Smartglasses: no camera, controlled from a ring - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/focals-smart-glasses-with-alexa/ <comment><AUTHOR> Weirdly difficult to find their website [https://www.bynorth.com/](https://www.bynorth.com/)

specs [https://www.bynorth.com/tech](https://www.bynorth.com/tech) Doesn't mention display resolution

Qualcomm APQ8009w [https://www.qualcomm.com/products/snapdragon- wear-3100-platf...](https://www.qualcomm.com/products/snapdragon- wear-3100-platform) "Snapdragon Wear 3100": quad A7, 1.2GHz (max), Adreno 304, 640x480 (max...)

</comment><comment><USER2> The headline is answered by the header image: nope. The arms of those glasses are massive!

<comment><AUTHOR> yeah, I would consider putting the guts in a lanyard or in a pocket (connected by wire if bluetooth isn't fast/bandwidthy enough). But the projector may be too big by itself anyway. Magic Leap considered a kind of fibre-optic cable.

Another approach is to target usages where bulky headhear is already acceptable, e.g. helmets (cycling, go-pro-like extreme sports, construction hard-hats etc), googles (welders, scuba, WWI aircraft).

I think that kind of application is where smartglasses are presently maturing.

I like the ring concept though, like nintendo switch joy-cons, but even tinier.</comment></comment>


Who's in this picture with President Obama? - <AUTHOR> http://www.flickr.com/photos/whitehouse/5455525432/lightbox/ <comment><USER2> Look at the last photo in the stream:

" _P021711PS-0659

President Barack Obama talks with Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg before a dinner with Technology Business Leaders in Woodside, California, Feb. 17, 2011. Also pictured, left to right, are Carol Bartz, Yahoo! President and CEO; Art Levinson, Genentech Chairman and former CEO; Steve Westly, Founder and Managing Partner, The Westly Group; and Eric Schmidt, Executive Chairman and CEO of Google._"

</comment><comment><USER3> Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page, Carly Fiorina

</comment><comment><USER4> See also: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2236093>

</comment><comment><USER5> And John Doerr (Kleiner Perkins) in front of the flowers on the LHS

</comment><comment><USER6> Larry Ellison directly across the table from Obama

</comment><comment><USER5> Is that Eric Schmidt front left ?

<comment><USER7> Looks like him.</comment></comment>


How I Sold My Company to Twitter, Went to Facebook, and Screwed My Co-Founders - <AUTHOR> https://backchannel.com/tuesday-april-5-2011-6c783a5dce42?source=rss----d16afa0ae7c---4 <comment><USER2> Let say the angels and YC had 15%-20% leaves just under 30% per founder. So, he went from 10m to 5m so he coud work at facebook intested of twitter. Which at 30% of 5m equals 1.5m. Plus, seems like he could have probably climbed higher at twitter in the org.</comment>


Designers Complaining about iOS7 - <AUTHOR> http://designerscomplaining.tumblr.com/ <comment><USER2> Having played around with iOS7 a bit, I can say that I mostly like the new interface. Even the new icons if you ignore the Safari one - something really must have gone wrong there - it feels totally out of place for me.

OTOH, this is the first beta out of probably many (considering how stable thing thing currently is - jokingly I'm telling my colleagues that it's as stable as the average Android phone now), so we might still see some changes there.

Of course, the thing that sold iOS 7 to me is the fact that you can finally place the unused and empty newsstand in a folder :-)

<comment><USER3> Your "joke" would have some element of humor to it if there were any instability at all with current (or last year, or the year before) Android phones. Amazing how that little bit of irrelevant swill diminishes an entire post.

<comment><USER4> My Galaxy Nexus was riddled with terrible problems. I love Android and am not trolling. Android still has stability issues.

Unfortunately, my phone was stolen yesterday and now I'm back to using a dumbphone until I can find something better.

<comment><USER3> These sorts of anecdotes always appear. Here's mine -- Currently have a Galaxy S3 and a Nexus 4. Previously had a Galaxy S2 and Galaxy Glide. Prior to that had a Nexus One. Prior to that had a HTC G1 and G2.

The last time there was any system instability _at all_ was early in the life of the Nexus One. The OS has been absolutely rock solid since.

Of course apps crash on occasion, just as they crash on my 3rd gen iPad and 5th gen iPod Touch. The system stability ruse, however, is noise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> iOS 7 is the first time that I have seen such arrogant designer elitism ever. If someone does not like the new style, they are of course _objectively_ wrong because _every good human knows_ that Helvetica is without fault, and so are low-contrast flat colours. If you disagree, you should feel bad and obsolete. Oh and be sure to mention stitched leather even though iOS6 didn't ever have that on the phone.

Note that many of the quoted people are not even angry. They are just saying they don't like it, sometimes giving reason. Let's shame this scum! LOL it's just Forstall posting under fake names anyway!

<comment><USER6> Who exactly is saying that? I haven't seen anyone say that the iOS7 design is objectively brilliant, just that it's here and everyone has to adjust to it- complaining about it is going to achieve next to nothing because Apple is rarely interested in community feedback.

In all honesty, most of the comments I have seen simply reflect the fact that (warning: generalisation approaching) iOS designers have been on a high horse about how iOS's design is superior to all other platforms, and are now being forced to re-evaluate that stance after Apple has rejected that design.

<comment> Cooler-gent @Gruber: If you don't think iOS 7 is beautiful, I don't know what to say to you.

[https://twitter.com/gruber/status/344179342764568577](https://twitter.com/gruber/status/344179342764568577)

<comment><USER7> ...says a guy entirely reliant on his influence in the Apple marketspace up to and including his newly released software application only available on the Apple App Store?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm sorry but it really does look very bad. This [http://dribbble.com/shots/1109343-iOS-7-Redesign/attachments...](http://dribbble.com/shots/1109343-iOS-7-Redesign/attachments/140304) redesign shows how much better it could be.

<comment><USER9> This designer gets the weather icon correct - the gradient should go in the same direction as the sunrise & sunset - lighter at the horizon, darker above.

<comment><USER10> Logically, it should be a radial gradient with the light end centered on the sun and the dark end away from it. Ideally, all icons should look like they're lit from above for consistency (light end of gradient at top, dark at bottom). Having some buttons lit from above and some lit from below (or some bulging out and some carved inwards) looks terrible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Same thing happens anytime Facebook changes their layout. After a month of using iOS 7, these people will forget what it used to look like.

</comment><comment><USER12> What's funny about this situation is that most of these designers have probably not even tried iOS 7 and they are already judging the design. All of this coming after Apple emphasized the fact that "design is how it works, not how it looks". I agree that there is room for improvement in the design, but I am starting to sense some elitism and bandwagoning from the design community.

<comment><USER13> _I am starting to sense some elitism and bandwagoning from the design community._

Starting to? That's kind of what the cutting edge of design is all about. When a design advances past certain middle of the road thresholds of usability and tolerably it become more and more just a matter of personal taste. When a bandwagon (or pieces of it) has appeal, it becomes a wider trend. It's still a bandwagon though, styles in the 1980's are(/were?) the go-to example of things that appealed to tastes at the time but are laughable in retrospect.

Design is important in giving products pleasant appearances and interactions, but it's also capable of turning people insufferable. [http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-57508907-71/at-apple-hq- ey...](http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-57508907-71/at-apple-hq-eye-for- design-extends-to-mens-room/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Apple didn't innovate.

They are following the trends set by others (Microsoft and Google) and I think that is what is infuriating designers.

</comment><comment><USER14> Can a designer please explain to me what's so bad about the new iOS 7 UI?

(FWIW, I still think the IRIX Indigo Magic Desktop is pretty good looking.)

<comment><USER7> It's not that there is anything wrong with it, it's just not very "innovative"

The new design can be classified as a "Flat UI" a recent movement in interface design where things like reflective surfaces, borders, and photo-realistic elements are eschewed in favor of a minimalist, iconographic look with bold coloring offsetting neutrally colored text. The aesthetic was heavily popularized by Microsoft in Windows 8 when they introduced the Metro UI. Google also picked up on the aesthetic in their redesign of their web services as well as recent iterations of the Android OS.

Apple has always been the darling of the design community so for them to be late to the party leaves the Apple faithful with a bit of egg on their face. How dare Microsoft dictate what is cool in a world where everything Apple makes is the very definition of hip.

Not only that, there are several major faux paus in the unveiled design that designers are having fits over. Many of the icons in the default interface lack a consistency across different parts of the iOS (like the camera). Any sort of organic rhythm is lost in the palette and seen as jarring. Worst of all, the prized "golden ratio" that Apple has been well known for in their design seems to be gone.

To people who pay that kind of attention to things like this, its an unmitigated disaster.

PS: Also, skeuomorphism. Because it was horrible until Apple got rid of it, apparently.

<comment><USER14> Thanks for this explanation. It's exactly what I was looking for.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I've been playing around with iOS7 for a few hours and a lot of the issues could be addressed in the next 3 months. Someone should do a redesign like that guy did for the NSA slides[1]. I think the color palette is taking all of the spotlight away from the key technical updates. Even though the updates are features that Android and WinMo users have had for a while, many iOS users are only getting these for the first time. This is a first cut and there is still three months to clean it up.

[1] - [http://fr.slideshare.net/EmilandDC/dear-nsa-let-me-take- care...](http://fr.slideshare.net/EmilandDC/dear-nsa-let-me-take-care-ou)

</comment><comment><USER16> All the images that Apple has posted so far (unless I've missed some) seem to use the white iPhone, with a blue/pastel background. I'm curious to see how the icons look in different contexts.

<comment><USER17> I have a white iPhone, so I can't answer that side of your question, but the icon labels change color according to the background (i.e, a dark background gets white labels, a light background gets black ones).

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I haven't seen this new design, but one thing I noticed with the flat design trend is that too many strong colors are used, and this causes fatigue in the long run; for example I noticed this in the latest updates to gmail on android.

But I also guess that with a flat design it is inevitable to resort more to color to differentiate your design elements.

</comment><comment><USER19> I like most of the new flat design but let's be fair those icons are objectively terrible.

<comment><USER20> Agreed. The icons are easiest part of a redesign to redo and implement tho, and designers on Dribbble have already posted versions that are significantly better. Apple's design team has a few months to fix things up and I'm confident that they will.

[http://dribbble.com/shots/1109343-iOS-7-Redesign/attachments...](http://dribbble.com/shots/1109343-iOS-7-Redesign/attachments/140192)

<comment><USER21> > The icons are easiest part of a redesign to redo and implement tho

Agreed, but that's why it's so puzzling that these icons were released in the first place. If they're the easiest to do and redo, they should be the easiest to get right.

Also, the iOS 7 video spoke of their new "harmonious" grid system used to design the icons. So I'm unconvinced that the powers-that-be at Apple believe they need fixing.

<comment><USER20> This is a new style for their designers, and I'm not surprised the visual design still needs some work. This is analogous to a developer learning a new framework - it takes time to learn it and get things right.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> If you can get past the icons, the UI itself appears to be much improved. Just looking at the compass app it's much clearer to glance at and get your information without the Master and Commander design of the old one getting in the way.

</comment><comment><USER23> A lot of people are objecting to the color palette, like which gradients Apple choose to use. Well, you don't accidentally make the iTunes store icon purple. That's a deliberate choice Apple made to be bold.

</comment><comment><USER24> iOS7 design is weak, with reason. This page is just quoting tweets, but there many in-depth criticism on the many obvious flaws everywhere on the blogosphere.

From the objective to the subjective:

\- Complete redesign makes it too different from iOS 6 and OS X, throws away all learnability

\- Icons have no consistency whatsoever

\- Toolbar icons are so abstract as to be useless

\- Legibility suffers from Helvetica Light on bright white, everywhere

\- Got rid of affordances, you don't know what is a button anymore (same mistake as WP and some Google apps)

\- Control panel is a mess

\- Color palette is poor and tacky. You have a true to life display to work with, but limit yourself to primary and secondary, over-saturated hues... just stupid

To be fair, usability increased in many places as in multi-tasking and better use of gesture, although that's hardly innovation - they are just copying tried and true interactions from software both on iOS platform (e.g. Gmail for iOS, Mailbox) and others (webOS, Android).

Overall the UI looks like designed by someone who designs print media and has no clue what they are doing.

This article wraps it up: [https://medium.com/i-m- h-o/275a56688510](https://medium.com/i-m-h-o/275a56688510)

<comment><USER25> I agree. The more I use it, the more I dislike it. I'm not a designer, but having worked with several for extended periods, I guess their attention to detail has rubbed off on me. The initial welcome screen on iOS 6 was cool and usable. The new one on iOS 7 kinda just dumps you on a parade of "welcome" without any clear indication on what to do next. So I tapped. And clicked. Then I swiped around. Until, bingo, I found the correct swipe direction. Ditto with the initial lock screen. [https://vine.co/v/blZZqDX9dA2](https://vine.co/v/blZZqDX9dA2) (this is not me).

I was hoping for a common design language, but there really isn't one. [http://i.imgur.com/zdMBUGT.png](http://i.imgur.com/zdMBUGT.png)

As someone on reddit said, it looks like a Chinese knockoff of iOS running on Android.

*Oh yeah and the new calendar. Looks great, but now you can't see if you have any events coming up from the calendar view...Ok...That's a step backwards.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I think I'm missing the point - is this supposed to suggest that these people complaining have no right to do so unless they're also elite designers?

</comment><comment><USER27> Why are all iOS7 screenshots using the iPhone? I suspect iOS7's excessively- detailed icons will look better on a big screen device like the iPad.

<comment><USER28> The first beta of iOS 7 is only available for iPhone. I'm guessing they're not done with the iPad version yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I think if you are going to throw out criticism like this and you yourself are a designer then you should provide some samples of your own work for critique; in an ideal world each would provide their own 'superior' iOS design, or at the minimum a design for a particular feature (icons, use of color, etc).

<comment><USER24> You don't have to bring your own theories to point flaws in a particular one. You just have to point at an inconsistency. iOS7 has plenty.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I like the new look, not sure what all the fuzz is about. Looks very artistic, specially safari. I prefer this to having lots of detail and shadows in a small icon, that can be left to the app developer. I'm not an iphone user but I'd definitely use one.

</comment><comment><USER7> The new design cues are more of a technical issue to me than an aesthetic one.

Darker themed phones consume less energy...on more modern screen hardware. While an LCD backlight draws the same power regardless of the colors on screen, AMOLED does not. In fact, AMOLED and a red only profile grants you an amazing device for night use; be it astronomy, reading, etc. because it does not dilate your eyes.

Not only that, AMOLED is the current frontrunner in engineering design to allow for an "infinite bezel" where you aren't sure where the screen ends and the edge begins.

By switching to this bright white look in IOS7, Apple has all be publicly admitted that the next several years will continue to be dominated by LCD technology that drags the progress of screen technology and cost down.

</comment><comment><USER31> "Design is not just how something looks; it's about how it works." \- Steve Jobs, Sir Jony Ive, Dieter Rams and every other half-decent designer worth a damn

<comment><USER7> I'm not sure if you are offering this as a counterpoint; but "not just" seems to reaffirm the point that how it looks still matters.

<comment><USER31> I think it looks fine. The icons only need to be proportioned a little better with regards to the grid they used for the designs, and the translucency could be dialed down slightly.

Other than that, it looks great. It's amazing how nobody complains about the preschool look of Windows Phone 8, but when iOS icons have a slight disproportion to them, everybody loses their minds.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> As a founder who also does our customer support, I got a big chuckle out of this. Its amazing how many people have such visceral reactions to change.

</comment><comment><USER33> The screenshots I've seen so far remind me of nothing so much as Windows XP.

</comment><comment><USER34> Funny how it is almost a complete copy of every feature already existent in Android and WP8. They are playing catch-on and it is going too well it seems.

</comment><comment> at-fates-hands Is this how the smartphone OS market is going to go now? Companies imitating other companies design?

Besides WP7 and WP8's interface, there really hasn't been a huge leap in this space for a while. Is this because companies are simply following the market leader and playing it safe?

<comment><USER35> when has this not been the case? heck, iOS was just a less-useful PalmOS clone at the start (with better default apps and hardware).

<comment> at-fates-hands Am I being too optimistic in thinking these interfaces could be a lot better than they are?

It's the copying of what seems like mediocrity is what I was trying to get across.

<comment><USER35> No, I very much think they could be better :) And tbh, I'm not all that much of a fan of the iOS7 changes, but I'll have to wait and see how it all works together. Screenshots are usually poor examples of a system as a whole.

As to copying mediocrity, what's the best flat style out there now? Or are you referring to flat styles in general? I would expect improvements through iteration, but I can't recall seeing any _great_ flat-ish UIs. I think Windows 8 / phone 7 has some great concepts (live tiles) but poor execution (live tiles, button == label visually). Android is overall decent (though those neon underlines are a bit odd) but they're not very consistent. Individual app implementations are sometimes awe-inspiringly well done but don't necessarily scale up to an OS as a whole.

I'm not sure there's anything _but_ mediocrity right now, similar to when Apple got into the phone market (with something relatively mediocre).</comment></comment></comment></comment>


From Investor Carl Icahn: If at first you don't succeed, sue!  - <AUTHOR> http://www.news.com/Razr-thin-margins-in-Motorola-strategic-divide/2100-1036_3-6155969.html

<comment><USER2> This is a bit old: "Published: February 5, 2007"</comment>


Parqyt Parking in San Francisco and soon to be all over - <AUTHOR> http://www.parqyt.com
Hello Everyone, we will soon be launching our "General Parking" model. I really hate to use "We are X for X", but to keep things short we are "Airbnb for Parking". I know this has been tried in San Francisco and is currently happening in various parts of the United States. What divides us from them, is our availability to advertise your parking space for various situations: Metered, Daily, Monthly, Long-Term, and Events, our bread and butter. Please check us out, we aren't fully ready for General but check us out and start hosting for events nearby!
Thank You <comment><USER2> The concept was tried in SF and shut down.

[https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/235575](https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/235575)</comment>


Judge: NSA doesn't have to keep all data as part of key surveillance lawsuit - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/06/judge-nsa-doesnt-have-to-keep-all-data-as-part-of-key-surveillance-lawsuit/

<comment><USER2> So, "collect it all" ... unless you're in court, in which case it's okay to delete key evidence because it's "hard" to keep evidence?

Snark aside, this part made me curious:

 _the NSA may have to shut down all systems and databases that contain Section 702 information in order to preserve [it]_

Is this really just a technical problem: a system design that failed to anticipate how legal proceedings would / could interact with the minimization feature? (Of course, they probably never expected the former.)

<comment><USER3> > Snark aside

Is it really snark? Cops pull the "missing evidence" stunt all the time and get away with it, why should we expect different from the NSA (now that they're playing at being a law enforcement agency)?

> Is this really just a technical problem

I wouldn't go so far as to say this happened by design, but at the end of the day does it really matter? Opportunistic evil is still evil, and this opportunity dangles the temptation of opportunistic evil in front of a group of people that don't exactly have a sterling track record of self-restraint in such matters.

EDIT (re:downvoters): I realize that the court order has more to do with the ongoing court case than ongoing retention policy. That doesn't make ongoing retention policy irrelevant.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The NSA program is too big for due process.

Yes, having to preserve all that stuff is a big burden when you already have do a 72h rollover given the immense amounts of data being collected. It's as if the people designing this didn't exactly account for the possibility of judicial inquiry.

<comment><USER5> Do civilian webmasters or Dev/Ops personnel typically retain all the data they transmit or receive along with the metadata as well?

That's what I'm still confused about here; why couldn't the court order the NSA to retain some set of metadata on the 702 programs they are running? Why does this entire argument revolve around the binary decision of _all possibly relevant_ data and metadata or none of it?

Even if NSA has to filter heaps and heaps of metadata (which is the "data" for their system), they could easily retain summary information of what data was filtered, whether it's filtered by subnet, identifier, etc.

As made clear in the past year by both NSA and EFF, metadata can reveal a lot about the activities of a person (or in this case, an Agency). I think it would make more sense for the EFF to push for specific items to be retained by NSA for civil discovery instead of "all NSA intake via 702".

<comment><USER6> Because Rule 26 of the _Federal Rules for Civil Procedure_ , which governs discovery, specifically rule 26(b)(1) is quite broad in scope, and even sanitizing it of non-privileged information (most likely classified data in this context) could allow outside parties to make structural inferences that would compromise intelligence gathering activities.

As a cheesy example, suppose I have files that note the existence of Alice, Bob, Carol, and Donald, and suppose furthermore that I suspect Carol of being a spy. You object to my surveillance activities and ask discovery of same. My evidence that Carol is a spy may be obviously privileged, but if I give you my files on Alice, Bob, and Donald it's easy to guess that I view Carol as somehow different from the others.

Now, I could in theory furnish minimal information on Carol that would not clearly distinguish her from the other three, but that puts the Executive Branch in the awkward position of making judgments about what degree of truth it is appropriate to provide, which is the sort of thing that is properly the province of the Judicial Branch. So the Executive Branch argues that compliance would necessarily mean an abrogation of Judicial Branch functions if it is not to impair he Executive Branch's lawful security function, and now you've got a separation-of-powers problem.

What happens in many cases and _may_ happen in this one, is that if there isn't a clear legal principle which guides the balance of the interests the Court may review the material in question and decide exactly what should be handed over and what can be retained, which decision might then be appealed to higher court by one party or the other.

<comment><USER5> Good points, all. It would probably be easier to argue about particulars if EFF had suggested any (though maybe they've made such feelers already in private).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Oceania here we come.

</comment><comment><USER8> so... the government can force carpathia to spend thousands of dollars a day, but can't manage to keep its own data intact?</comment>


Show HN: I built a tool to test gRPC through a browser base GUI - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/oslabs-beta/Yodelay <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN: I've been around HN since 2011 and this is my first dive into gRPC. This tool is still in beta, but I'm happy to share it with everyone, it's been an amazing learning process. I'm happy to answer any questions or take any suggestions. Also, follow our progress on github!</comment>


Gitflow – Animated in React - <AUTHOR> https://veerasundar.com/blog/2018/03/gitflow-animated/ <comment><USER2> Thanks! A command log would be really helpful too.

The HubFlow docs contain GitFlow docs and some really helpful diagrams: [https://datasift.github.io/gitflow/IntroducingGitFlow.html](https://datasift.github.io/gitflow/IntroducingGitFlow.html)

I change the release prefix to 'v' so that the git tags for the release look like 'v0.0.1' and 'v0.1.0':

      git config --replace-all gitflow.prefix.versiontag v
      git config --replace-all hubflow.prefix.versiontag v

I usually use HubFlow instead of GitFlow because it requires there to be a Pull Request; though GitFlow does work when offline / without access to GitHub.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure.. will add the command log</comment></comment>


Bank of America website disrupted for 4th day in a row - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/10/03/bank_of_america_website_outage/ <comment><USER3> > Friday's disruption came the same day that BofA said it would begin charging > customers $5 per month for purchases billed to their debit card.

Does anyone have more details on this? The units don't seem to match in "per month for purchases" - like, $5 per purchase? $5 a month? $5 a month, but only on months in which you make at least one purchase?

And for heaven's sake, why?

<comment><USER4> Five dollars a month, for any month in which you use your debit card for purchases.

As for the "why", the immediate reason is because there have been some legal changes vis a vis how much they can charge to the merchant for the benefit of running this transaction.

More generally, because they want to incentivize people to use their credit cards instead of debit cards. And for those who can't or don't want to get credit cards -- to incentivize them to take their business elsewhere, because the bank really doesn't make any money off people who just have checking accounts. Checking accounts are merely a gateway drug to more expensive banking products.

Doesn't bother me, I get 1% cash back on my credit card and am not dumb enough to spend more than I earn on it, so I already have no incentive to use my debit card for purchases.

<comment><USER5> I'm annoyed at this, but I probably won't switch. I rarely use my debit card to make purchases, since I have a BoA credit card with reward points - <USER2> I've heard that debit card fraud is more difficult to combat.

Do most people shop with their debit card?

<comment><USER6> In Canada we do.

I think the reliance on credit cards is largely an American phenomenon.

<comment><USER7> In Canada, people don't use Visa or Mastercard Debit cards. They use Interac, a Canadian financial network that only charges a flat fee of ~0.25 per debit card transaction. You can't use them for online purchasing although. Most Canadian's are surprised when you can use a debit card like a credit card for online purchases.

<comment><USER8> The phrasing of your last two sentences is unclear, but to clarify for those reading, you can indeed use Interac debit cards for online payments.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> FYI: I don't know where their mobile app is pointing too but it works perfectly fine

<comment><USER5> For me, it's always been incredibly slow, and stateless - e.g., if I use it to find a nearby ATM, and switch over to the Google Maps app, and go back to the BoA app - it forces me to start all over - it takes about 3 minutes for it to finally find an ATM near me.

I've given up and just started searching for 'bank of america' in the Maps app.

(iPhone app, 3gs.)

<comment><USER10> > if I use it to find a nearby ATM, and switch over to the Google Maps app, > and go back to the BoA app - it forces me to start all over

They fixed this is the latest release. It now will keep you logged in as long as the app hasn't been kicked out of memory (which is not up to them). On a 3GS that might be sooner than you'd like, but has been working for me on my 4.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> oh man. so they use he.net, too?

(I kid, but it's been a pretty horrible week for DoS attacks there, too.)

</comment><comment><USER12> First bank e-run ?</comment>


Backstory: An Adventure in Lean Software Design - <AUTHOR> http://paislee.io/backstory-an-adventure-in-lean-software-design/

<comment><USER2> Seemingly small, arbitrary selection of stories. Nothing on Bill C-51 for instance.

Allowing user submissions and linking all the submissions together would create user-interest rather than whatever being reported as focus areas.</comment>


Plivo Rolls Out Free Trial Account that Lets You Do Voice Calls and SMS - <AUTHOR> http://plivo.com/blog/free-trial-account-that-lets-you-do-voice-calls-and-sms/

<comment><USER2> Quick comment about the signup procedure; just finished the sign up and phone number verification, and I'm wondering why I have to enter the '+' in front of the country code and area code. Your signup form is smart enough to notice it's missing and let me know to enter it...so why isn't it smart enough to see that it's missing the leading '+' and just tack it on?

Reminds me a bit of entering a credit card number into a form, only to have the validation tell me that spaces aren't allowed.

</comment><comment><USER3> We use Plivo at 7 Cups of Tea. They are great and I highly recommend them.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Glen for the kind words :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is great news, thanks guys!

Are there really no limitations on the number of calls and text messages? I imagine many businesses and other use cases could operate indefinitely with a single phone number and unlimited calls/texts, so what's preventing 10,000+ customers from never paying a cent, or even reselling your service to others?

<comment><USER5> @sparky You're correct, we are very aware of that risk, so we do have an algorithm in place to deter people from abusing the system. With that said, most users would not get to that limit with regular use while developing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Does 'trial account' mean that it's free only for a limited duration?

<comment><USER5> Free trial is for life :)

<comment><USER6> Awesome! Thanks for this!

<comment><USER5> Anytime!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Very cool. Just been testing the SMS and text-to-speech API (via their node.js helper libraries) and it's working well.

</comment><comment><USER8> Can I use the SMS API with this free trial?

<comment><USER5> Yes, you can definitely do that. However, the your caller ID will be that of the phone number assigned to you. Upgraded accounts will have the ability to customize their caller ID.

<comment><USER8> OK, is pricing the same for sending SMS with the trial? Sorry I'm having a hard time figuring out what is free.

<comment><USER5> the price for sending out an SMS is technically the same for the trial account, but you won't be paying for it :)

<comment><USER5> @tehwebguy Yes, that's right. We want you to use Plivo to the fullest.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is a competitor to Twilio, yes?

<comment><USER5> Indeed we are in the same space as Twilio. However, we do have quite a number of differences. On the technical side, we have dedicated hardware for our media, which means that our call qualities are consistently great and drastically increases the number calls which can happen concurrently on our box. Our framework is also written on FreeSwitch, an open-source telephony platform. On the non-technical side offer 24/7 chat support at no extra cost and competitive pricing that just gets better with higher volumes. :)

<comment><USER10> Definitely like that you guys have your own hardware termination vs where Twilio is just terminating to Level3's gear.

<comment><USER11> Thanks for the confidence. We think that decoding/encoding of audio on dedicated hardware works best for call quality and we are really focussed on doing that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> What happens to the $10 credit developer accounts that was offered before?

<comment><USER13> Hi @chinmoy. It's DH from Plivo here.

Interesting question: your old Developer account actually had more limitations than the new Free Trial accounts. For example, you couldn't have made outbound voice calls to regular numbers via PSTN.

You can check out the full comparison here: [http://plivo.com/faq/basics/whats-the-difference-between- fre...](http://plivo.com/faq/basics/whats-the-difference-between-free-trial- account-and-developer-account/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> No possibility of receiving SMS?

<comment><USER13> Hi, yes you can. You need to append a 'message url' to your Plivo app:

check out the message section at [http://plivo.com/docs/xml/request/](http://plivo.com/docs/xml/request/)

<comment><USER14> Oh ok, its just not very clear unlike twilio

edit: those api docs are as clear as mud, no example on how to receive an SMS</comment></comment></comment>


How I hacked unverified Facebook accounts  - <AUTHOR> http://hak-it.blogspot.com/2014/05/how-i-hacked-your-unverified-facebook.html <comment><USER2> I love seeing posts like this that go into the blackhat but executed properly sort of things. The fact you exposed it, went through the bounty program, and shared the knowledge is great. It just continues to give insight into other firms as to how they can prevent such burning issues. Great post, thanks :)

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the appreciation mate!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm surprised they didn't have some kind of request throttling to stop you trying 100 codes a second.

<comment><USER3> Exactly, mate!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> 1\. Codes should be like passwords. If they're guessable, they're no good. 2\. All operations, including signing in, verifying the account, etc should be rate shaped. The more you try, the longer you have to wait till you can try again.

<comment><USER3> and it was missing on facebook. That was the issue

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Could you elaborate on the countermeasures taken? The takeaway seems to be: 1. rate limit the "verify you email" requests, and 2. have enough entropy for the activation codes.

Another possibility is also not to log the user in after successful activation (i.e., mark the email as active, but don't give access to the account), but I've never seen anyone behaving like this.

Moreover, sensitive operations, like changing settings or deleting the account, should be password-protected (so that, even if logged in, the attacker couldn't damage too much).

Anything else that I'm missing?

<comment><USER3> Kindly refer to the comments in the post itself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I really don't get this... Maybe I'm just not clever enough, but this is referring to verification of the email address, right?

I wonder how many users don't ever verify their email address though... Couldn't facebook instead just make you verify it? i.e. not allow / limit use of service until you've verified your email address?

</comment><comment><USER8> Attempted to comment but it just clears the form without doing anything it seems (perhaps stuck in mod queue? If so, it's invisible).

What I wanted to ask is what info Facebook wants from you before paying out, besides your Paypal email address of course.

<comment> Marshall-scales don't know but it must be bad coz everyone wants money these days

<comment><USER3> Is "wanting money" bad? Or the write up is bad? OR the humanity is bad? Please make yourself clearer!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> What's so secret about the value of the bounty that it has to be spoilered?

<comment><USER3> Privacy issues. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> you can replace your python code with:

       $ seq -w -s "\n" 99999 > outfile.txt

also, burp has a generator built into the intruder to create these types of payloads. it is very powerful.

</comment><comment><USER11> How did you delete accounts by confirming their email address?

<comment><USER3> attacker gets hold of the account associated with the email. If you associated an email with another account, the existing account was _deleted_</comment></comment>


How Robots and Algorithms Are Taking Over - <AUTHOR> http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2015/apr/02/how-robots-algorithms-are-taking-over/?insrc=toc

<comment><USER2> "... In fact, this is already happening, in part because programmers increasingly rely on 'self-correcting' code—that is, code that debugs and rewrites itself ..."

What on earth is the author talking about? I've never heard of self-correcting code, certainly never used it, and can't find a reasonable reference to it with a google search. Is he mistakenly referring to "Error-Correcting Code", that is, using redundancy in data storage or transmission to catch and correct for random bit flips?

<comment><USER3> Wow, my opinion of the editing process at the New York Review of Books has just dropped, by a lot. It's not just that it's a bizarre claim, but that it's also stated so matter-of-factly. Honestly, the writer probably talked to a coder friend who uses an IDE, and the way the coder described auto-completion and type-checking extensions sounded very much like "self-correcting" code.

No matter what you think of difficulties of the Turing halting problem, I'd say that writers depend --and can benefit -- far more on "self-correcting" writing (particularly auto-correct) than programmers do on self-correcting code.

<comment><USER4> I think you're overreacting. The author could well be talking about neural nets, deep learning, etc. We may choose to nitpick or discuss the overall point.

<comment><USER5> That could be the next part "machines that are able to learn on the job", but that's not "code that debugs and rewrites itself".

<comment><USER6> It's not a far stretch that laymen conflate "code" with "statistical learning algorithms."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's a hodge-podge of semi-accurate statements about very minor trends (minor in employment terms) and inaccurate statements that it's hard to critique. Check this partial paragraph with my thoughts as I read it:

"Meanwhile, algorithms are writing most corporate reports [What? what kind of reports are we talking about? At first I pictured those glossy end-of-year things for analysts, but maybe not, anyway - citation needed!] analyzing intelligence data for the NSA and CIA, [Analyzing? Or just winnowing hopefully significant items from oceans of chaff for real analysts to look at?] reading mammograms [OK, valid hit], grading tests [then why are teachers and professors always still bitching about the time they spend grading?] , and sniffing out plagiarism [valid, but only a minor adjunct to a professor's grading life]. Computers fly planes—Nicholas Carr points out that the average airline pilot is now at the helm of an airplane for about three minutes per flight [False impression, there has to be an awake and alert trained pilot at "the helm" 100% of the time regardless of the autopilot]—and they compose music [BAD music that nobody but a few academics ever listen to and that certainly does not sell] and pick which pop songs should be recorded based on which chord progressions and riffs were hits in the past [? that would explain a lot about current pop...]. Computers pursue drug development—a robot in the UK named Eve may have just found a new compound to treat malaria [yes there are interesting machines that try thousands of molecules to find ones that might work, but that in no way displaces any human bodies; these are NEW discoveries that wouldn't be made otherwise]—and fill pharmacy vials [as pick- and-pack machinery has been doing for decades]...

This article is a mess.

<comment><USER8> Your comment is a mess. Most of your "criticisms" seem to follow the logic that if you haven't personally seen it before, it doesn't exist.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Programming will probably look entirely different from what it looks like now in two decades, but I doubt it will be entirely replaced as a profession in that time. If it has, the singularity will have been started and everything will be entirely different anyways.

<comment><USER10> I think it's pretty foolish that most programmers assume they will always be "working above the api".

[http://rein.pk/replacing-middle-management-with- apis/](http://rein.pk/replacing-middle-management-with-apis/)

edit: To clarify, I think AI is the wrong question it's a question of the layers of abstraction and where it puts you in the labor force. Who cares what inhuman force is telling you what to do or how fast to do it?

<comment><USER9> I assume there will be no clear definition of where the API begins and where it ends when this happens. The various systems which employ humans will probably be mixture of AI and humans working together through multiple interfaces.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I have a hunch the author read someone's explanation of "machine learning algorithm" and the author changed it to "self-correcting code" along the way.

</comment><comment><USER12> This is supposed to be a book review, but seems to be mostly uninformed blithering by the reviewer.

Actual physical robots still aren't very good at dealing with the real world and cost too much. Progress is being made, but it's slow. Having been in the field, it's been discouraging how slow. Robot manipulation in unstructured environments is still very weak. "Pick up thing and put it somewhere" works reasonably well. Beyond that, performance is poor.

The robot cost problem is severe. Look at prices on industrial robots or intelligent farming equipment.

On the other hand, jobs which involve sitting at a desk and dealing with inputs and outputs which come in via wires (or paper, for retro outfits) are looking vulnerable. If they haven't been automated already. Computers are just so cheap now.

This leads to "Machines should think, people should work." Computers are better at organization and scheduling than humans. Humans are better at the grunt work, for now. Consider Uber. Or Amazon's order-fulfillment operations. It's not clear how far that concept will reach. HouseCall tried to do it for plumbers and repair services, but didn't get much traction. Uber is in a space where the product is uniform and the pricing model is simple. HouseCall is not.

After reading a review like this, it occurs to me that it's probably not too hard to write a program to review popular non-fiction books. Grind through the text. Run each chapter through a summarizer like the one that used to come with Microsoft Word. From the summary, find key phrases and look them up with Google. Find popular comments on the same subject from people with some notability. Look at the Amazon sales statistics and generate some prose using a modified business earnings story generator. Generate a clickbait title and feed into the Demand Media or AOL content mills.

</comment><comment><USER13> Articles like this, which I come across enough to have mental category for them, are hard to take seriously.

It seems to me that of the great problems facing the world that that this is not one of them. As opposed to vague hypothetical troubles down the road, there is no shortage of vexing problems clamoring for attention right now.

I think improvements to our political and economic systems, which are under direct human control, would pay big dividends.

To the extent automation is a malevolent force for humanity, it seems far more likely that the people and institutions who control this technology will be the ones who decide whether it is used for good or ill.

</comment><comment><USER14> "While these machines cannot think, per se, ..."

The author appears to have no idea that this might be a controversial statement.</comment>


Rumor: iPhone 5 Coming to T-Mobile Sept. 25th - <AUTHOR> http://www.tenfingercrunch.com/article/18/2011/09/11/rumor_iphone_5_coming_to_tmobile_sept_25th/

<comment><USER2> I doubt it, but stranger things have happened.

In their acquisition plans, AT&T has announced that T-Mobile's 3G frequencies are going away:

<http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D9M3LNPO0>

It seems silly to produce a 3G smartphone for the T-Mobile frequencies in this case.

</comment><comment><USER3> I won't violate the NDA, so I will only refer to public information as I attempt to disprove this rumor.

iOS 5 has several new features that are announced and relevant to developers. These were made public at the WWDC keynote. For instance, News Stand and iCloud have developer APIs.

The iPhone 5 will, if history is a guide, be running iOS 5. Generally new hardware requires the latest operating system.

Therefore, in order to have iOS 5 compatible apps, on the day that iOS 5 ships, Apple will have to open up submission for iOS 5 apps to developers some period of time in advance of when iOS 5 actually ships... so that the new apps, and the rush of revised apps, can get thru review.

In the past when that happened, places like macrumors, et. al. announced it.

So, whether the iPhone 5 will ship in 14 days or not depends on whether you think Apple will give developers at least 14 days to submit their iOS 5 compatible applications before shipping... or not, and whether you believe the lack of public reports that Apple has opened submissions for iOS 5 compatible apps is an indication that Apple hasn't yet done so.

Also, I was once accosted in a restaurant by a customer service rep for Verizon, a couple years before the iPhone came to verizon. He saw my iPod touch, assumed it was an iPhone and felt compelled to let me in on his inside information about when the next iPhone was going to ship. I knew he was wrong, I knew that Apple wouldn't announce it until WWDC, but what's the point in arguing with him? He felt like an insider because he worked for Verizon, so let him feel that way. But I think that low level customer facing employees at these carriers may not have the greatest jobs and may feel that they are privy to more special information than they actually are. We've often heard these kinds of rumors in the past....

<comment><USER4> I totally agree with all your nicely worded release comments.

"He felt like an insider because he worked for Verizon, so let him feel that way."

Whilst I too wouldn't have said anything, it's interesting to consider the number of people he may have said this to in the course of his work...

...Who then may have changed their buying intentions based on this false information.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Here is my rumor, the iphone5 will be available on all networks. Sort of like everyone else's phones always are.</comment>


Japan cyber security minister admits he has never used a computer - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/nov/15/japan-cyber-security-ministernever-used-computer-yoshitaka-sakurada <comment><USER2> > When Renho asked him how much funding the central government would > contribute to the 2020 Olympics and Paralympics, he responded: "1,500 yen", > which works out at just over $13, some way below the actual sum of 150 > billion yen.

</comment><comment><USER3> Reminds me how the leader of Japan's Central Bank bragged in 1989 he had never even purchased a single stock. He said this to show his independence from the stock market, which was (somewhat) understandable at the time.

Either way it ended in a 30 year depression that continues to this day.

[https://www.nytimes.com/1994/05/30/business/the-evolving- out...](https://www.nytimes.com/1994/05/30/business/the-evolving-outlook-of- japan-s-no-1-banker.html)

</comment><comment><USER4> Thanks, I was needing to feel a little better about the state of my country's government right now and this did the trick.

</comment><comment><USER5> I have no words other than 'WOW'.</comment>


Show HN: Explore related artists on spotify through a network of nodes - <AUTHOR> https://latitudediscover.herokuapp.com/ Made with the Spotify web API and vis.js <comment><USER2> Very cool! Couple thoughts - 1\. I noticed some artists get added a second time as the network expands, so some de-duplication may be needed? 2\. It could be interesting to (optionally) scale the node size or border width with respect to the node degree.. In particular for the nodes that were clicked on (and thus, have their degrees inflated).. this way it would be easy to spot artists that have a lot of connections just based on who else is currently displayed.

</comment><comment><USER3> I want the same but for twitter. I find twitter an important news gathering source for my daily activity, but it's biased. There's definitely a bubble in my feed. I'd love to explore other bubbles. Perhaps rather than having music as preview, it can have the "most influential tweets" one can quickly look at. Purpose is to find other relevant and reputable feeds to follow.

</comment><comment><USER4> How are the relationships determined? Is do those just come directly from the Spotify API? Is there some threshold user here to determine which ones show?

I ask because poking around I noticed what I thought were some strange absences, such as one band not showing a relationship to other bands that share members.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah they come from what spotify considers a related artist, usually 10-15 artists that appear as suggestions

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is awesome. It seems like it provides the best info if I search for an artist I know, then click two more artist I know. Then I get a grouping of artists inside a triangle that are similar to those three, most of which I haven't heard of.

</comment><comment><USER6> This is neat! It gets a bit too cluttered when I'm just trying to look at new artists though, maybe make a click listen to the artist, but maybe double click to 'expand' them? Good stuff either way!

<comment><USER7> Seconded (on all counts). This is a really huge UI improvement to be able to see genre tag and quickly hear a sample. I like eatwater123's idea of double click to expand, or perhaps just give the option to unexpand a node?

<comment><USER8> Mine got overcluttered and started to loose its marbles failing to find an equilibrium. Apart from that it's great.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> Very cool! Couple quick thoughts:

1\. I noticed some artists get added multiple times, so some deduplication may be needed. 2\. Perhaps you could (optionally) scale the node sizes or border widths with their degrees?

</comment><comment><USER9> Suggestion: Put a sentence at the top, or at least a label saying to enter an artist name.

Would make this easier to send to other people, which I'm doing right now because it's really awesome.

</comment><comment><USER10> Can make it play on hover?

Right now I have to click a related artist before I can decide if I like him so I already have his nodes pop out even if I don't like him.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> [https://latitudediscover.herokuapp.com/](https://latitudediscover.herokuapp.com/)

<comment><USER11> That is pretty neat! the bouncy transition animation is a little too long/much for my taste ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Is the code open source? It looks like there are a bunch of web service calls in the backend that sit on top of the Spotify API.

</comment><comment><USER13> Really cool, I bookmarked it!

</comment><comment><USER14> I hit random several times. 3 of the artists had dollar signs in their name. 2 of them had more than one. There's nothing wrong with dollar signs but man does that feel cliche.</comment>


Google Engineers Organizing a Walk Out to Protest the Protection of Andy Rubin - <AUTHOR> https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/carolineodonovan/googles-female-engineers-walkout-sexual-harassment <comment><USER2> Reminds me that Kierkegaard has written about Google:

"A revolutionary age is an age of action; ours is the age of advertisement and publicity. In the present age a rebellion is, of all things, the most unthinkable. Such an expression of strength would seem ridiculous to the calculating intelligence of our times. On the other hand a political virtuoso might bring off a feat almost as remarkable. He might write a manifesto suggesting a general assembly at which people should decide upon a rebellion, and it would be so carefully worded that even the censor would let it pass. At the meeting itself he would be able to create the impression that his audience had rebelled, after which they would all go quietly home – having spent a very pleasant evening."

<comment><USER3> If this is aiming to invoke the tired "virtue signalling" cliché, it's rather vacuous.

Kierkegaard's alternative was an armed rebellion. Are you seriously advocating for civil war, and dismissing all peaceful methods of achieving change?

That gets to the heart of what's wrong with the concept as it is used by the 4chan crowd these days: The success of democracy _is exactly_ the possibility to effect change _without_ shouldering grave personal risks. Trying to reframe this accomplishment as ineffective, weak, or lazy runs the danger of provoking exactly the sort of dramatic, self-sacrificing gestures that have been in the news recently.

In the specific case, maybe quitting would be slightly less dramatic but more forceful form of protest. But it's quite obvious that exists a gray area where it's perfectly legitimate to try to change an organisation, while still being convinced of its overall benefit. Recruitment & retainment are also huge factors for Google's future prospect, making a walk-out with the implied threat of quitting, an effective tool.

<comment><USER4> > _The success of democracy is exactly the possibility to effect change > without shouldering grave personal risks..._

True. In effect, we have a civil war every 4 years. During these civil wars there is zero personal risk to the participants. And even still, the largest bloc of us chooses not to participate.

<comment><USER5> Describing the process of voting and elections as a civil war is something that I think (and no offense meant by this) only be done by an American. No other democracy would describe voting this way (with the exception of dictatorships in democracy's clothing).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Google could have given him the 90 million but at the same time still call out his behavior.

But what happened was that Google only said how awesome everything is and hence in fact protected and worse, basically endorsed, his behavior.

I find it good that Google employees stand up here. I'm already wondering what will Google do about that other guy who gives back rubs in interviews? He got similar support and is still at Google as far as I understood.

<comment><USER7> > Google could have given him the 90 million but at the same time still call > out his behavior.

Probably not; _mutual_ non-disparagement clauses are extremely common in executive contracts. Breaking that would have been the same, in terms of kind of litigation risk, as not paying the $90 million.

<comment><USER8> Is it disparagement to report facts without attaching an opinion?

<comment><USER9> Non-disparagement clauses are usually worded in such a way to prohibit making disparaging statements even if the statements are true. The disparagement is based in the fact that it will damage the party's reputation, not on whether it is true or substantiated or not. (It all depends on the wording of the contract of course, and also how the courts are likely to interpret or enforce it, which is why professional legal advice is so essential in these matters.)

For some examples of how non-disparagement clauses are commonly worded: [https://www.contractstandards.com/public/clauses/non- dispara...](https://www.contractstandards.com/public/clauses/non- disparagement#examples)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This article is missing a fairly important detail - the demands of the protesters. It is one thing to be unhappy with a situation, but given that the situation is now in the past - what exactly do they want to change going forward?

The article is almost scrupulous in painting the walkout as out-of-control employees rather than the precursors of organised labour.

<comment><USER11> It seems that the protesters believe that Google erred too much in favor of Andy Rubin (and other protected execs). A protest makes these concerns known to Google -- and just as importantly, to the public -- and ostensibly reduces the chances that Google will have a different mindset when a similar situation arises in the future.

In any case, the article describes this particular walkout as part of an ongoing/emerging movement:

> _Employees participating in this movement for increased transparency and > ethics within Google have presented management with petitions, made demands > for greater employee oversight into product decisions made by management, > and even quit their jobs in protest of Google's decisions. Increasingly, > employees have been signing their names to a spreadsheet, refusing to > participate in screening interviews for potential new hires at Google as a > form of protest._

<comment><USER7> > Increasingly, employees have been signing their names to a spreadsheet, > refusing to participate in screening interviews for potential new hires at > Google as a form of protest.

That last seems particularly counterproductive.

<comment><USER12> How so?

In general protests involve some amount of inflicting inconvenience or pain. Google is short on interviewer bandwidth, so bottlenecking it more is certainly a way to get management to feel the pain.

<comment><USER7> It's protesting culture by forgoing an opportunity to shape it.

I do see your point it this is a real resource constraint, but though.

<comment><USER12> Do you mean forgoing an opportunity to shape it through choosing who gets hired?

Google's process is engineered in such a way that individuals will not be able to individually skew cultural selection for new hires, so I don't think they would even see hiring as such an opportunity.

Or were you talking about the more classic issue of whether it's more effective to be an insider vs. an outsider to affect change?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Would be more meaningful if they quit in protest to a lower paying job. This type of protest is merely exercise or a routine jog.

<comment><USER14> If they quit they don't have leverage at Google anymore. This is why unions exist: they can threaten to quit, extract concessions, and not quit.

<comment><USER15> When negotiation fails, unions extract concessions by trying to prevent anyone (members or not) from doing the work.

Unions are rather weak when they can't prevent employers from hiring strikebreakers.

<comment><USER16> Yes, because there's an infinite supply of completely interchangeable workers, and no costs associated with hiring or training.

<comment><USER15> Yes, those are two obstacles that employers face when hiring strikebreakers, along with more significant obstacles like laws forbidding strikebreakers, licensing, and union violence.

The common factor is that it's not enough to refuse to work, unions must be able to ensure that no one does the work.

<comment><USER16> > unions must be able to ensure that no one does the work.

Often the barrier is natural, such as with folks at Google who built the systems and are (collectively) the only ones who can keep them running without significant interruption. By what authority, for what compelling reason, would you abridge their freedom of association (or in this case non-association)?

<comment><USER15> I wouldn't, they should be free to work or not as they choose. But they shouldn't be able to abridge anyone else's freedom and I doubt they're as irreplaceable as you think.

<comment><USER16> Doubt all you like. It doesn't matter. What matters is whether _Google_ doubts it, and I think they know better. They know the costs of hiring and training and downtime for their business. Do you seriously suppose that _they_ think they could just find a few thousand replacements on a moment's notice?

<comment><USER15> Now you're making a different argument. Yes, there are costs involved in replacing employees, and there are costs involved in allowing employees to walk out or refuse to work on certain projects. Naturally Google will weigh those costs.

But earlier you claimed they were "the only ones" capable, and that I wanted to abridge their freedom of association. I disagreed with both those statements.

Now that you've restricted your position to acknowledging a reasonable cost/benefit tradeoff for Google, I agree.

<comment><USER16> > earlier you claimed they were "the only ones" capable

No, I claimed that they were the only ones capable of running the systems _without significant interruption_. Others can be trained up, but it would take months and there would be some failures along the way. You're the one whose argument has been changing, since you started with the presumption that strikes' effectiveness relies on explicitly excluding others (e.g. via law or force).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Someone with more info please correct me:

But from what I read it sounds as if Google had to pay him the $90MM+, else be sued by him right? Because if they didn't pay him, he'd sue, then they [Google] would have to prove that he [Rubin] acted maliciously (or whatever), which would've been hard (if not impossible) to do, given that the accuser said they were _coerced_ (not forced).

So it seems as if Google's hands were tied legally on this.

<comment><USER18> A lot of the popular unrest facing both corporations & governments today is people learning that _conflict gets results_. The logic goes that "Well, Andy Rubin managed to exercise his threat to sue to get a $90M severance package, and he doesn't even work for the company anymore. We _do_ work for the company, so we are going to exercise our power as employees to put pressure on the company to _not do this again_ , so that our interests as current employees who don't want to work in an environment rife in sexual harassment aren't discounted." The whole _point_ is to make the company uncomfortable so that they realize they're caught between a rock and a hard place, and the next time an executive's caught with his dick in somebody's face the company's like "Well, we really wish we could work out an amiable settlement with you for your past service, but you remember the protests when this happened with Andy Rubin? Our hands are tied here - the whole company almost fell apart, and if we avoid your lawsuit we'll just end up with a bigger one from them."

They aren't really wrong in this - the squeaky wheel gets the grease and always has, and now a much larger portion of the population is willing to squeak.

The end result probably looks like us burning most of the modern world to the ground, literally, but that's where game theory is taking us. I wonder if much of the appeal of the crypto world (where whole organizations are disintermediated in favor of smart contracts) is because people are realizing that an organization is nothing but a target for angry people, and so by getting rid of the organization and making any people behind it anonymous & fungible, you can continue to organize economic activity without painting a target on your face.

<comment><USER19> > _The end result probably looks like us burning most of the modern world to > the ground, literally_

The end does not justify the means. So what good is a society built on prejudice, harassment, and corruption?

If you can sweep controversy under the rug until such time that it's convenient then good luck ever getting change to occur for the better.

> _by getting rid of the organization and making any people behind it > anonymous & fungible, you can continue to organize economic activity without > painting a target on your face._

Making it anonymous & fungible is only necessary if you're unable or unwilling to stand up for your actions. If you're unwilling to stand up for what's right or are doing something you know is unethical, then what right do you have to the proceeds from your actions?

<comment><USER15> What good is a society without due process or presumption of innocence, where a disputed allegation would be punished without proof?

<comment><USER20> Do companies apply any of that to employees unless they are a protected class? If they want you gone you're gone for whatever reason they make up if they even make one. You don't get to have a presumption of innocence or due process.

Why shouldnt companies be treated the same way by their employees?

<comment><USER15> I think we'd all like to see contracts meant to prevent those abuses honored. It's only unfortunate that more of us don't have such contracts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I wonder what it would take for google to lose it's star as being such a great career defining place to work? I think it's kind of happening. We need more people out of the motherships and doing new, innovative stuff and defining their own progressive policies in their companies to compete with the motherships.

I get the scale of capital and everything, but the internet is still a changing place and could be so much more if people just said no.

<comment><USER22> I am only interested in Google becoming uncool so that Googles hiring practice of LeetCode is not replicated everywhere.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Do we know what actually happened? Why is anyone protesting over an allegation?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Original title: "Google Engineers Are Organizing A Walk Out To Protest The Company's Protection Of An Alleged Sexual Harasser" (28 characters too long).

</comment><comment><USER24> Have the protest organizers communicated any specific set of outcomes they wish to achieve from the walkout? The news article does not go into those details. Perhaps I have missed out something there.

In the previous protests, Google employees had their demands penned in open letters which I believe also contributed to concrete actions taken or responses given by Google. A generic protest is bound to only draw vague assurances such as those given in their all-hands meeting as reported in the article.

</comment><comment><USER25> I have no idea whats up and down in this case, but it is good to see engineers waking up to the power of collective action.

</comment><comment><USER26> Every story needs two sides, I think Google didn't predicted that employees will be against the company policy. Well it's a two way highway and using everything to barricade themselves against an employee isn't the most constructive way of a dialog and change of policies.

</comment><comment><USER27> Rubin is still on the exec team roster at Essential. Man do people just wince when they pass this guy in the hall?

</comment><comment><USER28> Oh cool. I wonder when they will stop working because of dragonfly...

</comment><comment><USER29> Whenever I hear about things like this, I always believe that only a fraction really care about the issue. The other half are saying "Wait... we can skip work and not get in trouble? Count me in!"

</comment><comment><USER30> Good on them - it is always great to see employees doing the brave and right thing.

</comment><comment><USER31> 200 engineers organizing a protest. 2000 engineers are afraid to organize a protest against false accusations. Inverted democracy

<comment><USER32> As about a dozen people in this thread have already patiently explained, Google investigated the accusations and found them credible. If you have evidence to the contrary, which Google didn't have at the time of its investigation, kindly present it.

<comment><USER31> I believe in the law. Google guys are smart, but they don`t have enough skills and intelligence in this kind of investigation and they can`t make any decision about guilty/not guilty.

<comment><USER32> That's not what you said in your first comment, you clearly said "false accusations". Are you walking back that claim now?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> a "walk out"... one in which people are so darn angry they walk out of work.. and then walk right back in and keep doing their job. I wish more people would quit these mega-corps over stuff like this. "Google engineers outraged...", "Facebook employees outraged..."... so quit. Go find work at a place that isn't an evil corporation. If you didn't get the memo, Facebook, Amazon, Google and Microsoft are all pretty evil.

<comment><USER11> What if the employees genuinely believe the company's overall work is good, and that these flaws can be mitigated?

<comment><USER33> If you work at Google and you really, truly believe that Google's overall work is good, good for you! I suppose I have more self respect to say that if a company is going to push me far enough to walk out, I probably need to move on in general.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> And then, after the walk out, they will return to their desks and continue working for the company. If you want a walk out to matter, you leave... and don't come back for free food in the employee cafeteria right after.

<comment><USER35> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exit,_Voice,_and_Loyalty](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exit,_Voice,_and_Loyalty)

<comment><USER36> Oh nice, I had forgotten about this. It came onto my radar when Occupy Wall Street was going on. Thanks for the reminder!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> As a side note: Microsoft will do AI work for the military: [https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the- issues/2018/10/26/technol...](https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the- issues/2018/10/26/technology-and-the-us-military/)

And Amazon will host the Pentagon cloud, and no one really cares, employees aren't derailing things and they sure aren't protesting.

Meanwhile at Google there is one employee driven mess after another, they leak everything to the press, and have no regard for company image or reputation, maybe Google should just show the door to those threatening to quit and start incorporating these lessons into their hiring process.</comment>


Notes from MPUG: "Python one-liners" talk - <AUTHOR> http://www.curiousvenn.com/?p=353

<comment><USER2> A nice list. I use things like the simple web server all the time, and I was unaware of the SMTP server, but some of these seem superflous, like:

       python -m calendar

When you could just do

       cal 2013

(with fewer keystrokes). Is there some advantage to using the python version of the above?

<comment><USER3> Doesn't quite work as expected. From "python -m calendar 1752 9" I get:

         September 1752
      Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa Su
                   1  2  3
       4  5  6  7  8  9 10
      11 12 13 14 15 16 17
      18 19 20 21 22 23 24
      25 26 27 28 29 30

"cal 9 1752" on the other hand gives:

          September 1752
       S  M Tu  W Th  F  S
             1  2 14 15 16
      17 18 19 20 21 22 23
      24 25 26 27 28 29 30

Maybe python doesn't auto recognize the timezone?

EDIT: Actually this is pretty bad because python gets all the days of the week before September 1752 in North America wrong.

<comment><USER2> Interesting calendar trivia. The Gregorian calendar was adopted in Sept. 1752:

 _Britain and the British Empire (including the eastern part of what is now the United States) adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1752, by which time it was necessary to correct by 11 days. Wednesday, 2 September 1752 was followed by Thursday, 14 September 1752._

So, in this case, it looks like cal is doing the right thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> A lot more examples are in the Python wiki: <http://wiki.python.org/moin/Powerful%20Python%20One-Liners></comment>


Show HN: Clara.io, next-gen web-based 3D creation tool. - <AUTHOR> http://exocortex.com/blog/introducing_claraio

<comment><USER2> This reminds me of Lagoa ([http://home.lagoa.com/](http://home.lagoa.com/)). How odd that two companies are doing almost the same thing in two cities that are so close to one another.

<comment><AUTHOR> It is a small world in the end high 3d space. I have collaborated in the past with the founder of Lagoa. But the main thing to remember is that Max, Maya and Softimage are all developed in Toronto and Montreal. Thus there is already an ecosystem around 3D tools here.

There is a difference of approach between Lagoa and Clara.io the main one is the Lagoa is mostly a renderer where as Clara.io is a more general tool, more ambitious in terms of functionality.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Looks awesome, is this useful for 3D printing? I noticed it supports STL. I'm actually hosting a largish (100-150 person) hackathon in Wollongong (hour south of Sydney) next weekend: [http://hackagong.com](http://hackagong.com)

We're including a 3D printing competition as part of it and will have 8 printers over the weekend for competitors. Would love to somehow get a beta access hookup for competitors. Surely beats FreeCAD or TinkerCAD

<comment><USER4> Clara.io is an digital content creation tool focused on animation & rendering, like Maya, 3DSMax, SoftImage or Blender. It makes no guarantee of solidity or that its exports are watertight. That's certainly something that could be done in a post-process step, but Clara.io does not yet support it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm very interested to learn which technologies helped to created the product! Angular, jQuery, Ember, CoffeeScript?

<comment><AUTHOR> Highly customized backbone variant (faster + increased flexibility) + javascript + coffeescript + WebGL + jQuery + ThreeJS + underscore + well a lot. JavaScript dependencies alone (excluding anything ThreeJS or our own code) are 500KB minified. :-)

We love ThreeJS. For example, I am third in total commits to ThreeJS: [https://github.com/mrdoob/three.js/contributors](https://github.com/mrdoob/three.js/contributors)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Very nice, like what I see and like that you show us :)

How is the business side working?

And how do you build a critical mass of users?

I have lots of ideas for you, but probably a distraction. I've always thought that binary asset mgmt is an unsolved problem and that whilst working with exclusive locks etc is engrained, diffing and deltas isn't as mad as it sounds, for example. Also, most exports are very poorly optimised; tight exports could be a big plus. And so on.

<comment><AUTHOR> Send me an email, email@example.com, I'd love to hear your ideas. Be sure to sign up for the beta as well.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Just a quick note that I am attending the Start Up Festival in Montreal today so my answers to specific questions won't be immediate. (SMS me at 613-762-4113 if you want to meet up at this festival.)

</comment><comment><USER7> How close is this to a full-blown 3D CAD program (i.e. Solidworks)?

<comment><AUTHOR> It is more art oriented than solid modelling. Thus it is best for video game art, rendering animations, etc. But it can do modelling to a degree but we do not make solidity guarantees at this point.</comment></comment>


dang, can we get a collapse threads function? - <AUTHOR> If you'd like, I can write up the JS. It would be a nice feature to have. When visiting new-ish threads I like to read everything, but if I'm revisiting something later I like to skip around and the scrolling is...prohibitive. <comment><USER2> [I am not dang]

I would not be surprised if the absence of collapsible threads were a conscious design decision. To put it another way if returning to the same thread again and again was considered a user behavior to be _slightly_ discouraged, then your anecdote indicates why no collapsible threads could be a feature rather than a deficit.

Thinking about why a designer would wish to raise the cost of returning to the same thread again and again: the cost is still rounding error when the reason is a compelling and collegial exchange of ideas and relatively high in relation to other places on the internet where people type into boxes when the motivation is pouring gasoline on the embers of insults, bullying or trolling. Or just ordinary XKCD386.

Another habit it discourages is a clique of people who hang out in a few threads for prolonged periods (say a week or more) engaging in 'insider' tribalism. Instead it may encourage people back to the front page and the content. On Hacker News, interesting topics recur when people make new submissions of additional information instead of prolonged based on the same information and position defending.

None of which is to say that this is in fact fact or to in any way imply that these habits or motivations or behaviors apply to you individually. I think it's more of design to avoid tragedies of commons.

Good luck.

<comment><USER3> With respect, while Hacker News does appear to be replete with attempts at subtle coercion, collapsible comments have been mentioned as a feature the devs are actually working on, so you might be reading the tea leaves a bit too hard in that case.

At the very least, I would suspect that particular bit of negative reinforcement failed at its job. A number of other features (karma primarily, but also the comments page and saved stories and saved comments) seem to encourage long term engagement far more than non-folding threads could discourage it. That downvoted comments alone appear on /newcomments practically makes it a flamebait generator. Tribalism, trolling, vindictive nastiness and even meme posting abound here.

On the other hand, I suspect (with nothing to back it up) that pg simply never considered thread folding, or else didn't consider it interesting. Meanwhile, any new feature will inevitably garner criticism from users if it doesn't work they way they expect, doesn't support their browser, etc. And, anything that causes Hacker News to look and behave superficially more like Reddit will cause more than a few users to rend their garments, put on sackcloth and ashes and wail in agony at the death of Hacker News.

That headache, combined with the 'unique' (and not really open) nature of the codebase, a staff with better things to do most of the time, and a strong cultural aversion to making even small changes in the UI, means otherwise apparently simple changes probably take far more time to roll out than many developers would consider reasonable.

<comment><USER2> I guess dumb luck keeps me from encountering a normal amount of undesirable behavior, while agreeing that folding comments isn't likely to have been anyone's priority. I do see isolated memeoization, flames, etc. but it's not really a characteristic of "core contributors" unlike is more typical of internet communities.

For what it's worth, if indeed PG didn't consider thread folding interesting, I cannot say that I blame him since it is that way for me. The feeling that scrolling through a page to find some comment feels like a bother means that it actually is a bother and not worthy of the effort. Collapsible threads making it less effort to rebut won't increase the quality of my comments...on average, it will probably reduce them. YMMV.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Have you guys tried User Scripts? I just tried this one and it seemed to work pretty well. (In chrome this can be done by saving the script as collapse.user.js and dragging into chrome://extensions).

[https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/2960-hacker-news- collapsib...](https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/2960-hacker-news-collapsible- comments/code)

<comment><USER5> I use this. Works very well. It is simple enough I'd encourage building it in to the site though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I second this - would be awesome. Some of the larger threads are taxing/hard to navigate without a collapse/fold function

</comment><comment><USER7> That is probably my favorite feature of reddit.</comment>