Ask HN: Do you know other firms like Valve or GitHub? - <AUTHOR> i.e. firms using collaborative/innovative/participatory methods of organizing? <comment><USER2> At Igalia ([http://www.igalia.com/](http://www.igalia.com/)), we are a worker- owned free software consultancy. There's a generic presentation of how we work spread among the various sections of [http://www.igalia.com/about- us/](http://www.igalia.com/about-us/), but one of us also wrote a series of blog posts that explains us pretty well: [http://wingolog.org/archives/2013/06/05/no- master](http://wingolog.org/archives/2013/06/05/no-master) [http://wingolog.org/archives/2013/06/13/but-that-would-be- an...](http://wingolog.org/archives/2013/06/13/but-that-would-be-anarchy) [http://wingolog.org/archives/2013/06/25/time-for- money](http://wingolog.org/archives/2013/06/25/time-for-money)

In a nutshell: people who work for Igalia own it (with equal amount of shares, usually after three years in the company) and participate in the assembly (usually after 6 months-a year in the company). From that premise, our decisions and ways of working are generally very flexible towards employees. Having the same salary (with more for people who live in more expensive countries) or being able to work from wherever you want is just the tip of the iceberg.

<comment><AUTHOR> igalia sounds amazing. congrats on your company. can you tell me how many people are worker-owners? are there also freelancers working yor you?

<comment><USER2> Thanks! Basically, everybody who's been here for more than 3 years is a co- owner. I just did a quick count (I might be off by one or two), and I think we're 36 owners out of 41 people. Our explicit goal when we hire someone is to keep them long term and have them become co-owner. Our workers (including owners) who live outside of Spain (where the company is based) typically have an official status of freelancers, though they have only one client and are as involved in the company as the ones who have a status of employee in Spain.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm subjective, but I think Spotify uses slightly innovative ways of organising. See: * [https://labs.spotify.com/2014/03/27/spotify-engineering- cult...](https://labs.spotify.com/2014/03/27/spotify-engineering-culture- part-1/) * [https://labs.spotify.com/2014/09/20/spotify-engineering- cult...](https://labs.spotify.com/2014/09/20/spotify-engineering-culture- part-2/)

Happy to answer questions.

<comment><USER4> I recently spoke to a recruiter at Skyscanner, and he mentioned that they have also adopted a similar model to Spotify. He called the model "Squads and tribes".

<comment><USER5> I work for Skyscanner, and can confirm this. It's a very effective model for managing a business this size, and IMHO fosters innovation within the business. Very basic description of the model as it is at Skyscanner:

Tribes - High level products (hotels, flights, car hire)

Chapters - "Departments"; areas of expertise (data acquisition, front end)

Squads - Autonomous project units (New features, development of an existing feature)

Guilds - Informal interest groups (Linux, Python, agile development)

Everyone is in a Tribe and a Chapter relating to their "department", and area of expertise; Squads are formed to work on projects, then disbanded once the project is finished; anyone can join and participate in Guilds, which serve as interest/support groups for technologies/strategies/methodologies.

Edit: Corrected my brainfart. Thanks ssabev! Can't believe I did it twice...

<comment><USER6> I suppose the difficult thing to gauge is whether using these cool-sounding names has any effect.

<comment><USER3> That's a good question. I think about it as a way to distinguish from e.g. departments, projects etc and set the connotation that these are different things. If you use them to mean a 1:1 mapping to e.g. projects, then it falls apart. The terms aren't important per se.

In other words – you can't make a race horse by painting a pig brown.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> In a similar vein, Fry-IT ([http://www.fry-it.com/](http://www.fry-it.com/)) are a small web-development company based in London that organise themselves around the outlook of "industrial democracy" ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_democracy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_democracy)) proposed by Ricardo Semler ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricardo_Semler](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricardo_Semler)).

They're also great supporters of the London Python scene (also another good indicator of a good company to work with).

(Note: I used to do sub-contract work with them. The first thing that happens when you work with them is you get sent a copy of one of Semler's books on the subject.)

<comment><AUTHOR> cool :) did you get seven day weekend or maverick?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> They call it "Open Allocation". "Holacracy" is similar as well.

A few other companies doing it...

* Zappos — [http://qz.com/161210/zappos-is-going-holacratic-no-job-title...](http://qz.com/161210/zappos-is-going-holacratic-no-job-titles-no-managers-no-hierarchy)

* Treehouse — [http://ryancarson.com/post/61562761297/no-managers-why-we-re...](http://ryancarson.com/post/61562761297/no-managers-why-we-removed-bosses-at-treehouse)

* WL Gore & Associates (parts of the company) — [http://www.theguardian.com/business/2008/nov/02/gore-tex-tex...](http://www.theguardian.com/business/2008/nov/02/gore-tex-textiles-terri-kelly)

<comment><USER8> We've been doing Open Allocation at Monk Development ([http://www.monkdevelopment.com](http://www.monkdevelopment.com)) for about a year now, but haven't yet written anything about our experiences.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Gore always gets named in this context: [http://www.gore.com/de_de/aboutus/culture/corporate_culture....](http://www.gore.com/de_de/aboutus/culture/corporate_culture.html)

Atlassian seem to be doing things differently.

Umantis in Switzerland democratically elect their CEO: [http://www.umantis.com/en/press/haufe-umantis-ag- employees-e...](http://www.umantis.com/en/press/haufe-umantis-ag-employees- elect-marc-stoffel-as-chief-executive-1/)

I'm very interested in this question as well, especially companies in Amsterdam, Berlin, Hamburg and Copenhagen. Anyone else know of companies doing things differently?

<comment><USER10> As an end user of Atlassian products - their support leaves a lot to be desired. Not sure if that ties in to "doing things differently" but there you go.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Here's a subreddit full of resources about this topic: [http://www.reddit.com/r/flatmanagement](http://www.reddit.com/r/flatmanagement)

I'm a mod of it...we're pretty flat at Balsamiq, too.

<comment><USER12> But you never had an opening for an engineer (during last several years, I believe) ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> There are lots of tiny companies (2-20 people) that can "wing it", but it's difficult to make decentralized or distributed decision-making work at scale.

We're a slightly larger team (almost 50 peeps) at Axiom Zen ([https://axiomzen.co](https://axiomzen.co)). Our entire raison d'etre is predicated on coming up with interesting, high-risk ideas and carrying them through the various stages of market validation, prototyping, iteration, and growth. Because of this, we are working really hard to become and remain the best place for brilliant people to build awesome things.

We try to clearly define our values (just like Valve/GitHub), build them into our products, and use them as a heavy filter for hiring. We also go out of our way to ensure total transparency in the team, using GitHub for everything from sales to hiring so that everyone can see the stage everything is at, decisions leading up to a particular status quo, etc. Also everyone has an equal voice in jumping in to suggest / push forward changes.

For a bit on our workflow, take a look at this blog post: [https://www.zenhub.io/blog/beyond-code-use-github-zenhub- for...](https://www.zenhub.io/blog/beyond-code-use-github-zenhub-for-all- company-workflows/)

We'll eventually polish up and publish our company handbook which dives into the `how` and `why` much more thoroughly than I ever could here.

</comment><comment><USER14> Not sure if this fits the bill, but I've always found the openness of Thoughtbot quite impressive. They have an open "playbook" describing how they operate and develop. [http://playbook.thoughtbot.com/](http://playbook.thoughtbot.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks, thats fascinating

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I love this model of working, but I think it's a lot more common in engineering teams than people realize. My company isn't anything special, and certainly most of the rest of the company doesn't work open allocation, but the engineering team pretty much does. You work on what you want, and you tell people what you're doing. Does anyone else feel this way?

<comment><USER16> It's not formalized in any way, but we have a small team that works this way. I would imagine it would be hard to scale, and takes the right sort of people, but it's a really great environment to work in. We are constantly experimenting and everyone is welcome where they feel they can be helpful - our video production team is deeply involved with the devops side of our streaming server for example...

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Not sure if it's in the same bucket as Valve or GitHub: at Mobile Jazz [http://mobilejazz.com](http://mobilejazz.com) we're only 20 people (and that makes things a lot easier), but we've quite a different way of working compared to traditional companies:

* We pay fair salaries. For most people in our team it's way more than what they've earned before.

* We pay everyone the same (base) salary. Regardless of their role or title.

* We pay quarterly bonuses based on pro-activity, responsibility and other performance indicators.

* Everyone can work from wherever they like, still many people choose to work from our main office in Barcelona. (For example I work many weeks out of my camper van with 3G/4G connection from beautiful surf locations)

* In theory, everyone can choose how much or how little they want. Not always possible, but we try to make it possible as much as we can.

* We have managers, but they don't demand things. They are responsible that certain things happen, but decisions are being made collaboratively.

* All managers are either engineers or designers. No bullshit managers.

* We don't have a dedicated sales person. All work we get is from word-of-mouth and the first person a new client speaks to is either an engineer or designer (or both).

* We play Mario Kart / StarCraft after lunch ;-)

* We do a lot of sports activities together

* We have a lot of BBQs on our terrace

* We use some of the profits for fun internal experiments (small projects without an expected outcome other than having fun & learning). However, some of them are now actually turning into actual products: [http://bugfender.com/](http://bugfender.com/)

* MJ University: we take online classes together as a group

* MJ Talk: weekly presentation about an interesting topic (not necessarily tech related). For example we had talks about personal finance (investing), achieving happiness, etc.

* We encourage pair programming where it makes sense

* MJ Weekend: once or twice every year we fly everyone to Spain, rent a nice villa with pool and have a good time together. Some pics: [http://blog.mobilejazz.cat/work-life-balance-at-mobile-jazz/](http://blog.mobilejazz.cat/work-life-balance-at-mobile-jazz/)

* MJ Retreats: we're going to remote places and work there together. At the moment six of us are on an island in Thailand. In February we go skiing in Austria.

* We put a lot of effort in hearing everyone's opinion and feedback and try to put it into action

With all that we've managed to attract and retain incredible talent, but most importantly we have a very pleasant time together.

That said, we're a company optimizing on lifestyle and happiness, rather than profit. So this way of running a business is probably not applicable everywhere.

(Edit: formatting, typos and a few additions)

<comment><USER18> Hi from 7th floor (3scale.net)! Good luck with candidates. Looks like pretty nice place to work.

<comment><USER17> We've regular BBQs. We usually let you guys know. Just come up next time and say hello :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Gore is a widely known company that does. However, a review of their glassdoor profile shows it is not as great on the inside as the marketing makes it out to be.

Here's my previous comments on it [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8270601](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8270601)

<comment><USER20> It sounds pretty similar to most large organisations. In particular:

"Now instead of getting work done, people will dedicate their time to internal politics and jostling for group position"

Internal politics and jostling for group position happens in every large organisation I have worked at.

"unresolved because nobody could assume the role of dictator and push through needed work prioritization schedules"

Again, at every large company I have worked for the "dictators" of successful projects were rarely the people with official ownership of the projects or people high up in the org chart. So I'm not sure why nobody could assume the role of dictator.

<comment><USER19> One of the things that formal organizational structures provide is a set of tools you can use to fix logjams when consensus-building isn't possible.

By building an organization _only_ on de-facto group dynamics, you toss away all of those tools and you have literally no option but to play along with these informal processes.

One of the few things modern management practice has identified for success is that informal processes need to be brought under some semblance of organizational control or they become incestuous and optimize for local efficiencies rather than enabling the entire organization to be successful.

>Again, at every large company I have worked for the "dictators" of successful projects were rarely the people with official ownership of the projects or people high up in the org chart. So I'm not sure why nobody could assume the role of dictator.

Here's how this works in flat organizations

employee a: I need you to do this

employee b: no

and that's the end of the story. Sometimes, if the organization is setup according to some kind of flat org theory you'll get these steps also

employee a: well I'm going to take this to committee

employee b: ok

<months pass, committee meets>

employee a: I told employee b to do the thing and he said "no"

employee b: employee a was acting like my boss and we're flat, I didn't feel the need to give into his demands ( _committee members nod in assent_ )

committee: we've decided that employee b does not, in _fact_ , need to do the thing

and now the thing doesn't get done

Here's how it works in a grown-up organization

employee a: I need you do this

employee b: no

employee a: boss, I need b to do this for <business reasons>

boss: employee b, do the thing

employee b: no

boss: rethink that

employee b: okay, I'll do it

souls are crushed, free will is diminished, but the thing gets done and the company moves on

However, more importantly, many so called "flat" organizations are not, either formally or informally. Informally they'll all succumb to informal group behavior that all humans exhibit in groups of more than 1. Formally, they'll all have some kind of hierarchy, but will attempt to hide it or obfuscate it in some way. This is usually tested trivially by offering to swap a low-level employee with a high-level one and seeing if it actually happens ( _hint_ it almost never will)

<comment><USER21> Ok then, the 'flat' organization devolves into a hierarchical one where you have to ferret out the real structure (or guess). So that a/b scenario never happens, even in the flat company.

<comment><USER19> Except the structure in a flat organization is all ad-hoc, there's no teeth behind it. Just because Joe in accounting talks loud and operates with charisma doesn't give him dictatorial powers backed by "do it or you're fired" powers.

It also means that when shit goes wrong, there's no "buck stops here" person who's ultimately responsible. Joe can always argue that he's just a member of a committee and defer responsibility to everybody else, and use his charisma (and probably a backlog of favor trading) to scapegoat somebody else.

The most important thing is that all this is a distraction from the business of the company. All this time that Joe has to invest in gathering and cultivating meaningless power that he shouldn't have, and putting in place an invisible power structure that everybody around him has to navigate...could better be spent doing, I dunno, accounting perhaps?

Flat structures tend to work only when organizations are _very_ small, or can be compartmentalized into very small groups, but there's tacit acknowledgement that even in those cases there needs to be a formal dictator to make sure the ball is moving forward and people aren't wasting time in power brokering exercises. When the organizations get large, it becomes a necessity.

Peer groups define fashion, not progress.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> You didn't specify in your question - what size firm are you thinking of?

There are _lots_ of small firms (ie, ~5 people) who use this approach. Arguably, for a team of 2-5 people, it's the most natural strategy anyway.

The challenge, of course, comes with scaling this to a team of 50 or 500 people. At that scale, there are far fewer examples (though the comments in this thread point out some exceptions).

Assuming you ask because you're looking to find a place to work, in addition to the other names mentioned here, you may want to look at very small companies as well, because the odds are very much in your favor of finding one. Just be aware that the team dynamics may change as the company grows, which you may find you like, or which may mean it's time for you to look for your next step.

<comment><AUTHOR> thank you. I am not looking for a place to work actually, I am working on a research project and at the moment i am interested in everything that is out there. but of course, I am interersted in companies that actually have to do some thinking about organisation in order to get things done

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Can anyone confirm that Github still operates this way?

<comment><USER24> Some LinkedIn job titles from current GitHub employees:

      * VP, Business Development & Services
      * Head of Technology Partnerships
      * CIO
      * VP, HR
      * Vice President, Strategy
      * Vice President, Marketing
      * VP Communications
      * Director of Outreach
      * Director of Sales

<comment><USER25> See also: [http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/09/technology/valve-a- video-g...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/09/technology/valve-a-video-game- maker-with-few-rules.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0) \- "The few employees who've put titles on business cards do so to satisfy outsiders apprehensive about working with people without labels. The same applies to Gabe Newell, one of Valve's founders."

(no idea whether this is the case here...)

One of my former colleagues had this sort of experience at one job, where his job title was "programmer" (you got this title if you were a programmer; there weren't any others available). He was finding it sometimes difficult to get people to return emails, presumably because he didn't sound important enough. Apparently the last straw was being roundly ignored in a particular meeting with one external company! A swift title upgrade (no changes in responsibility...) fixed all of this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I feel like this describes my present employer. The company culture emphasizes that everyone should experience maximum Autonomy, Mastery, Purpose, Transparency, Empathy and Fun in their job. Hierarchy is way less important to us than getting results. We're in Toronto and we have more about this at our website: [https://nulogy.com/](https://nulogy.com/)

<comment><USER27> How is management structured? How are product decisions made?

<comment><USER26> Ah! Josh, your name was familiar to some of my coworkers!

A couple of points to answer your questions:

\- We do centralize our product strategy and portfolio planning, but we decentralize our release and iteration planning.

\- We focus on building strong teams of diverse talent sets that are becoming more self managing. Teamwork is big for us, flying solo on any task is rare-r than in other places I've worked.

\- Our management (and everyone else) are really accessible for a medium sized company. I have faith that if I sent a calendar invite to our C*O for a 15 min chat on a free timeslot, they'd show up. Of course, respect goes both ways and I wouldn't book their time unless I really needed them specifically and it couldn't be handled asynchronously.

Thanks for the questions!

<comment><USER28> Well, the point is some companies don't have management. Sounds like yours does ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Monty Widenius published the [http://hackingbusinessmodel.info/](http://hackingbusinessmodel.info/) which they were using at MySQL AB (before Sun I think). I don't think they use this at MariaDB Corporation. We try to use this at [http://axai.com.mx](http://axai.com.mx), a small company I belong to in Mexico.

</comment><comment><USER30> We do this at Olark to a large extent, but I don't think anybody has written about it in any detail yet. We have a peer-driven project proposal process that allows anybody to propose a project, and then "vote with your feet" to get it done. It's still pretty new, but I'd guess we'll write about it once we have a little more experience with it.

</comment><comment><USER31> Springest in NL (and some other companies too) practice Holocracy

[http://devblog.springest.com/holacracy-at-springest-dev- team...](http://devblog.springest.com/holacracy-at-springest-dev-team-kick- off/)

As far as i know the only 'new' management trend that has catched on here.

<comment><USER32> That we do! If you're interested, our founder Ruben more recently also wrote an article about the challenges of adopting holacracy: [https://medium.com/@rubzie/8-challenges-to-overcome-when- ado...](https://medium.com/@rubzie/8-challenges-to-overcome-when-adopting- holacracy-9bc38f5cbab4)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Here in the Netherlands we've got Voys ([http://www.voys.nl](http://www.voys.nl)), they were on HN a while back too; [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8420802](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8420802)

<comment><USER33> They have a flat management style, see [http://www.voys.nl/over-voys/het-voys- model](http://www.voys.nl/over-voys/het-voys-model) (it's Dutch but, you know, Google Translate)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Ok this is a little off topic but maybe someone can tell me. These orgs make a huge deal about how salary is selected by your peers. How does that actually work though? Like the detailed logistics of it? Who exactly picks what you'll get? How is the final decision made?

</comment><comment><USER35> Semco. You may want to read Ricardo Semler's book [http://www.amazon.com/Maverick-Success-Behind-Unusual- Workpl...](http://www.amazon.com/Maverick-Success-Behind-Unusual- Workplace/dp/0446670553/) it's 20 years old but for some reason it's not a classic in startups or US business environments (edit: oh I see someone mentioned it). He wrote a more recent book I haven't read: [http://www.amazon.com/Seven-Day-Weekend-Changing-Work- Works-...](http://www.amazon.com/Seven-Day-Weekend-Changing-Work-Works- ebook/dp/B000PDYVXE/) anyone with comments on this one?

</comment><comment><USER36> Galois has a pretty flat structure, and employees can choose what they work on among the currently funded projects (they do mostly grant-funded research).

[https://galois.com/](https://galois.com/)

</comment><comment><USER29> There's gcoop ([http://gcoop.coop/](http://gcoop.coop/)). A software cooperative in argentina. I think they have around 20 people working on a cooperative model.

<comment><USER37> Similarly in Montreal: [https://www.koumbit.org](https://www.koumbit.org) (legally a non-profit, run mostly by consensus)

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> At Buffer we've started to move in this direction. I can highly recommend watching this video if you're interested in self-management and the idea of a new management paradigm: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcS04BI2sbk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcS04BI2sbk). Frederic's book by the same name also goes into further details and shares several example companies: Buurtzorg, AES, Morning Star, FAVI, RHD and others.

<comment><USER39> This is the most eye-opening talk, I've listened to since a long time.

It is sad that it was published in August this year and was only viewed 8k times. I don't think this is a big number for the applicability this has.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I remember two firms from previous HN posts that stuck with me, Fog Creek and Balsamiq. Joel's methodology might be a little complex, but it makes sense.

[http://blogs.balsamiq.com/team/2011/09/12/salary/](http://blogs.balsamiq.com/team/2011/09/12/salary/)

[http://joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000038.html](http://joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000038.html)

</comment><comment><USER41> Not sure how we compare to those but here @ VAGAS.com we have a radically horizontal management model.

Everything, from strategic planning to everyday decisions, are open to anyone participate, but well... our founder can explain this way better than me, so here it goes: [http://www.managementexchange.com/story/horizontal- managemen...](http://www.managementexchange.com/story/horizontal-management- vagascom)

</comment><comment><USER42> We have a flat structure with no technical managers at Smarkets (London). Engineers self-organise into projects. Projects are self-directed and members of the project appoint a lead and have quantitative goals. Salaries will be set from anonymous peer review. We're a team of 11 engineers.

</comment><comment><USER43> You might find this from Laura Thomson (Director of Engineering Operations at Mozilla) useful: [https://speakerdeck.com/lauraxt/minimum-viable- bureaucracy](https://speakerdeck.com/lauraxt/minimum-viable-bureaucracy)

</comment><comment><USER44> Zoho Corp. is also an interesting company. Their CRM is often considered a better/cheaper alternative to SalesForce.

Their Zoho University concept is also an interesting attempt to solve India's problem of creating quality engineers (vs quantity).

<comment><USER45> Do Zoho have a flat management structure?

<comment><USER44> I'm not sure about a completely flat structure, but they do value the actual work done than the post of an employee.

Employees are often encouraged to move between products as both of them mature.

Their attrition rate is also very very low.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Morning Star is the best I've heard: [https://hbr.org/2011/12/first-lets-fire- all-the-managers/ar/...](https://hbr.org/2011/12/first-lets-fire-all-the- managers/ar/1)

</comment><comment> d--b Bunch of them in there: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_organization](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_organization)

</comment><comment><USER47> If the organizing method at Valve is so great, where the hell is the third episode of the Half-Life 2 trilogy? I've been waiting 7 years for god's sake.

</comment><comment><USER48> [https://www.balancedpayments.com/open](https://www.balancedpayments.com/open)

</comment><comment><USER49> Attlasian

<comment><USER50> Do you have any information on how exactly Attlasian works (links to some presentations/posts would be great)? From what I know they are not even close to Github/Valve kind of flow. But I might be wrong.

<comment><USER51> Found this from 2011: [http://www.managementexchange.com/story/its-culture- stupid-h...](http://www.managementexchange.com/story/its-culture-stupid-how- permeating-information-culture-leads-corporate-success)

and of course their official pages on it: [https://www.atlassian.com/company/about/values](https://www.atlassian.com/company/about/values)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Bridgewater Associates

</comment><comment><USER53> Have you checked: www.assembly.com & www.kickstarter.com

<comment><USER54> I don't think that is what was meant by OP. I think they were asking about the atmosphere/organization inside of the company, rather than companies that allow people to collaborate.

<comment><USER55> Yes I think this is what the question is about. Some people might call it "Holocracy" or something like that...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> I still remember michaelochurch suggesting that Google should use open allocation.</comment>


Risk and Reward, or how to make a lot of money - <AUTHOR> http://influencehacks.com/risk-and-reward

<comment><USER2> Interesting post, but I don't think risk is the fudndamental driver of markets, scarcity is. And that's what drives the value of risk up. Risk isn't rewarded per se by the market, otherwise people who were willing to jump off cliffs in the hope they might live might find themselves rewarded. But people who jump off cliffs to find the last gold ingot may be rewared for their risk if they find it.

Hence same with startups, don't just take completely stupid unjustified risk, but if it's in the hunt for something valuable and scarce the risk can be justified and if successful the reward disproportionally large.

And to quote you "that's how you can make a lot of money!"</comment>


The heroes we deserve: Nickelback - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/tldr/2019/10/3/20896623/nickelback-trump-photograph-meme-copyright-takedown <comment><USER2> >Fair use is a doctrine in the law of the United States that permits limited use of copyrighted material without having to first acquire permission from the copyright holder.

I wonder where the line is drawn on fair use in this case.</comment>


Ask HN: Why Can't I Watch SouthPark in English in Germany? - <AUTHOR> Feel free to finish the probable-manager's sentence: "No, we should make it German only, because..."
It's a general question about the reasons behind original providers limiting user's choice. Feel free to use other platforms and countries. <comment><USER2> ...we bought the rights to distribute in a huge package with dozens or even hundreds of shows, and apart from a few special-interest titles (GoT, TBBT etc.), demand for English-language programming is pretty low. We're certainly not paying double price so that a few thousand users can watch one of their favorite shows in English.

<comment><AUTHOR> Right, ok. So, SouthPark's parent company has to pay for being able to stream the original, English version on their website? (just clarifying what ___distribution rights_ __means in this case) Is there any way to justify such practice, from a utilitarian perspective of a net-benefit for society?

<comment><USER2> I assumed you mean something like Netflix. At first I even thought you were talking about television.

<comment><AUTHOR> I meant streaming platforms, where the cost of providing original voice over is close to zero, compared to the benefit of learning a new language.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'd turn the question around and ask why in Germany TV shows shouldn't be broadcasted in German.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dubbing_(filmmaking)#Germany,_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dubbing_\(filmmaking\)#Germany,_Austria_and_Switzerland) "According to a European study, Austria is the country with the highest rejection rate (more than 70 percent) of subtitles, followed by Italy, Spain and Germany"

<comment><AUTHOR> The question is about ___removing_ __the option to watch it in the original.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Also, am I correct in the assumption that U.S. doesn't have access to non- dubbed versions of foreign series?</comment>


How Many People Are You Consuming in a Day? - <AUTHOR> http://jordancooper.wordpress.com/2010/08/25/how-many-people-are-you-consuming-in-a-day/

<comment><USER2> I actually thought it would describe some kind of green soylent-ish scenario with calculations about number of people required...</comment>


Ask HN: Would you sign up for a "Hire-a-HN-Hacker" board? - <AUTHOR>

HN has monthly "Who's hiring" posts, but not "Who wants to be poached into a better job" posts.
So, I want to ask: Would you like such a service? Are there any comfortably-employed hackers hanging out at HN who would like something better -- new challenges, work-life balance, kegerator, whatever?
We created this page to test the idea: http://blog.fiveyearitch.com/2013/05/show-hn-unofficial-hire-hn-hacker-board.html  (Clickable link below.)
It uses the same embeddable FiveYearItch widget which learning sites use to get better jobs for their students.
Do you like it? Tell me in the comment below and vote in the quiz at the widget page.
If enough HN people sign up, our next step is finding a permanent high-profile home for an unofficial "Hire a HN News Hacker" page. <comment><AUTHOR> Clickable link: [http://blog.fiveyearitch.com/2013/05/show-hn-unofficial- hire...](http://blog.fiveyearitch.com/2013/05/show-hn-unofficial-hire-hn- hacker-board.html)

</comment><comment><USER2> In my experience, most developers are looking for more then "just" another job...it could be a bump in pay but it usually also means a new challenge like working on a particular tech, type of product, domain, etc...nothing here on the Hire-a-HN-hacker tells the employer what you _want_ to do, only what few hot keyword/skills you have and sure, the skills will match the same keywords that crappy recruiters are searching for and you'll learn about heaps of jobs good and more often bad. You could also post your résumé privately on monster if you want to cast a wide net.

we're lucky as engineers...tradionally employers have had an abundance of candidates to filter, but with programming skills in such demand, developers now have an abundance of oppourtunities...it's not that we need more job oppourtunities, we need a way to filter the bad ones out.

disclaimer, I run trypitchbox.com - which operates in a similar space

<comment><AUTHOR> >tells the employer what you want to do

>it could be a bump in pay but it usually also means a new challenge like working on a particular tech, type of product, domain, etc

Sure, that's _exactly_ what FiveYearItch is all about.

When you register ( <http://www.fiveyearitch.com/register?publisher=e0e3f1> ), you will say "what you need in your next job," whether it is learning opportunities, ace colleagues, stock options, a flat hierarchy, or anything else you'd like.

Employers have to commit to provide these if a deal goes through.

The "Hire-a-HN-Hacker" widget has limited space, and so it highlights skills that would interest an employer, but when the employer clicks to search, they'll see the developer's requirements as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Great idea, and it looks to be executed well. One gripe. Please don't regulate sysadmin/devops to 'other'. I like to believe we're first class citizens too :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. Yes, this is absolutely for sysadmins, etc. The "fun quiz" on the welcome-page only had room for a few sample options.

On the registration page at <http://fiveyearitch.com/register> just start typing in the "wanted position" field and you'll see that "system administrator" is already an option.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm not sure if this will work, the thing is that a lot of good hackers that I know, don't like to spend time on writing nice resumes, sign-up for jobs websites, write a good bio, introduction etc, they simply prefer to do what they like :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, maldinii, that's exactly the problem we are trying to solve. Take a look at the sign-up page <http://fiveyearitch.com/register> We made it super- simple: No resume, no bio, super-short form.

And even after employers contact you, we have optimized to make it easy to ignore them. No chit-chat, you can just click "no thanks."

<comment><USER4> Yes, I understand your point, but the problem is that if the developer doesn't post enough information, the employer won't be able to evaluate their work and they will not be able to differentiate people that are good from people that are not. A solution that I see for those kind of people is to introduce a 5 minute call with any developer that apply and see what kind of person they are .

<comment><AUTHOR> Right, we developed a workflow to work around it.

The employer can ask for some quick qualifiers, FizzBuzz-style questions, to separate the sheep from the goats.

They should take two minutes each to answer and are not intended as an in- depth test or interview.

Afterwards, the employer can move into further discussions and the regular interview process.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> How about people in EU? _Please only sign up if you have authorization to work in the US._

<comment><AUTHOR> We're not quite worldwide yet :-/ but we have been adding countries gradually and will be adding more soon.

So far, FiveYearItch supports the US, Australia, Canada, the UK, Israel, and India.

You can register at our user-feedback page <http://fiveyearitch.uservoice.com/> to get updates.

<comment><USER6> > FiveYearItch supports the US, Australia, Canada, the UK, Israel, and India.

Why is supporting the EU more difficult than supporting any of those countries?

<comment><USER7> Are you volunteering to spend the time building up a list of partner companies willing to hire through them from every country in the EU? Are you also volunteering to do the legal consultations to ensure they're meeting labor law requirements in each of those countries? Or, are you asking that they let engineers spend time putting their profiles into a pile nobody will see?

This isn't a technology problem ("add EU to line 284 of config.yml"). It's a regulatory problem, a cultural problem, a sales/support staffing problem, a marketing problem. There's nothing wrong with not half-assing it.

<comment><USER8> Amen to that. People tend to forget that Amazon started off selling only books, Facebook started off exclusive to Harvard students, CraigsList started off as a local SF site, etc. Companies that try to do too much at once end up spreading themselves too thin.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Like!

We need a way for GOOD employers, the ones who grok hacking, to poach us out of the corporate jobs.

We all got what it takes to hunt up a job, but if employers can find me with other HNers, all the better!

<comment><USER10> Strange how employers have to dig through HN profiles or LinkedIn accounts to find the good ones -- and many of us just don't WANT any offers at all.

I wish I could say "Job's not so awful I gotta move, but I want to hack for real, please, and not just on my GitHub at night."

<comment><USER11> I have that feeling too... I kindof want to look but don't want to do the whole song and dance.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! We called "that feeling" the "Itch," and built our site around it -- <http://FiveYearItch.com>.

Song-and-dance definitely not required.

<comment><USER11> Hey! I actually had a try on your site few months ago and it didn't pan out for me. I must not have an attractive enough skillset for the businesses browsing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Well, I lose. It's not even 18 hours and I'm breaking from my self-imposed HN break. Dammit, I suck. Or, we'll just call this thread an exception, because I really want to contribute to this discussion.

Neat idea, but probably not. The problem with job boards is that they all turn into ghettos. The technology is fine. The material (sometimes on both sides, but almost always in terms of employers) usually ain't.

I was talking to an investor, years ago, about a dating site and he pointed out a mistake I was making. He said, "you think the problem with these other sites is technology, but that's wrong. The sites are fine; the people are broken."

We think that the recruiters peddling horrible subordinate corporate jobs are somehow unaware of HN and how geeks really think; but reality doesn't bear that out. We're damn easy to fool. If a sociopath can hoodwink a venture capitalist, then he can pretty easily hire nerds.

I don't want to get into a long-running HN thread (I have good reason for my month-long break that I just now broke from) but if you'd like to talk offline about some thoughts I've had about fixing the job market, I'm michael.o.church at gmail.

<comment><AUTHOR> Michael,

Thanks for that comment, you've hit it spot on. The focus at FiveYearItch is not the technology, it's the workflow for connecting the two sides.

> recruiters peddling horrible subordinate corporate jobs

That's exactly who we are keeping out.

We work with employers, preferably technically savvy hiring managers, and they have to be smart enough to reach out to developers rather than assuming developers will come begging for a job to them.

They have to be willing to commit to what developers require, which is often not salary or health plans but "ace colleagues" and "flat hierarchy."

And as to finding the folks to bring together: That's the key, we're finding various ways to do it -- and note where we're chatting right now :-)

<comment><USER13> How is this different from a conventional full-service executive search firm?

How does it scale if employers and candidates are rigorously screened (assuming that they are rigorously screened) since conventional full-service match making is built upon individual relationships and meaningful conversations?

This is not to say that there isn't a need for an HN full-service executive search firm. But rather that I don't see how the objectives are satisfied without a conventional labor intensive model.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good question.

First, it's for developers and other IT pros, not executives.

It's for introducing people, not a full-service search firm. Employers send quick screening question to candidates.

The workflow is designed to be very quick, easy, and easy to drop at any time. At the early stage of communication, both sites should be able to click a "No thanks" button and leave it at that.

Once the candidate has passed initial screening, employers continue in their normal interview process.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Liked the quiz on the FiveYearItch.com welcome page. I got a 3-of-5 "itch" score, so, I guess I'll give it a try.

</comment><comment><USER15> Very cool. Signed up.</comment>


X Window System Basics (2014) - <AUTHOR> https://magcius.github.io/xplain/article/x-basics.html <comment><USER2> Previously: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21039848](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21039848)

<comment><USER3> Author here. I don't want to copy/paste my entire postmortem in here, so I'll link to the thread from a few days ago which has some extra context into why I started this series, and why I stopped it, as well as future projects I've since moved on to.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21041340](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21041340)

<comment><USER4> > pick up a piece here or there, and go on straight to bashing Wayland, > gleefully unaware that I was one of the people making it.

Don't worry, you working on Wayland doesn't make it any less sucky, it is broken at a design level so unless you had a fundamental effect on the design, you don't bear any blame for its state :-P.

(though a better approach would be to try and fix X11's issues instead of intentionally breaking it and replacing it altogether)

<comment><USER3> That's exactly the comment that makes me feel validated in leaving the Linux and FOSS worlds behind. Why would you post something like that?

<comment><USER4> Because i believe Wayland is fundamentally worse at a design level than X11. Why else would i post something like that?

And i too have lost interest on Linux (on the desktop at least) over time (incidentally also working on games but that is just a coincidence) and a main reason for that is all the push that Wayland gets despite its shortcomings from various big players. Wayland is most likely going to become the primary tech behind Linux desktop, but that wont be due to its merits, it will be due to the push it gets from companies with money.

Xorg is not a simple project and most people who may want to work on it will be hobbyists who more likely than not, wont be able to keep up with whatever breakage Wayland introduce. You can already see this sort of inability to keep up with "modern Free Desktop" breakage by looking at the projects that are developed by hobbyists in their free time and how slow they are in adapting from Gtk2 to Gtk3 - some still haven't fully adapted, yet Gtk is now breaking things again with Gtk4.

If only all that breakage was for something worthwhile. But in reality there is absolute no reason, yet is forced on everyone. Desktop programs in the 80s drew buttons, checkboxes, input fields and sliders. Desktop programs in the 90s drew buttons, checkboxes, input fields and sliders. Desktop programs in the 2000s drew buttons, checkboxes, input fields and sliders. Desktop programs in the 2010s drew buttons, checkboxes, input fields and sliders. I am absolutely sure that desktop programs in 2020s, 2030s, 2040s and forward will continue to draw buttons, checkboxes, input fields and sliders. There is no reason to break those programs, no reason to waste anyone's time rewriting programs that already work just to keep up with lower layer breakage, no reason to introduce additional dependencies just so you can avoid the breakage, no reason to waste time learning how to do the exact same stuff only now in a slightly different way, no reason to do any of that _at all_.

From my perspective Wayland has no reason to exist. At least no reason that has to do with what would be better for everyone _NOT_ involved in its development.

While Windows has its issues (e.g. i do not like how it forces composition - also a reason i dislike Wayland - and how they remove customization options in a very hacky way) it is still better than Wayland (e.g. my old code still works without changes, i can write code that manipulate arbitrary windows, despite the hacks it is still very fast, etc). At least from my perspective. But i feel like choosing the least of two evils (not that X11 is perfect, but i'd prefer if all the wasted effort that went to Wayland was spent on improving Xorg).

So i decided to stick with Windows. The only way i could see myself doing what i believe is right is work full time on Xorg, toolkit(s) that take advantage of Xorg (instead of treating it as a dumb bitmap terminal) _and_ programs that work with these toolkits. But i cannot do that and even if i could, the constant FUD against X11 from Wayland developers and fans make me wonder if it would be worth the effort in the first place.

FWIW i do not mind Wayland existing (even though i see no point in it personally) as much as i do not mind Arcan existing - or Qt existing, Gtk3 existing, ZSH existing, Ruby existing and any other project that provides an alternative option to another project. What i _do_ mind is the manipulation going on to force me (indirectly mainly, through all the efforts going on - yes i know that technically nobody puts a gun on my head) to use Wayland. If i'm going to be forced something might as well be something i dislike less and due to the vast majority using it it has less problems.

Hence, Windows.

<comment><USER3> Well, I won't respond to any of that, I will just say that I was one of the core designers of Wayland, and I've had a very fundamental impact on the design. I understand both X11 and Wayland quite well. So thanks for the insults, I guess.

This is exactly the sort of comment that got me tired of working on Xplain, and why I quit working on Linux entirely. My one wish is that you treat the FOSS graphics communities with more respect in the future. There's a lot of people who have years and years of experience solving problems and dealing with this stuff every day, and their opinions hold a lot of merit.

<comment><USER4> > So thanks for the insults, I guess.

I'm not sure what you found insulting, i was commenting on Wayland itself and the companies that push it. The closest i could think of is the "blame for its state" bit but that was obviously said jokingly as tongue-in-cheek (even with the ":-P" smiley).

Do you see disliking Wayland, disliking the forces that push it and not seeing a point at it existing as insults to yourself?

> treat the FOSS graphics communities with more respect in the future

A "community" isn't a person to be treated with anything, if i'm to treat someone with respect it will be a person, not something vague like a community.

Also disliking a piece of work doesn't mean that i disrespect (or respect) the person who worked on it. I honestly do not know you so i have no reason to disrespect (or respect) nor insult you (something that from my perspective i didn't do). I do know about Wayland and i have many reasons to dislike it, but that dislike doesn't extend to a general dislike or disrespect of you. It is Wayland i dislike, not you.

> There's a lot of people who have years and years of experience solving > problems and dealing with this stuff every day, and their opinions hold a > lot of merit.

Sure, but there are also a lot of people who can simply be wrong despite their experience, for a variety of reasons. Appeals to authority aren't to be taken at face value. Also in my post above i'm not judging the people who created the work, i'm judging the work and (also) how it i feel is enforced on me despite my will.

Some people might get too attached to their work and feel any attack towards it is an insult to themselves, but to me that does not sound like a reason to not criticize that work - or any work - especially when that works is affecting me.

Also i think that if you feel insulted by people criticizing your work you may not have a good time working as a games developer :-P.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is also one of my favorite and most helpful posts I've found working with X so far: [http://jichu4n.com/posts/how-x-window-managers-work-and- how-...](http://jichu4n.com/posts/how-x-window-managers-work-and-how-to-write- one-part-i/)

</comment><comment><USER6> The XCB tutorial is quite good as well [https://xcb.freedesktop.org/tutorial/](https://xcb.freedesktop.org/tutorial/)

Also, if you want to do simple graphics stuff with X11, then I highly recommend looking at [https://www.cairographics.org/](https://www.cairographics.org/) instead of trying to use the builtin drawing functions that come with X11.

<comment><USER7> Additionally, if you want create good looking modern UI take a look on _mlib_ [0] toolkit (built on top of X11) used for _AzPainter_ [1] drawing program.

[0] [https://github.com/Symbian9/azpainter/tree/master/mlib](https://github.com/Symbian9/azpainter/tree/master/mlib)

[1] [https://github.com/Symbian9/azpainter/](https://github.com/Symbian9/azpainter/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> For those that miss it, there's multiple pages. If you go back one page (by hitting the left arrow link), you get an introduction and table of contents.

</comment><comment><USER9> I don't have anything this cool and interactive, but for those interested I've been working on a comprehensive Wayland book:

[https://wayland-book.com](https://wayland-book.com)

It's a little over halfway done.

<comment><USER10> I bought it yesterday and was curious about what software you used to generate the html viewer. I liked it.

<comment><USER9> [https://github.com/rust-lang-nursery/mdBook](https://github.com/rust-lang- nursery/mdBook)

Thanks for buying it, I hope you like it :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> How does X interact with your graphics card?

<comment><USER3> That boils down to two main questions:

1\. How do X11 clients render using your GPU, like using OpenGL or Vulkan?

2\. How does an X11 server talk to your graphics card to get stuff on screen?

Clients render through a magic secret backdoor. libGL.so / the Vulkan ICD, provided by the vendor talks to their graphics driver, and then there's typically an Xorg extension to do the buffer handoff. In the open-source world, the libGL.so is mesa, it talks to the kernel using a kernel API called "DRM" (Direct Rendering Manager) to render your graphics to a buffer, and then the resulting rendered buffer is shoved across and composited using an Xorg extension known as DRI3, which is initialized as part of the video driver. Most of the open source xf86-video-* drivers support DRI3.

For the latter question, the X11 server has a series of video drivers that can take the buffers you have and show them on screen. I won't go into the exact details of how these buffers are composited (it's not very pretty, but the typical approach these days is the server itself using GL the same way a client would to composite the buffers together), but ultimately a final composited scanout buffer comes out the other side, which is sent to the screen through some driver-specific mechanism. In the open-source world, this mechanism is called "Kernel Mode-Setting", or "KMS", and it's part of the kernel DRM APIs mentioned above.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Logged in to upvote this because it used the correct: X Window System and not X Windows (Grrrr...) Man X folks! [Apparently OP did.]</comment>


WikiLeaks releases AKP email database - <AUTHOR> https://wikileaks.org/akp-emails/ <comment><USER2> Website loaded a moment ago (17 minutes after this link was posted) but now the site is not responding.

Says they are releasing emails from mailboxes from first part of alphabet, and these are more used to communicate with the world than internally.

Hopefully server will come back soon.

edit: it loaded again, copied text from landing page

Today, 11pm Anakara Time, WikiLeaks releases part one of the AKP Emails. AKP, or the Justice & Development Party, is the ruling party of Turkey and is the political force behind the country's president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Part one of the series covers 762 mail boxes beginning with 'A' through to 'I' containing 294,548 email bodies together with many thousands of attached files. The emails come from "akparti.org.tr", the AKP's primary domain. The most recent was sent on July 6, 2016. The oldest dates back to 2010. It should be noted that emails associated with the domain are mostly used for dealing with the world, as opposed to the most sensitive internal matters.

The material was obtained a week before the attempted coup. However, WikiLeaks has moved forward its publication schedule in response to the government's post-coup purges. We have verified the material and the source, who is not connected, in any way, to the elements behind the attempted coup, or to a rival political party or state.

</comment><comment><USER3> > The material was obtained a week before the attempted coup. However, > WikiLeaks has moved forward its publication schedule in response to the > government's post-coup purges.

Unclear wording. Does moving "forward" mean to do something earlier than planned? Were we supposed to expect some other publication date when told that "the material was obtained a week before the attempted coup"?

<comment><USER4> > However, WikiLeaks has moved forward its publication schedule in response to > the government's post-coup purges.

This would be considered clear wording by proficient English speakers, 'However' sets up the clause, and 'has moved forward its publication schedule in response to..' is pretty self explanatory.

Generally one does not need to write "Wikileaks had publication of the material planned for a later date than today." \-- "has moved forward" implies the former.

<comment><USER3> > 'However' sets up the clause, and 'has moved forward its publication > schedule in response to..' is pretty self explanatory.

I think it requires the reader to perform an unfortunate extra step or two of inference. It seems preferable, in my humble opinion, to avoid this in situations where you want to be sure that you are expressing yourself unambiguously.

<comment><USER5> It seems perfectly unambiguous to me. However, ambiguousness may have been an intended affect of the statement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A random, cursory look didn't yield anything particularly interesting: lots of fairly shallow emails, google groups conversations, disgruntled citizens writing in all caps and a fair bit of spam. Granted, I'm also relying on Google Translate for a lot of this, so I may well be missing something obvious.

According to Wikileaks, the release was hastened in light of recent events, so I presume they didn't have time to comb through the data. That said, I would assume this was released for a reason (i.e. some of the emails have some value), but I honestly can't tell what that might be.

<comment><USER7> Why does Google Translate breaks newlines when translating? It makes really hard to read.

<comment><USER8> You just made me realize, it's a harder problem than at first glance:

\- If you translate line by line, you lose information shared between lines (state of the current sentence, etc)

"Did you stay \n

up last night?"

\- A solution would be to remember where the newline was (here, after the word stay) translate the whole sentence, then add it back in. But after translation, maybe "stay up" transformed into another word entirely. "stay" doesn't exist anymore, Or it might have shifted to another place in the sentence. where do you put the newline?

\- Idioms would further exacerbate this problem.

\- As a result, you would need to train your translation unit (e.g. a neural net) on also intelligently carrying newlines to the translated language. This might be more work than worth the payoff.

This might or might not be the reason. Could be a simple oversight, or something entirely different.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> There is also Fuat Avni, who was exposing Turkish government for last few years with very accurate predictions:

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

</comment><comment><USER10> Is there no way to download a dump of this leak and keep digging offline? (also started getting HTTP 500s now, search doesn't work either with HTTP 400).

</comment><comment><USER11> I am also having trouble loading the site.

But shouldnt WikiLeaks be releasing this as a torrent?! Wouldn't that be much more effective, both efficiency and cost-wise?

<comment><USER12> It would pretty great if everything wikileaks put out was available to download. They're actually really great research corpora in theory, but they send them to their website to die.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Are they claiming to have some new Clinton emails as well? [https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/755501298687115264](https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/755501298687115264)

</comment><comment> sohrab-b Getting"401 Authorization Required" trying to reach page

<comment><USER14> Same - chrome is bringing up a modal username/password box for me to fill in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> for the sake of clearness, story title can be switched to "turkish government" from "AKP", since other than turkish people would not be familiar with the name "AKP"(ruling party name's acronym)

<comment><USER16> The title is correct. It would be woefully incorrect to say "turkish government". Emails from the party email server have been leaked. If it had been government email servers, then government would be correct.

<comment><USER15> I'm not saying it's incorrect, it's not a well known acronym outside Turkey though. It could be "Turkey's ruling party" then in light of your comment. But it's ok if everybody's ok with it, just my thoughts.

<comment><USER17> _it 's not a well known acronym outside Turkey though_

Only if you've been living under a stone for the past week.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Have they release highlights of anything interesting?

Edit: Not able to search, I'm getting timeouts. Clearly a heavy load at launch time.

Edit 2: Wikileaks mentioned they were hit by 'cyberattacks' before the release but were still able to get it out. Maybe it's getting DDOS by some Turkish supporters. They were also apparently phished well enough to cause them to tweet this: [https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/755140834836832256/phot...](https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/755140834836832256/photo/1)

<comment><USER19> It would be nice if our technically-minded organizations would use more precise language, even if our government cannot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Site was accessible a few minutes ago. TCP connection now being reset almost immediately after request.

Edit: accessible again. Perhaps a DDOS mitigation technique?

</comment><comment><USER21> Translation will be necessary of course, but for some reason Chrome isn't recognizing that the page should be translated for me(not even offering me the context menu item on selection).

Trying to search returns a 401 at the moment.

Edit: that's no longer happening.

</comment><comment><USER22> Sadly, absolutely useless data -this batch at least-. Appearently nobody in AKP uses email but few rather nonimportant people.

</comment><comment><USER23> Is there a data dump of all of this instead of Wikileak's website? Would certainly make it a lot easier to comb through.

</comment><comment><USER24> Getting a 401 when trying to search.

</comment><comment><USER25> I'm getting a 401.

edit: it's fixed

</comment><comment><USER26> An initial search gave me lots of spams and malware...</comment>


Create website in easy way using simple Drag and Drop tools - <AUTHOR> http://www.codelator.com/blog/2014/aug/webflow-create-website-in-easy-way-using-simple-drag-and-drop-tools.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Webflow is one of the best website builder tool available on the internet. It uses simple drag and drop tools for creating custom, responsive and professional looking websites. If you are not a web designer and you don't want to write thousand lines of code then WEBFLOW is the perfect tool for you.

Webflow provides complete set of tool for creating stunning looking websites. It allows you to create all the necessary elements such as <div>, social widgets, video embedding, maps, buttons, section, container, columns, images, menubar etc. It provides a very clean and beautiful environment which makes it easy to find the desired element you want to add in your webpage. You don't need any skills for building a website using Webflow, but you need some basic understanding of HTML and CSS concepts. Once you will start using Webflow, you will automatically learn all the concepts.</comment>


Easy way of gaining or losing five years of life - <AUTHOR> http://books.google.com/books?id=si0CAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA99#v=onepage&q&f=false

<comment><USER2> Using this logic, if one sleeps 3 hours less than 8 (that is, 5 hours), In a 40 year period that would be 43800 hours (365 * 3 * 40). That amounts to 1825 days (that is, 24hour days) which is equal to 5 years (that is 365-day years, a simplification).

Teorically if you slept only 5 hours a day, you would live 5 years more in wake time during your lives, but... perhaps there should be studies correlating sleep deprivation and a shortest live span.

Nonetheless that is an interesting theory if we combine it with polyphasic sleep, which could ease the effects of sleep deprivation.

<comment><USER3> I sleep five to six hours a night. The information I find usually says that something around six to seven hours is ideal, and that less than six hours is a bad idea (It's usually stated that there are some links to health issues and lower longevity. This is also true for more than seven to eight hours.).

But then I also find information saying that it really varies from person to person, and that it's best to make sure that you don't feel tired during the day; if so you're probably okay.

(Note that this is all second hand. I've never really sat down to read studies themselves, I just read journalist interpretations.)

Anecdotally, I've had little problem with my sleep schedule. It gives me an extra chunk of time in the morning which I find extremely helpful, and I rarely find myself worn out until a little before I normally go to sleep.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> \- medical advances add 40 years to our lives (maybe) so we can live to 120 \- use polyphasic sleeping to sleep 4 hrs a day \- for the next 80 years (for a 40 year old man) \- and gain another 20 years in awake time so in effect you may be able to live 140 years! Cool.</comment>


Dow Plunges 1,175, the Biggest Point Drop in History - <AUTHOR> https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/02/05/583325123/stocks-extend-losses-with-dow-dropping-more-than-300-points-at-the-open <comment><USER2> It's the biggest drop because the Dow is close to all time highs.

It's far from the biggest percentage drop. Sensationalist headline.

<comment><USER3> I've found that in order to persuade people that something is important, you can either show them percentage deltas or quantity deltas. Pick the one that supports your agenda.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Think this is relevant

[https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/01/04/508261371/epis...](https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/01/04/508261371/episode-443-dont- believe-the-hype)

<comment><USER5> I agree with the premise, but the Russel 2k[0] and the S&P 500[1] were down similar amounts today (on a percentage basis).

[0][https://www.google.com/search?q=INDEXRUSSELL:RUT&tbm=fin#scs...](https://www.google.com/search?q=INDEXRUSSELL:RUT&tbm=fin#scso=uid_AOF4WqDZMcagtQXL5I6gDg_5:0) [1][https://www.google.com/search?q=INDEXSP:.INX&tbm=fin#scso=ui...](https://www.google.com/search?q=INDEXSP:.INX&tbm=fin#scso=uid_2-B4WoGyD4W8tQXd8obgBg_5:0)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> So, finally the correction comes? remember the 2000, then 2008, now it is already passed the 8 year mark, I guess it's finally here...

<comment><USER7> Yea, it comes just 1 week after I finally relent, and invested a large some of money which was "waiting" for this very correction.

So, guys, next time you want the market to drop just let me know and I'll invest some money.

FML.

<comment><USER8> What kind of sum? Were you doing dollar-cost averaging?

This kind of shit stressed me out so much to "track" I gave up entirely. Not like I'm ever pulling it out anyway.

edit: [https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/dollarcostaveraging.asp](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/dollarcostaveraging.asp)

<comment><USER9> I felt the same way so I just started investing a litte each month instead

That way it all kind of averages out instead of trying to time the market

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It isn't a crash unless the Dow drops more than 10% in a single day. When it drops more than 20% since the last high, it is a bear market. It's still a market correction adjusting to the Fed increasing the interest rate to control inflation. We should be fine in the near future.

</comment><comment><USER11> So I read that this drop relies on fears the there will be a spike in inflation due to increases in demand from higher wages and job growth? I am interested to see whether the inflation will really come so easily. I've personally been predicting that production can easily meet large increases in demand given current production tech, and international economic systems where multiple supply chains can reroute around locsl disruptions to production.

</comment><comment><USER12> This is a dupe of [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16311632](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16311632)

<comment><USER13> But this one doesn't require a login to the WSJ to read it.

Edited to add: Are you sure you weren't happy that your story was marked as a dupe?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=zitterbewegung](https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=zitterbewegung)

<comment><USER14> Erm, the other one is CNBC...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> _> As quickly as the market fell, it recovered much of the ground it had lost as investors remembered the economy and corporate earnings remain strong_

Amusing.

</comment><comment> sid-kap Obligatory comment about how the Dow is a useless number.

</comment><comment><USER16> looks at stock market. think: could be worse. could be currently invested in bitcoin.

</comment><comment><USER17> is it relevant to any cryptocurrencies?</comment>


Setting Up a Radio System from Scratch - <AUTHOR> http://spin.atomicobject.com/2014/05/16/radio-system-from-scratch/

<comment><USER2> The reason why you can find these modules is because 434MHz is an ISM band in some parts of ITU Region 1. You won't find an garage door opener there in the US. In the US you should use the 315MHz version which allows for license free use.

While 434MHz is in the 70cm amateur band you really should have an ID coming out of this thing when it transmits. All you need to do is shove your call sign out at 20wpm Morse code at the end of your transmission.

Otherwise it's a cool little hack.

<comment><USER3> There are some comments on the SparkFun page suggesting these transmitters are "Part 15" compliant (or at least can be, if only transmitting intermittently): [https://www.sparkfun.com/products/retired/8946](https://www.sparkfun.com/products/retired/8946)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is really great for both the Amateur Radio community (proper) as well as amateurs of radio concepts. Like a lot of things, computers are becoming more and more things in more and more places. Your grandfather's crystal set is today's DSP with an Arduino. That's just fantastic.

<comment><AUTHOR> Software Defined Radios are also fascinating! That's a very different post, though. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Nice post. For a slightly more comfortable setup the Arduino based JeeNode's ([http://jeelabs.org](http://jeelabs.org)) are worth mentioning. Super low power and quite a nice library.

</comment><comment><USER6> For frame syncing you can also have a look at Hoffman-Neuman sequences, applying convolution between the expected frame sync sequence and the incomming bit stream.

</comment><comment><USER7> Is it necessary to periodically transmit? What are downsides to only transmitting on state change?

<comment><AUTHOR> There's no way to know that the payload has been received - they're transmitters, not transceivers. The messages are idempotent anyway, so just retransmitting makes the whole system simpler.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I thought this would be yet another reference to a sci-fi story where someone is marooned on a planet with nothing, and they use their chemistry knowledge to re-implement enough metallurgy to build a spark-gap radio and get rescuced.

<comment><USER9> I'd read that

<comment><USER10> You have read Andy Weir's "The Martian"? ([http://www.amazon.com/The-Martian- Novel-Andy-Weir-ebook/dp/B...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Martian-Novel-Andy- Weir-ebook/dp/B00EMXBDMA))

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Or use Wifi, Bluetooth, Zigbee, :)

<comment><USER12> It's almost like you didn't even read the article...</comment></comment>


Launch your Angular JS development on a solid structure - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/real-life-front-end-experiences/ac9dd3537553

<comment><USER2> LESS/JS/TPL in one module — YES.</comment>


How Square moves Cash - <AUTHOR> http://jonbwhite.tumblr.com/post/66853226398/how-square-moves-cash

<comment><USER2> This is what x.com (aka payPal) did in the earliest days. You could submit a credit transaction to a credit card without an initial charge.

It worked, but it was strictly against Visa/MC policy, and they had to stop. By that time they had some critical mass and got ACH going quickly.

I don't know if it's the same thing with debit cards, but I suspect it is -- the transaction goes through Visa/MC, but settles via ACH once it's known that it's a debit card.

But Square might be big enough to change the policy. Especially since Visa is an investor?

<comment><USER3> The debit networks don't universally allow for refunds, even for legitimate transactions. Additionally it is generally against their terms of use.

Either Square is flying under the radar or has gotten special permission to do this.

<comment><USER4> We've been looking at the payments infrastructure in New Zealand recently and have discovered that, unless you find whoever wrote something 30 years ago, most of the senior payments people have limited and ofter contradictory understanding of the capabilities of the underlying systems.

<comment><USER5> Definately the US banking systems also still have the feeling that there's been an accretion of layers of technology over ancient systems. APIs that look like XML files wrapping fixed-field-length VAX-style data. It made me wonder - are there still mainframes under there? Or mainframe software being run in emulation? Or are the systems just patchworks maintaining the 1970s interchange formats because no one can stand to making breaking changes?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> By the way, Planet Money (a public radio show in the US) had a great episode on how ACH works, and the history behind it.

Excerpt from summary: "On today's show: Why the invisible pipes that move money around America are so slow. (And why the ones in England are so much faster.)"

[http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/10/04/229224964/episode-...](http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/10/04/229224964/episode-489-the- invisible-plumbing-of-our-economy)

<comment><USER7> I keep seeing this radio program referenced every time a thread comes up related to (blah blah ACH...).

So I listened to it. It wasn't that interesting. If you had never heard of ACH before, it would perhaps be illuminating, but if you already have a decent grasp of the existence of this system and it's shortcomings, there's not a lot more meat in that program...

YMMV.

<comment><USER8> What I find interesting about the program is that I have an emotional reaction like they are talking down to me.

I mean, yeah, it's a podcast targeted at the average person, sure, I'm not expecting them to really go deep. But I don't know very much about that sort of thing, so sometimes they really are giving me information I don't have.

But the tone? Well, it really does feel like I'm being talked down to. I do not know why. I find my own reaction odd, and I've listened to the podcast several times in an effort to try to figure out what, exactly, I found condescending.

It's especially odd because I'll listen to other podcasts targeted at the average person, and I'll be entertained or informed, and I won't feel like they are talking down to me. There's something about the planet money folks that sets me off.

<comment><USER9> Wow, and this podcast was done by Bloomberg and Kestenbaum, two of their _better_ reporters.

I mean, yeah, it's NPR. You're not going to get amazing voice talent reading the stories. I don't feel talked-down-to as much as I feel like I'm hearing a work done by second-year broadcasting students trying to finish a project. Listen to Chana Joffe-Walt or Zoe Chase sometime.

But if you think _this_ podcast is annoying, best you skip the rest of them...

<comment><USER8> nah, the voice acting is fine. And certainly, I'm not claiming that they are objectively arrogant, or that a 'reasonable person' would feel talked down to, and when you get down to it, I'm the last person to call someone else out on arrogance.

It's odd, too, as the non-financial stories on, say, this American life usually doesn't trigger the same response. (I mean, I'm not a huge fan of this American life, but not because I feel talked down to.)

I was commenting mostly because I find my own reaction... unexpected. And I think the question "what is arrogance?" is an interesting one. Different people will perceive vastly different levels of arrogance in the same document or reading.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> These have colloquially been referred to as blind credits, and are seriously frowned upon by the card networks. We told a Visa exec that we were planning on doing these and he said that at any substantial volume, we'd get shut down.

Square has a totally different cachet than GiftRocket does, so they may actually be in a position to bend the rules. Seemingly, other smaller payments providers have been able to implement APIs around this.

</comment><comment><USER11> To be fair, it's not some amazing flash of brilliance that led to square realizing you can "refund" a card without a charge first.

About 4 years ago I was building a payment processing solution for an ad network (something along the lines of an adsense clone) and for new users we needed to support micro-deposit verification. Usually this involves ACH deposits but to cut down the time it took, I implemented this using the Cybersource API against debit and credit cards. Obviously sending somebody money only reliably works with debit cards, because many people don't use a credit card often, but I just want to downplay the rhetoric in this post about squares unique brilliance in this regard.

<comment><USER12> It's not a flash of brilliance for thinking about it, it's a flash of guts for building a product around it.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, I second this. When I was at Square (a year ago), we knew the banks' APIs would allow "refunds" of arbitrary amounts, but it was a sort of "gee, isn't that odd" piece of information - it certainly didn't occur to me that it would be reliable enough to replace ACH. I'm super-curious about who made the call to use it this way.

<comment><USER13> The reason why it wasn't done to any great degree is that banks generally frown on this, and when I was last dealing with them a few years ago, Visa and MC would see a rise in refunds sort of like a chargeback. It wouldn't cost you a penalty, but do too many and you'd be at risk to get shut down.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I personally liked this explanation better: [http://www.quora.com/Square- Cash/How-does-Square-Cash-work-t...](http://www.quora.com/Square-Cash/How- does-Square-Cash-work-technically)

</comment><comment><USER15> Are there any API's out there currently that allow you to issue a debit card refund like this?

After some googling I found this: [http://www.fuzenetwork.com/contact- us/](http://www.fuzenetwork.com/contact-us/) linked to from here [https://github.com/balanced/balanced- api/issues/32](https://github.com/balanced/balanced-api/issues/32)

I tried to use their contact form but was redirected to what looks like a version of their site that isn't supposed (or expected) to be public yet. From there I find a link to this page: [http://info.fuzenetwork.com/developer- center-fuze-network](http://info.fuzenetwork.com/developer-center-fuze- network) and I was able to submit the form.

Edit: I received an email after signing up but it seemed a little half-baked. I would guess that they are still working on their product and aren't ready to launch just yet.

<comment><USER11> Debit-card only is something you'd need to determine yourself. But any merchant account API lets you issue refunds in this way. I've used Cybersource for it myself.

And of course, has anybody verified w/ Square that it MUST be a debit card. It could also just be a marketing distinction. For me, I NEVER use a debit card -- i abhor them -- and put everything on a credit card. So I wonder if it would let me provide a credit card number. For a friend sending me $20, it's no difference to me whether it goes directly to my Amex or makes a brief stop in in my bank account first.

<comment><USER16> Another reason they probably have the debit card restriction is due to the fact that the fees on debit card transactions are much cheaper than credit card processing fees.

<comment><USER11> I thought that was only true when processed over the debit network? That is, when using pin transacations. In my experience debit cards processed over Visa or MC network have identical fees to the merchant.

On the money-sender side, debit cards have far fewer consumer protections so will result in fewer successful chargebacks. Whether that had anything to do with it, I have no idea.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> "Original credits" have been around forever but they are typically watched pretty closely by the acquirers, processors and associations (V, MC) since they are ripe for enabling fraud. But I could imagine someone with Square's clout could work out a deal with Paymentech/First Data and/or Visa/MC (Visa is an investor).

As someone mentioned, we did this at PayPal a long time ago but it was frowned upon. We even looked at refunding prior credit card charges that were unrelated to the new payout. We'd even make money on those txns!

</comment><comment><USER18> I'm not sure where you got this from. But Visa already supports P2P payments for its acquirers: [https://developer.visa.com/vpp/](https://developer.visa.com/vpp/).

Venmo uses it. Square probably does it as well. Mastercard has an equivalent.

<comment><AUTHOR> Transactions via Square Cash show up as "transaction adjustments" in my bank account. It is possible that Square is using VPP and that is simply how Visa distributes the payments, but it seemed to be different to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Using the debit card system is not innovative and it's not "cash" either. But don't mind me, I just hate the credit card industry and wish it would roll over and die already.

<comment><AUTHOR> Point taken, but given ACH as the alternative, I still think this is a step in the right direction.

<comment><USER20> I think the _right_ direction would be to have a system of inter-bank transfers that was instantaneous, and didn't suck. The banking system in, say, the UK isn't perfect by a long shot, but at least I can move money from one bank account to another (across banks) a) instantaneously, and b) for free.

The fact that the US insists on operating on such a terrible system where it takes five business days reflects really badly on the infrastructure in place.

So on the one hand, I really like Square Cash as a concept. On the other, I wish banks would actually stop sitting on their hands and make a transfer system that _works_. Of course, there's no incentive for banks to do that, because they can keep charging money for 'instant' wire transfers right now.

<comment><AUTHOR> Square is taking advantage of the existing terrible system to give users an experience that is a step in the right direction.

But I agree having instantaneous transfers instituted at the bank level would be _real_ progress. Unfortunately congress can't even agree on the incremental changes it makes to the existing system, so I have little hope for sweeping reform.

<comment><USER21> As the global experience shows, it won't happen without government regulation forcing it - the current system has a strong financial motivation to keep it slow and expensive forever, but other than that there aren't any serious obstacles.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Offermatic [0] used to do the same thing with issuing refunds to cards. They could offer rewards such as "Get 10 dollars off your next purchase > $50 at xyz". They would poll your cc to check for the purchase at xyz and you would then see a refund for $10 from offermatic on the same card. I personally thought that this company had a lot of potential.

[0] [http://www.crunchbase.com/company/offermatic](http://www.crunchbase.com/company/offermatic)

</comment><comment><USER23> I always wondered how can ACH be automated and take days to process transactions? Do they use an almost infinite number of monkeys for their automation system?

</comment><comment><USER24> Very interesting. The big concern here is what exactly happens in case of fraud. With credit cards, this is less of a hassle for the consumer, since the issuer takes the hit. With debit, it's a pita to get your money back if it's stolen. I use my debit card only at the ATM for this reason.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, it's unclear what Square's responsibility is in this situation, especially since they are indirectly performing transactions on your behalf.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> This is all irrelevant when Bitcoin supplants all these silly money transfer companies anyway.

<comment><USER26> I agree. Bitcoin is a technological advance for all of civilization (like the printing press), while Square is just a slight optimization of the status quo.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I tried Square Cash. Sent a payment to a friend and immediately received a notice that due to fraud detection my account had been permanently closed. Completely turned me off from Square and I don't ever intend on using one of their services.

</comment><comment><USER28> How does square make money(or not lose money) in this transaction?</comment>


The Fledge – How One Community Is Getting Creative with Pepo Conversations - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/the-pepo-app/meet-the-fledge-how-one-community-is-getting-creative-with-pepo-conversations-142a201262cc <comment><AUTHOR> I volunteer for the local Code For America brigade that meets at the Fledge. Any Lansing HN'ers come down any Wednesday at 7 pm and hack with us.

Jerry has created an amazing community of people and the amount of innovation that I see on a weekly basis is incredible.</comment>


Should We Allow Bulk Searching of Cloud Archives? - <AUTHOR> https://www.justsecurity.org/28752/keystrokes-solve-crime-press-enter/ <comment><USER2> >Fourth, this kind of voluntary search by the likes of Google is not unprecedented. Google scans outgoing Gmail messages to see if there are attachments whose hashes — that is, digital fingerprints — match those of known images of child pornography. When this first became widely known to the public, the company explained: "Sadly all Internet companies have to deal with child sexual abuse … It's why Google actively removes illegal imagery from our services—including search and Gmail—and immediately reports abuse … This evidence is regularly used to convict criminals."

>To be sure, child pornography filtering — and reporting — may be a place to draw a clear line. Not only is child pornography near-universally reviled and banned, but the matching algorithm for previously-identified images boasts no false positives, and, perhaps most important, possession of the file is not only clear evidence of the crime, but quite typically the crime itself.

I had no idea Gmail did this.

<comment><USER3> I accidentally stumbled across this while searching for some obscure IC part numbers. The wording is something like "we have removed results of _suspected_ child abuse" (emphasis mine --- I remember that part the clearest), and that scared me for several reasons; the implication that just being "suspected" is enough to censor, whether this was logged and now my searches are being scrutinised even more, and the reminder of effectively how much power they have over what people can find on the Internet.

I'd use DuckDuckGo if it weren't for the fact that its index is far smaller than Google's, although with the latter's increasingly aggressive pruning of results, maybe that won't remain the case for long...

<comment><USER4> Use [https://startpage.com/](https://startpage.com/)

It uses Google, but Google won't get your ip.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Fighting use of such capabilities will always be a losing battle, because there will _always_ be a situation that makes the majority clamor for greater powers. The only way to preserve security is to prevent the capability in the first place. This means building technology that preserves personal privacy and autonomy, rather than naive implementations that are easy to monetize.

All of us are culpable, to the degree we contribute cleartext to the butt and encourage others to do so as well, for creating these massive data silos that are gifts to (micro)politicians everywhere.

<comment><USER6> Cleartext in the butt sounds exquisite.

<comment><USER4> Should We Allow Bulk Searching of Butt Archives?

<comment><USER7> Only tasteful searches

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is an excellent look at the challenge of having a capability vs using it vs civil liberties. I think everyone should read it.

</comment><comment><USER9> I posted this comment on Schneier's blog, but I then saw this thread. So here it is:

This type of risk is one that you must accept if you rely on a Service as a Software Substitute[0].

By relying on a remote service for your data storage and computing, you give up both freedom and control---even if the data are encrypted; we've all seen what information can be gleaned from metadata[1]. In this case, perhaps where a document was distributed: if Eve knows that Alice viewed document X, and Bob has a document Y that is shown (through metadata) to have been sent from Alice, and that document has certain properties that match, then it might be enough to convince a court that Bob contains document X, and get a warrant.

> Companies treat child pornography and abuse in a special category. But the > precedent remains, and it could be tempting to extend at least the exact- > match kind of search to the Paris terrorist example

Terrorism and child pornography are two examples that are often used to justify broad searches, chilling free speech and violating privacy.[2] These types of privacy/security "trade offs" start down a very slippery slope.

> As so much of everyone's private communications and work migrates into the > hands of a few massive private companies, the net-wide search will become > too tempting to leave alone. Exactly what makes it tempting is what makes it > troubling

You should reject those services and do your own computing![0] These remote services are not a substitute for locally installed software---a distinction that many do not consider or realize.

Not everyone has the technical capability to handle certain problems on their own; hosting your own e-mail server is a good example. In such cases, users should, at the very least, choose a service that commits to their privacy, to the degree that LavaBit did.

For social media: consider decentralized alternatives, like GNU Social[3], GNU MediaGoblin[4], and many others. Using those services will also encourage your friends and family to ask questions about why you made that choice, and consider switching themselves, since they'll have others they know using those services. Even if you cannot host your own, you can shop around for hosts that you feel that you can trust, and still participate in the same network as your friends and family; there's no lock-in to one service like Twitter or Facebook. Wholesale searches are also made rather difficult by distributed networks.

Forfeiture of privacy and freedom should not be the default, as it is encouraged today.

[0]: [https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server- really-s...](https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really- serve.html) [1]: [https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/06/why-metadata- matters](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/06/why-metadata-matters) [2]: [https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/08/mandatory-reporting- us...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/08/mandatory-reporting-user-content- chills-speech-and-violates-privacy-rights) [3]: [http://gnu.io/social/](http://gnu.io/social/) [4]: [http://mediagoblin.org/](http://mediagoblin.org/)

</comment><comment><USER10> It's not a matter of allowing. The math just is.</comment>


Massive blow to criminal DarkWeb activities after globally coordinated operation - <AUTHOR> https://www.europol.europa.eu/newsroom/news/massive-blow-to-criminal-dark-web-activities-after-globally-coordinated-operation <comment><AUTHOR> Discussion here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14813087](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14813087)</comment>


Top: Cloud Influencers - <AUTHOR> https://onalytica.com/blog/posts/top-100-cloud-influencers/ <comment><USER2> This seems to be focused on Twitter only? I am not sure how relevant that is.. For example in our org, when we choose cloud technologies, we look at blogs, talks, and personal experiences, and we ignore things like Twitter and Facebook.

<comment><USER3> I'm not so sure. Number 2 on the list isn't particularly active on Twitter.</comment></comment>


Nokia's new Asha phones look gorgeous - <AUTHOR> http://unleashthephones.com/2013/05/09/nokia-asha-501-announced-brings-n9-like-swipe-ui-hands-on/ <comment><USER2> So Nokia finally built the feature-phone of the smartphone-era: cheap, long battery life, good durability (probably) and incredibly ugly.

<comment><USER3> It might not be astoundingly pretty, but ``incredibly ugly'' seems a bit of a stretch.

<comment><USER2> Low screen/front-size ratio, big fonts to compensate low resolution, flat UI and "clever" menu layout to compensate low contrast. Consumer expectations are high these days...

<comment><USER3> ...for high-end phones.

For a $99 `feature phone' expectations are commensurately lower; I don't think anyone would buy this phone expecting something that's equivalent to an iPhone 5 or a Galaxy S4. They'll buy it because it's cheap, cute, does everything they want, and it has great battery-life.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Considering that one can buy three to five of these for the price of one N9, they're really impressive.

Now I just have to wait for someone to steal the fast-lane idea and implement it for Harmattan :-)

</comment><comment><USER5> When did hackernews become a place for advertisements?

<comment><USER6> about five years ago

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The form factor is very... "unique".

</comment><comment><USER8> Looks pretty ugly

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=_3d8xzeNoJY)

</comment><comment><USER9> The front looks like the original iPhone.

<comment><USER10> You could say that, but Nokia had very similar designs (albeit with a couple more buttons at the bottom and a hidden keyboard) before iPhone. When iPhone4 came out I remember thinking how familiar some of the details looked.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm assuming the title of this submission is sarcasm?</comment>