China's scary lesson to the world: Censoring the Internet works - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/chinas-scary-lesson-to-the-world-censoring-the-internet-works/2016/05/23/413afe78-fff3-11e5-8bb1-f124a43f84dc_story.html <comment><USER2> Of course it does. I wouldn't bet that it will last though. I often tell people how I was born under communism and that what happened before 1989 in Romania and maybe in other Easter European countries makes the 1984 novel seem unrealistic and boring. We had far worst forms of censorship and propaganda, paranoia about being caught with doublethink by nosy neighbors was at al times high, yet everything looked normal, roses red, sky blue, etc. But the social dissent was there, buried within all layers of society, because you cannot stop thought or even word of mouth. And it didn't happen overnight, it took more than 40 years, but in the end we shot our dictators on Christmas day. Not a smart thing to do, not real justice, but you know, when the revolution came people feared for their lives and in the end the many trump the few, a fact that governments tend to forget.

I don't care much about what the Chinese do within their borders. The far more aggravating thing is that we tolerate China, choose to do business with Chinese companies and buy Chinese products.

Now that's fucked up, because we are trading our values, for which people freaking died to win, for short term convenience, also sending the message that it's OK as a country to violate basic human rights, as long as you're powerful enough. Money trumps everything, great thing to teach our kinds, kudos folks.

<comment><USER3> > The far more aggravating thing is that we tolerate China, choose to do > business with Chinese companies and buy Chinese products.

A trade embargo (aka cold war) would be a lot worse for everyone involved.. Leads to arms race and threats of war, even less freedom and more injustice for the people (eg North Korea).

> we are trading our values, for which people freaking died to win, for short > term convenience ..

Yeah, we do that with Russia, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Iraq and many more. That's the essence of business - trade one thing for another. We trade our "freedom to do whatever we want" for a salary. We trade our "freedom to party" for the happiness of raising a child... It's one of those laws of life which we might not entirely like, but cannot escape.

> people freaking died to win

People die - that's the only absolute we can rely on. Don't get carried away with "dying for .. something", most often this is not true - most died because delusional leaders sent them into battle ... only after the fact their death got dressed into "honorable cause"..

In the end, the higher morals are dictated by whoever managed to seize power..

Which, by the way brings us back to the censorship thing..

<comment><USER2> I don't think we have the same definition for freedom. Here's one freedom that we do have: I have the freedom to denounce China's attitude towards censorship and you're free to counteract with other arguments, leading us to dialog, on a public forum.

And on people dying, that's just another way of saying that great sacrifice has been made for us to enjoy the lifestyle and freedoms that we do have, so we can't trade those so easily, because then our children will have to repay that price.

<comment><USER4> > I have the freedom to denounce China's attitude towards censorship

Just like the Chinese have the freedom to denounce US imperalism. Now, try something more serious, like calling for actual Western war criminals, and those of Western allies, to be brought to court. You won't go to jail; because nobody (who matters) will listen to you. And what would happen if you managed to actually start something that had a _real_ chance at getting people in front of a judge and behind bars, that we can just guess at, since nobody has done it before.

<comment><USER5> Oh, I think Mr. Snowden would disagree on the "nobody has done it before." And he wasn't the first.

<comment><USER6> I don't know that Snowden is a good example: he had to flee his country in a hurry. There is a great deal of uncertainty about whether he would have a fair trial in the US, a country where many are calling him a traitor.

<comment><USER7> That's seletz's point.

It's easy for people to embrace the rhetoric that China is a bound society and the West is made of free societies. In reality, the shape of the bindings is different. A free society wouldn't have forced a man to flee because he knew he wouldn't find justice after revealing an uncomfortable political truth to the public that is oppressed by it. America's methods are different, but being a superpower and an empire demands supreme authority in key areas.

<comment><USER6> Oh, if that was seletz's point, then I agree with it.

I thought he was claiming in the US it was possible to be a dissident without censorship or repression. My mistake!

<comment><USER5> Well -- I think it's a bit more subtle than that. And maybe a bit more scary. While one would believe that there can be "dissidents" in the US w/o repression based on what one reads on the net -- e.g. the the "US" representing the "free world" yadda yadda ... -- the repressions and censorships are more subtle in general.

Also, one must not confuse the US with "the western world". I live in Germany, and I believe that you could be a dissident here w/o censorship. I also believe this is true for most other European countries.

My original point was that the statement: > And what would happen if you managed to actually start something that had a real chance at getting people in front of a judge and behind bars, that we can just guess at, since nobody has done it before.

Is simply not true. Mentioned Mr. Snowden as an example -- but there are more, like the huge leak of the panama papers.

<comment><USER7> > I live in Germany, and I believe that you could be a dissident here w/o > censorship.

Just don't say "The Nazis are great and I really wish they were back in power." That'll get you straight-up jailed under section 86a of Strafgesetzbuch, if I understand correctly. Everything else is on the table. ;)

[http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html)

<comment><USER5> Well -- apart from the fact that you probably wouldn't ( _) -- one can always come up with something which is against "rules". Be it social rules, rules you made up in your head, law and so on. Rules are what it takes apparently to uphold a coherent society.

The question is what happens if you break the rules. Are there rules on how to handle individuals who break rules? Do the ones who have the power also have to follow the same rules? What about those wo make the rules? Do they have to follow the rules? How is the process of rule-making, rule-checking and punishing separated?

I'm pretty sure that in most european countries this is pretty OK -- yes there are gaps, holes, and sometimes just plain unjust or unfair processes.

I'm also pretty damn sure that for some countries this is way off. China is IMNSHO one of them.

(_) There are still people wandering about who say this and similar things who are not in jail. You much more likely would get in trouble if you call someone a "goat-fucker" (google erdogan and jan böhmermann).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> China's firewall is largely constructed to create technology transfer towards China.

This may be in the form of hindering sales for comapanies they may have interesting opportunities for investment, from sports shoes to embedded microchips, to financial products.

It is also part of a much greater Golden Shield network.

But a lot has changed over the past 5 years. A contrast of goals/objectives: the Golden Shield formerly largely about public security and media control, a network prided under the former premier (national harmony being the end-game), but now goals are much, much, more nationalistic at a strategic level across China.

<comment><USER9> > China's firewall is largely constructed to create technology transfer > towards China.

That's been a huge effect of the GFW, but is there material indicating it was the original purpose? My understanding was that much of the explosion in Chinese censorship tech happened as a way to prevent social media from gaining control over the news cycle. (i.e., when a train wreck occurs, the Party prefers stick-to-the-facts news coverage over whose-to-blame social media mobs)

<comment><USER8> Original purpose? Multifaceted, but certainly not just internet focused, it was a part of a much bigger thing (Golden Shield) that involves submitting photocopies of IDs to get a mobile phone SIM to an urban alley-way with CCTV and a cartoon of a friendly cop pasted on the wall.

>when a train wreck occurs, the Party prefers stick-to-the-facts news coverage over whose-to-blame social media mobs

combating whose-to-blame scaremongering isn't in the GFW's scope, as in regarding blocking foreign access, but is in the grey area with the rest of Golden Shield, such as requiring ICP licences in order to host a website. Today, however, Golden Shield is pretty mature, high-speed train-wrecks being covered by diggers is generally accepted as not OK, and most of the action happens on WeChat anyway with gov't ID papers issued to get a SIM, therefore a number, therefore a WeChat account.

A huge amount of fraud happens on WeChat, despite these paperwork needs.

<comment><USER10> > a much bigger thing (Golden Shield) that involves submitting photocopies of > IDs to get a mobile phone SIM

I can assure you this is not current Chinese policy.

<comment><USER8> >> a much bigger thing (Golden Shield) that involves submitting photocopies of IDs to get a mobile phone SIM

> I can assure you this is not current Chinese policy.

It is the law: to get a SIM card, must submit ID card scan or passport scan.

<comment><USER11> In India too, you need ID card to get sim card. And your sim card is activated after verification. In west you don't need to? How does Security agencies collect data? India is quite free albeit there's a recent surge of fascism.

<comment><USER12> India is _practically_ free, but technically not. We're hilariously stumbling into becoming a security state.

Its funny, even though it is so tragic.

I remember that you didn't need Govt ID to get a phone line, to enter an airport, or to get on a plane (you just needed the ticket hard copy).

I definitely remember a time when you didn't need Govt ID when you checked into a hotel! Now you do, and hotels have to keep copies of them.

There's been so many, many assaults on privacy in India, and no one to oppose it because Indian's inherently are fond of the idea of a parent state.

If its hard to believe a random person on the internet - consider that the Government of India recently argued that _there is no right to Privacy in the constitution._

And Aadhar. Man, if you want to see a better example of "Not my Problem" and doublspeak, then look no further than our Biometric program.

Its like watching Kafka author history.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I don't subscribe to common western black and white views on US vs Chinese freedom, and in fact I am fairly paranoid about the US government overreach of power, however I don't see that Chinese-style internet censorship has any applicability to the US or European governments.

I'm far more concerned about the power exterted by increasingly large corporations who want extract as much rent from the network as possible. I'm also more concerned about covert government surveillance. But in terms of outright censorship, that will just piss off too many people for little gain. There's no competitive advantage to be gained the way there is for China.

<comment><USER14> Anecdote: On Omegle a while ago, I chat with a Chinese girl, all Chinese guys I met there were always anxious about how other people would see their country, so I proceed to explain that I grew up very fond of many things about China, martial arts, silk clothes, temples, food, pictural art, kanjis. The girl listens happily and then tells me 'you know, not everything in China is good, <this> <that> <this> ... ' Then 3 seconds blank. Then 'oh god .. god ... no' then left asking me to forget what she said, that her country is great and she loves it very much. Then quit.

I guess she was worried her messages would be logged and have consequences.

<comment><USER15> Seems more like you were successfully trolled.

<comment><USER14> Could be, but I spent a huge amount of time on Omegle, stats from 10K conversations, and that kind of troll was almost non existant. American teens trying to spot sex seekers (to leverage in positive or negative ways) = 70% of the users over a 9 month period. The rest were mostly bored cubicle workers. Chinese users had recurrent pattern: struggling to type, low english level, similar center of interests. That girl was very similar (except for the english level). Maybe you're right but it didn't feel like this at the time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Maybe it doesn't work. I've always wondered why, among so many long-ruling authoritarian regimes, China is almost the only one with such strict censorship. Yes there was the Arab Spring but look at Saudi Arabia, Russia, Belarus, Vietnam..., they don't ban Facebook yet the incumbents' rule do not face exceptionally greater challenge than China. Maybe all censorship does is to give the Communist Party is false sense of security. Maybe it's something else that's working and censorship is simply free-riding.

<comment><USER17> China don't have as much natural resources per citizen as Russia, don't have huge totalitarian sponsor next to like Belarus and don't have as much oil as Saudi Arabia. Never did any research on Vietnam so have no idea.

Reason why Russia regime still exist without heavy censorship is billions and billions of dollars burn to sustain level of consumption. Russian economy is nothing compared to China, but hey most of people there still able to earn more than average chinese and even more money dumped into Moscow (only city budget is $24B). So in past they just bought votes directly or indirectly instead of enforcing censorship.

But since oil prices are low and they run out of money there is more and more censorship appear. For instance more censorship-related laws adopted since 2014 than in 14 years prior that year.

<comment><USER18> Vietnam has mild censorship - the block the BBC unless you use a VPN - and the government isn't that unpopular with free health and education and 7% growth so they don't have to try that hard. You can still end up fired/imprisoned/deported if you do the wrong thing though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This article fails to define what "works" means

Does censorship give China a better economy? Does it make people more happy? Safe?

Does censorship eradicate certain ideas? Does it prevent people from communicating domestically or internationally?

There's no data in the article that suggests any of this is true.

<comment><USER20> Works means "is technically feasible".

It doesn't matter if you think it's a good idea or not: the ruling class in China thinks it is. And any government who thinks it's a good idea in the future knows it's technically possible based on China's example.

<comment><USER19> Right, all they need to do is convince their population to abandon Facebook and use the government sanctioned social media. I'm sure that will go over well.

<comment><USER20> Agreed that the public won't abandon facebook.

But I don't understand what point you are making.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> So what about Tor and obfsproxy? Does it actually (still) work? If so, why don't more people use it?; if not, why not?

I can't easily find up-to-date information about this through Google - which I find odd, since China is such an important use case for Tor that I would expect them to maintain some sort of status page. Maybe the information is more readily available in Chinese...

<comment><USER22> I just got back from a few months in China. These services are definitely blocked through DPI. It's frustrating. It's also interesting what happens to your mind when you can't read what you'd like to, talk about what you'd like to, and revert the accepted status quo for everything.

<comment><USER23> While you were there, did you get a feel for whether people there would pay for a semi-reliable bridge through the firewall?

<comment><USER24> "Will they pay for freedom"? Seriously?

<comment><USER25> I thought it was a good question.

"Do people in China in general care enough about censorship to pay for access to uncensored internet?" doesn't have an explicitly obvious answer, does it?

They could be happy with their internet as is. They could be unhappy and willing to pay. They could be unhappy but unwilling/unable to pay.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> You can censor by scarcity (China) or censor by overabundance of trivia (Western).

When Kardashian out weigth cultural news, PR of corps outweigth economical analysis, half baked tutorial replaces consistent tutorial, unproven science replaces science : you drown signal in noise.

How many Western citizens have read that the middle eastern wars are mainly about the top 4 weapon dealers (UK, USA, Fr, Russia) bribing locals (see #clintonmails & #panamapapers) in order to ensure the growth of their economy and the disposal of scarce resources (oil, Phosphate, Uranium, Copper, Gold)?

How many citizens knows that we are fueling education/health bubbles based on good intentions (NHS) without control (incompetence?) that results in counter productive results?

There are 2 ways to censor: cut the access to information (earth friendly solution) or hide the information in a haystack (resulting in 2-3% of global energy burned in spin doctoring).

<comment><USER27> The Chinese government does censor by overabundance of trivia [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party) . Do you have evidence that Western governments are doing similar things?

<comment><USER28> Not too hard to find.

[https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy- op...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-operation- social-networks)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Not surprising. And I doubt other country can do the same. Several factors makes China a unique case: 1\. Massive domestic market, China along can have its own internet ecosystem, which is the fundamental reason why GFW can endure.

2.Conformist culture due to its Confucian tradition

3.Communist government has firm grasp of its power and stay vigilant to any sign or power that acts against it.

<comment><USER30> #1 trumps everything else. Try doing the same in a market the size of a typical European nation and you end up with an embarrassing digital backwater. Do it in a market the size of China and you can trail silicon valley by a few years at most, constantly gaining relative competitiveness as the global market of "online stuff" slows from wild, exiting exploration to establishment.

I suspect that #2 and #3 are far behind what I would put on #2, plain old language barrier, but I am surely no China expert.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> The sad fact is most people do not care about political freedom as long as they feel that their economic situation is adequate.

</comment><comment><USER32> It may work now, but I suspect in the longer term it could be very harmful. As with stocks, it is like getting short-term calmness for the price of blowing up in the future. Noise of internet freedom train society deal with rumors etc., that may be essential for survival.

</comment><comment><USER33> I would argue that even without the Great Firewall, China starts isolated by the fact that its language isn't really shared by anybody else.

<comment><USER34> Nitpicking, but Mandarin Chinese is one of the official languages in Singapore (with English, Tamil, and Malay).

Also, there is an immense Chinese diaspora throughout the world (especially in neighbouring countries), of which many became multilingual and have access to other media and can still communicate back.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> The thing is, information is the weapon of the 21st century. We are already litigating the cold war in the 3 most popular courts: the olympics, the media, and financial markets.

We cooperate with China, but what will become obvious if a horrifying 1984 censorship scenario evolves more forecfully is that nations and powerbrokers have different information thay want buried/codified. So while China censors it's internet, there will be many places that actively promote (or at best do not dissuade) the content that China is burying.

Just as Russia publishes content the U.S. would prefer not to be published/ is critical of America. So Censorship does work as does fearmongering and threats of violence. However, even in China's situation (which is horrifying) where you can be killed for promoting information/speaking out about some things there will always be groups outside the region with the information and as it becomes scarce it becomes more powerful. Peacekeepers, activists, anti-chinese nationals and subversive governement agents all have incentive to work against chinese censorship, so censorship as a whole can not be successful hopefully as there will always be factions and these factions will gain the highest leverage disseminating the information that is the most policed and downright censored shit in their counterparties region.

</comment><comment><USER36>
        > In April, the U.S. government officially classified
        > it as a barrier to trade

Interested to see what happens if this gets taken up at the WTO.

</comment><comment><USER37> > On the Sina Weibo microblogging site, his post was deleted by censors, and > his newspaper soon afterward published an opinion piece defending the > barrier and attacking Western media for hating it so much.

I'd love to read this piece, I'm genuinely curious on how the GFW can be seen as a positive thing for ordinary people because I really can't see it as defensible.

</comment><comment><USER38> To play devil's advocate: The US does also engages in censorship. Non-citizens are heavily restricted in the kind of political lobbying and contributions that they are allowed to make. We can argue about the distinction between political contributions/lobbying vs speech, but let's examine the intent behind the US laws: to limit the influence that foreign countries/organizations can have on domestic politics.

One could credibly argue that Chinese censorship of the internet falls along the same vein. A completely open internet would immediately result in China being inundated by western perspectives and arguments. An inundation that would be disproportionate, simply due to the west's economic lead and online headstart. One can understand any non-western-aligned nation being concerned about its domestic politics being strongly influenced by the western-free- speech-megaphone.

Overall, I still think that internet censorship does more harm than good, but it's worth considering the above.

</comment><comment><USER39> Why is it surprising that it works? It comes from strength as well as buy-in. People know its censored, but they accept the bargain.

In this case, I think Chinese buying the Han homogeneity helps in that there isn't an us vs them struggle. But rather an us vs the agitators mentality. And being nationalistic [affinity to the homeland] helps.

So long as people see the service provided by the government to be worth the deal, they'll put up with it. Just as we make an arguably similar, but obviously different bargain when we put up what some people call security theatre. We "put up with it" so long, in balance the government gives us an acceptable deal.

For China, where in a communist country you have daily labor riots or protests against corrupt officials, people buy into the case that with a scandalous press they, the population, by and large, could be worse off due to unrest and instability which could arguably threaten the viability of the CCP as well as the one nation notion.

<comment><USER22> FWIW, my personal experience says differently. I recently got back from a few months in China, and while I was there I had a conversation with a young man who was 100% convinced Tiananmen Square was a rumor started by anti government 'bad guys'.

<comment><USER40> Think of a person of median intelligence. Now realize that half the population is dumber than that guy. That's who propaganda is intended for, not the Hacker News crowd (apologies to anyone on Hacker News with below median intelligence, you're welcome here too :) ). Same thing in China. The people who are easily convinced of things is who the propaganda is intended for and who the government wants to protect from foreign opinion.

<comment><USER41> Median might be about right - here in Austria we witnessed yesterday that almost 50% of the ppl fell for a rightwing wanna-be dictator running for presidency. And there wasn't even brainwashing involved, apart from ads and word of mouth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> UVB-76 Link to the actual report: [https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom- net/freedom-net-2015](https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-net/freedom- net-2015)

Let's not kid ourselves, though. The US scored 19 and UK scored 24 (on the scale of 0-100, 0 being most free)

Censorship is alive and well in the West.

<comment><USER42> The criteria for censorship at the 20 points level - could be debated as - quite healthy criteria.

Criteria such as the government controlling online harassment is classed, rightly, as censorship. Political anarchy would be the reflection of 0 point score.

Is 0, 10, 20, even 30 or 40 points the optimum score: thats debatable. At the 80+ level, its really not debatable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> The metric saying 1/3 of the world faces heavy internet censorship seems large until you remember 1/5 of the world lives in China

China is one of two countries that doesn't have access to Facebook and Twitter. The other is Iran.

I'm not in love with FB or Twitter, but for tracking censorship, they are a useful measurement.

</comment><comment><USER43> "The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it" \-- John Gilmore.

Even back in the slashdot days I always thought this oft-repeated quote was more of a hopeful rallying cry than an actual statement of fact. And I think it's been clear for at least ten years that it's definitely not true.

<comment><USER44> I wouldn't say that... but what if you could block all the routes? That appears to be the case here....

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> The Chinese own China and can decide for themselves what is best for their country. But as an American living in China, I fear that some of what I see here can and will happen in America one day.

<comment><USER46> If you're locked in a kitchen, even though there is more than one choice of food are you free to decide what to eat? What if you was born there and don't really know all variety options you could have?

Centralized propaganda makes "freedom of choice" very controversial topic. Especially when its source has all the power to censor and prosecute.

<comment><USER45> You know, this is a great example. Let me continue the kitchen analogy.

Those of us born in the West are lead to think that being stuck in the kitchen sucks. That people stuck in the kitchen will suffer and/or be in a constant state of revolt and unhappiness. I know thats how I thought before I left (whether I realized it or not). Consequently we think that America is quite far from being stuck in the kitchen because things don't look remotely close to what we imagine being stuck looks like.

Let me tell you what's truly scary about China: the censorship, authoritarian rule, all the "stuck in the kitchen things" are _a lot_ more palatable than we are lead to believe. The Americans have a cartoonish view of authoritarianism so-much-so that we will not recognize it on our own shores. That terrifies me and that's why I left my comment. I wish I had the words to explain this better.

I can't change China. Even if it was democratic I don't and shouldn't have a voice here. It is not my country. China belongs to the Chinese people, not to me. What I can say is that I don't want to see America copying China with respect to civil liberties.

<comment><USER19> > Let me tell you what's truly scary about China: the censorship, > authoritarian rule, all the "stuck in the kitchen things" are a lot more > palatable than we are lead to believe

China is livable for people so long as they do not criticize the government.

People who do so are often thrown in prison indefinitely without trial, and only released if they sign a form saying they will never protest again.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> It's really odd when my Chinese friends go home and go "dark" on "free world" social media until they return. They usually get emails while in China, though.

</comment><comment><USER48> I have wondered if there is a VPN in China so that you can see what China actually sees (the opposite is easy to find).

I would imagine such a service not to be very public. I suppose you could buy hosting service in China and do it yourself... or is that not even possible?

EDIT.. apparently there are now lots services that do this (I had looked a few years back).

</comment><comment><USER49> They didn't tell you the most dangerous part: The TV box in everyone's home. It is far more powerful than the Great Fire Wall.

1\. It's a part of the internet. More than a half internet traffics are video streams. 2\. It's a bug 3\. It can do End2End monitoring and filtering.

</comment><comment><USER50> To everyone who hold the 'western value': do you know that one of the biggest jokes of your 'western value' is that you think it applies everywhere in the world in the same form, and you take it as a disguise and do harmful things to the people of other countries(of course, this is all done by the hands of politicians). You don't understand that there can be different values. So when you look at things from this perspective, you always think that the Chinese government is evil.

You put 'human rights' all day long beside your mouth, haha, but never really investigate if human rights in China really worse than western countries. US government criticizes the Chinese government for this all day long but never say nothing about their arabic friends. And Snowden is from US, right?

You have never had experience to truely live in a country of 1.4 billion people, let alone governing one. You don't understand how to unite people with such great quantity and diversity. You don't understand what chaos will come if everyone can purse his political dreams.

Western value emphasizes on the value of individuals, while in china we balance between individual and the whole nation. Interestingly, I want to use the word '集体(jiti)' in Chinese, but I can't find a suitable word in English, so I used nation. Maybe you never thought of that.

As to why CCP is blocking the internet? Because, the blocked sites contains values that is not really about freedom or human rights, instead that is like virus, that will do harm to our values and the interest our the Chinese people. For now, as a newborn ancient nation, our value is not strong enough yet. Your values will not bring Chinese people human rights and prosperity. No revolution can be done without being based on history, we have our tradition and our value. When it's powerful enough, enough that Chinese people won't be harmed by western politicians, that you are all convinced the world can have different values and still a harmony world. our value will be more open to the world.

To those who won't like to trade their values for Chinese goods, my advice: Don't Buy ANY Chinese Goods. We can see whose life will become tougher.

P.S.: As a Chinese, I have every means to access the 'free' internet(as anyone who really want in China) and know what's all about in it, know all the bad words about China and CCP and know most of them are not real. So I think censorship for now is a great idea for we Chinese to focus on forging a beautiful life for ourselves. for our people.

<comment><USER51> > As to why CCP is blocking the internet? Because, the blocked sites contains > values that is not really about freedom or human rights, instead that is > like virus, that will do harm to our values and the interest our the Chinese > people.

Who defines what is in the best interest for the Chinese people?

<comment><USER50> If Chinese people start to argue about this, haha, then damn it, our lives are doomed. Deng Xiaoping has said: "Don't argue, just try it, just do it." China has made mistakes arguing, and the outcome is horrible.

However, there is something close to a common sense now, the best interest for Chinese people in the first 100 years of PRC is to lead all the Chinese people to live at least in moderate prosperity, to build a modern country.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> _Leiden University_ is founded in 1575 in The Netherlands, not in Germany

</comment><comment><USER53> So by the looks of the picture halfway down the page the porn filter in the UK has also been removed because they are labeled as 'free'? or is porn not a part of (internet) freedom anymore?

<comment> UVB-76 Apparently there are many shades of 'free'

The UK scored 24 out of 100, 0 being the most free.

<comment><USER54> With Germany prosecuting people who download torrents, UK banning internet pornography and US manhunt against Edward Snowden and Assange, there is definitely more than one shade of free. The image of freedom is being shaped and tailored for everyone individually, it's a Brave New World out there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> What a good comparison to Berlin Wall that is. Never thought about it. Whenever I went to China the VPN-fight-with-GFW has always been a nightmare, and my Android phone could not get updated either as google is 100% blocked there.

On the other hand, in USA the is near 100% freedom including the internet, but that does have some side effects itself, e.g. nowadays any gender can get into any restroom depends on what he/she feels, that's when I hate "too many freedom", where a few forces their will on the majority public that is normally silent or staying-politically-correct, yes transgender does deserve their rights, but what about the rights for the 99.9% of us that are not transgenders?

<comment><USER56> Please educate yourself about what being transgender actually means.

To give you a rough idea: If you think that people should use the bathroom that matches their birth certificate, you should expect to meet these people in your bathroom (and yes, I am assuming that you are male):

[http://www.gardenstateequality.org/wp- content/uploads/2015/0...](http://www.gardenstateequality.org/wp- content/uploads/2015/06/Andy-file-photo.jpg)

[http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/695/cpsprodpb/10BA6/production/...](http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/695/cpsprodpb/10BA6/production/_88381586_dsc_0647.jpg)

[https://d1j2diro5xke84.cloudfront.net/photo- articles/feature...](https://d1j2diro5xke84.cloudfront.net/photo- articles/featured_images/455/original/MarciBowers2012Headshot3-cq600.jpg?1422306229)

[http://womenofrubies.com/wp- content/uploads/2016/05/Geraldin...](http://womenofrubies.com/wp- content/uploads/2016/05/Geraldine-Roman-first-transgender-politician-elected- in-the-Philippines.jpg)

<comment><USER55> the key is not about transgender itself, it's about the law, who defines you can be a transgender at will based on what's in your mind when you reach the restroom door, that means any man can get into women's restroom and vice versa any time.

I'm sure bad thing will happen due to this rule directly.

Some identity card might mitigate this situation, of course it will not get passed as it will be yet another discrimination.

<comment><USER56> > I'm sure bad thing will happen due to this rule directly.

Like what?

> Some identity card might mitigate this situation, of course it will not get > passed as it will be yet another discrimination.

So you would prefer that you cannot go to the toilet without showing ID?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> > China has achieved this. It can communicate with the outside world, > meanwhile Western opinion cannot easily penetrate as ideological tools

Media is powerful. And even in the US, most of us self-censor our news (liberal vs conservative media) to the point where we're largely reading only views we agree on (HN is no different in that regard). I always find it amusing that we can all read the same news with different conclusions and come out thinking that we're right all the time.

A lot of people assume that people in China are unaffected by all the censorship, but even if they're aware of it, I wonder if censorship in China actually reduces cognitive dissonance at this point, and it's actually more agreeable to read censored news than not. Much like advertising or the opinions of our friends/family, ideas can be subtle but extremely influencing.

<comment><USER58> When I'm in Russia, I find the state-controlled media surprisingly critical of government policy and very outward looking. They are clearly ignoring the elephant in the room: the country being an ungovernable pool of corruption that can only be kept together by instilling nationalism and foreign threats and an authoritarian leader, but then again, it's not like US media are really asking critical questions. With or without free press, no one wants to hear that they're in a mess. It's much nicer to think that everything is good, but the evil-doers are trying to ruin it.

<comment><USER59> The US media as a whole may not be asking critical questions, but that's not the point of free press. The fact is that the US media is free to ask critical questions, and therefore _some_ , though not all, of the media ask critical questions.

Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

<comment><USER60> Free to still allows another way to allow the powerful to control and manipulate.

In order to truly be a free system the system has to be fair as well, which means more income equality in addition to a free press system.

If money controls the "free" press and money distribution is heavily skewed, then it's not really a free press. This is how the US system works.

<comment><USER61> Bingo. I keep seeing the US chatter being about boo scary government, but then turn right round and supplicate themselves to the big US brands as some kind of deities of freedom.

fuck that shit. Every large org is a problem, as it will develop a internal culture and world view.

when you have corporations existing in the world that has bigger revenue streams than nations, it should bring pause for thought.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> There're a lot of valuable points in this topic's comments.

I'd like to add one more which has been ignored: the GFW/Golden Shield was built to uphold the central government's authority over other provinces.

One-to-many propaganda is the most important leverage for Beijing to suppress provincial rivals.

And I assert the same propaganda leverage applys to the relationship between Washington D.C./Newyork and other states in the U.S. as well as the relationship between the U.S. and its allies.

Censoring/manipulating the internet is not merely for silencing individuals.

</comment><comment><USER63> I'm not so sure that countries will be all that enthused to follow China's example. Aside from the technical and infrastructure costs, it's evident that they're using a huge amount of human manpower. A lot of countries don't have the knowhow or billions to do it.

At this point, I suspect the lesson will be to block all sites except those that force people to use their real names, and arrest them if they say something unapproved. Intimidation is pretty cheap.

</comment><comment><USER40> There would not be a hundred billion dollar ad industry if propaganda didn't work. We wouldn't run multi-million dollar presidential campaigns if propaganda didn't work. The whole field of social psychology and public relations would be a useless exercise if propaganda didn't work. This is the fundamental problem with democracy: people are easily influenced.

The antecedents of the current Chinese communist party, the Bolsheviks knew this and they decided that the inner party must be the vanguard of the proletariat in order to prevent the proletariat from being easily led astray by the faith of the masses in the monarchs. Of course, they were wrong, for different reasons, but objective truth is a hard thing and often a weak voice amid the bullhorns blasting propaganda.

Anyone interested in this topic should watch the great documentary "The Century Of The Self"[1] that goes into the history of the public relations industry and mass persuasion in general.

[1] [http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2d29tf_the-century-of- the-...](http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2d29tf_the-century-of-the-self- part-1-of-4-happiness-machines_school)

<comment><USER19> > This is the fundamental problem with democracy: people are easily influenced

That's not a problem with democracy. It's how people learn. We learn something and form an opinion about it.

The problem comes when only certain media sources are allowed. In that case, it's harder for people to discuss alternate viewpoints

<comment><USER64> No, the problem isn't when only certain media sources are allowed - honestly, the problem is when any media sources are allowed at all. Frankly, I think Amercians are as deceived by propaganda as the Chinese. Did we somehow forget in this thread that in western press, one can rarely find an article that isn't full of bullshit? Even if the reasons differ (western media do this for profit), the end result is the same.

<comment><USER19> > honestly, the problem is when any media sources are allowed at all

Lol. Yes let's just stop all people from communicating. That will solve everything.

> in western press, one can rarely find an article that isn't full of bullshit

There's plenty of good reporting in the West. The way to get informed is to read many viewpoints and form your own opinion. Stopping all non-government press would be terrible for a country's education, economic development, and general happiness.

<comment><USER65> A vast majority of people do not have the time to do any of that, simple as that.

And the mainstream press is not to be counted on the good reporting side of things so while good reporting is out there, it is not accessible to the mass. That being the reason why good reporting still exists, because in the grand scheme of things, it does not matter.

<comment><USER19> > A vast majority of people do not have the time to do any of that

A quality education is not spoon fed. It is the responsibility of the individual to educate him or herself. Making media available is only half of the equation

<comment><USER66> > "A quality education is not spoon fed."

It can be, you just have to be picky about the spoons. It's also useful to avoid relying on a single source of information, a diet of opposing views is healthy.

Self-directed education is probably the best overall, but nobody has time to keep up with everything going on in the world, at some point you have to find trustworthy news sources if you want to be aware of activity outside of your main interests.

<comment><USER19> > nobody has time to keep up with everything going on in the world

Exactly. Self directed education is as much about ignoring information you don't need as it is about absorbing information.

> at some point you have to find trustworthy news sources if you want to be > aware of activity outside of your main interests

At _many_ points we need to re-examine already-trusted news sources. For example, the Discovery Channel which lost its ability to be scientific.

To hear even more different perspectives, learn a foreign language so you can read their news or talk to foreigners.

<comment><USER66> > "Exactly. Self directed education is as much about ignoring information you > don't need as it is about absorbing information."

Not everything that you're interested in will end up covering the most important new developments of the day. For example, if you spend most of your self-directed learning focused on learning about physics, you may miss news related to the economy, and it could turn out that there's an important event related to the economy that you should be aware of. In such cases, you will be relying on the expertise of others in the field.

Speaking generally, it's healthy to have a passing interest in many things, as long as you can also acknowledge that your understanding of things you don't spend a lot of time on is likely to be limited.

<comment><USER19> I agree with all that. I think we're both being picky about each other's words, or we're both not. You pick, or I will.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> Is news.ycombinator.com visible in China?

</comment><comment><USER68> > VPN Software is pretty simple

Can someone explain why VPNs are "simple"? What do they mean by simple?

<comment><USER69> They mean easy to detect and disconnect.

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> > VPN software is simple

Can someone explain why VPN software is "simple"? I thought it encrypted your data so they cannot be inspected, plus if you tunnel over the HTTP/HTTPS ports how can VPN traffic be separated out from "regular" traffic?

<comment><USER70> Because to establish the tunnel, you need to send some "handshake" packets to the server. Those packets are not encrypted and can be easily identified and dropped.

<comment><USER71> Which is why `shadowsocks` has become popular to bypass the GFW: it has no such handshake phase and hence cannot be easily identified.

<comment><USER70> ...and when GFW has trouble stopping `shadowsocks`, it threatens the author of the software. GFW is not only the technology, which is easy to bypass, but also the system that average citizen cannot escape.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER72> Does it?

<comment><USER73> You can try to as them about tank man

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

<comment><USER74> I, as well as my parents, my grandparents, and many other Chinese, know about the incident, but we do not necessarily agree with the Western media's opinions on it. After all, our parents were the ones that witnessed it, and they should have a better understanding of what really happened.

You can read this article by Western media to get a different perspective: [http://www.cbsnews.com/news/chinas-leader-talks- to-60-minute...](http://www.cbsnews.com/news/chinas-leader-talks- to-60-minutes/)

<comment><USER75> I'm pretty sure that all but a very few of them watched it on TV just like everyone else did. Well, not exactly like everyone else did - a lot later, a lot shorter, and edited and presented by the tank.

edit: I'm overestimating Chinese media freedom here. Furtive word of mouth and descriptions from people who have travelled outside of China are probably a more accurate way that Chinese people have learned about this facet of their own history - am I right?

<comment><USER74> You are right. It's good to get opinions from people who are living abroad. But I would be cautious over the recounts of the "Chinese dissidents" who are expelled or fled from China.

They are more likely to be motivated to give a biased recount against the government as a way of expressing their resentment with the government. They also often have supports from people/organizations who are eager to find ways to paint Chinese government black (for whatever reason they might have). (Think the situation of Snowden)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER76> Remember Edward Snowden?

</comment><comment><USER77> China is just making real the wet dreams of RIAA and MPAA executives.

It is coming in the west too - for copyright, hate speech, terrorism, child porn - the internet will be as tightly locked here too. The fact that so much of it is already a walled garden makes it easier. Remove the web browser from the iDevices and you have a very compelling ecosystem for any dictatorship. It may take 50 years more, but the trends are unmistakable.

We need next generation of communication networks. That make laugh of national sovereignty. I think google's project loon and the likes are a good way. Fill a country sky with relaying stations and the government will make itself broke trying to take them down.

</comment><comment><USER78> What bothers me more is the chilling silence on the issue of human rights violation carried out by the followers of communism [1],[2] by most of the intellectuals (mostly humanities professors) in USA who are very keen on criticizing USA for whatever perceived/projected censorship and violation of human rights. There is a huge possibility that these intellectuals are either crooks who have been paid and bought by the communists and/or are fools ("useful idiots")[3] who believe in the communist propaganda.

For every criticism dealt out against USA for human rights abuse and other governmental crimes/sins, the communist nations must be criticized a 1000 times.

Communism as a ideology is still a great threat to world peace. The followers and believers of communism have wreaked havoc on various parts of the world that matches nothing and these crooks blame the free market based democratic western nations for problems in their own countries.

I don't deny that capitalism has its disadvantages but it is by far the most humane, most successful and most benevolent government/societal system that has existed ever before whereas communism has resulted in extremely corrupt and very abusive government/societal systems in the world.

The things like the communist party chairman, the politburo members, and a bunch of their cronies got the entire benefits in a very skewed manner whereas most of the general public got only hardship should not be forgotten at any cost by freedom lovers.

So, we must not forget that the USA has served the world by taking a stance against this vicious ideology called communism and its equally vicious followers. We must raise this issue every time USA and capitalist free and open market based democracy gets criticized in favor of communism/socialism by the communists/socialists.

Some links you may find interesting here [2], [3], [4].

[1] [https://sentinelblog.com/2015/12/10/maos-monstrous-record- ha...](https://sentinelblog.com/2015/12/10/maos-monstrous-record-has-been- suppressed/) [2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laogai](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laogai) [3][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Useful_idiot](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Useful_idiot) [4] [http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2017839/Madman- starv...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2017839/Madman- starved-60-million-death-Devastating-book-reveals-Maos-megalomania-turned- China-madhouse.html) [5] [https://tiananmenstremendousachievements.wordpress.com/tag/m...](https://tiananmenstremendousachievements.wordpress.com/tag/maos- tyranny/)

</comment><comment><USER79> See Reddit and Facebook for a domestic examples.

I know there are differing views on Reddit in particular, but reality simply is that the "moderation" has become well beyond moderation and is well into censorship and authoritarian type of control and domination of the conversation that totally and fundamentally breaks the foundation of how Reddit is supposed to work.

There is really no legitimate excuse (which is what they always are) to censor, remove, and ban users and comments that are not all out direct threats to commit criminal acts or spam. What is going on on Reddit in particular is a thoroughly liberal authoritarianism that is heavily dominated by a kind of perverse paternalistic supremacist, i.e., protecting users from hearing and seeing things that the authoritarian types deem unauthorized.

Reddit, as example, is intended to allow the community, through a kind of civil society, determine the dialogue and conversation; but with ever spiking frequency, Reddit in particular is being sabotaged as the authoritarians remove the community's ability to shape the conversation.

The mods on Reddit in particular are thoroughly acting as common authoritarian goons by patrolling the discussions and routinely removing comments and conversations they decree as unauthorized or very much like "speaking against the regime". It's clearly an authoritarian mentality eating its way through Reddit at the moment.

Sure, some will say "private website, blah blah blah" but that's not the point really. It's about civil responsibility, which, ironically, the liberal authoritarian goons on Reddit supposedly frequently espouse regarding all sorts of other topics. As the internet continues to be consolidated and shrinks and is ever more controlled by the likes of Facebook that is controlled by Zuckerberg, who's goal is for Facebook to replace the internet, you will have ever more increasingly controlled spaces for public discussions and at some point there will be no non-private spaces for discussion to any effective degree. At that point we have come full circle and devolved back to a monarchical and aristocratic type of social structure where all of society and it's people only operate in "private websites" and the justification is that because the ruling class control everything and all forms of communication, like Kings, Dukes, and Princes, you are claimed to have no right to have conversations.

I know many, rather short sighted people may dismiss what I say, but reality is that is a rather counter-intuitive and unexpected manner, the internet is really leading to far more control and consolidation of power and homogenization of society and collapse of diversity. It's rather odd that large segments of society are all supportive of things that will end in demise of the very tings they espouse.

In many ways, the current phase humanity is in with regard to neo-liberalist views, is akin to investment in a ponzi scheme. Everyone (liberal, tech, globalist, etc types) is all Golden Age level indulged in excess and self- gratification because they invested all their money in a ponzi scheme that has huge returns on paper, but the day will come when you can't withdraw the false returns or the scheme collapses altogether.

</comment><comment><USER80> That's ironic because the Washington Post is censoring this article from me with their paywall.

</comment><comment><USER81> Bread and Circuses: bribe the population with free bread and distract them with circuses whilst the rulers do whatever they want.

</comment><comment><USER82> Here is an example of recent FaceBook censorship: [http://youtube.com/watch?v=25tYyAgejA8](http://youtube.com/watch?v=25tYyAgejA8)

</comment><comment><USER83> The Great Firewall actually makes a lot of sense. Everyone thinks of themselves as being rational and unbiased - But in fact, we are all irrational, biased and at times hypocritical. Those people who think that they are rational and objective are usually the least rational and most hypocritical of all because they lack self-awareness.

As westerners, as much as we like to pretend that we know the whole truth, in reality, what we know is only a biased approximation of it. The west likes to impose their version of the truth on the whole world but China is determined to stick to their version - I don't see anything wrong with that; especially if it works in their favour.

Regardless of how you look at it; the west is aggressive when it comes to spreading its ideals and values. If China wasn't so protecive, they would have become economically dependent on the west (as opposed to being the powerhouse they are today).

<comment><USER84> I find the many "the West is a problematic too" responses here a bit troubling.

Not that I don't find the West problematic but the many problems of the West don't actually make China's problems any better and I'm not sure there are many who seem to think they do.

<comment><USER83> China definitely has its problems but my point is that there are problems everywhere and we shouldn't single-out any specific country because we think that their problems are worse than ours (maybe they have the opposite opinion).

The reality is that no one has the moral high ground; we are all competing for resources and relevance and every country is willing to resort to dirty tricks to get ahead.

China has the Great Firewall, the US has the NSA...

<comment><USER85> One is allowing free information while the other has the great firewall and random arrests for people writing negative comments about the party in power.

Although the US is not as democratic as it should be your comparison is not even laughable.

I find it hard that people can be so misled, or maybe you are just trolling. China has a brutal dictatorship that executes people for trying to get more power and were responsible for the Tiananmen massacre and still will not even admit it happened.

If you think you could live in China and even write anything about the party the way you write about the US government from your comment you are delusional. The US has a very free press and free speech for everyone.

<comment><USER86> > If you think you could live in China and even write anything about the party > the way you write about the US government from your comment you are > delusional.

Censorship in China Allows Government Criticism but Silences Collective Expression

Contrary to previous understandings, posts with negative, even vitriolic, criticism of the state, its leaders, and its policies are not more likely to be censored. Instead, we show that the censorship program is aimed at curtailing collective action by silencing comments that represent, reinforce, or spur social mobilization, regardless of content.

Source: [http://gking.harvard.edu/publications/how-censorship- china-a...](http://gking.harvard.edu/publications/how-censorship-china-allows- government-criticism-silences-collective-expression)

<comment><USER19> Yeah. Combine that with the fact that protesters are thrown in jail willy nilly and the above comment still stands

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER87> I don't really know if it's that much worrying. I mean can the entire world really criticize china, when you see so many companies having influence in democratically elected governments?

If you look at the political science of it, I think that this firewall is there to mitigate the potential instability of the chinese government. This is not new. I mean I'm okay with critics as long as it aims for progress, but the reality is that you don't just snap your fingers and "tada democracy"! So when you don't have democracy, you will have other ways to have a country that is peaceful and thriving enough. Restricted speech is one of those methods.

If you compare the situation in china with the west, it's not so different: there is still some influence between large corporations and government in western countries, and we don't like it either, and free speech doesn't always solve those problems. It's less corrupt, but I think China has really caught up.

I would be cautious about putting "free speech" on a pedestal. What works for western countries wouldn't necessarily do for countries which don't have the same customs, history, or culture. Free speech is one of those double edged swords that are well regulated in western countries, but is not in other parts of the world.

<comment><USER74> I agree. But first rule of HN: Do not defend China or you will be down-voted to the bottom.</comment></comment>


I'm harvesting credit card numbers and passwords from your site. Here's how - <AUTHOR> https://hackernoon.com/im-harvesting-credit-card-numbers-and-passwords-from-your-site-here-s-how-9a8cb347c5b5?gi=9b859366d965 <comment><USER2> Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16084575](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16084575)

Part 2: [https://hackernoon.com/part-2-how-to-stop-me-harvesting- cred...](https://hackernoon.com/part-2-how-to-stop-me-harvesting-credit-card- numbers-and-passwords-from-your-site-844f739659b9) But that one didn't make such a fuss.</comment>


What programmers need to know about hardware prefetching? - <AUTHOR> http://www.futurechips.org/chip-design-for-all/prefetching.html

<comment><USER2> The article really only touches on the absolute basics. It would have left me hurting for more specifics. However, I've read Ulrich Drepper's epic paper on modern memory architectures. (<http://lwn.net/Articles/259710/>)

You should do yourself a favor and read it.

<comment><USER3> +10, best article on memory ever. If a similar treatment showed up on branch prediction we would have an excellent pair.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is this different from caches? If so, the advice also applies to properly using the cache. I've read that cache misses are the biggest source of slow- downs on modern processors. (Sorry, no citation)

<comment><AUTHOR> This is related to caches as the author is talked about hardware prefetching from memory to caches, i.e., is the act of fetching in to the cache the data that will be needed in the near future. This reduces cache misses.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Nice introduction to data prefetching. I don't fully agree with this statement, though:

 _Second, programmers have very little control over instruction placement in memory._

Depending on your platform and type of application you may have full control over instruction placement and it might be extremely important to know how to sequence instructions to get maximum performance.

<comment><USER6> Assuming he is talking about languages like C, and you don't use inline assembly, I don't see how you can have any control. For anything complex, your compiler will probably do a much better job then you in creating fast assembly.In the case you can do better, you would just inline the code, so you only have control over that small part.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you get notifications if something doesn't happen? - <AUTHOR> I have searched high and low for a service and I could have sworn I saw a solution on HN but I cannot find it.
In particular I am looking for a solution that can notify me if my hourly backups were NOT completed.
What I have come up with is a script that checks the modified timestamp of my backup file and then checks if it is older than 1 hour. If it is, then the script returns 200 success headers. If it doesn't then it returns a 404.
I am then monitoring that page with an uptime monitoring service.
I'm curious what everyone else does and how well it works for you. <comment><USER2> If this is a Unix-like environment, have you thought about running a cron job that runs your script and decides to send a message based on the results?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I have. But I think the job never running at all is the problem I am trying to avoid. If the cron didn't fire or if the entire command just failed, or if maybe the server was offline when the cron was supposed to fire, a check after the job is finished would never happen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> Then i think the solution you came up with is pretty good for your situation. If this external service is stable, of course.</comment>


How to stop your images from being pinned to Pinterest - <AUTHOR> http://benwerd.com/blog/2012/02/20/how-to-stop-your-images-from-being-pinned-to-pinterest/

<comment><USER2> I agree that there should be a general "republish" property. As various forms of reblogging continue to come into vogue, managing your own content is going to get messy.</comment>


Ask HN: How does Mint.com work? - <AUTHOR> Mint.com connects to your bank account, credit card account, etc, and downloads your data. How do they do that? Do they need any special authorization from the banks or it's an open API? How about security? Can you please explain their back-end system?<p>The same question applies to Blippy and inDinero. Anyone know what these guys are doing on the back end to get the transaction data? <comment><USER2> This is Jessica from inDinero. We use the same technology that Mint uses -- namely, integrating with a third party service called Yodlee. They take care of aggregating financial data through various means. Screen scraping, direct OFX feeds, etc...

The typical question is, why do Mint and inDinero use Yodlee instead of building the solution out themselves?

1) Security Liability. No startup should ever have to deal with the problems that go with storing passwords to financial accounts. Yodlee is in the business of security, they have direct feeds with major banks, making it much easier (and safer) to just integrate with them.

2) Mass quantity of banks. Screen scraping from so many banks is a pain in the __*. It isn't standard either -- compare the bank website of Wells Fargo to that of a local credit union that asks 5 security questions upon login. In short, it's a brutal nightmare.

3) None of our businesses are in the business of screen-scraping. If Mint had to spend the first year of business integrating with banks, they wouldn't be successful. And even once the integrations are done, you have to maintain them in the event that the bank changes their login page or interface. In short, it's not worth any startup's time to do manual screen scraping themselves.

Would be happy to discuss further if you DM me.

<comment><USER3> Would you consider working with Iphone app developers to make money tracking and spending actionable? I've wanted this tool for a few years now. If I set my expenses, say utilities, rent, insurance, and car payments in a system that also tracks my purchases and income, I could see my daily budget for other more spontaneous expenses. I could open up my app to find what my drinking/nightlife expenses can be today, or tally up the day's spending to see if I'm still on track with that utility bill.

The thing I've found frustrating about financial planning tools is that they seldom give me any useful information about the purchase I want to make right now. Instead, they tell me about the malleable resource called money, and offer me the chance to look at it from a 3rd person perspective.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Straight screen scrapin' yo. I worked for a similar startup that collected more detailed information than yodlee/mint, it was a product for financial managers instead of consumers. We collected over a 1mil transactions per night from over 3000 financial institutions. It was no joke. You might think screen scraping is silly but the bottom line is if a bank had an api (OFX, and very few do offer OFX) or formatted data downloads(csv,xls) the data tended to be stale or incorrect. Reasoning behind that is more eyeballs are on the web pages and so bugs/inconsistencies are noticed quicker. There was more of an expectation for the web pages to be accurate.

<comment><AUTHOR> Can you elaborate in how "screen scraping" works?

<comment><USER5> Screen scraping means: you write a web crawler which loads up the web page (in this case, takes your bank login user name and password, puts them in the login form on the bank website, pretends to be you and loads up the relevant web pages). Then you write an html parser which grabs the relevant bits from the bank's web page (account balance, number, name, etc.) and stores those bits somewhere useful in the local database.

<comment><USER6> My bank (all of them where I live) uses a challenge code that I have to enter on a separate hardware card reader. So only human login permitted :-(

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> At least prior to their acquisition by Intuit, Mint's backend was powered by Yodlee. This TechCrunch article provides a little background: <http://techcrunch.com/2009/09/18/mint-is-yodlees-youtube/>

<comment><AUTHOR> It says that Yodlee received $2mil/year, isn't that a bit expensive for startups like inDinero to pay? (I'm assuming inDinero uses the same system)

<comment><USER8> I wouldn't be surprised if it is priced based on number of accounts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "How do they get the data" doesn't seem mysterious once you give them your logins. "Is this safe and why or why not" is the question I'd be much rather have answered.

<comment><AUTHOR> Once you give them the login info, how can they get the data from the bank?

<comment><USER5> See the answers under screen scraping; basically they load the web pages up, login as you, and parse the html to find what they need...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Last I looked into this, Yodlee's security pages were a good place to start because they have a lot of the key words to look up.

<http://www.yodlee.com/security_overview.shtml>

A lot of the "how" is meeting security wickets (physical, application, transport, audit, examination).

</comment><comment><USER8> They do use Yodlee but you still raise some interesting questions. Should the bank really be allowing access by a third party using stored two-factor credentials?

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't think Blippy uses Yodlee. Maybe they are using some kind of bank API?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's not screen-scraping. They use Yodlee and CashEdge.

</comment><comment><USER12> Think it should be "How mint.com works?" or "How does mint.com work?"

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Maybe someone from inDinero could join the conversation?

</comment><comment><USER13> Did quicken back then also used screen scrapping? Most banks at the time didn't even had websites.</comment>


Court Refuses to Keep Patent Licensor's Secrets - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/05/court-refuses-keep-patent-licensing-secrets <comment><USER2> Alsop: _Because Uniloc's rights flow directly from this government-conferred power to exclude, the public in turn has a strong interest in knowing the full extent of the terms and conditions involved in Uniloc's exercise of its patent rights and in seeing the extent to which Uniloc's exercise of the government grant affects commerce._

This is a straightforward argument. Hopefully the court in GEORGIA v PUBLIC.RESOURCE.ORG follows similar logic.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/13/us/politics/georgia- offic...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/13/us/politics/georgia-official- code-copyright.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> >He also noted that "patent holders tend to demand in litigation a vastly bloated figure in 'reasonable royalties' compared to what they have earned in actual licenses of the same or comparable patents," and that "[t]here is a public need to police this litigation gimmick via more public access."

Yeah I don't see how you can argue "Oh man we should get X" if you can't show that you ever made X licensing it before...</comment>


Your priorities do not align with the company's - <AUTHOR> http://trenchescomic.com/tales/post/your-priorities-do-not-align-with-the-companys

<comment><USER2> And this is why you need to make sure that you can live without a paycheck for 6 months to a year. Everybody needs F.U. money.

You never know when you will be shepherded into a room and asked for your badge. It can happen to anyone, and it can happen out of the blue for no apparent reason! In a case such as this when you happen to have a bad manager, or an ethically challenged company, you must always have contingency plans to handle this situation.

America's workplaces would be much different if everyone could weather a layoff without financial difficulties.

</comment><comment><USER3> EA</comment>


In New Space Race, Enter the Entrepreneurs - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/08/science/space/08space.html?hp=&pagewanted=all

<comment><USER2> I heard Robert Bigelow speak at a conference on Capitol Hill years back. Interesting guy.

I really think that space entrepreneurship is insanely exciting and I'd love to see more people get into it. I think in our lifetimes we'll see some incredible progress in private space exploration -- if we all step up and use our entrepreneurial energies in this direction.

Sure, I'm insanely excited about the iPhone's video chatting features, which Steve Jobs raved about today in the context of growing up watching Star Trek and seeing this sort of thing on TV. But if you're talking Star Trek, let's talk space travel!

I spent a summer in college working for Space Adventures (<http://www.spaceadventures.com>), which at the time had very much a "startup" feel despite having arranged for "space tourist" Dennis Tito to fly to the International Space Station (and in more recent years, sending up people like Microsoft Word developer Charles Simonyi and signing up Sergey Brin as a future client). (Forbes has details about the early days here: <http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2005/0509/058.html.>) Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Paul Allen are dabbling in space ventures. And Richard Branson, with Virgin Galactic, has made space entrepreneurship sexy.

But I'd love to see a lot more young entrepreneurs and investors focusing on space entrepreneurship. Sure, iPhone apps and websites can help improve people's lives. But do you really want to have an impact on the course of human history? Do something in space! Space Adventures was founded by a young entrepreneur in his 20s, Eric Anderson, just two years out of college, who dared to think big. It started in his basement. We should all think big, too.

</comment><comment><USER3> There was an article today in the WSJ about SpaceX needing $1B in public funding to achieve its goal of shuttling astronauts to the Space Station [1]. That is unfortunate and frankly a little unsettling. It is sad to see the space entrepreneurs who argue against costly government space programs rely on the same government/taxpayer funding to launch their own ventures

[1] [http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870472610457529...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704726104575290604217670696.html)

<comment><USER4> Until there is an alternative established market, realistically you are only looking at getting a slice of the government funds, as that IS the market.

And if for that $1B you can achieve what currently would cost $15B and up (orion - <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orion_(spacecraft)> ), then what other reason do you need?

Government has deemed it necessary to spend this money, so its in your best interest (as it is your money) to make sure that this gets used most efficiently.

<comment><USER5> To date 8 individuals have flown to orbit as tourists, paying around $20 million each for the privilege. This despite the fact that no existing space program is set up for such tourism and much of the bureaucratic apparatus behind every existing governmental space program is more or less hostile to that sort of thing.

And yet, somewhere around a sixth of a billion dollars has been spent on orbital tourism. What will the market look like when much less costly sub- orbital trips are available and when there are companies and space craft purpose built for tourism? Every indication is that there are billions of dollars to be had from tourism alone. And any company, such as SpaceX, with a vehicle that could also fly commercial satellite payloads is in an excellent position to bootstrap its way profitably from zero to a manned space program so robust that would make the Apollo engineers blush in jealousy.</comment></comment></comment>


Hacked in a public space? Thanks, HTTPS - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/05/20/https_wifi_trust_in_a_public_place/ <comment><USER2> As long as you visited Gmail within the last 126 days, your browser won't allow you to visit the HTTP version of Gmail because they have HSTS[1] enabled:

> strict-transport-security:max-age=10886400; includeSubdomains

This sensational article fails to mention that.

To protect your website visitors, enable the HSTS header on your web server. Basically just use SSL Labs[2] and fix everything until you have an A+ rating.

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

[2] [https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=wakatime.com](https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=wakatime.com)

<comment><USER3> My personal grief with HSTS is that it pretty much requires you to have installed and trusted one random 400 CA collection or the other. If you have uninstalled/distrusted most of them, no current browser will allow you to access a HSTS enabled domain using one of those distrusted CAs.

There is no override to skip and accept an encryption-only connection. Which is what I would have gotten with HSTS as well, because without independent verification the CA system is a lot, but not the mutually trusted third party it claims to be.

<comment> ryan-c Chrome at least, does allow HSTS errors to by overridden (and "safe browsing" warnings). It's just not exposed visibly. There is a deliberately undocumented "cheat code" that you need to type.

<comment><USER3> If you mean the one starting with D, then I may have mistyped and need to try that again. Thought that did not work for the HSTS block.

<comment> ryan-c They've changed the code from that, the new one starts with B.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> >If a site provides only HTTPS then sslstrip would fail as it can't fall back to HTTP

I don't believe this is true. Sslstrip would get the site in HTTPS and serve it to you in HTTP, right? Only pinning or hsts would prevent that, HTTPS only servers wouldn't help.

I guess they could mean hsts by HTTPS only, but the end of the article implies otherwise.

>Certificate pinning, though, is limited to Google sites at present

This is also false.

I'd also hope they'd mention something like HTTPS everywhere which also mitigates this.

<comment><USER5> MITM tools such as [0] can also generate new certificates on the fly. So, unless HSTS is enabled, the user will still see the green padlock. This, obviously is only possible if the signing authority is in the device's trusted CAs. But I'd assume that corporate systems would have local CAs trusted by their admins.

[0] MITM Proxy [https://mitmproxy.org](https://mitmproxy.org)

<comment><USER6> Also it should be noted that Chromium will ignore certificate pinning if a private root certificate is used. So this will do nothing to prevent corporate snooping.

<comment><USER7> Which makes sense, because anyone who could install a root certificate on your system could easily disable any such check, backdoor Chrome, install a keylogger, etc.

This would lead to a false sense of security, which I believe would be worse than the status quo.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I don't want to sound like a jerk, but The Register is IT equivalent of Daily Mail more or less. Sensationalist clickbaity titles, misleading content, making news from non-news. Every time I click a link to it, I regret. This article is yet another example.

Please make a favor to fellow HNers and do not upvote ElReg stories. If you find something truly interesting there and want to submit, probably there's a better-written equivalent available on ArsTechnica or other page already.

<comment><USER9> I disagree. This article had several interesting points.

El Reg have a wide ( tech ) audience. Some articles are for noobs, fine. Like other places they need filler content when there is nothing organic happening.

They also have their finger on the pulse a lot more than stars-in-their-eyes tech coverage elsewhere.

Rather than Daily Mail I think of them more as New Scientist

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This document goes to imply that corporations installing a private CA on your machine for SSL interception within business networks, somehow means any using any wifi anywhere compromises all communications. This is quite a leap.

</comment><comment><USER11> What a pointless article. Nothing news-worthy.

<comment><USER12> It's in The Register.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Is there any way on the client side to pin the certificate you are expecting a website to be served under ?

I use SimpleNote a lot, and don't want my work snooping on the contents. Nothing dodgy, just a little tin-foil hatty. If they do snoop, and I have no mechanism to know when they are, then I'll stop using it.

So SimpleNote use a Comodo certificate ( by inspection ).

How can I personally instruct my browser to reject any cert from a different provider just for SimpleNote.com ?

</comment><comment><USER13> Besides the fact that the author is a fucking dunce, the more important fallacy in this article is that there's a hacker running Kali on a laptop in a coffee shop just trying to steal _your_ Facebook credentials, or GMail. Nobody gives a shit about your private data (other than the government, and advertisers)

</comment><comment><USER14> How exactly does a "hacker in a coffesshop" spoof a Google cert without Chrome complaining? These certs are pinned. Or is that just an implementation detail that if they had to explain would prevent them from writing such click bait?

<comment><USER7> The "fun" thing about this article is that pretty much every claim they make is debunked one or two paragraphs later, but that doesn't seem to be stopping them from making click-baitish claims.

I'd almost be willing to accept this, because while we do have tons of new mechanisms such as HSTS and HPKP that prevent most of this from happening, and while most big sites have adopted at least HSTS, the same thing certainly cannot be said for every single financial institution and many other sites out there. So I guess there is some truth to the statement that HTTPS is no silver-bullet for public networks ... yet.

<comment><USER15> Except that it pretty much is. Redirects from HTTP to HTTPS are not. But they failed to mention the one actually useful piece of information: If you visit a website where security is important, enter the URI with the [https://](https://) protocol specifier (or use a bookmark with that URI) to prevent attackers from hijacking the connection.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Carrying a supercomputer with internet connectivity via a network with largely known vulnerabilities in my pocket, allows me to forgo public wireless networks and tether the Thinkpad instead.

It ain't perfectly secure but odds are I'm not the slowest wildebeest.

</comment><comment><USER17> Hmm, does DNScrypt helps here too to increase security?</comment>


Show HN: Aeroscope, a Wireless Oscilloscope Probe - <AUTHOR> http://www.aeroscope.io/ <comment><USER2> It would be neat if the device could store some samples locally, so that you could throw it into a faraday cage (completely isolated from all noise sources), make some measurements, then later look at the measurements on the app.

<comment><AUTHOR> Our original plan was to support something like this. We don't have this feature right now, but will consider adding it in the future. It is mainly a UI problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> For attaching onto a device, do you offer different attachment heads to make it easier? Or is there only 1 probe head?

<comment><AUTHOR> The probe tip can be interchanged. It uses an SMA connector, so it is easily adaptable. We plan on shipping with a probe tip and a set of "pig tails" with mini-grabbers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Looks interesting for quick testing. Any indication on how much this will cost?

<comment><AUTHOR> Right now, we are targeting a $400 price point.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the quick response. You are priced about where my Rigol DS1102E 100 MHz Digital Oscilloscope is. Lots of people use it or the DS1000 (50Mhz) as their daily scope. The Rigol has a ton of memory in it so I can do pretty long capture points (most of mine is long period I2C captures).

I'll keep you bookmarked to watch for a release and a final price.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, Rigol is a strong competitor for low cost bench scopes. As a small startup, we don't have the pricing leverage Rigol has with chip vendors. We plan to get there in a few years. Our edge over Rigol is our wireless capability and portability. Wireless is nice for remote measurements or anytime you need isolation from mains ground.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Will the protocol documentation be publicly available?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, the protocol will be completely open source.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Very cool!</comment>


Coronavirus forces Italy to tighten lockdown - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus/coronavirus-forces-italy-to-tighten-lockdown-trump-to-address-u-s-crisis-idUSKBN20Y1RF <comment><AUTHOR> Italy forces all shops to close except supermarkets, pharmacies and drugstores for at least two weeks. Rstaurants have to close also if they can't provide 1m space between patrons.

[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/11/italy-faces- ca...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/11/italy-faces-calls-to- close-everything-to-tackle-coronavirus)

</comment><comment><USER2> It was on the frontpage, twice. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22550623](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22550623)

The news cycle is saturated ("If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic." [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html))

<comment><AUTHOR> Ups, didn't see it on the front. My bad.

/e >Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.

So it doesn't seem to be off topic after all, or all COVID19 stories would be.

<comment><USER2> IMHO indeed a lot are. About every 6th story, right now every 4th story, in /newest is virus related in the last couple of days. One aim of hackernews is to be the place to find stories that are outside the usual 24/7 breaking news circle. Two hours ago it was Denmark closing schools with 200 comments [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22550108](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22550108) before Germany (Merkel) saying 70% of the country could be infected and when Italy news broke an hours ago the quality of the discussion already suffered [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22550623](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22550623) It's the top story on CNN and BBC news.

<comment><AUTHOR> I see your point but on the other hand this is not the soccer world cup or some tech event. It could evolve in a once in a lifetime outbreak and the 8th largest economy of the world in essence partialy shutting down is something to discuss with the hn crowd. Perhaps my view on this is a bit skewed as i could drive to italy in two hours. If no one is intersted these stories arn't upvoted enough to be visible.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How Does Linux Start Up - <AUTHOR> https://www.tutorialdocs.com/article/how-linux-start-up.html <comment><USER2> I upvoted this because I think these sort of tutorials are a good thing. I've learned many things with tutorials like this, which are a great starting point (I used to spend ages reading through tldp howtos etc).

That said, I'd like to see more such descriptive docs about the modern Linux system. I confess, I know very little about how Systemd, dbus, whatever does device management and filesystem mounting, switching of networks in network- manager etc work. I use these daily and I have a vague idea but I would like to read a doc that just opens the boot, points at things and describes them, so to speak. Any recommendations?

<comment><USER3> Not the thing that you have upvoted, certainly. (-:

It's significantly wrong for a systemd operating system from step #3 onwards.

* [https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/394238/5132](https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/394238/5132)

* [https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/196014/5132](https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/196014/5132)

* [https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/236968/5132](https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/236968/5132)

* [https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/233855/5132](https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/233855/5132)

* [https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/194218/5132](https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/194218/5132)

* [https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/333922/5132](https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/333922/5132)

It is important to also look at the further reading, which points to quite a lot of stuff.

Of course, there are other systems, for which the headlined article is also quite wrong.

* [http://smarden.org/runit/runit.8.html](http://smarden.org/runit/runit.8.html)

* [http://skarnet.org/software/s6-linux-init/quickstart.html](http://skarnet.org/software/s6-linux-init/quickstart.html) / [http://skarnet.org/software/s6-rc/why.html](http://skarnet.org/software/s6-rc/why.html) / [http://skarnet.org/software/s6-rc/overview.html](http://skarnet.org/software/s6-rc/overview.html)

* [http://upstart.ubuntu.com/cookbook/#system-phases](http://upstart.ubuntu.com/cookbook/#system-phases)

* [http://jdebp.eu./Softwares/nosh/guide.html](http://jdebp.eu./Softwares/nosh/guide.html) / [http://jdebp.eu./Softwares/nosh/guide/](http://jdebp.eu./Softwares/nosh/guide/) / [http://jdebp.eu./Softwares/nosh/guide/gazetteer.html](http://jdebp.eu./Softwares/nosh/guide/gazetteer.html) / [http://jdebp.eu./Softwares/nosh/guide/startup-and-shutdown.h...](http://jdebp.eu./Softwares/nosh/guide/startup-and-shutdown.html) / [http://jdebp.eu./Softwares/nosh/guide/networking.html](http://jdebp.eu./Softwares/nosh/guide/networking.html) ... and so forth.</comment></comment>


Phi Sigma Sigma demands Penny Arcade remove "trade secret" secret handshake - <AUTHOR> http://penny-arcade.com/2012/11/19/phi-sigma-sigma <comment><USER2> This doesn't look like a legally valid demand. A "secret handshake" is not likely to be classed as intellectual property, and referring to it in a work of art in most cases would fall under the fair use doctrine:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use>

Lawyers can write letters demanding things from people, but -- even though lawyers are technically officers of the court -- their demands aren't necessarily legal or enforceable demands. A judge might well look at this demand very differently than an advocate for one side would.

It's best not to ignore a letter from a lawyer, but blind obedience is also unwise IMHO. Let me add that IANAL.

</comment><comment><USER3> "He asked if I'd have done it had they simply asked nicely.

no probably not."

Beautiful.</comment>