Do you know any comprehensive guides on the business side of a startup? - <AUTHOR>

I'm looking for a book/guide that explains all (or most) the business stuff you should know when starting a company. <comment><USER2> I suggest the following books:

\- The Lean Startup [<http://amzn.to/X3SYp0>]

\- Rework [<http://amzn.to/14DHIXG>]

\- Art of the Start [<http://amzn.to/Vt4aMj>]

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the suggestions. I will try them out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> You realize that's like asking for a comprehensive book that explains technology ?

If you gave some examples of the type of content you're looking for it might help people suggest appropriate reading materials.

<comment><AUTHOR> I do now. I'm not trying to learn everything about business. I just want some good books with basic business information. Such as: differences between organizational types (LLC, INC, etc), information on shares, investments, investors, equity.

I can't say specifically what I want to read about, because I have no idea about what knowledge is required for running a company.

To somehow rephrase my question - I'm interested in a something that could be titled "Business for dummies" or "The business side of a startup".

I hope I'm clear enough.

<comment><USER4> It sounds like you're interested in the legal and bureaucratic mechanics of it all.

While you can also find all the content scattered around his blog archives, Brad Feld's 'Venture Deals' puts it all in organized book form.

Keep in mind that Feld's book focuses heavily on the venture-backed side of startupland and you're missing the other part of the picture. For that, buy a basic guide or two on setting up your business from someone like NOLO.

This stuff won't teach you how to run a business, it'll just teach you about the paperwork. It's still useful information to know, though.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's exactly what I'm interested in. I know I can't learn how to run a business from a couple of books, but I'm hoping to at least get an idea about what's involved in running a business.

Thank you for your reply.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Business is like sex. You can't learn it in a book ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> You can learn anything from books. Even sex. The hands on approach is good only after you have some basic knowledge.</comment></comment>


Driving Sideways - <AUTHOR> http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/23/driving-sideways/ <comment><USER2> I hope this thread gains some traction.</comment>


Coronavirus Origins: Covid-19 Wasn't Produced in a Lab, Scientists Conclude - <AUTHOR> https://www.studyfinds.org/coronavirus-origins-covid-19-wasnt-produced-in-a-lab-scientists-conclude <comment><USER2> Only a small minority is saying its a bio-weapon. The bigger community says that it could have been an accidental leak from the BSL-4 lab in Wuhan. It is a fact that the BSL-4 lab has samples of coronavirus and study coronavirus.

There is documented fact that China has accidentally leaked SARS from a lab: [https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2004-07/02/content...](https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2004-07/02/content_344755.htm)</comment>


UK fisheries accuse EU of using 'nuclear option' in Brexit talks - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/jun/02/uk-fisheries-accuse-eu-of-using-nuclear-option-in-brexit-talks <comment><USER2> > " _claiming decades of injustices, such as French boats being allowed to > catch 84% of the quota of cod in the Channel, for instance._ "

This is highly misleading.

France may have 84% of the quota for the (East) of the Channel, but they have only 4% of the quota in the North Sea. Overall quotas are not designed to exactly balance each area but to balance overall and they seem to vary partly based on which area is most accessible to each country.

Let's face it, quotas are hotly negotiated so each country will only give on one side if they can get on another side.

</comment><comment><USER3> duh... what was UK expecting?</comment>


All of Richard Feynman's physics lectures are now available free online (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciencealert.com/all-of-richard-feynmans-physics-lectures-are-now-available-free-online?utm_source=Article&utm_medium=Website&utm_campaign=InArticleReadMoreAll <comment><USER2> From the site:

 _However, we want to be clear that this edition is only free to read online, and this posting does not transfer any right to download all or any portion of The Feynman Lectures on Physics for any purpose._ [1]

Do the content creators understand the basic mechanics of how web browsers work? If someone was to watch the cached video on their drive are they then breaking the policy stated?

[1] [http://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/](http://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/)

<comment><USER3> There's always been a disconnect between people who understand technology and people who write disclaimers and laws. Being smart doesn't protect you from doing something which is a violation of the law, even though there may be gray areas. Yes, watching the cached video might be a gray area - but the spirit of the disclaimer is obviously to prevent storing it in such a way that you can't access it unless they can provide it at the point of request.

[https://xkcd.com/1494/](https://xkcd.com/1494/)

<comment><USER4> But caching is such a mechanism.

Not sure if this is a flag I enabled, but Chrome allows you to view content from the cache.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> On kind of a related note, I've recently read "Surely you're joking mr. Feynman" it's a funny and engaging book. It's really amazing what he was able to learn.

Thanks for posting the lectures, I'll take a look.

<comment><USER6> I quite enjoyed that book, it's one of my favourites, actually.

One part that caught me by surprise was Feynman's praise for the quick decision to use the atomic bomb. That stood out as something in apparent disagreement with the character of his which I learned of, and I didn't know what it was about that that he respected.

<comment><USER7> It's been a long time since I've read it, but I'm guessing the saving lives part of dropping the bomb.

Also, they didn't have the norm of a 70 year history of not nuking other countries over disagreements, and had been in a brutal war for years, so they probably though differently about the use of nukes.

<comment><USER6> > It's been a long time since I've read it, but I'm guessing the saving lives > part of dropping the bomb.

I wasn't baiting an argument about the bombs, but I just don't want to let it slide by. That is with almost certainty a false claim. I know we don't admit in America that we are capable of producing and consuming propaganda, so it's exceptionally difficult to communicate that idea despite what facts & what leadership at the time said that is in the historical record. Something swept under the rug was that there were many senior military leaders who pleaded to not use the bombs on urban, civilian population centers, at the very least. Also contrary to popular belief, the Japanese leadership was actually desperately looking to find a way out of the war. It was over by that point. Hirohito had no way for his empire to survive, and he selfishly did not want to relinquish his role as emperor (he otherwise offered to surrender if he could).

Feynman wasn't a military general at the time and he likely had no way or time available of knowing the full consequences of use of the bomb.

My high school history textbook told me that the bombs saved lives. President Eisenhower said there was no reason to drop them. There are two sides to that story.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Also recommended: The Theoretical Minimum, courses by Leonard Susskind [1].

[1] [http://theoreticalminimum.com/courses](http://theoreticalminimum.com/courses)

<comment><USER9> These were really good.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> [http://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/](http://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/)

</comment><comment><USER11> Are there any universities that are taking advantage of the blooming of online content in their traditional programs and combining it with small-group / individual study sessions?

Even if just internally (e.g. film Complex Analysis 101 one year, that stuff doesn't change, and not need to lecture it again), but still give the assignments and personal feedback. Perhaps do a weekly new video'd 'feedback for everyone' for the course based on homework understanding. It certainly is not done in universities in the country I'm in.

It seems an ideal opportunity to do more with less.

</comment><comment><USER12> Since there was recently a post about fusion, and this seems to be of interest to many people on HN, here are really fantastic videos from University of Wisconsin's Intro to Plasma Physics class. These got my dumbass through the program [http://mediasite.engr.wisc.edu/Mediasite/Catalog/catalogs/de...](http://mediasite.engr.wisc.edu/Mediasite/Catalog/catalogs/default)

</comment><comment><USER13> (2014)

<comment><USER14> I got really excited because I've been reading these on the caltech website, and from the title, without looking at the date, I thought this was suggesting that videos of the lectures had been made available (!!) but, alas.

The lectures are great though. Really engaging and creative, and they help you rethink some things you may have picked up in physics class.

<comment><USER15> There are lectures on Youtube, but I think Microsoft did a great job on cleaning them up and captioning them. You can find them here (link in the article does not point to the current location anymore):

[https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/tuva- richar...](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/tuva-richard- feynman/)

<comment><USER16> Cool, they've updated that page so that it no longer requires Silverlight.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Weren't these lectures recorded as well?

</comment><comment><USER18> HN loves fenyman

</comment><comment><USER19> Physics is like sex, it's only fun if you're doing it too

<comment><USER20> Not true: [https://www.reddit.com/r/physicsporn/](https://www.reddit.com/r/physicsporn/)</comment></comment>


Authorea - <AUTHOR> https://www.authorea.com/product <comment><USER2> I compared Authorea and ShareLaTeX early on and have been subscribing to ShareLaTex for several years. The biggest selling point at the time was the option to setup a ShareLaTeX server at any point when I got around to it. That, and the track changes in ShareLaTeX when working with my team is its biggest selling point for me at the moment. However, my institution recently signed up with Authorea so it may be that they have been able to catch up in many respects to convince the decision makers here (or else, on the pricing).</comment>


Attempt at Lip Reading with AI - <AUTHOR> https://www.technologyreview.com/s/602949/ai-has-beaten-humans-at-lip-reading/ <comment><AUTHOR> From link in article: "There is a significant challenge here. During speech, the mouth forms between 10 and 14 different shapes, known as visemes. By contrast, speech contains around 50 individual sounds known as phonemes. So a single viseme can represent several different phonemes."

Seems like facial recognition has advanced enough that the mapping of video to visemes can be done similarly as in the Portland Digit Recognition Test (plus face direction).

For the phoneme mapping problem, I'm just wondering how videos with subtitles could be used for training data.</comment>


HTML 5 - audio codecs, h.264 licensing issues - Part 2 - <AUTHOR> http://microreviews.org/audio-and-video-support-in-html-5-audio-codecs-licensing-issues-part-2/ <comment><USER2> Youtube has already converted at least 2/3 of their old videos into WebM, and all the new ones are converted to WebM as well. I hope Google makes the WebM player the default on all browsers supporting it, and leave Flash fall-back for the others, once they have all of them converted (early next year?). I figure by then they should fix all the remaining issues with it, too (no fullscreen mode for 1080p video, etc)

I think it's the only way to make video on the web not be patent encumbered. They need to take a stand and push for it, with their own services. Nobody else is going to do it for them. They should adopt this Apple-like strategy with WebM, like Apple did against Flash (and it turned out to be the right one). Google only really embraced Flash on Android to spite Apple anyway, not because it was the right strategy or path to take.

<comment><AUTHOR> Completely agree with you on this. However, Google's removal of h.264 support is a very interesting move. Possibly because of infrastructure issues but with so many iOS supporting h.264, youtube may need to support h.264.

<comment><USER3> New youtube videos are still being transcoded to h.264 (among the other formats). I don't think anything with that is changing short-term.</comment></comment></comment>


The End of Bad Home Wi-Fi - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/review-the-end-of-bad-home-wi-fi-1456236474 <comment><USER2> So, yet another wireless repeater, just with better marketing?

</comment><comment><USER3> powerline networking worked surprisingly well for me, and would solve this issue for a lot cheaper than $200/router.</comment>


Simple screenshot sharing for Windows - <AUTHOR> http://www.vimeo.com/6813523

<comment><USER2> This is cool. I wish there was a way to do this without needing to have an account though.</comment>


U.S. Agencies to say Bitcoins Offer Legitimate Benefits - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-11-18/u-s-agencies-to-say-bitcoins-offer-legitimate-benefits.html

<comment><USER2> Isn't "we have no plans to regulate bitcoin" just the least embarrassing thing they can say between that and "it is not actually possible for us to regulate bitcoin"?

<comment><USER3> No. Of course it can be regulated. Indeed it could be flat out made illegal. Just because you can't physically stop people from doing stuff doesn't mean a law can't (or shouldn't) be enacted.

Having a "no murder" law in no ways stops people from comitting murder.

As pointed out in the comment below you can certainly make it difficult to participate in the market - e.g making it illegal for companies to provide clearing into fiat currency. E.g in the UK right now altho there isn't currently a law no UK banks will provide deposit or clearing facilities for exchanges or market places for fear of reputational damage, e.g being at risk of accusuations of faciliating crime or terrorism financing. (Barclays have recently ended banking facilities with several hundred regular currency exchanges for exactly this reason - including a Somalian remittance service which has been in the news a bit [1])

1\. [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-24553148](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-24553148)

<comment><USER4> I would assert that there has been at least one murder prevented by the law against murder.

<comment><USER5> and having a no bitcoins law would prevent at least one person from making a bitcoin transaction

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What's the best and easiest exchange to get into? Lets just say to start buying bitcoins?

also, what's the best API to use to start charging my customers with bitcoins?

both serious questions.

<comment><USER7> Coinbase.com is by far the easiest in my opinion (and is a YC company). Unlike MtGox.com (originally the most popular) the site is fast, stable, well designed, and can connect directly with your US bank account. They've also got a set of merchant tools and APIs.

Since we're throwing out referral links here apparently, this link will give you and I both $5 in BTC:

[https://coinbase.com/?r=4fedfb2d6cbd3b0003000845&utm_campaig...](https://coinbase.com/?r=4fedfb2d6cbd3b0003000845&utm_campaign=user- referral&src=referral-link)

<comment><USER8> > this link will give you and I both $5 in BTC

 _If you buy or sell at least 1BTC on their platform._ Since that sets the mark at, oh about $500 now, ... ;)

Edit: ...or $600.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Did I miss something? Bernanke's comment basically boils down to "no comment", phrased in the polite speech Senate committee hearings. What's the news here?

<comment><USER10> The news is that the government isn't likely going to throw a shitfit and freak out over bitcoin. Because it's money related, and they can tax and regulate some piece of the transaction.

Doesn't really need to be said that Wall Street, Washington, and Lobbyists are all in bed together. Wall Street types and some Valley people have clearly told influential politicians in this that they should be cool.

Bitcoin gets another serious mark in the de-risk column

<comment><USER9> The Fed is not the government (its a private bank btw), and Bernanke's comments do not apply to agencies for which virtual currencies are their jurisdiction.

<comment><USER11> >its a private bank

Yeah, a "private" bank whose executive officers are appointed by the President and whose authority was enacted by Congress.

<comment><USER12> Precisely! Which is exactly what enrages so many people :)

(I must assume you haven't watched Sony Pictures' ca. 2010 documentary _Inside Job_ yet?)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm saddened that legislation in the UK is so awful that it's virtually impossible to run a legitimate bit-coin business.

This is going to come back to hurt the UK economy in the end.

</comment><comment><USER14> There seems to be a common fallacy that is propagated by media that bitcoin is untraceable. A visit to blockchain.info pretty easily dispels this myth. Bitcoin is anonymous (in the same way that cash is) but it is not untraceable. If money being exchanged to/from bitcoin is coupled with the same money transfer regulations as standard currency it ends up being more traceable than standard currency because there is a log of all transactions. This is likely why there won't be much resistance to bitcoin from regulators as long as they can control the endpoints.

<comment><USER15> Yes, the opportunities for forensic analysis on BitCoin are much greater than in a traditional currency where money can disappear into the void and re-enter the economy somewhere else without any word on what happened in between. In some ways I wonder if criminals of the future won't prefer the dollar to conduct their illegal activity.

<comment><USER16> Physically moving dollars is the hard part of conducting black market business in dollars.

Obscuring a wallet address is far easier than physically smuggling cash.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Has there been any clarification on the tax treatment of gains from trading Bitcoins? If I bought at $100 and sold at $300 is the $200 gain treated as income or capital gains?

<comment><USER18> Well, the SEC said that bitcoins "likely would be securities and therefore subject to our regulation", which would seem to indicate that it would be considered capital gains, rather than income. It's too early to know for sure, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Is BitCoin as secure as conventional currencies?

I've seen a good number of articles about wallets being stolen or exchanges being compromised but I don't know enough to tell if it's negligent behavior by the user/owner.

<comment><USER20> Negligent behavior. Bitcoin implement bank-level security, so anything stolen is negligent behavior. The vast majority of articles about wallets being stolen is when bitcoins were held in a third party online wallet, which was hacked. Keeping bitcoins in someone else's wallet defeats the idea of decentralization and owning your own money.

As for whether it's as secure as conventional currency, even more so: no one else has access to your money, unlike a bank account. In other words, no one can withdraw your bitcoins without you explicitly sending them.

<comment><USER19> Would it pass the Grandma test?

What would it take to trick Grandma into giving a person/program access to her Bitcoin wallet?

I assume she would just need to reveal her password to a program and from there it could steal her wallet?</comment></comment></comment>


Attorney General blasts tech, suggests companies be liable for dangerous content - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/02/19/attorney-general-barr-blasts-big-tech-questioning-its-protection-liability-content/ <comment><USER2> "Carrie Goldberg, an attorney who specializes in sexual privacy violations, offered one example of the potential harm from her own case work: A plaintiff whose ex repeatedly created fake profiles of him on Grindr, a gay dating app, putting him at risk for assault.

The ex would "post my client's geographic information, and then send people" to his home and workplace, looking for sex, Goldberg said. The plaintiff repeatedly flagged the issue to Grindr, to no avail, and a subsequent lawsuit fell short of holding the company accountable in court. Grindr prevailed by invoking Section 230, she said."

This case seems like you could apply precedent to it. Dating services like this have been around for decades, using snail mail instead of apps. Surely someone did something like this back in the day, putting a dating ad in the singles section of a newspaper or something similar. Did the US sue the postal service back then? Did they sue the magazine?

</comment><comment><USER3> Whatever happened to prosecuting perpetrators? I guess there's no $ in that...

<comment><USER4> In addition to prosecutorial laziness, there is also the problem of false attribution. On the internet, nobody knows that it wasn't the real stevenalowe that posted that call for violence. People open accounts with other peoples' names. People discover other peoples' passwords and take over their accounts. All kinds of spoofing things happen. So "jail the perps" has it's charm, but be careful to make sure it's the _actual_ perps...</comment></comment>


Software Is Smart Enough for SAT, but Still Far from Intelligent - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/21/technology/personaltech/software-is-smart-enough-for-sat-but-still-far-from-intelligent.html <comment><USER2> It's impressive seeing all the recent progress.

I went through Stanford in the 1980s, when the "expert systems" crowd had reached the "emperor has no clothes" state and the "AI winter" was starting. Three decades later, AI has become un-stuck, and there's real progress every year. The next decade is going to be interesting.

Fifty years out, the machines will be in charge, but I won't live that long.

<comment><USER3> You might live to see it, given the amount of research that is starting to be put into anti-aging therapies. Biology is gonna go through an amazing revolution in the next few decades, so be optimistic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Read the title and had a different SAT in mind before reading the article -- pretty funny.

<comment><USER5> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satya_Nadella](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satya_Nadella)?

<comment><USER6> Presumably 3-SAT ( [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boolean_satisfiability_problem...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boolean_satisfiability_problem#3-satisfiability) )

Obviously, software is not actually smart enough for SAT ;)

This is kind of an interesting case, in that the article, contradicting the headline, says that the software was only given some "geometry questions" from the SAT, and that it only performed at the level of an average 11th grader, which is shockingly bad. Writing the software to solve SAT geometry problems with perfect accuracy isn't difficult at all, so what's being tested here is the ability to parse visual diagrams and natural English sentences into an accurate representation of the problem. (Again, this is made clear in the article, but seems basically unrelated to the headline.)

But since that's what we're doing, I don't see why we don't give it the verbal questions too. Understanding written English sentences is most of what's left there.</comment></comment></comment>


How to market your business on social media - <AUTHOR> https://blog.paymill.com/ecommerce-social-media/

<comment><USER2> great input! thanks for that!!!</comment>


Ask HN: Do you have examples of Facebook using your microphone for ads? - <AUTHOR> A few days ago we had this thread [0] where someone asked about a Facebook ad that arrived mysteriously on their page. I saw several possible explanations for this in the thread. Later I found a post by Facebook [1] stating explicitly that it does not use the microphone for ads. I was satisfied, until last night.
Last night, while we were at home, my wife mentioned to me that she would like to get a storage box to hold her external hard drives. She described her ideal one as a metal box with some sort of foam to hold the drives in place. She had never searched for something like this before and wasn't even aware that something like this existed. A couple hours later, an ad for such a product landed up on her Facebook page. I was a little freaked out.
So, do you have any examples of where something like this has happened to you? Am I being paranoid and this is just a coincidence? Or could Facebook actually be listening in on us?
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13597225 [1] http://newsroom.fb.com/news/h/facebook-does-not-use-your-phones-microphone-for-ads-or-news-feed-stories/ <comment><USER2> Considering that this would be pretty easy to prove, but no one has yet, Occam's razor says this most likely was something else entirely. One possible explanation could be that the ad was shown to her before as well but she didn't notice it, yet it subconsciously registered and created a need or idea for such a product (i.e. you're switching around cause and effect). Another is that your wife is quite predictable in her demand of such a product due to other factors that are trackable by Facebook.

</comment><comment><USER3> If you are using Facebook on a recent phone client, or through a browser, whenever this happens, try this:

\- There is a little "chevron" menu popdown in the advert, generally top- right.

\- Tap it, and then pull down "Why am I seeing this?"

Then you will find out why you are seeing the advert.

Source: I used to work at Facebook

<comment><USER4> "One reason you're seeing this ad is that bluefrog Plumbing + Drain wants to reach people who are part of an audience we created based on data provided by Acxiom. Facebook works with data providers to help businesses find the right audiences for their ads."

So, it's Acxiom doing the listening?

<comment><USER5> Axciom does all of the data buying and creating models to figure out what people like.

Source - Used to work with Axciom data myself

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I find it highly unlikely and am inclined to believe Facebook on this one.

I'd say it's much more likely that your wife had seen that ad before your conversation but wasn't particularly conscious of seeing it.

You're basically describing how advertising works - making people feel they want to buy something without them even realising.

</comment><comment><USER7> If Facebook indeed does this, it should be fairly easy to trigger by repeatedly mentioning some kind of product in front of a running Facebook app. If not, it's a "can't reproduce" for me.

<comment><USER4> How would you know whether that product's maker pays for that sort of marketing? Perhaps if you tried ten products and got one positive, that would suffice.

<comment><USER4> OK, we just made up a big fake conversation in the presence of a desktop and laptop running fb, an iphone running the ap, and an iphone only accessing via Safari.

We mentioned Target, including a request for upcoming sales and target credit cards, Advil, Colgate, Liquid Plumber, Scott toilet paper, Wells Fargo (though we need to rule that out bc my daughter's been googling them re DAPL), Citibank, Marriott, Red Lobster, and an imaginary pending trip to Maine.

I will report back what we see.

edit: none of these do we use or see ads for.

<comment><USER4> 10 hours later: nothing convincing. I got one for an Amex card and he got one for Discover, but nothing exact. His other ads were verizon, geico, halls, lay's, AT&T. Mine were only local news sites -- paper, radio and tv.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I do not. However, I've heard it anecdotally many times. You can definitely find similar stories on reddit.

I'm guessing Facebook is doing some pretty complicated work to find that interest and serve the ad, but as evil as Facebook is I doubt they're straight up lying about using the microphone to listen and serve ads.

<comment><USER9> /puts on conspiracy hat

Facebook might obtain the ad profile match from a third party which obtained microphone access and would let them bot claim 'at this one company we do not use microphone recordings to target ads'

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Does it actually matter much whether there are current, proven examples? If you give their app access to your microphone, they're going to use it for ad targeting and worse as soon as it's politically / technically / economically expedient to do so.

<comment><USER11> On my iPad, the Privacy settings for Microphone do not even have entries for the official FB or Twitter apps, so I'm not sure how this could be done on iOS. So I wonder if the user is using a different platform in question?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Not verbal communications, but I have seen ads relating to SMS messages I've sent or received. Perfect example was my wife advising the vacuum cleaner was broken, next thing I see when I logged onto Facebook was an advert for vacuum cleaners.

</comment><comment><USER13> I have been approached by companies that wish to listen for audio on our mobilenetworks for tv stations. They have pretty good id databases of the shows in the background and use the information to reset ads and to sell back to stations. They did mention facebook being a client. As far as realtime interpretation of plain audio for ads that doesn't seem far fetched. Ad units of these companies are the elite i wouldn't put it past them.

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

</comment><comment><USER14> This just happened to me: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13589749](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13589749)

None of the possible justifications mentioned in the replies really apply for the case I observed... We have had this happening two or three times, and it is _always_ when my wife's mobile is around (I don't have FB app installed).

So for all I care, it is something that _does_ happen.

<comment><USER15> Facebook friends are looking at the place on Facebook, so Facebook shows you adverts for it.

It's a really basic and obvious explanation.

Nobody is secretly listening to your phone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Coincidence. FB has over a billion daily users and each one communicates dozens of concepts per day - if each person sees numerous ads per day then it's a statistical certainty that someone, somewhere happens to get an ad that matches up with something they mentioned earlier in that day or week. This is the same reason why everyone has a story about a dream that came true.

</comment><comment><USER17> I've had a number of ads pop up for things my wife and I have discussed verbally without searching. Even if Facebook themselves do not monitor the mic, nothing prevents someone else (Apple, Google, etc) from doing so and feeding that information to FB. It's certainly occurring but it's not clear that FB is directly responsible.

<comment><USER18> I imagine you'd notice the battery drain if that were really a mic eavesdrop.

More likely you and your wife are demographically similar to others those advertisers are researching and targeting

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I was talking to my boyfriend in the car about the idea of people having personal plastic recycling machines in their home, where you would break down the plastic waste you create and then make "ink"for a home 3D printer to reprint plastic household items. This idea came to me when I was thinking about the world's problem with plastic water bottles, at that time, in the car. An hour later, he opened his Facebook on his phone that was on and playing music in the car and the first ad he saw was for a 3D printer that uses recycled plastic. I know the idea in my head goes along with current popular issues of the times, so yes my thought process and Facebook ad could just be coincidence, but the fact that it was a more novel and complex idea made it amusing.

</comment><comment><USER20> IMO this is what's known as a coincidence. The odds against seeing an advert for a product you have just talked about are incredibly low, but there are also a hundreds of millions people using Facebook every day, each seeing hundreds of ads and discussing lots of products with their spouses. Eerie coincidences are inevitable.

Derren Brown did a great demonstration of a similar phenomenon by asking 100s of people to bet on a series of horse races. Of course one person backed the winning horse on all races and thought it was magic. What they didn't realise is that there were a lot of others doing this too and having one person back all the winners was (in that experiment) an inevitability.

</comment><comment><USER21> My wife and I were talking about salt. I forget the exact conversation, but was random. Not about wanting salt for dinner or whatever just a general conversation about salt.

Opened Facebook a little while later and ther was an ad for Morton's Salt at the very top of my feed. I've never searched on the internet anywhere for salt. I've never liked mortons salt on Facebook. I've never clicked on anything remotely related to salt.

I'm 99.9% convinced facebook was open and listening to us. (There is a very small possibility it was a coincidence, but I doubt it.)

My wife has had similar experiences where she was out at a bar talking with friends and on the Bart ride home saw ads for topics that were discussed.

<comment><USER22> My wife has this happen to her frequently. I bought a friend a bottle of Woodford Reserve (Bourbon) for his birthday and it appeared within a few days for her after discussing it on the way to the party (she doesn't even drink). Additionally, we have talked about "blue Gatorade" in the car only to have Cool Blue Gatorade show up within a few days. The one that really freaked me out was the "Thunderstorm" color paint that we saw a commercial for and briefly discussed. None of these things were actively searched on her device and were only talked about in private. I would believe some of the explanations here but the wide spread of items makes me think that Facebook and Instagram are passively listening to our conversations. These three items all appeared within the same month and within 72 hours of talking about them in person. I don't believe it could be a coincendence at this point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Yes happened to me. I was discussing about a food item (Anchovies fish) within a day or two I saw some ad about restaurants famous for Anchovies. It was very surprising for me because I havent searched or even typed those words in my mobile.

<comment><USER15> Is this satire?

<comment><USER23> No it happened. I cant convince myself it could be a coincidence. I mean what are the odds ?

<comment><USER15> In case you are actually being serious, the odds of that happening are very normal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> If I assume for a moment that the microphone actually is being listened to for ad keywords… why would it have to be Facebook, specifically, who's listening? It could be another rogue service feeding back to Facebook.

</comment><comment><USER25> Twitter has done this to me twice.

I had a deep and random conversation about Oreos and the tv show Colony recently.

Within a day ads started showing up on my timeline.

<comment><USER15> Is this satire?

<comment><USER25> No, actually happened. Both so random that I'm convinced twitter is listening in! Not sure how I was targeted for both otherwise.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> You should be able to convert this into an experiment. Find an off-the-beat market and start talking about it in the presence of your phone (and maybe with the app open, don't know the particulars of when the app can activate the microphone). If an ad for a product in the space appears it would confirm the hypothesis that FB is listening in.

</comment><comment><USER27> I doubt that FB is doing this, but I'm sure they are knowingly or unknowingly, buying data from someone who does.

</comment><comment><USER28> Did she perhaps recently buy hard drives? Cases for drives seems like the type of thing to be advertised once they've connected that the buyer of the drives is the person currently logged into FB.

</comment><comment><USER29> I talked to my friend about my tooth pain couple of days ago and I saw an ad for dentist yesterday. Can't have it appear again for the screenshot. Keep in mind I newer saw dentist ads before..

<comment><USER15> Google "confirmation bias".

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I think best option is try talking some 'unique' topic again and see whether related ad popups or not.

Please do share your results :)

Ps : record the topic and take screenshot if you like to make a proof.

</comment><comment><USER31> Why does'nt someone sniff the network traffic and see if this is happening or not. https man in the middle attacks exist.

</comment><comment><USER32> Me and my boyfriend were talking about possible tiles to use for our future home, we never actively looked it up, as it was a conversation that sprung from watching a series. (In the episode during a bathroomshot we saw interesting tiles) During this conversation I was holding my phone. Next time I scrolled through fb, I got an ad for freakin' tiles.

<comment><USER32> This has happened many times. Since I deinstalled the fb-app and use facebook only through mobile safari, this has stopped.

<comment><USER11> Which platform was your FB app installed on? iOS does not provide mic access to FB at all, it's not even in the privacy options as that app has never requested mic access.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> My partner, who is bald, was sitting with his arms crossed, and I teased him for looking like Mr. Clean. We both got ads for Mr. Clean in the next 48 hours.

</comment><comment><USER15> I run a website that shows random images.

I ALWAYS get emails asking why I have showed an image that relates to what they person was just talking about.

But the images are random! It's the well understood concept of confirmation bias.

It's just depressing to see here, because I thought the readers of hackernews were more sophisticated than random sampling of the general population.

<comment><USER15> Wait... I just confirmation biased myself by only concentrating on the replies which believed that Facebook listens via your microphone, and ignoring those that disagreed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is an absurd urban myth, and it's embarrassing to see such nonsense on this website.

<comment><USER33> I think its good to always be highly skeptical of all technology these days. I don't mean that we should do so in a tin-foil hat sort of way... but we should question everything. I saw a post on HN just a few days ago about how Vizio (the low-cost TV supplier) was wholesale collecting and selling all usage information to a third party... without users' consent. Its good to be vigilant and ask the "dumb" questions sometimes...</comment></comment>


Work from home, take breaks, do simple exercises - <AUTHOR> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.subham.breathe <comment><AUTHOR> World is working from home. they sit for a long interval of time.

Visram is an app that aims to make ourselves more active by reminding us to take breaks.

interactive exercises that helps you be healthy.</comment>


The Failure of #amazonfail - <AUTHOR> http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2009/04/the-failure-of-amazonfail/

<comment><USER2> The fact that anyone was actually outraged in the first place is the real failure here. I would have assumed prior to this past Sunday that nobody would be stupid enough to think that Amazon would maliciously, openly, and unapologetically de-list all material pertaining to homosexuality (or categorize it as "adult").

Okay, fine, Amazon screwed up and there was a glitch or a security hole or whatever it really was. Their bad, they should fix that and people have a right to be upset that their books lost sales or whatever was the case. But _moral outrage_? Protest logos? Petitions? People either need to lighten up or get lives that lack the required free time to get _that_ worked up over a conspiracy that was obviously irrational.

<comment><USER3> _I would have assumed prior to this past Sunday that nobody would be stupid enough to think that Amazon would maliciously, openly, and unapologetically de-list all material pertaining to homosexuality (or categorize it as "adult")._

I'm not going to say that you're wrong. You're not wrong: That _was_ a crazy conclusion for people to come to, because it _is_ something that Amazon would never do.

But I am going to take a wild guess: are you significantly older than thirty? I'm guessing the answer is no.

Those of us who came of age before the Internet were raised in a world where it was _intuitively obvious_ that GLBT literature _would_ be openly, unapologetically classed as "adult" and kept hidden away from the general public. That's the way the world worked.

It's easy to retrain the front of the brain. It's a lot harder to retrain the instincts that you learned as a kid. Especially if those instincts were forged under stress. And gay people and their friends, especially those over a certain age, are intuitively aware that it is (or, at least, was) _entirely_ possible for big, public entities to wake up one day and decide to screw LGBT people over. That used to be the norm.

I sincerely hope that we reach the state where open maliciousness towards gay people becomes unthinkably weird, but it's going to take at least a few more years.

<comment><USER4> I haven't seen solid enough evidence to convince me that this wasn't the result of an action by an Amazon employee for whom it was 'intuitively obvious that GLBT literature would be openly, unapologetically classed as "adult" and kept hidden away from the general public'. It would seem pretty easy for them to classify this as a 'glitch'. Without complete transparency you can only really judge an organisation by it's actions.

<comment><USER5> It was killed, but someone posted how they had hacked amazon.com.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=560075>

Do you feel that he was faking it?

<comment><USER4> I think there is substantial doubt that this was true.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Can anyone tell me how people like Clay Shirky are using Twitter?

I read Twitter by occasionally surfing to the website and scrolling through the backlog of Tweets from the fairly small list of people that I follow. Which is to say: I'm probably some sort of neanderthal. In this mode, hashtags are kind of useless.

But apparently the cutting-edge users of Twitter spend their days plugged into a client which lets them do nifty tricks like following hashtags in real time. I tried that last month, using TweetGrid. It was hypnotic, and kind of fun, but way too much volume. And it featured spam and trolls. Finally, I understood why some people complain about Twitter spam! It would appear that anyone can create a random Twitter account under a fake name and start spewing arbitrarily-hashtagged crap!

So I lost interest. But apparently many people have not. Do other folks just _inhale_ all the hashtagged stuff, spam and trolls and Amazon-hating hysteria- inducing _agents provocateurs_ and all? Or do serious Twitter users just follow so many people that they actually find the hashtags useful, just to sort through the Tweets from people they are _following_? Is there some nifty client software, which everyone but me knows about, that does something different from either of these strategies?

<comment><USER6> I'm relatively new to Twitter but I think the answer is "no". The interface really does suck. Imho, Twitter has very good uses that many people like and suggests many more potential uses that would be powerful except the platform itself is a piece of crap. Twitter is powerful because of its users, nothing else -- MIT's zephyr has supported all of Twitter's use cases and more (and better) for ~20 years now.

If it's easy to understand, people with little imagination have an easy time understanding it and heralding it as revolutionary. It's not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is the second major twitter witch-hunt in the last couple weeks that turned out to be targeting the wrong person. I wish people would wait for the facts before bringing out the pitchforks. I guess that's the downside in a medium of communication as instant and viral as twitter.

(The other one was this: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=552160> )

<comment><USER8> A twitter witch-hunt? That's a "twitch hunt"!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm surprised by the number of comments here that say "Amazon would _never_ do that". Look at our society, we have a black president openly advocating separate but equal treatment of gay people which to me is mind blowing. We have states voting to make it illegal for gay couples to adopt children, because they are _so_ much better off without a stable family, right? We have once progressive states like CA taking steps back. The simple fact is the majority of people don't see gays as equals. It would not be unheard of for a large company to bow to pressure on subjects like this. I didn't sign any petitions but when I heard the news my first thought wasn't of Amazon.com's benevolence. I learned my lesson from the last internet fiasco and waited this one out. I just think it's premature to suggest we live in a enlightened time where people are free from sexual orientation prejudices.

<comment><USER3> It's not that the act is fundamentally unthinkable. It's the preponderance of evidence against this being an intentional plan.

Amazon is a progressive company. They're headquartered in Seattle, a fairly progressive city. Their employees do not enjoy being treated like pariahs.

Amazon's best customers tend to be highly literate people who react to book- banning like they've been personally knifed. And Amazon is smart: The company _knows_ that authors and publishers watch their Amazon sales rankings on an hourly basis (if not minute-by-minute) and will commence an _immediate_ shitstorm if those rankings _change_ in an unusual fashion, let alone _vanish_. Amazon would have an explanation ready. They would roll any change out carefully. They would have approached _someone_ in the publishing industry to discuss such a drastic move before making it.

Because -- most importantly -- Amazon has _a big financial incentive_ not to ban books. Amazon makes _money_ by selling books. Every GLBT book they don't sell is money they don't make. If they were going to bow to pressure and take thousands of titles off the site the pressure would have to be _really costly_. Hence, presumably, quite visible. Where is it? And wouldn't the company have tried negotiation, first? Taken one or two shocking-looking titles off the list and then publicized that fact? Or tried the case in public, where librarians and publishers of (nearly) all stripes could help them push back against the pressure?

The very fact that the act blew up so quickly is evidence of how stupid it was. And it's impossible to believe that Amazon is really that stupid. (Though, as has been pointed out, it _is_ easy to believe that an AI is that stupid. Be careful when letting AIs make your business decisions.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I really respect Clay for this post (though I am floored that anyone would believe Amazon intended what happened), because it's definitely not socially required to apologize or feel embarrassed for being wrong about anger if the thing was bad enough.

The part about people justifying their anger post-explanation is really true and is present in some of the comments on the post. It seems to mean chastising Amazon for taking too long to address the _serious_ situation – which seems code for giving people too much time to make fools of themselves.

People need to slow down and think.

<comment><USER10> I want to clarify that I don't mean it's foolish to make a scene about real book banning. I mean that it's foolish to get so up in arms over an _accusation_ of book banning without waiting for evidence.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I suspect(and hope) most people don't believe lynch mobs should be permitted in society. What I don't understand is why the electronic equivalent is socially acceptable?

"it was stupid to take as long as they did to dribble an explanation out."

Didn't they answer in a day or two? That is fucking fast, esp for a giant corporation.

and "it was stupid to speak in PR-ese to the public about something that really matters;"

What I remember reading sounded very un PR-ese. Trying to find their press release to reread... They don't have one / I can't find it. That is bad. This is what I read <http://blog.seattlepi.com/amazon/archives/166329.asp> I guess that's not official release.

<comment><USER12> Lynch mobs do not have electronic equivalents.

The worst I can think of would affect a person's psyche, but Amazon is not a person. The analogy is not apt.

<comment><USER11> I meant the figurative meaning of "Lynch mob"(which perhaps only I hold) I should have used "mob justice".

Amazon is a "virtual" person under US Law. I don't like it but it's the reality of corporatism. Amazon can receive justice or injustice. In this case the mob delivered them a heap of injustice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Kudos to him for admitting his error, but can someone remind me why this guy is famous?

<comment><USER14> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clay_Shirky>

(or was that a rhetorical question?)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Does anyone have any good information regarding what actually happened? Amazon's corporate PR and random LJ posts have about the same level of credibility to me; they both have a single objective, to make themselves look good.

The troll did seem a little too perfect, but Amazon's "oops-a-daisy!" explanation doesn't smell so good either. Anyone know the real story? Or at least of substantiation details to make the "official" lines, on either side, sound a little more plausible?

<comment><USER16> Here's an interview with an unnamed Amazon employee about it: <http://blog.seattlepi.com/amazon/archives/166384.asp>

Basically, an employee in France (possibly due to a language barrier) flipped the "adult" bit on a bunch of stuff he shouldn't have, which interacted badly with recent changes to remove adult content from places where kids might stumble across it. It sucks that it affected a bunch of LGBT stuff, but it wasn't intentional.

If you're a developer who is like me, this is exactly the kind of thing you have nightmares about doing, because you know it could happen to anyone. How many times have you typed something, or committed something, and moments later felt the dawning horror of deleting some essential files or missing some essential step? Obviously we erect processes and technical solutions to make it rare for this kind of thing to make it into production, but it still happens.

<comment><USER17> I keep trying to imagine the database query that would have resulted in this particular subset of items being altered the way they were. I guess my imagination isn't that great.

I suspect the troll/CSRF might be the simplest explanation here.

<comment><USER15> Yeah, exactly my line of thought.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The NSA can store communications of US citizens for up to 5 years, sans warrant - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/06/20/the-nsa-can-retain-and-use-data-inadvertently-collected-from-communications-of-us-citizens/ <comment><USER3> I like how these jerks think they can go around and just make up their own rules on what is and what is not allowed.

Why don't they just admit that their lying sacks of shit, set fire to the constition, and admit what they think all the along:

"The only limit on Federal government powers are ones that we decide is valid and ok. We can do whatever the hell we want and everything we do is secret. If you try to tell the American public what is going on we will throw you in jail or otherwise make your life a living hell. We are only obligated to admit what we do when we feel like it or are caught. The rules we can change any time and only exist for our own convenience. The only people that are allowed to judge us are the judges we select and appoint for life and the rest of you peons just STFU."

<comment><USER4> It takes different experiences for different people to realize that government's claim to power is largely arbitrary.

This has been the situation prior to the existence of the NSA. Because people's actions tend to coincide with government policy, they often don't ever realize it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Blogspam for a Guardian article[1] that was posted here 3 hours before this[2]. This just has a different title.

[1]: [http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/20/fisa-court- nsa-w...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/20/fisa-court-nsa-without- warrant)

[2]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5914021](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5914021)

</comment><comment><USER6> This is true _for this specific program_ and only under the current policies. Let's just stop kidding ourselves and assume that the NSA stores our communications indefinitely, and design our software accordingly.

<comment><USER3> > This is true for this specific program and only under the current policies. > Let's just stop kidding ourselves and assume that the NSA stores our > communications indefinitely, and design our software accordingly.

Really?

And you believe this... because why? Because that is what they said?

I seriously believe that if I was to tell you that Obama had a massive program to collect and record the phone activities of every American at any time for any reason two months ago you would of called 'bullshit' so fast that it would of made my head spin.

I see zero reason to believe anything these guys tell us about anything. The only way to understand what they are really doing is to get information that they say is illegal for you to know.

<comment><USER6> "I seriously believe that if I was to tell you that Obama had a massive program to collect and record the phone activities of every American at any time for any reason two months ago you would of called 'bullshit' so fast that it would of made my head spin."

What makes you think that the latest news has changed my assumptions about the NSA? There has been evidence of widespread surveillance by the NSA for _decades_ :

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

These sort of programs span multiple administrations. There was never any reason to believe that the Obama administration would end them.

<comment><USER7> Statements by candidate Obama that he'd put an end to warrantless wiretapping was _some_ reason, if not (apparently) sufficient reason. Of course, he did put an end to warrantless wiretapping: collection of metadata is no longer considered wiretapping. Yay!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Why is everyone fretting about US citizens?

a) Thinking the NSA and other intelligence organizations would really make the distinction between US and non-US citizens, except in the scope that public opinion doesn't instantly crush them, doesn't seem like something they'd actually be likely to do.

b) 95% of the earths population are _outside_ of the USA, Facebook alone has a user count higher than 3 times the total US population.

Really, the distinction is completely meaningless for this discussion. The only effect it has is alienating non-US citizens because it makes it seem like US citizens are only concerned about themselves.

I also think the focus on the US surveillance apparatus might not be the way to go either, things like the upcoming Indian surveillance system belong to the very same discussion.

<comment><USER7> While I think in numerous respects we do pay too little attention to the rights of people elsewhere, both in a moral and practical sense, there is a significant sense in which our surveillance capabilities turned inward is a bigger problem than them turned outward: the American people are fundamentally the biggest check on the further growth of the power of these individuals, and giving them further power over us diminishes that.

<comment><USER9> Right. It isn't to be disingenuous to everyone else. I think of it similar to Chinese hacking incidences. "Foreign Power X hacked into the US defense contractors?" Yeah, I'm okay with that. We need a balance of power in this world.

Versus if it was this: "The US hacked into it's own civilian's businesses?" Not acceptable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Two important things for Americans to note:

1) FAA702 is supposed not to target "US persons" at all. But FAA70 _3_ and 70 _4_ are intended to target US persons outside the United States. They are more restrictive, and surely less often used, but they're still there.

2) Have you actually read the ruling [http://www.fas.org/irp/agency/doj/fisa/fiscr082208.pdf](http://www.fas.org/irp/agency/doj/fisa/fiscr082208.pdf) in the Yahoo! FISA case which was [http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/14/technology/secret-court- ru...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/14/technology/secret-court-ruling-put- tech-companies-in-data-bind.html) recently reported? It's all about 703-like surveillance _on US persons_. And it contains this:

"2 . The Foreign Intelligence Exception . The recurrent theme permeating the petitioner's arguments is the notion that there is no foreign intelligence exception to the Fourth Amendment's Warrant Clause. 6 The FISC rejected this notion, positing that our decision in In re Sealed Case confirmed the existence of a foreign intelligence exception to the warrant requirement. "

You may want to read that again. IANAL, but as best as I can understand this is the FISC appeals court (the secret intelligence court's appeals court) affirming its belief that while _law_ \- the FISA - prevents (some) no-warrant searches for "foreign intelligence information" on US persons, this is not actually necessary to comply with the US constitution, because the _Constitution_ does not prevent such searches at all. As soon as a foreign intelligence justification exists, open Sesame! the Warrant Clause goes away and the US government can search US citizens without any warrant. It is (according to this theory) only out of the goodness of Congress' heart that this isn't permitted already.

</comment><comment><USER11> They can store inadvertently collected US data without a warrant (with a written letter from the NSA director outlinig the reaons), but can they _listen_ or _read_ it without a warrant? That key bit of data is missing from this article. It appears that the answer is "yes" but it's not clear.

<comment><USER12> They can read it until they're sure an American is on the line. If the person never identifies their nationality, who can say.

<comment><USER13> And they can continue to read it as long as they're pretty sure a crime of any kind has been or may soon be committed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> If I send a letter with my email address and proof of citizenship to the NSA, that gives them specific information that my email address belongs to a US person.

Will they not then be required to delete all communications collected under FAA702 between my email address and any other email address for which they have received similar proof of US person-ness?

Can we organize a mass campaign for everyone to send letters to the NSA doing something like this?

</comment><comment><USER15> That sounds too long, by about 5 years.

</comment><comment><USER16> NSA Dark Star is capable of holding way more than five years of all voice and internet traffic.

Something tells me that number is going to be made into decades.

Unless maybe they are planning to store five years of all the drone video recordings over every major city.

</comment><comment><USER17> I'm punch drunk at this point. What are we going to do? What is being done?

<comment><USER18> Please call your Senators and Representative, it really does help. Every call counts for hundreds (or even thousands) of emails.

[http://callday.org/](http://callday.org/) makes it pretty easy. You'll either get voicemail or an intern who will take notes on what you say. It's very low- pressure.

<comment><USER19> Do keep in mind that your call will be recorded and stored for possible future analysis of trouble elements.

<comment><USER7> All the more reason for all of us to call.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm sure they'll only use it to catch terrorists, though.

Or not:

[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/20/russ-tice-nsa- obama...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/20/russ-tice-nsa- obama_n_3473538.html)

[http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/06/nsa-whistleblower- nsa...](http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/06/nsa-whistleblower-nsa-spying- on-and-blackmailing-high-level-government-officials-and-military- officers.html)

</comment><comment><USER21> Apple, Google and Facebook can store communications for evermore. And NSA can easily get a copy anytime, via a rubber stamp by a judge in the secret court.

Now, in light of this, are we all (the good guys) permitted to use strong encryption to protect our data in storage by these third parties... since we can't trust them to do so?

Unless we have a HIPAA-like law to cover all data, not just our medical records, then may we resort to self-help?

<comment><USER22> > Apple [...] can store communications for evermore. And NSA can easily get a > copy anytime, via a rubber stamp by a judge in the secret court.

"There are certain categories of information which we do not provide to law enforcement or any other group because we choose not to retain it.

For example, conversations which take place over iMessage and FaceTime are protected by end-to-end encryption so no one but the sender and receiver can see or read them. Apple cannot decrypt that data."

[https://www.apple.com/apples-commitment-to-customer- privacy/](https://www.apple.com/apples-commitment-to-customer-privacy/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> And non US citizens?

<comment><USER24> Don't count. Being an Australian, I'm pissed.

<comment><USER25> Dude, we Brits know you Aussies love your beer, like we do, but hey, don't openly prove the stereo type!!!!

Although, I am "pissed" too. No, non Americans are subhuman and have no rights in US law and seemingly to most Americans, even if we are customers of US businesses making them money, while these US business avoids tax like its AIDS. The US government also happily sweeps aside international law and convention when it suits them. Hence drone strikes, gitmo and rendition, or as the rest of us sub-humans call it, kidnap, murder and false imprisonment. Or the refusal to submit US citizens to international courts.

That is the problem with the US attitude to the rest of the planet, we are seen as both customers to be exploited, and the enemy. Real shame the US is so paranoid, the vast majority of us aren't evil.

I really fail to understand why the US believes it can behave in a way no one else does, why it thinks it has the right to do what it likes and over ride every one else. It really does feel like the US only recognizes American citizens as fully human. America and Americans are some how special and of more worth than every one else.

Yet, while I disapprove of this, worse is the way US allies lay down and accept it. So, partly, I think, "sod it, if my government cant be arsed to challenge them, then why am I bothering?". A bit like thinking the US citizens clearly want this, they voted for it, so they deserve it.

Its sad because all this stuff, IMHO, tarnishes everything good the US does. And it really does do some brilliant, awesome stuff. Is this superiority complex really the price the rest of us have to pay?

It funny, just a the simple addition of equality and humility, and the US could be the most loved country on the planet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> 5 days/months/years doesn't really matter, they have it, they will store it. Data is new Gold, no one wants to get rid of it or can get rid of it for the complications it might cause in the future. Can the people who decided to store the data, will ever be ready to destroy it ?

1\. You Can't treat your citizens like suspects 2\. You can't take control over the world information 3\. If it is done for the security, let us know upfront about it, there should be no beating around the bush.

</comment><comment><USER27> Section (3) is particularly interesting.

 _A communication identified as a domestic communication will be promptly destroyed upon recognition unless the Director of the NSA specifically determines, in writing, that_

 _(3) the communication is reasonably believed to contain ... information necessary to assess a communications security vulnerability_

What does this say for vulnerability researchers who happen to be American?

<comment><USER28> I interpret it to mean that if NSA's filter catches words related to communications security then it is flagged and possibly read by an analyst. It does say the Director of the NSA has to specifically request that the communication be kept, but someone has to read it first to determine its value. So it's read and stored without a warrant. Seems like a pretty clear violation of the 4th amendment to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Is it just me or has the gov't clammed up and stopped making incredible & dishonest denials?

</comment><comment> grey-area I have been thinking about steps Google and other big providers could take to make their services more trustworthy again for those outside the US who apparently have no protection from this dragnet under US law. Given the dominance of their services in email and search, Google could actually initiate a step-change in the privacy of their customers, without much effort.

They could anonymise their search data before storing, so that they don't store individual actions, just something like group preferences to tailor searches and target advertising. This wouldn't be easy while keeping their advertisers happy, but it's an interesting problem - how do you tailor search and advertising while not keeping track of every URL the user searches or clicks on. It would be interesting to know if turning off google web history actually turns anything off apart from the UI to display this tracking to the user - they have a disclaimer saying they still log for other purposes even with web history turned off. They could allow users to turn off this tracking completely.

They could make gmail delete old mails after 1 year or so by default, as a security measure. Keeping everything forever on a server is not a great idea if various governments are then given access to that data at some point in the future, and people should keep their archives of mail locally, not on Google's server - Google should encourage that.

They could offer easy to set up encryption on gmail, in fact they could set it up by default for each user. If the user chose to this could kick in automatically when emailing any account on their own service, giving a lot of people encrypted email all of a sudden without any effort on their part. That would make a vast number of email communications encrypted, and coupled with deleting older emails, this would make it far harder for the NSA to snoop on email communications, at least for those who don't use webmail and delete their old messages from the server. If Google did this and used an open standard, other providers like Apple, Hotmail etc would follow, and mail readers like Apple mail would be changed to read the messages.

Finally, they could do far more to explain what they are gathering on each individual, and in what circumstances they will pass the material on to the NSA - they claim that they robustly defend the rights of their users, but without actual proof, this is not very convincing. I read their lawyer's Q&A with the guardian last week, and nothing of substance was said, though lots of vague denials were included again:

 _" We review each of those requests and push back when the request is overly broad or doesn't follow the correct process. There is no free-for-all, no direct access, no indirect access, no back door, no drop box."_

Which tells us nothing about what actually does happen, and whether Google has enough information to effectively oversee these requests. If they don't feel they can legally tell their customers what they are doing, they should be campaigning far more robustly and openly for the right to divulge that information, and fighting it in the open courts with ACLU now that the details have emerged. They could start by simply refusing to cooperate with FISA requests going forward, until a more transparent system is put in place - Twitter hasn't been cooperating, so why should Google?

This scandal is damaging their standing in other countries, and the best way to counter that would be to be open and honest (in spite of the secret laws they are asked to operate under) and stand up for their users' privacy with concrete actions rather than denials. If they continue to give information to the NSA, US users should be very concerned about what Google will say when all the other governments of the world require data on US persons from Google subsidiaries, following the NSA's example.

<comment><USER30> The issue here is that Google's business, or a large part of it, is all about amassing data in a useful and usable way. Most of what you propose would undermine Google as much as it would undermine security organisations.

<comment> grey-area _The issue here is that Google 's business, or a large part of it, is all about amassing data in a useful and usable way._

I see it as a social contract between Google and their customers - <USER2> give up a certain amount of anonymity and allow some activities to be tracked so that they are provided with services, sometimes paid (e.g. google apps), sometimes free (e.g. search or gmail). If the relationship becomes one where Google takes whatever they want and provides that data to third parties, why should we as customers put up with it? It's particularly galling if you're paying them for the privilege.

Plenty of alternatives are ready to replace them if they don't pay more than lip-service to their users' privacy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> But how can they accurately identify a request as being by an actual US citizen?

<comment><USER32> For that matter, how can they identify any individual as a US citizen when the commercial systems they're monitoring (phone, email, etc) often don't know? What about foreign workers on visas, or US expats abroad, or simple business travelers.

<comment><USER13> We expats abroad are not protected. I guess we're just not loyal enough.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Off topic, but explain to me the gratuitous use of a French word in the headline. Is this some kind of slur on the French, e.g. the NSA are being so duplicitous they are almost French?

<comment><USER34> Do you mean "sans"? That word is commonly used in U.S. English to mean "without".

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I feel safer already. /sarcasm How can citizens reverse these sort of intrusive policies?

</comment><comment><USER36> Well, at least my embarrassing things that I wrote in high school are gone now...

</comment><comment><USER37> _Sometimes_ all I think we can do by writing to our "tough on terrorists" lawmakers is save some money. Avoid the FISA court entirely, just give the the rubber stamp to the f#^&%($ NSA, it's not like any request is denied anyway.

Look at hosting services and the storage GB and traffic they offer now compared to a few years ago. Storage and bandwidth costs are going lower and lower so NSA can easily store everything "forever." If Google can do it, why can't NSA with a comparatively unlimited budget ? Just the US intel spending is something like $80 Billion a year and that's one area that is not going to be left unfunded or "you Senator will have blood on your hands next time Al Qaeda..."</comment>


A massive open-data survey of people learning to program - <AUTHOR> https://freecodecamp.typeform.com/to/gc0JJI <comment><AUTHOR> Currently we have about 8.2k respondents. Hoping to get to 20k by the time we release the dataset next week. For more back story: [https://medium.freecodecamp.com/we-just-launched-the- biggest...](https://medium.freecodecamp.com/we-just-launched-the-biggest-ever- survey-of-people-learning-to-code-cac81dadf1ea#.gmz65sebi)

</comment><comment><USER2> This is an awesome effort.</comment>


The programmer who created Python isn't interested in mentoring white guys - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/1624252/pythons-creator-thinks-it-has-a-diversity-problem/ <comment><USER2> Here's the quote below which is quite reasonable, it's their time mentoring so they should mentor how they like. I feel like the article is designed to kindle the fires of internet drama.

"It's not just about writing the code, but you have stand up for your code and defend your code, and there is a certain male attitude that is endemic in many projects where a woman would just not feel comfortable claiming that she is right," he explained. "A guy who knows less than that woman might honestly believe [he is right], so they present a much more confident image." In his experience, van Rossum sees incompetent men's ideas gaining acceptance more often than merited because they are more forceful in how they present them.

Van Rossum believes that the different attitudes of women and men in programming communities is due to wider societal problems that we need to fix from the bottom up. "I've always felt that feminism was right and we need to change the whole society," he said. In the meantime, he feels a responsibility to act in the places he has influence, like in the Python community.

He believes the key to making open-source communities more inclusive is establishing (and enforcing) codes of conduct and mentoring. Van Rossum says that he now mentors women and underrepresented minority programmers. "But white guys can forget it," he said. "They are not the ones who need it most." (In typical programmer speak, he calls mentoring a "completely distributed, democratic approach.")

<comment><USER3> He is free to do what ever he wants but I find nothing reasonable in generalization that reduced complex individuals into two bits of information, skin and gender. To quote Carl Sagan, reducing people down to single bits of information is intellectual laziness.

 _" Ethnic groups are stereotyped, the citizens of other nations and religions are stereotyped, the genders and sexual preferences are stereotyped, people born in various times of the year are stereotyped (Sun-sign astrology), and occupations are stereotyped. The most generous interpretation ascribes it to a kind of intellectual laziness: instead of judging people on their individual merits and deficits, we concentrate on one or two bits of information about them, and then place them in a small number of previously constructed pigeonholes.

This saves the trouble of thinking, at the price in many cases of committing a profound injustice. It also shields the stereotyper from contact with the enormous variety of people, the multiplicity of ways of being human. Even if stereotyping were valid on average, it is bound to fail in many individual cases: human variation runs to bell-type curves. There's an average value of any quality, and smaller numbers of people running off in both extremes."_

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I feel this article would win more people over if it had a more positive spin, e.g. "I can't mentor white men - there are too many women of colour beating down my door for mentorship" or something like that.</comment>


"Fabric" To Weave Security Into Code - <AUTHOR> http://www.drdobbs.com/java/227900404;jsessionid=0H4QNJT3ZHQ3NQE1GHPSKH4ATMY32JVN

<comment><USER2> Analogous to mandatory access control security, though labeling objects (outside of a compiler) isn't particularly new, and keeping a multilevel- enabled server from getting its access tangled is not a trivial undertaking.</comment>


Against popular culture - <AUTHOR> https://aeon.co/essays/against-guilty-pleasures-adorno-on-the-crimes-of-pop-culture <comment><USER2> I hesitate even to say it, because I know how snobbish it sounds, but I got tired of reading genre fiction, so I went to Project Gutenberg and started reading Shakespeare for the first time since High School. I always knew Shakespeare was great, everybody knows it, but knowing it and _feeling_ it are worlds apart. Shakespeare is amazing. The words, the characters, the depth of meaning and ambiguity. Go read Shakespeare!</comment>