The Age of Unregulated Social Media Is Over - <AUTHOR> https://www.justsecurity.org/52346/age-unregulated-social-media/ <comment><USER2> The problem we're experiencing is what I've been calling "humanity at scale." The vast overwhelming majority of people can be perfectly fine, courteous, thoughtful, engaging, but if just 0.1% of the 3 billion internet users are lacking empathy, argue in bad faith, harass, threaten, etc., we're still dealing with 3 million people. And if those people don't particularly have much better to do, and can post pretty often, then you have the worst segments of humanity having a magnified voice.

The recent focus of troll farms and political interference increases that number by introducing people who wouldn't be interesting in doing it for free, but will gladly do it for a paycheck.

And then you have the social influence of all these voices saying and doing the worst thing and modifying the behavior of internet users who otherwise would never consider doing these things at all. This behavior becomes normalized where it wasn't before.

We used to think it was a matter of anonymity, but I don't think that's it, we've all encountered plenty of people willing to do these things under their real (or easily traceable) names.

I think it's just good ol' fashioned peer pressure, where the worst elements get the most influence and the best elements are easily ignored.

<comment><USER3> _> And if those people don't particularly have much better to do, and can post pretty often_

...and because a huge chunk of them are economically null NEETs and ironic fascism has mutated into real fascism...

We're pretty well boned unless something changes, huh.

<comment><USER4> I'm genuinely curious if it ever was ironic, or if irony was just a convenient excuse and recruitment tool. What do you think?

<comment><USER3> From my experience, I suspect it was a little of both. A little sugar makes the medicine go down, and all that. Sell it to kids who don't know any better, and let the ironic nature filter away over time. What comes to mind the ironic/pseudoironic use of fascist and totalitarian tropes for Warhammer 40K now turning into the use of the same memes and ideas in a new context, celebrating Donald Trump as the "God Emperor" and portraying liberals/cucks/whoever-they-hate-the-most-in-that-particular-moment as the "xenos".

<comment><USER5> I think we often underestimate how much pretending to be or do something can make it real.

<comment><USER2> _"We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be."_ \- Kurt Vonnegut

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The fact that the new rules, whatever they will be, are so blatantly politically motivated (don't kid yourself, _none_ of this would be happening if Clinton had won the election), suggests that there is approximately zero chance that they will be politically neutral.

</comment><comment><USER7> Unfortunately, the most likely outcome is a society-damaging overreaction.

Angry people will still look for other like-minded people with whom they can share their grievances. The Internet makes it possible for larger groups to meet, talk, complain, and bond. When these folks get kicked off Facebook, substitute ecosystems will pop up on WhatsApp, some other social media app. Are "we" going to start restricting encryption next, just so "we" can keep the next unlikable candidate out of office? Not worth it IMHO.

<comment><USER8> I'm not sure that substitute ecosystems are a bad thing? People are more likely to emulate what they see out in the open rather than what happens in darker corners of the Internet. Scale matters.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> How do we get lawmakers to understand the difference between the data going over an internet connection, the various transport protocols being used, and the end result that's being rendered in the browser?

If this is done poorly, by regulating network traffic overall like the FCC seems to want to do, we'll start to have real issues with overreach. Web content, streaming content, game traffic, etc. will all be held to some standard, or set of standards.

We, as the tech community, could get out in front of the problem. Some of issues raised in the article stem from the combination of almost effortless publishing at a massive scale, combined with complete anonymity.

We could define a standard that would allow for some kind of traceability or transparency, maybe public key cryptography, to prove identity. Social media sites like Facebook could voluntarily implement the standard. Browsers would be able to render some kind of simple UI indicator to mark content source trust, just like we have a lock to signify HTTPS today.

We can either wait and see what happens, or propose a technical and voluntary solution that would allow public internet traffic to remain as free as it does today.

Edit: it would be in Facebook's best interest to implement such a standard, because they clearly realize they have to do _something_ , and this wouldn't get in the way of their ad revenue.

</comment><comment><USER10> Oh, great, can't wait until social media companies become arbiters of truth and outright prevent you from reading things they've deemed unfit.

<comment><USER11> They _are_ arbiters of truth whether they choose that role or not. The question is only who (or what) chooses, andd how well they do that job. The obligation cannot be shirked.

<comment><USER10> They aren't really. They are mostly acting as a platform, not going through and determining what is true and false.

<comment><USER12> The problem is that Facebook was presenting truth and lies in identical ways. People should be able (and willing) to dig in and find out what is true for themselves, but that takes time and effort.

<comment><USER10> I don't wasn't Facebook to act as an arbiter and decide for me what's true or false.

<comment><USER11> If Facebook itself does not, _then those with the power to game Facebook itself will do so,_ because there is a gain to be had by disseminating disinformation, propaganda, distraction, fomenting distrust, etc., etc., etc.

 _What you actually do want, whether you realise it or not, are well-formed, well-behaved, epistemic systems._ Note that the original false dichotomy I referenced was between _no_ regulation of this and _unaccountable_ regulation.

The fact that that is in fact _not_ the entire universe of possibilities seems to be being studiously ignored.

<comment><USER10> Whatever metric they choose is almost certainly much more likely to be gamed by powerful people. One doesn't need to look much further than PropOrNot, or the Google changes to address supposed fake news, or the immediate reactions to the Russia indictment, to know that any drive to "eliminate fake news" will immediately be turned against independent media and causes like BLM, opposition to the Dakota Access Pipeline, any political figure not popular with Beltway types (like Sanders or Stein), etc.

I do enjoy being told what I actually want, though, so keep using that not-at- all-patronizing rhetorical maneuver.

<comment><USER11> Theories and criteria of truth is _not_ a greenfield:

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

[https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/truth/](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/truth/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm not sure what the solution is, but it's definitely not doing nothing. The 2016 election has proved this.

<comment><USER14> Social media didn't cause Clinton to lose. The DNC and Clinton lost.

Clinton didn't do the work needed to win, flat out. The DNC didn't run a solid primary process either. I am not sure Sanders would have won that primary, but the events leading up to the convention were appalling.

<comment><USER13> I completely agree with you. I believe that Clinton was a horrible candidate and I don't think that half of the people who voted for Trump are "deplorables".

But wouldn't you agree it's still a bad thing that Russia is trying to influence our elections? Who knows how much worse it will be next time if we don't do something to stop them.

<comment><USER14> I don't believe they had any real impact.

And, if we actually clean our politics up, that noise won't even rate.

Run Medicare For All, strong commits, nationwide, 80 percent support issue and watch non voters come right out of the woodwork to dominate.

<comment><USER15> _I don 't believe they had any real impact._

It's amazing that massive amounts of money are spent on election campaigns, precisely _because_ candidates believe voters can be swayed. Similarly, massive amounts are spent on on online platforms, because businesses and organizations believe that it's an effective way to reach people.

But combine the two (use of online platforms to attempt to influence an election), and we hear confident pronouncements that it could not have had any impact. It simply doesn't add up.

<comment><USER10> In fact very few people -- nearly none -- are truly "swing voters" who could plausibly vote for either candidate. Most swing voters identify as "leaning" Dem or Republican and vote with that party as reliably as registered voters of it. Winning an election is about mobilizing your supporters and getting them to show up to the polls. Understanding of this is one reason why there are so many contentious changes to voting laws popping up.

<comment><USER14> You are not factoring in the very large number of people who currently aren't voting at all. They haven't really bought into the system, or they are jaded, something.

Those people, giving something to vote for, and explicit good that they can identify with, we'll improve turnout numbers, and can dramatically change the election outcomes.

<comment><USER10> I think I rather explicitly am factoring them in. The party that wins is the party that convinces more of its supporters to go to the polls, not the party that completely changes voters' views with compelling arguments. Obviously whoever doesn't go to the polls is someone who was not mobilized.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It'd be interesting for Facebook and the like to provide a report to users of all the content they were shown that originated from accounts linked to foreign actors.

</comment><comment><USER17> I worry more about measures that may be taken by platforms to prevent using pseudonyms (Facebook is a big enemy on this respect) in the mistaken belief that real names (or "authentic names", as Facebook calls it) would make people interact in ways that don't cause harm. Add to this making surveillance a de facto experience of having an online presence and humanity (as we know it) would be doomed.

</comment><comment><USER18> I'm severely disinterested in regulated social media, even moreso than social media under any other conditions.

If I can't write fiction, then why write words ever? Be it on the internet, be it on a website, be it on an _extra special_ website that people seem to find more important than most other websites.

<comment><USER6> The government is happy for you to write words, as long as it's not anywhere that anyone will see them. (Unless they're words the government approves of, of course.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Surely it can't be the majority of Americans in growing, significant economic need driving lack of confidence in "modern democracies."

Ours is very deeply corrupt. The ONLY place that is really being discussed is outside of equally owned media channels.

Don't like that state of affairs, but failure to incorporate it into this problem set is ripe for abuse.

<comment><USER10> Russia panic is largely just a way to avoid the discussion of deep discontent, which did not need to be imported.

<comment><USER12> Russia spent a lot of time and money amplifying that discontent, so they clearly thought it needed to be "imported". It's also important to remember that they amplified discontent on both sides of the spectrum, because that increases discord and makes our political process look (more) dysfunctional.

<comment><USER10> Yeah it was all a harmonious idyll before those 13 guys got on Facebook.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Relative volume and value of U.S. currency in circulation by bill denomination - <AUTHOR> http://www.randalolson.com/2014/06/20/dolla-dolla-bill-yall/

<comment><USER2> I would wager the lack of a need for a 200 dollar bill is card payments becoming more popular.</comment>


Refer.ly (YC S12) Lets You Earn Cash and Donate It To Charities - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/04/referly-donations

<comment><USER2> It is not very clear how much you actually earn.</comment>


Scientists might have spotted dark matter in the Perseus Cluster - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2016/02/the-perseus-signal-what-we-found-could-not-be-explained-by-known-physics-weekend-feature.html <comment><USER2> No fewer than three autoplaying video advertisements that made it past my hosts file. Ugh.</comment>


France rules Google must pay news firms for content - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-google-france/france-rules-google-must-pay-news-firms-for-content-idUSKCN21R14X <comment><USER2> The actual PDF of the decision is there: [https://www.autoritedelaconcurrence.fr/sites/default/files/i...](https://www.autoritedelaconcurrence.fr/sites/default/files/integral_texts/2020-04/20mc01.pdf)

The arguments are:

\- Press freedom is a fundamental right

\- The press is not in its best state right now in France, so hitting them (for example, removing them from the search result from Google, which is in a monopoly position) is dangerous for the press freedom

\- Google did not try to negotiate a fair price for the news, with the publisher

\- Google applying a "zero price" for newspaper is not reasonable, as google has an economic incentive (users using its search engine) to display the news paper content in its search engine and in google news

\- Google is in a monopoly decision, as most of the traffic of the newspapers comes from Google

\- Google is discriminatory as it applies to newspapers equal treatments, even if they are in different situations (newspaper with protected content, and newspaper without protected content)

\- Google tries to bypass the spirit of the law, which is for newspapers to get paid for their content by people using their content, and Google can do so because it's in a monopoly position in search

\- Google does not has objectives explanations regarding its behavior besides « we don't pay for content », but paid for content in the past (for example, the french agency AFP)

The decision is manyfold:

\- Google has to enter negociations, in a fair manner (I think this means no « we will not pay anything » unless they can back it off);

\- The price decided by the negociations will be applied retroactively, from the date the new law was passed

\- They have to report to the authority every three months the progress they make on this

\- Restore the service they provided to newspapers to what was in place before the new law was voted

Let's note the court making this decision can not decide what the law is, and applies it as it was voted; even if it thinks some part of the law sucks, they cannot change it, it's not their role in the justice system.

<comment><USER3> > Google is discriminatory as it applies to newspapers equal treatments, even > if they are in different situations

This would appear to be the opposite of what "discriminatory" means.

<comment><USER4> Maybe not in French legalese.

<comment><USER3> That could certainly be the case, but...

(1) It would still be disturbing if the meaning of "discrimination" in French legalese was the exact opposite of its meaning everywhere else including vernacular French. War is peace.

(2) I have a sneaking suspicion that the meaning of "discrimination" in French law is _sometimes_ this and _sometimes_ the ordinary meaning, and if that's true it's a much worse state of affairs than just the legal meaning being opposed to the ordinary meaning.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wish Google would finally go with the kneejerk reaction of just unlisting all these sites from Google Search and News.

<comment><USER6> Essentially France has said Google, being a monopoly, is not allowed to refuse to provide this service. They must do it, they must pay for it.

<comment><USER7> Solution: keep running google news, but without the snippets. You search for news, you get a set of mute links to articles from various sources.

<comment><USER8> The ruling states they _must_ index, provide snippets, and pay.

Google did remove the snippets, which hurt the news sites traffic, such is mostly Google referrals. This ruling makes it so they must index and pay.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think this is the actual judgement?

[https://www.autoritedelaconcurrence.fr/fr/communiques-de- pre...](https://www.autoritedelaconcurrence.fr/fr/communiques-de- presse/droits-voisins-lautorite-fait-droit-aux-demandes-de-mesures- conservatoires)

This techcrunch post has more details than Reuters:

[https://techcrunch.com/2020/04/09/frances-competition- watchd...](https://techcrunch.com/2020/04/09/frances-competition-watchdog- orders-google-to-pay-for-news-reuse/)

Abusive practices the agency says it suspects Google of at this stage of its investigation are:

The imposition of unfair trading conditions; circumvention of the law; and discrimination (i.e. because of its unilateral policy of zero renumeration for all publishers)

<comment><USER10> > discrimination (i.e. because of its unilateral policy of zero renumeration > for all publishers)

Umm ianal but isn't saying all publishers don't get paid the opposite of discrimination?

If they said some American companies get paid but not french etc I would totally get it.

<comment><USER11> Inal either but the way the court phrases it in the press release is that google negociated a free use licence with everyone, regardless of their financial situations, using their dominant position on the market to "force" everyone.

A way of seeing this is that it might be fine for the big players for national and international news (Le monde, Le figaro ...) , but probably has a much bigger impact on small news outlet, because if they dont agree they are at a disadvatage obviously, so they cannot afford to say no, but at the same time they might already be in a difficult financial position, and that revenu might have helped.

The key part is that google had no real justification according to the court to treat everyone the same way, and that consitutes discrimination.

It seems a bit weird to me too but you could make a parallel to a school that has a set meal price for every student, regardless of parent income.This would obviously be discriminating towards the poorer students.

Now whether google is a public service the way school lunches are is up for debate but i think it basically comes down to equality vs equity

<comment><USER12> The justification for the remuneration agreement would seem to me to be that each individual news outlet is worth nothing, or very close to nothing, to Google. What provides value to Google is having quality search results about a particular topic in the native language. This is satisfied by some portion of news outlets allowing themselves to be indexed, foreign news sources, and independent sources (i.e. blogs and Twitter).

And my suspicion is that the value to Google is likely inversely proportional to the size of the news source, and I think the smaller publishers are hurting the most. I care to some degree that the NYT shows up in Google (but not much, really) whereas I couldn't care in the least about whether a local news paper in West Virginia is indexed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> As a European, I have to say: The sooner non-innovative media companies die, the better. Replacing Google is hard, but replacing Google News, really is not. Ignoring reality and trying to lobby the EU to an absert extent will harm their business in the long term.

There are organizations with working business models like the German public stations[1] (ARD, ZDF, DW, arte and others), which are publicly funded and thus prepared for the future. These are even trying to innovate, e.g. by providing textual content for the web or by trying for years to create a single unified Netflix competitor for their video content, but they are being shut down with lawsuits from companies like Bertelsmann, too (in a similiar fashion like the story about the public weather data, recently here on HN).

I think at this point these companies have to wake up and realize that their old model is lost. I see four options for them:

1) Get in line and try to find shelter within those publicly funded systems. Use your lobbying budget to accomplish that.

2) Be the best. Find a niche. There will always be room for a few remaining.

3) Team up and create your own system.

4) Die. But don't slow everyone down endlessly trying to rent seek based on the working competition or the threats form US companies.

In the end, I don't see Europe losing anything to the US here, but instead the publicly funded organizations surving. When I look at an other market providing a human right, namely healtcare, I don't see Europe being worse off in the end at all.

[1] These stations do have their own problems: Endless layers of management and administration.

</comment><comment><USER14> I think seeing this as an antagonistic situation between Google and the news sites is less than ideal. Google provides value to the news sites by driving traffic to them, and Publishers provide value to Google by helping provide more complete search results. If we could help the Publishers have more sustainable ways to make meaningful revenues off traffic once it visits the site, they wouldn't be trying to bite the arm that feeds them traffic. But instead of the news industry and the government trying to find ways to sustainably pay for news in an "information abundance" economy, they're turning their sights to a company that happens to have a large wallet but has already demonstrated it would get more value out of simply turning off news (like in Spain) than paying for the content because the fair value of showing the snippets or even the article links is far too low to it.

<comment><USER12> User generated content has vastly decreased the value proposition of newspapers. Looking at sites like Reddit, a lot of users read the headline, maybe skim the first paragraph or two of the article, and then go straight to the comments. Where people would once have read articles from multiple view points about a particular issue, they now read the headline and get opposing views in the comments.

This is exacerbated by the fact that there are hundreds or thousands of news sources all paying someone to write an article about the same bit of information.

The industry is going to end up collapsing to a much smaller number of organizations and they'll likely become profitable as the user views aren't split among so many sources.

</comment></comment><comment> m-p-3 Are they (news firms) going to charge a fee to access RSS feeds at some point now?

That judgment seems to be absurd, especially if they only provided a snippet of the article for data discovery purpose.

I'm not sure that would help those news firms if they get blackholed from Google altogether.

</comment><comment><USER15> While I an not a fan of google for a lot reasons this decision is pretty wacky.

This ruling says google must provide a service, but they must also pay those who use it... How does this make any sense. It's akin to the government forcing someone to stand at a street corner shouting and advertising for someone. However, every-time a persons goes into the business because your advertising you must pay that business...

Like can google just pull out France? I don't see how anyone could negotiate under such insanity?

Like the bigger issue is BS like AMP that will take traffic away from the sites. Why is that not a concern... Where as indexing things is an old idea. Like if you applied this to card catalogs, phone books, and heck references in papers this ruling makes no sense.

</comment><comment><USER16> What happens if you make cost an inverse ranking factor?

Structure your ranking algorithm to allocate a proportionate share of traffic to french news sites, given relevancy to a query topic, and rank order publishers by negotiated cost?

Given there is SUBSTANTIAL value in a news publisher being sent traffic, in terms of advertising and circulation, the power law in search engine clicks should keep cost paid to a bare minimum.

Unless the French are going full dystopia and picking the winners within their own markets?

</comment><comment><USER17> So I have to pay if I want to make my own news site that have links to French news website?

Best way to ensure that Google stay super dominant.

</comment><comment><USER18> Website monetization [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Website_monetization](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Website_monetization)

Web Monetization API (ILP: Interledger Protocol)

> _A JavaScript browser API which allows the creation of a payment stream from > the user agent to the website._

> _Web Monetization is being proposed as a #W3C standard at the Web Platform > Incubator Community Group._

[https://webmonetization.org/](https://webmonetization.org/)

Interledger: Web Monetization API [https://interledger.org/rfcs/0028-web- monetization/](https://interledger.org/rfcs/0028-web-monetization/)

Khan Academy, for example, accepts BAT (Basic Attention Token) micropayments/microdonations that e.g. Brave browser users can opt to share with the content producers and indexers. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_(web_browser)#Basic_Atte...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_\(web_browser\)#Basic_Attention_Token)

Web Monetization w/ Interledger should enable any payments system with low enough transaction costs ("ledger-agnostic, currency agnostic") to be used to pay/tip/donate to content producers who are producing unsensational, unbiased content that people want to pay for.

Paywalls/subscriptions and ads are two other approaches to funding quality journalism.

Should journalists pay ScholarlyArticle authors whose studies they publish summaries of _without even citing the DOI /URL and Title_; or the journals said ScholarlyArticles are published in? [https://schema.org/ScholarlyArticle](https://schema.org/ScholarlyArticle)

</comment><comment><USER19> I work for a popular web portal in my country and we also have news aggregator. There are revenue sharing deals with quite a few news providers where we share ad revenue when we show those snippets. Both portal and news providers win...

</comment><comment><USER20> What is to stop someone from starting a "newspaper" in France, hiring the cheapest freelancers possible to write whatever (or generating stories with AI) and collecting free money from Google?

</comment><comment><USER21> I wonder if France ultimately wants Google to pay for the content and the News sites to pay Google for listing them, reaching a net of zero for both sides, other than the taxes that France banks from both sides.

<comment><USER22> does France get tax revenue in this scenario? Usually corporate expenses are tax deductible, ie you only pay tax on profit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Europe's not going to stop until the internet is totally burned to the ground, are they?

<comment><USER24> The internet was never going to last anyway. Every country wants to impose its own laws on it in order to guarantee the rights of their citizens. Instead of one international network, we'll end up with many national networks with strictly controlled boundaries.

I'm fortunate I got to know the true internet. Truly one of the great wonders of this world.

<comment><USER6> The Internet isn't a magical virtual destination immune to the law. It's a communication technology, and like fax, the telephone, and the postal system before it, it runs within the framework of laws of the countries it operates in.

<comment><USER24> "The" law? There are as many as there are sovereign nations. Are foreigners subjected to your country's laws when they post on your site? No. Your laws cannot be enforced because those people aren't subjected to it. Like an embassy on foreign soil, you have no actual power over those people.

This very site's terms of service infringes my rights by requiring arbitration. Can I do anything about it by legal means? Who knows? Could I even sue them to begin with? Could they even sue me? Do the terms even matter at all?

<comment><USER6> So essentially each country has control of the physical structure within their borders. This is not different from any other technology.

Now, a country can then hold anything they control as collateral for any other demand they make: France could block a site from the country, they could seize any assets that site has in the country, or arrest personnel in that country. France has a vested interest in not overplaying their hand, such that companies won't operate there at all, but effectively a country has complete power to demand anything in exchange for access to their country.

In that way, the Internet is not subject to any country's law in only that country, but every country's law in every country, insofar as those countries are places they want to do business.

Nothing here is new and the US is traditionally the largest user of this sort of power.

<comment><USER24> > France could block a site from the country

That's exactly what will turn the international network into regional ones with tightly controlled borders. Large groups of people simply won't be reachable from the outside. My country blocked WhatsApp for several days when it couldn't decrypt messages for the benefit of an investigation.

> they could seize any assets that site has in the country, or arrest > personnel in that country

And then countries will start requiring that all data concerning their citizens be stored on computers located on their soil and therefore under their jurisduction. That almost made it into law here. How many sites are just gonna block the entire country in response to that? How many are going to be blocked for not complying?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> The problem is that "press freedom" as a right should not mean "The press MUST receive leads through all search engines and the search engines MUST pay for doing so".

"Press freedom" historically means that the press can publish anything factual, artistic, or opinion based without fear of government censorship or retribution.

We are seeing the EU and various EU countries redefine fundamental terms for entirely different things, to the point where the original rights are completely eroded, and instead we have a system that effectively serves special interest groups in Europe.

An infamous example of this is the "right to be forgotten". In Europe there is now a process where individuals can effectively censor the internet/press from publishing factual information about their past transgressions. Ostensibly this is to allow the individual to move on with their life. For example, someone convicted of murder has successfully removed articles related to his murder from the internet (in Europe). This is incredibly dangerous. Why should the government get to decide what fact based censorship is irrelevant or not? I certainly think it is pertinent for society to know about past murders.

The EU is slowly eroding all individual liberties, while its markets are becoming less competitive and its welfare state expands to unprecedented levels. Free speech and freedom or religion are much worse in Europe. Germany is run by a Christian political party. In addition to no longer being able to advocate for Nazi politics in Germany, now you cannot speak about certain facts that have occurred in the past. Now France is attempting this novel "shake down of tech giants we cannot compete with" strategy, which is frankly a strategy that was until recently more likely to be seen in an Authoritarian country like China than the country that was the inspiration for the US independence.

<comment><USER26> > _the country that was the inspiration for the US independence._

The United States declared independence in 1776, and the storming of the Bastille was in 1789.

I'm pretty sure the arrow of causality runs in the opposite direction from what you describe.

<comment><USER25> Clearly factually my statement is incorrect. However there certainly was a lot of cross-polination of enlightenment ideas between the early US, France and England.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I get that HN hates journalists, but other than that I don't see why people are on google's side here. Is it about personal convenience?

If you want to scrape someone else's work and display it next to your own ads, it doesn't seem crazy to ask you to pay up.

<comment><USER28> I don't necessarily disagree about Google being required to pay publishers to make money off of having snippets of their content in Google News.

But requiring Google to both index all websites (in a separate attempt to mitigate the monopoly effect) __and __requiring Google to pay publishers to include content in search results certainly has a bad smell to it.

If Google had the option to not index the websites, then I'd say it's fine.

<comment><USER29> Google did have the option. They chose instead to pressure newspapers into signing free agreements to add their content back. Google obviously thought it had found a loop around the law, and the French courts saw through it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Google needs to finally stop being a parasite - both on the economy and other people's work. The content is not theirs. Pay up and support the ecosystem, if you want to use it.

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h How exactly is Google the parasite here? They are only providing links to content since the publishers didn't want them to provide snippets or previews. So literally the only thing that Google is providing is a link to the content on the publisher's site.

<comment><USER29> Google was still providing full content, just after getting the providers to sign free contracts. THAT was the behavior the French court came down on them for. They were given the option to just provide link and title and chose to try and have their cake and eat it too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> While this is a complicated situation, it's clear that Google is profiting greatly off of journalistic works while these same organizations are struggling to survive.

<comment><USER32> I think that in a strict interpretation of current copyright attitudes, web spidering/mirroring in general is probably an infringement if you then republish any part of that content in any way for your own benefit. Imagine if you made a "Google for Twitter" today; you'd be sued out of existence. I believe precisely this happened with LinkedIn, IIRC.

I think the concept of copyrights is fundamentally incompatible with an open web, ultimately. It should be that a webserver sending you a response to your request is an implicit usage license. After all, the webserver doesn't _have_ to send you anything. If it does, we take that to be an implicit agreement that you can have and use the data. That should be codified as law, because it is the current convention.</comment></comment>


Facebook Down, Like Buttons Vanish, Internet Implodes - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/23/facebook-down/ <comment><USER2> They closed shop after DHH's scathing criticism.

<comment><USER3> DHH's fantasies realized.

<comment><USER4> More like zuckerberg making a statement to detractors, how important they are.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Well somebody has screwed it up on their end. Only the www record is not resolving, a lot of the others are, for eg:

<http://developers.facebook.com/>

      $ nslookup facebook.com ns1.facebook.com
      Server:	ns1.facebook.com
      Address:	18.104.22.168#53

      Name:	facebook.com
      Address: 22.214.171.124
      Name:	facebook.com
      Address: 188.8.131.52
      Name:	facebook.com
      Address: 220.127.116.11

      $ nslookup www.facebook.com ns1.facebook.com
      Server:	ns1.facebook.com
      Address:	18.104.22.168#53

      Non-authoritative answer:
      *** Can't find www.facebook.com: No answer

(YMMV based on local cache etc.)

<comment><USER6> I imagine that would be a relatively easy fix, more likely they took the record down to debug internally without getting flooded with requests.

<comment><USER5> It looks like you were right - they dropped that record to stop the requests coming in

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> It's hard to overstate the damage this is causing for merchants that prominently display FB like on their pages - lots of big ugly blank spaces / errors out there.

Realize this is temporary but shows why if you install any external vendor tool as a part of your site make contingency plans that switch on errors.

<comment><USER7> Or people who rely on Facebook for shared login...that must be down as well.

<comment><USER8> Well frankly, If you _rely_ on some other business for such critical functionality, you deserve to lose.

<comment><USER9> Unfortunately its difficult to avoid relying on other businesses for crucial systems.

Example: Payment Processing, try building a business, especially an online one, without depending on Paypal, or at least Mastercard/Visa.

Sure you can reduce it by say not having FB Connect as the only log-on option but the simple fact is that you will almost always have to depend on other businesses, the best you can do is diversify and hope for the best.

<comment><USER7> Exactly...people made this same argument a few years back when Amazon S3 went down for a few hours. Just have a few different options, and the chance that they will all be down at the same time is pretty slim.

<comment><USER8> If you have a few options, then you don't _rely_ on a single company, do you?

<comment><USER9> Yes and No. If you have a few options than your entire business won't come grinding to a halt but if half of your customers choose to use FB Connect as their login option than they likely don't care that FB's down, or that people with email logins can still access your site. To 50% of your user-base your site has failed and so in that sense I would say that you still rely on FB for your business.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> cauliflower farms everywhere are withering for lack of water.

<comment><USER11> Please don't downvote me. I am not a native speaker. But I still don't get it. Someone care to explain ;-)

<comment><USER12> FarmVille.

<comment><USER13> As a non facebook user, I didn't get it either... :)

<comment><USER14> I use Facebook (sometimes), played FarmVille and Farm Town up until this January, and I STILL didn't get it right off. Guess pulling out of those games was a good idea after all. :)

<comment><USER13> My co-worker just told me his mother is level 137 at Farmville :) Apparently she spends 6 hours a day playing it...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This affects me in no direct way. I officially have a good life.

<comment><USER16> Same here, I already have most of Facebook's domains in my hosts file. I haven't seen a Like button in ages.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> And that, my friends, is why its risky to build your business on top of FB Graph API.

In terms of reliability, FB is not twitter, but it certainly isn't google either...

<comment><USER18> I came here to post this same thing, but I just started thinking about it. When was the last time FB went down like this and took a bunch of core functionality down with it? Has it ever happened? And how long are they down...30 mins? Is that 30 mins of downtime every few years really more damaging than that the (potential) value that integration with the graph API or FB Connect can bring? Yes, you look like an idiot to a few users, but maybe you have 100x as many users as you'd have otherwise. I think the real reason not to build your business on the FB API (or Twitter or whoever) is strategic, not because of potential downtime.

<comment><USER17> You're right, I should have phrased it "And that, my friends, is _one of the many reasons_ its risky to build your _entire_ business on top of FB Graph API."

Just went through a nightmare building a product entirely on top of fb graph. FB fails, a lot. And not just in terms of downtime, in terms of inconsistently implemented technology, poor documentation, lack of transparency, inconsistent policies etc.

Not saying don't use FB ever, just that it's risky.

<comment><USER18> Oh, don't get me wrong. I won't do FB apps for clients anymore, despite the high demand and great pay. It's just way too stressful to have the clients always angry at me because of the platform's shortcomings.

<comment><USER17> Amen! I tell ya, I have had so much stress over the last few months as the direct result of this. Well put.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Their SSL site still continues to simply not work:

      www.facebook.com uses an invalid security certificate.

      The certificate is only valid for the following names:
      a248.e.akamai.net , *.akamaihd.net

This is the biggest problem with the SSL PKI. It is partially responsible for the lackluster deployment of SSL. We need to switch to a TOFU model supplemented by a more nimble version of the current PKI for first connect acceptance.

You would not believe how often I run into problems just trying to use SSL on _major_ _sites_. If you can't trust a large organizations like facebook and akamai to mess up SSL support during problems, you simply will never get it deployed well on all the rest of the sites.

SSL is simply a poor user experience. Twitter's SSL site often goes down more often than the main site too. SSL users get a second class experience and that is the most damming thing I can think of for a technology where deployment is so critical.

<comment><USER20> Excellent points, but please be sure to simply never split infinitives. ;)

<comment><USER21> I shall continue to boldly split all the infinitives I please. We speak _English_ , despite the best efforts of medieval Latin grammarians.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Everyone should calm down and realize that Facebook being down for a few hours is not going to kill anyone's business. It may cause trouble and disruption, but not anything more intense than a daily commute in Los Angeles.

That being said, this makes me question Facebook's ability to deliver on the "Social Graph" promise. If they truly want to build a completely social internet, this kind of downtime can't happen.

<comment><USER23> > _"If they truly want to build a completely social internet, this kind of > downtime can't happen."_

Why not?

Even commerce sites such as Amazon or Ebay have downtime. Studies demonstrate that unless you're selling a perfectly commoditized generic product, obtainable instantly from multiple sources, downtime doesn't materially impact revenue.

Users seem to manage to "queue up" their intended actions and do them when a site is back. And it's not like Facebook's users can gravitate en masse to anywhere else.

The founding principle of the internet is not "5 nines" uptime for all components, but resiliency. Switch off your mail server for a few hours; you'll still get all your mail when you turn it back on.

"Kids these days" build apps and APIs (and sites that rely on APIs) that are much more brittle, because today's developers are spoiled into thinking communication conduits are reliable. They're not.

The fabric fails, so your site, your apps, your protocols, should fail gracefully -- and recover gracefully later.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I like how their API response time chart intentionally doesn't have a Y scale. But clearly it is busted:

[http://www.facebook.com/developers/chart.php?type=at_total_t...](http://www.facebook.com/developers/chart.php?type=at_total_time)

<comment><USER25> Oh dear, DNS error on that link.

<comment><USER26> As somebody pointed out, the www record was removed probably to stop the barrage of requests coming in.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> As an aside I notice that 'Facebook' is not a trending topic on Twitter. Seems the term must be blacklisted in some way along with all the swears and other undesirable terms.

Which seems a bit underhand by Twitter.

Edit: I notice that 'Facebook isnt working' has appeared now. I've blogged about this issue here: [http://blog.dansingerman.com/post/1174729229/twitter- mostly-...](http://blog.dansingerman.com/post/1174729229/twitter-mostly-a- force-for-good) (if anyone cares)

<comment><USER5> during one of the twitter hacks the blacklist application was accessed and facebook was on the list (as was google and a bunch of other brand names)

<comment><USER28> Wow. So twitter censors disparaging comments about companies? Wow.

<comment><USER29> More likely that terms that are continuously mentioned in huge numbers (and therefore don't count as "trending") are omitted.

<comment><USER30> There are more principled ways to do that than a blacklist, though, like looking at current frequency compared to typical frequency. That way even something commonly mentioned could still genuinely be trending if it gets mentioned much more than usual on a particular day.

(It's possible there are scale-related reasons that make this infeasible, though.)

<comment><USER24> Just not tracking the frequency of the most common words that will never be in the trending topics is probably a big performance win. I'm sure there is an additional blacklist that includes stuff like "and" and "the".

<comment><USER31> You know you've made it when your brand name is a stopword.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> In researching web performance DNS configurations issues are common problem. It is usually related to www.foo.com and foo.com being configured differently. This seems to be at a high level the issue with facebook.com. if you go to "facebook.com" the DNS will resolve correctly, but it will redirect you to www.facebook.com. I guess they could stop the redirection and fix the problem immediately, or wait till the sorry.ak.facebook.com.edgesuite.net is fixed.

=====www.facebook.com

new-host-3:dpu2 robertbuffone$ dig -trace www.facebook.com ;; Warning, ignoring invalid type race

; <<>> DiG 9.6.0-APPLE-P2 <<>> -trace www.facebook.com ;; global options: +cmd ;; Got answer: ;; ->>HEADER<<\- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 19626 ;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 4, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0

;; QUESTION SECTION: ;www.facebook.com. IN A

;; ANSWER SECTION: www.facebook.com. 0 IN CNAME sorry.ak.facebook.com.edgesuite.net. sorry.ak.facebook.com.edgesuite.net. 0 IN CNAME a1030.g.akamai.net. a1030.g.akamai.net. 4 IN A 22.214.171.124 a1030.g.akamai.net. 4 IN A 126.96.36.199

;; Query time: 10 msec ;; SERVER: 22.214.171.124#53(220.127.116.11) ;; WHEN: Thu Sep 23 16:57:29 2010 ;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 144

</comment><comment>==facebook.com

new-host-3:dpu2 robertbuffone$ dig -trace facebook.com ;; Warning, ignoring invalid type race

; <<>> DiG 9.6.0-APPLE-P2 <<>> -trace facebook.com ;; global options: +cmd ;; Got answer: ;; ->>HEADER<<\- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 19984 ;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 3, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0

;; QUESTION SECTION: ;facebook.com. IN A

;; ANSWER SECTION: facebook.com. 352 IN A 22.214.171.124 facebook.com. 352 IN A 188.8.131.52 facebook.com. 352 IN A 126.96.36.199

;; Query time: 13 msec ;; SERVER: 18.104.22.168#53(220.127.116.11) ;; WHEN: Thu Sep 23 16:57:44 2010 ;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 78

</comment><comment><USER33> When I heard FB was down I went over to twitter to see how many tweets this was generating, I was surprised to see the first refresh of "XXXX more tweets since you started searching."

I decided to start keeping track and I made a graph of the difference between refreshes. You can see my graph here. It seems like in the course of just a few minutes (I was probably conducting my little experiment for 10 min?) you can see the frenzy gaining momentum then it seems to die down until only hundreds of people are talking about it per 15 second refresh.

A little bit about the graph, each tick mark on the bottom represents a refresh (15 seconds or so I think). The Y axis is the difference between refreshes.

Graph: <http://drp.ly/e3oH>

</comment><comment><USER34> It's a funny coincidence that this comes right after the recent facebook valuation news.

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

</comment><comment><USER35> Current Status: API Latency Issues We are currently experiencing latency issues with the API, and we are actively investigating. We will provide an update when either the issue is resolved or we have an ETA for resolution.

</comment><comment><USER36> DNS issues are the cause for so many outages by a myriad of prestigious web shops. It's incredible how often overlooked something so pivotal to your infrastructure goes without being properly monitored. I have seen entire businesses suffer hours of downtime because their monitoring systems would query an authoritative name server from RFC1918 IP space - but not the same from an externally visible address. An NS not responding to local queries can be just as detrimental internally as they are externally because of how web services are architected, obviously. In their defense, Facebook rarely incurs outages of this capacity, and I can bet it won't happen again and someone is getting seriously reamed. They can and will happen to the best of them, no matter how many MIT PhDs you have designing your systems.

</comment><comment><USER37> maybe its the 1 billion like buttons they serve a day that tipped them over the edge. ;)

<comment><USER38> perhaps the Stuxnet virus was built to target facebook? ;)

<comment><USER7> You don't get to 500 million friends without making a few enemies

<comment><USER39> Wait, doesn't Facebook already have 500 million enemies?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Don't place 3rd party javascript on your pages if you don't really need it.

<comment><USER41> Facebook is our biggest traffic source after Google. I'm inclined to forgive them for occasional outages.

<comment><USER40> I did say:

> if you don't really need it.

In your case, you obviously do.

<comment><USER41> I don't think we're uncommon. Most sites that I see plastered with Facebook embeds are publications, and I'm sure they all see results similar to ours. Facebook is RSS for the masses.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> The significance of the "like" button missing from other sites is lost on me.

I've been using the Application Boundaries Enforcer feature of no-script in Firefox to block facebook content when I'm not visiting a facebook site directly.

      Site .facebook.com .fbcdn.net
      Accept from .facebook.com .fbcdn.net
      Deny

This is motivated by privacy concerns of Facebook's ability to track which partner sites I visit.

</comment><comment><USER43> First I just had an empty feed, then I got the feed back but posting links and comments timed out. Then it worked for a minute, and now I get the DNS error. Seems like this affects several of Facebook's applications.

</comment><comment><USER44> I experienced a facebook outage yesterday afternoon (-03:00 UTC) although the DNS resolved the facebook I could not ping their IP addresses. As you can read in facebook's twitter timeline.

</comment><comment><USER45> At least Hacker News still works. All is well.

</comment><comment><USER46> Is this a coordinated blackhat attack with DHH's PR attack intended to benefit some investor somewhere? (joking)

</comment><comment><USER47> It's odd, I've been hearing about this all day but I have had no problems at all contacting facebook.

</comment><comment><USER48> IT Dept. around the world will now get washed with calls, on how the internets dont work.

<comment><USER49> the BOFH will be making a list of people wasting time on facebook for later blackmail.

<comment><USER48> joking aside, this actually had this effect, as so many pages actually resolve some components to facebook.com, the slower response was felt on a wide variety of sites.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Aaaaaand, they're back. Down for about 15 mins (from Tucson, AZ).

</comment><comment><USER51> heh... ironically facebook's error rate is at an all time low!!

<http://developers.facebook.com/live_status>

</comment><comment><USER52> The one day I choose to update my FBConnect code!

</comment><comment><USER53> Who's next to go down? downrightnow.com?

<comment><USER54> downforeveryoneorjustme was throwing errors when I tried it: <http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/facebook.com>

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> But I can still harvest my cows ...

</comment><comment><USER56> Thank goodness for Ping ...

</comment><comment><USER57> Nice to see the big boys experiencing mundane issues as well now and then...

</comment><comment><USER58> I demand a refund.

</comment><comment><USER59> I [Like] this.

</comment><comment><USER60> In A.D. 2010

War was Beginning.

Internet: What happen?

MarkZ: Somebody set up us the bomb.

FB: We get signal

MarkZ: What?!

FB: Main screen turn on.

MarkZ: It's you!!

DDH: How are you gentlemen !!

DDH: All your Information are belong to us.

DDH: You are on the way to destruction.

</comment><comment><USER61> Rarely use it so I didn't notice...

</comment><comment><USER62> I'm sure somebody out there told you so

</comment><comment><USER63> I thought I had a crappy router, I didn't realise it was _that_ crappy!</comment>


Ramanujan – The Man Who Knew Infinity and the Akashic Records - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGfV80ioA6U <comment><AUTHOR> 2:49 "At 16, he [Ramanujan] stumbled by chance across a copy of George Shoobridge Carr's seminal work, "A Synopsis Of Elementary Results In Pure And Applied Mathematics", and began to work through its 5,000 theorems..."

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

[https://archive.org/details/synopsisofelemen00carrrich/page/...](https://archive.org/details/synopsisofelemen00carrrich/page/n5/mode/2up)

[https://www.amazon.com/Synopsis-Elementary-Results- Applied-M...](https://www.amazon.com/Synopsis-Elementary-Results-Applied- Mathematics/dp/1108050662)</comment>


Testing iOS In-App Purchases Makes Your Device Unusable - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/revenuecat-blog/testing-in-app-purchases-ruins-your-phone-3751665ca5c1 <comment><AUTHOR> A cathartic exercise listing all the tiny cuts that make testing iOS IAPs miserable.

The biggest being with subscriptions, you will have to clear 5-6 login modals every time you unlock your phone. The only fix is uninstalling the app your testing, which is usually the app you are working on.

Neglect of the developer experience runs downhill and consumers are the ones who ultimately suffer. I wish Apple would put some of their massive stockpile of cash into solving these solvable problems.</comment>


Mertado (YC W10): Deal Hunting, Social Shopping For Facebook - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/20/yc-funded-mertado-deal-hunting-social-shopping-for-facebook/

<comment><USER2> From a quick look the facebook app comes off as intrusive which is a bit different for a YC company, you can't even look at it without giving them access to your email address, then while clicking through products it will pop-up with refer a friend and post to wall.

There are quiet a few of these sites around now that give you a small list of deals and presumably buy these items in bulk. Unless all the products are in a niche it would be pretty rare that much that I wanted would crop up, other people could be different I suppose.

<comment><USER3> I had the same thought too. Their deal structure seems a bit convoluted, and when this is paired with the fact that they are gleaning my personal information it comes off as spammy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Dang, definitely some good deals on there.</comment>


Ask HN: Make something people want - 4.5 years left and counting  - <AUTHOR> Quick background. I'm 19 years old, 1st year in University, gunning for a Master's in Software Engineering from the University of Melbourne (Australia) in 4.5 years time.
I'm at an awesome stage in life right now: full benefits of University with an interest-free study loan, along with the power to leverage the internet for both learning and creation (i've got 2 sites up and running).
I'm a big proponent of learning from others, and talk to people older than myself frequently. The one recurring theme is: stay focused during Uni, learn some skills that will make you indispensable in life.
While that's all great, I believe it isn't enough: we as individuals somehow need to optimise our own learning if we expect to be able to afford groceries in 5 years time. While I think I'm doing that pretty well, and have firmly set my direction into the world of software, building a product is a whole different beast.
So the main question here is: How do I optimise my learning, such that I am capable of actually building a great product the moment I'm out of Uni?
Let me elaborate on that.
First, this is the ideal end goal. It is not easy, I respect that, and there's always plan B (go work for a company, learn the ropes, etc)
Second, when I talk about product, I'm not referring to things like iPhone apps. I'm referring to large-scale data-driven products (akin to what Bradford Cross talks about).
This is where the "Do Programmers need math?" argument pops up again, and as far as I know, the answer to that question is, "it depends on what you're doing". And for myself, I foresee a future in the direction of what Bradford Cross would term a "research-driven startup".
Hence, I place great emphasis on getting the basics right. I've went ahead and invested in some texts (Intro to Algorithms!), completed a course in Linear Algebra, soon to be doing much more related stuff, and have been programming in Common Lisp and Python for about 1 year now (with project euler being my main past-time). I'm thinking of expanding into the more front-end stuff (CSS and Javascript) as my next step, but that can be a whole other discussion.
The thing is, knowing all of that doesn't teach you anything about server architecture, datastore management, etc. Heck, I don't know anything about MVC right now.
While I'd love to get off and just build something, like anyone in this community can attest to, both the act of programming and learning to program, be it an iPhone app or a next-gen server, is one MASSIVE time sink. So too, is the process of learning to do math, statistics and the like.
Hence the dilemma: How much focus does one place on mastering the skills to work with today's existing infrastructure and tools, as opposed to focusing on the related theoretical aspects of the craft?
Similarly, how much does one invest in learning about how things fit together on a specific implementation, as opposed to learning how to program in general (and solve logic problems, etc).
Now of course, there is no black and white here, and the answer is to do everything. The question is how much of each to do, bearing in mind that technologies change so quickly. EC2 was not feasible for independent developers 2 years ago. Google App Engine was non-existent (at least for Python) then, and who knows where it will go in the future. Nodejs is all the rage now, and just today, a new clojure server (aleph) is up and running.
On the opposite end, my trusty "Introduction to Algorithms" and "Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach" will never go out of fashion, and will only add more to my current skill set.
I'm in a great position, mainly because I have no pressing need to make money. The corollary is that I have a pressing need to get good at making things people want. That means investing the time to pick up the necessary skills. More importantly, it means taking up evergreen skills, since even languages come and go but math will always stay.
Most importantly, it's about ensuring that I go about it in a way that I can sustain physically and mentally for the next 4.5 years in college.
By definition, someone looking up at the wild world of software can only be perplexed by the complexity, and be caught up in the vagaries; paralysis by analysis. But once you've come to grips with a novel concept, it starts to look less difficult and the fog seemingly clears overnight. The skill becomes second nature and mastery ensues.
I'm not at that stage yet, and to those that are, and can remember what it was like at my stage, I ask for your advice.
If you managed to read through all that ranting, Thank You. If you manage to come up with a coherent response to this, I'll be even more grateful.
Finally, people may say that I'm thinking too much. To them I say, Though is infinitely Scalable <comment><USER2> Your attitude towards math/"timeless" cs is correct. Today's infrastructure, if you want to build something awesome four years in the future, is of little interest to you. Focus on learning general-purpose algorithms, maths, language concepts, and design sensibilities. When the time comes to pick up the technologies of the day you want to build in, you'll have an abstraction of those technologies ready to give you the context to totally own it.

This is not to say that you should totally neglect concrete tools. The strategy that I've followed in this case has served me well, and I'll outline it below:

First, learn a few "immortal tools" really well: emacs, some kind of revision control, and how to be fluent in a UNIX shell. This includes understanding the "unix philosophy," and shell scripting. None of these things are going anywhere anytime soon, and a deep understanding and fluency with them will boost your productivity by quite a lot.

Second, learn an orthogonal basis of programming languages to reasonable fluency. That is, identify the major families of programming languages, pick the one that most appeals to you in each family, and learn it. Do some project euler stuff, or hack out that application you wanted, or implement one of your favorite algorithms. The first thing I always write in a new programming language is a nondeterministic finite automaton description language and execution engine, for instance. Not only will this be fun, but it will prepare you to learn whatever is in vogue when you sit down to make your product by giving you broad context for programming languages in general.

Good luck. You have a good attitude and you're starting in the right place; linear algebra is great stuff, and so is CLRS.

Oh, and finally: for the love of god take a class that uses SICP. Or just work through it yourself with the online lecture videos. It teaches programming by giving you a series of ever-more-elaborate models of program evaluation. It will give you a deep understanding of how programming languages work, in general, which it sounds like you'd really enjoy.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the reply. The recommendations are awesome, thanks! I've put off picking up SICP for awhile, will probably do that soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Start now.

Theory means so much more when you have experience to apply it to, especially the experience of doing it wrong. Building things will keep you grounded and give you leads for more theory to learn. I don't think either are very relevant on their own.

Learning technology is also a skill and something that comes with practice. As new things are generally an evolution of old things, the more exposure you have the easier learning will be.

Front end (CSS, JS, HTML...) is a deep rabbit hole. It sounds like you are really more interested in data, maths and algorithmic problems so I would play there as much as possible. Things like Clojure are more likely to keep your interest and excite you.

Don't wait!

</comment><comment><USER4> Get internships. These will help remind you why you're in school, and give you great mentorship opportunities. I've learned just as much if not more from internships as I have from my CS classes (although the knowledge tends to be of a more practical, rather than theoretical, nature).

If you're really lucky, in your time in undergrad, you'll be able to already have experience working at some of the most innovative companies.

</comment><comment><USER5> <braces for downmod> tl; dr

The focus seemed : How do I optimise my learning, such that I am capable of actually building a great product the moment I'm out of Uni?

to which I have to say..... write code. Lots of code. Endless amounts of code, debug it, fix it, test it, write it.

There's no reason you can't write a great app right now. Pick a language and get to it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great to hear opinions. However, the point isn't if one could produce a great app right now, it's if the time invested in doing so, especially if it's on a narrow implementation space, is worth the opportunity cost of doing the more "heavy" stuff like statistics, algs, etc.

I do agree with the sentiment though, and I'm definitely going to be coding whenever I can!

<comment><USER5> imho, an operating software system is kind of an organic entity. It behaves in very different ways, requires different kinds of attention and more personal commitment to keep going. This is distinct from toy examples, prototypes and course projects.

So, I'm suggesting that while you're young, start building something. It doesn't have to make you money or be successful or take any more than 5 hours a week of maintenance. The goal is to have something tangible for the experience of maintaining it and to use in discussions with other people.

This could be an open source project or a serious commitment of contribution to one, something to deal with mp3s or videos or whatever interests you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think you're off to a good start, but the best way to learn any of this stuff is through experience. Take your classes of course, and study, but if you've got time, contributing to open source, or creating your own projects from scratch is a great way to learn and gain real-world experience.</comment>


Steve Ballmer thinks tech firms should be as accountable as NBA teams - <AUTHOR> https://slashdot.org/submission/7104885/steve-ballmer-says-tech-firms-should-be-as-accountable-as-nba-teams <comment><USER2> The link goes to Slashdot. The article is at Backchannel (on Medium) [https://backchannel.com/steve-ballmer-says-tech-firms- should...](https://backchannel.com/steve-ballmer-says-tech-firms-should-be-as- accountable-as-nba-teams-b8de47ec5258)

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, pasted too hastily. Is there any way to edit this? (Edit function doesn't seem to allow replacing URL.)

<comment><USER2> Sorry to say that I don't know. I think only the mods can change titles and URLs...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Ballmer says that in the NBA salaries are totally transparent. And columnists know everything that the GM does. Teamwork is judged every 24 second. This makes for a level of accountability that tech firms could use. Is he right?</comment>


Trading Is Hazardous to Your Wealth [pdf] (2000) - <AUTHOR> http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/odean/papers/returns/Individual_Investor_Performance_Final.pdf <comment><USER2> If markets were truly random, you might expect 50% of day traders to lose money, not 90%. Of course, markets are not random and most untrained humans have emotional biases that actively optimize for losing money in markets.

This is likely a controversial opinion: 90% of the time, someone who wants to break out of the "rat race" or achieve wealth for some future vision should go the startup route, or if the wealth part is not as important, do freelance/consulting. However, I believe there are 10% of people where trading the markets provide the better way to achieve the same goal. The reason being that for certain personality types (you need to be smart, disciplined, and creative to beat the market, and it still requires a lot of time), I suspect trading offers a higher expected value of return than starting a bootstrapped company. Startups, especially those not started by someone wealthy, have a higher failure rate than day traders. If you are not passionate about anything you can get funding for (would SpaceX have been successful if it were Elon's first company?), and you fit the criteria, trading is not as terrible an option as its reputation suggests.

<comment><USER3> Two counterarguments:

1) Trading fees. If the house takes a cut of 0.1% on every transaction, then on average those who trade more lose more money.

2) Risk/reward tradeoff. If you buy deep out-of-the-money options, you might have a 5% chance of profitability, but expected return of $0 (neither positive nor negative). 95% of the time you lose $X, and 5% of the time you make $19X. If traders are pursuing riskier strategies, you'd expect most of them to lose money.

<comment><USER2> Trading fees are a valid counterargument here, and while they are non- negligible (especially back when the "90% of day traders lose money" rule was established), I don't think they account for the full 40%.

For point 2, if there is an expected return of 0, then on average this should push the portfolio toward 50% chance of profitability.

It is the psychological factors combined with a non-random market that ensure most traders lock in losses (usually after riding them too long or not long enough).

<comment><USER3> If I roll a 100-sided dice that pays me $99 if I roll a 1 and -$1 if I roll 2-100, then my expected value is $0, but my chance of profitability is 1%.

<comment><USER4> He's saying that traders don't just make 1 bet in their lifetimes though.

<comment><USER3> True, but you have to account for the chance of ruin. Once you go broke, you have to stop betting. Many traders will continue betting larger and larger amounts of money when they win, but stop betting if they lose big. Making risky bets is quite likely to make you go broke, especially if you scale the size of your bets with the size of your bankroll. The [Kelly Criterion]([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelly_criterion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelly_criterion)) is the best way to approach it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I read an article a few years ago that compared the trading performance of various strategies. The number one performer was the "dead people" strategy, which happens when a person dies and his portfolio cannot be traded while the inheritance issues are sorted out. Next best is the broad index fund, and dead last was the average investor.

Edit: Found the article!

[https://www.businessinsider.com/forgetful-investors- performe...](https://www.businessinsider.com/forgetful-investors-performed- best-2014-9)

<comment><USER6> What's the difference between the dead person strategy and an index fund? The dead strategy involves whatever stocks they had selected at the time?

<comment><USER7> The dead person can't make bad decisions on when to buy/sell the index fund. Those "bad" decisions don't even require an attempt to time the market, if e.g. you always invest whatever's left over after ~fixed living expenses, and you get paid more when the market's higher.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > Trading costs are high. The average round-trip trade in excess of $1,000 > costs three percent in commissions and one percent in bid-ask spread.

A lot has changed in 20 years. The conclusion may still be the same, but spreads are much tighter (thanks in part to HFT) and trade commissions no longer exist.

<comment><USER5> Trading also subjects you to short term capital gains tax rates, as well as losing the effects of compounding.

<comment><USER9> Short term capital gains rates have been 15%, right? Which is, based on my last gander at the tax charts, less than the regular w2 tax rate bracket many successful traders would file under.

<comment><USER10> No, short-term capital gains are taxed at your marginal income tax rates. 15% is for _long-term_ capital gains below $500k.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Not in any way defending day trading, but I think it's interesting that it's become such accepted wisdom about how bad it is- here on a website dedicated to startups. 90% of day traders lose money, what are the odds for startup founders? Probably more than 90% fail, yeah?

Imagine if, within the next 20 years, it becomes normal & accepted wisdom that joining a startup and taking their basically worthless 'equity' is more likely to lose you money than day trading. Just kind of an interesting juxtaposition- Hacker News, Website Devoted To Risky Startups, Decries Risky Day Trading

<comment><USER12> You don't work at a startup to make more money, you work at a startup for non- monetary benefits and if you're extremely lucky you might get rich quick. Average case is you make less, good case is you make even if your company is highly successful.

<comment><USER11> Without pointing any specific fingers, people were pushing 'you should spend your 20s working 60-80 hours a week at a startup so you can get rich' really hard for a while there. It's only relatively recently that this is understood to be a bit of a con

<comment><USER13> >> It's only relatively recently that this is understood to be a bit of a con

This go-around, there is a lot of private capital, so companies stay private for a decade or longer and lock employees out of liquidity events (meanwhile, founders can negotiate to take some cash off the table during a financing round.) The incentives are skewed. In the 90s bubble, companies with a $50M valuations could go IPO -- you could hopefully sell after your lockout. (Oh, and houses cost a tenth of what they do now.)

This go-around, there is HN, Quora, Blind, and so it is harder for people to get suckered into starry visions.

That said, it is _still_ worth considering working at startups for the high- learning, low-BS environments you can find as compared to big companies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Can someone explain to me why people keep referring to average return as some sort of magical answer to the question? The median person makes the median income, that doesn't mean that trying to get a good job is pointless.

By definition in order for you to make more than the market, someone else has to make less than the market.

Assuming that knowledge has superlinear returns (I consider this to be obvious without proof required), of course less than 50% of participants will 'win' \- those at the bottom are totally useless and burning money, whilst those at the top are quite skilled indeed.

It's fair to say that one should not expect to be in that upper echelon, but I don't think it's reasonable to state 'most people lose' and just leave it at that, it's blindingly obvious that most people lose, it would be impossible for them to not.

(Adjusted for balances - a guy with 20 billion quid can lose 1 pound each to 7 billion market participants and in that case 'almost everyone wins more than the market')

<comment><USER15> a lot is stacked against you as a private investor. being very smart is not enough to beat the market consistently when your competition is other very smart people who themselves have a support staff of very smart people and they all spend 8+ hours a day analyzing the market and making trades.

even if you quit your day job to trade full-time, they can collect information in ways that you can't (eg, satellite imagery), and they may also have direct lines to an exchange to execute trades faster than you. unlike you, they trade in large enough volume that they can get people to pick up the phone to trade after the exchange closes. they have access to entire classes of investments that are closed to you due to capital requirements.

<comment><USER16> Hm.

I would argue that working for an institution that gives you access to satellite imagery also implies you can't really play below a certain threshold of volume.

Otherwise it's like hunting deer with a ballistic missile: you will kill the deer, but for that money you could have raised a whole tribe of them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> A related blog post: "Why I don't trade stocks and (probably) neither should you" [http://edmarkovich.blogspot.com/2013/12/why-i-dont-trade- sto...](http://edmarkovich.blogspot.com/2013/12/why-i-dont-trade-stocks-and- probably.html)

<comment><USER18> And consider also, "The 15-Stock Diversification Myth," [http://www.efficientfrontier.com/ef/900/15st.htm](http://www.efficientfrontier.com/ef/900/15st.htm) :

> One of the most dangerous investment chestnuts is the idea that you can > successfully diversify your portfolio with a relatively small number of > stocks, the magic number usually being about 15.

> …

> The reason is simple: a grossly disproportionate fraction of the total > return came from a very few "superstocks" like Dell Computer, which > increased in value over 550 times. If you didn't have one of the half-dozen > or so of these in your portfolio, then you badly lagged the market.

<comment><USER19> there is a lower bound, but it's closer to 60, and those need to be picked carefully to avoid excess correlation. at that point, you might as well buy an index fund since you're unlikely to beat the market anyway.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> On average. Also on average, starting a business is hazardous to your wealth, it's likely to fail. On average, don't do competitive sports, you're likely to lose.

Maybe 'Less Than Excellent Trading Is Hazardous to Your Wealth'? Don't do a trade unless you have an excellent advantage on it...

</comment><comment><USER21> It's my understanding that, if commissions are free (e.g. Robinhood) then on average, any trading strategy is going to perform comparable to the market average.

If you can find any reliably bad strategy (in a fee-less market), then you have necessarily found an outperforming strategy that is the opposite.

<comment><USER3> Eh, if I wanted bankrupt a trading account by playing a reliably bad strategy, I'd buy deep out-of-the-money options expiring this Friday. The expected value is $0 (neither positive nor negative), but they have only a miniscule probability of profitability.

<comment><USER22> When you say "expected value" are you trying to say most likely value?

<comment><USER3> No, I mean the mathematical mean, not mode. If you take this action infinitely many times, what is your average (mean) return? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expected_value](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expected_value)

<comment><USER22> I see, so you're saying the expected profit on the trade is $0 assuming an efficient market and ignoring trading costs? Your comment is confusing the way it's worded because the expected value of the option is non-zero.

<comment><USER3> Ah, sorry for that. I meant E[return on option - cost of option] ~= 0.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The biggest problem with trading is unrealistic expectations.

If people believed they could become a medical doctor by taking a weekend boot camp, you would see extremely high failure rates.

But that high failure rate would not suggest that it's impossible to become a doctor.

Same with trading, if a person thinks they will make a few trades as their side hobby, it's going to go about as well as the hobbyist surgeon. But if you're obsessed with trading for a decade you can become quite competent.

<comment><USER9> Studies have shown it takes about 3 years of constant trading to develop a sense or intuition about markets.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Trading is just connecting buyers with sellers and pocketing a spread. It's been a most profitable activity for a long time. You just have to optimize the carrying costs and manage risk. but it's the same thing everywhere, being average is useless in wide competition. You need an edge: be smarter, faster, better capitalized, better connected, informed etc...

</comment><comment><USER25> The more access the average joe has to the market the more seemingly plausible the idea that it's "impossible" to beat the market. No, it's just really hard. Just because most sculptures are statistically made with playdough doesn't mean it's impossible to create a great sculpture.

<comment><USER25> The best comparison anyone's made here is competitive sports. Most traders are doing the skill equivalent of shooting free throws in their yard; this doesn't mean there are not professional NBA players.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I don't trade individual stocks, I don't know enough. But I do buy ETFs, which are ran by people that [theoretically] do know enough. As an experiment I bought in after the March crash on a few ETFs that got hit hard. I'm pacing with the index which is good enough I guess.

</comment><comment><USER27> Notes they're including this: "In aggregate, round-trip trades cost about one percent for the bid-ask spread and about 1.4 percent in commissions." Not necessarily the case anymore. The spread on apple is 0.04 cents on $300.

</comment><comment><USER28> why do people think trading will make you rich?

<comment><USER29> Because there are some very rich traders, including the fourth-richest person in the world.

<comment><USER19> he's an investor, not a trader, and has outsized influence on the outcomes of his investments.

<comment><USER29> A distinction without a difference. He is an active trader that moves in and out of businesses all the time.

In fact, he just dumped all of his airline stock recently due to Covid-19.

It doesn't matter if you trade based on research or not, you're still a trader.

<comment><USER19> _au contraire_ , it's precisely the most carnal difference, that of intent and of effect. investors want investments--the companies--to succeed, and thereby externalizes a net positive societal effect; traders want their bets to succeed, others be damned.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Cognitive biases play a large role in poor investment performance, see "Thinking Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman.</comment>


Ask HN: Why are companies still reluctant to hire remote devs and designers? - <AUTHOR> Though some companies are remote friendly and hire remote devs and designers (US or overseas), many are still reluctant to do it. What are the main reasons behind this? <comment><USER2> Speaking for myself, I've been burned repeatedly by remote labor and remote teams. Any theoretical cost savings were squandered by the increased amount of time overhead in project management and "do over" work. I'm now advising a startup which had to start from scratch on its MVP a second time because the first team…simply walked away after six months of work.

I'm sure there's blame to be spread around, but personally after nearly a decade of trying to use remote labor for coding, I won't do it again if it's my money at stake.

<comment><AUTHOR> You mean remote employees, or outsourcing development to an overseas team for a specific project?

<comment><USER2> Both.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I can only speak for my own company (startup), but typically it's the simple matter of immediate feedback and reaction. In the startup world, things are changing constantly, and it's really convenient to turn to my left and ask a question. I can't do that when I'm required to schedule hangouts or meetings for things. Having everyone in the same room is priceless when things are moving this fast.</comment>


An introduction to the Julia language, part 2 - <AUTHOR> https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/764001/1bdd9aaea43a2b81/ <comment><USER2> Someone with lwn account could point out `julia> (g ∘ f)(x)` and the plans to revamp `|>` to rsidd over there.

<comment><AUTHOR> I added a comment there, thank you.</comment></comment>


10 Story-Driven Websites that will blow your mind - <AUTHOR> http://www.onextrapixel.com/2013/04/24/10-story-driven-websites-that-will-blow-your-mind/

<comment><USER2> Wow! These are bookmarked worthy websites. Cool especially the Paranorman and My Life in 20 Years. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Glad you liked it. :)

<comment><USER2> you're welcome. :)</comment></comment></comment>


Avoiding using a database by using Smalltalk - <AUTHOR> http://methodsandmessages.vox.com/library/post/ramon-on-keep-it-simple-persistence.html <comment><USER2> _If you have hierarchical or self-referencing data, making the triangle or circle peg fit into the square hole seems like a lot of effort._

The effort may be worth it when an application has to share its data with other applications since the alternatives may be even harder.</comment>


Amazon Fire Phone is now 99¢ with a 2-year contract - <AUTHOR> http://www.amazon.com/Fire_Phone_13MP-Camera_32GB/dp/B00EOE0WKQ/ref=sr_1_1?s=wireless&ie=UTF8&qid=1410194761&sr=1-1&keywords=fire+phone <comment><USER2> I think at this point we can say that Amazon gambled w/ this device and lost the bet. This is simply not a device that consumers want. Lesson learned.

<comment><USER3> It might be picked up as a budget device for customers who are willing to buy dirt cheap devices that didn't sell well during its production run. I can imagine the Fire phone joining products like the Canon EOS M in that category.

(The EOS M camera was panned by reviewers when it was released, for being unusably slow. Sales were horrible, and the price dropped like a rock from $899 to $250. However, Canon also released firmware updates that fixed a lot of the speed issues, so some people are buying it now as a great budget camera).

<comment><USER4> The EOS M was rejuvenated because hackers got Magic Lantern on the thing.

<comment><USER3> Magic Lantern is pretty fun, but I bought it because it fits in my to-go bag unlike my dSLR and it's ridiculously cheap for an APS-C camera.

It's by far the best mirrorless camera in its price category. You need to go up to to almost twice the price before things get competitive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> So about $600.99 then? What a bargain. The $449 price is cheaper than that. (Assuming you are on AT&Ts more recent plans where they charge you $25 more for having a subsidized, on-contract phone.)

<comment><USER6> No, it's $450.98. AT&T Next does not require down payment for a new phone, since they amortize the phone's cost over two years.

For an iPhone 5S you pay $0 up-front and 24 monthly payments of $27.09. Of course, $27.09 * 24 = $650.16, the unsubsidized phone price.

You can, of course, still buy phones on two-year contracts instead of paying monthly. In that case you'd pay $199 for an iPhone 5S, in addition to a (lower) contract hit.

<comment><USER7> The problem is with a new 2-year contract on an AT&T Family Plan you end up paying $15 - $25 more each month for the contract.

So for an iPhone 5S on a 2-year contract with a 10GB plan you pay $199 up front and then $25/mo for two years with a grand total of $799 over two years.

AT&T's new pricing structure is a mess

<comment><USER6> Yeah, I think they've done this to encourage customers to use AT&T Next instead of signing a 2-year contract. Purchasing a phone with AT&T Next, then foregoing the upgrade, is exactly the same as the old-school 2-year contract.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I imagine this is to offload some inventory before the iPhone 6 announcement. My bet is Amazon will sell very few phones after tomorrow.

</comment><comment><USER9> So this is a fire sale then.

</comment><comment><USER10> 1 month with AT&T is a deal breaker for me, so forget about 2 years!

Buy your way to unseat iOS $150 no commitment

features are a commodity now, providers are the thorn.

..it's your only hope..

<comment><USER11> This is what keeps me from taking them up on this offer. I would absolutely extend my T-mobile contract for 2 years to try this phone, but AT&T is a huge dealbreaker.

Edit: spelling

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Dropped almost as fast as the HTC First/Facebook phone! (which was actually a great phone, by the way)

<comment><USER13> Even the Microsoft Kin didn't drop in price this quickly. That was an unmitigated disaster, which sold less than 10,000 units.

<comment><USER14> The Kin should have been called the Contractual Obligation Phone. Microsoft had to give it to Verizon, but they were really late. Verizon had to take it, but they didn't push it.

I went to a Verizon store when Kin shipped (Kin was developed by my old team, so I wanted to see it) and I couldn't get a rep to pull one out of a box to show it to me.

I know someone in MSR that ended up with a truckload of them; they're reflashed and used for lots of little things. Kind of a neat second life.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This one is a good example, any Android without the blessing of Google and without Google Play would not sell. For the people, who were demanding MSFT to ditch WP and do an Android fork, this is the case and point. If any one could have pulled an Android Phone w/o Google Play it was Amazon and now we learn that they too are incapable of pulling some miracles.

<comment><USER16> >> If any one could have pulled an Android Phone w/o Google Play it was Amazon

I don't agree with this assertion. Amazon doesn't have a stellar UX track record.

<comment><USER15> The reason for giving Alpha status to Amazon is because they have a mildly successful android tablet and an android app store the preceded the phone by few years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It has all the same mistakes that their tablet had. Its an android device that's not compatible with android apps. It provides less features than the devices its competing with and offers no reason to buy it over a regular android device.

I don't get how they're not seeing this aspect of it at all.

</comment><comment><USER18> Email me for a MacBook Pro for only $0.99! (plus a $100 per month espresso beans subscription)

<comment><USER19> Sounds good. If I didn't get coffee for free at work, I'd probably spend more than $3.33 a day on it.

<comment><USER18> Just on the beans??

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The reviews on this phone are very bad- frequent freezes, slow UI, randomly calling people, extremely limited number of apps, and lacking in basic functionality. I can understand the $0.99 price tag.

</comment><comment><USER21> Horrible initial pricing strategy with equally terrible subsidies. It's like they positioned this product from penthouse to outhouse in less than 90 days.

</comment><comment><USER22> I would love to see some sales figures for the Fire Phone. I have yet to see one in the wild here in NYC.

<comment><USER23> Amazon doesn't release sales figures for devices, but a writer at The Guardian tried to extrapolate sales figures based on traffic and ad impressions and estimated about 35,000 devices in use [1].

[1]:[http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/aug/26/amazon- fir...](http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/aug/26/amazon-fire-phone- sales-data)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> The cheaper the mobile device, the more it likely spies on you.

</comment><comment><USER25> How long until they use these in place of packing peanuts?</comment>