Ask HN: Why is Facebook automatically liking pages? - <AUTHOR>

Hello,
I have a question and I know I am not the only one with this issue as when I asked several people they all said similar things happened to them.
The question: Why is Facebook automatically liking pages for me? I most certainly did not like "praise jesus" pages nor other "funny" pages that I just found out in my news feed. Is there anything more to this? And finally...what can I do about this besides disliking the page ? <comment><USER2> This could happen when the page changes admins, i.e the page gets sold to somebody on a trading forum / SEO forum, like blackhatworld. Some FB pages are very valuable, similar to the story of @N on twitter.

When a page changes hands/admins, there could be some political agenda pushed, or even a religious agenda. It could be another "best vines" page, who knows?

When this happens, the page jumps to the top of a person's likes, so as to notify the person of the new page contents. Usually the page is left with no trace of previous posts. (All posts are wiped, but the likes remain)

Of course, now you're going to tell me you don't like any pages, and liked pages are conjured up from Facebook itself, which is highly unlikely, unless they are doing A/B testing on you, and you are simply a guinea pig, but again, unlikely.

This is deceptive on Facebook's part, because ... Facebook

It's nothing to worry about though. Simply unlike, and soldier on through your day.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I do like some pages so it's not that they are doing A/B testing on me. The thing is, I do not think it is as you put it that people sell their pages or something... Because even if I do like pages, I know the ones which I liked and they are not that many. Moreover I noticed the same page being liked around the same time by more than 50 of my friends and it wasn't an invite to like a page as I always refuse those.</comment></comment>


Parinfer – Simpler Lisp Editing - <AUTHOR> https://shaunlebron.github.io/parinfer/ <comment><USER2> I've argued that parinfer complicates lisp editing. Some notes critiquing parinfer: [https://github.com/noctuid/parinfer- notes](https://github.com/noctuid/parinfer-notes)

<comment><USER3> That's why few people are using things like parinfer. This demo might look cool to non-lisp programmers, but in lisp-land, everyone is using semantic editing (in Emacs or otherwise), and _not_ line-based editing.

<comment><USER4> _That 's why few people are using things like parinfer._

I don't think this is true. I develop Cursive and _I_ use it, despite being competent at paredit. A ton of my users do too, even experienced ones. It's just easier, and it turns out that a lot of editing is actually line based, even in a lisp. And when it's not, I can still use the paredit commands in parinfer mode, at least with Cursive.

It's referenced in an edit to noctuid's document, but many of those criticisms are no longer valid since smart mode became the de-facto default for parinfer. It's now really intuitive. Parinfer's worst problem now is its difficulty inferring parens when there are multiple expressions on a line (i.e. when there's no indentation to infer from), but it's surprising how infrequently that's actually a problem.

<comment><USER3> What percentage of users is that, assuming that you don't make parinfer the default choice in your IDE? What percentage of Cursive users knowingly say: I'm a bit confused by how these parens work (my guess: all lisp newcomers), what percentage goes to preferences to see what they can do about it (my educated guess: a lot, but less than, say, a third), and what percentage of those conciously look for parinfer (I don't know - I'm asking)?

Now, Cursive is used by something like a third of Clojure users. Half of them use Emacs, and in Emacs land there are rather few Clojurians who seek something like parinfer. Even when they do, it's a usual "how we can make this more palatable to outsiders" type of quest rather than "I'm really frustrated by how Emacs does Lisp editing. I'd like something like parinfer"...

<comment><USER4> I don't know exact numbers, since I don't do any user tracking. But I know of numerous users _who are already experienced with Clojure_ who have switched, myself included. Cursive currently has paredit on by default, but I'm going to switch that to parinfer.

FWIW Emacs users do ask about parinfer in #parinfer on Clojurians because they actually want to use it. There currently isn't a smart mode for Emacs though, and that's what I consider the game changer. I suspect that uptake will be good once that's available.

<comment><USER3> If so many people find parinfer valuable, maybe they should consider donating some money to Shaun.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I loved using Parinfer when I was writing ClojureScript, but it also made me question the value of Lisp syntax.

If brackets can be inferred from indentation, doesn't this imply that they're extraneous — that indentation only would be sufficient to write many Lisp structures?

<comment><USER6> One can do that, but most Lisp programmers value the direct "source code is data" nature of Lisp - using s-expressions.

Alternative notations were originally planned for Lisp when it was designed - some books were published using it, but for actual programming it wasn't used too much - especially since most implementations actually a) didn't support it or b) had s-expressions as a default/internally.

Then several attempts to modernize Lisp with a different syntax mostly failed to get traction or failed big (like the Lisp 2 effort).

Then some efforts failed to provide more than one syntax and also failed to appeal to people (Dylan).

What we saw is a bunch of languages derived from Lisp with different syntax (ML, Logo, ...) and a bunch of Lisps for mathematics with different syntax (Reduce, Macsyma, ...).

But the core Lisp programmers were never willing to give up the s-expression- based syntax. It has some clear advantages when manipulating code, especially in interactive programming.

<comment><USER5> Thanks for these comments. I didn't realise alternative notations were planned and never took off. (Dylan in particular looks really interesting.)

I can see the value of homoiconicity / code as data from the perspective of someone writing a parser.

I've asked what writing code as s-expressions gets you as the end-user of a language before. People usually say, "macros" or "it's easier to manipulate code". But macros exist in non-homoiconic languages, like Nim and Elixir. And in my short time using ClojureScript I'm not sure what manipulations Lisp syntax gave me that I don't already have with other languages in a modern text editor.

I'd love to see examples of accomplished Lisp users on YouTube or elsewhere, to see what those code manipulations look like.

<comment><USER6> > I didn't realise alternative notations were planned and never took off.

See for example this program from McCarthy, 1960. On top is my Common Lisp translation and below you find the original code. The original had to be hand- translated into s-expression syntax to run it in Lisp - in 1960.

[https://gist.github.com/lispm/e44d81c3bb9b86d4313763647e058a...](https://gist.github.com/lispm/e44d81c3bb9b86d4313763647e058a59)

For a Lisp 2 (Lisp 2 as the successor to the original Lisp language - with the long promised notation) example see: [http://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/LISP/lisp2/SP-2...](http://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/LISP/lisp2/SP-2450-SUMSQUARE_LCS.pdf)

> But macros exist in non-homoiconic languages, like Nim and Elixir.

Lots of languages have some kind of macros: C has textual transformations and Elixir has AST transformations.

Lisp macros are different, since they are not AST transformations but token tree transformations. That means Lisp accepts arbitrary token trees (give that the first item is a macro identifier) and one can write programs to transform them.

Languages which support macros for AST transformations, need to have the code parsed into an AST first. That means the expressions it can transform need to be already parsed into an AST - and the language accepted by the parser limits the expressions - unless one can add syntax changes to the parser, too.

ASTs are special purpose data structures, while s-expressions are general purpose data structures and thus are not limited to expressing programs in a particular syntax and are not limited to express something which looks like a program.

Lisp offers a bunch of macros: macros for transforming Lisp code, macros for transforming symbols, compiler macros for optimizing code, macros for transforming s-expressions, ... Additionally the macro has access to a full Lisp - which means it can do arbitrary computations: primitive transformations, complex language transpiling, full parsing&transformation, doing side-effects in the development environment, running at runtime in interpreters, ...

That means for me as a programmer I can automate all kinds of code manipulation. There are many simple and many complex examples.

Another advantage is that the language core can be reduced to a minimum set of syntactic forms and every other syntax can be built on top of it - and the developer uses the same mechanism as the language core: macros. This makes macros very pervasive - a programmer will use a lot of macros and may also program macros.

One of the disadvantages is that macros also cost us: the code we see can be very different from the code which executes and there is an additional programming paradigm to understand: using syntactic abstractions with macros. One can learn some Lisp without touching macros (see for example SICP, which does not use macros), but in real world programs one might see a lot of macros.

Paul Graham wrote a book, which explained use of macros in Lisp: On Lisp. Free download at: [http://www.paulgraham.com/onlisp.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/onlisp.html)

There are more disadvantages and also attempts to improve macros. See for example: [http://library.readscheme.org/page3.html](http://library.readscheme.org/page3.html)

An example for a typical use of macros is CLOS, the Common Lisp Object System. It has a three or four - layer architecture:

       layer 0 : meta object layer for CLOS - here CLOS is implemented in itself
       layer 1 : object layer for CLOS - here CLOS deals with simple representations of itself
       layer 2 : functional layer for CLOS - here have functions operating on CLOS objects
       layer 3 : macro layer for the CLOS programmer - here we have macros providing ways to configure CLOS programs

Take for example defining a CLOS class:

0) on layer 0 CLOS has CLOS functionality to represent and create instances of classes and metaclasses, he were can also write extensions to new kinds of metaclasses

1) on layer 1 CLOS classes are objects: which have slots which are objects and which have superclasses which are objects

2) on layer 2 CLOS provides functions to create all that stuff: classes, slot objects, ...

3) on layer 3 CLOS provides the DEFCLASS macro which at macro expansion time - which typically will be triggered by compilation - can do all the transformations and can interface to the development environment at compilation time.

The programmer will typically use layer 3 to define a class using the macro DEFCLASS. For more advanced use one could use the function ENSURE-CLASS

Common Lisp originally in 1984 did not have any syntax for defining classes. The first CLOS implementation was a Lisp program which implemented all the layers above and provided the necessary syntax to define the new language objects: generic functions, methods, classes and some others. So it was mostly a user-level program which added a full complex object system - with only little code for implementation specific stuff.

Thus the DEFCLASS macro could introduce any syntax it wanted as a user level program - since it is not constrained by a fronted parser. So the CLOS developers came up with something that was convenient for them to define classes. This could mean that it does something trivial by providing a different order to define things, make things shorter to write or that it does something more complex by actually checking the provided class configuration and doing some code transformations.

The whole story of CLOS in CLOS itself is written in AMOP: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_the_Metaobject_Prot...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_the_Metaobject_Protocol)

See also the pointer there to the first and portable implementation of CLOS: PCL.

<comment><USER5> Thank you so much for this thoughtful reply — I enjoyed the code samples and the details on Lisp's macro system, and I can see how its approach gives you more control to invent on top of the language. It's given me more to read and think about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is really amazing and it's too bad the author is getting so little from his Patreon for making it! But at the same time I understand why. People can't contribute to every open source project that increases their productivity, there's just too many of them. But what other options do innovative geniuses like Shaun have to keep making things like this? Make a kickstarter for a product? Nobody would bite for small but invaluable utilities like Parinfer. Commercialize it and keep it closed source as an IntelliJ plugin? Would be incredibly hard to market. Keep it open source but charge for support? It's not complicated enough, he'd have to add a gazillion configuration options and intentionally bloat it just to justify it. I would really hate to see things like Parinfer die out because most people wouldn't justify spending the time making it, or would make it but wouldn't open source it.

<comment><USER8> _" People can't contribute to every open source project that increases their productivity, there's just too many of them."_

I'm sure there are people on HN who can do just that, and much, much more. Some of them may even use parinfer. But whether they can and whether they want to contribute are two different things.

For me the more interesting question is how the tiny minority of people who have gotten their hands on the overwhelming majority of money, power, and resources in this country and around the world can be persuaded to use what they have in socially constructive ways rather than for the benefit of the tiny, exclusive minority they are part of.

<comment><USER7> This gives me an idea for a platform that:

\- looks at your Github repos

\- looks through all your dependencies

\- lists all the projects you depend on that support donations

\- shows you how much (or rather little!) they're making now

\- shows you the (Patreon) rewards you can get for supporting them

\- allows you to support them right there and then!

I honestly think this is a legitimate idea and kind of want to pitch it to Y Combinator right now. It would be like something that ties Patreon and Github together.

\---

Okay I just posted this idea to Hacker News, find it in my submissions if you're interested :)

<comment><USER9> Sounds like a cool idea for a free open-source project. Too bad your Patreon for it would be somewhat underfunded...

<comment><USER7> Chicken v Egg! Haha, did not think of that :D Actually I think a Kickstarter would be more appropriate for this, but even then it seems unlikely to get any funding. I think going straight to a VC would be my best bet.

<comment><USER10> Nah, just build it. A VC would cause the resulting service to end up very poor due to money pressure.

<comment><USER7> I don't think so? The product is too simple to get destroyed from money pressure and bloat. All it needs to do to make it worth their while is skim a little off the top, maybe 1%.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm using the atom parinfer plugin for my clojurescript projects and it makes development so much easier! The "it feels like writing python" analogy really fits. Now, if only there was a jump to function definition by ctrl+lmb for clj/atom it would be the perfect environment!

<comment><USER12> Also coming from Python and now using Parinfer for Clojure/ClojureScript, but I use the implementation in Cursive (intellij Clojure plugin). Love it. The only problem is working on a shared code base where people don't bother to indent code properly.

<comment><USER13> I'm glad you like Parinfer!

 _The only problem is working on a shared code base where people don 't bother to indent code properly._

Parlinter was designed for this purpose. Maybe you could suggest it to your team? [https://github.com/shaunlebron/parlinter](https://github.com/shaunlebron/parlinter)

<comment><USER12> Thanks, that's a great suggestion, although I think this I'm probably not going to get it through. This is a team of probably around 50 Clojure developers using different editors and AFAIK I'm the only one using parinfer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I've sadly never gotten around to using Lisp, but even still, this kind of thing excites me. I think there's a lot of untapped promise in supporting structure within free-flowing text editing, like this does.

<comment><USER15> You don't realize how terrible things like JS are until you experience the power and freedom.

<comment><USER16> That was the first phase.

But ultimately Lisp taught me not to overvalue technical superiority, so I eventually stopped using it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The lego analogy is something I've thought about before. Inspired by Firefox's Tilt 3D[1], I've wondered if it makes sense to code in VR with indentation, or even level of the AST projected onto the z-axis. Wobbling the perspective around would probably be annoying and unnecessary, but hopefully a fixed angle, or one varying slightly with zoom could work.

[1] [https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/tilt/](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tilt/)

<comment><USER13> I did a quick project around this idea a while ago:

[http://oakmac.com/lisp-3d-1.gif](http://oakmac.com/lisp-3d-1.gif)

[http://oakmac.com/lisp-3d-2.gif](http://oakmac.com/lisp-3d-2.gif)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Discussed in 2015: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10547772](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10547772)

</comment><comment><USER19> I badly need something like this in [http://www.hyperfiddle.net/](http://www.hyperfiddle.net/) \- is this a bug in smart mode or am i doing it wrong ... ?

edit: better video [https://i.imgur.com/4BsYQ3e.gif](https://i.imgur.com/4BsYQ3e.gif)

Exposing newbie end users to modal editing would seem to be a non-starter, i think smart mode needs to work

<comment><USER19> update: I hacked up parinfer-codemirror to be modal and indicate mode visually, here is the result: [https://i.imgur.com/xPDc4Wy.gif](https://i.imgur.com/xPDc4Wy.gif)

I'm wondering if paren mode might be what newbies actually want, and they can go and learn about indent mode later?

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> who else tried but got back to paredit because of too many years of habits ?

</comment><comment><USER19> Is there a place with a one slide, single demo, "type this, observe this, now type this, so you understand ZZZ"?

</comment><comment><USER21> When I think about LISP and parens it just feels redundant if you're gonna use indentation anyway.

Parens are only useful if everything is on a single line. With new lines and indentation, things can become a lot cleaner like python style.

I strongly believe python got so popular because of its very simple to read, almost pseudo-code like syntax that anyone could learn.

List had great ideas, everything is a list, but dealing with parens hell makes me think it could be a lot more elegant.

<comment><USER22> >More than anything else, I think it is the ability of Lisp programs to manipulate Lisp expressions that sets Lisp apart. And so no one who has not written a lot of macros is really in a position to compare Lisp to other languages. When I hear people complain about Lisp's parentheses, it sounds to my ears like someone saying: "I tried one of those bananas, which you say are so delicious. The white part was ok, but the yellow part was very tough and tasted awful." – Paul Graham

Lisp programmers don't deal with "parens hell". That's one of the misconceptions that come from outsider looking in. Parens are for the editor. Lisp indeed uses indentation and not parens as you said. It's very python-like that way."You have reached Lisp enlightenment when parens disappear"

I think it would be real helpful to have editor for beginners that shows parents as transparent and low contrast, separately from the rest of the code. It would help people to understand they should not be trying to match them visually.

<comment><USER23> If Lisp uses indentation and not parenthesis, then why is my mental caricature of Lisp just ((())))(()))((())))()()()(())))((())))?

<comment><USER24> Educated guess: because you have zero experience developing an application or utility program in a language in the Lisp family. Because then if you still harbored a caricature, it would probably be more sophisticated.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


U.S. consumer protection official puts Equifax probe on ice - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-equifax-cfpb/exclusive-u-s-consumer-protection-official-puts-equifax-probe-on-ice-sources-idUSKBN1FP0IZ#ref <comment><USER2> 143M Americans Affected and by Census'[0] count, there are ~327M Americans.

Chances are, if you're an adult American you are impacted. _Even if you did not authorize Equifax 's "services"_, __a third party most likely did it for you __, and you are impacted.

Note that your credit score or lack thereof is often used to deny housing and (for generally _unsubstantiated_ reasons,) employment.

The fact that Equifax is not held accountable is one of the biggest data- related atrocities of the modern era.

[0]: [https://www.census.gov/popclock/](https://www.census.gov/popclock/)

<comment><USER3> > Note that your credit score or lack thereof is often used to deny housing > and (for generally unsubstantiated reasons,) employment.

Not defending Equifax, but this is misleading. Credit checks are what enable lending of this sort in the first place.

<comment><USER4> No. France for one does not have a similar system available and lending still works well.

<comment><USER5> How does France go about determining if someone is a good credit risk who pays their bills on time?

<comment><USER6> It really is amazing how until the current three credit reporting agencies came long, nobody in the history of humanity had managed to obtain a loan. We owe them a lot for inventing the entire idea of lending money.

<comment><USER7> Since this apparently isn't obvious to you, creditors have different interest rates and different loan terms for different risk pools. Your risk pool is determined, in part, by your history of borrowing and paying back money.

It isn't that lending doesn't exist without credit history, it's everyone gets the same shitty terms and shitty interest rate and banks are much more conservative in lending.

<comment><USER6> Apparently the other commenter is right, I should've used some kind of sarcasm mark.

The parent comment I was replying to seemed not to understand how a functioning credit/lending market could exist without Equifax-like centralized reporting agencies. The sarcastic point was that credit and lending existed and worked for millennia previously.

<comment><USER8> The point you are still missing is that better credit rating leads to lower interest and more efficient investing.

<comment><USER6> Which... didn't seem to be the claim made in the comment I originally responded to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Another transparent appointee of Trump's designed to destroy the department to which he/she was appointed. See: Ajit Pai, Rick Perry, Scott Pruitt, Betsy DeVos, and more.

Is there any precedent for committing "mutiny" in a governmental organization?

<comment><USER10> A more-legal solution might involve invoking the "take-care" clause that requires the executive branch to "faithfully execute" laws. They usually get very wide latitude to (de)prioritize things, but requesting zero money and putting all work on hold might be on the other side of the line.

<comment><USER11> There is no constitutional duty to request funds. The duty is upon Congress to appropriate funds. They have the power of the purse, not the Executive.

<comment><USER12> In the case of the CFPB, I believe Congress delegated to them the authority/responsibility to request funds directly from the Federal Reserve.

[https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/budget- strategy/fun...](https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/budget- strategy/funds-transfer-requests/)

<comment><USER11> Yes. Congress constantly pulls this rigamarole, even back in the 1974 Congressional Budget Act. That's actually why I wrote, "There is no _constitutional_ duty to request funds". I didn't mean to imply anything else.

These requirements on the President are just a shell game from Congress to blame the President, avoid passing a budget, and pretend to be the "white- knights" each time there is a continuing resolution battle.

It is interesting to note that the CFPB passed in July 2010. Yet, 2015 was the first budget passed since 2009. I think it's safe to say that Congress has purposely engineered this situation to get the self-serving results they want.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This current administration must be like living in a mirror reality for long time government workers. The EPA, FCC, CFPB, DOE and other regulatory agencies have had appointed leaders who explicit mandate is to tear them apart. Even the state department has been severely reduced (Did you know that we don't have an ambassador to South Korea???). It seems like only Homeland Security and DoD have had leaders who alight with their vision.

There is tons of waste in government and oversight is needed in many facets but destroying our agencies is not the way forward. I wish voters where more aware of how many services government agencies provide, it seems like most of America is for smaller government until something like a shutdown slaps them awake for a brief period of time.

<comment><USER8> Shuttering most of the Federal Government has been GOP platform since 1994 Contract With America.

<comment><USER14> Reagan's whole schtick was that government is inherently useless.

e.g. "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help.'"

"One way to make sure crime doesn't pay would be to let the government run it."

"Government is like a baby. An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other."

etc., and unfortunately this rhetoric was very effective as advertising/propaganda, noticeably shifting public attitudes.

His platform was largely about cutting taxes, deregulation, privatizing public institutions and infrastructure, reducing or eliminating government services, ...

<comment><USER15> Not sure you can blame the rhetoric alone as such sayings have been around for a long time. viz. Mark Twain: "It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress."

p.s., As far as I can tell he actually wrote this, which is somewhat unusual for such things.

<comment><USER14> Reagan's policies were aligned with this rhetoric... or at least, the rhetoric was used as justification for the policies, which e.g. shifted the tax burden from the rich toward the middle class by cutting taxes on income (in particular slashing the top marginal rates) and inheritance, hiking payroll taxes, and using Social Security money to pay for general federal expenditures.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Since I'm seeing confusion about how this has occurred in various comments: this is actually not a failure of the executive branch/presidential administration. The American system is defined by a system of "checks and balances" — meaning that the legislature has full power to veto appointees to these departments and even impeach the president. What we're witnessing is a critical vulnerability in this system — when two branches of American government no longer work in the interest of the country, the only remaining check is public elections. These are slow to occur and can be manipulated in plethora ways.

So the issue here is a legislature that has coordinated against the interests of the country and its people for the betterment of themselves and the few who fund them. Keep that in mind, and direct anger and action there.

<comment><USER17> Mulvaney is the acting head of the CFPB.. meaning he was not confirmed by the Senate. Trump appointed him, and he leads the agency. That's it.

I'm going to assume you weren't aware of that... and not--as Trump likes to do --pointing fingers at others for Trump's failures.

<comment><USER18> Yes, that's true--the malware installed in our government has done some bad things that need to be discussed. But we also have to address the vulnerability that resulted in its installation.

<comment><USER19> To continue the metaphor: From the perspective of the malware, the bugs are features

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> What saddens me is that the details of the pervasiveness of this administration's failures will likely be lost when the stories are retold decades from now. The big sweeping failures will be the focus, and people still won't quite grasp how living in this time actually feels.

<comment><USER21> I don't know about this. One thing that has really struck me about the kind of behavior on display is that a lot of it seems to be under the assumption that getting away with it initially means getting away with it forever, but in reality, we live in one of the most well documented periods of time in history. Information is everywhere and it's nearly impossible to suppress. Not everything happens in internet time, but the truth is going to catch up to a lot of people eventually.

There will probably be dozens of books solely about the topic of what has been said by the executive branch on Twitter. (How clever will all those snappy quips and one liners seem 15 years from now on the pages of the next David McCollough?)

It's usually the case that those who aren't passionate about history will primarily be familiar with the big picture marquee events without fully getting the nuance of the experience, but there are troves of evidence here for extraordinarily rich future histories.

<comment><USER22> > _Information is everywhere and it 's nearly impossible to suppress._

I've noticed a disturbing trend recently where this is becoming less true than we'd like to believe.

Try searching for news articles about GWB's 2nd term. Try to find opinion pieces about it. Try to name (and cite) a dozen different important events directly related to his administration.

It's doable, but it's not easy. Google's got a really short-term memory these days (unless, of course, you're trying to debug a problem in Linux, in which case these forum posts from 2010 are sure to help...).

It's a big part of why I take the time to maintain the bookmark database I've got: I don't trust that I'll be able to find articles like this one in the future.

<comment><USER23> > It's a big part of why I take the time to maintain the bookmark database > I've got: I don't trust that I'll be able to find articles like this one in > the future.

I go further than that - and I assume many do: For stuff I think I'll want to reference in the future, that I find important - I'll take a copy of it; ctrl+s or ctrl+p for basic stuff, other things I'll take the time and space to mirror (using wget or something similar).

Given that we've seen major portions of the internet literally shut down or "destroyed" over the decades, this isn't something one should find odd or overkill.

I too keep a huge bookmark stack, but sometimes I don't properly sort things, and just put them in a "general" location. Recently I started going back thru these bookmarks, just to organize some of them - and many of them were no longer valid; 404s were the norm. That said, in many cases having the bookmark name or description (and even the old URL) was useful to find a copy of the information, where it moved (if it did) or maybe somebody archived it. But in some cases, it simply vanished.

I do agree with your assessment, though - Google and the internet has this "short term memory" problem; a big part of that is the (now) dynamic nature of websites, which doesn't allow for easy crawling by some systems (like the wayback machine), as well as allowing the data to move or vanish at a whim.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I froze my credit for free in response to the Equifax breach, and it gave me a little more piece of mind. However, I just had the experience of thawing my credit and I discovered that the companies are back to charging you for the freeze.

I had the pins for all the thaws and they went relatively smoothly, except for Equifax, who required me to call and answer ridiculous questions about banking I did over a decade ago (and suggested I would always have to do this regardless of the fact that I had my pin and an account).

I shudder to think what would happen if I lost my pin numbers. Especially if I didn't realize until right before I needed a credit check.

<comment><USER25> I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop on that. Surely, given the recent breaches, a _lot_ more people are freezing accounts who are less accustomed than the average HN reader to keeping pins or other security identifiers around long-term. Once those people need to start unfreezing accounts, we're either going to have a mess because they can't, or a mess because it turns out unfreezing isn't that well protected either.

Either way, gonna be ugly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> There is no purpose for the United States regulatory apparatus if no action is taken against Equifax. None.

<comment><USER27> You might want to think that one through a little more closely, keeping in mind who is running the executive branch right now. They want you to think there is no purpose for the regulatory apparatus, and they are attempting to take no action against Equifax. It would certainly be _useful_ to them if you took their inaction as proof that the regulatory apparatus has no purpose.

<comment><USER26> Absolutely agree. I think my statement makes implies I believe the regulatory apparatus COULD have utility, but in any state where they can't prosecute Equifax it does not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Ah Republicans, they want you to believe the government can't do anything well, and then they set out to prove it to you. Remarkably consistent.

</comment><comment><USER29> Depressing, but hardly surprising.

One of his early moves was to change their mission statement to add "regularly identifying and addressing outdated, unnecessary, or unduly burdensome regulations".

[https://thinkprogress.org/cfpb-protect- consumers-8d50e60ba5d...](https://thinkprogress.org/cfpb-protect- consumers-8d50e60ba5d6/)

Odd addition to the agency that was created because existing regulation was demonstrably insufficient.

</comment><comment><USER30> Tax dollars hard at "work" at "protecting" consumers.

<comment><USER31> Consider the administration, and the fact the GOP has hated this bureau since it's inception, promising to curtail it. This is hardly evidence that governmental consumer protection can't work, just evidence that the GOP has delivered on its promise to stop government from trying.

<comment><USER32> The purpose of all this "deep state" talk is to cast doubt on the idea that certain government policies should not change at each administration's whims, and there should be a semblance of continuity of both policy and personnel across presidential elections. Now that anyone who's been working for the government since before 2017 is being demonized as the "deep state," it opens the door to politicize every single action from every single agency.

If a Democratic president gets elected in 2020, it'll be interesting to watch whether this standard gets upheld. (Most likely the Republicans will complain about how the Democrats are attacking loyal Americans working hard for their government, and the Democrats will do their usual thing of feeling bad and giving in.)

<comment><USER8> Politics is a pendulum. It has always swung back and forth every few year. But now it's swinging much farther and much heavier, and it's making the whole system unstable.

Democrats are unlikely to give in again. Giving in is what drive away their base cost them the election in 2016. If they do it again in 2020, the party is dead.

<comment><USER33> Good luck with that, the Democratic party has not suddenly grown a spine.

<comment><USER34> Please vote in your local Democratic caucus/primary and force them to grow a spine. We need your help to make it happen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> > Mulvaney put a hold on much agency work when he took over in November, and > said it would last at least 30 days to give him a chance to understand the > job.

Yes, I too routinely shut down entire departments when I'm put in charge of them. Just long enough so I can get a handle on things, you know. Perfectly reasonable behavior.

<comment><USER36> Well, in Mulvaney's other job n the administration, he's also advocated CFPB be disbanded, so when he talks about understanding the job, it's about understanding how to dismantle it entirely, not how to do it effectively.

<comment><USER37> Same story at the EPA and other agencies. I believe the agenda was summarized as "deconstruction of the administrative state".

<comment><USER38> I mean, scaling back or disbanding the federal government has been the GOP's dream for the past 50 years. It also strengthens the argument that "government doesn't work" because they made government not work.

People blame Trump but this has been a conservative agenda item for decades.

<comment><USER39> Trump did appointed some of loudest voices against those departments to lead them so he's pretty much responsible.

<comment><USER38> Trump is just parroting fox and friends, which is basically how the government works now apparently. Fox -> Trump -> Fox

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> The "official" in this case is the new head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Mick Mulvaney, who is profiled here: [https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/09/01/mick- mulv...](https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/09/01/mick-mulvaney-omb- trump-budget-profile-feature-215546) and quoted as saying "I don't think anyone in this administration is more of a right-wing conservative than I am."

</comment><comment><USER41> I don't see how the facts of this article agree with the headline. Most potential sources for information were cited as having "no comment". There's been no official indication that the investigations have been abandoned.

> Three sources say, though, Mulvaney, the new CFPB chief, has not ordered > subpoenas against Equifax or sought sworn testimony from executives, routine > steps when launching a full-scale probe. Meanwhile the CFPB has shelved > plans for on-the-ground tests of how Equifax protects data, an idea backed > by Cordray.

So, beyond not issuing subpoenas (yet), and shelving plans for a security test, that's hardly putting the probe "on ice". It's possible the the statement from TransUnion was correct:

> We believe that it is clear that the CFPB was not given legal authority to > supervise any financial institutions with respect to cybersecurity

In which case it's no surprise that the inspections were deferred or cancelled.

</comment><comment><USER42> I feel helpless with everything the current Administration is doing.

<comment><USER43> The old addage.. "If you can't beat them then join them" becomes more true to me everyday as I get older. Accumulate wealth and "escape" the system.

<comment><USER44> One has to wonder at the reasoning of a person who complains that the world sucks and decides that the solution is to make it suckier for their own benefit.

<comment><USER45> If you live in a dump why not litter?

I'd have no problem with "political litter" in the state I currently reside because it's a corrupt, mismanaged dump.

If I moved back to where I used to live I'd care.

<comment><USER44> > If you live in a dump why not litter?

How do you think it got to be such a dump?

<comment><USER45> Social acceptance of corruption and mismanagement

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> This reminds me of the same thing happening at Yahoo. I and others are still dealing with every Yahoo account being hacked, and the world essentially just ignoring the disaster. This time it is far, far worse. The whole eTrust system is hacked. They are used by banks all over, and by most FDIC Banks here in the US. The idea that it can be ignored, and dealt with on a case by case basis, is almost insane. It is a clear criminally liable situation. Even if the certificates are replaced, they will be used, in time, to try to establish credibility and get access to the accounts they are tied to. I had seven! My firm blelief is even when I close those accounts, open new ones, all on MY dime, it will still leave me under a cloud. Whoevfer ends up with them will try to use them to trick monetary systems into thinking they are me, long enough to steal money. I have run over 100 banks, or done their books. The scope of this is potentially over $1 TRILLION dollar, and that is just the banks I did ebnd-of-day for. For the government to blow it off, for the banks themselves to blow it off, for the FDIC to blow it off.... My God, they are insane. I did the end-of-days! Geez. Come on! My opinion is the heads of these entities should be criminally charged, if they do NOT act, and now. Its been months. I am stunned, and I am losing any faith I had in even the FederaL Reserve Baord! The Board is independant, or at least, as independant as they can be made, and still part of the US Government. I urge all the Board to declare this an emergency, and force the rest to get up and deal with it. I guarantee, irregardless of lawsuits, promises, and all the rest, when people lose their money, and even if they are eventiually compensated somehow, it wilol destroy people. I am simply of the belief that this is an act of criminal negligence, and at so many places that it is almost mind boggling. Thse leaders need to quit wqaiting for someone else to yell fire, and get out the damned fire hoses, while yelling Fire loudly, publicly, and defiantly. The ones who do so will go down as future leaders, and the ones who hope it goes away are the ones who should be fired, immediately. They need to act, to perform the damned jobs they were hired to do! If the FAA acted this way, its head would gert hung when planes fell out of the sky, and just go ask him, because he or she will nod furiously!

</comment><comment><USER47> I really worry that this leak could really be used for a massive scam campaign. If well executed it could do massive damage.

I really wonder about the necessary cost involved to prevent those future scams.

<comment><USER48> If you are setting up troll/bot armies, lots of valid information to setup users under.

Wait til they start contacting representatives with stolen data to make it look like real constituents, en masse in your name like the FCC faked comments supporting net neutrality repeals.

How are we gonna stop people contacting your representatives, under your name, throwing support behind what you are opposed to?

We eventually need some sort of validated 'contact your representative' system that tracks responses, shows numbers of people in support against how representatives vote and more to make sure people are real people and that it isn't stolen data used to support something you don't want in your name. Contacting your representative is one of the most broken systems in the US with so few representatives, if they flood them with real user data but fake concerns, representatives will be flooded with the wrong perception of what people want.

This is besides all the fraud that can come about with stolen data from hack after hack. How long until they have access to all the NSA collected data through hacks and backdoors. We are seriously in the thick of it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Trump's cabinet is like the wind-down team a VC brings in to shutter a non- performing portfolio company – they have no experience or interest in the work done by the divisions they are put over, only in selling them off.

<comment><USER50> And in your analogy, all hypothetical of course, the VC here is located in Moscow?

Update: Am I really being down-voted for suggesting what everyone already knows? Seriously?

<comment><USER51> It's generally a bad idea to complain about down-votes. Try to shrug and argue the points, not people's choices for how to respond to the points.

Taking my own advice, regardless of what you or anybody may think of the connection between Russian money, Russian politics, and Mr. Trump, surely we can find a number of wealthy Americans who are interested in winding down Federal oversight.

I'd start with the high-fructose corn syrup people, the private university rip-off people, and the fossil fuel people. If there are also Russian interests, surely they are not "acting alone."

<comment><USER52> > surely we can find a number of wealthy Americans who are interested in > winding down Federal oversight.

Or non-wealthy Americans interested in winding down Federal over-reach. Really, in a _federal_ republic aren't there quite a lot of things which can safely be left to the several states? Is it necessary to make _everything_ an item for federal concern?

<comment><USER53> Most things already are. But there are many things that do need to be a federal concern, because a state does not exist in a vacuum, nor is it a (metaphorical) island. Things like the environment and pollution, for instance, need to have a federal component. One state may decide to relax environmental protections so that they can encourage factories and jobs. However, that pollution does not limit itself to the people that decided it. People outside that area, in other states that do have environmental regulations, will also be affected.

<comment><USER52> > But there are many things that do need to be a federal concern

I completely agree! Most of them are already explicitly listed as federal concerns, in the Constitution; we should amend it to include environmental concerns for the exact reason you note.

But I see no reason why e.g. education should be a federal concern. Let the states do as they will.

<comment><USER53> Because there need to be national standards for education. The citizens of a state do not exist in a vacuum, and being taught Creationism instead of actual science is going to do great harm to those kids ability to get jobs, which is going to have an impact on many sectors of the economy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> They are still being investigated by the FTC.

</comment><comment><USER55> Hypothetical: If a Tyrant rules a country why should the serfs expect anything?

</comment><comment><USER56> Nice, what was I just saying last night?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16307496](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16307496)

</comment><comment><USER57> What does it mean to put something 'on ice'?

<comment><USER58> To "freeze" it, i.e. stop it from moving forward, also to preserve in its current form with possibility of pursuing later.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> _" In contrast, the CFPB fined credit bureaus more than $25 million just last year for over-marketing its monitoring services, which generated monthly fees."_

How is "over-marketing" even a thing? Like what is the definition of that term? Seems very odd that would be a regulation at all which they could be fined for. I'm no fan of credit companies, but it seems strange that a company could get fined for aggressively advertising their product.

<comment><USER60> They were selling credit scores to consumers and claimed they were the same scores lenders used for making credit decisions. They weren't. They also deceptively enrolled consumers in costly subscriptions, e.g. "It costs only $1" but then in the small print costs $16/month after the trial period.

[https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/newsroom/cfpb- order...](https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/newsroom/cfpb-orders- transunion-and-equifax-pay-deceiving-consumers-marketing-credit-scores-and- credit-products/)</comment></comment>


Physics Travel Guide – Physics concepts explained in three levels of difficulty - <AUTHOR> https://physicstravelguide.com <comment><USER3> From just glancing at a few articles, this site is a treasure trove of references to highly readable explanations on a variety of fairly advanced topics. In fact, just the links to Wilczek's grand unification overview [1], and Klauber's Student Friendly QFT book [2,3] made this site worth visiting for me.

Resources that explain physics in (relatively) simple language without requiring books worth of prior knowledge seem to always be targeted at school- level physics; this one is different.

Of course, this is no substitute for a university curriculum, but as a way to plug holes in one's understanding, the site seems genuinely high quality.

[1] [http://frankwilczek.com/Wilczek_Easy_Pieces/172_Unification_...](http://frankwilczek.com/Wilczek_Easy_Pieces/172_Unification_of_Couplings.pdf)

[2] [https://www.quantumfieldtheory.info/](https://www.quantumfieldtheory.info/)

[3] ftp://srdconsulting.com/USB_BackUp/Data/Articles/QFT/StudentFriendlyQFT/

<comment><USER4> I haven't read it in full but Klauber's book is supposedly loaded with errors and also (in my view) needs re-typesetting (it's written in word)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Interesting. I am slowly building a computer science dictionary with a similar concept: three levels of difficulty [https://cs.quickref.dev/](https://cs.quickref.dev/)

<comment><USER6> Keep doing. Good stuff. Subscribed your youtube channel as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Almost nothing about experiments. Physics is an experimental science, based on observation of nature.

Its treatments of experiments is as if they were mere side notes to the real thing. The Tools section might include something like a ruler, clock, or basic physical tools used to observe nature with.

<comment><USER8> I strongly disagree "Physics concepts explained" has no need to add anything about experiments. The focus of the site is learning concepts.

Criticizing focused educational site for not being comprehensive enough is not valid.

<comment><USER9> I strongly disagree. Experiencing concepts first-hand through experiments improves learning and understanding, excites curiosity, and teaches practices that can be used in other disciplines.

I learned about many physics concepts with simple experiments in elementary school. They can certainly be extended and adapted for an adult audience.

<comment><USER8> What you say is true about learning physics. Not valid criticism against this site.

It's not meant to be the only source for learning physics. It is focused reference site for concepts. Having focus and focusing on just one viewpoint is a good thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I found this section confusing (emphasis mine):

[https://physicstravelguide.com/equations/schroedinger_equati...](https://physicstravelguide.com/equations/schroedinger_equation#tab__concrete)

"This means that for _all_ systems where the Hamiltonian does not explicitly depend on the time, we known (sic) immediately how the time-dependence of the total wave function Ψ(x,t) looks like (sic), namely: Ψ(x,t) = phi(t)ψ(x) = Ae^(−Et/ℏ)ψ(x). The only thing we then have to do is to solve the stationary Schrödinger equation Hψ(x) = Eψ(x)."

It sounds like they're saying that _all_ systems with a time-independent Hamiltonian are stationary, which is obviously wrong. This would have confused the hell out of me while learning QM, and dissuades me from learning more on this site.

Have I misread? I can infer what they're trying to say from context and previous knowledge, but that's of little help for someone new.

<comment><USER11> >Ψ(x,t) = phi(t)ψ(x) = Ae^(−Et/ℏ)ψ(x)

This equation is missing a sum symbol, also it should be e^(-iEt/ℏ), where in the correct case the amplitude does not change. What you get is a sum of products of each occupied stationary state and a time-dependent phase. So the general solution looks like this:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Scythe33/san...](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Scythe33/sandbox&oldid=948716529)

<comment><USER10> Indeed. But as another commenter points out, what I _think_ they wanted was to solve only for eigenstates here. Apparently I'm not the only one this confused.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is really great, would love something like this for pure maths.

<comment><USER13> A few answers from when a similar question was asked last time

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16373386](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16373386)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Just looking around, but this looks like a gold mine ! Definitely going to be my go to site when I'm bored ! I love how each concepts are explained at high school, college, and grad school levels !

</comment><comment><USER15> A thread from 2018: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16372454](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16372454)

</comment><comment><USER16> Generally very nice, but I did not find the 3 levels of difficulties. Where can I see them?

<comment><USER17> They are the tabs just below the title of every subject.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Some of those articles are just a modern Tantra - no one is seriously trying to refute these models because lots of people have a comfortable, high social status living out of it, just like modern theologians or tibetologists - <USER2> know the mantras and it's current interpretations, and the question of "How real it is" is frowned upon.

Generalisations aside (however valid and useful) most of this theoretical physics is nothing but a socially constructed models, agreed upon.

And yes, I have read a few of Bohm's books before forming an opinion.

<comment><USER19> Is that you jonathan tooker?

<comment><USER18> Before Hegel and his abstract bullshit, the main question of philosophy was "What is real", not what a mind can imagine.

Similarly, the main question of physics used to be "how everything is", not how do we think everything might be.

A map is not a territory, a model is not what is. It is that simple and infallible.

<comment><USER20> > _the main question of philosophy_

Well, philosophy is known to ask questions for which there are no answers. As to (theoretical) physics, I think we should look at it first and foremost as a computational tool (similar to applied mathematics) which is the way it has been since Newton, then it becomes clear that physics does indeed help understand "how everything is" \- in the sense that it helps us predict the results of experiments, and I am not sure if it even makes sense to talk about a "higher level of understanding" than that. A map is definitely not a territory, but it can indeed be (and will always remain to be) both "true" and "false" to a certain degree; similarly, no one in their right mind would say that physics is, should, or can be equivalent to the reality (aspects of) which it merely reflects.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> No Special or General Relativity - WTF?

OK found them hidden away under "models" \- WTF again?

<comment><AUTHOR> Wikis are intrinsicly hard to organize in a hierarchy. There is a search though.

<comment><USER21> That is how I found them, estranged from the other "theories" for some reason.</comment></comment></comment>


GPhone Revealed: With 'phone' project, Google has mobile ad dollars in its sights - <AUTHOR> http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/10/07/business/gphone.php <comment><USER2> This is actually breaking news, because sources indicate that the GPhone will not actually be a phone, but rather a software suite package for mobile devices, based on linux.

So the idea of a GPhone device competing directly with the iPhone wont happen right now. Google simply wants other handset makers to use their cell phone software (they dont charge any license fees, it is entirely ad funded).

I'm a bit disappointed they wont build special hardware but hopefully some of the good handset makers will adopt Google's software since it is open.

<comment><USER3> I dunno if I'd be disappointed by Google not building a real phone. They're not what I imagine when I think "hardware."</comment></comment>


Ask HN: where you are hosting Go apps? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> I'm not but you might be able to use this:

[https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/third-party- buildpacks](https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/third-party-buildpacks)

plus

[https://github.com/kr/heroku-buildpack-go](https://github.com/kr/heroku- buildpack-go)

</comment><comment><USER3> Digital Ocean.

[Referral Link]: [https://www.digitalocean.com/?refcode=04a9230a84e6](https://www.digitalocean.com/?refcode=04a9230a84e6)

</comment><comment><USER4> VPN is always great. I'm using [http://myhosting.com/](http://myhosting.com/) and it is pretty decent

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm using Amazon EC2, but just for small side projects at the moment.

</comment><comment><USER6> EC2</comment>


Txti – Fast web pages for everybody - <AUTHOR> http://txti.es/ <comment><USER2> This is really, much faster than pastebin (no captcha) and doesn't require registration like gist.github.com.

I think it should say on the homepage that the content is parsed as markdown (it's in the howto but could be summarized as one word that is starting to be quite universal (even Reddit uses it)).

Very neat, I'm going to use it often, thanks.

edit: yes and HTTPS would be nice, Cloudflare does it for free and automatically for instance (Heroku too and I'm sure many others)

edit2: Also it's removing newlines: [http://txti.es/yw35f](http://txti.es/yw35f) (should be test and test2 on two lines).

<comment><USER3> > Also it's removing newlines: [http://txti.es/yw35f](http://txti.es/yw35f)

That's probably because it uses Markdown for formatting so you need an extra carriage return to actually push it to a new line.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nice and simple pastebin alt.

May I suggest ability to have simple E2E encryption, so you, the service provider aren't aware of the shared content, thus can reduce legal complications.

Example:

* Have a encryption key generated on client side

* Share link will becomes [http://txti.es/{POST_ID}/{E2E_KEY}](http://txti.es/{POST_ID}/{E2E_KEY})

* You, as service provider, only stores POST_ID and its encrypted content.

* Link sharer passes the complete URL around, which contains the key to unlock the content

* Content are fetched and decrypt on client side

<comment><USER5> The encryption key should be passed in the fragment portion of the URL like [http://txti.es/{POST_ID}#{E2E_KEY}](http://txti.es/{POST_ID}#{E2E_KEY}). Else, it's still being sent to the server (and potentially logged or intercepted).

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm into this---it's kind of like the anti-Medium. Might try and use it for ad-hoc blogging. Maybe an experiment?

<comment><USER7> The biggest advantage with medium is the visibility of your blog post. Why not just use google blogspot website if all you want is just adhoc blogging?

<comment><USER8> Blogspot.com is terribly heavyweight and requires JS.

<comment><USER9> Agree. I find my use case for a small, personal site cum blog perfectly satisfied by Github Pages. Plain HTML and CSS, no Javascript. Now that Github Pages has Let's Encrypt support, there's no need to front it with Cloudflare (though the SSL support right now is not without bugs. The auto-renewal for my domain has been stuck for months now.)

<comment><USER10> > cum blog

Eww ;)

Isn't it "come", short for become?

<comment><USER11> [https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cum](https://www.merriam- webster.com/dictionary/cum)

First entry:

> _: along with being : AND —used to form usually hyphenated phrases_

<comment><USER10> Thanks for pointing that out! I guess I've once again proven how lacking my understanding of the English language really is.

But that's how it often is as a non native speaker ... Everything is fine until you have the strangest misconception.

<comment><USER12> Well, technically it's showing a lack of understanding of the Latin language, since "cum" is Latin for "with".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Cool.

Maybe add `https:` to it. Free with letsencrypt.org

<comment><USER7> What's the need if you're not having any form of credential store?

<comment><USER14> The password to edit each txti is sent over http, so your ISP could theoretically intercept that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Your friend Adam's twitter account was suspended

</comment><comment><USER16> Very cool. Will use.

One request: could you support "raw" in addition to json, xml, etc? So it would just be the text exactly as entered?

</comment><comment><USER17> This is so much what the web should be that I almost forgot about Article 13, GDPR and so on.

<comment><USER18> Does this violate GDPR? You have a delete code .. man this is a long terms of service.

<comment><USER17> In this particular case only Article 13 could be a problem, but it's this represents the kind of wonderful things that are becoming impossible because of regulation, walled gardens breaking net neutrality, etc.

<comment><USER19> Net neutrality is a regulation.

<comment><USER12> Net neutrality is what the web was like in its early days before it was usurped by commercial interest. _Nowadays_ regulations appear to be the only feasible way to retain net neutrality.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is cool. People may I request to not squat on good names and being kind citizens?

Question- what are your plans on handling abuse? And what are you requires to store by law?

</comment><comment><USER21> Similar to [https://itty.bitty.site/](https://itty.bitty.site/) which was on hackernews some time ago

</comment><comment><USER22> I would love the web to be much simpler like this.

</comment><comment><USER23> This is neat, I would ask to add some basic HTML parsing but it would ruin the experience

</comment><comment><USER24> The M----rFu---ngWebsite.com was done by that. (Sorry for the inappropriate language)

</comment><comment><USER25> Cool project. An improvement could be integrating with IPFS.

<comment><USER26> IPFS is better for larger content (although so is WebTorrent or DAT).

For content small like this, GUN or SSB is better.

Also, Txti supports edits, currently on GUN can do mutable & immutable data - IPFS & others are only immutable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Are you using any backend library or is it raw php ?

</comment><comment><USER28> does the markdown also parse code blocks? I can't see it correctly, new lines are stripped.

<comment><USER29> do double spaces for newlines

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Cool stuff, back to the web roots

</comment><comment><USER29> Love its simplicity!</comment>


Memory Switch Could Enable Brain Hacks - <AUTHOR> http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/03/predictrecall.html <comment><AUTHOR> This would be an excellent YC application!

<comment><USER2> I was just thinking the same thing. I really want to try building this. Anyone want to work together?</comment></comment>


AWW App – Online Whiteboard for Realtime Visual Collaboration - <AUTHOR> https://awwapp.com <comment><USER2> I have used AWW App last December to remotely help my son with maths studies. It worked really well for a little while but at one point it started having sync issues where every new event would erase the previous one.

I sent their support an email and never got a response back. Eventually started using a different whiteboard website, one that looked a lot worse and had a slightly cruder UI but was solid.</comment>


Why some countries are stuck in poverty - <AUTHOR> https://notesonliberty.com/2019/11/28/why-some-countries-are-stuck-in-poverty/ <comment><USER2> Nice but too simplistic. The best work I have come across on the topic is: Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty

[https://www.amazon.com/Why-Nations-Fail-Origins- Prosperity/d...](https://www.amazon.com/Why-Nations-Fail-Origins- Prosperity/dp/0307719227/ref=sr_1_1?crid=L4PRCJBJU6ZN&keywords=why+nations+fail+the+origins+of+power%2C+prosperity%2C+and+poverty&qid=1575175516&sprefix=power+prosperity+po%2Caps%2C1091&sr=8-1)</comment>


To Cover China, There's No Substitute for WeChat - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/09/technology/personaltech/china-wechat.html <comment><USER3> If you're a foreigner, getting a functioning WeChat account is near to impossible these days. Validating a foreign account involves sponsorship from a local account. Local accounts can only sponsor one user every three months.

This is a policy that has been getting steadily more and more restrictive. I have partners who simply give westerners a telephone with a new account + Sim loaded and bound to a local to avoid hassles.

Life in China today without WeChat is a bit like life in the USA today but communicating only by postal mail and paying for things with traveller's cheques. It's possible, but it's not a world you want to live in.

If WeChat is taking over the world.. it's a world without foreigners.

<comment><USER4> > If you're a foreigner, getting a functioning WeChat account is near to > impossible these days.

You are confusing Wechat with Wechat Pay which is a feature of the former. You only need a mobile phone # (foreign or domestic) to sign up for WeChat. As for Wechat Pay, getting a bank account should be fairly easy if you live in China.

<comment><USER3> Unfortunately no longer the case. All account validations for foreigners require the above hoops to be jumped through - at least as of yesterday when we were jumping through them to activate the account of two EU clients - <USER2> only, not payments. I may be incorrect (and I hope for any other foreigners wanting to use WeChat this is the case) - but I witnessed two data points to the contrary yesterday.

<comment><USER5> I signed up for wechat about a month ago in the US without any issues.

<comment><USER6> I signed up for WeChat a few months ago, and later found out that WeChat was warning my Chinese friends that my account was unverified and to be careful. I had no idea it was telling them this until one of them told me.

I was also unable to log into the web/desktop client. The error message just said that for security reasons, only verified accounts were allowed to use WeChat through the web, but didn't give any instructions on how to get the account verified.

<comment><USER7> That's essentially a spam protection feature. Because WeChat has so few non- Chinese users, most "foreign" accounts are actually made by spammers. So you're graylisted until they become confident you're an actual human. I've only seen that warning message about an unverified account once among the 100+ foreign WeChat contacts I have (most of them Pakistanis), but I seem to recall that the warning also included an option to verify the contact. Obviously they don't want to give spammers a way to directly verify themselves.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The combination of Wechat and making it effectively the only option through the Great Firewall is an amazing tool for shutting out foreign voices from Chinese social media. The apparent policy on connecting to Wechat from outside the mainland is "don't".

It seems incredible that people would want to use such a restrictive service when much more open ones exist, but the others routinely have their service degraded by the government so they aren't a viable option.

Personally, it think in the long term this sort of compartmentalization is harmful, it too often facilitates groupthink and missing valuable input from people with a different perspective. It's damaging to a society and is going to have repercussions.

<comment><USER9> > It seems incredible that people would want to use such a restrictive service > when much more open ones exist, but the others routinely have their service > degraded by the government so they aren't a viable option.

Do those other options actually exist within China? I thought they were blocked and that's why WeChat is dominate.

<comment><USER8> I remember at least one of the popular third party chat apps like Signal or Telegram made a big push to squeeze past the Great Firewall by hosting on AWS and being judicious with their traffic patterns. IIRC they even manged to get AWS shut out of China at times.

<comment><USER10> > I remember at least one of the popular third party chat apps like Signal or > Telegram made a big push to squeeze past the Great Firewall by hosting on > AWS and being judicious with their traffic patterns. IIRC they even manged > to get AWS shut out of China at times.

I think you're talking about domain fronting ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_fronting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_fronting)). IIRC, Google, Amazon, and MS all blocked it because they were _afraid_ of getting blocked. Though I also vaguely recall that Russia was blocking big blocks of AWS IPs for a time to try to stamp out Telegram.

I was in China recently, and Signal actually seemed to work on a local wifi network (with cellular data disabled), so maybe they've got some new circumvention technology in place. I didn't thoroughly try to test it since 99% of the time I just used data roaming on a foreign carrier to avoid the firewall.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> God forbid if I want to quit WeChat. The shit I get from my wife and relatives if I don't post anything, reply to something they posted or give them "red pockets" is absolutely ridiculous! It is probably the most successful social network app/money transfer app out there... and I don't like it. Maybe I'm turning into an old geezer or something...

<comment><USER12> I let my wife manage all our wechat posting, I'm responsible for all the Facebook posts. Sometimes it is hard to synchronize baby pics between the two.

<comment><USER13> If there was only a service that would allow sharing photos without WeChat or Facebook..

Its trivial to share photos using shared galleries in iCloud. Why Facebook is still considered valuable is beyond me. The last thing I want is photos of my kids on a Facebook type service.

<comment><USER12> The American relatives use Facebook, the Chinese relatives use wechat, it's not like we go out and tell them to use Snapchat for this.

I'm not really worried about toddler pics on Facebook. Many people have complex conspiracy theories that they can be turned into CP or something, but they are all pretty impractical.

<comment><USER14> My objection to putting toddler pics on social media is that we ask friends and relatives if it's OK to post photos of _them_ , but by the time a child is old enough to give informed consent it's too late.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> My hope is that China demonstrates to the world how terribly this kind of digital-dystopia plays out, and serves as a cautionary tale for countries like England and companies like Google which are already (more slowly) heading in that direction.

<comment><USER16> > terribly this kind of digital-dystopia plays out

Yeah, but what if it works? What if technology and the laws of our physical universe really do allow efficient, permanent and total totalitarianism?

<comment><USER17> That question provokes a need for faith. Faith that whatever is emerging in this age represents a flavor of evolution with an appetite for the good, the beautiful, and the true.

<comment><USER16> I'd prefer that engineers and scientists made opinionated decisions to work on technology that sustains a free, egalitarian society than just blindly being a cog in whatever machine they work in, and allowing whatever happens to just happen.

<comment><USER17> Yeah, I mean me too. And I do. Every day.

But I also recognize that the universe is bigger than me, and I'm not so self- assured as to believe that its impact on me isn't as big or bigger than my impact on it.

I think that you can decline to work on bombs and torture and machine learning unto psychological manipulation, etc. but also at the same time have faith that the emergence of the internet is something natural whose essence is good and beautiful and true.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I had to install WeChat once on my phone for business reasons. From what I read of the Chinese government's control over it, I felt nervous that my phone was compromised by installing it.

You could say that Facebook is just as bad, but 1) I don't install Facebook and 2) I still trust the US Government more than the Chinese one.

<comment><USER16> I'm not sure if this is still the case but Google used to not even allow employees to bring their laptops to China. If a Googler had to go to China they would be issued a special laptop just for that trip. I have no idea what IT had to do to that laptop after the trip to make sure it was clean.

If I were going to China on business I'd have a separate cell phone just for that purpose. You can just swap sim cards if you need to keep the same number. Smartphones are so cheap nowadays you might as well have a burner for that purpose.

<comment><USER10> > If I were going to China on business I'd have a separate cell phone just for > that purpose. You can just swap sim cards if you need to keep the same > number. Smartphones are so cheap nowadays you might as well have a burner > for that purpose.

A SIM card is an independent computer that runs a stripped-down version of Java. According to this comment ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17083221](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17083221)), the cell network can even upload programs to it to run.

<comment><USER19> Sim isn't a computer, it's just a secure data store. SIM cards predate java afaik.

<comment><USER20> There are UICC SIM card -- it is a java card emulating sim card.

for example: [https://www.etsi.org/deliver/etsi_ts/131100_131199/131130/08...](https://www.etsi.org/deliver/etsi_ts/131100_131199/131130/08.03.00_60/ts_131130v080300p.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> > the messaging app that's the equivalent of WhatsApp plus Facebook plus > PayPal plus Uber plus GrubHub plus many other things.

It's unfortunate not much of their architecture is publicly shared or discussed. With their massive amount of users and incredibly diverse service offerings I'd love to see their backend architecture design choices/tradeoffs.

<comment><USER22> Actually they shared a lot but vast majority of them in Chinese.

<comment><USER7> Could you link to some Chinese-language resources they published?

<comment><USER22> Just did a brief search and found a few links: [https://www.infoq.cn/article/the-road-of-the-growth- weixin-b...](https://www.infoq.cn/article/the-road-of-the-growth-weixin- background) [https://cloud.tencent.com/developer/article/1005631](https://cloud.tencent.com/developer/article/1005631)

There seems more on cloud.tencent.com/developer.

And you can check their presentations on major per-field conferences like AI or big data or something.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Reminds me of some earlier article about a chinese daughter who pursued a "solitary life". With few chinese "social connections" it was tough for her to get things done for her aging father? mother?. That would seem to make for a strong driver for "digital connections" ala wechat.

Hate to break it to the author though: western companies aren't going to be the ones doing the digital liberation. It's not like that's what their doing here anyway.

<comment><USER24> I believe it was this NYT article about guanxi: [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/23/opinion/international- wor...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/23/opinion/international-world/the- bitter-regrets-of-a-useless-chinese-daughter.amp.html)

<comment><USER25> Guanxi sounds like the "Old boy network."

And "Chabuduo" sounds similar to "Fail fast, fail often."

<comment><USER26> I'd like to respectfully provide some contrasting ideas regarding these two points.

1\. Guanxi is related to one's network or clout, but there are several distinct differences between the chinese concept of Guanxi and the western notion of "old boy's network." Primarily, guanxi is more a locative phenomena --anyone can have Guanxi within your community and business--whereas idea of an "old boy's network" pertains to ones connections and access to society at large. Additionally, Guanxi isn't explicitly related to a subpopulation. Anyone can have guanxi in a specific community, not just men.

2\. Chabuduo literally means "not a big difference." More abstractly, I see it as a thought process where "adequacy is enough." I do see the connection with fail fast, where one doesn't wait until perfection to ship. However chabuduo to me doesn't exemplify the pursuit of improvement that underlies "fail fast, fail often."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> The WeChat MacOS client requires some ridiculous QR code dance to login _every time_ I open it. That alone prevents me from using it over iMessage / FB messenger when communicating with my family.

The only time I use WeChat is if family members are in China where I assume they have banned FB messenger and iMessage.

<comment><USER28> That's basically 2-factor authentication. It's more secure than entering a password. WeChat was also built as a mobile-first app, the desktop experience was an afterthought.

<comment><USER29> 2-factor authentication generally keeps you logged in, instead of forcing you to re-do the authentication every day.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> And then we have things like this, where in Canada, a Liberal Party candidate used WeChat to post a racist campaign message: [https://globalnews.ca/news/4853439/karen-wang-liberal- burnab...](https://globalnews.ca/news/4853439/karen-wang-liberal-burnaby- south-candidate-wechat-message-controversy/)

How can any journalists learn about this story without a WeChat account or without having some insider (local Chinese person) who has access to a WeChat account?

Multiple Internets are _already_ here, and we've got to work at bridging them all over again.

</comment><comment><USER31> Serious question:

We bitch and moan in the US about NSA-Google-FB-Amazon etc spying on private conversations/things we say outloud etc.

Why on ___EARTH_ __would you want a Chinese WeChat account, assuming you had any privacy concerns in a country like the US?

<comment><USER32> You say we but there is no hivemind, just a bunch of bees, and some are less privacy conscious than others.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Funny that this article shows up today right after a big update (I think within the last few days) where the most basic message notification broke. Yep, it literally doesn't show any message notifications unless I manually open up the app. Kinda useless in this state. This is probably not affecting many people since I haven't see anybody complain about it.

<comment><USER34> I upgraded to v 7.0.0 a few weeks ago (when it first appeared), and WeChat runs 2 or 3 times slower on my old phone ever since. As for payments, sometimes it takes a few minutes to make a payment in a shop where I scan them. I'm starting to seek out larger shops where they scan me for payments because it's a lot quicker. I really don't want to buy a new phone because my old one still works for everything else. Sounds like WeChat/Huawei is the Chinese version of the old Microsoft/Intel duopoly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Kind of funny.

WeChat is more taking over the world before ByteDance's phenomenal growth in the past 2 years.

Now to say it's taking the world appears to show that the author has no idea what's happening in China...

<comment><USER36> right they just released a clone of snapchat. Android client looks like a decompilation of snapchat app

<comment><USER7> According to Wikipedia, WeChat was first released in January 2011, while Snapchat only came out in September 2011. I conclude that Snapchat is more likely to be a clone of WeChat than the other way around.

Edit: To be clear, while I haven't used Snapchat, based on what I've heard about it I'd say that the two apps are nothing alike except for having some kind of chat functionality.

<comment><USER37> Parent was not talking about WeChat: [https://technode.com/2019/01/18/bytedances-snapchat-clone- is...](https://technode.com/2019/01/18/bytedances-snapchat-clone-isnt-wechat- killer-but-tencent-should-worry/)

<comment><USER7> Thanks for the clarification. I read the "just" as "only" instead of "this week" and also thought it referred to WeChat instead of Bytedance's new Duoshan, which I totally hadn't heard of before.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I was in China, in the moment of activating WeChat when I put my phone down on my RFID passport. WeChat was the app which asked for Android permission to read the RFID tag.

I ceased installation and removed the app.

</comment><comment><USER39> Just installed in on android. 90mb for a chat app. Really wonder what's inside. We have multiple apps with a whole lot more functionality. Never more than 20-30mb

<comment><USER40> Oh really? And do you have built-in microblogging platform? Do you have OCR with English-Chinese and Chinese-English translation? Do you have mobile payments? Do you have discover people feature (by location)? Can you identify movies by recording audio? Not only payments are possible, you can send money to anyone in WeChat. Sadly, some of these functionality are not available for non Chinese people (people without account in Chinese bank).

<comment><USER41> > Can you identify movies by recording audio?

Wait how can you do this? I've tried searching in English (can't write Chinese) to no avail.

<comment><USER40> I can read and write Chinese only partially, but that's not needed here: [https://www.dropbox.com/s/bd61em3tieo8ry0/Screenshot_2019011...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/bd61em3tieo8ry0/Screenshot_20190119-135131.png?dl=0)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> There was a recent If Then episode that commented on how China's declining demand of iPhones may be in part to how people there are agnostic to the hardware and more dependent on the software apps ran on the device (WeChat, Alipay, etc.).

</comment><comment><USER43> WeChat utilitarian characteristics seem awesome, aside from it being a major commerce platform but I've heard of features that connect you to businesses, government, and other services that would be really helpful.

</comment><comment><USER44> It's interesting and a bit scary to see how the reporter from NYT rendering WeChat, a daily used app developed by a HK IPO-ed tech giant, into a scary, wretched, government-controlled monitoring tool for restricting personal freedom.

Tell me, how can a social media like Signal and WhatsApp win in a country of billon population without even a single one local office? Just because it's encrypted? Come on!

How to say that? Either charlatan or simpleton.

Talk with some "real" Chinese ppl, guys, and learn about what is WeChat.

<comment><USER45> Prior to its acquisition by Facebook, WhatsApp gained significant market share in Europe, India, and Israel. The company is based in the US, and I don't think it had local offices in those areas before it was already popular there.

So it is not obvious, or even true that a chat app needs a local office to become popular in a given region. It _may_ be true that a chat app needs a local office to become popular in _China_ , but it's definitely possible to believe otherwise without being a "charlatan or simpleton".

As an aside, we don't talk to each other that way on Hacker News. Please do not insult people, and please explain why you think someone is wrong instead of claiming that it's obvious.

<comment><USER44> As X succeed in Europe, India, and Israel, then it's natural it should success in China.

Sorry, my fault, I thought recognizing the diversity of things is "obvious" in HN.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Does anyone here have a business presence on WeChat? If so, what has your experience been like?

<comment><USER47> Two of our Chinese partners conduct their entire business through a collection of groups all related to careers.

Since we are a foreign firm located in South Korea - they sell our services to their users on our behalf. Amazing how an entire company can be ran solely on wechat

<comment><USER14> That's terrifying. The IT section of their business continuity plan must be empty beyond "don't get kicked off WeChat"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Where by "the world" we of course mean "mainland China"

Edit: the title has been changed; it used to read "WeChat is taking over the world" or something

<comment><USER49> As someone not from the US, I can assure you the same mindset does appear on American websites about the US.

<comment><USER50> I thought american tech companies were used in most places outside of the US. From what seen facebook, google, amazon, etc are fairly global reaching at this point.

<comment><USER51> Reddit it's pretty much unknown in Europe I'd you check statistics

Amazon it's also the last option i would be looking at when shopping for something online in Europe

<comment><USER52> Right, first place would be ebay.de, .fr, .it, .co.uk..

<comment><USER51> that's even less likely than amazon

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Article title is currently the slightly less hyperbolic: "To Cover China, There's No Substitute for WeChat"

<comment><USER54> Yes, thanks! We've updated the headline from "WeChat taking over the world".</comment></comment>


Y Combinator Dataset Of Posts And Users Version 1.4 - <AUTHOR>

A 111MB archive of Y Combinator posts is available by accessing http://www.rushy.com/ycombinator-news20080610.tar.gz and a 0.8MB archive of Y Combinator user profiles is available by accessing http://www.rushy.com/ycombinator-news-profile20080610.tar.gz <comment><USER2> Hi, this is a great resource. Only one suggestion: it would be great to also combine web server access logs with this info. It would allow all sorts of research based on real evidence (traffic).

</comment><comment><USER3> I notified <http://infochimps.org/> about this. It's a cool place to get data sets, check it out.

</comment><comment><USER4> Thanks.

I am sure at some point I'll find it useful or find a use for it :)

</comment><comment><USER5> How about something that compares users and their comments, and helps you find a hacker like yourself?

</comment><comment><USER6> This is great stuff. Will get it into infochimps on the next update.</comment>


Byteconf React, remote React.js conf, streaming on YouTube [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeEADrueBIA <comment><AUTHOR> Day two of Byteconf React, a free remote React.js conference, is streaming on YouTube now!

The full schedule is available here; [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23052564](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23052564)

Join us in the live chat to hang out with other attendees!</comment>


The FBI Warns Retailers About Thieves Armed With Foil - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-12-27/the-fbi-warns-retailers-about-thieves-armed-with-foil#r=most popular

<comment><USER2> I wonder who came up with this gem:

"Climb onto the roof and physically inspect satellite antennas before approving big-ticket sales."

</comment><comment><USER3> Do they even need to use stolen cards for this? Wouldn't cards with random (but valid) numbers work just as well?

</comment><comment><USER4> Why not authorize transactions over redundant buried internet links? Why the need for specialized/proprietary satellite connections just do to credit cards?

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm not sure what it is about this article or business week that attracts so many...interesting comment authors.

</comment><comment><USER6> So they make a tin foil hat for the satellite dish and it actually blocks the signals?

</comment><comment><USER7> Approving a large credit card transaction on faith seems like a pretty questionable move on the retailers' parts. Don't the CC companies have phone numbers they can use to manually approve transactions? Is it common for people to go into a gas station and buy a whole cartload of cigarettes? This seems like a crime that a little common sense would foil (get it? foil!).</comment>


Ask HN: How did you find HN? - <AUTHOR>

I was wondering how did everyone else came across HN in the first place? For me it was several months back when I googled "hacker news" in an attempt to find something better than techcrunch or mashable. HN was the first result. <comment><USER2> I've been reading HN for quite long, mostly parallel to /., then one day I figured /. is no longer for me (I think it may have been one too many instances of browsing at -1 during breakfast or so), so I registered here, a little less than a year ago.

I visit /. very rarely now, the best stuff from there makes it to HN anyway and the S:N ratio is many times higher here than there.

Frankly, I'm amazed it is as large as it is without being overrun by the wild hordes. Apart from one single instance of a downright abusive user ('arrington', a couple of weeks before I joined up) I have seen only very little of that sort of thing here.

I try to keep my 'memberships' to social news sites down to a minimum, I've registered the usual (fb, twitter and so on) but I only really use HN.

</comment><comment><USER3> Two(?) years ago I read about Y Combinator since I knew about pg from his essays. Browsing yc's site, I came across news. After a few months of lurking, I registered.

</comment><comment><USER4> Had been reading pg's essays since around 2002, and saw the link to Hacker News (or Startup News at the time) not long after he added it to his website.

</comment><comment><USER5> From Techcrunch, which I found while searching for info on iPhone apps.

</comment><comment><USER6> Googled lisp -> pg's essays -> arc forum -> HN.

</comment><comment><USER7> My boss told me about it when we were having a conversation about favorite blogs/daily reading.

</comment><comment><USER8> I found HN via a link on reddit, probably somewhere in the programming subreddit.

</comment><comment><USER9> A friend linked me to their "rate my startup" submission.

</comment><comment><USER10> i stumbled across YC (2-3) years ago while looking at some of their companies (while casually looking at jobs), and stumbled across HN in the process.

</comment><comment><USER11> Through a friend. and now im addicted!!

</comment><comment><USER12> My oldest son was talking about some interesting articles. I asked him to send me the links to a couple of things. They were articles written by PG. I read his stuff for many weeks, aware from comments he made that HN existed but I had no reason to think it was my cup of tea. Somewhere along the way I decided I need to learn a programming language and joined HN to ask some questions.</comment>