Beijing Wants to Rewrite the Rules of the Internet - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/06/zte-huawei-china-trump-trade-cyber/563033/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> By trying to make governments irrelevant, the big internet companies will end up in the bin of history. I would say that it is understandable that China or the EU are not happy to see how their tax revenue is siphoned out to the US (in the best scenario) or to fiscal paradises (in the worst case).

A supra-national level of organization is desirable, with open networks and a global community, but not the way we are doing it right now: currently a handful of companies are amassing all the power, benefitting a very small minority of workers (SV), collecting private information worldwide and providing that information to the US government. It is not even illegal, as Snowden thankfully revealed: US laws do not protect foreign nationals against eavesdropping.

What else can we, in the rest of the world, do? Since the behemoth is profitting from the global network but not contributing to its fairness, the only option left is to break it up, and take care of our piece of the network.

The other, better option, would be to regulate all this at the supra-national level. Sadly, we are entering a phase of nationalism, and that battle is already lost.

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure Google, Facebook and the like are actively trying to make government irrelevant or heading for the bin for that reason. Their core stuff of providing search results or updates of what your friends are up to are kind of separate from the core duties of governments of making laws.

I agree the tax situation is a problem and think govenments should change the tax laws. Countries could estimate a fair tax for each multinational and tell them pay it or be blocked. Its not really the problem of the CEOs who can only really pay the tax required by law.

GDPR seems something of a success at regulating things supra-national level if not perfect.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> So does Europe. Article 13 up for vote today and GDPR already passed. To quote the article, "Many of these elements serve a dual purpose: supporting domestic industry while further closing off the internet."

<comment><USER5> I think GDPR is mostly good, it is a lot of work, but so is protecting people's data. It is a law for individual's personal data. It is coming from the right place.

Article 13 is for copyright owners, not individuals. Large corporations benefit the most from this legislation.

<comment><USER6> The goal of GDPR is good, but I think the biggest issue people have with it is enforcing one countries laws in another country, where people following the regulations had no say in them (regulation without representation).

Also, if I'm reading it right, one of the provisions Article 27) is that if you are outside the EU, you need to hire someone inside the EU as a representative / contact point for GDPR issues. If I'm running a one-man business, there is no way that can happen.

The reason I'm concerned is that if I start a business providing support for one of my open source products, and have something like a web forum, well then I have user-generated content, so that would mean that I have to now hire someone in the EU to act as a point of contact.

<comment><USER7> Looking at the actual text, according to section 2(a) of GDPR Article 27†, a representative is not required in the cases of small or occasional operations. Basically, If you aren't a large corporation, it doesn't apply to you.

You still have to follow the majority of the Article but a representative is not required.

† [http://www.privacy-regulation.eu/en/27.htm](http://www.privacy- regulation.eu/en/27.htm)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It was only a matter of time.

Today computers like imacs, ipads, mobile phones or tvs(not even talking about Alexa), clocks could spy on you in your house at every single time and give the data back to home at the other side of the globe.

Your pulse could be monitored, your movement could be monitored, who you talk with privately could be monitored, who you sleep with could be monitored.

Once this is possible it is a temptation so great for the US Government(or any other Govertment) and status quo to resist.

It is only a matter of time that Governments react. Of course the other powers of the wold want to do what the US Govertment already does.

Massive surveillance spying using technology created by companies of the same country? Already done by the US.

Protecting sensitive data from outside Governments? Already done by the US.

Restricting companies from working in strategic sectors and forcing them to provide source code? Already done by the US.

<comment><USER9> > Once this is possible it is a temptation so great for the US Government(or > any other Govertment) and status quo to resist

You emphasized _Government_ but most surveillance in countries like the U.S. and Australia/NZ is done by the _status quo_ of self-styled "community leaders" spread across business, media, academia, religion, sports, and government. They informally network with one another in bar drink ups, legal war rooms, and prayer meetings, as well as surveil their targets and disseminate their messages via misled employees. Workers at internet providers, government departments, and vehicle leasing businesses provide customer data to associates and "friends" all the time, and a wide variety of channels such as news stories, entertainment, and social media are used to spread manufactured narratives. When you add the extent of this informal network to the formal U.S. government surveillance and interference, it could equal the extent of China's. Such American and Australian actors also frequently network with their "Chinese counterparts".

<comment><USER10> Dude, you really need to get out more.

<comment><USER9> > we can easily trivialize what you say with a reply questioning your sanity

You didn't make fun of the parent comment in the same way. Why is that?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This could be just the natural evolution of the internet. Early on the internet needed a global scope to reach a critical mass. These days a critical mass can be reached within a trading zone with not much (percentage wise) value added outside of that. Also because equipment continues to get cheaper the size of a viable critical mass is shrinking.

<comment><USER12> That this could be true makes me very sad.

<comment><USER13> Every time I take a step back and look at what the internet is today I am simply amazed. That we could for once agree world wide on running this huge thing together involving almost every country in existence. Leaving (recent) developments like carrier grade Nat aside, we have a system that enables me to address anybody anywhere on this planet directly and send them a data packet that arrives within milliseconds.

I mean we had the same with phones or mail before but its still different because the Internet is technically decentralized. Anyone could fuck around badly with BGP, but it's mostly OK. DNS is completely optional or you could roll your own, but everyone participates.

With phones, you just need to agree on the country codes and everything that happens after that is everyone's own business. Mail even more so, you drop it off somewhere at the destination country and then it will involve varying amounts of manual processing to further distribute it. It just feels different.

<comment><USER14> I don't think it's accurate to consider the internet decentralized. Consider the entire domain name system is under ICANN control with a couple dozen root servers. Or the backbone which is almost entirely owned by Level3, Cogent, and a few other regional carriers.

Redundant is nice, but it's not decentralized.

<comment><USER15> Did you mean redundant (not or no longer needed or useful; superfluous) or resilient (able to withstand or recover quickly from difficult conditions)?

:)

<comment><USER16> redundant - /Engineering/ (of a component) not strictly necessary to functioning but included in case of failure in another component.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Those that know their history better could expand upon this, but isn't this what happened in the late 1800s and early 1900s where globalization peaked and then gave way to nationalism/protectionism ?

Perhaps we're just dealing with a natural cycle of trade expansion followed by protectionism.

<comment><USER18> Perhaps it is a natural cycle, but that doesn't mean we have to stop fighting it.

<comment><USER17> I think you misunderstood me. What I'm saying is that perhaps we _are_ in the fighting portion of the cycle where free trade has reached some extreme where individual nations feel like they need to rein it in a bit in order to retain their autonomy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> SESTA & GDPR just did. I'm generally in favor of the ideas of GDPR but these countries are all imposing ridiculous constraints that crush & quell the very small would be's & gdpr especially is vulgarly pathetically unilateral. But SESTA is truly vile. Some safe harbor is required & the US fucking wrecked it. That China wants to rewrite is a comedy compared to what the west did in two thousand fucking eighteen. Lordy lordy do have mercy we got proper fucked by the rules rewrites this year.

</comment><comment><USER20> There's nothing mentioned in this article that's either a new type of strategy or anything limited to China.

Three objectives:

1\. _legitimate desire to address substantial cybersecurity challenges, like defending against cyber attacks and keeping stolen personal data off the black market_

2\. _support domestic industry, in order to wean the government off its dependence on foreign technology components for certain IT products deemed essential to economic and national security_

3\. _expand Beijing's power to surveil and control the dissemination of economic, social, and political information online_

Replace Beijing with <country's capital city> in #3 and all of those points sound like what Western countries are doing. There's nothing noteworthy in those three points. What's noteworthy is that #3 is becoming prevalent in countries that consider themselves 'free'.

Other things listed, such as employing people to manipulate content, is done elsewhere, but it's done by private companies rather than 'the state'. Not new, but the singular direction makes this stand out in a 1984 way. The Tanzania example is just a modernised version of the US' manifest destiny behaviour in Central America and other 'strategic' nations ( _cough_ Ukraine _cough_ ).

Where China is a leader, others are (often hypocritically) following. Where they're a follower, the leading has been done by the West.

" _China's control-driven model defies international openness, interoperability, and collaboration, the foundations of global internet governance and, ultimately, of the internet itself._ "

Replace China with "Facebook" or "Google" or even "Apple" or "Microsoft" and the sentence still rings true. Singularly calling China out smells like fairly blatant propaganda.

Openness, interoperability, and collaboration are utopian ideals of the Internet that were achieved when the Internet was a network of universities and scientific institutions back in the late 80's, up until "view your trolley / Checkout" was a thing. Profit is what's re-written the Rules of the Internet. Why else would it be so full of ads?

The nation states have just followed the money.

</comment><comment><USER21> Kind of an odd error message.

" Looks like you are offline

You'll need to check back here once you have restored your connection. Thanks for your patience. "

But you're clearly online if you can see the error message....

<comment><USER22> I think Web workers can actually do that if you've visited the site once before, even if you can't connect now.

<comment><USER23> Service Workers, probably.

<comment><USER22> Doh, you are right. That's what I was thinking of.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Europe has been rewriting the rules of the internet for a while. It's amazing how europe/EU is getting a pass when it comes to censorship. Not to mention what our corporations and our media have been doing.

The problems with the internet isn't china. It's our media and our government but for some odd reason, all I hear is "china/beijing".

Is beijing the reason why there is so much censorship? Is beijing the reason why google search is so terrible? Is it beijing why there is so much censorship of the social media and the rest of the internet in the west? Of course not. The real reason is News Corp, NYTimes, WashingtonPost, The Atlantic along with corporate america and their stooges in the government.

Try googling anything. Half of the frontpage is now links to nytimes, washingtonpost, cnn and rest of the media.

I remember googling for yanny vs laurel not too long ago. Do you know what the top result was? A nytimes article. It wasn't the original instagram post. It wasn't the reddit post that made it go viral. It was a nytimes post. And almost all the results on the first page of google were links to news companies. I've been using google search since the late 90s. It's pathetic what google search has become. Youtube is going down the same path.

I'd take the atlantic a bit more seriously if they did an article about themselves or the rest of the media in regards to the rewriting of the rules of the internet. The biggest supporters of censorship and destruction of the internet is the media in the west.

<comment><USER25> This is whataboutism. Nothing the West does compares to China's firewall and blanket surveillance, even if we stipulate we live in a corporatocracy and include the private surveillance of Facebook, Google, et al (which would make for an unfair comparison). I'm no apologist for the West's behavior or any of the things you point out, but let's not try and minimize the human rights violations China's committing -- and actually proud of, for what it's worth.

<comment><USER26> I think the point was something like JP's "clean your room before you try to change the world".

Let's fix our system before we go grand-standing about China.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> > This alternative would include technical standards requiring foreign > companies to build versions of their products compliant with Chinese > standards, and pressure to comply with government surveillance policies. It > would require data to be stored on servers in-country and restrict transfer > of data outside China without government permission. It would also permit > government agencies and critical infrastructure systems to source only from > local suppliers.

That is the trend in the EU and US as well. Cyber protectionism, more or less.

To be crystal clear: a nation's critical infrastructure that is produced or designed in places which are neutral or quasi-hostile to that nation is suspect. It's perfectly reasonable for China to want its critical infrastructure supply chain local.

It's _also_ perfectly reasonable to mandate that products sold in China be compliant with Chinese standards.

The open question is what constitutes "transfer of data". And, to again be crystal clear: China is notorious for abuse of human rights and for being at the forefront of applied digital surveillance of its citizens. Which is a shame.

> we cannot take for granted that the internet will remain a place of free > expression where open markets can flourish.

The internet has not been a place of genuinely free expression for something like a decade now; platform operators set boundaries. Note that open markets are disjunct from free expression.

> . At a roundtable in Dar es Salaam sponsored by Beijing, Edwin Ngonyani, > Tanzania's deputy minister for transport and communications, explained, "Our > Chinese friends have managed to block such media in their country and > replaced them with their homegrown sites that are safe, constructive, and > popular." Among other countries where China invests heavily, Nigeria has > adopted measures requiring that consumer data be hosted in Nigeria, while > Egypt has pending legislation that would mandate ride-sharing companies to > store data in-country while also making it more accessible to authorities. > Chinese partners like Ethiopia, Sudan, and Egypt engage in aggressive online > content control.

Notice that there are benefits here: citizens' data is being stored in a country where they have jurisdiction to sue over misuse. I consider that a Good Thing. But censorship, again, is problematic. The desire to be an individual entails being wanting to able to say and write what you desire, regardless of the government's censorship (and China does have people who want this- it is not special in this regard!)

> foundational principles of the internet in market-based democracies:

how disgusting a word choice! we're not liberal (free) democracies, we're market (to be bought and sold) democracies.

<comment><USER28> Markets are a prerequisite for liberal democracy.

<comment><USER27> > Markets are a prerequisite for liberal democracy.

That is an assertion, and my recollection of history suggests that is not the case. Would you mind backing that up?

<comment><USER28> Can you give an example of a liberal democracy without markets?

<comment><USER27> Mmm- no, I don't think that's how this works. You're dodging the question.

(markets have multiple definitions. a bazaar or person to person trade has existed as an independent variable of governance. a stock market ("the market" usually referred to in these sorts of articles) exists today in a wide variety of modern governance, from authoritarian to liberal. Arguably Athens had a liberal democracy, but no stock market)

<comment><USER28> > Mmm- no, I don't think that's how this works.

How what works?

> You're dodging the question.

I'm not. Every liberal democracy I know of has a market economy.

> a stock market ("the market" usually referred to in these sorts of articles)

Why should "markets" refer exclusively to stock markets? What about the most essential type of market: commodities? Markets have existed for millenia, since humans began to trade.

> exists today in a wide variety of modern governance, from authoritarian to > liberal

I didn't say liberal democracy is a prerequisite for markets (and I don't think it is). I said markets are a prerequisite for liberal democracy.

> Arguably Athens had a liberal democracy, but no stock market

But they had markets, which agrees with what I said. In fact, ancient Athens engaged extensively in trade. It's one of the major reasons it became an important center of culture, arts, and philosophy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Western companies filter out "hate speech". Chinese companies do the same. In China, the definition of "hate speech" also includes anything that is critical of the government or Xi Jinping.

<comment><USER30> My ISP doesn't filter hate speach, and it'd better damn stay that way.

<comment><USER31> You ISP may not, but plenty of other filtering is going on on social media, YouTube, and all sorts of other sites. I say this without commentary on whether it's good or bad, but it is _definitely_ happening.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> By requiring connections to be end-to-end encrypted (by pushing for HTTPS and other strong encryption methods), web architects have forced nations into an all-or-nothing position. They must completely control their slice of the internet, because otherwise they can't accomplish their goals. The future is fragmented, incompatible internets.

If protocols and services were designed instead to allow a measure of control at a high level, these nations could still do all the things they're going to do anyway, but allow the internet to remain open. For example, data wouldn't need to remain within a nation's borders if the nation still had control over it, at least within their own networks. They wouldn't have to create their own Facebook if they could manipulate Facebook inside their borders. You could still have cooperative compatible services, with controls where they were required.

I guess it's western ideals that make these suggestions sound horrible. But different countries are going to work differently - the fracturing of the internet and laws governing its use is the proof of that. You can choose your response: pick up your toys and go home, or make concessions so that everyone can use the same toys.

<comment><USER33> Welcome the free world to play with our toys. It is all-or-nothing. You can't stop math.

<comment><USER13> Too bad everyone thinks they are the true free world and everyone else got it wrong.

<comment><USER34> With end-to-end encryption it is easy to tell: the free world is where end-to- end encryption is unrestricted.

<comment><USER32> Actually the free world is all non-Communist countries. It's a propaganda term invented by the west (literally they were interchangeable, "free world" and "western world"). You can still see this influence as the use of the phrase "the leader of the free world" is exclusively held for the President of the United States.

The "free world" as a broader idea is still kind of useless in the modern world. Your government may not have made end-to-end encryption illegal (yet) but as private corporations actually run everything that people use, they get to impose their own will and determine your practical "freedom". There's no law preventing Apple from changing its encryption technology.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> This isn't totally bad. China has shown that it is possible to both offer an environment that fosters startups and online communities operating to their maximum creative potential while policing for things that incite hate, forms of bigotry, and ideas that create dangerous divisions. While China isn't perfect, I wouldn't mind if America was made less influential when it comes to the Internet.

<comment><USER28> > things that incite hate, forms of bigotry, and ideas that create dangerous > divisions

Is that a euphemism for "anything the Communist party dislikes"?

<comment><USER36> A clear and present danger. Youth are being exposed and educated to a much higher level today. They know full well the uselessness of such dogma and warped thinking.</comment></comment></comment>


Purism's Librem 5 phone starts shipping–a fully open GNU/Linux phone - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/09/purisms-librem-5-phone-starts-shipping-a-fully-open-gnulinux-phone/ <comment><USER2> I had the original Palm Pre... after two years HP cancelled the Palm Pre 2 and other upcoming phones after WebOS tanked (was mismanaged absorbed into nonpublicfacing IP). I did a Debian chroot and used the phone as a Wi-Fi only thinclient for another year then sold it (3 years of use!) for more than I had paid for the phone. In my opinion this is the first phone to rival the Palm Pre which ran Debian at its core. I look forward to owning the first phone that I will truly enjoy in over 7 years. Corporatism and clueless consumerism has not won yet. This is still truly a bastion of freedom compared to the way COMCAST/AT&T took over mom-and-pop ISPs then deleted all copper. The fight is not lost! Happy hacking!!

</comment><comment><USER3> I wonder if you can install any linux app on it, like Wireshark, Gimp, Inkscape, LibreOffice apps, Blender, desktop Firefox and Chromium (with Web Inspector and extensions!), etc. At least, what I understand by a "linux phone" is one whose window manager is specialized for phones, and that has a few apps with their interfaces specialized for phones, but that can install and use any linux app like on any other linux machine. If they would clarify this, I think it would boost people's motivations in buying this.

I also wonder how one might go about changing the OS. Would it support live- USBs via OTG? or booting from the microSD? Do they offer an ISO of PureOS to reinstall? I wonder how difficult/easy it would be to do a normal Archlinux ARM installation, like on any other computer.

The marketing seems to focus on privacy, and being fully open source, and buying for the community benefit of promoting better tech in the market. However, if it's a "linux phone" that can run any linux app and even easily lets you run whatever distro you want, then there are practical, personal benefits to buying this, too. It wouldn't be instantly obsolete like so many people are saying.

And if the window manager and phone apps they made are distributed separately, then one can install their favorite distro, and install those programs, getting the same look and usability on their favorite distro.

I only found this secondary-source article[1] from a couple years ago that says it would support booting most distros, but is there anything official?

[1] [https://www.cyberciti.biz/linux-news/the-librem-5-your- ultim...](https://www.cyberciti.biz/linux-news/the-librem-5-your-ultimate- gnulinux-floss-smartphone/)

<comment><USER2> GIMP? Chromium? Even as a decade-long gimp user: I absolutely hope not. There is a huuuge difference between GNU/Linux (of which, 32/64-bit and architecture are of course considerations) and packages. I certainly hope they aren't handicapping the phone by enabling bloated cruft trying to keep up with this crap.

...before the downvotes: I literally use each of these daily with the exception of blender...

Edit: you want to install your own WM without messing with DE? Good luck to you, is nothing good enough? This is the first step toward freedom since the bad guys won!

<comment><USER3> I don't mean for them to come preinstalled and I don't mean that I personally would typically use all those programs specifically on a phone, but something that sucks about phones is that they have a completely different software ecosystem. If it's a linux phone, I think it should be possible to use the same programs. I can run any linux program on any raspberry-pi which also runs ARM, why not on a phone?

At least, I would like to have the option of having a web browser with a web inspector available using only the phone and the same extensions that are available for desktop.

> is nothing good enough?

I'm just concerned that the consensus seems to be that $700 is too much for the personal value this gives. The marketing even needs to resort to statements like:

> Vote with your wallet to support a future safe from digital exploitation and > create a secure and respectful environment for you, your children and > society as a whole.

I agree that that's nice, but for me personally, it's not reason enough to buy it at that price. We all understand the reasons why it's $700, but I think being able to install other distros and being able to install any linux app like on any other computer would motivate a lot of people. It would be an additional edge this would have over other phones.

There's at least 1 comment[1] (with upvotes) on that article that shares the view that having few apps and an incompatible ecosystem would be a concern.

This doesn't mean that they must support those programs or other distros, just their possible installation would be enough for anyone I think.

I'm just looking for ways to justify my buying it.

[1] [https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/09/purisms- librem-5-pho...](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/09/purisms- librem-5-phone-starts-shipping-a-fully-open-gnulinux- phone/?comments=1&post=38024531)

<comment><USER4> > I'm just looking for ways to justify my buying it.

How about the fact that you can connect a monitor, keyboard, and mouse — and use it as a full desktop Linux machine running any desktop apps you like?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> So how many non-Android smart phones have there been past Nokia N9?

\- Jolla/Sailfish is still alive, but not doing particularly well (I'm typing on one.)

\- Firefox failed

\- Ubuntu failed (I hear a community is still continuing with the SW, but not sure whether it runs on any phone HW)

I'm sure I missed something, but I'm sure I did not miss any real good ones.

<comment><USER6> There is a Tizen (Samsung) phone

<comment><USER5> True. I was sure I missed at least one, probably several. But even a giant like Samsung doesn't seem to be able to make a well-known success story with using Android.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "In other words, nearly any phone you buy today will have a more powerful, more power-efficient CPU than the Librem 5—even $160 Android phones are now packing eight-core SoCs built on more power-efficient manufacturing processes. That $700 price Purism is asking (more than a OnePlus 7 Pro!) is the price you pay for a niche smartphone with none of the economies of scale you get with normal smartphone parts."

It seems like the thing they always forget is that the first off the line product of any kind generally runs more expensive. Also, by knowing that your phone is private, it's definitely not "unknowingly" sponsored by third parties interested in information harvesting. Not many smart phones can unqualifyingly say that anymore.

<comment><USER8> boot speed seems to be much faster with Librem 5 compared to Android. I suspect that most apps will just run faster on Librem. [https://puri.sm/posts/librem-5-vs-android-which-boots- faster...](https://puri.sm/posts/librem-5-vs-android-which-boots-faster/)</comment></comment>


Private Internet Access: We Are Removing Our Russian Presence - <AUTHOR> To Our Beloved Users,
The Russian Government has passed a new law that mandates that every provider must log all Russian internet traffic for up to a year. We believe that due to the enforcement regime surrounding this new law, some of our Russian Servers (RU) were recently seized by Russian Authorities, without notice or any type of due process. We think it's because we are the most outspoken and only verified no-log VPN provider.
Luckily, since we do not log any traffic or session data, period, no data has been compromised. Our users are, and will always be, private and secure.
Upon learning of the above, we immediately discontinued our Russian gateways and will no longer be doing business in the region.
To make it clear, the privacy and security of our users is our number one priority. For preventative reasons, we are rotating all of our certificates. Furthermore, we're updating our client applications with improved security measures to mitigate circumstances like this in the future, on top of what is already in place. In addition, our manual configurations now support the strongest new encryption algorithms including AES-256, SHA-256, and RSA-4096.
All Private Internet Access users must update their desktop clients at https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/pages/client-support/ and our Android App at Google Play. Manual openvpn configurations users must also download the new config files from the client download page.
We have decided not to do business within the Russian territory. We're going to be further evaluating other countries and their policies.
In any event, we are aware that there may be times that notice and due process are forgone. However, we do not log and are default secure against seizure.
If you have any questions, please contact us at firstname.lastname@example.com. <comment><USER2> How difficult would it be for this to happen in the US?

<comment><USER3> One word: Lavabit.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Tea or Coffee? - <AUTHOR>

I'm a coffee man myself! <comment><USER2> Tea... the taste/smell of coffee is so disgusting to me that it makes me nautious for as long as I can remember. Even as an ingredient in food, there is something about coffee that is completely repulsive.

</comment><comment><USER3> Used to be coffee, but now i am experimenting with green tea, i have found that it provides a milder effect but more lasting and it doesn't have the crash associated with coffee.

</comment><comment><USER4> Both ... just not at the same time. That would be like crossing the streams!

</comment><comment><USER5> I switch between coffee, tea and yerba mate.

</comment><comment><USER6> Yeah... it's tea for me.

"MISS TEEEEA!"

</comment><comment><USER7> Chai or better yet, cutting.

</comment><comment><USER8> Coffee and Yerba mate

</comment><comment><USER9> Just water.</comment>


Aerial Imagery: Assessing Dorian's Damage from the Air - <AUTHOR> https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/news/sep19/dorian-imagery.html <comment><USER2> I was on Grand Bahama island in Freeport last summer for my Brother-in-law's wedding. We took a guided tour one day and there were still entire parts of the city ravaged by the previous hurricane that came through.

China Town was uninhabitable and was just a bunch of collapsed buildings.

I can't imagine the damage there now.</comment>


Firefox makes this color ugly - <AUTHOR> The color #fcfc04 looks completely different (uglier imo) on Firefox while Chrome and Safari display it the same.
I was visiting this website when I noticed
https://www.copyipsum.com/
Why does this happen? <comment><USER2> On my computer, Safari and Chrome both display in sRGB while Firefox displays in the "native" (aka wild west) RGB. You can verify this by opening up the "Digital Color Meter" app.

</comment><comment><USER3> No, the color itself is ugly, Firefox will just show you the truth

</comment><comment><USER4> It looks the same on my TN-panel monitor with Firefox 80 and Chrome 84 on Windows 10 and Linux. Could you post a screenshot?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's the same for my friend and I.

[https://imgur.com/gallery/iDkW4qj](https://imgur.com/gallery/iDkW4qj)

<comment><USER5> I'm looking at your screenshot on both chromium and firefox, and I can't see a difference in color between the two sides of your picture. I can't see the difference when visiting the website directly either.

Checking the color code with the eyedropper of gcolor2, I see the site is #FCFC04 when checking it directly on both browsers, and in your picture, the right one is #FCFC07, while the left one is #FCFD00.

They all look the same to me though. It's not distinguishable to my eye.

<comment><AUTHOR> So, on both my colleagues iMac and mine, they look very very different, however viewing the Imgur on my iPhone 8, I see no difference.

Strange

<comment><USER5> It could be the display and/or the OS.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Online platform to learn cryptography - <AUTHOR> https://cryptools.github.io/learn/ <comment><USER2> Doesn't show exceptions when running javascript making the debug cycle very painful.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've fixed it</comment></comment>


A letter about Google AMP - <AUTHOR> http://ampletter.org/ <comment><USER2> I do not believe page speed should play a role in search rankings at all. It has nothing to do with the content and the person with the correct and most relevant content doesn't always have the relevant skills or a DevOps specialist handy to meet the requirements.

This only helps the heavy handed SEO optimized sites with deep pockets and time to kill get yet another edge.

The article with the best insight isn't likely to be the one with the perfecly optimized website.

I understand that pagespeed effects end user experience when they hit a website, however that's not what I searched for. I did not search "fastest website with okay knowledge about dogs" I asked for "website with the best knowledge about dogs".

I want Google to be able to show me the most awesome page about dogs. The most in depth and relevant information. That niche dog blogger who is so passionate that they spend all their time researching dogs. I don't want "10 cool facts about dogs by Buzzfeed".

<comment><USER3> This seems clearly false.

Let's say the page with the best information about dogs took an infinite amount of time to load (never loaded). I don't think you'd want that page to be ranked highly.

What about if that page took a year to load?

What about if that page took an hour?

A minute?

What's your cutoff? Let's say, generously, that you're willing to wait 30 minutes for the page to load. Why such a sharp cutoff? Why do pages that take 30 minutes and 1 second to load get penalized, but pages that take 30 minutes are treated as fine? The user experience is basically just as acceptable (by your standards) / just as bad (by my standards).

Perhaps maybe instead of a sharp cutoff we need some sort of sliding scale, where pages that are only slightly slower than optimal are penalized only slightly, and pages that are much slower than optimal are penalized more.

Gosh, that sounds familiar.

<comment><USER2> Your assumption is that the time factor can't be handled by the user. Users try somewhere else when a page doesn't load, and in my opinion that is fine. Granted, it's my opinion. Perhaps most users don't agree and here we are.

If it is truly the best information, it is what I want and I will wait. If I trust that Google can give me the best information then I would be willing to wait. I give up easily now because I can't trust Google to give me quality results. I will not wait for an ad bloated news aggregator.

<comment><USER4> When a user does a search, clicks on a result, that result does not have what they want so they hit back, and then they click on another result that is a failure of the search engine. "Users can decide the site is worthless after they click" is an opportunity for somebody to come up with a better system.

<comment><USER2> I guess I simply don't agree. The search engine should give me the best information, period. It does not, and one of the reasons it does not is because it is busy prioritizing things that aren't relevant to content.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > _Instead of granting premium placement in search results only to AMP, > provide the same perks to all pages that meet an objective, neutral > performance criterion such as Speed Index._

But _who_ will measure it "objectively" (leaving aside no one agrees on how to universally measure load speed).

Googlebot? From what location and what machine types and how often? Should I get search results based on an average of all possible variables or the closest matching my locale and device? What happens when page content changes? What happens when the page sometimes loads slow content (e.g. ads) and sometimes doesn't? What happens when SEOers start cloaking their ad loads or taking advantage of flaws in the benchmark?

It's good to have a speed signal in search rankings, but this petition shouldn't pretend that's an objective replacement for something that always displays content first and loads media and third party content async

<comment><USER6> GoogleBot runs only in a few datacenters in certain locations in the world with amazing connectivity.

It is a horrible predictor of load times.

<comment><USER7> This is probably the easiest problem to solve. Hosting a GoogleSpeedTestBot in every city with the sole purpose of speed testing a page would have laughably negligible impact on Google's resources.

<comment><USER6> You're proposing hosting thousands and thousands of servers across every city in the world where each server would be accessing all the top 1M sites in the world every day and measuring the speed of each page in that site?

Seriously?

<comment><USER7> Not every day; at the time of publishing, and maybe few days later. (This could be improved even further: you don't need to access every article. If you could identify a page that's representative of a real article, that could suffice. Maybe have periodic random checks to see if this is still representative.)

Not every city; the top 500 cities would probably cover 90+% of the users.

You're not understanding the scale of Google. They're incredibly good at exactly this stuff.

<comment><USER6> Oh, I am, but maybe you're not understanding the scale of the internet. Connections, cables, CDNs change on a daily and weekly basis.

Is a cable is cut between Jakarta and Singapore, it can take months to fix as Indonesia only allows Indonesian-flagged cable layers to operate in its waters.

Individual datacenters, CDNs, cables are going offline constantly, so you'd need to be continuously testing every site to rank it correctly. Not only that, each page in a site might have a very different structure, so you can't just rank a site, you need to rank individual pages and articles too, which means testing every new page and article from every city.

I guess you're not getting the scale of that...

AMP standardizes the CDN serving part, largely eliminating that issue. AMP articles can't prevent 3rd party CDNs from caching them, which means that they can be served from the closest CDN after the first time they are used.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I would normally never do this, but over the past couple weeks I've been drafting a blog post proposing an open AMP alternative called Particle.

You can read it here: [https://andrewrabon.com/particle-a-proposal-for-tinier- html-...](https://andrewrabon.com/particle-a-proposal-for-tinier-html-and- css-1760ca148722) [Draft]

Would anyone here be interested in seeing the blog post completed and/or helping me build it out? If so drop me a line at andrewrabon at gmail. :)

I also want feedback on if my ideas are actually solving a problem, and are doing so in the correct way. I only recently joined a news publisher so I'm not 100% cognizant of the issues at play.

<comment><USER9> Sounds like extra work that websites would need to do in order to adopt. If there was a way to say automatically remove the javascript and other html extensions and the automatically serve the site via particle, then that would facilitate adoption.

<comment><USER8> Hm, maybe have a <link rel> to the Particle version and switch over to that with a browser extension?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > Instead of granting premium placement in search results only to AMP, provide > the same perks to all pages that meet an objective, neutral performance > criterion such as Speed Index. Publishers can then use any technical > solution of their choice.

Hasn't Google gone on record saying that AMP doesn't affect search results given the same page load speed for non-AMP sites?

<comment><USER11> Except that AMP pages are often in the band of promoted results that show above the remainder of the search results, at least in the mobile app. And are prominently icon'ed in the desktop results.

So yeah, Google's not honest about this.

<comment><USER12> From my test the AMP icon in Google's search result is gone (Chrome, Android, Incognito tab).

Disclaimer: I work for Google but not on AMP product.

<comment><USER13> Search for Trump on iOS and you'll see an AMP icon.

<comment><USER14> Is the issue the icon or the carousel being at the top? I just checked and the carousel had both AMP and non-AMP content for me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Doesn't [https://amphtml.wordpress.com/2018/01/09/improving-urls- for-...](https://amphtml.wordpress.com/2018/01/09/improving-urls-for-amp- pages/) address one of their two demands?

<comment><USER16> To me the proposal there is arguably even scarier than what AMP is doing now.

It requires changing browsers, to let people distribute Google Hosted Apps on their own domains (as long as Google approves). Sites distributed in this way will get preferential treatment by Google.

This is essentially an App store model, similar to Google Play, and the really big danger is that we end up in a place where you either distribute (and host) your website through Google's AMP registry, or you're not actually on the web (in the same way that distributing your Android app as an APK outside of the Play store is not a realistic distribution channel).

I hope Firefox, Safari and Edge will resist this.

<comment><USER17> > you either distribute (and host) your website through Google's AMP registry

As long as anyone can setup their own AMP-like cache and build a search engine similar to Google, that also supports preloading... then I'm not sure it so bad.

The proposal GP refers to has a lot of use-cases, it basically makes caching of HTTPS by third-parties possible. At-least to some extent.

<comment><USER18> > As long as anyone can setup their own AMP-like cache and build a search > engine similar to Google, that also supports preloading... then I'm not sure > it so bad.

Yes, anyone could build a cache. But can anyone build a cache that can compete with Google's absolutely massive infrastructure and pile of money, not to mention the reach they already have with search?

I'd say this is not a discussion on the level of 'can you build a better product and win from a giant company?', more like 'can you build a planet and get everyone to move there?'

<comment><USER19> Cloudflare can (and does). So do Apple, Facebook, Microsoft and a few others.

Yes, the web is dominated by big companies more than ever before but there's at least some competition left.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Personally, speaking as a search user, all I want from Google regards AMP is a setting that disables it in search results.

Google's results ordering is already sufficiently "optimized" away from my needs that as often as not I end up in 'verbatim' mode or on page 3 of the results before I get near what I'm looking for, so an extra layer of SEO- gameable "user convenience" isn't likely to make my google experience _that_ much worse.

Since the presence of AMP results is based on device detection, it seems a search setting removing them would be a simple matter. Google's unwillingness to provide it speaks volumes about their actual intent, IMO.

<comment><USER21> This is exactly my position on this also and the reason that I've moved to DuckDuckGo on my mobile in place of Google even though I much prefer Google as a search engine.

<comment><USER20> Thanks to Spivak, who mentions in another comment here [1] that "[https://encrypted.google.com](https://encrypted.google.com) doesn't serve AMP results" my phone now has a new default search!

1: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16108896](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16108896)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Google amp is a blessing on mobile, I don't give a damn't about site owners.

<comment><USER23> yeah, as a user AMP is awesome.

Dear website owners who wrote this letter: yes, amp has it's downsides but the reason we have amp is that the internet as a whole failed to make fast sites. you had your chance for the previous ~30 years, and it's clear you couldn't be bothered to make speed a priority. I'm glad you're angry that AMP is eating your lunch, because maybe you'll actually start trying to compete now. But you aren't getting my sympathy.

<comment><USER24> The whole point is, Google has shut down the competition. One Google has everyone on "the platform" they now get to mandate new rules. There may as well not BE any more web frameworks. The idea that we "did this to ourselves, and are now getting our just desserts" isn't going to fair well for anyone - not even the user. Google is now the gatekeeper and independent attempts to chip away at that foundation are almost a waste of time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I don't see the point of AMP. Why not just give certain sites a little icon/preference if they're faster than XXXms? Glad to see this letter says as much.

<comment><USER26> Because they did that, for years, and next to nobody changed anything.

Fast websites stayed fast, and slow websites stayed slow. They also gave out tons of free "speed test" tools to make it easy for developers to test their speed, and improve it. They even made apache and nginx plugins that would auto-optimize assets as it served them! And still basically nobody used them.

Plus it's not just about "faster than XXXms". What is that time measured to? Time to text on the screen? Can they game it by lazy-loading images, then videos, then ads, then 6mb of other javascript and social networking stuff and a comment system and...?

You could try a "size limit", but then you penalize asset heavy sites (like high-resolution image sharing sites, or video sites).

So their solution was to make a very restrictive system where you are forced to do things "the right way" (for at least one definition of "right"), and to pump that up in the search results.

Plugins were made for common blogging and news platforms, and now a portion of the web loads significantly faster for many, and I think that's a win.

It's not perfect, but it's at least the first thing that I've seen google try in this area that is actually working.

Obviously there is benefit to Google as a company in that now results that are served through their AMP system are faster than those of some of their competitors, and AMP gives them a nice easy way to pull some structured information from an article for things like the carousel or other non-search offerings, but I genuinely don't believe that was the main motivator, seeing as Google has years of examples of failed attempts to "fix" this problem (though maybe I'm just not cynical enough!).

<comment><USER27> But they _could_ do the best of both worlds if they wanted. The launch of AMP was coupled with the "carousel" that appears at the top of search result pages. Only AMP pages are eligible to appear in that carousel. Why not keep the carousel, but prioritise by overall load time?

<comment><USER26> I believe they kind of do.

IIRC they treat AMP pages the same as any other in terms of ranking, but since AMP is super fast, it gets a natural boost.

(obviously AMP gets other benefits like the lightning bolt badge and inclusion in the carousel)

<comment><USER27> Is that not a contradiction in terms? Placement in the carousel means you are placed above all other search results, that's in no way being treated the same as others in terms of ranking.

<comment><USER26> Ah I misunderstood what you said.

I believe that some of the data in the carousel is pulled from the way that AMP is structured, however I'm not 100% sure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I support this completely and I would go one step further. We need a search engine that is free of CPM-monetization practices. It has become clear that Google is driving the web intentionally in a profit-maximizing direction at the expense of users and ordinary developers.

Move ad blocking to the indexing layer. Create a corner of the web that is naturally fast and user-friendly again without resorting to corporate-defined subsets of well-documented open web technologies.

<comment><USER29> And it will get paid... How? Ads are keeping your net experience free.

<comment><USER28> It would still be ads, but much nicer ones that come out of direct negotiation between publishers and advertisers, instead of some shady clickbait ad agency randomly selected to invade your site by Google's algorithms.

My experience has been that direct-sold ads produce more revenue for publishers than programmatic ads. I would love to see research on this one day.

<comment><USER30> > My experience has been that direct-sold ads produce more revenue for > publishers than programmatic ads

Yes, but do they provide an equally good ROI for advertisers? (And the same level of granularity, tracking and reach as something like Google Adwords?) That's the real issue at play.

<comment><USER28> If price is any measure of value, yes.

<comment><USER31> "Premium" sites (like the ones with engineering resources to build to AMP spec) e.g. NYTimes, WA Post, WSJ, are not really prime concern - they can afford to move to AMP and do whatever kind of ad sales they want (direct/programmatic).

It's the smaller websites (Bob's Blog) who can't afford eng resources to build to AMP, and to build fast ads, who are "suffering" a loss of search results prioritistion. (These smaller sites may turn to shady ad networks, and suffer further with shitty ad payload, further lowering search preferences if based on page load).

Does that mean smaller websites are stifled? Not sure...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I'll be giving a talk about what you can do to get your site to load faster without using AMP in Portland, Oregon on February 4th. [https://pnwdrupalsummit.org/2018/sessions/how-get- perfect-10...](https://pnwdrupalsummit.org/2018/sessions/how-get- perfect-100-google-pagespeed-insights-what-might-happen-if-you-dont)

Long story short 100/100 with page speed is possible with most sites; further optimize for Speed Index by using rel="preload" for assets above the fold. What else am I missing?

<comment><USER33> You're missing the lightning icon.

<comment><USER32> So by not using AMP, Google search result pages will not display the lightning icon next to the link to your domain? Is this what you mean?

<comment><USER33> Yes, and thus your boss won't pay you to optimize anything if he doesn't get the lightning bolt.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Honestly, let's all of us web developers make an agreement together that we'll focus on plain text and intelligently-compressed images rather than JavaScript and auto-playing videos in our projects moving forward and recommend that we do the same where we work.

People are trusting us to help them with technical decisions and we have a responsibility to make sure the web is accessible to as many people as possible. Our opinions have tremendous sway, even though it might not feel like it.

The web really started to go sideways when we followed the trend away from Progressive Enhancement. Let's get back to basics, pure and simple.

<comment><USER35> When thinking about progressive enhancement, it's debatable what your baseline should be. I'm not sure I agree we should take plain text as the baseline. There's a development cost to everything. I genuinely believe you can create a better experience with a JavaScript-powered app/site, where the server doesn't have to re-render the entire page when someone interacts withit to show new content, and developing server-side rendering so that the same page can be rendered by the server, as well as constructed by JavaScript on the client, with content from an API, takes a lot of time. Even though it'd make it more accessible to clients who have JavaScript disabled, or where rendering the page client-side takes longer than rendering it on the server and sending it as a whole.

I completely agree about unnecessary annoyances such as auto-playing video, or load-blocking ads. #perfmatters.

<comment><USER34> A close baseline is Hacker News. The site works perfectly without JavaScript but is a bit faster (don't have to wait for page refreshes on upvote) if you enable it. If Hacker News had a more responsive stylesheet, it would definitely be something we could hold up as an example.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I keep telling myself that when someone finally takes Google down, AMP would standout as example of where Google went wrong. Basically, almost every search result I click on now requires THREE clicks:

1\. click from the search page to the search result AMP page

2\. click on a link on the AMP page to see the _original_ link

3\. click on the original link to bring the original search result

<comment><USER37> [https://encrypted.google.com](https://encrypted.google.com) doesn't serve AMP results. Add it to your browser or access it from ddg.gg with !g bang.

<comment><USER38> Amp finally helped me make the switch to ddg. I'd completely forgotten about it until I saw this thread.

<comment><USER39> Nice :)

I too have ddg as default search engine. I refuse to bookmark (or set as default) google again, so to use it I need to type part of the domain, wait for it to load, and either paste or retype the query. That cost also helps me to stay off of it, even if they have a better search engine. The risks involved with one company owning most of the things one does online, is not worth it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I have constantly heard that they can't reliably measure the performance of a website unless it is AMP. I don't buy this argument at all. Google already has mentioned to using site speed for as a minor ranking factor, why can't they use the same methodology for putting websites in the carousell too?

Also, they have Real user data for over a million websites - [https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2017/12/crux](https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2017/12/crux)

This is a way better indicator of site speed as opposed to if the site is AMP or not. Would be so cool if Google used this data as a pre condition to put sites into the carousell!

</comment><comment><USER41> Maybe I'm being too cynical, but I would suggest removing, or at least adding 'nofollow', to all the personal hyperlinks at the bottom of the letter to make it look less like SEO spam.

It devalues the letter, in my opinion, because I see them as people signing the letter for the sole purpose of promoting themselves.

But like I said...maybe I'm being too cynical.

<comment><USER42> Half of those appear to be twitter handles. So yeah, you are probably being too cynical ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> I agree with all the points, but I would add one:

Show AMP results for all browsers. AFAIK, only Chrome (and maybe Safari, can't confirm) are shown AMP links in the search results.

There is people (like me) who like to support other browsers , or like some addons. I get it, Google: you want your browser to be the most popular. You've done it. Now treat the rest of them like capable pieces of software.

<comment><USER44> Ahh, that would be why I've never seen one. I was wondering what all this hullabaloo was about.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> It's sad that only Google is getting punished when Amazon owns a major portion of sales. Facebook is increasingly becoming the "home page" of small businesses all over the world. Etsy is now the ONLY place people can sell small hand-made art pieces. Ebay is the only marketplace to sell wholesale items on.

None of these platforms value add much that can't be built into whatever the next web becomes... But no organization is as powerful as a single one of them.

So Google is allowed to do this as long as all these other companies do what they are doing. I think what happened is that all the other disruptions were done to companies that don't know something could be better - they were not technologists, programmers, etc..

This letter is written by technologists, developers, so they know what google has done to steal the market. But no one here wants to apply the same logic to the other ones.

<comment><USER46> Er, if having a public petition about you is "being punished," those other companies have definitely been punished too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> This letter just seems to affirm that Google made a good business decision with AMP.

</comment><comment><USER48> It is odd all that everyone talks about the blockchain and the one problem no one talks about that it could solve is journalism.

News committed to an anonymous blockchain, immutable and potentially monitizable seems pretty interesting but maybe not as lucrative as other ideas.

Because AMP isn't about ads or speed, it's about editorial control. The same goes for Facebook and Apple.

I don't care how many press releases they put out denying it.

</comment><comment><USER49> I like the idea of an independent system that doesn't require publishers to opt-in to AMP. But in addition to Speed Index, I'd apply a perceptual diff to an ideal content rendering based on AMP-like heuristics.

</comment><comment><USER50> AMP, that thing you have never seen in the wild if you run firefox on your phone.

<comment><USER51> AMP pages show up for me when I use Bing in Firefox but not when I use Google.

<comment><USER52> Bing supports AMP, too.

[https://blogs.bing.com/search/September-2016/bing-app- joins-...](https://blogs.bing.com/search/September-2016/bing-app-joins-the- amp-open-source-effort)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> I switched to duckduckgo a few months ago and it has been the first time that I felt that I was not missing something... I tried to switch a few other times before that and the results were of much lower quality...

</comment><comment><USER54> Page loads < 600ms on mobile are a non-issue. All of the RTT talk and TTFB is not worth the tradeoff. If we can have this paradise where all content is prefetched and served/encrypted from Google to only save a fraction of a second, it isn't worth the sacrifice of freedom.

I'll take 500ms page loads any day when the content comes from the true origin. I don't want 60ms responses from a Google server when I'm trying to use the internet.

Why not just make google the internet?? There's power and freedom to be had when publishers aren't tied to a tech behemoth.

</comment><comment><USER55> Has no one yet tried forking AMP and simply removing all the Google? Call it OpAMP. You might not get into the carousel right off the bat, but if you get the ball rolling you'd have actual leverage instead of writing open letters on the internet.

<comment><USER56> Because it's much less work to just make fast pages using the HTML we already have. The problem is that fast isn't what google wants, they want their special HTML fork called AMP.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Google is a for-profit corp. How are these proposed changes in Google's self- interest?

<comment><USER57> Google was just fined 3 billion EUR for the advantage they gave to Google Shopping in their search, it is very much expected that if they continue with AMP, the same will happen again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> Does AMP open google up to new anti-competitive claims?

<comment><USER59> Probably not. Google and Apple both currently get away with things Microsoft could have never even dreamed of in the early 2000s and are not only living to tell the tale...but profiting by leaps and bounds abusing their power. The only excuse each of them has is that technically you have another "choice." Which somehow holds weight now but never did for Microsoft.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> I like what Twitter does with AMP.

If a page has AMP version, it redirects mobile users to AMP version, but on that page, not on its own cached version.

</comment><comment><USER61> Resistance is futile. Google is the web now. There are people who don't realize that gmail connects to a bigger world of email.

</comment><comment><USER62> I was wondering when Google serves content via AMP because it never happened to me. I mostly use DuckDuckGo but occasionally use Google when I'm not satisfied with the results. Turns out when you use Firefox on Android, Google serves a different (older?) version of the Google search that doesn't link to AMP.

Is AMP opt-in for site owners? Or is it determined by page load speed? It didn't use AMP for my website, but it also loads faster than google.com ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

</comment><comment><USER63> If google makes a copy of original content and it doesn't hold copyright, why nobody sued them for breach of copyright?

</comment><comment><USER64> My work firewall blocks this site; can someone paste the letter's contents?

<comment><USER65> (URLs not copied, sorry)

A letter about Google AMP

We are a community of individuals who have a significant interest in the development and health of the World Wide Web ("the Web"), and we are deeply concerned about Accelerated Mobile Pages ("AMP"), a Google project that purportedly seeks to improve the user experience of the Web.

In fact, AMP keeps users within Google's domain and diverts traffic away from other websites for the benefit of Google. At a scale of billions of users, this has the effect of further reinforcing Google's dominance of the Web.

We acknowledge the problem of Web pages being slow to load, relative to alternative, proprietary technologies such as Facebook Instant Articles and Apple News. Publishers (especially in news media) have long faced difficult choices and poor incentives, leading to bad decisions and compromises, and ultimately to terrible user experiences.

Search engines are in a powerful position to wield influence to solve this problem. However, Google has chosen to create a premium position at the top of their search results (for articles) and a "lightning" icon (for all types of content), which are only accessible to publishers that use a Google-controlled technology, served by Google from their infrastructure, on a Google URL, and placed within a Google controlled user experience. (source)

The AMP format is not in itself, a problem, but two aspects of its implementation reinforce the position of Google as a de facto standard platform for content, as Google seeks to drive uptake of AMP with content creators:

Content that "opts in" to AMP and the associated hosting within Google's domain is granted preferential search promotion, including (for news articles) a position above all other results. When a user navigates from Google to a piece of content Google has recommended, they are, unwittingly, remaining within Google's ecosystem. If Google's objective with AMP is indeed to improve user experience on the Web, then we suggest some simple changes that would do that while still allowing the Web to remain dynamic, competitive and consumer- oriented:

Instead of granting premium placement in search results only to AMP, provide the same perks to all pages that meet an objective, neutral performance criterion such as Speed Index. Publishers can then use any technical solution of their choice. Do not display third-party content within a Google page unless it is clear to the user that they are looking at a Google product. It is perfectly acceptable for Google to launch a "news reader", but it is not acceptable to display a page that carries only third party branding on what is actually a Google URL, nor to require that third party to use Google's hosting in order to appear in search results. We don't want to stop Google's development of AMP, and these changes do not require that. We also applaud search engines that give ranking preference to fast-loading pages. AMP can remain one of a range of technologies that give publishers high quality options for delivering Web pages quickly and making users happy.

However, publishers should not be compelled by Google's search dominance to put their content under a Google umbrella. The Web is not Google, and should not be just Google.

Sincerely, AS INDIVIDUALS

<long list of names>

<comment><USER66> Hyperlinks:

* Accelerated Mobile Pages: [https://ampproject.org](https://ampproject.org)

* Facebook Instant Articles: [https://instantarticles.fb.com/](https://instantarticles.fb.com/)

* Apple News: [https://developer.apple.com/news-publisher/](https://developer.apple.com/news-publisher/)

* source: [https://developers.google.com/search/docs/guides/about-amp](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/guides/about-amp)

* Speed Index: [https://sites.google.com/a/webpagetest.org/docs/using-webpag...](https://sites.google.com/a/webpagetest.org/docs/using-webpagetest/metrics/speed-index)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> AMP is borderline MITM.

<comment><USER17> then you didn't read yesterdays announcement: [https://amphtml.wordpress.com/2018/01/09/improving-urls- for-...](https://amphtml.wordpress.com/2018/01/09/improving-urls-for-amp- pages/)

Look at the underlying specs... They are talking about bundling web packages and signing them with TLS certificates, so that anyone can distribute them... and the browser can still verify the origin.

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> AMP is the solution the internet deserves for not coming up with the solution the internet needed.

<comment><USER69> This is a perfect way of putting it.

"You don't need AMP to make websites fast!"

And yet, most popular websites sans AMP were/are indeed quite slow.

<comment><USER70> And yet, it's a miracle how a few lines of CSS & JS server from a high-speed server makes a website load faster. So, no, we don't _need_ AMP to make webpages faster. To make a website fast (OTTOMH):

1\. Optimize the content we deliver, (HTML, CSS, JS, etc...). Minimise the time for all content and First Meaningful Paint.

2\. CDN servers. Bring the servers closer to the user, geographically.

3\. File compression during transport. Stuff like gzip and HTTP/2.0 (which isn't a compression algo, but inherently makes the pages load faster, which was the objective)

Edit(s): Some formatting & content, somewhat new to HN

<comment><USER69> You're missing the point. I recognize that it was quite possible to make fast websites without AMP, but as a consumer, a theoretical solution that few take advantage of is useless to me.

AMP got (some) websites to _actually_ be fast, which is a lot more useful than a hypothetical.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> It's funny how no one was up in arms when facebook (the leading source of publisher traffic) did their version of accelerated pages.

AMP serves a purpose for the end user and it does so well, it loads instantly and doesn't consume much data in the process.

As for their "demands":

1\. Google already states that AMP pages are ranked higher because they're faster to load.

2\. I'm not sure if it's related but they they addressed that only yesterday: [https://amphtml.wordpress.com/2018/01/09/improving-urls- for-...](https://amphtml.wordpress.com/2018/01/09/improving-urls-for-amp- pages/)

<comment><USER72> So are you saying -- all else equal -- that if your webpage can respond just as quickly as an AMP one, that your search rank won't be docked?

E.g., your site is just as performant as AMP, but you're not using AMP.

<comment><USER71> Yup, that was in the the blog post announcing AMP, and subsequent press comments.

I'm of the persuasion that they can rank and display the results however they please, it's their site after all, so it's a non issue either way.

<comment><USER73> I wonder how Google manages the network topology for testing this so that the fact that AMP is served from a Google-local cache does not give it a speed advantage to Google's speed-testing bot beyond any it may have in typical, outside of Google, use.

<comment><USER13> Google preferches the amp content.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER74> Not sure how or why AMP is better at delivering a better web experience to anyone than a properly and efficiently designed website.

<comment><USER75> It isn't. It was a response to all of the bloated, slow websites that were becoming the norm.

<comment><USER76> This is inaccurate, the preloading that AMP on Google Search does is a significant advantage over anything you can do with current web technologies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER77> Then make another search engine, don't complain about using Google technology in Google's search engine, on Google's browser.

<comment><USER78> You could use that argument to argue against any regulation of any monopoly.

"You don't like that Comcast is going to decide what sites you can see? Then make your own ISP"

"You don't like that the water company is pricing people out of drinking water? Make your own water utility"

"You don't like that Golden Gate jacked their prices? Build your own bridge"

BTW, those examples aren't exaggerations. I imagine they're all no less difficult than making a new search engine to compete with Google.

</comment></comment><comment><USER79> Complaining about google for using their bat and ball in their backyard?

<comment><USER80> The web is not Google´s backyard.

<comment><USER81> google.com's search results, which is where these AMP links are served up, is Google's back yard.

<comment><USER82> Naive to assume that the largest portal for the web can't have a detrimental effect on the web. As that's what this is. The clout Google has in driving web standards is both a positive and negative. In the case of AMP the consequences of the trajectory Google is on now can set the precedent for other networks and ultimately lead to further centralization of content.

<comment><USER81> That's fine, and it's also their backyard, not "the web", which is what the parent comment said.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER78> Google registered a domain just to host a letter?

</comment><comment><USER83> When you navigate to an AMP site there is a very clear icon at the top to click and go to the site's actual domain. I don't understand what this letter is so upset about - if they have such a problem, they should build their own search engine.</comment>


This Is How One Woman's Rebellion Abolished Kerala's Oppressive Breast Tax - <AUTHOR> http://www.vagabomb.com/How-One-Womans-Rebellion-Abolished-Keralas-Breast-Tax/ <comment><USER2> NSFW tag would have been nice.</comment>


Apple's cringeworthy approach to women reveals a company out of touch - <AUTHOR> http://www.thememo.com/2015/09/10/apples-cringeworthy-approach-to-women-reveals-a-company-out-of-touch/ <comment><USER2> I don't think the author had a single good thing to say about the Apple event.

I on the other hand, thought the event went over really well - most (all?) the demos went off without a hitch and a lot of things got refreshed.

Anyone that thinks a $100 stylus is a consumer product is out of their minds. It's a pro product with pro's in mind. Dad won't be buying a $100 stylus to click around the screen.

And it just seems like the author was trying to find any reason why more women weren't on stage.

I'm all for women in tech, but I'm more for the right person for the job. Maybe more women weren't on stage because more women weren't capable of producing the kind of "performance" Apple and it's customers expect from this event. Just because a women might work in a department as a programmer or a designer or whatever, doesn't mean their capable of spending 10-20 minutes on stage explaining a product.

And the author neglected to mention that it was a women who presented the features of the new Apple TV - which IMO and a lot of others also, was the best product to be released yesterday. Her presentation was almost perfect (couldn't tell if she was crossing her fingers because she wanted her team to win, or she wanted the feature to work hahah) - she was very well composed, spoke clearly and barely stumbled - absolutely on par with most of the men on stage.

Title is complete clickbait.

</comment><comment><USER3> > _While much of the press gushed ecstatically over every minor update, at The > Memo we questioned the company's future._

How original. Only the 10.000th press article to do so since 1999. Clearly Apple is doomed.

> _Watch customers are selling up in their thousands. Take a look on eBay and > count the number for sale. This is not normal behaviour for a new product > from the world's most valuable company._

Yeah, "numbers of sale on eBay" sounds a very scientific metric. Probably he's too young or uniformed to remember that iPod and iPhone have been (and are) HUGE sellers in eBay (new models included):

Also nevermind that:

[http://appleinsider.com/articles/15/07/20/at-97-apple- watch-...](http://appleinsider.com/articles/15/07/20/at-97-apple-watch- customer-satisfaction-outpaces-original-iphone-ipad---report)

Then they complain how Adobe showed retouching a woman's picture on stage with their app and the new Stylus, saying, "You know, maybe that would be seen as the embodiment of all that's wrong with Silicon Valley?".

Do the people on The Memo know that retouching model photographs happens in tons of magazines millions of women love like Vogue, Cosmopolitan, etc? Or that it also happens for male models in magazines like GQ, Men's Health etc?

> _The patronising positioning of women continued. The next woman on stage was > from online retailer GILT, America's answer to Net a Porter, showing off a > new app for the TV. As many noted on the night, her elevator pitch was > carefully slotted between men talking about manly pursuits like sports and > computer games, because it appears that in Apple's world, women are best > left talking about shopping._

That's a new kind of BS spin, where you're damned even when you do show a woman on stage, because she's "no true scotsch-woman". She should have been a game designer or a sports. But not bad sports, like Beach Volley, because then it would be sexism again.

They forgot to tell us what women do in Amazon's and Netflix's world, btw.

> _Except as we reported days before, Apple had been pipped to the post by a > Chinese challenger, as most of these 'exciting' new innovations are already > found in Huawei's Mate S, a device that costs a mere fraction of the new > iPhone._

Ughhh, the age old "competitor product has more features and is cheaper" (never mind execution, coherence, build quality, ecosystem, etc).

</comment><comment><USER4> If you are a man and don't see anything odd or disturbing about an audience of men watching a man edit a woman's face so that she is smiling at all the men in attendance, you are pretty much by definition part of the problem here.

<comment><USER4> Oh, good, thoughtless downvotes! You know, I always like to think that technically competent men like me are also thoughtful people, capable of introspection and self-criticism, but I'm usually shown otherwise. Still, hope springs eternal...</comment></comment>


No Strong Opposition to 144-146 MHz Reallocation Proposal at CEPT Meeting - <AUTHOR> http://www.arrl.org/news/no-strong-opposition-to-144-146-mhz-reallocation-proposal-at-cept-meeting <comment><USER3> The Radio Society of Great Britain (RSGB) is leading the charge to stop this in Europe. Here's where you can help or contribute:

[https://www.change.org/p/rsgb-stop-the-2-meter- band-144-146m...](https://www.change.org/p/rsgb-stop-the-2-meter- band-144-146mhz-being-taken-away-from-radio-amateurs/psf/promote_or_share)

Side note: Actually visited the RSGB offices when I got a British reciprocal call sign prior to operating over there. Absolutely great bunch of people. Amateur radio is a true bridge between nations, races and sexes.

</comment><comment> temp-dude-87844 This appears to be pushed through by France at the behest of Thales [1], a large and diverse manufacturer of civilian and military tech that, among other things, builds UAVs and aeronautical communication equipment.

This portion of the band is allocated globally to amateur radio, and is not assigned to any commercial or (formal) public safety use. This likely makes it a valuable and easy target for reallocation for an entity wishing to operate on it globally.

[1] [https://www.f4fxl.org/update-on-the-threats-on-2m-amateur- ba...](https://www.f4fxl.org/update-on-the-threats-on-2m-amateur-band/)

<comment><AUTHOR> I wonder why Thales can't target some other band? Are they hoping to jump on the wide variety of radio gear already made available for this band at low prices?

<comment> temp-dude-87844 VHF may be desirable because it penetrates objects and buildings well, has dozens of km of range, and typically propagates line-of-sight instead of groundwave or skywave.

But the VHF band is nearly full [1] of existing allocations for public and commercial interest, like FM radio (87.5 - 108 MHz), air navigation (108 - <USER2> MHz), Marine VHF (156 - 174 MHz), with broadcast television channels slotting on either side on a variety of frequencies. Here's a US allocation chart too [2]. The 144 - 146 MHz interval in question is reserved for amateur radio throughout the world, being one of the very few remaining slots in this band that has the same exact purpose around the globe. This universality makes it valuable, both for amateur radio, but presumably coveted by commercial interests as well.

If they can achieve a reallocation, the frequencies' existing users will be kicked out, giving them a nice and empty slot in the VHF band. Currently, operating on this band requires a license, and if it's reallocated, presumably not many licensed operators would infringe on the band in protest, as they could lose their license and be prosecuted for unauthorized transmissions.

[1] [https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:VHF_Usage.svg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:VHF_Usage.svg) [2] [https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:United_States_Freque...](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:United_States_Frequency_Allocations_Chart_2016_-_The_Radio_Spectrum.pdf)

<comment><USER4> Why not go after FM radio frequencies? Dab+ can replace them more efficiently, like dvb replaced analog tv. Yes, it will annoy drivers of old cars for a while. But there's a lot more bandwidth there: 20MHz compared to 2MHz for the VHF in question. And FM is a global range AFAIK

<comment><USER5> There is 0 DAB deployment in the US

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The loss of this band would really hurt ham radio. The cheap Baofeng VHF radios that use this band are probably second only to the RTL-SDR for enticing people into the radio hobby.

It would be pretty easy to move all the current VHF activity up to UHF if you have the equipment, but a lot of tech class (or the European equivalent) hams that only have a cheap handheld are going to need to buy a new radio. That's going to be a bummer.

<comment><USER7> It's "easy" to move, but not cheap - particularly for all the clubs which have thousands invested in 2m repeater hardware.

There are many thousands of repeaters around the world, worth hundreds or thousands of dollars each, mostly in remote locations or on private land, and almost entirely funded and maintained by volunteers.

The loss of this band would definitely hurt ham radio!

<comment><USER5> Where do you move to? the bands in the states are full

<comment><USER6> This varies on the region. 70cm here in the midwest and mountains is nearly empty, and 2m isn't completely full. If you combined both you would have an exciting band. The downside is that there won't be a whole lot of space to expand in the future. I'm sure that on the east coast it's a different story.

But gaining an exciting and active band is probably not worth losing 2m, and I'm sure that once 2m is gone in Europe it will be on the chopping block in the USA.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The French are sell-out idiots. 6 out of 12 representatives are from Thales who has wanted more frequencies on the air band for years because of their drone business and also have interest on the space industry. The Galileo project should've never even be close to 1.2GHz but apparently they need the band and it's too late to change. Since filtering is too expensive it's cheaper to just take away from ham community... This said, if they do get it their way there's gonna be a lot of interference on 2m.

</comment><comment><USER9> This coming, ironically, only a few days after the first 2m transatlantic QSO: [https://hackaday.com/2019/06/22/a-two-metre-bridge-across- th...](https://hackaday.com/2019/06/22/a-two-metre-bridge-across-the-atlantic- for-the-first-time/)

</comment><comment><USER10> Not only limited to amateur radio novices who are new to the hobby; during emergency/disaster relief, the 2m VHF amateur bands are the among the most used bands due to how inexpensive the radios are. By creating an ad-hoc network used as a failsafe when cell towers and internet services could be offline for an indefinite period of time, civilians are able to save lives when police and and EMS are allocated at their capacity. I also personally enjoy using these bands because it's able to travel well throughout a medium- large city fairly well on a clear night.

</comment><comment><USER11> It seems like a bad thing for a few reasons and is going to detrimental to ham radio users - especially the more novice ones.

From a purely practical level it seems like a crazy idea, for no other reason than the huge amount of cheap equipment that can broadcast over it. I'd describe it as almost too polluted to be used reliably for anything else.

Unless I'm entirely misunderstanding the article, this seems really serious. Like contact your radio clubs and lodge official complaints serious. Can anyone shed more light please?

<comment><USER12> Most of the radio clubs here in the US have been griping about this for the last three months. It's just a question of how much pull the european clubs have.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Don't think this will be the last amateur band to be privatized either.

Commercial entities and the politicians they have in their pockets will keep asking and getting more and more.

<comment><USER14> The next band to be targeted is 3450 to 3550 MHz (of which, 3450 to 3500 MHz is allocated to Amateur Radio).

[https://www.lightreading.com/spectrum-now-act-takes-aim- at-m...](https://www.lightreading.com/spectrum-now-act-takes-aim-at-mid-band- spectrum/d/d-id/752390)

<comment><USER15> I never like to see Amateur Radio lose spectrum. But if I'm not mistaken 3300-3500 MHz is currently allocated to Amateur Radio. So this would still leave hams with 3300-3450 MHz.

<comment><USER14> That's correct. It would not be a complete loss. More like when 1215 to 1240 MHz and 2310 to 2390 MHz was lost after WARC-79.

<comment><USER16> Except for the fact that Channel 1 bleeds into almost all of the amateur 2ghz band. The center frequency puts the left side of the channel into our band and has made it a mess.

For those interested in how these frequencies are used by HAMs check out [http://www.arednmesh.org](http://www.arednmesh.org). We hack routers and wifi point to point links to operate on those frequencies to build out large mesh networks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The official proposal if anyone is interested:

> _The decisions of previous conferences have introduced some restrictions to > the use and have imposed constraints on the development of aeronautical > mobile applications within some existing mobile allocations traditionally > used by the aeronautical mobile applications._

> _At the same time, the number of manned and unmanned aircraft equipped with > sensors has grown significantly in the past 20 years together with the need > of bidirectional low to high data rate communications. Aeronautical > applications like fire surveillance, border surveillance, air quality and > environment monitoring, traffic monitoring, disaster monitoring, terrain > modelling, imagery (visible, infrared, radar, meteo), video monitoring > require non-safety communications between various types of aeronautical > platforms._

> _Consequently the need of non-safety data communications between various > types of aeronautical platforms increases and so the need for new frequency > bands._

* [https://cept.org/ecc/groups/ecc/cpg/cpg-pt-a/client/meeting-...](https://cept.org/ecc/groups/ecc/cpg/cpg-pt-a/client/meeting-documents/file-history/?fid=51940)

</comment><comment><USER18> How does this play out for amateur satellites operating in the 2m band? Do they have to stop broadcasting over Europe?

<comment><USER6> Not really. The space over Europe isn't governed by Europe, they'll just have to tolerate the transmissions. But lots of ham satellites are repeaters, so they'll probably get a lot less activity over Europe, and nearby hams will probably get fewer European contacts.</comment></comment>


Twitter: Please Charge me for Biz Tweets instead of Suspending my Account - <AUTHOR> http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2009/03/twitter-charge-me-for-biz-tweets-instead-of-suspending-my-account.html <comment><USER2> Twitter seems to be another case of giving away free services online when people value it enough to pay for it.

It would make things easier for all startups if users didn't expect things for free. In the real world, when someone at a store gives you something for free, you look at them, say "Are you serious?!", and walk away dumbfounded. But online, it's become the default.

Maybe startups can change the expectation by charging by default instead of the other way around.

<comment><USER3> The post on SvN yesterday regarding this sort of idea got me thinking. Why don't people use the model some museums use? "What do you want to pay today to see our exhibit?"

You default to the amount you'd ideally like to get, but have a few radio buttons that have other amounts (one is the free amount).

If your service is based around a subscription model, then you add the option of, "only charge me once, I can always pay later."

I wonder how well it'd actually work. My guess is that the same people that buy eBooks instead of downloading them for free will at least throw you a couple bucks.

<comment><USER2> This got me thinking... Why isn't there a "credit card payment system" gem in RoR? Because if we want this sort of thing to be ubiquitous in startups, our tools must support them out of the box.

Put another way, startups are too busy prototyping and running up hill to bother re-implementing a credit-card payment system -- a simple, yet difficult-to-get-right chunk of software. Unless it's already done, no startup wants to waste their time doing it.

Again, I ask the question, why isn't it dead-simple to include credit-card payment into my website? (Please, someone make this!)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Twitter: Please carry on suspending accounts like this.

<comment><AUTHOR> Did you actually read the post? I said clearly it violated their TOS. So yeah, they did the right thing. That's why I wrote an apology and asked to be reinstated. The point was there is something valuable in there, i.e. worth charging for, that they should accommodate.

And where is the spam line anyway. Is sending one unsolicited tweet, spam? What about 5? What about one a day? Certainly all follows are not two way, so in some sense, a large portion of tweet replies are unsolicited. Is any tweet reply where the person is not following you, spam?

My suggestion was that they keep so-called paid tweets completely separate. So if you never want to see them, you don't have to. But if you want to see them, they are one-click away.

<comment><USER5> I think the repetition is a bigger deal than the unsolicited nature..

unrelated: congrats on the birth of your son!

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I think you are right, which is the part of the TOS a quoted in the post, i.e. "updates consist of duplicate or repeating links and/or text."

And thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't understand how this was wrong.

If there were 100 people tweeting about my startup, and I manually went and tweeted a "thanks for checking us out!" to each of them...I'd have my account suspended?

From the title I assumed he was using a robot to send auto replies to anyone who tweeted about new search engines, but he was doing this by hand? How is this bad?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yup, I was doing this literally by hand.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Indeed. This is pretty much the only thing I use Twitter for at the moment, and it would be cool if it were officially sanctioned.

About once a week, I'll do a twitter search for "BigCompetitor", which yields 50 tweets a day along the line of "BigCompetitor sucks. I just can't stand them anymore. Anybody know of something better?"

It doesn't seem like answering that question with a personal message should be against the Twitter's TOS, so long as you take the time to write a reply that actually addresses the tweet in question and is not simply a paste of your ad copy.

"Yeah, it's painful. That's why we built OurThing. Check it out when you get a chance."

</comment><comment><USER8> There is value in e.g. a commercial reply to a set of problems or a question one tweets. If it doesn't clutter up the interface by e.g. being in a separate area, like on Google, I feel that could be potentially be pretty powerful. It's not spam because spam is both unsolicited and (mostly) untargeted. In this case, while I don't solicit the commercial tweet, I am clearly interested enough in a subject to be talking about it. If it doesn't hamper my user experience, I wouldn't mind Twitter implementing what Gabriel suggests.

</comment><comment><USER9> How many did you send? If it was less than say, a dozen, that seems reasonable. Otherwise, I think you are right -- some kind of adwords type solution is appropriate. They probably aren't quite ready to monetize like that but I'm sure it's only a matter of time.

<comment><AUTHOR> I sent about 25. It was to anyone who was checking out new search engines over the past few days.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I unfollowed you because of the spam. It was really too much.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, the point was it should be separated so you wouldn't have seen it at all! But in any case, it won't happen again...</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What feeds do you follow every day? - <AUTHOR> I love HN and HN community, learned and explored lots of things here with these amazing community, and continuing.<p>I want to ask HN community to what feeds do you follow every day? Beside HN. Thanks. <comment><USER2> I just moderate my twitter feed on a daily basis - I create theme lists (like webdev, gaming, pixelart, reading (for these people who blog often on the topics I like) etc.) - this takes some time to discover accounts that are worth to follow, but keeps you sane from the trash info you don't want to browse.

<comment><USER3> I love this but I hate it.

I hate that twitter has become the default google reader replacement and tweet threads replaced writing.

Now get off my lawn /old guy rant

<comment><USER4> Well blogs still exist and many of them have higher quality than few years ago because they resisted all this time, the same can be said about RSS. Although I completely understand what you wrote. I also feel the recent boom of podcasts is also somehow replacing blogs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have a couple of feeds about retro RPG, e.g. CRPG addict.</comment>