Diving into AngularJS - <AUTHOR> http://floatleft.com/notebook/diving-into-angularjs

<comment><USER2> I tend to dive a lot into a source code when I am working with a library. You always have missing spots in documentation but you can actually know what's going on by reading the code. This is one of the reasons I am super comfortable with Backbone.

However I cannot comprehend Angular's source code on github. Can anyone give me pointers on where to start reading it and/or how it's organized?

<comment><USER3> I found AngularJS very readable and was able to read it during my commute over the course of a week.

However: I read the documentation first.

I think you'll find if you give it a chance, you'll find that AngularJS has _excellent_ documentation.

Someone put a lot of effort into taking what is organised for implementation (code) and reorganising it for users, and it was something that was very much appreciated.

For example, you should look at this:

* <http://docs.angularjs.org/guide/di>

There's a very subtle piece in there about how AngularJS figures out what the dependencies of a function actually are, and understanding that piece is key to understanding how much of the AngularJS code is written.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The video tutorial mentioned[1] really is excellent, and it's recent too so it's not out of date.

[1] [http://weblogs.asp.net/dwahlin/archive/2013/04/12/video- tuto...](http://weblogs.asp.net/dwahlin/archive/2013/04/12/video-tutorial- angularjs-fundamentals-in-60-ish-minutes.aspx)

AngularJS' strict adherence to separation of concerns is definitely a breath of fresh air.

</comment><comment><USER5> The first feedback I always heard from new angularjs developer is: "A completely different approach that I've seen before... it's so productive".

Great blog post :)

<comment><USER6> It shares a lot of principles with Apache Flex. It's seen huge uptake by expat Flash platform devs.

After a year on a large project using Angular, I'm loving it more every day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The more I use Angular, the more I love it. I like how it's really easy to get started with it. Just avoid writing your own directives right away, that's still the one part that is super confusing (although powerful).

<comment><USER8> What do you wish you knew about writing directives then that you know now? Or what did you find confusing?

I am currently writing a book on Angular and would like to know. I remember I had a lot of trouble on how to write a reusable component defined in a partial, and what to pass into the directive constructor.

<comment><USER9> Hey Kevin, this isn't about directives but about RESTful services and $resource. I started learning how to use AngularJS yesterday and all of the examples that I've found on it are confusing to me and seem to do it in different ways.

I've seen somebody do it by calling myModule.factory. I've seen an example on Stackoverflow that says all you need to do is something like var Todo = $resource('/api/1/todo/:id');. I'm not sure where I'm supposed to put this code. I want to be able to use the resource globally but I don't have access to $resource in the global namespace.

All I'm trying to do is make a simple blog that can interact with my backend. If you have this part of the book written I'd love to read it right now.

EDIT: I figured out how to do it I think. But I'd still love a more complete introduction to using Angular with a RESTful service.

<comment><USER10> Personally I found using $http less restrictive - there seem to be some edge cases where $resource behaves oddly. Ideally what you should be doing with REST calls is pushing them out to Angular Services ([http://docs.angularjs.org/guide/dev_guide.services.creating_...](http://docs.angularjs.org/guide/dev_guide.services.creating_services)) rather than making them directly in your controller.

Here's a simple example:

      appServices.factory('Thing', function($http) {

        var Thing = function(data) {
          angular.extend(this, data);
        }

        Thing.all = function() {
          return $http.get('/things).then(function(response) {
            return new Thing(response.data);
          });
        }

        Thing.get = function(id) {
          return $http.get('/things/' + id).then(function(response) {
            return new Thing(response.data);
          });
        }

        Thing.delete = function(id) {
          return $http.delete('/things/' + id).then(function(response) {
            return new Thing(response.data);
          });
        }

        Thing.create = function(data) {
          return $http.post('/things', data).then(function(response) {
            return new Thing(response.data);
          });
        }

        Thing.update = function(data, id) {
          return $http.put('/things/' + id, data).then(function(response) {
            return new Thing(response.data);
          });
        }

        return Thing;
      });

In your controller, inject the service:

      function thingCtrl($scope, Thing) {
        Thing.all().then(function(data) {
          $scope.things = data;
        });
      }
      thingCtrl.$inject = ['$scope', 'Thing'];

<comment><USER11> Another nice feature of angular is that templates are promise-aware. So the following controller is equivalent for most purposes:

        function thingCtrl($scope, Thing) {
          $scope.things = Thing.all()
        }
        thingCtrl.$inject = ['$scope', 'Thing'];

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Best video tutorials I've seen on AngularJS yet: <http://egghead.io> \-- find directives confusing? watch a couple two minute videos, and it'll fall into place.

</comment><comment><USER13> I have been wondering if I should look into AngularJS but I'm a bit worried about it's future given Google also has Dart which seems to be competing with it, or am I wrong? We all know what Google is like when it comes to closing stuff down.

<comment><USER14> Angular is a front end JS framework. Dart is a language. So no, they are not competing.

<comment><USER13> I know Dart is a language, I have installed the Editor and played around with it, but it is all compiled to JavaScript (at least for anything except Dartium). I guess it is conceivable that Dart and Angular might be used together, not sure what the point would be though since Dart has the WebUI packages. Seems a bit simplistic to dismiss the idea there any overlap between these projects.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Why am I just noticing the "by Google" under the logo?!

<comment><USER16> That's actually one of the more interesting parts about Angular. I'm not sure of the details but I believe the Angular team have been counting on Object.observe for increasing the performance of the Angular code [0] (something that Google / the Chrome team have influence over).

The Angular code you write now won't need to be updated and will get a great speed boost later. Other libraries, like Ember, get you to add all that metadata to your code to give you a performance boost now (which to me feels like something you'll regret in a year's time).

Ah, this is the post I was looking for [1].

[0] [http://blog.angularjs.org/2012/07/angularjs-10-12-roadmap.ht...](http://blog.angularjs.org/2012/07/angularjs-10-12-roadmap.html)

[1] [https://plus.google.com/112439678898563138768/posts/RZKRBiGX...](https://plus.google.com/112439678898563138768/posts/RZKRBiGXvR2)

<comment><USER17> Actually, I'm sure it'll break a few things. Angular doesn't have a good concept of update granularity, which can be problematic when you get to the multi-directive interaction phase...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Hey Andy, please consider choosing a more readable font for your blog. I would love to read this article, but the thin font is hurting my eyes.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback - I've been wondering about this for a while and you're right. It's just finding something that will work well!

<comment><USER6> This is a good survey of some of the beauties hidden in Google webfonts

<comment><USER6> * <http://sachagreif.com/google-webfonts-that-dont-suck/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Am I the only one who dismissed AngularJS by the fact that they use a nearly unmodified bootstrap design?

<comment><USER20> Probably, as that doesn't seem like a good reason.

<comment><USER19> Quite. But how much effort they put in their website and documentation is somehow important to me. Then again, Ruby projects always look glamorous while Haskell projects (just an example for an exotic language) look like some HTML document someone wrote 10 years ago on an university computer.

Ember.js in comparison has a certain glow to it. Especially with that weird mascot.

<comment><USER10> They have put a lot of effort in to their documentation, which personally is more important to me than the aesthetic of their website.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> So many client side js libraries. Can anybody help compare Ember, Meteor, Angular and Backbone?

<comment><USER22> came up a few days ago - [http://sporto.github.io/blog/2013/04/12/comparison- angular-b...](http://sporto.github.io/blog/2013/04/12/comparison-angular- backbone-can-ember/)

<comment><USER21> Fantastic - thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> With all the attention Ember is getting lately I'm glad to see Angular getting some attention.

<comment><USER24> Ember tends to go completely forgotten aside from a small burst of activity yesterday.

Speaking of which, I started a project in Ember and quickly encountered the primary reason why it is dangerous to change conventions and APIs -- searching for basic information on how to do certain things brings me to various StackOverflow posts, etc, most of which are just entirely wrong now.

<comment><USER25> It's worth noting that stackoverflow has some wiki blood in it; if an answer is out of date, you can edit it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I've found The tutplus angularjs course to be very beginner's friendly.

</comment><comment><USER17> AngularJS definitely requires a higher level of CS competence. It's initial learning curve is quite high compared to most frameworks.

It is awesome sauce.</comment>


Beautiful iOS mail app - <AUTHOR> http://www.mailboxapp.com App looks amazing. Looking forward to the possibility of replacing Sparrow! <comment><USER2> Wow, truly is beautiful!</comment>


Ask HN: Do I need the Twitter handle? - <AUTHOR>

I'm trying to name my startup and the .com is available but the Twitter handle is not. What do I do? <comment><USER2> I suppose it could depend on what your startup actually does, but on a scale from 0 to 10 in importance I'd rate availability of a Twitter handle at a solid 0 for the vast majority of startups.

</comment><comment><USER3> Try GetName, NameHQ, OfficialName, RealName, or some other short word that associates with your company. If you're a bakery named "Flour" in NYC, for example, then try FlourBakery, FlourBread, FlourNYC, etc. Avoid geographic terms if you're a web startup though. Once you get some traction and have legal incorporation documents, contact Twitter. If the handle isn't actively being used by a company, they'll usually give it to you. It'll take a couple months though.

 _Source: your friendly neighborhood naming expert. I know of a couple companies that went through this exact process. Let me know if you have any other questions._

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Find another? See if the handle is in active use and if not ask nicely if they'll turn it over to you (after you purchase the .com).

<comment><AUTHOR> Ask who? Twitter?

<comment><USER4> No, the @twitterhandle you would like to have.</comment></comment></comment>


Reinventing the wheel to learn. What do you think about this? - <AUTHOR> http://imakeapps.alwaysdata.net/blog/because-i-can/

<comment><USER2> I think many people fail to notice that there can be many motivations behind someone's actions. When the motivation is some kind of business interest, for example, it does not make much sense to reinvent the wheel. On the other hand, when the motivation is to explore concept-space, it does not make much sense to not reinvent the wheel. Motivations determine the proper course to take and no motivation is superior to another. And we should not forget that the reinvention of the wheel is the reason we do not bustle about on wooden rims anymore.</comment>


Ask HN: For you, what makes for a good job description? - <AUTHOR> Things like salary information, tech stack, processes, hierarchy, responsibilities, etc. <comment><USER2> Tell Me: WHO exactly does this role report to?

What's their track record? Do they have true management experience and domain expertise? -

Ultimately, it's the leadership and people on the team that make a job interesting.

</comment><comment><USER3> Requirements vs like to haves clearly spelled out.

Location - if remote is a possibility, then how often you expect me in. i.e if I move to Hobart in Australia is it a problem.

Your work style.

Salary is always important.

I do not want to see a bunch of fluff - i.e. come work in a dynamic environment, making world changing services, for an energetic and so on and so on. No need for the 'Ad'. It makes me wonder what the truth is.

</comment><comment><USER4> Let's be frank, if salary figures are missing a job listing will always be red after those with a salary range.

Then the description of tech stack and responsibilities.

</comment><comment><USER5> In order: 1) Responsibilities + who I will report to 2) Hours 3) Real Hard Requirements (what I will be interviewed on) 4) If travel is required 5) Salary (don't give me a range, I will treat the salary you post as a middle point anyway and ask for more)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Things like salary information, tech stack, processes, hierarchy, responsibilities, etc.</comment>


Dataship: share data and analysis from simple charts to complex machine learning - <AUTHOR> https://dataship.io/ <comment><AUTHOR> For more information, you can also check out this case study we published on their work: [http://frictionlessdata.io/case- studies/dataship/](http://frictionlessdata.io/case-studies/dataship/)</comment>


The story of Lovely: developing a sex tech product (from idea to production) - <AUTHOR> http://imgur.com/gallery/gQXVO <comment><USER2> Hi! This is really fascinating stuff, can you elaborate any further on the custom PCB?

I've been investigating it, it's seems incredibly difficult to do?

For instance, I've been looking at a base Arduino + Bluetooth + accelerometer board, but in a custom shape, you _seem_ to have something similar...

<comment><USER3> Hi! Thanks for your kind words. It's been fairly difficult to pack everything we needed on such small PCB indeed. However we made it with 4-layered PCB and of-the-shelf BT module, IMU with gyroscope and accelerometer and other standard components.</comment></comment>


Cloudera drops 40% after CEO Tom Reilly leaves, forecast cut - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2019/06/06/cloudera-drops-40percent-after-ceo-tom-reilly-leaves-forecast-cut.html <comment><USER2> I know nothing about their hosting, but it seems that for what they do hardware / cloud costs could be the single biggest expense. Especially if they don't have optimal multi-tenant practices, orchestration and job scheduling, etc

Other large costs (which for less compute intensive SaaS companies like marketing or productivity or whatever would be the biggest ones)

Enginers

Ad/marketing budgets

Sales / account managers (note that not all SaaS is as "self serve" as it purports to be)

La croix

</comment><comment><USER3> If with revenue for year 2020 estimated between 745 and 768 million dollars they are still losing money then what are their operating costs?

I am not familiar with how software as a service companies operators but if they are not manufacturing anything then their cost must be mainly development and operator salaries, and rent and such like. So what else is the money spent on?

AWS? Google Cloud?</comment>


GCP, AWS or Azure for ASP.NET Core? - <AUTHOR> https://www.andreasrein.net/posts/gcp-aws-azure-asp-net/ <comment><USER2> Thanks nice reading. Here are some price estimates for GCP I upped an ASP.NET Core web api with a basic React Redux app that simulates a books titles search engine.

[https://github.com/erikswed/AspNetCoreReactRedux](https://github.com/erikswed/AspNetCoreReactRedux)

I let the react app and ASP.NET Core app run during August and the bill was not so funny for august alone this cost USD 200.

This was a student project worksample for new employment and nobody but me used the React app. I used it maybe 20 times searching for books each time maybe 30 sec(only to make sure server was alive)

Please post your experiences!</comment>


The Narrowing Ambitions of Venture Capital - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologyreview.com/news/429024/the-narrowing-ambitions-of-venture-capital/ <comment><USER2> Lerner assumes that innovation is simply a function of money invested. It's not. Innovation is created independent of money.

Furthermore, by dismissing social media as a fraternity drinking app, he demonstrates a myopic view of how social media has transformed our society. Afterall, social media quantifiably shaped political debates in the Arab Spring ([http://www.washington.edu/news/2011/09/12/new-study- quantifi...](http://www.washington.edu/news/2011/09/12/new-study-quantifies- use-of-social-media-in-arab-spring/)).</comment>


The U.S. just hit a 40-year low in its fertility rate - <AUTHOR> https://ifstudies.org/blog/baby-bust-fertility-is-declining-the-most-among-minority-women <comment><USER2> Why did the fertility rate stop falling so abruptly in 1975?</comment>


The 2011 Web Analytics Review  - <AUTHOR> http://blog.kissmetrics.com/2011-web-analytics-review/

<comment><USER2> So the stats for the average website in the word are:

      Pages Visited = 4.5%
      Bounce Rate = 47.0%
      AVG. Time on Side = 4:50min

      Traffic Sources:
      Direct: 36.8%
      Search Engine: 28.0%
      Referral: 19.4%
      Other: 15.8%

      Operating Systems (increase last year):
      Windows: 84.8% (-5.1%)
      Mac 5.2% (+0.7%)
      Linux 0.7% (+0.1%)
      Other 9.3% (+4.3)

I can only assume that the increase in Other-OS are due to the rise of mobile. Which would mean, around 9% of all traffic are from mobile phones? This number seems unrealistically high to me, what am I missing?</comment>


DATASHEET 2.0 - <AUTHOR> http://datasheet.emcelettronica.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Datasheet on semiconductors, microcontrollers, discretes, passive and more electronics components parts. Datasheets about the most important brands and datasheet related to the obsolete parts.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Search, download & comment the datasheets!</comment>


Driving Your Car Will Soon Be Illegal - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2015/08/11/driving-your-car-will-soon-be-illegal/ <comment><USER2> I absolutely can't wait for self driving cars! Then all the slow, inexperienced drivers can be driven around in the right lane and those of us that know what we're doing can stay in the left.

Nothing is more infuriating then a senior citizen that can't look over their shoulder to see who's in their blind spot and driving 10 miles under the limit to be in front of you for miles upon miles of highway. Same thing with young drivers - texting and fooling around listening to music to loud to hear a siren a block away.

And thats not to put either demographic down; I hope to someday be a senior citizen and being a teenager with a fresh license was fun also, but being a good driver is a skill earned via years of practice. If self driving cars can take the less experienced drivers out of the equation, all the better.

<comment><USER3> You're assuming that your self-driving car will not be slower than today's human-driven cars, but until all (or practically all) vehicles on the road are auto-driven, such cars are unlikely to be configured to exceed the speed limit (in addition to the intense legal pressure - internal (lawyers) and external (lawmakers) - to make sure speeding self-driving cars don't exist (I can already see that phrase "speeding self-driving cars" being used by the media to scare the unaware among the public).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "According to this science fiction scenario we've concocted, and Elon Musk, who obviously knows what he's talking about, it will be illegal to drive your car in exactly 14 years."

... is what this non-story amounts to.

</comment><comment><USER5> I think it will happen sooner or later, but it will be the market force doing the work. At some point, it will become too expensive to engineer and build a vehicle that is both autonomous and human operable. Offerings will dwindle. Cheaper insurance and maintenance will accelerate people's flight to autonomous cars.

</comment><comment><USER6> "Soon" here means by 2030.

So when will the last non-self-driving car be sold? 2020? That means it will be illegal to drive one of those 2020s in 2030?

It could happen that way, but I doubt it. I think it more likely that the liability for the accidents makes it economically advantageous to not drive your car.

<comment><AUTHOR> The article is just clickbait. The ONLY way this could be done it would be requirement around 2050 when driver-less cars will be everywhere, for people that want to drive cars by themselves to pass much more advanced tests.</comment></comment>


Mark Cuban: 'No Meetings. No Phone Calls. All Because of Email' - <AUTHOR> https://journal.thriveglobal.com/mark-cuban-no-meetings-no-phone-calls-everything-is-email-afbed0679311 <comment><AUTHOR> MC: Today is the youngest I will be. Live like it. Interesting man and interesting lifestyle.</comment>


Kaleidoscope: Implementing a Language with LLVM in Objective Caml  - <AUTHOR> http://llvm.org/docs/tutorial/OCamlLangImpl1.html

<comment><USER2> With the recent spate of "write your own compiler" posts, it's nice to see one that _doesn't_ use Lex and Yacc. Certainly, there is a lot of history (and therefore documentation/example code/wise old hackers, etc) surrounding these tools, but some of the alternatives are really compelling. Besides OCaml, I'd also love to see someone do the same sort of post with Antlr.

<comment><USER3> Wait til someone posts a link to Jack Crenshaw's tutorial in Pascal ;-)</comment></comment>


Rob Fords Office Hired A Hacker To Destroy The Crack Tape - <AUTHOR> http://www.vice.com/en_us/read/rob-fords-office-hired-a-hacker-to-destroy-the-crack-tape

<comment><USER2> Re: the second image half-way down the article:

I don't understand why people keep on coming up with novel overly complicated ways to censor images. Just use a black polygon. Not the "spray can", not a bunch of scribbles with the "pen" tool, not a distorted twist tool, not the acid inspired thing used in this case...

Is the idea here to "accidentally" leak the censored information while giving yourself plausible deniability? It appears awfully reversible...

<comment><USER3> I think it might be the second--a protest against the need for self censorship.

Along those lines, a local DJs admitted that whenever he bleeped profanity, he actually put the beep after whatever word was being censored. Like "What the fuckBEEP". He claimed he never got a single complaint.

<comment><USER2> It seems to be at least standard practice to let the leading "f-" through.. rather pointless censorship if you ask me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm usually happy to see my home town featured on the front page of HN, but not this time. The scandal with the mayor's office throughout his tenure has been a terrible distraction and media circus.

<comment><USER5> Why hasn't the people rallied to boot this guy out of office? Crappy politicians are the norm but, come on, this guy is an all time low!

<comment><USER4> The city council is trying to put forth motions to hasten his exit from office[1].

[1] [http://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/deputy-mayor-councillors- urge-r...](http://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/deputy-mayor-councillors-urge-rob- ford-to-step-aside-1.1530351)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Every TV, my Twitter feed, Facebook, Google News, Google+, Newsblur... all Rob Ford. HN was my last refuge from this madness. It is so unbelievably ridiculous, this could (should) be a Chuck Palahniuk story.</comment>


Preview PineTime Watch Faces in Your Web Browser with WebAssembly - <AUTHOR> https://lupyuen.github.io/pinetime-rust-mynewt/articles/simulator <comment><AUTHOR> Here's how we create Watch Faces for PineTime Smart Watch and preview them... With only a web browser

[https://lupyuen.github.io/pinetime-rust- mynewt/articles/simu...](https://lupyuen.github.io/pinetime-rust- mynewt/articles/simulator)</comment>


The Cult of Rich Kid Sports - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/10/harvard-university-and-scandal-sports-recruitment/599248/ <comment><USER2> The article is envy-ridden. There is too much weight given to sports in general in U.S. college admissions, not just to "rich kid sports".

<comment><USER3> I agree, also no mention of figure skating.

My significant other took figure skating lessons as a child and although nothing monetary every came back out of those lessons she has stated time and again that she is very easily influenced and if it wasn't for the environment she was put in, she would have gotten in with 'the wrong crowd' in school if she didn't have some sort of regiment.

Looking back her parents really struggled to pay for it as the cost of the skates/lessons ice time was close to $10k/year. They had two daughters who both were in the program. She was the "poor" one of them all, although no one is poor if you can afford figure skating.

She didn't appreciate what her parents had done for her until she had grown up and realized the amount of trouble she avoided by having to be involved in figure skating, along with how much it cost her parents.

Yes "rich kid sports" are sadly not free and accessable to everyone. Anyone can scrape some change together for a soccer ball, football or basketball cheap and have their kids spend hours and hours playing with them. The sports which require equipment, lessons and/or trainers are obviously going to be more expensive to learn.

If parents go into it with the expectation that their are providing a safe culture for their children to socialize, learn how to fail and try again while also becoming proficient at a skill/sport then there is nothing wrong with it. The problem arises when parents pay for their children's sport, expecting a monetary return on investment rather than investing in the experience for their children and realize it is probably going to be a one way street.

<comment><USER4> My daughter did competitive FS too. Pricey but worth every penny. She has grown up to be an amazing person.

Family and friends couldn't believe the cost or that we were foolish enough to pay for it. But it really was a worthwhile experience. After pre-juvenile we were probably paying 20-30K+ per year including travel. The joke among our circle of skater families was that having a kid in competitive FS was like buying a new car every year. LOL we drug her skates everywhere we went so she could keep in shape.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Athletes getting preferential treatment during admissions is as old as alumni giving. You cannot separate one from the other. Families have known this for generations and take steps to optimize for it just as they do with SAT prep. The resulting reality is that every collegiate sport is ultimately a "rich kid sport". Just as SAT prep, orchestra and debate are "rich kid activities".

The author suggests that no one falls into the river and comes out a water polo star. The same is true for every varsity sport and every varisty player regardless of ethnicity. No one stumbles onto the hard top and pick themselves up as a D1 basketball player either.

It takes talent, hard work and yes money/time for training, club/travel teams and equipment. Facts that the family of every varsity athlete knows all too well.

With the hours my daughter puts into practice and travel (yes she plays a rich white sport apparently) it is a minor miracle she can maintain her k-12 grades at all, yet she does. If she ends up playing for her college it will mean hundreds of hours of practice and play on their behalf while being forced to maintain her GPA. If she were to be injured while representing her college she would likely not be covered by the college healthcare in any way and would likely loose her scholarship. Interestingly enough the same source (The Atlantic) has an article on exactly this ([https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/05/i-...](https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/05/i-trusted- em-when-ncaa-schools-abandon-their-injured-athletes/275407/))

Considering what colleges are potentially asking and expecting from their athletes, do I think it would be inappropriate to favor them against non- athletes during admissions? No, I don't.

</comment><comment><USER6> Well, in a post-truth apartheid, separating kids from their parents in concentration camps is A-okay and discrimination isn't discrimination even when it's obvious. Red means go and green means stop. What the court is reinforcing is: there are N >= 2 sets of rules: one for most people, probably one for the very poor, and one for the very rich. You can rape an unconscious girl behind a dumpster, and only serve six months if you're very rich. Or be famous and connected like Jimmy Savile, and then you can rape disabled children and never be punished for it.</comment>


Cheap DNA Sequencing Is Here – Writing DNA Is Next - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2015/11/making-dna/ <comment><USER2> When it comes to people, you don't need much writing of DNA to get really interesting stuff. Nick Bostrom (author of _Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies_ ) has fleshed-out the idea of iterated embryo selection.[1] IES lets you do the equivalent of a millennia-long human breeding experiment in a couple of months in a lab. The result would be phenotypes that have never existed in history. These people would be smarter and healthier than anyone who lived before. It would utterly change the human condition.

The key enabling technology is the ability to (in-vitro) turn embryonic stem cells into gametes. This has been done in mice, but not humans.

1\. [http://www.nickbostrom.com/papers/embryo.pdf](http://www.nickbostrom.com/papers/embryo.pdf)

<comment><USER3> I don't think it's quite as easy. With embryo selection you are selecting genotypes, not phenotypes.

The paper you link is pretty handwavy regarding that point; Bostrom seems tho think that if we just had more data we will be able to find a model that links genotypes and phenotypes. However, this is far from certain. There are too many degrees of freedom in our genome, and there are too many factors that contribute to something generic like "cognitive ability". Each individual contribution is so tiny that the effect is lost in noise, even if we sampled all humans.

And even if someone comes up with a novel statistical method and finds a reasonable model, optimising that model would be pretty dangerous. If you just optimise for one trait, the chances you'll even end up with a viable embryo after a dozen iterations are pretty slim.

There's a lot of selective pressure on cognitive abilities; so there must be reasons why we aren't smarter than we are. These reasons will probably kill your experimental embryo.

<comment><USER2> > Each individual contribution is so tiny that the effect is lost in noise, > even if we sampled all humans.

Maybe for some genes, but for thousands of others, the signal is definitely there. Intelligence is highly heritable –as much as height. Just like height, it's spread across thousands of genes. Yet GWASes have found hundreds (soon to be thousands) of genes for height.[1] If researchers had a quarter of a million pairs of IQs and genomes, they'd find a similar number of genes for cognitive abilities.

> If you just optimise[sic] for one trait, the chances you'll even end up with > a viable embryo after a dozen iterations are pretty slim.

That seems highly unlikely. We've done far worse with domesticated animals and they've been quite viable. Some breeds of dog are predisposed to genetic diseases such as hip dysplasia, but that's because we didn't have the ability to screen for genetic defects. (Or more cynically: breeders cared more about looks than diseases.)

When domesticating animals, breeders often found rare traits and exaggerated them. But for human cognitive abilities, the best alleles are already prevalent in the population. It's just that nobody has lucked into all of them at once. And unlike height, there's no square-cube law to disadvantage more cognitive horsepower.

> There's a lot of selective pressure on cognitive abilities; so there must be > reasons why we aren't smarter than we are. These reasons will probably kill > your experimental embryo.

Humans have definitely been selected for intelligence, but we were also selected for other things such as famine resistance. The tradeoffs are different today, and we can do a much better job than nature. We can fix a lot of mutation load. Really, we're not nearly as smart as we could be. In the words of Nick Bostrom:

> Far from being the smartest possible biological species, we are probably > better thought of as the stupidest possible biological species capable of > starting a technological civilization—a niche we filled because we got there > first, not because we are in any sense optimally adapted to it.

1\. [http://www.nature.com/ng/journal/v46/n11/full/ng.3097.html](http://www.nature.com/ng/journal/v46/n11/full/ng.3097.html)

<comment> T-A > unlike height, there's no square-cube law to disadvantage more cognitive > horsepower

Are you sure? [http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20150413-the-downsides-of- be...](http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20150413-the-downsides-of-being-clever)

I have a pet theory that while a modest intelligence advantage is likely to be genuinely beneficial, social animals like humans quickly run into trouble if they stray more than a couple of standard deviations from the average. Imagine living all your life surrounded by idiots (parents, teachers and superiors included), having to explain the stupidest thing in painstaking detail (and regularly being scorned as the one who doesn't get it), and of course having no palatable romantic partners. Down that road lies bitterness, voluntary solitude and maybe substance abuse. Something like [http://nautil.us/issue/21/information/the-man-who-tried- to-r...](http://nautil.us/issue/21/information/the-man-who-tried-to-redeem- the-world-with-logic)

<comment><USER4> _Imagine living all your life surrounded by idiots (parents, teachers and superiors included), having to explain the stupidest thing in painstaking detail (and regularly being scorned as the one who doesn 't get it), and of course having no palatable romantic partners._

I think this is the most accurate description I've ever seen of my pre- university life.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Writing genomes, once we can do it, will be the technology that drives this century (sorry, nodejs). Imagine printing a bamboo tree programmed to grow into a bed frame.

<comment><USER6> I don't see how being able to write DNA will give you the ability to grow bamboo bedframes.

<comment><USER5> DNA is code, we just don't have a compiler yet.

<comment><USER7> Phenotype = genotype + environment + reproductive phenotype (that is, the seed shell for a plant, egg for a bird, or the uterus for a mammal). Being able to rewrite the genotype doesn't give you total customization of the resulting phenotype.

<comment><USER8> Wouldn't the reproductive phenotype in this case also be genetically controlled (albeit in the previous generation's)?

<comment><USER7> Except that it's _also_ subject to _its own_ environmental influences, separately from those which impact the new individual after its birth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Synthesis is still quite expensive at a penny a base, much less a dime a base. To give a comparison to sequencing, costs are about a penny a megabase (~7 orders of magnitude cheaper). We have a long way to go.

Even for a small bacterial genome (1Mbp) that's $10,000 at a penny a base. To have any real power, I'd want to build at least thousands of them which is a little out of my price range.

<comment><USER10> I guess today is my day of not groking English, but I have to ask - what do you mean by "a penny a base" and "a dime a base"?

EDIT: I know what's a base pair. I didn't understand the "penny" and "dime" in this context.

<comment><USER9> Sorry, it's short for basepair (bp) of DNA (eg a, c, t, or g). Currently it costs about ten cents a bp to synthesize a particular stretch of sequence from one of the companies in the article (dime a base). An average protein can be encoded by 1 kilo basepair, a small bacterial genome by 1 mega basepair, and a human genome by 6 giga basepair.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> DNA has been proposed as a long term digital storage medium. Magnetic and optical digital storage generally last less than a decade. You need to copy annually to be sure.

As others pointed out, writing DNA efficienty is the bottleneck. Reading is getting cheap.

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm a bit scared, so far I've never read anything leading me to believe we can understand organic complexity. To my eyes writing DNA will only be a spectacular show of nopes.

<comment><USER13> _so far I 've never read anything leading me to believe we can understand organic complexity_

That's a bit hyperbolic, isn't it? We understand the basics many organic systems and our knowledge and tool sets are improving at an accelerating rate. Look at the recent gene therapy used to cure leukemia: [http://www.techtimes.com/articles/104545/20151109/babys- leuk...](http://www.techtimes.com/articles/104545/20151109/babys-leukemia- reversed-by-new-gene-editing-technique-therapy-may-also-work-for-other- diseases.htm)

 _To my eyes writing DNA will only be a spectacular show of nopes_

But we'll be able to learn so much from the failures. We'll finally have the coding and debugging tools to make a serious stab at reverse engineering life.

<comment><USER12> Right, hyperbole it is. I understand that research is making very large steps these days. But too often when things get too cheap, people use it without deep enough thoughts, with something as large as an organism.... Cheap rant from my side but that's my belief.

The sooner we get real insights and are able to find new cure the better. We'll see.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> So maybe this will lead to open source Jurassic Park style dinosaur code on GitHub that you can write to DNA and breed?

</comment><comment><USER15> Sequencing will only be truly "here" when companies like 23andme offer both sequencing and interpretation of human genome directly to consumers for $1k or less. Preferably much less.

</comment><comment><USER16> If you think this sounds awesome and want to be a part of a Founders Fund startup working on related things contact me at email@example.com

</comment><comment><USER17> Interesting times! Can we recursively keep on creating our better (or worse) selves for ever? How will copyright work for genetic designs?

<comment><USER18> Great question! I'm assuming that if AI and genetic engineering hit their stride at the same time, copyright is the least of our concerns.

We engineer machine intelligence just enough for it to spark (tipping point, runaway, whatever you want to call it), and then it'll engineer us "better". Is "better" what we consider better? Or what it considers better? Interesting times.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Relevant xkcd:

[https://xkcd.com/1605/](https://xkcd.com/1605/)

</comment><comment><USER20> Gene doping is upon us!

<comment><USER21> Exciting and scary at the same time. Here's to hoping people don't go overboard.

<comment><USER13> Some always do go overboard no matter what the technology.</comment></comment></comment>


Thoughts about a WebGL-Next (2016) - <AUTHOR> https://floooh.github.io/2016/08/13/webgl-next.html <comment><USER2> Here's a followup blogpost I wrote a few months later where I did a little experimental Typescript WebGL-wrapper (it was just one weekend, so not complete):

[http://floooh.github.io/2016/10/24/altai.html](http://floooh.github.io/2016/10/24/altai.html)

I think something like this could be used as a minimal wrapper for WebGPU, with WebGL2 and WebGL as fallback paths (shaders will be a problem though).

<comment><USER3> That's neat, and I agree there's a lot of potential to learn and experiment with that approach.

I've done something similar with Go, it was a library [0] that exposed identical API in 3 situations: desktops, mobile, and browsers. It uses OpenGL 2.1 backend on desktop, OpenGL ES 2.0 on mobile, and WebGL 1.0 in browsers.

It worked really well and results in an extremely cross-platform graphics library. It was also a great way to learn about the few subtle differences between OpenGL ES and WebGL, and understand the kind of challenges they faced when designing the WebGL API.

[0] [https://github.com/goxjs/gl](https://github.com/goxjs/gl)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Security issues aside, why wouldn't we want "WebVulkan"? I suspect there would be some interest from various parties in making a WebAssembly compatible cross platform 3D library. Being able to create something with Unreal Engine, for example, while targeting both web, mobile and desktop seems like it would be incredibly powerful.

<comment><USER2> Vulkan is a more like a driver-level API, an API to write other 3D-APIs with. You need over a thousand lines of code to render a triangle. It doesn't abstract the underlying GPU enough that you can have a single code path that gives you best performance across GPU vendors (at least that was the state a couple of months ago, I don't know if this has changed).

I think this is the wrong approach for a 3D API that should be usable by more people than a very small group of highly specialised rendering engineers. Metal is an API that fills that gap very well, it is easy to use _and_ is a modern low-overhead API.

A proper modern 3D web API should be agnostic to the underlying native API (a bit similar to how WebGL runs on top of D3D on Windows, but with much less 'conversion overhead' since most state is compiled into immutable objects).

<comment><USER5> I am going to respectfully disagree with you here. Yes, Vulkan is a difficult API to work with and it's not at all beginner friendly.

But simplicity and ease of use should not be guiding the decisions, the emphasis should be on providing a way to run Unity, Unreal, and other engines (new and old) on the Web.

Even if Vulkan is a difficult API to work with, a low level 3d API should be available in a browser. It could be used as a building block to create frameworks and engines that are easy to use.

Even WebGL is "too low level" for most application developers, which is why three.js and other frameworks are popular.

<comment><USER6> It's not about being too low-level for developers, it's about it being too low-level for implementation. Vulkan is lower level than DX12 or Metal; you can't implement it on top of those platform APIs, like ANGLE runs OpenGL ES on top of a compatibility shim over DirectX or desktop OpenGL. A cross-platform graphics API in the browser needs to be high-enough level to abstract over all of Vulkan/DX12/Metal and provide a consistent interface so that developers don't have to know which one their application is running on.

Either that, or in addition to WebVulkan you need WebDX12 and WebMetal.

<comment><USER7> > _you can 't implement [Vulkan] on top of [DX12 or Metal]_

[http://lmgtfy.com/?q=vulkan+metal](http://lmgtfy.com/?q=vulkan+metal)

First result: _" MoltenVK is an implementation of Vulkan that runs on Apple's Metal graphics framework on iOS and macOS."_

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I can't wait to read flohofwoe's thoughts on WebGPU.

<comment><USER2> I think it's great, hopefully SPIR-V will be used for shaders. I guess the current use of MetalSL is a compromise to get the prototype up and running fast. I think that MetalSL is pretty much the perfect shader language, but its compiler shouldn't have to live in the browser.

<comment><USER9> Not too familiar with either - is MetalSL's compiler much more complicated than SPIR-V's, such that it being in the browser would be onerous?

<comment><USER2> MetalSL is basically a slightly stripped-down C++ with vector math datatypes and some new annotation keywords, but I think it basically requires a complete C++ compiler (Apple's MetalSL compiler is based on LLVM I think). SPIR-V is a bytecode format with the idea that several shader languages could be compiled into SPIR-V (hopefully also MetalSL).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Are there any plans to improve debugging ? It seems to be the elephant in the room with this kind of tech

</comment><comment><USER11> Whatever it would be, I hope drawing a triangle is a one liner.</comment>


Facebook vs. Zynga  - <AUTHOR> http://blog.bluefrogsrv.com/?p=27 <comment><USER2> The liquidity of Facebook Credits is a major problem. They are asking game developers to give up control of their virtual currencies. When you control your virtual currency you can use it in so many ways to influence user behavior.

You can give away your own currency to lure back wayward players. You can use your currency to smooth over customer support problems (lost some of your inventory due to a bug? Sorry, have 1000 gold). You can run contests where the grand prize is $100 of virtual currency. And, so on.

You won't be able to give away or otherwise manipulate Facebook Credits in the same way you can your own currency.

Of course, you keep your own virtual currency and accept Facebook Credits. You just need to ask your players to exchange real money for Facebook Credits, and then exchange Facebook Credits for your currency, and finally exchange your currency for that neat power-up they wanted. That won't confuse anyone.

<comment><USER3> I think you kinda explained the problem Greece is having because there are in the Euro zone as well as the hint towards the possibility of an exchange rate between virtual currencies. This should make forex much more interesting...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The killer point:

 _So my guess it that what we're hearing is the end result of Zynga's a/b testing which has shown that the payments platform is cannibalizing significantly more than it's adding._

If this is true, I'd be curious to see if Zynga releases the numbers. If they do, then things might be on like donkey kong.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm also certain they can't release them legally.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Let's play this out.

Say Zynga actually has the cajones to leave Facebook and run their game from farmville.com

As soon as Zynga leaves, this creates a huge void that hundreds of other game developers will rush to fill. These smaller developers will probably have smaller payrolls and be fine with the 30% cut Facebook is taking.

<comment><USER6> If Zynga has the cojones to leave Facebook, it must believe that its games will draw users away from Facebook, compared to other games people are accustomed to playing online. I don't play games online, so I don't know how warranted that assumption is.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't think anyone will know until it's been tried. The thing is though, there's no reason why people cannot have accounts at 2 social networks. If they can convince 50 million people to use their network, and they perhaps can (more than that log into Farmville every 2 weeks) they might have something of extreme value.</comment></comment></comment>


VR Headsets from ASUS, Dell, HP, and More Coming in 2017 - <AUTHOR> http://www.roadtovr.com/vr-headsets-asus-dell-hp-coming-2017-will-run-intel-integrated-graphics/ <comment><USER2> Competition is great. I ended up with the HTV Vive this year, and I've had more problems than fun with it.</comment>


Using AWS Lambda Functions to Create Print Ready Files - <AUTHOR> http://highscalability.com/blog/2015/12/28/using-aws-lambda-functions-to-create-print-ready-files.html <comment><AUTHOR> This actually is a great use-case for Lambda functions, since it is not possible to process everything parallel on a single machine, and it would be very hard to manage if you would scale a lot of instances up and down all the time based on processing queues.</comment>


US asks top court not to take case on NSA cyber-snooping - <AUTHOR> http://www.france24.com/en/20131016-us-asks-top-court-not-take-case-nsa-cyber-snooping

<comment><USER2>
        US government attorneys argue that the Supreme Court does
        not have the jurisdiction to take the case...

        The US administration also believes the EIPC suit cannot
        move forward because it argues the court lacks authority
        under the 2001 Patriot Act to weigh in on the legality of
        NSA activities.

        "This court lacks jurisdiction to issue a writ of certiorari
        to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court," the secret
        intelligence affairs court, Verrilli added.

Doesn't SCOTUS have jurisdiction over any case it wants to take, assuming the case has passed through the appropriate lower courts first?

<comment><USER3> It really feels like, "SCOTUS cannot judge this law because the law says SCOTUS cannot judge this law. And, you know, it's the law."</comment></comment>


Ubuntu Spyware: What to Do? - <AUTHOR> http://www.fsf.org/blogs/rms/ubuntu-spyware-what-to-do <comment><USER3> A lot of people are pointing out that if you do not like something, don't use it. It's simple enough, and have a "sounds right" tone to it. As an implied statement with this, anyone complaining should just shut up then.

This is a rather crazy line of thought once one actually starts to think about it. If I see a poisonous (say rotten) food being sold, I find it almost my duty to inform people. Somehow it's now being argued, that I should stay quiet and vote with my feet/wallet instead? If a company does something clearly distasteful and harmful to others, staying quiet and voting with your feet is not a good idea. This should be obvious to everyone. At best, you are ignoring the problem, and at worst, you are implicitly allowing the situation to continue.

If something is harming others, staying quiet or saying that "users should know better and not act like they do" is not the way to go. If the search box was labeled "ask amazon about this", then this would have been a no-brainer and no one would object to this. Its the same as labeling some food-like objects as non-edible. Canonical search however does not do this, and tricks users to send data that they believe is private.

Imagine a worker at a company, using this function to search for internal document including a string with company secrets. Whooops, now that data is at Amazon. Imagine a police worker, seaching for email with witness details. whooops, now that data is also sent to Amazon. Imagine a normal person searching for emails that includes their credit card. Whoops, gone gone. And let's not discuss things that private people honestly, truly, do not wish other people know, or for that matter, journalists.

This is not fair to the users, and RMS points this out. It might even be illegal in some if not all european countries. At the least it's something to write about and inform users about the risk involved.

<comment><USER4> This is a great example of how nothing is free. Linux isn't free, not only does it cost time, it costs privacy. I do enjoy playing with it, so the first cost is meaningless to me, but the second absolutely is not.

Frankly, Ubuntu is mismanaged. From the absurd new UI to a built-in privacy trojan? I'd rather just pay for an OS that doesn't hate me or use a different distro. Not sure what the allure of Ubuntu is at this point. If you can install and use Ubuntu, you can install and use Debian. Or Xubuntu if you're still an Ubuntu loyalist.

<comment><USER5> > Linux isn't free, not only does it cost time, it costs privacy.

How does that follow?

I'm assuming you're using an economic rather than ideological definition of the world "free", which sort of misunderstands the point of the article, but OK.

The Linux kernel does not, to my knowledge, include anything which explicitly violates your privacy. If a Linux system distributor chooses to install privacy-invading bits on your hard drive, I don't see how you can blame the kernel or the entire free software ecosystem for this invasion.

(The argument about time is possibly valid, though I find it takes more time to configure Windows to a point that I consider it usable than it does to do the same for a Linux system. As it turns out, learning new things does take time. You had to learn how to use Windows or MacOS as well, though chances are you learned it through assimilation. Some of us learned Linux this way, and thus don't quite understand people griping about how it's hard to use or takes too much time to set up).

<comment><USER4> >The Linux kernel

Its 100% obvious from the context of my post that I was using linux as a shorthand for this distro.

I really hate this disingenuous rhetorical trick. When people start talking about stupid things distros do suddenly its "OH WAIT, LINUX IS JUST A KERNEL!" Err, no one is just running the kernel. We're all running some distro.

Its like a 'god of the gaps' argument for geeks. You get backed into a corner and suddenly its "wait wait, its just a kernel, how dare you criticize it?! Its pure." Yeah but we're still all running some distro. Why do distros like ubuntu and mint have these privacy issues and have ads in them? Lets not sweep these important issues under the rug of technical minutia.

<comment><USER6> "Linux" is not a valid shorthand for "Ubuntu" when you are saying things like "Linux costs privacy". Using such unannounced "shorthands" makes you appear to be a troll, and because of Poe's Law it is exceedingly difficult to rule out the possibility that trolling is exactly what you are doing.

If you want to avoid these accusations, be _clear_ and either type out Ubuntu instead of saving a single letter by writing Linux, or explicitly announce your "shorthand".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "When the user searches her own local files for a string using the Ubuntu desktop, Ubuntu sends that string to one of Canonical's servers."

That's not how I see it. I'd correct this to "When the user performs a global search for a string using the Ubuntu desktop, Ubuntu sends that string to one of Canonical's servers to perform that search".

If a user wants to search his own local files without searching the entire Internet, then perhaps he shouldn't perform a global search.

The global search box (the Dash) _didn't previously exist_ before Canonical invented it. I think it's fair that they get to define what it does. If you don't like it, then don't use it, or change its behaviour (it is open source, and you don't need a fork to change what is effectively a setting), or just use Xubuntu, Lubuntu or Kubuntu, all of which are acknowledged as official flavors by Canonical and none of which use Unity or the Dash by default.

"People will certainly make a modified version of Ubuntu without this surveillance."

And Canonical even support the existence of these modified versions! If you don't like it, just vote with your feet and install Xubuntu instead. Install popularity-contest to show people your vote. Job done.

By all means go ahead and complain that the default doesn't do what you want it to do, but please stop with the hyperbole that is actually misleading to readers about what the real situation is.

<comment><USER8> "stop with the hyperbole that is actually misleading to readers about what the real situation is"

I wonder if readers do really understand the situation or not. I don't think the hyperbole is a bad idea when features like these should be opted in and not a default for everybody. I don't know if this feature is properly advertised by the system and if there will be someone that didn't know about it.

I'm a happy 12.04 user and, since it's LTS, I'll avoid 12.10 until this issue is sorted out.

<comment><USER9> I think Canonical has been appropriately forward with discussion of what the situation is, and who gets information. I think it's an awful idea — who really wants commercial results built into their desktop? — but calling it spyware is disingenuous.

I also think it'll kill adoption of Ubuntu. It made me adopt a different distribution, and I think it will cause others to do the same.

<comment><USER7> > who really wants commercial results built into their desktop?

The distinction between the desktop and the Internet is going away. Some argue that "the desktop is dead"; I just think that it'll get more integrated.

I don't think that this is necessarily a bad thing, providing that you have adequate control over your own privacy settings and have a choice of providers (both large and small). An open source project that is promised to always remain so is the safest place for this, since you'll always be able to find instructions to turn things off if the defaults don't suit you.

I much prefer this over the world switching to web-based hosted solutions for everything.

<comment><USER8> In fact it turns out that 12.04 has some lens making queries to different services when I was searching stuff using the dash, and I didn't know about it.

I fixed it with: sudo apt-get remove unity-scope-musicstores unity-lens-video unity-lens-music

(I couldn't find how to disable it)

It's not like I agreed to this when I installed the system, because I upgraded from a previous version (and a previous version, etc), and that behaviour wasn't there.

I don't know how Canonical could advertise these changes, but in the Amazon lens case I think RMS did it right.

<comment><USER10> You can disable it via the GUI in the Privacy settings: <http://askubuntu.com/a/192270/235>

<comment><USER8> I said 12.04 and not 12.10. There's no way of disabling the lens I removed in 12.04 (may be because they got introduced in that release).

EDIT: at least I couldn't find a way to disable them. Nothing in privacy settings and nothing with dconf-editor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's always interesting to read RMS' posts, though I don't agree with a lot of them.

In this case, he's got a very valid point (I disabled the adverts on my Ubuntu install), but he uses such over the top language that it makes much of his writing seem like a parody.

Ubuntu sending all desktop searches to Amazon by default (even if it's via a proxy) isn't cool, and isn't what most users would expect, but I don't believe screeds like this aren't going to make Canonical think again.

<comment><USER12> What was "over the top" about the linked piece? It's got to be the most even- tempered thing I've ever read from RMS. Did you actually read TFA before posting this comment?

<comment><USER13> I found referring to the Kindle as being for "virtual book burning" straying into rhetoric.

<comment><USER3> Its a very loaded and picturesque description to use, but is it an wrong description?

The goal of book burning is to remove information, private owned books in this case, from the public by destroying them. While one could smash them and disintegrate them through the use of massive force, burning was the practical tool used.

If kindle suddenly create a goal of removing information from the public, in this case some private owned books, and goes through this act by destroying the information from private people own devices, doesn't that act align itself perfectly with book burning, through instead of using fire, they used electronic means.

Sure, its not something I would like to see on Wikipedia. Its not neutral, and there are better, impartial wording one could use to describe, but is it wrong to use in a blog?

<comment><USER14>
      > doesn't that act align itself perfectly with book burning,
      > through instead of using fire, they used electronic means

If that was the primary purpose of Kindle, you'd be right. However, for that to be true you constructed a scenario which is opposite to the real and intended use of Kindle.

<comment><USER3> Of course its not the primary purpose of the Kindle to destroy information. They have however made it their goal once before in regard to one book.

The original blog post could be interpreted as claiming what the kindles main purpose is, but I doubt RMS would defend such interpretation. A one time act, while notable, does not equal primary purpose, and he and everyone else knows that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Canonical is not the first to do this. And nobody minded.

In Chrome, every time you start to type a URL, it tries to autocomplete. One source of autocompletions is that it contacts Google, which sends back suggestions. Therefore by default Google knows every search you do in Chrome, even if you didn't want to go to Google. (They turn this off for incognito mode.)

I don't know how long this has been the case for Chrome, but I use this feature a lot more than I'd use Canonical's search.

<comment><USER16> Yes, but it's somewhat less of a privacy violation, because you usually expect to send out the URL you type over the internet. That's different from trying a local search on your machine and finding it ended up on the internet.

<comment><USER17> No, you only expect it to send the URL when you hit "enter". For instant results, however, it must send each character typed to Google. Also, when I type a non-google URL into my address bar, I don't expect Google to be notified. As it is, they can track all your internet travels from Chrome, and I don't like it. Hence why I use Firefox and Duck Duck Go.

<comment><USER16> You're absolutely right, that's why I wrote "somewhat less".

It's happened to me more than once that I accidentally pasted a password into the Chrome bar so that I had to go and change it, and so like you, I much prefer having an address bar without function creep. All I meant is that the potential for much worse privacy leaks is much much greater with the Unity bar than with the Chrome bar.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I have to say, having been a huge ubuntu fan for many years, I am seriously dismayed and dissapointed. This destroys my trust in Ubuntu completely. They have ruined a great thing.

Was just about to put Ubuntu on a new machine, now I'll have to switch distos. Any recommendations?

Edit: I think I have misunderstood. I assumed this referred to a commmand line (s)locate or find or grep or similar. Apparently it refers to a GUI search box on the desktop from which you can do global searches (local plus web). OK not so bad - in fact I have no problem in supporting Ubuntu in this way, providing local searches remain private.

<comment><USER19> Local searches do not remain private as there is only one search box for global and local stuff.

So when you type "goat porn" expecting it to open your folder of goat porn on your workstation, it will send it to amazon and show goat porn that you didn't want to see and tell amazon and canonical that you are interested in goat porn.

In a few years time[1], on your lifetime leased IPV6 address you will pop up a legitimate web site and get adverts for goat porn. Look at the display on the fridge: goat porn. Walk into the bedroom to see your Android Clock showing you the latest "Russian Bride Goats".

[1] This is apparently not possible at the moment as they "don't store or process your IP address", but we all know how Mark bends over when someone waves cash at him. After all he is a businessman.

<comment><USER20> Not fully accurate. The main search box does local+global search unless you turn off the global part in settings. But you can easily do local searches only: Super+F for files, Super+A for applications.

<comment><USER19> Yes fully accurate.

By DEFAULT it does local+global search.

Motivation for user to turn this off - low.

Education on what it's going to do - none.

This is about as unethical as it can get. Even Windows 8 asks religiously before sending anything.

<comment><USER20> To be clear, my 'not fully accurate' was in response to your "Local searches do not remain private". Local searches do remain private, and there are several ways of doing them. But the default search is not a local-only search.

I agree with you: I expect the default search to be local-only, and I've turned off remote results. But it's not as though it hides the fact that it's searching remotely. So I stand by my words: it's not fully accurate to say that local searches are exposed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I find this spyware by default as wrong as Stallman. I dont want my machine to send anything anywhere without me explicitly telling it to do so.

What I find even more frightening is Mark Shuttelworths view of this:

<http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1182>

"Don't trust us? Erm, we have root."

Looks like he gets the issues of privacy and trust completely wrong. Imagine catching your cleaning lady reading your diary. And she says, without a sign of guilt, "Don't trust me? Erm, I got keys to your apartment.".

Time for a new cleaning lady.

Time for a new distro. I happily switched to Mint.

<comment><USER22> "Time for a new distro. I happily switched to Mint."

Does my irony meter need calibration?

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> You can always turn it off. You can always use Gnome Shell over Unity (should anyway as its nicer). You can always buy another operating system. You know, vote with your wallet. Ah, wait...

There has to be a price for free. In RMS world everybody is a hacker, everything is free (as in love) and open and nobody needs to eat, kids grow up not costing a penny. But in my world, I understand that sometimes I'm getting something for free that is actually superior to the paid stuff, and sometimes those giving it to me need to feed a kid or two, or buy their Mrs that new outfit on the high street. And since they don't charge me outright they try different things, one of which is trying to sell affiliate links to Amazon. They don't even force me to do it because I can turn it off. But they do it by default hoping that I won't. Its a revenue channel, albeit probably a small one at the end of the day. And you know what, had I used Unity I'd probably keep it on and do my Amazon shopping via the OS to give something back.

I also understand RMS-style extreme is vital to balance out the Corporate extreme of the software world. But come on man, choose your battles better and you'll have my support. This one is a waste of time.

<comment><USER24> >>> I'm getting something for free that is actually superior to the paid stuff, and sometimes those giving it to me need to feed a kid or two, or buy their Mrs that new outfit on the high street.

Classy. You get my vote for that and subsequently pointing out that _"They don't even force me to do it because I can turn it off"_. This.

I also liked the way you ended it. We definitely need RMS, but he _definitely_ needs to choose his battles wisely.

<comment><USER25> But why not present it as an option to the user on first launch, or first search? Considering how relatively few people actually _want_ shopping suggestions on their desktop, I expect the majority of users who don't turn it off to be people who simply can't be bothered to find the setting and change it. Exploiting user apathy is not my idea of software that respects its users, which is what the FSF is all about.

<comment><USER23> Because, realistically, given choice upfront most will probably choose to disable it even though they won't mind it if its there. When installing an OS I don't want many questions. I just want to get on with it. Ask me a question and you won't get my full attention and given the option to disable something I might just disable it.

Maybe a compromise is a notice while installing that the default is to search with Amazon and instructions on how to disable it. Those who really mind it can find their way there after the OS is installed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Do people using Ubuntu not also use web browsers? If so, then they are also being spied on by others such as google, amazon, facebook, twitter - <USER2> time they use one of their sites.

I just find it overly dramatic to be focusing on this one point of Ubuntu's search being harvested for keywords when this sort of thing is commonplace on the web. At least with Ubuntu you have the option to turn it off.

<comment><USER27> We don't associate google, amazon, twitter and facebook with free software and personal liberties though - where Ubuntu is traditionally associated with these due to it's origins.

Just because something is commonplace does not make it justified, and it's perfectly right to criticize the decision to do it. We criticize google and the rest for doing the same - just that most people are not concerned, or not informed.

IMO, any communication done by your OS to any server, without informed consent is a direct threat to privacy, and should be criticized, even if it's "convenient".

<comment><USER28> As for me, I've became wary of Ubuntu since it started shipping Ubuntu One pre-installed. It was clear back then that personal liberties are not that important for Canonical.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Relevant: Canonical have just said there will be more retailers integrated in 13.04 (which was always expected). And: "We are also testing a few additional user controls like filters for local and global searching – more to come on this front as we learn from those sessions."

[http://blog.canonical.com/2012/12/07/searching-in-the- dash-i...](http://blog.canonical.com/2012/12/07/searching-in-the-dash-in- ubuntu-13-04/)

<comment><USER7> "...we have made it dead easy to switch the online search tools off with a simple toggle in settings."

<comment><USER20> That bit's not new, though - the toggle is already in place, and I have used it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> This should help de-Amazon your Ubuntu.

1\. Ubuntu Settings --> Privacy -->Include online results [OFF]

2\. sudo apt-get remove unity-lens-shopping unity-scope-video-remote unity- scope-musicstores unity-webapps-service

3\. Launch dconf-editor, navigate to: com -> canonical -> unity -> webapps, and then remove everything under allowed-domains, dontask-domains and preauthorized-domains

References:

[http://askubuntu.com/questions/192269/how-can-i-remove- amazo...](http://askubuntu.com/questions/192269/how-can-i-remove-amazon- search-results-from-the-dash)

[http://askubuntu.com/questions/214755/how-to-remove-unity- we...](http://askubuntu.com/questions/214755/how-to-remove-unity-web-apps)

[http://xchamitha.blogspot.com/2012/11/de-amazonising- ubuntu-...](http://xchamitha.blogspot.com/2012/11/de-amazonising-ubuntu- removing-webapps.html)

<comment><USER30> Can we keep a sort of page where we put all the commands to remove the bullshit from Ubuntu? I think it's starting to grow and stink more and more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Ubuntu is also shipping with two new Firefox extensions that ask to "install" certain web apps when you visit them. Havent audited them yet, but my tinfoil suspicion is that these add-ons are leaking private information to Canonical by asking "is this a web app that can be downloaded?" (this is in addition to the current controversy that Unity searches are being leaked).

By the way, Amazon is pre-installed. I noticed yesterday that Amazon web pages still open up in the Amazon icon on Unity -- even after I had removed the unity-shopping-lens.

<comment><USER32> That's almost certainly implemented by looking for HTML offline cache manifests.

[https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/HTML/Using_the_appl...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/HTML/Using_the_application_cache)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Ubuntu install a custom application that does something involving sending data out -> We're doomed! They're spying and tracking you! Grab the pitchforks!

Of course, that's RMS' viewpoint and he's entitled to it, and it often provokes some very interesting discussions around it, but he's terrible at being anything other than over the top. For what it's worth I don't think what Ubuntu did was that a bad a thing, it's a nice revenue stream for those that use it and that's a good thing for the future of the project, but I can also understand the view point of people who are uncomfortable with search results peppered with ad's.

<comment><USER34> _"...it's a nice revenue stream for those that use it..."_

I'm not entirely convinced that this is going to make a lot of money for Canonical. It will be interesting to see figures in a couple of releases if Canonical (which is a private company) decide to tell us.

What do we think the value to Amazon is of my random desktop searches for files & stuff on my desktop?

The 'slow typing' problem is real: search is dynamic and can, as a result of network latency and fat fingering show results of unfortunately shortened search terms. There is no content filtering on the results. That is actually why I switched it off.

<comment><USER35> Could you re-enable it for a little bit and test that slow-typing thing? We did a bit of work to make it a little bit better at that.

<comment><USER34> Which version, QQ or 13.04? I'm on QQ with Unity. Everything Everywhere is having some fun with their 'profile generator' at present, and we have exactly 0.24Mbit/s of bandwidth, so that might be an issue.

<comment><USER35> 12.10. It was one of the last changes before the freeze on QQ (re: <https://bugs.launchpad.net/unity-lens-shopping/+bug/1060979> ), and a server- side change.

BTW, you seem to have the name/numbers convention backwards :) it's codename during dev, numbers once released. So it's 12.10 or RR now.

<comment><USER34> I was never one for convention :-)

Yes, much better. Working off a USB stick with persistent space, (I have the Gnome Ubuntu Remix as PC os at present) and this box has Nvidia graphics, _and_ we have problems with the broadband. So as slow a combination as I can imagine anyone new to Ubuntu seeing.

Searches now seem to be completing before sending to Amazon, and my maths related file name terms were bringing up sensible UK relevant suggestions from Amazon, mainly textbook titles. This 'feature' has got a lot smoother since I first saw it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I've used Debian GNU/Linux as my primary desktop OS and as a server OS since 1995. Many ditros (such as Ubuntu) are derived from it. People who have grown accustomed to deb packages and synaptic, etc may like to try it.

</comment><comment><USER37> Stuff like this should be opt-in. And, if you want it to succeed, it should be good enough that people _want_ to opt-in.

People search on Google -- they _opt-in_ to Google Search -- because the results satisfy them (more than the competition).

If Canonical's partners want people to opt-in to their collaborative offerings, they should make them offer significant value. And Canonical, for its part, if they want to successfully build out this revenue stream, should ensure that they partner with partners who demonstrably do so.

I already use affiliate links _when I think that the affiliate has given me something of value_ [1], in discovery or qualified opinion or some other combination of factors.

I think Canonical provides me and the broader community things of significant value. Offer a monetization scheme that is 1) opt in, and 2) Respects my concerns, e.g. privacy, and I would be consciously, favorably inclined to use it.

\--

[1] One example, although Amazon may not particularly like this one:

<http://us.camelcamelcamel.com/>

<comment><USER38> > _People search on Google -- they opt-in to Google Search -- because the > results satisfy them (more than the competition)._

Um, no. A lot of people don't even _know_ there is competition to Google. They don't "opt-in" to Google just as much as they don't "opt-in" to using Windows, they've just always used it because it comes with their browser/PC. There's a reason Google pays Mozilla a few million every year to be the default search engine.

<comment><USER37> Fair point!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I'd guess that the only way to really dislodge the Amazon widget would be to make sure it remains unprofitable. If it remains a major talking point and doesn't pull in enough money to compensate for its negative effect on community evangelism, it won't last long.

I have mixed feelings about the new system. On the one hand, I respect a lot of what Canonical is doing with linux regarding mainstreaming, streamlining, and even Unity. I also recognize that they are a company and need to make money, and think Amazon integration is preferable to dozens of preinstalled, hard-to-remove junkware applications.

On the other hand, I really don't like the intrusive-by-default nature of the integration, and the fact that I'll have to go tell all the folks I've installed Ubuntu for that they need to essentially disable spyware the next time they do a distribution upgrade.

On the third hand (what, you don't have one?) I'm not sure what other profitable solutions Canonical might implement in a community that values privacy and freedom.

<comment><USER40> Amazon postage is prohibitively expensive for those outside the US (except perhaps for those who live in another country where Amazon is based?) The only time I'd ever use Amazon is if I'm after an old rare book which is out of print and Amazon is the only place I can find a second hand copy. And in those times I'd actually be deliberately searching for it, checking many sites in my browser, not casually using Unity!

<comment><USER20> According to Wikipedia, Amazon has national sites covering North America, most of Europe, Brazil, Japan & China. That's a pretty substantial slice of the world's population.

<comment><USER41> Only a handful of European countries: Germany, UK, France, Italy I think. That's 15.2% of Europe by area.

<comment><USER20> But probably rather more by population. Also, I'd guess that at least some of the other countries get reasonably cheap shipping from those sites.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> It's a pretty big stretch to call this "spyware". It's an ill-advised feature, sure, but "spying" indicates secrecy and subterfuge. If I came up behind you while you were typing, and started reading aloud your words as you typed them, would you call me a "spy"? I think real spies would be offended.

</comment><comment><USER43> Are there other distros with Wubi (or something like it) and automatic updates? If it weren't for Wubi I don't think I would have ever fully switched to Linux. VMs are OK for a bit and repartitioning is right out if all you want to do is try something out for a while. I don't use Ubuntu anymore but Wubi really was the gateway drug for me. I personally don't care about automatic updates but I think it's a big one for some others. When I switched away from Ubuntu I thought I'd be missing out on the community behind it but it's really the Linux community in general that's awesome, a lot of the stuff just ends up on Ubuntu forums and much of the advice is universal. I think people need to know that.

<comment><USER44> Wubi-like: <http://goodbye-microsoft.com/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> I find it ironic reading this article on a site that collects my visitor data using piwik stats without explicitly asking me first.

</comment><comment><USER46> Was pleased to see a reference to Fravia in RMS's article.

For the sake of comparison, here's a 1998 essay about what Microsoft was specifically doing in Win95:

<http://18.104.22.168/fravia/mmstory.htm>

<comment><USER47> Good old Fravia. Like Stallman, Fravia seems to have been "hard to swallow" by the community at large. However, just like Stallman, when you dug into Fravia's stuff it turned out to be pretty great.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> I'm slightly surprised to feel this way, but upon reflection, I actually like rms's rebranding of DRM as "digital restrictions management".

Calling DRM "Digital rights management" is about as accurate as calling prison "freedom management".

</comment><comment><USER49> I'm pretty surprised that Shuttleworth didn't see this kind of reaction coming, considering his long-time involvement in free software. Or maybe he did see it coming, and just doesn't care?

In either case, you're in a bad position when you're distributing a Linux distro that RMS starts to call out. Shuttleworth would do well to observe what happened to GNOME: they ignored their core user base, and they've been in such hot water for it that now they're backpedaling (GNOME Legacy). If Linux can't even please its core user base--aka the evangelists--it doesn't stand a chance in the wild.

<comment><USER50> Seeing this reaction coming and not caring is a reasonable strategy. In free software, RMS holds a lot of philosophical sway, but Ubuntu operates in the larger open-source ecosystem.

Let's say that free software adherents decide that Ubuntu is bad for their interests. How will they react? The GPL prevents them from forbidding Ubuntu from bundling their work as long as Ubuntu's use of the work is GPL-compliant. This leaves them with few options. They can refuse to support Ubuntu, which is fine; other software developers can patch the bugs and fork projects that the original maintainers refuse to update. They can call out why Ubuntu is bad for a free software ecosystem; this is a good thing to do, but has little impact on those who are familiar with the four freedoms but don't buy into their absolute necessity.

As a tool to exercise free use of software, GPL is very strong. But as a coercive tool, GPL is pretty weak (by design). Shuttleworth recognizing these strengths and weaknesses and adapting the company's motion to account for it is shrewd business.

Accepting the notion "I don't approve of your use of my software, but I respect your right to use, study, redistribute, and modify free software" is an implicit aspect of the free software philosophy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> I am running 12.10 and disabled this right away in the privacy settings.

Why not have it opt in instead of the ninja mode opt out? Explicitly prompt the user to enable this when first using Dash but disable by default.

<comment><USER29> Did you also remove the Unity - Amazon webapp integration?

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> There are two problems with the Ubuntu search box.

1) Not being very clear to your users that the search box is now global and will send information out of the local machine

2) Amazon search sucks.

I haven't used recent versions of Ubuntu, but linking a good distro with the disaster that is Amazon search is not something appealing to me. I don't think it's going to improve my experience on Ubuntu. I strongly feel it's going to make my search experience really sucky.

Note that I am ad-tolerant, and I don't really care about information getting sent off to other servers (so long as I'm told about it before hand) so Canonical have a bit of work to do to persuade me that the new experience is not as awful as Amazon search is on the website.

PS: Apologies to any Amazoners here, but come on, you know the search is terrible, right?

</comment><comment><USER53> For context on what the Ubuntu Dash actually does and how it's evolving - please see [http://blog.canonical.com/2012/12/07/searching-in-the- dash-i...](http://blog.canonical.com/2012/12/07/searching-in-the-dash-in- ubuntu-13-04/)

</comment><comment><USER54> People really use Unity? I might be rolling my eyes a bit at Canonical for this decision, but seriously who would even want to use Unity, they can do what they want with it as far as I'm concerned.

We can't have it both ways, for software to be free, Canonical has to be 'allowed' to do this. The community is now very aware of what is going on, and that is good. We can make our own decisions as informed users. Uninformed users have always been at a disadvantage, that will never change. Case closed to me, lets not turn this into an episode of the 'Real Housewives of the GNU' it really shouldn't be as dramatic as this comment war would have you believe.

</comment><comment><USER24> _snip_

Even in arguments around copyright law (like this recently concluded debate... <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4882364>) the general consensus seems to flow around comments such as "... was not trying to reignite the Great Internet Copyright Argument for the millionth time, and instead was making a point about what was politically actionable today"

On similar lines, why not acknowledge the reality of running a viable, commercial venture around FOSS by tapping viable revenue models?

A few others have written some very good points that I really enjoyed reading. Here they are (in no particular order of preference):

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4887261>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4887132>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4887365>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4887294> (I really hope that comment was rhetorical rather than being literal)

that makes the point of why the situation is much more nuanced for someone like Canonical. And if Linux adoption has to succeed big time, we need the Canonicals and Mints (with their warts and all) that give the general public a viable alternative. Mandriva Linux was facing bankruptcy a few years ago, if I am not mistaken.

 _EDIT_ : For the opt-in vs opt-out discussions:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4864783>

 _The difference is that - for a chunk of people - this functionality isn't crap. It's actually useful. It's out of the way for people who don't care. It's there for people who do. I've seen folk go "that's so cool" when the amazon stuff came up. This stuff is much closer to the adds folk get in Google search. It's often relevant to what they're doing at the time._ (anecdata, sure. happens to match mine ;-) )

</comment><comment><USER22> What distro would you recommend take the place of Ubuntu, as a recommended for newbs distro?

I mean a distro that you would feel comfortable recommending to a stranger that you will not be able to help install or support the distro, as well as the more traditional "lemme help you with that."

As a subset of that, what apt based distro would you recommend for that niche?

Is plain Debian really something that people feel comfortable recommending to non-supported strangers? Something that you would not be embarrassed about if they looked you up and told you what happened?

<comment><USER24> I hope that my reading of your question as a rhetorical one than a literal one is correct?

Because your entire comment is one big reason I have been rooting for Canonical from day one. I have been on Linux on and off since slackware 1.0, Redhat 5 (5.0 (Hurricane)/5.1 (Manhattan)) all the way to SuSE 7.0 and not one time was I able to get someone ( _anyone_ ) to adopt it completely -- despite all my handholding and regular support! Finally resorted to recommending Cygwin as an alternative, and I was still called upon to help with _"things"_ ;-)

The first/only time I managed to get a successful switch and retain, was when I recommended Ubuntu.

<comment><USER22> I meant it literally.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm a little surprised at how accepting people are here relating to the Amazon feature in Ubuntu. I would assume that there are a lot of critical thinkers here as comp sci people tend to have that mentality. Possibly not!

The usual excuses are "we can turn it off etc" or just shrug it off and carry on.

Have you thought long term? If you don't make a stand with this feature, one will eventually be added which can't be turned off or is far more invasive.

<comment><USER22> Indeed.

If spyware is a continuum from onerous to innocuous, then at the moment Canonical's string sending/sharing is somewhere near the innocuous end of the line. But it's still within the continuum.

By excusing it as innocuous and (for now) flippable, we shorten the line.

And then shorten the line again for the next thing that finds itself happily closer to the innocuous end of the line.

And again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> Taking a political angle on it: Won't the free software market decide winners and losers?

In other words, there are hundreds of Linux distributions. Choose a different one. If you really like it fork it and rebuild it without support for that feature.

Isn't the point of free software that you have the inherent right to do whatever you want to the software to make it do what you want (or not do what you don't)?

<comment><USER56> You're exactly right - and his article is explicitly encouraging this behaviour. He's not calling for any additional action than for people to create, recommend and use distributions that don't do this, and to make others aware of the potentially harmful effects of Ubuntu's decision.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I came back to Ubuntu when I got a System 76 laptop earlier this year with it preinstalled. I was actually impressed. It was pretty good, with some tiling features I liked and lots of keyboard shortcuts. But the prospects of 12.10 spyware made me dump it for Slackware 14, which came out around the same time.

And I never looked back, because man, Slackware is great. Install that instead.

</comment><comment><USER57> What's with this "distro" stuff... Can't we just boot into Emacs and call it a day?

</comment><comment><USER58> >> when he searched for a string in the files of his Windows system, it sent a packet to some server

anyone has a source for this? Was this built into windows? (It's not in mine, or it's not active)

<comment><USER59> Windows XP search assistant* has a database of file types it uses for filtering and to determine which files are worth searching into. It also has a small misfeature where it updates this database every time you search. It doesn't send anything to Microsoft about what you're searching for, it's just an overly persistent auto-update mechanism.

The usual suspects freaked out about this, of course.

* The little dog that makes intermittent scratching noises when you accidentally leave explorer open, slowly driving you mad

<comment><USER58> ah the dog. One of the first things to get rid of in XP :]

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> Whilst his point is clearly that Ubuntu should be punished (by users switching to alternative distros), it would have been nice to provide or link to some detail about how to disable this behaviour, for those who can't or won't reinstall.

Also, 'virtual book burning', really? These snide little terms detract from his core (and important) message, and come across as just petty. I think there's probably an Internet Law that you can safely ignore anything by people who use a $ symbol in the word 'Microsoft'.

<comment><USER22> Book burning: Amazon turned off access to people's Kindle copies of 1984, that they had purchased from Amazon.

When I buy a book at the store it stays bought, and the store is not going to break in to my apartment and take that book back. Giving me my money back would not make up for it in the slightest. If there's a dispute with the publisher or copyright inheritors, that's Amazon's problem post-sale.

If they can do this in a quasi-legitimate situation ("We're going to get sued! Fuck the customers!"), then they could do it at the behest of a government or investor, or maniacal CEO.

When I buy a DRM-free book from O'Reilly or Packt, it stays bought.

Yes, book burning may be an inflammatory phrase, but I think it's apt.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> My sister home schools two kids, cooks three squares a day, and doesn't care if someone knows she googled for "bread pudding recipe." They have an old, aging computer, and when I gave an Ubuntu CD to her husband, they were _so_ incredibly grateful.

I see this feature being excellent for her, because she has a bunch of documents on her computer that contain her recipes, and then maybe she'll see a cookbook she might want to buy. Maybe she'll be looking for the days curriculum, and see a book that might help her youngest figure out her multiplication tables.

These are all relatively impractical use cases for the nerds of Hacker News. Ubuntu will still serve their needs, but Canonical wants to "cross the chasm" and have ordinary muggles using Ubuntu. Those people will find all of these features "valuable" and don't actually _want_ to turn them off.

<comment><USER62> This is such bullshit. There is a big difference between _googling_ and searching your own files, while the anecdote you give probably accounts for only 1% of that computer's usage or even less. Reading this opinion I even pictured a stock-photo with family members gathered around a laptop, stupidly laughing at a photo of " _bread pudding_ ".

Your sister could be searching within her own files for strings like " _last year debt_ ", " _ass ventura crack detective_ ", " _bondage_ ", "dvdrip" and " _office keygen_ ".

I'm sure your sister doesn't do that, but other people do. And searches can express and hint to your deepest desires/taboos and things that might lead one to think of illegal activities.

My non-technical wife asked me one day, during a funny conversation about sex gadgets, if people at Google can see what she's typing and I taught her how to use incognito mode. At some point I also made her aware that Facebook sends and publishes her lat/lon coordinates when typing a message from her phone. She understood the dangers of online activity and took steps to protect herself, without me even trying too hard to explain, but this required some amount of education which is out of reach for most normal people who either don't have a technical friend that understands such issues, or that technical friend thinks it isn't a problem, such as yourself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> I agree, the Linux community as a whole has never stood for these malfeasons ever!! I say we stand up, I use Ubuntu on ALL my PC's home and work, so we're talking 15 to 20 PC's that I might have to move over to another Distro here soon. This is not the first time Ubuntu has tried these "Windowz" practices on it's users, but this needs to be the last! The first was taking away our choice in the first release of Unity, it was sooooo much a pain in the but to get back to default Gnome that most people didn't try.

Mint allowed it's user's to do so from the get go, so that means it was possible but Ubuntu made the choice for us instead of allowing configuration choices, that's what Linux is all about, choices! Ubuntu has been trying to take our choices away for a long, long time.

We as a Linux community first and foremost need to stand up and let the Linux community as a whole know we will not stand for this. Ubuntu is the first doing this, but if we let them get away with it then companies like Amazon might go to other Distro's and try the same thing. If a small distro see's an easy way to make money and people don't care, or don't show they care, they might do it.

With no place to run Linux becomes "Windowz"! We need to let them know we are not standing for this before it gets out of hand and happens all over the place.

I personally haven't used Unity since day one on any of my 20 PC's, I hate it. So I have never been in the position to be used by Canonical to pad their pockets in this search thing. I don't ever even suggest people to use Unity since it's such a pain in the butt! But other people will be affected by this more than likely. My simple solution is don't use Unity ha ha but that's not a solution, that's a band aid.

If we let Canonical get away with it without screaming they will just continue as long as Amazon funnels cash into their caufers! If they loose user base then we win and Linux as a whole wins since they are the big distro on the block.

<comment><USER7> > Ubuntu has been trying to take our choices away for a long, long time.

How has it taken any of your choices away? All of Debian is available in Ubuntu, and Debian is all about choice. You can manipulate your systems as you please. You can even roll your own installation CD exactly how you want it.

Canonical even supports Xubuntu, Kubuntu, Lubuntu etc., all of which have taken a different set of choices and all of which are released at the same time as Ubuntu itself.

How is any of this about taking choices away?

<comment><USER24> Sigh.... you mean well. But you'll never win this battle/war of words... Someone summed this whole thing on another earlier thread on.... (wait for it......) Ubuntu, a few days ago...

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4864591>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4864615>

And the argument continues.....</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Are most YC startups S Corps or C Corps? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Unless you're a "lifestyle business" (which YC wouldn't accept) you should be a C Corp. See [https://www.quora.com/Should-a-tech-startup-incorporate- as-a...](https://www.quora.com/Should-a-tech-startup-incorporate-as-an-LLC-a- C-Corp-or-an-S-Corp-If-so-why)

</comment><comment><USER3> Delaware C corp, like basically all startups that potentially want to take VC investment.

</comment><comment><USER4> I believe S</comment>