Ask HN: What do you guys think of zero rating? - <AUTHOR> The Indian mobile operator Airtel has proposed a new scheme called Airtel Zero here in India , which is supposedly an "open" platform that would allow any app maker to pay for the data so that customers can use the app without paying any data charges.
This is ofcourse , a blatant violation of net neutrality and has caused an uproar here in India . However they're trying to make this into a Rich vs poor thing by saying that banning zero rating is to deny poor people access.
The worse thing is that both Google and Facebook are in support of this scheme even though they support net neutrality in the US. Facebook was already in violation with their Internet.org scheme but I didn't expect this from Google.
If Airtel's experiment succeeds I think that this could be replicated across the world and destroy the very character of the internet.
The other problem is that zero rating is a bit of a trickier debate since it's not the customer who's paying.
We need to force the tech majors to take a stand against this. What can be done to force them ? <comment><USER2> Okay, this has nothing to do with supporting the poor as the comments here are suggesting, and as Airtel is trying to paint it. Poor can avail month-long 1GB data at $3 in India. All major providers have a plan that makes Facebook, Whatzapp, Google, Twitter, Instagram free for $0.5 a month. We already have plans for the poor, this is not it.

This plan is the following - if you take Airtel Zero, you cannot access any other website. Period. That's right, no option to pay for other websites at all. Once you opt-in, your web is restricted. This is not like the plans for poor we already have, where you pay little or nothing for some websites, but can use regular plans to access rest of the web. With the new Airtel Zero, you waive off the rights to rest of the web as soon as you opt-in.

This is a net neutrality debate. We have plans for poor, this is not it.

<comment><USER3> Wow $3 for a GB of data? I'm paying more than three times as much in Canada and that's considered a good deal.

<comment><USER4> $3 a GB is not cheap when it's 10% of your monthly income, which is the case for somewhere between a quarter and a half of Indian citizens on a dollar a day, depending on whose statistics you regard as the most representative and accurate. And that's a number which has fallen heavily in recent years.

That certainly puts things into perspective when talking about the downside to requiring people pay for bandwidth even if the app-owners want them to have it for free...

<comment><USER2> That quarter and a half billion cannot afford a smartphone yet. So mobile data scheme for apps is not a conversation about them. It is peanuts for people who can afford a smartphone.

<comment><USER4> I wouldn't call $3 per gigabyte "peanuts" to someone buying the ~$30 extreme low-end Android phones, or indeed a much poorer person that possesses a battered second-hand feature phone with a Facebook app, which could at least theoretically be covered with this sort of program.

<comment><USER2> As I said before, we already have plans that give access to basic websites for $0.5 a month. Facebook-only access is like $0.1 a month. But with these plans, I can still access the rest of the web if I choose to, I just have to pay. $0.5 is what a poor person pays for lunch on job site, just to put the price in perspective.

I'm not arguing the free part, I'm arguing the fact that as soon as you opt-in for the new Zero plan, the regular web just cannot be had, even for price. The only web that will work on the phone is apps by Zero Rent providers. No websites, even if you wish to pay for them.

And this is bad for poor people to boot. What if they want e-governance features, no sir, wait in line and be treated poorly. What if they want to access healthcare information, no sir, wait in private hospitals and be treated poorly. But wait, get this, you can shop on Flipkart for no cost. Yay!

<comment><USER5> If they want e-governance and healthcare information, why did they subscribe to a service that didn't have them? Is there any argument that justifies this besides "they're too stupid to know better"?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I am not sure why businesses paying the data charges of their customers is a violation of net neutrality? It might be anti-competitive and an abuse of market power, but unless the traffic was prioritized over other traffic how is this a violation of net neutrality?

<comment><USER7> If I understand correctly, someone out of data on his/her plan will be able to access data from some businesses (who pay for the data), and not from other "normal" businesses.

So in a sense it's a form of binary prioritization: 0 or 1.

<comment><USER6> It isn't a violation of net neutrality if I don't pay my cable bills and so get cut off. I am not suggesting that it is a good idea for companies to abuse their market power, but it is not an abuse of net neutrality to pay someone else's bill.

<comment><USER8> Having no service does not violate net neutrality. But net neutrality is violated when ISPs provide selective service based on who pays them the most. If packets are delivered differently based on business relationships, then it's not a neutral network.

What's being described here is much more akin to cable, where many channels pay for access to consumers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm always disappointed when deregulation advocates don't seem to understand how markets work.

Free markets are great when you have a large number of relatively equal agents interacting freely. E.g., the classic farmer's market, or the stock trading pits of old. But the more you drift from those conditions, the less effective they are.

Here, with large, rich players paying for access to poor, mostly-uneducated individuals, it's a situation ripe for abuse. Especially because those individuals won't have access to the regular Internet to help them sort through what they're seeing.

I expect a lot of what they get will be from the sort of people who exploit the poor, the online equivalent of payday lenders and debt relief scam artists.

<comment><USER9> I don't think having a large number of relatively equal agents interacting freely is ever realistic. There will always be those at an advantage and they should choose what he pursue based on their abilities. Kind of like very tall people with an athletic disposition should consider playing basketball. On the surface it is unfair to those under 6 feet tall but the NBA, being a market, is most concerned with attracting the talent that should be playing basketball rather than providing a level playing field to those who aspire to play.

In that sense, the market isn't about providing fairness to all players but for allocating talent and abilities.

In regards to exploiting the poor, I think that sort of mind-set often results in a dangerous kind paternalism. Protecting the poor is an excuse used for all sort of policies that often keep the poor down (cigarette taxes, drug policy, etc).

<comment><USER10> Not only that, it takes away an avenue for companies with large coffers from doing charity. For example, Google might want to make all of Khan Academy available via 'zero bandwidth' to Indian customers, by footing the bills themselves. Forcing customers to pay for the bandwidth (when someone else is willing to pay) goes against free-market principles.

<comment><USER8> Free-market principles aren't a religious goal. They're tools we use to design markets. And we do that to achieve some real-world end, like better resource allocation, more stable social structures, or smarter, healthier citizens.

In this case, if we're writing net neutrality rule, it's easy enough to exempt charity cases like you describe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> If I was developing an app in India, I would love to pay for my users data. This is a huge win for both companies and customers.

My opinion is that this should have nothing to do with the "net neutrality" debate. It's just shifting more costs onto the host, instead of the user. The host already pays for all the servers and outgoing bandwidth, why is it a problem if they also pay for the other side of the connection?

And if any website can opt-in to this arrangement, then there is nothing anti- competitive about it at all.

</comment><comment><USER12> > If Airtel's experiment succeeds I think that this could be replicated across > the world and destroy the very character of the internet.

No - that is unlikely in the extreme. The UK has had zero-rated data and text messages for over 5 years and it has had no impact at all.

</comment><comment><USER13> > We need to force the tech majors to take a stand against this.

Why exactly?

The crux of this argument seems to be "having more money makes you better able to compete"

This falls out of free market capitalism. Its not going to go away without regulation, and it seems like doing so will disadvantage swathes of poor people for questionable benefits.

I do see the argument, but I think its quite far out of touch with reality, as a lot of these 'internet rights' and silicon valley engineers seem to be.

<comment><USER14> More like "Having more money means you can sandbag your competitors, since you own the verticals and give away your service to encourage usage of your walled garden until your competitors fade into nothingness."

In regards to the swathes of poor people, we can use a similar situation (though hyperbolic) to compare, and that is nestle giving out free formula to breastfeeding mothers in poor countries, and that couldnt hurt anyone because they were giving it away, right?

 _For example, IBFAN claim that Nestlé distributes free formula samples to hospitals and maternity wards; after leaving the hospital, the formula is no longer free, but because the supplementation has interfered with lactation, the family must continue to buy the formula.[1]_

Regulation is definitely needed when a company does the equivalent of dumping or a predatory pricing scheme. Claiming that "poor people will be hurt" is missing the point that the robber baron isn't giving them free bread to feed them, they give them free bread to close down the other bakeries and then charge them for their daily bread in any way they want.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nestl%C3%A9_boycott#Baby_milk_i...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nestl%C3%A9_boycott#Baby_milk_issue)

<comment><USER13> It should be regulated. I'm just not sure why tech majors should take this up for us... its not in their interest, or in the interest of their customers.

Regardless as to motive, nothing will change to the people who benefit from this...

I'm not sure what competition it will be stifling either. We seem to be assuming that this is already a fairly balanced industry without gigantic monopolies - which is just untrue.

I can see the philosophical argument, I just can't be in favour of it when all we want at the core is to do is hold something back that has benefit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> There is only one solution: If absolutely nobody has to pay for their mobile data usage, then there are no "poor" people in that respect.

If "Airtel Zero" were implemented as is, then "poor" people would only see the apps / contents that the people with the money are willing to give them. That degree of dependency borders on modern slavery. I would rather see mobile data made free for everyone.

<comment><USER11> If you pay nothing for a service, then you are the product. Facebook and Google are already providing enormous value for free, if you have an internet connection. Now they want to provide it for free even if you don't pay for your internet connection. This arrangement changes nothing about the consumer relationship.

<comment><USER8> Except that you no longer have access to information that they don't want you to see. For example, they won't be able to see you explaining that for Facebook and Google, users are the products.

<comment><USER5> Doesn't the same happen in TV, radio, newspapers, etc? I understand why the Internet is different (and better, imho), but that doesn't mean we should ban other mediums. Just don't call this service Internet access.

<comment><USER16> I actually think this is one of the better ideas/solutions to this problem I have yet seen in this thread. If you don't label this service as access to "the internet" then there should be little concern as far as net neutrality goes. As long as it is made clear to customers that they are not getting the full internet, and instead are paying only for access to a handful of services then I dont think this should be considered a violation of net neutrality.

<comment><USER8> I am flabbergasted that you're just going to define the problem away. But it certainly is easier. You can solve all net neutrality problems just by labeling things as other things.

For the rest of us, though, that doesn't work so well, because there are societal purposes to getting people access to the Internet. Democracy requires an informed citizenry, and there is no better tool for that than the Internet. Reducing multigenerational poverty similarly benefits from reducing the digital divide: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_divide](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_divide)

<comment><USER5> Why don't you try engaging the argument? I think we all agree that Internet access is important - I certainly do - but that does mean we should ban all other mediums? If not, what makes this one different?

That we should give people access to the Internet is a red herring here. The existence of this cellphone plan doesn't preclude us from doing so

Insteadof being outraged that this company dared to violate NN, why don't we try to understand why would people choose this instead of Internet access? If it's due to cost, then maybe the solution should be to provide more affordable Internet access, so that they don't feel the need to join this plan.

<comment><USER8> I don't think we should ban other media, and I don't know why you think I'm obliged to defend that straw man.

New mediums come along rarely. It behooves us to be very careful in how we adopt them. That's especially true for the Internet, which I think is more powerful and likely to be more lasting than its historical competitors.

When television came along, there was enormous hope for its power. But its commercial structure, at least in the US, left it to become "the idiot box". For people who would like to pay a lot of money to constrain people to listen to their messages, TV still exists.

it's _possible_ that Internet-- won't reduce prevent getting people proper Internet service, but when making major societal decisions, I think we deserve a higher standard than the _possibility_ of not fucking things up for the next few hundred years.

I do note that in the US internet market, the reason most people's ISP is their old telco or cable company is that poor regulation let the old oligopoly players rebuild their oligopolies for a new medium through undercutting real competition. That now looks impossible to dislodge, which is why we need net neutrality regulation in the first place. So it seems plausible to me that letting quick hits of easy money determine who gets to see what on the Internet could establish long-term patterns that permanently undermine net neutrality.

<comment><USER5> _it 's possible that Internet-- won't reduce prevent getting people proper Internet service, but when making major societal decisions, I think we deserve a higher standard than the possibility of not fucking things up for the next few hundred years._

You never have more than the possibility of not fucking things up. When you're arguing against allowing people from subscribing to a service, I think they deserve a better standard than "I know better than you what is good for you".

As I've pointed out, there have been many mediums of communication, that have been installed for many years before the Internet appeared, yet they didn't stop it from taking hold rather rapidly. I don't see why you shouldn't have to explain why you think this time is different, besides "well, it might be!"

 _I do note that in the US internet market, the reason most people 's ISP is their old telco or cable company is that poor regulation let the old oligopoly players rebuild their oligopolies for a new medium through undercutting real competition. That now looks impossible to dislodge, which is why we need net neutrality regulation in the first place. So it seems plausible to me that letting quick hits of easy money determine who gets to see what on the Internet could establish long-term patterns that permanently undermine net neutrality._

"Let" is not the right word. Regulation in the US was designed to build and sustain those oligopoly players. I see no reason to assume that "easy money" alone will provoke the same effect; the ISPs in my country all have plenty of money, and many offer zero rating or the equivalent, and yet we still have an healthy market.

<comment><USER8> > When you're arguing against allowing people from subscribing to a service, I > think they deserve a better standard than "I know better than you what is > good for you".

Ok. You keep on thinking that. That is very nearly the basis of regulation, so I don't see a lot of future in this discussion. Sometimes rational individual choices have negative systemic effects, so I think it's reasonable to say, "We know better than you what is good for all of us."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Wouldn't banning zero rating impact poor people the most?

It's probably why this is even an issue in the first place. In richer countries, companies simply expect their customers to have a decent connection.

<comment><USER18> Zero rating is a thing in richer countries, too; in the US, for example, Sprint has made deals to zero-rate selected social media services; T-Mobile has made deals to zero-rate certain streaming audio services.

And, as in India, the advocates of the interests of the wealthy and corporations in the US like to promote zero rating as a thing that is good for the poor, with AEI promoting it as a tool to "narrow the digital divide". [0]

[0] [http://www.techpolicydaily.com/internet/zero-rating- narrowin...](http://www.techpolicydaily.com/internet/zero-rating-narrowing- digital-divide-mobile-broadband-market/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> The telcos and the government are trying to spin this as affordable Internet for the poor. Essentially, it does break net neutrality [0].

> At first glance it may appear that all traffic is handled equally in this > charging model, but the fact is that once you have used your quota, the > traffic that is exempted will be allowed to continue, while all other > traffic will be throttled or blocked. This is clearly a case of > discrimination between different types of traffic.

Now, if this is so altruistic and for benefit of all - I would make three "requests" from the telecoms.

1\. Telcos should not prevent ANY app/website or any other service from being registered on the zero rating platform.

2\. Telcos should post every detail of their financial deal with zero rating partners public. Essentially, I would like to know if a zero rating partner is paying for this affordability or are these costs passed on to the consumer in secret.

I am sure since this is for the good of everyone, telcos would have no problem agreeing to these two reasonable requests.

[0] [http://eng.nkom.no/topical-issues/news/net-neutrality-and- ch...](http://eng.nkom.no/topical-issues/news/net-neutrality-and-charging- models)

</comment><comment><USER20> The original post

[http://www.airtel.in/about-bharti/media-centre/bharti- airtel...](http://www.airtel.in/about-bharti/media-centre/bharti-airtel- news/corporate/airtel+launches+-+airtel+zero-+a+win- win+platform+for+customers+and+marketers)

and their clarification on the Airtel Zero

[http://www.airtel.in/about-bharti/media-centre/bharti- airtel...](http://www.airtel.in/about-bharti/media-centre/bharti-airtel- news/corporate/statement-from-airtel)

I feel Zero rating can be a boon or a death knell for small startups based on Airtel decide to charge per GB of data. I don't think it about restricting certain sites, its about giving the option to peoples to be able to access certain services without having to recharge. I am not sure if Airtel have a sinister design behind this at the moment.... Its more of wait and watch, keep your fingers crossed.

</comment><comment><USER21> There are two points here.

1\. Zero rating is good for customers. If Flipkart offers zero rating app, then other competitors like Amazon, Ebay, Snapdeal etc. too are forced to improve their service over Flipkart, or provide Zero Rating for them also. (But from a Business perspective, this can be bad).

2\. Net Neutrality is a different thing. But here the telecom operators are confusing people with NN and ZR, tricking the users to believe that they are going to get internet for free once ZR is active. No, it's not like that. They are different things.

I believe that ZR for basic communication apps (like WhatsApp, Google Hangouts, Skype etc.) is an essential thing to do.

But still maintaining Net Neutrality is very very important.

<comment><USER22> _1\. Zero rating is good for customers._

This is probably more complicated. While large companies will have to follow suit and probably buy-in into the ZR deal of large telcos, startups and small buisnesess will essentially be cut off from (potential) customers.

For a small company, it will become a huge challenge to enter such markets - both logistically and financially, so in the end there will be no more Internet for the customers but only FacebookGoogleEbayNet...

<comment><USER21> @ge0rg You said it right. In this blossom of startups, the ZR will be too heavy for startups to handle. Example is, if Uber has a ZR on Vodafone worldwide, then no other cabs startups are going to raise. ZR is a sure death- shot for startups and SMEs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> If the carriers are calling this scheme 'Internet' or using that word (or concept) to market this, then it is fraud. If they are instead calling it 'Airtel Zero' access, then they are fundamentally offering access to a different thing from the Internet, and thus it would not be a 'net' neutrality issue. If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, its a duck- if not, then it shouldn't be advertised as such :)

</comment><comment><USER24> I just switched to a $50 ($40 for the third and subsequent lines) unlimited and supposedly uncapped mobile data plan. As long as such plans area available at reasonable prices, I don't think zero-rating some services on cheaper plans is very evil. As other commenters have pointed out, there are plans that restrict Web access, but that's not "zero rating." That's a walled garden.

</comment><comment><USER25> Does anyone know how Facebook 0 worked? That sounds like it was pretty much the same thing:

[https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook/fast-and-free- facebo...](https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook/fast-and-free-facebook- mobile-access-with-0facebookcom/391295167130)

<comment><USER26> Facebook 0, aka internet.org still exists and is growing in many developing countries.

Basically Facebook goes into local carriers and makes an agreement to the effect that users can reach 0.facebook.com for free on their network. They've now started adding other sites as well to that 'free tier'.

I imagine Facebook is paying something to the carriers for this, though at the very start it may just be seen as a competitive advantage by the carrier so perhaps not.

I actually find this practice super disturbing and find the naming of it as 'internet.org' even more so. The Internet is great because of the very opposite of this type system.

Say in an alternate reality Friendster did this a decade ago, would Facebook even exist if people had to pay to access it? Is that a state of the world we are comfortable with?

I very much understand the arguments towards the utility of the internet (even Facebook) to the poor and marginalized, but this isn't the right way to do it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> > by saying that banning zero rating is to deny poor people access.

I may be naive but I kind of agree. I also think zero rating sounds great in theory. The alternative is that people cannot access at all? Can you post some arguments of why it is bad? Net neutrality doesn't tell me anything. Why would I as a consumer care about that?

</comment><comment><USER28> [https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/zero-rated-data-net- neutralit...](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/zero-rated-data-net-neutrality- violated-period-vinay-bhardwaj)

</comment><comment><USER29> They have or had for a while this for Whatsapp in Brazil. I don't think it spread much. The market sometimes does things even market theory assumes it can't.</comment>


SparkFun Free Day Recap - <AUTHOR> http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/news.php?id=322

<comment><USER2> One thing that was particularly annoying, given the expected server troubles, was the use of images inside of links for stepping through the checkout procedure. So even after the page loaded I couldn't see the link until all the images loaded on the page.

Then to verify shipping, a piece of Javascript had to be loaded. The request for this file always timed out. So even when the link to finish checkout showed up I couldn't because the Javascript wasn't there.

In the end, I wasn't able to fill my order and I started wondering if Sparkfun hosts static assets on the same servers as it's shopping cart software.

EDIT: My cart had: Arduino Starter Kit, Arduino Motor Driver Shield, iPod Breakout Connector. It came out to a total of $99.85

</comment><comment><USER3> The server only went down 3 times? I suppose the giant downtime for three hours while everything ran only counts as one.

I realize it's free, but wouldn't an "Oops! Sorry, we are at capacity" message have been better then just letting requests time out?

</comment><comment><USER4> I think a "sorry, we screwed up" consolation discount would go a long way in helping smooth over all of the bad sentiment I'm seeing toward sparkfun after todays fiasco. Perhaps something along the lines of "If you were unable to get in on this offer, sign up for our newsletter and get a 20% off coupon code that expires in 2 weeks."

</comment><comment><USER5> I wonder how anyone got an order through? Nothing would load for me.

</comment><comment><USER6> Cool giveaway, but I wasn't patient or persistent enough to complete my purchase.

</comment><comment><USER7> I got through the mayhem, and am pretty excited; haven't done anything with Arduino before, but have a free Lilypad and Bluetooth Mate for it on the way.

</comment><comment><USER8> Neither me nor the four or five people I know who tried got through. They need to consult with the Macheist people about how to scale.

</comment><comment><USER9> A lot of people seem to be seriously pissed about this. One comment I've seen on an email list for (very) high-end electronics hobbyists pointed out that Sparkfun just made a few hundred friends and several thousand enemies.

It got them a lot of publicity, but whether it was the kind of good publicity that will result in return visits, I don't know. Especially since many of those valuable first-time visitors never got through to the site at all.

<comment><USER10> Care to share what list this was? (I noticed a ton of gripes on time-nuts today.)

<comment><USER9> That's it.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Any "Git diff"-like service but for when terms of conditions changes? - <AUTHOR> One gets the terms of conditions updates via email, like linked-in, or just as start-up popup when you init the app, like xcode, anything that helps to understand exactly what changed especially for well-known apps? <comment><USER2> I'm a co-founder of [https://termscout.com](https://termscout.com) and our TermAlerts service does exactly what you are looking for.

We have attorneys on staff and looked into other tools, but understand that about half of the contracts that live on the web are not webpages, but versioned PDFs and could not find anyone that can catch when that occurs, so we built it ourselves.

When a change occurs we email a redline (diff) and in the process of working on a dashboard that you can see not only the version of the contract when you submitted it and the new one, but overtime be able to scroll through all previous versions of that contract too...very much inspired by Google Maps Street View timeline tool. :)

<comment><USER3> You know what would be a great marketing tool?

If you summarized and posted the terms and the latest changes for some of the big vendors for free.

So maybe you would summarize iTunes, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Dropbox etc for people and they can be made aware of what they agreed to or not.

I don't think this would impinge on your business product too much since companies are presumably not sending this kind of thing your way. (Although, maybe they are in which case I don't know if it makes sense.)

<comment><USER4> I made and sold a company that did just this

<comment><USER5> Amazing

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There is [https://tosback.org/](https://tosback.org/) or [https://www.docracy.com/tos/changes](https://www.docracy.com/tos/changes) for most popular services

Or

You can build your own [https://github.com/pde/tosback2-data](https://github.com/pde/tosback2-data)

</comment><comment><USER7> [https://monitoro.xyz](https://monitoro.xyz) does exactly this (assuming you use it with IFTTT to send updates to your favorite endpoint).

Disclaimer: I'm the author, and I'm happy to answer questions.

</comment><comment><USER8> Follow That Page has a good diff by email service for pages that change.

[https://www.followthatpage.com](https://www.followthatpage.com)

I use Follow That Page to monitor about a dozen websites for things like news and events, changes to a change log.txt, and so on. It would work well for TOS and TOC web pages.

</comment><comment><USER9> There are some interesting suggestions here.

Another (free) is [https://tosdr.org](https://tosdr.org) , which reviews many agreements but I don't know of a diff feature in it.

I have read & then saved agreements to a common directory (with memorable names & dates) when agreeing to them, and wrote a little script (assumes *nix) that basically converts the html to text using w3m or such, shortens lines (or every long line looks different), then runs diff. Maybe I could post it at my simple site if there is interest (or see lukecall.net for an email address in the footer, and ask).

(Of course, that doesn't work for the ones that don't let you save the agreement content, short of doing a screen capture.)

(I posted my thoughts or rants about this problem at [http://lukecall.net/e-9223372036854587150.html](http://lukecall.net/e-9223372036854587150.html) , and will add a link to this discussion as a resource.... Hm. My page links to a related discussion on slashdot.org where a minority of comments are somewhat interesting, like the one with "IAAL" in its text.)

Is there some movement to standardize ToS and such agreements, so you can just recognize "oh yeah, it's just agreement #7 again" and not have to bother further (similarly to CC or known FLOSS licenses?)

</comment><comment><USER10> This is what [https://tosback.org/](https://tosback.org/) does, I believe.

<comment><USER11> Unfortunately there is too much noise for some TOS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> VisualPing? [https://visualping.io/](https://visualping.io/)

<comment><USER13> I made a simple script, as I prefer plain text emails. [https://torvald.no/web-change-detection.html](https://torvald.no/web-change- detection.html)

<comment><USER14> Thanks for sharing! I like the idea of getting the diff in my email notification.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Not directly what you ask, but "Terms of Service didn't read" is great

[https://tosdr.org/#](https://tosdr.org/#)

</comment><comment><USER16> You can also use [https://www.guardscript.com](https://www.guardscript.com) that does this for free and send you a diff in your email.

</comment><comment> laurynas-s I am the founder of [https://pagecrawl.io](https://pagecrawl.io) and this is exactly what can you do with the service.

I have been considering releasing a product only for tracking ToS only but haven't managed to release it yet.

</comment><comment><USER17> [https://scrapinghub.com/autoextract](https://scrapinghub.com/autoextract) may help you with this, it will provide the article in a structured form which you can then diff.

</comment><comment><USER18> Wayback machine and text diff.

</comment><comment><USER19> You could try Diffbot.

</comment><comment><USER20> vimdiff</comment>


The Pirate Bay Taken Offline - <AUTHOR> http://torrentfreak.com/the-pirate-bay-taken-offline-by-swedish-authorities-090824/ <comment><USER2> So now the movie industry's profits should skyrocket right?

Better start buying that stock before all those suburban teenagers start buying up Blu Ray discs and going to the movies every night.

</comment><comment><USER3> So much for all those claims that they could not take tpb offline even if they wanted to.

What I don't get about the legal angle of the case is that they had their re- trial refused, but doesn't that give them the chance to do a normal appeal anyway ?

<comment><USER4> _Update: As expected, The Pirate Bay site relocated and is back online (DNS still has to update for some people). A Pirate Bay insider told TorrentFreak that they "got a new connection to the net." The tracker is still down and is expected to be fully operational tomorrow morning, we were told. Ever since their servers were raided back in 2006 they were prepared for takedown attempts like this._

The Pirate Bay _has_ gone offline before. The question is always how long it stays offline.

<comment><USER3> Interesting... if they can keep going under this pressure I'll be most impressed.

<comment><USER4> You know they survived a raid back in 2006, right? When I was in high school they were my heroes for making being a computer geek so edgy.

<comment><USER3> Yes, but this time it is different. With a pretty solid judgement in hand *aa gets to go after any provider in the western hemisphere that hosts them. So I really wonder how they'll solve that.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do US HNers get their health insurance? - <AUTHOR>

Hi guys,
I'm from the UK and am engaged to a US citizen. A month and a half ago she lost her job, and health insurance, and since then I've been helping her through some sort of Kafka-esque nightmare regarding that. She's decided for now to use COBRA, under which she can continue with her old employer's coverage. It took about 3 weeks for the paperwork for that to come through, which we returned immediately, and we're now being told that once the payment comes through, it'll take a week and a half for the coverage to restart. So all in all, it looks like my fiancee is going to have spent over a month without health coverage. While once the coverage restarts, it'll be backdated to the 1st September (so she can claim for any out of pocket expenses she incurred), it seems crazy that for the last month any sort of serious health issue could have financially ruined her.
The plan is to move to the US post marriage. This whole ordeal has put me off the idea of getting health insurance through an employer - I certainly don't want to spend time uninsured on the offchance I lose my job for whatever reason - not least because sods law states that that's the point that I'll get hit by a bus or some such. How many American HNers pay for their health insurance themselves? If you're working for someone who generally offers health insurance, but you choose not to take it, is there ever any scope for persuading them to contribute some money to your personal costs? <comment><USER2> As someone who moved from the UK to US under almost identical conditions, let me say this: If you have a job that offers health insurance 99% of the time you will be better off taking that health insurance rather than buying it directly from the exchanges.

Why? At least two reasons:

1\. Employers are in a stronger negotiating position as insurance companies really fight for the business (it is for multiple people, so even if each one is less profitable the entire account will be more profitable with less overhead, so they WANT it).

2\. The people buying directly from exchanges are higher risk/greater cost. They're normally poorer, self employed (which includes a lot of people in physically demanding professions as well, who get injured often), and some are early retirees (pre-medicare age, but still "older").

Plus the biggest reason is that almost all employers pay a % of your health insurance premium. If you go with the exchange you're paying 100% (of a higher base) rather than 70% of a lower one. So unless your employer has simply terrible health insurance, it is almost never a better idea from a financial perspective to go private.

If you're really paranoid about it, just take the employer health insurance, assuming they pay 30% and you pay 70% of the premium, take an equivalent amount out of your pay and save it (e.g. save 30% of the premium a month). Since that is what you would have been paying privately anyway (100%), now you're just using the employer's cut to save for a rainy day.

Personally if it was up to me employer provided health insurance should be banned in the US and everyone (aside from the US Military) should be required to go out and get private coverage (e.g. car insurance). That way the prices come down, competition goes up, and certain demographics (unemployed, self- employed, early retirees, etc) aren't unfairly "punished."

But I don't see that happening any time soon (or ever) because employer provided health insurance is too heavily ingrained in US culture. Nobody even discussed destroying that link during the ObamaCare debates. So whatever...

For now, until things change, employer is the way to go.

</comment><comment><USER3> Your options depend on where you live.

I signed up for Covered California, which is subsidized insurance. My husband (non-US citizen, but perm resident) is part of my plan. This depends on what state you live in. Some states rejected the federal healthcare funds.

As for employer contributions, it depends on the employer -- I offer my employees insurance. If they choose NOT to take it, I don't give them a pay bump -- the cost per employee is negligible, and insurance is not offered in lieu of higher pay here. The purpose of me buying insurance for employees is mostly to ensure they're healthy while working for us, and getting care so as not to sicken others while on the job.

</comment><comment><USER4> We use a HSA-qualified high-deductible policy from Humana One ([https://www.humana.com/individual-and- family/](https://www.humana.com/individual-and-family/)) with 100% coverage after deductible, and we deduct premiums as a business expense. We make the maximum HSA contribution every year, which makes all of our family healthcare spending tax-deductible. Coverage can be obtained quickly and prices are generally reasonable, particularly if you don't have kids.

For routine care, we subscribe to MDVIP ([http://www.mdvip.com](http://www.mdvip.com)), which has been fantastic. The subscription pays for a very comprehensive annual physical (of the type Fortune 500 execs get every year), and helps the physician maintain their practice with a smaller number of clients, so you can schedule visits same-day if you need to.

Because we cover healthcare expenses out of the HSA, it pays to shop around for things like prescription drugs. Tools like GoodRx ([http://goodrx.com](http://goodrx.com), details on how it works at [http://kk.org/cooltools/archives/22342](http://kk.org/cooltools/archives/22342)) help save a lot of money.

Hope this helps.

</comment><comment><USER5> Full time employed, health insurance through my employer.

Group coverage (i.e. employer-based coverage) is the best insurance you can get in the US because of a number of already-given reasons, as well as the fact that they can't reject you for a preexisting condition. All private plans will exclude preexisting conditions, so if you're already one some medication or treatment, you will have to wait at least a year before your insurer will cover it.

I was a freelancer on a private plan previously. Private plans were kind of bullshit (and _very_ expensive), but I don't know if the ACA has changed that.

I would like to see Canada-style single-payer health care in the US, but I think it will be a couple of decades before we do.

</comment><comment><USER6> I went to [http://healthcare.gov](http://healthcare.gov), filled out some online forms and picked a plan. It's like Amazon.com for healthcare -- sort by brand/price/features, add to cart, check out. The only difference is that whatever insurer you sign up with sends out their own bill afterwards rather than paying the website.

I've been buying my own insurance since reaching adulthood. Before the federal exchange, I typically found personal plans through [http://eHealthInsurance.com](http://eHealthInsurance.com), though they have less selection now than before the exchange. I think some insurers in states with an exchange pulled out of the private comparison sites like this.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm self-employed and use a catastrophic healthcare plan, found through the healthcare market ([http://healthcare.gov](http://healthcare.gov)). There were some hiccups in the beginning when I had to call repeatedly to ensure all the paperwork went through, but that's expected (unfortunately).

</comment><comment><USER8> Mom & School. Thanks Obama! No really, thank you. I presume you're older than 27 though?

</comment><comment><USER9> Get it from your employer. It's better and cheaper than what you can get in the market.

You are allowed to supplement -- this may or may not make sense, but your final coverage will be a lot cheaper if you start with employer insurance.

</comment><comment><USER10> I've had one employer offer to pay you the difference, but I don't believe this is common outside of large corps known to be good places to work.

</comment><comment><USER11> I ended up on disability in 2003, been on Medicare ever since.

Got a part D plan.

Private insurance covers more, but the monthly cost of Medicare is cheaper. Your private insurance costs more per month, than Medicare, but covers more things.

Medicare for example has a doughnut hole for prescriptions and if you reach it, you aren't covered until you spend $3500 of your own money to get out of the hole on prescriptions. It used to just be for name brands but ACA added in new holes for generics. My medicine that is generic is $370/month until I am out of that doughnut hole.

[http://www.goodrx.com/](http://www.goodrx.com/)

That website gave me a discount code that got my medicine down to $112/month instead. I'd recommend it for anyone having price issues with their medication.</comment>


Show HN: THE GREATEST FRAMEWORK EVER. (Dart) - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/angel-dart/angel/wiki <comment><USER2> Single-handedly writing an entire full-stack framework is commendable. Doing this at your age, with complete documetantion no less, is amazing.

Congrats on the release</comment>


Profanity Helps One Tolerate Physical Pain Better - <AUTHOR> http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=profanity-bleeps-physical-pain-09-07-13

<comment><USER2> The note at the start says "This is an exact transcript of this podcast". The actual content is full of "@$#%!" and suchlike. So does the speaker in the podcast say things like "Holy at-sign dollar hash percent exclamation mark"?

An article about the same research at the researcher's university -- [http://keeleuniversitypressoffice.wordpress.com/2009/07/13/s...](http://keeleuniversitypressoffice.wordpress.com/2009/07/13/swearing/) \-- is more specific about what sorts of word the subjects were allowed to use in the two conditions. It wasn't that they were "only allowed to use more socially acceptable words" in the no-swearing condition; more specifically, they were asked to use "a more commonplace word that they would use to describe a table". The abstract of the paper says "a neutral word".

So, in particular, it isn't that subjects were having to expend mental energy thinking up socially acceptable expletives :-).

<comment><USER3> _So does the speaker in the podcast say things like "Holy at-sign dollar hash percent exclamation mark"?_

They use a bunch of "funny bleeping sounds" in the podcast.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> from [http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=why-do- we-s...](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=why-do-we-swear) "There is a catch, though: The more we swear, the less emotionally potent the words become, Stephens cautions. And without emotion, all that is left of a swearword is the word itself, unlikely to soothe anyone's pain."

<comment><USER5> That's exactly what I thought of when I read the headline.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Ironically swearing when talking about swearing falls flat, always.

</comment><comment><USER7> Sounds like a nomination for an Ig Nobel is in order.

</comment><comment> onreact-com That explains hard core hip hop.

<comment><USER8> So when I sing along, I'm really just dulling the pain that such music exists.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Seems more of a "I want to do this thing, therefore if I do it, I'll feel slightly better" sort of thing. I mean, people get accustomed to cussing. I sure feel better when I get the urge to do it and can actually do it.</comment>


Mobile social network Path, once a challenger to Facebook, is closing down - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/17/rip-path/ <comment><USER2> Looks like more comments here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18003580](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18003580)</comment>


Did Google Just Kill Ogg Theora? - <AUTHOR> http://newteevee.com/2010/04/14/did-google-just-kill-ogg-theora/ <comment><USER2> The goal of the Xiph.org Foundation was never make Vorbis or Theora take over the world. The goal was to provide royalty-free multimedia codecs. If VP8 is open sourced and they make the required patent grants, the world gets a royalty-free video codec. We win.

We worked on Vorbis and Theora because no one else was going to do it. Here we are a decade later on the cusp of much of our dream finally coming true.

disclaimer: I co-founded, managed, and still sit on the Board of Directors of the Xiph.org Foundation.

<comment><USER3> I think it's fair to say your efforts paved the way to a world where a major corporation could actually consider this. You may not have struck the final blow for video codec freedom, but the victory is very much yours as well.

A sincere bravo to you and the Xiph.org Foundation.

<comment><USER4> Xiph's Vorbis is the only audio codec that's suitable for use alongside a hypothetical Google royalty-free video codec.

Well it's not the only one. Xiph's CELT and Xiph's FLAC are probably interesting too for certain use cases, and maybe the upcoming IETF Wideband codec that Xiph are helping standardize. And they appear to be working on their next-generation audio codec, Ghost, again too, so that's one for the future.

So yes, well done Xiph.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> On a related note, somebody once explained to me why India develops satellites, missiles, rockets, fighter planes, nuclear reactors etc which are sometimes half-assed at great expense over many decades when they can probably buy the same things ("comparative advantage" and all that jazz).

The reason is to force sellers to sell their highest-end goods, or to negotiate on price. Because India has it own reactor tech, it has a stronger hand when negotiating with GE/France/Russia to buy reactors. For instance, they can ask for technology transfer and license to manufacture too instead of just a reactor.

So Ogg Theora wins even if it dies, because it kept the Free video codec idea alive until a big backer such as Google emerged for the idea.

Thanks for all the work, Ogg!

<comment><USER6> India is also making their own nuclear reactors because they have a lot more thorium than uranium, and in order to use it, they need reactors which support thorium fuel. </nitpick>

<comment><USER7> I wouldn't say so much "making their own" as they are cloning & tweaking the 2 CANDUs we sold 'em a few decades ago.

And yes, CANDU reactors can operate on thorium fuel cycles (lucky for them).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "...indisputably superior to H.264"

Is that really the case? Indisputably? I'd like to learn more about that.

Also, even if VP8 takes over Ogg Theora's position as a competitor to H.264 as a web standard, it will still face some problems.

One is that in moving to HTML5, many videos being served through flash are already encoded as H.264 and could be served through HTML5 without re- encoding. VP8 would still require conversion for a full transition away from flash to be made.

Another problem is IE support for VP8... hopefully they'll be willing to support it in a timely manner.

<comment><USER9> you fail to realize that windows has codec management built into the system.

a browser should never concern itself with codecs. that's what system APIs are for.

you can teach IE6 about VP8 by just installing a codec into the system. if that's not done by the IT dept. or your neighbor's kid, you either don't have the need to play back VP8 or whoever gives you VP8 content also tells you how to install a codec.

<comment><USER8> My point with IE is that a lot of content providers don't want to use something that everyone doesn't have access to out of the box. Yes, people can install the codec, but for websites to start using it in a widespread manner it would help for all the major browsers to package it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Didn't Google just commit to funding Ogg Theora on ARM devices, not two days ago?

[http://www.linux-magazine.com/Online/News/Google-funds- OGG-T...](http://www.linux-magazine.com/Online/News/Google-funds-OGG-Theora)

Not sure how that would qualify as 'killing' it..

</comment><comment><USER11> I've always felt that a factor holding back more widespread adoption of Ogg Theora (or Vorbis for that matter) were the product names. I'm very glad that someone out there was providing a royalty-free codec, but it's frustrating to see them get held back by a decision that made their battle harder than it needed to be.

To some extent - especially in the last decade - a codec is/was a consumer- facing technology, and I feel short, simple names like "FLAC", "MPEG", "VP8", etc make it easier to brand things than a long foreign names that leave most users puzzled.

</comment><comment><USER12> 1\. This is nothing but a rumour, this instance seemingly made up out of thin air by that website.

2\. There is no evidence whatsoever that VP8 even exists, let alone performs anywhere close to H.264.

3\. Even if it does exist, and even if it is opened, there is no reason to believe the usual suspects do not hold patents covering at least parts of it.

</comment><comment><USER13> I'll still view it as a rumor until Google confirms, personally.

<comment><USER4> Google _started_ the rumor, in their PR when they bought On2 last year:

 _"Today video is an essential part of the web experience, and we believe high-quality video compression technology should be a part of the web platform," said Sundar Pichai, vice president, Product Management, Google. "We are committed to innovation in video quality on the web, and we believe that On2's team and technology will help us further that goal."_

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> "indisputably superior to H.264"

Whoo, whoo there, Ben Moskowitz, jump off your stampeding horse. Stop counting beans and pennies and go get some "hands-on" with these things before you talk.

</comment><comment><USER14> Let's hope.</comment>


AT&T banning Bitcoin nodes by closing port 8333 in cable boxes - <AUTHOR> https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2015-September/010798.html <comment><USER2> "The FCC's Open Internet rules protect and maintain open, uninhibited access to lawful online content. The rules specifically prohibit: [...] Blocking: Broadband providers may not block access to lawful content, applications, services or non-harmful devices." [0]

[0] [https://consumercomplaints.fcc.gov/hc/en- us/articles/2042314...](https://consumercomplaints.fcc.gov/hc/en- us/articles/204231404-Open-Internet)

<comment><USER3> There's a difference between blocking a customer's access to external services, and blocking an _outgoing_ web server port like 80 or 443.

The terms of use of your residential internet contract most likely prohibits using your connection in a "commercial" manner (running a full scale web server) out of your home.

<comment><USER2> > There's a difference between blocking a customer's access to external > services, and blocking an outgoing web server port like 80 or 443.

There's obviously a _difference_.

It is less obviously a _relevant difference_ in regards to the FCC's Open Internet rules.

> The terms of use of your residential internet contract most likely prohibits > using your connection in a "commercial" manner (running a full scale web > server) out of your home.

To the extent that they purport to limit your right to use applications, devices, etc. that are not themselves unlawful on that connection, such provisions would appear to be in direct violation of FCC Open Internet regulations, which is probably among the reasons the ISPs with such rules also generally opposed the FCC adopting those regulations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I am a network engineer for TWC specifically running the business class fiber network. As far as I know and can tell with my own connection we do not block anything for our residential customers.

I always speak up internally for customers rights and privacy and I implore anyone else in charge of a network do do the same.

<comment><USER5> Ditto. I work for an ISP as well and, while I know ISP's don't get a lot of love (especially from the more tech-savvy customers), I feel better knowing that least I'm helping to Do The Right Thing(TM).

The company I work for is pretty small as far as ISPs go (our customer base numbers in the four digits) so our headcount is pretty small too. While it sucks sometimes, I am personally in charge of exactly how our network is ran and have complete freedom to do whatever I want however I want (so long as it doesn't significantly affect the bottom line, of course). I try to run things the way I want my ISP to (I live outside our service area so I don't have our service but I do have blazing fast FTTH so that makes up for it.)

I (we) don't block _anything_ although sometimes it would make my job a lot easier... nor do I even bother forwarding to the customer all those requests I got from "Echelon" (on behalf of HBO) complaining about people torrenting Game of Thrones. Although, on a side note, I stopped receiving them after I started enforcing FCrDNS on our incoming mail gateways. :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> AT&T bans port 25 as well so you cannot run a SMTP server, they do that to cut down on spam.

I remember my son was in an out of town Soccer game, and we stayed in a hotel. One of the other families brought their XBox 360 and tried to plug it into the Ethernet port and unplug the custom game console controller that rented Nintendo 64 games and plug the XBox 360 into their TV set. For some reason their Internet blocked access to the ports that the XBox 360 used to sign in and play games so they couldn't play anything. I guess they wanted to force people to rent N64 games on their custom video game console controller?

If enough ISPs block port 8333, the Bitcoin programs will have to be changed to be like the Bittorrent clients to use a random port and connect via a tracker or something to that port.

<comment><USER7> Did you call the front desk for assistance?

I used to work as a network analyst for a company providing high speed Internet for hotels across North and South America. The default network policies were quite aggressive (to limit network (ab)use). Other than opening up specific ports for various VPNs, the greatest number of calls received was to enable network access for gaming consoles.

Next time, give the front desk a call and ask. In an industry where customer satisfaction _really_ is a concern, they should be more than happy to forward your call to someone like me to help. :)

<comment><USER6> No it was another family who tried to hook up the XBox 360. I didn't think to tell them to ask the front desk to unblock the ports. It was years ago, and my son is in high school now and left the middle school behind.

Next time I encounter that situation I will advise them to call the front desk to unblock the ports.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> nv-vn They recently started blocking XMPP ports which is quite an annoyance. I literally can't think of a single logical reason they would even do that.

</comment><comment><USER8> What's the motivation?

I thought Bitcoin wasn't really that network intensive?

<comment><USER9> The motivation would presumably be to mitigate damage done by malware-- it's not uncommon for malware authors to use infected machines to mine Bitcoin.

<comment><USER10> But using that motivation, then they should block other ports as well if they suspect that IP address is infected.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> You should all be using a VPN, even if it only connects to a server in the next city. It's more for basic privacy from their intrusion more than anything security related.

The less your ISP knows about you, the better off you are.

</comment><comment><USER5> For what it's worth, "tcptraceroute" is a great tool to help diagnose these kinds of things.</comment>


Ask HN: Anyone building anything with the Telegram API? - <AUTHOR>

I'm having a hard time making use of the MTProto protocol in JavaScript. The official Telegram web app is written in AngularJS which I'm not familiar with. I couldn't find any tutorials on how to use it with JavaScript. Anyone know any good resources? <comment><USER2> [https://github.com/enricostara/telegram.link/](https://github.com/enricostara/telegram.link/)</comment>


How do i get more users to http://www.LiveWorldCupChat.com - <AUTHOR> http://www.LiveWorldCupChat.com How can I get more users to my http://www.LiveWorldCupChat.com website?
We've spent about 6 months on and off building functionality and building up twitter/facebook feeds but it seems cant catch "lightning in a bottle".
Apart from pay-to-play on social media am I missing something about whats needed to build a live fan chat application? <comment><USER2> Promoted tweets by location, targeted to people talking about specific games. FB ads, Adwords - targeted to places that people talk about games. Go on Twitter and football forums and tell people why they should use it. Be friendly. Talk to any local or tech media folks you know and see if they can help you promote it.

Getting people to the site won't be your biggest issue. Getting people to sign up and take part once they're there will be. There's no real call to action on the site. It's not particularly visually appealing. Could you recruit some friends/family to generate some activity and some buzz? Right now, there only appears to be one person posting. It needs to look busier than that for people to decide to go there rather than Twitter, IRC or wherever else they are chatting about whatever game is ongoing at that time.

<comment><AUTHOR> agree with you about traffic, once you get a few people in the chats it works great, especially on the [http://www.LiveBaseballChat.com](http://www.LiveBaseballChat.com) pages. People tend to stay the entire game etc.....but getting them there seems to be the issue.

<comment><USER2> maybe remove the requirement to be registered before seeing the chats? I just clicked in to see the France/Honduras chat, but I can't see any activity. I'm much more likely to sign up and participate if I think I'm signing up for something that's more active.

<comment><AUTHOR> and that brings us to the crux of the issue...... there was no one chatting in there.

we've built a great app, with gamification elements (eg check out the badges on my user profile [http://www.LiveWorldCupChat.com/Dean.Collins](http://www.LiveWorldCupChat.com/Dean.Collins) ), we have the ability to email friends, send out facebook and twitter links etc.....and no one is using it......

We've had over 5,000 people sign up for the various [http://www.LiveFanChat.com](http://www.LiveFanChat.com) sites but just unsure how to get it to progress.

<comment><AUTHOR> eg check out these logs of hits in the first 20 mins of the USA v Ghana game......but not a single new user

(18:00) lccbot: An anonymous user from pool-96-239-94-23.nycmny.fios.verizon.net has joined room 24959 where there are 5 or less logged in users. (18:03) lccbot: A new visitor has just hit the landing page from host: 184.108.40.206 (18:03) lccbot: A new visitor has just hit the landing page from host: 188.8.131.52 (18:04) lccbot: A new visitor has just hit the landing page from host: 22.214.171.124 (18:04) lccbot: A new visitor has just hit the landing page from host: 188.8.131.52 (18:07) lccbot: A new visitor has just hit the landing page from host: h216.hlfs.bf1.yahoo.com (18:08) lccbot: A new visitor has just hit the landing page from host: 220.127.116.11 (18:08) lccbot: A new visitor has just hit the landing page from host: 50-193-26-28-static.hfc.comcastbusiness.net (18:08) lccbot: An anonymous user from 50-193-26-28-static.hfc.comcastbusiness.net has joined room 24959 where there are 5 or less logged in users. (18:08) lccbot: A new visitor has just hit the landing page from host: c-50-174-130-157.hsd1.ca.comcast.net (18:08) lccbot: An anonymous user from c-50-174-130-157.hsd1.ca.comcast.net has joined room 24959 where there are 5 or less logged in users. (18:11) lccbot: A new visitor has just hit the landing page from host: cpe-098-024-050-168.carolina.res.rr.com (18:11) lccbot: An anonymous user from cpe-098-024-050-168.carolina.res.rr.com has joined room 24959 where there are 5 or less logged in users. (18:15) lccbot: A new visitor has just hit the landing page from host: 18.104.22.168 (18:15) lccbot: A new visitor has just hit the landing page from host: 18.104.22.168 (18:16) lccbot: A new visitor has just hit the landing page from host: 22.214.171.124 (18:16) lccbot: An anonymous user from 18.104.22.168 has joined room 24959 where there are 5 or less logged in users. (18:18) lccbot: A new visitor has just hit the landing page from host: cpe-66-108-53-102.nyc.res.rr.com (18:19) lccbot: An anonymous user from cpe-66-108-53-102.nyc.res.rr.com has joined room 24959 where there are 5 or less logged in users. (18:21) lccbot: A new visitor has just hit the landing page from host: 188.8.131.52 (18:21) lccbot: An anonymous user from 22.214.171.124 has joined room 24959 where there are 5 or less logged in users. (18:21) lccbot: A new visitor has just hit the landing page from host: 22.214.171.124 (18:22) lccbot: A new visitor has just hit the landing page from host: 184.108.40.206

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> How about advertising on adwords or fb?

<comment><AUTHOR> really trying to find ideas apart from pay to play social media</comment></comment>


My new website for web developers: http://frameworkvalidator.org - <AUTHOR> With Framework Validator you can verify websites built with Foundation, Bootstrap and soon also with other frameworks like Semantic UI.
I have created a human-like language to describe frameworks, with a compiler to generate complete framework descriptions.
With your support, I will be able to continue my work and add support for other frameworks.
Thank you for your support… but for now, check your website with http://frameworkvalidator.org <comment><USER2> 0\. If it meets the guidelines, this might make a good 'Show HN'. Show HN guidelines: [https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)

1\. It might be useful to add some examples so that people without websites built on frameworks or with confidentiality concerns are able to better understand the tool.

2\. I do not understand what a framework validator is.

Good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> thank you,

0\. done 1\. good idea 2\. you men the name?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I love this site!!! Everything is now easier

<comment><AUTHOR> thx!:)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why are blogs/companies not updating existing subscribers (for GDPR)? - <AUTHOR> I'm subscribed to hundreds of email newsletters.
According to GDPR all those businesses/blogs/sites/newsletters must ask for a new consent that I'm still fine with receiving marketing emails from them.
Mailchimp - e.g. puts it that way: "You still need your existing contacts to opt-in to your marketing permissions. The best way to do this is to send a consent campaign to each list affected by the GDPR."
So my question: Why don't most businesses do not comply with that (so far)? <comment><USER2> Exisiting consent taking procedures would still hold true till the GDPR date. So, All these website have to do is update their terms of use and privacy policies before that date and they're safe. Since you've most probably agreed to their terms once. And those terms say that they might update it from time- to-time.

They would only be taking fresh consents from the signups and registrations after May 25th

</comment><comment><USER3> I see two possible reasons:

(1) People don't know who is affected by the GDPR and who is not.

(2) There is still enough time to send a consent e-mail before the GDPR becomes effective on May 25.</comment>


I Quit a $500K job at Amazon to work for myself - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@dvassallo/only-intrinsic-motivation-lasts-92c0497cf97c <comment><USER2> This story template increasingly raises conflicting and mostly negative reactions from me. It wasn't always this way.

To the author's credit, $500k in comp as an engineer is not easy. Kudos to anyone who pulls that off.

The reason for my reaction is this: the title can be interpreted two ways:

"I had a great setup but I'm giving it up to take a risk."

"I want to feel motivated again and I'm willing to give up a lot of money to do so."

But I increasingly dislike these posts because (1) we know there's a strong correlation between having a lot of money and success in entrepreneurship. Starting out with a safety net is the best way to derisk! In that sense, this post is just saying "I'm taking a risk after I've derisked it!" And (2) talking about how much money you'd give up to feel motivated is pretty explicitly signalling success to other people in the "I earn enough to be able to talk about it like this" group. That's just upper-middle class signalling.

The author's other posts also don't really address the elephant in the room. He was pulling in $500k. If he fails, and even if he wipes out his savings, he's going back to pulling in more than enough money to live very comfortably while still saving enough for kids and retirement. That may feel like more risk than he's comfortable with, but that means he's about as derisked as it gets at a personal level. His explanation in the post titled "How I set myself up financially before I took the plunge." has to do with allocating his savings to make sure he and his family are taken care of, but it doesn't really talk about the point that he at any point can choose to go back to earning more than enough money. That's a privilege that very few people have. He certainly earned that privilege, but how many entrepreneurs can say "I'm setting aside $1m of my liquid money to bootstrap a startup"?

If the author had left the money out, it would have been a great post about searching for motivation, which we all struggle with, but I think the money aspect undermines the point.

<comment><USER3> Author here. The reason I call out the money is to emphasize that everything was going great with my career. And despite that, I realized that a career as an employee wasn't the ideal one for me.

I'm very risk averse, but not in the traditional sense where I'm paranoid about losing _anything_. I protect the (few) important things aggressively and then I feel free to speculate with the rest (savings, time, reputation, etc).

<comment><USER4> Why am I seeing this post again? I remember seeing this or something very similar a few months ago. To me this feels like a humble brag than anything. Its great you were able to pull 500k but it isn't very useful to read an article like this. Most of us aren't making 500kpa, and we are not you, thus most of your thought process doesn't apply to us, so why should we care? Now, if you did do something cool technically (or) served users, we are all ears.

<comment><USER3> Someone else posted it here. I noticed it because someone told me about it on Twitter.

I realized that climbing the career ladder wasn't my ideal career, despite everything going very well by most traditional metrics. What I hope readers can take away from the story is that succeeding as an employee is not necessarily the most satisfying career path. It can be, but it wasn't for me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The title is "Only Intrinsic Motivation Lasts"

This needs to be "Only Intrinsic Motivation Lasts if You're Not Expecting a Reward"[1]. His career at Amazon demonstrated that. Like another commenter stated: "His earnings peaked." He stopped getting rewarded, so his motivation went down.

A better solution: Keep your job, but stop caring about being rewarded at work. Get your rewards from your personal life (marriage, children, social groups, hobbies, etc).

[1] [https://www.spring.org.uk/2009/10/how-rewards-can- backfire-a...](https://www.spring.org.uk/2009/10/how-rewards-can-backfire-and- reduce-motivation.php)

<comment><USER3> Author here. Maybe my earnings at Amazon had peaked (unlikely but possible). I realized that rewards hurt my long-term motivation rather than help. My income right now is about $0, and I'm not aiming at getting back to the same income level (if it happens, good, but I can have a good satisfied life with much less). This change had nothing to do with income maximization. I prefer taking more control over my lifestyle instead.

<comment><USER5> "But what I was looking for was something that I could do for a living that was also driven by this type of motivation: the intrinsic kind."

Read the study I linked in my other response. Doing something "for a living" means you expect to be rewarded for it. According to the study, if you do something that intrinsically rewards you, you will eventually lose motivation to do it when you expect to be rewarded for it. You're setting yourself up for failure.

I experienced this same phenomena almost 15 years ago. About 2-3 years after I started programming professionally I hated it. I kept at it for 10 years, being miserable most of that time, then I changed to a management track.

I fucking hate management. It's a mix of babysitting adults and coping with regular disappointment. Nevertheless my life overall is much better. Don't, however, misconstrue my hatred of management to mean that I do my job poorly. The hatred actually makes me reflect on myself and my skills, and I constantly seek to improve them. Hatred is also a source of passion. Use it wisely.

I have zero expectations of my work and there is no reward that would make this work meaningful. I have removed my career's power to bring me into existential crisis. My advice: _don 't_ do something you love for a living, and/or learn to remove your occupation's ability to contribute to your self- worth.

<comment><USER3> I'm very familiar with that research. I read "Punished by Rewards" by Alfie Kohn and "Drive" by Dan Pink, and they both cite the same studies and make the same arguments.

I was already operating like you are when I was an employee. (I wrote another blog post about it.) I had already mentally ignored all rewards and extrinsic motivators and just focused on doing the best work I can (something fully in my control).

I believe there is a nuance you're not seeing when you say "... doing something for a living means you expect to be rewarded for it. According to the study, if you do something that intrinsically rewards you, you will eventually lose motivation to do it when you expect to be rewarded for it." The intent is what matters. You lose intrinsic motivation if you do something for the reward. But you don't lose it if you do it for its own sake. Running & growing a business is something that I believe I'm intrinsically motivated to do. The money from that activity is not the same type of reward (dangling of a carrot) that the research you cited talks about. The books I mentioned talk about why that happens: the carrot & stick approach feel manipulative to whoever is subject to then, which in turn cause loss of interest and lack of cooperation. When working for myself I won't be subjected to any of that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> every time I read a story like this I think the author's earnings have just peaked but they don't realize it

<comment><USER7> What would your recommended best course of action to someone in this position be? Say you've worked 8 years and went from $75k to $550k pre-tax total comp - would you recommend that they continue slogging for another 2-3 years or?

I'm personally planning on working for large companies the first 3-4 years of my career (out of college) saving ~50% of my earnings post tax then giving some early stage companies another go (whether it be joining in early growth stages or as a founder).

I find it hard to believe that more than say the top 10% of engineering or management talent in tech is making $500k+ total comp in 2019. But I'm open to being corrected.

<comment><USER8> If you are still college, you might not want to strictly plan too far forward. People, priorities and goals change drastically over a span of 3-5 years.

The top 10% of all reported employees at Google are predicted to make ~$300k a year. This is after selecting every variable in your favor. I preselected for the highest paying big company, most paying country, chose stats from Paysa (anecdotally they inflate numbers the most) and judged all TC as cash. Even levels.fyi (more reliable) and blind put a Google L7 at 550k.

Most optimistic guesses put 5% of people at Google at L7 and above.

So even in the most optimistic case it isn't 10%. If, I had to guess I would say the top 0.05% make 500k or more. At best.

<comment><USER9> Levels.fyi says Google L5 engineer averages $300K. That's top 30-40%, not 10%

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Wow!

Compensation has changed dramatically since I worked at Amazon, although I worked in non technical Operations Management.

I can relate to leaving a LOT of money on the table(back in the days of BiG AMZN stock options and SMALL salaries).

Orgs and their cultures change, people and their motivations change.

We only get one life.

So best to be happy and/or challenged.

I wish the author well and will try to follow his updates.

</comment><comment><USER11> To the folks claiming he's not taking a risk, he's taking more of a risk than most similar articles.

He's got two kids and a mortgage to worry about and he's assuming whatever he cooks up will be able to add $250/month in value in perpetuity while he has no PoC implemented.

His monthly budget and insurance setup were particularly fascinating.

[https://danielvassallo.com/from-employee-to- bootstrapper/](https://danielvassallo.com/from-employee-to-bootstrapper/)

<comment><USER3> Actually it depends on what risk it is. Sure, I'm risking a lot of money (my savings), time, and career growth opportunities. But I actually don't think I'm risking anything consequential. If this doesn't work out for whatever reason, I can always go get a job again that makes ends meet. It doesn't have to be the same job with the same income. My family's standard of living is not really at risk with this experiment I'm doing with my career. I'm quite risk averse, but I'm careful to separate what is really worth protecting aggressively from what I can be free to speculate with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is really irresponsible thing to do.

<comment><USER5> It could be, but here we only see a fragment of this person's life. I've often found that people who do this type of thing come from well-heeled families. And they conveniently leave out the details.

"I quit my $500k/year job to paint because mom and dad said I could convert the estate's 2500 sq ft carriage house into an in-law unit in case I don't become the next Andy Warhol" doesn't really sound inspirational and compelling.

What type of person throws his non-trivial money in his audience's face and gives an "Eat, Pray, Love" lecture? A clueless dolt. At least go the "Gospel of Wealth" route and tell us to found libraries and coding academies.

<comment><USER3> I described my finances in great detail in another blog post. I don't think I'm risking anything consequential, because I can always go get a job again if this doesn't work out for any reason. I definitely don't think I'm doing anything irresponsible.

<comment><USER13> ... another smart decision:-) The only person to talk about your finances is your accountant. Definitely not public forums on internet

<comment><USER3> Why?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is RAII sufficient for memory management? - <AUTHOR>

In C++ the RAII idiom is common for managing memory. Any resources(such as heap memory or files) needed are acquired in the constructor of an object and releases in the object's constructor. Since stack-allocated objects destroyed automatically upon leaving scope this ensures that the resources are released.<p>Are there any memory management scenarios for which this is insufficient and for which garbage collection is necessary?Are there any other memory management techniques(other than GC, RAII, or manual memory management) which would be more effective for those scenarios? <comment><USER2> RAII doesn't provide an obvious, simple way to release memory in the presence of cyclic references. You may be able to use weak references to fix this, but that requires the programmer to notice the problem and explicitly specify the solution. Automatic GC takes the burden off the programmer in this case. (On the other hand, RAII provides for greater control, and works for resources other than memory too. Both techniques are useful tools.)

<comment><AUTHOR> In some instances of cyclic references, specifically those in which only one of the objects need be stack-allocated and in which none of the objects will be passed into a higher scope. For example, one may find it useful in a tree class to keep a reference to each node's parents. Despite this cyclic reference, however, if you have a local variable which holds the top node of a tree it will, upon leaving scope, be destroyed. If its destructor recursively deletes the subtrees, RAII works despite the circular references.

However, you're right that in more complex scenarios, RAII doesn't deal with reference cycles.

The ideal situation would be a language in which one could use either garbage collection or static allocation with RAII as the situation demands.</comment></comment>


I developed a superior Hamiltonian Cycle Problem solver - <AUTHOR> It is superior compared to the ones available in the market (e.g. Mathematica) by testing against difficult instances.  (Though, not all graphs are solvable... yet)<p>How do I get the attention of Apple / Google / Microsoft et. al to sell the algorithm to them? <comment><USER2> There's been a lot of discussion of this sort of thing lately, so I've written a quick piece about the problem you face - that of making a profit from your (alleged) breakthrough.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10546348](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10546348)

I have a way of generating instance of Graph Vertex 3-Colouring. If you can convert G3C to HCP (which in theory is possible, off-hand I don't know what the degree is of the best conversion) then you can really test your algorithm.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm not personally aware of many applications of Hamiltonian cycle solvers per se. However SAT solvers are in active development and have some important applications and SAT instances can be quite efficiently reduced to Hamiltonian cycle instances.

If your solver is good enough to perform well on such instances there might be some sort of market for it.

If you're interested in code to convert SAT instances to Hamiltonian cycle instances I think I have something that might be useful to you. If so my email is in my profile.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the insight.

On another note, I already have code to reduce SAT instances to HCP.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Put up a page about it, let people play with the inputs, throw up some metrics comparing your computation time with more standard methods. Or write it up as a paper and submit it for a conference.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good idea on the former.

The latter - submitting for a conference - would prohibit me from profiting off it since I am depending on this for my rice bowl.</comment></comment>


Facebook is Killing Email - <AUTHOR> http://www.loopycode.com/facebook-is-killing-email/

<comment><USER2> I do a _lot_ with my email. I sort, prioritize, archive, cross-reference, index, analyse, categorize and more. With FaceBook I don't have access to anything they don't choose to do for me. I can't get the data.

The other day I needed to track down a detail someone had sent me, and it was in a FaceBook message. I had no way to find it. It took literally over 2 hours to find something that I would otherwise find with a grep and a coffee.

Please, please, don't let FaceBook take away my email.

</comment><comment><USER3> The author contradicts himself.

First he says that "Facebook is killing email. It's been happening slowly, and most techies disagree, but it's been happening for a long time."

Then he goes on to admit "More importantly, Facebook isn't seen as a serious platform. This is less true now than it used to be, but I would still hesitate to ask people to Facebook me in order to talk business – Facebook is for friends and family, email is for work."

"..email is for work."

So....Email will not die anytime soon then is what he is saying.

Can anyone see businesses around the world allowing facebook to peer in and access their company messaging and data? Never.

Email is dead. Long live email.

<comment><AUTHOR> (I'm the author)

I don't think it's a contradiction at all. Email is used for a lot of things. Facebook has replaced _one_ use of email. Their next move will be to try and replace all the other uses, by making Facebook into a more "serious" platform.

<comment><USER3> For facebook users, yes it can replace personal communications.

Businesses are more likely to totally block facebook rather than allow their important and legally binding email communications be run through an American social networking company.

<comment><AUTHOR> But if Facebook integrates an email client into their ui, what will businesses do? No one blocks gmail because it is technically "controlled" by Google.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Contabulo – Knowledge Management with Cards - <AUTHOR> https://www.contabulo.com <comment><AUTHOR> I thought I'd share my side project, which I am trying to turn into a business: [https://www.contabulo.com](https://www.contabulo.com)

I started working on it after become frustrated with Trello (admittedly I was trying to use it for things it was never intended to do). It's geared heavily toward knowledge management, though I think it's flexible enough it could probably serve in a variety of use cases. I have a long list of ideas for additional features and possible "card content" (beyond checklists). Some rough edges in the interface at this point, but quite usable (yea, this is a one-man project).

Some example boards (with read-only access):

\- Wiki: [https://app.contabulo.com/boards/b7dcea21-e1a3-4fa2-ab14-441...](https://app.contabulo.com/boards/b7dcea21-e1a3-4fa2-ab14-441523d18405)

\- Planning: [https://app.contabulo.com/boards/a5e413d1-8fe3-4b42-a8f1-b4f...](https://app.contabulo.com/boards/a5e413d1-8fe3-4b42-a8f1-b4f83cd1aff5)

\- Job board: [https://app.contabulo.com/boards/5c0eb6f0-7eb6-411b-918c-d7c...](https://app.contabulo.com/boards/5c0eb6f0-7eb6-411b-918c-d7c0e016015f)</comment>


The Mathematical Atlas: A Gateway to Modern Mathematics - <AUTHOR> http://www.math-atlas.org/welcome.html

<comment><USER2> The idea is admirable, but the website design needs rethinking -- the resolution of the text and graphic elements in particular.</comment>


Robotic fish powered by fuel cell consumes ~10mW - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVTpINHJeaY

<comment><USER2> All the hype about the fuel cell (which wasn't even in the fish) obscured the really amazing thing: They replaced a conventional motor with a magnet and coil arrangement that mimics the tail motion of a real fish and it made it _100 times_ more efficient. Nice.

</comment><comment><USER3> That's an amazing video, how does it change it's vertical angle, I can't seem to catch how that works, but it is very pronounced, especially near the end of the video?

<comment><USER4> It is able to change its center of gravity (it's mentioned near the beginning of the clip).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> checkout the solar window glass video in the same playlist: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXSPaNpYMLA&feature=Serie...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXSPaNpYMLA&feature=SeriesPlayList&p=B82E7D0174883419)</comment>


German authorities sent 440,783 SMS to track citizens w/o their knowledge - <AUTHOR> http://www.f-secure.com/weblog/archives/00002294.html

<comment><USER2> _German law enforcement agencies have been "pinging" mobile phones ... [and] they can be used to locate the cell towers through which the pings traveled. And thus, can be used to track the mobile targeted._

That is just so scary. I am watching the video this blog-post was based on here: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWdHSJsEOck&feature=youtu...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWdHSJsEOck&feature=youtu.be)

</comment><comment><USER3> More and more companies seem to be forced/coerced into implementing backdoors into their chips, components, software.

While the government will obviously claim it is for the good of its citizens, it would be nice if companies would be transparent about the matter. Maybe not shown to the average consumer, but one should be able to get a report detailing the hidden functionality that something has.

By using the device/whatever I would know that I could be monitored, but at least it would be a conscious decision on my behalf. I wouldn't be at all surprised if in 5 years everything I owned was reporting my actions back to some government center.

</comment><comment><USER2> SMS is unbelievably insecure. I am a rank amateur but I have done things with SMS that should not be possible. I have emailed all the networks to explain the problem but none of them have responded.

<comment><USER4> Recently in Germany many banks introduced a new "security" feature that allows you to receive your TANs per SMS in order to do online transactions. The TANs are sent in plain text. All you need is a UMTS receiver and a way to analyze the data, e.g., a software-defined radio implemented on an FPGA.

<comment><USER5> Isn't this more secure than having nothing? There is a large additional cost to the wrongdoers in that they have to get close to you (even if they know your home address, how do they know you and your phone are home). Seems like a deterrent when you could be running credit card phishing sites for less work per victim. And you would still get the intercepted text, the ones I get from my bank in Australia suggest if you didn't request the token to contact them immediately.

<comment><USER6> The old alternative in Germany was that you had a piece of paper with numbers on them. So it absolutely may be a step backward.

<comment><USER7> I might add, that the numbers were indexed and the banking software was requesting a random TAN. This was called iTAN.

<comment><USER8> We had both (both the original TAN list where every number could be used just once and invalidated all previous numbers on the list and the iTan system).

I prefer the token thingy my bank gave me. Insert your direct debit card, enter two numbers from the screen (usually corresponding to your transaction in some way, to confirm _again_ that you're really trying to send money to account X) and generate the TAN. Done.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Is there any way to disable or at least make the silent SMSes show up in Android or jailbroken iPhone?

</comment><comment><USER10> Also note that these silent SMSs can also help with cracking A5/1, the broken GSM encryption algorithm. I think this attack was demonstrated at a previous CCC.

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm surprised this police tactics are still now widely known outside of Germany. But seeing the included GPS chips in smartphones & tablets makes me believe that this is even easier & more precise these days for other "institutions" and Online-Targeting companies without publishing this.

But maybe there is also hope with smartphones, you could start effective "Gegenmaßnahmen" (counter-measures) by routing your calls via vpn,voip and anonymous throw-away calling cards - to cover at least your location. But don't forget to disable the "location based serives" and install an outbound firewall then ;-)

</comment><comment><USER12> This is hilarious, considering the hard time German government gives Google in terms of privacy.

<comment><USER13> Why? Google is some outside entity from another country. Do you find it hilarious that I discipline my kids but it would probably result in a physical altercation if someone else whom I didn't place in authority (explicitly or implicitly like the schools) did?

Granted, I wouldn't want to be live under a government that thought of me as "belonging" to them [1] but their stance here isn't remotely hypocritical.

[1] The US government does as well though. The US is the only country in the world where you if you sell everything you have in the US and move away to a new life they still expect you to pay them taxes on what you earn _in the new country_.

<comment><USER14> But it's FUD. It's a smokescreen.

Google is harmless compared to the power nation states have. It's just wrong to focus your effort on companies and not states. What politicians try to do is make privacy all about companies and not the state and that is, honestly, disgusting. All their gushing about Facebook and Google only serves to hide their own failings.

<comment><USER13> I disagree. The bigger the company gets the more influence it is likely to have on one _or more_ states. Both corporations _and_ governments are dangerous and should not be trusted with privileged information.

<comment><USER14> Sure both. But nation states are far, far, far more dangerous.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm very wary of this sort of tracking, and I do take it seriously... but I just want to point out that this number _could_ make the tracking sound more widespread than it actually is.

The article implies that certain targets are pinged continually in order to establish their patterns. Pinging somebody once per minute for an entire day would come out to 1,440 messages.

Not saying the number is or isn't inflated, just pointing out that they could potentially have tracked a very small number of people for a while.

</comment><comment><USER16> This is an honest question: why are people so concern about privacy when it comes to their government? What is the issue with the gov listening to my phone calls if I am not doing anything illegal?

Note: I was once followed by the FBI because they were following someone I was spending a lot of time with. I ended being asked for a coffee by the agent. I was not worried because I had nothing to hide.

<comment><USER17> What is the issue with the gov watching my girlfriend and I have sex if we're not doing anything illegal?

In other words, where is the line to what is or is not the government's business, and why does the government get to determine where this line is?

<comment><USER18> You know why the goverment is called the goverment, right?

gov·ern : Conduct the policy, actions, and affairs of (a state, organization, or people).</comment></comment></comment>


Justice Department Opens Antitrust Review of Big Tech Companies - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/23/technology/justice-department-tech-antitrust.html <comment><USER2> Earlier discussion:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20510022](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20510022)</comment>


[FREE][Android and PC] Splash Up – Cool game for hot summer - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0BlKzzJPtc&version=1

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi! I have made a tiny game on android and i want to share it with you. Hope you enjoy it!

Splash Up is a simple but fast-paced and addictive game. Video to introduce game play

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0BlKzzJPtc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0BlKzzJPtc)

How to play

\- In start game you have 10 drops. Use them to "Up" the Splash. When splash get full it will be exploded

\- When a splash explodes it splits to 4 drops fly to 4 direction, hits to other splash, and make them grow or explode(if it full before hit with the drop).

\- When all of splash on the screen are exploded, you will complete current level.

\- The more splash exploded in a row the more bonus you will get.

\- Each time you complete a level you will get 1 more Drop and 50 Scores

\- You could submit your score to scoreboard and compare with others in the world.

\- This game based on the popular game Splash Back

Link Google play

[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tkv.splash...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tkv.splashup)

Link Google play HD version for high resolution device or tablet

[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tkv.splash...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tkv.splashuphd)

Link on PC for people who does not use Android (Require JRE installed)

[http://www.mediafire.com/download/1672y2kio2go619/splashup.r...](http://www.mediafire.com/download/1672y2kio2go619/splashup.rar)

</comment><comment><USER2> Please, don't repost from a different account: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7877104](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7877104)</comment>