Facebook rejects ad criticizing actions of Zuckerberg political group - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/facebook-rejects-ad-criticizing-actions-of-zuckerberg-political-group/2013/04/30/d41b9bb0-b1ba-11e2-bbf2-a6f9e9d79e19_story.html

<comment><USER2> > Facebook rejects ad that uses Zuckerberg's photo to further its goals, > without Zuck's consent.

FTFY. They'd do it even if Candy Crush used his photo. This is not newsworthy.

</comment><comment><USER3> If Google Adwords allowed images, I doubt they'd let advertisers use 960px- tall face shots of Larry and Sergey to promote their political angle. It's just not classy advertising, in addition to being confusing to users.

<comment><USER4> Google owns a large display-ad network.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> They of course have the right to do it. But it shows a lack of class and integrity on Facebook's part.

Which should shock nobody who's been paying attention.

<comment><USER6> I guess the same lack of class shown by every print media in existance. And all the broadcast ones too. They are all platforms for their owners' views. Why should FB be different? Why is it less classy when they behave like everyone else? Point to one 'classy' media outlet.

<comment><USER5> Are you kidding me?

New York Times, NPR even Fox News, will host dissenting opinions. And pretty much every media outlet will allow their competitors to run advertising.

<comment><USER6> I guess its my provincialism showing. Midwest papers won't even accept advertising from folks they don't like.

And 'host dissenting opinions' is funny. As long as they can make them appear silly or wrong, sure.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Girls in California Are Latest to Seek to Become Boy Scouts - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/23/us/girls-in-california-are-latest-to-seek-to-become-boy-scouts.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=second-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0 <comment><USER2> I used to be a leader in the scouts. Before I joined, our scouting group tore itself apart because the previous leader felt that girls should be in girl scouts rather than boy scouts.

When he finally relented, the mothers moved in and asked that activities be 'toned down'. When he refused, the complaints came in thick and fast. The leader was removed and the group collapsed. Nobody stepped up to fill the void.

After I joined, we spent 6 months playing skipping rope games until I asked what the hell we were doing as a group to grow our kids. I joined the Scouts to learn leadership and survival skills for my kids. That's when I got the back story from our group leader (a very capable woman who had also suffered in the skirmish and was afraid to rock the PC boat).

The first change I initiated was to split the group activities into 'soft' activities and 'hard core' activities. Those that wanted to play skipping rope games could. Those that wanted to learn bush survival skills could.

Interestingly, everyone dropped the skipping rope games and we actually started to function as a productive and capable scout group. We quadrupled our numbers in 12 months to the point we could no longer cope without additional leadership because our sixers weren't experienced enough to take up the slack.

I don't have daughters, so I never got involved with girl scouts. While headlines like this raise all sorts of questions about girl scouts in the 21st century, I have no idea about them.

<comment><USER3> The big problem, then, seems to be the parents who wanted things "toned down". Very sad. Glad you were able to reframe things so that you could grow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> One of the under-appreciated qualities of the Boy Scouts is how the National Council mostly keeps its distance, allowing individual troops to organize themselves. There are fixed requirements for advancement through the Scout ranks, but some troops are focused on outings, some are overtly religious, some are basically Eagle Scout factories for college admissions, etc.

This is a great thing. It means that kids can learn the core skills and values, like leadership, discipline, teamwork, and wilderness survival, and receive recognition for it, even if their parents' faith, political leanings, or goals aren't aligned with the National Council.

I hope the Council leaves it up to the individual troops as to whether they admit girls (or boys, for that matter). Many troops will go co-ed given the opportunity.

And as others have said, the Girl Scouts are not perceived to be as rigorous or prestigious as the Boy Scouts, and should step up their game. It's hard to blame girls for being uninterested in an organization best known for _selling cookies_.

(Disclosure: Eagle Scout)

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm really surprised there was no mention of Venturing in this article. Venturing is the program created by the BSA specifically to have multi-gender troops and focus more on high adventure activities.

From the website:

> Venturing is a youth development program of the Boy Scouts of America for > young men and women who are 14 years of age OR 13 years of age and have > completed the eighth grade and under 21 years of age. Venturing's purpose is > to provide positive experiences to help young people mature and to prepare > them to become responsible and caring adults.

[http://www.scouting.org/scoutsource/Venturing.aspx](http://www.scouting.org/scoutsource/Venturing.aspx)

<comment><USER6> I assume that's what this is referring to: _" While allowing girls to participate in some affiliated programs, it keeps them out of the core scouting curriculum that has built a reputation as the most rigorous youth development program in the nation."_

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Hmm, I don't think every activity needs to be mixed. At that age kids have plenty to learn from same-sex role models. However, it sounds like the GS program is not aggressive enough for some people? Well, by all means, expand it in to more hard-core activities.

If the GS administration won't do that, then perhaps BS should open additional girl-only BS troops with the boy curriculum.

</comment><comment><USER8> As a Boy Scout we often had sisters of scouts come along on our outings. Half the time one or more parents would come, and it just makes more sense. "Admitting" them as full members is just a formalism on top of the core experience, so why not?

Also, it's a shame that these girls don't feel like girl scouts does enough for their sense of adventure and play. The girl scouts should also step up to accommodate them. And I think the girls are right on this one, the Girl Scouts websites in all regions I've checked in the last ten minutes have the primary events being "fun-filled festivals" and "leadership conferences" and "arts and crafts workshops." The images are girls holding rainbow parachutes instead of hard hats, fish, and model rockets like on the BSA websites.

<comment><USER9> There's no reason a Girl Scout troop can't do all sorts of adventure activities. My wife led a troop that did all their meetings at a GS camp where they usually cooked over a campfire as part of each meeting.

The biggest blow to Girl Scouts is how they're organized. They're almost always single-age troops, which means there's no scout-to-scout mentoring and there are a lot less scouts per unit. It's much harder to keep a troop alive as the girls get older and there's a lot of consolidation. It's hard to grow new leaders when you only have a dozen parents involved in each unit. Then when a troop breaks up or ages out, the leaders almost always leave scouting.

I've been told it's possible to have a single Girl Scout unit with multiple ages, but I've never seen that. The best I've seen is a couple individual troops that share a common meeting time and place.

For example, my daughter's been in two Girl Scout troops. One is "huge" especially for high school aged girls and has maybe 15 girls from 13 to 15. That troop has had 3 official leaders in the 8 or so years it's been around. Her other troop folded once it dropped to three girls. My son's Boy Scout troop has over 100 boys from ages 11 to 17 and has at least a dozen adults in leadership roles and dozens more registered + background checked "at large" leaders to draw from.

<comment><USER10> >>> _The biggest blow to Girl Scouts is how they 're organized._

My wife has expressed the same sentiment. She was a leader in our daughter's Girl Scout troop, which had maybe a dozen or so girls and fell apart as the girls got to middle school and high school.

In contrast, our son's Boy Scout troop is currently over 80 years old and has some 250 to 300 registered Scouts and maybe 50 fully-trained adult leaders (including a number of moms).

My wife said that the biggest difference she saw between the Girl Scouts and the Boy Scouts was that Boy Scout troops are chartered to an organization (typically a church), whereas GS troops are all formed ad hoc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Isn't there a valuable lesson to teach here?

A group has become dissatisfied with a monopoly on girl scouting and created a more satisfying alternative. They've taken the responsibility upon themselves to create that which they desire.

Unfortunately, I don't think that's the lesson the Unicorns' parents are trying to encourage.

There's nothing wrong with co-ed scouting. There's nothing wrong with single- gender scouting. Really.

<comment><USER12> >There's nothing wrong with co-ed scouting.

How would that work in camps? Apart from having to have separate times for bathing, obviously.

The wonderful thing I remember from my time was that there was very little status jockeying in our troop. It wasn't like school at all. I felt like I could trust and rely on most everyone.

Now, I'm not sure introducing girls into this would not mess it up. Teenage boys behave differently with women around. Instincts involved are likely much more powerful than mere social technology.

<comment><USER3> Do 10-year-old girls count as "women"?

I think your concerns about the dynamic are very valid -- on both sides -- but it's probably useful to remember that the girls and boys specifically mentioned in the article are pre-puberty (10 and 12 year olds, one 13 yr old).

<comment><USER13> That's the entry age. Boy Scouts continues well through puberty (one can be a Scout until 18).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Is it only in the US in which Scouts are called Boy Scouts? It's just been called "Scouts" here in Australia for as long as I can remember, I was a member about 20 years ago and we had quite a few girls in our group back then.

<comment><USER15> it seems like most countries have moved to co-ed programs. I know it's just been "Scouts" since i was a kid 20 years ago in Canada too.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scouting#Co- educational](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scouting#Co-educational)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> If boy scouts want to let in girls that's fine. I also think it's fine if they don't.

I would be annoyed if they let girls in and starting changing things. If you wanted something different then go start something different.

</comment><comment><USER10> The comments to the NYT article are worth reading, especially the one under the tab "NYT Picks."

(Disclosure: I'm an Eagle Scout, as are my brother and my son, and I'm a long- time adult leader in what we're pretty sure is the largest Boy Scout troop in the U.S.)

</comment><comment><USER17> What's wrong with having boy-only activities club and girls-only activities club?

</comment><comment><USER18> I want to join the Unicorns.

</comment><comment><USER19> Ugh, but the Boy Scouts are homophobic and the Girl Scouts are progressive and _awesome_.

It would be better if this was the other way around. I'd love for the Girl Scouts to become the "Scouts" and the Boy Scouts to die off.

<comment><USER20> Great generalizations there.</comment></comment>


On the Web's Cutting Edge, Anonymity in Name Only - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703294904575385532109190198.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_LEFTTopStories

<comment><USER3> Seems like a good time to resurrect /etc/hosts as killfile. <http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/>

</comment><comment><USER4> Oh privacy, I knew you well. Does anyone have insights into any specific methods [x+1] would use?

<comment><USER5> It's just standard-issue behavioral targeting. Dozens of firms do this - <USER2> wouldn't describe what [x+1] is doing as exceptional or new.

While all of this is harmless, you can block all the trackers by installing Ghostery (ghostery.com) - works with Firefox and Chrome.

<comment><USER6> So are they reading the cookies you have from other sites?

<comment><USER5> No, a domain can't read cookies set by another domain.

Here's how it works: a publisher (eg. 'travel.com') will place a snippet of JS or an image from a tracker (eg. 'tracker.com') on its site - anything to initiate a HTTP request. The HTTP response from 'tracker.com' will set a 'tracker.com' cookie in your browser. This cookie will contain a unique identifier, which links to a backend database at 'tracker.com', which will now contain the fact that you visited 'travel.com'. Sometimes 'travel.com' will use JS to add parameters to the HTTP request to 'tracker.com', to pass things like gender or age or location, should they know that about you. This information is also added to the database at 'tracker.com', keyed to the unique identifier in your cookie.

You'll then go to another site, which will make a request for an advertisement. The request might be directly to 'tracker.com', or it might be to another domain which will return JS which will then force an HTTP request to 'tracker.com'... there could be many redirects, but an HTTP request to 'tracker.com' is involved, which automatically contains the unique identifier in your cookie.

'Tracker.com' then uses that unique ID to look up what it knows about you, potentially supplements that with location based off your IP address, and potentially appends some guesses about demographic info made from the content of the site you're visiting and the type of folks that tend to live in your ZIP code. It then uses all of this (or passes all of this on to another party) to select a related advertisement. That's why you see ads for cars after visiting car sites, and ads for travel after visiting travel sites.

There's nuances, of course, but that's the gist of it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Wow, I visited the Capital One page for myself and was pretty amazed with the results: interests where right aligned.

I got different pages when switching browser (although you have to clear cookies/flash cookies), and also different credit card proposals (some student cards for you in Chrome? Or rather some "serious" cards in Internet Explorer)

You can find the tracking from the domain .edge.ru4.com. It does contain a wealth of information, although I have yet to find the identifier for "my" Nielsen Market Segment. The segments are here:

[http://www.claritas.com/MyBestSegments/Default.jsp?ID=30&...](http://www.claritas.com/MyBestSegments/Default.jsp?ID=30&SubID=&pageName=Segment%2BLook- up)

</comment><comment><USER8> Does this mean if I'm an undesirable customer, they'll stop showing me ads altogether?</comment>


Why (Almost) Everyone Got Snowpocalypse Wrong - <AUTHOR> http://www.alternet.org/environment/why-almost-everyone-got-snowpocalypse-wrong

<comment><USER2> It's nice that New York didn't get much snow, as predicted by the GFS model but not the other two.

Did GFS predict 2-3 feet of snow for Boston? Because west of Boston they're at 30 inches already, and it's expected to fall at 1 inch per hour for the next 5-6 hours. As forecast.

Also Nantucket has lost all electricity and cell coverage, after hurricane- force gusts to 77 mph.

With storms like this, although false positives are annoying and expensive, false negatives are worse. It would have been interesting for the article to discuss how GFS fared in that respect.</comment>


Robert Scoble: I didn't sexually harass women as I lacked power over them - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.co.uk/tech-policy/2017/10/robert-scoble-i-didnt-sexually-harass-women-as-i-lacked-power-over-them/ <comment><USER2> So that makes it ok to grab someone's breast without consent?

I'm sorry, that's the most weaselly statement any of these schmucks have made so far, and the bar for that is pretty high. (Or should I say low?)</comment>


iPhone Barometer, Eat My Weather Dongles - <AUTHOR> http://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-blogs/weathermatrix/iphone-barometer-eat-my-weather-dongles/33737543

<comment><USER2> What is the point of this article? New iphone has barometer, some android phone dropped thermo/hygrometer support, some other folks made dongles which communicate via 3.5mm...so what.

<comment><USER3> Seconding that, and it should be well known around here that Apple in many cases wasn't the first company with a certain product – and they don't need be. (Though I'm really curious how the whole watch thing turns out)

TL;DR Article's point unclear, essentially a list (of existing-pre-apple stuff), the only remote possibility of a point long well known.

<comment><USER2> Maybe it's about existing dongles communicating with the iPhone.

On that note, is the communication protocol over 3.5mm audio standardized in any way?</comment></comment></comment>


Habitual tub bathing and risks of incident coronary heart disease and stroke - <AUTHOR> https://heart.bmj.com/content/early/2020/03/03/heartjnl-2019-315752 <comment><USER2> > Conclusion: The frequency of tub bathing was inversely associated with the > risk of CVD among middle-aged Japanese.

I am curious as to whether their baths were with hot water, and whether that had an effect.

<comment><USER3> >whether their baths were with hot water

I would be surprised if they were cold baths. (Source: Totoro, Spirited Away, every onsen fan-service anime episode ever)</comment></comment>


Show HN: Compare Your Title to the Pros - <AUTHOR> https://www.viralml.com/title-analyzer <comment><AUTHOR> Let me know if anybody had a chance to try this out - if you are a writer or blogger, does this analysis make sense? thanks! @amunategui</comment>


Tracking friends and strangers using WhatsApp - <AUTHOR> https://robertheaton.com/2017/10/09/tracking-friends-and-strangers-using-whatsapp/ <comment><USER2> A few weeks ago there was a similar discussion, and I commented the following:

If you think there is no problem, you are wrong. The blog post does not show all the information leaks that this implies. Example: I can modify the script to monitor all the numbers I've in my phone, so that based on the online/offline status in a few weeks I can be able to guess who is having conversations together, discovering cheatings, work affairs, ... EDIT: Practical example. After collecting enough data about user X I create a table about the probability of this user being online in a given few-minutes time ranges. Then I check the online frequency of that user compared to the online statuses of another user Y. If the difference compared to the expected probability is significant, than I can suspect the two are chatting. Another thing I can use is that attivation delay of the online status, since often X sends a message to Y and this results in, a few seconds after, Y to be online, and then the contrary.

[then an HN user said she/he was not sure this was serious because maybe the users casually had similar patterns, so I replied:]

If you check the model I described in my comment, it should filter the "bus problem", since it will detect a chat only if, compared to the standard "bus time" probability of the user A chatting, it is chatting more if in the same range also B is chatting. If you add to this that people on Whatsapp usually do not talk to the exact minutes, it is definitely possible to create a robust system for guessing with good probability of two have often conversations. Also note that the phone numbers in input are not random, are the ones of a connected circle of persons. Add to this the fact that we can split the ranges even, potentially, by few minutes, and you can even detect interesting stuff for people having continuos chats with multiple persons like teenagers. Another thing that is possible probably is also "groups detection", since at new messages a set of users will activate at the same time.

[And the attack can be refined a lot with more powerful mathematical approaches]

<comment><USER3> Once I hacked together a similar program to log the terminal activity of fellow students on the university UNIX and Linux servers: [https://github.com/andyn/actspy/blob/master/actspy.c](https://github.com/andyn/actspy/blob/master/actspy.c)

The main objective, however, was not to stalk innocent users but to catch an anonymous IRC troll who was using an identless shell server in order to hide their real account name. Every time the troll wrote to IRC, the activity logger program showed typing activity from a certain user. After a few message exchanges during quiet night hours I was able to reliably pinpoint them.

<comment><USER4> So what happened after finding out who it was?

<comment><USER3> That'll be the boring part of the story. I just /msged her primary nick and asked nicely if it was possible to stop. Apparently the threat of losing anonymity is enough to turn trolls back to normal people.

<comment><USER5> This is, in a nutshell, the secret of the internet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you trust those """services""" to be secure and trust that they care about your privacy, then you will be betrayed sooner or later, in ways you can't think of -- just like in the article.

Fun fact, years ago I accidentally found out that my girlfriend at the time cheated on me on Snapchat, without me actually exploiting anything. She told me to join it with her, telling me that is going to be fun. Snapchat kept track of useds' activity and gamified it to incentivize you by scoring your activity then. Each person has a public activity score when you tap on their profile. One day, I noticed that her Snapchat had more than twice the score that I had. So I clicked on her profile and there it is some strange dude having a score higher than me, it turned out that was her """"ex"""" (I actually never asked her even for his name before, I found out only after that). I never consciously looked for anything, I trusted her 100%, the score was just there on my screen.

Thanks Snapchat for their stupid gamification efforts, otherwise I would have wasted more time on her. But since that accident, I never trust proprietary shit that has money to make, ads to sell, governments to please, and incentives to grow, even it says its selling point is to protect your privacy, like Snapchat. It's not about the "end to end encryption" or "finer privacy control" or "only allow when app is in foreground" or "restricted sharing" or "MIT open sauce license" or "export your data" or "only listening to hotwords" or "open APIs," it's about the intent. If the intent was to expand and make money, then all those techs won't be the magic pill that suddenly cures the ill intent. Anyway, privacy my ass, man.

<comment><USER7> Wait, when you view her profile (as a friend), it shows who has the highest 'score' in terms of contact with her? Wow, that IS a lot of data if they break it down by contact pairs.

<comment><USER6> Yep. It was called Snapchat score or something. It had a list of top 3 people or so and how much score they had with each other. It was unreal.

This was back in spring-summer 2015.

<comment><USER8> Now it shows you the live current location of all your friends, no one I know has it turned off.

Wth people?

<comment><USER9> This setting doesn't seem to be enabled by default, at least on Android. I just scrolled into settings > Who can... See My Location >

Found it to be on "ghost mode (only me)." I never touched this setting before.

<comment><USER6> Only log me, but don't let my friends know: You know your privacy is respected jack shit when the _least_ intrusive setting is letting the service know and log you, but not letting your friends know.

The real question isn't that what it sets by default, the question is why that chat app needs to know and log your location in the first place? Why does it not only get it and send it when you choose to share? What kind of enhancement does it give to your fucking """experience""" when it logs your location like that?

<comment><USER6> @cassowary, geotagging your photos can be done without logging your location on the server. It can be done locally. Plus, I thought that Snapchat does not keep the pictures you've taken? (I have been out of that since then, so I don't know.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I loved this article. It is beautifully written, given both the hacking curiosity on display as well as the real-world privacy impact it demonstrates. Most of my family use whats-app and would be mortified if they actually understood most of this. Not saying they would stop using it, as the trade-off is a great social app, but it would make them think more broadly about how the world is changing.

<comment><USER11> Nobody has to stop using WhatsApp, the scenario described in the article can be prevented simply by changing the app's privacy settings.

<comment><USER12> Wrong, if you deactivate the feature 'last seen at' it doesn't change anything because you can still get the same information with the feature 'is online now' and this feature can't be deactivated

<comment><USER13> What count as "online"? Using the app? Does the web app also track that? I don't think this is disclosed by facebook, it would be nice to experiment to check it.

<comment><USER14> AFAIK, having either the mobile app or web interface in the foreground.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Nevermind the clever writing but the issue has been known for years—and beautifully exploited with the selfhostable ready-made solution WhatsSpy Public since Feb 2015: [https://gitlab.maikel.pro/maikeldus/WhatsSpy- Public/](https://gitlab.maikel.pro/maikeldus/WhatsSpy-Public/) It's not actively maintained anymore but Maikel deserves some credit for it.

<comment><USER16> Do you happen to know if it's still working without heavy modifications?

<comment><USER17> Probably not, it used Chat-API [0], but the developer is kind of an asshole. But I admit, people just post stupid issues all the time. However I don't share the developers opinion that this was abused. My friends and I haven't received spam messages on Whatsapp. I admit that may be a small sample size, but still.

[0] [https://github.com/mgp25/Chat-API](https://github.com/mgp25/Chat-API)

<comment><USER18> I did the same about mid 2015 using yowsup (Python API to Whatsapp). But it's was a private project because of legality concerns of hoarding so much data.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Of course, the elephant in the room is that all this info and much more is with WhatsApp, Facebook, Google and what ever garbage app is installed on your phone. I agree that the article is more about targeted surveillance towards certain users but that is where NSA and secret letters come in :).

</comment><comment><USER20> Very well written article - and I love your drawings! I did a similar story a while back on how you can track your friends sleep patterns using Facebook Messenger [1]. I'm sure there are lots of other services that have this problem, and most users are blissfully unaware.

[1] [https://medium.com/@sqrendk/how-you-can-use-facebook-to- trac...](https://medium.com/@sqrendk/how-you-can-use-facebook-to-track-your- friends-sleeping-habits-505ace7fffb6)

</comment><comment><USER21> > Facebook sends data to your browser using straightforward HTTP requests that > you can easily write a program to mimic.

Shameless plug, I wrote a plugin for Chrome [1] and Firefox [2] to do just that.

(Facebook is the opposite of WhatsApp – you can disable your online/offline status, but not your idle time.)

[1] [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/social-network- cha...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/social-network-chat- idle/ngjiolhcdneedkjhdpeokdahhgohnogo)

[2] [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/social- networ...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/social-network-chat- idle/)

</comment><comment><USER22> When stuff like this happen I wonder if we can try to trick the system, overloading it with information, faking things. Couldn't we just somehow make sure we are online all the time (some script pinging the app), then the data would become meaningless..

</comment><comment><USER23> Just to clarify as a non-user: there's an online status, and a 'last seen' data point, and both can be queried by any user for any user given their telephone number, as often as the querying party likes? And the online status is when the app is open on the phone?

<comment><USER24> AFAIK If you have them in your contacts and they haven't blocked you, you can access both those data points. If they have disabled last seen, you can still get the the 'online' and 'typing' status.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I suspect a fairly small percentage of users is active enough that you get usable hourly data.

<comment><USER12> I agree with you, whatsapp is not like Tinder or Facebook you don't open it every 2 minutes to check if there is something new.

<comment><USER26> That depends on the country. In the US, people still tend to text a lot, but in most of Europe, Whatsapp totally replaced texting.

<comment><USER7> Is this because of their still-utterly-broken roaming model? (supposedly to be remedied soon)

<comment><USER27> Soon was June 2017. But I doubt it has anything to do with roaming. Maybe more people paid per SMS for a longer time than in the US? I know I still do; I could add unlimited messages to my monthly contract for 1 EUR or so, but what's the point.

<comment><USER7> Interesting. My assumption was that Europe was much more okay with pay-per-use than the US was. It was always strange to someone in the US that a European would pay different amounts for a call depending on what kind of phone you were calling, where in the US both parties simply paid for their airtime if they wanted to use mobile phones.

SMS took off faster in Europe than in the US, but we've had bundled packages for so long that the individual cost per text wasn't such an issue, and now on many plans they're unlimited.

I guess the differing cost structure depending on who you're texting and from where may have spurred the adoption of WhatsApp, whereas in the US, even if you WERE paying per text, it was the same across a territory of many thousands of miles and hundreds of millions of people. And, the same way that many folks in the US do not even have a passport, they tend also not to have a reason to text internationally. The size and homogeneity of the country benefits the adoptions of some technologies, but hinders the adoption of others.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I made an MVP 2 years ago: [https://www.producthunt.com/posts/whatsapp- tracker](https://www.producthunt.com/posts/whatsapp-tracker)

</comment><comment><USER29> Maybe I'm in the minority, but I haven't ever used WhatsApp. Is there a huge benefit to using it over SMS, or something similar?

<comment><USER30> * SMS delivery isn't guaranteed.

* SMS don't have read receipt.

* SMS depends on cellular connectivity.

* SMS and MMS have very limited media transfer support.

* SMS don't have feature similar to groups.

<comment><USER31> >* SMS don't have read receipt.

I feel like this is a pro.

<comment><USER30> While I can see your point, it really depends on usage purpose and taste. For many this is the most valuable feature of the app.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> People avoid thinking too much about things that are working as advertised. How many people wonder about how exactly their cars work or the global financial system works yet they are impacted by both of these. They may reserve curiosity for other things depending on their interests.

And here the problem begins, a lot of software engineers seem to conflate this disinterest to stupidity and think this gives them a right to do whatever they want with other people's data.

There is a fundamental lack of understanding and respect of other people rights and privacy and an easy dehumanization that is disconnected from human society and the evolution of fundamental rights like like the right to privacy. Regulation will catch up and eventually address this as more people become aware but is a troubling reflection of a large part of the software ecosystem.

</comment><comment><USER33> Huh; why on Earth does WhatsApp make the default visibility of your "last seen" to "everyone"?! Also, speaking of 'tracking', I'd love to be able to track the sources of fake news forwards, but I assume such a technique would not work for anything like that.

</comment><comment><USER34> I think I did almost the same thing three years ago. See: [https://www.v2ex.com/t/121272](https://www.v2ex.com/t/121272) (in Chinese only, sorry. I should translate it to English when I'm free)

</comment><comment><USER35> Always wondered what would happen if someone was to happen to have every valid US/CAN number in their contact list (all 3-4 billion), since WhatsApp doesn't validate you actually _know_ the contact just that you have their phone number.

<comment><USER36> They ban your IP. Anyway with some effort you can deanonimize a lot of numbers (eg: status/name/profile photo).

<comment><USER37> Is there a known upper limit on the number of #s one account can have?

I suppose you could use that limit to set up enough WhatsApp accounts on proxies to effectively have access to all registered #s?

<comment><USER11> There's another startup idea.

<comment><USER38> The idea being you incentive WhatsApp users to install your app that then harvests all their contacts and collates the "last seen" info on all of them. If they delete your app, you setup a proxy to imitate their device and continue the monitoring. Have a privacy policy that is super strong but has a couple "loopholes" that one can drive a truck through.

Is that the idea? Seems doable if you're not too risk averse, have no family and live in a country with weak extradition laws. Kidding, there's nothing illegal about any of this stuff or FB, Google and lots of other companies would not be in business.

FB would have a civil claim against you -- they paid several billion dollars for the legal right to all that user data!

<comment><USER37> You wouldn't need an app or other WhatsApp users beyond your distributed proxy accounts. You'd be running the monitoring through these proxies.

Creating an app with the sole purpose of backdooring WhatsApp on a user's phone seems like it'd open you up to a lot of lawsuits. Ethically its a mite more questionable, but the original article is still unethical in that you're monitoring people without consent.

Like I said above, I'd do this just so that they'd crack down on it. It's still a "means justify the ends" argument, however, so you have to be quite comfortable with moral relativism.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I don't see why people suddenly panic about it.. That's not a new thing. I wrote my own Tracking app over 2 years ago. I still have the code and database laying around. I was using [https://github.com/tgalal/yowsup](https://github.com/tgalal/yowsup) back then. Back then you could even see when people requested your online-status. Meaning you could see when they opened your chat. Back then I used that to see if my message have been read because the message-read notification didn't exist back then.

</comment><comment><USER39> I'm increasingly inclined to keep my phone on airplane mode for most of the day.

Now, I just need to train people into calling me only between x:00 and x:05. But I don't get many calls anymore, everybody texts...

</comment><comment><USER40> Similar "online status tracking" has been used for Facebook messenger in the past. I know Facebook removed send-location by default, but I'm not sure if the API still allows pulling online status.

[https://defaultnamehere.tumblr.com/post/139351766005/graphin...](https://defaultnamehere.tumblr.com/post/139351766005/graphing- when-your-facebook-friends-are-awake)

</comment><comment><USER41> Stalking Your Friends with Facebook Messenger | [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9609286](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9609286) (May 2015, 185 comments)

 _when you send a message from the Messenger app there is an option to send your location with it_

 _the mobile app for Facebook Messenger defaults to sending a location with all messages_

<comment><USER42> Facebook doesn't do this anymore.

[http://money.cnn.com/2015/06/04/technology/facebook- messenge...](http://money.cnn.com/2015/06/04/technology/facebook-messenger- location-tracking-fix/index.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> The only issue here is that WhatsApp lets you see the status of people who don't have you as a contact. The rest is utterly underwhelming.

One thing I loved about ICQ-esque IM services was that you could clearly see whether a contact was online or not. I still feel weird starting a conversation on WhatsApp because of the lack of clear visual cues of the contact's status.

</comment><comment><USER44> Reminds me of an article I wrote up about tracking who's talking to who on WhatsApp: [https://medium.com/p/finding-out-if-2-people-are-chatting- to...](https://medium.com/p/finding-out-if-2-people-are-chatting-to-each- other-on-whatsapp-7f13448be665)

</comment><comment><USER45> A few days ago I tried to track people on WhatsApp even if their "Last Seen" was hidden. [https://hackernoon.com/uhoh-did-i-break-whatsapps-last- seen-...](https://hackernoon.com/uhoh-did-i-break-whatsapps-last-seen-feature- dbde54ecf79b)

</comment><comment><USER46> I might be wrong here, but what if I change my settings to "not show the last seen status"? I guess in that case this doesn't work. Yes, I believe checking "Online" status frequently does give some information about my activity. Correct me if I'm wrong here.

<comment><USER47> I was thinking the same. I haven't seen any of my friend with last seen status enabled.

<comment><USER48> If you disable on your account, you can't see the last seen status of your friends, even if they have it enabled.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Loved the article. The increasing pace with the article gives you a rush which was amazing!

Very well written.

</comment><comment><USER50> Just turned that "feature" off in mine. I am glad people point out stuff like this.

Is Facebook still spitting out similar crap? I checked the console and there is a reassuring looking message there, but I am not up to date.

</comment><comment><USER51> Nice and very well written article,most of my friends use whatsapp and would be mortified if they actually understood most of this.

<comment><USER52> Even without, unfortunately (I'm sure they are wonderful), knowing your friends, I bet you a cookie that they don't care.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Enjoyed the article, but my favourite part is the reference to Garth Marenghi's Darkplace in the description.

</comment><comment><USER54> Whatsapp's opening an API for businesses soon. More abuse on your data. Wait for it.

</comment><comment><USER55> Brilliantly written Rob Heaton! Bravo!

</comment><comment><USER56> Well written.

</comment><comment><USER57> isn't this privacy breach?

</comment><comment><USER58> What I don't like about WhatsApp is that even if you hide your last connection time, everybody gets to see whether you're online.

<comment><USER59> I was exactly thinking about this last night. It's bad that WhatsApp doesn't hide the online status.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> Just turn off last seen. Duh.

<comment><USER45> [https://hackernoon.com/uhoh-did-i-break-whatsapps-last- seen-...](https://hackernoon.com/uhoh-did-i-break-whatsapps-last-seen-feature- dbde54ecf79b) ;)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why are YC company posts' comments disabled? - <AUTHOR> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24208501<p>No comments for this post. <comment><USER2> It's an ads, the only type of ad on hackernews

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html)

"Another kind of job ad is reserved for YC-funded startups. These appear on the front page, but are not stories: they have no vote arrows, points, or comments. They begin part-way down and fall steadily. Only one is on the front page at a time."</comment>


Unable to unlock gunman's iPhones, the FBI (once again) asks for Apple's help - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/01/fbi-seeks-apples-help-in-unlocking-iphones-belonging-to-pensacola-gunman/ <comment><USER2> Just another PR move by the feds to try and sway public perception to accept intentionally weakening encryption.</comment>


7 YC startups find success in the heartland - <AUTHOR> https://venturebeat.com/2017/07/09/7-yc-startups-find-success-in-the-heartland/ <comment><USER2> A lot of products I think find initial traction and then flop because SV is a shitty test city.

[http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1137953...](http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113795356)</comment>


Sleep Tip - <AUTHOR> http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/sleep_tip/

<comment><USER2> Yep, works for me. That's why I've fallen asleep listening to podcasts almost every night for the past 3 years or so. I can't run much of an internal monologue when someone else is talking.. and I've learned tons about various topics (I tend to listen to an entire podcast's back catalogue then move on to another one).

</comment><comment><USER3> Keeping your mind busy in the background is the easiest way to fall asleep, otherwise it obstructs itself. Personally, I just either, listen to a podcast or start thinking of big landscapes and as my mind constructs trees and objects it gets busy and let's my subconscious do the work.</comment>


There's Evidence We're Living in a Simulation - <AUTHOR> https://hackernoon.com/evidence-were-living-in-a-simulation-yanny-laurel-audio-illusion-79ebf0461b9c <comment><USER2> Title seems misleading to me

</comment><comment><USER3> Horrible article. No evidence.

<comment><USER4> Did you not understand it? Your brain creates the simulation.</comment></comment>


YouTube is littered with mass-produced videos made by automated bots - <AUTHOR> https://hackernoon.com/unethical-growth-hacks-a-look-into-the-growing-youtube-news-bot-epidemic-e1ef8c98b605 <comment><USER2> People still use YouTube for non specific search results?

All that shows up when I try to "explore" is what could be called tabloid amateur videos, top 5-10 lists and a bunch of other shit that will quite literally waste your life as it makes you dumber.

Maybe it's my own fault for having watched the Churchill vs Roosevelt epic rap battle too many times, but nothing YouTube suggests is anywhere close to something that I won't shut off after 5 seconds.

I mean, it's so bad I actually spent time to turn off auto play on every device I access YouTube on.

<comment><USER3> If you remove a recommendation, it has a link saying "tell us why", and you can say "don't recommend me videos based on video X" (X being the video that YT used to generate that suggestion).

I find YT's recommendations a bit myopic (too focused on what I've watched in the past few days), but I literally don't have any clickbait or other crap videos, it's actually pretty OK.

<comment><USER4> Oh no. You mentioned it.

I've used it hundreds of times, but since "clickbait bullshit" isn't an option, there are 3 and they're pretty dumb it probably won't learn any time soon. It sometimes comes pretty close to driving me away from the service.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The writer makes it seem as if society itself is at risk from being ruined because there are crappy videos on YouTube. I couldn't care less. It is YouTube's image that is at risk if anything and to be honest I find it super clever to generate videos like this to earn money. Very out of the box.

YouTube is just a service that is out to make money out of bored and media- addicted people. It isn't a public service that is being exploited.

<comment><USER6> > _YouTube is just a service that is out to make money out of bored and media- > addicted people. It isn't a public service that is being exploited._

You're not a parent, are you?

EDIT: neither am I, for the record. But I think a lot of the replies here are a bit too quick to lay the blame on the less tech-savvy parents, who may just be using YouTube in the good faith that an app designed for children will not auto-queue disturbing content (also, the linked article makes a larger point about the _" infrastructural violence"_ of the internet that we should not dismiss to quickly).

[https://medium.com/@jamesbridle/something-is-wrong-on-the- in...](https://medium.com/@jamesbridle/something-is-wrong-on-the- internet-c39c471271d2)

<comment><USER7> From one parent to another: Parents need to stop asking the world to accommodate for them!

If you don't think your kids should use YouTube then don't let them...easy as that! It's like with cookies...if you really want to I'll bet you find a way to stop you kids from eating them.

<comment><USER8> Except that "online video" is now a synonym for YouTube. Most people are not aware of this and think "just don't use YouTube" is as extreme as "then stop watching TV".

<comment><USER9> No, it's more akin to "don't watch these channels on TV". There is plenty of content served on sites/apps where preventing children from seeing inappropriate things is a primary focus. It's like locking down your TV to only show cartoon Network and Nickelodeon. Besides, putting your child's productive energy into more productive activities that are not watching either TV or online videos will serve them better.

<comment><USER10> > No, it's more akin to "don't watch these channels on TV".

Sort of. If I let my kid watch Peppa Pig on the TV, I can be _reasonably_ assured that it won't suddenly take a turn (while I'm in the next room washing dishes) into Peppa Pig having sex with Barney just before they're both ground up into sausage.

The same isn't true on YouTube.

<comment><USER11> That gives me an idea, actually. Do you have an RSS reader of choice?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I find it fascinating how YouTube can afford to keep storing so much data, at the rate it comes in and especially when most if it is not valuable and may only be watched a handful of times. A few years ago I looked up their profitability and came across an article claiming they were about breaking even bringing with about a billion dollars in revenue with about a billion in costs to run the service. If anyone has any recent / real insight into this I would be grateful for a link.

<comment><USER13> I can give you a couple insights:

300 hours of video are uploaded to youtube every minute in 2018

A couple of years ago I've seen a Google talk with a youtube admin/engineer. He said that in the beginning they had huge issues because they could not order servers fast enough for the demand. Money seems to never have played a role in those decisions (I can't find the link to the talk anymore).

If a video gets uploaded it will be stored in multiple resolutions and formats. So a video is probably stored as ~20 files which makes the space requirements even more mind boggling.

<comment><USER14> > He said that in the beginning they had huge issues because they could not > order servers fast enough for the demand.

We had the exact same problems in the beginning of Camarades.com, before the wankers found out about it. It's amazing how for nearly 6 months it was just 'nice people' and after that it went downhill rapidly.

We found out that hard way that 3 weeks lead time on a batch of servers only looks good if you don't double in size every two weeks or so :)

One Dell server we ordered didn't even make it to production, it was way too small by the time it arrived so they took it back and shipped us a much larger one. That's also roughly around the time that we figured out that it is much cheaper to have one large server to do all the writes and a bunch of slaves that do all the reads from local copies.

Of course a modern day server would laugh at serving up dynamic pages to a few hundred thousand people per day but in the late 90's that was quite a challenge.

<comment><USER15> And these days i think Google builds their storage solutions from the board up. And i seem to recall reading about Facebook doing something similar (including experimenting with cold storage on burned blu-ray).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I've yet to see something called a " _growth hack_ " that _wasn't_ unethical.

<comment><USER17> What's funny is this article seems to have been written and promoted by a Snapzu, which literally promotes "growth hacks" on its front page.

<comment><USER18> Just because common usage allows us to call two practices "growth hacks," doesn't mean they are the same in most or even many respects.

One is an automated, content stealing scheme for making easy money. The other involves techniques by which you can promote your brand through your own content.

Just because you can predicate something with the same term, doesn't mean they are not very different.

<comment><USER17> I was replying to a comment that said: "I've yet to see something called a "growth hack" that wasn't unethical."

I wasn't equating anything.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> YT earnings up to $20 per 1k views, with $7 average?

Who is earning that kind of money? The pros I know bank $1/1k (excluding sponsorships, referrals, Patreon, random demonetisations, and so on).

</comment><comment><USER13> I've seen those videos around for a few years now. Altough the one linked in the article is of a high quality (relatively speaking). Does anybody know how to create those? I tried it with FFmpeg and espeak but never actually got anywhere fast.

<comment><USER20> 1\. set up scrapers to get the filler content- text and video/audio

2\. read text using text to speech, produce audio file

3\. use a library like [https://pypi.python.org/pypi/moviepy](https://pypi.python.org/pypi/moviepy) to combine them

4\. auto upload to youtube

5\. profit!

<comment><USER21> Its more like:

1\. hope and dream of success

2\. set up scrapers to get the filler content- text and video/audio

3\. read text using text to speech, produce audio file

4\. use a library like [https://pypi.python.org/pypi/moviepy](https://pypi.python.org/pypi/moviepy) to combine them

5\. auto upload to youtube

6\. get depressed when you realise nobody wants to listen to a computer speak.

7\. go back to day job

:)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> A video analysis of the related phenomenon:

"Weird Kids' Videos and Gaming the Algorithm"

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKp2gikIkD8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKp2gikIkD8)

It talks about possibly using machine learning to create many videos targeted at toddlers and using techniques to ensure the next autoplay item doesn't change to another channel.

</comment><comment><USER23> This could be a preview to the future where content is generated on the fly by bots that gather events on their own (and hence no content ripping). At present, most of the financial content of day to day events like stock price movements is already auto generated.

</comment><comment><USER24> Demand Media, 2.0

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

</comment><comment><USER25> An article about a growth hack which is, itself, a growth hack for an email list building service :-D

</comment><comment><USER26> I found most of them too cheesy to watch for very long.

What makes them fun is trying to figure out if (or where) the voice is a robot - usually child's play because robots frequently places the em-PHAS-is on the wrong syl-LAB-le.

But the British butler voice isn't too shabby.

</comment><comment><USER27> It took me a while to realise that what everyone is talking about (peppa pig / r/elsagate) and these are not AI produced videos but script kiddie stuff. The peppa pig stuff i have seen looks more like someone with one tool has been trying to make something "funny" but i suppose the point being made here is that if you can make a video for effectively free, and youtube pays you 10 bucks, you can scale that forever.

surely the solution here is in how youtube pays people? Does it not have to have a bank account? Isn't it a bit weird to find thousands of channels with robo videos on it with the one bank account?

i may of course be simplifying fraud detection

<comment><USER28> There's an upload limit for Youtube, although it's 50-100 a day. You won't be guaranteed views and YT doesn't pay out that much.

<comment><USER29> And the upload limit only applies if you're using a single account. The big algorithmic content generators all use multiple accounts.

<comment><USER28> Then how do they get enough views and subscribers for monetization? More bots?

<comment><USER27> this is what fascinates me - how do people actually monetise this stuff

I was amazed to discover the Nigerian scam was a means to get money out the Western banking system - find a fool who will transfer 900,000 of a million bucks to a number somewhere and you get your stolen credit card money out the country.

(see also gangs who walk down high street taking out 1000 in cash at each ATM)

But this one - YouTube is paying these people. what about fraud prevention are we missing here?

<comment><USER28> Personally, I think Youtubes recommendation algorithm is to blame. It's probably to easy to fool; have a nice clickbaity title, some clickbaity thumbnails, and you're much more likely to get hits. YT should eliminate those factors, as it only lowers the bar, but they don't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> There are also innumerable CG videos on YouTube, targeting children, which appear to be algorithmically generated. Using a combination of popular kids characters (Elsa, Spider-man, etc.) and ostensibly canned animations, the results are often strange, bizarre, and even entirely inappropriate for the intended audience.

The phenomenon is referred to as "Elsagate"[0]; be forewarned, it's pure nightmare-fuel.

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

<comment><USER31> There is also an entire genre of children's nursery rhyme videos and toy videos which are not so obviously inappropriate, but which also have an uncanny algorithmic quality to them - I remember seeing those before I even heard of Elsagate.

<comment><USER31> Sorry for self-replying, but I remember what I was referring to now, the "Finger Family" type videos[0] particularly Toys in Japan[1] who is apparently now streaming Fortnite.

[0][https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NceTdz8KlYU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NceTdz8KlYU)

[1][https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_oSI23s8qw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_oSI23s8qw)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Meh. Human performance follows a power law. I would only expect an ocean of garbage at the bottom and a few at the top with 80% of the total views.

</comment><comment><USER28> Haha, I made my own bot a while back ( [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvZs4sXbeaQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvZs4sXbeaQ) ). It makes videos out of wikipedia pages, so I figure it's not terrible. If you're thinking about doing such a thing, take note from me, and make sure the voice sounds okay from the beginning.

</comment><comment><USER33> Had something like this with a whitepaper: Someone took the PDF from our website and generated a video from it - crappy music included. That was 9 month ago. While we had some laughs, I'm a bit afraid potential customers find it and mistake it for one of ours :/

</comment><comment><USER34> This is the first time he came across one of these? People have been spamming them for years and nobody watches them.

</comment><comment><USER35> Who actually watches these?

<comment><USER36> I watched a video just last night, regarding the F35 vs. the SAAB Gripen, it was junk, so naively I clicked on a promising title in the recommendations. The voice-over read the EXACT same script, line by line.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> that page is littered with automated popups and nonsense

</comment><comment><USER38> What's unethical about that? It looks very clever to me. In fact I'm kinda envious because I didn't come up with that...

<comment><USER39> I can't think of any kind of ethics that would see these as a positive thing. What's possible and makes money for you isn't necessarily good.

Can you explain how littering Youtube with low-quality copyright-infringing videos contributes anything to society?

<comment><USER40> Whoa hold on... We have to contribute to society now?!

<comment><USER41> It is not so easy to correlate income with contribution in the modern economic system. I am really good at making more datacenters and populating them with servers but it gets kinda nebulous when you try and relate that with direct benefit to society. Yes large corporations can get their compute and storage cheaper than if they had their own servers, but does this actually net benefit humanity? Not sure.

It's easier to realize you make money because its making other people money ( nothing to do with benefit though ).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> YouTube is more famous than Jesus. I tried automated videos on YouTube twice. Nobody watched them. It's not as easy as it sounds to be successful on YouTube. Politicians using you as an example of society falling apart certainly helps to make you famous though.</comment>


Who are you gonna believe, me or your lying eyes? - <AUTHOR> https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2020/09/07/who-are-you-gonna-believe-me-or-your-lying-eyes/ <comment><USER2> After a blog post which explicitly says it is only investigating the plausibility of constancy, and has nothing to do with the argument in which it was embedded, it's amazing how many of the comments want to talk about anything but the interpretation of that specific graph.

Bonus clip (1992): [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYa5fR1qDRo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYa5fR1qDRo)</comment>


Youthful Brains in Older Adults:  Contributes Youthful Memory in Superaging - <AUTHOR> http://www.jneurosci.org/content/36/37/9659 <comment><AUTHOR> Had to cut title to fit into 80 char limit :(

Youthful Brains in Older Adults: Preserved Neuroanatomy in the Default Mode and Salience Networks Contributes to Youthful Memory in Superaging</comment>


Mozilla: End of Firefox for Android Slated for 2020 as Fenix Rises - <AUTHOR> https://www.zdnet.com/article/mozilla-end-of-firefox-for-android-slated-for-2020-as-fenix-rises/ <comment><USER2> Felix doesn't appear to have support for extensions. That would be very unfortunate if Mozilla has chosen this route. Hopefully they plan to include support for them.

<comment><USER3> This is the main reason I use Firefox for Android. Without a good ad-blocker, browsing while commuting quickly blows through my data caps (I am in Canada).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Extensions like Ghostery and Ublock Origin are maybe the only reason to use FF on Android, as Brave does adblocking as well and renders pages more smoothly as it's a Chromium fork.

Didn't they also release Firefox Focus recently, also with no extension support?</comment>


Show HN: Got my Pebble and built a seven minute workout watchapp today - <AUTHOR> http://kennberg.com/7min/ <comment><USER2> I really like this. It's a nice simple idea and looks really good.

Since they came out with the latest version of the SDK I've been trying to think of some good stuff to play around with for the extended set of features they've given access to.

Any plans on adding support for the accelerometer to this? (for stuff like star jump reps or whatever)

<comment><AUTHOR> Great idea! I was thinking about using accelerometer as well. It'd be cool to track reps and try to beat personal record.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> That's right. That's - that's good. That's good. Unless, of course, somebody comes up with six minute workout watchapp. Then you're in trouble, huh?

</comment><comment><USER4> Does it work on iPhone? I heard they had issues with Apple, and allowing you to download apps from the internet for your Pebble with iOS.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, they fixed the problem a while ago and you can install apps and watch faces directly to your Pebble from your iOS device.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Protip: don't make your background image so monstrously large. It's close to 700kb alone :-)

<comment><AUTHOR> Reduced it to 200kb. I love my city, what can I say. :-)

<comment><USER7> 200Kb for a background image? I could say a few things, none of them complimentary.

<comment><USER8> 200 KB for a 1600x1078 photo sounds quite reasonable to me. The 300 KB PNG wrist photo on the other hand...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Once I get my White Pebble I might be able to join in with the watch app fun :(

<comment><USER10> Yeah I'm waiting for the white too...

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I too wrote a 7 minute workout app, only this time as a shell script.

<https://github.com/vlaube-de/7min-workout>

<comment> mc-lovin mine is a regexp

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The three vibrations at the start of the workout might be a bit superfluous; the watchapp already has my attention when starting.

</comment><comment><USER12> Irrelevant: We just downloaded a 700 kb of background image and your links are hard to distinguish from text.

</comment><comment><USER13> Nice! I'm going to try loading this once I get the BlackBerry 10 Pebble app done.

</comment><comment><USER14> Great! Very convenient in comparison to a smartphone too.

</comment><comment><USER15> Thanks for this, just tried it out and it works great

</comment><comment><USER16> Is anyone building a 7-min workout app for iPhone?

<comment><USER17> I made one for Android and iOS and submitted it to the Appstore; probably they won't accept it though as it's 'too simple'? (Mine is free, no ads, I just wanted it for myself)

There is a paid one here from someone which looks quite nice: [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/7-minute- workout/id650762525...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/7-minute- workout/id650762525?mt=8)

Mine is here: [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.vafive.sev...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.vafive.sevenminworkout)

And waiting for an Appstore response as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Very neat! Works great on my Pebble.

</comment><comment><USER19> Awesome work Alex!

</comment><comment><USER20> what city is that in the background?

<comment><USER21> Toronto it seems like.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> got it. love it. Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER23> good job!

</comment><comment><USER24> _"essentially combines a long run and a visit to the weight room"_

I'm sorry but it just doesn't, even if it is based on science.

<comment><USER25> I agree, it was discussed to death in the story about the original article.

This exact phrase actually was in the NYT article rather than the paper itself, that as far as I remember made no such claims.

There is no doubt that is more beneficial than actually doing nothing, but let's keep it real.

About the app, nice.</comment></comment>


Ubiquiti switches have Augmented Reality features in their feature of their app - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/i/status/1266428485804847104 <comment><USER2> Such an excellent and practical use of AR. Wow I hope the devs that came up with that are really proud of themselves.

I have UBNT stuff all over my house but not the rack switch.

</comment><comment><USER3> That's a very helpful feature. I was helping out a friend with no experience in networking setups with his first homelab a while back, this could have saved me some time :)

</comment><comment><USER4> I've been thinking that it would be really nice if switches had an RGB led on each port showing its vlan config, but this technique would work too!</comment>


The Problem With MVPs - <AUTHOR> http://steverb.com/post/2010/03/24/The-Problem-With-MVPs.aspx

<comment><USER2> Probably unrelated but...

I was fortunate enough to attend an event recently that a very well know MS superstar was presenting at, I arrived slightly late and the only seating room was in the front row with about 8 others. So I quietly sat and enjoyed the excellent presentation.

At the first break the MS hero took his microphone off and 6 of the other people in the row stood up instantly and quite literally skipped towards the podium forming an MVP wall of knowledge around the hero. On their way back I could see several of them proudly sporting MVP shirts and one of the others I recognised as another MVP that I had some knowledge of.

At the time I cringed a little, these guys were all blatantly trying to befriend this poor MS superstar as well as try to outsmart him on several topics that were unrelated to the presentation. The introductions that went along the lines of "Hi, I'm John Smith, MVP of XXX" accompanied by the longing look of "Please please know who I am" made me smile inside.

Next break arrived, MS man popped his microphone down again and... yup, the same six jumped up again along with another couple of folk.

The Most Valued Phanboy program is an excellent way of rewarding the good in the MS community, but after witnessing this I have to say that I was a little bit disgusted at the behaviour of these MVP's. Rather than make it look like a fantastic gang of helpful product experts they succeeded in making it look like a really unwelcoming clique.

Obviously this is my view of one event and undoubtedly not representative of the community as a whole.

</comment><comment><USER3> > If you want attention in the open source community you write code and you > release some projects. You do stuff. If you want attention in the Microsoft > community you talk.

I think you can garner just as much attention in the open source community by just being a talking head. It's sort of the whole "squeaky wheel" phenomenon. These guys aren't helping Microsoft as much out with free technical support as they are helping them with grassroots PR.

<comment><USER4> See: ESR

<comment><AUTHOR> Crap. I totally forgot about ESR. He completely screws up my pithy "compare and contrast".

<comment><USER5> I think ESR is respected more in the "philosophy of open source" department than for being a real developer. Kind of like the way I respect PG for his startup philosophies more than I do for being an actual Peter Thiel-style genius. There's room for both and I don't think it screws up your point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A post a while back about the MVP program elicited some interesting comments from a former MVP lead - specifically discussing the pressures on leads to drop people who don't follow the company line: [http://codebetter.com/blogs/karlseguin/archive/2009/02/03/wh...](http://codebetter.com/blogs/karlseguin/archive/2009/02/03/why- aren-t-i-an-mvp.aspx)

</comment><comment><USER7> From my experience with MVPs and also developers with many MS certifications, they tend to over engineer. They add complexity ahead of its need (like Factory classes when there is only the requirement for one implementation, Visitor pattern when a simple builder will do, etc). The point seems to be to stroke the programmer ego with execution on fancy technical requirements, with a complete lack of care to the experience of the end user.

</comment><comment><USER8> It's a bit of a strawman he sets up.

 _(...) the work of another developer, a Microsoft MVP. The code (...) stunk in a strange way. (...) The MVP program does not recognize technical ability. It's possible to be awarded an MVP in a development related area and not really be able to write code. (...) Mind you, there's nothing wrong with doing any of those things and a lot of reasons why we should encourage the behavior. (...) there isn't really a problem with the MVP program. (...) There's really no reason for Microsoft to change things on their end._

In the end, it's a warning that holders of a recognition that doesn't have anything to do with programming, might not be good programmers.

<comment><USER9> Yes, but the problem is that most people don't realize the title doesn't have anything to do with programming. They assume the MVPs are great programmers who should be looked to for general guidance on programming technique. At least I have observed this kind of thinking at places where I have worked.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I got excited in the hopes that it was an article on model-view-presenter (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model-view-presenter>)

<comment><USER11> I thought it was going to be an article about creating Minimum Viable Products (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_viable_product>)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> How about a "ShipIt" reward given by the open-source side of the Microsoft organization - CodePlex: <http://www.codeplex.com/>

</comment><comment><USER13> _To make matters worse, part-way through the interview the candidate starting listing their "requirements", which conferences they'd be attending, which technologies they would use, etc.

I was flabbergasted. Granted, my friend was glad the candidate was so forthcoming with his lack of professionalism._

How in the hell does it reflect a lack of professionalism to expect to be sent to conferences? To have the company invest in one's career is a natural right of the employee, and companies that don't respect this right end up bleeding talent and becoming shells.

It just sounds like he's being honest about his expectations. If the company doesn't have the resources to send him to the conferences, then they shouldn't hire him, but that's not a lack of professionalism.

This bit was just flamingly offensive, even though I agree with the rest of the OP.</comment>


The world's most evil entrepreneur? - <AUTHOR> http://thebln.com/2010/01/jim-mccormick-ade651-how-can-someone-profit-by-causing-death-misery/#comment-3170 <comment><USER2> No, I'd think the guys into sex slavery and organ theft are probably more "evil". This guy is more like an opportunistic sociopath. That seems more like the norm with this war...

<comment><USER3> and probably the guys selling the bombs his device doesn't detect are more evil, too. although it might be more difficult to blame it on one person in that case.

<comment><USER4> A lot of those bombs are hacked together by the user himself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Sorry, to disappoint but this is standard within the military-industrial complex. If you have dealt much with DoD and their contractors, you would notice a lot of waste and a lot of scamming going on.

There was a story a while ago about some contractor in Afghanistan charging the military $100 for a 15 pound load of laundry. That happens because the guys at the Pentagon are the same guys running the defense contracting companies.

</comment><comment><USER6> while it doesnt take anything away from how terrible selling these things was, since this story came around I have been incredibly confused at how someone spent £60million and wasnt absolutely certain they worked.

<comment><USER7> Occam's razor says that this is essentially embezzling reconstruction funds. You pay me a buck of Uncle Sam's money for your dowsing rod, I make sure 10 cents finds it way into your Swiss bank account, everyone is happy.

</comment></comment><comment> b-man I propose a test for this guy.

Let's plant some live mines in a large field, and simply ask him to cross it a few times, using his little tech wonder detector.

I'll bet all my possessions that he will promptly refuse, on some 'atmospheric impossibility' or some other shit.

<comment><USER8> I was thinking more of a Schrodinger's cat like scenario. Lock him in a room with 10 bombs. Give him his device and tell him that 9 are filled with c4 and one with spaghetti noodles, well cooked. He will be released when he chooses the fake and presses the detonate button. (In reality, all will be filled with tasty pasta.)

How long will it take him to emerge?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> How can we have a problem with this guy but are happy for "psychics" to play havoc with people's emotions in exchange for cash? It's the same thing.

The response has interesting echos to the US government's response to being hacked. It's the hackers fault! Not the fault of our security!

The fact remains as a purchaser you should be cautious about what you choose to buy. To blow millions on this guys stuff is utterly hilarious to buy it without expert approval is just dumb.

Makes me wonder if the military ever blew millions of dollars on x-ray specs or Charles Atlas's book but kept hush about it.

<comment><USER10> Who here is happy about "psychics" taking people's money? Certainly not me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Much discussion here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1070732>

</comment><comment><USER12> "The government has just banned the export of these devices to some countries on the grounds that they could put the lives of UK forces at risk, but they are still able to export to other countries."

Because "lives of UK forces" are at risk and only they needed to be protected by evil entrepreneur of UK. Evil what???

<comment><USER13> National security usurps the companies right to otherwise sell stuff that doesn't provably work. If only we could get UK forces to use homeopathy.

In other news the director of the company has been arrested for fraud so they are doing something.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> How is this "Hacker News"? News of fraudsters doesn't help techies or founders do anything. Flagged.

</comment><comment><USER15> "Stop government intervention in our lives! Let the invisible hand take care of this one!"

<comment><USER8> I suspect if there was no government intervention, "invisible hands" would take care of this guy soon enough.

</comment></comment><comment> b-man Man, how on earth would you explain this[1] to your boss?

[1]<http://www.ubergizmo.com/tags/ade-651>

<comment><USER16> I don't think it would be too hard to explain that a pathetic little blog post somewhere on the Web falsely claims that you purchased 1,500 of these things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> that is is tremendous opportunity to solve this particular problem. Whoever does will make a lot of money, just that this goofball shouldn't hsve.

</comment><comment><USER18> This just says that the guy who made those useless bomb sniffing toilet rod things made lots of cash.</comment>


Steve Jobs talks about GPT-3 in Sweden (1985) - <AUTHOR> https://youtu.be/2qLuerYx2IA?t=281 <comment><USER2> Assuming the watch was Job's last project, it seems like no significant products have been designed by Apple after he died.

<comment><AUTHOR> Totally agree, although it's quite remarkable to see his today's vision from too long ago.</comment></comment>


Times Articles Removed from Google Results in Europe - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/04/business/media/times-articles-removed-from-google-results-in-europe.html <comment><USER2> How long will it be before right-to-be-forgotten infrastructure becomes abused for something like taking down a competitor's visibility?

I wonder.

<comment><USER3> I think that's already happened. I can't turn up the article right now, but I saw an article talking about exactly that recently.

<comment><USER4> Maybe the article was also removed from google

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm a bit baffled at Googles implementation here. They have turned a single decision (though at a high court) into a seemingly automated process where everyone can have stuff removed that just mentions their name by filling out some web form:

[https://support.google.com/legal/contact/lr_eudpa?product=we...](https://support.google.com/legal/contact/lr_eudpa?product=websearch)

Theres no obligation to go that far. Make people pay a lawyer when they want to get something removed.

Basically, treat it as the DMCA requests: remove the stuff and post the full request on a ChillingEffects-like site, and hint at that when a search included removed results.

<comment><USER6> An automated process is cheaper than dealing with lawyers. It could also be that Google made it this easy in order to make a point that the law is a bad idea.

<comment><USER7> Likely parts of both. If they want human involvement (like the government will probably eventually request), the bureaucracy's budget can pay for it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> When one of the early apparently outrageous cases of removal came out I was critical of Google removing stuff that seemed completely appropriate but it turned out that the removal wasn't of terms related to the person in the article but was one of the commenters. As such I reversed my position and apologised to Google.

I haven't investi these removals but wanted to share my experience of jumping to conclusions that Google wasn't making appropriate judgements. Without looking closely I would now tend to give Google the benefit of the doubt on these judgement issues (and I really don't trust Google on other things such as privacy).

</comment><comment><USER9> It's strange to have articles about suicides, prevention, and getting help next to articles that are actively trying put peoples back in a past they would like to have a break with.

<comment><USER10> To "like to have a break with" is quite different than to force the world to censor, or a claim a right to control recorded history.

<comment><USER9> it's not censorship, the story is still in the archives, it's still on the web, it's just not broadcast on google.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> That was a bit confusing, here The Times is not the NY Times...

[http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/?CMP=INTstp2](http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/?CMP=INTstp2)

</comment><comment><USER12> Doesn't the ability to do this sort of thing interfere with the notion of Google being a safe harbor in the US? They are now curating content.

<comment><USER13> They are not curating it. They are responding to lawful requests from others.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Congratulations to the EU courts. Through great skill and determination they have managed to construct the world's first self-Streisanding privacy law.

<comment><USER15> > Since May, when the European high court made its initial decision on the > right to be forgotten, Google has received roughly 140,000 privacy requests > connected to more than 500,000 links, according to the company's top lawyer. > So far, the search giant has approved around half of the requests.

One in 70,000 is a rather low Streisand concentration...

<comment><USER16> Yes. The Streisand effect doesn't really scale.

<comment><USER14> If you confined the search to newspapers, you could construct a live list of article availability vs territory for all the major search engines. I'm actually quite surprised that there isn't one already.

<comment><USER16> You could, but the inherent limitation of the Streisand effect is that both media and public attention are finite resources.

You can focus media/public attention on at best a few individuals and have it be effective. Have tens of thousands, and the effect is too diluted to be meaningful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I don't think this policy is bad for the EU. Google will remove articles faster than publications can notice and report on their removal. Most EU citizens will not care enough to use non-EU Google sites on a regular basis.

<comment><USER6> I don't follow, do your arguments make this kind of frivolous censorship any less ridiculous?

<comment><USER17> The censorship is frivolous but effective. I should have said "I don't think this policy is bad for the EU government."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> _Unlike in the United States, where freedom of expression is a fundamental right that supersedes other interests, Europe views an individual's privacy and freedom of expression as almost equal rights._

Except everybody knows that the right privacy is not the reason. EUrocrats needed to use subterfuge as an opening salvo for the beginnings of censorship, so this is what they came up with.

But there's no surprise that NYT would give the EU the benefit of the doubt, since they tend to fawn all over whatever wacky EU policies are implemented anyway.

<comment><USER19> as you can see, the naivety of the avg hn ready confirms the points you made by down voting. if they'd live in the eu or at least open their swollen-by- intellect minds, they'd see through the charade.

having said that, i also have an issue with your comment: everybody does NOT know.

<comment><USER20> Another user already replied to your parent so I won't repeat the argument but just a note: I downvoted him and I'm English, not everyone (or even most) in the EU think like you, and it's misleading to imply to Americans/others that we do.</comment></comment></comment>


Reddit goes open source - the actual announcement from reddit.  - <AUTHOR> http://blog.reddit.com/2008/06/reddit-goes-open-source.html

<comment><USER3> I'm a US-based journalist with a team of young, hungry, underemployed aggressive reporters at my disposal. Starting a new metro newspaper makes zero sense today, but launching a voting site for a city and then backing it up with a cadre of investigative reporters who would dig deeper into the stories that made the front page is something I've dreamed of getting off the ground for a while.

I was hoping Reddit's open code would give me the vehicle, but it's now clear that's not the case unless I get a hacker on my team. Any takers?

Pligg sucks. Drupal will work but it's kind of a pain. I'd been anxiously awaiting this announcement because I hoped the Reddit code would give us something to work with.

However when I visit code.reddit.com, all I see is stuff I don't understand. I'm no hacker, but I've developed Drupal and WP sites. However I don't know the foggiest about Python, Subversion or any of the other things listed under the dependencies. This is very disappointing. How do they expect their code to be deployed when it requires a hacker to set it up?

If anyone on here is interested in getting involved in what I believe would be a groundbreaking journalism effort, shoot me an e-mail at email@example.com

Note: I have no funding at all. Simply a concept and the means to launch a handful of trained journalists at news stories that merit more attention and follow-up. With all the talk of "citizen journalism", surely this could be an interesting way to tackle metro news, no?

<comment><USER4> If I were you, I'd start by creating a new sub-reddit for your city: <http://www.reddit.com/reddits/create>

Couple that with a Wordpress or MovableType blog for your own content, and you can at least get people working in the right direction.

<comment><USER3> I've thought about that. However, I think branding and having a sense of identity is very important, in fact, as this isn't a tech play, but a content and community play, I think it'd be crucial, so being on reddit.com or wordpress.com to me seems like we'd be shooting ourselves in the foot from the get-go. I'd have to have to hack a Pligg install, but that's about what it's come to at this point

<comment><USER5> Then use slinkset.com, customise it to your own tastes and with your own domain. That's what I did with news.ezlearnz.com.

<comment><USER3> What's the procedure like for "taking over" the domain. Cost? I don't see that info on their site.

Update: Nevermind. Found it. I'll look into it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is a great move. But it only makes sense after a community with momentum is in full swing. The community experience is the driving force behind reddit/digg/HN/mixx/slashdot/etc successes, not the technology.

<comment><USER7> > The community experience is the driving force behind > reddit/digg/HN/mixx/slashdot/etc successes, not the technology.

Slashdot only went open source after they gained a lead with their own instance of the code. Slashdot only went open source after increasing demand from its community. Since going open source, Slashdot has subsequently gained bug fixes and a much more scalable implementation at reduced cost. However, I cannot name any other instances or derivatives of the code which are active - not even Squishdot Zope clones.

So, if you've got a big archive of posts and a large number of active users then open sourcing your code only entrenches your position by reducing costs.

<comment><USER8> >However, I cannot name any other instances or derivatives of the code which are active

In Spain we have <http://barrapunto.com> much smaller but also using slashcode. IIRC there are also two more instances, one of them in Portugal.

Barrapunto added its own features for a long time, but they weren't incorporated to main branch, and after serious scalability and trolling problems arose, they reverted to regular slashcode.

<comment><USER7> > after serious scalability and trolling problems arose, they reverted to > regular slashcode.

That's very pertinent because reddit haven't released code to reduce spam:

From the article: There are a few portions of the code that we're keeping to ourselves, mostly related to anti-cheating/spam protection.

Anyone deploying their own instance of the reddit code will have to develop their own protection against spam, trolling and rigged voting.

<comment><USER9> I thought security by obscurity was wrong in _all_ cases :(

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Anyone find any clever ideas, designs, idioms in the code yet?

I'm not interested in starting a reddit clone, but am interested in reading interesting code. The one file I glanced through was readable, straightforward, and concise, the hallmarks of good Python style. That's a very good thing, but I'm wondering if they've done anything especially clever, or implemented anything generally applicable beyond the realm of discussion sites.

Not that they should. Clear, concise, readable, simple code that builds on existing, open code wherever possible is a wonderful recipe for success. But I'm still interested in whether they went beyond that anywhere.

<comment><USER11> Skimming the code now. Looks clean and DRY, maybe a bit define-happy. Definitely better than I'd have written it.

<comment><USER12> It was writeen in LISP first so a lot of defs make sense if just porting the code.

What's wrong with a lot of defs anyway?

<comment><USER11> Nothing wrong, it's a matter of taste. To me there are two kinds of code: "worker code" that does actual work, and "managerial code" that passes the buck. Lots of managerial code, deep call stacks, short extracted methods that are used only once etc. are heavy smells to me.

Not saying this is the case with the reddit codebase!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is neat. I always thought a hosted reddit/HN solution would be a good startup idea. Imagine a site where I could start my own reddit/HN type space with a unique url. I could then control who comes in (be it co-workers or friends) and have a place where we could all privately share links and start discussions. Great for companies, project groups, families, friends, etc...

I know I won't have time to build this, but I think somebody should.

<comment><USER14> _> a place where we could all privately share links and start discussions._

<http://slinkset.com/>

<comment><USER15> Also, corank.com

<comment><USER13> excellent. So no, don't make what I say.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Weirdly, they've refused to consider moving their source to github (1) citing that they want to "stay in control of their code." So for now their code is stuck with very weak community interaction. Even gitorious would have been a better choice than trac.

It's disappointing and puzzling.

1\. [http://groups.google.com/group/reddit- dev/browse_thread/thre...](http://groups.google.com/group/reddit- dev/browse_thread/thread/82b3608b7c351106)

<comment><USER17> Someone has, however, set up a GitHub mirror of the Reddit code. It's not official, but at least it's there. I understood their position, which could be boiled down to "Seriously, we don't have the time right this minute." As with anything that is new, it _would_ take time to understand what GitHub is, and what it does, if you had never looked into it before.

A lot of people are saying, "Oh, but it's so easy." The Reddit boys' point is that it may be easy, but it still takes greater than 0 time and effort. They either can't or do not want to, dedicate more than zero time and effort at this time. Their prerogative.

<comment><USER16> mileszs, what's more disappointing is that they did it the wrong way from the start. I fully understand the decision to wait awhile if you've got an established project and you want to slowly move it over. But the reddit guys didn't, and it's pretty clear they did basically no git homework before proceeding with this.

That would be bad enough on its own, but then they handled the response really poorly. This "we don't have time" response was the sane cap on the mouth of a bottle of crazy agitated mailing list messages from a different maintainer saying strange things. It's pretty likely they never even considered it before someone mentioned it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Line 298 in r2/r2/config/middleware.py:

#god this shit is disorganized and confusing

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Or, if you just want the code:

<http://code.reddit.com/>

</comment><comment><USER19> I'd be more interested to see the old Lisp implementation.

</comment><comment><USER20> big boost to the pylons community.

good pylons code to learn from, written by smart dudes, working at a large scale.

hats off to reddit!

<comment><USER21> might want to read the code before saying its "good" pylons code.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Really curious what the algorithm looks like that moves stories up-and-down the page.

Anyone taken the time to unravel the great mystery behind it?

<comment><USER22> Woot! found the answer on a reddit thread. Copied and pasted from a commenter:

      def hot(ups, downs, date):
      s = score(ups, downs)
      order = log(max(abs(s), 1), 10)
      sign = 1 if s > 0 else -1 if s < 0 else 0
      seconds = epoch_seconds(date) - <USER2>
      return round(order + sign * seconds / 45000, 7)

"score" is just (upvotes - downvotes). This is then log normalised.

"seconds" is the number of seconds that have elapsed since around 1.46am on 8th Dec 2005.

"sign" just ensures a positive value.

45000 seconds is 12.5 hours. I don't understand.... that looks like hotness increases the older the story is. I know brackets aren't needed but they help readability!"

<comment><USER4> There's a PGSQL "hot" function as well: <http://code.reddit.com/browser/sql/functions.sql>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> pretty cool

wonder how long it will take for the flood of clones. i can see it now:

"now that they're open source, i can build that reddit clone for elite tech and startup news that i've always wanted to build"

<comment><AUTHOR> I think there will be an initial flood of clones, but only maybe 3 or 4 semi- successful ones. Remember how everyone said there would be a billion Slashdots when Slashcode was open sourced?

<comment><USER24> I concur. Several years ago I wrote a "clone" of MetaFilter (which was quite popular at the time) called FreeFilter. A bunch of *Filter sites sprung up with only a few actually "sticking." I don't believe any continue to exist now though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> >There are a few portions of the code that we're keeping to ourselves, mostly related to anti-cheating/spam protection.

I can understand why they want to keep these hidden but on the other hand these would be some of the juiciest bits. Oh well. I hope one day people can come up with an algorithms that doesn't rely on 'security by obscurity' to deal with spam/cheating - I know I've tried.

</comment><comment><USER26> Perhaps pg releasing the source to Hacker News was a trial run for Reddit? Or the Reddit guys were inspired by it?

</comment><comment><USER27> Look at this link <a href="[http://www.kolbrenerusa.com/blog/index.php/2007/12/04/50-top...](http://www.kolbrenerusa.com/blog/index.php/2007/12/04/50-top- niche-social-media-sites-and-their-power-accounts/)"> 50 Top Niche Social Media Sites, and Their Power Accounts </a>

there are plenty of niche clones

</comment><comment><USER28> Thanks, guys. Really nice job.

</comment><comment><USER29> such simple site ... so many technologies it uses. this can happen only to python :)

</comment><comment><USER30> Will twitter follow suit?</comment>