Former CEO of Paypal, Intuit: "Bitcoin is the greatest scam in history" - <AUTHOR> https://www.recode.net/2018/4/24/17275202/bitcoin-scam-cryptocurrency-mining-pump-dump-fraud-ico-value# <comment><USER3> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16914632](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16914632)

80+ points

</comment><comment><USER4> I'd believe Intuit's CEO as I trust him to know about scams - he's running one of the most successful ones there is! He successfully lobbied Congress and the IRS to mandate the use of tax preparation software, and hey, _guess what his company makes_?

<comment><USER5> Did you read the part that says he's the past CEO of Intuit? Not involved with Intuit's current lobbying. In any case attacking the author or Intuit about something that has nothing to do with the topic doesn't make sense.

<comment><USER6> Does he still own stock?

<comment><USER7> How would that make the original comment more or less valid?

<comment><USER7> Someone's downvoted me for asking a question for clarification? I'm regularly reminded how garbage downvotes are.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It might not be a good idea, but I don't think it's fair to call it a "scam". I don't think Satoshi created it with the anticipation that it would fail.

</comment><comment><USER9> What's so righteous about the status quo that makes skeptics feel so compelled to defend it so vehemently by degrading Bitcoin?

But it seems we should be far beyond Denial and Anger stage and well into Bargaining and Guilt at this point. Don't worry, he'll join the chorus of "blockchain is good, Bitcoin is bad" rhetoric soon enough.

<comment><USER10> What's so righteous about the status quo? I'll put it to you as succinctly as possible:

I can hold money in a checking account and have the same amount of money next week, or next month

Inflation is largely predictable, and pretty much non-existant compared to crypto volatility

Fraud, phishing, and hacking will not cause me to lose my life savings. My mother is not technologically savvy at all. I would be terrified to let her keep any significant portion of her savings in a system where a hash with a typo will cost you you everything.

For as much as cryptocurrency supporters will harp about the evils of Wall Street; the explicit scams, pump and dumps, and market manipulation by 0.001% of crypto holders make Goldman Sachs look like a company of boy scouts. 2008 Financial recession? Ha, wait until you see what happens when Chinese mining pools decide it's time to weed out the small fish (ie, every other month or so). Sure, lecture me all you want about how the Federal Reserve is evil - <USER2> at least they don't prey on investors with explicit pump and dumps, useless ICOs, or that shit circus Tether.

Although there are certainly smart people working in the blockchain space - most cryptocurrency/blockchain supporters are needlessly confrontational, smug, have a limited understanding of economics or financial engineering, and use ad hominems when they're confronted by arguments they can't debate against.

From an economics and engineering perspective, there are a lot of holes in blockchain and crypto as a technology. This is reflected in the fact that there are currently no useful innovations built on blockchain, other than money laundering, and cryptocurrency (which has no inherent value itself).

<comment><USER9> I find nothing righteous about a system designed for a select few to profit from maintaining the illusion our money is safe and secure in a vault somewhere. That illusion has already cost people their life savings without any attacks or user error required. But the difference is they are deemed "too big to fail", so when they screw up, they get bailed out while everyone else loses it all.

More egregious is economists insistence that the continuous debasement of our currency combined with skyrocketing consumer debt and stagnant wages due to automation will not end badly. These are the same economists that couldn't possibly predict what would happen when bankers and creditors were allowed to produce billions in worthless financial derivatives and sell them as triple-A investments.

<comment><USER11> Funnily enough, when people realised they could copy code and sell them off as triple-A investments that is exactly what they did. (OK, not triple A, but the scam of money from nothing is happening again and again.) At least with Bitcoin there is an end.

<comment><USER9> I see little distinction between a shitcoin ICO and a fart app on the App Store. A fool and their money are easily parted.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm not sure why they needed to add incorrect/unfounded ideas to the otherwise ok article.

> Because transactions can be anonymous — law enforcement cannot easily trace > who buys and sells — its use is dominated by illegal endeavors.

That's a no, no, and [citation needed]. Especially since later they write:

> The IRS recently ordered one major exchange to produce records of every > significant transaction.

<comment><USER13> I assume that most mom and pop investors will use the same exchange to buy their bitcoin and then later sell them. In that case the IRS can see both transactions in their account and know the capital profit/loss they have not declared.

If you buy at one exchange and then transfer the coins to another to sell it would be harder for the IRS to match up and discover your profit/loss. Especially if you move the coins via several intermediaries and sell in a different country that is not under the IRS jurisdiction.

<comment><USER12> You can still track the transactions though - or specifically IRS or LE can request history from the exchanges. Some exchange in the chain may not be under the IRS jurisdiction, but if you want to actually withdraw your money, you'll have to do it either by buying something, via local organisation in cash, or in another country. I.e. it's not that much harder to track than if you did it in cash (rather than btc), which has the same pros/cons if you're in the US.

And I don't think exchanges will ever protect anyone if the LE asks, because of the know your customer rules ([https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Know_your_customer](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Know_your_customer))

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> [https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-is-a-scam-claims- oust...](https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-is-a-scam-claims-ousted-ceo- of-paypal)

Seems like Harris spent around 20 working days as "PayPal Founding CEO" before he got figured out. Quite ridiculous.

<comment><USER10> Not sure what "figured out" means. However, just to deflect another crypto- fueled ad hominem, I'd like to point out that Elon Musk was also a CEO of PayPal, and lasted only around a year in the position before he too was forced out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I mean, it is though.

Consider the quality of life that could've been achieved with the same energy cost, material cost, and eventual environmental cost--all so that nerds can collect Merkle pogs.

<comment><USER16> Consider the quality of life that would be gained by having the same energy all these "gamer" nerds use, with their consoles and graphics power on these useless. silly games. Or consuming netflix. Or watching movies. Or doing anything that is not directly used on the survival of the human race. This is a pedantic argument.

<comment><USER15> There's a big difference between entertainment and bitcoins--your false equivalence is wrong.

<comment><USER11> It is. One is the most important economic innovation of our lifetime.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Reminds me of this piece re: other fields:

President of American Association of Buggy-Whip Manufacturers takes a strong stand against internal combustion engine, argues that the so-called "automobile" has "little grounding in theory" and that "results can vary widely based on the particular fuel that is used" [0]

[0] [http://andrewgelman.com/2014/08/06/president-american- associ...](http://andrewgelman.com/2014/08/06/president-american-association- buggy-whip-manufacturers-takes-strong-stand-internal-combustion-engine-argues- called-automobile-little-grounding-theory/)</comment>


How to get your consulting fee upfront - <AUTHOR> https://joshrichards.net/2017/03/24/how-to-get-your-consulting-fee-upfront/ <comment><USER2> That link just sent me into a 2 hour web hole that was insanely productive.

After reading some more of the original authors work, I was linked out to the ebook Breaking the Time Barrier [0] (by the CEO of Freshbooks which I'd never heard of) which instantly helped me reframe my approach to consulting.

And this is why Hacker News is addictive; Occasional and random large rewards.

[0] [https://www.freshbooks.com/wp- content/uploads/2018/03/breaki...](https://www.freshbooks.com/wp- content/uploads/2018/03/breaking-the-time-barrier.pdf)

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice!

If you enjoyed Breaking the Time Barrier, you may also want to check the material put out by Alan Weiss. In my case, the real-world proposal examples he published years back (and pulled from his own solo practice) have easily been worth six figures to me. I believe I first ran across them in his book Million Dollar Consulting, but they are covered more specifically in two of his later proposal specific publications.

[1] [https://alanweiss.com/](https://alanweiss.com/) [2] [https://alanweiss.com/store/books/](https://alanweiss.com/store/books/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This article makes great points about basic negotiation. One other point for people not used to sales is that you get _way_ better with repetition. Getting a particular price once gives you the confidence to ask for it again. Conversely there's a lot less push-back if you forthrightly state your terms instead of dithering. These are both the product of experience.

For people starting out I think it's fine to low-ball a few deals to gain experience and get insight into what the market will bear. But you need to learn from that process as quickly as possible. The most important learning for me was to ensure that clients put money on the table to close the deal. At that point they are invested in your success, especially if they had to push for it from their own management chain.

</comment><comment><USER4> Personally I would negotiate my hourly fee based on the project extension in time, e.g. a six months consulting contract has a lower hour rate that a few days contract. I tend to not negotiate the payment terms though, which are always 7 days following the receipt of my invoice. In Italy very often delayed payments are an issue, but for my type of consulting the customer knows that's better not to delay my payments due to the confidentiality of the matters which I deal with.

<comment><AUTHOR> That seems fine, but it doesn't really change whether you should ask for some of the overall fees upfront. :-)

I've moved almost entirely away from hourly billing, but where it does pop up there is generally a different fee for clients who have retainer agreements with me (which are usually annual in nature).

<comment><USER4> I agree with you, my comment is not totally relevant to the subject, sorry for that. Personally at the moment I don't feel/need to ask upfront payments for my services, but in the event I'd feel that the payment should be upfront, I'd ask simply ask for it. I agree with the fact that often asking for something just works.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> But you sometimes don't know upfront how much you'll actually work for the client for the thing they need to accomplish. Guess this won't work then.

<comment><AUTHOR> I respectfully disagree. That situation is common in hourly billing certainly. That doesn't mean you can't require a deposit upfront based on some sort of rough estimate. The point isn't necessarily the amount, but that there is something. The client needs some skin in the game. Otherwise they're not actually a client. Plus it helps with your own cash flow, which is often far tighter than the client's (or prospect's) and, in any case, far more important to you than it is to them. :-)</comment></comment>


Google CEO: Change Names to Avoid Social Networking Past  - <AUTHOR> http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2367972,00.asp

<comment><AUTHOR> my plans for name change back in business :)</comment>


Googlebot's recent improvements might revolutionize web development - workhere-io http://blog.workhere.io/googlebots-recent-improvements-might-revolutionize-web-development/ <comment><USER2> One potential problem here is that google will use this to widen the gap between it and the 'one page apps' web and other search engines (such as duckduckgo) that can't match it in resources.

How strong of an advantage that will be in the long run is uncertain, I would rather see a web that ships pages with actual content in them than empty containers for a variety of reasons (most of which have to do with accessibility and the fact that not all clients are browsers or even capable of running javascript).

This 'new web' is going off in a direction that is harmful, coupled with the mobile app walled gardens it is turning back the clock in a hurry.

I'm fairly sure this is _not_ the web that Tim Berners-Lee envisioned.

<comment><USER3> It's not difficult to set up middleware that'll render the page for any clients that require it. (For instance, we can assume any client that identifies as "bot" that's not Google probably wants a pre-rendered page, which we can do quite effortlessly. Here's one implementation for Nodejs: [https://prerender.io](https://prerender.io), or you can always roll your own with something like Phantom.js.

<comment><USER4> wow this is amazing. would love to see an offshoot of this where it could render a sitemap, or even keep a live sitemap up to date via cron.d or something (just hoping out loud)

<comment><USER5> You can use SEO4Ajax [1] to crawl your SPA and generate an up to date sitemap dynamically.

[1] [http://www.seo4ajax.com/](http://www.seo4ajax.com/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Taking a step back: The "Page" paradigm is still very much alive, despite these recent javascript parsing advances.

1\. Google still needs a URL-addressable "PAGE" to which it can send Users.

2\. This "PAGE" needs to be find-able via LINKS (javascript or HTML) and it needs to exist within a sensible hierarchy of a SITE.

3\. This "PAGE" needs to have unique and significant content visible immediately to the user, and on a single topic, and it needs to be sufficiently different from other pages on the site so as not to be discarded as duplicate content.

<comment><USER7> I'd debate the phrase "step back". If you replace all your references to PAGE with URL, you get closer to a real meaning.

URLs for single-page applications are a serialization of application state. The fact that we now have an application platform (JavaScript/HTTP) providing sharable, mostly-human-readable state sharing (URLs) and is also _indexed and searchable_ is nothing short of incredible.

Yes, the basic abstractions we use are the same. We will have URLs that address content in our applications. But now these are applications running on Google's own servers. Google is running my application (and hundreds of thousands more), and trying to understand what they mean to humans. This is a pretty amazing step forward.

Imagine Apple announcing it would run all iOS applications, interacting like a user to build a search index. IMO, this parallel shows what makes Google's commitment to running JavaScript apps exciting.

<comment><USER6> The point I was trying to make is this:

With every new capability from Googlebot comes new opportunities for us to screw it up as developers.

If we were to replace PAGE with URL, and URL is simply a serialization of application STATE, we could easily end up with infinite URLs that lead to STATES that are not really that different, unique or appealing as answers to queries users type into Google.

When deciding how to build Search-accessible Web Apps, and specifically what to expose to Google, we need to keep in mind that Google likes PAGES that follow the requirements I detailed above.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Create web applications, rank as a web application.

Create web pages, rank as a web page.

This is a band-aid by Google. Developers created inaccessible websites (JS- only, no HTML fallback) and Google still wanted to give those sites a chance to be in the index. Like when Google made it possible to index text inside .swf movies. This did not mean that flash sites suddenly ranked alongside accessible websites. No, it only meant that you could now find content with a very targeted search query.

Don't think you are gaining any SEO-benefit from one-page JS-only applications, just because Google made it possible for you to start ranking.

And don't forget your responsibility as a web developer to create accessible content. Forgetting progressive enhancement, fallbacks, a noscript explanation for why you need JS, ARIA is devolution. If Google can index your site, but a blind user has a problem with your bouncy Ajax widget, then you failed catering to all your users. If you lazily let Google repair your mistakes, then soon you will be a Google-only website.

<comment><USER7> 100% FUD.

There is no evidence that Google is going to punish my website for being rendered with JavaScript, as you imply with your first two comments.

Google is indexing the HTML generated by JavaScript, and the links in that HTML. Not some non-web custom format like SWF.

JavaScript driven sites work just fine with modern screen-readers. [https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/Accessibility/A...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/Accessibility/An_overview_of_accessible_web_applications_and_widgets) and in 2014 97.6% of screen-readers ran JavaScript [http://webaim.org/projects/screenreadersurvey5/#javascript](http://webaim.org/projects/screenreadersurvey5/#javascript)

In 2013, 92 out of 93 visitors to a UK government webpage supported JavaScript: [https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2013/10/21/how-many-people-are- missi...](https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2013/10/21/how-many-people-are-missing-out- on-javascript-enhancement/) And mixed into that 1.1% were users getting broken JS, behind firewalls, disabling JS, etc.

Google making this change does not force you to build a JavaScript-driven website, but it does make it more attractive .

<comment><USER8> If I wanted to imply that Google will punish your website for being rendered with JavaScript, I probably would have said so. It would likely be false too, as it is less of a punishment, than it is not maximizing your chance to rank (to put your best foot forward as a website).

Accessibility is not a numbers game. In many countries it is a legal requirement. And adhering to the WCAG means providing non-JS fallbacks or progressive enhancement. RMS not being able to access your content is an accessibility issue too, it does not have to involve a disability. It can be technical in nature, like disabling JS or being behind a corporate firewall, or your browser not supporting pushstate.

If you want to look at stats, take a look at the stats and surveys on accessibility of dynamic web applications. Just because your screenreader supports JavaScript does not mean you have no accessibility issues due to JavaScript. Rich internet applications should use WAI-ARIA. I don't think people who create websites without a fallback (avoiding this issue entirely), will worry about creating websites with ARIA-support. And if they do care about such accessibility, they should also provide a non-ARIA non-JS fallback.

Google making this change makes it possible to have your non-fallback JS-only application be indexed. It does not make it more attractive from an SEO or accessibility viewpoint.

<comment><USER7> Web accessibility, as we commonly use the term, pertains to creating a website that disabled users can interact with an navigate. It does not pertain to those who choose to or are forced to disable JavaScript (the RMS example). Creating an accessible site is a challenge regardless of what technologies you pick, for sure. Just as saying "just because your screenreader supports JavaScript does not mean you have no accessibility issues", just because your website uses JavaScript doesn't mean you have accessibility issues. A plain HTML website can have accessibility issues. So can a JavaScript one.

AFAIK, nothing in WCAG says you must have a non-JavaScript fallback to adhere to their standard. If you can back that up I am all ears, I would be interested to read it.

> Google making this change makes it possible to have your non-fallback JS- > only application be indexed. It does not make it more attractive from an SEO > or accessibility viewpoint.

The attractiveness of JS heavy development is not in an inherent SEO or accessibility benefit. Absolutely true.

The benefit is a development style that is more productive, giving me more time as a developer to focus on solving the problem at hand, be it business logic, SEO, or accessibility. You can debate this benefit, but don't imply that single-page apps cannot have SEO on par with HTML sites and good accessibility.

<comment><USER8> >Web accessibility, as we commonly use the term, pertains to creating a website that disabled users can interact with an navigate. It does not pertain to those who choose to or are forced to disable JavaScript...

Often web accessibility focuses on people with a disability, correct. Accessibility, like I said, really is more than that, though. From the Wiki: _Accessibility is the degree to which a product, device, service, or environment is available to as many people as possible._ Hence it does pertain to those who choose to or are forced to disable JavaScript. It literally means _as many people as possible_, RMS included. Even the WCAG do not solely focus on assistive technologies, but include "a wide variety of user agents".

The comment "just because your screenreader supports JavaScript does not mean you have no accessibility issues" was in reply to your statistics on JS- support for screenreaders. 98% of screenreaders supporting JavaScript is moot when less than 75% of browsers support pushState. In other words: You leave much more than 2% of users incapable of accessing your content. WebAim Surveys show that people have increasingly more trouble accessing content on JS-heavy social sites and dynamic web applications.

> A plain HTML website can have accessibility issues. So can a JavaScript one.

A JavaScript site can have a problem. If you serve it without a fallback (under the assumption that 98% of your users can access it that way) then it has a problem for sure. I have nothing against JavaScript. I have a problem with JavaScript sites that don't provide a fallback or weren't build according to progressive enhancement principles.

>AFAIK, nothing in WCAG says you must have a non-JavaScript fallback to adhere to their standard.

It said so specifically in WCAG 1. WCAG 2 is more ambiguous. You can have a no-fallback application that requires JavaScript provided: You can not show the content in any other way (a fallback is impossible), and you clearly explain in <noscript> why JavaScript is required.

Where a fallback IS possible, not providing one lowers accessibility. This is the relevant principle:

 _Principle 4: Robust - Content must be robust enough that it can be interpreted reliably by a wide variety of user agents, including assistive technologies._

If you do not provide a fall-back and require JavaScript then your content can not be interpreted reliably by a wide variety of user agents. Not providing a fall-back goes against this principle.

Relevant guideline:

 _Guideline 4.1 Compatible: Maximize compatibility with current and future user agents, including assistive technologies._

JS-only non-fallback sites do not maximize compatibility, they minimize it, breaking this guideline.

Government 508 guidelines for accessibility:

 _When possible, the functionality should be available without requiring JavaScript. When this is not possible, the functionality should fail gracefully (i.e., inform the user that JavaScript is required)._

Webaccessibility.com best practices:

 _Ensure elements that use ARIA provide non-ARIA fallback accessible content._

Since you should markup your rich web apps with ARIA, and you should provide a non-ARIA accessible fallback, you should provide an accessible fallback for your rich web app.

I do know that this can be a point of debate, and that is fine. It is up for interpretation what "maximize compatibility" means to you. If you have legal obligations to maximize compatibility (like government organizations in The Netherlands) then this becomes a harder rule.

> The benefit is a development style that is more productive, giving me more > time as a developer to focus on solving the problem at hand, be it business > logic, SEO, or accessibility.

I really don't understand this way of thinking. If you want to spend time on accessibility, start with a fallback, don't create a website without a fallback and then cheer on the idea that now you have time left to fix the problem you created a few minutes before that...

If you want to solve problems with SEO, don't start out by creating one :D

> but don't imply that single-page apps cannot have SEO on par with HTML sites > and good accessibility.

Good accessibility means good SEO. No fallback means poor accessibility. Draw your own conclusions (Socrates is mortal?).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Sending the framework of a page to your users and expecting them to do all the heavy lifting and slow loading of constructing the page and fetching the data is still rather unfriendly if you can afford a server to construct it.

If you love your users, give them HTML and let the Javascript enhance it.

Projects like Facebook's React ( [http://facebook.github.io/react/docs/top- level-api.html#reac...](http://facebook.github.io/react/docs/top-level- api.html#react.rendercomponenttostring) ) and Rendr ([https://github.com/rendrjs/rendr/](https://github.com/rendrjs/rendr/)) let you use server rendering as well as the single page technologies on the client side.

<comment><USER10> The lifting ain't that heavy. And besides, wouldn't you want your server spending its precious cycles on things the clients absolutely cannot handle?

<comment><USER11> The lifting can be heavy for mobile devices with slow CPUs and limited battery life unlike the servers running your site. Also if your server renders the site and some of the pages are public, the server can cache the HTML and let the web server serve cached HTML rather than render the page in the web framework for each request.

<comment><USER12> > The lifting can be heavy for mobile devices with slow CPUs and limited > battery life unlike the servers running your site.

The reverse is also frequently true: if client rendering can improve cacheability or reduce the data going over the wire the radio savings will pay for a LOT of text updates. Similarly, if you can transfer a large listing without creating thousands of DOM nodes the results can be a wash depending on exactly how much data, the browser, etc.

There isn't a single right answer here - it really depends on the application and good analysis.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Like many, I am suspicious of the rather overbearing claims made on behalf of the SPA architecture.

I just launched a website. It's a weekly periodical with political analysis, word-count on articles 1500-6000. It needs to carve up the content in a few different ways (categories, issue numbers etc), decorate an article with links to other relevant content, and provide a nice CMS for non-tech people to use. So it's on Django, with the regulation sprinkling of JQuery. (If it were only techies updating it, you could probably do it with a static site generator...)

To me, the idea that you'd try and force something that is plainly a big collection of pages into a 'single page' is just philosophically bizarre, like printing Moby Dick on a square mile of paper, using some amazing origami skills to present it to the reader, all in order to save a bit of effort at the paper mill.

The googlebot business is one aspect of a bigger issue, which is that a website needs to be consumable by a host of different clients. I don't see how you can do the SPA thing without making major assumptions about those clients.

Sometimes, of course, those assumptions can be justified - it depends on the job. And Angular etc are enormously fun to play with, and handled well can enable a great UX for certain jobs. But I don't think it's 'the future'. It's another tool in the box.

Relevant here, a nice talk by John Alsopp from Full Frontal 2012:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTqIGKmCqd0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTqIGKmCqd0)

EDIT: clarification

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm not sure if this announcement changes anything. The bottom line is to make apps for the end user. Google is simply saying that those best practices are now crawlable in a way that is very mature. The same rules still apply.

A simple guide can be found here: [https://developers.google.com/webmasters/ajax- crawling/](https://developers.google.com/webmasters/ajax-crawling/). Although I suspect it needs to be updated since its from 2012.

If you create an application, make sure it alters the URL when applicable. For simple apps, the following repos will be useful:

The old way, that still works: [https://github.com/asual/jquery- address](https://github.com/asual/jquery-address)

The better way, preferred: [https://github.com/browserstate/history.js](https://github.com/browserstate/history.js) or [https://github.com/defunkt/jquery- pjax...](https://github.com/defunkt/jquery-pjax...). not sure which is better to be honest. Feel free to chime in.

<comment><USER15> fixed link: [https://github.com/defunkt/jquery- pjax](https://github.com/defunkt/jquery-pjax)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> > Single page apps are not a new concept, but up until now they were typically > a bad solution for public websites that depend on hits from search engines

If your users (I'm talking humans, not bots) have to download a mountain of JavaScript and execute it before seeing any content, your site is slower than it could be for everyone. We should stop saying that "single page apps", i.e. sites rendered in JavaScript in a browser, are bad because they can't be scraped by a bot. They are bad for EVERYONE who wants to view the site because of the network and CPU time it takes to download the assets and render the site in the browser.

<comment><USER16> Doesn't it all depend on how long they spend on the site? If it's one page and bounce, sure, that's a terrible experience. More pages than that? Now we're starting to see savings.

<comment><USER11> If you serve a rendered page of HTML with CSS links, browsers can progressively render the page as it is downloaded. Users will notice that on the first page load, particularly on higher latency connections where round trips for resources like JavaScript files are expensive.

<comment><USER16> My point still stands. Time to load is only part of the equation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> So you want to have the URL for every content but you don't want to provide the content as HTML, instead expecting that once the page is by client, the client only then separately loads the content? Only because it's easier to you to program, you want to deliver me the content much slower than you can?

There is some strange logic there.

<comment><USER10> Slower in some respects and faster in others. Suppose I cache the data I get back from the server for page 1 and page 2 of content. Now, if the user switches between page 1 and page 2 they don't needlessly ask the server for the HTML every time like they do when relying on the server to render templates.

And I'm not sure where you're getting that it's "easier to program" single page apps than it is to simply rely on the server to render html on the server. The fact that it's _not_ easy is the very reason we have so many competing front-end frameworks to solve the problem elegantly.

</comment></comment><comment> grey-area _With the new improvements to Googlebot, single page apps will likely advance from being niche solutions for non-public websites to being the default way to build websites. A website will contain a single HTML page (typically heavily cached and served via a CDN). The JS on that page will then fetch content (as JSON) from the server and change the path as necessary using pushState._

I find the cheerleading for single page websites disconcerting and the proposed benefits unconvincing. Why should this be the default way to build websites? A few desultory upsides are presented without a full consideration of the multiple downsides to client-side development.

The biggest advantage of thick-client architecture is sending less data to the client and, if you like using javascript, writing everything in js, but there are multiple downsides compared to more traditional thin-client websites - load times which depend more on client capabilities (hugely variable and out of your control) than servers, dependence on js on the client, loading pages while your content is placed in the dom by js, forcing everyone to write in js instead of switching language on the server whenever they like, ignoring the simple document model of html served at predictable URIs, which has served the web so well and means you can use dynamic or static documents, full documents can be cached for very quick serving and by intermediaries, etc, etc. Of course some of these can be overcome, but there are serious obstacles, and the advantages are meagre to non-existent unless you enjoy javascript and feel its the only language you'll ever need.

For someone who doesn't like working in js, and/or doesn't have a huge amount of logic already in js (many websites work just fine with some limited ajax), trying to force every website into the procrustean bed of client-side development is not an appealing prospect. I can see why it appeals to those who have already invested in js frameworks, but predictions of its future dominance on the web, like predictions that eworld, activex or mobile would replace the web, are overblown.

I suspect the birth and death of Javascript will be a footnote in the history of the web, rather than taking it over as this article suggests. If anything we should be looking to replace our dependence on js, not making it mandatory.

</comment><comment><USER18> I can't believe that single page webapp are easier to write than true old website. Maybe you can gain some performance improvement but if you use a framework you will loose this very little gain. Those who claims that developpement is easier with framework on a single page have too learn programming, because for most case, the "old" way works very well and is incredibly faster than a bloated javascript page.

I really, really dislike this approache of doing website, it make the code and the design hard to understand and cost a lot of problem when comes the time to debug or made major changes.

There are no magic when using javascript, it will slow down the client, and manipulating DOM is very slow. Doing things server side cost nothing compared to javascript. Remember that loading a webpage is very fast when you have only a CSS and html code, because it very easy to put it in cache and doing some pretty nice optimizations on it.

With frameworks, making "webapp" become a huge nigthmare, things becomes overly complex and bloated, the request as to pass trough a lot of layers before end up somewhere, and the developpement is not faster than have a custom code. Good framework don't make good programmer.

When the article say "put the CSS inside a <style> tag on the page - and the JS inside a <script> tag", it's just horrible, fuck it.

<comment> workhere-io _Those who claims that developpement is easier with framework on a single page have too learn programming, because for most case, the "old" way works very well and is incredibly faster than a bloated javascript page._

Who says the page will become bloated with JS just because you use clientside loading? The mechanism I'm talking about can be done with something like 10 lines of JS or less. No one's saying you have to use AngularJS with every web page you make.

 _When the article say "put the CSS inside a <style> tag on the page - and the JS inside a <script> tag", it's just horrible, fuck it._

First of all, this is not a requirement of single page apps, just an option. Secondly, when you're developing, you would still have your JS and CSS in separate files. Your compiler would then minify the whole thing and put it inside your minified HTML file.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Not every single search engine will be able to scale a JS virtual machine for all the pages they need to index. There are also social network bots that you might like supporting such as Facebook and Twitter which will not be able to crawl javascript either.

At any case, if you want to have a solution to this SEO problem now, I created SnapSearch ([https://snapsearch.io](https://snapsearch.io))

</comment><comment><USER20> I wouldn't actually call this "recent" improvements. I mean, Google has been handling JavaScript for years now. And they're just now coming out and publicly saying it. Which is typical Google.

<comment> workhere-io What they were saying before was that you always need a HTML fallback for JS- generated content. Now it seems they're saying you don't necessarily need to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Optimism rather than fact.

There is a lot more to it. I am pretty well known as an SEO, and while I would love this to be true it isn't.

Google's improvements to GoogleBot are mostly targeting spam, and obfuscation of content. The ideas is not to discover content as much as it is to avoid having content hidden.

Previously you could have a webpage that appeared to be about Puppies, but then used any number o dynamic methods to instead show naked cam girls. Google worked to fix this.

Google is now doing some indexing of named anchors, and this allows for linking to a page with in a page as it were. But that is a Long ways from building indexable single page applications.

-Brandon Wirtz SEO (formerly Greatest Living American) [http://www.blackwaterops.com](http://www.blackwaterops.com)

</comment><comment><USER22> This is a great improvement, but I'm struck by two things:

1\. The state of JavaScript-only application development is still nascent. The number of JS-only sites I see that are buggy, don't use PushState correctly, or have other shortcomings is growing faster than the overall trend. Not that it can't be done well, but if your JavaScript-only "app" is really just a standard website, you might want to re-think your approach.

2\. There has to be a better way. There are distinct benefits to approaches in caching content and providing feedback, but JavaScript seems to be a kluge-y approach. It reminds me of frames back in the day. Some of this is browser support; some of this is lack of standardization; some is perhaps a missing piece of the HTML spec; etc.

</comment><comment> workhere-io Author here. Some of you are saying that this will lead to bloated, JS-heavy websites. I disagree. The JS necessary for making a single page app can be done with something like 10 lines of JS (plus jQuery or something similar, but that is already included in most normal pages anyway).

A single page app isn't JS-heavy by definition, and a "normal" page (with HTML generated on the server) can easily be JS-heavy. It all depends on how you program it. Just keep in mind that single page apps don't necessarily need to use heavy frontend frameworks such as Knockout, Ember or AngularJS.

</comment><comment><USER23> This seems like an odd thing to be shouting about.

As far as I can see, throughout this thread the performance benefits of single page apps are touted as being fantastic, making it worthwhile to use the new technology etc.

When has performing operations efficiently ever been the domain of the web? Websites in my experience have the worst performance of almost any software I use! I've seen developers cite 200ms or longer to load a page as being a good benchmark - that seems pretty awful to me.

If getting this tiny performance improvement (which often results in poorer performance on the first load (not ideal for many)) is so critical, why do the same developers not invest in writing more performant server apps? Yes, often the database is a bottleneck, but these problems can in general be worked around (either by use of faster queries or caching etc).

Why attempt to get a small performance benefit by saving 30-odd kB of HTML on each page load (static and so essentially free for the server), when one could get a much larger performance benefit by optimising the backend?

Almost all serious sites will still see their page load being limited by the time it takes to produce the page. It's possible to write really fast websites (try [http://forum.dlang.org/](http://forum.dlang.org/)) but no one seems to do it :(

If anything but almost all of your website is static, you won't be saving all that much time.

<comment> workhere-io _If anything but almost all of your website is static, you won 't be saving all that much time._

Single page apps can easily be static (static HTML page + static JSON). The point of this would be to decrease the download size for each new page visited by the user.

<comment><USER23> I think you missed my point. In each web page downloaded there's a bunch of (basically constant) static data - to download your javascript files, and set up your document - your template (or similar). This is the only data that single page apps can eliminate - everything else must either be queried from the server or can already be cached.

Some sites obviously inline CSS or JavaScript, but that can be eliminated if necessary (and only affects the first page load anyway).

This information is free to generate on the server side, so it's not slowing down that computation at all (it's just a stringbuilder function, essentially). Furthermore, the transfer time is generally not the deciding factor - it's the server side time to put the rest of the information together.

To give one example, I went to a typical website - the Guardian (it's a fairly standard high-traffic news website). Chrome informs me that in order to request one article, it took 160ms to load the html - 140ms of waiting and 20ms of downloading. Now, the RTT is about 14ms, so that's about 110ms of generating the web page and 20ms of actually downloading it. It's about 30kB of compressed HTML (150kB uncompressed), most of it's 'static content' \- inlined CSS and JS.

Them using the single page model would reduce the page download time (apart from the first page) by an absolute maximum of 20ms - which means that the time to load each page has been reduced by about 12%.

This is fine, but almost all of the data is just the result of string concatenations and formatting - i.e. free processing (or at least almost-free processing). It's getting the rest of the data together that's somehow taking the 100ms (or crap implementations).

The cost of moving data around on websites is typically small compared to the actual production time of the content. That's why we see people preferring to inline huge amounts of CSS etc on each web page and having people download it time after time - because it's only about 10kB compressed the data transfer is inconsequential, and normally is dominated by the RTT.

Spending all the time writing these frameworks because of performance benefits is a fallacy - the data still has to be generated somewhere, and if it happens dynamically it's slow as hell. The savings can never become that great - <AUTHOR> most they lead to 20-30ms of improvements if bandwidth is acceptable.

Writing the frameworks because they make development easier is a much more reasonable argument.

This still all detracts away from the fact that non-static websites are typically dog slow and they shouldn't be.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> The single page app has another _huge_ drawback.

The reload via JS fails silently, when you are on a bad Internet connection, like I am currently here in Nepal. You can not simply do a reload, like with a simple HTML page.

For example, Facebook is here unusable, because of the same issue. It works only, when you request the mobile site of Facebook in the browser.

So please, get rid of that damn JS, if you care about your user base and usability.

BTW: that problem also happens on bad hotel Wifi in the US.

</comment><comment><USER25> Somewhat off topic, but how do single page apps deal with people hacking the JS? For example, if as a particular user I am only allowed to perform certain functions within the app, and that functionality is contained in the JS, then it doesn't seem like it would be very hard to modify the JS to enable the functionality I shoudn't be allowed to use.

<comment><USER26> Usually the functionality of the app exists in the backend, which would be server side. No matter what you do on the frontend, there should be no way for you to trigger actions in the backend you were not authorized to perform.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> This news article seems to come up every few years. Nevertheless, the niche of apps, which can profit of this, is quite small.

Either you have a highly interaction-heavy web-app, where it makes sense to execute most of the code on the client and deliver the content as JSON or you have a content-heavy website, where it makes sense to deliver cached content to the client.

There are some apps in between, which are highly interactive and content heavy like web versions of social apps. For them additionally the question arises, if they _want_ to be crawled by Google or Google wants to index their content.

To profit from this, you need an app, which content the users search for and interact with several times after they have found it. So i guess, "revolutionize" seems a bit much to me.

</comment><comment><USER28> Please use this instead: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_enhancement](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_enhancement)

<comment><USER29> But we're talking about making AJAX pages robot-friendly, not making regular pages mobile-friendly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Loading off most of the work to the client has its downsides too. If that was a reality i would assume that mobile devices would require quite a bit more battery power to render basic webpages.

</comment><comment><USER31> google is not the only search engine.

<comment> workhere-io Which I emphasized in the post :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> We're still using hypertext transfer protocol, right? You need to send hypertext down the wire.

We shouldn't let one company, google, dictate how the web works, simply because of their proprietary technological innovation.

<comment><USER33> Roads are meant for horses, right? We shouldn't let one company, Ford, dictate how the roads work.

My man, if we only used infrastructure and technology in the way it was originally intended and narrowly imagined, the world would be a dim place.

<comment><USER32> Ok, I see your point.

But, have Yahoo or Bing or DuckDuckGo made the transition to be able to crawl the web with a full JS & DOM rendering engine? I doubt it. By eschewing that compatibility we're setting a very high bar for what any competitor to google would have to achieve.

I _like_ google. I just don't think it's good to have one company own a market so completely.

<comment> workhere-io _But, have Yahoo or Bing or DuckDuckGo made the transition to be able to crawl the web with a full JS & DOM rendering engine?_

They can just use PhantomJS ([http://phantomjs.org/](http://phantomjs.org/)), which is free and open source.

<comment><USER34> They could, but I wonder what it'd take to scale it to crawling that number of pages.

I think only Bing would have the cash and resources to build that.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Article 13 is almost finished and will change the internet as we know it - <AUTHOR> https://juliareda.eu/2019/01/article-13-almost-finished/ <comment> GuB-42 It looks surprisingly reasonable.

"internet platforms that organise and promote large amounts of copyright- protected works uploaded by their users in order to make a profit"

That's actually a lot of limitation. From my understanding: "organise and promote" means it is not simple hosting, and "in order to make a profit" excludes organizations like Wikimedia Commons and "large amounts" most likely excludes smaller websites like fan sites, and "uploaded by their users" exclude search engines.

It is clearly meant to target a form of abuse that is much too common in the "internet as we know it". It is mostly apparent in sites like PornHub. They live by monetizing content they don't have the rights for, and they use their status as a platform as a way to stay legal. I think YouTube admitted that in the early days, they voluntarily turned a blind eye to copyright infringement as a way to grow ahead of their competition.

It is unfair to legitimate companies who do their best to make sure their content really is original or properly licensed.

And if it changes the internet as we know it today, is it that bad? It will push people to self publish instead of relying on "platforms", like the old internet.

As for the potential for abuse, remember that the article isn't finished, it has yet to be completed, ratified, and tried. Public debate is important and we shall not let everything pass, but IMHO, the spirit is good.

<comment><USER3> For your info: Hacker news is:

      - an Internet platform
      - that organizes and promotes large amounts of posts
      - which are copyright-protected works uploaded by their users
      - in order to make a profit as it is an advertisement for y combinator.

So hacker news needs a filter lest you quote a sentence from some movie.

What is 'meant' is irrelevant. Important is the letter of the law. Besides, 'meant' is a very dangerous word when used by politicians as jaded as the EU folks. It is a way to whitewash unpopular laws, and make them look reasonable when they are in fact the complete opposite.

<comment><USER4> I feel like we had this exact same argument over GDPR, but no horror stories have descended about Mom and Pop operations run out of business but the evil Brusselcrats.

<comment><USER5> It's not clear what's going on with GDPR, good test cases are only now starting to be tested. But the fact that many American newspapers, for example, are blocked in Europe is certainly something to worry about.

<comment><USER6> > But the fact that many American newspapers, for example, are blocked in > Europe is certainly something to worry about.

They are not blocked. They have chosen to take their services offline because they don't think changing their business model such that it no longer depends on aggressively tracking their users is worthwhile or cost-effective. Which is fine by me imho.

<comment><USER5> You must understand the economics. Newspapers have zero cash on hand these days, so their choice was to fire staff to allocate money for GDPR or not. Seeing how staff is at a minimum, that was the practical option. Result is equivalent to censorship. I'm surprised you don't find this a terrible outcome.

<comment><USER7> > Result is equivalent to censorship.

I don't agree that if a business chooses not to operate in a country, because it's unwilling to spend the money required to comply with the country's laws, that that is equivalent to censorship.

Another person's personal information is not protected speech.

<comment><USER8> I always viewed it as a transaction--go to the news site and read the news, in exchange they will sell data on what articles you're reading, etc.

I was fine with that transaction. In fact, I would rather have them sell my data instead of charging money.

Consumers have a choice on whether or not they want to go to these sites, it's not like they are forced to give away their personal information to news sites.

I would say the GDPR blocking news sites is a net negative because it denies consumers the choice to read news stories.

<comment><USER9> Agree. There are ways to protect your data if that's important to you. If I walk out in the middle of a freeway I should expect that I might be hit by a car rather — the EU instead says, "let's ban freeways".

<comment><USER10> No, EU says "let's put signs that point to where there are (previously invisible) freeways".* GDPR does not ban any practices, it just says that certain practices need to be communicated to and approved by the people affected by them.

*metaphors can get quite silly

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This seems like it will benefit the whales more than the fish, as they can absorb copyright infringement costs into their already expansive legal departments, whereas a smaller company will likely go belly up or be chummed.

<comment><USER12> The same can be said for every other EU law.

Net neutrality regulations include vague language that allows "reasonable network management", which is a multi-million dollar legal hassle that stresses small ISP owners. And I shudder to think how Duck Duck Go's programmers will manage to comply with the EU's "right to be forgotten [from a search engine's results]".

I hope the politicians in Washington, D.C. recognize that America is the world's last refuge for small business growth and economic innovation.

<comment><USER13> I would imagine you'd be able to simply submit a domain to DDG, they would ask for a txt record or file to be present within the site, similar to a DNS verification tool. Then it would be queued up in a crawler for removal upon verification. Is there something I'm missing?

If it's individual pages, then probably just a meta-tag?

I think robots.txt could be leveraged for this though maybe.

<comment><USER14> > Is there something I'm missing?

Yes, they don't have their own crawler for regular websites. They get their organic search results from Bing and Oath.

<comment><USER13> I assume then that Bing will be responsible for this then (or if they won't then they'll need to find a new engine)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> In a weird way, this might be EU's strategy to finally deal significant damage to Google and Facebook, as this law will encourage development of alternatives on decentralized peer-to-peer technologies. However, I'm not sure if EU politicians are that smart...

<comment><USER16> It's not made by EU politicians, it's made by a combination of lawyers, engineers and public administration majors.

In many ways the EU is a functioning technocracy, and if you ever read through the actual EU documents it shows. They are almost always sound, they are also massively bureaucratic and around 90% longer than necessary, but I've never read through something that wasn't sound.

Disclaimer: I haven't read up on article 13, but I do read (and sit through) a good deal of EU standards and proposals for EU wide Enterprise Architectural principles, and they are never thwarted by politics.

<comment><USER17> >but I've never read through something that wasn't sound.

Sound in respect to very general interpretations and "common sense". The problem is that general laws can touch topics that are way beyond common sense, the room of interpretation is then just so big that it's like a weapon to take out anybody if you only dig deep enough and frame it as a problem for the common good.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I wrote to my MEP and this is the response I got:

Following a number of important amendments being made to the Copyright Directive since July, the proposal was put to a plenary vote in September, which over 60% of MEPs supported. During further negotiations between Parliament, the Council (EU Member States) and the European Commission, any remaining shortcomings can be addressed.

I am in favour of a balanced Copyright Directive that allows for a free and fair internet, and also ensures the fair remuneration of creators, artists, publishers and journalists who create important jobs, growth and innovation in the EU.

With regard to a stronger right for press publishers, Article 11 allows for: • Fair remuneration for journalists and press publishers for the use of their articles. • Financially independent press (independent from platforms). • Quality journalism. • Journalists to get a share of the press publishers' remuneration. Private use of press articles is allowed. Hyperlinking is allowed.

With regard to the value gap, Article 13 allows for: • Platforms to take more responsibility for the content on their websites. • Fair remuneration for European right holders (artists, musicians, authors etc.) from the platforms that use their works. • Platforms to conclude licenses with the right holders. • Right holders and platforms to find a practical solution to bring copyright and liability in a better balance. The scope of Article 13 has been limited to those platforms which infringe the most copyright. Platforms like Spotify, iTunes, Netflix, eBay, Wikipedia, dating-platforms, software developing platforms, blogs, private homepages, dropbox etc. do not fall under Article 13.

Copyright rules need to reflect the new realities and business models of the 21st century, particularly the rise of digital media. Press publishers and other content producers should receive a fair share for the use of their content on the internet. Currently, most generated revenue goes to the platforms and aggregators, such as Google, Facebook, YouTube.

It is of course a priority that the Internet remains a platform where free speech prevails. The rules will only affect platforms that explicitly make profit from copyrighted works. Private individuals can continue to share content on the internet for non-commercial purpose. Platforms such as universities, scientific databases and online encyclopaedias, which are not dealing with copyright content as their primary purpose, will all be exempt from the new rules.

_________________

<comment><USER19> Thanks, that's actually a reasonable and balance view. Let's just hope that's what _actually_ gets implemented in the law as well...

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> The GDPR has already resulted in quite a few websites simply refusing to serve the EU. Will this clinch it? Will the EU be cut off form the internet due to over-regulation that no one wants to put themselves at risk over?

<comment><USER21> I think calling GDPR over-regulation is extremely suspect. The GDPR does a good job in codifying basic privacy principles of what you can do with personal data. Clear communication, consent, control over your own data and data protection principles. Things that should be self-evident but we have been failing with forever, and something that has become an extremely widespread widespread in an online society. The only reason to call it over regulation is if you're spoiled about not being regulated beforehand - <USER2> there was a clear need for such a law and codifying reasonable privacy principles. I don't understand why I hear so few Americans about wanting this in their own country.

Article 13 is fundamentally different from the GDPR. The fundamental problem is that I think (and most people hopefully do) user privacy is an ethical good, and I don't believe (much of) copyright law is an ethical good. If you fundamentally believe copyright must be defended vigilantly Article 13 is not an unreasonable consequence at all - I just don't agree with that premise one bit.

Websites that don't want to comply with GDPR, I say good riddance. If you really feel you cannot uphold the basic privacy principles posited, then screw you too. But for Article 13, the laws are only in the interest of big corporations. I don't care about those.

<comment><USER22> There is a cost to businesses in complying with and implementing regulations, regardless of the size of the business and how good or bad their behaviour has been with respect to the intention of those regulations. You can't deny over- regulation by assuming only the badly-behaving people are burdened by it.

Besides, there is also a cost to me: the never-ending pop-ups and acceptance dialogues, inability to access information in a straightforward manner for those that choose to block, etc.

What is the percentage of users who actively control their privacy as a result of GDPR (and still happily use the website)? What is the percentage of badly -behaving businesses who will be prosecuted?

<comment><USER21> Every regulation is a trade-off.

> There is a cost to businesses in complying with and implementing > regulations, regardless of the size of the business and how good or bad > their behaviour has been with respect to the intention of those regulations. > You can't deny over-regulation by assuming only the badly-behaving people > are burdened by it.

Indeed - the lack of this cost of business was causing (1) reckless and (2) (deeply) unethical behaviour to become rampant [0]. I think it was fair to say it was not acceptable anymore, and I think the GDPR does a good job of formalizing rules of _basic_ common sense about personal data protection. There's really nothing in the GDPR that I can point to that is overbearing, although of course many businesses do implement unnecessarily overbearing UX on top of it.

Processing personal data _should_ be a risk to business, and I think some basic rule of law was warranted for this risk to be clear to business.

I'm not saying there is no cost to regulation. But the cost needs to be proportional to the good it achieves and I think the GDPR does that quite well. Article 13 - in my opinion - clearly will not.

[0]: E.g. in unregulated countries: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17081684](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17081684)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This has the potential of being a blessing in the disguise since these barriers will not hold for decentralized alternatives where there is no obvious platform operator to hold responsible.

<comment><USER24> Don't they already have that covered through existing policy, though? bittorrent is highly policed

<comment><USER25> only the centralized public trackers are "affected". and the fact that they are still around and kicking, and distributed decentralized anonymous reputation-market systems are pretty empty shows that that policing is rather weak (otherwise people would move toward the "policing resistant" networks)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Bloody hell that's rather terrifying. After GDPR I was thinking Europe would be the bastion of the internet, now it looks like it's time to decentralise the internet completely. Which is going to surely have it's own issues I'm sure.

<comment><USER27> its own issues

<comment><USER26> Yeah phone autocorrect.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'm worried about influencing outcomes in the EU due to language barriers, especially on boring and "unsexy" issues like Internet regulation. It'd be important for the EU to be able to vote for representatives regardless of your primary jurisdiction.

Even if I manage to convince most of the representatives from my region, they will be outvoted by the French who had a big hand in passing the proposal forward the last time... It's like they reside in a completely different universe, with no hope of meaningful communication.

Edit: adding a link to this false-positive emulator script[0] as an example of how stupid the proposal is.

[0]: [https://twitter.com/AlecMuffett/status/1015594170424193024](https://twitter.com/AlecMuffett/status/1015594170424193024)

<comment><USER29> This is why we need Esperanto.

<comment><USER30> Or English as the officially recognised global language

¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

<comment><USER16> With Britain leaving the EU there is sadly a lot less reason for English to be the official language.

<comment><USER31> Now if Britain is leaving, English could be considered as a neutral language so no country has an advantage.

It is also still the only language that is taught as a foreign language in close to all primary and secondary schools in the Union. It's the most spoken language in the Union. It's relatively easy to learn as a foreign language. It's also the de facto language of international trade, of science, of culture and of international diplomacy (sorry France).

<comment><USER32> > Now if Britain is leaving, English could be considered as a neutral language > so no country has an advantage.

There's still the Irish.

<comment><USER31> True, but Ireland is less than 5M, 13 seats in the EU parliament. They are not seen as a competition to anyone. The UK is 66M with 73 seats in the parliament, member of G7 and one of the most important economies in the EU.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> > Legal content should not be blocked.

I don't think this will happen, but if this is actually made into a liability then this would create a rather interesting situation where a platform could be sued for blocking fair use content and miss-identified content.

<comment><USER34> I think the net result would probably be a rapid increase of the "451 Not Available For Legal Reasons" errors which have appeared post-GDPR.

That and a load of innovative start-ups simply setting up overseas instead of inside Europe, and perhaps major sites simply preventing any kind of contribution from European users.

After all, there's no A13 clause which says that if your US site allows uploads, your European one also has to?

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> OK. So I'd like to help make some noise surrounding this issue. Who should I email for best impact?

<comment><USER36> Your MEPs, politely and in your own words.

<comment><USER37> I've already tried e-mailing the MEPs, it doesn't work. If you do get a response it goes in the lines of _sorry mate, but you 're wrong, here's why blah blah; our party consensus is that we're doing the right thing by voting for this controversial measure_. Good luck with that.

<comment><USER38> That doesn't mean that contacting MEPs "doesn't work", you can't expect them to change their opinion immediately based on receiving one email from one of their constituents.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> A friendly reminder that almost no-one commenting in this thread has read the full articles and recitals.

<comment><USER34> I'd love to see a "cliff's notes" summary of what A13 means as it is right now. Something like the "Doorstep EU" app does for Brexit-related news -- an actual, thought-out summary which links to authoritative reference material.

<comment><USER40> Isn't that what the linked-to article is?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> It's unclear to me what "internet platforms that organise and promote large amounts of ... works uploaded by their users" really means. It presumably applies to Facebook. It presumably doesn't apply to e-mail. But if I had a social networking service that had no advertising and was only accessible to its paying users, would the law apply to it? What if postings were encrypted and could only be read by users that had requested access to them? Would the company running the service be expected to either backdoor the encryption or create bogus accounts and request access from those bogus accounts in order to monitor postings that might contain infringing content?

</comment><comment><USER42> > Licenses that platforms take out cover uploads by their users, as long as > they act non-commercially or "don't generate significant revenues"

Am I reading correctly that when you have a forum (e.g. Discourse) which is non-commercial i.e. for an open community, that any users uploading stuff or quoting article sections are exempt from this regulation (even though the forum is hosted on Discourse servers on a paid plan)?

</comment><comment><USER43> This might be a good thing actually.

If huge content distribution platforms like YouTube and Facebook are not viable anymore, it might put a renewed wind in the sails of self-hosting systems. Getting the Internet back to it's distributed nature would make it more resilient.

<comment><USER44> youtube does not rely on infringing content anymore. at least, 100% of the channels i follow are by makers who try to make fair use of copyrighted stuff or using public domain of historic stuff .

> the sails of self-hosting systems

Self-hosted content is pointless if there are no watercoolers to chat about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> So usenet is dead, right? 90%, usenet ISPs are a download server pretenting to be a mail server so they can claim safe harbour. If they are responsible for auditing their content, presumably this isn't viable anymore...

<comment><USER46> I am so tired of this abuse ... finally there is light

<comment><USER47> How will this help? The usenet providers will be responsible for the uploads their own customers do -- not for the content posted elsewhere on Usenet.

<comment><USER45> If in a federated platform the ISP is not responsible for content they agregate, that's a big loophole. It would really encourage P2P approaches.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I am curious about other interpretations of the impact this law will have. Would it encourage the development of more peer-to-peer sharing networks, which lack a central space to upload?

I wish we had the kind of concerted effort that the copyright lobby is able to launch, but focused on issues that reduce the net benefit of these platform more than copyright infringement: hate speech or intentional misinformation.

<comment><USER48> It'll encourage growth of telegram/whatsapp groups where stuff is forwarded around and reaches a large audience, but without a crawlable URL.

Social networks.

<comment><USER49> Like in the old Direct Connect days.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> I like this new law. My rights are abused every hour and corporations hide behind the safe harbour. It is a really good thing. Keep up EU

<comment><USER50> Can you be more specific? Which rights?

<comment><USER46> I have a software product. People resell it on marketplaces. They make €30~50,000 per year from doing this. When I contact the marketplaces they hide behind safe harbour - yes, they suspend the user account but the same user will register the next day under a different name and keep the same practice. The responsibility of the content published should be shifted from the author to the platform so abuse like this is not repeated.

<comment><USER51> > _The responsibility of the content published should be shifted from the > author to the platform_

How is the platform going to know what's legally published and what isn't? In some cases I suppose you can work with an industry, like YouTube's Content ID for music, however even with Google's resources Content ID still has severe glitches[1] (should they be legally responsible for false positives too?). Otherwise what, hire an army of mechanical turks to manually review every single thing that's uploaded?

At best I think under this kind of system you're going to get a stagnant landscape where only corporate giants with deep pockets and/or industry connections can create new innovative products. There's going to be no more upstart Instagrams, Snapchats, Soundclouds, whatever if the company can get sued into oblivion if some rando takes a pic or uploads a snippet of copyrighted material.

[1]: [https://twitter.com/SmellyOctopus/status/1082771468377821185](https://twitter.com/SmellyOctopus/status/1082771468377821185)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> This wil change nothing that is not already in effect for most sites. Try to upload a movie to Youtube, it will be removed. But only when the owner/author complains or some automatic filter is triggered.

There is also too much content to check and enforce it all.

<comment><USER40> YouTube has stated that if this passes, "EU residents are at risk of being cut off from videos that, in just the last month, they viewed more than 90bn times" – i.e. despite all the overblocking and mistakes, still too much slips through ContentID for them to take the risk of direct liability. [https://youtube-creators.googleblog.com/2018/11/i-support- go...](https://youtube-creators.googleblog.com/2018/11/i-support-goals-of- article-13-i-also.html)

<comment><USER53> I hope this happens and everyone will wake up, complain and the directive will be changed.

<comment><USER34> In all likelihood, EU users will just end up using VPN-type services to bypass the blocks... rather than talking to their MEPs.

(I don't blame them to be fair, I've gone down the MEP route - they replied with a form letter to the effect of "this is party policy and I'll support it because it's for your own good, and I'm not discussing it further")

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> I'm an EU citizen.

Honest question here: What can I do to influence this decision?

<comment><USER55> > I'm an EU citizen. Honest question here: What can I do to influence this > decision?

Mmm...maybe you could write to your local/nearest European Parliament Representative...I think they call them MEPs...

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> What strikes me as odd is that most of these efforts are driven by the EU. Are other unions and nations not seeing the need for these things? It reminded me of GDPR.

</comment><comment><USER57> What if an internet platform requires encryption of every upload? And other internet platform stores keys for such uploads, and decryption happens on user's computer.

</comment><comment><USER58> This will either be really good by forcing people to run their own sites (the web is a giant social network naturally) or will kill the meme culture.

</comment><comment><USER59> I hope my country leaves the European union, soon.

<comment><USER55> > I hope my country leaves the European union, soon.

LOL...why though? By the way...which country is that?

<comment><USER59> It won't happen any time soon I'm afraid. I want to leave the eu because I don't believe in big centralized countries making decisions for hundreds of millions of people. I like decentralization.

Just look on all the big countries of the world, they all kind of suck. There is simply no way for ordinary citizens to have any effect on EU because of it's size alone. Almost all my countries MEPs voted no to Article 13 but it still got passed.

I don't want Germany and France to control Sweden (which is the country I'm from).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> That's why more and more people feel resentment towards their states and the EU. This is a blatant corruption and this is only going to get worse. There should be an investigation of all the people involved, money traced even for distant family members and acquaintances. If any shady behaviour is discovered then the justice should be dispensed. Any politician that abuses his position to serve company interest in exchange for money should receive a capital punishment as a deterrent

</comment><comment><USER61> Is AWS's S3 (or other object store providers) on the hook for upload filtering? Maybe just their EU locations?

<comment><USER62> Well, you have to sign up with a credit card for AWS so I would think they would just pass on the lawsuits straight to you as they know who you are.

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> what if they post from outside of the EU, or the platform is not in the EU? that would mean these laws don't apply? seems a bit useless law considering what the internet is... besides that it's prone to trolls getting companies fined. stupid idea for on the internet if you ask me.

</comment><comment><USER64> Hmmm This might make the dark net more mainstream

</comment><comment><USER65> How will this be different from SOPA?

<comment><USER66> It isn't different from SOPA (or from ACTA)

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> Small companies won't have resources to create their own content filters.

Guess who is going to sell content-filter-as-a-service?

<comment><USER68> From the article:

> Platforms run by startups (small and micro-sized businesses) are exempted > from the law.

<comment><USER69> From the article:

> This was one of the European Parliament's main improvements to the text. > Unfortunately, it is now in danger of being dropped in negotiations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> Ah yes, a private police force for the copyright holders. What on earth is wrong with just letting them sue?

</comment><comment><USER9> The EU is going to regulate themeselves to the dark ages by simply creating an environment that is too antagonistic and costly to capitalism compared to other parts of the world. The regulations around capital raising for a fund in the EU is aweful. You're better off being based in the US and simply invest in EU startups.

</comment><comment><USER71> seems fair, if you're going to make your money from user created content

</comment><comment><USER72> As much as I like GDPR, I have no idea why would this law be any good. Perhaps I'm not seeing something here - can anyone explain how this law is good for society?

<comment><USER25> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18883114](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18883114)

</comment></comment><comment><USER73> Poor Europeans. The European's Great Firewall.

</comment><comment><USER74> Well there goes my startup idea I was working on and off last two years.

<comment><USER39> Your startup idea was to host large amounts of copyrighted material for profit, without checking who had the rights to distribute that material?

In some parts of the EU that's already illegal. Not just a civil tort for which you can be sued, but an actual criminal offence for which you can be prosecuted.

Which would you prefer?

<comment><USER74> > Your startup idea was to host large amounts of copyrighted material for > profit, without checking who had the rights to distribute that material?

of course not don't be silly.

but so far liability was on the uploader, when the police comes knocking you gave out user data and that was it. see, for example, the jsfiddle constant issue with illegal content: [https://remysharp.com/2015/09/18/jsbin-toxic- part-5](https://remysharp.com/2015/09/18/jsbin-toxic-part-5)

people miss here that any user generated content could be part of a copyright. even text if they are lyrics. there's NO user platform that's safe.

<comment><USER39> Can you post a link to the bits of article 13 (from the EU source) that you think make your idea unworkable?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER75> Julia is running her own upload filter in advance of the legislation she is fighting. My comment does not appear on her site.</comment>


New speech-jamming gun hints at dystopian Big Brother future - <AUTHOR> http://www.extremetech.com/computing/120583-new-speech-jamming-gun-hints-at-dystopian-big-brother-future

<comment><USER2> > _if you're a firm believer in free speech, you should now be experiencing a > deafening cacophony of alarm bells_

This article is sensationalist. If a directional mic/speaker is a "speech jamming gun" then a loud speaker is a "free speech area jammer". And you really don't need the mic - just blast Justin Bieber at a conversation and nobody will be able to hear anything intelligible anyway...

If you had a "totalitarian government" that wanted to jam you from thinking there are simpler ways to continuously annoy or distract you. Maybe if Stalin were bored and wanted to f#@* with people for the lulz.

<comment><USER3> No, but a western democracy could make up some pretext to silence protests under the guise of, say, bringing peace to the lives of all the people who don't give a shit, so that they don't fall so much in the polls.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is actually useful tech - I've been in many situations where other people talk louder and longer than me (I have a quiet voice and don't interrupt others when they say something - I'm always perplexed when others do it) and instead of escalating and turning a debate into a shouting contest, one could use these devices (though I don't see that actually happening since it would make a lot of people angry).

As for free speech - it's not really a danger - if you're having a protest, the last thing you wanna do is shut people up - they're going to start destroying your equipment and it will quickly turn into a full-fledged riot...

</comment><comment><USER5> It's not a speech-jamming gun at all.

It's a speaker which plays back your speech to you.

It could be easily circumvented with $.10 earplugs...

<comment><USER6> Even the best earplugs only muffle sound to a certain degree. Sound, especially loud sounds, is transmitted very well through the bones in your head.

<comment><USER7> Bone conduction only works well for lower frequencies, unless a transducer or vibrating object is directly coupled to your body. Earplugs would work just fine in this application.

<comment><USER6> I've yet to find a pair of earplugs that block conversations in my office enough to let me concentrate, I seriously doubt that they'd be good for a concentrated blast of sound.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> From what I understand of the technology at play here, it seems like it could be defeated by a pair of earplugs (or, if you're in a conversation rather than a speech, then a microphone/headphone combination with an additional short delay) - though I'm by no means qualified in this area!

Still, even if there is a workaround, it seems impractical to wear all the time.

<comment><USER9> Just put your fingers in your ears when you want to speak, or wear noise- canceling headphones.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I often speak with a colleague by phone and for whatever reason our connection creates this effect. It's very disorienting at first, but you can get used to ignoring it quite quickly.

</comment><comment><USER11> I don't understand how the author of this article thinks this could be applied to an audience or protestors.

For this to work, the audio output to each individual person has to be exactly what each individual person is currently saying. If it's a combined audio mess of an entire audience's voices, it's not exactly going to screw up anyone's speech patterns.

So the only way this could work in an audience would be if the back of every chair in front of people had one of these devices on it which could filter out the noise of everyone else around that person and only output _their_ voice.

</comment><comment><USER12> _In short, imagine if a runaway mega-corporation or government gains control of these earbuds. Not only could the intelligence-destroying blasts from Harrison Bergeron come to pass, but with Delayed Auditory Feedback it would be possible to render the entire population mute._

Is it just me who thought; well if a runaway mega-corporation does come to exist, in a position to force society to wear such earbuds (or whatever)... I doubt the existence, or not, of "speech-jamming guns" will affect matters.

They haven't even thought through the sensationalism!

<comment><USER13> Yeah - this seems like a sci-fi rant.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The title of the article got me quite frightened for a moment, until I read on and realized the "gun" is more-or-less an audio playback speaker with minor delay.

Early Skype users who made calls to people using their speakers instead of headsets/headphones know how this feels.. disorienting yes, but easily ignored after you get used to it.

I never imagined the effect could be implemented as a directed energy weapon. Just makes me think it would be that much easier to re-make as a DIY project, smaller and cheaper..

</comment><comment><USER15> The invention itself is not too scary, but the commentary of the researchers is. Perhaps we should silence people like them who put forth such dangerous ideas.

</comment><comment><USER16> While the title made me wonder if this was a spoof article, I'm surprised that no one here finds the article chilling. Forget the politicians, the intended use is for modifying people's behaviour. From friends' anecdotes (both Japanese friends and those who spent many years in Japan), there is strong pressure to conform in Japanese schools. Imagine this scenario:

Speech jammers are introduced into Japanese schools. From the article: "We have to establish and obey rules for proper turn-taking when speaking." Sounds like a school to me. This type of technology used on kids could have long-term impact on their ability to think during public conversations. And once the teacher realizes they can silence any student at will, do you think they'll stop at the "louder, stronger" voices? Any student with an opinion the teacher doesn't like could get zapped. And the worst part is not that other students won't hear their ideas -- it's that the student herself will have those thoughts disrupted.

Entrepreneurs are who we are because we think outside the box -- we do things we're told can't be done. Most people aren't like that. And imagine if every time you talked about anything "out of the norm" as a child your very thoughts were stopped. Chilling.

I guess if Japanese authorities want that kind of conformity, it might help the US economy...but I'm still not a fan.

</comment><comment><USER7> This isn't a new idea, it's just a "portable" version of the anti-vulgar- speech system you see at many sporting stadiums that play back delayed recordings of crowd noise when vulgar chants (i.e. "bullshit! bullshit!" after a bad call) start.

</comment><comment><USER17> I made a simple Pure Data patch (adc > delay > dac) that simulates this effect, and I can confirm that it works well.

<comment><USER18> I have a VoIP phone that performs this function for free. It's very annoying ...

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> It's easy to counter-jam, if you're expecting it. Noise-cancelling headphones with a 200ms buffer delay should do it.

</comment><comment><USER20> Does anyone know of any proof of concept video out there? I would love to see this in action.

<comment><USER14> Here you go: "SpeechJammer (en)" <http://youtu.be/USDI3wnTZZg>

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I too own a gun that can prevent people from speaking out of turn. It is made by Smith and Wesson</comment>


The present/future of AngularJS - <AUTHOR> https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1-M5U0B6JI2JKU2ibVmU-xKkR7a88Uz1ZN0pc2lEuGzE/

<comment><USER2> I really dislike the trend of tech talks turning into stand-up comedy routines where 75% of slides must be a funny image that barely relates to the point the speaker is making at the time.

<comment><USER3> I really enjoy that trend. Tech is a dry topic with typically uninspiring presenters.

<comment><USER4> I agree, I went to a conference the other weeks where the talks where extremely informative but after a day of presentations it becomes very hard to listen even if you're passionate about the topic.

I enjoy the more casual approach than the dry textbook approach, I don't have an academic background however and that may be the difference.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What I'd really like to see in AngularJS is some sort of asynchronous module system a la AMD. Doesn't have to be AMD, but some way to not have to load a whole app in memory at once. I thought I saw a design document that mentioned they were considering this for AngularJS 2.0, does anyone know more about it?

I do know that you can use requirejs, does anyone have any experience to share using requirejs and angularjs?

<comment><USER6> We use angular with RequireJS, though we don't (yet) load any Angular modules lazily because it is not supported by Angular. There are workarounds (like [https://github.com/marcoslin/angularAMD](https://github.com/marcoslin/angularAMD)) which I have no experience with. We do load external libs (like MathJax, which is comparatively huge) lazily where possible.

Our AMD modules are actually TypeScript modules that generate the AMD wrapper. Works great, and makes for a very clean and modular codebase. In the end, we use r.js to concat and minify most of it (everything except the lazily loaded libs) down to a single file. Including Angular templates, using [https://www.npmjs.org/package/gulp-angular- templatecache](https://www.npmjs.org/package/gulp-angular-templatecache) which can output the templates as initialization scripts inside and AMD wrapper as well.

<comment><USER7> But you're not using async (angular)module loading.Angular modules cannot be loaded async in.You might be able to inject services after the app is bootstrapped but it involves using global variables,which totally defeat the purpose of dependency injection.

<comment><USER6> Indeed, that's what my first sentence implies. Note that this doesn't prevent you from lazily loading other JS libs when using them inside Angular modules.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> kuni-toko-tachi AngularJS is terrible choice for a front-end framework. It's just bizarre from top to bottom. Not everything needs two-way binding. Not all SPA's use nesting to compose their user interface! Why does ng-if create a new scope? Using attributes as control structures is plain dumb. Component re-use is difficult because of nesting as a central paradigm.

Javascript is a wonderfully expressive language. Unlike AngularJS, ReactJS let's you use this wonderful language to compose your application, not the foolishness of Angular's "modules", "factory", and "service". Even Dependency Injection is a foolish concept in a language like Javascript. Composition and wiring can be orchestrated through code, it doesn't need an intervening layer!

Javascript already has well-establish design patterns - it doesn't need AngularJS.

<comment><USER8> As I may soon be maintaining some angular code and am new to it, I'm interested in your criticisms. Would be nice if you could expand them a bit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I hate being linked to slide shows. When I saw the docs.google.com I was expecting some sort of design document or something.

<comment><USER5> Right! The presentation showed some of those design documents in a picture in a slide. Are those documents available? That's exactly what I thought when I saw that slide, that I'd love to read those documents.

<comment><USER10> The Angular 2 design docs can be found here: [https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B7Ovm8bUYiUDR29iSkEy...](https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B7Ovm8bUYiUDR29iSkEyMk5pVUk&usp=sharing)

<comment><USER5> Awesome, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> how does react.js compare? [https://www.google.co.uk/trends/explore#q=angular.js%2C%20re...](https://www.google.co.uk/trends/explore#q=angular.js%2C%20react.js&cmpt=q)

<comment><USER12> TL;DR: Ember and Angular are more full-featured than React.js. And Angular gives you the most bang per byte downloaded.

angularjs is mvc (Model View Controller)

react is only the V(iew), so you can blend AngularJS with ReactJS.

The most popular post (about Angular vs React) is on [http://www.quora.com/Pete-Hunt/Posts/Facebooks-React-vs- Angu...](http://www.quora.com/Pete-Hunt/Posts/Facebooks-React-vs-AngularJS-A- Closer-Look) , but it's kinda subjective i suppose as he works on the React team.

(Note: I use AngularJS, but haven't used ReactJS. So if i'm wrong, please correct me).

Here is a nice comparison though [http://www.reddit.com/r/javascript/comments/1v4glc/react_vs_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/javascript/comments/1v4glc/react_vs_angular/cepekuj)

<comment><USER13> The Reddit link seems much less objective than Pete Hunt's overview (e.g. the last point about React not providing code modularity is flat out wrong)

I wrote a frontend framework comparison essay here ( [http://lhorie.github.io/mithril/comparison.html](http://lhorie.github.io/mithril/comparison.html) ). It's focused heavily on Mithril.js, but might be useful for someone evaluating frameworks.

FWIW, I've used Angular extensively for the past few years and some of the reasons I wrote Mithril (which has a virtual-dom based engine like React) were because 1) Angular performance issues are _really_ hard to fix, 2) I feel some of the design decisions in Angular are fundamentally flawed.

<comment><USER14> Thank you for writing Mithril; it's a breath of fresh air coming from the complexity of Angular. Not to mention the small size (5kb!) - that'll be especially useful when we build our JavaScript embed widget.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I hope AngularJS implements a virtual DOM, but I'm keen to transition to reactjs anyways, as I prefer assembling a program from many libraries instead of a monolithic framework

</comment><comment><USER12> TL;DR;

The presentation is about the community (it's large) and about AngularJS 2.0.

AngularJS will become more usable with mobile dev.(with Material Design and famo.us). It will also expand to AngularDart

The poem is fun though when you like Angular: The poem [https://twitter.com/NicoJuicy/status/525295632882614272](https://twitter.com/NicoJuicy/status/525295632882614272)

<comment><USER16> In singing form:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSCpGAPWe_8#t=166](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSCpGAPWe_8#t=166)

Really looking forward to the integration of Material design in a mobile browser with Angular.</comment></comment>


CEO makes prospective employees take "Snowflake Test" - <AUTHOR> http://newbostonpost.com/blogs/ceo-makes-employees-take-snowflake-test/ <comment><USER2> I'm not even sure where to begin with this. Why did Mr. Reyes even write a public article about this topic? He is putting his ego and his company on a very high horse. In striving to be politically incorrect, he is reinforcing political correctness through the questions; candidates will now have to optimize even more for what answers they _think_ he's going to want to hear. Why would any candidate willingly expose their true beliefs to such a combative process (and person)? His list is a bizarre mix of hot-button political topics, personal never-talk-about-this-at-work questions, and a few legitimate questions.

</comment><comment> awinter-py Silly but as fiction, this is brilliant. We've all met this person.

Getting an applicant to answer 'no' to safe spaces probably makes it harder to sue for harassment down the line. Hmm.

<comment><USER3> but I bet the settlement gets whole lot bigger because he's creating an "environment of hostility"

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> i don't have a problem with the test, or the tone of the questions asked.

a company is just a group of people.. surrounding yourself with like minded people is a good thing. Now, don't get me wrong.. i don't want to work with 40 copies of myself. like minded does not mean we have to agree on anything or everything.

What industry does this company serve?

Are you going to have an open carry environment? if so wouldn't you like to know going in?

is it a faith based leadership? does that offend?

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't understand what kind of person would take that test?

It just seems like one of those do what your told type places.</comment>