China Blocks Foursquare; Too Many People Checking Into Tian'anmen - <AUTHOR> http://www.techblog86.com/2010/06/china-blocks-foursquare-too-many-people-checking-into-tiananmen/ <comment><USER2> It seems like the eventual trajectory of such censorship is the creation of a completely separate Internet that is China-only. With more and more sites from around the world being blocked, the demands aren't going away, and so parallel censorship-friendly sites go up inside The Great Firewall. I wonder if one day, China will get sick of maintaining the Firewall and just turn off connections to the rest of the world.

</comment><comment><USER3> Censorship is horrible. But if you think it's restricted to China... think about what would happen if 10,000 people would tweet something sensitive on 9/11. My guess is something along the lines of [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/10/paul-chambers- convi...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/10/paul-chambers-convicted- f_n_570073.html)</comment>


IO.js, a Node fork - <AUTHOR> http://iojs.org/

<comment><USER2> This is the third time in a week an uninformative link has been posted to HN, without any comment from the forking community. Can we consider this a dupe?

Previous:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8694953](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8694953) (Link to the repo)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8669557](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8669557) (Another link to the repo)

At this point I'm just getting frustrated because I should be able to learn about important open-source issues from the community, not from a Wired article and not hidden in some secretive organization and private repo. Airing frustrations through Wired is only bad for the community -- the headline is nothing but FUD:

" _Future of Popular Coding Tool In Doubt After Public Split_ " \-- Can you imagine selling your CEO on Node when articles like this are being written?? Someone on HN posted this [1] recently, and I think it's very appropriate -- I believe this confusion could have been avoided:

> If, after careful consideration, you still conclude that you must fork, line > up support privately first, then announce the fork in a non-hostile tone. > Even if you are angry at, or disappointed with, the current maintainers, > don't say that in the message. Just dispassionately state what led you to > the decision to fork, and that you mean no ill will toward the project from > which you're forking. Assuming that you do consider it a fork (as opposed to > an emergency preservation of the original project), emphasize that you're > forking the code and not the name, and choose a name that does not conflict > with the project's name. You can use a name that contains or refers to the > original name, as long as it does not open the door to identity confusion. > Of course it's fine to explain prominently on the fork's home page that it > descends from the original program, and even that it hopes to supplant it. > Just don't make users' lives harder by forcing them to untangle an identity > dispute.

[1] [http://producingoss.com/en/forks.html](http://producingoss.com/en/forks.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> This is a big deal, because of who is involved. Here's the list of people involved:

       * Indutny (listed as a Node.js code team member)
       * Trevor Norris (also a Node.js core team member)
       * Isaac Schlueter (cited as a Node.js core team alumni)
       * Ben Noordhuis (also an alumni)
       * Bert Belder (another alumni and a Node.js maintainer)

Compared to the Node list of top contributors:

[https://github.com/joyent/node/graphs/contributors](https://github.com/joyent/node/graphs/contributors)

Here's some better information:

[http://www.infoworld.com/article/2855057/application- develop...](http://www.infoworld.com/article/2855057/application- development/why-iojs-decided-to-fork-nodejs.html)

<comment><USER4> Thank you for some actual, useful information! The article link should be repointed to [http://www.infoworld.com/article/2855057/application- develop...](http://www.infoworld.com/article/2855057/application- development/why-iojs-decided-to-fork-nodejs.html) if at all possible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> So for those who wonder:

        In the TC meeting today we came up with a vision for the first release.

        First, a few assumptions we've internalized that probably need to be stated for this to make sense.

        - Node is pretty damn stable already. There are huge companies with it in production, 100K+ modules, etc. It is already far more stable that its pre-1.0 release tag suggests.
        - Releasing more frequently leads to a more stable product, not a less stable product.
        - The entire ecosystem uses semver while node uses a confusing even/odd release structure.

        If people disagree with any of those assumptions then they certainly won't agree with anything the TC determined for the initial release.

        So, first release of io.js:

        - January 13th (Fedor's Birthday!) target date.
        - Will be 1.0-alpha1, with alpha releases continuing until 1.0.0.
        - Switching to semver.
        - We will be taking new v8 releases as fast as possible moving forward.
        - Trying to get to a weekly release cycle. Which version number is incremented each week is determined by the changes and whether or not they are breaking. Again, following semver.

        Some questions still left open:

        - Are there any changes other than dep upgrades and fixes required for 1.0?
        - Is build confident we can have enough automation in place to hit this date.
        - Is the plan to have the installer install an iojs binary and an alias to node?

Source: [https://github.com/iojs/io.js/issues/28](https://github.com/iojs/io.js/issues/28)

<comment><USER6> So, they're going to change a few things around the build process and versioning? I wonder if there will be any plans to address core functionality, namely callbacks vs promises.

<comment><USER7> I assume language features remain the domain of the V8 engine, which is pulled in from Google.

<comment><USER8> The parent was referring to how, in the Node world, typically errors are the first argument of a callback function(err, value). Promises will be added to Node soon, but the question was whether they will change all of their APIs to use those instead of the current callback method.

<comment><USER6> precisely

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Not looking for dirt or anything, but why the fork? What makes this different from Node?

(Only clue so far is the "open governance model"; is that in contrast to Joyent maintaining Node?)

EDIT: Based on their CONTRIBUTING.md page[1], it looks like this is intended to be a more "community-driven" version of Node. A strike against is that SEVERAL (if not most) links in README.md and CONTRIBUTING.md still reference the joyent/node GitHub project.

[1]: [https://github.com/iojs/io.js/blob/v0.12/CONTRIBUTING.md](https://github.com/iojs/io.js/blob/v0.12/CONTRIBUTING.md)

<comment><USER10> Because Node 0.12 took forever to be released, looks more and more like vaporware, and the community demands new V8 features yesterday. Oh, and the V8 version bundled with the current stable Node was no longer maintained even at launch time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Questionable way to start: "This organization has no public members. You must be a member to see who's a part of this organization."

</comment><comment><USER12> Any background on who's doing this or what the motivation is?

The linked site doesn't have much content besides a link to the GitHub repo.

EDIT: Even though it's not explicitly listed in the README or contributor list, the commit history does show a bit of detail: [https://github.com/iojs/io.js/commits/v0.12](https://github.com/iojs/io.js/commits/v0.12)

<comment><USER13> Wired has a pretty good high level overview:

[http://www.wired.com/2014/12/io-js/](http://www.wired.com/2014/12/io-js/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This has been brewing for a while. I don't know most of the people involved but they post youtube videos of their meetings. isaacs is involved and get is the creator of npm so that is a good sign. As I understand it this is a direct backlash against joyent's governance of node and it's slow release cycle.

<comment><USER15> Wired's quote from Joyent is, to me, rather telling:

"But for Joyent CTO Bryan Cantrill, Node is alive and well, despite the slower pace of development. He says that Joyent has been focused on making Node faster and more stable, rather than adding new features. "You've got to look at the quality of contributions," he explains, "not the quantity.""

<comment><USER16> Node.js issues in my mind now are maintainability related, not performance related. They need to stop fetishizing performance and focus more on making node.js more accessible/easier to work with.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> A lot of confusion about why this is going on. My take as a very interested user who has been actively tracking down info about this Node's next release and possible fork for some time is this:

Node.js's last supported release uses such an old version of Google's V8 that this V8 version is itself no longer supported. This, in my opinion, is just not good enough. In my personal experience, when a release cycle gets that fucked up there's a reason.

Joyent hasn't shared what the reason actually is for the delay, but so many of the top contributors think they can do better with a fork, and I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt.

The plan is to do weekly releases, semver, to keep absolutely up to date with Google V8, and incidentally to not let just one interested party dictate their future directions.

It's a good plan and if they follow through, I'm definitely on board.

</comment><comment><USER18> There are more details on "why" in this previous discussion from 6 days ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8669557](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8669557)

</comment><comment><USER19> What I find most interesting about this is how many of the most influential people in the node community seem to be at least interested in supporting this, if not actual on board. The website and github organization do not give any info about who is involved, but if you look at some of the discussions in github issues, you'll see some big-name node community members.

Just a few I saw in the handful of issues I looked at: isaacs, mikeal, domenic, rvag

</comment><comment><USER20> More info will be added shortly to [http://iojs.org/](http://iojs.org/) See also [http://nodeforward.org/](http://nodeforward.org/)

There is a lot going on, and it is a little difficult to keep track of everything, for sure.

Just know that io.js will be node and npm compatible.

</comment><comment><USER21> Would really like to see some explanation of an overall vision here. A paragraph from a core contributor would do.

</comment><comment><USER7> But why?

<comment><USER22> This Wired article gets into the why:

[http://www.wired.com/2014/12/io-js/](http://www.wired.com/2014/12/io-js/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Why isn't it a github fork?

</comment><comment><USER24> Great, a node.js fork.

</comment><comment><USER25> Cool fork, bro.</comment>


Blood Tests Can't Tell Who's Really Too Stoned to Drive - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/02/09/466147956/why-its-so-hard-to-make-a-solid-test-for-driving-while-stoned <comment><USER2> Well, You can have 2 beers, not be drunk, and still get a DUI (even though you aren't too drunk to drive)

Everyone that wants weed legalized doesn't seem to want the responsibilities that come along with it. The world just doesn't work that way.

<comment><USER3> Everyone that wants prohibition to continue likes to manufacture necessities and construct parallels that don't exist in the physical world.

If you look at the underlying differences in biochemistry and effects on behaviour, I think you'll find that regulating cannabis with the tools made for alcohol makes no sense.</comment></comment>


Consider Static Typing in Ruby - <AUTHOR> http://codon.com/consider-static-typing <comment><USER2> As a 10 years Rubyist I'm conflicted about this.

First, if I wanted to use a static typed language I have plenty of them to chose from, when I started using Ruby and more right now. One of the reasons I'm using Ruby is that it works well enough without having to tell types to the interpreter (which is already pretty strict about them because - example - it doesn't automatically cast strings and numbers into each other like JS and Perl do).

However, in some very rare cases an object without method M gets passed as argument where an object with method M is expected and the code fails at runtime. It would be nice to catch this in advance, but if the price to pay is to start declaring types like I did in C and Java, no thanks. The problems I had because of dynamic typing have not been big enough to go through all that pain again (and code pollution.)

We'll see what Matz ends up proposing to us, then we'll discuss it. I hope to be able to keep my code free from type declarations and optionally throw in some constraint when I really want to be sure that an object belongs to some class or has some methods. Nothing more.

<comment><USER3> The bad things about Ruby are mostly Ruby cultural norms, like willy nilly metaprogramming often done by unskilled people, published as a gem, and used by many others, some of whom create useful gems.

Static typing would be a benefit. I think Matz realizes that with the rise of Javascript transpilers Ruby is going to have to fight hard to remain relevant. Give Swift a few more months and there is already a pretty solid language with ruby-like simplicity and a well designed type system.

<comment><USER4> Ruby obviously competes with Node, but is there any chance of Ruby and Swift competing directly?

Go or <insert JVM/CLR language that already directly competes with Ruby here> would probably be better examples.

<comment><USER3> Perhaps you are correct (though I'm curious which languages you'd nominate as more likely contenders).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> So much of what makes Ruby Ruby is based on dynamic types. Is this going to be optional? I've been moving away from Ruby a bit over the years specifically because I want static typing, but I can't imagine that the majority of Ruby devs feel this way.

Also isn't Crystal basically a compiled, statically typed version of Ruby?

<comment> ryan-allen I've been doing C# after years of Ruby, and every time I find myself needing or wanting to do 'duck typing', what falls out is an interface and then using generics.

After years of Ruby, this is so handy because you end up formalising 'on the side' the commonalities of your modelling.

I had no idea what generics were for, and I thought interfaces were mostly for over-abstraction but lo, I was wrong. They are very handy. They are typed duck typing!

Combine that with type inference, and you've limited all the ugly 'everything is typed' code, and what you get is code that looks a lot like Javascript.

And if you don't like, that, there's F#, that as an ex-Ruby guy, looks rather compelling, but with all the benefits of C# as well.

I didn't realise until I was out of the echo chamber that Ruby is only a small spot on the radar compared to the rest of the software world.

<comment><USER5> I completely agree with everything you wrote, that's been my experience as well. I'm also a Ruby guy who's moving a lot of my projects over to .Net. F# is actually what attracted me, but I'm really enjoying C# as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Another very interesting (and well-thought) article on the topic is Tony Arcieri's latest blog post: [http://tonyarcieri.com/an-open-letter-to-matz-on- ruby-type-s...](http://tonyarcieri.com/an-open-letter-to-matz-on-ruby-type- systems).

I can't wait to see how this develops, the simple fact that people inside the Ruby community are willing to put all this on the table is a good sign about the dynamism of all involved.

</comment><comment><USER7> Weird to see references to soft typing (something quite old that didn't quite work out) and no references to the much more recent Diamondback Ruby: [http://www.cs.umd.edu/projects/PL/druby/](http://www.cs.umd.edu/projects/PL/druby/) It was a research project from the fine folks at the university of Maryland but it lost steam because Ruby is so dynamic that its very very hard to write static analysis tools for it.

[http://www.cs.purdue.edu/homes/jv/events/PBD13/slides/JeffFo...](http://www.cs.purdue.edu/homes/jv/events/PBD13/slides/JeffFoster.pdf)

There are some misconceptions about the the Soft Typing approach though that I think I should clear out a bit:

* What a soft typing system does is use type inference techniques to try to figure out what locations in the program might raise dynamic type errors (accessing inexistent methods, etc).

* Soft typing systems do not check the types of function parameters and return values (since just passing a value around never cause the itnerpreter to throw an error). Some non-soft type systems might check though, adding runtime contract checks if needed.

* Soft typing can guarantee safety if you write your program in a way where the type checker manages to infer a static type for everything.

* On the other hand, writing things in a way that satisfies the type inferencer can be very hard. And to acomodate the flexibility of dynamic languages the type system might evolve into something quite complex. This is an even larger issue for Ruby, which is highly dynamic and has no formal spec.

* The 1991 soft typing paper focuses a lot on speed because back then dynamic type checks were a big reason for the slowness of dynamic language implementations. Nowadays we have tracing JITs (which "inline" away all the type checks, method dispatches, and so on) so there is less of a need to use type inference to speed things up.

</comment><comment><USER8> Crystal seems to offer us a preview of what life might be like with a typed Ruby. Types in Crystal are _mostly_ unobtrusive. Performance is nice too. I'm really liking what I see. It's not yet mature and lacks a REPL still but Crystal offers a serious Rubyesque option that I could see gaining some steam.

</comment><comment><USER9> That's really interesting to me.

One of the things I like about Ruby its pliability. It's what I'll turn to when I'm just hacking something together, exploring a problem/solution space. But that very pliability becomes an issue when I'm trying to write something that's reliable. There, I'll often use something like Scala, which yells at me when it detects fuzzy thinking on my part.

My general approach here is to throw a lot of code out when I try to shift from exploration mode to high-reliability mode. I'd be very excited to see a language that let me make that transition gradually.

<comment><USER10> In a few years from now we will expect this from every mainstream programming language/platform.

Dart allows you to use gradual typing in production right now, PHP and Python are in the process of adding support for it as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I wish Ruby would focus in immutability before this.

As things stand, the language is built in a way that you've no guarantee that any object you hold as variable won't change without you knowing. The net result is you either ignoring the problem entirely (until you runinto a bizarre bug introduced by a new library) or (more rarely) you re-inventing the wheel by being extremely verbose in all accessors where it matter.

<comment><USER12> Ruby has the .freeze and .clone methods on many types, but in general Ruby expects developers not to monkey with other objects without knowing the consequences.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm not a ruby-dev, but glad to hear this news - as more web langs turns into lands of static typing, more other (or new) langs will consider to do it too :)

</comment><comment><USER14> OP missed some more development on recent gradual typing efforts in dynamic languages. I collected those links below when implementing gradual typing for perl5. perl5 is more lucky than ruby, since perl5 supports syntax for types in lexical variable declarations for decades already, and more via attributes.

[http://www.typescriptlang.org/Content/TypeScript%20Language%...](http://www.typescriptlang.org/Content/TypeScript%20Language%20Specification.pdf) (microsoft's javascript with types)

[https://code.facebook.com/posts/1505962329687926/flow-a- new-...](https://code.facebook.com/posts/1505962329687926/flow-a-new-static- type-checker-for-javascript/) (facebook's javascript with types)

[https://github.com/rwaldron/tc39-notes/blob/master/es6/2015-...](https://github.com/rwaldron/tc39-notes/blob/master/es6/2015-01/JSExperimentalDirections.pdf) Soundscript, google's javascript with types

[https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0484/](https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0484/) (planned python with types)

[http://www.mypy-lang.org/](http://www.mypy-lang.org/) (existing python with types)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8620129](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8620129) (ruby 3.0 planned with types)

[http://crystal-lang.org/](http://crystal-lang.org/) (a good existing ruby with types)

[http://hacklang.org/](http://hacklang.org/) (facebook's php with types)

[http://blog.pascal-martin.fr/post/in-favor-of-rfc-scalar- typ...](http://blog.pascal-martin.fr/post/in-favor-of-rfc-scalar-type- hints.html) (php 7 types overview)

[https://wiki.php.net/rfc/scalar_type_hints](https://wiki.php.net/rfc/scalar_type_hints) (php 7)

[https://wiki.php.net/rfc/return_types](https://wiki.php.net/rfc/return_types) (php 7)

[https://github.com/rurban/perl/blob/master/pod/perltypes.pod](https://github.com/rurban/perl/blob/master/pod/perltypes.pod) (perl5 inofficial)

<comment><USER10> On Dart's type system:

[https://www.dartlang.org/articles/optional- types/](https://www.dartlang.org/articles/optional-types/)

[https://www.dartlang.org/articles/why-dart- types/](https://www.dartlang.org/articles/why-dart-types/)

<comment><USER13> Dart has dynamic typing. Code will not fail on compilation step and in runtime, if type mismatch expectations. You can try to get warnings (at least warnings) with "checked" mode, but it works only with primitive cases, not with closures (no static analysis), so it's mostly useless and better to forget about it. It's only hinting for autocompletion in IDE (although autocompletion is a big thing). Even PHP 5 has strongest typing.

<comment><USER15> Dart has static analysis as well. There is a server that reports errors and warnings in an IDE, and you can also run it as a batch job using the dartanalyzer command if you like. You can run dartanalyzer in a test, parse the output, and treat warnings as errors, and some people do.

The question is whether the existing static analysis is enough. Some people think it isn't, and the Dart team has a couple of projects to improve on it. See the Dart Development Compiler [1] and linter [2].

The DDC project in particular plans to implement a subset of Dart that makes it easier to check types statically.

This is all supposed to be integrated into the analysis engine using a plugin architecture so that these errors will show up in IDE's and anywhere else you want to display errors.

It's work in progress, as are some of the other type checkers.

[1] [https://github.com/dart-lang/dev_compiler](https://github.com/dart- lang/dev_compiler) [2] [https://github.com/dart- lang/linter](https://github.com/dart-lang/linter)

<comment><USER13> I have quite opposite information from one of Dart authors, as response to my bug report: [https://code.google.com/p/dart/issues/detail?id=23148](https://code.google.com/p/dart/issues/detail?id=23148) Sorry for offtopic, ruby devs :)

<comment><USER15> It's confusing, but that's not a contradiction. The Dart spec defines the official set of errors and warnings and that particular snippet of code is within the spec, even though it's broken. The dartanalyzer tool follows the spec.

But there are other possibilities. The dartanalyzer has hints which aren't part of the spec. Other tools (like the linter and DDC) can and will check for more problems.

You could try refiling that as a feature request that the analyzer should provide a hint here, or perhaps try out DDC.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I find it interesting that almost all dynamic programming languages eventually get some kind of static type system or type annotations, but very rarely the other way around, C# is the only one i can think of, although i've never seen anyone actually use the dynamic keyword there. PHP, Perl, Python, JS(via typescript or other preprocessors) all got it after years of arguing.

<comment><USER17> Scala has a Dynamic type that is used occasionally.

[http://www.scala-lang.org/api/current/scala/Dynamic.html](http://www.scala- lang.org/api/current/scala/Dynamic.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Half the fun of Ruby is monkey-patching...how does that play with static typing?

If they go this route, I'm sure we'll see some very interesting spins on it.</comment>


Ukraine Tracks Protesters Through Cellphones - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/22/world/europe/ukraine-protests.html?smid=tw-share&_r=1 <comment><USER2> Well, this only proves how technologically backward the Ukraine is comparing to the US or the UK. Over here protesters can be tracked through cellphones before they even know they are going to become protesters.

<comment><USER3> nope,I think that's was just to add some pressure on protesters. Telecom companies even told that security forces was use fake cells to broadcast those messages

<comment><USER2> Dude, thinking is not going to change what is going on there. EU wants the civil war in Ukraine, its organisation is paid. "Protesters" are just per-hour hired guys, professional street muscles. Germany wants half of Ukraine. And it always wanted. There is nothing you can do about it.

And poor security forces are the guys who are ordered to wipe "protesters" to keep Ukraine whole body and not becoming Sudan with Russian winter. I can only pray they succeed. Winters are harsh in Kiev.

<comment><USER3> Wow police supporter on HN. Even can speak broken English. Stop posting bullshit, Putin whore.

<comment><USER2> Thank you for the credit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> During protests after 2009 Iran presidential election there was a lot of concern that the government will use this sort of technology to find protesters. Some people advised that one should remove the battery altogether near protest centers, because putting the cell phone in airplane or even turning it off wouldn't prevent the telecommunication companies from tracking it. The reason they provided was simple: if it doesn't transmit any data while it's turned off, how does it say a different message to the caller when the called number is turned off vs when battery is removed.

I mostly forgot about it until I saw this article. Anyone here care to explain if this is true?

<comment><USER5> When you are turning off the cell phone it sends a signal to the operator (graceful shut down) so the operator knows that you turned off the phone. When you remove the battery the phone has no time to send a message to the operator about the phone going offline so the operator doesn't know for sure whether it's turned off or it is out of the towers range at this moment.

Of course this doesn't mean that they can't track turned off phones, it's still technically possible (while the battery is there).

<comment><USER6> It would also presumably mean that the government could compile a list of cellphones that turned off during the protests, while not located at but rather near the protests.

To a sane government, this information wouldn't be of much use. To a crazed paranoid government going on purges and witchhunts, this could be all the information they 'need' to find somebody suspect.

Of course if you pull the battery, they would also notice the phone dropping off the network (though it would be unclear what the cause was). To a crazed government, the difference might not be too important.

If you are ever in the sort of situation where any of this might become a concern, I recommend leaving the phone at home, sitting comfortably on your couch, turned on with the TV on. Of course this precludes using the phone in an emergency, so 'burner' phones with removable batteries may become valued.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Rogue BTS/stingray. Ukraine needs to set up something similar to the decentralized Athens community network so protesters can turn on airplane mode and remove sim cards which will work for a while until they jam it. Note how every government during sustained protests resorts to hiring criminal hooligans to randomly assault people wonder if they will be given a list of subscribers to go visit like Bahrain did when doctors were dragged out of their houses and beaten for having their cell radios tracked to underground hospitals to treat injured protesters.

</comment><comment><USER8> I couldn't image getting this text: "Dear subscriber, you are registered as a participant in a mass disturbance."

Puts a bit more focus on the reach available to anyone via my reliance on tech to "always be reachable". Good when my friends/family/customers need me but horrible when in the hands of bad actors.

</comment><comment><USER9> Of course their top 3 cellphone providers had no knowledge of this... (our American companies said the same thing). They probably got the cellphone data from the NSA. (For a small fee of course, added to our black budget.)

This is interesting though and something I think we should consider if we Americans ever get the courage to stand up to our government for it's abuses of power. It semi-happened with Occupy but they were barking up the wrong tree. You can only force a private bank/companies hand with the power of government. They can stand out their all day and do whatever, but it would be easier if a law or resolution were passed.

How do you know if someone at a protest is a 'plant' whose job is too incite violence so as to show the protest as negative regardless of their stated goals.

I was thinking of a system maybe, that would definitely be reputation based, but one where you could verify someones identity while still maintaining a certain level of privacy. Maybe something similar to how bitcoin works. Everybody could have a public key that anyone at the protest could scan if needed and say 'ya this person's legit, they have XXX amount of reputation, we are connected by XX people, etc' or 'woah, who are you? you have -XXX reputation and no one here knows you'... but this idea needs to be developed further...

When i put my 'evil' cap on and think how I would use the data if I had all the data in the world and I wanted to stop people protesting me, I would use those kinds of cellphone SMS messages to intimidate people in the area and I would want them to be divided by those who want to achieve revolution nonviolently and those who would easily engage in violence if given the opportunity. Taking it a step further, I would use that system the NSA made that tracks internet browsing history especially for porn, to threaten people that their data might be 'leaked' if they continue to protest. Or perhaps sent messages and calls can be 'rerouted' to different people to cause confusion in their communications. Or perhaps I'd use a few 'if-then' simulations to put the right police officer in front of the right protestor so that violence would be most likely to occur. evil cap off.

The rest of the world seems to be taking the lead in standing up to corruption, but when America catches up, I want us to lead by example of how it should efficiently and safely be done.

</comment><comment><USER10> As if only Ukraine does that. How about OWS protesters?

<comment><USER11> When the US does it = good.

When a country we don't agree politically with does it = bad.

Likewise protesters attacking police with Molotov cocktails, charging their lines with farm equipment and torching police vehicles would elicit a fairly strong reaction from any Western government, yet the Ukrainian government is demonized...

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The website says that I have already read my 10 free articles this month and need to pay money to read this one. This has been happening a lot with HackerNews links for me. Do I have a virus, or are you supposed to be rich to post here?

<comment><USER13> The New York Times is professional journalism. You don't need to be rich to afford $3.75/week. This is about $200/yr, on the order of the price of a print subscription. Working class families have been reading newspapers for decades.

Occasionally we find that professional, full-time newsrooms produce better content than the blogosphere. Producing that content took a staff of educated, full-time professionals with families and mortgages. I don't find it particularly offensive that people who regularly consume their output are expected to help fund their salaries so they can keep producing.

<comment><USER14> Of course, because digital edition has distribution costs just like printed editions.

<comment><USER15> If you get the same news, and you were happy with what you were paying to get high quality news (you're not buying a sheet of paper, you're buying the news), then what's the problem?

Why should moving to digital mean reducing the price versus print?

Perhaps the NY Times should keep the margin difference as profit, helping to restore their financial condition from the recent disaster it has been, so they don't have to go crawling to Carlos Slim again. Building up their financial position would assist in their independence as a news source.

Perhaps the NY Times should put that margin back into the business, and create more / better content, thus more than justifying the price staying the same.

Either way, the argument in favor of reducing prices just because of cheaper distribution, is not inherently a good one.

<comment><USER16> Agreed, and this group as much as any should understand that just because the product is made of bits and can be distributed virtually free, it should not be free of cost.

Just like any good software company, the NYTimes should be thinking about their price strategy in a more complex way than cost plus. And I'm sure they are.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How to Get Started Developing Black and White Film for £25 (Or Less) - <AUTHOR> https://www.35mmc.com/07/09/2020/how-to-get-started-developing-black-white-film-for-25-or-less-by-sroyon-mukherjee/ <comment><USER2> It's good to have a bottle of Rodinal around if you are only developing occasionally, because it has a longer shelf life than you do.</comment>


No Windows 8 Update for Existing WP7 Users - <AUTHOR> http://www.anandtech.com/show/6029/existing-windows-phone-7-devices-will-get-updated-to-windows-phone-78-no-windows-8

<comment><USER2> Well that's sabotaged Nokia and WP7.5 nicely. No one is going to buy a current handset with that on the way. Way to go microsoft!

I genuinely think someone has a 90ft long crack pipe over at Redmond. They've made so many bad decisions lately its scary.

<comment><AUTHOR> Absolutely! I was thinking of buying a Lumia 710 recently after owning an iPhone and an android for the past few years. Glad I didn't pull the trigger.

<comment><USER3> Here: <http://www.t-mobile.com/shop/phones/?shape=smp> Go to tmobile website and find the phones that are rated as the best by users and choose the top ones instead of taking the recommendation from a stranger on the internet

<comment><USER2> I'd ignore that entirely as well - if it's a network they are biased instantly. How to pick a phone:

1\. Write down what you NEED, not want.

2\. Find a phone that does it on gsmarena.com which has LONG term reviews and doesn't try and sell phones to you.

3\. Buy it off ebay second hand unlocked therefore saving on the instant purchase depreciation. If you're lucky like me, I bought a Nokia 3310 a couple of years ago new in box as a backup for 10GBP. I'm now using that as my full time phone. Buy 2 or 3 for that price TBH.

4\. Get a cheap PAYG deal. In the UK, you can get a T-Mobile deal for 26GBP/month that gives you pretty much unlimited everything.

Anything else is just retarded if you ask me.

<comment><USER4> I was with you right up until you called everyone who doesn't do it your way a retard.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> WP8 release is Fall 2012. OEMs won't begin to have WP8 hardware on carrier shelves until end of 2012* at the earliest. Microsoft just killed Windows Phone for at least the next 6 months.

I wish Microsoft would see the damage they do when they inappropriately pre- announcing products.

* Mango had a similar release scheme last year.

<comment><USER6> With iOS 6 announced and Jelly Bean just around the corner, Microsoft can't really afford to just sit there poker faced until it's done. It's a wise tactic, to maintain interest when it's clear their competitors are moving forwards.

<comment><USER7> Not only that, but end users probably appreciate knowing that anything they bought today would have limited future support --this alternative is better than pulling the rug from under them come 4-5months. That is to say, it hurts MS and partners initially but benefits customers short-term and long-term.

What they could announce is some kind of voucher for future phones if they buy now --giving customers a kind of indemnification against obsolescence. Not saying they will, but they could.

<comment><USER5> So what do you think customers are going to do? They're going to buy an iPhone or an Android device, instead.

<comment><USER7> It's likely preferable to having their (customers') money but engendering lots of ill-will a few months down the road.

I have an iphone 4. With this announcement, I'm willing to wait a few months before buying a WP8 device.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> So WP7 in WinCE-based, and WP8 is WinNT-based like the rest of Windows 8.

Can't say I didn't see that coming. WP7 always seemed like a bit of a dead-end platform because of it.

At least WP8 will have a compatibility layer for running legacy WP7 apps. But if you're a developer do you continue to target the legacy .NET Compact Framework for WP7, or do you target the new SDK that will run on exactly zero of the Windows Phones devices in circulation today, but will run on Windows 8 Metro tablets and desktops?

This is not Microsoft's finest hour, to be sure.

<comment><USER9> How different is it to target WP7 vs. Win8 when it comes to .NET/WPF/Metro? I'm sure a few developers around here have started playing with Win8 and have done some phone development. I would think that it wouldn't be a radical change.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Windows Phone 7, or as I like to call it now, the Osborne I.

<comment><USER11> For reference:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_effect>

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The big story is not the new start screen or even WP8. It's whether WP7.x users can download and install new apps. Can a non-native C# app that does not use any WP8 hardware features compiled for WP8 run on WP7.8? _MS needs to clarify_. If not, MS just screwed all their existing WP7 users and have effectively killed off all new sales of WP7 devices. Developers will continue to develop WP7 apps and any benefits to switching to WP8 for development are moot.

More alarmingly, if they did this for WM6.5 and WP7 within such a short time frame, how can any customer feel safe in buying a WP8 device? What happens when WP9 gets released? Why would anyone buy a WP now? My iPhone 3GS may not support FaceTime, Siri or Notification Center, but at least I can download new iOS 5 apps from the App Store.

</comment><comment><USER13> It's important to note that apps will work on both platforms according to this article. This sounds like a pretty minor issue to me if I need a new device for some of the newer features, many of which require new hardware anyway (SD card, NFC).

<comment><USER14> Apps made for windows 8 will not run on wp7, even when not using the new hardware features

<comment><USER15> I don't think this is entirely correct. If you write in Native (C/C++) then true, it won't run on WP7. But if you write in C#/Xaml you could have targeted your app to WP7 and I believe it will run on both WP7 and WP8 -- of course this will preclude you from using whatever now hardware capabilities in WP8 only.

I think the Native C/C++ is the right move though. The "easy to port to IOS/Android" point is important, and I think going forward that would/should be the model for web development, unless Webapp is sufficient for your purpose, or that you're willing to develop your app in 3 languages (ObjC, Java, C/C#).

That said, I'm sad that my (otherwise very nice) Lumia 800 is getting the WP6.5 treatment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This has to be a first for Microsoft. I know my first instinct is to say, "how crappy of them?" But they should have done this with Windows 10 years ago.

<comment><USER17> Then no company would have bought anything beyond Windows XP (released 11 years ago) or Windows 2000 Server.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Not a big deal. I'm tired of the HD7 as it is.

</comment><comment><USER3> There probably should be an article like this every time a new version of android is released. :)

<comment><USER19> There are, but maybe they aren't always posted here :)

With Android the situation, as always, depends on which device you happen to own, in which case you may or may not get the update. Of course there's always rooting and ROMing, but that's not going to apply to most users.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Crawl the entire web? - <AUTHOR> If you were tasked with crawling the entire web, how would you go about doing it? <comment><USER2> I'd grab the CommonCrawl data and keep moving on what my actual problem is.</comment>


Me on Covid-19 contact tracing apps - <AUTHOR> https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2020/05/me_on_covad-19_.html <comment><USER2> This is a weak argument from Schneier.

Most of his concerns (false positives, false negatives) also apply to contact tracing done by humans, which he advocates at the end of his article.

If a medical professional interviews you about your contacts, you have to remember who they were. If you forget someone, or didn't know their name, that's a false negative. Someone you report you had coffee with, but who doesn't get the disease, is a false positive.

Apps have different limitations, and need adoption to be useful, and that's a problem societies will have to consider. There's also legit privacy concerns.

But the very broad argument made in that post is silly.

You just don't need to stop every transmission to stop the disease. Even stopping 70%, via a range of measures, is about enough. You can tolerate some errors.

<comment><USER3> The dichotomy isn't between the app or a medical professional guessing, based on contacts, whether someone might be infected and whether they should self- quarantine. The dichotomy is between guessing infection based on contacts and testing for infection.

<comment><USER2> You may be misunderstanding the purpose of contact tracing?

It's not to guess whether a patient you have is infected. It is to find the people that patient has infected before those infect more people.

If things are being run properly:

1\. Someone shows up with the disease. (Tests positive, or clinical.)

2\. You find their contacts, either by app or interview or both.

3\. You tell those contacts to quarantine, hopefully before they've become infectious, breaking onward spread.

4\. If they test negative and don't display symptoms, they stop quarantine.

Unless you mean to test everyone every day? Sounds good, but then you need way more tests than countries have been able to make so far, and they have to be very sensitive and specific too, even before someone is infectious.

<comment><USER4> Regarding 3) - should they quarantine regardless or just if the get ill?

<comment><USER5> It it depends on the pandemic. The reason COVID-19 has upended the world is that our usual metric "if they get ill" doesn't work. It doesn't work in this case, because many people with the virus show no signs while they are contagious, with some (many?) never showing signs they were ever sick.

Worse, because COVID-19 is new, we are still learning details about it performs. The current recommendation to quarantine for 14-days is based on what little we _do_ know - which is that people exposed to the virus may show no symptoms for 14-days. There are cases of it taking more time, and there are also cases of it taking shorter time, but 14-days is what's currently recommended. Because we're still learning how the virus performs, testing is _far_ from foolproof. A test that says negative for the virus just means that the test says negative. The swap could have missed the virus even though a person has it.

Thus, if reopening is to avoid a second wave of cases, they must quarantine until either the 14-days are up (and even then), or we (humanity) learn enough more and are able to give tests that are more widely trusted.

"Quarantine regardless" is pejorative - it makes it sound like quarantine is just for the sake of it. With more knowledge and better technology, the 14-days could possibly be reduced, but the quarantine is one of the oldest medical technologies we have - an empirical test for "do you have the virus".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > Assume you take the app out grocery shopping with you and it subsequently > alerts you of a contact. What should you do? ...the alert is useless.

This feels like the mask debate again. It doesn't _guarantee_ safety, so it's useless.

But there are plenty of things you could do.

You could carry on but avoid visiting your elderly parents, and cancel your plans to attend a crowded event. You could start walking or driving to work instead of taking the train. Or work from home more often.

It's not a choice between quarantine or complete freedom, there are grey areas in between.

Get one of these alerts? Start taking more precautions. Get many more? Start taking more extreme caution.

<comment><USER7> Some of the problems: If you get an alert, are you personally responsible if you aren't going to self-quarantine immediately and perhaps infect others after being notified? What use would a tracing app have if anyone could ignore alerts at will, because s/he has no symptoms and is afraid of job loss if quarantining?

On the other hand: What about people not using the app or just disabling bluetooth because they are afraid of being helt responsible? What if your employer, your supermarket or your health insurance demands that only users of the app are served/welcome? Are they allowed to check that you conform, even if the use itself is volontary?

I'm not against a tracing app, but lots of unsolved questions aren't even discussed openly.

<comment><USER8> > I'm not against a tracing app, but lots of unsolved questions aren't even > discussed openly.

Weird, I see the points you made brought up in many discussions that are tad more professional than a Twitter argument.

Your first point is addressed by the fact that these apps are developed in tandem with health authorities. You don't just get locked away for two weeks because your phone popped up a notification. Just like there's stages for isolation there's ways to make this more compatible with regular life and still maintaining an impact on hindering the spread of this pandemic, e.g. getting you tested quickly instead of automatic isolation. Of course from an epidemiological standpoint one might argue that immediate isolation would be advisable but I doubt that would go over well in most democracies. The job loss argument seems like the economic impact argument brought up a lot over the last few weeks. On a population scale, an asymptomatic superspreader is likely far more expensive than somebody not going to work for a few days until they got tested so it could/should be addressed by policy makers. If your politicians can't figure out how to make mandatory sick leave happen during an active pandemic I'm not convinced a contact tracing app is the problem.

The debate on voluntary or mandatory usage will surely be interesting, though I don't see how making it mandatory would not lead to people actively avoiding it's use and thus lessening the efficacy.

<comment><USER9> > On a population scale, an asymptomatic superspreader is likely far more > expensive than somebody not going to work for a few days until they got > tested so it could/should be addressed by policy makers. If your politicians > can't figure out how to make mandatory sick leave happen during an active > pandemic I'm not convinced a contact tracing app is the problem.

That's pretty much the endpoint of the discussion.

We've already established there is no magic bullet for this. Even the most promising therapeutics, in the best case, will not return us to normal by the fall. Source - [https://www.gatesnotes.com/Health/Pandemic- Innovation](https://www.gatesnotes.com/Health/Pandemic-Innovation)

We are counting on vaccines, but the timelines already have a huge amount of optimism backed into them. We can hardly stand 18 months more of this, but yet rollout may drag on longer than that if the trials encounter setbacks.

If we don't ramp up and improve testing then we're screwed. No matter what else happens, that banishes us to isolation with no end in sight. Thankfully, testing is one area where we can and probably will come up to snuff in the summer months. That doesn't get us back to normal or normal-ish.

The app would be a tremendously powerful tool. If you take this seriously, then you will value even meager tools that help move the needle in the right direction. People still holding out hope for that magic bullet are delusional, and they need to wake up to reality.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Don't these arguments apply equally well for manual contact tracing? There will be very significant false positives and negatives there too.

I would expect that a contact tracing app can actually make a much more accurate list. Trying to accurately remember who I was near and for how long over the last X days is difficult (given that I'm not confined in my house, of course) Even with intensive manual research, working out who it was that cycled behind me for 5 minutes this morning or who I coughed next to at the cheese counter is going to be remarkably difficult. Apps can plausible cover some of those cases.

We'll need to tune the alerts for acceptable precision & accuracy, as a function of the signal strength & duration of each contact, but that seems like a tractable problem, and again seems very similar to judging the risk of manually collected contact events.

Despite all these possible inaccuracies, AFAICT contact tracing has been shown to be very effective, and is a well respected technique. I don't see anything here about how apps will be significantly worse. This assumes a significant install base of course, but I think that's tractable.

<comment><USER11> "Don't these arguments apply equally well for manual contact tracing?"

No. They mostly _apply to_ manual contact tracing, certainly, but they do not apply _equally well_.

A human being doing it is much smarter. They _do_ take into account the fact that someone was on the other side of a wall. They are not limited by whether or not someone installed the app. They can use their brain to solve little local issues that the app can't even perceive which cumulatively add up to a huge difference.

The app has a few advantages over the human, too, but I don't think it's that surprising at all that when it's all summed up and accounted for it ends up heavily Advantage: Dedicated Human. The modest advantages are trashed by the massive disadvantages.

<comment><USER10> I agree there's cases that humans will handle better, but there's also cases where the apps will do better too, and I wouldn't be surprised if it was a wash (soon hopefully we'll have some actual research on this!).

For example, in most situations where you're near an anonymous stranger, manual tracing is going to have a lot of trouble. That's a _lot_ of cases. You're almost certainly not going to be able to hunt down the person you sat next to on the metro for half an hour, or a stranger who came into your shop to ask some questions yesterday. Apps plausibly could trace them.

That's before you start thinking about simple forgetfulness. Who did you sit next to in the company meeting a week ago?

Assuming people actually use contact tracing apps (TBC...), then many of those otherwise untraceable contacts can be picked up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm glad to see Schneier come out with an opinion against these apps. Up until now, it's seemed like the privacy community has been almost _excited_ about the idea of these tracking apps. Maybe because it's a cool academic problem? I don't know.

Take this DP-3T project for example. It's really interesting tech, and a great group of people behind it. But the government doesn't care for this nuance of what is privacy preserving tech and what is not. For now, maybe at the beginning, privacy will be emphasized. But the important part is conditioning citizens to be okay with the underlying idea of technology assisted self- surveillance, and compliance with notifications on their phone telling them to stay inside.

Schneier raises the point of false positives, which is important with regards to this idea of conditioning. What do you do when you get a notification that someone "nearby" tested positive? Do you take time off work and isolate yourself in your house for two weeks, just because some beacon passed within two meters of you within the past two weeks? Even if you have no symptoms at all? Just because you got a notification on your phone? This just seems unrealistic to me.

My other worry is the classic "slippery slope." Maybe people are okay with these apps in their current form, if they're privacy-preserving. (Personally, I doubt anyone outside tech can recognize the difference anyway, but let's assume the wider populace takes its lead from us). Isn't there a risk that eventually people will forget about the underlying details and privacy will be deemphasized?

"You were okay with TrackingApp 1.0, why wouldn't you be okay with TrackingApp 2.0?"

If we give an inch now, will the government take a mile later? Who's to say the emphasis on privacy will remain in place? Heck, it's not even clear whether it will be in place from the beginning. The NHS is already saying they don't want to use it, choosing instead to build their own centralized solution.

Again — it's extremely concerning to me to see the general vibe of excitement coming out of the tech community around these apps. I'm really disappointed and would expect to see more skepticism. So, kudos to Schneier for going against the grain here.

<comment><USER13> We already gave an inch and the government took a mile. Closing down state parks and playgrounds. Making it illegal to play with the kids next door.

I was probably pro tracking app a month or two ago, but the draconian measures taken by some governments (Michigan, Wisconsin) has changed my mind. Its going to lead to abuse abuse abuse abuse.

<comment><USER14> I don't understand this argument. It's not like governors _want_ to take that mile. They have literally no incentive to shut down playgrounds (in fact, politically, the incentive is the opposite), besides uncertainty around what does and doesn't matter for fighting the epidemic in their state. It continues to look like we got lucky that kids aren't really affected much by this, so maybe it would have been fine to leave playgrounds open and keep having play dates. There were indications of that early on, but also a high risk it wouldn't pan out. Playgrounds are _exactly_ the kind of thing that are problematic for the spread of this illness: high-touch surfaces of the kind that this thing sticks to. If there were playgrounds for adults, they would be the most important things to shut down (indeed the closest thing to that - bars and clubs - will probably be the very last things to reopen). On top of that, kids cough a lot and put their hands in their mouths and just generally spread their fluids around. This would all be really bad news _except_ that it doesn't seem like kids spread this much, for whatever reason. But we just got lucky with that, and taking that risk would not have been smart at the beginning of this.

Going back to my first point: I don't understand the logic of this argument at all. Why do governors want to lock people inside? What is the benefit? I share concerns over government breaches of privacy, because I don't want politicians abusing their trove of information on people to hang on to power. I don't see how this is similar to that at all. If politicians in the US were using this to cancel elections where they're on the ballot, then I'm with you, that's worrisome, but that's not what's going on here. These governors are accepting a political hit on the bet that it is going to keep more of their people alive.

Lay out for me the argument for why you think these leaders _want_ to take this mile having been given this inch; why do they _want_ to close down state parks and playgrounds and cancel your playdates? What do you claim is in it for them?

<comment><USER15> I think politicians do have an incentive to lock down as much as possible.

It appeals to their ego to do something authoritarian, and the power balance shifts from voters feeling free to voters anxiously hanging on the lips of politicians to find out when their new masters will allow them to go out again.

There very powerful psychological forces at play here, people are literally trained like dogs in these situations.

As an example, in Germany the CDU approval ratings shot up during the crisis, people apparently have Stockholm syndrome.

<comment><USER14> This is very very thin when balanced against putting hundreds of thousands of people out of work and making some other very large number of people homeschool teachers at the same time they are full time employed. I am deeply skeptical that there is any governor in the US who thinks this is great politics. I really think they're just trying to do the best thing for their people. Recognition of this is why you see their approval ratings up.

<comment><USER16> I cannot comment on the US, because I don't live there. In Germany, however:

Information flow was poor and deceptive:

1) First, actual masks are purportedly useless, now homemade toy masks are mandatory.

2) While the population was locked in and many people lost their jobs, the government health authorities could not be bothered to report new cases in the weekend. Of course one cannot force a civil "servant" to work. Work is for the plebs and civil "servants" have job security as long as the ECB can print money.

3) There is no effort to determine if for example supermarket workers have a higher number of cases. They are in contact with hundreds of people every day. Zero information.

4) Actual antibody studies are lagging and take an extraordinary amount of time.

Now the economy is down, bailouts for the rich will happen, the politicians, civil "servants" and state television parasites are secure and the general working population is screwed. Same as in 2008.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> No offense to Bruce Schneier but he seems to be making an argument based on the apps' epidemiological value, an area that is outside his expertise.

Surely all contact tracing methods have false positives and false negatives. Do they all have "no value"?

Technologists have a duty to explain the limitations of the technology, but I don't think they should be drawing conclusions and making public health recommendations.

<comment><USER18> Yes, they all have no value.

Let's assume someone got bankrupted by a hospital over a severe coronavirus case. This means that someone has been wandering around for weeks infecting others. Let's assume there is a chain of 10 contacts between me and that someone. The probability of virus transmission is 1% (and I'm generous here) because more people wear masks, because people avoid talking and generally avoid interactions. Probability of transmission over 10 links is 10^-20 and we may stop right here, unless we plan to study quantum particles.

Now let's assume I get a notification that I might have been infected over the past few weeks. The probability that the app is correct is abysmally low. But even if I get infected, I'm unlikely to get sick and I'm unlikely to transmit the virus to others because masks, social distancing and because I already assume I'm infected.

So yeah, this app would be useless and is only good for surveillance.

<comment><USER19> > The probability of virus transmission is 1% (and I'm generous here) because > more people wear masks, because people avoid talking and generally avoid > interactions. Probability of transmission over 10 links is 10^-20 and we may > stop right here, unless we plan to study quantum particles.

If that were truly the case why are there still transmissions? Wouldn't that imply that in a matter of 5 months it will be impossible to get the disease strictly due to the timeline and required links? ~14 days of transmissible * 10 transmission events / 30 days in a month = 140 days before no more mathematically possible transmissions. Wouldn't that require us being repeatedly exposed to every person on the planet to keep those numbers to a possible level?

<comment><USER18> Because there are multiple paths and the virus really spreads like a wave frontier in a 10 dimensional space of human to human contacts graph. The virus also spreads in a non uniform way: it's not about the distance between two interacted persons, but about the nature of their interaction, whether they weared masks and so on. The virus also really likes to stick to surfaces, like door handles or plastic wraps, and this vector of transmission is very difficult to trace even manually. Think of credit cards. The virus floats in the air like smoke if someone coughed and others may catch it this way. An app can't account for that and instead builds a social graph of interactions. The app would notice a lot of people crowded in a parking lot and would assume the virus was transmitted between those 50 people, but it wouldn't know that all those people sit in their cars, so the app just made the transmission chain 50x less useless. A few more such gatherings and the relevance of tracing drops to those sub quantum levels of homeopathic medicine.

<comment><USER20> But, if it can save just one person...

<comment><USER18> That wouldn't justify surveillance.

<comment><USER20> What about one child... and a puppy?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I think the point of contact tracing is not that it's a silver bullet used alone, but rather a piece used alongside more widespread testing to help lower the rate of transmission. It may be reasonable to argue that these tracing apps alone aren't valuable, but once you add in greater test availability, it seems like they can help.

[https://ethics.harvard.edu/covid-roadmap](https://ethics.harvard.edu/covid- roadmap)

<comment><USER22> Right - this is just a way of helping to prioritizing who gets tested. Given that testing kits will always be a limited resource (you can't simply test everyone, everyday) it makes a lot of sense to find sub-populations who are more likely to be positive. That doesn't mean you don't test anyone else (eg. those with symptoms, those in sensitive jobs) - it just lets you use a certain percentage of your testing capacity one those people who have been in proximity with confirmed cases.

As you say, it's not a silver bullet but in combination with a slew of other approaches can help reduce the rate of transmission rate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Schneier is correct in that the proposed method is almost worthless for _effective_ contact tracing. However, he does not offer a viable alternative.

There have been large-scale ground-truthing experiments run in cities like Manhattan for similar types of data models where population coverage was similar to the most optimistic projections for the proposed contact tracing method. We have a lot more data on the effectiveness of this type of tracing than most proponents and bystanders know, and it provides plenty of reason to believe the bluetooth proposal is an exercise in futility. Methods that would likely produce an effective data model exist but they are much more difficult to navigate as there is no legal framework for it, though technically possible.

Discussion of contact tracing has been taken over by armchair experts who have a naive understanding of the complexities of the problem, particularly when a disease is already endemic. Technical implementations that would have broad efficacy in a country like the US are _at least_ a year away, and several governments are aware of this. Some governments are rolling out contact tracing programs they know have low efficacy for the sake of appearances.

</comment><comment><USER24> Thinking "its not accurate enough" should not EVER be a reason to decide not to try something that could potentually help in this unprecedented situation. It may well not work well enough but we won't know unless we try!

Each individual incremental activity, process, treatment, protection or APP that takes us a little closer to successfully fighting this thing should be done and done in conjunction with the others.

<comment><USER25> >Thinking "its not accurate enough" should not EVER be a reason to decide not to try something that could potentually help in this unprecedented situation. It may well not work well enough but we won't know unless we try!

You do know you're using this line reasoning against the guy who literally invented the phrase "security theater," right?

<comment><USER14> The analogy is definitely apt, but the difference is that we know a lot less about what is going to help with this problem than we did about the terrorism problem. Furthermore, it seems like contact tracing has helped in some countries who are already doing it, so there is some evidence it is not just theater.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Two big things he seems to miss.

Correctly identifying (and quarantining) just a few newly infected people in the early stages of an epidemic is a huge win. It's the same as compound interest. Early investment pays handsomely.

Secondly, this article is written as if better testing won't be available in the future. Better tests will eventually exist, so that can hardly be a reason why we shouldn't lay groundwork now.

Bonus point: we aren't just trying to help the current pandemic. Perhaps this infrastructure could help prevent the next pandemic of a far deadlier disease where every extra quarantined person saves multiple lives.

</comment><comment><USER27> This is very wrong, to the point of being deliberately misleading:

> Assume you take the app out grocery shopping with you and it subsequently > alerts you of a contact. What should you do? It's not accurate enough for > you to quarantine yourself for two weeks. And without ubiquitous, cheap, > fast, and accurate testing, you can't confirm the app's diagnosis. So the > alert is useless.

YES, of course we need pervasive testing. Everyone knows we need pervasive testing. That's why it's called a "test and trace" regime! We don't have it, and that's a major problem. But we know we have to get there.

And once we do, the alert isn't useless anymore.

Tracing is _one_ requirement of a successful mitigation strategy. Testing is the other. We need both. Having one side refuse to cooperate because they don't think the other will is just a recipe for disaster.

I mean, imagine if the medical community started refusing to do tests because they thought the privacy folks would block attempts at tracing. That's what this logic amounts to.

</comment><comment><USER28> For me it's both about the privacy and vulnerabilities in the Bluetooth stack such as [https://www.armis.com/blueborne/](https://www.armis.com/blueborne/)

According to the article, you need Sep 9 2017 security patch level, but my 5 year old phone is on Sep 1 2017 level. No way I'm going to have Bluetooth turned on in untrusted areas. While I'm unlikely to get hacked on the street or in a store, it gets more likely in places like a bus or a train (while commuting).

</comment><comment><USER29> Unlike "Security Theatre" of the TSA et al, this is a little different. Contact tracing is proven to be effective in reducing the number of infections and locating and treating infected people earlier in their infection.

These apps are _aids_ to that tracing, not a solution. They help both those that were in contact with someone who is diagnosed, by getting tested and treated earlier, they are more likely to stay healthier.

But if they also quarantine themselves and are infected, they are less likely to spread the infection further.

So it's a win-win.

</comment><comment><USER8> > [...] and Bluetooth -- just aren't accurate enough to capture every contact.

Did I miss his paper on the matter? There's dozens of groups working on this and even with a regular free space model the results seem "good enough" in <2m,15min scenarios for an additional data point.

Most of this seems to leave out that digital contact tracing is not a cure all but a tool to help manual efforts. I somewhat hate the simplification people bring here, that every additional identified contact helps, but dismissing it as "plain dumb" seems rather shallow as well. Sure, false negatives will be a thing, the false negative rate of not doing digital contact tracing at all would be higher by definition. Most of what he outlined can occur in manual contact tracing as well and we still do that, simply because it's necessary.

I haven't seen anything so far that would suggest that digital contact tracing in the poster child Singapore had any of the negative impact he brings to the table here and studies like Ferretti et al. [0] seem to make a pretty good case why it would at least not hurt the overall epidemiological goal.

> It's not accurate enough for you to quarantine yourself for two weeks. And > without ubiquitous, cheap, fast, and accurate testing, you can't confirm the > app's diagnosis. So the alert is useless.

The time frame and assumptions on testing capability is US centric I assume? If you can get a quick test it would not be two weeks, it's likely quick tests will become more prevalent if this sticks around long enough and testing capability will be raised to sufficient levels. Otherwise yes, false positives would quickly diminish usage.

Of course some of his points are valid and need to be addressed by OS vendors, apps and policy makers, and evaluation of efficacy will be just as critical as teaching the public that having an app does not mean things can go back to normal. There's also plenty of opportunity for abuse even with the commonly decentralized architecture that is at the moment widely agreed upon but none of that supports the allegations of this particular article imho.

The comments similarly bring up things like "surface transmission" as if that mattered at all. If you treat a contact tracing app as an additional data point it becomes much more sensible.

[0] [https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2020/04/09/scie...](https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2020/04/09/science.abb6936)

<comment><USER30> What percentage of the population should install and use this before it becomes useful?

The latest survey in my country said less than 50% were willing to adopt it and the number in the article mentions only 20% in Singapore.

<comment><USER8> That completely depends on your definition of useful, how people react to a "hit" in the application, and a bunch of other factors honestly.

Figure 3 from the paper I linked contains a heatmap [0] that shows the simulated impact on r in different isolation scenarios vs. completely manual contact tracing. That's where those widely cited 60% adoption come from. In my, non-epidemiologist, view what matters more is that a) the gradient in this is better than completely manual contact tracing and b) I have yet to see anything that suggests it did not help in Singapore. While their product lead [1] is a biased source, he correctly points out that working in tandem with health authorities is critical for these efforts. If these apps aren't made only for technologies sake I do not really see how they would hurt. They have 20% there, quite some experience with outbreaks, and didn't replace it yet so I'd figure 20% would be a good enough data point for other countries to evaluate the approach on the scale of a population. And afterwards they would have to be re-evaluated constantly, just like any other measure politicians and epidemiologists currently propose to address the pandemic. We imho don't have enough data yet to even remotely answer "this amount helps", "this is how good they are" but I don't really see how that justifies these "this isn't perfect so it is dumb" reactions in the other direction.

[0] [https://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/early/2020/04/09/...](https://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/early/2020/04/09/science.abb6936/F3.large.jpg?width=800&height=600&carousel=1)

[1] [https://blog.gds-gov.tech/automated-contact-tracing-is- not-a...](https://blog.gds-gov.tech/automated-contact-tracing-is-not-a- coronavirus-panacea-57fb3ce61d98)

<comment><USER30> Thanks for taking the time to type out this response. I had scanned the paper you posted and failed to make the link between success to isolate and adoption of the app. It's messy and a bunch of factors come into play, I now understand this better.

I don't oppose a tracking app (it could be an api baked into the os but let's call it an app to simplify things). Maybe I'm wrong but that paper only addressed the (bio)tech side of things instead of also considering the sociological implications.

If governments rely on this app to do the work of human tracers, I think the initial adoption rate will be high but then fall dramatically. This is the sociological effect I'm talking about. What happens if the app flags them as possibly infected? Can they call a hotline to give them information or is it just some automated crap they hear? How many times do you think someone would get a false positive before they uninstall it? It works using bluetooth. How much power drain on their batteries are they willing to accept?

I see this app as an aid to human contact tracing not as a replacement. Maybe this is a naive interpretation, but I see it more useful in this situation:

vector: "On date X I met with Zoe, Alec and Ronnie"

tracer: "There's a fourth with the same timestamp here"

vector: "A fourth?? I don't remember a.. Oh... right... uncle dave was also there"

The problem is companies and some governments have abused privacy information and now the consequence is that people are more reluctant to give this useful info. That's why you need to study this also from a sociological point of view.

<comment><USER8> Yeah that's fair, especially your last point. In a perfect pandemic-fighting world we could just have an app that did that, the decentralized model adopted won't be that specific. It would be more something along the lines of uncle dave getting a notification. I share your concern on initial adoption, especially since I could not find hard data on places that already implemented apps. I would expect an initial rush and then a plateau instead of WhatsApp like growth as some people expect. As for your specific questions I can only offer a few points on two of them given what we know about the current plan here in Germany, that highly depends on the country and I honestly have not looked at how health authorities work in the US very much.

> What happens if the app flags them as possibly infected? Can they call a > hotline to give them information or is it just some automated crap they > hear?

The new vendors here in Germany were especially chosen with the argument that they are able to operate 24/7 human phone support. With the decentralized approach they'll get a lot of people flagged and at the moment it seems like the app would suggest to them to call up that number (or likely offer that as an alternative to the other established contact points). Those phone contacts could then talk them through the next steps or, should testing become too limited at any point, through an assessment if testing makes sense for them / voluntary self quarantining can be done / ...

> It works using bluetooth. How much power drain on their batteries are they > willing to accept?

In centralized models as proposed by PEPP-PT/ROBERT(France) or NHSX(UK) there's a few ways explored to minimize battery usage on Android, the APIs on the iphone require the screen to be turned on for this use case and must subsequently be horrible for battery usage. The decentralized model that was adopted adopted by many countries is supported by Google/Apple as OS vendors with battery usage and interoperability with other Bluetooth usage in mind, I doubt there will be much of an impact (at least not any that would drive significant user numbers away from voluntary use).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> >without ubiquitous, cheap, fast, and accurate testing

No one is arguing to do more contact tracing and stop building testing capacity. You need both. False positives are a big issue and should be reduced. but I don't see how having a better idea of which asymptomatic people to test would be a net negative on the whole?

</comment><comment><USER32> This is a false dichotomy. Professional contact tracers must be in charge. Contact tracing apps help them do their job more effectively.

His arguments also seem to assume that testing will remain scarce. But testing capacity keeps increasing and as lockdowns continue demand goes down.

Schneir seems so out of his element here to the point that his arguments devolve into name calling. Unfortunately this is going to taint his future credibility on contract tracing. It would have been nice to have his input on the security and privacy concerns of this issue.

</comment><comment><USER33> An important part of the criticism is that the apps being proposed won't tell you who or where you had a contact, just that it occured anywhere. This leaves you with no capacity to judge the actual danger of being infected. An app being used to augment practical contact tracing, for example by reminding you who you'd been in contact with, would be potentially useful, but that isn't what's proposed.

Another way that such apps become useless is their voluntary nature. Ie that use of the app, and self-quarantine in response to an alert, are an individual's choice. Obviously, if you passed by a sick person in the grocery store, you do have a chance of being sick, and therefore quarantining is still useful. But most people will feel silly about quarantining themselves in response to such a low probability event. Having even a small fraction of people act on these alerts would therefore require enforced compliance of some sort.

Note that I'm not per se advocating either that the app be less privacy aware, nor that compliance be enforced, just expanding on the source of the impotency schneier talks about.

<comment><USER34> also, even if compliance was enforced, at best, the apps can only track phones. For example, I leave my phone at home by mistake all the time...

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> The crux of it is: "... it's just techies doing techie things because they don't know what else to do."

All the comments here, esp HN, should think about if this is even a useful app, before debating other stats.

Will ordinary people install and use this app? Example scenario: will SIP protestors use this app? Force install with opt-out?

</comment><comment><USER36> Add ubiquitous & fast testing into the mix - is contact tracing valuable then? Because testing on demand is what a lot of governments are looking at.

I'm thinking the app giving me a notice of close contact with a confirmed covid case will also increase my chances of getting a test even before we reach that scenario.

</comment><comment><USER37> If contact tracing can be better than 50-50 it will be better than knowing nothing like we are now when ever we go out. If it is les than 50/50 it could have fatal consequences where people lower their guards because of too much trust into the data that is probably wrong

</comment><comment><USER38> The points are worth discussing and putting some numbers on. What false negative and false positive rates, installation percentage among population and other things are acceptable for still useful contact tracing? And how does it tie to testing availability etc.

<comment><USER8> [https://twitter.com/eredmil1/status/1255934130753204224](https://twitter.com/eredmil1/status/1255934130753204224) this had preliminary results on questionnaires w.r.t. user acceptance . This [https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2020/04/09/scie...](https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2020/04/09/science.abb6936) paper looks at how effective it is given N% of the population using it and I've not seen any info that it hurt the situation in Singapore.

<comment><USER38> [https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-how-to-do- testing...](https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-how-to-do-testing-and- contact-tracing-bde85b64072e)

This article argue why it's not very likely to be good, compared to manual contact tracing. I don't agree with all the points, but it is a valuable read. There is a lot of other good things there as well.

<comment><USER8> When discussing the paper I linked this article says "That sounds hard. The good news is that, done well, this measure alone could stop the epidemic. But even if you don't do it well, it contributes." and correctly calls for combination with other measures. That's my main point, even if it's not as good as manual contact tracing the allegation that this is "tracing app" vs. anything else is just a pointless debate that Schneiers post seems to further. Like the article you posted seems to say, we should improve manual tracing and testing as well but I haven't seen anything in there that would support the Schneier viewpoint on first glance. Looks like an interesting read for later though, thanks for sharing!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> With 95% infected not showing any symptoms, contact tracing is pointless, as it will be about tracing contacts of those few severely ill. With this in mind, contact tracing is really just a way to sell survelliance to people and then seal it in laws.

<comment><USER39> But it is more 5-40% of infected that don't show any symptoms. It is also not clear how infectious people that don't show symptoms are.

<comment><USER18> They are doing well. The symptoms are the same as mild flu or allergy, and the effects are nearly non existent except in already old and sick. If half of infected got severe complications, it would be a blood bath with military on the streets already.

<comment><USER39> Average life expectancy based on age and comorbidities of the people who die is around 10-13 years. That is not an insignificant lifetime reduction.

0.5%-2% of the people who get it, die. That is much worse than the flu that kills 0.04-0.1% of the infected. The flu itself is already pretty deadly and this is much deadlier.

<comment><USER18> But it's not deadly enough to reverse the climate change. Humans are smart animals: they will adopt to the virus real quick, restart the dirty economy machine, get their previous life expectancy back and suffocate in dirty air, water and unbearable weather. But they will die on their terms, with pride and dignity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I think there is more to the ContactTracing app then what Schneier mentioned.

Understand how to define a close-contact of infected. It requires a constant 30 minutes Bluetooth-strong-signal (geographically near) to the infected person, not just because your "ID" being captured on the infected person.

The app helps find these close-contacts around you and eventually notifying them to isolate themselves and test. Imagine this process chained.

Of course, this will need a scale of people downloading the app. But better- having this auto-logged than human-effort asking infected 1 by 1 (10,000+++ infected VS 100 contact-tracer)!

</comment><comment><USER25> >That loss of trust is even worse than having no app at all.

Suddenly, for the first time, I'm sold on contract tracking apps. Lets build them and push them far and wide. If the hype cycle and subsequent arguments regarding contract tracking have shown us anything, it's that everyone needs to stop trusting claims of "it's for your own good."

</comment><comment><USER41> I have a rather cynical prediction for these apps: they will be mandatory for us to have to use various public services, and they will cost absurd amounts of money. This will be regardless of the efficacy because the goal isn't safety or surveillance, but extracting rents for the politically-connected people who will be "approved vendors."

<comment><AUTHOR> I suspect there will be multiple flavors of bootleggers and multiple flavors of baptists.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Another take: all these things (shutdowns, contact tracing, social distancing) are measures to give people a sense of security, and make them feel as if the PIC are doing something useful.

At the end of the day, the virus will do what the virus does, with or without apps. Until there's herd immunity or a vaccine, this will remain a politically charged issue and there will be constant jockeying for political clout (and I'm using the term 'political' in a sense that includes private entities trying to win favours in the eyes of the public).

I agree with Bruce, the contact tracing apps are goofy and I don't see how they will make the virus stop spreading without other changes such as widely available cheap home test kits.

<comment><USER18> TBH, the real solution will be reopening the economy with masks on and social distancing. Vaccine is a pipe dream and by the time it might be created, everyone will have been infected a few times.

My conspiracy theory is that the government understands that very soon everyone will wear masks and sunglasses and all the face-recognition tracking will become useless, so to compensate for that, they are pushing hard for alternatives. Once masks get normalized and the infection rate drops to manageable levels, the opportunity to push this app surveillance will be lost.

<comment><USER42> I'd agree that qualifies as a conspiracy theory.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> If software is the new bureaucracy and this app can put you in a detention center, oof. How do you get out when the software is wrong?

</comment><comment><USER34> what these apps would be most useful for is keeping OCD types and concern trolls busy while the rest of us get on with our lives.

EDIT: and think about this, users of this app will open and engage with it every time they're shopping or any venue. It will be the most effective add delivery platform ever made. I think that's the real motivation.

</comment><comment><USER44> Schneier is too close to the binary nature of security.

This is an organic problem, not his specialty and will take a multilayered response.

</comment><comment><USER45> I really think the equivalent of paper journals is the way to go.

As well as some way to report to grocery stores etc you've visited after testing positive.

Heck an answering machine at the grocery store that reports known cases, which everyone calls each Sunday would be enough.

</comment><comment><USER46> Half the population won't even voluntarily wear a mask or isolate. Some even go anywhere they want coughing constantly.

So how exactly is voluntary contract tracing anything but an utter fantasy and hand waving that it "exists" so magically protects us?

</comment><comment><USER47> It doesn't matter; politicians already love it because they appear to be "Doing Something(TM)", and the ~~commecial arm of NSA~~, er, big tech are excited to provide yet one more surveillance tool. What could go wrong? This year it will be for covid, next year for influenza, then u re just going to have to learn to live with it.</comment>


nvm - <AUTHOR> nvm <comment><USER2> Q: Why is x broken?

A: Because either the devs didn't think of your use case, or they didn't care about it.

<comment><USER3> What's broken and how?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Can you expand on this a little?</comment>


The isolating, maddening, shared experience of 'Insomnia' - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/books/la-ca-jc-insomnia-20181109-story.html <comment><USER2> Archive link for readers in Europe: [http://archive.is/gUjbv](http://archive.is/gUjbv)</comment>


Could You Pass Sixth Grade Economics? - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/could-you-pass-sixth-grade-economics-1456857573 <comment><AUTHOR> [https://archive.is/UBMCT](https://archive.is/UBMCT)</comment>