Why Are Creators Paying for TikTok's Mistake? - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/03/why-are-creators-paying-tiktoks-mistake <comment><USER3> It's mind boggling that they just "forgot" about COPPA.

Out of curiosity I browse the Snapchat scrolling feed from time to time, and since a few months ago I have been inundated with TikTok ads. 90% of them seem to be targeting teenagers, featuring pre- to early teens, dancing in front of the camera and flicking rubber bands at folded pieces of paper with Sharpied messages on them.

Something like - "to all the boys who think I'm cute..." (note 1, rubber band flick) "wait till you see..." (note 2, flick to reveal third note, which is covered up by the TikTok logo that prompts you to download to find out the rest).

It seems more likely to me that they just followed the classic "move fast and break things," gambling that no one noticed.

<comment><USER4> The last time I encountered a COPPA opt-in was on the register.php page of a vBulletin forum where you had to enter your birthdate.

It doesn't boggle my mind. I'm sure very few services online would stand up to scrutiny. It's just that such few platforms are ever in that position.

<comment><USER5> Are you sure your not just mentally filtering it out? I see _" [checkbox] I agree that I am 13 years old or the legal guardian blah blah blah"_ pretty frequently on signup pages.

<comment><USER4> That's possible, but not that I can tell. Neither Twitter.com, Reddit.com, nor Pornhub.com ask, for example.

Though, TikTok is a video platform with immense popularity among children. Put those two together and you're bound to be first on this sort of COPPA chopping block, so I suppose I do see how OP's mind could be boggled after all. Maybe it's "just" a fine of $5.7 million.

<comment><USER6> Reddit terms that you agree to when creating an account say:

"Children under the age of 13 are not allowed to create an account or otherwise use the Services."

[https://www.redditinc.com/policies/user- agreement](https://www.redditinc.com/policies/user-agreement)

<comment><USER6> TikTok allows users under 13 with some requirement that the person signing up should have their parent review these terms.

"If you are under age 18, you may only use the Services with the consent of your parent or legal guardian. Please be sure your parent or legal guardian has reviewed and discussed these Terms with you."

[https://www.tiktok.com/en/terms-of-use](https://www.tiktok.com/en/terms-of- use)

<comment><USER7> That IMO was TikToks downfall... They should have simply said "No children under 13" and made a date of birth selector making it impossible to select a date younger than 13.

Children would then have to ignore the terms and lie to the date of birth screen (fraud) to gain access, yet I'm sure that wouldn't stop most of them.

TikToks as a company can publish age stats from the data 'proving' they have nobody under 13, and all of the above should satisfy FTC

<comment><USER8> > Children would then have to ignore the terms and lie to the date of birth > screen (fraud) to gain access

Out of curiosity - is that really fraud? It doesn't sound like it hurts the company.

<comment><USER7> Falsifying information to trick a company into doing something illegal (collecting data on a minor) for personal gain (ability to use service) sounds like fraud to me.

<comment><USER9> If you're considered too young to have the right judgement to vote, drink, die for your country or be married off (excepting the US states that still allow marriage from age 12[0]), you should also be too young to be held liable for fraud.

[0][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_marriage_in_the_United_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_marriage_in_the_United_States)

<comment><USER10> Isn't that the point, you pass off the legal liability to the user who can't be held liable and so bypass the need to restrict your service to over-13s.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Tangent: I don't trust TikTok. I notice "they" use bots on other media platforms to post gifs/images with their logo (Imgur was getting this a lot) to drive people to their platform.

Couple that with that we now know how Russia (and ostensibly others) are using social media platforms for manipulation, and it just seems rather suspicious.

I'm probably just being tinfoil hat paranoid, but I feel like memes are basically vehicles for propaganda and we should be cautious with where we spend our time.

<comment><USER12> > "they" use bots on other media platforms to post gifs/images with their logo

Are you sure these are bots? They might just be regular users that download these videos through the app. No matter what, when you download a video on TikTok, it downloads you a watermarked version.

<comment><USER11> I can't speak for every post, but there are plenty that are bots. At first I thought the same, because I noticed people leaving notes on these posts like "Don't upvote, bot" (not that it ever mattered) but I wasn't sure - <USER2> whenever I saw tiktok I started checking account histories and nearly every time it was an account with no activity other than maybe one or two failed tiktok posts, then one successful front page post. There'd also be posts that took already successful FP content, and reposted it with the tiktok branding.

Not very scientific, but it was enough at the time for me to sort of take note.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> >defaulted to putting in the current date while also not making crystal clear to users why it needed that information and what could result

It's been years since I've worked with COPPA, but isn't it illegal both to 1. default to e.g. 1970-01-01 so that accepting implies you're of age, and 2. for your prompt to be "You must be 13+ to use this service. If you are under 13 your videos will be deleted. What is your birthday?" because you're basically encouraging kids to lie?

<comment><USER14> Just leave it blank and force the user to explicitly enter something? I don't see how defaulting to the current date is ever useful for date of birth from a user interface design perspective.

<comment><USER7> Defaulting to the current date is just lazy coding - lots of date UI controls do that by default.

<comment><USER15> Yes

Also whenever you ask for a birthdate _don 't use a datepicker_ (or use one that allows selection of the year)

It's not fun dragging or scrolling the picker month by month until you get to your birthdate

<comment><USER16> Those of us with birthdates back in the '60s salute you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Having gone through this just recently I feel compelled to comment. I feel this isn't being discussed more, because parents are ashamed they allowed their children to use the service (I am not).

=====

My kids started on Musical.ly before other social media. Private accounts, IRL friends only.

My daughter, a TikTok user was prompted one day to enter her birthdate.

Not thinking too much about it (and without asking me), she did so. She entered her birth DAY but used the current year: 2018 (see the article). Should be an easy fix right?

Despite this obvious error (do 5 month olds really use the app?) she was now locked out.

 _tears_

We requested a copy of all her videos.

TikTok sent a text file to our email with a list of MP4 URLS.

I downloaded a browser extension to help auto-download this rather extensive list.

My daughter now has a new account, with a _just old enough_ age to not get locked out again. _sigh_

=====

TikTok literally built a billion dollar business on kids and are now giving them the boot.

</comment><comment><USER18> Age requirements for any web app always struck me as a joke. I'm sure _everyone_ is telling the truth when they click "I am over 13/18 years old".

<comment><USER19> Somehow I'm reminded of the Leisure Suit Larry age check [0]... which for a young teenager all those years ago was quite hard. You need to be a certain age to get quite a lot of the answers.

[0] Sample questions here: [http://allowe.com/games/larry/tips- manuals/lsl1-age-quiz.htm...](http://allowe.com/games/larry/tips- manuals/lsl1-age-quiz.html)

<comment><USER18> For a young teenager back then those were hard. For a mid-late 20 year old today they're still hard.

I wonder what sort of questions one would ask to implement such a age verification scheme these days. Ask, "what does AOL stand for?" or, "which one of the following audio clips is 'the dial-up tone'?". Or how about "what is a 'hanging-chad'?". Heck that last one doesn't even work anymore, there are 18 years today born after the 2000 election... I'm getting old.

Although I guess Google and widespread internet adoption has rendered this kind of age verification useless.

<comment><USER20> I know the answer to the first two of those, but I have never heard about a "hanging-chad". Is that something people from outside of the US (as I myself am) would be likely to know?

Even AOL, which I happen to know about is something I think few people in my country would be likely to know.

These questions strike me then as not purely relating to age but also to culture.

And even the dial-up tone question could be difficult for some people to answer. We had dialup at my child home but not everyone did.

And like you said, most questions can be Googled anyway.

<comment><USER18> Hanging chad is a reference to disputed ballots in to 2000 presidential election, Hence my reference to the year 2000 [1]. Definitely yes, these are questions about culture rather than age and is more specific to Americans. The same applies to the original Leisure Suite Larry age questions [2]. My post was intended to be more humorous than practical.

1\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chad_(paper)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chad_\(paper\))

2\. [http://allowe.com/games/larry/tips-manuals/lsl1-age- quiz.htm...](http://allowe.com/games/larry/tips-manuals/lsl1-age-quiz.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I keep getting SMS text messages from TikTok several times a week even though I have never used the service. They are in the format:

[#][TikTok] 1234 is your verification code aBcDefGhij1

At first I assumed these were someone accidentally or deliberately giving TikTok my phone number when registering. But if they never got the code, How could they activate the account? So why would they (or others) keep using my number? I read online that it may be a confirmation needed to delete an account. But that implies that TikTok accepted my phone number without verification. And again, if the person didn't get the code, what good did using my phone number do them?

All very dubious.

<comment><USER22> I remember years ago, at a startup, we had a person complaining that they were getting SMSs from us several times a day. It turned out that we had a test that wasn't properly mocked, it also used a 'fake' number which was actually a real person (should always use 555 numbers in tests). So every time the tests were run, this user would get an SMS similar to what you are getting.

<comment><USER23> > should always use 555 numbers in tests

...And don't give your test suite access to the real world.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This reminds me of a great quote from Tropic Thunder: "Behold, God's mistake!"

Anyhow, interesting to see the eff getting in on what it perceives as a dark UI pattern. I ran through this age check screen and had no problem.

I do not see a profound issue with creators that rushed through it having to submit gov ID. If the account is that valuable, teenagers can get ID. Frankly, they should probably have one anyway.

</comment><comment><USER25> Related: "New hunting ground for paedophiles: Chinese apps" [https://m.timesofindia.com/india/new-hunting-ground-for- paed...](https://m.timesofindia.com/india/new-hunting-ground-for-paedophiles- chinese- apps/articleshow/66758462.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst)

</comment><comment><USER26> >The FTC required TikTok to "destroy" the "personal information" of any account belonging to someone currently 13 or under...

If they are required to "destroy" the data, how can they restore it after proving age using a government ID?

<comment><USER27> I thought that too, but perhaps only personal data is deleted irrecoverably, allowing them to retrieve other/periphery account data; maybe an account's "fans" aren't considered personal data, for instance? I'm not familiar with TikTok, admittedly.

Otherwise, perhaps there was some delay on account deletion?

<comment><USER7> A 30 day delay on deletion is commonplace

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> The problem isn't they forget, it's more along the lines of their culture. In China, they do the {thing} first then apologise.

On a related note, TikTok is just a rebranded version of DouYin [0] which was originally built by a small group of young programmers called Beijing Shaking Youth [1]. It wasn't until their recent funding [2] they sent up an office in the USA by which time the damage had already been done. Not only do they violate laws their app is riddled with dark patterns by US standards (all of which btw is normal in China).

If you go on LinkedIn and look up Jobs in Los Angeles you'll notice TikTok has 1200+ open positions. You'll also notice they're hiring people specifically to develop policies for each region.

[0] [https://Douyin.com](https://Douyin.com)

[1] [https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/9iy84y/whats_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/9iy84y/whats_up_with_the_app_tik_tok/e6o2iwx)

[2] [https://techcrunch.com/2018/08/08/bytedance-is- raising-2-5b-...](https://techcrunch.com/2018/08/08/bytedance-is- raising-2-5b-3b/)

<comment><USER29> >their app is riddled with dark patterns by US standards (all of which btw is normal in China)

I've never used tiktok, could you give a few examples?

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> The mistake here is not the prior lack of COPPA compliance.

The mistake here is their rushed implementation of the compliance.

Why do I feel like many companies, in the exact same situation, would have also messed up?

Aggressively deleting accounts of even older users due to messing up birthdate collection, with no recourse is such a bone headed move. Falling back to defensively asking for government ID can't really be counted as recourse.

</comment><comment><USER31> This is the same exact thing that happened to Dinesh and PiperChat on Silicon Valley...

</comment><comment><USER32> Seems to me that they totally forgot about COPPA when designing the app, and then hastily added the age verification in response to the FTC fine. Didn't test the change properly, rolled it out, and disaster ensued.

</comment><comment><USER33> > _We hope online service providers of all stripes learn from TikTok's > mistakes._

Right; heaven forbid the _users_ should learn a lesson about stuffing content into someone's walled garden.

</comment><comment><USER34> When I get into Youtube from a private browser, it shows videos in my country. What if I'm under 13? Clearly it's using my IP and it doesnt ask whether I'm 13 or older?

<comment><USER35> COPPA isn't about banning people under 13 from the app. It's about gathering personal information from those users, and about letting them delete their content.

This means if you're under 13 you can watch videos on YouTube, but you can't create an account or use notifications or subscriptions.

THis does create weird things though. Children like that notification bell, and so they use their parent's accounts. This means advertisers think the person viewing the videos is over 18, and that it's okay to show ads for alcohol or gambling.

That's not ok in the UK, and the regulator tells advertisers to be more careful when placing ads.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I think COPPA applies to US only. TikTok is doing fine elsewhere in the world. Anyway, I wonder how big a market US is for TikTok?

</comment><comment><USER37> Oh yes someone is asking the real questions here!

Wait

</comment><comment><USER38> Creators are paying for TikTok's mistake because TikTok made even more mistakes in attempting to comply with COPPA.

Why does the EFF care about this?

<comment><USER27> Why _wouldn 't_ the EFF concern itself with the careless and disorganised response of a digital company to online privacy legislation?

<comment><USER39> I support EFF from time to time, but ISTM this case could have inspired some reflection on the not-completely-graceful COPPA regulation itself, in addition to the low-calorie castigation of the latest Chinese-origin USA moral panic. How effective is COPPA in meeting its stated goals? Could it be more effective, with fewer undesirable side effects like those described here?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> "Users logging in for the first time after the order were prompted to give their birthdate, but TikTok's own interface defaulted to putting in the current date while also not making crystal clear to users why it needed that information and what could result."

If you can't work a birthdate field in 2019 you should not be on the internet.

<comment><USER17> My daughter did this by accident - she'd run rings around you on the Internet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It seems to be TikTok should be castigated for the first two mistakes (allowing children on their platform, and implementing the birth date dialog poorly.) However their response to that second error seems sane to me. If they're going to reactivate accounts closed for being too young, shouldn't they make an attempt to verify the age of the person reopening the account? I doubt the FTC would be amused if TikTok started permitting 12 year olds to reopen their accounts with no form of attempted verification.

Also I'm not quite sure I buy the argument that the birth date dialog was bugged. Defaulting it to the current date is dumb, but was it _really_ non- functional for some users? _Really?_ Or did some users just click past it unthinking, annoyed that they were being asked something without bothering to stop and look at what they were being asked? The later seems more likely to me. These users would doubtlessly be annoyed, but what really can be done about that scenario? Those users should take it as a learning experience and be thankful TikTok is a thoroughly frivolous platform so they lost nothing of worth _this time_.

<comment><USER41> If it's possible to click through a form with all defaults retained, you should assume that some users will do so. It's probably also safe to assume that deleting their account and all of their uploaded content is not the typical user expected behavior from doing so.

I don't think the problem was defaulting to the current date. No default is probably better in general for this sort of thing, and in hindsight it definitely would have been better in this case. But for a field for which you really need the user to provide a value, if you're going to set a default, that default should be obviously and universally invalid (the current date qualifies for that when you're asking for DOB), and you should have logic in place to deal with obviously invalid inputs.

<comment><USER5> Sure. But even if they did that form right, they'd still have some adults flip the year a few years, some falling short of 13. At that point they get banned because that's what the FTC requires, so what procedure do you use to let them appeal? Asking for an ID seems reasonable to me.

<comment><USER41> I agree that the appeals decision is a little bit tricky and that asking for an ID is probably the best option in those cases. But I'd bet that some very basic, sensible validation would have reduced the number of those cases by orders of magnitude.

<comment><USER5> You could ask for a CC or something like that, which wouldn't be bulletproof but probably reasonably good enough. But I think you'd still have the EFF complaining that not everybody has a credit card, particularly teenagers, just like they object to the photo ID requirement.

Asking for a photo ID was probably easier for them than asking for a credit car though, since with the credit card method they now have to worry about PCI compliance. Getting themselves out of one regulatory shithouse by walking into another probably wasn't something they were eager to do.

They could ask the appealing user to upload a quick video of themselves requesting the appeal, and then use common sense to grant the appeal to people who reasonably appeared to be adults. That might make the FTC upset with them a second time though, since you'd doubtlessly have kids filming and uploading appeal videos, which would probably put TikTok back in violation of COPPA...

I don't think asking for a link to other social media like facebook would help, because even though Facebook is presumably in compliance with COPPA, somebody having an account on Facebook and being in compliance with COPPA doesn't necessarily mean they are >13 years old; their parent or legal guardian could have given them permission to use facebook, but not tiktok. So you can't assume that control of a facebook account means they're >13 or have parental approval to use _your_ service.

There might be other ways out of this mess, but I can't think of any at the moment.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Can Aging Be Cured? - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/2015/05/22/408025154/can-aging-be-cured <comment><USER2> In a way, we've already "cured" aging. On average, we live a lot longer than many of our ancestors. We can check many diseases and conditions that would normally kill elderly people. The problem is like cancer, in that it's not one thing, but a multitude of things. (And cancer itself is among that multitude!)

Not many people, outside of healthcare workers and AIDS patients know of cytomegalovirus, but most of the population has it. What most people don't know, is that if we could otherwise have a life expectancy of 200 years, many of us would be dying from cytomegalovirus. (Simplified version: it takes up memory slots in our immune system, but at a slow enough rate, we die of other causes before that can happen.)

I suspect that "curing" aging will consist of extending the average lifespan a decade at a time, as we cure dozens of different conditions. Something as complex as a human body is always going to have some unforeseeable epiphenomenal mode of failure, given enough time. We know from thermodynamics and the Halting Problem that everything is bound to break down, and that we won't be able to predict all of the ways it can happen.

(For a given degree of complexity in any turing complete mechanism, maybe an overwhelmingly correct heuristic for the halting problem is a piece of paper with the word "Yes" printed on it.)

<comment><USER3> Thermodynamics doesn't say that "everything is bound to break down, and that we won't be able to predict all of the ways it can happen".

I guess you're referring to the second law of thermodynamics. It says that the entropy of the universe tends to increase. This is predictable and the lack of "negentropy" won't be an issue for a long time. The heat death of the universe is supposed to be on the order 10^100 years from now, so is not very relevant when talking about curing aging.

<comment><USER4> I suspect they were referring to the ways our body is part of numerous pseudo- closed local systems, and in each of those systems entropy will tend to increase. It's true that we are also open systems in meaningful ways and can be farmers of enthalpy inside our bodies. To some extent that's exactly what life is--enthalpy farming equipment. But farming is tricky and requires constant energy inputs. And it does seem like fighting the entropy of those pseudo-closed (ie can be opened with effort) systems is a difficult if not losing battle.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If we can finally cure aging, then, at long last, we will finally be able feasibly tackle inter-galatic travel and planet-level terraforming.

<comment><USER6> Considering how little progress we've made, I hardly think that our lifespans are the primary limiters in that venture. I mean you can travel to Mars in 8 months-3 years, yet we haven't.

Energy is our primary limitation right now. We have nuclear but are too afraid of launching large quantities of the raw materials into atmosphere in case of a catastrophic failure (and showering land OR sea with some heavy radioactive metal).

We also have fossil fuels which are very energy dense, but still heavy/expensive. And finally we have solar which has been a long-term popular form of spacecraft energy, but it doesn't provide enough to travel between planets YET.

Ultimately if we invented "infinite safe energy" tomorrow I don't see Mars or greater space exploration as being too big of a challenge. In particular as getting stuff into atmosphere is now energy-free, and your only limit is the cost of the raw materials.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Here is the transcript for those who missed that easily-overlooked link:

[http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?story...](http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=408025154)

"Things that have only a 50 percent chance of happening in 20 years from now are supposed to sound like science fiction."

This interview with de Grey is one part of a longer piece with other interviews:

[http://www.npr.org/programs/ted-radio-hour/408023272/the- fou...](http://www.npr.org/programs/ted-radio-hour/408023272/the-fountain-of- youth)

Of which the one with Cynthia Kenyon is also interesting, particularly as a contrast on fundamental philosophy and strategy in the approach to treating aging as a medical condition:

[http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?story...](http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=408027400)

\---

Aubrey de Grey is the cofounder of the SENS Research Foundation and coordinator of rejuvenation research programs. Cynthia Kenyon worked on single gene manipulations that extend nematode longevity back in the 1990s, efforts that arguably kicked off the modern wave of interest in slowing aging.

In these two short interviews you can see illustrated the most important division in the modern work aimed at intervention into the aging process: on the one hand the mainstream approach of altering the operation of metabolism so as to slow down aging, based on traditional drug discovery methodologies, and on the other hand the radical, disruptive approach of repairing the damage caused by the normal operation of metabolism, requiring the development of new biotechnologies. The strategy here is to avoid changing the operation of metabolism, because that is very hard and far too little is known of the important details, but rather periodically clean up the consequences of normal metabolic activity in order to prevent that damage from overwhelming and altering biological systems so as to cause degenerative aging.

I'm greatly in favor of the latter approach because all the signs suggest it should be far more efficient and effective at extending healthy life spans, not to mention producing actual rejuvenation in the old. You can't greatly help the old by slowing down aging: better technologies are needed. Rejuvenation is needed. You can't bring aging under medical control by working on metabolic alteration to slow aging. Repair is needed, not merely dialing down the pace of new damage.

</comment><comment><USER8> Well if we "cure" aging, it will have the awkward consequence that every life must end with an accident, disease or suicide.

<comment><USER9> Or not taking the cure.

<comment><USER10> Which can be decomposed into not taking the cure by choice (suicide) and being deprived of it forcibly, which can be further decomposed into negligence (accident) or malice (murder).

<comment><USER9> That's like saying shooting yourself in the head is just an allergic reaction to lead.

<comment><USER11> I can't see the comparison...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Didn't know about this guy (Aubrey de Grey) but googling for him I just learnt that's he's 52.. From that vid I thought he was a sleep-deprived 30-something!

</comment><comment><USER13> IIRC from my molecular biology class, the biggest (or maybe one of the biggest?) problems is about Telomeres[1].

I was impressed by this study[2]: "Lifestyle Changes May Lengthen Telomeres, A Measure of Cell Aging".

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telomere](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telomere)

[2] [http://www.ucsf.edu/news/2013/09/108886/lifestyle-changes- ma...](http://www.ucsf.edu/news/2013/09/108886/lifestyle-changes-may-lengthen- telomeres-measure-cell-aging)

<comment><USER14> Unfortunately, this "problem" was already solved a long time ago... by cancer cells ! [1]

It turns out that having immortal cells (by either avoiding death signals or by having "enhanced" replicative machinery is a great way to develop cancerous cells. So you have to carefully regulate the lifetime of the cell... which is what telomere are doing in the first place.

[1] Many many sources, but for instance the "Enabling Replicative Immortality" of Hanahan&Weinberg 2011, "The Hallmarks of Cancer: the next generation" [http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092867411...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092867411001279)

<comment><USER15> Right. Furthermore, our cells have many of other mechanism besides telomeres whose function is to prohibit immortality in a way that's difficult to bypass. (If it were easy to bypass, then it would be less effective at suppressing cancer.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I wake from nightmares worlds where "aging" is cured but "forgetting" becomes broken.

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you have a deeper point—which I'm missing—or is this FUD?

<comment><USER17> This is me reading between the lines -- so maybe not the parent commenter meant at all! -- but I think the point is that all sorts of grudges, prejudices, and regrets naturally expire through generational turnover, and in a world without aging that natural expiration won't be there to help society put the past behind us.

<comment><AUTHOR> The loss of grudges/prejudices is also a loss of skills and unique perspectives. That sounds as much an opportunity as a danger.

I could come up with ridiculous 'nightmares', and interpret them, as well:

I wake from nightmare worlds where 'world hunger' is cured but 'satiety' becomes broken.

Interpreted as:

Without scarcity peoples' greed will continue to grow unabated. The lust for consumption will result with the depletion of natural resources, and the destruction of society.

The dream is a non sequitur; and even taken as a metaphor, it has gapping holes in the logic!

1\. Prejudices are passed down through generations.

2\. People change their position on subjects, when new information becomes available.

3\. There's nothing 'natural' about living short lives. Some species live longer than us; and some are even negligibly senescent[0]!

4\. I've established there's at least one other mechanism by which people can alter their ideas (point 2). Others could be found.

5\. Dying of cancer (and other diseases) seems like the _worst_ possible solution to the problem. Torturing people who don't age, and then _not_ have them die in the end seems more humane! (That may be the _second_ worst solution). Killing healthy 150 y/o, so that there's generational turnover would also work (I would prefer that to the status quo, personally). Under such circumstance, I think it probable a reasonable remedy could be found (sans death, pain, and indignity)!

Thanks for the interpretation, but you may have been overly charitable!

\---

[0] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negligible_senescence](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negligible_senescence)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Is aging a disease? :)

<comment><USER19> Its a cause of death. We like to avoid those. And we know multicellular organisms exist that can maintain their telomeres and avoid senescence.

We are almost certainly going to be able to genetically engineer that into future people at some point, among a lot of other useful things. Dunno if we are going to manage to get gene therapy that can alter living humans so drastically before they die, though. And who knows when it will happen, just that it almost certainly will, unless we blow ourselves up.

<comment><USER20> I would hate to be poor and immortal. That would be the worst. I feel like immortality is something for the rich.

<comment><USER21> Becoming rich within 1000 years is more plausible than within ~80 years. Unless the concept of being "rich" disappears due to progress.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> anti-shill yes, but it will take hundreds of years

</comment><comment><USER22> Step one: Buy a gun.

</comment><comment><USER23> One reason why we age and die - might be because we(any living being) want to evolve, and that pressurizes us to cross breed and give birth to new generation before we die and finally die and not hog up all the resources ourselves. And let the better generation live on.

That natural strategy might have become suboptimal since the progress in science.

<comment><USER24> You might be mistaking cause for a reason here.

<comment><USER23> No no, cause would be something like length of telomere being short or something. The reason (evolutionary reason) would be that nature needs to clear the previous generation in order to make room for a newer and better generation.

<comment><USER11> Evolution doesn't work like that. You don't consider newer generations 'better', you consider the survivors better. So you're assuming your conclusion and burying it in human moral terms, which evolution has no obligation to apply.

<comment><USER23> Newer generation is supposed to be better at least thats what genetic cross tries to do, pass on the better/survivor genes to next generation.

<comment><USER11> There is no 'better' in evolution, only 'survivor.' And if you cured aging, you would survive better. End of story.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN:  Weekend project TieMonster.com - <AUTHOR> http://tiemonster.com

<comment><AUTHOR> I know that 1/2 or you are watching the super bowl, 1/2 are watching the super bowl ads, and the other 1/2 are avoiding all tv right now. ;-)

But I thought I'd show you what I worked on this weekend. It's not exactly your average startup, though similar ideas have popped up from time to time on HN. What do you think?

<comment><USER2> I think it's awesome! Alas, I want an HackerNews tie.

<comment><AUTHOR> I could probably get one made... Is there a semi-official logo? I know it would be of limited interest, but it might make sense in the long tail...</comment></comment></comment>


What do you use to keep notes as a developer? - <AUTHOR> http://www.stackprinter.com/questions/what-do-you-use-to-keep-notes-as-a-developer.html

<comment><USER2> I used to hand write notes, or use emacs org-mode. I now believe that my notes are in many cases substituting for poor procedures or documentation. As such I've given up entirely keeping my own notes and instead I fix the procedures or documentation.

I mean, fundamentally notes are things that are sufficiently important to know that you write them down for future reference. If you need it written down, then others probably do too, in which case the fact that it's in my notebook is useless to them. Therefore I even put my "personal" notes into my own page on the wiki so at least they're searchable. Usually they stay there until I find or create a better place to incorporate it into the rest of the docs.

<comment><USER3> I second this. A lot of times in the past I might put down notes on "run this command to get this result" or "don't forget that this library is over here". I made the incorrect assumption that this was obvious to others and not just to me.</comment></comment>


Congrat me, I got a job. Should I quit college now? - <AUTHOR> So, I got a Web Developer's job. It is pretty good job. I am just 19 years old and I've been programming since ~15 years old. So, they liked me and said that you can come work with us. Problem is, it's full-part job and I need to quit college to work here. And I don't like college that much, because it contains so much theory and it's hard for me. So, what do you think I should do? (my parents yell at me like crazy)...<p>I really need help, thank you very much. <comment><USER3> Finish college.

You _NEED_ that theory stuff. If you don't get it now, it will stunt your growth and will limit how good you'll get at your craft (mainly because you'll keep making rookie mistakes for the rest of your life because you won't understand the theory behind what you're doing).

Quitting something just because it's hard is a very bad habit to get into. All it does is keep you on the bottom rung for the rest of your life. The good things are hard to get. That never changes no matter your age or station in life.

If you really want to do well in life, start researching companies now, while you're still in school. Find out what they're doing. Find out who they're looking for. Get contacts within those companies and talk to them. Build up a contact network. It's WHO you know that gets you in the door, and WHAT you know that keeps you going.

<comment><AUTHOR> How would I need that theory stuff if it contains hardware and other similar stuff and I am not planing to do anything with that kind of things in my career (I just want to be a software programmer, because I love it)? I am just feeling that I am studying lots of useless things...

Thank you very much for researching companies advice, it's a very good advice, I will start doing that.

<comment><USER3> Most definitely, some of the stuff you're studying you'll never use. But a career in software engineering takes a LOT of twists and turns, ups and downs. Technologies and techniques come in and out of vogue. But one thing remains solid throughout: Algorithms. Without a solid understanding of algorithms, you'll never be able to write efficient software. And what's worse, you'll never even know why. You'll lack the tools to even be able to question why, until you study the algorithms written by the giants of computer science. They've done the hard work for you. All you need to do is learn the how and why.

But it doesn't stop there. You also need to have a solid understanding of at least one level below where you're working at (and preferably many levels). I'll relate a small example:

When I was working at a bank, all of our software was written in high level languages (mostly COBOL, Java, Python, and PERL). You'd figure that there's no need to understand CPU architecture, right? WRONG.

We started getting reports that our web app (for funds transfers) was crashing (not the regular Java crash, where the app keeps going; the hard crash where the entire web app goes down and has to be restarted).

Needless to say this was costing us a lot of money in lost business. All we had was a Java crash report with a stack trace that went into a JNI call. At this point, it's outside of Java, so the trail ran cold. Or did it?

One nice thing about Java crash reports is that they include a memory dump of the stack area, as well as a dump of the CPU registers. I know software and hardware top-to-bottom, from transistors to logic gates, to CPUs & machine language, through the BIOS, kernel, OS, libraries, all the way to the application level. It wasn't that difficult to trace back through the stack in the memory dump, disassemble the shared library that JNI was calling (a library for secure thumbprint recognition), and use the stack offsets to track execution right up to the memcpy() call that was being passed a NULL pointer (the thumbprint recognizer code returned NULL if the scan was incomplete, and the the library wasn't sanity checking the result before making a copy of the scan buffer). I was able to turn the library vendor's story around from "It's a problem on your side" to "We'll have a fix out for you in a couple of days".

I was the ONLY person in the company capable of doing this, simply because I paid attention in college. The knowledge I leveraged to fix the problem was seen as pure magic by other engineers because they didn't understand the theory and lacked even a way to ask the right questions, let alone answer them. Finding the answer is easy; It's finding the question that's hard.

So yeah, you can skip college and live a life of mediocrity. It pays pretty good, too. But you'll always be on the bottom rung. You'll be the guy who gets work in good times, and then gets laid off in bad times. When the market's hot (like it is now), companies tend to get driven to desperation, taking any programmer with a pulse. And then the bubble bursts, leaving all these now- jobless mediocre programmers asking "Why me?" when it's really their own fault.

If you're serious about programming, you'll take the time to learn. The best programmers never stop learning new things, and never stop reading new books. College is merely the beginning of learning & knowledge.

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow, what a post. Thank you very much.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> No, no, no, don't quit college. Your parents are completely right (sans yelling). Jobs come and go, but fundamental education is just that - <USER2> foundation for everything else that you are going to learn through other means. No foundation = mess in the head.

Besides, people who are self-taught are always treated with extra suspicion during the selection, interview and the trialing process compared to those with a proper degree. And quite rightfully at that. If you have Masters in Comp.Sci., it's given that you know reverse polish notation. But if you picked it all up by yourself, you could've missed this bit and it could complicate my life as your colleague or boss further down the road.

So, yeah, educate yourself properly first. The jobs will follow.

</comment><comment><USER5> As someone who quit college at 20 for a high paying job I understand your feeling. I'll say this though, the only reason I quit college was because of my financial situation. Here it is 6 years later and I am ahead of my peers in terms of salary but know I had to work just a bit harder then everyone around me to prove myself because I've worked for companies where I was the only person in the whole building without a degree. Now as I progress through my career at such an accelerated rate I recognized this is not the norm by any starch and I am vastly approaching that glass ceiling (granted I can hack the system to break right through that too). With all that said it is a much smoother route if you get your degree first and since your only 19 instead of joining some company start your own thing in your spare time in school. You will be far better served working for yourself while gaining more knowledge in college. If i could go back and do it all again that's exactly what I would have done as I am on the path to trying to get my start up off the ground. NoBadGift.com

<comment><USER6> Indeed. Finances ended my college career after my first year and never getting that degree hurt quite a bit. Note: avoid the D.C. metro area and others where people tend to value credentials over ability.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> You get one chance in life for most things. As long as you exit gracefully, college will always be there to return to. This job may not be. Take it for the experience. If you hate or it doesn't work out, then go back and finish school.

But don't do it just because someone else tells you to (especially me). Do what you feel is right.

</comment><comment><USER8> Wait, you don't have time for what? I worked full time + (IE overtime, IE 40-50 hour weeks), and went to school fulltime and also picked up 4.0's. The whole I can't work because I have school, or I can't go to school because I have work ordeal is lame at the most extreme levels. Deal with it. If you quit college your a fool. If you can't do both and excel at both your lazy. Get it together.

<comment><USER8> And the comment from Kstenerud about contact networks is probably the most important thing anyone will ever tell you. Without this, your worthless. Well, unless you are a true renegade in tech. But web designing... come on. You are competing with a zillion other people, aren't prototyping hardware, inventing anything (hardware/software/anything else), so it's more about networking, schooling, etc than anything else!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Even if you don't get much out of it. The BS will work on two levels. The first is when you inevitably change jobs, you need that single credential as a baseline for getting your resume in the 'to be reviewed' stack.

The second, is that it gives you a higher safety net if/when you find yourself off track in the future. You won't have to worry as much about finding employment just to get by.

</comment><comment><USER10> No, you should not quit college. I worked a full time web development job while attending college from age 20 to 22 and I was much better off for the experience. I will finish my bachelor's next semester, and the combination of the experience and the degree are attracting far, far better jobs than the one I had at that age.

</comment><comment><USER11> It's much easier to go from college to a job, and much harder to go the other way. Drop out if you end up inventing a successful business that's a once in a lifetime thing and pulls you out (think Gates and Zuck, not Jobs), but not for just another job. There are plenty of those where that came from.

</comment><comment><USER12> How long have you been in college for?

What are you life goals, what do you want eventually do as a career? What don't you like about college (can you change programs/courses)?

You have lots of options, you should think about this a bit more, don't just take the job because its been offered to you.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is the first year of college. My life goal is to work for myself and I hope to achieve that by the age of 25.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Yes, listen to your parents. I was also not that good at college and couldn't wait till I get out, but you need to go through it. You will get another job, enjoy college. You can never get that time back and sometime you will miss it.

</comment><comment><USER14> Why can't you do both? Or do you only want to do one?

I worked full time in college from the time I was 20 until I was 23. Work was 8-5, classes from 5ish to 8ish, hung out with friends afterwards.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am not that clever and my classes are at day time...

<comment><USER14> I can't tell you what to do. Honestly, it sounds like your mind is already made up.

But if I were in your shoes, I would want to do both. So I would schedule next semester classes to be in the evenings OR I would strike up a deal with the new employer to change my hours around slightly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I think you can do both if you make the sacrifice to do so. Take night classes.

</comment><comment><USER16> What happens if you find out you hate your job?

<comment><AUTHOR> I've been working as a freelancer, so I know I love to do that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> You are a 19 year old web developer who finds college hard? Then they are not hiring you because you are the second coming of Richard Stallman. You are being hired as just another warm body, easily replaced or downsized. When you get the axe, you will have no job and no enrollment. Whoops.

Tell them no way, you are committed to earning a degree. Higher education is valuable to you, so it's part time or no time. Do not be apologetic or sheepish. Do not blather on with explanations. Leave a silence for them to fill with compromise. If they truly like you, or if they are desperate for a warm body, they will likely compromise on part time or summer work.

<comment><USER18> I agree with this. If they want you and not a person who can code, they'll work with you on your school schedule. Either part time or remote work or flex hours. At the beginning of every semester, probably about 2 weeks in you sit down and talk about what your schedule will be like. The two weeks allows you to see what sort of course load you have and homework load. I did this and worked the last 3 years of college, 12-20 hours a week depending on courses, but I couldn't work outside of business hours.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Do both. Most high paying jobs require a BS degree. HR often simply throws out resumes without bachelor degrees, even if you had 20 years of programming experience.

</comment><comment><USER20> Be aware that traditional web development is going to continue to be more and more automated, cheaper, and commoditized.

I used to make good money as a PHP developer 10 years ago. These days I have been priced out of the PHP job market because I'm competing with every college dropout that's willing to do my job for a lot less.</comment>


Where Tesla skeptics are misguided - <AUTHOR> https://www.axios.com/where-tesla-skeptics-misguided-8b360aac-39ff-4cff-9679-91e7a15a1e6c.html <comment><USER2> I noticed there's no mention of the multiple executives jumping ship.</comment>


Meetup.com User Lifecycle - <AUTHOR> http://www.gettingmoreawesome.com/2011/03/18/how-meetup-com-brings-in-the-cash-with-personalized-email-marketing/

<comment><USER2> Yes meetup is really good at this. I started a meetup and for the first couple weeks only about two people joined. Then all of a sudden the meetup machine kicked in and practically overnight about 50 people joined.

They definitely work hard to make the $19/month they charge you worth it for their customers.

</comment><comment><USER3> I run a large meetup (SVNewTech), and agree with a lot of the points this article makes. I've tried to apply the email marketing concepts to my startups, and have seen others do so, as well (Convore & Quora come to mind).

One interesting aspect of Meetup's email strategy that the author doesn't mention (because it's only tangentially related): Meetup.com doesn't give organizers access to their community members' email addresses. The only way for the organizer to contact the community is through Meetup - this creates lock-in to the service (and much frustration). It's probably a wise business policy for Meetup, but becomes a point of contention for the organizers of larger groups.

On a related note, Meetup seems to succeed in spite of itself. They recent released sweeping changes to the design & functionality of the site without notifying organizers, resulting it this epic thread of discontent: <http://www.meetup.com/boards/thread/10376961/0/>

I think there's a great opportunity to create a service like Meetup that addresses some of these downfalls. If anyone is interested in building something like that, let me know: joe (AT) svnewtech [DOT] com

</comment><comment><USER4> The email alert method of retention works to some extent, but the more engaged users (multiple meetup groups and interests) get so much email it just becomes spam. Plus, alerting to new groups in a very high traffic location is also a bit overwhelming. I wonder if they are tracking unsubscribe-from-email metrics and aiming to satisfy this (probably quite small percentage-wise) set of users too?

<comment><USER5> Agree completely. I think there is definitely high-churn on their subscriber base if things start to feel spammy. Basically yes something should be considered relevant after I express interest in it. But I find that meetup does a bad job of differentiating what the service sends out versus what I decided to get alerts on. Compare this to something like Quora where when I 'follow' a topic (another type of indication of interest) I get email alerts. But its simple for me to know as a user that I can stop following that topic and stop getting alerts. That doesn't mean I shut down all of Quora alerts at once. Compare this to Convore, where I unsubscribed immediately after I started getting all kinds of email from them that seemed completely irrelevant to what I had originally signed up for. I couldn't figure out what on the site was causing all the spam. So what did I do? I shut down the entire service. Bottom line you are playing with fire with email alerts -- make sure its clear to the user whats causing the alerts to happen and give them fine-grained tools to control them.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, I agree that alerts have to be very transparent for this model to work in the long run.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've deleted my Meetup account on two occasions because of the amount of spam they sent me.

I ultimately had to rejoin in order to attend certain events but I still lost trust for the service.

</comment><comment><USER8> I like Meetup a lot and I've had a couple active Meetups for a couple years.

The thing I don't like is that the feature they've been seem to be copied from Facebook rather than being specific to Meetup - especially, it would be nice to have to calendar and event oriented and less chat-oriented (especially, it's annoying getting extra-info about event I already decided not to go to).

But the valued offered by Meetup is in many ways better than the Facebook equation; Meet people you don't already know face-to-face rather than chatting online with people you've known forever anyway.

<comment><USER9> I agree, and since meetup.com is a lot more locally relevant it has more "opportunities" to connect with their users in a way that would not be regarded as spammy.

Though it is harder to scale, I think there is a lot of potential in this go local strategy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've never gone to a meetup, although I've checked out the site before... I think if I saw a meetup about narwhals or Conan I would go. Lol</comment>


8 in 10 Americans Say Economy Is Bad - <AUTHOR> http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/08/26/eveningnews/main6808993.shtml

<comment><USER2> Because it is bad. There is another major correction coming and when the second wave of foreclosures hits things are going to get much, much worse for the whole world. People know what's going on even though the powers that be are very optimistic. Every major economist has been wrong about industrial output, home sales, and GDP growth projections so far. They've been wildly off too. I don't think their employers are going to call them on it because they were all wrong. The clustering of predictions keeps people who are massively incompetent employed.

Right now the world's economy is being propped up by debt and phony stimulus money. When that party stops the reality of our situation will be exposed for what it really is: ugly.

<comment><USER3> The powers that be have to be optimistic. That is a prerequisite for growth. In fact, the real powers (CEO's and boards of the big corporations) are pessimistic, and therefore the economy is in danger of dying.

The whole thing is largely psychological. It's not like we actually have crumbling infrastructure that would be difficult to repair; it's just that the social structures (money, corporations, banks, government) we have in place are not properly arranged to spur allocation of wealth to new projects.

So I find all this naysaying essentially to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. It's entirely in our collective minds that we can't build enough for everyone to be prosperous. Naturally, it's a real problem, but when people say that specifically the stimulus money is "phony" it seems very myopic. It's all phony. The question is, how do we convince ourselves it's real, and how can we harness that?

<comment><USER4> It's not all psychological, the problem is that massive amounts of capital have allocated to the wrong uses - building 100 homes, when only 50 were needed or building a factory that produces 10,000 items when only 5,000 are needed. Unfortunately do to all the interference in the market no one is sure what the correct prices are and hence what the actual demand is and what is and isn't profitable. Adding to this all the messiness of new insurance laws, etc it becomes very hard to predict what the next correct move will be so instead people save their cash until they know what to do.

The way we find out what is real is by seeing what people will buy at what price and letting everyone go bankrupt who can't pay their bills. This will depress the costs of goods until demand picks up. For instance, everyone thinks their house is worth probably 30 - 40% than it is. So they refuse to sell at lower prices, keeping inventory off the market. Thus no one is buying houses since the asking price is too high. Housing is tough one because it takes forever for the prices to adjust back to normal, but everywhere this type of effect can be seen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Headline should read "2 in 10 Americans say reducing incredibly complex systems to binary questions is silly"

</comment><comment><USER6> What else would you expect when 4 out of 5 media outlets say the economy is bad?

<comment><USER7> I have to agree with you whole-heartedly. I cannot believe that the sensationalist media and its continuing push to make this economy really in a recession. Yes, joblessness is up. Yes, credit is getting harder to come by.

I don't think you can honestly find 8 out of 10 people that have been affected enough by this past year or two to honestly say their spending habits is one of someone in a recession. Restaurants are still full on the weekends; amusement parks are still busy with tourists. I just don't get it.

Though this is coming from someone who still has a steady job and is not in financial problems due to the current state of the economy.

edit: finishing thought.

<comment><USER8> How many people do you know are un- or underemployed? (The latter are those not making what they were making despite trying, most especially those not in a full time permanent job but instead working part time, contracting, etc.)

For the next step of the discussion, see this remark of mine: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1639188>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> But is it bad for those 8 people? Or do they just perceive it being bad for everyone else?

<comment><USER8> "It's a recession when someone you know loses their job. It's a depression when you lose your job."

True, U-6 and beyond unemployment, underemployment and just plain given up searching is so high (22% according to [http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/unemployment- chart...](http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/unemployment-charts)) that we're seeing something akin to Great Depression levels. It's just that we're wealthier, have much greater safety nets (as I recall 40 million are on Food Stamps), we're more flexible, etc.

For that matter, our government is a lot better than in the Great Depression (Hoover/FDR), e.g. we aren't doing stark raving mad things like driving up food prices by destroying food and preventing planting when 1/4 of the nation is malnourished....

<comment> mkr-hn Mobility and information are big factors too.

In the Great Depression, a poor person or a farmer out in the middle of nowhere couldn't just hop on the web and make themselves more employable (or market themselves), or drive 50+ miles on well-maintained highways and interstates to other opportunities.

<comment><USER8> Exactly, that's an important subset of what I labeled "flexibility".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> What gets me is shopping centers. Every one I see if 25% to 50% empty. If I recall, a few years ago you'd once in a while see an empty unit in a shopping center, and usually there was a sign that something was coming soon. (Am I remembering incorrectly?)

It kind of feels like a post apocalypse situation going into some shopping centers?

<comment><USER10> BTW my wife rents retail space at a shopping center and even though they have 20% of their units empty, they refuse to lower the price she negotiated five years ago (her lease is up for renewal). She called a few other places and they're also still charging the same prices and don't seem willing to negotiate.

What's the deal with that? Shouldn't prices be going way down since there's so much empty space everywhere?

<comment><USER11> I think they're hoping inflation will eventually compensate...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Another anecdotal indicator, for the past few months when I go out to restaurants they've been half full. These are places that less than a year ago had 30 minute waits most nights.

I wonder if it takes this long after the crash for people's spending behavior to adjust, or are we really hitting a second dip now?

</comment><comment><USER12> Contrarian indicator.

There are some excellent investments out there right now that in twenty years will cause people to look back and wish they had made a move when everyone else was paralyzed with fear.

"Be fearful when others are greedy and be greedy when others are fearful." -Buffett

<comment><USER8> Well, of course ... but first you have to have the money to invest. That's not true for most Americans, especially since most who do have investments have them in their primary residence and retirement plans, the vast majority of which have taken a significant hit.

Then you have to call the bottom, where the adage "Don't try to catch a falling knife" comes into play. A lot of people who bought into the stock market in, say, 1931 lost their shirts.

That said, I'm sure there are good and fairly safe asset classes (perhaps the one this forum is dedicated to? :-) to be invested in right now, but it's certainly riskier than "normal".

Also, when citing that "in twenty years" hindsight concept don't forget survivorship bias....

</comment></comment><comment> mkr-hn The economy's great or bad depending on what you look at.

Large businesses are doing fine--they get a lot of money from investing in diverse markets that are less affected by a single country's political and social situation.

Small businesses and most people in the US are still in a rough spot though.

</comment><comment><USER13> I know it's "just one data point," but I live in Portland, OR and everyone is hiring. No, seriously, every software shop I know about is looking to hire. Not just boring-as-hell C# and Java cubicle farms, but startups and small companies writing interesting software with Python and Ruby.

<comment><USER14> Ruby programmers might be doing ok, but:

the general problem with Portland is that nobody else is hiring... ever

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm wondering why the roads are still so full of cars, even late into the night.

<comment> mkr-hn People with second and third jobs, people taking night shifts to stay employed, people working late to stay employed.

That and stuff like it, mostly.

<comment><USER16> [Citation Needed]

<comment> mkr-hn All I've been able to find is a PDF showing a lot of people with second and third jobs on the BLS website from 1997, so nothing recent.

It's something that seems reasonable, but I don't have anything to back it up. The BLS is probably who would have it though if you wanted to look in to it.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How to do customer development? - <AUTHOR> We have an idea and want to start speaking with some customers. Do we do a survey, do we call them? What is the best way to get feedback? <comment><USER2> Id like a reply to do this too</comment>


Ask HN: Review UI of my app - Addpiks - <AUTHOR>

Hi
We are currently looking to source some feedback on the UI for our shiny new (free) iphone app, Addpiks, and a friend, Swombat, said HN is the place to ask. So here we are...
Would really appreciate any inputs on the UI whether its just from the screenshots at
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/addpiks/id407488046?mt=8
or even better from an actual app itself (iphone only currently, sorry android guys)
Thanks Iqbal <comment><USER2> There is no focus in the app. I have no idea what to do when I see the UI.

Try removing all the unnecessary lines and complexities, such as the borders of the images, the dividing line between the top bar ("Journal") and the subheading("recent"). Remove the gap at the bottom between green stripe and the phone UI.

I think there are too many colors, that don't match well. You could make the color of the titles ("Dress I need...") like the color of the UI.

That would probably make the app easier on the eye.

Then you could also not italicize the description of each item ("Me, 61-73...") to make it easier to read.

On the right screenshot: Don't allow titles of images be too long. "Movies to Wa..." seems broken, use "Movies" instead.

Hope this helps. These observations are only based on the screenshots provided, I haven't tried the app.

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome, tks for feedback, please do try the app, for a better feel. Its amazing what you don't see when you are building the app...tks again

<comment><USER2> Not everyone has an iPhone. I don't.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> This will sound harsh because I'm going to keep it short, and it's also pretty harsh.

Nothing in the UI looks considered. None of the elements seem to have space to breath. The colour palate isn't one I would have chosen. Overall, it looks amateur.

That said, it's clear what each element does and what the UI is trying to tell you. So it isn't a UI disaster, but the experience of looking at it isn't pleasant.

As with all the apps I download, free or not; If I were to choose between this app and a similar app with a nicer UI, i'd go with the nicer UI because it implies quality. What constitutes "nicer"? You'll know it when you see it. As will everyone else.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting, not sure how this fits in with post prior to yours about lacking focus, i.e Is it clear what each element does or not (perhaps two diff viewpoints).

Trying to define nicer...tom tks for feedback

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I personally like like interface. It may be a bit cluttered, as some suggested. But "no focus"? Really?

One thing that is quite confusing from the given pictures are the given descriptions. I kind of get that I could make notes of those products, but the specific examples you gave are really poor. It's hard to tell what's default text and what the user has inputed. (For the first and third screenshot)

1st shot: It took me quite a while to realize that the big text in green is inputed by the user, and the stuff in the grey is the location (I thought that was the note!). I'd suggest first changing the name "Dress I need" to something like "Remember to purchase", "Dress I need" threw me off. For location, write "Place: _____"

While these may not be needed for the user, they would make that first screenshot much more obvious.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ozzie, tks for that, I like the Place: notion it makes sense, am thinking the order of the screenshots needs to be altered also, tks again, will take on board for next update. If you have anything else there is a feedback button in the app itself (if you wish to try it) and you can add up/down vote ideas there also.....should hv seen the first version :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'd change the perspective on the icons so they're flat, rather than at a slight angle. They look a little out of place to me.

Also, the CSS and all images on <http://www.addpiks.com/> are returning 404 errors.

<comment><AUTHOR> blame the techie for playing when he should not, fixed :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Hi Iqbal, really like the app. I totally understand what I am supposed to do and see a clear purpos. I know this feedback might not be overly helpful to you, but I have nothing else on my fingertips right now. :)

</comment><comment><USER7> Noisy.

<comment><AUTHOR> tks, all of it, or just some screens

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Sorry bro,I am the robot ilk. Put a clickable link in the comment area.

<comment><USER9> <http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/addpiks/id407488046?mt=8></comment></comment>


After the newspapers die, who will watch the police? - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/27/AR2009022703591.html

<comment><USER2> One problem (of many) is that police abuse disproportionally affects those of lower socio-economic status. So, those who have the power to do something about it have below-average personal motivations. Certainly, Bill Gates isn't at great risk for contracting malaria, and he's still doing something about it. However, the average upper-middle class American probably thinks police misconduct is a much less serious problem than someone living in an inner-city housing project.

As a teenager, I was always shocked at how rude police were to me; they seemed to have no respect for the laws they were supposedly there to enforce. However, as a 30-something, even when getting a speeding ticket, the police are generally polite. Have the police changed, or have they started treating me as someone who might have some power to keep them in check?

<comment><USER3> Or because you're older?

At the age of 14, I used to carry a Commodore 64 to my friend's house, and once the police stopped me thinking I was a burglar, and I showed them this _thing_ with circuit boards hanging off, and said 'Would I steal THIS?'. It was pretty funny. I also ranted on about being a 'law-abiding citizen', which helped.

<comment><USER4> Of course nowadays you'd be arrested for being a terrorist.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There is good work being done by internet writers. For example, Radley Balko's stories have gotten more than one corrupt prosecutor fired. His efforts at exposing phony forensic experts in Mississippi could lead to many freed innocent men:

<http://reason.com/blog/show/131954.html>

I've rarely seen newspapers conduct that kind of journalism, especially on the national level. Another example: Balko has been almost single-handedly raising awareness about the death and violence that occurs from the military-style raids that many police departments use to arrest suspects of non-violent crimes. I haven't heard any newspapers tracking that story:

<http://www.cato.org/raidmap/>

This website has exposed more corrupt police practices than any newspaper I know about:

<http://www.theagitator.com/>

But regardless, the death of the newspaper is going to cause a lot of change in our society. Not all the costs will be easily dealt with.

</comment><comment><USER6> Unfortunately I don't know of any profitable way to provide local news without having it subsidized by classifieds, car ads, real estate ads, etc. Newspapers used to be profitable because they dominated all these things. But on the web, they become detached. Ebay and craigslist can efficiently serve many places and scale up effectively. But it's hard to watch the police in 100 major cities at once.

How much money would people pay to provide the service of watching the police? I'm afraid the answer is... not much. It has to be tied to something else, or to have a nonprofit structure.

<comment><USER7> It depresses me sometimes how almost everything in society can be be reduced to the question "but how will this generate money"? On the other hand, maybe the sooner people are honest with reality and start asking that question first, the sooner we'd get solutions to problems like this one. At least that seems to be the libertarian take on things. It just concerns me that the end result of the invisible hand given absolute power is something out of a William Gibson nightmare.

<comment><USER6> The reason we got all this great investigative reporting in the first place was because newspapers were making money.

Journalism needs to have its own source of power besides the government. You can't simultaneously depend on the government for funding and make it your mission to expose the government's shortfalls. Profit provides that power.

<comment><USER8> Yes and no; the BBC is perceived as independent even while publicly funded; so are NPR and PBS, to a much lesser extent.

<comment><USER9> Their "independence" doesn't mean that they'll investigate anything/everything. For example, while all of them are willing to quibble about specific aspects of specific govt programs, they're unwilling to go after govt programs in the large (with the small exception of military projects).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> I have often wondered what the impact would be of assigning some journalism students along with a mentor to cover the politics of a small town in gratuitous detail. Scrutinize every action of the city council. Cull through the police reports. Examine who wins and who loses when zoning policies are changed (one of the main bastions of wealth transfer via politics, IMHO). Would citizens care enough to read about this stuff? Would politicians become more accountable?

This seems like it would be a cheap (< $500K) experiment to conduct in a few towns. Perhaps some foundation interested in government transparency could fund it. However, I don't see how it would scale out without a revenue model behind it.

</comment><comment><USER10> I would make the argument that police are becoming more accountable, not less, as a result of technology (particularly cell-phone video) and common knowledge of FOIA statutes (at least in the US). The cases of the man shot on Seattle transit and the abusive officer in Saint Louis that were both caught on video and punished (and otherwise may not have been) come to mind.

It's probably better that responsibility for tracking cops is more widely disseminated, so that one or two lazy (or corrupt, or ideologically motivated) reporter(s) can't set the tone for an entire city.

On the other hand, it does help to have these things spread by someone seen as neutral, and willing to do some leg-work. Perhaps we need something like a consumerist for police? (I could see this being generalized to local governments too). Or perhaps it will fall into the purview of hyperlocal sites like everyblock. Right now most of these seem to use a highly automated approach, although I imagine they'll evolve into a more user-contributed model.

We need something more than the patchwork "Hope someone catches it on video and it makes youtube's front page" model for accountability than we have now, but I'm not sure that local newspaper reporters are the best solution going forward.

There's been talk for years about getting a standardized accessible electronic format for crime data across the US (John Udell in particular has discussed this at length) but I think we're a long way from any real implementation of that, sadly.

<comment><USER11> We may not be talking about the same St. Louis officer, but the tape that caught the one I am thinking of was illegal. In many places it is illegal to record video and audio of strangers. It is probably an unintended artifact of old wire tapping laws, but law enforcement agents have been more than happy to exploit it to suppress videos of malfeasance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The TV stations? If a cop shoots someone in the back I want to watch the video. If a cop beats the crap out of a 15 year old girl I want to watch the video. If a cop knocks a bicycler off his bicycle I want to watch the video.

\+ Its not like the newspapers do anything about it, they just report it. Its the redditors and 4channers and youtubers who go on a crusade to hold these guys accountable

<comment><USER6> Redditors getting outraged because of a video showing police brutality is great. But it doesn't scale to cover things like fact-checking the police, like the article is talking about. If there isn't a shocking video, TV news and Reddit won't really care.

Consider the article's example of Baltimore. How often is there a reddit, 4chan, or youtube outrage relating to Baltimore? Whereas the Baltimore Sun can have crime reporters there every day.

<comment><USER13> That's true to an extent but.... (I apologise for the terminology)

There are already great examples of 'new media,' amateurs supported by new technologies & online communities doing things that would not have gotten done under a 100% old media regime. Exposing police brutality, war crimes, or other issues we associate with heavy duty press. That is, there are circumstances that involve more then a flood of commentary where new media does a better job then old media.

On the other hand, New Media is not going to fill all the wholes old media leaves behind. I think that's clear already.

But we don't really know what, how deep or how many these holes are going to be. Currently, reddit/youtube supplement exixsting media because existing media exists. If we take professional media out of the equation, it will evolve differently.

There might not be that much of a long term net loss from newspapers going out of business. There are some shocking videos going to be produced outside of conventional media. It's still not clear how many or what quality.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Doesn't the author refute his own point when towards the end of the article he admits that it has become very rare for reporters to actually research those things? Also, he only provides anecdotal evidence when he says "no blogger was trying to cover this". There are probably countless other offenses that no newspaper reporters are trying to cover, either.

I wonder if newspapers and other media overestimate their power? They would like to think that they can sway public opinion, but maybe ultimately they are simply forced to write scandalous stories, but they can not manufacture them. Like they can make a lot of money out of "Britney Spears cut her hair", but maybe if they tried to make a big fuzz about that police incident, nobody would care and nobody would buy the newspaper anyway.

<comment><USER15> He's making the point that newspapers don't do this anymore, either, and that there's very little chance of newspapers starting to do things any better, which is a problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Press is show. Single anecdotal cases make headlines. What doesn't make a headline doesn't get reported. "Crime is down everywhere" doesn't sell. Some "news" like fear mongering with terrorism or a cute lost child get full.

It's time for a change.

<comment><USER17> Really? I can think of numerous cases where the press uncovered corruption. Investigative reporting is extremely important - and there is no alternative to that.

<comment><USER9> > I can think of numerous cases where the press uncovered corruption.

And I can think of numerous cases where the press "uncovered corruption" that wasn't. I can think of cases where the press helped with/caused corruption.

Never confuse ideals with reality.

<comment><USER17> I have not heard of a case where the press was involved in corruption - honestly. And even if they were corrupt, they were corrupt with private money.

Even in cases where the press "got it wrong" the harm of public interest was not that great. Maybe in the USA there are not a lot of corruption - but in my country it is rife.

Politicians wants to push everything under the carpet and the police system is wilfully incompetent (since it falls under the minister of safety and security, another politician).

The reality is that there are a few publications that do excellent work. Here are a few things in which the press paid a significant part in bringing to light: corruption in a massive arms deal (and by the next president), dealings of a mining magnate (who eventually was murdered), showing corruption by the national police commissioner, shedding light on numerous large fraudulent financial schemes, etc...

The list can go on. I doubt a blogger will be able to take on complex and multi-faceted corruption cases while he is being sued from all sides.

<comment><USER18> Try that line with an actual journalist. There is corruption everywhere, even in the newsrooms. And politicians don't always want to hide things.

A few years ago it came out that Deep Throat was Mark Felt -- he had been #3 at the FBI. Felt was disgruntled that Nixon had passed him over for promotion after JE Hoover died, and so carried out a leak campaign through the Washington Post that ultimately brought Nixon down.

The Post editors and Woodward & Berstein knew who Felt was. They chose to keep quiet and accept _decades_ of hero-worship. The truth was that they were willing participants in a rather slimy and petty act of political revenge.

<comment><USER17> "There is corruption everywhere, even in the newsrooms."

So? What is to prevent a rival paper from reporting on the newsroom? (I actually have memory of this happening - an editor of a major newspaper was a philander and another paper ran an article on him. Another big story happened 20 odd years ago - one paper was funded by the government and another newspaper brought that to light - the result was that one of the people who organised funding did not become president).

"And politicians don't always want to hide things."

So, if they are not hiding something they would not mind people looking? I am one of those people who think it is a good idea of a healthy dose of cynicism for public officials.

"They chose to keep quiet and accept decades of hero-worship. The truth was that they were willing participants in a rather slimy and petty act of political revenge."

The question is not if Woodward&Bernstein were upstanding citizens with good values. The question is this: Was the Watergate affair good for the country? Would it be better if it had not been brought to light?

<comment><USER18> You went from "I have not heard of a case ..." to mentioning a few cases. I took your first comment at face value; now I don't know what to make of it.

<comment><USER17> Philandering around the workplace is usually a big no-no but it is definitely not corruption by any stretch of the imagination. I did this to show you that journalists will easily turn on their own kind.

As for the case of the government covertly starting a newspaper, I have not heard about it (but read about it in history books). They did this with the express purpose to change public opinion - since the current English newspapers were too critical of the government (with good reason). That really is before my time (20+ years or more).

I do not recall a single instance in my country where journalists were found guilty of corruption. Yet for politicians the list of the non-corrupt would probably be shorter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> video and pictures from mobile phones spread by bloggers.

Not a day goes by on Reddit without a video of someone being beaten by the police in the street, and thousands of bloggers pick it up instantly.

If I were a corrupt officer I would fear a horde of a thousand angry bloggers with video as proof more than a single journalist that has the home number of a local judge.

<comment><USER20> Until they make filming the police illegal, like they have in the UK...

<comment><USER19> Would an amateur clip of someone being beaten by the police be inadmissible as evidence in court?

<comment><USER20> No, but it's unlikely to exist if filming it means _you_ get beaten up by the police too.

<comment><USER21> cameras are getting smaller

<comment><USER22> But cops are getting bigger...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The power here seems to be the district judge who was willing to actually do their job.

When just the reporter tried after the judge had retired reporter was ignored like everyone else.

</comment><comment><USER24> <http://baltimorecrime.blogspot.com/>

</comment><comment><USER25> Online news can be localized. Forums like these can be easily retrofitted for the hyper local and give people lots of things relevant to their area, rather than having to sift through the trash of news to find the morsels you want.

</comment><comment><USER26> I think the best model at the moment for funding journalism is to allow people to contribute part of their tax contribution to a news organisation of their choice. Then the only cost you would incur is the effort of filling in a form. The news organisations become responsible to the population instead of advertisers whilst some sort of market forces remain. Effectively you'd be saying to anyone who contributes taxes "here's $100 dollars, which news organisation do you want to support".

Effective journalism is important to a democracy and it should be funded in as democratic manner as possible.

</comment><comment><USER27> It looks like some newspaper replacements are doing a fine job watching the gov (and the gov's money): [http://www.tmz.com/2009/03/01/tmz-story-forces- bank-to-retur...](http://www.tmz.com/2009/03/01/tmz-story-forces-bank-to- return-1-6-billion/)

</comment><comment><USER28> Correlation/Causation problem: The police are getting away with these policies not because journalists aren't there to watch them, but because ordinary citizens no longer give a damn.

The newspapers are desperate for a reason to exist.

</comment><comment><USER29> the police only "need to be watched" because the police have no incentive structure to serve the people. their paycheck does not rely on how well they serve your community. It relies on how well they comply with federal regulators.

</comment><comment><USER30> Millions of citizens with camera-equipped cell phones linked to Twitter. ;-)

</comment><comment><USER31> For fuck's sake, the Huffington Post asked a question at President Obama's first presser. There will always be a vigorous press in this country - it's just a matter if the legacy media wants to get their act together enough to be a part of that in the future.

At the very, very least, new organizations free of legacy costs will step up. In Chicago, the Chi-Town Daily News (<http://www.chitowndailynews.org/>) is one of them. They've got a bunch of citizen journalists, supplemented by a handful of paid staff.

Journalists are called to the vocation the same way that artists, musicians, priests, and others are called to theirs.

<comment><USER20> Obama's press conference is national news. This article is arguing about the lack of local coverage.

The Huffington Post doesn't have the desire nor ability to chase up on some local police shooting, unless it really, really stands out as a potentially big, national story.

A local daily newspaper, with a staff of investigative journalists some of whom are dedicated to watching the police, does. None (or almost none) of those stories will make national headlines (and so they're not suitable for national papers), but they most certainly make a huge difference to local life.

Personally, I don't think the solution is to have newspapers watching the police. I think the solution is that all police officers at work should be permanently under watch via a justin.tv kind of system. Maybe with one day of delay (to prevent "the bad guys" from being able to tell that the police are on their way to their place), but no more. And this should most likely be administered by a third party with the power to have police officers docked if they refuse to hand over full recordings (so probably by a sub-department of the DoJ).

<comment><USER31> No, it's about recognizing that online-only organizations are worthy parts of the reporting infrastructure. Some day - and hopefully soon - Mayor Daley will call upon a reporter from the Chi-Town Daily News.

The HuffPo is fascinating - they provide an outlet for 9/11 truthers and their own paid reporters on the same platform. And the President of the United States recognizes such a brand as worthy of engagement. People run for local school boards for a reason - don't underestimate local citizen journalism just yet.

And cops already have cameras in their squad cars; many cities are already awash in CCTVs.

But there's something that David Simon says that's really interesting - he's fighting for a document. A paper document. That's the sort of stuff that EveryBlock and Public.Resource.org are fighting to free. And Carl's trying to get the GPO job: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=498610>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Alex Jones.

And it is not like the newspapers are aggressive against the government, they let them get away with way too much.

<comment><USER12> Hardly, noone knows of Alex Jones except for his small group of followers on the internet, and since he is known for exaggerating the crap out of things, noone else takes him seriously...so he can report that a cop executed a 5 year old girl, and people would need video proof before they believe him

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> People like this organization: <http://www.chitowndailynews.org/>

</comment><comment><USER34> Bloggers and the twitterati

<comment><USER35> Read the article. I don't see bloggers and twitterati having the same social impact as a crime beat reporter with a circuit court judge's card in his wallet. All you're going to get from that is photos, opinion, and a lot of waving and yelling. Stuff like "secret police videos". I don't see much crime analysis, deep reporting, and investigative news from those formats. I might be wrong, though. Does anybody know of serious in-depth crime reporting that's come from blogs? (I'm not even going to use "in-depth" and "twitter" in the same breath)

<comment><USER6> Talking Points Memo has done some good in-depth reporting. For example they helped expose a lot of the scandal around U.S. attorneys being fired. I think they also started the scandal around Trent Lott at Strom Thurmond's birthday party.

I guess this is not "crime reporting" in the Baltimore Sun sense. A lot more bloggers will go after national news, since it's more common for blogs to have a national audience. Blogging just isn't organized around the city level like journalism is.

<comment><USER36> My startup, The Windy Citizen is a social news site for Chicago. When Citizen journalists post something to their blogs, they submit it to the Windy Citizen and Chicagoans can vote it up and check it out. We're sending 50-100 readers to the sites that crack the front page right now...and those stories are then showing up in the local papers since reporters and editors are reading us.

3 years from now there will be hundreds of local blogs in every U.S. city. We need "interesting-ness" filters for this stuff just like we need filters for tech blogs and political blogs right now.

If there's anyone out there interested in chipping in some tech expertise to help out (I'm a journalist and am bootstrapping this) I'm all ears.

<comment><USER33> Check out these guys: <http://www.chitowndailynews.org/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I have always found this curious: In general, criminals cause significantly more damage than police. Then where is the outcry against politicians who are soft on crime and thus allow these increased rates of crime?

Thats what I am really worried about. That without good newspapers, politicians who allow an increase in crime through their policies will go unaccountable. (Whether that is already a problem is a matter of much debate).

</comment><comment><USER38> Why, Reddit will! (for visiting Redditors: </sarcasm> :)</comment>


The Brain Acts Fast to Reappraise Angry Faces - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/11/111115180319.htm

<comment><USER2> You can actually do this to yourself if you're having a bad day. You might find yourself being mean to people for no reason, but if you consciously separate the cause of your frustration from the people you're dealing with, it's much easier to avoid being accidentally mean.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, the main secret to being happy, at least for me, is a highly developed ability to simply not care about things that I can't influence, or that just really don't matter in the broad scheme of things.

Of course, I care that those around me should be happy, and I care about trying to do good work, and that should be enough of a weight for anyone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This really shouldn't be news to anyone that's married to a fairly emotional spouse.</comment>


Google threatens to end operations in China - <AUTHOR> http://www.wfaa.com/news/national/81273422.html

<comment><USER2> See <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1048909>

</comment><comment><USER3> needs a registration to read.</comment>


Sublime Sand: Desert Dunes Seen From Space - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/12/deserts-gallery-1

<comment><USER2> Cool... but does it have to reload the page for each image? You would think Wired could do better.</comment>


Has Dropbox set the stage for a privacy revolution? - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/cloud/has-dropbox-set-the-stage-for-a-privacy-revolution/ <comment><USER2> I don't know why Dropbox is catching so much flak for this when the TOS were standard stuff you see pretty much anywhere.

ex: <http://www.google.com/accounts/TOS>

"By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services."

"You agree that this license includes a right for Google to make such Content available to other companies, organizations or individuals with whom Google has relationships for the provision of syndicated services, and to use such Content in connection with the provision of those services."

<comment><USER3> Hating on Dropbox seems to be the flavour of the week on the intarwebs it seems. Fascinating to see how easily geeks fall prey to basic thought manipulation by the media. Aren't we supposed to be smarter than the average bear?

<comment><USER4> I've recommended Dropbox to a number of _personal friends_ throughout the past couple of years. When the first security incident (Dropbox employees being able to read files when they said they couldn't) came up a couple of months ago, one of my friends emailed me to ask what the deal was with this company. He doesn't know them from HN. He only knows them from me. In my circle, _I'm the one responsible for Dropbox._

When the password incident came up a couple of weeks ago, I was on guard and emailed my friends proactively before they found out about it via news sites.

I don't bash on Dropbox because:

      - they have a great product
      - security is hard
      - startups are hard
      - they are a yc company

But I think it's fair to say that:

      - they made mistakes
      - they handled the initial mistakes poorly
      - they are now working to address any issues, but...
      - ...every subsequent action is therefore under more scrutiny

In summary, there is no thought manipulation by the media. There are a lot of lessons that can be learned from this, but being dismissive of it is the exact wrong thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A privacy revolution would be to use client-side encryption on this sort of services, not change the TOS -- especially since questions about ownership of the data would become pretty irrelevant.

</comment><comment><USER6> Since day one I've stored an arsenal of Truecrypt archives in my Dropbox folder for anything that I really don't want anyone else to find out about. (Not that there is much of that.) Most of the rest of what I store there is ebooks, university lecture notes, my portfolio, and other stuff that I wouldn't worry about if Dropbox really dropped the ball. Seems reasonable to me to be a little more in charge of your own security instead of handing off responsibility to people you don't even know. Still, I agree that we should be holding Dropbox (and similar services) to a high standard, and they have indeed stumbled on this issue.

</comment><comment><USER7> > we won't share your content with others, including law enforcement, for any > purpose unless you direct us to.

So, they're somehow immune to subpoenas? How can this possibly work?

Or are they saying that since your data is encrypted, they couldn't provide the plaintext to the authorities even if they wanted to?

<comment><USER8> There's another clause just above that that refers to another document which covers law enforcement.

BTW, DropBox is legally required to comply with a valid subpoena. The data on your computer requires a search warrant.

<comment><USER7> So that sentence I quoted is basically a lie.

<comment><USER9> It wasn't a sentence, it was a qualified clause: "To be clear, aside from the rare exceptions we identify in our Privacy Policy, no matter how the Services change, we won't share your content with others, including law enforcement, for any purpose unless you direct us to."

<comment><USER7> Oh, duh, I don't know how I missed that part :/

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I always wondered why do we need all this legal bullshit... and I never liked the order of the words in these sentences...

If google has a button, that I press and my content becomes available to the whole world... it is me pressing the button.

It should be the other way around... or at least say: you as a user have the option to make your content available, modify your content, distribute or bla, bla, bla using our services... and you give no license to the provider.

ps: still... I don't care about these terms much, as they really appear everywhere. Although, I'd feel much better if using an online service, in legal terms would be closer to buying a tool in the hardware store. :)

</comment><comment><USER11> I haven't really been following the Dropbox fiasco(s), mostly because I've been so happy over the last year with SpiderOak (<https://spideroak.com/>). They go out of their way to put you in control of your data. They don't store any passwords whatsoever, encrypt everything, and have a strong zero-knowledge policy.

</comment><comment><USER12> Does anyone have any examples of Google lobbying against clearer legal documents? I would love to see this.</comment>