WhatsApp Security Vulnerability - <AUTHOR> https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2017/01/whatsapp_securi.html <comment><USER2> While people discuss about a possible state-actor stronghanding WhatsApp and the semantics of backdoor, the "design feature" of not showing the key changes are making real victims, at least in Brasil:

The attacker first try to duplicate the mobile phone number of the first victim, probably by social engineering their phone company. This part may look difficult to do, but it is not hard if you realize you do not need to target anyone special - everyone uses WhatsApp, so any number gives a high probability of success.

After getting the first victim number, the attacker install WhatsApp, which gladly verifies the user via SMS - WA has no login, no password, so anyone receiving the SMS can impersonate anyone else.

As Whatsapp does not send any alert of key change by default, the attacker is free to impersonate to person - in this case, he simply asks for some borrowed money to be transferred to a bank account, which will be paid soon. The recipient has no reason to distrust the message - it is being sent by his friend in the same chat window as they always talked to, even the logs are there. There is no message to warn about the potential issue, by design!

This is no hypothesis - this is actually happening for some time, now.[1] This design feature surely has some loyal users.

[1][http://www.correiobraziliense.com.br/app/noticia/cidades/201...](http://www.correiobraziliense.com.br/app/noticia/cidades/2016/05/11/interna_cidadesdf,531298/brasilienses- caem-em-fraudes-cometidas-atraves-de-aplicativo-de-celula.shtml)

<comment><USER3> Unfortunately, if WhatsApp did defend against this, it would be such a big hassle that users would disable it. How many people do you know that wouldn't just click "accept" on "this user's keys changed", or wouldn't just ask the attacker "hey did you get a new phone?" "yes" "oh okay"?

People love to blame WhatsApp, but what can anyone realistically do?

<comment><USER2> It does not need to be a modal form - a notification message, embedded in the the chat log, just before a "Hey, could you send me some money", could make some people think twice before transferring:

"Wow, he is asking me in excess of USD500 just after WhatsApp warned me his cell phone has changed. Weird".

The simple alert shown in moxie's own blog post [1], perhaps less cryptically written, would probably do the job.

Heck, if this happened between me and girlfriend last week, I would most probably fall, as I did not know this was disabled in WhatsApp. Now, at least, I have turned the notification on.

[1] [https://whispersystems.org/blog/images/whatsapp- keychange.pn...](https://whispersystems.org/blog/images/whatsapp- keychange.png)

<comment><USER4> For the overwhelming majority of people, it would just lead to alert fatigue, where users start ignoring the alerts because 99% of the time they're not actually indicative of a problem.

<comment><USER5> As much as I agree that alert fatigue is a problem this shouldn't trigger it.

<comment><USER6> [citation needed]

<comment><USER5> I wrote shouldn't instead of won't.

That said, my reasoning went along the lines of:

Where I live at least people rarely switch phone numbers and I have yet to hear about a single person that I know or have worked with who have had their phone number hijacked.

So, lets say that other people are less lucky than me and this warning will pop up twice a year, -will that be enough to trigger warning fatigue?

IMO, probably not.

Will we still have a problem with warning fatigue? Yes. Why? Because of the sticker and warning requirements created by American lawsuits and EU cookie law. (Oh, and IIRC my country isn't much better in this regard, just smaller so less of a problem.)

While not a citation I hope this explains my reasoning.

<comment><USER6> > Where I live at least people rarely switch phone numbers…

First, it's not about people switching phone numbers. It's about switching _devices_. This can be something as innocuous as uninstalling/reinstalling the WhatsApp app. Or upgrading their phone on a one or two year cycle. Or because they broke their phone and are using a friend's old phone for a few weeks. Or wanting to send and read messages on their laptop too. And their work laptop. Except they also had their work laptop reinstalled because of a virus, or because IT needed to do an upgrade, or whatever.

This shit happens all the time.

> …and I have yet to hear about a single person that I know or have worked > with who have had their phone number hijacked.

I think this proves my point. The signal-to-noise ratio for this type of message is precisely zero for greater than 99.999% of WhatsApp users who are _not_ being singled out by a nation-state for surveillance. And he number of these users who actually bothers to confirm keys out-of-band is, while not precisely zero, near enough as to make no difference.

For users who _do_ anticipate being singled out, there are two plausible options: they are savvy enough to look into the settings and ensure the toggle is enabled, or they're _not_ savvy enough to look for this type of option, and they're probably screwed anyway because actually achieving practical privacy against a highly-funded and highly-motivated governmental adversary is brutally hard and requires significantly more active involvement than merely toggling a switch on a messaging app.

> So, lets say that other people are less lucky than me and this warning will > pop up twice a year

Twice a year times fifty contacts adds up to seeing this message frequently enough that you learn to subconsciously ignore it. People _still_ try to bypass virtually every TLS warning browsers throw at them even though that number for most people is less than once per year, and even though browsers have made it painfully difficult to do so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The article mostly just quotes two other sources that have already been discussed here:

 _WhatsApp backdoor allows snooping on encrypted messages_ , [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13389935](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13389935)

 _There is no WhatsApp 'backdoor'_, [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13394900](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13394900)

<comment><USER8> Yep, this is an analysis by a trusted individual in the security field. His ultimate summary:

> [WhatsApp's representative is] technically correct. This is not a backdoor. > This really isn't even a flaw. It's a design decision that put usability > ahead of security in this particular instance.

<comment><USER9> Or to re-phrase:

This security application is not secure but it is usable.

<comment><USER10> There is no "secure", it's a scale from "no security" to just "very high security".

<comment><USER11> Security isn't either a scale or a binary; from one point of view a large number of binary values.

Either your security will or won't be compromised by a given threat model. This is binary, but there's lots of different threat models one could have.

e.g. If you care about the Russian government impersonating you, it's a different threat model than if you care about the US government reading your communication, which is a different threat model than if you care about a private actor encrypting all your data and holding it ransom.

This is then complicated by the fact that we can't see into the future (sufficiently complicated code is likely to have bugs, we need to predict if those bugs will be exploited before they are fixed; large government attackers may or may not know about math that the public crypto community doesn't; which governments will successfully compel a third party to do various things or reveal various secrets &c.) so each binary value for the security becomes probabilistic.

<comment><USER10> Come on, a collection of binary values for all of the threat models on a product used by millions of people is a scale by any other name. How good is the product at covering each of the threat models?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The question for me is that posed by the hacker who discovered the vulnerability. Here's what he said [1]:

"He (Moxie) said: "The choice to make these notifications 'blocking' would in some ways make things worse. That would leak information to the server about who has enabled safety number change notifications and who hasn't, effectively telling the server who it could man-in-the-middle transparently and who it couldn't; something that WhatsApp considered very carefully."

This claim is false. Those "blocking" clients could instead retransmit a message of the same length that just contains garbage and this message would just not be displayed by the receiver's phone. Encryption guarantees the garbage or real messages are indistinguishable in the encrypted form. Hence, this technique would make identifying users with the additional security enabled on a large scale impossible."

This was raised in the previous WhatsApp vuln thread but as far as I'm aware, Moxie is yet to address this criticism. Would be good to get a response on this.

[1] [https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jan/16/whatsapp-...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jan/16/whatsapp- vulnerability-facebook)

<comment><USER13> I think you're using a different meaning of "blocking" than Moxie is. I believe they mean "blocking" in the sense of waiting for the user to confirm that the message should be re-sent -- i.e. blocking on the user's input. Whereas you're using "blocking" to mean refusing to re-encrypt the message.

Presumably any message which would be detectable enough as garbage to not be displayed on the reader's phone could be treated as them having this feature enabled, allowing the information-leak Moxie mentioned.

(To be clear, I do think there's a argument to be had over which of these leaks is _worse_. I just don't think this suggested approach actually addresses Moxie's concern.)

<comment><USER14> Resending and reencrypting the message mean the same thing here, I don't understand the distinction. Once the user okays the key change it can be resent by encrypting with the new key, before that it would be blocked from being resent.

I know nothing of the signal protocol, but whether the server can tell the message is garbage depends on what the receiver client tells the server. An ideal client would acknowledge receipt to the server but show the user an error (or silently drop the garbage message). From the quote it seems like this is the case, in which case the server can't tell a true message receipt from receipt of garbage and the correlation doesn't work.

<comment><USER15> > I know nothing of the signal protocol, but whether the server can tell the > message is garbage depends on what the receiver client tells the server.

You're forgetting that the server is the one telling the sender what the new key is. If the key is under the control of the attacker/server, they can read the message and determine if it's garbage or not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Even if they changed this specific design decision/vulnerability, it seems like there's a big gaping hole (or I'm missing something).

Given that WhatsApp brokers the initial key exchange, lawful interdiction can take place at WhatsApp under subpoena. What we hope is the case is that WhatsApp would fight these orders in court, claiming that the keys are merely forwarded and aren't stored by design. But if they fought and lost, then presumably they'd comply with the orders and the provision not to reveal the order. Do we really think that WhatsApp and/or Facebook have the conviction of Ladar Levison?

It would seem that all new accounts created at WhatsApp after that theoretical warrant is executed are at risk.

<comment><USER17> I'd assume the keys are generated on device.

<comment><USER16> Presumably the device generates a keypair and then needs to exchange with the remote device somehow? I assumed both devices connect to WhatsApp and it delivers what is ostensibly the pub keys from each of the parties to each of them?

<comment><USER15> This can be detected if the sender and the recipient attempt to verify their keys out of band (i.e. in person or through some other trusted communication channel). WhatsApp allows you to do that.

<comment><USER18> Out of band but not out of app. It's the WhatsApp app that generates and presents the 'security code' or key fingerprint for comparison.

It's not like SSH in which separate and discrete components generate the keypair and verify fingerprint on connection.

<comment><USER15> That's moving the goalposts. A backdoor in the app itself is a whole different matter - both legally (give us these records/change these records in your database vs. build software according to our spec and ship it to your customers, which is similar to Apple vs. FBI and might not be constitutional) and technically.

I also don't see the difference between this and SSH. If your SSH server or client is backdoored/compromised, you have no control over what happens with your plaintext, no matter what the fingerprint verification tells you. The only difference is that one is open source, so the likelihood that a backdoor is detected is probably higher, though I don't think this means a) there is no backdoor and b) a backdoor in a closed-source app cannot be detected.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> If your threat model is the government compelling Facebook, then you should be using a different product that's geared specifically towards security, such as Signal. WhatsApp is a mass-market product aimed at the whole world, which means it makes different tradeoffs, providing a less comprehensive threat model in favor of higher usability. And that's a perfectly fine thing for this app to do.

<comment><USER6> Yes, thank you. So many people in this thread are making the absurd assertion that security is a binary thing — it's either totally secure against all threats, or it's insecure.

What the security community has spent the last 20 or so years coming to grips with is that it's _very hard_ to cover every attack surface, and not wind up with a product that nobody outside of a select few are smart or dedicated enough to use (e.g., GPG), or that people don't just blindly click through endless warnings (e.g., the not-so-distant days of TLS). What we _can_ do is make incremental improvement over the existing tools that people use by covering more in the threat model or improving the usability such that more people use it and/or fewer people ignore important concerns.

As a mass-market anti-surveillance and privacy-enabling chat app, WhatsApp is an incredible success. It's not replacing GPG with a carefully-curated web of trust. It's replacing plaintext SMS.

There are better tools if you _know_ your threat model includes targeted, high-budget attacks the FSB, NSA, or CIA.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I didn't quite grasp why attacking entity (e.g. government) has the ability to read messages. What does "WhatsApp has the ability to force the generation of new encryption keys for offline users" mean? Does it mean that WhatsApp backend has the ability to force sender to use pregenerated compromised key provided by attacker? In terms of WhatsApp security whitepaper, does that mean that attacker can force sender to use newly generated (by attacker) S_recipient, O_recipient and the main one, I_recipient? I'm asking because "force the generation of new _encryption_ keys" doesn't really specify who would generate keys, or what about identity key that signs everything.

<comment><USER11> Let's say WhatsApp wants to read the next message sent to user X:

1) WhatsApp makes user X appear offline

2) User Y sends user X a message

3) WhatsApp sends user Y an indication that user X's key has changed, along with the public key for which they have the corresponding private key

With these steps, user Y's message will be resent with the new key that WhatsApp knows, and so they can read the message. There is a configuration setting that will display a notification that the key changed, but no way to prevent an undelivered message from automatically being resent with the new key.

<comment><USER19> So the main problem is that on _identity_ key change, the new one isn't required to be signed with previous identity key? If so, that's plain stupid, isn't it?

<comment><USER11> It's a natural consequence of "My phone got run-over/lost/stolen"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> conspicuously missing from this discussion is the self-healing capabilities of the signal protocol, which as far as i understand is a major feature. when marlinspike says, "This is called a \"man in the middle\" attack, or MITM, and is endemic to public key cryptography, not just WhatsApp," i find it odd that he wouldn't even address the fact that the signal protocol has protections against this built into the protocol.</comment>


React vs. Ember – EmberNYC slides - <AUTHOR> https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1afMLTCpRxhJpurQ97VBHCZkLbR1TEsRnd3yyxuSQ5YY <comment><USER2> I'm a big fan of React. I soured on Ember but, to be fair, haven't looked at it in quite a while. Curious, though, is the statement in the slide deck that Ember "dominates" big apps true or verifiable? Perhaps if you exclude toolkits/libraries like Backbone, and compare only to Angular, I could buy it.

<comment><USER3> Ember definitely smashes Angular in terms of 'big apps', it seems it's somewhat behind Backbone.

Ember:

* Vine

* Twitch

* Square

* Heroku (dashboard)

* NBC News

* Discourse

* Huboard

* Travis CI

Backbone:

* Rdio

* Hulu

* Disqus

* Khan Academy (also uses loads of React)

* Stripe

* AirBnB

* Pandora

* Trello

etc etc..

Backbone has been around a lot longer, but Ember's apps seems to be built more recently.

<comment><USER2> Interesting. Thanks for the list. My biggest issue with Ember, other than the management of release schedule and API early on, is the concept of tying routes to models explicitly. It seems to assume that given a route context, you'll be dealing with a particular model - and only one particular model. If you want to have an additional data context, you need to establish route and then tie the routes together within one template.

This seems to confuse the relationship between a URL and the data displayed on the page.

I've really enjoyed React+Backbone, on the other hand. Very small footprint and gives me flexibility to design and build an application. After spending years with Rails, I've come around to "convention over configuration" is a nice thought, but breaks down at certain sizes. And it seems to break down much more quickly on the client side.

To me, personally, well-written Backbone+Underscore+React runs circles around the newer JavaScript frameworks. It's not to say the debate is over and settled - I just haven't found the complexity and size of frameworks like Ember to pay back more than they cost.

<comment><USER4> Ember has now got one of the best (IMO) release cycles in the business. We borrow heavily from Chrome, and have a very polished release infrastructure, with release, beta and canary channels you can subscribe to. Additionally, we have a strict commitment to SemVer and most Ember apps are on the latest release.

As for the complaint about tying models to routes: Ember does want you to have a model per route, but the model can be any data structure you want: an array, a hash with multiple models, or a single model.

I'm not sure exactly what issue you hit, but most apps of any complexity have multiple models on the page, and of course that's something we support out of the box. (You can see this if you open any production Ember app in the Ember Inspector browser extension, such as [http://vine.co](http://vine.co) or [http://twitch.tv.](http://twitch.tv.))

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Every time there is any post on Ember, it starts a flame war. As @tomdale would say it, it was ember vs backbone, then ember vs angular and now ember vs react. In today's age of minimalism and extreme flexibility, Ember is very complex and huge - but that is actually it's strength. Build a massive app with just 2 people on the team and you will know why ember users swear by it.

</comment><comment><USER6> I really enjoy React's concepts. I have but one nit to pick with it and it's meta: mixing grammars in a single buffer really hoses syntax highlighting & indentation in emacs.

I'd much prefer to be able to "require" the JSX where I need it and have the right context passed to it. That way all the editor-specific nonsense can just be avoided.

<comment><USER7> You could look into Mithril (a smaller React-like framework). It mixes JS and CSS syntax to achieve terseness, and it does so within the rules of valid javascript:

        m(".form-group", [
          m("input.form-control[placeholder='Name']")
        ])

<comment><USER8> I think using m() with CoffeeScript or LiveScript results in much more concise code than React.DOM. with JSX.

Well, you got to like semantically significant whitespace for this.

On the other hand, Mithril offers something like JSX, so the <> and ; crowd should be happy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I realized some time ago that the run loop inside Ember (aka Backburner) is really similar to Flux.

In Flux, everything is powered by the dispatcher. Changes to the store goes through dispatcher. All the stores changes that react to another store change needs to settle before re-rendering. This is almost exactly how to run loop works. The run loop is the dispatcher.

So in theory, we can just use Backburner to power a Flux app.

<comment><USER10> React does a similar batching of updates to avoid unnecessary rerenders, but a critical piece of the Flux dispatcher is helping organize inter-store dependencies which (unless I'm missing something) neither Backburner nor React itself does:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8248536](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8248536)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> One question:

What is the advantage of using Stores over the approach of using Backbone Models as stores and rerender on 'change' events?

[https://github.com/clayallsopp/react.backbone](https://github.com/clayallsopp/react.backbone)

I'm just starting with React, but IMO referring to the models in the component and calling methods on them is like the equivalent of calling actions through the dispatcher?

<comment><USER12> 1\. Stores can contain more than one "model", they cover a certain "domain"

2\. Stores contain immutable data. This allows for reference equality checking which will yield performance gains

3\. Stores do not contain asynchronous code. From the view of stores, it doesn't matter if user manipulates the state directly or triggered a fetch from a server.

Using Backbone models is a valid strategy in my opinion though...

<comment><USER11> Not to sound too defensive, but couldn't you do all these things with Backbone Models as well?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Is the video of this talk available anywhere?

<comment><USER14> It will be in 1-2 weeks at [https://www.youtube.com/user/EmberNYC](https://www.youtube.com/user/EmberNYC)

<comment><USER15> Thanks for slides. In this slide [http://goo.gl/XDk0J0](http://goo.gl/XDk0J0) you mentioned you would talk about alternatives to passing down callbacks later? Did I miss that in the deck or was that just spoken to?

<comment><USER14> Flux is that alternative.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Awesome slides, even having very little experience with EmberJS and React it explained very well what Reach does and is, and why I would want to use it, better than most tutorials out there (at least the ones I have come across).

</comment><comment><USER17> I like how this is showcasing real-world JS. Which libraries is it using again?

</comment><comment><USER18> These slides are hilarious. Love the kool-aid stream analogy. I'd love to see the talk if it is up somewhere.

</comment><comment><USER19> as a recent react convert from ember, this is a great presentation. _to convert more ember users._ :)

for a flux implementation, you might want to checkout delorean. [https://github.com/deloreanjs/delorean](https://github.com/deloreanjs/delorean)

</comment><comment><USER20> "If you're going to hate on React for some reason, make it something other than JSX"

But what if I hate JSX? It's such a tight coupling to the DOM which is just the opposite direction I want to go where the DOM doesn't even matter. But that's just my opinion I haven't done enough research or investigation to try and prove one over the other.

<comment><USER21> I slightly disagree with @machty. I agree that most of the reasons people give for hating on JSX are somewhat off the mark.

HOWEVER: the fact that JSX is XML and not HTML syntax is a real issue. `<label for="foo">` doesn't work; you have to know that it's `<label htmlFor="foo">`. Same with `class` and `className` and multi-word (`maxwidth` vs. `maxWidth`).

Early on, before React had fully made the decision to stick with raw property names, they understood the value of making JSX "just HTML" (see @petehunt at [https://github.com/facebook/react/pull/269#issuecomment-2291...](https://github.com/facebook/react/pull/269#issuecomment-22912842), for example). The decision that they made is totally reasonable, but having to learn an XML dialect of HTML (not XHTML, but a dialect that uses property names for attributes, and disallows normal attribute usage) is not free.

That said, I'm sure it's something you get used to quickly, and isn't something that slows you down much once you understand it.

<comment><USER22> It's not even XML — it's JavaScript. The problems with for/class/etc. problems aren't because of XML, but exist because the preprocessor just translates everything to React.DOM element declarations, and of course "class" et al are reserved words in JS.

I agree that's it super awkward. I have no idea why they don't let the preprocessor be HTML-aware and translates class into className directly. I can't see how something like "class" would clash with the surrounding JS syntax given that it's specific to the local tag syntax. <Foo> isn't valid JS, after all, so why should "class" not be valid JSX?

It creates a maintenance problem, too, because React has to play catch up with every HTML tag and attribute and every CSS property.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Jumping in at this point cuts out all the evocative pictorial motivation for unidirectionality. If you'd rather start at the beginning:

[https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1afMLTCpRxhJpurQ97VBH...](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1afMLTCpRxhJpurQ97VBHCZkLbR1TEsRnd3yyxuSQ5YY/)</comment>


Samsung is hurting Android  - <AUTHOR> http://www.trustedreviews.com/opinions/samsung-is-hurting-android?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter <comment><USER5> The Samsung software I have seen on their TVs, laptops, phones has been adequate at best. I wish them best of luck developing another closed ecosystem. However their track record of developing good, functioning software is not very promising.

When you use Apple products everything is tied into Apple. I didn't like some parts of their ecosystem (Itunes). It is all or nothing for Apple, so I said farewell and moved on.

When I switched to Android I discovered it is strongly tied to Google, their services are great and free. However I grew increasingly worried about a future in which my account ends up as a "false positive" and my life get's deleted. — Seriously those horror stories about people's Google account getting deleted for no good reason are very scary to a startup founder. The probability is very low, but I am scared enough to invest money and time in moving all my data away from Google.

So Samsung if the article is right and this is your longterm strategy, I wish you best of luck, don't expect me to be a customer at any point in the future.

<comment><USER6> > The Samsung software I have seen on their TVs, laptops, phones has been > adequate at best.

You've clearly used a Samsung SmartTV then. The software is so slow, so clunky, so unreliable; it's a hair pulling exercise just waiting for the thing to load (1-2 minutes to bring up the dashboard). Its bad enough to justify hauling the thing back to the shop and getting a refund.

<comment><USER7> I have a SmartTV as well. Tried the apps once and never touched it again. It really is 90's era software.

I honestly can't fathom why the TV manufacturers are just sitting back, twiddling their thumbs and waiting for Apple to come in and make them look stupid. I mean really is a TV so much more complicated to build a decent UI for than a smartphone or computer ?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> What's strange to me is that everything Samsung does to try and differentiate themselves just makes me like their phones less. Their hardware design is plastic and cheap feeling and I hate the touchwiz layer they put on top of android with their gimmicky features (camera based gesture controls? - <USER2> cares?).

I think Apple, Nokia and even HTC make much nicer hardware (although HTC still puts its Sense on top of android). I really wished Nokia had partnered with google to make the nexus phones instead of joining up with microsoft - then we would have had awesome hardware and a solid vanilla android phone.

<comment><USER9> I have a Nokia Lumia 920 and other than battery life I am extremely happy with it. WP8 might prove to be a nice middle ground between iOS and Android. If only more people would give it a chance, it's a really stellar experience.

<comment><USER10> I actually switched to iPhone 5 after a couple months of Lumia 920 usage. Bought it right after release, with the wireless charger and stuff. I really liked the device.

My problem was the fucked up regional annoyances. If you are not in USA, good luck! No full size skydrive photo uploads for you! No Xbox online.. No album covers in music app. A lot of missing apps in store. No this, no that. Well, I have no such problems with iPhone and Android.

BTW: After I switched, I sold my Lumia to a friend and used factory reset before handing the phone. Guess what? There is a known bug in factory reset that bricks the phone and it was apparently not fixed in 2 firmware upgrades that I got during that time :)

<comment><USER11> At least it is only software-regional. I've bought the One X in Taiwan when it was brand-new and now I have an Android 4.0 phone that only supports the following languages: Chinese, Simplified Chinese and English (I'm still too scared of Buyer's Remorse to check what else is different).

<comment><USER11> ...that was a pretty cryptic post, what I meant is that it only supports these three languages no matter where I am (different hardware/OS per country). It's like buying a movie on a vacation and then finding out about DVD regions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > If ITV wanted to avoid fragmentation it would have chosen to make its app > compatible with only pure versions of Android

That isn't what causes Android's fragmentation issues. Even between virgin android devices there is a LOT of fragmentation, these devices just happen to be popular with developers so most people aren't impacted by it.

Different screen sizes/resolutions, driver issues, graphics acceleration, aftermarket distro's, all cause a LOT of issues and these things all exist on virgin Android just as much as Samsung's strange re-imagining of the ecosystem.

Nvidia Tegra in particular has broken a LOT of stuff.

<comment><USER13> I am an android developer.

Are you suggesting that screen sizes and resolutions are uniform among Samsung devices? Drivers are the same? That is nonsense.

Aftermarket distros include no warranty warnings, it's up to the packagers to solve bugs in their builds.

Here is the reality: if they had opted to use the MediaPlayer classes with whatever streaming service they use on devices 2.3+, they would have likely had to deal with a few corner cases. If they didn't, they have made a poor decision. If they did, they are restricting allowed devices for reasons that are non-technical.

> Even between virgin android devices there is a LOT of fragmentation, these > devices just happen to be popular with developers so most people aren't > impacted by it.

I use the emulator for almost all of my testing and then test on a Galaxy Nexus. I beta test across a large net. The number of corner cases that are not related to pre-gingerbread versions of android is tiny. [EDIT: In the streaming media field, as of now. This was a much bigger problem several years ago. Obviously, the differences are more of an issue with games, which we are not talking about here.]

<comment><USER12> > Are you suggesting that screen sizes and resolutions are uniform among > Samsung devices? Drivers are the same? That is nonsense.

...No? In fact my post said exactly the opposite of that:

> all cause a LOT of issues and these things all exist on virgin Android just > as much as Samsung's strange re-imagining of the ecosystem.

I am saying there is fragmentation between two "virgin Android" devices. Therefore making his point that virgin Android somehow "solves" fragmentation wrong.

Samsung has a lot of fragmentation. So do "virgin Android" devices. Android has fragmentation because there is too much incompatible hardware and for some things the abstraction is more weakly enforced than for others (e.g. hardware acceleration).

<comment><USER13> The argument that the post was making was that there is zero weight to the claim that this decision was made for technical reasons.

Further, the post makes the point that choosing an open-source baseline as the first system you support means that there's a clear and relatively straightforward path to compatibility. Setting that target at a proprietary fork of that system does nothing to improve the situation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The time is right to capitalize on Android's big weak spots (OS fragmentation, disorganized app infrastructure, indifferent branding) but I don't see Tizen looming large yet. Samsung is doing a great job selling phones to consumers, but it's not in a great position to buy up the whole Google Play collection one piece at a time, and it doesn't seem to be trying to get developers and advertisers interested in Tizen at the moment.

If their long-term plan is to fly close to Android and then swap it out for something completely different, I'd be very excited. As a longtime smartphone user and current Android developer, I've been through the transition from one proprietary platform to another... BlackBerry, iOS, Android... I'm weary of dismissing a dozen app update notifications from my tray every day, and I'm tired of "apps" in general. I don't want to jump to another copycat of the same old junky, cluttered world. If Samsung is prepared to offer a fresh way of seamlessly being in the physical and digital worlds without having to navigate through a bunch of noisy, crappy apps (possibly without even the candybar form factor), I will be right there, wallet open. But as the author points out, it looks like the current iteration is just to load up a bunch of crapware onto a plastic toy, and users have to buy into the whole infrastructure if they want access to their favorite brand. No thanks.

</comment><comment><USER15> >The exit strategy is called Tizen.

I see two major issues with Samsung switching to Tizen: * Samsung is unlikely to get developers as talented as those at Google. I doubt that Tizen development could approach mainline Android's development pace, given the talent difference. * Tizen would need its own app store. Ask BlackBerry or Microsoft how well new app stores do.

Tizen is unlikely to catch up with Android functionality- or app-wise. Unless the carriers push it hard over Android, it will have no advantages and thus will not sell.

<comment><USER16> Android's development pace is slowing down, as is iOSes. Smartphones are not an innovative platform any more. It used to be that OSes got major new features like universal voice dictation, universal search, and turn-by-turn navigation, but in the last couple of years the two major platforms have been getting very iterative improvements; performance upgrades, visual polishes, proprietary assistant apps...

That's because the smartphone market is slowing undergoing commoditization. We're only a few years away from when Samsung could realistically swap out Android for another OS that looks on the surface to be the same and not many people will notice.

<comment><USER17> _and not many people will notice_ : unless they try to run their favorite Android apps - starting from the Google ones - and they discover that they're not there...

<comment><USER18> This implies that people buying a new phone actually have detailed knowledge about the underlying OS. But a lot of sold Android smartphones are cheap ones. I know lots of "mormal" people that barely know Android is powering their phones. They will not miss their favorite apps because they have none and seldom install new apps on their phone. Thats the "mass market" that Samsung could address with its own OS.

<comment><USER17> Ok, leave alone the "apps" - let's talk about the functionality. Where are my maps, with turn by turn navigation? Where is that translation thing that my nephew has got? I think that most people who buy a smartphone, paying good money for it, want to do "things". Many of the most interesting things you can do with Android phones (for free, too) are Google powered. Even Apple has a difficult time replacing them on iOS, and my guess is that they're much better positioned than Samsung in that respect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> From what I'm hearing, Google is not happy with Samsung. Google wants to lead and direct the future of Android but Samsung wants to do what's best for Samsung. Google is facing a bit of a dilemma. They can't push and risk alienating their number one device producer and they don't want to lose control of Android.

Their only option is to move faster than Samsung to make sure samsung follows.

<comment><USER20> Their other option is to declare android essentially a lost cause, let the device manufacturers do whatever they want to it, and develop their own "pure google" platform that runs on top of android and works around any OEM specific customizations.

Coincidentally, they already have a platform that they maintain complete control over and that runs on top of other operating systems - Chrome. and android just got brought under the umbrella of the chrome division.

<comment><USER13> They have that now, but they don't because consumers do not care.

The Nexus line is the best smartphone bargain that has ever happened, period, and it's still outsold by the Galaxy S III. They even use the words "pure google" in some of their marketing materials for the devices. Developers seem to be most of their market, though.

They could also opt not to include the Google properties on such phones (GMail, Google Play Store, etc...) but they don't. I suspect that relationships with headset manufacturers is the reason for this, but that's pure conjecture.

<comment><USER21> >The Nexus line is the best smartphone bargain that has ever happened, period, and it's still outsold by the Galaxy S III.

Dont forget what happened with the Nexus 4. A pure-android device with great hardware at a reasonable price. It sold out within an hour. Availability was terrible for weeks (months?) after launch. A very large number of people who wanted the phone couldnt have it and presumably went with other handsets such as the S3.

So clearly consumers _do_ care, but in this case it was Google/LG who screwed up. I suspect they'll be better prepared for the next Nexus iteration.

<comment><USER22> Plus, I don't know about the US, but in Australia the average consumer is going to have no idea the Nexus 4 even exists. Previous nexus handsets were supported by significant collateral from telcos, the only way you'd know about the N4 would be if you accidentally clicked the 'devices' link in Google Play.

The lack of 4G is also a bit of an issue to the average consumer, I think - it's a clear feature differential between it and high end phones, at a time when 4G is receiving a huge marketing push in Australia.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The exclusive deal last until August 31

[http://www.engadget.com/2013/05/09/samsung-itv-player- androi...](http://www.engadget.com/2013/05/09/samsung-itv-player-android-app- exclusive/)

<comment><USER24> You appear to be the sole voice of sanity. The Trusted Reviews article is a badly written illogical pile of mish-mash. And you can quote me on that. I've read most of the comments here as well and they're well wide of the mark. Android is here to stay, Samsung are not going to make any headway with Tizen. Firefox OS does not stand a chance in my opinion, though I admire their efforts. I still use Firefox the browser and I have tons of respect for the Mozilla Foundation. It's a win-win for open-source either way.

Google is doing what Microsoft should have done years ago but couldn't because it wasn't in its DNA. Android is Linux folks, don't forget that, Google is the steward at the moment but anybody can fork it if Google starts behaving badly. A whole consortium could get together. I really wish people would quit with the griping and conspiracy theories and appreciate what Google have done. It's unprecedented and I salute them. And to prove I'm not a total fanboy, I'm writing this from a Macbook, not a Linux box, and I own a HTC One X. I say hats off to Google and Samsung and HTC and Motorola and Huawei and whoever jumps on board. Every sale of Android is another vindication of the open- source model and I wish them all well.

<comment><USER25> I so incredibly disagree that Android is Linux.

I mean in a technical sense that is true since well it is the Linux kernel. But there is the argument that Linux is not Linux without GNU tools, build systems, terminals and __*root access. I stress the last one, the day I can ssh into my phone and install/add repositories, setup scripts, who knows I might actually make my life easier and for god sakes develop with whatever I want, whether it be C, Clojure or Python. And I mean we all know that Java developers are the renown worldwide for their quality especially considering how wonderfully over designed everything needs to be.

Your writing this from a Macbook so no offense I doubt you have any idea how Linux works deeply or have seriously developed something like say Robotics(<http://www.ros.org/wiki/>), or drivers, or the kernel.

It's true that the kernel is the most important part of the OS, but the total sum of all aspects of a OS especially for a consumer oriented product is vastly greater than just what the kernel provides.

I'd also like to add that just because something is open-source doesn't mean it's a net positive for the community or the consumers for that matter. Just look at Oracle, hell just look at Android. There is no diversity hence there is no evolution and if developers aren't going to get better at solving harder problems all I see is a sinking ship.

<comment><USER26> To be fair though, it's _vastly_ closer than anything else around. You can get shell access—and it's a bourne shell, with environment variables, piping, control-structures, etc (it even has emacs-style command-line editing!)—add a C compiler, etc, on an unrooted Android phone.

It's not really Linux the way we usually know it (just the non-standard filesystem layout ensures that), but typing "cat /proc/meminfo" into a shell and seeing the expected result, and using ls, printenv, df, etc, to explore, really makes it feel pretty familiar to someone used to Linux or other unix- style systems. [It also seems to use the standard linux/unix group mechanism for granting app permissions: if you type "id" to the shell, you'll see the permissions the terminal app holds listed as groups it belongs to.]

The end result is that it really does _feel_ like "Linux with a twist" rather than something alien.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> > _Samsung is hurting Android_

Maybe. But without Samsung there is NO Android.

No mobile maker makes any money of it worth mentioning, including Google, besides Samsung. The disparity is so big, it's not even funny. The majority of Android devices shipped ARE Samsung.

If Samsung was to stop shipping Android stuff, maybe someone else would pick up. But if Samsung Android devices were to disappear altogether magically, Android would have like 10-15% market share.

</comment><comment><USER28> If Google had been less afraid of the GPL, Samsung would've been forced to share-alike. Instead, they can just grab the fruits of Google's labors, put some icing on top, and leave Google with a lesser product.

</comment><comment><USER29> This article is decent, but it forgets to mention that Samsung has done more to help Android take market share away from Apple than any other company.

<comment><USER25> Ya? Then why is Android share dropping and iOS gaining.

[http://econintersect.com/b2evolution/blog1.php/2013/04/08/an...](http://econintersect.com/b2evolution/blog1.php/2013/04/08/android- market-share-appears-to-have-peaked)

<comment><USER23> You know that, shockingly, there is a world outside USA?

<comment><USER30> Ah, the "that's only true for the US..." meme, which _always_ lacks any kind of graph or reputable article supporting the assertion. I don't actually disbelieve it at all - Samsung have a lot of different devices on sale - <USER3> the trite assertion that 'marketshare = victory!' is entirely pointless. No, I won't search for it myself. You asserted it, so the burden of proof lies with you.

<comment><USER31> Here's some relatively recent worldwide estimates: <http://blog.laptopmag.com/android-powers-devices-worldwide>

You might want to pay particular attention to the device category Android is running away with. I found it surprising.

Separately, the timing of that article (dated April 8, 2013) makes its manipulation transparent. Talking about Android's US market share peaking mere weeks before the 2013 flagships (GS4, HTC One) land is almost as stupid as claiming the iPhone has peaked based on the quarter before the new model is released. Of course, the bases are covered because they mention the GS4 launch lower down, but somehow that isn't reflected in the clickbait title.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I'd think twice before going to war with Google. Samsung's phones aren't as much better than Motorola as Samsung seems to think they are. It isn't hard to see Google pumping the next Razr model with significant advertising dollars and claiming the crown for best selling Android smartphone for itself. Remember how fast Chrome beat out Firefox and and IE?

Samsung should have been content slipping under Google's radar and riding that wave. I can't see how poking the Google beast is a good idea.

<comment><USER33> Fighting Google is the lesser of several evils. There are three companies doing serious mobile business: Apple, Amazon, and Samsung. All of them are at war with Google one way or another.

Everyone playing "nice" with Google is losing money and/or insignificant. They're going down the same road that the PC vendors went down playing by Microsoft's rules. It looked like a different game at the outset because Google wasn't charging them an $80 tax on each device. But the end result is the same, they are being commoditized into irrelevance.

<comment><USER34> This might sound crazy, but it seems that Google are trying to do the same to Apple as well. Obviously they won't switch to Android, but most consumers don't really care about the OS. Nobody can replace Google's apps - <USER4> can't, Samsung will fail if/when they try.

By placing their apps on iOS, and essentially being the best of breed in every category, the long game seems to be to relegate Apple into the realm of the Android OEM. When it comes time for average iOS consumer to replace his phone, if Google have managed to push enough apps on him, he probably cares more about them than iOS. If Google can play it right, they might be able to make choosing a phone choosing your favourite front for Google apps, with no revenue difference either way.

They're not there yet, but it looks like they want to be. If Samsung, Apple, whoever has market share don't move fast, and Google play it right, they could all become fronts for Google's apps. And then the market share just shifts around between the current best front for Google's apps.

<comment><USER7> Have you never used the Google apps on the iOS before ?

They are good but not significantly better than Apple's built in ones. Apple Maps may have less quality data but has a much better UI and uses a lot less data. Google Now is pointless compared to the genuinely useful Android version. Chrome is slower in most cases than Safari and not integrated with the rest of the OS. And really all their other apps simply aren't popular.

Unfortunately Apple just doesn't give third party apps any room to expand beyond its tiny little sandbox.

<comment><USER35> > They are good but not significantly better than Apple's built in ones.

I guess I'll agree to disagree here. Apple's first party apps significantly behind Google's in my opinion.

> Unfortunately Apple just doesn't give third party apps any room to expand > beyond its tiny little sandbox.

This is unfortunate, but it looks like Google is working hard to make its own applications interop nicely and directly, even with the limited capability iOS provides for this.

<comment><USER30> "Apple's first party apps significantly behind Google's in my opinion."

Care to elaborate?

<comment><USER35> Sure. I find the Mail app to be ugly when compared to Gmail and more frustrating to use. Chrome seems to handle text much better than Safari, and the syncing is more convenient to me (because the tabs sync with my Android/Linux devices as well probably). Apple Maps seems to give pretty poor directions relative to Google Maps (just last weekend 2 of my family members got lost on their way to a family party because they used Apple Maps and it took them to the opposite side of town). Everyone using Google Maps made it just fine. Siri's voice recognition feels much slower and less accurate than Google Now.

Any major apps I'm missing?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Samsung will never truly ditch the platform that helped it become the number #1 mobile phone maker in the world, at least not in the next few years. While Samsung undoubtedly have a plan for Tizen, swapping out Android for Tizen is probably suicide right about now. Without Android, Samsung probably wouldn't be in the place that they are right now: highly profitable and popular.

The average consumer doesn't buy a phone because of it's CPU, battery life or operating system, they buy phones based on the number of apps in an app store. The reason Apple were the number ones for so long is due to the fact they were the first mobile phone manufacturer to have a decent app store. Sure Symbian had app stores and before that you had stores where you could buy Java apps for other phones, but nothing unified and supported by just one device existed.

The only way Tizen will succeed is if they manage to build an app marketplace that can rival Android or iOS: consumers want apps. As Microsoft and Blackberry have shown, it's not easy releasing a new OS and getting developers to spend time and money to build for yet another operating system and marketplace with little market share in comparison to Android or iOS. The Lumia 920 had some of the best hardware and camera around, but failed to reach the masses because of the app store drama's.

Lets not forget the other side of the story here. Samsung are helping Android out here as well, every time Samsung sells a phone it's currently benefiting Android not hurting it. Currently it is in Ssamsung's best interests to see Android succeed as it took what, five years for Android to be the dominant player in the mobile space via it's quantity not quality approach in the early days. Anything is possible here for either platform.

I foresee Samsung releasing Tizen phones and Android phones in the future, then depending on the success of Tizen choosing to venture down a completely Android-less path. Only time will tell what truly happens here, not conspiracy theories.

I am a happy Samsung Galaxy S4 owner and I really like the TouchWiz additions Samsung put over the top that make the phone more user-friendly and easier to use. I don't see the additions as a degradation of the Android experience, I actually prefer them and they're leaps and bounds more stable than the additions in the S3 or S2 (which seems to contradict this article suggesting Samsung want Android to fail).

<comment><USER37> Samsung's Tizen can run android apps.

<comment><USER38> So what, they still can't just upload all apps from the Google Play Store into their own. I've actually tried some of the other stores for publishing my own apps and my experience is that users of those alternative stores either have no money or do not want to spend any money on apps. (the sales have been catastrophic, even in Amazons App store)

<comment><USER37> Google Play Store... is an android app.

<comment><USER38> It is not allowed to use any part of Googles Services for Android on a non Android device.

Links: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_(operating_system)#Lice...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_\(operating_system\)#Licensing) <https://source.android.com/compatibility/index.html>

<comment><USER37> Well the play store could be classified as Not a "Google Service for Android".

Much like Gmail, and search are... I don't know how google would play it. But they could do a number of things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Paying off a software developer for an exclusive is, by some measures bad. But how bad is it? Worse than Netflix having exclusive content? Worse than exclusive games on consoles?

There is a lot not to like about Samsung's approach to "differentiation," but this seems like a minor, petty basis for condemning Samsung as harmful to the overall Android ecosystem.

It is also alarmist to say Google is in a weak position relative to Samsung.

Compared with Amazon, who compete directly with parts of Google's ecosystem on an Android-derived platform, Samsung is a model citizen, if you look at the world that way.

Google is content to leave a large penumbra of non-Google-ecosystem Android devices in the market without exerting any pressure to reign them in. Why worry on Google's behalf?

</comment><comment><USER31> You know, Samsung did the exact same thing last year with the S3 and Flipboard. I believe that, at the time, some people had similar concerns. In retrospect, though, that deal turned out great for Android. Samsung paying for exclusivity helped give the Flipboard developers an incentive to do the (long- desired) port. A year later, "everyone" has it and most people have forgotten that Samsung had an exclusive window (if they ever knew it at all). If the ITV app turns out similarly (and other have pointed out that the exclusive window is limited), I don't see any reason to be worried on behalf of "Android".

</comment><comment><USER40> This articles just increase my expectations for FirefoxOS and Ubuntu phones. I really want one of them to succeed. Firefox can probably attract more developers than Ubuntu.

<comment><USER41> Ubuntu seems to offer a nicer experience, but as a developer who likes FOSS stuff I trust Mozilla more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Android has never been particularly open; never in the sense of FOSS. Samsung is in the business of selling devices and their business strategy is winning at the moment. I am sure Google too is looking for business though their scale dwarfs in comparison to Samsung.

</comment><comment><USER43> I don't really care for Samsung's overpriced plastic phones, but their S-Pen is all sorts of awesome.

Why no-one else is innovating in that area is beyond me. Or do google prefer us to type our data in, because it's easier to index?

<comment><USER44> Yes, Google should be supporting active pens in a much bigger way. There are certain "niches" in the app ecosystems where the iPad and the iPhone are _much_ better than Android, and that's mainly because of Google's almost complete disregard for those categories of apps such as: games, music tools, and drawing/designing.

Rumors are Google _begin_ to address gaming at next I/O, and some rumors said they will announce something about audio latency improvements in Android, too. But I'm not expecting them to announce anything about drawing yet.

<comment><USER43> I hope so.

Drawing/handwriting on the iPad isn't great either; the software (3rd party) is good but the hardware isn't. Samsung on the other hand have the hardware spot on, but their software could be a (lot) better.

Apparently the Surface Pro pen is just as good; that doesn't surprise me in the slightest because Microsoft have been active in that area for a long, long time.

<comment><USER45> A proper pressure-sensitive stylus from Apple would be nice. Out of the few pressure-sensitive bluetooth styli available from third-parties, only two (Pogo Connect & Jot Touch 4) support palm rejection. Even the prototype pen showed by Adobe during MAX didn't seem to have palm rejection implemented. It just feels really awkward holding a pen without putting the palm on a surface somewhere. The drawings apps on iOS are so good though, and if I have to pick between good hardware/weak software (Android tablets w/ S-pen) and good software/weak hardware (iPads w/ 3rd party pen), I would choose the latter.

Also, the Surface Pro pen apparently had issues supporting Photoshop, and it didn't get fixed until a (beta) driver update released two days ago.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> The only thing Samsung is hurting is the patience of people waiting to buy the 32GB or 64GB versions of their fucking phone.

</comment><comment><USER47> Way too much fuss about something most of the world can't use (the ITV player)and don't care about...

</comment><comment><USER48> As a monetization strategy an app maker gets in bed with a certain vendor. This has literally nothing to do with Android (or "fragmentation"), and Samsung is just as capable of entering into such deals as HTC is, or Apple, or any other vendor.

If I were a consumer of the service, I would be pissed with the service provider for making that choice.

</comment><comment><USER49> Without Samsung, Android would be about as relevant as Windows Phone OS.

<comment><USER50> The fact that I'm a Linux user makes me irrelevant because of the low market share? Tell that to Valve.

<comment><USER51> Valve doesn't give a shit about you, the Linux user. They are hedging their bets against Microsoft and Xbox.</comment></comment></comment>


Elon Musk: The Recode interview - <AUTHOR> https://www.recode.net/2018/11/2/18053424/elon-musk-tesla-spacex-boring-company-self-driving-cars-saudi-twitter-kara-swisher-decode-podcast <comment><USER2> I think the thing that people really like about Elon Musk is that he just doesn't care about the interpersonal social status dynamics at play with his position in the world. If you look at the interview, he's very dismissive of Kara's questioning about how others perceive him:

 _Kara: What's Twitter? Okay, let's start with Twitter. I have an obsession with Twitter, too, and an addiction. What happens with you and Twitter?

Elon: Well, I tweet interesting things pretty much as they come to me, and probably with not much of a filter.

Kara: And why?

Elon: I find it entertaining. I think, "Oh, other people might find this entertaining." Sometimes they do.

Kara: Just at night? What are you, at home you're doing this?

Elon: Yeah. Mostly at home. I spend a lot less time on Twitter than people probably think. It's like maybe 10-15 minutes or something.

Kara: Yeah, well people pay attention when you do that._

And then he continues on to legitimize his tone by showing his prowess in entrepreneurship and science:

 _Kara: Do you take criticism to heart correctly?

Elon: Yes.

Kara: Give me an example of something if you could.

Elon: How do you think rockets get to orbit?

Kara: That's a fair point.

Elon: Not easily. Physics is very demanding. If you get it wrong, the rocket will blow up. Cars are very demanding. If you get it wrong, a car won't work. Truth in engineering and science is extremely important.

Kara: Right. And therefore?

Elon: I have a strong interest in the truth.

Kara: All right. And you are —

Elon: Much more than journalists do._

I think people find this kind of backed-up braggadocio incredibly entertaining and exciting to watch, it makes Elon musk an irresistible personality to follow.

<comment><USER3> He's just a pretty no-nonsense individual.

Bureaucracy, and coded ways of doing things, seem to be irresistible to many.

He types some words into a phone, presses an enter key, and a decent subset of the world loses their minds.

Golly gosh.

If I were him, I'd be doing it for the amusement factor alone.

<comment><USER4> He's the CEO of one of the most valuable car companies and the words he speaks affect those trading on that information. Saying whatever he wants for entertainment is horribly irresponsible when his words have financial consequences for real people.

The "funding secured" tweet wasn't harmless, it was a lie that gave a false valuation basis for Tesla at $420. If he was just an employee or outsider that wouldn't matter, but as the CEO he should know better.

<comment><USER5> Unpopular opinion but I'm coming up pretty short on sympathy for someone trading stocks based on a few words in a tweet and then losing their shirt. These people are grownups and fully aware of the risks they are taking when they walk into the casino. Nobody is forcing them to read twitter or take it seriously as a source of investment advice.

The $420 thing didn't hurt grandma's pension fund or long term buy-and- holders. It hurt day traders, options traders, shorts, and other gamblers.

<comment><USER4> I'm sorry but this kind of thinking is so dangerous. Pumping hurts anyone who buys it after the pump, including grandma's pension fund, because now they're buying it at an artificial value.

Traders have a right to accurate information from the officers of the company, which is the whole reason we have regulations in the first place.

<comment><USER6> Pension funds don't buy the most shorted equity on the market, typically. He's right that the people most affected were in effect gamblers. They gambled on the 5k number happening or not and got creamed in aftermath.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Kara Swisher is a terrible interviewer. She was terrible here [1], and she was terrible in this interview. You have an hour with Elon Musk and you ask what BFR means again (knowing the answer) and don't know that they attempt to catch fairings? Why does she always look like she did not do her research? Why do I never learn anything new if she interviews?

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wsixsRI- Sz4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wsixsRI-Sz4)

<comment><USER8> Yeah I thought she was really bad as well. Kept interrupting him and also seemed disinterested in things he was saying. Like she was looking for certain answers and he wouldn't give them so she would just interrupt. She also asked really irrelevant questions, and in some cases condescending.

<comment><USER9> Oof, I didn't listen originally, just read the transcript, and I thought everyone was overreacting, but it comes of a lot worse in audio format.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> What was Kara thinking? She was trying to be too much of a high-brow. I will give you a lecture on how you should behave by asking you questions that will put you down. Very offputting!

</comment><comment><USER11> Joe Rogan interview of Elon is much better: [https://youtu.be/ycPr5-27vSI](https://youtu.be/ycPr5-27vSI)

<comment><USER12> I don't agree. Rogan is a better interviewer but Elon is much more fluent in the recode interview.

<comment><USER13> Joe Rogan as interviewer but in the Tesla Palo Alto office instead of in the evening when Musk is tired would be perfect.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Elon almost reprimanded Kara for not listening carefully.

</comment><comment><USER15> I'm tired of having Elon Musk in my life. I like his initiatives, but Im very tired of him.

<comment><USER16> Elon's been a counter-balance to the insanity that is Trump, for me at least.

<comment><USER4> Musk has a lot in common with Trump actually. They both despise the media and have a casual relationship with the truth.

They're both self-made billionaires who built their companies on risky debt financing, and they both have narcissistic traits and an apparent "god complex," as well as difficulty accepting criticism.

<comment><USER17> Both victims of the twitter manipulation machine.

<comment><USER16> Who are the supposed victims? Elon and Trump?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


First Detailed Photos of Atoms  - <AUTHOR> http://insidescience.org/research/first_detailed_photos_of_atoms

<comment><USER2> Hey! "The pictures, soon to be published in the journal Physical Review B, show the detailed images of a single carbon atom's electron cloud, taken by Ukrainian researchers at the Kharkov Institute for Physics and Technology in Kharkov, Ukraine. " I was born in Kharkov! Never see it mentioned anywhere, so this was a surprise.

</comment><comment><USER3> Beautiful images.</comment>


Ask HN: What happens when programmer get old - <AUTHOR>

What happens to developers who get old. Some of them become team leaders, project managers etc. But that is maybe 10% of all developers from same generation. <comment><USER2> 40+ is old? I still feel like a kid!

I'm 47 and generally code six days a week. I've done' the management ascendancy a couple times and have worked for (or co-founded) four start-ups and I worked for one large company. I've kept my skills up-to-date and now command a _very_ high salary.

So with my mini-bio out of the way, I'll caveat my answer a bit ... I think a true programmer loves what they do and wouldn't be satisfied with any other role. So I've pushed my way back into development and I'll stay here until I die (I can't imagine retiring). I think the other class of programmers are people that got into the craft because they heard it was a well-paid gig, and thought that their college provided all the education they'll ever need ... they're generally gone in under ten years. Either into management or other careers altogether.

</comment><comment><USER3> "What happens to developers who get old"

We look at the young kids and think "What chance have they got".

We've had decades to assimilate Basic (C64), Assembly (6502, 68000 and Z80), C, Pascal, Serial Comms, Linux, Windows, X, ASN.1, C++, STL, OO, Patterns, UTF-8, Java, Lisp, Ruby, CSS, SQL, HTML, XML , XSL, XPATH, JSON, Node.js, Punch Cards, Boost and all the other stuff I've forgotten.

And guess what, once you've been to about 20 interviews all the questions are the same. So you better hope you don't come up against us.

</comment><comment><USER4> Most developers will not launch a startup and make a bunch of money, so if you are young and wish to mitigate the risks of a downward career trajectory, here are a few suggestions off the top of my head:

1) Learn a domain, one with staying power.

2) Stay in shape. For me, this means limiting how much I eat. I find that consuming a minimal amount of carbs/sugars totally eliminates the ups and downs in energy levels throughout the day, and makes me feel as ready to go at 4PM as I do at 9AM.

3) Enjoy yourself. There are thousands of domains for programmers. Find one where you like the culture and work.

4) Consider moving away from the coasts. The concentration of competent developers is much lower in the interior of the country. (Just 100 miles can make a big difference).

5) Don't go into management, unless you really enjoy it. And if you do become a manager, hack management.

</comment><comment><USER5> I think the developers who are more like musicians [ever hear of a retired musician?] keep at until they go blind. I work in a 2 developer shop and the "kid" is in his early 40's, I'm 49 and the contractor we have in once in a while has white hair and hearing aids (he's awesome btw).

</comment><comment><USER6> One of the most inspiring people on HN, edw519, is still hands-on @ 55.

</comment><comment><USER7> <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nv0Oa8fZ26E#t=01m52s>

</comment><comment><USER8> Define "old." 30? 75?

<comment><AUTHOR> 40+

<comment><USER9> If 40 is when you get old, seems like we're getting 'old' sooner and retire later. If that's the case, you're 'old' over 50% of the time you're in the workforce. :p</comment></comment></comment>


In My Culture - got-any-grapes https://medium.com/@ThingMaker/in-my-culture-29c6464072b2 <comment><AUTHOR> > "This is part of why the diplomatic approach gives me cautious hope. It > seems like a hammer in a world full of nails - the sort of thing that might > actually make a difference both in the moment and in the aggregate."

In my culture, where any hammer:nail::solution:problem scenario more often than not exemplifies confirmation bias with a negative connotation, this seems a strange choice of words for what I think the author means.

</comment><comment><USER2> > …and then they'll go on to explain something that one might easily mistake > for a rule, or a request, or the enforcement of a social norm, but which is > actually (as far as I can tell) just a statement about the version of the > world they carry around inside their head.

The way I understand it, _not_ qualifying these sorts of statements with "in my culture..." is exactly how the cultures in question - as sets of common assumptions that are taken to be universal rules or as natural and invisible as breathable air - get forged to begin with. The moment someone says X is a rule and nobody is raises any eyebrows at the statement, it becomes functionally true (for the speaker and their listeners).

Relinquishing the claim to universality by framing them as personal hangups is probably good diplomacy and helps you to get along with coworkers and other relations from various backgrounds, but could it also amount to surrendering the possibility of ever building a shared culture with them?

<comment> em-bee i don't think it surrenders the possibility of creating a shared culture. in order to build a shared culture we must first understand each other, so explaining ones personal culture is useful for that.

also, very often the problem is not an act itself, but the interpretation of it.

if in my culture a thumbs up is a slightly obscene gesture, and i can explain why i feel perplexed every time you give me that sign, and likewise you explain your actual intention, then this enables us to discover that your actual intention in this case is actually welcome by me, and i was just not able to read it. we can then develop a way to communicate that intention that we are both comfortable with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> > In my culture we cut out the hearts of unbelievers like you to sacrifice to > the gods for a good crop.

>> In my culture we discourage homicide, even for unbelievers, without their permission at least.

> May I have your permission?

>> No.

> I don't think you're getting with the program of negotiating between our > cultural norms.

>> Well I would like to help. Would your gods be appeased by the heart of a chicken? They're $3/lb at the supermarket.

> That would insult the gods, the crops would fail and there would be great > famine. You are being quite unreasonable. Can I have your liver?

>> This intercultural diplomacy stuff is hard.

</comment><comment><USER4> I like the point of self examination, and not assuming you know others intentions, but I really dislike this sort of phrase reassignment. The one that really bothers me, is when people say "I feel like..." followed by something that is not a feeling. Changing the wording only works when everyone is on board with the reason for doing so.

<comment><USER5> I am the opposite. I hate when people pretend to talk objectively while actually talking about feelings. For example claiming the code is objectively bad when it is just that they have negative emotional reaction to some difference against how they would do it. Or trying to convince me to do something out of "objective" reasons when they are just stressed or afraid or panicking. Or talk with certainty when situation is not certain at all and they know it. Like, I am willing to accommodate your feelings to some extend, but not when you pretend it is all rational choices.

I feel like..." followed by something that is not a feeling usually just conveys uncertainty or awareness what follows is not fully proven. It is more honest, imo.

<comment><USER4> I understand what you mean, but in those situations i prefer "it might be better if" or "i think we should."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> One thing about this article that I find interesting is that it is not necessarily dealing with conflicts between different cultural values from cultures from different countries or ethnic groups. The point is even within groups of people that you'd think are similar, people interpret things in different ways. Some people will think that picking up a check for a group meal means you expect others to do the same next time. Others will think it means you are feeling financially secure and are informing others of this status. We all assume others understand our meaning but they often may not.

</comment><comment><USER7> I like it! :D. It reminds me of the time when the Simpsons visited Australia.

That said, I belong to at least two cultures. In one of them being offensive is often punishable. In another, being offended is seen as a sign of weakness and immaturity.

When I was younger, I'd often get offended easily - I'd be endlessly frustrated by the things that people whom I considered close had said to me. As I've grown older, I've come to appreciate the latter culture.

<comment> em-bee in my culture i am taught to avoid doing anything that might offend others, but also to not take offense at anything that others are doing or saying.

for example, i don't use swearwords in my language, but i'll silently ignore if you use them. (and they don't even make me uncomfortable)

or in tech terms (paraphrased from the SMTP RFC i think): be strict in what you send out, but be tolerant in what you accept.

<comment><USER8> That practice in tech has given rise to endless variations of security vulnerabilities. In human terms, it especially accommodates cons.

Good fences make better neighbors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It seems from the comments that this article rubs people the wrong way. This article might be getting grouped into a speech police category that is undeserved.

I think the intention of "in my culture" is to allay a fear in the listener. The speaker is worried that there is a strong expectation of change in the listener by stating something as an axiom. The speaker's hope is that the listener will see a possibility instead of a demand.

Some people think it should be obvious that what a person states should never be seen as a demand to conform. Some believe this is a necessary life skill, especially in business.

Some people are interested in finding ways of speaking in a more sensitive way in an era that seems to be embracing sensitivity.

Its interesting to me that both sides can see each other's ways of communicating as an affront, when it is likely not the intent on either side.

</comment><comment><USER10> I believe, in my culture, this person would annoy me quite a lot.

<comment><USER11> Oddly, I think they would still be a very good friend.

Most of these rules were ultimately grounded in trying to be fair. Fairness, though, is something you bring to the world. It is not the result of natural laws, but of human effort.

Obviously, that is just an assertion of mine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> [deleted]

</comment><comment><USER13> In my culture we say "whatever" a lot.

</comment><comment><USER14> A person of color might be afraid to say something like this in case people take it as carte blanche to make their statement a generalization about a given ethnicity.

<comment><USER15> Why the asymmetry? Surely people of color are just as capable of making generalizations about various white ethnicities.

<comment><USER16> I imagine faitswulff was considering a scenario where someone is a racial minority in a situation where they are perceived as outsiders. Then the asymmetry is clear.</comment></comment></comment>


The Terminator Is Not Coming. The Future Will Thank Us - <AUTHOR> http://recode.net/2015/03/02/the-terminator-is-not-coming-the-future-will-thank-us/?refresh=1 <comment><USER2> There is a massive fallacy in this paragraph:

"This doomsday scenario can't happen. Intelligence is a product of learning. A brain, no matter how big or how fast, does not become intelligent until it learns. In humans, learning is a slow process requiring practice, repetition and study over many years. Unlike humans, intelligent machines can be cloned, transferring the learning from one machine to a new one, eliminating the learning time. However, for an intelligent machine to discover new truths, to learn new skills, to extend knowledge beyond what has been achieved before, it will need to go through the same difficult and slow discovery process humans do. Yes, an intelligent machine could think much faster than a biological brain, but the slower process of discovery still has to occur."

The person writing this fails to understand the difference between engineering and biological evolution. The AI would be engineered to begin with. There would be nothing haphazard or extraneous about its design. The "slow process of discovery" would be bootstrapped, as stated, by "cloning" (copying extremely fast memory compared with humans). Then, the AI would attack new problems with very likely a minimum 100-1 speed advantage over humans, based on electronic versus chemical speeds. Nerve impulses travel at well less than 100 miles per hour, versus the over 150,000 miles per second of electronic impulses.

Consider a first-gen AI engineer, with "only" a 150 IQ human equivalent intelligence, attempting to design a better AI. Such an AI would have no distractions (food, sleep or sex) and would likely have a monomaniacal focus on its job. It would have a perfect, near-instantaneous memory of arbitrary size (we can already do this). I expect it would in fairly short order produce an IQ 300 version of itself, and that that cycle would likely continue.

That is the basis for the idea of the "singularity", and I find it completely believable. What it would mean, I don't know...and neither does anyone else. We have the same relationship to an IQ 1000 AI that a chimp has with us.

That is the concern that Musk, Hawking and others share.

<comment><USER3> You're confusing "brain" and "intelligence". A brain will be engineered to begin with. Then is has to learn. Once it learns some amount of information, it is intelligent, and this intelligence can be cloned. However, to increase its intelligence, that brain has to start learning again. And this process can be slow, because it is limited by the speed of experimentation.

I agree that the machine will probably be able to learn faster than humans, but it's not at all clear how much faster. Also, we know little about human intelligence. For example, Einstein's brain wasn't much bigger or faster than an average human brain, yet he could make profound discoveries. It's not clear to me that if you take an average brain, and make it faster/bigger, it will suddenly be able to make scientific breakthroughs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Terminators did not have to be self aware or have desires to do their job, killing. They simply had to follow a set of rules. Intelligence will merely help them follow the rules when circumstances go beyond the originally coded set of conditions.

The real threat of intelligent machines is the people who would use them. Not everyone with ability acts rationally and why would we expect them to use such ability correctly?

</comment><comment><USER5> "In the 1940s, no one envisioned the smartphone, the Internet or GPS satellites."

Except Arthur C Clarke, and the creator of Dick Tracey? So, no one but comic strip creators and short story writers?

Or are smart phones substantially different from portable communicators? I guess so. Nobody saw the 'fart app' from 1940.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm not as worried about _completely_ autonomous AI/robots, as I am about _government-controlled_ "autonomous" robots, or even non-autonomous ones.

For instance, for someone in the Middle East, or any poor country being in war with US, it would very much look like the Terminator war, if the US only sends remote-controlled robots and drones to invade that country.

<comment><USER7> I would prefer they use drones and robots that have some kind of targeting, even though the targeting is imperfect, than they use cluster bombs on civilian populations.

Especially when they make the unfortunate mistake of making the cluster bomblets the same colour as air-dropped food packages.

<comment><USER8> That would be true if it were not for the fact that targeting comfortably from your desk makes it _much_ more likely that you do not care about killing people. It is just a game, after all. And you are the good one!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Side thought: what is the purpose of designing a humanoid robot? To make it tolerable to humans.

What is the purpose of designing a _terrifying_ humanoid robot (even if it is covered by fake nice-looking flesh)? None whatsoever!

Whatever shape terminator takes, it won't be the one in the movie ...

<comment><USER3> A robot becomes much more capable if you can't tell it's a robot!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I put exactly as much stock in predictions like this as I do in those that say that Terminator-alikes _are_ coming.

Zero.

</comment><comment><USER10> It might be comforting, and it might even be true, but this kind of cheerful optimism is simply in bad taste in my view.

It's either hubristic or it's empty in content, in that we _know_ the promise the future _might_ hold. Technology has been promising us the world for a while now, but what we've gotten has actually been a shift towards dystopia. Yeah, the future might be a paradise where you can virtually travel to see relatives in Guam while also learning to cross-stitch, but Silicon Valley thinking currently presents us with ad-infested crapware.

We don't actually need more cheerleading.

The kind of people that write this kind of article aren't the kind of people that are actually working against the threats these writers want to ignore.</comment>


Startup Title Junk - <AUTHOR> http://cam.ly/blog/2010/12/startup-title-junk/

<comment><USER2> People pay me money for this, and I didn't know that trick. Thanks.

As long as we're all here obsessing on title tags:

Apples, Oranges, Potatoes | Farmly

is my go-to template for a title tag. You'll find in very competitive verticals the title is more optimized and less English, e.g. by not having the natural "and" before Potatoes.

Companies not dependent on rankings for customers acquisition can use the title tag to compete for CTR on the SERP. This is most relevant to companies with very recognizable brands. e.g. see whatever Amazon's title is now. Almost everybody will maximize for search engines on leaf node pages.

<comment><USER3> You didn't know about that Opensearch trick because it's not actually true... it doesn't really work. Google acquires page titles from a variety of sources, including Dmoz, domain name, and inbound links.

For example: Search for [msnbc], and it shows up as "msnbc.com" … title tag: "Breaking News, Weather, Business, Health, Entertainment, Sports, Politics, Travel, Science, Technology, Local, US & World News – msnbc.com"

[new yorker] shows up as "The New Yorker" … title tag: "National and world news, Profiles, culture, reviews, fiction, poetry : The New Yorker"

[redfin] shows up as "Redfin" … title tag: "Search Homes for Sale & Find Real Estate Agents Who Put You First | Redfin"

None of those pages have opensearch documents.

<comment><AUTHOR> You are correct. I knew that google was showing brands like the redfin example, but when I saw the opensearch xml document, I assumed it was a way to relay more meta information to google.

It appears that the actual purpose of the opensearch xml document is to describe the _search engine_ which exists on the homepage of airbnb.com. That explains why more sites don't do it. It isn't actually relevant unless you are running a custom search engine.

We have updated the blog post, and I'm sorry for the confusion about this point. Still, I very much believe in the takeaway message that it is important to craft a strong title for your website.

<comment><USER4> Please put an edit at the top of the article in addition to the one at the bottom. This article has the potential to waste the time of those who don't read all the way through.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Everybody who is diving off to take advantage of this trick, _stop_ , its not true.

The opensearch protocol describes the onsite search interface, so browsers (that support it) can add that search engine as an option. So, in effect, the opensearch link on the AirBnB sist is just saying "hey, if you want you can access the AirBnB search engine straight from your browser".

It has absolutely nothing to do with how google (etc.) index and display your site in their search results.

Instead, the AirBnB homepage comes up as 'AirBnB' (mostly) because it has a huge number of trusted incoming links containing hypertext 'AirBnB'. Google treats these as kind of 'alternative title text suggestions', and if you get enough they can override the actual page text in some cases.

So the trick is (as always) to link build.

</comment><comment><USER6> I don't think this has anything to do with the Opensearch.xml file, from what I've seen Google is also doing this manually.

Previously they have been using the title from DMOZ but, Check out our startup in the SERPS "StoreCrowd" the branded search returns the brand name in the results. However our title reads more like "Coupon Codes, Deals & Discounts for Online Stores"

We launched an Australian version with an optimised title tag but it appears in branded search as "StoreCrowd Australia".

Neither sites are in DMOZ nor do we use the Opensearch protocol.

<comment><USER7> Google does do some of this, but it's not fully automatic. You still mark up your content, but it makes it easy for them to pull it out: [http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/05/introduci...](http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/05/introducing- rich-snippets.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Awesome. I never knew you could do stuff like this. We need more articles like this one on HN.

</comment><comment><USER9> i had somewhat the opposite problem: my site was showing up on yahoo's search with a weird title, something i've never had as my title and certainly not anywhere in my html.

i emailed them and they replied saying, " _The title and description listed in the Yahoo! Search results can come from many different places, only one of which is the actual metadata in the page itself. The title and description can also come from descriptions on other websites which link to yours or directory services such as the Yahoo! Directory or other third party directory services._ "

i had to add "noodp, noydir" to the meta robots tag on my site to prevent this from happening.

</comment><comment><USER10> Fantastic. Applying it to my site right now.

I'm a little humbled to realize I've stopped viewing source as much as I did five years ago.

I really should do it more often so I can see cool things like this, especially for sites with great SEO.

Love the random Wag's Revue shout-out. I happened to meet one of the editors at E3 and discovered it that way, but via Google would've been a lot easier. It deserves more notice.

</comment><comment><USER11> This seems backwards to me. Shouldn't the "extended" description be the one hidden from the user's title bar, not the short one?

<comment><USER12> It's a little bit confusing. The "extended" description does, in fact, show up in the title bar. The short one only shows up in the google search link.

The point is, imagine you're trying to get to the Airbnb website, and you're the type of user who is going to type "airbnb" (or the closest thing you can remember to that) into google. When google returns the Airbnb url, the optimal thing for them to display is "Airbnb". If they returned the extended title, it would blend in more with the other search results, and it might take a user longer to find it.

The title plays an important role with the your whole customer user experience if you consider the role it plays in getting them to your page.

By providing flexible search anchor tag text, you can hint at google about your service relevance, while also targeting users who are already familiar with your brand.

<comment><USER13> There's two pieces of text relevant: the "extended" description that introduces the site to people who don't already know it (such as search-engine users), and the "short" description that has the site's actual branding for people who are already familiar with it.

In an ideal world, the <title> element would contain the short description, for bookmarking purposes, while the OpenSearch metadata would contain the extended description for search engines. It's kind of unfortunate that it's the opposite way around.

<comment><USER14> Use user-agent or javascript to do this. Seems like a good idea. I'd much rather see "HN | Startup Title Ju..." than "Hacker News | Startu..." in my tab. Especially if I'm trying to remember which HN tab I'm trying to get back to.

(edit: actually "HN | Startup Title Junk" all fits in the tab with my font config)

<comment><USER11> Or even "Startup Title Junk | Hacker News" -- that keeps the full title, and makes it show up right in your tab.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is very interesting. There are a lot of brand-sensitive client types such as healthcare organizatons and higher education who would love this. I do have one question though.

According to Wikipedia's list of software and search engines that support OpenSearch, only Google Chrome is on the list. [1]

Google as a search engine is not listed. The screenshot in the article is also in Chrome.

I wonder if this feature is supported in Firefox or IE.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenSearch>

edit: tested in Firefox, it works. this is great!

<comment><USER16> It works for me, Firefox 3.6 on Linux. Searching "airbnb" has the shortname shown: [http://www.google.com/search?client=ubuntu&channel=fs...](http://www.google.com/search?client=ubuntu&channel=fs&q=Airbnb&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8) , while searching "vacation rental for the night" has the standard title shown: [http://www.google.com/search?client=ubuntu&channel=fs...](http://www.google.com/search?client=ubuntu&channel=fs&q=vacation+rental+for+the+night&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8)

<comment><USER17> It didn't work for me, I got the "Vacation rentals, private rooms, sublets by the night - Accommodations on Airbnb" as page title entering from both searches.

Using Safari on OS X

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Very interesting, I didn't know about Opensearch. I'll spend my afternoon setting it up on my websites...

Now if browsers and bookmarking service start using the Short name for the title bar, we will have reinvented the meta keywords tag :-)

</comment><comment><USER19> Bing does not change its title for airbnb <http://www.bing.com/search?q=airbnb>

Cool trick!

</comment><comment><USER20> How do we increase the chance to get sitelinks to show up on google?

<comment><USER21> You have to the THE relevant authority on that keyword. FYI, you can check your sites on Google Webmasters tool.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Great. Thanks for the tips</comment>


The Story of a Trump Supporter - <AUTHOR> http://mattbruenig.com/2015/12/30/the-story-of-eric-harwood/ <comment><USER2> I appreciate the compassion displayed by this piece.

<comment><USER3> Agreed. Very, very few people are what you might call "evil". Everyone thinks they're the good guy and they're doing what's right (even hardcore racists).

I recently listened to an Intelligence^2 podcast where an ultra-libertarian was debating against a mainstream point of view regarding the minimum wage. Both were arguing from humanitarian angles (although the ultra-libertarian might well have been arguing cynically, it doesn't really matter).

Rather than write off Trump supporters as bigots or idiots or whatever, we should be asking ourselves what creates extremism. From what I've read, it seems that people become racist or extremist when they become disenfranchised and feel that society is ignoring their problems. This anecdote seems to support that theory.

<comment><USER4> A couple months ago I was reading a post from Yonatan Zunger on Trump, and an SE named Shawn Willden wrote a reply with a good explanation of Trump's appeal. I hope I'm not stepping on anyone's toes if I quote it here.

"I find my own reactions to Trump's rhetoric very interesting.

"Intellectually, I find all of it very obnoxious, insensitive, morally wrong and fundamentally stupid. But emotionally... it's sort of comforting.

"This became very obvious last weekend when I was sitting around the campfire with my relatives after our biennial family reunion, which is always held in conjunction with the (archery) deer hunt, in the mountains of southern Utah. We sat there, dozens of white faces, mostly blue collar, surrounded by our pickup trucks, and although no one especially likes Trump (rural, lower-class Americans aren't particularly enamored of New York billionaires), the ideas resonated strongly.

"I wanted to argue, and I did, some. But the other sides of each of the arguments are complex and nuanced, and more importantly they almost invariably cast white Americans, especially men, in the role of the bad guy, the oppressor. To people who feel like their lives have been a never-ending struggle and who don't, personally, have any particular animus against other races, or women, the constant drumbeat suggesting that they're keeping others down is disheartening.

"Trump, however, is telling us (and I include myself, even though I disagree) that we're not bad, we're not wrong, that the issues aren't complex and nuanced, that there are simple answers, old answers, answers which have worked in the past. The answers are harsh, but life is harsh. The appeal of these arguments must not be underestimated.

"Intellectually, I understand that minorities and women face all of the same challenges as white men, plus more that we simply don't see. I understand that however hard it is for us to get ahead, it's harder for others. That micro- agressions matter, that there are systemic oppressions in place that go far beyond micro-aggression, that there are real and valid reasons for the anger we saw in Ferguson, etc. But all of that simply tells me, on a daily basis, that I need to be doing more, being better, and that even when I'm doing everything I know how to speak up, to be fair, to help out... I'm still a racist, misogynist oppressor.

"That makes Trump's message a soothing emotional balm, and makes me want to accept it. So when it came to arguing the points with a couple dozen of my extended family members who haven't made the effort I have to understand other perspectives, and who see me as a member of the privileged elite (which I don't think I am, but I can see how a Nevada road construction worker would think that of a Google engineer -- and maybe I am), it was just too hard. After some half-hearted attempts, I just shut up.

"Which means I should do more, I know -- which in turn makes Trump's arguments that much more attractive.

"The bottom line is that progressive politics tells the American white male that he's bad. Anyone who tells him he's not bad is going to have his attention, and those arguments are going to get the benefit of the doubt, because said white male knows he's not bad. Trump's rhetoric resonates because it's an affirmation of white decency, though it does that by being intentionally indecent."</comment></comment></comment>