Netflix disables use of the Chrome developer console - <AUTHOR> http://pastebin.com/Lx5gjXsA <comment><USER2> "self-XSS" (the thing this malfeature is purportedly protecting people from) is a made-up concept. It's basically "don't run your own scripts to interfere with our site, and we'll use scary-sounding security words in an attempt to discourage you from doing it." I don't believe for a second this is about helping the user - more likely is that FB and Netflix want to prevent users running scripts that add features or do functions they find inconvenient, like exporting your address book or movie rating info.

I get to run code just as much as you do - it's MY computer, MY browser, and MY bandwidth. Making up a scare word (that just means "users running code I don't like") in an attempt to legitimize disabling access to development and exploration tools is beyond the pale. There is absolutely no reason to permit this kind of behavior, and I'm frankly a little appalled a community of startup founders and hackers would ever defend this kind of behavior, as some of the comments here have done. If you want to protect users from themselves and limit and restrict what they can do, write a mobile app. Don't try and put your shit on the web if you want it to be a walled garden.

<comment><USER3> I don't see exactly how it is a concern for Netflix, but sadly "self-XSS" is real on Facebook. Not among us tech-savvy people obviously, so consider how much you look from inside a bubble.

If people read of a "h4x0r trick to read their bf/gf private messages", they will execute it. And hey, "it has this l33t keyboard shortcut that will make a strange window pop up, it must be what the hackers in the movies use!!". And then "Oh well, thanks to this friend of mine for sharing this cool trick that gives me the stuff to paste there, I would not know how to use it!". And finally "Booooo, Facebook sucks, my account got hacked".

I remember of the internet making fun of a girl that believed to be enrolled in some secret police because she popped up the Dev console. Well, that is just normal people, not uncommon.

I trust that actual developer can find their way around blocks and warnings, that however raise the bar for social engineering.

<comment><USER4> right, because patching one of 1000 is the right solution? please give back your engineer card.

\- just download this file to see your gf private messages. ok, lets remove download from the browser (actually, ios did this)

\- just run this long string in the address bar to see whatever. ok, let prevent javascript: schema in url bar (actually, android stock browser did this)

anyway you go at it, is ineffective. the only solution is to educate. trying to prevent idiots from harming themselves will just lead to annoyance to the non-idiots and more sophisticated attacks until you cant prevent them.

people who implement those dumb thing disgusts me. your comment disgusted me.

<comment><USER5> > the only solution is to educate.

Exactly. The more things you do to restrict users so "it's safer for them", the more reckless and stupid they'll become - "because $security_feature will protect me" \- and they won't ever learn anything. On the other hand, if we give them the freedom to make mistakes, those that do will learn from them. Instead of trying to block "self-XSS" or telling everyone "don't listen to anyone telling you to paste something into the URL bar", we should be encouraging them with "if you don't know what it does or don't trust the one who told you to do that, then don't do it - _or find out what it really does_." That last part is particularly important, since it encourages curiosity and that motivates learning.

I understand that many people would just want to use something and not want to learn all that much, but I feel we should also not be encouraging this "lack of thought" mentality either.

<comment><USER6> See [http://boardofwisdom.com/togo/Quotes/ShowQuote/?msgid=35154](http://boardofwisdom.com/togo/Quotes/ShowQuote/?msgid=35154)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> You can defeat this without any extensions, here is how:

Since this only applies to Chrome, so do the instructions:

1) Open netflix.com

2) Open developer tools.

3) Go to Sources tab.

4) Click on the tiny icon for "Show Navigator" on the left.

5) Find the JavaScript file that has: (function(){try{var $_console$$=console;Object.defineProperty(window,"console",{get:function(){if($_console$$._commandLineAPI)throw"Sorry, for security reasons, the script console is deactivated on netflix.com";return $_console$$},set:function($val$$){$_console$$=$val$$}})}catch($ignore$$){}})();

For me this is cdn1.nflxext.com/FilePackageGetter/sharedSystem/pkg-nflxsrc- __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __*

6) For me the offending line is line 3. Click on the line number, this will set a breakpoint.

7) Reload the page, now the Script will pause before running line 3.

8) Switch to the Console tab.

9) Run: Object.defineProperty(window, "console", {configurable: false});

10) Switch back to the Sources tab and press the resume script button or F8.

11) Enjoy console access again.

<comment><USER8> You don't need the breakpoint. Just run Object.defineProperty(window, "console", {configurable: false}); before loading netflix and you are good to go ;)

<comment><USER7> That doesn't work for me. When the page load happens aren't a new set of client-side browser object created? Do you have any more detailed information?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> There are legitimate security reasons why various major sites want to do this, and the changes do appear to be in response to actual, self-XSS attacks that have been seen. While I am no fan of the NSA, I don't see how this has anything to do with them. I also think this is very distinct from the right- click-disabling that used to be so popular: that was _not_ in response to actual attacks, and also, to my knowledge, never happened on reputable sites. Additionally, I don't recall it being justified as being for "security" reasons: websites were usually rather honest about having it to prevent saving or copying and pasting.

This _is_ , in my view, a poor solution to the problem, but as a temporary measure, it makes some sense. A change to Chrome to make a warning message appear the first time the developer console is opened, or javascript is used in the location bar, could be a good idea. And, as the pastebin notes, there are likely better, if more complex, technical solutions from the website side. All of these, however, will take considerably more time and effort, and the attacks are already happening.

<comment><USER10> It doesn't have anything to do with the NSA. He was just saying that "for security reasons" is a stupid excuse that, he says, seems to be frequently used to excuse any nefarious behaviour.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Its just a bug in Chrome that you _can_ disable it. A cat and mouse game that Chrome should easily win, given that it holds all the cards.

<comment><USER12> Chrome can easily fix this, but it wouldn't actually be a bad idea for them to show a message to the user warning them of social-engineering based self-XSS attacks when devtools are first brought up.

Either that or "hide" the developer tools a bit like they do in modern Android so that it is really obvious to the user if they are directed to mess with things that they shouldn't be messing with without understanding them.

<comment><USER13> "so that it is really obvious to the user if they are directed to mess with things that they shouldn't be messing with"

I think that as soon as an attacker tempts the user with: "follow these steps to access American/UK (substitute a locale that has content your account shouldn't have access to) only films that Netflix don't want you to know!" that the apparent gain for the user will lead them to ignore any warnings. In fact, warning might actually encourage these kinds of attacks since the user could think "that's just Netflix trying to hide something, I'm gonna following [the attackers] guide"

<comment><USER14> You can't protect the users this way: the attacker will create a custom Chromium build and lure the user to download and execute it. At that point the user will be pawned either way.

<comment><USER15> That's a ridiculous argument. If the attacker could do that why would they even bother with XSS attacks based on developer tools?

<comment><USER16> The argument would be that the custom build of Chrome (or other malicious software) is harder to create, but not so much harder so as to be not worth doing for the attacker.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I really like the comparison with right click deactivation.

Anyway, people who use social engineering will still win; you can put JS code in the browser bar with the good old javascript: "protocol" if you want somebody to execute something.

<comment><USER18> I think that executing JS in the URL bar is disabled in all browsers now.

<comment><USER19> Disabled in Safari and Firefox, still works in Chrome Canary.

<comment><USER20> However, you can't paste a string starting with "javascript:" in the address bar

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Google please fix this bug in Chrome. Websites SHOULD NOT be able to override the console.

<comment><USER22> Let the websites do whatever they want. You can always work around it. The point of such measures is inconvenience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Just enter this in the address bar (may have to manually re-type "javascript:")

> javascript:void(delete window.console);

<comment><USER5> Intuitively, I would expect that to FUBAR the console completely but it's actually deleting the overridden version so it restores the _real_ console's properties (which thankfully cannot be deleted.) Cute way of fixing it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Things like this always annoy me. It's a marginal annoyance to people who know what they're doing. For those less knowledgeable, who were using something they learnt by rote to improve their experience, they'll either google and find another way to do it (thanks to a blog post/youtube video by someone with a bit of nouse) / download some virus / wait until they see the person who originally showed them what to do.

It just seems like a bit of grief for a temporary gain.

</comment><comment><USER25> First Netflix attempts to subvert web-standards with WebDRM. And now they attempt to lock down the regular HTML as well by disabling legit inspection tools. I can't wait to see what's up next!

It should be clear by now that if you care about the open web, Netflix is not a company you can trust, much less fund with your money.

Cancel Netflix if you already haven't.

</comment><comment><USER26> Guess it's time to recompile the browser (Chromium in this case?) with some extra switches to remove that chunk of JS code before it's executed?

<comment><USER24> From the article:

// But if you're feeling up to it, you can run the following line via an extension to prevent // this abuse:

// Object.defineProperty(window, 'console', {configurable: false, value: window.console});

<comment><USER16> Actually that alone won't work in a Chrome extension because of isolated worlds. You have to do a bit more gymnastics.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Interesting that this happens soon after Google restricted extensions to developer mode, isn't it? Back then I said the "security reason" is definitely BS, because they already took a "strong enough" measure to only allow extensions to be installed with drag and drop into the Extensions page.

Plus, when you have the company that lives by data, not show you the _data_ that made them make this move, you know something is up. I asked then, and I actually asked when they moved to drag and drop, too: show me the data that proves this is so necessary!

Even before any of this, Chrome was far better than IE and even Firefox at staving off bad extensions. So to me both of those moves seemed unnecessary, and most likely with another "agenda" behind. Now we begin to see that that agenda could be.

I've also connected stuff like this with MPAA taking board membership at W3C. Expect stuff that's much worse than this, and the MPAA-influenced W3C to start keeping features away from browsers that MPAA freaks out about, while Google will increasingly start to ban various extensions from the store for various "ToS reasons".

And people still think W3C's DRM extension won't be used to close down the Internet? It took Netflix _weeks_ to take advantage of Google's recent move. Watch what happens when DRM can be enabled in the browser by anyone, just as easily, Then we'll see if the "convenience" of not playing Netflix through a plugin was worth it.

</comment><comment><USER28> Instead of developers throwing their toys out the cot, try to imagine a conversion along the lines of:

MPAA executive: we need to lobby W3C more to get DRM!

Netflix: why?

MPAA executive: because they'll steal our content!

Netflix: no need! we've disabled the developer console so they can't steal your content!

MPAA executive: That sounds good!

It's nice having a "yeah but you can do X" retort to the people making these decisions.

The ideologically driven 'but the web should be oooopen' argument won't go far.

<comment><USER29> > The ideologically driven 'but the web should be oooopen' argument won't go > far.

lmao, which site am i on again?

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Facebook at least allows an easy opt-out.

<comment><USER31> That and Facebook's one shows a huge message saying why they do it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Doesn't affect me on Ubuntu, they can't even play a movie in the browser which is something Crackle does a great job at.

<comment><USER33> There is a way to get Silverlight as a plugin in your standard Linux browsers. It's called Pipelight[0]. Yes, it uses Wine, but not for the rendering, so it's not a horrible experience.

[0] [http://www.webupd8.org/2013/08/pipelight-use-silverlight- in-...](http://www.webupd8.org/2013/08/pipelight-use-silverlight-in-your- linux.html)

<comment><USER34> Pipelight is awesome, I recommend using it to anyone reading this. It just works.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> > API requests can be made inaccessible from XSS (and that includes self-XSS) > by means of a CSRF token that is properly secured

How can self-XSS be prevented with a CSRF token? Can't the script included via self-XSS get the token out of the page and use it to make requests that appear as if they originate from the app itself? Can't a script injected through self-XSS do absolutely anything the page can do in the first place?

<comment><AUTHOR> No, but it's not easy (in fact it's quite hard to do well) because of how insecure the browser is.

You can take advantage of the fact that you can store private information in closures. To prevent malicious code from overwriting a native function to which you pass sensitive information (like the CSRF token in this case) you need to Object.freeze the prototype of things like XMLHttpRequest or take your own references of the native functions.

Naturally all of this assumes the user doesn't do something like set a breakpoint and then inject a script with access to scope variables. But if social engineering gets you that far, you could probably just have the user run any arbitrary code on their machine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> "And interestingly, Chrome (even Canary) still allows the user to run javascript from the omnibar."

Worth noting that they remove the "javascript:" part when you paste from clipboard.

My guess is that it protects against people telling others to "copy this in the address bar to steal your friends' Facebook accounts", much like why Facebook disabled the console previously.

</comment><comment><USER5> I've noticed a rather disturbing trend of thought in technology that's been showing up more and more recently with things like this: "Make it harder for users to know how things really work. Make it harder for users to explore, make mistakes, and learn. Make it harder for users to become developers. The less the users know, the easier it'll seem to them, and the easier it'll be for us to stay in control. Keep them ignorant and consuming. Lock them in a walled garden and tell them it's all 'for your security/safety'. Because knowledge is power, and we don't want that in the hands of the users."

Netflix doing this is one of the more obvious manifestations, but they are not alone - many other companies and even open-source, free-software projects are taking this approach, Google included.

<comment><USER37> Yes, the bottom line is that Netflix is sending you code executed on your own machine. You, as the user, should have full access to inspect the executed code. Obfuscated or minified code should only be used as a bandwidth saving device, and not to hide the true functionality from the user. If the browser is seeing it, why can't the user?

Disabling a feature of the user's browser is absolutely absurd. If you want to hide from the user whats going on then that code needs to run on the server.

Can you imagine opening an image in Photoshop and because of some flag half the tools disappear? Yeah, me either, and images don't even run code.

<comment><USER38> Have you ever tried scanning in a picture of a US Dollar? ;-)

<comment><USER8> HOLY SHIT. I never knew about this. Makes me wonder though if someone decided to prevent the scanning of every single currency out there and the developers had to code in a shitload of recognition patterns into the scanners firmware.

<comment><USER39> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurion](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurion) suggests currency has some common features.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Anyone filed this on [http://crbug.com/](http://crbug.com/) yet?

<comment><USER41> I was going to, but the developer console works on the landing page and I don't have an account, so I can't verify Netflix is actually doing that.

If someone can verify, I highly recommend filing it.

ed: Looks like there is a bug already: [https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=345205](https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=345205)

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> > _Google should really patch this. The command line API should be privileged > so that third parties can 't modify how the browser behaves without explicit > authorization (i.e. an extension)_

Absolutely agree. Why don't they do that, or at least make it an option?

</comment><comment><USER43> I threw together an extension during my lunch that should work against these types console disables [0], using the method the poster suggested.

[0] [https://github.com/Decad/ConsoleDefender](https://github.com/Decad/ConsoleDefender)

</comment><comment><USER44> This mentions that there are ways to secure CSRF tokens so that they can't be stolen via self-XSS (or any kind of XSS) attacks.

How exactly could this be implemented, not including adding a captcha or requiring the user to retype their password for every action?

</comment><comment><USER45> I don't think the goal of this is to hide legitimate uses of the dev tools. As many have mentioned, it's really easy to circumvent. It's to shut down an attack vector.

</comment><comment><USER46> never trust the client. no matter what kind of hacks you come up with to protect yourself. you have to assume the client side is always compromised. always protect yourself in the parts you have full control.

</comment><comment><USER47> What are some things everyone's using the dev console on Netflix for?

</comment><comment><USER48> It's a major WTF that Chrome even allows this.

Still, I suppose it is google...

</comment><comment><USER49> i would have called that "for security reasons" :)

</comment><comment><USER50> I didn't read the whole thing, but I think the actual motivation is to prevent self-XSS which is in the first line.

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/21692646/how-does- faceboo...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/21692646/how-does-facebook- disable-the-browsers-integrated-developer-tools)

Anyhow, I will just quickly dismiss this has anything to do with NSA. If I may, be an ignorant once, called this pastebin a bullshit.

<comment><USER50> Wow, I can't even modify my post. Which unfair HN mod locked my post? How on earth could anyone connect this to NSA?

<comment><USER51> > I didn't read the whole thing

May I suggest you read the whole thing next time? You can certainly disagree with the author's assertion that companies and governments abuse "for your security" to do awful things (or that it's what happened here), but it's far from ridiculous. I think you just misunderstood the point about the NSA--not reading will do that to you--and it makes you look silly.

<comment><USER50> I did understand the point he was trying to make, but to me that's a poor analogy. This self-XSS prevention is a temporary solution. Facebook probably thought they had enough of people reporting dev console self-XSS so they took the initiative.

Netflix is not abusing "for your security" to do awful things. How? I just don't see it. I see that as an accusation, putting Netflix and Facebook's temporary solution in the same category as NSA's excuse is bad. I might be unfair to the author for not reading the entire post (well technically I read most of it, except Crockford and afterward I gave a quick glance), I will admit that's my failure, but that argument doesn't appeal to me at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Thank you facebook

</comment><comment><USER29> Why can websites disable use of the developer console? That seems like a critical security bug,.

</comment><comment><USER53> The NSA ranting around here is out of control. Not only did the poster somehow tie this bit of javascript to the NSA, but he claimed that the NSA records our phone conversations too. There is no evidence that it does unless you're a head of state or somebody the FBI has a warrant to tap.

<comment><USER54> The poster did not "tie this bit of javascript to the NSA". She/he argues that blindly acquiescing to removal of rights in the name of security is a bad idea, using the NSA phone tapping deal as a point of comparison.

<comment><USER53> Removal of rights? Saying that either this JavaScript or the NSA's actions amount to a removal of rights is a huge stretch. You might as well compare the the sealed battery on the iPhone to the NSA's data gathering.

<comment><USER54> I half-disagree with you: the NSA's actions, IMHO, certainly do amount to a violation of the right to privacy. However, calling the ability to run the javascript development console on a page a 'right' is a stretch, I agree.

Please feel free to read the actual article and quote it and find fault with its conclusions. As it is now you're seizing on individual words, not ideas. If this were a Turing test you wouldn't be doing so well.

<comment><USER53> Reread what you just posted. You just said that the poster's comparison to the NSA is invalid, which is exactly my point. Why does everything around here have to be tied to the NSA (see Gruber's ridiculous conspiracy theory about the Apple bug for a recent example), and why does half of the stuff posted about the NSA have to be hysterical nonsense like that they're recording all our phone calls? It removes legitimacy from the rest of us who are complaining about things the NSA actually does.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google's ads just look like search results now - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/tldr/2020/1/23/21078343/google-ad-desktop-design-change-favicon-icon-ftc-guidelines <comment><USER2> Previous discussion on this topic: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22107823](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22107823)

</comment><comment><USER3> Google has publicly stated that they are not moving forward with this:

[https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/24/21080424/google-search- re...](https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/24/21080424/google-search-result-ads- desktop-favicon-redesign-backtrack-controversial-experiment)

</comment><comment><USER4> Here is the solution [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/google-search- ads-...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/google-search-ads- highlig/cjdeidnceplfnabgonejmggjhgjmlpff)

<comment><USER2> Open source alternative: [https://github.com/attio/google-ad- fixer](https://github.com/attio/google-ad-fixer)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Soon on mobile, we'll have to go to next page to see organic results. First page will be all ads.</comment>


Ask HN: I'm creating a startup financing directory, looking for suggestions - <AUTHOR> I thought it would be good to build a simple and useful site that can help founders find the right resources to fund their startup. Hopefully FundingLinx.com will become one of the first sites you look at when you are trying to find startup funding, but I'm looking to add new resources, and therefore I thought HN must be the ideal place to ask :)<p>Any suggestions are welcome! Anything startup grant, government loan, accelerator or incubator related. <comment><USER2> I have something like that in _paper_ version for Spain. Get ready to be able to publish in physical format and get an ISBN.

Also collect and get press contacts for anyone. Journalists usually have a hard time getting that information and investors will be glad to get press exposure, not just people spamming ideas.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It's a great idea.

Classify investors by type, industry, country and region. Provide contact details of decision makers and indicate if cold calling is acceptable. Provide details of previous investments made and percentage of deals closed. Provide information on industry events. A podcast would be a bonus. Provide a brokerage and legal service for a small fee which could be a percentage (1% to 3% ?) of funds raised. I'd certainly use this service if available

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for sharing your thoughts! I'm working adding more resources every day, it just has to be done gradually to make sure the data is of high quality. But I do want to expand the range of services offered, along the lines of what you are suggesting.</comment></comment>


As a Service ─ Failure on Demand - <AUTHOR> https://500asaservice.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> My mission is to provide a planet-scale, elastic, resilient, secure and low- latency on-demand HTTP 500 service. I hope you enjoy it. Pull requests accepted!

<comment><USER2> Do you use microservices? Is there a GraphQL API? Do you have an engineering blog or newsletter so we can keep track of updates? Are you hiring and do you have a "careers" page describing your company's values and how diverse and inclusive it is?</comment></comment>


Some Startup Opportunities Are Losers Today - <AUTHOR> http://www.caycon.com/blog/2011/06/some-startup-opportunities-are-losers-today/

<comment><USER2> In at least two of these categories, (search and social networking) today's market leaders started up during low points when nobody thought their was room - or even demand - for another entrant.

Seriously, when Google was founded building yet another search engine was considered slightly less cool and even less lucrative than developing a new word processor for Windows.

Focusing on unoccupied niches or new markets is usually a bad strategy. Businesses are like life; they find a way to occupy every habitable space. There's usually a reason unoccupied niches are unoccupied. Being the first into a new market is almost as bad. The business that establishes the market is usually just providing a free lesson to potential competitors on what to avoid. They tend to grow hidebound just as the market really takes off.

<comment><USER3> When Google launched, no one was even trying to do search anymore. For some reason everyone thought that portals were going to be the big thing. Google launched with something truly innovative that was a _massive_ improvement over the incumbents.

When Facebook launched, the social network sites all bit, and everyone knew it. MySpace was the big thing, but everyone over the age of 14 knew it was unpleasant to use. Facebook came along and launched a different kind of site. First, it was exclusive. Second, it wasn't about putting together a page that looked like it belonged on Angelfire. It was about spending time connecting to people you knew.

If you're going to try to launch in a space with long-established players, you better have something damned impressive. e.g. There is no meaningful space for small players in search. You either take a huge chunk of the market and put yourself on the Forbes list, or you fold. If all you've got is another search engine that's "as good" as Google, then don't bother. "As good" doesn't win customers.</comment></comment>


Atiyah Riemann Hypothesis proof: final thoughts - <AUTHOR> https://aperiodical.com/2018/09/atiyah-riemann-hypothesis-proof-final-thoughts/ <comment><AUTHOR> I really liked the positive tone of this article and also found it be very informative.</comment>


NSA Blimp Spied in the United States - <AUTHOR> https://theintercept.com/2017/04/24/nsa-blimp-spied-in-the-united-states/ <comment><USER2> I find it interesting that this blimp is called Hover Hammer. I was stationed in Ft Lewis and went to Iraq (OIF II 2003-2004) and as part of a RSTA (reconnaissance, surveillance, target acquisition) cavalry squadron, our unit had these "Prophet" SIGINT listening devices. They were humvees with telescoping antennas. The antennas would go up maybe 2-3 stories high and they look like this:

[https://www.army.mil/article/76623/Soldiers_train_on_upgrade...](https://www.army.mil/article/76623/Soldiers_train_on_upgraded_PROPHET_systems)

The NSA operated a much larger immobile version called the "Prophet Hammer", which there doesn't appear to be much on the internet about:

[https://icwatch.wikileaks.org/search?company_facet=Prophet+H...](https://icwatch.wikileaks.org/search?company_facet=Prophet+Hammer)

Given the similarity, I can't help but think that the NSA uses "HAMMER" for their main SIGINT collection hardware. Something to note when reading some of the released documents full of codewords and internal DoD lingo.

<comment><USER3> Is it appropriate to post this kind of sensitive material on the internet?

<comment><USER4> The real question is whether it is appropriate for a government to be using weapons of war against its own civilian populace, in direct violation of human rights and constitutional prohibitions.

<comment><USER5> What?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I hate the idea that government agencies can deploy technology like a blimp that flies around for 6 months at a time listening to _everything_ in order to spy on citizens who should have a right to freedom and privacy, but a little part of my brain can't help but think "That is _so_ cool."

</comment><comment><USER7> The last time I was near Baltimore, I saw one of those things and it gave me the creeps.

What really stuck with me was the way the locals blithely accepted it, like "Oh, those are always up there".

<comment><USER8> Like Eloi and Morlocks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Quick, bring out the biplanes! :)

</comment><comment><USER10> Naturally they'd probably want something like those absurdly high-resolution real-time drones put into a package that can be kept aloft not just for hours but perpetually.

[https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/146909-darpa-shows- off-1...](https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/146909-darpa-shows- off-1-8-gigapixel-surveillance-drone-can-spot-a-terrorist-from-20000-feet) is an example of an existing drone. That kind of equipment could easily fit into a blimp.

</comment><comment><USER11> These look like the TARS blimps or DEA blimps used for border surveillance and trying to catch drug smugglers.

<comment><USER12> They've had blimps at the border for some time.

[https://www.cbp.gov/frontline/frontline-november- aerostats](https://www.cbp.gov/frontline/frontline-november-aerostats)

But ya, the pictures do look the same.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> What are they alleging it spied on?

I hear about test operations and the targeting of international traffic.

Was there domestic targeting for non-test purposes? Or even any domestic targeting at all?

<comment><USER14> They are alleging that it spied on any and all electronic communications that occurred in the Long Island, New York area .. not just international shipping, though that was included, but potentially everything else as well.

And that's really the point: we don't know. Unless someone investigates and pulls the evidence, we won't know, for sure, that this device isn't being used by the political elite in order to maintain their powers.

Such is the nature of a nation run on secrets.

<comment><USER15> The terminology made me think that they just had a VHF receiver up there and were listening to AIS traffic [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_identification_syste...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_identification_system)

It's similar to the ADS-B systems that airplanes use to report their location and altitude and heading.

AIS has a built-in messaging system for ship-to-ship communications and to receive alerts.

You can detect AIS traffic from satellite, but ground-based antennas are cheaper and more sensitive. Having a aerostat to increase range would be good for monitoring maritime traffic over a larger area.

UPDATE: After reading some more, I think this is a perfect fit for AIS monitoring. Ground-based solutions have a horizon limitation of 46 miles. Satellite systems get overwhelmed with too many ships reporting in and data is lost. A balloon based system would be in a sweet spot where it would allow the US to extend the AIS monitoring a few hundred miles out from the borders while not having to put more satellites into orbit.

<comment><USER14> Nothing in the article indicates that they are 'only spying on AIS traffic' \- this is an assumption, and a poor guess, possible diversion tactic, at best.

<comment><USER16> The source material linked in the article (SIDtoday newsletter) is what states it was used for AIS traffic.

I am curious as to what else you believe it is used for?

<comment><USER17> I'd guess they were monitoring every signal from radio bands that have a line- of-sight or one-bounce range limitations, as they could get the rest of the spectrum from their ground-based antennas.

They're experts in signals intelligence and have no practical budget limitations. They're recording _everything_ , automatically processing to find the interesting bits, and assigning real life humans to look at those interesting bits.

I'm guessing that in the NYC area, at the very least Russia, China, and Canada are sucking up the same EM signals, or trying to.

We mere mortals tend to assume that such a tool would be used for one thing in particular, because don't have cults of patriotism or bottomless bank accounts.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


TellMe "not even close" to Siri - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/microsoft/2011/11/25/apples-siri-vs-microsofts-tellme-this-isnt-even-close/

<comment><USER2> Not too surprising. Siri isn't "real AI" in a sense, but it _is_ the result of several years of well-funded AI research (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CALO>), which is probably an approximation of AI that's hard to replicate without significant effort.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's also difficult to replicate because Apple acquired the technology and patented it, making it very difficult for other companies to compete for a while.</comment></comment>


U.S. kids want to be famous on YouTube; Chinese kids want to go to space: survey - <AUTHOR> https://www.businessinsider.com/american-kids-youtube-star-astronauts-survey-2019-7 <comment><USER2> Both types of kids desire the same thing: to contribute and be relevant to society as they perceive it.

American society has plenty of astronauts and space over acheivers. American society is also very much unplugged from the rest of the planet, so much so that I can say most Americans don't consider good image of their country in the eyes of the non-western world a priority. If this was the cold-war era, American kids might have wanted to help their country look better as compared to the communist world. The difference is that of being the winner and being the losers trying to catch up to the winner. China might be second place in many things but as they say, second place just means you're the first loser. There is a reason "made in china 2025","The 100 year matathon" and "belt and ring project" all have competitive undertones.

America is also an individualistic society where everyone seeks what makes themselves look good and profit while east asian societies tend to be more hive-minded (For a lack of a better expression). I dislike both selfishness and prioritizing the greater nation over your own immediate family and community. If the Nash equilibrum of economics and game theory holds true, I wager the American perspective will result in long term prosperity fot all that follow it, but of course that model does not take into account strife and external malicous actors whose end goal is not to profit but to destroy.

</comment><comment><USER3> Isn't YouTube banned in China? If so it's not surprising the kids there don't respond as strongly to the idea of being a "YouTuber".

<comment><USER4> There are many video and streaming platforms in China even with integrated chat and tips.

<comment><USER5> Many Chinese children aged 8 to 12 probably don't have their own device for watching videos all day.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Not sure about the kids, lots people around my age in China ("post 95's") wish to be "influencers" on douyin

</comment><comment><USER7> Kids in USSR also wanted to be astronauts and look what happened to their country

<comment><AUTHOR> One of the worst nonsequitur I've ever read. Having dreams and ambitions that go beyond making money is a positive trait.

Edit: The USSR also achieved much more than your dismissing post implies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The larger question is why do kids want to be teachers?

<comment><USER9> Maybe teachers have some sort of important, authotity-figure type role to some children.

<comment><USER10> It's like prisoners wanting to be prison guards.

<comment><USER11> I didn't see my teachers as prison guards. Some were very inspirational.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Give them 5 years and China will be the same.</comment>


Amazon Selects New York City and Northern Virginia for New Headquarters - <AUTHOR> https://blog.aboutamazon.com/company-news/amazon-selects-new-york-city-and-northern-virginia-for-new-headquarters <comment><USER3> > Long Island City is a mixed-use community where arts and industry intersect

It's mostly empty warehouses, housing projects, and luxury condos. There's very little in terms of culture or even basic needs, like grocery stores.

> Long Island City has some of the best transit access in New York City, with > 8 subway lines, 13 bus lines, commuter rail, a bike-sharing service, and > ferries serving the area

Realistically it's the densely overcrowded 7 train, getting worse each year, with no relief in sight. Once the L shuts down in 2019 the G will be absolutely overrun.

> and LaGuardia and JFK airports are in close proximity

Getting to LGA involves taking a train to a bus, by car it's a breeze, JFK is an hour away by train.

<comment><USER4> I spend a lot of time passing through in this neighborhood, and can mostly confirm this.

In fact, about those luxury condos and housing projects… they're _very_ new, popping up within the past two years and more coming all the time. I've been wondering for years what kind of people make the sort of money to afford these places and would also _want_ to live in that area… now I wonder if this decision wasn't made long ago, and word was carefully leaked to various developers to get the housing ready.

It's not enough to store 25,000 workers, but it's a lot. Maybe I'm naive but I feel like the immediate area can contain this, with minimal spillover to Manhattan and Brooklyn. (Like, if the workers want to. The area is definitely not the kind of hipster chic or glamour chic or any chic that people come to New York for.)

<comment><USER5> I highly doubt this was leaked to developers, I think this was developers realizing that long island city was within close proximity to Manhattan and people want luxury rentals without the price of paying for one in Manhattan.

<comment><USER6> This is exactly why my partner and I live there. It's cheaper, cleaner, and generally calmer than Manhattan. Plus, we have an extraordinary view of the Manhattan skyline from a terrace we could NEVER afford in Manhattan.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Wouldn't you call two new offices that are smaller than the headquarters "satellite offices"?

It really does feel like Amazon successfully played a lot of municipalities against each other to try and extract the biggest concessions, knowing all along that it didn't make sense to try and hire 50000 people in a decade in any one location.

I know that's how the game is played, but it's still feels a little disingenuous.

<comment><USER8> > Wouldn't you call two new offices that are smaller than the headquarters > "satellite offices"?

Not quite.

Amazon has satellite offices, that employ an order of magnitude fewer employees.

At 25k/branch, the term "regional headquarters" can be considered justified.

They did game the system though. Feels like they negotiated tax benefits with 50k employees in mind, and kept the same benefits while only giving locations 25k each.

This is good for tech in the east coast. Fin-tech firms WILL HAVE TO compete against Amazon for (supposed) west coast wages, and could help build a much stronger tech industry than NYC has atm.

Cornell tech much be so happy with their choice to open office on Roosevelt island. I can see them being the biggest winners out of this whole set of events. NYU is probably also happy, having acquired NYU poly a few years ago.

<comment><USER9> > Fin-tech firms WILL HAVE TO compete against Amazon for (supposed) west coast > wages, and could help build a much stronger tech industry than NYC has atm.

Those fin-tech companies almost certainly pay more than Amazon already. IIRC amazon has a cap of 275k for base pay, which means even if you're James Gosling that's the most you're getting, the rest has to come from RSUs which amazon also has a terrible vesting structure for. Amazon is regarded as a top- tier tech company, but their pay is not on par with any of the other companies (Google, FB, Uber, etc).

More tech presence is good, but I don't think big name companies are going to be too worried about their employees leaving to get paid less and have fewer benefits.

<comment><USER8> I am not sure if I agree with you on wage distributions.

Sure, Google and FB pay more and so do top investment banks / hedge funds in math/stat/algo positions . However, those simply are not the bulk of fintech employees.

The majority of fintech SDEs at GS,Morgan,etc. are working on software engineering and maintenance work. These roles pay closer to the $100k number than Amazon's quoted $150k. At least for new hires.

<comment><USER10> Pretty much this and fintech isn't this one thing that pays well but ranges from highly paid domain experts to generalists working on maintaining legacy systems. most generalists are not usually paid that well by SV big tech standards and the work environment is generally not as great. Amazon is more than competitive enough against the bulk of software engineering roles even at top investment banks and you will see lots of ex-top-IB engineers already working in their NYC office.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Why do we give Amazon subsidies but not small businesses, who altogether provide over 50% of the jobs in America? The reason, as I understand it, is because Amazon as a single corporate entity provides far more jobs and holds more power.

Following that: Wouldn't the small businesses, due to our anti-trust regulations, actually be considered a cartel if they tried to negotiate as a group and gain the same tax advantages that Amazon has?

So, with that in mind, don't we have some very arbitrary laws? If I could buy up a few small businesses and negotiate with them as pawns, but without a common owner, it's anti-trust behavior?

Maybe I'm misunderstanding this; IANAL, but would love to hear someone's opinion. Though game theory would likely prevent their continued cooperation, it seems quite unfair for small businesses that are unable, even in theory, to collectively negotiate on the same scale as Amazon.

<comment><USER12> Also not a lawyer, but cartel behavior usually refers to price-fixing and other anti-competitive behavior. Small businesses banding together the way you described would just be lobbying and already happens frequently.

Amazon should be investigated for anti-competitive practices, and their ability to negotiate this kind of a circus is certainly an indication of that. The problem has been two-fold -

1\. The Sherman act is over 100 years old and was written to target 19th century trusts like Standard Oil and the railroads. These need to be updated to reflect new types of models of trusts and conglomeration (and accumulation of power) that have developed.

2\. Enforcement - the SEC and FTC are largely toothless and everyone knows it. If you are a company that can afford a team of lawyers, its unlikely you will be penalized in a way that actually hurts.

<comment><USER13> The SEC does not enforce the antitrust laws. Do you mean the DOJ?

If you are going to take unsubstantiated potshots at government agencies you would sound more credible if you at least picked the right agencies.

* * *

On the substantive question here, I agree that small businesses already band together to lobby the government for special treatment. It's not an antitrust violation to ask the government for things, even if you couldn't get together and do those things directly: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noerr%E2%80%93Pennington_doctr...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noerr%E2%80%93Pennington_doctrine).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> As a New Yorker, I am super disappointed that they chose Long Island City. There were contenders where this stimulus could have been a paradigm shift. Instead, it's just a drop in the bucket for a city that is already growing recklessly.

My vote was for Newark, personally. Plenty of office space; access to NJIT, Rutgers, and Princeton; and good public transit that connects directly into NYC. Bezos and co. could have done some real good, but instead they will just be contributing to New York's biggest gripes (unsustainable subways, housing shortages, and an aggregation of labor into a few metropolitan areas).

<comment><USER15> I was really hoping for Raleigh and/or Dallas. Instead, Amazon picked two places where the cost of living is worse than Seattle.

<comment><USER16> I'm from Raleigh but I"m not convinced Raleigh-area schools have the talent required and willing.

<comment><USER17> The Triangle has a number of good schools: Duke and UNC are both in the top 25 CS programs in the US. I've worked with some NCSU CS grads in the past and they've also been great.

<comment><USER16> Duke and UNC are tiny CS programs. I went to NC State, and it's definitely not in the same tier for undergrad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Newly elected Democrats in the NY state legislature might block the NYC Amazon subsidies and put the funds into student debt relief instead: [https://capitalandmain.com/will-new-york-fund-amazon- subsidi...](https://capitalandmain.com/will-new-york-fund-amazon-subsidies-or- student-debt-relief-1113)

<comment><USER19> The current situation we have is insane. It's like the height of the gilded age with no trust busting in sight, the largest corporations in the land buy out politicians and are openly taking public money.

<comment><USER20> It's worth noting that not all politicians fall for this crap. Austin's Mayor, for all his flaws, refused to give any incentives to Amazon.

<comment><USER21> A lot of mayors did that. Truth be told, even New York City's mayor did that.

Problem is that it doesn't make a difference. Lots of other mayors _will_ give the incentives. And, as in the case of NYC, sometimes the governors will come in and override the decision not to give subsidies anyway. (Although in the case of NYC it likely wouldn't have really mattered. I suspect they would have won the HQ2 subsidies or no subsidies.)

<comment><USER22> Lots of mayors will give the incentives? Fine. Let them. If you think it's a bad idea - or even a bad idea for your city - then don't give them. If someone else will make the mistake, let them make the mistake (and reap the consequences).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Tax kickbacks of $48k/job in NY and $22k/job in VA wth average salary of $150k/yr. Also $325mil in NY and $23mil in VA for just occupying the space. All well below the projected billions in direct investment and tax amounts.

Not sure whether worth it or not, but it's all around economic growth which I see as a good thing in general. We can argue about public funds and growing pains, but this problem is better than the opposite problem. If you are in the area and oppose along with the majority of your peers, say so at the polls. But I wouldn't be surprised to find that, outside of pro-tax/anti-big-corp circles, this is gleefully welcomed.

<comment><USER24> > $48k/job in NY

That is over 10 years, so is like $5k a year.

<comment><USER25> even then, assuming 15k jobs in New York is $75MM/yr, which is a lot of money.

<comment><USER21> That's nothing.

Especially for a place like New York.

Consider, in Wisconsin, we have to pay on the order of roughly USD400M to USD500M per year, for about the next ten years. And we're a state that, compared to New York, is mired in abject poverty.

And to add insult to injury, that USD400M per year is for only _HALF_ the jobs that New York is getting. And they don't pay as well.

Yeah, not a good time to be a Wisconsinite.

<comment><USER26> Wisconsin also doesn't have corporate taxes so a lot of the Foxconn benefits were structured as direct payments rather than tax breaks.

And many weren't even dependent on Foxconn employing a certain number of people, which is why now that their plans have scaled down the numbers look disastrous.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Unless I'm misreading this, it looks like Nashville got the best deal

> Amazon will receive performance-based direct incentives of up to $102 > million based on the company creating 5,000 jobs with an average wage of > over $150,000 in Nashville.

This is a pretty big deal for Nashville, and costing them only $12,000 per job is a pretty big win.

<comment><USER28> As someone who lives in Nashville and can see the future location out my office window, Nashville might be getting jobs but we don't have the infrastructure to support what we already have. The post Amazon puts out makes it sound like we have public transit (we basically don't) and the recently downvoted transit bill means we can't readdress it anytime in the near future. I don't really see anything good out of it for those of us who already live here and have no interest in picking up one of those jobs.

<comment><USER29> Your salary will likely go up even if you don't take one of those jobs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> As usual, the Onion nails it...

 _New York City Announces Subway Just For Amazon Employees Now_

[https://www.theonion.com/new-york-city-announces-subway- just...](https://www.theonion.com/new-york-city-announces-subway-just-for- amazon-employee-1830418104)

</comment><comment><USER31> Let the real estate speculation begin!!

[https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazons-move-to-long-island- cit...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazons-move-to-long-island-city-sparks- condo-frenzy-1542116117)

<comment><USER32> Grab a subway map of Queens.

The good thing about NYC is that no one needs to drive to work.

<comment><USER33> The E/M/F/R tunnels are already some of the most congested, most delayed, least pleasant segments in the entire city. As much as I welcome Amazon's move, I don't envy the poor suckers who have to ride in and out of Queens.

<comment><USER34> The "interesting" thing about that location is that it actually isn't especially especially convenient for commutes to/from places where young well- paid techies would normally choose to live.

<comment><USER35> Out of curiosity, where do you think young well-paid techies live in the city?

Because I'm a young well-paid techie, and I live off of the G line in Brooklyn, which this move would definitely affect.

<comment><USER36> Greenpoint, bushwick, wburg, bed-study, park slope, Clinton hill, LES.

<comment><USER37> Greenpoint is directly south of LIC. You can walk there in 30 minutes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Interesting to see the Virginia state ("commonwealth") "incentives". At the state level, the original VA pitch was out near Dulles (the currently state- owned CIT land). Pitches for Arlington et al. were done by the county as far as I know. Presumably once Amazon zeroed in on the Arlington area the state was willing to go along.

(Apple has supposedly been in talks with the state about the CIT land as well, just in a less public fashion than Amazon, so I assume something is still going to go in there soon, whether Apple or something else.)

</comment><comment><USER39> Can't believe how many subsidies they got, to me it's a question of fairness, why should we subsidize them, but not others? I get that they are doing the community a service by creating high paying jobs, but there certainly have been negative sides to what they've done (gentrification, poor working conditions for many employees in their warehouses).

<comment><USER40> They're doing the community a service by creating high paying jobs? The people will be shipped in from all around the world and displace the current communities. This destroys communities. This segregates poor & lower income people out. Only already rich people get to experience the benefits of this.

The subsidies and tax cuts they got are an embarrassment to our system and a wonderful look into how this country isn't working for lower classes and small local business that _actually_ build communities. Amazon doesn't need subsidies, this is just a race to the bottom.

<comment><USER41> That's partially true. Not sure where you are from, but as opposed to places like San Francisco, NYC has a functioning real estate private sector that reacts rationally to increases in demand by increasing supply. This is not to say gentrification is not a thing, but it's not like in San Francisco where there's basically a set housing stock and new people completely displace the old people. Instead new people displace some of the old residents, but they also rent or buy newly built housing. In the long run Amazon's choice is probably good for nyc. It could be very good if nyc manages to get its act together regarding subway and infrastructure.

<comment><USER42> And yet NYC still has some of the highest rent in the country. For someone making 60k or less it doesn't matter much if the rent is 2k or 3k a month, it's all totally unaffordable anyway and those people are either pushed further out from where they work, or if they're young they split the rent amongst 2-4 people.

<comment><USER41> Those are Manhattan prices. If you travel more than 10 minutes outside Manhattan the rent drops. This normally means long commutes, but with the new HQ in queens, workers could commute from the cheaper parts of queens.

<comment><USER42> Maybe six or seven years ago. Any neighborhood close to Manhattan is already dealing with the issue of high rent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> What the heck is "National Landing"? I've lived in this area for over a decade and that's the first time I've heard the name.

<comment><USER44> I'm skeptical at the choice of Crystal City. (Sorry, that's where it is, call it what you want.) I think being "urban" mattered a lot to them, and Crystal City has the most opportunity for a significant tenant to move in.

But that "opportunity" is there because it's a secondary or tertiary choice for employers. Considering that 70%+ people are commuters, a) there are more desirable locations _no matter where_ you're coming from, and b) there's no direct way to get there, other than Route 1, which is going to be a _disaster_.

No major highways or arteries, Metro goes through Arlington first, etc.

If you live in DC, you have to leave the city. If you live to the west, you'd prefer Dulles, Tysons, or Arlington. If you're to the south, it's Alexandria. To the north, Bethesda. To the west... probably Baltimore, or you have to drive all the way _through_ DC.

<comment><USER45> Agreed, Crystal City is a terrible choice if you are trying to attract talent in the DMV. Who wants to make that commute? Not sure why they didn't choose Dulles - more space, new metro infrastructure, Dulles airport access and existing AWS offices and data centers.

<comment><USER46> >Not sure why they didn't choose Dulles

Dulles is no better of a commute for most people in the DMV, _especially_ those that want to live within the DC/Arlington area.

<comment><USER45> Well, there is no good commute in the DMV for one, but Dulles/Herndon/Tysons at least has new metro stops and more highway infrastructure than to Crystal City. Plus, Google, Oracle, Microsoft, AWS, et al are all already off the Dulles toll road. If you are in tech, there is a high probability you are headed out that direction anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> I still don't understand why NYC gave up so much by way of incentives and subsidies. With things the way they are, seemingly Amazon needed NYC, way more than NYC needed amazon.

</comment><comment><USER24> If only we had a tunnel from Seacaucus to Grand Central. Thanks Chris.

</comment><comment><USER48> Both cities should pull their subsidy packages. Amazon negotiated in bad faith, under false pretenses. The conditions under which any subsidies were offered no longer apply.

<comment><USER22> Could you state _what_ the false pretenses were, and how those conditions no longer apply? All you have here is a dogmatic assertion with no supporting information. Often that is done by people who have strong beliefs but no basis for them, so if you have a basis, stating it can prevent you from getting lumped in with the "dogmatic unreality" people.

<comment><USER49> Uh, that there will only be 25,000 jobs, and not the 50,000 promised.

<comment><USER22> If the subsidies are per job, is that a problem? Pay half as much for half as many jobs - seems reasonable to me. Doesn't seem like "false pretenses" in a way that materially affects the deal.

<comment><USER49> It might be nice if the subsidies were granted "per job", but it seems as though they weren't.

Also, it's not yet public what these cities promised, but how do you "half build" new transit infrastructure and such?

<comment><USER48> Even if they are "per job", the per job price was still based on a total of 50,000 jobs.

If you go to Bob's widget factory and place an order for 50,000 widgets, you'll likely get a different per widget price than if you place an order for 25,000 widgets.

If you say at first that you want 50,000 and Bob starts making preparations for that many, then at the last minute you say "Nah, I only want 25,000", Bob is rightfully going to be pissed and you're going to pay a higher per-widget price if your order isn't cancelled altogether.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> The easiest way to think about these HQs for me:

\- Seattle - retail, logistics

\- Crystal City - <USER2>

\- New York City - Amazon services for advertising, publishing, media

I would bet Seattle sees those roles slowly pull towards their respective HQs. It's already happening with advertising and NYC as far as I can tell from their job listings.

And if in the future, for some reason, Amazon is required to break up, this would make it a little less messy.

</comment><comment><USER51> I grew up in QUEENS. Well LIC is a melting pot. The amazon workers can live in sunnyside queens or greenpoint brooklyn. I think with AMAZON coming to LIC that whole area is gonna light up. Also lets not forget Roosevelt Island is right there. You'll see new development in Roosvelt island. Buildings have been going up in LIC for the last 10 years. You have Jackson Hights. Sunnyside, greenpoint, also the boogie down bronx has places to live,. so the transit system is gonna be PACKED. the train is always late in NYC / Queens. LIRR will also see increased traffic from Jamaica to hunters point or woodside. You can get LIRR from Forrest hills or key Gardens. This will allow for new eating places to open and other small business will pop up to meet the needs of the 25k people they plan to hire. I will be looking for business opportunities my self! :-)

</comment><comment><USER52> Why didn't anyone ask the residents if they wanted a megacorporation to move into their neighborhoods? Amazon insisted on absolute secrecy moving forward and elected officials went right along with it.

Queens residents are outraged by this news. No one asked them. How is this democracy at work?

</comment><comment><USER53> That's right, Andy. Change your name now. Amazon Cuomo

</comment><comment><USER54> Is there really any good reason to hate Amazon for this? It sounds like they gave an offer, and the offer was good, so people wanted it. I like freedom. This sounds like freedom. Is it not?

</comment><comment><USER24> > Hiring at both the new headquarters will begin in 2019.

Do they have buildings leased? I presumed they were going to build. How can they start hiring already?

<comment><USER55> Part of the rumors for the Arlington location included Amazon leasing older offices for the initial group of employees as they built out space: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/amazon-in-advanced- talk...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/amazon-in-advanced-talks-about- putting-hq2-in-northern-virginia-those-close-to-process- say/2018/11/02/9be831d6-d7c0-11e8-aeb7-ddcad4a0a54e_story.html?utm_term=.aa3f196126b3)

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> Hard to escape the conclusion that this whole thing was just a way to grab tax cuts for places where Amazon already has a presence.

</comment><comment><USER49> Since each city is only receiving half the benefit they thought they were bidding on, presumably they'll each get to cut their bids in half — the subsidies, tax abatements, infrastructure spending promises, etc.? But I haven't seen any notice of this in the news coverage. [rerun]

</comment><comment><USER57> Ahhhh crap. Here goes housing prices... We were really hoping to buy something next year :(

</comment><comment><USER58> I haven't read anyone citing Google also setting up shop in NYC. This might be way off but could Amazon and Google be competing for political influence in NYC?

</comment><comment><USER59> This entire competition was an obvious sham to try to equivocate really desperate cities willing to give basically anything to have a major tech company headquarters, to the inevitable choice amazon was going to make of california or the coastal northeast, so they could extract maximum concessions.

Its disgusting this worked as well as it did, $48k/job in tax concessions from NYC and $22k/job from VA, expect to see a lot more of this in the future. Hopefully governments wake up and realize its a race to the bottom that advantages megacorps to such a point that having them is barely worth it, while at the same time hurting local businesses.

EDIT: the tax deductions are one time, not per year, i mixed that up.

<comment><USER60> What do you mean by "hurting local businesses"? Wouldn't more highly paid workers in the area be good for local businesses?

<comment><USER61> I was similarly confused by this...its not like its a Walmart superstore undurcutting the local mom-n-pop shop.

That said, perhaps the fear is "over-cutting" \-- that HQ2 slurps up top talent from local tech businesses and overbids salaries. I can totally see that happening, especially with the only-handful of truly high-tech businesses in the Northern Virginia community. This is a bad thing short term and a good thing long term.

<comment><USER62> They are quite literally the WalMart of the web. Although that sort of damage has already been done.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> Wow, the gatekeepers in /r/nashville are probably apoplectic.

</comment><comment><USER64> Who bended over the furthest for their new corporate overlords?

</comment><comment><USER65> Knew that they wouldn't pick Toronto - Trump would have blown a gasket

<comment><USER66> Toronto wasn't chosen because Toronto wasn't competitive. People that live in Toronto talk about how they're underpaid and how their tech sector pales in comparison to major US cities. Even many Waterloo CS graduates have a "US or bust" type mentality because of the labor market disparities.

Amazon would be foolish to choose a location in Canada due to a their healthcare system and immigration situation. Healthcare isn't that big a deal to a company like Amazon and regardless of the current administration, Americans have never been more supportive of immigration.

Canadians were naive to think they were competitive for an Amazon, and they're wrong if they think Amazon would have chosen them if they weren't so concerned about blowback.

Sometimes, America being welcoming to big businesses has its advantages.</comment></comment>


Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos' Rocket Company, to Launch from Florida - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/16/science/space/jeff-bezos-rocket-company-to-build-and-launch-in-florida.html?_r=0 <comment><USER2> I hear they salvaged some of the Saturn V rockets from the ocean so they could reverse engineer them. Fit then with all new technology to replace the old 1960 technology. Learn how the engines worked and improve on them.</comment>


In an ancient workshop, discovering modern ideas (2015) - <AUTHOR> http://magazine.columbia.edu/explorations/winter-2015-16/ancient-workshop-discovering-modern-ideas <comment><USER2> The 1500s are ancient now? I wonder what that makes the classical world.

For historians, the 1500s are modern times. The early modern period was traditionally "from Columbus to Napoleon", but these days is generally reckoned in round numbers, 1500 to 1800. Prior to 1500 is the Middle Ages (500-1500, overlapping with "late antiquity" from 300 to 700); after 1800s is either "modernity" or "middle modernity". It's anyone's guess whether the contemporary world can be called "late modern" or not; but the 1500s can hardly be called ancient.

</comment><comment><USER3> Fascinating...thanks for posting this...

I especially appreciated this quote:

>>"Basically, this was the birth of the modern scientific process," she says. "Inspired by what they saw in the workshops, the great natural philosophy and medical societies of Europe would, by the mid-seventeenth century, embrace laboratory experimentation as the basis for accumulating new knowledge about the physical world."<<

The Renaissance was a fascinating period in history...knowledge intentionally repressed for approximately four centuries during the Dark Ages, followed by a gradual rebirth...

I've often wondered what those of exceptional intellectual and/or creative abilities had to endure just because they were born into a time that refused to let them "bloom"...so many obstacles in their way...that must have been hard to bear...

<comment><USER4> Roger Bacon and Robert Grosseteste kind of invented the scientific method in the 1200s.... The religious wars and black death put a lot of dampers on Western Science during the high middle ages, and but science was not exactly deliberately repressed.

<comment><USER2> Indeed. Science wasn't suppressed in the Middle Ages and restored during the Renaissance; it flourished through the 1300s, then was stopped dead by the Black Death, the Great Schism, the Protestant Reformation, and the wars of religion -- roughly 1350 to 1600-1650, not 1000 to 1400.

Improvement in the human condition in Europe was stopped for longer by that series of catastrophes (and was also badly slowed down by the Renaissance, which introduced a new fashion for Plato, aristocracy, and philosophy instead of the old style of Aristotle, observation, and practical knowledge). Conditions had improved dramatically until the early 1300s; then they stagnated, sometimes even going backwards, until about the 1750s in England, a bit later on the Continent.

<comment><AUTHOR> I appreciate that you're defending the pre-Renaissance period from being called the Dark Ages (a term worth abandoning if there ever was one) but I think you're being led astray here by equating a breakdown in "the human condition" with the status of scientific knowledge.

The demographic/epidemiological/economic/political crises of the 17th century, after all, overlapped with the period that's traditional considered the high point of the Scientific Revolution - heck, Newton even began working on his optics and calculus during an outbreak of the Plague! - so it's not clear to me that two actually have much to do with one another. Granted, a certain baseline for material conditions and political stability needs to exist for scientific work to take place, but beyond that I don't buy the argument that something like, say, wars of religion or periods of plague necessarily leads to intellectual stagnation. From the 17th century crisis to WWII, I'd actually say that it's arguably the opposite.

I'm also struck by the fact that the period where you consider science to have "stopped dead" overlaps with Copernicus, Bacon, and Galileo! All this isn't intended to be argumentative at all, I just find debating this stuff to be interesting, and I'm an early modern historian so I couldn't resist being pedantic about it.

<comment><USER4> Kenneth Clark thinks the 12th-13th century was special in some mysterious way; pointing out that all kinds of interesting progress happened then. There was certainly a great deal of learning which occurred then; in addition to Bacon and Grosseteste; Witelo, Albertus Magnus, Petrus Peregrinus, Leonardo Fibonacci, Abelard. In the spiritual realm, Francis of Assisi; an important thinker even to the non-religious.

Clark points out that, oddly, a lot of interesting and nice things happened in other civilizations at around the same time. I can't list any at present, as my world history isn't as good as Clark's, but it's in his documentary. I dunno, maybe the weather was particularly conducive to elevated thinking.

The conventional wisdom is that science was hamstrung by the black death, since something like half the population of Europe died off. While Newton escaped a plague at Cambridge during his miraculous year, that's not the same level of disaster as half the population going away. Anyway, history nerding is fun.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > "Basically, this was the birth of the modern scientific process"...

Why is this stuff never backed up with arguments/evidence? Alhazen was around many centuries before (in Cairo). [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alhazen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alhazen)

<comment><USER6> "In Europe" or "In the Western world" could well be implied.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, especially with the key term "modern" in there - seems pretty clearly to be referring to the Scientific Revolution which really was largely a 16th/17th/18th century Western thing.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Missing GitHub Feature, now a chrome extension - <AUTHOR> https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/github-similar-repositori/ilohmipmgoellpajalkccofkgdheomfh

<comment><USER2> What factor(s) are used in determining what's related? Is age of last update factored in if a repo is abandoned?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's open to personal interpretation. There are certainly a number of varied factors that could be used, but to start out I figure letting the community up/down vote will determine a prevailing consensus on what makes a repo "similar."

As for me, my primary factor is: mutually exclusive usage. If I need to scrape some page and want to find a jQuery like parser for node I'll either use JSDom or Cheerio, but not both.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Pre-ICO for MMORPG game that lets players mine cryptocurrency - <AUTHOR> http://lordmancer2.io/ <comment><USER2> ... and were featured on Kotaku [http://kotaku.com/upcoming-mmos- cryptocurrency-marketplace-w...](http://kotaku.com/upcoming-mmos- cryptocurrency-marketplace-was-inspired-b-1797874103)

</comment><comment><USER2> It's no coincidence they've got decent ICO score [https://coins.best/ico- reviews/lordmancer-ii/](https://coins.best/ico-reviews/lordmancer-ii/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Looks promising!</comment>


Ask HN : Is the "auto-starting a sound" new trend annoying? - <AUTHOR>

I was browsing through the comments of http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=894251 and I opened 4 links and 2 of them automatically started a song or a video with sound.
2 or 3 years ago, this technique was used only by scams or cheap websites and now, perfectly legit sites are doing it.
Isn't it annoying? Why did it come back? <comment><USER2> It annoys me, too.

However, here is one nice solution (that is nice for a lot of other reasons): <http://rentzsch.github.com/clicktoflash/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks a lot! That will save me a lot of frustrations...</comment></comment>


FlightCaster merges its statistical-learning code into Incanter - <AUTHOR> http://incanter-blog.org/2009/12/03/flightcaster/ <comment><USER2> Flightcaster does some fantastic, innovative stuff in the statistical, distributed computing, and Clojure worlds.

<comment><USER3> Could you give some specifics?

<comment><USER4> Article about them in general: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=782960>

Their stack (kinda): _S3 - > EC2 -> Cloudera -> HDFS -> Hadoop -> Cascading -> Clojure._

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is really cool. I have been learning some stats, data mining, and machine learning stuff and I'm compelled by Incanter. I can see why a lisp is a good choice for statisical computing, with lists of data and easy composition of calculations.

Thanks to both the Incanter and FlightCaster devs for the generosity.

<comment><USER6> Using lisp as language for statistics has it's precursors like xlisp-stat. In a historical perspective, S (or similar functional languages) have taken the crown though.

<comment><USER7> Somewhere in the archives of comp.lang.lisp there is a post by Ross Ihaka where he mentions that they wanted to use scheme or another lisp-like language for R, but decided to go with something more familiar to most potential users. If I remember right, he said if they could do it all over again, they _would_ use lisp.

There's also this, which I believe partly motivated Incanter's creation: [http://books.google.com/books?id=8Cf16JkKz30C&pg=PA21#v=...](http://books.google.com/books?id=8Cf16JkKz30C&pg=PA21#v=onepage&q=&f=false)

<comment><USER6> IMHO the popularity of R is grounded on its compatibility with S/S-Plus. if they hadn't used S as language, they would have never reached the position where they are now and R wouldn't be increasingly adapted as standard statistics package---competing with and/or replacing SPSS/PASW, SAS, stata etc.

On the incanter homepage there is a link to <http://www.jstatsoft.org/v13> which includes a few interesting articles.

Anyway, I find the integration with java interesting. That's a strong argument in favour of a solution like incanter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> More information on the code added: [http://incanter- blog.org/2009/12/03/flightcaster/#comment-13...](http://incanter- blog.org/2009/12/03/flightcaster/#comment-132)

</comment><comment><USER9> I can have a REPL with easy dynamic access to S3 for compute power? Nice.</comment>


Facebook Mirror | Index of / - <AUTHOR> http://mirror.facebook.com/ <comment><USER2> From the bottom of <http://developers.facebook.com/opensource.php>

Facebook Mirror - A public mirror for projects such as Apache, Linux, Mozilla, GNU, MySQL, and much more...

</comment><comment><USER3> How is that new, newsworthy or even relevant?

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't know. I stumbled on it today, and thought maybe someone would be able to contextualize it for me?

<comment><USER4> My guess:

They rely on open source, and they figured they'd be a good citizen and mirror some of the software projects that they rely on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> So what is facebook.exe? Anyone willing to run it? :)

<comment><USER6> Could it be related to this: <http://facebookmessenger.ws.tc/></comment></comment>