Is Facebook eavesdropping on phone conversations? - how-about-this http://news10.com/2016/05/24/is-facebook-eavesdropping-on-your-phone-conversations/ <comment><AUTHOR> No.

This is one of those tech urban legends that keeps popping up. Facebook does have an opt-in feature that can identify what music, tv show or movie you are listening to or watching, but that's it.

[http://newsroom.fb.com/news/2014/05/a-new-optional-way-to- sh...](http://newsroom.fb.com/news/2014/05/a-new-optional-way-to-share-and- discover-music-tv-and-movies/)

[https://www.facebook.com/help/iphone- app/369513256545845](https://www.facebook.com/help/iphone-app/369513256545845)

<comment><USER2> This could be rigorously studied. A group of people could attempt to plant false advertising opportunities in their speech and then measure the frequency at which related ads/posts arrive in their feed. I would trust something like this more than an assertion by FB that this is not happening.

<comment><USER3> I think that if Facebook was caught doing this after they specifically denied it, then executives would probably be going to jail.

I think if Facebook say they aren't doing this, then they aren't doing it.

<comment><USER4> Even IF this was true, do you really think the executives on their meetings go like: "Okay, if we deny this, we will go to jail. So let's tell everyone that we are spying on them!"

No. Denying is the only smart move here.

<comment><USER3> Just to be clear, are you positing that Facebook is actually doing what the article accuses it of doing?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Another anecdotal-data-of-sample-size-one, my wife was at a bar and struck up a conversation with another person to whom she had no connections. After she left, Facebook suggested this person as a friend.

The other person may have searched for her on Facebook, causing her to be listed as a possible friend. Or perhaps Facebook uses location data to group people that are in the same location for an extended period of time.

It would be interesting if someone at Facebook could provide some insight into this.

<comment><USER6> Why do people keep the Facebook app installed? I use it in the web browser and it works just fine, while sort of sandboxing it within Chrome.

<comment><USER7> Because my phone wont let me uninstall it [0] and it's not just on my specific phone, other manufacturers do the same. I also cannot uninstall Amazon or the 5 other completely useless apps it brings, Facebook Messenger and Instagram are ingrained into my phone which is annoying. I wish rooting and setting up a custom ROM wasn't a painful experience or I would do both, but I like getting updates, which rooting stops, and I'm not too sure a ROM supports updating properly.

[0]: [https://www.reddit.com/r/androidapps/comments/3catb0/i_cant_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/androidapps/comments/3catb0/i_cant_uninstall_facebook/)

<comment><USER8> Have you tried disabling the apps instead of uninstalling them?

I've had good luck with this on stock roms when you can't uninstall the carrier's apps. Settings » Apps » All » Application Name » Disable

Technically the app is still there, but it can't be launched and doesn't appear in the list of apps.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Can't speak for Android, but on iOS it is not possible for an app to "listen" to your microphone unless it is in the foreground, and you have explicitly given the app permission to do this (the first time the app attempts to do so). It can also be revoked at any time without removing the app.

The only way around this restriction would be using a private API Apple could have provided. Given that Apple has even integrated some aspects of Facebook into iOS, this is not totally impossible, but it's hard to imagine Apple having an incentive in allowing Facebook to passively record and transmit all user audio. To date, Apple actually seem to be pretty good at protecting user's privacy.

<comment><USER10> Unless Heard has stopped working then this is not 100% true [http://www.heardapp.com/](http://www.heardapp.com/) It may put a banner on the top bar but I've used this app and it worked just fine.

<comment><USER11> Very off-topic but what is your real-world use case for such an app? The site lists a couple but most of those seem to make more sense when using a recording app in the traditional, explicit, way (e.g. "we are having a meeting, I will record this meeting").

<comment><USER10> So honestly it's best use case is "gotcha". As in you didn't know I was recording and you said something stupid and now I have a recording. Likewise if you are talking to someone and you say something along the lines of "Are you sure about that?" or "Can you confirm this is what/how you want me to do this" and then you record the audio for later incase they come back and say "I never said that".

For myself I went the extra mile to just have my laptop record ALL audio but then felt this was a little too douchey/NSA-y and disabled the whole thing and wiped the audio. I wanted such a system not only for "You said this then and now you are saying that now" but to remember things I had said myself. I wanted to hook it up to STT to have a searchable archive of what I had said but again it was an invasion of privacy (to people around me) that I personally couldn't stomach.

<comment><USER12> Besides the creepiness, the law around recording people without them knowing (one-party consent) is state-by-state

<comment><USER13> As for creepiness, you know what's creepy? People saying something and then lying about it later.

You'll be happy having the audio even if there are restrictions. Simply don't tell anyone about it until the benefits (saving your ass) outweigh the drawbacks (potential charges).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> _"That is kind of weird," she laughed. "I'm still not so sure this isn't just coincidence. I don't think Facebook is really listening to our conversations."_

This is a terrible article. There's an easy way to figure out if it's a coincidence... repeat the experiment.

<comment><USER15> 99% sure this is not a coincidence, here's my theory: people's IRL conversations can be pretty reliably predicted by their Facebook conversations, so targeted ads based on messages tend to be surprisingly relevant to the _next_ thing they talk about IRL.

Example: my girlfriend was given a box of Flonase by her parents and immediately got a Facebook ad for it. She had not mentioned Flonase anywhere on Facebook ever. Spoopy eavesdropping? No --- she _did_ talk on Facebook about her ENT appointment that morning. And what products might be relevant for someone going to an ENT doctor? Allergy medication.

And in cases like that, it's very likely that your two recommendations from different sources will happen to match --- what brand of medication are your parents likely to recommend? A popular one that spends a lot of $ on advertising. What brand is likely to buy ads? A popular one that spends a lot of $ on advertising.

<comment><USER16> See this seems reasonable.. however I was once playing Battlefield Hardline raving about how awesome the camera's were for whatever I was doing and was then presented with security camera ads shortly after while browsing Facebook on my desktop. I have no interest or need for security cameras or even any reason to source information about them online. I double checked my web history and couldn't find anything related either, plus I had not had any conversations about cameras on Facebook. I remarked about how creepy it was over Team Speak and had 2 other people comment about similar experiences recently (at that time) as well. They claimed the only device they had near them was a phone at the time and the conversation was spontaneous.

<comment><USER17> See frequency illusion.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases#Frequ...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases#Frequency_illusion)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Just use the mobile web site. I'm doing it because of the zillion of permissions the FB app ask and it is good enough.

However they could do it with Whatsapp. There is no alternative to that.

<comment><USER19> There are plenty of alternatives to Whatsapp. I don't even have it installed on my phone.

<comment><USER20> It's not about the program. It's about the network... you cannot switch a network when all your friends and colleagues use WhatsApp and their groups. But I'm happy WhatsApp is more secure than most of the alternatives with good E2E encryption support.

<comment><USER21> > with good E2E encryption support.

They say there is good E2E encryption. Great claims require great proof.

<comment><USER22> The only great proof would be opensourcing it completely, and I don't see that happening.

Then again, Moxie said he himself oversaw the implementation of the encryption and that he has trust in it...

<comment><USER23> Even if they implemented correctly, it doesn't mean that they didn't add a backdoor for the government.

<comment><USER22> To quote him:

 _" I was very closely involved for the integration, had full access to the source code, did plenty of review, and have a lot of confidence in the engineers that are maintaining it.

There are plenty of engineers in the world who are capable of inspecting the binaries they're distributing, so it would be incredibly risky of them to inject surveillance code client side."_

<comment><USER23> I guess that the governmenet doesn't even need a backdoor in the Facebook app... Since Google has admin privileges on your device and is in bed with the NSA, they could go that route instead.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> As one of the people said below, there is an easy way to test the validity of that statement – take 30+ participants with randomly selected backgrounds and friend networks and break them into 2 groups for different 'trigger word' and then study their newsfeeds.

It seems that there is a subgenre of geek-oriented clickbaiting, which has a strong claim about something tech-related like AMAZGOOGBOOK with little proof or scientific study. We, as a community, can be better at identifying and pointing out deficiencies in the scientific method, instead of saying 'I'm not sure they do it, but it would be scary, if they did'.

The story about uber tracking your battery status is legit and has been proven and I don't remember it climbing as high as no 2 on the front page, so IMO we can readjust our BS-meters.

<comment><USER25> I think the days of giving corporations benefit of doubt are long gone. Now if outrageous claim is made by any sort of reasonably credible source, you can be sure there is an ounce of truth to it. So yes FB probably does do this, and people claiming conspiracy to discredit this are the crazy ones.

<comment><USER26> Finally, I can tell them that _they_ are the crazy ones. I _told you_ General Motors was breaking into my house at night and reorganizing the books on my bookshelf!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Android M above (<strike>N</strike>) you can disable various permissions asked by an app. I have disabled everything for Facebook (except storage). No location, contacts, microphone, calendar, phone, sms or even camera. You're not allowed here, facebook. So it can't do much damage for at least those versions of Android.

<comment><USER28> Makes you feel being totally in control, doesn't it?

<comment><USER27> I understand you might be saying that sarcastically, but yes - as far as these specific permissions on my phone are concerned, I feel being in control (e.g. I _know_ it can't record my voice even if it wants). I have otherwise given a lot of my information to both Facebook and Google, and I'm aware of the potential consequences.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Wouldn't it be possible to determine this by jailbreaking + decrypting the facebook .ipa, in a combination with watching the network traffic?

</comment><comment><USER30> [https://mbasic.facebook.com](https://mbasic.facebook.com) has been amazing for me. I don't have Messenger nor Facebook on my phone, it's a faster and data plan friendly alternative. Not to mention no notifications.

<comment><USER31> I use Metal, which Appifies the mobile site. It even supports notifications, I think, but I turned them off.

[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.nam.fbwrap...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.nam.fbwrapper&hl=en)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> The impact on battery life alone would be insane if this wee true I'm guessing.

<comment><USER33> Funny you mention that:

[http://bgr.com/2016/02/01/facebook-android-app-battery- life-...](http://bgr.com/2016/02/01/facebook-android-app-battery-life- performance/)

[http://www.cnet.com/how-to/improve-iphone-battery-life- delet...](http://www.cnet.com/how-to/improve-iphone-battery-life-delete-the- facebook-app/)

[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/facebook-iphone- battery-...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/facebook-iphone-battery- life_us_56b8b6c5e4b08069c7a7fc54)

Now is that because of voice? Very unlikely.

<comment> yoz-y On iPhone the problem was that FB left a bug (according to FB) in the application which made it play silent audio in background. Incidentally this meant that the app was able to bypass the iOS restrictions on background processes.

Whether it really was a bug or intentional is a subject of debate though.

<comment><USER34> Why would they intentionally play silent audio?

<comment> yoz-y On iOS your application can not stay fully active for more than 10 minutes. After that time it gets into suspended state and can be waken up only when it receives a notification (and the wake up time also has time limitations). There are only three exceptions to this rule: active GPS usage for maps and trackers, active voice calling apps (for ringing) and music apps that are actually playing audio. Silent audio thus enables Facebook to stay alive forever.

This had also the effect that when you were listening to music or a podcast and opened the FB app it would stop playing your audio.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I've had this happen to me so many times, that I wouldn't be surprised if it was true. At this point in history it seems that any surveillance that is technically possible _will_ be done.

</comment><comment><USER36> I see two ways to do this, sending audio to Facebook or doing speech-to-text on the phone.

Sending audio to Facebook would be so obvious that presumably somebody would have noticed by now.

So that leaves speech-to-text on the phone. However, if that was on "all the time" or even some significant fraction, wouldn't that take an enormous amount of battery power? I'm not sure exactly how much juice on-handset speech-to- text takes but it seems like it would be nontrivial.

On the flip side, I do have to admit that Facebook probably already shows up on the top of most people's CPU and data listings already, but, still, it seems like this could easily be an order of magnitude beyond even that for many people. Surely someone by now would have noticed that they didn't even open Facebook today but it's the top battery draw and/or data user for the day?

Forget _whether_ Facebook wants to do this. I'll take it as read that, duh, yes they do. The question in my mind is _can_ they actually do this without being noticed somewhere other than a local news channel? I mean this question seriously; as you can see above I've already sort of laid out the parameters, so I'd ask that replies here not just "guess" how much juice speech recognition takes, I already did, please tell me if you _know_. (I can't enforce this request, of course.)

</comment><comment><USER37> How do we know this isn't double speak?

Maybe they aren't listening to the conversations per se, but for an audio beacons in television and radio?

[http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/11/your-p...](http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/11/your- phone-is-literally-listening-to-your-tv/416712/)

<comment><USER38> I think you probably need to read 1984 again. Doublespeak is euphamistic political propaganda language.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Pro Tip: Just use the mobile web version of Facebook.

<comment><USER40> Yes, that or Face Slim.

[https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdid=org.indywidualni...](https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdid=org.indywidualni.fblite)

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> For me, this is one step too far. If my phone is just laying around, it should not record the sound in the room and send it to Facebook by default. Sounds like a fake story, would be worried if this is true.

<comment><USER42> I tried to reproduce it by keep saying education education. It didn't pick it up. Tried with FB and Messenger. Maybe it doesn't work for me...

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> I think it was about 2 years ago that the Facebook android app requested permission to your microphone? As soon as I saw that I warned everyone I knew that they could be listened in on, and uninstalled the app on my phone, using FB through a browser if need be.

I find it interesting how people accept such things without a question. But I guess articles like these are good even if they're late to the party.

</comment><comment><USER44> This makes good business sense, and it's going to happen, often enough to become banal. We have to come up with laws to protect ourselves.

</comment><comment><USER45> Well, either we are going to see a Facebook exodus happen due to privacy concerns (unlikely) or now almost everyone is comfortable being watched 24/7 and the next wave of apps _cough_ SNAPCHAT will learn to exploit people recording every moment of their lives thinking it actually goes away. (unfortunate)

</comment><comment><USER46> Google have access to all your mails, web search, documents, travels, habits... Facebook have access to your friends, family, pictures... And you guys worry about them listening to your conversation...I mean most of the info they gather with that they already have them by other means

</comment><comment> brown9-2 This article has a single anecdote whose source isn't even convinced of the veracity of the headline:

 _"That is kind of weird," she laughed. "I'm still not so sure this isn't just coincidence. I don't think Facebook is really listening to our conversations."_

</comment><comment><USER47> They've done this to me as well. Months ago a conversation with a medical key word I have never used in my life led to that key word being added to my "interests" on Facebook that evening (i groomed my interest tags to make FB more bearable at the time). That day I realised they must be listening somehow and uninstalled the FB app. Also, every time I add or update a phone contact on iPhone, I am asked to add my FB password - they are digging where they don't belong.

<comment><USER48> This is absurd . If they were _secretly_ recording you they wouldn't obviously throw it in your face immediately.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> It sounds like a creepier version of google now which listens for many keywords instead of just one, is it not?

Question for the experts: How much battery would it actually drain if the mic was constantly activated and the app was scanning for keywords. I mean, you could limit the scanning to times were someone actually speaks and otherwise remain in a sleep mode. The keywords are then synced only when the user opens the app.

Did anyone ever check if something similar was mentioned in the google now TOS?

<comment><USER50> Some devices _are_ always listening for "OK, Google", if you turn that feature on (Nexus 6, Nexus 9, and Samsung Note 4, according to a Google help page [0]). I vaguely remember reading something about a subprocessor in those devices, looking for that phrase, to cut down on battery usage. Most of the speech recognition processing happens remotely on Google's servers, though.

[0] [https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/6031948?hl=en](https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/6031948?hl=en)

<comment><USER51> Funny, I'd actually _want_ that feature in my phone (S7). It could easily turn Google Now into single-room Echo alternative. Without it, Google Now's voice features are pretty useless - if I have the phone unlocked and in my hands, I may as well type what I want and get to it faster.

<comment><USER50> I've got it disabled on my phone, and you couldn't pay me to have something like an Echo at home. I feel like it would be another underused tech device I'd have to find an outlet for, and I don't ever want to feel reliant on cloud services.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> I had this happen to me a while back and came up with a fairly simple possible explanation/implementation. Facebook could look at the time and geo stamps in uploaded photos to determine who was in the same place at the same time, and offer those people up as potential friends to add.

</comment><comment><USER53> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_hoc_ergo_propter_hoc](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_hoc_ergo_propter_hoc)

</comment><comment><USER54> tl;dr It is probably common Wifi in a specific setting.

Cmon, HNers. You're better than this. This obsesssion with "listening" to what you say is so twentieth century. Metadata beats data anytime. with the surround of information that comes from auth, apps, and FB usage, there's no problem associating people that meet each other, then immediately check FB.

</comment><comment><USER55> No, but it does listen to your audio when you have your profile/post active for a period of time.

</comment><comment><USER56> Both Messenger AND Instagram is also listening to the microphone in addition to the Facebook app.

</comment><comment><USER57> Yes.

(It's electronic communications, your assumption should be, without a doubt, that someone is listening, seeing, hearing.)

<comment><USER58> If you RTFA you'd see the claim is that Facebook is activating the microphone to listen to non-electronic verbal communication you're having nearby your phone.

<comment><USER59> You're missing the point. It doesn't matter at all if there's any evidence that a given claim about a particular version of an app is being tapped; you have to assume that they all are, all the time, and act accordingly. You're never going to know, and certainly not ahead of time; best to assume they're all tapped. Which, as we all know post-Snowden, is the only reasonable assumption.

<comment><USER58> Most people are aware at this point that non-end-to-end encrypted electronic conversation is being tapped. It seems like a new development to extend that assumption to non-electronic verbal communication you're having with another person physically in the same room as you. Again, communication _not occurring via_ any electronic means whatsoever. Just so happens your phone was in your pocket while you were non-electronically verbally communicating with someone physically sitting in front of you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> It makes me cringe so bad that many HackerNews commentators believe this nonsense. This is why I don't tell friends and family that I use HackerNews.

<comment><USER61> DAE CRINGE?!

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> So she mentions safaris in a conversation and a facebook ad for safaris pops up.

I guess we're just going to ignore the fact that she could have been looking up safaris in Africa the day prior to their little demonstration? At no point do they indicate it was a randomly chosen topic.</comment>


A Free Market Fix for the Copyright Racket - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-11-29/a-free-market-fix-for-the-copyright-racket.html

<comment><USER2> Given other issues floating around maybe rather than go to something as restrictive as what was proposed at the end of the article take a half step.

Leave much of the law today as is (copyrights can apply to more than the original copyright law allowed and are automatically in force even without registering) but change the duration mechanism.

For the first 14 years of the work's existence you get a copyright for free.

For the next 14 years, you can re-register but with a higher but still nominal fee.

For each year after that, you must re-register and the fee goes up at an accelerating rate eventually reaching millions per year per copyrighted item. I'm assuming there would have to be a cap somewhere.

The government gets new revenue, most copyrights are shortened and enter the public domain more quickly and for the copyrights that are extremely valuable and still producing value in excess of the ever increasing registration fee, it will be worthwhile for the holder to pay.

<comment><USER3> I don't like this because the amount an entity will pay to keep copyright is roughly proportional to how culturally valuable it is. The more Disney will pay to lock up Mickey Mouse, the more we want the mouse to be free.

<comment><USER4> If there is no cap on the exponential portion eventually Mickey will be too expensive to protect and he will be free. The result would be the Government capturing all the value in later years and then the work would be freed allowing the public to capture the value.

I think the OP's suggestion is the best I have heard so far. It could be a simple formula like a fee starting at $10/year for each copywrited work after 14 years, then it doubles ever year. By the 24th year you would be looking at paying just over $5,000, but by the 44th year Disney would be paying $5Bn/year. Probably not worth keeping the rights on Mickey for $5Bn/year.

<comment><USER5> Now Government will have yet another source of revenue to optimize. Since Government hates giving up revenue we could expect entities close to giving up due to cost to receive exceptions. Anything to keep the money flowing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If there was a time or an issue that Republicans could stand for and actually be pro-market as they keep saying they are (in theory), it's this one. They'd probably get as much support as they usually get from evangelists, which seems to be their core audience these days, or at least that's how they're acting in public.

<comment><USER7> It's a shame: Republicans are, in general, pro-corporatism. They are not usually truly for the free market.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> great... however, a more direct example would be mickey mouse...

<comment><USER9> Mickey Mouse is also a trademark of Disney. Using Mickey as an example would confuse the issue.

<comment><USER10> This is important to note every time someone brings up Mickey Mouse. The super old "steamboat willie" movies would be out of copyright, but Mickey Mouse would still be a trademark.

In addition, Mickey Mouse is perfectly legal to use in works of parody etc</comment></comment></comment>


Playboy Magazine Shuts Down Print Edition - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/playboy-magazine-shuts-down-print-edition-citing-coronavirus-11584582245 <comment><USER2> Behind a paywall:

Try this web archive: [https://archive.is/1QVqJ](https://archive.is/1QVqJ)</comment>


The new, subtle ways the rich signal their wealth - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20170614-the-new-subtle-ways-the-rich-signal-their-wealth <comment><USER2> > More profoundly, investment in education, healthcare and retirement has a > notable impact on consumers' quality of life, and also on the future life > chances of the next generation. Today's inconspicuous consumption is a far > more pernicious form of status spending than the conspicuous consumption of > Veblen's time.

Spending money on education, healthcare, and retirement is pernicious? Self- perpetuating, perhaps, but pernicious, really?

<comment><USER3> "having a harmful effect, especially in a gradual or subtle way."

That seems like exactly the word to use for self perpetuating inequality to me...

<comment><USER2> And what's the alternative? Should people make a conscious decision to be less educated, less healthy, and less prepared for retirement?

<comment><USER4> There's this very strange and very dangerous notion making the rounds that because some people don't have the means to access something (i.e. a college education) then those that do have the means should abstain out of...what, solidarity? Because it's unfair?

Problems of inequality are complex and have many different factors at play. I think it's extremely dangerous to discourage the wealthy from using their wealth in this manner. We need to explore the root causes of problems of inequality and this type of rhetoric does NOTHING but fester resentment.

<comment><USER5> Notions of solidarity have been around as long as human civilization existed. Thus you see a lot of cultures where the leaders/elite of their society were discouraged from ostentatious displays of their wealth. And you can see this today as well with a lot of very wealthy people choosing to not exercise their wealth (e.g. Warren Buffett still lives in his old home at Omaha).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> tl;dr: rich people spend more on education and fancy lunches for their kids. Also, they pay attention to reading the right magazines, like The Economist and The New Yorker so everyone knows they went to fancy schools.

Choice quotes:

>"Given that everyone can now buy designer handbags and new cars..."

>"Knowing which New Yorker articles to reference or what small talk to engage in at the local farmers' market enables and displays the acquisition of cultural capital, thereby providing entry into social networks that, in turn, help to pave the way to elite jobs, key social and professional contacts, and private schools."

This article is really stupid.

<comment><USER7> How is it really stupid? I thought it was an interesting analysis of consumer behavior

<comment><USER6> "The new, subtle ways" of signalling wealth in this article are neither new, subtle, nor interesting. You're telling me:

-Rich people bragging about going to/sending their kids to nice schools

-Eating fancy food

-Ostentatiously namedropping highbrow pop culture

are some sort of recent phenomena? Come on :)

<comment><USER8> Traditionally, there was "old money" and "new money" where entry into the old money class didn't rely solely on wealth but also on subtle social signifiers. What's new is the emergence of a class of "new old money" that adopts the same social signalling techniques of old money, even with new wealth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Spending more on health, education, and retirement is thinking long-term. Is that a cause or an effect of being wealthy?

Perhaps in the old days, when overt classism was still accepted, conspicuous consumption yielded something for the spender. Now it is often frawned upon in the West, why bother? So the money saved is invested in consumption/investments with better returns. That is rational.

<comment><USER10> > Spending more on health, education, and retirement is thinking long-term. Is > that a cause or an effect of being wealthy?

Probably an effect. You can't choose to invest long-term if you can't afford it.

<comment><USER9> There are many poor people in developing countries who sacrifice a lot of things and save every bit they can to invest in the education of their children. This phenomenon is very pronounced in China and several countries with Confucius influence.

Families with this kind of mindset are unlikely to stay poor for more than 1-2 generations. (This is probably one reason why hundreds of millions in China arose from poverty to middle-class in a single generation, although I do not see many economists in the West discussing it in the context of China's rise.)

\---

"Zhang Yang, a bright 18-year old from a rural town in Anhui province in China was accepted to study at a prestigious traditional medicine college in Hefei. But the news was too much for his father Zhang Jiasheng.

Zhang's father was partly paralysed after he suffered a stroke two years ago and could no longer work. He feared the family, already in debt to pay for medicines, would not be able to afford his son's tuition fees.

As his son headed home to celebrate his success, Zhang Jiasheng killed himself by swallowing pesticide.

Zhang's case is an extreme. But East Asian families are spending more and more of their money on securing their children the best possible education.

In richer Asian countries such as South Korea and emerging countries like China, "education fever" is forcing families to make choices, sometimes dramatic ones, to afford the bills.

There are families selling their apartments to raise the funds to send their children to study overseas.

\---

Extreme Spending

...

It is not just middle-class families. Workers also want their children to do better than themselves and see education as the only means of ensuring social mobility. Some go deep into debt.

"Families are spending less on other things. There are many cases of rural parents not buying healthcare that their doctors urge on them... Part of the reason is that they would rather spend the money on their children's education," said Mr Kipnis.

"

From [http://www.bbc.com/news/business-24537487](http://www.bbc.com/news/business-24537487)

<comment><USER10> > Families with this kind of mindset are unlikely to stay poor for more than > 1-2 generations. (This is probably one reason why hundreds of millions in > China arose from poverty to middle-class in a single generation, although I > do not see many economists in the West discussing it in the context of > China's rise.)

What? China's economic boom has little to do with their view on education. They "simply" moved from farmers in extreme poverty to 6 day/12h shifts factory workers in poverty. I don't dispute it's relatively better for everyone, but it's hardly something to aspire to (particularly since other countries made the transition ages ago, so it's not even replicable unless we're talking about a really poor country that now has to compete with China too).

The BBC article has a much more negative spin about this than you portray. It even suggests it can be detrimental to the country.

The real reason some cultures obsess about education is because there are severe and very real penalties if you fail some exam in middle school.

Finally, this is direct contradiction with your parent comment. Are poor people poor because they don't invest in the future or are they more likely to? Because if all you're saying is that poor people who invest long-term will not stay poor, that's almost a tautology.

<comment><USER9> I said " _one_ reason why...". I am aware that there are other forces at work for China's rise. However, if you look at many other countries on the verge of industrialization, for example some in Latin America or Southeast Asia, the rise has not been nearly as rapid and they tend to get stuck at the middle- income level (and sometimes worse).

Why has the industrialization of East Asia been so much faster and go further than in most other regions of the world? Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, ..., and likely China. Also look at their PISA scores [1] (or other international exams). I believe that _one_ major factor is the emphasis of education in the culture.

If you have other explanations, I'd like to hear.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pisa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pisa)

> The real reason some cultures obsess about education is because there are > severe and very real penalties if you fail some exam in middle school.

The penetration of cultural emphasis on education is much deeper and broader than that. It starts almost from birth, and often before, and at all levels of society. Many people there pick partners using strong filters on educational level and institutions attended. High-achieving students are admired, not bullied, for example. The real reasons go back thousands of years. Check out Confucius philosophy and Chinese imperial examinations. [2][3]

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confucianism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confucianism) [3] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_examination](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_examination)

> if all you're saying is that poor people who invest long-term will not stay > poor, that's almost a tautology.

I said that because you claimed that investing long-term is probably the _effect_ of being well-off.

Note: I agree there are drawbacks to extreme emphasis on education. But it is a good predictor of long-term material successes of a community and a country.

<comment><USER10> > The real reasons go back thousands of years.

The why has China's industrialisation happen so late?

> I said that because you claimed that investing long-term is probably the > effect of being well-off.

That is the main argument here. I still think it's an effect.

 _Everyone knows saving for a pension is worth it, everyone knows a more expensive fridge is more economical, everyone knows expensive shoes last longer, but not everyone can afford these solutions._

> Note: I agree there are drawbacks to extreme emphasis on education. But it > is a good predictor of long-term material successes of a community and a > country.

The South Korean government disagrees with you.

FYI I am reading your sources. One important concept in Confucianism is this:

> Social harmony results in part from every individual knowing his or her > place in the natural order, and playing his or her part well.

It's not a guide that promotes social mobility. It was created for a certain time and place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Reading "The Economist"? Talking to vendors at organic farmer's market? Breastfeeding? (Not that there's anything wrong with that). All of these signal middle class more than anything else.

The rich people I know display the following marks of belonging:

1) the ability to make a call and solve any petty problem they have (forgot to take a prescription to the pharmacy? Make a call, and the medicine will be released anyway, with compliments).

2) being relaxed and serene like a Buddhist monk

3) displaying levels of trust impossible to the less rich people. Like "you know Bitcoin and how it works, right? Could you buy some for me? Here's $30,000". I barely knew the guy!

<comment><USER12> In your example with a phone call and a pharmacy, how would that work (the exact mechanism)? I assume that you imply that this is happening in a first- world country, of course.

<comment><USER11> Switzerland. I don't know and they don't tell :) But probably he has called his concierge or family office, who called his family doctor, who told the pharmacist to release the medicine on his behalf.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> As a non-American and occasional visitor the most obvious class distinction is Teeth. The American middle-class have great looking teeth, bought and paid for. What's funny is they talk about other countries having bad teeth, ignoring the fact that all you have to do is walk into some other neighbourhood and see all the bad teeth you want...

<comment><USER5> Interesting.. but class distinction b/w middle and upper class or middle and lower class? After you mentioned it though I do agree on this... dental care is incredibly good in the US and covered by insurance so many middle class Americans do have incredibly good looking teeth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> There is nothing new or subtle about it. This subject has been thoroughly explored by the French school of sociology, most notably Pierre Bourdieu, some 60 years ago, with much more detail and academic rigor.

I understand that an article cannot show the same level of detaik as a sociology book, but framing it as new is either disingenuous or uneducated.

</comment><comment><USER15> I'm starting to feel sorry for rich people. They're not allowed to buy nice things because that is just obnoxious showing off, and now they're not allowed to spend their money on education, retirement, and healthy food? Maybe the author should stop bearing around the bush and just tell the rich off for being rich!

</comment><comment><USER16> It's interesting reading a pseudo-critique of the "new cultural elite" coming from an author who lives in that elite and an institution that represents that elite globally.

It's like a weird ritualistic self-criticism exercise, to demonstrate goodness and status. Like watching a beauty pageant contestant answer a question about her flaws. Which is part of the virtue signaling that article is about! It's so _meta_.

And it's nothing like what an outsider to that subculture would write.

\---

I'd actually say that getting a useless degree in an intensively political field is one of the more interesting 'new' forms of conspicuous consumption.

Back in the day, people used to get tutored in Latin or Christian theology to have upper-class cred. Now they get gender studies or "whiteness studies" degrees.

In each case the message is the same: _I am so wealthy that I can spend all my time doing things that don 't economically benefit me at all and are entirely focused on elevating my morality in the dominant activism of our age._ It's a sort of ritualistic destruction of your own ability to earn a living, to demonstrate you don't have to earn a living. Like Chinese foot binding.

<comment><USER17> College is not necessarily a vocational school -- many people with "useless" degrees go on to become knowledge workers... using the skills that they learned and applied in their "useless" degree. That's an economic benefit from the "useless" degree.

One example of this is all the physicists working as programmers. There are also a ton of examples of humanities students becoming lawyers, or product managers, or school teachers, or ...

<comment><USER16> Of course, some degrees are direct training, and some are more generally useful. But there's a spectrum.

E.g. philosophy and "gender studies" are both considered generally useless. But I'd say that philosophy at least can be applied to various types of work, and the course doesn't make a student _less useful_ as a productive human.

With "gender studies" the student is actually becoming _more useless_ by having his head filled with a bunch of moralisms, victimhood ideologies, and objectively false lies about the world. A naive highschooler is more useful in any workplace than a "gender studies" graduate.

It's more useful to know nothing than to know things that aren't true, or be full of propagandized anger at various identity groups.

<comment><USER17> Wow, you're really doubling down on making stuff up and then being critical of it.

My sister is an example of someone who studied gender studies as an undergraduate, and she's currently a quite successful high school English teacher.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> tushar-r Posted for the 7th time in 7 days (different posters), this article has touched a nerve :-)

</comment><comment><USER18> So, people are status conscious.go over to overcoming bias.com and read it from the master Robin Hanson. Every thing we do is based on stay.including pretending to care about inequality

</comment><comment><USER19> So by admission of the article, they're not really signaling their wealth, they're being more inconspicuous. I'm not even sure what the claim is anymore...

</comment><comment><USER20> This article is an archetypal example of raw, unpasteurized Crab Mentality. More focus on healthy behaviors and education? God forbid!

<comment><USER5> Nowhere did the article say it is a bad thing. Only that the rich have changed their behavior.</comment></comment>


A list of software that was once free and is now proprietary - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/fommil/copywrong <comment><USER2> I'm not seeing the problem here. I license my open source projects under Apache specifically to allow this. I don't need a session in the Stallman Reeducation Tank to have my opinions "corrected" on this.

<comment><USER3> So long you behave consistent in that and do not complain if someone makes a gplv3 fork of your projects. So many people want to push their religious believes rather than just pick a license which suits them and then live with the consequences.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It isn't correct to call this behaviour a "copywrong". The licences allow or encourage this. People are doing what they want, as designed when the developer chose a super-free licence.

If you don't like this, don't use a MIT/BSD/etc style licence; pick one that protects your code (as well as it's future users) like GPL. Keep it slightly less free, but forever.

<comment><USER5> Just because it's legally permitted doesn't mean it's not OK to criticize.

I think there's a difference between using a piece of software (perahps with some inessential small changes) as a component in a larger system, and just striaght up forking it and then not contributing changes back.

The problem with companies who use MIT/BSD in the latter way is that they encourage the use of GPL-style licenses. I wish more people would use a license that allows the former but not the latter. That is, you're free to make small changes for iner-oping with your system and you're free to distribute that as a binary; but, you're not free to just fork the project and make huge improvements but then not share those improvements. Unfortunately, that style of license would be nearly impossible to write or enforce because the line is so subjective (e.g., I think some of the examples on the linked list could fall on either side of that line).

Concrete example: I personally believe that Apple should be allowed to build OS X on top of BSD, but should contribute back any significant changes that are improvements to BSD in general. The license doesn't require this, but I think it's the decent thing to do.

<comment><USER6> The license your describing is exactly the LGPL - you can link to it as you please from proprietary software, but modifications to the code itself need to be distributed in their code form.

<comment><USER5> Yeah but I also want to allow "super massive change that fundamentally changes the character/utility of the system"

Basically, don't repackage my stuff with a stupid extra feature or some crapware or a few bug fixed. But feel free to build something new using it.

(edit: I should also mention I use LGPL. But even the definition of linking can get hairy, because sometimes interop requires small changes that aren't directly linking.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Those software are still free even if there are proprietary forks of them. You are not forced to use the proprietary forks.

<comment> steve-howard Exactly. The title is misleading because it implies we're talking about open source products that eventually became closed source (this happens, it's annoying, and it's their prerogative). Instead it's upset that people use licenses that aren't the GPL.

It's also one of the only projects I've ever seen to use the Affero GPL.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I know Nessus (a vulnerability scanner).

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nessus_%28software%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nessus_%28software%29)

<comment><USER9> Submitted a pull request for that one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> These are false claims and some the entries are downright wrong; for example, FoundationDB was always proprietary.

Listing LaunchD and LLVM are also wrong as they're not "formerly" free, they're still free with communities supporting the free branch. They are code bases that are available under free AND proprietary terms.

What's the point? Public shaming in favor of copyleft? Someone hasn't read their Dale Carnegie.

<comment><USER11> launchd is a pretty ironic inclusion as it was developed at apple, by apple, and released under an apache licence.

So this "copywrong" would have been "right" if they hadn't open-sourced it at all?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This should not be a debate about licenses but about business models. Contributing Open Source code (whatever reasonable license) is giving a huge chunk of the value of that code to the world at large (#). But the methods available to sustain oneself and family as a developer are limited if one is not selling proprietary licenses. Donations are pants, crippleware is ugly all round and selling service and consultancy is twice the effort. So it's hard to see sustainable open source as an easy one.

(#) ok mostly the rich western world but that is changing.

</comment><comment><USER13> FoundationDB was never free software, and LLVM is still free software. 2 of the 4, right off the bat are mislabeled.

</comment><comment><USER14> So, which are good ways to support ourselves (ie: small team/single owner) in a open source project (not counting the "give support and docs" that are only for huge packages), and what are the right licenses to pick one?</comment>


Ask HN: How do you organize your pdf library? - <AUTHOR>

I have a directory full of papers, books and random documents and I am experiencing hard times in organizing them. Expecially now that the number of files is near huge it's really difficult to perform a succesfull and efficent search.<p>So do you have any suggestion to share? Tips, tricks,  apps or whatever useful is welcome! <comment><USER2> I know that people who use MacOSX love with passion a software call "papers". Some people use mendely or zotero.

I am a Linux user and I use an opensource software called bibus. <http://bibus-biblio.sourceforge.net/> It works crossplatform and it also serves as endnote alternative for citations, in case you need one. It does integrate with pubmed but not in the perfect way (somewhere in my todolist it says "fix bibus-pubmed interaction").

<comment><USER3> OS X user here... and its true. I used Papers extensively to manage academic papers.

<http://www.mekentosj.com/papers/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> For research papers, Mendeley is excellent - <http://www.mendeley.com/>

</comment><comment><USER5> I use a similar broad topic based folder organization on both my dropbox ebook folder, and in my iBooks collections.

On Kindle it's just one big mess, but I don't have as many books in the Kindle yet (a dozen or so).

I use the same idea for Instapaper folders.

</comment><comment><USER6> I load everything into Evernote. It scans your PDFs and makes the contents of them searchable, even images with the PDF will be searchable if they have text. Plus you can always open any PDF in Evernote with your viewer of choice.

</comment><comment><USER7> You can add PDFs to iTunes. I add them in iTunes and hit Get Info and apply titles, authors, dates, tags, notes, etc. It's not perfect, but iTunes makes fairly decent PDF library thingy for me.

</comment><comment><USER8> keep an eye on <https://github.com/abhijith/cxr> \- a friend of mine is writing it to solve the same problem, but with a "search, don't sort" approach.</comment>


Show HN: A new, clean, and concise look at weather from My-Cast - <AUTHOR>

We just released a new weather website using all sorts of awesome web technologies. We use ModestMaps to show tiled, animated radar and satellite data, Raphael.js to show historical averages and record high/lows, and MapQuest's new Nominatim service sitting on top of OpenStreetMap to do location lookups.
We're really proud of this site and would love to hear your feedback and to have try it out:
http://preview.my-cast.com/ <comment><USER2> I like it. My first instinct was to click on the radar to expand it (maybe because I'm trying to determine if I'll need a kayak to get to work tomorrow in PHL). I like that the timestamps for the radar frames were converted from GMT/Zulu for me.

Your hourly forecast is nice and clean. Have you considered adding greater detail to the precipitation icons? Percent probability or estimated total QPF? Either way, I think this is an easier presentation than the hourly weather graphs on NWS.

Bottom line, I'll keep checking back to see how things develop.

EDIT: Forgot to add - good job making the map responsive to zooming and panning. That is one thing that drives me nuts with many radar/map implementations.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the feedback! You have NO IDEA how much work went into developing a performant tiled & animated map. Modest Maps was a very good base to build on and we tried several other options before we went with MM.

<comment><USER2> I can imagine it was a significant effort considering all of the horrible implementations I've seen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hmmm. Is it attempting to geolocate me? If so, it keeps saying I'm in Minneapolis when I'm actually in New York. My first instinct was then to type my location in, but it took me a second since I expected the search box to be so much more prominent (I guess since my typical weather checking approach is: 1. Go to weather.com 2. Type in search box smack in the middle of the page)

Seems very cool, though. I would definitely use it.

<comment><AUTHOR> This first iteration doesn't geolocate ... it's on the top of the list for the next release, though!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Clickable link: <http://preview.my-cast.com/></comment>


Rep. Zoe Lofgren Introduces Aaron's Law [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.lofgren.house.gov/images/stories/pdf/draft%20lofgren%20bill%20to%20exclude%20terms%20of%20service%20violations%20from%20cfaa%20%20wre%20fraud%20011513.pdf <comment><USER2> Would Aaron's Law have helped Aaron? Both Orin Kerr and Jennifer Granick have said that his actions in evading filtering and shutoffs on MIT's networks would have created a plausible argument for the prosecution that he had been evading specific code-based authorization mechanisms and would have known his access was unauthorized.

If you read Reason, you're immediately suspicious of laws with people's names on them; they're often more about PR than about well-thought-out policy changes.

Granick makes pretty good arguments that it's the sentencing structure of CFAA that creates the largest problems (a low evidentiary standard for establishing damages, not to mention the ridiculousness of criminal sentences that scale with the number of documents you download). But more importantly, prosecutorial misconduct is at the heart of this case. Surely we're going to do something about that, right?

Obviously, I don't think TOS violations should be felonies, for whatever that's worth. Lessig, on Reddit, says it's critically important.

<comment><USER3> I read the Granick piece. One thing that strikes me as completely absurd is that the plea deal is for a substantially lower sentence and that if the plea deal is rejected the prosecution will go for a much higher punishment, sometimes as much as 10 times as much as offered in the deal. It would seem to me that if you offer a guilty plea that is 10% of what you intend to seek that if such an offer is on the record that a small multiple of that (say twice as much) should become the new maximum sentence. It's utterly frivolous to mess around with 90% or more of a sentence just to put pressure on people, that's poker table tactics and we're dealing with people's lives here.

The most worrying bit is the part where she says that people will plead guilty to things they did not actually do just to _not_ have the chance at a much worse sentence during a trial stacked against them. This is not about justice at all, it's just a numbers game.

<comment><USER4> > is rejected the prosecution will go for a much higher punishment, sometimes > as much as 10 times as much as offered in the deal

In this case it sounds like the prosecutor was going for 70x the plea offer before the plea was even rejected. Simply outrageous.

<comment><USER5> Not exactly. The statutory limit was that much. The prosecutor claimed to be planning to press for about 12-14x the plea offer.

<comment><USER6> > The prosecutor claimed to be planning to press for about 12-14x the plea > offer.

Is that better? There comes a point where it doesn't make a difference anymore.

Ever see a sale like that? Where one day something costs 10 bucks and then the next day it's 170? Me neither. That's not a deal. It's blackmail. Do what we want or we'll do our best to destroy your whole life. Justice, eh?

<comment><USER7> We'll let you off the hook if you pay us $200 of the $2000 that you may or may not actually owe us. And just in case you've missed it, there are four snipers at the top of the roof. I don't know what they're doing there, but thought you might wanna know.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The important stuff:

 _SEC. 2. ELIMINATION OF CERTAIN VIOLATIONS OF AGREEMENTS OR CONTRACTUAL OBLIGATIONS, RELATING TO INTERNET SERVICE, FROM THE PURVIEW OF CERTAIN CRIMINAL PROHIBITIONS. (a) FRAUD AND RELATED ACTIVITY IN CONNECTION WITH COMPUTERS. - Section 1030(e)(6) of title 18, United States Code, is amended by striking ''alter;'' and inserting the following: ''alter, but does not include access in violation of an agreement or contractual obligation, such as an acceptable use policy or terms of service agreement, with an Internet service provider, Internet website, or employer, if such violation constitutes the sole basis for determining that access to a protected computer is unauthorized;''._

 _(b) FRAUD BY WIRE, RADIO, OR TELEVISION. - Section 1343 of title 18, United States Code, is amended by inserting after the first sentence the following: ''A violation of an agreement or contractual obligation regarding Internet or computer use, such as an acceptable use policy or terms of service agreement, with an Internet service provider, Internet website, or employer is not in itself a violation of this section.''._

It essentially means that violating a TOS will not longer be considered "wire fraud".

The law, currently:

18 U.S.C. § 1030: <http://codes.lp.findlaw.com/uscode/18/I/47/1030>

Summary: [http://www.justice.gov/usao/eousa/foia_reading_room/usam/tit...](http://www.justice.gov/usao/eousa/foia_reading_room/usam/title9/48mcrm.htm)

18 U.S.C. § 1343: <http://codes.lp.findlaw.com/uscode/18/I/63/1343>

Summary: [http://www.justice.gov/usao/eousa/foia_reading_room/usam/tit...](http://www.justice.gov/usao/eousa/foia_reading_room/usam/title9/43mcrm.htm)

<comment><USER9> And the important question: was jstor's tos the only mechanism used to deny Aaron access?

<comment><USER8> No, there were other mechanisms used to deny Aaron access to the JSTOR archive (and he made several attempts). I don't think this law change would have affected Aaron's case at all.

What he did was still plausibly wire fraud, computer fraud, unauthorized access, and computer damage.

Edit: To those downvoting me, please read Orin Kerr's take on this case here: <http://www.volokh.com/2013/01/14/aaron-swartz-charges/>

The charges against Aaron do appear legit, and I don't see how changing the definition of wire fraud to exclude TOS violations would have affected Aaron's case. Set aside the issue of whether you think the prosecution pursued Aaron's case too aggressively (I think they did) or whether you think the permissible sentences for these crimes are fair (I think they are not).

Interesting sidenote: Kerr himself defended Lori Drew in the so-called "MySpace suicide" case (2008), in which Drew was convicted of computer crimes and wire fraud for violating MySpace's TOS by "cyber bullying" 13-year old Megan Meier, resulting in Megan's suicide (the conviction was overturned on appeal). [http://www.mail- email@example.com/msg1...](http://www.mail- email@example.com/msg14744.html)

There is no federal law against cyber-bullying, so the prosecution in that case used these same computer and wire fraud laws to go after Drew for her role in Megan's suicide.

<comment><USER10> > There is no federal law against cyber-bullying, so the prosecution in that > case used these same computer and wire fraud laws to go after Drew for her > role in Megan's suicide.

This is the thing that's strange to me. Seems as though existing laws against harassment would apply. What is so different about this activity online than offline?

<comment><USER9> As noted elsewhere, CFAA has suped up mega penalties, so it's the hatchet of choice when the public demands blood.

<comment><USER2> Perhaps less that it has amped up penalties and more that it has a careless and capricious standard for mapping alleged damages into sentencing categories. It's not necessarily that the CFAA on it's face is unreasonably harsh; it's that it's attached to a stupid scheme from which harshness is an emergent property.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Just because this isn't a cure all magic bullet does not mean it isn't a step in the right direction. Progress no matter how small is still progress.

I encourage those of you who live in the United States to drop a quick line to your congressman and ask that they support this bill.

<http://www.house.gov/representatives/find/>

<comment><USER12> YES. Vote up this comment, for he speaks the truth.

Edit: Note to PG and HN mods. With power comes responsibility. You have in the past allowed cynical posts from reaching the top and influencing opinion and thats led to tragic consequences. See the infamous Aaron post from Ed. Its happening again. I encourage you to vote down negative nonsense, even it consists of well constructed sentences and comes from people with high karma scores. Or whatever the kids call it these days.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Explanation here:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/16njr9/im_rep_zo...](http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/16njr9/im_rep_zoe_lofgren_im_introducing_aarons_law_to/)

</comment><comment><USER13> It's a nice narrow fix and I hope it passes, but the real elephant in the room is 'plea bargaining.' That needs reform at the federal level.

<comment><USER14> Federal prosecutors' primary tactics mirror those of the medieval siege. They do their best to fling arrows at the castle by generating enormous amounts of discovery material They starve defendants with insanely over-broad civil asset forfeiture laws. They charge crimes on the prosecutor's whims: HSBC bankers get away with laundering hundreds of billions for Iran, but go after Aaron Swartz with utter malice. Of course, these whims are driven (as always) by personal ambition, outright greed, and a strategy towards personal profit. They strip the defendant of all his most essential Constitutional rights, and then bully him into accepting the arbitrary conditions imposed by one in a position of power, desecrating the right to a trial by peers--a right we gained in the 13th century.

We must pass laws mandating adequate funding for the judiciary, and mandating that after the prosecution's total expenditures surpass $50,000, the prosecution must contribute the amount it spends on its own expenses, minus the first $50,000, to a legal defense fund for the defendant.

This will ensure the government will not resort to dirty tactics like inundation with discovery materials, since they will just have to pay for the defendant's lawyers to read them all. They will not be able to subjugate defendants with their might, because defendants will have the means available to them to stand up to it.

<comment><USER15> This would basically mean you could never get a large company or criminal organization for anything. If you're trying to uncover e.g. systematic FCPA violations, you can't help but make the case complex.

<comment><USER14> Fine, and so the case is complex and expensive. If the accused truly are guilty, then they will be afforded due process of law _and then_ convicted. The case may cost twice as much for the government to prosecute, but the large company will forfeit any profits derived from that criminal activity.

Besides, the DoJ consumes an absurdly low proportion of the Federal budget [1]. Even if this law doubled the DoJ's budget (impossible; they still have to pay for facilities, support staff, etc.), it is a worthy price to pay for a safeguard of the liberties we've enjoyed for nearly a millennia.

1: [http://www.justice.gov/ag/annualreports/pr2012/section3.pdf#...](http://www.justice.gov/ag/annualreports/pr2012/section3.pdf#1) \-- page III-18. Total appropriations received: ~$27 billion, $18 billion of which went to supporting the goal, "Prevent Crime, Protect the Rights of the American People, and Enforce Federal Law". The total of Federal expenditures for FY12 was $3,538.3 billion (<http://www.fms.treas.gov/annualreport/cs2012/finhigh.pdf>).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> We need to ensure that "Internet website" is replaced with "any computing device which intentionally uses electromagnetic radiation to communicate with other computing devices".

EDIT: OK, how about, "any device which intentionally communicates with other devices". Is that better?

<comment><USER16> I'd strike "computing" from your suggestion as well.

<comment><USER17> Also, "uses electromagnetic radiation to" -- let's not be limited to particular technologies.

And maybe strike "intentionally" too, or you'll have lawyers arguing about the intent of a piece of networking equipment.

<comment><USER16> So, "any device which communicates with any device" then? We might need to add a clarification that communicating with itself is included, and that communication could be uni-, bi-, or multi-directional...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Zoe Lofgren is my Congresswoman. Her office is across the street from where I live.

I think I'll visit her office tomorrow to thank her for this; it makes me proud.

<comment><USER19> Before you do, make sure you spend some time reading the analysis here and on reddit, and come to a solid conclusion whether this proposed change actually would have helped Aaron, or whether it's a feel good attempt to use his name for political gain.

<comment><USER18> I think it's possible for the bill to be a good idea even if it would not have helped Aaron, and also possible for it to be suitable memorial even if it would not have helped in his particular case. The fact that it could help prevent some other similar cases would be good enough for me, for instance.

If you have any analyses you think are particularly valuable, feel free to recommend; I'm reading dozens of things per day about this story as it is, at the moment, as so many of us are.

<comment><USER19> I'm envisioning a course of events where this bill gains support and gets passed (fixing one problem, yes), but nothing is done to address the real causes of what happened. It's then reported on in the media as if this longstanding severe criminalization of acts-with-technology has been fixed, when the reality is that people like Aaron are extremely rare and we're unlikely to see a similar case in the next decade (/me knocks on wood).

Sorry to jump at you a bit. Most of the comments on reddit seem to be unthinking sycophantic praise, and don't really consider if this is the appropriate response.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Am I the only one who thinks that the current situation requires _removing_ text from the federal register rather than adding it? In both cases, the changes here are insertions, with no deletions. There's plenty of offending code to delete, why let it rot more?

<comment><USER21> I agree with you, but I don't know how much credit she'd receive for merely trying to eliminate law.

We wouldn't need this massive, inconsistent, vague, and convoluted law system if we just followed a few fundamental moral principles. An analogy would be the overly-complex equations to support the Earth being at the center of the solar system. When the sun was rightfully placed there, the equations became more elegant.

A programming analogy would be to refactor similar laws into a more general form, follow KISS, use open-source software (free market) instead of reinventing the wheel (the type of wheel you'd find in Death Race 2000, btw), etc. But just like the programmer who gets job security from tangled, inscrutable code, Statists and lawyers do so from law.

<comment><USER15> No, the proper analogy is Windows, except 1000x more complex. The complexity of the Windows code doesn't exist because Microsoft profits from keeping it hard to understand.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Lets just sit back and revel in the irony of programmers discussing broad fixes to federal laws, based on insights from reddit comments.

To all the armchair legal experts of HN, here's a challenge: draft legislation that fixes what you propose and post it here.If you can't do that, you are not qualified to comment on the matter.

The EFF has addressed the technology aspects of this. You have ascended into general purpose prosecutorial reform. The legal profession has a vast number of incredibly intelligent people and the legal process has vast nuances, and to think you are an expert in the subject is downright arrogant.

You solve this problem by momentum and visibility, not tossing out arbitrary criticisms.

In the meanwhile, vote up the comment that urges readers to help get this passed.

<comment><USER22> It's quite disturbing that people expert in technology (such as HN visitors are) should not comment on the matter because they have no 'law' qualification.

Is this 'law' thinghy you are talking about something that only applies to people with 'law' qualifications?

Oh no you say? it applies to everyone ? OMG!

Here's my draft legislation: get rid of the laws used to incriminate Aaron as they are crazy, overreaching and unjust. No need to polish a turd and I'm sure real crimes are already covered by non computer laws.

<comment><USER12> My 3 year old niece is far more articulate than you. I'm serious, you're an embarrassment to this board.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Who does the typesetting on these documents? I'm curious - the Supreme Court looks like it uses TeX; here it looks like they're rendering XML.

<comment><USER24> I was curious about this as well.

It looks like a XML document with some standard XSLT presented in a browser and "printed" to PDF.

Which to me sounds way too technical for any lawmaker to be doing.

Anyone got any insight into this?

<comment><USER23> I just found this - <http://xml.house.gov/drafting.htm>

Some relevant quotes:

> ...most legislation in the House is worked on by attorneys in the Office. > The signed paper version submitted to the Clerk of the House on the House > Floor is the official document of record.

> HOLC, the main drafters of House legislation, consists of approximately 35 > attorneys and a support staff of about 15 individuals, and is headed by the > Legislative Counsel of the House who is appointed by the Speaker of the > House...

> Because the paper version is the document of record, the drafters provide > their clients with typeset drafts or PDF files that can be printed in the > client's office. The paper version of legislation is currently created in > one of two ways...

The gory details come just after that, but the site itself seems out of date. More interesting is the peek at the physical process of drafting legislation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Even though it might not have made Aaron's specific case go away, this bill does solve a serious problem with EULA breaches being used for overzealous prosecution.

Say that my ToS / EULA says "By using my product, you agree to hop on one foot while doing so." If some terrible person uses my product without hopping on one foot, then the _worst_ thing that can happen to them in the legal system should be _civil_ actions, namely, I can sue them for breach of contract.

If they can be _criminally_ prosecuted for "hacking" my software/website, that seems to go against the entire concept of having a divide between civil and criminal cases. Only the government should have the power to declare that the specific behavior of failing to hop on one foot is criminal.

Letting any private party set arbitrary rules for any other private party _that are enforced by criminal penalties_ is just nuts.

</comment><comment><USER26> Its too short, wont pass. Add about 100 pages of junk to it and you might have a shot at getting it passed.

<comment><USER27> Don't worry, that will come later.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Aarows laws:

1) Thou shall not harm those weaker than you. See too big to fail for names to go after.

2) Thou shall protect and let them have freedom of choice and experimentation and broad access to knowledge.

3) If thou cannot avoid being bureaucratic in the age of information, take into account that time waiting for decisions is painful. See 1).

4) Thou shall avoid giving money and encouraging practices that lead to 1) either in your country or in other countries. A living creature is the same everywhere.

</comment><comment><USER29> This sounds like its clarifying what the founding fathers really meant when they wrote the law way back in 2002.

</comment><comment><USER30> maybe i am missing the point. But by applying the logic of this bill to other laws. Then trespassing on private property, being asked to leave several times, but not doing so, should not be a crime either.

<comment><USER4> That's not a crime that will typically get you threatened with 50 years in federal prison, no.

We can't expect our 3000 year old "tresspass" and "stealing" concepts to work well as metaphors for information systems built specifically to copy information at the rate of thousands or millions of times a second.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> This seems like a udiff would be a much easier way to represent the changes.

</comment><comment><USER32> Had Aaron ever been found guilty of any other crime?

Because if not, first time offenders almost always get probation unless they killed someone.

Some drunk drivers who killed people get only a couple years.

Destroy the economy = no jail time, free information that was already technically free = mandatory minimums?

</comment><comment><USER33> That kerning is making my eyes twitch.</comment>


Ask HN: Can you forward my resume in your company? - <AUTHOR>

I lost after 3rd round of Google today but thats not the end of the world and I am not giving up on looking for job opportunities. I haven't heard back from few of the other companies that I applied. I am also looking at options in 'who is hiring' thread of HN. I post it here to know if anybody of you is interested to consider me as a potential candidate for interview in your company and could forward my resume may be ?. Currently, I work on a research funded project called VIVO Semantic network, at Cornell University, NY. I have done Masters in ECE( graduated in dec 2009), worked in Java, interested in search engines and topics like IR and Semantic Web. Total experience is around 3 yrs ( 2 yrs before MS on a software maintenance project + 1.5 yrs on VIVO development at Cornell). I would require H1B to work.<p>email: email@example.com <comment><USER2> Maybe some details about things like what and especially _where_ ?

Best of luck !

<comment><AUTHOR> Software development job that encourages challenging work in IR/Semantic Web/ML/Data mining.

Where ? you mean place ? I don't mind moving anywhere in united states if the work is good.

Thanks for your wishes.</comment></comment>