When patents attack Android - <AUTHOR> http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/08/when-patents-attack-android.html <comment><USER2> Drummond is very smart. And he's always been friendly to me. But that's not to be confused with Google being the good guy. They tried to buy these patents and failed.

And they claim that they aren't litigious with patents, and they haven't been yet. But to paint them as the victim is disingenuous -- while they don't use patents offensively, they have many other tools at their disposal that they do use offensively, market share in advertising and search amongst them.

Google is a massive company with massive resources. They happen to be exceptionally smart and know how to use tools outside of litigation to achieve their means -- but that doesn't make them any less a monopoly or anti- competitive company; far from it.

It's impossible to view Drummond's post in a box -- it's not just about how patents hinder innovation -- /everybody knows that/ already. But Google does everything for a reason, they are very strategic. Since Google knows it has better tools to be competitive outside of patents, it is in their interest to eliminate patents as a source of pressure from competitors.

And if you invent something amazing, and you patent it, and then Google decides to copy you -- you may not feel that patents hinder innovation as much as you do right now. But since they are a behemoth with lots of other tools at their disposal, they want to eliminate a favorite weapon of their competitors. Smart, but altruistic it may not be.

<comment><USER3> They're being painted as a victim because they are. Patents are BS and continue to hinder innovation.

They may be anti-competitive in other areas (although I don't know specifics). Can you provide some sources?

<comment><USER4> They sure touted their PageRank patent.

<comment><AUTHOR> To me, that one seems to actually be a non-obvious, patentable idea. It made the world a better place. This isn't 1-click checkout or clickable phone numbers on a smart phone...

But I don't think Google actually sued anyone when most other search engines started using that method. Correct me if I'm wrong.

<comment><USER5> It is _exactly_ the kind of innovative solution that multiple developers would discover independently. It is _exactly_ the kind of idea that does _not_ need a 17 year monopoly to incentivize investors to provide cash for its development.

<comment><USER6> In fact multiple people did discover similar strategies at the same point in time such as: <http://www.cs.cornell.edu/home/kleinber/auth.pdf>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's blatantly incorrect to say of Apple (and even Microsoft) that "Instead of competing by building new features or devices, they are fighting through litigation."

Regardless of one's feelings about software patent lawsuits (I'm opposed), a better phrase than "instead of" might be "in addition to".

<comment><USER8> Agree totally. It doesn't really appeal to me personally, but Microsoft in particular is trying to do some new things from a UI and software perspective with Windows Phone. From what I have read about it, it actually seems like one of the few products where MS hasn't tried to systematically copy what is being done elsewhere.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Forget Multitouch. Let's talk about how google one day decided to take Java, a project Sun had spent decades developing and selling as a product, and copy it (not necessarily the source code) and give it away for free, in all of it's Google "Don't be Evil" righteousness. Thus causing handset makers who were paying Sun for their product to stop paying them and instead get the free version from Google instead.

Is android a better platform than Java's? Yes, definitely. But that's not the right question. The right question is: was it right for Google to take someone else's IP and give it away for free?

Frankly I hate the way people view Google, as some righteous white-knight out to save the world from having to pay for anything that's worth buying. Instead "just give me all your personal info, and look at a few advertisements, and be on your way" (pat on the head).

I think Oracle has every right to go after Google for hijacking Java and turning it into another add-generating revenue stream, without so much as a tip of the hat to the company that spent decades and billions of dollars building it into what it is today.

Just my $.02.

<comment><USER10> I don't think you're familiar with the licence history of Java, Sun has long allowed free third party implementations of Java as part of it's attempt to get Java adopted as the standard development language.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Is this why we're seeing a sudden burst of anti-patent news? Is Google in the early phases of drumming up grassroots support for a direct assault on software patents in general, without their name being on the effort? Is this post actually move 3 instead of move 1?

Honest questions, BTW, if there's anybody with answers who are allowed to give answers...

<comment><USER8> Astute observation. Reminds me of this pg classic on PR:

<http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html>

The timing is certainly convenient for Google.

<comment><USER12> Software developers, and Open Source developers in particular, have been adamantly against software patents for a very long time. It seems equally as likely that independent developers are taking advantage of Google's predicament to further their own goal of abolishing software patents.

Edit: I will add that I personally have done exactly this in conversation. But, in the worst case, Google is exploiting a sentiment that already exists, rather than creating it from nothing.

<comment><USER13> "Software developers, and Open Source developers in particular, have been adamantly against software patents for a very long time."

This is exactly as true as the claim that all scientists support AGW theory.

Reality-- most scientists don't support that theory.

But proponents of the theory say that they all do, all over the place. And since there is nobody who actually speaks for all scientists, there's nobody to prove them wrong.

So they repeat it over and over and over and over again, even though it isn't true.

Logically, your statement is easily disproven. I have been developing software for two decades, including open source, and I support software patents.

Now you can never make that statement again. Well, you can't if you're honest.

<comment><USER12> _"Software developers, and Open Source developers in particular, have been adamantly against software patents for a very long time."

This is exactly as true as the claim that all scientists support AGW theory.

Reality-- most scientists don't support that theory.

But proponents of the theory say that they all do, all over the place. And since there is nobody who actually speaks for all scientists, there's nobody to prove them wrong.

So they repeat it over and over and over and over again, even though it isn't true.

Logically, your statement is easily disproven. I have been developing software for two decades, including open source, and I support software patents.

Now you can never make that statement again. Well, you can't if you're honest._

At the risk of sounding like I'm retroactively changing my argument, I didn't say "all software developers." My intended meaning of "software developers" and "Open Source developers" was _many_ , not _all_ , which I believe is a common and valid grammatical interpretation of a pluralized noun without a specified quantity.

Sites like Groklaw and organizations like the FSF (though FSF is a bit more extreme on most things than I am) show that there is a sizable group of people against software patents, and whether you yourself are for, against, or neutral, your position does not disprove the harm done to OSS/FS, small companies, and general innovation by software patents.

Finally, though this is off topic, do you have evidence that most scientists don't support the theory of anthropogenic global warming? From the perspective of a non-climate-scientist, non-politician such as myself, it seems like most climatologists do consider anthropogenic greenhouse gases a problem. It also seems that claiming that most scientists disbelieve in AGW is a hallmark of conservative arguments (as in preserving the legal status quo, not as in right wing), as is claiming that patents help the small inventor.

<comment><USER14> For what it is worth I read your pervious comment as you intended and good job in your response.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I find Google's stance here ingenuous. They're attempting to portray themselves as the persecuted innovator, but their behaviour in the market in question doesn't really stand up to scrutiny.

While the patents Apple are using to attack Android with seem dubious, the motivation for this tactic is obvious. Google extremely blatantly cloned the look and feel of the iPhone and have pursued a strategy of dumping Android in an attempt to reduce smartphones to a commodity. Of course Apple will try every trick in the book to prevent them doing this.

As a strategy for Google this makes perfect sense, but playing the wounded party as they do in this post is ridiculous, whichever horse you have in the smartphone OS race.

<comment><USER16> "Google extremely blatantly cloned the look and feel of the iPhone and have pursued a strategy of dumping Android in an attempt to reduce smartphones to a commodity."

There are actually quite a few differences between Android and iOS in terms of interface, and there always have been -- in fact, many features found in later versions of iOS were found first in earlier versions of Android, such as copy & paste, wallpapers, and the upcoming notification area. In addition, applications are presented differently (you have to slide up a panel, generally, or tap a button somewhere to get to them), wallpapers can be dynamic (Live Wallpapers), and Android is, in general, _much_ more reliant on menu structures than iOS, which seems to take a more simple and transparent route to most functions.

Sure, there are similarities -- like the fact that it's a touch interface and applications are represented first as icons -- but I'm inclined to think they're less prevalent than seems to be thought, and the ones that are there are (more or less) common sense. (I could be wrong, of course :))

<comment><USER16> (I forgot to mention also that manufacturers and carriers also seem to have a lot to do with the overall interface -- Samsung's stock Android for the Captivate, for example, _does_ mirror iOS quite a bit, while HTC Sense probably couldn't be much more different if they tried!)

<comment><USER17> You can edit posts on here to add updates.

I would say that both iOS and Android are touch enabled versions of this from more than 20 years ago: [http://images.yourdictionary.com/images/computer/_PROGMAN.GI...](http://images.yourdictionary.com/images/computer/_PROGMAN.GIF)

For a truly innovative mobile UI, look at WP7 and Metro.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I think that some people have missed some of the points in the article in particular the aggressive litigation against Samsung, HTC, Motorola etc it isn't just Google thats being targeted. This is an anti-competitive stance, Apple, Oracle and Microsoft are being very aggressive in their pursuits. In my opinion the critical and genuine patents in mobile are linked to the radio portion of the device, the remaining patents are dubious as they don't represent novel or non-obvious solutions to a problem, more I did it this particular way so I am patenting it.

The US patent system, is broken. The cases as far as I know are being fought in the US, I doubt any of the claims would be accepted by a European court, though feel free to correct me.

</comment><comment><USER19> I'm kind of disappointed that the word "reform" doesn't show up anywhere in this article.

Indeed, one of the main courses of action they're taking is to "strengthen our own patent portfolio"…

<comment><USER20> Given the current state of american politics would you want to rely on "reform" as crucial element of your business strategy?

<comment><USER19> I certainly don't blame them for continuing to play the game as it's currently played. I was just hoping that they would _also_ look into other, broader, more beneficial options.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> So ... if Google had won the patents, was their plan to just release them into the wild? Or would they be defending them, just as these other companies are doing?

<comment><USER22> Based on what they publicly said, it would probably be something like granting a license to anyone who asked which would be revoked if they sued Google. It would probably have been very much like the license for WebM[1].

[1] <http://www.webmproject.org/license/additional/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Nice to read a Chief Legal Officer using plain language.

<comment><USER20> And due to this plain language this reads like a like a declaration of war of Google vs. Microsoft & Apple.

He is accusing them of illegal behaviour. He is accusing them of impeding innovation. And he says they will increase their own weapons arsenal to defend their products as well as fight through other channels.

Due to him being a Google official this means this is officialy a confrontation course. No more diplomacy.

This will be fun to watch. I'm for google :).

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> adding more content for discussions

<http://twitter.com/#!/bradsmi/status/98902130412355585>

Brad Smith (Microsoft General Counsel): Google says we bought Novell patents to keep them from Google. Really? We asked them to bid jointly with us. They said no.

<comment><USER25> With this, it is difficult to believe and trust whatever Drummond is selling (apple and microsoft ganging up on google).

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Patents are here and companies will find a way to exist with either DoJ's help or by acquiring their own patent portfolio. That's not the interesting news here to me.

I think by being offensive and teaming up with Microsoft, Apple is risking being at the losing end of a huge PR and mind share battle here. Microsoft still makes money using their market position but they are no longer in the mind share race.

Apple's business is in a position right now where they aren't a monopoly yet to start abusing it - unlike Microsoft which has so much leverage that losing mind share and having bad PR doesn't do much in terms of being a dent in existing, established business. However, for Apple if the rising tide against their close-ness continues with the help of economical realities and being perceived as a bully in the same league as Microsoft - they could see stagnation.

Apple has really no reason to pick that bullying route - they are always first to create new market categories, they are the most profitable ones, they still have lot of novelty factor going for them and they can compete in every better way if they wanted.

</comment><comment><USER27> Note to Google - fix smartphones and insure against future patent abuse by advancing an even better alternative - a fully formed HTML5+Javascript mobile OS offering.

Mobile and Web are the same thing, its just we have a legacy crud that needs to be factored away.

Ideally my phone runs linux with a GPU accelerated HTML5 UI, and has a javascript programming model with open API to get to hardware features. We are nearly there.

I believe Objective-C and Java languages are ultimately unsuited to phone app development. [ because phone app development _is_ web app development ]

This would be a bold, unifying, visionary strategy. You already have this in place, it just needs to be amplified - doing so could be the perfect strategy to win the patent game by making the patent game largely irrelevant.

<comment><USER28> Huh? HTML5 + Javascript would not avoid future patent abuse. There are lots of dubious web-related patents from the dot-com bubble that haven't expired yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Patent lawsuits are probably filed nowadays how you would threat opponent in a game of chess. You just need to attack to maintain the strategic position. You need a lawsuit in an advanced state as a strategic asset. I don't buy that Google is really any better in a moral sense.

I do believe, though, that there are plenty of people at the companies driving these current litigations that hate what they are doing. It's just the rules of the game that let aggression emerge.

<comment><USER12> That is indeed the status quo for the large corporate players, but small-time developers/founders such as myself will still argue against the game because the same tactics are used by slow-moving incumbents and patent trolls to crush the nimble startups that are innovating at a much faster rate. A patent threat against Android in particular is treated as a threat by proxy against all independent developers because of its open nature.

<comment><USER30> It's also a further disincentive to be involved in the American market. The Indian and Chinese markets aren't similarly encumbered.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> If the patents were used to block android out of market, then maybe it is harming the consumers. But I see no problem with demanding license fees and maintaining certain feature exclusivity, even that means Android become not so free or less user-friendly. Google does not represent all people and Android has no inherent right to be free.

<comment><USER32> You make it sound so reasonable. There is a patent gold rush right now. The USPTO is approving thousands of patents that cover the same obvious ideas. Parties that have lost in the marketplace or haven't even participated are effectively taxing the winners by extorting patent fees. Google could pay the fees to the losers and acquire enough patents the reach an equilibrium via mutually assured destruction with their competition, but the market is effectively closed to anyone without the extremely deep pockets.

<comment><USER31> First I hate patent trolls, but the ill effects are financially not that devastating. Trolls do not kill the geese. No geese, no egg.

And then there are the tech giants, they do not notice you until you get real big yourself.

So yeah, the situation sure is depressing, but then again at the end of the tunnel is money and fame, it is only reasonable the path shall be difficult.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> If this was coming from an open source community (instead of Google) that's developing something like Android to give away for free, I would have understood. But, Google gives away Android for free so that it can sell loads of them and there by locking down most of the users (non-geeks) to the Google Ad universe and earn its revenue by selling loads and loads of Ads. Its not like Google genuinely cares about the expensive mobile industry and its actual intent is to provide cheap phones to those who can't afford it (on the lines of OLPC). While whether or not patents and specifically Software patents is good or bad for the society is a different argument, this issue doesn't deserve the same sympathy that companies who are attacked by patent trolls do.

<comment><USER34> Taking a course of action that is in your best interests does not somehow invalidate the premise that that action is ethical or the right thing to do absent those interests.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I just finished listening to that Planet Money podcast on this, just to see this blog post this now.

Should be interesting to see how this plays out.

I wonder if all parties involved would lobby for the destruction of software patents - wholesale - and call a ceasefire.

</comment><comment><USER36> technology is an inherently fiercely competitive landscape--a missed technology cycle can materially adversely impact a businesses operations.

coming out of the 2008-2009 recession, companies are flush with cash, of which shareholders encourage companies to invest in various operations, assets, etc. using these cash stockpiles to buy nortel patents and prevent google from enhancing their dominance / protection against litigation in the android space is a form of competition. it is all a game.

</comment><comment><USER37> I agree that patents are a problem. And, I saw Google's offer today for a free Android phone with a 2-year contract.

I would love a deal on a phone, but I think it is unethical to bundle products in this way. I would rather have the opportunity to switch carriers anytime I want.

I love mobile devices and mobile services, but the market conditions are too restrictive. I'd like to be able to (for example):

o Have multiple devices from different vendors on the same carrier plan o Have multiple carriers for each of my devices, so I can use whoever has the best service at any particular location o Pay a fair price for the data I send and receive to/from each carrier, and not pay for what I do not use o Sign up only for internet service from a carrier, without anything else bundled in that I do not want, such as voice service, SMS plans, etc. Only internet protocol, thank you. o Use my phone, which I bought, on any compatible carrier, in any country in the world, for a fair price.

If Google offers an android phone with these terms on their main search page, I will gladly pay a fair price for it.

<comment><USER38> You're more than welcome to forego the contract subsidy to buy a Nexus S (or many other phones) at full price and use it on any GSM network. Nothing stops you from pulling your SIM card out and using it in another device, provided said device supports your carrier's frequencies. The rest of your complaints are the fault of the carriers, not Google or OEMs.

<comment><USER37> And so I would like to see Google, who are so intent on fighting anti- competitive business practices, throw its weight behind this in their negotiations with carriers, so that they can make such an offer on their home page.

I seem to remember them trying this originally, with the nexus one, and it didn't go very well. But, the nexus one was a mediocre phone and it was relatively early days for android. Now the phones are better, and android's market share greater. I want to see them take this idea seriously again.

But yes, you are right. The real problem in this case is the carriers.

<comment><USER38> Not quite; the N1 came out right as Android was exploding (thanks to the Droid/Milestone a few months prior), and IMHO (as well as many others) it was the best phone on the market. It failed because Google didn't bother to advertise it, and your average person will flip at the idea of paying $529 for a phone (and these people won't see/care about being in a contract). The Nexus S is the same concept as the N1, and it's also being sold off contract and unlocked. It's also being sold on a contract (but still not SIM-locked AFAIK), because that's what consumers "want" and it'd be another marketing failure otherwise.

<comment><USER37> Interesting, maybe I misunderstood. I've had the horrible experience of trying to use a phone with a European carrier and finding that not only was it SIM- locked, but there was basically nothing above-board that I could do to unlock it. I guess I assumed this was a standard practice.

If Google's phones are not SIM-locked, that's great :)

My main remaining gripe is that if I can save on the price of a phone by entering a contract with a carrier, I want to also be able to go the other way: get more favorable contract terms if I already have a phone. Or get month-to-month service at a reasonable price without the need for any contract at all.

To the extent that these options are not available, the market for mobile internet service is not as open and efficient as it really ought to be.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> It makes sense for the legal system to guard against copying. If people buying Android phones actually thought they were buying iPhones - that's a problem. But if Apple can convince the government that they had a truly original idea and that no one can use that idea regardless of how they came up with it - that's absurd.

</comment><comment><USER40> This is wonderful actually. I don't believe Google's motives are altruistic for a minute but the only way to make this debate stick is by having one angry giant of a corporation against it and lucky for everyone Google is the one.

The system is broken but at the same time I suppose we need patents in some form at least for hardware. Apple couldn't make phones if it wasn't for innovative suppliers. The only thing between them going it alone and taking orders from Apple are patents. It's a bit tricky because if this patent battle plays out, Apple, Microsoft, and HP/Palm would be the only players able to make smartphones on their own without fear of patent suits. That's a near monopoly.

It's enough of a tricky debate and politics usually favors entrenched interests of large corporations. Despite Google's clout they couldn't match the sheer magnitude of Apple, Microsoft, and others. Plus, Google has always had an antagonistic relationship with government, since government keeps trying to pry sensitive personal information from Google.

</comment><comment><USER41> To put their money where their mouth is, Google should may be put their thousands of patents in the public domain and license it to anyone as per the alternative system they believe is better than the current patents system.

</comment><comment><USER42> pro- or anti-patent aside, this post sounds to me more like Google is really not confident in winning the current lawsuits around Android against its competitors.

As this blog is definitely not just a random rant against patent from some random lawyer. Its intention is more interesting. Is Google crying out loud just because it sees the patent system unjust? or is it really because they believe they are gonna lose most of their android related lawsuits, so they want to cry "its unfair!" earlier before the final whistle? just a thought...

</comment><comment><USER43> Google was born off of a patent: PageRank. It is unfair to criticize the entire concept of patents when they've guaranteed the just reward for several great, honest inventions.

</comment><comment><USER44> They clearly listened to This American Life's piece on patents. That title can't be coincidence. They just appended the word "Android" to it. :-)

</comment><comment><USER45> a tough topic/post to go front-and-center public with. a bit surprised to see it coming from Google. Guess it is the CLO griping.. but the multiple sides of this coin are hard to ignore. Coin being an operative word as much of this calls into question the nature of business and competition

</comment><comment><USER46> i am yet to hear a valid justification for ANY patent. can we just ignore them en masse please? the law will then have to change... at any rate i have zero respect for them. if i invent something already patented, good luck trying to extract money from me... i dare you.

</comment><comment><USER47> off-topic, but if your weblog is not a personal one and has multiple people authoring content, put the author name immediately under the post's title.

reading a post that starts with "I have worked" makes me immediately stop reading and scroll around to find out who "I" is.

</comment><comment><USER48> Hopefully Google will use some of those $3B to lobby against software patents.

</comment><comment><USER13> The problem with this is that prior to the introduction of the iPhone, android was designed to look like and work on phones like the blackberry. It was a better feature phone OS. After the iPhone came out, Google changed courses and counterfeited the iPhone.

If google wanted to compete, they could have spent 7 years investing in fundamental innovations-- like Apple did with touch-- to create their own new UI. Maybe they could have done a voice driven phone. OR, if touch was inevitable, they could have done their own, innovative take on touch UIs.

They did not. They turned around and cloned the iPhone and then gave the OS away for free. They were able to do this because the patent system requires Apple to publicly disclose their inventions. In exchange for this disclosure, Apple gets a monopoly on the use of their inventions. If you don't like this, that's fine, amend the constitution, and take it up with your congressman.

Google is now claiming that the government should step in and use force-- that is, decrees backed by men with guns and the threat of violence-- to allow google to steal other companies innovations and get away with it.

Think about that. Google cannot compete fair and square, so they steal their competitors technology. When this is pointed out, they call for the use of violence to let them get away with it! Talk about Doing Evil!

Apple learned their lesson last time around. They relied on copyright and license agreements to protect the invention of the GUI. The government did not have their back when Microsoft stole their invention, so this time, Apple made sure to patent their inventions.

This is not "anti-competitive", this the very definition of competition. Apple made a better widget to break into the fiercely competitive mobile phone market.

People only say "anti-competitive" when someone is _competing_ successfully and they don't like it.

If justice prevails, Google will become the wholly owned search and advertising subsidiary of Apple. If corruption prevails, Apple will be prevented in succeeding against google in court. We'll see how it turns out.

Either way, Once again, Apple-- the only company in Silicon Valley with a track record of genuine innovation-- is being attacked by counterfeiters who can't be bothered to spend any R&D on coming up with something new themselves, and once again, the thieves are claiming that they're just "competing."

If you hope to ever profit form doing something innovative... and not get squashed by a company like google ripping you off... you really should be on Apple's side on this. They have always been the underdog that stuck to their guns and innovated really hard. That they've been successful at this shows that the underdog can sometimes win.

If its taken away from them, it will not be justice, and it will not be moral.

<comment><USER16> "The problem with this is that prior to the introduction of the iPhone, android was designed to look like and work on phones like the blackberry. It was a better feature phone OS. After the iPhone came out, Google changed courses and counterfeited the iPhone.

If google wanted to compete, they could have spent 7 years investing in fundamental innovations-- like Apple did with touch-- to create their own new UI. Maybe they could have done a voice driven phone. OR, if touch was inevitable, they could have done their own, innovative take on touch UIs.

They did not. They turned around and cloned the iPhone and then gave the OS away for free."

Fundamentally incorrect; the T-Mobile G1 running Android 1.0, 1.5 and 2.0 (with modification), did, in fact, come with its own user interface, utilizing widgets on the home pages, wallpapers before iOS was even capable of such a thing unjailbroken, and a different method by which the applications are accessed -- those particular elements are present to this day in Android software. Notably, it wasn't until 2.x that the G1 gained multitouch. Back then, Android's home screen metaphor more resembled the standard desktop of a computer than anything else -- of course, with the addition of widgets. On top of everything else, Android did notifications in a brand new way -- in fact, in a way that was so innovative, Apple ripped them off in iOS 5!

Also, in 2.x, Android gained the feature of dynamic image wallpaper -- i.e. "live wallpapers" -- where the wallpaper is quite dynamic. This is a feature Apple simply does not have yet.

Furthermore, there are different interface conventions in application design, different methods of application development -- in fact, an entirely different language with a platform-agnostic binary format, and, in general, different UI mechanisms for everything.

This is not even to mention copy & paste, which Android had before iOS proper did.

In short: they did not clone the iPhone nearly as much as you say they did. Manufacturers are the ones that did that later, with form factor.

"They were able to do this because the patent system requires Apple to publicly disclose their inventions. In exchange for this disclosure, Apple gets a monopoly on the use of their inventions. If you don't like this, that's fine, amend the constitution, and take it up with your congressman."

Actually, just because Apple publicly disclosed their patent doesn't mean Google read the patent and purposely implemented anything exactly the same way Apple described. In fact, I'm absolutely positive that multitouch doesn't work quite the same way simply because the API to access touch is completely different. The end (user-facing) result winds up the same, though -- but the end result is what's at issue here, isn't it? To that end, I'd say, sure, multi-touch is copied -- but, there aren't a whole lot of common-sense ways, on a screen like that, to enlarge something (beyond buttons and such).

"Google is now claiming that the government should step in and use force-- that is, decrees backed by men with guns and the threat of violence-- to allow google to steal other companies innovations and get away with it."

Blatant, incorrect hyperbole -- unless you can back up the "use force" part. No, the DoJ is stepping in because the major parties involved with the Nortel patent acquisition are also direct competitors with Google -- in fact, the parties are all the major mobile companies that _aren't_ Google. These are companies that did _not_ invent or patent the technologies themselves, but the patents are going to them and are potentially usable for the purpose of crushing Android with litigation rather than by the merit of the products themselves.

"Think about that. Google cannot compete fair and square, so they steal their competitors technology. When this is pointed out, they call for the use of violence to let them get away with it! Talk about Doing Evil!"

"They call for the use of violence" -- citation needed. Honestly, the fact that _Google's_ competitors seem to be (may not be, but the patent acquisition seems to be far more than coincidence here) colluding to squash Google by means of patent litigation is more evidence that Google's _competitors_ can't compete "fair and square", that is, by technical merit.

"People only say 'anti-competitive' when someone is competing successfully and they don't like it."

This sounds like something that would be strangely pro-Microsoft back when MS was abusing its monopoly... but a move to block new competition from entering a market, or a move to exclude (by disqualification) a very specific competitor seems pretty anti-competitive to me.

"Either way, Once again, Apple-- the only company in Silicon Valley with a track record of genuine innovation--"

Are you ignoring Facebook or something? I'm fairly certain Google's search engine indexer is genuinely innovative, too. Oh my.

"If its taken away from them, it will not be justice, and it will not be moral."

If it's not, it will not be moral to allow three out of the four mobile companies to arbitrarily kick the fourth out just because none of them can top it or stop it on technical merit alone.

Oh -- as for Apple being the most innovative company... [http://www.gsmarena.com/showpic.php3?sImg=newsimg/11/06/ios-...](http://www.gsmarena.com/showpic.php3?sImg=newsimg/11/06/ios- event/gsmarena_002.jpg&idNews=2747)

<comment><USER49> I can't agree with more than the first few lines of the grandparent comment (as it is, as you say, "pure fanboyism"), but there is a point there. Nothing — nothing — before the iPhone had _anything_ similar to it's UI. Not Palm OS, not Windows Mobile, not (in-development) Android, not even any research prototypes. The iPhone was _new_.

But "wallpaper", "copy and paste", and even "live wallpaper" are not new. Physics-based scrolling responding to touch input as if it was actual physical objects you're manipulating? That was new. Android's innovating (and not at all bad) notifications interface? That's new, although it's not quite at the same scale.

But it's hard to argue that Apple did not make serious progress in computing as a whole with the iPhone. Even if you believe that Android (and webOS, Windows Phone, etc) should be able to use some of those same elements, or if you believe that Apple shouldn't be able to patent them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> If the "innovations" in Android were already covered by prior patents; they weren't innovations at all, were they?

Not necessarily my point of view, but isn't that how patents should work? Protecting prior art.

<comment><USER3> There are plenty of innovative and unpatented areas of Android. The problem is "A smartphone might involve as many as 250,000 (largely questionable) patent claims" - this is insane. Patents should protect prior art, not every single trivial software task. I'd guess it's impossible to create a new mobile phone and OS without violating patents.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Google should buy Lodsys :)

</comment><comment><USER52> It's sad that pro-patent asstroturf hijacks serious anti-patent discussions on HN, it's obvious that the HN sentiment towards software patents is that of disgust, yet when a passionate and rare post like this makes headlines somehow a pro-patent sentiment creeps out.

Software patents are a joke, just listen to this now famous 'This American Life' piece: [http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio- archives/episode/441/w...](http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio- archives/episode/441/when-patents-attack)

In this case it's so blatantly anti-competitive you have to be blind no to see the problem with it, we have all of Android's competitors consorting together, time and time again to block Google from buying patents so they could kill it.

Even if you are pro-patent (slim chance if you are a HN member) you should appreciate the anti-competitive risk of these patent consortiums. And if the government wasn't infested with IP lawyers (former RIAA, MPAA, BSA; None reformists) this issue would have taken center stage ages ago.

<comment><USER53> This piece really is all about the Nortel patents.

Google wanted the Nortel patents very badly but couldn't find enough fellow bidders whose interests matched its own to overcome the concerted efforts of Apple, Microsoft, and others who have a stake in pulling Android down. An interesting analysis of who the winners and losers were in this bidding process appears here: [http://www.tangible-ip.com/2011/what-does-nortel-mean- for-th...](http://www.tangible-ip.com/2011/what-does-nortel-mean-for-the- winners-and-losers.htm).

Having lost that bid, Google is in a far worse position to defend Android from patent attacks than it ever has been before. Essentially, all of its competitors now have formidable new weapons to use against the Android platform. This isn't so much an issue of "trolls" as it is conventional large players who use patent portfolios as arsenals for both offensive and defensive purposes. Google's enemies are now much more formidably armed as a result of the bidding.

Google therefore hopes to stir the DOJ into doing something about this on the antitrust front. The DOJ is scrutinizing this deal and may wind up imposing conditions that could be vital to Google. Its antitrust chief, Christine Varney, had represented Netscape while in private practice years ago in its antitrust fight with Microsoft and she has publicly expressed concerns about the misuse of patents by trolls and others for anti-competitive purposes (for those with a subscription, see this WSJ piece: [http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405270230365740457636...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303657404576363781889157222.html?KEYWORDS=nortel+patents)). Quite apart from her personal views, however, it is problematic that competitors can collude horizontally to do a major IP acquisition for what seems like an obvious anti-competitive purpose.

Google is not a "little guy" that might elicit sympathy in battling over the mobile space but it clearly has had its competitors gang up on it in pulling off the Nortel bid. Android will undoubtedly survive this attack but Google is seriously worried about being besieged in this way. In this piece, it is essentially looking to its last best hope in the DOJ for attempting to block this attack by competitors who hope to win by artificial legal means that which they can't win in the marketplace.

Let's hope this gets the scrutiny it deserves.

<comment><USER54> > This piece really is all about the Nortel patents.

You bet! Nortel is a household name for all they have done to advance technology and for the smartphone industry in particular, I am _shocked_ that anyone could dispute the validity of these patents. We owe them a debt of gratitude for the Nortel PalmPilot, the nDroid, nPhone, the nPad, and all the other consumer products Nortel has poured their innovation into. They gave so much, in fact, that they went into bankruptcy. If it wasn't for Nortel, why, who knows where Apple, Google, Microsoft, and the others would be? The bones of Nortel are probably brimming with innovative new product ideas that only need cash from Apple or Microsoft to see the light of day.

<comment><USER55> I worked at Northern Telecom. You would likely be astonished at how much they did invent that got licensed into products you take for granted.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> I keep seeing this idea that Apple is filing patent lawsuits because they are afraid of their competitors and their business is on the verge of collapse, and I just don't understand. Their business is better than ever, breaking records every quarter. I think maybe people are reading too much into market- share figures, or projecting their wishes onto reality.

Also, did Google not just try to buy the Nortel patents? Weren't they in an auction with the same companies called out in this blog post? I wonder if we would be reading this post at all, had Google won that auction.

Ultimately, patents are not good for our industry, obviously. And if Google manages to bring about change in this area, we will no doubt be the better for it. But it just seems a little funny to strike this "patents are bad" pose when they just bid like $3B for a bunch of 'em.

<comment><USER57> Had Google won the auction, then we likely wouldn't be having this discussion. Google would have had a huge stockpile of patents with which to countersue Apple, Microsoft, and Oracle, the result being a cross-licensing deal where everyone goes back to actually making things. Google's loss created a mismatch in power, so the cartel can sue them without fear of reprisal. It's this mismatch that has led to the current situation of companies competing in the courts instead of the marketplace. Just think: if Microsoft managed to impose another $15/unit licensing fee on Android, would it even be worth their while to try to compete? Why bother with WP7, which is never likely to be the market leader, when you can make more money leeching off Android?

<comment><USER58> google doesn't sue to hinder competition. At Apple and MS its a regualar practice. And yes MS is making more money off of Android than WP7

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> Google is lying if they are pretending that Apple and MSFT have started the software patent issues. And they clearly could have tried harder for the Nortel patents if they wanted to. How about try to not just bid a magical number but actually try and win auctions instead?

If Google really cared about the issue of PATENTS they'd be putting as much leverage behind changing the patent laws and not just calling sour grapes for themselves. I haven't seen them jumping in and defending (actually small) tech companies from litigation or doing much more than... a blog posting.

They're also saying that the Nortel patents are dubious, but I doubt it. A legacy company like Nortel probably had a lot of patents made long ago that are worth their weight in gold.

What is Google doing about it (based on this blog post)? Not fighting the patent system itself but of course trying to overturn the patent sale, buy more patents for themselves and basically become involved in the back and forth that had predominated software patents for a while now.

This is a blog post from Google about how they want to be heavy hitters with patents too. They want to throw their weight around with patents just like everyone else and use the system in the exact same way as this axis of evil who are conspiring against them.

<comment><USER60> The incredible irony is one of the major benefits of patents is "openness" and public disclosure of techniques.

The alternative to patents is massive secrecy, sorta like Google's search algorithm.

<comment><USER61> Openness + death by a thousand papercut licensing fees whenever you try to write any piece of software. I'll take secrecy and copyright, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> I wonder if anyone in Google is wishing that they hadn't tried to adorably bid pi billion, and had instead played to win.

<comment><USER63> This is a rather silly meme. Bidders were allowed to place more than one bid.

<comment><USER62> What you're saying does not contradict the meme at all. The meme goes that Google first bid Brun's constant, then upped it to the Meissel–Mertens constant, and finally pi.

That's more than one bid.

<comment><USER63> And then they continued bidding to over $4 billion. There's nothing to indicate that bidding non-round amounts changed the outcome.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> Good to see Google speak out against the patent trolls that Microsoft and Apple are, shame on them.

Edit for people downvoting: As I say in my comment below, this is one of the definition of a patent troll according to wikipedia[1]:

> Purchases a patent, often from a bankrupt firm, and then sues another > company by claiming that one of its products infringes on the purchased > patent;

This is what Apple and Microsft did by buying Novel and Nortel patents, making them de facto patent trolls.

1: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_troll#Etymology_and_defi...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_troll#Etymology_and_definition)

<comment><USER65> You have to be careful throwing around the "patent troll" label or it'll lose all meaning.

Microsoft and Apple actively ship product. They're playing the patent game but they're also doing real shit that impacts users every day. This is a far cry from the Intellectual Ventures and Lodsyses of the world.

<comment><USER64> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_troll#Etymology_and_defi...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_troll#Etymology_and_definition)

> Purchases a patent, often from a bankrupt firm, and then sues another > company by claiming that one of its products infringes on the purchased > patent;

<comment><USER65> You left out the rest of the qualifications:

Enforces patents against purported infringers without itself intending to manufacture the patented product or supply the patented service;

Enforces patents but has no manufacturing or research base;

Focuses its efforts solely on enforcing patent rights; or

Asserts patent infringement claims against non-copiers or against a large industry that is composed of non-copiers.

I mean, sure, they respond to one of the criteria any time they buy a patent and later use it in a complaint that includes many patents, both homegrown and acquired. But I think it's reasonable to say that the rest of the criteria are a lot more egregious, especially when a company fits most or _all of them_.

<comment><USER64> You left out the part where it says that a patent troll can be defined by any of these points. Therefore only quoting the one I did was enough to define Microsft and Apple as patent trolls.

<comment><USER65> But that's obvious. The point here is that patent trolling exists on a spectrum. While Apple and Microsoft may have a tenuous qualification, when I say patent troll most people who follow this stuff will think Nathan Myhrvold, not Steve Jobs.

It's same way that calling both a jaywalker and a burglar criminals just because both have committed acts against the law dilutes the word "criminal."

<comment><USER64> So when Apple and Microsoft buy bankrupted company's patents and use them to sue Google, they are not patent trolling? What are they then? Innovating? This is plain patent trolling and make those two companies effective patent trolls no matter how you try to turn the story. Even if they are innovating on other fronts. Just like I can save someone's life one day and kill someone the next day. That doesn't mean I'm not a killer because I'm a humanist on a good day.

<comment><USER65> > So when Apple and Microsoft buy bankrupted company's patents and use them to > sue Google

Has this happened?

<comment><USER64> Not Google but OEM yes.

<comment><USER65> They're already suing manufacturers with patents they acquired two weeks ago?

<comment><USER64> They acquired Novel and others long before Nortel.

<comment><USER65> You're doing an admirable tap-dance to preserve your Google partisanship here. Apple may have acquired patents before this but I'm having a hard time finding support for your assertion that they're trolling with those alone. Or even applying them at all as part of their patent litigation, as raganwald has pointed out elsewhere.

Consider these patents cited in Apple's HTC complaint:

[http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/02/the-complaint-apples- patent...](http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/02/the-complaint-apples-patent- lawsuit-against-htc-is-all-about-android/)

Steve Jobs and Scott Forestall are mentioned as inventors in some, and plenty more are attributed to one Bas Ording, who is a UI designer at Apple.

Even if fully half of Apple's patents in this complaint were acquired from an outside source, I have a hard time begrudging them their application of patent law in the protection of a business that makes a real product that required significant investment to create.

<comment><USER64> Who's doing the tap-dance? First I said that this was patent trolling:

> Purchases a patent, often from a bankrupt firm, and then sues another > company by claiming that one of its products infringes on the purchased > patent;

You disagreed, then I demonstrated that it was patent trolling. So, doing you little tap-dance, you're now saying that Apple never did that. Funny huh? As for the patents that Apple is suing HTC over, they are ridiculous just like any software patent as explained by many people (including Bill Gates and Larry Ellison) and others who pioneered modern computer science:

<http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Bradley_Kuhn_on_software_patents>

Regardless, Apple and Microsoft have been attacking other companies by using their patents, some which were bought and that, my friend, is patent trolling.

<comment><USER66> You have still failed to name the bankrupt company, the company sued, and the patent in question.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


NYT on retro apps like C64, Marvin and EISENHOWER.me - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/13/technology/personaltech/apps-that-recall-a-time-before-there-were-apps.html Apps that recall a time before there were apps <comment><AUTHOR> Who knows why there's Quora in it, but I guess people have been asking questions since we left the trees already!</comment>


Ebola hospital statement blaming earlier missed diagnosis on software - <AUTHOR> http://www.texashealth.org/body.cfm?id=1629&action=detail&ref=1871

<comment><AUTHOR> "Protocols were followed by both the physician and the nurses. However, we have identified a flaw in the way the physician and nursing portions of our electronic health records (EHR) interacted in this specific case. In our electronic health records, there are separate physician and nursing workflows."</comment>


DPC++ for Intel Processor Graphics Architecture - <AUTHOR> https://techdecoded.intel.io/resources/dpc-for-intel-processor-graphics-architecture/ <comment><AUTHOR> This seems like a direct stab to NVidia and CUDA.

I couldn't find out how good is this performance-wise, but I discovered that up to 45% of die area in Intel processors is for their embedded GPUs. And they didn't bother to expose it to users until NVidia all but owned the market? Seriously, what kind of paper-pushers work at Intel!!??</comment>


The man who made Edward Snowden inevitable - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/news/christmas-specials/21683975-man-who-made-edward-snowden-inevitable-black-chamber <comment><USER2> God damn, I could just feel the writer stretching to make the parallels work...that last attempt at poetry in the last line, "Then, along came Mr. Snowden". A code breaker who wrote a book to make money during the Great Deprssion is what made Snowden inevitable? And no one of worth came after Yardley to expose the NSA, not James Bamford nor Bill Binney?

If there was anyone who made Snowden inevitable, it was whoever was doing sysops.

<comment><USER3> I'm also confused about whether the connection between the two is more meant to be "both Yardley and Snowden told the public about signals intelligence activities because they thought the government was doing the wrong thing" or "because Yardley was so indirectly successful at making the U.S. government aggressively spy on communications, it was inevitable that people working in that field would some day be disturbed and frightened by the scope of surveillance". (Or both?)

<comment><USER2> Yeah I read through his Wikipedia page...granted, it was before I had coffee, but I didn't see anything where it was said he did it out of conscience. The Wikipedia entry claims he couldn't get a job in U.S. government so he ended up working for the Canadians.

I felt as if the article was trying to make it sound like it's unfair that Yardley is in the NSA hall of heroes while Snowden is in exile. First of all, Yardley was inducted decades after his death; we don't know how things will change with Snowden.

Second, Yardley actually contributed to "the cause"...that is, codebreaking for World War II...in fact, according to the OP, he _led_ it. The problem was when he decided to write a book for it to make some money. And of course, he did it during a time when giving up cryptography secrets was not seen as treasonous (was it still too new?), which is a big factor.

<comment><USER4> Yardley was active during World War I (aka "The Great War" before we had to number them), not World War II — a minor typo I'm sure but relevant for the comprehension of the comments by a cursory reader.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Smartphone Apps Are Filled With Trackers - <AUTHOR> https://onezero.medium.com/the-app-privacy-crisis-apple-and-google-need-to-fix-now-4e3590f2fc52?sk=12d73f8b09e058d3ab8f5a4b02cf8619 <comment><USER2> As an app developer, what worries me if the third party tools we use do unintended tracking. For example, we use Firebase for tracking crashes and knowing which versions of our apps are being used. We've also recently started using them for push notification handling for Android streamlining reasons. In one of the apps I've worked on we need location permissions to do geofencing but it's all local, on device stuff. On the same app we've also recently added support for adding/removing calendar events. Again, it's feature we added that's local-only and theres's no data transmission associated with that feature. The only tracking we do is our own home-grown solution that we don't share externally.

With all that in mind, I'm curious how much of that data does Firebase, aka Google, share with all the rest of its services. Does enabling location tracking suddenly causes Firebase to report location data without our knowledge? Does enabling calendar access suddenly cause Firebase to read the calendar data on its own and report that, too? I'm not at all accusing Firebase of doing anything without knowledge and maybe it may be a "good citizen" with regards to how it manages and accesses (or doesn't, even if it can) private data but I'm confident that that's not the case with every third party tracker.

<comment><USER3> > Does enabling location tracking suddenly causes Firebase to report location > data without our knowledge?

> Does enabling calendar access suddenly cause Firebase to read the calendar > data on its own and report that, too?

These are good questions to be thinking about. As for Firebase specifically, I have never seen it automatically collect additional data based on user-granted permissions (at least in iOS apps).

However, there may be a few other SDKs with this sort of issue. It is important for app developers to be careful of this.

For example, when working on similar location tracking research (see: [https://guardianapp.com/research/ios-app-location-report- sep...](https://guardianapp.com/research/ios-app-location-report-sep2018/)), I noticed that quite a few prominent apps use an SDK from "Braze" ([https://www.braze.com/](https://www.braze.com/)), and if location permission was granted to the "host" app, the SDK automatically sends back the user's GPS coordinates when communicating with the Braze API. I remember at least one such app developer had no idea Braze was doing that and rushed a fix out soonafter to make it stop sending the GPS information to Braze.

I hope we see more pressure on analytics companies to offer more open source SDKs instead of compiled binaries and headers. This sort of issue would be easier to spot and deal with, instead of being unsure what exactly the SDK was doing.

<comment><USER4> A hundred times this. One big red flag is if you have a 'free' stack which does something useful for you. It is important to ask if it does something 'useful' for the stack developer who gave it to you to use. Perhaps the most canonical example of this was Facebook giving away "free" internet to under served groups in India. At what point will we have an organization giving away 'free phones' to people as a way of developing demographic data?

On the plus side I think more and more developers and users are becoming aware of the dangers and the actual cost to their privacy and/or brand that these 'free' things expose and so it will perhaps get better.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> When someone asks me about what is the most important challenge of this century, I reply: PRIVACY. The way it goes right now shows us very clear sign there will be no privacy anymore. Anything you say or watch is preserved and can be used one day against you. My apologies to all future politicians. It is serious. Porn habits? No problem. Drunk jokes? Will reflect. The way to solve this conundrum is a change of social norms, but it's a long way.

<comment><USER6> Privacy is very important but its just a drop in the ocean compared to environmental disaster. Google tracking you browse the internet seems unimportant compared extinction.

<comment><USER7> Advertising is fueling that extinction; why else would we consume so much, in such a wasteful way?

<comment><USER8> This is where these two issues beautifully tie together: Saving the environment is important - consuming less is a way to do say - with less paying consumers, adds become less valuable - less incentive to violate privacy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> One of these days, I took some time to analyze network traffic going out of my phone. I wanted to know what was happening behind. I learned that some apps that I wouldn't think of, such as banking, ISP and credit card, were tracking me and sending information to advertising companies!

I got angry at some things. For instance, ISP app should provide me information about data consumption and means to buy more. However, it decided to do more things behind the scenes, in addition to doing the tasks it was supposed to in a overly complicated manner—requests travelled back and forth over multiple servers over multiple companies before it did anything.

After this exercise, I realized how great it would be if these companies had to provide a clean and well documented API. Users could implement their own apps, liberating themselves from having to trust their private data and resources to companies that would care less if, if allowed.

<comment><USER10> > _After this exercise, I realized how great it would be if these companies > had to provide a clean and well documented API. Users could implement their > own apps, liberating themselves from having to trust their private data and > resources to companies that would care less if, if allowed._

That's why we don't have those APIs. It's not in the interest of any company to make itself more interoperable. This would allow users to develop ways at getting directly what they want and paying the sticker price, without being exposed to all kinds of garbage. Problem is, this very garbage is an important, and sometimes primary way companies make money.

Put another way: most companies aren't your friends, they're here to abuse you. Hold on tightly to the rare ones that are friendly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> And I for one am tired of it!

How much would it cost me to have a phone with all trackers turned off? (Or, perhaps, routed through a core application that requires whitelisting?)

<comment><USER12> Are you on Android? Use Firefox with NoScript or uMatrix (also as your default webview) and setup AdGuard DNS [0] or a pi-hole. You could consider using a VPN like Orbot (free Tor-as-a-proxy) [1], PerfectPrivacyVPN (supports multiple exit IPs, multiple-hops, and server side firewall) or set one up using Algo/Streisand [2].

If you do not want to root your device:

1\. Install NetGuard or No Root Firewall to view what's going on from network perspective.

2\. Install ExodusPrivacy to generate a report on apps wrt sdks in use by them.

\---

If you are okay to root the device:

1\. Install XposedMod, and then XPrivacyLua module, and work through the options.

\---

If you're okay with flashing a ROM:

1\. Consider LineageOS + microG

2\. If you are using Pixel, consider ChromeheadOS (edit: CopperheadOS) [3].

\---

If you're okay with a new device:

1\. Consider purchasing puri.sm Librem 5.

\---

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18788410](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18788410)

[1] [https://guardianproject.info/apps/orbot/](https://guardianproject.info/apps/orbot/)

[2] [https://github.com/trailofbits/algo](https://github.com/trailofbits/algo)

[3] [https://copperhead.co/android/](https://copperhead.co/android/)

<comment><USER13> For anyone considering the above, this is a failing battle. The only way to stop this sort of tracking is if we have a cultural shift, start putting laws in place, and actually enforce them.

For example, did you know that many shopping malls track you with license plate readers? Did you know that your credit card transactions are up for sale? Or that your cell phone provider will give up your location to a third party with a flimsy consent?

<comment><USER12> You are absolutely right that we need laws and regulations to govern all the tracking that's going on, much like how call-tapping is illegal.

Bruce Schneier has written a book on the topic, and you can view him speak on it here: [https://youtube.com/watch?v=GkJCI3_jbtg](https://youtube.com/watch?v=GkJCI3_jbtg) Highly recommend it.

I'm no expert but I do not agree with the 'failing battle' part... still quite a way to go in that regard, I think, specifically because the Math behind crypto hasn't failed us yet (ocassionally, the implementation has) and because the government agencies themselves need tech that helps them stay underground (Tor, for instance, continues to get funding from the US Government).

Is it getting difficult? Yes, absolutely. People still hold the 'nothing to hide' stance and most are okay giving up privacy esp if it means their life becomes a little more secure and things get more convenient (most would support AI powered street surveillance that helps keep tabs on criminals, for instance).

<comment><USER14> In the end unfortunately none of the ad/tracker blocking solutions are solid; All an app developer has to do is use an IP address to fetch ads (avoiding dns resolution and thus dns based blocking won't work.)

Or, fetching the ads from the same hostname as also used by the app itself to provide whichever service the app provides, which means that hostname can't be blocked even by a firewall because the app itself will stop working.

So i agree, the only proper solution is laws to stop the privacy abuse.

<comment><USER15> The laws won't work.

The internet isn't a "US" thing. It's not a "EU" thing. It's not even a "China" thing (GFoC aside).

The internet's a worldwide thing. And that means, sure your puny law may say you can't do X (ad tracking). Ok. I'll just make a shell company in shithole country, pay some protection money, and run tracking or whatever. And that data I generate will be sold to anyone who wants to buy. I'll make it so _everybody_ has to buy to compete - even if against the law.

And it too is a failing battle in the US. Experian, Equifax, and Transunion... If what happened regarding Equifax didn't bring the corporate death penalty either by fines or dissolution of their corporate charter, nothing will.

<comment> your-nanny Actually, in that case the centrality or Monopoly of the Apple store and the Google play store makes regulation easier. Censure Apple or Google for the apps sold in their marketplaces that violate the law and they will be taken down.

<comment><USER15> I'm not seeing that case for:

         1. spying apps
         2. the saudi arabian woman-tracking/permission app
         3. chinese social credit app

In the end, it makes them a pile of money, allows them to function in that country and access to that market, and nobody with power cares.

<comment> your-nanny I'm not sure I see the objection? Are you saying that the US government doesn't have sufficient carrots and sticks to get app stores like the Apple Store or Google Play to remove apps from US markets that violate US law?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I have raised the issue of trackers in analytics SDKs on developer forums and the result has invariably been negative towards me.

When speaking to friends and coworkers about these issues, the result is mostly people calling me paranoid.

Developers mostly don't care as long as they get money.

Users mostly don't care as long as they get cheap apps.

As a developer who does not use third party SDKs that track users (other than the OS) because I value my user's privacy and realize that many of my users are in places where data is expensive and scarce, I sometimes feel like I an engaging in a futile and unwanted effort.

</comment><comment><USER17> There's a lot of scaremongering in here. I fully support giving users full privacy controls. However, both Android and iOS allow you to toggle off availability of your Advertising ID. That's been in there for years. Turn it off and apps can't grab it (they get 000000000). Each vendor gets a vendor- specific ID on iOS, shared between that vendor's apps. Delete all vendor apps and it resets.

I'm not saying this is an ideal situation by any means. However, it's just two small examples that are ignored by this article.

<comment><USER18> There's much more to tracking than your phone's tracking/Advertising ID. A modern smartphone app can identify you and commit pervasive tracking whether or not this ID is set. Disallowing permissions partially solves this problem, except that an app can get quite far just by setting its own UUIDs and sharing them with other vendors.

Further, an Android phone with no 3rd party apps is already sending an enormous amount of tracking data to Google, where it can be purchased by 3rd parties. None of this requires an Advertising ID.

<comment><USER19> Can you point me to where I can by this data Google is collecting? I'd like to see what data is available.

<comment><USER18> Here's a good resource:

[https://digitalcontentnext.org/wp- content/uploads/2018/08/DC...](https://digitalcontentnext.org/wp- content/uploads/2018/08/DCN-Google-Data-Collection-Paper.pdf)

If you read through here, you'll get a sense for the various different IDs and tracking methods that Google is using. It's more than just the Advertising ID.

You'll also get a sense for the collection Google does about your environment. (nearby wifi, GPS position, etc.) And more troublingly, the fact that these services still collect data even when the user sets them to "off." A couple excerpts:

\-----

"It's hard for an Android mobile user to "opt out" of location tracking. For example, on an Android device, even if a user turns off the Wi-Fi, the device's location is still tracked via its Wi-Fi signal. To prevent such tracking,Wi-Fi scanning must be explicitly disabled in a separate user action, as shown in Figure 4."

"Google can ascertain with a high degree of confidence whether a user is still, walking, running, bicycling, or riding on a train or a car. It achieves this by tracking an Android mobile user's location coordinates at frequent time intervals in combination with the data from onboard sensors (such as an accelerometer)on mobile phones.Figure 5 shows an example of such data communicated with the Google servers while the user was walking."

"Google records the time and GPS coordinates for every photo taken."

\-----

Anyhow, the fact is that much of this data is collected whether the user is accessing the phone, or not.

It's a bit complicated, and disabling the Advertising ID may limit some tracking in a few cases, but despite this extraordinarily prolific tracking is still occurring. There's a lot more detail in the document and frankly, it feels a lot like Facebook's privacy invasion in that:

\- It's possible to mitigate some of the tracking, although this is intentionally made unintuitive the user.

\- Conversely, the user will never be able to prevent a large portion of the tracking, and will have no intuitive sense of what is being collected by google at any different time, and;

\- The default values and the data tracked will change over time, and the user will have to try to stay educated with every update about what has changed.

[edit]

Another decent resource:

[https://www.apnews.com/828aefab64d4411bac257a07c1af0ecb](https://www.apnews.com/828aefab64d4411bac257a07c1af0ecb)

"An AP investigation found that Google saves your location history even if you've paused "Location History" on mobile devices. This map shows where Princeton privacy researcher Gunes Acar travelled over several days, from data saved to his Google account despite "Location History" being off."

<comment><USER19> my question is not "what data does Google collect". My question is "what data can I buy from Google" as op said that data is for sale

<comment><USER18> Sorry -- I missed the point of your question. I don't think individuals can just buy the data the same way a bounty hunter can simply buy cell tower tracker information on an individual basis.

I'm not very informed here, but I suspect those purchase arrangements are made by very large companies, and that by the time small companies or individuals are purchasing data it's been resold and transformed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Is there a way to check what trackers/libraries/"kits" an iOS app uses? I don't use many apps on my iPhone and most of them don't have background & location rights so I'm not that worried but would still like to know what they send back...

<comment><USER21> Exodus can detect a number of them: [https://exodus- privacy.eu.org/en/](https://exodus-privacy.eu.org/en/)

By installing their app, you can see the trackers for each app that you have installed. If you use Yalp store (an open source front-end for the Play Store), there is also a button to view trackers for each app.

Edit: just saw that you're on iOS. This is probably not allowed by Apple, so I guess there will be no alternative.

<comment><USER3> Working on this. It is very tricky to do for iOS in an App Store compliant manner, but doable. Apple has already approved it.

<comment><USER22> > Working on this. It is very tricky to do for iOS in an App Store compliant > manner, but doable. Apple has already approved it.

This is very welcome news, please do a "Show HN" or post a link to the announcement when it's ready.

For now, before I install an iOS app I run the Exodus Privacy tool on the Android version and must assume the same trackers are present on both platforms. What is worse, Apple fail to label which apps contain ads in the store so I can't even tell which ones are adware before installing (apps with ads are clearly disclosed in Google Play).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm moving towards simply having more devices, partitioning their uses. A decent tablet is a mere $50 (eg flo) and a good phone is a mere $100 (eg herolte).

It's easy enough to have eg two phones - a main one with FDroid only, and a secondary off-most-of-the-time one with YALP store convenience apps. Tablets you can diversify even harder because you don't have to carry them in your pocket.

<comment><USER24> So what? They can still track you across devices. Especially if they use some 3rd party ad SDK, which might use the Google advertising ID, or some other identifiers.

<comment><USER23> Modern tracking is fundamentally a product of executing hostile code on your own device. The idea is to _never_ put apps that have built in or will otherwise facilitate surveillance on the more secure devices. This includes a javascript browser, due to its unwieldy attack surface.

Separate devices draw a line in the sand, rather than just accepting amorphous insecurity as inevitable. And then you can work on slowly moving your usage patterns away from the surveillance-foregone devices.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Since it's not yet mentionned, here's an alternative:

 _> The Librem 5 represents the opportunity for you to take back control and protect your private information, your digital life through free and open source software, open governance, and transparency_

 _> As a social purpose company, Purism believes building the Librem 5 is just one step on the road to launching a digital rights movement, where we—the people—stand up for our digital rights, where you place the control of your data and your family's data back where it belongs: in your own hands. Let's declare, "We will no longer allow unfettered access to our photos, videos, email, text messages and application and usage data without our permission."_

[https://puri.sm/products/librem-5/](https://puri.sm/products/librem-5/)

</comment><comment><USER26> on ios, if you have a pihole set up, you can use dnscloak[1] to block advertising and tracking servers. (alternatively you can use one of the servers listed in the app by default if you care to trust someone else's dns server.)

you can set it to 'connect on demand', ie always on mode, at the cost of a bit of battery (not enough for me to be bothered). it acts as a vpn but only for your dns queries. afaik this is the best single step privacy option on ios at the moment.

[1] [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/dnscloak-secure-dns- client/i...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/dnscloak-secure-dns- client/id1452162351?mt=8)

<comment><USER27> pihole? you have got to be kidding. i'd trust basically anything else than a dns box.

<comment><USER28> Why?

<comment><USER27> All of your traffic, every single DNS query going thru a single unverified codebase off of github? i mean i know regular folk are quite naive with tech. but i hoped us tech people are less so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> > Most people use the Google Chrome browser anyway

Nope. Safari is by far the most popular browser on iOS.

</comment><comment><USER30> I know Algo vpn[1] can be configured to block ads with a DNS resolver, but does anyone know it also block trackers?

On desktop I use extensions to limit tracking, but it's harder on iOS.

[1] [https://github.com/trailofbits/algo](https://github.com/trailofbits/algo)

</comment><comment><USER31> You are Right, but XML should also Not be used, and what to consider as Configuration? Maven: Pom.xml as well? JSON is neat, like to use it. Write your own parser to fix Tage issues you see. But in the end: what Format do you propose for config files?

</comment><comment><USER32> Smartphone baseband blobs are also something we know nothing (or very little) about.

</comment><comment><USER33> And yet IM the crazy one for still using a flip phone!

<comment><USER34> Do you also not use a "rewards membership" card at grocery stores where you get charged extra to not be tracked?

<comment><USER35> Correct. I opt out of membership savings and credit card rewards by using cash and not using membership cards or giving out phone numbers.

(not the grandparent, but that user is not alone)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> That's one of the reasons I use AdGuard on my android phone. No problems with ads and trackers anymore.

</comment><comment><USER37> May be that's why politicians use Nokia 3300

</comment><comment><USER38> hey everybody. buy stuff. with money.

</comment><comment><USER39> Ok...let me try.

"Physical retail stores and loyalty programs have trackers you know nothing about."

Am I doing this right?

I feel like a deeper point needs to be made to justify these headlines. The conversation needs to evolve and get more nuanced.

<comment><USER40> Walmart greeters have built-in facial recognition abilities. I didn't believe this until one started greeting me by name after a few interactions.

<comment><USER41> That's one way to get rid of your introvert customers

<comment><USER42> Holy crap yes! The number of coffee shops, etc I have stopped going to because the person behind the counter suddenly acted as if we were old friends...</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Creepy Line: a documentary about Google, Facebook and user manipulation - <AUTHOR> https://www.thecreepyline.com/ <comment><USER3> I think that a lot of Google and Facebook's creepyness would go away if they'd just voluntarily respect the Do Not Track header.

There's no techical reason why don't, just business ethics.

That header is someone explicitly telling Google "I don't want you to do this" _before_ collection happens and Google's response is "we don't give a shit what you want" and doing it anyway.

The current model where you have to register with Google or Facebook and then hunt down all the options to clear data just doesn't cut it because they're still using that data. They just clearing it after use or hiding that collection or use from you.

Facebook and Google could be looking at BATs as a way forward for targeted advertising without user tracking but they're not in the "not creepy" business.

<comment><USER4> Microsoft turning DNT on for all Windows users automatically pretty much killed the movement's momentum. While privacy as the default has strong arguments going for it, as a practical matter since DNT was supposed to be an intentional signal Microsoft's mass-flagging effectively drowned the signal in noise. And those who didn't know better lauded them for it, too.

<comment><USER3> Even if Microsoft turned DNT on by default Google/Facebook should still respect it.

They could ask users to turn it off in the same way they bug people to install their software.

Alternatively they could work on business models that don't rely on collecting massive amounts of personal data about people who don't want them to do that. E.g. Basic Attention Tokens and others.

<comment><USER4> Sure, you could wish for that, but if we could have everything you wished for we probably wouldn't need DNT in the first place.

Since DNT was specifically raised, bringing up how Microsoft's hug of death killed it seemed pertinent.

<comment><USER3> That still sounds like we have a problem with Google/Facebook and not with Microsoft turning it on by default.

The default behaviour for Google/Facebook should be not to track people that aren't logged in to their services.

That should go double for people who are not just neutral but explicitly telling them "really, don't track me" in a header.

There is no justification of "we're just improving services" for people who are telling you "I don't want to use your service and I don't want to help you improve your services."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I watched half of it... but began noticing the frequent references to how only 'conservative' views are suppressed. And then there were a bunch of Tucker Carlson snippets and then realized something wasn't (no pun intended) 'right'. Looks like M.A. Taylor, from his IMDB page is hyper conservative anti- obama/clinton political hack. Sure, some of what the film talks about - <USER2> google and facebook - can nudge peoples opinions and view of the world is true.. But it is creepy that he has snippets in there projecting them as liberal anti-conservatives hipster organizations. Come on - 2016 would've turned out very different if facebook was really suppressing conservative content at the scale this film is talking about.

<comment><USER6> > But it is creepy that he has snippets in there projecting them as liberal > anti-conservatives hipster organizations.

I don't think that means the characterization is false, though. My friends working at Facebook and Google are very liberal and internal polling and their message boards have shown that to be overwhelmingly true for the wider organization as well.

> Come on - 2016 would've turned out very different if facebook was really > suppressing conservative content at the scale this film is talking about.

It's possible that it happened and simply backfired. Conservatives aren't blind and turned out in greater numbers due to personal anecdata that they and the current events they were interested in were being squelched and misrepresented across social media. I personally recall Facebook's news sidebar feature had a clear pro-Democrat bias in the editorialized titles they wrote and presented above stories throughout 2016 (before they took it down).

<comment><USER7> > _It 's possible that it happened and simply backfired._

This is exactly what happened, from what I can tell, with the one caveat that most of the bias likely came from the human staff they hired to editorialize and moderate. The attempt was noticed, and it backfired spectacularly. If you look at Facebook today, I think it's clear that they mostly don't do this anymore. Facebook's users naturally spend more time and effort sharing and interacting with conservative content than progressive content; thus, the top stories on Facebook are usually from large conservative media (esp. The Daily Wire).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I looked at the "Google" page ([https://www.thecreepyline.com/programs/google-v2](https://www.thecreepyline.com/programs/google-v2)) and noticed it doesn't mention a few kind of important things.

(1) You can pause activity collection at [https://myaccount.google.com/activitycontrols](https://myaccount.google.com/activitycontrols)

(2) You can delete activity here [https://myactivity.google.com/delete- activity](https://myactivity.google.com/delete-activity)

Also, does anyone know if Facebook offers interfaces like these?

<comment><USER9> Would this unlearn the Google's ML models from my data?

<comment><USER10> Would you ask somebody who had you in an A/B test to destroy the feature?

<comment><USER9> Surely A/B does not require PII? In FB case-if the model's purpose is to identify individuals then yes, it should be undone as requested.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I see a different and worst thing: actually big of IT think to be they are powerful enough to take over banking system and governments itself.

We all depend more and more on hw and sw build by more and more fewer subjects bigger and bigger to a point of being become "platforms of the world".

See only casual outbreaks "Whatsapp down", the polemica between a Brazilian judge and Facebook that lead to a temporary ban of WA and the consequent citizen reaction. See only what you can do without connectivity or without few big's clouds.

That's far more serious of mere "steering with aggregators" or mass profiling.

</comment><comment><USER12> If the author of the site is reading this, I was unable to scroll down on Firefox/Android.

<comment><USER13> Not working in Chrome/Android either

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> _The Creepy Line is written and directed by the filmmakers behind conservative documentary Clinton Cash. It takes its title from Google executive Eric Schmidt, who said in 2010 that Google's job was to "get right up to the creepy line and not cross it." Schmidt has gotten no end of flack for that quote, and it's easy to point out that Google is, in fact, often very creepy. But The Creepy Line makes a more specific, partisan argument. It claims that Google (and Facebook, which the film refers to almost interchangeably) deliberately manipulates its service to suppress conservative users and ideas, and — more ambitiously — that Google tweaked its search algorithm to swing the 2016 election in Hillary Clinton's favor._

[https://www.theverge.com/2018/9/19/17878332/creepy-line- anti...](https://www.theverge.com/2018/9/19/17878332/creepy-line-anti-google- facebook-conservative-censorship-documentary-review-right-wing)

</comment><comment><USER15> It is good that Amazon funded this documentary.

<comment><USER16> Yeah, this is actually quite funny. You can also watch it on iTunes. Are Amazon and Apple exceptions with respect to selling your information? (I'm genuinely asking)

<comment><USER17> Apple's whole stance is to protect your data. They don't sell it.

 _Don't know about Amazon but I think they use it for their own services only as they're not advertising company._ \---- EDIT: Brain fart, ignore

<comment><USER18> Amazon made $2 billion last quarter in advertisements. This is easily searchable, but here's the first result I found: [https://marketingland.com/analysts-say-amazons- advertising-b...](https://marketingland.com/analysts-say-amazons-advertising- business-will-surpass-aws-by-2021-245983)

As a comparison, Twitter made $758M in revenue last quarter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> How does the site know what sites you are logged into? Is there some sort of guesswork involved?

<comment><USER20> There is some javascript that is connecting to around 40 different websites. If you are logged into any of these sites already then they don't return a login prompt so the site knows that you are logged in.

<comment><USER21> That's not entirely accurate. Some trickery is involved...

Javascript in one site can't just access another website's content. That's the Same Origin Policy. But what you can do is dynamically link to an image on another website. You can't access its content, but you can know if it loaded correctly. So if you find some image that is only accessible to a logged-in user (non logged-in gets a redirect for example) you can determine logged in status.

Another technique uses time measurements and non-image resources. Loading them as an image will fail anyway, but if there is a substantial time difference in the error response for logged-in vs not, it can be done that way too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Obviously the true value of these companies is in the data they'll never show you, and there will be no documentary about.

While I might not learn much, the documentary format is really good for older people to get a grasp on what FAANG might be doing.

</comment><comment><USER23> I've trouble trusting the content when the website is so badly technically made.

</comment><comment><USER24> if the author of the site is reading this, please remove the scrolljacking.

</comment><comment><USER25> Couldn't watch the whole thing, was so naff, with grating 'tension' music, simply ghastly! At times I actually thought it was a spoof.

</comment><comment><USER26> Did anyone who upvoted this actually watch the documentary or the trailer, or do HNers just automatically upvote anything that's anti-Facebook and Google these days?

The documentary is mostly right-wing conspiracy theories about how liberal tech companies are trying to undermine democracy and favor Hillary Clinton. Watch the trailer if you don't believe me. Or read this: [https://www.theverge.com/2018/9/19/17878332/creepy-line- anti...](https://www.theverge.com/2018/9/19/17878332/creepy-line-anti-google- facebook-conservative-censorship-documentary-review-right-wing)

<comment><USER27> That's a fair question. I've got a follow-up for you: do people actually watch other people express diverse opinions or are they happy with just impeaching the source, slandering the messenger, and moving on? It seems everywhere I go online I get other people telling me how I should or shouldn't consume media content based on the producer's political opinions.

I both upvoted the video link and your comment. I like people with different opinions and worldviews.

Now I'll go watch the video.

<comment><USER28> The verge article is detailed and pretty convincing that I don't need to bother with this video. This isn't impeaching the source because of their political opinions, it's impeaching the content because of its political opinions.

> Taylor and the film's writer Peter Schweizer say that they're aware of > issues affecting non-conservatives and simply wanted to focus on a single > thread of the conversation. But that focus completely changes the argument. > If conservatives are disproportionately suffering on Google and Facebook, an > incident like Peterson getting locked out of Gmail looks like political > warfare. If people across the social and political spectra are getting > accounts suspended, YouTube videos demonetized, or stories de-ranked, it > looks like bad service from a platform with a legitimately disconcerting > amount of power.

> This distinction is probably obvious to many people. But The Creepy Line > suggests that any seeming technical glitch or bad decision is a coordinated > step in the master plan of Silicon Valley's digital "kingmakers," even when > that's far from the most obvious conclusion. It does things like insinuate > that Google's lack of a customer support hotline is inexplicable and > suspicious, or claim that "very few people in the world have ever seen" an > error page for google.com, so spotting one indicates that Google has cut off > search access to punish a user for criticizing it. __It glosses over the > fact that these kingmakers didn't even get their favored candidate into the > White House, although Taylor argues that Google only put "roughly 10 percent > effort" into its manipulation efforts because it was confident Clinton was > already winning. "That won't happen again," he says. __

edit: If this actually is funded by Amazon as someone speculated elsewhere in this thread, it 's probably going to backfire spectacularly if this catches on.

<comment><USER27> I honestly think you're missing the forest for the trees.

It doesn't matter the actual reason massive, subtle opinion changes occur. Maybe it's the Russians. Maybe it's a liberal cabal. Maybe, as I suspect, most of SV doesn't know what the hell they're doing and are just faking it the best they can while they make bank. There is some effect occurring. Most reasonable commentators agree on that.

Once that's settled, then there are a bunch of follow-on questions: how large is it? How do we measure it? And so forth.

This video, assuming the worst slander you have is true, is an example of an answer to the following question: how are the existing political power structures perceiving this new effect?

That, in my mind, is as interesting as any of the rest of it. More so, actually, since the perception of damage is a much bigger thing in most cases than the damage itself.

This is going to get political, and in a hurry. I don't care which bunch of political assholes are carrying the flag towards fixing it, but I want to know how they perceive the problems involved and what they might do to fix things if given the chance. This is too important to choose up teams and play the usual stupid partisan games.

<comment><USER28> Sorry, I don't buy it. If you (or the authors of this piece) want to have a conversation about data harvesting, do that. Subtly entwining that with conservative conspiracy theories isn't just an innocuous side thread of the conversation. This is clearly an attempt to hijack the conversation about data harvesting to amplify their totally unrelated message about supposed suppression of conservative speech.

This is a case of 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend' going horribly wrong.

<comment><USER27> I'll try again. And that's it.

You are concerned that this piece is wrong/misleading.

Ok. Great. Another person wrong on the internet.

Now, from a meta level, can you accept that the public discussion about data harvesting, like everything else is going to be politicized? And would you rather understand and engage people of all political persuasions by following their arguments, or are you happy just being in teams?

I like understanding both sides, seeing where they are going. That way I can have reasonable conversations with them.

Innocuous has nothing to do with anything. In fact, I'd argue that it's not innocuous. It's important. That's why we need to understand it.

You realize, of course, that both sides look equally nutty to the other, right? I'm watching it rain and friends of both political parties spin up the most fantastical explanations for why it's raining. I find that fascinating. I also need to talk to them about coming the hell in out of the rain, so I choose to understand first, then be understood.

Nobody's trying to soft-pedal anything. There's no whitewashing here. The perception is the reality. That's the way humans work. The causal, pseudo- scientific part of things? Different conversation entirely. Stop mixing them up.

<comment><USER4> Listening to different political viewpoints can be good. I make sure to do so myself on many occasions.

However, the criticisms regarding this film raised in other comments and linked articles appear to be valid. It concerns me that you have repeatedly dismissed these objections as "slander", even before watching the film according to your own words.

You don't have to agree with someone's politics to work together on common ground, of course. And a film with a message may be worth watching even or especially if it challenges your views. But the film's agenda cannot be concealed.

The Verge article, for example, made no bones about its political views but also raised factual concerns about the film. It is also a fact, as others have pointed out, that the writer and director of this film, M.A. Taylor, also worked on political films such as _Hype: The Obama Effect_ (which detailed "various questions about Barack Obama's past") and co-directed _Clinton Cash_ along with former Brietbart chairman Steve Bannon: [https://www.imdb.com/name/nm3379741/](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm3379741/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> The points-to-comments ratio of this post is massively out of whack with everything else currently on the HN frontpage. Also anyone posting criticism is instantly being heavily downvoted.

Something fishy is going on here.

</comment><comment><USER30> The website knows more about me than I do! I can't remember the last time I logged in to Disqus or Blogger but apparently I'm logged in.

An app that notifies you the services you're currently logged in to, and helping you log out immediately, would be a good idea.

<comment><USER31> Containers on Firefox do this type of isolation without making you play login whackamole. Each website you define gets its own little sandbox with no access to other sandboxed cookies, unless you permit it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This documentary makes the extraordinary claim that Google developed Chrome in order to spy on users' browsing behaviour, which is more uncharitable than necessary. I don't trust Google all that much, and I don't think you should either, but that doesn't mean that everything they do is pure cynical exploitation. Defeating these anti-features and misadventures doesn't require a moral crusade, it only requires you to decide not to use the product, and to tell them why through the feedback feature (though some things, like mass gathering of location data, involve plenty of third parties who will probably keep selling your data to Google whether or not you use Google's services directly).</comment>


Polymaps - A JavaScript library for image- and vector-tiled maps using SVG. - <AUTHOR> http://polymaps.org/

<comment><USER2> _Love_ the smooth zooming. That's always bugged me with online maps. And it zooms so _quickly_ , even when encountering new info on a relatively slow connection.

Color me very impressed. Though I am with devonrt on this: other projections?

</comment><comment><USER3> Looks kind of neat, but I always thought it was a shame that spherical mercator has become the standard projection for web maps; it's kind of ugly.

</comment><comment><USER4> <http://mapbox.com/> has some simular maps

</comment><comment><USER5> Doesn't work in Firefox 3.0.x

<comment><USER6> All of the examples I tried worked wonderfully in 3.6.8.</comment></comment>


Half Life: Alyx announced – 'Alyx' is a weird way to spell '3' - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2W0N3uKXmo <comment><USER2> I dont even care anymore, maybe this is a fringe opinion but HL2 on its own is an okay game but its such a departure from the feel of the first that it might as well not even matter if its 3 or not. Its got nothing much to do immediately with black messa anyway. Unless this game connects it since its before HL2</comment>


Ant engineering captured in slow motion detail - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22604193

<comment><USER2> The original paper (and movies!) are available at <http://crablab.gatech.edu/pages/publications/index.htm></comment>