The 68000 Wars, Part 1: Lorraine - <AUTHOR> http://www.filfre.net/2015/03/the-68000-wars-part-1-lorraine/ <comment><USER2> I think this bit was _really_ interesting analysis:

"Amiga's financial difficulties provided the opportunity of a lifetime to a bunch of folks that may have struggled to get in the door in even the most junior of positions at someplace like Apple, IBM, or Microsoft."

It reminds me a bit of the recent realization Google has had (after trolling through vast amount of employment data) they see virtually no difference in performance from people with high pedigrees that people without.

[http://www.the-american-interest.com/2013/06/24/google-is- no...](http://www.the-american-interest.com/2013/06/24/google-is-not- impressed-by-your-fancy-ivy-league-credentials/)

It's a lesson that seems to keep getting relearned over and over again. Hire the individual, not the GPA, not the degree, not the school.

These guys produced an _amazing_ machine virtually on a shoe-string.

It also comes up a lot in some circles that the Amiga was spiritually the follow-on to the Atari 8-bit computers, not the ST. A podcast I've been listening to recently has some wonderful interviews with some of the industry people from that time period and there's some great insight into this transition.

[http://ataripodcast.libsyn.com/](http://ataripodcast.libsyn.com/)

<comment><USER3> The ST was a way to get access to a 32 bit address space without spending a very large amount of money.

The Amiga was the fore-runner of the multi-media PC.

<comment><USER4> 32-bit address space, GUI, hi-rez screen, and good-enough games. In 1987 my choice was a Commodore 128 or an Atari ST -- I wanted 80 columns, modern graphics, and more memory and couldn't afford a PC or Mac (nor did I like the PC anyways). I was coming from a VIC-20. The ST fit the niche and lasted me until I went Linux on a 486 in 1992. The Amiga was another step up in the price tier, and less geared around productivity and more around entertainment.

<comment><USER5> If you were into video at the time, the Amiga was most definitely the more productive machine.

<comment><USER4> Oh for sure. But if you were into MIDI, the ST was by far the better choice. The Amiga sold more the ST in the end. But neither really made a dent in the market % wise.

Both had a lot of potential and were let down by bad management. Commodore I think did a marginally better job than Atari did in growing their platform. Atari had a last gasp of inspiration with the TT and Falcon and MultiTOS that seemed like they were making up for 5 years of neglect. But then they packed it in.

I still turn my Falcon on occasionally. It is a really nice machine.

<comment><USER5> Neither understood the fundamental truth that they had to be priced in the C64 range to stay alive. The C64 was replaced market share-wise by the IBM PC and neither company repeated the success of their earlier, cheaper machines.

They needed games and price to keep winning.

<comment><USER4> PCs didn't become affordable for non-business uses until the early 90s. By then you could get a 486 or 386 for about $2000. When you think about inflation, that's a heck of a lot in today's money, but if you take into account that the original IBM PC was $1500 in 1981 dollars when it was introduced, that's a heck of a lot more cash. ($3,873.30 according to [http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/](http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/)) That was really out of the reach of middle/working class people.

<comment><USER5> I'm sorry, but I don't buy the inflation line when it comes to computers. As an industry, we continually say computer get cheaper every year. I look at the price brackets. We lost the under $100 and under $200 price brackets and are only now getting them back.

In the late 70's and early 80's, my family could get me a computer I could program for under $200 (well under $100 with the Sinclair). After that, I wouldn't have been able to be a programmer.

As an industry, we have failed our youth. We had no answer to uplift the low income like the opportunities the 8-bit computers gave us. Big box stores allowed non-technical parents to get a computer that could be programmed. Magazines had programming articles.

<comment><USER4> Yes, I agree! That was my point. We lost the affordable when _everything_ went PC/Mac. PCs were very expensive until the mid to late 90s. Even then they were pretty pricey, but not quite as pricey when you account for inflation (my argument above).

We are only getting the price down again now with the ARM revolution.

Anyways, I could build a pretty darn capable PC in the late 90s for about $800-$1000 which is about what an Atari ST would run you in 1986/87.

<comment><USER5> Oh, ok - I get it now. I'm just a little sensitive to inflation calculations where people say a $200 PC in 80's is just as affordable as a $500 PC now - which is bunk given people's situations and frankly demonstrated by the $99 price point for cellphones and other electronics.

I dream of getting rich enough to build a modern Sinclair / Atari / Commodore that could be sold in retail stores. Something that a kid can write a program and then share it with other kids without purchasing a developer account. One can dream.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is a good honest account of the Amiga, I'm glad to see somebody to admit its faults and quirks rather than blindly sing glorious praise to it as is often the case with its former (or present) users.

I was an Atari ST user back then, the "other 68000 home computer". When comparing the ST and Amiga it is easy to get caught up in hardware capability comparisons, but the ST was 2/3rds the price of an Amiga, and shipped with more RAM and didn't have the interlaced video. There was nothing like the ST's hi-rez monochrome monitor (very good quality) for the Amiga. Really the ST was like a budget Mac, but with a higher clock rate, higher monochrome screen resolution, and disk format compatibility with MS-DOS. Here's a similar accounting of the first genesis of the ST: [http://www.atarimagazines.com/startv3n1/threeyearsofst.html](http://www.atarimagazines.com/startv3n1/threeyearsofst.html)

The Amiga was a great piece of hardware, and the games for it were generally the best in class. And it was made by some really inspired people. But it only took a few years and that hardware advantage meant little anymore. Mainstream Macs and PCs absorbed the multimedia capabilities. Game consoles from Sega and Sony were able to outplay it, and there were even machines like the Sharp X68000 that blew it away on the hardware front by the late 80s (and even outsold it, albeit only sold in Japan.)

<comment><USER6> You are right that the advantages the Atari ST and Amiga had were absorbed into mainstream consoles and computers, but I think the time gap is a little longer than a few years. The Amiga released in 1985, but the Sega Genesis/Masterdrive didn't come to the US until 1989, and didn't arrive in the UK until 1990. Windows 3.1 was 1992, first color Mac was 1993, and Sony PSX was 1994.

<comment><USER7> The first colour-capable Mac was the Mac II in 1987.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's hard to convey the feeling when I first saw an Amiga. In the office, surrounded by monochrome early DOS machines someone had set up an Amiga 1000 showing the golden sarcophagus of Tutankhamen. It's like someone had switched on an electric light for the first time.

<comment><USER6> This was exactly my experience. I was at college, walking to the bookstore to buy a 286. There was a guy from Creative Computers with table set up demoing an Amiga. I couldn't believe what I was seeing - it looked so much better than anything else at the time. I bought one the same day, and struggled to find a decent word processor for the next 4 years. But the games made it worth it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Still reading this, just wanted to thank you for posting this! I owned an Amiga back in the day. I wasn't old at all, I was only just barely getting my toes wet in programming, but I knew I was using something special, and when I look back and see an Amiga 500, I still think it is. It's even pretty despite the design's age. Or maybe it's my pretty memories of it speaking.

Making me even more nostalgic about this era, is that it felt like the golden age of computing, so many wildly different concepts. My ZX Spectrum 48K, my Atari 520 STE, then my Amiga 500 Plus. It felt like anything was possible, that anyone had a chance of building a famous new computer with its own operating system and all. And all that felt on countless LAN's. Man, those were the days!

</comment><comment><USER10> Ah, those were the days. I learned Assembly on A500. You would just load an image into memory, tell the video card to point to that location and it got shown on the screen.

I recall writing a simple program to extract images from games. After reboot, the game graphics would remain in RAM. Using the program I would change the address with keyboard controls until I got something that looked like an image from game on my screen and then I would save it into a file.

And I got docs for programming it via a friend who had access to some BBS.

Kids these days don't know what they have.

</comment><comment><USER5> Jay Miner was one heck of a designer. I do wish there was a book that focused on the forgotten hardware designers of that era.

</comment><comment><USER11> Ah, the Amiga -- computing's Lamborghini Countach. Sexy, powerful, revolutionary engineering for its time. Fueler of many a pubescent schoolboy's wet dreams. But also hopelessly stuck in the 80s in terms of design and fiddly enough to put off non-enthusiasts.

</comment><comment><USER12> As someone who grew up on the Commodore 64 and Amiga, I sorely miss the 68k platform.

The few times I'm still forced to deal with the X86-architecture at assembly- level it just _pains_ me to see the clusterfuck that modern the Intel-platform represents.

The 68k was _clean_ , nice, logical and let you _work_ on the data you wanted to process. The X86 looks like a patchwork of instructions and registers added cumulatively over time, with no design behind them, and the majority of code is moving data in and out of registers, not actually processing the data.

The X86-architecture marked the end for when I cared about knowing how things worked all through the stack. It was just too ugly for me to embrace.

</comment><comment><USER13> I got my Amiga as a freshman in high school. It was so much better than anything else out at the time, yet never caught on.

Is there anything like that happening today, where there is something significantly better than its competitors, but has no traction. I don't mean something debatable (e.g., Windows Phone vs iPhone or MacOS vs Windows), but something clear cut?

Probably the closest thing I could think of is Tesla, if they go belly up.

<comment><USER14> Never caught on ? No traction ?

That certainly wasn't true in Europe. It seemed like every kid around me in the early 90s had an Amiga 500, a few years after they all seemed to have an Amstrad CPC (wildly popular in France, even though it was a British computer. The Spectrum was the UK darling, and the C64 was the more popular one everywhere else)

A generation of game publishers (mainly in the UK and France) thrived on the Amiga and went on to become household names today (UbiSoft comes to mind)

As the article notes, there were even Amiga magazines on UK newsstands as far as Y2K, years after Commodore's demise.

So yeah, pretty big deal over here.

In some ways, the Amiga reminds me of Techno music : invented in the US, but found its true home in Europe.

<comment><USER15> I had an AMIGA 500 in the early 90s. Sadly, I only ever used it to play video games, got bored eventually and then sold it. I knew several people who did, too.

I remember part of the reason to sell it was classmates mocking me for having a machine that was only good for playing video games, while _they_ owned _real_ computers, i.e. IBM compatible PCs. In retrospect this seems kind of funny, given that they usually had 286 machines with EGA graphics cards...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> In the comments of the article some pointed to a Kickstarter in progress right now for an event at the Computer History Museum in Mountain view to celebrate the upcoming 30th anniversary of the Amiga.

[https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/890300835/amiga-30th- an...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/890300835/amiga-30th-anniversary- in-california)

</comment><comment><USER16> I got an Amiga in 7th grade! It was a hugeee step up from my previous computer (an Apple II.)

It felt truly amazing for the time (late 80's).</comment>


UK Porn Filter Will Censor Other Content Too, ISPs Reveal - <AUTHOR> http://torrentfreak.com/uk-porn-filter-will-censor-other-content-too-isps-reveal-130726/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter <comment><USER2> This deserves a lot more of a response but for now I'll just leave this:

Liberty is about the ability of the individual to do things that others disapprove of. You don't need liberty if everyone else approves of your actions. As a corollary, the exercise of liberty does not require a justification, because it's a liberty, practicality or "usefulness" or what- have-you play no part in it. It's onerous to require someone to justify their right to look at porn. It's even more onerous to ask people to put their name on a list as someone who desires the ability to look at porn. And indeed this is how freedoms are eroded. Because once you put things on a different footing and you require people to justify their freedoms then it becomes ever more difficult to justify anything. Can you justify eating a cheap, greasy cheeseburger? Can you justify watching "Jersey Shore"? Are you willing to?

These are precisely the same sorts of tactics that have been used since the dawn of time for busybodies to rein in individual freedoms of others, and thereby to obtain greater authority over others.

People often dismiss out of hand the notion that tyranny could possibly take hold over the first world democracies of the west in the 21st century. And to that I can only sigh. Perhaps it will not be known as tyranny, perhaps someone will come up with a different, more apt name once (if) we are in the clutches of it, but it will be every bit as bad and every bit as difficult to throw off, if not more so.

<comment><USER3> > People often dismiss out of hand the notion that tyranny could possibly take > hold over the first world democracies of the west in the 21st century. And > to that I can only sigh. Perhaps it will not be known as tyranny, perhaps > someone will come up with a different, more apt name once, if, we are in the > clutches of it, but it will be every bit as bad and every bit as difficult > to throw off, if not more so.

Jesus fucking christ you people should go look at what happens in real dictatorships sometime.

A voluntary filter is not tyranny and it's fucking disgusting to compare optional filtering of semi-random webcontent with governments who murder and torture their citizens.

<comment><USER4> _A voluntary filter is not tyranny and it 's fucking disgusting to compare optional filtering of semi-random webcontent with governments who murder and torture their citizens._

 __You __are the one that made the equivalence, not the person to which you replied. Nice straw man.

This UK porn filter is a step on a path. Yes, that current position is not tyranny, but it's a step on the path to it. Frogs can't be dropped into boiling water, but you can turn up the heat a little bit at a time until they boil. That's what's happening in the US and UK right now. The end result will be tyranny, and it will end with murder and torture of citizens.

Btw, in the US, we've already started murdering our citizens[1].

1\. [http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2011/09/obama- assassin...](http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2011/09/obama-assassinates- us-citizen)

EDIT: remove "Boiled" before frogs to clarify my intent. Thanks coldcode.

<comment><USER5> You mean frogs I assume. Pre-boiled frogs don't mind a new dip.

<comment><USER6> It's a legend anyhow, but an apt one.

[http://www.snopes.com/critters/wild/frogboil.asp](http://www.snopes.com/critters/wild/frogboil.asp)

<comment><USER7> Don't believe that conspiracy-debunking-nonsense!!

The truth is that the myth is true. However they have already censored all of the boiling frog videos from the internets.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Sorry for the 19th century text wall, but this is so pertinent that it hurts.

"Next in importance to personal freedom is immunity from suspicions, and jealous observation. Men may be without restraints upon their liberty: they may pass to and fro at pleasure: but if their steps are tracked by spies and informers, their words noted down for crimination, their associates watched as conspirators, who shall say that they are free? Nothing is more revolting to Englishmen than the espionage which forms part of the administrative system of continental despotisms. It haunts men like an evil genius, chills their gaiety, restrains their wit, casts a shadow over their friendships, and blights their domestic hearth.

The freedom of a country may be measured by its immunity from this baleful agency. Rulers who distrust their own people, must govern in a spirit of absolutism; and suspected subjects will be ever sensible of their bondage."

The Constitutional History Of England Vol II (1863), pg. 288

by T. E. May

[http://archive.org/stream/constitutionalhi029622mbp#page/n31...](http://archive.org/stream/constitutionalhi029622mbp#page/n313/mode/2up)

<comment><USER9> In free governments, the government is the servant of the people. It's activities are transparent and public by default, though the people may allow some defined areas where some secrecy is temporarily allowed. The people's liberty and privacy are assumed by default - it may be violated only by specific, well-defined legal processes.

In a despotism these roles are reversed, in government, secrecy is assumed. For the people, there is no privacy. Government is not longer the servant but the master.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> First they criticize the Great Firewall of China. Then they start building it themselves. And who better than a Chinese network operator to do it? After all:

"The Public Pledge on Self-Discipline for the Chinese Internet Industry is an agreement between the Chinese internet industry regulator and companies that operate sites in China. In signing the agreement, web companies are pledging to identify and prevent the transmission of information that Chinese authorities deem objectionable, including information that "breaks laws or spreads superstition or obscenity", or that "may jeopardize state security and disrupt social stability"."

-From Wikipedia

</comment><comment><USER11> Well DUH!

Some of the politicians like to say it'll be the same sort of system that's on mobile phones here. These have two characteristics -

      1. The filter is full of holes
      2. What's blocked is pretty arbitrary

For instance, I was at a music festival last year (Beautiful Days), and access to the online site map and festival schedule was blocked as 'adult' content. The festival itself was full of kids and teenagers (brought along by their parents) for whom the info would have been useful. To get around it, I installed Orbot (Tor for android), because they only care about censoring the web.

<comment><USER12> Wait, is there already a government-imposed web filter on mobile phones in the UK? And you can't opt out? When did this happen? What were the justifications given when it was put into place? Does it also apply to GSM tablets and devices tethered to your mobile?

<comment><USER3> There is filtering on most mobile phone data contracts in the UK.

YOU CAN OPT OUT. YOU WILL BE ABLE TO OPT OUT OF THE PROPOSED FILTERS TOO.

Justifications: "Children have too easy access to very hard core porn. Provide filtering, or we'll regulate you".

<comment><USER13> _> YOU CAN OPT OUT. YOU WILL BE ABLE TO OPT OUT OF THE PROPOSED FILTERS TOO._

..Thereby putting your name on a list of people who like to look at $blocked_thing. Why this is problematic is left as an exercise for the reader.

Any such filtering should be OPT IN by default. Not the other way around.

Further, what data children have the ability to access is the concern of their parents, not the government.

<comment><USER14> Does opt-in vs opt-out make a difference, though, once they have enough data? If oppression or data misuse is the goal, it seems like reversing the set selection criteria would be a trivial way of getting the list of people who like their ${badstuff}, even if they did not opt out of a filter":

        # obviously not real sql
        select * from citizens where (citizen.id not in opt_in_list)

What am I missing?

<comment><USER13> Probably the fact that only a minority will actually opt in. Requiring positive action almost ensures that miniscule amounts of people will change from the default.

        (defaultsetting_users) > (nondefaultsetting_users)

..regardless of how desirable the non default setting is.

This, for instance, is why Windows Update got a lot more forceful in its later incarnations. People will not update, even when it's good for them, unless you make it hard to not update.

<comment><USER15> Another example: IE being installed on Windows by default.

How many people still think IE == internet...

<comment><USER16> Way too many.

I work as an engineer in a small ISP compaly, and for some time had very closely contacted with phone support (sometimes helping them) and heard many conversations with clients.

I'd say there are quite a few people who can't distinguish between Internet, browser and VKontakte (Russian analog for Facebook). Didn't counted them or did any real statistics, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> As I've been saying for years, the Great Firewall of China is -- or was -- the prototype.

Look at its early history: Built with "Western" technology and consulting.

Did you think all these firms were creating a one-off?

And, the following observation is perhaps stretching the interpretation a bit (or not), but I find it somewhat ironic that, after all this, it is a Chinese company that is pushing this implementation forward. Use domestic market access to acquire the knowledge (sometimes, by hook or by crook), and then use your control of your own labor market to undersell the competition.

<comment><USER18> So you could call this one the China Firewall of Great Britain.

<comment><USER19> B.ritish O.nline L.imiting L.ude O.bjectionable C.ontent S.ystem:

B.O.L.L.O.C.S

<comment><USER20> [...] [O]bjectionable [C]ontent for [K]ids [S]ystem ?

<comment><USER19> heh... Yeah - I couldn't think of a [K] ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> A possible silver lining - if you're against the filters that currently exist (blocking child porn), someone might infer you're a paedophile, which would be bad for you. If you opt out of porn filters, you'll go down on a list of people who want porn. If you opt out of everything-filters, the only thing that can really be implied is that you want access to _something_ , which is somewhat less easy to blackmail with.

<comment><USER22> Exactly. If I disable all all those filters, I can credibly argue that I'm against filtering on principle, not necessarily because I want to view any of those things.

I just wonder how long until they start using this infrastructure to compute a profile that determins things like your social security contributions or security clearance. They could also threaten to take the children away from people who disable the filters or force them into some kind of "re-education" program.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> In my previous line of work, as a criminal lawyer, this is how this would be used:

Q: "Mr Smith, isn't it true that you willingly removed a filter on you Internet connection, places there for your safety, and the safety of your children, and now your connection allows you to watch hard core porn?" A: "But... I did it because.." Q: "Yes or no, Mr. Smith? Did you ask for the filters to be removed?" A: "Yes, bu..." Q: Thank you, Mr. Smitha

<comment><USER24> >placed there for your safety

"No"

If the lawyer wants to be an ass then he can enjoy some excessively pedantic replies.

<comment><USER25> not sure how that would go down. It's funny though

"Placed there for my safety? Why would I remove a filter placed there for my safety? He must be referring to some other filter."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> 2010-2012 may well have been "peak internet".

Three years ago, or so, I was thinking about[1] the idea that we may have been witnessing something akin to peak oil, or peak credit.

At that time I was discussing it in terms of network fragmentation and net neutrality ... but a collection of different censorship regimes around the world degrades it[2] just as well...

[1] [http://blog.kozubik.com/john_kozubik/2010/12/peak- internet.h...](http://blog.kozubik.com/john_kozubik/2010/12/peak- internet.html) [2] "it" being the "homogenous, globally routed Internet as we have known it."

</comment><comment><USER27> There was a debate in Finland when the child porn filter was introduced a few years back. One guy had a website where he kept database of sites which were blocked but did not contain any child porn. Aftermath was that the site was added to list and that raised even more questions about the whole censorship idea. ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lapsiporno.info](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lapsiporno.info))

Unlike in Britain, the consumers did not have an option to opt out from the filter although it seems that majority of ISPs don't use it. Later on ISPs were forced to block piratebay.org and there have been discussions about blocking online poker sites etc, because Veikkaus enjoys monopoly in gambling and betting business in Finland.

<comment><USER28> Britain already has a mostly mandatory filter designed to save it from child pornography. Cleanfeed is run by the Internet Watch Foundation who look for images of abuse and put it on the blocklist. They're responsible for blocking Wikipedia due to an album cover.

The same filter is now used to action on high court demands to block torrent websites like The Pirate Bay.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> There are two aspects to the current debate: \- The 'child porn keyword' web search filter mandated on all UK ISPs with no opt-in or opt-out \- The 'opt- out porn block' which will be applied to all internet connections, from which people can opt-out in order to receive unfiltered results.

The first part hasn't received as much attention because it's harder to write a punchy article about the malicious nature of a government-supplied permanent search filter blacklist, and it isn't as easy to attack as the blocking of legal content such as pornography but this is where the real danger lies.

Once the government add all their 'illegal search terms' to the blacklist and have the appartus for such wide-ranging censorship set up, what is to stop them from adding terms unchecked and unguided to filter any "unwanted" material from web searches? If this had existed in the US, for example, when the NSA Verizon/PRISM stories were leaked, how easy would it be for them to simply add "Edward Snowden" or "The Guardian" or "PRISM" or even "NSA" to the search term blacklist? They would easily justify it on the grounds that the material leaked was classified or damaging to national security.

At this stage a majority of people would in hindsight agree that this leak is hugely important and in the public interest, but if these terms were blocked by the government then what?

</comment><comment><USER30> The terrifying reality of censorship, as told through the lens of that of China:

"I knew of some Chinese migrants to Australia who watched a Tiananmen 10-year anniversary documentary, and apparently tears just streamed down their faces.

 _They had no clue that it ever happened_."

<comment><USER31> Uhhh maybe they came from a Tier 3 city or something. Most Chinese I have talked to know about Tiananmen

<comment><USER32> I know at least one person who moved to the US from China for graduate school and had no idea about Tiananmen. Mind you, it is not something I bring up, she just happened to bring it up during a conversation

It is pretty easy to find Chinese people talking about how few people (specially younger people) know about it too:

[http://www.quora.com/China/What-percentage-of-Chinese- know-a...](http://www.quora.com/China/What-percentage-of-Chinese-know-about- the-Tiananmen-Square-incident)

[http://observers.france24.com/content/20080605-tiananmen- squ...](http://observers.france24.com/content/20080605-tiananmen-square-china- censorship-media)

Even those who have heard about it though, many probably haven't seen the pictures to truly understand the scale of it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I'd like to see some direct information on what was actually said by the ISPs and where it's come from. This article is a lot of speculation based on a statement that they've said something and then an existing service offered by one ISP. Clearly they're not going to block games and dating sites which this service does so it's not clear why we should assume that it's any sort of useful template for what's proposed.

ISPs have a stated objection to these proposals (if only because they understand what's really involved) and it feels to me a little like this could just be spin from their camp. Suggesting that this is the start of wider censorship would certainly be a way of pushing the public against it which would suit the ISPs cause.

None of which is to say that what they're saying is wrong or that it's good bad or indifferent, just that my reading of the article is that it doesn't really have much to support it's claims.

All that said we know for sure that the proposals will block things other than porn if only because it's almost impossible to accurately define porn or build a perfect filter for it based on whatever definition you have. There will be false positives and negatives both in terms of definition and implementation, meaning that stuff will absolutely be restricted which shouldn't be (and let through when it should). Good luck running an on-line site such as Ann Summers or Agent Provocateur, even when you're allowed shops in the high street.

<comment><USER3> > Clearly they're not going to block games and dating sites which this service > does so it's not clear why we should assume that it's any sort of useful > template for what's proposed.

Why won't they block games or dating sites?

That Talk-Talk product was put in place in response to earlier requests by MPs to "protect children", which is why mobile content tends to have filters now.

It seems that filter is as good a model as anything else for what the filter will be.

<comment><USER33> To me the Talk Talk product looks like they pulled it off the shelf - they're pretty standard categories for blocking software.

Obviously that's the likely implementation for the new system but it seems unlikely that they'd enable all that by default - that would absolutely open them up to claims of censorship and undermine what they actually want to do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Which is, of course, an excellent reason such projects should never be tolerated in the first place. Government-mandated filters simply should not exist. Full stop. It's an easy question: Does the law in question require that access to publicly-available information be blocked in any way? If yes, then it is a bad law.

</comment><comment><USER35> There's no feasible way of blocking circumvention tools without causing massive collateral damage.

If they block SSH tunnels for instance no sysadmin will be able to do their job. Same for VPN. A lot of people work remotely.

I will laugh my ass off if they try to do that.

At the same time I won't be able to access my VPS anymore :(

<comment><USER36> I don't think they care about it enough to want to go even that far, unless VPNs become totally mainstream.

But you can tunnel encrypted data over _anything_ that can carry a signal, and stuff IP datagrams inside it. This will only stop people that are "casually" looking for stuff and don't really care.

Latency might suck. But if the filters become a problem, you'll start seeing VPN applications with "UK filter modes" that use whatever the current simplest circumvention method is. Heck, I'm in the UK and I'd go into business selling VPN solutions like that myself if the filters get obnoxious enough for that (through suitable shell companies somewhere more favourable). The trouble with a business like that, of course, is that the market will be limited as long as the filters are not mandatory.

But just as an illustration of how ludicrously infeasible turning this into full censorship is: If they allow HTTP through at all, you could easily create a VPN were the packets are exchanged by ensuring every Xth character is lowercase for 0 and uppercase for 1, and serialise your packets by downloading / uploading hacker news comments to the VPN server, with the case changed. Or you could use a thesaurus on both ends, with an algorithm for assigning 0/1 to words, and rewrite the text by looking up the next word and deciding whether (and if so what) to rewrite it to.

Of course that'd also be ludicrously slow and waste tremendous amounts of bandwidth, but it's an example on the far extreme end. More likely _if_ they ever try to make this mandatory and actively filter, it'd likely start out with just be a matter of changing port numbers. The next step up in escalation would likely be wrapping the data in something that looks like you're talking to a DNS or mail server or similarly slightly massaging the data.

It'd only be somewhat tricky if they get to the point of trying deep packet inspection and validating that the contents matches expectations from the protocol _and_ doesn't look "too random" for _every_ protocol people might use.

(As a last resort we'll just have to implement IP over Avian carriers: [http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1149](http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1149) )

<comment><USER37> You can do IP over DNS today:

[http://code.kryo.se/iodine/](http://code.kryo.se/iodine/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> If you live in the UK, please consider signing the petition to stop the filters: [https://submissions.epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/51746](https://submissions.epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/51746).

At the moment, it's sadly languishing at a mere 21,000 signatures. If it reaches 100,000 then that should trigger a parliamentary debate. I'm also going to send an email to my local MP. Does anyone have any other ideas for fighting this censorship?

<comment><USER39> The press could mention it, that would be a start. BBC news for instance barely mentioned the proposed blocking. The only stories to hit the front page (and then, right at the bottom in the Tech section) were the links to Huawei and the spat between the minister and the reporter. The actual proposed block has barely been mentioned. Apparently a baby being born warrants continuous headline coverage; loss of civil liberties gets a footnote.

<comment><USER40> Was a cleverly chosen publication day to be honest. I wouldn't be surprised if there's other bad news that we haven't even heard about that was completely blanked off the news by baby discussion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> When widespread Internet censorship started in Iran, they promised it will only be used for porn. Being a religious country, no one protested. I don't say everyone agreed, but because of all the stigma attached to porn, no one said a word or lifted an finger. What started as a porn-only filtering system expanded exponentially. Little by little, the number of unavailable websites grew. Nowadays, most of the internet is inaccessible from Iran. To name few instances:

YouTube, Vimeo and all other video-sharing websites Flickr, imgur and all other photo-sharing websites WordPress, Blogger and all other blogging platforms (and every blog on them) Facebook, Google+ and all other social networks BBC, CNN, NPR and almost all foreign news agencies ... And also HTTPS rarely works. They have limited the HTTPS bandwidth so much it's impossible to use Gmail without a headache, in an effort to encourage everyone to disable it, thus making it easier for surveillance.

Dear British friends, it's a slippery slope. Don't let the same thing happen to you.

</comment><comment><USER42> Absolutely no way they'll ship with social networking blocked by default, it'll be dead on arrival. Every household will want social networking, and will enable that if they just skip through and realise they can't get to Facebook. Once they do that the whole systems pointless unless people actually see some benefit.

</comment><comment><USER43> Us hackers need to make a new "web" a web where censorship is not possible and everything is encrypted, a "web" with no single points of failure, a "web" where domains cant snatched or censored, a "web" like the web used to be :(

<comment><USER44> It's already there, developed by the US military no less. It's called Tor. If the installing and usability was improved it might catch on for normal people concerned about their privacy.

<comment><USER45> Installing Tor on Windows is a breeze, it even comes with a modified Firefox browser that enables your tor session when you open it.

<comment><USER46> For what it's worth, it's actually as easy on Linux and Mac as well. There is a prevailing myth that Tor has this enormous learning curve and is only for neckbearded hacker masterminds, and it could not be any more wrong. This is by design - The Tor Project wants anonymity to be for everyone who desires it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> It turns out that the slope was very slippery indeed.

<comment><USER48> It's worse than that - a 'slippery slope' seems to imply [to me] that you can go back up the slope.

What we are seeing now is a thin end of a very big wedge which once in place will be much harder to reverse.

With this and the recent disclosure regarding fibre tapping, take a moment to remember these words from John Gilmore [1]

>How many of you have broken no laws this month?

>If you're watching everybody, you're watching nobody.

>When the X500 revolution comes, your name will be lined against the wall and shot.

But we have hope:

>The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.

Sadly quote 4 may lead to quote 3.

1\. [https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Gilmore](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Gilmore)

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> I can only interpret this as a power grab. This is not a sensible solution, it's an opportunistic solution.

I think many people in modern society don't understand the power of data. The NSA scandal has shown how much people underestimate the power companies can have when they own everyone's data. And similarly, they underestimate the power that a government can have when it owns everyone's data.

We need to do a better job of showing the lay person how much they're underestimating the value of their data, and how much power the data aggregators have.

</comment><comment><USER50> This is probably a long shot but I was wondering if eventually this censoring functionality can be used to draw boundaries over the internet. Once you have the infrastructure in place to censor then there's very little needed to do extend the filters to censor other content.

For instance, nationalize the internet, perhaps block services from companies from other countries or tax such services to promote indigenous companies that provide similar services. The reasoning can be why not promote local businesses and provide them incentives by taxing or levying duties on services from other countries instead of letting a company from some other country making all the profits.

edit : typo

</comment><comment><USER51> Pope is Catholic, Vatican reveals.

</comment><comment><USER52> You know what would make a lot of sense? Install these filters on every new device sold in the UK. Make them configurable, and even uninstallable, but defaulting to "blocked". That way if and when people choose to unblock something, it's a private matter between them and their device.

This achieves both the stated goal of protecting people from malicious content, and the freedom of people to consume malicious content, if they want to, in private.

<comment><USER53> I am surprised that they haven't tried this as it would be much more affective. Network level filtering always fails because it can't see encrypted packets. To prevent circumvention you need something running on the machine, at which point you may as well just run the filter on the machine. The government could have promoted officially recommended browser plugins. If parents don't know how to protect their children why not help them?

<comment><USER54> _Network level filtering always fails because it can 't see encrypted packets._

Pfft, how far in the past are you living?

[https://www.barracuda.com/products/webfilter/features](https://www.barracuda.com/products/webfilter/features)

 _SSL Inspection - Administrators can specify domains and URL categories for which SSL-encrypted traffic will be decrypted, scanned for malware and policy and then re-encrypted to the destination when deemed safe._

All you do is put a trusted SSL certificate on your office computers, and the proxy device will reencrypt the traffic as coming from your trusted certificate, and the end user will not notice the difference unless they study the names in the certificate chain.

<comment><USER53> You need root access on the machine to add an SSL cert, meaning that the network level filter fails without maintaining control of the users machine. At that point you may as well do filtering at the client level. I think we can all agree that breaking SSL is bad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Let's see which way the wind is blowing .... hmmm... I sense an opportunity for profit!

I think that I will create a business to develop technology that lets us block undesirable thoughts. We will use an EEG cap as the sensor, some machine learning to detect undesirable thoughts, then a bone-conduction speaker to play distracting and disorienting sounds whenever our detector is triggered.

Perfect.

Do you think I could get some government funding for this?

<comment><USER54> _then a bone-conduction speaker to play distracting and disorienting sounds whenever our detector is triggered._

But I already hear constant radio pop-music everywhere I go without triggering anything first :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> HN users in the UK should note: The default blocked items includes "web forums", potentially including HN.

You would have to opt-in to viewing such content as the default has you opted- out along with porn, violent material, extremist and terrorist related content.

</comment><comment><USER57> If the concern is actually about enabling people to restrict what their children see, why not create and distribute a free, open-source software package that citizens can run on their own?

Obviously the question is rhetorical, but I'd like to see someone ask it.

<comment><USER3> They have asked it. the politicians said that people are stupid and don't want to learn how to use complicated software, they just wanted to be protected.

ISPs said they offer opt-in filters (and opt-out on mobile products) that people could use.

politicians now say those filters must all be opt-out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> At least to me, the big problem with porn is that it can rise your thresholds of excitement, make you insensitive, and you can even become an addict. But our kids will (hopefully) live in a world where porn is prevalent. We should teach them (at the appropriate age) that it is something that they can enjoy but should be careful not to abuse it.

Anyway, the idea of getting the government involved on blocking porn (or anything) is really bad. I rather live in a world where we have to teach our children to be responsable than in a world where the government decides what they can and what they cannot see.

</comment><comment><USER59> I tried to look it up, but UK's law is still a mystery for me. Can someone help: what is a definition of ISP in the UK?

Especially: is a VPN provider an ISP?

Additionally, what definition of ISP is used in Mr Cameron's proposal?

<comment><USER40> The reason you're struggling is there has been no bill published yet. I'm fairly sure this is mostly political bluster, it'll be hard to know exactly what is required until they actually publish something real.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> So basically its a business deal between Huawei and the UK and they're using the angle of "Think of the children" to sell the idea.

</comment><comment><USER61> If the block itself is only a technical measure, it only boosts alternative access methods. But if they make it illegal to do things like watch port or download torrents without government permission, like they do now with the requirement to hand over private encryption keys to the officials require them, then GB will become worse than China in the freedom of information flow aspect.

<comment><USER62> Baby steps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> I don't know how things are going to change but I ordered Talk Talk a couple of days ago and they only ask you if you want content filter and antivirus filter on; whatever you choose they say you can customise it later in your control panel.

So far I like what I have seen. I just don't want any filter, thanks, and I did't have to say why (ie. porn or anything else).

</comment><comment><USER64> The internet filter at the café I'm connected to at the moment (Stofan in Reykjavík, I'm sure some of you know the place) actually blocked me [following this link]([http://www.siminn.is/lokad-a-sidu/](http://www.siminn.is/lokad-a- sidu/)).

</comment><comment><USER65> Anyone know if Tim Berners-Lee has come out to say anything about this?

I believe he's expressed views in favour of net neutrality and against censorship in the past. With his participation in the Olympic ceremony perhaps, if he were to get in the news, the public would pay some attention.

</comment><comment><USER66> I don't understand one thing: how will this filter actually work?

Say I use Google or Bing or whatever over SSL. All traffic is encrypted end- to-end. How will the ISPs know I am searching for a forbidden term? Are they going to request a CA to issue certificates for google.com to ISPs?

</comment><comment><USER67> If you have a problem with what your children are exposed to lock them in a box, not the internet.

</comment><comment><USER68> This filter is for the coming austerity cuts Cameron is about to roll out. He saw what happened in other countries and took a preemptive measure to be able to filter Twitter and other online protest organizing during times of "national security".

</comment><comment><USER69> The whole thing comes a bit unstuck when you realise that BT has had a system in place that allows parents to protect their children for years. The new approach doesn't seem to provide any benefits but succeeds in pissing off a great number of users.

</comment><comment><USER70> So what are the speculations on circumvention?

Would an unblocked proxy suffice, or do we think UK internet users would need to purchase a VPN?

Also, is the idea to block porn sites, or any site that contains pornographic content, like NSFW subreddits?

<comment><USER3> 1) Open web control panel

2) Click checkbox by "Filters on [ ]" so that the box is unchecked.

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> Slightly tin-foil, but any thoughts on the timing of this story? The intersection between those talking about the NSA and those that will be angered by the introduction of internet censorship is pretty perfect.

<comment><USER71> You mean the birth of a royal baby? Is the filter even still in the news in the UK now?

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> Of course it will. Porn, terrorism, etc, etc, are always used as fronts for some other goal. History has shown that once a technology is in place it will be misused.

</comment><comment><USER73> The Internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it. $5/month VPN subscriptions will come with routers, pre-configured.

<comment><USER2> This is very, very wrongheaded.

The internet as a _transmission protocol_ is robust and redundant. And if it were used as a sort of replacement for the telephone system then that would be enough. But the architecture of the way the internet is today used in practice is far more centralized. If the web worked the way bittorrent does then perhaps your comment would be accurate, but it doesn't, so we have a "web" that is not strong due to its massive interconnectivity but rather weak because each part of it, content-wise, lives in comparative isolation and is easy to cut off (for now).

<comment><USER73> Say that to thepiratebay.

This legislation isn't about shutting down porn websites, it's about blocking their access at the ISP level. This censorship is circumventable by using a VPN or other such technology. Censorship -> damage, Internet -> routes around damage.

This has _nothing_ to do with cutting off a website from being accessible by removing it from the Internet.

<comment><USER2> That's an illustration of just how difficult it can be to try to operate a website with the governments of the G8 out to get you. It's something that requires extraordinary efforts for TPB and only works because it's a meta site, if they had to seed every tracker they index they would have died long ago. Moreover, because of the nature of their site and the demographic it's used by it's trivial for them to slap ads on the site and make a lot of money, no matter what.

Compare that to, say, a reporter's personal blog and videos, for example. Especially if they have a family they are going to be much less able to pull the sorts of hijinx that TPB manages. When they're shut down once they will stay shut down and they will more than likely just keep their head down from then on.

<comment><USER73> There is absolutely nothing in the UK plan to shut down porn websites.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER74> Doesn't really surprise me, since it's basically the same thing we already have on mobile connections...

</comment><comment><USER5> If everything goes through a filter then anything can be tapped and recorded as well.

</comment><comment><USER75> The rapid growth of circumvention technologies is now assured.

</comment><comment><USER76> The state nanny approach to internet censorship.

</comment><comment><USER77> i.e. D-notices.

</comment><comment><USER78> ImageVision.com</comment>


Activist ejected from "public" meeting on secret copyright treaty for tweeting - <AUTHOR> http://www.boingboing.net/2010/01/22/activist-ejected-fro.html

<comment><USER3> "ACTA -- a secret treaty that contains provisions requiring nations to wiretap the Internet, force ISPs to spy on users, search laptops at the border, and disconnect whole households from the net on the basis of mere accusation of copyright infringement"

Is there any historical precedent for worldwide corruption on this scale? Not to be overly dramatic, but this feels vaguely like the end of the free world.

<comment><USER4> While this treaty has the potential to be very bad, all that we hold dear about "the free world" encompasses more than copyrighted content.

<comment><USER5> Privacy and innocent until proven guilty are probably high up that list, ideas being trodden on in the name of copyright.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> People realize that the negotiations of the United States Constitutional Convention were secret, right? There's a difference between a 'secret treaty' and a treaty merely negotiated in secret.

<comment><USER7> There's a difference between a piece of paper that establishes a government and the limitations on said government and a piece of paper which coerces unjust reactions to accusations of copyright infringement, along with massive violations of privacy.

<comment><USER6> Petitio principii—you're saying there's a difference because the treaty is unjust, but you're simply declaring the treaty unjust. Negotiating anything among many parties with competing interests involves certain difficulties, and making the negotiations secret provides benefits that facilitate the negotiations.

<comment><USER7> I'm declaring the treaty, as we know it, unjust because it directly violates limitations on the government set forth by our constitution: the right to be secure in my person and my papers (and, by extension, my communications - <USER2> internet), and assumes guilt instead of innocence (punishing based on accusations instead of proof).

The problem, of course, is that this treaty is being negotiated by many parties with competing interests, but no party is representing the people who will actually be affected by this treaty. The people discussing the treaty are paid for and bought by controlling copyright interests, and not by the people.

Therefore it is fundamentally different: it is not a negotiation at the behest of The People. It is a negotiation based on the trade and control powers of multinational corporations. It's diametrically opposed to freedom, because the free are not involved at any level in its construction, negotiation, and ratification. The fact that they are so secretive about the negotiations as to eject and ridicule third-party observes proves that they are not acting in the best interest of said third party observers.

(I would have no problems with the treaties being discussed / negotiated in secret, if there were bona fide representatives of People and specific safeguards against the treaty being unilaterally used to oppress the masses)

<comment><USER6> Holding the negotiations in secret does not prove that they're acting one way or another. All secret negotiations have underhanded motives; these negotiations are secret; therefore, these negotiations have underhanded motives? The first proposition is quite an assumption. I can see why they wouldn't want to include you in the negotiations.

The representatives of the people in this process are the democratically elected Senators who must ratify the non-secret finished treaty.

<comment><USER8> You seem to be putting words in warfangle's mouth, then criticizing those words. Nowhere does warfangle even remotely propose the logic you are describing. It is clear that warfangle is in fact getting the information about the treaty from what has leaked about it.

Assuming the leaks are true, we do not need to speculate that it may be underhanded because it is being negotiated in secret. We can be as confident as we are in the veracity of the leaks that they are being underhanded because of the _content of the treaty_.

Secrecy is an irrelevant point. If this treaty was produced in an open and transparent manner I would still agree with warfangle that the treaty is unjust and in the US, unconstitutional.

Are you aware that details have been leaked? It sort of sounds like you may not be aware that while to some extent we are still speculating on the contents, it is well-founded speculation, not wild speculation.

<comment><USER6> I disagree that I'm putting words in warfangle's mouth. He said, 'The fact that they are so secretive about the negotiations as to eject and ridicule third-party observes proves that they are not acting in the best interest of said third party observers.' I don't think that it in any possible way proves such a thing at all, and I was making a guess as to the premise warfangle was assuming to arrive at such a statement.

You'll note that I haven't made any statement one way or the other regarding the treaty itself. You shouldn't infer that I am for or against it based on what I've said. Yes, I do know the details have been leaked. You're missing my point entirely, because the content of the treaty is completely irrelevant to what I've said. My point is simply that the fact that the treaty is being negotiated in secret has no bearing on the relative merits of the treaty itself. The secrecy is just an irrelevant procedural technicality of the negotiation process that's being framed as some nefarious underhanded move that should invalidate the treaty. It's being used as a scare tactic in place of debating the treaty itself. Argue for or against the treaty on its content, not how it was arrived at.

I'm perplexed at how it isn't clear to people that the treaty is being negotiated in secret _precisely_ to prevent just such a mob backlash as is occurring. And it's not to prevent a backlash because there is some corporate/government conspiracy to control the masses at work. It's because there are concrete procedural difficulties in negotiating something like this when the parties involved aren't able to speak freely without having 6 billion rabid critics jump down their throats at every proposal.

<comment><USER8> X (m/b)illion rabid critics is one of the prices of democracy. Throwing away democracy because it is inconvenient is a great way to ensure you won't be living in democracy much longer.

<comment><USER6> That's just a red herring. Democracy isn't being thrown away because the treaty negotiations are closed. A democracy does not imply absolute and unmitigated transparency in all steps along the way. As I already said, democratically elected representatives will have final say on the finished non-secret treaty.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "This is not how the world makes its copyright laws."

Apparently it is.

</comment><comment><USER10> stopacta.org,.com and .net are all registered. It'd be great if there could be a way to directly call politicians to complain from the website. GizmoCalls is an in-browser VOIP client, wikipedia says they've recently been acquired by Google. Google has a HUGE interest in stopping this treaty. Maybe they could donate calls from the US to US politicians to complain about the treaty? It'd certainly be great for marketing. Anybody know how one'd go about contacting google to ask about that? Anybody know of any other in-browser VOIP clients that would be willing to donate phone time to call politicians to stop this?

<comment><USER11> Politicians do not care about what their electorates want once they are in office. They will make the decisions they feel are appropriate until it is time for them to seek re-election.

Phone calls, letters, etc. are all just things for them to stew on. Ultimately, they can make whatever decision they want. Volunteer for political work and you'll see: letters will be tabulated and counted to favor one position or another, and at the end of the day it's just a number for the senator or representative to glance at for a few moments when considering what position to take, which in the end will almost definitely be the one handed down from their party.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> There are public meetings on "secret" treaties? That doesn't sound very secret. Was the activist ejected for breaking the rules. When you attend an in-progress House or Senate debate in their galleries, you aren't allowed to have any electronics out, and you aren't allowed to write or draw. From the capital website:

The Gallery "staging areas" are located on the upper level of the Visitor Center near the Orientation Theater exits. Visitors are not allowed to bring battery-operated electronic devices (medical devices are permitted); cameras; creams, lotions or perfumes; strollers; or video recorders or any type of recording device into the Galleries. These items may be stored securely in the Gallery staging areas while visitors are in the Galleries.

What happened to those promised televised health care debates?

<comment><USER13> The public meeting was on the _process_ of negotiating the treaty. They were quite specifically _not_ discussing the content of the treaty, making the secret treaty still quite secret.

The rules of the US Government building aren't relevant. The meetings about the secrecy are being held in Mexico. They nearly required the attending public to sign NDAs and surrender electronics, but last minute deliberation removed those restrictions. Which suggests the ejection of a live-blogger appear quite unfounded.

The ACTA meetings themselves are being held at some other time, in an undisclosed location in Mexico.</comment></comment>


'Nobody is using it': Amazon Spark is not taking off with brands, agencies - <AUTHOR> https://digiday.com/marketing/nobody-using-amazon-spark-not-taking-off-brands-agencies/ <comment><USER2> I didn't even know it existed. But, even if I did, why would I use it? Most products have a few hundred reviews that are already present, that I can use to decide if it's a good product or not. It definitely doesn't help it's cause, that it's only available for Prime users. Oh, it comes with some user uploaded images? Prepare to filter through a barrage of unprofessional images, that are too dark to even make out the product.

It almost feels like this product was conceived by someone's kid, and they allowed it's release to give him/her a participation trophy. Then abruptly afterward swept it under the rug, afraid someone might behold the abomination.

It: -Has no market use. -Has terrible application. -Has no marketing, other than this article.

<comment><USER3> I read one theory that products like Amazon Spark or Facebook Mail exist to ward off antitrust regulators' attention by giving the appearance of more competition between tech giants without having a serious expectation of success. I'm not sure if that's true but it's interesting to consider.

<comment><USER4> How does it help the company in question? In the scenario, you propose Facebook mail is selflessly helping to fend off antitrust regulators off Gmail.

<comment><USER5> Google pretends to have shopping [1] to shield Amazon, Amazon pretends to have social media [2] to shield Facebook, Facebook pretended to have mail to shield Google [3]. It's an interesting thought, especially considering how half-assed most of these non-core projects are.

1) [https://www.google.com/shopping](https://www.google.com/shopping)

2) [https://www.amazon.com/Spark/b?ie=UTF8&node=16907772011](https://www.amazon.com/Spark/b?ie=UTF8&node=16907772011)

3) [https://www.theverge.com/2014/2/24/5443454/facebook- retires-...](https://www.theverge.com/2014/2/24/5443454/facebook-retires-its- email-service)

Combine it with the wage collusion case [4] from a few years ago and it's entering the plausible territory

4) [http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-tech- job...](http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-tech-jobs- settlement-20150903-story.html)

<comment><USER6> Could also be Amazon pretends to have social media, and then when challenged as being a monopoly they can say something like "well, ecommerce is but one of our many products and across out entire portfolio we have lots of competition" or something to that effect. Just redirect to the sham loser products to make an appearance of competition, even though the lion's share of revenue is derived from a line of business that has a monopoly position.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've said it before and I'll say it again: Amazon builds things like this (their phone, their tablets, Alexa, and apparently their social media platform) based on what Amazon wishes were true, not what actually is.

Amazon wishes people built their daily lives around shopping at Amazon and would share that with their friends. Amazon wishes people wanted to take pictures of products so you could buy them from Amazon (this was one of the "innovative" features of the Fire Phone, it was called Firefly, and I never used it once in the year or so that I used that generally awful phone). It's like they start from the premise of, "Sell more stuff!", and then build products around that. Anything else that gets into the mix is just a flashy gimmick to get you into the store.

There have been Amazon products that have succeeded, obviously, since they're bigger than god and still growing (and I shop there all the time, and use/like AWS). But, boy, do they suck at consumer technology.

<comment><USER8> > (their phone, their tablets, Alexa, and apparently their social media > platform)

Obviously with the exclusion of the phone, I'm under the impression that Fire TV and Fire Tablets sell pretty well. I know lots of parents who use Fire Tablets for their kids over iPads because they are cheap and the content restriction is really easy. Also, aren't Echo/Alexa-driven products pretty much thriving?

<comment><USER7> Yeah, well, some people _do_ base their lives on shopping at Amazon, so there's a market there. It's just not as big as it could be. I mean, my prior comment was somewhat limited in nuance. Sure the Kindle tablets are reportedly well-liked, but they're _most_ well-liked by people who buy everything from Amazon.

The thing is, I have a lot of this stuff I'm making fun of. I have a Fire TV Stick, I have a Kindle (the old-fashioned kind with an e-ink display), I had a Fire phone. But, I recognize that they are Amazon service delivery platforms. They exist to sell me products from Amazon. It's all part of a big ecosystem where lots of little frictions are removed from my life if I buy from Amazon. In addition to the devices, I have Prime, I have an Amazon Visa card (5% cash back on purchases from Amazon), I've bought a bunch of music from Amazon (and can have it all stored on Amazon when I change devices without having to remember where I bought it from or deal with weird download limits or whatever), etc.

I'm making fun of myself here, basically, because I'm the ridiculous and stupid consumer that Amazon is building all the their ridiculous and stupid consumer products for. But, even I saw through the bullshit that was the Fire phone and found it absolutely ridiculous. And, I have a Nexus tablet and no interest in a Fire tablet, even at a better price than competing Android devices. The value proposition from a standard Android device with the Google apps is higher for me in phones and tablets. I won't likely fall for another Amazon produced phone or tablet. And, I haven't yet seen a compelling reason to invite Alexa into my home.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This one can't be a shocker. I even had to open my Amazon app to see if it existed for me, and sure enough it's tucked way down at the bottom of the left side menu.

Definitely odd to shove a weird pseudo-social marketing feed into my shopping app... there's no way the people behind this actually thought it would catch on, right? If this disappeared tomorrow I don't think anyone would notice.

<comment><USER9> I can't find it at all, in the app or the web site. Either they decided to launch it dead, or they haven't really launched it yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Can people stop naming products "Spark" already? There's a programming language, Web framework, cluster computing technology, email client, and instant messaging client all named the same thing.

<comment><USER11> Protip: Look for the Wikipedia disambiguation page. Here's the one for "ace", which is more overused than Spark, even:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ace_(disambiguation)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ace_\(disambiguation\))

Here's spark:

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Previously: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14799025](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14799025) 3 points, 8 months ago

 _Amazon launches Spark, a shoppable feed of stories and photos (techcrunch.com)_

1 Comment: _Yes, a new way to help people shop! It 's just what we needed ;)_

</comment><comment><USER13> I though it was one of the many AWS products. I would have guessed one that sends email/SMS, etc.

<comment><USER14> I thought it was a hosted offering of Apache Spark which has been around for years. Odd to choose a name like that.

<comment><USER15> That was my first impression as well. Yet another hobbled open-source technology being offered at a ridiculous price to tighten the lock-in noose on AWS. Yay.

Turns out it's just another social media flop. I'm okay with that.

<comment><USER16> Can you elaborate? Are you saying Apache Spark itself is hobbled, or Amazon is offering a hobbled version?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I work there and have never heard of it.

</comment><comment><USER18> I totally missed that it existed. Now that I know it does, I still have no interest in it. It's not clear to me at all what value it's adding.

</comment><comment><USER19> Amazon is now like google, they just keep building things without any commitment to it. If it sticks they will add more developers to it, if it doesn't they will kill it. They were pushing Spark on mobile. It's sorta hidden under the nav menu. You click on the nav icon, and then you get the menu, and to the right of the menu you see some spark cards. It's terrible UI, terrible placement and annoying.

</comment><comment><USER20> Am I the only one who misread this as "Apache Spark"?

<comment><USER21> +1

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> There should be a limit to the amount of crap a company can shove in your face after they get the privilege of your attention.

</comment><comment><USER23> I can understand the rationale for why Amazon would build something like this. Amazon owns a large chunk of the market of ecommerce in instances when customers already know roughly what they're looking for. A big growth opportunity that's mostly untapped for them is convincing people to do their serendipitous, casual browsing (think: walking through a mall and seeing what's on display) on Amazon. This is their latest attempt to capture that use case and foster that kind of "daily habit" type mentality (see also their gold box deals and similar product features).

One thing that's unclear to me is why they'd use Instagram as their inspiration rather than Pinterest when the latter more clearly lends itself to shopping, and when there's a natural tie-in with Amazon's wish lists functionality (totally conceivable to change wish lists into some kind of Amazon pinboards).

</comment><comment><USER24> Amazon Spark what?! Anyway, I just want to see a video where some business guy announced the plan to launch a consumer product for paid users and the rest of the team roll their eyes! :D Should have happened definitely!

<comment><USER25> More likely, the dev team carefully conceal their eye-rolling, and agree enthusiastically to the plan.

If your normal job is working on the ancient Amazon website codebase and holding back the bile you feel as you add yet another "SIGN UP TO PRIME!!!!!!" banner, then a couple of years of being paid to build a green-fields project using the technology of your choice sounds pretty great.

<comment><USER11> Maybe they write this stuff off as an employee retention program.

<comment><USER25> Hah! Could be. It certainly worked for me - I stayed eight years, rotating teams on average every three years. Greenfields project, big established project, greenfields project, back to big established project. Learned a heck of a lot too, in a very wide variety of areas.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Amazon launched a social media platform? I am a Prime member, and had no clue. I'm not sure I would have been interested had I known, but this may be a marketing failure as much as anything else.

</comment><comment><USER27> It seems like there are some product categories where there are known reputable reviewers and this is an attempt to formalize that and make it more discoverable. A cure for the fake reviewers ' influence on review aggregations. Sounds great in theory. I'm thinking of those couple of guys who methodically tear down and test every aspect of every major new USB-C cable or accessory. I tend to trust what they say, or at least I value the information they are presenting.

</comment><comment><USER28> It seems like they were trying to emulate AliExpress, which has built-in giveaways and all kinds of badges for "bloggers" who take pictures of their items and write reviews. It appears to be mainly used by Russians although it is open to Americans on the app, but the links don't appear anywhere on the English webpage. AliExpress is like a bizarre hybrid between Amazon & Ebay (at least the imported stuff) with an international bent.

</comment><comment><USER29> I also had no idea it existed. I can imagine that someone had the idea that having an "instagram-like" feed of product content that was tightly tied to an e-commerce platform that allows you to purchase those products was a good idea. But it doesn't seem like they are executing it in a way to get adoption...

</comment><comment><USER30> Never heard of it until today.

> Spark, which launched in July, is a social feed of photos. It is similar to > Instagram, but open only to Prime members.

There is the reason--thinly veiled way to encourage people to buy Prime. Facebook succeeds because "everyone is there." Not everyone can afford Prime.

</comment><comment><USER31> Mazda did a product launch yesterday at the New York Auto Show and mentioned they were doing some kind of "social" thing with Amazon. Is this it? This seems kind of sad.

</comment><comment><USER32> Looking for the "Amazon App" in the AppStore results with a dozen or so Amazon applications, which one are they referring to?

</comment><comment><USER33> Apple Ping anyone?</comment>


Multiparty Session C: Safe Parallel Programming with Message Optimisation (2012) - <AUTHOR> https://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~cn06/pub/2012/sessionc/ <comment><USER2> Not new, this paper is from 2012. There's also a link to a google code project which is a 404 now. On the other hand, the MPI library that they compare against is still alive here:

[https://www.open-mpi.org](https://www.open-mpi.org)

<comment><USER3> There does appear to be a mirror on github for sessionc, [https://github.com/sessionc](https://github.com/sessionc).

<comment><USER2> Oh, thanks for finding this because I was curious about checking out the code (that's why I found the broken link after all). I did a quick google search but wasn't able to come up with anything.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Sorry for the offtopic, but they have this typo, "satatic checking" that I at first misread as "satanic checking" and got a bit spooked.</comment>


Google Moves Forward With Using Profile Information in Ads - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2013/11/11/google-moves-forward-with-using-profile-information-in-ads/

<comment><AUTHOR> When Facebook added their user's names and images to advertisement with their "Sponsored Stories" feature, they got sued, and lost:

[http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/08/26/judge- approves-20-mill...](http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/08/26/judge- approves-20-million-settlement-in-facebook-class-action-lawsuit/)

I suspect Google is being more cautious the Facebook in their terms of service, but also, Google seems to let users opt-out of becoming advertisements:

[https://plus.google.com/settings/endorsements?hl=en](https://plus.google.com/settings/endorsements?hl=en)</comment>