Estonia, the Digital Republic - <AUTHOR> https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/12/18/estonia-the-digital-republic <comment><USER2> Just a fun geography tip, you can easily remember the locations of the 3 Baltic states because they go in alphabetical order from North to South. Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania.

<comment><USER3> Estonia, however, is more Nordic than it is Baltic, other than in geography: its people and language are Finnic (neither Indo-European nor related to Latvian/Lithuanian) and it's been part of Denmark or Sweden for most of its history; there were even Estonian vikings.

<comment><USER4> That's not quite correct. There were also 'Latvian vikings', the Curonians. Latvia was also ruled by Sweden for centuries. There's not much difference there, apart from language. They were a mix of Baltic tribes, some combination of which formed the modern nation states.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I know, this may be unpopular in context, but are there any updates on the Estonian ID-cards?

News as of November were that they were (temporarily) locked-down [1] and are to be reissued until next March [2] in reaction to the RSA related security flaws [3] in the libraries bundled with the Infineon chip. Is this even an issue, or is everyone using a phone app, instead of the cards, anyway?

[1] [https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/11/03/estonian_e_id_lockd...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/11/03/estonian_e_id_lockdown/)

[2] [http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-41858583](http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-41858583)

[3] [https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2017/09/security_flaw...](https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2017/09/security_flaw_i.html)

<comment><USER6> Most people who use ID card every day have updated certs remotely or went to police office. I would say government handled it pretty well.

Problematic was communication with card maker Gemalto, who didn't inform Estonia about security flaws properly. Gemalto was informed by researchers in March. These researchers informed Estonian government in August. Few days after that prime minister announced security problems.

Things would have been a lot of easier if Gemalto didn't hide the problem from the government.

<comment><USER7> Chances are that the contractual arrangements that routinely exist between governments and contractors like Gemalto make "blameless post mortems" non- profitable. It's a tricky thing to do right, because you do want to have accountability in the contract.

Governments (rightly) want contractors like this as experts-on-tap in the technology under consideration. But what you really want is not exactly a provider of the technology, but rather an advisor or partner in the process of implementing your process. I don't think we know how to structure a non- nepotistic relationship of that kind.

<comment><USER8> That's usually why projects of this size have multiple parties involved aside from directly contracting with the vendor.

As much as it's easy to hate on the Big4 consulting companies, they exist for this reason among others (some of which have more to do with how to grease the skids with pork).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Just opened a company in Estonia. The experience so far has been incredible. It's not quite the future - all the technologies should exist everywhere etc. It's the present that should have been, but somehow it's not.

<comment><USER10> I'm getting ready to do this but haven't figured out a way to open a bank account there without visiting the country. How did you do that? I saw there's a service that will do it for you but it seems like an expensive monthly fee.

<comment><USER11> I opened my company with Leapin. Easy and fast.

If you don't need a bank account and you can live with PayPal you don't need to go there. I needed a bank account and credit card so I traveled to Tallinn and opened a bank account at LHV. You have to sign the documents at the bank office.

I think LHV Bank is working on a remote process with an interview using Skype, but it was not available several months ago.

Still, I have faced several issues setting up my small SaaS service: Stripe is not available and my Braintree application was rejected because they did not understand why I wanted to create a company in Estonia! It took me two weeks to explain that I was a nice guy and then everything went fine. I also had issues creating a merchant account in Coinbase, so I had to use Bitpay.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> [https://president.ee/en/media/interviews/13471-our- citizens-...](https://president.ee/en/media/interviews/13471-our-citizens-are- going-digital-and-global-if-the-state-doesnt-keep-up-it-will-become-obsolete- the-telegraph/index.html)

Article by Estonia's current president, Kersti Kaljulaid.

"As the President of Estonia, I represent the only truly digital society which actually has a state. And this position has made me question whether the state as we know it today is fit for the 21st century."

</comment><comment><USER13> Meanwhile in Germany:

\- you can't even send an email to tax authorities and have to print/send paper letters

\- mobile internet is very slow and super expensive.

\- until recently it was not even possible to share your wlan

<comment><USER14> I don't think something working for 2 mln nation scales up for 80 mln nation. Anyways the German paper and post fetish, and active fight against any internet in wireless form is obnoxious.

<comment><USER15> _I don 't think something working for 2 mln nation scales up for 80 mln nation_

Why? There's proportionally more manpower, and even more than money than that.

<comment><USER16> Try to drive a small car. Then try the same with a big truck and you know there _can be_ scalability issues ;)

In case of Germany the problem might be that they do not need to change much as everything is okayish. In Estonia they knew they had kind of nothing after the 90's and there was a real need to reinvent themselves.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I got estonian e-residence and wrote about it here (for those interested).

[https://impossiblehq.com/estonian- eresidency/](https://impossiblehq.com/estonian-eresidency/)

<comment><USER18> > unless you count the Consulate, which technically is sovereign ground

Actually, consulates are not considered sovereign ground [0]

[0] - [https://www.quora.com/Is-an-embassy-sovereign- territory](https://www.quora.com/Is-an-embassy-sovereign-territory)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I keep seeing a ton of ads for starting a company in Estonia.

To those who've done it, what are the pros/cons?

For the record, I'm based out of India and have been advised to setup in Singapore

<comment><USER11> For me, it's cheaper to run a company in Estonia than my country (an EU country). You don't pay taxes if you company has benefits. You pay taxes for the dividends only, which makes the company perfect for very early stages.

Also, for an international business a company based in Estonia looks more reliable and "techie" than other countries. And this is important if You sell digital goods or services.

I think Singapore can be a good place too, but it's much more complicated for me.

<comment><USER20> I guess you can only do this for some kind of companies? I've got a Belgian company and it's mostly just me doing consulting work. I live in Belgium and most of my clients are other Belgian companies. So I guess Belgian taxes wouldn't allow me to invoice from my Estonian company?

<comment><USER21> I don't know anything about Belgium but it's probably similar: If you have a branch located in Germany (which is definitely the case if you are the sole employee permanently living there) you need the pay the same taxes as an equivalent German company for all income derived from there.

The Belgian tax authorities must allow you to invoice from the Estonian company (that's part of EU freedoms) but it probably won't save you much taxes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I think it's time we expected more from our government.

</comment><comment><USER23> E-government in Estonia, all fine and dandy[0]. But there is so incredibly much low hanging fruit to fix on an administrative level, all over the EU...

I recently completed an advanced level of "Kafka quest": a 40-day fight with the city administration of Leuven, Belgium. The goal? Change the marital status of my Latvian(EU!) girlfriend in the Belgian(EU!) civil registry. From "undetermined" to "single".

-"No, we can't accept printouts from an electronic service. It doesn't look like our examples, nothing at all like what we have."

-"But it's the only marital status the Latvian civil registry gives out since a few years. Have a look at this explanation on the relevant Latvian government website. In English. With a Dutch translation I made to help you."

-"I'll have to ask my boss."

-(two weeks, several emails and phone calls later) "OK, we can accept this document. You don't even have to get a court stamp to legalise it. But it needs to be translated. To Dutch. All eleven pages, even if we need only that single word "single". No, google translate for the relevant bits won't do. No, you can't translate it yourself. It has to be done by a certified translator. Here's a list."

\- Leuven official sends me a list of certified translators. No certified translator for Latvian on it. I find one online, in a city 100km away.

\- Certified translator translates the 11 page document for us. Gives us a discount because it doesn't need a certified translation.

\- Make an appointment a week in advance (the fastest possible) with the city government, then back to the Leuven city hall.

-"Ah, when we said it the civil registry excerpt was free of legalisation, we meant the original only. The certified translated copy needs to legalised. By the court of the city the translator is attached to."

\- Back to the translator in the city 100km away, to request legalisation by the local court of her translation of a source document that is free of legalisation.

\- Wait another two weeks for the stamped document to arrive by snail mail.

\- Make another appointment with the city services.

But fear not, for there is hope! In a few years, so I learned, standardised paper forms will be developed to exchange this kind of information within the EU, hopefully eliminating the need for certified, legalised translations.[1]

[0] ...except for the fundamental conceptual insecurity of voting from home of course.

[1] [http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal- content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELE...](http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal- content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:32016R1191) for a bit more context.

<comment><USER24> In germany I'd call this tuesday and everyday that isn't tuesday. The amount of paperwar that I had to deal with at times was insane.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> How closely does the KAPO (Estonian Internal Security Service) monitor e-Estonia?

<comment><USER26> Unauthorized collection of data is a crime, and there hasn't been much scandal. Fairly impossible to be certain, but there's no reason to suspect it is occurring.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I'm a big fan of Estonia, Estonians and during my many visits I admired how quickly they transformed their small but not insignificant country to an innovative model nation. I hope they can stop brain drain and our Estonian colleagues realise that they have a 10 times bigger impact on the world if they stay there than if they move to Silicon Valley or other bigger hubs.

</comment><comment><USER28> Estonia also has a very interesting and unique scheme for taxation of corporations: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_in_Estonia#Corporatio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_in_Estonia#Corporations/legal_persons_income_tax)

<comment><USER29> How do things like director expenses work? If I setup a company that rents me a house, a company car, and caters all my meals, I don't need to pay any taxes?

<comment><USER30> There's a principle concept that every expense has to be for the purpose of doing business. If it's not, then it will get hit with income tax, and sometimes even payroll taxes.

In practice nobody really monitors these things and many do abuse the system to cater for themselves etc. However if you find yourself an enemy who will report you (even just on suspicion), then you better have a convincing case for the tax authority and/or judge as your accounting gets audited.

There are a bunch of special benefit rules that can be used for lawful cost savings though. There are lawful ways to split car costs with company money, there are lawful ways to get a tax-free daily allowance if you're traveling for business, limited to some X days per month.

In general I think the company tax rates are low enough to do everything lawfully. Taking out profits as an owner incurs a 20% income tax to the company and zero taxes to the individual. In addition, if you've taken out profits before, then the company income tax is 14%, up to the amount that equals the average of the last 3 years. So if you take out similar profits on a regular basis, the tax rate is only 14% on everything.

<comment><USER31> > In addition, if you've taken out profits before, then the company income tax > is 14%, up to the amount that equals the average of the last 3 years. So if > you take out similar profits on a regular basis, the tax rate is only 14% on > everything.

As I understood it, this is only so for distributing profits to legal entities. If you're distributing to a private person, the private person will have to pay a new 7% income tax which sums up to a total of about 20%. This of course only matters if the private person is tax resident in Estonia.

I find the PwC tax alerts very informative to be kept up to date on the tax laws in Estonia: [https://www.pwc.com/ee/en/press-room/tax-alerts/estonian- tax...](https://www.pwc.com/ee/en/press-room/tax-alerts/estonian-tax- alerts.html)

<comment><USER30> You're very much correct, thanks for pointing that out!

I hadn't seen any mention of the new 7% individual rate in any newspaper articles or even accounting firm articles. I now inspected the actual income tax law [1], and sure enough the 7% clause is there.

One one hand this means a slight net tax increase to 20.02% [2], on the other hand if the total individual income is less than 25200€/year then a part of that 7% will be returned.

\--

[1] Unfortunately not yet translated to English [https://www.riigiteataja.ee/akt/107072017022](https://www.riigiteataja.ee/akt/107072017022)

[2] 100 * 0.86 * 0.93 = 79.98

<comment><USER31> Indeed, I too had difficulty finding exact information on this new change. I then stumbled upon the PwC tax alerts where it was very transparently explained. Personally I wouldn't mind if they would take a bit longer to implement changes like this, so everyone can be accurately informed and optimise in time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> The most interesting part of an interesting article was the bit near the bottom about "kratt law"—conceptualising the idea of wanting to "make it possible to hold accountable whoever gave a drop of blood." It's a beautiful and highly comprehensible metaphor.

</comment><comment><USER33> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_cyberattacks_on_Estonia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_cyberattacks_on_Estonia)

</comment><comment><USER34> Imagine if they one day actually got invaded and we would see the start of the distributed republics of Neal Stephenson.

</comment><comment><USER35> I might actually have an idea of what the article was talking about, but after reading 5 paragraphs about the road and lawn I just kind of gave up.

<comment><USER36> I agree - I prefer dry facts and really dislike the trend of news written like narrative. I usually turn off after the first sentence (invariably an attempt to write like a 19th century novelist) because I know its going to be 10 minutes before i figure out if there's anything of value to me in its content (I acknowledge that sometimes there is and I'll miss out).

<comment><USER37> It is disconcerting for an upstart like the New Yorker of co opt a dickens style. You'd think after 90 years they would realize it is just a fad.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> jou jüri</comment>


A year of Windows kernel font fuzzing #1: the results - <AUTHOR> http://googleprojectzero.blogspot.com/2016/06/a-year-of-windows-kernel-font-fuzzing-1_27.html <comment><USER2> What was the reason for adding font handling of all things in the Kernel? I know that the low-level graphics primitives were added to the Kernel round NT4 (apparently for performance reasons), but why is the font processing there too?

<comment><USER3> Text rendering is the slowest graphics operation of most desktop applications. If you are willing to argue BitBlt should be put in the kernel you'd have to put text rendering there by default.</comment></comment>


Why I love Industrious, and about coworking and offices more generally - <AUTHOR> http://likewise.am/2015/12/18/why-i-love-industrious-and-about-coworking-and-offices-more-generally/ <comment><USER2> I appreciate this post because the author seems to have gone through a lot of the same things as me, though I'm an introvert.

When I was working from home, I had great productivity, though the biggest problem for me was not being able to stop working. Work began when I woke up and usually kept on going after my wife came home from her job. And those times when I was able to stop physically working, my mind kept going anyway.

Eventually I rented a desk from a local IT company which filled the social void left by working at home. It was also just nice to be around other people to bounce ideas off. It was especially nice because neither of our jobs overlapped, so you could have some nice honesty when receiving feedback as the people in the office had no skin in the game.

After that I decided to just rent my own office and rent out some desks to other people looking for a similar situation. This has been fun and given me a seemingly long-term place to call home in a great part of Santa Barbara. Even though it is quite a bit more expensive than a desk in a coworking place in town, I don't mind it because I have control over the environment and enjoy the consistency of that.

All that said, Industrious sounds like the type of coworking I would like.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi! Author here. Thanks for the feedback!

How did you manage to find tenants for your spare desks?

<comment><USER2> The two primary people have so far been from my friends of friends network.

I've had good luck offering them a free trial for a couple weeks to a month to see what they think. That way they can tangibly see if it will offer a benefit ahead of time rather than making them pay for something they might not end up using. It is also a good way to see if our personalities mesh as that is probably the most important factor in a good office mate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> That means workplace is more productive :)</comment>


Shorturl auto-discovery - A standard for URL shortening - Are there others? - <AUTHOR> http://relshorturl.appspot.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> I wanted to know more about a standard way for finding a shorturl version for any page I'm looking at. I found this proposal that is supported by some but it's not clear what the adoption rate is. Do other HN'ers know of other such standards?

I've also found: <http://alanhogan.com/tips/rel-shortlink-for-short-urls>

I want something like this for Chrome 140 [http://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/cdecnlepkfcnhkame...](http://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/cdecnlepkfcnhkamehohfiomhlfofhbi/) . Instead of using the is.gd version I can use the one the site wants to use.</comment>


Y Combinator hires first black partner to recruit more minorities - <AUTHOR> http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2014/12/03/y-combinator-michael-seibel-minorities-silicon-valley-high-tech/19805087/

<comment><USER2> thanks for posting. Will definitely be reaching out to Michael!</comment>


Twitter's Biggest Problem: Tweets are Ads - <AUTHOR> http://smoothspan.wordpress.com/2011/04/14/twitters-biggest-problem-tweets-are-ads/ <comment><USER2> > Stop what you're doing right now (i.e. quit reading this blog post), go to > your Twitter account, and scan the first screen. Be really dispassionate. > How many of the Tweets there could be called ads in the sense I'm using it?

I get 5 that could be considered ads out of 30 tweets; only two of which are actually about things for sale.

It sounds like this guy just isn't very good at picking folks to follow.

That said, it's a good thing to be aware of.

<comment><USER3> Ads are blurbs that are asking for your attention. If they are asking you to go somewhere (link), think about something (statement) or buy something, they are still ads.

Given that twitter is a one-to-many medium, unless your friends (real ones that you hang out with) are directly communicating with you over twitter, its pretty much a given that they are ads.

Assume that you follow P-Diddy. You read his tweets. You have never, nor shall never actually hang out with this person in real life. Every time you read anything he produces, you're consuming his ad. His comments which you receive via twitter are veiled PR/marketing - even if he is providing tangential commentary on events unrelated to himself such as the earthquake in Japan... you are consuming his content.

He is a media icon. Anything he says is designed to drive attention to his brand.

While you may not be purchasing anything he produces with your money -- you are _spending your attention_ on anything you read.

This is the nature of _programming_ (content/media programming, not computer programming) -- You are rewarding media content producers with your attention, eventually that will translate to an expenditure of your money -- which is really a proxy for attention/thought anyway...

EDIT: Given that your handle is _'Technomancy'_ I would have thought you to understand this much -- unless you dont know the meaning of your own handle...

<comment><USER2> > Ads are blurbs that are asking for your attention. If they are asking you to > go somewhere (link), think about something (statement) or buy something, > they are still ads.

Sure, that's why I said only 2 of the 5 ads were things for sale; the others were to things like blog posts. I do realize that I'm in the minority; I only follow about a little over a hundred users. I personally know maybe 70% of them.

I suppose his point stands he is talking about the bigger picture and Twitter in general; I'm just pointing out that if you take some care to curate your followers list it doesn't have to be that way for you.

<comment><USER3> Honestly, I posted a bit impulsively as the first read of your comment sparked my post, but upon review - you were not as rejecting to the idea as I had originally thought... so, my apologies, though I do stand by my points for others who may not think tweets are ads.

Cheers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> So why doesn't Twitter just embrace this and charge to send tweets (to any significant number of followers)?

<comment><USER5> …or from "verified" accounts.

If you go this route, I guess you'd probably want to let @replies and DMs remain free (or give them a much higher cap).

<comment><USER3> Actually -- then it would make sense for twitter to become a PR extension. They should bolt on a ton or PR services - like managed delivery, metrics, event tie ins etc...

They should work exclusives with celebrities to promote their albums, concerts, movies and events.

There should be special rewards for followers to engage via retweets such as free tickets, lower pricing etc.

There are so many media engagement models that I am just amazed that they aren't doing any of this.

When I interviewed there recently, the only takeaway I had from the experience was organized chaos.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's kind of funny that such a succinct explanation of Twitter's core problem could lead to a tl;dr situation.

<comment><USER7> This guys makes the same point over and over.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> While reading this, I kept thinking that search results are ads too, at least as the author defines them. Google still managed to create a valuable proposition for advertisers, so why couldn't Twitter?

</comment><comment><USER9> I just got working my Twitter game weekend project: Can you guess who tweeted this? <http://who.saidth.at>

One thing I haven't realized before I started is how difficult it is to find "quality" tweets. I use celebrities' messages, people who I can reasonably assume that some people would care to know what they have said. But at least half of them just post links and retweets all the time.... Fortunately there are some really good ones as well, so anyways.... :)</comment>


YouTubers lost thousands of dollars as channels were mistakenly demonetized - <AUTHOR> https://www.businessinsider.com/youtubers-entire-channels-can-get-mistakenly-demonetized-for-months-2019-8 <comment><USER2> YouTube is the only Google service I use and this news just brings to the fore why we need a viable alternative. I understand mistakes happen and when they do there needs to be a process to get things ironed out. Instead, the people who are making tons of money for Google are told to pound sand - and they wonder why people are starting to revolt against Big Tech.

</comment><comment><USER3> Google has built its businesses with the assumption that software can do what other companies use humans for (customer service, moderating communities, recommendations, etc.)

They're right in some cases, but they dive so shallowly that their implementation is awful compared to competitors (e.g. Play Music's recommendations vs. Spotify's).

The cases where they're wrong, like this debacle, should make them sober up and build a human organization until machines catch up, but of course they won't because they don't believe anyone can compete with them.</comment>


Show HN: HTML5 Piano - with its own data URI synth - <AUTHOR> http://mrcoles.com/piano/

<comment><USER3> Don't see anyone mentioning here that you can also play the piano with the ASDF...(etc) keys on your computer's keyboard. It was way easier playing it that way, rather than clicking with the mouse. Great job!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I was struggling with trying to keep it super minimal looking and letting people know how it works.

If you hit "0" or the button in the top right, it'll show a dashboard with settings and info on how to use it. I make that minimize from full size during page load as a vague indicator that it's hidden up there.

Also, I don't know if anyone notices the "info" link in the bottom left that scrolls the whole page down and shows some more info?

When I get chance I'll make a quick video of using it with the looper to perform a song.

<comment><USER4> No, I didn't notice the "info" link. My browser window is about 1300 pixels high, so I just saw the piano at the top and a huge expanse of whitespace below it, and didn't bother examining the whitespace for anything.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Don't open the page with an iPad. It keeps showing js alerts non-stop and you have to kill safari to fix it :)

<comment><AUTHOR> OK, I just updated it to not crash the ipad. As a trade off, it won't play sound, but it will still shoot out the waveforms from the bottom of the keyboard (so you can compute the sound in your head and imagine what it should sound like).

<comment><USER6> Nope, still crashes the iPad.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh dear… looks like my fix during work yesterday was too hasty. I just updated the code, and tested it in Safari with my useragent set for an ipad. Here's the diff:

\- var isIos = navigator.userAgent.match(/(iPhone|iPod)/i); \+ var isIos = navigator.userAgent.match(/(iPhone|iPad)/i);

Thanks for letting me know it was still broken!

Unfortunately, as I said above, it will not play the music, but it will still shoot out waveforms from the piano. I spent several hours experimenting with different dataURI settings and then trying falling back to static .wav files. The latter was the most promising, but there was still a huge lag between calling .play() and the sound actually playing. Looks like you still have to rely on actual "apps" to have good sound on iOS. (If someone knows otherwise, please share!)

<comment><USER6> I feel your pain. Getting a browser to play audio properly in iOS is pretty much impossible, and it seems like apple has done this intentionally.

No more crash though. Cool.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm getting no sound in Firefox 12 on Linux. On Chromium 18, this somewhat works, but with lots of clicking (not mouse clicking, audio file clicking) and distortion - it doesn't sound anything like zitterbewegung's song - <USER2> certain notes seem to randomly go dead (they stop making a sound when clicked).

<comment><AUTHOR> That's very possible. It works really well on Firefox 12 on a mac. Chrome on mac has periodic issues (the delayed loading of each keys mitigates it somewhat)—looks like I need to do some debugging on Linux. Thanks for reporting this.

HTML5 audio has lots of problems, but the clicking and distortion also gives it that special pop and click sound that you wouldn't otherwise get. Future browsers will just sound too robotic on this piano :)

Additionally, higher notes often get distorted as a result of the low sampling rate. I just changed it to turn on "visual mode" by default (that lightning bolt thing in the top right). You can actually see where the low sampling rate starts to affect the resulting wave form—which is sort of fun to see.

<comment><USER8> re "That's very possible," anything which has happened is as possible as possible gets.

Sorry to be that guy. This is a very cool hack.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Here is a song I made it with. I used an apple mouse and webkit. <http://soundcloud.com/joshua-herman/whatwgsong>

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome—I think you've done the first recorded song using my piano!

There's a looper too (that 2nd button, or the 9 key—hold down to start recording, lift up to stop recording and start playback) which can lead to interesting songs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> First thing this reminded me of, especially because of the choice of sine, triangle, square or sawtooth waves and the slightly creaky sound was C64 Music Maker - an piano overlay for the C64 keyboard:

[http://retro- treasures.blogspot.co.uk/2007/11/commodore-64-m...](http://retro- treasures.blogspot.co.uk/2007/11/commodore-64-music-maker.html)

</comment><comment><USER11> I created html5piano.com with pretty much the same end goal of using browser generated sounds versus static audiofiles but got sidetracked with implementing chords and sequencer and then moved on. Great to see it implemented using data uri's!

</comment><comment><USER12> Awesome. Although I don't understand why you load each data URI thrice?

<comment><AUTHOR> So you can hit a note again when it's already playing. I cycle through which copy gets played each time you hit a specific key. Otherwise terrible stuff happens :'(

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> It needs an short attack ramp, to eliminate the clicking. Or it can ensure that the waveform always start at the zero crossing.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point, I should modify my volume functions for that. The current code is here (the wave functions live just above that in the code):

[https://github.com/mrcoles/javascript- piano/blob/master/audi...](https://github.com/mrcoles/javascript- piano/blob/master/audio.js#L86)

Linear fade and quadratic fade sound nice on the way out, but all start at full volume.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Crashes my chrome tab.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, Chrome is meddlesome. Firefox takes whatever I throw at it, but Chrome sometimes has periodic issues. I actually load the keys slowly in order to decreases the chances of crashing in Chrome.

<comment><USER10> Have you submitted a bug report? That's the most brutally consistent way of crashing Chrome tabs I've seen...

<comment><AUTHOR> Nope, reasonable suggestion though. What OS and version of Chrome are you using? It's sporadic for me in OSX on Chrome 19.0. (Also, wtf is up with their ridiculously high versioning? The new browser wars seem to be based on version number.)

<comment><USER10> Linux. Chrome 17.0.963.56. Changing waveforms seems to crash it pretty consistently after at most a handful of changes.

Firefox works great.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It gets way out of tune the farther you get from middle C.

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha, yeah, because the sampling rate is super low, in order to make the data URIs work. Turn on "visual mode" hit 8 or click on the lightning bolt, and you'll see the visual representation of each sound—and you'll see how it breaks because of the sample rate when it starts sounding weird.

<comment><USER16> Looks like your sample rate is 2048Hz. Shannon-Nyquist says that should be plenty to represent the fundamental of your highest note (C5 at 523Hz). Even if you're getting aliasing on some of the higher harmonics, I'd think the tuning would still sound okay.

Any acoustics nerds that can help me understand this?

<comment><USER17> The notes are not sine waves.

The harmonics (sines whose wave length is an integer fraction of the fundamental) play a big role in how we perceive sounds.

<comment><USER16> Right. I understand what harmonics are.

I'd expect timbre to get weird from aliasing of the high harmonics, but since all the partials within an octave above that C5 are under the Nyquist frequency of a 2048Hz sample rate, I'm a little surprised that the pitch is affected.

I guess there's probably some destructive interference being caused by the aliasing though. Maybe that's what's ruining the tuning.

<comment><AUTHOR> I just bumped up the sampling rate to 11025Hz and that seems to have helped.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Love the distortion effect!</comment>


Nokia 3310 to be reborn - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/feb/15/nokia-3310-beloved-and-indestructible-mobile-phone-to-be-reborn <comment><USER2> If this is true, I'm going to get one asap and try to use it as my main phone.

Next time my bank/barber/grocery store asks my to install their stupid app to get full service I will flash my 3310 and ask if it is available for Nokia...

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd buy one in a heartbeat. I'll buy even more if it ends up with a real antenna jack.</comment>


How to overlay text on image easily, pixel perfect and with no CSS/HTML - <AUTHOR> http://cloudinary.com/blog/how_to_overlay_text_on_image_easily_pixel_perfect_and_with_no_css_html

<comment><AUTHOR> This blog post explains how you can dynamically add text overlays to images using simple manipulation URLs of Cloudinary. Multiple text overlays can be added while using hundreds of web fonts and applying any style, color and further image transformation. Sample code for generating manipulation URLs is included for Ruby on Rails, PHP, Node.js, .Net, Java, Python and jQuery.</comment>


36 Startup Tips: From Software Engineering to PR and More - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/36_startup_tips.php

<comment><USER2> Tip 2: Hire A+ engineers who love coding

is Wrong!

You're better off hiring a team of engineers who work well with each other to get things done. All of them do not have to individually be A+. In fact a team of A+ rockstar engineers is almost guaranteed to be dysfunctional.

</comment><comment><USER3> some interesting tips, but not too sure about the PR section specially hiring a PR firm, you might be able to get more creative than that and waste less money on these sort of expenses</comment>


TV May Die Soon - <AUTHOR> http://www.shellypalmer.com/2017/04/tv-may-actually-die-soon-stay-tuned/?utm_source=Daily%20Email&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=170416 <comment><USER2> > _FANG is delivering actionable data to advertisers in ways that traditional > broadcasters simply can't._

The "N" in that weird acronym stands for Netflix. The day they start selling my data to advertisers is the day I'm back to torrenting. I feel like the author is so ad-focused that she doesn't even see this: the whole article is about ads.

Netflix is showing that you can make fantastic, super expensive content, even niche content, without advertising. To me that feels much more profound than "Youtube has more data about you than ABC so advertisers will prefer that".

<comment><USER3> Data about you is valuable. Netflix can sell it without displaying the ads itself. I'd be surprised if they aren't tracking users and monetizing that information, like seemingly every other business in the world.

But maybe someone knows ...

<comment><USER4> I thought Netflix had a whole bunch of product placement deals?

There can be advertising without breaking out of the content.

<comment><USER5> Watched Sense8 (over here in Germany) for the last couple of days on NF. Every episode has a disclaimer at the beginning "This show contains product placements".

From first view: Ben & Jerrys, Pepsi (?), Sennheiser

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> We keep getting "TV is dead/dying/will live forever" stories on HN.

tl;dr of all of them is essentially: TV, as a non-time-shifted non-live broadcast medium, is dead: Netflix et al, Youtube, Torrent, and at the very least, DVRs, killed it; people watch non-live content how they want, when they want, frequently choosing to just "Netflix binge" it.

TV, as a live broadcast medium (eg, emergency news), will never die in that sense: I can watch Presidential addresses via the White House's Youtube channel via Youtube's Live feature as well as many local OTA broadcast channels.

TV is both dead and will live forever depending on what you call TV.

<comment><USER7> > _will never die in that sense: I can watch Presidential addresses via the > White House 's Youtube channel via Youtube's Live feature as well as many > local OTA broadcast channels._

If "presidential addresses" are what's supposed to keep a medium afloat, it's doomed already.

Millenials don't even watch as much sports as older generations anymore...

<comment><USER8> They might not watch as much traditional sports. But there is a rapidly rising amount of viewers watching esports and other streaming games. While a game isn't a sport; a sport is a game.

This audience is growing rapidly and is already quite large too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "TV" has been undergoing changes for its entire history. Cable brought major changes. The ability to play movies at home changed things. Streaming did, too. And regulatory changes along the way had their impact. I also have to take anyone who talk about "4 networks" a bit less seriously because for a long time there were only 3, and Fox actually making a 4th was also a big deal when it came along.

So, sure, if what you mean by "TV" is the original networks, yeah, that may be concluding at some point. But "TV" itself just continues its ongoing evolution.

</comment><comment><USER10> It would be interesting to see some data on recent prices for TV station license transfers. The market value of AM radio station licenses has plummeted in recent years. I suspect the same is happening to TV stations, in particular the little independents that live off of syndicated feeds and Star Trek re- runs. (I've seen TV control rooms far, far, less luxurious than the station in Weird Al's movie "UHF"...)

</comment><comment><USER11> One thing that the article gets wrong is the difference between brand advertising and direct response. Consumer products goods will always be about brand awareness and not direct targeting. It's the difference between what Snapchat is trying to do and what FB is trying to do. Coca Cola advertising is never going to be about running an ad an expecting someone to go on a website and buy a Coke right then. Neither is anything sold by companies like P&G.

Brand advertising is not about the level of targeting that FB is doing.

</comment><comment><USER12> AM radio hasn't died yet. Heck, books haven't died yet. New media doesn't always kill old media.

<comment><USER13> AM is dead.

Listen to the ads, not the god awful programming sometime. There's only so many prostate pills to be sold... I don't think it's a real business anymore, IMO there are a few ultra conservative types supporting the whole thing.

<comment><USER14> If there are ads at all, somebody sold those & got paid.

<comment><USER13> True, but prostate pills are the equivalent of a strip-mall with a karate studio and dollar store -- usually dying.

<comment><USER14> Had to laugh at the image. Yeah it's a market but probably not the juicy part of the market.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> One problem with the TV discourse is that it mixes together different meanings of "TV". One is the actual technology to broadcast video, second is the act of broadcasting video to consumers, and the third is the actual receiver, e.g. physical a television screen.

The first one will surely die, and has already died for most(?) young people where I live. But that doesn't really matter much as content can be streamed using the internet.

<comment><USER16> Anecdote time: I'm nearly the only one in my group of friends who still has a TV, and it's become a tradition for us to gather once a week to watch the "heute-show" (a German copy of The Daily Show, but only broadcasted weekly) at my place, and maybe have some political discussions afterwards. So in this particular case, timeslotted broadcasting actually brings us together.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> There's a huge opportunity for the attentive. Rock and roll got started largely because the major broadcasters moved away from radio and into television, and as a result operating an FM radio station got crazy cheap, leaving lots of room for experimentation. I have had my fingers crossed for years that the same thing is going to happen to terrestrial TV.

<comment><USER18> Sorry to ruin your hopes: any free spectrum will be consumed by wireless data transmission systems.

<comment><USER19> As one example, but a big one, that's the plan in the European Union.

[http://europa.eu/rapid/press- release_IP-16-207_en.htm](http://europa.eu/rapid/press- release_IP-16-207_en.htm)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Here are the SF Bay Area's current TV broadcast stations: [1] High power stations get a channel for the entire area, while low-power stations share channels. The FCC has a computerized model that takes into consideration antenna height, power, frequency, and terrain to figure out what won't interfere.

(There are a large number of low-power religious stations. For people thinking about repurposing "white space" in the TV bands, they're going to have to get rid of some of those Voice of God stations. One God Ministries alone has 17 stations licensed in the Bay Area.)

There's more space available now for TV stations because the tuners for digital TV have much better adjacent channel rejection than analog TV tuners did. There used to be restrictions to prevent harmonic interference and such. That's mostly gone, and all the channel slots can be used. If you wanted to set up a broadcast TV station in San Francisco, you probably could.

[1] [http://transition.fcc.gov/fcc- bin/tvq?list=1&dist=100.000%20...](http://transition.fcc.gov/fcc- bin/tvq?list=1&dist=100.000%20&dlat2=37&mlat2=45&slat2=35.571600&ns=N&dlon2=122&mlon2=26&slon2=14.612532&ew=W&size=9)

</comment><comment><USER21> It's taken as a given that more targetability is always better for ads but lately, I've come to believe that lack of targeting ability can, in and of itself, be an asset.

The more coarse the targeting, the more humans are able to reason about ad placement. If I see an tv ad on a program, I know that all the people in my region watching the same program are also guaranteed to see the ad. Whereas if I get an ad on Facebook, I have no idea who else might have seen the same ad.

I've been mulling this over because Podcasts, by some weird quirk of technological path dependence, got locked early on into a state of extreme ad unsophistication. Despite, or maybe because of this, podcasts have some of the highest ad rates in the business. Take Mailchimp's sponsorship of Serial for example, that sponsorship itself became somewhat of a mild media sensation surrounding the discussion of the story. But that could only happen because of the impossibility of ad targeting in podcasts. Because of that, you knew everyone else listening to serial was hearing the exact same ad as you.

</comment><comment><USER22> TV is declining, just like newspaper empires. Streaming is expanding as it's own empire even though it smells and tastes like TV it's different. Google and Facebook kill with ads so they'll continue to drive "innovation" for eyeballs as again traditional TV attempts to stop the bleeding. Innovation is where newspapers failed.

I'm streaming mlb right now and reading HN, TV can't offer that experience easily.

</comment><comment><USER8> As some have already stated. TV is the wrong word here.

"Television or TV is a telecommunication medium used for transmitting moving images in monochrome (black-and-white), or in color, and in two or three dimensions and sound. "

This sounds like everything from traditional broadcast TV to YouTube to twitch to snapchat. You are remotely seeing something on a display. It's technically TV is it not?

</comment><comment><USER23> This is just an idea, not really even opinion piece, but has some good insight.

I was interested that she coined the term FANG and not FANTA (Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, youTube, Apple). I am a big fan of Apple but continue to be dumfounded by how tone-deaf they are about the Internet. It's as if they have Jim Sensenbrenner on their board.

</comment><comment><USER24> I've been hearing this targeted audience and advertising for several years. However for as long as I've been watching Hulu, YouTube etc I rarely see ads that interest me. I wish they used that data better.

</comment><comment><USER25> If Net Neutrality goes away TV will thrive. This battle is far from over.

<comment><USER26> TV may thrive again if they improve the content. The biggest hurdle network TV has right now is that people are leaving because there is nothing to watch.

<comment><USER27> i kind of feel the same way about Netflix and Amazon too. I've watched most of what I want to watch. Neflix has never been as good as when they had the Starz deal.

<comment><USER26> I agree. I may even suggest that mainstream-geared media is fundamentally flawed, as it has to attract a wide audience, providing great appeal to nobody. We accepted it in the past due to not knowing better, but now that we have a taste of video content tailored to our very specific interests, where producers are happy to have an audience of 1,000 people, it's hard to go back.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Television isn't dying. Over the air TV though is on life support. Just like gas stations someday soon local TV stations will be ancient history.

<comment><USER29> What's the story with gas stations in the US? Are they dying out / being replaced by something else as well?

<comment><USER14> They're doing fine for now. Electric-car optimists think they'll be replaced by charging stations. Apocalyptic doomsters think they'll be replaced by a place to feed & water your horse (or by nothing at all). Both camps seem to agree petroleum fuels are a temporary thing.

<comment><USER30> The number of gas stations declined 25% from 1994 to 2013. I'd hardly call that doing fine.

[http://www.slate.com/articles/business/the_juice/2016/06/why...](http://www.slate.com/articles/business/the_juice/2016/06/why_america_s_gas_stations_are_running_out_of_time.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> The networks take away FANG's bite with live sports, which are about the only thing I care to watch anymore.

</comment><comment><USER32> I searched the article for "Hulu" and got zero hits. I assume the author simply didn't do any research at all.

<comment><USER33> That's interesting, since Hulu runs Nielsen tracking software. I'm not sure if it's included in DVR+3/+7 ratings, though.

<comment><USER32> I'm not sure either, but I do know it's included in the top four networks' and their advertisers' future plans for TV and that an article discussing said companies future without discussing Hulu is incomplete.</comment></comment></comment>


Silicon Valley county passes new law requiring approval before cops buy spy kit - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/06/silicon-valley-county-passes-new-law-requiring-approval-before-cops-buy-spy-kit/ <comment><USER2> Earlier discussion, 8+ comments:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11859018](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11859018)</comment>


Announcing AMP Real URL - <AUTHOR> https://blog.cloudflare.com/announcing-amp-real-url/ <comment><USER2> This is a "solution" to a "problem" that AMP itself created. And in the process it creates additional complexity[1] and a new potential revenue stream[2] for middlemen providing a service that shouldn't be necessary in the first place.

Astounding.

And oh yeah:

> AMP Real URL is only supported in the Chrome browser at this time, but we > are optimistic it will be supported more widely as its benefit to Internet > users becomes clear.

Who needs web standards, right? [3]

[1] Especially egregious because it's making SSL identity validation even more complex than it was before. I'm sure this will make getting security "right" even harder.

[2] Or in this case a new barrier to competition:

> After speaking with publishers and with Internet users, we have decided not > to charge for AMP Real URL. This is not because our customers haven't been > excited or willing to pay for it, AMP makes up a huge component of many > site's traffic. Our motivation is the same as for offering CDN or SSL > services to millions of customers free of charge, we are here to help build > a better Internet and improving AMP is a huge step in that direction.

Edit: [3] dfabulich (below) has correctly pointed out that this is in the process of being standardized: [https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-yasskin- http-origin-signed...](https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-yasskin-http-origin- signed-responses-05)

Despite this, Firefox has currently marked this proposal as "harmful" ([https://mozilla.github.io/standards- positions/](https://mozilla.github.io/standards-positions/)). It seems to me as though Google may be ramming this one through despite objections.

<comment><USER3> > Who needs web standards, right?

This new thing (signed HTTP exchanges) is an IETF draft. [https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-yasskin-http-origin- signed...](https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-yasskin-http-origin-signed- responses-05)

As usual, Chrome is the first browser to implement this, but they're participating in the normal standards process. (Microsoft is in favor. The Chrome team generally ships stuff if at least one other major browser vendor approves.)

<comment><USER4> Normally I'd rush to Chrome's defense here (see my post history) but I have to agree with others about Chrome kind of breaking the process here. Other browser vendors have large concerns with this spec, so it's quite surprising that it's shipping at this scale.

<comment><USER5> Doesn't surprise me in the slightest. Chrome has done this before, e.g. with QUIC.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's really unfortunate to see awful claims like "we are here to help build a better Internet and improving AMP is a huge step in that direction" that are blatantly dishonest and harmful to the Internet being promoted by Cloudflare in this blog post. AMP is a horrible cancer the Internet is plagued with, and we keep being told it's great even though _literally nobody wants it_.

Claims like "Many of the sites we have spoken to get as much as 50% of their web traffic through AMP" ignore the fact that this is only true because it's been forced down our throats without our consent.

Anyone implementing an AMP-based technology which doesn't come with a way for users to decline to participate is actively harming the open web. I like Cloudflare and a lot of what it does, but I'm really disappointed in them today.

<comment><USER7> [I work at Cloudflare]

It's hard to build a great website, particularly one which works well on mobile. AMP as a web framework makes it easier. There's nothing about that value it which is intrinsically linked to any particular way of rendering AMP, a good chunk of the web would be better off building on AMP independent of Google. That doesn't mean every site should, there are developers and teams who are capable and willing to build great sites and we support their right to not have to use AMP. The need to use AMP-the-framework to get instant loading is hopefully a temporary one partially fixed by signed exchanges.

The AMP cache is also made much less concerning and painful for users through the use of signed exchanges. By ensuring the content is what was provided by the origin we believe the Internet is becoming a more trustworthy place, opening the door to sites being able to be served from wherever they will be most performant.

<comment><USER8> > It's hard to build a great website, particularly one which works well on > mobile.

> The need to use AMP-the-framework to get instant loading is hopefully a > temporary one partially fixed by signed exchanges.

You know what would really fix this? Developers doing their work. Deeply knowing and understanding the consequences of their work and how everything comes together in the end and leads to a slow website or not.

We don't need to put even more power in the hands of Google, because we (as in "some developers") don't know how to do our job right and therefore punish the internet as a whole.

There is no valid reason for the use of AMP. It's only there because a) developers fucked up and b) Google forces you to use it. If we would fix a), I'm not sure b) would even be a valid point anymore.

<comment><USER9> > You know what would really fix this? Developers doing their work.

That's merely replacing one problem by another, which is: how do you get developers to do their work?

<comment><USER8> You'll need people that _really_ love their work. I know that's hard to find or to achieve, but it's possible to have some intrinsic motivation to deliver better and better code each day, to grow with your tasks etc.

I think most people these days are in for the money and not for "the challenge" which is why we see so much mediocre software. On the other hand there is excellent software too, so there are people who really know what they are doing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Mozilla's Position: "Mozilla has concerns about the shift in the web security model required for handling web-packaged information. Specifically, the ability for an origin to act on behalf of another without a client ever contacting the authoritative server is worrisome, as is the removal of a guarantee of confidentiality from the web security model (the host serving the web package has access to plain text). We recognise that the use cases satisfied by web packaging are useful, and would be likely to support an approach that enabled such use cases so long as the foregoing concerns could be addressed." [https://mozilla.github.io/standards- positions/](https://mozilla.github.io/standards-positions/)

<comment><USER3> Apple's position: "The Security Considerations describe some bad things that can happen even if the spec is properly implemented. Unsurprisingly, I think those things are bad. No time to make actual technical contributions at this time but I will consider it if this spec gets multi-vendor interest." [https://twitter.com/othermaciej/status/951001352347402240](https://twitter.com/othermaciej/status/951001352347402240)

Microsoft is in favor.

<comment><USER11> If by "Apple's position" you mean "a 15-month-old tweet by one Apple employee".

Edit: And the spec has since gotten multi-vendor interest. From Microsoft:

> We're excited about the potential for this feature set to resolve some of > the performance and privacy problems of alternative approaches, and we have > been talking to publishers who are interested in utilizing these > technologies to provide accelerated experiences.

[https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/d/msg/blink- dev/gPH...](https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/d/msg/blink- dev/gPH_BcOBEtc/QwdrwjmlDQAJ)

<comment><USER3> He's not a random employee. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maciej_Stachowiak](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maciej_Stachowiak) "he is a leader of the development team responsible for the Safari web browser and WebKit Framework"

For now, his tweet is all the signal we have from Apple.

<comment><USER12> And considering Apple's strict policies around public communication, it's pretty safe to describe it as a formal statement of the company's position.

<comment><USER13> People jumping to this conclusion is why employees are burdened with prefixing everything they say with a disclaimer that they do not speak for their employer :(

<comment><USER12> I completely agree. My point was only about the reality of communications from Apple employees, not asserting it as an ideal.

<comment><USER14> Note also the Apple employee's reply upthread.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Thumbs down to anyone enabling AMP's success. Google should be measuring page speed only, it's none of their business what methods you used to achieve that speed.

<comment><USER11> You can improve your network request speed, but you can't bring the time taken down to literally zero, i.e. the speed if your page was already prefetched while the user was looking at search results. Yet for privacy reasons, prefetched results had to be served from a cache, yet the Web had no way for Google to cache a page without literally rehosting it on its own domain – which in turn required restrictions on JavaScript, to avoid random people's code being able to execute in the context of www.google.com. That explains most of AMP.

On the other hand, AMP Real URL is based on Signed HTTP Exchanges, which allow one site to send a cached copy of someone else's site, in a much more straightforward manner. In theory, Google could now drop the bulk of what's now known as "AMP" and cache arbitrary pages that indicate their willingness to be cached. That they're instead integrating this with AMP suggests they may not drop it, which would be unfortunate. On the other hand, since Signed HTTP Exchanges will remain a Chrome-only feature for the foreseeable future, it's arguably a bit early to expect Google to make that kind of commitment.

<comment><USER2> > You can improve your network request speed, but you can't bring the time > taken down to literally zero, i.e. the speed if your page was already > prefetched while the user was looking at search results.

Maybe I'm just old, but I don't understand why this is a worthwhile goal. Even with its bloat the internet today is much, much faster than it was 15 years ago and I'm quite happy to wait a few seconds for a page to load. In addition, doesn't pre-fetching every result just waste bandwidth on mobile?

<comment><USER11> Well, for one thing, internet speed depends on the quality of your connection, which in the case of mobile networks varies wildly.

But personally, I'm a sucker for low latency across all of tech (and gaming as well). That's why I use Safari instead of Chrome, Terminal.app instead of iTerm, C++ instead of Rust sometimes (compile times), and basically anything else instead of Java (startup time), among other preferences. I even prefer reading ebooks on normal screens rather than e-ink displays, simply because I don't want to wait between pressing "next page" and seeing the page show up. Not surprisingly, then, I really appreciate website snappiness in general, including links that load instantly due to prefetching. I can't say I appreciate AMP as it exists today, because the quick load comes with a host of UX issues, but I have hope for the future.

Take that perspective how you will. I think I'm a bit of an outlier in just how much latency bothers me, but pretty much everyone consciously or subconsciously appreciates when it goes down. Probably including you: the current speed might seem "fast enough" now, but if faster loading becomes the norm and the other issues are dealt with, I bet you'd have a hard time going back.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Despite all the hate against AMP, this will actually improve the state of a decentralised web. Disconnecting the web packaging feature from the application that birthed it, the format allows a website to sign its content and create an immutable package that any server in the world can distribute - with the signature allowing clients to trust where it came from and show the origin address instead of the cache.

Isn't this exactly what the distributed web needs? This is a massive boon to IPFS (a content hash can still show the proper origin name), a big blow to censorship (a censored website could spread its content to a thousand different servers, each served over HTTPS, and viewers would still the original URL whichever cache they access), consensual permanent archiving, and much more?

<comment><USER6> Questions for you:

\- Who decides which HTTPS certs are valid? (Followup: Who decides which of those your browser considers valid?)

\- Who operates the browsers you'd use to view this content which sees the original URL, and have any of those companies deplatformed content on behalf of government requests?

Which is to say, web packaging looks somewhat decentralized at a glance but arguably still leaves the same handful of companies entirely in charge of deciding what you view and how you view it. And it's entirely dependent on your browser's developers being ethical and trustworthy, and choices on what browser you use has just shrunk significantly in the past month alone.

<comment><USER17> > _Who decides which HTTPS certs are valid?_

Wait wait wait, are you telling me signed exchanges _maintain the status quo_ on a problem they aren't intended to solve?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > If your site has AMP Real URL enabled Cloudflare will digitally sign the > content we provide to that crawler, cryptographically proving it was > generated by you. That signature is all _a modern browser (currently just > Chrome on Android)_ needs to show the correct URL in the address bar when a > visitor arrives to your AMP content from Google's search results.

Is the dig (emphasized above) about what constitutes "a modern browser" really necessary? Is a modern browser now whichever one that supports something you like?

</comment><comment><USER19> Based on the discussion from the Cloudflare announcement and here, I don't think people understand why Amp was created and is being heavily pushed by Google: global accessibility.

Many countries, including India, are just now getting widespread broadband rollout. Due to its infancy, many ISPs have data caps and may even be delivering data over 4G/LTE to homes. With AMP, Google and CF have the privilege of driving all of this (search-driven) bandwidth to datacenters within the same country, or at least the same continent, to the visitor. If all of this content was really served from the origin, latency would be considerably worse since the data will have to go through the undersea cables and the performance issues that may occur with bad routing.

You could also say the Data Saver web proxy they run is to encourage these users to browse the web without worrying as much about their phone data bill.

Google really wants everyone in these countries to be using and depending on the Internet just as much as Americans use and depend on it, otherwise they may miss out on advertising $$$ potential from a country that's ~4.5 times more populated than the United States.

<comment><USER20> That isn't a main reason. People are going to use the internet either way. Google is making a power grab by breaking web standards (embrace, extend, extinguish), and companies like Cloudflare are enabling them.

Mozilla has marked Signed HTTP Exchanges as harmful.

<comment><USER21> I'm sorry but if you believe AMP breaks web standards, then you do not understand AMP. It is built entirely from the ground up on web standards.

<comment><USER22> AMP does not work unless you include a Google hosted JS file.

From [https://amp.dev/documentation/guides-and- tutorials/learn/spe...](https://amp.dev/documentation/guides-and- tutorials/learn/spec/amphtml?format=websites):

> AMP HTML documents MUST

> ...

> contain a <script async > src="[https://cdn.ampproject.org/v0.js"></script>](https://cdn.ampproject.org/v0.js"></script>) > tag inside their head tag.

That is not a web standard.

<comment><USER23> Wow that is disgusting. Why does it need to include remote code to function? How can they even pretend this is an open standard when it has a backdoor?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Sigh that last thing we need is more AMP.

<comment><USER25> If I understand correctly, the biggest problem was that google was hosting the cached amp pages. If this instead sends the user to your own domain, viewing your content which just happens to be hosted elsewhere, does that solve the primary complaints? I know google was also exposing content directly on the search results, but I feel that's a separate issue.

<comment><USER26> The problem is that the AMP standard is just generally poorly-thought-out, no matter who hosts it. Instead of a subset of HTML, it's a weird mishmash of everything that requires magic incantations to make things work for the browsers of the time it was invented.

It's like NaCl/PNaCl - a good idea in theory, but created by a team that didn't do a great job at speccing something that could be long lived and satisfy other players than Google+Chrome.

<comment><USER27> What's wrong with NaCl?

<comment><USER3> I believe the gp was referring to NaCl the Native Client [https://developer.chrome.com/native- client](https://developer.chrome.com/native-client)

Not the crypto library [https://nacl.cr.yp.to/](https://nacl.cr.yp.to/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I work on AMP Real URL at Cloudflare and am happy answer any questions (live from AMPConf in Tokyo)!

If you're looking for a super in-depth technical post which includes all sorts of wonderful bits about the engineering and cryptography involved don't miss [https://blog.cloudflare.com/real-urls-for-amp-cached- content...](https://blog.cloudflare.com/real-urls-for-amp-cached-content- using-cloudflare-workers/)

AMP Real URL was built by engineers Avery Harnish (started when Avery was an intern!) and Gabbi Fisher, and is built on top of our Workers [1] tech.

1- [https://www.cloudflare.com/products/cloudflare- workers/](https://www.cloudflare.com/products/cloudflare-workers/)

<comment><USER28> So is this basically the server okaying a replay attack? I'm looking through the technical post but it hasn't clicked yet.

<comment><USER3> > okaying a replay attack

When you permit a proxy to replay your content, it's just caching. It's not an "attack." (If the proxy can replay your content without your permission, _that_ would be an attack.)

<comment><USER29> I believe AMP required inserting a piece of Google controlled and hosted JavaScript in your content from the very beginning. So the cat was pretty much out of the bag on this already.

<comment><USER30> So if you block this Google JS, you cannot access said AMP page? Does AMP implicitly mandate users subscribe not only to said content provider but the third-party AMP host?

<comment><USER29> Yes, you have to include it.

 _" AMP pages must...Contain a <script async src="[https://cdn.ampproject.org/v0.js](https://cdn.ampproject.org/v0.js) "></script> tag inside their <head> tag."_

[https://amp.dev/documentation/guides-and- tutorials/start/cre...](https://amp.dev/documentation/guides-and- tutorials/start/create/basic_markup)

Their special tags[1] won't render without it, and I suspect Google won't include it in their SERPS if it's not valid AMP.

[1] [https://amp.dev/documentation/guides-and- tutorials/learn/spe...](https://amp.dev/documentation/guides-and- tutorials/learn/spec/amphtml?format=websites#html-tags)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> In related news:

Google signed exchanges, Instant-loading AMP pages from your own domain

[https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2019/04/instant-loading- am...](https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2019/04/instant-loading-amp-pages- from-your-own.html)

</comment><comment> rob-olmos Found this more lively page, apologies if cross-posting a comment is not allowed:

Semi-related, I think Web Packages and Signed Exchanges could have some usefulness outside of Google's caches. One of their spec examples was for verifiable web page archives. Another idea it could be used for a wifi "drop box" (drop station?) when there's no internet connection around. That isn't uncommon at some popular spots up river into the woods in the US.

The idea is that as people enter the area, they can update the drop station automatically for things like news or public posts with whatever they've cached recently.

I'm pretty sure I read about this idea before the spec was drafted but I couldn't find or remember the site, something like vehicle-transported data.

</comment><comment><USER32> I'm rather worried about how closely Cloudflare is working with Google in pushing their proprietary stuff. I would have hoped they would be more neutral and take a similar position as Mozilla.

</comment><comment> m-p-3 I'll just keep using the Redirect AMP to HTML addon[1]. AMP links annoys me to no end.

[1] [https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/amp2html](https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/amp2html)

</comment><comment><USER33> Who uses AMP? I've only ever heard of it on Hacker News but never seen it when using Google or any news websites. What actions does a normal user have to take to use AMP?

<comment><USER34> Nothing. By default, Google will show you the AMP page when you tap a search result if it's available

<comment><USER33> It's not working for me. Do I have to use Chrome on Android? I just tested on Firefox Linux, Chromium Linux, Safari iOS, and Firefox Android.

<comment><USER35> Google anything news related, you'll see the symbol next to the URL you click, and you'll notice it loads rather quickly too.

<comment><USER33> I can't see the lightning bolt icon. Commented here [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19682479](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19682479)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> > _Importantly your site is still being served from Google's AMP cache just as > before; all of this comes without any cost to your SEO or web performance._

Glad to see they've addressed AMP's main leverage point

</comment><comment><USER37> I wonder if this will have any impact on AMP for Email as well.

[https://emailinnovations.com/the-email-is-being-amp- ed/](https://emailinnovations.com/the-email-is-being-amp-ed/)

</comment><comment><USER38> Will the usability still suck? Can I tap the menu bar to go to the top?

</comment><comment><USER39> Glad cloudflare and Google are now ramming through de facto web standards without consensus from the rest of web and browser developers...

</comment><comment><USER40> >The promise of the AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) project was that it would make the web, and, in particular, the mobile web, much more pleasant to surf.

That's, ostensibly, the goal, but anyone with an independent mind can tell it's just about control.

>It was particularly aimed at publishers (such as news organizations) that wanted to provide the best, fastest web experience for readers catching up on news stories and in depth articles while on the move. It later became valuable for any site which values their mobile performance including e-commerce stores, job boards, and media sites.

What a harrowing paragraph.

>As well as the AMP HTML framework, AMP also made use of caches that store copies of AMP content close to end users so that they load as quickly as possible. Although this cache make loading web pages much, much faster they introduce a problem: An AMP page served from Google's cache has a URL starting with [https://google.com/amp/](https://google.com/amp/). This can be incredibly confusing for end users.

This wasn't an issue before TLS everywhere was pushed, was it? The same organization that pushed for encryption, no matter how useless, Google, is now there to solve the problem of caching encrypted pages, centrally of course.

>But the problems with the AMP cache approach are deeper than just some confusion on the part of the user. By serving the page from Google's cache there's no way for the reader to check the authenticity of the page; when it's served directly from, say, the BBC the user has the assurance of the domain name, a green lock indicating that the SSL certificate is valid and can even click on the lock to get details of the certificate.

There's already no foolproof way to do that. Rather than checking that it's actually BBC and BBC has verified what it's delivering, you instead ask a third party if this is the BBC and if what it's sending is true.

>That signature is all a modern browser (currently just Chrome on Android) needs to show the correct URL in the address bar when a visitor arrives to your AMP content from Google's search results.

So, just as with ''DNS over HTTPS'' and other nonsense, this is yet another thing they want to pile on.

>Importantly your site is still being served from Google's AMP cache just as before; all of this comes without any cost to your SEO or web performance.

Only fools and cretins care about SEO and ''web performance'' is solved by not having so much JavaScript and actually bothering to optimize images you send.

>Brand Protection: Web users have been trained that the URL in the address bar has significance. Having google.com at the top of a page of content hurts the publisher's ability to maintain a unique presence on the Internet.

Not violating people already trained is very important.

>Easier Analytics: AMP Real URL greatly simplifies web analytics for its users by allowing all visitors, AMP or otherwise, to coexist on the same tracking domain.

Anyone using anything more than HTTP server logs, which are already too revealing, is likely a fool.

>Increased Screen Space: Historically when AMP was used room would be taken for a "grey bar" at the top of your site to show the real URL. With AMP Real URL that's simply not necessary.

This sentence is only possible due to a dearth of independent implementations, which communicates a great deal about this nonsense. Also, it's nice to see Google beginning to kill URLs as it wanted to; lying in the UI is a good first step.

>Content Signing: By relying on cryptographic techniques, AMP Real URL ensures that the content delivered to visitors has not been manipulated protecting the sites and brands it is used on. It's now not possible for any external party to add, remove, or modify the content of a site.

Remember when Cloudflare was spewing private information all over the Internet?

>We are also taking this opportunity to sunset the other AMP products and experiments we have built over the years like Ampersand and Firebolt. Those products were innovative but we have learned that publishers value AMP products which pair well with Google's search results, not which live outside it. Users of those older products were informed several weeks ago that they will be gradually shut down to focus our attention on AMP Real URL.

Don't worry about this being shut down for the next big thing, though.

>Our motivation is the same as for offering CDN or SSL services to millions of customers free of charge

You mean subverting the Internet through increasing centralization and also enabling mass-spying by the perversion of the very encryption that's ostensibly so important?

Does anyone actually think Cloudflare isn't a US government operation? They have so much hardware and they get so much support from these other companies that we know are paid off by the government.

</comment><comment><USER30> I don't understand why AMP is targeted at the "mobile web". What exactly makes browsing the web on mobile different than other platforms?

<comment><USER41> The network is much slower and the CPU is much slower, so getting very good performance requires extreme optimization.

<comment><USER42> Extreme optimization that can be achieved without AMP.

Performance of web pages is heavily dependent on the amount of assets and their size. Hacker News loads extremely quickly without AMP, and the same can be achieved for other sites. HTML/CSS (with a small amount of JS if really needed) can achieve the same thing as AMP regarding the web page size and rendering time.

CDNs are well established and can be used to serve content from a nearby server, and HTTP/3 will reduce the number of round-trips needed.

<comment><USER43> If you have a round-trip-time of 1 second, it will take you 1 second to load a text file with 1 byte in it. However, an amp page will have loaded before you clicked, so it will take only the handful of millis in CPU time to swap frames and display.

<comment><USER42> Like mentioned in another comment, HTML5 supports prefetching.

<comment><USER43> The problem with prefetching the publisher URL from a search results page is that it leaks the user's query intent to an origin they have not visited, which violates the user's privacy.

By prefetching a signed exchange from the same origin as the search results page, privacy is preserved. Once the user clicks on a result, the user intent can be shared with the third party origin, no problem, and is in the AMP cache.

<comment><USER44> > By prefetching a signed exchange from the same origin as the search results > page, privacy is preserved

How so? Unless I misunderstand (which is entirely possible), all that this does is change where privacy is violated from the publisher to the search engine.

<comment><USER43> If a Google search results page instructs your browser to request some bytes to preload from a Google server, that request does not reveal anything new to anyone. Google already knows it instructed your browser to preload, so knowing that your browser mechanically followed that request tells it nothing new about you or your behavior that it didn't already have another way to know.

Let's consider the alternative. Imagine you searched for [headache] and a preload request was made to mayoclinic from your browser for their headache document. Your browser when making that fetch would send to mayoclinic your ip, any stored mayoclinic cookies, and the document URL that you prefetched (not the precise query, but the approximate query is easy to guess). This is sent to mayoclinic _even if_ you never click on that document at all, which is not what you would expect privacy-wise.

Once you do click, mayoclinic can very easily log this visit even if the document bytes were preloaded from elsewhere. They can use javascript analytics or simply even load an image on their server ([https://amp.dev/documentation/components/amp- pixel](https://amp.dev/documentation/components/amp-pixel)). And you as a user are not surprised that clicking on mayoclinic shares your interest in the document with mayoclinic.

<comment><USER44> > Let's consider the alternative

Ah, I understand now, thank you.

I guess the problem that I have is with the preload. Without that, then neither Google nor the Mayo Clinic would get that data.

So, no preload for me.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Map Reduce in Python - transparently done over a network - <AUTHOR> http://remembersaurus.com/mincemeatpy/

<comment><USER2> Another way to implement map reduce in Python is to use the Hadoop Streaming Jar (<http://hadoop.apache.org/common/docs/r0.20.1/streaming.html>). You basically write a mapper and reducer as python scripts and ship them out with the job in a tarball. The scripts just need to read input from stdin and write to stdout. You then pass arguments to the streaming jar when you kick off the job with the shell command to invoke your python scripts for the map and reduce tasks.

<comment><USER3> Yes, for Python you can use Dumbo for this ([http://yz.mit.edu/wp/no-nonsense- standalone-hadoop-and-dumbo...](http://yz.mit.edu/wp/no-nonsense-standalone- hadoop-and-dumbo-on-ubuntu/)).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> this is pretty cool, but be aware that he is using marshal to send function objects to remote systems, so you are marrying yourself to its list of requirements as well: <http://docs.python.org/library/marshal.html>

it'll work great for simple use cases but since he also does nothing to handle dependency capturing, your map and reduce functions had better use standard python objects or python objects that you are sure will be installed on the remote systems ...

<comment><USER5> Would you suggest pickle or a more generic compressed JSON?

<comment><USER6> Unfortunately, python doesn't let you serialize a function through pickle or other non-marshal serializations. The only cross-python solution is to actually have python read the source code and send it (rather than the bytecode) over the wire, which seems much more brittle to me.

See [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1253528/is-there-an- easy-...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1253528/is-there-an-easy-way-to- pickle-a-python-function-or-otherwise-serialize-its-code)

<comment><USER4> oh yeah, if you run this script with different python versions, you will experience mysterious failures probably.

in some limited testing I did, I was able to serialize a function on 64-bit Linux and have it execute on 32-bit Windows. I even went crazy and wrote using ctypes against the Win32 API on Linux and sent a string to be loads()ed by code on Windows... and that worked.

(this isn't really python being awesome as much as bytecode languages working as designed... but as far as I know this is all working by happy co-incidence, unlike say Java, where the bytecode is designed to be cross-platform...)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Amazing! Map Reduce couldn't get simpler.

</comment><comment><USER8> I'd love to see one of these python MR approaches get some traction, until then I expect most companies will be following Facebook's approach of putting data into HDFS/Hive and then using Python, or whatever, to parse the output of HiveQL.</comment>


The world is too hot in 10 years: what do you do? - <AUTHOR>

Using today's technology, how does one invest in future survival assuming global warming does not taper and subside? What does surviving the global climate crisis look like in the near future? <comment><USER2> Actually there are a lot of geo-engineering solutions to climate change. Price tag is probably ~$1T, which honestly is not all that much when you think about the costs.

When climate change really starts to hurt, that money will get spent. Of course, a lot of the damage (extinction, human cost, etc) will already have been done, along with whatever side effects the geo-engineering brings.

</comment><comment><USER3> Great question. Something in the mountains near the last remaining bit of snow and rainfall, something in a very cold climate now which will be warm soon.

</comment><comment><USER4> Why do you think there is so much private interest in Space technology and space exploration and such ?</comment>


Father of sci-fi (Arthur C Clarke) lists three birthday wishes - <AUTHOR> http://ukpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5jrdIgCt8LubkN0ZBUTkj43QjtIdg

<comment><USER2> I wouldn't say Arthur C Clarke is the father of sci-fi. Jules Verne, HG Wells, or Gernsback (creator of Amazing Stories) might take that honor.</comment>


Tactful Trademark Defense: An Example - <AUTHOR> http://tech.wordnik.com/tactful-trademark-defense-an-example/ <comment><USER2> This is why _you_ should be in control of your response to these things with your lawyers advice to guide you. If you just "leave that stuff up to the lawyers" without ever doing any kind of oversight, even the good ones who aren't 'make-working' billable hours are likely to embarras you with uncalled for nasty grams-sooner or later.

</comment><comment><USER3> The outcome is great, but what happens when a small company sends out a friendly email like that without lawyers and things don't do so well? Has the company screwed themselves or will they just be back at square one when they have to involve the lawyers?

<comment><USER4> From experience, the other guys just go dark on you. I got a threat of libel from the companies attorney in response to my initial cease and desist. I rebutted the claim with them, but never heard back. After talking to about 10 attorneys, the estimate for fighting it in court is about $80K. Another option is to file for invalidation with the USPTO, which can be done without an attorney. Here's the whole story if you are interested: <http://www.geekceo.com/entry/zoto-trademark>

<comment><USER5> Wow, great write-up and sorry you've had to/are still going through this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> How early is too-early to file and receive a trademark? Is a landing-page with a "coming soon" message sufficient, or do you need to have active customers / users to get an approval?

<comment><USER7> You can file as 1b intent to use. Or simply design a logo as used in printed stationery (or on a website page) and submit that. We've done both and have been successful in getting trademarks approved.

<comment><USER6> Cool. Do you happen to know what constitutes actual "use" in the eyes of the trademark office when it comes to a website?

Content? User accounts? For a private site behind a login screen, how would they even know whether the service your trademark is being registered for even does what you say?

<comment><USER7> First, in general it is cheaper and quicker to file as actually using the trademark (1a). We've gotten trademarks with as little as a search page and a logo, literally, created with a cheap logo maker.

So if you file 1b (intent) that is fine but then you have to pay a fee and do another filing (iirc $100 more) when you finally use the trademark. And wait for approval. So if you can start to use it (in the class you have filed in) right away that is the cheaper route. Generally this is stuff that lawyers have little benefit in telling you since they get extra money for doing the extra work for you. And of course it is probably more ritualistically or legally correct. But if you are going to be lean you will have to cut corners and take some nominal chances. Important point.

Or operate the site that they see at something like

joeblow.mydomain.com instead of "www.mydomain.com". And give them that address.

Or simply give them screen shots actually even easier and say it's pw protected and only open to selected users.

There is stuff to know, not a big deal, but hard to summarize in a HN reply.

We got a trademark by putting up a site which literally was created by putting a logo on a customink.com shirt, screen grabbing, submit that to the trademark office and say that was the product. This is not a patent. It's a trademark for a logo or for words, right? All you have to do is show you are using it. In general.

<comment><USER8> Are you sure? I thought trademark protection was limited by field. So if you intended to create a clock called TeaTime, and you got a trademark on "TeaTime" as a t-shirt slogan, that wouldn't stop another company from getting a trademark for its TeaTime clock, because clocks are not normally competitors to t-shirts. Am I mistaken here?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> If only it were this simple with every case. What if you applied for a trademark sometime ago, but haven't released your product yet and someone comes along and releases a product with your trademark (unintentional of course)and becomes fairly successful ? I am not debating the article. Just wondering what would be the most ethical thing to do.

</comment><comment><USER10> Very very cool - see how nice the world is when we don't get lawyers involved?

<comment><USER11> Lawyers are an essential component of society.

However the law is, as my favourite legal blogger says, "a broadsword, not a scalpel".

<comment><USER10> "Lawyers are an essential component of society."

Well obviously not in this instance.</comment></comment></comment>


Constraints and Concepts - <AUTHOR> https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/language/constraints <comment><AUTHOR> Here's Bjarne Stroustrup's 28-page submission to the committee advocating this: [http://www.stroustrup.com/good_concepts.pdf](http://www.stroustrup.com/good_concepts.pdf)

Excerpt:

> My aim is to make

> • simple generic code as simple as non-generic code

> • more advanced generic code as easy to use and not that much more difficult > to write.

> Concepts by themselves do not address the code organization difference; we > still need to put templates into headers. However, that is addressed by > modules [Rei16]. In a module, a template is represented as a typed abstract > graph and to check a call of a template function using concepts only its > interface (declaration) as provide by the module is needed.</comment>


How a Tick Bite Made Me Allergic to Meat - <AUTHOR> http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jul-aug/09-how-a-tick-bite-made-me-allergic-to-meat <comment><USER2> "Helen Chappell is a museum exhibit developer and freelance writer based in Durham, North Carolina."

I checked the PubMed references kindly included in the submitted article. I think it's stretching a point beyond recognition to say that anyone has "proven" that tick bites have anything at all to do with food sensitivities. Cross-reactivity is often an intriguing theory, as many biochemicals are present in more than one organism, but this needs a lot more epidemiological work, and more in-vivo experimental work, before this speculative hypothesis can be considered an established fact. As always,

<http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html>

check the experiment design (there is no "experiment" here, really, but rather field observations), check the sample size (small here) and check all the other issues before taking this as fact. Further research will be needed before it is clear that anyone is actually developing meat sensitivity BECAUSE OF tick bites rather than just AFTER tick bites (or after something else that has nothing at all to do with tick bites).

<comment><USER3> Is this what you read? [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3085643/pdf/nihm...](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3085643/pdf/nihms-273885.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This might be an entirely irrational fear, but throughout this entire article, I kept thinking of vegetarian/vegan extremists (and because I need to clarify, not all vegetarians are extremists, obviously). "What if," I thought, "these extremists started spreading lone star ticks around the world to further their ideals?" Historically, people have done some pretty crazy things for what they believe is right; I just hope intentionally spreading ailments won't be added to this list.

In any case, here's a video/article I saw two months ago, that summarizes this article, in case it's tl;dr: [http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Wellness/allergic- meat-lone-sta...](http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Wellness/allergic-meat-lone- star-tick-spreading-vegetarianism/story?id=16610228#.UC-4EN2PV08)

<comment><USER5> Whenever there's talk of veg*anism, many people automatically think of 'extremists'. Why is that? As a vegetarian myself, I know I'm not an extremist; neither are all of my vegetarian friends. Some of them are repelled by meat, but that is no different than people being repelled by Durian for example; meat does smell offensive if you're not used to eating it.

<comment><USER6> By extremists.... He's thinking of vegans out of morality--the type of people who say meat is murder.

If meat is murder, making people allergic to the fruits of their murder is a lesser crime.

<comment><USER7> If meat is murder then gunning down ranchers and blowing up meeting packing plants would be justifiable too. But it doesn't happen.

A bunch of non-meat-eaters taking their clothes off for PETA ads or throwing red paint on fur coats is a loooooooong way from what you are suggesting. Please come back to reality.

<comment><USER8> > _blowing up meeting packing plants would be justifiable too. But it doesn't > happen._

There have been plenty of incendiary devices planted at a variety of UK locations, including department stores that sold fur.

<comment><USER9> In that case, why are there not a lot of people dead from this if it is that prevalent? Either the people you are describing are the most rubbish terrorists ever, or they are just really not that into killing, which would make sense really, if their entire political belief is against killing things in general.

<comment><USER8> Animal rights extremists have set many fires in England. There are several reasons why no-one so far has died:

1) We have excellent fire response services

2) We have strict fire safety codes for buildings - those shops should have had working sprinkler systems for example (and setting off the sprinklers was the stated aim - water damage would have caused just as much financial damage)

3) Timing the devices to go off at night when there would be minimal people working

4) The aim is not to kill people, but to cause financial loss. ALF have been successful at that.

There are other reasons why few people have been physically harmed by animal rights extremists - most extremists are "non violent" (where violence applies to people, but not property).

The wikipedia article for the ALF is reasonably complete.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I am more concerned than ever to learn the best ways to protect myself from tick bites. I was already concerned because of the life-changing impact of lyme disease.

I am currently travelling the U.S. in an RV, and I do a lot of hiking/biking/camping in remote areas. I'm sure a lot of other HN readers do as well.

What are some of the best proven ways to keep ticks off of yourself?

<comment><USER11> Permethrin treated clothing is the best deterrent I've used. Deet doesn't do much in my experience but if ticks get on pants treated with permethrin they get off as quick as they can. I've use this spray to treat my clothing before going out in the woods anymore: [http://www.rei.com/product/768970/sawyer- permethrin-pump-spr...](http://www.rei.com/product/768970/sawyer-permethrin- pump-spray-24-oz)

<comment><USER12> One thing to be very, very careful of with permethrin-treated clothing is that it's very water-soluble, and _extremely_ toxic to fish. If you go swimming while wearing permethrin-treated clothing, you will leave a trail of death in your wake, and not just of the bugs you were hoping to kill...

<comment><USER13> I feel compelled to note that it's also quite toxic to cats (but not dogs). This is one reason you should never use flea products intended for dogs on your cat.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14>
        Having grown up in the woods, I'm so used to tick bites
        that I don't even notice them half the time. But I
        remember this particular bite because it left an itchy
        welt behind that lasted for weeks after I'd tweezed out
        the tick itself. Long-lasting, itchy welts, I now know,
        are one of the hallmarks of an allergy-causing tick bite.

So this guy went weeks with a tick bite without seeking medical assistance?(!)

Maybe American ticks are different, but I'd always advise people to talk to their GP and get some antibiotics.

<comment><USER15> It's the usual advice when you're living in places where you don't meet (if ever) ticks. I rarely get tick bites where I live (once or twice a year), but in 2005 during our summer vacation we had to remove 10 to 20 ticks from every member of the family, every day, for two weeks. In these areas when you ask the pharmacy what to do, they just tell you to use a special tick remover and disinfectant... people there can't live getting antibiotics all year round.

Apparently, woodlands where there are lots of deer and/or sheep grazing around are infested with ticks. There's nothing much you can do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> If it's an allergy to a sugar present in mammalian meat, how does the body not become allergic to itself?

<comment><USER17> By the way, there are quite a few autoimmune diseases[1] where the body attacks parts of it. Some examples: psoriasis (affects the skin), celiac disease (small intestine), rheumatoid arthritis (joints), multiple scleroris (nerves), Hashimoto's thyroiditis.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autoimmune_disease#Classificati...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autoimmune_disease#Classification)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I would not call your ammonia-treated pink-slime mixed from hundred cows actual "meat". you should try some real food, even organic maybe.

</comment><comment><USER19> There is a bright side: factory meat farms are responsible for a lot of pollution. I would think any reduction in demand for cheaply produced meat would have environmental benefits.

</comment><comment><USER20> wow don't show this to PETA</comment>