Text-only NPR - <AUTHOR> https://text.npr.org/ <comment><USER2> 132ms to load the whole page for me. Over half that time (76ms) spent establishing the connection and negotiating TLS. TTFB only 18 milliseconds once the connection was established. No adds, no pop ups, fully accessible, cache friendly, and virtually free to host and maintain.

For a public news organization that doesn't need to desperately push their brand onto people or track a user's every breath, this is a great thing to provide, even if most people would consider it "ugly".

</comment><comment><USER3> Lite sites are just the best. Hacker news, cnn, this, hell even Drudge Report. It's user friendly. It's classic. It's fast. Even with limited ads it's just a frustration free way to consume info

</comment><comment><USER4> First, I think there should be a browser extension that rewrites links for various new sites from the bloated pages to these simple pages.

Second, I think it is ironic that one of the major justifications for javascript on web pages is that itcan be used to optimize the page. For example, javascript can be used to reduce the need for a full page reload, reduce roundtrips when interacting with the page, only update the parts of the page that actually change, etc. [Edit: I think a good example of this is Hacker News itself, where upvotes initiate a full page reload if javascript is disabled, but simple send an asynchronous request and update the page otherwise.] This justification is trading off additional complexity and violation of the simple application model provided by html and the related concept of Hypermedia As The Engine Of Application State (HATEOAS) where clients are dumb and simple allow users to follow links and submit forms in a standardized way, for micro optimizations. However, these micro-optimizations are basically nullified by the hundreds of kilobytes of tracking software and visual gizmos that content providers are stuffing in their pages, and the ever increasing internet speeds and bandwidth. Make web pages dumb (and fast) again!

</comment><comment><USER5> Similarly: [http://lite.cnn.io/en](http://lite.cnn.io/en)

</comment><comment><USER6> The text-only website is just perfect to read in the CLI environment using lynx. No ads, no distractions, just the contents. Definitely underrated.

</comment><comment><USER7> The only problem I've found is that if you reject cookies form their main site it boots you to this homepage instead of whatever article you were on.

<comment><USER8> This is irritating for anything not in the current top articles, as the plain site has no search or useful index of older entries, but you can manually work around it.

copy the article ID from the "full" URL, the large integer after the date, and place it at the end of [https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=](https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> There is a similar site for TED Talks too.

[https://en.tiny.ted.com/talks](https://en.tiny.ted.com/talks)

</comment><comment><USER10> It's great. I wish when you choose text-only after clicking a link to NPR it took you to the desired page instead of the homepage.</comment>


Giving Foreign Aid Helps America's Economy - <AUTHOR> https://www.gatesnotes.com/Development/Foreign-Aid-Helps-Americas-Economy <comment><USER2> It's good to see influential people like Gates posting on topics like this</comment>


The Flaw Lurking In Every Deep Neural Net - <AUTHOR> http://www.i-programmer.info/news/105-artificial-intelligence/7352-the-flaw-lurking-in-every-deep-neural-net.html

<comment><USER2> I don't think this is a problem for safety-critical applications any more than neural networks were before. It also gives a very interesting way of keeping CAPTCHA alive for awhile longer. Also possibly a new method to increase generlizability in neural nets (and possibly making them resistant to this.)</comment>


Ask HN: Any good new podcasts lately? - <AUTHOR>

Personal favorites below, please share yours.
1. Planet Money - Often excellent, always good.
2. Radiolab - Every episode is painstakingly produced, using all sorts of aural tricks to tie up various stories related to the theme of each episode.
3. The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe - group commentary about recent news especially dedicated to debunking homeopathy etc. But most of all I enjoy the segment at the end of each show "science or fiction", where the group is presented with three science news and they must guess which one is the fictional one.
4. The Moth - People telling their random stories on open mic. Quality better than you might expect, since not all end up on the podcast. <comment><USER2> I like the "new" 5by5 podcast "Back to Work". It has some interesting informations about how to be more productive and follows the opinion of seth godin's linchpin, most of the tim. Additionally, the hosts are funny, especially Merlin Mann, and the podcast is not too long.

</comment><comment><USER3> Build and Analyze (iOS): <http://5by5.tv/buildanalyze> and The Big Web Show (Zeldman & guests): <http://5by5.tv/bigwebshow>

</comment><comment><USER4> This Developer's life .</comment>


Groovy in Action: A review - <AUTHOR> http://theexceptioncatcher.com/blog/2013/01/groovy-in-action-a-review/#.UPXALlHXfuk.hackernews <comment><USER2> > With most books, which are responsible for introducing someone to a new > language/framework, I expect the resource to really sell the > language/framework in the beginning, and ease into the more gritty details. > However, this book tried to do this at some points of the book, but lacked > order.

Perhaps the problem is with the book's many different authors, i.e. Dierk Koenig, Andrew Glover, Paul King and Guillaume Laforge. Maybe they wrote it in an uncoordinated fashion.

This book is now 6 years old. A 2nd edition has been in the works for years now, but hasn't yet arrived.

<comment><AUTHOR> Don't forget John Skeet and a forward by James Gosling. I want to say this book took me longer than a year to complete.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Open Port Checker - <AUTHOR> http://portchecker.co <comment><USER2> How do you plan to prevent abuse? E.g. this website allows someone to portscan another IP without exposing their own IP. Even with a per-IP throttle, someone with a botnet can use this website to effectively portscan any one host without exposing any of their botnet's IPs.

I've been using [http://www.canyouseeme.org/](http://www.canyouseeme.org/) for this purpose. It does have the limitation that it only allows testing the ports of the connecting IP.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, that's a good point. Thanks. I'm still trying to figure out a way for preventing such abuse. Otherwise, I would have to limit the scanning to origin IP.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Related is hxxp://portscan.me/ \- which does a nmap scan on the requester. Not a click-able just in case people don't read the purpose before clicking on it. Good for quickly finding out if your port forwarding worked (and it never works).

</comment><comment><USER4> Technically, the page checks ports that are accessible on the public side of your local router. That can be very useful in checking one's configuration for errors and unintended vulnerabilities.

</comment><comment><USER5> An usability upgrade would be to allow port ranges, for example I wanted to try 0-1023.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've something like that for TODO. But I'm not sure whether that would be legal or not ?

<comment><USER6> What kind of thing is legal to do once but not 65,535 times?

Google for "scan ports" and you'll discover plenty of people offering this service already.

<comment><AUTHOR> "Sometimes, if a computer system is affected too much by a port scan, one can argue that the port scan was, in fact, a denial-of-service (DoS) attack, which is usually an offense. "

[http://www.sans.org/security- resources/idfaq/port_scanning_l...](http://www.sans.org/security- resources/idfaq/port_scanning_legal.php)

<comment><USER6> Rate limit target IP subnets. 0.1 second timeout per port per IP: ten ports on one IP delays a second, one port on everything in a /24 delays 25.5 seconds. It's useful without being abusive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Good tool for terminal-averse people, but I still prefer nmap

<comment><USER8> IMO, they could just get Zenmap, anyway.</comment></comment>


Poorbuthappy - Free, detailed travel guides written by travelers. - <AUTHOR> http://poorbuthappy.com/ <comment><USER2> How's this different from wikitravel, which has a much larger user base?</comment>


Programming Languages are PC OSs circa 1986 - <AUTHOR> http://enfranchisedmind.com/blog/2008/09/20/programming-languages-are-pc-oss-circa-1986/#comment-33728 <comment><USER2> When I first opened this I thought it would be an interesting dialogue on how langs/class libraries are blurring the boundaries with operating systems... Particularly with this "is the internet the os?" thinking floating about.

However, it's not that discussion at all - Was more along the lines "Java is like DOS because it's popular, and DOS sucked for all these other reasons (UI), therefore Java sucks"...

Metaphor can be pretty handy sometimes, but this just seems very labored.

<comment><USER3> Exactly. None of the conclusions he drew about C# or Java are especially true. C# is one of the most reliable frameworks I see, and to say that OOP scripting languages are "better" than Java/C# (as Mac is to Dos) is BS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> That was a lot better than I was expecting it to be.

</comment><comment><USER5> So what is lisp?

<comment><AUTHOR> Unix obviously, especially the shell.

Everyone says the Lisp "UI" sucks, but masters explain how you can be even more powerful piping all these separate commands together... And the eyes of the lumpenproletariat glaze over...

<comment><USER6> I think the inside (fundamentals) vs. surface (UI) is an important way to think about any kind of module - including languages.

Lisp is interesting, because one of the strengths of its syntax (that it's as close as possible to the internal AST so you can fiddle with the language easily) means that it really doesn't _have_ a designed surface or UI (yes, you could add one, but then lose this key strength). Lisp wears its guts on the outside - very convenient for surgery.

Forth is similar in this sense.

BTW re your comment on the blog: he did say "Mac adopting Unix" (unless he edited after seeing your comment). The answer that comes to my mind is "Erlang with Python syntax". Pattern matching is tricky though - but doesn't Python already do something like [Head|Tail]? Or is that only on the RHS?

PS: _lumpenproletariat_ \- ridiculing newcomers who aren't as knowledgeable as you is what got Lisp to where it is today.

<comment><AUTHOR> _PS: lumpenproletariat - ridiculing newcomers who aren't as knowledgeable as you is what got Lisp to where it is today._

I don't ridicule people who don't use Lisp--I don't use Lisp professionally myself. I was trying to get into the spirit of painting programming languages with such broad metaphorical strokes that you could sum up their entire character and history by comparing them to an operating system... from two decades ago!

My experience with Lisp programmers has been uniformly excellent, however there are certainly people who paint Lisp the language as being inhabited by hostile self-proclaimed experts, so I played along.

It doesn't suprise me that things could be this way, I have observed people taking much the same line with Linux: "What, you have trouble recompiling the kernel? You're an idiot, go back to WIndows!" or more recently, "What do you mean Software Update is a feature? I just use apt-get! And Time Machine? What does it do that git doesn't do? grow up and become a real programmer!"

Or more HN-local, there was a post somewhere that suggested owning a MacBook Air was all about impressing girls at Starbucks. I took this as a mortal insult: I would certainly buy technology to impress people, but the suggestion that owning a Mac means I drink Starbucks coffeee... That was a low blow.

So I compared the two. Seemed entirely within the spirit of the OP.

<comment><USER6> Thanks for explaining: your ridicule of newcomers was parody; not your opinion.

I disagree with you about the article - I think comparisons and metaphors can shed light and reveal common principles of tools/tasks (without defining them). I thought your comparison of sh vs. lisp was insightful.

I take back what I implied about some lisp-users. It's just that I wish it were easier for me to learn about lisp (which I wish about many things).

<comment><AUTHOR> _I think comparisons and metaphors can shed light and reveal common principles of tools/tasks (without defining them)_

Oh absolutely. We are pattern-matching machines. If we had to reason about every new thing from first principles because of the exceptions and corner cases that mean no two things are exactly alike...

Well let's just say we would need a whole brain architecture. The one we have --highly parallel with relatively slow procesors and six layers of neocortex-- wouldn't cut it.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


On Laughter and Dreaming in Pushkin (2017) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/spellberg/files/spellberg_laughteranddreaminginpushkin.pdf <comment><USER2> TIL Tatyana singing about meeting her desire in "My Dream" [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSMP9Gs5cSQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSMP9Gs5cSQ) could be considered a very indirect reference to Tatyana Larina's Dream about Eugene Onegin.</comment>


Bit.ly Swoops in to Save Tr.im - onreact-com http://mashable.com/2009/08/10/shorturl-savior/ <comment><AUTHOR> The longevity of short URLs (or any form of redirect) is their primary drawback. Having one company bail out another is not a long-term strategy. The only long-term way to make sure redirects continue to function is to have some kind of open, federated redirect service (which might be what 301works is trying to achieve). However, the kind of flexibility inherent in a federated service implies that the links would not be very short (e.g. 301works.com/bit.ly/abcdef), so they would at best be a backup solution.

The long-term solution for shortlinks is very unclear, as long as services (and who are we kidding: we mean Twitter) require them. Twitter could solve it by allowing metadata around links, but that would break their 140-character protocol, which has been a big factor in their success.

I don't have a solution, or I'd be building a startup around it right now :-)

<comment><USER2> _Twitter could solve it by allowing metadata around links_

Twitter could also solve it by upping the 140 character limit to something more reasonable. Any magic reason for the 140 char limit is pretty much gone now.

In the end, I don't know how much any of this matters, Twitter seems overrun by marketeers and self-promoters now, hard to tell if there is enough of a future in it for the URL shorteners to really have much of a future.

<comment><USER3> > Any magic reason for the 140 char limit is pretty much gone now.

This is incredibly short-sighted. I, for one, still only use Twitter via text. If Twitter allowed for longer messages, I'd be out, as would many of the people that I know.

The plural of anecdote is not data, but just becasue everyone you know uses an app, does not mean that everyone does. I'm sure txt is still _really important_ to Twitter overall.

<comment><USER4> Does your phone and provider not support long SMS messages? ( <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concatenated_SMS> ).

<comment><USER3> I have no idea. My phone probably doesn't support them, though. It's pretty terrible. Free is better than paying, unfortunatly.

<comment><USER5> My nokia 8310 that had in 2001/2 supported it so maybe your phone does

<comment><USER3> Verizon's phones are notoriously crippled. I'd expect Nokia to have thier act together, though.

<comment><USER5> That was here in the U.K. I think all networks do and have supported it here for a long time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Bit.ly's not the only one who's made this offer. Whether the tr.im people see it as a helping hand or an opportunity to sell their stuff, though, is up to them.

I have half a feeling that this whole deal was designed to instigate a buyout. It certainly got enough peoples' attention.

</comment><comment><USER7> Sounds like Bit.ly is offering hosting services. Swoops in to save...that's going a bit far (unless they offer cash).

<comment><USER8> swoops in to save trim's link structure, is more like it.

but, its a smart move. it helps to validate bitly, both in what its doing and as the leader of its space. makes link redirection seem like it could be more stable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Why do we need URL shorteners again?

<comment><USER10> because twitter limits you to 140 characters of input.

<comment><USER11> The real solution would be for Twitter to not count URLs against the 140 character limit.

<comment><USER12> But wasn't the requirement that a tweet fit into an SMS? How relevant the SMS medium still is to Twitter is another question...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> onreact-com This would be a truly wise move in the long run. If I read the article right there is no official announcement yet, is it?

<comment><USER13> It looks like they're in contact but no deal has been reached, and it is implied that there are some sour grapes because of the blog post line quoted, but that's speculation only.

I'm very curious how this will turn out. This was a very short lifecycle for a service, but in the long run this is to be expected for just about every website. Stuff gets created and it dies again.

Url shorteners exist in the first place because of bad design in the websites that need to have their links shortened.

Plenty of websites that I'm familiar with have overlong urls, some to the point of being ridiculous.

Maybe sites should employ their own internal url shortening service, where '<http://somesite.com/shorturl> gets mapped to the real url. That way the short urls will live as long as the site.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh, and re: the idea of internal URL shorteners, Google's suggestion for rel=canonical

[http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/02/specify-y...](http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/02/specify- your-canonical.html)

is a way to allow those to exist without destroying your pagerank. However, I'm not seeing them too widely implemented yet.

<comment><USER14> I'd think a 301 Moved Permanently is more appropriate - and also how many URL shorteners work today.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Using 'Big Brother' to Motivate You - <AUTHOR> http://wesleyzhao.com/using-big-brother-to-motivate-you

<comment><USER2> This advice sounds a bit immature to me (which the author hints at in the end) -- it's sounds like a sign of one who hasn't taken "know thyself" to heart -- that the author defines himself and is motivated through the expectations and desires of others, rather than being driven by inner strength and understanding (deeply set principles) and hence an intrinsic motivation.

<comment><USER3> It is a bit of a mind game, yes. I don't think it's healthy to do things _because_ someone else might admire it or think it's right. But I think it's fine to aspire to be like others who embody your _own_ principles and values more effectively or faithfully than you do at the moment. That kind of emulation is healthy.</comment></comment>


Feds intercept incomplete cross-border subterranean tunnel - <AUTHOR> https://www.ice.gov/news/releases/feds-intercept-incomplete-cross-border-subterranean-tunnel <comment><USER2> HSI said the tunnel ran from Mexico to a disused Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant in San Luis, Arizona, just about 200 yards (180m) north of the border.

[https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/aug/07/us-mexico- sm...](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/aug/07/us-mexico-smuggling- tunnel-arizona-sophisticated)</comment>


Google Removes Vital Privacy Feature From Android, Claims Release Was Accidental - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/12/google-removes-vital-privacy-features-android-shortly-after-adding-them <comment><USER2> If you have root you can still enable it with market apps.[0][1]

However something like this needs to be integrated tightly like iOS and apps need to be aware they may not receive requested permissions. I still use App Ops in Kit Kat and it silently breaks apps all the time. Apps expect to be able request information (e.g. contact details) and crash or stall when they can't.

In that respect, LBE Privacy Guard[2] was a much better alternative up to ICS. It was a privacy firewall that would pop up notifications when protected permissions were being used for the first time. Instead of blocking apps when denied, Privacy Guard would feed it blank data instead. This lead to a better UX and stopped blocked apps crashing.

There needs to be an open source version of LBE Privacy Guard since the current one hasn't been updated over a year and is closed source from a Chinese company.

[0]: [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.colortiger...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.colortiger.appopsinstaller&hl=en)

[1]: [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=biz.bokhorst.x...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=biz.bokhorst.xprivacy.installer&hl=en)

[2]: DO NOT INSTALL, FORCES REBOOT LOOP

[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.lbe.securi...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.lbe.security.lite)

<comment><USER3> I think the article is a tad misleading here, and I think your first link is going to add to the confusion.

The ability to revoke permissions was built right into the System Settings app, but the ability to access it was hidden from view. Custom roms would usually add a link to it, and apps like AppOps by ColorTiger (your first link) was simply a pointer that would trigger that view to activate (I'm glossing over the root functionality here).

What Google did in 4.4.2 was _remove the hidden view from settings_. This means that apps like ColorTiger's AppOps will no longer work at all- there is nothing for it to call. The pointer has been dereferenced, if you will.

Apps like LBE (which I share your desire for a newly updated, open source version which doesn't cause bootloops on newer versions of Android), PDroid, and presumably XPrivacy (which I've never heard of, but am looking into now for the inevitable upgrade to 4.4.2 if OmniRom is unable to provide a new solution) work because they replace the functionality that Google removed, not just call something built into Android, but hidden.

<comment><USER4> _The pointer has been dereferenced, if you will._

I do not think dereferenced means what you think it means.

<comment><USER3> Holy shit, I feel like an idiot. Still, thanks for pointing it out.. keeps me humble.

Kids, if you're curious what we're talking about, look up dangling pointers in C, which is what I should have 'referenced' in the first place.

<comment><USER5> It's OK – I hadn't realised that's what dereferenced meant either! Has been 10 years since I wrote any C though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm probably going to turn in to that old guy with tin foil who can't play any games because nobody supports his choice of platform, but I really miss when computers were devices you could buy and then put your choice of OS on. Phones are pretty much just little ARM computers, why the hell don't I just install Ubuntu, Firefox OS, Android, WinPhone, Symbian, whatever? I could format a microSD card to boot from and go from there.

And while I'm complaining, phones (devices for communication, remember?) need proper keyboards.

OK. I'll crawl back into my cave now.

<comment><USER7> Re. proper keyboards - the market says otherwise. There have been plenty of Android phones with hard keyboards but they've not sold in sufficient quantities to make it attractive.

If there was a market for it, people would be making them, if you disagree with that they what are you doing on here, your fortune awaits...

Also worth seeing kids who've never used a physical keyboard to any great extent. I've seen them doing what must be close to 60 words a minute on a touch screen (tablet rather than phone but still). If you're used to it a touch screen keyboard isn't a massive limiting factor.

EDIT: This is interesting: [http://psychology.wichita.edu/surl/usabilitynews/122/ipadtyp...](http://psychology.wichita.edu/surl/usabilitynews/122/ipadtyping.asp)

A study showing netbooks to have a typical typing speed of around 60WPM vs 40WPM for iPad, but interestingly it mentions that none of the participants had used an iPad.

I'm guessing that someone with significant experience on a particular OS / soft keyboard with correction could close that gap pretty sharpish.

EDIT2: [http://thinkertry.com/2012/10/30/typing-speed-test-iphone- vs...](http://thinkertry.com/2012/10/30/typing-speed-test-iphone-vs-ipad-vs- keyboard/)

Someone testing iPhone, iPad and keyboard two years running:

2011: iPhone: 57 wpm, iPad: 60 wpm, Keyboard: 71 wpm 2012: iPhone: 51 wpm, iPad: 75 wpm, Keyboard: 82 wpm

It seems that practice does indeed close the gap. Given that the total install base for touchscreen devices will exceed that for PCs in the next 12 months (probably next 6), that greater level of familiarity will shortly become standard.

<comment><USER8> > If there was a market for it, people would be making them, if you disagree > with that they what are you doing on here, your fortune awaits...

This is incredibly disingenuous because of the high barrier to entry on cellphone manufacturing.

<comment><USER7> It's an offhand line but the point stands - people who have the resources to overcome the barrier have tried and the phones don't sell in great numbers.

Once they get used to a good soft key board like you get on the iPhone or most Android phones people either don't want (or don't feel they need I suspect) physical keyboards.

<comment><USER8> That a large company can make enough money by focusing on one type of phone, thus not splitting their engineering efforts doesn't mean that there wouldn't be a viable niche market, if not for barrier to entry.

I often hear people lament the design of their phone, caused by the preferences of the majority.

<comment><USER9> It's hard enough to make a profit on popular phones, as evidenced by the woes of HTC, Blackberry and others... making a phone for a niche group, especially if you can't charge materially more (and I mean $1,000 or more, unlocked) just doesn't make any sense. Particularly when you consider that carrier and OEM marketing (large national campaigns, in-store placement, etc) doesn't scale down to small volume products.

Making niche products doesn't work well for consumer electronics in general, unless you can sell that product at a much higher margin. Having a keyboard on a phone just doesn't seem to result in being able to sell it for twice as much.

Another issue with keyboards is they don't internationalize well. So rather than having 1 hardware design worldwide, you now either need a TON of SKUs - one for each country (and you can't move inventory from one market to another) or you need to further limit your target market to just a few regions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> They still need to split the permissions more. READ_PHONE_STATE is nasty.

Apps ask for the permission because they (for instance) need to pause playback on a video because you have an incoming call. But it covers all the phone details (numbers, IMEI etc) _and_ who the call is coming from and a hell of a lot of other stuff.

Who the hell thought that was a good idea?

<comment><USER11> Yep. I have gotten one-star reviews on an app of mine because they think I want to invade users' privacy, when I really just want to pause media when a call comes in.

READ_PHONE_STATE means I have to decide whether I want a handful of one-star reviews for requesting that permission, or a truckload of one-star reviews for the app playing media over their calls.

<comment><USER12> Have you considered listing the reasoning behind your permissions in your app description?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is one area where iOS stands head and shoulders above Android. I used to run Cyanogenmod and I remember deciding to not upgrade the Facebook app because doing so would have required giving it a slew of permissions, including the ability to "directly call phone numbers".

By contrast, in iOS, I can choose which apps have access to my location, contacts, etc.

I know that Apple's track record when it comes to privacy isn't exactly spotless but Google would be well advised to follow their lead in allowing users granular control over 3rd-party apps' permissions.

<comment><USER14> Do not expect Google to implement it anytime soon, due to the massive app breakage potential.

Android's permission system looks good on the surface. However, there are so many required permissons nowadays that many users do not even check them anymore. And you can revoke specific permissions on an app by app basis.

On iOS, developers are told not to rely on certain permissions being available, such as location. Some apps truly can't function without those, but they are supposed to warn the user, not crash.

<comment><USER15> There is almost zero app breakage potential. Because the implementation shouldn't be refusing permissions, it should simply be mocking them. Ask for a location? Mock it to an arbitrary location. Asking for contacts? Return an empty list, or a list with firstname.lastname@example.com. Etc.

<comment><USER13> > ..the implementation shouldn't be refusing permissions, it should simply be > mocking them. Ask for a location? Mock it to an arbitrary location.

Like 38° 53' 50.55", -77° 2' 14.51"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> There is another point here, one I think even more important and more disconcerting.

Google released an entire feature of their Android OS BY ACCIDENT. W...T...F?! How do you release a feature "by accident?" By having awful quality control? How does that make me feel about the rest of their Android OS now?

Either this, or they're lying through their teeth in an effort to cover up. In either case, it's evil.

<comment><USER17> From the comments, it sounds like the preference pane was hidden and had to be enabled by installing 3rd party software. Having experimental features in software that are hidden (but included for testing in limited situations) is not surprising, nor WTF worthy.

<comment><USER18> This is exactly the case. Someone noticed it somehow (source / activities dump, I forget) and figured out how to launch it. And last I saw it wasn't actually _removed_ , it just had stronger permissions on what was allowed to launch it, which broke all existing launchers. There may or may not be a new way to launch it.

Meanwhile, the source code keeps moving more and more towards having a real runtime-permissions-manager. Honestly I think they'll have something soon, but probably not before 4.5 or 5.0. In the meantime, I've been loving XPrivacy, it's probably more granular than anything they would release anyway (and I've had exceedingly few crashes, blocked data is faked not broken).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Whatever, fuck Google.

If you are interest in doing this with Android, the autopatcher[0] does this for you on a whole series of ROMs on all versions of Android from 2.x-4.x, and has been doing so successfully for a while. There is a pretty active user community on XDA for the PDroid patchset as well.[1]

[0] [https://github.com/mateor/auto-patcher](https://github.com/mateor/auto- patcher)

[1] [http://forum.xda- developers.com/showthread.php?t=1357056](http://forum.xda- developers.com/showthread.php?t=1357056)

<comment><USER20> > Whatever, fuck Google.

Well this is going to be productive.

I'm pretty sure Google isn't out to put all of its users through a meat grinder. For one thing people have been way off the handle about Google touching anything. At all. This article only mentions an accident that lasted one day. So it's "fuck Google" after everything, still, again I guess.

<comment><USER21> I don't know if you read the article properly (or maybe I didn't) but the 'accident' was improved privacy. Then they took the better privacy feature out. So that could qualify for a fuck Google comment.

<comment><USER22> I don't know if you read the article properly but this was never an actual feature. They were debug screens that required a third-party app to access. There's no way to access these settings at all from the system UI.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> > When asked for comment, Google told us that the feature had only ever been > released by accident — that it was experimental, and that it could break > some of the apps policed by it.

Oh, it would definitely break some apps. Considering it would introduce new uncertainty. It's still an amazing feature.

<comment><USER24> Yeah, because checking return codes and error values is overrated

Thanks Google, for making my phone _less secure_.

<comment><USER25> _Yeah, because checking return codes and error values is overrated_

Even Google's own non-AOSP camera is guilty of this too.

The API docs says an app should check for camera capabilities before using them. Still the PhotoSphere feature in Google's non-AOSP camera attempts to set Flash-settings on devices with no flash-capability.

To overcome the issue you have to rewrite the camera-interface code to ignore API calls to SetFlash, SetLightmode etc when not supported, instead of throwing as you should be doing according to the docs.

So yeah. Even Google is guilty of this one.

<comment><USER26> Google is one of the worse offenders when it comes to not following android guidelines. Their apps consistently break back button behavior, don't follow UI guidelines, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> This is a major issue Google needs to deal with in Android IMO. I'm surprised that this feature ever existed in Android because of how coupled permissions are with applications. Since applications request all permissions on install I imagine most developers don't have much conditional code for their failure, unlike iOS where you have to because there's a possibility a user may deny access to a single specific thing, like location data. I'd really prefer to see Android go more towards that. When you look at the permissions an application like Facebook requests on install it's just insane.

<comment><USER28> That's partially because developers are somewhat incentivized to "front-load" their permissions. If you think there's even a chance you might use a permission, even if your app doesn't currently use it, ask for it on the first install.

Then, later, when you actually do want to use it, your app update won't say that you need any new permissions.

<comment><USER29> This doesn't sound right to me. I don't think developers are doing this.

<comment><USER28> I don't think developers _should_ do it, but there's no question that they're doing it.

For example, Facebook requests almost every permission under the sun. But if you look at the average user's permission profile for their Facebook app, they'll only show a tiny fraction of the overall permissions that Facebook originally requested.

<comment><USER27> And that's the really scary part. Is that so many applications do this for just unreasonable permissions. Then you get one of the bad applications that's actually using that data for something nefarious and it destroys trust in the process. For me at least.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> The original intention (as explained by Dianne Hackborn among others) is that if the user sees the app requesting too many capabilities... the user should simply choose not to install the app. Having the user needing to understand all the different capabilities is too much. Having a bunch of pop-ups ( _cough_ Vista) is also bad UI design.

The current set of capabilities is too technical for end users to really understand. This all need to be collapsed into a few broad areas like "tracks your location" that have clear, clickable explanations.

For the privacy paranoid, having a configurable way to just inject false data would be great. Have a single fake IMEI number, for example. Then for apps, the API call doesn't fail, it just returns the fake number.

<comment><USER31> > Have a single fake IMEI number, for example.

How would that work in countries where modifying the IMEI is illegal?

UK law (note prison sentence) [http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2002/31/section/1](http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2002/31/section/1)

I don't know if this is current US law or not. Here's one example [http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi- bin/query/z?c112:S.3186.IS](http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi- bin/query/z?c112:S.3186.IS):

<comment><USER32> That law seems particularly draconian. I assume it's an attempt to criminalise the changing of IMEIs on stolen phones? Reading that is slightly alarming, if only because I wouldn't have even considered that it could be illegal before today. I wonder how many other pieces of legislation I've naively violated?

<comment><USER33> [http://www.amazon.com/Three-Felonies-Day-Target- Innocent/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/Three-Felonies-Day-Target- Innocent/dp/1594035229/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> This is a pretty disturbing trend. Just recently I ran into problems with a TV station's app on iOS that refused to play video without Location Services Enabled. I don't mind a general region being disclosed, but the house-level accuracy of the location data definitely creeps me out. I don't think the general public realizes location can be equivalent to a person's id.

<comment><USER35> > I don't mind a general region being disclosed, but the house-level accuracy > of the location data definitely creeps me out.

This is exactly what I want most of the time. My ISP's servers are usually in neighboring cities, so geoip isn't precise enough, but GPS is too precise for my needs. I just want to disclose what city I'm in. This is enough info to give me useful results (e.g. I search Google for "italian restaurants", it gives me results for my city first) without violating my privacy by giving Google my location habits. Maybe OSes could give an option to reduce the granularity of the location reported, so you could disclose the town or state, but not the exact street, for instance.

<comment><USER36> There are apps to "fake" your location so maybe you can find a suitable one. I never used one but my external Bluetooth GNSS device feeds its accurate location into Android the same way. Please share if you do find a good one!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I think it's a great feature. There have definitely been some apps where I would have liked to use them but they've had permissions requirements that I did not believe the app's core functionality needed.

<comment><USER38> every time I open facebook messanger with gps enabled, I see it querying my location. I hate it so much. Would love to be able to turn that off

<comment><USER39> Have you tried not opening it?

Seriously, if you use any of facebooks stuff, you clearly value something they offer more than your privacy. Everybody, and I'm not just talking about the HN crowd, knows how bad Facebook is when it comes to privacy.

<comment><USER40> This is the sort of sad comment that continually amazes me. Facebook is am important part of the social life of millions (billions?) of people. It isn't feasible to go away from it. It's completely reasonable to have a requirement to use Facebook while not wanting it to be an ass about stuff like constant GPS fixes.

Yeah, sure, don't use Facebook. You're the guy who butts into conversations to tell everyone how you don't own a TV, aren't'cha?

<comment><USER39> > This is the sort of sad comment that continually amazes me.

Frankly, I'm stumped.

There's nothing sad about pointing out that you clearly:

1) Understand the privacy costs associated with Facebook

2) Choose, Yes, Choose to continue using it

What's sad is that you feel it's impossible to continue your social life without it.

<comment><USER40> Sorry to disappoint you, but the rest of America has basically abandoned email and Twitter isn't a serious medium for connections (at least, among non- technical people I know; I have a number of friends who use Twitter on the regular, but only a small few use it meaningfully). If you have friends-- especially non-technical ones--who aren't in your local area (or, a lot of the time, aren't in your workplace) Facebook is very frequently the _only_ way to keep in regular touch with most of them.

 _Network effects matter._ That's not _sad_ , that's simply reality. The lock- in effect is real and puts you in a position where, yes, you have to use it unless you wish to move out of contact with people. That doesn't mean you have to like it and it doesn't mean you can't, as the person you sneered at did, express a desire for its improvement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> It seems really dumb of Google not to just go with the flow here and let the AppOps feature exist. Whack a giant disclaimer on it that it will break stuff, disable Play Store comments and ratings, let the users use it, and collect the giant PR dividend for looking like you care about privacy. They can do all that and lose virtually nothing because such a tiny percentage of people will ever use this feature that it will make no difference to them at all.

On the other hand they can go the other way and take a giant PR hit for virtually no benefit. Out of some sense of stubbornness or beligerance Google often seems to desire to shoot itself in the foot like this.

<comment><USER42> I'd love it if enabling a feature like just caused the selected data points to be returned, but completely bogus (invalid phone number, empty address list, north pole location, etc). It would work for almost everything except network access, and would ensure that it didn't break apps in a bad way.

The all-or-nothing data privacy model of android makes me a bit crazy now that I'm using it on a regular basis for my tablet. That's one thing BlackBerry got right - you can grant _or deny_ individual permissions to applications, and generally could safely assume that application developers knew this and handled security access exceptions when trying to access protected data.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> I hope it wasn't just an "accident" and Google really was working on a way to make it work for both developers and users, and perhaps it was there much like the ART runtime is in there, even though it's not ready for primetime.

I think Google can make it work, but they need to be committed to it. Surely there's a way for the apps to gracefully transition to not needing certain permissions. Google just needs to introduce the proper rules for developers to make this work.

<comment><USER44> I don't have hopes of Google restoring the AppOps functionality in the future. Most of the apps require these excessive permissions because of third-party ad libraries. Google's AdMob library is the most popular of these libraries, being used in 36% of Android apps [1].

[1] : [http://www.appbrain.com/stats/libraries/ad](http://www.appbrain.com/stats/libraries/ad)

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> I would guess this is because cancelling the internet permission can be used to block ads. Ads that generate money for Google.

</comment><comment><USER46> There is a way of bringing it back, however the phone has to be rooted. See here: [http://www.xda-developers.com/android/xposed-module- brings-b...](http://www.xda-developers.com/android/xposed-module-brings-back- app-ops-to-android-4-4-2-and-gives-your-control-of-your-application- permissions/)

</comment><comment><USER38> I'm surprised this feature wasn't in place from day 1. It probably involves almost no implementation overhead on the OS side of things.

Apps, on the other hand, would have an extra error case to deal with, but they should be dealing with other error cases anyways.

<comment><USER47> > "they should be dealing with other error cases anyways"

 _Especially_ when "Access to all your contacts" (or whatever) is really not needed for the application to work correctly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Users of Android should realize that they are the product. If Google gives too much privacy control, advertisers won't pay as much for ads, and Google's core business is ads.

Given a fight between privacy and ad dollars for Google, privacy will lose almost every time (within reason; Google doesn't want to kill the golden goose (i.e., you)).

</comment><comment><USER49> If they put it back with next release, it was accidental.

If not, not.

<comment><USER50> They're claiming the release was accidental. Not the removal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I have to admit, the EFF has just lost a chunk of support from me over this. Google never released this feature - you needed to install some 3rd party app to expose the settings, this alone is enough for anyone of any intelligence to know they are doing something not intended for the general public.

Seriously EFF, get your act together please. I do want to support you, but not like this.

</comment><comment><USER51> I didn't use App Ops. Did it allow a general policy to be set? I can see you can set permission per app from the screen shot.

I'm not sure I buy Google's excuse. Any app worth it's salt should be able to cope with not having the permission set. I'm guessing this was impacting their own core apps.

<comment><USER40> _> Any app worth it's salt should be able to cope with not having the permission set._

That doesn't in any way follow. My Android application handles the expected failure cases enumerated in the API. It does not handle the "permissions granted when the user saw your manifest and agreed to grant those permissions disappear because reasons" case because they're is no reasonable expectation that case is necessary. The APIs don't allow for that case, if it throws a catchable exception at all it'll be an undocumented one, I can't differentiate between it any other exception that might roll out of Android. Why would be anything other than unhandled?

Which isn't to say that data permissions should not be mockable; they should. But your "anything I don't understand is easy" post is straight-up bad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> I'm really disappointed, seems like my next phone won't carry Android! App opps worked great for me and help alleviate some worries about tracking. I could also see which apps actually used their claimed Android features. Many of them claim to use location yet never access it.

</comment><comment><USER47> All these abusive permissions are an excellent opportunity for GNU-licensed software (free, no ads, _only_ strict minimum of required permissions -- all honestly explained) to thrive on Android.

</comment><comment><USER53> I hope this feature will get added again in a future version.

It was not an official feature in KitKat and somewhat breaks the current API, where developers didn't have to check for permissions at runtime.

Android 5.0 maybe?

</comment><comment><USER54> This is very disappointing. I had hoped the release of App Ops as a hidden feature indicated that permissions would be user-revocable in a future release.

It isn't a burden to handle security exceptions.

</comment><comment><USER55> It's been a pretty shitty week for privacy, hasn't it? First the Disqus hack, then the changed Block feature on Twitter, and now this?

<comment><USER56> The changed block feature on Twitter didn't do anything negative for privacy.

<comment><USER55> It took away users' ability to block other users from viewing their tweets? How is that not privacy?

<comment><USER57> I think the point is that if Alice hopes to hide her tweets from Eve by blocking Eve, then Eve can always log out of Twitter to see those tweets again.

Conclusion: Blocking users cannot ever be a privacy feature. You cannot prevent a specific user from seeing your tweets without preventing every un- logged-in person from seeing your tweets.

Edit: Though admittedly, that's a bit of a black-and-white perspective. I suppose blocking a user from seeing your tweets could work in the same way that hell-banning works: If Eve never logs out to check whether you blocked her, she won't find out. It's a bit of security through obscurity: far from ideal, but it might work for some practical problems.

<comment><USER58> After reading lots of discussion about this yesterday, I think the change being negative hinged on one big thing. Nobody truly believed that the old(current) block on Twitter was actually blocking anyone from reading your posts if they were public, but not being able to follow someone had the (imo) underrated benefit of not letting someone directly interact with your tweets.

That added layer of friction meant it was just a little more difficult for group harassment (e.g. retweet someone you don't like, laugh at them, have a group of your followers send harassing tweets even though they're not individually blocked). The only way to do so would be to open Incognito mode or log into another account and then manually RT or find another way to harass someone (like a forum or chat). The suggested new functionality meant that there was more security through obscurity (well not quite, apparently you couldn't add people that blocked you to lists) but reduced that friction in the harasser's favor.

Personally I'm hoping Twitter keeps the old block forever, but then adds something like the attempted new block functionality under the less-of-a- misnomer-name "mute" \- both have their strengths and weaknesses and I don't think one can really replace the other.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Jolla and/or Myriad could make some hay by adding a similar feature to the Android compatibility runtime used in Sailfish.

</comment><comment><USER59> I'm surprised at the EFF. this post seems intended to save face for them rather than anything else.

They had a post recently lauding App Ops although it was never officially released, announced nor documented. And it certainly was not accessible to the average user.

Also it was obviously not compatible with most apps, as they didn't fail too gracefully. Again: App Ops Was Never Meant For End Users, Used For Internal Testing And Debugging Only

[http://www.androidpolice.com/2013/12/11/googler-app-ops- was-...](http://www.androidpolice.com/2013/12/11/googler-app-ops-was-never- meant-for-end-users-used-for-internal-testing-and-debugging-only/)

I do hope Google is working on something similar on an OS level for future releases, but this hack job by the EFF is disappointing and unnecessary.

<comment><USER60> Because using "beta" features from Google is unthinkable?

I think it makes perfect sense to laud even small steps in the right direction (beta-quality features etc.) and comment negatively on steps in the wrong direction (removing privacy options for users).

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> I don't understand this from the EFF first they post a piece lauding an unofficial, deeply buried unannounced functionality, then they condemn Google for removing something that they have never officially released or supported in the first place.

It's their mistake for jumping the gun and discussing something that wasn't officially, the followup is just to save face, but that is really an unfair attack.

<comment><USER62> How would anyone know it was not official until Google said it wasn't meant to be released?

<comment><USER11> What sort of official feature is hidden and can't be accessed via any user interface provided by the vendor?

<comment><USER63> What sort of "we never meant to release this" feature would get merged into stable tree and even get into the production builds that get shipped on the actual retail hardware?

I thought if feature's meant to be solely experimental it'd just sit in a separate feature branch.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How to get a free Nexus 4 16GB with a 2-year AT&T contract - <AUTHOR>

Sign a 2-year AT&T contract, get a free iPhone 4 8GB (Black), sell it on eBay for around $350 (my auction is already at $355 with 2.5 days left), then order that sexy slab of glass and unadulterated Android magic on the 13th.
Three tips! 1. Check the prices on eBay of all the free/low cost phones your carrier is offering. At the moment the iPhone 4 8GB (Black) edged out others, but that could change. Particularly if a lot of people do what I did, although the market seems to have a normal supply at the moment. 2. Don't open the sealed phone box, it's will sell for more if it's "unopened, factory sealed". 3. I don't have a ton of evidence to back this up, but I included photos of taking the phone box out of the AT&T shipping box along with all the AT&T papers, which I believ gives bidders greater confidence and will raise the auction price.
I know this is fairly obvious to a lot of people, but I thought it might be helpful for people that only consider getting free phones on contract. <comment><USER2> Or you could just get a sim from Straight Talk or T-mobile and be free of contracts forever! Then just buy the Nexus 4 directly from google

<comment><AUTHOR> Because Free! Plus T-Mobile is more expensive. You can do $70/m on AT&T (with sms only though Google Voice, etc).

<comment><USER3> What? T-Mobile is $30-60/month and Straight Talk is $45/month. The savings easily pays for the Nexus.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right, I should have been more specific. For my usage needs AT&T was less, if I use GV for sms (saving $20/m). Though the T-Mobile coverage is poor in the places I want it, so it wasn't one I considered anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> But, it's not free. On a two year contract, I'm sure you pay for the phone many times over. A $350 discount maybe.

<comment><AUTHOR> Free _with_ a 2-year contract. Like "Free printer with a new laptop". But yeah, the amount of the monthly service fee that goes toward paying for the "free" phone is probably more than the cost of the phone, thus a profit for the carrier. But if you want a major carrier plan you may as well take advantage of the offer you're paying for.</comment></comment>


Wil Shipley on Apple's Patent Enforcement - <AUTHOR> http://wilshipley.com/blog/2010/03/open-letter-to-steve-jobs-concerning.html

<comment><USER2> Jobs told the world he would do this at the 2007 MacWorld keynote introducing the iPhone:

"We filed for over 200 patents for all the inventions in iPhone and we intend to protect them."

[http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/09/live-from- macworld-2007-s...](http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/09/live-from- macworld-2007-steve-jobs-keynote/)

<comment><USER3> I fail to see how Apple stating their intent to be an asshole makes them any less of an asshole.

Patents are, in the words of @lapcat: anti-competition, anti-free market, anti-consumer. First to market is already a huge competitive advantage.

Patents are a huge part of the reason you're paying so much for health insurance right now. They play a large role in _stifling_ innovation. Imagine you have a great idea that hasn't been done before, but you suddenly discover parts of it have been patented. The patenter isn't doing _shit_ with the idea, yet they have a _20-year_ monopoly on it.

Oh, and they also happen to be a huge monolithic organization with thousands of employees worldwide that is patenting thousands of ideas every year, yet actually implementing only a small fraction of those ideas.

Don't think this happens? You don't know much about patents then. The patent system is one of the best examples of an idea backfiring on itself that I know of. It was supposed to protect the guy toiling in his garage on the next best thing (read: Apple in its infancy), but today it's doing the exact opposite while screwing consumers over to boot.

<comment><USER4> Honestly, I think software people have a largely skewed view of the patent system in general. I used to be in traditional engineering (mechanical/electrical to be precise), and the amount of R&D dollars that has to go into any major innovation is astronomical.

The amount of testing, regulatory costs, tooling costs, etc etc, makes bringing an innovative thing to market very, very expensive indeed. Most of these things are also trivially easy to reverse engineer - the patent is the only thing preventing a company's competitors from cloning the tech, avoiding all of the costs associated, and discouraging innovation overall.

The trick is software patents - software largely doesn't _cost_ a lot, not compared to big heavy machinery requiring onerous certification and government authorizations. 3 guys hacking for a month straight is peanuts compared to, say, the amount of money it would cost to bring a new fuel injection system to market, yet the software these guys produce can be equally valuable from a marketability perspective. This is where patents fall apart - the point of the patent system is to encourage R&D spending by allowing protection of its results, because being simply first to market is not a large enough advantage in many industries to be profitable. It is, however, true in software, so I'm personally dubious of software patents in general.

Just some perspective - I dislike the "patents are evil, always, every way!" kneejerk reaction. It has a very valid role in a lot of industries that aren't well represented or understood by people on HN.

<comment><USER5> Here's an interesting Apple hardware patent:

"It is somewhat surprising that Apple received some of the patents in question, such as the patent on "Conserving Power By Reducing Voltage Supplied To An Instruction-Processing Portion Of A Processor". When you peel away the technical language, the patent basically is talking about saving power by supplying less voltage to a circuit and some common strategies to do so. Not only has then been seemingly done before (prior art), but it also is inherently given by laws of nature (power = current * voltage). If that's patentable, the general concept of die shrinks should be patentable, overclocking would be patentable (watch out Anandtech.com!), and a whole host of other processes made possible by laws of nature."

[http://www.dailytech.com/Apples+Wild+iPhone+Patent+Attack+To...](http://www.dailytech.com/Apples+Wild+iPhone+Patent+Attack+Took+HTC+by+Suprise/article17822.htm)

<comment><USER6> Everything patented or implemented in the history of the world is possible under the laws of physics; the argument that because it is possible, it is not patentable makes no sense.

As must be stated anytime there is an article on here concerning patents, read the claims, not just the title. Most of the titles are so broad as to be meaningless, but the claims must be made specific, as these are what can be defended against infringement.

In this particular case, the claims themselves ( [http://www.google.com/patents/about?id=7CCWAAAAEBAJ&dq=7...](http://www.google.com/patents/about?id=7CCWAAAAEBAJ&dq=7,383,453) ) are vague and extremely obvious, and I would be shocked if every claim hadn't already been implemented and/or patented by someone else. In fact, if you read the application, they were forced to retract the first twenty of their original claims.

I know it has become fashionable to say that the concept of patents in general is flawed, and that patent examiners are sub-human imbeciles. I disagree on both counts; software patents are generally crap and should be done away with to a large extent, but as another commenter has pointed out, many inventions require a great deal more investment and patents provide a great incentive to develop such things. It is unreasonable to expect patent examiners (engineers, not lawyers) to do a perfect job of pattern-matching each application with every similar previous application, considering that patent applications are deliberately worded in a language which is impenetrable to anyone trying to figure out what the hell something _does_. Reform at the policy level is needed, and acting as though the problem is that patent examiners aren't smart enough or that patents in general are a bad idea tends not to be very persuasive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Microeconomics 101: Apple is in the mobile device business. Apple makes money by selling high-end mobile devices. Google Android is an move towards commoditizing mobile devices, as they are a compliment to Google's business [1]. The point of this is simply to increase the costs of making mobile devices.

1\. <http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/StrategyLetterV.html>

<comment><USER8> As far as I know Introductory Microeconomics is much more than that... not intending to disrespect to Joel, but my father, being a formed economist with a master degree, laugh reading this some years ago. Watching two courses on Introductory Economics and trying to analyze a [fairly complex] situation with a great number of players is the same thing as passing as a analyst after watching a course on basic calculus.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Does anyone else think this is less about the patents and more about a boardroom beef between Jobs and Eric Schmidt?

My gut feeling is this is a private argument between two CEOs that has spiraled into the public eye.

<comment><USER10> Apple feels threatened by Google, as simple as that. Its hard to compete against a freemium model. It take years of research and development to make a solid OS (desktop or phone). Remember all the Phone interface before iphone? Yeah, they all pretty much sucked. Based on Apple iphone sales it is fair to say they have a winner and most people likes it.

Google comes up with a free high quality, highly customizable, open source alternative to iphone OS that can turn any phone to a good phone. So all phone manufacturers have to do is concentrate on making a phone that looks like an iphone.

I don't like that fact that Apple is being a patent troll, but at the same time I think manufacturers just copying iphone form factor is being a bit tacky.

Who wants to bet that when ipad ships (and if it is a success) tablet manufacturers will start making tablets that copies the form factor of ipad?

Edit: Relevant to what I wrote earlier - <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8547230.stm>

<comment><USER11> _Apple is being a patent troll_

No they aren't... patent trolls don't produce anything or use the patents they sue over. Apple is clearly using their patent portfolio to produce products.

You can disagree whether or not they should enforce their patents, but don't call them a troll. It weakens your argument.

<comment><USER10> Patent troll is currently a controversial term, susceptible to numerous definitions, none of which are considered satisfactory from the perspective of understanding how patent trolls should be treated in law. Definitions include a party that does one or more of the following:

\- Purchases a patent, often from a bankrupt firm, and then sues another company by claiming that one of its products infringes on the purchased patent;

\- Enforces patents against purported infringers without itself intending to manufacture the patented product or supply the patented service;

\- Enforces patents but has no manufacturing or research base; or

\- Focuses its efforts solely on enforcing patent rights.

\- Asserts patent infringement claims against non-copiers or against a large industry that is composed of non-copiers

\</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment>--- [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_Trolls#Etymology_and_def...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_Trolls#Etymology_and_definition)

I think in this case the fifth definition applies?

<comment><USER12> > \- Asserts patent infringement claims against non-copiers or against a large > industry that is composed of non-copiers

Isn't this what the case will determine? If that is the situation then nobody really knows if there is infringement until the courts decide. They have also only filed against one company right now.

I don't agree with the action, but I don't think they even remotely qualify as a patent troll.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> "Who will want a pale imitation when they could have the original?"

I'd imagine it's the people who want a cheaper option that does most of the things an iPhone does and don't mind the lack of polish.

<comment><USER14> And the people who think the pale imitation's lack of software restrictions is far more important than any amount of polish.

<comment><USER13> As an Android user I wouldn't disagree with you; I was just trying to present an example which the article's author wouldn't feel the need to argue about (software restrictions is a holy war topic, price probably isn't :) ).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> What troubles me about this whole thing is, Apple doesn't NEED to do this. They still have great products, there are still many geniuses who would love to work there, they still have an insanely valuable brand. This sort of thing should be a last resort.

<comment><USER16> course they don't _need_ to, but if they can hurt HTC, isn't that good strategy?

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> This could be less to do with Apple asserting its rights and more to do with protection. Don't forget Nokia is if I remember correctly suing them for patent infringement with Apple counter suing so it could just be for protective purposes as well as legal maneuvering. I guess we'll see where things end up in a couple of years down the line. I doubt this would be cleared up quickly.

<comment><USER18> Apple's patent's are software patents which we all as software people know should never exist.

Nokia's patents are hardware patents, actual inventions related to wireless.

In other words, a light bulb is genuinely patentable but some software code which does (for example only) _if(switch=on)light=true_ shouldn't be patentable and much less enforceable.

<comment><USER19> Some of those patents Apple is using are hardware.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I think the issue is with the government issuing patents like these in the first place. Multitouch...are you kidding. I can see a patent on the technology behind multitouch so you can't open the iphone and steal it. Unlock by dragging an icon. rediculous. I am going to patent the form submit button. "an action by which a user submits information to a back-end server" Then I will sue everyone. Done!

</comment><comment><USER21> Apple has always been vigorous about protecting its intellectual property. Its UI innovations are what keeps it ahead of the pack and not just another generic hardware manufacturer.

The loss of _Apple v. Microsoft_ only means that they cannot protect UI elements under the copyright regime. Which leaves patents and trying to invoke UI elements as trademark/trade dress.

<comment><USER22> When was the last time Apple offensively sued for IP?

<comment><USER21> The last high-profile case was the aforementioned _Apple v. Microsoft_ from 1988.

They've issued plenty of C&D letters and takedown notices to individuals making Aqua-alike UI themes for other operating systems, as well. Not nearly the same threat display as an actual suit, but indicative of Apple being proactive about IP defense.

<comment><USER23> Indeed. It always struck me as odd they didn't C & D Microsoft for the aqua start menu in Vista and XP.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> um, a CEO has an obligation to act in the financial best interests of his shareholders. software patents might suck, but them's the rules. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capitalism>

<comment><USER24> Indeed. It seems to me that using the term "evil" (at least in instances where there's no human harm being done... Bhopal disaster and such aside) about a corporation is unlikely to lead us to clear thinking.

Corporations are artificial entities that are set up with the goal of maximizing shareholder value. The corporations we're talking about exist inside democratic governance and regulatory systems. It seems to me that things would be likely to work best when we all think of corporations as what they are: machines to make a profit, and exercised our powers as voters (and as customers) appropriately.

Now, of course, a particular corporation's behavior may make one more or less likely to want to purchase their products (in other words, their public "persona" is part of their marketing), but to be _outraged_ about legal maneuvers doesn't make much sense to me. Don't buy their products and/or work to change the laws, but let's not be angry at tigers for chasing sweet little antelopes. It's what they do.

I say this as someone who's been outraged before over Microsoft's anti- competitive maneuvers. I think that was probably stupid of me. They were doing just what they should have been doing if that's what they thought would maximize their profitability. Doesn't mean I like their products. But to call them evil was a mistake that I regret.

<comment><USER25> According to dictionary.com, evil means: "1. morally wrong or bad; immoral; wicked. 2. harmful; injurious". Microsoft harmed competitors (and their shareholders) in the marketplace with questionable ethics at best, and was convicted of illegally using their monopoly powers by a U.S. court. "Evil" applies to injustice as much as it does to gross immorality. Sociopathic corporate behavior is just as evil as sociopathic personal behavior.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Great artists sue?

<comment><USER16> sure they do. [http://www.musicradar.com/news/guitars/joe-satriani- speaks-a...](http://www.musicradar.com/news/guitars/joe-satriani-speaks-about- coldplay-lawsuit-185914)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> " _If Apple becomes a company that uses its might to quash competition instead of using its brains, it's going to find the brainiest people will slowly stop working there. You know this, you watched it happen at Microsoft. Enforcing patents isn't a good long-term play: it's the beginning of the end of the creative Apple we both love._ "

theorizing out my ass without thinking much about it here: does anyone else feel like this is the long term lifecycle of every successful company? innovate, scale, stop innovating but keep executing what you know, scale, become too clumsy to innovate, die. But you made a heck of a lot of money along the way.

<comment><USER27> Yep. I think so. When you get big enough not to care, you inevitably stop caring. At some point, you become evil, and the smartest guys usually don't want to work for the evil company.

That being said, I this is a good thing - other companies may be forced to out-innovate Apple and pay as much attention to detail as they do, and maybe these companies will attract all the talent they need to make it happen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> As someone who was using macs even when there was a death watch on the entire company 1997-1999'ish I find all this wringing over patent fights to be silly. For better or worse, it's what companies do in this day and age. It's also hard for me to imagine that Steve Jobs is going to let someone do what Bill Gates did with windows in the mid 1980's (e.g., steal Apple's dominant market position by basically copying Apple's stuff and then selling it for a lower price) again without a fight.

<comment><USER29> Are you kidding me? Every time I hear someone complain about how Apple was wronged by Microsoft in the 1980s, I can't help but roll my eyes. Three words: Xerox-Fucking-PARC.

<comment><USER19> Xerox made a business decision and was paid by Apple. Now, we can debate if Xerox's management made the correct call, but you can't say Apple "ripped them off". It is interesting comparing the situation with Microsoft since most of the problem came from badly written (from Apple's perspective) contracts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I believe the targeting of HTC might also be due to their modified android version with almost exact copies of the gesture from the iPhone (pinch to zoom in browser).

But frankly, that stuff falls in the obvious category to me. And Apple claims to being a great company with awesome originality does feel like re-visioning history.

<comment><USER31> Pinch-to-zoom predates the iPhone. (That doesn't mean you're wrong.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> The patent system is broke. Patents are handed out willy-nilly and only later validated through expensive legal litigation. Somehow the work needs to be done up front, to provide transparency and reduce litigation.

Here's an idea. A tax on any product or service which is covered under a patent. The tax would be placed in government trust. If a patent is successfully invalidated by later litigation, then the court could award the successful litigant all or some portion of the collected taxes.

When the patent expires, the collected taxes is transferred to the Patent Office.

The intention is to increase funding for patent deliberation up front, and to create incentive for awarding enforceable patents.

</comment><comment><USER33> There is something very wrong with the fact that I can only get the 'best' technologies on my phone if I use an Apple product. I really should have the choice between several phones with similar technologies, and each of their respective companies should be spending their time competing to create the _next_ best technology so that everyone can have even better phones in the near future.

But no, my only choice is Apple, because they want to 'protect' their patents. In reality, all they are doing is impeding the natural progress of innovation.

</comment><comment><USER34> Interesting as Apple clearly copied the look and feel of Wil's application Delicious Library of use in thier iBook store application. Granted I doubt Wil holds a patent on that interface, but it does seem a bit hypocritical.

<comment><USER9> I assumed this is licensed from Shipley or they had Shipley do it for them. Apple is good at covert acquisitions and partnerships.

Edit - Looks like i'm wrong. (easier to edit than respond to 4 other posts)

<comment><USER35> Shipley wasn't involved. He posted some angry tweets when he first saw it.

<comment><USER36> "Angry"? IIRC he said they'd clearly copied it and that he'd be pissed if they were using it in a directly competing product. He also acknowledged that there's hardly a better visual metaphor for representing a collection of books.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> This is one of the more childish rants. Apple is a company working in a capitalistic government, Its no different to any other company out there. Defending patents isn't unusual...especially if they have a case (which I feel they do).

I don't agree necessarily with it because it stifles creativity and to some respect stops others from trying new things (or makes them too scared to try something else based on some current technology), but its the same with every other industry, HTC just have to payup or innovate. If they cant do either then they were taking a chance and it didn't pay off.

</comment><comment><USER38> This is a sign that the Apple vs. Microsoft battle is over. Previously, Apple and Google felt the need to cooperate against Microsoft. Apple believes now they have won.

<comment><USER39> I think its because Apple's main sources of revenue (handheld devices like iPod, iPhone...) are no longer conflicting with Microsoft's. Windows and Office are still huge revenue generator for MS and dominate their market.</comment></comment>


Why vegan junk food may be even worse for your health - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200129-why-vegan-junk-food-may-be-even-worse-for-your-health <comment><USER2> There seemed something fishy about this article. I looked up the first stat that caught my eye,

> One study found that 25% of vegans had very low blood iron levels, compared > to 3% of vegetarians and 0% of omnivores.

That just sounded like rubbish – although "one study" has found almost everything – so I clicked the link to the paper, _Nutrient Intake and Iron Status of Australian Male Vegetarians_ which turns out to have involved 39 ovolactovegetarians, 25 omnivores, and 10 vegans. 10 - so already the "25% of vegans" must be nonsense. I couldn't find the 25% figure in the paper, but I think it comes from this:

> One ovolacto-vegetarian aged 23 years and two vegans aged 41 and 36 years > had serum ferritin concentrations below 12ng/ml (11, 8 and 10 ng/ml, > respectively).

At that point I lost interest.

</comment><comment><USER3> Its almost 100% certain - if your vegan diet looks exactly like a standard American diet (using substitutes) - you will gain weight unless you're meticulous about counting calories.

If you want to be healthy on a vegan - do not eat vegan junk food. Being healthy on a vegan diet means eating whole foods - minimally processed. The food you eat should be high in fiber, low in fat, and high in water content. Most of your calories should come from minimally processed starches.

The incomplete protein thing is a myth.

[https://www.forksoverknives.com/the-latest/the-myth-of- compl...](https://www.forksoverknives.com/the-latest/the-myth-of- complementary-protein/) Frances Moore Lappé retracted her statement about incomplete protein.

These articles are essentially Vegan FUD - hoping to get you to worry about health minutia. It tries to poison the well essentially. A whole food plant based diet is a great way to maintain your health.

[https://nutritionfacts.org/video/uprooting-the-leading- cause...](https://nutritionfacts.org/video/uprooting-the-leading-causes-of- death/)

<comment><USER4> The incomplete protein comes from one thing: grains are generally.low in lysine and legumes are generally low in metsomethingine (metionine?). Both are essential. Eating enough for both during a day will even out (the liver stores them) unless you are doing a shitload of exercise.

Anyway, you will have to eat really shit food to not get enough protein. I live in a country with among the world's highest recommended protein intake (Sweden, 15%E - but anything between 10 and 20 is within recommendations) which I reach without even trying.

The WHO and American lower limits are impossible to come down to unless you live on oil and rice or eat ultrashit food.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm willing to sacrifice some karma on this. What a trash article that selectively picks information (some of it not really true and some of it easily overcome in today's world).

Whatever diet you follow, if you don't care about what you eat or don't eat and in which combinations, your health will not be what could be expected for a person of the same profile who cares about what they eat.

Processed (also called "junk") foods aren't going away, whichever diet you look at. People want convenience. Try telling someone to change their diet to be different from what they're used to eating and you'll find out how difficult it is (without other motivations, external support, convenience of picking stuff off the shelves or ordering something, etc.).

Considering the environmental impact of meat (and the current agricultural systems), and considering that it's absolutely impossible for everyone to avoid their supermarkets and convenience foods, these alternatives provide some kind of stop gap even if they may be unhealthy. Point the drawbacks. Give feedback to the makers to improve the products. But don't pretend that the currently available junk foods (that aren't vegan) are better overall, all things considered.

Personally, I avoid processed and junk foods most of the time. I also cook food by myself almost all the time. But I do indulge once in a while on some junk food. And I can feel its adverse effects. I'm under no illusion that this would be the same for others or even possible for others just because I'm able to do it.

<comment><USER6> By eating food that is more unhealthy for you in order to save the planet, it means that you have valued the planet's health above your own. I find this to be irrational. I am all for finding the cleanest, most environmentally friendly way of feeding humans. But if the result is less good for human consumption, then I am simply substituting one evil for another, and nobody can take any moral high ground over it.

<comment><USER7> > By eating food that is more unhealthy for you in order to save the planet, > it means that you have valued the planet's health above your own.

It's entirely possible that these products, in conjunction with a vegan diet, are better overall than a meat-eating diet with similar junk foods. The starting point is this: a generally healthier vegan diet vs. a generally less- healthy omnivorous diet.

> But if the result is less good for human consumption, then I am simply > substituting one evil for another, and nobody can take any moral high ground > over it.

If the conversation of veganism vs. eating meat is centered around the cost/benefit analysis of junk-foods available to both diets, then the moral distinction between the two has already been overlooked. I really don't think there's a generally applicable moral framework that doesn't require veganism.

<comment><USER8> > I really don't think there's a generally applicable moral framework that > doesn't require veganism.

You know, it is one thing to say that you believe it is best, and argue for it vigorously. But if you are unable to imagine someone else holding a differing view in an intellectually and morally self-consistent manner, that says a lot more about your thought patterns than it does about the intrinsic validity of a cause.

<comment><USER9> It's perfectly reasonable to me that some people consider the morality of veganism as settled as the morality of, say, rape. Especially in a world where the vast majority of us only eat meat because we were born into it and it pleasures us.

Frankly, I think the moral superiority of veganism is obvious to most people and very difficult to argue against. I think a lot of the drama is only the fallout of our difficulty squaring those morals with our culturally-backed, deeply-seated, identity-level behavior and our already existing struggle to control what we eat.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Junk food is junk food. It's called "junk" for a reason.

If you're a vegan for health reasons and eating a lot of junk food, you are missing the point of being vegan for health reasons.

<comment><USER11> Junk vegan food is seen by most as a transition food to allow those that eat crap food to keep eating crap food, but without the animal abuse and environmental impact that meat/dairy cause.

Many people have struggled to jump from a traditional western diet straight into a whole grain plant based diet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This article misses two huge reasons for veganism: global warming and animal welfare. It doesn't even seem to try represent vegans fairly, which pisses me off (even though I'm not one).

<comment><USER13> IMHO the biggest argument is that vegan diet is much less resource-intensive. Much more people could be fed globally, because per gram of omni food a multiple of resources (water, soy, space) are used compared to a vegan diet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I know we interpret very broadly what topics are considered "hacker" news here. But I, for one, think the topic of nutrition and particularly vegan nutrition seems to generate a lot more heat than light on HN.

There are plenty of other places online people can go to discuss this. I wouldn't mind seeing this site stick a little closer to its hacker roots.

<comment><USER11> I disagree. This is a huge area which is ripe for innovation. Eating crap food is a huge problem for society and many don't even realise what they are doing to their bodies or the planet.

<comment><USER14> I'm pretty much vegan myself and have been an advocate for plant based diets here on HN many times. But the discussions on this topic don't ever seem to go anywhere productive here with people mostly talking past each other.

There are plenty of other places people that want to debate this stuff can go.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm not vegan but this article is junk.

Junk food is well known to be unhealthy.

A lot of animal fats cooked at high temperature are known to be carcinogenic.

There is widespread agreement in nutritional medicine that most people eat too much meat and not enough fruit and vegetables.

IMO the phrasing "vegan junk food may be even worse" and the whole article sounds like cherry picking and clickbait.

</comment><comment><USER16> >Olive oil, on the other hand, is high in high-density lipoproteins (HDL).

Lipoproteins are the fat transport mechanism found in animals. Oil olive, like all vegan products, does not contain lipoproteins.

<comment><USER17> >Lipoproteins

Is that a bad thing? Quick google suggests it's associated with inflammation

<comment><USER16> AFAIK dietary lipoproteins have no nutritional relevance. Lipoproteins in your body are made by your liver to package fats into tiny droplets that can be transported by your blood. The balance of different types of lipoprotein in your blood is associated with different health outcomes, and diet influences the types of lipoproteins produced. Exactly how important any of this is a contentious subject.

The article probably meant to say that olive oil consumption is associated with higher HDL production, which is associated with better health outcomes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I recently read that saturated fat in coconut oil is actually much better for you than unsaturated fats in regular vegetable oils due to the effect on sugar metabolism[0]. This seems like a total reversal of what is presented in the article.

[0][http://raypeat.com/articles/articles/unsuitablefats.shtml](http://raypeat.com/articles/articles/unsuitablefats.shtml)

<comment><USER18> More on coconut oil specifically: [http://raypeat.com/articles/articles/coconut- oil.shtml](http://raypeat.com/articles/articles/coconut-oil.shtml)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Any manufactured food will be less healthy than natural foods.

I'm rather suspicious of this article. It smells a bit like a meat industry funded piece.

Vegans I know are not trying to replace meat with manufactured substitutes. They eat while foods instead, including spinach and kale, which has a lot of iron.

<comment><USER20> Did you miss the part where they pointed out vegetable sources are often less bio available and less well absorbed?

The article is not funded by the meat industry the BBC is not PBS. The article is talking about a culture where junk food is ubiquitous (the UK) and where vegan junk food is being touted as a healthy alternative.

<comment><USER3> If you think that the BBC is not affected by the beef/lamb industry in the UK - I have a bridge to sell you.

The British media pushes gastric bypass surgery before pushing plants.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Using the word "food" even in "junk food" for ultra-processed stuff like these products seems confusing. I felt a new term would clarify and propose _doof_ , "food" backward, which I explain in this podcast episode [https://shows.acast.com/leadership-and-the- environment/episo...](https://shows.acast.com/leadership-and-the- environment/episodes/319-avoid-doof).

Use of the term has spread, used by Dr. Joel Fuhrman, Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, and more.

</comment><comment><USER22> I think the problem with most vegan dishes in the west is the lack of a cultural context. Unlike food conglomerates, cultures give an unbiased generational assessment of what it means to have flavor and health benefits e.g - vegan burger in america (processed as hell) < vegan dumplings (fresh leeks, vegetables, garlic). Also as a woman you do face low iron levels naturally and vegan diets affect how we menstruate.

</comment><comment><USER17> I'm sticking to a "most meals vegan" approach for now. Not confident I have the skills to cover all the nutritional bases with pure vegan

</comment><comment><USER23> I personally know several vegans that have had minor health problems because of their diet. You can eat a very healthy diet as a vegan, the problem is most people are not educated or motivated enough to get proper variation in their diet.

Its much easier for the general public to eat a varied diet by not restricting themselves to veganism.

<comment><USER13> "Its much easier for the general public to eat a varied diet by not restricting themselves to veganism."

Which nutrients (micro or macro) would you say most people would be missing if switching from a omnivore diet to veganism?

<comment><USER24> From memory, protein, B12 vitamin and iron. Again all these can be avoided with a good understanding of what you are eating while on a vegan diet (buying fortified foods to get B12 for example, or mixing protein sources).

The other thing which I believe (but no idea if scientifically true) is that different people (due to genetics or whatnot) respond to diets a bit differently. A high carb diet for me is a no-no. I get joint pains, tired all the time, break up in acne all over my scalp (and no, I don't eat grains. I eat rice or pasta maybe once a month, most/all is from veggies and fruit). If I go over 100-150g of carbs I have these effects.

My ex-wife had issues with a high protein diet that exarcebated her anxiety and panic attacks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Actually, not having all aminoacids can lead to better aging. Vegan and vegetarian diet lack of methionine, and in animal models the carence in methionine boosted their lifespan.

</comment><comment><USER26> One of the worst articles I've ever read.

1\. Blood levels of DHA vary by a 30 micromole difference between fish eaters and other diet groups suggesting ALA conversion is higher when DHA and EPA intake is lower.(if you are that concerned you can also take a supplement)

2\. Jack fruit is low in protein. Ok eat something else than if you are looking for protein lmao. Every food contains every essential amino acid just in varying levels. They are completely wrong on that pointNo evidence you can't get enough of each on a vegan diet just eat a varied diet and you will be fine. No one gets there protein from a 1 or 2 sources anyways.

3\. They are spreading dangerous misinformation in their third point. Heme iron is absorbed "better" than non heme iron because it bypasses the body's regulatory pathways. The body cannot regulate heme iron when consumed which can lead to elevated iron levels above what the body needs. This is a problem because iron is a pro-oxident and these supraphsiolgical levels of iron cause oxidative stress leading to DNA damage. This is the main reason red meat is classified as carcinogenic. It is also linked to all sorts of health problems like arthritis, diabetes, and heart disease. Heme iron is not good for you and to reccomend meat because of the heme iron content is ill advised at best. As for deficiency on a vegan diet just make sure you are eating your dark leafy greens foods like tofu, beans, and lentils also have sizeable iron contents. No evidence that plant sources are inadequate.

4\. Don't eat out if you are concerned about sodium intake. Pretty much any food from a restaurant, be that fast food or upscale, contains shockingly high sodium contents. Not unique to vegan food in the slightest and to paint it otherwise is blatantly disingenuous.

5\. Cheese is good. No it contains saturated fat and cholesterol even that spooky sodium depending on the type. But it contains healthy bacteria because it is fermented. First, that doesn't nullify the other issues concerning cheese. Second, you can get fermented vegan cheese. Thirdly, the bacteria in cheese has an extremely high die of rate so the amount is actually quit low in cheese to begin with and then if you cook it or prepare it in anyway you will pretty much get no living bacteria into your gut.

6\. Coconut oil is bad. Yes it is and it is worse than other plant based oils but all oils wheather it be cold pressed olive oil or lard are terrible for you. Some are worse than others but they all contain saturated fat, which is proven to raise serum cholesterol levels.

7\. Vegan diets don't contain b12. While lots of processed vegan foods and nut milks have b12 added it still is not that reliable a source. So yes you should supplement with b12 if you are a vegan. 1 pill a day is not difficult.

Processed vegan food is not very good for you yes. But neither is the animal foods it is imitating. No one is eating a beyond burger because it is healthy. They are eating it because it tastes good. Same as the cow burger. If you are trying g to be as healthy as possible a whole food vegan diet which excludes vegan junkfood seems to be the way to go. All if this also ignores the ethical and environmental reasons for going vegan. Dogshit pseudo science article with blatant misinformation.</comment>


Huell Howser Video Archives and Interactive Map - <AUTHOR> https://issigis.github.io/ThatsAmazing/ <comment><AUTHOR> All the map items link to full videos. I'm sure there's more than a few California's Gold fans here.</comment>


Creating Product Tours with Hopscotch - <AUTHOR> http://engineering.linkedin.com/incubator/creating-product-tours-hopscotch

<comment><USER2> Oh, my... this is very, very, very cool. I'm stunned nobody is talking about this. This is probably one of the coolest new projects I've found out about via HN in, like, forever.

I can absolutely see us using this for product tours of two of our projects, which will make our public "demo" servers FAR more useful. The timing is nearly perfect as well, as we're just starting to promote the demos to people a bit.

Our products fall into the "enterprise software" space and are, to be quite honest, a bit complex in some places. Well, it's not so much that they're complex, as some functionality won't be intuitively obvious to people without some guidance and hand-holding. Once you know it's there in the first place, and the basic concept, it isn't hard to use. So for us, this is nearly perfect as a way to let the product itself be the tutorial / guide.

I'd just started recording some screencasts, and we'll probably still want those as well, but this will definitely complement that very well.

All in all, I'd say this is mondo radical!</comment>


Richard Hughes on color management in Linux and GNOME - <AUTHOR> http://libregraphicsworld.org/articles.php?article_id=42

<comment><USER2> These guys have done some nice work in an area that's too easy to overlook. I'm really excited to see how their full screen color management idea works out, since the main problem I used to have with calibrating stuff in Linux is with calibrating each screen in a multi-monitor (dual-head, triple-head, etc.) setup. I've only ever had luck loading profiles for each separate screen when using Xinerama and the proprietary NVidia drivers. Everything else I've tried either makes it impossible to load an ICC profile or will only allow one profile for both screens (since all the screens use the same gamma table with certain drivers), so you can calibrate one monitor or you can calibrate the other one, but you can't have both calibrated.

For right now though, huge 1920x1080 resolution screens are cheap enough now that having just one screen isn't so bad anymore, but it's only a matter of time before you'll pretty much need two or three screens like that. Fortunately, it sounds like these guys will have a real solution worked out within a matter of years.

</comment><comment><USER3> I guess I must be old school. My idea of color management in Linux is setting the colors in my Xterm.</comment>


Ask HN: What is your back end stack? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Python and PostgreSQL. Nothing fancy, but it works.

Why are you asking? What kind of information do you need?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm working on a service [1] that aims to make coding backend easy from your machine. No need to set up local infrastructure, staging environment, or dev environment. Have a copy of your production data and just code and get real- time feedback.

[1] [https://foundryapp.co](https://foundryapp.co)

</comment></comment><comment> enahs-sf Golang, MySQL on ec2. Been using this formula for years. Turns out it works pretty well.

</comment><comment><USER3> LAMP for the win</comment>


Microsoft stock rises on upbeat Q4 earnings - <AUTHOR> https://news.alphastreet.com/microsoft-q4-2018-earnings-call/ <comment><USER2> Impressive results. Solid growth from Cloud and also from LinkedIn.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Gaming revenue increased 39% to $2.28 billion.</comment>


IRS sues Facebook for $9B, says company offshored profits to Ireland - <AUTHOR> https://www.foxbusiness.com/technology/facebook-faces-tax-court-trial-over-ireland-offshore-deal <comment><USER2> Comments moved to [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22363150](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22363150).

</comment><comment><USER3> Meta remark. It took me quite some time to vet Fox Business Network for basic journalistic quality. [0][1][2] Sorely needed because of the direct link with Fox News.

Why not put in an article source with easier to verify journalistic integrity, like the Irish Times [3][4] for example? That took me all of a minute to find...

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/21st_Century_Fox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/21st_Century_Fox)

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fox_Corporation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fox_Corporation) . I've had a short look at their website too.

[2] [https://www.foxbusiness.com](https://www.foxbusiness.com)

[3] [https://www.irishtimes.com/business/economy/facebook-s-9bn-i...](https://www.irishtimes.com/business/economy/facebook-s-9bn- irish-tax-row-due-to-begin-in-us-court-1.4168386)

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

</comment><comment><USER4> Original source:

Paul, Katie (18 February 2020). "Facebook faces tax court trial over Ireland offshore deal". Reuters.

[https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN20C2CQ](https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN20C2CQ)</comment>