Google to add 'news feed' to website and app - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-40656033 <comment><USER2> 20 years ago, all the engines (AltaVista, Lycos) did exactly that. And then they all became "portal" like. And then a brand new engine with just a search box (so refreshing so clean) came along and swiped them over....

<comment><USER3> The difference is personalization. I never would visit a portal site like yahoo, but every morning I look through my Google Now feed. Relevance matters.

<comment><USER4> Does anyone else remember the personalisable "iGoogle"?

<comment><USER5> Yeah, I actually hated when that went away. I had several RSS feeds on there, my inbox, my calendar... never found a good replacement. I used Netvives for a while, but it was somehow not the same (can't really put my finger on it, though).

<comment><USER6> Can be replaced by Google Now and/or your Android home screen (inbox widget, etc)

<comment><USER7> Except Google Now still completely sucks because you have close to zero direct control on what gets shown there.

Also: I like that they're experimenting, but come on. Replacing a settings menu with a list of very specific yes/no questions that are added to that list as you encounter them - that's just _wrong_. You don't even get a benefit of being able to scroll through a settings screen to discover what features are available...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If only there was a system to create "feeds" of website entries (such as news sites), aggregate them, and then read them at our discretion. Then we could each create our own personal Google homepage.

Google could brand such an offering as "Google reader" and "Google personalized homepage"...

(For those who don't remember: these both used to be a thing!)

</Bitterness>

<comment><USER9> See but that gives you, the consumer, toouch control over what you see.

They don't want it to be your choice.

<comment><USER10> Yea if they gave you the choice not screw yourself over, then you wouldn't be able to get screwed over by Google </sarcasm>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The "newsfeed" pattern is one of the worst ideas humanity has ever had. Never has it been so easy to manipulate public opinion at will. 10 years ago there was a such thing as standards in journalism. Now anypoliticalblog.com's headline has been promoted to the equal status of an actual news organisation by means of the implicit legitimacy of appearing in a news feed. This insanity has reached a crescendo with the official endorsement of sites like breitbart.com by the White House, and I don't think there's any going back.

It's a psychological hack, and the promoters of this technology know it.

<comment><USER12> > 10 years ago there was a such thing as standards in journalism

Was there? Because last I checked all that these so called 'reputable' sources of news seem to put out is biased garbage full of misleading data and often blatant lies.

I've seen better journalism from bloody buzzfeed than I have from some of the "proper" news networks in Australia...

<comment><USER11> >Was there? Because last I checked all that these so called 'reputable' sources of news seem to put out is biased garbage full of misleading data and often blatant lies.

The inculcation of this sentiment is precisely the effect I'm referring to. The waters have become so muddied with nonsense that no one can tell right from wrong anymore. And thus, actual news organizations with trained reporters and fact checkers and a tradition of at least being held to _some_ kind of accountability lose all credibility. It's not a perfect system, but it's one which evolved to solve the exact problems we are facing here. There's a reason Trump attacks the media's credibility on a daily basis. Throwing your hands up and saying "it's all fake news" is precisely what the propagandists want.

<comment><USER13> Is there a reason most of the MSM attacks Trump's credibility on a daily basis?

The reasons are ratings and political ideology. They know that a lot of people hate Trump so they attack him. Any evidence of wrongdoing on Trump's part is merely a happy extra for the MSM.

If Obama did the same things that Trump does, do you think the MSM would behave the same way?

The MSM have cried wolf so many times that now half the country will not listen if they actually find something solid against Trump.

Whatever your position on Trump, it's hard to think of the MSM as being driven by actual journalism. And that's a real shame for the small number of journalists in the MSM who actually have integrity.

<comment><USER14> I agree; the right-wing press lacks high quality journalists. Journalists seem to happen to lean left a whole lot more.

<comment><USER15> This is a convenient fiction.

There are plenty of right-wing journalists who have similar quality to left wing. Publishers like _The National Review_ have fine writers and it is hard to argue the a publication founded by William F. Buckley is some liberal organisation.

The "problem" is that all these organizations are critical of Trump too.

<comment><USER11> >The National Review

And who else?

<comment><USER16> Certain other commentary magazines (eg Weekly Standard and Commentary), think tanks (AEI, Heritage, Cato), business newspapers (Wall Street Journal).

I do think there is an issue in that these sort of commentators have much less visibility than before in American politics, so it's easy to form a negative opinion about right wing journalism. Partially as a result, I can name several commentators that have migrated from "Republican conservative" to a more "independent" oriented stance. Names like David Frum, Andrew Sullivan, Bruce Bartlett, David Brooks, and George Will come to mind. None of these names are 100% "liberal", neither are still today. They just don't fit well with right- wing media that has increasingly become populist.

It is probably my bias, but I can't think of a similar type of left-wing commentator that's made the same transition. On the other hand, I've noticed increased populism in more left-oriented media too...

This is a shame, because even when these type of commentators were at their most raucous, I always got the impression that both sides respected each other. (You saw the same thing at, say the Supreme Court, where Scalia and Ginsburg were friends.) A lot of media these days in contrast is extremely us vs. them and tribal oriented, with seemingly no respect for the other side at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> >The feed will include news stories from a variety of publishers, to avoid the so-called filter bubble effect, where people follow only content aligned with their pre-existing point of view.

>"To provide information from diverse perspectives, news stories may have multiple viewpoints from a variety of sources... and, when available, you'll be able to fact check," the company said in a blog post.

I'm growing increasingly uncomfortable with how Google, Facebook etc. are now positioning themselves in terms of what news and sources they believe we should and should not consume.

If this piece is true and this update isn't confined to the Google app then I think it may be the final nail in the coffin of my relationship with Google products.

<comment><USER18> 2020 election will be Larry Page running against Mark Zuckerberg

<comment><USER19> Trump would probably be a better candidate than either of them, at least he's actually run a business and would have four years of presidential experience.

<comment><USER20> Your comment implies that Mark Zuckerberg has not run a business.

<comment><USER21> Nor Larry Page!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I had to double check to see if I had woken up from a coma and it was in fact April 1, 2018, but no. What a way to destroy the most iconic webpage in history.

<comment><USER21> I would guess non-logged in access would still yield the all-white page?

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Who visits google.com anyway? I am pretty sure majority of those users who aren't interested in seeing these news are already using google search via browser address bar. Only those who go to google.com will see these news , and they seem to be an exact type of people who would enjoy such content and spend hours browsing it generating more revenue to google

<comment><USER24> Majority of _regular_ users (who do not care or even know about any kind of online privacy, open web, net neutrality etc.) I interact with go to google.com, write down e.g. "facebook" and then log in! They don't even know they can use url bar for searching (let alone typing xyz.com directly). It makes my blood boil every time I see that. I try to explain, they usually just don't care to listen/understand. Coming from other thread about Firefox marketshare, it's mostly this kind of users that kill the open web and help billion-dollar walled-gardens prosper. There are billions of them.

<comment><USER25> Paraphrasing something else... this is probably what actual hell is like. Having to watch people browse the web in this way. Indefinitely.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Google's blog post talks about introducing the newsfeed to the Google app, but I don't see any mention of Google.com: [https://www.blog.google/products/search/feed-your-need- know/](https://www.blog.google/products/search/feed-your-need-know/)

Anyone know where the BBC found this confirmation?

<comment><USER27> I think they weren't being precise and just meant how the app will look, which some people might equate with google.com itself.

I don't see any reason to believe it would affect the site.

<comment><USER26> Perhaps the BBC spoke to someone at Google who said the news feed would be available via the web – à la [https://news.google.com](https://news.google.com) or [https://newsstand.google.com/](https://newsstand.google.com/) – which the reporter misunderstood to mean Google.com itself would display the news feed?

It just seems anomalous that such a great change would be announced with so little fanfare (a single sentence in the article). I need to see confirmation before I believe it.

<comment><USER26> Update: [https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/07/google-denies- claims...](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/07/google-denies-claims-of-a- desktop-google-com-revamp/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Didn't they try basically this before, then had it fail and discontinue in the form of iGoogle(2005-2013)? The idea of google going back to that is just nuts.

At least DuckDuckGo has got the search page concept right.

<comment><USER29> They definitely discontinued it, but that doesn't mean it failed. What do you think made them kill it? At the time, it felt like textbook Google capriciousness (see Reader, etc).

<comment><USER30> I expected it to be a strategic push towards their more interactive content aggregation feature built into Google+.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I can't wait for them to add a stories UI so I can see what my friends are searching for while I'm searching.

</comment><comment><USER32> It's hard to believe this is going to happen to google.com

Google is, if nothing else, obsessed with metrics; unless they'd A/B/... tested this _to death_ , there is zero chance they'll roll it out to their homepage.

I can't believe it, and it's not mentioned anywhere on their blog post.

To be fair, most people probably search from the chrome toolbar now, but even so, I imagine at most, we'll see a staged roll out to a cohort to test it.

<comment><USER33> Being obsessed with metrics is the exact reason something like this would go through.

All companies that design to metrics instead of vision always ship the worst UI/UX crimes. This is the ideology we have to thank for things like the lightbox sign up forms that block or lock out content if you try to browse without an account on FB/Pintrest etc.

You're assuming the metric Google is designing for is still how fast a user gets what they want off site. What if the metric they're designing for is how long someone spends in the Google ecosystem?

<comment><USER34> on that note...how on earth is it possibly that the "im feeling lucky" button is still doing something for them?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Really, Google, all I want is my search-oriented "plus" operator back, and for you to unfuck search.

I would have bought into the other Plus, your social network, but you fucked over your base product (search) during its launch, and then went all "real names" et al. on us.

<comment><USER36> If you click on Tools and then change "All Results" to "Verbatim", then it behaves a bit more like it used to

<comment><USER37> I can't find this on Google.com - is it just in the App ?

<comment><USER38> From the search-results page, there's a "Tools" button which exposes a bar containing "Any Time, All Results". Click "All Results" and it exposes "Verbatim" as another choice.

There might be a more-permanent way to set it if you are logged-in, but I don't usually do that for Google for privacy reasons.

<comment><USER37> Aha. thank you. It would seem the magic is:

      &tbs=li:1

On the URL. As I use a custom search page as my home page, I shall alter it accordingly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I've been using Google Home / Android version of this for a year or so now, and I have to say I really enjoy it. NOt sure if I will also enjoy the desktop version, but the app is truly intuitive. It shows me not just "news" but stuff like

-amazon price udpates on products I like -random forum comments -HN threads trending -and of course, news type news

either way I don't ;like a cluttered feed but I do have my eye on this

</comment><comment><USER39> Dear God. I can barely handle the news snippets that have started appearing in Google Now, I'm actually really close to disabling the entire thing because of them. I guess this means they're not going away anytime soon.

<comment><USER40> I disabled them after about a day and I don't feel like I'm missing anything. I have about as much respect for news/trivia noise as the ads you hear in call hold music.

<comment><USER39> Please tell me how? Is there a way to disable them without disabling google now?

<comment><USER40> Nope! There's no way. Funny, that.

(Same goes for Google's new-ish "share location" feature of Maps. Want that? Then you'll have to share and record you location for all apps. And you have to hunt into settings to re-disable it EVERY SINGLE TIME. It's a feature! Basically a Trojan horse for Google's "record everything" business need, but less immediately threatening. A Trojan gnat, perhaps.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> What I want to know about Google's news feed priorities is what possessed them to think it's a good idea to completely overtake the Play Newsstand app?

To access a magazine subscription, you must open Play Newsstand, click on the Library icon now relocated to the bottom (as they've culled all options from the hamburger menu), then scroll down every single news feed source to which you are subscribed (I believe there are defaults as well), just to get to your most recent issues.

I spend about 10x more for magazines on Play Newsstand than I do on Play movie rentals & android apps every year. Yet the options for automating downloads, selecting the type/quality of download, verifying library content, etc are amateurish at best. You cannot even read a magazine using Google Chrome in Linux.

I also have almost a full year's worth of a subscription that doesn't even show up. When I called support, they stated it was a known issue. No refund and no attempt to fix. $70 down the drain.

But yeah, my news feed is so much more important than the household $500/yr on magazine subscriptions.

</comment><comment><USER42> The bit about adding it to the website seems like a misinterpretation/over- extrapolation of something said in a briefing about it, specifically that the news feed would be brought to mobile web browsers 'in some form' (see quotes below). That's pretty different from "the feed is definitely being attached to google.com", and also seems to entirely exclude the idea of it showing up on desktop google.com as well.

(disclaimer: I work at google, but I know nothing much about this in particular)

Fortune: > "In addition to putting Google Feed on mobile apps, the company is looking at attaching it to web browsers in some form, Shashi Thakur, a second Google vice president for engineering, said during the briefing." [http://fortune.com/2017/07/19/google-feed-compete- facebook-n...](http://fortune.com/2017/07/19/google-feed-compete-facebook- newsfeed/)

Indian Express: "The company is looking to bring it to mobile web browsers, although it didn't say when. "It should have roughly the same behavior" as a news feed, Thakur said." [http://indianexpress.com/article/technology/tech- news-techno...](http://indianexpress.com/article/technology/tech-news- technology/google-scraps-sparse-search-page-for-full-fledged-news-feed-on- mobile-app-4759171/)

</comment><comment><USER43> Google's services just get worse and worse these days. Used to be so damn good.

Sad.

</comment><comment><USER44> Seems like bad news to me! :(

However, one could easily start using "startpage.com" or duckduckgo.com with "!google <your search string>" \- both deliver results from google!

</comment><comment><USER45> Have we gone back in time? The idea of a newsfeed is ancient, pre-dating the interne. The only difference is that this time around the feed only shows you what you want to see.

Scary shit.

</comment><comment><USER33> This must mean that Yahoo and the other search engines that followed the "portal" design pattern which Google was a welcome alternative to are so far in the past that they're about to sleepwalk into the same design mistakes.

Looks like Duckduckgo has an opening, don't waste it.

</comment><comment><USER46> If anyone has the Pocket browser extension installed, they'll notice that Pocket automatically adds some featured (and maybe personalized?) stories to a new blank Google Chrome web page, right below the search field.

I used to think this was obnoxious. Then I started clicking on the articles. Now, I like this feature. It surfaces articles that I otherwise might have missed.

So I could see this working with Google, if they do it right. And perhaps they should offer a way to turn it off for users who prefer a simple UI.

</comment><comment><USER40> Dear Google, my concentration is a valuable resource to me. Please don't fritter it away. (In practical terms, please don't remove the option to disable the trivia feed.)

<comment><USER47> Custom style sheet to the rescue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> What a horrible idea. Their original user interface consisting of a logo, a search bar, and two buttons is iconic and made up a great deal of what set google apart from its competitors. I know the first time I used Google in the late 90's, the thing I noticed was the user interface. I was a middle school kid then and knew nothing of PageRank. The reason I kept going back to google was their UI.

</comment><comment><USER49> Took long enough. The next step will be adding a Google+ integrated commenting system.

But why?

Attention (which is Google's main product) is now captivated by the social networks. Google must adapt or lose market share. What is interesting is how they have not been able to really break into social. What about Google makes it so difficult for them to do just that?

<comment><USER50> It's very important that people working on things like __human social interaction __be able to do things like invert binary trees. They only hire the best.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Without Marissa Mayer is there really nobody senior enough at Google to successfully fight such a bad idea?

</comment><comment><USER52> This seems like the true reason, or end game, for AMP. It's a way to control the presentation and wall people in to prevent them from leaving Google.

I hate AMP and I'm pretty sure I'd hate this if I still used Google much. Especially if it's driven solely by algorithms and AI.

</comment><comment><USER53> Do people even visit google.com anymore? I just type in the address bar of browsers.

</comment><comment><USER54> The whole home page news feed thing is exactly why my father chooses to use Bing and I'm sure he's not the only one in that boat. Looks like Google has realized this.

</comment><comment><USER55> I use Bing's news section (on their home page) all the time, syncs with Cortana. I assume this will be similar. I'm sure they will let you hide it, even Bing does that.

</comment><comment><USER56> Betting clicking on any lands you on a Google AMP cached page too. So they can control the page, add the AMP banner, carousel widget, etc.

</comment><comment><USER57> And it goes without saying that the news sources preferences will reflect those of Google's predominantly liberal top brass.

<comment><USER13> I suspect you're correct, despite any assurances to the contrary. And any bias might not even be by design but rather just a result of the biases of the people who make the feature.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> Well, I believe it really is time someone came up with a good replacement for Google.

</comment><comment><USER59> This seems much more like Apple News than Facebook.

</comment><comment><USER60> Great, what i asked for: think for me before I do.

</comment><comment><USER61> Isn't this going back to 1999?

</comment><comment><USER62> Who cares your privacy.

</comment><comment><USER63> The title is a bit clickbaity. It's a news feed. I don't see how it's related to Facebook.</comment>


Protect the last of the wild - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-07183-6 <comment><USER2> I live in southeast Alaska, where we have a relatively healthy population of coastal brown bears. When we go into the woods, there is always a chance a bear could be nearby.

Your first encounter with a brown bear in the wild can be unnerving. It's a really different feeling to see an animal that could easily kill you in the woods, without a wall or a fence between you and that animal. It's really humbling, and makes the woods feel entirely different than most other woods I've ever been in.

It's not that hard to be safe. You make noise when you're in brushy areas, and you stay aware of your surroundings as long as you're in bear country. If you're camping, there are well-established routines that keep bears from messing with your camping area. You keep in mind where bears are in their annual cycles; are they relatively well-fed, or are they hungry and looking anywhere they can for food?

I like the balance of doing technical work with the experience of walking in the woods with bears. The projects I work on are important, but they're not life-safety-critical. If one of my servers goes down, no one's going to die. Having interacted with brown bears at close range, a server going down is a relatively low-stress event.

I wish there were more wild areas left. The woods in the lower 48 feel empty after living in forests that still have the top predators alive and healthy.

<comment><USER3> Was out in the wilderness on Vancouver Island, a place with the highest concentration of cougars in North America. You're right, it is a vastly different experience walking around an area like that knowing you're just a fragile voyeur in another animal's environment (especially something as silent and murderous as a big cat).

<comment><USER4> I live on the San Francisco peninsula. A mountain lion killed a deer in our back yard once, and then the buzzards came and cleaned it up. Not that I wish to dispute the premise of the OP in the slightest, but you can still find wildness in some unexpected places.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'd argue that humanity certainly _requires_ huge tracts of wilderness for its long term survival. So far, we've successfully transformed diverse ecosystems into vast, but basic, mono-cultural 'deserts'.

But - is it sustainable? In the century since the Haber process was introduced, the world has started to buckle at the seams from the results: huge population growth, with accompanying pollution (nitrates, pesticides, algal blooms, etc.) and degradation of biomes. What are the effects on our biochemistry? Plastic pollution is only now being noticed. Pthalates and numerous other estrogen mimickers are silently at work. Antibiotic resistance is increasing.

I think it's too early to conclude that we can indeed survive this. The outlook for the rest of this century is not positive...

A 'wilderness' is a vast library of alternative biotech. Until humanity understands the effects of its impact on Earth's ecosystems and itself, it would be wise to remember this.

<comment><USER6> Could not agree more with this. Evolution on Earth has had a very long time to develop super advanced nanotechnology, which we understand and utilise very poorly and are destroying forever - for what? More beef on the plate, palm oil for products no one needs and a bit of money for one generation?

Beyond being critical to the survival of deeply linked ecosystems, and ultimately ourselves, it's just really stupid to destroy products of millions of years of R&D before we've even begun to unlock their potential. The amount of energy and computation that has gone into that evolution is super valuable and a couple of generations are trading it for profits lasting a blink of an eye.

In general, I find it super strange that multi-generational thinking/optimisation isn't more deeply ingrained in our behaviour as a species.

<comment><USER7> Natural selection is a greedy algorithm. Being forward thinking or altruistic rarely produces more surviving progeny over the short term.

<comment><USER6> I guess in the case of humans we have partly outpaced natural selection - nature hasn't had time to optimise for the reality we are creating, it's too slow. Short term impulses which have worked great (until now) still govern our behaviour.

It's not altruism to try to avert long term disaster beyond your own life span. It's in your own interest to ensure your progeny survives - even several generations in the future they still carry your genes. But I don't know if inbuilt mechanisms for this exist in evolution.

I'd like to think self-inflicted extinction isn't a likely outcome of evolution - but maybe it is once a certain species dominates.

<comment><USER8> All of the things that humans have done, which you are referring to - can be traced back to one thing - cheap energy - in the form of OIL.

<comment><USER6> It is curious how carbon based life that existed in the past (dead plants and animals in the form of oil) is the catalyst for carbon based life wiping itself out in the future.

I wonder if this ultimately also happens on other planets with carbon based life (if they exist) - a short period of hyper growth once life learns how to unlock energy from the past, followed by extinction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've been thinking about this quote a lot recently - "Canada, the most affluent of countries, operates on a depletion economy which leaves destruction in its wake. Your people are driven by a terrible sense of deficiency. When the last tree is cut, the last fish is caught, and the last river is polluted; when to breathe the air is sickening, you will realize, too late, that wealth is not in bank accounts and that you can't eat money." It's attributed to a canadian Aboriginal but could apply to any industrialized or semi industrialized country. Hopefully we save ourselves before it's too late

<comment><USER10> Canada has a terrible environmental record that completely undermines its progressive reputation. The tar sands project may be the single most egregious resources undertaking in history.

But other so-called progressive industrialized nations aren't much better. Norway is also wealthy primarily due to the extraction of fossil fuels.

<comment><USER11> Hopefully with the oil prices so low and keep getting lower, the tar sands is a dead project

<comment><USER12> Low prices means higher consumption, which will do the opposite of kill off that project.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Having grown up with a national forest as my literal backyard, its amusing and sad to hear so much nonsense spewed in this thread. Yes, we need to protect the wild, and inculcate respect for it in those that live in and visit it. My issue is with the naivety of proposed "solutions".

One of the best examples I can give, though I have many, is this: my grandfather was a logger and firefighter in this forest in the 70s. During my lifetime though, the PhD environmentalists came to dominate the forest service, and as logging waned they stopped listening to the old timers about how to take care of the forest. My grandfather would try to tell them they needed to let loggers thin the forest out, and to do more control burns and let them burn longer.

As a kid I dismissed his ramblings, thinking; "they have PhDs! they know better than us!"... and then after I left home, after the pine beetle infestation, poof: two fires within a few years of each other that burned over 500,000 acres of that national forest I grew up in... and it is still recovering to this day, and doesnt look the same. Old trails I used to walk dont exist anymore. Mud slides from the fire have covered up old fishing spots. Etc.

City slickers love to wax poetic about the forest, and then show up and destroy it, and want to send in their environmentalists to fix it their way, while those of us who live in those forests are greater stewards than they ever have been. Then after the forest service or BLM phds have fucked things up, they get sent off to some other poor areas forest, where they arent native and dont listen to the natives.

Another example for this thread: many are claiming cattle ruin forest. on the contrary, cattle have become an important part of keeping the forest healthy, including ranchers taking care of forest land the forest service doesnt have the resources to fix...

Just thought some people might want to hear a slightly different perspective on this issue. Now of course Im talking about smaller localized forests compared to the giant ecosystems the article covers, but I think those microcosms should serve as a warning for anyone wanting to tackle those larger ecosystems in a similar manner. Namely, listen to locals who know the forest better than you do.

<comment><USER14> Cattle are good for forests? I'm sorry but you're going to have to backup that statement.

<comment><USER15> I can't speak for what the OP meant, but at least out West cattle fill a critical role in the wilderness ecosystem vacated by bison. If you remove the cattle, you would need to find a suitable replacement with similar grazing patterns.

As a well known example, pronghorn antelope benefit significantly from coexisting with cattle/bison populations, due to reduced predation and increased food supply (they have complementary feeding patterns). Grazers create ideal habitat for pronghorn, so pronghorn populations tend to track grazer populations. These days, that is cattle.

<comment><USER13> I am talking about out west. I hadn't thought of the bison angle, but thats a good point. (I'm a geek, not a rancher, so my knowledge on these things is anecdotal from listening to the old timers)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is a difficult issue. On the one hand, it is arrogant to sit in comfortable chairs imported to areas that live in excess and tell others to live with less so that we may appreciate their wilderness from afar; or ephemerally while we are on vacation. On the other hand, I am reminded of this letter/video which sums up an important ethos: [https://vimeo.com/newmanfilm/wildernessletter](https://vimeo.com/newmanfilm/wildernessletter). We should protect the wilderness because it inspires us to be better.

Humanity doesn't need wilderness to survive and grow (we need food and water). But we do need it to remind ourselves where we came from and how complexity can be beautiful. So what do we do?

<comment><USER17> > Humanity doesn't need wilderness to survive and grow

Can you back this up? I agree with the comment by fractallyte that wilderness is a necessity for long-term survival of humans. Also guaranteeing food and water without wilderness has never been attempted before...

<comment><USER18> It seems to me that the opposite assessment requires more justification. Ever since Neolithic, mankind has been domesticating most if not all species it consumed. And we've been deforesting like crazy. We're not hunter gatherers anymore, so our progress has consisted relying less and less on wilderness and more on controlled, artificial environments.

I'm not saying that we don't need wilderness for deeper reasons (say psychological, or in terms on keeping biodiversity for future-proofing our biological pool of domesticated species...). But such hypothetical reliance on wilderness surely seems less obvious than our independence from it.

<comment><USER19> Absolutely not definitive, but the biosphere 2 experiments provide a data point.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosphere_2](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosphere_2)

<comment><USER18> We were talking about wilderness. Biosphere 2 is about way more than that, as it was a completely sealed environment (it had to produce its own oxygen, for a start).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> If you look on the map, there's a small patch of wilderness in the lower 48 (direct link):

[https://media.nature.com/w800/magazine- assets/d41586-018-071...](https://media.nature.com/w800/magazine- assets/d41586-018-07183-6/d41586-018-07183-6_16233416.jpg)

That's most likely the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness here in Idaho, as well as the various national forests surrounding it:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Church–River_of_No_Retur...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Church–River_of_No_Return_Wilderness)

There is almost no wilderness left, and what remains is only there because people spent lifetimes working to defend it. I highly encourage anyone who reads this to make a stand in your personal discussions to always choose protecting wild lands over financial gain.

I see the recent attacks on things like the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase national monuments to be sabotage, undermining the decades-long efforts of conservationists:

[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/04/us/trump-bears- ears.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/04/us/trump-bears-ears.html)

As a native Idahoan I respect opposing arguments but recent trends have gone too far. I heard discussions while growing up that when the national debt reached a certain level, the US government would begin selling off its public lands. So look at who stands to benefit from that and other debts, and you'll see a giant circle of corruption. Meta-level critical thinking is needed now more than ever in these times.

</comment><comment><USER21> Problem here is that developed world has destroyed it's wilderness long time ago, used that land to produce food and resources, but now we demand that others don't do the same. Why don't we instead create a wilderness by giving up on our local agriculture land? Nature takes back the land very quickly and if you limit hunting and repopulate the animals you'll quickly have a full- blown wilderness back. It doesn't have to be Amazon or some place in Africa, Europe once was covered in forests end-to-end too.

<comment><USER22> > Problem here is that developed world has destroyed it's wilderness long time > ago, used that land to produce food and resources, but now we demand that > others don't do the same.

So why not pay those countries to leave their wilderness wild?

It would be like saying: "You know, we really screwed up, and you guys are the only ones who have some of this precious wilderness left. We'd like to pay you to preserve it."

<comment><USER23> It would be nice, but many countries struggle to even get funding approved to help other people who are starving. Nationalism is a huge barrier.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> So how do you incentivize/coerce governments and companies to conserve natural resources, not dump toxins into the air, land and water, and generally limit the negative influences on our health and environment?

"A world given over entirely to the engine of industry becomes a world no longer fit for creatures, human or otherwise; it becomes a world without hope." \- Tim Winton

</comment><comment><USER25> What these reports often seem to ignore is that there is still biodiversity within our cities--sometimes a lot of it. If the default assumption is "city bad, wilderness good", we're never going to make any progress, because short of an apocalyptic event cities are here to stay. What we should be focused on is making the cities we live in more sustainable and integrated with their ecosystems. Green roofs, urban parks, sustainable transportation networks, clean energy--there are plenty of avenues being explored today that are connecting our cities with nature. Cities should be a part of nature rather than apart from nature.

<comment><USER26> Thinking just of recognizable animals, typical cities have, what, rats, cats, starlings, house sparrows, rock doves, gulls, and not terribly much more. We can do better, but in general cities are _not_ biodiversity hotspots.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Interesting that the article comes a week after Brazilians elected an extreme right-wing president that promised to open up all the Amazon's nature reserves for mining and farming. I expect the next 4 years will be very sad for Amazon forests.

At HN we are discussing roguelike game development while the world around us is systematically destroyed and what will be left is us experiencing nature through a Nethack game.</comment>


Alan Kay on 'Learning to See' - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/chunkamui/2012/06/12/alan-kay-on-learning-to-see/

<comment><USER2> It always takes me a while when I'm watching Alan Kay deliver prepared remarks because his emphasis doesn't seem to match the emphasis of his speech.

In this case it strikes me that he's trying to evoke the _enormity of human history_ \-- hundreds of thousands of years -- and the surprise that we've only really been trying to "step outside ourselves" for about five hundred. Somehow at least 99.5% of that time has been spent in the fogs before enquiry and only the last 0.5% have we really seen the explosion of mathematics, the emergence of science, and the industrial revolution. That we can fool ourselves allows us to dream of the world to come, but it also eats itself: it locks us in a prison of our own minds. So that is the emphasis that I see in this talk, after puzzling through it in my head for a bit.

This may be true, but I worry that this has been too limited an approach to history. As an artist whose works will likely be lost to history, I must object that there seem to be more artists than ever talked about, more soul- seekers lighting fires than fires that burned across history: most trickle away into embers.

What if the problem isn't that we're always fooling ourselves -- i.e. that we never light fires -- and rather that we have simply not had the right environment for the fires to explode the way they do? What if, say, ideas became properties of trade routes rather than properties of cultures, and the Dark Ages somehow stabilized these trade routes so that the ideas could finally diffuse from one route to another?

It's only a half-baked idea at present, but I'm just not sure that this relatively recent explosion in innovation is due entirely to the fact that people got locked inside their own beliefs. Perhaps that is me getting locked inside my own beliefs though -- beliefs that we are all cosmopolitan and curious and earnest inside.

</comment><comment><USER3> Interestingly, we humans do literally have to learn to see, including updating our preferences about where to rotate our eyeballs.

Also interestingly, we perceive nothing directly. The role of sense organs is to _rule out_ possibilities. So everything that remains must be internally generated (i.e. conjectural). Before we can see something we must first have an idea about it, and all such ideas come from guesswork.

When we observe correctly we can say that the internal perception corresponds to external reality.

Another property of humans is that our perceptions are distorted by strong emotions such as fears and desires. Overly ambitious people, for instance, perceive the world differently. I wonder whether this goes all the way down to the level of apples and oranges (e.g. not seeing an apple if it is not in my 'interest' to do so).

</comment><comment><USER4> This struck a chord: "We are the species that fools itself"

I think this is at the heart of how we are capable of creating something from nothing ('create wealth' as pg would say).

There's also a dark side - I've come to notice that people who cannot 'fool themselves' are less happy, and at times dangeruosly so.

We are indeed a self-winding spring.</comment>


Can developers read/interpret law clauses? - <AUTHOR> Often when I read job contracts, when I find something offending, and when I say that to recruiters I usually get argument (often in high peach almost screaming voice) :"You are not a lawyers, you do not know how to read a law clause".
Taking in consideration that job contracts are very similar to BDD specs in Cucumber, why we cannot read them as part any coding specification or developer code.
What do you think in your opinion can developers read law and understand it? If recruiters are right why reading contracts at all?
Should we just accept blindly or we always need to have lawyer to decipher real meaning? <comment><USER2> My wife is a lawyer. She sometimes has to deal with people who think they know the law as well as she does (or better), simply because they've read the written laws or they've read the contract. That is almost always a huge mistake.

What is written is only one leg of the tripod. Another leg of the tripod is knowing the legal precedents, and you won't get those just by reading the laws or the contracts -- and even if you pass the bar exam, you probably won't learn those outside of going to law school. The third leg of the tripod is knowing which judge(s) you are dealing with, and how they are likely to rule, based on what is before them -- and even law school can't really help prepare you for this problem.

And all of that assumes everyone is operating in the same legal regime, in the same jurisdiction. The legal systems can be radically different in other places, such that the lawyers in that area don't even think the same way. For example, in French law, there is no Federal system. So, any contract that is written with language referring to federal law may be null and void in France -- just ask Chubb and their multimillion dollar case that went all the way up to the French Supreme Court.

So, as a programmer, sure -- you can read the contract, and you may even be able to do a better job of it than most. But do you know all the legal precedents in your jurisdiction? Do you know all the respective judges who might see your case and how they would rule?

If it's a standard contract with a big company, you may just have to bite the bullet -- or decide you don't want to work under those rules.

Either way, a big company probably isn't going to make any changes for you, because this is their standard contract that they give everyone, and they never make any changes for anyone.

So, how badly do you want this job? How much of a stink are you willing to raise to try to get changes made to the contract, before you decide it's not worth it?

Even if you are a lawyer, if you are a client in a case, you don't want to represent yourself. You can't really be properly impartial when it comes to what you want, and so you would be the moron who would be retaining a fool as his representation.

<comment><USER2> And yes, on any contract I sign, my wife takes a look at it first. And so far, there has only been one employment contract I recall that she was able to get any modifications made to.

It was a minor mod, the employer was very small, and the fact that we wanted this mod did make my negotiations with that employer considerably more difficult. But in the end, we did get it.

Your mileage may vary.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> My experience is company lawyer telling me "oh, don't worry about that" but when I hired a lawyer their explanation matched my understanding. When someone tells you not to read the contract ignore them.

You won't get the nuances (and they matter a huge amount!), and you won't be able to write a good contract, but you can usually notice grossly bad clauses.

So: on the one hand, no, you don't understand it enough for many purposes. But then neither can the recruiter. On the other hand, you _can_ notice really bad things.

</comment><comment><USER4> I would say there's a difference between being able to read a contract and negotiate one.

For example, one common clause that 'offends' a developer might be something starting any work done whilst under their employment remains the IP of the employer.

It's one thing to tell the recruiter something offends you, but another to negotiate an alternative.

For that's what negotiation is. Understanding why the employer requested what they did, and suggesting something that achieves that reasoning but satisfies your concern too.

<comment><AUTHOR> Issue here is they saying: "we are to big company, it is our standard contract, we will not change contract just for you ... at least that is what their HR is saying"

<comment><USER4> I know. What I'm trying to say is, you're not asking them to change the contract for you. You're asking them to change the contract for both of them.

If you ask a prospective employer to remove any clauses that say "Any work done during employment is ours" then why should they bother? They put this clause in to a) avoid being the funder for work that doesn't benefit them and b) Ensure you don't steal other company resources.

If you suggested "Can we please add a clause that states any work done outside of contracted hours using resources not directly owned by the employer shall remain the property of the employee" that would seem much more reasonable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is the part I do not like: i) Due to the nature of your duties and your particular responsibilities, you recognise that you have an obligation to further the interests of company "B".

ii) If you make an Invention in the course of your duties for us, you must disclose it to us at once. That Invention will belong to us. If we obtain a patent for that Invention, however, you may be entitled to compensation for it in accordance with the Patents Act 1977 s.40.

iii) Subject to ii), all Intellectual Property Rights that come into existence during the normal course of your employment or by using materials, tools or knowledge made available through your employment, will belong to us or any of the Group Companies which we nominate. If required to do so (whether during or after the termination of your employment), you must sign any document and do anything necessary to vest ownership in these rights in us as sole beneficial owner. Where ownership does not automatic ally vest by Act of Parliament, you must immediately assign all your interests to us. You irrevocably waive all your rights pursuant to sections 77 to 83 inclusive of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988.

iv) The provisions of this clause 3 (c) shall remain in full force and effect following any termination of this agreement for any reason, whether such termination is lawful or not.

Any thoughts?

<comment><USER3> Problematic bits might be "in the course of your duties for us" (need a lawyer to know what that means) and "by using knowledge made available through your employment" is very vague...

My experience is with small companies you can negotiate changes that make everyone happy, if you have a lawyer to reduce hassle for company. Big companies... harder to say.

<comment><AUTHOR> For me issue is "or by using materials, tools or knowledge made available through your employment" when you combine it with "whether during or after the termination of your employment" and "shall remain in full force and effect following any termination"

So basically, let say I do not know Scala and I learn it there or I use GoDaddy to register domain, according to contract I will never be able to use those anywhere else, and if I do I will need to handover things I have done?!

<comment><USER5> The "materials, tools" part is fairly standard in the U.S. (I believe the OP is in the UK, though, correct?). The "knowledge" part is overbroad.

If knowledge were replaced with "Company's confidential information," then that would make sense and is standard. Your employer has a legitimate interest in your not using their trade secrets and confidential information for your own use.

But everyone gains "knowledge" working at a job. Whether it's learning a programming language, being introduced to a publicly available tool or service, we all learn things of general applicability at our jobs. Come on - why do employers ask for people with X years experience, other than the fact that they understand people learn things from their working experience?

So, yes, this is unreasonable and I wouldn't sign it, unless amended.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Don't take the recruiter's opinion on this. They want a commission.

Can developers read/interpret legal clauses? Yes and no. I good developer should have the analytical skills to do a much better than average job spotting issues in the plain language of a contract.

What a lawyer can add, if they have experience, is a familiarity with these types of clauses, what is and is not standard, the background law which helps in terms of what is and is not enforceable, and an understanding of how courts interpret these types of clauses.

And, of course, a lawyer can help in terms of revising the terms of an agreement or negotiating.

But, from what I see here, you have picked up on some serious issues with this agreement and you don't need a lawyer to go back to the recruiter or employer and explain your concerns. Maybe they will propose alternative language. If not, that's probably when you would want to either consider a lawyer or just walk.

</comment><comment><USER6> > I usually get argument (often in high peach almost screaming voice) :"You > are not a lawyers, you do not know how to read a law clause".

And neither are you (the recruiter) and this bothers me.

If your working with a recruiter who isn't working for the company, your making extra work for them. But at the end of the day YOU are their ticket to a paycheck. Don't like the contract, simply say "this changes or I walk", they will work their butt off to be accommodating.

My favorite thing to say to recruiters when it is about money is this: "If you want me to take this job go back and get me another 10k, it isn't a lot of money on your bottom line, hell it is probably only a dinner out, but it is going to make me happy and take the job." Watch how quickly a final offer changes!

</comment><comment><USER7> Everybody should be able to read legal contracts especially if it's for personal matters like employment and renting. It's going to get fairly expensive if you need a lawyer to review every contract you sign. If you don't understand the contract you shouldn't sign it.

Personally I think contracts should just be a series of bullet points in clear language so each party knows where they stand but it's a convention that contracts should be in legalese or it's not a proper contract. Lawyers use legalese to increase or decrease ambiguity or to hide unfair contractual terms. It's also gives the impression that only lawyers can draw up contracts, though most of them at this level are just copied and pasted from somewhere else.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have some issues with "Intellectual Property Right" in my job contract, as I have my llc company, but I am seeking permanent job, in the contract says that, what ever I learn there tools, knowledge etc, I cannot use anywhere else. And if I register domain or what ever I have to handover everything... so now not sure what to do...

<comment><USER3> 1\. DO NOT SIGN IT. You will be signing away your rights.

2\. Either walk away, or hire a lawyer to help you make changes. I've worked with Rex Baker ([http://www.rexbaker.com/](http://www.rexbaker.com/) ) and he is a good guy.

<comment><AUTHOR> I need someone for United Kingdom...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> As a lawyer and a dev this is pretty interesting. There's less distance between law and coding than a lot of people think. Both are expressing logic.

I agree with the comments below that you should read any contract that applies to you. Chances are that you'll understand it and this is extremely important before signing.

With that said, lawyers spend years learning how to draft and interpret contracts and I thin it's simplistic to say that it's similar to a BDD spec. There's a lot more going on under the hood.

Either way, never accept blindly and you're within your rights to seek a plain-English clarification.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you. Down in comment I gave offending parts: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14166514](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14166514)

and as they say they are not willing to change contract, I have to think twice... as I do not want to retire my skills or cut out my possibility to have a startup one day.</comment></comment>