CA assembly member introduces encryption ban disguised as human trafficking bill - <AUTHOR> http://asmdc.org/members/a09/news-room/video-gallery/cooper-introduces-human-trafficking-investigation-legislation <comment><USER2> Here is the bottom line -- if smartphones can not be securely encrypted there are a lot of things we can't use them for:

\- Phones aren't going to replace credit cards \- You will need to type in all your passwords each time you use them \- Two Factor authentication will need to be done with a different device \- Healthkit and other medical records will need to be moved elsewhere \- Any profession where there are very serious consequences for leaked communication will no longer be able to do it through their smartphone (lawyers, doctors, executives.)

Basically losing or having your mobile phone stolen will be equal to a burglar pulling up to your house or office and driving away with every sensitive document and record in the back of a van.

No tech company wants to see the end of the mobile revolution. Forget the national interest side to this, anyone supporting broken encryption basically looks like a total moron.

<comment><USER3> Put a space (or is it two?) in front of each line item if you want to make a list on HN. HN interprets this as 'code block' and doesn't reflow the text.

<comment><USER4> Does anyone know why HN doesn't handle linebreaks correctly? I mean, I can't imagine that it's by accident, but I also can't imagine why anyone would do it on purpose.

If it did like HTML and completely ignored linebreaks as extraneous whitespace, that would at least be consistent; if it expanded single linebreaks to doubles, that would be enforcing a layout preference for inter- paragraph blank lines; but "ignore one linebreak, print two linebreaks normally" is just weird.

<comment><USER5> I guess ignoring single linebreaks prevents people from wrapping lines manually (happens surprisingly often on some forums), resulting in an annoying reading experience.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Assemblyman Jim Cooper represents Elk Grove a city of ~160K just South of Sacramento. Apple is the second largest employer in Elk Grove [1] and currently expanding their footprint there by several thousand jobs [2].

Hopefully there's a primary challenger or soon will be, I'll donate.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elk_Grove,_California#Top_empl...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elk_Grove,_California#Top_employers)

[2] [http://www.bizjournals.com/sacramento/news/2015/12/07/someth...](http://www.bizjournals.com/sacramento/news/2015/12/07/something- huge-is-brewing-apples-elk-grove-campus.html)

{note: [2] gives a significantly larger current headcount than [1]}

<comment><USER7> Am I crazy or is it kinda weird that someone like that is already in office in that area?

<comment><USER8> Not weird at all. Sacramento overall is very conservative.

<comment><USER9> I don't really think this is a liberal/conservative issue. I'm what most Americans would call extremely liberal, and yet one of the very few legislators whose views consistently align with my own on matters of encryption and privacy is a tea-party libertarian Republican.

I think the proper political theory axis on which to hang this debate is libertarian-authoritarian, both of which exist in liberal and conservative thought.

<comment><USER10> If you're interested more in these issues, I wrote an article last month about california politics and silicon valley looking in particular around privacy legislation [http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/12/30/losing- figh...](http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/12/30/losing-fight-big- data.html)

<comment><USER9> I most certainly am interested. Thank you for the link.

And for what it's worth, I hope the Al Jazeera America cutbacks don't affect the excellent written journalism you all do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Same problem pretty much with the NY bill. Buy a phone that is unlocked / decrypted at the time of sale. The next step is for the user to login and encrypt. I don't see how this bill actually fixes that. I guess this hinges on the definition of authorized when it comes to encrypting something I own. I hope I don't require authorization to do this.

A few questions I posed to the NY senator earlier this week:

1\. Would you use such a phone knowing that the government / apple / seller of the phone could easily get into it. 2\. Would it be legal for someone in the legal profession to use such a phone without being disbarred for negligence of the right to private communication? 3\. If sold unlocked, and then later locked (i.e. every phone right now), where's the change? 4\. Where's the 4th amendment fit in with this? 5\. What should we do with old phones that don't support this? Dump them in the bay I guess? 6\. Where are the technical experts that are telling you that this is actually feasible to do securely and safely? I'm looking hard, but only seeing negative responses from those that know what their talking about. 7\. Who's responsible for fixing the broken device once the master key gets leaked? The manufacturer? The state of {CA/NY}? 8\. the list goes on.

<comment><USER12> Not just the same problems as the New York bill; the wording of the two bills appears to be nearly identical!

Here's the CA bill: [http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/pub/15-16/bill/asm/ab_1651-1700/ab...](http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/pub/15-16/bill/asm/ab_1651-1700/ab_1681_bill_20160120_introduced.html)

Here's the NY bill: [http://legislation.nysenate.gov/pdf/bills/2015/A8093](http://legislation.nysenate.gov/pdf/bills/2015/A8093)

<comment><USER13> Dude the last paragraph is almost word for word. Who wrote these??

<comment><USER14> NSA? FBI? I'm sure they're pretty happy with them.

I'm going to make it clear to Jim that I'm going to give money to his political opponents in his next election.

<comment><USER13> Nah this will only benefit local cops. Those big guys have network sniffing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> For a long time gun owners have had the singular pleasure of having massively intrusive, incoherent regulations written by people with no technical understanding of the subject matter. It's nice to finally have some company.

<comment><USER16> Please don't hijack the discussion with flamewar-prone tangents. HN guidelines:

"Please avoid introducing classic flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say about them."

<comment><USER17> It's not strictly a tangent. The GP pointed out that the tactic being tried here is "tried and true" and well understood by many. Although the GP should have gone further and said that we should all be against such tactics regardless of which side of any issue we should find ourselves on. It's a very underhanded, anti-democratic scheme.

I've also seen guns and gun control discussed many times on HN without flames. So I'm not quite sure it qualifies as a "classic flamewar topic" on HN even if it qualifies as such among the general population. I would also argue that the GP did, in a sense, have something new to say about it.

<comment><USER18> It also gives us an answer, the National Encryption Association should be formed with the exact same tactics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> "Full-disk encrypted operating systems provide criminals an invaluable tool to prey on women, children, and threaten our freedoms while making the legal process of judicial court orders useless."

<comment><USER20> I saw that and I couldn't help rolling my eyes. By that logic, _door locks_ also provide human traffickers the tools to involuntarily imprison innocent women and children. So _clearly_ we need to outlaw locks on doors, everywhere.

<comment><USER21> I understand the point you're making, but the quote in full context is that it provides the tool _while making the legal process of judicial court orders useless_. The emphasis on the latter part is kind of where legally they have a point that there is a difference. You can order someone to just open a lock, bash down a door, or break in through a side window/thin wall. With even decently implemented encryption on a device, no such alternatives exist for law enforcement.

To be clear, I'm against the inclusion of backdoors/side-channels/key escrows for anyone on the basis that it threatens the security of everyone for the chance that law enforcement might glean something off a phone. But I do think its important to be realistic and acknowledge that there are situations in which encryption impedes the usual investigative process for law enforcement, and that many time sensitive cases may result in serious harm to individuals as a result.

I do believe that most people calling for backdoors do so in bad faith, but it's not difficult to imagine actual scenarios in which such complaints do impede an investigation. Coy reductio ad absurdum statements really don't help the discussion at large along in either direction.

<comment><USER22> Burying your secrets in a hole in the desert and never revealing the location makes the legal process of a judicial court order useless too. Should it be illegal to hide things really well?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This is the game. There will never be a "Prohibiting Encryption and Preventing Privacy Act." It will always be a ostensible act of patriotism and protection. Combatting terrorists, child molesters, sex traffickers, drug cartels, money launderers, and other easy-to-demonize scary folk.

</comment><comment><USER24> Here's the actual bill: [http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/pub/15-16/bill/asm/ab_1651-1700/ab...](http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/pub/15-16/bill/asm/ab_1651-1700/ab_1681_bill_20160120_introduced.html)

<comment><USER25> Includes leased phones, and any phone shipped to a California address. So any legit purchased phone basically would need to have a key escrow system in place by either the manufacturer or OS vendor, it wouldn't just be Apple and Google (as California companies) it includes Microsoft Windows Phones also. That sounds like it affects interstate commerce.

Also interesting, the language only says "smartphones" so this doesn't include devices that aren't smartphones. OK tablets and laptops aren't included then. But what is a smartphone? What about an iPod Touch? Only if the device has a GSM/LTE/CDMA radio in it is a smartphone?

<comment><USER26>
        "Smartphone" has the same meaning as in Section 22761.

[http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi- bin/displaycode?section=bpc&gr...](http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi- bin/displaycode?section=bpc&group=22001-23000&file=22760-22761)

        22761.  (a) For purposes of this section, the following terms have
        the following meanings:
           (1) (A) "Smartphone" means a cellular radio telephone or other
        mobile voice communications handset device that includes all of the
        following features:
           (i) Utilizes a mobile operating system.
           (ii) Possesses the capability to utilize mobile software
        applications, access and browse the Internet, utilize text messaging,
        utilize digital voice service, and send and receive email.
           (iii) Has wireless network connectivity.
           (iv) Is capable of operating on a long-term evolution network or
        successor wireless data network communication standards.
           (B) A "smartphone" does not include a radio cellular telephone
        commonly referred to as a "feature" or "messaging" telephone, a
        laptop, a tablet device, or a device that only has electronic reading
        capability.

It seems like a tablet with a cellular radio could arguably fit that definition as well.

<comment><USER25> (iv) mean LTE or newer. That suggests NOT tablets, including iPod Touch like devices, because it must have all of the listed features.

It also, weirdly, suggests not anything 3.5G or lower. What? Why?

And in any case, Apple's end-to-end encrypted iMessage does not depend at all on such a cell network of any version. It does work on WiFi only just fine. So why are these devices exempt from terrorists and kiddie porn sickos and human traffickers?

If you're going to be serious about catching that, it seems like everything that does full disk encryption would be broadly included. Desktop and laptop computers, and tablets. Why does Layer 1 matter to this?

<comment><USER26> iPad does has LTE.

<comment><USER27> Not mine. I specifically got the model without cellular.

<comment><USER26> Sure, I was talking about iPads with cellular.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Cryptography yields two components: encryption/decryption, and authentication. Break one of those, and they're both broken. And that's what really bothers me about all of these politicians who only fixate on the encryption part. They're oblivious to extreme risk introduced by breaking authentication.

<comment><USER28> While you raise a point, I am not sure that the law in a heavy regulation environment will be that specific. For example, in the area of ham radio encryption is strictly forbidden and has been for years and yet cryptographically secure authentication is still arguably acceptable as long as it does not "obscure the meaning of the communication". I wrote about this in 2004 while I was a student and posted on my blog in 2009 at [https://rietta.com/blog/2009/08/17/authentication-without- en...](https://rietta.com/blog/2009/08/17/authentication-without-encryption- for/).

To my knowledge the idea has not taken hold as the ham radio hobby moves slowly and the need for strong authentication is not typically a felt need of most operators who want to chat broadly and make new friends. It's part of the ham radio culture as a hobby.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> >Full-disk encrypted operating systems provide criminals an invaluable tool to prey on women, children, and threaten our freedoms

"If You're Typing the Letters A-E-S Into Your Code You're Doing Wrong"

<comment><USER30> Sorry, I don't follow. How is the quote you highlighted related to not rolling your own crypto?

<comment><USER31> He changed the quote from "doing it wrong" to "doing wrong".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> It's a political tactic that's been used _forever_.

When the legislature wants to do something unpopular (or even _stupid_ which is what this is), associate it with the "Evil Of The Era" and propose the bad legislation as the solution to said evil. These days, popular "Evils" are Human Trafficking, Child Porn, and "Terrorism". The first two evoke extreme emotion of crimes committed against the most innocent of victims, so they're the _best_ choice in this scenario. In the 80s-90s it was anything to reduce "Crack Babies" or win "The War on Drugs".

It's an old trick -- when people talk about logical limits placed on the first amendment, you'll hear the phrase "Shouting Fire in a Crowded Theater". Most of those who utter it don't realize that this phrase originated as part of a ruling that had nothing to do with "fire" or a "crowded theater" but was made to curtail the _dangerous speech of opposing the draft during World War I_ [1].

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_fire_in_a_crowded_the...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_fire_in_a_crowded_theater)

</comment><comment><USER14> The bill says "...shall be capable of being decrypted and unlocked by its manufacturer or its operating system provider."

It doesn't say _how_ , and it doesn't give a time frame.

So: Provide an API to accept a key. Allow two key attempts per second. Start with key 0x0000..000, next try 0x000..0001. This is guaranteed to complete, you just have to be prepared to wait a while.

(Yes, I know that courts are unhappy with this kind of thing. But the bill is a crappy bill, in many regards).

<comment><USER28> Yeah, that's not going to work. Just like Mr. Levison giving the FBI the key printed in tiny font did not fly from the court's point of view.

Lavabit found in contempt for trolling the FBI with 4-point font [http://www.dailydot.com/crime/ladar-levison-lavabit- founder-...](http://www.dailydot.com/crime/ladar-levison-lavabit-founder- denied-appeal/)

<comment><USER17> That was contempt of court, though; in which he was ordered to do something, and by delivering the 4-point font basically failed to do as the court ordered.

The tactic suggested by the GP is similar, but distinct, and has a better chance of working because it isn't an attempt to circumvent the court itself. It's an attempt to have the law seen as vague and therefore void. Still, IMO, not likely to work, but it's not exactly like the Lavabit case.

<comment><USER14> Yeah, a better written bill would include "Within 48 hours" or "Within three seconds of a request from someone whose third cousin is a dog-catcher who can spell 'Lawful request'" (too much to hope for "Within heat-death of the known universe").

These two bills are actually clever probes, IMHO.

What are the chances they run afoul of interstate commerce provisions?

But hey, C compilers are tiny. It's no problem to put one on a phone.

I would:

\- Comply. Rip encryption out of the OS. [keep reading!]

\- Make a plug-in for the crypto. That probably already exists in the form of a library, but in any event it doesn't seem hard.

\- Have a system update -- one that is fetched very, very early in system setup -- download and install that plugin. To avoid the possibility that downloads can be blocked, you release the source code and give existing phones, already in many hands, the ability to compile that code on the device (some handwaving here, but you can probably make that secure, for specifically that plugin, and maybe exactly that version of the source). You need a way to distribute bug fixes, but again you're dealing with source that's not part of the OS.

That source-level plugin isn't an operating system, and we're back in territory where the government has to ban specific software components, and maybe ban source code (which is going to be a really difficult 1st Amendment argument).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> What a severe irony for this idiot to be on the _Privacy and Consumer Protection Committee_.

</comment><comment><USER34> So the 2nd crypto war has move beyond mere fighting words. The long term battlefield is usually the court of public opinion, so I hope Silicon Valley recognizes this challenge to their power. Tech firms should have been attacking this rhetoric hard when it started, but accusing politicians of not understanding math/crypto has been a common response.

Do you want crypto to work? Or do you want to be forced to replace crypto with security theater? Is your business actually willing to _actively_ protect a free internet? Or is it easier to assume this is "someone else's problem"?

I guess we will see which companies defend themselves, and which companies think being a collaborator is more profitable?

</comment><comment><USER29> so basically there should be 2 components sold separately - "dumb GSM connectivity module" and "smart OS module" (iPod basically). The latter not having cell phone connectivity wouldn't be subject to that law and thus can have FDE/whatever. The GSM module can just attach to the "iPod" back like external battery.

<comment><USER35> I have a "mifi" device sittin in my coat pocket right now. Even better than attaching to the back, and readily available - it takes a sim card and creates a wifi hotspot for all your devices, and can optionally export a media library or network drive to all connected devices.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> The "shall" wording is going to keep this in courts for years, even if it does pass.

Shall is the source of more litigation than any other single word in the English language. It can always be debated because no one knows if it reliably means "can", "must", "may", "might", "will", "should", "ought to", or "is allowed to".

All the above uses can be supported with evidence. Because language evolves.

It's killer word for any law or contract and guaranteed to be disputed.

I am not a lawyer, btw.

But if this somehow passes, it will get tossed because of the wording.

<comment><USER37> I haven't done any research or anything, but I can't imagine any reasonable person interpreting "shall" to mean "can", "might", "may", or "is allowed to".

Shall means "will" or "must". Like any uncommon word I'm sure it's frequently used incorrectly, and I recognize that language evolves, but I have difficulty believing those other uses have become prevalent enough to be considered valid.

<comment><USER36> I have done the research. It can mean all of the things that I mentioned.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Would Apple have the balls to stop selling phones in California?

<comment><USER13> They have the balls to lie.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Where the hell is Anonymous in all this? Shouldn't they be out there doxxing and haxxoring and whatever it is that they do to these kinds of people? I'd figure if someone stands up and says "Encryption should be illegal", they probably don't encrypt jack shit themselves, and they're probably easy targets. They might even take the hint and say "shit, I should have encrypted my internetz" and change their stance. Eh, doubtful.

</comment><comment><USER40> What impact might this have on tax revenue from said controlled devices no longer being purchased in California?

Do we start referring to encrypted devices without back doors as contraband?

<comment><USER26> Unfortunately, the vast majority of consumers don't understand what this means and will continue to purchase their phones from the local Apple/AT&T/Verizon/Sprint/TMobile Store.

<comment><USER13> Most people also buy the "nothing to hide" argument, in the interest of not making trouble.

<comment><USER41> Whenever someone brings up that argument, I ask them to let me see their phone, PC, etc. and all the data on it. The majority will ask why, to which I respond, "you have nothing to hide, right? So what's the deal with me seeing it?"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Someone needs to make a big deal about how this is bad for business because it allows the Chinese/Russians/French/Welsh/whoever to steal American Innovations(TM) and then write to whomever this person will be challenged by in upcoming elections with "x is anti American Business" talking points. Both sides can play "Won't someone think of the children?"

<comment><USER35> If you want to play that dirty, rather than make statements about it, ask rhetorical questions about _why_ the people proposing this wants to give the Chinese and Russian an easier way of stealing silicon your secrets, and ask what they've got to hide.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Might as well try to ban speaking pig latin in public.

</comment><comment><USER44> I'm waiting on the day something like this gets proposed in all of the EU states, for the same BS reasons.

As a matter of fact, I'm certain that current leaders of the EU countries who publicly invited immigrants to their state (we all know the most prominent one), was considering this as a easy way to change the privacy laws - and be applauded for it.

</comment><comment><USER45> Fair question, if I wanted to buy a phone now, which manufacturer/OS comes with ability to do FDE and said party does not have a copy of the key?</comment>


Human Rights Advocate Recounts How Iran Tried To Hack Her Email - <AUTHOR> http://www.rferl.org/content/interview-iran-rights-/25405025.html

<comment><USER2> So, she used the same password on her gmail as she did on that site? Wow, someone needs to teach journalists how not to reuse passwords. Or at least have one dedicated for email.

<comment><USER3> It actually sounds like she was given a login to the phishing site, which then proceeded to request her Gmail address & password.

That would be a good example of how, for many people, when a trusted authority asks you to do something you are less likely to question it.

 _...he indicated that the material that he had prepared was ready for my review and that his assistant would be sending to me login information to a website that was not yet live online. And I received the login information -- this is all the first week of April -- and I logged in, and I put in -- as requested -- I put in my e-mail address and then put in my password._

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is this any different than the NSA tapping the German chancellor's phone? (Other than the NSA actually succeeded)

<comment><USER5> The German chancellor is in charge of a government, it's completely acceptable for anybody to listen in on their communications without their permission.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Like most (all) western countries do to tons of human rights advocates operating on their premises?</comment>


Ask YC: Linux-VServer vs. Xen - <AUTHOR> It looks like Dreamhost is going to start providing what they are calling "Private servers" (http://www.dreamhostps.com) using Linux-VServer. Does anyone have thoughts on this approach vs. using Xen for virtual servers ala slicehost? (http://www.slicehost.com) <comment><USER2> Single-image systems like Linux-VServer (or FreeBSD jails) are more efficient than fully virtualized systems like Xen (or VMWare); however, they're not as secure (the userland-kernel interface is far wider than a kernel-virtualizer interface, so there's far more potential for escape-from-jail bugs) and the fact that there are more shared resources increases the potential for a busy website to cause other sites on the same physical hardware to slow down.

Personally, I wouldn't hesitate about using a jailed system for testing purposes, but I'd want a fully virtualized instance (or real hardware) for a production site.

</comment><comment><USER3> Linux-VServer is an odd choice, since it appears to be less actively maintained and less popular than OpenVZ/Virtuozzo.</comment>


The Mighty Airship - <AUTHOR> http://lupoleboucher.livejournal.com/50384.html#cutid1

<comment><USER2> The Edwardian sentimentalist strikes again. It takes a strange view of history indeed to suppose that strapping a school bus onto a great big sack of _hydrogen_ is somehow a regal and wonderful technology of the past that we should all pine for, wondering where we went wrong with that "aeroplane" nonsense.

Cool photos though...</comment>


Optimizing Nginx TLS Time To First Byte - <AUTHOR> http://www.igvita.com/2013/12/16/optimizing-nginx-tls-time-to-first-byte/

<comment><USER2> SSL stapling can reduce the overhead as well, simple nginx config:

      http {
        ssl_stapling on;
        ssl_stapling_verify on;
        ssl_trusted_certificate /etc/nginx/ssl/stapling.trusted.crt;
        resolver 220.127.116.11 18.104.22.168 valid=300s;
        resolver_timeout 15s;
      }

We [https://commando.io](https://commando.io) use GoDaddy SSL (sigh, face- palm), so the contents of stapling.trusted.crt is:

       http://pastebin.com/0H0i09Pn

<comment><USER3> You really should use a local caching resolver, even if you set your upstream to google's resolvers.

Just install pdns-recursor and you're good to go.

<comment><USER4> If nginx caches for 300s and that's the only reason you are installing pdns- recursor, that's unnecessary technical debt in your production pipeline.

<comment><USER2> Agree, won't DNS do this caching automatically with valid=300s?

<comment><USER5> I believe that nginx will do the caching with valid=300s.

"DNS" does not let the client set the record TTL, and "DNS" in this case would be a round-trip request to the Google DNS servers listed in the config snippet - precisely what it was suggested be avoided.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I like TLS False Start and other, similar speculative algorithms. Speculative execution is especially interesting in circuit design!</comment>


Apple makes zsh default shell on macOS - <AUTHOR> https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208050 <comment><USER2> Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20090193](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20090193)

</comment><comment><USER3> This isn't going to fix the fact that they are shipping a 12 years old version of bash. How many scripts with `#!/usr/bin/env bash` are there out there?

Bash is the least worst language for bootstrapping since the alternative is POSIX shell which is even more difficult to get right.

The biggest issue is that Bash 3.x arrays don't work well with `set -u`.

<comment><USER4> Bash went GPLv3. Apple will never ship GPLv3. Persuade bash to relicense and they might consider it. Otherwise, goodbye bash.

<comment><USER5> Nothing wrong with GPL3. I'd rather use an OS that's willing to ship essential software. The OS is there to serve the user, not make their lives more difficult because of petty licensing concerns.

<comment><USER6> > Nothing wrong with GPL3 > ... > petty licensing concerns

Apple's lawyers probably think different.

You can install all the GPLv3 software you want on your Mac (Macports and homebrew make it easy). But Apple made it clear that they are not going to ship anything GPLv3 licensed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I thought everyone was using the fish shell on the Mac. :)

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

<comment> yoz-y I have used fish for a few years and quite liked it, but ultimately I think using zsh with oh-my-zsh or similar bundle is better because of bash compatibility.

I think if one only ever uses their own computers fish is better, but having to switch contexts, having to have different configurations and so on is a pain and not very productive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I can recommend the GRML ZSH config to go with ZSH [https://grml.org/zsh/](https://grml.org/zsh/)

Works out-of-the-box for me on most machines (i.e. I don't maintain shell settings besides downloadding GRML zsh regularly) and it is not as big as oh- my-zsh.

<comment><USER9> From looking at it, this seems designed for Linux and not MacOS.

If you're looking to replace oh-my-zsh with something sane and fast, zprezto has been my go-to choice.

<comment><USER8> will have a look at zprezto, but I wonder how its "designed for Linux", or at least how that would matter. Been using this template for years on Mac and have not had the impression that I would be missing out on things.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Is there any news on if apple is keeping python 2 and/or adding 3 by default?

<comment><USER11> Scripting Language Runtimes Deprecations Scripting language runtimes such as Python, Ruby, and Perl are included in macOS for compatibility with legacy software. Future versions of macOS won't include scripting language runtimes by default, and might require you to install additional packages. If your software depends on scripting languages, it's recommended that you bundle the runtime within the app. (49764202) Use of Python 2.7 isn't recommended as this version is included in macOS for compatibility with legacy software. Future versions of macOS won't include Python 2.7. Instead, it's recommended that you run python3 from within Terminal. (51097165)

Source: [https://developer.apple.com/documentation/macos_release_note...](https://developer.apple.com/documentation/macos_release_notes/macos_10_15_beta_release_notes)

<comment><USER12> good decision. macos shouldn't come with a python version installed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> If you like zsh, you should check out the "oh-my-zsh" addon, which features 200+ optional plugins (rails, git, OSX, hub, capistrano, brew, ant, php, python, etc), over 140 themes to spice up your morning, and an auto-update tool:

[https://github.com/robbyrussell/oh-my- zsh](https://github.com/robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh)

<comment><USER14> Or prezto if you just like a few sane extras without bloat.

<comment><USER15> I remember trying oh-my-zsh in the past and over time having its performance crawl to a halt. Been rocking zprezto for years

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> No surprise. This has been coming for a long time.

</comment><comment><USER17> it doesn't say why. is it a BSD vs GNU thing?

<comment><USER18> It's a licensing thing yes. Current bash's are GPLv3, zsh is MIT.

A pity they didn't make a structured output shell rather than traditional regex scraping but their main concern is compatibility, and zsh fits nicely.

<comment><USER19> PowerShell is available for Linux & Mac now if you're looking for a structured, object-oriented shell on your Mac.

<comment><USER20> Doesn't really fit into the posix compatibility bucket though. If that hadn't had been a concern then I imagine fish is the most Mac-like shell out there.

<comment><USER18> I'm not sure how much POSIX matters anymore. Linux and MacOS determine 'standard' Unix behavior by their market share - I can understand disliking this though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> It should have been fish shell. :(</comment>


Jason Calacanis' Take on Google's Algorithm Change - <AUTHOR> http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/algorithm-change-launched/#comment-708686

<comment><USER2> So what Jason is saying is that they're actually going to earn their Google rankings, and thus admitting that before now they hadn't? Now they can say with a straight face that their results are good, instead of lying about it?

I mean, I had that impression about Mahalo already, but it's weird to see him admit it's true like that.

<comment><USER3> A little cynical are we? I like that. :-)

We had pages in the past that were not spam, but I would say they were on the ehow "lighter" side (think < 300 words.

We now are focused on getting experts into our studio and building content around their expertise. This is about 10-25x more expensive, but I don't see any other choice. Google is going to smack down anyone who makes them look bad by trying to rank lower-quality stuff.

We rank only 5th for how to play guitar chords, but ask yourself would rather use this page: <http://www.mahalo.com/how-to-play-guitar-chords/>

or ones in front of it like: <http://guitar.about.com/library/weekly/aa071200e.htm> and [http://www.guitaralliance.com/guitar_lessons/guitar_chords/i...](http://www.guitaralliance.com/guitar_lessons/guitar_chords/index.htm)

out page is clearly the best.... over time google will move us up i'm sure.

big loser in this is ehow for going wide and not deep.

<comment><USER2> Don't think of it as cynicism, it's just my interpretation of what appears to be a mixed message. You and Mahalo have caught a lot of flack for being a content farm, a scraper site, an ad-strewn wasteland, etc, and you've denied those claims, always seeming like your argument was 'Mahalo has good content and we're totally legit'.

Now the message I get is 'we're getting rid of the junk content and focussing on making good, solid pages that will make people stop searching and stick around'.

I suppose my interpretation could be off; I'm not referencing any particular quote of yours, so I may be remembering 'we don't have junk content' as 'we're not spamming our content, whether you think it's junk or not'.

To answer your question, the Mahalo page you linked looks great (and the amount of content is almost overwhelming at first glance). This definitely isn't the Mahalo I remember, and reading your comments here (and what others have said about your comments elsewhere), you don't sound like the Jason Calcanis I've heard so much about. Evil robot twin? Or genuine individual concerned with making good content people want? Only time will tell, but if you're not here to harvest all our organs I'm looking forward to seeing what you have planned.

<comment><USER4> No, your interpretation isn't off and Jason didn't answer your question.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I love how this sits right next to "How Organized Spam is Taking Control of Google's Search Results" on the homepage.

You couldn't make it up.

</comment><comment><USER6> Previously Mahalo was thousands of long tail pages like "How do I make pepperoni pizza at home?". Now it's going to be thousands of long tail _videos_ like "How do I make pepperoni pizza at home?"

That doesn't seem very different to me. Maybe I'm missing something?

<comment><USER7> Nothing wrong with it as long as it actually intelligibly describes how to make a pepperoni pizza at home.

At least video is harder to scrape from another site or auto-generate, which is where the only real problems are.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Saw Jason live at DLD talking about "the pivot" it seemed like a genuine change backed up by some very quality video snippets from the new site... much different than his internet persona I had read about in the past. He even apologized to the crowd for "talking too much" when he was younger. A new leaf for sure.

</comment><comment><USER9> Is pivoting the new synergy?

</comment><comment><USER10> This is not Jason Calacanis's take on the Google Algorithm Change. This is just Jason Calacanis spamming for his website. He's saying, 'It's funny you mention content spammers—let me tell you some more about the NEW Mahalo!'

</comment><comment><USER11> If it wasn't for TWiT I'd have never of heard of Mahalo.

</comment><comment><USER12> My feelings about Jason Calacanis evolved similarly to the way they did about Gary Vaynerchuk, just slower. With Gary, you see him going HiEveryBodyThisIsGaryVay-NER-Chuk!-and-this and you're kind of turned off, but you warm up to him because he's a good guy doing a unique style, and he's got serious chops/substance beneath the style.

Similar for me with Calacanis. It was Peldi from Balsamiq linking to an article of his talking about how to deal with journalists smartly that turned my opinion around, and since then I've come to respect the guy a whole lot. He's got a strong style that rubs people the wrong way at times, but he's a super savvy businessman and also seems like a genuinely helpful person.

<comment><USER13> The business he actually runs turns off many people more than his personal style.

<comment><USER14> Agreed. In everything I have read about him it seems perfectly clear that he's happy to game search engine ranking algorithms to place highly in their results. Moreover, driving volume to his site(s) in this way is his main concern.

But unfortunately for the people coming to his sites there really isn't all that much content to see. Perhaps this has changed recently - if so, I'd love to see an example (just one!) of a page on Mahalo which gives better information than Wikipedia (for example)...

<comment><USER15> Here is a quite lengthy Mahalo GTA4 walkthrough that includes a bunch of videos as well:

<http://www.mahalo.com/grand-theft-auto-4-walkthrough/>

Here is the GTA4 Wikipedia page:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Theft_Auto_IV>

<comment><USER3> Our video game team is amazing.

We are making 900 high-quality videos a week. 105 people at Mahalo now, and we will add 100 more this year. We should be able to hit 3k videos a week this year.

The next wave of videos we create you guys will actually be using.... so I'm looking forward to hearing what people think of our lynda.com-like stuff. :-)

<comment><USER16> Do you ever think that maybe Mahalo isn't working out and perhaps it is time to give it another go with a different product? It's good to evolve but at some point, throw in the towel. I'd say the same for Seesmic. It's admirable, but at some point after many reinventions, you've just got to step back and examine honestly if you're wasting talent and time on a losing ticket. There's very little about Mahalo that makes it attractive other than the great design. When does anyone say to themselves "Hrm I bet Mahalo has this information" or "I should check Mahalo.com." However if you do plan to stick it out until you're bankrupt you might want to think about employing librarians. Helping resolving information needs is what they are best at.

<comment><USER3> Well, did you watch my talk about pivoting from DLD? In that talk I outline how Mahalo's human-powered search vision got us to the top 400 sites, but that it wasn't growing and the users wanted more how to/instructional content.

We iterated, and mahalo is a top 200 site that also gets 1M+ views a day on YouTube. yes, 365M views of our 23k videos every year.

I do think your question "i should check Mahalo" is an EXCELLENT one. Human- powered search doesn't have that draw, but I think _free_ instructional videos will.

If you wanted to speak Russian or make perfect grilled cheese or solve a video game you would do well to come to Mahalo.com.

Direct traffic is the real test of a sites worth... and we're very focused on growing that with high-quality instruction.

We have tons of money and tons of revenue... we can't go bankrupt if we can easily make a profit can we? :-)

Talk to me in one year and we'll be in the top 100 sites and have 100M+ views a month on YouTube. :-)

<comment><USER16> That sounds pretty positive actually. I'm glad that it's working out for you. My impression was looming disaster, I was wrong. :P

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Kudos for this pivot, the video is worth watching. Data driven decision making at its finest.

</comment><comment><USER18> Brilliant!</comment>


The TLA+ Video Course by Leslie Lamport - <AUTHOR> https://lamport.azurewebsites.net/video/videos.html <comment><USER2> TLA+ is fantastic. Knowing it is like having superpowers. While others are mortally afraid of concurrency, you just spec your system & go. It also gives a huge decrease in cognitive load when you're implementing your system against a TLA+ spec. The hard stuff is already done. You can just glance at the spec to see what preconditions must be checked before an action is performed. No pausing halfway through writing a function as you suddenly think of an obscure sequence of events that breaks your code.

<comment><USER3> Are there any good tools around like c# codegen or verifiers?

<comment> a-saleh Last time I asked aound this, the replies I got were roughly:

1\. this is not the focus of TLA 2\. TLA is for high-level protocol specification, there probably wont be 1 to 1 mapping to code

But I know i.e. some AWS team used TLA in their project, and I would like to finde their workflow, because it is not really clear to me, how do you usually get from "This spec checks out" to "I have a working code"

<comment><USER2> You translate it yourself ;) you're a programmer, go program!

More seriously, the main classes of bugs TLA+ defends against are logic hole bugs and concurrency bugs - spec/design bugs, the most insidious kind! That's what AWS used it for; there is no machine-enforced correspondence with the code. People get really hung up on this, but after they try to formally verify something they see the wisdom of the separation. Proving code correct is _extremely_ time-intensive. In contrast TLA+ gives you great bang for your buck.

And to repeat - translating a TLA+ spec to code is not an error-prone process and is well, well within the grasp of software engineers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Favorite comment from previous discussions: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13919274](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13919274)

> Kind of an out of left field question: Lamport appears in a little square of > video occasionally overlaid on the slides and sometimes full screen. As far > as I can tell, he never recycles an outfit and seems to switch head gear > regularly. The switch is often between segments that are quite short.

> It feels almost like an intentional joke. Do you think that is the case? Or > just even short segments were recorded on different days and Lamport like to > wear all sorts of hats? That one where he's wearing a beanie and indoor > sunglasses seems particularly intentional.

And the response:

> Haha yep, it's intentional. He has a sense of humor like that. Famously, he > first presented his paper on the Paxos algorithm dressed like Indiana Jones > with the fictional backstory of the algorithm being an archeological > discovery of the ancient parliamentary systems of the Greek island of Paxos.

What a legend.

<comment><USER5> [https://i.imgur.com/0gAVffm.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/0gAVffm.jpg)

I've also noticed that sometimes the video will resize between full page and minimized, automatically when he wants you to pause the video, with relevant links below the video, what is this amazing system?

<comment><USER6> I thought that resizing was really neat as well, and the videos are such a pleasure to watch. Lamport may be my favorite lecturer I never had...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I wish Microsoft could make a new edx course in their series covering TLA+. Those lectures are gonna be more helpful with exercises one can get his/her hands dirty.

<comment><USER8> Try this [https://learntla.com](https://learntla.com)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This seems to be another one of those times when everyone runs with an acronym and no one bothers to spell it out a single time.

(Temporal Logic of Actions)

<comment><USER10> Three Letter Acronym

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> [https://amturing.acm.org/p558-lamport.pdf](https://amturing.acm.org/p558-lamport.pdf) the paper he's talking about in the first video.

</comment><comment><USER11> this man has a wonderful sense of humor

</comment><comment><USER12> Neat. Got stuck watching Die Hard clips. Can I do all this from the CLI?

<comment><USER2> Yes you can run the syntax & model checkers from the CLI, although then you need to manually write the model-checking settings file which I don't think the video series covers. It _is_ covered in Lamport's Specifying Systems book, or you can take a look at the settings file generated by the GUI toolbox and adapt it to your own uses.

<comment><USER12> Very cool. Thank you.</comment></comment></comment>


Tim Armstrong: We Got TechCrunch - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/28/tim-armstrong-we-got-techcrunch/ <comment><USER2> Wonder who's going to scoop the TechCrunch buy out price, since that's usually TechCrunch's job.

<comment><USER3> There clearly is some kind of earn-out, meaning that the founders get the whole money only if they stay long enough and/or if the business remains healthy. On stage, Mike Arrington mentioned that he'd stay for sure on board for 3 years, due to "incentives." So it's possible that the sale price is $25M upfront, with another $25M in 3 years. That would make both sources (one that says the price was only $25M, and one that says it was in the $40 or $50M) correct.

<comment><USER4> Would a sale in that region make Techcrunch a "dipshit company" in Arrington's parlance?

[http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2010/07/lead-investors-dipshit- compa...](http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2010/07/lead-investors-dipshit-companies- and-funding-every-entrepreneur.html)

<comment><USER5> It wasn't Arrington who said that. He was quoting VC's who had said that.

 _There's a worry among venture capitalists, [Arrington] said, that angels are training "an entire generation of entrepreneurs who are building dipshit companies" that sell to Google for $25 million. In fact, that criticism might be extended to Y Combinator as well, which could be seen as "the king of the dipshit companies."

Arrington said he isn't on-board with all of that criticism, but that it holds a "kernel of truth."_

[http://venturebeat.com/2010/07/29/angelconf-ron-conway- micha...](http://venturebeat.com/2010/07/29/angelconf-ron-conway-michael- arrington/)

<comment><USER4> Point taken; he was quoting an unnamed VC who said that and he believes there's a kernel of truth in it. He's also been characterised as supporting that point of view; on stage yesterday Chris Sacca straight out placed "his" words feet and he didn't take the opportunity to refute it:

 _MA: No one is talking about the entrepreneurs._

 _CS: That's not true. You call some smaller companies "dipshit" companies, but they're not._

[http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/27/the-panel-thats- definitely-...](http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/27/the-panel-thats-definitely- maybe-not-about-angelgate/)

Another quote from VentureBeat: _"TechCrunch Editor Michael Arrington, who moderated the panel, had previously criticized some angels for funding "dipshit companies" that think too small and aim to be acquired by Google for around $20 million"_

[http://venturebeat.com/2010/09/27/angel-investors-defend- sma...](http://venturebeat.com/2010/09/27/angel-investors-defend-small- valuations-and-dipshit-companies/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Though I disagree with Arrington quite often, congratulations on the acquisition. He worked his ass off to build TechCrunch to where it is today.

</comment><comment><USER7> So we were right to suspect the move to Seattle was tax based...

<comment><USER8> am I the only one who thinks that IF its really the case, its kinda ... unfair. cmn, MA is good writer and he 100% deserves his money but he made it writing about SV! I think CA certainly deserve its 10,3% back, hey?

<comment><USER9> I don't think SV is SV _because_ it's in CA. I think SV is SV _despite_ being in CA.

<comment><USER10> People have been arguing about it forever, but I think there's at least a relationship. The UC and Cal State systems have been feeders to many tech companies, and during the Valley's formative period, even the private universities were heavily state-subsidized (California used to have an extremely generous CalGrants scholarship that would pay for any CA high-school student with good grades to go to _any_ CA university, public or private).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> it's kinda funny....Techcrunch makes it a point that they don't accept press releases...and they announce their acquisition with a press release.

<comment><USER12> He doesn't even mark up the press release with semantics. Not even header tags for subheadings. What is this?

<comment><USER13> I call it a 'rushed post'.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Best comment from TechCrunch:

"Shouldn't Techcrunch be acquiring AOL?"

<comment><USER15> You probably don't realize how many AOL sites you interact with regularly. They don't do a lot of 'hey this is an AOL site', so I suspect just like TC, you won't be aware of any major changes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is epic. For all the crap we give AOL, they really did a nice job with the Weblogs acquisition. A lot of those blogs are still around and the leaders in the field.

I wonder a) what's happening to the amazing conferences b) and where Mike's future will be like.

<comment><USER16> Huge props to AOL for showing that a massive company CAN pivot and use their brand equity/buying power to maintain a successful business.

Myspace, take notes.

<comment><USER17> Gannett, take notes. Or continue dying.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I've always kind of disliked Arrington, thought he came off as a douche on a lot of occasions.

And yet, I'll give the man props. He started a business, hustled his arse off and made a big sale. Haters gonna hate, but good job.

</comment><comment><USER19> I wonder if TC was owned 100% by Arrington. That would be a big check in the mail. Hope the rest of the writers there get some dough.

<comment><USER20> I have heard that Arrington is the majority owner (by a large scale). I think the CEO and a third person own a small share. I will look for the source I am remembering...

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> "You've Got Capital Gains"

<comment><USER22> That's called a good problem to have :)

<comment><USER23> I'm of the opinion that people who say something is a good problem to have are people who have never had that problem.

<comment><USER24> I don't think you understand what the phrase means if you think that. Having the "problem" of dealing with capital gains means you made money that is capital gains taxable. The alternative is to not make that money. Get it?

<comment><USER23> Oh I understand it perfectly and I think you misunderstood me.

Whether you say "scaling is a good problem to have" or "paying CGT is a good problem to have", it just means you never experienced how hard it really is to scale, and how hard it is to deal with taxes/accountants/lawyers and lose money. They're still problems and when you're in the thick of them, they're not good.

<comment><USER24> Of course they are. If you have scaling problems that means you have a ton of users. A hard problem but I'd rather have it than not have it. Same with capital gains tax. I'd rather make enough that I have to pay attention to this stuff then not ever have to think about it because I've never been financially successful enough for it to matter (and with taxes you're not "losing money", you're paying for the services that helped you get there. Of course that's not as clearly the case in the US tax system but that's the idea anyway).

If everything were effortless then anyone could do it.

<comment><USER23> I think we're both looking at the same coin from different sides and disagreeing. As I understand my and your argument, we're arguing cup is half empty vs half full. My "half empty" argument is centred on the how stressful it is for people to go through these "good problems".

<comment><USER24> Possibly. Your messages read like "it would be better to not have that problem at all than to have it". I'm trying to say "it would be better to have it because you've succeeded than to not have because you haven't. Of course (and I haven't focused on this part or even mentioned it because I assumed it obvious), it would be _best_ to have the success and no problems".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Send your comments to firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment><comment><USER26> That post is such a canned press release it's untrue. [insert name] CEO, commented: blah blah natural complement... Blah excited ... Blah great future together.

<comment><USER27> "Tim Armstrong and his team have an exciting vision for the future of AOL as a global leader in creating and delivering world-class content to consumers"

...and they also had a big wheelbarrow of cash.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Video of the deal: [http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/28/the-aol-techcrunch- disrupt-...](http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/28/the-aol-techcrunch-disrupt- tcdisrup-videos-tctv/)

</comment><comment><USER28> Anyone know for how much $$$ ?

<comment><USER29> I hope he got a Bebo-like valuation... and can then buy it back for cents on the dollar 2 years later.

<comment><USER30> I would love to see this. As much as they say the site will be independent, it's hard to believe AOL won't ask for a few favors every now and then.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> It's interesting that with AOL trying to assemble a collection of new media websites/blogs they probably would have been better off spinning off another company that doesn't have such a bad reputation in media.

</comment><comment><USER32> This bums me out. A TC that can't call AOL a pile of dung isn't TC to me. I really enjoyed TC, and have a lot of respect for Michael Arrington. I don't blame him at all for cashing in. But this will decrease the quality of TC.

<comment><USER33> AOL owning Engadget and Autoblog, two blogs I visit daily, hasn't affected the quality one bit.

<comment><USER34> But gadgets and cars aren't areas AOL is heavily involved in, as far as I know.

How would reporting of something like AOL's search privacy leak (<http://techcrunch.com/2006/08/07/aol-this-was-a-screw-up/>) go?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I am worried about the long term of this deal as well. Can techcrunch post AOL leaks anymore (Not that AOL really has leaks anymore)? Will the upper echalon corporation politics effect the writings? Will the Disrupt and TC50 events still happen? I would assume they would, who knows. I am also curious about the crunchpad/jojo lawsuits going on. Will the added aol resources help? Not effect it? Hopefully techcrunch stays roughly the same, or I will need a new main news source.

</comment><comment><USER36> Congrats to the TechCrunch team.

</comment><comment><USER37> I couldn't help myself from laughing when I noticed AOL's first post was one of those press releases that Michael Arrington despises.

</comment><comment><USER38> Interesting follow-up to the talk of companies being acquired yesterday at disrupt. Arrington was surprised that Conway et al seemed to not have a problem with companies who were content with being acquired at less than billion dollar valuations and dramatic "change the world" dreams.

</comment><comment><USER39> will Mike move out from Seattle now?

</comment><comment><USER40> The only problem is AOL has driven every acquisition into the ground:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_acquisitions_by_AOL>

But still, congrats to the TechCrunch bunch.

<comment><USER41> Weblogs Inc seems to be doing okay, not sure if this would be much different.

<comment><USER42> I agree. The major difference between Weblogs Inc/TC and many of the other acquisitions is that they serve audience-relevant content (to use Armstrong's words). It makes sense that AOL would focus more on high-quality content than on vehicles for content delivery in light of the Weblogs Inc success.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> So, content-based sites _can_ make money after all. TC apparently made decent profits off of their events business, and the site was basically a large marketing spend.

Arrington's legendary workaholism paid off nicely.

</comment><comment><USER44> I was at Netscape 8 years ago when AOL spent $4.2B on it so that TC deal seems like peanuts and AOL might be on the up and up but it sure isn't as grand as it once was! AOL and Web were never friends.

</comment><comment><USER45> So who's going to be the next TechCrunch now that they've been bought out? For that matter, seems like this leaves GigaOm as one of the largest independent blogs right now...

</comment><comment><USER46> [http://corp.aol.com/2010/09/28/aol-to-acquire-techcrunch- net...](http://corp.aol.com/2010/09/28/aol-to-acquire-techcrunch-network-of- sites/)

</comment><comment><USER47> I wonder how many more Armstrongs can show up on HN's front page? Maybe get something about Hellcat Records on here and we can have two Tim Armstrongs!

</comment><comment><USER48> Let's hope Arrington will continue to be loud even after the acquisition and not have to worry about pissing off some advertiser with AOL or something.

</comment><comment><USER49> Did AOL acquire the rights to the CrunchPad as well? It was never clear whether it was completely spun off as a separate entity.

<comment><USER50> IIRC, TechCrunch didn't even acquire the rights to the CrunchPad.

<comment><USER49> To clarify: I am leading to whether or not AOL would represent the interests of Michael Arrington's Crunchpad v. joojoo d/b/a Fusion Garage Pte Ltd in their current legal battle.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Coming soon ... more ads, less journalizm!

</comment><comment><USER52> But I thought Yahoo! were making content plays . . . .

Perhaps they only make moves for blue collar content?

</comment><comment><USER53> Anyone have any thoughts on the impact of leaks on accelerating/killing deals?

</comment><comment><USER54> Not sure what to think. I really like TechCrunch and hope it stays awesome.

</comment><comment><USER55> The title says "We Got TechCrunch" like a general coming back from battle.

</comment><comment><USER56> We interrupt this disrupt to join AOL's "audience-relavent" department.

</comment><comment><USER57> I just hope AOL starts paying all TC writers the ridiculously low monkey writer rate that it pays Weblogs writers. Ooh, and TC posts now get entered into the digg voting ring too!

</comment><comment><USER58> Will they now stop with gossip or do even more?

</comment><comment><USER59> Techcrunch is dead. Long live Techcrunch.

</comment><comment><USER60> Did anyone see this coming?

<comment><USER7> The acquisition? Yes.

From AOL? No.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> I hope the hack writers get fired...

</comment><comment><USER62> I wonder what Mike Arrington will be doing after this? 1) Go for pilgrimage 2) Run for public office 3) Start another tech blog 4) open a law firm

</comment><comment><USER63> This seems like a good fit, certainly an equivalent quality of editorial content.

</comment><comment><USER64> Consensus amongst my hacker community: sellout. But we all drunk some haterade this morning.

<comment><USER15> Is that a consensus of one?

From a business perspective, this is a successful exit, though I seem to recall $100m valuation about a year ago.

From a hacker perspective, I don't really think much about TC. They aren't a technology company, though they've done a really nice job with open data on the crunchbase.

<comment><USER64> Cute.

The consensus is of six successful and pretty popular serial entrepreneurs/hackers and five of my high up tech hacks contacts that's been reading TechCrunch even before '05, when Arrington published on his first site.

The hackers thought he was a startup hero but this is a sellout move to give it up like this. The hacks think the flacks must be effing elated. Now the process to get their bullshit published is streamlined when there's shareholders to account for.

<comment><USER65> What's great about selling out is that he doesn't have to care that you think he's selling out. He has a hundred million dollars now...

<comment><USER64> You don't need money to not care. That's a childish notion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> I'm absolutely certain I will be downvoted for this, but I'm really saddened about this deal. Well...

Congratulation to the TechCrunch team; my condolences to TechCrunch.

<http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2565-acquisition-condolences>

<comment><USER33> What a troll. And no I don't mean you bearwithclaws I mean 37 Signals. Cherry picking two failed acquisitions to support your knee-jerk reaction to this deal is just lazy. I don't think I need to point out that AOL has done just this before (bought popular blogs) with great success. The shot at AOL's 'age' is just icing on this lame attempt at getting some free press cake.

<comment><USER67> Not a "knee-jerk reaction"- the 37s post was written two weeks ago..</comment></comment></comment>


Ask YC: Anyone in Chicago going to TechCocktail Tonight? - <AUTHOR>

I remember jdavid said he was coming down from Milwaukee.  Other Chicago people (Shooter, speby, there, rrival, bmaier, cstejerean)?  Does anyone want to meetup?  I don't know the venue so I can't recommend a good way to meetup.
Venue: John Barleycorn Wrigleyville (Map)
Time: 6:30pm -9pm
Date: Thursday, February 21, 2008
Cost: FREE
RSVP Info at: http://techcocktail.com/blog/2008/01/22/tech-cocktail-chicago-7/ <comment><USER2> I think a couple of our guys (thepoint.com) are going. Please say hello! We look like this: <http://www.bandrew.com/rampage/>

<comment><AUTHOR> That...is the COOLEST picture ever! I'll just follow the National Guard to find you guys.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'll be there wearing a Mashable schwag shirt (<http://tinyurl.com/2xs7c2>), black jacket. I look like this guy: <http://tinyurl.com/yw4bet>

It's upstairs. There's a circular bar in the middle, a wall of windows on the east wall. The elevated area along that wall is probably the easiest place to meet as there's just one way to get there.

See you guys there!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Should we go with rrival's elevated platform on the east wall? I would recommend the Social Helix space but I wouldn't want to hog their demo room.

I look like this: [http://www.pchristensen.com/blog/articles/your-code-is- subop...](http://www.pchristensen.com/blog/articles/your-code-is-suboptimal/)

except without the sunglasses and hat.

</comment><comment><USER4> I will tell the two other startup guys I'm working with about this. We were planning to meet tonight to work on stuff, but this may be a better thing.

Edit: Apparently they ran out of space. One of the guys said he'd been invited. We'll go to the next one.

<comment><USER3> I'd be curious to see if they really care -that- much - it seemed pretty open last time I was there. Walking in like you know what you're doing might work, and if the last one is any indication, people tend to stay on after the event ends at 9 (we closed it down last time).

<comment><USER5> It is a free event, apparently the registration they do is to get an accurate head count. Just show up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Social Helix(all 4 of us) will be there. We will be demoing and talking hopefully with all of you. Then tomorrow Jon and I fly out to SF for the google hackethon.

</comment><comment><USER5> Yes, I'll be there, but unfortunately I don't know the venue either. I believe its upstairs at Barleycorn. Anyone else going?

</comment><comment><USER7> We'll be there. Look for the 3 most dashingly handsome guys in the whole bar. That's us.

<comment><AUTHOR> I believe you're referring to me, myself, and I :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I want to go, will they just let you in without rsvp?

</comment><comment><USER9> didn't rsvp in time, make sure you talk to the suits, they've got the money.</comment>


Trump, without evidence, accuses Google of 'illegal' action ahead of election - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-google-trump/trump-without-evidence-accuses-google-of-very-illegal-action-ahead-of-election-idUSKCN1UW1AM <comment><AUTHOR> I feel that it is usually best to avoid this type of submission and that it's very regrettable that this is the current level of public discourse in the US. However, it's unfortunate but this is something we (collectively, the software industry) should not ignore and - however we feel about Google - should be aware that governments change but precedents for acceptable behavior are stickier.

It's pretty disappointing for me that it's flagged. It's Reuters quoting the US President directly. The headline is taken from the article verbatim.

<comment><USER2> It's the "without evidence" claim that got this flagged. On a daily basis, major news organizations anonymously source articles but don't put "without evidence" unless it conflicts with their political narrative. There is plenty of evidence that tech has a bias.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's the headline that Reuters gave it. What specific evidence do you have the Reuters has an institutional bias that makes it into the editorial process resulting in a headline?

Without going into the particulars of your response, it is irrelevant in this case. What is at issue is that the president accused Google of a crime. Tech may have a bias, so then it should be possible to follow the law and charge Google with a crime and submit evidence for the case. Don't you understand how serious it is for the president to extrajudicially threaten people with prosecution?

Side note: it is a useful tool of extremists to accuse specific members of the majority of "bias". The tech community is large and diverse, and is mostly representative of society on the whole.

<comment><USER2> > What specific evidence do you have the Reuters has an institutional bias > that makes it into the editorial process resulting in a headline?

Trump's tweet references the former Google engineer who claims that Google has an anti-conservative bias.

> The tech community is ...mostly representative of society on the whole.

That is absolutely not true on so many levels. People who work in tech tend to be young, wealthy, live in cities, lean liberal, etc. That's like saying farmers or policemen or doctors tend to be mostly representative of society as a whole. Not true.

<comment><AUTHOR> The idea that a single (fired for cause) Google engineer is reliable evidence for a claim of this magnitude is ridiculous.

Please find some hard data on tech demographics to support your data. Also, realize that is beside the point. Even if everyone in tech is an enormous liberal who tilts the scales against conservatives at every opportunity, then producing hard evidence of this massive conspiracy shouldn't be as elusive as it has been. Absent that data, it is grossly irresponsible for a sitting president to threaten a company with prosecution for a matter in which they are so grossly conflicted.

<comment><USER2> We could get into a long, drawn-out discussion about whether the evidence is flimsy or not, but the fact of the matter is that it is evidence. End of story. The title didn't say, "Flimsy evidence," it said "No evidence." It's grossly incompetent of the media to misrepresent story after biased story as "evidence" and then attach a "without evidence" to the president's words just because they don't like the narrative.

> Please find some hard data on tech demographics to support your data.

You're the one that made the claim that tech demographics represent the general population. You're the one who needs to prove the claim.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think the ship has sailed on this being drawn out. Since this post is flagged and unlikely to get further attention, I will indulge a bit more nested discussion than I would otherwise, though.

I think you mean, "accusation". Google is _accused_ of having bias. Evidence would constitute something that shows that the accusation is true. Since we are already parsing a headline, I'm going to have to be pedantic that "evidence" has specific meaning. It has common meaning, too, but I think I can lean on the president's own words: "All very illegal" puts this firmly in the judicial context. If the accusation was made under oath, under the penalty of perjury, then it could be considered evidence.

Let me tell you this: if technology is a growing field and is difficult/increasingly requires specialized education it is going to have young and educated people on the whole. Furthermore, it has more immigrants and is more urban. If you correct for those factors (and a few others) you are going to find that tech is more conservative than you would otherwise expect. And tech demographics in SV is different than in Austin is different than in Minneapolis. On the whole the differences are much smaller than most people would believe.

ps - while I disagree with you, I don't appreciate that you are being downvoted. I upvoted all your replies to try to counter that, and I would appreciate if people would resist the urge to reflexively downvote opinions they disagree with (which discourages discussions like this, which in my opinion, has been perfectly cordial)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Well...all is fair in love and war I guess, for years now people have been accusing him of colluding with the Russians...and without evidence.

<comment><USER4> The president's campaign chairman (Paul Manafort), campaign manager (Rick Gates), lawyer (Michael Cohen), and national security advisor (Michael Flynn) would love to hear about this lack of evidence.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It wasn't linked from the article and it took me a moment to find it, so I've reposted the text of the tweets in question below.

> @sundarpichai of Google was in the Oval Office working very hard to explain > how much he liked me, what a great job the Administration is doing, that > Google was not involved with China's military, that they didn't help Crooked > Hillary over me in the 2016 Election, and that they...

> ....are NOT planning to illegally subvert the 2020 Election despite all that > has been said to the contrary. It all sounded good until I watched Kevin > Cernekee, a Google engineer, say terrible things about what they did in 2016 > and that they want to "Make sure that Trump losses...

> ....in 2020." Lou Dobbs stated that this is a fraud on the American public. > @peterschweizer stated with certainty that they suppressed negative stories > on Hillary Clinton, and boosted negative stories on Donald Ttump. All very > illegal. We are watching Google very closely!

Here's a link to the end of the chain: [https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/11587060587240407...](https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1158706058724040704)

<comment><USER5> Reading through this, I don't take it as "Trump accusing Google of illegal acts" \- at least not the way that it seems to be have been perceived by Reuters.

I read this as Trump saying that Pichai's statements seemed to contrast with what is being said by other parties, and that the acts described by those other parties are illegal.

That doesn't strike me as a minor distinction. It seems to me that he's using his bully pulpit to publicize Cernekee at Google's expense. Whether or not that is appropriate is fair game IMO, but it's not at all what the article claimed.

<comment><USER6> Cernekee has asked people to contribute money to help Richard Spencer, a white nationalist, defended skinheads, and used 8-chan compatible lingo of referring to people with negative views of skinheads as "normies".

Even the right-wing Daily Caller thinks this is a fishy source for Trump to be using to justify attacks on Google. In the era of domestic white nationalist terrorism, is it really good practice for the President of the United States to be basing public, global messaging attacking public companies based on really flimsy sources with tangential ties to extremist communities? This isn't the first time either, Trump often retweets questionable, un-vetted sources with crazy theories, like the whole "3 million illegals voted" conspiracy.

How many more lies and incompetent sourcing incidents do we need before people stop giving him the benefit of the doubt and start demanding that the President act with some restraint, some level of due process, some level of balance?

[https://dailycaller.com/2019/08/05/google-engineer-posts- lis...](https://dailycaller.com/2019/08/05/google-engineer-posts-listservs- richard-spencer-golden-state-skinheads/)

<comment><USER6> Disappointed that members of the HN community would rather down vote than discuss.

I wonder how they would feel a nutty Democratic President takes office, and an ex-Chick-Fil-A, or Fox employee, who lost their job, went on to trigger that President to go on non-stop media rants against them, put them on an enemies list, and tried to use the power of the executive branch to settle paranoid political vendettas.

Or, we could just imagine how people felt when the IRS was accused of targeting "non-profit" conservative groups.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Trump's tweet references Kevin Cernekee, a former Google engineer who claims that Google has an anti-conservative bias and took actions with a goal of influencing the 2016 election.

Whether that's actually true and whether it would be illegal or not is debatable, but the "without evidence" qualifier that Reuters added seems strange.

<comment><AUTHOR> That is not evidence, it is hearsay.

<comment><USER7> Hearsay would be if someone else said a Google engineer told them that Google was biased. If a firsthand accusation from an engineer is hearsay then whistle-blowing of any type wouldn't be a thing.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, what he said is hearsay because it's a bunch of work rumors from an unreliable source. I have no idea why I should trust Cernekee (let alone why any US President should trust him enough to make this type of public accusation), it seems like he has some "unfortunate baggage" ([https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/06/google-whistleblower- cerneke...](https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/06/google-whistleblower-cernekee- pushed-alt-right-views-former-colleague.html))</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Any small side project ideas for unemployment period? - <AUTHOR> I am facing an unemployment period after graduation and need something to do with my time.
Do you have any ideas for a small useful project that could be finished within a couple of weeks (until I hopefully find a job)?
It could also maybe be contribution of a small feature to some open source project.
I am somewhat tech agnostic, so all ideas are welcome. Thanks. <comment><USER2> 1) Make youtube training videos in your area of expertise.

2) Use your training videos to solidify your presence on the internet with an accompanying blog/newsletter/and kindle e-book.

</comment><comment><USER3> If you are into self sovereign ID or programing for ethereum/IPFS or even IPDB then take a look at [http://etherRe.al](http://etherRe.al) We are in hackethercamp and two of our devs have dropped out for different reasons so if you have time THIS WEEK then hit me up @CampEtherReal on twitter or email me.

</comment><comment><USER4> Contact me. My email is in my profile.</comment>


Please Read: A Personal Appeal TO Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/05/wikipedia-affiliate-links/ <comment><USER2> I love wikipedia, and the fact it is a non profit outfit. It becomes biased the moment it decides to monetise it's content. While the idea behind the appeal to Jimmy seems on the outset a noble one, I can't sit down and say nothing because it is so wrong.

The article (not so cleverly) drops two companies names/urls in for the role of helping out after conveniently figuring out how to fill the $16million finance hole in one go. This is nothing more than a personal appeal for the respective companies to monetise wikipedia, ergo monetise themselves .. I'm sure Jimmy has seen it all before and won't pay it any attention; as it deserves absolutely none.

It doesn't take a genius to work out that the moment wikipedia pages start monetising, they become biased.</comment>


Benefits of Bootstrap framework with it's example - <AUTHOR> https://dev.to/codedthemes/benefits-of-bootstrap-framework-with-it-s-example-2i26 <comment><USER2> How tailwind CSS compares to Bootstrap?

</comment><comment><USER3> A list of benefits but no cons?</comment>


Why is "r/the_donald" removed from Google search results? - <AUTHOR> https://www.google.com/search?q=r/the_donald <comment><USER2> They were discussing this on the radio yesterday. Celebrities and public figures are no longer excluded from flagging as adult material. Now people that follow will get a notification saying the message may contain adult material (or something along that line) and they must click a button to see the message.

<comment><AUTHOR> But this is about google's search results, not the subreddit. It has disappeared from search results. Is this an attempt from google to avoid the streisand effect from people reading about it in the news and searching for the subreddit?

It's still there on bing [https://www.bing.com/search?q=r/the_donald](https://www.bing.com/search?q=r/the_donald)

Weird. I'm sure it's just some technical problem with google's algorithm.

<comment><USER3> >Is this an attempt from google to avoid the streisand effect from people reading about it in the news and searching for the subreddit?

Is this an attempt at damage control, deflecting conversation away from from the violent content which got The_Donald quarantined and towards a false-flag conspiracy theory about Google?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> r/the_donald was "quarantined" by reddit after violence was explicitly threatened against police officers (and many, many other people and groups, but the threats against police seem to have been the final straw). As part of being "quarantined" pages in the subreddit now require the user to be logged into a verified account to be viewed and also have a noindex meta tag applied[1].

[1] [https://old.reddit.com/r/news/comments/c5t0tv/reddit_quarant...](https://old.reddit.com/r/news/comments/c5t0tv/reddit_quarantines_protrump_forum_over_antipolice/es3zaw7/)

<comment><AUTHOR> there is no noindex or nofollow meta tag in the subreddit though

<comment><USER4> Even if there wasn't you still need to be logged in to view it. Googlebot probably doesn't have a reddit account.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah ok i checked there is a nofollow if you re not logged in. I was just curious if this was a deliberate action on the part of google</comment></comment></comment></comment>


66% of Americans have considered starting their own business - <AUTHOR> http://www.mediapost.com/publications/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.showArticleHomePage&art_aid=42246

<comment><USER2> There is a huge difference between desire and compulsion (see 'How To Get Rich' by Felix Denis').</comment>


Tell HN: After years of meandering through the tech world,I take a diff course - <AUTHOR>

After years of drifting with the flow and daring against the flow of programming and technology river, through trying to catch up with new languages, frameworks, tools and technologies, I feel numb and tired.  I feel a bit inadequate and overwhelmed.  Hence, I have decided to divert my attention for some time to other activities, so that my obsession with technology does not cause me panic attacks and I don't feel lagging behind the world full of ultra-intelligent hackers.
I, an avid HNer, for at least two months, decide to:
1.  Not learn anything new in languages, tools or technology.  Focus on the tasks at hand at work and get them done, nothing more nothing less.
2.  Not get overwhelmed and depressed with how much there is to know in the world and how much others know more than I do
3.  Focus my attention on blogging, tech or non-tech, at a professional level (not necessarily professionally)
4.  Focus my attention on my financials, which are not bad, but scattered and untracked
5.  Focus my attention on StackOverflow in answering questions as much as possible
6.  Travel around as much as possible and talk to people about anything other than technology
7.  Exercise and meditate a lot! <comment><USER2> Good luck man! if you run into troubles, focus on point 7! :) all the best!

<comment><AUTHOR> Absolutely, thanks!</comment></comment>


What Happens When Water Freezes in a Box So Strong It Can't Expand? - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/what-happens-when-water-freezes-in-a-box-so-strong-it-c-1500919062?utm_content=buffer85509&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer <comment><USER2> >We currently know of 15 different "solid phases" [...]

>The form you're likely most familiar with is Hexagonal Ice [...]. If you keep lowering the temperature of Hexagonal ice, it eventually becomes Cubic Ice; tweak the temperature and pressure further and you can create Ice II, Ice III all the way up to Ice XV.

I've counted 16.

</comment><comment><USER3> What I keep wondering is how long these various exotic forms of ice survive outside the conditions in which they were created. If XV quickly changes back into regular ice this is a cool but seemingly impractical topic of research.

<comment><USER4> I don't see that it's necessarily impractical. We still have a lot to learn about why various materials behave the way they do. Examining corner cases and weirdness is often informative.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Ice exerts 45,000 lb pressure as it freezes! SO James Watt was 'all wet' when he invented the steam engine. He should have invented the 'ice engine'.

</comment><comment><USER6> >It is theorized that at pressures somewhere between 1.55-5.62 terapascals ice will become metallic.</comment>