How Node.js has revolutionised the Mail Online (Worlds No.1 Online Newspaper) - <AUTHOR> http://www.nearform.com/nodecrunch/how-node-js-has-revolutionized-the-mailonline#.UpMzaWTfw2E <comment> UK-AL I think programmers these days focus too much on having whizz bang technologies.

90% of successful project implementation is culture, good practices and so forth.

I've seen well run cobol projects, and badly run projects using all the latest trends.

It doesn't really matter if your software is using Java, ruby or node.js. I can guarantee you from a business perspective, success does not rely on that. I much rather have well tested, well maintained Java Spring Code base, then a badly tested, unreadable clojure codebase.

The success of the story is that they probably went from a bad codebase to a good one. And you can in any language, node.js or not.

<comment><USER2> I wish I could upvote this more than once.

Except maybe for the 4th paragraph. Using node.js instead of PHP cut my server costs to 20% of what it was before (simply because I can run the same thing on less number of cheaper servers). Lower cost means more profit and I count profit under "success from business perpective". ;)

<comment><USER3> Sure, but if you don't get that "90%" right first, your "20%" becomes irrelevant. Too many don't get the "90%" right.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is a fascinating article, but I can't help thinking that I wish they were more technically incompetent so it harmed their business. The Daily Mail has to be one of the most repugnant media organizations and if there is ever a justification for using the word 'evil' in relation to an institution then they are it.

<comment><USER5> > The Daily Mail has to be one of the most repugnant media organizations

Hm, I don't know. I sort of respect them, in a way. In some ways I think of them as the authentic voice of the impotent lower middle classes, lashing out at everything around them, greedy, cynical, childish and shallow, blaming others, ever seeking some outraged scandal to distract them from their otherwise mundane lives. Hate the Mail if you will, but you're basically hating their audience too.

I don't like the Mail, but at least they're independent, seemingly serving no- one's agenda but their own. Murdoch is much worse, in my opinion.

<comment><USER4> I hate the Mail because it encourages the worst in its audience. I have to believe that if the people that read it and I could reach a compromise if we weren't being so polarized by their reading material.

Being "greedy, cynical, childish and shallow, blaming others" are all vices at the end of the day (FYI despite the tone of my comment here, I'm actually not religious).

I agree totally that Murdoch is worse, but I think the Mail does hold more sway in a vocal area of the population with political power. The fact that they never acknowledge their hypocrisy or the damage they do I think is also offensive on an intellectual level that the Sun et al never quite reach as they're so cartoon-like.

<comment><USER5> I agree with everything you wrote. But the problem is, what can anyone do to fix it?

I mean it's easy to come up with a plan to "fix" Murdoch. Simply tighten media ownership rules, so that one family or organisation can't own more than a certain small percentage of media. And I take your point that the Sun is pretty clownish in the UK, but in Australia they're far more insidious. (¶)

But how do you fix the Mail? They're like this perfect endgame of free press. There's no big conspiracy; they're simply the answer to the question: "what does the angry disenfranchised demographic want to read about?". And while I lament the means by which said class seeks to assuage its anger, I do sympathise that they have a lot to be angry about.

All this is why I find it hard to wrestle with the question of the Mail. I _want_ to hate them, but some part of me holds back, because I feel that's too close to simple class discrimination, and because I can't shake the feeling that they're the symptom, not the cause, of society's ills.

(¶) Check out the Murdoch press's outrageous bias in the recent Australian election: [http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/05/daily-t...](http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/05/daily- telegraph-election-australia)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> My hosts file always contains this entry:

127.0.0.1 dailymail.co.uk www.dailymail.co.uk

This ensures that there is no possibility of my giving any traffic to this utterly repugnant shitfest of a newspaper.

I would encourage everyone to do the same.

</comment><comment><USER7> Excellent submission. I wish it went into some more detail on how they integrate those mini apps into the site or handle their failure but it was probably already long enough.

This

 _a Table also rebuilt the entire legacy Java frontend replacing the entire 155,000 lines of have with about 4000 lines of Clojure_

was particularly impressive since a Table is just a small team of up to six people.

I also skimmed the front page of [http://www.dailymail.co.uk](http://www.dailymail.co.uk) and don't understand the allergic reactions in the comments here. A guy built a hobbit hut, some celebrity gossip, sports, more gossip... rather unremarkable.

For a website this big (32k pixels according to the article) it does load pretty quickly. Faster than a product page on Amazon (at least for me from Central Europe).

<comment><USER3> There is a difference between the Daily Mail newspaper, which is a scare mongering right wing hate rag which has as much relation to truth and news as say Fox News, and its website which is pretty much a celeb stuff and sort of a soft porn peddler.

Its a weird pairing under the same brand. I don't _know_ , but I don't think there is much crossover between the users of the paper and website. Personally, I find both hideous, but Im at a loss to accept that some one who gets all up set about gay marriage, immigrants, and the alleged loss of Englishness, what ever that is or was, is in any way interested in a Kardashian thing.

<comment><USER8> It's very difficult to hold any extreme view - right or left - without begin hypocritical[1]. The DM just excels at it.

[1] And, at an individual level, without encouraging the trashier elements of the media to expend enormous amounts of energy to expose those hypocrisies, however significant.

<comment><USER3> Well, sort of, the web site is the newspaper's hypocrisy. No?

You are correct, the DM does excel at what it does. On the face of it, the impression I get is that the paper does have a consistent vibe. I mean, I despise its views, but I do have to admit that it is very good at what it does. It is fairly rock solid in its opinions and politics. I would use lots of words to slag the paper off, but I don't think hypocrisy is one of them. But then maybe, people who read it, for either pleasure or pain, may well have many examples of hypocrisy.

<comment><USER8> I don't read it, but I am aware of a) its rabid obsession with pedophiles b) it's 'sidebar of shame' which frequently features very young women in various states of undress. That, I call hypocrisy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> >Enter Fred George (of Programmer Anarchy fame). Fred came on board as Chief Architect, and focused on supporting the organisational move from traditional enterprise technology team to a nimbler, highly skilled organisation built around a strong culture of personal responsibility and trust.

I think all the other details in this write-up are not as important as this. The specific tech choice isn't the driver, it is this cultural shift. This doesn't mean the tech choice doesn't matter though. In fact, I would argue that the most rapid way to build such a culture in your organization is to self-select for people who would do well in that environment. I hate painting people with too broad a brush, but my experience has been that choosing safe, established technologies as your stack will cause the sort of people who like safe, predictable work to show up for jobs. It can be hard (though certainly not impossible) to recruit the alpha geeks and the people with a more entrepreneurial perspective. There are plenty of super-talented people who have very pedestrian technologies as their preferred platforms. But if you're looking to mix things up quickly and go for a more nontraditional environment, the shortcut to getting that is to choose tech that is beloved by people who primarily want to work in a nontraditional manner. The sort of person who dabbles with go or node in their spare time does it not because they expect that it's going to be their meal ticket to a cushy job doing software development at a bank somewhere. They do it because they have got intrinsic motivation to learn new things and be on the cusp of the latest tech out of sheer enjoyment.

</comment><comment><USER10> _it's not possible to serve a 32,000 pixel webpage to a mobile device_

I reject this prejudice.

The biggest annoyance I have with browsing websites on mobile devices is that they _nearly always disable zoom_.

Zoom is the probably the single easiest way to navigate large documents, because it lets the user scale effective panning speed. Without zoom, you're forced to pan at a fixed speed, and if the document is very long, it takes forever. But if you can zoom out, you can pan much much faster, and focus in on interesting bits of content much more easily. Many many times I've given up on websites because I wasn't able to get to the desktop view on my phone.

As to the infeasibility of a 32k page? The Nexus 7 tablet has the same resolution as my 24" main monitor. My phone isn't far behind. If anything, the question should be if 32k pages are infeasible for desktop machines, not mobiles.

</comment><comment><USER11> Worlds (sic.) number 1 online newspaper? Riight. [http://www.mailwatch.co.uk/](http://www.mailwatch.co.uk/)

<comment><USER12> They're not claiming to be the most ethical or nice paper, just number one in terms of readership. Which, like it or not, they are.

<comment><USER11> The world's number one newspaper in terms of readership? Show me the numbers!

<comment><USER12> "Mail Online close to 100m users"

"Associated Newspapers network remains world's most popular newspaper website with more than 99m monthly browsers"

This is published by the Guardian, the Mail's left wing equivalent.

[http://www.theguardian.com/media/2012/feb/23/mail-online- clo...](http://www.theguardian.com/media/2012/feb/23/mail-online-close- to-100m-users)

<comment><USER11> _the Guardian, the Mail 's left wing equivalent_

Ouch!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> _The entire backlog of 1.2 million articles are stored in elastic-search, which is used to drive the site_

Elasticsearch is awesome and I'd heard rumors of people using it as a data store rather than just a search index but it's awesome to see it being used as a data store at such scale.

<comment><USER14> At the last place I worked, we used ES for both search and storage of 2.5MM+, and quickly growing, items (the data was also stored in DynamoDB for safety). It worked quite well, saved us some development time, and reduced the latency of search requests a little since there was no 2nd network call to fetch the documents found by ES from separate storage.

<comment><USER13> What are the basic tradeoffs at that scale? I'm only using it for search at a very low scale but it almost sounds like a dream database if it works well at scale and for canonical storage.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's a interesting presentation but can anyone tell me why you would build an analytics tool and an advertising tool when there are already tools out there to do this? (Chartbeat, Doubleclick, etc...)

Maybe there have very specific use cases or have grown to the point were it makes economic sense to rebuild these but seems a bit redundant.

</comment><comment><USER16> "From a content management perspective, writing code in a very functional way is very low friction vs traditional OO models of building content management systems". It sounds like "using letters is very low friction vs using numbers". A new silver bullet/hammer?

PS: I like functional programming a lot.

<comment><USER17> > _It sounds like "using letters is very low friction vs using numbers"._

No, it sounds like "using flexible, isolated, easily changable functional components and avoiding side-efects" is very low friction vs "designing and creating an OO class hierarchy, with all the tedium it entails in most common languages".

<comment><USER16> I think I misunderstood him but it did sound like OOP vs functional :). What he meant was probably something like "we stopped writing bad code with lots of mutable state and caught up with modern best-practices in OOP".

</comment></comment></comment><comment> UK-AL A lot of this personal responsibility, freedom to make choices stuff sounds like a system to place blame on individuals, instead of fixing the system.

</comment><comment><USER18> You don't read the Daily Mail, you look at pictures. They put tons of pictures whenever event happens.</comment>


America, Land of Brutal Binaries - <AUTHOR> http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/09/andrew-sullivan-america-land-of-brutal-binaries.html <comment><USER2> I've been doing a lot of research on political polarization. I think the story can be described by two simple statistics:

1\. 68% of Americans say that insulting political opponents is "never fair game."[1]

2\. "The Facebook audience of congressional candidates engaged with oppositional posts more than with ones that didn't take sides"[2]

I think this is just the fundamental struggle of being human - what's fun now vs. what's good in the long term. Political takedowns, cable news, tweetstorms - these are all fun. But they are in no way nuanced, and they in no way lead to good democracy.

At the same time, I don't think political polarization is an existential threat to democracy. We're _allowed_ to be polarized because we don't have any huge issues to face. If you look at George W. Bush's approval ratings after 9/11, they skyrocket, because we had a lot more important things to worry about all of the sudden.

[1] [http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/05/01/few- american...](http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/05/01/few-americans- see-nations-political-debate-as- respectful/ft_18-05-01_politics_mostamericans/) [2] [http://www.people- press.org/2018/07/18/how-the-facebook-audi...](http://www.people- press.org/2018/07/18/how-the-facebook-audience-engaged-with-congressional- posts/)

<comment><USER3> > we don't have any huge issues to face

I couldn't disagree more: there are many huge issues at stake. Abortion, to cite one which animates both left and right, and which is at stake in the fight cited at the top of the article over the current Supreme Court nomination.

We adopt a certain indirection on HN so that we can avoid descending into political harangues, but outside of this context, people need to fight and fight hard for what they believe.

<comment><USER2> It's semantics for sure, but I think huge issue != controversial issue. Healthcare or global warming (depending on which side you ask) may be the biggest existential threats to America itself. But even with those, I don't see polarization being too much of a road block for us to figure some solution out.</comment></comment></comment>


Bell Labs and CSP Threads - <AUTHOR> https://swtch.com/~rsc/thread/

<comment><USER2> The problem with flow-based programming is the debugging. If that if you put a breakpoint on some message-processing code in a thread and examine the backtrace, it ends in up in some "read next message and dispatch" loop. Thereafter, the trail runs cold. Where did the incorrect message come from? Oh, the "left neighbor". What's it doing now? Something no longer related to what it was doing when that message was produced; it's sitting in its own loop, blocked on receiving the next message.

Spaghetti algorithms emerge. Some crucial behavior is implemented using ad-hoc messages involving several distant threads. "If we inject this new message type here, then massage it here, then finally process it over there, we can achieve such and such a scenario". The message is then like the data equivalent of a rampant goto, not to mention that the plumbing is a giant global variable.

The approach is good for eliminating deadlocks, though. No module calls into another module where it has to acquire that module's locks.</comment>


Rumors of Further Layoffs at DigitalOcean - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/nixcraft/status/1253369283356160000 <comment><USER2> There's an immediate denial in the thread from DO so this is probably just some competitor BS.</comment>


Facebook hires Apple UI design manager - <AUTHOR> http://www.insidefacebook.com/2012/06/21/facebook-hires-apple-ui-design-manager-among-two-dozen-other-positions-this-week/

<comment><AUTHOR> From, [http://9to5mac.com/2012/06/22/facebook-recruits-apples-ui- de...](http://9to5mac.com/2012/06/22/facebook-recruits-apples-ui-design- manager/)

As for Weeldryer's work at Apple, he certainly worked on at least iWeb as he is listed as an inventor on several Apple Inc filed patents including iWeb for iPad, multi-touch and gesture related inventions, as well as a number of security related patents. His LinkedIn lists his specialties as: Industrial Design, Interaction Design, User Interface Design.</comment>


Ask HN: How can a 17-year-old make money (online/offline)? - <AUTHOR>

I've been asked numerous times from teenagers around my age how they can make money (online or offline), anything creative or simple.
I'm putting together a piece on the new Quora blog and would like your input.
Some stuff I've already thought of: - Web design/dev work - IT Tech Support
If there's anything you've done in the past, or believe would work for teenagers, please let me know in the comments! Thank you! <comment><USER2> This probably won't sound very useful for a 17 year old that's strapped for cash right now, but the fact that you're asking these questions right now is very good for the 20-something version of yourself.

Most people my age (ie anyone working full time) would kill for the huge amount of free time that 17 year-olds have. Use it to be spongelike - learn as many new languages, techniques, skills etc as you can. A great way to do this is with internships, or taking grunt-like jobs in places where you're surrounded by knowledgable people. By the time you're out of school (or whatever you're doing right now), you'll be vastly more employable than 90% of your peers.

But, in the short term... I made money at that age by designing themes for CMSs and cold-calling local businesses and asking if they wanted websites.

Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER3> I started making money online at 14 with $0 and I remember thinking then if I could make $100 online that would be amazing – I made it within 3 days of my decision to start making money online through forum boosting (there's a load of forum posts where you can see me winning "forum boosting contracts" etc).

There are a load more methods which I have done and what anyone could do as well but, there are some methods you implement to make money online quickly with no capital outlay. I know because these are some of the methods I have used over the years to make money online. I'm going to reveal some of the methods you/your friends can make money with $0 outlay because these are the easiest ones to get them started:

\- Create FREE Wordpress Themes & sell the "sponsored" links in the footer = $75 – 150/theme (You can code HTML to Wordpress with ~30ish lines of Code although adding extras takes a little more but it really is that simple).

Sell 3 slots on each design for: $20-25/each

Sell the "designer" slot by for: $30-50/each

Offer the whole theme for: $100-150

Then submit the theme to 100-150 free theme places (you could even pay someone on Fiverr to do it)

\- Sell Wordpress Themes on ThemesForest

$30 – 50/each

\- Sell Wordpress Plugins

\- Code PSD/HTML etc

Offer your services for $30-100/page & charge $50-100 extra to code to Wordpress etc.

\- Write an eBook report

Write a report on some aspect to making money online etc & sell it for $7-10 on Webmaster Forums.

\- Write a Larger eBook. Sell it on Warrior Forum/ClickBank.

Write a 10-20 page eBook then sell it on Warrior Forum as a WSO or on ClickBank etc.

\- Write Articles

500/word articles at $6-8/each.

\- Bid for Data Entry/Web Development/Mobile Development on Freelance Sites

Take small tasks which are easy to do & take a short period of time - $100-200 projects.

\- Create Mobile Sites Charge $100-500 for making existing website owners a simple mobile version of their site.

\---

There's loads more but there's some quick examples to make some cash online with $0 outlay. Once they're making money online then the question is what to do next (in my opinion those methods are boring although paid Wordpress Themes etc aren't that bad of a business). The possibilities are endless and again I'll be happy to list some of those as well because some of those methods get boring after a while!

</comment><comment><USER4> What I did at that age: computer training classes.

Your friends are already familiar with a classroom setting, and probably have something they could teach to people who aren't computer/smartphone/tablet savvy. Think 'Intro to smartphones' as an hour long class at a common area in the local retirement community.

This has three big advantages over a traditional job.

1\. You set the schedule. So it doesn't conflict with school/study.

2\. Excellent monetary return on time. $10 a head and a class of 10 people is $1k. It's a good deal for them and you.

3\. Doesn't generally require a huge level of knowledge/experience like professional development or sysadmin type work.

A less visible advantage, is that it broadens your network. All of your students will have your name handy if someone is looking for an intelligent IT guy. Also a great way to generate leads if you are doing house-call type IT fix it work.

This of course depends on your friends maturity/leadership level. They have to be comfortable teach a class, and dealing with people on that level.

<comment><USER5> $10 x 10 people is $100. Somewhere you messed up on the amount of zeros?

<comment><USER4> _facepalm_ I was writing the comment and originally had another 10 in there. 10 classes a month, along with some more with prep times and comparing it to other jobs. Pared it down before I posted to try and make it more approachable.

I would never teach math or editing obviously.

<comment><USER5> It happens to the best of us.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I would look for something local and don't try to be a full-fledged adult yet. You've got dues to pay, don't be a mucky-muck about it.

Ask you parents and their friends. Perhaps offer to help out doing IT things as a volunteer for a while. Could you get involved in anything locally in your city?

When I was 17. I fixed Macs. I mowed lawns. I watched neighbor's kids. I helped neighbors do a myriad of things and without want or need for financial support. Sometimes they would pay me, but most times the experience was just as good. In my 18th year summer I worked at my county's IT shop and did many little duties there. I was hooked up with that job from a friend's parent. I didn't get paid much, but it was edifying.

So start networking...offline.

<comment><USER7> _You've got dues to pay, don't be a mucky-muck about it._

I'm not really sure what this has to do with OP's question. It seems to suggest that instead of aiming high, OP should just go do low-tech manual labor jobs that are contrary to his/her interests.

Like you, I also worked IT jobs locally when I was a teen. It doesn't mean that that is how things are supposed to be done now in 2013.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> 1\. Speeding up computers. Removing spyware/uninstalling programs people don't need is always in demand. 2\. Making websites for local businesses that don't have one yet. In high school I traded a website for a cake a month from a new cake shop. The cakes were better than money! 3\. Backup solutions for offices. It's difficult to back up Windows computers properly. Most businesses are not backing stuff up properly and they know it. They'll pay to have someone tell them what to buy/subscribe to and then set it up for them. 4\. Carpet cleaning. Do they live near condo towers? Lots of demand for that. Not too hard to do. There are lots of non-tech businesses that teenagers can do too.

</comment><comment><USER9> T-shirt designs. Find a decent-sized fan community on Facebook and design a shirt that would appeal to them. Use Zazzle or - better yet - Teespring to print and sell the shirts. <http://spottedsun.com/how-i-made-money-with- teespring/>

Mobile apps. Find some narrow niche, see what information you can find that they're likely to need, and roll that into an app (paid or ad-supported).

Affiliate blogging. Start reviewing some line of products on a blog and get at least Amazon associates as an affiliate. Alternatively, you can pin items to Pinterest if they have some visual appeal.

</comment><comment><USER10> I did freelancing and some of my friends did some SEO and quite good amount of money with Adsense etc when they were teenagers.

But if you don't really need much money (I didn't when I was teenager, but of course this was only me), I would rather use the time to learn and explore new things and have fun. Of course if you can combine earning money and learning new things, its great.

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm 17 and over the past year or so, I've made a bit of money doing freelance programming. The Freelancer / Seeking Freelancer thread on the 1st of each month is a really good place to start if you have marketable programming skills. I've found that even a quick rundown of your experience / skills is enough to get a few emails from interested parties.

</comment><comment><USER12> The first question is - how much money do you have to work with? Bitcoin mining, ebay reselling etc require a certain minimum amount of money to start playing.

</comment><comment><USER13> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5272025></comment>


Google Instant - Search Results as you type the query - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/instant/

<comment><USER2> Other submissions on the same subject:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1672391> <\- This has _lots_ of comments

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1672388> <\- This is an explanation

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1672346> <\- First

... and more by the minute.</comment>


Free Idea: News with indications/rankings of relative significance vs. other news - <AUTHOR> Why now?
Today we process more data/news than we ever have. We need new ways of dealing with this.
One way of dealing with this - software to help us process/put things in perspective.
Example:
https://twitter.com/upshotnyt/status/862431071752916992 <comment><AUTHOR> Clickable example: [https://twitter.com/upshotnyt/status/862431071752916992](https://twitter.com/upshotnyt/status/862431071752916992)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Areas this would be useful for: geopolitical news/risks, anything related to democracy, news on specific issues (e.g. criminal justice)</comment>


Uber and Under: China's Hometown Advantage Claims Another Victim - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/backchannel/when-it-comes-to-china-googles-experience-still-says-it-all-bdc4eeedd32c#.tiz8d8qwn <comment><USER2> Article works like this:

1\. First I start with my pet theory (China kills foreign competitors to local companies)

2\. The headline case does not support my theory with facts

"Uber in the ride-sharing market; in fact, Uber felt it was treated fairly by a government interested in transportation innovation. According to reports on the ground, Didi used its local knowledge to act more nimbly in satisfying Chinese customers."

3\. I draw stories from fantasy world

"But my guess is that if the American ride-sharing company had been more successful, China would have put a Mao-sized thumb on the scales."

4\. I go on as if the facts (Uber being clobbered) support my pet theory.

5\. Page views + Expert!

(I'm not saying China doesn't protect it's companies)

<comment><USER3> If an American company failed in China, it must be because it is treated unfairly.

Wait, Walmart, MacDonald's, Procter & Gamble, etc are hugely successful in China. Nah, they are not tech companies. Wait, Apple is successful in China. Microsoft has a good run, too. Even Yahoo had a few good years there.

<comment><USER4> Not to mention all the American fashion brands that are doing great in China, like Levi's, Coach, Polo, etc.

Add in the makeup brands like Lancome, Estee Lauder, Clinique, etc.

<comment><USER5> The Chinese public values hardware and tangible stuff. Plus its made in China, so the Chinese Govt lets them live. Apple, VW, GM, Caterpillar, Fashion.

The Chinese public don't much value IP, software or services and so the Chinese Govt doesn't need to let anyone get a foothold. Plus these companies don't really help the Chinese economy with jobs, etc. so Google, Uber, Software? Consulting? Banks?

<comment><USER6> actually most IP is pretty misleading anyways.

sure there are good IP examples but since the 21th century the most stuff is over patented.

especially design shapes. most development will lead to the "optimal" design anyways maybe not "exactly" the same but the same as it would threaten somebodies IP. software patents, too. so much stuff that is patented that you will probably have a really hard way to come up with a new video codec without violating "something".

patents should be invalidated based on "evolution" of triviality and state of the art, but they will never be since somebody will pay a huge amount to just keep this stuff.

and that just applies to IP in "our" world. In other stuff it's even worse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't really see Uber as a "loser" or "victim" in this latest development. They accomplished a lot here:

      * Stop losing $1B/yr in a non-premium market (low average fare)
      * Get a 20% stake in the new Didi/Uber hybrid company, which will grow over time without much active effort by Uber
      * Negate Lyft's efforts to run around Uber in China by empowering Didi to crush them
      * Align with Apple, who invested $1B in Didi

All of this just by giving up a failing Chinese taxi business. Uber claims they're not just a taxi company and that they can be a worldwide logistics network. If that's true they can fine-tune that technology elsewhere and re- enter China in other businesses later.

<comment><USER8> So weird to see people trying to put a positive spin on this for Uber.

Uber lost in China, flat out.

> Negate Lyft's efforts to run around Uber in China by empowering Didi to > crush them

What? Didi and Lyft struck a deep partnership. Lyft doesn't have Chinese operations. The pressure induced on Uber by Didi and Lyft working together is part of what got Uber to admit they were losing the fight and didn't have a reasonable path to victory.

As for framing their 20% stake (actually, it is 18%) as a win, consider this:

Uber burned _over_ $2B in cash in China. If simply owning a % of Didi was an acceptable "win" state for Uber, they would've been _much_ smarter to simply _invest_ that $2B into Didi. Just a year ago, Didi was valuated at only $13B... even then, the $2B would've resulted in a ~13% ownership stake. Last year, they were valuated under $10B. Tencent got a ~20% stake in Didi for just $15M only 3 years ago.

In fact, Uber could've played a much stronger hand and ended up with _far_ more than 18% of Didi if they'd offered to invest $1-2B and agreed not to enter China in the first place. Or, they could've made a credible threat by growing rapidly (as they did) for a year, and _then_ offering a merger + an investment from a position of strength. Instead, they played a suboptimal strategy. They continued to operate in China and their growth slowed, meanwhile they burned even more money, their investors started making noise about backing out, and they gave Didi time to strike huge strategic partnerships (Kuaidi and Lyft) and raise a bunch more money, all of which strengthened their position relative to Uber even further.

The time to strike a combination with Didi was 1-2 years ago. They could've got a much, much better deal while still spending only the same total amount of money.

This was a loss for Uber, and it absolutely wasn't their intended outcome, nor their best outcome.

Uber has absolutely dominated in other markets. So, it's not like they're dummies or poor operators. They are amazing in terms of market domination. But let's not put a sugar coating on this. Call a win a win and a loss a loss.

<comment><USER7> For what it's worth I am not trying to put a spin on it for Uber, I am generally one to root against Uber (you can see this in my comment history). But I do respect their ability to almost always get what they want.

You're right they could have done better, but they did a great job at mitigating loss and backing out of China with a lot more than just money lost. They'll get a piece of the pie going forward.

My comment about Lyft was that by partnering with Didi just like Lyft did, Uber can now minimize the possibility that Lyft gets farther in China than Uber does. Everyone is relying on Didi, so Lyft and Uber will both get some of China but not the lions share and Uber will continue to beat Lyft in all other markets.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Ugh, this is a poorly written piece. Points are muddled, poor segues, poor references/unbacked claims, and a meandering story. Not what I'd hope for from Levy.

From the article:

> "..in fact, Uber felt it was treated fairly by a government interested in > transportation innovation"

Anyone have a source on this?

Also, this seems to me like something you'd say even without believing it, if you were afraid of disgruntling the government (either for Uber's operations, or for your prospective future endeavors).

</comment><comment><USER9> About the only thing I agree with Donald Trump about is that we should be more aggressive with China. They're clearly protecting their domestic industries very aggressively via tactics like the Great Firewall and subsidizing of domestic companies, but any protectionism on our end would apparently be a trade treaty violation. Very, very unfair. But nobody wants to challenge it because too many American companies are still getting rich off cheap labor in China.

<comment><USER10> Indeed, most of their big industries are heavily owned and controlled by the government. It is interesting how the WTO has allowed China's eg heavily state controlled and owned steel producers to endlessly dump below cost with zero consequences. The same thing is going on in several other industries at the moment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> "This is not to say that Chinese government regulation drove Uber's deal with Didi, which was clobbering Uber in the ride-sharing market; in fact, Uber felt it was treated fairly by a government interested in transportation innovation." ... and then he follows up with a story about the Chinese government treating google unfairly. Nice segue man.

</comment><comment><USER12> A cursory search shows that the US is protectionist too: [http://www.cnbc.com/2016/02/22/huawei-well-re-enter-us- marke...](http://www.cnbc.com/2016/02/22/huawei-well-re-enter-us-market-if- welcomed--mobile-world-congress.html)

<comment><USER13> A cursory search will also find gun deaths in the UK and Australia. I guess Somalia and Yemen don't have a problem at all!

I'm using this extreme example to demonstrate that the degree of protectionism employed by the US (and your example isn't even definitive) pales in comparison to that employed by China.

I'm not saying I agree with this article.

<comment><USER12> Don't forget Snowden's laws, in particular the Zero, First and Second laws:

Zero) Any US company _might_ be in bed with government.

First) Any US company _might_ be forced to deny involvement with the US government.

Second) Any US company _can_ be tried in secret courts.

So, basically all US companies are potentially government branches.

This is _not_ tongue-in-cheek.

<comment><USER13> Can you share the links to news sources describing companies or company officers being tried in secret courts?

<comment><USER12> If I am right, we are talking about FISA / FISC [1]. This was widely reported during the Snowden scandal, but I do not have the links.

Anyway, this is secret stuff, so by definition you won't find a lot of information out there.

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

<comment><USER14> The classic standby; I don't have proof of the conspiracy, that's how far it goes!

<comment><USER15> Are you forgetting the the secret courts have been proven to exist? I try to be charitable but your comment is either trolling or borne of sheer ignorance.

<comment><USER16> The existence of the "secret courts" was never a secret.

<comment><USER12> What they do is secret

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> If Uber's goal is to dominate the Chinese market, it lost the war, of course. But Uber as a business company, making profit is it's ultimate goal which is actually accomplished in its deal with Didi. Also Uber can focus on all others markets in other countries where it is more possible to be the dominant.

</comment><comment><USER18> I find it interesting that major Chinese internet sites like qq.com, weibo.com, baidu.com & taobao.com seemingly have no interest in becoming globally recognised like western social media brands, and seem content with their mandarin speaking audience (which is quite a big audience, mind you).

</comment><comment><USER19> " Uber has become one more casualty in China's other wall, a towering fortress of restrictions, regulations and unfair play that keeps down American internet companies. "

The government is protecting the home grown companies as any other good government would do. So whats the problem ?

<comment><USER20> The problems are deep and broad and lead to the Napoleonic Wars and the United States' independence among other things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm wondering, how Coca-Cola being a US company is successful in China ? (OMG did I just gave China a opportunity to restrict a US company??)

<comment><USER22> Plenty of US companies are successful in China: McDonald's, KFC, and Apple come to mind.

I think Uber failed to adapt to local conditions. I was in China about a year ago and suggested Uber a couple of times, but we always ended up using Didi. A major part of that was payments: Didi integrated with the mobile provider's payment system making everything nice and transparent, while Uber wanted a credit card.

<comment><USER10> All the companies you mention are having big problems in China right now.

Apple will lose at least 50% of its sales in China over the span of about two years. They just lost a third of their sales there as of the latest quarter, while their market share is plunging rapidly. Zero chance that situation will turn around. In China, if you lose your position, you're toast.

Yum is desperately trying to figure out how to liquidate out of China as their market share collapses rapidly. Yum is finding out that China is hard to operate in to begin with, and much harder to operate in when the ground is sinking out from under you. They'll be out of China entirely, holding a minority position, within just a few years. McDonald's is in the same increasingly struggling boat:

[http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-08-03/china- star...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-08-03/china-starts-to- loses-its-taste-for-mcdonald-s-and-kfc)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> first of all, Uber China is not the first competitor DiDi killed, it is the 31th which means there are 30 China "uber" dead before. In another way, Uber cannot even beat Lyft at hometown. What this story tell you?

</comment><comment><USER24> It is not in their national interest to have activities of Chinese citizens controlled by foreign companies. They can create their own services, which will serve a huge domestic market, keep the wealth in the country and support domestic economy.

</comment><comment><USER25> >even to the point where its CEO has learned to speak Mandarin

Does this seek to create an undertone of fear that English might not be the dominant business language of the next century?

Way to stoke the xenophobia, Steven Levy.

<comment><USER26> There are many reasons why one might want to speak Mandarin.

Because it's a cool language, for one.

Because one wishes to do business in a country where Mandarin is the primary language, for another. In this light, learning that language is a strong signal of respect, which is prized.

Because one might have personal friends?

When seen in this light, fear doesn't seem like a particularly strong reason...

<comment><USER27> Also Zuckerberg is married to Priscilla Chan who is ethnic Chinese although she grew up speakingk Cantonese.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priscilla_Chan_(philanthropi...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priscilla_Chan_\(philanthropist\))

<comment><USER26> ...Wait. Why is Zuckerberg learning Mandarin then?

<comment><USER28> Because business isn't generally done in Cantonese. It's a common story that families that historically spoke Cantonese are now teaching their Mandarin alongside or instead of Cantonese because Mandarin is more useful in the professional world.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


NASA Image and Video Library - happy-go-lucky https://images.nasa.gov/#/ <comment><AUTHOR> It is like a work in progress. There are some gorgeous photos on there, and amazing that they did take the time to actually write a description upon clicking into the photos. Thank you for sharing!

<comment> happy-go-lucky You're welcome. The searchable library also allows users to download the media files.</comment></comment>


Terrorist attack in France - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/live/world-europe-36799172 <comment><USER2> The problem with this attack is that no sophisticated preparations were done, no weapons were needed, just a fanatic driving a truck and yet so many people died.

This makes things harder for counter terrorism. If terrorists operate independently and don't require special training (piloting a plane) or resources (e.g. explosives) how do you stop them before they attack?

<comment><USER3> Education + Decrease in Wealth Inequality + Better Mental Health Care is an answer.

Everyone likes to paint bad guys as monsters, but they all started as little baby human beings just like the rest of us. Then something went wrong.

Lets fix those things that go wrong piece by piece and make this world a better place for everyone.

<comment><USER4> I am not convinced that your (possible) answer is compatible with "We are at war and I am a soldier - now you too will taste the reality of this situation." \- Mohammad Sidique Khan (7/7 Bomber)?

Apparently he was "a quiet, studious boy who was never in trouble but was sometimes bullied. Friends from his teenage years recall a highly Westernised young man who insisted on being called "Sid". After school, he worked in low- level government clerical jobs before leaving to study for a degree in business studies at Leeds Metropolitan University. "

Sadly your and my 'fix' is unlikely to be a fix for everybody. The 'fix solution' makes a very large assumption about shared values across the world.

<comment><USER3> Every group has crazies and outliers, we can minimze their damage but they will always exist. Just because he made a statement doesn't mean it applies to anyone more than him.

From his description it is likely he was suffering from depression. He found a hook and tried to get out of the spiral by joining something he felt gave his life meaning and friendship. Just like someone joining AA, just like someone joining a local church or synagogue group. Sometimes people are desperate to just be with and around other people and they'll take what they can get.

With better mental health resources he would hopefully have been helped before he got to that state.

Remember, no monsters, just people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's disturbing that in the age when we can manipulate atoms, we still cannot do anything about religious fanaticism, and about religion itself for that matter.

One might think that mankind is just a bunch of stupid monkeys that happen to be very good with tools.

<comment><USER6> This has more to do with tribalism than religion imo. Religion is just another way of belonging to a tribe.

<comment><USER7> I would like to see if religion would not exist (so no heaven, no elaborate scripture, no virgins, no caliphate) if they would've picked another 'tribe' with such vigor and disinterest in their own and other lives.

(Following huuu here; we don't know if it was ISIS or another group yet)

<comment><USER8> Hutu and Tutsi in Rwanda? Whites and Blacks a few decades ago in the USA? Aryans and Jews in Germany a few decades ago?

<comment><USER7> You can find plenty of references to Hitler and some of his henchmen thinking they're doing the will of god; [http://jewsforjesus.org/publications/issues/v16-n10/01](http://jewsforjesus.org/publications/issues/v16-n10/01)

Nor would I describe that as terrorism; the nazi's were the elected party.

<comment><USER8> Claiming something and believing in something are two different things.

Of course, "tribes" have always painted their fight against the other tribe as God-approved. That doesn't mean that God actually plays a role.

<comment><USER7> But I was not claiming that; if you take away religion, at least you don't have god on your side. That is what i'm saying.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Pretty soon attacks like these (Religiously-motivated muslim terrorists killing large numbers of innocent people) will be happening every week or even every day, I fear.

<comment><USER10> They DO happen every week in the Middle East, I am afraid.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think it's sad that everybody is already jumping into conclusions. The same happened with the missing flight MS804. Everybody was shouting 'IS attack' but we still don't know.

This is dangerous because it troubles our thinking.

<comment><USER12> It's not that surprising, as there does seem to be a pattern with these type of attacks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> If he had taken some time to build bombs at least he could have been caught. Now any nutjob will get a fucking truck and run over some crowd and nobody will be able to catch them.

Oh boy… What a world…

</comment><comment><USER14> Next step: increase military and security budget.

<comment><USER15> It's paradoxical.

 _Normally_ when someone failed in a company, it is fired. When a company failed in a market, it bankrupt.

In this sector (maybe it's the state level): more budget.

They would have done better to invest in the future of those stupid guys.

Sad.</comment></comment>


DPAPI security flaw in Windows 10 - <AUTHOR> https://www.passcape.com/index.php?setLang=2&section=blog&cmd=details&id=38 <comment><USER2> My brief understanding. If you have auto login enabled, it is possible to gain access to an account secrets stored in a security store. That sounds bad, but with auto login you are already unlocking an account. No CVE posted. No description of mitigation. A hostile view of Microsoft in closing remarks.

Edit: as has been pointed out, this could be triggered by Windows update with a setting enabled [https://support.microsoft.com/en- us/help/4027599/windows-10-...](https://support.microsoft.com/en- us/help/4027599/windows-10-automatically-finish-setting-up-pc-after-update- restart)

<comment><USER3> This is what I first thought, but here the auto-login is not enabled by the user, but configured automatically by Windows Update so that it automatically logs in the previous user (and immediately locks the session) after a reboot for installing updates, so that the lock screen apps work.

For the user, everything seems fine: the account is locked after reboot, not auto-logged-in. But the credentials are still readable on the disk.

<comment><USER2> You are correct about auto-login [https://support.microsoft.com/en- us/help/4027599/windows-10-...](https://support.microsoft.com/en- us/help/4027599/windows-10-automatically-finish-setting-up-pc-after-update- restart)

Per [https://vztekoverflow.com/2018/07/31/tbal-dpapi- backdoor/](https://vztekoverflow.com/2018/07/31/tbal-dpapi-backdoor/) After the post reboot "login" happens to the last user, the credential is removed from the disk (registry) but will stay in memory. To exploit this, you would need to find a hole in the lock screen, use an admin account to dump memory, or have physical access to the drive before boot that doesn't have bitlocker.

Is there an attack vector that doesn't require privileged access or physical access to the machine without bitlocker/tpm?

<comment> semi-extrinsic > Is there an attack vector that doesn't require privileged access or physical > access to the machine without bitlocker/tpm?

In the past, RDMA over Firewire used to be such an attack vector, see the Inception tool that could unlock Windows machines reliably. Presently, there seem to be openly described solutions for using an FPGA hooked up to the TPM to grab keys from the wire. Both types of attacks require physical access and somewhat specialized tools, but AFAIK both work even when Bitlocker and TPM is present.

I don't understand why anyone who actually cares about security uses Bitlocker, and not one of the systems that ask for a password before booting Windows. The latter reduces the attack surface by such a large amount, it's a no-brainer.

<comment><USER4> If I'm understanding correctly, did the RDMA attack work because it was able to probe arbitrary memory-mapped registers on request?

And for the TPM attack, is the FPGA able to initiate it? or would this have to be some kind of hardware implant? the latter isn't a big deal - plenty of ways to bug a machine given invasive physical access - the former would be a serious TPM breach akin to GrayKey.

also I'm a little clueless, but my secure laptop has a Bitlocker boot password, with autologin disabled even during updates iirc. does that not mitigate?

<comment> semi-extrinsic I think if you have Bitlocker set up with a boot password, and you are careful to shut down when you're not using the computer, then you're probably fine. But in my experience most people use Bitlocker just with the Windows login prompt.

As I understand it, the FPGA is able to initiate the TPM key extraction, yes. So it's not a sniffer that has to wait for the user to input the password.

[https://pulsesecurity.co.nz/articles/TPM- sniffing](https://pulsesecurity.co.nz/articles/TPM-sniffing)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> (Almost) a year late: [https://vztekoverflow.com/2018/07/31/tbal-dpapi- backdoor/](https://vztekoverflow.com/2018/07/31/tbal-dpapi-backdoor/)

<comment><USER5> What's interesting is that neither mention that a windows update triggered reboot - at least when i was on insider builds - somehow auto-unlocks bitlocker (or it may be using a kernel level restart like kexec, which apparently is a thing that exists in windows server at least)

<comment><USER6> That's a different bug: [https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/09/25/bitlocker_suspensio...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/09/25/bitlocker_suspension_patching_mystery/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I was wary to click because of the unknown domain name and the vague clickbaity title but it seems legit and quite severe:

> Our experts have found a new serious breach in DPAPI security, allowing > anyone to decrypt personal data (protected by DPAPI) of the last active user > in Windows 10.

</comment><comment> a-dub so basically, if you have "root", you can get at another user's secret store through some esoteric weird means under some weird windows post update auto reboot auto logon whatever... which means absolutely nothing because if you have "root" you can do a billion other things to get at the same secret store anyway... i don't see the point of this.

<comment> S-E-P This is for when an attacker has physical access, as in they can just pull the information from the drive (by mounting the drive to another OS, i.e. from USB), without any restriction from the Windows OS

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> "The problem for a user is that after the system is shut down, anyone who has physical access to the PC..."

This is what bitlocker is for, isn't it?

<comment><USER9> If you have to rely on bitlocker anyway, then what problem is DPAPI solving?

<comment><USER10> It was created as a system level vault to store private keys, passwords and the like without requiring a library. But that was 20 odd years ago, so who knows what problem its solving now. Full-disk encryption was probably considered computationally expensive back then too..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Isn't this easily addressed by unchecking the Windows Update feature that uses it?

[https://www.thewindowsclub.com/log-automatically-after- windo...](https://www.thewindowsclub.com/log-automatically-after-windows- update)

<comment><USER12> Or don't, because this isn't a real risk.

It's a risk if you and another person you don't trust share a machine, _and_ that person has admin access, _and_ you store sensitive stuff on that machine, protected by DPAPI, _and_ some other technical restrictions on updates etc.

But seriously, don't share a machine with a hostile user with admin access and expect secrets stored on that machine to stay secret.

Edit: the auto-credentials saving happens every shutdown, not just for automatic ones, so this is much easier to exploit. The link somebody else in this thread posted is easier to follow (for me anyhow) [https://vztekoverflow.com/2018/07/31/tbal-dpapi- backdoor/](https://vztekoverflow.com/2018/07/31/tbal-dpapi-backdoor/), and in the meantime I'm chomping down on my hat. All those fibers must be good for me, right?

<comment><USER6> It's a risk if anyone has physical access, you have sensitive stuff stored in DPAPI, and FDE isn't enabled. The risk isn't related to having other admin users on the system or anything to do with updates.

<comment><USER12> In theory perhaps: but by the description given in this article the keys are not permanent, and that means you'd need to wait for an automatic reboot, and cut the power while that's occurring, and you need to do that right on the very first try, because if the system fails to store the key for any reason, it's not retrievable without the user logging in (and if you could do that, this whole saga wouldn't have been necessary). The demo appears to require admin access anyhow.

I suppose if you steal a laptop that's on but locked, and doesn't use FDE, and then open it up and hook it up to the power, wait for patch tuesday, and pull out the battery/cut the power at just the right moment, this is likely reproducibly exploitable without access.

It's a risk, but a fairly far-fetched one. If you have attackers that determined and skilled, use FDE... and pray, because if you've got that kind of time, patience _and_ physical access, there are likely over avenues to exploit.

Admittedly, the features gained for this crack in the security sound pretty limited - after auto-update lock screen apps that depend on DPAPI still display? Yawn.

Edit: [https://vztekoverflow.com/2018/07/31/tbal-dpapi- backdoor/](https://vztekoverflow.com/2018/07/31/tbal-dpapi-backdoor/) this description is slightly different, and clearly states that the TBAL credentials-saving hack gets used _every_ shutdown, which is much easier to trigger. Given the pointlessness of this feature in the first place, I'm turning if off.

<comment><USER6> Ah, I didn't see that the article indicated that this only occurred on automatic reboots. Between this and the other article it's not clear if it happens on every reboot or not, but if that's not the case then this is indeed somewhat less severe.

Regardless, if you're willing to wait for Patch Tuesday, then FDE can already be bypassed by means of another bug: [https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/09/25/bitlocker_suspensio...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/09/25/bitlocker_suspension_patching_mystery/)

<comment><USER12> I'm not sure anymore if it's every shutdown or patch tuesday anymore; but it sounds like every shutdown? Somebody would need to repro.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is not the first time "serious" flaws have been found with DPAPI. Here's another example: [https://cqureacademy.com/blog/windows-internals/black-hat- eu...](https://cqureacademy.com/blog/windows-internals/black-hat-europe-2017)

In this case, it turns out that if you have access to the domain controller as admin, you can decrypt DPAPI secrets by using user's private keys stored there (keys for DPAPI need to "roam" with the account, as do keys for EFS, so it's not surprising that they're there). Likewise, it also turns out that if you decline to provide a password (encryption key) for secrets stored in a PKCS#12 blob (PFX), Windows makes one up for you and this is deterministically bound to your user account (and can be broken with said access).

Neither of these "attacks" cross a privilege boundary - it just turns out crypto isn't magic. As pointed out by other commenters, bitlocker should be enough for most people, but the truth is that if you don't trust your physical environment you need to put in place physical access controls, tamper detection, have a TPM etc, as well as full disk encryption.

<comment><USER14> A domain admin can access the user's long term kerberos encryption keys and generate arbitrary key tabs for that user.

If you have domain admin, you can access EVERYTHING in that forest and any two way trusted forest.

<comment><USER13> Of course. Hence it isn't really a flaw if you need domain admin to gain access. It's a vulnerability or major fault if an ordinary user can get access, or worse an unauthenticated user / someone with a specially crafted network packet. Obviously domain admin accounts need to be suitably protected and you hint at this in your comment (ESAE) but that's another matter.

This bug is another such example - you have to decide to enable this and ask Windows to store your password to log you in, and that's exactly what happens, including exposure of any secrets protected via DPAPI / bound to your account. It's a convenience feature, working as intended. Perhaps the impact should be made clearer, but there are even legitimate reasons for this sort of functionality, such as self-service kiosks that are often built with windows images.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This seems like less of a flaw and more of an "undocumented feature".

<comment><USER16> You mean security by obscurity?

<comment><USER17> I can't be the only one tired of this pedantic platitude.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I have some serious concerns about the security chops of the author, who recommends using the Syskey startup password feature, which is trivial to crack, mostly used by support scammers, and removed in recent versions of Windows 10 because it is like having a screen door on a submarine.

</comment><comment><USER19> Smells like some slashdot neckbeard propaganda when you punctuate your objective facts with statements like "As we warned in our previous article, the next versions of Windows will become less and less focused on ensuring the safety for an end-user."

</comment><comment><USER20> Is this an auto login feature? If so seems necessary. The question might be if this is the default behavior.

</comment><comment><USER21> Exactly how terrified should I be right now?

<comment><USER22> Unless you're a snowden, DPR or khashoggi you're probably not worth the headache, effort and time that this process would require just to get your encryption keys.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I think this article is quite misleading as to the severity of the issue. It is basically by design.

TL;DR; provided you are an administrator on a Windows machine you can read encrypted user data from another user's home directory without having him login first.

In the video they show you have to be able to read other user's profile, which you are unable to do, unless you are already an administrator.

<comment><USER3> You don't need to be an admin, just have physical access and plug the drive into another computer. Which is why the early W10 versions used to require enabled full-disk encryption before allowing this feature.

<comment><USER23> I am not sure what you mean.

If the drive is not encrypted, then anybody can read any data. <\- OK, that is incorrect. DPAPI is supposed to protect from this by deriving encryption key from your password.

If the drive is encrypted you'd have to know the drive encryption key, which likely (if not necessary) means you are the administrator.

<comment><USER3> > OK, that is incorrect. DPAPI is supposed to protect from this by deriving > encryption key from your password.

That's the point: DPAPI is (deliberately) bypassed by TBAL, by storing the necessary info from the user's password to decrypt the DPAPI key after reboot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Is it Windows 10?

</comment><comment><USER25> Doesn't this happen on macOS after an update? I mean, I have returned to my Mac to see my login sitting there as if nothing happened...</comment>


What I've learnt from this successful CEO who had only $3 left in his bank - <AUTHOR> A friend of mine graduated from Cambridge University  13 years ago, went on to work at a top consulting firm. Just as his career advanced rapidly, he abruptly quitted and invested all his $20k saving into his new venture. $20k quickly dried up and one morning, he woke up to $3 left in his bank.
Miraculously, the next day after, he found $30k in his bank, giving him the breathing room to continue. Today, his company has staff close to 100 with offices in three countries, aiming at disrupting an age old industry.
That $30k is not god sent, he simply earned it. Months before that $3 day, he already anticipated empty bank account, so he offered to work for free for his "imaginary" client. He busted ass all month, and this client loved his product/service so much and he voluntarily put $30k into his account, hence miracle I mentioned earlier.
Today, I sat across table from him, asked him, whats your advice for an early stage startup.
He did not hesitate: flawless execution. cash flow. Ideas, products are secondary, the most important is your will to find that first customers who really love your product.
I further asked him: what if I'm so indecisive, I don't know who will be my customers, my product can do so much.
He replied:"Find that customer who badly need your service, and simplify it for this customer."
It reminds me what Groove founder Alex Turnbull said: "the fundamental keys to success are simple but hard: first and foremost, make something that people badly need or want."
P.s. Please have a look at our product offering in the link, and let me know in the comments what you think. Any feedbacks are appreciated. Thanks!
http://audiencemojo.com <comment><USER2> Nice little story, but then you point to audiencemojo, basically an automated clickfarm for instagram.

How does that compare to the advice you were given. If you get 1 customer for audiencemojo, they get 1 like from you (as you don't have others in your farm to take advantage of) what are they going to pay you for? Or are you going to like them from fake accounts? What will that actually do for them.

My main criticism is you've spent a bunch of time and clearly thought out what adds up to little more than a scam, and if you think Instagram doesn't have the ability to shut you down in a very short time, you're dreaming.

If I'm misreading what you're doing, please correct me.

If I'm right, stop. just stop. take a breath, realise that there are many many great things you could be building now that will 1) actually help people and 2) that you can be proud of. If you can nail those two, it is likely that you will have something that somebody will pay for.

Don't be a charlatan or wantrepreneur. It appears you have some ability, you've got a minor project done where others have not, you just chose the wrong project. Not a big deal. Just take better aim next time.

</comment><comment><USER3> Your link has nothing to do with the post.</comment>


It's hard to get people to pay for software - <AUTHOR> http://www.devmull.net/articles/pay-for-software/ <comment><USER2> Target audience matters a lot.

For example: <http://www.stickycomics.com/computer-update/></comment>


What do you get when you count frequent names in posts that also mention Trump? - <AUTHOR> https://webhose.io/demo/cool-useless-demo/ <comment><USER2> Is the site suffering from the HN "hug of death" ?? It's unavailable for me.

A web search found this:

[https://github.com/Webhose/Cool-Useless- Demo/blob/master/REA...](https://github.com/Webhose/Cool-Useless- Demo/blob/master/README.rst)

<comment><AUTHOR> Works well for me: [https://webhose.io/demo/cool-useless- demo](https://webhose.io/demo/cool-useless-demo)

<comment><USER2> I'm consistently getting "page not available."

<shrug></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN/PG: Video stream weekly YC speakers? - <AUTHOR>

I have noticed that YC is very generous with its advice, which includes advice to all (even non-YC) founders through HN and PG's essays, and with it's open application process/criterion that allows other accelerator programs to copy it openly. I was wondering if this generocity could be extended to the weekly talks that speakers give during YC sessions for all to watch and learn from? <comment><USER2> So I can't speak for PG but according to the "What Happens at YC" page he mentions that video streams and recordings used to be available but are not anymore because it has increased the value of what the speaker has to say. According to the page, speakers feel less filtered when off camera and off record and can thus be more helpful. Here is quoted text:

I didn't consciously realize how much speakers at more public events censored themselves till I was able to compare the same people speaking off the record at YC dinners and on the record at Startup School. YC dinner talks are much more useful, because the details people omit in more public talks tend to be the most interesting parts of their stories.

And link to page: <http://ycombinator.com/atyc.html>

<comment><AUTHOR> How about selective releases or even edited versions?</comment></comment>


VESA Brings DisplayPort to New USB Type-C Connector - <AUTHOR> http://www.vesa.org/news/vesa-brings-displayport-to-new-usb-type-c-connector/

<comment><AUTHOR> > [...] can deliver full DisplayPort audio/video (A/V) performance [...] and > up to 100 watts of power – over a single cable.

I'm not sure it will actually work in practice, but if so this gets rid of the power cable for the monitor.</comment>


What Investors Look for in Your Startup: Insights from 5 Investors and Founders - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/startups-ignite-community/what-investors-look-for-in-your-startup-insights-from-5-investors-and-startup-founders-5b7b50e67c1 <comment><AUTHOR> This post features quotes from Manor, Startups Ignite, CIT Gap Funds, Hungry, Village Capital, and Urgent.ly.</comment>


Watching the sixties and seventies through 2001 and Alien - <AUTHOR> http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2015/01/09/hal-mother-and-father/ <comment><USER2> Heh, I loved the term "truckers in space", which pretty accurately described some of the characters in Alien - Brett, Parker, Dallas.

Speaking of Ridley Scott, my favorite movie of all time is Blade Runner. I was watching it the other day, and noticed that the incept dates of some of replicants were 2016. Oh boy, Ridley got that one wrong. But they still used payphones too, like in Alien. Remember Deckard calling Rachel from the video pay phone at the bar?

So it seems like filmmakers predictions either grossly mispredict the amount of technological progress at the big scale. Everybody thought there would be moon colonies by now, or advanced cyborgs. Or they don't see the technological innovation at the small scale. They can't see things like cell phones, the internet, etc..

I have seen several movies with the 70s or so, with flat screens hanging on the wall. So I guess they ocassionally get things right

<comment><USER3> I kind of like all the anachronistic elements in old sci-fi movies. It doesn't really feel like an error; it feels more like a stylistic choice. The chunky CRTs and grimy machinery gives the world character, and makes the world feel tangible. I'd take that over a sterile, Apple-eque vision of the future any day (in my fiction, at least).

<comment><USER4> The sf movie 'Her' has a very Apple-like feel in the production design. Great movie, but of course a totally different feel.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If imdb's movie /year/1979/ list is to be believed, there was a lot of self loathing going on in films in the late 70s (i.e. Vietnam).

<comment><USER6> You have no idea.

One of my favourite 70's quotes is from the quite brilliant book "The Medieval Machine" by the Anglo-French historian Jean Gimpel, published in 1976 (which really is a very good history of Medieval technology):

"The economic depression that struck Europe in the fourteenth century was followed ultimately by economic and technological recovery. But the depression we have moved into will have no end. We can anticipate centuries of decline and exhaustion. There will be no further industrial revolution in the cycles of our Western civilization."

These words were written _at the same time_ as Jobs, Wozniak, Gates and Allen were all hard at work. This smug bastard was just one voice amongst many telling the world that we were in the grip of a permanent, inexorable "malaise" that could at best be accepted passively, which there was no point in fighting, which had to be simply taken as given, unstoppable, forever.

At the same time people like me were being told by teachers that we would never be able to image the disk of extra-solar stars or discover extra-solar planets, and so on [1]. Gleeful murderers of hope were desperately trying to crush any spark of innovation, creativity or freedom. And it was happening the world over. A relentless, ruthless, assault on the Enlightenment, the rule of law, and the industrial revolution.

They failed.

A lot of it was funded, ultimately, by the Soviets, who generated an enormous amount of propaganda that was intended to make people believe these things. One of the notable things that happened after the collapse of the Soviet Empire was the stunning pall of silence that fell over the Left in the West. It was almost as if the lifeblood of the whole enterprise had been cut off.

Part of that was simple empiricism: it was hard for Leftists to hold up their pathologically insane ideas as "better" when their poster-child had just endured a complete and spectacular collapse, including the freeing of a large number of vassal states, all because some shipyard workers in Poland had laid down tools a decade before.

But part of it was also that funding for a bunch of stuff that Comintern paid for (mostly by indirect means, in the same way the US government funds stuff through NGOs today) vanished.

Today, hyper-capitalist brands like Naomi Klein are attempting to resurrect some of the old zombie Soviet ideas, but it's a pretty pathetic effort, full of contradictions and gibberish. They won't have a lot of influence, at the end of the day, and it is my firm belief that we are entering into a century of progress that will make the 19th century look staid and the 20th century look stupid. Having lived through the '70's, this is a good thing to see.

[1] We have done both, and more: [http://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/astronomers-image- lowest...](http://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/astronomers-image-lowest-mass- exoplanet-around-a-sun-like-star/)

<comment><USER7> This screed is essentially pure-quill mental imbalance. I was in school in America in 1979, too. I subscribed to BYTE, Science 80, the whole nine yards. My teachers were ecstatic about my love for science, not even once trying to dissuade me from my eager pursuit of the future.

So right on the face of it, you're just flat wrong. And then you go _right_ off the rails screeching about Communist influence as though this were anything but raving paranoia.

I'm a liberal Quaker (Quakerism _far_ predates Communism) and - you know what? - I seem to have been left off the distribution list from Moscow.

Basically, all I can think when I read this is that you need to get back on your meds. "Pathologically insane ideas," my ass. How anybody can view _liberalism_ as an attack on the Enlightenment - when it _is_ the Enlightenment - is frankly flabbergasting.

<comment><USER8> I miss OMNI. I keep hoping they issue a DVD of all the issues.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> In the sequel, "2010", it's revealed that HAL has essentially had a "nervous breakdown" because he'd been lied to. This is apparently true for both the novel and the film.

</comment><comment><USER10> \</comment><comment>

"The U.S. is not waging the Cold War in outer space. We have no moon colonies, and our supercomputers are not nearly as super as the murderous HAL. "

2001 was a prescient film, but the details have turned out somewhat differently than Kubrick and Clarke imagined. HAL was portrayed as truly sentient. The same cannot be said of any AI existing today. However, HAL was also immensely limited. He was like a servant or child in his abilities. He was not the the oracle and gateway to the sum of all human knowledge, as the computers of today have become. If you asked HAL how to build a boat or how to score a date with a beautiful woman, he'd have been baffled. Google, on the other hand... HAL also had a large central core that could be attacked. If we built a true AI today, it's possible that the brains of such a beast could be the size of a pocket watch and the software copied and transferred freely. If such a viral consciousness had infested the Discovery, Dave would truly have had nothing to strike back against. HAL would not have been a single consciousness, but a legion!

Meanwhile, the U.S. is very much still engaged in a struggle for control of space. Other challengers have appeared, but Russia hasn't gone anywhere, and that particular war seems to be getting colder by the minute. However, the commercialization of space has been late in coming. Pan Am's collapse must have delayed things somewhat. However, it's finally starting to happen.

\</comment><comment>

"Mother, on the other hand, spends the whole movie like a fated southern belle hooked on laudanum, locked in her room. She can't even advise on how to defeat the monster. The computer cannot help. No costly investment in heavy capital will keep nature at bay. "

Alien does indeed present a very different view of technology. Where, in 2001, technology was the tool of humanity, uplifting it to greater and greater heights, in Alien technology cannot overcome the base nature of humans. The people in space aren't heroes or explorers, but working-class stiffs trying to make a living. Technology serves its owners first and foremost. The corporation's interests reign supreme, even over the space workers very lives. This vision too is both wrong yet prescient. The computers of today are of tremendous help, but are also tools of control. You can ask google how to do practically anything, but you have to accept the fact that your request will be logged by the NSA (and probably other organizations) for future reference should you ever be naughty. Computers do not directly control us, but other humans use computers to tell us how to do things. For example, look up why UPS drivers are trained to avoid turning left. Computers and automation have eliminated many jobs, but always seem to create even more in the process.

\</comment><comment>-

The last few years have greatly increased my optimism for the future. It seems that we're finally pulling out of the cyberpunk dystopian funk of the last decade or so and trying to do "big" things once again. Electric cars are finally a practical reality. Self driving cars are close at hand. Private space flight is taking off. People are talking about capturing and bringing asteroids down to Earth for their resources. Space elevators that will make getting bulk quantities of material off of Earth seem almost possible. Quantum cryptology is currently in limited use and expanding, and may one day offer us all security from the NSA's of the world, even should they gain the tremendous power of quantum computers, which themselves will offer humanity fantastic new abilities. 3D printing is rapidly improving and making new things possible, and our advances in nanotechnology will only amplify and ramify their capabilities. It's an exciting time to be alive, even in spite of all the nicks and cuts we receive from the other side of every new sword we invent. Humanity needs to keep its ideals and be on guard against the darker half of it's nature, but there are many great reasons to think we might just surprise ourselves and turn out okay after all.

<comment><USER11> > Quantum cryptology is currently in limited use and expanding, and may one > day offer us all security from the NSA's of the world

..."classic" cryptography done right, and software done right, with verifiable versions of critical components like compilers and kernels, and a few more pieces of technology we already have, but simply "done right", would give all the unbreakable security anyone would need. But "doing things right" is simply suicide (business-wise) in the current economy. Technologies "done right" and "maintained right" from a security perspective have negative economic value for whoever would develop them in the current market system, so unless you're an institution big enough to be both the researcher and the producer and the consumer of such technology you'll never have it.

...and if you are big enough, let's say a big army system, the inefficiencies that make any such big closed systems underperform (bureaucracy, internal corruption, lack of employee motivation etc.) would make security flaws appear into the system.

So the thing to have hope in is this: even if all systems have flaws that your boggie-man (the NSA, let's say) can exploit, the boggie-man himself has flaws that can be exploited.

 _...so the best guarantee of freedom is a perpetual world-wide cyberwar intense enough to guarantee anyone 's secrets and private information always have a certain risk of getting exposed so that no one can afford to keep truly horrible secrets (like torturing people in secret prisons, or routinely violating everyone's privacy!) because they would know that information leakage is at some point inevitable._

<comment><USER12> This reminds me of the reality of 'criminal convenience.' A criminal isn't going to plan the perfect attack so that they don't get caught; they'll just smash and grab. Firstly, 'doing it right' is expensive. Secondly, there is enough uncertainty in the world and the bottlenecks of human concern are so over-saturated with confusion that nobody will likely catch you anyway.

>...so the best guarantee of freedom is a perpetual world-wide cyberwar intense enough to guarantee anyone's secrets and private information always have a certain risk of getting exposed [...]

I feel like this would just entrench cynicism as a way of life. Kind of like it already is: everyone expects bad things to happen and they feel they are inevitable. It doesn't improve anything because so few people believe real improvement is possible. Admittedly, I think that things are getting better.</comment></comment></comment>


Migrating from Parse? Why You Should Join StackMob - <AUTHOR> https://blog.stackmob.com/2013/04/27011/

<comment><USER2> That was fast.</comment>


Introducing: Figma's Platform - <AUTHOR> https://blog.figma.com/introducing-figmas-platform-ee681bf861e7 <comment><USER2> Congrats to the Figma team!

Open API, React-generating integrations, examples of CI-usage — this feels like a great leap-forward in bridging the divide between dev / design disciplines and providing the infrastructure for a tech-enabled design ecosystem. Astounding.</comment>


Ask HN: Could we please have the author's comments highlighted in some way? - <AUTHOR>

I often find the most interesting cmments are posted by the author of the original post. Could HN highlight the author's comments with some type of symbol (green asterisk?) <comment><USER2> Write a Greasemonkey script to do it.

<comment><USER3> This is a possibility but not everyone can and not everyone browses with GM installed. Would it hurt?</comment></comment>


Infosys introduces new artificial intelligence platform - <AUTHOR> http://www.financialexpress.com/article/industry/companies/infosys-introduces-new-artificial-intelligence-platform/245848/ <comment><USER2> I don't want to be elitist but really? The company that is well-know for being a body shop that takes all the grunt work that US companies dont want to do, is doing AI work? I have to give their marketing dept props.</comment>


Data Science of the Facebook World - <AUTHOR> http://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2013/04/data-science-of-the-facebook-world/ <comment><USER2> I did the analysis and worked with Stephen on the science side of it.

If anyone would like to ask questions about what we did, I'd be happy to answer them.

There's still lots more interesting stuff to do, but it was enough for a blog post. Suggest away if you think we missed something obvious!

<comment><USER3> The only visualization I didn't like was the chord diagram: [http://blog.stephenwolfram.com/data/uploads/2013/04/chordplo...](http://blog.stephenwolfram.com/data/uploads/2013/04/chordplot- movers-by-state3.png)

Did you try this visualization?: <http://bl.ocks.org/mbostock/4062006>

<comment><USER2> Yes, I did.

We'll have to agree to disagree. I think the visualization you linked to is much harder to read, because the visual weight accorded to each edge is a non- linear (and somewhat arbitrary) function of the 'true' weight. It also doesn't scale well with number of vertices.

Whereas with the chord diagram, your eye is naturally drawn to the big arrows, and you can easily follow them. It's also bidirectional in a more straightforward way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I found this interesting. What I would love to have seen, however, is a probe into the dynamics. You did a nice abstraction over time as you measured property X as age was varied. I would have loved to have seen the manner in which topics and ideas spread over your network.

For instance: If an event occurred in New York, say, how long would it have taken to spread to San Francisco? If there were no progression, topic times would center around the same time. This would indicate that people were getting their information from national, not local sources (e.g. the evening news), then talking about it on facebook. On the other hand, if a local topic was spread on facebook alone, we should see some sort of progression.

It's possible that this progression could take more interesting forms besides geolocation, but that might require a more extensive network. A simple experiment would work like this: A few thousand people who are not friends but have a similar interest (say an interest in Elizabeth Warren) post independently a video of her. This particular esoteric interest is unlikely to be valued a priori by their friends, but perhaps they are compelled to repost the information. What's the threshold of "esotericness" such that it won't "go viral?" Is there a way to predict virality as a function of how popular it is to begin with? Is there no actual progression across the network, but rather a small bump in topic expression, until it is picked up by larger media sources at which point the entire network is inundated with people reposting Elizabeth Warren recaps from HuffPo et al?

The reason this is interesting is that it sheds insight into the role of social networks: are we fundamentally disposed toward central sources like the NYTimes, or is facebook a fundamental _sharing_ mechanism? That is, do I post on facebook just to have my views expressed, validated, and challenged, so that they might change the world over a few years? Or do I post on facebook to have my views _propagate_ across the world much more quickly?

Finally, a question: How did you estimate the power law? I know how difficult it is to do this (e.g. not linear regression on a log-log scale). Did you compare the power law fit to other, similar distributions, like lognormal? Preferential attachment is indeed a beautiful theoretical result, because it implies the existence of power law degree distributions. Unfortunately, many networks are not as well represented by power laws as by alternative distributions, which casts doubt on the preferential attachment hypothesis as is. (Also, many sampling methods give rise to fictive power laws). That said, a fat tail can still be interesting.

In any case, this is a beautiful piece of work.

<comment><USER2> Interesting points.

1\. Dynamics

You're right, that would be very interesting. The most obvious way we could have done this is by looking at the spread of our app itself as people started to use it. Unfortunately, we only started recording anonymized stats for the second release, so we've somewhat missed the boat there.

To do it with links and general "memes" would be technically much harder, because we'd have to periodically rescrape walls of all the donors to see time evolution. It was somewhat out of scope of the blog post, given all the more basic stuff we could do instead.

I'd be surprised if Facebook didn't already do an analysis of this when they "cracked down" on app virality a while back.

Bit.ly's Hilary Mason might have looked at this question too, and I'm sure it has been done to death with Twitter, though the demograph info is much sparser there.

2\. This not being a scientific paper, we estimated it by drawing on the log- log CDF. Barring the noise that "deparadoxing" the friend's friend count distribution induces on the low end of the distribution, it was very linear over two decades. We didn't think the exact number was all that interesting, so we didn't spend any more effort than that. Facebook's anatomy paper probably has a very accurate number.

I'd heard about the fictive power law stuff. What makes me even more skeptical is that FB friends are probably a poor proxy for 'true' friends. You'd be better off looking at number of friends as defined by some cross-commenting threshold.

3\. Thanks! It was a lot of fun!

<comment><USER5> About the "fictive power law" thing: this is THE paper to read: <http://arxiv.org/abs/0706.1062> (it's an easy read, explaining what the maximum likelihood method is, etc.). Despite what they say, fitting the log- log CDF usually gives pretty good results when done right (fitting the PDF does not)

<comment><USER2> Thanks! What do you know? Shalizi!

<comment><USER6> Also from Shalizi, if you want a TL;DR

[http://vserver1.cscs.lsa.umich.edu/~crshalizi/weblog/491.htm...](http://vserver1.cscs.lsa.umich.edu/~crshalizi/weblog/491.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I wonder if the higher friends count of Brazilian users is caused by the previous use of Orkut, where it was popular to try to have as many friends as possible.

<comment><USER2> Ha! That is interesting! I didn't know about that... will tell Stephen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> How is it possible that Facebook, which owns the data, does not give tools like these but others tap this using their data?

<comment><USER9> The attitude of companies like Facebook, Google, Twitter is: if the product isn't addictive or useful to Billions of people, its not worth doing.

Hence there are vastly more resources dedicated to assimilating eg photos and games into their ecosystem, than into something computationally innovative.

This is IMHO a huge mistake, since they could instead be introducing simple forms of programming that takes you on a continuous curve from using the product, to developing for it. There is a huge hunger in the masses for better forms of programming.

This point will probably become obvious if the Wolfram Language is successful.

<comment><USER2> I'm sure Facebook's Data Science team does a lot of interesting things internally. They do in fact have some interesting papers [0] and [1], though obviously with more of an 'academic' feel than the blog post.

[0]: <http://arxiv.org/abs/1111.4503>

[1]: <http://arxiv.org/pdf/1201.4145> (edit)

Edit: they also have this FB page which has a steady stream of interesting stuff: <https://www.facebook.com/data>

<comment><USER10> Thank you so much. Edit: I don't work at facebook.

<comment><USER2> Are you on the Facebook datascience team? Your profile is pretty sparse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've been doing Facebook network visualization for a while now with Gephi. Here are some of the graphs I came up with: [http://visualizingpolitics.wordpress.com/2012/05/02/facebook...](http://visualizingpolitics.wordpress.com/2012/05/02/facebook- network-visualizations/)

<comment><USER2> Nice! Do you know if Gephi can do something similar to the summarization that we did using cluster diagrams? The whole "ball of hair" problem doesn't have any other real solution, I don't think (well, unless you use edge clustering, but that doesn't help in-group connections).

<comment><USER11> I'm 90% certain that it can, but I haven't worked with it in a while. I remember a setting in the display options that simply combined all the dots of one color into one large group.

<comment><USER2> Cool! I wonder how one could combine the best of both worlds... what we're really talking about here is a hierarchy of graph plots in which you can drill down to each node = graph at a lower level.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Wow- this is awesome! It's really cool how people's friend distribution by age is a convolution of their age and the age of the general facebook population. It's also scary in a way to see a snapshot of how I'm likely to change in the future with regards to my clusters of friends, my relationship status, and what I'll talk about.

</comment><comment><USER13> The traditional way to plot the assortativity by age is using a scatter plot / heatmap. This is similar to what they did for country homophily on p12 of the Facebook anatomy paper. The result would be a plot with a prominent diagonal, illustrating that "same attracts same".

That aside, imo, Facebook is an incredibly idiosyncratic "app", which makes almost no sense. And yet, it gave us so many opportunities for interesting discussions, like the insights in this blog post. Nice job.

<comment><USER2> Yeah, we tried a couple. Those heatmaps I think are quite hard to read.. because it is natural to want to take marginals, but you can't easily do that visually.

I think this whole "octile plot" thing turned out quite nicely. It's in a sense a way of 'slicing' the CDF into 8 even strips and projecting them onto a single axis. It's quite intuitive to read, too. Facebook seems to use it too for some of their papers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> One thing that bugs me is how comments are linked to "interest". There are many topics that interest people (passive consumption), that do not necessarily translate into engaging in a conversation with others publicly.

As a marketing term - sure, that would be a good indicator of interest. Since this article is more scientific than marketing-oriented, I would clarify what some of the metrics mean (or don't mean).

Excellent, fantastic visualizations though!

<comment><USER2> You're right. A more ambitious thing might get a bit closer to people's "real interests" would be to follow posted links and topic model the contents of those links.

<comment><USER14> I am very interested in that angle - let's connect when you have time, twitter @iTrendTV

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> How much of the friends with zero friends is simply because that information is blocked? If my friends "donated" their data, I would show as having 0 friends if I've blocked that information to apps.

<comment><USER2> Actually, NONE of the people in our dataset had zero friends. The x-axis starts at 1, not 0. The point is that resampling to remove the friendship paradox shows that there are many more people with single-digit friends than we expected.

<comment><USER15> Given mcintyre1994's comment, I think this still explains the same situation. People with single-digit friends are simply people who have friends blocked to apps but have multiple friends who've donated data.

<comment><USER2> No, we can tell when someone's privacy settings have given them a zero friend count, and they're not included in that aggregation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Introducing "data science for Facebook" in 2013 is ... odd.

All the more so because Jeff Hammerbacher is often credited with coining the term "data science", and he started doing it at -- that's right -- Facebook.

<comment><USER2> Well, the title is "Data Science of the Facebook World", there is no "for". The data _comes from_ our "Personal Analytics for Facebook" product.

Didn't know Jeff Hammerbacher coined "data science" at Facebook -- that's interesting!

</comment></comment><comment> brown9-2 Very nice looking graphs, but running "Wolfram Alpha Personal Analytics for Facebook" for my own profile comes with a rather nerve-wracking warning:

 _Wolfram Connection would like to access your public profile, friend list, email address, custom friends lists, News Feed, relationships, birthday, status updates, checkins, education history, hometown, current city, photos, religious and political views, videos, likes and your friends' relationships, birthdays, education histories, hometowns, current cities, photos, religious and political views and videos._

<comment><USER17> How do you think they are going to get all the data to analyze your facebook account?

<comment><USER2> Yeah, that's data you _see_ in your report.

You have to opt in to being a data donor for us to store any of it.

Otherwise we just record basic anonymized statistics -- like number of friends, sex, age, etc... and throw all the detailed stuff away. Our privacy policy has more: <http://www.wolframalpha.com/fbfaqs.html>

We also encrypt with public keys like there's no tomorrow.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The Mathematica system makes some beautiful, informative graphs, and presumably users can make those graphs with a minimum of fuss and bother. It's technically very nice.

Yet, in the entire blog post, is there one insight that wasn't a priori obvious? Maybe the bits about migration.

I don't see the "art and science" in this analysis, I see "stamp collecting" (<http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ernest_Rutherford>)

<comment><USER6> So Rutherford says: "All science is either physics or stamp collecting" and then wins the Nobel prize for…

You got that right: chemistry!

<comment><USER19> Chemistry is applied physics, after all.

<comment><USER6> I'd rather imagine him fuming in one corner: "stupid Nobel committee… they should have kept their crappy stamp collecting prize…"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> People _donate_ their data to support Wolfram's closed-source, paid-license, for-profit program?

<comment><USER20> They said they'll use it to support their 'personal analytics' programme [0], which is free via wolframalpha.com - I don't see how this data would help with Mathematica or anything else they charge for?

[0] <http://www.wolframalpha.com/facebook/>

<comment><USER21> They are using it for marketing.

(I mean the post is what it is, I don't mean to whine about it)</comment></comment></comment>


Inhaling Fear: Those Graphic Smoking Ads Potentially Encourage Smoking - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/12/opinion/12lindstrom.html?_r=1&ref=opinion

<comment><AUTHOR> This seemed really surprising to me since I'm disgusted by those ads but I'm not a smoker so I wouldn't know about the craving.

I guess the question is whether to get people to quit or to prevent people from smoking. The ads might work for the latter but not for the former.

</comment><comment><USER2> I love such bold claims from a 32 person study. :(

</comment><comment><USER3> I smoke; most of my family smokes, around half of my acquaintances. As best as I can tell:

External messages (warnings, PSAs) have a negligible effect on people who already smoke. The psycho/physiological considerations are much more a factor than how graphic a warning message is.

Instead, they should be doing this study on people who _don't_ smoke. The real goal is prevention.

Personally, I'm a programmer so I don't worry about warnings anyway, only errors.

<comment><USER4> Unfortunately smoking errors tend to be fatal ones.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> "To the contrary, the warning labels backfired: they stimulated the nucleus accumbens, sometimes called the 'craving spot,' which lights up on f.M.R.I. whenever a person craves something" - maybe they were craving to be non- smokers.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'd like to see some rigorous analysis of the anti-smoking ads run in California. Moreso than the messages 'smoking kills' or 'you shouldn't smoke', they emphasize the message 'tobacco companies/executives are _evil_ '.

That's always seemed to be an unfair use of public funds for nasty politics, to me. (The ads are a lot like election campaign hit pieces.)

I wonder if by blaming third parties for smoking, rather than individual decisions, it subtly enables smokers to avoid making a healthy personal choice. It also fortifies the self-righteousness of anti-smoking crusaders: "we good, they evil, ugh! ugh! ugh!"</comment>