Microsoft charges to use Internet Explorer - <AUTHOR>

For the first time in months I fired up my 360 to test the MS SmartGlass App.  For those that don't know SmartGlass syncs your device with your 360, the feature I was interested in trying was the "remote" which turns your device into the 360 controller (it works...but not as cool as it sounds).
To my surprise I found Internet Explorer was finally released on the 360 so I downloaded the app.  To my astonishment the App failed to launch because I do not have an Xbox Live Gold (paid) Account.  Microsoft is really sick, its one thing to charge for the Gold Account for online game play and for access to certain content (even when your main competitor offers similar service for free), but to disable the web browser unless you have a paid account is really disgusting corporate behavior.  In short, cost to use IE on 360 is $5 to $10 per month depending if you pay the year upfront or month to month - and it looks like it will be another couple months before I turn my 360 back on.
Can anyone think of another hardware manufacturer that creates a device that limits your access to the internet to only their browser, and then charges you a monthly fee before you can use the browser, even though your already paying third party service provider? <comment><USER2> _even when your main competitor offers similar service for free_

 _is really disgusting corporate behavior_

Microsoft was lynched in an antitrust trial for giving IE away to compete with Netscape.

I think your attitude is evidence of really disgusting consumer behavior. Between you and every other whiner, Microsoft is damned if it does something, and damned if it doesn't.

<comment><AUTHOR> >Microsoft was lynched in an antitrust trial for giving IE away to compete with Netscape.

Living in a country that actually permits hanging as a legal punishment, and with 2 States that currently practice hanging I would say your word choice is a little more exaggerated than mine.

Apparently the only one to ever survive being "lynched", MS is still alive and well, in fact if I am not mistaken MS is currently giving IE away for free, the very behavior MS was lynched for. On top of MS currently giving IE away for free, the software is also free to use not requiring a paid membership, EXCEPT IN THIS ONE LITTLE EXCEPTION THAT I POSTED ABOUT. However, you seem to suggest MS is justified in charging Xbox owners to use IE, and Xbox owners ONLY, even though IE is free in all other circumstances and on all other devices, all as the result of their anti-trust suit in the 90's before Xbox was even in production.

>I think your attitude is evidence of really disgusting consumer behavior.

Instead of attacking me personally for my observation that as far as I can tell is 100% accurate, why not at least show me another company that manufactures hardware, requires you to access the internet through their browser only, and charges a monthly subscription for the browser. Then at least you can point out this type of corporate behavior is not "disgusting", but just the corporate norm. Even MS does not replicate this behavior on the only other hardware they manufacture (the Surface). Moreover, MS does not charge Surface owners a monthly fee to use IE or otherwise access content nor are you limited to IE as your browser on the Surface.

>even when your main competitor offers similar service for free

FYI I made this comment in support of a paid MS Live Account for online game play and certain content, even though their main competitor, PS3, offers their Xbox Live equivalent for free. So do not give me the MS "damned if it does, damned if it doesn't" spiel , especially when I complimented Xbox Live as so good they can charge when others give it away for free; however, for simple and obvious reasons I will not extend that support from paid Xbox gaming to paid IE.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Your focusing on Internet Explorer is just odd. It's borderline libelous since the headline is not true. The truth is that, if you have an Xbox Live Gold account, you can access the internet because one of its benefits [1] is "Explore the web on your TV with Internet Explorer for Xbox." The benefit of purchasing a Gold account is that you can access the internet with your Xbox; Internet Explorer just happens to be the browser. For you to say "Microsoft charges to use Internet Explorer" then is clearly a mis-characterization of the service. I think it's fair to say that this is just you making a scandalous, link-baity headline to get attention.

What if the benefits said "Explore the web on your TV with Xbox" (thus removing Internet Explorer)? Does that change _anything_? No. To me, the point is that Microsoft charges you to browse the web via the Xbox; not which browser is used. That's silly and that sort of silliness is the type of thing that keeps from buying products.

[1] <http://www.xbox.com/en-US/live/join>

<comment><AUTHOR> >I think it's fair to say that this is just you making a scandalous, link- baity headline to get attention.

The HN community is going to know that MS does not generally charge a subscription fee for IE, so I was not trying to be scandalous or link-baity but concisely describe my post about this unique instance IE is subscription based.

> For you to say "Microsoft charges to use Internet Explorer" then is clearly > a mis-characterization of the service.

In my OP I clearly describe IE is part of the Xbox Live Gold Account which includes other benefits, I even named online game play and access to other premium content as additional benefits, so do not accuse me of mis- characterizing the service. Besides, my point was MS should not bundle IE into the paid Xbox Live Gold Account, rather IE should be a free service on the Xbox.

>It's borderline libelous since the headline is not true. The truth is that, if you have an Xbox Live Gold account, you can access the internet because one of its benefits [1] is "Explore the web on your TV with Internet Explorer for Xbox."

Did you go out of you way to make this statement to bait me because my HN profile says I am an attorney? First, my headline is true. Obviously, if IE was always a subscription service I would not have posted about this issue. I posted this because it is odd MS does not allow Xbox owners to "Explore the web on your TV with Xbox" for free,

If you are going to take MS's side on this issue that is fine, but at least justify why you agree IE should be part of the paid Account and not free service on the Xbox. In the OP I even help people make the argument for MS by suggesting posters name other hardware manufacturers who exercise similar policies, in otherwords what other hardware manufacturers require consumers pay them a monthly fee to "explore the web on your TV with (blank)"?</comment></comment>


Nope, no Intel chip recall after Spectre and Meltdown, CEO says - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnet.com/news/meltdown-spectre-intel-ceo-no-recall-chip-processor/ <comment><USER2> How could they ever afford to do the recall? They would go broke. Something that would help nobody.

<comment><USER3> I would expect some kind of compensation, especially for Xeon series. If you are paying that amount of money but your computer power decreases in one day, it hurts your business. Will those people buy more servers?</comment></comment>


Artificial intelligence crushed human records in 2048 - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/artificial-intelligence-crushed-all-human-records-in-the-addictive-tile-game-2048--heres-how-2015-5?IR=T

<comment><USER2> Developer of the AI, used by the author, gave details of the code on Stack Overflow

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/22342854/what-is-the- opti...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/22342854/what-is-the-optimal- algorithm-for-the-game-2048/22498940#22498940)</comment>


Show HN: Moustique – C++14 coroutine-based non-blocking IO on Linux - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/matt-42/moustique <comment> Const-me I haven't developed much for Linux, but I think it's a good idea to replace your std::vector<ctx::continuation> fibers with std::unordered_map<int, ctx::continuation> fibers.

Here's why: [https://stackoverflow.com/a/9376493/126995](https://stackoverflow.com/a/9376493/126995)

<comment><USER2> That StackOverflow comment is wrong. Linux guarantees that for open(2) / creat(2) / socket(2) / etc. "[t]he file descriptor returned by a successful call will be the lowest-numbered file descriptor not currently open for the process." This has been the case for the entire 40+ year history of Unix, and was certainly relied upon in the days when select(2) could only handle file descriptor values that were less than 32.

See the man page at, e.g., [http://man7.org/linux/man- pages/man2/socket.2.html](http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man2/socket.2.html) from which the quote above is taken. Note that I'm not expressing any opinion on whether to use a vector or an unordered_map in this particular application.

<comment> Const-me > Linux guarantees that for open(2) / creat(2) / socket(2) / etc.

Not "etc.", accept(2) that creates the sockets in that code doesn't guarantee that.

See the man page at, e.g., [http://man7.org/linux/man- pages/man2/accept.2.html](http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man2/accept.2.html)

<comment><USER2> Hmmm. Looking further, the dup(2) man page also mentions "lowest," but pipe(2) doesn't. A documentation oversight, I claim; after all, what would be the point of the kernel not using a single function for "get me an available fd" everywhere that it needs one? Not as reassuring as finding it in the specs, though; here's what [http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/](http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/) has to say:

"2.14. File Descriptor Allocation

All functions that open one or more file descriptors shall, unless specified otherwise, atomically allocate the lowest numbered available (that is, not already open in the calling process) file descriptor at the time of each allocation. Where a single function allocates two file descriptors (for example, pipe() or socketpair()), the allocations may be independent and therefore applications should not expect them to have adjacent values or depend on which has the higher value."

<comment> Const-me > what would be the point of the kernel not using a single function for "get > me an available fd" everywhere that it needs one?

Multithreading.

To return lowest-numbered file descriptor, calls to that single function need to be serialized. On multi-core, and especially on NUMA, I can see how that might hit the performance.

Apps don't normally create thousands of files, or pipes, or client sockets per second. However, for some server software, accepting thousands of sockets per second is normal.

Update, see also multi-queue NICs: [https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/networking/scaling....](https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/networking/scaling.txt)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Please be fair if in the readme that a comparison to ASIO is a bit apples to oranges. This one seems to be mostly a learning project, and is heavily work in progress.

boost asio already works with boost coroutines in a reasonable fashion. And this would certainly be a good way if someone wants to build some production project on top of it.

Regarding the code and example itself:

Having a separate callback for connection close seems to be a bit backward, since it again means the connection state is spread out over multiple callbacks. The purpose of a coroutine is to have everything in scope of that routine. In that case the connection close should be signaled by reading 0 from the socket, or the read returning an error.

<comment><AUTHOR> Removed the comparison with ASIO. But note that this is not "heavily in progress" but ready for production too.

I took your remark for the closing callback. read now returns 0 and write returns false when the connection is closed or lost.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Not super fair to say _linux sockets_ (in the README) and _I /O_ in the title when it's really just a TCP client - you force SOCK_STREAM and bind(2).

<comment><AUTHOR> This is default behaviour but you can fill you own socket file descriptor if you want, using the second overload of moustique_listen:

template <typename G, typename H> int moustique_listen(int listen_fd, G closed_connection_handler, H data_handler);

<comment><AUTHOR> But you're right, maybe we want two moustique_listen_tcp moustique_listen_udp helpers. I put this in my todolist.

<comment><USER5> While you're at it please add a namespace .. it'd make it a lot easier to administer in a project.

Great project by the way - I've put it on my workbench-TODO for a little hacking some time in the next few days. I've got a standard 'command processing server' project that I've been hacking on over the years, I might try to hack up a moustique_ integration, just for grins.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Note: I wrote this yesterday after I wrapped my hands around coroutines. This is a work in progress (even if it's already fully working) I'll take any remarks here.

<comment><USER6> Since you asked, I suggest running your readme through a spell checker. I didn't bother looking further than that.

<comment><USER7> Not everyone has English as a first or even second language. No bothering because of spelling seems like a good way to filter out some cool pieces of code.

<comment><USER8> With some potentially unreadable documentation. Spoken language is not less important than programming languages (and interestingly, from my experience, there seems to be at least some correlation between caring about either).

<comment><AUTHOR> I did not spend too much time writing the documentation because of the simplicity of the library. I thought that the tcp echo example would be enough. But I'll spend more time in the Readme, at least fixing the language issues :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> You've got memory leaks and resource leaks there.

<comment><AUTHOR> Got it. I'll fix them asap thanks

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is the API:

int moustique_listen(const char* port, G closed_connection_handler, H data_handler);

int moustique_listen(int listen_fd, G closed_connection_handler, H data_handler);

This could be improved, because the port argument could easily be confused with the file argument.

I.e.: moustique_listen(80, ...)

<comment><USER11> > moustique_listen

What, no love for namespaces?

<comment><AUTHOR> I did it this way because This library contains just one function. Would you still use namespaces in this case?

<comment><USER12> It's just more C++ ish to write something::listen rather than something_listen. Namespaces are easy too. Why not?

<comment><AUTHOR> My fear with this approach that it allows to write "using namespace moustique". This would cause: \- name conflicts on the listen function. \- Code harder to read since it's not obvious anymore that listen comes for the moustique library.

I often use namespaces but I do think that they can have a bad impact on the usability of the api, especially when you have too many deeply nested namespaces, and have to use plenty on using namespace ... to fix this.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ashley Madison investigation finds security measures lacking - <AUTHOR> https://www.priv.gc.ca/media/nr-c/2016/nr-c_160823_e.asp <comment><AUTHOR> The submission page forced omission of the rather damning "fictitious security trustmark was 'deceptive'" from the title.

Intentionally making up fake security trust logo to deceive people takes this from being simply bad at security right into the arena of _knowing_ you're bad at security and setting out to deceive people instead of doing anything to improve security.

On a side note, I just saw AM advertising on TV the other night - they'll not be so happy this joint government report has come out just at the time they believed the heat had died down and were back to business.

</comment><comment><USER2> YOU DON'T SAY</comment>


U.S. tech companies are building a Chinese-style social credit system - <AUTHOR> https://www.fastcompany.com/90394048/uh-oh-silicon-valley-is-building-a-chinese-style-social-credit-system <comment><USER2> Your FICO score and detailed credit history already serve this purpose to a large degree. Everyone knows that affects whether or not you can get a loan (and thus purchase a car or home), and on the surface that seems fair enough, but is already fairly discriminatory. But it's far worse than that; if you have a bad credit score, you can't even _rent_ an apartment. And many employers won't hire you. It's not just used to calculate what interest rate you get charged; it's used to judge your value as a human being in general.

<comment><USER3> FICO score isn't used for employment and I doubt it is used from renting. Employment based credit pulls gives employers a stripped down credit history allowing employers to see total debt, late payments, payment history etc. As for renting, it would be discriminatory against certain religions that forbid debt. If you don't have debt, you can't have a credit score.

Edit: People really need to know the difference between FICO score and credit history. You can't challenge algorithm of a FICO Score number. You can challenge incorrect data on your credit report.

<comment><USER2> At least in the US, you are wrong on both accounts. Employers regularly check credit history, and every apartment rental agency I've ever dealt with has as well. They might not have an explicit numeric FICO threshhold that they use (or at least admit to using), but that's just semantics. They will pull your credit history, and if they don't like what's on it (or if you simply don't have one), they won't deal with you.

I lived outside the US for years, and even when I'm in the US, I don't participate in the credit market. I'm completely unable to rent apartments in NYC unless I work out an unofficial sublet arrangement (and get treated like a second class tenant at risk of eviction at all times), and even in the suburbs, it severely limits my apartment choices. The only reason it hasn't hurt me with employers (that I know of) is because I have a solid resume and references.

<comment><USER4> You should be able to do what most people with not to great credit do, prepay some amount of your total lease. Credit is to show that you pay on time. It makes total sense you're not able to rent without some validation that the landlord will get paid.

<comment><USER2> Alas it's not really like that. The NYC rental market is incredibly tight. Most places already want a deposit plus first and last months' rent, which really just means double the deposit. Even if you have the cash for yet another deposit on top of that, they often won't entertain the idea. It's easier if you can deal directly with a landlord; agencies will generally have nothing to do with you. That and proof of a job/income should be way more than enough proof, but it's still not.

I'm a capitalist and a bit of a left-leaning libertarian, so I'm not saying landlords shouldn't have the right to act like this, or that I think the government needs to step in and regulate it. If I owned a property, I wouldn't want the government telling me whom I can rent to (more than they already do). Just providing examples of the creeping social credit system we have. I don't think it's about financial security once you're already asking for three months' rent just to move in; the financial part is pretty well covered by then.

<comment><USER4> The government has little to no say in who you rent it to. If I as a landlord want 100% of rental term up front, that's up to me and has no bearing on credit score, that is just a metric that helps me make a decision.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _" The most disturbing attribute of a social credit system is not that it's invasive, but that it's extralegal. Crimes are punished outside the legal system, which means no presumption of innocence, no legal representation, no judge, no jury, and often no appeal. In other words, it's an alternative legal system where the accused have fewer rights."_

Also, what if you disagree with me politically about illegal immigration - does that give you a "right" to ban me from your establishment? Imagine it on the other side as well for people who are against abortion.

<comment><USER6> Id imagine I wouldn't be welcome in a church or mosque because of my views on abortion.

<comment><USER7> Churches that don't welcome all aren't really functioning as churches. More like social clubs.

      And Jesus answered them, "Those who are well have no need
      of a physician, but those who are sick. I have not come to
      call the righteous but sinners to repentance."

      Luke 5:31-32

<comment><USER8> Well functioning Churches are social clubs. Fellowship, witnessing and counseling are all found in Christian traditions of worship.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> mAEStro-paNDa _Honest_ discussions and reporting around anything involving China is quite difficult to come by these days. I would very much recommend everyone take any Western reporting with a grain of salt, especially from obvious pro-U.S. sources. Much of the coverage of the situation in HK can be seen as evidence of this. On this topic specifically, Wired's recent article over this was a breath of fresh air[1] for the overall state of news reporting when it comes to China.

Some clarification: First, when I talk about this slant in reporting Chinese affairs, it's not from a pro-CCP or pro-China position. Discussions about Chinese media and bias are still essential to have, but has nothing to do with the point I'm making here. Next, this issue isn't limited to just US media. There is arguably an observable bias even when it comes to Western academics that study or cover China in some capacity.

I'm sure aspects of this system in China earns a healthy dose of criticism and skepticism. However, it's important to consider the way this may be reported in the West, especially as tensions heat up between China and the US. Just think, for example, that it would not be very difficult to cover the US's credit score system as authoritarian, racist, or Orwellian. In fact, such cases have been made in the past and have some weight to them.

Just a thought.

[1] [https://www.wired.com/story/china-social-credit-score- system...](https://www.wired.com/story/china-social-credit-score-system/)

<comment><USER9> > Wired's recent article over this was a breath of fresh air.

I agree that this article is pretty good. Ironically, Wired's first article about China's social credit system generated a lot of misinformation about the social credit system in the first place. Nothing was factually incorrect, but most of the article was pure speculation and then everyone on the internet treated that as fact.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Why do you think Google is indexing all your online purchases?

Look, online tracking inevitably leads to behavioral profiling. Put two behavioral profiles side by side and you have scoring, ranking. Add some weight on behaviors, age, income etc. and you have a social credit system.

Edit: the question is not if big tech already have social scores in us or not. The questions are when and how they will use it

<comment> word-reader Exactly; let's say you have a social media record or even a browsing history that indicates labor activism (or drug use, or health issues, or any other kind of activism). That data is saved somewhere, associated with you directly or just assembled into a behavioral profile for ad targeting purposes -- at least for now and as far as we can tell. And like racial bias, this data can be dumped into a neural net with a score at the end to launder what exactly is going on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Fully, fully agree.

Tech has opened up "channels of analysis" that the US spent a huge amount of time, effort, and social strife legislating against. Because of the hub-and- spoke model of tech and data, a lot of these channels have been re-opened in indirect, but socially important ways.

What goes in one end for social media, comes out the other end in your insurance rates. How do we think Rocket Mortgage generates am instantaneous rate, when mortgage lenders used to rely on a great deal of relationship management and building to do the same loan issuance (and, they had credit scores back then, so it's not only an API into FICO that's changed).

There are so many unknown unknowns here now. Previously, your mortgage rate bumped up if you lived in a red-line neighborhood. This was legislated against. Now, is the same thing happening with online banking/online health insurance rate quotes, etc., if you have a history of social media locations that place you in minority neighborhoods? Odds are, I bet yes, or something very similar.

The more people that realize what is going into seemingly innocuous uses of tech - game apps, social media, food ordering, comes out in the other end in things that really matter to us - banking (this guy's kid spends $1k a month on candy crush), insurance (see the article), politics (we all know this), the more this can start to be legislated safely, and at least make the consumer aware.

</comment><comment><USER12> > That Instagram pic showing you teasing a grizzly bear at Yellowstone with a > martini in one hand, a bucket of cheese fries in the other, and a cigarette > in your mouth, could cost you. On the other hand, a Facebook post showing > you doing yoga might save you money.

It will be a cold day in hell when any insurance company investigates you for potential fraud, decides you're not guilty, and then decides to _LOWER_ your premiums as a result of their investigation. Premiums don't work that way. It's frustrating to see that float around as even a possibility from a blog like FastCompany that claims to know how the business world works. I find it incredibly frustrating anyone would even insinuate that insurance companies have a conscience.

<comment><USER13> Insurance companies already give away FitBits, have "health fairs," I remember getting a $50 Visa gift card for participating in some health thing at work. These are all in exchange for lower premiums your employer is likely negotiated.

I've heard similar stories about car insurance companies asking to install GPS into your car for discounts or per-mile billing.

I'm not quite sure about the end-game for insurance companies for things that aren't about catching fraud. If we have perfect data then we lose the risk- pooling for insurance--then you're no longer insuring against anything and that seems like a different type of business to me.

<comment><USER14> The innocent explanation is if they see it as reducing the risk in their pool - the equivalent of it is cheaper to give away flu vaccines than say 25% reduction in flu hospitalizations it is a win-win. Assuming it is always the case is naive however.

However the tracking is suspicious. Insurance companies have a bad habit of trying to never pay what they promise out of greed - despite doing so sawing at the branch they sit upon.

As a rule of thumb if the insurance company learns nothing from what it gives away it is probably trustworthy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Isn't this already done to a great extent through black balling?

SV recruiters blackball candidates/potential employees (often for no reason than petty vindictiveness);

SV incubators/VCs use blackball lists;

even insurance has internal lists in order to assess and deny claims based on nothing other than the "social credit" of the claimant rather than the merits of the claim itself. They even go a step further and insurance will rate/rank a claimant's attorney, so you may have a good claim that gets denied because you have a low ranking attorney, or you may have a weak claim they approve because your attorney is highly ranked (probably has a number of jury verdicts in similar cases).

<comment><USER16> > SV recruiters blackball candidates/potential employees (often for no reason > than petty vindictiveness);

How do you know about this blacklist? How is it shared and maintained.

<comment><USER17> It's not a written down list. The way it works is that when you are considered for a company, someone there might reach out to people they know at your former or current employer and get the inside info on you. Those people are usually higher up the hierarchy than you. So if they have some grudge they hold against you, then you won't get hired irrespective of how you did in the interview and you will never know the real reason.

This is the hidden power structure that crosses companies. And this power structure holds and maintains all sorts of biases: alumni, ethnicity, religion, gender, socioeconomic, etc... It works the other way too in terms of some people getting hired who otherwise wouldn't.

In fact, that person holds the relationship with the other person in higher regard than you and will in fact report to the other person that you have been interviewing at another company. Applies to recruiters, managers, HR, you name it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This makes me wonder which company made this "Social Credit Drone Strike List" [1]

> In 2014, former CIA and NSA director Michael Hayden said in a public debate, > "We kill people based on metadata."

> According to multiple reports and leaks, death-by-metadata could be > triggered, without even knowing the target's name, if too many derogatory > checks appear on their profile. "Armed military aged males" exhibiting > suspicious behavior in the wrong place can become targets, as can someone > "seen to be giving out orders." Such mathematics-based assassinations have > come to be known as "signature strikes."

1\. rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/how-to-survive-americas-kill- list-699334/

<comment><USER19> > Such mathematics-based assassinations have come to be known as "signature > strikes."

Meet the algo behind the math assassinations, its name is literally SKYNET [0]

[0] [https://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2016/02/the-n...](https://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2016/02/the-nsas-skynet-program-may-be-killing-thousands-of- innocent-people/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Fundamentally, for a service to not be discriminatory, it must be regulated like a utility (e.g. telephone, electric, etc).

Using something that has the same functionality as a utility but is not regulated as such raises some questions.

Also, profiling social media is nothing new. It's not uncommon for insurance companies to hire private investigators to look into suspicious cases. One case I heard was a man going on disability citing being homebound but the private investigator found evidence completely to the contrary. I fail to see how this is any different.

</comment><comment><USER21> Adding reasons why opting out of social media 10 years ago was and remains a good idea.

</comment><comment><USER14> Comparing it to social credit is disingenuous even though there are real problems with existing and proposed ratings and their applications.

Social Credit is a wrong-headed authoritarian tool of control that is enforced and has jack and shit to do with actual creditworthiness. It only "works" from being pressures because otherwise the companies shouldn't give a shit if they want to optimize for profits. If you tried to sell a loan evaluation system for banks based upon how they treated their parents in the US or Europe they would tell you to not waste their time again.

There are problems with the current scoring systems of course - the burden of proof for identity theft is utterly backwards, credit scores have major "how good of a cash cow are you" aspects mixed in to what should be pure reliability, and idiots in recruiting use it for employement evaluation when it is utterly irrelevant.

Even if the system winds up unjust and stupid there are large differences - the comparison isn't helpful.

</comment><comment><USER22> Indeed so. That is one of the major reasons why I don't use social media, and go to great lengths to evade the pervasive spying that major tech companies have brought into fashion.

</comment><comment><USER23> Didn't this happen before with some group called "Klout" or some such? I don't remember what happened to them.

<comment><USER24> Purchased by Lithium Technologies in 2014, shuttered in 2018. [0]

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> This could and should be a huge US election issue. Tulsi Gabbard is suing Google and has made some pretty strong statements about big tech. I fear all the other candidates are under the sway of the DC lobbyists where Google. FB et al spend tens of millions

<comment><USER25> [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-22/google- se...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-22/google- set-2018-lobbying-record-as-washington-techlash-expands)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> These false equivalences are not helpful at all.

<comment><USER27> Why are they false?

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> In China, the government has the ability to make me disappear whereas a silicon valley corp. can't. That's the major difference here.

<comment><USER29> True, they can just ruin your life, but at least they can't just kill you. That makes it totally okay.

<comment><USER28> That's at least something citizens can act upon. In China they'll just bury you.

<comment><USER30> Just like citizens can act up on, say, getting blackballed by Google and having their email gone forever?

<comment><USER31> Are you comparing losing your email versus being kidnapped and held in jail without access to a lawyer or courts?

<comment><USER30> No, I'm saying this is a thing that deeply impacts people's lives which they cannot, in fact, "act upon" when they are wronged.

<comment><USER28> Take regular backups has _always_ been good advice, that doesn't go away just because a company handles your email for you. Always take archives from cloud services just like you backup HDDs, use a custom domain to forward inbound email traffic and you'll be 100% protected.

You chose the worst example of Google being able to ruin somebody's life when if they really wanted to be evil, they'd have a monumental amount of data for blackmail, the ability to silence you online, etc..

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> As long as it's not state enforced, not equivalent.

</comment><comment><USER33> Insurances assessing risk based on publicly available information (social media posts) is in no way comparable to a social credit system.

PatronScan looks potentially more dangerous, but the law in the US and UK (for example and afaik) is that you are free to refuse service to anyone you please as long as it is not illegal discrimination (e.g. in the UK, race or sexual orientation).

Once again what this highlights is the power gained by these online platforms. On the one hand as private companies they have no obligation of universal service, on the other hand some of them have so much power that being excluded has a real impact on people.

This reinforces my opinion that either these tech giants will effectively rule, or they will have to be controlled in a way similar to what China does in order to keep decisions on censorship, exclusion, and provision of service within public hands.

<comment><USER34> > the law in the US and UK (for example) is that you are free to refuse > service to anyone you please as long as it is not illegal discrimination

Just wondering what does it mean and how can this ever be enforced? Does this mean that you can refuse service to anyone as long as they are not part of any minority?

<comment><USER33> In the UK there is a list of so-called protected characteristics that originates from EU law. It includes sex, race, age, sexual orientation, religion. It is not legal to discriminate based on those. In general it is legal to otherwise refuse service. I suspect the US are similar.

On the other hand, for example in France it is illegal to refuse service unless you have a good reason to.

So in the UK if I walk to a market stall with money in my hand they are free to refuse to sell to me (I suspect the same is true in the US), but in France they would need a 'good reason' to refuse.

<comment><USER34> > So in the UK if I walk to a market stall with money in my hand they are free > to refuse to sell to me,

But I do not understand how can this be enforced. If for example you are gay and are refused service, can't you claim that it is due to your sexual orientation? Conversely, if the shop wants to expel you because of illegal reasons, can't they always claim that it is due to some other, ridiculous but valid reason?

<comment><USER33> Yes you can obviously claim that, and yes they can obviously claim this was not the reason.

Then it's the usual job of the courts to try to uncover the facts.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Review My Startup: Getridofit.com - A marketplace for junk removal. - <AUTHOR> http://getridofit.com

<comment><AUTHOR> I launched Getridofit.com last month.

So far about one hundred independent junk removal teams have signed up around the country. I have been running campaign on Google Adwords to get customers. We have done jobs in Phoenix, San Diego, Los Angeles and San Antonio. Hopefully many more to come!

I am new to programming and spent about a year learning the basics of PHP in order to get the site up and running. I have a lot to left to learn, but I put out an mvp.

I would love any feedback or questions from HN!

</comment><comment><USER2> Your site seems to work well, and is a service I could have made use of a few months ago. Finding reviews and scheduling local services like this often leads to a million dead ends using google and traditional search.

Right now, in Kansas City you have one provider with no reviews, so for me it has not yet solved the problem, but it is a great start!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for checking it out!</comment></comment>


WearScript: A JavaScript environment for Google Glass - <AUTHOR> http://www.sdtimes.com/content/article.aspx?ArticleID=68986&page=1 <comment><AUTHOR> [http://www.wearscript.com/](http://www.wearscript.com/)</comment>


NY Times Blocking Incognito Browsers - <AUTHOR> http://www.niemanlab.org/2019/02/your-favorite-way-to-get-around-the-new-york-times-paywall-might-be-about-to-go-away/ <comment><USER2> This will probably stop working.

From the bottom of the article:

"There is one way the timing is odd, though. In order to treat incognito browsers differently, a website needs to be able to determine that they're incognito browsers. Earlier this month, it came out that Google Chrome, the web's most popular browser, was working to prevent sites from doing just that. Code that blinds servers to private browsing has already been added to the current Canary version of Chrome (a version used for early developer testing). New features in Canary, if all goes well, typically roll out to the standard Google Chrome in three or four months — so this sort of tactic will likely break by summer in the browser that currently has 63 percent market share.

By the way, I tested this out: Running the current Google Chrome Canary (74.0.3718.0) and turning on the internal setting for the change (#enable- filesystem-in-incognito in chrome://flags) meant the Times suddenly lost its ability to detect incognito mode."

</comment><comment><USER3> This style of article of "Let's post 4-5 random tweets of people mentioning the points!" annoys me...

My main browser is Vivaldi, I now have Firefox set-up to clear cookies, etc, on exit, so if I want to browse WaPo I load up Firefox and the website thinks I'm just a fresh user (although this too has stopped working with WaPo's site...).

</comment><comment><USER4> Disabling JavaScript should be a suitable work around as it requires JS to run their check for private browsing. Also I have JS disabled by default and I have no issues accessing articles from the NYT, WaPo, etc.

</comment><comment><USER5> It seems like the best option given the business model.

Essentially, if they want to limit a given person to N articles a month they need to be able to in some way identify them. If a person is using private mode then theoretically there isn't a way to track them, so your option is to either not allow them to read articles at all, or actively search for, and exploit, some break in privacy. I like to imagine that many companies think that is not the right thing to do.

</comment><comment><USER6> Browser extensions that automatically delete site cookies when you close all the tabs for a given site (unless you manually add the site to your whitelist) still work and involve the least amount of ongoing user hassle.

Cookie Autodelete on Firefox, for example.

[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/cookie- autode...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/cookie-autodelete/)

</comment><comment><USER7> Can someone explain how they can detect if you are in incognito mode? I didn't understand the article's explanation. From what I understand, it checks if you can store cookies. But doesn't incognito store cookies until you close the window? When I just opened YouTube in incognito, I get generic recommendations. But after watching several videos, I get recommendations based on what I watched, which I presume, are stored as cookies.

<comment><USER8> Some web APIs are disabled in incognito mode, yet are almost universally present on modern browsers. By attempting to use these APIs, a web page can detect if you are in Incognito. If the API is blocked, they can reasonably assume you are.

<comment><USER7> Thanks. What were some examples of those APIs?

<comment><USER9> I believe FileSystem API is one of them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I wonder when a newspaper will try pay-as-you-go. $10 gets you 20 additional article credits in your allowance. Or maybe a cheaper lite subscription with a higher article limit or just A-section or something.

<comment><USER11> You mean something like Blendle? [https://launch.blendle.com/](https://launch.blendle.com/)

Basically top up your credit and pay per article from a range of news sources. Although it's not (yet?) as integrated, featured and wide spread as it needs to be to be really useful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I've been wondering about this and was about to make an HN thread asking about it as I couldn't find anything online.

I'm no longer able to bypass the paywall via Incognito Mode. It appears to be IP-based and perhaps even guessing based on geolocation? I sometimes can't even get around it by using a VPN in a different country.

And now, I've seen it block Incognito browers (I have to login to be able to read in Incognito). But oddly, I left the browser open on that page and about ten minutes later the paywall disappeared and I could see the full article.

NYT should just go full paywall like FT. No way around it. if you are paying for a subscription you should feel confident knowing there's no way to bypass and get the content free.

the dumbest paywall is the Australian Financial Review's. you can just hit Escape and stop the page before the paywall loads. or use Outline.com or Textise as the content is all there, it's just behind a css element. and they charge subscribers like $1,000 per year.

<comment><AUTHOR> Instead of incognito, what if you just march through a bunch of different browsers in their non-incognito modes?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Disable JavaScript. Bonus: the site loads much faster.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I was not able to replicate (the article suggests it might be a test).

<comment><USER14> I can. It doesn't always happen, but I have seen it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I cringe the day where my connection gets temp-banned because my browser rendered the site too quickly because I disabled all the junk a page loads.

</comment><comment><USER16> the NYT has really done downhill over the years, so I'm exactly bristling at the thought of losing access to it.</comment>


Show HN: Find people nearby to Yo  - <AUTHOR>

http://yopeoplefinder.appspot.com enables you to find people to Yo. Comments and feedback welcome :) <comment><USER2> The link in the footer to JustYo.co doesn't work.

Neither do links to JustYo.co/username, as far as I can tell. I haven't used the app so the link may have significance to the app even though it doesn't show anything in the browser, in that case I apologize.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey thanks for the feedback - the link in the footer should now work.

You must have the app installed in order to add users, maybe this should be clearer.

<comment><USER2> Yeah, of course, that's a given, I just thought that clicking on the username link without the app installed would at least show something else instead of the Yo landing page. Not a big issue, I wouldn't expect the Yo website to be polished or overly functional, so it's ok :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Clickable: [http://yopeoplefinder.appspot.com](http://yopeoplefinder.appspot.com)</comment>


Ask HN: Do small, brick-and-mortar businesses care about customer feedback? - <AUTHOR>

I'm building something at the moment that really streamlines customer feedback for a particular type of business. What I'm offering is essentially an A/B testing service for real-world products. I've done my due diligence on this market, and while three or four other Web apps have started doing what I'm proposing, none of them are executing on the same vision.
Something that's been nagging at me, though, is whether these business owners actually care about customer feedback. The owner could make the argument that increasing profits are a sign that the customer is happy, but I've been toying with this counterargument:
-they may be buying from you because the selection in the area is limited. If another business offering the same type of product suddenly opens up, those customers are not going to stay loyal unless they're happy with your business. Customer feedback is a good way to gauge that.
Similarly, happy customers are the ones that make referrals to friends and family.
I'm planning on sitting down with several dozen of these business owners in the near future and hammer out exactly which features they'd like to see in this product, but I thought I'd ask this here: do you think brick-and-mortar business owners care about customer feedback? <comment><USER2> Of course they do. Customer feedback allows you to add products and services that add value to your offerings and remove ones that don't. In my experience I've found that it's very difficult to see your business as your customers do, so the only way to figure out what they think is to have them tell you.</comment>


CAcert.org – A community-driven Certificate Authority issuing free certificates - <AUTHOR> http://www.cacert.org/

<comment><USER2> I am curious why this was submitted now, especially in light of the recent removal of cacert from Debian's ca-certificates package.[^1][^2] It seems that the discussion of cacert's removal highlighted serious concerns about cacert's process. A request to include cacert in mozilla's certs sat in bugzilla for four years before it was--thankfully--closed.[^3]

[^1]: [https://bugs.debian.org/cgi- bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=718434](https://bugs.debian.org/cgi- bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=718434)

[^2]: [https://lwn.net/Articles/590879/](https://lwn.net/Articles/590879/)

[^3]: [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=215243](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=215243)

<comment><USER3> No serious concerns. Just the typical overly debian knee-jerk reaction to bring someone down by bullying "because we can" and not for technical merits. There was no argumentation why cacert should be removed.

Maybe Assange was right? (I still doubt it, debian politicians are just as stupid and like to abuse their powers as any other politicians are)

<comment><USER2> Argument: (In order of how persuasive I found the argument)

      1.  "There was no argumentation why cacert should have been included
          initially."
      2.  No audit of CACert's process and infrastructure.
      3.  Mozilla and FreeBSD have had previous discussions and decided CACert
          was unacceptable. (reliance-on/agreement-with)
      4.  Questionable license.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Yeah, you don't want to use this.

<comment><USER3> You do want to support a non-commercial and community driven CA cert authority, because you don't want to rely on commercial-only cert's which are not based on technical merits, just on friendship and common business interests.

You really want a free HTTPS connection to your favorite open source projects login page, and do not force them to pay yearly CA update fees to not trustworthy cert authorities for no reason.

Currently you need to add the cacert into your keychain on some distros manually. See [http://wiki.cacert.org/FAQ/ImportRootCert](http://wiki.cacert.org/FAQ/ImportRootCert)

<comment><USER5> Certificates are not expensive, they can be picked up for $5.

<comment><USER6> 5$ is expensive. Don't you know that there are other countries in the world and that the Internet is not only used by the US. There are also other age groups. If a 10 year old boy has a hobby website 5$ might be a price which is unacceptable.

what would you say if I as a billionaire tell you that cars for less than 50 000 $ are not needed because all Ferraris are not expensive. So please don't use your subjective experience as an argument against cheap security solutions. They have a point to exist. Nobody should have the right to set the lower limit of how much you have to pay to secure your website. Commericial CAs cannot guarantee the security of your favorite site as we all learned from the heartbleed bug. So there is nit argument to favor them and block community solutions.

<comment><USER5> I'm not American, so yes I am well aware.

>If a 10 year old boy has a hobby website 5$ might be a price which is unacceptable. Why would this site need SSL?

<comment><USER7> Because he has users and he wants to keep their private info under encrypted channels?

Hobby sites quickly become apps (even as small as phpBB) and it would be good if we SSL'd everything.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> A community-driven effort is always commendable, but we must ditch the whole CA model, not fix it.

Proposed solution: use namecoin's _.bit_ domains [0], add TLS records, and use dsnchain [1] as a bridge between DNS and namecoin to keep using our current applications.

 _Disclaimer: I participated in dnschain_

[0] [https://wiki.namecoin.info/index.php?title=Domain_Name_Speci...](https://wiki.namecoin.info/index.php?title=Domain_Name_Specification)

[1] [https://github.com/okTurtles/dnschain](https://github.com/okTurtles/dnschain)

</comment><comment><USER9> _www.cacert.org uses an invalid security certificate.

The certificate is not trusted because no issuer chain was provided.

(Error code: sec_error_unknown_issuer)_

<comment><USER10> Yes, because it is self signed, and your OS/distro must have CACert.org's certs to be able to verify.

<comment><USER11> Not technically correct a "self signed certificate":

A self-signed certificate is an identity certificate that is signed by the same entity whose identity it certifies. ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self- signed_certificate](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-signed_certificate))

The certificate certificates your identity, and it's signed by the certificate of the CACert certificate authority.

The problem is caused by the fact that your browser/OS doesn't trust CACert's certificate by default; each user would have to add it manually.

<comment><USER12> Also not technically correct. Root certificates -- such as the one that provides the top-level of CACert's trust hierarchy -- are, by definition, self-signed certificates. So, you're both right. The CACert root is a self- signed certificate, which is not in the trust store of the browser.

<comment><USER11> Trust of root certificates is not obtained through signing. Browser or OSes contain a key store which includes a bunch of CA along with a few flags which define how should certificate signed by those CAs be trusted (e.g. sites, code signing). So, by definition root certificates are not even self signed; they are trusted by virtue of being included in some authoritative key store.

The comment was referring to the following error message: "www.cacert.org uses an invalid security certificate. The certificate is not trusted because no issuer chain was provided sec_error_unknown_issuer"

This error is reported when the CA is unknown; If the certificate itself was self-signed the user would see:

"www.cacert.org uses an invalid security certificate. The certificate is not trusted because it is self signed. (Error code: sec_error_untrusted_issuer)"

In this case the line is blurred because arguably both www.cacert.org and the cacert CA is run by the same entity. But if you obtain a certificate for your site, signed by cacert's CA, an arbitrary user will get sec_error_unknown_issuer not sec_error_untrusted_issuer.

The distinction of those two cases is however relatively useless, and I'm sorry I'm contributing into veering this topic into pure nitpicking. That said, computers nitpick by definition, so it's always useful being able to clearly understand what different sets of initial conditions will trigger a different output (In this case "sec_error_unknown_issuer" vs "sec_error_untrusted_issuer").

NOTE: if you add cacert's CA certificate to your key store but don't set the appropriate trust flags, you will get "sec_error_untrusted_issuer"; this obviously means that this error message is not a reliable way to determine if a given certificate is self-signed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The problem with a community driven CA is that there is no repercussions if it is infiltrated. If one of the commercial CAs got hacked then they would be removed as a trusted CA and their business would cease from that point on. They have a commercial interest in being secure and therefore invest lots of money in solutions to this (including expensive HSMs).

Certificates are not expensive - you can pick them up for $5.

I sell SSL certs for £35, every one of my customers could have got the exact same certificate for £5 - they pay the extra for a well designed, intuitive website that makes the process incredibly easy with great support.

Most of my customers hear about my site through word of mouth, I often give out free or cost-price certificates to Open Source software or charitable sites.

[https://www.volcanicpixels.com/ssl/buy](https://www.volcanicpixels.com/ssl/buy)

[https://github.com/volcanicpixels/volcanicpixels/](https://github.com/volcanicpixels/volcanicpixels/)

<comment><USER13> Experience shows that there are no repercussions [edit: usually no repercussions] if a commercial CA is hacked, either (or even if it intentionally issues fraudulent certificates).

<comment><USER5> That is simply not true:

[http://googleonlinesecurity.blogspot.co.uk/2011/08/update- on...](http://googleonlinesecurity.blogspot.co.uk/2011/08/update-on-attempted- man-in-middle.html)

<comment><USER14> OTOH Comodo is still in business: [http://www.wired.com/2011/03/comodo- compromise/](http://www.wired.com/2011/03/comodo-compromise/)

<comment><USER5> I was wrong.

<comment><USER15> DigiNotar got revoked partly because they got hacked, but mostly because they had zero acceptable followup. There was no good enough postmortem describing their mistakes and how they would correct them, and they also engaged in a coverup.

Browser makers do not engage in instant execution of any CA that makes a mistake, because CA's are run by humans and to err is human. What they insist on is coming clean when mistakes are made, and steps taken ASAP to restore confidence, like publishing a real post mortem and making business changes to ensure the same mistake can't happen again.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What advice do you have for your younger you? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Buy bitcoin in 2010, ask for more money to employers

</comment><comment><USER3> Don't get married. And certainly not before your 50s.

<comment><USER4> Why 50s? I can understand the benefits of not marrying in one's 20s for example, but not marrying until one's 50s?

<comment><USER3> In your 50s, you're (with luck) wiser and have more experience. You've had a chance to see what happens with the marriages of a lot of people around you, and just how miserable a bad marriage can be. And also just how financially and emotionally devastating a bad divorce can be.

Things are very different from the 1930s or 1960s, and in general it's hard to see marriage as a good deal for most these days.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Buy Bitcoin in 2011</comment>


Twelve months notice - <AUTHOR> http://cdixon.org/?p=1674

<comment><USER2> This is exactly what I did when I emigrated to Canada from the States. I let the company I was working for know that I was applying for landed immigrant status and that they could count on me until the immigration process was done and I had a job in hand for the move.

It took about ten months from start to finish, but they appreciated the openness, honesty, and (most importantly) hard work that I put into the company prior to emigrating.

Were we a startup? Um. No, more a small player. But I would have done this whether it was a small company or a large company because I respected the people I worked with. If I didn't respect them, then they'd exactly get the two weeks (and that happened more than once, too).

</comment><comment><USER3> Generally good advice, but a year is a long time in the startup world and what do you do if you get a really good job offer that won't wait? Seems like this is a pretty common occurrence as it has already happened to me and I am only 6 months out of school. Without going into a lot of detail, I started at a company shortly after graduating and two months later got a job offer at another startup that was better in almost every aspect and decided to bail.

<comment><USER4> "twelve months notice" is definitely just general advice, and certainly a long time in the startup world. However, I think it's just an illustrative example. What the author appears to be saying is that in social circles where your reputation matters, don't be a dick. I think the author was just using "twelve months notice" as an explanatory example.

In summary: Don't screw people over unless you work in an anonymous, transactional industry, which startups aren't.

<comment><USER5> I agree. I think the time is arbitrary, it is the communication itself that is important.

When I took a position with a small company way back when, I told them up front that I had a summer job working for my dad for 3 weeks each year. They were very accommodating.

This does not address the lack of time off for a vacation, but that is another post...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is 2 weeks a legal requirement in some states? I have yet to see that here in California, except once in an employment contract for a company headquartered in NJ.

The advice I generally give is also Golden Rule based, which is to give the amount of notice one reasonably believes would be given in a layoff. This is, of course, easiest with a company that has already gone through such a thing, having already set an expectation.

<comment><USER7> Wouldn't any law against at-will employment be tantamount to slavery?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> There are pockets of the latter approach in larger industry. I was fortunate enough that my frustration at truly ignorant policies caught the attention of our CTO, who happened to value openness and honesty over legalistic relationships.

I've found the freedom to be unabashedly open about my search for fulfillment in my work to be an incredible source of inner peace and job satisfaction. It's humanizing.</comment>


A former Googler has declared war on ad blockers with a new startup - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/former-google-exec-launches-sourcepoint-with-10-million-series-a-funding-2015-6/

<comment><USER2> I don't see how ad blockers are "bad" \- I'm running it on my computer, after all. Don't I get to control what my computer does?

In a larger sense, calling ad blockers "bad" is the kind of thinking that leads to DRM, or government mandated blacklist software. If you can't make interesting ads, go home.

</comment><comment><USER3> I only recently (last month or so) started using an ad blocker. IMO, if the content is free, ads on a page are completely reasonable. I installed the ad blocker because some websites take it way to far. Don't show a modal box to get me to sign up for your notifications or newsletter - if i want to, i'll find the link. Don't be excessive - I counted 7 ads on Wired's homepage. Seriously? And at least, try to target ads. If i'm reading an article about Apple, I don't want to see an ad for bath tubs from Home Depot because your using tracking cookies and I'm remodeling my bathroom. Show me ads for Apple accessories or software related to Apple.

<comment><USER4> This is just a race between adTech companies and adBlockers, like the information security race - more attacks, more protection. Both tend to balance the other over time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's my computer. You don't get to decide what I run on it. If I don't want to run your stuff, you can step off.</comment>


Gartner: Android to be become #2 worldwide mobile OS this year, #1 by 2014? - <AUTHOR> http://www.boygeniusreport.com/2010/09/10/gartner-android-to-be-become-2-worldwide-mobile-os-this-year-1-by-2014/

<comment><USER2> A lot can happen in the next 4 years...there may be something nobody sees coming that knocks iOS and Android down a few notches. Back in 2005, I bet few predicted that Apple would be a mobile powerhouse (or even have a mobile device, though there were rumors). Same with Google (they bought Android in 2005). Who knows...we may all be using Facebook and Twitter phones in 2014.

</comment><comment><USER3> US Android developers can sell apps to NZ users. NZ Android developers cannot sell apps to any users. Still targeting iOS, thanks.</comment>


Ask HN: Would like to speak to someone in education - <AUTHOR> Hello HN crowd!
I'm a software developer who wants to make education more affordable. My desire is to enhance back-office systems that reduce the need for administrative work.
If you are in this space, I would love to help discuss your needs or problems that you have and want to be solved. I am not seeking compensation for this work but am open to compensation if it presents itself as an opportunity.
Thank you for your time! <comment><USER2> I'm thinking about education powered by something like Hololens 2 and the Mixed Reality Toolkit.

Happy to chat, email me (address in profile)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for responding!

This was more-so a thought of making the expenses of running a school cheaper, rather than teaching in a new way. I do like your enthusiasm, but let me think about this and how I feel about possibly pursuing this avenue!</comment></comment>


YouTube videos freeze at view count of 301 - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIkhgagvrjI&list=UUoxcjq-8xIDTYp3uz647V5A&index=1&feature=plcp

<comment><AUTHOR> Summary of the video

This was interesting question that was answered, but it's becoming an annoying trend to have 10-minute videos of things that can explained in a few sentences. Here's basically everything the video had to say:

Q: When you submit a video to YouTube, why the does view count grow nicely hour by hour, 6 views, 57 views, 188 views, and so on, but then seems to get stuck at 301 views and doesn't advance from there for a long time?

A: YouTube doesn't do much checking on the veracity of videos that get <= 300 views. The 300 was an arbitrary threshold that no one remembers the origin of. As of 301 views, YouTube will apply more sophisticated video analytics to check for cheating against the view count (by bots, etc.).

Once a video reaches a view count of 301, it'll stay stuck there for a half day or full day until YouTube does the video analytics, after which they will allow the count to be updated if it was not found to be fraudulent.</comment>


More from Silicon Valley Alt-Right Posterboy, James Damore - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/palebirdy/status/899764514878574592 <comment><USER2> Why is this man now being classified as " _alt-right_ "? It seems to me he's 'just' sexist, I haven't really seen any indication regarding his political beliefs in general, certainly nothing along the lines of the unthinking intolerance towards minorities, anti-immigration stance, subscription to weird conspiracy theories, and white supremacy that need to be broadly satisfied in order to reliably define somebody as being alt-right. (Yes, it will be argued that sexism correlates with other forms of discrimination, but what is roughly true on average is not necessarily true in every particular case.) Just tarring him with the label of being "alt-right" as a manner of shouting him down seems very lax, particularly when he can be countered with far more compelling arguments.

<comment><AUTHOR> > Why is this man now being classified as "alt-right"?

(1) Sexism is an integral part of alt-right movement. Most alt-right communities are anti-women as well. (e.g. [https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/dissecting-trumps- most-...](https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/dissecting-trumps-most-rabid- online-following/)) (2) This man has identified himself as an "alt-right" icon by continuously featuring on shows of every despicable alt-right outlet (refer to his twitter account, multiple interviews, etc.).

"If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck."

<comment><USER3> But he is not sexist. It is not sexist to believe biology could influence interests or to cite peer reviewed research on the topic.

<comment><AUTHOR> Any real scientist knows that all "peer reviewed research" are not equal, there can be very low quality research. Almost in all "citations", he made a jump from a small experimental study to women in STEM field (or, maybe he simply copied the points of prominent alt-right figures). See this [https://www.wired.com/story/the-pernicious-science-of- james-...](https://www.wired.com/story/the-pernicious-science-of-james- damores-google-memo/) And there are many "debunkings" like this.

<comment><USER3> There are also many articles backing up his cited research, the consensus from the articles I've read indicate two of the factors were very strongly correlated and others were very debatable. He did jump to conclusions, but that does not mean he is sexist.

<comment><AUTHOR> Okay.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Also, James Damore interview with alt-right troll Milo Yannopoulis

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2J5E8sSdsI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2J5E8sSdsI)

Most recently, Milo had posted images of several Google employees who were gay, lesbian, or transgender.

<comment><USER2> That is an utterly preposterous bit of interviewing, the interviewer (Milo) literally leads him on the whole way and biases the whole discourse to the point of being essentially a monologue. (Only watched the first five minutes or so but that was quite enough.)

Still, being interviewed and led on by an interviewer that wishes to convey a very definite message and is willing to indulge in the most naked forms of pretesti get does not sell me on the idea that the author of the memo is himself satisfies all the criteria for being called "alt-right".

EDIT> Dear Christ what utter tosh that is. I was pained watching it. Ugh.</comment></comment>


Chinese scientists admit to tweaking the genes of human embryos - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/chinese-scientists-genetic-modification-human-embryo-crispr-2015-4

<comment><USER2> I am totally for genetic modification of embryos!

Only downside I can foresee is the possible unknown long-term side effects.</comment>


Mappiness maps happiness across the UK - <AUTHOR> http://www.mappiness.org.uk/ <comment><USER2> Interesting - although I probably wouldn't bother with it if I was unhappy. I'd be concentrating on sorting my unhappiness (ie finishing work, getting home, whatever) and would come back when I had time / was happier (much like Twitter etc.).

As a side note, the favicon looks like the Chrome loading icon got stuck at the bottom :-)

<comment><USER3> It does try to interrupt you, but I'd probably do the same: ignore it if I'm not happy.

Maybe there could be a 'f __* off' dismiss button that registers as an unhappy response?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Just taking a look at the map, everyone on there is either Happy, Very Happy or Extremely Happy. Without sounding like a pessimist, I have a feeling people have a tendency to say they are happy when they aren't, I'm not sure if any data this project collects will have any value at all, apart from portraying us Brits as a jolly happy bunch.

<comment><USER5> I'm the developer/researcher. Nobody but nobody reads captions... but if you did, you'd see this: "These are the places where mappiness users have most recently reported feeling happy."

I thought a miserableness map might be a bit morbid, so only happy responses get shown. I'm not certain this is the right choice, but it's how it works at present.

Incidentally, mappiness has shown up a few times before on HN: [http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=mappiness](http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=mappiness)

<comment><USER6> Could it be scaled by population density (or reporting density)? I have a feeling the map just shows there are more people in some cities than others; nothing about per-capita happiness.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm the developer/researcher. For some background and early results, see my TEDx talk (from January 2011): <http://mappin.es/TEDx></comment>


I Taught Shanley Kane How to Troll, And I'm Sincerely Sorry - <AUTHOR> http://www.breitbart.com/london/2015/01/17/i-taught-shanley-kane-how-to-troll-and-im-sincerely-sorry/

<comment><USER2> Seems like Shanley, on her Twitter feed, has confirmed the validity of this. Bizarre.</comment>


Ask HN: Rejecting an offer from one of the Big 4 after I signed it - <AUTHOR> Early this year I got and signed an offer letter with Facebook London which gave me a nice SWE position starting in March after I graduated. However, in this interim year, I got another job offer from an exciting startup which I'm planning to take.<p>If I had a time machine I would go back a year and not sign the Facebook offer. Since I don't, does anyone here have any experience with the consequences of rejecting job offers from big software companies after signing up with them? Would I get some kind of penalty (I didn't take the signing bonus yet)? Would this bar me from having a new offer with Facebook in an hypothetical future? <comment><USER2> I would never hire someone back who accepted and then bailed on a job offer. I would hire someone back who rejected a job offer and got back in touch at a later time saying circumstances have changed. I think once you make a commitment to someone that you will do something, and then you do not do it, regardless of the legal repercussions most people will not want to hire you as a result.

It is possible that you are amazing at what you do and that they will bend over backwards to make a spot for you even if you abuse them. I suspect however the good advice for 90% of people asking that question is only take the start-up job if you _never_ want to work for Facebook or the person who offered you the Facebook job.

</comment><comment><USER3> Let's reverse the circumstance.

Let's say you signed a job offer with Facebook. A year later, there's a recession and FB decides that they didn't need X many SWEs now. I would think they would write you a letter to regretfully inform you of the situation and may be offer you some compensation (that might work only for FB, other cash strapped companies might never do this).

Loyalty, not reneging on your word etc, is overrated. I think they will understand that if not for this wonderful new/unexpected opportunity that turned up for you, you were planning on keeping up your end of the bargain. So I'd say go ahead and take the new gig.

<comment><AUTHOR> My problem is not loyalty or whatever. I just don't want to be burned from all Facebook jobs for the rest of my life for not taking a job I signed for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's hard to know what a specific company's policies will be, but in general I expect larger companies to still be willing to work with you in the future even if you bail on them.

Facebook probably didn't even allocate you to a specific team, so no-one is even expecting you, they're just expecting to need X entry-level SWEs next year.

Smaller companies are more likely to take things personally.

</comment><comment><USER5> Maybe you should get in touch with them and ask them what their policy on this would be?</comment>


TwitterTwitterChickenDinner.com - <AUTHOR> http://www.twittertwitterchickendinner.com/ A Saturday night project to learn node.js. TwitterTwitterChickenDinner.com picks your Twitter contest winners randomly and most importantly with one click.
Just enter your giveway hashtag and how many winners you want randomly selected and hit spin. Your winner will then show up.
Try it out and then follow @TwtrTwtrChknDnr
Hope it comes in handy next time you are giving away something on Twitter! : ) <comment><AUTHOR> A Saturday night project to learn node.js. TwitterTwitterChickenDinner.com picks your Twitter contest winners randomly and most importantly with one click.</comment>


Javascript Unit Test Environment (JUTE) Now Open - <AUTHOR> http://developer.yahoo.com/blogs/ydn/posts/2011/08/javascript-unit-test-environment-jute-now-open/

<comment><USER2> Hmm, is there a way to also do async tests?

Still seems to be a bit much code to write for a single test compared to other testing frameworks (e.g. nodeunit on the server side or QUnit for client scripts).

The code coverage check is a nice feature - are there any other testing frameworks around supporting this?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> It was nice/smart of Yahoo! to not limit JUTE's capabilities to testing YUI3 code. Jasmine is my go to JavaScript BDD/testing framework, but JUTE looks like an impressive set of tools. Bonus that it's built off of Node.js and supports testing server-side JavaScript too.</comment>


A solution to byzantine consensus without proof-of-X [PDF] - <AUTHOR> https://drive.google.com/file/d/150uOd161WUzmcypoGUPfW3PrzE9lc_Eo/view <comment><USER2> This sounds like a very interesting paper.</comment>


UK gov't to demand backdoors, give prison sentences for disclosing them - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.co.uk/tech-policy/2015/11/snoopers-charter-uk-govt-can-demand-backdoors-give-prison-sentences-for-disclosing-them/ <comment><USER2> British people proudly building their own Stalinist Stasi Society.

Nothing to see here folks, move along, move along.

Edit: I see this as expression of huge fear about possible conspiracy. The question is: who they think are the conspirators.

<comment><USER3> I take exception to that. I am "British people" and consider the proposals outrageous.

The only ray of hope is the reasonable test but that can only be decided in court. That makes this very poor legislation and hopefully struck down in The Lords on that basis if not for any other reason.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is brilliant for criminals. If they get to exploit those gov't backdoors, there will be no way to prosecute them right?

</comment><comment><USER5> This is going to make life very hard for UK security companies and researchers. Suppose you find a backdoor in router code. Do you disclose the problem, or not? That backdoor just might be the Official GCHQ Backdoor, and you're in danger of harsh UK prison sentence.</comment>


The first flying car (1959) [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMF99kJGLQc <comment><AUTHOR> Here's an awesome, well funded idea that didn't work - the AvroCar. A true flying saucer powered by three jet engines, it was built for the U.S. Army in 1959. (Reposted, per request in HN email.)

But it didn't quite fly. It could hover, and move around like a hovercraft, but didn't have enough lift to get out of ground effect. It was also unstable. One of the prototypes was brought to NASA Ames in Silicon Valley (it wasn't called that yet) and spent a lot of time in the big wind tunnel. It turned out that, although there are some theoretical advantages to disk-shaped aircraft, the negatives outweigh the positives as the disk gets bigger.

Around the same time, the U.S. Army was testing the UH-1 Huey helicopter, which worked, carried more payload, and was far more useful. So they canned the AvroCar program and bought many thousands of Hueys. That was the end of military flying saucers.

(The National Archives has posted good, full-length high-resolution copies of the original films.[1][2][3] Short AvroCar clips have been around for years, but they'd usually been through broadcast TV or VHS, with heavy loss of detail. Amusingly, the earliest film was classified SECRET, the second one was marked OFFICIAL USE ONLY, and by the third one, there's no classification.)

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMF99kJGLQc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMF99kJGLQc) [2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdSo31A9j_I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdSo31A9j_I) [3] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opD86VZSWpo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opD86VZSWpo)

<comment><USER2> I wonder if flying discs are like flying wings, and that their downsides become upsides with a sufficiently advanced control mechanism, like fly by wire?

<comment><AUTHOR> It seems to work at model scale.[1] Geobat got a working saucer-like model flying. It's not VTOL; it's an an airplane with a circular wing. Their "disc" is a swept back curved wing that continues around until it meets the tail. It has conventional rudders and elevators, unlike the AvroCar, which was entirely thrust-controlled. GeoBat tried to get IndieGoGo funding for a full size aircraft, but bombed out at 2% funded.[2]

Wind tunnel testing indicated good stall characteristics but less lift than conventional designs.

Here's a modern analysis of a circular wing, as a PhD thesis.[3] This uses the "blown wing" concept, an idea which has great theoretical potential and has been tried a few times, but has been only marginally successful in practice.

[1] [https://vimeo.com/65578829](https://vimeo.com/65578829) [2] [https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/geobat-saucer- aircraft#/](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/geobat-saucer-aircraft#/) [3] [https://core.ac.uk/download/files/14/337571.pdf](https://core.ac.uk/download/files/14/337571.pdf)

<comment><USER2> Interesting things to consider, and I appreciate all of the informative links.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> It was proceeded by the 1947 Convair Model 118, a real car that flew unlike this flying saucer stuff.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convair_Model_118](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convair_Model_118)

</comment><comment><USER4> They demonstrated (at 6:50) high stability in quad-copter form, albeit without yaw control.</comment>


Ask HN: What are some of the best text-only websites? - <AUTHOR> Hi,
I've spent most of 2018 either in very rural areas, foreign countries, or in "throttled-mode" on my US-based prepaid mobile plan.
My phone's processing power is really excellent, but of course the bottleneck with modern websites is the tons of pings back and forth over the network and the huge image sizes.
Please, take pity on me and send me some links for great websites that offer a text-only service or some other form of lightweight browsing.
Of course, Wikipedia, lite.cnn.io, and outline.com are life-savers :) <comment><USER2> [https://damng.github.io/hackernews-rss-with-inlined- content/...](https://damng.github.io/hackernews-rss-with-inlined- content/output.rss)

HN RSS feed with inlined/distilled linked contents. The 300 or so entries on the feed becomes about 5MB (or about 1/5 the size of a single medium.com blog post). The inlined contents from the article are just simple html with no javascript or style sheets.

[https://codezen.org/canto-ng/](https://codezen.org/canto-ng/) is a good curses, console rss reader.

</comment><comment><USER3> NPR : [https://text.npr.org/](https://text.npr.org/)

Harvard Law Review : [https://harvardlawreview.org/](https://harvardlawreview.org/)

I'm also interested in more lite sites. Btw, your CNN link is not working. Correct link is [https://lite.cnn.io](https://lite.cnn.io)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!! I confused NPR's format with CNN's :)

There's always Drudge Report for anyone who prefers the "opinion" section... :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've spent many hours reading [https://yarchive.net/](https://yarchive.net/)

</comment><comment><USER5> A good news site that I've been telling people about is Legible News- only text and links. No images, ads, etc.

[https://legiblenews.com/](https://legiblenews.com/)

There is also Wiby, the search engine for 'classic websites'. You can only submit a website if it is simple and meets the criteria (not a lot js / css). Whatever you find, add it to Wiby!

[https://wiby.me/](https://wiby.me/)

</comment><comment><USER6> You can disable images in some mobile browsers (e.g. firefox for android) [0]. That significantly knocks down the size of pages. I have mine set to only load images when on a wifi connection.

If you can use a desktop browser tethered through your mobile data connection, you can use the extension uMatrix [1] to selectively block scripts, css, images, outbound requests, and more. This would allow you to turn most pages into lightweight, text-only pages.

[0] [https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/block-or-load-images- ov...](https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/block-or-load-images-over-wifi- firefox-android)

[1] [https://github.com/gorhill/uMatrix](https://github.com/gorhill/uMatrix)

</comment><comment><USER7> You won't regret reading the online only book Worm, by Wildbow. Very light site and an amazing story. It has a huge online fan base for a reason. Warning: it gets dark.

[https://parahumans.wordpress.com](https://parahumans.wordpress.com)

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm keeping a list here: [https://sjmulder.nl/en/textielhandel.html](https://sjmulder.nl/en/textielhandel.html)

There's not that much out there, unfortunately.

<comment><USER9> [https://sjmulder.nl/en/textonly.html](https://sjmulder.nl/en/textonly.html)

<comment><USER8> Thanks, I posted that on mobile and didn't notice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Have you tried just turning off JavaScript? A website often is a hundredth the size without it. This is because many use JavaScript to add iframes, images, videos, and more JavaScript.

</comment><comment><USER11> CNN lite: [https://lite.cnn.io/en](https://lite.cnn.io/en)

Text Edition of The Christian Science Monitor: [https://www.csmonitor.com/layout/set/text/textedition](https://www.csmonitor.com/layout/set/text/textedition)

News aggregator website:Readspike [https://readspike.com/](https://readspike.com/)

<comment><USER12> My problem with CNN Lite is that there is no apparent way to sort the links. Right now, as I write this -- 0815, 20 August -- the top story is from 1100, 17 August. In fact, the top five stories are all form midday last Friday. The 10th story is from 17 July. Maybe sorting the links by date won't help much; but, it's a start.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is where some sort of Lynx-browser-powered-proxy would be ideal.

I know it'd probably break several sites... but your average news reading would be hugely improved.

I will say that [https://forums.whirlpool.net.au/](https://forums.whirlpool.net.au/) is one of the best community sites I know of. It's very lightweight, looks good, works incredibly fast. As a dev, I'm really impressed.

<comment><USER14> > This is where some sort of Lynx-browser-powered-proxy would be ideal.

No need to go into any of that trouble. Just install ssh on your phone and connect to any box with lynx/elinks/etc.

Works like a charm and is real snappy over any wireless connection.

If you are short of a box to ssh into, sign up for any of the providers of free shell accounts.

There are of course also a lot of native text only browsers like Instabrowser if you prefer an app. Then there are browsers using compression and proxies like Opera Mini.

<comment><USER15> >Just install ssh on your phone

Which ssh app would you recommend?

<comment><USER16> [https://termux.com/](https://termux.com/)

<comment><USER15> Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Someone asked a similar question on ProductHunt a few weeks ago (definitely not lightweight)[0]. It introduced me to skimfeed.com, and wttr.in.

[0] [https://www.producthunt.com/ask/9071-what-are-some-good- ligh...](https://www.producthunt.com/ask/9071-what-are-some-good-lightweight- text-only-websites-you-use-regularly)

</comment><comment><USER3> Kinda off-topic but if you use Firefox on your mobile, you can install 'uBlock origin'[0] extension which will block pesky, annoying ads and trackers. Not that helpful with text-only sites but very useful with normal browsing.

[0] [https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock](https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock)

<comment><USER18> To add to this, if you root your phone and install adaway you would be free from ads even in an app.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Not the answer you're looking for, but Reddit. Sure there are images and gifs, but the majority of the content is text. I'm not sure if there's a good way to see a text-only version (aside from turning off js) but if there is, it's a site I recommend.

<comment><AUTHOR> I would have been endlessly happy if Reddit worked, but on my current data plan, it hangs instantly :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Reuters has a toggle button to switch of photos: [https://www.reuters.com/commentary](https://www.reuters.com/commentary)

And nowadays I find Reuters having very interesting informative writeups which rivals NYT, Guardian, etc.

</comment><comment><USER21> Hackernews! \o/

</comment><comment><USER22> [http://goosh.org/](http://goosh.org/) \- Google command line.

</comment><comment><USER23> Metafilter.

<comment><USER24> Great site, ask.metafilter.com as well

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> The catcher and the rye.

</comment><comment><USER26> slatestarcodex.com is endlessly interesting and thought provoking.</comment>