Hubble Reveals Latest Portrait of Saturn - <AUTHOR> https://www.spacetelescope.org/news/heic1917/ <comment><USER2> This summer I gazed at Saturn through an inexpensive telescope my dad found at an antique store. The image was tiny, and rather black-and-white, but the rings were sharp and unmistakable. Despite the lack of resolution, it was one of the most magical things I've seen. Seeing Jupiter and its moons was pretty great too.

<comment><USER3> Such a cool feeling isn't it? Never forget the first time I saw those rings in person through a cheap telescope. It somehow places you in the same universe you've only read about till then.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> In case it whet your appetite for more tastefully shot imagery of heavenly bodies:

[https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/images/index.html](https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/images/index.html)

<comment><USER4> This backlit view from Cassini is one of the most amazing. It's not a view one can see from Earth. [https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/resources/13315/in-saturns- shad...](https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/resources/13315/in-saturns-shadow-color- exaggerated-view/) (Note: colors are enhanced a bit)

<comment><USER3> Took me a minute to figure out the shadow at Saturn's equator, but it looks like the rings basically illuminate the entire planet and the shadow is just where the dust from the ring blocks the reflected light from the sun.

Read an article about how Titan would possibly be a better location for humans to land first, and one of the benefits listed was that you could see Saturn's rings up close. Amen. :)

<comment><USER4> The back rings are also in sharp shadow that happens to mostly match the shape of the planet from that angle.

Re: _Titan would possibly be a better location for humans to land first, and one of the benefits listed was that you could see Saturn 's rings up close_

Titan's hazy atmosphere may make viewing Saturn itself tricky. It's debated how much it's "fogged out" and how often there are partial clearings in the haze. But at least the atmosphere can protect one from Saturn's radiation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The number of years of service and usefulness of Hubble is truly astonishing. I even remember news, almost joking about its initial mirror flaw which inflicted ironically an almost blindness, so much so people thought it would be fatal. NASA & Hubble seem to have had the last laugh on this one. Long live Hubble!

<comment><USER4> But the repair costs were astronomical (pun semi-intended). However, the experience helped with future maintenance missions. Part of the reason for the flaw was paranoia about leaking tech to other countries that could result in spy scopes, which made testing tricky.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Original image: [https://hubblesite.org/image/4565/gallery](https://hubblesite.org/image/4565/gallery)

It has smaller resolution compared to older Saturn images.

<comment><USER7> Thanks, much better. The posted article is insanely slow and clogged by ads (over 600 http requests)

<comment><USER8> Additionally, the posted article is a watered down version of this one; the journalist just rewrote paragraph by paragraph but in less detail.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Mike Massimino's book, _Spaceman_ , includes a captivating account of what it was like to spacewalk on Hubble. He went on two Hubble servicing missions, including the final one when the WFC3 was installed—the camera that captured this new Saturn image.

</comment><comment><USER10> Why can't you see any stars in these pictures or the video they posted? I'd expect to see thousands of stars.

<comment><USER11> The exposure is adjusted for Saturn which is much brighter than the stars.

<comment><USER12> That said, it would be amazing to see HDR images of these stellar bodies.

<comment><USER13> Here's a picture of some of the light even HDR wouldn't likely uncover:

[https://www.esa.int/spaceinimages/Images/2007/07/The_constel...](https://www.esa.int/spaceinimages/Images/2007/07/The_constellation_Orion_and_the_winter_Milky_Way)

EDIT: A larger version of the image, with an equally huge url: [https://m.esa.int/var/esa/storage/images/esa_multimedia/imag...](https://m.esa.int/var/esa/storage/images/esa_multimedia/images/2007/07/the_constellation_orion_and_the_winter_milky_way/9242622-5-eng- GB/The_constellation_Orion_and_the_winter_Milky_Way_article_mob.jpg)

<comment><USER14> HDR and wide-spectrum are extensions along different measurement axes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> You can even see the hexagonal pole from Hubble! Amazing!

Full size image: [https://www.spacetelescope.org/static/archives/images/origin...](https://www.spacetelescope.org/static/archives/images/original/heic1917a.tif)

</comment><comment><USER16> Link to the original video:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8eJM0WlEjTs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8eJM0WlEjTs)

It might save you some time

</comment><comment><USER17> From the image titled _The Moons of Saturn (annotated)_ [1], what relevance do the arrows denoting "North" and "East" have?

I'm genuinely dumbfounded by the concept of cardinal directions in space.

[1] [https://www.spacetelescope.org/images/heic1917b/](https://www.spacetelescope.org/images/heic1917b/)

<comment><USER18> This is from memory, so apologies if vastly wrong.

North is the direction out of the solar system plane in the same direction as Earth's North. East is prograde; tangent to the radial line from the sun, and in the direction of travel about the sun.

Quickly googling I discovered that Saturn is considered to 'Rule the West' in some astrology circles, but alas I think that may not help this discussion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Was trying to figure out why it looked photo-shopped to me. Realized the planet looks cut and pasted on to the rings due to the planets shadow on the rings being just barely visible behind giving it a black outline look. Well I'm assuming its the shadow...

<comment><USER20> Also the nearly precisely head on lighting, that comes from exactly 1 point. The lack of any atmospheric distortion. The perfectly clean background.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Hubble is a fantastic program that gets far too little credit IMO.

<comment><USER22> I'm not sure how much more credit it could get. It is extremely well known inside and outside of technical circles. Its images are often the face of astronomy as a whole - and credited as such.

<comment><USER23> There was a lot of criticism of the cost of the Hubble program in the beginning and then then mirrors failed after it was initally placed in orbit, turning Hubble into a national joke. NASA and Congress seriously considered abandoning Hubble then and a couple more times in the last two decades.

[https://spaceflightnow.com/2015/04/23/fixing-hubbles- blurry-...](https://spaceflightnow.com/2015/04/23/fixing-hubbles-blurry- vision/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Wow. It really looks like created in Blender or similar program!

</comment><comment><USER25> I read a journal claiming saturn would lose its rings over a period of time. Wonder how the solar system would look a few hundred thousand years later..

</comment><comment><USER26> Nice image, but the article is Buzzfeed-tier garbage.

</comment><comment><USER27> The official URL from the ESA (European Space Agency) / Hubble Information Centre newsletter was:

[https://www.spacetelescope.org/news/heic1917/](https://www.spacetelescope.org/news/heic1917/)

</comment><comment><USER28> Exposure is too long, all details lost.</comment>


Surge Conf 2012 Interviews - <AUTHOR> http://foodfightshow.org/2012/09/surge-conf-2012.html

<comment><USER2> nathenharvey is doing an awesome job w/ his on-the-spot conference interviews. I really enjoyed listening to these.

disclaimer: i founded the foodfightshow podcast and co-host the regular bi- weekly episodes with him</comment>


Judge sends two to prison for 7 years for H-1B fraud - <AUTHOR> http://www.computerworld.com/article/3079224/it-careers/judge-sends-two-to-prison-for-7-years-for-h-1b-fraud.html <comment><USER2> I rarely comment but this story makes me happy enough to do so. I'm a former H1-B with an American Masters degree in STEM. I think this conviction will go a long way in making the system fairer.

Here is what happened. H1-Bs must be legally employed all (well most of) the time they are in the USA. To get past that rule, these H1-B shops act as employers and then farm out the employees to other companies. Employers need to pay H1-Bs at least the prevailing wage that is mentioned in their H1-B application. This employer did not. Instead, they reduced wages when the employees were on the bench. That is the violation that they have been convicted for. So this conviction is not that much about H1-B's replacing American workers as much as it is about an unethical employer paying his employees less than the promised wage.

Usually, people who join this kind of shop are people who have not been able to land a direct employer on their own and desperately want to stay in the USA. This judgment will go a long way in correcting the system because now all shops (and there are many!) that run this scam will close down. That, in turn, will decrease the number of people who end up applying for H1-Bs without a real employer. Hopefully, that will improve the perception around genuine H1-B VISA holders.

<comment><USER3> I am in the same boat (bachelors + masters from US universities and on H-1B).

I've been in the US for almost 10 years now since undergrad and have put down roots (friends, acquaintances, credit history, etc). It is very unfair for us to be put into the same bucket as body shop labor from India. I personally know several people who were forced to leave the US because they didn't get chosen in the H-1B lottery.

There needs to be a new visa that caters specifically to those in our situation. USCIS needs to let the consultancy companies and body shops compete among themselves for H-1B and stop screwing law-abiding international students who have devoted 4-6 (or more) years of their lives to living in the US, who suddenly might lose everything they've worked for because of the H-1B lottery.

<comment><USER4> Serious question - I don't in any way intend this to sound inflammatory. If you've been here almost 10 years and have set down roots, why haven't you just applied to be a citizen? It sounds like you want to stay, and frankly, it sounds like it would be good for us to have you. Is there something holding you back beyond just personal preference? (Or are you already in the process but haven't completed it?)

<comment><USER5> > why haven't you just applied to be a citizen?

IIRC, an H-1B can't apply to be a citizen, you have to be a permanent resident to do that, which you can only do from an immigrant visa. The H-1B is a "dual purpose" visa, which is a non-immigrant visa that doesn't require you to leave the country before applying for an immigrant visa, but you still have to qualify for one of the immigrant visa categories and make it through any source-country-specific backlog for that category. (And the vast majority of tech-industry H-1B's are from India, which is also near the top for waiting list length in many of the immigrant categories -- including all but one of the Employment-based categories.)

<comment><USER4> Ah, I see. Thanks for the clarification.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If they made the H1-B system fairer for the immigrant workers, so that they their employability wasn't tied to a sponsorship, it would actually be better for American workers.

How?

Because H1-B employees cannot transfer out easily and live in fear of losing their jobs, because it means packing up and going home. (I can only imagine how much managerial abuse and in the worst case, sexual harassment this situation can lead to.) Employers love this arrangement, because it allows lower wages (the H1B worker isnt going to fight for a higher salary because he knows its dangerous to walk without another sponsor lined up.) and this pseudo indentured servitude arrangement makes for dependable employees.

Now if they took that away those restrictions, salaries would increase and employers would have no incentive to hire an immigrant over a local worker.

<comment><USER7> Not that I'm in favor of the current system, but your argument is flawed.

How?

Loosening restrictions on sponsorships would invariably result in a net increase in the available labor pool, which would put downward pressure on wages for everyone. This is because the program as-is does not restrict people from changing jobs. It just requires a sponsorship. So, what you are really advocating is that people without jobs can remain in-country "off-visa". This is not the purpose of the H1-B program.

So, if you were to allow this, yet still keep the notion of H1-B sponsorship alive, then there would be the source of the net increase of available workers.

Now, you could make arguments about lowering the expense and friction involved for sponsoring companies, which would then increase the appeal of H1-B visa holders and make finding new sponsors easier. That would probably go further in the direction of increased salaries you mentioned, so long as you kept the visa-holder cap constant. But, of course, part of the reason for this cost/friction is to provide companies with incentives to source labor locally before looking to non-U.S. labor markets.

It's a complex problem with no easy solutions.

<comment><USER8> > Loosening restrictions on sponsorships would invariably result in a net > increase in the available labor pool, which would put downward pressure on > wages for everyone.

The labour market doesn't work like that..

<comment><USER9> How so? Isnt this just a typical supply and demand issue?

<comment><USER8> People usually consume a significant part of their income, so they create more demand.

Also, aggregate demand has more to do with central bank policies than the real economy.

Yes, in each particular occupation, an influx of people willing to work for less might lower salaries in that occupation (compare game programing vs CRUD apps; or magazine journalism vs lawyers), but that doesn't exert downward pressure on everyone's wages.

In addition, if it's easy to start up new competing companies, the employers are forced to pass on the savings.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I had a friend at HP - who worked in a group arranging for "tourists" to staff HP projects. It was a "secret" group offsite from HQ and they got lists of major development projects. Then they worked with recruiters worldwide to find staff. They would arrange cars at the airport, long term hotels, and rotated teams in and out of the country to keep the project going. They did this for years and years.

We need some real laws with real enforcement. Right now, there are too many ways to evade the H1B program. My understanding it that most foreign workers aren't using that program - and that other programs were specifically set up with minimal monitoring in order to provide a way to get around the H1B program. So the numbers of foreign workers being reported is a complete fiction.

<comment><USER11> I think if H1-B, and skilled visas in general, was truly about skill level and best fit, fine. However, every situation (like Disney) where visas are used to bring in labor to be trained to replace technical workers who may not necessarily be the HN crowd, but are a vital part of business, should be disallowed. If a company wants to offshore, fine, but it shouldn't use the Visa system to have workers being replaced training their replacements.

<comment><USER10> I don't really know if skill level should be the only consideration. I think that every country has an obligation to consider its citizens. I'm not saying that citizenship should be the only consideration - but I do think that it should be a strong one. Here in the US, I know many technical people who hit mid-forties and couldn't find a job anymore, in spite of having great technical skills. So maybe there should be some obligation to make sure that a country's citizens are doing OK before allowing skill to be the primary consideration? I don't know -- but I do know that something is wrong with the way we're doing it now.

<comment><USER11> I personally hate the H1-B/visa system for anything but skilled graduates being targeted for specific roles. I also hate the loss of the social contract where companies actually invested employees and helped them grow.

IBM, Disney and others are trying for a race to the bottom.

I also know that it is incumbent on people in our field to stay on top of things, continue to learn, etc. But not everywhere has the same access to knowledge (or may not know how to find it) as those of us already naturally curious.

In no form should Visas be granted to bring workers over to be trained by those replacing them. Unless maybe it's something insane like $100k/head going into training programs. But, that's all fantasy on my part.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This abuse of the H-1B program also hurts the many students attending US universities, hoping to gain work experience here post graduation.

Remember that the number of H-1B visas granted every year are capped. Plenty of students from top US universities (and often at the top of their class) cannot accept jobs (or only do so for a very short term under the F-1 OPT program) for which they are the most qualified candidate because they cannot attain the right to work.

<comment><USER12> This might be interesting to some:

The big tech companies in the Bay area may initially hire recent international student graduates on F-1 OPT status and then attempt to apply for their H-1B. If this fails the common approach is to move them to Europe (usually Dublin) to work there for a year. After that time they can return on L-1 (company internal transfer) visas.

Note that these candidates are extremely competitive in terms of performance, don't replace anyone, and are paid the same kind of salaries as any other highly qualified individuals.

<comment><USER13> The don't replace anyone statement doesn't make any sense. Instead of training foreign workers we could be training American workers for these jobs.

<comment><USER12> Are you suggesting that companies should not be able to hire the most qualified individuals who went through the same system as everybody else?

[EDIT (rephrasing): There is no particular training provided. The international students received the same education as US students at US institutions.]

International students generally have to pay for everything out of pocket (they are not eligible for any public/tax-payer based assistance, not even subsidized loans). This in effect often subsidizes the cost of tuition for the domestic students. [EDIT: This is the case in the University of California system where the percentage of out of state and international students admissions increases to deal with budget problems.]

The companies in question here expect individuals to have worked on significant projects, demonstrated ambition and passion outside of their regular coursework. Those who can generally have no problem being hired.

<comment><USER14> Are you seriously saying that foreign students subsidize the education of US citizens? That is one of the most absurd statements I've ever read on HN. US student's educations are paid for by student loans, they fund their own tuitions I can assure you.

Attending university in the US is a privilege and that does not mean you should be guaranteed a job in the United States upon graduation. You seem to have a real sense of entitlement that because you went to school in the US the US owes you a job. Wow.

This idea that the most talented people can only be found from outside the US needs to just die. If the US were so bereft of talent none of these companies that these H1B visa folks want to work for would exist. Ditto for the US universities they attend.

This idea of relocating people to London for year is just gaming the system.

<comment><USER15> <Are you seriously saying that foreign students subsidize the education of US citizens?>

It may be a reference to the fact that many public colleges have tuition breaks for residents.

The other side of that coin is availability. That practice gives those schools a financial incentive to grant full-retail foreign students admission _priority_ over residents. That's certainly the case in California.

<comment><USER12> The University of California system is exactly what I was referring to.

They increasingly admit more out of state and international students to deal with their increasing budget problems and to counteract otherwise necessary larger tuition increases.

I'm not saying this is good or bad. Just stating that this is happening.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The H1B system favors inexperienced grads straight out of school over truly experienced workers bringing unique skills. Grads get 3 years on OPT while the company can navigate the labyrinth H1B application process. A company looking for a critical senior position for which they cannot have a large class of intakes is at a huge disadvantage. With the level of unemployment of recent grads still high, I think we need to seriously rethink how to structure the H1B program to actually be for uniquely skilled, highly paid workers who would otherwise be "irreplaceable".

</comment><comment><USER17> Another 50 convictions like this and the H1-B problem will be over.

If your employer is considering replacing you with an H1-B, give them a copy of this article.

<comment><USER18> It'll just encourage companies to stick with the big body shops that can manage the legal risk.

<comment><USER19> Concentrate the crimes to a few places, then prosecute those places.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> So what is actually being paid on these H1B as salary? Using something like h1bdata.info, you can look into any company's filings. For example, the most recent Uber h1b filing[0] has a rate of pay from 110-140k but only a prevailing wage of 68k. Any insight as to what these employees are getting for base salaries?

>"F. Rate of Pay

1\. Wage Rate (Required) From: $ 115,000.00 To: $ 140,000.00"

>"9\. Prevailing wage $ 67,683.00 "

[0][http://h1bdata.info/lca.php?id=4536234&em=UBER%20TECHNOLOGIE...](http://h1bdata.info/lca.php?id=4536234&em=UBER%20TECHNOLOGIES,%20INC.&job=DATA%20SCIENTIST)

<comment><USER21> "Wage rate" is what they are actually being paid. "Prevailing wage" is the legal minimum to be paid for the visa application to be approved for that specific position. Which just goes to show how much of a joke the prevailing wage requirement is, since this person is being paid twice what the supposed prevailing wage for their position is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> As long as the DHS doesn't find a way to shut all these shops and reform the immigration rules, nothing will ever change.Part of the problem exists with the thousands of universities which gives admits to everyone who applies without even a GRE. These universities are pumping the market with resources these H1B shops rely on. The problem with consulting companies which get thousands of visas which actually replaces some American jobs is a whole different story.

All of this takes a comprehensive immigration reforms which encourages merit based visa assignment than a ridiculous lottery, guess this will takes years to happen, sadly.

</comment><comment><USER23> Indian regime is trying to protect Bania hegemony [http://www.livemint.com/Leisure/3u2QUPuXBEFPaBQXU2R8mJ/When-...](http://www.livemint.com/Leisure/3u2QUPuXBEFPaBQXU2R8mJ/When- will-the-BrahminBania-hegemony-end.html)

</comment><comment><USER23> Not surprised. [http://business.rediff.com/report/2009/sep/24/indians- among-...](http://business.rediff.com/report/2009/sep/24/indians-among-most- corrupt-while-doing-business-abroad.htm)

</comment><comment><USER24> This will definitely curtail the abuse. Nonetheless this is a double-edged sword. Many so called STEM grads just do it to land a software job. They just invest a couple of years in some anon university and then bring their self entitlement and half-baked semi-polished language skills feeling entitled over guys who invested time and try to find an opportunity to work in the US. These "Grads" are copious in numbers and sickeningly pretentious. Sadly the system runs on money and keep feeding these idiots to attract tuitions into half- arsed universities. Most of them are rich douches with mediocre skills and can't do a lick without begging around for help. part of the rut.

</comment><comment><USER25> I think all visas (employment or otherwise) should be auctioned off to the highest bidder. The "most fair" way to allocate resources is in accordance with how much people are willing to pay.

</comment><comment><USER26> * * un popular opinion alert * *

I don't think the employers in this case deserve prison time. I understand they are being made example of. This law breaking of h1b ranges from subtle to glaringly wrong. Where should we draw the line?. What about all the other consulting companies that do the same thing but have enough influence that they can get out of being caught? Out of all the people abusing this system, how is that the names of the convicted people look foreign?

The employment model of these convicted people benefits from a very bad and outdated h1b law. They find talent every year and get the paperwork done, hope the lottery wins them some visas and then rent out the talent. In good times, the employer saves and in bad times shares the misery with the employees. Some employees might understand this and some don't. They are meeting the demands of market that allowed them to sustain. The employees sign up for this knowing all well what is happening.

The employer should compensate the other employees for their losses and they should be not allowed to hire any other foreign worker. Anything beyond that is excessive.

This is another case of a developer blaming the user.

</comment><comment><USER27> Now can Disney go to jail for the same in conspiracy with the outsourcing company to replace employed tech workers with cheaper H1Bs when that's not what the visa program is about?

</comment><comment><USER28> About time.

</comment><comment><USER29> > These two brothers created a highly profitable, and highly illegal business > model at the extreme expense of the alien workforce that they recruited

Independence Day: Resurgence

</comment><comment><USER30> computerworld hits a jackpot .</comment>


Startup Marketing: Big Bang vs. Darwinian Evolution - <AUTHOR> http://onstartups.com/home/tabid/3339/bid/2014/Startup-Marketing-Big-Bang-vs-Darwinian-Evolution.aspx

<comment><AUTHOR> I particularly liked this challenge: "Think of five startups that you really admire and that you think were big hits. Now, do some quick research and figure out how much time/energy they spent on a big-bang launch to "release" their product to the world."

</comment><comment><USER2> This one reminds me a bit of Joel Spolsky's "Ben and Jerry's vs. Amazon" from back in the day: <http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000056.html>

"Both models work, but you've got to pick one and stick to it, or you'll find things mysteriously going wrong and you won't quite know why."

</comment><comment><USER3> I think Lamarckian evolution would be a better model here.</comment>


Misguided protesters should 'occupy' Apple, former San Francisco mayor says - <AUTHOR> http://www.bgr.com/2011/12/19/misguided-protesters-should-occupy-apple-former-san-francisco-mayor-says/

<comment><USER2> Just about all of the people who work at Apple aren't in the top 1% of income earners either. Why does it make more sense to disrupt the work of some software developers rather than dock workers? If you want to object to Apple getting tax subsidies for exporting jobs or the bailout of big banks, you should be protesting on the steps of the U.S. Capitol.</comment>


Ask HN: Any low cost laser metal engraving machines out there? - <AUTHOR>

I figured HN was the best group to ask about this sort of thing.
A google search for "laser engraving machines" is awash with B2B  websites.
Are there any laser engravers (capable of engraving stainless steel) that are affordable ($5k max) for the typical hacker available yet?
I noticed kickstarter had a fulfilled laser engraving project here but I doubt the units are still available seeing as it ended over a year ago: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/fsl/affordable-20x12-laser-cutter-engraver-assembled-i <comment><USER2> Full Spectrum has been around for years. I got one of their very early models when they were still importing the cheap chinese junk and replacing the controller boards. The product wasn't all that good back then, but the company and their support were very good. It looks like they've come a long way since then. You can just go to [http://fslaser.com/](http://fslaser.com/) and buy one.

Note: These lasers don't _engrave_ metal. You can use them in a few interesting ways to get effects very much like this, especially if you're clever with powder coat and or printer toner. You almost certainly won't find a laser that can actually ablate metals that could be reasonably described as "low cost". The cheapest I can think of is probably a Kern(1) for around $80k.

(1)[http://www.kernlasers.com/metal_cutting.htm](http://www.kernlasers.com/metal_cutting.htm)

</comment><comment><USER3> eBay search for laser engraver and you'll find units in the $600 range. They use CO2 lasers and seem to do ok, though you'll typically find yourself laser etching a painted surface off stainless rather than engraving the stainless itself.

Most people don't mean engrave when they say engrave, though if you really want to remove hundreds of microns of thickness, you'll have to spend far more.</comment>


FBI Face Recognition Technology Has 'No Limits,' Congressional Hearing Reveals - <AUTHOR> http://www.commondreams.org/news/2017/03/27/fbi-face-recognition-technology-has-no-limits-congressional-hearing-reveals <comment><USER2> Should I be afraid of this? What is the potential for abuse?

In the article it talks about a 15% error rate, that's extremely high. I assume with time this will quickly go down.

If this technology is improved and used in stopping criminals/reducing false accusations, does it outweight the violation of privacy?

<comment><USER3> I think we'll be asking this question over and over in the coming decades.

I personally think it would be foolish to take a hard-line stance on our law enforcement agencies adopting new, more powerful tools to do their job. We don't need to freeze our law enforcement agencies in the 20th century. We do need to open them up to increased transparency and oversight to ensure these tools are used correctly.

<comment><USER4> Right. We shouldn't be trusting a black box government with executive rights anymore than we should be trusting black box microprocessing platforms inside of our CPUs with executive control over our desktop. I see absolutely no difference in these analogies for the given use case

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The congressional hearing last week had them say that "the Obama Administration threw pebbles, and it's about time we started throwing rocks."</comment>


Army Says 'Social Network' Use Is a Sign of Radicalism - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/10/insider-threat/

<comment><USER2> Let's be clear on the definitional game the Army is playing here: a "radical" is someone the Army prefers not to be in its ranks. Yes, the Army employs people who would draw this conclusion. Lots of them.</comment>


Open Letter to the Airbnb Community About Building a 21st Century Company - <AUTHOR> https://press.atairbnb.com/brian-cheskys-open-letter-to-the-airbnb-community-about-building-a-21st-century-company/ <comment><USER2> I feel like I'm supposed to be somewhat embarrassed to admit, as someone working in tech, that I prefer hotels to Airbnb. Unless hotels are completely booked, overly expensive, or it's a location with few hotels to begin with, I highly value the consistency and reliability of being able to check-in at anytime, knowing there's a baseline of security that a hotel offers, having access to basic amenities like a gym, having access to generally English- speaking staff if it's international, and having flexible cancellation policies depending on the rate.

With Airbnb, you really have no idea what you're going to get until you get there. The platform skews heavily in favor of hosts, and most listings I see have stricter cancellation policies than your average hotel and zero recourse if the host decides they want to cancel on you last minute.

<comment><USER3> > I prefer hotels to Airbnb

I really don't get this kind of opinion, just because it is so binary. Hotels are great when you need to quickly check-in and check-out, although the experience vary grandly and they can get pretty bad and pretty expensive.

On the other hand if I want to feel "at home", if I want something cheaper, if I want a kitchen and if I want something well located. Airbnb is always the answer.

There's something really impersonal about staying in a hotel that you don't get with an Airbnb (although some airbnbs are pretty bad as well).

I remember almost all the airbnbs I've stayed at. I usually forget about how a hotel room looks a few days after checking out. Try to think about this, you'll be surprised ;)

<comment><USER4> I'm the same way as the parent. Especially traveling on business, I want something straightforward and reliable even if my flight is delayed. Especially outside of cities on vacation, I may well stay in "official" B&Bs (which are increasingly listed on Airbnb although I almost always book direct) assuming it's not somewhere like a national park where I likely don't have that option.

<comment><USER5> I can't imagine a scenario in which I'd prefer an AirBnB for business travel. But here's a scenario that AirBnB was a perfect fit. My daughter is a cheerleader and we sometimes have traveling competitions. There are some families on her team which we're friends with. Rather than everyone getting a hotel room we rented an entire house on AirBnB. Each family got their own room, the kids got to enjoy being together, and we had a default location to just waste time watching TV or whatever all together between competition events. We ended up cooking out at our AirBnB location. It was really great for this more casual travel experience.

<comment><USER4> Absolutely. And, as I said in another comment, the marketplaces for renting vacation homes, houses, etc. was very fragmented and generally not very good until AirBnB came along. A lot of their business still depends on sketchy host behavior but there was clearly a legitimate need for a better service.

Also, in cities, I'm not sure I even want to spend enough time in wherever I'm staying to have a memorable experience. The city is the experience, not the place I'm staying. Not that I hang around where I'm staying most places but definitely not in cities. Or if I do, it's because I'm working :-/

<comment><USER5> With regards to non-business stays in cities, I'm more than happy to use AirBnB if I can simultaneously save money and support a small business. I've used AirBnB for beach vacations before and it worked out great for that as well, equally a scenario where hanging out at the house wasn't desired. We were at the beach all day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This also announces that Ken Chenault, former CEO of American Express, joined their board. What's really interesting is that he also joined the board of Facebook last week [1].

He must be a damn good exec who was recruited left and right during his 37 years at Amex and, now that he's retired, he's going to mentor the top execs at the top companies [2]. Exciting development for both Airbnb and Facebook.

[1] [https://www.recode.net/2018/1/18/16905386/facebook-ken- chena...](https://www.recode.net/2018/1/18/16905386/facebook-ken-chenault-new- board-directors-mark-zuckerberg)

[2] [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/18/business/american- express...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/18/business/american-express- chenault-squeri.html)

<comment><USER7> _Part of designing a 21st-century company is designing a Board of Directors that can help us implement our 21st-century vision ..._

This is the dinosaur who will transform Airbnb into an "infinite" 21st-century company??

Here's the ridiculous story of how Ken Chenault's old-school ways cost Amex their Costco relationship and chopped their customer base by 10%.

[https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2015-how-amex-lost- costco...](https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2015-how-amex-lost-costco/)

 _The Costco guys were tickled by how meticulously Amex choreographed Chenault 's movements.

Ken Chenault would have an advance team come to our office before he visited. They planned everything — where he would enter the building, the route to the boardroom, where he'd sit at the table.

Soon after the breakup with Costco, JetBlue ditched Amex for Barclays and MasterCard. Fidelity may also be thinking about canceling its affinity card._

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> _Being an infinite company is an idea that my friend, author Simon Sinek, has been discussing with me. Simon explained that a company's purpose is to advance its vision, and since a vision is a mountaintop you never quite get to, you should have an infinite time horizon. But many companies are designed to be finite. Finite companies are focused on beating their competitors and appeasing short-term interests. But business is not finite._

I love AirBnb and I hate being negative about Brian's post but I stopped reading there. Perhaps this is AirBnb's reality but it certainly isn't the reality for 99.999% of other companies, who aren't dwelling in unicorn land. Companies don't think finite because it's fun, but because they have to. Because there are bills and salaries to pay and shareholders to satisfy. Because there are people who expect a return on their investment in a finite time, because their lives are finite and because their kids will grow up a finite time before they enter college.

Don't get me wrong, as a founder there's not much I despise more than short- term thinking, but if a strategy can't work within a time frame of, say, a couple years it's kinda worthless. It's hard enough to plan and predict 2 years into the future and god knows what's 5 years from today. Why be concerned with infinity?

<comment><USER9> Yeah, this sounds weird - _especially from a VC-funded company_! One can hardly imagine a better way of having myopic perspective, of being forced to optimize for short-term, than taking regular VC funding. Because, as you've said, "there are people who expect a return on their investment in a finite time".

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> One thing that AirBNB seems to get right, is knowing who its customers are. They have two major categories of customer: Hosts and Guests. (Those have subdivisions as well, which may be quite significant.) Curiously, one of those is effectively the "product" peddled to the other. This model can be generalized across many kinds of gig economy websites. How is it that AirBNB can be so much better at this than other websites with similar models? Is it because the services on offer are that much more complex?

<comment><USER11> There are a few reasons why AirBnb is succeeding and many other gig economies are struggling.

1\. AirBnb is a global market place. It's much more difficult to build a global market place and its much easier to defend your moat once you are a global marketplace. Travelers from all over the world want to visit all over the world. There is a chicken and egg problem when you start. This benefit applies to Uber to much lesser degree because they are a city level market place. Most riders ride in their home city majority of their time.

2\. Repeat business between travelers and hosts are much lesser compared to other gig economies. While people might get tempted to cut a direct deal with their cleaner or dog walker after a few good experiences, it's much less likely to happen with AirBnb. Same benefits applies to Uber.

<comment><USER4> Re: 1. Also, at least the legitimate parts of AirBnB's business (i.e. not the condo sublets that break lease agreements or homeowner's association rules), are a pretty well-established business. Low-touch B&Bs, including without the breakfasts, is a thing. So are vacation home rentals.

There wasn't a very good company to do all this through in anything like a consolidated way before. There were some vacation rental companies but none were very good. My parents rented out their vacation home in Mexico for many years and would absolutely have used AirBnB had it existed at the time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Lots of platitudes in there, but not much substance.

How about you tell me how Airbnb is contributing to vacancies in crowded real estate markets? Or what you are doing about cities introducing regulations that will make Airbnb essentially the same as a hotel? Why are condos starting to ban Airbnb rentals?

It kind of feels like Airbnb knows they are on shaky ground and this memo is step 1 of reinventing themselves to prevent their collapse.

<comment><USER13> Why should AirBNB take on ownership of the problem of vacancies in crowded real estate markets? AirBNB is, if anything, helping this problem in many cases by allowing people to compensate for the expense of living in a crowded real estate market by renting out rooms. Also, AirBNB isn't the only game in town any more and they need to compete with the likes of Vacasa among others.

The regulation question is a real issue for AirBNB and I agree that they ought to be telling their shareholders and their hosts what their plan is.

<comment><USER14> In places with limited rental properties, some people have got leases on apartments and are then renting them out via AirBnB instead of living in them. This decreases the total amount of apartments available for long-term renters.

In NYC, you can rent a room out as AirBnb if either of the following:

      1. the rental is long term
      2. you are present in the apartment while the guest is staying

The issue with the third case:

      3. short term rental while owner is absent

is that the apartment is a secondary rental unit for the host/owner and is not a primary residence for the guest. Rich people can afford this, poorer people cannot. Hence the problem.

That is when AirBnB does not help the housing market and some cities have rightfully legislated against that case.

<comment><USER15> > This decreases the total amount of apartments available for long-term > renters.

I don't see why this is necessarily bad. If short-term renters provide better value to the owners, why should they be deprived of this opportunity?

<comment><USER14> Because that decreases the supply of housing available for those that cannot afford secondary residencies. If there is not enough extra housing supply, you end up raising rent prices. If the market isn't creating enough housing for some reason or another, middle-class and lower-middle-class are left hung out to dry.

This dichotomy bleeds over into arguments about welfare state, supply-side economics vs high upper income taxes, etc. You can argue that people should be able to create value and earn however possible, but I'm going to disagree with that view. I think regulation and limits are appropriate in some cases, this being one of them.

<comment><USER16> There's a lot of ifs in your statement. I don't necessarily think that raising real-estate prices is a bad thing. It will encourage building of more real- estate. Laws that precent so artificially should be abolished. Using regulation to prevent a private owner from exploiting his property to the maximum degree ought to only be reserved for matters of commons (such as environmental polution/degredation etc).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > Infinite time horizon

I get what he's going for here, but this phrasing just sounds too TED-talk-y for me. I also don't get what they'd change as a result, but I guess that's TBD.

</comment><comment><USER18> There are good things in there, and then there is this:

"Where every city is a village, every block a community, and every kitchen table a conversation. "

Didn't he get the memo that many people explicitly want to be in cities for the very reason that they are disturbed by the social dynamics of villages (everyone knows everyone and is involved in everyone's business)?

I love Airbnb but I would hate if every city becomes a village.

Also, this talk about building an infinite company. I'd argue that in the current public debate about tech's power, this actually can sound a bit threatening.

<comment><USER19> Not sure what memo you're referring to - I generally hear people who like big cities reference the ability to walk to a lot of things you can do.

<comment><USER9> The "ability to walk to a lot of things you can do" implies your agency. You have lot of options, but you're not automatically attached to anything; you can choose what to get involved in. Whereas in villages, "everyone knows everyone and is involved in everyone's business"; you're attached to everything whether you like it or not, with all the social consequences coming from attachment.

<comment><USER19> No I get that, I'm just saying I've only heard that from 2 HN users, and not from anyone else who chose to live in NYC or SF in the years I lived there. It's not exactly an obvious memo that AirBnB didn't get.

<comment><USER9> Fair enough.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This seems really inspired by finite/infinite game talk by Simon Sinek: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bFs6ZiynSU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bFs6ZiynSU)

<comment><USER21> Absolutely.

As he mentions in the letter, they are friends. I'm sure he's knee deep in most of Sineks' philosophy on orginzations and products.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I don't get it, it's far too abstract to me. A company's goal is to fulfill its vision? It really doesn't help unless they identify what that vision is. And identifying who the stakeholders are is of course an important step but it doesn't illuminate anything unless we know what they intend.

</comment><comment><USER23> This reads like "we are not going public anytime soon"...

</comment><comment><USER24> > I was thinking about the next ten years of Airbnb when I received a phone > call I'll never forget. A close advisor told me that now was the time to > "institutionalize your intentions so that even as you grow, you can minimize > what conflicts with your vision."

"I'll never forget that time my advisor told me to institutionalize my intentions to minimize conflicts," he said, wiping a single tear from his eye.

<comment><USER25> He must be a relative of my late friend, [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7387402](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7387402)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> This letter sucks. Why would any host or guest take a minute out of their day to read this corporate bullshit? Believe it or not, Brian, I don't care about your journey or your company or your management philosophy, I just want a cheap room.

<comment><USER27> I'd like a cheap room that doesn't cut into people being able to get affordable apartments. They need to address the issues around people leaving flats empty after people leave and turning them into permanent AirBNBs instead of renting out room to people who actually live there.

If you really want to build community and meet people, you should try Couch Surfers. It's part of the real sharing economy, not the bullshit sharing economy.

<comment><USER5> >They need to address the issues

If by "they" you mean NIMBY regulators who won't allow more housing to be built, then we agree. This is not AirBnB's fault or responsibility.

<comment><USER28> Didn't Airbnb just have something like 5000 units yanked off their site where the owners couldn't prove they were legit "sharing"? Seems like it's their issue now.

<comment><USER5> As of July 2016 Bloomberg estimated that AirBnB had 2.3 million listings[1]. At just 0.2% of their entire listing base, culling 5k bad ones from time to time seems pretty reasonable.

But more to the point, this was the original comment I'm responding to:

>They need to address the issues around people leaving flats empty after people leave and turning them into permanent AirBNBs instead of renting out room to people who actually live there.

If the NIMBYs weren't allowed to have a strangle-hold on supply, then it wouldn't be a problem for the wider market if some property owners turn their units into AirBnBs.

[1]: [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-07-11/airbnb- fa...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-07-11/airbnb-faces- growing-pains-as-it-passes-100-million-users)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> "This means that we must have the best interest of three stakeholders in mind: Airbnb the company (employees and shareholders), Airbnb the community (guests and hosts) and the world outside of Airbnb."

Pick one.

</comment><comment><USER30> Imagine a future where there's one big landlord that owns all residential real estate. Some smaller cities already come close.

Up next, the merger of WeWork and AirBnB?

<comment><USER16> > one big landlord that owns all residential real estate.

AKA, the gov't.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Interesting how serving their customers is not part of the defining characteristics. o_O

<comment><USER32> > This means that we must have the best interest of three stakeholders in > mind: Airbnb the company (employees and shareholders), Airbnb the community > (guests and hosts) and the world outside of Airbnb.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I don't think that Airbnb is really giving back to the community: they might IPO this year or the next and most of the value created will go to VCs, founders and employees, while guests and hosts still pay up to 20% fees.

That's why I've built CryptoCribs ([https://www.cryptocribs.com](https://www.cryptocribs.com)) to enable repeat users to share their homes without paying a middleman

<comment><USER34> Why does everything crypto related feel the need to create a whitepaper following scientific conventions, even when there is nothing scientific about it...

<comment><USER35> > Why does everything crypto related feel the need to create a whitepaper > following scientific conventions, even when there is nothing scientific > about it...

That is how you bamboozle all the rubes into buying your worthless garbage. If it sounds all high tech and futuristic, it has to be awesome, right? See also: Ethereum and all it's weird futuristic terminology like "gas" and stuff...</comment></comment></comment>


Good News You May Have Missed in 2014 - <AUTHOR> http://www.gatesnotes.com/About-Bill-Gates/Year-in-Review-2014 <comment><USER2> The news about better treatment for drug-resistant tuberculosis is huge. If confirmed, that'll be the basis for saving many lives in the next decade, especially in India. Multiple-drug-resistant tuberculosis has been an alarming problem there.[1]

[1] [http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2013-06-23/news...](http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2013-06-23/news/40134749_1_stop- tb-department-mario-raviglione-jmm-meeting)

[http://www.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405270230344420457...](http://www.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303444204577460734274201756/)

[http://www.iom.edu/Reports/2012/Facing-the-Reality-of- Drug-R...](http://www.iom.edu/Reports/2012/Facing-the-Reality-of-Drug- Resistant-Tuberculosis-Challenges-and-Potential-Solutions-in-India.aspx/)

<comment><USER3> Serious question though, and I would like people to ignore some sort of moral or religious argument for it; but what is the long term implication if all kinds of health advances save people but humans still reproduce and impact the planet in already unsustainable rates.

I get it, some people have a bleeding heart and want to save everyone, everywhere, at all times; but what happens when the planet is the equivalent of a cat hoarder's house because we could never say no and we could never implement policy to limit population growth because the wealthy inherently gain from unregulated population growth?

<comment><USER4> Gates actually addressed this[0].

The upshot is that as countries get richer, fertility rates decrease. Allowing these poorer countries to lead better lives will paradoxically lower the population increase. If you look at the western world, negating immigration, many countries have a shrinking population.

The more pressing problem of the future, ironically, will be under population - at least if you consider the economic impact and our way of life. Our economy right now is built on so much growth and young labor. What happens without poor countries and when more people are retired than working?

[0][http://annualletter.gatesfoundation.org/#myth- three=&section...](http://annualletter.gatesfoundation.org/#myth- three=&section=myth-three)

<comment><USER5> That's just not true, as UN stated last month. Population, particularly in Africa, is growing instead of stabilizing.

[http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/world- population-w...](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/world-population- will-soar-higher-than-predicted/)

Vaccines without sex education and birth control support programs are extremely irresponsible. We need both, just one is trading off a short term problem for a bigger long term problem.

<comment><USER6> > Vaccines without sex education and birth control support programs are > extremely irresponsible

Are you sure there is no correlation between mortality and fertility rates? Assuming there is (which lots of evidence points to) there isn't actually any problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I would add they just came out with a drug to cure hepatitis C. That's amazing news for 3.2 million Americans with the disease, including my dad. [http://www.webmd.com/hepatitis/news/20140729/pill- hepatitis-...](http://www.webmd.com/hepatitis/news/20140729/pill-hepatitis-c)

<comment><USER8> Oh wow, I had no idea this happened! And it's actually true? This isn't the typical "we've cured this" then "loljk here's why we haven't cured this" news piece?

<comment><USER9> Yes it is true.

However, it's not like we couldn't cure hepatitis C before, we could, but just not very well.

The old regimen was interferon + ribavirin. You had to take it for months and months and the interferon makes you feel like you have the flu (it also put the patient at risk of depression and suicide). The cure rate was ~50%.

With the new drugs you don't need to get interferon injections anymore. You just pop one pill a day and 12 weeks later there is a 95%+ likelihood that you've been cured of HCV.

It's a HUGE medical advance.

<comment><USER10> That's quite frankly amazing. I'm really happy to read stuff like this on here.

<comment><USER11> It's really amazing, as Hep C kills more Americans per year than HIV.

There's a bit of a dark side, though, in that this miraculous cure's creator was bid up to billions of dollars, and the cure is sold to American health insurance for ~$85k a course, which is out of reach for most people without health insurance.

Of course, if you limit the upside on the home runs, you may find yourself with fewer batters in the pharmaceutical industry. I'd personally prefer if governments directly funded research, or even better, offered X-prize style contests, rather than granting patents on drugs.

But none of that diminishes what a remarkable advance this is for millions of Americans.

<comment><USER12> Given the immense cost, but huge benefit, it will be interesting to see how it stands up to cold-hearted cost/benefit analysis. The decision as to whether it will be available on the NHS (i.e. at taxpayer expense) in the UK is due in January[1].

[1]: [https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/indevelopment/gid- tag445](https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/indevelopment/gid-tag445)

<comment><USER9> Although the written report isn't available, NICE already came out and said despite the price, Sovaldi is cost-effective.[1]

[1][http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2014/08/18/uk- says...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2014/08/18/uk-says-sovaldi- is-worth-it-we-should-listen/)

<comment><USER13> The British National Health Service can make that trade-off. Because the NHS covers the entire population, it knows that it will recoup the high up-front cost by avoiding other treatment later in the patient's life.

An American insurer would rather put you on the older treatment and make your life so miserable that you switch to another insurance company at the next open enrollment. It makes no sense in the aggregate, but it makes sense for any one insurer.

No insurer wants to have the most generous policy, because it will just attract Hepatitis C patients from other insurers, hitting them with the up- front costs. However, they would not get all the delayed savings, because the patients could switch to a different insurer after they were cured.

The only way to break the game-theory logjam is to force the drug to be covered nationwide. Then, all the insurers pay the up-front cost, and on average, all of them reap the savings.

<comment><USER9> _An American insurer would rather put you on the older treatment and make your life so miserable that you switch to another insurance company at the next open enrollment. It makes no sense in the aggregate, but it makes sense for any one insurer._

The thing is, that's not happening at all. Nearly all US insurers are covering the new therapies. There are a couple that are holding out and only doing individual approvals.

You have to remember that private insurance competes on coverage, particularly for the insurance purchased by large employers.

Your comments about the NHS having a different viewpoint is correct. Since the NHS looks at total societal costs, they can reap the benefit of any immediate costs.

<comment><USER13> > _The thing is, that 's not happening at all. Nearly all US insurers are > covering the new therapies. There are a couple that are holding out and only > doing individual approvals._

So what are all the news articles about? A problem that is only hypothetical? The reporters don't seem to have a hard time finding cases of Hepatitis C patients who have been denied:

[http://kaiserhealthnews.org/news/most-illinois-medicaid- pati...](http://kaiserhealthnews.org/news/most-illinois-medicaid-patients- denied-new-hepatitis-c-drugs/)

[http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2014/10/28/359553282/insurer...](http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2014/10/28/359553282/insurers- may-cover-costly-hepatitis-c-drugs-only-for-the-very-ill)

Then there's the fact that AbbVie and Merck are coming into the market soon with their own Hepatitis C drugs that also have 90% cure rates. It seems hard to believe that either of these companies will come in significantly below the price of Sovaldi, but that's what the insurance companies are hoping for.

<comment><USER14> > Then there's the fact that AbbVie and Merck are coming into the market soon > with their own Hepatitis C drugs that also have 90% cure rates. It seems > hard to believe that either of these companies will come in significantly > below the price of Sovaldi, but that's what the insurance companies are > hoping for.

Why? If you apply game theory, one of the three will try to defect and undercut the other two.

<comment><USER13> > _Why? If you apply game theory, one of the three will try to defect and > undercut the other two._

Because they're playing a repeating game. AbbVie and Merck are big pharma companies. They don't particularly want to get into a price war.

It would be different if a small biotech firm were coming in. They might not get a second shot at it for a long time, so they are much more likely to undercut on price.

Also, three is a low number. Defection is more likely when the number of players goes up.

Of course, they're not going to come in dollar-for-dollar identical to the pricing of Sovaldi and Harvoni. However, the insurance companies seem to be hoping for some really sharp drops in price, which are less likely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's so cool to see the eradication of a disease. To live through it. You read about such things in history books, but actually being alive while it happens is pretty sweet. Especially such an awful one like polio.

<comment><USER14> They'll have to eradicate it in Pakistan and Afghanistan first, and around there people don't really trust foreigners who come around promising free polio vaccines because that was the CIA's cover when they came looking for Bin Laden.

<comment><USER13> There was a polio outbreak in China in 2011 that was traced back to Pakistan. Prior to that outbreak, the last case of polio in China had been in 1999.

The outbreak was contained after 21 confirmed infections plus another 23 suspected. The Chinese public health system mobilized 1000 health workers, spent $26 million, and vaccinated _44 million people_.

If we can't get rid of polio in Pakistan and Afghanistan, then this will just keep happening.

NEJM editorial: [http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMe1311591](http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMe1311591)

<comment><USER16> This will keep happening around the world. We came so close to eradicating polio for good and to see it all thrown away is heartbreaking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It's fantastic to see articles that focus on the positives. Most media and the press are all about the daily, the shocking and the hurtful. This is good news.

<comment><USER18> The irony is that the "news" often focuses on exceptional events, which tends to result in having a skewed view of the world.

<comment><USER19> If you haven't read "It's Not News, It's Fark: How Mass Media Tries to Pass Off Crap As News"[1] by Drew Curtis, then I highly recommend it to explain quite a lot of the process and thinking of the news. It might not be the most serious, and it is funny, but it digs into the truths of the beast.

1) [http://www.amazon.com/Its-Not-News-Fark- Media/dp/1592403662/](http://www.amazon.com/Its-Not-News-Fark- Media/dp/1592403662/)

<comment><USER20> My life has become markedly better since I cut out following daily mainstream news. I realized I wasn't gaining anything from it, just loosing.

<comment><USER21> I'm curious as to where you get your news instead. I feel like you do and I've been looking for more thoughtful places to get news.

<comment><USER22> [http://www.stratfor.com](http://www.stratfor.com) and the like.

Protip: If you abandon your subscription in last stage of the cart and come back later, it knocks 50% off the price. It did for me anyway.

<comment><USER23> The MSM creates a false world view by creating an impression that rare, exciting events are the norm. Stratfor creates a false world view by "contextualizing" current events and making predictions, thus creating a false impression that the future is knowable.

Pick the fantasy you're most comfortable with.

<comment><USER22> Yes, a lot of the analysis is quite silly. It's a good way to find out about stuff though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Hi Bill,

Just wanted to let you know you have a 'bug' on the 'contact us' section, I assume only for iOS devices. It comes up with a gray area blocking the forms, with the text out of place.

Great site, and it's good you're giving so much back to the world to fight worthy causes.

<comment><USER25> Curious side note/question: What makes you think Bill Gates or someone involved with the website reads the comments on this HN submission?

<comment><USER24> Yeah, I thought the site posted was his official blog. I naturally thought he would check this to see how the HN community responded.

I've cold emailed a lot of well known people before and most of them responded. I guess it was 'positivity' that skewed my thoughts. But, your right, a Lotto chance of Bill Gates coming on here.

<comment><USER26> Ray Ozzie had a #1 comment here recently and I wouldn't be surprised if BillG also reads HN. He's a voracious reader and it would be interesting to see what online sites he reads daily.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> These are wonderful trends that are keeping more people alive and for that we should both be grateful and thankful to those who work on keeping them moving in that direction.

What effects do these trends have on poverty and food insecurity?

</comment><comment><USER28> The numbers in the polio graph doesn't match the positions! Comparison: [http://i.imgur.com/3kGXyRA.png](http://i.imgur.com/3kGXyRA.png)

Not a massive problem in this case but worrying.

<comment><USER29> All I'm seeing from the comparison is that your circles are a bit smaller than the original.

<comment><USER28> The 122 in particular should be almost halfway between 100 and 150 but theirs is much lower.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> This is a huge case, maybe rare, how money is better used than a tax payment. Non of this would happen if sunk into the government

<comment><USER31> Not sure I understand your point. These are all state tier achievements. If anything it's where the state is either disorganized, broke, utterly corrupt, or all that make it difficult to achieve those goals in the first place.

You are saying we shouldn't have to pay taxes so the state can plan and execute vaccine campaigns and offer chronic disease treatment without cost to the patients that need it?

This is the case in Brazil (for instance [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HIV/AIDS_in_Brazil](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HIV/AIDS_in_Brazil)) and I happily pay my due to make it happen.

Not all tax money is actually put to good use, but the greater part is and I certainly wouldn't advocate against that.

Of course some countries have weird priorities IMO (yes, US) and may not share this view.

<comment><USER26> Yes dodgy's point is probably that this tax money sent to US govt will not result in such achievements like medicine in developing countries.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> My mind added an exclamation point to that headline.

Good News! You May Have Missed 2014!

</comment><comment><USER33> What the Gates Foundation is wonderful, laudable, noble, and good. I am disappointed to not see mention of any environmental accomplishments in the list, though. Long term, the threats posed by climate change are far more of a threat than any disease.

<comment><USER34> That doesn't seem to be true. According to the WHO, climate change has the potential to cause 250,000 deaths per year in 2030-2050. When it comes to disease, malaria alone kills between 376,000 and 755,000 people per year - right now.

Sources: [http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/premature- deaths-m...](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/premature-deaths- multiply-as-climate-changes/) [http://www.who.int/features/factfiles/malaria/en/](http://www.who.int/features/factfiles/malaria/en/)

<comment><USER35> As one noted in the article ""almost certainly an underestimate", because a number of climate-health relationships are not measurable due to lack of adequate data".

Milder winters expand the range of disease-carrying insects, increase risks of wars or famine with less water, mass migrations leading to political instability, more extreme weather events like draughts and flooding leading to failed crops and other natural catastrophes...

Meanwhile much of the WHO estimate is for people dying due to heat exposure. Easy to quantify, important to know - but nowhere near the full picture.

<comment><USER9> Since there is a lot of uncertainty as to what the negative impact of global warming might be, doesn't it make sense to focus on the people who are dying right now?

<comment><USER36> It depends on your risk/reward curve, and your probability estimates.

Malaria is unlikely to get much WORSE than it is now. But if you think that global warming has a chance to cause catastrophic damage, two or three orders of magnitude more than malaria is causing today, then you should estimate the probability that you can impact global warming and do the EV calculation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I'm surprised not to see the usual contingent of malthusians out in force. We're saving more kids than ever; surely this means we're all doomed, right? BillG should spend all this money on sterilising (poor, non-white) people instead, right?

(ok, ok, this is a bit trollish, but my point stands: the world is getting better and the sky is not falling -- deal with it)

<comment><USER38> Soo, you missed a trollish debate so you're trying to start it even though you don't agree with the presumed point which, in fact, nobody is making?

<comment><USER37> I didn't say malthusians are trollish, I admitted _I_ was being trollish. I am just curious about why they're not trying to spin it in their usual fashion.

<comment><USER39> Well, The average intelligence of the Hacker News commenter is a tad above that of Youtube or the Daily mail. Bill Gates himself has repeatedly stated that reducing mortality and improving quality of life has consistently proven to _reduce_ population growth : [http://annualletter.gatesfoundation.org/#myth- three](http://annualletter.gatesfoundation.org/#myth-three)

Everybody here already knows this of course. ;)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Idea: Real-ID/Trust/Rating Network - <AUTHOR>

I am contemplating a few ideas for a start-up, and this one in particular sounds really cool to me, however, being in the HN community, I know better to ask for opinions before rushing out and coding the idea.
Here are the basics...
1. Create a site that would allow users to login via each of the following networks (Paypal, Facebook or Linked in) to create an account.  The more sites that are logged in to be authenticated, and compared to the other hashes, the "trust" factor increases.  The final step would be to send a registered letter to the address of the account.
2. Depending on if the details of each account match, and the registered letter is received, it would issue a real-id factor (the more, the more likely it is that the user is indeed who they say they are).
3. Users can up-vote other users based on personal transactions, or even recommend with a comment.  There would be no down-votes or negative comments allowed.
4.  There would be a back end-api to get a rating/trust factor for other sites to implement it.
5. Users with a certain 'rank' could have dedicated email addresses with the site, as well as hot links, that would take people to a secure page to send a message to the user.  I believe the second part, along with captcha would eliminate the worry about potential spam from any site.
Is this a good idea?  Would you use it? <comment><USER2> Idea? Good. Try it? Yes. Use it? No.

1\. Why? It's just another Web of trust (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_of_trust>). While absolutely great in theory, the actuality is unless you can get a significant number of people to use it -- _regularly_ \-- it won't work. (Hackers don't count. You might get enough to make it worthwhile to other hackers, but we trust each other already, right? ;-) )

2\. Why no negative comments? One user who had 100 good experiences and 1000 bad would look good, while in reality not.

3\. If you end up deciding to build it, good luck. I'll probably sign-up, and hope for the best.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's an interesting idea. I was contemplating doing something similar a year or so ago, but got side-tracked. I hope you can make it happen. If you happen to do something open-source, gimme a shout, I might be able to pitch in a bit (or not, I'm pretty slammed these days, but this is something I'm interested in).

Getting enough adoption to take advantage of network effects and make it really useful is going to be the hard part, I think. Not sure what to tell you there, except "Good luck."

</comment><comment><USER4> Didn't Rapleaf try to do this?</comment>


ActivityPub: decentralized social networking protocol - <AUTHOR> https://www.w3.org/TR/2018/REC-activitypub-20180123/ <comment><USER2> This protocol is a successor to OStatus (GNU Social), and mostly made by the same people.

From what I remember, Mastodon switched from OStatus to ActivityPub a few releases ago. In the past they had to extend the OStatus protocol for private messages, which meant some clients may not honor the private status of theses posts. ActivityPub has private messages defined properly in the spec.

It seems PeerTube ([https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube](https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube)) will also use ActivityPub.

<comment><USER3> Last summer I tried untangling the OStatus/pump.io/ActivityPub/ActivityStreams nest hoping to piece together a big picture mental image based mostly on what Wikipedia has to say, and found it mostly frustrating.

For anyone who's similarly curious or confused, LWN published a pretty great overview last month—their "Federation in social networks" article:

[https://lwn.net/Articles/741218/](https://lwn.net/Articles/741218/)

<comment><USER4> Thanks! After reading that article I'm curious where public key cryptography fits into this.

<comment><USER5> In AP, messages are signed with http signatures ([https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-cavage-http- signatures-09](https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-cavage-http-signatures-09)). OStatus has a similar mechanism called salmons, which are signed XML payloads.

<comment><USER4> server-to-server signatures are a good start, but what about encrypting messages end-to-end? I assume the servers already talk over HTTPS.

<comment><USER6> Hello! Co-editor of ActivityPub here. I wrote a paper for Rebooting Web of Trust on how this could be done: [https://github.com/WebOfTrustInfo/rebooting- the-web-of-trust...](https://github.com/WebOfTrustInfo/rebooting-the-web-of- trust-fall2017/blob/master/final-documents/activitypub-decentralized- distributed.md)

<comment><USER4> Thank you! Important part starts half-way down: [https://github.com/WebOfTrustInfo/rebooting-the-web-of- trust...](https://github.com/WebOfTrustInfo/rebooting-the-web-of-trust- fall2017/blob/master/final-documents/activitypub-decentralized- distributed.md#end-to-end-encryption)

The ideas about using DID's ([https://w3c-ccg.github.io/did- spec/](https://w3c-ccg.github.io/did-spec/)) and moving off a common transport like HTTP was also interesting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> From my quick read of the spec, server-to-server federation assumes that servers can be trusted. That need not be the case; unless a message is signed it should not be assumed to have come from a specific user. I don't know if there's an easy way to share keys in a decentralized way, but that'd be an interesting problem to solve (some blockchain maybe).

The other question is whether we want server-to-server federation at all instead of a P2P network like bittorrent. With the decreasing cost of compute, I am also optimistic of everyone being able to run a little sandbox on the cloud to exchange data with others, instead of routing it via FB/Twitter.

<comment><USER8> > I don't know if there's an easy way to share keys in a decentralized way, > but that'd be an interesting problem to solve (some blockchain maybe).

This is exactly what namecoin tried to solve. Buy an identifier, put whatever you want in it. Example: [https://nameid.org/?name=rakoo](https://nameid.org/?name=rakoo)

> The other question is whether we want server-to-server federation at all > instead of a P2P network like bittorrent.

We want something in between. The best model I know is the one of scuttlebutt ([http://scuttlebot.io/more/protocols/secure- scuttlebutt.html](http://scuttlebot.io/more/protocols/secure- scuttlebutt.html)): Each peer is identified by an asymetric keypair, and writes posts/comments/photos to a local ledger. Everything is signed and potentially encrypted if the message is to be read only by select people. Diffusion follows the peers' connections: stuff is sent from peer to peer as they connect together, friends can be used as a third leg (ie a common friend can carry stuff even if it's not for them), and you also have pubs where more people can connect and get more stuff faster. This system is different from bittorrent in that everything depends on the human connections: information spreads along human acquaintances, names aren't globally unique, they depend on how your friends agree to name you, etc...

It's better than naive server-to-server federation because pubs can be simple, stupid message forwarders yet still have all the advantages of being always-up servers.

<comment><USER9> Scuttlebut is, so far, the most interesting decentralized social media tool I've seen. Even Mastodon and Matrix still require a server of some form, while SSB will continue to work offline and via truly local peer to peer connections.

The only issue is client support and the fact that I don't have a good sense of the state of development/stability/soundness for SSB.

If you (or anyone) has experience actually using SSB or similar true P2P platforms, I'd be very interested to hear what did or didn't work well.

<comment><USER10> SSB is rock-solid in that the community _encourages_ the use of diverse client and server implementations rather than having a monolithic interface that's meant to do everything.

On the other hand, the underlying libraries are opinionated in that they usually use depject and a handful of other tools/techniques that aren't super familiar to those outside the SSB community, which makes it harder to write brand new clients.

I'd use SSB exclusively if they offered a web client (as I'm on a Chromebook), but we're slowly getting there.

<comment><USER11> > ssb webclient

[https://github.com/ssbc/patchfoo](https://github.com/ssbc/patchfoo)

you do need to host your `sbot` somewhere tho

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> ActivityPub is like JWT. Simple on the outside but complex inside. For example I wanted to implement a simple server to connect to Mastodon. JSON via HTTP, what could be simpler? Actually it's JSON-LD not JSON. But it doesn't matter as JSON-LD is JSON, right? No, as the standard requires normalizing JSON-LD for purposes of signing that includes all of RDF canonicalization, of course the standard do not require it [0] but it's akin to unencrypted HTTP2, theoretically it exists but practically doesn't.

What's interesting is that ActivityPub requires signing the data twice, first on a HTTP request level, then the JSON-LD itself. It seems like the designers tried to make it simple (let's use JSON-LD and HTTP) but after several edge cases the standard got out of control.

[0]: "Linked Data Notifications also supports a number of RDF serializations which are not required for ActivityPub implementations. However, ActivityPub implementations which wish to be more broadly compatible with Linked Data Notifications implementations may wish to support other RDF representations." source: [https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/](https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/)

<comment><USER13> HTTP signatures and LD-signatures serve different purposes. HTTP sigs authenticate server-to-server requests, while LD-signatures allow to forward verified messages in the network. The forwarding part is a good extra for UX purposes but it's not necessary for your implementation, you can just stick to HTTP sigs which are really simple. I agree that LD-signatures are very complicated to implement. If you avoid LD-signatures then you don't have to mess with JSON-LD canonicalization either, you can just treat the JSON as simple JSON (though it's still a bit fiddly because a value can often be either a URI string, an array of URI strings, an object, or an array of objects).

<comment><USER12> I know what the signatures are for but I wonder if there's a simpler way to achieve these objectives.

Server authentication: For example XMPP uses client certificates to authenticate servers to other servers (TLS server certificates usually can be used for client authentication too).

Message authentication: maybe exchanging OpenPGP messages would be easier? They already are signed and the payload can be anything. Of course it's not as easy to list a collection of these messages as it is with JSON (just collect into an array).

> If you avoid LD-signatures then you don't have to mess with JSON-LD > canonicalization either,

I want to be interoperable with existing software so avoiding it is not a practical option (although allowed by the ActivityPub spec). Just like having non encrypted HTTP2 is not a practical option (although allowed in the spec).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The FSF announcement about it:

[https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/victory-for-libre- networ...](https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/victory-for-libre-networks- activitypub-is-now-a-w3c-recommended-standard)

Look in particular at that cool video in it. Someone posts a video to Peertube, which gets federated to Mastodon. People comment on Mastodon and the comment gets federated back into Peertube. People reply on Peertube, and the comment goes back to Mastodon. Kinda nifty:

[https://peertube.cpy.re/videos/watch/da2b08d4-a242-4170-b32a...](https://peertube.cpy.re/videos/watch/da2b08d4-a242-4170-b32a-4ec8cbdca701)

Btw, I have been greatly enjoying Mastodon. I'm @firstname.lastname@example.com in case anyone feels like chatting to me there.

</comment><comment><USER15> PeerTube with Mastodon comments. Powered by ActivityPub. [https://peertube.cpy.re/videos/watch/da2b08d4-a242-4170-b32a...](https://peertube.cpy.re/videos/watch/da2b08d4-a242-4170-b32a-4ec8cbdca701)

<comment><USER16> Comments are disabled.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> The thought process behind ActivityPub seems fanciful to me. To paraphrase:

Here is a spec for something no one currently uses, please take a risk and invest your time to understand ActivityPub, build an impl of ActivityPub, and then build your thing on top of it. Then, if many others also do this, it might have a chance at success.

Heed the lesson of OStatus. Open source has killed RFC style development. If the backers of ActivityPub genuinely want people to use it then they should publish a reference grpc microservice porcelain on docker so people can use it from any language, without thinking about it. Otherwise the cost to implement ActivityPub is just too high.

<comment><USER18> Did you miss the part where a million people use ActivityPub via Mastodon? There are already numerous implementations, such as Mastodon, Hubzilla, Pleroma, PeerTube, Kroeg, and more.

<comment><USER17> Perhaps I should have said "that no one uses directly".

I tried out Mastodon but didn't become a regular user. So I'm just curious, are you claiming a million monthly active users or a million accounts created since inception?

A million a month is roughly what serverfault.com gets. If you have 1MAU/month, that's a nice achievement, though it's still 1/130th the market share of twitter.

I hope Mastodon keeps growing to level out the playing field. That's why I suggested a way to make it easier for other sw engineers to support it.

<comment><USER19> By that logic no one uses email directly either.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Federated is not decentralized.

If you feel this is a small point, please consider the centralization which has happened with email, jabber, and other federated systems.

<comment><USER21> Anything web-based is a dead end at this point. There is many, many reasons why any web-based solution will degenerate into centralized system. People behind Urbit got it right. I don't know if Urbit is going to succeed, but the they have pointed out the issue brilliantly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> My only question is: Is this a Twitter or Facebook replacement? Because if it's only about someone status and you can't post something on someone's wall/timeline, then it will never truly complete with Facebook.

It was the only thing missing from Google+ IMO.

<comment><USER23> It actually contains sufficient primitives to implement either. Mastodon uses it in a Twitter like way, but there are projects being worked on that are more similar to Facebook.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Imho, any such document should start with a requirements-analysis.

It's difficult to tell what requirements they have considered, and what they have forgotten without reading (and re-reading) the entire spec.

</comment><comment><USER25> Misread as 'Decentralized Pub', am sad I was wrong.

(although, that now just sounds like 'drinking alone')

<comment><USER26> You should check out Scuttlebutt

[https://staltz.com/an-off-grid-social-network.html](https://staltz.com/an- off-grid-social-network.html)

[https://www.scuttlebutt.nz/getting- started.html](https://www.scuttlebutt.nz/getting-started.html)

[https://scuttlebot.io/docs/basics/install-the- database.html](https://scuttlebot.io/docs/basics/install-the-database.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I have been in touch with Tim Berners-Lee and his Solid project since late 2016. Since then, I've run across many people who work at W3C and in the protocol space, and it's inspired me to open up and publish protocols derived from our platform (eg [https://github.com/Qbix/auth](https://github.com/Qbix/auth))

But I believe that, in the end of the day, mass adoption can only be done when there is a popular platform. Whether it's closed source like Facebook or Twitter, or open source like Qbix, it needs to be actually used. That's how, for instance, oAuth came to be so widely adopted, and many others.

Here is an overview of what I mean: [https://vimeo.com/252105786](https://vimeo.com/252105786)

Protocols like Scuttlebutt or ActivityPub can be bolted on after the actual infrastructure is there.

<comment><USER28> Mastodon is used by a million people across a lot of instances and supported ActivityPub before it was a W3C recommendation, so I'd say it is definitely being used.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Reminds me of my own attempt to design a decentralized networking protocol FOSP ([https://github.com/maufl/fosp- specification](https://github.com/maufl/fosp-specification)). I now think that a peer to peer solution would be more user friendly, it's sometimes difficult to explain to some of my peers that there can be a difference between an app and an service.

</comment><comment><USER30> We need P2P not federated. Federated still requires trusting a server which is not good. We've tackled this problem and produced an insanely simple API for creating fully P2P apps, even the cliche Twitter/todo app can be built in 4min: [https://scrimba.com/c/c2gBgt4](https://scrimba.com/c/c2gBgt4)

</comment><comment><USER4> Does anyone have a reference to all the expected/discussed use-cases? [https://github.com/jasnell/activitystrea.ms/blob/master/READ...](https://github.com/jasnell/activitystrea.ms/blob/master/README.md#usage) shows a number of activity types.

<comment><USER4> Found the [https://www.w3.org/TR/activitystreams- vocabulary/](https://www.w3.org/TR/activitystreams-vocabulary/)

and the older [https://www.w3.org/wiki/Activity_Streams/Examples](https://www.w3.org/wiki/Activity_Streams/Examples)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Does anyone know if say you have Facebook level of activity, wouldn't the block chain be in the orders of petabytes to download? I'm sure you may want to know your history all the way back, or does the protocol is smart to know how much you need to download?

<comment><USER23> ActivityPub does not use a blockchain.

SSB uses an append-only log similar to a blockchain, but it only contains things your identity knows about (you and your friends and channels).

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Similar earlier attempt by Google : [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenSocial](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenSocial)

</comment><comment><USER33> I'm looking for the specs of the message format used, but couldn't find it. Is it gonna be like email message format? html perhaps?

</comment><comment><USER34> Is it just me or does this recommendation reads more like a medium blog post from some developer advocate than like a formal specification ?

</comment><comment><USER35> and it only took 10 years to come up with the spec ! [https://www.w3.org/2008/09/msnws/report.html](https://www.w3.org/2008/09/msnws/report.html)

</comment><comment><USER36> Yeah, let's send my social media data to a bunch of servers automatically through a distributed protocol with no practical means to enforce compliance with privacy settings. But that's okay, nobody ever posts anything on social media that they end up regretting, right?

<comment><USER37> I'm reasonably secure in my feeling that centralisation isn't the problem.

As much as people far too freely giving up information about themselves online. Decentralisation can work as an anti-censorship measure but I wouldn't expect something I send out over Bittorrent (for example) to remain my personal private info.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Does GNU Social support this? AFAIK ActivityPub is a successor to OStatus.

<comment><USER39> No.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Can I build a blockchain on top of it?

<comment><USER41> my thought exactly! At least add work of proof to fight with spam :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> ELI5 ActivityPub vs xmpp semantics

<comment><USER43> AFAIK XMPP is more geared towards IM than microblogging and it's very complex and difficult to get right due to many extensions.

<comment><USER44> Actually, I never did any XMPP coding but from what I belief it is more difficult to get it 'complete' then to get it 'right'. I mean you get it 'right' even with a minimal/core implementation but 'complete' only with about the 50 most common extensions. Getting it 'right' seems to be a problem when the XEP definition is open to interpretation.

Nevertheless, I agree that it would not fit the XMPP ecosystem to be used as a micro blogging service. It's like using e-mail for IM: Possible, but not recommended.

<comment><USER45> > I never did any XMPP coding but from what I belief it is more difficult to > get it 'complete' then to get it 'right'.

I don't think there is a point in getting it complete. You choose the XEPs you want by looking at what your client/server goals are. Also if you need help in choosing, there are pointer XEPs, like the Compliance Suites, or the mailing list, or the chatrooms. See [https://xmpp.org/community/](https://xmpp.org/community/)

> Getting it 'right' seems to be a problem when the XEP definition is open to > interpretation.

When in doubt, ask the author/council.

<comment><USER44> Fair enough, 'complete' might be the wrong word here too (as you do not have to support all XEPs), but currently my biggest problem is, that Conversations (Android XMPP client) works pretty good (something I would consider 'complete' in terms of messaging), but I could not find any desktop client which works on a similar feature level.

For example how many desktop clients support OMEMO, MAM and Carbon copies? Those are just 3 XEPs all related to secure multi device communication. Yes, they haven't reached the status recommended yet, but I think that is more a symptom than the root of the problem.

<comment><USER46> Desktop client support is lacking, but I think Dino (a relative newcomer) does a pretty good job of being compatible with Conversations and being "modern" (for some handwavey value of "modern") messenger based on XMPP:

[https://dino.im/](https://dino.im/)

<comment><USER44> Last time I tried Dino was 4th August, but I can't remember what made me stick with Pidgin. But hey, if Sam Whited suggests Dino I will try it again :-D

I love the XMPP and Golang stuff you are doing.

And far as I can see it Dino seems to have pretty good XEP collection nowadays:

[https://github.com/dino/dino/wiki/Supported- XEPs](https://github.com/dino/dino/wiki/Supported-XEPs)

<comment><USER46> > Last time I tried Dino was 4th August, but I can't remember what made me > stick with Pidgin.

Dino's still relatively new software so it may not be all that stable yet (I don't actually use it enough to know). I hope it works out for you though; it looks nice if nothing else!

> I love the XMPP and Golang stuff you are doing.

Thanks! It's still very early days and I don't get a lot of time to work on it, but I'm glad someone has seen it and found it useful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> how can anything be verifyed?

<comment><USER13> With cryptography.

<comment><USER47> how? in the example the data is not signed, what is stopping a other server from changing the content i posted?

<comment><USER13> The exact methods of authentication are simply "out of scope" for the ActivityPub standard itself. As far as I understand simply for bureaucratic reasons. In reality there's already agreed upon mechanisms for doing this.

Each actor has an RSA keypair. Server-to-server requests are authenticated using HTTP signatures (that's a different spec), so you know a delivery is legit and on behalf of which actor it is. For messages that are passed directly between origin and destination there is no reason to believe the sender has tampered with the message (SSL is a prerequisite anyway). For messages that are about other messages, such as reblogs, you would _not_ trust the sender, you would look up the message by its ID on its origin server instead. This is always possible because ActivityPub prescribes IDs to be resolveable URIs. There's also another method to verify the authenticity of a passed message, called Linked-Data Signatures (that's a different spec). It's a way of signing JSON inside JSON, it's a bit of a bother to implement though (To make sure the signature works regardless of how the payload is re- formatted or re-ordered in transit, the JSON is "canonicalized" using RDF)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> All of these social networking protocols feel like we're just re-inventing UUCP at a higher level.

<comment><USER23> I've considered that, as well. I _enjoy_ Mastodon, and am working on another ActivityPub project. But in a lot of ways it's not a significant advantage over Usenet.

<comment><USER48> Mail over UUCP and Usenet over UUCP are optimized for short(-ish) messages, and deal with packet loss, dynamic IP addresses on remote connections, partial transfers, and synchronization scheduling as part of their implementation.

It would seem to be a good base to build something like ActivityPub on top of.</comment></comment></comment>