Lawsuit Filed Against NYPD Street Body Scanners - <AUTHOR> http://tsaoutofourpants.wordpress.com/2013/01/28/lawsuit-filed-against-nypd-street-body-scanners/ <comment><USER2> Original author here... thanks for posting! :) I filed the first lawsuit against the TSA's nude body scanners when they became primary screening in 2010, and you may also remember me from my "How to Get Anything Through TSA Nude Body Scanners" video. Today I filed suit against New York City for attempting to introduce street body scanners that can look under your clothes from afar. It is unfortunate that it seems that government at all levels is always in need of a fresh reminder that the citizens for whom it exists demand privacy, and that each technological advance is not a new tool to violate our privacy. However, as often as proves to be necessary, we will give them that reminder.

<comment><USER3> This seems to relate to using devices to detect things inside your car (dogs) or devices to detect growing lamps in your house (unconstitutional search).

It looks like they are working to erode searches again, using dogs to detect drugs inside a home. [http://www.scotusblog.com/2012/10/argument-preview-drug- snif...](http://www.scotusblog.com/2012/10/argument-preview-drug-sniffing- dogs-and-privacy/)

Everything I learned in high school civics class seems to be obsolete when it comes to our Constitutional rights: "bong hits for jesus", "administrative" searches (body scanners), and now street searches.

Why is it the argument from ignorance/lack of imagination via fear is so compelling? "We need to do X to stop Y." Where Y is something very remote but really scary.

<comment><USER4> Ugh, "Bong Hits for Jesus". That SCOTUS decision sincerely and utterly gnaws at my core. One of the worst decisions in the last 30 years.

<comment><USER5> For those who are curious and ignorant of this SCOTUS decison (as I was): <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morse_v._Frederick>

<comment><USER6> What doesn't make sense about this decision is its clear lack of constitutional basis. How does an opinion (via statute) on illegal drug use conflict with a constitutional amendment?

<comment><USER7> I'm trying to work out how the First Amendment was trumped for students based on historical opinion! Can someone clarify?

<comment><USER6> I have always been confused by this, as well. IANAL, but the reasoning seems to be based in the need of educators to reduce disruption and offensiveness, at the cost of protected speech. This wikipedia article [1] does a good job laying out the history of opinions on the subject.

[1]: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_speech_(First_Amendment)>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Playing Devil's Advocate here: how is this comparable to "nude" body scanners? From the demo images, it seems to produce an abstract outline except for the shapes that, I'm assuming, are too dense to be organic. In concept, how is this different than being forced to walk through a metal detector? Both this visual body scanner and the metal detector only provide vague indications of what you have hidden under your clothes.

From a pragmatic point of view...maybe I'm misunderstanding the technology, but it seems prone to a wide range of false positives...to the point that using the scans to justify apprehending someone is not much better than stop- and-frisking because a person looks "suspicious"

<comment><USER3> > In concept, how is this different than being forced to walk through a metal > detector?

Well, you generally have a choice (kinda) to walk through a metal detector. People should be protect from random searches while walking around the streets. At one time there were very specific cases where you had to submit to a search -- one being hot pursuit.

<comment><USER8> I guess that's true. I forgot that the NYPD can search through all of your stuff when you enter a subway, but you have the right to refuse and just not take the subway (at least at that station)

<comment><USER9> In NYC the subway is critical infrastructure, as important as electricity or water, denial of its use should not be taken lightly.

Denial of this service to people who would not submit to a search, IMO, makes this highly coercive and the search can no longer be considered strictly voluntary.

One has to remember that having seen the flip side of the urban coin, New York City has taken the stance that quality of life ought to be enforced via any means necessary: legal or extralegal. Both stop and frisk as well as the bag searches on the subway do not pass even a cursory constitutionality examination, but that doesn't seem to bother anyone.

<comment> jack-r-abbit _In NYC the subway is critical infrastructure, as important as electricity or water, denial of its use should not be taken lightly. Denial of this service to people who would not submit to a search, IMO, makes this highly coercive and the search can no longer be considered strictly voluntary._

Being a frequent user of BART (SF Bay Area Rapid Transit), I understand where you are coming from about how so many people have come to really rely on the public transit systems. But I don't think the NYC subway or BART is anymore critical than air travel. If you were not able to take the subway, you do have other options (bus, cab, walk, etc). Yes... those other options are a lot less convenient and/or more costly, but the same can be said of the alternatives to air travel (bus, train, car, etc).

Every time I go through the Trans-Bay Tube (the BART tunnel under the bay that connects all East Bay BART lines to San Francisco), I think "imagine the chaos it would cause if a suicide bomber detonated a bomb on a train in the tube." So many people use this to commute in both directions, the Bay Area would screech to a halt. That would have devastating effects on the economy (both locally and nationally). I imagine the same can be said if that happened in one of the subway tunnels. I don't think it is too far out of "reasonable" to want to protect them like we want to protect airplanes. That being said, the TSA is a huge failure and should not be used as a model for how to protect the railways.

<comment><USER10> > Being a frequent user of BART (SF Bay Area Rapid Transit), I understand > where you are coming from about how so many people have come to really rely > on the public transit systems. But I don't think the NYC subway or BART is > anymore critical than air travel. If you were not able to take the subway, > you do have other options (bus, cab, walk, etc). Yes... those other options > are a lot less convenient and/or more costly, but the same can be said of > the alternatives to air travel (bus, train, car, etc).

These forms of transit aren't even close in comparison. They serve different kinds of traffic density, the cost to ride is not even in the same ballpark, and it is NOT feasible to travel around NYC without access to the subway unless you have a large amount of money to spend on cabs (chain bus transit is not time effective for traversing boroughs).

In fact, the NYPD relies on the fact that traveling in any way other than subway is so much of a PITA that people will mostly accept a subway search. Those searches are at the discretion of the officers present, which as we've seen with stop and frisk becomes a racist, classist implementation.

<comment><USER2> Really it comes down to the fact that many people rely on all of those transportation methods to do things like work, study, visit family, etc., and _can't_ do it another way, because of time, money, or whatever. Under those circumstances, any government hoops to jump through should not be considered voluntary and consensual.

The NYC subway system is particularly sensitive to this, as others have pointed out, because so many people use this to work every day. You can say the bus is an alternative, but what about when they make a requirement to get on the bus? (TSA has already been caught at Greyhound stations!)

...or looked at from an entirely different angle, why should there be people trying to determine if I have a gun in a bus, on the subway, or on the streets of New York? Aren't guns legal in America? The fact of the matter is that it is so impossible to lawfully carry a gun in NYC that the cops, now using these scanners, _presume_ you can't have one. Imagine a Texas sheriff with a scanner. "Excuse me sir, I've scanned you and you have a gun on you." "Yeah, so?"

<comment><USER8> I don't disagree with your last paragraph but I'm not sure what your point is except expressing a tautology. Let's pretend that there was no way to hide a gun (Mayor Bloomberg bans clothing in the summer as a way to curb the problem of people hiding high fat snacks in their pockets)...are you saying that police should not take notice of people carrying firearms, give the very low incidence of legally opened firearms?

How else could they enforce the city's laws, besides waiting for someone to actively commit a crime with the gun before they can ask if the gun is legally owned?

<comment><USER2> That's exactly what I'm saying. The carrying of a firearm should not be considered evidence of a crime in progress in and of itself. Nowhere else in America, save for NJ, IL, and DC, is it unusual for someone walking down the streets to be in possession of a firearm. Lawful firearm owners should not be harassed to prove their lawful status at every turn. The police can ask questions when they have reasonable suspicion.

<comment><USER9> > _"Nowhere else in America, save for NJ, IL, and DC, is it unusual for > someone walking down the streets to be in possession of a firearm."_

Right, so we've established that legal firearm ownership is vastly outnumbered by illegal firearm ownership in the above places, and that seeing a legal firearm on the street is in fact _extremely_ rare.

So... you live in an area where there is a substantial known presence of illegal guns, that isn't balanced by a substantial ownership of legal guns. When you see a gun, how is it not at all suspicious?

I do not see your conclusion as a logical extension of constitutional principles, it seems more informed by your own stance re: gun ownership. The constitution grants the right to search upon reasonable suspicion - I'm unsure how a gun's appearance in a place where there are almost no legal ones fails that bar.

Whether or not NY _should_ have such strict gun laws is an entirely separate debate - as it stands it seems perfectly reasonable for the presence of a gun to be suspicious.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Thank you for doing this!

<comment><USER2> Happy to help ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> From what I can tell these devices cannot look under one's clothes. The image is just too blurry. In fact, these scanners could be considered cameras that capture light outside of the visible spectrum. Are we to now say that one can't take photos in public? That seems to be quite extreme. I would like to preserve my right to do so, even with an infrared camera.

</comment><comment><USER13> I hope you win, but the way case law has been going, this is going to be a difficult lawsuit to win at the lower levels

<comment><USER2> Of course it will. And let me guarantee you this: the city will not start by defending the merits of the scanners, but by doing everything it can to get my case dismissed before it has to do so.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Are there practical materials to make hoodies and/or jeans out of that are opaque to these devices?

<comment><USER15> If these are terahertz-band scanners, I believe most metals will block the waves.

<comment><USER16> So, tin foil hoodies? Or maybe chain mail will come back in style?

I haven't encountered one of these yet, but I'd actually be willing to go through if I had some sort of metallic pre-wash all over my clothes.

<comment><USER15> Apparently there are a number of problems with terahertz technology, meaning potential methods of fooling them.

[http://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/military/the-truth- about-...](http://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/military/the-truth-about- terahertz?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+IeeeSpectrumFullText+%28IEEE+Spectrum+Full+Text%29)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Dang is a terrible moderator who engages in ideological censorship - <AUTHOR> I'm sorry, but after trying yet again to contribute and yet again being slapped around I've finally had it.
Dang, you are the single worst moderator I've ever had the displeasure of having to deal with. You regularly ban, throttle, shadowban, and otherwise censor used for purely ideological reasons while claiming that their posts are "unsubstantive". The entire structure of HN does inevitably lead to an echo chamber of people who are at times incredibly lacking in self awareness, but your actions only exacerbate this problem.
Anyway, this post is giong to be downvoted, flagged, and probably deleted with the account banned and maybe a weak redirection to an email account. God forbid we discuss the state of the site and moderation publicly. <comment><USER2> Why don't you supply links so readers can make up their own minds?

It sucks to get moderated, and often feels like the mods are doing it because they disagree with you. Whatever your ideology is, though, I guarantee you there are users on the other side complaining that yours is the one we secretly agree with and theirs is the one we're censoring.

<comment><USER3> I think you may be underestimating this issue. It is leading to one of the most heinous and vile things someone can do on an internet forum, shadow banning, akin to putting them in an isolation cell; only worse worse, basically transporting them there without even letting them know they are/were put there and users keep commenting and contributing while being essentially locked away and lost in an authoritarian prison cell where no one can hear them. It's downright sick and depraved and one of the worst practices of the tech sector today for which there is zero justification regardless of what unapproved things were said.

There is a real sickness on the net today where "moderators" have come to think of themselves as the thought police, but even worse, not just thought police of an authoritarian regime, but a kind of self-anointed little dictator that rules over the user rabble at will and upon whim.

If you want to silence people, at least have the spine of any other run of the mill authoritarian and tell users their fundamental human right to speech and expression was taken from them … don't just silently transport them to digital purgatory. Again, it is a vile act that only the most depraved people would excuse, let alone endorse, no matter what unapproved things were thought and said … which are only words/characters on a screen that can be dismissed and ignored.

Ok, I've said my peace. It's a sick and depraved practice and I cannot stand by just not say something when the topic comes up while digital regimes like HN, reddit have, what are essentially digital version of hellish totalitarian regime isolation cells that "mods" disappear people/accounts to.

<comment><USER2> We don't typically shadowban accounts that have much history on HN; we tell them we're banning them: [https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20banned&sort=byDate&type=comment).

We shadowban spam accounts and new accounts that are egregiously and/or repeatedly breaking the site guidelines, especially if they show evidence of being serial trolls. That's a fundamentally different case—there are many users who simply create new accounts as we ban their older accounts and carry on posting as before. It isn't a good use of resources to patiently coax them to improve or even to reply to their posts at all. These users know perfectly well when we've banned them; it's a cat and mouse game and not at all an "isolation cell".

It's certainly true that there are a few good-faith users who get shadowbanned because we mistook them for bad-faith users—people who didn't realize that they were breaking the site guidelines and could have reformed if we had explained and asked them. But there are orders of magnitude fewer of these than your comment implies. I'd prefer that there not be even one such lost lamb, but it's just a hard problem to solve. Software can't distinguish these and moderators can't read intent correctly in every case.

<comment><USER3> And yet, here you are, validating the very criticism of your heavy handed authoritarian nature. You make the very same kind of authoritarian claims of "evidence" (where is it, show it and provided it for public scrutiny and audit then) and you weigh that "evidence" against arbitrary (yet comically inline with your own self-interest) measure against ambiguous rules. It's the authoritarians' playbook 101, regardless of whether the authoritarians are competent enough to recognize it, let alone self-are enough. (pro tip: you guys never are … never)

Just try to reflect on the authoritarian and supremacist mentality you have with language like "It isn't a good use of resources to patiently coax them to improve or even to reply to their posts at all"; yet your expend resources to censor and control and rule with an iron fist anything that is not to our liking.

No one is talking about obvious spam or any kind of illegal language like credible threats of violence or stalking or bulling, but if you were at least honest with yourself you would acknowledge that it has nothing at all to do with "good use of resource" and all to do with control. Because it is irrefutably true that if it were about "good use of resources" you would wholeheartedly avoid censorship of legal language and not violate what what has been deemed a human right, free speech.

You types, people with the authoritarian supremacist mentality you clearly have, are always quite to rationalize why it is fine that you be the arbiter of right and wrongthink, but it never avails you of the inherent evil exhibited by controlling speech and expression, no matter how much beneath you or inferior and unworthy you decree that speech to be.

<comment><USER2> You're arguing for a style of moderation that has never applied on HN, because this isn't that kind of site. Rather than complaining about that here, it would be in your interests to find a different forum that is more aligned with the kind of moderation you want to see.

There's room for lots of different kinds of internet forum. It's good for different sites to make different choices about how they operate—that gives users get a richer set of communities to choose from. The thing to realize, though, is that there are tradeoffs. For example, you can't both have a site that's dedicated to intellectual curiosity and allow aggressive comments and flamewars. If you try, the flames will burn out the curiosity. That has significant consequences for moderation on a site like HN, where curiosity is the core value. In order to preserve HN for its intended purpose, we have to respect that reality.

It isn't "authoritarian supremacist mentality", or any of the other things you describe, to want to maintain a particular kind of internet forum. If your job was to maintain a public garden, you wouldn't allow drag racing in the flower beds.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> _The entire structure of HN does inevitably lead to an echo chamber_

Group dynamics always and consistently create situations where "popular" views are much easier to express. This is not _caused_ by moderation and not unique to HN. In fact, good moderation should give some pushback against such which makes it less awful to participate in good faith while disagreeing with the majority view.

My first-hand personal experience is that HN is generally better than most forums about allowing for and supporting disagreement with the popular views on the site, so long as you follow the rules concerning civility and the like.

I find group dynamics fascinating. It's unfortunate that moderation of online forums is one of the best real world "labs" for such an interest. It inevitably gets interpreted as me sucking up to the mods here rather than me simply finding the topic interesting and desiring to participate in the discussion in good faith.

I keep trying to find other outlets, but they tend to fail to satisfy.

</comment><comment><USER5> Personally, I like the moderation here. It strikes the difficult balance between allowing discussion of sensitive topics while preventing the forum equivalent of descending into all-out verbal Armageddon about as well as any humans possibly could.

Bending to whatever ideology bonetopick wants to push, be it right, left or otherwise, would probably get equally angry posts from others so I encourage the moderators to give this post the minimal attention it deserves.

<comment><USER2> We tend to leave posts like the OP up. This one was killed by a software filter as well as heavily flagged by users, but I turned all of that off. That way we don't get accused of killing it for sinister reasons, but also the occasional thread like this can act as a pressure valve to air grievances and give us a read on how the community is feeling. My sense is that the bulk of the community does not share the feeling that moderation here is so biased or vindictive. But if that's wrong, we definitely need to know.

<comment><USER6> The only thing worse than moderators is the sites with no moderation. I've been watching a site I liked turn into a venting ground for mentally ill people, trolls, and people with a strange, obsessive hatred of one particular person and everything he does. It's rather unpleasant.

So thanks for all you do. You get lots of complaints (nobody likes being on the receiving end of what you do), but the site is _far_ better because of you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Please point out the first substantive parent comment you see at [https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=author%3Adang%20unsubstantive&sort=byDate&type=comment)

<comment><USER8> Edit: Nevermind, I misunderstood parent comment completely.

\---

What's your point? The search term is ensuring you only find moderation-hat comments, and _of course_ they're not going to be contributing with substance of their own to the topic being discussed.

<comment><USER9> "substantive parent comment" for that search, i.e. a comment that dang called unsubstantive but that is actually substantive. If such a comment existed, it would lend credence to the accusation that dang was wrongly calling it out for purely ideological reasons.

<comment><USER8> Oh I see, sorry!

I thought you were saying 'look at all these comments of dang's, calling out other people, but not a single one of them is subtantive itself'.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've been reading top HN posts for a few years now and recently started reading a little more of the comments. My personal impressions are that here we have a good and precise moderation. What makes me think this way is that I mostly remember reading deep, reasonable, authentic and specific comments and discussion, even in long lists of comments - different from some other forums / channels where it might be more common to see hateful, toxic comments. Is it a good moderation or the public here is more polite? Or both, maybe? What I see in this post here is a lot of offensive accusations and supposed constatation, without examples, evidence or even a narrative of facts that led to this rage and indignation... In my perception a clear example of post that is not useful, not following the guideline and doesn't promote any improve. I feel sorry you feel this way about the moderation here, but I suggest you deeply analyse yourself first.

</comment><comment><USER11> You provide no evidence at all. Like a single link to what you're talking about. (Why is that?)

You say you've had it, yet here you are still.

There seems quite a lot of discussion of the "state of the site and moderation" on here, but you act like it's forbidden or something.

</comment><comment><USER12> We apologize for the fault in the moderation. Those responsible have been sacked.

</comment><comment><USER13> I rarely agree with his stance in regards to political moderation.

On the other hand I don't envy his position. It is easy to be critical, but harder to put yourself in his shoes and suggest improvements.

Overall I think he wants to moderate for the most sensitive users of a particular persuasion. I view HN as a product of Silicon Valley's culture.

The end result is that I self censor when I disagree with what I perceive as a the prevailing view on HN.

Take it or leave it. Discussing political views online isn't an especially fruitful use of my time.

Occasionally there are a few interesting articles. If I need a diversion I focus on the ones I'd like to read. Commenting is rarely worth it in my view.

<comment><USER14> What do you find you self-censor the most on? Perhaps not going in-depth, but I'd be curious on what you notice you feel isn't a good fit for the site.

<comment><USER13> Off the top of my head, Climate change, China, Hofstede, the primacy of the state and bicycling oddly enough.

The first one I won't touch anywhere online. China has too many wumaos. There's very little room to question the role of the state without things devolving rapidly.

As it concerns cycling, suggesting that people can get out there as self- starters without the need for designated lanes had me warned for being impolite? Not sure how much gentler I could have said it.

I few comments later someone else was suggesting that I was an outlier as a former bike messenger and that most couriers are run-over so my opinion isn't valid. Somehow this one passed by the moderation team.

I get that the moderators can't be everywhere at once. Not here for Internet points. I want to be polite with everyone. But I view the pedantic wrist slaps as falling on one side and ignoring the other.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> odd how different people have wildly different experiences on the same website</comment>


Condoleezza Rice calls Edward Snowden 'a traitor' - <AUTHOR> http://features.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2014/05/14/condoleezza-rice-snowden/

<comment><USER2> _" Edward Snowden didn't go to work for Disney," Rice said. "What did he think the N.S.A. did?"_

Obey the law?

 _" If I were Edward Snowden, I'd watch what I eat," Rice said._

Threatening assassination? Why the fuck is she on Dropbox's board? What do they gain from this?

<comment><USER3> The fact that she's on Dropbox's board absolutely disgusts me. I was bothered before but this is exactly the type of thing that is pushing me to an alternative.

What are the alternatives these days? git-annex? Anything else?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Predictable

</comment><comment><USER5> Is she speaking in her capacity as a representative of Dropbox, here? Does Dropbox consider Edward Snowden a traitor?</comment>


First Impressions of a $9 CHIP Computer - <AUTHOR> https://spin.atomicobject.com/2016/03/27/chip-computer-review/ <comment><USER2> I'm going to go ahead and say it. It doesn't count until I can buy them in any quantity at any time for $9 each. Shipping to a few backers doesn't count. "One per customer, supplies limited" doesn't count. 6 month waiting time, "special" shipping charges/handling fees/only available as part of a more expensive "kit"... you get the idea.

This is a bog-standard device in a sea of similar SBC's. The entire magic here is the price. Honestly, I don't even "believe" in the Pi zero yet. It could still turn out to be a publicity stunt produced in a very limited quantity just to get everyone talking.

Until its a product you buy a dozen at a time and leave behind in the projects in your wake, the magic hasn't happened yet. Otherwise, you pull it out of those projects because its a rare specimen you might not be able to get another of any time soon. It doesn't matter if it only cost $9 if you can't get any more of them.

But I _want_ to believe!

<comment><USER3> I couldn't be more disappointed with Raspberry Pi regarding their availability of the Zero. It's been four months since they announced "immediate availability" and seemingly the only way you can get a $5 Pi is to buy a $40 bundle. If you can't buy it in numbers needed then it simply doesn't exist.

<comment><USER4> Firstly, only kudos to them for having designed the Zero in the first place, and I'm sure they intended it to be available in volume this many months after release.

However, until they can reach volume on a major released project (e.g. the Zero), they should be careful about getting too much press visibility on said product. As of 2016, Raspberry Pi is world-wide name with international name recognition, and it can only hurt the organization when its products marketed at a $5 USD price point are, in practice, only really available at $40+ USD, to the majority of its potential customers, and this many months after release.

<comment><USER5> On the plus side - all the donations the Raspberry Pi Foundation received from sales of the Zero helped fund a teacher training course that is being rolled out across the United States.

<comment><USER4> That is a indeed a plus. Indeed in the gparent comment I only wished to point out 1 way in which the organization could improve should they wish. Getting open source design part-sourced, assembled and then shipped in volume levels is still a business process in nascency. I'm sure they face abundant challenges on the supplier-side. Regardless, I do hope that against all odds, volume manufactured open source hardware becomes a force to be reckoned with in the decades to come - perhaps analogously to how FOSS Linux dominated in its own and ever-expanding arena.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Wow! Built-in Wifi + 4GB storage for $9? This changes the entire scope of my repeatedly-postponed environmental monitoring project. I can wire a $10 temperature/humidity sensor and put 40-50 of these devices around the building for $1k. I would easily pay $50 for a pre-made device that:

1) Is built using CHIP and has a simply case + power adapter

2) Is wired to [https://www.sparkfun.com/products/10167](https://www.sparkfun.com/products/10167)

3) Has an easy Wifi setup process and does DHCP

4) Lets me do a GET [http://ip/status](http://ip/status) and gives me JSON of the current temperature and humidity.

Then all I have to worry about is setting up a cron job that wgets all 50 devices and logs the result to DB.

FYI equivalent systems, even non-NIST-calibrated ones cost $500/device or more.

<comment><USER7> Not $50, you can do all of that with a $5 ESP8266. The CHIP is IMO enormously overpowered for what you're describing. The ESPs can do HTTP/MQTT/etc directly themselves, but I think an ideal use for the CHIP is as a hub with the ESP's reporting sensor data and the CHIP logging data.

Also, as a warning from experience the DHT22's aren't that great and they have been a headache. They are relatively expensive, not very precise and also I've seen a huge variation in their manufacturing quality. The relative humidity readings in particular are wildly inaccurate. There are better temperature sensors that cost less than a dollar (DS18) and to get reliable humidity readings you really need something nicer like the SHT-31.

<comment><USER8> I'm always curious about these sorts of answers, because from an outsiders perspective, you may as well be talking in another language.

From what I can tell the ESP8266 is some sort of wifi enabled...chip? That you need to solder onto something or plug onto a breadboard, then you need an arduino for some unstated reason. What is an arduino? how do you make these two things interact? How do you provide power to these things? why are there so many arduinos?

I think the advantage of these single board computers are they are a much lower barrier to entry if you don't have that much knowledge of electronics, but have more experience of navigating Linux systems and writing software.

<comment><USER9> The ESP8266 is actually a system on a board, too. Essentially, it's a tiny microcontroller, with Wifi and a few GPIO connections, in a very small form factor, for a very small price.

You don't need to solder it to anything (it already comes soldered on its own board). You don't an external microcontroller to use it. It is standalone. It is compatible with the 'Arduino'. The Arduino is a family of microcontrollers built from the ground up to be easy to use. Easy to use software, easy to program (Variant of C) - and more importantly, heaps of support and tutorials online.

Honestly, the most difficult thing about using the ESP is powering and programming it. It takes 3.3V - and only 3.3V, so finding an appropriate power supply can be trickly. It programs over serial, so you need to use a USB > serial module - $1.30 [1]

The modules themselves are super cheap: - $1.50 [0] There's a very strong community behind the module: [http://www.esp8266.com/](http://www.esp8266.com/)

Essentially: Don't be scared: there's an initial learning curve that is very gentle, and you'll suddenly find unlimited uses for these tiny little modules.

I've got modules that show build statuses, affiliate account activity.. etc.

They also work, as mentioned, exceptionally well in a flock reporting to a main system - which may be a CHIP system, Raspberry PI, OpenWRT router, etc.

[0] [http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Free-Shipping-2pcs-lot- ESP826...](http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Free-Shipping-2pcs-lot- ESP8266-remote-serial-Port-WIFI-wireless-module-through-walls-Wang- ESP-12/32256161821.html) [1] [http://www.aliexpress.com/wholesale?catId=0&initiative_id=SB...](http://www.aliexpress.com/wholesale?catId=0&initiative_id=SB_20160328010733&SearchText=FT232RL)

<comment> david-given Technically the ESP8266 is a modular wifi controller, isn't it? That is, it's one of those gadgets that's supposed to sit on a daughterboard and provide wifi services with embedded TCP/IP stack to another microprocessor. (I hear.) It just so happens that it's own processor is powerful enough and flexible enough to be useful as a microprocessor in its own right.

I wonder what other common bits of electronics might have useful amounts of processing power...

<comment><USER10> $50 (or less) WiFi enabled SD cards (intended for use in cameras to automatically upload pictures) have an ARM processor running linux.

[http://haxit.blogspot.ch/2013/08/hacking-transcend-wifi- sd-c...](http://haxit.blogspot.ch/2013/08/hacking-transcend-wifi-sd- cards.html)

[http://www.amazon.com/Transcend-Wi-Fi-Class-Memory- TS32GWSDH...](http://www.amazon.com/Transcend-Wi-Fi-Class-Memory- TS32GWSDHC10/dp/B00A659ILQ)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I have a friend who has one of these, and he's stopped using it entirely because of unreliability. The WiFi performed poorly (e.g. in same room, on same router, multi-second latency) and the radios seemed to crash to the point of requiring a hard reset after a few days. Another thing he mentioned as an annoyance (that may be fixed now) was that the power state can't be controlled from software (e.g. shutdown -r will hang when it actually tells the hw to power-cycle).

<comment><USER12> For what it's worth I have 2 and have yet to experience any need to hard reset after roughly a week of being connected to the same network. I've also been able to use shutdown -r without any issue. I used them as beacons to mock up an indoor location app recently an they performed well during all of my testing. YMMV but thats my 2c.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I backed their Kickstarter and I love them.

They have consistently delivered updates to backers and have always been on schedule (they are even ahead of schedule now!). I'm not sure how they do it, but they just solve problems.

Initially, the shipping cost for their Kickstarter was too high ($9 computer + $20 shipping to Europe). They lowered shipping costs (to $14 for me) just before the end of their Kickstarter. Even though I had the expectation of paying $29 to get a C.H.I.P to my door, they let everyone use the difference with what they paid to buy more boards or accessories, so I got two C.H.I.P.s for $32 instead. [1]

They encountered issues with the CPU they planned on using, and had to replace it with a bigger version that didn't fit the front of the board. They had to put it on the back, and added small cases to everyone's orders so the computers could lay flat as expected. [2]

The hardware and software initially had issues for some people. They quickly released a simple flashing tool for Windows, OS X and Linux. For hardware problems, they flat out offered to swap defective C.H.I.P.s. [3]

I've truly appreciated their level of professionalism and their customer support work. The computer in itself is fine, and much more economical than the Raspberry Pi (integrated networking capabilities).

[1] : [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1598272670/chip-the- wor...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1598272670/chip-the-worlds- first-9-computer/posts/1250255)

[2] : [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1598272670/chip-the- wor...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1598272670/chip-the-worlds- first-9-computer/posts/1428989)

[3] : [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1598272670/chip-the- wor...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1598272670/chip-the-worlds- first-9-computer/posts/1459547)

<comment><USER14> Blame the bad world, if it isn't true, but your post feels a little bit like paid enthusiasm...

<comment><USER15> I agree with Artemis2. I also backed this project, and it has absolutely been one the most well managed, communicative projects I've supported. I've been very pleased.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Just 9$ for a 1Ghz ARM processor, 512MB of RAM with integrated WiFi and Bluetooth! At prices that cheap I would be super interested in a ultra cheap mobile phone with e-ink display that last several weeks on a single charge.

<comment><USER17> Solar powered would be a bonus

<comment><USER18> Well, it does have built-in support for a lithium ion battery, so if you can figure out some way to hook it up to a solar panel...

Though I suspect there'd be practical issues with getting enough energy to keep it charged.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The USB TTY idea is really nice!

<comment><USER20> Yeah I would really like to see the Raspberry series integrate that feature.

<comment><USER21> RPi got an SPI interface, which can be used with a standalone FTDI USB-to-SPI.

<comment> david-given You don't even need that --- the RPi has got a proper TTL UART. Two, in fact, although as you can only use one at a time that doesn't get you much. Any TTL serial adapter will just plug straight in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Has anyone priced out the components? How is $9 possible?

<comment><USER23> >Has anyone priced out the components?

Yes. The BOM is well over $9. You could reasonably debate if it's $12, or $20, or $15. But it's not less than $9. Not even with sweetheart deals all around.

Here's the BOM: [https://github.com/NextThingCo/CHIP- Hardware/raw/master/CHIP...](https://github.com/NextThingCo/CHIP- Hardware/raw/master/CHIP%5Bv1_0%5D/CHIP_v1_0_BOM_20151030.pdf)

The R8 CPU + 4GB NAND FLASH + 512M DDR3 alone would be close to $9. The RTL8723 wifi/bt chip is at least a dollar. The rest is cheap individually, but there's a lot of connectors, resistors, caps, etc. It adds up.

Also, the BOM doesn't include any of the costs for the PCB itself,assembly, the employees, engineering time, etc.

>How is $9 possible?

Loss leader. Make it up in shipping and accessories.

Edit: Don't believe it? Enter your own prices here. I put in "sweetheart deal" prices for the 4 items mentioned above, and assumed $0.01 unit cost for everything else (which is not realistic). That unrealistic approach totals $12.19.

[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1HPjX9_H2NIkR4l1l34JT...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1HPjX9_H2NIkR4l1l34JTLuUn8sQYiyJYiyd4WmD6K7o/edit?usp=sharing)

So, if you're going to claim it's somehow less than $9, clone the spreadsheet, update the prices, and show us how :) Oh, and throw in what you think the bare PCB + assembly costs.

<comment><USER22> Makes sense. But how can a Kickstarted project be a loss leader? Or are they bootstrapped, and using Kickstarter funds to subsidize loss?

<comment><USER23> >>how can a Kickstarted project be a loss leader

Looks like some combination of padded shipping prices, plus sales of accessories that appear to actually be priced above cost. (PocketChip, VGA, HDMI, etc).

So, you can pledge for just a $9 CHIP, but they are subsidizing the losses there with the other pledges + shipping margin.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Our condo has an entryphone working over normal phone line. I really wanted for a very long time a simple system which can a) authenticate via HTTPS b) after auth, for a few minutes if someone (like me) rings the phone it would answer the phone c) dials 6 to let me in. There is no dialtone or such involved.

Most solutions I were able to find are ridiculously expensive compared to how simple this ought to be. Now we have an adequately cheap computer ... is there a modem you can drive from the GPIO? Or is that crazy.

<comment><USER25> You can attach a USB modem to a SBC and go from there, that's probably the simplest way to approach it.

The more complex way is to have an interface/isolation circuit using two GPIO pins (one input for ring detection, one output that switches a relay into the rest of the circuit and also takes the line off the hook). You then have a single DAC or PWM output that plays the tone into the isolation transformer. If you are interested in more info on this sort of thing, contact me.

<comment><USER24> That's where the "ridiculously expensive" part kicks in: the only modems that mention Linux support are 40+ USD. (Zoom 3095 etc)

<comment><USER23> These $9/shipped generic USB modems worked on Linux for me: [http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Adroit-New- USB-56K-V-90-V-92-...](http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Adroit-New- USB-56K-V-90-V-92-External-Dial-Up-Voice-Fax-Data-Modem-for/32604327115.html)

Not great quality, but it sounds like you just want to go off hook and send a single DTMF tone. (ATH1, then ATD6). It should work fine.

<comment><USER24> Thanks! I will need to figure out how to configure mgetty to do an ATDT6 on dial.

<comment><USER23> Sure. Looking at mgetty's man page, it looks like you would want to

a) Disable Auto Answer on the modem, manually: ATS0=0

b) Set the "answer-chat" setting in mgetty to send the ATH1 then ATDT6

I imagine you'll also have tons of errors, since no actual modem-to-modem data connection will ever get established in this scenario. So maybe some options to suppress all that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Java? Scala? Yes, please. See my slide deck from NEScala at [https://goo.gl/2t5hBX](https://goo.gl/2t5hBX)

</comment><comment><USER27> I don't do preorders, but I'd like to pick one of these up if/when they ever become generally available. I guess the storage/bluetooth/wife are worth the extra $4 over the Pi Zero, and the USB TTY be default is handy too.

</comment><comment><USER28> Gotta love the guy who chimed in with "The worst part of the CHIP is the GPU, which is more than trash."

Phewww! I almost spent a whopping $9 on a tiny computer that cannot process media as well as computers 50x more expensive and 10x as big. I'll just wait until those shrink down and cost the same so I only ever need to buy one computer for all my projects.

</comment><comment><USER29> Maybe I'm crazy, but I feel like the big inflection point with these single board computers will really come when they have PCI express slots on them.

There's a whole bunch you can do with peripherals and networking over PCIe that would make those chips useful for a new set of situations.

<comment><USER30> Other than graphics, is there anything available over PCIe that isn't available over USB?

<comment><USER31> Just because you _can_ do it over USB doesn't mean you should. PCIe gets you more bandwidth and vastly better latency, and the peripherals that use PCIe tend to be higher quality and have better drivers than their USB competition. Just compare any USB NIC against Intel Ethernet or Atheros WiFi, or NVMe and AHCI devices against the mess that is UASP. You can't build a decent router or NAS around USB devices.

(And DisplayLink offers graphics over USB, but it's so bad that in almost any other context it should be regarded as _not counting_.)

<comment><USER32> DisplayLink has a large number of customers, so obviously it works well enough for a lot of use-cases. I've used it for status displays, and the additional monitors that most engineers like to have. I can't even remember which one of the two monitors in my home office is DisplayLink. I'd imagine that I'd notice if I tried to play a game...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Those are compelling. I am lusting after the wire friendly gpio mounts from the picture, too.

</comment><comment><USER34> I ordered mine last year. It was the first purchase I ever made on kickstarter. I went with the VGA adapter, but it seems everything is HDMI these days. Everything is still back ordered, but I am excited to see what this system can do.

</comment><comment><USER35> Looks very interesting, too bad they don't accept paypal</comment>


Tell HN: I feel ike I'm waiting for the show to start - <AUTHOR> With Trump becoming President I find I'm in a strange state which feels like "waiting for a show to start".<p>I suspect it's going to be spectacular, regardless of what you think of the content. <comment><USER2> Same here. As foreign without any relation to the U.S. at all i cant wait to see how he will make "america great again". But economically it probably cant be much worse, maybe his money based plans actually help the country?

</comment><comment><USER3> How hilarious it would be if it wasn't, though.</comment>


Improve Performance and Reduce Memory with PVRTC Textures - <AUTHOR> http://www.uchidacoonga.com/2011/07/pvrtc-textures-and-cocos2d/

<comment><USER2> Thanks for sharing. Note Apple increased the size limit for OTA app installs earlier this year from 20MB to 50MB (the article was written in July 2011).</comment>


'Biohacker' Implants Massive Computer Chip In Forearm - <AUTHOR> http://www.storyleak.com/german-biohacker-implants-massive-computer-chip-forearm/ <comment><USER2> This is horrifying to me yet I still have to admire the sheer amount of brass it would take to go through with. Though one does wonder if this is just a man pleading for attention.</comment>


Cool examples of social polling widgets for blogs - <AUTHOR> http://poutsch.tumblr.com/

<comment><USER2> Am I supposed to be able to vote multiple times? My incessant clicking has now made "The Ambiance" the number 1 reason for going to Y Combinator.</comment>


Solresol - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solresol <comment><USER2> Always love Tom Scott (and 12tone!)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyC4lLTOyL8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyC4lLTOyL8)

</comment><comment><USER3> Commentary by the conlang critic: [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tZDUVJKo5nY](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tZDUVJKo5nY)

</comment><comment><USER4> This means something...

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2JL0xABlrQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2JL0xABlrQ)

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm curious if this was used for the musical communication in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. I recall then having notes synchronized with colors, which could be the same system shown here.

</comment><comment><USER6> May be interesting for steganography.

</comment><comment><USER7> Been involved in music for 10+ years... first time I've heard solfege referred to as solresol. Neat!

<comment><USER5> If you read the article, they're not the same thing. Solfege is a way of teaching the notes in a major scale, while Solresol is an entire language built on top of that.</comment></comment>


Your TV Is Now a Computer, but Not in a Good Way - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/01/smart-tvs-are-dumb/581059/ <comment><USER2> Putting aside my personal feelings about the spying that "Smart" TVs do on us...

The specific problem described in the article (a TV that won't work properly because of an app that you cannot uninstall), under Australian consumer laws this would not be a problem. I would be able to demand a fix, replacement or refund from the seller.

Of course, that doesn't help people in places with weak consumer laws such as the US.

In a more general sense, I believe it should be illegal for a manufacturer to remotely update firmware in a way that the purchaser is not able to downgrade to the exact configuration that it was at the time of purchase.

I wish our governments would actually work for the people.

</comment><comment><USER3> Economists (at least the sane one) talk about market failure, which means when things being sold for a profit but those who buy them are coming out worse than they would be in a well-functioning market. And example would be where there is price-fixing.

Another type is information asymmetry, which is when the seller knows something the buyer would benefit from knowing but doesn't. An example would be some sells a car as running great but knows it is really a leamon.

What we have here as a case of blatant information asymmetry. Consumers think they are basically buying a TV set, but it is actually doing all sorts of things they have little or know awareness of. And there is an unspoken agreement among the TV set producers that they won't tell the consumers, much less offer them real alternatives.</comment>


Python Library for Learning Binary Trees - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/joowani/binarytree <comment><USER2> Possibly worth noting some other modules for general graph analysis:

[https://graph-tool.skewed.de/](https://graph-tool.skewed.de/)

[https://networkx.github.io/](https://networkx.github.io/)

[http://igraph.org/python/](http://igraph.org/python/)

 _disclaimer_ : I haven't worked with igraph but these all certainly have more overhead involved in getting set up.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is great. Are there plans to add other data structures or are you taking pull requests to do so?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I may create one for linkedlists in the future!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Make one for graphs too please.

</comment><comment><USER5> Cool, I also had a library for drawing binary tree. [https://github.com/msbanik/drawtree](https://github.com/msbanik/drawtree)

</comment><comment><USER6> This is pretty cool</comment>


Richard M Stallman: Steam Is Good For GNU/Linux - <AUTHOR> http://www.muktware.com/4042/richard-m-stallman-steam-good-gnulinux <comment> mike-cardwell Although the title is the same as the one from the article it links to, it is not what he says. He says there are both good and bad things about it. It's good if it stops you using Windows. He still categorises what Steam is doing as unethical.

As Lockyy stated, check out what he _actually_ said here instead: <http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/nonfree-games.html>

<comment><USER2> That seems to be a departure somewhat from the very doctrinal "you have to use all free software or it doesn't matter" (my paraphrasing). By this logic, Ubuntu is good, running GNU/Linux on whatever not-completely-free platform you have is good etc. etc. It's very pragmatic and I agree fully - I just didn't expect RMS to be so pragmatic.

<comment><USER3> He's long had a bit of that game-theoretic view, that it may be worth compromising if you don't think you can win a given situation with a hardline approach. That's the reason for the existence of the LGPL, for example, which is recommended to be used in cases where the quasi-ultimatum of the GPL wouldn't be a successful strategy:

 _Using the ordinary GPL is not advantageous for every library. There are reasons that can make it better to use the Lesser GPL in certain cases. The most common case is when a free library's features are readily available for proprietary software through other alternative libraries. In that case, the library cannot give free software any particular advantage, so it is better to use the Lesser GPL for that library._

 _This is why we used the Lesser GPL for the GNU C library. After all, there are plenty of other C libraries; using the GPL for ours would have driven proprietary software developers to use another—no problem for them, only for us._

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> A link to his actual post is always nicer than a commentary honestly.

<http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/nonfree-games.html>

<comment><USER5> I agree. The OP is full of errors and typos.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Personally, I don't see games the same as other software. Generally, they are more like content (movies, music, etc). Especially in the world of game consoles, where the games come on read only discs.

Games that are able to be "modded" of course add additional value and surely open source games would only expand the possibility, but there aren't the same concerns of my work and data being locked away in a proprietary ecosystem. If a game from 10 years ago stops working, it is disappointing, but not debilitating.

<comment><USER7> A great point. The counter argument would be the recent development with drm that requires online authentication to run, so they can't be sold and _will_ stop working at some point, most likely within 5-10 years.

<comment><USER8> "so they can't be sold and will stop working at some point, most likely within 5-10 years."

This is incorrect, it would be more correct to say that they _could_ stop working at some point.

It's entirely possible (and has been done before) for the company to patch out the DRM before turning servers off or going defunct.

The internet is also full of no-cd cracks that generally circumvent this kind of always-on protection (at the expense of breaking multiplayer) without circumventing serial code or other protections.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is another area where I prefer Raymond's open-source consequentialism to Stallman's free software deontology. Raymond actually takes the time to evaluate the harms (<http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=4371>) we anticipate from closed source software, and shows why we can expect a greater harm from OS or productivity software than from games or elevator firmware.

</comment><comment><USER10>
      (Game art is a different issue, because it isn't software.)

Would anyone be able to explain why RMS has this stance? Game art is just bits and bytes, and are thus recreate-able by others (think of old school sprites for example), why is that so different from code?

<comment><USER11> If it's not source code, he doesn't care how closed or restricted it is. It's what the computer does, not what you do with what the computer does that is his interest.

<comment><USER12> That's fine for justifying the ability to view and modify source code for your own use, but his definition of free extends to being able to freely redistribute it.

What's the difference between that and being allowed to sample or re-edit music and video and redistribute it?

<comment><USER11> He's only interested in the redistribution of source code, that is where his definition of free ends. Simply license the code so you can and the art so you can't and RMS is find and dandy with it. Tight controls on artwork to make money off of is good but tight control on source code is evil.

The closest he gets to extending out of his little bubble is that copyright should be 10 years only and then everything is public.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I think there's a bigger picture that RMS seems to be missing. Simply look in the HN feed and you'll see that Square Enix is partnering with OUYA. OnLive is partnering with OUYA. Steam is coming to Linux. This is about cutting out the middle-man and bringing content to people without the enormous barriers to entry.

This is a coup in waiting and RMS is worried about whether content is free (or "nonfree" in his own words, both in terms of DRM and cost). This is greater freedom for producers of content and consumers alike, but not for tinkerers. It's not the outcome that he wants but it could be one of the most important developments for open source platforms. He needs to step back and assess what's more important - his rigid ideals or measurable progress for open source platforms.</comment>


Mozilla: Ad on Firefox's new tab page was just another experiment - <AUTHOR> https://venturebeat.com/2018/12/31/mozilla-ad-on-firefoxs-new-tab-page-was-just-another-experiment/ <comment><USER2> Wow.

They keep using that word 'experiment' to mean 'I can run whatever code I want on an end user's computer' which is not right. It's an ad. You're pushing ads. It's not the worst thing in the world if you just call it what it is, but using the 'experiments' mechanism to push ads is scummy and to me a violation of trust.

I've been running Firefox inside of Firejail, a sandbox, lately, primarily as a light form of exploit mitigation, and I think maybe you should too, just in case Mozilla decides to experiment with attacking your computer as well.

I think today I'm going to experiment with QuteBrowser and some other more fringe browsers that are available for Linux.

<comment><USER3> the difference may not matter to you but it's not an ad because it's not a _paid_ placement. no personal info is shared up front either.

obviously you'd share info once you click on it. i don't like ads either, but this seems better than the standard track-you-out-the-wazoo ad.

<comment><USER2> Which definition of ad requires it to be a paid placement? As far as I understand it the word advertisement is a pretty broad term. You could advertise for someone for free, perhaps because you have an existing relationship, or perhaps you could advertise for something other than monetary payment. It's an advertisement.

Worse, it's an advertisement, for a commercial service, in a place that I didn't want it to be. The last place I wanted something like that to be, really.

<comment><USER3> we can debate the semantics but i don't think it's a stretch to consider monetary exchange as a feature of advertising (perhaps a more narrow version of your general exchange of value definition). with that said, another commenter noted that this could be paid per action after the fact (CPA), so it could very well be called an ad by any definition.

i agree that we shouldn't place ads everywhere, especially in "safe" places. but i'm also concerned with the viability and longevity of firefox.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's an experiment in hurting the good will of their brand.

I still use Firefox but it's painful sometimes. Not as painful as Chrome, but Mozilla seems determined to come up with unexpected new ways to fuck up Firefox for some reason.

<comment><USER5> It's simple: $$$$$.

Every one of these actions is a short-term cash grab. The real amazing part is how privacy advocates let these transgressions, or what Mozilla calls "experiments", slide.

<comment><USER6> Here's reality, though:

The minimum annual cash burn to have a high quality browser engine, js runtime, and UI seems to be several hundred million dollars.

FF is now utterly dependent on google for cash (and to be fair, google really needs FF to exist to pretend chrome isn't close to a monopoly). But who knows how long that will last and if/when google will exert control. One of the best things for Mozilla to do as an org is to figure out a non-google-dependent revenue stream.

Privacy respecting ads are a good compromise.

<comment><USER7> Yes but Mozilla does a lot more now than produce and maintain software. For example, in 2017 it spent $24m on its internet health project [1].

I'm making no judgement about that but there are two sides to fiscal longevity: getting more money is one, the other is to focus spending.

1\. [https://www.mozilla.org/en- US/foundation/annualreport/2017/](https://www.mozilla.org/en- US/foundation/annualreport/2017/)

<comment><USER8> Those are entirely different buckets of money. Money the foundation spends on things like the IHR, do not come out of the revenue from the Google search deal. Mozilla Foundation and Mozilla Corp are two different entities (though MoFo owns MoCo). In the same way, donations to MoFo do not pay for browser developer salaries.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> If you want to avoid running random experimental mozilla code on your machine without any kind of confirmation needed by you remember to go to about:preferences#privacy in the "Firefox Data Collection and Use" and turn "Allow Firefox to install and run studies" to off.

I would also set the about:config options "network.allow-experiments" and "app.normandy.enabled" to false.

</comment><comment><USER10> Based on their logic ads in newspapers aren't ads because customer information isn't shared with the advertiser until they connect with the ad and visit their store.

<comment><USER3> that's not quite right. newspaper ads are _paid_ placement, while these are not. being paid for placement is an essential feature of advertising. so to differentiate from that, mozilla uses the term "offer" here.

<comment><USER11> Paid placement is just one model of advertisement. Other well known ones are paid per impression, per click, per action. This is obviously the last one.

I guess Mozilla is confident enough not many people understand what CPA ads are to claim they are not ads.

<comment><USER3> that's a fair point, but it still doesn't help the newspaper analogy i was responding to.

i don't like ads either, but i'm ok with mozilla experimenting to find more privacy-respecting revenue streams and lessen their reliance on google.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I hope they randomized it so they can measure the effect of ads on users quitting Firefox or reducing usage.

</comment><comment><USER13> _"This snippet was an experiment to provide more value to Firefox users through offers provided by a partner," a Mozilla spokesperson told VentureBeat. "It was not a paid placement or advertisement. We are continually looking for more ways to say thanks for using Firefox._

Yuck, what a slimey piece of PR babble. I guess all those IE toolbars weren't spyware after all - they were trying to provide _value_ to their users! I guess all those unwanted flyers tucked in my mailbox aren't ads either, they just want to provide me value...

</comment><comment><USER14> how do these people convince themselves that the problem with ads is privacy and tracking? i use an ad blocker so that i _won't see ads_.

<comment> david-gpu I would happily pay a flat $50/month for an ad-free experience where content producers got paid for each of their pages I visit.

<comment><USER15> I, too, would pay $1000 for unlimited use of any supercar I want.

<comment> david-gpu Snarkiness does not help.

Right now publishers make zero from me because I have a couple layers of ad blockers. If I'm willing to pay X for some number of ad-free articles, which does not have to be unlimited, then publishers would be making X dollars more.

<comment><USER15> Yup. That's why I don't pay for HBO, so I totally get it. If they want to make it $2, at least they'd get something from me. Until then, there's always Putlocker. Their loss, really.

<comment> david-gpu HBO is not funded by ads. We are talking about removing ads with a micropayment of equivalent magnitude.

The energy spent feeling smart would be better directed at your reading comprehension.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> While I'm not thrilled Mozilla ran an experiment placing ads in the browser, I am confident that anything they release will be easy to disable via about:config or some other configuration.

However, looking closer at this situation there is a bit of a troubling fact that `experiments.enabled` - the configuration directive used here - doesn't appear in about:config but certainly is being used:

[https://dxr.mozilla.org/mozilla- esr45/source/browser/experim...](https://dxr.mozilla.org/mozilla- esr45/source/browser/experiments/ExperimentsService.js#20)

Looks like someone filed a bug: [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1517147](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1517147)

<comment><USER17> Mozilla's in a weird spot. I understand they need to be profitable but springing these types of "experiments" on users is eroding trust and is damaging long-term. There's got to be a better way to manage these changes so that it doesn't feel like adware is being surreptitiously injected into your web browser.

The Wikipedia method of getting in your face begging for money seems unpleasant as well but at least that doesn't leave you questioning their motives and judgement.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> And Mozilla is wondering why they keep losing usage share...

</comment><comment><USER3> the hubbub over this seems overblown. sure, there is advertising value to booking.com, but if no data is shared with them until you click on the offer, this seems like a decent privacy-respecting effort to find another revenue stream for mozilla that's not google. if you already use booking.com, it's 20 bucks free.

moreover you can turn off snippets in the about:preferences > Home tab.

at least it's not chrome, which constantly and intrusively monitors you for advertising value.

<comment><USER18> Please don't resort to whataboutism to defend a move that would obviously alienate a very core part of Firefox's userbase. Being better than Chrome is a very low bar. This hubbub seems overblown to you, but not to others, and from your comments on this thread, you don't seem to understand why.

Firefox has traditionally been the _only_ major browser that champions the traditional freedoms that many folks (myself included) associate with the web. For me personally, that involves looking at the commercial internet as a subset of the internet as a whole, which is a successful decentralized system which has reached escape velocity. The legacy of Firefox is the legacy of that system. You seem to presume that the corporation and its profitability is necessary for Firefox to be successful, and so a "decent privacy-respecting effort to find another revenue stream" rooted in advertisements is reasonable. I don't agree on principle, and I don't agree in practice, because these things take away the sole differentiator that prevents Firefox from becoming Chrome with less market share.

This is probably the central thing that might make sense for you to think about: what is the market differentiator for Firefox? Why would anyone bother to use it versus Chrome? Being less obnoxious in doing sketchy things but still doing them is not a good reason. Not doing sketchy things is a good reason.

<comment><USER3> i deny your whataboutism and counter with _slippery slope_!

but seriously, i don't think it's a big deal because

1) no personal data is shared up front

2) it's an experiment

3) you can turn it off/block it

4) some people might appreciate the discount

5) there's a wide non-slippery gulf between complete ad blocking and complete tracking

6) mozilla might find a decent compromise between those extremes, which is sorely missing

7) i trust mozilla to course-correct if necessary, as they have in the past.

i don't want ads everywhere either, and i applaud your principles, but please apply them to helping mozilla find non-ad and non-google revenue streams (assuming you're not anti-revenue as well). please work through and put forth a rationale, not an emotional appeal, and refrain from condecscension.

n.b. - i've used firefox since it was called phoenix (v0.3).

<comment><USER18> Please allow me to apologize in advance for the long rant that is to follow.

I think you're proving my point by insinuating that I need to put forth a way for Mozilla to find non-ad and non-Google revenue streams, and I also think you're misunderstanding me by implying I'm putting forward an emotional appeal -- I actually could care less about whether or not Mozilla Corp chooses to uphold the open source values that propelled it to success and relevance, I merely think it's poor decision making to ignore that if they wish to survive.

This, of course, was the heart of the question I posted to you at the end of my comment, and it is also something that you still haven't answered. Let me reiterate it: what is the key differentiator of Firefox? Why do people use it? You are talking about why you don't think it's a big deal. The thing is, whether you (or anyone else) thinks it is a big deal or not is simply not directly relevant to Mozilla and Firefox (although it is a signal). The question of whether it's strategically a good decision for them is actually important. I believe that it is not. To further illustrate that, let me make some arguments by comparison.

Is Python ad-supported? Is the Linux Kernel ad supported? Ruby? Nginx? There are companies that make products which utilize Python or are greatly involved in the Python ecosystem, and those companies contribute back to the ecosystem because it serves their purposes. Likewise with the Linux Kernel, Ruby, Nginx, Python, and many other excellent pieces of open source software. Would you dilute the reference protocols and implementations for these products by diluting key parts of their functionality with advertising in a form that is essentially malware?

No. You wouldn't do that because it would compromise the trust of your core users and ultimately result in negative momentum. You wouldn't do that because ultimately, it's poor product management. Healthy businesses that operate with a division between the open source and closed source areas are well trodden territories, and one of the easiest ways to kill the healthy business line that depends on the open source product's mindshare is to dilute it. This is what you're not addressing, and based on your arguments, it may be something that you don't understand. What Mozilla Corp just did was a bafflingly poor product management decision. It was an experiment with little reward and what appears to be high risk. Time will tell. They may have lost sight of the the need to add value first in order to rake in profits long term, and the need for that to sometimes take longer, more expensive paths to result in the most lucrative circuit.

This, of course, is something that the original core contributors to all of these projects understood quite well. They produced software, but they were first and foremost constructing protocols. Protocols can be created in purely informational theoretic terms and be released into the wild, and upon critical mass of mindshare adoption, operate self-sustainably in their current form. It is certainly the case that money and other resources can scale up the rate of development and scope of these protocols as well as the ecosystem around it, but it is not a requirement. The organization and labor that construct these protocols are motivated by a variety of motivations, but often times, one of the core motivations is the desire to mutate the way that things flow in societal infrastructures by improving them. When attempting to build one of these mutations, focusing on profitability prematurely is ironically one of the easiest ways to doom it, or precluding it from ever occurring. It will get you stuck in local minima and distract you from executing correctly. Why did Google beat every other search engine? They figured out how to do search properly, better than every other competitors.

Mozilla Corporation (if it can) needs to figure out how to do the browser properly, better than every other one of its competitors. If not, it will slowly fade into obsolescence as superior forks or competitors better at its core functionality supplant it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Either Mozilla has been infiltrated by malicious actors or the modern crop of web-focused developers are so numb to current status quo of mass ads and tracking that they are unable to see alternatives or understand why people would be upset.

I find it a bit bizarre.

<comment><USER20> > _" malicious actors"_

Maybe, but my best guess is they've been 'infiltrated' by people with absolutely no ideological commitment to what Mozilla has traditionally stood for and instead view it as "just another job". Probably people with a stronger marketing background than anything else.

I think it's the best explanation for shit like this or the "mr robot tie in." These sort of advertisements aren't the sort of ideas a software developer with a commitment to free software and privacy would think up. These are the sort of ideas that come from people with a marketing background. I doubt these were bottom-up ideas, the order almost certainly came from the top down. I hate to say it but Mozilla's upper and middle management probably need to be gutted if this kind of crap is ever going to stop, and I doubt that will happen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> With things like that, I find moral superiority of Mozilla to be questionable.

</comment><comment><USER22> "It's not an ad" is such a fucking bullshit line. Why does anyone believe Mozilla is different than the others?

</comment><comment><USER23> to those complaining about Mozilla trying to monetize: did you (ever) make a donation to the foundation?

Now it is a good time to show your support to the project.

<comment><USER24> If you disagree with what Mozilla just did, now is a terrible time to show your support for them; given their data-driven philosophy, they'll conclude that running ads on the New Tab page led to an X% increase in donations and do it again in the future.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> A related thread: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18800360](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18800360)

</comment><comment><USER26> I am disappointed.

</comment><comment><USER27> Mozilla's death will be one of the saddest dead-horse-beatings to be ever seen. Personally I've switched to Chrome after so many years of using Firefox and I'm not looking back. I'll be stabbed in the back, but I won't say I didn't expect it! Also the knife in my back will be placed by competent people, keeping my bleeding to a minimum ^_^

<comment><USER28> I've switched because chrome manages my accounts seamlessly across my Android phone and Desktop. It's an unfair advantage Google has. I don't know how Mozilla can compete in the long run.

<comment><USER27> From your answer, I assume you own an Android phone. Mozilla could compete because Firefox has Sync, but Firefox on Android is some seriously laggy shit with built-in ads, so it's going to be hard for them to win.

<comment><USER29> While I agree ff on Android has big lag problems, where are the built in ads?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> It's just a prank.</comment>


Looking for a research project? USENET style scoring applied to web - <AUTHOR> http://idea-tank.borud.no/2011/05/usenet-style-scoring-applied-to-search.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Looks like the DNS entry for idea-tank.borud.no had somehow disappeared. Have fixed it, but it is going to take a bit for the change to propagate. Sorry about that.</comment>