7 architects defend the world's most hated buildings - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/06/05/t-magazine/architects-libeskind-zaha-hadid-selldorf-norman-foster.html

<comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9667756](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9667756)</comment>


Future of Gaming study: seeking gaming enthusiasts and entrepreneurs - <AUTHOR> http://www.latd.com/2011/03/10/game-enthusiasts-and-entrepreneurs-the-future-is-calling-you/

<comment><USER2> -Really- want to see a recording of this one. Shareable always has interesting things to say.

<comment><AUTHOR> Love that Shareable.net.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I think this looks interesting. I'll definitely check out the results when they come in.</comment>


Tell HN: Super Mario maker is the visual programming language we have waited for - <AUTHOR> I'm very impressed with this game. The concepts it teaches are exactly what developers need to know. I'm going to write up a more thoughtful review of this but I wanted to tell the parents of HN that this is a must buy for your kids. In 2 hours my 8 year old has figured out some incredible concepts of programming. I cannot understate how great this game is. <comment><USER2> How can it possibly be when it is limited to one proprietary platform?

</comment><comment><USER3> Add a link to your write up when it is completed please.</comment>


Ask HN: Is something injecting code inside webpages? - <AUTHOR> It seems like many times--and every time I visit for the first time--I visit an HTTPS website my browser cannot connect, giving me an ERR_ADDRESS_UNREACHABLE error.
Then, it works if I refresh the page.
I'm using a Vodafone connection via Fon. Is it possible that they're trying to inject code into webpages? How can I find out and if possible fix it? <comment><USER2> Seems like the first connection attempt to a new host is dropped; could be malicious, could be misconfiguration of one of their "magic boxes".

A VPN should sort this out, worst case the first VPN connection attempt will fail just like everything else, but the second attempt will work; once you have your VPN up all traffic should flow just fine within it, and no more problems.</comment>


BitFunnel: Revisiting Signatures for Search [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://danluu.com/bitfunnel-sigir.pdf <comment><USER2> I'm one of the authors of the paper they compare against (Partitioned Elias- Fano), and since I saw the StrangeLoop talk I've been curious to see a more detailed description of the index, so I was very eager to read the paper as soon as it came out.

I think it's an interesting approach, but I have a few questions about its practical applicability.

For one, space utilization seems to be a serious issue: bits per posting are more than double than the Elias-Fano indexes in their experiments, and furthermore, they claim that they used the Java Partitioned Elias-Fano implementation of MG4J, but MG4J does not have one! It only has an Elias-Fano index; since they get the same space from PEF and MG4J, this means that either they are using a random ordering of the document identifiers (otherwise they'd get another 2x improvement from PEF with proper docid ordering) or they're misusing the PEF code.

Also, they claim to use 5 corpora, but they're actually 5 slices of the same corpus (Gov2), sharded by document size classes, so both the collection sizes and document sizes vary and it's not easy to correlate them with the observed performance characteristics. A trend shows up anyway, that as the collection size grows the performance difference between BitFunnel and EF-based indexes gets thinner, which suggests that on very large collections they might even cross. This is not surprising, as BitFunnel query execution is linear in the collection size, while inverted indexes have empirical performance closer to the number of returned results. Also, I could not find in the paper the exact definition of "false positive rate": is the denominator the number of results, or the number of documents in the collection?

The experiments are on a 4-core desktop-class machine; would the results hold up on, say, a recent 28-core Xeon processor, or the memory throughput would become the bottleneck given that scanning the Bloom filters requires to go through a large fraction of the data?

I got the impression that a good use case for BitFunnel is not to replace inverted indexes altogether, but just for the "fresh" part of a large index (say, newly crawled documents). In that case we have fast insertion of new documents, and a small collection (where the performance gap with inverted indexes seems to be high). However, there does not seem to be an efficient way to update existing documents (add/remove terms), because changing the term set could change the document size shard.

<comment><USER3> I was at the SIGIR'17 presentation of this paper (won best paper award btw) and have some comments in general:

\- They mentioned (from what I remember) that they now use BitFunnel as they core of the complete Bing search engine not just the fresh parts.

\- When I read the paper and looking at the code, it looks like their index doesn't include frequency information whereas your PEF code does. It is unclear what was counted in the experiments.

\- If you look at the code, they are actually doing much more complicated stuff than just regular bloom filters by "bin packing" the hash positions for each term to reduce false positive rates (see [https://github.com/BitFunnel/BitFunnel/issues/278](https://github.com/BitFunnel/BitFunnel/issues/278) ). I'm nor sure if it is "fair" to compare a system developed by 10+ engineers over many years to a "phd student" code base developed over short period of time. I think the PEF code is excellent but I'm more talking about that engineering efforts can have a large impact on performance.

\- I'm fairly sure you are right regarding the lack of URL-sorting. However, this can have another cause. If you consider Figure 4 in the paper which shows how "higher ranking rows" group documents together to allow faster intersection. URL sorting causes clusters in document-ids. Say, in the example in Fig. 4 there might be a cluster for that specific term for documents 0,1,2,3. This would mean the "higher ranking" row approach becomes worse (more false positives) when clustering occurs in the collection. So while URL- sorting helps PEF, it will most likely make BitFunnel worse.

<comment><USER2> > They mentioned (from what I remember) that they now use BitFunnel as they > core of the complete Bing search engine not just the fresh parts.

I find it hard to believe this. Their main index is certainly not all-RAM (there must be some flash and maybe even disk), and the throughput would just not be enough for something like BitFunnel.

> When I read the paper and looking at the code, it looks like their index > doesn't include frequency information whereas your PEF code does. It is > unclear what was counted in the experiments.

In PEF the frequencies are not interleaved with the postings, so if you don't read them you don't pay any computational overhead (they mention this in the paper). However, it's not clear whether they included them when measuring the space.

> I'm nor sure if it is "fair" to compare a system developed by 10+ engineers > over many years to a "phd student" code base developed over short period of > time.

I'm not trying to compare the code :) On the contrary, I'm mostly concerned about the behavior as the collection size grows. Gov2, especially if split into 5 pieces, is relatively small.

> So while URL-sorting helps PEF, it will most likely make BitFunnel worse.

That's possible, but I don't see why they could not use different docid orderings for BitFunnel and PEF. If they use the one that is better for BitFunnel, that's not fair to PEF.

<comment><USER3> > I find it hard to believe this. Their main index is certainly not all-RAM > (there must be some flash and maybe even disk), and the throughput would > just not be enough for something like BitFunnel.

From looking at the github repo it does look like the system runs entirely in main memory.

<comment><USER2> Yes, I meant that I don't think they're holding an entire web index in RAM.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm a co-author on the paper, and a couple of interesting quick notes:

* BitFunnel processes every query that comes into Bing, but (at least when I left MSFT) indexed "only" the superfresh tier.

* Dan and Mike spent a few months removing cruft and porting it to Linux before we open sourced it: [https://github.com/BitFunnel/BitFunnel](https://github.com/BitFunnel/BitFunnel)

* It did win best paper at SIGIR (probably the most prestigious IR conference) this year.

<comment><USER5> I had a glance the engineering diary [http://bitfunnel.org/](http://bitfunnel.org/)

I find really interesting for a code repository to have such a companion.

<comment><USER4> The original idea was to write little entries as we continued the Linux port, explaining why certain things are they way they are -- a sort of tour of a very serious production system. I still love the idea, but unfortunately, I think it is safe to say that this goal failed. :(

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Transcript from Dan's talk about Bitfunnel:

[http://bitfunnel.org/strangeloop/](http://bitfunnel.org/strangeloop/)

The talk itself:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80LKF2qph6I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80LKF2qph6I)</comment>


Yes, Python Is Slow, and I Don't Care - <AUTHOR> https://hackernoon.com/yes-python-is-slow-and-i-dont-care-13763980b5a1 <comment><USER2> I'm more interested in what parts of Python are 'accidentally slow' or 'accidentally huge' that Python noobs fall into.

I remember when I was first learning Perl many years ago, and discovered that certain varieties of looping on an array (most, in fact) actually created a second copy of the array at the start of the loop. This was memory- catastrophic for certain things I was attempting to do, and was easily avoided, but I didn't know it was happening until a Perl monk explained it.

What are some similar pitfalls in Python?

</comment><comment><USER3> As someone who enjoys using Tcl, I find it amusing that Tcl enthusiasts have been making this exact same argument for decades [1], and have been viciously mocked for it.

I suppose now that a Python enthusiast is making it, it will be applauded as self-evidently true and profoundly wise.

[1] [https://www.tcl.tk/doc/scripting.html](https://www.tcl.tk/doc/scripting.html)</comment>


Ask HN: How do you decide whether to use a SPA or not? - <AUTHOR> Assuming you can make the choice, how do you decide if you want a single-page application or a good ol' server rendered sprinkled with JavaScript one?
I've had an idea for a project I want to build for a while. It's pretty CRUD-y but the resource the users have is a "timer", so to speak. Basically, a runnable recipe that counts down with time and shows which ingredients to put in at which time.
Everything can be server-rendered except the actual timer, which is what makes the choice hard for me (I'm fairly inexperienced and only been forced to do SPAs at work).
Assuming I go server-renderd, what should I use for the JS such that the timers are just "components" that are easy to render but don't take over the page like a full SPA would?
Thanks. <comment><USER2> > what should I use for the JS such that the timers are just "components" that > are easy to render but don't take over the page like a full SPA would?

Bake your site with plain JS, perhaps throw in some jQuery sprinkles.</comment>


Ask HN: Ex-Intuit Engineer Building Free Income Tax Software. Join as cofounder? - <AUTHOR> I'm a well known developer in San Diego (where TurboTax is made). I spent the last 2 seasons on TurboTax as an engineer and learned how to make free software that still pulls revenue - about $20M at scale.
Looking to transmit returns for next year's tax season.
Our team is 3 looking for a 4th: myself, another full stack dev, and a NYU tax attorney.
We're looking for founders with full stack abilities and good communication. Remote OK.
Interested in joining? Check the site & blog for more! http://taxcompactor.com
Email me: ecolner at gmail dot com Please include your Github portfolio in email :) <comment><USER2> My major reservation about using newly developed software to do my taxes is that it has no reputation - I have no idea whether to trust it or not. Will it expose me to the risk of being audited? Will it accurately send the IRS the same numbers that it's displaying on my screen? There will be no reviews available on Amazon or elsewhere when the software hits the market, and nobody I can ask about their experience with the software. I'd have to trust it on blind faith.

Also, there are strong forces working against a tiny company that wants to enter this complex market. A company with four people:

\- Can't afford to hire as many testers as Intuit (or H&R Block, or the other major players) to test their software to make sure that it operates correctly.

\- Can't hire as many CPAs and tax lawyers to confirm that they comply with the latest tax laws. If they want to "make income tax preparation and filing free for every taxpayer in America" (as their web site claims), that would involve staying on top of federal tax regulations, the tax regulations of fifty states, and also cities like NYC that have their own income tax.

\- Can't hire as many security specialists to make sure that they're haven't overlooked a vulnerability on their web site.

So what's the value proposition? Why should people risk using this product next year instead of shelling out $25 or $50 dollars for the tax prep software they used for the last several years?

<comment><AUTHOR> Your odds of being audited are based on the information that you provide, and that alone. Your return will be rejected if the government tests it and it fails to have the correct calculations. This happens. The government gives companies 48 hours to correct and retransmit in those cases (by law). All sorts of games are played using this 48 hours window. And it would be improper for me to discuss this with you further beyond just stating the law is on the books and it is utilized. Obviously we'd prefer to submit your return and be correct 100% of the time.

Everything you said is true. There's a pretty big difference between 4 people versus 400 people working on software. All I can say is that probably 10% (that's optimistic) of the people working on any given project make a difference in a large company. At least that's been my experience. And that's why you get startups bringing products to market with great success over and over again.

We encourage you to keep spending the money if it gives you the warm feelz! It's your money and it's our job to convince you to make the switch. You'll be able to use any product out there and compare the results for yourself before submitting your returns next season, so we've got that going for us.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> You might as well put up a sign-up box on your home page, to start collecting emails. Then when you launch your beta, you'll have a set of customers ready!

Good luck.

<comment><USER3> You know, I had no idea I could scroll down on your homepage. It just looked like a simple landing page for me, so I closed the tab.

I find this a problem with all the newfangled webpage designs... but on others, there's an indicator that there is more content below.

<comment><USER4> I have no idea why everyone decided, all at once, that scroll bars should be invisible by default. The presence of a scroll bar communicates useful information! Why would you hide that?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Maybe I missed the answer to this, but how are you doing this for free? Obviously your business needs to make money somehow.

As others have said you should definitely put a sign-up form on your site.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's hidden in plain sight... but that's all I'll say.

<comment><USER6> Hm, does that mean you'll take a % of the deduction? Hm that sounds illegal actually, but maybe instead the software is free and you charge per hour to get access to a high quality, certified income tax guy to help with weird situations / edge cases / provide a personal touch!

<comment><AUTHOR> We would never steal from our customers. That's not what this is about.

<comment><USER7> What is this, a guessing game? If you don't want to answer the question, please let us know instead of giving vague answers.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry to be vague, but honestly it's not a riddle. It's just not something we want to announce yet.

<comment><USER8> just say so, then. being tantalisingly vague in an attempt to build interest can backfire very badly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Sounds like a great project but don't you fear that you will be sued immediately by TurboTax? Any large company I've done work with in the past has had me explicitly sign agreements that would prohibit me from going out and creating competing software with the domain knowledge I had obtained.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes. That's why I retained an IP lawyer to review the agreements that I signed and to write an opinion about my plans. Every sw company will require you to sign these documents NDA and Non-compete. The key is don't steal their trade secrets, code, client lists, employees, etc. A lawyer can sue you or me at any time. The problem there is that a case that doesn't have merit will just look like bullying and help our cause. Even if they win a case like that what do they gain? An injunction to force ppl to pay for a service that should be free to every tax payer? Not a good fight to have IMHO.

<comment><USER10> I empathize with that prospect, but unless you have deep pockets, won't you be quickly vaporized into dust through legal fees? This is especially problematic given the seasonal nature of income tax.

<comment><AUTHOR> It isn't a concern.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This looks great. Doing your taxes sucks.

One completely unrelated question (and I hate to be _that_ person on HN): is the accelerated scroll on the website intentional? It's a really good looking site, but the scroll speed makes it very hard to read.

<comment><USER6> Ha I think it's a wordpress theme (if you cmd + f in the view source for the page) so they may be able to change that setting but yeah by default it may be accelerated?

<comment><USER12> It is Startup Framework: [http://designmodo.com/startup/](http://designmodo.com/startup/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Have you ever thought about building tax software for the other side of the fence i.e preparers? I'd love a chat about why the existing competition sucks and what's truly missing from the software market for tax professionals.

<comment><AUTHOR> Tax pros are like developers, most comfortable closer to the bare metal if you will. They use a separate product line that mimics the actual forms closely. They don't like the interview style because it just slows them down when they're barreling through hundreds of returns. Beyond the UI, there's no difference in the calculations they work with so that should tell you something.

<comment><USER3> Maybe (someday) you can build two different UIs to the same return. For example, I can hire a CPA and then share with him/her my return. I can upload the docs and numbers, and the CPA can do the magic using the bare metal UI.

I heard from my CPA that Intuit provides very poor support for their ProSeries / Lacerte software, because they are trying to get everyone to use Turbotax instead. So even CPAs have a pain point that you could solve.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Indiegogo Campaign: [https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/tax-compactor-free- income...](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/tax-compactor-free-income-tax- preparation-and-e-file#home)

</comment><comment><USER14> Because this is looking for a co-founder, it's ok. Job posts aren't allowed, except via /jobs (it is one of two areas where YC companies are allowed an edge on HN).

I'll change the title to make the cofounder bit explicit.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks dang.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> As European, I'd like to say that it would be awesome if your app had enough abstractions built-in to make it adaptable to non-US systems. The fundamentals if tax systems everywhere are the same after all (money comes in on some basis, and some of it must be taxed according to some rules), a pluggable architecture would be nice; it would also make it much easier to update when the inevitable changes in tax law come around.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not familiar with Euro tax codes. But I don't think it would be hard to adapt using the proper rules engine. We'll take a look but too soon to promise anything.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I can't contribute but I just want to say you are awesome and I hope you succeed! It'd be an incredible contribution to our democrasy!

</comment><comment><USER17> Wow, this blows me away.

Are you open to sharing what stack your team will develop with? I didn't catch that here, on your site, or your HN profile. As someone that's interested in this, that's one of the first questions I have; others may as well.

I'm not co-founder level, but I'm going to keep an eye on this.

Best of luck, I really hope you guys knock it out of the park.

<comment><AUTHOR> At the moment it's a Java stack, but we're intentionally not limiting our search to Java developers because we don't mind learning new ways of doing things - we love that part of software development.

That said, web is pretty broad so if you're a database expert that also dabbles in sys admin and node then we're interested in talking with you. If you're a talented engineer you can adapt to new technologies is the way we see it.

<comment><USER17> Understood. I do focus on full stack web, but primarily through JavaScript and LAMP.

I'm positive I'm not co-founder material though. I'm still going to keep eye on you guys, primarily b/c I hope you succeed, though I also want to see what future developer opportunities may arise.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Man, this is really weird. Just a few hours ago I came up with what I think is an awesome for a tax-related service. I was reading HN, as I do daily, before I decided to start Googling for possible competitors. Imagine my surprise when Google brought me back to HN, to a post from just a few hours ago that I somehow managed to miss.

</comment><comment><USER19> I shot you an email. Definitely interested in "fixing" tax prep... It's pretty sad how obtuse they make things and how often tax prep software nickel and dimes you even though the actual computational aspects of filling in the forms is pretty negligible.

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice! We totally agree with you. We'll be in touch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> You guys should have an email sign up form so people know how to subscribe for updates!

<comment><AUTHOR> Will add. Revisit the page tomorrow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Will this just make the tax return process simpler or will your AI assist in finding the loopholes that the wealthy exploit?

It would be fun to see everyone claim deductions on dog food the same way a rich guy might deduct on his horses.

<comment><AUTHOR> I would say that most of the "loopholes" that you're referring to aren't really accessible to the average Joe because most of us make what's considered "Earned Income". That's what your salary is considered and it's taxed according to your tax bracket. Wealthy people will structure their income and their holdings in ways to minimize the amount classified in the earned income bucket. The extreme is when executives take $1 salary.

The AI is going to be superior in terms of explaining which factors played in your return. This will become clearer how powerful it is when the application suggests ways to optimize your situation and you basically have a playbook in hand to use.

<comment><USER20> Sounds like you're going to be using some weighted statistical methods in there.

I also read that you're going the Java route. Decent option for handling the load (free tax returns will pull in a big amount of people - assuming they trust the service), but considering you guys are going to be 4-5, perhaps python with the data packages(numpy et. al) might help with AI (which reads like intense probability calcs).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Stupid question: How do you make money with a "free" tax service?

<comment><AUTHOR> We'll announce that in the future.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> good luck but when i read something like "Our tax engine is built using artificial intelligence." it doesn't exactly make me think "this is a legit product"

</comment><comment><USER23> What, if any, obstacles do you face getting the IRS to accept returns from your software? What about states?

Glad someone is doing this by the way, and best of luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> The IRS is easier to deal with. They're more efficient but all require an acceptance process to transmit. The states are in priority order starting with CA just purely based on # of returns and then NY, Illinois, Penn, etc. Trying to do as many as possible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Dropped you an email! This sounds like a very interesting problem domain that I'd enjoy working on.

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool! I'm forwarding it to the team.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I think Tia's job title should read "Principal Tax Analyst", not "Principle".

<comment><AUTHOR> Fixed

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Clickable [http://taxcompactor.com](http://taxcompactor.com)

</comment><comment><USER27> Sounds awesome!</comment>


Reddit CEO admits to altering user comments that were critical of him - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Donald/comments/5ekdy9/the_admins_are_suffering_from_low_energy_have/dad5sf1/ <comment><USER2> And without an "edited" mark, which means that any comment of any user can be covertly modified by an admin. Very concerning since Reddit comments have provoked even Congress hearings: [http://thehill.com/policy/national- security/296680-house-pan...](http://thehill.com/policy/national- security/296680-house-panel-probes-web-rumor-on-clinton-emails)

<comment><USER3> He changed a 'F U CEO' (upvoted by 1.6k users) comment to 'F U unpaid reddit moderator', without any indication that the comment was edited.

Very juvenile and unprofessional way of dealing with the situation, really erodes trust in the platform (simply deleting the comment would have been a better response).

Would maybe expect this from the founder of a young fledgling startup, but the 33 year old CEO of a company like Reddit ought to know better.

<comment><USER4> I met Steve several years back while going through YC. He's a much calmer and nicer person than most founders I've met, myself included.

If I read this Reddit thread without knowing him, I would have deemed him unprofessional and maybe even upvoted some of the comments.

When I read the thread knowing who he is, I'm thinking "I can't imagine how stressful it must be to run Reddit. He made one mistake in a bad day, apologized for it, and now everyone's talking about it. Steve's way nicer and more professional than I am, so I would probably have messed up big time in his shoes."

<comment><USER5> Hang on a second here: many people comment that murderers seem like really nice people when they met them briefly. You don't really know anything about someone just because you met him for a bit a few years ago. He can be both unprofessional and seem like a calm and nice person, while being neither if you had gotten to know him better.

You comment that he's made just one mistake on a bad day. Perhaps this is just his most visible mistake, and he's been making these kinds of bad mistakes for the past month. It didn't take him 10 seconds to do this - he had to log in with full access to the reddit database and run unprotected queries against the live running copy. That's both shocking security, operations and basic common practice. For a childish insult.

And finally, he did not actually apologize for any of this. "I fucked up" is not the same as "I'm sorry".

<comment><USER6> He was also joking about it a little bit later in the IRC.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is pretty bad. That pretty much destroys the credibility of Reddit's commenting system in a single act. No one can look at the integrity of the comments written by others the same any more.

<comment><USER8> Does it? Really? An admin played a prank on a bunch of insane, out of control conspiracy minded screaming blubbering trolls calling him a pedophile with a dumb silly find/replace rule. God forbid, next forums will start replacing words like 'shit' and 'fuck' with symbols to try and hide the truth of what we /really/ mean from the world.

Who cares? Why is this a big deal? I am so unbelievably unimpressed with the seriousness of this, I feel like there is such an enormous effort to pretend this is "serious business" and "the integrity of reddit" (?) is somehow being compromised. We all knew this could be done. On any forum. Reddit is a silly place. Reddit is a place for people to shitpost memes and puns with throwaway accounts. The Donald is a subreddit that revels in trolling and messing with people, spewing toxic garbage nonstop. They riled up the main admin of reddit so much he did something childish -- a pretty impressive trolling effort. That's the end of this story as far as I can tell.

<comment><USER9> Reddit comments and posts have been used in investigations. In the UK a teenager was sentenced for writing some "racist" comment(I'm not saying this is right or wrong, just that it happened).

Just think, the admins have the power to edit your comment as they see fit and you'll have no proof as your comment isn't even marked as edited.

It's a scary thought.

<comment><USER10> To clarify, are you suggesting that someone was indicted based purely on a Reddit post?

If so, that in itself is scarier than anything else being discussed here.

To assume Reddit is a unedited source of truth is just insane. Why people felt it was 100% tamper proof is beyond me. I wouldn't even trust public companies like Twitter to not have potential flaws like this.

<comment> angry-hacker Yes, yes he was. [0]

It's nothing new in UK, they are literally CCTV state now. Don't forget American folks that in most of the countries over here we don't have free speech ;)

And in the light of this news that Reddit CEO edited comments -- it's scary stuff -- for fun or not.

[0] [http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/watch- mom...](http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/watch-moment-web- troll-who-11918656)

<comment><USER11> Your source says he admitted writing the comments, which is much stronger evidence before a court than the original comment could ever be.

<comment><USER12> Do they have plea bargains in the UK?

<comment><USER13> No, nor elected prosecutors. There is however a system where if you plead not guilty and are convicted you have to pay towards the court costs: [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-32078676](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-32078676)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The tension that The_Donald and many alt-right subreddits place on reddit in general seems to be reaching a boiling point. I get the feeling the admins are just waiting for a credible reason to present itself that lets them cleanly wipe out all of them.

<comment><USER15> What is the tension about exactly? That they don't align with their own personal political views?

<comment><USER16> I think it's more about the way they express their opinions, rather than the content of those opinions.

Posting in ALL CAPS, posting fake news or insults to other members of the community, posting to incite anger, etc. does not make for good discussion, and hurts the sense of community. That, and bringing that to other subreddits via brigading, etc.

<comment><USER17> Plus heaps of users browse /r/all and the the_donald community is so large, and the upvotes come so quickly (some insist it's upvoting bots since it's so fast) that the top of /r/all is often the_donald. Right now the nr. 1 post and another one on all are from the_donald.

<comment><USER18> During election they modified their algo to avoid the_donald posts getting to front page.

<comment><USER19> (ex-reddit employee, employed during the changes) - we'd been designing changes to the algorithm to not be just a few top subreddits, and to instead show more variety well before r/the_donald even started; in fact, it was one of the first things Steve took on when he came back. There's no anti-r/the_donald conspiracy; there's much less discussion about them internally than they'd like to believe.

<comment><USER20> I believe there were two edits from the time /r/the_donald became popular, the first was a more general edit as you say, but the second if I recall correctly was all about keeping the /r/the_donald from the top. Though it seemed to have backfired because after the second edit I saw more of them on /r/all not less.

<comment><USER18> Yes, the second edit backfired massively.

The reason pretty much all posts in the_donald are upvoted by users is due to the fact Clintons Correct the record was downvoting the_donald posts in hordes.

Again if Reddit would not have aligned themselves with one candidate named Clinton they probably wouldn't have this problem now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The CEO of Reddit is officially a cursed position, on par with the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor at Hogwarts.

In other circumstances this might have gotten laughed off, but The Donald has really developed a bunker mentality IMO after having mods doxxed, the algorithm changed to end their front page dominance, lots of other subs being anti-Trump, and the general tenor of the campaign against Trump.

I hope Spez can take a nice relaxing weekend holiday and let someone else deal with this shit-hurricane.

<comment><USER22> > The CEO of Reddit is officially a cursed position

Not sure it's a curse when you list all the things being done to the sub- reddit?

They get attacked, so they fought back? To be expected, no?

<comment><USER21> I'm saying its a curse because:

\- Yishan Wongs various missteps and eventual bizzare (looking) departure

\- Ellen Pao had haters on the site from day 1, Hitler memes etcetera. And then when they fired u/Chooter all hell broke loose and some subs were shut down by their own mods. The integrity of AMA was permanently ruined by this IMO. Anyway, Pao was hated by the idiots immediately, but hated universally after this.

\- Spez started strong but this is going to affect his credibility, and seems to me to be part of the same downward spiral that happens to the CEOs when they get caught up in some bullshit happening on the site.

<comment><USER23> The real trouble is that its CEOs are all far far far too involved in the going ons of the communities.

<comment><USER24> No kidding. They create a platform, and then continually panic like "Oh no! People are using the platform! What do we do? How do we stop people using the platform while making it seem like we want people to use the platform? People are using the site! Something must be done!"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I can't be the only one that finds this pretty funny, right? Forget about whatever dumb imagined political angle of it. If you go on someone's website and spam "fuck [admin's name]" and call them a pedophile based on ridiculous accusations, it's probably only just because of misplaced mercy that you're not banned for harassment right off the bat. These aren't paying users, and they don't have personal data locked up in their accounts that they may lose access to. Whatever forum they're posting to owes them nothing and they do worse than spit on that. That a wordfilter gets applied to some posts of some users that were basically asking for a ban is pretty funny.

I've helped run a popular forum before. We added silly global wordfilters at times, and on a couple occasions when seriously-rule-breaking users repeatedly evaded bans, we applied customized wordfilters to them to help drive them off. (Dropping all of the vowels that weren't at the start or end of a word from their posts to make it look like lazy teenager txtspeak was a favorite.) It worked and people found it hilarious.

<comment><USER26> Reddit used to be a place where intelligent users had a quality discussion. It used to happen. At least in my imagination. What I see now is a machine which produces memes (still going strong there) and propaganda (growing stronger) but the discussion is on a much lower intellectual level.

<comment><USER27> Calling BS for the following reason:

I agree with what you posted that memes and propaganda are still going/growing strong... there is still a TON TON TON of discourse that is important and intellectual.

S:N ratio and all that....

Noise may be growing like mad (Shills/corps/whatever-other-noise- producers/etc).... but Signal is growing as well.

The thing is that NvS ratio has to increase in order to keep status quo....

That doesnt mean that certain stories are not true but that perhaps they are pushed aside with noise to keep certain things seemingly implausible...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Politics and the ethics of what spez did aside, /r/The_Donald seems to be one the most nightmarish communities one can think of, and it's a huge.

Very toxic.

<comment><USER29> I can put the politics aside. But the ethics? No. The_Donald might be awful, in your opinion. But what spez did isn't just awful. It's _the canonical example_ of bad behavior on the internet from a mod.

<comment><USER30> thankfully its a free market. those angry at spez can tske their business elsewhere.

<comment><USER31> Would be nice if they all moved over there

<comment><USER29> Just because we think what spez did is disgraceful doesn't mean we're a bunch of alt-right Donald-worshipers. I'm not a fan of either, I just think editing message text like this is disgusting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Wow. And he knew it was stupid when he did it. There's been a lot of talk about having the right temperament for leadership lately, and this is an excellent example of lacking it.

<comment><USER33> And the thread was otherwise so civil: [https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Donald/comments/5ekdy9/the_admi...](https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Donald/comments/5ekdy9/the_admins_are_suffering_from_low_energy_have/)

<comment><USER34> This is like sarcastically mocking how "serious" /r/coaxedintoasnafu is.

/r/The_Donald's purpose is to be a "24/7 Trump rally". There are other Trump- related subs for serious discussion with supporters.

<comment><USER35> Can you point me to such subs? I have only been exposed to the 'joke' subreddit.

<comment><USER36> /r/HillaryForPrison? (just kidding, there are none)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> While I strongly disagree with what he did, the level of fake news and conspiracy theories hitting the front page has been toxic and out of control this year.

Everyone has been accusing of Facebook and twitter for spreading fake news while reddit has also been absolute shit at it.

<comment><USER38> Exactly who gets to decide if news if fake?

There's a lot of theories going around because there's quite a lot of circumstantial evidence. Just because there's no proof does not automatically make it a conspiracy theory.

<comment><USER39> So what you're saying is maybe Hillary Clinton did have an FBI agent murdered, and maybe Putin and the Dalai Lama really did meet up to talk about how Clinton and Obama started ISIS, a few days after the Pope endorsed Trump.

<comment><USER38> I'm not saying any of those things. I'm also not rushing to dismiss them as fake either though.

<comment><USER39> I would like to explore the frontiers of what you're willing not to dismiss out of hand. Can I interest you in a story about a secret blood cult John Podesta runs? How about the Lizard People?

<comment><USER38> All I know is that John Podesta and his brother were invited to a spirit cooking dinner [1]. I haven't seen any evidence they attended but it was an interesting email that was uncovered.

I don't believe lizard people are real.

[1] [https://wikileaks.org/podesta- emails/emailid/15893](https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/15893)

<comment><USER40> See, this is the kind of dumb crap that isn't news.

In less than 2 minutes of googling and reading you can find a comprehensive answer to all your questions, but instead you put forward a leading statement like "it was an interesting email that was uncovered."

It genuinely was not. It's not interesting, it's mundane.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Reddit has large radical left and radical right communities that are constantly fighting and overwhelm the site with political drama and propaganda. If they don't do something about it they are going to lose the users that come there to look at cats.

<comment><USER42> That's the problem -- there should be no "Reddit". The only interesting part of Reddit are the communities and there's no reason why the_donald and SRS can't exist under the same reddit.com domain. I really wish /u/spez et al. would take a hands-off approach except for cases where users are breaking the law.

<comment><USER43> Yep, that's the libertarian dream. It makes me nostalgic for the 90's when the web was new.

Now we know that spam and abuse make any large Internet forum suck. Your choice: moderation or cesspool.

Also, getting rid of the really extreme filth on the Internet is no fun and people generally have to be paid to do it, which is one of the things that keeps larger social networks in business.

<comment><USER42> I'm not convinced. Maybe a lot of people think of 4chan as a "cesspool" but I think it's actually quite functional with minimal moderation. They have a small volunteer staff to delete the absolute worst of the worst and let the rest roam free. The most radical thing they've ever done is made containment boards to keep the noise down.

I think the real problem is that sites like 4chan makes a tiny fraction of what Reddit does.

<comment><USER43> It works for 4chan's users or they wouldn't hang out there. But the level of moderation is a competitive feature. Users decide where to hang out based on the quality of discussion, and moderation has a direct effect on that (in both directions - too heavy-handed or too hands-off).

Also, in the end, the people who host a forum get to choose whether they really want to host a cesspool or not. If it's not working for them, they can shut it down, or maybe outsource moderation to Facebook or Disqus.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> What would it take to show the current internet generation that what they really want is usenet? It's impossible to alter a usenet post after it's been sent out. It's decentralized, uncensored, has no economic interests of a company to consider, and no worry of going away when the company calls it quits. It's everything your average redditor wants.

<comment><USER45> Because spam-filtering and moderation are useful forms of censorship that keep communities alive. In the US, I need to at least be able to remove child pornography (and other illegal content) so that the FBI doesn't come after me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> I will once again point out the irony of r/The_Donald members constantly complaining about SJWs being up in arms over their racist, sexist, homophobic rants. Yet the second something like this drops, it's the end of the world. Reddit as a whole is going to crumble because the CEO got sick of their childish antics.

<comment><USER47> That's two totally different concepts.

It's one thing to "complaining about",,, generalizations. It's entirely different for a CEO to abuse his power and censor those he disagrees with on a social media site.

He should be let go for this! He is literally putting words in peoples mouths!!

It calls into question the credibility of the whole site.

<comment><USER48> And yet Donald Trump is blocking his press core [0], calling for an end to SNL because they made fun of him [1], telling CNN execs that they are all liars [2], revoking credentials of the Washington Post [3] among many others [4]. Sure, the reddit CEO doing it is bad... the president elect though...

0\. [http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us- election...](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us- elections/journalists-president-elect-donald-trump-press-freedom-blocked- media-a7410806.html)

1\. [https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/78761255265415577...](https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/787612552654155776)

2\. [http://www.vox.com/policy-and- politics/2016/11/22/13714052/d...](http://www.vox.com/policy-and- politics/2016/11/22/13714052/donald-trump-nyt-media-fight-network)

3\. [https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/trump- revokes...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/trump-revokes-post- press-credentials-calling-the-paper-dishonest-and- phony/2016/06/13/f9a61a72-31aa-11e6-95c0-2a6873031302_story.html)

4\. [http://money.cnn.com/2016/06/14/media/donald-trump-media- bla...](http://money.cnn.com/2016/06/14/media/donald-trump-media-blacklist/)

<comment><USER47> Yeah - but imagine that Paul Graham w HN for example disagreed with your position.

Let's say that instead of allowing you to express this last comment - he used his admin privileges and made your comment PRO trump.

Do you see the difference? Having a strong opposing - even annoying - demanding - opinion is not the same as impersonating others and censoring their words.

HUGE HUGE DIFFERENCE

Does that make sense?

<comment><USER49> No, let's instead say that you and all your pals were spamming "fuck pg" in a "pg is a pedo" thread you made, and he changed your comments to instead say "fuck gamechangr". That would be pretty funny. And also a HUGE HUGE DIFFERENCE from "changing your political messaging to be for what it was supposed to be against".

<comment><USER50> This is what I think is being lost on people.

People are getting too tied up in what this "potential power" and "loss of integrity" means.

In reality is it means nothing. There never has been and never should be a guarantee or even an assumption of integrity of comments posted on the internet unless they are cryptographically signed.

He trolled some trolls for the lulz. It was a bad idea, hopefully he just drops the banhammer on all of them next time. Hell, ban the entire subreddit while you are at it for excessive harassment and be done with it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> This post is decaying off of the front page of HN very quickly (every few refreshes it drops a position or more), despite have more upvotes and being posted more recently. Reddit is a YC company as well. Is this post being artificially pushed down?

<comment><USER52> Nope. Literally the first rule of HN moderation is that we don't do that—i.e., we moderate stories less, not more, when they're negative about YC or a YC startup. Also, we were slacking this afternoon (where by slacking I mean hacking on an arc compiler) and had no clue this thread existed.

It set off the overheated discussion detector (a.k.a. flamewar detector), which lowers the rank of a thread. We do turn that penalty off for particularly substantive discussions—which, though this may surprise you, I'm not sure this one is. Not every Reddit drama shitshow is uniform in its excellence. Can I say that without evil catnip effects?

Edit: ok, we've reduced the penalty and changed the title to something the post actually says. (The submitted title, "Reddit CEO admits to altering user comments that were critical of him", breaks the HN guideline about not changing titles unless they are misleading or linkbait. Please don't do that when submitting here.)

<comment><USER53> What about people who just click on links and don't view comments? Won't they be missing out just because the discussion in the comments isn't great?

<comment><USER52> Story quality and comment quality have mystical connections.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> This is genius really.

This act will cause /r/The_Donald to leave reddit, saying they don't trust them anymore.

Those opposed to their antics will forgive /u/spez and stay.

The result is that reddit expels it's undesirable members without anything so controversial as banning them.

<comment><USER47> "Those opposed to their antics WILL FORGIVE /u/spez"

That's wishful thinking if you ask me.

I'm "opposed to their antics" but I'm 10X more opposed to CEO's censoring people and literally putting words in their mouth!

I feel sorry for those that would forgive that, if in fact many people on a social media site would think that's "no biggy"

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> How did he make the changes to the comments? Is it via an audited admin function available to Reddit staff or by directly modifying the backend data store?

I ask because I want to figure out if anyone else that works at Reddit was aware of this. It's one thing to have the top of the house do something this betrayingly asinine, but I'd consider it _much_ worse if other staff at Reddit were aware of this.

</comment><comment><USER56> What made this situation more interesting is that Washington Post cited comments from that edited thread in their article: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the- intersect/wp/2016/11...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the- intersect/wp/2016/11/23/fearing-yet-another-witch-hunt-reddit-bans- pizzagate/). That's not a good look for Conde Nast - should the proper media cites now have a disclaimer that the user "apparently" wrote such and such post?

I would guess that this exposure is also the reason he edited this thread in particular.

</comment><comment><USER57> Could this hurt Reddit's credibility? Seems like it's kind of a big deal.

<comment><USER58> It might to some people. It doesn't for me though.

I personally want to see more corporate leadership taking responsibility and leadership for backing up their personal views and those of their employees. A good example is how Grubhub's CEO Matt Maloney sent a company-wide email about the culture of the company that I respect quite a lot. [http://media.grubhub.com/media/press-releases/press- release-...](http://media.grubhub.com/media/press-releases/press-release- details/2016/Inclusion-and-Tolerance-in-the-Workplace/default.aspx)

Now do I agree with exactly what /u/spez did? Personally, the vindictive part of me likes the idea of fucking around with the morons in that subreddit. But as the ceo of the company, no. If it was any employee that had done it, they would likely have been terminated or at least had a severe write-up, no matter how much the leadership agreed with it. But when its the ceo, I'm not sure what the outcome will/should be.

To be completely honest, we have to remember that reddit is a company and not the public airwaves. There is no requirement that it be a bastion of free speech for all users. If I were running reddit, I would have banned that subreddit months ago. Any users found to be making racist, homophobic, hateful, or any other kind of similar commentary would have been permabanned a long time ago. The internet is a big place and its already too full of negativity. There are no socially positive reasons to provide places for it to fester.

<comment><USER59> Maloney's email was terrible. I would never want to work for someone like that, and never will if I can avoid it. It was a kind and wonderful thing to send a company-wide email saying something to the tune of "If you ever feel marginalized in any way, come to me personally, immediately." He then promptly shat all over the goodwill by indirectly calling for Trump voters to quit. Screw that. I would have loved to have seen a brazen employee call him on that.

<comment><USER58> That's fair and I respect your point of view. But I have a different perspective. I'll grant that emotions are still heightened from the election, but if anything it has brought some long-term underlying issues to the surface. I'm no longer comfortable working for/with people that take positions that disenfranchise and discriminate against other people.

<comment><USER59> I actually think we agree more than it may seem, even if not entirely. I too am no longer comfortable working for or with those people. I just think it's egregiously bad form for a CEO to send a mass email calling for X group to quit if Y. Whether that's that you voted for a political candidate, or whatever. It's a pitchfork-y mentality that I think only serves to embolden whoever the perceived opposition is, even if it's in the medium or long term rather than the immediate. In this case, it's the racists/alt-right/etc. And to me, actions like Maloney's only strengthen communities like /r/The_Donald. Just my 2c.

<comment><USER58> Yeah I agree. Actually I'm not traveling for Thanksgiving. If you're in SF and want to get lunch tomorrow send me a message at email@example.com. Be happy to chat for a bit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> Gas lighting is some pretty advanced abuse. I wonder how often this has occurred before now.

</comment><comment><USER61> Reddit has been on the road to becoming digg for some time now, the only thing propping them up is the lack of a decent alternative.

<comment><USER62> I seriously considered trying to use elixir to start a new site with similar intentions to hn/slashdot/reddit, but then I did a precursory search of all the legal implications and it seems nightmarish to run a high-volume user commenting site these days.

I've settled on a side project of just editorials that dissect the rhetoric and logical strengths of current stories in aggregate.

I think the next version of reddit is going to have to be on a blockchain or something decentralized and verifiable.

That being said, I really have to give props to the HN team for how well they do their job technically and politically compared to most internet forum sites.

<comment><USER63> Hi, I'd be very interested to be a part of that... PM if you need more hands

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> In a slightly twisted way, his mistake is a good thing for the rest of us. With this happening right along side as the "fake news on Facebook" stories that are happening, it shows how so much of what we read on the internet could have been altered or plain old fabricated and should be taken with a grain of salt.

</comment><comment><USER65> Plugin to add crypto signatures to comments and validate them? :-)

<comment><USER66> In the past reddit mods and administration threatened to do someone who had a system like that running, especially for direct messages

<comment><AUTHOR> Could you elaborate on this?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> I don't understand HN rank algorithms. With 300+ points in 3 hours I would expect this to be at the very top, not sliding off the front page.

<comment><USER68> See this thread for some details:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13027367](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13027367)

Short (incomplete) answer: it tripped the flame war detector and has likely been flagged by a number of users.

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> This is the perfect ploy to get conspiracy nuts to leave Reddit. I'm sure spez is tired of dealing with the pizzagate cats and he thought this was the best way to drive them off without creating a bigger shitstorm by telling them all to get fucked.

</comment><comment><USER70> Made this comment in the other (flagged) thread. Here goes:

I agree it was not nefarious, but it was a decision that shows unbelievably poor judgement, especially for a CEO. I'd be surprised if he keeps his position. He's undermined his fundamental role as the leader of one of the biggest social media sites by violating the trust that users put into the site's administration.

The context as I understand it involves some ravenous hordes of conspiracy- theory redditors promulgating fake news stories and doxxing innocent people. However, by changing the text of these users comments, whatever their actions, and by admitting to it, Steve has opened the floodgates. Now there is no question -- in the minds of these users -- that the site is truly "against them" and willing to not only censor them but to rewrite history as they see it. They can no longer trust anything they read on the site.

But what is worse is the effect and message this sends to normal users. How can, for instance, any person safely participate in an AMA now? When the real possibility exists to have their words changed out from under them, and no way to prove they aren't in fact the author? And from that, why would anyone post anything potentially personally identifiable, if (in their mind) some disgruntled admin could modify what they said to include false yet humiliating or criminal things (e.g., throw in racial epithets, link to porn, admit adultery / drug use) that might eventually link back to them. And how far does this go? Can admins send PMs under the name of other users? What else? To me at least, the scary thing is that Reddit posts that _only obliquely_ reference personal information have already been used as the basis for surveillance and legal action [1]...

And taking one final step back, from a business side this drama goes beyond just being unprofessional. Reddit posts are now often linked to from news articles. How can the media trust the source they link to? If the content of posts are 'up for grabs' to be edited by admins in the minds of users and the media (even if they aren't in reality), then one of Reddit's functions that is growing in importance -- that is, news-making -- may be stymied.

Harming trust is extremely dangerous for social platforms. And when it is the CEO themselves doing the harm, it could very well border on being suicidal for the site.

[1] [https://np.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/58hae4/what_is_a_...](https://np.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/58hae4/what_is_a_piece_of_reddit_history_every_redditor/d90lago/)

</comment><comment><USER71> This reminds me of Jimmy Wales editing his bio:

[https://www.wired.com/2005/12/wikipedia-founder-edits-own- bi...](https://www.wired.com/2005/12/wikipedia-founder-edits-own-bio/)

</comment><comment><USER72> I get why this is bad but the lack of perspective is kind of astonishing. I mean these insane idiots will not give up this stupid idea of some pedophile conspiracy they think they've uncovered. And they don't care whose name they shit on. But edit their internet posts and they scream bloody murder. They can lie and lie and lie and lie and lie and lie and lie and _this_ is what will get talked about.

I'm very pessimistic about the future.

</comment><comment><USER73> People seem to be treating their comments with some kind of sanctity. These changes are most copy-and-replace for humorous effect (message boards in the past have done it). Surely it is obvious that the Reddit staff has the ability to edit or delete comments.

Users might think this is a breach of trust, but I really cant make that jump.

The important thing is that the_donald followers need a controversy to latch onto and will do so.

<comment><USER74> Surely if Jack Dorsey edited someone's tweet or Eric Schmidt edited a Gmail user's email, that would be cause for great concern. Which user or users it happened to is irrelevant to the breach of trust it represents to all users of the platform.

<comment><USER75> On the other hand, didn't moot auto-edit people's 4chan comments all the time? I'm told this is where the current meaning of "weeaboo" came from, because moot was sick of the word "wapanese".

Although this is an odd thread to use Urban Dictionary as an authoritative source, that's what I've got: [1]

[http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Weeaboo&defid...](http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Weeaboo&defid=1427331)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER76> Leaks from the reddit admin slack channel show the motivations behind this:

[http://archive.is/ZmULb](http://archive.is/ZmULb)

Apparently a long history of harrassment from the subreddit in question finally made /u/spez retaliate. The leaks further show the admin team is planning to deal with the subreddit in a more definitive way.

</comment><comment><USER77> Ok, so Reddit has been filled with some pretty "deplorable" characters as of late... and to censor them and edit comments... holy fuck, these are not the people you want to do that to. Especially given that they will self-destruct if you just leave them alone. Fueling the fire like this... honestly that's some horrific judgement on the part of u/Spez. Probably time for a new CEO.

But... then again... Reddit's best days are behind it. Doesn't really matter who is at the helm.

* Reddit is still in turmoil | Hacker News || [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12140603](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12140603)

</comment><comment><USER78> How do we know his apology is real?

Maybe he posted "I did not do this. Get off my back people. I don't know what is going on here."

Later, another admin may have gone in and changed Spez's comment to read "Yep. I messed with the ...".

(I'm being facetious)

</comment><comment><USER79> "...getting called a pedophile constantly..." Why?

<comment><USER7> From what I have seen. It seems Reddit has shut down a subreddit whose people are in the midst of investigating pedophile rings.

<comment><USER80> So /r/pizzagate was a subreddit convinced they'd found evidence of a pedophile ring in the government and more specifically implicating Hilary Clinton. They were recently shut down because they kept publishing people's information (which is against reddit ToS _even if said info is publicly available_). This prompted them to assume reddit admins were part of said ring. I assume /u/spez has been receiving accusations since.

<comment><USER81> Based on zero evidence they believed that Podesta and Clinton were molesting children in the bathrooms of a NY Pizzeria.

They then proceeding to post the owners information and make death threats against him and his staff.

Absolutely despicable behaviour. And completely criminal.

<comment><USER82> It is a DC pizzeria

<comment><USER83> And there was some evidence. Like people hanging out with convicted pedos, quickly removing symbolics from their sites, emails in Podesta's inbox, and more.

<comment><USER82> You're getting downvoted because people don't like it, but you're right. People who don't like it don't read about it, and that gives rise to denial and lack of knowledge, like "in the bathrooms of a NY Pizzeria."

If you think it's entirely implausible that there could be organized pedophilia operating out of DC, you're not being honest with yourself. Look at what happened in Norway 4 days ago.

I'm not interested in discussing politics on HN--and I'm not referring solely to this theory--but I am concerned when people are not intellectually curious enough to consider even _hear_ an argument.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER84> /r/The_Donald is such an Internet cesspool.

<comment><USER85> The Internet is such an Internet cesspool these days. You won't believe what happens next!

</comment></comment><comment><USER86> This type of breach of trust could be used to help educate people on what digital security really means, and to demand real security in all parts of their digital lives. It is also good to demand _multiple layers_ of security.

Reddit is "https", and did that help here? No, in the sense that it only ensured the unaltered delivery of _what Reddit was sending_. It did nothing to preserve the integrity of comments that were originally written. This was not a "secure" web site for this case, yet many people would _assume so_ due to the one layer of security that was present and prominently displayed in the browser! Now extend this to any given web site, and data that is far more important than a stupid comment. Real security is not trivial, and figuring out a good way to manage trusted parties is especially hard.

</comment><comment><USER87> Reddit can no longer be sourced by any media outlet because of this. How can any comment be valid on Reddit anymore?

Reddit's credibility is gone __forever __. No going back.

<comment><USER88> Don't worry, media outlets generally don't care about vailidity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER89> Am I the only one who isn't really concerned with this?

spez was engaging in a bit of the Internet pastime... trolling. It wasn't some conspiracy to control information on reddit, he was just having fun. Dastardly fun, yes, but fairly innocent, all things considered.

</comment><comment><USER90> As one who moderated a smaller forum for a while in the past:

1) Direct access to the database at times is needed particularly for bulk edits. In our forum we had certain bans and not all were immediately enforced by the posting software. Some were done in bulk operations down at the database level.

2) Manual semi bulk edits at time were done in places where scripts simple were too much work to get right.

3) Manual direct individual edits also at times happened but they are incredibly dangerous as they can erode the confidence in the site. From what I saw at multiple forum the temptation is very high at the top to rationalize such edits and it tends to work against them badly.

4) Edits at database level often leave little to no trace. That is one reason that makes them so dangerous. At production level _very_ few should have access to the DB for accountability reasons.

5) Nobody really likes DB level edits but they are needed and done. The forum software and support scripts do not cover all situations. Getting 100% rid of them is unrealistic. For audit reasons logging original posts in a tamper proof place may be wise but is rarely done.

6) Clearly someone has abused privileges here, I'm fairly sure such edits are not condoned by any internal guidelines. There must be consequences.

7) Personal consequences. This is about ethics, behavior and trust. These things are not all b&w. Was he hiding the behavior? Is there insight? Are there mitigating circumstances? Also is he the right guy for the job considering the job description requires flame retardant skin? The board needs to look into this carefully and quickly.

8) Organizational consequences. How can they make sure this does not happen again? Do they have all the right controls in place? Are they are properly separating the roles. Should they get audited? The threat for an organization to suffer from catastrophic cyber events increased incredibly. It used be be groups of people revolting on boards. These days certain sites reach out to sizable fractions of the US electorate and whip up attacks (recent: Kelly's book on Amazon or CNN's app in the app store). Very solid organizational and technical controls are needed for a place that so easily gets into the cross- hairs of a mob.

</comment><comment><USER91> This is quite concerning. I do wonder if blockchain could fix the problem of stealth edits by privileged users.

<comment><USER75> It would fix the problem by making commenting require insane amounts of computation, thus making it require transaction fees, thus making nobody comment, thus making there be no comments to edit, right?

</comment></comment><comment><USER92> I still have no idea what /r/pizzagate is all about.

<comment><USER93> The more you research, the more horrifying it is. I'd not recommend looking into it if you don't want to go down a rabbit hole, be thoroughly creeped out, and have your day completely ruined.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> In my eyes reddit quality, especially the frontpage, is declining year over year and it's not really getting better. It might be my age but I'm less and less interested in the content which gets all the upvotes. Also, the bigger subreddits seem to show this decline where quality discussion doesn't happen anymore.

Is there actually a long-term analysis about how reddit content and discussion changed over the years?

</comment><comment><USER94> I'm seeing reddit's user base as less and less valuable. There is so much active disinformation with purchased reddit accounts (because aged accounts attract less suspicions) that's ripe with vote manipulation.

By actively triggering reddit's vote manipulation trigger on somebody's comment, you effectively have a way to censor and control information and how it's portrayed.

Reddit CEO directly altering user's comments that criticize him seems to signal that the platform is incapable or unwilling to address the poor value proposition of a purely anonymous based social networks that serves as stage for anyone with the monetary and networking resource to manipulating the casually browsing redditor and their opinion .

</comment><comment><USER95> Not surprising at all.

<comment><USER68> Why? Would you add some context to your comment?

<comment><USER95> Reddit is known for censoring subreddits the admins do not like or when they're involved in some drama, they have a specific algorithm to filter out Trump's subreddit from /r/all[1][2], the default subs are strictly aligned with the admins' political views, and recently the CEO mocked Facebook's knowledge of their users data saying that at Reddit they know not only what one publicly speaks (such as in Facebook), but also their users "darkest secrets" (in an interview about advertising on Reddit).

[1] [https://voat.co/v/MeanwhileOnReddit/1373659](https://voat.co/v/MeanwhileOnReddit/1373659) [2] [https://www.reddit.com/r/shittychangelog/comments/59s3ao/red...](https://www.reddit.com/r/shittychangelog/comments/59s3ao/reddit_change_rall_algorithm_changes/)

<comment><USER96> > Reddit is known for censoring subreddits the admins do not like

r/The_Donald mods were censoring all comments against Donald Trump (hence why they didn't reach r/all)

> the CEO mocked Facebook's knowledge of their users data saying that at > Reddit they know not only what one publicly speaks (such as in Facebook), > but also their users "darkest secrets" (in an interview about advertising on > Reddit).

It was clearly a joke taken out of context from conspiracy theorist.

<comment><USER97> Moderators can run their subreddits however they see fit. They're the ones who create the rules and they're the ones that enforce the rules, as long as they don't break the rules of reddit itself. Admins, on the other hand, should not favor one subreddit over the other.

<comment><USER98> Why do you make that distinction? AFAIK reddit is not a free speech platform.

<comment><USER99> Because mods aren't paid and are generally put in power by their specific community to uphold the communally agreed upon standards and rules.

Admins are paid employees of a company (reddit) that provides a platform for communities and discussion. If the platform itself is biased, then it is not really a platform but rather a specific media / viewpoint forum.

The distinction matters.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER100> Wow people are freaking out. In a couple of months everyone will forget.

He got stressed and did something unprofessional. But at the end of the day it's just reddit. The world will not end.

Anyone know if there is a way to shout him a beer. Sounds like that man needs a cold one and some quiet time.

</comment><comment><USER101> > the only thing he secretly altered was the target of the insults

Basically irrelevant. One hell of a veil to pierce.

This isn't even the first time reddit's indicated they're kind of... flexible, let's say, with how they handle certain kinds of data; but it always seemed like they stopped just short of crossing lines.

Unmarked edits to user comments was absolutely not something I'd've expected to come of that, so I can't say I'm not surprised; still, this seems like it's just the next stage of something that's always seemed to exist (or not exist, I suppose) for them.

</comment><comment><USER102> Why didn't he simply delete them? Editing their comments seems so odd.

<comment><USER103> Clearly to troll them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER104> was he drunk or in urgent need of a break? OTOH , good of him to take the responsibility immediately. OTOH, maybe he even wanted to send a message to those who rely too much in reddit's freedom.

<comment><USER29> No, he was tired and emotional.

[https://youtube.com/watch?v=z49LjJj3VTI](https://youtube.com/watch?v=z49LjJj3VTI)

<comment><USER105> Brilliant. I had no idea, got to love the British culture.

<comment><USER106> Parts of it at least and I say that as a Brit, if you like our comedy check out Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister.

<comment><USER105> I grew up on those shows. :) Might be worth a rewatch.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER107> FWIW, I have had a number of incidents with sketchy "content" on reddit over the years. This incident with content modification is in alignment with my experiences.

</comment><comment><USER108> There are a lot of politics going on on communities like these. And there are a lot of trolling, people attempting and sometimes successfully summon mobs, sometimes for amusement, sometimes with an agenda. Do not underestimate stupid people in large groups!

</comment><comment><USER109> awesome work spez, you're now liable for everything your users do on your site due to your actions.

have fun dealing with the outcome of this. I don't envy you, but this was your decision.

</comment><comment><USER110> This election (seen from outside as a storm in a glass of water) undermined America's best appeal as the only place with the first amendment. Please remain free.

</comment><comment><USER111> I would be pretty annoyed if a good chunk of the paranoid pizzagate believing Internet spent all day calling me a pedophile.

</comment><comment><USER112> I am /r/outoftheloop. What happened?

</comment><comment><USER113> Why was the title changed from "Reddit CEO" to "I"? Seems very asinine.

<comment><USER52> When a story is written in the first person it's common for the title to say "I". Sometimes we put those in quotation marks but then we'd have nested quotes in this one.

As for why changed, see [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13027515](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13027515) and the replies.

<comment><USER114> I think you're doing a great job. Moderating threads and submissions that are basically guaranteed to be shitshows (like this one) is an incredibly thankless job.

Thanks for keeping it together, and thanks for keeping this from going off the rails.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER115> Am on mobile and that link keeps giving a "something went wrong page" on reddit

</comment><comment><USER116> Haha! Long live "freedom" of speech!

</comment><comment><USER117> shouldn't he be saying i fucked up?

</comment><comment><USER118> I didn't get all the drama even after reading top HN comments. Am I completely lost?

</comment><comment><USER119> If you don't trust auditd

<comment><USER119> No

</comment></comment><comment><USER120> How pathetic

</comment><comment><USER29> I was surprised. This was wrong of me.

Reddit (the company) is a wretched hive of scum an villany, where this sort of stuff seems almost regular. Perhaps it wasn't always so: I don't know.

But I can't think of any other forum that would put up with this. If an owner or mod did this on the *chans, the chan in question would be abandoned within the week.

As for HN, dang does as he sees fit, as do the admins: they'll split your thread, redact your post (and if they doesn't, the software will if it gets flagged enough, IIRC), and (or so I heard) even shadowban you of you're bad enough. However, they're mostly right, and not corrupt. And they wouldn't pull crap like this. Blocking a comment that talks about how HN is just a massive circlejerk is one thing: actually altering it to say something else is quite another.

I suppose it might be common on forums run by egotistical gits, but come on, you're heading a company running a large forum/news aggregator. You can do better than an egomaniac with a website.

<comment><USER121> The rest of reddit will accept this because everyone hates /r/the_donald anyway. That subreddit is an abuse of the system already.

<comment><USER103> This brings up memories of when moot messed with /pol/. He turned off the spam prevention scripts and captcha, made every post look like a doubles post, and let an audio recording of cuck porn play on the board page. That was sort of expected from moot though and it was 4chan after all.

<comment><USER29> Well, yes.

 _but he didn 't mess with any of the content of any messages._

If he did, the entire chan would have gone up in flames.

<comment><USER122> The content was subject to a large amount of wordfilters at the time, which would alter half the posts.

<comment><USER29> ...but those were public. It's one thing to have a computer run search and replace on every post in the board. It's quite another to have a mod specifically edit _your_ post, making it look like you said something you didn't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> Please stop using this "alt-right" terminology. All its doing is trying to put a neutral label on a group of vile people. People that are blatantly racist, misogynist, and just anti-American. These are the same kinds of monsters that started the "National Socialist German Workers' Party" in the 1930's. They used the same rhetoric and played on desperate people's fears and prejudices.

My grandparents didn't fight on two fronts to see this bullshit taking over the United States.

<comment><USER123> I think the "alt-right" term has its use. After all, not all of the people we are talking about here are sadistic monsters. Even among those engaging in the juvenile, antagonistic bigotism and bullying that is pervasive on /r/the_donald are a large group of otherwise reasonable people who feel alienated by the progressive left, and have simply bought into the all of the recent rhetoric against political correctness.

Those people have been mislead, to be sure, but it isn't accurate or useful to assume they are malicious.

<comment><USER124> Impact matters more than intent.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER125> Stalin would be proud of this guy. (They practice the same brand of politics after all.)

</comment><comment><USER125> Combine it with Milo's getting banned by Twitter, Doordash's CEO asking for Trump supporters to resign - a not very pretty picture of Silicon Valley emerges.

<comment><USER126> Grub hub not door dash. And it was not trump supporters, but people who supported his racist views.

<comment><USER127> Can you explain how Trump's views are "racist"? AFAIK, he criticised _criminal illegal_ Mexican immigrants, not even a whole nationality, let alone a whole race!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER128> Shit some people do to stay relevant. That's all I have to say.

</comment><comment><USER129> There is a reason I'm on HN and not on Reddit. Please don't spill your petty in-fighting over to other sites.

</comment><comment><USER130> Usernames on Reddit do not require even an email address. For that reason, I find it hard to muster up even a modicum of concern for the sanctity of 'authorship' and 'attribution' for individual users. For all I know, every comment on Reddit but my own are generated by a very clever computer.

That congress sees fit to investigate Reddit comments and news websites find credibility in re-posting them are separate issues that absolutely deserve discussion. But the editing of "Fuck [username]" posts...

<comment><AUTHOR> Many people post on Reddit under their real identity. Now it is madness to do so, as a malicious Reddit employee can frame you as having said anything.

<comment><USER130> This has always been the case. It has always been madness to post on user forums under your real identity. In the 'viral era' \-- the age of mobile broadband, the age where any post you make or photo you send can get the attention of millions and ruin your career before your plane lands [0] -- it's pure madness to expose yourself like this.

[0][http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/magazine/how-one-stupid- tw...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/magazine/how-one-stupid-tweet-ruined- justine-saccos-life.html)

<comment><USER105> Reading that is both sad and scary at the same time. White Christmas (of Black Mirror) certainly doesn't look so science fiction anymore.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz: "I'm Just a Manager"  - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcompany.com/1680546/yahoo-ceo-carol-bartz-im-just-a-manager

<comment><USER2> Yahoo is a sinking ship...

</comment><comment><USER3> yeah. a manager at a "media company". no wonder they're screwed.</comment>


Understanding Amazon's "HQ2" Announcement - <AUTHOR> https://sccinsight.com/2017/09/10/understanding-amazons-hq2-announcement/ <comment><USER2> I agree that Atlanta is a good choice. The others not so much.

Toronto has average housing costs that are $700K, plus you're going to have a hard time getting Americans to move there.

Austin is bursting at the seams already.

Boston is way too expensive, which the author acknowledges.</comment>


Zucked OUT - <AUTHOR> https://www.thesun.co.uk/tech/5853280/facebook-share-price-latest-stocks-cambridge-analytica/ <comment><USER2> Not that the source is a bastion of journalistic excellence, but anyone using the term "data breach" is not helping.

A data breach is a real thing and has a legal definition, this wasn't that.</comment>


Amazon To Enter Wine Business - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/03/06/cheers-amazon-to-enter-wine-business/ <comment><USER2> The real question is will it be able to use its firepower to open any doors for the wine industry. Alcoholic beverage shipping and sales laws in America are still stuck in the dark ages.

</comment><comment><USER3> I wonder what effect the product recommendation system is going to have on pricing and availability. The wine industry is very susceptible to information cascades, which is why you have people paying twenty-five bucks for a bottle of Cloudy Bay.</comment>


Linux users pay 3x that of Windows users for Humble Indie Bundle 3 - <AUTHOR> http://www.geek.com/articles/games/linux-users-pay-3x-that-of-windows-users-for-humble-indie-bundle-3-2011082/

<comment><USER2> I hope companies read that, that still think Linux user aren't willing to pay for software since "they're not used to it" -.-</comment>


How France's TV5 was almost destroyed by hackers - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-37590375 <comment><USER2> Haha I remember this story. I haven't fully read this article but do they mention that their passwords were shown during an interview? (source, in french: [http://www.tuxboard.com/tv5-monde-mots-de-passe-clair- interv...](http://www.tuxboard.com/tv5-monde-mots-de-passe-clair-interview/))

<comment><USER3> It's not just TV stations that get hacked this way; it's common to leave post- it's with credentials in office environments; when you air them in HD on tv, that might cause problems :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I once worked as a consultant to a subsidiary of one of the larger Cybersecurity vendors.

Many institutions have weak cybersecurity including healthcare concerns. In this Fortune article about he Sony hack, the CEO said basically that they did not want to spend the money for Cybersecurity. [http://fortune.com/sony-hack- part-1/](http://fortune.com/sony-hack-part-1/)

Target and Lowe's POS terminals were hacked because they were told to upgrade their software to a newer version of the OS and they didn't do it. The CEO of Target was canned as a result.

Many firms and other institutions love the power of computing without spending the money and hiring the expertise needed to maintain the security. There are private security contractors that these groups can hire _to ensure that their environment is fully secure_.

In addition to financial audits, shareholders should insist on cyber security audits to ensure that the firm or institution is acting in a responsible manner.

Obviously acting in a responsible manner regarding Cybersecurity is not a guarantee, but many cases of hackers breaking in is because of not even making the attempt to be secure.

<comment><USER5> _fully secure_? aeh.

it's a tradeoff. you spend time, money and productivity loss (i.e. procedures) on IT security to decrease the risk of a successful attack. every additional dollar spent decreases the probability a bit further (if done right) but your returns are diminishing. at some point it's not worth anymore.

> "The TV5 attack fits into this pattern of highly-targeted attacks, rather > than the kind of general criminal activity typically seen on the web."

in my opinion: no matter what kind of business you do, if you fall victim to the "kind of general criminal activity typically seen on the web" you're acting negligent.

then, after a certain point of increased protection attacks drastically decrease for most businesses because you're not worth the time and money it costs to attack you.

but fully secure? i mean, the stuxnet attack is the best counter example.

i compare it to healthy living: by investing time and money and refraining from doing certain pleasurable things you're improving your health and increase the chance to reach an old age. but it's no guarantee - you can still get hit by a car or succumb to cancer at age 20 just due to bad luck.

<comment><USER4> I think we agree. By doing your best to implement security measures (hire cybersecurity consultants, install the software they recommend, etc.) you are still exposed to risk, just significantly diminished since generally hackers would go after easier targets.

At issue is that many firms do not implement these security measures at all. The Sony people were repeatedly warned and had earlier breeches but didn't want to spend the money it took to follow measures recommended to them until after the attack. I think their mindset is not so unique and that many firms aren't doing what they can to try to eliminate the breeches. In some cases, the issues are internal, but in others customer lists are breeched, etc. or credit cards hacked as in Target, Lowe's, and others.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Hijacking live broadcasts seems to be one of the ultimate hacker accomplishments. There is something about it that is far more disconcerting than just defacing a webpage. Seems like it would feel far more invasive, popping on your living room tv. Would love to know how much someone like the BBC spend on security, must be huge.

The most famous TV hack, Max Headroom [1] (NSFW), from what I recall involved overriding the terrestrial signal, presumably with very powerful broadcasting hardware. BBC are digital now, so I am surprised they haven't had a successful incident yet.

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

<comment><USER7> I came across this a number of years ago and the wiki article is a very interesting read [0]

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Headroom_broadcast_signal_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Headroom_broadcast_signal_intrusion)

<comment><USER8> And of course there was Captain Midnight!

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_Midnight_broadcast_s...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_Midnight_broadcast_signal_intrusion)

<comment><USER7> Also a very interesting story but Max Headroom will also stand alone IMHO due to the person never getting caught and the seemingly randomness of the whole thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> _" Any substantial delay would have led satellite distribution channels to cancel their contracts, placing the entire company in jeopardy."_

Can someone explain that a little more? Are satellite carriage contracts so twitchy that going dark on a channel for more than a few hours forfeits your service?

<comment><USER10> I don't know about France's laws but in Belgium radiosilence and television black are forbidden and you don't need to be down for an hour to lose your license, and the carriers will in general ditch you really quickly AFAIK

<comment><USER11> Okay, next question: why is that?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "The attackers used seven different points of entry. Not all of them were part of TV5Monde or in France. In one case, a company based in the Netherlands was targeted because it supplied the remote controlled cameras used in TV5's studios."

= cameras with a backdoo^^^^cloud integration/permanently connected to manufacturers server.

<comment><USER13> That's actually quite ironic. Selling some insecure hardware not only exposed their clients, but also lured hackers to their own systems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'd be really interested in seeing informed commentary on what is gained by this.

In general, crippling hacks aren't terribly useful -- they're embarassing and harmful to the targets, especially in shaking confidence. But they're not particularly useful to a general attacker. Having insider access to a television or broadcast entity would itself be useful.

Other options might be to test (or prove) the capability to take a target down, particularly in preparation for other more advanced capabilities.

The more successful parasites don't disable hosts, but hijack them to their own ends. That is something I'd find more troubling.

Online searches don't show much at Schneier or other security-minded blogs. Am I missing something?

I did find a Friday Squid discussion: [https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2015/04/friday_squid_...](https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2015/04/friday_squid_bl_473.html)

</comment><comment><USER15> > And that is indicative of a new trend: attacks with physical-world > consequences.

In general, I think all attacks made against computers have physical world consequences. Time, money, disrupted services...

</comment><comment><USER8> The cost is $3m per year for each year after the attack for extra protection ... I'd argue they were discounting their security posture by $3m every year before the attack.

</comment><comment><USER16> Im guessing they were targeted merely because they had poor security and random scanning found a gaping hole.

</comment><comment><USER17> Is no one paying attention to the fact that the guy is called Mr. Bigot? xD</comment>