Google Flight Search - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/flights/ <comment><USER6> It's rather powerful: as long as the origin airport is one of those shown on the map, and the destination airport is reachable via a domestic flight on one of the major airlines (AA, AS, B6, CO, DL, F9, UA, US), the search results come back instantaneously. Multiple origins and destinations (up to five of each) are supported as well:

[http://www.google.com/flights/#search;f=LAX,SFO,SEA,LAS,DEN;...](http://www.google.com/flights/#search;f=LAX,SFO,SEA,LAS,DEN;t=ORD,BOS,MIA,ATL,CLT;d=2011-10-10;r=2011-10-14;mp=1300;md=690)

And the results _still_ come back immediately! Including the three-month chart of prices. This leads me to believe that Google/ITA has precomputed all of these results, and is simply serving these results out of a cache of some sort. That would explain why they are only offering a limited set of origin airports at this time: it probably takes an incredible amount of computing power and storage space to pre-calculate all of the possible results.

Colour me impressed.

<comment><USER7> Interesting. That makes me wonder: would that really be the optimal approach? Google is able to return search results for previously unsearched queries nearly instantaneously too, so I'm wondering whether it's really a cache that's serving those queries. Would some sort of graph-based index be possible in this situation?

<comment><USER8> Here's the classic presentation people usually refer to when talking about flight pricing complexity.

[http://www.demarcken.org/carl/papers/ITA-software-travel- com...](http://www.demarcken.org/carl/papers/ITA-software-travel- complexity/ITA-software-travel-complexity.pdf)

I'd love to know how Google's doing it - it's a really hard problem.

<comment><USER9> What's interesting is that you linked to an ITA Software presentation, and Google _own_ ITA Software. So it's almost certain that some of the people who put that document together worked on this pre-computed solution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Internally, this has been around for a little while (disclaimer: I work for Google but not on anything related to this).

What continues to impress me about Google is:

1\. Just how quickly this was built (really, it was quick); and

2\. Google wants you to use our services because they're compelling not because we don't give you any other choice (ie "Don't be evil").

Sure there are limits to what it currently does but I think you'll see it rapidly iterate.

<comment><USER11> Let's be honest. Google wants us to use their services because the better they understand us, the better they can advertise to us. That's the profit model at Google. I don't begrudge them for it either. You've got to turn a profit if you want to keep the lights on.

I don't mean any offense, but the "Don't be evil" mantra is growing a bit tired. Evil is a strong word, and "not being evil" is a pretty low bar, IMO.

<comment><USER12> I strongly disagree. Google wants us to use its services because at its core is a bunch of engineers that simply want to make the world better.

<comment><USER13> the first motivation of any for profit corporation, especially one as large and successful as Google, is profit. That is their entire reason for existence, don't fool yourself into believing otherwise.

<comment><USER14> People like to say this, maybe believing it fulfills some deep-seated need for cynicism, or makes the speaker feel wise and worldly. But what is your actual argument in support of this? Just saying it does not make it true.

If profit is the only motivation for decisions at Google, why did it pull out of China? I'm sure you're cynical and wise about that too, but here's what I can tell you. I saw Sergey up on stage saying the same things he said in this interview ([http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/22/interview-sergey- br...](http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/22/interview-sergey-brin-on- googles-china-gambit/)) and he got fiery and emotional about it. This is a guy who grew up in the Soviet Union until he was 6 and for him it is a very personal and ideological issue.

This corporations-as-profit-seeking-automata meme is old and tired. At the end of the day it's people who make decisions, and just as in every aspect of life people can have complex motivations for the decisions that they make.

<comment><USER13> I never said profit was their only motivation, but it is the reason they are a corporation, and not a charity.

I refer you to the comment above by jey

      What Google "wants" as an entity is different from what the individual
      component humans want.

Although Sergey is an obviously important influence at Google, he is not Google.

<comment><USER14> You said profit was the "first" motivation. You haven't even justified that. Saying that a corporation has to at least break even to avoid being a charity is a far cry from your previous grandstanding. Just because a corporation has to make money doesn't mean that money is the "first" motivation for every decision. It doesn't explain why Google (not Sergey, Google) pulled out of China.

<comment><USER15> Um...they chose to go into China in the first place, and they didn't do it for charity work. A lot of people thought that was pretty evil.

In any case, the parent doesn't have to justify anything, because he's stating a relatively well-known argument: in the US, there's an obligation for corporate executives to maximize shareholder value. This point is debated ([http://www.linkedin.com/answers/law-legal/corporate- law/corp...](http://www.linkedin.com/answers/law-legal/corporate- law/corporate-law/LAW_COR_CRL/834796-1078684)), but not to the extent that you're claiming.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> That really is good. Hipmunk is still better if you know what days you want to fly, but this is great if you haven't yet decided precisely when, or precisely where, you want to go.

A pity it only works within the US so far, but I'm sure they'll add international destinations eventually.

Also a shame that Southwest still won't cooperate with any of these guys. I guess it's a rational decision on their part: be cheapest _most_ of the time and hope that people won't bother to compare your fares to others.

<comment><USER17> Yes, the first site that has JetBlue and SouthWest comparisons with the major airlines will have my traffic. I usually prefer to travel on price when it's not business so I love how Google has made this clear - that's my core problem with Hipmunk and I'm not sure why they don't just tell you the cheapest days to fly, like Kayak at least tries to. I also like how <http://skyscanner.com> does it.

<comment><USER18> We (Hipmunk) have Jetblue, and so does Kayak and Google. We also let you figure out the cheapest days to fly: just click "I'm flexible."

<comment><USER16> Good to hear.

You also have one killer competitive advantage: an adorable logo.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Not bad, but hipmunk's visualization seems far far better than Google's tables. The graphical representation of the flight path seems nice, as does the highlighting of cities involved, but that doesn't actually give me information I need to make a decision; Hipmunk's time-oriented chart of departures, arrivals, and layovers tells me exactly what I need to know to book a flight.

<comment><USER20> Exactly. This would intimidate my aunt; Hipmunk would amaze her.

<comment><USER21> I hope she'd like the chipmunk, too!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> If your startup is involved with search aimed at the consumer market, watch out...Google is coming.

In a few weeks/months Google will be featuring this search result when you type "nyc to sfo" and take a big bite out of orbitz, kayak, and whoever's lunch that's in this space.

EDIT: The counterargument to this, is that orbitz, kayak, and friends are some of the heaviest purchasers of PPC ads. So Google be at risk of cannibalizing if they push this too hard.

<comment><USER23> > If your startup is involved with search aimed at the consumer market, watch > out...Google is coming.

Possibly... However sites like hipmunk will be used as a comparison in so many press articles and blog posts when google starts pushing this.

Many start ups have won against google. Google Notepad & Evernote, Google Wave & Twitter, Google Ride Finder & Uber etc...

.. but I still wouldn't want to be in this space right now.

<comment><USER24> Not entirely sure how you're equating Google Wave and Twitter.

<comment><USER24> I think Jaiku is the more apt comparison, for what it's worth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Well, it was a matter of time, wasn't it? For now it's a bit too fiddly when compared to the likes of Hipmunk, save for the booking process which is quite streamlined. And the search itself, which is blazing fast. On second thought, this is really not a bad effort. I can see it gaining huge traction in no time.

</comment><comment><USER26> The (well-hidden) "Limits" widget is a very cool bit of visual / visceral UI design. Click the "scatter graph" button next to the Duration field and you get a scatter plot of duration against price for all the flights - which is useful data in itself - then you can drag a boundary around to set the maximum duration or price.

</comment><comment><USER27> You know what would my make flights better (I travel a lot for work - but work out of my house and book a lot of my own travel)

I want to be able to setup standard trips/itineraries and be able to single clik re-book them with simply a leave and return date.

Further, I want the system to auto arrange for a cab/shuttle/uber to pick me up and take me to my destination.

For example, I fly to LAX several times a month - Nome Alaska once a month, Soon it will be Dallas once a month - and various places in the bay area.

If I can setup my "Visit LAX trip" with all my details and know that a car was waiting for me when I got to LAX to take me to my office/hotel and I didnt have to do anything other than click "Re-book LAX" that would save me so much time and hassle.

I would setup my preferred airlines, times and seats (Virgin America etc...)

<comment><USER28> May I ask what you do, and how I might get into doing it? I am craving a job with > 0 travel...

<comment><USER27> I am a healthcare consultant. I consult on new hospital builds and ensuring the organizations are prepared to get licensed and then move in.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> To me, that map seems like a very confusing bit of UI. The cities themselves are _really_ tiny interaction points, I'm a relatively experienced FPS gamer and hitting those points accurately involves more fumbling than it should. You cannot drag departure/arrival pins. Streetview kind of taught me that this should be a mechanism for manipulating this sort of location reference.

The big one, though, is that layovers are not reflected on the map. Granted, it may push me slightly towards more expensive flights, but I would appreciate the ability to see the grid of ugliness and waiting I'm buying into to get that super cheap ticket.

I don't think that map as it is now is worth the screen real estate.

<comment><USER30> The whole thing has "designed by an engineer" all over it. From hidden UI that reveals itself by clicking/hovering on various elements, to the entire process being limited to one screen which various pop-out elements and transformations. There is little consistency in the design, and poor or no usage of contrast to separate information visually.

When clicking the large blue button to the right of a flight, several rows of return flights drop down below that. The only visual distinction between these specific sub-rows and the other departing flights below is a thin blue/gray border on the sides.

Going from A to B is called an "Outbound flight", while going from B to A is called a "Return flight". Copy is very important in UI design. It should be outbound/inbound or depart/return, not some mix of different terminology.

Durations are always "-- Xh -->". What is the point of the arrow if it is always pointing to the right? Why is the duration a lighter shade than the rest of the text?

The left column is a Gawker/Gizmodo style static column that locks in place when scrolling down. The Google search results page doesn't do that.

These are basics, and a company the size of Google with as many employees as it has should be able to get these things right.

<comment><USER31> Outbound/return is standard terminology all over the travel industry. Including in UK and US, and for trains and for planes: I'm surprised you're not familiar with it.

"Depart" means something different: it refers to the beginning of _each_ leg of the journey. Its opposite is "arrive". So you might have an outbound leg which departs from LAX and arrives in SFO, and then a return leg which departs from SFO and arrives in LAX.

<comment><USER30> Hipmunk.com says depart/return and Iflyswa.com says departing/returning. Your claim is 0/2 so far.

<comment><USER32> I went to go and prove you wrong (I personally use outbound/return).

But webjet (Departing/Returning) and skyscanner (Depart/Return) seem to back you up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> "Sorry, locations outside the U.S. are currently not supported." Are you kidding me?

<comment><USER34> as usual

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Just for some context, here's the previous HN discussion when Google announced their acquisition of ITA in July 2010.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1479107>

</comment><comment><USER36> It's quite scary that a company like Google can come along and shit in a startup's cereal practically overnight.

I know we were all rooting for The 'Munk, but it seems that Google's use of Price x Duration matrix effectively steals the thunder from Hipmunk's agony filter.

I mean, it's not as if Google needs the affiliate revenue, and I bet the Hipmunk guys would have preferred it had Google decided to "organise the world's information" through an acquisition. I think I'd need a good cry if this happened to me :(

<comment><USER18> No tears over here! We've known this was coming for almost a year—Google announced their ITA acquisition before we even launched. We've also been preparing some sweet responses :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Attaboy! Still rooting for you guys. You should add gigaballs of steel to the mascot.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> General question here. Almost all flight search sites default the search dates to about 3 weeks out. Now, I find this annoying but I'm wondering if its done because there is statistical evidence that most customers search in that range of time, or rather if it's just what someone thought would be a good idea by "following their intuition".

<comment><USER37> Well this is some interesting research. Out of my off-hand and roughly scientific research, my statement of "almost all" was quite off.

I found that all of the major carrier websites I could remember off the top of my head did not employ the date-ahead practice.

Delta - no US Airways - no Southwest - no Virgin America - no Continental - <USER5>

I followed that by a Google search for "flight search" and checked the sites that came up in roughly the 1st and 2nd pages. Where I put "yes" and the date range, this date range was pre-populated.

Based on Google for "flight search" Priceline - no Travelocity - no Kayak - yes 9/27/11-10/4/11 Expedia - no Cheapflights - no Flightsearch.com - <USER4> 9/27/11-10/4/11 Tripadvisor - yes 9/27/11-10/4/11 Farebuzz.com - <USER4> 9/27/11-10/4/11 <http://www.skyscanner.com/> \- yes 9/27/11-10/4/11

Finally, I checked YC's own Hipmunk, and they do not do it either.

Hipmunk - <USER5>

So my original statement was at least partly false. It doesn't seem like "almost all" after all. And the ones that I could find doing the date-ahead practice all had identical dates. I suspect all of them use the same backend search product.

I don't care enough at this point anymore to follow up on this anymore, so I'll leave it at that.

<comment><USER38> I cannot vouch for the other sites, but at Skyscanner we looked at the aggregated search history (12 million users a month) to make a best guess at the default dates to set.Interestingly the defaults we use are different for the mobile platforms. (We use our own backend technology)

<comment><USER39> Can you provide a little more detail on this? What percentage of users actually use the defaults (for both start and end date), and how many change it anyways?

Have you thought about doing some A/B testing on providing a default and not?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Bad news for hipmunk? Especially since google acquired ITA.

<comment><USER40> The really bad news for hipmunk will be when google integrates it into their search results.

<comment><USER16> What do you mean by "integrates it into their search results"?

Hipmunk's killer feature is the ability to easily visualize the flight in terms of the time you leave, the time you arrive and the time spent at various intermediate locations. It becomes more useful when there are no nonstop flights. Google is taking a different approach with their UI, which is fine.

In terms of whether I'd use google or hipmunk to search for flights in the future, I'd say that it depends on what my priorities are for that particular flight.

<comment><USER40> by "integrate into their search results" i mean.. if you search google for "sfo lax" and it brins up this new Google Flight page with their organic results.

<comment><USER16> Ah, I see. Sorry, the ambiguous "it" made me think "it" was hipmunk. Somehow.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Game over.

Disclaimer: This is a throwaway account. I'm a person who has had a travel startup. I've decided to halt, once Google has finally acquired ITA Software.

Travel is one of the world's largest industries (~5th), and online sales are its significant part (~10-30%, depending on the market), growing strongly. Online travel agencies (OTA) are among the few companies on web that get real money (~$150 per sale) from customers (it is relatively easy to make serious revenue).

Online travel sales consist mostly of flight bookings, and hotel reservations.

On these markets, there are roughly three categories of players. Airlines and hotels _provide_ the inventory, that is flights and hotel rooms. Computer reservations systems (GDS) _manage_ the inventory. Online travel agencies _sell_ the inventory.

Specifically, there are thousands of airlines and hotels (e.g. Hyatt, Lufthansa). However, there are only three major GDS operators in the US and Europe (i.e. Amadeus, Sabre and Travelport), as well as only few big OTAs (i.e. Expedia, Travelocity, Orbitz, Priceline, Hotels.com, and Opodo).

Few decades ago, before Internet, airlines and hotels were unable to sell inventory on their own. It definitely takes more time to set up an office than a connection between two airports. Thus, it made sense to use travel agencies for this purpose.

Over time, airlines and hotels became also unable to manage their inventory. Synchronization of reservations between thousands of third parties is a non- trivial task, not a core competency of involved companies. Thus, it made sense to use a middle man.

That's what GDS systems do. They manage inventory, what includes reservations (PNR), its availability, prices, and exchanging data with others. As far as I know, right now, airlines and hotels pay them for the service, and for each reservation made (~few bucks).

Internet has complicated things a bit. Travel agencies are no longer so vital, as both airlines and hotels are able (at least, they think so) to sell the inventory on their own. Unfortunately, they were too slow again, and OTAs has emerged meanwhile (Expedia), giving the second youth to GDS companies.

The ecosystem is like an old marriage couple, although a threesome. Each party hat hates each other, but there's no other way around. To oversimplify a bit, OTAs have _customers_ (traffic), GDS systems _manage_ the inventory (with airlines, hotels, and OTAs) and both airlines and hotels _provide_ the inventory, after all.

From time to time there's an affair. Low-cost airlines try to distrupt the market by selling tickets so cheaply partially because they sell them directly. Major OTAs, like Expedia, partially grow to a GDS category. Some airlines or hotel chains withdraw from GDS systems, and return eventually with negiotiated better fees. However, it's mostly business as usual.

Today, if you want to start an online travel agency you have to speak with a GDS company. Depending on your market, it might be Amadeus, Sabre or Travelport. After a long selling process, you get access to the system, and you can start selling the reservations.

What's important, though, nearly all systems used today were created a decade, or two, ago. As core competency of GDS companies is in selling, then, as far as I know, they outsource the software evelopment to third parties, and it's not that easy to innovate on a critical part of the world's infrastructure.

What you end up with, then, is an access to an undocumented API that lets you to search, and manage your reservations. Insiders are used to the quirks, like waiting few seconds until you get the response, random issues, or hinting the system so you get a better response than others. Importantly, you're actively discoured to cache the data, as the prices change rather frequently.

The critical part here is search. It's a mathematically non-trivial problem to very quickly find rates within thousands of connections, definitely beyond technical know-how of GDS operators, airlines and hotels. ITA Software has managed to get access to the inventory and while, as far as I know, they do not sell resevations, they've created a much better (faster) search.

Meanwhile, few years ago, metasearches (e.g. Kayak, Hipmunk) emerged. Smart folks have realized that the competition is on price, customers look for a single place to compare prices, and operate under assumption that what really counts is traffic. From both customers and metasearch perspective, it does not make that big difference where do they buy the reservation from, an OTA or directly from an airline.

So, here we are today.

As a beggining travel agency, you likely have to pay annually for access, and for each request made, especially if you exceed the quota negotiated with the GDS company. Few years ago you were able to make profit by incurring a transaction fee to each ticket sold, but now transaction fees are nearly non- existent, and it's more frequent to rely on provisions from GDS companies, and, sometimes, airlines.

What's your competetive advantage? Basically, you cannot provide much better product than your competitors, as everyone relies on the similar legacy GDS system that returns the flight details rather slowly. Most of the time, only choices are either to show the results a bit differently, or bet on more trustful brand.

The focus is on efficiency. Profit per ticket is so slim, so cost of customers acquisitions is what really matters. OTAs, metasearches and, increasingly, airlines, together with hotels, master SEM, SEO, and other forms of advertisement (newsletters, banners). They live and die by the numbers. If you've figured out how to scalably make $1 more profit on each reservation made, you're covered for some time. The novel methods are, obviously, eventually realized by others, too.

In this race to the bottom there's one clear winner. Google's AdWords is a major source of traffic for all parties, and I bet that they already make the biggest profit off each reservation made. Once Google has acquired ITA Software, they now have both traffic and the inventory.

<comment><USER42> This is one of the reasons I hate Google. I love to see normal people like me go make a startup and become successful. Escaping their corporate bonds. With companies like Google around who can use ad income to supplement dabbling in all sorts of things they can really weaken that option. And what's Google going to do with this? Add a couple percent on their revenue sheets? Great.

<comment><USER43> And make my and million's of other live's much better. It takes a mammoth to disrupt such a consolidated (and crappy) industry.

<comment><USER42> It does not take a mammoth anymore. A small group with a big idea can change the world these days. We don't need Google.

<comment><USER44> Actually yes and no.

True you dont need Google. We would all love their traffic but having played with the tool for the past 24 hours. I have noticed the changes in inventory state and they are doing exactly what we could have expected them to do.

Sadly that is also the downside - they did exactly what we expected them to do. A mediocre job that is fast and of course "good enough".

A small team can (and has) replicated what Google has done. In fact there are many of them. But Google does not provide Trust and in my reasonably jaundiced view - this is another rearranging of the deck chairs.

The issues are now out in the open. The core infrastructure of search is REALLY hard if you work on the same premise as Google. If you change the basics then there is a different answer.

Will the basics change? I believe the answer has to be yes because otherwise the original premise of the first poster must logically be correct.

I believe not. I am working specifically to change that - if you are interested - then ping me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> My First Impression:

No international flights yet: Fail but not surprising

That's okay I want to fly from NY to Vegas next year. No flights for April 2012: Fail that was not expected.

I don't really understand why Google launches stuff like this when it has a lovely user interface but is a bit halfbaked in terms of the data that they've put in.

I guess I'll go back in a years time when they remind me about it.

<comment><USER46> Many airlines don't allow you to book tickets more than 6 months in advance at their own websites. I don't think it's surprising that Google didn't prioritize 6+ month advance ticket purchases.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> _We have detected that you are using an unsupported web browser. We support Firefox 3.5 or later, Chrome, Safari 4 or later, or Internet Explorer 8 or later._

?!? I'm using the Android browser!

</comment><comment><USER48> If I were expedia, orbitz, priceline, travelocity, kayak, hipmunk. etc. I'd be very very afraid. Sure, google won't actually do the sales, but they are linking direct to airline websites for now. Also this doesn't exist for hotels. Yet. The odds that in 1 year that any of those sites have a better UI or superior search capabilities than Google is low. So, what will they bring to the table?

Also, what's up with all these people saying that it's so limited because it doesn't do international and such. It seems very obvious that this thing will get better and better and like others have said, eventually end up on top of the search page. This is assuming it gains traction quickly and doesn't get nuked.

</comment><comment><USER49> Honestly, the lack of a good API by any provider is one of the biggest barriers to entry in this space. I wonder if the Hipmunk guys might release one? I'd be _thrilled_ to send affiliate traffic to the first company that makes good on this.

</comment><comment><USER50> Unless I'm missing something fairly obvious, they might have missed something pretty big - is there any way to book a one way flight?

<comment><USER51> Agreed -- couldn't find it in the first 30 seconds, which is sort of a red flag...

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> what will be a game changing tool, and something befitting the resources of google, would be to pair flights together that are cheaper than what is offered by the airline. for instance: flying from NY to LA. Airlines sell this route non stop, or through one of their hubs. But imagine if a flight search can figure out that a oneway flight from ny to new orleans on Delta and than a flight from new orleans on AA, had a low layover and was significantly cheaper than the published routes.

The problem is that as this expands to more cities and takes more stops, you end up hitting an NP problem.

<comment><USER6> It's unlikely that the Delta fare from NYC to MSY and the American fare from MSY to LAX permit end-on-end combination with each other, so it would have to be issued as two separate tickets. What happens if your Delta flight to New Orleans is delayed and you miss your connecting flight to Los Angeles on American? Neither carrier is going to offer you any compensation, and your travel insurance probably has a clause which excludes misconnections caused by an airline's late arrival.

There are occasions when this strategy produces good results, however: last year I needed a last-minute one way flight from a small southeastern city (TYS / Knoxville) to San Francisco, and the fares were extremely high ($800+). But flights to Orlando were very cheap due to competition from low-cost leisure carriers, and the last-minute fares from Orlando (MCO) to San Francisco were quite reasonable. I booked, on a single ticket and flying on a single airline the entire way, TYS-IAD-MCO-IAD-DEN-SFO. This gave me a TYS-MCO fare plus an MCO-SFO fare, which was hundreds of dollars cheaper than the more direct TYS- DEN-SFO. At the time, saving money was a lot more important than getting to San Francisco a couple of hours earlier. A cunning plan that cannot fail!

Except that I missed my first flight of the morning due to an overnight road closure that blocked my only way of leaving the house. By the time that I got to the airport, my originally booked flight had already left and I was faced with a very long wait for the next flight to IAD, which virtually guaranteed I wouldn't even make it to San Francisco that day. It was only through a combination of charisma and blind luck that I managed to convince the airline to reroute me direct through Denver, which is completely against company policy. They only charged me the $50 same-day standby fee.

Needless to say, I would never sell that sort of a ticket to the general public. Far too many different ways in which things could go horribly wrong. It's also likely that the airlines would promptly revoke your ticketing privileges with them were they to discover you were routinely issuing these sorts of tickets.

<comment><USER52> perfectly fair, i admit i've done some flight "hacking" myself. The reason i bring it up is because it is well know that airlines prices their flights between city pairs, not based on the legs. For instance a flight, between jfk and lax through chicago could cost more than the sum of those two same exact flights. This would be an opportunity to build your own ticket. I admit there are significant downsides with delays and reroutings, but if google presented the information to the public it would add transparency to a very opaque system and it may lead to a change throughout the industry in the way tickets are priced. After all google's mission statement is to organize the worlds information

<comment><USER53> The market for building complicated routings is very small -- typically only mile/segment runners. ITA's backend is already used by that community for this, but not sure why the public would be interested. Each segment adds additional landing fees and taxes, making it more expensive, unless you're exploiting a rare hub/partner mistake fare.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Looks nice and it has great potential, especially since it isn't cluttered with links to Expedia/Priceline like the others are.

That said, I can't really use it until it supports multiple destinations/open jaw in a single search.

</comment><comment><USER55> This is just beautiful. Data matrix is innovative, UI is out of the way, slick and to the point interface, and it even takes you to the correct 3rd party booking pages.

I can't wait till this is implemented in Canada.

Kayak beware!

<comment><USER56> > Kayak beware!

This definitely looks better than Kayak. ^_^

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> I love the scatter plot graph (with duration/price), it is so geeky :)

</comment><comment><USER58> As is evident from some of the comments here, the map and the search bar on top are totally extraneous to the basic task that the user wishes to perform.

The absolute barebones should be shown: Starting location, Destination, Dates. And then maybe a less noisy version of the price-points plot from which one can just drag and drop certain options into a bucket for comparison.

The fact that so much scrolling _needs_ to be done to even get a basic understanding of the results means this _needs_ to be reworked.

</comment><comment><USER59> I try to get a flight from Frankfurt - the 9th busiest airport in the world. - and I get "Unavailable".

Post this again when I can actually use it.

<comment><USER60> When you search for a destination airport outside of the US, you get a very clear message:

"Sorry, locations outside the U.S. are currently not supported."

They're taking the release-early-iterate-often approach to this new service, which means that they're not going to make everyone happy immediately.

Rather than dismiss this new service just because it doesn't fit your specific use case right now, think about this from a different (i.e. hacker) perspective -- this is a cool new service that will obviously become even cooler as it gets more advanced.

<comment><USER59> I agree totally...just pointing out that the site is useless to us living outside of the USA. Hard to get excited about something that is, from a European resident's perspective, useless.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> Decent initial release, but I wish the search was more flexible.

My common use case is "I will spend $X to go anywhere for under Y days any time in the future" and I haven't found a service that makes this easy.

Kayak's "explore" page is the closest I've found, but they rarely have the cheapest flights listed and have no way to set duration. Has anyone found a better solution?

<comment><USER62> These guys almost fulfil that requirement - I use their service pretty regularly. <http://adioso.com/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> Is there anyway to do one-way flights? I really like it so far but cannot for the life of me figure out if one-way is possible.

<comment><USER64> I can't find it either. I would have actually used it today since I found it right as I was about to search for a flight on Kayak... but w/o one-way I can't use it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> I don't understand why anyone would use a federated flight search when looking for a domestic flight in the US. None of the major airlines come close to Southwest in terms of price or hassle free travel and none of the flight search engines include price information for Southwest.

<comment> T-hawk Perhaps for the still-common case of flying to an airport where Southwest doesn't go? Southwest gets to be cheap in significant part by only flying routes with enough demand to fill a 737.

And on rare occasions another airline does beat Southwest's price. Sometimes I see flights in and out of JFK turn up cheaper on Delta.

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> When are people going to stop solving this problem and start building super sonic airplanes like the concord? The airline industry moves backwards in technology and trying to build a flight search engine to wrap around it is really a band-aid to the real situation. If I could get to Vegas in half the time, or even a quarter of the time (currently takes 4 hours, could take 1 in supersonic jet) I would pay at least double price for a ticket, and I wouldnt even need a seat.

My point is if you fly coach especially with Delta they treat you like a slave and stuff you with almost zero space to move (I am american, but not obese (5'9, 200lb). Forget flight search engines I can find a flight, make a me a faster more tolerable flight, you are friggin GOOGLE!

<comment><USER67> Drag (and hence power required) is roughly proportional to the square of the velocity. You want to go twice as fast? You better be willing to pay (at least) 4x the ticket price. And since most people want cheaper tickets over flight time, you'll have to pay even more to compensate for the lack of economies of scale.

Computer efficiency still is rapidly moving up. Airplane efficiency is near its limits.

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> This had to happen sooner than later after the ITA aquisition. I wonder why it took them so long.

</comment><comment><USER69> Is it me, or that app is super fast?

<comment><USER33> It probably is caching data from other people's searches, similar to what Kayak does. This is cool right up until you try to actually book a flight and it sells out or goes up in price dramatically.

<comment><USER70> Wait, is this actually the case with the Google product?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> I was under the impression that Amtrak from Newark Airport to 30th St Station in Philadelphia was available as an airline code share (and that train segment is fast enough that there's no good reason to get on a plane for Newark<->Philadelphia, even if you are connecting to another flight out of Newark), but I haven't figured out how to find such a code share with Google's flight search tools.

(The governor of IL and the Chicago mayor also asked Amtrak to study how to extend some of the Amtrak routes to O'Hare, presumably to replace some ``commuter'' flights, and they wanted the study done by the end of this summer, but I haven't seen any evidence of the study being done yet.)

</comment><comment><USER72> It's only a problem for hipmunk as long as google doesn't 'retire' the project.

Give it 6 months or so.

</comment><comment><USER73> We built this at Yahoo! in summer 2007 after the FareChase acquisition. Took about a week or so to prototype, and a couple months to offer various filter/search criteria and prepare for launch. With access the good flight data APIs it's a pretty simple app. Of course for us it was never allowed to launch.

Glad to see Google was finally able to push something like this. Main feature missing that Y! Faremaps had is the ability to specify a span of time in which you wanted to travel and the cheapest trips in that timeframe were shown. Also, you could search "weekends only" in that timeframe.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> In true Google style, they are focusing on speed, with a minimal UI.

<comment><USER74> Unexpected was the minimal data part... They have a short look-ahead and don't work with any international destinations.

The folks who are most interested in this app are the ones who are most likely interested in the above two points.

</comment></comment><comment><USER75> When I want to do a flight search, I don't usually think of a map.

</comment><comment><USER76> I wonder if they allowed ITA to keep writing in Common Lisp...

<comment><USER77> "Knowledge of LISP" is still showing up on job postings:

[http://www.google.com/jobs/itasoftware/eng/ita-software- soft...](http://www.google.com/jobs/itasoftware/eng/ita-software-software- engineer-data-and-reporting-cambridge-ita/index.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER78> I work for Dohop (www.dohop.com), a direct competitor of Google's new flight thing. We have been worried about Google's entrance into the field for a while, but after today we are breathing easier.

No international? No one-way? I know Google will change this, but why put out such a wildly underwhelming product?

And finally, since they are basing the whole thing on ITA anyway, we don't expect them to do anything Kayak isn't already doing.

</comment><comment><USER79> Wow ... but then I am not really sure it meets my needs. For one thing, it does not recognize may local airport and keeps wanting me to fly out of another airport a good 4 hour drive away! And while it is good at displaying cost differentials for different destinations it does not seem to do as well for the same destination at different times with different carriers. Still, it is interesting.

</comment><comment><USER80> My eyes dilated when using the auto price feature. Also the speed and ease of adjusting the dates by a day is impressive.

</comment><comment><USER81> Please build this in Europe, searching for flights is so painful. I hope you're looking at this web site Expedia!

</comment><comment><USER24> This makes a ton of sense to me. Users already trust Google with search and connecting people with airlines has baked-in revenue. This also has tremendous advertising potential. Imagine if local restaurants could target ads at people who will be traveling to the area in the next three months.

</comment><comment><USER82> They must be accessing prior flight search history in some way or they made a really lucky guess with their default selections.

I've recently searched for flights on Expedia and Southwest (I don't think I've visited anywhere else). Google already had those same dates and cities selected by default.

</comment><comment><USER83> I think they will integrate this with google maps and give around the world directions. Pretty cool.

</comment><comment><USER84> "5 unknown price"

Looks like it needs another QA pass.

<comment><USER85> Were those Southwest flights? I think SWA doesn't let any of the aggregators display prices for their flights - I was pleasantly surprised that I saw Southwest flights at all.

<comment><USER84> I was pointing out the obvious typo. It should read "5 unknown prices."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER86> Interesting, I like the simple layout, but it would be nice to have a price comparison of a few days in each direction like some sites have (I'm thinking Virgin Atlantic) so you can save some money by leaving a day early or a day late. Overall though bravo.

<comment><USER16> Once you've done your search, click on the little calendar icon, and it gives you a lot of information about prices on other days.

<comment><USER86> Ah, missed it. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER87> It is amazing! I hope outside U.S service will come soon and calculate flights globally.

</comment><comment><USER88> Interface was confusing at first: you click the "x from $xxx" then you choose a return flight by clicking the sub="x from $xxx" with the time you'd like to return. Then you can book.

This is cool though

</comment><comment><USER89> Completely useless for me. Doesn't find a single flight out of ROC.

</comment><comment> eren-tantekin Sorry, locations outside the U.S. are currently not supported :/

</comment><comment><USER90> I had always imagined they would try to dabble in flight search but always assumed the sheer volume of their travel ppc clients would restrict it. Big revenue gamble.

</comment><comment><USER91> Faster than Hipmunk, but can't do international flights yet.

</comment><comment><USER92> Great implementation. Recently I've been playing with skyscanner and HipMunk. This will definitely replace them for me when international support arrives.

</comment><comment><USER93> Very nice, my only complaint is they don't have Southwest pricing. No one else does either, so Southwest continues to bring me to their site :)

<comment><USER94> In addition, <http://getawayfinder.southwest.com/> has been around for some time already.

</comment></comment><comment><USER95> I don't see any Southwest or JetBlue airlines flights listed. Both usually have very competitive pricing on some routes.

</comment><comment><USER96> Just the other day I was wondering "why isn't there a flight option in Maps?", well here you go then, there soon will be.

</comment><comment><USER97> Wow what a relief to see they are dogfooding. This is built on GWT and the performance is kick ass.

</comment><comment><USER98> Any idea when they expand beyond the US?

</comment><comment><USER99> This is one of those late nights at Hipmunk.

Good luck guys!

</comment><comment><USER100> U.S. only.

</comment><comment><USER101> hipmunk, hold on to your 'nackers :)

</comment><comment><USER102> Jesus, this amazing.

</comment><comment><USER103> ha a flight search engine that only does flights inside the US? cute, but of limited use. I won't hold my breath just yet.</comment>


TSA to download your iTunes? - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/apr/18/tsa-to-download-your-itunes/

<comment><USER2> This is why I travel with a netbook that has full-disk encryption. If the government wants my laptop, they can have it for as long as they want. $300, whatever. If they want to compel disclosure of the passphrase, though, that's not as easy. Then judges and the Constitution get involved.

What I've learned from reading cases (and watching Law & Order, heh) is that if the police have evidence against you, it's easier for them to get what they want from the courts. "We already saw the child porn, we just want to check for more."

If all they have is a disk they can't read, it's going to be hard to get any judge to compel you to produce the key, especially if they can't prove you have the key. (And, in the US anyway, there is some precedent that you can't be compelled to produce the key anyway.)

The government wants more power, but the people have the power to take it away. It's just a checkbox away in your favorite OS's installer. (Well, in Debian anyway.)

With talk of 20 year prison sentences for ordering manga from Japan or talking to people on Myspace, I think it's pretty insane to not encrypt your disks. Who knows what someone else will think is illegal? I would rather not find out.

<comment><USER3> This works up until the point where it's decided that refusal to disclose your password, while not a criminal offense in any way, is grounds to prevent you from boarding your flight.

<comment><USER2> Customs is after you arrive, so whatever.

If I'm ever in this situation, I fully expect to be arrested (and released 23 hours later with no charges filed), though.

(Expect the worst and you won't be surprised.)

<comment><USER4> Customs is not after you arrive in all cases (Canada and the Caribbean have "pre-inspection" centers at most airports).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The TSA has posted an official reply to this:

That's the Customs and Border Control's Job not ours. You can tell the difference because their uniform is NAVY blue and ours is more of a ROYAL blue. (I'm paraphrasing here but only barely. THEY ACTUALLY POINT OUT THE UNIFORM COLOR DIFF).

I wish/hope this was/is a joke:

[http://www.tsa.gov/blog/2010/01/can-tsa-copy-your-laptop- har...](http://www.tsa.gov/blog/2010/01/can-tsa-copy-your-laptop-hard-drive- and.html)

<comment><USER6> As much as I hate to agree with him ( [http://reason.com/blog/2010/01/19/tsa- pays-blogger-to-mock-p...](http://reason.com/blog/2010/01/19/tsa-pays-blogger- to-mock-peopl) ), in this case "Blogger Bob" has a point. It was customs, and not DHS who actually searched the laptop.

The court case: [http://fourthamendment.com/blog/index.php?blog=1&title=s...](http://fourthamendment.com/blog/index.php?blog=1&title=s_d_tex_border_search_of_computer_for_ch)

<comment><USER7> Speaking as a fairly frequent traveler here...

In my mind, there are two sets of uniformed people at the airport. "Airline worker" (gate agent, skycap, pilots, etc) who are there to help me.... and "TSA" (Anyone with a badge, possibly a gun, and the ability to basically do whatever the hell they want) who are there to make life demeaning.

It doesn't matter to me that the dark blue person is Homeland Security, the pale blue person is Customs, and the in-between blue one is Immigration. They are all equally "the man" and equally capable putting me on the "fuck that guy" list.

Intellectually I understand that many of them perform a valuable service. Emotionally I fear (and by extension: hate) them and have grown to dread traveling.

<comment><USER8> CBP is a different sort of dickheadedness than TSA.

TSA: Undertrained goons hopped up on terrorism paranoia. Will make your life absolutely miserable if given the prompt to do so (e.g., a tiny contraband item in your carry-on). Can't do _too_ much to make your life miserable outside of missing your flight.

CBP: Will. Fuck. You. Up. As a non-American working in the US, I fear the CBP like the motherfucking gestapo. Each agent wields an insane amount of power to alter one's legal status in the USA, and they never hesitate to express this power to you. Unlike the TSA agents, who get no respect from even their employer, CBP goons are given a huge amount of unquestionable leeway in their jobs.

I've seen TSA workers cite regulation after regulation to make a traveler's life hell - but they've always been professional at least on the surface. I've seen CBP agents be blatantly racist, insulting, and grossly unprofessional and conduct themselves in ways unbecoming of a human being, much less a government representative. And there's not a damn thing that can be done.

<comment><USER2> I'm a US citizen, and my experience has been the opposite.

Of course, US Immigration/Customs is not nearly as nice as immigration in other countries, but that's to be expected. (When I visit Norway and Denmark, the immigration people actually _smile_ at you. When I visited Germany, the immigration officer actually laughed at something I said. It's like they are real people or something!)

<comment><USER9> Why is that to be expected?

<comment><USER10> Because when something happens over and over and over again, you tend to expect it to keep happening.

<comment><USER2> Because the US takes immigration and police in general too seriously. Everyone is a criminal. Nobody is to be trusted.

Compare this to Europe (minus the UK and France), where people in positions of authority treat you nicely until they have a solid reason to do otherwise.

"Cultural difference" or whatever.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> From the article: _[4th amendment] protections do not disappear merely because one happens to be at a real - or imaginary - border._

Ah, but they do. It's called the 'border search exception' and it has been consistently upheld by courts, based largely on the 5th act of Congress passed in 1789 which set up the US Customs Service. Not only are searches of laptops and storage devices considered reasonable in this context, but so is opening mail and just about anything short of a strip search.

This has been argued over on a variety of grounds quite recently but the courts have stood firm on it. So like it or not, it's better to avoid carrying any storage device containing data that might be construed as suspicious.

<comment><USER2> Indeed. Just send it via the Internet, where packets are not opened and inspected before entering the country.

Sometimes I think that government policies are implemented only to make people feel powerful. We can search your laptop!

OK, but I can just send the data to my home computer via the Internet, and just carry my wiped laptop across the border.

<comment><USER6> You're joking right?

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protect_America_Act_of_2007#Dat...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protect_America_Act_of_2007#Data_monitoring)

<comment><USER2> But they haven't broken AES or the key exchange protocols. Nobody sends important data across the Internet unencrypted.

<comment><USER6> DJB had some interesting thoughts on AES and its vulnerability to timing based attacks, here: <http://cr.yp.to/antiforgery/cachetiming-20050414.pdf>

While network latencies would definitely make this type of attack more challenging to implement, AES is not invincible.

And that's just the stuff we hear about :)

<comment><USER12> If you're sending encrypted files across the internet, the government doesn't get to see how long it took to encrypt the data. And if you're running an open "encrypt anything my secret key" oracle, well, you get what you deserve.

<comment><USER2> Indeed. This sort of attack is good for breaking DRM, but not so good for any legitimate uses of cryptography.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's worth nothing that CBP cannot compel you to give them your password(s), and can't really refuse entry to a US citizen, so as long as you encrypt everything your laptop should be secure. They can of course confiscate the machine to image it - and you may not get it back while it's still worth anything - but, what can you do.

The iPhone is trickier, mAdvLock is the only thing I know of that would most likely work even if it was confiscated.

</comment><comment><USER14> Nobody disputes, or should dispute, the right of a sovereign nation to perform invasive searches at international borders. What is most serious and egregious in the DHS/CBP behavior is the slippery slope of trying to change the definition of an international border. The 4th amendment in no way protects you from a border search, but saying that 100 miles inside the country is an international border is ludicrous.</comment>


Show HN: A Hacker News demo in NX, with real-time updates and animations - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/nx-hacker-news/nx-hacker-news.github.io <comment><USER2> Hrm, 84KB NX site vs. 12KB regular site. Is there 72KB worth of features/improvement? I understand it's just a demo, and that even at 84KB, that is a relatively small size anyway, I'm just always curious when I see a site rebuilt in another tool and it balloons in size compared to the original.

Is HN a site that even needs to be an SPA anyway? It's fun as a demo, but maybe this type of site isn't a prime candidate as a typical SPA use-case?

Either way it's always fun to build something as an example or learning process, so please don't perceive my comments as having any ill will. Maybe all-in-all I'm just an old-school HTML/CSS guy that is admittedly having trouble in this new SPA world (a discussion HN has had ad nauseum, I know)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi!

Thanks for the comment, I think it's pretty constructive. The site is bigger because it is a SPA. It loads every static asset on start, compared to the HN approach which loads only the current page. The NX framework itself is 12kb zipped and 10kb minzipped.

I agree, that it is not a typical use case, but it is starting to become a standard thing for new frameworks (like todoMVC). The point is to implement something that others implement too, to give a fair comparison to users (code).

<comment><AUTHOR> After a second check: that extra 70kb (on top of the 12kb size of NX) is mostly from the FireBase and EventListener APIs that I use for real-time networking.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> NX is an API for remote X Window System.

It's rather well known by that name. I would suggest a different name. Perhaps NXF.

<comment><AUTHOR> A lot of people commented about similarly named projects in the recent past (mainly Nintendo NX). I am considering a rename along with the beta version coming out soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Here's this comments page within the app itself:

[https://nx-hacker-news.github.io/story?id=12762530&type=top](https://nx- hacker-news.github.io/story?id=12762530&type=top)

</comment><comment><USER5> A web framework that doesn't work on actual web browsers? What is the point of that? Supporting older browsers is like half the job.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi, is the DNS outage still a problem? Could you please let me know in a comment if the link is not working for you? Thanks a lot!

<comment><USER6> Definitely still a problem here on the US west coast. Also: [https://www.dynstatus.com/](https://www.dynstatus.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks the info and the link!

These are some NX related links in case someone is interested and can't open GitHub (they might work for you).

The live demo of the app: [https://nx-hacker-news.github.io](https://nx- hacker-news.github.io), Home page and docs: [http://nx- framework.com](http://nx-framework.com) or [http://nx- nxframework.rhcloud.com](http://nx-nxframework.rhcloud.com) (to avoid CloudFlare)

<comment><USER7> Baltimore here. Can't resolve either host right now.

ETA: ...that said, looking at the Google results for "nx framework", one has to wonder about the quality and value of something that's touted with trumped- up rhetoric like "the best client-side JavaScript framework".

<comment><AUTHOR> Valid point, I did that for SEO and I don't think it had much success according to the stats. Going to change it now, thanks.

Edit: Changed it to this. 'NX is a small client-side framework built with ES6 and Web Components. It features routing, data-binding and animations among other things.'

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Pretty slow compared to the real thing. The NX website is also down :(

<comment><AUTHOR> About the speed: HN provides a real-time API for SPAs like the NX app, but it is an old fashioned serve-ready-HTML page (a speedy one). I found the API they provide somewhat slower than the site itself. I think other HN SPA clones also suffer from this.

About the site: It is working but things are sometimes not working at some places now because of the DNS attack (pages like GitHub and Twitter are also up and down today.)</comment></comment>


Stingray manuals detail how police can spy on phones - <AUTHOR> https://theintercept.com/2016/09/12/long-secret-stingray-manuals-detail-how-police-can-spy-on-phones/ <comment><USER2> This makes it quite clear that these devices are intended and used for the routine disruption of a licensed radio system ... which is Federal offence in the US. The interesting question here is; why? Why would someone working in law enforcement risk a year in jail just so they can do warrantless wiretapping? That suggests a certain level of desperation.

One answer is that we to a certain extent make it impossible for law enforcement to do their job any other way. We have a lot of laws on the books where none of the people violating those laws are likely to go down to a police station and file a complaint. The prohibition on illegal drugs is a good example. It's like asking a friend to help you with your diet while forbidding them from looking in your fridge. Your friend is likely to look in your fridge if they don't just refuse to help at all. We are sending mixed signals.

Another answer is purely economic. It is very expensive to have law enforcement people sitting around on stakeouts and/or following people. It saves a tremendous amount of time and effort if you can find out where people are going to be. If warrantless surveillance becomes technologically impossible, then we are going to have to pay a lot more salaries to have all our laws enforced.

<comment><AUTHOR> >> "If warrantless surveillance becomes technologically impossible, then we are going to have to pay a lot more salaries to have all our laws enforced."

Completely agree, cost would rapidly get out of control without warrantless surveillance and criminal activities would surge. In fact, why even use tech like this when everyone by law should just wear a device to broadcast their location, all their communications, etc. All the data collected should be admissible in court too.

/sarcasm

<comment><USER2> Particular categories of criminal activities would surge. A strong argument can be made that the associated problems shouldn't be handled with law enforcement ... but that is not something law enforcement gets to decide, we do.

In a sense we are being crummy bosses, we want our employees to do two mutually incompatible things at the same time. Our conflicted thoughts about things like recreational drugs trickle down into bad policy.

<comment><USER3> The thoughts on recreational drugs are not conflicted (for the most part), they are separate thoughts from groups which are at odds with each other.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's not really new information, as knowledge of stingrays has been around for a while, but it is still amazing that so few people know about this. Since this is essentially MitM. I wonder how easily they could just get the data from the actual tower (without a warrant).

<comment><AUTHOR> They could, but to do so, legally they be entering the property without a warrant, even if it was executed wirelessly.

Whole legal arguments about the wireless signals is that they're "public" data.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The lack of accountability and oversight is really scary.

</comment><comment><USER6> great, now maybe we can develop countermeasures to illegal & unethical surveillance methods like these. there are a few imsi-catcher detection apps out right now, maybe we will see more.

<comment><USER7> What scares me is that we all thought we had countermeasures in HTTPS and anonymizing proxies. When using both, so long as you only did things over HTTPS you were safe. It turns out that wasn't true at all for at least iOS dating back many years:

[https://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/id/905344](https://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/id/905344)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> A commercial product comes with a technical manual why is this even news?

Is The Intercept running out of stories that they need to turn "user guides" into news? Did anyone expected equipment and software that can cost millions of dollars not to be supported?

Heck commercial malware these days comes with online support, manuals, an SDK, and a development community w/ access to Jira.

<comment><USER5> The story is not "this is a manual", but "here's this manual which the manufacturers have tried really hard to keep secret".

<comment><USER9> Not only "here's this manual", but also "the manual for this product documents some scary features which we didn't know about before".

<comment><USER8> >"the manual for this product documents some scary features which we didn't know about before"

Name one.

<comment><USER9> Two that were mentioned explicitly in the article:

1\. Permanently storing data on devices under surveillance.

2\. Selectively degrading service for a target device.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Occupy Economy  - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204002304576631084250433462.html

<comment><USER2> "The whole operation runs on donations, of course."

You're not really "living" on $10 / day if your necessities are donated and you're occupying a public space. The costs of supporting you are borne by the donators and the taxpayers, respectively. EDIT: Turns out the park is privately owned by Brookfield Properties, and was created by US Steel.

An amazing spectacle, absolutely. Our generation's Woodstock, perhaps. But the title's misleading.

<comment><USER3> If you only spend $10 a day and manage to survive with that expenditure then you're living on $10 a day in a very straightforward sense of that word. As far as misleading headlines go, this one's rather mild :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Amazing how quickly the msm has flipped on OWS. This article contained information!

<comment><USER5> What's "msm"?

<comment><USER6> Mainstream media.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's not entirely news that if you live with shared resources, costs per one person goes down.

Unfortunately, as 20th century showed us, it doesn't scale well. At all.

<comment><USER8> Communism is the answer!

<comment><USER9> If communism is the answer, you're asking the wrong question.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> _The Occupied lifestyle, says Mr. Knowles, is a lot cheaper than real life: "I might go home with more money than I had."_

So they're actually _all_ just doing it for the money. I'd got the impression they were protesting about the mechanics of the world's financial markets, but actually they're just all just opportunistic capitalists looking for a quick buck. Thanks for clearing that one up, WSJ.

</comment><comment><USER11> They're onto something here, they should add dust and dubstep and charge people $300 for a ticket.

edit: s/sand/dust/

<comment><USER12> Same thought occured to me. My first thought was it sounds like these people essentially set up Burning Man on Wall Street. I haven't been to the former, new to the Bay Area, but got real curious when it was held a few weeks ago and read up as much as I could about it. This article sounded very similar to the ones I read describing BM.

Makes me wonder what cross section of OWS are also burners, especially among the OWS organizers. Is that where they learned how to pull off something like this massive temporary settlement?

<comment><USER13> I think a big part of BM culture is bringing BM home with you. Building "local burns" and building local networks. I don't think this behavior is unique to BM though. Watching documentaries on hippies flooding California you see stands for free food, clothes, etc...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> completely mis-titled headline. These people are living on $10/day (with help), but their permanent living expenses are not $10/day.

I can eat, Drive (pay for gas) and entertain myself for $10/day. But I can not shower, keep warm and shelter myself within good standards for $10/day....new title?

<comment><USER15> Or just get rid of these type of stories. Personally I don't think they're something that should be on HN. But then HN is not what it used to be. It's more of a "Reddit Lite" now sadly :/

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> First thing I thought: holy shit, if we did this kind of stuff for those living below the poverty line, they would have enough resources to pick themselves up and get new jobs (after showers, job interview supplies, counseling, etc etc). At the very least the 22% of American children living in poverty would have a meal and clean clothes.

Second thought: if this was Orlando most of the donators would be arrested.

Third thought: This is the perfect time to backpack up to New York and have a week-long vacation for super cheap. Swing a protest sign for long enough to get a free meal, then move on to sightseeing.

<comment><USER17> Actually, in New York you pretty much have to _try_ to be homeless. I'm not going to say that being hard-on-your-luck is a breeze in New York, but with things like City Harvest (a truly brilliant concept -- <http://www.cityharvest.org/>), the anual coat drive, and the city's homeless outreach programs, it's certainly a lot better than many places. There was a good story a while back on "This American Life" that talked about this subject ([http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio- archives/episode/358/s...](http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio- archives/episode/358/social-engineering?act=1)). Additionally, you have Geoffrey Canada doing his thing up in Harlem...one of the true innovators in social reform. If you haven't heard of him, go read everything about him that you can _now_!

Honestly, the biggest gap in the city is caring for the mentally disabled. A large portion of the city's homeless population are schizophrenics, and they will effectively never be able to be productive members of society. For them, the only solution is long term care, but the city's mental facilities are really horrible. Unfortunately, the public's views on mental illness are still stuck in the 1890s...

<comment><USER18> The major cities of the Pacific Northwest actually have at least one serious problem that stems from making the homeless lifestyle _too_ easy: too many runaway teens. One of my sisters lives in Portland, and for several years she worked as a social worker for teenage girls. The network of shelters, kitchens, and other services for the homeless is so extensive there that a lot of teens choose to leave home and just live on the streets. It is (or was, at least) so pervasive that there was actually some name for the phenomenon (can't remember what it was, off the top of my head), and it was a major concern to the organizations my sister worked with. Part of the problem is that there are policies in place that made it extremely difficult for parents to find their kids and bring them home. These policies exist for good reasons (e.g. abused children who _shouldn't_ be found and brought home), but they are so one-sided that kids can just choose to run away because they feel like it, and their parents have no recourse if the kids are in the city's shelter system.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> lets hope it scales well!

</comment><comment><USER20> They definitely save money on cleaning.

</comment><comment><USER21> And yet she packed a make-up kit. For someone who is "protesting" corporate greed it seems contradictory to wear cosmetics from a protestor's perspective-- they have a gigantic profit margin.

As a male, I'll never understand how cosmetics are so entrenched in the lives of females.

<comment><USER22> Gigantic profit margins? Estee Lauder had a 2.1% profit margin last quarter.

[http://www.google.com/finance?client=ob&q=NYSE:EL](http://www.google.com/finance?client=ob&q=NYSE:EL)

Cosmetics are entrenched because beautiful women are sought after. It's not very complicated.

<comment><USER21> Make-up itself costs very little to produce, so I suppose I could have just said mark up.

I'm not an equity expert, but I have the feeling that how that one specific company has performed over one quarter isn't a great indicator. They still had double digit EBITD margins last year, and I know L'Oreal had double digit margins for something like 20 years in a row.

Out of interest, do you personally think cosmetics make someone "beautiful"?

<comment><USER22> There are a lot more costs than what it took to purchase the raw materials. It wasn't one specific quarter, it was simply the last quarter. And they were the first large cosmetics company I could think of.

I have no strong opinion on cosmetics either way, but it would be hypocritical for me to hate on someone for buying something with large profit margins. I'm typing this on a Macbook Pro attached to a 27" Cinema Display. Apple's margins last quarter? 25.58%. Their Return on average equity was a staggering 44.81%. Now that's fat.

<comment><USER21> I wasn't hating, I'm a free market capitalist. I was suggesting it was contradictory of the protestor.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Project MKUltra - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MKUltra <comment><USER3> Also relevant, "The CIA's Secret History of Psychological Torture."

[https://www.salon.com/2009/06/11/mccoy/](https://www.salon.com/2009/06/11/mccoy/)

> Canadian psychologist Donald Hebb found that he could induce a state akin to > drug-induced hallucinations and psychosis in just 48 hours -- without drugs, > hypnosis or electric shock. Instead, for two days student volunteers at > McGill University simply sat in a comfortable cubicle deprived of sensory > stimulation by goggles, gloves and earmuffs. "It scared the hell out of us," > Hebb said later, "to see how completely dependent the mind is on a close > connection with the ordinary sensory environment, and how disorganizing to > be cut off from that support."

>During the 1950s, two neurologists at Cornell Medical Center, under CIA contract, found that the most devastating torture technique of the Soviet secret police, the KGB, was simply to force a victim to stand for days while the legs swelled, the skin erupted in suppurating lesions, and hallucinations began -- a procedure which we now politely refer to as "stress positions."

<comment><USER4> Still used today at Guantanamo bay.

<comment><USER5> And no one prosecuted for it, to date.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm an old-school fringe aficionado. I wish I could express to you how _weird_ it feels that, first, MKUltra turned out to be real, and second, knowledge of it is going mainstream.

It is fucking _fascinating_ watching y'all go through the psychic gyrations induce by confrontation with this knowledge. And this is just the tip of the iceberg.

Welcome to the flip side my friends. Pull up a lawn chair and pop some popcorn, everything you know is wrong, and things only get stranger from here on out. Just remember, if you see strange lights in the sky _run like hell_.

(Or just close the tab, click away, lower the curtain and forget the strange little man you saw, the Wizard of Oz is talking. He is so important and powerful you know.)

<comment><USER7> Please explain. Hurting our fellow human being by torturing them in different ways like 'stress positions' as discussed on around this article is pretty different than mystical space ships coming. Yes, the us gave lsd to people to see what would happen. It's terrible. Also the us kidnapped teenagers all of the world who were accused of being terrorists and tortured them in black prisons, on my behalf, and I hate that. So what is the next step you forsee happening know that more people know about this?

<comment><USER6> This used to be in the same category as bigfoot and UFOs, now it's written up in major media. For a lot of people that makes it harder to dismiss which leads to serious "cognitive dissonance". That's what I find fascinating to watch: society going through the process that I went through as an individual to come to terms with what happened.

If cognitive dissonance happens on a wide enough scale to enough people simultaneously _all kinds_ of weird stuff can happen. As the mind recalculates and recalibrates belief systems _new information_ has a chance to take hold. (E.g. the Reformation; or the founding of USA, there are more new religions in the US than the rest of the world combined.)

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

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

I have no idea what will happen from this particular revelation.

<comment><USER8> Sigh. Why do you mention religion? _That_ is the largest disinformation of all to me. No matter which.

By that i don't even mean to disregard anything supernatural, spiritual, or whatever is above our _current_ understanding of the ways in which nature works.

I just feel that any organized religion is a form of totalitarian gatekeeping.

Imagine for example some dystopic society where for whatever reason there is only one fast food provider with a limited menu available. While fruits and berries do exist outside of the walled ghettos, but nobody dares to go there, because FORBIDDEN.

 _That_ is what every religion, church, sect, cult is to me. Some asshole saying _this is_ and countless drones repeating it for all eternity, which is not making it so, just an annoying loud drone instead.

Call it memetic pollution.

<comment><USER6> Ah my lad, come to Church

[http://subgenius.com/](http://subgenius.com/)

<comment><USER8> I'd rather not.

[1] [https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-UOnDNNJlRUo/VIBMCIzyr6I/AAAAAAAAO...](https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-UOnDNNJlRUo/VIBMCIzyr6I/AAAAAAAAOGE/4tLadXdI7mQ/s1600/shakti_excess.png)

<comment><USER6> Suit yourself.

[1] I don't know what that is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Terrifying stuff including torture with psychedelics, and attempts at "mind control"

>In addition to LSD, Cameron also experimented with various paralytic drugs as well as electroconvulsive therapy at thirty to forty times the normal power. His "driving" experiments consisted of putting subjects into drug-induced comas for weeks at a time (up to three months in one case) while playing tape loops of noise or simple repetitive statements. His experiments were often carried on patients who entered the institute for minor problems such as anxiety disorders and postpartum depression, many of whom suffered permanent effects from his actions.

<comment><USER4> Was this person put on trial for those crimes?

<comment><USER9> you must be joking, what crimes? /s

they probably payed him a big bonus and set about incorporating his results into standarized procedures to be used against "enemies of the state"

he apparently served as president for several Psychiatric Associations.. yikes

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > Ted Kaczynski, a domestic terrorist known as the Unabomber, was said to be a > subject of a voluntary psychological study alleged by some sources to have > been a part of MKUltra.[95][96][97] As a sophomore at Harvard, Kaczynski > participated in a study described by author Alton Chase as a "purposely > brutalizing psychological experiment", led by Harvard psychologist Henry > Murray.[98][99] In total, Kaczynski spent 200 hours as part of the > study.[100]

<comment><USER11> I teach about Ted Kaczynski in my course at Sciences-Po in Paris. Do you have more info on that? I'll guess I'll find out easily by myself, but if you like the topic you might have good clues about where to go.

<comment><USER12> You'll have to sort through some chaff, but most of the most compelling evidence can almost surely be found here:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/search?q=mkultra&restric...](https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/search?q=mkultra&restrict_sr=on&sort=relevance&t=all)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/search?q=Kaczynski&restr...](https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/search?q=Kaczynski&restrict_sr=on&sort=relevance&t=all)

I think it's a cosmic shame most people seem unable to consider conspiracy theories ("It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it"), especially since most everyone seems to believe in many conspiracies, the only difference being they're covered in the MSM rather than discussed in online forums. I imagine this is due to conditioning to some degree, so I guess one shouldn't cast too much blame.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Relevant stuff:

How a deadly fall revealed CIA secrets

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20893452](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20893452)

1951 Pont-Saint-Esprit mass poisoning - <USER2>

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1951_Pont-Saint- Esprit_mass_...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1951_Pont-Saint- Esprit_mass_poisoning)

'Poisoner In Chief' Details The CIA's Secret Quest For Mind Control : NPR

[https://www.npr.org/2019/09/09/758989641/the-cias-secret- que...](https://www.npr.org/2019/09/09/758989641/the-cias-secret-quest-for- mind-control-torture-lsd-and-a-poisoner-in-chief)

</comment><comment><USER14> Such a disgraceful project and I'm sure we only know the half of it.

I recently heard a good long form interview with an author who spent 20 years studying Charles Manson's connection to this program. It's pretty shocking:

[https://soundcloud.com/chapo-trap-house/bonus-interview- tom-...](https://soundcloud.com/chapo-trap-house/bonus-interview-tom-oneill- and-chaos)

</comment><comment><USER15> It's also worth watching Wormwood [0], where Eric Olson investigates the death of his father, Frank Olson.

[0] [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7306056/](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7306056/)

</comment><comment><USER16> It makes me wonder what projects are happening now, or recently that are not yet known.

<comment><USER17> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S051A8doXP0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S051A8doXP0) (mind control)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4m6dldvNECI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4m6dldvNECI) (heart attack gun)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVF8YGFcJWU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVF8YGFcJWU) (electronic weapons)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jT9-Z_p84b0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jT9-Z_p84b0) (active denial system)

it's not hard to find out since it's all public domain. the discovery is a trivial search away, and there are a lot of threads you can start pulling on which eventually leads to to books written by pseudo-credible people with some alphabet intelligence agency background.

here's the catch, verification is nearly impossible. what is a prototype, what is in production, what is just a rough sketch idea of something that was never implemented, what is wild fantasy. in the game of secrecy and asymmetric information, it pays to be deceptive and ambiguous. to the point most of the people publicly discussing these topics are they themselves compromised and largely act as misdirection.

you are not need to know.

<comment><USER18> > _here 's the catch, verification is nearly impossible. what is a prototype, > what is in production, what is just a rough sketch idea of something that > was never implemented, what is wild fantasy._

100% agree.

I learned this as well. For example, if you search the U.S. Patent system, you can find a lot of crazy things, because the patent office never actually verifies them! One example is a mind control patent by displaying a certain images using Visual Basic, making the CRT to emit electromagnetic waves at specific frequencies. It even has some code! Nobody cannot tell if it's just a work by a fantasist engineer, or the surface of a deeper real project. I bet my specific example is the former one. I also believe the remote mind control stuff is bullshit.

But nobody can differentiate every single thing in general. We cannot tell.

This process also effectively makes conspiracy theorists be able to claim they're always correct: If you try to interpret all actions by the governments to be huge conspiracies, naturally, many of your predictions will be true! Unfortunately, things like the shape of the Earth or vaccines will be victims as well.

I think this is a very effective strategy by the governments in an information age with relatively free flow of information: You don't need to censor anything, you simply misdirects all, to the point that the SNR is so low that almost no one can decode the real signal successfully.

<comment><USER19> All patents are screened by the military. If it has any chance of being real, it's theirs and doesn't go public and author gets shafted.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The english page of this article barely mentions experimentations on children. Other languages highlight sexual abuses and drug based experiments as part of sub-projects number 102, 103, 112 and 117. Apparently International Children Summer Camp was part of the project and were provided the children.

Sickening.

<comment><USER21> What's sickening is that they've been getting away with this and worse for a long, long time; despite all sorts of evidence leaking of acts that are so insanely inhuman and twisted it's pretty damn obvious where the path ultimately leads.

The US imported all real psychos from Nazi Germany as part of operation Paperclip and let them loose on the local population to test their insane ideas about how to break and bend innocent people to whatever purpose using trauma.

Paperclip is also supposedly where the missing pieces for the nuclear bomb came from, which explains the sudden need to blow Japan into little pieces before the war was officially over.

These people are clearly insane, and will eventually have their power taken away and be tried for their crimes; or burned at stakes and torn into pieces by angry mobs, depending on how much forgiveness we're capable of collectively.

<comment><USER22> Too late. There is no "enemy" to lynch or forgive because most of the individuals responsible for such abuses are long dead. Their legacy has now subtly ingrained itself into the edifice of Western culture, our norms and institutions. (Now _that_ is really scary stuff. Like "ubiquitous totalitarian death cults, complete with loyal oposition" level of scary, at least if you have an aversion to cognitive dissonance and want your culture and ethics to make sense anyway, only we call it business as usual. Either way, it's disheartening to realize how humanity can ruin things sometimes.)

<comment><USER21> Agreed, this so called society is rotten to the core. Even our official history admits several incidences of the same scenario. Once all possibilities have been explored, the corrupt end result dies in no time; since there is no substance left holding it together.

I'm not after revenge, it just leads back to square 1. But I have an idea how far out the truth will appear to most once fully revealed, and I don't claim to know half of it myself. Truth always finds a way. The natural tendency then is to find someone to project your pain on, someone to hang for it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Recommended [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1824.The_Men_Who_Stare_a...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1824.The_Men_Who_Stare_at_Goats)

</comment><comment><USER24> Tangential:

Interview with Chris Morris on his new movie exposing the malfeasance of the FBI.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=liV5wKAihh8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=liV5wKAihh8)

</comment><comment><USER25> For those interested in parapsychology check out Dean Radin's talk on whats new since the 70s - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUw9kT19EVc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUw9kT19EVc)

<comment><USER26> Thank you for sharing!

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> If you look at the various testimonies of MK Ultra victims now surfacing, it's clear that the program is ongoing.

<comment><USER5> Yes. People assume that since it was reported on, it was shut down, but there was never any evidence of that. The principals got promotions on schedule, and retired with pensions.

Jon Ronson's "Men Who Stare at Goats" is an exploration of the recent state of the program, terrifying if read carefully. Certain of the principals retired very, very wealthy. How they got that way is not revealed, but access to damaging secrets is not hard to convert into wealth.

That so many people today believe that it was all about ESP experiments is evidence of its success, because it included tests conducted against the public.

We may reasonably infer that its success led to its regular deployment. Public approval of the Iraq invasion, despite proof before the event that it was unjustified, may be counted as evidence of its continued misuse. Public acceptance of universal surveillance, post-Snowden, might qualify.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> This is unreal. It feels like something out of the Marvel universe.

<comment><USER29> This is why nationalism / patriotism is so destructive (edit: in blinding us to the possibility). We are all humans no matter where we live. Humans, in aggregate, have repeatedly over the years committed atrocities. And we will again, unless actively prevented. Being 'the best country in the world' (which ever one) is irrelevant.

Then again tribal exceptionalism is in our nature too.

I'm still troubled by the memory of a well educated intelligent American refuse to believe that the US uses torture when the Guantanamo revelations came to light.

<comment><USER30> What does this have to do specifically with nationalism? A globalist government could conceivably do the same things.

<comment><USER29> Specifically the belief that "my country would never do that". It's crucial to be able to believe that it can happen.

<comment><USER31> That seems like a very minor connection to nationalism. Also, lots of other political ideologies put a similar amount of faith in their government. I don't see a reason to single out nationalism at all beyond maybe pushing your agenda. The real lesson to be learned from this is not that nationalism is bad but that people should not trust their governments.

<comment><USER29> Who cares what the precise political ideology is? It's the same human characteristic.

<comment><USER31> You, apparently, because you specifically pointed out nationalism and even gave a justification as to why.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Stephen Kinzer has a new book about this:

[https://www.amazon.com/Poisoner-Chief-Sidney-Gottlieb- Contro...](https://www.amazon.com/Poisoner-Chief-Sidney-Gottlieb- Control/dp/1250140439/)

[https://www.npr.org/2019/09/09/758989641/the-cias-secret- que...](https://www.npr.org/2019/09/09/758989641/the-cias-secret-quest-for- mind-control-torture-lsd-and-a-poisoner-in-chief)

[https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/10/books/review/poisoner- in-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/10/books/review/poisoner-in-chief- stephen-kinzer.html)

</comment><comment><USER18> One also needs to look some of the experiments in terms of LSD. In the 60s an 70s, psychedelic drugs, especially LSD, were believed to have mind-changing power, both the counter-culture activists and the CIA establishment were experimenting with the drugs, the former group wants to use it as a tool to look beyond "The Matrix" and authority, and a gateway to a new spiritual world. While the establishment were trying to use it as a tool for psychological manipulation.

A good book that cover the history is _Acid Dreams: The Complete Social History of LSD: the CIA, the Sixties, and Beyond_ by Martin A. Lee and Bruce Shlain. If you want to learn more about LSD and computer culture, read _What the Dormouse Said_ by John Markoff.

The history was quite interesting. For example, Kary Mullis claimed his discovery of PCR was inspirited by LSD, Whitfield Diffie is said to be active in the anti-war movement and knew about LSD, Dan Ingalls jokingly implied some features in Smalltalk were inspirited by LSD when journalists asked. Later, the psychedelic subculture was appropriated, commercialized, mainstreamed, losing the original countercultural context and message ("The early years of the 1970s saw advertisers using psychedelic art to sell a limitless array of consumer goods. Hair products, cars, cigarettes, and even pantyhose became colorful acts of pseudo-rebellion"), slowly disintegrated it, also, and the drugs didn't show such great power as previously promised, finally government had banned drugs as well.

Later, the personal computing in the mid-70s was literally seen as the new LSD, but this time not by chemistry, but by networks, building the cyberspace, a civilization of mind.

Now we see the history repeats again, full cycle. The advertisers and companies use it to make big money and push for pseudo-rebellions. Technically, the potential of Internet as a force of liberation is correct, but too overrated. Politically, the establishment like the NSA and CIA are trying to use it as a tool for psychological manipulation, and calls for more regulations (especially the anti-Fake News measures, the intention is good, but its implementation can be dangerous if the system is abused).

I believe the next failed revolution will be biohacking and transhumanism.

</comment><comment><USER33> I recommend the Netflix series Wormwood, a documentary about Frank Olson, a CIA agent who was "suicided" when he learned what the CIA was doing with MK Ultra, and started expressing his discomfort about it.

</comment><comment><USER34> Timothy Leary was in on it too:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32TU6yLwqrg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32TU6yLwqrg) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3i4ALdMSt0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3i4ALdMSt0)

Wiki section about their unethical experiments on people:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unethical_human_experimentatio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unethical_human_experimentation_in_the_United_States#MKUltra)

Makes me think that where there's a well funded covert organization (CIA) operating in a climate of fear (cold war), the sociopaths and psychopaths therein can easily rise to the top. :(

</comment><comment><USER35> Check out the movies - The Manchurian Candidate and The Game.

<comment><USER36> And "The Men Who Stare at Goats": [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1234548/](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1234548/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> "But the Russians were doing it and might use it against us in war!"

I think projects like this are the logical outcome of a society or entities which constantly look forward to the next war instead of seeking to spread peace through cooperation. It's also a statement of trying to win a war through subterfuge instead of straight-up defeating your enemy in combat should it come to that. Either way, I think it reeks of pusillanimity.

<comment><USER38> It is not pusillanimity. If you are the lone society that tries to cooperate and spread peace you will be eaten out. It is rational and logical behaviour to survive.

<comment><USER38> If your goal is ideal world you must for a while be non-ideal to survive until you reach closer and closer to that ideal state. Which I would say we are doing currently.

<comment><USER39> Isn't this exactly the rationale used by Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot to commit mass genocide in the name of a more 'ideal' future state?

<comment><USER38> Just because some type of reasoning was used in order to justify something bad happening does not mean the reasoning itself is bad or wrong. If your goal is an ideal peaceful world you might have to be patient in order to reach it and take some non-ideal steps to have any chances at all reaching it.

<comment><USER40> And this is how fascism spreads. Thanks EstoniaTechLead for trying to seduce people into giving up their morality.

These are bad actions but for "the greater good"? You don't get to have it both ways. Protecting yourself without torturing people is 100% feasible and your argument should only be heard in a war crimes tribunal from the defendant'a lawyer to ease their sentence.

Morality isn't hard, but the implementation can be.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Hey look an influence operation.</comment>


SendHub (YC W12) raises $3M Series A, Launches Attachments for SMS - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/09/04/sendhub-secures-3-million-series-a-to-be-the-mobile-alternative-to-business-phone-systems/

<comment><USER2> First of, Congrats on the round!

The article provides some interesting numbers to chew on: \- 150,000 users \- 15,000 business (let's call them customers) \- $50,000 in monthly revenue \- 6 lines average per customer.

Impressive numbers to backup traction! But they also tell the story of the freemium model very well.

Sendhub website lists cheapest paid plan at $25/month/line. This means that at most, they have 2,000 paid lines (based on $50k monthly revenue) and in the neighborhood of 400 paid customers.

These are still very good numbers and nothing to frown upon, but if you compare that to the massive adoption of the free accounts (150k users), it's very telling of how difficult it is to convert people from free to paid.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, pretty close. We used to offer individual accounts - those folks were hard to convert, hence the large number of free users.

<comment><USER2> Thank you for validating the pseudo-math :)

And, yeah, converting any free accounts to paid is an achievement in and of itself. Best of luck in growing the company!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Great to see more investment in Telecom.

This space is red hot right now :). Congrats Ash!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Josh.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Are you actually sending arbitrary files over SMS? How does that work?

My thought is it would be technically possible over MMS, but most default messaging apps wouldn't play nice with them. Also getting into the network is a huge challenge.

<comment><AUTHOR> MMS is coming soon but the network operators aren't always easy to deal with. Right now, we put a link in the sms, that way you can send any file type.

<comment><USER3> Getting an MMSC exposed from a network operator is a nigh-impossible task (source: I'm a telecom junkie).

The MMSC infrastructure is unnecessarily complex and, for some ungodly reason, is seen as a proprietary network advantage. Your best bet is to make an end- run around the carriers by partnering with an aggregator like Acision (or someone smaller if you lack the volume).

MMS is one of the most difficult things to get carriers to expose :/...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Fantastic, congrats to Ash, Garrett and team!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Jan.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Great work SendHub team!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Omar - waiting on hearing your news too.

</comment></comment><comment> old-gregg Woo! Congrats guys!

</comment><comment><USER7> Congrats SendHub!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Chris.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Great feature!</comment>


Can we please stop saying "unstructured" data? - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2013/03/17/can-we-please-stop-saying-unstructured-data/ <comment><USER2> The language that we use to describe things is actually one of my biggest interests. I usually cite five phrases and terms that I hate with a passion.

1\. Technology

2\. Computer stuff

3\. Computer person

4\. Virus

5\. Anti Virus

I could go on about why, but I'll save that for a full blog post. In the meantime, use your imagination.</comment>


Show HN: ContactBro – Scrape contacts and social links from any website - <AUTHOR> http://www.contactbro.com/ <comment><USER2> Don't name it anything-bro, or bro-anything, please.

This whole "bro" concept needs to die a quick and horrible death.

</comment><comment><USER3> I saw something similar [http://www.contactrocket.com](http://www.contactrocket.com)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey friedpiper44,

For some reason that I don't know I can't get to use their app, it seems they also want to scrape emails and contact information with URLs you provide

But I think they make the whole process very weird with this 'rockets' and 'target' things

Have you gave a try to contactbro?

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hello everyone!,

I built a contact scraper using Apifier. For now it's just a proof of concept, but would love to hear your feedback.</comment>


Interactive visualization of the European soccer leagues standings with Plotly - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/iamaziz/soccer-leagues-interactive <comment><USER2> Interesting! Do you have something on NBA, as well?

Have you also tried, something other than plotly?</comment>