Enabling further research of information operations on Twitter - <AUTHOR> https://blog.twitter.com/official/en_us/topics/company/2018/enabling-further-research-of-information-operations-on-twitter.html <comment><USER2> Here's a good Twitter thread on preliminary findings from the dataset: [https://twitter.com/benimmo/status/1052545119826706433](https://twitter.com/benimmo/status/1052545119826706433)

</comment><comment><USER3> Perfect training data for my own botnet for the 2020 election

</comment><comment><USER4> I dont understand why any social media company is beholden to the American political system?

<comment><USER5> One could argue that social media companies are attempting to appear responsible for fear that if they don't then govt might regulate them more

<comment><USER4> I just don't understand what they would regulate. Would they ban other countries from using Twitter? Would they censor foreign tweets within the US border? What is wrong or illegal with allowing foreigners to comment about our election system?

<comment><USER6> ==I just don't understand what they would regulate.==

The first step to answering this question lies in understanding the data.

<comment><USER4> I just dont think it matters if a foreign person (or bot farm) tries to sway an election? They aren't telling any more lies than the politicians, their PACs and/or supporters are already spreading. They just don't happen to be in the US, but we live in a global economy, with treaties, arms deals, pacts, etc.... If someone is dumb enough to be swayed by what they read on Twitter it doesn't matter who is sending the message. No one said the internet is a source of truth or honesty, and in reality there isn't much of that in US politics anyways, especially during an election campaign. This seems like political fodder and grandstanding by all parties.

<comment><USER7> Contrary to popular opinion, politicians actually (used to) lie very rarely. For non-elected officials, such as the WH press secretary, it was even rarer.

Yes, they'd deny comment, avoid the question, give a completely unrelated answer, etc. But they avoided actual lying.

What was especially rare was lying to _gain_ something, as opposed to, for example, getting out of a scandal. There are people now gearing up to give me contrarian examples of politician X telling that story how they were shot at in Belgrade, etc. But the simple fact that we remember these episodes proves their extraordinary nature.

So I'd say the main problem with your comment, among many others, is this cynical view that everything is as terrible as it can be, anyway. If that were true, we'd have lost already and the US would be indistinguishable from, say, Yemen.

Once you agree that there is something like a political culture, or at least there could be, your other claim seems to be that the internet just doesn't matter. Because people shouldn't use it for information, or because it just is a space seperate from "the real world" in your mind.

But just as nobody is ever influenced by advertising and yet the practice continues, everyone thinks it's a stupid idea to get your news from Twitter but it just happens to be one of many channels that has an impact on people's opinions.

<comment><USER4> > So I'd say the main problem with your comment, among many others, is this > cynical view that everything is as terrible as it can be, anyway. If that > were true, we'd have lost already and the US would be indistinguishable > from, say, Yemen.

I think there is a lot to be said about the Dog and Pony show we see during campaign season to what politicians actually do and accomplish once in office. Whether they are outright lies or just knowingly false promises or attempts to slander an opponents images, it's definitely a show that rarely has anything to do with what they will do if elected. Cynical? Probably yes, but it's also based on a lifetime of watching what occurs in this country every few years. So whether its the 'home team' sending out these messages of what will change, or how bad X person is, etc.. or a foreign entity anyone who believes what they see, hear or read during a campaign cycle is a person not in touch with reality. But I still believe that any attempts to regulate this is just political grandstanding after all it's the internet, everyone has a voice.

<comment><USER6> ==But I still believe that any attempts to regulate this is just political grandstanding after all it's the internet, everyone has a voice.==

I'll ignore the fact that many mediums (print, radio, tv) have been regulated and ask this: Is a bot part of everyone? If I control 5 bots, do I now get 5 voices instead of just one?

<comment><USER4> Yes, with citizens united if you work for a company you already get 2 voices. If people are so swayed with what the consume on the internet we are already doomed.

<comment><USER6> ==If people are so swayed with what the consume on the internet we are already doomed.==

The counter to this would be: If people aren't swayed with what they consume on the internet then Facebook, Instagram, Google, Snap, Twitter, Pinterest and more would have market caps of about $0. The primary revenue stream for each of these companies is advertising on the internet.

Since large corporations pay these companies significant dollars to advertise on their platforms, we can assume that their analysis shows some type of return on that investment. With that in mind, maybe there is a middle ground between your fatalism and the standard political grandstanding.

<comment><USER4> > we can assume that their analysis shows some type of return on that > investment.

I wouldn't assume anything there.

> With that in mind, maybe there is a middle ground between your fatalism and > the standard political grandstanding.

I'm sure there is but I still dont see why the government should be required to regulate SOCIAL media companies. It's social media for a reason.

<comment><USER6> ==I wouldn't assume anything there.==

If you are going to dismiss it, then you should bring some evidence. Failing that, it is safe to assume that if profit-seeking corporations continue to spend billions of dollars a year for advertising, there is some return on investment. If there wasn't, the market would adjust.

== It's social media for a reason. ==

I don't understand what this means. They added the word social, so it is no longer media?

<comment><USER4> > If you are going to dismiss it, then you should bring some evidence.

There is plenty of evidence that supports both sides of the claim. It's pointless to discuss because it will not stop the market.

> I don't understand what this means. They added the word social, so it is no > longer media?

It's media in the essence that it's a means of communication, and media alone, especially social media, shouldn't be regulated by the government on private platforms. The government has no reasonable reason to stop people from voicing their opinions, or expressing satire, or discussing politics on social discussion platforms.

<comment><USER6> ==There is plenty of evidence that supports both sides of the claim.==

Please share your evidence.

==The government has no reasonable reason to stop people from voicing their opinions, or expressing satire, or discussing politics on social discussion platforms.==

Bots are not people, which renders the point moot. Even if bots were granted rights, they are committing fraud by assuming fake identities and attempting to sway people's actions for gain. Fraud is a crime, crimes are regulated by the government.

<comment><USER4> > Please share your evidence.

You can google on your own, I will not be doing. Nor replying further to this conversation thread.

> Bots are not people, which renders the point moot.

Exactly so there is no need to regulate information or opinion coming out of a essentially a robot. They are not committing fraud as for social media has never been regarded as a system of truth there is no law that says I must tell the truth when posting on social media. Nor has social media every been restricted to one account per person.

This has been a fun conversation but I am done speaking on it as for nothing we discuss will change anything or either's opinion.

<comment><USER6> I'll continue to assume you have no evidence as you continue to not produce any.

==Exactly so there is no need to regulate information or opinion coming out of a essentially a robot.==

Two comments ago it couldn't be regulated because it would "stop people from voicing their opinions, or expressing satire, or discussing politics"; now you say they are just robots. Which is it, people or robots?

Your stance is equivalent to believing Samuel Clemens couldn't be held liable for something that "Mark Twain" did/said. If you build a bot and that bot commits fraud, you have committed fraud.

==This has been a fun conversation but I am done speaking on it as for nothing we discuss will change anything or either's opinion. ==

You are speaking for yourself, not me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I wonder how long until we see 2nd gen propaganda twitter trolling. If aggressive twitter propaganda that is in favor of candidate X has the effect of make candidate X look bad, and anyone can do it since they're all fake anyway, I don't think it will take long to be used in a false flag sense.

Edit: even in situation where the person(s) responsible might not be in favor of either side, for example if someone were doing it in both direction i.e. in Clinton vs. Bernie primary just to corrode the relationship and weaken the winner.

<comment><USER9> This has already been done. cf. The "Bernie Bros" accounts that were harassing democrat women.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Are there "likes" in the dataset? Sometimes I think the likes and their effect on trending tweets is way more damaging than tweets themselves.

<comment><USER2> Yes, the dataset has quotes/reply/likes/retweet counts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> It will be interesting to see the left-wing/right-wing proportion. Ie: do they shill and troll both sides to increase division and reciprocal hate.

<comment><USER12> I'm pretty confident you'll find plenty of both and lots of stuff that's ambiguously in between. I'm sure you'll also get different answers about which stuff is "left" and which stuff is "right" based on who you're talking to. Groups and people who are really good at propaganda understand that it's really not about left vs. right propaganda, it's about controlling the narrative. I think the best example you can find of this is Andrew Breitbart, everyone knows about the "news" outlet he founded which bears his name, Breitbart News. Most don't know about the other news outlet he founded (or rather that he founded it): The Huffington Post. Andrew understood better than anyone at the time how to control the narrative by being on both sides of it.

<comment><USER13> >better than anyone at the time

Really? The trick is... no less than 2k years old, no Dzerzhinski was around king Herod's time

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> How do they know which accounts were in fact created by the IRA / Iran?

<comment><USER15> Also, why don't they include other propaganda bad actors like Correct The Record?

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

<comment><USER14> Also what about propaganda created by the US under the Smith-Mundt Modernization Act?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Defense_Authorization...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Defense_Authorization_Act_for_Fiscal_Year_2013#Smith- Mundt_Modernization_Act_of_2012)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I have a feeling paid-for domestic influence campaigns are a lot more important at this point. What about CTR accounts and the bots they used to mass-upvote their opinions? Reddit is what I really want to see some transparency from.</comment>


Some things need to change - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/01/28/some-things-need-to-change/ <comment><AUTHOR> This is terrible, worse than people speculating about Steve Jobs' health, as an example of how low folks in our industry can go. (I know they're unrelated but the 2 evoke the same emotions in me.)

I desperately want Michael Arrington to cover my startup as well, but I still can't understand those that threatened or spat on him. Michael, I hope you return to regular writing after Feb, but if you don't, thanks for all the great work so far.

<comment><USER2> I agree, it's a sad state of affairs, but

"I desperately want Michael Arrington to cover my startup as well"

I don't really get this... startups don't fall or succeed based on tc coverage. It might spike traffic for a day with some geeks. That's all at the end of the day.

Seems like some of this is TC's own doing - they have made people believe you _have_ to get techcrunched, or you won't succeed - which is completely false.

I think they do a great job in the main though.

<comment><USER3> I've had three things I've worked on get posted to TC, and it was totally useless. Traffic had minimal stickiness (lots of clicks to the frontpage and nothing else), and when I think about my behavior when I read TC, it definitely makes sense.

And yet, for all of those startups, getting the TC story was a milestone of sorts.

Its like getting your first hundred users, it doesn't define your success or failure outright, but its a big psychological hurdle I think.

<comment><USER4> Our experience has been contrary to what others have said about minimal stickiness -- Techcrunch coverage has precipitated blog coverage and attention that each time has resulted in a new bar for traffic and retention. -- YMMV

Regardless of how valuable TechCrunch is to us or any other startup, the fact remains that violence and threats of violence against bloggers is utterly unjustifiable. People act like Michael Arrington owes them something, and that's the fundamental problem underpinning the latest attacks.

<comment><USER5> I think that's just luck of the draw. If your startup is good enough for TC to precipitate mass blog coverage, than I imagine it would have worked the other way around had TC not covered it early.

In any case, I think fighting for press coverage is stupid. Press coverage is not going to make people use your product, and if enough people use your product you are guaranteed coverage. On the other hand, if you want to break into the public consciousness, traditional marketing will help, but there's no point doing that until you know you have a winner on your hands.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm not a part of the startup community, and have no hatred of Arrington. I haven't heard any of the rumors and don't know any of the drama that wasn't in the linked article. I've been a casual reader of Techcrunch for 1-2 years.

I have found Techcrunch articles to be of inconsistent quality at best. My impression from reading Hacker News for the past two years is that TC articles are often poorly written, poorly researched, and sensationalistic. 'Integrity' isn't the first thing that comes to mind when I think of Techcrunch. It is perhaps more candid than say, MSNBC, but that isn't saying much.

If I were Arrington, I'd try to stay focused on improving that image. Venting personal frustrations on the front page of the site doesn't strike me as helping all that much.

</comment><comment><USER7> For a while now I've been wondering about the industry and the people in it, and this story just makes me question it all so much more.

It seems that the majority of people who work in IT (or at least, those that contribute to the various sites) are acting like they are still in high school. You've got to be associated with this person or that site to be 'cool' and a 'guru' and if you're not you're nothing. It's getting beyond a joke.

Congratulation, you got a mention on TC or HN, or you've been 'dugg' by lots of people. It doesn't mean your startup or product is actually good or useful you know. If that is all the marketing you are relying on then you've only got a 50% chance of success.

The whole thing even extends to people. I'm not going to name names but there seems to be some sort of god-worshipping to people just because they write a blog. Yes, I enjoy reading them, yes I pick up things from people who have done it before, but it doesn't mean they're some sort of superstar ... and I'm not even going to talk about the "we've just got a new CIO who used to work at Google brigade" (oh, he worked at Google, he must be a hero).

Thanks for reading.

<comment><USER8> Partly it's because this is an industry that acts like it's very geared towards youth. The emphasis is on the young millionaires: Zuckerberg comes to mind. (I'm 18 and applying to YCombinator, so I fall into this category too.)

The environment is much more geared towards the hotheaded youth. It's not that you have a few outliers that act immature that get kept in check: _everybody_ is immature, and the outliers are the people who act mature. Beyond that: a lot of the people in this scene are the unpopular sorts. People like that often have a ramped up persecution complex: they feel like everybody's got to be against them. As a result, you get very ramped up fights over really stupid things.

I get this a lot whenever I take the time to read Gawker - I followed the big Jakob Lodwick fight when it happened. Every side was awful. Gawker took potshots at Lodwick to get hits, people online started threatening him because he was a public figure, Lodwick worked up, and in the end he denounced the masses for being "common", Gawker still takes every chance it can get to diss the guy, and people like Ted Dziuba go out of their way to denounce him as pathetic and meaningless. It's a shame, because Lodwick does incredible work and Dziuba doesn't, and so the one takes it out on the other.

(Then, of course, there's Connected Ventures, which makes a few good-but- overrated things and whose staff tries to act perpetually like they're frat kids. They're fun, but it doesn't help this attitude of people that it's okay to be over-the-top and conceited and _loud_ about it.)

It's an attitude that I despise, and it hurts the community at large.

<comment><USER9> "The environment is much more geared towards the hotheaded youth. It's not that you have a few outliers that act immature that get kept in check: everybody is immature, and the outliers are the people who act mature."

My experience being a part of Y Combinator is that everyone is precisely the opposite, though my experience is limited them the people I've met directly a indirectly because of Y Combinator.

<comment><USER8> That's why I like YCombinator, and consequently why I like Hacker News: it avoids that level of immaturity. All the HN users who have YCombinator-funded companies tend to have great conversations. I can't think of a troll here who also was part of YC.

That said, this is the exception. I can't think of many more online groups that are this adult.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Arrington gets a lot of shit. I mean honestly he's a journalist. The core problem is that when someone's livelihood is on the line, people change. When someone is out of work looking for a job, there are usually two responses to a rejection: depression or anger.

TechCrunch (and Arrington to a lesser extent these days) get hundreds of tips or requests for coverage from companies and when TC passes them over, these people who are relying on press to get their name out there, can sometimes get angry. And when TC does cover a company in the same market, or sector, but not their company, it can be interpreted as an insult.

Arrington is the face of TechCrunch. As much as Erick and the others write for the site, Arrington is still seen as the embodiment of it.

I don't care for him, as he does come off as unlikable, and he is also prone to sensationalism for the sake of traffic I feel sometimes, but I hate to read this post. No one deserves that sort of treatment.

<comment><USER11> Generally Arrington hasn't been respected by the journalists I've met. He covers companies and fields he has a direct financial interest in, he's OK with posting rumor and innuendo, and he can be sensationalist. The first one is a big problem, the others are mostly style things. Faking photos like [http://www.crunchgear.com/2009/01/27/cal-to-offer-course- in-...](http://www.crunchgear.com/2009/01/27/cal-to-offer-course-in-advanced- starcraft-theory/) is totally uncool.

(I'm not speaking here about my coworkers, or my employer, or my employer's content-sharing agreement with TC.)

<comment><USER12> Sounds like we might work for the same news organization with a content sharing agreement with TC. I was appalled/not surprised at all when that happened.

<comment><USER11> I wasn't trying to keep it secret; I've just already mentioned in other comments that I work at the Washington Post. Most of what I was relating I've heard from other journalists I've met, I just haven't really talked to any coworkers about Arrington/TC.

<comment><USER12> Are you in DC? I'm in the Arlington office for the time being.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I think that what it comes down to is that a certain subset of the population has mental illness - some more severe than others - and when you come in contact with a lot of people, you are going to have to occasionally deal with those people. You can complain all you want, but even if the tone of the internet community as a whole changes, you're still going to get death threats and get spit on. It's a problem with the way that society handles mental illness, not a problem with the attitudes of the VC/startup community.

<comment><USER14> Michael Arrington is one of those people.

<comment><USER13> Come on... of course you could argue that all humans are mentally ill to some extent. But Arrington's behavior is easily within the realm of acceptable social behavior, even if he does like to cause minor controversy.

However, death threats and randomly spitting in someone's face are unambigiously crossing those social boundaries by a wide margin.

<comment><USER14> Arrington is a pathological narssicist.

I'm not remotely surprised that he's pissed off other crazy people enough for them to get retaliatory.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I don't read TechCrunch, but I know _exactly_ why some people hate Michael Arrington [1].

For various reasons [2], human beings tend to think about social groups in us- and-them terms. We're naturally suspicious of Them (whoever they are), while we tend to give Us (our own group) the benefit of the doubt.

Arrington's problem is that he wants to provide information to Us. That means he's One Of Us, because he's helping Us and because we don't listen to Them. A lot of the information he's providing is about a particular group of Them we'd like to join: successful Silicon Valley people. This is a valuable service, and _on a rational level_ we know he has to work hard at it. Even so, when he describes TechCrunch as a startup, associates himself with other successful startups, and even takes credit for some of their success, our emotion-driven social circuitry hears: _I am an insider describing to you outsiders what it's like to be inside._

If Mr. Arrington knew about this dynamic, I'm sure he'd spend less time talking about being "battered for three days straight with product pitches from entrepreneurs desperate for press."

[1] In case it's not clear, I'm ambivalent about him. It should go without saying that spitting in the man's face is too much, and threatening his family and business is beyond the pale.

[2] [http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/01/a-tale-of-two- tradeoff...](http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/01/a-tale-of-two- tradeoffs.html)

</comment><comment><USER16> I guess the person who spat on Michael really showed his level of integrity.

I respect the guy (Arrington) professionally, I've never met him so I can't comment on him personally but this type of shit is totally not cool.

I know you occasionally read this site Mike, so please come back when you've taken time off, even if its to take a more backseat role in what you do.

</comment><comment><USER17> Wow. He shouldn't have to put up with that crap. The whole death threat thing is freaking scary. Hopefully Michael doesn't shutter Techcrunch, but he's right. Something has to change.

<comment><USER18> _Hopefully Michael doesn't shutter Techcrunch_

Given how much money it makes, I doubt it will happen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I don't like techcrunch, and i don't like Arrington, but i can't understand why all the hate? Spitting on people is not cool, and threatening their lives is even not cooler. The worst i ever did was just ignore all the techcrunch links here, i think that was enough.

</comment><comment><USER20> Internet fame is like "rock star" fame but without the rock star security entourage.

People begin to treat folks like Arrington as an object and not a person but by the nature of the job they do they are inevitably in closer contact with those that would treat them that way - than (say) a Hollywood film star.

I suspect that we will see more such incidents affecting key technology writers and pundits - fame is dangerous in so may ways.

</comment><comment><USER21> This kind of reminds me of the T-Shirt Hell guy's entry a couple of days ago. Basically, everybody is just tired of the crap and they are taking time off or quitting. You shouldn't be assaulted for your opinion (and spitting is assault in the US AFAIK).

</comment><comment><USER22> This is unacceptable. I'll venture to guess that it's coming from a european entrepreneur who didn't get the bad jokes that Mike was putting out in his fake fight with Loic.

But (you know there's a "but" coming). But actually, no, it's unexcusable, no matter what.

To you the spitter: no matter your issues, you made the wrong choice and deserver zero respect.

</comment><comment><USER23> Disgusting as it clearly is, I feel the spitting incident is a bit of a red herring.

If this had happened 2 years ago during the rapid growth in Web 2.0 investment, I think Mike would have soldiered on.

Instead, he has a nasty experience while his business and kingdom are shrinking. Deep down, I suspect he wanted out already.

In his situation I would.

<comment><USER16> I completely disagree with what you're saying. I'm not sure if you've stood back and had a look at just how much flack Michael actually cops from day to day.

Sure, he may simply ignore a lot of it - but eventually if you're getting attacked from all sides, there will be a point that you break.

This was his.

<comment><USER23> It's impossible to know the answer, since it's hidden somewhere deep inside Mike's subconscious. My intuition says that he'd be more willing to put up with something like that if his company was still growing rapidly.

<comment><USER16> I disagree, it is more than possible - it was the likely outcome.

As Shakespeare once wrote _"If you prick us, do we not bleed?"_

I think the problem is that people are blurring the lines between the professional Arrington and the personal Arrington.

Let me highlight it using a hypothetical but extreme case.

You start up a new web app. For every 100 user signups, I get to kick you in the groin (literally, not metaphorically) - How would that make you feel?

I think if people want to attack his professional life - great, compete hard with TC, refuse to do business with him, boycott his blog - whatever... but when you start blurring (or crossing) the lines between a personal and professional attack is when situations like these arise.

<comment><USER23> If it was my main life project, and the number of users signing up between each groin kick was increasing exponentially, my entrepreneurial fire would keep me going.

But when the ratio between groin kicks and sign ups started going in the wrong direction, I'd want out.

Hey, it was your metaphor, not mine... :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> It's times like this that make you feel a bit better about living your life out of the spotlight. I wonder how people like David Pogue, or Walt Mossberg deal with this type of attention. Come to think of it, they cover higher profile companies, and probably don't have to deal this this kind of crap. Most of the time.

The only equivalent I can think of would be the reporters at papers who cover the shady-side of the business world. David Baines (Vancouver Sun) was the target of a lot of threats and innuendo during his coverage of stock-scams in Vancouver, to the point at which he just stopped working in that space for a while.

Sounds like Arrington has come to that place. Let's hope he comes back from it.

</comment><comment><USER25> _I always assumed that our work and integrity would speak for itself._

It does.

Unfortunately, in your business, just like ours, you have to account for outliers. When we miss them, computers mess up. When you do, ever worse things can happen. Sorry to hear about it.

Have a nice month off, Michael. Looking forward to having you back in March for the 99% of us who really do care about your (and your family's) well being.

</comment><comment><USER26> _And I hope that my peers who tend to sit on the sideline while others attack will start to take a stand against it._

And I hope people take this literally. IE, grab the jerk and call the police. Don't just let him walk away.

</comment><comment><USER27> I do agree that this is over the line.

But I'm also slightly conflicted - why did I laugh when the Arabic reporter threw his shoe at Bush a few months ago? In retrospect, that event should have been just as inexcusable. What if Georgey wrote up a similar blog post about his experience? How would I have felt then?

<comment><USER28> Universally across human cultures, throwing a shoe is considered hilarious whereas spitting is considered is rude and gross.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I always thought people attending a conference like this are civilized but no matter if you like MA or not, this is below all standards

</comment><comment><USER30> _"That is an idiotic thing to say; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3"._

Spitting is a long way past that point. Not cool.

</comment><comment> old-gregg Spitting to me is pretty violent behavior, and while Michael suggests that it's borderline with something "far more violent" I personally can't imagine what could be worse. I'll take a good punch attempt over a spit any day.

 _"Before TechCrunch I assumed most people were essentially good, and assumed that an individual was trustworthy until proven otherwise. Today, its exactly the opposite."_

I think any history buff would disagree with this assumption. People tend to be "essentially good" when there are plenty of resources and nothing to fight about. Numerous societies collapsed and some even resorted to cannibalism when resources became scarce.

Also I don't really get people who hate Arrington or love Angelina Jolie or want to kick Brad Pitt's ass. They don't know these people personally, they only can see an artificially engineered media-projection of them. Arrington didn't cover our startup, but hey - _we haven't done anything for him either_ so I never felt bad about it. However, I had a chance to chat with the guy once and even though he looked tired and overwhelmed with attention, he still managed to give me a few very useful suggestions, far better than an average "wow that's nice" doublespeak you'd hear from people who aren't interested but just trying to be polite.

</comment><comment><USER31> Spitter was probably from a PR firm. Remember this post? <http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/12/17/death-to-the-embargo/>

A little spit never killed anyone, and I would say any controversial figure is going to encounter that every once in a while. But the death threat stuff goes way over the line. The police needs to find that guy and put him in jail immediately.

<comment><USER32> Or a disgruntled European entrepreneur who didn't like the opinions he expressed at Le Web... <http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/961885>

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Ok. Here comes another opinion.

Maybe Arrington should not work from his home to save money. He can't secure it. It's unsafe.

Maybe it's ok if Arrington has to hire security for his workplace. Every newspaper in the country does this because they publish things that would get people shot, maimed, kidnapped or worse. Arrington's stuff runs in the Washington Post and is very influential in a major industry sector. Why is he surprised that people would come after him? He's got money and can make or break people's careers.

Is the spitting lame? Sure. But welcome to the big leagues dude. If you want to call yourself a news organization and play hardball, there's a price that comes with it.

Perhaps this is more about bloggers coming up against the problems that face traditional news organizations rather than a new problem in the industry.

</comment><comment><USER34> This is a complete dishonor. Yes things have to change. Startups and people involved should show basic respect and honor for others even if they are competitors or so-believed goal makers - TC and other blogs, VCs or anyone who pump some fuel. At the same time bloggers, VCs and angels should show some respect and humility to ppl in startups who are slogging day and night to build something dedicating their personal lives and lot more.

Getting listed on very popular blogs as someone rightly commented have manifested themselves as a milestone, a psychological hurdle. Not just these but the arrogance of people in this circle is definitely making the startups disgruntled. A little amount of humility and humbleness (Mike if you are hearing) will make them so much more big and fond of.

</comment><comment><USER35> stuff like this is why you need to keep your personal life and your business life separate.

Sure its nice to save the few grand and work from home...but is that really worth putting your family at risk?

Hell, the least Arrington should have done is get a P.O. Box and used that as his address for techcrunch whois.

</comment><comment><USER36> Maybe there wouldn't be so much Arrington animus if TechCrunch would stop doing things like republishing the Twitter streams of disgruntled data entry employees as retaliation for a management team that refused to comment about that employee.

Maybe there wouldn't have been so much animus if Arrington hadn't done things like single out the lead dev for his favorite web service and run story after story about his purported incompetance.

Nobody should spit on Arrington --- at least, nonconsensually --- but it's not like this is Bill Moyers we're talking about here.

</comment><comment><USER37> Personally, I commend Micheal on not punching the guy that spit upon him in the face. I;m certain it took a great deal of self restraint. I would have likely taken it as an immediate threat of harm, and beat the tar out of the guy. (I have learned to control my temper much better over the years, but there are some things that are intolerable.)

I would also recommend he go to Front Sight and get the training to protect himself and his family (from the death threats, not the spitter).

</comment><comment><USER38> "Before TechCrunch I assumed most people were essentially good, and assumed that an individual was trustworthy until proven otherwise. Today, its exactly the opposite."

Most people are trustworthy until there's a large amount of money on the line, as in startups. Then you really never know who is. You think "oh, we've been friends/coworkers/brothers for years, he'd never screw me". Then 6 or 7 figures become and you find out what people are really made of.

<comment><USER39> > Then 6 or 7 figures become and you find out what people are really made of.

Like alcohol can sometimes do temporarily, extreme money will magnify your personality and who you really are.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I'm an Arrington fan, so just wanted to get that out of the way.. but.. petty assault is really, really common in Europe. Well, at least here in the UK.

Only Michael can really know what the score was on the day, but I wouldn't be surprised if random Americans get petty attacks quite often while they're in Europe. What with all the chavs and all nowadays..

Anyway, shame on whoever did it. Showing the disturbing old European spirit yet again.

</comment><comment><USER41> Isn't this becoming the norm now? Whether related to technology or anything otherwise, expressing opinions is becoming increasingly dangerous.

</comment><comment><USER42> This is ridiculous. A lot of the rumors about him covering only recommended or friends of friends startups are just plain untrue. He does cover startups he invest in, but in the end, it doesn't help them that much (just look at Edgeio). I think people have an exaggeration on him being a king maker for startups.

</comment><comment><USER43> Wow!

I think that this indicates an incredibly cut-throat feeling in the startup world.

The state of the economy in general can't be helping.

How could this be different?

</comment><comment><USER44> I don't like TechCrunch, and I don't like Michael Arrington. I can write a book on why, but this is not place.

Death threats and spitting are way over the top!!! It's a shameful behaviour that needs to be outcast. TechCrunch help lots of businesses and in the process killed some. That's life, suck it mate!!!

</comment><comment><USER45> Why not fight back? If people are saying negative things about him, spreading rumors then he should be countering them. Maybe start a personal blog. Rebut them. Make your point be heard loud and clear. Not tough for a person who's in media already.

</comment><comment><USER46> I think any violent action is condemned! If you do not like what he writes, then do not read it! You can discuss it here on seesmic. <http://seesmic.com/videos/gEfLwq4pqG>

</comment><comment><USER47> Doing something like TechCrunch in an ever-growing Internet startup world, Arrington is (wrongly) perceived as a deciding factor to success, as a God to some, maybe even. Although it's wrong, I'm not surprised this happened.

</comment><comment><USER48> Mike, If you ever read this, may be it's time to shutdown TC!. As you mentioned, you've got a template for farewell letter from T-Shirt Hell ;)

No, don't. Just kidding. Be careful out there.

</comment><comment><USER49> This reminds me of "kenneth whats the frequency"

Spitting on someone is wrong and cowardice. However, I would not lose sleep over it.

</comment><comment><USER50> a lesson in civility from MA? The guy's an asshole. If you can't take the consequences for talking shit about people, stop talking shit. He's done real damage to people with the crap he puts up. If he said the shit he publishes in a bar, he'd get his ass kicked. And he's surprised he got spit on?

</comment><comment><USER33> The spitting sounds more like a lack of social skills than anything else...

<comment><USER2> For all we know it could have just been someone from Wales...

"Never ask for place-names in Wales, Baldric. You'll be washing the spit out of your hair for weeks". (Blackadder)

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> I feel bad about the fact that I liked whatever happened....

</comment><comment><USER52> Spitting in his face is going a bit far, but it's pretty difficult for me to feel sympathy for the guy. I struggle to think of a more dislikable, arrogant jerk. This belated plea for human-to-human sympathy falls on deaf ears, for me at least.

In my group, Arrington symbolises everything we hate about the "Web 2.0" greed culture. He's relentlessly promoted himself as the gatekeeper to this bullshit world of easy VC money, now crashing down around him. Good riddance.

If it hadn't been something as revolting as spitting, and instead say a nice cream pie to the face, I'd be delighted.

<comment><USER53> Why do you have so much animosity toward him? You say he represents everything you hate about Web 2.0 greed culture, but is that a valid reason to delight in someone receiving a nice cream pie in the face?

I think you need to stop and reconsider whether this is the appropriate attitude to take toward someone who really does nothing more than write articles and speak at conferences.

I'd also argue that a culture of tolerance, civility and diversity of views does far more to foster the open exchange of ideas than the silencing of those with whom we disagree.

I do agree somewhat with some of the criticisms that you and others have put forth about Techcrunch as a publication, in particular that it was prone to hype. But otherwise I think he performed a valuable service to our industry, and I think his willingness to speak his mind is both rare and laudable.

It saddens me that the animosity and intolerance that have shadowed Techcrunch have boiled over to something as despicable as this.

<comment><USER54> I'm worried about exactly how that person received so many upvotes. This person does not seem to have much basis to his/her hate other than some blog posts. More importantly, there seems to be a sizeable number of people who agree with the idea of "I disagree with you and don't like what you write about, so you must be an asshole."

<comment><USER55> _"More importantly, there seems to be a sizeable number of people who agree with the idea of "I disagree with you and don't like what you write about, so you must be an asshole."_

Because of course it couldn't possibly be that people object to the _way in which he spouts_ those disagreeable opinions. Or the ex-cathedra pontificating on technical matters he has no understanding of whatsoever. Or the use of his extremely loud megaphone to bully individuals.

The bulk of the antipathy towards Arrington, I believe, has very little to do with what he says and almost everything to do with how he says it. When TC was new, none of the most obnoxious behaviour was yet apparent. As time's gone on it's been on a continual slide into egomania and vindictiveness.

[And, fwiw, no: I have never been covered, or asked to be covered, or had a project which was relevant to be covered, by Techcrunch.]

[edit: In case anybody's unclear, nothing here should be misinterpreted as support or defence of gobbing in his face.]

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> here's the fucked up thing about Arrington. I'm not surprised this happened to him; I think everybody should pay attention to the fact that this happened; and I think it will happen again, because when he speculated about the spitter, he assumed it was some entrepreneur. it never occurred to the guy that anybody but a slighted entrepreneur would want to spit on him, when in reality many more people do. but that's not the fucked up thing. the fucked up thing is that with all of that information, I was AFRAID to post my opinion about this, because what if Arrington discovers who I work for and takes revenge by ignoring our products. think about how fucked up that is. the guy doesn't know very much. his posts often have huge technical inaccuracies and other bad information. and I'm scared to OFFEND him in a random comment on Hacker News, because he might retaliate for me expressing my honest opinion, and my company might get fucked because of his whims. so he has all this influence, and pretty much every time he discusses tech that I know details of, he gets shit wrong. that's what's fucked up about Arrington. I guarantee you there are people reading this whose opinions on the subject we will never know. and that's probably why he got spat in the face. somebody who could normally have just said what was on their mind didn't have that option, got wound up all tight, and went a little bit crazy.

but Kathy Sierra, some misogynists went a little bit crazy. we can't tolerate this kind of thing, no matter how much this particular target deserved it, because it creates a dangerous atmosphere. so although I think anybody who is upset that this happened is a fucking idiot, and anybody who was surprised is probably too stupid to spell their own name, we need a way to prevent this kind of thing from happening, and part of it involves tuning out idiots like Arrington instead of letting them amass all this ridiculous inappropriate influence in the tech world.

<comment><USER57> _I think anybody who is upset that this happened is a fucking idiot, and anybody who was surprised is probably too stupid to spell their own name_

You sound like a delightful person to be around.

The gist of your entire tirade is that Michael Arrington doesn't deserve the influence he has because he often gets technical details wrong, ergo he deserves people spitting in his face.

Are you kidding me? It's his blog, he can do whatever the fuck he wants with it. If he doesn't want to cover your company because he judges that you're an asshole, how does that give you the right to assault him?

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> Using lies and manipulation to attack some companies you dislike (or get paid to do so) is not the same as reporting on startups, once you threaten others' way of life, yours will be threatened back too.

Focus on startups as you say, and stop mudslinging with a hidden agenda.

<comment><USER59> Oh come on! Very few of his posts are negative and mostly those are when the company closes up shop. Paid to do so, you have any poof of that?

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> let this be a reminder that actions have consequences, and none of us lives in our own isolated bubble.

treat others as you'd like to be treated - and that applies both to Arrington and to the spitter.

</comment><comment><USER56> woah, this karma thing is worse than I thought. downmodding my opinion, I hope you all die.

anyway, for what it's worth, because I'm thinking out loud, the thing w/both Arrington and Sierra is it's live by the sword, die by the sword. especially with Arrington. you can't set up a system where your income depends on fame and then be surprised by the fact that people project things onto you. that's what fame is. it's not the only thing fame is, but it's a huge part of what fame is. there's a whole lot of people who don't need to know who Arrington is, but know who he is anyway. Arrington created that deliberately, because building your fame builds your ad revenue.

interesting thing about neurology, if you hear about a celebrity often enough, you actually end up with a neuron dedicated to that specific individual. so he literally invaded our brains because it would make him money. that's fine; wasting our time for his selfish purposes isn't a problem in his book. but when it bites him in the ass, it's not fine?

I'm not saying this is how fame should work, but it's how fame does work, and if he's not realistic about that, that's nobody's problem but his. you can't help yourself to all the upsides of fame and then literally go running home to Mommy (as he himself says he did) when the downsides enter the picture. that's just not going to work.

</comment><comment><USER56> I think this is awesome and terrible at the same time. Awesome because I wanted to do it myself, and you knew it was only just a matter of time. Terrible because even though Arrington deserved it, Kathy Sierra didn't. Attacking people because you disagree with them, that's a really awful trend.

For Arrington to be surprised that this happened, though, jesus. That's ridiculous. Go to my blog and google "Arrington." Got at least five links to him spitting in people's faces online. Probably many more than five. And that's not even going anywhere near the politics, power-playing, manipulation, or his claim that promoting his own companies means "journalism is evolving." He's a horrible human being.

I'm against the idea of randomly attacking bloggers, but if you had to pick a blogger to randomly attack, you couldn't find somebody who deserved it more. And if this incident shuts down TechCrunch, we should find the spitter and give him a medal for helping the tech community scrape that thing off our shoes.

</comment><comment><USER51> I believe he just made that up to grab attention and a few more pageviews

</comment><comment><USER61> Pics or it didn't happen.

</comment><comment><USER62> Arrington has spat in the face of many startups and blogs, metaphorically speaking, and the most successful business people in general are ruthless. This doesn't excuse the literal spitting behaviour, but Techcrunch is a blog with way too much power, for better or worse depending on the way you look at it.

<comment><USER63> why does everyone think startups are doomed if they get a bad TC review?

There's a perfect example of this THIS WEEK! Arrington has been ripping into Cha Cha for years, and they just got a massive funding round.

<comment><USER16> Just because ChaCha got funding, doesn't necessarily make it a good idea.

I've never used it before, so I decided to give both it, Google, Yahoo, Live Search and Ask.com the same search phrase in response to this comment and see what the results are.

 _What is the speed of light?_ \- I felt a simple enough question.

      Google took just 0.11 seconds to give me an exact answer.
      Yahoo took 0.28 seconds
      Live Search has no timer, but it was much less than 1 second, I assume around the same speed as Yahoo
      Ask.com no timer, but same perceived speed as both Yahoo and Live Search

Finally, I tried asking the question to ChaCha, I asked it around 4:16pm, it asked me to sign up, so I did, went through the signup process, confirmed my email address - now its sending me through an SMS to confirm my mobile..

EDIT - it's now 4:25pm, still no SMS on my mobile phone from ChaCha.. I think its fair to say that comparing 10 minutes to 0.11 seconds is a pretty clear indicator why human search isn't a good idea.

Even if you take out the signup stage, human reaction time can't even compete with 0.11 seconds and that doesn't begin to factor in things like time it takes to read the question.

EDIT #2 - 5:06pm, still no SMS...

<comment><USER64> _What is the speed of light? - I felt a simple enough question._

Why didn't you try a _non_ -simple question? Google is basically an almanac. When I have an almanac question, I don't hire a professional researcher. I consult an almanac.

<comment><USER16> I wasn't planning to ask it too difficult a question as I really don't feel like waiting hours for a response... although given the circumstances I don't think it matters.

Its now 1:30am, I'm just about to head to bed and still have been unable to sign up for chacha (even though I've attempted to do so again with a different email address/username since I last updated my comment) I feel that I can quite comfortably say that I wont use them for my searching requirements anytime soon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> I hope he stops writing. I really do. If you're reading this, Michael Arrington, please go away and never touch the Internet again.

<comment><USER66> Like him or not, Techcrunch has helped tons of startups out.

<comment><USER67> It has destroyed a whole lot too; depending of what side of the fence you are you should be able to recognize this too. They rush to say something nasty about a startup but most of the time will say something nice about startups in their friend circle.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> I don't like Michael Arrington because of the way he acts. His latest post backs up my dislike. He needs to grow a backbone and not cower behind security. If you are in California its much harder to have a gun to protect yourself. You could always move to Texas (Austin is nice). :)

Also, if this guy is a felon how does he have a gun and Arrington knows this is a fact? When you buy a gun they do a FBI check to make sure you don't have such a conviction.

Your startup will succeed regardless of its inclusion in TC. Worry about the product not some silly blog.</comment>


Show HN: Live-programmable voxel landscape in WebVR - <AUTHOR> http://www.primroseeditor.com/examples/editor3d/ <comment><AUTHOR> Primrose is a text editor for use in WebGL/WebVR contexts.

I want to make live-programmable environments and create new user experiences that require VR, rather than adapting 2D UX to the stereo display. Having a text editor run in a texture is a necessary tool to start. I've demoed just the editor before, but this is the first time I've been able to demonstrate an environment constructed on the fly, using the editor.

You can find the source code here: [https://github.com/capnmidnight/Primrose/](https://github.com/capnmidnight/Primrose/)

</comment><comment><USER2> FYI, a voxel (volumetric-pixel) is a 3D rendering primitive which is a competitor of the polygon (yes there is other primitives like elipsoide[0]). A point cloud carrying whatever augmented information isn't in itself a voxel model. Ultimately, a voxel is a voxel when it is rendered as such: when this is the 3D primitive used to support/make the rendering.

So are minecraft lanscapes made of voxels? No, these are polygons.

[0] [http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/ecstatica/ecstatica2-6.jpg](http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/ecstatica/ecstatica2-6.jpg)

<comment><AUTHOR> I know the difference, but people today hear "voxel" and think "minecraft" and I didn't want to say "minecraft" in the title, because there isn't any world- level interactivity in this particular demo.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Good work. I can envision live editing to become standard and we're bound to see new 'code' builders where programs can be expressed using graphics mixed with text.

That being said, editing text in 3D isn't fun. Text is by definition 2D and it's weird to edit it projected (although the idea itself seems cool).

I'd be perfectly happy with a split screen of 2D editor + 3D scene being edited.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's necessary with the WebVR setting, though, because mixing traditional 2D elements with the VR scene is extremely jarring. I built Primrose specifically because, at the time, other VR live-programming demos were overlaying HTML elements with using CSS3 transform matrices to fake a 3D, barrel-distorted projection, which meant that there were two completely different Z-buffers (the WebGL one and the DOM one) and they didn't interact.

Certainly this is not the most ideal setup, but I think it's a good baseline to continue to build from. I'm working on a game of collaborative AI bots that the user will program using a simple, not-JavaScript programming language. (maybe CoffeeScript, IDK, I actually slapped together a BASIC interpreter not too long ago for another demo I made). I think it will work better to organize functions 1-to-1 with editor objects, tied directly to the physical objects of which you're editing. I'm approaching it from a "crack open the back of the robot and twiddle the parameters" metaphor. I'm hoping the more concrete scenario will obviate some of those awkward issues you've mentioned.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What is this useful for? I'm not a WebGL/VR programmer, so I'm curious as to why people would use this, besides the neat factor.

<comment><AUTHOR> Think of it a bit like a 3D REPL.

Working in the browser provides me, a single developer, a much faster route to a wide variety of other features (webcam, audio, webrtc) as well as cross- platform compatibility (for example, this same site works in WebVR builds of Chromium and Firefox for Android using a Google Cardboard-like setup).

With that as the baseline, I want to experiment in creating new user experiences that require VR, rather than adapting the same, ol' 2D UX to the stereo display.

One of those things might be live-editable objects. Having a text editor run in a texture is a necessary tool to start. Eventually, I'll be building more controls and features for being able to manipulate objects on the fly.</comment></comment>


Google Ventures' Bill Maris Investing in Idea of Living to 500 - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-09/google-ventures-bill-maris-investing-in-idea-of-living-to-500? <comment><USER4> Some other poster is talking about "hubris", "neopotism", or "tales from the aristocracy."

Are we so focused the 99% / 1% difference that we are too blind to see we're all in the same team, team Humanity?

Nothing is sadder that a live going away, knowledge, experience, etc all going to waste. Sentient creatures have a moral duty to live.

Extending our lifespan is also a necessary first step for serious large scale projects. I don't think we are ready with a 70 years lifespan to care about the consequences of our present days actions in 500 years, or to tackle serious projects such as building a Dyson sphere.

To all those who talk about how some people won't have access to that technology - yes, just like how they don't have access to antibiotics, cellphones or the internet in Africa.

<comment><USER5> We're not all on the same team. No way.

When a certain portion of the 1% seems intent on seeing the populace as cannon fodder (Kissinger's ideology), or as idiots to be manipulated into submission (Bernays's ideology), or as any of the other indsidious descriptions that the 1% use for the rest (welfare queens, leeches, etc.), we are certainly not all on team humanity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This piece may as well be called "tales from the aristocracy." Every name mentioned in there except for Brin got to where they are through some combination of nepotism and positive stereotyping.

I bring this up because I find it especially amusing to watch these aging billionaires chasing after immortality. I imagine some ancient philosophers would have some zingers for these guys. The hubris is incredible.

(That said, the research into aging is fascinating and promising in many ways. I'm disappointed the article spend so little time exploring the substance of the research.)

<comment><USER7> If you think income inequality is bad now - imagine how much power/money/prestige/knowledge a 400 year old Sergey Brin would have. The rich getting exponentially richer.

<comment><USER8> We have a pretty strong reliance on the estate tax for situations like these. I imagine if longevity were discovered, that would change to another kind of wealth tax within 10 years.

<comment><USER9> Does the estate tax actually work in the US? Our equivalent in Britain appears to be a joke - anyone with a reasonable amount of money can just hire accountants to find some trivial way around it.

I think it's probably the most important tax, in terms of social equity - <USER2> you can easily pass down all your wealth from one generation to another, there are no wealth taxes, and capital reliably grows faster than the general economy, that is an obvious formula for the creation of an aristocracy - but I don't know whether it's compatible with the global financial system. Or perhaps it's just British politicians are particularly lackluster on cracking down on obvious avoidance schemes.

<comment><USER10> Estate tax in the US only hits the upper-middle class. The rich avoid it entirely.

What makes my blood boil is that politicians that support raising the estate tax use trusts to avoid paying it. People like the Clintons:

[http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-06-17/wealthy- cl...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-06-17/wealthy-clintons-use- trusts-to-limit-estate-tax-they-back)

They're not alone... The Kennedys, the Pelosis, even Noam Chomsky is set up to avoid paying the estate tax!

[http://www.hoover.org/research/noam-chomsky-closet- capitalis...](http://www.hoover.org/research/noam-chomsky-closet-capitalist)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > "The analogy I use is this," he says, holding up his iPhone 6. "Even five > years ago, this would have been unimaginable."

That's... a strange thing to say. In 2010, the iPhone6 was "unimaginable"? At the time of the iPhone 4, the iPhone6 was unimaginable? Really?

</comment><comment><USER12> It's hard not to think of Ricky Bobby:

 _" No one lives forever, no one. But with advances in modern science and my high level income, it's not crazy to think I can live to be 245, maybe 300. Heck, I just read in the newspaper that they put a pig heart in some guy from Russia. Do you know what that means?"_

</comment><comment><USER13> That leaves you with 450 years of unenployment for many engineers.

<comment><USER6> Or 450x new projects and job openings, depending how you look at it.

Of course, a 22 year old engineer won't stand a chance of getting hired over a 222 year old engineer. :) at that point they may as well be called wizards.

<comment><USER14> >Of course, a 22 year old engineer won't stand a chance of getting hired over a 222 year old engineer.

Now that made me stop and think... what I could be in 200 years from now?!

<comment><USER15> Topsoil.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It's good that big names with big money are investing in fighting aging, but it's not so great that the end result could be an entrenched eternal aristocracy. I'm not so sure we have to worry about that just yet, though. I'm a big proponent of research on aging and cures thereof.

As far as the article itself, the SV-standard corpulent optimism seems to run strong in Maris, and when it comes to biomedical stuff, it's an indication of ignorance. I read that Maris worked in a lab before he got the gig at Google; that's great, but it means he should know better than to casually bullshit around about living to be 500 years old being a realistic goal because Google is weighing in. Maybe it will be ultimately proven to be a realistic goal, but for the people alive now, reliably getting to 100 or 115 using anti-aging technologies is far more likely than living to be 500.

Biomedical research and development is messy, fault-filled, slow, and never truly finished. I guarantee that "disrupting" organic degeneration as a result of accumulated damage is several orders of magnitude more difficult than making a dominant search engine. Gaining a rudimentary knowledge of aging systems beyond what we already have is going to take years, not to mention several paradigm shifts in how aging is considered. That said, I think that science is up to the task-- in particular, private R&D is going to be carrying a ton of weight when it comes to aging research because of how lucrative any product would be.

I'm pretty sure that research on aging will have a lot of unintended positive side discoveries, likely relating to cancer and immunology. Hopefully the hype from Google causes more people to pile on their support, getting us there faster. It's going to be a really interesting 20 years-- there's a good chance anti-aging technology could remake society.

<comment><USER17> In this case piling on more support will not help. Like most things that require fundamental research for progress quality trumps quantity. By support I'm assuming throwing more people at the problem.

<comment><USER18> I think it could be useful. It's true that for that kind of problem, you want to throw more money at the best people, no strings attached, and let them keep playing around until they solve it - but all other research you can get will act as a support team. The field of biology is so big and messy, that you'll likely need tons of researchers and algorithms running experiments, sorting through data and writing down the findings, so that the best of the best can have all results they need available to devise a working solutions.

TL;DR: make the support T-shaped.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> If you think real estate in SF and the valley is bad now ...

<comment><USER20> Seasteading FTW!

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I think we are going in the wrong direction once again, this won't solve the problem of death at all, instead it would merely prolong life, but all studies show that the leading cause of death is in fact life.

Trillions of dollars are already being spent worldwide each year with the supposed goal of eradicating life, but I think it's all just a conspiracy involving the military industrial complex.

I'm sure that if we really wanted to we could end all life and thus death once and for all _today_ using the means we already have at our disposal and have had for over 5 decades now.

</comment><comment><USER22> [http://www.nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon.html](http://www.nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon.html)

This was an interesting read about humanity's perception of mortality.

</comment><comment><USER23> if a cure for aging was discovered, how would we deal with the population getting too large?

perhaps mandating that people who take the drug can't have children?

</comment><comment><USER24> Bill Maris looks like a white Tyler the Creator.

</comment><comment><USER25> Maris is a buffoon.

</comment><comment><USER17> It doesn't matter. Cancer will get them anyway: [http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/05/sunday-review/why- everyone...](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/05/sunday-review/why-everyone- seems-to-have-cancer.html). Unless they figure out a way to digitize themselves in which case maybe something else will get them.

Mutation is the engine of evolution so in essence the folks looking to live for 500 years are trying to get rid of "the engine of evolution". Lofty goal when put that way.

<comment><USER9> The whole of modern civilization is a way to power down the engine of evolution - for instance, short-sighted people or someone who catches a nasty infection surviving to have children. If you take moral cues from natural selection, you're going to face the creation of a very bleak world.

<comment><USER17> It's not about morality. It is the fundamental nature of the cell to mutate. The fact that multicellular organisms have managed to get this far is quite amazing but you'd be foolish to think those cells are anything more than selfish self-replicating mutation engines. So really at the end of the day all life extending research is about changing the fundamental nature of the cell which is an impossible goal.

<comment><USER18> Why impossible? A cell is but a complex nanoscale machine. There's nothing fundamental about it that says it's The Right Way. But if you mean the fundamental nature of evolution process, its _mathematics_ , then well - <USER3> don't have to change it, we just need to harness it. Just like we didn't change the explosive nature of gasoline, we harnessed it for our purposes.

We're no longer in the domain of gene-based evolution anyway - our minds are smarter than it, and thanks to our ability to write things down, we advanced into cultural-level evolution, which works _orders of magnitude_ faster than the biological kind. There is no law of nature that says we can't just decide we like living and then enforce our will on nature.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Thousands of Linux Servers Infected by Lilu (Lilocked) Ransomware - <AUTHOR> https://fossbytes.com/lilocked-ransomware-infected-linux-servers/ <comment><AUTHOR> Interesting that they don't know how its getting in (and getting root access)

> The mechanism behind how it gets access in unknown yet.

I wonder if there's a zero day. (Though there a are a lot of unpatched web- facing Linux servers out there!)

<comment><USER2> My guess would be that the ransomers bought a list of web shell URLs and passwords, and went from there. [https://backsib.com/](https://backsib.com/) sells backdoor access for 40 cents each in lots of 50. I believe there are other groups doing the same sort of thing for "WSO" web shells. Sure, they'd get a lot of dead/unattended sites, but they'd get a few live ones, too.

I'm also going to guess that there's really not that many servers infected. As an example, there's a sort of vigilante malware for WordPress sites that renames files it considers malware to ".php.suspected". Google for ".php.suspected" (quotes included). Somewhere in the first page of results you'll find something like [https://precision-grinding.com/wp- content/plugins/revslider/...](https://precision-grinding.com/wp- content/plugins/revslider/temp/update_extract/revslider/), which has been victimized over and over and finally the vigilantes got in there. You won't find the same when googling for ".lilocked". Tons of posts about it, tons of articles advising how to remove it, no instances.

<comment><AUTHOR> Why do Linux users insist that there's "no malware on Linux" and that it's so much safer because you can read the source code, etc., etc.,? It seems that there are a lot of these things.

<comment><USER2> The backdoors are more WordPress than Linux malware - a lot of them at least nominally run on both Windows and Linux hosts of WordPress, but you have a good point.

There's also something to the "read the source" thing - there are a lot of WordPress and/or Joomla backdoors, web shells, trojans, etc, but since you can read the source, you can understand them. There's no need for a Wizard from IBM or Kasperskey or Symantec or MacAfee to tell you what WSO does - you can see it for yourself. If it's PHP or Perl or shell scripts, no exotic disassembly is needed - any old fool an see what it does. This de-mystifies the malware, I think.

<comment><AUTHOR> If Linux allows Wordpress and PHP to run in such a way that it can take over the system, then I believe it to be Linux's fault.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Space for Equity Deals between Entrepreneurs and Property Owners - <AUTHOR> http://bootrent.com/

<comment><USER2> I was going to post this yesterday on the discussion of this idea, but I didn't get back to my computer in time.

Keep in mind that every entity to whom you give shares in your company is now a part-owner. To the degree that rent will be a major expense in the early years, when your valuation is at its lowest, your landlord could end up owning a non-trivial portion of your company. He/she/it is going to have a vote on every significant ownership even in your company's life cycle -- Series A, B, C financing, sale of the company, etc. Also think about what will happen if the landlord comes to you in a few years and wants to sell these shares. You're then going to be stuck re-purchasing them out of operating funds, or risking a sale of equity to an unknown third party.

The whole point of venture capital is that VC's are willing and able to translate equity in your start-up into cash, which you can then use to pay for things like rent and legal bills. That's clearly beneficial to them, but also to you, since you can then pay your bills in cash instead of managing monthly share transactions.

<comment><USER3> Hoping we can come up with some simple model that will limit the voting rights, etc. curious about your thoughts on you could make it work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Let's see how it goes ;)

</comment><comment><USER4> Proof that the .com bubble is back.</comment>


Why I will not analyze the new WikiLeaks data - <AUTHOR> http://www.drewconway.com/zia/?p=2537

<comment><USER2> Court jester? Is this guy serious?

The value of Wikileaks is that it makes secrecy more difficult for governments. Period. What Wikileaks publishes is dependent on what is leaked, and so far (in my opinion) Wikileaks has done much to gain credibility as an institution. Notably, it has moved away from journalistic interpretation of the leaked info and has left that to established papers. Instead, it has focused on its role as conduit and trusted intermediary.

Ironically, Wikileaks will enhance the credibility of government in a good way b/c it helps the public view its government as fallible, corrupt, and absurd, all of which help rein in the scope of government action so that what is actually undertaken stands a chance of being accomplished honestly.

Sadly, much of what has been leaked shows simply that the government is putting on a show for the American people and that much of what is kept secret is done so for propaganda reasons, not security reasons.

<comment><USER3> "Notably, it has moved away from journalistic interpretation of the leaked info and has left that to established papers. Instead, it has focused on its role as conduit and trusted intermediary."

Wikileaks certainly has an agenda. There's a good New Yorker piece [1] from back before a lot of this stuff broke about how Assange edited the 'Collateral Murder' video to maximize emotional impact. I personally do not view Wikileaks as a trusted intermediary.

[1] [http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/06/07/100607fa_fact_...](http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/06/07/100607fa_fact_khatchadourian?currentPage=all)

<comment><USER4> When bringing up the "Collateral Murder" video, it's always worth remembering that WikiLeaks released the unedited original alongside their version.

<comment><USER5> I might be in the minority here but it seems to me they need not release their own version.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wonder how much outrage there would be if the exposed documents were not diplomatic records _of the USA_.

As a thought experiment, assume these documents were from (say), Iran, China or Russia (miraculously translated to English , hey this is a thought experiment)- fundamentally any power opposed to the United States. For even more fun, throw in Pakistan, North Korea or (really stretching here, because they don't do formal nation state like diplomacy or maintain records thereof) the Taliban or Al Quaeda.

I suspect a good portion of the people who decry WikiLeaks today would be analysing this data, or otherwise using it to draw insights to further US interests and lauding Assange as a hero, while the Chinese (or whoever) would be making the "this endangers our people/troops" and "Wikileaks is irresponsible" argument.

I doubt US citizens would be doubting Assange's "agenda" or saying things like "many of the documents being leaked contain information that was exchanged under the assumption of privacy." and so they shouldn't be public and so on. I suspect people would laud Assange as some kind of heroic figure for exposing an enemy regime at great personal risk.

Is Assange a US citizen? If not why should he care about the impact on the USA? Would an American care about the impact on say Chinese diplomacy before he exposed any records he had on their thinking?

Nothing wrong with being nationalistic/patriotic as long as you are aware of your biases (if any) therefrom. Most HNers are Americans and the discussion here is somewhat biased in that direction of whether this is good or bad for the USA. That is just one possible perspective of many and hardly universal. Just something to be aware of.

As an outsider (not a USA citizen though largely pro American), I think this is all to the good in the long term.

</comment><comment><USER7> I have to agree with Drew here.

I believe that our government should be more transparent and that its primary purpose is to serve its citizens.

That said many of the documents being leaked contain information that was exchanged under the assumption of privacy.

Just as it is sometimes necessary to defend anonymity on the Internet and a citizens right to privacy, the same right should be granted to many of these documents. The expectation of privacy in diplomacy can be an extremely powerful tool in creating honest and helpful dialogue.

It can also be abused and has been in certain instances to keep information from the public but I do not think it is the right of Wikileaks to rectify that mistake. Especially at the cost of individuals' safety or diplomatic relations.

<comment><USER8> Upvoted, not because I agree but because you have a good point (as all upvoting should go anyway).

To your point, though, I do not think the government has a general expectation of privacy. On the other hand some of these cables might have been private in nature or might have been sent with an implicit expectation of privacy, so this is a difficult area.

Still, I'd rather have us err on the side of transparency.

<comment><USER9> I would be on the side that under certain circumstances governments should and do have expectations for a level of privacy. Wikileaks is doing the wrong thing here period.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The simple-minded open=good mentality is thin enough when it applies to technology, but it just plain falls apart when you're talking about diplomacy.

Let's be clear: What Assange and WikiLeaks are doing is incredibly irresponsible. They're uncovering important channels that are going to close up if neither side can trust that what's said won't become public (this is especially true of critical Middle Eastern relationships). Even worse, they're outing confidential informants and information critical to national defence. I hope they're prepared to have blood on their hands.

These documents will undoubtedly reveal some important stuff that the public should know about, and I'm not saying that everything that the government does is automatically good, but I think that most experts in the field would agree that Assange is doing way more harm than good here. There are important trust- based relationships and sources, nurtured for decades, that have just been utterly ruined, if not severely damaged.

Diplomacy is incredibly complicated and nuanced, and this naive belief that indiscriminately releasing thousands of documents and cables is automatically going to make the world a better place is totally out-of-touch with reality.

My theory (and sorry if this sounds mean) is that the same personality traits that make geeks great at visualizing logic and data comes at the expense of being able to understand nuance. You see it with the tech press' bizarre, highlanderistic insistence on everything being a something killer, you see it in the anti-government streak that is rampant on HN, and I think you're seeing it here.

<comment><USER11> "Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it." — Brian W. Kernighan.

I think good programmers value simplicity and clarity more than the average person _because_ they have more experience with and a better understanding of complexity and nuance. It's easy to build incomprehensible software: just don't make an effort to keep it simple.

I would think the same is true of diplomacy. Without a strict policy of honesty and open dealing, national embarrassment is practically inevitable. It's unreasonable to believe that you can build sound foreign relations on lies and deceit.

Diplomats, like lawyers, are effective because they are persuasive. Not because they are good liars.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I respectfully disagree. This is my government, working on my behalf, with my money, and I want to know what this government is doing.

If public release of this information is damaging to US interest, the answer should not be to suppress this information, but rather to behave in an agreeable way in the first place.

<comment><USER12> Would you say that governments should have no secrets?

I think the issue is more nuanced than it first seems to most people.

<comment><USER13> While government secrets can be useful, I think that the lack of secrets is far less damaging than entrusting the government with determining what may or may not be kept secret.

So, yes. I do say that governments should have no secrets.

<comment><USER14> >So, yes. I do say that governments should have no secrets.

Missile launch codes?

<comment><USER15> I am hearing this example too often. It is far from an intelligent response and reminds me of the meta contrarian [1]. An equally flippent and useless retort would be here: fragme69. There's the launch code; what use is it to you? It might take the next level of insight to point out the "danger" of Wikileaks, but further reflexion brings you back to the initial gut feeling: THIS CAN BE NOTHING BUT A GOOD THING? So what if even 100 informants get murdered? If these leaks prevents the invasion of Iran (note: Saudi Arabia are agitating for this [2]), then tens if not hundreds of thousands of civilians will be saved.

People are really laying into wikileaks. Do not forget that they are just the messenger. A near boy has been held without trail for 8 months I think now, and for what? To risk his life by highlighting fraud and corruption, only for people to be still to stupid or too embedded in the system to realise. If Wikileaks had a cache of embarrassing Chinese data, you wouldn't be able to hear anything above the "Amerkah Fuckyeah". You live in a democractic society (probably), enjoy the freedom of information, then realise you actually live in a kleptocracy and the US is a pathological state.

[1] [http://lesswrong.com/lw/2pv/intellectual_hipsters_and_metaco...](http://lesswrong.com/lw/2pv/intellectual_hipsters_and_metacontrarianism/)

[2] [http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/nov/28/us-embassy- cable...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/nov/28/us-embassy-cables- saudis-iran)

<comment><USER14> >It is far from an intelligent response and reminds me of the meta contrarian [1].

Talk about forcing a response.

You're _petitio principii_ is showing please put some pants on.

Shouting "this can be nothing but a good thing" [wake up sheeple!] and claiming that this is blatantly obvious to anyone of modest intelligence doesn't make it true. Only if it's an obvious answer and I were reacting to that would it make this "meta-contrarian".

>There's the launch code; what use is it to you?

With no secrets I know where the bases are, all the computer schematics, all the cable connections whether or not remote launch is enabled, where to dig to jack into cables, which satellites to tap, what the guard rotations are on bases, what the secret service have found out about military personnel that foreign powers might use to blackmail them, etc., etc.. To me, now, those codes are useless - so is the knowledge of how to build a nuclear bomb though as I don't have the resources to act on it. There are plenty of people who do have the resources and who would be interested in holding America to ransom using their own nuclear arsenal.

IMO to consider that this sort of information isn't harmful to the security of a country is naive in the extreme.

Yes, if no one in the world were greedy or lusted for power then there would be no need for the final remaining human to keep secrets from himself.

How about a tamer example: if the government can't keep secrets then anyone can log in to Obama's email account and send an email that appears to be from him. Suddenly no government entity can be authenticated online. Iris scan, well yeah but the output of the scanner is public knowledge and the signing key is too.

At the very least I hope you can concede "well of course some secrets have to be allowed". Now define the boundaries.

To me, your response sounds like the knee-jerk reaction of a rebelling teenager. Do you think that Iran's closest neighbours want them to be invaded because they doubt that Iran will use nuclear weapons?

Your 100 informants getting murdered sits well with you? If it does it can only be because whilst you see that as saving thousands of Iranians you don't consider the billions that would most likely die if Iran initiate WWIII.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Wikileaks motivation and the politics of its founders are somewhat of a red herring so long as they simply make documents available verbatim, leaving commentary to others. I would prefer it if there were 5 or 10 wikileaks to to balance the effect of this power being concentrated, but one step at a time.

Meanwhile the immediate effects of breaking down secrecy are potentially volatile. For example, Iraeli papers are currently running stories about Israel coordinating with the Palestinian Authority and Egypt. Anyone following ME politics knows that (a) this is almost certainly true. (b) proof of its truth will play to the hands of the anti-compromise, theocratic elements in that region.

Similarly, Arab States (eg Saudi Arabia) supported US invasion of Iran. Similarly unsurprising. Similarly bolstering of anti-compromise, theocratic elements.

My reading is that both of these are bad.

The long term effects are more difficult to gauge. But I think they will be positive. Basically, governments will have to align their private policies more closely to their public ones.

<comment><USER17> "Wikileaks motivation and the politics of its founders are somewhat of a red herring so long as they simply make documents available verbatim, leaving commentary to others."

The choice of which documents to leak, when, and in what context is in itself a form of commentary. Drudge is a master of this: his website consists of nothing but headlines and a few pictures, and yet he is constantly accused of various biases.

<comment><USER16> Hence somewhat.

I don't think the politics are immaterial. They may influence in exactly that way. Reporters, news shows and everything else has biases. When it's an opinion article, that bias is the central component. When it's fact based reporting the bias is a smaller component.

The context here is _"WikiLeaks's continued and reckless pursuit of classified document disclosures seems to have much more to do with the proclivities of the organization's founder, and very little to do with building knowledge or improving democratic discourse."_ and _"by continuing to analyze new disclosures I am tacitly supporting this."_

I think that the above is _somewhat_ of a red herring considering that we are talking about source documents released verbatim. How could wikileaks' bias come in to play? Withholding documents where people sound good? Withholding documents where the "other side" sounds bad?

<comment><USER17> "How could wikileaks' bias come in to play? Withholding documents where people sound good? Withholding documents where the "other side" sounds bad?"

Those are two really good examples. Is he doing this? I really can't tell. For every "bad" or "good" docment he releases, there could easily be others that are event "better" or "worse."

More importantly, he choses whose documents to leak. Lots of classified U.S. documents in there. Where are the classified documents from other nations?

As I mentioned, there are other factors besides which documents are released: the timing and context of the releases also matters greatly. The mere fact that highly sensitive diplomatic wires were leaked will have a negative impact on all of our current diplomatic efforts, regardless of the actual contents. Diplomats who don't feel confident of confidentiality will be much less likely to speak frankly. Is it that hard to imagine that this release was timed to derail a particular diplomatic effort?

In relation to your quote from OP, I think that the single biggest indicator to support OP's position is Assange himself: he has a history of making provocative remarks which demonstrate a clear hostility towards the United States, or at least the U.S. government. It's hard for me to believe that this animosity isn't having a profound effect on his priorities. If nothing else, I get the definite vibe that this latest batch was released primarily for the reason of jabbing his thumb in Washington's eye.

<comment><USER16> How does his choosing not to leak document X invalidate leaked document Y?

<comment><USER17> I wasn't claiming that it invalidated anything. I was claiming that it was an expression of his biases.

I will say this, though: it is entirely conceivable that "document X" provides context that completely changes the significance of "document Y." Deliberately withholding that context is therefore a form of dishonesty.

<comment><USER17> I said nothing controversial or offensive here. Downvoting me just because you disagree is just plain immature.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is the equivalent of seeing the US government sent through a full-body scanner. I, for one, think it is great. If they have nothing to hide, why are they worried? Isn't that what governments tell the rest of us, when they wish to intrude upon our privacy?

<comment><USER19> The problem here is that this is not universal. If WikiLeaks is going to make a habit of this sort of leak, it will completely kneecap US foreign relations and make it impossible to speak to _any_ of our foreign allies in confidence.

Meanwhile our allies and enemies alike will have no such handicap.

WikiLeaks can potentially shift the balance of diplomatic power drastically - and not in a particularly good way at that. It would be a difference story if they could get leaks out of every major government - but a few seem particularly problematic: China and Russia come to mind.

In the US, Pfc. Manning faces court martial and jail time for leaking this information. In China they'd just put a bullet in your head without any kind of process, and then in your families' too just for good measure. This is information asymmetry, and is downright dangerous.

<comment><USER20> Absolutely. The diplomacy that goes on behind closed doors does so for a reason. Politics tends to shift the focus to the irrational side (just look at the current state of political discourse in the US). If we had access to other nation's documents like these, I think the US would look downright saintly (or at least no worse).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> FTA: "Having worked inside the U.S. intelligence community, ..."

Drew knows perfectly well that if he even touches this data with a 10-foot pole, he'll be persona non grata in the intelligence community. So my cynical view is that his decision to not analyze this data has more to do with future employment prospects than with the methods of WikiLeaks or the contents of the data...

<comment><USER22> This seems dubious. Everyone and his dog will soon have read it, and he'll better to work in the U.S. intelligence community by being the only one not having looked at it? If this really is the reason, it seems this indeed would reduce his value to work in this domain. Would be weird.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Every time I hear someone criticize Wikileaks it just seems to me like they simply don't want to know what's happening in the world. Because if you want to gain more true understanding of what's happening in the world then why would you criticize more source material? The conclusion I then draw is that people who criticize Wikileaks seek ignorance.

<comment><USER24> I'd be happy for _me_ to know everything. But if the cost is that everyone else gets to know it too, I need to think more carefully about that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> So, before talking about whys and why-nots, what _is_ there that has leaked? Obviously someone has to feel morally equipped to analyze the data before any sane discussion can take place of whether it should have been leaked or not.

Now, if I had to form an opinion about something related to this (but that I don't exactly know anything about), I might consider my baseline the fact that any nation that continuously exerts offensive military activity _outside_ its own borders should not in the first place have the slightest expectation of any "rights" to remain private.

It's indeed the U.S. whose "secrets" on the stake here; however, I'm not pointing particularly to the U.S.

</comment><comment><USER26> > WikiLeaks' motivation is that of a court jester

Can anyone elaborate on that?

<comment><USER27> > "It has always been the prerogative of children & half-wits to point out > that the emperor has no clothes. But the half-wit remains a half-wit, & the > emperor remains an emperor."

\--Neil Gaiman

See also: <http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LampshadeHanging>

<comment><USER26> I'd really like to get an honest try at the motion to see how far it goes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Whatever happened, happened. I'd not appeal to journalists' conscience, but rather try to protect sensitive documents better in the future. I have not doubts that revealed information will harm in some way to "good guys" if they let it fall into "bad guys'" hands.

</comment><comment><USER29> Seems rather juvenile.

</comment><comment><USER30> If he refuses to analyze the data, his meta-analysis is worthless. He could point out that Assange seems to focus on corruption and violence perpetrated by the United States and its allies, and appears to shy from reporting on non- allied regimes. But the consequences might exceed indictment for rape.

</comment><comment><USER31> If this really is information that other countries don't know, then interested parties will make much better use of it than American citizens will.</comment>