When the cops subpoena your Facebook information, here's what FB sends the cops - <AUTHOR> http://blog.thephoenix.com/blogs/phlog/archive/2012/04/06/when-police-subpoena-your-facebook-information-heres-what-facebook-sends-cops.aspx <comment><USER2> I recently served on a jury for a violent crime, and as a juror being able to see evidence like cell phone records and closed circuit video was incredibly valuable. Cases that would have otherwise been a matter of "he said, she said" can have corroborating evidence that makes it much easier to be convinced beyond a reasonable doubt. I wondered how prosecutors managed to convict at all before these kinds of electronic records were available.

I'm not downplaying privacy concerns, but when you can see thing from the other side too it's easier to see it as a set of trade-offs that need weighing. It's not a black and white issue.

EDIT: Also remember that evidence can help the falsely accused just as easily as it can help victims of crime. Phone records can give a person an alibi that would otherwise have been very difficult to prove.

<comment><USER3> Yes, think of all the things we can do with street CCTV surveillance. Or with cameras matching license plate numbers on the street. Or with a secret service allowed to act within our borders and against american citizen.

The point of laws is not to make things harder for the police, it is to protect all of us from the government.

<comment><USER4> Think about how much fewer wives would be beaten if the Government had a camera in everyone's bedroom, or how much money we'd save on taxes if law enforcement could do anything they wanted without a warrant.

Yes it's sarcasm, but I don't think the law enforcement agencies see it like that. They actually want that, and they've said before that having to get a warrant makes it "hard" for them - even though 90% of the warrants they ask for are approved.

Lately all of them are pushing for more invasion of privacy, because they don't see it like that. They see it as "making our job easier" - without any regard for the abuses that could lead to or for history of Government oppression, or if the people actually want that. After all, surely they know "best" what needs to be done to protect the population.

<comment><USER5> There is no law enforcement agency in the country that wants cameras in everyone's bedroom.

<comment><USER6> And the Missing the Point award goes to...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's incredibly ironic that The Phoenix censored out identifying information of Markoff's friends, but left all the event / profile ID's in the browsing history section. You can easily go back to a 3 year old event:

<http://www.facebook.com/events/46300108330>

And view who attended, or view the profile he viewed on February 18th 2009:

<http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=16104623>

Kind of creepy to say the least. I'm surprised they made such a huge mistake. Knowing which profiles he stalked before committing his crime is even more sensitive than just friendship connections in my opinion.

<comment><USER8> They acknowledged it wouldn't be perfect redaction, and isn't the whole un- redacted thing publicly available now anyway?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Here's a PDF version I created: [http://dl.dropbox.com/u/105727/fb-subpoena- db/fb-subpoena.pd...](http://dl.dropbox.com/u/105727/fb-subpoena-db/fb- subpoena.pdf)

Or view as a web page with JPEGs: <http://dl.dropbox.com/u/105727/fb-subpoena- db/index.html>

(What is more absurd than releasing information like this in SWF format and only SWF format…?)

</comment><comment><USER10> It makes one wonder how many people will create a fictional facebook 'experience' which is to say spend time building up an alternate identity in various social sites so that in the event they are charged with a heinous crime they can confuse the jury and make it seem 'out of character.'

Surveillance works best when it isn't scripted.

<comment><USER11> That kind of thing definitely goes on in the intelligence community

<comment><USER12> One of the leaked HBGary e-mails is about developing a tool to automate it, including completely fake subgraphs.

[http://www.boingboing.net/2011/02/18/hbgarys-high- volume.htm...](http://www.boingboing.net/2011/02/18/hbgarys-high-volume.html) [http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/02/16/945768/-UPDATED- The...](http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/02/16/945768/-UPDATED-The-HB-Gary- Email-That-Should-Concern-Us-All)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I skimmed the document. Nothing terribly damning, or that you wouldn't suspect that FB would hand over.

No, the part that creeps me out is when they start being able to hand over my political preferences and ideological bents and how likely I am to consume drugs based solely on how I am friends with.

"Your honor, members of the jury, the evidence is clear: based on phillmv's social graph, he's 83% likely to be a stark raving socialist capable of committing precisely this sort of crime. As we all know, Facebook cannot lie!"

<comment><USER14> Well, there is one thing "terribly damning," and that's the "Deleted Wall Posts" bit.

This was also discovered when someone in Europe requested all of the data that Facebook has on him: that stuff which he had deleted had never _actually_ been deleted, but was instead stored with a flag "deleted=True" which was checked by the database queries.

In principle, at least for short time scales, this is not a bad idea -- you should try to make most or all of your database manipulations reversible, just in case someone steals someone else's account (or other similar abuses). But for long time scales, you would really expect that it would eventually get purged -- and as far as anybody knows, it never is.

<comment><USER15> You can't purge backups: if the servers were allowed to go in and remotely modify the off-site backups to purge deleted data, then an intruder could do the same thing for all data. So you can't permanently delete data in the backups. When subpoenaed, Facebook would have to go back through the backups and find the user-deleted data anyway: they still have it under their control. So there's really no difference in marking a "deleted" flag or purging the data from the production servers: they are not (and should not, and arguably cannot be) able to the data from backups.

This is true for all web services. I'm not even getting into about the support and user anger cost by permanently deleting user data. But it's clear to see that this — while an intuitive idea — is not practically possible for most web services.

<comment><USER14> I would agree that there are privacy concerns whenever you back up user data. It's something of an interesting question because users could also be held responsible for creating their own backups, especially if you made it extremely easy for them to do. It's something like when my VPS failed. The code that I was running on my VPS I routinely backed up, but the database -- while I serialized it to disk -- wasn't ever transferred to my local computer because I didn't think it was important. When the VPS failed, the whole database was gone. The point is, I can't be angry at them for not backing it up, because that wasn't a term of the service they were providing me. A similar mental model could probably work for database-driven sites, at least for the databases storing user content -- your code should of course always be under a mirrored version control. ^_^;;

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Don't forget about Max Schrems from Austria. He got Facebook to send him on their data on him (at least most of it)

I couldn't find the original news article I read when it first came out but here seems to be a good summary of what he found out: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJvAUqs3Ofg>

While this may not be identical to what cops would receive from a subpoena request, it shows at least part of what Facebook knows about you.

</comment><comment><USER17> Huh. That's funny.

One would think what special secret information facebook has on its users - where they are, what do they click to over the site, what sites do they visit even outside the FB site, but nope, it's just that - the data people wrote to the system themselves, voluntarily. Maybe with their public IP, sometimes.

Maybe I am skipping something, but there is nothing one wouldn't reasonably believe Facebook has on you and would give to the police.

edit: oh. I did miss the browsing history section.

...yeah. That is kind of creepy.

<comment><USER18> One should note that this request was satisfied in 2009. That leaves 3 years of extra _innovation_ that you don't know about.

<comment><USER17> Very true. All the "likes" and the united Messages are both younger.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Did anyone else notice the 172.23.8.44 "login IP" on the third page? What does it mean that the login IP is a non-routeable address? Is that some kind of IP in use inside FB's network?

<comment><USER20> Is it possible that a client behind a NAT logged into facebook and facebook recorded the clients local IP address?

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> That's the last straw. I haven't done anything with my Facebook page in a while, but now I'm just going to delete it.

<comment><USER22> What exactly surprised you?

<comment><USER23> While most people on hn probably know about this, you would be surprised at what the general public would think about this story. I hope it gets spread further in the media so more people know exactly what fb(and other social networking sites) keeps tabs on and what info they give out to law enforcement.

<comment><USER24> Do you think it will matter? That Farmville thing ain't gonna play itself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Where are the private messages though? Did Facebook hold them back? Should be the most interesting (and well, most private) bits. (Sorry, I am in a bit of a hurry right now and only had a quick look at the article and the provided document.)

And a bit off-topic, but related: does anyone know if Twitter actually deletes direct messages or are they just not visible on the website any more?

<comment><USER26> Yeah, PMs and comments seem to be missing. Probably a whole lot of other stuff, too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Am i correct in seeing (page 54) that Facebook logs every single mouse click you make within facebook? That's pretty intense.

<comment><USER28> Why not? Most companies do - since most webservers are configured to log every request by default. Of course, with facebook volumes they probably don't use "default" solutions for anything - but logging every click is a norm for most sites.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> It's conceivable that law enforcement could legally obtain _any_ information that is stored on any disk, even the disk inside your local machine.

</comment><comment><USER30> I am 3 seconds away from deleting my account, but before I do that I would like to know if fb actually deletes my account and everything I've generated on there. I have a feeling that they just insert a "deleted=True" in the database. In that case I don't want to delete my account, because I'm merely giving up my right to log in.

So, do they completely remove my account information, or do they just mark me deleted?

<comment><USER31> The information probably still exists somewhere. The best you can do is probably to stop using your account.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> What about extrajudicial requests like NSLs? I bet they get far more of those.

</comment><comment><USER33> Has anyone tried the last session cookie in the access log? It's probably been invalidated, but then again...

</comment><comment><USER34> If you are frantically looking around for a link to "DELETE" your facebook account, here it is :

[https://www.facebook.com/help/contact.php?show_form=delete_a...](https://www.facebook.com/help/contact.php?show_form=delete_account)

I did this just a month ago.

</comment><comment><USER35> Interesting that things like photo tagging is stored in a changing timezone (some are PDT (UTC-7), some are PST(UTC-8)), whereas for the access logs, they state that everything is PST.

Why would they be storing/using time in a timezone anyways?

</comment><comment><USER36> Resembles the contents of the zip file you get if you click the button on Facebook to download your entire personal data (yes, it exists. It generates huge HTML pages of all your messages, wall posts, photos etc)

</comment><comment><USER37> Not visible on an iPad. Rare you run into a newspaper that ignores that part of their audience.

</comment><comment><USER38> Wow, so our dear friends and FB save even our deleted posts?? What the...</comment>


Facebook extends account deletion grace period from 14 to 30 days - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/3/17933264/facebook-account-deletion-grace-period-extension-30-days <comment><USER2> "We've seen people try to log in to accounts they've opted to delete after the 14-day period. The increase gives people more time to make a fully informed choice."

I'm thinking most people try to login after the grace period because they just want to see if the account is truly deleted. At least that's what I would do.

</comment><comment><USER3> So, water is wet, and Facebook doesn't actually delete the data.

On top of that, they record the logins from deleted accounts... _still_ adding to the metadata they have on you, even after you delete.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm sure this has nothing to do with the "insignificant" recent wave of deletions.</comment>


Saudi Aramco reaches $2T value in second day of trading - <AUTHOR> https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2019-12-12/saudi-aramco-reaches-goal-two-trillion-second-day <comment><USER2> What an insane country and what an insane IPO.

Aramco is estimated to be valued around $1.5T. But Prince Mohammed had promised $2-trillion valuation and decided to fake it. He told rich Saudi's to buy Aramco or else. It involves thinly veiled physical threats.

Saudi Arabia renews push for $2tn Aramco valuation [https://www.ft.com/content/0043ccf6-1b42-11ea-97df- cc63de1d7...](https://www.ft.com/content/0043ccf6-1b42-11ea-97df-cc63de1d73f4)

>Many wealthy families, some of whom were caught up in a 2017 anti-corruption crackdown masterminded by Prince Mohammed that resulted in hundreds of businessmen and princes being detained at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Riyadh, have already bought shares. Some are now being asked to pledge further funds, advisers to the families said.

>"They've been told it is their duty, and everyone understands what that means," said one adviser to local wealthy families.

>"This is another Ritz, through different means," said another banker working on the deal</comment>


Gone, the App to Sell Your Old Junk, Acquires Yardsale/FOBO (YC S11) - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2015/10/19/gone-the-app-to-sell-your-old-junk-acquires-yardsale-inc-fobo/ <comment><USER2> From CrunchBase, Gone had only raised $1.12M in seed capital, which makes me wonder what capital they actually used to acquire Yardsale. (Or, more likely, it's an acquihire.)</comment>


Using Machine Learning to Explore Neural Network Architecture - <AUTHOR> https://research.googleblog.com/2017/05/using-machine-learning-to-explore.html <comment><AUTHOR> Hook: Google made an AI that they're using to help design other AIs. It worse or as good as the Google human experts.

This feels like an important moment.</comment>


Show HN: 8kB router for React with route transition and middleware support - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/eatthatpie/react-router <comment><AUTHOR> Hey guys!

Recently, I've been working on an app in react and have reached the point where I could use some non-invasive and lightweight router.

So I created this.

I am not a big fan of big piles of dependencies so I tried to minimize them as much as I could (I ended up with one).

This is not production ready and there are still some issues.

Do you think this is the right direction?</comment>


Have you considered exposing yourself? - <AUTHOR> https://www.indiehackers.com/post/1128d2aca8 <comment><AUTHOR> Cross-post from Indie Hackers:

No, not like that! I'm talking about that visceral feeling of getting yourself out there, of being vulnerable and outside of your comfort zone, in person or in front of a camera. Just you, the real you, and the tides of the Internet; dropping Internet cliches of pseudonyms, handles, cat GIFs and avatars. You do this to promote yourself, your product or some part of the ecosystem that you dedicate your life to.

For this I recently took part in a live stream (as in, a real-time broadcast, gulp) chat/interview with Darko Fabijan, co-founder of Semaphore CI ([https://semaphoreci.com](https://semaphoreci.com)), as part of their Semaphore Uncut series where they discuss IndieHackers favourite topic(s): the problems that we face as software industry professionals, how we're solving them, and what we're working on that excites.

For our session, we chatted about our experiences and passions as founders, about building Enterprise-class SaaS products, about how package management (the domain of Cloudsmith, [https://cloudsmith.io](https://cloudsmith.io)) integrates with CI/CD, and what's coming up next for both of us - You can watch it the full thing here (with a podcast to follow):

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHLy0IV4Yq8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHLy0IV4Yq8)

It was a pleasure chatting with Darko, although it was my first experience doing a live stream. Darko was obviously a lot more practiced, calm and measured than I was; he was fantastic and I can only thank him for directing the conversation smoothly. Having watched it back I think I managed to just about get away with it externally, but internally I'm a maelstrom of nerves. Certainly my domain is at a keyboard and not as a natural orator, but we all know here that practice makes perfect.

Apart from one or two brain blips, it went well; I didn't articulate about package management patterns and advice in the way that I would have liked. We had a followup conversation that was much smoother, as is typical, and I'm hoping to add some of that to the podcast. As is typical for anything that's live, we also had a bit of meltdown pre-stream with the streaming software and Skype, which both decided to crash just as we started to broadcast. Maybe they'll release an "off-cuts" series of bloopers in the future.

Overall though, great fun and extremely worthwhile; I would definitely recommend it as a soapbox. If not for your product, then for you personally. Do it to better yourself. Do it to grow. Do it because you can do it. Although I'm well-versed with talking to customers and doing demos, these are targetted/pointed "scenarios" that play out similarly each time. This though, this pushed me to the edge of my abilities. Would I do it again? Absolutely, and I will. Watch this space.

So Hacker News, my actual question is:

What have you done recently where you exposed the real you?

Did it work? Tell us more, and give us a link (if you can). Be polite. :-)</comment>


Defeating Amazon Kindle Book Filename Obfuscation - <AUTHOR> http://mikecanex.wordpress.com/2010/10/03/defeating-amazon-kindle-book-filename-obfuscation/

<comment><USER2> I don't have any kindle books I can try it with but what if you open the book file in a hex editor? Or use a grep of the directory full of binary file's contents to locate the book? Are they encrypted?</comment>


End Pay Bumps for Iowa Teachers with Master's Degrees - <AUTHOR> https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/opinion/editorials/2018/03/01/end-pay-raises-iowa-cheating-teachers-masters-degrees/377253002/ <comment><USER2> How about: pay all teachers well. Instead of using 'no Masters' degree; less qualified' as an excuse to pay half of all teachers badly.</comment>


Ask HN: How to build the next Facebook or Google with anonymous user data - <AUTHOR>

Is it possible to build the next killer startup using some kind of pin number or pass phrase authentication without the use of personal information, or minimal personal information.<p>I just went over to foursquare to check it out and they want all kinds of personal information to log in.  This is the same as any other social networking site as expected but such a disappointment. <comment><USER2> I've considered this problem, even built a product to address it. A difficulty is that if its anonymous users won't know who there friends are and if you add a pin exchange system you are creating excessive difficulty to your friending system.

If you figure out a way to get around not knowing who other people are on the network while still being able to find your friends then you will be one step closer, but you will also have to figure out a system that is simple enough to be comparable to the easy of adding friends on Facebook.

After solving those problems, good luck getting over the network affect of Facebook's already established network.

Personally I think you need to look forward instead of backward, Facebook and Google products already exist and have an established user base, the next big thing on the internet isn't going to be a remake of what already exists, it will be something NEW.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree with what you said about the next Facebook or Google. I should have specified metaphorically speaking or the same league based on user numbers. Thank you so much for your comment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Umm... most sites offer the ability to login using an username and password. I don't see what mainstream problem you're trying to solve here.. most people dun care about stuff like this

<comment><AUTHOR> A username and password is great. To get that you have to fill out a bunch of personal information that most people do not have time for or want to fill out. Soon a person will have 20 email accounts tied to 20 different Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter accounts. I guess my goal was to find out how a single piece of information could be used to login to many different sites similar to OpenID or single sign on and be successful. Thank you so much for your comment.</comment></comment>


Ask YC: Does anyone get any value from mind mapping? - <AUTHOR>

I've dismissed mind mapping as a fairly pointless excercise having tried it on several occasions and found it to be not much more use than a fairly messy way to organise your ideas. The thing is, I keep stumbling into people and books who swear by it and sing all sorts of praises. I'm interested, does it not suit certain types of people or am I missing something here? Do you guys find it to be useful and if so would you mind sharing how? Cheers Ads <comment><USER2> To be honest, I was very sceptical of them at first as well; however, now I have my mind mapping software load at start-up - that is how much I need it. I put everything related to my ideas in it: links, notes, images, videos, pdf's, etc. One thing that you have to be careful of is that the maps for ideas can quickly grow to become huge, and I have now found it more beneficial to split large maps into smaller ones and just link through to them. They are also really useful if you have more than one idea on the go. Good software will allow you to set-up different styles too; this can be useful for simple flow diagrams.

</comment><comment><USER3> Mindmaps have been an invaluable tool for me to organize my thoughts. They're less restrictive than simple down-the-page tree hierarchy notes, more understandable at a glance, and keep ideas connected. They've been most useful when I've been trying to grasp really big ideas that take multiple lines of thought.

It's not a tool for providing fully-detailed notes. They've been most useful for helping people who already _know_ the subject matter better _understand_ it.

</comment><comment><USER4> Personally, I find the idea of concept mapping to be much more 'useful' than mind mapping as I don't like having 1 big idea stuck in the middle of a map. However, to organize your thoughts in a not strictly linear format, there are worse ways than mind maps.

Also, having the ability to expand/collapse branches of the tree make it fairly useful for organization of projects or for GTD systems. This is not something easily mimicked with other note taking/text tools.

</comment><comment><USER5> "The thing is, I keep stumbling into people and books who swear by it and sing all sorts of praises."

Religious people do that do but they don't impress me.

</comment><comment><USER6> For what it's worth, I see it as nothing more than an outline that pines to be a spider chart. It's foolish to say one form of personal organization is better than another if your aim is to convince other people of the same thing. Do whatever works for you.

In my case, so long as I have things written down, I'm good.

</comment><comment><USER7> I use it for brainstorming. It allows me to effectively operate in both "sparking off lots of quickly-forgotten ideas" and in "elaborating in depth" mode.</comment>


Amsung Preparing Wristwatch as It Races Apple for Sales - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-03-19/samsung-preparing-wristwatch-as-it-races-apple-for-sales.html

<comment><USER2> Damn, that Amsung sure is working hard for it's ales.</comment>


How to free up space on Android device - <AUTHOR> https://techengage.com/free-up-space-on-android-device/ <comment><AUTHOR> That's the best thing for Android users who are facing memory issues on their devices. Try it.</comment>


The shadow of a contrail - <AUTHOR> http://cliffmass.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/contrail-shadow.html

<comment><USER2> I have once seen exactly this effect - it's quite remarkable when seen for real, and took some time to figure out what was happening.</comment>


Why I'm Worried About Google - <AUTHOR> https://slate.com/technology/2018/10/google-is-losing-users-trust.html <comment><USER3> For some reason this was also a breaking point for me. I've switched to Firefox and Duck Duck Go. It's a small thing, but boy do you start to feel like a second rate citizen fast. The state of extensions on Firefox is a mess. I can get the usual privacy extensions easily enough, but things like using media keys to control videos playing in the back ground. Or how in the phone app of Firefox you need to pull up the side menu to refresh instead of just pulling the page down. It's all small stuff, but it adds up.

But despite this, and the lower quality search results of DDG, I'm still going to push forward with degooglifying my stuff. But I'm in deep. Drive, keep, Gmail, photos, hell I'm even typing this on a pixel 2. It's gonna take a while.

It's been surprisingly difficult finding a good replacement for keep. If anyone has suggestions I'm open. I'll probably make the shift to protonmail to replace Gmail. Not sure what do to about drive at this time.

The issue is that Google's stuff has always been very reliable and performance (well performant enough). For example I'll often ping Google.com for a network test. Google.com is never down, it's always my hardware, or my ISP, never Google.

Im just rambling at this point, but I think somewhere in there is a point about reliability, ease of use, and security that makes Google's products so compelling. Hence why they'll be able to get away with privacy issues like this.

<comment><USER4> To replace Google Keep, you definitely want to checkout [https://standardnotes.org/](https://standardnotes.org/) \- Going back to Google Keep would make me feel like a second class citizen today...

As for the Pixel it's ok, just switch to LineageOS, but you'll want F-Droid + Yalp, or F-Droid + Aptoide if you feel adventurous (awesome project but they are just getting started.

Drive... I'd recommend Nextcloud, but then you need to choose a provider since it's decentralised. If you're in Europe I'd say woelkli.com, if you're in Asia or America sorry I don't know what to recommend but I'm sure there are good options. Nextcloud will do a lot more for you if you need (CalDAV, CardDAV, Password manager, Bookmarks manager, etc).

<comment><USER5> Standard Notes looks interesting, but isn't the root issue that these services tend to drift over time into places we don't like? Evernote, Apple Notes, etc.

Would it be better to just use something like Emacs org mode and store the data in .git?

<comment><USER6> Check out some of the principals of Standard Notes [1]. It's built to avoid this exact problem. I've been using it for over a year after migrating from OneNote and highly recommend it.

[1] [https://standardnotes.org/longevity](https://standardnotes.org/longevity)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's the closing paragraph that's the important bit:

 _In the end, this is why I'm moving away from the Google ecosystem. If nothing else works, then at least I can vote with my feet—or my fingertips._

Google have set their path, so it will take effort for them to deviate from it. The best way to show them that the effort is worthwhile is to affect their bottom line by reducing your use of their services. And maybe you'll find that the competitors are still there and pretty good.

<comment><USER8> Firefox is fine and DuckDuckGo is good enough by now.

Firefox has the added bonus that it doesn't implement a two tier cookie system. Of which one tier cannot be deleted.

This, in combination with the new and improved "sign-in-convenience" convinced me that Google is exactly as dirty as any other tech company and should be avoided like the plague, wherever possible.

<comment><USER9> DuckDuckGo is mostly a skin on Bing search results. By using it, you're saying you trust Microsoft more than Google. If that's your intent, cool, but you're not really getting away from the big tech companies by doing this.

<comment><USER10> Hardly. DuckDuckGo claims not to share my information or searches with Microsoft. I trust DuckDuckGo (not Microsoft) to keep their word.

The fact that DDG sources information about the internet from Microsoft is unimportant. I'm concerned about my personal information, not large scale manipulation of search results.

<comment><USER11> In that case you could use [http://www.startpage.com](http://www.startpage.com) \- it's a wrapper around Google, and your information isn't shared with them.

<comment><USER12> I would use this if it weren't so darn slow.

I've tried searx instances as well, but couldn't find one that functioned consistent to my liking.

<comment><USER13> Recently I deactivated Javascript on Startpage (with uBO) and surprisingly it suddenly loads fast.

Believe it or not they are injecting all kinds of ad related JS.

I am even questioning their sincerity, since the page is badly optimized for usage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > But it brings users within an accidental click of sharing their bookmarks > and browsing history with Google.

It's two clicks, you need to be really explicit about it. The first click opens a huge "You're about to turn on sync" dialog, where you have to click "Yes, I'm in" again.

I don't disagree with the general sentiment, but the article isn't factually correct. It's also by the same person who misunderstood the recent chrome changes and wrote a long blog post triggered by them misunderstanding what was going on ([https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/gyny83/google- chr...](https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/gyny83/google-chrome-sync- privacy)).

<comment><USER14> Could you tell me what claims in my post were incorrect? So far nobody at Google has disputed them, just pointed out that they don't activate sync (which my blog post already stipulates.)

<comment><USER9> "Google developers claim this will not actually start synchronizing your data to Google — yet"

It sounds like you got up in arms because you thought that chrome now auto- syncs when you sign in to gmail, and wrote the blog post draft. Then you learned that this isn't the case but you kept your arms up anyway, added that unsubstantiated "\- yet" and hit "publish" anyway, despite nothing really having changed.

(Disclaimer 1: I used to work for google, so I'm likely biased to give them more benefit of doubt. Disclaimer 2: This is a shared HN account (the password isn't exactly hard to guess), so not all of its comments or posts are written by me.)

<comment><USER14> If you look up my Twitter account, you'll see that I had a long discussion with multiple Chrome engineers days prior to writing the post, and there they explained the sync distinction to me. The post clearly explains the situation (mandatory login, but not sync) and articulates several reasons why I think it's still an issue even if Google doesn't auto-synchronize — a guarantee I don't feel confident relying on in the future. In those various Twitter threads I also identified several problems with the Chrome privacy policy, which Google had to quickly update on a Sunday as a result.

[https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green/status/10433312293267496...](https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green/status/1043331229326749697?s=20)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I have already begun to vote (against Google) with my feet/fingertips. I realize that even if I use non-Google products/services - much like the Kevin Bacon game - I'm only so many degrees away. But still, I feel i have at least a little more agency over my data. If I do this (move away from google), and then another person does this, and then another...eventually if many more do this, there could be a dent; which would hopefully more positively influence google (AND others like google); in essence manually move Adam smith's supposed invisible hand.

</comment><comment><USER16> I've switched to Safari and DuckDuckGo last week. I can still search on google with the DuckDuckGo shortcut !g when the duck doesn't quack. I tried Firefox but it became too slow. Safari is actually pretty good, for me the main problem is that it reduced my productivity for web development (I need to get used to the safari devtools) and the lack of some browser extensions (redux devtools etc). For now, I keep switching back to chrome for web development.

<comment> move-on-by DDG's bang features are great. You might be interested in the !sp bang - <USER2> takes you to StartPage (a proxy for Google). This way you can still get the Google results without using google when DDG isn't cutting it.

<comment><USER13> I heard they still ping Google because they also have google ads on their site.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> Spartan-S63 With all of these emerging privacy concerns, it reinforces my choice to move away from the Android and Google ecosystem insofar as I can.

It reinforces my choice to embrace the Apple ecosystem. While their products aren't perfect, they do take your privacy seriously and you do pay for it. But to me, that seems like a fair trade. Additionally, they have second to none customer support, so it's going to take a company providing the same level of support (3-5 business day repairs on laptops) for me to move away from Apple.

<comment><USER17> Every post about google, facebook or privacy, there is a PR comment about Apple.

Apple doesn't care about privacy any more than google believed in "do no evil". They collect data on you just like google does. They buy data from other vendors like google does. They sell data on you.

The idea that a company who gives data to the chinese government cares about privacy is laughable.

[http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-apple- china...](http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-apple- china-20160226-story.html)

You shouldn't confine yourself to an "ecosystem" controlled by one company. Be that google or apple.

<comment><USER18> Literally nothing you said is true. Apple doesn't sell your data and they collect dramatically less data which has been proven numerous times. This is basically a cheap attempt at trolling.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The default on is a favorite ad-tech strategy; its how a lot of websites gather customer data, since most users couldn't care less that they're always signed in, always sending browsing/tracking data to other parties.

There is little regulation in online advertising; GDPR helped a lot but most ad revenues are still generated in the US. I have a feeling that some regulation would go a long way in improving the online browsing experience and prevent incidents like this, which can get tiring: every time a trusted internet company makes a privacy "error", everyone is outraged, we shame the company to getting better yadda yadda.

</comment><comment><USER20> I wonder if, in a couple of generations from now, we'll be browsing private messages, emails, browsing history, etc—all the "private" details that Google et al, have amassed—much in the same way the Stasi files are available now.

<comment><USER21> We already did with NSA : [https://opendatacity.github.io/stasi-vs- nsa/english.html](https://opendatacity.github.io/stasi-vs-nsa/english.html)

<comment><USER22> That's... Unsettling.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> As a non-native speaker, I would have expected the title to be "Why Google Worries Me".

"Worried About" sounds like it's Google who's being negatively affected by this, but that doesn't seem to be the main point of the story.

Is this a common pattern?

<comment><USER24> Your wording is certainly better than the ambiguous article title. I would write it your way too.

"I'm worried about X" _usually_ means that I'm concerned for X's welfare, but not always. It takes some context to disambiguate the phrase.

A couple of examples:

"I'm worried about that stray kitten."

"I'm worried about the lion perched in that tree."

They are both felines, but clearly in one case I'm concerned about the cat's safety, in the other case what the cat might do to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Today Google popped up a little survey in the corner of my account page, with questions like "I trust Google to keep my data private", "It's easy to find out what data Google has on me", that sort.

Answers were one-click response buttons: Strongly Agree, Agree, Neither Agree nor Disagree, Disagree, Strongly Disagree (top to bottom, in that order).

The first time I clicked "Strongly Disagree", a few questions in, the next question had the order of the answers reversed so that Strongly Agree was on bottom. Submitted an opposite sentiment before realizing what happened.

Strikes me as manipulative, like the survey really isn't so much for discovering my opinion as it is for collecting favorable ones. I wonder who will get the results, and to what end?

<comment> Paul-ish That's common in surveys. It's to see if you are paying attention.

<comment><USER25> I've noticed that with single-question responses such as Amazon's "why are you returning this" drop-down, and it makes total sense there. A consistently random arrangement means that users picking just the top answer will have no more influence on the overall report than random noise. Makes less sense when available answers are the same for each question, such that the user might have mentally cached them to avoid rereading.

However, n=1. The timing might have been coincidental.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Firefox doesn't highlight find-in-page search results on the scroll bar. Chrome does.

Am I the only person who relies on that feature daily for their work?

<comment><USER27> For me, highlighting all occurrences and ctrl/cmd+g (next) is enough. Jetbrains idea does the highlight in scrollbar but I don't find it useful.

<comment><USER26> If a method is used several times at the top of the page, and you want to find out if it's used elsewhere, without the highlights, you don't know that. You have to hit Next until you make sure it's nowhere else. With the highlights, you immediately see that the block you're looking at is it, and you can move on to a different file.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Firefox.

<comment><USER29> Firefox is looking more like a very good insurance policy going forward privacy-wise. I would like to see more open source browsers though. It feels like we are getting nearer and nearer to browser mono cultures with all the chromium clones. Maybe Ms can release edge as an opensource app with it being far behind in adoption.

<comment><USER30> There's also Brave browser by Brendan Eich. It's still very young and have issues, but it's getting better over time.

<comment><USER31> Before using Brave, you should consider if you value their business model as ethical (I don't). What they do is filter-out ads and replace them with ads of their customers.

<comment><USER13> No they filter out ads.

Then they give everyone the opportunity to use a Patreon-Style support or view Ads, optionally.

Why isn't it ethical to target big Ad-Tech middle men like Google and Facebook and increase efficiency and privacy at the same time?

<comment><USER32> The publishers didn't agree to it. Brave is not allowed to unilaterally dictate terms. If I'm going to steal from publishers, nobody should benefit, especially not some smarmy browser vendor. Similarly, if I'm going to pirate, I'm not going to pay some piracy middleman who makes up some cryptocurrency to send to the content creators.

Of Firefox, Chrome, and Brave; Brave is by far the worst browser of the bunch. It's not even pretending not to be evil, let alone trying and failing like the others.

<comment><USER13> But that's essentially was Google is doing: dictating things unilaterally.

And that's also how the web was founded. No one agreed to anything. People just started to build.

If there isn't a law against it, they are allowed to do it.

Everyone who uploads free content on the web without a paywall essentially says "take it and display it however you like".

Besides that, Brave is essentially building a sustainable model in favor of publishers. They will be very thankful.

It is ad-blocker without an alternative model that is problematic for publishers, not Brave. So I don't see why anyone besides Ad-Tech has a problem with Brave.

You conveniently ignore that most publishers desparately want to see a new model succeed, because Google and Facebook take too much of a share of the publishers. Brave takes less then Google et al., so publishers get more. That's why publishers like the Guardian are already on board.

Brave isn't free of problems, but arguing from a moral perspective isn't legitimate. So where does your hostility come from? Do you work for some big ad-tech company?

<comment><USER32> > But that's essentially was Google is doing: dictating things unilaterally

Nonsense. The publishers agreed to sell their inventory to Google, just as the movie studios agreed to license their content to Netflix or sell it on DVD.

Everything else from your post stems from this fundamental misunderstanding about how publishers monetize their content.

> That's why publishers like the Guardian are already on board.

Then it's ethical for Brave to monetize The Guardian's content. It is not ethical for it to monetize everybody else's. The same with a piracy service. If a piracy service resells content it has an agreement from the owner to resell, that's kosher. It doesn't mean that it also gets to resell everybody else's content.

> Do you work for some big ad-tech company?

No. I'm just not stupid enough to accept Eich's stupid output.

<comment><USER13> Brave does not monetize content. Everything that is monetized goes to the wallets of publishers, minus a fee.

Publishers don't "sell their inventory", since everything a website puts up on the web is essentially free. Consequently there isn't a licence involved, in contrast to your movie example. The publishers chose Google as their middle- man to make money with ads.

<comment><USER32> > Brave does not monetize content. Everything that is monetized goes to the > wallets of publishers, _minus a fee_ [emphasis added].

Your second sentence contradicts your first sentence.

> Publishers don't "sell their inventory", since everything a website puts up > on the web is essentially free.

They have spots on their web pages for advertisements that they sell to Google or other ad networks. Brave unilaterally takes those spots from the publisher for a price the publisher never agreed to.

> The publishers chose Google as their middle-man to make money with ads.

That's the point. They sold that inventory to Google, not to Brave.

<comment><USER13> Well, after all it's called user-agent, not publisher-agent ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I'm trying so hard to move my email away from Gmail. I have a paid proton account by the syncing for desktop and the mobile app is terrible. Are there any other options out there? I switched to Firefox and I love it so far.

<comment><USER34> It gets thrown around a lot and in my opinion for good reason - I've switched to Fastmail[1] myself. I've got the $5/mo account because I wanted to bring my own domains.

Had it for a while just forwarding everything to my gmail but have now cut the forwarding and switched fully. If you're in the Apple ecosystem the app I attribute to finally moving was Spark[2], which I discovered after Google announced it was killing off Inbox

[1] [https://www.fastmail.com/](https://www.fastmail.com/) [2] [https://sparkmailapp.com/](https://sparkmailapp.com/)

<comment><USER35> Doesn't spark scan your email box like GMail used to? I haven't found anything recent stating they have stopped that practice.

<comment><USER34> What does that mean? I imagine it has to scan my email if it's to provide the search functionality.

If you're hinting at something more untoward could you spell it out for me, I can't find anything that painted it with an ugly brush

<comment><USER31> A basic mail service is about IMAP (and P0P3), rather than webmail with full- text search. Searching through your mail is performed on your own computer using Thunderbird or another mail client. If your mail provider scans your email for targetting, you should switch to a paid provider where you are the customer, rather than the product.

<comment><USER34> I understand how mail works trust me, I used to manage a fleet of about 40 mail servers in a past job _shudder_

I'm sorry but these comments aren't really saying anything with any substance. If my mail provider "scans my email for targetting" \- Do you mean ad targeting? Both the mail host and the app are paid products, not ad supported.

<comment><USER31> Sorry for not being clear and stating obvious things. I just wanted to express that IMHO a mail provider has no business of scanning your email (for ad targetting or other purposes), and should not get away with this. In fact, if your email provider engages in such things, then that could be a reason for another person/org to not send you mail over that channel, which kind of defeats the purpose of email.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Google always knew that trust was very important to their long term growth and viability. It's why "Don't be evil" was their motto for so long and it actually appeared to be more than lip service. That motto is gone, and now they're actively monetizing that accumulated goodwill.

<comment><USER37> It's still in their code of conduct.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> For me breaking point was enabled by default google assistant on any Android phone. Not assistant itself, but one smaaaal feature. If you hold home button a little bit longer phone takes screenshot and uploads it to google to recognize it. That... just insane. I only wonder why no one is talking about this?

</comment><comment><USER39> I was done with Facebook several years ago even before I knew they were complicit in the subversion of our democracy.

And recently I deleted my last Google account after moving domains, voice number and email to other providers.

These are marketing companies and you are their product. This will only get worse. Opt out now.

</comment><comment><USER40> I think it's probably possible to model credit-worthiness according to search history and site use patterns. Google's partnership with Mastercard could be something to do with that. What would be particularly irritating is if Google start showing credit offers next to product ads. Eg you look at an advert for a new iPhone and google then lets you know Mastercard will give you an immediate credit line for an impulse purchase. Marketing strategy is obviously focused on overcoming your will power to buy things you want but don't need. One of our last lines of defence is: I can't afford that right now...Mastercard and by axiom Google profit when you don't think like that.

<comment><USER41> From: [https://adwords.googleblog.com/2017/05/powering-ads-and- anal...](https://adwords.googleblog.com/2017/05/powering-ads-and-analytics- innovations.html)

 _" even if your business doesn't have a large loyalty program, you can still measure store sales by taking advantage of Google's third-party partnerships, which capture approximately 70% of credit and debit card transactions in the United States"_

Who knows what other 3rd party data they correlate...

<comment><USER40> Wow.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I don't think anything's actually changed in terms of how you can be tracked, it's just being made obvious to you. If you don't want your browsing linked to your gmail, use different profiles or use a private browsing window.

<comment><USER43> > If you don't want your browsing linked to your gmail, use different profiles > or use a private browsing window.

It still requires a mental effort to make sure your information is not linked. One small mistake (e.g. visit site in wrong browser window) and all your previous effort is wasted.

Therefore, we need not only technical solutions. We need companies to change. Perhaps by an update of the law (GDPR for US), and if this doesn't work then perhaps we should even consider a ban on personalized advertising to make sure that these companies have no incentive to trick the user into disclosing personal information.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> I have an understanding on both sides. To keep our privacy is something we initially feel should be our decisions. However, besides companies buying Google services, most individuals do not pay for Google services. Chrome, Gmail, Google search, are monetarily free for us. We are paying with our information. If you use the service then you are saying yes to allow companies to enact these dark patterns, ethics aside. One could argue if the internet is a right, but that's another day

Although it would be helpful for some if Google laid it out transparently to individuals who do not have the technical slop to understand what they are "losing"

</comment><comment><USER45> Google is a brilliant company but ad based business models have weird incentive structures. When your primary customer isn't actually using your product it makes product decisions harder. I don't think Google means harm but it does seem like they are making some questionable decisions. Zuck was smart to remove ads on FB even though it cost FB lots of ad revenue. Their web browser change had no obvious benefit for users compare to how creepy it is to have gmail forced on you by the web browser. they might have some hidden strategy that will eventually benefit chrome users but it's not clear what that is

<comment><USER46> I still see advertisements on Facebook. Even more so, in fact. They now have ads that will cut in while you're watching a video.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> To me it sounds like we need a Libre Office of Google Docs (web based). Everyone is worried about tracking and privacy, but what about the productivity tools? If you quit Google, you also abandon the GSuite - which is quite nice.

<comment><USER48> There is an online office suite based on Libre Office. [https://www.collaboraoffice.com/collabora- online/](https://www.collaboraoffice.com/collabora-online/)

<comment><USER47> It's not web-based.

<comment><USER48> Link updated, I thought it'd be clear enough I'm referring to the "online" product.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> The fact that they added a setting means nothing. Settings in Chrome seem to randomly (but maybe not randomly?) get rolled back from time to time. Are you going to check the setting every day?

</comment><comment><USER50> I really want to get away from using a pixel (or Android) phone, but an equivalent iPhone costs literally twice as much. Is it worth it for privacy alone?

<comment><USER51> Maybe not relevant to you, but my Pixel 2 XL was already $900-ish, so switching this year to the iPhone XS wasn't a big deal.

I will say a brand new iPhone 8 is also currently $599 (and the 7s is even cheaper) and will likely get updates for the next 4 years or so.

I've used Android since the original Android phone (T-Mobile G1/HTC Dream). It felt hypocritical, however, to have switched away from most of Google in my personal life and still give them access to me through my phone. I dislike Apple for many reasons, but I'd much rather deal with those issues than continue to use Google.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> I just want a company that respects me and my data. Likewise, I want tools that behave in predictable and understandable ways. Google does not produce these kinds of products anymore. The small change in workflow with a different tool is minimal, the gain in quality from working with companies that treat me with respect is immeasurable.

</comment><comment><USER53> As soon as I can find a decent, stable job I'm going to start degoogling more of my life. Unfortunately, I have a Pixel 2 and a Pixelbook (unfortunately because Google, otherwise they're great), and I don't have the money to replace them right now. I do use Firefox and DDG on my desktop though. I really like them.

</comment><comment><USER54> I've dumped Chrome over Firefox now. First time I've changed browser in about 10 years.

</comment><comment><USER55> Chrome turns on the fans on my old macbook air which is an audio reminder to only use it occasionally for specific tasks.

My paranoid side makes me wonder if all the fan activity is because it's so busy phoning home all the time 'sharing data'?

<comment><USER55> My comment was tongue in cheek. I do feel Chrome is v bloated these days though. Opera and Brave seem to run much more cleanly and faster

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> What is Google's end goal here? More accurate targetted advertising?

<comment><USER57> My guess? An unholy alliance between government and private industry which allows each to get away with things the other can't. For example, squelching free speech can be done by a private company with practically no impediments. Meanwhile, governments want to eavesdrop on everyone and develop dossiers on everyone because that's how you control people. Corporations are doing that for marketing purposes, but the intelligence agencies are right there in that data now, too.

Google always had a CIA connection. You do the math on how this works and what it means now that you can see it all unfolding like everyone else can. They want total control over your mind and barring that, they want total control over your behavior one way or another.

What can't corporations do? They can't force people to buy their products or pay their bills. Governments can, though. It's actually the only tool in the box. Corporations would love to gather and coalesce the information and then have the jackboots do the violent stuff to suppress and subjugate. The very definition of fascism.

<comment><USER58> What CIA connection?

<comment><USER59> [https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/how-the-cia-made- goo...](https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/how-the-cia-made- google-e836451a959e)

[https://pando.com/2015/07/01/cia-foia-google- keyhole/](https://pando.com/2015/07/01/cia-foia-google-keyhole/)

Search "In-Q-Tel Google" for more.

<comment><USER58> Jesus man, that's some tenuous connectivity. The first article's really trying hard to link investment capital flows into some larger conspiracy. The second is about generalizing mapping tech originally developed for surveillance satellites to be used for publicly available imagery, and the purchaser's obligations to fulfill the contracts of the purchased company. Both are results of the same underlying issue: defense & intelligence run as essentially monopsonies for the technology they care about, so they have to pay to have it developed. Sometimes their result is generally useful (better search of documents), sometimes it isn't, and sometimes it just isn't for a while (until publicly available imagery is widespread enough to cover a large map).

If articles like these are the basis for your conclusions, really take a step back. I went down this route a little some years ago, and really just felt miserable for no good reason.

Now the next part of my suggestion is going to sound rough for a second, but please take it seriously. Check out a book called "The Information Diet" by Clay Johnson. After reading (it's a really good book, and helped me a lot in avoiding this sort of stuff), watch a ridiculous conspiracy show on TV. My favorite recently was about whether mermaids were real.

Listen to the techniques they use in there -- By saying "A relates to B" and "B relates to C", they ask "Does A relate to C?" Even though A and B relate only through something remote, and similarly for B and C. But, imply a conspiracy and suddenly the remote links seem like a cabal of some sort. It's a manipulative practice to get eyeballs and clicks, and we have to identify it as toxic before we start taking it in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> This honestly makes me sad. I really did think google was different

</comment><comment><USER61> I think Firefox should rollout its own search engine

</comment><comment><USER54> I can't read the article becaue their GDPR opt out is (perhaps deliberately) broken, is there a summary?

<comment><USER62> [https://web.archive.org/web/20181003121506/https://slate.com...](https://web.archive.org/web/20181003121506/https://slate.com/technology/2018/10/google- is-losing-users-trust.html)

<comment><USER54> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> Do you think we'll ever move away from search engines entirely? What's stopping us from using alternative means of searching and what would these look like?

<comment><USER64> I don't have an answer, but I have trouble picturing a better option that's both egalitarian and actually gives the best search results.

The closest thing I can think of almost feels regressive -- sites like HackerNews and Reddit. What I mean is asking a question there or searching for threads where other users have asked a similar question. Often the links provided in those threads are less likely to be provided by advertisers and actually just promoted by users. That's often where I find the best answers for things.

But to access those threads I still use Google or DDG because the Reddit search function is terrible.

Other options, like AOL Keywords (if you remember those) basically just directly link to paid providers.

I guess it's possible that there is a fair and balanced web crawler, but to give true freedom and not guide the user to specific the best option still seems to be a search engine.

Maybe the answer isn't alternative forms of searching but rather alternative ways to show the results? Right now they look like a ranking list. Maybe they could be displayed in a map or another form?

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> This bothers me a little bit

> By clicking "Agree," you consent to Slate's Terms of Service and Privacy > Policy and the use of technologies such as cookies by Slate and our partners > to deliver relevant advertising on our site, in emails and across the > Internet, to personalize content and perform site analytics. Please see our > Privacy Policy for more information about our use of data, your rights, and > how to withdraw consent.

I need to consent to have your website show me "relevant advertising across the Internet". If you can't take my privacy seriously, how should I take your concerns about Google and privacy seriously?

<comment><USER66> You speak as though an author on Slate.com has any actual say in what Slate.com does to set policy. It would be the same as if you read this article on any other "news site" \- so why would you dismiss the author's concerns about privacy? Simply because they chose to use Slate.com as the outlet for their statement?

<comment><USER65> Just like he has alternatives available for Google products that respect _his_ privacy more. He has alternatives available for slate that respect _my_ privacy more. He simply chooses to dismiss _my_ concerns about privacy by picking slate. Why can't I dismiss _his_ concerns about privacy then?

<comment><USER67> > He simply chooses to dismiss _my_ concerns about privacy by picking slate. > Why can't I dismiss _his_ concerns about privacy then?

I don't see how that follows. Even if the author were positively malicious, why would you ignore their concerns about privacy, which affect you and everyone else? It's a non-sequitur.

<comment><USER65> I'm not saying his concerns are invalid just because he posts them on slate. I'm not saying his concerns are invalid at all. I would be able to criticize the validity of his concerns if I were able to read them. I have no choice but to ignore them because I'm not prepared to pay the price of my personal data. And I find that quite ironic, since apparently they are about protecting online privacy in the first place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> Google is a for-profit enterprise. Currently the company has optimized its products for what users want: reliability, security, ease of use. The (sad) fact is that users tend to undervalue their own privacy and data because a single person's data is not very valuable. They don't see the power of aggregate data.

The title is a little misleading because it's not Google who choosing this balance between privacy and convenience. We, the users, are making this choice. This is what concerns me.

If users choose privacy over convenience, Google would happily oblige. I'm confident of this seeing the way that the "organic" movement has taken hold.</comment>


AWS IAM Policies in a Nutshell - <AUTHOR> http://start.jcolemorrison.com/aws-iam-policies-in-a-nutshell/ <comment><USER2> Q: do you apply policy on roles, resources, or both? How do you maintain mental sanity?

We use 1 base policy + 1 policy/role, and so for each role it's easy to see what are its permissions.

We have no policy on resources, so it's hard, e.g., given a bucket to know who has access to it. We're building tooling for that.

edit: grammar/typos

<comment><USER3> I work on multiple AWS installations and we use the approach you describe of only defining IAM Policies and avoiding resource-based policies where possible. The one exception is KMS Keys, which require a KMS Key Policy.

That being said, I've found IAM's power impressive but ultimately complex. If you're really serious about isolating users from certain resources, separate AWS accounts for each environment may well be the best way to do this. This way, you can grant "admin" access to users in your "stage" AWS account, they get all the permissions they need to do their work, and have no permissions to the more sensitive "prod" account.

<comment><USER2> Out of curiosity, do you keep 1-1 mapping among users/groups/roles(/resources?) across different accounts? Because that's another possible source of complexity.

<comment><USER3> We ([http://gruntwork.io](http://gruntwork.io)) are still establishing best practices around managing multiple AWS accounts, but so far having a single "admin" account where all IAM Users are managed seems like a best practice. You can then implement a nifty dropdown that allows IAM Users to easily switch accounts. [1] I'm not sure about how IAM Groups fits into this.

For IAM Roles, we use Infrastructure-as-Code (Terraform) to create all those anyway, so I still prefer to create those in the AWS account that contains the resources to which they apply.

[1] [https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/enable-a-new- feature-i...](https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/enable-a-new-feature-in- the-aws-management-console-cross-account-access/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Just for anyone wondering, as per joshpadnick's great suggestions, you can specify other AWS account's users/roles via Principal in a policy as well. Just use the other AWS account in the ARN. edit: if you want to do so via policies that is

I'd be interested to see your team's workflow for multiple accounts @joshpadnick.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> There's been lots of griping about AWS and IAM, which I'm sure is at least in part due to AWS' popularity, but how does it compare to permissions management from other major cloud providers, e.g. google and azure?

<comment><USER5> Haven't dealt with Google much but Azure and AWS have good and bad points with identity.

Azure is much easier to define RBAC access for individual resources in the portal, but doesn't give a unified view of what a user has access to (that I've found).

AWS IAM provides a much more consistent experience across services - I have a key pair or role and that key pair/role works across all the AWS services according to the policies defined. Compare to Azure Storage Account access for example.

AWS IAM can get frustrating when you take into consideration interaction between things like user policy, bucket policy and VPC endpoint policy when trying to access S3 from an EC2 instance in a VPC.

AWS IAM policies can make it difficult to express some use cases, mostly relying on tags and the console doesn't support tags on resource creation for many services. I've also run into bugs in cloudformation where it ignores or doesn't support putting tags on redshift clusters, meaning the only way I could give someone access to create a redshift cluster with tags was either through the CLI or APIs directly.

AWS IAM Roles and Instance Profiles are amazing for granting access to EC2 instances, and they added similar functionality for containers in ECS recently also.

Overall I like the AWS approach better because I find it much easier to implement as code and also probably because I've been using it for much longer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> When you switch roles in the console, you don't have to enter in your credentials. So, if I get access to the account, I have access to all the roles. So, what additional protection is provided by separating out permissions into roles that are trivially accessible?

I can see how if conditions are added to the AccessRole action, such that I can only switch roles based on time of day or IP address, then that might be useful (although those conditions could be applied directly to policies as well).

So, absent the conditions mention above (which is still questionable), is there any point to using roles in the console?

<comment><USER7> This is where users come in. You should be setting up users other than the root user which have significantly fewer permissions. We essentially use our root user to set up the account and then throw away the MFA key (not really, but you get the idea).

As for roles themselves in the console, those become useful when you're using federation: [https://aws.amazon.com/iam/details/manage- federation/](https://aws.amazon.com/iam/details/manage-federation/)

This allows you to use your company's own identity provider instead of IAM users (or in conjunction with). In this scenario, users access the console by assuming a role. You essentially say "Users within this Active Directory group are allowed to access the console by assuming this role."

This process uses Active Directory to communicate with STS to give you a temporary token allowing you to assume the role: [http://docs.aws.amazon.com/STS/latest/APIReference/API_Assum...](http://docs.aws.amazon.com/STS/latest/APIReference/API_AssumeRole.html)

The diagram on this page provides a nice overview of how that all ends up working: [https://aws.amazon.com/code/4001165270590826](https://aws.amazon.com/code/4001165270590826)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Thank you for posting this.

</comment><comment><USER9> Very nice explanation. Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER10> Isn't the "Principal" element only a part of S3 permission policies, not IAM? In IAM the "principal" is implied, it's the user to which the policy is attached. Edit: I see you explain well into the article, but I believe the title of the article could be improved.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I mention that in the "Who" aka Principal section. It's like that for any resource based policy (i.e. like S3). So IAM Users/groups have it implied, but Resource based ones like S3 do not have it implied.

<comment><USER10> The thing is, an S3 bucket policy is not an IAM policy. It's a bucket policy. They use the same language, format, and syntax, but they are not called the same thing.

<comment><AUTHOR> Indeed, they're just a "resource" policy. They're still talked about and share the so many same attributes that it became more character saving to say AWS IAM Policies vs. AWS IAM, S3, SNS, SQS, Glacier Policies =P</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: RSA encryption explained with demo in Google Colab - <AUTHOR> https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1ccyVKHHXFczk_3u5WoV-3OGtyS-FJnO3?usp=sharing <comment><AUTHOR> A detailed explaination and python based implementation to understand RSA encryption algorithm. This is not to be used a production code as it uses a pseudo-random number generator.</comment>


Show HN: A Javascript quiz that explores how javascript scopes its variables - <AUTHOR> http://madebyknight.com/javascript-scope/

<comment><USER2> Since your quiz applies equally to any JavaScript engine, why not replace "window" with "this"?

See [https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/JavaScript/Referenc...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/JavaScript/Reference/Operators/this)

> In the global context (outside of any function), this refers to the global > object, whether in strict mode or not.

</comment><comment><USER3> Yeah, I agree with the other comments -- the greatest JS scoping gotcha involves unbound methods.

        var o = { a:13, add:function(b){ return this.a + b; } };
        o.add(42); // => `55`
        var add = o.add;
        add(42); // => `NaN`, because `this.a` is (presumably) `undefined`
        var a = 3;
        add(42); // => `45`, because `this.a` is resolved to `window.a`, as `window` is the global variable used as the method context when we call an unbound function (which is stupid (`null` would have been a way better choice, Brandon)).

This is the sort of thing you learn and just get over to reach the level of javascript mastery. Yeah, some things are silly. But you know what? You only get to write one language to access the dynamic web.

<comment><USER3> For unknown reasons, ARC has truncated my code-comment. It read:

// => `45`, because `this.a` is resolved to `window.a`, as `window` is the global variable used as the method context when we call an unbound function (which is stupid (`null` would have been a way better choice, Brandon)).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> You might want to consider including something about how passing objects between functions can be by reference or value for object oriented Javascript programming.

<comment><USER5> JavaScript only supports pass by value, @ author: Nice quiz, I failed the last one, it would be nice to add more quizes and test users knowledge of function scoping, just like the commenter said, since functions can be passed around like objects, function scoping is another tricky one to master for beginners.

<comment><USER6> not true. boolean, strings, numbers (int, float) are passed by value, while Objects, Arrays and Functions are passed by reference!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> veryvery superb quiz! I like the way you mix questions with a tutorial, not just "HA, you suck, wrong", but really give detailed explanations, even when the correct answer is given. Maybe you can add some questions with strange return values or some "what happens if you modify the passed-in object within a function?";

function(){ var fn2=function(){} if (fn2()){ alert("nobody ever calls me"); } else{ alert("stop calling me!"); } } (no return value is a falsy value)

var data={a:"cow"}; function update(obj){ obj.a="fish"; } update(data); alert(data.a); //"fish"

vs.

var data="cow"; function update(str){ str="fish"; } update(data); alert(data); //"cow"

keep up the great work!

</comment><comment><USER7> Excellent quiz to test your knowledge on global and local variables.

</comment><comment><USER8> Good & Informative quiz....Especially the tutorials section.

</comment><comment><USER9> Nice Quiz. I just attempted with all right :)</comment>


Sleep quality and stress level matter far, far more than the languages you use - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/hillelogram/status/1119709859979714560 <comment><USER2> OOP and dynamic languages stress me out and cause me to lose sleep. So... I agree and disagree.</comment>


Invaluable Resource for Growth Hackers - <AUTHOR> https://www.growthhacker.tv/signup/?r=eb65e920

<comment><AUTHOR> We're boot-strapping and love this resource! Warning: this is a referral link BUT (hear our plea) if just 4 other people subscribe with this link we can get the service for free (every single penny helps us right now). You can also save 25%. Every one of these videos has helped us in someway but my fav so far is [https://www.growthhacker.tv/jason- cohen](https://www.growthhacker.tv/jason-cohen). I hope it helps others too!</comment>


How much are Bitcoins predicted to be worth by 2020, 2025, 2030,? - <AUTHOR> How much are Bitcoin, Litecoin and Ethereum coins predicted to be worth by 2020, 2025, 2030, etc.?<p>over 100000$ or more ? or under 100$ or less? <comment><USER2> most likely zero as by that time we probably have moved on to a next generation distributed ledger</comment>


What should I choose: Swift or Machine learning? - piotr-yuxuan I mean, what would be best for my mind-shaping? What would be funniest? What would make best effect on my résumé?
In passed twelve months I learnt Clojure, automata theory (applied it through regex and grammars with instaparse) and logic programming (with core.logic)
I thank you deeply in advance for your answers! <comment><AUTHOR> Machine learning. Very broad and educational. It'd take 15 minutes, then 3 weeks to learn Swift, and then all you'd have is another language you're familiar with. Actually scratch that. Go long on machine learning WHILE ALSO skimming through Swift docs such that you'll be familiar with both.

</comment><comment><USER2> Not a fair apples to apples comparison.

Swift is a programming language. A form of expressing your ideas.

ML on the other hand is a full fledged field with active research going on.

<comment> piotr-yuxuan Thanks for your answer.

Yeah I know that, maybe I could even use Swift to do ML. The thing is, like everybody I have limited time and learning ability so I'm thinking about what I should use my time for.

Actually I believe ML will shape my mind but maybe Swift could do this also. About money, not sure what a recruiter would value the most.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> You could learn swift in about 3-6 mo to be productive. People have spent entire careers in ML. So it totally depends on your commitment level.

</comment><comment><USER4> ML

<comment> piotr-yuxuan Thanks for your answer; would you be kind enough to elaborate on that? :-)</comment></comment>


Freemium is Not a Business Model - <AUTHOR> http://www.markevanstech.com/2008/10/17/freemium-is-not-a-business-model/ <comment><USER2> It's making billions of dollars in the gaming industry (particularly with the play for free, pay for added content MMOs). I don't think it's the fact that the concept of "freemium" is flawed for consumers, but you need to have very compelling premium content. Just be sure you pick segments where there's a strong incentive to upgrade as a natural progression of the service.

<comment><USER3> I'm particularly curious about this market. It's definitely comparing apples to oranges, and thus this article can't really be said to speak to freemium MMOs. The market is different, the products are different, just about everything is different. I am wondering if anyone has done any in-depth research about MMO business models; working for an MMO company, it's obviously something I'm very interested in.

Most 'freemium' MMOs are Korean. I don't mean to make a generalization, but is the Korean gaming culture much more serious than the US/EU one, and thus this model is much more successful in Korea? Many (if not all) of these Korean MMOs are available in the US, but I have no idea if the nonpaying/paying gamer ratio is better or worse, and those figures might unfortunately be private.

<comment><USER2> I don't think it's apples to oranges, personally. Unless you mean "examples where it does work" versus "examples where it doesn't work" as a business model.

I'm no expert here, but these guys seem to believe addon and premium content will be the main business driver for MMOs long-term and try to make that point: [http://www.techcrunch50.com/2008/conference/presenter.php?pr...](http://www.techcrunch50.com/2008/conference/presenter.php?presenter=93#video)

<comment><USER4> Freemium in MMOs is different from most freemium implementations that startups have. In the game case you have an extremely low barrier to entry, as well as a social incentive to buy into the premium aspect of the product.

With something like, say, the poll service from the article, there's no social incentive to upgrade, and the cost of doing so is non-trivial (more so than, say, a $1 sword).

There's a difference between "hey, now that you're hooked, buy this $1 thing" and "hey, now that you're hooked, buy a $20/month subscription"

<comment><USER2> That sounds like an argument to change how to make freemium more successful-- it doesn't sound like a counter-argument against the fact that they can be.

Why don't more freemium services allow one-shot addon purchases instead of subscriptions?

I know one of our sites is going to help soothe the pain of purchases by buying "credits" in batches that can be spent in different ways rather than requiring a CC# every single time they want to buy something.

<comment><USER4> The other poster is right: half of the reason people BUY these things in MMOs and on the SA Forums is because of social status. I doubt many people would buy a shiny Sword of Infinite Destruction +5 in their MMO if they were the only ones who got to see it. People are by nature vain creatures, and if you give them a chance to pimp out their gear and appear more elite than the rest, it's a big bump to the incentive to purchase.

This works great in social networks or game worlds - not so great if you're running a site that does poll aggregation technologies.

<comment><USER3> I concur; if you study MMOs carefully (okay, not even that carefully), you will notice that the most successful ones tend to be loot-oriented ones, and after a player has hit the level cap, the reason they keep paying their subscription is e-loot, and to a lesser extent, e-friends.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _If there is a foothold for freemium, it's the corporate market where customers are willing to pay for high-quality services as well as customer support. This is why companies such as 37Signals and Freshbooks have thrived because enough customers want more than freemium services._

Which means "yes, it is a business model."

The key to Freemium is the same key to crippleware: give away enough that a user can experience enough of the product to acknowledge its value. Keep enough back that you can charge for it. That balance is hard, but not impossible.

The strange thing that I've found over the years is that the balance requires _creativity_ to pull off. Using a magic number (>1000 accts, >100 friends, >2G of space) is a mark of being lazy. The question whether you can offer substantially _new_ abilities to the customer. Something that makes the product different in a way that isn't a simple extrapolation of what it already does.

</comment><comment><USER6> As I understand the article it suggests that the free side of freemium is feature full enough for almost all users leaving very few users willing to pay. Isn't this then just a case of balancing the features in the free and pay versions so that a larger chunk of users would need a entry level pay version for doing anything beyond the basics?

<comment><USER7> There is always a competitor willing to give more away for free with the bet that they can make up for it once they control the market.

This is for the WEB though where cost/user is low and cloning a product is easy. Other platforms are vastly different.

<comment><USER8> In a time when VC money is scarce, fewer can play the "accumulate users and charge in the unforeseen future when all your competitors have died". In this type of market, freemium is a tough play.

Which is nice. I prefer old-fashioned biz models where you put out a product and quickly find out if people are willing to pay for it.

<comment><USER7> Seeing if people are willing to pay for it is still a great metric. But until (if ever) the advertising bubble actually pops, extremely few web products will be best served by freemium.

I can count web freemiums that made more money than their free counterparts on half a hand.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Misleading title. Freemium IS a business model. Giving away things for free is not.

If anything, this article is a good description of how freemium can work. It seems to work well in the corporate market and it doesn't work when there are only minor differences between the free and pay versions of a product.

</comment><comment><USER10> Freemium is just another name for the old Razors/Razor Blades model.

It's all about finding the right complements of your core business that people will pay for. Whether it's an ad-free service (flickr,basecamp), access to critical resources (most every dating site), or nice software that works best w/ your hardware (iTunes on windows).

The two variables you want to track especially closely are the per customer cost of acquisition and profit per customer.

//the OP is either linkbait or just dumb

//O yeah. <http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=buckpost>

</comment><comment><USER11> I agree that there are risks involved with the freemium model, but I think there is still a lot more merit to those that use it.

I think one interesting case study of the Freemium model is iPhone games. It seems to me that most people want more than 1 or 2 levels and are willing to play only after they get a chance to test if the game is actually fun.

<comment><USER4> There's a difference between iPhone "shareware" games and freemium web businesses. After you beat the 1 or 2 levels on the iPhone game, the utility of those two levels drops of considerably... i.e. you can no longer derive much use replaying these levels.

With most freemium websites, the free service is offered perpetually, and thus the utility of keeping the free stuff stays the same as the first time you used it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The danger in the freemium business model is understanding just what features are worth paying for and which ones are not.

About 12 years ago there was a circuit-board layout program (PADS-PCB) that followed this model. The paid version started at about $900 (and went up to about $5,000 IIRC depending on features you wanted) and the free version was limited to small circuit boards and 70 components. I downloaded the free version to use in my "basement business" and never needed to upgrade: 70 components was plenty for me. Talking to a salesperson a few years later, I found out that the company lost money hand-over-foot because only relatively few companies needed to build boards larger than the freeware version could handle: the market was changing and electronic component integration was increasing so a single part could now do what a couple years before would have required 5-10 parts. Most of the companies that were happy with the free version would have had no problem paying the $900 had the free version not been available. The software was excellent and even the free version would have been worth the $900, but obviously if it did what you needed, there was no reason to pay.

</comment><comment><USER13> Flickr is the perfect example of a well worked out Freemium example. Same story for last.fm. You can do it, but I think that the features you're offering 'extra' are not just 'extra' but great and enhanced adds to the service they're already experiencing.

</comment><comment><USER14> In my experience, freemium can be a really tough sell, and it depends on who you're after as a customer. Consumers (man I hate that word) will pay extra in small amounts as evidenced by the iPhone app store, online games, etc. but I've found it can be tougher to get them to pay for something less fun- oriented. They aren't businesses, after all.

My first business distributes an open source app and sells a paid version of it. We've been in business for 7 1/2 years now and it's been my sole source of income for 7 of those (subsequent business attempts aside :). But that's targeting businesses, and not necessarily small ones either. The freemium side of open source works to a certain size in the corporate world, because of things like the perception of support. But in this case it's software as an install not a service, and so there are problems with scale.

My next business tried to sell something to individuals (ah, much better than consumers :), and that was really tough. I discovered that about 99% of our revenue was going to come from advertising, which hit a plateau and couldn't continue to grow like we needed. C'est la vie.

My newest business is again targeting business users, again with a kind of freemium model (we offer a basic free account), and I really think we might be onto something big with it this time. So it can definitely work, but it does have its own set of challenges, and sometimes they can be killer ones.

</comment><comment><USER15> _Freemium is flawed because most people don't need more features than what they can use for free._

I guess wholesale stores like Costco and Sams club are flawed because people don't _need_ more food than what they can get at a cheaper unit price. Just like buying groceries wholesale gets you the better deal by virtue of unit price, it's the same with Freemium.

Let's look at BaseCamp. BaseCamp under Mark's logic is a flawed product because no one ever manages more than one project at a time, which is what you are limited to with the free version. It only makes sense to buy in bulk what you can get for free because more often than not, you get more for what you pay for.

I don't think freemium users are missing the point of business, I think Mark Evans is missing the point of business: make money.

</comment><comment><USER16> I thought I was going to read an article about how the author tried the freemium model and it did not work, and then he switched to something else and became rich. Well, you know what they say about opinions...

</comment><comment><USER17> [http://www.pchristensen.com/blog/articles/freemium-isnt-a- bu...](http://www.pchristensen.com/blog/articles/freemium-isnt-a-business- model-its-a-marketing-and-trust-strategy/)

</comment><comment><USER7> Very true. On the web, it's not uncommon for free vs paid users to be 1,000,000 to 1. For desktop apps it may be different, but online, way over- hyped.

<comment><USER18> 5% is the normal ratio

<comment><USER7> 4.53% is the accepted ISO standard.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The title should have been: "Freemium might not be a good business model for most consumer applications". That title would have made sense...

</comment><comment><USER20> Seems to work well for Xing.</comment>


Live stock market hedge powered by Machine Learning algos - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdRgu32ap2k&feature=youtu.be

<comment><USER2> would be awesome to get to know more about the alogs you have used & the strategy you wanted to trade.</comment>


Why a developer profile will land you a job - <AUTHOR> http://blog.hackerearth.com/2014/01/developer-profile-job.html

<comment><USER2> This is a load of BS. I know _great_ developers who don't waste their time on sites like GitHub and StackOverflow (that's probably why they're great developers to begin with). I look at it like this - if a prospective company is so clueless they can't discern what a good developer is for their organization then do you want to work for them? How are they going to handle performance reviews? Look at your GitHub contributions?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi Taylor,

While you're right about the fact that many great developers aren't on the aforementioned sites, you are taking the case of exceptions.

The problem today is, for the majority of developers, who get day to day work done for products at various companies, to whom software development is just an employment, they are faced with a need to validate their skills.

This is a product for them. Most companies cannot afford the developers that you talk about and the developers probably aren't interested in working for them either.

And lastly, when a company scales, it is difficult to have hiring systems which can discern a good developer from a not so good one. Testing 100s of developers is tedious, even with SaaS products. We believe what we've built can save time, without having to compromise on skills.

But thanks for your feedback, appreciate the honesty. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Link appears to be just advertising their product

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, a useful one at that :)</comment></comment>


HN: Is Posterous blocked in China? - <AUTHOR>

Happens to be in China for 2 weeks already and I cannot get on Posterous at all.  However, I can access tumblr, wordpress, and typepad.  And no, the posterous site is not down, because at the same time I can access it via a server in US from where I am.<p>IF it is blocked (don't see why, though), then bloggers in those platforms may not want to move to posterous too fast, unless if they don't care about the Chinese audience. <comment><USER2> It's block for me too.</comment>


Why people think total nonsense is really deep - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/12/01/the-kinds-of-people-who-confuse-total-nonsense-for-something-really-deep/ <comment><USER2> So, insightful consideration lacks in the intellectually challenged and inexperienced audience.

The Bullshit Bingo phenomenon isn't new.</comment>


The Illiac IV Computer - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ILLIAC_IV <comment><USER2> I have been attempting to locate software for the Illiac IV. I corresponded with as many of the people involved with it I could easily find online and with NASA Ames (which has a history office!).

I've been looking for software such as this:

ASK - assembler for the Illiac IV on the Burroughs B5500 and later B6700

SSK - simulator for the Illiac IV on the Burroughs B5500 and later B6700

CFD - a FORTRAN like language targeted at CFD

Glypnir - ALGOL like language, likely not used at Ames

VECTORAL - vector processing language used at Ames

So far nothing has been found except the manual for CFD.

</comment><comment><USER3> > Generally considered a failure due to massive budget overruns, the design > was instrumental in the development of new techniques and systems for > programming parallel systems. In the 1980s, several machines based on ILLIAC > IV concepts were successfully delivered.

Such as it ever was. Breaking boundaries takes guts, a lot of time and resources, and is rarely appreciated in the moment for the advances generated (even if a 'failure' by original operating criteria).

</comment><comment><USER4> Article doesn't mention SILLIAC, a similar computer at Sydney University.

> _Like most of the IAS family, SILLIAC was not an exact copy of ILLIAC. One > important change was the use of 2C51[6] valves in place of the more common > 6J6.[7] The 2C51 had been developed by Bell Labs for use in undersea > telephone repeaters and had about 5 times the life (for 6 times the cost). > This decision significantly improved the reliability of SILLIAC compared to > its contemporaries._

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

<comment><USER5> No, SILLIAC is related to the original tube-based ILLIAC I, which is absolutely nothing like ILLIAC IV other than in name.

<comment><USER4> Thanks, I stand corrected.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've been reading The Dream Machine by Mitchell Waldrop and it tells the story of early computing centered on J.C.R. Licklider. It's an easy recommendation for the HN audience.

If your eyesight is less than perfect I recommend buying both the hardcover and the digital version of the book. The hardcover is printed by Stripe (yes, the payments people) and it's a beautiful thing but the text is small.

</comment><comment><USER7> > The ILLIAC IV was the first massively parallel computer. The system was > originally designed to have 256 64-bit floating point units (FPUs) and four > central processing units (CPUs) able to process 1 billion operations per > second.

Modern consumer-grade GPUs and CPUs have attained these numbers, eh? It's great to see that we have achieved this goal.

</comment><comment><USER8> It was the first network-available supercomputer, beating the Cray-1 by nearly 12 months.

<comment><USER2> This map from Feb-1978 shows Illiac IV connected to ARPANET (top-left of diagram):

[https://i.imgur.com/7hSaVVf.png](https://i.imgur.com/7hSaVVf.png)

By this time Illiac IV had been connected to ARPAnet since Nov-1975.

The Illiac IV had various supporting systems: Burroughs B6700, DEC PDP-10 and PDP-11s.

Map is from this document: [https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a482154.pdf](https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a482154.pdf)</comment></comment>


Too Many Parallelization Frameworks? - <AUTHOR> http://nesteruk.org/blog/post/Too-Many-Parallelization-Frameworks.aspx

<comment><USER2> .NET Parallelization.

Please edit titles to reflect actual content.

Grumble grumble tagging grumble</comment>


Ask HN: Why was Eric Schmidt Hired to Run Google? - <AUTHOR>

In light of recent news of Schmidt's departure, I did some wikipediaing of his bio, but there wasn't anything in his track record that made it seem immediately obvious that he should lead the biggest tech company around.<p>He did a pretty good job at the helm IMO, but I'd like some insight into why he was chosen. <comment><USER2> I think both Larry and Sergey realized that even though they were well versed in the technology aspects of running Google they were not prepared to run the business aspect of the largest tech company on the internet at that point in time.

It's actually much to their credit that they were able to recognize this and act on it rather than to try to go it alone, at the same time since you only get to live your life once there is no telling where they would be today if they had done just that.

I think they might have had a rockier ride but they're both pretty clever guys to put it mildly and I think they would have been able to overcome the challenges that were thrown at them.

Personally I'm pretty happy to see this change, I think the 'face' of google needs a person that does not give you a feeling of old guard corporate but instead should be fresh and young.

Time will tell where it all leads, I'm pretty hopeful about this being a positive change.

</comment><comment><USER3> Pretty much I assume both Larry Page and Sergey Brin trusts Eric who has both the technical and soft skills to lead their business.</comment>


Ask HN: HN Devs, to ChatOps or not to ChatOps? - <AUTHOR> Hey HN Devs,<p>Our team(of 20-25) is considering exploring ChatOps for a few use cases around incident management and server monitoring. In your experience, what are the pros and cons of doing ChatOps? What tools did you use(Hubot, Lita, Err, YellowAnt, Posh etc.)? What were the problems you were trying to solve and did ChatOps help? <comment><USER2> We use ChatOps extensively for a team of 15-20 and it's been fantastic. It makes life easier for devs and devops, and empowers QA and customer support to perform various tasks that they would otherwise need dev or devops assistance with.

We use it for deployment, building, getting status information from various environments, a few escalated customer support tasks, as well as security and monitoring alerts. Security and monitoring alerts above a certain severity level also get delivered other ways.

We're running an old version of Hubot that talks to Slack. It crashes frequently so we have a script that restarts it. It's ugly, but it works. I'm planning an overhaul.

I can't really think of any cons, other than people constantly asking for more plugins/scripts.

One thing that bears mentioning is that our team is Slack-heavy so this is a natural cultural fit for us.

<comment><AUTHOR> Gotcha! How many developer hours went into building your bot on Hubot? Was there any development friction considering every script dev needs to know/learn coffeescript?</comment></comment>