The Next Bubble - Don't Get Fooled Again - <AUTHOR> http://steveblank.com/2011/06/15/the-next-bubble-dont-get-fooled-again/

<comment><USER3> Take this as uninformed speculation (read: I'm not willing to spend the 6 hours pulling together the citations I need for this argument), but it seems to me that some of this bubble is a response to current investing conditions.

Everyone is concerned that we're moving into a second dip, possibly worldwide depression. With the problems with the Euro, Europe isn't an appealing place to invest. the BRIC countries are often risky investments due to government interference, and would be hit extremely hard with a worldwide depression. The American stock market is volatile, and seems maxed out right now.

Yet people are worried about gold and other inflation hedges as well. It has exploded, but is risky as a primary investment vehicle. Real Estate is a bad hedge because its values are still above what seems to be market value. Bonds aren't safe if there are a series of defaults.

Thus, there are no "safe" vehicles for money. However, these social tech companies grew in a recession, so seem less risky than their objective risk profiles would indicate. The bubble, then, may be relative to other investments, not because of their own inherent value.

In short, when safe (relatively) investments look risky, risky investments look less risky in comparison.

<comment><USER4> William Gross said in 2007 that everything he sees is in a bubble - that all assets across all markets are overpriced.

There was no significant correction from then - thanks to ECB and FED, who decided to finance the perpetrators with even more credit.

<comment><USER5> What could it possibly mean for all assets to be overpriced? What could they be overpriced relative to?

<comment><USER4> In (value?) investment asset prices are always reflected against expected future returns via increase of price or via dividends.

Edit: So the assets are overpriced relative against their future returns.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't see how you can compare this to the housing bubble/crisis. The real estate market contains trillions of dollars (everyone's money participates in it one way or another), and some of the worst stuff, like bad mortgages, was amplified and leveraged by firms using it as collateral.

Here, we're talking about a $9 billion valuation for LinkedIn, and that's just a valuation, they sold off something like 20% of the shares, so actually only $1 billion or $2 billion changed hands. In other words, the leverage here works to reduce the economic impact. Who cares about this, other than the people holding these shares? The percentage of the world's capital being invested at these insane valuations is very, very small. Meanwhile, there are tons of undervalued companies in everything from shipping to construction and energy. I think we're not looking at a depression just yet, at least not based on a few dumb valuations for no-substance "social" companies.

</comment><comment><USER7> Assuming we're in a bubble, from a startup founder perspective, it seems like the smart thing to do (to me, at least) is either:

1) Look at the companies and business models that survived the first dot-com bubble (amazon, ebay, priceline, eharmony, etc.) and start analogous companies that can get to profitability

OR

2) Start something in a hot space and get acquired ASAP or do a funding round that let's you take money of the table. And then don't spend the money

<comment><USER8> This is true regardless of impending bubble or not.

<comment><USER9> Yes, but more accentuated in a bubble.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I wonder if awareness + the experience that we had just 10 years ago is going to limit the size of this bubble. 10 years is a very short time it's the same sector.

I know for one thing, I had my lesson 10 years ago, my dad had his lessons investing in Nortel Networks and most of my friends learned a lot about bubbles in 2000. The pain of losing that much money is still there.

<comment><USER11> There are always people that haven't lost enough in the previous bubbles and the allure of getting a huge return in only 1 or 2 years is greater than life. I'm sure a lot of people recognize that evaluations are already inflated, but feel confident that they'll get out before the bubble explodes.

<comment><USER12> This discussion came up recently in a Planet Money episode ([http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/05/20/136403092/the- tues...](http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/05/20/136403092/the-tuesday- podcast-we-sold-gold)).

They interviewed an economist who ran a simple experiment: he created a market for the students in his class with a VERY predictable security (it paid a pre- established dividend N times, and then stopped.) And yet speculative bubbles invariably formed and crashed.

<comment><USER13> That blew my mind. The professor even told the students it was happening as it was happening and the bubble wouldn't deflate.

<comment><USER14> It feels like it's similar to the "guess a number between 0 and 100 that's 2/3 of the average person's guess" game. In the real world, you don't win by doing the most rational thing; you win by succesfully modeling the other players.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> What started the Mania phase in the last bubble, the Netscape IPO in mid '95? If so then we could have four or more years to the next Blow Off.

</comment><comment><USER16> Still with all that knowledge I'm afraid it's almost impossible to slow down group dynamics (and that's all this is) to a point where everybody doesn't get hurt - again. People are going to try to outsmart the bubble, probably even accelarting it. Human nature, I guess. Still sucks. :)

<comment><USER17> I think you could get a lot of mileage out of taxation.

Increase the short-term capital gains rate to -- say -- 50%, add in an shorter-term capital gains rate of 75% for gains inside a month, and just for good measure top it all off with a super-short-term rate of 90% for gains inside of a day.

And to balance the equation, maybe make a longer-term capital gains and drop the capital gains rate on investments lasting more than 5 years to 5% or so. (Or, heck, just inflation-index them.)

<comment><USER18> Two problems:

1\. There is zero political will (yet) to raise taxes. You will never get elected on a tax raising platform.

2\. Increasing taxes means a decrease in aggregate demand, which will slow the economy -- an economy already in the doldrums.

That's why it's such a precarious situation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Click through to the debate and read Horowitz' side: <http://www.economist.com/debate/days/view/710>

He has some pretty compelling graphs and arguments for his position!

</comment><comment><USER19> I feel the realization rate of most investments in the tech sector are already understood. If there's a bubble, it'll just be a function of poor investing, rather than poor understanding.

<comment><USER16> I agree. Afraid it won't matter, because ultimately it's going to affect the entire industry and make it almost impossible for startups that just happen to be in the right place at the wrong time to get funding.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> He closes with: "For all of these reasons, I believe this House should vote in favor of the motion before it. "

What does that mean?

<comment><USER21> It's a part of formal debate procedure. This blog post was taken from a debate in The Economist magazine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Blank's argument doesn't completely hold up. Bubbles happen, but not all bubbles are created equal. The Big Bad One, from 1999, does not compare to whatever you want to call this one. The irrational exuberance exercised in that era was much, much greater and far less sane.

Yes, Linked In is/was overvalued. Same with Groupon and a handful of others. Color raised $40 million without a product (gads! no product before a venture round?). But we've been through this before, and not all the investors are going to be suckers. Color will not IPO. There will not be hordes of companies going public. John Q. Public Investor will not be directly affected. And the VCs are not solely investing in companies without products, business models, and income.

Pandora is profitable. Facebook is profitable (AFAIK). Twitter has figured out how to make money. Y-Combinator companies are being bought out not in a flurry of impulse and whim but because it makes business sense (e.g. Wufoo).

edit:

Steve Blank: _No one doubts that social networks and web and mobile applications are reinventing commerce. Obviously, some of these companies will have hundreds of millions of customers, unprecedented revenue growth and great profits. Yet none of these companies have earned the valuations that they are receiving._

Block that kick! Mr. Blank is leaping from "there are some companies that have not earned these valuations" to "we are in a widespread bubble." That's my problem with this logic -- it's unjustified. _We're still talking about a handful of overvalued companies._ We're being way too sensitive. Bubble, maybe, but a tiny one. Not a really big one. Not one that's going to have any significant effect on the economy.

Oh, and Mr. Blank: the reason driving through Palo Alto is tough is because the Valley economy is in better shape than it was a year ago, not because of your tiny bubble. People are working again, but they're not all working for Color and Linked In.

edit 2:

Quote from an Economist commentor: _The fact is that a bubble "in Tech", which was the debate topic looks highly unlikely just based on the fact that the success of the high-fliers hasn't started raising all boats. The market is still acting properly and choosing winners and losers, and the losers' shareholders would be the first to point that fact out._

Exactly. Those screaming "bubble" are looking at a skewed picture. "Hey, these five companies are overvalued!" Yes, but these X thousand companies are not. Why does that handful warrant so much attention, fear, uncertainty, and doubt?

<comment><USER23> We are in the beginning phase of what might end up being a humongous bubble. Angel investment valuations[prices] are up, IPOs are starting to take off. But it isn't totally crazy yet, and it may never get there.

As Brad DeLong says these days: it isn't a Great Recession anymore, it's a Little Depression. (And could get worse before it gets much better).

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> This will be a short bubble.

\- Greece is about to default any minute now. After that, Ireland/Portugal/Spain/Austria/Italy will soon follow.

\- Japan is suffering -5% GDP per year

\- China is starting to have internal riots in major cities because of high inflation. Also, lots of their high flying companies are starting to be investigated for fraud. Thus the recent 30-40% drops in their stock prices.

\- US is about to default technically by not raising their debt ceiling.

All signs point to the second dip in the global economic depression.

<comment><USER6> I can be a pessimist with the best of them, but this is just panic-mongering.

\-- The US would be insane to default; their debts are mostly internal, and in their own currency, which they can just inflate. Unpleasant for Americans, whose pensions and savings are going to be worth a lot less, but this is how you pay for living beyond your means. If they need to change some technical rule, they will find a way of doing that, rather than default on debts and cause chaos.

\-- Unlike Iceland, which physically lacked the money to pay its debts, Greece simply doesn't want to cut its government spending by 10% and pay its creditors. They are a sovereign nation, so nobody can force them to. Fine. After they default, and the financing gets cut off anyway, they will have to cut spending even more. Maybe after other nations will see how that works out for them, they will think twice about not paying debts that they voluntarily took on. Or maybe not. But let's not start hyperventilating about an Austrian default just yet.

\-- China has had two decades of solid economic growth. Make that fantastic economic growth. I am not talking about numbers on paper, it's growth measured in concrete and steel and food. They'll live through a correction if they have to.

<comment><USER25> \-- "Just inflate" Oh, is that all? Turned out pretty nicely for Argentina, didn't it?

\-- Unlike Iceland, Greece will taco the Euro, and bring down a bunch of Euro banks.

\-- China is to the Greater Depression as the U.S. was to the original Great Depression: the exporter that is going to get totaled. I'm optimistic on the other side of the coming valley, but they are going to have a heck of a reckoning when all the bad debts and malinvestment come to a head. I don't expect the current government to survive unless they are extremely brutal and extremely lucky.

<comment><USER6> >> "Just inflate" Oh, is that all? Turned out pretty nicely for Argentina, didn't it?

Argentina defaulted. It turned out to be a disaster, which, for them, may have been unavoidable. Why would the US want this?

>> Unlike Iceland, Greece will taco the Euro, and bring down a bunch of Euro banks.

Yeah, sure, we're all moving to the workhouse because Euro banks stand to lose 40 billion euros from a Greek default (this is the "haircut" being proposed). In an economy of 13 trillion euros a year. After Greece finishes digging out from its default disaster (remember, plenty of their debt is internal), maybe others will think twice. Or maybe not. I don't have the gift of prophecy, but I am betting pretty strongly against the whole Eurozone of 400 million people turning into a boarded-up wasteland.

If you want to counsel panic, put some numbers on it - what exactly will one Euro buy in five years, and where will the stock markets be (boarded up, maybe)? Then let's see if you're willing to invest your money accordingly.

<comment><USER6> By the way, if you want to see my predictions in numbers for the next 5 years, here they are:

1\. The Euro will appreciate against the dollar, because the US will have to issue a lot of currency to bail out local and state governments in the next 5 years. I am guessing a Euro will buy about 2 dollars then (edit: come to think of it, probably more. The US will print a lot of money).

2\. The stock markets will not be boarded up, and will be trading at roughly at the levels of today (+ inflation). I don't see tons of profit there, given panicky investors, but the fundamentals are more than sound enough to prevent a total collapse. It's not like the market is trading at insane P/E ratio.

3\. Almost all private and public debts will be paid. There are funds to do this, and the political pressure to make good on debt will be overwhelming. There may be a Greek default, and the Spanish real estate debts will have to be restructured too, but not at a crippling loss to the whole Eurozone - <USER2> is not enough money invested to "taco the Euro".

Yes, my money and my mouth are in the same exact place.

<comment><USER25> 1) I think the Euro will not be recognizable in five years, so I hesitate to guess where whatever the Euro is (if it still exists at all) will be. I'm expecting that current Euro holders will see depreciation of their purchasing power unless they are very nimble.

2) I expect the S&P to retest and break the previous lows. Russell Napier has a target of 400, which sounds plausible to me.

3) Not a chance. Productive capacity has been hollowed out in exactly the economies that have taken on the most debt, so the debt can't be repaid in any meaningful way. When you start penciling in future obligations or, heaven forfend, "investments" in "derivatives" made by our friends in the big pension funds... No way. I believe we are at the end of the public/private debt ponzi scheme. It could end in hyperinflation or in deflation. I expect deflation.

My money is kind of where my mouth is: a straddle of startup investments and cash/PMs.

Hey, I could be wrong, right?

<comment><USER6> By the way, I've always wanted to ask someone who buys gold/silver as a hedge against economic collapse - are you physically holding it in your house, or what? If your gold is just 1s and 0s in some database which say that you own some gold, why do you think you will be able to get it after the "Big One"? Your bank or brokerage may have to give it to some creditor who is in line before you. And there are precedents for the government just confiscating it, or forcing you to "sell" it at the price they set. So what's the plan?

<comment><USER25> We've established that you think I'm crazy. Granting that, how do you think I would answer your questions?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Xyrlo Network: the Facebook killer - <AUTHOR> https://xyrlo.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> All of your favorite social media functions in one place. Unlimited friends list, news feed, photo share, video channels, marketplace, Snap Up, chat, blogs, forums, and much more!

<comment><USER2> Doesn't Facebook already have all of those things in one place? And also, you know, my friends?</comment></comment>


Retired equipment lives on in new physics experiments - <AUTHOR> https://www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/retired-equipment-lives-on-in-new-physics-experiments <comment><USER2> Close to where I am the ISIS [1] neutron source [2] notoriously used a lot of second hand stuff when it was built. It is a tremendously successful science facility despite the fact that some parts date from the 1950s [3] [4].

I was told that some electrical equipment that had previously helped power the London Underground; I have never been able to find a source for this but I desperately want it to be true.

[1] Named in the 1980s [2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISIS_neutron_source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISIS_neutron_source) [3] [https://www.isis.stfc.ac.uk/Pages/Inside-the-ISIS-linear- par...](https://www.isis.stfc.ac.uk/Pages/Inside-the-ISIS-linear-particle- accelerator.aspx) [4] [https://www.isis.stfc.ac.uk/Pages/ISIS_AR_2017.pdf](https://www.isis.stfc.ac.uk/Pages/ISIS_AR_2017.pdf) picture on page 4

</comment><comment><USER3> I studied physics in college. One of the more surprising things I learned was just how much scientific equipment was bought and sold via eBay. And we aren't talking like run of the mill high frequency generators. No, it was specialized stuff like high field density magnets with cryo chambers, helium 3 systems, etc.

<comment><USER4> Gee, Brain, what do you want to do tonight?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I briefly worked on an experiment at Fermilab (FNAL) that was trying to measure the birefringence of the vacuum (QED theory states the vacuum is birefringent in presence of magnetic field). Key to the experiment were the final 2 remaining magnets from the SSC (Super Conducting Super Collider). There was much donated equipment, some of it repurposed from experiments at SLAC and elsewhere within FNAL. Gotta say those folks at FNAL really knew how to stretch a dollar.</comment>


House Defeats Effort to Rein In N.S.A. Data Gathering - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/25/us/politics/house-defeats-effort-to-rein-in-nsa-data-gathering.html

<comment><USER2> I really do commend everyone involved in this effort. This is how the system is supposed to work, citizens making their voices know, and the legislature acting upon the will of the people.

Honestly you guys got far closer to your goal than I would have anticipated. The bipartison support was almost unprecedented in recent years.

From a practical matter, even if the House bill passed it was dead on arrival in the Senate. But nevertheless it is a significant symbolic blow to blanket surveillance against American citizens.

All I've tried to communicate, perhaps with less than appropriate tact, is that this is going to be a long slog.

If you're going to reign in the surveillance state, you'll need to start thinking like Washington insiders. Pick one incumbent that vocally supported these programs, and take him or her down. That will instantly catapult this issue to the top of the concerns in DC.

It only costs a few million to get that done. Considering the wealth of the tech industry, and the threat this poses to overseas expansion of the US internet services, donations shouldn't be overly difficult to drum up. We could really make a large dent in getting the legislature to help roll back these programs to sane levels. Add to that an anit-SOPA style social media campaign, and you could accomplish real and lasting change.

<comment><USER3> > Pick one incumbent that vocally supported these programs, and take him or > her down.

That sounds wonderful. Who do you suggest? Mike Rogers? Ruppersberger? Labrador?

<comment><USER2> Let me think on that. It's really a political question of vulnerability. You want someone that's prominent enough in the debate, but weak enough in their home district to take down. A senator would be better than a Congressman...

You'll also have to remember that there is a series of corporate interests, large and small, with very deep pockets that will oppose any check on the surveillance state, no matter how reasonable.

Full Disclosure: I don't support outright ending these programs, as many of you do. I do support real judicial oversight, transparency into the law being made in the FISA opinions, and a series of internal and external safeguards to reign these programs in from the brink.

I know it's not the most popular opinion in these parts, but politics makes for strange bedfellows. No reason that we can't work together on the things we agree upon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Here is roll call, complete with a map:

[http://politics.nytimes.com/congress/votes/113/house/1/412](http://politics.nytimes.com/congress/votes/113/house/1/412)

The vote wasn't partisan, nor did it break along geographic lines.

<comment><USER5> Furthermore, some urban districts are invisible at that scale.

<comment><USER6> You can zoom in by double clicking on the map

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The roll call if you are interested in how your congressman voted:

[http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2013/roll412.xml](http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2013/roll412.xml)

<comment><USER8> Well, today I learned I'm not voting to reelect my Congressman.

<comment><USER2> Mine were one aye and one abstention, (the abstention from a neighboring district that isn't technically my district but was gerrymandered to run through part of my home city.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I hope that every tech person in SF will be clear and unequivocal in saying ... "Dear Ms. Pelosi, you have demonstrated that you do not represent your constituents and you will never receive my vote, and that I will put all my efforts into ensuring that you are never reelected."

<comment><USER10> Assuming we all agree with you is pretty arrogant. A lot of people will do as you say, and a lot of people will do the opposite. As long as nobody acts like a sore loser about it, everyone goes home happy.

<comment><USER9> I don't see how you got "Assuming we all agree with you" out of "I hope."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm somewhat encouraged by this. 12 votes and it would have passed. Even though it didn't pass and will ultimately be seen as a failure, I imagine this will serve as a wake-up call.

Imagine the investment made by the NSA into collecting and processing all of this data. 12 votes and it could have changed. This must have scared the shit out of someone. Hopefully this is just the beginning.

<comment><USER12> 6 votes actually, not 12. (Well 7 because of the tie breaker.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This will probably come up again (along similar lines) clearly there would be enough support after some back room deals.

</comment><comment><USER14> What a mind boggling time we are living in where the liberal government is pressing to keep such practices and conservatives are against it only because they are against liberals in principle.

If this is not the doom of two-party ideology of liberal/conservative political system than I am not sure what is.

<comment><USER15> >What a mind boggling time we are living in where the liberal government is pressing to keep such practices and conservatives are against it only because they are against liberals in principle.

What in the world are you talking about? Do you have any reason to believe this is true?

<comment><USER16> During the bush years "conservatives" [republicans] tended to be more in favour of government surveillance, while "liberals"[democrats] tended to be more opposed. Now that Obama is in power conservatives are more opposed while liberals are less opposed. The switch would suggest that at least some of these individuals (on both sides) are motivated by politics and not principle.

<comment><USER15> >Now that Obama is in power conservatives are more opposed while liberals are less opposed. The switch would suggest that at least some of these individuals (on both sides) are motivated by politics and not principle.

But you're not talking about the same thing. The idea that you can support warrantless tapping of international calls when the other end of the line is a suspected terrorist and oppose the dragnet of all call records and emails doesn't indicate a lack of principle. We're talking about policies with a much different scope.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> So when do we see a similar vote to rein in corporate and other private entity data gathering? Or are we all conservatives here?

<comment><USER18> Of course corporate entities should not be getting away with anything you haven't agreed to let them do. People need to become more aware of what they're agreeing to when they use any service. You can try to inform them, but you can't think for them, and you can't act for them. At some stage, they need to make an effort.

But the difference with something like the NSA is, you can't opt-out of what they're doing. With a company, you can take your business elsewhere. This isn't so easy with the government, unfortunately.</comment></comment>


Thread Turns Facebook Friends into Dating Matchmakers - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2009/09/01/thread/ <comment><USER2> That assumes the "inauthenticity" of dating sites is a bug rather than a feature. They're not going to attract three groups which to me seem to be almost the entire market:

1\. People looking to cheat on their partners with whom they have 50% overlap in Facebook friends.

2\. Shy folks --- the ones who don't cold-approach women in meatspace and thus prefer dating sites, are also the ones who are going to be too self-conscious to announce to all their friends that they're looking online for dates.

3\. People who plain old want to date outside of their social cul-de-sac.

My most successful experiences with "online dating" has actually been with friends of girls I met through language-exchange websites. Since all the other guys on those sites only want to "learn" by gonadal osmosis, if you show even a small amount of knowledge in the language, combined with active disinterest in the girl, you come out smelling like a rose in comparison. Now if you can figure out how to monetise THAT ...</comment>


Top Youtube channels. - <AUTHOR> http://microreviews.org/top-youtube-channels/ <comment><USER2> Decent list you put together. Isn't youtube great. Something for everyone really.

If you want a full (though not as detailed) list of all the top youtube channels (currently tracking 80k+ channels hourly/daily) I've actually been running a site that monitors youtube for the past year now. It also estimates how much partners make and lets you track your own stats too.

Check it out: <http://SocialBlade.com/youtube></comment>


Sharing secrets and distributing passwords: Shamir's Algorithm - <AUTHOR> http://www.datagenetics.com/blog/november22012/index.html

<comment><AUTHOR> This is one of the best (simple) explanations of Shamir's Secret Sharing Scheme [0] which has a solid working implementation [1]

[0]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shamir%27s_Secret_Sharing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shamir%27s_Secret_Sharing)

[1]: [http://point-at-infinity.org/ssss/](http://point-at-infinity.org/ssss/)</comment>


Map the iPhone Users In Any City, And You Know Where the Rich Live - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlanticcities.com/jobs-and-economy/2013/06/map-iphone-users-any-city-and-you-know-where-rich-live/5961/ <comment><USER2> Super interesting.

However, iPhone appears to have been rendered last, obfuscating Android users.

Example:

iPhone only: [http://d.tiles.mapbox.com/v3/enf.iphone/11/327/791.png](http://d.tiles.mapbox.com/v3/enf.iphone/11/327/791.png)

Android only: [http://d.tiles.mapbox.com/v3/enf.android/11/327/791.png](http://d.tiles.mapbox.com/v3/enf.android/11/327/791.png)

iPhone and Android: [http://d.tiles.mapbox.com/v3/enf.android,enf.iphone/11/327/7...](http://d.tiles.mapbox.com/v3/enf.android,enf.iphone/11/327/791.png)

<comment><USER3> Sure, but why let proper data visualization get in the way of link bait?

The original source, which I'm assuming you got your images from directly, is much more interesting: [http://www.mapbox.com/labs/twitter- gnip/brands/#9/40.1358/-7...](http://www.mapbox.com/labs/twitter- gnip/brands/#9/40.1358/-74.2676)

</comment></comment><comment> jack-r-abbit I don't see how this matches. Is owning an iPhone a symbol of being rich more than other smart phones? I know people that can easily afford an iPhone but don't have one. I know people that have an iPhone but probably should have paid their rent instead. My wife has an iPhone. We can also afford for me to have one. I choose Android instead.

It is also only geotagged tweets. I don't geotag my tweets. My wife doesn't use Twitter. So we're both completely out of this "study". It would be interesting to see stats on how many Android users geotag their tweets vs iPhone users. I believe there is a certain mental difference between iPhone users and Android users (not better or worse... just a different type of person) which could have a bias toward geotagging vs not.

Do the results take into account multiple tweets from the same person? One "rich" person with an iPhone that tweets 50 times a day is going to make a bigger mark on an area than 5 "poor" people with a Blackberry that might only tweet 1-2 times a day.

I'm not convinced there is anything useful here.

<comment> matt-attack > I'm not convinced there is anything useful here.

Well there is indeed _something_ here. The charts are clearly correlated with rich and poor areas (at least for cities I'm familiar with).

Now whether or not it's tied solely to iphone vs android remains to be seen. The results deserve some sort of explanation.

<comment><USER4> The charts are of dubious value. As others have send, the z-order puts the iPhone on top, occluding Android. In the "rich" areas, Android and the iPhone are close to identical.

Which, of course, makes sense, as there are high end and low end Android devices.

<comment><USER5> But outside of the "rich" areas, although iPhone tweets are rendered on top of Android tweets, Android dominates. To me this indicates that iPhones are concentrated in the "rich" areas as opposed to Androids, which are more evenly distributed. What am I missing?

<comment><USER4> You aren't missing anything. Androids are available from premium Galaxy S4s, to discount pay-as-you-go discount devices. Android is a device for everyone and every demographic, and the charts reflects that.

However by using the layering, it suddenly seems like the iPhone is the phone used in the rich areas, when in reality if you compare layers Android and the iPhone have very similar distributions in those areas as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> How are the color pixels indicating device stacked in the map? If I only check Android I will see large green areas, but when I then check iPhone the same green areas will be red. Does that simply mean that there have been more iPhone than Android tweets in that particular spot?

<comment><USER7> I made the map tiles, but Tom did the UI and compositing, so I'm not sure how the layers are combined. There are more iPhone tweets than any other source, so they will tend to be the most visible if they are given equal priority.

<comment><USER8> And this right here invalidates the article's conclusion, the simple number of iPhone tweets overwhelms the Android tweets. The map just shows who is more chatty, versus actual income disparity.

As a side note, I do find the map very interesting - it's just the article's conclusion that I'm not convinced of.

<comment><USER7> But they don't overwhelm the Android tweets everywhere, only in some places.

I agree that it is too big a leap to say that phone choice always indicates wealth, but I do think there is a connection.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Obligatory: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_sharpshooter_fallacy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_sharpshooter_fallacy)

</comment><comment><USER10> Being from Atlanta, this maps is drastically incorrect as to our wealth distribution. The locations on I20 East and just above 285/75on the south side have distinctly the lowest incomes and most crime. (Though, there is an amphitheater at the south hotspot)

<comment><USER11> I'm not seeing the same thing. The big chunk of red on the south side of the city is the ATL airport. ("Checking in! #delta #hartsfield) Georgia Tech, Downtown, Midtown, VaHi, Morningside, Druid Hills, Buckhead, Brookhaven, Marietta, Lake Claire, west side of Decatur and the south end of Sandy Springs are the areas I see in red here. These are all wealthy areas. All along the northern perimeter - which is mostly just white-collar businesses, is mostly red tinted and all along the rest of the perimeter is green. Other than Hartsfield Jackson, there is a pretty solid cone of red emanating from downtown into the north. I would say this is 100% spot on with mapping wealth to iPhones, although, I am not sold on the numbers that generated the map.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Or you can tell where university students are. Checking Atlanta, GA, you can see where Spellman college and Georgia Tech are. Check Seattle, WA, and you can see very clearly where UW is.

Also, in Savannah, GA, you can look and you'll see a lot of iPhones in the "projects".

This is a neat project, but it's not as clearcut as the author is trying to make it out to be.

<comment><USER12> In Seattle, it's interesting to see Downtown a sea of Blackberrys surrounded by iPhones. More Blackberrys and iPhones in Bellevue. Like you said, UW is another cluster of iPhones and so is Seatac airport. But the rest of the area is Android.

Tacoma looks just like the surrounding region, despite being WA state's 2nd largest city (tied with Spokane).

<comment><USER13> I'm not seeing it. It's a sea of red in downtown Seattle (and up into Lower Queen Anne i.e. where the Space Needle is). Yeah there's some purple in there but as it has been pointed out, surely those are Windows Phone devices.

The neighborhoods south of downtown do appear to be majority Android, which does agree with the assertions of The Atlantic.

<comment><USER12> Where was it pointed out that these purple dots are likely Windows Phones?

Maybe the shades of purple are too close for me to tell. Or maybe nobody uses Blackberrys anymore?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Cool pictures, but knowing about some of these cities, isn't this basically a population map? Obligatory xkcd: [http://xkcd.com/1138/](http://xkcd.com/1138/)

It seems to miss very wealthy areas that have a lower population.

<comment><USER15> It's not just a population map, because you're effectively looking at the _relative_ usage of each platform in different geographical areas. If it were a map of just iPhone users and you went: "look, all the iPhone users are in rich Manhattan" then the XKCD comic would be relevant.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> It looks to me like they are drawing the iPhone pixels on top of the Android pixels... so any location that would have _both_ ends up showing iPhone only!

<comment><USER5> Yes, but their argument is that iPhones are concentrated in the enclaves of the rich i.e. _less_ widely distributed than Android. The way that they presented the data is actually biased _against_ their thesis.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Doesn't work in Denver. The richest area, Cherry Hills Village, has such massive houses on relatively massive lots that there are hardly any data points, and those that are there look like an even mix of iPhone and Android.

Looks more like people tweet while out and about during the day from the patterns I see in Denver.

Looking at Albuquerque, the biggest iPhone cluster is around the UNM campus, mostly students.

</comment><comment><USER18> I love stats. I must say, that this is a very clever metadata scraping and analysis! I do have to point out that the purpose of a mobile device though is to be able to conduct work (or the basis of this article...a tweet) from anywhere, with that said, I don't think the geo location reflects where someone lives.

Side Note: I may own an iPhone, but my wallet doesn't agree with this title.

</comment><comment><USER19> Chicago resident here - I think the map of Chicago is fairly accurate. It's also interesting to see a number of red dots along the blue line (part of Chicago's public transit system that runs from O'Hare to downtown)

</comment><comment><USER20> I knew it! Bushwick and Broadway near the 24-7 Popeyes/Dunkin Donuts as I suspected.

</comment><comment><USER21> Interesting, what about the poeple who dont tweet or have a smartphone?

Also I reckon it is certainly not just income we are seeing in the ios vs android broad pattern. I would guess age and tech-savviness are a large factor in this divide aswell.

</comment><comment><USER22> The author presupposes that rich people buy more expensive things. Some rich people are rich because they are frugal consumers.

<comment><USER23> And yet, the iPhones show up in the wealthier areas just the same.

<comment><USER22> See the comment thread above. The author didn't just present the data; she suggested that mobile phones are linked to socio-economic status.

<comment><USER23> Yes, and "linked to" is just another way of saying "correlated". I don't understand why you seem to be OK with one term but not the other.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This is making an implicit assumption that iPhones are symbols of wealth where other smartphones are not.

The real cost of smartphone ownership is in the contract. The ~$100 savings you could get in buying an Android phone (not always there - when S3 was introduced, it cost the same as the iPhone - $200) doesn't mean much when you consider $100+/month over two years. There shouldn't be a real difference in the wealth of Android owners and iPhone owners.

<comment><USER25> Not everyone has a Galaxy S{2,3,4}. "Android" phones are pretty routinely available free-with-contract and with limited plans these days. This isn't mapping high end smartphone users with iPhone-equivalent handsets. It's showing you that Apple has nothing to sell into poorer demographics, but that those demographics still want smartphones.

<comment><USER24> >with limited plans

I'm just pointing out that $2600 for an iPhone over 2 years (Verizon Share Everything, 2GB data) is only 8% more expensive than a "free" low-quality Android handset on the same plan ($2400).

Limited and prepaid plans would explain the class difference. If it weren't for the shitty suburban/rural coverage, I'd strongly consider Nexus 4 on T-Mobile.

<comment><USER25> But again: the ability to amortize a big upfront payment over a two year contract is _also_ a characteristic of "rich" consumers. Not everyone has $200 in the bank when they need a new phone. These people end up with Gingerbread handsets.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Ah, London... The City is all covered in Blackberries, as expected.

</comment><comment><USER27> this is stupid. 1) accuracy of data 2) having an iPhone ≠ being rich.

</comment><comment><USER28> This assumes that people mostly phone-tweet from their home, and not, let's say, from work or restaurants or clubs.

<comment><USER29> There's still a decent correlation between a restaurant's location and the wealth of its customers. People who live in Manhattan aren't typically going to go to a club in Newark or vice versa.

Anyway you can see on the map that tweets come from a huge number of locations; there's not that many restaurants and clubs.</comment></comment>


Beijing's US Treasury holdings dip - <AUTHOR> https://asia.nikkei.com/Economy/Trade-war/China-sells-dollars-and-buys-gold-as-tensions-rise <comment><USER3> This is a misrepresentation which is trying to paint a relatively weak position as a stronger one. A small fraction of that money is being spent on gold. According the financial times[1], China only bought 15.6 tonnes - <USER2> $675 million worth[2], compared to the dollar deficit of ~$7.5 billion.

China has a trade surplus with the US, but is net losing dollars because it has to use dollars to buy oil and other imported goods as very little international trade is transacted in yuan. They aren't choosing to shift away from the US dollar. They need them and are going through their stockpile.

[1][https://www.ft.com/content/ca50aa10-8b18-11e9-a1c1-51bf8f989...](https://www.ft.com/content/ca50aa10-8b18-11e9-a1c1-51bf8f989972) [2][https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=value+of+15.6+tonnes+o...](https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=value+of+15.6+tonnes+of+gold)

<comment><USER4> >China has a trade surplus with the US, but is net losing dollars because it has to use dollars to buy oil and other imported goods as very little international trade is transacted in yuan

China is a net exporter to the tune of half a trillion per year. I don't see how they could be running out of dollars. Your first link is behind a paywall so I'm not sure what stats they use to back that up.

<comment><USER3> I believe the missing factor is investment. You're likely referencing numbers just for trade. There is also foreign investment to consider. I believe China has been a large net investor for some time and those investments, by their foreign nature, reduce China's foreign reserves as well.

<comment><USER4> Sure, it's possible they have a net negative dollar flow because of investments. But that's a lot different than having a net negative dollar flow because they're importing oil.

<comment><USER3> There is some nuance here. We can talk about all of their net flows as if they're denominated in a given currency, but this article is specifically talking about their reserves of a particular currency, and oil is a very large reason for the continued depletion of their dollar reserves, independent of their overall account balance when all of it is converted to dollars. I don't have a good knowledge of what their other currency reserves are, or the feasibility/implications of converting such massive dollar figures between currencies. If you want to provide some more details about the particular figure you mentioned, we might be able to discuss it more meaningfully.

<comment><USER4> This cite has them at 873B of net exports with about 200B in petroleum imports in 2017:

[https://atlas.media.mit.edu/en/profile/country/chn/](https://atlas.media.mit.edu/en/profile/country/chn/)

The net exports decreased to about 500B for 2018. I can't seem to find a dollar figure for 2018 oil but I've seen articles saying imports are up 10% by volume. So total petroleum imports are less than half of their net export amount. Meaning that they could triple their petroleum imports and still be a net exporter.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, hard to tell just looking at that data. I don't know what currencies each one of the trade relationships is settled in. The differences in balance with the US there is also similar to what they spend on oil (~11%). If all other trade is settled in other currencies and all oil is bought with dollars(from countries other than the US), they would be about flat in terms of dollar reserve growth from trade. My understanding is that most of their dollar reserves originated from buying dollars w/ yuan in the years after 2009 to help keep the value of the yuan depressed for the sake of trade competitiveness. So that does seem to imply that investment balance is the factor tipping the balance here. Which is probably why the Chinese government has set stringent rules on currency controls for individuals.

<comment><USER4> Which currency the trades are settled in is effectively meaningless as long as it's hard currency. If they end up with a surplus of Euros and a deficit of Dollars they can easily exchange Euros for Dollars. If they end up with fewer dollars it's mostly by choice.

<comment><USER3> We're talking about hundreds of billions of dollars here. How confident are you that you could 'easily' do that without major undesired effects?

<comment><USER4> This cite says the average daily volume of EUR/USD trades is half a trillion a day:

[https://www.currenciesfx.com/index.php/eur- usd](https://www.currenciesfx.com/index.php/eur-usd)

So hundreds of billions of dollars a year is small relative to the volumes being traded.

<comment><USER3> Very little of that is true demand. That corresponds to 10x American GDP annualized.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> From "Currency Wars: The Making of the Next Global Crisis", which I read too many years ago to clearly remember, this was a economic war strategy. During economic war-games the Pentagon set up this strategy was successfully employed.

China, Russia- the "anti-west" powers started buying gold, dumping US debt and finally proposed creating their own currency for regional trade instead of using the USD as their reserve currency.

This is a summary based on a book I can't really remember and concepts I might not have understood. That said, I do remember it was a good book, worth a read.

<comment><USER6> This is not much of an "economic war" strategy, TBH - it's just a very visible _signal_ of the "hey, we hate the U.S." sort. The "reserve currency" one uses as part of world trade is immaterial, except for convenience; the U.S. are not perceptibly better or worse off as a result of such choices.

Tariffs and trade barriers though? Now, there's some "economic war" if I've ever seen it! "When goods won't cross borders... armies will."

<comment><USER7> In most of the analyses I've read, the petrodollar has been of huge benefit to the US - effectively propping it up in the face of massive QE efforts and (in theory) allowing much more to be printed to service debts than would otherwise be sustainable.

I mean, there must be some reason that trading or threatening to trade oil in Euros is practically asking for some kind of forced regime change.

<comment><USER4> >In most of the analyses I've read, the petrodollar has been of huge benefit to the US - effectively propping it up in the face of massive QE efforts and (in theory) allowing much more to be printed to service debts than would otherwise be sustainable.

It's not as simplistic as good or bad for the country. If have a good job and you want to buy a lot of imports then it's good. If you want to be a factory worker it's bad because what you make is more expensive for other companies to buy.

<comment><USER7> Sure, a weak currency is better for basic exports. It's widely accepted that Germany prefers a weaker euro to a stronger mark.

We can look at the US's behaviour, though, to determine whether they think it's valuable to them or not. It's had every year since the petrodollar was established post WW2 to push the world towards using the Euro and instead has fiercely defended it.

<comment><USER4> > they think it's valuable to them

"They" in this case are the elected politicians that are in the "good jobs that buy imports" category and/or dependent on that category for political support.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > Some of this capital is going into gold. China's gold reserves have grown > for six straight months since December, the first time the country increased > its holdings of the precious metal in more than two years. Russia has made > similar moves, slashing its dollar-denominated assets while purchasing gold > as essentially a borderless currency.

I know it's crazy but I have to ask - with countries seeking more neutral currencies, could it be fathomable that adoption of digital currencies would grow as well?

<comment><USER9> Swiss Franc is the primary alternative. I don't see digital currencies going farther away than being used in the dark market/crypto-trading.

<comment><USER10> It is, but it's too small for china.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This doesn't seem particularly newsworthy. It's such a tiny blip that it's immaterial.

The RMB & USD have traded in a very tight range throughout 2019.

<comment><USER12> Really it is about the trend. China couldn't just dump their treasuries (as explained in the article) as they would lose a lot of value that way. So dribbling them out and exchanging them for gold maximizes the value returned. At $20B/month that is a pretty steady pace of a quarter trillion a year.

EDIT: A quarter trillion not billion dollars, thanks.

<comment><USER13> I think you might have meant a quarter trillion.

<comment><USER12> So true, just 3 decimal orders of magnitude :-). And it would eliminate their holdings in 5 years if they were to stick to it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> China is in a delicate position. They're fighting trade war from weaker position. Their diversification to gold makes sense. They probably know that they don't have the power to "sink" the dollar. If they need the dollar in the future, they can still sell their gold and purchase US treasury again.

I think they are testing out strategies. Gold is an alternative. The US and its European allies still control most of the gold reserve. Western countries have an upper hand if currency war moves to gold.

Some Asian countries are voicing support for gold backed currency. But they together don't have substantial gold reserve. I think China is waiting for a break of European countries to gold. That would be a real opening for them in this battle.

There's also bitcoin. China doesn't like it because the system is decentralized and supply is limited. They can't easily take control of the market. But the US also face similar issues. That would make an unpredictable battle field. For now, it seems China is treading slowly with gold.

<comment><USER10> The only thing that really matters is the relative percentages of what currency is used in international trade. If you need to buy stuff from outside your country and they want to be paid in USD then you need USD to pay them. The RMB isn't really that useful outside of China, I don't honestly see gold being the substitute because there just isn't enough of it, any gold backed currency would end up deflationary and people would hoarde it for the sake of hoarding it.

<comment><USER14> Gold backed currency doesn't have to be 1-1 with gold. You can use fractional reserve to issue more currencies. Or you issue bond to borrow. Given you keep your promise to pay debt and allow people to redeem currency using gold. People will trust you as long as you keep your promise and have enough gold reserve.

I personally think having the ability to hoard gold is good. I can decide that for myself. It's easier to understand than the voodoo economics of money printing. It's the fallback to keep accountability.

<comment><USER15> Gold would be extremely deflationary.

It is what made the great depression worse.

If the Fed didn't "print money" as QE1, QE2, QE3 then you would have 25% unemployment in the US alone.

Having half of society unemployed just so that you can "hoard gold" would lead that half of society taking up guns to take it away from you.

Be careful what you wish for.

<comment><USER14> The problem with QE is you will have QEn. Everyone will do QE on their economies. We don't have any accountability. During the 2008 crisis, we were told this is the right thing to do. And we keep doing it.

We're not at the stage where half of the society is unemployed and hoarding gold. We're at the stage where everyone is doing QE on their economies.

Having full employment for the sake of full employment is dumb. That's the same as communism.

<comment><USER10> The goldbugs all said the fed and its helicopter money would have lead to hyperinflation at this point. Well every major central bank in the world did QE and it didn't happen, inflation barely cracked 5% if I recall? And quickly retreated from there.

<comment><USER14> The QE technique is interesting and new. They write up the money on Fed book as liability without pumping printed money into the economy. I think it's recently possible because our money is mostly digital now. You can look at US national debt clock. It's there.

I think inflation is shifted into debt on Fed book. Between having some inflation and blowing up the debt, I think having some inflation is better now. You don't want to load up all your risks in a central book. But our political class doesn't want this. They want to keep loading up debt. We'll then have a QE race between nations. Maybe, at some point, we come to love each other and burn our debt on each other books. JK, that'll never happen :)

<comment><USER16> Not all nations to QE - quantitative easing, some to QE- qualitative easing: [https://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2014/08/11/how-chinas- tr...](https://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2014/08/11/how-chinas-trying-to- boost-its-economy-qualitative-easing/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The US President is looking to the Federal Reserve to interest lower rates. By reducing their T-Bond holdings and curbing future purchases, China is increasing the volume of T-Bonds the Federal Reserve must purchase in order to achieve the US President's wishes of lower interest rates.

It seems like a good move, seeing as the President's base has a negative opinion of national debt and government interference.

<comment><USER18> Massive selling pressure would push bond yields up. Fixed income security prices and yields have an inverse relationship

<comment><USER17> Right, which means that the Fed will have to buy even more to push rates down.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is really weird. You buy something and sell something. This is entirely up to customers. Why make it so big deal? It is the customers' freedom to do so.

So respect the customers' choice, respect other countries' choice. They want to sell, let them sell.

<comment><USER20> This is a report of publicly released numbers, it isn't a judgement. No one is trying to stop anyone.

<comment><USER19> I saw people here discuss about WAR.

<comment><USER20> You should have replied to them, since this is just reporting what China's official information is. China and Russia have been buying gold for many years now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Another discussion on current state of China (was on the homepage, but got flagged right away)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20215382](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20215382)

</comment><comment><USER22> Selling large amounts of dollars to buy gold should devalue the dollar against other currencies, right?

Isn't that what Trump wants to happen anyway? (Looking at his attacks against the fed [1], for not dropping rates or attacking the ecb for planning to do so and thus devaluing the euro:

 _Mario Draghi just announced more stimulus could come, which immediately dropped the Euro against the Dollar, making it unfairly easier for them to compete against the USA. They have been getting away with this for years, along with China and others._ [2]

[1] [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-06-18/white- hou...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-06-18/white-house- explored-legality-of-demoting-fed-chairman-powell?srnd=premium) [2] [https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/11409356202919649...](https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1140935620291964928))

Why is this a good move in the trade war then? What am I missing?

<comment><USER23> This was my first thought, but I'm not sure this is true. Buying debt from the US government increases the numbers of dollars in circulation (since bonds are redeemed in dollars) and shores up its price. Selling this debt to someone else (i.e., not back to the US government) doesn't destroy those dollars, it just changes its owner. It's not clear this would result in devaluation.

<comment><USER22> > increases the numbers of dollars in circulation (since bonds are redeemed in > dollars)

But following supply and demand principles, increasing the number of dollars in circulation should lead to inflation/devaluing of the dollar, right?

<comment><USER23> You are right, my initial assumptions are wrong - China isn't buying bonds from the US Treasury (as I would), they are buying them from a forex bond market, where we might consider the supply of dollars to be like any other commodity. This means when they buy up bonds they are decreasing supply, therefore driving up the price, and when they sell off bonds, they are increasing the supply of dollars, causing the price to fall.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Maybe I am just ignorant, but I do not see the appeal of gold.

"Gold. How archaic." is what I immediately think. So many other commodities will hold value, even in the worst of times, being either useful or desired, and have long shelf lives.

<comment><USER25> Real question...what is useful about gold today that makes it valuable, other than it's scarcity?

<comment><USER26> It's scare.

Yes.

It's a rock trading card that people have been trading for thousands of years.

The industrial uses exist, but it's a vehicle of Economic exchange.

This is why I find Bitcoin useful. It's nuclear chemistry proof.

<comment><USER24> Let us say that there was a nuclear war, and everyone left is near starvation, lacks resources and security. What holds value? Gold? I'd say useful or desired commodities: Food, fuel, guns, working machines, liquor, tobacco. Perhaps gold will be settled on as the most fungible (and transportable) material for trade, but if I were preparing for such times, I would be betting on the commodity, not an inert bit of metal.

<comment><USER27> Of course those commodities are pretty terrible currencies in non-destabilized to a dark age times.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> China owns a considerable amount of American debt. If they sell it off, the result could be a major drop in the US dollar. Combining this with tariffs we could see Russia in the 1980s style shortages (ie: nothing on the shelves). Countries which have been blockaded (ie: Cuba, Iran, Venezuela, etc) always have their economy drop. Doing it to ourselves is, in my opinion, self injurious.

<comment><USER29> Who exactly would China sell that debt to, and for what? How would that impact the US dollar? They certainly aren't going to cut off exports to the US.

<comment><USER30> They can "sell" a lot of it back to the US government. The debt is held in bonds that mature. Big bondholders regularly roll their bonds over, so it acts as if they're just holding the same debt indefinitely. But some fraction of their bonds mature every month, and if they don't buy new ones, the government has to give them their money.

It doesn't directly impact the dollar, per se, but it does mean that the government has to find the money elsewhere to continue operations. If it has to look harder, it will have to spend more, and that ultimately has to be backed by the taxpayer.

<comment><USER29> That's really not how US bond sales work in practice. The Chinese government is a relatively small player. And you didn't account for FOMC operations.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Pie: Better chat for work - <AUTHOR> https://www.piethis.com/

<comment><USER2> I signed up to play around. It seems nice, but totally not what my team needs. It's a little too cartoony and cute. Creating rooms is a little awkward, I think. I see where they're going with it, but I don't think it's really a "better chat for work".. maybe a "better chat for friends"? I dunno.

Also, I tried to delete my account and the AJAX request is getting a 500 error. Kinda funny.

</comment><comment><USER3> What makes this different than something like Flowdock, for example?

<comment><USER4> (I work at Pie)

the key bit is that on Pie, everything gets a mini chatroom. so every discussion is focused. we're betting that as people share more and more stuff, they'll value group chat apps that help them organize and structure all these things.

on Flowdock, Slack, Hipchat, etc, people usually talk in a "catch-all" chatroom like "Product team" or "Marketing team" which (in our experience) gets messy quickly and it can get hard to share information there. it's often a mishmash of links, files, images and conversations.

So, Pie is great if you're in a team that shares a boatload of info: links, files, etc. gives you a message board layout as opposed to one huge stream.</comment></comment>


More than 9M broken links on Wikipedia are now rescued - <AUTHOR> https://blog.archive.org/2018/10/01/more-than-9-million-broken-links-on-wikipedia-are-now-rescued/ <comment><USER2> I worked at the Archive for a few years remotely. It permanently altered my view of the tech. world. Here are the notable differences. I think these would apply to several non-profits but this is my experience

1\. There was no rush to pick the latest technologies. Tried and tested was much better than new and shiny. Archive.org was mostly old PHP and shell scripts (atleast the parts I worked on).

2\. The software was just a necessity. The data was what was valuable. Archive.org itself had tons of kluges and several crude bits of code to keep it going but the aim was the keep the data secure and it did that. Someone (maybe Brewster himself) likened it to a ship traveling through time. Several repairs with limited resources have permanently scarred the ship but the cargo is safe and pristine. When it finally arrives, the ship itself will be dismantled or might just crumble but the cargo will be there for the future.

3\. Everything was super simple. Some of the techniques to run things etc. were absurdly simple and purposely so to help keep the thing manageable. Storage formats were straightforward so that even if a hard disk from the archive were found in a landfill a century from now, the contents would be usable (unlike if it were some kind of complex filesystem across multiple disks).

4\. Brewster, and consequently the crew, were all dedicated to protecting the user. e.g. [https://blog.archive.org/2011/01/04/brewster-kahle- receives-...](https://blog.archive.org/2011/01/04/brewster-kahle-receives-the- zoia-horn-intellectual-freedom-award/). There was code and stuff in place to not even accidentally collect data so that even if everything was confiscated, the user identities would be safe.

5\. There was a mission. A serious social mission. Not just, "make money" or "build cool stuff" or anything. There was a buzz that made you feel like you were playing your role in mankinds intellectual history. That's an amazing feeling that I've never been able to replicate.

Archive.org is truly only of the most underappreciated corners of the world wide web. Gives me faith in the positive potential of the internet.

<comment><USER3> Thank you for sharing this. I've donated (small amounts of) money to Mozilla and Wikipedia in the past. Your post makes me consider donating to archive.org this year.

Edit: typo

<comment><USER4> How does archive.org make money? I imagine their storage costs must be quite high.

<comment><USER5> They don't. They are a non-profit 501c3 charity that relies on donations.

<comment><USER6> I think what the parent meant is "how does archive.org pay their bills?".

<comment><USER5> I thought I was answering that. Where did I go wrong?

<comment><USER6> Are you saying they don't pay their bills?

<comment><USER5> I'm saying they pay their bills (utilities, hardware costs, salaries) with donations, US dollars obtained from those donating.

> How does archive.org make money?

Donations ([https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/943...](https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/943242767))

> I imagine their storage costs must be quite high.

No, they aren't. Building and hosting your own storage is cheap. Same reason Backblaze and Dropbox built their own storage systems.

<comment><USER6> > _Building and hosting your own storage is cheap_

Archive.org uses S3 extensively. Not exactly cheap.

<comment><USER5> Can you provide a citation? To my knowledge, the Archive does not use Amazon's S3 storage system (which they refer to in places as "S3" [1]), only they're on their own internal storage system [2].

[1] [https://archive.org/help/abouts3.txt](https://archive.org/help/abouts3.txt)

[2] [https://archive.org/web/petabox.php](https://archive.org/web/petabox.php)

<comment><USER2> To the best of my knowledge, the Archive has it's own machines to store data. It _is_ an Archive and one of the principles was to have the know how to preserve data even if the cloud providers disappear.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> jonah-archive If you're curious to learn more about us, we're hosting our big annual event in SF this Wednesday (Oct 3)! Details: [https://blog.archive.org/2018/08/20/save-the-date- building-a...](https://blog.archive.org/2018/08/20/save-the-date-building-a- better-web-internet-archives-annual-bash/)

<comment><USER7> If you're not hosting that site P2P yet you're just centralizing the distributed Web.

<comment> jonah-archive [http://dweb.archive.org](http://dweb.archive.org) \-- previously: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17685682](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17685682)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Archive.org is such a wonderful institution.

The other day, I discovered that the Wayback Machine has been archiving YouTube videos in full HD. Most videos aren't on there, of course, and it seems to only go back as far as ~2012 (HTML5 video switchover?), but some of them are there.

Y'all will be getting more donations from me. :)

<comment><USER9> I was wondering if something like that existed. A lot of times I add to my YouTube WatchLater list, which can often times be much later in tim that by the time I get around to it it's not unusual for videos to be removed by the user or deleted for unknown reasons. And there's no text to even see what the video was.

<comment><USER10> that does my head in. I have so many videos on most of my playlists that im hardly ever able to guess what the missing video was.

<comment><USER8> This is why I backup videos with youtube-dl. Internet history can be completely erased at a moment's notice, and some things ought to belong to the public if they're to never see the light of day again otherwise.

<comment><USER11> I'd suggest a slight revision to your theorem: > Internet history can be completely erased at a momement's notice (unless it would embarrassing for you later in life)...

<comment><USER8> Yes, indeed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I've always wondered this - How does Archive.org work in terms of storage? Internet is massive and caching every single site periodically for years on, isn't that unreasonably huge amount of data?

Edit: I just checked Wikipedia, it says they're using about 15 PB of storage.

Edit 2: 15 PB cost => 15,000 TB x $30/TB = $450,000. Ofcourse, back of the napkin cost (no maintenance, power, etc). That's not too bad actually.

<comment><USER13> The Archive currently has about 46 Petabytes of content ("bytes archived"), and over 120 PB of raw disk capacity; the difference is due to data replication, "currently filling" storage, non-storage infrastructure, etc.

We save a lot on web content storage by de-duplicating "revists" when the page hasn't changed. This works out to save a whole lot for content like jQuery served from a common CDN URL; it doesn't work well when there is a page counter or any trivial changing content on a page.

If you are interested in the storage back-end, it's actually pretty simple: HTTP requests/responses are concatenated and compressed in WARC files (sort of like .tar.gz) that get stored on regular old ext4 filesystems. An index of "what URL captures are in what WARC files on what servers" is continuously generated in the form of, basically, a giant sorted (and shareded) .tsv file; replay requests on web.archive.org look up the URL and timestamp and get a reference to a machine, file, and file offset, and make an HTTP 1.1 range request for the content in question. There are a bunch of other details, like checking robots.txt status, but the core design is super simple, cheap, and (relatively) easy to operate at scale.

Apart from web crawl content (including, these days, "heavy" video content which is difficult to de-dupe), we have a large amount of live recorded TV, scanned books (raw photos), etc.

(I currently work at IA)

<comment><USER14> Would be nice if you could store a diff, so a changing counter would only have to store the changed counter after the initial save.

<comment><USER15> Wondering the same. How if used git protocol itself? Not sure how efficient is git, but if it is then it's a relatively easier change

<comment><USER16> Git doesn't store diffs, it stores whole files.

<comment><USER17> No, git packs do store base blobs and diffs, which are not visible to end users; the git plumbing hides this and only presents blobs to the user.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> It's an invaluable resource. In the past week I realized it is quite likely that a site I used to work at which hosts a lot of my portfolio might disappear or be heavily amended. So I located and indexed a complete list of my articles there -- and I was even able to click a button and create an archive for the few pages that IA hadn't bothered to index (I wish I had known about this before, since it was a shock to find that IA can be quite selective, and to find a page you were hoping was there simply isn't, and is now irretrievable).

But as one other commenter here has mentioned, you're only a robots.txt amend away from the oblivion that the entire IMDB comments section fell into [1], so a good archiving system is essential. I use (no affiliation)Save Page WE on Waterfox:

[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/save-page- we/](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/save-page-we/)

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13571893](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13571893)

<comment><USER19> Wayback Machine isn't Googlebot, it doesn't crawl the web, so there's no such thing as "hadn't bother to index"... Someone, be it a human or a bot, needs to submit a page for archival.

Programmatically submitting to Wayback Machine is trivial enough, so I have cron jobs backing up most of my static sites (in their entirety) periodically.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> This just reminded me to donate. I've used the archive several times just in the past few days to resolve 404s on old gamedev blogs. I'm amazed how often what I'm looking for is in the archive considering how big the internet is and how niche the content I'm looking for. Truly an amazing resource comparable to Wikipedia in value.

<comment><USER21> To everyone considering donating, please set up a monthly donation if it's within your means!

I used to donate every time something reminded me of the value of the archive. Now I just think "that's why I have a monthly pledge!"

<comment><USER5> Also, your employer may match charitable contributions (up to a predefined amount). Check if they do! It's effectively free money for the Internet Archive.

<comment><USER20> Googlers can donate with two clicks on G-Give, with Google matching. I highly recommend it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I got a call a few years ago from a member of a humanitarian organization that had accidentally lost a significant percentage of their web site detailing projects that they had completed over many years with no backups. The people that had completed the work had moved on and they were frantic that the work was gone forever, but the Wayback Machine had almost perfect records to restore everything.

<comment><USER5> There is a github project out there where you can specify the site, and it will rebuild the content locally from wayback content. Something to consider for last resort recovery.

EDIT: [https://github.com/oduwsdl/warrick](https://github.com/oduwsdl/warrick)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> They mention at the end of the article that 'content drift' may be a bigger issue than link rot; when the content of the post is simply changed rather than missing, it is much harder to notice.

Is there a scalable way to monitor Wikipedia links to see if the content is changed after originally being posted?

They are already storing every link in the Internet Archive when it gets added, so there should be a reference point to compare against.

One easy option would be to make Internet Archive links available for every single link on Wikipedia, even if it hasn't rotted yet. So a 'live' link to the current content, and an archive link for what it was at the time of linking.

<comment><USER24> Interesting aspect!

The biggest problem in this would probably be how to recognize if "content" changed. A site can change the full design, navigation, footer and header and everything and still have the exact same "content". For a human being this will be simple enough to understand, but a tool might have its problems with that.

<comment><USER23> Yes, this is a fundamental issue if you wanted to do this at scale.

There are a few solutions to this already, using solutions like outline.com to pull the content out of the cruft, but I don't know how many of these are general purpose and how many are purpose built for each site (and maintained for the current version of the site, perhaps?)

As seen in the article, most links are to a small number of sites, so perhaps hard coding the content extraction would be feasible, especially for an initial study.

It would be interesting I think to see just how many links have identical content, but you're right in that the number will be skewed greatly if there are any ads or similar included.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> And, for those who don't know, you can help host the Internet Archive now by running a P2P/decentralized backup of it:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17685682](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17685682)

<comment><USER26> Thank you for pointing this out, I will see what I can do to help, this is the sort of thing I'm more than happy to dedicate resources to. I still have a 36 drive enclosure lying around that would make a nice bit of storage if I can get it to be silent enough for the home.

<comment><USER25> This is the repo Mitra has been working on for this: [https://github.com/internetarchive/dweb- mirror](https://github.com/internetarchive/dweb-mirror)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> And they are one robots away from cancellation. For all the good they do, retroactively applying robots exclusions to their crawler is a terrible thing. Luckily there are alternatives for going forward.

<comment><USER28> They keep the data and just don't display it. The last thing they need is a court order demanding they delete it.

Sure the archive is useful today, but it's primary purpose is retaining information for future generations. If that means placating copyright holders it's worth the cost.

<comment><USER29> > They keep the data and just don't display it.

I've read about the robots.txt mentioned before but hadn't seen this mentioned. Any idea if they have this somewhere on the site?

<comment><USER28> Sure see here: [https://archive.org/post/133690/robotstxt-only-gives- tempora...](https://archive.org/post/133690/robotstxt-only-gives-temporary- removal-of-pages)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I spend quite some time on archive.org. Of course the wayback machine is great, but I am mostly interested in old digitized media. There really is some great stuff on there - But what is really missing is organization (and a less broken-seeming website, I guess). It doesn't help you much to have a great archive if noone will find anything. User-curation would help a lot with this.

<comment><USER31> Found any gems you want to share?

What you're doing is essentially digital archeology, which is super cool. In 50-100 years, if not sooner, people will be digging through digital "graveyards" for evidence of this and that. That's so intriguing.

<comment><USER32> I like this term "digital archaeology". I find myself saying it a lot when dealing with "only" 20 year old database data in my day job. Apparently, but not surprisingly, it's a real thing[1]!

[1] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_archaeology](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_archaeology)

<comment><USER33> There's long been a saying that "Once it's out there (on the Internet), it's forever," but I used to save links in a Microsoft Word document, and I went through them a few years later and almost none of them worked anymore. The years in which they were saved was 2006 to 2009, and the year I went through them was 2012. The links were from MySpace (which totally overhauled the entire site and all content), Facebook (where users had deleted their profiles or pictures), Tumblr (where bloggers rename their blogs, which change the URL, or they wipe them clean, or delete their blogs), YouTube (tons of videos and whole accounts have been deleted because of copyright infringement, whether by the account holder or by YouTube itself), Blogspot (same, but also that some bloggers made their blogs private, perhaps to prevent spam-comments or trolling), Yahoo articles (which I see Yahoo deletes after some time), Style.com (Vogue magazine's website of all runway shows, which are now on Vogue.com instead, with a different URL structre), and dozens of other websites that don't exist anymore.

I think the statement about "stuff that's out there" really only applies to famous or public people, where leaked and/or damning photos or videos are quickly copied, saved, and rehosted by websites all over the world, including Twitter, Pinterest, and other platforms. For instead, while Google Images fastidiously won't show you the hacked photos of "Jennifer Lawrence naked," as Google sought to avoid a $100M lawsuit [0], Bing Images, once you turn off Safe Search, shows plenty of sites that host the pictures, with most frequent such site being a German-based one called "OhFree," but there are at least 3 Blogspot sites as well, I suppose ironically.

[0] > "We've removed tens of thousands of pictures," says the web giant - [https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/google-responds- je...](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/google-responds-jennifer- lawrence-attorneys-737656)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> iso-8859-1 There was a big drama in 2012. [http://Archive.is](http://Archive.is) was proactively archiving Wikipedia links. An unauthorized bot (RotlinkBot) was linking to Archive.is. The bot was banned.

I liked how Archive.is was so fast at archiving, its UI more clean. And since it proactively archived links, it still happens today that a dead reference link will be archive in Archive.is, but not in the Wayback Machine.

See [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:RotlinkBot](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:RotlinkBot)

<comment><USER34> I'm guessing Archive.is will probably disappear within the next 5 years, taking all data down with it.

Nobody knows who owns or maintains the site, and recently the mysterious owner started taking donations to keep the site running. It's a commercial enterprise.

Slick UI or not, Archive.org's longevity is probably more feasible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> The internet archive is great for static pages but what will happen for today's interactive content with complex data stored across different domains?

<comment><USER36> They save JavaScript, flash apps, and even some downloads too. Just recently I used them to get an old flash game of a studio that went bust a couple years ago

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> If a tree falls in the forest and nobody is there to hear it, does it make a noise? If IA is storing copyrighted (noarchive) content but not displaying it, does that make it acceptable?

<comment><USER38> Yes, because copyright only lasts for a finite duration. In 100+ years when the original right-holders have disappeared, or when copyright expires and the original right-holders have no incentive to keep the originals; IA archive and similar archiving efforts will be able to make their copies available as a matter of historical importance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> a worthy donation candidate ;)</comment>


Plenty Of Fish Hacked – Chris Russo's explains how he did it - <AUTHOR> http://grumomedia.com/plenty-of-fish-hacked-chris-russos-explains-how-he-did-it/ <comment><USER2> Wherever the truth lies, which in my mind is much closer to Frind's side, an SQL injection attack, in 2011, on an actively developed site, using modern day technology, is pathetic.

I've tried to come up with analogies that explain how people can write systems without actually knowing how to program. Something like, just because I know how to make nachos or pancakes doesn't mean I'm a cook. This is the type of stuff I'm talking about though. You can know about if statements, variables and even fancy classes...you can put it all together and build a system and be hugely popular, but it doesn't mean you are any good at programming.

Duct tape programmers indeed.

<comment><USER3> So... blame the victim? Really?

<comment><USER4> Why not, when they are being completely irresponsible with millions of people's data?

<comment><USER5> Nothing like hearing reports of security issues to make one remember the adage "There but for the grace of God go I." Humility may be in order: substantially none of us are capable of delivering a system without at least one game-over bug in it.

<comment><USER4> There but for the grace of _contracting security professionals_ go I.

<comment><USER6> Incidentally, their notification emails routinely contain your password in cleartext as a "reminder". I signed up for an account several years ago but was put off by the incredibly ugly design. Here's an excerpt from an old email from them (note, redacted by me!) This one is from a few months ago:

\-- Hello _REDACTED_ ,

Thank you for signing up on 10/12/REDACTED 4:08:52 PM. Remember your password is _REDACTED_. \--

The most recent one from had an empty string as my password, as in "Remember your password is ."

<comment> T-hawk That is standard behavior for many web sites whose purpose includes no important personal information. vBulletin and some other forum engines do that by default. These site owners figure, probably rightfully so, that the support burden for a forgotten password exceeds the expected value of some black hat actually intercepting the plaintext email (low) times the meaningful impact of any ensuing activity (also low). The chief risk is in compromising a password that this user also uses for applications of high security impact, but it is not the responsibility of this particular site owner to protect a user from generally dumb behavior.

More generally: security best practice is not always about enforcing as tightly as you possibly can. Security has real costs and it's a cost-benefit tradeoff against many other factors.

<comment><USER7> That may be their assumption (clearly is, given the evidence), but I think it's a pretty poor one and it's certainly off-putting as a potential user.

A dating site contains, practically by definition, a fair bit of personal information. It's not online banking, but there's a lot of ugly stuff that an attacker could do if they could break into a large number of user accounts, and particularly if they could de-anonymize those accounts.

POF was pretty clearly sacrificing security -- which in this context means the potential privacy of their users -- in order to get more engagement and build userbase. Bluntly: they were taking risks with their users' data in order to build their business.

That's not terribly cool in my book, even though I can see why they might have made the decision. The fact that it's understandable doesn't mean that it's right.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Frankly, Marcus does not sound like he is very computer Saavy. He sounds like one of these people who knows how to write some PHP scripts, but does not really understand the details of what goes on behind it - so assumes that what this guy is doing is some terribly complicated hack.

I think the argentine guy probably searched the website for vulnerabilities as a way to get business. He found one and contacted Marcus. Marcus then freaked out and panicked, leading to this.

<comment><USER9> Marcus taught himself ASP.net [http://plentyoffish.wordpress.com/2006/06/14/how-i- started-a...](http://plentyoffish.wordpress.com/2006/06/14/how-i-started-an- empire/) His story is pretty remarkable considering POF was a one man operation until recently.

<comment><USER8> ASP.net is just Visual Basic. It's not the most complicated language to learn, and you don't need to know much about computers to develop in ASP or VB.

<comment><USER10> That isn't true. Asp is the web piece of the .net framework and can use VB, C#, python, ruby or any other language supported by the framework.

<comment><USER11> But is that how he used it in this case?

<comment><USER12> Saying 'ASP.NET is VB' is sort of like saying "General Motors is a Buick Skylark." It just doesn't make any sense. ASP.NET is a framework for developing web applications. You can use any number of supported languages - C#, VB.NET, J#, Ruby, Python, F#, etc. I can only assume that he conflated the late 90s scripting combo of ASP/VBscript with ASP.NET.

It's obviously possible to write terrible code in any language, with the aid of any framework. It sounds like POF did just that.

<comment><USER8> The original site was in ASP, then he migrated it to ASP.net. I doubt that he paid any attention to the 'framework' part of things. He just did a VB syntax migration.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm pretty amazed that in this day and age companies still store sensitive information like user passwords and credit card numbers in plain text.

<comment><USER14> IMO storing this kind of information in plain text was never acceptable. It requires the right combination of arrogance and incompetence for this to happen.

<comment><USER15> In some ways it's no wonder POF was able to bootstrap and run this amazingly large system all written by one guy with limited hardware. Dunno what their stats (or headcount) are now, but years ago POF was heralded as some genius site because it was all put together by one guy and running on a few load balanced servers.

I'm not saying it takes multiple people to make something secure, but if one person either doesn't have the experience or knowledge to make something secure, and there's only that one person, there's no one else to even determine there's a problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm not surprised PlentyOfFish was hacked in the least. I signed up at one point and the password entry form wasn't even obscured. That was my first red flag. So I made sure to use a throwaway password.

But it got worse. Every few days, POF started sending me newsletters with my password in plaintext! "in case you forgot, your password is:...." in addition to whatever else the newetter said. So I knew they were storing passwords in plaintext.

Couple those things with the complete unusability of the site…well I deleted my account (which is unsurprisingly difficult to do as well).

</comment><comment><USER17> _because there was a serial killer, murdering people from the website._

err what?

<comment><USER18> I have to say, from the writing alone Chris Russo sounds a lot more confidence inspiring than the POF people. That long rambling blog post by POF did not come across as very professional.

<comment><USER19> Both posts are rather comical and infantile. Drama all the way, serial killers and Russians. Techno soap.

<comment><USER18> The serial killers are a quote from the mail of the wife of POF founder, I think?

The Russo side does sound "insecure", as he admits himself. Presumably they have not been in business for very long. But that is not the same as infantile, it's just inexperienced.

<comment><USER19> Finger-pointing is always infantile.

<comment><USER18> You've got a point there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Am I reading this right? Are both sides of this story intimating that the security guys found a vulnerability in the site, published it, and then pitched them a consulting gig? Go live with something or not, pitch a gig or not, but I'm not sure you can have it both ways without looking skeezy.

</comment><comment><USER21> hmmm this really looks like a complicated matter to judge with the available information. Really there are several plausible scenarios where POF or Chris could be at fault. The information available to the public is not enough to make an informed judgement. Everything else is pure speculation or pure DH0 (as per Paul Graham's disagreement hierarchy).

For what we see now, it is clear that POF people were scared shitless from the report (obviously) and tried to limit the damage and gain time by manipulating Chris whom they thought has downloaded all their users data and is extorting them against the disclosure of this data. I think anyone in their shoes would think the same (at least primarily).

Now wether Chris really intended to extort them or not is another matter we cant judge from what we are seeing. He does seem like a nice guys from his emails, and kind of excited about the "opportunity" but really that is not enough. Nice people sound nice... so do most criminals.

One more thing that is unclear ! Was POF actually hacked (in the sense that data was leaked) or was it just that a vulnerability got exposed? I think this will tell us a lot as well about the real motivation of the "hacker".

</comment><comment><USER22> To discover a security vulnerability (Chris Russo's POV) in a site and to hack a site (POF's POV) are different things.

      POV - point of view

<comment><USER9> You are right and I changed the title of the post to "Plenty Of Fish Hacked - Chris Russo explains what happened" instead.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> > By the nightfall of Sunday 30, Mr. Markus Frind sent me an email accussing > us to steal his whole user database without a single proof, based on > supposed information that "20 employees of him told him.

This fellow is either a fool or a terrible liar. If he didn't take the data then he would have said "I didn't steal the data". He instead accuses Markus of a lack of proof.

<comment><USER24> Lack of proof == credible, since the burden of proof is on the accuser

"I didn't steal the data" == my word against yours

<comment><USER23> There is no burden of proof in the court of public opinion. There is no 5th Amendment either.

Imagine this scenario, your boss says to you: "20 of our employees are telling me you piss on the toilet seats."

You respond, "You have no proof".

Good luck with that.

<comment><USER24>
         there is no burden of proof in the court of public opinion

Except that article by Markus Frind walks a fine line between libel and opinion.

And you can get your ass sued to stratosphere and lose if you fail to produce reasonable proof when making public accusations.

<comment><USER23> I agree with you. Defamation / libel laws are far more strict in Canada than in the US. This is clearly going to interfere with Chris Russo's ability to earn a living as a security researcher. I have a feeling he is going to get paid to go away at some point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Wow. I just read the Inc Magazine article about this guy from 2009: [http://www.inc.com/magazine/20090101/and-the-money-comes- rol...](http://www.inc.com/magazine/20090101/and-the-money-comes-rolling- in.html)

Highlights:

1\. The site makes $10 million/year. 2\. He has three employees, all customer service. He does everything else. 3\. He pays himself $5 million/year.

This quote is particularly telling: "At other sites, when one thing goes slightly wrong, the reaction is to buy more servers or hire a Ph.D.," he says. "It's almost unbelievable -- it's like people are trying to justify their jobs by spending money. This isn't rocket science."

</comment><comment><USER25> This guy still sounds like a scumbag. He's complaining they responded to someone threatening to post people's private info by saying they'd post info on the person doing it? Boo-hoo.

If Chris wasn't going to post the info publically (ie, extort POF), then he had nothing to worry about.

As an observer this certainly doesn't make Mr Russo seem any better.

Edit: per below, removed work extortion as posting people's private data might be done for other reasons rather than to make money.

<comment><USER18> I don't read anything about an extortion attempt (in this account), what am I missing?

I guess it is normal for a security firm to hope to gain some business by exposing security flaws (hey, we found a hole in your site, hire us to fix it). As this incident shows, it is not an easy business to be in...

<comment><USER25> That's true, the guy might just post the data to be an asshole, rather than asking for money.

Either way, the guy who was cracked is saying if the cracker posts the stolen data, he will post the cracker's contact details to every account. Which is completely reasonable.

<comment><USER18> I didn't read anything about him posting the stolen data. I think he specifically wrote that he didn't even steal any data.

I don't know whose account is true, but I don't think it is reasonable to threaten somebody who approaches you with information about a security hole, just in case that somebody has evil intentions. In general it seems reasonable in human interactions to not issue death threats upon the first encounter.

<comment><USER25> > I didn't read anything about him posting the stolen data.

Read the post again - the owner of the site is saying he will publish the guys details if he posts the data.

If he doesn't post people's personal data, fine. The site owner won't publish his address.

If he does, then fair enough.

<comment><USER18> Hi, nice to meet you. Btw, try anything funny on me, and I'll set the Russian mob on you.

How to explain? Yes, strictly logically speaking it is "OK" (no funny actions, no Russion mob). But psychologically I don't think it would be a good approach to human interaction. It establishes an atmosphere of distrust right from the start. You approach somebody and say "you might be a criminal".

Or imagine you meet somebody on a party and he says "Hi, my name is soandso. By the way, I carry a gun". How would that make you feel?

<comment><USER25> I understand what you're saying, but do you have any information that this is how the site owner began the conversation?

I imagine we're seeing a small snippet of something larger.

I also see the security company guy doesn't dispute that his revelation the site was cracked began with a push for payment to remedy the situation.

<comment><USER18> No idea, really. It sounds as if Russo denies having any data, in which case I struggle coming up with a good reason for POF to issue the warning. But ultimately, I really only know what is written in the two articles. I guess time will tell.

<comment><USER25> > It sounds as if Russo denies having any data

I don't get that impression - I imagine that if he didn't have any data, he'd say so explicitly. If he didn't have data, though, I'd totally agree with your observations.

> I guess time will tell.

Indeed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Nothing, including all of the justifications for the terrible security practices, should excuse Marcus Frind for the death threats and sheer hatred being thrown at the messenger.

Chris mentioned that this was _actively_ being exploited by malicious hackers. Taking your rage out on the guy trying to help is not appropriate by any means.

</comment><comment><USER27> Maybe relevant: [http://www.reddit.com/r/netsec/comments/f647p/i_found_a_seri...](http://www.reddit.com/r/netsec/comments/f647p/i_found_a_serious_security_flaw_in_a_social/)

</comment><comment><USER28> Sorta what I asked for the original thread, but not any great details. More or less what I expected though.

I guess that'll have to sate my curiosity for now.

</comment><comment><USER29> in any case epic fail at damage limitation by all involved

</comment><comment><USER30> Wow, I don't know whom to believe. But it's 1a drama. And I love drama :)</comment>