Google Maps is about to get a lot more ads - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2016/5/24/11761794/google-maps-promoted-pins-announced-ads-coupons <comment><USER2> Google was great because it surfaces the most relevant results, but more ads infiltrate everything it surfaces results with the largest wallets who rarely are the most relevant. On the bright side it's good news for Apple whose business model isn't reliant on ads. While Apple can't yet beat Google's mapping technologies, I think instead it's hoping in the long run Google will ruin itself that people will prefer an inferior technology but one that values their privacy and relevancy.

<comment><USER3> Good news for OpenStreetMap, as well. And a good illustration of why it is an important project.

<comment><USER4> Openstreetmap sadly has some relatively big flaws (this is coming from a regular openstreetmap contributor).

* The copyleft license ODbL probably will mean that there never will be a huge adoption. The situation simply is different with a geo database compared to software or one art piece.

* Vandalism very easily goes unnoticed, as there is no review at all for edits. If something that went wrong is found, reverting is very hard to do, often left to some expert group that only does that.

* Tags indicating when things were last checked are hardly in use. So the database contains tons of information that might not be true anymore or might never have been true.

* The data model lacks persistency, the tags of a shop might go from a node to the building area it's in or otherwise effectively loosing the history. It's very hard to find out where something really came from (editor and source).

* The data model also lacks a good way of dealing with areas (especially ones with holes in them), multipolygon relations are a hack barely supported in editors that often lead beginners to feel overwhelmed. On the other hand there are no curves, just straight lines, because bezier lines are supposed to be too confusing for beginners.

* All the data is in one huge database, not split up into layers.

* There are hardly any volunteers in America. It's an import desert.

<comment><USER5> > The copyleft license ODbL probably will mean that there never will be a huge > adoption. The situation simply is different with a geo database compared to > software or one art piece.

From OSM:

> You are free to copy, distribute, transmit and adapt our data, as long as > you credit OpenStreetMap and its contributors. If you alter or build upon > our data, you may distribute the result only under the same license.

How is this not an absolute necessity for the long term success of the project? Without it, someone can just slurp up the data, add their own, and then shut OSM out.

<comment><USER6> I think if there was no share back requirement you would still have one project that would be the social nexus of the data. Forking and closing the database just to add some trails in Wyoming would not make much sense (as a silly example).

In essence, careful respect for the license isn't the main driver for contribution.

I think it would certainly lead to more competitors, people would take the data and do their own value add, but I think it is quite an open question whether they would be able to actually become considerably better databases.

(I'm roughly indifferent to the share back requirement. I don't think it is needed but given how much support there is for it in the community it isn't worth discussing over and over)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> So it's going to get even slower? Awesome!

I needed a bigger kick in the butt to try something else.

Honestly, what a sell out. What was once neutral territory for businesses is now available for bidding.

Does Google need this revenue? What is the problem with the existing maps that they are solving?

I see the full keynote is here [1]

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JW1LS94wLJw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JW1LS94wLJw)

<comment><USER8> Google is increasing ad sizes and frequency because growth is slowing.

[http://www.wsj.com/articles/google-to-increase-size- frequenc...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/google-to-increase-size-frequency-of- ads-1464105600)

<comment><USER7> The solution to Google's dwindling advertising market is to increase the size of ads on content I watch?

Noooooooooooooooo =(. Sounds like a good chance for competitors to jump in.

Thanks for sharing this though, I didn't know that =)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Google is on track, albeit slowly, to the AltaVista destination.

When in 1999, before the first collapse, the competitors to Google were inundating users with in-result ads, crazy load times and odd results. This was pushed by the stock's need to show constant revenue growth.

Google now is adding more ads, configuring the ads in-line to increase clicks (yes, they are 65% relevant), integrating an obtuse implementation within Maps, and so forth.

DuckDuckGo becomes more viable each day as an alternative.

<comment><USER10> I can't deny any of that, and DDG has a better UX, but Google is still by far superior when it comes to returning relevant results. I do a lot of Googling for my job (and life), and nothing I've tried seems to compare to Google's results yet.

<comment><USER9> Absolutely. Google is far and away what I fall back to when I need to really find something. That being said, I use Bing and DDG as my defaults to see if I get good enough results.

<comment><USER11> Even though I have the latest version of Maps installed I never use it and it is disabled and blocked from the net. Osmand works great, aside from when it tells you to get on a freeway; it doesn't, and will say something like "veer right", which has caused some headaches. Searching within osmand for an exact address also sucks. I have to enter Los Angeles for cities such as say, Reseda, when it should know better. Thankfully the fdroid apk AddressToGps fixes the search perfectly, allowing you to enter an exact address which then uses a google api to pull up the exact coordinates which is then seamlessly handed off to Osmand. All you do after is tell it to map the route. Without addressTogps, osmand is practically unuseable. GEO Bookmark, fdroid repo, is also an excellent companion ap to osmand.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Between this and the total redesigns that keep making things harder to use for no reason, Google seems to have no interest in people actually using their products. I've never seen a single company with more cases of "geez this stuff is all great if you'd _just leave it the hell alone_ …".

For that matter, didn't it take Steve Jobs to connect the dots for them so that they'd even consider putting their maps on mobile phones? They're lucky they're even in this business.

<comment><USER13> > For that matter, didn't it take Steve Jobs to connect the dots for them so > that they'd even consider putting their maps on mobile phones? They're lucky > they're even in this business.

huh?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> It feels that ad space is in a downward spiral. The more space these companies convert to ads, the less the ads are worth and the more space they need to convert. Instagram in particular seems to really be falling into this cycle.

<comment><USER15> Plus the more obnoxious ads get, the more people [1] will go to adblockers.

[1] Or businesses, e.g. Opera has an integrated adblocker now, and Firefox blocks tracking while in privacy mode (and they plan to expand this to the normal mode, IIRC).

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I already see plenty of logos on google maps here in Japan (mostly convenience stores), even without searching anything. I guess this news is only regarding results?

[http://i.imgur.com/6eGBKN6.png](http://i.imgur.com/6eGBKN6.png)

<comment><USER17> Those are icons, the post is talking about sponsored company logos.

<comment><USER18> That image does show a 7-11 company logo, though.

<comment><USER19> Japan has had those for quite some time. I presume it's because convenience stores are a _really_ big thing in Japan and there isn't really anything like a universally recognizable generic convenience store sign.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> If it weren't for the traffic conditions and satellite images, I would not be using Google Maps anymore - it's been incredibly slow on both the Android app and the web. Takes about 30 secs of loading until I can finally switch on satellite images. Is it change for change's sake that bloats so many company offerings after a while?

<comment><USER13> I think it is the marketing belief that unless they show change over time, people will think the product abandoned.

You see this in the FOSS world as well. I think there was a presentation posted recently by a former project lead that had his project co-opted and forked because he refused to release a new update until he deemed it "ready".

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I think that Google Maps is becoming more and more advert-based regardless of this; Once a year I run a little "banger rally" thing for friends of mine and do most of the planning of the route using G-maps. It's impossible now to search for something such as a landmark, instead you get redirected to businesses with either the word landmark in their title, or businesses that will make a landmark for you (funeral directors, etc). It wasn't like this a few years ago. I know, I know, it's business- and advertising-driven, but I can't help but feel that we're starting to get both ends of the stick here - we're the product and our whereabouts are tracked all the time, but on top of that we get advertised to constantly as well.

Problem is I've not found a solution that is as smooth or useful on Android?

</comment><comment><USER22> I found myself rarely using google search partly because of paid ads already. Looks like they are making decisions which will push me away from another product I enjoyed.

<comment><USER23> You should consider installing an ad blocker like uBlock Origin. I haven't seen ads on Google Search for years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Sometimes I'm glad that I'm old enough (38) to have lived a significant amount before the conveniences of the modern internet. The idea of getting around without online maps isn't strange to me and I have the skill from back when it was the only option. So when google maps starts getting too bullshitty it's easy for me to do without it.

One time a few years ago a (younger) friend laughed at me for writing down directions on a piece of paper. But the piece of paper didn't have to be mounted, I didn't have to turn on a screen to use it, navigate to the right app, worry about the screen going off after not using it for a minute, etc. The piece of paper was the most usable option by far.

</comment><comment><USER25> Just a thought, seeing as these ads are undoubtedly pissing everyone off: Why not have a paid alternative (like Youtube red)?

</comment><comment><USER26> You never thought Apple Maps will be tempting.

<comment><USER27> Apple Maps' exclusive access to use the lockscreen, along with (IMO) a better UI when following directions, make it my go-to when driving despite the bad reputation it has on the internet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Man, I wish HERE and/or OSM had an equivalent of StreetView. That's the only thing which makes me use Google Maps at all.

<comment><USER6> Mapillary is a company that is building crowd sourced street imagery.

They have a reasonably open license ([https://www.mapillary.com/legal.html](https://www.mapillary.com/legal.html)) and allow OSM to extract information from the photos.

Telenav is rolling out something similar.

They don't really come close to StreetView as far as coverage.

<comment><USER3> Mapillary needs some sort of camera you can buy for $50-150, put on the top of your car, and take decent resolution 360 degree photos. Then the coverage in major city areas would get completed in a few years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> The irony of having to scroll past three ads to read this four paragraph article about Google serving "a lot more" ads

</comment><comment><USER30> What about the Google Maps api? Will companies be able to use the maps to display things, unmolested by google-sponsored ads?

<comment><USER7> Who knows. If Google's revenue slips, investors get upset and make leadership changes.

It sounds like leadership is out of ideas if their only ones are to increase the size and frequency of ads on existing apps. That's a bit sad considering the talent they have there.

<comment><USER31> Increased ads will bring in more revenue. They're not doing this for the sake of it.

<comment><USER7> Right. I'm saying, they've run out of other ideas.

Ads have always been Google's major source of revenue. Now, their to answer to dwindling revenue is to add larger ads to existing apps [1]

Bigger and more ads is not very innovative for a tech company.

[1] [http://www.wsj.com/articles/google-to-increase-size- frequenc...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/google-to-increase-size-frequency-of- ads-1464105600)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Things like this instantly piss me off. Then I remember I use an adblocker and I calm down again.

<comment><USER33> But what about on the mobile apps? I need a content blocker for apps.

<comment><USER34> Use Adaway ..

[https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdid=org.adaway](https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdid=org.adaway)

It blocks at the Hosts file level.

<comment><USER35> Sadly requires root, which is a higher bar than I'm willing to clear.

<comment><USER36> As the phone manufacturers are the same as the danguses adding ads everywhere, the only other option I can think of is to proxy your traffic through another service that does server side ad blocking, and that seems like quite a headache if you want to, for instance, unblock certain content.

<comment><USER15> At least at home, I do DNS-level adblocking, which should be good enough for all devices that use the DNS resolver advertised by DHCP. (Source code is at [https://github.com/majewsky/system- configuration/blob/master...](https://github.com/majewsky/system- configuration/blob/master/holodeck-damogran.pkg.toml#L289-L407) if you want to copy this.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I get absolutely livid when I'm using Waze as my navigation and an ad pops up and takes up the entire screen WHILE I'm navigating. Awful implementation, I immediately X them, don't read them or anything.

<comment><USER38> I tried out Waze for some trips in the last few months after hearing all the hoopla about it, and honestly I don't see why people like it. It's kinda cutesy, I'll admit, but the only useful feature it has is that users can inform each other about speed traps. Aside from that, it's really kind of a PITA to use, and also it doesn't seem to do any kind of re-routing for slow traffic or have any indication that you can take alternate routes and how that will affect your travel time. On Google Maps, there's frequently places where it'll show you alternate routes in gray, and how they'll affect your time ("3 minutes slower"). Waze doesn't have that at all. I was really disappointed, so I just went back to Google Maps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> There is a lot of hate here for something we haven't even seen yet. While I aknowledge that they could screw this up badly, my first reaction was positive. I've done a couple of road trips recently where a pin for every Peet's, Starbucks, IHOP, and Chipotle all along the route would have been welcome.

<comment><USER40> I have a good response to this, but first: Are you interested in a home-cooked meal? Perhaps a Golden Corral(R) "Awesome Pot Roast" could get your stomach rumbling like no other dumpster food could! Choose from one of our great buffet options! Green beans, carrots, chicken, we've got it all!

OK, joking aside, here's my issue with intrusive advertising: sure, they justify the advertising by saying it's to pay for the service, even if you'd be willing to pay for a subscription service that would remove the ads. But instead, you get ads for Golden Corral while you're really looking for the "Oreo Madness" now at TGI Friday's! Today's special includes hot wings with a creamy Ranch dressing, an ultra hot spicy sauce, and fresh celery sticks! Choose from one of our new Bacon Burgers, like the All-American Jack Daniel's Burger. Thirsty? Try our handcrafted cocktails like fresh Peach Sangria!

<comment><USER41> That's a great idea. I'm going to disrupt the ad industry by making a startup that injects ads into commenting platforms like disqus!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Google also announced this 6 years ago, FWIW.

[https://maps.googleblog.com/2010/09/more-easily-find-some- of...](https://maps.googleblog.com/2010/09/more-easily-find-some-of-your- favorite.html)

</comment><comment><USER43> Google, stop being evil, shut up, and take my money.

Why can't I just pay to opt out of all this crap I don't want, and instead _incentivize the businesses they actually get right?_

</comment><comment><USER44> Waze already has had these promoted pin icons for a while I think.

</comment><comment><USER45> I do enjoy ignoring the KFC pin in Waze.</comment>


WikiWikiWeb - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiWikiWeb <comment><USER2> I guess I'm one of those old people now who actually does remember reading about software patterns on the c2.com wiki, and being amazed by it, before Wikipedia even existed :)

<comment><USER3> Some of their article titles are still hilarious, like [http://wiki.c2.com/?SmugLispWeenie](http://wiki.c2.com/?SmugLispWeenie)

<comment><USER4> I appreciate asking questions like "WhatsaControllerAnyway?"

[https://web.archive.org/web/20190321044743/http://wiki.c2.co...](https://web.archive.org/web/20190321044743/http://wiki.c2.com/?WhatsaControllerAnyway)

And covering both sides of issues like:

[http://wiki.c2.com/?WhyWeLoveLisp](http://wiki.c2.com/?WhyWeLoveLisp)

[http://wiki.c2.com/?WhyWeHateLisp](http://wiki.c2.com/?WhyWeHateLisp)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > On February 1, 2015 Cunningham announced that the Wiki had been rewritten as > a single-page application and migrated to the new Federated Wiki.[6]

I still don't understand the motivation behind this. The "new" SPA is bizarrely unperformant and inelegant. Unnecessary too, since the wiki just serves a bunch of unstyled HTML boilerplate. What was the idea here?

<comment><USER6> The point wasn't a new front-end. From this Wired article[1]:

> But there is one thing about the wiki that he regrets. "I always felt bad > that I owned all those pages," he says. The central idea of a wiki – whether > it's driving Wikipedia or C2 – is that anyone can add or edit a page, but > those pages all live on servers that someone else owns and controls. > Cunningham now believes that no one should have that sort of central > control, so he has built something called the federated wiki.

So, in short, the point is decentralization, so the Wiki belongs to the people and not be under any one entity's control.

[1] [https://www.wired.com/2012/07/wiki- inventor/](https://www.wired.com/2012/07/wiki-inventor/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> One thing I liked was the use of WikiCase. Just type the title of another page, and it makes it a link. No markup to learn. Very approachable. There are a number of major downsides, though, so I am glad most modern wikis use a markup-based system.

[http://wiki.c2.com/?WikiCase](http://wiki.c2.com/?WikiCase)

[http://wiki.c2.com/?WikiNameDisadvantages](http://wiki.c2.com/?WikiNameDisadvantages)

[http://wiki.c2.com/?WikiNameAdvantages](http://wiki.c2.com/?WikiNameAdvantages)

<comment><USER8> But the tiny learning curve made them so accessible. Back then you could introduce a wiki for your team and start churning out project documentation right in a meeting. Where the wikis back then didn't hold up was for long term documentation sites. If your wiki would only have a short shelf life it was an awesome collaboration tool.

<comment><USER9> Where did you feel wikis fell down in the long term? I would quite happily ditch Slack for something like a live collaborative Google Docs but simpler and with wiki style linking, if the tooling for search and discovery was good.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm surprised how many people today, even people my age, don't realize that anyone can edit Wikipedia, or that there's much more valuable information (at least for controversial articles) located in the Talk page.

<comment><USER11> You can edit it, but your edit will be quickly reverted.

<comment><USER12> Not always but definitely true for anything politically controversial.

<comment><USER13> It's true for anything with an obsessive self-declared owner on a subject. Political articles attract those like flies, but you'd be surprised at all the other places they nest.

<comment><USER14> Everything is political to somebody.

I see that the bird lovers have finally conquered the Feral_cat page on wikipedia. That took some doing. The obsessed cat crazies used to really guard that page.

A decade or two ago, wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales had to step in to handle pedophilia-related pages that were being guarded by sympathetic editors.

Most companies will guard pages related to them. Whole countries will even do this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The history of wikis[1] page says that the wiki concept was introduced to the general public by Wikipedia.

Of course this is a one sided perspective. Growing up in Sweden I was introduced to the concept by susning.nu. Which is also mentioned on that same page.

For a while it was a concept to look up things on susning. Just like googling.

"Skaffa en susning" is an old swedish saying that means "get a clue", "educate yourself".

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

</comment><comment><USER16> Thanks to Ward and his friends, a source of inspiration like few.

I loved the site so much I used to spam it on every blog as a 'personal website' to promote it ..

</comment><comment><USER17> My favourite online community. It taught me a lot about what can and cannot work with online social organizations. It is amazing how much can work with so little just through sheer common spirit, focus, and camaraderie.

<comment><USER18> It was a great online community!

It was weird how shared content (what we think of as a wiki today) and discussion ("talk" pages on wikipedia) were all mixed together, and it somehow worked. The only Wiki I use these days that still does this is EmacsWiki. Google Wave felt like this in reverse, starting with discussion as default but you could edit everything into a document.

Also: hi Sunir!

<comment><USER17> Hey Amit!

I still think the best I have ever written or contributed was from editing discussions over time into content. Slowly.

I still use those skills. I just edited a Slack Q&A into a checklist on launching partnership integrations. The difference is I don't write in the "WikiNow" any more because no one understands it except what someone once pejoratively called "wiki monks". :)

For reference: [http://www.cloudsoftwareassociation.com/2019/07/11/the- compl...](http://www.cloudsoftwareassociation.com/2019/07/11/the-complete- integrated-partnership-launch-checklist/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I remember two great things from my time on c2:

\- Vigorous and fruitful discussion of current programming and SW engineering trends

\- TopMind!

</comment><comment><USER20> Ah, the TVtropes of software development.

</comment><comment><USER21> Does anyone know if the original (pre-2015) source code of the wiki software is available anywhere?

It once was at [1], but that link has long gone. [2] still links to it.

[1]: [http://c2.com/cgi/hp?WikiInHyperPerl](http://c2.com/cgi/hp?WikiInHyperPerl) [2]: [http://wiki.c2.com/?WikiBase](http://wiki.c2.com/?WikiBase)

</comment><comment><USER22> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_On- line_Dictionary_of_Com...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_On- line_Dictionary_of_Computing) also allowed suggestions from users for changes

</comment><comment><USER23> So, are wikis currently out of fashion in Software development/internal documentation?

I don't see many wikis that are really suitable for this, and none that have widespread adoption.

Does everybody just throw stuff in Slack and hope they can find it with the search function?

<comment><USER24> I'd say tools like Notion [1] have brought wikis more into fashion for internal documentation than ever.

[1] [https://www.notion.so/](https://www.notion.so/)

<comment><USER23> Interesting, but I've never heard of it and didn't come across it when I was looking for wiki/Evernote alternatives a few months back.

I guess I'll have to look into it. Couldn't quite see how it differs from Evernote (which in my few has a lot of features missing which teams might need).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Lisp: [http://wiki.c2.com/?LispLanguage](http://wiki.c2.com/?LispLanguage)

</comment><comment><USER25> goto: [http://wiki.c2.com](http://wiki.c2.com)

it's like [http://harmful.cat-v.org](http://harmful.cat-v.org) but saner

<comment><USER26> I hate this trend on sites that show you buttons when you highlight text. I use highlighting to follow the text and it interrupts my line of site every time those buttons pop up.

<comment><USER25> Install NoScript, never look back.

<comment><USER27> Unfortunately, the site in question requires JS; without JS, it displays nothing but a blank page with a spinner. It doesn't even have a <noscript> element.

<comment><USER28> Stylus can often undo that by styling the popup elements as "display: none !important;"

<comment><USER27> That would still result in a blank page. There's no content at all in that page, everything is generated by JS.

<comment><USER28> I was addressing the "show you buttons when you highlight text" issue.

Enabling JS _and_ 'none' styling the offending elements via CSS ... solves at least one problem.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Feedly Found a New Way to Steal Page Views From Publishers - <AUTHOR> http://www.the-digital-reader.com/2014/01/18/feedly-found-new-way-steal-page-views-publishers/ <comment><USER3> Feedly to publishers:

> If you do not want to benefit form this feature, you can also sent me an > email and we will quickly opt you out.

I think I will just quickly opt out as an end user by not using Feedly.

<comment><USER4> What do you use instead? or do you just use the sites themselves/Twitter etc?

<comment><USER5> After Google Reader shut down, I briefly switched to feedly but found the UI basically unusable.

Newsblur is a great alternative. The web client and Android clients are both nice to use -- no experience with iOS but I'm sure it's comparable -- and are open source, written and maintained by Samuel Clay (conesus on HN).

I pay for the service but there's a free tier as well.

<comment><USER6> Just a small notice: NewsBlur is actively hostile to power users.

1\. There is a hard limit on a number of unreads per feed, which is pretty low (100-500 depending on a feed): [https://getsatisfaction.com/newsblur/topics/feed_cut_off_aft...](https://getsatisfaction.com/newsblur/topics/feed_cut_off_after_100_entries)

2\. When not hitting that first limitation, Items are marked as read after 30 (previously 14) days: [https://getsatisfaction.com/newsblur/topics/do_unread_items_...](https://getsatisfaction.com/newsblur/topics/do_unread_items_sunset_after_14_days)

<comment><USER7> I think it's a bit strong saying it's "actively hostile" to power users. The developer takes a very specific view about why he has the limits set-up that way: I think a lot of people would like a different level but he makes sense over the fact that most people don't go that far back on RSS. And in fairness he's added a lot of other power user features like keyboard shortcuts.

Personally, I really like Newsblur. It's available on all the clients I care about, it's pretty fast and it's Open Source with a sane business model. I'd really like it to have search as that's the main thing that stops me finding good trends in my RSS feeds.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> And, I just switched from Feedly to Digg in both my Windows Firefox browser and Android app.

While not appropriate for folks on feed caching services (FeedBurner et al), it would be interesting to write a quick script/htaccess to detect when Feedly is loading your RSS feed on-server and redirect to a custom one which includes a warning above each story about Feedly stealing page views.

<comment><USER9> go on... I mean do we know their IPs? they could easily move to amazon and not provide any distinguishable Browser ID, etc..

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> By the way, Pulse News has done this for a long time.

Share something from the Pulse app and it generates a pulse.me link which functions as an URL shortener through a browser, but redirects to their app install page on mobile.

</comment><comment><USER11> Their annoying UX on Android as well as on the "desktop" and their hijacking of URLs for sharing (enforced redirect) are the reasons I've stopped using feedly. This is just another nail in the coffin.

Sadly, stunts like these will drive even more people to publish only excerpt feeds, which is very frustrating for users and further impacts the already declining RSS ecosystem.

</comment><comment><USER12> I find we're using "publisher" in a quite broad manner any more.

When I think of a publisher, I think of words on paper. Specifically a newspaper or book. As a publisher, I convey the words to some permanent form (a publication) which is then broadcast in some fashion.

The point here? I own the words. I put my name on them.

But now we're asked to believe that publishing involves some kind of deeper interaction. If I'm a publisher, I guess, I'm supposed to be creating an immersive, interactive (perhaps "sticky" or "addictive") model of content consumption. People who leave my words alone but take away my interaction with consumers are stealing my works.

This just sounds like a playground fight over who gets to be the newspaper delivery boy -- and the reason it's so important isn't because of the content, genre, or authorship of the work in question. Everybody agrees on that. This is important because content creation in 2014 is about a fight for eyeballs. Get them on the page, get them to join an email list, get them involved in the comments sections, get them coming back.

Publishers and publications, at least in the way the words have generally been used, have little to do with anything here. The fight is because everybody's looking to psychologically manipulate the poor schmuck who's reading the publication, not for any loftier reason than that.

<comment><USER13> I don't think that's valid. "Publishers" are those who publish content - <USER2> is, make it available to others in some form. The fact that this publishing is via RSS or a website doesn't change that.

You can bet that if you created a newspaper that was simply a selection of articles photocopied from other newspapers, you'd have IP issues. Same if you tried it with a book.

<comment><USER12> Didn't there use to be "clipping services" for executives that did just this? You'd pay them, they'd subscribe to a bunch of different print services, then they'd clip out what they thought might interest you, compile it, and send it as it's own custom publication?

If I gave my passwords to a poor person in a third-world country, might they not consume all of my digital content online for me, summarize it, and send me what's important, in plain text format?

<comment><USER14> Yes, but the clipping services needed to purchase a license to do this. In the UK there are two special bodies that handle this: the Newspaper Licensing Agency and the Copyright Licensing Agency.

<comment><USER15> Under UK law, the digital version is actually legal without a license, because the Supreme Court held that copies made by digital-clippings services were permitted "temporary copies": [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Relations_Consultants_A...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Relations_Consultants_Association_%28PRCA%29_v_The_Newspaper_Licensing_Agency_%28NLA%29)

In the US the same case came out the other way around, holding that copies made in the process of digital aggregation didn't constitute fair use: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Associated_Press_v._Meltwater](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Associated_Press_v._Meltwater)

In the US you don't need a license for the physical version, though, where you literally cut out news articles and mail an envelope of clippings to someone. Under the first-sale doctrine, you own the physical printed copy of a book, magazine, or newspaper you bought, and you can resell that copy (only) without further permission of the copyright holder. You can also modify it before resale if you'd like, since you fully own it: carve it into a book-sculpture, clip out pages and sell them independently, cut out the pages and reuse the binding, etc. You can even buy copyrighted paintings, modify them, and sell the modified version, as long as you're modifying the physical canvas you bought (not copying it onto a new canvas or making prints).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> For the sake of providing a counter argument, not all publishers monetize page views; some simply want as many eyeballs as possible landing on their content. Additionally, it is almost impossible to guarantee that a request for your content results in a hit on your httpd process (even if you have the resources to send highly restrictive cache headers, browsers, proxies, etc. don't HAVE to honour them)

</comment><comment><USER17> He brings up 75% of Twitter being mobile, which sounds like a good number. But, at least on the Google Play store, Feedly seems to have 1 to 5 million installs whereas Twitter has 100 to 500 million. So we're talking about 1% the number of users anyway. So it doesn't much matter what Feedly does since it won't make a dent on your page views anyway.

<comment><USER18> Depends on your audience. If you have a tech/iOS audience, Feedly users might be 10% of your visitors or more. Plus, Feedly might grow in the future.

And in any case, we should not encourage bad behavior, whatever the actual impact.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> As an end user I personally hate the fact that I can't choose my own URL shortener and stuck with feedly.com links.

</comment><comment><USER20> They say insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results.

These people have to stop doing this shit and realize it isn't doing anyone any good.

<comment><USER21> Because greed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> My viewpoint is a bit different on this. First off, Feedly has no way of showing the user the entire article, even if they first direct them to the feedly app. Feedly should show the preview with a snippet, then provide a "View Website" link.

That is, unless you output the entire blog post on your RSS feed. If you do this, then that's your own fault.

Therefore we are left with the question. Does this harm your site and/or metrics? Short answer. No.

Are your users going to your articles from Feedly short links? Probably not. Why would you link your users to a feedly short link to begin with?

In the end, what Feedly is doing is doing a disservice to their end user. It makes the process confusing by creating more hoops to get to the original content. Those short links frankly do not need to exist.

We all know what Feedly is trying to do, and in the end they should stick to building premium features rather than something like this.

<comment><USER23> > unless you output the entire blog post on your RSS feed. If you do this, > then that's your own fault.

I understand the reasons against posting your entire blog on an RSS feed, but it hurts usability so much. If I'm opening my feed reader I would like to stay there and not have to continuously open a post in my browser and then jump back again. If a RSS feed does not contain the full posts I need to be extremely interested in the content to still follow it.

<comment><USER24> As a user, sure. As a publisher, full article feeds are incompatible with web ads.

<comment><USER23> I have seen special ads embedded into feeds. Sure, they are not dynamic, targeted and what not, but they are hand selected, probably relevant, and under total control of the content provider.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Just use [http://feedbin.me](http://feedbin.me). It's three bucks a month.

edit: because in Feedly's case _you_ are the product.

<comment><USER26> And by that do you mean to suggest Feedly doesn't offer a paid version?

[https://feedly.com/index.html#pro](https://feedly.com/index.html#pro)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Wow, a RSS reader "steals views from publishers"? Call the police.

Guess what? If your article wasn't in my RSS, I wouldn't have read it at all. It didn't steal anything.

</comment><comment><USER28> ShareThis widgets operate in a similar way.

</comment><comment><USER29> Can we just please build an exact replica of Google Reader that can handle power users?</comment>


WxErlang: Getting_started [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://arifishaq.files.wordpress.com/2017/12/wxerlang-getting-started.pdf <comment><USER2> I think most people today would use a web front-end to Erlang/Elixir, with events over websockets (cowboy), using WebGL in the browser, with either server-side rendering (Phoenix LiveView) or client-side JS integration (pick your poison).

[https://github.com/phoenixframework/phoenix_live_view](https://github.com/phoenixframework/phoenix_live_view)

These ideas were first proposed by ... joearms, of course, way back in 2009.

[https://armstrongonsoftware.blogspot.com/2009/12/comet-is- de...](https://armstrongonsoftware.blogspot.com/2009/12/comet-is-dead-long- live-websockets.html)

RIP Joe

<comment><AUTHOR> Because WxErlang is distributed as an OTP application with the current OTP package, it's dependency implications are different. Not necessarily better or worse, just different.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Where was this in 2014 when I wasted two months on doing the most basic WX things?

<comment><USER4> There was a Python book on Wx back then if I am correct. At least that was what I used when writing a WxPerl program, a few years ago.</comment></comment>


NBCUniversal has invested another $200M in BuzzFeed - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/21/nbcuniversal-doubles-down-on-buzzfeed/ <comment><USER2> That's a lot of money to dump into a "fake news" (according to CNN's Jeff Zucker: [http://dailycaller.com/2016/11/17/fake-news-flashback-cnn- pr...](http://dailycaller.com/2016/11/17/fake-news-flashback-cnn-president- says-buzzfeed-not-legitimate-news-organization/)) organization.</comment>


Show HN: Homeroom, a new edtech startup – any advice appreciated - <AUTHOR> http://www.homeroom.me <comment><AUTHOR> My two friends and I recently started an edtech started called Homeroom (it's live at homeroom.me) to promote collaboration and discussion in the classroom. It's a free online website that acts as a forum for students and teachers to answer each others' questions and discuss classroom content. We launched about three days ago and we've gotten about 900 total users including students just in a few schools we've reached out too in the bay area.

Does anyone have any advice on how to best reach out to teachers in other districts? We've been cold emailing teachers for now and seem to have a hit or miss with them. When we get a chance to explain ourselves teachers are really interested and we can usually get them to sign up with a class. Any advice would be much appreciated! More detailed info can be found at [https://angel.co/homeroom](https://angel.co/homeroom).

<comment><USER2> Your product sounds like Piazza. My computer science department uses it extensively - combination Q&A, announcements, and a sort of ticketing system for the TAs. It's a great tool. It's a powerful and innovative place to take fairly standard web application technology.

Why should I use your product instead of Piazza?

If you believe you can beat Piazza, then figuring out how Piazza got its marketshare might be a good place to start. I gather they have decent penetration in the higher ed market.

<comment><USER3> Thanks a lot for the feedback. My name is Abhishek Fatehpuria and I'm also a cofounder with Homeroom.

Theres a couple reasons why we think we're better than piazza.

1) Our discussion software yields higher quality discussion by having a more steady stream and well organized posts. 2) We're releasing more features which enables even more collaboration and discussion. Piazza only goes as far as posts and answers. We are going to do a lot more very soon. 3) Our target market right now has actually been the K12 market. We find that the softwares in that space right now are not that good and its incredibly fragmented.

That being said, I use piazza in school and I love it, and we know its pretty entrenched already in the higher-ed not K12 market.

Please let us know if you have more questions/feedback

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think this text should be on the homepage: "Homeroom creates a secure environment for students and teachers to bring intellectual discussions from class and other parts of their educational experiences to the web. "

</comment><comment><USER5> The first thing you show is a signup page. Why would I sign up if I find no value in the site?

"Where the world comes to learn"

If it's a forum, learn from stackoverflow, reddit, 4chan, etc: give everyone your content, and if people find value and want to contribute, they'll sign up.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, I was pretty fuzzy on what exactly the software is/does.

A video would be awesome. I would understand them wanting to provide some layer of security for students/teachers by not allowing open access, but a demo area or even some screenshots would solve the "What am I signing up for?" problem.

<comment><AUTHOR> true, thanks for the feedback! I agree it is hard to understand the product simply from looking at the first page, we have an about page at [http://www.homeroom.me/about](http://www.homeroom.me/about) and screenshots at [https://angel.co/homeroom](https://angel.co/homeroom), but we'll definitely create some sort of video or demo where we can show teachers how exactly the website is used.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I worked for a collaborative ed-tech startup from 2012-2013. Happy to talk about it / give advice, my email is in my profile.</comment>


YouTubers Threaten Revolt! (Again) - <AUTHOR> http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2007/08/23/youtubers-threaten-revolt-again <comment> mark-t I thought they were revolting already.</comment>


Adobe to Acquire Magento - <AUTHOR> https://magento.com/blog/magento-news/adobe-to-acquire-magento <comment><USER2> Ah, Magento.

It's "smart" EAV[0] Database schema gave my colleagues so much good time. I do not know how it became in more recent versions, but at the time I distinctly remember them dealing with abysmal DB performances and completely gibberish auto-generated queries.

In one case, I had to manually dig through the DB and write an ad-hoc query to extract data that was needed for reporting, otherwise the software would start doing a gazillion of round trips between a DB lookup, an AS-level computation, another DB lookup...

That DB design tasted of super-mega-premature optimization, in which the developers wanted to guarantee extensibility at all costs, foregoing in the process the design of an actual data model.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entity%E2%80%93attribute%E2%80...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entity%E2%80%93attribute%E2%80%93value_model)

<comment><USER3> My first impression looking at their schema was, "what the fuck? if they wanted MongoDB why the fuck didnt they just go with MongoDB?"

Thanks to Magento I can add "someone tried to turn MySQL into a typeless K-V document store" to the list of crazy things that I've seen.

<comment><USER4> Since at this time you seem to be the first user of the f word on this thread, it seems like a good time to say that me and a lot of my database friends and colleagues use Magento as a replacement for it. So you could rewrite that bit of your comment as "what the Magento?" and it would not lose meaning for us!

<comment><USER3> Hilarious! I am so stealing that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've never met anyone who uses Magento that actually likes it.

<comment><USER6> As the saying goes, compare Magento to the alternatives, not to the almighty.

If you're running an ecommerce operation that is too small to justify building a custom CMS, and can't justify paying for Demandware/Salesforce Commerce Cloud, your options are really limited.

Shopify and Big Commerce offer good out of the box functionality, but you are then stuck with their feature sets and pricing tables. Each platform taxes you in various ways. Shopify imposes 0.5-2.0% fees on transactions processed with external credit card processors. Big Commerce forces you to upgrade your plan after your sales exceed a certain threshold.

For even ecommerce companies doing several million dollars a year in revenue, Magento community edition (open source) is sufficient. You pay up front for development or design work, pay annual server costs, and can scale your ecommerce technology spend on your schedule.

Magento has given me extreme headaches at times, but once we had our site up and running it was easy to maintain and administer. The non-technical people, i.e. the people who are actually packing and shipping orders, quickly picked up using the admin panel. So, yeah, I like Magento just fine.

<comment><USER7> So far the only somewhat sane alternative is prestashop.

At least I don't worry what breaks this time on a security update, which is a real PITA with magento. For updates to magento shops I schedule time, for updates to prestashop I press a button..

<comment><USER6> We actually used to run our site off of Prestashop. The biggest reason that I saw to switch was because of the lack of integrations with some of our operations tech stack. For example, Freshdesk has an official extension/add-on for Magento, but on PrestaShop the only add-on is a $39.99 option made by a 3rd party developer.

Prestashop is probably easier to administer than Magento, but that comes with tradeoffs because of its smaller developer ecosystem.

<comment><USER7> Understood, it might not fit for every shop. For quite a lot of shops it works quite well though.

I guess that it wasn't so much that the add-on came at a cost, but more that it was:

a) a 3rd party developer

b) the only option

As you said it was just one of your issues.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Adobe is looking more like a holding company trying to grow their membership offerings than a company building a cohesive product. It's similar to how Microsoft is acquiring successful companies but having a hard time incorporating them into their ecosystem (Skype, anyone?).

I don't see this going well for either Adobe or Magento. Remember when Adobe acquired Macromedia and killed Fireworks? And then Sketch came in and neatly filled the void? That's kind of what Adobe appears to do to companies.

I'm not saying Adobe is bad, but their diverse portfolio of products won't be well integrated for years and in that time, there is the possibility of killing a brand simply because it does not keep up with time (and competition).

Good luck, Adobe.

<comment><USER9> Adobe's behavior makes me think more of Oracle than Microsoft:

Acquire a product with a competitive moat, reskin a year later but change no features, attach an enterprise sales force to it to wring the hell out of every last subscription dollar you can get, and then maybe release a few substantive changes when sales begin to slide.

<comment><USER10> We took our company off Magento enterprise and onto community. We paid to have the features we wanted from Enterprise developed on community exactly because there was no guarantee that the price of Enterprise wouldn't get racked up every year. Feeling good about that decision today

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've made a pretty good money over the years with Magento and even though I'd still recommend it to clients (since there's no better alternative) every interaction with it is painful. To the point where I mentally add an "insalubrity" tax to every Magento invoice I make.

I don't know how to feel about this accquisition. I already depend on Adobe a lot more than I'd like to, and this makes it no better.

<comment><USER12> Out of curiosity, are you familiar with Workarea? Seems to fit pretty squarely in the 'better alternative' category,at least for medium-sized and up companies.

<comment><USER11> Open source and humongous ecosystem makes Magento unbeatable.

You would be nuts to release a payment gateway with no support for it.

<comment><USER12> >makes Magento unbeatable

I don't know if you've had a look at the other comments in this thread, but if Magento was actually unbeatable, let's just say I'd still be coding in PHP today.

<comment><USER11> PHP is pretty hard to beat as well.

I'm sure you are aware that most of the web runs on it. Wikipedia, WordPress and most other big CMSs. Oh yes, and that Facebook thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This acquisition has piqued my interest moreso than your average bear because I work for a major retailer that just so happens to be heavily invested in Adobe Experience Manager (AEM). We are using AEM strictly as a CMS and are otherwise heavily invested in Oracle Endeca to drive commerce from a search/nav perspective. And then there's the whole payment and order management issue which we handle with custom, in-house solutions.

I'm a little scared to hear all the horrible experiences with Magento because I'm a developer on our search team and working with Endeca (or any Oracle product for that matter) is an absolute nightmare. I flat out hate Endeca. We'll be due for a replatform in another few years (once the business gets sick of us trying to bolt on big data features to Endeca, which just wasn't built for such). I can imagine us going the Magento route since we already have hefty contracts in place with Adobe.

I've tried to pitch a custom solution based on Elasticsearch (or Solr directly) but my director and VP don't want to hear about anything that involves building various business user UIs from scratch. Endeca provides a (sigh... Flash based) UI that gets the job done, and on top of that we have several legacy apps with (can't believe I'm saying this in 2018) UIs written in classic ASP.

Other than Shopify or Workarea, are there any platforms you, the ever-full-of- knowledge gurus of HN would recommend? I really like both of the aforementioned products because they give you a lot of useful UIs out the box (in addition to the capabilities of the platforms themselves), but they also give you a lot of content management and we don't need that.

<comment><USER14> It's a smart move for Adobe I believe. I really can't see how the overlap of customer base for AEM / Magento will be, also it will be interesting to see if they start to do more b2b or b2c eCommerce. It is an interesting time in the space, strong CMS adding eCommerce, and strong eCommerce adding CMS. It's highly likely that Salesforce / Commerce Cloud will expand into the CMS space and possibly more consolidation of platforms.

There are some abstract systems like Moltin.com that offer eCommerce APIs Platforms like BigCommerce.com / VTex.com / Miva.com / Volusion.com are also pretty popular.

Then you have some end to end ones like Coredna.com* that offer B2B, B2C and CMS.

*Disclaimer : I work for the last company

<comment><USER13> Awesome reply! This is why I love HN. I'll be sure to investigate all of the options you've provided, including your own company. It takes a lot of integrity to list your own product last and include a disclaimer to boot. Kudos!

<comment><USER15> Hey! one of the founders at Moltin here. Thanks for the mention @blackdogie, always a nice surprise to stumble across! Coredna looks interesting (nice explainer video!).

@jsntrmn we often see the need to de-risk technology choices for decision makers at larger retailers which can sometimes be in conflict to what a developer looks for when selecting a tool or service. We're trying to get the right balance at moltin as we think both voices need to be at the table.

Happy to chat with either of you if you would like to share learnings/experience or if I can help in any way, just drop me a message email@example.com

<comment><USER14> Great to connect, will reach out via email. Thanks for the kind words about the website, it was just relaunched last week.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> They'll drive it into the ground like what they did with Business Catalyst. The things will get stuck in middle management who doesn't know web.

</comment><comment><USER17> So Adobe wants to take on Shopify. Interesting. I wonder if that can work? What is Shopify's long term competitive advantage here?

BTW how much was it acquired for?

<comment><USER18> 1.6 billion.

They bought demandware nearly 2 years ago for just slightly higher which has ecommerce. They just recently ended Business catalyst which was a POS. I guess they magento is the key to taking on big and small ecom sites in the future with this POS.

<comment><USER19> I can't figure out what you mean by POS, is it Point of Sale, or more common attribute meant to describe Magento performance? :)

<comment><USER18> A piece of sh%#

My bad on demandware.. ^^

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The eCommerce/fintech/small-biz-tech space generally is really heating up this year. Small timeline:

* Verifone was acquired in early April.

* Square acquires Weebly in late April (to round out itself in eCommerce, which was its weakness vs Shopify)

* PayPal acquires iZettle in May (to compete with SQ where they failed in the past with its homegrown product)

* Square just yesterday issues $750 in convertible notes (I have a lot of speculation on this one, but something big is brewing)

* Adobe acquired Magento today (SHOP stock way down on the news)

Earlier, when Amazon mulled p2p payments (Square has Cash App, PYPL has Venmo), both stocks dip on the announcement, which was otherwise pretty hollow PR. Amazon actually had a Square/iZettle competitor called Amazon Register that they shut down back in 2015, so I would not be surprised if they want to get back into transaction spaces. Also wouldn't be surprised if they made a bid for SHOP or SQ within 2 years in order to get into eCommerce and small biz tech generally.

Both SQ and SHOP and PYPL have had nice years, stock price wise. Disclosure: I'm watching this space _very closely_ and am long SQ, AMZN.

<comment><USER21> Out of curiosity, what are your thoughts on SHOP as an investment? Do you think Square (now that they've acquired Weebly will be able to slow down their growth)?

Also, SHOP is sitting on >1.3B of cash and their new CFO hinted at an acquisition - any guesses on who/what kind of business might be a good acquisition for them?

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Last time I interacted with Magento, one of their customer service people verified my plain text login password over the phone.

edit: (it was about 5 years ago)

<comment><USER23> I honestly don't know how that's possible, as right from the start Magento used a (very crappy) MD5+SALT scheme for password encryption.

Here's a 2013 version of their password hashing file[1] which should confirm that they were using the (very crappy) method back then.

OSCommerce, which Magenta was attempting to replace, had password hashing as far back as 2006.

Maybe you're thinking of a different service?

1\. [https://github.com/nexcess/magento/blob/master/app/code/core...](https://github.com/nexcess/magento/blob/master/app/code/core/Mage/Core/Model/Encryption.php)

<comment><USER24> I know it sounds implied but he didn't say customer service had access to plain text password, just that he verified it over the phone. You can surely do that with hashed password but it's still not a good practice.

<comment><USER22> I was not enjoying Magento and my password was something like "MagentoSuck$"

I don't remember who I was talking to exactly but they said something like "and you're logging in with the username <whatever> and the password (fading awkwardly) MagentoSucks..."?

And we both kind of laughed nervously...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> So a company whose fantastic products are also known to take forever to load even on most performant machines, acquires a ecommerce that looks good on the outside, but it is pain to run in every scenario :). Kind of make sense in some weird way.

</comment><comment><USER18> Can we be like Shopify but with more baggage? I think there were better options here.

<comment><USER25> "We want to buy Shopify but we can pay 1/10th of Shopify's valuation"

I think Magento is "fairly priced" priced at ~10% of Shopify's valuation

<comment><USER26> The code is already Adobe Quality and with a horrifically overengineered database layer to boot. They'll get along just fine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> This is likely the reason they are shutting down an existing Website platform of theirs, Business Catalyst. [1]

While it was a dated system (purchased in 2009) it came as quite a surprise that it was reaching the end of its life.

I think it will be very interesting where Adobe takes this

[1]: [https://forums.adobe.com/thread/2470031](https://forums.adobe.com/thread/2470031)

<comment><USER28> And magento isn't dated? It'd probably make more sense if they bought someone like shopify

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> This is not Adobe's first e-commerce dance.

Adobe attempted an acquisition of Hybris Software, a Java-based e-commerce platform back in 2013 (see first link). This would have meshed well with their Adobe Experience Manager, their CMS solution (an integration already existed, and was also based on Java/Spring). SAP offered Hybris the opportunity to operate independently for two years, and Hybris was acquired by SAP.

What is surprising is how AEM and Magento will integrate, considering that AEM is a Java/Maven based CMS and Magento is PHP.

(And yes, the article doesn't seem relevant, but contains an important reference)

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-02-09/steve- you...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-02-09/steve-young-is-an- athlete-who-s-actually-good-at-finance)

<comment><USER30> They have actually had a partnership/integration for ~2 years. Basically it comes down to using AEM as the "Glass" in front of Magento. Basically just using Magento as an API and doing all of the front-end with AEM. I know there are a couple of big sites that have gone this direction, but I think the M2 API is still not feature rich enough to make it work easily.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Seems like a strange purchase for Adobe. How does this fit into their market or ecosystem?

<comment><USER32> I'm an Adobe employee, but know nothing about the real reasons for the acquisition. We focus on providing great digital experiences for our customers and their customers. Something you may not know is that Adobe is a leader in digital MARKETING. We help people create/monitor/optimize ad campaigns, we help customize website experiences for users, and we help with website creation in general-- Brackets, the IDE, Dreamweaver, all of the other creative products, Adobe Experience Manager, Adobe Analytics-- it all kind of ties together to help create an end-to-end experience for users, now especially in the commerce arena. Adobe is no stranger to web content creation.

Adobe is also focusing on AI, so if they have good talent over there, I'm sure it wouldn't hurt to have their predictive analytics tech over on our side.

Also, I'm sure Adobe wouldn't mind the large ecosystem of Magento plugin developers writing plugins for [https://www.adobe.io](https://www.adobe.io).

I can imagine this would be a great way to identify people who could benefit from switching from Google Analytics to Adobe Analytics, as well.

<comment><USER33> Reads like parody.

<comment><USER34> Not parody, MARKETING!

<comment><USER35> Can't it be both? ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> eBay/PayPal bought and sold Magento before this. When a payment processor that could embed and make its' offerings the optimal experience within a heavily- used ecomm platform decides to ditch it, I think you have a dud.

</comment><comment><USER37> Right now, i am picturing the heap of _something_ traditionally garbled out by Adobe "webdesign software".

Then I remember all the fun and the "good times" I had in my life building shops with Magento.

I'm kinda scared of whatever Adobe is up to here...

</comment><comment><USER38> Let me know in 5 years how delicious the corporate ____you 're eating is, I guess.

Blah.

</comment><comment><USER39> Makes a lot of sense. Adobe has some warped ideas about what makes something good.

</comment><comment><USER40> Having worked on Hybris and Magento and a few other eCommerce platforms, Hybris is the best of the bunch. When I say best only relatively...it has its own headaches but at least its not as horrific as Magento

</comment><comment><USER41> Tangential: I am not familiar with Magento and is not easy to identify what they do from their website.

The "Why Magento" section is especially useless.

<comment><USER42> Magento is the company. The product is main Magento Commerce: [https://magento.com/products/magento- commerce](https://magento.com/products/magento-commerce)

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> So basically run away from Magento now that Adobe is involved.

</comment><comment><USER44> This seems like a very weird match.

</comment><comment><USER45> I cannot see how this is a good thing...

<comment><USER46> Well, it's real software, open source, used by millions, and it's making its developers some money.

That's good enough in my book.

And way better than some BS startup that gets billions for "uber for cats" and "self-erasing dick-pics for teens".

<comment><USER45> I'm referring to Adobe purchasing it.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: ipscrub, an IP address anonymizer for Nginx - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/masonicboom/ipscrub <comment><USER2> I'm sure laws differs between countries, but isn't there a law in Europe that forces you to log IP for eventual police investigation ?

It was true some years ago in France (a law from 2011 says you must keep 1 year of logs for user posting content on your website [1]), and it's the big question I am asking myself for several months with GPRD comming.

Everyone I ask had its own way of seeing it and I'm confused.

[1] [https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichTexte.do?cidTexte=JORFT...](https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichTexte.do?cidTexte=JORFTEXT000023646013&categorieLien=id) (in French, article 3)

Edit: found the law

<comment><USER3> In some countries in europe (e.g.: Germany) they are pretty strict against maintaining logs that associate employee web traffic with the employee. Plus,GDPR will introduce some concerns like you mentioned.

For that law you referenced,I am not sure it would apply for a network provider as it would for a site-owner (e.g.: VPN or CDN provider vs a website)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This looks great for GDPR and a good way to get in compliance by pushing the problem way upstream as to not have to figure out delegations at the app layers.

</comment><comment><USER5> This module makes it impossible to detect and handle IPv6 /64 subnets. Perhaps the first and last 64 bits should be hashed separately.

<comment><AUTHOR> What do you mean when you say "detect and handle IPv6/64 subnets"?

I'm not too familiar with IPv6 but would love to improve support for it if the project is deficient somehow.

<comment><USER6> With the original IP, addresses are fairly expensive. With IPv6, even home users are assigned a /64 subnet at the smallest, so a malicious actor can iterate through many addresses. Generally for things like per-IP ratelimiting, you treat a whole IPv6 /64 subnet like you would treat a single IP address.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Even using anonymization such as this you should not keep logs for longer than necessary to debug and delete after a month or two

</comment><comment><USER8> Why would you need to avoid logging IPs?

<comment><AUTHOR> I prefer to look at it the other way around. Why would you need to log IPs? It's like asking people for their social security number (USA) just to have a unique identifier—this is more info than you need.

<comment><USER9> It can be useful to find out who's been spamming requests at your server and block connections on the firewall level.

<comment><USER10> From the project summary:

"You can use this hash to link requests from the same source, without identifying your users by IP address"

So perhaps it is/will be possible to take actions against bad IPs.

<comment><USER9> With more difficulty. I can hardly use hashes to blacklist IP ranges in my firewall, even if it could, the performance would suck due to the necessary hashing.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


When People Ate People, a Strange Disease Emerged - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/09/06/482952588/when-people-ate-people-a-strange-disease-emerged <comment><USER2> I did a bunch of research (googling) back in the late 90's or 2000s when the mad cow disease outbreak first happened mainly in England. I thought it was pretty terrifying and I wanted to know what the hell was going on. I read about Kuru all the way back then and the take away was that people shouldn't eat the brain and nervous tissue of other people or Kuru could result. But also it seemed that mad cow disease was occurring because cows were being fed the ground up remains of other cows and that included cow brain and cow nervous tissue. So basically what was happening with cows was the same as what was happening with people getting Kuru.

I also recall learning that in order to get mad cow disease you would need to eat cow brain or cow nervous tissue. Of course, you would probably assume, as I did, that you are safe because you don't eat cow brains or nervous tissue. Well, you could be wrong about that. There is something called AMR (advanced meat recovery). As I understand it, when the meat processing plant removes the spine and skull from the cow there is still some meat stuck to the spine and skull. The AMR process entails blasting off that meat stuck to the spine and skull with some kind of high pressure for use in ground meat. But the result is that some nervous tissue from the cow can get mixed up in ground meat created with the AMR technique and that is one way that you could end up eating cow nervous tissue. After I did that research, I swore off ground meat.

<comment><USER3> A workaround for people who would like to eat ground meat but avoid this issue is to grind it yourself, or to buy steak and have the butcher grind it for you.

<comment><USER4> In Argentina the meat should be grind in front of the customer by law and every butchery exposes a sign explaining this.

Big chains are not exempt.

But you can still buy frozen burguers for instance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I first heard about prions and Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease after getting a letter saying I may have been exposed.

I had surgery after someone with CJD, but before that person died, was autopsied, and diagnosed.

That was over a decade ago. So far no signs of it. I did make peace with the fact that I have a much higher probability of dying from it than the average American. The only substantivu changes in my life are:

(a) My family and I have had very frank discussion about death earlier than we would have otherwise.

(b) I no longer donate blood.

(c) I removed myself as an organ donor. Although my family knows I still want my body to be available for science.

<comment><USER6> >> My family and I have had very frank discussion about death earlier than we would have otherwise.

It would benefit any family to have that discussion, even if both parents are in their 20s and there has been no "scare scenario". Many people die every single day due to unpredictable events, with no warning whatsoever. Unfortunately, too many people have never _really_ pondered their mortality, leading them to be incapable of even considering what it would mean if man/woman/child died tomorrow. Having a sit-down meeting is likely to be brushed off as a "meh, it'll never actually happen to us".

Any one of us could be dead in the next 5 minutes. That's more reality than paranoia. The trick is to get to the point where you understand just how fleeting life is (you or a loved one might be gone any day now), but without letting it negatively control your life.

>> I did make peace with the fact that I have a much higher probability of dying from it than the average American

You should stop thinking that way. A decade past the initial scare, you're likely no more at risk than anyone else. You weren't _given_ the disease, you were exposed to a small _possibility_ of it. It's still the responsible thing to not donate blood or be an organ donor, but as far as your day-to-day life goes you should consider yourself squarely in the "average" category.

<comment><USER7> Surely, after a decade it should be fairly easy to detect Prp_sc levels, or at least extract bone marrow sample for examination. That should eliminate beyond any reasonable level of doubt, any reason for worrying about the matter.

<comment><USER8> Certain categories of people with exposure are to this day disallowed from being blood donors as a result due to the risk and difficulty in testing.

Red Cross rules: " You are not eligible to donate if:

From January 1, 1980, through December 31, 1996, you spent (visited or lived) a cumulative time of 3 months or more, in the United Kingdom (UK), or From January 1, 1980, to present, you had a blood transfusion in any country(ies) in the (UK) or France. The UK includes any of the countries listed below. ... "

[http://www.redcrossblood.org/donating-blood/eligibility- requ...](http://www.redcrossblood.org/donating-blood/eligibility- requirements/eligibility-criteria-alphabetical-listing#arc5)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I understand prion diseases are rare and it's more likely I'll die in a car accident or something, but the persistence of prions is just a horrifying concept.

Highly resistant to heat, radiation, proteases, enzymes... Basically if you've got a prion disease it's just a matter of time before they end you.

<comment><USER10> What would a cure for prion diseases even look like? Are prions targeted by the immune system at all? That to me is what is scary about them.

<comment><USER11> From what I recall, they are seen as normal proteins by the immune system, thus not targeted.

A simple illustration on prions was to imagine it like a busted cable end that would break the socket it plugs into, then the socket would break other cable ends plugged into it. This would occur until all sockets and cable ends were broken in the same way.

<comment><USER12> Decades ago, we had a PCMCIA card that did exactly that. A bent pin distorted the plastic in the socket and that led to more bent pins. Of course you had to try to force them in to propagate the problem and we never tested to see how many generations it could last. Once discovered we threw out all defective hardware which was just a few cards by then.

<comment><USER13> I have heard this one before!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Many of you have probably heard about Prions and Papua New Guinea but the end of the article discusses new prion diseases showing up in deer within North America.

The idea that human's could get a prion disease from deer meat, coupled with a potentially long incubation period, is frightening. Living in a hunting community I may avoid eating deer for the foreseeable future.

<comment><USER15> it's highly unlikely... There's a (probably directed, weighted) graph of species-species transmission potential, and it does seem to obey some rough distance rule, which does NOT correlate necessarily with species distance rule. We think that cows can transmit to humans; cows and sheep can co- transmit. (if you have a sheep with scrapie sharing a pasture with cow, the cow can get mad cow disease). deer though do not seem to transmit to cow, even though CWD is super common in deer and deer and cow pasture together pretty much everywhere in the US except maybe hawaii.

Here, a transgenic mouse with human prion protein is resistant to CWD transmission; but the same mouse with elk protein is susceptible.

[http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19336896.2015.11...](http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19336896.2015.1118603?src=recsys&)

<comment><USER14> That's really great information thanks for sharing

<comment><USER15> Here is a really good review:

[https://academic.oup.com/bmb/article/66/1/199/284812/Other-a...](https://academic.oup.com/bmb/article/66/1/199/284812/Other- animal-prion-diseases)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Reminds me of a scene in the film Book of Eli, which, if you're a fan of Fallout, should watch.

<comment><USER17> An underrated movie, imo.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Prions were the cause of the BSE cattle disease. more commonly known as mad cow disease in europe some years ago, which was blamed on cattle being fed animal products. It killed a couple hundred human and millions of animals either died or were slaughtered.

The incubation period is several years so at the height of the crisis the worst case scenario involved hundreds of thousand of people developing the disease.

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

<comment><USER19> Lots of US people end up hearing about this in a roundabout way, having lived in the UK for a period of time is a disqualifier for donating blood in the US. So each time you donate blood you read a question asking about cumulative time spent:

[https://www.fda.gov/BiologicsBloodVaccines/BloodBloodProduct...](https://www.fda.gov/BiologicsBloodVaccines/BloodBloodProducts/QuestionsaboutBlood/DonatingBlood/#nvCJD)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Can we view this as nature's mechanism to prevent cannibalism amongst species? Mad cow disease occurred when cattle were fed the remains of other cattle in the form of meat and bone meal

<comment><USER21> Why would nature care?

<comment><USER22> Cannibalism seriously threatens a species' survival. Risk of disease from eating same-species meat is a good way to stop it.

<comment><USER23> Nature cares not a whit about "species".

<comment><USER24> All things equal.

Specie A (with this disease) stop cannibalizing after seeing the outcome, better chance of survival.

Specie B (without this disease) eat themselves to the last person... Lower chance of survival as a specie.

Nature "cares" by generating lots of options, then let the fittest to survive. So while nature doesn't intend or plan for a specie to survive, the outcome is no different from if it did. I believe the OP means "care" in this sense.

<comment><USER25> " _Specie B (without this disease) eat themselves to the last person... Lower chance of survival as a specie._ "

That seems unlikely. A bigger risk would be a carnivorous species exterminating its prey species.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Interesting side story is that Gadjusek did a year in prison for child molestation (which he think is a natural/good thing).

There is a documentary on him on BBC called the Genius and the boys [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OxppDxzSww](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OxppDxzSww)

</comment><comment><USER27> Researcher: "I have no solid idea where this problem could be coming from. As a last resort I'll examine whether the ritualistic consumption of decomposing human brains may have _something_ to do with it"

> Lindenbaum had a hunch about what was going on, and she turned out to be > right. It had to do with funerals. [0]: Ibid.

</comment><comment><USER28> Can you be tested for prion disease?

<comment><USER29> Indeed, you can. What you cannot do, however, is remain alive to get the results.

<comment><USER30> Unless they are negative?

<comment><USER31> No, he is making a joke that you can only test by looking at slices of brain tissue (which require you to be dead to do)

<comment><USER32> You don't have to be dead when they start, but you will be when they finish.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> For the past months I've been seriously considering starting a theme restaurant that served wild meats - deer, hogs, gators, large constrictors, etc. That idea just went out the window.

<comment><USER34> Prion-disease transmission from wild game is still quite rare.

I'd be more worried about exotic parasites or radioactivity from the wild hogs.

[0] [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/110...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/11068298/Radioactive- wild-boar-roaming-the-forests-of-Germany.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> >My own interest in this question became rekindled by my experiences in New Guinea over the last 50 years. When I arrived in New Guinea for the first time, it became clear to me almost immediately that New Guineans are curious, questioning, talkative people with complex languages and social relationships, _on the average at least as intelligent as Europeans and Americans._

[http://www.jareddiamond.org/Jared_Diamond/Guns,_Germs,_and_S...](http://www.jareddiamond.org/Jared_Diamond/Guns,_Germs,_and_Steel.html)

</comment><comment><USER36> Is it certain this came from cannibalism and not infected pigs?

<comment><USER37> Yes, very certainly. When the cannibalism stopped, so did instances of Kuru. Although you can get Prion diseases from eating infected pig brain and nervous tissue, the instances discussed in the article were solely caused by ritual cannibalism.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> This article make me unwell. Just thinking of the cannibalism makes me wanna throw up.

<comment><USER39> Let me accelerate that then:

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

<comment><USER40> This might just have been the best thing I've ever seen on Wikipedia.

We evolved from a species of ape that developed an appetite for going on cannibalistic brain-eating killing sprees followed shortly after by a lot of rape because eating brains fills us with uncontrollable lust. In the long-term this made us super intelligent, but killed our psychic abilities and thus our ability to connect with nature, so we began to do a lot of really awful things like pollute the environment, develop nuclear weapons, and become racially- tolerant (gasp!). If you want to escape from the hell that awaits modern society, then you should drop out, become vegetarian, get acquainted with Eastern philosophy, and maybe try and reshape your head using some wooden frames. Also, modern cannibalistic tribes are really just trying to play catch-up with white people.

But the best part of all has to be the Devo connection.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> And that's why you never grok.

</comment><comment><USER42> NPR needs to be more concise. Their informative articles such as this one are written as if the writer is trying to get an A in creative writing 101. Knock off the color and give us the scoop in 2-3 paragraphs.

</comment><comment><USER43> Okay, atleast some benefit of being a vegetarian. But iirc there was some vegies too that can infect the brain.</comment>


Jane Manchun Wong: App researcher who unlocks new features before they launch - open-source-ux https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-47630849 <comment><AUTHOR> Hi, Jane here! I hope you like this profile of me :)

It has been delightful to watch different approaches companies take to enrich, optimize and harden their web and mobile apps.

For example, Facebook has been dogfooding a new approach to improve the overhead in their mobile apps since last year. I speculate (or hope) they will announce it during F8 2019 in coming days.

<comment><USER2> Question: why don't you profit from this either with the stock market or selling info to companies? What is your motivation for doing this anyway since it takes significant time and skill?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> > But some of Ms Wong's scoops are so big that they threaten to impact the > stock market, leading some to accuse her of insider trading.

Can anyone with a good understanding tell me if that really qualifies as insider trading or market manipulation? As I understand it, she reverse engineers a publicly available app, something that anyone with the technical know-how could do. So even if she bought stocks before releasing this information, anyone could have done the same and learned the information the same way.

I would be really surprised if big investment firms aren't already doing that (but just don't release this information publicly). I don't see how this is any different from collecting other public information and placing bets based on that information. (e.g. reading import lists from container ships and estimate the production volume from a company before they announce it).

Otherwise, Jane's efforts seem to be pretty cool and I am honestly surprised that more people aren't doing it. I can't wait to get read her blog later!

<comment><USER4> This is a really interesting question. IANAL and I am not sure a decisive answer even exists, but here is another thread to pull: Lots of traders work with satelite data to estimate non-disclosed info about energy and agriculture companies: [https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/05/stock-v...](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/05/stock- value-satellite-images-investing/586009/)

That article suggests that there is a consensus that high tech surveillance doesn't count as inside information, and I can't see why Jane's reverse engineering would be different. There's also an argument that she is publicizing the material, so depending on the order of operations maybe it is public?

A separate question is what kind of trouble you might be able to get into with specific companies due to license agreements. Would love legal take on any of above as well.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the answer! Really helpful.

> A separate question is what kind of trouble you might be able to get into > with specific companies due to license agreements. Would love legal take on > any of above as well.

I believe you are allowed to reverse engineer software you own in most countries despite what the TOS says. But they might ban you from their platform which doesn't stop reverse engineering because Apple/Google is distributing the software.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Big fan of Jane's overall approach. Since the profile focuses on the leaks themselves, here's something the HN crowd might find especially cool - disclosures for the reverse engineering methods behind many of the leaks: [https://wongmjane.com/](https://wongmjane.com/)

Jane, since you're on: I'm curious how you feel about the red-team/blue-team dynamics of what you're doing. If companies get better at hiding tests and under-development features, is that a Good Thing? Or, does reverse engineering demonstrate that they should be more transparent about dev in the first place? Or, is the frontier of reverse-engineering / hiding stuff itself something productive?

<comment><AUTHOR> As a user, I am curious and excited to know the future of the apps I use. Reverse engineering allows catching a glimpse of the future without having to wait for launch events or press releases.

Often times, this kind of scoops could be beneficial to companies. Product teams at companies could look at public opinions and take that into the consideration of product decision. It functions similarly to "focus groups" or "soft launch", except it's free. According to my profile on CNN, a Twitter spokesperson mentioned [0]:

> the platform wants its users to be part of the process, and these types of > discoveries help it learn

That's not to say companies encourage users to reverse engineer their apps. However, if they make it completely impossible to find any unreleased features whatsoever, it will kill off this free channel of unofficially gathering public opinions (or hype) before launch.

It is understandable there are competitors out there in reality. Getting better at hiding tests and under-development features could help preventing the competitors from knowing the company's upcoming strategies.

To hide or to not hide, they both have pros and cons. It really comes down to how companies balance their priorities. If their priority is to hide everything until launch, even if it means getting rid of the free QA and focus groups, go for it.

I personally hope companies will choose the transparent route rather than being a sealed black box. I believe users deserve to know what is changed in the apps installed on their own phones. Being more specific than the vague "bug fixes and improvements" will provide a sense of assurance to users.

[0]: [https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/22/tech/jane-wong-app- features/i...](https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/22/tech/jane-wong-app- features/index.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> "she faced a Twitter storm of comments saying that she was purposefully manipulating the market for her own profit."

If they were fabricated screenshots or leaked press releases then they might have a case. But if these companies really didnt want these features to be leaked, then they should have done a better job of securing them. Is it really that hard? It wasnt like this was a rogue employee!

<comment><AUTHOR> Also, I was a broke college student. How can I even afford to invest! Still having hard time grasping the concept of stock market and related topics :P

I think there are better ways to bring food to the table than this, such as getting a job as SWE, or donations.

I never earned any money from this hobby and have no plans to change it

<comment><USER6> > I never earned any money from this hobby and have no plans to change it

Except for the bug bounties you've received, presumably. Unless you consider those a separate part of what you do. All great work in any case!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Can't the app maker simply _not_ include the unreleased features in the published package? E.g use a preprocessor to remove them.

I understand the purpose is to enable it programmatically, but what's the problem with simply showing user "Please update, there's a new feature"?

<comment><USER8> They want to prerelease the features for some trial set of users, while only having one binary in the store.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Does this posit a strong argument against trunk-based development patterns?

</comment><comment><USER10> Love finding out early about new app features and in development without having to work at the companies themselves! lots of really good leaks</comment>