Swedish startup Rdot is trying to take on E Ink - <AUTHOR> https://goodereader.com/blog/e-paper/swedish-startup-rdot-is-trying-to-take-on-e-ink <comment><USER2> I was just today looking at E-inks new 'JustWrite' technology where the screen pixels are activated by a stylus instead of the backing, so writing feels instant (and might be just about instant too). If this tech also has that possibility, then good on them. Edit: though I'm not aware of a product which incorporates it yet, which is a shame. Maybe I'm wrong - research on mobile is hard.

What I'd love is a notebook of the stuff that I could write on and save and swap the contents with an open protocol/app.

I'd also probably love hacking on the stuff. Make a 'spellbook' for one of my D&D characters where the contents change 'magically'. :)

<comment><USER3> You might want to take a look at the reMarkable tablet [1].

Apparently it's quite hacker-friendly/open.

[1] [https://remarkable.com/](https://remarkable.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Good. E-ink displays are expensive and have a monopoly on low-energy persistent displays.

However, Rdot doesn't have nearly the same resolution as E-ink at this time, it seems: [https://rdotdisplays.com/technology](https://rdotdisplays.com/technology)

<comment><USER5> The contrast ratio of 3:1 isn't great either! The first generation of e-ink had a contrast ratio of 7:1, and they've been at 15:1 since 2013.

[1]: [https://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/E_Ink_display](https://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/E_Ink_display)

<comment><USER6> 1:3 for the grey version. But the RGB versions do much better:

Red: 1:8

Green: 1:11

Blue: 1:7

[https://rdotdisplays.com/technology](https://rdotdisplays.com/technology)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "Typically, the energy required for a full switch on an E Ink display is about 4mJ/cm2. The corresponding number for the Rdot display is about 1mJ/cm2 with the addition of 0,25mJ/cm2 every 15 minutes. LCD continuously consumes about 6µW/cm2."

This is some interesting numbers. So, for a 1 cm^2 screen, LCD consumes 6mJ for every 1000 seconds - i.e. just over 15 minutes. But to redraw the screen on eInk takes 4mJ. So if you do something that would cause the screen to fully redraw more than twice every 15 minutes, then eInk actually consumes more power? But wouldn't that generally be the case while reading?

<comment><USER8> No, the screen is not usually "fully redrawn" when reading, which involves a full flash visible to the user. Often it's only a fraction of the screen that has to be redrawn as most of the pixels can remain the same between page turns

<comment><USER7> For a single page flip, sure. But how many page flips are you going to do in 15 minutes? Wouldn't you have enough changed pixels add up to at least a couple full repaints?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Considering I'm still waiting for my Indigogo backed 13.3" Good E-Reader from June 2016 I won't be holding my breath for this.

<comment><USER10> Me too, I can't believe the gall they have still taking orders.

<comment><USER11> If there's a sucker born every minute that also means every minute there's a sucker finally able to buy stuff on the internet without parental consent. Why shut down a scam under those conditions?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Interview w/ the CEO @ [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hS5_D0bxLWI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hS5_D0bxLWI) ... can someone explain he mentions the display is semi stable + lasts "one hour" does it need to refresh 24x @ some point to hold an all day display?

</comment><comment><USER13> E-ink and similar tech seems to have tapered off the last couple of years, the only thing (as far as I know) that is doing anything new is the reMarkable. I was just about to pull the trigger on ordering one - anyone have experience with it? Is it really as paper-like as they claim?

<comment><USER14> I was thinking about ordering one, but out of the Boox note and the sony devices, I ruled out the remarkable first. I can't remember why, but you can search reviews for yourself.

I choose the boox note over the sony because it's more fully featured (e.g. better web browsing). I don't regret buying it. The only problem is that you need to use a screen protector to prevent scratching from the stylus, but the screen protector is impossible to place without air bubbles. Eventually I decided that the air bubbles weren't a big deal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I don't fully understand from reading the article why this is better than EInk. Seems it just uses 1/4 of the energy but other than that is there more benefits to it?

<comment><USER16> Competition. Eink seems to have stagnated.

<comment><USER17> My understanding is that E-Ink holds all of the patents and is preventing any further competition or innovation.

<comment><USER16> That's my understanding too - if someone can create a screen that competes on energy use, then they occupy the same market and will hopefully force E-Ink to innovate/bring down prices.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I love to have a reflective screen in my phone and as monitor.

For those devices energy consumption is just low priority.

Color and refresh-rate is where most reflective screens fail. So if you take on E ink I think that's where you should shine.

</comment><comment><USER19> I wonder how fast they change? The time to rewrite the screen is a major bummer for me when compared to flipping pages with dead-tree paper

<comment><USER6> I used to think this too, until I videoed myself reading to test.

I discovered that dead-tree page flips take between 1.8 to 4.2 seconds, pretty much normally distributed. Granted we're doing more page flips on eink because the screen is smaller, but by timing my blinks and keeping the eyes closed a bit longer, I no longer even feel the page flips and my eyes are more rested.

The difference that we feel is because with dead trees are are actively changing the page, whereas with eink we are waiting.

<comment><USER20> I don't know how you're flipping your pages, but it's possible to flip through a book at something like 6 to 10 pages per second. Which is how flipbook animations work.

Even setting aside this specific form of flipping, with a moistened finger and a small book I can leaf through at a rate of several pages per second.

The annoying part with E Ink update speeds isn't the page turn you do when you've finished reading the page - it's the inability to rapidly visually scan the book.

<comment><USER6> I am not referring to flipping through a book's pages. I am referring to reading a book.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> How is this different from the Sharp Memory LCDs?

<comment><USER21> My calculations might be wrong, but it looks like these Rdot displays use significantly less energy than Memory LCDs.

Using numbers from Sharp[0], Memory LCDs use ~226µJ/cm2 each second when static. I'm assuming they are 60Hz displays & therefore require a refresh 60 times each second but even if they only refresh once a second, that's ~3.8µJ/cm2 a second or 13,680 times the power consumption of the Rdot displays.

The article claims these Rdot screens use 0.25mJ/cm2 _every 15 minutes_ when static.

Again, these are my "back-of a napkin" calculations so take with some salt.

[0][https://www.sharpsma.com/products?sharpCategory=Memory%20LCD](https://www.sharpsma.com/products?sharpCategory=Memory%20LCD)

<comment><USER22> Calculating out of my Kiester assuming 2.5cm2 display 3.0V it seems

Sharp Memory LCD is 200uA vs rdot at 0.25ua.

With AA batteries Sharp Memory is only going to last 1 year MAX. That's too short for most consumer applications. Where rdot is much less than the self discharge. So 5-10 years.</comment></comment></comment>


Fixing College - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/26/opinion/fixing-college-through-lower-costs-and-better-technology.html

<comment><USER2> Good for you to submit the canonical URL. The previous submission (3 points, no comments)

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4217169>

was with a noncanonical URL. What do you think of what the author proposes?</comment>


Signal, a fast, secure and simple messenger endorsed by Snowden - <AUTHOR> https://www.signal.org/ <comment><USER3> Kind of weird posting the app as a submission like this, given that it's pretty well-known and HN search turns up hundreds of discussions about it. This is kind of like posting a link to slack.com.

<comment><USER4> It became more useful and stable since last discussed

<comment><USER5> Interesting say more

<comment><USER6> Encrypted backup and restore works now. Including media.

<comment><USER7> For how long though? Signal Android has repeatedly broken its backup functionality with no warning, it seems the Signal team is not testing this feature regularly.

iOS users are still out of luck on message backup too :c

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I wish I could keep recommending Signal to my friends. For an app as famous as theirs, the applications and tooling don't feel mature at all. Their MacOS desktop app insists on updating multiple times a day. Indeed, every time I have it open, it starts bugging me for updates. I can't have conversations anymore because the app insists on restarting signal. These hourly demands for updates has caused me to ignore them entirely - devaluing the core value add in the process. Was the latest 5pm update a security update that I desperately need? Well, I don't know and at this point no longer care because I'd like to use the app to talk to people instead.

The app also doesn't work if you have multiple phones or a tablet. I can have signal either on my iPad or my phone. Not both. Why? I don't know. But Signal insists that it is more secure.

It's a problem with these security focused applications. They often sacrifice usability on the altar of best case security; making applications that are hard to use for anyone but the most ardent of folks.

I want to love this app, but their bad UX makes it really really hard.

<comment><USER7> Check out [https://pyre.chat](https://pyre.chat) (pre-alpha) and signal- weechat for a non-electron based desktop client that won't nom all your ram.

[https://github.com/thefinn93/signal- weechat](https://github.com/thefinn93/signal-weechat)

Signal makes for a decent SMS replacement, IMO they have put little effort into being a group chat competitor. Some bots like [https://git.callpipe.com/yosl/repost4privacy](https://git.callpipe.com/yosl/repost4privacy) can make groups more user friendly, but group management is still poor.

Edit: added last paragraph about groups.

<comment><USER9> signal-weechat looks very interesting. do you have any idea how well it works?

<comment><USER7> Its seem much less development than pyre.chat, but it is a functional client (tho pictures all end up in a folder when sent your way, as images + ncurses doesn't really work).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> My 2c

I recently got signal because some friends made me. Given how old it is, I was shocked by how poor some aspects are.

I liked using it as an android sms app, until I replied to one too many sms over signal because signal always defaults to signal, rather than whichever protocol the person sent you a message via. People uninstall the app, or use iOS. Signal constantly defaulting to a protocol the person on the other end isn't using was too much, so I stopped using signal as my sms app.

I hate that, now that I've stopped using signal as my sms app, it wasn't storing sms in android's common sms store. Now chunks of history are missing, trapped in signal.

The desktop client seems fundamentally broken, often taking 5-10 minutes to sync messages in.

I hate that I can only mute conversations for 1 or 2 hours, 1 or 7 days, 1 year, or forever.

I hate that I can't mute a group and still receive @s.

I hate that it is tied to my phone number.

I think signal offers a really bad experience. I prefer keybase, for many reasons. However when my mother and sister and grandmother needed a way to share pictures and videos (which mms would convert to garbage quality), I set them up with signal. Keybase's mobile client is, unfortunately, specifically bad at media. Signal is decent at it.

Although, the keybase devs as recently as yesterday said they'll be polishing the mobile experience in the coming weeks. Maybe soon I can in good conscience not recommend signal and start pushing keybase among my family. Keybase did also recently streamlined their onboarding process to not require a password- you can just download and go.

Edited for spelling errors.

<comment><USER11> All true. The worst offender is actually sync on desktop that can take anywhere between 5 to 50 minutes !

On-boarding of keybase was more complicated before, maybe its better now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I wish they had a competent desktop client with feature parity to mobile and not just an Electron "app".

I could write more critique regarding the forced contact discovery, the use of phone numbers as identifiers, but at lest the underlying security of the app is good.

<comment><USER13> When I used Android, Signal doubled as a regular SMS app.

That meant you would _only_ use Signal, and the recipient would receive the message via Signal if he too was a user. Basically it worked like iMessage on iOS, but was 100% OSS.

Which from what I can tell, is a thing people here on HN (not to mention /r/Android) are asking for all the time.

Using Signal on iOS though indeed feels weirder because you always need to "discover" who has what IM-service, and then start the corresponding app.

That's a flaw of iOS though, and not Signal, and all non-iMessage services suffers for that.

<comment><USER14> This was the main reason I never started using Signal. When I tried it some years ago it wanted virtually all permissions on my phone and wanted to replace my SMS client. I also did not like that they wanted my phone number. The SMS replacement should be an optional feature, and they do not need any phone number unless I want to use that feature.

<comment><USER12> I registered my Signal account with a burner number not linked to any SIM card, and thus I didn't use it as my SMS app. Don't know if it's default behavior when you register it with the phone number attached to your SIM or not.

I agree the permissions (especially the forced contact discovery) is problematic.

<comment><USER15> I thought of doing the same until I realized that it's a silly workaround. If I ever need to restore my account or forget password or change device, I'd need the same burner phone... it's a burner anymore now is it?

And then I gave up because of the forced contact discovery... it's a pity.

I wish there was a popular chat service that worked more like Blackberry. Central network but just pseudonymns instead of the phone number.

<comment><USER16> > If I ever need to restore my account

..for what?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Signal's hostility towards third-party contributions and staunch refusal in federation makes it hard to recommend. Not to mention for an app that touts itself as both being secure and being easy to use, it has a rather crappy UX.

<comment><USER18> Also, why is it on Google Play Store but not FDroid? Tryin' to protect my privacy, here.

<comment><USER19> Because Moxie doesn't want it to be[1]. It should be noted though than you can download _just_ the APK from their website[2] and it supports auto-updating.

[1]: [https://github.com/signalapp/Signal- Android/issues/127](https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/issues/127) [2]: [https://signal.org/android/apk/](https://signal.org/android/apk/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I want to love Signal but is so hard to love at times:

1\. The Signal backup restore process is ridiculous and kludgey. It took me quite some time to figure out how /Internal works on Android 9 devices using the files app for example. [1]

2\. If your phone fails without a backup the only way to rejoin groups is having people post a message to each group. I wish there was a middle ground between full backup and dump my keys/group list.[2]

3\. The Linux app will, at random, take minutes to load because it is loading 100s of messages. But, this happens even if I was running the app 5 minutes before. Watching the logs I see sqlite insertions happening no faster than 10 a second. The old web based Signal client worked great. I would love to have that brought back.

On my wishlist, which I haven't posted anywhere publicly, includes:

1\. Clicking a contact circle _should not_ show me the Android contact, it should show me a list of actions I can take in Signal instead: call, message, video call

2\. Video conferences are often used with families. Please create a full screen video call mode that is friendly for parents with kids. This means that I can let my kid touch the screen and not immediately drop a call or switch apps. A full screen mode with optional pin or swipe pattern to exit would make me love the app forever.

Also, for context, my experience comes from converting dozens of family members off of Whatsapp to Signal over the course of 6 weeks earlier this year. For the most part it has been fine but these sharp edges have caused me pain trying to support my family members. Whatapp lost my trust with the announcement of Fb messenger integration and the unencrypted backup to Google Drive.

I am hopeful that Signal will improve overtime. However, the web client deprecation and my recent experience with the backup/restore process has me concerned.

[1] [https://support.signal.org/hc/en- us/articles/360007059752#an...](https://support.signal.org/hc/en- us/articles/360007059752#android_restore)

[2] [https://support.signal.org/hc/en- us/articles/360007062012-Ne...](https://support.signal.org/hc/en- us/articles/360007062012-New-Number-or-New-Phone)

<comment><USER21> this this this this this.

I like and push signal every chance i can get but yeah, the UI/UX is horrible at times.

Also wtf should we pay attention to snowden's opinion. the guy is no "security guru". His name is only relevent because he uses it... so what?

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Signal isn't federated. Use Matrix instead.

<comment><USER23> For those like me who aren't used to the term federated...

"Federated architecture (FA) is a pattern in enterprise architecture that allows interoperability and information sharing between semi-autonomous de- centrally organized lines of business (LOBs), information technology systems and applications."

—Wikipedia

<comment><USER24> For those who want to know why it's not federated: [https://signal.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is- moving/](https://signal.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/)

<comment><USER25> For those who want to know why it still should be federated: [https://gultsch.de/objection.html](https://gultsch.de/objection.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> [https://quicksy.im/](https://quicksy.im/) – a spin-off of the popular Jabber/XMPP client Conversations with automatic contact discovery.

> Even if you are not a Quicksy user you can enter your Jabber ID into the > Quicksy Directory and give Quicksy users the ability to automatically > discover you based on your phone number. This lets you enjoy the privacy- > friendly, federated nature of Jabber/XMPP while giving your less tech-savvy > friends a low barrier entry into that world

// not affiliated; saw this recently, like the idea.

</comment><comment><USER27> Signal lags pretty hard on ubuntu 16.04, reason why I switched to Telegram despite the latter's inferior privacy

<comment><USER28> Telegram is a native Qt app written in C++. It's very smooth because of it

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Outside of the tech-bubble we are all in, security-blablabla sounds good - <USER2> ordinary people just prefer any sorts of like WhateverAppMyFamilyUses.

We're stuck with alternatives, that the crowd doesn't prefer.

<comment><USER30> Telegram has gotten decent adoption because it makes a good compromise of security and convenience.

<comment><USER31> Like, not encrypting by default?

<comment><USER30> Yes. It allows you to easily have your content synchronized between devices.

<comment><USER31> Well, my comment was not serious. By not encrypting by default they actually put your data at risk. Syncing and encryption is not exclusive and could be done in its simplest form by sharing the private key or working with subkeys. Not encrypting by default is the worst option, imho.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Once my phone is rebooted or ran out of battery, Signal would stop notifying me of any new messages unless I manually launch the app, sometimes I even had to tap on each individual conversation to check for new messages. I agree with some posters here that its UX badly needs a redesign too.

<comment><USER33> I had to do this [https://support.signal.org/hc/en- us/articles/360007318711-Tr...](https://support.signal.org/hc/en- us/articles/360007318711-Troubleshooting-Notifications)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Those who depend on anonymity and security in any serious way should think carefully about using technology. Two whistle blowers in a row have been compromised in the last few months and are now in prison in their communication with theintercept.

Don't trust anything you read online, if you need guidance try to reach out to trusted and well regarded experts in privacy and security ecosystems and do it in the real world face to face, not online. Cryptome has a decent faq on this.

Signal is connected to your phone number. That's game over right there and then on any claims to security and anonymity. Things directly connected to your identity in an insecure OS as Android cannot deliver security or anonymity, and its dangerous to lull others into a false sense of security.

</comment><comment><USER35> I love Signal and use it as my main communication platform, but the inherent metadata information disclosure doesn't make it the ideal secure communication platform.

Right now, that title belongs to Briar in my opinion - it has a far more satisfactory security model in my opinion.

</comment><comment><USER36> How do people think about the relative trajectories of Signal and Keybase? It seems like Keybase wins in terms of features, but Signal has a much bigger network and is therefore perceived as more of a known entity, security wise?

</comment><comment><USER37> For some critique of Signal, Drew DeVault wrote this up several months ago: "I don't trust Signal" \- [https://drewdevault.com/2018/08/08/Signal.html](https://drewdevault.com/2018/08/08/Signal.html)

Past discussion here on HN: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17723973](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17723973)

Just posting for discussion. For me, the fact that Signal can only be downloaded via Google Play and not F-Droid. is a major blocker.

For that reason I run a Matrix/synapse instance and that's what I use for day to day text based communication. Matrix clients have some issues and aren't as user friendly as Signal's IMHO, but they're getting better and better.

That said, I don't think federation actually contributes to security. My instance is firewalled off from being discoverable by the larger Matrix community, mainly because my instance is for close friends and family.

I can't really comment on what he brings up about the Signal founder -- not very familiar with him..

</comment><comment><USER38> I find Signal on Android handy since it can be used for sms as well.

</comment><comment><USER39> I currently use Wire. Their apps are solid, not perfect thats for sure but good enough, but most importantly I am not required to use my phone number to register an account.

</comment><comment><USER40> I think the endorsements should acknowledge that one can't necessarily trust the rest of the smartphone software and hardware.

<comment><USER41> > I think the endorsements should acknowledge that one can't necessarily trust > the rest of the smartphone software and hardware.

Welp, guess I should just send my messages in the clear then rather than make them work for them

<comment><USER40> Recommending a solution for a critical need without communicating the limitations doesn't seem like good engineering practice.

<comment><USER41> > Recommending a solution for a critical need without communicating the > limitations doesn't seem like good engineering practice.

Good security advice is about harm reduction.

Security advice is not "bad" because it does not achieve perfect security.

Using Signal instead of an app the government can access through subpoenas (Facebook Messenger), that is closed source (iMessage) or transmits in the clear (traditional SMS) is good advice because it reduces harm and reduces risk.

<comment><USER40> We can't know all threat models and options of everyone who is the audience of such broadcast endorsements, such that we can engage in noble lies and confidently call it "harm reduction".

(Simple scenario: journalist was told by experts that such-and-such is secure, without qualification, so journalist uses it in some ways that they would not, had they been given a more accurate characterization.)

<comment><USER41> How is saying "I endorse using Signal" a lie? Seems like that's a statement of opinion.

<comment><USER40> You can see my first comment in this thread, which you took exception to. This is a very important topic, and I'm not debating recreationally. There is a long and ongoing history of security advocates overstating security, to people who really need it, and that's the sort of thing that can get people killed, positive movements ended, etc. Anyone advocating right now should be aware of that, and not keep making the same mistakes.

<comment><USER41> > There is a long and ongoing history of security advocates overstating > security

I'm not sure I follow your logic. Maybe you can help me out a bit?

There are four quotes on the linked page. Which one do you feel overstated the security of Signal, and why?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> what kind of metadata does signal generate by using google cloud services (or whatever) to send push notifications?

<comment><USER43> here you go [https://www.reddit.com/r/signal/comments/ap9lin/gcm_notifica...](https://www.reddit.com/r/signal/comments/ap9lin/gcm_notification/)

Its amazing how paranoid some people are

<comment><USER25> There are also these kinds of slip ups: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18234849](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18234849)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Signal, or what any chat system should be : E2E encryption, user friendly, Open Source, Vendor neutral.

What else ?

<comment><USER45> What it's missing: federation, a stable/open protocol

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The pin on signal is not secure at all. easy to brutefoce bypass on existing signal users

<comment><USER46> This won't get the history of the conversation though. And if doing this on a new device, the security number will change, and others will be notified.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> "endorsed by criminals" is now marketing blurb :')

</comment><comment><USER48> Oh really? Endorsed by a guy who is working for Putin? cool.

<comment><USER35> I hear the commies endorse the use of air for breathing too. We need to find alternatives asap.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Has the experience improved much recently? I switched a couple of years ago to using Wire, since it seemed like a smoother experience (important for trying to convert people).

<comment><USER49> I think the experience has improved a lot recently, and it's grown much more popular than Wire, so you may find your friends already on Signal rather than needing to convert them. For comparison, Wire for iOS has 204 ratings (3.9 stars) in the App Store, while Signal for iOS has 190,000 ratings (4.7 stars).

<comment><USER9> Hmm... perhaps I'll try Signal again. It looks like they've add videos calls since I seriously used them too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> How long until one or more of USA/China/Russia has a device to crack such e2e encryption? Secret quantum computer, perhaps?

<comment><USER51> It would be incredibly surprising for such a device to be created in secret. Moreover, there are versions of public key encryption that can not be broken by a quantum computer.

<comment><USER50> Makes sense. There would probably need to be a kind of intellectual hoarding and misdirection amongst leading academics in quantum computing research. Yet one would have to assume such research does take place in private by governments.

Does signal use the quantum-proof variety of encryption?

<comment><USER51> No, nobody uses quantum-proof encryption yet (usually called post-quantum encryption). Google and others have experimented with it for https and it worked fine, but nothing is deployed yet and standardization has barely began. So if someone records your traffic today, they will be able to decrypt it in a couple of decades.

<comment><USER19> > Google and others have experimented with it for https and it worked fine

To be clear, Google didn't experiment with actually using post-quantum crypto. Their experiment was to figure out what was the largest key sizes that browsers and networks would accept before you start degrading connections. Their "post-quantum keys" were just padding bytes. This was gone through in the Bernstein and Lange talk this year at 35C3[1]. This is a good thing, given the history of the security of post-quantum candidates[2].

[1]: [https://youtu.be/ZCmnQR3_qWg?t=1457](https://youtu.be/ZCmnQR3_qWg?t=1457) [2]: [https://youtu.be/ZCmnQR3_qWg?t=208](https://youtu.be/ZCmnQR3_qWg?t=208)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Amazing. Endorsed by Snowden makes me trust this so much

"Snowden didn't just steal information about "domestic spying" operations. The truth is Snowden apparently stole many more files related to what most in the intelligence community and beyond see as legitimate, overseas spy operations — including anti-terror operations and those targeted against the U.S. by our enemies. He reportedly focused his theft on the most sensitive "Level 3" data that includes lists of sources and methods in China, Russia and Iran.

This is the type of information that "could invalidate America's entire intelligence enterprise if it were placed in the hands of an adversary," Esptein writes. He suggests Snowden would have known Booz-Allen Hamilton in Hawaii (his last contractor position) was one of the few contractor facilities that had the authority to hold "Level 3" data and former co-workers believe he took the lesser paying gig"

<comment><USER53> The data Snowden took relative to his access level does not support your theory.

The most amazing thing about Snowden case was his access to information. Normally NSA employees have a combination of clearances: TS (top secret) and then SI (signals intelligence), TK (talent keyhole), and Gamma (with subcompartments).

But then they gave some IT staff like Snowden special "root access like" clearance called PRIVAC (Privileged Access) where people had access to all data collected. Snowden had open list of live feeds from all active operations, drone feeds and other information regardless of classification all over the world.

PRIVAC didn't have two man rule, restricted access to contractors or compartmentalization until Snowden came out and Senate hearings happened. NSA clearly prioritized cost and data collecting over security.

If there was actual spy in the same position as Snowden, or if Snowden really had the intention to spill everything to harm the US, the damage done would be catastrophic.

<comment><USER54> > The data Snowden took relative to his access level does not support your > theory.

How do you know that? The only people who know what Snowden took are Snowden, the journalists, the NSA, and the foreign intelligence agencies who took the data from the journalists.

Nobody thinks Snowden had the intention to damage the US. He was just so stupid that he did it accidentally.

<comment><USER55> "It's impossible to know what he took, therefore your claim about what he took is baseless.

MY claim about what he took, however:"

<comment><USER54> We know at the very least that he took lists of Chinese targets and when they were compromised and gave them to the SCMP, who reported in broad terms about the content of the lists. We know he gave a list of war zone and drug trafficking targets to Greenwald because he reported them. We know he gave a list of Western European political targets to Greenwald because he reported them as well. We have no idea what Russian target lists he took.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


New developer requirements to protect our platform - <AUTHOR> https://blog.twitter.com/developer/en_us/topics/tools/2018/new-developer-requirements-to-protect-our-platform.html <comment><USER2> As someone who is apparently "old", I continue to not understand how Twitter has managed to trick an entire generation of developers into believing they need Twitter's permission to develop a third-party Twitter client. Has the law changed in some noticeable way to make reverse engineering the official Twitter client and extracting their first party keys for purposes of interoperability suddenly illegal? We used to do this _all the time, at scale_ before Twitter's invention of the "API key", and the only recourse the service has is to try to detect weird usages of their backend and then punish the users... something that tends to be something of a PR nightmare. (FWIW, I am totally willing to believe the issue is that Apple won't accept them, but then that is Apple being the asshole, and we should be looking into ways of making that market collusion illegal, assuming of course that it isn't already.)

<comment><USER3> I can see two counter arguments. One, you don't want to go with Twitter, or any large corporation for that matter, to court. They have a legion of lawyers and you don't. They have budgets for these kind of cases, you don't. Even if any dispute you have with them won't make it to a court you'll lose precious time and resources consulting with lawyers in order to answer their C&D demands, which I guess at some point will escalate if you keep ignoring them.

Then you have the practical part. Would you really base your project on reverse engineering and hacking a third party service? It will end up being an arms race. Everytime they change something you'll race to hack it again. In the meantime your service will be inoperable. If your user base is in the tens of thousands that will kill you. I can't think of any reliable service that every couple of months or so would go offline even for a few hours until the developer finds a way to circumvent whatever countermeasure Twitter came up with.

So you play nice and follow their rules. Even if they suck, which by the way is the main reason why Twitter lost all the love of developers and has stagnated for the last years.

<comment><USER4> > It will end up being an arms race. Everytime they change something you'll > race to hack it again. In the meantime your service will be inoperable.

They (any service with a large user base across many devices) are at a serious disadvantage of not being 100% in control of app upgrades across the legion of devices and app versions supported. They are just as likely to break a legitimate user's app as yours (even higher, imo). I don't think the technical war is nearly as difficult as you imagine. On the legal side, you might be right depending on the geographical location of the dev.

In regard to the original question, I think we'll begin to see a shift in that direction as these services tighten the screws. Like youtube-dl, Youtube++ app is a relief to anyone who watches much YT on a phone/tablet. It's easily sideloadable even on iOS and actually puts the user first with regard to permanently settable playback speed and ability to hide algorithmic suggestions among many other tweaks. It's based on a year+ old version of the official app and is still working fine even after being DMCAd. So you know they got Google's attention, but haven't had to update the app in almost a year. I also see these gray area tools as an important check on the power of the platforms to not abuse their dominance. Like jailbreaking was before Apple started incorporating many of the more popular tweaks into iOS itself.

<comment><USER5> > They (any service with a large user base across many devices) are at a > serious disadvantage of not being 100% in control of app upgrades across the > legion of devices and app versions supported. They are just as likely to > break a legitimate user's app as yours (even higher, imo).

Yes they are? Alternative apps use the official API, their internal services use their internal API's, which are also likely versioned. So if the internal DM API has an upgrade, the website can change to the new version while the mobile app is using the previous version.

youtube-dl and Youtube++ are already solved problems. The fact that you have to sideload it means the user market is tiny and at this point I highly doubt YT even cares anymore.

> I also see these gray area tools as an important check on the power of the > platforms to not abuse their dominance.

This is the weirdest thing you've said in a whole lot of weird things. YT proved how powerful it was via demonetization of so many creators videos. Nobody could do anything about it, primarily because the real power behind YT is that _creators_ don't have an alternative, not users.

<comment><USER4> > Yes they are? Alternative apps use the official API, their internal services > use their internal API's, which are also likely versioned. So if the > internal DM API has an upgrade, the website can change to the new version > while the mobile app is using the previous version.

I think we might be speaking about different things. My original point was that reverse-engineering Twitter's private APIs (used by the first-party app) is not as difficult to do or maintain as the parent suggested. My reasoning was that for the foreseeable future there will be legitimate users on non- updated clients, forcing Twitter to choose between disabling those clients or letting your 'cloning' of those apps' API calls continue to function.

> This is the weirdest thing you've said in a whole lot of weird things. YT > proved how powerful it was via demonetization of so many creators videos. > Nobody could do anything about it, primarily because the real power behind > YT is that creators don't have an alternative, not users.

Maybe I wasn't clear. I'm not speaking about creators-vs-YT, but consumers-vs- YT in terms of anti-user restrictions in the YT app and website. Issues that grey area tools alleviate and therefore provide the only effective check on YT's ability to take them further. Just as abusive ads and tracking has caused a jump in adblock usage. The harder it gets to enjoy YT content through the first-party app, the more people will take the time to discover alternatives.

The concept generalizes to Twitter or YT or any platform (or creative industry) that achieves ubiquity or monopoly. Even if you disagree, maybe it sounds less 'weird'.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The translation of this is: We're trying even harder to kill any and all 3rd party applications. 300 tweets per 3 hours global rate limit is bonkers. My favorite twitter app for android is probably dead after this.

<comment><USER7> On the plus side, signal to noise is about to skyrocket on Twitter.

<comment><USER8> This will make maintaining an army of bots more expensive. It does little to actually stop it.

<comment><USER9> So you don't believe price effects the creation and maintenance of bots?

When maintaining an army of bots becomes more expensive than the amount of money they are making from it, they will stop doing it.

<comment><USER10> Having dabbled in the space a bit: (on the less-malicious side, scraping for archiving, I imagine pro bot-writers are far beyond me.)

There's an upper bound to "bot complexity"; that being the complexity you want to impose on a normal user. For many sites (e.g. instagram) it's often easier to just "pretend to be a normal user" and hit it from a headless browser. You lose some functionality, but at least for my needs, that's always been a sufficient fallback.

As such, I've always been of the opinion that the primary function of API limitations is to punish/limit/extract more money from the good participants.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> How long before we go back to dodgy apps that just ask for the user's email and password, if regular API access is so heavily restricted? I know there's an npm package out there for my bank that runs a headless browser and requires full credentials, which is terrifying.

<comment><USER12> I'm lost - how does what your bank does and what Twitter does connect?

<comment><USER11> Twitter is currently locking down their API and making it harder for developers to access. My bank doesn't even have an API, but developers still gain programmatic access to it, only they ask users for their full credentials instead of limited, monitored, and revocable API access. My concern is that Twitter's new restrictions, and restrictions like them, will push apps towards just collecting a user's login credentials.

<comment><USER13> How is running a chrome headless any different than running it normally, that's how you login to your account, don't you?

<comment><USER11> It's exactly the same thing, which is why it's bad. When I log into e.g. CoolQuiz[0] on quizzes.cambridgeanalytica.com with Facebook using OAuth 2, it requests a limited list of permissions from Facebook, which are shown to a user, and which don't include things like like resetting the user's password or changing the user's email address. It gets back an access token which can _only_ be used for doing those things, and Facebook can track what's done with that access token, in the case that e.g. CoolQuiz uses it to read personal information from all a user's friends and microtarget advertising during a US election. Headless chrome is indistinguishable from a normal user, which means it can do absolutely anything a user can do and can't be tracked.

[0] probably doesn't exist, just a hypothetical example

<comment><USER13> Right, i missed the oauth2 scoping aspect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> _The new default limits for each endpoint are outlined below and will apply in addition to existing user-level rate limits for these actions. By default, an app (across all of its users) will be limited to: \- Tweets & Retweets (combined): 300 per 3 hours \- Likes: 1000 per 24 hours \- Follows: 1000 per 24 hours \- Direct Messages: 15,000 per 24 hours_

They write that they can lift this requirements for certain apps. But any new 3rd party twitter client is pretty much toast.

<comment><USER15> This is per-user, not per-entire-app-user-base, AFAIK

<comment><USER16> No, this is per app.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> That sounds like the end of a lot of API use for small players... Review is noticeable hurdle for small/private projects, and at the same time services serving many small users will easily have trouble with the rate limits, unless they make it easy to get those raised (which is possible, but I'd be skeptical).

</comment><comment><USER18> Instagram did this a long time ago with their API - they require you pass a Permissions Review [0] where you submit your featureset along with a website landing page (ex. for a product offering) for review by a human who then can accept or deny your application.

[0] [https://www.instagram.com/developer/review/](https://www.instagram.com/developer/review/)

<comment><USER19> This is also the approach Facebook has taken in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica debacle.

Everything has shifted back to the walled garden approach. Twitter had destroyed a wide ecosystem of applications that promoted their brand several years ago via a similar approach. FB has done (and may be again doing) the same.

The message remains clear: don't build your business on another business without contracts and guarantees. When the utility of having you as a promotional instrument wears off, they will dump you.

<comment><USER18> > don't build your business on another business without contracts and > guarantees

Or even with them: [https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/21/twitter-smytes- customers/](https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/21/twitter-smytes-customers/)

<comment><USER20> That's... amazing.

These two tweets really show just how WTF this was

> A vendor notified us of their acquisition at 6am this morning and shut down > their APIs 30 minutes later, creating a production outage for npm (package > publishes and user registrations). The sheer unprofessionalism of this is > blowing my mind.

> It takes weeks to negotiate and sign an acquisition. You didn't find out at > 6am. You couldn't give us a week? Even a couple of hours to take your > service out of our critical path and avoid an outage? Fucking shocking > behavior.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> A common workaround after Twitter attempted to kill third party client apps was to have users register their own "app" and insert the API keys. So this will put a stop to that.

<comment><USER22> These new limits seem specifically designed to continue allowing that workaround. 300 tweets per three hours is about the upper limit of what a single user would do, so if you're registering a developer account just for personal use you can do that without any manual review or having to demonstrate having a real product.

You only require approval from twitter and a product website if you have higher usage than that, which is what would prevent you from using that workaround.

<comment><USER23> I think I see what the OP meant, here are relevant excerpts from the article. New API access:

> Beginning today, anyone who wants access to Twitter's APIs should apply for > a developer account using the new developer portal at developer.twitter.com.

Existing API keyholders:

> Eventually, all developers with existing access to our APIs will be required > to complete a developer account application in order to maintain their apps.

<comment><USER22> Maybe i'm misreading it, but it looks like you're essentially just filling out a form with your contact info and agreeing to the T&C for the initial "application".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Meantime: [https://www.dropbox.com/s/hb7c0l54r8m0zoy/Screenshot%202018-...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/hb7c0l54r8m0zoy/Screenshot%202018-07-24%2015.34.08.png?dl=0)

I know that fixing/changing/upgrading things at scale is much harder that what most people think, but man... they have done nothing to fix these type of issues, and don't tell me is not something easy to fix.

The other day a journo complained on twitter about the problem of dealing with crappy messages: [https://twitter.com/sarahfrier/status/1020512187322789888](https://twitter.com/sarahfrier/status/1020512187322789888)

So in less than an hour, I had a prototype to help to filter those type of messages: [https://www.dropbox.com/s/z914olzgn68v660/Screenshot%202018-...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/z914olzgn68v660/Screenshot%202018-07-21%2008.57.01%20%281%29.png?dl=0)

If a random dev can do this, why they can't fix it?

I like twitter, and I'm genuinely curious why some of these seemingly easy to fix problems are not taken care.

<comment><USER23> What are we supposed to be seeing in your second screenshot? I just see an array of DMs, what's being filtered?

<comment><USER24> Yeah, sorry. You are right is not showing anything else besides the API result.

But is trivial to return a secondary, already parsed array. I haven't used the API in a while and was just seeing if I could achieve that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> How would this impact a service like Buffer? Limiting posting 300 tweets per 3 hours certainly wouldn't be feasible, given the number of customers they have...

<comment><USER17> The existing large players probably already have their exceptions worked out, or will very soon.

Want to join that space? Gotta be lucky with review/limit raise request I guess. It's possible they just want services to start small and act legitimate to raise the bar for "bad apples" and will raise the limits easily afterwards, we'll have to see.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I know a lot of the conversation about the API separates out good guys and bad guys, i.e. spammers.

But I'm more and more thinking that Twitter and other platforms should consider marketing automation to be a form of spam. Once you start questioning that there isn't a human behind the human account you give up on human interaction.

So yeah, maybe there's some vanity metric that marketing automation props up for companies like Twitter. But underneath that vanity metric, the real quality of the site is being diminished.

</comment><comment><USER27> This is basically "know your customer" for an API. It's episode N in "why the Internet can't have nice things." If you make a technology available at scale, it will be abused.

Compare with email spam countermeasures making it more difficult to set up a email server that other email providers will accept mail from. Or malware resulting in the rise of app signing and app stores.

</comment><comment><USER28> No more free $ETH giveaways. Just darker, more deceptive black hats.

</comment><comment><USER29> Well, I guess my movie quiz bot (@whattheshot) which turns 8 in a few hours, is almost coming to an end then. I had to adjust so many things the last few years that the game lost completely interest to most of my players. I was shadow-banned anyway.

My last hope is that the "review process" they talked about could really differentiate bad apps/bots and interesting bots and let them work. But I honestly doubt it will happen.

</comment><comment><USER30> Thinking through this a bit... So the end result of this move is less SPAM and higher quality content. Great! But if SPAM is a form of activity (albeit a less desirable one) and activity represents feed liquidity - which directly impacts revenue - how does this not significantly hurt the bottom line? Time to short TWTR in Q4ish.

</comment><comment><USER31> Given how many times twitter has screwed developers attempting to build things on top of their API, does anyone still care? Does anyone still think developing on twitter's API is a good idea?

</comment><comment><USER32> We've updated the submitted title from 'Twitter introduces new developer requirements "to protect our platform"'. Submitters, please leave out the editorial.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm the submitter:

This wasn't intended to be an editorial, it was intended to provide context. I believe that it's not clear from the title alone as you've included it here that it was Twitter. Yes, it's on the twitter blog platform, but so are many other things that aren't actually from twitter.

Personally, I spent some time trying to make sure the submitted title was more accurate and informative than the one on the post. I freely acknowledge that it's your call. I think you got this wrong.

<comment><USER32> According to [https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=blog.twitter.com](https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=blog.twitter.com) it's the Twitter blog site, is it not? The quotation marks seemed to convey something else, whether you intended them to or not. But since the original title was neither misleading nor click-bait it's besides the point.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> One can't know that without going to the site and working it out. Exactly that title on Medium, for example, would leave it completely unclear without visiting the article. So unless you _know_ that this is Twitter's official blog - which some people (including me) wouldn't - it's useful to have the modified title. In particular you say:

 _... since the original title was neither misleading ..._

To me the title as it stands _is_ misleading. That's why I wanted to make it clearer. <fx: shrug />

But seriously, your call. You thought it was editorialisation, intentional or not, and you changed it. I think the existing title is less useful or informative, but it's not my final decision. I've long felt that the blind reversion of submitted titles to the title of the article is misplaced and over-zealous, but as a moderator on other platforms, I know that every decision requires work, so not actually making a decision is a huge saving in time, effort, energy, and will.

 _(Several edits have been made as I try to make my points clearer. Not sure I 've succeeded, but I have no more time.)_

<comment><USER32> Ah, I see. Appreciated! I did jump to conclusions here and I apologize.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you. I'd suggest some middle ground, but it's probably too late.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Emacs Bytecode Internals (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://nullprogram.com/blog/2014/01/04/ <comment><USER2> Nice article, but I was surprised to read that array accesses are not range checked for speed concerns. The emacs byte code interpreter is not known to be a very fast one, I doubt that the range checks would make a significant difference in run time. If anything, byte codes should bring high levels of safety.

<comment><USER3> There's a JIT branch in the official upstream emacs repository. Just checkout nick.lloyd-bytecode-jit after cloning emacs from git and run `./configure --with-jit` once you have libjit (originally a part of GNU dotNET) to give it a try. libjit doesn't install a .pc file so you'll have to explicitly set the LIBJIT lib and C ./configure flags if you install libjit from source.

<comment><USER4> If you want to try out that branch, do note that lisp functions are either explicitly JIT compiled with the `jit-compile' function or JIT can be enabled globally by setting `byte-code-jit-on' to non-nil.

In my own testing I've found that global JIT seems to not help very much, and may actually be slower because of repeated compilations. Selectively compiling specific functions can give a decent speedup, though.

Also, check out Burton Samograd's emacs-jit[1], which uses a very similar technique.

[1] [https://github.com/burtonsamograd/emacs- jit/](https://github.com/burtonsamograd/emacs-jit/)

<comment><USER3> This branch being in the official repository, I took it to be favored. Do you know what's going on?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Article might need a 2014-tag.

<comment><USER6> Added. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> "People do not write byte-code; that job is left to the byte compiler. But we provide a disassembler to satisfy a cat-like curiosity."

How dare they! I will use that disassembler with my dog like curiosity.

<comment><USER8> As long as it doesn't involve dog-like comprehension[1]. Or butt-sniffing.

[1]: [https://www.flickr.com/photos/sluggerotoole/153603564/](https://www.flickr.com/photos/sluggerotoole/153603564/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> "Byte-code compilation is an underdocumented — and in the case of the recent lexical binding updates, undocumented — part of Emacs"

"People do not write byte-code; that job is left to the byte compiler. But we provide a disassembler to satisfy a cat-like curiosity."

If I was an emacs fan I'd be weary of this. What happens if the devs are hit by busses? What happens to emacs? No documentation means very little stability.

<comment><USER10> That's true for a lot of software. Do you use any SaaS? That's the worse.

<comment><USER9> The only SaaS I use personally are websites I visit. I host my own ownCloud, file storage, contact backups, and when I move into my new place I'll be setting up my own email server as well.

Edit: If you consider DNS as SaaS then I also use that but I don't need it internally for my network to function so I won't call it a dependancy.</comment></comment></comment>


Intelligent autocompletion in Vim with language servers - <AUTHOR> https://kimpers.com/vim-intelligent-autocompletion/ <comment><AUTHOR> Coc completely changed my Vim coding experience, I feel like I finally can get the best of both worlds when it comes to text editing and intelligent tooling.

Disclaimer: Post written by me.</comment>


Removing Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior from China - <AUTHOR> https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2019/08/removing-cib-china/ <comment><USER2> People are complaining a lot about how FB are enforcing things, and why they are explicit about their decision to remove these things was not based on the content, but the patterns of inauthentic activity and fake accounts.

Look what happened with Matthew Prince of Cloudflare. Relentless harassment from people who believe he should be more active in censoring his customers, especially after that last shooting. Even when he has reluctantly stepped in on some extreme cases, they still gave him no credit. Defining wrongthink is a slippery slope, and you'll never make ideologues happy. If you even try, then next thing you know, you're somehow culpable for everything you _didn't_ remove, or didn't remove quickly enough. Then you get accusations of endorsing it, because you removed X but not Y, so you must approve of Y, right?

And where does it end? "Sprint are 'literally Nazis' for allowing David Duke to have a cell phone?"

It's no wonder everyone is deathly afraid of policing based on content. The PR consequences are bad enough, but it's also likely to lead into legal problems as well.

<comment><USER3> I dunno, FB does a pretty good job keeping ISIS recruitment and child porn off its products and I don't see them getting harangued for that.

<comment><USER4> I see FB, Twitter, and YouTube accused frequently of not doing enough to take down pedophilia.

<comment><USER5> Lots of American culture skates _very_ close to pedophilia. At the extreme, there's porn that's only legal because the actors are documented adults. But there are also some hugely popular actors and musicians, who leverage child- like sexuality. And then the pervasive style for girls to dress like prostitutes.

And no, I'm not a prude. I just find it amusing. And, I admit, very sexy.

Edit: If I didn't care about this account, I'd link examples. But I do, so I won't.

<comment><USER6> > Lots of American culture

lots of what porn producers are producing you mean?

'american culture' also stipulates that it is illegal to disseminate pornographic material to minors.. but this is not being enforced at all against the US pornography industry..

-> $$$

<comment><USER5> From porn producers, yes. And on ~mainstream TV, for example Alessandra Torresani in SyFy's Caprica: [https://bestofcomicbooks.com/wp- content/uploads/2018/12/Ales...](https://bestofcomicbooks.com/wp- content/uploads/2018/12/Alessandra-Torresani-sexy-2.jpg)

Also lots of amateur content.

And just search about preteen fashion.

It's mostly about money, yes.

<comment><USER6> > lots of amateur content.

this presumes that mass media doesn't have any bearing on the culture it broadcasts to, when in fact, it is a two-way street.. and also that this is a representative sample size.

<comment><USER5> Of course it's a two-way street.

But the fact remains that "sexy young woman" is a hugely popular theme in US culture. Also in many other cultures. But the US seems particularly schizophrenic about it.

<comment><USER2> Youthfulness and pedophilia are very different things. I don't even see a hint of pedophilia in the SyFy image you posted. She looks feminine and young, but not like a child.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Interesting seeing this response from both Facebook and Twitter on the exact same day.

Guessing from this:

> Based on a tip shared by Twitter about activity they found on their > platform, we conducted an internal investigation into suspected coordinated > inauthentic behavior in the region and identified this activity. We will > continue monitoring and will take action if we find additional violations. > We've shared our analysis with law enforcement and industry partners.

that the simultaneous response was coordinated by both platforms... I'd go so far as to say that it was coordinated in order to demonstrate the capability to self-moderate ahead of the 2020 US elections.

<comment><USER8> It's likely due to this: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li_Yi_Bar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li_Yi_Bar). Which organized a widely popular anti-protest campaign about 2 days ago, the online community had about 30 million members. Members proceeded to use VPN to spam anti-HK protest posts/comments on FB/instagram/twitter. This is consistent with the behavior of this community in the past (mass trolling, mostly apolitical but sometimes political, this community is pretty nationalist to begin with).

<comment><USER9> No, Li Yi Bar is more of trolling group from self-organized netizens. They do share comfroming ideology as Chines government.

What's banned here is government organized activity.

If this is indeed from Li Yi Bar, then it should not be called government organized activity.

<comment><USER2> It does not really matter if one can prove that something is government directed, because "coordinated inauthentic" behavior is sufficient reasonable grounds to take action.

An individual expressing their own pro-government views from their own account is fine. An individual pretending to be someone else, or multiple people, is not, regardless of the content.

<comment><USER10> What about multiple people coordinating to express an unpopular opinion together, each of their own volition? You know, kind of like a protest.

Just call this what it is, subjective censorship. Of course they give a different reason to skirt by on technicality. But if it were an extremely popular opinion being shared millions of times, it would just be called a viral meme and FB and Twitter wouldn't be making subjective judgements on authenticity.

<comment><USER2> What about it? It's allowed. Do you not see the distinction? Inauthentic activity. Fake accounts. So no, this isn't subjective censorship at all, that's the point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "We're constantly working to detect and stop this type of activity because we don't want our services to be used to manipulate people." What do they think advertising is?

<comment><USER12> Most advertising is attempting persuasion, not manipulation.

<comment><USER13> Going even further, a lot of people in the advertisement industry see it as just providing a way for companies to inform consumers that their products even exist. The point of ad targeting in this worldview is to figure out who already wants to know that certain products exist, not to change anyone's mind by getting them to purchase something they don't want to.

<comment><USER14> As someone who's worked with ads campaigns, yes that's true and entirely how I thought about it, but there are so many bad apples too, those disgusting Taboola ads as an example.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Shouldn't they replace all the content with, at least, a short note saying what was formerly here was part of a "coordinated inauthentic behavior" and that the individuals representing themselves here were not real?

<comment><USER16> Hard to say if they would want those remnants on their platform, but it would be really great if these things were funneled to the FBI who published reports of state-sponsored misinformation activities so we could cite them as examples later on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> They've been doing that more transparently on r/Sino, too.

<comment><USER18> Part of Reddit is essentially owned by the Chinese government.

<comment><USER17> Really? Where's that documented?

<comment><USER19> [https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/11/reddit-300-million/](https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/11/reddit-300-million/)

<comment><USER17> Thanks, I'd forgotten about that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Algorithms to detect algorithms. The latter have to become more and more genuine and authentic in order to fool the former which are forced to become better and better ... Soon the genuineness, authenticity and complexity of the latter will exceed Shakespeare writing his plays (some say even that was a fake - in this case i subscribe to Marlowe theory) and we, regular humans, will be left in the dust... Too stupid a post - yea, that is a real human, let it through :)

</comment><comment><USER21> I find the obvious propaganda (like this) both amusing and useful (well in this case not very useful).

It exercises the immune system against the ever flowing rubbish that is so much of the Internet, Press, Politician bit dribble...

In this case it was so very obvious that it wasn't that useful. I'd be happy to see it still there to give me a laugh.

Also a bit insulting, these guys seem to assume that I'm a weak minded fool who will get taken in by this obvious nonsense.

<comment><USER22> The point of propaganda isn't actually to promulgate a lie that obscures the truth. It's to promulgate a lie that people will repeat. It may eventually reach a scale where it can eclipse the truth, but by then it's generally done its job.

You may not be a weak minded fool, there surely are SOME people who are who will be genuinely moved by the now-banned content. Those people will then repeat credulously an idea, making it easier for folks who know better to repeat an idea. That's generally how propaganda starts. Eventually it becomes unquestionable.

<comment><USER23> There are many purposes of propaganda, a term which is not synonymous with falsehoods. Some propaganda tells the truth, and some lies. Some propaganda merely conveys a sentiment that is neither true nor false.

Consider _" Loose lips sink ships"_ or _" Uncle Sam Wants YOU"_ Those are both _classic_ propaganda lines and neither is promoting a falsehood.

<comment><USER22> > Consider "Loose lips sink ships" or "Uncle Sam Wants YOU" Those are both > classic propaganda lines and neither is promoting a falsehood.

I agree with this and these are good examples of what I was talking about.

I was responding specifically to the propaganda at hand and MikeGale's comment, "Also a bit insulting, these guys seem to assume that I'm a weak minded fool who will get taken in by this obvious nonsense."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> To understand the bigger picture of this propaganda campaign on Hong Kong's protest, check out an allegedly leaked instruction on how China controls the media (picture in Chinese and translation to English [1], transcribed in Chinese [2]).

[1]: [https://www.reddit.com/r/HongKong/comments/csj4ca/chinas_pro...](https://www.reddit.com/r/HongKong/comments/csj4ca/chinas_propaganda_strategy_for_the_hong_kong/)

[2]: [https://pastebin.com/anMtU0Lz](https://pastebin.com/anMtU0Lz)

Edit: it is interesting to see that a sibling comment of mine [3] on another thread on Twitter's reaction got overwhelming upvotes, while this comment on FB's reaction got a downvote.

[3]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20742525](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20742525)

<comment><USER25> > _Edit: it is interesting to see that a sibling comment of mine [3] on > another thread on Twitter's reaction got overwhelming upvotes, while this > comment on FB's reaction got a downvote._

Yes, it's almost as if different people -- with different opinions -- read and reacted to two comments posted 5 hours apart on separate threads.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Lol if they ever do this because of US interference.

</comment><comment><USER27> I wonder when the US and other Western countries finally start cracking down on China and Russia with harsh sanctions for all the manipulation they're doing.

Oh wait, they can't, as all manufacturing was outsourced to China and that would be the first thing China cuts off...

Sarcasm aside: how can the West possibly react on the events of the last years?! There's not many options available any more.

<comment><USER28> Great question. I've been dealing with APTs from Russia (and to a lesser extent China) for two years now, and there is nobody out there to help independent sites.

GDPR recently drove us to build our own application level firewall from scratch, which turned up behavior that is never reported by CloudFront or Google Analytics - those services are only hiding the severity of the problem.

<comment><USER29> Maybe a silly question, but what is an APT?

<comment><USER30> Advanced Persistent Threat - a hacking group that finds an open door (or creates on by phishing), gains access, spreads little backdoors and malicious code into a bunch of machines, any of which, if removed, can be re-created by the others. Not easy to detect, _very_ hard to get rid of once infected. Many groups have differences in the tools they use, which enables those in the know to say "Oh, that's APT X" when they look at an infection.

You may have heard of "Fancy Bear". That's one APT out of Russia.

For more information, see [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_persistent_threat](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_persistent_threat)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Like every other Conservative party in the world doesnt do the same? This is my problem with these actions. They are selective based on political affiliation.

I dont care if they are communists, socialists, or the run of the mill capitalists. The only reason twitter and facebook still exist in their current form, is because the poltical establishments all over the world have worked out to leverage them for their advantage.

Politics has not escaped the disruption that other industries have suffered. Its like any other targetting advertising campaign. How are mining companies who put out poltical properganda too undermine environmental movements any different?

[https://www.theguardian.com/australia- news/2019/mar/08/natio...](https://www.theguardian.com/australia- news/2019/mar/08/national-disgrace-glencore-coal-campaign-revelations-prompt- calls-for-reform)

</comment><comment><USER32> While this is not going to be a popular opinion, you have to give credit where credit is due to Trump. Without his campaign to crack down on Chinese practices (including Huawei) and bringing massive attention to China via the active trade war and tariffs I doubt social media such as FB and Twitter would in-acting these policies. He brought political pressure onto China where there was little to none by previous administrations.

<comment><USER33> Maybe it's the conspiracy theorist in me, but I see the exact opposite: there are a lot of people who believe that "coordinated, inauthentic behavior" on social media platforms allowed Trump to win the 2016 election, and that a crackdown on anything perceived to be "coordinated and inauthentic" will prevent him from doing so again in 2020. To me, this just feels like a cynically convenient excuse to get ready to remove content arbitrarily in advance of next year's election cycle.

<comment><USER32> I actually argue that the social media campaigns were much more negative against him. Google literally had a all-hands (leaked video) after the election where Brin and C-level executives were activists against Trump and conservative news outlets. Brin called the election results "offensive".

<comment><USER16> He did many offensive things, it's not really in dispute. It isn't a secret that he thrives on controversy. It's also not in dispute that foreign actors took advantage of the social media structure to stoke animosity and resentment ahead of the elections (at least, not in dispute among anyone serious). Execs in silicon valley would be correct to be horrified at what their infrastructure was used for and the results.

The FBI has posted many examples of the propaganda. It was not "much more negative" against Trump. That's a falsehood.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> "We're taking down these Pages, Groups and accounts based on their behavior, not the content they posted."

Hmm...

<comment><USER35> FB doesn't want to be a content police, behind the principal of freedom of speech. They're instead looking at metadata that reveals that it's fake and attempting to pursue an agenda. I am certainly no FB apologist, but I think the language of 'coordinated inauthentic behavior' is a really smart one that well defines the problem.

<comment><USER36> The phrase is so vague as to be meaningless. They may as well have said "organized opinion setting".

I miss the time when there was a massive debate over the legality of removing the video Innocence of Muslims, to the extent there were op-eds suggesting that Youtube pursue an advisory opinion before removing it. Now it is all but certain that FAANG has the right to remove whatever, without question, without appeal.

And in most EULAs, certain categories of dispute go to arbitration.

<comment><USER30> Well, is "organized opinion setting" something they should allow? What if it pretends to not be organized? What if it's organized by a government? What if the "opinions" are that the government organizing the opinions would be right to oppress those with differing opinions?

Is there anywhere in there that you think a line should be drawn?

<comment><USER36> Are we going to be arguing about reductionist philosophy?

People are autonomic agents, yes. People share opinions, yes. Governments are comprised of people, yes.

The line was quite eloquently drawn during World War One when it was illegal to protest the draft. Or the Civil War.

There is no real answer to the question of whether is this immoral or moral, and thus I must voice my opinions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> > We're constantly working to detect and stop this type of activity because we > don't want our services to be used to manipulate people. We're taking down > these Pages, Groups and accounts based on their behavior, not the content > they posted. As with all of these takedowns, the people behind this activity > coordinated with one another and used fake accounts to misrepresent > themselves, and that was the basis for our action.

To suggest that the practices of facebook in general - likes, the activity feed, and various experiments that facebook has in its history - is not itself an attempt by a coordinated group to manipulate people, is itself disingenuous at best. In order to correct this to honesty, they would have to clarify that they don't care for external groups - other than those who pay for advertising services - to be permitted to manipulate people.

This take down of a few pages being followed by 15k people and its subsequent information release is itself a manipulation, to make it appear as if facebook is doing something about the glaring problems that I personally think it represents. It seems to me that in the halls of power today, there are few good actors, and this tiny morsel doesn't make facebook one of them, and does nothing about the manipulators on their platforms that are beyond their ability to take down, despite self-serving dishonesty from so many groups.

In other words, what a skillfully crafted news release from facebook, give that marketer a raise.</comment>


How to Try the Ancient Art of Spearfishing in Colorado - <AUTHOR> https://www.5280.com/2019/04/how-to-try-the-ancient-art-of-spearfishing-in-colorado/ <comment><USER2> The "Ancient" art of spearfishing requires a wet suit, snorkel, and spear gun? I don't think that word means what you think it means.</comment>


Apple applies for magnetic/sonic sharing patent - <AUTHOR> http://www.patentlyapple.com/patently-apple/2011/04/apple-invents-new-peer-to-peer-sharing-technology-that-utilizes-unique-magnetic-compass-and-supersonic-tone-methodolo.html

<comment><USER2> Seems like an awful lot of trouble when the devices could just blink their screens at each others cameras. Do dogs howl when you're file-sharing?

I kind of miss the bad old days of IR. It used to be teh awesome when I waved my palm pilot at my printer and it printed.</comment>


Show HN: Cashbar app – your SaaS revenue in your menu bar - <AUTHOR> https://cashbar.app <comment><USER2> My first thought was "oh, this will contribute to already high anxiety levels", mostly because I remember how I reacted to MRR changes:

\- MRR went up a bit: "Great, we're on track"

\- MRR went down a bit: "THE END IS NEAR!!!!"

At some point, I understood that it was Loss Aversion Bias [1] at play. Once I reframed MRR movements as something fluctuating and neutral, it lost all anxiety-inducing powers.

So this might actually be fairly neat if the business owner has a reasonable approach to this metric.

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

<comment><USER3> Solo founder with a SaaS, can confirm. These reactions are REAL. This is why I first thought this app was cool, and later thought that I'm fighting myself every day not to look at my MRR too often.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Any particular reason why this isn't notarised? I realise it's another hoop to jump through (and an annual fee for Apple's developer program), but given that I'm going to connect this thing to my Stripe account it would be nice if it didn't feel like it was avoiding (minimal! easy!) security checks.

For that matter, it's also slightly misleading that you don't call it out as Catalina-only. I'd love to use it (to wit, I've just paid you for it!) but I'm sure there are still lots of folks putting off the upgrade to Catalina.

(Indie game devs especially, since Steam's upload tools are 32-bit).

<comment><USER5> Came here to say the same thing. The installation b/s gives me the impression this developer doesn't take releasing MacOS software serious enough to trust them with running code on my machine, let alone having access to highly secure things like payment gateway auth tokens.

<comment><USER6> Hey now, the notarisation priority bit has only been set for a little while, if you wanna release early/often, you can't wait around for Apple to approve your submission...

<comment><USER4> I honestly can't tell if this is sarcasm or not, but I notarise builds on commit as part of CI and it took...all of about five minutes to set up. Three of those minutes were me hunting around my desk for my 2FA phone. The whole thing is _trivial_ to automate, and I normally see notarisation times around 2-3 minutes.

Is it more tedious than just flinging something up on the web? Sure. Is it so much of an obstacle that we should give up on shipping vaguely secure software for Macs? Obviously not.

(I do have time for the argument that the $non-zero/year fee excludes a huge swath of indie/hobbyist/student developers, but that's not what we're talking about here.)

<comment><USER5> Thanks for saying this. I emphatically agree with all points but wanted to add, even if you don't have a CI/CD pipeline already, doing notorization is trivial locally.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fixed the notarization, thanks for bringing that up!

<comment><USER5> Your reply makes me feel a bunch better about your product. Keep up the good work!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Would be very useful if the website had even a single screenshot that clearly showed the app experience. Yes I know there's a video (and a rather crude clip of a screenshot at the very bottom of the page), but nothing that clearly just shows what the app looks like easily. As the author, I'd assume it shouldn't be too hard to mock it out with dummy data rather than blurring out details. If there's any motion, a gif would be ok, but clearly showing a screenshot with what the menu bar experience looks like would go a long way imho.

<comment><AUTHOR> Will add, thanks for the suggestion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Alternatively for other data you can use [https://github.com/matryer/bitbar](https://github.com/matryer/bitbar) and code your own api consumer in a shell script.

<comment><USER8> is there windows sys tray equivalent? (or taskbar)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I would love to see this also for App Store & Play Store Revenues. That would push me to pay for something like this because it's much harder to get that revenue data in real-time .

<comment><USER10> Me too, although currently the lowest resolution of reports from Apple via the API is daily sales, no way to get last 24 hours at the moment (which I would be most interested in).

<comment><AUTHOR> Don't AppAnnie do that?

<comment><USER11> AppAnnie doesn't have a special agreement with Apple. all they do is guesstimate revenue figures based on downloads/rankings.

<comment><AUTHOR> Got it, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Recorded a quick overview: [https://www.loom.com/share/412c35ddc5f944f7937629080c76d7e1](https://www.loom.com/share/412c35ddc5f944f7937629080c76d7e1)

<comment><USER12> The video is awesome! I didn't know that is possible to make a preview video in Loom. So much fun!)))

<comment><AUTHOR> Glad you liked it :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I imagine with an app like this that gives visibility into which SaaS services are making good revenue, it would be very tempting for the app developer to exploit that information and select businesses to start replicating. Or hand the info off to an associate if you want to keep up appearances. Very clever if that's what's going on here.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for stopping by:

> exploit that information

All your Stripe data is stored locally: it is not going anywhere. And I have no intention on tracking any of that.

There are plenty of tools like ProfitWell that provide in-depth Stripe data analysis for free. I simply wanted to see my own SaaS numbers. All. The. Time.

Thanks!

<comment><USER13> That is good to know that it stays local! Great app idea too. Thanks for replying.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I use CashNotify.app it seems similar

<comment><USER15> Hey @agustif, (one of) CashNotify maker here. Thanks for the mention!

This indeed looks similar to what we do since 2016 ([https://cashnotify.com/](https://cashnotify.com/)). However, $2 for that app is unbeatable. I hope it'll be sustainable.

CashNotify is more pricey, but you can add multiple Stripe and PayPal accounts. It's also a bit more "visual", supports both macOS and Windows, and it's notarized ;)

Anyway, best of luck to Stas!

<comment><USER14> Hey no problem, I think it may help some of the other HN fellow users which weren't so trusty about CashBalance.

If I remember correctly you're on the official App Stores, and also are a stripe verified partner which is a great point to be confident about the proper use of API_KEYs

And sometimes being pricey in software inspires more trust to the buyer, this is also true in any product or service you might need tough

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Launching on Product Hunt today: [https://www.producthunt.com/posts/cashbar](https://www.producthunt.com/posts/cashbar)

</comment><comment><USER16> Hey that looks interesting, do you have graphs in your product? I just installed it, looks minimalistic but I like to know if there is some kind of extended functionality that I am missing. Thanks

<comment><AUTHOR> No extra stuff: just showing your Stripe balance in your menu bar on macOS.

This was supposed to be a quiet soft-launch of v1.0 that I've just published at Gumroad. Charts and other beautifications to come, thank you for the suggestion!

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Is installing an app like this a good idea with regards to your anxiety levels?

<comment><AUTHOR> Depends on the anxiety readings :) I just like to see numbers going up. It's generally upward and onward in my SaaS ([https://karmabot.chat](https://karmabot.chat)).

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Love it

<comment><AUTHOR> My pleasure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Electron?

<comment><USER20> react native + catalyst[1] would be best for you — to prepare for the future and be multi-platform, which is what we'll be releasing in my team[2] in the next few weeks.

[1] [https://github.com/react-native-community/discussions-and- pr...](https://github.com/react-native-community/discussions-and- proposals/issues/131)

[2] [https://standups.io](https://standups.io)

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll check 'react native + catalyst' out thanks.

For now, I'm just planning to do another tiny native app for Win. Thanks!

<comment><USER20> No worries! You can basically have a native macOS app using JS — without using Swift, with the potential of having native mobile apps and web apps (react- native-web, which is what Twitter is using these days), all using the same JS codebase — over 90% code share. Happy to chat anytime. :)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Does JavaFX Spell The End Of AJAX? - <AUTHOR> http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/3676226 <comment><USER2> Why should JavaFX work if Java applets don't work? All those new frameworks are completely useless because they require the installation of plugins or executables on the client.

</comment><comment><USER3> Why invent a new language instead of using Javascript?

The goals of JavaFX are the same as the goals of Java ME and Java SE. Java ME and Java SE have basically failed to live up to their expectations. Why not fix Java ME and Java SE instead of inventing something new? And, why should we expect that JavaFX will succeed where Java ME and SE have failed?

</comment><comment><USER4> Hopefully this will end the horror that is writing Java GUI's in Swing, but I am severely skeptical of this somehow knocking out AJAX. It'll probably do well in the corporate world, where people actually use Java and where its "no code needed" approach seems to be targeted, but I can't see serious developers flocking towards it.

Of course, opinions can change when I actually see the damn thing, rather than just hear Sun guys blathering on about it, but I doubt they will.

</comment><comment><USER5> Signs point to no.

</comment><comment><USER6> No.

</comment><comment><USER7> Does it? Blogga, PLEASE.

<comment><USER8> Ha ha :) Was there something really wrong with AJAX? I gues s these products are aimed at corporate drones who want AJAX for buzzword-compliance reasons, not because they actually know anything about it.</comment></comment>


Dear Amazon, We Picked Your New Headquarters for You - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/09/09/upshot/where-should-amazon-new-headquarters-be.html <comment><USER2> We're all full up here. I hear Kansas is nice.

</comment><comment><USER3> TLDR: Denver

<comment><USER4> Or Toronto.

<comment><USER5> toronto fails affordability and space to play</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you overcome the chicken and egg problem? - <AUTHOR>

You're building a community driven site that relies on member generated content. Potential users don't want to participate unless there's content. What do you do? <comment><USER2> Make 20 different user accounts. Create 20 different pieces of content, from 20 different people. Rinse and repeat.

To a new user, it'll look like there's some serious activity, and they'll join in.

I believe this is what Quora did.

</comment><comment><USER3> I would create two separate services for each side - services that doesn't require the "egg" or "chicken".

Once you hit critical mass, you can start integrating the futures.

Let's say you want to create a "find a cofounder website".

=====Very Specific Example Here =====

For tech entrepreneurs, you might create a tool that helps with adwords or business development. Maybe a directory of similar startups in their niche & pre-typed business development sample emails.

For business entrepreneurs, maybe create a lean website testing quick app that will test if their idea is viable. Idk, fake pricing page, fake screenshot, and they'd put in their prices, features, and sales copy.

Maybe you can go even simpler and create one of those dumb quiz sites: Are you a tech cofounder or a business cofounder quizzes - make it funny and you can get email addresses on both sides of the coin. Just getting the email addresses alone can potentially help solve the problem.

</comment><comment><USER4> This isn't the answer you're looking for, but I'll give it anyway:

Reframe your site so that you don't rely on the community to power it -- make it so each user can use the product to its fullest extent without a single other user.

We had this same problem during the early planning process for our (currently just _my_ ) startup. Ultimately we realized that we were looking at the problem the wrong way. Instead of making the tool community-powered, we made it individual-user-powered. This lets us be "successful" with far, far less users.

Obviously this probably won't work for your site, but maybe it's just a useful thought exercise.

</comment><comment><USER5> In general, you to have seed one side.

Would also recommend checking out this HBR paper - Strategies for Two-Sided Markets. It's talk of the "money side" and "subsidy side" is quite good.

</comment><comment><USER6> The Reddit guys faked submissions for months until the site caught on.

</comment><comment><USER7> As other people have already posted, the founders of Quora and Reddit have admitted to generating "fake" content on their own to attract users to the site. Reddit supposedly did this for the first few weeks until it got going. I also remember reading that Quora put in a lot of hours generating the "fake" content, but it has seemed to pay off quite well.

When looking at your community, find ways that you and your friends/cofounders can easily generate lots of hiqh-quality content. It's important to set the tone of the site when you're generating the content. If you make lots of spam or low-quality content due to time constraints, the site will get a poor reputation and new users will continue the trend of making bad content. So make sure you generate the content wisely from the beginning :)

</comment><comment><USER8> Find another source of this same content.

Based on the licensing of it either: use it directly, quote and reference to it, approach the best contributors and offer to pay peanuts for their content, approach the site and pay for a bulk license.

Or just outright steal it and deal with the repercussions later :-O (It worked, albeit indirectly, for YouTube etc.)

Or if you wish to go the normal route, add an incentive. Free "pro" accounts to the top contributors, ad-revenue share (with a minimum payout set to something sensible, like affiliate programs, so you only deal with the best contributors). Or something as simple as a points system (works well at somewhere like HN & StackOverflow).

</comment><comment><USER9> Depending on the type of content you need, you could try leveraging Mechanical Turk. Or, as others have said, fake it. Also, posting a link here couldn't hurt (providing it is live).

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm tackling this problem at my startup, ParkGrades.com, by: 1\. Seeding the site with as much quality information as I possibly can (given my limited resources); 2\. Incenting users to add content through giveaways; 3\. Testing the giveaways to see which incentives work best.

Once a given area/topic has a certain amount of information, it's then much easier to promote that area/topic with additional marketing and incentives.

</comment><comment><USER11> Have a conversation with yourself and 100's of usernames. Worked for me first time I made a forum in the late 90's Within a couple of weeks the site membership was exponentially increasing and out of control.

</comment><comment><USER12> am i the only one who cringes at the thought of faking users?

<comment><USER13> Do you have a specific situation you are considering? If so, may I ask what kind of content it involves?

<comment><USER12> regardless of the content, it _feels_ like cheating. for whatever that's worth. "cringe" was admittedly an exaggeration.

<comment><USER13> No, I agree with you. Just wondering if I might be able to help you overcome an issue. If there's no issue you are working on, no big. We are in agreement.

<comment><USER11> How do we know hacker news isn't faking all this? Am I speaking to myself?

<comment><USER13> Don't be silly. I am the one speaking to myself. Really, extremely advanced case of multiple personality disorder.

(Please lead me not into humor temptation. Jokes of this sort are discouraged here and I hate when my other selves downvote me.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I think that depends in part on what type of content you are aiming for.

I did gather a few links to previous discussions on this topic (and a couple of related articles) here:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2126209></comment>


Things That Are Not Superintelligences - <AUTHOR> http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/12/27/things-that-are-not-superintelligences/ <comment><USER2> Fails at the math example. Teams of mathematicians consistently come up with novel strategies and approaches to all sorts of problems and their collective intelligence does beat the intelligence of their smartest members. See [http://polymathprojects.org/](http://polymathprojects.org/) for an example.</comment>