Google blocked every one of the WSWS's 45 top search terms - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/08/04/goog-a04.html <comment><USER3> I have no way to tell if this was deliberate or not, but personally I lost any respect and trust in Google the day they removed the discussion search filter. Before that day I could find common people talking about a product or a political issue, now unless I'm prepared to jump dozens of pages I'm inundated by sites selling that product or affiliated with that political orientation.

<comment><USER4> > they removed the discussion search filter.

Could you provide more detail on this search filter? I haven't heard about its removal before and it sounds interesting.

<comment><USER3> A search for "google discussion search" brings lots of results.

[https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!msg/websearch/Psb6O...](https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!msg/websearch/Psb6OmlLJTg/WOLoez6mUBEJ)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/google/comments/2b54ux/google_compl...](https://www.reddit.com/r/google/comments/2b54ux/google_completely_removed_discussions_search_is/)

[http://www.realitymod.com/forum/f11-off-topic- discussion/130...](http://www.realitymod.com/forum/f11-off-topic- discussion/130894-rip-google-discussion-search.html)

...etc.

<comment><USER5> For now...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This has been fairly thoroughly debunked:

[https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/webmasters/0Y...](https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/webmasters/0YippLN0KoA;context- place=topicsearchin/webmasters/category$3Achit- chat%7Csort:relevance%7Cspell:false)

<comment><USER7> Of course, support.google.com opinion on this matter is entirely unbiased :P

<comment> joatmon-snoo Well, considering it's a support forum and none of the people who have answered are affiliated with Google, yeah, it's unbiased.

<comment><USER8> I don't have any particular say on this issue in particular, but what about the fact that Google can silently remove replies without telling you (which gives the image of non-bias) and further that people may be biased in favour of Google without actually being affiliated with Google?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> >The WSWS has been blacklisted in searches dealing with history, and in particular historical topics related to the revolutionary struggles of the 20th century. These include the terms "Russian revolution," "Bolshevik revolution" and "October revolution," all of which returned results in the top 50 in April

That's probably ... correct.

<comment><USER10> Why is that correct? Looking at their website they're currently running a lecture series/look back at the Russian revolution: [http://www.wsws.org/en/special/1917/chronology.html](http://www.wsws.org/en/special/1917/chronology.html)

None of it seems to be conspiracy theory or low-quality material.

<comment><USER11> "...what Google, working with the highest levels of the state intelligence apparatus, does not want them to find."

I'd classify that as conspiracy theory.

<comment><USER12> It is a conspiracy theory.

Do you have a better explanation?

<comment><USER9> Yeah. The NSA and the CIA doesn't care about WSWS, and Google simply made an editorial decision that these guys don't have a credible or objective view of history and shouldn't be a search result for neutral terms on history. How's that for a non-conspiratorial version?

<comment><USER13> Since when is Google making "editorial decisions"?

<comment><USER9> Bad choice of words. "Tuning their search engine" is more apt. Search is intrinsically a subjective domain.

<comment><USER14> But this "editorial decision" (ahem, "tuning") is in fact a political decision to downgrade results for a site that by any objective measure has a wide, international readership (Alexa global rank, 30-40k). It is also an objective fact that Google has close relations to the state (top federal campaign contributor, regular visitor to the White House, Eric Schmidt book praised by Michael Hayden, etc.). So it is a "conspiracy theory" that Google's actions might be motivated by political considerations? Of course, Google might think so... As for the WSWS, it was recently the subject of editorials throughout the German media for its campaign against Jorg Baberowski, a right-wing historian at Humboldt University who is attempting to whitewash the crimes of the Nazis. If you think that the WSWS is not getting the attention of the state, then you aren't following developments closely.

<comment><USER9> >But this "editorial decision" (ahem, "tuning") is in fact a political decision to downgrade results for a site that by any objective measure has a wide, international readership (Alexa global rank, 30-40k).

WSWS has a skewed view of history that is outside of what mainstream historians would accept. For that reason displaying them for neutral historical search queries is dishonest. So it seems reasonable that whatever version of search algorithm they updated to might assign them a lower priority.

>It is also an objective fact that Google has close relations to the state (top federal campaign contributor, regular visitor to the White House, Eric Schmidt book praised by Michael Hayden, etc.)

So? Doesn't mean regulatory bodies are interfering in day-to-day operational decision or in this specific instance.

>So it is a "conspiracy theory" that Google's actions might be motivated by political considerations?

Anything is possible but there's no evidence - so yes, it is a "conspiracy theory", especially considering there's an alternative explanation that is more reasonable and doesn't necessitate invoking sinister shadow governmental actions.

<comment><USER14> Consider the concepts you are using. "skewed view of history," "mainstream historians." According to whom? Google? Amazon? The Hoover Institution? Who make this decision? If you search for "Russian Revolution," the works of Sean McMeekin will be very high, in part because the book is being heavily promoted by the New York Times, Amazon, large publishing houses, etc. And by Google. Yet McMeekin's book is based on largely discredited slanders about German gold financing the Russian Revolution. As soon as Google makes these decisions, it is in fact casting its large, well-financed, foot on the balance of historical truth--in favor of the established, "authoritative," i.e., state- and corporate-sanctioned version of events, whether historical or contemporary. As for "conspiracy theories," the problem is that history is full of conspiracies, and therefore theories based on conspiracies are often true. In any case, I don't believe you have given your "alternative explanation," unless it is the SEO explanation, which has not real factual foundation?

<comment><USER9> >Consider the concepts you are using. "skewed view of history," "mainstream historians."

The first line in their 'Russian Revolution' chronology uses terms like 'bourgeois' \- a loaded ideological term used exclusively by Communists and Marxists. It's not hard to see what their spin is.

> I don't believe you have given your "alternative explanation," unless it is > the SEO explanation, which has not real factual foundation?

But I did give you an alternate explanation - you just prefer your crazy tinfoil conspiracy. Flat-Earthers are the same. They ask for a picture of a round earth to prove to them the earth is round, and when you show them one, they say NASA faked it.

<comment><USER14> Again, you are inserting your own political prejudices. This is of course fine, but it is not Google to do. (Bourgeoisie is in fact a term that is broadly used in social scientific writing. While it is particularly associated with Marxism to refer to the class that owns the means of production, it is both more broadly used and arose prior to Marx). And to compare the analysis being made with flat-earthers is ridiculous. Google's new search algorithm had a direct and immediate impact on a broad range of left-wing and progressive websites. The VP more or less said what they were doing--combating "fake news," as part of a campaign supported by the state and the corporate media-- and then the results came: a fall in search traffic to left-wing sites. The conclusion is fairly self-evident, in my view, but in any case it certainly is not unfounded.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > The physical censorship implemented by Google is so extensive that of the > top 150 search terms that, as late as April 2017, connected the WSWS with > readers, 145 no longer do so.

> These findings make clear that the decline in Google search traffic to the > WSWS is not the result of some technical issue, but a deliberate policy of > censorship.

...or that they have not been keeping up with their SEO, are getting edged out by AMP sites, tripped over some other google rule, etc...

<comment><USER14> This is partially addressed here: [http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/08/08/goog-a08.html](http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/08/08/goog-a08.html) and here [http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/08/02/pers-a02.html](http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/08/02/pers-a02.html)

The change has effected a broad array of left-wing websites, with different SEO methods. It has also happened directly after Google's new algorithm, which stated clearly what they were planning on doing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> FWIW, searching on Bing "russian revolution" wsws.org shows up on page 5.

<comment><USER17> Searching on duckduckgo, "russian revolution" shows wsws.org on 80th place. Didn't show up for "proletariat".

The irony: they prefer to cry wolf instead of doing SEO and don't want to be called a conspiracy theory site.

<comment><USER18> I guess they'd rather play the victim and try to get free PR.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Bullshit. A Google search for "socialist news" returns wsws.org as the #2 response. #1 is socialistworks.org, a competing site.

<comment><USER20> > the company instructed its search evaluators to flag pages returning > "conspiracy theories" or "upsetting" content unless "the query clearly > indicates the user is seeking an alternative viewpoint."

"Socialist news" would be one of the searches that "indicates the user is seeking an alternative viewpoint."

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> > These findings make clear that the decline in Google search traffic to the > WSWS is not the result of some technical issue, but a deliberate policy of > censorship.

Quite a claim.

<comment><USER22> It would be _very interesting_ to prove this, but their argument is mostly circumstantial so far.

<comment><USER23> The fact that Google is refusing to deny it is, in my view, pretty strong circumstantial evidence.

<comment><USER22> Not necessarily. Google may not comment on these things as a matter of policy; for example, let's say that Google is required by some law to censor a particular search result. If they are in the habit of announcing their censorship decisions, then their silence on that one site would be non- silence. They would have to lie about the site instead. So, from a company liability perspective, Google is cautious about revealing information.

<comment><USER23> That's true. But this isn't about Google releasing a whole class of information by policy. It's about them responding, or not, to a specific question of the form, "We run a legitimate website on the topic that the American government has censored more often, and more harshly, than any other topic. Could you please confirm that our recent drop in search rankings is not the result of deliberate action by Google employees?"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Unfortunately, some companies are becoming too powerful. Concurrency must be encouraged, it's always good.

<comment><USER25> At first glance, this looks extremely ironic. Don't Socialists advocate for a centralization of economic capital (among others like political and news) or do I misunderstand? If purist socialists had there way, wouldn't there only be one search engine?

Obviously it would be great if others could compete, but I think it's simply a market gap (innovation, capital investment, etc) at this point and not for lack of competitors trying. Many died out (Yahoo!, Excite, Altavista), some survive as niche (DuckDuckGo), some still exist (Bing, Ask/Jeebs), and some are still massive but serve other markets (Baidu, Yandex).

Google has become so successful that their search is very advanced compared to upstarts. The more Google learns from their massive index corpus and userbase, the further ahead they get. Baidu might have a comparable dataset and userbase, but they specialize in different markets with different languages and cultures.

<comment><USER26> >Don't Socialists advocate for a centralization of economic capital (among others like political and news) or do I misunderstand?

Not necessarily (distributed economic planning, comumnal planning and indeed some (though not I) advance market Socialism), and further, things like search can be decentralised, as I'm sure mosts Socialists would agree with if aware that such technology exists.

>If purist socialists had there way, wouldn't there only be one search engine?

No, I see no reason to think that. This is largely stemming from the myth that "everyone has one car under Socialism"; it neglects that aside from seeking profit, different cars have different uses and advantages. It's probably the same with search engines and GNU/Linux distros.

>Google has become so successful that their search is very advanced compared to upstarts.

I agree, and I think that in a world where there is less incentive to keep secrets (though of course there is always incentive, such as personal pride, mastery, or even embarrassment over how your code looks!) because profit doesn't need to be protected from "theives", such research might even be public for others to benefit from. The learning technology can be free. Google would not have to collect data "on the sly", perhaps.

However the response to this is - would people willingly (and by this I mean when properly and fully informed of what they are doing) give over this data that Google uses to learn in such a way? If the answer is no, perhaps it's time to consider the ethical ramifications of such 'learning'.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> This is why [http://levelnews.org](http://levelnews.org) was created. It is a place to find real-time independent, progressive public-interest news.

If you would like to know more about the project, the blog is here: [http://blog.levelnews.org](http://blog.levelnews.org)

Much of the codebase is open source and can be found on GitHub if you'd like to contribute: [https://github.com/levelnewsorg](https://github.com/levelnewsorg)

</comment><comment><USER28> If they haven't been blacklisted for spreading conspiracy theories, they now probably should be.

</comment><comment><USER29> Google adjusts its search results all the time for business reasons but also for political or legal reasons. The PC description is "tuning the search algorithm". That may encompass any number of effects to the search results or Google interfaces. While I hate the idea of regulation, Google Search is such a basic utility in the US that it really should be regulated by the government.

Regulation is done on utilities like cell providers, cable/internet providers and consumers are usually aware of multiple choices. If I ask a non-tech user to name a search engine other than Google, they likely can't. So users do their search and interact with the results they are presented.

Edit: Removed my personal experience. Added thoughts on regulation.

<comment><USER30> How would that work? You want Congress to determine SEO rank?

<comment><USER29> I expect it would prevent making changes that are not firmly based organic search quality; not changes that benefit Google's other businesses including advertising, maps, plus, etc. or political views.

<comment><USER30> So every algorithm change would require congressional approval. That seems very untenable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I'm an anti-censorship extremist, but this doesn't feel to me like censorship. After all, the site is being discussed here on HN, and I'm sure it could also be found through many other search engines, portals, or whatever.

Even if we get to the point that certain pages are only likely to be found via 10-20 year old technologies, so what? Those technologies were invented for text articles and still work well for them, and text articles are what matter most. Similar things are also true about the runners-up in "matter most", which in some order are straightforward image, sound and video files.

<comment><USER32> Then you're probably not an anti-censorship extremist. If (big if) what the post is alleging is true, then it is pretty egregious.

<comment><USER33> So not getting #1 is search results is censorship?

The word is becoming meaningless dribble in the hands of axe-grinding cretins who believe that everyone must be forced to read their material.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> When Google, Facebook, and others announced that they were banning "fake news", many on the left cheered.

But it was probably naive to assume Google would limit itself to censoring political opinions with which one disagrees.

<comment><USER34> I don't quite understand the snark in your response - were you, unlike the purported cheering liberals, fond of the purveyors of fake news?

<comment><USER20> I don't believe it was ever about "fake news", rather it's about establishing "acceptable opinion".

As the article said:

> In a set of guidelines issued to Google evaluators in March, elaborated in > April by Google VP of Engineering Ben Gomes, the company instructed its > search evaluators to flag pages returning "conspiracy theories" or > "upsetting" content unless "the query clearly indicates the user is seeking > an alternative viewpoint." The changes to the search rankings of WSWS > content are consistent with such a mechanism.

Notice how Google said "alternative viewpoint". Alternative to what? Google seems to be establishing a new orthodoxy.

<comment><USER35> In this context, I read "alternative viewpoint" as a polite way of saying "complete bullshit".

<comment><USER36> Why not say "factually inaccurate information" if that is what you mean?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Meh, I have a hard time caring about this because I want Google to block propaganda and misinformation. From my experience, socialist websites and forums tend to ignore, rewrite, or white wash the history of communism in Russia/USSR, Venezuela, and even North Korea. So much so that the No True Scotsman fallacy should just be the No True Socialist fallacy. Go check out /r/socialism if you want your head to spin. According to that sub, there were no famines in the USSR, Stalin never killed anyone, and everything bad we hear about Venezuela is just media bias. And then when it's objectively true and can't be dodged, they aren't really socialists.

<comment><USER22> ...how far does "propaganda and misinformation" go? Political parties also put out propaganda and misinformation, as do businesses and individuals.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Sometimes sites are "punished" for aggressive / misleading "SEO" tactics.

</comment><comment><USER38> Gee, wouldn't it be great if we could just look up the open-source code for the most popular search engine on the "open" Internet?

Given the amount of power and money they now have, effectively having "won the game," it seems ethical to me to open-source their entire search algorithm.

<comment><USER39> But if it's open, people will game it...

<comment><USER38> Do people game open encryption?

<comment><USER39> Just because they both use the word "open", does not make them structurally the same. Show me a ranking algorithm I can't game...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I wonder if it'd be possible... (i know it'd be extremely challenging) - <USER2> have some sort of open-source-ai search engine that runs on the blockchain... -- something that anyone could use the API to make a frontend interface ala google, but all the rankings/etc... are controlled by the blockchain, and people using the sites could maybe thumbs up/down if it was a good search and then the AI could use those indicators to hone it's algorithms.

</comment><comment><USER41> EDIT: I've noticed all the replies and I'd like to acknowledge them. Unfortunately I feel very stupid for not screenshotting what I saw when I searched one hour ago. I now see 62,900 results, and I can load up to page 6. I can't prove that I was not able to load page 2 before, but it's true.

My original comment remains unedited below.

\--

For a concrete demonstration of pathological de-ranking, do a query for "site:web.archive.org".

I get "59,000 results" on page 1, but page 2 will never load!

There _are_ a few results, which proves that a) web.archive.org are not using robots.txt or other blocking techniques, and b) that Google's infrastructure is inhaling content. But it's invisible.

Think about how sad this is - once a site goes dead, it's offline, _even though the content is still publicly accessible._ If only that context was indexed using a decent search engine.

Practically speaking, I totally acknowledge that archived content is complex to surface; sites can be pulled offline because content needs to be disappeared for any number of reasons, etc. I recognize the general difficulty of getting this right. So I'm _not_ _really_ arguing "if only this were surfaced", because it's unfair to - I'm more saying "hey look, this is what it looks like when something has been completely killed," as a demonstrable and extreme datapoint.

<comment><USER20> Page 2 loads for me, though there's a slight delay.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Moosedown, using LINQPad to export and analyze last.fm data - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/anoonmoose/moosedown <comment><AUTHOR> Author here. I uploaded this slightly hacky project for a few reasons:

-HN has made me nervous about services I love disappearing out of nowhere, so I wanted to give people more options for saving their last.fm data

-I love data analysis, and I want more people to know what can be done with only a fresh install of LINQPad on Windows.

Like I sort of say in the readme, the cool thing here isn't that you can export your last.fm data- which is useful and cool- it's that you can quickly and easily leverage your knowledge of whichever of the several supported languages that you happen to know to query and analyze the data.

Thanks for any feedback!</comment>


Ask HN: Open Source Project looking for Designer? - <AUTHOR>

After years and years of benefitting from open source projects, I would love a chance to give back.<p>I currently work as a Front End Developer / Designer for one of the Big SV Companies, and am looking for a project to contribute to. Can anyone recommend a project to get involved with? Feel free to comment below, or check out my profile for portfolio and contact information. <comment><USER2> Hey - was just poking around new and saw this. We're pushing on a number of open-source iOS apps, because the number of OSS is disappointingly low for such a popular platform.

Announcement & links: [http://blog.inkmobility.com/post/59687500040/open- source-and...](http://blog.inkmobility.com/post/59687500040/open-source-and- the-ios-app-store)

Feel free to shoot me an email as well</comment>


Android 5.1 Fixes a Wi-Fi Annoyance - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2015/03/google-android-broken-wifi/ <comment><USER2> As someone who still has a plan with a "adorably small data cap", I'm happy and worried at the same time. I'm happy because, as most other people, I too have had to disconnect from hotspots with captive portals manually, in order to get the phone to switch to mobile data. But I'm also worried that this fancy new algorithm will choose 3G instead of WiFi much often and sometimes against my will, effectively reaching the cap much faster.

My Android 4.2 phone already does something similar with WiFi networks where it says it "avoided a poor connection", which is annoying when you're trying to connect to that "poor" connection precisely, and even worse when it ditches the "poor" connection... for one with a captive portal, leaving me with a super fast connection, indeed, but which only leads to a login page.

As someone with a capped plan who often prefers slow-but-unlimited to fast- but-limited connections, I'd like to be able to disable the automatic switch, and I really hope they add an option for that. In this day and age though, everything seems to be moving in the direction of less and less configurability...

<comment><USER3> It's worse when the "poor" connection is because you're in the edge of its coverage area, so you move right next to the router... and it still won't connect, because it decided that this network was a "poor" connection and memorized that decision. Happened to me a few days ago. Luckily, leaving it alone for a few minutes cured that and it connected.

<comment><USER4> I've found that turning WiFi off and on again will also reset the 'poor connectivity' decision.

<comment><USER3> That was the first thing I tried. Didn't work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I do find quite often when walking around my university campus that my phone's attempts to connect to 2-bar WiFi signals result in a much worse connection than just turning off WiFi and letting my iPhone use 3G or 4G. I mean, if it's 4 or 5 bars (inside a building), the WiFi's as good as, or better than, 4G. But outside, the phone keeps trying to connect to weak signals despite having the option of superfast 4G.

Another problem is just that so many WiFi hotspots are gated and require you to use a horrid web portal to log in. Their automatic redirection has stopped working properly for most major sites due to HTTP Strict Transport Security, so I have to deliberately go to an insecure site just to bring up the portal, and if my phone loses signal for just a moment, bam, need to relog...

<comment><USER6> Browsing to [http://example.com/](http://example.com/) is perfect for finding the captive portal.

<comment><USER7> I thought Android already used [http://www.gstatic.com/generate_204](http://www.gstatic.com/generate_204) for exactly this purpose.

<comment><USER6> The notification that does this doesn't show up reliably for me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This was one of the reasons I left AT&T.

They have hotspots everywhere that my phone would connect to and they inevitably either sucked or were located just far enough away from the store I was visiting that the phone could connect but not get usable internet.

I'd have to keep turning wi-fi off in order to use the internet, then naturally I'd forget to turn it back on.

Between the removal of unlimited data plans and the strategic placement of wi- fi internet sabotage devices I wouldn't be surprised if I had to pay AT&T some overage as a result.

I'm on T-Mobile now with unlimited data and no useless hotspots.

<comment><USER9> Couldn't you just delete the AT&T WiFi data from your phone so it never tries connecting?

<comment><USER8> If there was an option not to connect to AT&T wifi hotspots I couldn't find it. Unlike most wireless routers it wouldn't only automatically connect to ones I've used before, it would eagerly connect to any AT&T hotspot.

<comment><USER10> There is no way to remove it via the UI. You sadly need a rooted phone to remove it.

<comment><USER11> I thought so at first too, but here it is on my AT&T branded Moto X: [http://bitraf.no/~mortehu/skrot/attwifi.png](http://bitraf.no/~mortehu/skrot/attwifi.png)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> By reading the title, I actually thought they fixed _the_ biggest annoyance, the endless-and-unfixable wifi connect-connecting-saved loop. But no, 5 years after I first saw this error, it still occurs with the newer versions.

</comment><comment><USER13> It's good that most of future customers will see it at the end of year at best. Old customers won't.

</comment><comment><USER14> > While the Nexus 6 has already started seeing the update stateside, Google's > latest and greatest software still takes too long to percolate around the > ecosystem for everyone else.

Both my Nexus 5 and first generation Nexus 7 got 5.1 a week ago. The 7 got it before the 5, which is weird because it got Kitkat almost a month after the 5 got it.

<comment><USER15> My first generation Nexus 7 got 5.0 a couple of weeks ago and 5.1 today. First impression is that 5.1 is much smoother, I wonder if they prioritized the devices that were sluggish with 5.0.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I dunno.

When my new Nexus 7 tablet got "upgraded" to Android 5 it felt like a downgrade. WiFi worked OK before but now it is slow and unreliable on any network I try. Also the full disk encryption makes EVERYTHING slow.

Lots of vendors are releasing new tablets with Android 4.4 because the user experience is so much better. And don't get me started on the "Material Design" fanbois who just have to have their car and their house and their rug fit in with Material Design.

So far as I am concerned, Android 5 is like Windows 8 but the media is treating Google with kid gloves compared to Microsoft because if Bing dropped them out of the search results they wouldn't notice, but Google could put any media company out of business in an eyeblink.

<comment><USER17> Same here, but 5.1 made it much better

I was getting system error popups every 30 seconds from various apps on 5.0.

<comment><USER18> on my n5, it feels waay snappier on 5.1. battery is better too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> To me the biggest annoyance is when phone connects to WiFi but doesn't open a browser to login or accept terms so it's just silently done't work at all

<comment><USER11> Apple and Android devices connect to fixed URLs[1][2] to verify the connection. Some captive portals whitelist only those URLs, so you only see this behavior when the captive portal creator wants it to happen.

1\. [http://www.apple.com/library/test/success.html](http://www.apple.com/library/test/success.html)

2\. [http://clients3.google.com/generate_204](http://clients3.google.com/generate_204)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I don't understand the problem that was solved. Android devices can forget a WiFi network (long press the WiFi icon for the menu), manually select a network (same menu) and can disable WiFi and/or 3G. You never connect to a network you don't want to connect to.

<comment><USER21> This fails when two networks have the same name and different characteristics, and you want connections to be automated. It's frustrating when I accidentally connect to a poor network just at the edge of range.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> What would have been better, though perhaps not technically possible, was to try WiFi while keeping the mobile data active, only switching if the WiFi worked well. Not sure it's possible to run both at the same time, though.

<comment><USER23> It already does that for access points that require logging in (or accepting a ToS). It shows an exclamation point on the wifi icon, and continues to use mobile data.

This behavior was introduced to my Nexus 5 beginning with Android 5.0. It's actually a bit annoying—it broke an app I had purchased that could record and replay scripts to automatically log me in to access points, and the app maker can't (last I checked) find an API that will allow them to re-create the functionality.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I don't get why this can't happen dynamically and automatically. Detect latency and dropped packets on WiFi and fall back to LTE. Just run both networks side by side and route over the healthier one.

</comment><comment><USER25> Comcast is by far the biggest offender. More than half the xfinitywifi APs I connected to had no usable connectivity. Ended up removing the network completely and never connecting to any of them. As expected of Comcast, the Preventer of Information Access, I know.

</comment><comment><USER26> I don't have a huge data plan (my wife and I share 3 gigs a month) but that is enough so we can switch off wifi when leaving our house. I don't like using public wifi anyway.

</comment><comment><USER27> This seems like a non-problem:

1\. Disable auto-connect to open wifi.

2\. If you connect to wifi and it's broken, just pull down the quick settings panel and turn wifi off.

</comment><comment><USER28> In other news your phone now includes an additional database which records everywhere you've ever been with it!

</comment><comment><USER29> Does anyone else hate these tech headlines that begin "X just did Y." It's the inclusion of "just" that for some reason infuriates me. It seems to imply some degree of worship toward the company who "just" did this. Thank god! Our saviors!

Am I totally alone on this sentiment?

<comment><USER30> No you're not alone. The title is verging on clickbait as it doesn't tell you how they fixed it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Title should be "Google decided to log even more data about your environment"</comment>


Dutch man, 69, brings lawsuit to lower his age 20 years - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-46133262 <comment><USER2> > "You can change your name. You can change your gender. Why not your age?"

Solid logic

<comment><USER3> I can't tell if you're serious. Name and gender are labels we put on ourselves. Gender can be a bit of a gradient.

Age, on the other hand, is the number of times you've circled the sun since you were born.

<comment><USER4> Isn't gender defined by X and Y chromosones? It seems as well defined (or fluid) as age.

<comment><USER5> How many people are there in the world for whom you could say, with reasonable confidence, that you know what gender they are? (This is not a trick question.)

How many of their chromosomes have you seen?

<comment><USER6> Can say the same thing about age, no?

<comment><USER7> I was gonna say, I have a far _far_ harder time determining my associates age than I do their gender. But that's no surprise, seeing as how only 4.5% of adults in America identify as LGBT; in other words, the vast majority of the people you come into contact with are straight, and generally conform to the stereotypes we've come to expect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Flagged? This is the legal/social equivalent of "falsehoods programmers believe about time."[0]

Most people don't realize time is relative and actually hard to pin down with logical precision in every case. Once you start to question the rules and references, there are lots of quirks.

I do think his argument about Tinder is more interesting than you might think. Why should he have to lie about his age on this public accommodation? He doesn't have to lie about his sex or race, even though some people choose intimate relationships on those factors. Why not put the onus on those who wish to "discriminate" against his age to out themselves as people who care about age?

[0] [https://infiniteundo.com/post/25326999628/falsehoods- program...](https://infiniteundo.com/post/25326999628/falsehoods-programmers- believe-about-time)

</comment><comment><USER9> I was originally against transgenderism having legal authority because of its effects on other methods of identification (like age). I suppose with that battle finished, this is the inevitable successor.

Well, I'm not going to be on the losing side this time. Here's to hoping for an age-fluid world in 5 years!

<comment><USER7> "Sir, you're too old for military service."

"That's ageism, and it's illegal! Also, did you just assume my gender identity?? Now watch my walker, and hand me that M14."

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'd go the other way, I want to identify as a 70 year old and get my social security cheques.

Maybe this is how we implement basic income.

</comment><comment><USER11> Ah... Emile Ratelband. Since "Tsjakkaa!" isn't so much on the television any more he craving for attention. He has been doing other tricks to get some attention in the past and this is also one of these tricks. I don't think anyone in my country takes this guy serious anymore.

</comment><comment><USER12> > A local court in the city of Arnhem, south-east of Amsterdam, is expected to > rule on the case within four weeks.

That seems inefficient and slow. Someone I knew growing up wanted to drive sooner. They asked their father to get them a new birth certificate. A few phone calls later, a "gift" to the right person at the records office and voila, he turned a year older. It was both scary and amazing that legally his age changed overnight.

<comment><USER13> What country was this?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> in the US seems like a lot of age-based laws, even the Constitution, would have to change to allow this. I.E. you have to be 35 to run for president, _voice cracking_ "no problem I identify as that!"

</comment><comment><USER15> Hah, I don't know if someone that senile could actually pass for 49. "Age is a choice!" like if he wanted to be born in 1230, we'd all just have to go along and agree that it is true and makes sense with our concept of time. No, it doesn't work like that.

Maybe he should've taken the time to convince the people drafting his birth certificate to put a different year on it back when they were writing it... if he can't do that, then he shouldn't have the power to change his age.

Of course, he can certainly lie about his age on tinder. Don't know why he needs a lawsuit to do that.</comment>


Ask HN: Payment handler for "directory" type site (multiple recipients) - <AUTHOR>

Hi,<p>I'm toying with an idea which involves your standard "directory" type commerce site where you aggregate sellers (e.g. different restaurants) and let them receive their own payments off of the "food" they'd sell on the site. (I know this has been done to death, it's just for illustrative purposes). Is there any service that lets you implement this kind of payments system (i.e. let new sellers register and receive payments straight to their account) or would I have to handle the payments centrally and redistribute to end recipients myself? Any heads up much appreciated. Thanks. <comment><USER2> Talk to BrainTree about becoming a "3rd party payment aggregator" (that's the official term for accepting payments and then distributing them). You can get a merchant account that permits this, although the requirements are a little stricter and some money may be held in escrow.

We do this at nextproof.com. We take payments and then transfer $ to the business via ACH once their balance exceeds $50.

</comment><comment><USER3> <http://aws.amazon.com/fps/>

_Facilitate transactions between a buyer and a third party seller, take a cut of the transaction, and have control over who pays the transaction processing fees_

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, Amazon FPS seems to be exactly what I want, but I don't think it has UK merchant support. I am hesitant about the whole "escrow" system because that can introduce a lot of complications and does not scale easily.

</comment><comment><USER4> PayPal is the defacto standard for what you want.</comment>


Show HN: Complain Anonymously about everything - <AUTHOR> http://onelink.to/e5vrx7

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN community,

We have developed this app so people will be free to offload their day to day stress without being judged by their friends for being complaining too much.

It's also a great tool to show brands your dissatisfaction with their services or products. Hopefully, it will make them to fix up the problems and everybody will win from it.

Essentially we are like a feedback box for everything!

Please Let us know what do you think(For good or for bad!), we appreciate all feedback and will try to address it.

OyVey Team</comment>


Nigerians Dominate Scrabble Tournaments Using Five-Letter Word Strategy - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/for-nigerian-scrabble-stars-short-tops-shorter-1463669734 <comment><USER2> If I understand this correctly, they are applying the Chess strategy of thinking n-moves ahead to Scrabble, where the opponent's tiles are hidden and ones own future tiles are mostly unknown.

If you use all the tiles, on the upside you get +50 extra points. The downside is that you leave a lot more room for the opponent to score big since there are more letters on board after your move. Also, you have no control on your next 7 tiles and this can negatively affect your scores for the next 3-5 moves.

The benefit to keeping a few good tiles for future moves comes at the cost of fewer points in the immediate round. The upside is your opponent has fewer open tiles to score big on.

In general, the first strategy beats the second because of the bingo advantage, however their secret sauce is a list of 5 letter words that the opponent can't build on to score big points. So these inert words make the second strategy better for now.

I haven't written any Scrabble AI but I wonder if most of them optimize for the immediate move or look further down the game? Unlike Chess, there are many more unknown variables per move in Scrabble - tiles you both might get, x-y position of n-tiles placed per round, scores of each tile placed, tile bonuses (double/triple letter/word) etc. If anything, the Nigerians' victory has shown that there is a lot more room for optimization in Scrabble and scoring the max per round may not be the globally optimal solution.

<comment><USER3> _" they are applying the Chess strategy of thinking n-moves ahead to Scrabble"_

That isn't new, what is new is that they (learni from analysis of games played by computer) show is that the conventional strategy favours scoring points too much over keeping a rack that allows you to score decently in future moves and preventing your opponent from scoring heavily.

This is presented as a totally new strategy, but looking at the video showing an example game, I get the impression it is more of a slight, but important adjustment. For example, the Nigerian does have a seven-letter move in that play.

And, by the way, I would expect this:

 _" Mr. Jighere and his teammates kept to themselves, going to bed early […] his opponent, Mr. Mackay, spent the evening before their big match at a pub."_

also influenced the result. McKay probably saw this as a bit of a holiday, while the Nigerians saw it as work. 449 vs 432 is not a crushing defeat.

<comment><USER4> OK you guys. Here's the serious bit then:

>> McKay probably saw this as a bit of a holiday, while the Nigerians saw it as work.

That's probably his way of unwinding and managing his psychology after a match. It's a bit misleading for the article to bring it up as a disadvantage since he's obviously a strong player who has probably competed for some time, so he should be expected to know what works for him.

Also, you can perfectly well go to the pub without coming back with your pants on your head. I usually drink half a glass of wine, then go home and code. No reason why the guy didn't have a light drink then got back to his hotel and trained.

By contrast, the Nigerian's practice of playing 48-hour games and studying non-stop during their flight sounds more performance-degrading to me (having played a board game competitively, I won't say which). But, again: what works for them works for them.

<comment><USER5> Stop.Just stop.You guys always begrudge success when Africans do good things.It is pathetic and low.You ought to learn to appreciate and celebrate people when they work hard to achieve success rather looking for ways to belittle their achievements.

<comment><USER4> Did you post this under the wrong message? I didn't write anything that sounds like I'm begrudging the Nigerians their victory.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Back in the day (2001) I worked on the PalmOS version of Scrabble. One thing that surprised me when I was tuning the AI was that it played better when all words of seven or more letters were removed from its vocabulary. Apparently searching through the longer words was a worse use of time than searching for other placements of shorter words (except on the highest difficulty, where it was given a larger time budget).

We ended up giving the lower difficulty levels a restricted dictionary anyway, but this was to affect players' perception of the difficulty rather than the actual difficulty (the AI on "beginner" mode shouldn't be playing a lot of words you've never heard of). We adjusted time budgets so that difficulty still ramped up as the dictionary expanded at higher levels.

<comment><USER7> > We ended up giving the lower difficulty levels a restricted dictionary > anyway, but this was to affect players' perception of the difficulty rather > than the actual difficulty (the AI on "beginner" mode shouldn't be playing a > lot of words you've never heard of)

It seems to me like a restricted dictionary or smaller time budget (or, for that matter, dumber search algorithms) are all sensible measures of a low difficulty level. Otherwise you're using "difficulty" to mean "difficult for me to program cleverly" rather than "difficult to beat" or "like a human expert".

<comment><USER8> I think you missed the point that a restricted dictionary actually increased the difficulty to the user.

<comment><USER7> I don't think so? The restricted dictionary is for the AI, not the user.

<comment><USER8> "it played better when all words of seven or more letters were removed from its vocabulary."

<comment><USER7> Oh, I see what you mean now. Thanks, I think you're right.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> More counterintuitive Scrabble facts: the French Scrabble world champion is from New Zealand and doesn't speak French.

[http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo- way/2015/07/21/424980378/...](http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo- way/2015/07/21/424980378/winner-of-french-scrabble-title-does-not-speak- french)

<comment><USER4> To be fair, he can now speak French _words_. He just has no idea what they mean.

<comment><USER10> I doubt he can _speak_ them, per se. French pronounciation can be quite tricky.

<comment><USER11> Eh, it's much less tricky than English.

<comment><USER12> touché.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The article really bungles the strategy talk. In the actual game, there are 14 tiles unseen.

[http://www.cross-tables.com/annotated.php?u=22368#17](http://www.cross- tables.com/annotated.php?u=22368#17)

If Wellington plays his 86 point bingo, he empties the bag and if Lewis bingos back, the game ends and he'll get the value of Wellington's final rack added to his score. By not emptying the bag, Wellington keeps control of the game and prevents the only way he can lose.

It's not some crazy strategy, it's a pretty clear decision for a high level player.

Source: Played tournament Scrabble and memorized something like 50k words for about 4-5 years.

</comment><comment><USER14> "Nigeria is beating the West at its own board game"

I know that the definition of "the West" is pretty vague, but this journalism seems a decade or two behind its time with its "us and them" style. Scrabble doesn't belong to Europe/USA and Nigeria fits geographically, politically, economically, and religiously into common definitions of "the West".

<comment><USER15> Wikipedia's "Cultural Definition":

 _" From a cultural and sociological approach the Western world is defined as including all cultures that are directly derived from and influenced by European cultures, i.e. Europe (at least the European Union member states, EFTA countries, European microstates);[31][32] in the Americas (e.g. Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Mexico, United States of America, Uruguay, Venezuela), and in Oceania (Australia and New Zealand). Together these countries constitute Western society."_

I don't think I've ever heard any definition include any African country.

<comment><USER16> Not even South Africa?

<comment><USER15> I can't think of any time I've thought of or heard someone speaking of South Africa as a western country. Influenced by the West, sure.

<comment><USER17> Honestly I hardly heard anyone referring Venezuela or Cuba as the West either. In practice it's really down to Anglo-Saxon + European first world countries.

<comment> semi-extrinsic Same goes for North vs South. There is a funny quote by a US president (that I can't seem to find right now) listing some countries in the southern hemisphere, and they're all actually on the northern hemisphere.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This article slightly overstates how disruptive the strategy is. Of course top-level Scrabble players already knew about rack management and defensive plays, and would not always just greedily play the highest-scoring word. It's more a question of finding the optimal weightings of the different elements, and the Nigerians have shown that the conventional wisdom was probably weighted too highly towards making big plays immediately.

</comment><comment><USER19> I've been playing Words with Friends more or less constantly for the past 5 years or so and I've come to pretty much the same conclusion. It's far more important to deny your opponent the opportunity to get valuable triple/double letter or work scores than it is to always grab them yourself.

If you do extend to get a bonus tile, make sure the potential scoring opportunity is limited. Things like:

1\. Don't leave a vowel next to a triple letter score in line with a triple word score - that leaves an opening for a valuable consonant to start a word and end on the triple word score.

2\. If you pass parallel to a triple letter tile, beware of having a vowel adjacent to the tile and a consonant after it. Especially if the vowel is A, I, or O as these form two letter words with Z, Q, and J respectively. If they can get get for example JO going in two directions on a triple letter that's 60+ points.

3\. Always be aware of whether the J, Q, Z, X have been played or not.

4\. Sometimes it's better to play a less valuable word if it helps you get rid of difficult letters like too many vowels or consonants in hopes that the next draw will even out your hand and let you play a better word.

I think WWF is a little different because the tiles permit higher scoring possibilities than Scrabble, but I imagine the strategies are much the same.

<comment><USER20> WWF forces you to focus more on the board strategy due to the mechanics of the game being different than Scrabble: the player doesn't have to actually know and/or memorize the words they are playing, they can just attempt as many high scoring combinations they want until they get a hit in the game's dictionary database.

<comment><USER21> I use this strategy when playing WWF as well, and have stumbled across words unknown to me.

I also play illegal words to check the validity of other words formed. For instance, if I wonder whether an existing word can take an -S or -D ending, I'll play a word I know is wrong. WWF helpfully comes back with a list of which words aren't valid. :)

Neither of these work against a live opponent so I play WWF a lot differently than Scrabble. Like you said, strategy is different when playing - in WWF, I can focus more on rack management and scoring spaces playing WWF; in Scrrabble, I am nudged towards playing words I know because I can't test them. Back when I played Scrabble I studied the 2 and 3 letter works plus the hooks and didn't find that aspect of the game all that fun.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> In my younger years I played Scrabble quite obsessively, sometimes in 36 hour long sessions with a dozen of us playing. Against mere mortals (i.e. those that dn't know all 102 two letter words) I considered myself unbeatable.

However, several years after my 'peak Scrabble' days, I found myself in a rural pub with not a lot to do than play the game, against someone who really didn't have the wordplay for it. Much to my horror I lost!!! His 'strategy' was to play 2 or 3 letter words, nothing longer, ever... He just lacked the tiles and vocabulary for longer words. Consequently the whole top left of the board had no places to go, totally locked out by little words.

Amongst my normal Scrabble playing friends I always played an open game, in contrast my 2-3 letter competitor played a closed game, not that that was deliberate.

Therefore, if you are not playing against a pro, try 2-3 letters rather than five - you really could win against those far more experienced than you.

</comment><comment><USER23> As a Nigerian, this makes me absurdly proud. As a mathematician, I am especially proud of the game-theoretic aspect of the win.

<comment><USER24> I'm curious though by your characterization of this as being "game theoretic"... It seems like this strategy is a consequence of correctly analyzing the game state tree, which doesn't on the face of it seem to involve game theory to me (in the way that term is usually used in economics.)

<comment><USER23> They are treating this as a stochastic game. They are accounting for their opponent's likely response when deciding their own move. That is enough for me, anyway.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> A couple of comments are slightly misconstruing the "rack management" strategy. Using all your letters for the 50 point bonus is sometimes OK.

>they increasingly hold off on other high-scoring moves, such as six-letter words, or seven-letter terms that only use six tiles from the rack. Instead, by spelling four- or five-letter words, a player can keep their most useful tiles—like E-D or I-N-G—for the next round, a strategy called rack management. The Nigerians rehearse it during dayslong scrimmage sessions.

My paraphrasing: "unless you are using all your tiles for the 50 points bonus, make sure you have decent letters after your turn; even then, consider whether the bonus is worth it."

Examples off the top of my head: what's especially decried is using 6 of your letters leaving "Q" or 5 of your letters, leaving you with something like "LW" and 5 randoms, which makes for awkward turns.

</comment><comment><USER26> I'm a tournament Scrabble player and while I'm glad this article has brought some awareness to our game, this is pretty standard tournament strategy. It's about balancing your rack and playing short words when needed. If you have a long word that uses all your letters, it is 99% of the time the right play.

The only reason why he passed up the bingo PEREIRAS in that endgame is because it would have emptied the bag and if his opponent had a bingo to end the game, Jighere would have lost.

</comment><comment><USER27> Brian Sheppard's thesis "Towards Perfect Play of Scrabble" [0] has a lot of good info on Scrabble strategy which can be applied to human play as well as to AI (though obviously things like B* and Monte Carlo search aren't realistic for human players)

        [0] https://project.dke.maastrichtuniversity.nl/games/files/phd/Shepard_thesis.pdf

</comment><comment><USER28> Pretty interesting strategy. I also play very defensively when I play scrabble to the point where I try to sabotage what I _think_ my opponent's next move(s) is(are) which, when using short letters, makes this really, really easy.

Then again I've never played competitively so who knows about that "easy" part :)

</comment><comment><USER29> If someone wants to experiment, I wrote a script a year ago that generates valid words from a set of letters and scores them according to Scrabble rules. [0]

[0] [https://github.com/mateogianolio/scrabbler](https://github.com/mateogianolio/scrabbler)

</comment><comment><USER30> Huh? I learned scrabble from a professional player 15 years ago, and at the time he said this was the default strategy for all serious players.

</comment><comment><USER31> Less is more! It's cool to see disrupting new strategies in classic games.

</comment><comment><USER32> If you watch the video, one big win for Jighere was to play QUIZ (93) on a triple word score field. This was right after a round where he did play 8 letters, which, according to the short word strategy, he should not have done.

So while he did manage this well, there was also good bit of luck involved. Or maybe it's good to have a strategy, but sometimes you need to ignore it.

<comment><USER15> Firstly a pedantic point, he played 7 letters not 8, but his 7 made an 8 letter word.

I don't play scrabble more than once or twice a year and am not great even by playing-it-with-family standards. But the concept that not using all 7 of your letters leaves you with a potentially bad next hand is one part of their overall strategy, according to the article. They also will be thinking about what letters are already gone and therefore what might be left to draw, they're thinking about what opportunities they might be opening up for the opponent, and they're thinking about their future opportunities too. And of course they're thinking about how many points they'll get, too.

His Bingo (I never knew that was a thing in scrabble before today) scored 72 points, so if he can find a way to justify it, it's something to at least consider. Looking at the board when he played it (and including the 7 tiles he put down), there are five clear spots where there is an open vowel with space to become a 4 or 5 letter word, which might make him worry less about not pulling a vowel if he reloads his letters. Add in all the other strategic thinking he has and I don't, I wouldn't be surprised if he made an intelligent rather than lucky decision. Of course, with his next draw, he was lucky that not only did he get Q and Z, but he also got a blank. But every time you get new letters in scrabble you're going to be lucky or unlucky, regardless of how well you play.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> > this country of 500 languages That caught me by surprise, until > [https://www.ethnologue.com/country/ng/languages](https://www.ethnologue.com/country/ng/languages)

</comment><comment><USER34> I wonder what happens when you apply Google's AlphaGo against the Nigerians.

</comment><comment><USER32> I liked the original title - can we change it back?

</comment><comment><USER35> I'm pretty sure "Katti" isn't an English word. Did the journalist mishear "Catty"? Is this not a word Americans recognise?

<comment><USER36> What dictionaries did you check? Did you check the one this tournament was using?

Words don't have to be English, they have to be listed in the book the tournament uses.

[http://www.anagrammer.com/scrabble/katti](http://www.anagrammer.com/scrabble/katti)

        In which Scrabble dictionary does KATTI exist?

        Scrabble (US/Canada)     No
        Scrabble (UK)            Yes!(9 pts)
        Official Scrabble (OSPD) No
        WordFeud                 Yes!(9 pts)
        Words with friends       No
        Hanging with friends     No
        Letterpress              Yes!(5 pts)
        Lexulous (US)            No

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> [tl;dr]

"Bingo" often beats going bingo.

</comment><comment><USER38> They might have to start donning the official scrabble championship mantle too [https://espnfivethirtyeight.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/ap10...](https://espnfivethirtyeight.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/ap103023753935.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER39> Let me be the first to say: moneytile!</comment>


Interactive simulation of a wormhole and a black hole like in movie Interstellar - <AUTHOR> https://sirxemic.github.io/Interstellar/ <comment><USER2> Terrifying.</comment>


Show HN: Slapshot — never forget anything - <AUTHOR> http://slapshotapp.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi I'm Tyler. I work at a startup, I'm not an engineer, but I like to make things.

Like many of you, I have lots of ideas. I also enjoy going out with friends for a drink. I like people telling me about cool things to check out later. But I never remember later what my ideas or those friends' recommendations were, because the brain isn't meant to be that kind of memory device. So I taught myself Objective-C and Xcode and made an iPhone app called Slapshot to solve this.

Here's how it works:

 _Just type and close the app._

That's it. Slapshot will email you exactly what you wrote 12 hours later.

I'd love your feedback. If you're interested in helping promote Slapshot please send me an email firstname.lastname@example.com, I've got a free promo code with your name on it.

<comment><USER2> Neat idea, but how is this better than just having a note-taking/text-editing app that you look back at later?

<comment><AUTHOR> Good question. I made myself constantly answer this when building Slapshot.

What I discovered: most people never remember to look back later. And even if you do it's just more work.

Slapshot isn't a world-changing app but it does help optimize for a small pain point in the easiest possible way. I'm all about off-loading work to automated things so I can use my brain to focus on other stuff.

<comment><USER2> Good answer. I'd consider adding it to the website.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. Done and done.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Stache – Docs and Interactive Snippets for Slack - <AUTHOR> http://stached.io <comment><AUTHOR> Checkout this 'public snippet' [http://stached.io/standalone/anfRHSfxinChFBKaQ](http://stached.io/standalone/anfRHSfxinChFBKaQ)</comment>


Australia's surprising disregard for free speech - <AUTHOR> https://www.economist.com/asia/2019/06/15/australias-surprising-disregard-for-free-speech <comment><USER3> Free speech is a very different subject than the rights of journalists.

Australians by and large don't want American style, unfettered free speech. And are quite happy with "say whatever you want so long as you don't libel or slander someone or some group of people" approach. It's what keeps our very multicultural society together.

What happened with the recent investigation of journalists is about the Australian government's right to see the drafts and sources for articles that involve investigating national security matters. And in general harass and intimidate journalists to discourage such articles in the future.

You can fix the second problem by enshrining the rights of journalists in legislation without having to make it a freedom of speech issue.

<comment><USER4> You're casting a very wide net there.

> Australians by and large don't want American style, unfettered free speech

I'd argue that Australians, by and large, don't know that they don't have a legislated right to free speech similar to what they have in the US. This is evident by the shock surprise and outrage from Australians every time there is an action that stifles free speech.

> And are quite happy with "say whatever you want so long as you don't libel > or slander someone or some group of people" approach

Neither libel nor slander is protected under the American first amendment.

> It's what keeps our very multicultural society together.

Australia has a very mono-cultural society. The "multi-cultural society" meme attempts to liken having a kebab shop on the corner to having conflicting cultures in the same area, which to me (as a non-Anglo Australian) doesn't make sense. Australian values and culture is quite evidently very specific (freedom of religion, freedom of dress, freedom of expression, etc) and we - both legally and as a society - reject any culture that conflict with this.

Perhaps the only other culture that is allowed in Australia is traditional Aboriginal culture, where we quite literally have a second set of laws to accommodate it.

That said, freedom of speech doesn't have any impact on this at all. I'm not sure where the link you're supposing comes from.

\---

In general, what happened[0] was intentionally misreported by the ABC.

1\. The AFP obtained a search warrant for the ABC offices.

2\. The AFP notified the ABC that they were coming to investigate in advance, however the ABC reported it to be a "raid."

3\. The ABC dedicated a five camera film crew to follow the AFP around throughout the process.

4\. The AFP had the explicit goal of finding out who the source was for revealing classified security information.

That's it.

It wasn't a free speech issue -- and it wasn't a journalistic rights issue.

[0] [https://www.afp.gov.au/news-media/media-releases/afp- stateme...](https://www.afp.gov.au/news-media/media-releases/afp-statement- activity-canberra-and-sydney)

<comment><USER5> >Neither libel nor slander is protected under the American first amendment.

No but...

Valid defenses include: the statement is true. The statement is the speaker's opinion. And even if those fail, it must proven that it was spoken with malice. So defamation in the US is close to unenforceable.

<comment><USER6> > Valid defenses include: the statement is true

Also a defence under Australian law.

> The statement is the speaker's opinion.

Also a defence under Australian law, as long as the speech falls under the concept of "fair comment and criticism", which is the same rule the US follows (albeit interpreted quite differently).

> it must proven that it was spoken with malice

 _NOT_ a defence under US law, unless the plaintiff is a public figure, which is a category defined quite narrowly in the US.

> So defamation in the US is close to unenforceable.

There are a _lot_ of libel suits in the US, many of them are won by the plaintiffs.

The difference in law is less than you seem to think, and what differences exist are mainly on the extent that opinions ("I think Joe is an asshole") should be protected; both countries agree that factual claims ("Joe murdered his wife") are not. And offhand, it's hardly clear that Australia had drawn the line in the right place.

See, eg:

[https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/05/opinion/australia- defamat...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/05/opinion/australia-defamation- laws.html)

[https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/nov/30/your-right- to-...](https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/nov/30/your-right-to-know-how- australias-defamation-law-stifles-public-interest-journalism)

[https://www.smh.com.au/national/australia-s-defamation- laws-...](https://www.smh.com.au/national/australia-s-defamation-laws-are- ripe-for-overhaul-20181207-p50kwk.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Australia is usually a canary in the coal mine for the effectiveness of resistance to repressive speech laws in the Five-Eyes countries.

The Spycatcher affair in the late 80s is the first one I can remember, although I am sure there are other, earlier instances that the commentariat can point to.

<comment><USER8> Teens watch Youtube more than TV. Youtube has been far more censorious and disregarding of Free Speech than anything the Australian Government has done.

<comment><USER9> Are you suggesting that having your video taken down from YouTube and going to jail are equally problematic?

<comment><USER8> If journalists are going to jail in Australia its because they have broken the law. At least you can vote for politicians with a different approach.

Channels (conservative ones) are banned and disappeared on Youtube for holding the wrong opinions, in violation of no laws, and there is no recourse.

<comment><USER10> People are free to use any video sharing website they want, or even set up their own, but it is significantly more difficult to change your country.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The Australian TV series "Secret City" (available on Netflix) and featuring a plot on gross abuse of power by the security establishment, is looking increasingly like a documentary.

</comment><comment><USER12> Australia used to have a very good record on individual rights, but in the past 20 years has headed towards authoritarianism. I guess PC/Statist/Collectivist culture has infested Australia too.

</comment><comment><USER13> I have once concern with this article. The ABC isn't a state broadcaster its a public broadcaster.

<comment> kube-system Edit: nevermind, it seems that "state broadcaster" implies more than I thought.

<comment><USER14> State broadcaster implies the state controls the content, in particular has editorial control, over the content, and that's not the case with ABC.

The wikipedia page says this, which highlights that ABC isn't a state broadcaster.

> but is expressly independent of government

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Speaking as an Australian I'd put the key difference between Australians and Americans this way: Americans feel like every surface is a slippery slope. Australians don't.

It's why Americans (many anyway) resist even toothless firearm regulations, for example. "If they take away our bump stocks then before you know it they'll take all our guns and we'll have no defense against the tyranny of government!"

While I certainly don't support raiding the ABC, for example (as opposed to News Corp, which needs to burn to the ground followed by exiling every Murdoch on Earth to Tristan da Cunha), an important question to ask--which I haven't seen the answer to--is did the AFP obtain the source of the leak from the raids or not?

If no then things are pretty complicated, for David McBride at least. He himself wasn't (and isn't) a journalist. He did obtain classified material in his capacity as a lawyer for the Defense Department, which is a bit of a double-whammy. Even if you can get passed the classified part, having your lawyer make unauthorized disclosures of professional work product (essentially) is a problem.

Even in America this would be a problem. It was certainly a problem for Chelsea Manning.

<comment><USER10> >important question to ask--which I haven't seen the answer to--is did the AFP obtain the source of the leak from the raids or not?

The AFP already knew who the source was!! As I understand it, he confessed before the raids even happened.

<comment><USER16> And his court date is already set. That's what confused me regarding the raids; the AFP already knew who the leaker was before conducting the raid on the ABC. Given that I'm a bit confused as to why the AFP needed to raid the ABC given they already had all the info required to move for a trial and conviction. Finally, the leak happened in 2017 and yet they're only now getting around to raiding the ABC?

<comment><USER10> The message is clear - report on our secret child murdering and we will send our goons to get you.

Are we still the good guys?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I don't think there's any legal basis for the idea of free speech in Australia.

<comment><USER18> There's an implied freedom of political speech. The rest can be regulated by law. By the way the way Americans view the constitution as some sort of divinely bestowed natural law document is highly unusual. For example the Australian constitution is literally an act of Parliament.

<comment><USER19> This comment looks like it got voted down, probably because the tone sounds a little patronising to what it characterises as the American view. But nothing it says is to my knowledge inaccurate or even a twisting of facts.

The constitution of America is explicitly stated to be a statement of natural law.

This view is highly unusual.

The Australian constitution IS literally an act of parliament to my understanding.

Freedom of speech IS only intimated by the courts and is not explicitly stated in any part of the Australian constitution.

<comment><USER20> "The constitution of America is explicitly stated to be a statement of natural law.

This view is highly unusual."

It's not highly unusual, see my comment below: it's normative.

As for 'natural law' \- well, the Canadian constitution essentially indicates that our rights are bestowed by the 'Supremacy of God' [1] which is kind of like 'natural law'.

[1] [https://laws- lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/Const/page-15.html#h-39](https://laws- lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/Const/page-15.html#h-39)

<comment><USER19> Your comment below doesn't demonstrate that constitutions being considered statements of natural law is normative at all. Constitutions far outdate the very concept of natural law, and your comment doesn't contain any evidence that this has become the norm in modern times.

I dunno if I accept that the Canadian constitution does or not, it doesn't matter, one other country would not tip the balance.

<comment><USER21> > Constitutions far outdated the very concept of natural law

Really? I would trace the concept of natural law at least back to Aquinas (13th century) if not antiquity. Constitutional law as part of a secular democracy, on the other hand, I wouldn't trace back much further than the U.S. Constitution, or at most its 17th century predecessors. Magna Carta wasn't really a constitution.

<comment><USER19> Considering the ancient Greeks basically made a hobby of discussing what the ideal constitution is, I would say the concept is far older than even the first twinkling of the concept of natural law.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> [https://outline.com/H7dDuF](https://outline.com/H7dDuF)

</comment><comment><USER23> As others have said it's not really about free speech. What a citizen is allowed to say in public isn't effected by this.

It's not anything particularly new either. Governments have always been pissed off by civil servants leaking things, and there have always been vindictive who rather than find the disgruntled employee and fire them, will lash out in the worst possible way and create more disgruntled employees.

What's changed is technology. Before someone had to tap explicit telephone's, someone had to listen to them. The journo's are just waking up to the fact that when the Australian government gave themselves the power to force the telco's to record the "meta data" about every phone call and web access and store it for two years, and granted themselves unlimited warrantless access to said data keeping your sources from the government became a little more difficult. Not a whole pile more difficult mind you - but you suddenly had to be computer savy. You had to know to use a mail provider out of Australia's jurisdiction. You had to use encrypted communications whose end points didn't reveal who you were talking to. It not complicated, and nothing that Wikileaks hasn't been doing for years, but it's definitely new.

Then we moved onto stage 2 - the Access and Assistance bill, in which the government gave themselves the power to force Microsoft / Google / Apple's / Facebooks of this world to silently install bugs on your phone / computer / tv. The raids being discussed by the article were covered by a warrant that specifically allowed them to delete and change data on the targets computers, which is decidedly weird when you think about it. [0] Surely they aren't planning to present data in court when there is a possibility they planted or modified it? Obviously that wasn't the intention. However replacing keyboard drivers and the like with something that does log data does require you to modify & delete data - so my guess is they were covering their arses. These seems to be little doubt they were planting bugs.

Avoiding the seeing eyes implanted by Assistance and Access bill is a damned sight harder than avoiding meta data collection. Again, not impossible - <USER2> now you have to avoid software that knows who you are. Software that is dispensed from centralised app stores that insist on identifying you and your device first is a definite no-go. Android is out, Apple is out, Microsoft is out. In fact most of the computing infrastructure they are comfortable with is out. Linux distributions are OK and open source communication apps like Signal are OK - but only those that have thought about and implemented evil maid protections.

It's all doable, and it's all cheap and once you do it you are even safer then you were pre Assistance and Access bill. But geeze you have to be really tech savy to get it right, and right now they are just waking up to the fact their lives and sources are an have been open book because they didn't do it.

As an aside, if this is the first time we've seen the Assistance and Access bill in action, it's poignant to note despite all the rhetoric of it being needed to keep Australian's safe from terrorists and paedophiles, it was in fact first use by the government against it's own citizens - public servants and journo's in this case.

[0] [https://twitter.com/TheLyonsDen/status/1136126140882440193](https://twitter.com/TheLyonsDen/status/1136126140882440193)

</comment><comment><USER24> The United States drone-killed Anwar al Awlaki, an American citizen, because of his speech. I don't disagree with that action, but it does illustrate that there are limits, even in the United States, despite claims to the contrary.

<comment><USER25> There are no claims to the contrary in this thread, or this article.

<comment><USER24> Unfortunately, people, particularly those who subscribe to a certain ideology that is (was?) popular in tech circles do tend to lecture others about free speech, using the United States as a gold standard.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Not directly related but here is my story.

Some years ago I was still a student in Iran. I was watching a satellite tv show as an Australian military officer appeared on screen and looked into our eyes and in an intimidating way told in Persian "Australia will not be your homeland" apparently to discourage seeking asylum there.

Fast forward years ahead. Every year I keep hearing more bad news from them. Australia's treatment of asylum seekers in Manus Island (as if this huge land isn't made of migrants in the first place), attack on cryptography, war on whistleblowers, wierd announcements as part of five eyes alliance, and etc. Somehow those moves all point toward a dystopian mindset.

<comment><USER27> Was the message specifically about seeking asylum after traveling to Australia by boat?

Australia does accept Iranian refugees (and refugees from other countries) if they travel to Australia legally (ie by plane, with a visa etc).

There is a strong public dislike of refugees coming illegally by boat, largely due to political fear mongering over safety (many drownings) and potential for terrorists to enter Australia.

Have a look at the statistics section of:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asylum_in_Australia#Statistics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asylum_in_Australia#Statistics)

The steep climb in asylum seekers arriving by boat after about 2008 was the main starting point for the current political stance against "boat people".

The rest of your points re over reach of government control is alarming to many Australians. However, as these laws don't have a direct impact on most Australians (yet), there is general apathy by the public.

<comment><USER28> I think the problem is with the wording and attitude. It would be totally OK to quote an immigration law instead.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Australia and New Zealand are ground zero for chinese influence:

[https://www.npr.org/2018/10/02/627249909/australia-and- new-z...](https://www.npr.org/2018/10/02/627249909/australia-and-new-zealand- are-ground-zero-for-chinese-influence)

<comment><USER30> So why exactly would the Chinese care if it was revealed that Australian soldiers were committing atrocities?

It's unclear what your connection is here.

<comment><USER29> We're discussing free speech and journalism, not the specifics of the soldiers actions.</comment></comment></comment>


YouTube - Famous Failures - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6hz_s2XIAU&eurl=http://www.google.com/reader/view/ <comment><USER2> Life is like being a reinforcement agent in a large world. We just need to raise our epsilon on our epsilon-greedy decision processes if we hope to learn from risk.

on a related note: AI is damn cool

<comment><AUTHOR> that's certainly a different takeaway from mine, but I can appreciate it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I still think they should have shown the kid crashing his bike at the end.

<comment><USER4> They showed a bandage. Probably hes successfully riding after a crash(it coincides with the words) :)

<comment><USER3> That doesn't fulfill my deep emotional need to see kids crashing their bikes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is more irritating than inspiring to me. Take the life of any prodigy and you can cherry-pick context-free moments where they appear shitty. Jordan, for instance, was passed over his first high school tryout because he was too short [1]. He heroically grew taller over the summer and owned continuously for the rest of his life, except at baseball.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Jordan#Early_years>

</comment><comment><USER6> You may want to also check out <http://www.scholarspot.com> tons more videos like this under the motivation category

</comment><comment><USER7> Other failures can not ever earn a record in history.

</comment><comment><USER8> Is the snow intensional? Or is it just my computer?

</comment><comment><USER9> that's a great little video that nicely summarizes failure.</comment>


Howard Hughes - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Hughes <comment><AUTHOR> I got trapped in Wikipedia, reading about the fascinating life & times of Howard Hughes, after seeing him mentioned here [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt- sh/deep_sea_mining](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt- sh/deep_sea_mining)</comment>


How not to report on the encryption 'debate' - <AUTHOR> http://www.cjr.org/first_person/misinformation_and_misconceptions_how_not_to_report_on_the_encryption_debate.php <comment><USER2> "We kill people based on metadata." \- former head of the National Security Agency Gen. Michael Hayden

"metadata absolutely tells you everything about somebody's life. If you have enough metadata, you don't really need content." - NSA General Counsel Stewart Baker

<comment><USER3> Could you post a citation, please?

<comment><USER2> [http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2014/05/10/we-kill-people- based...](http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2014/05/10/we-kill-people-based- metadata/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> OK, so we have another well written article explaining how attempts to demonize encryption and put it back in the bottle are misguided, and the spokespeople for the authoritarians and intelligence community are being disingenuous on cable TV.

But most of us already knew this. So what I'm asking is:

* Are these well reasoned words affecting/effecting policy?

* How will we know?

<comment><USER5> Most of us who read Hacker News already know this, but it is important to keep publishing and reinforcing the message for everyone else!

<comment><USER6> But is anyone hearing the message other than us?

<comment><USER7> Have you tried using ALL CAPS?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think this article is great, but something did stand out for me.

I'm a huge supporter of universal end-to-end encryption, but Feinstein's point is making me feel some cognitive dissonance:

>"I think with a court order, with good justification, all of that can be prevented."

There _are_ cases where I would want law enforcement to be able to read encrypted communications in an emergency situation, with a valid court order. If someone is being held hostage, for example. Of course I don't want intelligence agencies having this same access; just very specific requests during exigent circumstances, with judge approval. A real judge in a real court, not a secret FISA court.

But to do that you need some kind of key escrow already set up with the government, and if you have that, there's nothing stopping law enforcement and intelligent agencies from spying on what they want when they want.

Right now this isn't a huge problem since a lot of people still communicate in plaintext, or things that are encrypted but logged/intercepted by a central location (Skype). But eventually more and more things will move to end-to-end encryption.

What is the right way to handle this?

<comment><USER9> The right way to handle it is to enforce laws in meatspace. To create CP, for example, you need to abduct and exploit children, and produce content. This leaves a trail of money, places, and witnesses. Bear down on that instead of snooping.

It could improve the effectiveness of law enforcement to force them to focus on meatspace crime rather than playing with their shiny computer toys.

<comment><USER8> True, but that's not the same for downloading or distributing CP. You can do that 100% online with no "physical" laws violated or money exchanged.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If the government forces the big American tech companies to adopt weaker encryption technologies, what's to stop terrorists from rolling their own communication app? Or new tech companies from deploying apps from countries where strong encryption is still legal? Would developers need to become familiar with government approved algorithms?

Separate from the debate on whether this is a good idea, I'd love to see a proposal for how a global encryption ban could actually be implemented.

<comment><USER11> Forcing the terrorists/criminals to roll their own encryption would be a huge win for both law enforcement/foreign intelligence agencies and the general public. When non-cryptographers write their encryption software the likelihood that it's insecure goes up, and if they're off using Mujahideen Secrets v5.0 instead of WhatsApp their communications would stick out like a sore thumb instead of blending in with regular users. When the terrorists/etc. don't blend in, the FBI/NSA/etc. don't have to sift through mainstream communications channels to figure out which people are bad guys and which are just regular people.</comment></comment>