US Bill Creating the Great Firewall of America - <AUTHOR> http://theagilepanda.com/2011/11/15/us-bill-creating-the-great-firewall-of-america/ <comment><USER2> Here's one form of protest I'd like to see:

Assuming Google wants to take a significant stance against this bill, they're in a unique position to raise people's awareness of its awfulness. They could put some text on the Google homepage and/or a link to a protest page informing Americans about this threat. (Google might need to set up their own page, to avoid overwhelming an external site with traffic.) Other creative possibilities come to mind:

\- Changing the "I'm feeling lucky" button to "I'm feeling very unlucky" and linking to the protest page

\- Posting a terrifying, yet appealing Google Doodle that links and lures users to the protest page

\- Announcing and then holding a scheduled, minute-long search outage, where all search traffic is redirected to the protest page (which would include an explanation of why searches were temporarily redirected)

Technically savvy users might be aware of SOPA and the threat it poses, yet the "average" American is probably unaware of what their elected representatives are doing to their digital future. They need to know, and hold their representatives accountable.

\----

Disclaimer: I am not an American, but feel a need to speak up, given the huge effect U.S. law has on the whole Internet.

<comment><USER3> I'd much rather see a large organized event by individual web sites than unilateral action by Google.

Not least among my reasons being that I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for Google to act.

<comment><USER4> I remember a broad campaign of website blackouts, blue ribbons, etc, to protest the DMCA in 1998. Which accomplished approximatly nothing except raising general awareness I'm afraid.

<comment><USER5> Luckily, Silicon Valley is a much stronger lobby today.

<comment><USER6> In all of the news and outcry surrounding SOPA, this is the most puzzling thing. I would be surprised to learn that the lobby of those in support of this bill is stronger than of those against.

Unless I'm wrong about the relative strength of these opposing lobbies, it hardly makes sense that SOPA seems to have so much traction among legislators.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm worried that the approach I'm seeing to stopping this bill gives the impression that it's supporters are simply "protesters" who support online piracy.

The article on agilepanda is well written but the site at <http://americancensorship.org/> focuses on website blocking, jail time if you "stream a copyrighted work" and the very general threat of "Chaos for the Internet". It's the wrong approach IMO.

The decision makers, or our target market for this if you'd prefer, are congress, the senate and the president. There's an election coming up and we have real power we can wield. So here's my suggestion:

1\. Make it crystal clear that replacing the DMCA with SOPA will kill many of the job creation machines coming out of Silicon Valley and the rest of the USA. It will prevent the creation of new businesses like Facebook that can only exist through user generated content and who generate billions in tax revenue and jobs for the US economy. If a representative supports this bill they are making it clear they don't support job creation in the USA.

2\. Make it clear that this is not about online piracy, but about government control of a free communications medium. It is tantamount to the US government taking control of the country's newspapers and having the ability to selectively block the publication of editions they don't approve of.

3\. Call your local congressman and senator and let them know that if they support SOPA, they don't support job creation in the USA and they oppose freedom of communication. Let them know two things: If they support SOPA you will not vote for them and you will encourage everyone you know to do the same. Secondly, let them know you will contact every major political donor in the area and make them aware of the representatives stance on the issue and how it endangers American business and innovation.

If we simply "protest" by shutting down our websites or sitting in the street, we risk getting lumped with the Occupy movement. However you may feel about that, what our politicians are most afraid of is losing their jobs and losing their funding. So lets hit them where it really hurts and take the power back.

<comment><USER8> Excellent comment. Any appeal to Congress that disrespects the value of copyright will not fly because, as the general public sees it, it is a serious problem when people have the value of their creative efforts diminished as they are spread across the web without compensation. The DMCA was never intended to protect infringers. It was designed to ensure that ISPs did not get caught in the cross-fire as copyright holders sought to protect their interests against those who did infringe. To do that, the ISPs had to abide by certain rules aimed at protecting copyright holders and their reward for doing this was to get "safe harbor" protection that shielded them from liability for the infringements that did occur on their sites. SOPA seeks to rip those protections away by effectively removing that shield. It also allows for what amounts to the creation of blacklists that will force search engines to ban allegedly transgressing sites from public view. All in all, then, it gives to the copyright holders (and to the Justice Department) a set of tools that will enable them to attack the websites directly for the infringements of others. In essence, this flips the DMCA on its head. Whereas DMCA nurtured the growth of the web by shielding innocent conveyers of information from liability as long as they played by the rules, SOPA (should it pass) will inhibit any such growth going forward by giving lawsuits and legal proceedings a central place in the copyright enforcement scheme across the web. This is why fledgling startups will be vulnerable to getting killed off before they can realize their potential: the copyright police will be there to shut them down before they can even develop proper systems for SOPA-style compliance. In other words, the issues here concern primarily the burden of litigation and whether, as a matter of public policy, people who have legitimate rights (copyright holders) should be given broad latitude to sue intermediate parties over what usually are infringements or whether they should be restricted in their right to impose liability on such intermediate parties, thereby giving such parties the room to breathe and to grow as companies and to further the information goals of the web itself. This is an important policy debate, and the people on the other side of it are not innately evil in arguing their case. I think they are wrong, very wrong, and that the consequences of what they are trying to do will be highly detrimental, as a matter of policy, to the future growth of the web. But it is important that the opposition to this not be centered on _ad hominem_ attacks. That only detracts from the strength of the case to be made for internet freedom and growth and does indeed allow the opposition to dismiss bona fide complaints by casting SOPA opponents as people who are not focused rightly on the serious issues involved in this debate.

<comment><USER9> This is a great summary of the core issues with this. If you or someone else writes this up in an easy to digest fashion for laymen, I (and I'm sure others) would be happy to link to it on our websites. I'm currently linking here: <http://fightforthefuture.org/pipa/> , but if that can be improved upon with less of an occupy-sounding slant, I'd love to support it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I am very pessimistic, because it seems governments just won't stop trying to pass such laws (the same thing is going on in Germany where I live). If this time it fails, they will just try again, until eventually they succeed.

In Germany the law is pushed under the pretense of fighting child pornography. Some people who are against it are now being described in media as people who are against fighting child pornography - even by tech magazines that should have a better understanding.

<comment><USER11> _I am very pessimistic, because it seems governments just won't stop trying to pass such laws_

And by definition, they have deeper pockets than us -- they can afford to push it farther than we can, because in the end, they control the guys with the guns who can come and take everything away from us.

A few years back I was involved in a local controversy. The local authorities made three tries to pass a referendum, being rejected each time. Finally, on the fourth try, they were victorious. There was no difference between what was proposed in #3 and #4, except:

1\. They changed voting hours, so that polls were only open in the afternoon; and

2\. They sent postcards to the entire town (paid for by us, of course) containing information that was objectively false. [1]

\-----

[1] Not relevant to this discussion, but the referendum was for school construction. The proposal contained a bunch of frills such as expanding the cafeteria. The false mailing I mentioned explicitly stated that the proposal was for classroom space only, which was patently false. But the mailing was timed to arrive the afternoon before the vote, when it was too late to do anything about it. And they knew we couldn't afford a lawyer, and the amount that could be done _ex post facto_ was limited anyway. No one ever held them to account.

<comment><USER12> Let's be honest, the drivers behind this are the content companies and various individual legislators. They're the ones who keep pushing it every time it fails. "Government" as it pertains to legislation is just a collection of 535 individuals (adjust figure for your nationality). Smoothing that all into a single proper noun will hamper understanding of what's actually going on.

<comment><USER11> _"Government" as it pertains to legislation is just a collection of 535 individuals (adjust figure for your nationality). Smoothing that all into a single proper noun will hamper understanding of what's actually going on._

That's true in one sense. However, pretending that everything would work out fine were it not for a few bad apples will certainly hamper attempts to keep the system running properly.

It would be far better to acknowledge that much of the behavior of a democracy results from Public Choice Theory, and so it's going to work out this way even if your favored politicians are lucky enough to win the election. With that out of the way, we can start to shore up the places where the system is vulnerable to malfeasance.

<comment><USER12> Yeah, I agree actually, I wasn't claiming it's "just a few bad apples" when we just had a throw out the bums election and the new bums are just as welcoming to anyone with a check to sign. IMO the bad apples here are the lobbyists who seem to be a permanent fixture.

So, 2 steps:

1) Call congressmen to directly remedy problem in this particular case (I haven't done this but should, they do listen).

2) Address the problem of lobbying generally, that's a bigger discussion and every idea I have to fix it could have unintended consequences.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's great to see the EFF, the Free Software Foundation, and other big freedom fighters opposing this bill. (See <http://americancensorship.org/> ).

But are any of the big corporations fighting it? Google / YouTube? Microsoft? Apple? Come on guys! Step up! (or am I just missing their statements on this bad bill?)

I think a "Stop Censorship" black banner across the Google logo tomorrow would go a long way toward defeating this.

<comment><USER14> Sad testament to the state of the policy making process in this country that the most we can hope for to stop one terrible piece of legislation advanced by corporations to further theirs interests is for another set of corporations to oppose it to further their diverging interests.

<comment><USER15> Is it really sad? Corporations wield a lot of power; that's why we built them. What would be sad is if they fail to stand up for our interests.

And then we might have to do something about it.

<comment><USER14> It is. Corporations exist for the purpose of maximizing their own profits. Government policy making should be about maximizing the people's well being. These might sometimes be related ends, but they're far from being the same thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It's intensely disappointing to see politics conforming to its stereotype, and making short-sighted decisions about this. It's wonderful to see calls across the net, led by the EFF and others, to stop this craziness.

That said - I feel like we've been here before. Bills that blindly support control of ideas and technologies seem to waft their way into Washington on a regular basis, and each time we're angry and afraid and annoyed.

What can we do to stop this happening again?

<comment><USER17> In all honestly, it would be by removing virtually all business interests from politics. No corporate donations, no PAC's, extremely reduced effectiveness of lobbyists, etc...

Good luck getting politicians to bite the hand that feeds them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I know everyone here is busy, but call your Representatives on the phone. <http://www.usa.gov/Contact/Elected.shtml>

Protesting is fine. Donating money to the EFF is fine. But truly angry phone calls by constituents are extremely powerful.

</comment><comment><USER19> You know, they are trying to pass the same bill in France at the same time. I wouldn't doubt other countries are concerned as well.

Pretty much a censorship worldwide effort going on.

</comment><comment><USER20> Just a friendly reminder to donate to the EFF:

<https://supporters.eff.org/donate>

</comment><comment><USER21> I'm not against trying to eliminate piracy, but I don't understand how any politicians can back this with a clear conscience. A bill that does things without having to be found guilty is an obvious anti-constitutional bill and should be destroyed immediately. We are innocent until proven guilty in this country, or so we are led to believe.

</comment><comment><USER22> Google didn't help China censor the internet (as stated in the 1st paragraph). It makes it very hard to read the rest of the article after seeing this. In fact, Google pulled its services out of China because it wouldn't succumb to censorship requests. Google this --> "google pulls out of china"

<comment><AUTHOR> The article linked was from 2005. They actively helped China censor the Chinese web prior to 2010. I was actually over there prior to, during, and after they pulled out. Prior to 2010, Google operated google.cn as a filtered web search, similar to Baidu now.

<comment><USER22> Okay, that makes more sense. Google did try and play ball for a little while...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> > _On October 26, 2011, the Stop Online Privacy Act (SOPA) was introduced in > the House of Representatives..._

Mmm, no. That may be the ultimate result (or maybe privacy died long ago) but SOPA stands for Stop Online _Piracy_ Act, not _Privacy_...

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for catching that. Fixed now.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Wow. I did not expect this blog post to blow up like this. I wish it was under less auspicious circumstances.

On a slightly related note, does anyone know how to fix the e-mail subscription widget in WordPress? I'm getting complaints that it is giving 'invalid e-mail' errors when people are adding valid e-mails.

<comment><USER24> Auspicious is good (roughly: causing hope, or offering opportunity).

<comment><AUTHOR> You are indeed correct. I was searching for inauspicious. Hah.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I think the only way how this can be fixed it that they pass SOPA since western democracies seems to be broken beyond repair.

This bill will severely affect the very last growth engine in the US (that is internet) and the US (and the rest of the world) will sunk into even deeper recession. In other words, this bill will slow down or even prevent "paradigm shift in the economy" which is needed to start recovery of the global economy.

And this prolonged deep recession will fuel occupy WallStreet and similar movements and eventually, after a lot bad things (wars, riots, etc.), the new version of democracy will arise: the democracy were the constituents are people and not corporations.

This is my pessimistic view but history seems to be on my side :(

</comment><comment><USER26> why not make a "one vote, one cause, one day" type of widget that can be easily added to any website( configurable to square, horizontal rectangle, vertical rectangle, etc...). Similar to the HN forum, you can create a 'cause' thread, design a logo/message for that cause, and the cause can be voted on. The highest ranked cause of that particular day is displayed for 24 hours, then reset back to 0 votes to even the playing field for other causes. Is anyone else starting to see my vision for this? Does this already exist?

</comment><comment><USER27> A lot of great comments. No action. When it comes to issues of a vote (like this), im sorry to report - we've lost our say in the matter.

Some would say "that's why we elect people, to do this for us" don't you get it? Politicians aren't out to help you. They have their own agenda. Unless your padding their campaign coiffer, your falling on def ears.

</comment><comment><USER28> The fundamental problem is that this is a part of a larger shift towards what is IMO an Unconstitutional government of prosecutors instead of a government of laws. These include mandatory sentencing guidelines, reductions in the discretion judges have in other areas, and the like. The idea is that the powers get shifted gradually onto prosecutors so they can go after bad guys, but that means eventually all of us can be prosecuted too.

In addition to the real problems with this act, try reading "Three Felonies A Day" by Harvey Silverglate (EFF and ACLU veterine, co-founder of FIRE)

</comment><comment><USER29> > SOPA puts in provisions that allows the US to control the internet the same > way that the PRC does in China.

I'm against SOPA, but the idea that it would permit the U.S. government, should it so desire, to set up Chinese-style censorship of the internet is nonsense on stilts. You can take any power of the government and theorize about what could happen if it ran unchecked: "What if they define talking about Occupy Wall Street to be piracy‽" "What if President Obama declared _you_ an enemy combatant‽"

Our laws don't work that way. For one, when it ends up in the courts, they're going to read it as narrowly as needed to accomplish its purpose (obviously, in this case, copyright enforcement). If the law is stupidly written in such an over-broad way that it can't be balanced against other rights and interests, it will be thrown out. For another, we don't live in a one-party autocracy: We have deep cultural norms favoring rights and freedoms. That permeates not just the electorate, but the people elected and appointed to execute the laws. Obviously we disagree from time to time about the trade-offs to be made, but those very disagreements make it harder for some rogue executive to go off the rails; there's always someone else ready to take his place after the next election.

This is a long way of saying that hyperbole like this is never going to win you a policy argument.

<comment><AUTHOR> I wasn't intending to speak in hyperbole, although I understand that I may have come across that way. I tried not to dive into too technical of stuff, but provisions to allow control of DNS servers is not something to be taken lightly. In addition, the SOPA model puts the burden of proof on the accused party and allows the alleged infringed rightsholder to suspend their services immediately upon making a claim.

I guess the point I'm trying to make is that this is a huge shift in the balance of power which makes it end up sounding like hyperbole.

<comment><USER29> All that is fine, but the Chinese analogy is inapt.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah. I guess in the end I am still speaking in hyperbole whenever I compare it to the Chinese situation. Unfortunately, I feel like the non-technical populace simply won't understand it any other way. There are no comparable systems. Unfortunately, I'm not sure that we have at this time the luxury of broaching this subject lightly. I tried to avoid being heavy-handed about it as much as possible, but I don't know how else to approach it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> It seems that what happened to wikileaks has become a blue print on how to deal with dissent. The demos allowed such monopolistic organisations such as visa and mastercard and the demos allowed the rest of what happened to wikileaks. We, the people, are to be blamed for not being willing to fight to retain our powers.

</comment><comment><USER31> It is truly frightening to see how far-reaching authoritarian legislation like this can get fast-tracked into law. The same thing happened with the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, the Patriot Act, and the Department of Homeland Security.

I can confidently predict this legislation will not be stopped.

</comment><comment><USER32> Enter stage right the mellinum of the copyproof bit. Delete those words citizen before I taze you.

<comment><USER33> So people start speaking in code.</comment></comment>


White House Petition Response: You have a right to unlock your cell phone - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57572391-94/white-house-you-have-a-right-to-unlock-your-cell-phone/

<comment><USER2> Other discussion here: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5319577></comment>


Ask HN:  best time to submit a story? - <AUTHOR>

When does readership generally peak on a daily and weekly basis? <comment><USER2> Readership peaks midweek, midday (US). But that doesn't mean it's the best time to submit a story, because there's also more competition. On a weekend, 2 points will keep you on the frontpage for a significant time. On a weekday it might not get you on at all.

</comment><comment><USER3> The best time to submit a story?

When you have something relevant and interesting to share!

(Sorry, couldn't resist)

</comment><comment><USER4> This feels like the beginning of the end.

<comment><USER5> I remember seeing these same threads start to show up on Digg a few years ago.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> From what I've seen, it only takes 1 upvote to hit the front page, and stories (if they aren't killed) tend to stick around for at least 24 hours. My hypothesis is that there isn't a best time.

<comment><USER6> "only takes 1 upvote"

I would say it only takes one _quick_ upvote. A submission with 2 or 3 quick votes after submission gets a big boost.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This might not be the best barometer for submitting a story, but take a peak at <http://www.hackrtrackr.com/>, I was surprised (still am) how many people participate from within middle[skewed easterly] america. I've always operated under the assumption that HN activity scales according to eastern standard time.

</comment><comment><USER8> it could go either way but in general x seconds after reading it (YMMV) and judging it HN worthy. i have found submitting stories prior to reading them, or even knowing that they exist, to be an inferior method.</comment>


Interview School – Mock Interview Software with AI-Assisted Grading - <AUTHOR> https://interviewschool.com/ <comment><USER2> One of your testimonials speaks lorem ipsum.

<comment><AUTHOR> ha, yes, we are still working on our 4th :)

<comment><USER3> Are the rows of checkboxes on the pricing page in mobile intentional?

I get MVP, but maybe just a touch more polish on a page trying to get people to buy your product would give a little more confidence.

Probably better to show 3 testimonials over 4 with a dummy one.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah thanks for that catch! Getting the checkboxes removed for mobile ASAP,

And you're completely right, we are definitely still in an MVP stage but should be more polished now that we're asking for money. Gonna get it cleaned up now! I appreciate this feedback!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> We just launched about a month ago so still working a lot of things out and still have a lot of content to add. Would love any feedback!

</comment><comment><USER4> What is the difference between this and what leetcode already has with their mock interview.

<comment><AUTHOR> Looks like LeetCode is for technical/coding questions. Whereas, Interview School is for non-technical questions like behavioral questions. So, instead of solving coding questions, we are presenting you with a questions like "Where do you see yourself in 5 years?", in which you would then answer while being recorded. We then run it through some Watson APIs so that we could give you some grading based on your tone, confidence, and the number of filler words you used. So you can practice on that aspect of your interview. We also take questions that have already been reported from that specific question and company.</comment></comment>


Hack the Crisis: Tech for Good Hackathon (Starts Now) - <AUTHOR> https://www.hackcrisis.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> For another COVID-19 challenge, see [https://www.kaggle.com/allen-institute- for-ai/CORD-19-resear...](https://www.kaggle.com/allen-institute-for- ai/CORD-19-research-challenge).</comment>


Google Search: Change is Coming - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2012/03/15/google-search-major-overhaul/

<comment><USER2> Well Google, a word of warning that will probably never be seen. I have loved you almost since you started. You have been a very good companion, which never crashed, (almost) never disappointed me for many years. Then you changed, you thought that adding your dumb immediate search after every keystroke would be a good idea (I hate being wasteful). Then you thought that adding some social component in it would be a good idea but I didn't care much about it. Now if there's more "Social bullshit flavor" in your result, I'm out, I am going to find another Search engine that suits better my needs.

Joke apart, Google has always been the way I search for KNOWLEDGE. Because of this "Social trend", it tends to become more and more aimed at searching for TRENDS. And they are two totally different things and pretty much... incompatible. Don't mix it up Google!

For any other additional information about search or more relevant results, I'm in!

<comment><USER3> While I really do like the social search feature (seeded with the Hacker News Google+ circle, I see things other people believe are relevant rather than relying on SEO), I agree with you on the instant search. Especially since they enabled it in Chrome's URL bar.

If I type "pho" and hit enter, I expect to be taken to search results about "pho", but instead Google automatically fills in the rest and searches for "phone". I then have to backspace and do another search just for pho. Instant search on Google.com is infuriating as well in that it doesn't work reliably. It will guess three or four times as to what I'm searching for as I type, then give up and say "hit enter to perform your search". That's what I want to do anyway! In the meantime, I've been distracted by a flashing page while I'm typing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I was thinking about this on the way to work this morning while Steve Martin was talking about his experiences with twitter on NPR.

The problem with search right now is that PageRank is not at all a good indicator of individualizing social search results, and contrary to Facebook's, reddit's, or the new, hot social network's goals, the social network ecosystem is constantly evolving. In ten years, I hope, for the sake of progress, that the social networks we have now are mostly dead, relegated to the core of dedicated users similar to sites like metafilter, MySpace and kuro5hin.

What I'm awaiting is a dedicated, personalized (but not 'personalized' or Personalized) social search engine that has enough implicit value for user buy-in. A search engine with enough context to make the facebook wall obsolete.

This hybrid search that Google is attempting wont have the value that they think it does - Wikipedia already does that, and better, without ads. Google needs to step back and think about what made their _approach_ to search a killer app ten years ago and try and understand how to apply that value to the search needs of people today, instead of trying to apply their _model_ from ten years ago to the search needs of people today.

</comment><comment><USER5> > _"In practice, that means that over the next few months you will begin to > see subtly different results to searches"_

Every time I notice subtle changes to my search results with Google, it's because they are worse [in the sense that they are less relevant to the actual terms I have searched for].

> _'"the most important thing about an artist is his greatest works."'_

That doesn't mean they are the most relevant results for my search terms.

<comment><USER3> Perhaps there are dozens or hundreds of improvements over the years you haven't noticed because they were better? People are going to notice things getting subtly worse, not things getting subtly better. Even if they are.

<comment><USER5> There might of been, but in general I have found that Google's search engine pays much less attention to the actual terms I entered than to what it expected me to enter, compared to the more literal behavior years ago.

When Google search first started suggesting that I had mistyped a term, it still returned results for the mistyping, and just notified me of the possibility. Now, it assumes that I mistyped a search term and returns results of what it thinks I requested. [edit] At times this is helpful but the times when it isn't more than offset any benefit [/edit]

In the old days, Google search would actual give me results from all over the world for my search terms, now it filters them for the US - searching for a foreign term or something that one knows is on a foreign site is a real PITA, these days.

It's all driven, not so much by relevance to me, but by relevance to advertisers. There's little money to be made if "German Bakery" returns a website in Berlin compared to if it returns a map to the one in my local Publix supermarket.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Interesting. I wonder if I happened to see some test of this a long while back? You see, I was looking up the specific gravity of a whole bunch of different things for something (I couldn't find them all on Wolfram Alpha).

Then, out of the blue, Google started giving me the answers directly, saying that it had calculated some number by averaging X sources. But that's not the odd part.

The odd part? The Google search page then asked me if that number was correct. I've never seen that before or since.

<comment><USER7> Something like this?: <https://www.google.com/search?q=specific+gravity+of+gold>

<comment><USER8> Please provided a picture when discussing google results. It's really difficult to know what your point is when I'm not sure what Google returns to you. The above links seems like a normal search result to me (without any factual google-provided results)

<comment><USER6> Here's a picture of what he's talking about: <https://imgur.com/HBt5f>

But I saw something different back then, because it had a little yes/no selection asking if I thought the information was accurate. I have not seen that question except for that one time.

<comment><USER7> Clicking on "Feedback" presents you with "Is this information accurate? Yes No"

<comment><USER6> When I saw it originally, the question about accuracy was right next to the search box. I didn't click on anything to get it. But that's interesting. I guess it got integrated at some point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> >As further outlined in a Wall Street Journal story on the subject on Thursday, a search for "Lake Tahoe" will produce "key attributes" that Google knows about the lake, including its altitude, location, salt content and average temperature. The query "What are the 10 largest lakes in California?," meanwhile, would yield an answer instead of just links to relevant sites.

Sounds like WolframAlpha.

<comment><USER10> They have been doing that for some time now. Typing "firefox license", for example, gives you an answer right at the top.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Sounds like it's time for someone to build pg's search engine for the top 10,000 hackers. Google's entering the uncanny valley; it's ai will be alright, but it won't be faster or better than my ability to parse a page of relevant links from 'old Google'.

<comment><USER12> Raises hand. :-)

Just saying that there are folks building search engines, blekko.com and duckduckgo.com are examples.

Many people share your dislike for the privacy aspects (or lack there of) to which Google has gone.

[disclaimer: per my bio I work at blekko.com and I consider myself friends with Gabe over at duckduckgo :-) doesn't take away from the fact that there are exemplars of people building new search engines]

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The search algorithm should not try to understand people. People should be enabled to understand the algorithm.

Google is heading the false direction.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> >"It's unclear how the plan overlaps, if at all, with Google's other recent search initiative, Google plus Your World, which integrates Google+ results into standard searches."

I would have to assume that going forward any tweak to the Google user experience will in some way benefit their social initiative. It seems to matter a lot to them.

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm curious what will happen to queries like, 'Thai'. Will they show me local Thai Restaurants? Will they show me travel deals to Thailand? Will these 'attributes' tell me something of Thai culture. God I would hate to have to be working on the query parser with these NLP type changes coming down the path.

</comment><comment><USER15> _For instance, a Google search can distinguish a search for "New York" as opposed to one for "New" and "York."_

OMG, what kind of sophisticated AI did they use to accomplish this? I'm thinking random forests mixed with neural networks and SVMs.

</comment><comment><USER16> Are they trying to turn google into wolfram alpha?

<comment><USER17> At least it will be suited for the large audience.</comment></comment>


AWS down? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> They quite famously are rebooting EC2 physical servers at the moment, maybe that's what you're seeing?

</comment><comment><USER3> no</comment>


Researchers Shed New Light on Collapse of Easter Island Society - <AUTHOR> http://www.sci-news.com/archaeology/science-collapse-easter-island-society-02398.html <comment><USER2> Is this new news? Environmental degradation on Easter Island is pretty well covered in Jared Diamond's "Collapse"</comment>


Worlds First Private Cargo Registry with Cloudsmith and Rust - <AUTHOR> https://blog.cloudsmith.io/2019/05/01/worlds-first-private-cargo-registry/ <comment><USER2> ...Private Cargo Registry [service] -- that's the interesting bit IMO. Not that someone spawned their own but that someone now enables you to have your own.

The free tier has 2GB which might not be bad -- if it's source tarballs I guess. Now I'm kinda curious about whether rustup/cargo can/does use bsdiff/courgette delta compression.

</comment><comment><USER3> For context to others: Unless you've been following developments in Rust recently, you may or may not have realised that Rust 1.34 [1] introduced the ability to point Cargo (the Rust package manager) at your own private registry, either self-hosted or managed.

So this is really exciting for anyone looking to privately develop or distribute Rust crates (packaged libraries), or to mirror some portion of crates.io for other reasons (e.g. availability, isolation, modification of public crates, etc.).

[1]: Rust 1.34: [https://blog.rust- lang.org/2019/04/11/Rust-1.34.0.html](https://blog.rust- lang.org/2019/04/11/Rust-1.34.0.html)</comment>


Is the DAO going to be DOA? - <AUTHOR> https://steemit.com/crypto-news/@dan/is-the-dao-going-to-be-doa <comment><USER2> He makes three key points:

1\. Funding a startup makes the value of Etherium go down. So holders have an incentive not to fund anything. This would be less of a problem if Etherium was bigger. The currency you're using needs to be much bigger than the biggest individual transactions, or the money system stresses out.

2\. "The DAO is just a committee of non-professional voters who have relatively little ability to do proper due diligence."

3\. All this complexity solves a non-problem. VCs seldom take the money and run. The things they fund sometimes do, but not the people who put the fund together. On the other hand, taking the money and running is close to standard operating procedure in the crypto-currency world.

<comment><USER3> 1\. is a fundamental problem with all deflationary currencies

<comment><USER4> Ethereum is fundamentally inflationary now, with no clear indication on how inflationary if and when PoS is implemented.

<comment><USER3> How? Does it have no mining cap?

<comment><USER4> Correct. The plan is to move to proof of stake once that's done.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm still pretty sure that the thing will be hacked before long, or will have critical bugs that will necessitate complex negotiations to fix.

It's not just the size of the code that is the problem, although that alone practically guarantees that there will be bugs. Ethereum has a couple of unique properties that can cause all sorts of chaos in ways that 'normal' language developers never need worry about.

First of all, code requires 'gas' to run. If there isn't enough gas, then the execution stops. But critically, some _but not all_ of the code's actions are rolled back. Transfers from one party to another still take place. You can imagine a situation where an attacker runs a contract with just enough gas to make the code transfer some money but halt before it records the payout, allowing the withdrawal to be repeated.

Secondly, there's a stack limit for code, again triggering an exception and a _partial_ rollback. Developers are used to having to reason about stack overflows in normal programming situations, e.g. a recursive algorithm. But Ethereum's stack has more problems. It allows attackers to control the available stack space before your code gets run. e.g. an evil-doer could use up almost all of the stack, then call your contract. If the stack runs out at a select inopportune moment, there is potential for abuse.

<comment><USER6> Do you have any more information about the stack overflow attack? It's quite concerning to me and searching google for "ethereum stack overflow" is as useless as you might expect.

<comment><USER5> Sorry, I can't find the good example which I read recently, which detailed the problem well. The best source I have right now is:

[https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/Subtleties](https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/Subtleties)

Which details many of the corner cases of the virtual machine, including the stack limits - but it's just a single line mention.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Even if TheDAO "fails", we'll have learnt something very important. We'll have found a DAO configuration that doesn't work. That knowledge will mean that future DAOs will have a higher chance of "succeeding".

<comment><USER8> You're making the critically flawed assumption that the space of all DAOs is a finite set!

<comment><USER7> Elucidate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> He writes: "It was because of these articles that Vitalik Buterin, one of the founders of The DAO, started exploring the concepts in a three part series."

Vitalik is in no way a founder of The DAO. He's a "curator" which only means he can whitelist wallet addresses that can receive funds. He had no hand in it's creation or in the white paper that inspired it.

Getting such a basic fact wrong makes me doubt his understanding in general.

<comment><USER10> I wouldn't be so quick to judge. Most of this Ethereum stuff even confuses me half the time and I've been following BTC closely for a long time now. I'm not surprised the journo mixed up him being a co-founder of Ethereum, which underpins the tech behind DAO, and being a co-founder of The DAO.

 _Off-topic_ : This type of nerd superiority complex comes up in every article written for a non-technical audience on a tech subject. Can't we ever just point out the error and move on, without turning it into an attack? It'd do a lot to improve the civility around here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> > Perhaps even more interesting with The DAO, once you vote for something you > are no longer allowed to split your ETH out and form a new DAO. This means > that you have much to lose by voting and much to gain by not voting.

I'm not an expert on the DAO but I don't think this is correct. I think that voting on a proposal prevents you from splitting the DAO for a certain period of time, but not forever.

Looking at various discussions happening around the web on this blog post, it's alarming how many people are disagreeing about this point. Even the author admits that he's not clear on it:

> The DAO is complicated and I admit that I am not sure I fully understand > how, when, and where ETH can be split relative to payouts and rewards.

How exactly has this project accumulated over $100 million in funding, when there's no real understanding among the community about how the DAO actually works on a day-to-day basis? This telegraphs the sickly condition of the DAO investing community, in my opinion. People seem to have bought DAO tokens to speculate, not to vote. That's a problem for the DAO because the only way for it to take more ETH into the system is for projects to be profitable.

<comment><USER11> You're right! It's just for the duration of the voting period (two weeks) of the proposal that you voted on, to avoid people being able to vote for a proposal without the outcome having any potential to affect them (because they split away).

This massively undermines the OP's article criticism.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm surprised that this is posted to a (mostly) technical forum, and no one else assumed that it was talking about data access objects.

TL;DR - It's really about Bitcoin-ish stuff

</comment><comment><USER13> This is the first time I've read content on Steem, and out of curiosity I went to check out the site. Its a pretty impressive alternative to reddit. Here's the whitepaper: [https://steem.io/SteemWhitePaper.pdf](https://steem.io/SteemWhitePaper.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER14> Time will tell. While he makes some interesting points, I think he misses a core distinction on this point "BitShares had all of the tools, the talent, and the money... [and failed]."

I had never heard of "BitShares" before, and I'm an active researcher in this area. The DAO made it to the front page of the New York Times, and not because of its amazing coding. Sometimes life is just a popularity contest, or nepotism (landing Buterin surely helped, since he is proving to be a masterful marketer). If the DAO succeeds where BitShares failed, it is probably due to completely _social_ reasons.

<comment><USER15> > I had never heard of "BitShares" before, and I'm an active researcher in > this area.

How long have you been researching this area? I've never invested or participated in the project, but Bitshares or one of the other Larimer/Hoskins DAC projects/renames/reincarnations filled most of the top search results for "Distributed Autonomous Corporation" and "Distributed Autonomous Organization" for several years, up to this past year (indeed, I'm surprised that Ethereum's success has pushed out almost all trace of the project from the top search results).

They promoted it pretty heavily, so you either are very new to the field or you didn't spend much time looking around for actual implementations of the technology.

In fact, to the best of recollection, Larimer actually coined the phrase "distributed autonomous corporation". And Larimer and Bitshares are even featured prominently in the Wikipedia article on "Distributed Autonomous Corporations" (and it's not a new addition to the WP article).

Here's an earlier piece from 2013 discussing DACs and Larimer by none other than Vitalik Buterin himself, back when he was a writer:

[https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/bootstrapping-a- decentr...](https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/bootstrapping-a- decentralized-autonomous-corporation-part-i-1379644274)

Also, most of Larimer's criticisms in this piece address problems with The DAO's incentives. If the DAO gets those wrong, it won't matter how well it's marketed.

That said, I do agree that these kinds of projects frequently fail or succeed for social, not technological, reasons (indeed, that's one of the main thrusts of the article).

<comment><USER14> Well, in my defense, I have not been actively looking for actual implementations (I'm an academic researcher), so I'll have to concede naivety. But, I think my point still stands, and I think we agree about the capricious nature of these things.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > Who is right? Well odds are in favor of it being wasted as 9 in 10 startups > fail.

This commonly cited 90% startup failure rate is actually based on a 7yr timescale (if I'm not mistaken). I remember it being an example of a common misconception in the book "The Illusions of Entrepreneurship" [1]. Just because a small company eventually fails, it doesn't mean the investors didn't get any amount of ROI out of it.

For example: It's possible a company makes 10's of millions in revenue but fails from cash flow issues after a long-term of being operational.

So this isn't a good way to measure return potential when investing in companies. Unlike VC-style investments, not all businesses (even with $1 million capital) are billion dollar or nothing businesses.

Not everything The DAO invests in has to be 100x return to be viable (unless they want to be VCs). So this changes the math quite a bit.

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/Illusions-Entrepreneurship-Costly- Entr...](http://www.amazon.com/Illusions-Entrepreneurship-Costly- Entrepreneurs-Investors/dp/0300158564/r)

</comment><comment><USER11> > With an initial quorum of 20% it will be very challenging to get enough > agreement, especially with the downsides associated with actually voting.

20% of tokens are held by the top 12 account holders. Getting 12 people (perhaps fewer, if someone had multiple wallets) who each invested millions of dollars into the DAO to vote doesn't seem that hard.

<comment><USER4> The DAO represents about 13% of all Ethereum in existence. Considering over 75% of Ethereum was part of a premine crowd sale for a price between 2,000 - 1,337 BTC per ETH it's a reasonable assumption that the DAO was mostly founded with severely discounted ETH, and doesn't really represent +100M USD investment.

<comment><USER11> Anyone could have sold their ETH at around USD $8 per 1 ETH just prior to joining the Dao. I don't think "it's not real money" applies.

<comment><USER4> Do you think they could have raised ~150 million USD by selling 12% of the existing ETH? I suspect $150 million couldn't be raised by selling all the ETH.

It's disingenuous to take the current ETH-USD conversion rate based on a relatively low trading volume and imply that's what the DAO is worth, especially when so much ETH was bought so cheaply.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Forgive me, but the website of DAO reminds me a bit of this one -> [http://zombo.com/](http://zombo.com/) :)

<comment><USER17> I know ethereum and "The DAO" sounds like a ton of mumbo-jumbo, but I assure you at its heart everything is actually very straight forward- For instance, the DAO is mainly just this small piece of computer code that is very readable: [https://github.com/slockit/DAO/blob/master/DAO.sol](https://github.com/slockit/DAO/blob/master/DAO.sol)

(Whether the DAO is good idea though is another matter entirely)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I thought the application for DAOs was far broader than setting up VC type corporations.

Another problem in general with blockchain technologies is that the power elite will eventually get around to trying to squash them. Anything that facilitates local businesses keeping value inside communities, businesses that don't give up value to the centralized monetary system, etc. will probably be targets.

</comment><comment><USER19> here's a typical deleware court lawsuit [http://courts.state.de.us/opinions/download.aspx?ID=207080](http://courts.state.de.us/opinions/download.aspx?ID=207080) skim thru that and now imagine that same disagreement over a DAO company vs. deleware court. Power players need to learn all sorts of different rules.

<comment><USER20> I read through the whole thing, and honestly, that whole thing seemed really straightforward.

What would you see the issue as?

<comment><USER19> I guess I'm a DAO novice, but when I heard about an org with 150 million and it's NOT a deleware company, I wonder how the power dynamic changes when things go wrong. The company in that pdf had a huge disagreement over who was running that company. Board members were forced out. New CEO placed in. In DOA what takes the place of the deleware court when there is this type of fight?

<comment><USER21> For TheDAO itself, there's no possibility of such a dispute or resolution. There's a little bit of code that runs everything, and what it does can't be overridden. With this particular code, you get a vote in proportion to how many shares you own.

The companies employed by TheDAO will resolve things like any other company.

<comment><USER19> this explains it well: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11787475](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11787475)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> All this assumes that people who invested in DAO are random blokes off the street which they are demonstrably not. Have a little faith.

</comment><comment><USER23> DAO was dead as soon as ODBC entered the room.</comment>


Tesla and Tucker – Similarities Between Automakers - <AUTHOR> http://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/a21094/what-tesla-needs-to-learn-from-tucker/ <comment><USER3> The law here is the FTC's "Mail Order Rule".[1] Properly, Tesla allows consumers to cancel your order at any time and receive a full refund. The other requirement is that if Tesla misses their ship date, they have to send the consumer a letter with a new ship date and an option to cancel. That part is "opt-out". If, 30 days after the original ship date, the product hasn't shipped, a refund has to be sent unless the customer explicitly requests otherwise. That part is "opt-in". The seller can't just keep the money at that point.

This is why, if you're selling online, you have to make sure not to take orders you can't fill in time. In the early days of the Internet, this was a big problem, because many sites had online ordering systems that had no connection to inventory control. By now, everybody with a clue knows to check inventory in the shopping cart program.

[1] [https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business- center/guidance/bus...](https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business- center/guidance/business-guide-ftcs-mail-internet-or-telephone-order)

<comment><USER4> I seem to remember hearing in one of Computer History Museum interviews that in the early days of home computers it was actually illegal to sell Computer by mail :o !?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Given Musk's legal jujutsu w/ SpaceX and ULA I think Tesla is much less susceptible to similar issues.

It's just anecdotal evidence but it seems like Telsa has plenty of momentum and real tangible products.

<comment><USER6> GM and Ford are drastically less powerful today than they were in Tucker's time. By 1945-1950, GM was already the global leader in auto sales, and of course Ford had been a juggernaut for some time as well.

That's the biggest difference.

Toyota, Honda, BMW, Daimler, Volkswagen, Hyundai, Nissan, Mazda - <USER2> combination of those companies effectively neutered the old GM / Ford political monster. It sucked the money out of the old Detroit political machine, making it far less fearsome and influential in DC.

The GM / Ford that Musk is facing off against, is a joke compared to what it used to be able to bring to the table in terms of abusing the system to stop competition.

<comment><USER7> However as GM has proved that they can pivot quickly and bring a product to market faster than Tesla. They have the supplier relationships needed as well as the manufacturing and testing expertise to do so. They key is having management that wants to do it.

I suspect Ford could as well but their leadership isn't as willing to change direction as GMs does.

<comment><USER8> Perhaps, but GM also has a worse reputation than Ford among buyers. Ford's reputation among the American brands is the best, while GM's is not that great, though Chrysler's is even worse.

If I want to buy a reliable, high-quality car that I know is going to last 10 years and not have the interior plastics all looking nasty and faded and falling apart after a mere half-decade, GM is one of the last brands I'd think of. No one thinks that Cadillacs are serious competition to real luxury cars like Mercedes.

I think Tesla would do much better partnering with a Japanese automaker. They know how to build high-quality cars in high volume, and they have great reputations too, which is important if you're trying to sell $100k cars.

<comment><USER8> I'll also add that if they have to partner with an American automaker, Ford is surely the best choice as long as they don't stick that ugly blue oval logo on their cars. Ford has a lot of experience partnering with other brands in mutually-beneficial relationships: they did it before with both Volvo and Mazda. In both cases, it seems like all 3 companies benefited from the arrangement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The article is ok I guess. Although I think this is more a book plug than true analysis. I've often thought of the tesla/tucker parallel and how hard it is to get a foothold in a capital intensive business as a start up. However I don't think the parallels stick. Tesla has built and delivered a sizable number of cars. I think the political influence of the big 3 is much lower now as well. For tesla, I think that it's survival hinges upon delivering the model 3 on time and at high quality. Along with a lot of other things going right as well. I probably make about 50k too little to comfortably afford a model x but I would love to own one some day. Quirks and all.

<comment><USER10> > I think that it's survival hinges upon delivering the model 3 on time and at > high quality

... and in sufficient quantities. They have proven the technology, the approach and the readiness of the market. The last thing they need to prove is their capacity to scale.

If they achieve their target (i.e. Model 3 generally available in 2018), they will have built a serious lead over the competition - meaning several years (at least 2) on that sweet sweet market unchallenged.

Of course, Tesla has failed to deliver in time, at expected price or in expected quantities before. Time will tell.

<comment><USER9> Agree. This is the biggest risk. Right now I think they have enough cache that I would jump to electric for them where I may be too skeptical to buy an electric ford. Delivering high quantity with high quality on time will almost guarantee success.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Public perception is big factor too. In Tucker's time info is disseminated via radio. If the radio host is bias and hostile towards your business, then good luck. Now we have internet.

</comment><comment><USER12> "Tucker: A Man And His Dream" was a good movie. I too thought of the Musk parallel many times.</comment>


XML, blockchains, and the strange shapes of progress - <AUTHOR> https://apenwarr.ca/log/?m=201809#14 <comment><AUTHOR> All of this has happened before and all of this will happen again.</comment>


The oldest live camera on the internet.  Over 20 years now - <AUTHOR> http://www.fishcam.com/ <comment><USER2> History: [https://sites.google.com/a/montulli.org/about- fishcam/Home/h...](https://sites.google.com/a/montulli.org/about- fishcam/Home/history)</comment>


Ask HN: pros and cons of different web stacks/frameworks - <AUTHOR>

I'm just starting to get into web development, and it looks like theres alot of choices out there. I dont really have an idea in mind, but I just want to start tinkering. I've heard of the LAMP stack,  but I'm leaning more towards Ruby and Rails.
Some of the frameworks I've read about and considered are Rails, Sinatra, CakePHP, node.js?, and some others in Erlang, Java, and Lisp.
To me, it looks like all these frameworks provide the same functionality, but with different languages, databases, and web servers. Is there some kind of way to choose, or do you just pick one that youre familiar with? <comment><USER2> _To me, it looks like all these frameworks provide the same functionality, but with different languages, databases, and web servers._

Basically, yeah.

 _Is there some kind of way to choose, or do you just pick one that youre familiar with?_

To be honest? There are too many out there, to actually do a thorough analysis / review of each, on your own. It'd take you 10 years, and by the time you got done, it would all be obsolete. So, ultimately, you have to fall back to _some_ kind of heuristic: recommendations from trusted friends / colleagues / etc., simple popularity, some "back of the envelope" calculations of some meaningful metric (availability of developers for that platform, for example), the aforementioned point of "go with what you know," size and activity level of the community around each one, ease of learning, etc., etc.

All of that said, I'm a big fan of Groovy on Grails, which I find has a lot going for it. But there are far more frameworks I haven't used, than ones I have, so I can't even begin to make a claim that Grails is objectively "the best" in any sense. In my case, I picked it because I already knew Java, was familiar with the JVM ecosystem, libraries, app servers, messaging systems, etc., and because Groovy is very easy to learn if you know Java. The pros I see for Grails:

1\. Open source (most of them are these days, but still)

2\. Easy to learn (this is relative, since I'm coming from Java)

3\. Rapid development using convention of configuration (same as Rails, etc.)

4\. allows me to leverage a lot of existing knowledge of using Java app servers, tools, and infrastructure.

5\. Easy use of tons of useful java libraries that already exist. I can easily incorporate Tika, Lucene, Mahout, HttpClient, Commons Math, etc., etc., etc.

Cons to Grails:

1\. There is some question as to the future of Groovy, since the creator of the language said something along the lines of "If I'd known about Scala when I created Groovy, I wouldn't have created Groovy." That said, the Groovy and Grails community seem to be very active, and I don't see any particular reason to think either will be dying off anytime soon.

2\. Performance: Groovy has a reputation for being a little bit of a performance dog, compared to some of the other JVM based languages. But it has gotten a lot better with recent releases, and there's reason to think that the JDK7 changes (MethodHandles API, invokedynamic opcode) will make Groovy even faster.

So there ya go, a few thoughts and comments on Grails. I'd highly recommend at least giving it a look, especially if you know Java already.

<comment><AUTHOR> I actually have a couple years of experience with Java. I'm looking into Ruby and Python not only because of their popular frameworks, but also because I feel like I need to broaden my horizons a bit. Do you think its worth learning Ruby/Python, or does Java/Groovy get the job done?

<comment><USER2> I don't really think there's anything you can do in Ruby or Python, that you fundamentally can't do in Groovy, although certain things might be _easier._ But I do encourage everyone to broaden their horizons, so learning Python and/or Ruby is definitely not a bad idea. Of the two, I've used Python more than Ruby, and am fairly fond of it, as non-JVM languages go. Python and Pylons (well, it used to be called Pylons, I think it's something else now) is certainly a fine stack for web apps.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I think the best way to choose is narrowing it down to a few potential frameworks/stacks that you (and your team, if applicable) thinks would be the best fit for your project. I don't believe any of these frameworks are the one answer to all your problems.

At work we build an enterprise level government used application in CakePHP. It's done fairly well, but given the ability to migrate our platform I would jump at the chance.

We begun trying to practice TDD on the project and it's been nothing but a nightmare! Whether it's Simpletest or CakePHP's implementation of Simpletest we haven't figured out (or had the time to dive in and figure it out). We run into issue after issue. The littlest change to the way our app runs at the core seems to trigger a shit storm of little issues here and there. Granted, a lot of this has to do with the architecture that was put in place by the Sr. developer before I got here, but it's definitely becoming an issue...

Might also be worth noting that CakePHP is a (poor in my opinion) port of Rails to PHP.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm partial to Python and Django, but in the end I think it comes down to preference, and what you feel most comfortable with. Honestly, if it were me I'd find and follow a tutorial for creating a small web app (like a blog) in a few different frameworks and see which one feels right for you.

There was a discussion a few years ago on HN about this very topic, although it was mostly focused on Django VS Ruby on Rails, but there is lots of good discussion in the thread all the same. Here's the link:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=195423>

Welcome to the web dev community! Come visit us on the Django IRC channel (webchat.freenode.net, channel #django) if you have any questions about django.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks! i'll definitely check these out.</comment></comment>


Google Introduces NLP Model Understanding Tool - <AUTHOR> https://syncedreview.com/2020/08/17/google-introduces-nlp-model-understanding-tool/ <comment><USER2> Easy to use and only a small amount of code required</comment>


Ask HN: Who feels undervalued at work? - <AUTHOR> Feeling undervalued at work. Anyone else feel the same way? <comment> J-dawg I'm a web developer in the consulting business of a big international IT company. I'd like to be paid more, but if I'm honest with myself, my salary probably isn't far from market rate.

However in terms of recognition of my skills I feel massively undervalued. The management are business consultants rather than technical people, and there's a pervasive culture that technical work is something to be outsourced/offshored and generally done by the lowest bidder. I was hired as a "Technical Consultant" and yet I've repeatedly had to fight to do technical roles.

I often think about leaving to get a pure web developer role, but I'm still at quite a junior level and junior dev salaries here in London are awful.

<comment><USER2> I'm kind of in the same position. Consulting is pretty thankless. They just expect you to bill as much time as humanly possible (and sometimes more). You rarely get thanks but you are on the hook when things go wrong. I know my salary is below the average rate even within my own company.

<comment> J-dawg It's good to know I'm not the only one here! Yep, pretty thankless sums it up.

Plus having to go through a long appraisal process at the end of every year which is essentially a test of how good you are at networking and self- promotion, rather than what you've actually acheived.

I keep thinking I'd be happier in either a startup or a corporate dev team, but I guess the grass is always greener on the other side

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Would you rather feel undervalued, or would you rather be underpaid? Sometimes you can't have both vocal appreciation and good pay at the same time. Being paid without hassle can at times be the only show of appreciation, at least in contract work.

Afterward, instead of trying to buy happiness, it would be more advisable to appreciate yourself. If you don't appreciate yourself, then you may want to find something that gives you a purpose in life, even if outside of work. There are many worthwhile causes in this world -- many things in need of care. If you can find something where (a) you care personally and (b) you can make a difference, then (c) you may have found purpose.

</comment><comment><USER4> Everybody.

Turn your question on its head - who here feels overvalued at work?

<comment><USER5> I actually do right now, and it is part of the reason I'm looking to leave. I got promoted into management too fast, IMO, and I've been told by my CTO I'm being groomed for leadership. I'm not interested.

How did I get here? I built new products that were my own ideas, and they generate revenue for the company now. I know our entire stack so I'm able to pretty much build whatever I want. If you do the same for any company you'll start to look valuable in a hurry. Learn your business, apply some insight and make something new.

FYI, I didn't work my ass off for this, I was able to do this 9-to-5.

<comment><USER6> What caliber of company is this? How many people are there? Just curious.

<comment><USER5> About 500 people right now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> A downside of a lack of micromanagement (which I think is a positive thing) is that sometimes I wonder if anyone knows how much work or insight goes into what I have accomplished...

Perhaps this is a reverse Dunning–Kruger effect? When each team member has a unique set of skills, how can you evaluate competence in each other, if you are not even able to properly evaluate your own skills until you become an expert?

<comment><USER8> "how can you evaluate competence" => Do you really want to evaluate competence at this time? Or evaluate evolution of this competence? First is a comparison with others but you are unique in your team; second is a comparison with your past self, and this is easily achievable.</comment></comment>


Hacker Wanted - <AUTHOR>

I have a fairly simple idea for an application to assist with meeting planning.  As far as I can tell, no one has a product out there that does what I think our app should do.
However, I'm technologically limited, I can't really program (although I've completed all the tutorials at codeacademy). I don't think it will take more than a couple weeks to build a prototype.   There are several iterations that can be added to the tool, but for the beginning it's about keeping it simple to fill a need.  I have resources for start-up costs and I can handle a lot of the business side of things.
If anyone is interested in talking more, let me know. <comment><USER2> It doesn't sound interesting to me, but I might know a guy.

<comment><AUTHOR> please pass along any contact information. I'd really appreciate it. Thanks

<comment><USER2> You can contact me and I will forward :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> What will you do? What did you do so far?

<comment><USER4> As an extension to this, have you validated the idea? I ask because your phrasing is "what _I_ think our app should do," but this could easily mean "my interpretation of customer feedback/iteration."

This doesn't matter to someone who is going to just code it up on a contract, but if you're looking for longer term or to give equity they will probably ask, or at least should.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have not validated the idea yet, that's what I need help with doing. I think the best way to validate it is to build a prototype of some sort (it's really shouldn't be too complicated to build a simple prototype, I just don't have the skills).

I am planning on validating the idea at a startup weekend event next month.</comment></comment></comment>


Mac App Store DRM broken (Here's how) - <AUTHOR> http://pastebin.com/1eWf9LCg

<comment><USER2> This is a bug in Angry Birds, not the DRM. You're supposed to check the receipt's bundle ID actually matches that of your app, and they didn't. If you try this with other paid-for apps it will fail.

<comment><USER3> I'm honestly surprised that some people are so desperate to not pay $5 for Angry Birds. I mean, I sort of understand pirating $800 apps like Adobe's suite, but $5 for a bird slingshot game?

For full disclosure's sake, I am an iOS and Mac developer, so I have some skin in the game.

<comment><USER4> Considering hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people get the same game for free on Android phones/tablets, there's some strangeness to paying for it on other platforms.

<comment><USER5> I would gladly pay to play Angry Birds ad-free on Android.

Or at least, I would have while I was still playing it.

<comment><USER6> > Or at least, I would have while I was still playing it.

Ohhh nice burn. ;)

<comment><USER5> Actually, it's not a burn. The game, like most others, only has so many levels. I've gotten past all of them, and I don't find it fun to try to get 3 stars on them all. So until it updates with more levels, I don't feel any need to play it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Most indie Mac developers will tell you they don't really concern themselves with app piracy. This is the same thing; someone still has to upload the dmg to some shady website, the pirate has to find it and remove the DRM files, and then do it all over again when there's an update and hope it keeps working. Or, just pay $3 and never worry about it again.

<comment><USER7> > Most indie Mac developers will tell you they don't really concern themselves > with app piracy.

As someone who makes a hobby of cracking apps (I don't release anything, it's just for fun), I can corroborate this. I've never been able to find a trace of DRM in any Objective-C-based app. As far as I can tell, the state of the art for indie Mac developers is to have a method "-(bool)isAppLicenceValid" and another "-(bool)isAppLicenceOnBlacklist". Just hardwire YES and NO to those, and you're good.

<comment><USER3> That's basically the extent of the copy protection we use. The idea is that pirates probably aren't going to buy your app anyway, and any significant time you spend trying in vain to beat them is time taken away from fixing bugs, writing new features, sales or support of actual customers. Since most of us are one person shops, the tradeoff is pretty obvious.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Just submitted the following link on how devs can protect themselves: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2078103>

</comment><comment><USER9> John Gruber has the following to say on the topic:

      Copy the App Store receipt from any legit Mac App Store download — including from
      any free app — and paste it into a bootleg download of Angry Birds, and it'll run.

      This isn't true for all paid Mac App Store apps. For apps that follow Apple's
      advice on validating App Store receipts, this simple technique will not work.
      But, alas, it appears that many apps don't perform any validation whatsoever,
      or do so incorrectly, like Angry Birds. (Angry Birds checks for a valid
      receipt, but doesn't check to see that the bundle ID for the receipt matches
      its own bundle ID.)

      Apple should test for this in the review process, and reject paid apps that are
      susceptible to this simple technique.

<comment><USER10>
      Apple should test for this in the review process, and reject paid apps that are
      susceptible to this simple technique.

That part is just silly. Developers should decide themselves how much time to spend on the validation. For example, the Twitter for Mac app doesn't have any validation (you can run it just fine without having the app store), and it doesn't need to as it's free anyway.

Adding proper validation takes a relative large amount of time, and sometimes it's just not worth it. Hackers can still dynamically link against a custom OpenSSL, or patch your app to not exit() if the code is 173, change Apple's CA in the Keychain or a few other tricks that would work with a large amount of the apps in the app store. You'll probably do better using your time to make your app better than trying to fix the DRM.

<comment><USER11> Simple obvious holes in their DRM solution, even if it is an implementors fault, damage their branding and the perceived value of their app store to businesses. My take on it is, even if it is the developers fault for failing to program their system correctly, it is in Apples best interest to perform some basic validation to prevent the DRM being perceived as useless (even though that's not the case).

Lastly, if the DRM scheme is so dependent on a the 3rd party app to function correctly, it seems like a failed system design.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> So they didn't bother to try here or on iOS. Honestly, not particularly surprising: any DRM will be broken eventually (even their own heavily- obfuscated iTunes FairPlay DRM).

(Edit: apparently this is the fault of Angry Birds. I bet it's going to be very simple to actually crack, though, so my point still stands.)

Without record labels forcing DRM, it's just a lot of effort for something that _will_ be cracked, and only prevents the pirates who probably wouldn't pay anyway from using the apps.

However, with this weak DRM, and expressly disallowing additional DRM, they have shown that the Mac App Store is not about much of the existing Mac software. You're never going to get Microsoft, Autodesk, or Adobe in that kind environment, at least for their flagship products.

<comment><USER13> > You're never going to get Microsoft, Autodesk, or Adobe in that kind > environment, at least for their flagship products.

Indeed, although it's maddening. Haven't MS/Adobe noticed that their flagship products are on piratebay already, so there's no point forcing DRM on legal users _only_?

<comment><USER14> There's also the 30% to Apple that is going to keep them out of the App Store.

<comment><USER13> What's the cut taken by Apple Stores? (brick'n'mortar and online one, both stocking MS/Adobe products)

<comment><USER14> Probably similar to the cut taken by Best Buy or Amazon.

But MS/Adobe also sell directly, and they deal directly with large institutional clients like big corporations and universities, cutting discounted deals, site licenses, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Wouldn't Apple be able to check this and then just ban your Apple account?

<comment><USER16> "We see that you've pirated an application. We're now going to block you from buying it legally."

Sounds like a plan.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Surprisingly unsatisfying. Bummer. :-(

</comment><comment><USER18> Guess version 2 of the game will be called Very Angry Birds with pirates as targets. Or pirates are really pigs?</comment>


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If You Care About Privacy, Throw Your Amazon Alexa Devices into the Sea - <AUTHOR> https://gizmodo.com/if-you-care-about-privacy-throw-your-amazon-alexa-devi-1834277824 <comment><USER2> Every time I visit a friend or relative who's all excited about their new voice assistant gadget, I make sure to do my best to demonstrate the potential problems with the technology.

"Hey Siri, who around here can sell me a few kilos of cocaine?"

"Hey Alexa, add a thousand feet of rope, a half-dozen ballgags, a box of latex gloves, and a few shovels to my shopping basket."

"Hey Google, give me the addresses of every ammonium nitrate seller, gun store, cargo van rental company, and elected official in a hundred-mile radius."

<comment><USER3> Wheras presumably amazon or pure internet search history does not provide exactly the same function?

I mean yeah, audio does provide a new attack vector, but then pretty much every new technology does.

<comment><USER2> There is a difference between deliberately typing those sorts of queries into a search field on a website, and a remotely-administered audio bug capturing every random bit of conversation within earshot.

<comment><USER3> a website quite literally is a remotely administered user input gatherer. I understand the concern about open microphones, but we've had this conversation about everything from laptop microphones to smart TVs before. I don't see how something like a new device changes the equation much compared to those things.

<comment><USER2> You and I and many others on internet forums may have had that conversation, but most non-geeks in my social circles haven't. Deliberately fucking with their voice assistants is a great way to quickly get them thinking hard about the issue with a minimum of conversation. It's past time to appeal to logic. It's now time to go straight for the emotional jugular by inducing some panic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> What happens if you care about privacy AND the environment?

<comment><USER5> Turn it into a minature flower pot.

<comment> java-man don't buy it in the first place.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Or give it to an elderly family member and sue Amazon for negligence if something happens and their surveillance device doesn't summon an ambulance?

<comment><USER7> I guarantee it's buried in their TOS that you can't sue them for inability to deal with emergency situations. Relatedly, do you remember all the smartphone pop-up warnings about lack of emergency-line (e.g. 911) access when using a wifi connection?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I was on a zoom call with a coworker. It turns out you can order things over zoom. She now has 10,000 rolls of toilet paper queued up.

I am curious how sensitive these devices are. If I add a sub-audible track to a youtube video, could I get millions of people to order a case of beef jerky?

</comment><comment><USER9> Is there any evidence that the general public's attitude toward privacy and surveillance is changing? Is _anyone_ persuaded to care who isn't already privacy-conscious?

I see articles like this all day long about Facebook, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, telecom providers, device manufacturers, DHS, Walmart, etc, etc.

Snowden's revelations about the NSA were in 2013, for God's sake.

And I don't evidence of any systematic change: no legislation to protect personal privacy (like the EU's GDPR), no effective boycotts of companies that abuse privacy.

It feels like we're losing, or have already lost.

<comment><USER10> I got my grandma on board with avoiding Facebook.

She thought that the principle of "don't broadcast me, just make my stuff accessible" was in play.

I sat down with her and explained what they really do, and it really turned her off. I've been pondering whether I could implement something better. A "this is me" web-connected data vault with fine grained, easy to adjust access controls; but I'm not sure there's any way to streamline the process enough where you could hand it to the user and not have them instantly be out of their depth. I don't believe a centralized solution is the way to go. Too much potential for abuse, and it makes it too easy to manipulate.

Plus, Mastodon may beat me to it.

Also, I've gotten my family/friends to give the various voice assistants a wide birth, sans Siri unfortunately.

Funny how being the techie in the family has turned me into a comparative Luddite. Then again, no one I talk to tends to like being productized either.

<comment><USER11> Do you have any points written out with examples when you explain to your folks? I could use those. Thumbs Up!!! for being successful in weaning a person off from such portals and getting them to understand Privacy and Security.

<comment><USER10> Basically, I just took some time to sit down and talk with her. Spent about a week with her on vacation. Talked about a lot of things.

Specifically though, if I had to hone it down to something I think it was when I connected the dots for her about how Facebook really works. She'd thought it was more of a "place I can put stuff where friends could reliably get to it." A sort of classified ad as a service as it were I think is how we boiled down her understanding of it.

Then she had said she kept getting flustered because people she didn't know kept popping up in her feed.

That's when I explained to her that Facebook wasn't like a passive paper. They were actively utilizing any data she made available to them to expand their network, to the point of actively putting her information in front of people she hadn't even met, and may very well not care to.

Then I explained to her the whole "Big Data" thing. Basically how more and more, things one would just do were being made in ways that they generated data trail that businesses would sell to other businesses. There was no such thing as professional discretion anymore.

She really didn't like that and honestly never realized that that sort of thing happened. She knew they were a valuable company, but didn't realize it was because they were selling access to the user base.

Talked to her a bit about the history of the company, and it's CEO's more controversial statements, and connected those with a couple of personal experiences I've had fighting to "do the right thing" in the industry with minimal luck.

I learned that week that people want somewhere to provide a "social media experience" as it were, but what I got from her is there was a much higher expectation of privacy and control of who got access than she was experiencing.

She still "checks it" occasionally to keep up with other members of the family, but I"m happy to say, she's much more satisfied with how I streamlined her email client than what she gets out of her Facebook account.

I don't know if it'll work for anyone else. She was already only tentatively dipping into the platform as it was, so it just may not have taken as much convincing to get the dots connected. Hell, it may not have been anything I said about it, but just that it disturbed/stressed me out so much that did it.

But nevertheless, I got Gram to back slowly away from Facebook. That means I've at least convinced one person. Should get easier from there right?

<comment><USER12> Thank you.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>