Criticized for overpriced parts, company gives away 3d schematics instead - <AUTHOR> http://www.synthtopia.com/content/2012/09/24/teenage-engineering-says-print-your-own-accessories-should-more-companies-open-source-their-parts/

<comment><USER2> 3D printing is exciting, but it's easy to get carried away. Paper printers exist, yet people still purchase books and magazines. By the same token, even if everyone had a 3D printer, they wouldn't necessarily print every object they own instead of purchasing it.

In addition, our culture has slowly eroded the usefulness of printing parts. Parts are great if you fix things, but consumers don't fix things. They break them and buy a new one!

IMO 3D printing will provide a huge boon to 1-2 person commando hardware startups more than consumers, in the same way that access to free development tools and cloud services have been a huge boon to 1-2 person commando software startups. In that way, consumers lives will certainly be changed by 3D printing because of being provided more products, but not necessarily by actually owning them and printing things with the printers.

<comment><USER3> If printer cartridges were cheaper and if home printers bound books, people might not buy as many books.

To me, the key is going to be the cost of the feed stock. Get it low enough and people will 3D print everything.

A side note, this weekend my 74 year old stepdad was asking me about the state of 3D printing. He has a mechanical engineering degree, so a bit atypical of his age group I guess, but he was really excited about the possibilities.

I also told him about HN so he's probably reading this now. Hi!

<comment><USER4> Indeed, you should check out the Espresso Book Machine. It's being installed in libraries around the world [1]. I've seen computations that suggest printing your book on demand might be more cost-efficient [2] than maintaining book inventories and hiring librarians to restock shelves.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Espresso_Book_Machine>

[2] Though probably much less environmentally sound!

<comment><USER5> > [2] Though probably much less environmentally sound!

Don't count on it. Paper isn't an environmental liability - all paper you can buy in the US and Europe is from sustainably farmed wood and recycling. As long and the resulting books are recycled, not inefficiently burned, it's fine.

Also, remember, the cost to maintain libraries isn't just financial, it's environmental as well.

<comment><USER6> Do you have a source re: sustainably farmed/recycled wood? I was not aware of this, and so often hear about disappearing forests in Brazil and Russia. But I'm curious.

<comment><USER7> Here in Brazil, most of the forest currently disappearing is because farmers want the land to raise cattle and make money off selling meat. Not paper.

Though forests used to be cut down for paper. That's no longer the case because it's not profitable anymore. Because of lack of demand.

But while the parent poster is right that virtually all paper today comes from sustainably farmed wood. That's still an ecological problem. Because sustainably farmed wood is not native to our eco system. Brazilian flora might take centuries to grow, so farmers would chop down local trees to plant European pine trees instead. Their propaganda, which the parent poster bought into, is that if you chop a tree to plant another, then no harm is done. But that's not how eco systems work. Local fauna cannot live in foreign pine trees, just as they wouldn't live in a concrete city. So many local species are now endangered or extinct because of paper farms.

I live on an area where a lot of paper farming used to happen. I had an American friend come here once. He told me the forest around the highway we were on surprised him. Because it looked nothing like the movies he seen, instead it looked just like Europe, with regularly spaced tall pine trees. He asked "is this where the monkeys are?", looking closely to the pines hoping to see one. Unfortunately, I told him, during my whole life here I have never seen a monkey in the wild. Even though this same place used to be the home of some really interesting species, like the golden lion monkey. But we could go to the zoo to see one if he wanted to.

Source of this is my experience as a local who used to be an active Greenpeace volunteer, back in the day.

<comment><USER5> It pretty rich for a Greenpeace activist to accuse others of buying into propaganda. Greenpeace is nothing if not a propaganda organisation.

For the record, I didn't suggest that replacing old growth forest with fast- growing trees foreign to the ecosystems is neutral or sustainable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> How long until the "Home printing is killing the small parts manufacturing industry. (And it's illegal.)" campaign?

<comment><USER7> 3d printing is theft. You wouldn't shoplift a toy, so why would you print it?

<comment><USER9> Reminds me of Cory Doctorow's "Printcrime": [http://craphound.com/overclocked/Cory_Doctorow_- _Overclocked...](http://craphound.com/overclocked/Cory_Doctorow_- _Overclocked_-_Printcrime.html)

<comment><USER10> One of my favorite of his stories. I'd strongly recommend his novel 'Makers' as well, if you're into this sort of thing.

<comment><USER11> Oddly, I just finished reading that. Can't say it's terribly prescient -- it was published just three years ago -- but it does echo lots of things that are just happening now.

<comment><USER12> SF authors have always predicted the present. Given that most people seem immersed in the past, this works for them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> As 3D printing becomes truly mass-market, people who want to print copies of objects will start attacking physical product patents as strongly as they attack software patents and digital media copyright today (strong, coordinated opposition to these grew only with distribution channels).

<comment><USER14> You're ignoring the massive grey area that is "fair use"

There's a huge difference between me building something for my own personal use, as opposed to building a product and trying to sell it.

<comment><USER13> I'm not ignoring it -- people used to make mixtapes for friends and copy games on 5.25" floppies (see the classic "Don't Copy That Floppy" -- but only when online distribution became a reality did people start arguments of the nature that "IP should not exist on this category of entity."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is a great idea! Those with 3D printers can get their parts almost for free and those without can pay Shapeways a "reasonable" amount.

As the quality of 3D printing improves I can see lots of companies doing this, especially for legacy parts.

<comment><USER16> > I can see lots of companies doing this, especially for legacy parts.

I wish I could agree with your conclusion, but I have had a lot of trouble looking for "out of print" arcade game roms [0]. I want build and use an arcade machine for my house (legally). However, it's amazing how protective old companies seem to be of people playing their games which they no longer distribute.

I get the feeling it will probably turn out the same with 3D printing out of production components.

[0] (for example) [http://mamedev.org/devwiki/index.php/FAQ:ROMs#How_do_I_legal...](http://mamedev.org/devwiki/index.php/FAQ:ROMs#How_do_I_legally_obtain_ROMs_or_disk_images_to_run_on_MAME.3F)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I love it. Those that have the printers can print their parts, and pay for the raw materials and the printer and the time. For those that do not, well, they can STFU about the cost of parts. I actually see this as more of an STFU move in reality/practicality, but it's a very cool way to say it. I wish I could do this with my products, but its not applicable.

</comment><comment><USER18> Am I not seeing them, or are there _no_ links to TeenageEngineering.com in the piece, or links to the actual announcement, or to where the CAD files can be downloaded? Very poor journalism, IMO. The linked Shapeways blog post has all of those links in the first sentence.

Anyways, I think this is a great development. If TE wasn't making much money on spare parts, might as well not sell them, and with companies like Shapeways around, it doesn't force every consumer to have a 3D printer, either.

</comment><comment><USER19> Now if only I could convince the wheelchair industry to do the same.

<comment><USER20> Can you explain what your problems are with the wheelchair industry in regards to parts? I'm actually very curious.

<comment><USER19> Just off the top of my head:

* One manufacturer and one manufacturer only of the parts for my particular wheelchair (A Quickie GTX by Sunrise Medical)

* High prices as customers often don't have any other options

* Occasionally the company won't deal with me as I'm only ordering 1 or 2 parts at a time, not hundreds

* Proprietary parts requiring complicated installation - unfortunately I can't direct link but have a look at any of the front brace/fork assemblies on <http://www.sunparts.us/>

* Slow shipping times from the US to Australia, requiring me to plan ahead for any future damage/repairs!

<comment><USER21> You need an open source wheelchair.

<comment><USER22> Theres a startup idea if I ever heard one

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Isn't the main point here that it's not the parts themselves that are expensive, but that the shipping for those parts is disproportionally expensive? So the company does in fact not loose anything by providing the designs, since they never made any significant money on the spares anyway. Still, it's a cool idea.

</comment><comment><USER24> I have a huge business crush on Teenage Engineering, I think they have handled this situation extremely well. I don't know of any other company that has done this with their products.</comment>


The Illusion of Social Networks - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/15/illusion-social-networks/

<comment><USER2> Flagged. Does Techcrunch have a bunch of shill accounts that upvote every one of their articles?

<comment><USER3> a duplicate submission is considered an update. I imagine people are auto submitting them, causing inflated upvotes

<comment><USER2> That sounds easy enough even for Techcrunch bloggers to game.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Man, I'm glad HN doesn't have this problem.

It seems the candle and mirror images should be reversed in the context of this article (the flame being the illusion). Yes, I understand the "smoke and mirror" reference.</comment>


Climb Mount Improbable: Evolvable Critters in JavaScript - <AUTHOR> https://www.gwern.net/docs/genetics/selection/www.mountimprobable.com/index.html <comment><USER2> Beautifully done!

Blind Watchmaker had a big impact on me as a kid. After I had read it, I programmed my own take on the biomorphs program and sent a copy of my program to Richard Dawkins. His research assistant Yan Wong replied with a very complimentary email. I wish I still had the email.

I've been playing with evolutionary algorithms ever since, such as [https://taliesin.ai/projects/science/floatworld/](https://taliesin.ai/projects/science/floatworld/)

<comment><USER3> I've been looking to get into evolutionary algorithms and micro-worlds similar to floatworld. Do you have any advice on good resources to start with?

<comment><USER2> At the bottom of the page I linked are some resources. But you can take a look at the most recent alife conferences like... ALife and GECCO to see what people are up to these days.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This old windows screensaver is one of the best illustrations of artificial life and evolution I've ever seen: [http://www.ultimatesavers.com/index.asp?ID=1381](http://www.ultimatesavers.com/index.asp?ID=1381)

The source is here, it seems : [https://github.com/jondo/primlife](https://github.com/jondo/primlife). But I don't know if it runs on modern OSes.

Edit: it seems to run fine with Wine!

<comment><USER5> Finally! I found that screensaver. I've been meaning to recreate it as a learning exercise.

I once observed a mass extinction on this screensaver. A very aggressive carnivore (meaning it survived by eating other organisms in the sim), reproduced like crazy, used up all the resources and the died out itself. I only ever observed this once, despite watching the screensaver quite a bit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Previously: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12024217](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12024217) (original site has linkrot)

<comment><AUTHOR> Did you own the domain and redirect it to Dawkins' publisher's website?

<comment><USER6> No, they did that. A pity, because even the original AWS S3 bucket is still up.

<comment><USER7> I was involved in the making of this but unfortunately have no control over their use of the domain. I have Penguin's permission to publish a new version of it however, though I haven't had the time to really look into it further. I'm glad a copy was saved!

<comment><USER6> You're welcome. I am happy to host it indefinitely for you, and update it if you want to fix any of the bug reports like scrolling or issues with too many samples.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It was difficult, but I was able to evolve a line. It didn't let me go further, unfortunately. Would've been cool to evolve a point.

</comment><comment><USER9> Beautiful all right, but why do this?:

* {

        box-sizing: border-box;

        -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent;

        -webkit-user-select: none;

        -moz-user-select: none;

        -ms-user-select: none;

        user-select: none;

}

No text on the site is selectable but this is a terrible thing to do. Not cool at all.

<comment><USER10> That's commonly done for interactive experiences or games where fast clicking selecting text or elements would be aggravating.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is really nice. However it would be cool if the original macintosh source/app could be handed off to internet archive so you could play with it in an emulator in browser. The screenshot of the original got me excited!

<comment><USER7> The original code can be found here: [https://github.com/Aronnax9000/WatchmakerSuite/tree/master/d...](https://github.com/Aronnax9000/WatchmakerSuite/tree/master/docs/Dawkins)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> For me it seemed to get stuck showing _You 've bred more than 50 children. Zoom out to see how far you've come_. It failed to notice when I then zoomed out.

I'm using Firefox, I wonder if that matters.

<comment><USER13> Not a Firefox issue. The same happened to me in Chrome.

<comment><USER14> If you click 50 more times you get another message. If you click a few hundreds(?) more you get the third message... after that I lost interest. Looks like there's no objectives or hidden goals in this "game", the objective is just to keep clicking aimlessly. Kinda fitting the theme...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I find Dawkins's approach to all this incredibly implausible. Think about it. How does a population of creatures split into multiple different reproductively incompatible species via chance mutations? A much more believable mechanism for speciation would be something repeatable like genes being spliced in by a virus, or a new symbiosis like what Lynn Margulis describes in her book Symbiotic Planet. Edit: Nice demo though. And maybe it could be fun to do one based on viruses or symbioses.

<comment><USER16> Most genetic modification by viruses is deleterious, as are most random genetic mutations.

Part of endosymbiotic theory is pretty well accepted now (I remember being told in school that mitochondria may have come from prokaryotic cells), but it's a bit optimistic to think that symbiosis causes all speciation. It's very conceivable that most speciation is caused through many generations of reproduction, environmental stressors and separation.

<comment><USER17> Then what is the engine of evolution? This is a point that I see repeatedly glossed over. First it's random mutation. Then random mutation is mostly bad. So, then the secret is natural selection. But what is natural selection? Is it merely survival and reproduction? Finally, when the author gets around to giving an example of 'natural selection' that actually works, they always give an example of human (livestock breeding, biomorphs, etc.) or animal driven selection (Koonin's lamarckianism or Shapiro's natural genetic engineering). This is always directed and purposeful, the very thing that evolution is not supposed to be. It seems the authors cannot get their story straight for whatever reason.

<comment><USER18> Yes, the engine of selection is just survival and reproduction. This, combined with random mutations is pretty much all you need for evolution to happen. In an artificial environment, survival and reproduction can be affected by humans, but selection happens in natural environments too. In the applet, the user plays the role of the environment, since that makes things interesting for you as the user.

But one can imagine a (perhaps more boring) applet where the computer makes the choice for you. Maybe the computer always selects the biggest critter to reproduce. Then, even though there is no intelligent overseer, the critters will tend to get larger and larger. Or one can imagine a more complicated selection process involving a physics simulation where a bunch of copies of the critter are dropped on top of one another in a pile. The tallest pile is selected to reproduce. Over time, one would tend to see critters that were good at stacking on top of one another, maybe they would be rectangular like bricks, or maybe they would have lots of spines so they could stick together like burrs. Or maybe evolution would hit upon something else. But there is no need for the selection process to be intelligent.

Of course, in those examples, you might say that whoever wrote the objective, like "grow big", or "stack in tall piles" is still directing the process from behind the computer program. That's why in the natural world, we don't have objectives like that. Instead, the only "objective" in the natural world is "survive and reproduce", since that is tautologically what determines reproductive success. There is a freely available software application called "biogenesis" that shows evolution using that objective function in a world with greatly simplified physics, if you are curious.

There are certainly plenty of examples of evolution being driven by the natural environment, even if the books tend to focus on things like evolutionary arms races, symbiosis, and sexual selection. Here is one: An organism that can convert a molecule of glucose to more molecules of ATP than its neighbours can will be able to use its food more efficiently than them. This will give it an edge in survival and reproduction, since it needs less food to do the same amount of stuff. So the genes that enable this more efficient metabolism will tend to spread throughout the population, because the organisms that bear them will be less likely to die of starvation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Currently reading Blind Watchmaker. Dawkins repeatedly says the most important thing about evolution is that it is unguided. Then he proceeds to demonstrate how evolution works with a guided computer simulation. I think I'm missing something.

<comment><USER19> Because as Dawkins points out you cannot intentionally evolve a target species. You can intentionally select from a set of results to influence future results, but you cannot produce a particular result intentionally.

<comment><USER17> even proximate results being selected is intentionality. i.e. i select a more simple design, then one with an interesting whorl, then one that looks like a bug. all that is intentional. or his example of butterflies selecting butterfly like biomorphs. again intentional, but at the insect level

it seems all very ambiguous what dawkins is trying to argue. if i try to make his argument rigorously worded it falls apart

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Dawkins was a huge influence on me as a youth, but his recent musings [1] have made me realize that he does not really have more than a shallow understanding of evolution. This in turn has made me reluctant to revisit the books (Selfish Gene and Blind Watchmaker) that influenced me so much, for fear that I'll see more of the same shallow thought that equates evolution with selective breeding.

In this link the problem I see is that he is too focused on the mechanic of change. The trick of evolution is not random mutations, etc., but has to do with statistical properties of large population groups. A population that is of sufficient size will have variation within the constraints of the fitness function. How those variations are achieved is not really even that important except as regards the rate of evolution, rather than the effect of it.

But the fitness function is extremely complex; it's not just changing a few parameters. A population of land-dwellers is largely indifferent to the ability to float; so some creatures can float better, others float worse, but it doesn't matter. But at some point the floaters get good enough at floating that they can actually swim, and now there's a whole new fitness landscape to explore. And the fitness function can change over time.

The most important thing is variation -- that's the "anti-fragile" hook that makes life so tenacious.

[1] [https://twitter.com/RichardDawkins/status/122894368695366451...](https://twitter.com/RichardDawkins/status/1228943686953664512) \-- "It's one thing to deplore eugenics on ideological, political, moral grounds. It's quite another to conclude that it wouldn't work in practice. Of course it would. It works for cows, horses, pigs, dogs & roses. Why on earth wouldn't it work for humans? Facts ignore ideology."

<comment><USER21> Why do you think his "musings" are wrong? Seems like something very obvious to me, but I'm a complete lay person in this regard.

<comment><USER20> The trick of it is that you can certainly practice selective breeding on humans. If you want taller humans, you can breed taller humans. Unethical, etc., but would work.

That is not what eugenics is. Dawkins might just have misunderstood what eugenics was as an applied science, but it would be egregious in itself if so.

Eugenics is the idea that we can "improve" the human stock through selective breeding, especially by excluding "undesirables". Any attempt to do this (unless you are omniscient) actually has the opposite effect -- variety is the fuel of evolution, not selection. Attempts to limit variability do things like create monocultures and other very dangerous and fragile systems. Acceptable risk for agriculture because our use cases are narrow (dangerous but mitigated by the fact that different strains are kept active for different purposes for most food stock), but for humans it would be a disaster.

It's a mistake to think that ethics is the only thing that prevents us from engaging in large-scale eugenics -- it's just an application of a misunderstanding of the underlying science; like trying to create a Maxwell's Daemon for your perpetual motion machine.

<comment><USER22> > That is not what eugenics is

You are concluding that an accomplished scientist in evolutionary biology has a shallow understanding of evolution on the basis of a tiny linguistic sample, with an argument that hinges on the definition of one word which you each may just be using with different emphases.

It seems pretty obvious you have other reasons for wanting to discredit him than your estimate of his competence as a scientist. (On the remote chance this isn't the case: you would benefit immensely by re-considering the practicalities and limitations of informal natural language communication.)

I mean, what is more likely here: you have incorrectly deduced his incompetence from the basis of a single remark he made on twitter, or that his colleagues at top universities for decades have been continually imagining his competence?

<comment><USER20> I'm sorry if I gave you the impression that this tweet alone is how I concluded anything about Dawkins. This tweet was just the most egregious example that I could find, and really made me reconsider whether my admiration of him as a scientist and spokesperson for evolutionary theory was well- placed. There are others [1], not to mention his various appearances on podcasts etc., and more long-form blog posts on his site where he reiterates these things (those are harder to dig up, and I'm too lazy to do so at the moment).

The site linked to in this article is an older example of his thought process, seen through the lens of interpretation, and is a very shallow view of some purported mechanics of evolution. Maybe just useful for illustrating some concepts without attempting to showcase the entirety of evolutionary theory, but worrying, because he never addresses the fundamental ideas of complexity and statistical dispersion of a population, at least in anything that I've seen.

I don't think he's incompetent, just that his understanding (or maybe, just his explanations, to be generous) of evolution are very shallow. Maybe he's just stopped thinking; relying more on his own beliefs and less on the path he took to arrive at them. Collecting rent on his position as a popularizer of evolutionary theory.

In terms of "other reasons", I'll try to address that. I align strongly with almost all of his publicly held beliefs -- I am an atheist, though less anti- religion[2], I am pro-evolution, though less mechanism-oriented. My conclusions have no motivation beyond a desire to assign some prior believe in his future statements.

[1] [https://twitter.com/RichardDawkins/status/531154466255667200](https://twitter.com/RichardDawkins/status/531154466255667200), [https://twitter.com/RichardDawkins/status/111203295062165913...](https://twitter.com/RichardDawkins/status/1112032950621659136) (this one is the worst), [https://twitter.com/RichardDawkins/status/313323444299251713](https://twitter.com/RichardDawkins/status/313323444299251713)

[2] [https://twitter.com/RichardDawkins/status/110833954764401049...](https://twitter.com/RichardDawkins/status/1108339547644010496)

<comment><USER22> Maybe all the information you're actually basing this stance on is through hours of listening to podcasts and reading long-form blog posts—but the only things you're citing as evidence are tweets, and the group of them suffers from the same problem I was initially pointing out:

They are all extremely politically charged except one, and completely insufficient for the purposes of judging his thinking as a scientist (no way to definitively tie his brief informal statements to some particular line of thought—there's enough ambiguity for a reader to read what they'd like into them).

So if a reader comes along and looks at the sources you've cited, all they walk away with is an impression of Dawkins' (implied) political alignment (in reality his comments probably have nothing to do with political thinking).

Maybe that's your intention, maybe not, but at the end of the day you have unambiguously:

1\. Brought his competence into question (or "depth of understanding" if you prefer—though it's the same thing insofar as the effective execution of his work depends on having depth of understanding)

2\. Cited as evidence for this: small, ambiguous, politically charged linguistic samples.

We have enough places in life and on the internet where arguments are made on that basis. Hacker News is a nice reprieve from it for the most part—which is my only reason for calling this out. I have no interest in Dawkins and haven't personally followed his work since Selfish Gene times, and I disagree with his anti-religion stuff too. But I also highly value having _some_ place on the internet where the conversation doesn't have to center around who to dislike because they're on the wrong side of the discourse.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Fitbit is close to buying Pebble - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2016/11/30/13802996/fitbit-buy-pebble-deal-reportedly-close <comment><USER2> I'm really like pebble and it looks like fitbit isn't looking to maintain any pebble product. Currently I cannot see any alternative smartwatch that could offer me full week of battery life. I hope this deal won't succeed.</comment>


Ask YC News: Issue Tracking? - <AUTHOR>

The situation: one support / customer service email address and 2-3 people keeping track of incoming email / responses / etc. <p>Is there something well designed that we can set up (or subscribe to) to allow us to share info on who responded to whom, see what those conversations were to maintain consistency, keep notes on contacts/situations, etc? Something like a Basecamp for issue tracking / support request tracking? Thanks =) <comment><USER2> fogbugz can do this.

<comment><USER3> If you are needing only 2 user accounts, fogbugz is free for a 'startup' account (1-2 users).

<comment><AUTHOR> Brilliant. Looks perfect - thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> zendesk.com?

</comment><comment><USER5> sproutit.com</comment>


Assistant.io - <AUTHOR> http://assistant.io/ Great meeting scheduler!  Simple to use & user friendly! <comment><USER2> This seems like a well executed solution to a surprisingly persistent problem.

That said, I wish all of these new calendar/scheduling apps would focus on the more difficult problem: optimizing/filling the whitespace between scheduled events.

I had a go at the problem myself (happy to share my deck/lessons-learned to anyone interested), but quickly realized I wasn't passionate enough about the space to continue on.</comment>


How would Git handle a SHA-1 collision on a blob? - <AUTHOR> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9392365/how-would-git-handle-a-sha-1-collision-on-a-blob <comment><USER2> answer straight from the source: [http://marc.info/?l=git&m=115678778717621&w=2](http://marc.info/?l=git&m=115678778717621&w=2)

<comment><USER3> unless i'm reading wrong (and quite possibly i am), that may have be the behavior meant, but seems in conflict with reality:

Someone tried it, and it looks like it silently corrupted the repo

<comment><USER4> The corruption may be that their patch, that reduced git's hash to 4bit might not take all of git's internal behavior into account.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Somewhat related: [https://joeyh.name/blog/entry/size_of_the_git_sha1_collision...](https://joeyh.name/blog/entry/size_of_the_git_sha1_collision_attack_surface/)</comment>


Firebase Hits One Million Concurrents - <AUTHOR> https://www.firebase.com/blog/2014-07-11-one-million.html?1

<comment><USER2> The Hacker News community has been amazingly supportive of us, and we really appreciate it! Many of you spent time with me in the early days going over our API (in excruciating detail). Others vouched for us in HN comment threads to let the world know that "yes, it really does work as described!". Still others have contributed to our open source projects.

HN is the first place we go to tell the world about new features, and each time we're always eager to hear everyone's thoughts. We'll have more updates soon, in fact : )

Lemme know if you want t-shirts, stickers, Hot Sauce (yes, we have our own hot sauce), etc: email@example.com

<comment><USER3> Is this in any way a response to Amazon's cognito?

Congrats either way, but it seems like a petty update just to show off against Amazon.

<comment><USER4> ...It does? Really?</comment></comment></comment>


The billion dollar genius ego dilemma - <AUTHOR> http://blog.bumblebeelabs.com/the-billion-dollar-genius-ego-dilemma/ <comment><USER2> THE FALLACY OF THE GREAT IDEA

"The problem with the great idea is that it concentrates the mind on the idea itself. Unless the idea is executed efficiently, and with panache and originality, then it doesn't matter how great the idea is, the enterprise will fail.

If you never have a single great idea in your life, but become skilled at executing the great ideas of others, you can succeed beyond your wildest dreams. Seek them out and make them work. They do not have to be your ideas. Execution is all in this regard.

On the other hand, if you spend your days thinking up and developing in your mind this great idea or that, you are unlikely to get rich. Although you are likely to make many others rich. Ideas don't make you rich. The correct execution of ideas does."

-Felix Dennis ($400+M net worth)

<http://sivers.org/book/HowToGetRich>

[http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/article1084093.ece?pri...](http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/article1084093.ece?print=yes&randnum=1246357554256)

Via <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=680578>

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't believe in the billion dollar idea. I believe in the million dollar idea and then iterating :)

</comment><comment> daniel-cussen I always like to compare holy grail problems to the biggest of them all: alchemy. For hundreds of years, many very smart people thought they were on the verge of becoming richer than kings but came up with bupkus until it was discovered that the means by which lead can be turned into gold involves nuclear reactions.

It has been done. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_transmutation>

But what matters is the field from which you are approaching a problem. Tabletop chemistry was not enough. You needed nuclear physics. Maybe logic is not enough for AI. Maybe you need psychology, or some other field.

In any event, great ideas don't care about probability. Google was a great idea, came in 1998, and kicked ass.

I've thought I've had billion-dollar ideas for eight years now. It's always something world-changing, but I've been wrong so many times that when I come up with a good idea I take it with a sense of humor.

</comment><comment><USER4> There's always a small chance that they're not billion dollar genius' but are instead people who have had a pretty good idea at exactly the right time.

If the right time is just after a step forward step in some seemingly tangentially related field and just before everyone else spots the connection then it more about luck than genius.

Of course, this doesn't apply to people with ideas that are trivially easy to shoot down but won't listen :)

<comment><USER5> I am a big believer that everyone's thinking the same thing at roughly the same time. My partner and I tend to come up with great ideas, and then 2-3 years later it appears on the market executed well. We are continually saying "I told you so" with new products that come out.

I don't think it's that we are amazingly innovative people, it's just that we keep a pulse on technology and science trends, and love extrapolating them.

The ones that aren't on the market usually have a technical hurdle if you look into them. I've got a drawer full :)

<comment><USER6> Gladwell wrote an essay along similar lines: <http://www.gladwell.com/2008/2008_05_12_a_air.html>

<comment><USER7> That would make for a great submission, really enjoyed reading it.

<comment><USER6> Yea - it was posted a while back - I think that's how I initially stumbled upon it.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Read Your Lulu Reviews - <AUTHOR> http://www.reviewlu.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Built this over the weekend, so be gentle.

You have to log in through Facebook, but that's just to keep people from reading other people's reviews. Since Facebook login is only being used for auth, it asks for the absolute minimum Facebook permissions and doesn't store anything.

I'm not sure where I stand on the whole Lulu thing, but I figured since the reviews are anonymous, guys should at least have a chance to see how they were ranked. Kind of along the lines of if people were saying behind my back that I smell, it would hurt a bit to hear it, but then at least I know it's a problem to address.</comment>


Your Guide to Music on the Web, Part II - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/09/26/your-guide-to-music-on-the-web-part-ii/ <comment><USER2> The author's bleak conclusion on music's future on the web is an interesting one. As popular as this media is, it really does seem to be in trouble with a lack of innovation and huge legal barriers.

With a vast majority of sites simply scraping copyrighted work from YouTube, the RIAA essentially has this industry in its pocket (a massive take-down campaign could crush these startups).

The only real solution I see is a complete rebuilding of the industry. It will take time but bands can be weened off of the whole "million dollar contract" thing--just like us Entrepreneurs are breaking away from traditional VC models.

<comment><USER3> I was just wondering this the other day. Back in '99 or 2000 it felt like a music revolution was in full swing. Music labels were ignoring p2p and everyone was downloading.

Now, it all seems stale. I love Pandora and similar services, but they've hardly broken open the doors of the music label oligopoly. I

It seems the ridiculous lawsuits is working. And artists are still more than eager to give their music away on mySpace, etc.

Where's the future of music?

<comment><USER4> spotify

I dont think much more needs to be done if spotify keep up what they are doing so far.

<comment><USER5> I am in US right now. That's why I have no access to Spotify. I believe that majority of the users here are interested in using Spotify but have no idea what it is.

Could you be more specific on what makes Spotify so unique? I heard that it is just another subscription based music player like Rhapsody but with better UI. Correct me if I am wrong.

<comment><USER4> not being in the us I dont know what rhapsody does, but :)

the desktop client is free to use in an unlimited way, there are adverts but they are pretty unintrusive.

they have a pretty massive library, at first there was a few holes but they are getting better and better.

their player interface is pretty decent, but their software rocks, I can search and start playing a song faster than I can with itunes playing local songs, if it goes offline, they have usually cached most of my popular playlists, I can have svn timing out and somehow this thing still plays new songs.

along with a mobile application that lets you store offline playlists.

from wikipedia it sounds like rhapsody is a pretty similar service, and if so I dont really understand what more people can want as a music consumer, its a pretty damn big step compared to just a few years ago

<comment><USER3> As far as music being available, I think it's a decent option, but it's still beholden (as far as I know) to the music label oligopoly.

I'd like to see something that gives the music labels a run for their money, doesn't require artists to sign away all their rights in return for sales and makes sense for all players in the business, not just the big-money interests.

<comment><USER4> with services like cdbaby (who are signed on to spotify), independent artists can get pretty direct access to consumers, its only one separation from artists directly controlling their own distribution.

to be fair its been like that for a while with cdbaby and itunes, lets hope we start seeing a larger throughput of artists "go it alone" now that this is all in place, or maybe we were wrong about the labels (and the artists) all along.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Python doesn't feel like a functional language (and Paul is blamed for making author want it to) - <AUTHOR> http://kunosure.blogspot.com/2007/04/python-doesnt-feel-like-very-functional.html <comment><USER2> Well, Paul might deserve a bit of the blame. He's written a code snippet or two of "Lisp in Python" -- unpythonic code that mimics the way Lisp does it, because he likes Lisp.

See: <http://www.prescod.net/python/IsPythonLisp.html>

</comment><comment><USER3> What the author means, is that Python does not feel like Lisp. It's true, but it doesn't make Python any less able to support FP. I code strictly FP for my work (science does not have state), and Python suits me fine in that regard.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think if we had true multi-line anonymous functions we'd be in better shape. Better support for closures also I guess. Still learning Lisp as well as I knew it back in school so I'll have to decide later if macros would be a good thing to have in Python.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It doesn't surprise me that attempting to program functionally in a statement- oriented language feels like putting on the wrong size pants. The two things are like oil and water: naturally opposed.</comment>


Ask HN: How to drive up employee/intern morale in an online working environment? - <AUTHOR> Transitioning into the online working environment could be tough, especially in a startup environment with not a lot of structure in place. I was able to quickly adapt within 2-3 weeks of work. However, that wasn't the case for some of our employees and interns.<p>To all startup founders and HR managers here on Hacker News, I would love to seek some advice on how you approach a situation like this. If you have any tips, guides, or even successful case study you have implemented for your company, i would love to further connect and learn more from you. <comment><USER2> I can tell you one bit from my own experience.

I joined a new team on a new stack about a month before we had to start WFH. I did ok for the first 2-3 weeks WFH and felt like I was still making progress. Now after a couple months, I feel like I'm not producing value and I'm slow. I'm very demoralized.

The reasons for this are: I feel the subject matter is boring, the business doesn't give us good requirements because they either don't know or can't explain their complete process, the program-level technical leadership didn't do a good job of guiding the business so the system is a bit of a mess, and most importantly I don't feel like I am a value-producing respected member of the team. I miss having a say in how things are done. I was the acting tech lead on a previous team and later an ASC who was allowed to prioritize, manage, architect, and perform or delegate security work on an application covering six teams over two departments (still an ASC but not much to do on the current system).

</comment><comment><USER3> Start by finding out why their morale is low. This is likely to be unique to each person. Deal with their unique situations and needs.</comment>


One Laptop per Child & Corruption: A Tale of 2 Cities - <AUTHOR>

	The idea behind the OLPC project is quite laudable but in Africa, to be specific, in Nigeria, the project is being frustrated by corrupt government officials who it is rumored have taken bribes from Computer manufacturers who intend to introduce their ultra low cost PC's into the country and also subtle pressure from the "Red Devils from Redmond". Also, due to the gross ignorance of the Minister of Education who said this "Children are not supposed to use computers, only adults should, so we are planning to introduce compulsory computer education to universities and colleges". You might ask, what do african children need computers for, in the light of hunger, war and other things plaguing the continent, but i dont think this is so, technology can be used to leap frog the continent into rapid development, and also increase the standard of living of africans. I wish this to be taken as a petition to people of this forum to mount pressure on the Governments of 3rd world countries to do what is right. <comment><USER3> Technological and Development Support for the Global Poor

Socially responsible technology development projects aimed at stabilizing and then improving the conditions of the global poor can easily be created from America's scientific and technical base. Many projects already exist, such as the One Laptop Per Child initiative, but these projects are seen as stand- alone initiatives, rather than parts of a coherent policy approach to the developing world.

Target areas could include global access to clean water through simple technologies like solar water pasteurization, development of new appropriate technology power systems, low cost basic medical technologies and so on.

The close analogy to the Air-support-only defensive pacts is that the US would take responsibility for developing and testing these technologies, but would only make the designs available free of charge - essentially providing design and laboratory services, and leaving nations, NGOs and individuals to capitalize the designs and handle resource distribution. This keeps costs down, and makes clear where US responsibility ends, which is an important consideration when considering how to reach outside of our borders on non- military levels.

Another critical area is farming. Roughly 50% of the world's population makes a living by simple farming, mainly using manual and animal labor. One recent study shows that modern organic agriculture techniques could roughly double the food output of these farmers (Perfecto et. al. "Organic agriculture and the global food supply.") Organic agriculture practices could be disseminated using modern ICT. For example, a farmer could send an SMS message to the local American embassy while standing in their field. The GPS data about their location could be correlated with satellite imagery showing the condition of their fields over the previous few years using techniques from precision agriculture, a common first world farming practice. Individualized recommendations could then be delivered. The cost per individual helped is relatively small: the heavy work is done by computers. But the effect on global food security, and on how the US is viewed by perhaps 50% of the world's population is beyond price.

Similar approaches are possible in medicine. Carefully prepared information packs, tailored to the health risks of each climate, geography and lifestyle could be coupled with existing medical expert systems to provide very basic, but still very useful, global health support at relatively low marginal costs. Education is similarly an open door: primary and even secondary education materials, vetted for accuracy and cultural appropriateness, and then translated into many world languages could help countless people at very low cost, and the more educated a population is, the less vulnerable they will be to rumors and propaganda.

<http://guptaoption.com/2.long_peace.php>

</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>==

There is a lot to be done with computers in the developing world.

</comment><comment><USER4> This happens in Europe as well: Something Rotten in Hungary

In the end, Steve Ballmer is doing what any good CEO should be doing, by recognizing where to best put his efforts to best sell his company to the world. Clearly, Mr. Ballmer sees the young minds as being valuable enough to invest 10 billion HUF (~40,000,000 Euro) in them. He's even has done something even better for his share holders: he has figured how to make this investment using someone else's money - namely, the EU taxpayers' money.

<http://www.theserverside.com/news/thread.tss?thread_id=49451>

</comment><comment><USER5> I am pretty damn sure the corrupt leaders in countries like Nigeria and Kenya (where I was born and raised) will not be swayed by an online petition! Rather than use this forum as a petition, you might consider leveraging the intelligence and experience of this group to discuss the issue of the digital divide and possibly offer suggestions as to how we could bridge it.

For example, as hackers and entrepreneurs we could work to develop an open online app that could make it easier to introduce kids in developing countries to CS and provide mentorship in some way. At MIT there was an program called AITI (Africa Internet Technology Initiative) that sent students to Kenya, Ghana and Ethiopia over the summer to teach programming to high school kids there. What about a project that would provide some seed money to local African entrepreneurs to setup educational internet cafes in communities there?

It is a huge problem and would be really interesting to discuss the issue further here.

(Posted earlier here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=208030> but recommenting since the submission is now getting some traction)

</comment><comment><USER6> Not directly related to the OLPC & Corruption issue but, something annoying's happening in Turkey, too. (First of all, let me start by saying that our country's got nothing to do with the english meaning of turkey and in contrast to the popular impression, it's not a country of radical religion some extremist groups of people notwithstanding)

After this brief introduction let me come to the main point:

Well the national telecommunication company of turkey (Turkish Telekom or Türk Telekom) has began to offer its E-Mail services ,which is bundled free with the ADSL subscriptions, on the Microsoft Windows environment! For years it has been offered thru a fine and effectively working Java application.

Sadly, this change from Java to Microsoft occurred right after the turkish telekom 's been privatized.

What annoys me is not only that the public services are being misused, it's also that this new Outlook like E-Mail service apparently favors Internet Explorer. This in turn makes people more dependent on Microsoft....

Just wanted to let you know...

</comment><comment><USER7> Um... Children AREN'T supposed to use computers. It's not just the Nigerian Minister of Education who believes this. Children should be using their hands, developing coordination, developing social skills, and solving problems through imagination. Ideally, they should be outside in the natural world. Unequivocally, they should be away from all screen media.

<comment><USER8> That's a false dichotomy. Time on the computer does not mean one mustn't spend time outside or on other tasks.

<comment><USER7> But time on the computer means there is less time to spend outside and less time to spend on other tasks. Screen media simply isn't helpful for children under high school.

<comment><USER8> You've made that assertion without any evidence. I was home-schooled for about half of my K-12 education, part of that included time on the computer during "school hours", and I was also given time on the computer after school - <USER2> moderation. As a result, I have a distinct love of the things that is not shared by my siblings who did not receive a similar education. So, since I am a (hopefully) competent systems administrator and programmer, I think that my experience on the computer as a child benefited me. I think that doing many different things in moderation is far more valuable than sending your children outside for every hour of the day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> wrongdoing from Redmond? Now, that's strange ;-)</comment>


Ask HN: What charities have you donated to for those affected by Covid and why? - <AUTHOR> Looking to give some money away to help those in need. Hoping to put where it can do the most good. <comment><USER2> Local food pantry. While food stamps are available there can be significant delays before people receive them.</comment>


The SeatGeek Event Recommendations API - <AUTHOR> http://seatgeek.com/blog/dev/seatgeek-event-recommendations-api

<comment><USER2> How would it be able to calculate results from an arbitrary vector of preferences in realtime? It seems like the sort of thing that could not be done quickly enough to respond with a synchronous API request. In other words, it seems like the sort of thing that is naturally backgrounded.

<comment><AUTHOR> It can be done fast enough. There is some pre-processing of the raw data at startup time, so all we store in memory is a matrix representation of our user/artist preference graph.

A typical preference calculation for a new arbitrary set of artists takes 50-100ms, at which point it is cached for a while. Our most common queries [individual performers, for example] tend to read from cache, which helps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> For those who are curious, a direct link to the documentation: <http://platform.seatgeek.com/#recommendations>

</comment><comment><USER4> Looks great. Are there affiliate options coming?

</comment><comment><USER5> I didn't even know SeatGeek had an API. Just added their event listings to one of my side projects.

Serendipity.

</comment><comment><USER6> I think their website just got hacked...

<comment><USER7> Unfortunately, it does seem that way. We're looking at it.</comment></comment>


The function of dream sleep (1983) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/ps/access/scbcdk.pdf <comment><USER2> FWIW, the book "Why We Sleep" mentions this paper by Francis Crick et. al. and talks about the history of sleep research.

I'm in the middle of it because of a Hacker News recommendation, and let me pass on the recommendation. It's great so far :)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17381235](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17381235)

For example, I think most of us now know that napping isn't for the "lazy" but it's nice to see the scientific reasoning for it. The author Walker is a great sleep advocate.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Graeme, a distant relative of J.B.S. Haldane, was a fantastic scientist who contributed to a wide range of fields. Sadly, he passed away in April this year. Here's a brief but interesting overview of his life for anyone interested:

[https://www2.mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk/graeme- mitchison-1944-2018-2/](https://www2.mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk/graeme- mitchison-1944-2018-2/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Good read, but the conclusions made in this 35-year old paper are a bit outdated. This reverse-learning idea has long been supplanted by the threat- simulation theory: [https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/behavioral-and- brain...](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/behavioral-and-brain- sciences/article/reinterpretation-of-dreams-an-evolutionary-hypothesis-of-the- function-of-dreaming/EE0E7DB39E361540D2DDA79C262EDA7E)

<comment><USER4> I'm genuinely curious how they test their conclusions with something like this.

The 35 year old theory seems equally as likely as the threat-simulation theory. What has made threat-simulation supplant other theories on this topic?

<comment><USER5> Well, the comment you are replying to may have jumped the gun, both are still hypothesis.</comment></comment></comment>


Tinker Away, Facebook Says - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/03/business/03stream.html

<comment><USER2> This strategy is not counterintuitive, as the article says. In fact, I see it as a logical next step. What could possibly be better than having your service work on all conceivable electronic devices in thousands of fun, creative forms?</comment>


This tiny projector puts smartphone apps on your car's windshield - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2014/8/5/5970705/this-tiny-projector-puts-smartphone-apps-on-your-cars-windshield

<comment><AUTHOR> _" In our interpretation, it's a transparent image, and it doesn't obstruct your view," Simpson says. "The laws that apply to us are about stickers and tinted windows, not HUDs." Navdy hopes the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration will ultimately say HUDs are a good thing since they let people view data without looking away from what's in front of them._

Curious to see how this plays out. Currently regulation is really lagging far behind technological advances.

</comment><comment><USER2> I remember test driving an Oldsmobile in the late 80s that had a HUD. The display was outside of the driver's immediate center of vision so it didn't obstruct the roadway, but it was visible without having to look away from the road to see speed, fuel, and some other data. It used a blue vacuum fluorescent display, hot stuff at the time. IIRC though the rest of the car was an absolute piece of trash.

Edit: Ha, my memory isn't terrible: 1988 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme Indy Pace Car

</comment><comment><USER3> Earlier discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8137815](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8137815)</comment>


What we actually know about Steve Jobs' neuroendocrine tumor - <AUTHOR> http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2011/10/steve_jobs_neuroendocrine_tumors_and_alt.php

<comment><USER2> I am disappointed in anyone that uses someone's death as a golf club for their pet topic, or, worse, to garner a few more page views.

And that's all I have to say about that.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't feel comfortable discussing this topic, however something stood out: "periodic abdominal scans". I've had an abdomiminal CT done, but I was acutely aware of the danger of high radiation doses: I certainly wouldn't want to repeatedly have the procedure done.

<comment><USER4> I have annual full chest/abdomen CTs done to monitor my ascending aortic dissection.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> And the cure for cancer? ... when?</comment>


Fine-Grained Replicated State Machines for a Cluster Storage System (NSDI 2020) - <AUTHOR> http://muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/2020/04/fine-grained-replicated-state-machines.html <comment><USER2> Weird that they didn't cite Ken Birman's RNFS paper from 1987 on a highly available, fine grained replicated state machine storage cluster.

Poor Birman seems to be habitually lost to the sands of time.

<comment><USER3> Can you provide more detail? I can't find the paper you are referring to.

<comment><USER2> RNFS - A Highly Available Network File Service. K. Birman with S. Armstrong et. al. Workshop on Workstation Operation Systems, Boston, Massachusetts, November 1987.

It's about building a clustered NFS server on "virtual synchrony", which is another replicated state machine scheme like paxos and raft. The paper really focuses on some of the issues in making the system very fine grained versus previous virtual synchrony implementations, in addition to the issues in general to making a clustered, highly available, multi master NFS server.

<comment><USER4> Have you tried googling for a copy of that paper?

That might be part of the reason.

<comment><USER2> The universities have access to it.

<comment><USER5> This is usually true but I couldn't find any record of an actual published version in proceedings anywhere.

On the other hand, a related paper on the same system by a subset of authors is available: [http://dl.acm.org.sci- hub.tw/doi/book/10.5555/866299](http://dl.acm.org.sci- hub.tw/doi/book/10.5555/866299)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google's Fuchsia OS on the Pixelbook: It Works It Actually Works - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/01/googles-fuchsia-os-on-the-pixelbook-it-works-it-actually-works/2/ <comment><USER2> I don't know why but I'm actually less excited about Fuchsia than the old Singularity/Midori. As Joe Duffy said [0] when they worked on Midori they also wrote UI, editors, browsers and many more applications in months so it's not surprising Google engineers also managed that.

[0]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CuD7SCqHB7k](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CuD7SCqHB7k)

For me it looks like the classic Not Invented Here syndrome - we already have microkernels, even formally verified ones (seL4) but AFAIK Google didn't want that to "be more flexible".

Using C for kernel also looks like a poor choice nowadays, unless Google has some magic static analysis (for example Singularity/Midori had custom languages with ownership tracking akin to Rust).

Maybe Fuchsia is for bringing microkernel architecture for masses using "boring technology"?

<comment><USER3> Here's a quick ELI5 style question: what are the implications of Meltdown mitigations on microkernel architectures (vs monolithic designs)?

<comment><USER2> Singularity used Software Isolated Processes. Basically the apps were distributed as .NET bytecode, compiled by Bartok on the target system to native code. That guaranteed that processes never accessed each other's memory so you wouldn't need regular process isolation.

I haven't thought about the implications to reading kernel memory but it'd be great to see a paper on the subject.</comment></comment></comment>


Shell social media oil spill a 'coordinated online assassination' - <AUTHOR> http://www.theage.com.au/technology/technology-news/shell-social-media-oil-spill-a-coordinated-online-assassination-20120719-22bpe.html <comment><USER2> Aging oil and gas industry engineer/project manager and environmentalist here. I really like this campaign! It provides an effective counter to the millions (billions?) of dollars the oil and gas industry expends in advertising and lobbying.

In my 25 year experience, the _western_ oil and gas industry is on the balance _very_ responsible when it comes to health, safety and environmental protection. I would much rather have Shell explore the Arctic than say Lukoil.

However, Greenpeace and other environmental activists are good part of the reason _why_ western oil and gas companies are so concerned about the environment. In places where Greenpeace has low influence/support/visibility, things like this are pretty common:

<http://www.tropix.co.uk/region_files/azerbajn_03.htm>

I have dealt with enough pointy haired bosses in my work to realise that without effective activism, health, safety and environment would often be improperly compromised wrt cost, schedule and throughput.

<comment><USER3> I'm still perplexed that Oil companies bother to advertise at all. What's the point? I'd keep a low profile if I were them. People don't really choose where they fill their car on the company do they? It's more dictated by price and whether the station is en route to work.

Good point about Greenpeace keeping the oil companies on their toes. Sad though that it has to be this way.

To me drilling for oil - is almost money for nothing. I'm baffled that these companies aren't behaving more responsibly.

<comment><USER4> People did react to the Exxon Valdez oil spill which IMO woke the oil companies up as to the value of pure image advertising.

<comment><USER3> There was a good TV program of a tear down of a decommissioned shell/esso rig from the North Sea oil field. On yesterday (Sun 22nd July.)

Apparently there was a shift in European law, that now forces companies to tidy up after they've finished. Brought about after pressure from Greenpeace for Shell trying to ditch the Brent Spar in an underwater trough.

Quite how you'd do this with anything deep sea is beyond me. Worth a watch though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Wow. This is absolutely fascinating. With this campaign, Greenpeace has shown more Internet savvy than the vast majority of professional "viral" marketers.

I'm not going to weigh in on the moral aspects of this incident, as I don't particularly care. I'm far more interested in the mechanics of how this was pulled off, as it has huge implications for corporations, activists, and even political candidates. I could easily see some Obama supporter pulling something similar and creating a firestorm around the Romney campaign.

Love it or hate it, these tactics are here to stay. It will be incumbent upon entities with interests in online perceptions to guard themselves against these kinds of attacks and, should the pros outweigh the cons, engage in them as well.

<comment><USER6> Greenpeace enlisted the amazing Yes Men as consultants via their thinktank: <http://www.yeslab.org/>.

<comment><USER7> A brief glance at their previous work shows that spreading hoaxes via social media seems to be their modus operandi.

<comment><USER8> And traditional media - their Bhopal apology hoax was done via a TV interview.

<comment><USER9> you seem to have forgotten the words "fsking amazing" between apology and hoax

See: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LiWlvBro9eI>

<comment><USER8> I was trying to stay fairly clinical about it because it's pretty controversial. But yes, I did have a good giggle when I first saw it on The Yes Men Fix the World.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> What's shocking to me is the blatant manipulation of the mob. Maybe this has gone on forever, but seeing it happen in real time on sites like Reddit is tripping me out. While I think my BS filter is more sophisticated than most, on the morning it was released I sent the Shell party video to a colleague to ask if he was there not realizing it was a spoof. Turns out he happened to know there was no such party.

I feel like the internet is becoming an increasingly dangerous place, and subtly so.

<comment><USER11> I'd pity them save for the fact that big oil has been 'blatantly manipulating the mob' for decades now, at the detriment to our environment.

The dangers of the mob are very real though, as many people's lives have been ruined (or nearly ruined) through some misinformation that goes viral.

<comment><USER10> I guess the interesting part to me is that, with the advent of news aggregators and social networks, the internet kind of removes the filter. A blatant lie can take off like wildfire and burn a lot of people before anyone can mobilize to put it out. Maybe I give journalists too much credit, but before the advent of the internet as we know it today, these organizations (whether big oil or Green Peace), had to filter the information through some sort of intermediary first. Now they have direct access to millions of people.

<comment><USER11> Yeah it's definitely a double-edged sword. Like the person whose house was posted to Craigslist with a "come and take what you want", which people did....and only too late did the owner find out -- and of course, he made no such offers. But the mob was quick to act and didn't ask many questions.

On the brighter side, there's quite a few exposés that we now witness that would have never seen the light of day otherwise (or would have been relegated to B-theaters, flea markets, and mail-order catalogs).

<comment><USER12> Maybe free speach has something wrong in it when taken to the word.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> For me, this just makes Greenpeace look bad. I wonder when we will see an "online assassination assassination": a purposely concocted lie that looks like it is spread by another party, designed to "backfire".

<comment><USER14> I dislike Greenpeace with a fervour shared with few other groups.

They constantly try and damage companies, which has a very real flow-on effect on peoples livelihoods. Usually their campaigns are built on a base of lies and usually over something the target company has very little control over anyway.

The damage they do to legitimate environmental concerns with their jack-assery is untold. In truth they are just a corporate machine built to collect more donations.

I go out and pick up rubbish, help monitor local wildlife and generally try and help out. This afternoon I told off a pair of kids trying to destroy a tree for kicks and made sure they didn't come back.

The only people I meet from Greenpeace are very unpleasant and a Greenpeace shirt never appears at local cleanups and volunteer days.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> As funny as these spoofed ads are, isn't this exactly the sort of thing that libel laws are for? This is a fake site purporting to be, in fact, an official Shell site. I guess their domain name isn't hosted by GoDaddy otherwise the URL would probably already have been redirected to shell.com.

<comment><USER16> _As funny as these spoofed ads are, isn't this exactly the sort of thing that libel laws are for?_

No, not really. This is what _charges of criminal impersonation_ are for.

<comment><USER17> Although parody would be an interesting defense. I suppose in some jurisdictions there might be a possible freedom of political speech defense too.

<comment><USER16> I am not a lawyer, but I'm not aware of parody being a defence against charges of criminal impersonation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Clever, but maybe not very wise. Doesn't this open Greenpeace up to all sorts of liability?

You can bet Shell's legal team is already going over this in detail, and their response is not going to involve a bunch of retweet whoring on twitter.

<comment><USER19> These guys engage in _actual naval combat_ on the high seas. I don't think they're afraid of lawsuits. If I were a lawyer, I wouldn't go anywhere near either side of that battle anyway.

<comment><USER20> The vandalism by the local chapter this year has been hilariously misguided. They destroyed a GM crop experiment that was investigating the damage GM crops do, attacked a building they thought processed cage chickens but actually cut off the supply of free range eggs and destroyed fences that were protecting reintroduced native animals from predators in protest against culling kangaroos.

We must destroy the village to save it? ;)

<comment><USER21> At the end of the day that's why I'm perfectly happy with Greenpeace/etc doing their battling from the web. They get the ego rub they desperately desire and no fingers are brought close to dangerous machinery.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I wonder what would people think if

a.) Someone fakes a YC startup b.) Shell fakes Greenpeace

We will remember this moment as the fake wars.

<comment><USER23> a) If a tree falls in a forest? b) Congressional hearings, a revitalization of public interest in conservation, and Shell would be dealing with the fallout for decades.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> The damage will really be done when Shell respond in kind and fake greenpeace campaigns spring up everywhere.

Disinformation warfare.

<comment><USER25> The article all but suggests that Shell actually do this. While part of me thinks Shell doing its own satire / misinformation campaign would be the most effective response (legal action would just attract more attention), I have a hard time imagining such misinformation campaign having anything but further negative effect on Shell's public branding.

<comment><USER26> The journalist let social media brand consultants write about half of the article, of course they would suggest escalating. Shell raising public awareness of shills would be an awesome move.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> This is stunt brilliant, but the truth of the matter is its not going to solve any problems. Don't get me wrong, I love that Shell oil is getting clowned, but other than possibly choosing a different brand of gas its not going to infect any meaningful human behavioral change.

As long as people live in a world where you have to turn on an engine to do ANYTHING - and participate in an economy that depends on and encourages over consumption, oil companies will continue to thrive. Humans will continue to burn shit to live the dream and humanity will carry on its march towards extinction.

Someone needs to find a way to convince people that using an automobile (or multiple automobiles) as a replacement for their legs is the real problem.

</comment><comment><USER28> I wonder how relevant the public image of an oil company really is.

It's not like we buy gas because we love Shell. It's because we don't really have a choice.

</comment><comment><USER29> The the viral campaigners who made this revealed themselves over a month ago and this is linked to directly from the video <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InL4ONJh9fA>

</comment><comment><USER30> I think threatening legal action over posting a link to the fake ads is overkill.

<comment><USER31> The threatening tweets are part of the brand assassination, not actually from Shell.

<comment><USER30> Oh, that wasn't very clear from the article.

<comment><USER32> _"It also has tweeted repeatedly that the account is in fact a legitimate Shell account. But of course, it, too is a fake. Not that web users realise."_

<comment><USER33> It's easy to overlook. The text of the tweet and the immediately following article text run together:

<http://imgur.com/OHq5z>

<comment><USER34> One of the downsides of disabling javascript is that you may not see websites as they intend you to see them.

<comment><USER33> I'm only using Ghostery, I wouldn't expect that to affect the main content of a site.

Ghostery's blocked list:

      DoubleClick
      Facebook Connect
      Google +1
      Google Adsense
      Google Analytics
      LinkedIn Widgets
      NetRatings SiteCensus
      ScoreCard Research Beacon
      Twitter Button
      Tynt Insight

... just disabled Ghostery, and one of those _is_ affecting the article content.

<comment><USER34> My guess is that Ghostery considers the javascript that is served by Twitter to be a tracking device (quite possibly correctly)... but I could be wrong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I just wonder why they targeted Shell with this new tactic, and not Exxon, the biggest oil company - is Exxon's environmental protection record better thank Shell's?

<comment><USER36> Shell just won permits to drill in the arctic, that's what the event in the fake video is supposedely celebrating.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> News to me. If it weren't on HN, I would not have heard of it.

</comment><comment><USER38> Even the phrase "social media oil spill" puts Shell in a bad light. Devious.</comment>