Reinforcement Learning: An Introduction (2018) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://incompleteideas.net/book/RLbook2018.pdf <comment><USER2> If you ever feel like trying out the algorithms contained in the book without going to the trouble of reimplementing everything from scratch feel free to come over to [https://github.com/Svalorzen/AI- Toolbox](https://github.com/Svalorzen/AI-Toolbox). This is a library I have maintained during the past 5 years and implements quite a lot of RL algorithms, and can be used with both C++ and Python. It's very focused on being understandable and having a clear documentation, so I'd love to help you out starting up :)

<comment><USER3> Cool! I'd also like to plug my own RL-related repositories: [https://github.com/rldotai/rl-algorithms](https://github.com/rldotai/rl- algorithms) and [https://github.com/rldotai/mdpy](https://github.com/rldotai/mdpy) .

The first one implements some of the more "exotic" temporal difference learning algorithms (Gradient, Emphatic, Direct Variance) with links to the associated papers. It's in Python and heavily documented.

The second one (mdpy) has code for analyzing MDPs (with a particular focus on RL), so you can look at what the solutions to the algorithms might be under linear function approximation. I wrote it when I was trying to get a feel for what the math _meant_ and continue to find it helpful, particularly when I'm dubious about the results of some calculation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> With all its hype in RL, I am yet to see significant real life problems solved with it. I am afraid with all the funding going into it, and nothing to show for except being able to play complex games, this might contribute to the mistrust in proper utilization of research funds. Also the reproducibility problem in RL is many times worse than in ML.

<comment><USER5> I agree with you that it's early days for RL. I think some companies are using it in their advertising platforms, but it's not really my field.

That said, I strongly disagree about what constitutes the proper utilization of research funds. IMO, society should invest in basic research without the expectation of solutions to significant real-world problems.

Still, I'd be really surprised if I don't see advances from the field of reinforcement learning used in a ton of applications during my lifetime.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The authors , Barto and Sutton take such a complicated subject and explain it in such simple prose.

I don't think think I've read any other work that does this as well.

Also RL is only going to grow in use and popularity. Highly recommend it for mL practitioners.

<comment><USER7> I hope it grows in popularity if only because its an interesting take on learning. I did a course on RL in 2007 and our textbook was the 1st edition of this book - back then, it was perceived to be a very niche area and a lot of ML practitioners (there weren't many of those either :) ) had only just about heard of RL.

I am happy that it's popular today.

<comment><USER8> > I am happy that it's popular today.

For doing what?

<comment><USER9> It's definitely finding a niche in robotic control. My lab just released a paper about running a policy trained in simulation in the real world on a bipedal robot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> My understanding is RL is a reasonable attack for situations where the environment is either (1) mathematically uncharacterized (2) insufficiently characterized (3) characterized, but resulting model is too complex to use, and therefore RL simultaneously explores the environment in simple ways and takes actions to maximize some objective function.

However, there are many environments (chemical/power plants, machines, etc.) where there are good mathematical/empirical data-based models, where model- based optimal control works extremely well in practice (much better than RL).

I'm wondering why the ML community has elected to skip over this latter class of problems with large swaths of proven applications, and instead have gone directly to RL, which is a really hard problem? Is it to publish more papers? Or because self-driving cars?*

(* optimal control tends to not work too well in highly uncertain, non- characterized, changing environments -- self-driving cars are an example of one such environment, where even the sensing problem is highly complicated, much less control)

<comment><USER2> RL is actually quite an umbrella term for a lot of things. There's policy gradient methods, which improve directly on the policy to select better actions, there's value based methods which try to approximate the value function of the problem, and get a policy from that, and there's model based methods which try to learn a model and do some sort of planning/processing in order to get the policy.

Using model based methods can allow you to do some pretty fancy stuff while massively reducing the number of data samples you need, but on the other side there's a trade off. Using the model usually tends to require lots of not- very-parallelizable computations, and can be more costly computationally. Very large problems can get out of hand pretty quickly, and there's still a lot of work to do before there is something which can be applied in general quickly and efficiently.

<comment><USER10> Thanks for the insight on RL. That's good context for me.

I would say though that from my experience, computational cost is rarely the issue with model-based control, because there are various attacks ranging from model simplification (surrogate models, piecewise-affine multi-models i.e. switching between many simpler local models, etc) to precomputing the optimal control law [1] to embedding the model in silicon. Also, some optimal models/control laws can actually parallelized fairly easily (MLD models are expressed mixed-integer programs which can be solved in performant ways using parallel algorithms, with some provisos). This is a well-trodden space with a tremendous amount of industry-driven research behind it.

Most of these methods come under the Model Predictive Control (MPC) umbrella which has been studied extensively over 3 decades [2]. The paradigm is extremely simple: (1) given a model of how output y responds to input u, predict over the next n time periods the values of u's needed to optimize an objective function. (2) Implement ONLY the first u. (3) Read the sensor value for y (actual y in real world). (4) Update your model with the difference between actual y and predicted y, move the prediction window forward, and repeat (feedback). When this is applied recursively, you obtain approximately optimal control on real-life systems even in the presence of model-reality mismatch, noise and bounded uncertainty.

If you think about it, this is the paradigm behind many planning strategies -- forecast, take a small action, get feedback, try again. The difference though is that MPC is a strategy with a substantial amount of mathematical theory (including stability analysis, reachability, controllability, etc.), software, and industrial practice behind it.

[1] Explicit MPC [http://divf.eng.cam.ac.uk/cfes/pub/Main/Presentations/Morari...](http://divf.eng.cam.ac.uk/cfes/pub/Main/Presentations/Morari.pdf)

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

<comment><USER11> (disclaimer: I am not a RL researcher) I think grandparent was using 'model' to refer to model-based or 'value-based' reinforcement learning algorithms (as distinct from 'model-free' methods (ex: 'policy-based' methods)). I don't think they were directly referring to the same 'model' as is meant by MPC.

In RL, the goal is to try to find a function that produces actions that optimize the expected reward of some reward function. Model-based RL methods typically try to extract a function for 'representing' the environment and employ techniques to optimize action selection over that 'representation' (replace the word 'representation' with the word 'model'). Model-free RL methods instead try to directly learn to predict which actions to take without extracting a representation. A good paper describing deep q-learning -- a commonly cited model-free method that was one of the earliest to employ deep- learning for a reinforcement learning task [1].

I think it's worth clarifying -- RL algorithms as a whole are more akin to search than to control algorithms. RL algorithms can be used to solve some control problems -- but that is not all they are used for unless you take an extremely broad view about what constitutes a 'control problem' ... I don't think it would be common to model playing 'go' as a control problem for example -- nor would I consider learning how to play all atari games ever created given only image frames and the current score and no other pre- supplied knowledge to be a control problem ...?

(I'm talking way passed my familiarity now) -- That said, optimal control theory intersects with RL quite a bit in the foundations -- Q-Learning techniques (a foundational family of methods in RL) have proofs that show under what conditions they will converge on the optimal policy -- I believe this mathematics to be quite similar to the mathematics used in optimal control theory...

[1] Deep Q-Networks [https://storage.googleapis.com/deepmind- media/dqn/DQNNatureP...](https://storage.googleapis.com/deepmind- media/dqn/DQNNaturePaper.pdf)

<comment><USER10> Thanks for sharing some really interesting thoughts. Just to add on to your comment...

The goal of optimal control is broadly similar to RL in that it aims to optimize some expected reward function by optimizing action selection for implementation in the environment.

The difference is the optimal control does not seek to learn either a representation or a policy in real-time -- it assumes both are known a priori.

Both can be thought of as containing hidden Markov models, though in optimal control the transition functions are assumed to be known whereas in RL they are unknown.

Another difference is that in control theory, we assume there is always a model -- though some models are implicit. You see, control algorithms either assume that the environment is explicitly characterized (model-based, like MPC), or that the controller contains an implicit model of the environment (internal model control principle, i.e. we adjust tuning parameters in PID control... there's no explicit model, but a correctly tuned controller behaves like a model-inverse/mirror of reality). In either of these cases, either the implicit or explicit model are arrived at before hand -- once deployed, no learning or continual updating of the controller structure is done.

In contrast, RL has an exploration (i.e. learning) component that is missing from most control algorithms [1], and actively trades-off exploration vs exploitation. In that sense, RL encompasses a larger class of problems than just control theory, whereas control theory is specialized towards the exploitation part of the exploration vs exploitation spectrum.

[1] Though there are some learning controllers like ILCs (iterative learning control) and adaptive controllers which continually adapt to the environment. They have a weakness (perhaps RL suffers from the same) in that if a transient anomalous event comes through, they learn it and it messes up their subsequent behavior...

<comment><USER11> I'm not sure how comparable adaptive control theory notions are to "reinforcement learning". Adaptive obviously isn't a perfectly defined word — but your usage makes me think you might be pondering applying RL to non- stationary environments which I'm not sure is something RL would currently be necessarily likely to perform well for - many reinforcement learning techniques _do_ require (or at least perform much better) when the environment is approximately stationary — of course it can be stochastic but the distributions should be mostly fixed or else convergence challenges are likely to be exacerbated.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Over 100K Windows computers may be infected by advanced NSA backdoor - happy-go-lucky https://arstechnica.com/security/2017/04/10000-windows-computers-may-be-infected-by-advanced-nsa-backdoor/ <comment><AUTHOR> Just 1 week ago [0], an HN article said that "Shadow Brokers exploits are patched or inactive on supported Windows platforms." In other words, no computers should be infected because Microsoft already dealt with the problem. However, >10,000 Windows computers are currently infected according to the linked article [1].

Further, take a look at the comments on that HN thread [0]. A lot of green accounts telling us that everything is just fine.

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14119656](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14119656)

[1] [https://arstechnica.com/security/2017/04/10000-windows- compu...](https://arstechnica.com/security/2017/04/10000-windows-computers- may-be-infected-by-advanced-nsa-backdoor/)

<comment><USER2> > In other words, no computers should be infected because Microsoft already > dealt with the problem.

I don't know if this conclusion is entirely accurate, I believe a more correct conclusion would be that "no computers that are patched and supported should be at risk of infection from these specific exploits because Microsoft already dealt with the problem."

I'd assume most of these infected computers are unpatched, unless someone can replicate the malware on an up to date instance of Windows 7+.

This is probably also why Microsoft have gotten so aggressive with patching and updating for better or for worse. (along with the cost savings internally that come with supporting evergreen software)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> "Greater than"?

Maybe "More than"?

The > character is not allowed in titles on HN?</comment>


Monster.com Founder Starts Social Networking Site for the Dead - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/techbiz/startups/news/2008/05/tributes

<comment><USER2> Asmallworld.com may be an example of a very exclusive social network, but this is getting ridiculous, you are telling me I have to actually die before I can join this site?</comment>


Show HN: My Site Up/Down Checker - Checking Globally - <AUTHOR> http://wheresitup.com <comment><USER2> Very nice. Simple, clean design and does what it says on the tin.

I am now also aware that there seems to have been a transient error between Hyderabad and my Linode. It's back up now though.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Our goal wasn't simply to say "Your site is broke", but to help inform you of global issues that could be affecting that answer (especially in todays world with AnyCast-DNS, CDNs, and global cloud hosting). And to further educate the site owner as to where the problem may lie.

</comment><comment> josh-skidmore This is awesome! Is the plan to keep it as a free tool?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi Josh,

Thanks for the kind words!

Our current plans are to keep this tool free, and monetize the service through our api (<http://api.wheresitup.com/>) for sites requiring around the clock monitoring.

paul

<comment> josh-skidmore Paul,

That great to hear!

I'm noticing some odd HTTP status codes (like random 404s and 500s). One other interesting idea might be to show the server HTTP header in the UI?

Thanks again, -Josh</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Any startups in need of awesome support? - <AUTHOR>

Hi HN,
TL; DR - Can anyone suggest any startups that are hiring for apps support roles?
Or even not openly hiring but are growing so fast they might be receptive.
I'm genuinely looking for a problem solving, people-facing/supporting role with an interesting startup.
I'm tired of supporting 50+ legacy applications with no room for growth, I want to focus on a single cutting edge product & know it inside out, as part of a fresh team.
Remote, UK or relocation is fine, I'm mostly just interested in providing amazing support.
Info & background - CS grad, female, UK, 5 years in high demand support environments, love of stats, data & improving process efficiency. HTML/CSS, Python, some PHP & MySQL & a little RoR.
Feel like I have covered many technologies on the surface level, happy to master a subset & improve full stack knowledge.
Any suggestions would be great.
Thanks! <comment><USER2> We might need some of that, email eric at getfwd.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Excellent. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I know 37signals is looking for one. What better place to work at?

<comment><AUTHOR> GMT timezone too! Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Love to have you for this role, my email is firstname.lastname@example.com</comment>


How a Startup Launch Was Ruined By Careless Blogger - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/08/24/the-lyft-launch-that-coulda-been/

<comment><USER3> Is it really that important for sites like this to "be the first" or at least "at the same time" of other press releases? It was 12 hours, most of your readers probably didn't read about it yet, why not just post about it? I wouldn't have noticed you were 12 hours behind some other site. I wouldn't have cared if I did.

Is it just for their pride that they won't do it, so as not to look like a half-assed journalist in front of their peers, or is there a real concern here vis-a-vis the audience? I'm trying to think how "posting late" as opposed to not posting at all could in any way bring negative value to the audience, and I just can't come up with anything.

Feel free to enlighten me, but to my unexperienced mind this smells like ego- tripping.

> What can I say? Reporters are a prideful bunch. No one ever wants to follow > someone else's story.

So yeah, it is pretty much just ego-tripping. Disgusting how he admits he broke embargoes himself, that he recognizes it's just pride, how apologetic he is about it, and then still doesn't publish the story.

<comment><USER4> You're right: it's just egos

<comment><USER5> Is it just egos, or is there also an impact on SERP rankings and referral traffic?

Assuming, for discussion, that it still needed further editing rather than being ready to go.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _But you really only get one chance to launch to the world, and it's a shame that it all got ruined by one careless little post._

Yeah, that's not the moral of this story at all. I think it's time for some of these "journalists" to do some serious soul-searching and introspection.

Hint: If it's actually news, you don't decline covering it just because you get scooped. Evidence: Did only the first media outlet to cover the invasion of Iraq, report on the invasion of Iraq? Substitute a nearly infinite number of other news stories for "the invasion of Iraq" for more evidence.

This is just a bunch of amateurs playing at being journalists and somehow commingling a pissing contest and a "my dick is bigger than yours" thing with what is, nominally, their job.

</comment><comment><USER7> Am I the only one who reads this and thinks that it sounds like a merely pointless ritual of "Why, no, I couldn't possibly do that, the gods would be displeased" that ruined some poor startup's day? If you have a perfectly good story, why not just run it and to hell with that blogger?

<comment><USER8> On the theory that people's actions are more reliable indicators as to their internal state than their words, it appears that he, and many journalists, successfully execute commitment strategies in the service of maintaining their power and privilege.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Oh look another TechCrunch article about TechCrunch and how hard it is to be TechCrunch and by the way, some company.

</comment><comment> jack-r-abbit > _No one ever wants to follow someone else's story._

Uh... then why do we see post after post droning on about the same BS days after the first one went up? It kind of sounds like he helped ruin the launch by refusing to be second (or fifth) to write about it. This guy kind of sounds like a twat.

</comment><comment><USER10> So the author didn't want to post the original article on Lyft just because someone else beat them to it?

Oh, someone launched a competing product before me, let me just scrap my project even though it's already done and ready to launch.

No one really cares that you weren't the first person to cover the startup. If it was good content, people will read it.

</comment><comment><USER11> A good way to cover Lyft without actually covering them. Not as good an an unborked embargo, though, because there are probably few people who might be interested in them that will get to the middle of the article and see the name.

On the other hand, if you are expecting a big press dump to make or break your company, you are in trouble to start with.

</comment><comment><USER12> One of many reasons I hate reading TechCrunch. This is one of the most asinine, pity me, articles I've ever read: the story isn't about anything but why he's hurt, and must maintain his status at the top of the totem. To be honest, yes, I now can't dissociate this pitiful shilling from Lyft. He has done them a major disservice.

</comment><comment><USER13> This is like... a sarcastic blow from the inside of tech journalism directed back at itself... right? I can't even believe so much was written on ridiculous self-serving inside baseball if the author actually believes his sentiment from the last paragraph - that people should really get to hear about this project and the amazing team behind it.

"Nah, instead people will just get to hear me whine about my own insecurity instead."

"No one ever wants to follow someone else's story" because these are just glorified press releases. If they believed in their own writing and ability to share something unique about their subject, they'd still release their version of the story.

Instead, we get this LiveJournal quality BS about other writers not playing by the rules, which justifies the author's own shitty behavior.

</comment><comment><USER14> This article is so strange. What could have been a great place for a piece about the service is now a whiny rant about getting beat to the punch by an embargo breach, a leak; something that we deal with so often these days that there's enough evidence of graceful ways to handle it that this post shouldn't have had to have been made.

Opposite to what others are saying, this doesn't highlight Lyft to me. It highlights that if this is what I can come to expect from TechCrunch writers, then I don't care to visit it or "launch" through them. I would be pretty livid if a blogger decided to use my launch to get on his high horse about how he was too busy at other events to notice the breach [1].

Regardless of his evening plans, the other article would have come out. Regardless of his evening plans, the other article would have said _the exact same things_ as his did. So what does that boil down to, that being a TechCrunch writer means you've got more of a right to that information than anyone else? Does that mean TechCrunch merely cares about being the blog equivalent of _FIRST!_ rather than truly informative?

It's okay though, you got to slap an Exclusive on that linkbait title.

[1] Question: When I wrote for a tech/gaming blog, it was mandatory that we constantly made sure we looked at what other stories people had on the docket so that we didn't overlap them and so that if we found out any new information, we would alert them to it so they could add it before it was published. If the staff at TC loved this company so much and were so stoked to write on it, how did it take 12 hours on a 24 news cycle for someone to become aware of this breach? Could understand how that might happen on a smaller site, but surely a company like TC, that apparently needs these firsts to be relevant, should keep pretty constant tabs on the industry.

</comment><comment><USER15> The implication of this article is that being covered by Techcrunch is somehow vital to the launch of a startup. It isn't; that's the bullshit Techcrunch wants everyone to believe.

I too like Zimride, but I'm flagging this article because it's linkbait.

<comment><USER16> It's used to kinda be that way, but you're right that they're just crudely attempting to rest on their laurels.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Seems awful that the author seems to really want to support a project he likes, a team he likes and something he feels is worthwhile, but won't because someone else scooped him .5 a day early. Honestly, are people really glued to their RSS feeds taking notice of which publication gets a story out first? I didn't read the other story, I dont even know what site posted it. Swallow the pride and help a company out.

</comment><comment><USER18> After reading the article and the linked comments to it (on TC, not here) this seems like it is just some sort of public grade school level grudge-spat between GigaOM and Ryan Lawler.

Why are the press/bloggers who cover startups such big fucking whiny-bitch babies all the time? Are there any hidden sites/writers in this area that I'm missing? Because it seems virtually universal to me.

<comment><USER19> _Why are the press/bloggers who cover startups such big fucking whiny-bitch babies all the time?_

Because clickers reward that behavior with attention. Histrionic personality disorder (real or affected) is practically a qualification for 'building your brand' and sustaining hit-bringing emotional rants and ensuing feuds.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> TechCrunch is kind of full of themselves, aren't they? If a startup doesn't succeed because of a 12 hour delay, it was probably never going to succeed anyway.

Not to mention, I highly doubt whether most readers give two flips about when a story is published or who published it first. If I read an article about a start-up that looks really cool somewhere, and I see another article about it somewhere else -- heck, I'll read that one too.

</comment><comment><USER21> i miss the days when a reporter's job was to report.

</comment><comment><USER22> Is this the "embargo" breaker? [http://gigaom.com/2012/08/23/car-sharing- service-lyft-goes-p...](http://gigaom.com/2012/08/23/car-sharing-service-lyft- goes-public-adds-android-app/)

But in any case, this is not Watergate. I don't get why it's such a big deal to be the first to report on yet another startup product launch.

<comment><USER16> It's only a big deal to TechCrunch "writers."

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> As someone who spends a lot of time writing, I want to grab this writer by the lapels and shout at him. The entire article amounts to a confession that _his authorship adds no value!_ If his unique voice, his writing skill, his experience, all the things that go into his authorship, are less important than the word Exclusive in the headline or the temporal positioning of the article, then he's a shitty writer. A press release is a commodity, its marginal value is very low. A good writer adds something to an account of facts that you cannot get elsewhere, and that's what makes their authorship valuable. For examples, see Seth Godin, who is absolutely stellar on this topic. This TechCrunch guy has revealed that he's just a stenographer, just a copyist. I have no sympathy for him. He needs to become a better writer - <USER2> that involves hard work, which he seems curiously averse to.

</comment><comment><USER24> "But I'll be damned if I'm gonna follow someone's story 12 hours after the fact."

Please get over yourself.

</comment><comment><USER19> What a window into the dark, hypocritical heart of corrupt scoop-for-warm- coverage journalism.

We have "Death to the Embargo" TechCrunch lamenting that someone else's 'careless' writing ruined their chance to spend a few leisurely days stewing on the details (and working off hangovers), but still have their share of an embargo-synchronized launch.

We have the corrosive quid-pro-quo of "we'll now only report if you can give us an extra new manufactured hook", as if "We all love the service, love what these guys are doing" wasn't enough, and the writer has no unique perspective to offer on a still spanking-new service.

We have the launch of a "really cool" startup that, simply because of a little other coverage, no longer rates for any straight-up coverage -- but is still great fodder for a meta, naval-gazing pride-stroking inside-journalism lament.

We have the hyperbolic assessment that the launch was 'ruined' when in fact, for the startup the "big problem it faces right now is that it just can't keep up with demand". Will anyone remember this TC-vs-GigaOm pissing-match sideshow by next Tuesday, when the launch news was 'officially' supposed to hit, and when traditional media sources outside the TC bubble pick up the story?

</comment><comment><USER25> Sounds to me like the tech reporting industry is in serious need of disruption.

<comment><USER5> Probably, but doing so is a bit thorny.

A major contributor to the problem is that the primary revenue model tends to be advertising. Ergo, behavior tends to drift towards whatever gets the most hits.

Say you decide to attack this by running a subscription-only model. This has been done, sometimes quite successfully. But from the perspective of the startups which are trying to generate publicity, a subscription model means fewer eyeballs.

What would get more eyeballs? Well, you could offer the content for free, then make revenue via advertising - and we're back to the current state of things.

Any ideas?

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Anyone else remember Arrington saying he'd break every embargo? <http://techcrunch.com/2008/12/17/death-to-the-embargo/> Ironic.</comment>


Will 2013 be the year Facebook becomes MySpace? - <AUTHOR> http://dendory.net/?b=51312adf

<comment><USER3> It seems to me that Facebook has always been stuck with a damned lot: to make their product profitable, they have make their product worse. This is exactly the problem with "social" games. These games are lousy exactly because the lousy features make them money. With the direction that Facebook is going, it seems to be a service where users volunteer to receive spam. I do not think any company in this position is setup for long-term success.

On a philosophical note, I have always felt that Facebook is just a slot machine company. They make a fancy box that takes advantage of the weaknesses of the human brain (obsession with novelty, gossip, and visual stimulus) to keep users doing an activity for much longer than required to get the benefit of that activity. I could be radical and say that I think Facebook delivers no value to its customers and that most people end up actively regretting the time they spend on Facebook (I think it is uncontroversial to say that no one goes to bed wishing he had spent more of his day on Facebook), however there is always someone with a story about reuniting with a long-lost elementary school friend due to Facebook. Nonetheless, even if this value does exist, in no way does it justify the amount of time most Facebook users spend on the site nor does it describe the majority of user activity. This is not to say that Facebook is doomed any more than Las Vegas is doomed, but maybe people will wise up and be more careful about how they spend their time...

A bit of anecdote: I have noticed people on reddit commenting that they now use reddit more than Facebook as all the good content on Facebook is just copied from reddit. If reddit had some kind of social interface, it might move aggressively into this market.

<comment><USER4> Isn't that the same phenomenon as television? It's still going strong. (Increasingly coupled with a realtime twitter stream)

<comment><USER5> I think so. In the natural arc of a new medium, social media is now at the point that television hit thirty years ago, when the "big three" networks started losing control to a host of new cable channels.

TV is obviously still around, but it's much more of a bazaar now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> 1) If you read in a literal manner the reports companies file with the SEC, _you'd think each and every one of them is going to fail_. Know that when companies list all the "threats" they "believe" they face in SEC reports, you have to be aware that it's basically legal-ass-covering, and doesn't really actually reflect internal sentiment. They basically include those so that if they get sued by shareholders they can point to those reports as legal evidence that they informed them of all the risks. Anyone who has read multiple SEC reports will know that this is pretty mundane stuff.

2) The OP's right about the coolness. Facebook is not seen as cool among teens anymore. _It's seen as necessary_. You are seen as _an unusual person_ if you don't have a Facebook. The same applies to having a cellphone - _it's assumed you have one_ , and it's a surprise if you don't (disclosure: I'm going off personal experience from high school).

But you're right. It's not seen as cool anymore. I think this is a great thing: Coolness brings you users. Necessity bring you the money.

It goes without saying that Blake Ross was being sarcastic about his reason for leaving.

</comment><comment><USER7> Don't agree 100%, but the quality of FB overall as a product has definitely degraded as of late as they've been pushing Gifts, Commerce, and other revenue streams onto users very strongly.

I've noticed several annoying redesigns / changes that hide convenient functionality in order to make the user click through "No, I don't want to give a gift"... Very annoying, definitely makes me less pleased and less engaged with the site.

<comment><USER8> As obnoxious as those gift suggestions can be for some people I'd never think of sending a gift, I've found the actual experience of sending a gift on Facebook to be great. You can send something across the country the day of someone's birthday (as opposed to sending something with a belated birthday card), because a lot of them give the receiver an option between a couple of gifts (say a bottle of red, white or rose wine).

<comment><USER7> I'm not saying I don't like the Facebook gift product. I tried it out a few times, and you're right - they nailed it. The virtual card and slow reveal as the user clicks through (then it shows up unwrapped on the wall, etc) is awesome and a great end-to-end addition to the site.

What I really hate is that because this great new feature makes money, as opposed to the previous goal of driving growth, engagement, what have you, it is pushed first and foremost and hides many more useful features behind additional clicks to first say "No, I don't want to buy a gift". For example, the one-click write-on-everyone-whos-birthday-it-is-in-one-dialogue feature was unbelievably useful. Now you have to click twice for each person to write on their wall (once on the thing that says "Buy a gift", then once on "Write on their timeline").

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > "Then we have the recent departure of Blake Ross, the company's Director of > Products. In his now removed goodbye letter he mentioned that he did an > informal survey and found that teenagers would actually answer 'no' to the > question of whether they still viewed Facebook as 'cool', and this > influenced his decision to leave the company."

Blake Ross was being sarcastic.

<comment><USER10> I agree that he was being sarcastic about whether this was a realistic reason for him leaving. But I still think it's telling that he made the joke - <USER2> seems to me to indicate that there's some perception, internally, that teenagers no longer view them as cool.

For example, if I were to leave Google, and had the same sense of humor as Blake Ross, I might say something like "I'm leaving Google because my mom and her friends don't use Google+. But seriously..." I wouldn't actually leave Google for that reason, but it doesn't make it an untrue statement.

<comment><USER11> its more likely he was mocking doomsayer articles like this one

<comment><USER12> Mockery only functions one way. If a customer mocks a company representative, it's an accusation. If a company representative mocks a customer, it's an acknowledgement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> As usual, the title is a little bit sensationalist. According to the company, Facebook is curently being used _actively_ by 1 billion users. For Facebook to go the MySpace way (let alone in single year), something incredibly extraordinary would have to happen, akin of Google as a search engine becoming irrelevant. I'm not saying it's impossible, just that it's a bit naive to suggest such thing because teenagers engage less with the site these days.

<comment><USER14> I notice my teenage sister using Facebook as something like an appliance: like email or SMS...it's just a little tool. When I was in highschool, it was a platform; a destination.

With un-monitized mobile apps and notifications on every device, it's just a communication tool nowadays. Instagram and Pinterest are what I notice teens using the same way I used Facebook in highschool.

So my predicion: it either becomes like Google and Email...or it dies. But nothing can bring back its coolness factor.

<comment><USER15> Am I the only one who finds that email other than beeing much more appropriate to send .. emails is also way more romantic?

<comment><USER12> I actually prefer handwritten letters, if I'm being romantic.

<comment><USER15> comparison was between facebook messages and email.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Facebook is the World of Warcraft of social networks.

\- Previous competitors were big, but only about 10% of what they've become.

\- They struck a nerve somewhere and didn't fill just a niche, they fulfilled what everyone wanted at the same time.

\- Made changes to satisfy the masses.

\- Made changes to satisfy the bottom line.

\- They will (or already have) reach a saturation point where they are losing people at the same clip as they are gaining them.

\- They will very, very slowly degrade, being eaten by many competitors but probably not just one.

\- Reach a lower equilibrium, nowhere near their peak, where they can continue for a very long and profitable future.

The last one is how WoW is doing right now. I don't know if Facebook has a 'very profitable' future for how big they are, although I do think they will be a portion of their current selves and sustain that for a very long time.

As a side note, I think the reason people are so pessimistic about Facebook's future (and has been discussed on HN before) is that if it was completely abandoned tomorrow, all of it's content is irrelevant. It's not really a blogging platform, it's not really an image archive, all that is there is connections - and even those might not be all that significant.

EDIT: formatting.

</comment><comment><USER8> Nope. Here's a difference: My parents never signed up for MySpace. It takes a lot of momentum to stop a beast as big as Facebook. MySpace was never even close.

<comment><USER17> While true, is this just the first example of a social site that has gotten big enough to attract your parents? Or is this the first site your parents will, for lack of a better term, abandon just like others did with myspace?

<comment><USER8> I think it's the case that Facebook has just gotten that big. Also, it doesn't have terrible custom backgrounds like MySpace. To the extent that they can avoid that, I think they'll be ok. There's probably a few other things they should focus on too...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > We believe that some of our users, particularly our younger users, are aware > of and actively engaging with other products and services similar to, or as > a substitute for, Facebook. For example, we believe that some of our users > have reduced their engagement with Facebook in favor of increased engagement > with other products and services such as Instagram.

Anecdotal evidence that happens to be confirmed by this FB press release: one of my younger colleagues (she's in her early 20s) just told me a couple of days ago: "I almost don't use FB anymore, I'm only using Instgram". She's the only person I know face to face who had a MySpace account (I live in Europe, where MySpace wasn't really that big of a thing anyway) and she has generally been among the first to experiment with new social thingies.

I'm not saying FB will "be dead" anytime soon, but is good that they've chosen not to bury their head in the sand like Google does with Google+. Of course, it just happens that Instagram is now owned by FB.

</comment><comment><USER5> It already has, in the sense that early adopters and content creators have largely abandoned it in favor of other services (mostly Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram and now Vine). Facebook is now mainly the realm of corporate- sponsored pages and gossip among non-technical folk, so basically MySpace circa 2004.

Granted, it's much less aggressively bad than MySpace was at that time, since people can't arbitrarily embed HTML/CSS/JavaScript wherever they want, but its stock prices are absurdly over valued and it has never found a way to monetize its audience, and it has totally lost the trust of its users.

The main thing Facebook has going for it is that everyone is on it. But most high-profile people only use it as a place to link to their profiles on the services they actually use, and people will follow the people they "follow" on to new services, if you follow me.

I think it's safe to say that it will become more and more of a ghost town over the coming year or two.

</comment><comment><USER19> fb is the premier social product in a world going social. they have a great foundation. everybody needs to take a step back and allow them to make some mistakes as they build a better product. think about some of the most revolutionary companies out there. everyone of them has a hiccup or two.

<comment><USER20> Why not use something better in the meantime?

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I wonder how much the "we no longer show all your posts to all your friends" issue is going to hurt Facebook?

I have limited data on this - but I know it's the reason I've stopped bothering to post anything on Facebook. I'll post on Google+, Livejournal or one of many blogs or forums where 100% of my friends can see what I'm saying, thanks, rather than have Facebook decide how my social interactions work and which 15% of my friends it'll show my posts to.

In my experience, when the "Facebook chooses who sees your posts, and it's never everyone" rule is demonstrated to other semi-"normal" Facebook users, they react very negatively.

</comment><comment><USER22> I miss being able to unsubscribe from my annoying acquaintances. It's too socially awkward to defriend some people who post 15 inspirational messages a day.

<comment><USER23> You can still do that they just changed the name. Where the unsubscribe thing was there is now a drop down that you can uncheck put posts in your your feed.

<comment><USER13> Found it, that's a pretty odd design choice actually, that button doesn't look like it's going to trigger a dropdown, in fact it looks like it would unfriend the person if clicked.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I think it's a poor metaphor. But I do think Facebook's future is going to more as a platform for connecting third party services. Few users are going to be on just one of these other services, and there's value in creating the best space to share content from disparate services.

</comment><comment><USER25> Facebook can lose 50% of its users and still have more users than basically anything else on the Internet. All they need to do is figure out how to monetize these users consistently, and they will be fine.

</comment><comment><USER26> For a minute I've misread it as "overcomes" and thought the article is from the past....

</comment><comment><USER27> No, the site itself hasn't done anything too drastic to suggest anything of that sort.

</comment><comment><USER28> Hmm, if so and so is going to happen, it will take someone to actually do it, so the real question is who will do it, and how? Anyone up for it ? Anyone?

10 bucks says, it will be 2014, not 2013, given how much time it will take at minimum to catch up to FB

</comment><comment><USER29> No.</comment>


Ask HN: What CMS are you using? - <AUTHOR> Hi HN.<p>I know many of you probably use static site generators. Question for me to those who use a CMS:<p>* What's the name (link)?<p>* Would you recommend it?<p>* Why yes, why no?<p>:) <comment><USER2> It really depends on your purpose and how technical your content authors will be.

If you need a CMS that non-tech people can handle, WordPress still does a decent job of that. The plugin ecosystem of wordpress is ginormous. Page builder themes like Divi or BeaverBuilder get you a decent looking site.

There is definitely a "wordpress way" of developing a theme and plugins but there are literally thousands of people doing it every day. Stay on top of updates and security isn't much of a problem.

</comment><comment> tyler-morrison I'm in love with Craft CMS ([https://craftcms.com/](https://craftcms.com/)).

I would highly recommend it. A lot of the big CMS developers like WordPress have certain conventions that you have to follow. If you need something outside of that "box" you really have to tie yourself in knots to get something custom.

Craft, on the other hand, leaves most of the structural design up to the developer. It also has a slick, built-in, live preview feature and easy localization.

Last but not least, they have a plugin that easily outputs your content as a RESTful API if you want to do a more modern JS front-end.

For small sites, the license is 100% free and then there's a nominal fee for larger sites.

</comment><comment><USER3> Hello,

I recently used Kirby for the first time.

* Kirby ([http://getkirby.com](http://getkirby.com))

* I recommend it

* It is lightweight (no database) and very flexible at the same time. What I really like are "blueprints" which are used to define input fields for page templates. Another nice thing are controllers for templates and hooks (e. g. after saving a page). It costs something but I think it is not expensive.

</comment><comment><USER4> Wordpress due to its market share.</comment>


Larry Page, Jimbo Wales, and Richard Branson conspire from private island - <AUTHOR> http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/03/20/business/deal.php

<comment><USER2> Hands up, how many Global Warming alarmists have read one well-researched anti-alarmist view on Global Warming (such as Bjorn Lomborg's)? Noone? Didn't think so.

It's sad to see that rich people are just as foolish as your average man.

</comment><comment><USER3> What they didn't tell you is that Tupac is there, too.

</comment><comment><USER4> Ha! They all traveled there either by private jet or giant cruise ship. :)

I get that they're thinking bigger picture but honestly...</comment>


Ask HN: Is short term crypto currency trading profitable? - <AUTHOR> Over the past few years, I was one of the many people who wrote off crypto currency. But apparently it grew by value and volume exponentially.<p>Was wondering if it's too late in the game to invest or do short term trading using coinbase API? I am planning to write a customized trading app myself which buys or sells based on my risk appetite that day. Is it worth the effort? Do any of you guys do it? <comment><USER3> It is (yet) profitable.

First, choose an exchange that is _stable_ , does not go down when there is a quick market movement. When that happens _only_ stop-loss orders get executed _automatically_.

Second, now the exchange fee structure. Some markets have different fees for "makers" and "takers (ppl that makes an order without counterparty and the ones that match existing buy/sell orders). I've seen 0% fees for market _makers_.

Third, Test your strategy. Dont' just measure how much you win. Check your drawback (how much you loose at peak). If it's not acceptable to you, DO NO TRADE that strategy. If you don't have an strategy, you're gambling, not trading.

Fourth, most crypto markets have _very_ low volume. Don't trade there because you will move the market with pennies.

</comment><comment><USER4> I have been working on an app to do trend forecasting for various cryptocurrencies. The end goal is to get realtime alerts when a currency dips or spikes above a given forecast. You'd get a message with the current forecast and a picture of the price graph with various statistical markers overlaid. Kind of like a real-time trend analysis snapshot.

Is this something you'd be interested in?

<comment><USER5> I've done stock trading before, with many of the tools. I'm skeptical of how good a tool for crypto can be. A lot of the reasons for spikes and crashes are emotional, and not really a consistent pattern.

Something like Bitcoin is going so strong because it had gone 'mainstream' and is vulnerable. There are several bubbles going on at the same time, one pops and crashes while the others keep growing. But ETH is still a niche and doesn't really have all the pops and crashes, so one can't just apply the same pattern across all cryptocurrencies.

But it's something interesting if it can be done.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Yes, I have a friend who programmed the profitable arbitrage bot.

He doesn't make the bot public, but you can check out this open-sourced bot([https://github.com/butor/blackbird](https://github.com/butor/blackbird)) that arbitrates among the prices in these exchanges below. * Bitfinex * OKCoin * Bitstamp * Gemini * Kraken

Please keep in mind that 1) I don't know how this bot exactly works because I didn't read the code yet and 2) this bot might not be the best one out there.

</comment><comment><USER7> Yes, I made 40% ROI in 2 months using the Coinbase API (buy when threshold met or price < x, sell when threshold met or price > y).

Just add in some kind of intervention system is the sell/buy is high because the volatile nature of the currencies can see major drops/gains which can cause all sorts of bother.

<comment><USER8> How did that 40% compare to the overall change in price? Bitcoin has gone up 100% over the last 2 months.

<comment><USER9> He may have risked less than holding bitcoin.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Why not trade the stock market instead? APIs are available from the major brokers... It is much more liquid, you have the government protection in case the broker disappears with your money... With the same effort you can build generational wealth if you have an edge...

<comment><USER11> Competition.

Crypto markets, although slow, don't have companies worth billions of dollars and thousands of employees trading.

There are actually windows that can stay open for minutes at a time, rather than seconds or milliseconds.

<comment><USER10> To me they are every slow you cannot trade 6 or 7 digits account fast in the crypto market to get in and out efficiently... not to mention security - <USER2> is going to protect your money if the broker disappears... every year a big exchange goes bust...

<comment><USER12> In general, risk is proportional to reward. Your given risks and many more repel more professional traders and arbitragers, therefore allowing the above stock market margin of profits.

<comment><USER10> There is a risk and there is a gamble...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> There's enough volatility to make it extremely profitable.

Coins are going up and down 10-30% for no "real" reasons.

[https://www.cryptocompare.com/coins/#/usd](https://www.cryptocompare.com/coins/#/usd)

</comment><comment><USER14> "Over the past few years, I was one of the many people who wrote off house flipping. But apparently it grew by value and volume exponentially.

Was wondering if it's too late in the game to flip houses?"

"Over the past few years, I was one of the many people who wrote off dot-coms. But apparently it grew by value and volume exponentially.

Was wondering if it's too late in the game to trade dot-coms?"

"Over the past few years, I was one of the many people who wrote off trading in tulip futures. But apparently it grew by value and volume exponentially.

Was wondering if it's too late in the game to trade tulip futures?"

Etc.

</comment><comment><USER15> I know someone who has made money with a simple ETH trading bot. Apparently it can be done.

<comment><USER16> It could be luck though?

Imagine a 1000 sided dice. Lose $2000 if you roll a 1. Otherwise make $1.

Roll it 10 times. Looks like your making money!

<comment><USER17> You make it sound so simple! I want one of those dice bots.

<comment><USER18> Here you go: [https://satoshidice.com/](https://satoshidice.com/)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Duke's Legacy: Video Game Source Disc Preservation at the Library of Congress - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.loc.gov/digitalpreservation/2014/08/dukes-legacy-video-game-source-disc-preservation-at-the-library-of-congress/ <comment><USER2> If it had a boot.bin file I am pretty sure you would be able to start it, either through an emulator, a hacked console, or a devkit. I wish I got my hands on it while I was still at uni, we had a few PSP devkits that laid unused because everyone was playing with PS3 and Vita devkits instead.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't get it, why is this game so special, and why are they publishing its assets without getting permission from the copyright holder?

<comment><USER4> It's special because it was developed as part of an existing (reasonably noteworthy) franchise but never released to the public, so the version in the Library of Congress is probably one of very few in existence.

The screenshots in this blog post contain only small excerpts of the disc's contents, transformed substantially from their original format, so they pretty clearly fall under fair use.

<comment><USER5> Even untransformed excerpts/screenshots would almost certainly be fair use in a scholarly article about them. The LoC knows a thing or two about copyright.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Always bet on Duke.

</comment><comment><USER7> It should be made law to provide the original resources used by every publication to archives.

This means stuff like raw videos, hi-def audio tracks, software utilities etc.

<comment><USER8> While I agree with the sentiment, in media production, sometimes those resources don't exist, or are intentionally discarded, making this unenforceable. For instance, simple image edits often get saved only in the final image format, rather than as a layered image format intended for an image editor.

However, I do think this would be wildly useful for software source code. After all, what good would it do to have a piece of software fall into the public domain in binary form only? That would facilitate copying, but not building on that work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'd still play it</comment>


Flag Semaphore - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_semaphore <comment><AUTHOR> A friend just told me that the peace sign came from the flag semaphore signals for "N" and "D". I was skeptical, but she was right!

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

What intrigues me about the flag semaphore system isn't just the character encoding, but the protocol:

> _The sender uses the "Attention" signal to request permission to begin a > transmission. The receiver uses a "Ready to receive" signal not shown above > to grant permission to begin the transmission. The receiver raises both > flags vertical overhead and then drops them to the rest position, once only, > to grant permission to send. The sender ends the transmission with the > "Ready to receive" signal. The receiver can reply with the "Attention" > signal. At this point, sender and receiver change places._</comment>


Show HN: Secure token authentication for Angular.js and Rails - <AUTHOR>

Angular module: https://github.com/lynndylanhurley/ng-token-auth
Rails gem: https://github.com/lynndylanhurley/devise_token_auth
I've been working hard to make this the most simple, flexible, and secure token auth system in existence. I believe that I'm close to succeeding. I'd love to hear your thoughts on what I can do to improve what I have so far. <comment><USER2> Oh man, I wish this was around about a year ago. I actually coded most of this for a client and it was extremely painful to get correct. We are using the Doorkeeper OAuth2 gem which uses slightly different tokens and has some different features, though.

Couple of things/feature you might want to consider:

* You might want to track the expiration time of the tokens if the API provides it. If the token isn't expired, potentially skip the verification step.

* Potentially you might want to add another HTTP interceptor that catches 401 (Unauthorized) responses. If a response returns a 401, you can prompt the user to re-authenticate and hold all HTTP requests until the user does. Then when there is a new token available, you can replay requests. This, coupled with saving the expiration time, can make page load times faster and still be robust.

* I'd make the HTTP interceptor that adds the Authorization header only add the header if the request URL is going to an API endpoint. The library user should be able to specify a function or regex that takes a URL string and returns true if the URL is an API url (and thus needs an Authorization header). Otherwise you'd include the token on unrelated requests to 3rd parties.

Nice job though, I'll definitely check this out next time I need to do token auth on Angular.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is all great advice. I've added these items to the issue tracker, and I am going to implement them right away.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Some questions that I have:

Is the documentation clear?

Is there anything that I can do to further simplify anything?

Are the security measures too aggressive? Not aggressive enough?

<comment><USER3> This gem & module look really well thought out and well designed. Security is impressive and well designed given the tradeoffs that are associated with it (ease of use versus time to implement). I look forward to integrating this into my app.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ahh thanks!!! _blush_

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Finally someone is doing a token based auth system for rails APIs</comment>


Tim Berners-Lee: we must regulate tech firms to prevent 'weaponised' web - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/mar/11/tim-berners-lee-tech-companies-regulations?CMP=share_btn_fb <comment> shaki-dora Regulation will be the natural consequence of the sector mostly being asleep on the wheel while the power of their platforms was turned against the values of a democratic society.

Facebook is the main culprit in this. It could be forgiven that their algorithms amplified humans' natural instincts towards divisiveness. But not being on top of the political advertisement on their platform is gross negligence bordering on intent: simply requiring transparency of sponsorship of political ads, as well as the groups being targeted, would have gone a long way in softening the calls for regulation we now see.

<comment><USER2> Considering that Facebook specifically markets political marketing as a use- case for Facebook, including a neat little marketing site with a how-to guide[1], I think it's going to be difficult for Facebook to claim ignorance on this when regulators start knocking at their doors. Yes, they could say that their platform was being used outside of their intended use-case, but that they didn't even attempt the bare minimum to prevent abuse while actively seeking customers for its political influence machine is fairly damning.

[1] [https://politics.fb.com/](https://politics.fb.com/)

<comment><USER3> How is that different from any other media platform? TV, radio, print, would all do the same thing. They clearly need more scrutiny on such ads, but otherwise it's the same sales pitch as any other media company.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> When you ask for BigCo to remove conspiracy theories, what you are asking for is that a small unaccountable elite decides what the truth is and deletes everything else.

This model has been shown to work fine with newspapers and other massmedia, but that's because there are competitors to jump to.

<comment><USER5> And the barrier to building Fauxbook(tm) is?

There is probably _FAR_ more opportunity to building a Facebook competitor than a newspaper competitor nowadays.

<comment><USER6> But who's gonna use it? Not even Google can build a Facebook competitor and get people to use it.

<comment><USER7> > Not even Google

Social networking is just one entry in the long list of Google's failures, many of which were successfully executed by smaller companies:

* Chat. Google has tried like 4 or 5 different times to do chat and ultimately lost out to the likes of WhatsApp, Slack, Messenger and others.

* Location/business Reviews. Despite having Maps, google still has yet to really come close to unseating Yelp in this arena.

* Wearables. Google Glass completely failed. Android Wear is well on its way to the grave. Fitbit, Apple and Samsung have all succeeded in wearables over Google.

* Augmented Reality. Remember Google Glass?

The list goes on. My point isn't that Google can't do anything right — that's obviously not true. What I'm saying is that Google trying something and failing isn't really a good argument against it being a viable idea.

Facebook's brand is ailing right now and I think there's growing concern about the way Facebook has been optimized to dominate the user's attention. There might be room for a social network that tries to be something much more minimal than what Facebook has become.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> That's interesting to hear from someone that railroaded DRM into the HTML spec, a prime example of what could be called 'weaponised' web (could really call anything moving the open web more toward closed web that, really) considering the DRM anti-circumvention laws that exist around the world.

<comment><USER9> I think it's a little hard to blame Tim here, DRM was happening with or without it being part of HTML. Either it could be in proprietary plugins or it could be part of the spec, but as long as movie studios were requiring DRM, DRM was going to happen. If anyone railroaded it through, it would be Google, who owns Widevine, and via Chrome, basically can determine web standards with or without the W3C's support, from a practical sense.

So the W3C has to accept DRM to prevent it being in a proprietary plugin, and Firefox had to also accept the DRM to avoid being "the browser that can't play Netflix", and everyone effectively has to go along with it to ensure they still have a seat at the table on the issue, but it all, at the end, comes back to the MPAA, which isn't going to let you have a license to stream their content unless it is locked with DRM, regardless of how futile DRM actually is.

<comment><USER10> Blame him or not blame him, it was hypocritical to proclaim in all other forums for open web policies and then not vote against DRM when the chips were down. From my very distant viewpoint, it's almost inexplicable.

I couldn't imagine Stallman, Doctorow, or anyone else with as deep a desire for open systems having that divergent a reaction to the one most galling topic in the whole discussion.

<comment><USER9> Stallman and Doctorow have the convenience of not running organizations which have to work with various corporate needs. They can afford to be religious and uncompromisingly devout. I don't think Tim has that luxury.

<comment> default-kramer I think the following quote from Braveheart is awesome. The whole movie seems designed to turn the audience into William Wallace worshipers, except for this line, which causes an attentive viewer to stop and think:

"Admire this man, this William Wallace. Uncompromising men are easy to admire. He has courage, so does a dog. But it is exactly the ability to compromise that makes a man noble."

<comment><USER11> >... ability to compromise that makes a man noble."

Sir Berners-Lee is such a nobility, should we as digital peasants knee before him? Feudalism of the Web is upon us.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> All I see is a great opportunity for the big guys to go from regulation -> regulatory capture -> rent seeking.

When you have a few big players they love to see regulations that make it harder for upstarts to enter the market since they won't have an army of employees who's only job is to ensure compliance with the bureaucratic demands.

<comment><USER13> Facebook will be at $80 billion in sales in about three years. What could be better as a corporate juggernaut of that scale, than to have the government protecting your ass from competition by dramatically raising the bar to competition.

 _Every_ regulation added to the Web/Internet, that a start-up has to comply with, is a benefit to the entrenched hyper rich giants. Regulators better be damn careful every time they lean toward giving in to emotionalism and seek to regulate as the easiest placation tool.

The US has seen a century of this scenario play out in every single major economic sector. We already know how it ends: stagnation, low growth, zero innovation, layoffs, and perpetual rent seeking rotting corporations with low competitive threats domestically.

<comment><USER14> > _Facebook will be at $80 billion in sales in about three years. What could > be better as a corporate juggernaut of that scale, than to have the > government protecting your ass from competition by dramatically raising the > bar to competition._

I already felt the legal pressures from linking to facebook users profiles with a C & D[0] on bootstrapped company with a friend ($100k annualized in year 3), so I decided to move to Indonesia and will relaunch here.

> _The US has seen a century of this scenario play out in every single major > economic sector. We already know how it ends: stagnation, low growth, zero > innovation, layoffs, and perpetual rent seeking rotting corporations with > low competitive threats domestically._

Exactly, and in this day in age, it seems like even if one has the tech to compete, you can always be undermined by the incumbents dropping the ladders on the way up. Luckily, it's easier than ever to leverage other government's laws (or lack of jurisdiction) agaisnt one another.

[0] [https://www.chillingeffects.org/notices/2037976](https://www.chillingeffects.org/notices/2037976)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> "strangely", the quote:

        Two myths currently limit our collective imagination: the myth
        that advertising is the only possible business model for
        online companies, and the myth that it's too late to change
        the way platforms operate. On both points, we need to be a
        little more creative.

from the actual letter was not mentioned or highlighted, merely the point about regulatory frameworks..

<comment><USER16> Readable copy for mobile users:

 _Two myths currently limit our collective imagination: the myth that advertising is the only possible business model for online companies, and the myth that it's too late to change the way platforms operate. On both points, we need to be a little more creative._

<comment><USER17> Or we could just do the straightforward thing: tax ads.

<comment><USER12> Not seeing how this would stop a state-level actor intent on engaging in a disinformation campaign, they'd just have their proxies pay the tax.

<comment><USER17> It would shift more of the web to non-ad-funded. People would get more of their info from venues without ads carrying disinformation, from whatever source.

<comment><USER18> > It would shift more of the web to non-ad-funded.

or it would just shift more of the web to non-funded.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Censorship and bias of information seem to be the major concerns I have with tech companies. Treating them as common carriers so they are not allowed to discriminate seems like something that is needed. Outside of that, I think they are doing a decent job and question whether more regulation will do more harm than good.

<comment><USER20> > Treating them as common carriers so they are not allowed to discriminate > seems like something that is needed

Common carriers for what?

Google and Facebook are by definition discriminators. You access Google so it can discriminate for you, and give you discriminated results that match what you're looking for, and not the entire internet.

You don't sign up for an ISP for discrimination, you sign up for access, so you want it to not discriminate at all.

ISPs provide access, social media and search provide aggregation. Trying to regulate both in the same is pointless.

<comment><USER19> Yes, this could use some clarification. Aggregation is fine, by discrimination I meant censoring and blocking certain individuals because you don't like them. Unless it is something illegal tech companies should respect freedom of speech.

By analogy, package (mail) is to packet (internet) is to post (social media). That's the common carrier connection I was trying to get at. ISPs and the postal service is not allowed to use discrimination to deny service to individuals because they don't like what they have to say.

<comment><USER20> > Unless it is something illegal tech companies should respect freedom of > speech.

Why would they, when no other company has to? Freedom of speech has nothing to do with others having to allow you to use their services for your speech.

> By analogy, package (mail) is to packet (internet) is to post (social > media).

Sure, and email providers are free to block your emails. Or rank them.

I'm not getting your point, are you saying that internet companies should promote all posts equally?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Regulation is not the only solution; lawmakers are imperfect. Decentralized web FTW.

<comment><USER21> And remember, software engineer != politician

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Too late.

</comment><comment><USER23> Who is "we" in this context? I'd submit that there is no "we" capable of accomplishing this goal effectively for the long term.

</comment><comment><USER24> The Butterfly War was designed to leverage a heavily regulated internet and make it undermine the cultural institutions that dictate such regulations.

The more you enforce your morality, the more the enforcement will be your executioner.

[http://cultstate.com/2017/10/13/The-Butterfly- War/](http://cultstate.com/2017/10/13/The-Butterfly-War/)</comment>


Anyone has a copy of the docker debian repo? Old versions before v17.* removed - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/zoobab/status/898499634674507776 <comment><USER2> Congratulations, now you see why software external to your chosen distribution you should always host from your own repository. Retention policy does matter.</comment>


Wilmunder's Star Raiders II Released - <AUTHOR> https://atariage.com/forums/topic/246591-wilmunders-star-raiders-ii-released/ <comment><USER2> Star Radiers was as close to Star Wars as Atari got, the Parker Brothers game The Empire Strikes Back was Star Wars but it was a Snow Speeder attacking AT- AT walkers. I'm talking more about a Star Wars type space battle game.

The extra controller as a keypad made it so you could toggle on and off stuff on your ship. Without it you couldn't play the game.

A friend borrowed my 2600 collection and never gave it back, so I lost every cartridge and controller I had. I think he ended up selling it for money without telling me. The same thing happened to my Amiga collection with a different friend and my C64/C128 collection with yet another different friend. I was too nice in letting friends borrow my stuff. Even a Vic-20 I let another different friend borrow so he could get on BBS systems with a 300 baud modem and he never gave it back.

But losing Star Raiders hurt me most of all. I even think there was an Atari Force comic book for it. [http://www.atariage.com/comics/](http://www.atariage.com/comics/)

</comment><comment><USER3> From Author Aric Wilmunder: "In 1983 I was hired by Atari Corporate Research and in '84 I transferred to Atari Coin-Op where I was part of a small R&D team under Lyle Rains, the brains behind Asteroids and Atari Football. I was tasked with designing and building a sequel to Star Raiders, the most sophisticated space battle simulator of it's time. While I was still working on the design, Atari Marketing had purchased the rights to develop games based on the movie The Last Starfighter, and when the movie did poorly at the box-office, they quickly re-branded the Atari 800 game as Star Raiders II. The actual sequel that I was coding was just a few months from completion and as a result it never shipped, but it did serve as my resume when I went to work for George Lucas' fledgling games group, Lucasfilm Games. So after more than 30 years sitting on a floppy disk in my garage, here's the true Star Raiders II."</comment>


Who Killed the Junior Developer? Plenty of junior developers, but not many jobs - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@melissamcewen/who-killed-the-junior-developer-33e9da2dc58c <comment><USER2> I like having junior developers on my team and always ask to have at least one, but the reality is that we can't really afford to have more than about 20% of the team being junior.

There are some problems that aren't really addressed by the article. The main issue is that it's much, much, much easier to write bad code than good code. Even when you have a couple of decades under your belt, it's hard to write good code. While bad junior developers will sit around browsing Facebook all day, _good_ junior developers will spend their time churning out hundreds and hundreds of lines of bad code. Mentoring or not, dealing with the fallout of that code is not trivial. And the volume of it can be daunting!

There is an additional problem that people's expectation of junior, intermediate and senior is skewed. The vast majority of people I've interviewed think it's reasonable to be "intermediate" or even "senior" after 1 or 2 years of experience. Their increasing confidence in their ability (which is admittedly improving rapidly at that stage of their career) translates into demands for more authority. Handling that transition is often difficult -- it is normal to completely screw up several projects before you figure out how to really be a good senior developer. It is also (unfortunately) normal to be completely unaware that you are screwing up those projects (even many years after the project is completed).

So when you hire a junior developer, you need to mentor them. You need to fix up problems that they create. But you also have this kind of time bomb where they will be pushing to break things on a much bigger scale. You have to be prepared to help them through that period. If you have 4 or 5 juniors on a team of 8, God help you in 2 years.

Which is not to say that you don't need juniors. However, keep in mind that the potential length of career of a programmer is something like 40-45 years. It should not be strange to have a team with several people who have more than 20 years under their belt -- and yet it is often _very_ strange.

<comment><USER3> > keep in mind that the potential length of career of a programmer is > something like 40-45 years. It should not be strange to have a team with > several people who have more than 20 years under their belt -- and yet it is > often very strange.

IT industry experienced very fast growth in recent years in number of candidates. We don't have enough people to consistently form teams with at least one guy with ten years of experience, much less several guys with twenty years. We'd need to wait another decade or two to see the seniority expectations to normalize like in any other craft.</comment></comment>


Should people in glass Facebook offices throw stones? - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2008/07/03/should-people-in-glass-facebook-offices-throw-stones/

<comment><USER2> Facebook is some dude's home page. The government is ... the government. I don't see why Facebook should have to open their API. If you don't like their ToS, don't use them.

With the government, you can't "not use them", so they need to make things open. Plus, since the government is something I pay for, they actually have to listen to what I want. Facebook doesn't get a cent from me, so why should they care what I think?

<comment><USER3> You can "not use" the government by moving to another country. Also, Facebook does get money from you through their advertising directed at you. If they want to stay alive, they definitely should care what you think.</comment></comment>


Girl found in UP forest not raised by monkeys, but abandoned by humans - <AUTHOR> https://scroll.in/latest/834126/girl-found-in-up-forest-not-raised-by-monkeys-but-abandoned-by-humans-say-doctors-and-officials <comment><USER2> This story reminds me of "Life of Pi"

1\. You can believe that this girl was raised by monkeys, the monkeys cared for her, and tried to defend her when the constable came to take her away.

2\. Or you can believe the reality - That a disabled female child was abandoned by her family to die in the forest alone.

From the article: "In India, people do not prefer a female child and she is mentally not sound," DK Singh said."

"She was wearing a frock and kachchha [knickers]. She was very weak and tried to move away on seeing us… There were no monkeys. She was not naked, and she wasn't using her hands to walk. I don't know how these stories are being spread." She was found in January"

</comment><comment><USER3> I found it hard to believe that a human child could survive on a monkey diet. I also found it hard to believe they would welcome her as a member of their band. And what about keeping up when the monkeys went swinging through the trees?

</comment><comment><USER4> When the facts don't match the story, change the facts.</comment>