Tell Everyone About Your Business Idea - Don't Keep It A Secret - <AUTHOR> http://eaaasyusuf.blogspot.com/2012/03/tell-everyone-about-your-business-idea.html <comment><USER2> Ideas are worthless. Opportunities could have a lot of value. Or not. With tech ideas it's mostly not, but not always. This "ideas are worthless" -- which I firmly believe, by the way -- is just a rule of thumb. It's not one of the Ten Commandments.

Share ideas. Think a bit about sharing opportunities before you do.

I have an idea to sell apples. So what? Everybody does. Share it.

I have an opportunity to buy apples down the street at one dollar and sell them in a nearby town. In this town apples are already selling for ten dollars each and the vendors are constantly running out of stock.

In that case, I'd keep my mouth shut and go sell some apples.

Ideas are just little blurbs. Opportunities are descriptions of value.

The reason your "I'm making the next E-bay for Twitter Reputations" idea is worthless is because it's a blurb, like selling apples, it's not an opportunity.

<comment><USER3> Is there such a thing as a good idea that isn't an opportunity, _and never was_? Or is the difference between a good idea and an opportunity based solely on chronology?

<comment><USER4> I think the problem is that these Silicon Valley types (I'm in Sweden) have a very low barrier for what constitutes a "good idea". What they call ideas I think of as stoner musings. Like, uhm, Facebook for cats, man. Totally.

No one in my part of the world seems to believe in the "ideas are useless, so share them with everyone" meme at all and I think there's a reason for that.

Then again, I do share most of my ideas: <http://ideashower.posterous.com>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The only reason I'll ever keep quiet about some ideas I have is to prevent that feeling you get after telling someone about an idea. You know the one: the one where _talking_ about what you're going to do emotionally _equates to having already done it_. So I may keep quiet until I either have _something_ (anything) to show, or effectively abandon the project due to lack of interest or realizing it's a terrible idea anyway (anyone want instantrummage.com? ha!)

But in general, the article is completely correct. There's not really a good reason to keep an idea secret.

<comment><USER6> TED video on this topic: [http://www.ted.com/talks/derek_sivers_keep_your_goals_to_you...](http://www.ted.com/talks/derek_sivers_keep_your_goals_to_yourself.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> When faced with this frequent question, I give a simple answer: "people copy success, they don't copy ideas".

By the idea your [lousy] idea becomes a success, copycats are far behind. So go ahead and spread your idea now, you'll get more feedback and iterate faster toward something that actually might succeed.

(*) by now I probably have heard close to 1,000 pitches

</comment><comment><USER8> Yes, the benefits from sharing your idea greatly outweigh the risks that someone will "take" it and move faster than you.

With Alikewise, my little labor of love, my decision to pursue it (quit my job) was largely driven by the number of people whose eyes lit up when I told them the idea. Keeping it secret, I might not have thought it more than a trifle.

On the other side of it, think of the chain of events that needs to happen for someone to "steal" your idea:

\- They need to understand it like you do – the implications, the possibilities, the vision. Even people that "like" your idea don't see what you see.

\- They need to have the skills to execute it.

\- They have to make a sacrifice to execute it.

\- They need to get the first 30, 50 and 1000 decisions right.

Not to mention, spreading the idea is a great way to find a partner.

<comment><USER9> Yeah but if you tell everyone, there's no reason you won't create 500 knockoffs, successful or not. What are all these benefits? Sure, you could many people to tell you what's wrong with it or how it can be better. Why not get advice from more trusted/private circles? Once it's out there, you can't take it back. My advice is to think this through carefully, don't just blindly accept the "ideas are worthless" and "be complately open" memes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I do agree with the principals of this article. Talk about your idea to flush it out. I disagree with the article on the basis that there can be some tact applied to who, how and when you talk to different people.

There many pluses to talking to idea people early on in your development, potential private investors mid-way into development, or very network savvy people toward the end of development. Just starting to develop an idea and telling everyone you know doesn't make much sense to me.

<comment><USER11> Those were my exact thoughts. There is a difference in running an idea by a couple of people in order to get feedback. Telling the whole world is a completely different thing. There will be times when being ahead of a competitor - even only a couple of months - makes the difference between success and failure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think there's a bit of a false dichotomy between sharing what you're doing and keeping it secret. There are many different levels of openness and secrecy. People often err on the side of being too careful by not even talking about the problem space they're passionate about with others. People also err on the side of telling people about ideas they haven't even got around to exploring. Derek Sivers wrote a nice post about erring on the side of being too open, yet he is very talkative.

<http://sivers.org/zipit>

I'm not very good at picking my battles when it comes to sharing my technical interests but I'm getting better as I get experience.

</comment><comment><USER9> I don't agree. I submit to you the world of knockoffs as a counterexample. I know of an idea out in the wild right now where the founder chose to tell everyone he could as soon as he could. There is a fairly bad MVP close too launch. The only saving it is that he hasn't been very successful in telling everyone he'd like about it. If many of you guys saw it in it's current state, I'm sure wouldn't be a massive undertaking to make a much better version, more directed. For the primary "tech," it's non-minified JS. This is a hotly debated topic but I think there should be some discretion; it's too easy to just flippantly say "ideas are worthless."

<comment><USER13> I got to say, it's really annoying to read articles about entrepreneurship that present dogmatic perspectives like this one.

Entrepreneurship is something that happens in the real world. The real world is a messy place. Just because you learned one lesson in a big way from your venture doesn't mean applies to everyone.

One of the big reasons I think I can succeed where most fail is that just taking the leap into entrepreneurship seems to make so many people turn their brains off.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Number 5 is the one that took me the longest to figure out but it is so true. There is basically no chance someone hasn't thought of what you are thinking of.

</comment><comment><USER15> Agreed. Times when I was afraid to tell other people about something I was working on/wanted to achieve were the same times as when it/I wasn't good enough.

<comment><USER9> This made me think of it a little differently. You know, I've never regretted not telling the whole my ideas but I could think of many examples where I would regret it, if I had. In fact, it seems very odd anyone would regret not telling everyone, including all of your potential big name competitors, your ideas. You'd have to be really wrapped in that meme :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> HN is hypocritical.

On one hand, people here consider ideas to be worthless and put Execution on a pedestal.

On the other hand, pure-execution copycats like the Samwer brothers are lambasted for their unoriginal ways.

Then again, maybe we just need better definitions of "idea" and "execution"...

</comment><comment><USER16> There are business segments where this flies. In most other areas you'll be robbed blind and left for dead on the side of the street.

<comment><USER17> I disagree actually, though for reasons other than in the article.

The big danger is not in being robbed, really, but in bigger established companies coming out with a clone to compete against you and then, after they drive you out of business, dropping the clone as not profitable enough.

<comment><USER18> Which could happen regardless of if you tell people your ideas or not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Beware the naked man who offers you his shirt.

</comment><comment><USER20> Zynga is a counter example to this. They regularly copy ideas and change them a little bit.

While it's not bad to get some feedback, blabbing about your great new idea to the world might not be wise. A bigger company could easily come along and beat you to the market because they have more resources.

The idea from one of my first startups came from another startup. They had a private beta and I was able to get to market first. It didn't work out in the end (this was 10 years ago), but I would have never even had the idea if I didn't see them talking about their idea months before it was even ready for beta.

Why bring on that competition before you can even get off the ground?</comment>


Gypsies Hijack Open Office For Profit - <AUTHOR> http://www.thepowerbase.com/2012/09/gypsies-hijack-open-office-for-profit/

<comment><USER2> It would be nice if the self-proclaimed "editor-in-chief" could spell "naïveté" (his version: "naivety"), among other terms he managed to mangle.</comment>


British Computer Society wants your votes on the greatest Information Pioneers - <AUTHOR> http://pioneers.bcs.org/

<comment><USER2> The way I like to think about it: <http://grab.by/grabs/059cadd141f45b9a5d417ee6a34139d6.png>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I, of course, voting for Turing.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think this poll is silly. What is the point of this? You're bound to forget somebody.

</comment><comment><USER4> Can only be one, Claude Shannon</comment>


DNA methylation GrimAge strongly predicts lifespan and healthspan - <AUTHOR> https://www.aging-us.com/article/101684/text <comment><USER2> so bad stuff is bad for you?</comment>


Show HN: The missing Oculus Home user reviews site - <AUTHOR> http://riftvr.review <comment><AUTHOR> Oculus Home has no user reviews, so people getting their rifts have no way to see what other customers think of the available games and experiences. I built this so that the VR community can share their opinions. Pretty basic, but I'll add features if people post more reviews :)</comment>


Ask HN: How to become an expert iOS developer? What are the steps? - <AUTHOR> I want to be a contract mobile app developer! To stay in the tough market I knew I should become an expert, I can't become an expert just by working on some projects. So I want to see the whole picture. And I do know the experts in HN will be kind enough to help me. Please mention links books or other materials/tools I should read, use or must have! Thanks and I hope this helps the iOS dev community! <comment><USER2> >I want to be a contract mobile app developer! >So I want to see the whole picture.

Wake up, son, this bubble burst in 2012! Serious answer is the market is too tough nowadays to make a living without an exceptional alignment of talent, networking and big luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> DrNuke thanks for the honest answer! This might sound dumb but can you mention the list of talents I must have to establish myself in the market? Thank you

<comment><USER2> Cheers! First of all, you need strong self-esteem to keep going without getting discouraged by the many and many and many rejections of any kind you will face along the road. Second, from a technical point of view it really depends on what you are going to work on (games, consumer apps, business apps, etc.) and what you are exactly willing to offer: programming, deployment, quality assurance, etc. Third, networking is the key: start by meeting like- minded people locally and work in team to build a portfolio until you get your first gig. Fourth, you are on HN and therefore smart enough to know that Google is your best friend to grow a skillset on your own, so just start with searching "ios mobile developer how to start" from past year and have a look at the first page of results. Good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks DrNuke! And Thanks for the great advice. FYI I am not new to iOS development and I am an iOS developer with a decent experience. I am googling for many years sir! But I still need good materials that people went through already and I need their word for it, for E.g. the books offered by raywenderlich.com looks pretty promising but I'm not sure how informative or helpful it will be. So I hope the experts at HN can provide me and other iOS developers a direction to become an expert, the parts of iOS sdk we should master and the skills we should acquire to become the best.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Your question has been featured on the lastest weekly of [https://mobilehackers.io](https://mobilehackers.io)

</comment><comment><USER4> Here's the steps to become highly informed in whatever technology:

1) Search through university course listings and youtube for introductory lectures on said subject and it's related subjects. Example, these basic design lectures, note all these lectures are open [http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~bam/uicourse/05863fall17/schedule.htm...](http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~bam/uicourse/05863fall17/schedule.html) or these Stanford iOS development lectures [https://itunes.apple.com/us/course/developing-ios-11-apps- wi...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/course/developing-ios-11-apps-with- swift/id1309275316) or Github for curated lists of iOS resources [https://github.com/search?q=iOS+resources](https://github.com/search?q=iOS+resources)

2) Go on some freelancer site or Craigslist and offer to make prototype iOS apps or just write your own hobby programs and release them as free software to gain experience/feedback.

3) Search Google Scholar for relevant things to your field/interests, like this Mobile Research Practical Guide and if you don't have access to a library or money use sci-hub [http://sci- hub.tw/https://doi.org/10.2200/S00763ED1V01Y20170...](http://sci- hub.tw/https://doi.org/10.2200/S00763ED1V01Y201703MPC012)

4) Find out core things in said technology you should care about and how to work around them, for example iOS: unpredictable variation in network quality, lowered trust and robustness of mobile elements, limitations on local resources imposed by weight and size constraints, and concern for battery power consumption.

5) Find more advanced courses that help with understanding core issues you've identified [https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~15-821/](https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~15-821/) note all the required reading, again get the doi's and look them up at public library/sci-hub for free

6) For the whole picture see how you can write once, deploy everywhere ie: OCaml/ReasonML or webassembly [https://jaredforsyth.com/posts/making-a-cross- platform-mobil...](https://jaredforsyth.com/posts/making-a-cross-platform- mobile-game-in-reason-ocaml/) taking into account all the big picture things such as battery consuption and network unreliablity you identified in Step 4.

*edited to fix links

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you very much! This is really informative.</comment></comment>


Show HN: HipstaDeploy – Generate and deploy static websites on CloudFront - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/proudlygeek/hipstadeploy

<comment><AUTHOR> Author here: Happy it can be useful to others :)

Right now i've only tested it with a local Ghost installation but _theorically_ it should work with every blogging platform since it uses wget to fetch pages. Since it's basically a very silly and dumb shell script i didn't want to use something platform specific such as grunt / gulp / rake / whatever.

Feel free to give me your feedback about it (Bugs, Features, etc.)

<comment><USER2> Do you have a link to a live demo?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, sure: [http://d1ggong7924xq2.cloudfront.net/](http://d1ggong7924xq2.cloudfront.net/)

<comment><USER3> Looks like the combination of histadeploy and ghost have garbled the about/cv/... links? I'm guessing ghost is set up to use some javascript shenanigans for display?

(Or perhaps those sections are empty by default...).

Anyway, nice little script, made me smile :-)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you, glad to hear that :)

The CV / About / ... Links are actually just empty anchors...the example online is my WIP new blog.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> If anyone is interested in a Node.js alternative, it's pretty straightforward to use Gulp ([http://gulpjs.com/](http://gulpjs.com/)) for this. Take a look at the deploy task for my personal web site for an example: [https://github.com/steadicat/attardi.org/blob/master/gulpfil...](https://github.com/steadicat/attardi.org/blob/master/gulpfile.js#L78)

<comment><USER3> But that assumes the files are available? Eg: it doesn't allow you to deploy a small mediawiki instance as a static site? (or any number of other smart/silly/useful/crazy uses for wget mirroring to disk, then copying)?

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> THANK YOU!

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!

Currently I'm using a local Wordpress install and a static site plugin and I'm getting kinda fed up with the gotchas. (Detail and links at [http://www.oddevan.com/about](http://www.oddevan.com/about) ) If this does what you say it does, not only can I automate the deploy process, I can move over to Ghost (which I'm already using for its superior Markdown editor).</comment>


Mozilla has a revenue share agreement with Pocket - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2015/12/mozilla-is-flailing-when-the-web-needs-it-the-most/ <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10680925](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10680925)</comment>


Ask HN: Technical founder here; who do I need to hire? - <AUTHOR>

Background: I am a sole founder, I've been running my non-intrusive in-game ads startup (www.giftgaming.com) now for 15 months. We are about to start generating revenue, and are launching with our first game publisher client in the next few days. We've raised over £50k to date, and I am going to raise more funds soon via crowdfunding.
I enjoy building things, hacking, product development and I also love pitching, doing sales and meeting clients at conferences. We have 2 loyal in-house advisors who help with the business development side, and we are attached to an accelerator in Cambridge.
Right now, I am at a bit of a loss as to what kind of role I need to hire for (but I know a need a team). I've gone through a few team members coming and going during the last 15 months.
Advice I have received so far (all of which I'm sure have an element of truth):
"You're a technical person. Don't hire someone who is like you. Don't make your team full of technical people. The best teams have a mix of personalities and skills."
"You need to hire more engineers as you are a tech company."
"You don't need to hire a salesperson! Founders like you are the best people to do customer development and selling."
"You need a cofounder, not a subcontracted-out person. You cannot do this alone, and a cofounder would be more committed if they had an equity stake in the company."
"The company is already founded; you can't really get a cofounder now! Plus giving shares to them now would incur a tax liability for them, because the shares have value. Hire people instead."
Like a lot of advice I receive, this above is clearly contradictory, and everyone seems to have their own idea as to how my team should grow.
So, I would love to hear what HN has to say on my situation, and what type of role I should be looking for. <comment><USER2> If you want a casual opinion, it sounds like you are a technical founder who needs a business partner.

You would have a salesman, a mix of personalities, and might have less turn over (I've gone through a few team members coming and going during the last 15 months.)

You would also have the brain space to know exactly what you need for your next engineering hire.

<comment><AUTHOR> Cheers for the insight. Yeah, I guess a business partner might be better, committed, for sure.

I don't want any old business partner of course, and may take some time to find the right one...

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It's not what sort of role you should be looking for. It's what sort of people you should be looking for.

Obviously you need business & tech ppl. Since you like doing both, just find the best hire you can right now and take on whatever they can't handle for yourself.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the suggestion, that sounds like a great way to frame it. I suppose role is irrelevant and could change, (and probably should, with any startup in 'search mode'). So I guess I need someone who is ideally business savvy, hungry for success, can adapt, is comfortable with uncertainty and is eager to learn...</comment></comment>


Shuffle's New iPhone App Lets You Create Disposable Phone Numbers and Email - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2015/05/15/shuffles-new-iphone-app-lets-you-create-disposable-phone-numbers-and-emails-too/?ncid=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29 <comment><USER2> Disposable email seems like a very dangerous proposition.

<comment><USER3> Why is disposable email a "very dangerous proposition?"

SPAM is the main reason for disposable emails. Even Microsoft has one built into Outlook.com they call it email Aliases.

However, I doubt it's much in use because Microsoft screwed up the implementation.</comment></comment>


Show HN: I needed to learn React and I created a meeting room manager - <AUTHOR> https://roombelt.com <comment><AUTHOR> I needed to learn ReactJS for my new job and decided to learn by doing. That's how Roombelt was created. The source code can be found at [https://github.com/ziolko/roombelt](https://github.com/ziolko/roombelt)</comment>


A Minecraft-like Block Based Game Engine Using Three.js, WebGL and Node - <AUTHOR> http://badassjs.com/post/40691367335/voxel-js-a-minecraft-like-block-based-game-engine <comment><USER2> A friend of mine made something similar, plus multiplayer support (and minus gravity): <http://benvanik.github.com/blk-game/>

<comment><USER3> To my knowledge Firefox has had support for IndexedDB for a long time without a vendor-prefix. Why does the page claim that it doesn't? Is there a bug in the implementation? A missing feature?

<comment><USER4> Firefox doesn't support IndexedDB in web workers yet, unfortunately. See: <https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=701634>

<comment><USER3> Thank you for info and bug number.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm always curious how much optimisation is required for these big voxel engines.

I assume since all voxels are the same size you can just batch draw them but even so there is going to be a lot within viewing distance that may be invisible.

Are they all just assigned to an octtree and then culled against the view frustum or do you really need some clever occlusion culling?

<comment><USER6> Nobody draws voxels, graphics cards aren't good at them. I don't know about these engines in particular, but in minecraft everything is converted to polygon meshes.

<comment><USER7> Nobody these days, but one of my all-time favorite games is Outcast[1], which used voxels for the terrain and polygons for smaller details. All it needed was a good CPU.

[1] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outcast_%28video_game%29>

<comment><USER8> Haha, i had that too.. fun game.. i think the characters were polygons, though :)

Also there was <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comanche_series> even before Outcast. I don't think it used polygons. It was launched years before 3D graphics cards, too..

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Ogden and Halliday are both names from the book Ready Player One (<http://goo.gl/f3OUa>). Is this just a coincidence?

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm really looking forward to seeing more gaming in the browser and hope it catches on. Imagine writing a game and it works on all platforms, PC, Mac, Tablet Android, iOS, etc. Also, TV manufacturers keep putting more powerful chips in their TV's for HD decoding. Couple with this a good browser, could we eventually see an end to console gaming because everyone's TV can play 3D games? Not to mention a lot of the TV's already have network capability. There's plenty of progress to make no doubt but it seems like a serious possibility to me.

<comment><USER11> This is exactly the reason we started PlayCanvas [<http://playcanvas.com>]. I don't think it will be long before there is a modern browser in every TV, phone and tablet, in addition to every desktop machine.

<comment><USER10> I've seen you guys before, I'm gonna have to play around with this sometime. I like how you've decided to also be the publisher/CDN for the games. Right now it seems like everyone who launches some demo has to build and manage their own web presence. Something a native game developer doesn't necessarily have to do. This could help take that extra load off their back. I imagine you'll eventually offer internal APIs of sorts like Steam does, achievements, cloud storage for saved games, etc.

<comment><USER11> Please do get in touch.

We love how easy it is to get a sample/demo/game published using PlayCanvas, we use it _all_ the time. We offer the option to download your game export and host it yourself but it's one button to publish to PlayCanvas so we're sure most people will want to do that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Manic Digger, a C# open source clone of Minecraft and Ace of Spades, is also getting a WebGL version.

<http://manicdigger.sourceforge.net/> \- click "development news"

I make it with Script# (C# to JS converter), WebGL, and WebSockets. Both desktop OpenTK version and WebGL version can be compiled from common source.

But it's missing 2 weeks of work to finish the port.

</comment><comment><USER13> And another new voxeljs module for portals: <https://github.com/substack/voxel-portal> <http://substack.net/projects/voxel-portal/>

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm confused. How does one simply play in the world? I see lots of docs for components and such, but no simple "Play here" button or link.

</comment><comment><USER15> If only someone could turn this into a useful UI for dwarf fortress!

</comment><comment><USER16> Can it handle rendering the star ship enterprise all at once?

</comment><comment><USER17> Is there a playable form of this somewhere? I spent a few minutes looking around...

<comment><USER13> Click on any of these demos: <http://voxeljs.com/#gallery></comment></comment>


Game of Life via Node.js (Note:reload the page) - <AUTHOR> http://game-of-life.jsapp.us/

<comment><USER2> An explanation would come in useful.

<comment><AUTHOR> well, if you are geek enough to think its cool you know what it is and what it does.</comment></comment>


How to Avoid Burnout? - <AUTHOR> I work for a startup. ~60-70 hours a week. There is pressure to ship things fast, but that would break things from time to time. Heavy work load plus incidents are taxing, so I am wondering if I should get a bigger company that could offer better work-life balance and avoid burnout caused by ensuring stress over a long time.<p>How do people here deal with this type of situation? <comment><USER2> Is this your startup? Are they paying you?</comment>


Democrats Are 3 Times More Likely to Unfriend You on Social Media - <AUTHOR> http://fortune.com/2016/12/19/social-media-election/ <comment><USER2> > There are a number of possible explanations for the different rates at which > various groups unfriended others over politics.

Throwing one more on the pile: Perhaps self-identified Democrats were more willing to _create_ social-media links with broader sets of other people in the first place, which now means a correspondingly greater scope for un- friending during controversial periods.

It's easier to avoid un-friending a person if (A) you have very strong requirements before you mark them as friends in the first place or (B) your friend-set is small in absolute terms.

<comment><AUTHOR> Its hard to say without a more detailed analysis. But there is a cultural drift towards censorship on the left.

No Platforming, Safe Spaces, Political Correctness are all movements that predominantly come from the Leftist Ideological spectrum.

So the willingness of a Democrat to censor ideas that disagree with there own is validated and 'normalized' by these left leaning movements.

<comment><USER3> "Safe Spaces" and "Political Correctness" are not censorship. They are about changing cultural interactions. I'm not a real "supporter" of either ideologies, but I believe its good to be nice to each other.

<comment><USER4> I agree with this sentiment, but would add that I'd rather people want to be nice to each other than be forced to be nice to each other. It's a lot more compelling to have reasons why being nice is good than to just tell people to do what we want them to.

<comment><USER3> You are being forced to nice to each other?? I'm confused what you are talking about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> From my exp I had three hard line Trump supports remove me. I don't generally post anything on FB, but I do sometimes point out issues with other peoples posts.

One removed me because he posted all these things about how it wasn't fair people called him racist, so I told him my personal experience of him calling Mexicans, Native Americans, and other people lazy and that that was racist.

Then two others stopped talking to me over chat because I debated them on their beliefs that poor people are only poor because they are lazy, immigrants are not here to have sex with "our" women, Muslims are not inherently evil, and on and on. They quickly grew tired of me poking flaws and not being a "liberal strawman" like they wanted and they stopped talking to me.

I'm not a democrat, but man it was a nasty election...

</comment><comment><USER5> Tribalism in politics. A strange game. The only winning move is not to play.

<comment><USER6> Unfortunately, when it comes to politics, the only winning move is to _win._ Thermonuclear war serves no one, but political tribalism serves the victors.

Trump got fewer votes than McCain or Romney, and millions of fewer votes than Hillary Clinton, but he won because his tribe convinced the other tribe not to play in droves.

<comment><USER7> > _Trump got fewer votes than McCain or Romney_

A quick google search proves that's not true. That claim is actually one of the many fake news stories of this election.

<comment><USER8> I think doing this kind of fact checking is useful. I'd encourage you to include the best of the references you found in your comment. Would you share those with us here?

<comment><USER7> Just check Wikipedia. McCain 2008 got 59,948,323 votes; Romney 2012 got 60,933,504 votes; and Trump 2016 got 62,979,636 votes.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_ele...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_2008)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_ele...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_2012)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_ele...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_2016)

<comment><USER6> Well, if I stand corrected, I stand corrected.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> In a discussion on the subject on Facebook I commented: "I'd wager it was partially related to the fact that conservatives were far more likely to share fake/biased news stories than liberals. Note, of course, that liberals were far from immune as demonstrated by sharing the likes of Blue Nation Review, Daily News Bin, etc."

</comment><comment><USER10> Good.

</comment><comment><USER11> Sticking their heads in the sand is part of the reason Democrats are losing ground.

<comment><USER12> No. I unfriended people because I got sick of reading conspiracy theories like Sandy Hook was a government conspiracy to take away guns, that Obama was a secret gay Muslim, that Michelle Obama was really a man and that their children weren't really theirs.

Let's not forget the investigation by Chuck Norris that the government was secretly trying to declare martial law in Texas, "proof" of a 6000 year old Earth, and that Noah's ark was found.

And then news that people are using welfare to by weed in Colorado and that parts of Minnesota are under Sharia law....

If "sticking my head in the sand" means ignoring the looneys on the right that believe everything they read, guilty as charged.

<comment><USER13> And for every one of those you have a 'Dem' spreading nonsense about vaccines causing autism and about how GMOs will mutate you.

While the media might make it look like it does no side has a particular monopoly on stupid.

<comment><USER12> How often does the mainstream conservative media go out of its way to debunk the idiocy on the right? The guy that started the "news" that people are using welfare money to by weed was actually trying to pull a prank on the right and see who would fall for it. Not only was there an uproar on the right. Fox News even reporter it.

The myth that vaccines lead to autism is repeatedly debunked by the mainstream media and they report all of the time about places where diseases on the rise because of anti-vaxxers

And while I use to think that nothing getting done in America without the support of big business was a bug. I'm starting to think it's a feature. For instance, once big business broke away from the religious right on issues like gay rights, the "moral majority" didn't have a say in the matter.

I expect the same thing to happen when it comes to immigration, trade, and the demonizing of "other". Trump supporters may have the numbers but they don't have the money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This must be all of that tolerance and diversity that we keep hearing about...

Okay, that sounds kinda snarky. But seriously, the level of hatred, contempt, and intolerance coming from the Left these days is a huge turn-off. Not saying there's no hatred on the Right, but they don't seem to broadcast it and revel in it the way that the Left does. Most of the vaguely hateful stuff I see from the Right is something that somebody on the Left dug up from some obscure place to try and smear the Right. It trips my irony meter pretty hard when they do all this, and then talk about how it's the other guy that's all about hate, in the most hateful tones of voice I've heard anybody speak seriously in.

<comment><USER15> "Michelle Obama. I'd like her to return to being a male and let loose in the outback of Zimbabwe where she lives comfortable in a cave with Maxie, the gorilla."

So said Trump's New York campaign co-chair. Today.

[http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/311686-trump-ny-co- chai...](http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/311686-trump-ny-co-chair-wishes- death-on-obama)

I'm not saying the right is consumed with hate, or that the left has none, but if you don't see any hateful stuff coming from the Right then you're deliberately ignoring it.

<comment><USER14> I never said there wasn't any, but I did say that it's mostly the Left scouring the ends of the earth to dig up any kinda dumb thing that any 3rd or 4th string person ever said and shining spotlights on it to try and smear the entire Right. And that's nicely confirmed by citing a statement made by the "New York Co-Chairman for Trump's Presidential Campaign" published in "New York arts publication Artvoice". At least it was actually published today, so that's only 2 out of 3.

Fortunately, I don't have the time or interest to keep track of every nasty thing that anybody on the Left has ever said. But you will perhaps recall such things as Hillary calling people "baskets of deplorables", Obama calling people "bitter clingers", etc. Look at what they say about Peter Thiel, Sarah Palin and her family, any prominent black conservative, etc. Yep, they sure love LGBT people, women, black people, just as long as they toe the party line. If they dare to have their own opinion, you get to see how they really feel about diversity.

<comment><USER15> EDIT: it's the holidays and I extract absolutely no enjoyment from endless back and forth like this, so I'm going to shut myself up. Cheers, all.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


'You're Not Allowed to Film': The Fight to Control Who Reports from Portland - <AUTHOR> https://reason.com/2020/09/04/youre-not-allowed-to-film-the-fight-for-control-over-who-reports-from-portland/ <comment><USER2> The mainstream news reporting on Portland (and other regional rioting) got to the point where they were bald-faced lying about peaceful protests standing in front of burning buildings.

The most charitable interpretation I can think of is that these professional journalists think that their readers can't understand a nuanced world of gray and need everything reduced to black and white. There can be a concept of "BLM" that is obviously right and important to support, while there is also a well organized radical contingent taking cover within BLM that is wreaking havoc on the streets and will bully or beat up anyone who stands up to them (police or bystander alike). That they call themselves anti-fascists while taking a truly fascist approach to spreading their ideology is a rhetorical pattern I'm seeing a lot lately; accusing your opponent of exactly what you are doing.

Portland just "celebrated" their 100th day of rioting. There was video from last night where they set a fellow rioter on fire while trying to throw Molotov cocktails at police.

The PR / social media contingent that supports the riots is frankly impressive. The article mentions Google sheets listing approved journalists and ways to help fund them. The level of organization belies a depth to the organization that I think most people assume is more organic and rag-tag than it really is.

<comment><USER3> I've found that most people I speak to can't accept that most issues are complex shades of gray. It's all our team or their team based on whatever news channel they subscribe to. No one takes time to dig below the surface and think for themselves.

<comment><USER4> If someone suggests that they think in morally gray manner, doesn't it signal to everyone around them that they're morally suspicious?

>"Do you think it's alright that police are getting killed?"

> "Well, let's think about the details, as the situation can be complex or > even gray..."

You might say this is a stupid and sparse example, but well, let's think about it... for many people instinctual morality is their primary way of relating to the world. If you suggest you have an intellectual and distinctive approach to morality, what does that mean? Does that moral distinction mean moral superiority, arrogance, or moral alienation?

<comment><USER3> I'm talking more about making moral judgements without adequate information or analysis. I'm not saying that morality is not absolute.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This isn't just limited to Portland but is becoming a general aspect of these protests now, e.g. here[1] was DC last night where a Washington Post reporter was hounded out of the protest and then followed by "minders" to prevent his return.

 _Protesters are now blocking media from filming their demonstration, shining lights into a reporter's face, blocking shots with fans umbrellas and following like "minders" ... "We have our press we know and trust," this young woman says_

[1] [https://twitter.com/KunkleFredrick/status/130241105817530777...](https://twitter.com/KunkleFredrick/status/1302411058175307777)

<comment><USER6> Maybe the press needs drones.

<comment><USER7> Some of them do (and are registered with the FAA to fly them). However there are a number of no fly zones, some which have recently been added, in addition to not flying them over peoples houses.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> There's reason to be skeptical.

From a local Portland journalist covering the protests:

[https://twitter.com/alex_zee/status/1302284883625046016?s=21](https://twitter.com/alex_zee/status/1302284883625046016?s=21)

" Not that I want to legitimize this @reason piece, but I have filmed copious moments of ppl throwing things at police/vandalizing bldgs/etc & have never been told I'm not allowed to film. I have never heard of the so-called "IPC." The lack of sourcing in this story shows."

[https://twitter.com/alex_zee/status/1302295695194386432?s=21](https://twitter.com/alex_zee/status/1302295695194386432?s=21)

" Also, worth noting that this piece is by Nancy Rommelmann. Background:

[https://www.portlandmercury.com/blogtown/2019/01/11/25469480...](https://www.portlandmercury.com/blogtown/2019/01/11/25469480/why- ristretto-roasters-ties-to-victim-blaming-journalist-matter) "

<comment><USER9> Apparently @alex_zee is no objective observer and has participated in disinformation.

[https://twitter.com/MrAndyNgo/status/1300617725354504192](https://twitter.com/MrAndyNgo/status/1300617725354504192)

<comment><USER8> This Andy Ngo?

[https://www.salon.com/2019/08/28/right-wing-journalist- andy-...](https://www.salon.com/2019/08/28/right-wing-journalist-andy-ngo- outed-video-shows-him-hanging-out-with-far-right-hate-group/)

<comment><USER10> Oh Salon, that bastion of levelheaded, fact first reporting. /s

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is the environment in which the journalism originally flourished: obtaining and reporting information that is not readily accessible otherwise, often against the wishes of the powers on the ground; and frequently being in danger while obtaining it. I am not glorifying this setup, it is horrible; but the _information_ it provides is very valuable.

Unfortunately, nowadays the journalist working on such project will not enjoy the backing at home: gone are the newspapers that would support independent investigations and publish important reports even when they do not line up with the editor's personal preferences. So the journalist reporting an unconventional view has to working with the other side of the political spectrum, which leads to being boxed all the same, just in a different box.

I think there is a real need for independent reporting, including (especially) on hot button topics. I even think that many people would gladly pay for such news if we can figure out the right model that ensures independence: it is perfectly OK to publish a partisan report, as long as publishing an opposing view is also acceptable. My 2c.

<comment><USER12> What's weird is that the script is flipped here, if this article is to be believed: it is the alleged "underdog" that is attempting to suppress journalistic freedom (through intimidation) to control the news narrative.

<comment><USER13> The script was always shaky. If there are lines of mayors, governors, millionaires, corporations, and celebrities lining up to support you, you are not an underdog. There are not similar lines to make sure a given periodical has room and support to safely provide agenda-free reporting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> To me this is a mix of the media no longer being trusted, the protestors wanting to control the narrative that is spread from their actions, and them trying to protect themselves from being filmed and then arrested.

</comment><comment><USER15> Interview with the same journalist: _DarkHorse Podcast with Nancy Rommelmann and Bret Weinstein_ [1].

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfT_APUnp30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfT_APUnp30)

<comment><USER16> Bret, notably, lives in Portland, and has been making direct observations about these events for a while.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Just some mostly peaceful Molotov cocktails in Portland last night during the mostly peaceful riot. Nothing to see here.

During the mayhem a protester was caught on fire but he was mostly not on fire.

<comment><USER18> Ignoring the 60-day escalation of protests on Portland is pretty dishonest. Police started using more rubber bullets, harming protestors: they started bringing homemade shields, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I am surprised to see this on the front page of Hacker News. The article makes claims which are completely unsubstantiated. There is no audio/video evidence, and there is no other source (that I could find) corroborating the story, or even mentioning these phrases. From another comment here: [https://twitter.com/alex_zee/status/1302284883625046016?s=21](https://twitter.com/alex_zee/status/1302284883625046016?s=21) IPC does not exist either.

<comment><USER16> In a similar way that there are claims that 'Antifa does not exist; it's just an idea.'

Lack of formal organization does not imply lack of existence. Self- identification with a group creates grassroots organizations, with different characteristics than a top-down group, but equally existent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Irony unintended: I'd really love to see some videos of protestors shouting these things. Didn't see any with the article.

Which isn't to say it's all fabrication, but "Reason" doesn't exactly tend towards a balanced, reasonable perspective on these things.

</comment><comment><USER16> This is vital to understand for anyone who thinks they know what's going on at Portland, and - on a broader scale - most current events. There is a massive polarization of who consumes which facts, and this is simply an encoding of that: a drip-feed of exactly what one group of people wish to see.

<comment><USER21> And you seem to be part of that honestly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I was just looking at the zoom of the Nikon p1000 and from over 3 miles away you can easily zoom in and read a piece of paper. Even if these people don't want someone recording them on the ground, a camera could literally be so far away they would not even see it recording them. It just seems ignorant. I pretty much assume I am being recorded at all times and act as such. Too many hidden cameras, security cameras and cameras so good I would not even see them in action. [https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=emb_title&v=LhQlwKX3LQA](https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=emb_title&v=LhQlwKX3LQA)

</comment><comment><USER23> Comparing scenes from Minsk with scenes from major US cities has been very interesting this year...

</comment><comment><USER24> This is my about half of my (modest) charitable giving goes to media organizations like Propublica and NPR that try to maintain journalistic ethics. Without them, we are lost.

</comment><comment><USER25> The mainstream reporting was so bad I just started looking on Twitter. I found both pro- and anti-"protest" accounts with video. Even the pro-protest account videos debunk the narrative that these are peaceful African-American protestors. Whenever one lets the mask slip or shows her hands or hair, it's a young white person. These are night time riots, plain and simple. Surveillance footage released by law enforcement shows that Mike Reinoehl loaded and cocked his weapon lying in wait before he murdered Aaron Danielson. Even the people generally sympathetic to the antiprotest viewpoint are able to publish their narratives using videos _from the pro- "protest" side_! Even the Kenosha story, the one we cant tell on Facebook, is largely misreported.[1]

At this point, these Antifa people (who "don't exist," yet all show up at the same time and place in a uniform and are even aware enough to know who is and isn't allowed to film), the mainstream reporting, the Democrats and Leftist activists seem to want me to believe their words over my lying eyes. I don't anymore. The illusion is shattered.

I'm a bit embarrassed that people who profess to be hackers in our industry are actively allowing themselves to be cannibalized by a narrative that is controlled by those with power over information. Ever since I was a kid, wresting access to information from a powerful, ruthless elite is what motivated me to be a programmer and hacker. I couldn't put it into those terms, but it's the same sentiment from my first exposure at age 12. When a billionaire self-described hacker uses his authority as the creator of the largest online social network on earth to censor any evidence that goes against a certain narrative, even to the point of blacklisting, he has ceased to be a hacker, as have any employees who continue to be accomplices in this increasingly absurd information warfare operation.

I have no doubt that many of these people believe they are doing the right thing, but they themselves have been cracked and don't even know it or are too fragile to resist. Anytime anyone says "you can't say <X> and you can't look at the evidence we don't endorse," I'm suspicious. Yet that is what we see right now.

The largest social networking site in the world will ban posts and even accounts for saying a certain narrative. The largest video platform in the world boosts the "reliable sources" mentioned in the article, and only puts less curated information after it. And the bird application uses trumped up bans, shadowbans and selective enforcement of policies.

When did hacker culture sell its soul?

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ro8hkfBDVw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ro8hkfBDVw)

<comment><USER26> Hacker culture isn't the entire field of programming.

Facebook, Youtube and Twitter are some of the largest businesses in the world and they are also free services.

I would bet that the majority of people who code or design software find hacker culture, to be silly.

The most read and shared news websites are anti-protest on Facebook. [1]

With the President and many politicians supporting the killing in in Kenosha, clearly a portion of those in power support it.

There are alternative news sites, forums and even social media. Nobody is locked to these sites, except for an entitlement to an audience.

[1] [https://twitter.com/FacebooksTop10/status/130190203942584729...](https://twitter.com/FacebooksTop10/status/1301902039425847296)

<comment><USER25> > Hacker culture isn't the entire field of programming. > > Facebook, Youtube > and Twitter are some of the largest businesses in the world and they are > also free services. > > I would bet that the majority of people who code or > design software find hacker culture, to be silly.

I get what you're saying. And yet Facebook HQ's physical address is 1 Hacker Way. Not 1 Big Business Way, nor 1 Status Quo Way, nor 1 Software Engineer Way. Hacker Way. Google used to speak about allowing the whole world to access information with ease, including projects like making libraries accessible.

Clearly Facebook and Google at least identify themselves with hacker culture. I'm not sure if Twitter ever professed any sort of noble goals, though it's a dwarf compared to the other two.

> With the President and many politicians supporting the killing in in > Kenosha, clearly a portion of those in power support it.

I'm not sure I'd say anyone supports the killing. I personally think it was a big mistake for that kid to go there, regardless of whether he has the right to. It was a bad decision, and led to a tragic situation where there were no winners. That said, he's not a murderer; if anything, the mob was coming after him (guns firing in multiple cases) to kill him.

I also question the _de facto_ power that the president has when the press really is able to control when and how he says what he says. And the press's lies seem to be getting more absurd and brazen. (The personality of the current president does him no favors. It's a negative, in fact.) He holds _de jure_ power, but given his inability to pull 2000 troops from Syria or drop charges against his former National Security Adviser, his legal authority seems like the Queen's royal prerogatives++. The press and entertainment industries, the universities and the bureaucracy seem to hold fragments of power both legally and in the culture, which makes the _de jure_ power a bit weak.

> There are alternative news sites, forums and even social media. Nobody is > locked to these sites, except for an entitlement to an audience.

Twitter and Facebook have strong network effects, which effectively does lock people in. YouTube's are much weaker, which is why I suspect decentralized video will be the first decentralized service if they can get some legal kinks worked out. (There's also a legal argument about monopoly common carriers, even at common law, and how they shouldn't terminate service unless the law is violated.) However, even if we accepted that these were competitive, this kind of competition can only exist when we at least have some level of order and security. The reason.com article seems to indicate how we do not have that kind of basic stability.

<comment><USER27> Lots of people support the killing. When you look into the background of the 3 people shot, the reasons become obvious. The first person shot had attacked boys aged 9 to 11, raping 2 and molesting 3 others. The second person shot had a history of abusive relationships, including strangulation. The third person shot (surviving) was a burglar. That's 3 out of 3 being horrible people. Hitting a criminal in that crowd is like hitting a tree in a forest.

Remember that many people feel that a pedophile rapist should get the death penalty. They are offended by the fact that he was out on the streets of Kenosha chasing a boy. Some people, probably fewer, feel the same about the woman abuser. It is a common viewpoint that justice was served.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Wow I kinda thought the article would go into police departments and unions paying social media management firms to send bad-faith takedown notices for YouTube videos that cast them in a bad light, but uhh yeah some protesters are kinda trying to do the same thing with far less resources.

</comment><comment><USER29> "A little firey, mostly peaceful."

</comment><comment><USER30> Journalism is a key element of our collective civic sensemaking. Kent Bye worked on a model for collaborative journalism he called "The Echo Chamber Project" see [https://archive.org/details/KentByeEchoChamberProjectVlogEpi...](https://archive.org/details/KentByeEchoChamberProjectVlogEpisode1_2) His goal was that documentary film makers could post all of the material they collected. This would allow viewers to judge what was excluded and to remix it from other points of view.

</comment><comment> collective-intl It's upsetting that this article is flagged. Is there no room for discussion of alternative views? Censorship is not the answer.

Funnily enough, it may actually harm the BLM movement. If there is no push back on protesters, they can keep escalating without fearing any consequences.

Ultimately, protests will get so big it will be impossible to censor them into a positive narrative.

In a couple months, say by Nov. 3rd, the protests could be so out of control as to tip the election. You're making your own bed.

</comment><comment><USER31> Do you believe there is any validity to the idea that increased political polarization is synchronous with an increase in systems that perform better when their data sets are distinctly opposed? Can there be a middle when our analysis systems perform more poorly in those conditions?

</comment><comment><USER32> A magazine called "Reason" publishes a piece which in the second paragraph has a line about some things being "90% bullshit" 🧐

</comment><comment><USER33> Oh partigiano.

</comment><comment><USER34> The libertarian non-profit Reason Foundation and it's associated magazine (linked article) have become much more prominent and linked as a respected news source since the beginning of the year. They do fantastic reporting with a logical (although biased towards freedom and individual rights) and informative style, which has simply disappeared from mainstream sources like the NYT and WaPo. I trust Reason much more than other sources.

<comment><USER35> Bias towards Union busting you mean.

<comment><USER10> Busting a union could literally fix the policing problem in this country. Concentrated power is a problem whether it's a union, a corporation, or a government. It's not black and white.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> It makes me sad that an institution I used to like and respect, reason.com, seems more and more often to subscribe to the standard (and, taken uncritically, untrue) set pieces of the standard American culture war.

This one, in particular, that "antifa is a violent mob that is super hypocritical", and also aliasing "antifa" and "blm" as coterminous.

The truth is very different, but I fear that many in their libertarian audience have shifted a lot more authoritarian in recent years, so it's a logical evolution. It's just super disappointing to see them regurgitating the off-the-shelf battle lines instead of digging for real.

<comment><USER37> > his one, in particular, that "antifa is a violent mob that is super > hypocritical"

For having met many of them during the Gilets Jaunes demonstration in Paris, it's not only true but an understatement. In addition everyone of them I talked to was of an abysmal intelligence and seemed to come only to destroy. I completely understand police brutality has I have been gassed, beaten and shot with rubber bullets while totally cooperative and non violent. However the behaviour of antifas is unacceptable.

I highly suspect that the government used them to destroy any sympathy towards the protests. It might be also the case in the US.

<comment><USER38> _" I highly suspect that the government used them to destroy any sympathy towards the protests."_

There have been documented cases of police infiltrating protest groups and encouraging violence, and probably many more that happened but have remained secret (because that's not really what the police ever want to talk about).

This history of provocateurs is mostly unknown to the general public, and certainly underappreciated.

Another factor is that pretty much anyone can dress in black and claim to be antifa (or whomever), or just commit violence without any political affiliation or purpose. Yet it's this anonymous non-organization that will get blamed regardless.

Very few of the people pointing fingers will bother to (or even have the capacity to) look beneath the surface to figure out who the violent ones really are. Much simpler to just slap a label on them and take it at face value.

<comment><USER36> I know for a fact that the police in Chicago used plainclothes officers to drag into the street many of their old/junked/rusted/decommissioned police cars; I'd be surprised if many of the vehicles so moved even functioned.

I presume they either set them alight themselves, or made them extremely easy targets for the protests, specifically to bolster their "but they're burning police vehicles!" narrative. The reporting on the matter won't point out that it's a 30 year old police car with a blown engine that was rusting in the ass end of a police storage lot for 10 years prior to being burned.

There are also lots of reports of police dressed in all black and not identified as cops (but wearing earpieces and cop-standard footwear) smashing things, and lots of pallets of bricks suddenly appearing in protest zones.

The whole story is not being, and likely won't ever be, told.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> If you spend any time on the Portland subreddit, you'll see plenty of stories and comments about how the city is just fine, and only Trump fans with an agenda push a "rioting and burning narrative". It's amazing watching hypocritical narrative control in action. These are the same people pushing for police body cameras.

<comment><USER16> And is there not a selection bias at play in a subreddit? People who don't follow the majority opinions of those on a subreddit are routinely hounded down and mass downvoted until they leave, seeing it's futile to try and converse there.

<comment><USER39> Of course there is, except I'm sure a lot of the people on that subreddit are also heavily involved in "protesting". There certainly is a selection bias at play in the general population of Portland, too ;)

Edit: I also find it fascinating that the users of the Portland subreddit will shun or ban you if you are not actually in Portland, as I am sure that a lot of those folks strongly favour all immigration in general. As I said, it's a miniature picture of hypocritical narrative control in action.

<comment><USER40> We favor legal immigration. Have your papers in order, be able to speak coherently and talk to people, and be useful to society. We aren't fond of random fascists coming in from across the Washington-Oregon border, let alone driving in from Idaho, just to have street fights and arguments.

From our perspective, you're just some hateful outsider who has no experience living in a society. If you want our respect, then you need to be a better person, or at a minimum you need to demonstrate that you're capable of being embedded within a societal context.

<comment><USER39> >From our perspective, you're just some hateful outsider who has no experience living in a society.

I'm glad we feel the same way about immigration ;)

<comment><USER40> Do we? I also think that police officers must live in their precinct. No Portland cop should live in Vancouver.

I also think that legislators are obligated to do their job. No Oregon legislator should live in Idaho.

I also think that you, being a non-Portlander, should not have any voice whatsoever in disputes between Portland's people and its elected leadership. Our problems are between us, and our city council and mayor and cops; you're not a party to it.

Edit: Downvoters, use your words. Show us why you think these points are bogus; explain clearly why you think that you should have a vote in a society which you don't live in.

<comment><USER39> Oh god people like you are why I left.

You all vote progressive lunatics into office then complain when things go to shit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Sounds a lot like "embedded journalism", i.e. a nicer term for propaganda. You write what they like, you document what is approved by their media operations, and you're silent on anything they do that makes them look bad.

<comment><USER33> Pioneered by the US in the modern day AFAIK. I remember the news reports from embedded journalists during the second gulf war.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Having done a fair share of media work on and in German protests myself: the biggest problem is that video evidence can and will be used by cops to go after activists - and that includes material from way outside a riot scene, given that police also look for such tiny details as shoes to (attempt to) identify people. The people at such events have something to lose: careers, families, friendships, years behind bars.

In contrast, in countries like Turkey, Belarus or other dictatorships, where the fear is getting killed regardless of protests, the situation is different - people on these protests want their faces to become public so that they cannot be "disappeared".

<comment><USER43> Go after them for what? Are they doing something illegal?

<comment><USER44> Cops have plenty of ways of going after people who haven't committed crimes.

[https://projects.tampabay.com/projects/2020/investigations/p...](https://projects.tampabay.com/projects/2020/investigations/police- pasco-sheriff-targeted/intelligence-led-policing/)

<comment><USER45> In other words, protestors are harassing, assaulting, and robbing reporters because they might otherwise be unjustly framed for minor crimes.

<comment><USER46> Protestors are people and unlike most places Portland is still active months later.

I would imagine there's a core cadre of organizers who are no longer able to hide in the crowd, now that things are less spontaneous. Those folks are going to try to protect themselves.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Happened to a reporter on the Key bridge in DC.

[https://twitter.com/DailyCaller/status/1300857489559375877](https://twitter.com/DailyCaller/status/1300857489559375877)

EDIT: apparently "You're not allowed to Post" also applies

<comment><USER48> The Daily Caller has been managed by Tucker Carlson, who attacks protesters on the air virtually every day. The Daily Caller is known for right-wing troll articles. There's no chance in hell that this publication would ever portray protesters favorably.

<comment><USER49> And therefore protestors have a right to prevent them from filming in a public space?

<comment><USER48> Oh sure, the Daily Caller certainly has a right to complain. They just shouldn't expect anyone to take them seriously about their intentions to report without bias.

<comment><USER50> All reporting is biased, even when people strive to avoid it.

To be human is to have biases and preferences, even if you are unaware of them.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Good Tutorial to Run Django+Nginx+GUnicorn in Docker - <AUTHOR> I am looking for a complete and descriptive tutorial on how to run a django project with nginx,gunicorn and postgres in docker! <comment><USER2> Check out this tutorial >> [https://realpython.com/blog/python/django- development-with-d...](https://realpython.com/blog/python/django-development- with-docker-compose-and-machine/)

It details how to use Docker to run a Django project (along with Nginx, Postgres, gunicorn, and redis) both locally and in the cloud.

\--

For more on deployment, check out [http://www.fullstackpython.com/deployment.html](http://www.fullstackpython.com/deployment.html)

\--

Cheers!

</comment><comment><USER3> Check out my repo: [https://github.com/andrecp/django-tutorial-docker-nginx- post...](https://github.com/andrecp/django-tutorial-docker-nginx-postgres)

Exactly this tech stack, step by step :)</comment>


New startup is taking on Amazon's oldest business, but ethically - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@jjpryor/look-out-amazon-theres-a-newer-ethical-online-book-seller-in-town-c614bddf5aa8 <comment><USER2> "ethical" and its derivatives have to be some of the most over-used and badly used terms these days.

Amazon did not do anything unethical when it started selling books online directly to consumers. This is a great idea that has worked extremely well.</comment>


I just wrote my congressman regarding SOPA - <AUTHOR>

Hey there.
I am the founder of an internet startup and also a constituent of yours (actually I happen to live in the same building as your office in Brooklyn). This is the first time I've ever written to my congressman, and I'm doing it because I have a very important concern about the SOPA bill that is being debated right now.
I completely understand the frustration that the content industry must have with foreign-based sites allowing US citizens to download illegal content. The foreign sites and registrars are beyond the jurisdiction of the USA. However, this completely does not explain why we must turn due process on its head in SOPA. My suggestion is simple:
Why not invite the foreign site to participate in an arbitration here under US law, and be given a chance to take steps to avoid getting cut off from US search engines, ad networks, and so forth? If they ignore or refuse, then the US attorney general (or the ITC) can take unilateral action, forbidding US businesses to do business with them. But simply giving them (as well as the intermediaries) a chance to participate in a legal process BEFORE taking unilateral action will rectify the most egregious problem that has everyone up in arms. Even criminals in US have the right to a fair trial before being convicted. And under SOPA, a foreign site wrongly cut off will lose an incredible amount of business yet have practically no recourse unless it proves that the other party knowlingly misrepresented the site as "dedicated to the theft of US property" -- something that is practically impossible to do. This lack of due process will encourage frivolous claims under the guise of "oh, it seemed that way at the time."
If a site has a following large enough to matter, it means that it has been growing for a while. The extra month or so to get a hold of who exactly is doing what, and giving them a chance to decide to get on the right side of US law before cutting them off, will not only prevent us from shooting first and missing, but also enable us to discover and better deal with the site and ALL its subsidiaries and connected organizations. The principle is: it takes time to build big operations, take the time to understand what is going on before taking action.
Simply put: by changing one thing in SOPA, it would become much more palatable.
Thank you for your time, and I would really appreciate to know what if anything comes of my email.
Sincerely, Greg Magarshak Qbix, Inc. <comment><AUTHOR> oh, and PS: I didn't speak about the DNS because they already took it out of the bill :)</comment>


Proof: Group-think a Dominant VC Trait - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2008/12/17/proof-group-think-a-dominant-vc-trait/

<comment><AUTHOR> From the article:

* 92 percent of VCs thinks investments will slow in 2009. (Translation: We are all going to be hiding under our desks.)

* 19 percent say they are going to invest in more companies.

* 60 percent are decreasing their seed investments. (Translation: We are not taking any significant risks)</comment>


Show HN: Eight - A social magic 8 ball - <AUTHOR>

Hi Everyone, (I know this is a repost, but I had some dns issues with my last submission)
I created this as a small project last weekend (started on _whyday) just to flex some ruby muscle, learn some stuff about sinatra, oauth and the twitter api and also get into the spirit of the day.
So what it does is use your twitter followers and random people on twitter to answer your questions (bearing in mind that the syntax has to result in a yes or no question). So In effect they may or may-not know anything about you, so you just vote yes or no (kinda like facemash or hot-or-not but for questions). The user is then presented with a general yes or no, and then they can choose to see a more detailed tally.
I hope some of you peeps have some fun with it :) and as always any feedback would be appreciated.
URL: eightapp.safetyscissors.co Alternative Link: eightapp.heroku.com <comment><USER2> Cool idea. The font is kinda hard to read though.

I think "voting" should be open to anonymous users. The public's consensus is the value you are offering. Without volume there is no value. Attracting that volume is key, meaning low barrier to entry is necessary.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the insight :)</comment></comment>


Fxmsp Chat Logs Reveal Hacked Antivirus Vendors - <AUTHOR> https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/fxmsp-chat-logs-reveal-the-hacked-antivirus-vendors-avs-respond/ <comment><USER2> From the article (in case it gets taken down):

"a conversation about source code files for various products from antivirus companies Symantec, McAfee, and Trend Micro. The chat is between Fxmsp members"

        Symantec (also owns the trade-mark Norton)
        McAfee
        Trend Micro

<comment><USER3> [https://archive.fo/ssLRP](https://archive.fo/ssLRP)

<comment><USER4> +10

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Funny, I posted[0] this 4 days ago and it didn't get picked up... Here's the link to the article I referenced to for those interested [1]

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19875574](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19875574) [1] [https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2019/05/top-antivirus- companies-h...](https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2019/05/top-antivirus-companies- hacked-by-a-credible-threat-demanding-a-measly-430-grand-security-firm-says/)

<comment><USER4> Funnier is how one article has the hackers' chat logs with the names of the victim antivirus companies and the other doesn't.

Gizmodo [US] also gave the names of the victims: [https://gizmodo.com/antivirus-makers-confirm-and-deny- gettin...](https://gizmodo.com/antivirus-makers-confirm-and-deny-getting- breached-afte-1834725136)

For a broader picture: 1\. [https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/hackers- selli...](https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/hackers-selling- access-and-source-code-from-antivirus-companies/) 2\. [https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/new- details-e...](https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/new-details- emerge-of-fxmsps-hacking-of-antivirus-companies/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> So basically every AV vendor denied getting hacked</comment>


African child mortality: The best story in development - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/node/21555571 <comment><USER3> The flip-side to reduced infant mortality is typically a population boom (at least this was the case in the 50s and 60s). I'm living in Bangladesh right now where the country really suffers due to over-crowding born out of that era which means there's not enough agricultural land to work for most people, leaving most people under-employed and impoverished.

Of course reduction in infant mortality is good, but it can be coupled with problems later if family planning is not also brought into families at the _exact_ same time.

If family planning is delayed by one generation compared with the reduction in infant mortality, a country's population can rise exponentially very quickly which is highly destabilizing.

The Vatican and others stand in the way to realizing family planning everywhere...

<comment><USER4> I think you're mixing up the causal relationship between infant mortality, population growth, and economic growth. High population growth does not necessitate low economic growth. In fact, it's economic growth that tends to determine the rate of population growth, not the other way around.

<comment><USER5> It depends. If capital accumulation is an important limiting factor in your country's growth, as it is in most of Africa, then adding more people will tend to increase the overall GDP but decrease the per capita GDP. If you're at the productivity frontier, however, and you're more limited by your ability to figure out how to use more capital (innovation). In this case there is still a small marginal return on having more capital per worker, but every worker is also a source of more innovation so its really hard to say whether adding more people (up to a certain point) will increase or decrease the per capita GDP.

Generally speaking, when a country develops to a certain point it gets what's called a demographic dividend[1]. The population has been growing rapidly in the past, so there aren't that many old people to take care of. With wealth people start having less babies, though, so there are also a relatively small number of children to take care of relative to the number of working adults. Countries in this position can, if they manage to avoid messing up, grow very rapidly.

[1]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_dividend>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> You can fund insecticide treated bed nets in developing countries by donating to Against Malaria Foundation (<http://www.againstmalaria.com>), which is currently estimated to be the #1 most impactful charity for your dollar in the world, as determined by GiveWell (<http://givewell.org>).

<comment><USER5> I'm always a bit worried about giving to humanitarian charities in Africa, just because it gives warlords a way to turn refugees into a lootable resource[1]. Aid organizations want to help refugees, and are generally willing to give warlords money in order to be allowed access to those refugees.

This was a big factor in the start of the Congolese Civil War. In Rwanada after the the genocide the perpetrators fled into Congo and many Hutus, fearing that the Tutsi forces would want revenge, fled with them. In the Congo the genocidaires were able to confiscate and resell part of the aid, and charge rent to aid agencies, and use the money buy weapons to arm the people there in the hopes of retaking the country. The new Tutsi Rwandan government, not willing to let this happen, decided to invade. And since Mobutu of Zaire had been harboring insurgents from all the other neighboring countries, they all decided to help. Thus began the Congo Civil War. However, rereading the section in Wikipedia on the refugee crisis it seems that Médecins Sans Frontières and most of the other independant aid organizations were smart enough to realize what was happening and leave so they couldn't be used - <USER2> it was the mostly UN that was still contributing money and supplies when the fighting started[2]. So maybe you should give money to aid organization after all.

[1]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse> [2]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Lakes_refugee_crisis>

<comment><USER6> I'm glad you know so much about this, but don't let your knowledge prevent you from doing the right thing. All I know is that Givewell seems extremely thorough, and holistic in their thoroughness. If there were a major effect such as the one you describe (warlords looting villages for bed nets), I expect that Givewell would recognize it and incorporate it into their estimates of cost-effectiveness for charities. Givewell is really very good. (If you want evidence for this, read some of their in-depth charity analyses and see how many factors they consider.)

And if the effect of warlords looting villages for their bed nets is _not_ large enough to make a significant negative impact on the charity's effectiveness, then it still seems like one of the best possible uses of money to do good in the world.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I hate these government-accounting style stories. The numbers reported in the graph are the percent change in infant mortality relative to the rate of change to meet MDG. Is it just me, or would it be more useful to illustrate an article about infant mortality rates by a graph of the actual numbers for infant mortality in these countries?

</comment><comment><USER8> This backs up Hans Rosling's talk on "The best statistics you've ever seen" pretty well: [http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_shows_the_best_stats_y...](http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_shows_the_best_stats_you_ve_ever_seen.html)

The world is definitely improving - from a health perspective. Of course you could talk about overpopulation as a chronic global problem as well, but in my opinion education on birth control will improve enough over the next few decades to help combat that.

<comment><USER9> My greatest problem with that talk is that he gloss completely over the countries that haven't improved (in particular Congo/Zaire) and never will.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I wonder how this will affect Africa as a continent. The article doesn't mention possible effects this could have on these nations, such an analysis would be interesting to read.

</comment><comment><USER11> Fantastic news. I wonder how much of this is a result of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's war on malaria?

<comment><USER12> It would be very hard to tell. The earliest and biggest public health improvements are driven by simple but powerful measures: increased calorie counts, clean water, improved sanitation. Only once these are satisficed do things like health care and immunizations begin to matter at the margin.

Something like malaria nets sounds cheap and simple enough to be a plausible driver. But even then, to a malnourished kid the nutrition probably matters first.

Even extensive efforts, occurring amid improvements on the fundamentals, would probably be lost in the noise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I think education and the internet also have lots to do with this decline. People in the third world have seen a huge increase in internet adoption, which facilitates second hand learning; they are now more aware and educated and can take better preventive actions. Great news.

</comment><comment><USER14> Step One achieved. Now if you could just feed and educate the little fellows and keep them from having too many kids and stop their (generally) useless and corrupt governments from destroying their countries and killing each other, the world would truly be a nicer place.

</comment><comment><USER15> Stories like this often don't get traction because it doesn't play into the news narrative. Doom sells.

EDIT: Why is that? Why does doom sell?

<comment><USER16> It's lame to be the guy who thinks the status quo is pretty good and that things are progressing nicely. It won't win you many friends at parties. Empirically, it's socially optimal to be the guy who insists we have to smash capitalism, or that the West is exploiting Africa and keeping it poor, or that if we don't cut our economic production by 20% in the next 10 years then nature will revolt and kill us all. Things like that sell.</comment></comment>


A better Youtube for music using Youtube, LastFM, and Musicbrainz - <AUTHOR> http://www.tunesicles.com

<comment><USER2> Really good, but where'd they get all this music? Youtube? Did you make this?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. The music is from Youtube, it just searches the song on there. The data (like list of songs on album etc) are from musicbrainz (a free database).</comment></comment>


The LinkedIn hack: what the experts think - <AUTHOR> http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/business/2012/06/linkedin-hack-what-experts-think <comment><USER2> One of the most fascinating aspects of this has been watching LinkedIn's response. The latest blog post is an example of 'reassurance through obscurity' where a large number of words say very little.

[http://blog.linkedin.com/2012/06/09/an-update-on-taking- step...](http://blog.linkedin.com/2012/06/09/an-update-on-taking-steps-to- protect-our-members/)

"First, it's important to know that compromised passwords were not published with corresponding email logins. At the time they were initially published, the vast majority of those passwords remained hashed, i.e. encoded, but unfortunately a subset of the passwords was decoded. Again, we are not aware of any member information being published at any time in connection with the list of stolen passwords. The only information published was the passwords themselves."

Look, either LinkedIn knows that rest of the information was stolen or they don't. If it was stolen then people need to be told, not fobbed off with this 'only the passwords were published'. The publishing of the passwords is irrelevant. What was taken? The other possibility is that LinkedIn doesn't know what was taken.

"Under this team's leadership, one of our major initiatives was the transition from a password database system that hashed passwords, i.e. provided one layer of encoding, to a system that both hashed and salted the passwords, i.e. provided an extra layer of protection that is a widely recognized best practice within the industry."

That doesn't address the issue of which algorithm is being used. At worst it sounds like they've updated to the late 1970s. Why not say the algorithm? Because...

"We want to be as transparent as possible while at the same time preserving the security of our members without jeopardizing the ongoing investigation."

Basically, they don't believe in Kerckhoff's Principle and think they 'preserve' security by being obscure. That was further reflected in Reid Hoffman's interview the other day when he said that a variety of security measures were put in place but that talking about them would be insecure.

[http://video.ft.com/v/1681242005001/LinkedIn-No-customer- acc...](http://video.ft.com/v/1681242005001/LinkedIn-No-customer-accounts- affected-)

</comment><comment><USER3> So the security experts make no statements on just how completely inept security at LinkedIn was? It's not like it's hard to have salting in your password storage. I don't mind that they got hacked so the hashes got stolen- that is gonna happen, and that's gotta be okay.

But it also has to be understood: Anything less than good hashes with good salt is going to be worthless. They used a plain SHA1 hash with zero salt, making it relatively trivial to get through that security 'layer'. It's like an unlocked door.</comment>


Sony suffers yet another breach; Sony Music Brazil site hacked - <AUTHOR> http://www.bgr.com/2011/06/06/sony-suffers-yet-another-breach-sony-music-brazil-site-hacked/

<comment><USER2> This was already presented yesterday: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2621844>

The previously discussed article is the source for this one.

Neither article adds much information to the title. This one adds that the site was taken offline after being defaced for 12 hours, and that it's still offline 36 hours later.

Edit: Today's Sony breach is "Lulzsec Leaks Source Code of Sony Computer Entertainment Developer Network" here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2624760></comment>


FileKit: An open source end-to-end encrypted cloud storage service in JavaScript - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/TankerHQ/sdk-js/tree/master/packages/filekit <comment><USER2> Doing cryptography in the browser is a bad idea: [https://tonyarcieri.com/whats-wrong-with- webcrypto](https://tonyarcieri.com/whats-wrong-with-webcrypto)

Also [https://www.nccgroup.trust/us/about-us/newsroom-and- events/b...](https://www.nccgroup.trust/us/about-us/newsroom-and- events/blog/2011/august/javascript-cryptography-considered-harmful/)

<comment><USER3> The author of that second one is a frequent HN commentator. Let me attempt to summon him to this thread to see if he has anything more to say, since that was written in 2011 so might be a bit out date.

Begin summoning ritual...

• It's easy to secure email with GPG.

• DNSSEC is a state of the art design that you should adopt on your website as soon as possible, to make up for the deficiencies of TLS.

• You should use /dev/random for most cryptographic random number generation on Linux. /dev/urandom is only good for things where security doesn't matter.

...end summoning ritual.

<comment><USER4> I only have an alert set up on DNSSEC, for what it's worth. I won't notice most GPG or /dev/random arguments.

(Thankfully, the /dev/random debate is moribund).

<comment><USER5> I'm just tickled pink that it actually worked. It made my workday.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This doesn't seem to be doing downloading in a streaming manner, as indicated by its use of my old "file-saver"[1] library. Edit: Originally thought this also did encryption without streaming.

Nowadays I would recommend using Penumbra[2] (another library I've worked on) with StreamSaver.js for streaming file encryption/decryption/downloading.

1\. [https://github.com/eligrey/FileSaver.js](https://github.com/eligrey/FileSaver.js)

2\. [https://github.com/transcend-io/penumbra](https://github.com/transcend- io/penumbra)

<comment><USER7> The encryption/upload _is_ streamed, but the download/decryption is not, we will work on that. Thanks for the link!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> But how safe is cryptography in JavaScript, knowingly that the language allows funny mathematics and comparison results?

<comment><USER9> JavaScript itself is quite safe, more so if it's running isolated like in a browser. Trusting your data to a piece of JavaScript code sent by a remote server, though, is only as safe as the server.

<comment><USER4> The "safety" being discussed here isn't system integrity, but rather cryptographic side channel safety, which is very much an open question in Javascript.</comment></comment></comment>


A TV series where all the actors are real insects - <AUTHOR> https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/a-tv-series-where-all-the-actors-are-real-insects--2#/ <comment><AUTHOR> I met these funny, talented French brothers on the internet about 12 years ago when I happened by chance on their internet radio broadcast/AIM channel. They have a quirky, clever sense of humor in their work... I'd love to see what they'd do with this!

Here's a music video they did in 2012 for their band Skwhere: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aec0RaXYte8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aec0RaXYte8)</comment>