the _Global Storage Settings Panel_ located at [http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplay...](http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplayer/help/settings_manager03.html). deselect the first option (the one that permits third parties to save data on your computer).

finally, excuse me that I didn't use the exact english description of each option. as you may guess, my settings are displayed in another language than the english one (it's the german one, to be exact :).

</comment><comment><USER7> Schneier on Security: Intelligent and adroit

Schneier on Videogame Terminology: Somewhat lacking (but we'll let him slide)

<comment><USER8> The indented text indicates that he was quoting the linked article -- the awkward phrasing is Wired's.</comment></comment>


Nonce Word - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonce_word <comment><USER2> First time I saw this word used in this sense (as a column in a database) I was baffled: in the UK a nonce is a paeodophile.

<comment><AUTHOR> I ended up there out of curiosity while reading a cryptography paper.</comment></comment>


Show HN: A docker API wrapper in rust - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/fristonio/docker.rs <comment><USER2> There is another one here [https://github.com/ghmlee/rust- docker](https://github.com/ghmlee/rust-docker) It's too old and with no development at all, but it does have TLS client capabilities. You can add it to your project too. I used this in one of my projects, but I only had use of a single command and it kinda worked for me.</comment>


A penetration tester's guide to sub-domain enumeration - <AUTHOR> https://blog.appsecco.com/a-penetration-testers-guide-to-sub-domain-enumeration-7d842d5570f6 <comment><USER2> For those on the defending side, remember that the purpose of DNS is to be public. Relying on DNS information to stay secret in order to protect vulnerable application is a bad idea. A service with a SQL injection is unlikely to last long, and as the article shows, it is not hard to enumerate DNS records if you are under a targeted attack.

<comment><USER3> "... remember that the purpose of DNS is to be public."

DNS records, e.g. zone files, are supposed to be public information.

As such, ICANN requires gTLD registries to provide users with access to them.[FN1]

However, various ccTLDs at various times refused to comply, and most still try to pretend their zone files are private.

Obviously, as the blog post shows, users can still get a large quantity of the data freely from other sources.

Google search results for ccTLD zone files are dominated by individuals who have done so and are selling this data. IMO, this sale of public data is unnecessary, not to mention annoying.

Last year .se and .nu started making their zone files public.

[https://www.iis.se/english/press/pressreleases/iis- releases-...](https://www.iis.se/english/press/pressreleases/iis-releases- zone-files/)

[https://zonedata.iis.se](https://zonedata.iis.se)

They were also the first to try their hand at DNSSEC. As the blog post shows, DNSSEC makes it _easier_ to get contents of a zone.

FN1. "About Zone File Access

Registry operators must provide to ICANN bulk access to the zone files of the Generic Top Level Domain (gTLD) at least on a daily basis. For gTLDs, a zone file contains information about domain names that are active in that gTLD. In general, Internet users may be able to access and download zone file data at no cost for certain purposes.

This contractual obligation does not apply to any ccTLD (such as .us, .de, or .uk). If you have a complaint about gTLD zone file access, please submit a Zone File Access Complaint Form."

source: [https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/zfa-2013-06-28-en](https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/zfa-2013-06-28-en)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The CommonCrawl dataset is another good source of host and subdomain information. The index server is here: [http://index.commoncrawl.org](http://index.commoncrawl.org) There's a client referenced on that page.

      [ec2-user@x cdx-index-client]$ ./cdx-index-client.py -c CC-MAIN-2017-43 '*.ycombinator.com'
      2017-11-11 22:50:08,381: [INFO]: Getting Index From http://index.commoncrawl.org/CC-MAIN-2017-43-index
      2017-11-11 22:50:08,387: [INFO]: Starting new HTTP connection (1): index.commoncrawl.org
      2017-11-11 22:50:08,468: [INFO]: Fetching 2 pages of *.ycombinator.com
      2017-11-11 22:50:08,477: [INFO]: Starting new HTTP connection (1): index.commoncrawl.org
      2017-11-11 22:50:08,478: [INFO]: Starting new HTTP connection (1): index.commoncrawl.org
      2017-11-11 22:50:10,409: [INFO]: 1 page(s) of 2 finished
      2017-11-11 22:50:11,711: [INFO]: 2 page(s) of 2 finished
      [ec2-user@x cdx-index-client]$ awk -F')' '{print $1}' domain-y* | sort | uniq -c
           66 com,ycombinator
           38 com,ycombinator,apply
          500 com,ycombinator,blog
            2 com,ycombinator,fellowship
            2 com,ycombinator,macro
        24036 com,ycombinator,news
           25 com,ycombinator,old
            2 com,ycombinator,ycblog

</comment><comment><USER5> Great list !

Also you can look at the SSL certificate of a page of the doamin and see if many domains appears inside it.

And currently if the website uses letsencrypt and need wildcard DNS, you may find hundreds of domains. Fortunately Letsencrypt wildcard certificates come in January

<comment><USER6> If the website is using Let's Encrypt then any subdomains using it will be in certificate transparency logs anyway (until it supports wildcard certificates).

<comment><USER7> Do you know how to find out which certificate issuers DON'T submit certs to transparency logs? Is there a list somewhere?

<comment><USER8> Symantec presently give you the option to redact the labels on precertificates.

I think they are the only ones because RFC 6962 does not actually support redaction.

Symantec say they are only submitting these entries to the deneb.ws.symantec.com CT log, but it is possible to cross-post redacted log entries to other CT logs, which actually is happening and is kind of annoying.

You can see an example of a redaction (for nsw.gov.au) here: [https://crt.sh/?id=49265178](https://crt.sh/?id=49265178)

I think the best way to protect your privacy currently is to purchase wildcards, though LE will support wildcards next year :) !

Kind of related, I also wrote [https://ausdomainledger.net/](https://ausdomainledger.net/) a couple of weeks ago that is crawling CT logs and Common Crawl as well to enumerate domains in the .au zone, because the zone file is not accessible for the ccTLD.

<comment><USER7> Ah, thanks! Yeah, currently I'm just waiting for LE's wildcard support, but then it hit me there might be others who don't even submit the 2nd-level domain to CT, which I'd prefer if possible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Great guide.

On point 6, find the asn, my own service [https://ipinfo.io](https://ipinfo.io) can help you there. Curl ipinfo.io/ANYIP/org and you'll get the ASN info. Also see ipinfo.io/developers for more options such as geolocation, hostname, hosted domains, and more.

<comment><USER10> Thanks. I'm the author of the blog post. I have used your service before and it has come in handy many times.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> WolframAlpha can display subdomains, not sure how and the format is not easy to use. But it works.

How one would one go about finding A domains pointing to specific AS. The target web app in question allows either using their subdomain or pointing to your own. Any ideas how to find those?

</comment><comment><USER12> CT is going to have way more impact given that people switch from paid certs to Lets Encrypt which cannot do wildcard certs.

I'm looking forward to wildcard certs, anything that makes it harder for attackers helps...

<comment><USER10> Wildcard certificates are not really a solution especially in this scenario. If you are using wildcard certs you have one more problem to deal with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> If you're looking for physical site ip addresses rather than dns entries, SPF records may be worth looking at (if there are distributed mail servers and outbound mail doesn't all go through a single exit point).

Mail headers may be similarly informative if you can get one or more email messages out from within the office.

<comment><USER10> Looking at SPF records is worth it. I should have added that technique.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I love "AXFR". It lets me AX FR the whole zone in one go.

<comment><USER10> I'm surprised at the number of domains that have mis-configured Zpne Transfer even today especially given the fact the the defaults of most popular DNS servers are secure enough.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I have a project called DNSDigger.com that could be used as well.

</comment><comment><USER16> A small question. For a CloudFlare-protected website, I see this in crt.sh:

>X509v3 Subject Alternative Name:

>DNS Name:sniXXXXXXX.cloudflaressl.com (X are numbers)

>DNS Name:(lots of domains, including the one I was researching)

>...

Does that mean all those domains belong to the same user/person?

<comment><USER17> No, Cloudflare batches together many unrelated domains from different customers into a single SSL certificate.

<comment><USER18> Which leads to amusing issues like the following:

[https://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2015/03/ted-c...](https://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2015/03/ted-cruz-for-presidents-ssl-certificate-nigerian-prince- headache/)

Though to be fair, this incident is now fairly infamous inside Cloudflare and these days they have ways to deal with it.</comment></comment></comment>


Interacting with Haskell Graphically - <AUTHOR> http://begriffs.com/posts/2016-01-20-ihaskell-notebook.html <comment><USER2> Hey folks, I'm the speaker in this video. Happy to answer any questions about IHaskell if you have any! You can install it using `cabal` or `stack` from Github [0].

By the way, if this stuff interests you -- Haskell, data analysis, interactive computing, science, visualization, etc -- please consider joining us at Karius. Karius is the biotech startup where I work, and we do a ton of really cool bioinformatics and high-performance data analysis and use Haskell for some of our infrastructure, and would love to hear from you. See our Who's Hiring post [1] for more info, or contact me!

Big thanks again to Joe for recording this, this was a fun talk to give and I hope you enjoyed it.

[0] [https://github.com/gibiansky/IHaskell](https://github.com/gibiansky/IHaskell) [1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10822842](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10822842)

<comment><USER3> Video doesn't really load well for me unfortunately. Is there a youtube mirror or transcript anywhere?

<comment><AUTHOR> Can you tell me more about how it breaks? If that video is misbehaving it probably means other videos on my site are as well.

Here's a direct link in case it helps [https://player.vimeo.com/external/152389902.hd.mp4?s=ec96813...](https://player.vimeo.com/external/152389902.hd.mp4?s=ec96813de3fbad1e6216d2bbaa719db7d4593a1d)

<comment><USER3> Just loading slowly and buffering. Direct link seems to work better for me, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Interesting. It looks like something that, one day, could replace Mathematica.

<comment><USER5> I've always hoped Haskell could someday replace R.

<comment><USER6> Have you seen this?

[http://www.tweag.io/blog/programming-r-at-native-speed- using...](http://www.tweag.io/blog/programming-r-at-native-speed-using- haskell)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> iPython really brought my Python to another level.

I expect the same to be true for Haskell... those second you spend passing between text editor and GHCi ... those milliseconds you could spend absorbing the basic and deep Haskell idiom</comment>


'Gaming disorder' is officially recognized by the World Health Organization - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/18/gaming-disorder-is-officially-recognized-by-the-world-health-organization/ <comment><USER2> This is made worse in my mind for games that are essentially single-player yet have some sort of online element that means you cant just hit pause or save & exit whenever you want. You have to keep on going for longer than you want until it is "safe" for you to stop.

In the old days you could just exit out to the pause menu or save so you could go to the toilet or answer the phone or talk to your family and your in-game activities were safe. You could pick and chose when and how you wanted to play.

Now you _cant stop_ when you want, because if you do you'll just be left "idle" in-game. This means that you're prey for other players or NPCs in game, and you risk losing your character's progress and you're back to the start (sometimes there is a significant time-investment to this progress so understandably you dont want to risk it). You can only stop when you get to some sort of safe-place in-game, which means you have to play longer than you want to.

So you get situations like where if I am playing a game and my wife asks me to come and see something or make a cup of tea or something, I have to ask her to wait until it is "safe" for me to stop. I feel like I am prioritising the game over my wife (and I guess I am to an extent).

I dont like this.

I really wish games would allow you to just quit whenever you want without risking your in-game progress.

<comment><USER3> Do you have any examples of games like this? I know there are singleplayer games that require you to be online even when playing solo(i.e. Diablo 3), but when you're solo, you can still pause the game. Curious to know what developers don't allow such actions.

<comment><USER4> Only ones I can think of is Dark Souls and Resident Evil 6, as other players can invade your single-player game to try to kill you.

<comment><USER5> How is it a single-player game then? I think I'm out of touch with newer games...

<comment><USER2> They're single-player in that you play on your own, but you play on your own with a lot of other people playing on their own. So you could be on a server doing your own thing, and if you see another character whilst playing, that could be a human person doing their own thing, or it could be a NPC doing their own thing (but with the option of interacting with other human players - chat/trade/fighting etc)

It is essentially a single-player experience but on a shared playing area.

If that makes sense!

Its kinda cool, but this forced you-can-only-quit-when-we-say-so thing is not cool. Why you cant just safely despawn when you pause or exit I don't know. I guess it is there for "realism"

<comment><USER6> Let's say your in a game with PVP, are you saying you should just be able to "safely despawn" to avoid a fight that you think you're going to lose?

Just because you personally have a problem with the way some games work doesn't mean every single game designer needs to shape their programs to your preference. If you don't like it, play a different game.

<comment><USER7> > If you don't like it, play a different game.

It's not that I hate it or the developers for implementing the mechanic. It's that it's not always conducive to a person in a relationship or with children. You can always dismiss the person as the problem by telling them to play something else, but clearly those people don't want to play something else.

We understand why (in some cases) you can't just quit at any time. Like you said, that means someone can avoid a PvP fight or a lopsided ranked match by disconnecting without repercussion. It sucks sometimes when you can't help but disconnect at the drop of a hat, and I don't necessarily think that those types of mechanics are the fault of the developers.

For example, I was playing a ranked match when my partner fell ill. They were making it fine for a while, but I was asking if we should go to urgent care. They flip-flopped multiple times on going over the course of 10 minutes. Then I plainly asked, "Do you definitely think that you need to go? I don't mind disconnecting to take care of you, but if I do and you decline, I'll get penalized for no reason." It makes sense that I would incur a penalty for dropping the match, but it still sucks.

The point is that if the developing company can find a way for quick disconnect that doesn't interrupt the spirit of gameplay, it would be a boon for a lot of players. I know that competitive/ranked modes are pretty much off limits for me during most of my play time, but that doesn't mean that I don't want to play against people who are trying their best.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > 2\. Increasing priority given to gaming to the extent that gaming takes > precedence over other life interests and daily activities

This needs to be further qualified, such as by "over extended periods of time". If you spend a weekend prioritizing gaming over other life interests/activities, it's no different than having a crunch week at work and prioritizing work over life interests/activities, neither of which should be considered a disorder.

Edit: This is shoddy reporting on TechCrunch's part, the official WHO ICD listing [0] qualifies it thus:

> The behaviour pattern is of sufficient severity to result in significant > impairment in personal, family, social, educational, occupational or other > important areas of functioning [...] The gaming behaviour and other features > are normally evident over a period of at least 12 months in order for a > diagnosis to be assigned, although the required duration may be shortened if > all diagnostic requirements are met and symptoms are severe.

[0]: [https://icd.who.int/browse11/l-m/en#/http://id.who.int/icd/e...](https://icd.who.int/browse11/l-m/en#/http://id.who.int/icd/entity/1448597234)

<comment><USER9> "For a diagnosis to be made, the negative pattern of behavior must last at least 12 months: "It cannot be just an episode of few hours or few days," Poznyak said. However, exceptions can be made when the other criteria are met and symptoms are severe enough."

[https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/18/health/video-game-disorder- wh...](https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/18/health/video-game-disorder- who/index.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+rss%2Fcnn_topstories+%28RSS%3A+CNN+-+Top+Stories%29)

<comment><USER8> Yep, see edit on my post.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Posted it the other day on another thread, will post it here again so people can see it. Here is my own experience with this.

As crazy as these articles have been about gaming addiction being a medical condition are, I believe it. I'm in my early 20s, ever since I was in my mid teens I was addicted to video games. All through grade school and in college now, I struggle to put the controller down. I routinely don't get enough sleep because I can't stop playing. As soon as I come home I am on, and I won't get off until the early hours of the morning. It's a mixture of reasons why I guess; it keeps my mind off of reality, I enjoy the satisfaction of winning frequently, and it fulfills my desire of being in a progression based system. Achievements, knowing that my actions will eventually unlock achievements and level-ups, it keeps me going. I can't play games that don't have progression systems of some sort because I feel like without progression, it's a waste of time. Sure you can kind of get that in the real world, but it's harder and takes so much longer. Why do that when I have an easy alternative sitting on my desk? I really want to break my addiction to gaming as it really does affect some parts of my life, especially academic.

<comment><USER6> Just play enough clicker games until you realize that "progression for progression's sake" is nothing but an empty dopamine hit.

Games can be a fantastic story-telling medium, a competitive environment where you can test your skill and intellect against real human opponents, a lot of pure fun, or a way to spend time playing cooperatively with friends. All of these can be worthwhile activities in different ways.

Grinding mindlessly to make some numbers go up is not worthwhile at all. Playing a game just for the progression that you wouldn't play otherwise is a sign of addiction and can have a substantial negative impact on your life. I love games, but some self-awareness about what they are actually doing for you goes a long way to making them a part of a healthy, productive life rather than something that destroys it.

<comment><USER11> >Just play enough clicker games until you realize that "progression for progression's sake" is nothing but an empty dopamine hit.

That might be clear for you, but it's not for everyone. The way the OP describes his motivation for gaming sounds extremely similar to people with gambling addictions.

Self-awareness isn't enough for everyone. Some people are just wired to respond to that dopamine hit from progression systems in an especially strong, self-reinforcing way. They need more help and one of the first steps to that is endorsing more ethical game design that doesn't go so heavily into building addictive feedback loops.

<comment><USER12> Sadly, these people are effectively destined to be exploited by one thing or another. From crack rock to food or sex or anything else that they find enjoyable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm curious why this needs its own definition, rather than being part of a larger "addiction disorder".

<comment><USER14> Because there is no larger "addiction disorder", and trying to create one would have a messy and complex definition compared to distinct definitions that happen to share some features.

<comment><USER15> Yet the same organisation that seems to care so much about giving every little addiction it's own name also lumps every variety of autism under the same umbrella term.

<comment><USER16> Each addiction clearly and openly differs in the object of addiction.

Whereas, with autisms, we don't yet know how to analyze symptoms well enough for there to be a bijection between set-of-symptoms and underlying-autism- variant; indeed, we can barely even separate autism's causes and effects, if at all.

<comment><USER17> The activity which is addictive varies, but the underlying physiological mechanism seems to be essentially identical from cocaine abuse to gambling. Defining the disorder by the pathology rather than an obtuse collection of symptoms which have a tendency to overlap and merge might be too much for psychology, but it's the scientific thing.

<comment><USER14> > The activity which is addictive varies, but the underlying physiological > mechanism seems to be essentially identical from cocaine abuse to gambling.

No, it doesn't. There seem to likely be some similar key mechanisms involved, but the shared mechanisms aren't the whole story, otherwise someone addicted to something would be addicted to everything.

We give different diagnoses for different allergies, even though allergies have a common key mechanism.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I stopped playing mainstream video games last century when, after a 'quick network game of Starcraft and maybe a bit of Quake on a Friday afternoon at the end of the work week', I emerged from the dungeon we'd made at work for the purpose, only to discover it was Sunday morning, and more than 24 hours had gone by since any of us had even thought about what we were doing.

That was my personal wake-up call. Now I only play MAME games that require, max, 10 or 15 minutes of investment .. and then I simply stop.

I sort of miss the arcades of the 80's, which didn't seem to really propagate this addiction as readily as the current madness does.

<comment><USER19> Arcades absolutely did promote addiction, they just sucked at it compared to today's games.

In a classical arcade, you walk into a darkened room filled with animated CRTs and strange noises. They literally have blinders, designed to shut out your peripheral vision so the game is the only thing in your consciousness. When you die, you have 30 seconds to insert more coins and continue, otherwise you have to start all over from the beginning. Pretty much everything about this is designed to trigger your adrenalin-based threat-and-reward reflexes.

If modern computer games are more addictive, it's only because they've figured out how to trigger even _more powerful_ primal instincts. MMORPGs and MOBAs add a social aspect, and very often a cumulative acquisition aspect (experience, gold, credits, etc). Simulations and worldbuilders like SimCity, Minecraft & Factorio engage our higher brain centers like planning and optimization. Mobile & casual games have figured out how to squeeze gaming into even smaller timeslots within our lives.

It's also interesting how gaming & gambling have converged. It used to be that a slot machine was a machine where you pulled a lever and tried to match up dials. Now you walk into a casino and it basically looks like an arcade, with lots of computerized gambling games on backlit LCD displays, while Internet games like CryptoKitties let you play & trade with real (well, fake) money.

<comment><USER20> > they just sucked at it compared to today's games

Games these days are far far more interesting than most movies, TV shows or other forms of entertainment. With photorealistic rendering coming combined with AR they might even override the need for exploratory travels outside pure relaxation stays (i.e. if you can visit Alaska/Antarctica/Japan/Petra/whatever with photorealistic graphics, would you really want to travel there? I guess you'd rather go to some beach or clubbing place to unwind instead)

<comment><USER21> Of course people would still want to travel. I don't know how to put this nicely but not everyone is a recluse.

<comment><USER20> I traveled around the world already. Now I'd rather visit some places only virtually and park on Maldives or Miami for relax.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> PSA: Playstation has a 'Family Management' feature where you can limit game time played on sub-accounts. You can set time limits per day and the action to take like auto-logout. It reminds the player as they get closer to being out of time.

I don't think we know the effects of modern video games on younger (aka developing) minds yet. Many of these games hire psychologists [0] to help engineer game play to keep people wanting to play because if they get bored and move onto another game it could be a loss. I don't think old school games like Zelda or Mario were engineered this way.

Think about a game like Tic-Tac-Toe and how after a certain age it becomes boring. Now add leaderboards, points for certain types of wins, customizable X's and O's, customizable game boards, avatars, seasons, etc. The game is the same but now you have multiple games encompassing the game of popular 'skins', points, 1-upping competitors, etc.

[0][http://theconversation.com/the-business-of-addiction-how- the...](http://theconversation.com/the-business-of-addiction-how-the-video- gaming-industry-is-evolving-to-be-like-the-casino-industry-83361)

</comment><comment><USER23> All 3 of the article's points could be applied to any hobby / passion driven profession.

Next up...

Guitar disorder

Karate disorder

Baseball disorder

Fast forward 10 years...

Someone coins the term "hobby disorder" after detecting numerous patterns of people wasting their life away on doing things they enjoy.

Fast forward 20 years...

Being passionate about anything is a thing of the past. Everyone works a corporate job at 1 of 5 companies in the world (people stopped innovating and a few large tech companies took over everything).

<tinfoilhat>

Sounds like a good way to begin the journey towards even more income disparity between the 1% and the rest of us.

</tinfoilhat>

<comment><USER24> This is really funny. How much have you "innovated" while gaming? You are living under the thumb of entertainment media already. You're trapped in your time waster instead of innovating.

<comment><USER25> Everything is a time waster until you know, investments pays off. Playing an instrument is a time waster until it turns into something you can market. Its difficult to judge future benefits of current actions.

<comment><USER26> Why does everything have to turn into something you can market?

So you spend a few hours playing games and you have nothing to sell or shill on Hackernews. Is that a problem?

Did you enjoy yourself playing those games? Yes? Then why isn't that enough?

Downtime is important.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I started playing Starcraft and watching it about 2 years ago. I've always had an obsessive mind and had stopped playing games since high school. It's reached a point where I almost dedicate every free moment to playing. Games are incredibly addictive and it can be hard to stop. Back when I didn't play I never understood why people play games so much. Games used to be only for geeks and boys but now everybody plays them. They are addictive and I think it's a growing problem.

<comment><USER6> Starcraft and RTS is general is a great game that rewards higher-level strategy thinking, attention management, and a number of other skills. Becoming proficient is no joke, and pros need to spend more of their time practicing than traditional sports because there is less of a physical tax from practice.

But it's just like any hobby. If it's not your profession, you need to make sure you're not putting your long-term health or the health of your relationships or other responsibilities aside just for quick shot of pleasure or adrenaline.

<comment><USER28> For Starcraft specifically, I've probably played 2k hours of SC:BW and maybe 3-4k of SC2, so I'd agree it is no joke and practicing is quite important. I managed to reach the top 2% of MMR by grinding out numerous games (as Zerg, FWIW), averaging 2.5 h/daily at my peak. I would practice economy/production (macro) and build orders outside of my matches, then bring those in to the competitive 1v1 ladder and figure out all the weird rush builds that needed to be scouted for/prevented.

I actually am trying to cut out games, however, since I find the stress on the wrists/hands that comes with coding + piano + gaming to be too much. So, when push comes to shove, I just end up watching some SC pro matches these days, as opposed to putting my wrist health in jeopardy.

<comment><USER6> That's awesome! Reaching Master League in SC2 is quite an accomplishment. I did it myself with Zerg and then Protoss, but only barely and only in 2 seasons.

The high intensity, unreachable skill ceiling, and quick feedback loop of Starcraft really taught me how improving a skill needs to be an active process. You don't just get better by grinding out games (at least not efficiently); you need to study your own play, find weaknesses in it, and work on them methodically. Having that background has helped me in other kinds of skill acquisition.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> How about addiction to social networks, status updates, fake snapshots pretending one's having a dream life and for virtue signalling? Being glued to a smartphone for that is more profound than basement-dwelling gamers.

<comment><USER29> they didn't say these things can't be addiction.

<comment><USER20> Why is suddenly some fringe gamer "epidemics" treated as more important (WHO level? seriously?) than vastly more prevalent smartphone-based social addiction?

<comment><USER30> If the WHO hasn't started looking at social networks and the like, it's just a matter of time. Why should there be a hault in studying the effects of games just because there hasn't been enough studies on social networks and phones?

<comment><USER20> Only by "shouting" about it and comparing it to a more benign addiction I can individually bring focus to that issue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Why is every researcher treating addiction like it's bad behavior that needs to be avoided in order to be cured, instead of researching ways for humans to keep on getting the satisfaction, while curing the side effects?

(I know "curing the side effects" sounds bad, but it's basically what we want).

<comment><USER32> It may not be possible. Addiction is a disease of our systems governing attention and motivation: Normally those systems should adapt so that we pay attention to those things which are most relevant to our long-term well-being, and so we are motivated to act in ways which sustain our well-being and success.

Addiction occurs when a pattern of exposure to an acute stimulus activates our reward system in such a way that our attentional and motivational systems are subverted to cause us to seek out more of that short term reward, at the expense of our long-term happiness.

The "satisfaction", as you put it, is the subjective experience of that overwhelming, system-breaking reward signal. To get that experience without the resulting behavioral consequences would require us to fundamentally augment how reward affects the brain. It's doubtful it's possible to do that with addictive stimuli without causing wide-reaching effects on general learning and adaptation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Gamers are so sensitive about their addiction. Like an alcoholic being called out.

<comment><USER33> I don't think most people would advise "calling out" as an effective modality for approaching addicts in general.

<comment><USER24> Good point. But I think the reactions are pretty telling that there is a real problem.

<comment><USER34> A bit of well poisoning, don't you think? That one can't call shenanigans without supposedly being affected?

<comment><USER35> It's not the fact of calling shenanigans; it's the vehemence with which it's being done.

There's an inflection point beyond which "[he] doth protest too much, methinks" becomes at least as parsimonious an explanation, if not moreso.

EDIT: Not to say that's happening here, specifically, but ... _gestures around_ there's definitely some emotionally-driven reaction to this idea, amongst (and probably also behind) some of the criticism.

<comment><USER36> Nowadays that society is more liberal in its acceptance of nonconforming behavior, referring to addition is one of the most effective ways of getting general acceptance to curtail people's freedom, so it's no wonder that people react with alarm.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Next up Social Media Disorder (SMD), Internet Disorder.. I'd be surprised if the latter isn't a thing already

<comment><USER25> i expect Wikipedia Disorder as well for people who are too curious and read too much. So basically any deviation from the normal boring person is a disorder,says the thought police.

<comment><USER38> Yes, and anyone looking for help in managing their lives will get slapped with any such term and made to feel like deviants.

I've been "diagnosed" with all sorts of things. ADHD, ODD (obsessive defiance disorder), asperger's (ASD 1), GAD (generalized anxiety disorder), and I'm sure I qualify for others. The thing is, there was always this search like that to look for what was the ultimate cause for my distress. And then, after all that searching, nothing came of it because I grew as a person. And I think there's a small thing there, which is that if you have a diagnosis, you have an excuse, and oh, you'll have loads of friends with similar diagnoses who will encourage you to whine and wallow in it and make excuses, and there will even be competition as to who is the worse for it.

I think the system is very wrong.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Isn't there some overlap with gambling addiction, given the tactics used by games like Candy Crush, etc.?

<comment><USER40> Financial investing...

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Video games are fine for some people, but for nerd-like personalities they present far too great a temptation to supplant real life goal obtainment with virtual status/achievement. I think its helpful to make people aware of this tendency, and unhelpful to wave it away with a comparison to some more widespread non-nerd past-time like watching TV or sports.

<comment><USER42> How precisely do you define "nerd-like" personalities and what is it about them that is susceptible to having a "gaming disorder"?

I feel like there's not much that would separate a gaming disorder from addictive behavior in general. So much so, actually, that to grant a special term for a video game related illness comes off as a little ridiculous.

<comment><USER41> The essence of nerdiness is the elevation of the abstract at the expense of what's real, including the elevation of accomplishment in abstract domains (eg. video games) at the expense of developing social skills and progressing towards real life milestones, and the misunderstanding of social relations and social status owing to incorrect, reality-starved mental models. Often manifests itself in things like unwelcome pedantry.

As another poster (always_good) observes, there is a huge observable difference between video game addicts and substance abusers. I would not expect nerds to be substance abusers, and I would not expect substance abusers to be video game addicts, but everything about video games, in their construction of alternative realities and virtual goals and online communities, is like a glove tailored to the hand of nerd-dom.

<comment><USER42> > Often manifests itself in things like unwelcome pedantry.

You callin me a nerd, Tycho?

So, broadly, I can agree that a tendency towards escapism is what would make someone develop a "gaming disorder". And perhaps video games are the pinnacle of what our culture can offer as the richest form of escapism.

But I still don't think that's enough to draw a categorical line between the vices through which escapist tendencies become pathologized. It seems to me the solution to the mentation of escapism is to reinforce what you appeal to as "anti-nerdiness": pursuing meaning in a world you can (and do) fully occupy with the senses. And I agree there too.

Noting the bit at the end of the article about how terribly few people manifest a "gaming disorder" is what I'm not pleased to hear. Calling it a "gaming" disorder makes it seem like if you get rid of games, you've solved the problem. But obviously that's not necessarily the case, and so I think it's a useless distinction which potentially obscures the real issue.

If the WHO is making an indictment against the entertainment industry to formally warn against the ethical risks of making games which exploit escapist tendencies, that's fine. But I don't think there's actually much of a problem here that couldn't already be meaningfully identified as an addictive tendency.

<comment><USER43> While not all addiction is due to escapism, it cannot be escaped (no pun intended) that it can be a catalyst. What we as a society need to stop doing (same re opiod addiction for example) is stop labeling and treating symptoms instead of addressing the root causes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Calling everything a disorder should be officially recognized as a disorder.

<comment><USER45> This is the perfect word to call them.

       dis·or·der

       noun
       - a disruption of normal physical or mental functions; a disease or abnormal condition.

       verb
       - disrupt the systematic functioning or neat arrangement of.
       - disrupt the healthy or normal functioning of.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Increasing priority given to gaming to the extent that gaming takes precedence over other life interests and daily activities

So, we all have a code and/or computer disorder. gg guys, lets get on dem zombie pillz ...

'gaming addiction' would be better term. and then even ,the problem is being addicted, not gaming.. people get addicted to all kinds of shit. having a interest in something more than other things is normal. and call that a disorder is criminal.

<comment><USER47> It's vague because it's an individual case-by-case assessment, it's not something easy to simplify to a checklist, it's a spectrum.

Yes, if the increasing priority begins to affect other aspects of your life negatively it's a disorder, like any other addiction, don't get defensive because you can relate to the description of the symptom.

<comment><USER48> > Yes, if the increasing priority begins to affect other aspects of your life > negatively it's a disorder, like any other addiction

Loads of people that have a passion for something, whether it be music, painting, coding, cooking, etc.. are experiencing a negative impact on their lives in some way. This seems very obvious to me. I play guitar and for many years I've practiced more than 10 hours a day. This had a very negative impact on my income to the point I had to stop to avoid becoming homeless. Is my passion a disorder because I don't make enough money with it? Are all successful musicians suffering a passion disorder? Should they quit making great music for the world and work for McDonalds living a depressed, and above all pointless life?

Some years later I started coding and a new passion arose. For years, and still today I code often more than 10 hours a day. Only now it positively impacts my income. Do I have a disorder? Do I need to stop and get treatment for being a passionate coder? I honestly think I'm quite lucky to have a passion for something that renders income.

I've played World of Warcraft for years, sometimes a real lot too. I have great memories of great times with my online friends. It is not something I will regret when my life comes to an end. I cannot play as much as I want because it will negatively impact my income. Should I regret now because I possibly have a 'gaming disorder', should I feel bad about the good times I had? Should I prevent others from having the time of their life? Should we not better ban eSports completely because too much gaming is bad? All pro players back to poverty, doing a stupid depressing job, but totally enjoying their 'disorder free' life?

Oh, and btw, I love coffee :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> This whole thing with trying to place a medical diagnosis on behaviors is too much. This is really no better than the old Greek humors theory where if you were sad, you had an imbalance of melancholy.

There are a bunch of human behaviors, many of which are destructive, for which we don't really have insight into the underlying bio-physical explanation. Without that understanding, we should not be turning them into medical diagnoses.

<comment><USER50> So basically you're against clinical psychology?

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Correct me if I'm wrong, doesn't South Korean have Gaming/Internet Addiction Centers for those with "Gaming Disorders"? I remember seeing something about this from a eSports documentary some time ago. Unfortunately I don't remember name of it.

Edit: found it [https://youtu.be/of1k5AwiNxI?t=1150](https://youtu.be/of1k5AwiNxI?t=1150)

</comment><comment><USER52> does this mean I can call in sick to play more splatoon? I think this means I can call in sick to play more splatoon.

</comment><comment><USER53> So we're basically just replacing the word addiction now?

<comment><USER54> More accurately, addiction to the point it has a severe negative impact on the rest of the patient's life.

<comment><USER53> I was severely addicted to video games when I was a kid. My parents kept saying I was going to be a garbage man (ignoring the insult to garbage men) I don't think it would be the norm, but because of my interest in games I was interested in computers and here I am. I'm not like a top earner 1M / year AI developer or anything, but it definitely didn't impact my life. Now if my parents had taken me to some kind of "gaming disorder" center to get fixed, I would.. probably be a garbage man right now.

<comment><USER36> Taking you to an addition center would be an overreaction as a first measure. More sensible first steps would be to simply limit the gaming time, possibly by getting you to do something else for part of the day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> An important aspect of identifying new disorders or creating new diagnoses is that it facilitates access to treatment and services for those that need it.

That means that those few people that have serious consequences because of excessive gaming will have the right to get treatment covered by insurance.

</comment><comment><USER56> As crazy as it sounds, I think I managed my gaming time by actually designing my own because the games i have been playing never satisfy me.

I usually get bored pretty easily, and there are no games that can really make me play for a long enough time because there is something that frustrates me about the game mechanics.

It's actually very satisfying to think about game design as a programmer, and to spot what can be improved in games i like so i might better enjoy playing and sharing them in the future.

</comment><comment><USER57> Is obsessing over things related to real life like social ties, money, career, or anything else that will surely pass after you die a disorder? If it isn't then why not?

<comment><USER58> Because activities related to those things create sustained material security and personal fulfillment. Your efforts at building a strong network of friends pay dividends for decades, the equivalent amount of time playing video games has no bearing on your life a year from now.

<comment><USER57> So in your opinion all efforts that result in the optimization or improvement of something decided as relevant by yourself are worthwhile?

<comment><USER58> All any of us have here are opinions, and yeah it's my opinion that any time spent doing things that don't lead to some better future state is the pastime equivalent of junk food: I eat junk food and enjoy it from time to time, but I also don't ever make the mistake of confusing it with nourishment or trying to justify why it's good for me.

<comment><USER57> I do not mind your opinion or way of life, but if I consider other things to be relevant, why can't I use my time to improve in them? Just as you do with the things you consider relevant? As long as the activity doesn't infringe on anyone's liberty why should you be branded as defective for engaging in it? Besides, it is hard to pinpoint what a better future state means. Doesn't it mostly depend on what you consider important to improve?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> As a 43 year old with two jobs and two kids, I found myself playing 500 hours of PlayerUnknown's Battleground in a few months. I had to uninstall the game.

The addiction was very real.

<comment><USER22> Did you lose your job, destroy relationships with your family and friends?

Or did this merely replace 500 hours that would have been spent watching TV, Netflix or other types of entertainment?

The word addiction has a real meaning with some clinical ways for a trained person to diagnose somebody as having it.

I think of addiction more like alcoholism. Sure video games are engineered these days to be huge time sinks but that doesn't make it an addiction. If you can drop it (like you did) and it doesn't impact your life, its not an addiction.

<comment><USER59> I am self-employed (I actually run two small companies) and I sent some of my work days playing PUBG. Also I had less interaction with my kids and wife, and no other hobby really.

I looked at PUBG videos very often, sometimes live streams, at the office during the day.

I was thinking about PUBG all day long. It was bad.

<comment><USER22> Awesome that you're running two companies!

I was just pointing out there is a difference between an actual clinical addiction vs. a really bad habit.

I know the feeling about gaming and have been in similar shoes. I actually stop myself and check if I am doing something out of habit or because I want to... and have found I want to do other hobbies more, its just the inertia to get over the habitual actions that is the problem sometimes.

<comment><USER59> The point that you dispute is the term addiction. You mention an "habit" for instance. My point is: video games can REALLY be an addiction even for older people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> I once had this problem. Especially when I used to work from home. The game was one click away from being opened. I used to play around 6 hours per day on weekdays and the whole day on weekends. I had to do treatment to get rid of the addiction, I really don't know how I didn't lose my job at that time. Although I ended up replacing it with other kinds of addictions, these new additions are way more subtle than the gaming and easy to manage.

</comment><comment><USER61> Now they just need to recognise the disorder making my dota 2 teammates so noob.

<comment><USER62> They have. That's the Dunning-Kruger effect.

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> I'd say the following points need to be made about "gaming" because the perception does not reflect reality when you play a videogame:

\- the classical "neurotic player who doesn't like distractions and spends hours on VoIP getting angry at the game" is the reflection of a lot of the people who get into real-time multiplayer in MMORPGs or now games like Fortnite. This isn't quite how it stands for a lot of games, genuine one-and- done experiences like God of War or going back a bit to the Wii didn't have this continuous "one more" feedback or ridiculous length of content (3 hours a night raiding is tiresome and stressing for some people)

\- The fighting game community has the oddity of gathering in large tournaments, building community on them and treating their games with immense discipline in learning to the point where others complain the barrier of entry to being "good" is too high. More than any other genre, fighters offer real- life experiences. E-sports is picking up on this*.

\- Something to consider when determining the "why" of prolonged play is also the community or social aspect of the game. I play a lot of videogames, I admit, and one of the things that makes me commit a lot of hours into a game is when I can talk about it, talk to people in it, build a common interest and execute it. I live in a country where I speak my second language more than my first and hopping online to play in English is definitely some strong escapism. This is my experience, but so many people get online these days for the strong community tools (Discord, subreddits). It's primarily this aspect that makes me question any attempt to compare it to gambling/watching sports/binge watching movies or what have you. Gaming is built on a huge internet infrastructure because social features build long-time users.

I totally appreciate the definition of gaming disorder being sacrificing other healthy parts of life to continue feeding your need to play videogames but maybe this made sense if everyone was still playing the Super Nintendo (and even then we mocked it) but the world, and maybe it's just because enough huge corporations threw enough money at marketing to make it happen, has managed to genuinely change real-life because of videogames. This is far too dismissive.

Other posters mention this and I'd probably say that they refused to consult people in the game development industry/competitive gaming organizations/prominent players because they'd like to poison the well by assuming they'd never admit they have a problem (Although I suppose that might have to do with EA and the like refusing to have ethical debate instead of filtering us through an endless marketing machine, taking notes from Hollywood)

Side note: First post on HN after long time browsing. Feel free to rip this apart.

</comment><comment><USER38> Oh! They've come up with a new disorder again. How nice.

</comment><comment><USER48> Hmm, this feels odd.. Do they mean: eSports professionals are having a 'gaming disorder', unlike old fashioned sport professionals?

</comment><comment><USER64> A bad parent could easily make a child fit all the criteria given by just being a bad parent.

Something like this should not exist in the ICD. There should be a general addiction disorder that puts forth general criteria for showing that a person has an addiction for something.

This just looks like a scapegoat to me.

<comment><USER14> > A bad parent could easily make a child fit all the criteria given by just > being a bad parent.

That's just as true of lots of diagnoses of physical and mental conditions and injuries. (bone fractures and PTSD are obvious examples.) The fact that bad parenting can cause a condition doesn't invalidate the diagnosis of the condition.

> Something like this should not exist in the ICD. There should be a general > addiction disorder that puts forth general criteria for showing that a > person has an addiction for something.

The inherent differences between different subjects of addiction require some source specific variation, but various addictive disorders in either the ICD or the DSM do have generally similar criteria.

> This just looks like a scapegoat to me.

A scapegoat for what?

<comment><USER64> >The fact that bad parenting can cause a condition doesn't invalidate the diagnosis of the condition.

You misunderstood me. The bad parent causes it by being there. If you removed the bad parent then there would be no problem.

One of the criteria (although not mentioned in this article) is that the person is having negative consequences happen in a family situation because of their gaming. A bad parent could cause these negative consequences by simply being a bad parent and as a result the kid could withdraw into gaming. With this disorder around the parent can simply blame the kid playing games without looking at their own behavior.

>A scapegoat for what?

For people who alienate those close to them, so that they can blame something else other than their behavior. If a kid wants to interact with their family then they will.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> Yet more bullshit "diseases" invented by the psychiatric community to push drugs for their big pharma overlords. Doesn't the WHO have better things to do, like fighting real diseases such as malaria?

Everybody goes on little sprees of one kind or another during their lives.

Up next, "sudden love syndrome" ...the symptoms are about the same, aren't they? No, in fact they are exactly the same if you replace "your new serious romantic interest" with "video game".

And also, I remember being pretty addicted to D&D for awhile in my teen years, so we clearly need "RPG disorder" and better throw in "Board Game Disorder" for people hooked on Scrabble or Risk.

WHO, GTFO!

<comment><USER20> Can't wait to see the name of "medication" for gamers - "game over" pills?

<comment><USER65> Wow, at least one person on the same page as me here. I just don't care what people think..."addiction" to a game and the associated anti-social and possibly self-destructive behavior is just not a disease. Or, if it is, then the sky is the limit on what will be called (and yes, medicated) as a disease. And I don't like the trend...look at the stats, they are medicating tens of millions of children in the US alone for crap just like this.........</comment></comment></comment>


Robotic Intelligence - or signals of the Singularity? - <AUTHOR> http://www.escholarship.org/uc/item/83b1t1zk

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a fascinating paper which discusses how 'intelligence' emerges as inter-dependent organizations and actors seek out advantage. After reading it I was thinking _" Ok, so the next Phd thesis will be someone who writes three genetic algorithm engines each targeting their own fitness function, and fighting the other two for resources."_</comment>


Ask HN: Why are trains not autonomous yet? - <AUTHOR> With all the advances in cars and drones it seems like trains should already be traveling without a person in the cockpit. To me it seems surprising that there is not even a discussion about this here in Germany where the was a train crash recently where a train dispatcher was playing a game on his phone and caused the crash because he was not paying attention. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_Aibling_rail_accident<p>What are the main issues with a technology solutions? Are any startups working on this? <comment><USER2> I think autonomous trains per-se could work, but even then it would be worthwhile to employ the 1 driver that would even just sit there, as lives of 100s of people are at stake.

There are always "exceptions" to a ride, where a human driver / operator would help, such as a person hitting the emergency button because of a medical condition, violence at the carriage, someone's hand got stuck between the doors etc.

What should actually be is not autonomous trains as we envision autonomous cars, but rather sophisticated signalling and emergency braking automation.

In this day and age, I can't see how come a train is allowed to drive past a red light, depart a stop without supervisor permission or scheduled departure, exceed allowed speed etc. These are very simple things infrastructure can enforce and I don't understand how come it has not been done yet.

I guess it has been done in some train networks. My personal familiarity is with the Melbourne (Australia) train network, and it's very old and untypical to a relatively modern western city.

</comment><comment><USER3> Docklands Light Railway in London has been driverless for years now.

</comment><comment><USER4> Trains are autonomous in civilized countries

<comment><AUTHOR> Then how can accidents like the I mentioned happen due to human error? Two trains crashed because they were both given a green light on the same track by the train dispatcher. That does not sound autonomous to me.</comment></comment>


Ode to a Pager - <AUTHOR> https://www.roguelazer.com/2019/06/ode-to-a-pager/ <comment><USER2> I assume, of course, this is being shared because the author wrote the etcd rant on the front page today: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23833362](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23833362)

And it does fit the theme: Author prefers reliable, robust, simple tools over endless complexity. I don't wholly disagree, for me, the alarm clock is a great example. Phones have batteries which make them good alarm clocks, but they also can have bugs and lock up overnight and fail to wake you up. So I love having a good old fashioned alarm clock (though a digital display is okay, I guess).

I'd also love to carry a simpler phone, but meeting all my work's required things with that is hard.</comment>


Records show $70k CEO hasn't actually mortgate his homes - <AUTHOR> http://www.geekwire.com/2015/records-show-gravity-payments-ceo-dan-price-hasnt-actually-mortgaged-his-homes/ <comment><USER2> No links to the land records of the allegedly unmortgaged properties? Ditto for the other allegations? I fully expected the mudslinging to begin in earnest, but this seems lazy.</comment>


Google update on China - <AUTHOR> http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/update-on-china.html

<comment><USER3> Many friends of mine have asked for my opinions on this. Figured now will be a good time to vent it out. About myself: <http://alexdong.com/>. I grow up in China, right now staying in Shanghai, waiting for my australia immigration visa. I have to say that I feel really sad and powerless about this whole event. I think China is gradually cutting itself from outside, like what we've done in 1600.

Instead of writing a long post explaining what I'm having in mind, I found it might be a good idea just to explain why most of the posts so far are unfortunately quite wrong.

> @falsestprophet: The question of who rules China is pretty interesting. It > turns out that the whole operation is run by a group of 9 scientists and > engineers.

It's easy to think of China as a multi-core Hilter country but it's not. It's true that the 9-people Politburo has the power to set the rules but they're only the top of the iceberg. There are _HUGE_ amount of low level officials, about 5% - 15% population, that actually rule the country using more morale codes rather than laws. Legal process has long been considered scraped. The last Politburo, with Jiang ZeMin as the president, has actually tried really hard to open up China and setup direct dialogue. But the current one has been cracking down on transparent governing since 2002. The next 'election' will be on 2012, we'll see how that goes. I'm not holding any high expectation here since 1) majority of Chinese population actually agrees with censorship. 2) China has a long history of Xenocide. The boxer rebellion in 1900 was pretty bad and the current communist party is actually silently encouraging that type of nationalism emotions.

> @varjag: Google obeying their directive, if only formally, is a face-saving > act for CPC. The redirect from the landing page can easily be censored, > Google can have their Internet license, and the Party can pretend to > domestic public that they have won. Everyone is happy.

I might be wrong but I don't believe Google will ever get their ICP license issued. I'm not going to argue about this but let's assume that's what happen at end of June, here are the implications I think are highly possible: * <http://google.cn/> and <http://g.cn/> will be dead in the dust. * Chinese will still be able to use <http://google.com/> * We'll see lots of `Connection Reset` error whenever the page contains 'sensitive' contents. * I doubt the chinese version of Google will be still accessible. For people like me, we'll continue to use our `ssh -C -2 -D` channel or VPN to visit whatever websites we'd like to use. For most Chinese people, they won't care.

> @jackowayed: How does that affect the Hacker-News-reading types who would > want to hack together a website and start making money from it? How > difficult/expensive/slow is it to get an ICP?

I used to run China's largest photo blogging site so I have some out-of-date data to share here. There are actually two kinds of ICP licenses, one is for sites with user generated content and the other without. It takes us 4500 RMB and 3 months to get a license. We have to explicitly write down the IP addresses and the hosting companies. Yes, shared hosting is a risk business since your 'neighbor' might cause the physical machine be unplugged from the internet, which I have witnessed with my own eyes once. Any further censorship requests will go through the hosting companies instead of directly from the government. For a million page view site, we'll usually get 1-3 phone requests per week to take down contents. What? Did we actually take down as requested? Of course I did! There was an accident that the whole data center was "unplugged" because of some VIP customer was a bit late.

> @garply: I think much of the damage from Google pulling out has already been > done - I know people who've switched back to Baidu because they find little > things about Google HK frustrating (for example, Google.cn used to mimic > Baidu in that you didn't need to control click to open a search result in a > new tab - that was the default - Google HK behaves like Google US does).

Ok, I have to say that Google's operation in China was a failure even without the censorship. They tried to copy the market leader by adding music search, discussion forums. Can you imagine Google has a direct link to a forum on their webpage here in China? Google used to be considered, 3-5 years ago, a more accurate search engine with higher quality users. But several mis- calculations on strategies essentially dig deep holes on the ship.

> @jrockway: Seems like they just want something to say to their investors > when they have to leave China. If the government fucks them over, it's not > Google's fault. If Google just leaves, then their shareholders might be > upset.

I think western world is under-estimating the hoops they'll have to jump through in China. Everyone thinks you have to have a presence in China because the market is HUGE. But soon or later, they'll find either they lose control over local sales or have to retreat to focus only on a few major cities. With the changes in last 5 years, it's not only western international companies that have suffered from this, but also many non-state-owned local companies. At the beginning of 2010, state owned capitals have rushed into two industries: coal mining and real estate, and ebb non-state ones out of the game. The shareholders should thank google for pulling out since I don't think the ROI is strong enough to keep Google in China.

> @greenlblue: Don't native corporations in China have an interest in keeping > Google out? I suspect their license will not be renewed.

Mind you that the largest search engine Baidu.com is not a Chinese company at all. But they managed to 'brand' themselves as a "national brand" and gain supports from governments.

Alex

<comment><USER4> _It's easy to think of China as a multi-core Hilter country but it's not. It's true that the 9-people Politburo has the power to set the rules but they're only the top of the iceberg. There are HUGE amount of low level officials, about 5% - 15% population, that actually rule the country using more morale codes rather than laws._

...this is, after all, the country that _invented_ the large-scale bureaucratic state.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> In which Google attempts to comply with the letter, but certainly not the spirit, of a directive from a communist dictatorship.

<comment><USER6> China is only nominally communist and has no dictator. I think pseudo- capitalist oligarchy is more accurate.

<comment><USER7> The question of who rules China is pretty interesting. It turns out that the whole operation is run by a group of 9 scientists and engineers.

They are called the Politburo Standing Committee of the Communist Party of China [1].

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politburo_Standing_Committee_of...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politburo_Standing_Committee_of_the_Communist_Party_of_China)

<comment><USER8> Vaguely related Orwell essay:

<http://www.netcharles.com/orwell/essays/james-burnham.htm>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Any commercial site operating in China needs an Internet Content Provider license? How does that affect the Hacker-News-reading types who would want to hack together a website and start making money from it? How difficult/expensive/slow is it to get an ICP?

<comment><USER6> Yes, but for little startups / projects like the kind you mentioned, you could likely go through a middleman with good connections who could get you a working ICP, which would probably technically be that of a shell company you did not own but which was 'lending' you the ICP. Once you got bigger, you would have the money to go through more official channels.

Going the super-official route would be a bit painful unless you already owned a company because the minimal financing for a corporation is high here (compared to the US).

More generally, the rule is - don't yammer about sensitive political issues and try to follow the law and you'll probably be OK.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Can't read it here from within mainland China.

<comment><USER11> Landing page url is: <http://www.google.cn/landing/cnexp/indexd.html>

<comment><USER12> How can Google get away with this? The "Landing page" is basically just an image that you can click on that redirects you to google.com.hk. So, in effect, the only change made is that you must _click_ on the page to go to google.com.hk instead of the automatic redirect. Big LOL. I do hope they get away with this. Whoever thought of this audacious (and simplistic) move is a genius.

<comment><USER13> And you think this will work and be accepted...?

<comment> brown9-2 Perhaps they don't care that much to make large gestures to get their license renewed. Seems like they've made the minimum gesture possible without comprising their earlier stated principles on this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I have troubles understanding this. So the Hong Kong servers are not censored, but they are also not blocked by the Chinese firewall? Or how does it all work? If the Hong Kong servers are neither blocked nor censored, where is the problem?

<comment><USER15> They could eventually be blocked if the chinese government decides to

<comment><USER14> But while it isn't blocked, why doesn't the whole of China just surf through Hong Kong?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Don't native corporations in China have an interest in keeping Google out? I suspect their license will not be renewed.

<comment><USER17> I wonder if Google has the proper Party connections to keep this mischief going — I suspect with the shenanigans they're playing they either don't or don't care about keeping them. There appear to be too many forces against them for this to keep up for much longer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't think this changes much - Google isn't really going dark in China, people will just have to type in google.com (which many of them probably already do) or google.com.hk.

I think much of the damage from Google pulling out has already been done - <USER2> know people who've switched back to Baidu because they find little things about Google HK frustrating (for example, Google.cn used to mimic Baidu in that you didn't need to control click to open a search result in a new tab - that was the default - Google HK behaves like Google US does).

<comment><USER18> You mean this "在新的浏览器窗口中显示查询结果。" option <http://www.google.com.hk/preferences?hl=zh-CN> ?

<comment><USER6> Yup, but you and I are not casual computer users - some people are frustrated by the change and decide it's easier to just use Baidu.

<comment><USER18> I remember they sometimes set "open results in a new window" option by default for new users (those without Google's cookies). But not always, so it seems like they're split testing it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> What does the following mean, on <http://www.google.cn/landing/cnexp/indexd.html>?

我们已移至 google.com.hk

请收藏我们的新网址

<comment><USER20> we have moved to google.com.hk

please bookmark our new address.

<comment><USER21> You're right, I was wrong.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Seems like they just want something to say to their investors when they have to leave China. If the government fucks them over, it's not Google's fault. If Google just leaves, then their shareholders might be upset.

</comment><comment><USER23> Quite a different tune than Sergi's initial gung ho, human rights are being violated by sensoring searches, and we aren't evil responce.

<comment><USER21> Not necessarily. Other people in this thread have stated that google is unlikely to see its license removed. If that's the case, there is some benefit to going through the motions of compliance, to make the eventual denial seem less reasonable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Why don't Google stick with its claim and just leave instead of dicking around with letter of the law or spirit of the law? That sounds like a capitalist pig instead of a moral crusader.

</comment><comment><USER25> I care will google return my google-ads payment

</comment><comment><USER26> So is this marketing PR speak for, we're not going to withdraw from China, instead we're going to censor our search results, except in an even more broad and drastic way?

<comment><USER27> Doesn't seem to be. They're not censoring anything, as the redirect is still available. This more playing semantics with Chinese Gov't Policy while still making uncensored info available to those savvy enough to know to click a link (which should be pretty much everyone).

EDIT: Ahahahahah! The landing page: <http://www.google.cn/landing/cnexp/indexd.html> is really just an image that looks like a censored search. Every user would click it, and it then redirects. Amazingly cheeky! Hopefully the technologically illiterate bureaucrats there will see that it doesn't automatically redirect, and be satisfied without digging deeper. Hahahahaha.</comment></comment>


Stealing Data with CSS: Attack and Defense - <AUTHOR> https://www.mike-gualtieri.com/posts/stealing-data-with-css-attack-and-defense <comment><USER2> These only allow attacks where the desired data exists in the html of the page that the browser downloads (or can be forced there). You can also do font- based attacks that will steal data that is entered dynamically.

[http://mksben.l0.cm/2015/10/css-based-attack-abusing- unicode...](http://mksben.l0.cm/2015/10/css-based-attack-abusing-unicode- range.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> Do these work on reddit where you can have user submitted CSS stylesheets for your subreddits?

<comment><USER4> They shouldn't. These examples all rely on being able to cause an image load on a host the attacker controls if the CSS rule is applied. reddit blocks stylesheets that reference off-site resources. See [https://github.com/reddit- archive/reddit/blob/master/r2/r2/l...](https://github.com/reddit- archive/reddit/blob/master/r2/r2/lib/cssfilter.py#L413-L428)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> what's the threat model here? if the site owner is malicious, then sure, they can exfiltrate form contents while you have scripts disabled, but i'm not sure how you'd enter your SSN into a malicious site to begin with.

if it's via xss, i'm not sure what the advantage of this is compared to a javascript payload, other than you being able to get those tinfoil hat folks running noscript.

<comment><USER6> Say the site has an XSS vector, but the site owner has taken the reasonable precaution of putting in a Content-Security-Policy that would disallow XSS from injecting <script> tags; this would seem to poke a hole in that protection. (Unless, perhaps, similar protections where applied to CSS, but I don't think most people _expect_ CSS to do this; the attack outline in the article was novel (and clever) to me.)

<comment><USER4> Generally if you have a CSP without `unsafe-inline` you'd have have a policy that would restrict all subresources (`default-src 'none'`,) then punch holes in the policy by resource type (`img-src`, `script-src`, etc.)

For ex. if you have a proper CSP with `default-src 'none'` you should be fine so long as you didn't allow `*` or `unsafe-inline` in any of the other `<X>-src` directives.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Well thanks for the info and the protection plugin :)

</comment><comment><USER8> It's odd the author thinks they're introducing the world to some new class of vulnerability. There's been a least a few presentations about it as far back as 2009, and is generally a known thing in web security.

[1]. G. Heyes, D. Lindsay, and E.V. Nava, "The Sexy Assassin: Tactical Exploitation Using CSS" (2009), [http://slideplayer.com/slide/3493669/](http://slideplayer.com/slide/3493669/)

[2] [CSSconf.eu 2013] Mike West - XSS. (No, the _other_ "S"), [https://youtu.be/eb3suf4REyI?t=582](https://youtu.be/eb3suf4REyI?t=582)

[3] [https://twitter.com/blubbfiction/status/657632031845826560](https://twitter.com/blubbfiction/status/657632031845826560)

[4] Demo PoC [http://eaea.sirdarckcat.net/cssar/v2/](http://eaea.sirdarckcat.net/cssar/v2/)</comment>


Ask HN: How could you claim a Facebook URL, if you have the trademark? - <AUTHOR>

Hello there,
If anyone has any additional information about how I would go about requesting a Facebook vanity URL, if we own the trademark for the name. It is very important for our brand to have the original username without any weird alternatives.
Thanks everyone, <comment><USER2> The best would be to contact facebook and provide them with more information like trademark proof, website url, etc.

There was a similar case in the past: <http://techcrunch.com/2010/01/23/facebook-vanity-url-harman/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Nader for the quick reply. Does anyone know the specific email address or contact form to use?

<comment><USER3> [http://www.facebook.com/legal/copyright.php?noncopyright_not...](http://www.facebook.com/legal/copyright.php?noncopyright_notice=1)</comment></comment></comment>


This Old Commodore 64 Is Still Being Used to Run an Auto Shop in Poland - <AUTHOR> http://sploid.gizmodo.com/this-old-ass-commodore-64-is-still-being-used-to-run-an-1787196319 <comment><USER2> Cool, finally a use case for the Commodore 64. I had one but it always seemed like an answer looking for a problem. Mine ended up being a game machine and my introduction to tech but I always thought there should have been a better use for it in the business world. Someone really found a use for it. Great!

<comment><USER3> Actually, it had a fairly advanced (for the time) productivity suite called "GeoWorks" available.</comment></comment>


MySpace developing "HyperTargeting" ad system, claims 300% increase in clickthroughs in tests - <AUTHOR> http://www.thestandard.com/news/2008/04/29/myspace-user-ad-targeting-will-be-optional

<comment><USER2> I hate to plug, but I will plug nevertheless: <http://cadmium.avecora.com/>

My micro-startup for targeted advertising on Facebook, but easily scalable to other social networks.

Unfortunately, it hasn't been getting the attention that I would desire, but nonetheless, there it is. :/

</comment><comment><USER3> "MySpace will give users the option of whether they want to participate in a targeted advertising system that mines their profile's information." And, they'll do this by pre-checking a checkbox, hidden below their privacy policy?</comment>


Is anybody trying to have a healthier relationship with mobiles? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> There is no try, there is only do.

I let my cell phone plan expire.

I honk at people who talk on their phones when I am driving.</comment>