An actual attempt at a list of "What You Can't Say." - <AUTHOR> http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/6cwfo/middle_school_student_newspaper_runs_survey/c03iohu

<comment><USER2> _They must something that teenagers can spot as true._

Indeed. Many of these are sophomoric "truths" that a teenager might believe, but someone with more understanding would spot as falsehoods.

<comment><USER3> Which ones are false? The only one I vaguely reacted to was about how women are less adept at symbol manipulation.

I think there might be other sides of the coins and exceptions in exceptional situations to some of these, but overall, I didn't think they were falsehoods. Perhaps I'm too easily agreeable.

But defn, I didn't find them surprising.

<comment><USER4> Maybe not outright falshoods - but possibly a product of over zealous cynicism.

For example:

"Fathers being suspicious of their young daughters' boyfriends and dates is really just sexual jealousy"

Could just as easily be attributed (nowadays) to social pressure: e.g. it is a well known in pop culture that fathers are suspicious of their daughters boyfriends and so some of them are. :)

(and yeh I realise it is somewhat ironic to be disagreeing with a list of "things that cant be said" :))

<comment><USER5> Both you and the Reddit poster are overlooking the obvious evolutionary explanation. To a father, a daughter's eggs are a precious reproductive resource. A daughter who squanders her reproductive potential on lower-status mates is diminishing her father's genetic legacy. (This doesn't hold for sons, because they have a virtually unlimited reproductive capacity.)

<comment><USER4> I was just using a random example to highlight the idea he is probably wrong in portraying that as an accurate assessment.

Now we have 3 ideas - I'm inclined to agree yours has a lot of bearing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This topic reminds me of an ex-girlfriend who had a knack for saying what I deemed inappropriate things. I recall getting upset with her when said something like #4 (below) among others. For example driving through an apartment area I used to live at which had slipped down economically after the dot-com bubble burst she said "You know you are in a bad neighborhood when there are a lot of black people" ... talking about a newborn cousin "he has a big nose, like a black person" ... and some other non-racist sounding stuff that I can't remember. Even when stuff she said was statistically true or had some basis in fact she just stated it in the most matter of fact and cynical way possible that really upset me.

"4. There is no such thing as altruism. Everyone is ultimately only interested in their own pleasure. Even those who appear altruistic are doing so because it makes them feel good. No one actually cares about anyone else."

<comment><USER7> Maybe the source of altruism is selfishness, but altruism exists anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Not a surprising list. I agree with some points, and disagree with others. But this:

"6. People believe what they want to believe. Any evidence they possess is an excuse, not a reason."

Seems to pose a bit of self-referential paradox...

<comment><USER3> I didn't think it was surprising as well, but I don't know if it's because I'm older and have seen more of the world and the sort of people in it, but I know I would have been surprised at some of them as a college student, such as public schools didn't exist to teach, but as a daycare center so parents can work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I say (and believe) things from that list every day. I find it funny to provoke people and test how much they can accept.

You can guess how popular I am with friends and at parties.

Consequently, my list of things we can't say would be very different. I guess each of us has his own limits and his own taboos.

<comment><USER10> I think you are taking "can't" too literally.

I think the original sense of "can't" from pg's essay meant "things you can't say and remain in good social standing with the broader society." You are choosing to reduce your social standing on purpose by uttering these remarks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> #27. There will always be people who think they are Right and anyone who disagrees with them is Wrong. These people will espouse their views through Religion, Politics, Lists of "What you can't say", etc...

</comment><comment><USER12> Maybe stuff you can't say (and definitly should be able to say, no doubt about that), but not stuff that is (obviously) true.

I have a hard time believing that there is empirical verification for all of the things on the list. (Considering the ability of the social sciences, I would claim that - at least today - finding out whether much of what is on the list is true, is pretty much impossible. Not forever or even in principle impossible, just as things stand today impossible.)

</comment><comment><USER10> I find most of these things true by default. But I also find them things that we are obligated to strive to overcome.

And I can't find a way to express this idea of overcoming human frailty and human nature, without referencing something very much like a soul, or a spiritual reality.

If we are just meat machines, we are just going to do what we are going to do, and the rest is just philosophizing. I find myself unable to accept that, and I guess that's why I'm religious.

To be specific, Jesus talked about most of these things as being the default human condition, and said there was absolutely no way to overcome them from within the human condition. The ability to transcend default human behavior is necessarily spiritual, almost by definition.

So, I find myself mostly in agreement with this list, but my disagreement with the first item puts the rest in a different context. Human nature is immutable, unless we consider something outside the system, which I and many others refer to as "spiritual."

<comment><USER4> On of my favourite ex-girlfriends once said the following to me:

 _I have great difficulty with this whole idea of the soul. I mean it seems to simply be a way for individuals to secure themselves a much larger place in the universe than we deserve. When you think of the grand scale of things we are less consequential than a single atom is compared to the entire earth. Seeing as we cant even truly visualize that analogy the whole truth scares the crap out of us; hence the idea of a soul._

(I post that w/o wanting to derail into an argument/discussion. It always struck me as an insightful analysis of the possibilities - hence worth sharing)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Tell me again why we're listening to this guy?

<comment><AUTHOR> Tell me again why we shouldn't?

<comment><USER14> Because most of the content is insultingly inane. I don't need some single guy with no kids telling me about how

 _Love is not eternal. It is a simple state of endorphin chemistry. It serves a single evolutionary purpose. It lasts about three years._

 _Fathers being suspicious of their young daughters' boyfriends and dates is really just sexual jealousy._

 _Parents care less about their children than they do about their careers, their socioeconomic status, and what the Joneses think. That's why we have public schools instead of home education by one parent who doesn't have a "career"._

<comment> a-priori 1\. Just because a mental state like love has a known chemical or evolutionary basis doesn't make it any less real.

2\. I say the father is concerned about his daughter's mate selection because she carries his genes. She is a proxy for his reproductive success. He wants her to choose a good mate (e.g. someone who's more likely to stick around to care for the children) so his genes are more likely to survive.

3\. No comment here, but I think it underestimates the effects of social proof in a parent's decision.

<comment><USER14> 1\. My primary target of ridicule on this one was the apparently arbitrary cutoff of "three years."

2\. I'm not a parent, but what you just described is not at all what normal people would mean when using the words "sexual jealousy."

3\. I personally think it speaks to a pretty unbelievable sense of privilege; there are a hell of a lot of jobs that don't support a reasonable standard of living for a family of four on one income.

<comment> a-priori Regarding #2, that's exactly my point: the father's behaviour can be explained completely without resorting to a sort of reverse Oedipus complex.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The list has the air of, 'you're an idiot if you disagree.' I suspect the punishment that the author perceives from society has more to do with over confidence of the delivery than the content itself.

Not to say I agree with all (or even most) of those statements. All of them are highly debatable. Even the ones I agree with are not clear cut. I think that's why I do find myself upset on reading the list. I find it particularly infuriating when very complicated matters are cut down into terse one liners as though no more thought is needed.

</comment><comment><USER16> I wonder--how much of what you can't say is necessarily all that cynical? I think there might be a lot of things you can't say which are actually positive and uplifting, but only incite outrage because they question the way most people live their lives or the restrictions they place upon themselves.

15, 18, 21, 22, 23, and maybe 27 are the only items on the list which will actually shock people, and 18 and 22 will only shock liberal people. I can think of a lot of claims that are more shocking.

</comment><comment><USER17> "They must be something that society will punish you for saying...in any degree from social disapproval..."

 _Social disapproval?_ What a ridiculously low bar. We might be better off trying to come up with a short-list of plausible claims that _don't_ cause a significant number of people, somewhere in one's society, to disapprove of anyone making them.

</comment><comment><USER18> Honestly, I could tell most of the things in that list to pretty much anyone I know without shocking them. Including my grandma.

"Communism would never work" ? Gee, I think there are actually more people in the western world who would actually be shocked if they were told otherwise!

<comment><USER6> I think you missed the point of that one

"Communism would never work, because no one with power is ever willing to share it. However, the reason we were taught to hate it was because it was a threat to our masters."

<comment><USER18> Ouch, you are right. This is perhaps the only one that might shock one or two persons ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> All items on this list can be summed up to : We always act out of self- preservation.</comment>


Regulators Will Excuse Venture Firms From Rules, Patricof Says - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=ax0nkbJLGf08

<comment><USER3> Bernanke said it very well at last weeks' House Fin'l Svc's Cmt'e hearing - <USER2> shouldn't matter how company is structured or what industry it is considered to be a part of, it matters how big and interconnected firm is.

What if some VC/PE company becomes "too big to fail"?

Who would have have thought that GE and GM will become financial services companies at some point?

<comment><USER4> Hmm. How about we shut down organizations that are "too big to fail"?

After all, regulators world-wide have pretty much demonstrated that they're incapable of stopping such failures. The regulated companies had worse failures and were more likely to fail.

Of course, we should start with govt agencies and affiliates (I'm looking at you Fed) s that are too big to fail....

<comment><USER3> I kind of agree... but how would you do it in a controlled way is absolutely incomprehensible question...</comment></comment></comment>


How did Orion withstand temperatures twice the melting point of steel? - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2014/12/5/7339431/nasa-orion-heat-shield-molly-white-engineer

<comment><USER2> For those who are curious about the answers, but don't care about the 90% filler that this article is made of:

\- they had documentation on the apollo shields, but few people who'd actually worked on it

\- NASA redeveloped Avcoat, a combination of fiberglass and high-tech plastics, that was used, in an earlier form, for Apollo's heat shield

\- if it worked as intended, about 20 percent of the shield burned up on the way down

In addition to being almost entirely filler and answering the titular question for no good reason whatsoever only in the last 25% of the article; none of the numbers are in SI.

I really hate modern journalism.

<comment><USER3> In the following film, you can watch them make and test the Apollo ablative heat shields and capsule blankets.

Apollo Spacecraft Status Report #2 - 1966 NASA Educational Documentary - WDTVLIVE42 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mk5QI0-k6nc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mk5QI0-k6nc)

> I really hate modern journalism. In my opinion, the journalism of the 60's > wasn't any better. Technical matters have always been simplified to a degree > that scientifically educated people find distressing. At least today, the > internet gives the interested person access to source documents nearly as > easily as depicted in "Star Trek".

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> A much more substantive article:

[http://spaceflightnow.com/2014/11/05/engineers-recommend- cha...](http://spaceflightnow.com/2014/11/05/engineers-recommend-changes-to- orion-heat-shield/)

 _The Orion heat shield's titanium skeleton and carbon fiber skin was fabricated by Lockheed Martin — the craft's prime contractor — in Colorado. The skeleton was shipped to Textron Defense Systems in Massachusetts for installation of a fiberglass-phenolic honeycomb structure._

 _More than 330,000 individual cells make up the honeycomb, and Textron technicians — using a special dispensing gun — filled the cells by hand with a material called Avcoat._

 _The Avcoat insulation is supposed to ablate away during the Orion spacecraft's re-entry, protecting the underlying structure from searing temperatures. The Apollo moon capsule used the same type of manually-applied material for its heat shield, and it worked so well Lockheed Martin and NASA decided to dust off the design._

 _But a review of the heat shield on the Orion spacecraft set for launch Dec. 4 revealed the Avcoat was slightly more uneven than expected, according to Jim Bray, crew module director at Lockheed Martin, Orion's prime contractor._

</comment><comment><USER5> Um wild guess here, but. By using something that isn't steel? Also intelligence insulting fluff articles have no place on HN.

</comment><comment><USER6> The part about knowledge like heat shield technology, rotting away, is kind of disappointing. It seems that's at least one area that would be under continuous development and the art would only be improving, not retreating.

<comment><USER7> There was a similar article some time back about attempts to retrieve and study Rocketdyne F-1 engines from the first-stage of the Saturn V rockets from the Apollo missions because understanding of their design was lost. I can't find the article, but someone did point out that in many ways the Space Shuttle's liquid-fueled engines were superior, albeit less powerful. It's just a fact that we haven't done anything quite like a manned moon mission in decades and a lot of that experience is unique, and is now "retired". I agree it's sad to see. I've been reading a few books on the computer systems from the program and it's fascinating - I recommend Digital Apollo if you're interested in what we still know about that aspect.

<comment><USER8> May be this one - [http://arstechnica.com/science/2013/04/how-nasa-brought- the-...](http://arstechnica.com/science/2013/04/how-nasa-brought-the- monstrous-f-1-moon-rocket-back-to-life/) ?</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Adblock Analytics - <AUTHOR> https://www.adblockanalytics.com/ <comment><USER2> Do you have a contingency plan if your script/domains start getting blocked by the very AdBlockers they're trying to track? For example, Google Analytics is already blocked by a number of plugins (Ghostery, uBlock, Disconnect, etc.)

<comment><AUTHOR> I hope that doesn't happen because Adblock Analytics is 100% cookieless and doesn't track visitors via any method, we're only interested if ads were displayed or not, but we do have some ideas if it does happen.

<comment><USER3> If cookieless, how do you accurately aggregate/assign pageviews per visitor?

<comment><USER4> Browser fingerprinting is one possible way.

[https://panopticlick.eff.org/](https://panopticlick.eff.org/)

[edit: clarified that this is a solution, I have no knowledge as to whether that is what is done.]

<comment><USER3> Do you actually know that fingerprinting is used or is just an assumption?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> They are not storing cookies but simply relying on if an ad blocker blocks ads.js or not:

[https://www.adblockanalytics.com/ads.js](https://www.adblockanalytics.com/ads.js):

var d = document.createElement("div"); d.id='abaA'; d.style.display='none'; document.body.appendChild(d);

var abaA; if(!document.getElementById('abaA')) { abaA = 'N'; } else { abaA = 'Y'; }

[https://www.adblockanalytics.com/analyze.js](https://www.adblockanalytics.com/analyze.js):

var r = new XMLHttpRequest(); r.open("POST","[https://www.adblockanalytics.com/analyze/");](https://www.adblockanalytics.com/analyze/"\);) r.setRequestHeader("Content-type","application/x-www-form-urlencoded"); r.send("abaI="+abaI+"&abaA="+abaA+"&abaSw="+screen.width+"&abaSh="+screen.height+"&abaBw="+window.innerWidth+"&abaBh="+window.innerHeight);

Don't see any reason why an ad blocker would block them.

<comment><AUTHOR> You are correct - no cookies or any visitor tracking is being used. We only track if the display of an ad is possible. And thanks for reminding me of the screen & window JavaScript variables. They aren't being used at all.

<comment><USER6> > > open("POST","[https://www.adblockanalytics.com/analyze/"](https://www.adblockanalytics.com/analyze/"))

That's gong to cause confirmation bias.

Since you're still relying on trusting an unknown client to run your code and submit your result instead of simply parsing the server logs, you have aren't including anybody - with or without an ad blocker (either of which may include downloading ads.js straight to /dev/null) - who decides not to run that <script> tag.

> www.adblockanalytics.com/analyze/

Time to add another "IN A 0.0.0.0" record to the local resolver.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Since nobody has mentioned it yet, you can block this using uBlock Origin by adding the following to your filter list:

adblockanalytics.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Purely out of curiosity, why are you opposed to websites knowing how many of their visitors are blocking ads? I get that you're against being tracked, but if they can't find out how their revenue is being affected, then how can they decide if a change in revenue source is necessary?

<comment><USER8> I think it's mentioned in the commit on uBO: [https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/commit/ba05804060ec7c4399c...](https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/commit/ba05804060ec7c4399c8286ed7fb95f2b8f83e06#diff-2269d70bc56a54c25a78533cf13f5657R39)

But basically making external calls to any outside site leaks information (metadata). Some people really don't want want to be tracked. period.

<comment><AUTHOR> Totally understand that some people don't want to be tracked, but our service doesn't track anyone nor has any interest in doing so.

My response is also raising a question which I'd love to hear your thoughts on.

<comment><USER9> It is a form of tracking. You're tracking if the user has adblock installed. Many people install adblockers for privacy do because they don't like being a part of data that will never be used in their best interest.

<comment><AUTHOR> We're checking if the display of an ad is possible, but the only reason we're doing this is to inform the website owner of how ad blocking is affecting them. Once they have this information, a lot of good can come from it that would benefit all of that websites visitors.

<comment><USER10> You say a lot of good would come but I think it would just make them more likely to use aggressive adblock countermeasures so deflating their numbers is probably more in line with the best interest of adblock users.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm the creator of Adblock Analytics and the reason I built it is because a lot of websites seem to be struggling with determining how many of their visitors are blocking ads. I'll be around to answer any questions that might pop up and would love to receive feedback - good, bad or otherwise. Thank you!!

<comment><USER11> Many site stakeholders don't realize that they have choices. They can: 1) Choose to show only non-offensive ads. 2) Prompt users to whitelist their site.

You are in a good position to inform them of this. Please do.

There are good reasons people have to block ads.

<comment><AUTHOR> You nailed - this is the exact purpose of our service.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Does your service respect the Do Not Track header?

</comment><comment><USER13> Given that pagefair does this for free and already has whitelisting agreements with adblock lists, I think your pricing is too high. The only differences I see at a glance are that you break it down into per-device stats and have a tabular view.

Does your javascript snippet support subresource integrity? That would be a key selling point as pagefair's CDN was hacked and their snippet replaced to do malware redirects against users. After that incident I'm keeping the number of scripts from "startups" to an absolute minimum.

<comment><AUTHOR> From what I understand, PageFair is also running an advertising network to cover their costs and that's why they need to be whitelisted. Our solution doesn't display any ads or messages to the visitors of websites which use our service. I've heard their reporting is very basic compared to ours, but would love for someone to do a thorough review. We also offer an API.

The PageFair hack was very scary and a good reminder to all companies that require the use of external JavaScript by their users. We currently don't support subresource integrity, but it's now at the top of our to-do list. Thanks for the great feedback!

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Off topic: What server-side Node/Express middleware would you recommend to perform analytics (now that client JavaScript-based analytics is no longer reliable)?

</comment><comment><USER15> Interesting from the screenshot, that visitors with adblock have a lower bounce rate and 25% higher pages/visit.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's what we're seeing so far. Nice attention to detail.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is pretty trivial to implement in GA. I could see why people would want this service

<comment><USER17> Can you provide a link to such a method?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> From the site: "No Cookies or Visitor Tracking"

I'm wondering how you can differentiate visitors from page views without it.

</comment><comment><USER19> This could be useful, e.g. for A/B testing to see if your ad campaigns are leading people to turn uBlock back on.

</comment><comment><USER20> I'm surprised this isn't included in current tracking applications

</comment><comment><USER3> Personally, I think the pricing is way too high for what you're providing.

Also, to people who think that this very JS might get blocked by ad blockers: all of the tracking and reporting could be done (server-side) with Google Analytics nonetheless by making use of the appropriate APIs.

<comment><AUTHOR> We spent a lot of time discussing pricing and so far it's seemed reasonable, but your feedback has been noted. Definitely true that someone with the right skills, time & resources could leverage existing APIs or build a similar service.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I like the site, is that a custom bootstrap theme or a modified one?</comment>


City Trees: London Has New Artificial Trees That Eat Pollution - <AUTHOR> https://secretldn.com/city-trees-london-pollution/ <comment><USER2> It would be extremely hard not to agree with any effort that reduces pollution. However, the article appears to be a fluff/puff piece by lulling it's intended audience into a false sense of security and virtue signalling by putting air pollution on par with veganism. No amount of fake trees are going to make a difference, unless there is at least a discussion about diesel vehicles being one of the root causes. To tackle this problem requires concerted efforts, not least by holding the government to account on the, now failed, Clean Air Bill.

Clean Air Bill: [https://services.parliament.uk/bills/2017-19/cleanair.html](https://services.parliament.uk/bills/2017-19/cleanair.html)

FT Big Read: 'Air pollution: why London struggles to breathe'

[https://www.ft.com/content/9c2b9d92-a45b-11e8-8ecf-a7ae1beff...](https://www.ft.com/content/9c2b9d92-a45b-11e8-8ecf-a7ae1beff35b)

[https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/feb/05/the- trut...](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/feb/05/the-truth-about- londons-air-pollution)

Edit: The 'new' Clean Air (Human Rights) Bill was also stalled due to the parliament being prorogued.

[https://services.parliament.uk/bills/2017-19/cleanairhumanri...](https://services.parliament.uk/bills/2017-19/cleanairhumanrights.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> I like this city trees idea a lot.

Probably less practical - at least for the diamond-creating part, more of an art project - is the Smog Free Project by Daan Roosegaarde. It collects smog particles from the air, which are then to be turned to diamonds and sold to the public to raise awareness.

[https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/06/why-turning-smog- into...](https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/06/why-turning-smog-into- diamonds-isn-t-as-crazy-as-it-sounds/)</comment>


Ask HN: Can we discuss about Martin Fowler's "Distributed Data Mesh" vision? - <AUTHOR> I'm referring to this Martin Fowler's blog post [1] about Distributed Data Mesh, posted May last year.
This is 5th time it's posted on HN [2], but all previous submission didn't generate any discussion/comments. As the article is very rich and interesting to one working with data architecture, I would love to get HN's experts' opinions on that.
Please, if you work with data processing, data warehouse, data lake, etc. do you agree with Dehghani's and Fowler's vision?
Where do you see data platforms going?
[1] - https://martinfowler.com/articles/data-monolith-to-mesh.html [2] - https://hn.algolia.com/?q=https%3A%2F%2Fmartinfowler.com%2Farticles%2Fdata-monolith-to-mesh.html <comment><USER2> Maybe you could try writing an opinionated blog post about it yourself, or an enthusiastic review of it, quoting the best bits, and submit that to HN. I've come across a lot of great stuff online from someone else writing enthusiastically about it. It does sound like you're qualified, and passionate!</comment>


Opsee Shutting Down Aug 31 - <AUTHOR> https://blog.opsee.com/shutting-down-6bd3a312ebd4#.udgqrf8g1 <comment><USER2> Wow, that's rough. Monitoring space is very crowded. Hope the team gets on to more fruitful adventures.</comment>


Kaggle will focus on oil & gas industries - <AUTHOR> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/01/01/big-data-shrinks-to-grow/

<comment><AUTHOR> [http://www.quora.com/Kaggle/Why-did-Kaggle-focus-on-oil- and-...](http://www.quora.com/Kaggle/Why-did-Kaggle-focus-on-oil-and-gas- drilling)

A related CEO quora answer</comment>


Offer HN: CarWoo CyberMonday Deal (YC S09) - <AUTHOR> http://www.carwoo.com/

<comment><USER2> This seems like a good deal and a great startup, but I'm not sure it's in the spirit of past Offer HN posts. Then again, maybe after its birth in hype and exuberance, this is what Offer HN has become.

</comment><comment><USER3> I wish carwoo would also handle leases; that'd be killer too.</comment>


Who Tried to Hack Your Microsoft Account? - <AUTHOR> http://www.7tutorials.com/who-tried-hack-your-microsoft-account-when-where-did-they-succeed <comment><USER2> I highly recommend enabling the two factor authentication feature. I got my account targeted by some botnet and was breached several times regardless of how ridiculous my password was. Of course, this all stopped the moment I started using two factor auth.

<comment><USER3> I've got some Chinese IP trying to log in to my account every 4 or 5 days at the moment it seems. Prior to that, it was a Japanese IP every few days for a couple of weeks.

Two factor auth. via my mobile is great.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Well that was amazingly useful. Someone had guessed my PW and was logging in regularly from a Windows CE device in Denver.

Very odd and confusing. Scary since my Skydrive has all sorts of personal stuff in it.

2 factor is awesome, but I always fear losing access to my account. Basically it means that if I don't have my smartphone on me, I have no way to check my email except on pre-authorized computers.

This is of course the point but it also means if I am traveling and I lose my smartphone, I have no way of contacting anyone that I know. I would be completely lost in the world and unable to reach out to anyone for help.

Of course there is the recovery code, which I have a copy of in my wallet, but that does me no good in a "traveling through city, get mugged" scenario.

It is scary how reliant we are upon technology. :(

<comment><USER5> Check the IP, if you are windows phone and your phone is syncing with exchange via the cellular data network your IP may be showing somewhere completely different than where your are. Check the owner of the IP and you'll probably see that it's your cellphone carrier.

I see the same logs, but in Washington and the IP is T-mobile's (my provider)

<comment><USER4> Some of the activity logs show "activesync", which I assume is my WP. Other log entries show logging in from Windows CE devices, which is very strange.

But yes, "datacenter" was the first thing that popped into my head.

Then of course there were the constant failed security question checks coming in at a rapid pace. I pretty much assume those are dangerous. I changed my PW to something insanely long with lots of nice junk in it and added two factor on top of that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Interesting. I'm in Colorado and last night I got regular (once every half hour) logins from "Exchange ActiveSync" in San Francisco.

Is it possible one of my (many) Live apps is doing this through an endpoint there?

[edit] I don't think justsomedood's post ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6928806](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6928806)) applies to me , all my devices were on my local network last night. It's a good thing to check though!

I've just enabled 2-factor auth, so hopefully I've removed the issue.

<comment><USER6> For anyone who hasn't set up 2 factor auth - you can use Google's app as described here: [http://www.hanselman.com/blog/SettingUpTwoFactorAuthenticati...](http://www.hanselman.com/blog/SettingUpTwoFactorAuthenticationForYourGoogleAccountANDMicrosoftAccount.aspx)

Much better than Microsoft's guide IMHO.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Needs work

\- I have a sea of successful logins. Finding a bad one in the past looks hard.

\- Location info for successful logins just says "United States", and should be more detailed up front.

Otherwise, a nice feature.

<comment><USER8> I suspect it's because the usual threat model is "overseas attacker" rather than "attacker one state over."

That said, if it's by IP, I don't see why they couldn't localize it closer, at least to an approximate state level.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I have Skype on my phone and the log is filled with that app logging in all the time (looks like every 10 minutes!), which makes this kinda useless. It would be nice if the UI had a way to trim that list down somehow. e.g., group by country, filter by successful logins.

</comment><comment><USER10> So if I have a random characters + numbers password that's reasonably long, do I actually have anything to worry about? Microsoft and Google don't allow brute forcing through their web login interfaces, do they? I keep things like IMAP and POP disabled.

</comment><comment><USER11> Terrifying - it's a shame the "Learn how to make your account more secure" link is broken. [http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/p/?LinkId=324395](http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/p/?LinkId=324395)

<comment><USER4> Works fine for me now, link followed in both IE11 and the latest FF build. FF was logged in, IE wasn't.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Thanks for posting that. I keep a throwaway hotmail account but it's the principle of the thing.</comment>


Understanding the Causes of Consistency Anomalies in Apache Cassandra [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.vldb.org/pvldb/vol8/p810-fan.pdf <comment><USER2> I think that measuring propagation delay at CL.ONE isn't very interesting because if you care about propagation delay you also don't use CL.ONE.

That said my passion is to get everything in C* off heap and get GC pauses down to single digit milliseconds. Old-gen pauses a handful of times a day with pause times 30 milliseconds or so and also nothing to write home about since it should be possible to a small old gen. All with good old CMS or G1.

From what I know it's a pretty attainable goal. The main bad actor is memtables and fast efficient off-heap memory management for memtables is easy because you can throw away all associated memory when the memtable is flushed.

That still wouldn't make using CL.ONE any better of an idea. GC pauses are one of several sources of propagation delay.

</comment><comment><USER3> "For example, in Cassandra such internal activities include the flush, also referred as minor compaction, which flushes in-memory data from the memtable to an SSTable file on disk, and may be accompanied by a substantial GC since a large chunk of memory becomes available for recycling."

So these researchers don't unfortunately understand the very basics of GC (or C* for that matter). The basic findings of their paper is to be expected given the question they asked, but the specifics of their findings should be considered suspect given the clear lack of understanding of the technologies they're interrogating.

</comment><comment><USER4> 5ms is a really long time</comment>


Tech Companies Are Deleting Evidence of War Crimes - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/05/facebook-algorithms-are-making-it-harder/588931/ <comment><USER2> The article centers around activity in Syria, but the problem is much more endemic. In the United States, Apple has consistently taken down apps providing information about US government airstrikes - including those that strike wedding processions, children, bystanders, etc. Recent efforts to identify and scrub foreign propagandists in the United States have silenced legitimate voices of domestic dissent, as foreign influence campaigns typically attempt to magnify grassroots dissenting opinions (this is true also of US foreign intelligence efforts). There's many reasons why these kinds of apps, comments, and conversations are taken down due to their content.

Fundamentally, being a gateway to information in a legal environment where the hosting the content as a curator puts you under risk creates deep incentives to whitewash content. Those forces are already present for companies which might accidentally sustain 9gag/4chan type cultures/commentary which contradicts however its productizing its platform.

Reddit is another example a company that has recently scrubbed itself of most controversial content, including content critical of or dangerous to its host's countries political and national security naratives. Twitter has started down that journey as well.

It feels like we're experiencing the growing pains of social network and hosted content boom reinvented on web technology over the past couple decades.

It's kind of amazing in retrospect how controversial some of the "mundane" applications of technology to society have been, whereas a couple decades ago most of the moral panic centered around concepts like "online dating", which to date have actually been relatively controversy scarce.

<comment><USER3> Not a surprise. Many of us grew up believing we as Americans are exceptional, that we are inherently the good guys in any international conflict.

The reality is our government has interests. Morality and interests are orthogonal, with the latter being influenced primarily by profits or some perceived direct or indirect threat to America's elite.

<comment><USER4> > _that we are inherently the good guys in any international conflict._

How else could any human or organization function if not by acting in ways they believe are right?

> _The reality is our government has interests._

The reality is _everyone_ has interests. The "government" isn't some homogeneous entity pushing towards a single plan; it's an incredibly complex network of individuals.

The nation isn't perfect, but does anyone really believe that, on net, America hasn't been a force for good in the world? What is your benchmark?

<comment><USER5> > The nation isn't perfect, but does anyone really believe that, on net, > America hasn't been a force for good in the world? What is your benchmark?

Lots of people all over the world who have been on the receiving end of US military or economic aggression enacted in the interests of the US plutocrats.

African Americans, Native Americans, most of South America, pretty much all of the Middle East and North Africa, anyone who has suffered structural violence as a result of the US's insistence on a morally bankrupt Friedman hack-job neoliberal economic ideology.

The US has done a lot of good things, but on balance I think it's done more damage and has merely replaced the British Empire as the current Anglo-sphere imperialist power.

<comment><USER6> Abusing its power to exceptionally shield itself from international justice, while at the same time practicing extraterritorial judicial reach, is also not a good sign of being a net force for good.

[https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-usa-icc/u-s-imposes- visa-...](https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-usa-icc/u-s-imposes-visa-bans-on- international-criminal-court-investigators-pompeo-idUSKCN1QW1ZH) [https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2009/0213/p05s01-woeu...](https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2009/0213/p05s01-woeu.html)

<comment><USER5> Plus, as a nation it meets its own definition of a rogue state.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The problem is that we've equated some platforms with a certain kind of media. Youtube is video, Twitter is news, Facebook is.. reality tv, I dunno. It's pretty debatable whether those platforms are the right place for the coverage of war crimes.

I'm not going to start an argument about the media not doing their job right. However, this discussion would be moot if there was a news platform on par with the above, and I don't mean Twitter. I'd love to see someone build or modernize a news outlet that isn't driven by attention or clicks as a currency.

<comment><USER8> This.

If your evidence for war crimes is Twitter, there's a problem. And the problem is not Twitter.

Twitter and Facebook posts should not be evidence of anything. That stuff is so easily faked that courts would be entirely right to laugh such "evidence" out of the courtroom.

Evidence should be gathered by appropriate authorities and kept in accordance with international standards on evidence storage.

Hint: That's not "look at this tweet I got!"

<comment><USER9> This makes no sense.

Pretty much all evidence starts out in some nonprofessional hands.

By this logic you could also say that you shouldn't record evidence of war crimes on your Android smartphone, because Android footage "shouldn't be evidence of anything" and "Evidence should be gathered by appropriate authorities and kept in accordance with international standards on evidence storage."

Videos from Facebook or Twitter can and have often been used as evidence in court.

> Twitter and Facebook posts should not be evidence of anything. That stuff is > so easily faked that courts would be entirely right to laugh such "evidence" > out of the courtroom.

What courts usually do when such things may be disputed is they ask the platform to confirm that the content in question is real. Source: I have been asked to appear in front of a judge (usually in his office to sign a written statement) to confirm the accuracy/authenticity of data from one of my platforms in the past.

I don't think there often is a dispute though, because both parties are aware this will happen and are also aware of the consequences of falsifying evidence.

Obviously that screenshot/video together with electronic traces and your statement would then be stored wherever it is they store evidence, not just on FB/Twitter.

<comment><USER8> > _Obviously that screenshot /video together with electronic traces and your > statement would then be stored wherever it is they store evidence, not just > on FB/Twitter..._

Money quote.

Twitter is not the evidence store.

Twitter is the place the evidence is gathered from. Along with numerous other sources. And no, they don't simply take your word that the footage on your platform was recorded at place X at time Y and is verified to document persons of interest A, B, and C. They take your word that a twitter post was made at time W containing video N. That's all. I think you may have misunderstood what you were signing if you thought that your signature validated and verified the content of a twitter post. (Or any internet post for that matter.)

That's what the investigations are for, investigations that I can assure you entail far more than twitter posts when you're talking about war crimes.

Crimes require evidence. Real evidence, not twitter posts.

<comment><USER10> You're completely ignoring the public pressure needed to bring about enforcement of laws against connected figures.

If you give your evidence against government officials to other government officials, good luck getting them bring a case that could hurt their career prospects by pissing off the wrong people.

To get that rolling under those circumstances, you need public pressure. Which means you need to distribute the source material far and wide, so that nobody can claim they don't believe it because they don't have access to it, and the whole internet can try to pick it apart use clues in the information to dig up more information etc.

None of that has anything to do with digital signatures or anything like that. It's a matter of seeing a video with a particular location and timetamp and then finding other documentation from other people for the same place and time, and looking up public records to verify that what you see in the video matches etc. That's how investigations work. You don't verify by having the original and some kind of signature, you verify with corroboration and the additional evidence that the original evidence leads you to.

<comment><USER11> The problem is though that a video goes viral and then gets forgotten in a time shorter than anyone can verify its authenticity. Public pressure may end up getting applied incorrectly.

<comment><USER10> People get upset about dumb stuff continuously. It's the job of the public officials to verify the information for themselves. If it's false then they can publish the information disproving it and the public pressure subsides.

Better to have the occasional tempest in a teapot than that people do nothing even when something needs doing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This article seems mostly concerned about Facebook and YouTube's opaque filtering systems, but the authors are looking in the wrong place. These platforms aren't and shouldn't be responsible for hosting violent and disturbing content - regardless of its purpose or utility. The authors themselves discuss the can of worms that open when you start accommodating the interests of some groups and not others; it isn't sustainable and it isn't possible.

Instead, this article should have focused less on the decisions of AI systems and neural networks, which can be difficult to decipher and interpret, and more on the decisions of the humans behind these tech companies. The latter is much easier to scrutinize and dissect.

I think the truly concerning initiatives are projects like Google's Dragonfly. There's absolutely nothing opaque about a search engine that will actively assist the Chinese government with whitewashing history for a billion individuals. These are the decisions that should be examined.

<comment><USER13> >Instead, this article should have focused less on the decisions of AI systems and neural networks, which can be difficult to decipher and interpret, and more on the decisions of the humans behind these tech companies. The latter is much easier to scrutinize and dissect.

I agree with your comment overall but this common assumption bothers me. We can put a debugger in a neural net, we can't put one in a human brain.

People get angry when a policy decision is made that targets them, and are told by that the people responsible that the decision was implemented with a neural net. Then they get mad at the neural net, which shifts blame away from the humans who control it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Tech companies are deleting evidence of war crimes and everything else at the behest of media companies like the atlantic.

Youtube, facebook, reddit, google search, etc have all been targeted by the atlantic, nytimes, washingtonpost, cnn, etc and bullied into scrubbing content and direct their users to "authoritative sources". Ironically enough, in china, russia and most countries, "authoritative sources" are state propaganda organs. But we are different or so I'm told. Our "authoritative sources" are independent news organizations who strangely enough push the same message with the same talking points. What a coincidence. For "independent" "news" organizations, they sure are united in the same message.

This censorship has been going on for at least 5 years now. Maybe the atlantic journalists should investigate their editors as to why the atlantic has supported censorship? Or maybe the atlantic journalists should start investigating nytimes, washingtonpost, cnn, etc. Why so many government/intelligence agency people are working in media. Why so many children of politicians ( Bushes, Clintons, McCains, Cuomos, etc ) have prominent positions in the media?

Or is the atlantic only interested in war crime evidence that suit their agenda ( pushing for war in syria, venezuela, etc )?

This article is so weird. It's like an arsonist setting a house on fire and telling everyone that the house is on fire.

<comment> 52-6F-62 What exactly are you claiming is being censored?

The media regularly investigates and reports on itself.

The press is far from perfect, but you're alleging a vast and deep conspiracy when reality is likely far simpler:

The right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing.

Sales and business have little impact on editorial. Editorial flies by the whims of a wide variety of strong personalities.

Politicians and relevant players get columnist and editorial roles because of their inside status and insight (of whatever level of quality that might be).

Suggesting those outlets produce a single unified perspective or ideology is a bit much. Which would explain why you might see contradictory ideas.

I continually stress media literacy as crucial-especially these days. It's not a mystery to be solved. Most of is pretty straight forward hum drum.

Edited to add:

The Atlantic is a very different machine from WP or NYT. It's magazine whose content has been analysis and ideas and always has been. Their work will always have perspective woven into their articles. It's not new to them. But it's not a conspiracy, it's part of their business model.

<comment><USER15> These do not have to be mutually exclusive accounts. There does not have to be a secret cabal of shadowy deep state operatives pushing a unified message, there just needs to be a propensity for the rich and well-connected (by definition a small group) to find their way into positions of influence in rough proximity to major media outlets. As you've said:

 _Politicians and relevant players get columnist and editorial roles because of their status and insight._

It's not difficult to see that wealth, status, and connection are self- compounding. I also don't think it's unreasonable to say that many people in this group hold views that are out of step with the majority of Americans, particularly when you are talking about the pro-military intervention crowd.

<comment> 52-6F-62 Granted, but what's being implied and not said outright is that those people are somehow influencing entire organizations of strong-willed career professionals and not just given their own post to say what they want alongside the rest.

I'm asserting the latter is usually what's happening.

Over the past 100 years there have been many times where North American governments have attempted to rule over the press. That never went well for them (save the inception of Fox News).

OP seemed to suggest the large number of contradictory articles _was_ the result of a larger unified conspiracy. I'm suggesting that is _highly_ unlikely.

For what it's worth- people don't get into working for the media because it pays really well. Not usually anyway. So in that way I'd rule out wealth as a primary motivating factor to sacrificing one's principles in that business.

<comment><USER16> It seems unlikely to me that there is no coordination between left wing media institutions. They say the same things at the same time using the same language. I don't read much right-wing media.

I'm not saying there's a shadowy conspiracy (though I'm not ruling out people talking about "messaging" via email). It may be that they read each other's stuff and the demands of the 24 hour news cycle dictate that there's a certain amount of cross pollination and regurgitation.

> For what it's worth- people don't get into working for the media because it > pays really well. Not usually anyway. So in that way I'd rule out wealth as > a primary motivating factor to sacrificing one's principles in that > business.

Another perspective on this, courtesy of Noam Chomsky in conversation with a journalist: "I'm sure you believe everything you're saying. But what I'm saying is that if you believed something different, you wouldn't be sitting here."

> Over the past 100 years there have been many times where North American > governments have attempted to rule over the press. That never went well for > them (save the inception of Fox News).

I think it's unknown to what degree American intelligence agencies influence the media but I'm willing to bet it's "more than not at all". It may be relatively benign stuff ("Don't use the term 'Islamic terrorism,' Al Qaeda uses that stuff to propagandize") or it may be not so benign.

I agree with the original poster. It's absurd that the left-wing media has been agitating for censorship of "hate" and then complaining when "evidence of war crimes" is deleted. There's been shockingly little mainstream questioning of just how quixotic it is to try to "remove hate".

I'm fairly concerned about the move toward censorship by internet platforms. The only way tech companies can realistically do this is with algorithms. Lots of people seem to think it's a given that these companies can algorithmically remove "hateful things". No one seems to be saying that rules and laws need to have precedent in order to be intelligible. For example, in the US, there are incitement laws but _what actually constitutes_ "incitement of imminent lawless action" is something that has been defined in the courtroom. You can't just say "delete hate" without precisely defining hate. It's a blank check.

I find censorship via algorithms extremely scary. There will be false positives and false negatives and there is absolutely zero recourse. Censorship by algorithms is a perfect expression of bureaucracy. In perfect bureaucracies, responsibilty is spread so thinly that it's impossible to determine who is responsible for a mistake. With algorithms, there's actually no human on the hook at all. Are you going to blame the programmers?

By all means, use machine learning to flag posts so humans can look at them. But automating the removal of content and the banning of human users is a road I strongly suspect we will regret going down. If the volume of content is sufficient so that you _need_ to use algorithms to remove human-generated content then I'd say it's time to reconsider whether that content should be removed at all.

<comment><USER17> In many cases the censorship is carried out by a 3rd party company setup in a low wage location where someone with their own biases, religious convections and influence of their own society moderates content for the west.

The tech giants don't want anything to do with it because it means employing 1000's of extra people and the costs that go with that. So it just gets contracted out to the the lowest bidder.

It can't all be automated yet, not some machine learning algorithm dreamt up be Facebook is any better of a prospect.

This is the problem with the black box of the multinational corporation deciding what is moral or acceptable with no oversight by the government.

<comment><USER16> > It can't all be automated yet, not some machine learning algorithm dreamt up > be Facebook is any better of a prospect.

Some of it is automated. Youtube removes/demonitizes stuff based on automated checks. I suspect other platforms do this stuff too or are headed in that direction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> Digit-Al So, here's an idea. Let's take the case of YouTube, instead of its algorithm deleting this content, how about it is marked with a flag. Normal users are completely unable to view, or even know of the existence of content marked with this flag. It doesn't come up in searches and even a direct link will just show some "content unavailable" message.

Human rights groups and the like can request permission for a designated user to have a "special administrator" permission. Anyone with that permission will see a permission toggle when they look at someone's user account. That toggle will allow them to give or revoke permission to view these "forbidden" videos.

That will then allows these organisations to give access to anyone they deem suitable to help them police these videos. There would need to be some sort of safeguards to make sure that permission is not accidentally given to a minor or something.

This should solve a lot of the problems I reckon. Thoughts?

<comment><USER18> Why would Human rights groups be entitled to have this censorship privilege? So they'd decide now what's good or bad to display on Youtube?

If anyone needs evidence, it is Justice prosecutors and it is likely already possible. Deleted from user-facing Youtube and Facebook and the like doesn't mean it's deleted from their storage...

Plus the title is misleading: they're not deleting evidence of war crimes, they're deleting upsetting and distressing videos from their open platform, and that's a good thing! Nothing proves they don't already pass these videos to law enforcement.

<comment><USER19> > Why would Human rights groups be entitled to have this censorship privilege?

Indeed, who watches the watchmen? The SPLC was recently embroiled in sexist and racist controversies. No human organization is exempt from corruption. We all have to watch each other while simultaneously be charitable and willing to forgive.

> Plus the title is misleading: they're not deleting evidence of war crimes, > they're deleting upsetting and distressing videos from their open platform, > and that's a good thing!

Debatable. There's no such thing as a right to be "not distressed" or "not upset". Being a member of any human society means being exposed to stresses of all kinds, and we arguably all have the stressful duty of guarding our human and civil rights.

<comment> Digit-Al I am in absolute agreement with you that whether or not such material should be removed is subject to debate. There are good arguments on both sides. I am generally against censorship but I can recognise some merit in protecting children from videos of people being shot, hanged, beheaded, etc.. Not that I particularly want to go down the "think of the children" route.

However, all the debate aside, the simple truth is that governments are ordering that content be removed so until we can have the debates it would probably be a good idea to have some way to allow the content be viewed by some people. Arguments that it's probably already available to law enforcement are all very well but law enforcement has limited resources and it's impossible for them to review all the flagged content so if there are people who are willing to volunteer their time to review it looking for evidence of crimes then we should probably have a way to enable that.

As for their being some bad actors in these organisations - that's pretty much unavoidable, even law enforcement has some bad apples.

It's about compromising and making the best of what we have.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The podcast episode "post no evil" about Facebooks moderation problems, covers something very similar where during the Mexican border drug wars people were posting images of dead bodies hung from overpassed and shootouts.

Facebook had internal debates over whether this counted as news or breached content guidelines

I recommend the podcast greatly.

But perhaps we need a simpler approach - a funded "journalism" archive where the tech firms can shift the posts to online storage (ie not delete it) but section it off for later analysis.

Seems the only likely compromise.

<comment><USER21> Something like the Internet Archive?

<comment><USER22> Except nobody goes to the Internet Archive unless they're looking for something extremely specific. The benefit of Facebook as a platform is that you can reach a wide audience in a place where often going to the authorities means either jack squat or your incarceration or worse.

<comment><USER21> Sure.

I meant to say the Internet Archive can be used as the 'funded "journalism" archive' that GP mentioned.

<comment><USER20> I did think that was one possibility - but this needs to be funded and supported by the tech firms themselves not handed off and forgotten.

I can imagine a way of referencing these redacted images that facebooks just puts up a big red sign and a warning - but that still allows people to find it and it acts as a full web citizen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Social media have successfully created the illusion that they are (to some extent, at least) public spaces. This is another reminder that they are not.

OTOH, truly public spaces on the internet ... where reasonable speech can truly be free ... are in very short supply. By accident or intention, this is a crappy state of affairs.

This isn't a new topic. 20 years ago, Lessig wrote, "We can build, or architect, or code cyberspace to protect values that we believe are fundamental, or we can build, or architect, or code cyberspace to allow those values to disappear." [https://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/02/arts/adding-up-the- costs-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/02/arts/adding-up-the-costs-of- cyberdemocracy.html)

If our free speech is limited only to the inside walls of walled gardens, that's not their fault.

<comment><USER24> > OTOH, truly public spaces on the internet ... where reasonable speech can > truly be free ... are in very short supply.

Who decides what is "reasonable"? One's person or group's "reasonable" is another's call to regulation, if not censorship by various means.

How can this conundrum be solved on an international network composed of both adults and children accessing the same content?

I'm not expecting you or anyone else to chime in with a solution; I obviously don't have one myself. But ultimately, this information hydra we've created will need taming in some manner, or it may eat the world alive.

<comment><USER23> Who decides? Good question. But IMO, democracy is not the strong suit of most corporations.

Here in the US, back in the fabled wild west, the solution was not to expect the law to be upheld by grocers, blacksmiths, or bankers. The public hired professionals. So, I reckon, maybe we need some laws to enforce.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> We couldn't have started the discussion of systematic censorship in a better way It's hard to come up with one rule that works for everyone It's normal to have a knee jerk response to censor something if what your looking at is terrible and you wouldn't want other people to see the bad thing, but it is also important that we as a race try to learn from our mistakes; and censorship straight to deletion is burning the evidence. This may fall short of crazy talk around here: But maybe we need a human element in the curation of our digital libary, and a way for society as a whole to have input on this process, not just in removing the offending content; but also in keeping track of it too help people to be accountable for their actions. Full Disclosure: I'm also a resident of christchurch, new zealand where the mosque shooting happened recently I saw our goverment block multiple websites via DNS, in a country where this kind pf censorship is otherwise unheard of: We honestly didn't know if the systems were in place for this kind of censorship. So my 2c is that if you are in a five-eyes nation, they almost certainly have the capacity to conduct this kind of attack.

</comment><comment><USER26> Damned if they do, damned if they don't.

<comment> yoz-y This. It is simply not possible to have these platforms host this kind of content and it boils down to money. If you want Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and the likes you need ads. Advertisers don't want to be displayed alongside gruesome content.

If people were ready to pay for a platform with "raw" footage of others' lives there could be a place for it. So far the market has proven otherwise.

<comment><USER27> There is a market for a lot of kinds of content, but companies will gladly exchange some of their profit to push to silence certain kinds of messages and to keep competitors down.

There's clearly a market for an uncensored social media network, but Gab has been deplatformed from payment processors, web hosts, registrars... Companies that refuse service to Gab will gladly host degenerate pornography and turn a blind eye to illegal activity.

Much of this censorship cannot be chalked up to profit motive, and the only conclusion is ideological drive or collusion with other tech companies to help insure their respective monopolies and duopolies.

<comment><USER28> I think it's just simpler than that, it's risk. Some content has a known level of "bad" risk associated with it, legal pornography for instance, but other content potentially has a massive and unquantifiable downside almost to the point of being an existential threat to a platforms business.

You can't force people to host content or be associated with hosting content which they fear will blow up in their faces.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> What do people expect?

Isn't this uncharted territory for everyone?

Everyone can report, but the public sphere where this happens is owned by a company which needs profit.

Humanity was always insulated from what the worst that happened at that minute by the difficulty of transmitting information over older mediums.

This means incentives are not aligned here - speaking the truth, keeping you engaged, and keeping Disney land clean.

A person in the UK who wakes up in the morning doesn't want to see evidence that South American violence has resulted in an entire village being eradicated.

As a species We were insulated from thinking at species scale. We could do village and perhaps nation scale on and average human basis. A rare few people can think at a planetary or greater scale regularly.

So how precisely should this be structured ?

<comment><USER30> That's an interesting point regarding human cognition limits.

Thanks to this comment I found Capacity limits of informationprocessing in the brain, by René Marois and Jason Ivanoff[1].

Intuitively I would think the gap of organizational difficulty between a village and nation be far more important than the one between a nation and the whole mankind. I mean that I would expect, a national organizational process to require far more logistic sophistication and far many more explicitly reproducible/scalable processes than what you need in a village. Of course, some of these processes can be argued as directly conflicting with a "mankind scale mindset", but it doesn't really seems to make a greater gap than one that isolate a mind in a smaller human scale.

[1] [http://www.psy.vanderbilt.edu/faculty/marois/Publications/Ma...](http://www.psy.vanderbilt.edu/faculty/marois/Publications/Marois_Ivanoff-2005.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Couldn't they take down the content but keep it available for neutral third parties to evaluate and collect?

There has to be a better way to collect evidence of war crimes than leaving decapitation videos visible on social media for all to see.

Maybe the ICC could even launch their own platform where this kind of content can be submitted.

<comment><USER32> Removed videos need not be graphic. War crimes take many forms. Bombings of hospitals and schools. Mass shellings of cities. Destruction of vital infrastructure, etc.

You'll not see any blood or torn bodies. It will just expose lies of some nation state's propaganda.

These kinds of videos get removed too. Either directly or indirectly by banning the entire account, if it posts more videos that are questionable - which is likely. Or because of targetting by trolls using false complaints.

Though I'm not that worried. Many people already know the perils of YouTube, and archive everything at first sight.

It just serves the nation state's propaganda, that is usually left untouched, because it's served via more official media channels.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> This sounds like a perfect reason why sites like LiveLeak exist. I don't know if I care that Facebook doesn't host videos that go against its TOS, but if sites like LiveLeak are forbidden from hosting these videos even though they want to, it would make me worried.

<comment><USER34> This.

Censor the mall (facebook, twitter) where families and your grandma hangout from stuff they would never want to see

But let the wild west (liveleak, 4chan, etc) stay wild.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> A thought experiment:

If 9/11 had happened today, what would their policies mean for that footage? What should they do to censor it, if anything? Consider too the increase in camera density over the past two decades.

</comment><comment><USER36> These platforms can do no right. If Facebook/Youtube leave a video online of a beheading of John Smith from <Country X> then <Country X> inevitably calls them out for promoting and hosting this "illegal" content. Now, they're being chastised for taking it down too.

Maybe, just maybe, these companies have internal processes for handing over such materials to the relevant authorities, and don't need to rely on armchair detectives to investigate war crimes.

<comment><USER37> Maybe, just maybe, we can decide if content platforms are responsible for user content or not.. and stick to that decision.

Quite frankly i am against any form of censorship.

<comment><USER24> Let's say you make users responsible for the content they create; how do you intend to enforce that?

Country A's User B uploads Content C that User D in Country E find's objectionable, or in Country E is illegal to view or possess, while in Country A is perfectly legal.

How do you enforce that? Labels or tags aren't the answer, because Content C could be labeled/tagged as X,Y,Z where X,Y,Z are orthogonal to the content, and bear no relation to it.

Do you allow it to be viewed by User D, and if it isn't legal, then put that on User D to be responsible to...what? Unview it?

More than a few of these problems are all because we humans have decided without consensus or agreement that some information is "bad" while other information is "good", and even that "good" information is only viewable by certain people of that group who meet a certain age requirement.

All of it is very arbitrary, and at odds with itself on the world stage.

This issue won't be solved easily, if at all. Instead, we'll likely just continue to make more convoluted laws that can't be followed and/or all descend into totalitarian walled garden states isolated from each other while atrocities continue behind those walls, telling each other within that "we're the free and prosperous ones; those over there are not".

Why does this narrative seem so damn familiar...?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Very interesting article. Essentially: there is a legitimate need for such content, namely to hold the perpetrators accountable. So the question might be: how can this content still be accessed later by e.g. researchers/prosecutors/...? On the other hand that then opens the door for a dictator (we seem to have plenty of them nowadays) to ask for deletion of content and then use the stored materials still to identify e.g. regime critics. Really difficult issue.

</comment><comment><USER39> I just wish it was easy to turn their algorithms off. All these companies were good before those algorithms started. Like feed for Facebook & Twitter, recommendations for YouTube.

That would solve a lot of problems. It would make sure people aren't exposed to things unwillingly and these companies won't be on the hook for it but it will also make sure things aren't getting reported and taken down as much as they should (for law enforcement tracking purposes).

</comment><comment><USER27> These tech companies decide, often in unison, to deplatform people, types of legal content, or political views. There is clearly coordination among news outlets, social media companies, and tech companies (everything from payment processors to web hosting).

Who is doing this coordination? To what end?

Is there a common thread in the deplatforming, smearing, and silencing campaigns?

<comment><USER40> There need not be a single "who" behind it in as much as a set of convergent processes with the same goal of control and power.

It is coordination of the kind of "going after the Joneses", because Chinese get away with it and gave useful results, so can we, ethics and long term effects be damned.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> To be frank tech companies are a second order symptom of fucked up societal attitudes pushing the censorship.

The puritan mass market push towards "child friendly mass market" as a default which leaves no place for the ugliness of reality. They don't care about suffering - they just don't want to see it. It is narcissistic sociopathy as a norm - how dare they run out of a burning building in their underwear! Children might see them!

That it is the middle of the night is no concern - they don't want "inappropriate content" in a back alley. They want it gone.

The tech companies tend towards doing nothing until the masses of "think of the children" complaints about "objectionable" content. The absence of those masses of people is what I miss the most about the internet not being mainstream. I personally believe what we need is to offend those busybodies as much as possible until they fuck off into their own bubble.

<comment><USER42> >The absence of those masses of people is what I miss the most about the internet not being mainstream.

I've seen this sentiment before, but I don't get it. Sure, the internet's mainstream and there are parts of it that have a mainstream culture and that's probably not going anywhere in the foreseeable future.

But the internet itself has no culture (heh). It's just a network. There are still corners of the internet that have whatever culture you're looking for. And if you can't find it, you can make it. It probably won't make much money or make the news, but the option is there.

That said, I agree with the main thrust of your argument that tech companies are just reflecting the mainstream preference to whitewash reality.

<comment><USER41> The sentiment is based on the transformative and displacing effects of the mainstream and "old internet" refers to culture as opposed to the network.

I am well aware that niche chasing is the way to achieve it for now. What the sentiment longs for as ideal is for influence to have worked more in the opposite direction. Instead we get advertisers trying to be the tail wagging the dog again when people left their last venture over the blandness they imposed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Aren't sites like LiveLeak better for this kind of content? Won't this kind of content make it there anyway?

<comment><USER44> It could be ordinary people using what they're familiar with. If an emergency suddenly happens, who's going to spend half an hour dicking around researching what site to use and going through their signup procedure and installing their app and all that?

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Stratechery had an article that I think provides a reasonable compromise for displaying and taking responsibility of content some might find objectionable but which others would argue has value. It involves the poster being responsible and owning the consequences for the content as opposed to some third party platform which has to try to please opposing sides.

[https://stratechery.com/2019/a-regulatory-framework-for- the-...](https://stratechery.com/2019/a-regulatory-framework-for-the- internet/)

</comment><comment><USER45> The issue with doing things at huge scale are all the edge cases. If Facebook wants to have all the benefits and money it gets from owning its huge network it also has the responsibility of having to treat different content with nuance. These kinds of issues are one reason why Facebook wants to move towards a more private network with more private interactions so it can avoid having to deal with the endless complexity of human interaction in public.

</comment><comment><USER46> Surely there's a difference between not publishing (to the general public) on their platform and not making such content available to the relevant authorities.

</comment><comment> j-c-hewitt I think the whole notion of war as a whodunnit crime is pretty moronic at a fundamental level. #1, you don't have jurisdiction. #2, if you hoped to gain jurisdiction, the most important thing is not piecing together the facts of the case, but winning the war.

If you want to go after the Libyan National Army for doing bad things, you have to go to war with Libya and defeat their army.

The trouble with going to war with Libya if you are the United States is the Atlantic Ocean and the absence of a real driving interest such as self defense that would lead Americans to support a war with Libya.

In order to goad Americans into a war with Libya, the best hope for doing so is to wave bloody shirts at them and somehow convince them that Libyans are going to blow them up at any time now unless we go to war with Libya ASAP.

Facebook and the rest of them don't have a duty to simultaneously prevent the wrong people from viewing Ogrish-style execution videos while also preserving them.

So they want Americans to be radicalized in favor of war against Syria and Libya (causing far more deaths than the typical radicalization which just results in teens posting lots of pepe memes), but not radicalized in favor of Islamic terrorists. That is just an impossible propaganda requirement that cannot be met.

</comment><comment> SR-71_Blackbird I'm sorry, but this article lost my interest by the opening sub-heading.

Algorithms that take down "terrorist" videos could hamstring efforts to bring human-rights abusers to justice.

"hamstring"? WTF.

</comment><comment><USER20> Of course the point I forgot to make is that we suddenly have access to all the world's evidence - that every good and bad issue around the globe is now passing through these forms data centres ... and we are not used to that. Our brains seem wired to weight bad news much more heavily.

We need to remember Douglas Adams advice - "It's vitally important not to have a sense of perspective"

</comment><comment><USER47> It's not evidence, at best it is hearsay. We have no way to validate truth from fiction.

</comment><comment><USER48> I'm not interested in seeing war crimes on facebook. If you want to disseminate that stuff, use a public forum where that stuff is welcome. There are countless places. Facebook and the spin users give is not welcome by me and no doubt by others.

<comment><USER49> Facebook is _millions_ , if not billions of tiny public forums. The problem is that people seem to want them all to have the same standards. If you don't want stuff like this on your wall or feed, it's easy to keep out. If the admins of a group don't want this showing up, they too can filter it out. But people seem to be demanding that not only do they not have to see content they dislike, but that no one else can either.

<comment><USER44> It's the nature of censorship that people want to censor what other people see, not what they see themselves. We believe we're able to make our own decisions and we're in control of our minds, but those other people who aren't us might not be and are in danger of bad influences.

<comment><USER50> Speak for yourself. People who support censorship, sure. "We"? No.

<comment><USER44> By "we", I mean most people, as evidenced by all democratic governments censoring various things, presumably because their voters want to prevent the rest of their country from seeing them. Same goes for restrictions on drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, etc. People who're concerned about their health won't be doing those things themselves and don't need a law to stop them, but they want to protect what they see as irresponsible other people. That might be a fair judgement but it's still a judgement about other people being somehow weaker and needing to be protected from themselves.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> I've noticed that myself as I'm analyzing influential public statements with regards to the Rohingya for my Bachelor thesis on their discrimination and genocide. Unfortunately, Facebook was one of the biggest channels for dehumanizing and incendiary content but this is all gone now. I think FB should at least provide researchers access to an archive of removed content.

</comment><comment><USER52> This is a very serious issue by far not limited to facebook and youtube. The problem goes much further then private companies not wanting the content on their site. Its very much motivated by a push of governments to purge terrorism propaganda and stuff that could be used to radicalize people.

The best example is, or better was, reddits /r/syriancivilwar. The subreddit collected all and every information available on the conflict, from every side. This brought them in direct conflict with reddit admins, who banned multiple users for linking to terrorism propaganda, namely ISIS videos and AMAQ statements, the ISIS news agency. The subbredit is now a shell of its former self because its reduced to a propaganda platform for factions which are socially acceptable, instead of a place to document the war and its atrocities.

It however doesnt stop there. The content wasnt hosted at reddit but literally anywhere where there is a hope it might not be immediately taken down. From piracy favored streaming services to archiv.org mirrors. Which all get taken down for distributing terrorism propaganda instead of violating the TOS.

When you hear about terrorism propaganda, there is a good chance we are talking about not just evidence of warcrimes, but also material that is important to understand how people can get radicalized. And how to counter that propaganda. People at risk of radicalization can still access the material while the public as a whole looses the insight into the mind of those people entirely. And the people at risk drift off into echo chambers. And for a lack of information we are doing nothing to counter that propaganda, quite the opposite. I doubt the media at large could have done ISIS a bigger favor by their coverage of focusing simply on the barbarism of the videos. They missed the point entirely, the barbarism was very much a part of ISIS propaganda. The reporting was great for getting views, but only reenforced the people who already entered the echochambers. And hoping on a purely military solution sounds absolutely naive to me. Its very much a task for society as a whole to watch out that people dont drop into those echo chambers and get radicalized.

Framing this issue as "AI gone wrong" misses the point entirely. The content would also have been deleted by a human. And with the given political development, its not overly pessimistic to assume that people publicly hosting content will be forced to remove any such content immediately or face prosecution. Which only helps with getting reelected for signaling to combat terrorism instead of actually doing anything against terrorism.

Not to sound overly pessimistic, but the situation looks really dire to me. I had hoped that we as a society had learned our lesson about book burning. And the issue is not a new one. Mein Kampf is still not readily available in Germany for the "fear that it might turn people into nazis". Serdar Sommuncu made the only reasonable thing here and started touring Germany reading from Mein Kampf as well as famous propaganda speeches to show how ridiculous they are. There is nothing special about them. There isnt some hidden insight in those books that turn people into Nazis. But our treatment of them might convince people at risk that there has to be something about them, or they wouldnt be banned in the first place. I fear very much the same development from the array of far right terrorists with their manifests. Instead of the rambling of lunatics they are it gets treated as something that is dangerous as it apparently might convince people.

</comment><comment><USER53> Number looks very little, if compared to Russia backing. Russia has whole TV channels backed by FSB, whole troll fabrics, and their own agents even in major Western media.

Why few orders of magnitude greater effort cannot help Russia, while much smaller effort helps USA a lot?

<comment><USER54> Quantity isn't always the most important quality. The US (and the UK?) seems to present propaganda as something the bad guys do, which is easier to believe if the changes are limited. Limited doesn't mean unimportant, and it being limited forces focus on important changes.

(I'm not assuming competence here: I assume that's random over time)

<comment><USER53> So, you say, Russia seems to counter-present USA propaganda as something the good guys do? It's looks stupid. Maybe I misunderstood you. Can you say explicitly, who does good propaganda, and who does bad propaganda? Who is good and who is bad?

<comment><USER54> Mainly I'm saying that the propaganda produced by the USA says "Propaganda? Us? Please put away your tinfoil hat, only bad guys do that."

I don't know what Russia's self-image is, but the impression I have from the outside is that it might as well be "<green frog emoji> Работа для нас в государственной пропагандистской компании <Russian flag emoji>".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Is this really a technology problem? Are we so naive that we believe these things were not happening in the past?

This problem cannot be solved in the consciousness we currently exist in.

The people running the world and those who ought to run it are entirely different.</comment>


Woman who has never felt pain experiences it for the first time - <AUTHOR> https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn28623-woman-who-has-never-felt-pain-experiences-it-for-the-first-time <comment><USER2> This is the real paper [1]. It is open access.

1\. [http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2015/151204/ncomms9967/full/nco...](http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2015/151204/ncomms9967/full/ncomms9967.html)

<comment><USER3> The sections of this paper are, in order: Abstract, Introduction, Results, Methods, Additional information, Accession codes, References, Acknowledgements, Author information, Supplementary information

Is it typical to present the methods _after_ the results in medical research papers? And to have the author info and acknowledgements _after_ the main write-up?

In my field we were consistently taught to present the intro/lit review (i.e. set-up the problem space), then methods (i.e. how we're trying to solve the problem that we just laid out for you), then the results (i.e. using the methods that the reader now knows, here's the data), and finally any interpretations of the results.

In addition, I was always taught that author info and acknowledgements go before the main write-up. This is to help illuminate potential biases (e.g. research into gun-related violence will read very differently if either the National Rifle Association or the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence funded the research).

<comment><USER4> More so than the field, the order will depend on the editors and journal in my experience. Anecdotally, in the field I work in (Material Science/Condensed Matter Physics) I have written and read papers in all different orders but the order seen in this paper is pretty normal to me. You want people to get through your work (abstract, intro, results) and then the nitty gritty details come later for the people that want to use your work for something more than an interesting read.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The article doesn't explain what her reaction was? That seems like the most interesting perspective to me.

<comment><USER6> "She was burned with a laser, and quite liked the experience."

<comment><USER7> So she didn't actually experience pain as defined in a dictionary.

<comment><USER8> Eh, I know a number of masochists who "quite like the experience" of pain.

<comment><USER7> They like to have skin cut, salt pored in? Scraping their eyeballs over a blackboard until they bleed?

I think your are talking about different pain than laser burning.

Most definitions of pain of pain contain terms like torment, distress, suffering. Not what someone would like. If someone never felt pain before and they say upon feeling something that they like it, you think they really feel pain? It sounds more likely to me that she felt something different. She wouldn't know of course, if what she felt was pain.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The upside of this is that we may have found a new way to cure different types of pain. A Nav1.7 blocker + low grade opioids seems to result in the same painlessness felt by people with this disease.

Nav1.7 blockers are off the shelf: [http://www.tocris.com/dispprod.php?ItemId=272948#.VmW57eMrJE...](http://www.tocris.com/dispprod.php?ItemId=272948#.VmW57eMrJE4)

Opiods too!

<comment><USER10> > He has taken out a patent on the use of the two drugs for pain relief.

Are you trying to get sued?</comment></comment>


Tell Microsoft and GitHub to Drop ICE as a Client - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/selfagency/microsoft-drop-ice <comment><USER2> There was a time when people came freely across the seas, and there were no passports or citizenship documents. In many places it wasn't even that long ago, 100 years or less. You just had to speak the language to make it, or find your community. If you didn't, you'd often become a slave (or were brought in as one).

But we live in a different world today, and there needs to be reasonable means to control immigration in the way modern countries have evolved to operate. I got a visa in New Zealand once and need to get my FBI fingerprints, a chest x-ray and blood tests.

You might disagree with certain policies, and there should be a legal means for more migrant labor for certain farm and factory fields to come in to meet the demand, but blanket "ICE bad" is just a weird stance to take. As the son of a legal immigrant, and someone who has gone through another county's immigration process, I think it's a little bonkers.

There are also plenty of legal refugee status programs (although some are difficult to find and yes, border security may deter people from the right locations/checkpoints to apply -- different problem really). Many undocumented workers come across the borders with their passports and just overstay (and we should have a way to give them actual work visas if they have passports, no criminal record and there is demand).

Well what about the war and crime and people escaping, you ask? Here's a better solution. The United States should stop buying ALL THE COCAINE and also put in actual gun registration so the big gun companies can't make as much money with their massive smuggling programs:

[https://battlepenguin.com/politics/america-and-the- mexican-d...](https://battlepenguin.com/politics/america-and-the-mexican-drug- trade/)

<comment><USER3> Blame 4th generation information warfare for it. Each country has its own narrative about what goes around both within and outside her borders, and they want to adamantly stick to that narrative.

If their narrative loses to another country's, they simply cannot survive, either politically or morally. Even people are becoming part of this narrative wars these days, which is why each country is zealously guarding its borders from outsiders.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think a country should have the absolute best tools at their disposal to be able to handle processing and serving the millions of immigrants and billions of dollars of goods which cross their borders.

If an influx of unaccompanied minors cross a border, a country needs to have the systems, processes, facilities, and supply lines setup and ready to activate to support that population.

Whether it is trying to confirm identification of someone crossing at a border station or illegally, locating and vetting relatives (or someone claiming to be a relative) in country, or finding a foster family or allocating space at a shelter, there is a very significant amount of work that DHS and ICE needs to be doing to both protect this vulnerable population as well as identify criminals who may be trying to cross the border for nefarious purposes.

We need a best-in-world multi-layered system which includes everything from search and rescue, drug interdiction, temporary shelters, family housing, background checks and asylum claims processing, work permitting, and on and on.

Border crossings on the southern border are actually at a historical low, but the demographics of the people who are crossing has changed dramatically. Instead of predominantly single males, we have had a massive increase in unaccompanied minors and families. Instead of Mexicans, there has been a large flow from Central America coming through Mexico and into the US. These new demographics present extreme challenges to the existing facilities on the border which were not built to accommodate that type of population.

IMO what we need to be doing is properly funding border enforcement and processing, hiring a large number of new immigration judges to process claims in days not months, and build facilities that can keep illegal entrants reasonably comfortable for the _few days_ it should take to process their arrival, whether that means admittance into the interior with a future court date or refusal of entry and deportation.

I wonder, for example, what tools and services the USDS may be building for ICE and DHS, and if the engineers on those products feel like they are positively contributing to the safety and welfare of, for example, families with qualified asylum claims, or helping identify children being trafficked across the border.

</comment><comment><USER5> >Or, we will simply take our projects elsewhere.

I want to see how many actually do. If that's what it takes to break Github's monopoly then so be it.

</comment><comment><USER6> Pay attention to the record and intentions of your legislative candidates, and go vote if you don't like what the government buys, or what kinds of institutions your politicians have asked the Federal government to take over.

ICE will have Git hosting, this is not where your perceived injustice is occurring.

</comment><comment><USER7> If they don't, the people who forced Chef to drop _their_ contract owe them a BIG apology. It's completely unfair to harass the little guys while the Microsoft's and Oracle's of the world continue, unaffected.

</comment><comment><USER8> No. They can do business with whoever they want as long as doing so doesn't break any law.

The world will never fully conform to anyone's vision, get over it.

</comment><comment><USER9> The U.S. government is a big spender on tech. Tech CEOs have an obligation to shareholders not to turn away big clients.

A sovereign country makes an effort to police its borders. It should do so humanely, and not expect 100% success in stopping illegal immigration, but immigration enforcement is a proper function. I get the impression that critics of tech companies doing business with ICE are against all enforcement.

<comment><USER3> Its quite funny that America was once heavily criticized for meddling in other country's affairs and inviting their hatred in return (pre 9/11 days). And now, they are criticized for exactly the opposite thing: Just minding their own business and securing it from outsiders!

<comment><AUTHOR> Securing a border != imprisonning children and separate them from their family

<comment><USER6> > _...separating them from their families._

When given the opportunity, the Democratic representatives refused to support a bill that simply reversed that one Clinton-era decision that leads to the separation of children from the people who claim to be their guardians at the border (who are, as it turns out, often not).

Much noise has been made about using these children as bargaining chips, by both sides, but neither seems to be totally above it.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think that's plainly wrong.

1\. There is no need for a bill to modify ICE misconducts 2\. The bill was for financing ICE and help it amplify it's bad behaviors 3\. When the democrats would not pay for inhumane ICE, the reps told everyone the dems were against every changement.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Manifest for a web application – Working Draft - <AUTHOR> http://www.w3.org/TR/appmanifest/ <comment><USER2> This is apparently different and separate from Mozilla's manifest.webapp (which I guess is for Firefox OS?), but I don't know if it's a standardization of Chrome's manifest.json that I've seen elsewhere or something entirely new, but similar. Either way, the entire manifest ecosystem is really confusing right now.

</comment><comment><USER3> I understand the need for the existence of an app manifest, but is there really a need to _standardize_ it? I suspect we may have reached the point of diminishing returns in terms of new web standards.

<comment><USER4> Would you prefer writing a manifest for every platform/browser?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Nice. Inter-app communication between web apps installed on any device.

A search engine for web app manifests would be a good starting point for a World Wide App Store.

</comment><comment><USER6> I thought html5 already captured much of this... What is this doing that html5 doesn't?

</comment><comment><USER7> The W3C still exists? I thought it was defunded by 2000.</comment>


A person is the "head of site integrity" at Twitter - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/LevineJonathan/status/1265457578215124995 <comment><USER2> Well, I would hope it's a person!

On a more serious note, I think that the comment about flyover states is really rude. There are plenty of great people in those areas, and no doubt people that work for companies like Twitter. It's just unfair to make a blanket statement like that.</comment>


Why did Albert Einstein hate freedom? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.pmarca.com/2007/12/why-did-albert.html <comment><USER2> Says more about Hoover than Einstein, wouldn't you say?

</comment><comment><USER3> Freedom?

Oh oh, Million dollar idea: Time travel buddy movie with Einstein and William Wallace. Call it Brainheart.

(Million dollar, as in the revenue. I.e. a complete flop.)</comment>


Ripple overtakes litecoin as the 4th largest cryptocurrency - <AUTHOR> http://markets.businessinsider.com/currencies/news/ripple-overtakes-litecoin-as-the-4th-largest-cryptocurrency-2017-12-1011247888 <comment><USER2> Huh, wonder why that is. Maybe it's because they try to pitch it to banks?

<comment><USER3> 1) Amex launches blockchain-based business payments using Ripple [27 days ago ] - [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-blockchain-amex- ripple/am...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-blockchain-amex-ripple/amex- launches-blockchain-based-business-payments-using-ripple-idUSKBN1DG1SX)

2) Ripple and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Partner to Create Open Source Payment Platform [2 months ago] - [https://ripple.com/insights/ripple-the- gates-foundation-team...](https://ripple.com/insights/ripple-the-gates- foundation-team-up-to-level-the-economic-playing-field-for-the- poor/?platform=wutlol)

3) Michael Arrington Has a New $100 Million Hedge Fund That Will Be Valued in Ripple's XRP [ 2 weeks ago] - [http://fortune.com/2017/11/28/arrington- xrp/](http://fortune.com/2017/11/28/arrington-xrp/)

Plus there is a lot of FOMO going on since the past month or so over Crypto, esp. Bitcoin and people are trying to 'get in early' on the next big thing like Bitcoin, hence Litecoin, Etherium and Ripple have had hockey stick rise in price...</comment></comment>