FTC Says AT&T Has Misled Millions of Consumers with 'Unlimited' Data Promises - <AUTHOR> http://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2014/10/ftc-says-att-has-misled-millions-consumers-unlimited-data <comment><USER3> For those of us who are Americans, isn't it amazing how the companies that provide us with access to the internet are pretty much among the most hated companies in our country? I feel like I'd rank them almost up there with Halliburton, Sodexo and Blackwater.

First of all they are incredibly expensive. They try to actively create worse experiences for their customers. Forced inclusions of apps on android phones on mobile carriers. A comcast rep wanted to install a browser toolbar on my computer. Vague billing that leads to sticker shock. $0.25 per tiny little text message, really? I paid next to nothing to post this comment on HN, but had I posted such large amounts of text via a text message, it would have cost a lot of money.

Talk to them on the phone and they try to sell you things you don't need. Like one time I wanted to get HBO, HBO costs $15 a month, period, but when you talk to them on the phone they wont tell you that unless you ask a specific question, they'll tell you about their bundles which will cost you hundreds of dollars extra. This is a really scummy thing to do. They know the person who contacted them only wants HBO, but then they sell them something way worse they didn't want.

Collusion with illegal federal programs that involved lying to congress, lying to our public representatives. These companies are filled with scum from top to bottom. The people that you deal with in the stores, the people that decide which phones you can buy at their store and what they have on them, the people you talk to on the phone, the executives. It must be like working for a tobacco company, once you're willing to work at such a place the culture just destroys your integrity or something. I have no idea. I even still considerably distrust tmobile, even though they seem to be trying to change things.

<comment><USER4> _isn 't it amazing how the companies that provide us with access to the internet are pretty much among the most hated companies in our country? I feel like I'd rank them almost up there with Halliburton, Sodexo and Blackwater._

Blackwater is a company whose employees kill people. Sometimes civilians. And sometimes for no reason.

[https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/10/22/blackwater- gui...](https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/10/22/blackwater-guilty- verdicts/)

 _The incident for which the men were tried was the single largest known massacre of Iraqi civilians at the hands of private U.S. security contractors. Known as "Baghdad's bloody Sunday," operatives from Blackwater gunned down 17 Iraqi civilians at a crowded intersection at Nisour Square on September 16, 2007._

If, after reading this, anyone is still nodding their head and entertaining the idea that their internet company is in the same league as Blackwater, then they have some pretty strange value judgments.

<comment><USER5> > If, after reading this, anyone is still nodding their head and entertaining > the idea that their internet company is in the same league as Blackwater, > then they have some pretty strange value judgments.

We can get really philosophical about this if you want. Is it worse to kill 1 person or dismember 100? Is it worse to bankrupt one person or steal $1 from a million? If the perpetrator is a single entity, then courts have precedents to punish appropriately. But what if it is a systemic theft where a million people are involved in making hundred million others suffer slightly? Is that somehow "less wrong" than 5 people killing 25?

What if one of the hundred million suffering slightly, missing school work, or work assignments because of bandwidth theft, and loses grade or job and consequently, a chance at productive life? Every time my home internet goes down, I lose a chance at being productive, meeting my deadlines, and making money.

We have started placing a lot more importance over the last few decades on violent crimes committed against a few over white collar crimes that marginally impact millions. Violent crimes against a few will never stop as long as humans continue to be humans. However, by excusing the white collar crimes that steal pennies from everyone, we are slowly chipping away at our standard of living. Banks charge fees incorrectly and get away with it. Cellphone companies do the same. Insurance companies do the same. Since nobody in a large company can be held guilty for distributed crimes, every large company engages in them without consequences.

An EDI error at my wife's health insurance company caused a refusal in her invoice. The doctor's office said "Sorry, the insurance company said they won't cover it." Only after I read through the fine print and contacted all parties involved, did we find out that it was an automated electronic processing error instead of an outright denial by a human or algorithm. Nobody got blamed for this. There is nothing I can do about this to prevent future instances. And I am 100% certain, there are many many many others who have just paid the $200 without putting up a fight. And then someone of them stop getting the treatment because $200 is too much, and then suffer despite having insurance.

You might still put outright murder in a different league than bandwidth theft, but my point is that scale matters and we continue to ignore it because we solely look at individual instances and go "Pfft! It's only bad 10% of the time for 5% of the base so who cares?", ignoring that the base is 100 million people.

<comment><USER6> This should be the top comment overall. The mods should sym-link it into the root thread or something.

From a leadership perspective, understanding that seemingly minor decisions have can horrible consequences, and how often that happens, is what makes good leaders.

Here's one: Bancroft Hall at the US Naval Academy lacked air conditioning until 2004. Even after plans were made, the funding was cancelled because alumni complained that "it would make the students weak".

One admiral had the temerity to re-fund the work and got A/C installed. In reality, not only did performance improve, 25% fewer midshipmen got sick throughout the summer months. A total of over 500 fewer diagnoses. Multiply that by the last 10 years, and you're quite possibly saving a life in that 5000 illnesses.

The medical director's assessment at the time: the students were probably enjoying improved immune function due to better sleep.

When you're in charge and trying to save money for your Ferrari, don't forget that life sucks at the bottom. Maybe you should spend that money on bigger monitors for your help desk people instead.

Because, in truth, you're not successful only because of your hard work and personal risk and sacrifice early on. Plenty of people worked hard, took risk, and made sacrifices to make the organization what it is. You just won the CEO lottery.

<comment><USER7> "A total of over 500 fewer diagnoses. Multiply that by the last 10 years, and you're quite possibly saving a life in that 5000 illnesses."

Not to mention the delays in people taking time to _get_ diagnosed, extra costs in diagnosing, delay in treating more serious complaints, and the cumulative effect of all of that over years.

Because some alumni didn't like the idea?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Here's the thing about these unlimited-throttling programs: They are good for both the consumer AND cellular operator, but you have to be upfront and honest about it.

AT&T's problem is that they just one day up and decided to start throttling unlimited customers (down to 10-20% of their normal speed) without a warning, and without it being made clear in any of their marketing material or contracts.

The reason why I call these programs "good" is that they all but eliminate overage charges from a consumer's bill. With limited data, you often get charged excessive amounts if you go over your cap (disproportionately large amounts at times).

So for example, if a consumer got their teenager 2 GB of data, and that teenager ran up a 5 GB usage bill one month, that could be an additional $60 charge ($20/GB) out of the blue. Unlimited-throttled data averts that possibility (and the teenager in this example is the only one negatively impacted by the excess usage).

This is how T-Mobile currently operates on all of their Simple Choice plans (both unlimited and limited). They have scrapped overage charges (so there is no bill-shock) and instead just throttle you down.

The only major difference between what T-Mobile currently do and what AT&T were doing, is that AT&T lied and hid it, and worse still charged customers ETF if they left as a result. T-mobile is completely upfront about the policy and how it is enforced.

PS - T-Mobile also do the same thing for roaming data, no overage charges.

<comment><USER9> > The reason why I call these programs "good" is that they all but eliminate > overage charges from a consumer's bill. With limited data, you often get > charged excessive amounts if you go over your cap (disproportionately large > amounts at times).

That's a bad solution, because it solves the wrong problem. The real problem is overage charges.

Of all the other companies who provide me with metered service, not a single one uses the same pricing structure where I purchase an initial quota for one price, and then have to pay out the nose if I go over it. Everyone else just charges a flat unit price. It's a flat $x/gal for water, $x/kW/h for electricity, $x/m^3 for gas, $x/min for land line phone service, $x/min for Azure compute time, etc. etc.

That style of pricing is good. It's a straightforward, easy-to-understand "pay for what you use" model. Cell phone style pricing is worse because it's unpredictable and consumer-hostile because it makes you feel punished for using more of their service. _Unlimited_ cell phone pricing is worse yet. It's supremely consumer-hostile because it forces light users to subsidize folks who watch Netflix while riding the city bus. As a light user (and informed consumer) I find that offer to be downright insulting; I hate it just as much as I'd hate if the gas station wanted to charge me the same flat monthly fee for me to buy gas for my economy car that I only use on weekend as they charge my neighbor to top off his Escalade that he uses for a 45-minute commute.

<comment><USER10> > Everyone else just charges a flat unit price. It's a flat $x/gal for water, > $x/kW/h for electricity, $x/m^3 for gas, $x/min for land line phone service, > $x/min for Azure compute time, etc. etc.

Except that consumers _don 't_ like those kinds of billing plans.

Consumers like fixed bill per month. Period. A plan that charges more per month than metered would still wins because the consumer sees it as a _fixed_ charge.

<comment><USER11> I don't think it's fair to say that consumers overall like either one more than the other, it depends on what we're paying FOR.

Why are consumers okay with paying a metered fee for electricity, water, and gasoline?

There's competition and/or regulations pushing those prices into reasonable ranges. Usage is fairly predictable. These are things that are horrible to have suddenly shut off without warning (like what effectively happens when you're throttled into unusability). They are things that people need in order to be a functioning member of society in the majority of places on Earth (in places with good public transit, gasoline gets removed from this list).

Aside from point #1, those also sound like the Internet.

<comment><USER10> > Why are consumers okay with paying a metered fee for electricity, water, and > gasoline?

They're not. But normally they don't have a choice.

 _However_ , some of the utilities in the Northeast have plans wherein your bill is mostly constant year round even in spite of the spikes at certain times of the year. Lots of people like them even though they almost always wind up paying more than they would otherwise.

<comment><USER12> >> Why are consumers okay with paying a metered fee for electricity, water, and gasoline?

> They're not. But normally they don't have a choice.

Wait, what? Says who? I certainly don't speak for everyone, but I'm perfectly happy paying just for my usage of these things.

I think the difference is predictability and that the costs aren't astronomical if you have a high-usage month. If it's colder than usual, I'd perhaps expect to pay another 10% on my utility bill. That's reasonable and not a hardship.

If I were to spend, say, $30/mo on a plan with 500 minutes of voice calling, and went 100 minutes over, but was only charged, say, $6 for that overage, I'd have no problem with that (because 30/500=0.06 and 0.06 _100=6). But instead I get charged something like $20, which is way out of proportion to the overage._ That's* the objection.

And I think part of it is related to an understanding of actually "using something up". When I use more electricity, I know that I actually used something up: that extra power came from more coal being burned, or more water falling from a dam, or something of that nature. When I use more water, I know that my use of it drained a reservoir a little bit more than it otherwise would. I used up a physical good, and I'm paying for that use. If I use more than what a regulator has decided is my "fair share", I might pay a premium for that extra (many utilities have tiered pricing), but I'm ok with that because I do recognize I'm using more than usual, and the added cost of the higher tier isn't unreasonable or burdensome.

But the cost of me spending 100 extra minutes on the phone costs the carrier basically nothing. Sure, if _everyone_ did that in a month, perhaps it would strain the carrier's network (not that it would cause the carrier to spend capital on increased capacity; they'd likely be fine with more dropped/failed calls that month). In general, though, the marginal cost to the carrier when you use more minutes than your plan provides is near zero -- and yet the carrier charges an exorbitant markup for that overage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > began throttling data speeds in 2011 for its unlimited data plan customers > after they used as little as 2 gigabytes of data in a billing period

This is what really gets me. I expected this sort of situation to come about when some jackass used up 1 petabyte of bandwidth on his unlimited plan, but 2 gigabytes?

To me, that's like offering unlimited coffee refills, but stopping customers after the second cup, with some excuse that there has to be some limits to "unlimited".

<comment><USER14> Wouldn't it be more like after 2 cups they only get served in half-cup increments? I agree with the sentiment. Unlimited with throttles isn't truly "unlimited", but "unlimited*". That said, the FTC complaint seems to take issue with that AT&T did not "adequately disclose to its customers" this information. And there, I take some issue with this. AT&T did actually explain that. Maybe some consumers didn't understand that because of the lack of an asterisk. I guess this will be interesting to see just how important an asterisk can be.

<comment><USER15> I don't believe they did, especially because for grandfathered users, there is no documentation on unlimited plans and there hasn't been for years.

<comment><USER14> Yeah, you're right that the grandfathered consumers are a special case. It would be like having truly unlimited coffee refills then all of a sudden being told you're getting half-cup intervals.

<comment><USER16> Aren't they the only case here? AT&T hasn't offered unlimited data plans for quite a while. They basically only had them for the original iPhone introduction, and got rid of them seemingly as soon as they could.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I've been on the AT&T unlimited plan for a long while now, and I've been looking forward to the day when I get a $10 settlement check in the mail whilst some law firm pulls in $200mm in legal fees.

<comment><USER18> $10 or... $850.

One person sued them in small claims court and won. ([http://www.mactech.com/2012/02/27/how-fight-att-data- throttl...](http://www.mactech.com/2012/02/27/how-fight-att-data-throttling- small-claims-action))

He outlines the steps on his website. ([http://www.taporc.com/](http://www.taporc.com/))

<comment><USER19> Still, $850 is only a little over a year of my Internet bill.

<comment><USER20> Only because your Internet is so expensive. I pay $13 for 200 Mbps down.

<comment><USER21> Are you just bragging or do you have a point?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> AT&T silently killed what formerly was an unlimited plan out of the blue one day, and not many people noticed. I would constantly run into the 3 GB limit a week or two into the month and then suffer through the slow throttled 0.5 Mbps rates for the rest of the billing cycle in agony.

At that point I realized I was essentially paying for a 3 GB data plan (remember, no tethering provisioning was included or even could be added) under the auspices of an 'unlimited' tier. I switched to mobile shared but that turned out to be a huge mistake for other reasons (among which was that corporate discount codes didn't apply to the $30 phone fee on top of the bucket charge), and then shortly after that left for T-Mobile where I now have a real unlimited plan for less money. Not the full speed tiers + throttled data after that plan mind you, the actual unlimited plan.

What's really disappointing is that it took the FTC until now to build a case or whatever legal burden is required to go after AT&T for their elaborate bait-and-switch. This is years after the fact, and I wonder how much extra money AT&T made as a result.

<comment><USER23> What did you think was a mistake about the mobile shared plan? I just switched to that for my single device and I was enjoying the money saved. Am I missing a "gotcha"?

<comment><USER22> My problems were really two fold:

* I previously had a 23% discount (FAN code) on my account which applied to the unlimited data lines in a favorable way. In essence, it applied to both the $30/month data fee for Unlimited, and the couple hundred minutes of call and unlimited text family plan which were sort of an umbrella for all the lines. With mobile shared, one of the gotchas I didn't discover until well after the first bill (since the perpetual excuse with a FAN code discount is – it takes a while to apply) was that the discount applies only to the mobile shared data bucket charge, not to the $30/phone, $x/tablet, $x/modem device access charge line items which quickly add up if you have more than a single line. This really threw off the math I had done for affordability and made it more expensive for me.

* The tiers previously were structured a bit differently, and with the two lines I had plus another person, I would always hit the 10 GB I had signed up for, then pay the $15/GB overage. Going to the next tier up to avoid paying overage for a GB or two would've still been more expensive, so like clockwork I would always end up paying some overages. Since then they've doubled some of the larger tiers as a reactionary measure.

Affordability wise quite honestly AT&T is close to parity with T-Mobile if you manage to get the mobile shared value plans which have cheaper monthly rates if you bring your own device or buy without a contract.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I've been on a (now grandfathered) 'unlimited' data plan with AT&T since 2008 (iPhone 3G > 4S > 5S). Can confirm the throttling, lately after 3GB of data usage in a billing period

<comment><USER25> A friend of mine was staying with AT&T because they had the grandfathered in 'unlimited' plan but when they figured out it really was a 2GB plan and a throttle that let them change carriers without feeling like they were "losing" something.

<comment><USER26> This is exactly where I'm at now. Been evaluating leaving our unlimited data plan because it seems it's effectively a 3gig plan that doesn't allow tethering. For the same cost I think I can get 6G shared with my wife and tether if I need to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> For people in the U.S./Canada looking for a provider who gives a shit and who live in an area with decent Sprint coverage, check out Ting. I've been using them for about 2 years now and they've been rock solid (I am in no way affiliated with them, I'm just that happy with them).

The closest reasonable thing to sending photocopies of your middle finger in their (Verizon/AT&T) "business reply" spam postal mailings is giving someone else who kicks ass your business (don't do the photocopy thing, the people who have to open and transcribe those things don't like Verizon/AT&T either).

<comment><USER28> I want to like Ting—my sister uses it and loves it, but they don't let you run the latest iPhones and that's a deal breaker for me. :-(

<comment><USER27> Yeah, the blackout period Sprint holds them to has shrunk over time, but if you're riding the bleeding edge you won't be happy with the delay.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> So, I wonder if this is the first salvo in a war on all the major carriers who use the same "unlimited but throttled" marketing scheme? If AT&T loses this one, will the FTC go after T-Mobile and Sprint, who also do this? (Verizon doesn't offer unlimited data to new customers, but had kept it going for grandfathered customers, and backed off from plans to throttle them[1]).

[1] [http://www.cnet.com/news/verizon-backs-off-on-plans-to- throt...](http://www.cnet.com/news/verizon-backs-off-on-plans-to-throttle- unlimited-data-users/)

<comment><USER30> I am not a lawyer, but from reading the link, it sounds like the problem isn't that they throttled the data, but that they hid/lied about it.

Neither T-Mobile or Sprint hide the fact that they throttle / rate limit their subscribers for various reasons. So presumably, they are less at risk here.

<comment><USER29> As a former Sprint customer, I'll disagree about that particular carrier. Sprint has offered "unlimited" data for a long time, but after they finally got the iPhone a few years ago, they saw a surge in data usage and started implementing undisclosed and seemingly random soft caps on all their unlimited data customers, all while claiming they offered "truly unlimited data" that wasn't throttled. They have only very recently admitted[1] to throttling some of their customers, but it's actually been going on for a long time according to customer complaints in their support site.

As for T-Mobile, it's my understanding that they changed their policy to include the possibility of throttling and initially didn't disclose it until it was leaked[2].

Of course, neither of these situations are as customer-hostile as AT&T has been, so maybe the FTC won't go after them. But I wouldn't be surprised if Sprint and T-Mobile make changes to their policies if AT&T loses.

[1] [http://bgr.com/2014/05/08/sprint-throttling-unlimited- data-d...](http://bgr.com/2014/05/08/sprint-throttling-unlimited-data-death/)

[2][http://bgr.com/2014/08/13/t-mobile-unlimited-data- throttling...](http://bgr.com/2014/08/13/t-mobile-unlimited-data-throttling- memo/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> There is debate on the thread about whether or not low level AT&T employees are scum...

I don't claim to know, but a funny thing happened a few weeks ago. My girlfriends android phone was acting up and shutting off randomly. So she took it to the AT&T store to have it reinstalled (I don't know much about smartphones and didn't want to play with it). So, in the middle of the day, I get an angry call from her accusing me of installing Linux on her smartphone (and why not? I install Linux on everything else...It must have been me!). The guy at the AT&T store told her since I had installed Linux there was nothing he could do for the phone and couldn't reinstall it nor repair it. I protested my innocence but she said the guy in the store had given her proof and she would show me that night. (I was actually a little curious as this was the first I had heard of Linux proper running on a stock android phone). So when the moment of proof came, she pulled up an android screen with the kernel version and there it was... at the bottom of the screen in bold white letters... "SELinux status". Proof! I mean, it said Linux!

So maybe they aren't evil, but that guy at least left me wondering about their general competency. I laughed for half an hour solid imagining all the Linux infected phones he must be seeing coming in.... Or more likely, he was just trying to sell her a new phone.

</comment><comment><USER32> I hope this is the beginning of the end of Fair Usage Policies (FUP) masked as "unlimited Internet". The best part of the release was the note

> The Commission files a complaint when it has "reason to believe" that the > law has been or is being violated and it appears to the Commission that a > proceeding is in the public interest. The case will be decided by the court.

</comment><comment><USER33> I had the unlimited plan for several years and was shocked and outraged to find that they were throttling after I reached a certain limit.

So I switched to Sprint's unlimited plan and now I can rest at ease that I have a consistent experience. My bandwidth is now throttled 100% of the time by the crappiness of their network.

</comment><comment><USER34> While this appears good, this is nothing more then a show. AT&T will end up paying virtually nothing[1]. If you get angry when companies like Microsoft can go and seize domains, property and anything else in civil matters - <USER2> lovely agency has helped pave most of the way for them. The bulk of their cases come with Ex Parte Temporary Restraining Order's and Asset Freezes[1].

What will likely be the most egregious offender with the highest amount of "consumer damage" (AT&T) they don't even use the word "scam" or "fraud" in the complaint or press release. AT&T has already won. I doubt anyone there is losing any sleep over this.

[1] - [http://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/cases- proceedings](http://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/cases-proceedings)

</comment><comment><USER35> I don't see how anybody wins from this complaint. AT&T already no longer offers any unlimited plans to new customers, and the most likely outcome will be to no longer offer renewals of the existing grandfathered plans.

It's not as if anyone on those plans using 5GB+ a month isn't already aware of the throttling: AT&T is pretty good about notifying you when you are close to or over the limit.

I guess a settlement might let some folks in the middle of their contact get out easier.

But personally, even considered as just a 5GB/line plan, my grandfathered plan is cheaper than anything currently offered (almost even before you account for the $450/line device subsidy!). Probably won't be the case in two years when I'm up again, but for now I'm glad the FTC didn't file this complaint a few months ago.

<comment><USER36> > AT&T is pretty good about notifying you when you are close to or over the > limit.

I am currently and have been for years on an unlimited data plan with AT&T, easily use over 5GB a month, and have never been notified of any limit ever.

My wife is on a standard plan and gets notified when she goes over. AT&T does not notify unlimited users.

<comment><USER35> Weird. I got a text today that I'm getting close.

Regardless, it's not as if you were unaware of the limit before this suit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I made the mistake of downloading over 20GB of music and files on my new iPhone 6. The phone has been almost useless since hitting that limit. So much for "Unlimited Data".

But, I am waiting for a check for over $1300 as part of a class action settlement with AT&T after being overfilled for service.

</comment><comment><USER38> I love seeing AT&T getting this kind of attention from the FTC for their terrible, terrible, monopolistic and greedy tactics. Their goal is to squeeze every penny they possibly can out of their customers. Their service has always been subpar.

I really hope that this lawsuit costs AT&T a lot of money; It needs to hurt in order to teach them a lesson.

One can only hope that we can someday have a competitive wireless market with 5+ options for consumers to choose from. That is when customer service will become real.

</comment><comment><USER39> I wonder if anyone would like clearly-advertised "unlimited data, harmonic throttling":

First X amount of data at full speed

Second X amount of data at 1/2 of full speed

Third X amount of data at 1/3 of full speed

Fourth X amount of data at 1/4 of full speed

etc...

(With perhaps prices based on what that X is, or the decrease in speed could be more gradual.)

This is clearly "unlimited" since you can transfer as much data as you want, it just takes a little longer for each additional amount (until the next billing period). :-)

<comment><USER40> Let's say you get your nth X GB at XGB/(1000n)s. Then in a month=2628000seconds, you'd get at most about (70X)-ish GB per month. Meanwhile, if you get a flat X GB at XGB/(1000)s, then you get up to (2628X) GB per month. That sure doesn't feel unlimited in comparison.... but I suppose when I put it that way, all data plans are limited by finite time. :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I'm on the $60-70/month T-Mobile plan that gives me truly unlimited 4G data; no throttling. I might not use more than 2G a month most of the time, but if I need to use more, I don't have to worry (such as when I had to go out of state when a family member had emergency surgery a couple of months ago).

I wouldn't switch back to AT&T as a wireless carrier even if someone paid me every month.

</comment><comment><USER42> Can't wait to send in the threatening email that i received from AT&T stating explicitly that my "unlimited" bandwidth will be throttled because i happened to be in a high usage area. Seriously there should be a place where everyone who received such emails can post them en masse...

</comment><comment><USER43> I left AT&T because of this. My iPhone went dead data wise after 3GB of usage, on unlimited data plan. We went to arbitration and they let me out of my contract, and unlocked my phone. They clearly know they are ripping people off trying to force them to nickel and dime the tiered plans.

</comment><comment><USER44> Do people actually think that wireless carriers have the bandwidth to handle everyone streaming HD at once? They throttle so there's headroom for spikes in overly-saturated network segments. It's not like they just don't like it when you use their service.

<comment><USER45> That's a great theory, but what are the actual limits? Why not introduce throttling to everyone at once only at times of actual spikes instead of forcing me to sit through a week of having an essentially useless phone until the billing cycle goes through?

More importantly, why the hell are millions of people paying for something that they were promised but aren't getting?

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> I have an unlimited data plan as well and I am 100 percent positive that AT&T throttles at 5 gigabytes and when they do its really bad, like .6 megabits per second down :(

</comment><comment><USER47> AT&T can't be the only operator guilty of such throttling. A previous article was published about Verizon also considering implementing throttling data consumption.

</comment><comment><USER48> I work for a telco reseller. We make our money by selling the same services as the big guys without being assholes about it. We make a lot of money.

</comment><comment><USER49> At least you Americans have some choice. Here in Canada there are only 3 (nation-wide) carriers with virtually the same plans/prices.

</comment><comment><USER50> arent these cell companies really misleading every customer by charging them for Minutes, SMS, AND Data, when really all that needs to be given to the customer is an ip address that one can call/text/email etc.? i've never understood why our phone numbers arent ip's they seem to be a converging set of numbers at this rate anyways.

</comment><comment><USER51> Here I thought I was being capped around 5gb. I didn't ditch the "unlimited" data plan until late 2013.

</comment><comment><USER52> Apart from a $10 settlement check, what's likely to happen to grandfathered unlimited / unthrottled plans?

<comment><USER53> Here is what the FTC says would have been valid options:

"Defendant has numerous alternative ways to reduce data usage on its network that do not involve violating its promise to customers. One alternative would involve Defendant requiring existing unlimited data customers to switch to a tiered data plan at renewal. ... Another alternative would involve Defendant introducing its throttling program at renewal, with disclosures at point of sale. ... Yet other alternatives might include limited, narrowly tailored throttling programs that are consistent with Defendant's contracts, advertising, and other public disclosures. "

So essentially, you'd end up in the same place, but you would have to be informed about it. And might be able to leave without ETF.

<comment><USER54> Which is really the way it should work. Let AT&T have all the crappy customer- hostile policies they want as long as they fully disclose it in a sufficient manner to their customers.

Then, their customers can vote with their money and go to a competitor that offers more for their money. That's the way it SHOULD work, but probably won't :(

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> This 'unlimited' term is very misleading. Every connection that has a bandwidth cap will be tied and limited by that cap. ie. 10mb/s is limited to 10mb/s period. There is no such thing as 'unlimited' unless of course the connection has no virtual cap, then that would be considered unlimited.

So every connection plan as we know is limited and never unlimited.

Thoughts?

<comment><USER56> It's pretty high though. For example, unlimited 10mb/s in a month is over 26TB.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> Sprint does the same thing but at 5GB. Just a data point from a former Sprint customer.

</comment><comment><USER58> And there is absolutely no meaningful way to hold them accountable.

</comment><comment><USER59> I dream one day we will all have 1 Gig per second up and down on our mobile phones and it will cost less than a gallon of milk. A man can dream can't he lol .

</comment><comment><USER60> Soooo, no throttling by ISP's is next?

</comment><comment><USER61> SURPRISE!</comment>


Licking your own eyeball emoticon - <AUTHOR> ;9 <comment><AUTHOR> For moments when you want to :p on 4chan

</comment><comment><USER2> ...and my cat licking his balls :

]8P:-</comment>


Something Happened to Activist ISP Riseup, but It Hasn't Been Compromised - <AUTHOR> https://theintercept.com/2016/11/29/something-happened-to-activist-email-provider-riseup-but-it-hasnt-been-compromised/ <comment><AUTHOR> I changed the title on the submission because the original ("Something Happened to Activist Email Provider Riseup, but It Hasn't Been Compromised") is too long by four characters.</comment>


Moose vs Mouse: OOP in Perl - <AUTHOR> http://bugsplat.info/2010-05-09-moose-vs-mouse.html

<comment><USER2> Instead of resorting to hacks like Mouse, he should have just made his app persistent with App::Persistent. The client you use to connect to your persistent app starts up faster than perl.

Client/server works for xmms, firefox, emacs, ..., so why not you? Using a few extra megs of RAM is well worth not having to use Mouse.

(And oh yeah, if you have a laptop, an SSD is essential. Although much of immutable Moose startup time is actually CPU time, there is a pretty good disk component too. An SSD also lets you do clever things like cryopid-ing your scripts to achieve an effect like precompilation. Cryopid is not faster than App::Persistent, though.)

<comment><AUTHOR> I certainly could have made it persistent but then I'd be adding significant complexity to a little run-and-done single-file data processing app. I mean, even before changing to Mouse the thing took only a few seconds to start up. Now it's less than half a second.

(Also, SSDs cost money :))

<comment><USER2> The "just rewrite your app to use a different object system" doesn't scale very well, but App::Persistent has a constant per-app overhead -- deciding what code to run in the server, and deciding what code to run per-client. (It's not automatic because the "omg magic" is what made pperl unusable.)

The persistent version of Devel::REPL, for example, is just a few lines of code:

[http://github.com/jrockway/app- persistent/blob/master/repl.p...](http://github.com/jrockway/app- persistent/blob/master/repl.pl)

And if you use MooseX::Runnable, it _is_ automatic. (Just load with +Persistent.)

<comment><AUTHOR> It wasn't a different object system, though. At the level I'm using Moose, Mouse was completely drop-in. I understand your point, but scaling isn't really a goal. I just wanted the script to run faster than it was.

I'm planning on building some persistent stuff at work and I'll definitely give App::Persistent a closer look when the time comes, but for a little script it's sort of overkill.

<comment><USER2> Why even use objects, then? Why not just use a hashref with key/value pairs? That's like 8 percent faster, and definitely not overkill!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> In my understanding Mouse is to become irrelevant someday, as Moose goes forward.

<comment><USER4> From what I've heard the future lies with Squirrel, unless Moose manages to pull a rabbit out of its hat.

<comment><AUTHOR> Squirrel is actually deprecated in favor of Any::Moose. They basically do the same thing except Any::Moose decides to use Mouse or Moose once, where as Squirrel will attempt to do it every time it's imported.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Moose was pretty difficult to grok, what with the variety of extensions that came with it. Anybody know a good Moose resource?

<comment><AUTHOR> Working through a few examples helped me quite a bit. I think the Moose::Cookbook[1] is pretty descent.

[1]: [http://search.cpan.org/~flora/Moose-1.03/lib/Moose/Cookbook....](http://search.cpan.org/~flora/Moose-1.03/lib/Moose/Cookbook.pod)</comment></comment>


Central Asia's 'desert kites' - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20200907-the-mystery-of-central-asias-desert-kites <comment><USER2> Observation posts to watch for invaders?</comment>


Education App for the Modern Classroom - <AUTHOR> http://www.techiediy.com/clipp-education-app-for-the-modern-classroom <comment><USER2> Basically what clipp is trying to do is replace papers and notebooks, with iPad screens. Well, in a country like America, that indeed is a giant step to put education forward. But, here in India we students and teachers alike, cannot afford an iPad. So if the app was basically a cloud solution with a HTML5/jAVASCRIPT sort of interface, it would be easy to port to different platforms and can be used in much affordable tablets. Anyway being a college geek, +1 for clipp.

</comment><comment><USER3> You may also find APPYnotebook (www.appynotebook.com) of interest. It is an open source LMS with it's own integrated App platform that allows teachers and students to build their own educational environment.</comment>


Misfortune Cookie - <AUTHOR> http://mis.fortunecook.ie/ <comment><USER2> I for one welcome our new convention of giving security vulnerabilities cute logos and names. It elevates their importance in the public eye, which -- I hope -- will elevate the importance of finding, fixing, and avoiding security vulnerabilities among the technoscenti.

I'll go out on a limb and say that if this pattern continues, it may be the most significant legacy of heartbleed.

<comment><USER3> I, for one, do not welcome the trend of information-free wankerism masquerading as security research. I would like proof-of-concept code, formatted in 80-column plain text, dropped on mailing lists. Not this unreadable javascript-laden junk that doesn't even tell me anything worth knowing.

<comment><USER4> Note how they drop the CVE number at the beginning of the article, even though it's not actually a published CVE yet. Is there any legitimate reason to do that other than to lend your news release a false air of authority to those who won't bother to go read the CVE?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> In addition to favoring the fashion of charismatic naming and artwork for exploits, I am utterly delighted by the notion of "misfortune cookies".

Imagine:

"You have good reason for self-doubt." "Avoid heavy machinery today." "You will be eaten by pumas." "Learn from your mistakes; wear a condom."

<comment><USER6> Twilight Zone from 1986: The Misfortune Cookie, starring Elliot Gould

[http://youtu.be/7FlyNU9FpK0](http://youtu.be/7FlyNU9FpK0)

<comment><USER5> Thanks, I guess there's nothing new under the sun.

I've always been afraid I would get the fortune I deserve...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Great, a huge vulnerability potentially affecting millions of routers around the world, and no information on how to check if your router is vulnerable.

Complete marketing cruft.

</comment><comment><USER8> For those trying to read this page but unable to deal with the broken JS, text dump to Pastebin: [http://pastebin.com/munLi0Cy](http://pastebin.com/munLi0Cy)

 _Misfortune Cookie is a critical vulnerability that allows an intruder to remotely take over an Internet router and use it to attack home and business networks._

</comment><comment><USER9> The verbosity of this vs. actual information makes my flag-finger itch. It also, apparently, keeps getting killer on /r/netsec[1].

<TLDR>"The affected software is the embedded web server RomPager from AllegroSoft."

"AllegroSoft issued a fixed version to address the Misfortune Cookie vulnerability in 2005 [...]" but it's complicated.

TR-069 is mentioned because it makes it sound cooler, and also uses the RomPager in certain implementations.</TLDR>

Yeah, Home Gateway security is almost as nonexistent as their release/update cycle. TR-069 is a blasphemy and an anathema in the first place[2].

This is an attempt to 'heartbleed'-ize a much broader issue. It is one of many, and they are known, and they never get patched.

Maybe make this into a crowd-type-movement to take back our routers, intending to put pressure on manufacturers to be more responsible with security and the intermediates for pushing the updates (since they've provided themselves the functionality to do that/TR-069/The Irony), but do not try to heartbleed-ize it, kinda comes off cheap.

In the meantime, for those that can (Hello Friends!), we already know the available patches:

* OpenWRT

* DD-WRT

* Tomato

It's tricky though, because you may have to spend $20/$60 for a new router.

EDIT: Also, dupe. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8767193](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8767193) Hrm.

[1] [https://www.reddit.com/r/netsec/comments/2poyp6/misfortune_c...](https://www.reddit.com/r/netsec/comments/2poyp6/misfortune_cookie_cve20149222_12_million_routers/) [https://www.reddit.com/r/netsec/comments/2polm6/the_misfortu...](https://www.reddit.com/r/netsec/comments/2polm6/the_misfortune_cookie_vulnerability/)

[2] "So my ISP can just flash my router with a new firmware, remotely, and then flash back the original, at any time? Or anyone with my ISP's private keys/credentials* , for that matter, but let's not open that can of worms. And you say that, despite this being active (and sometimes partly hidden and un- killable _cough_ BTHomeHub _cough_ ) our routers are still running archaic software that hasn't received a 9-year-old patch? Then... ugh.. what is this used for, exactly? Why is it there?"

* Oh God I hope it is at least private keys and not 'admin:P@ssword1' :S

<comment><USER10> I've been assuming DD-WRT is clear, but is it confirmed[0]? I can see no reason why DD-WRT would use the RomPager SDK, but I haven't checked the actual internals.

[0] [http://www.dd- wrt.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=277217&sid=e88f...](http://www.dd- wrt.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=277217&sid=e88f15058e5909f23f1acb0a60da99db)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> What a bullshit puff piece.

Checkpoint marketing is experimenting with new marketing techniques. No way this peacock-style creation could've come directly from engineering. They really want some of the CNN coverage that Heartbleed enjoyed, except now it will have a discreet "Checkpoint" logo in the corner. Ain't that clever.

<comment><USER12> Some might actually think that the vulnerability affects only Checkpoint devices.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Two months ago I decided that I didn't want to be in the position of waiting for a vendor to release an upgraded firmware OS for my house firewalls.

If Ubiquiti's EdgeRouter Lite ran an actual Debian release rather than a derivative with no obvious toolchain, I would have bought that. (If they change to that, I would recommend them.) I worked my way through the capabilities list of the PCengines mini-ITX devices (ALIX: underpowered; APU: a little expensive) and settled on AMD's successor to the APU, now called Athlon 5150/5350.

It's deployed and making me really happy now.

<comment><USER14> I built mine on an Avoton Intel Atom C2750. It's the first amd64 Atom, the first to support ECC memory, and has 20W TDP. It runs FreeBSD 10.1 and I'm very happy with it. Before Avoton you had to go for a Pentium D or a Xeon for ECC support on the Intel side.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Scrolling on that site is very frustrating.

<comment><USER8> My solution is to use w3m. The site fails to open for me at all in Chrome.

Sadly yet another case of overly rococo Web design getting in the way of basic readability.

<comment><USER16> > My solution is to use w3m.

It's amazing how much nicer the web can be without images and javascript. These tool-bags really want to "promote their brand," but they might consider creating a website that looks less like malware.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> No PoC? This is a marketing brochure.

</comment><comment><USER18> From what I understand this gives the attacker administrative access via a routers Web UI configuration interface. So they could change the configuration of the router, which could be concerning in some scenarios but irrelevant most others. Assuming it is something like this, you can help protect yourself by disabling remote Web UI management. This is the default already for most routers. Though I guess we will know when Lior Oppenheim presents the issue at the 31C3 in a week or so.

</comment><comment><USER19> If anyone finds this helpful, I hacked together a quick test tool to check for vulnerable rompager versions: [https://rompager.hboeck.de/](https://rompager.hboeck.de/)

Still uncertain if this is to be taken seriously, because detailed information is lacking.

</comment><comment><USER20> The biggest question I have about this is how they managed to register the fortunecook.ie domain knowing the hoops you have to jump through to get an IE domain in the first place

</comment><comment><USER21> How about adding a simple test to check if my router is vulnerable, instead of all the text ?

Their website has a special security check section but that link is (conveniently ?) broken...

</comment><comment><USER22> Is it April Fools' Day already?

</comment><comment><USER23> javascript only site</comment>


Apple Becomes Most Valuable Company of All Time - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/08/20/us-apple-valuation-market-record-idUSBRE87J0KM20120820

<comment><USER2> Except...not really.

Microsoft in 1999 was worth $620Bn, which in 2012 dollars would be around $853Bn.

[http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9230400/Apple_not_mos...](http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9230400/Apple_not_most_valuable_firm_ever_says_press_watchdog)

</comment><comment><USER3> Most valuable public company. Saudi Aramco is worth over $7 trillion.

<comment><USER4> To be fair, the huge values of the oil companies are largely the result of tremendous state-owned assets that were "privatized" through backroom deals. Every upstream oil company is effectively a set of operations and a dubiously acquired asset trove joined in one entity.

If you strip out assets and talk about what the most valuable "company operation" is it's certainly Apple by a long margin.

<comment><USER5> What about inflation adjusted Standard Oil?</comment></comment></comment>


'We Care Deeply About Diversity': Zuckerberg Defends Thiel's Ties to Trump - <AUTHOR> http://www.mediaite.com/online/we-care-deeply-about-diversity-zuckerberg-defend-facebook-board-member-peter-thiels-ties-to-trump/ <comment><USER2> I wonder if this marks the point where diversity (of thought) is officially a luxury afforded only to the wealthy. After all, this is the same Zuckerberg that warned employees that replacing "black" with "all" in "black lives matter" was racist and grounds for termination. This is the same Facebook that is deeply preoccupied with hiring non-white/Asian males regardless of intellectual background.

If a lowly employee had publicly made a donation to Trump's campaign would we see the same statement from Zuckerberg, or would that employee's time at Facebook come to an end at the next HR-approved opportunity?

<comment><USER3> Replacing "black" with "all" in the statement "black lives matter" reveals an astounding lack of knowledge of history. I'm not sure if it's racist. Maybe 'totally ignorant'? I hope the totally ignorant are on a different team.

<comment><USER4> Let's not forget the silent ", too." At the end of the statement.

Black lives matter, too. Please stop executing us, jailing us, abusing us, beating us, underpaying us, stereotyping us.

We deserve the safety, humane treatment and respect for basic rights that are already available to others.

Hope that clarifies the statement for anyone who still feels/wants to feel confused or outraged by the exclusivity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Diversity of thought is not itself a good thing. That is, a group with more opinions among its members is not necessarily any better / more moral / more effective than a group with fewer opinions.

Facebook is not "stronger" than the Democratic National Committee or the ACLU or Heritage Foundation because it has a broader array of political opinions among its staff and leadership than those groups do. The organizations simply have different reasons for existing.

What we should concern ourselves with as a society is _freedom_ of thought, freedom of expression, freedom of association. This is different from diversity. In fact these freedoms eventually reduce diversity of thought, as we influence each other.

For example, the belief that slavery should be legal is no longer widely held in the U.S. That is a reduction in "thought diversity" from 160 years ago. And I highly doubt that Mark Zuckerberg would keep a board member who advocated for the return of slavery, in the name of "diversity of thought."

The freedoms listed above include the freedoms to disagree, to dissociate. It would not be unpatriotic or somehow wrong for Facebook to break ties with Thiel based on political disagreement. After all Zuckerberg has already done the opposite: he has sunk millions into efforts to convince the country to pass immigration reform. This despite knowing that a huge number of Facebook customers (and perhaps staff) don't want immigration reform.

If it's ok to create organizational relationships based on shared political beliefs, I don't see how it's wrong to break relationships based on political beliefs.

So: I find the appeal to "diversity of thought" to be not very compelling. The reality is that Zuckerberg probably thinks that cutting off Thiel would cause himself and his company more harm than good.

<comment><USER6> Diversity is the very reason you and I even exist.

So whether you like it or not it's one of the best things if you care about progress of any sorts.

<comment><USER5> Let's say Facebook added David Duke to their board. That would significantly increase the diversity of thought: Duke would bring many ideas and beliefs to the board that the current board members don't hold. Would that be better or worse for social progress?

See, social progress is not just a spreading-out of more and more and more social ideas. It is a definite direction. Less slavery, not more. More tolerance, not less. Less sexual assault, not more.

Social progress requires decisions and commitments. It requires people to change their minds, which means discarding one idea for another. Not trying to hold more and more contradictory ideas in their heads at the same time.

Zuckerberg has every right to decide to keep Thiel on the FB board. But he also has the right to ask Thiel to leave, and doing so would not be any less principled than keeping him. Both decisions rest on the same principle, which is that Zuckerberg is free to make his own decisions about who he associates with.

<comment><USER6> You are taking a point made in about diversity in general and applying it to a single case.

I hope you understand what's wrong about that.

<comment><USER5> I'm making the point that one cannot talk about diversity in general. The word means very different things in different contexts. Political beliefs are not the same thing as race or gender.

<comment><USER6> Of course you can talk about diversity in general. It doesn't actually mean different things in different context but it has different consequences IMO.

<comment><USER5> With respect, I don't think you've thought about this very carefully.

If you feel you have, I'd be interested in your response to any of my detailed points above.

edit: softened the tone

<comment><USER6> The difference we are having is not with the details but with the fundamental principle you approach this from vs. how I approach it.

Diversity is by default at good thing by exception a bad thing. Thats my base point and I thought about that quite a lot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It'd remarkable to me how many people who support 'diversity' and 'inclusion' will shun those who have ideas/beliefs they disagree with. Good job to Mark for not being one of those people.

<comment><USER8> it's remarkable to me how this "point" is brought up every time someone mentions diversity. diversity is not about equality. diversity is about balancing the current inequalities that people who are not rich, not the right gender, not the right race, or not the right sexual orientation are forced to deal with every single day. it is not about giving every side an equal viewpoint because one side has had an unfair advantage for as far back as anyone can remember.

and it's pretty hypocritical of thiel to be mad at gawker for outing him as gay due to his fear of repercussions since he now supports a candidate who would gladly keep the status quo in making homosexuality something you have to worry about being "leaked" to the public.

this is why there is outrage over thiel giving/supporting a candidate like trump. and further outrage against zuck and sam altman for advocating "diversity" while allowing thiel to support someone who is completely against that idea.

so no, it really shouldn't be that remarkable that people who support "diversity" would not support people who are against those ideals.

<comment><USER9> What has Trump done to make you think he hates diversity? I get that Trump comes off egotistical, but even if he only cares about his own image, I think it's unfair to say that Trump is "completely against the idea of diversity". Just because he's a big bad white man and wants to put America first that means he hates all diversity?

I cant see any reason for Trump to be against gay people either, or any other group for that matter, but liberals have no problem saying that he's anti- everything. This is the same kind of overly PC whining that is fueling the Trump fire.

<comment><USER10> _What has Trump done to make you think he hates diversity?_

Have you heard the man speak, or heard him quoted? You don't denigrate Mexicans, federal judges whose parents are Mexican, and blacks because you're a fanboy of diversity. You don't judge women solely on their appearance and yet still get to be the poster boy of diversity. Making fun of the disabled is not only a cheap shot beneath even most 13 year old boys, it also doesn't get you the "Diversity Champion 2016" award.

 _Why would Trump have anything against gay people?_

Because he hasn't shown any respect for anyone else that isn't white, straight, male, and American-born. Why would homosexuals get a pass?

<comment><USER9> I've never heard Trump denigrate Mexicans or Blacks. He made that one poorly phrased comment about illegal immigrants being drug dealers and rapists, but in context, it's clear he wasn't implying anything negative about Mexican people as a whole, but just those that illegally cross the border. All of the instances you mentioned were taken out of context.

"Because he hasn't shown any respect for anyone else that isn't white, straight, male, and American-born. Why would homosexuals get a pass?"

This exemplifies exactly what I was trying to say. Do you really believe that Trump has never shown respect for anyone except for white men? I feel like there's nothing Trump could do to avoid this stigma, because our PC culture attaches it to anyone who speaks out against them. I think this is exactly why Peter Thiel is pro-Trump.

<comment><USER11> > I've never heard Trump denigrate Mexicans or Blacks.

Then you haven't been paying attention. He said a judge couldn't do his job because his parents were Mexican. The highest ranking elected official from his own party, Paul Ryan, called it the "textbook definition of a racist comment".

<comment><USER6> Thats not a lot to go by though and hardly enough to brand him a racist.

He has hired more or less any race, have several women on his boards and trust his daughter with big parts of the business.

His actions are very different than the claims of him.

I would agree that he comes of rather ego-driven but there is a world of difference between that and the way he is portraid as the anti-christ.

<comment><USER8> > He has hired more or less any race, have several women on his boards and > trust his daughter with big parts of the business.

Not[0] Really[1]

0: [http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/08/donald-trump- cas...](http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/08/donald-trump-casino-women- executives) 1: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trumps-courtship- of-...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trumps-courtship-of-black- voters-hampered-by-decades-of-race- controversies/2016/07/19/d9822250-4d2e-11e6-aa14-e0c1087f7583_story.html)

<comment><USER6> He doesn't really run casinos anymore so that's hardly useful.

But for instance

Key Executives For The Trump Organization LLC

Cathy Hoffman Glosser

[http://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/private/people.asp?...](http://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/private/people.asp?privcapId=344985)

In other words he does have women in leading positions.

<comment><USER8> > He doesn't really run casinos anymore so that's hardly useful.

huh?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


PagerDuty notification delays - <AUTHOR> https://status.pagerduty.com/ <comment><USER2> Our engineering team is aware and working to restore notification delivery to full performance. We will post any status change immediately. In the meantime, for the latest status updates, please visit our service status webpage [https://status.pagerduty.com/incidents/1jj1tzw836rp](https://status.pagerduty.com/incidents/1jj1tzw836rp) or follow Twitter handle @PagerDutySupport</comment>


ip2geo info in PHP - <AUTHOR> http://www.trk7.com/blog/programming/getting-visitor-location-in-php/ source of the script used to get the country of an online visitor.Demo here:http://play.trk7.com/ip.php <comment><AUTHOR> demo here: <http://play.trk7.com/ip.php></comment>


MA's Opsware bought by HP for $1.6B - <AUTHOR> http://blog.pmarca.com/2007/07/hp-buys-my-comp.html

<comment><USER2> Hmm. That's pretty good, I guess. How many Jr. Bacon Cheeseburgers is that?</comment>


Project Gutenberg's science fiction bookshelf - <AUTHOR> http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Science_Fiction_%28Bookshelf%29 <comment><USER2> Recommendation, EE Smith's Triplanetary. This is the first book the Lensman series, unfortunately I do not see the rest of the series available through this means.

While a product of his time these stories are incredible. If you like space battles he had some very original ideas, some of which even many modern science fiction writers haven't touched.

<comment><USER3> A note on various of the Gutenberg SF entries: the versions on Project Gutenberg may be the magazine serial versions. They may differ substantially from the book versions. (Shorter, to fit magazine space limitations.)

Copyright law was different back then, and magazine versions had different copyrights than book versions. In many cases, magazine copyrights were _not_ renewed, but book copyrights were, so you'll see magazine serial versions on PG but the books won't be available.

This is particularly true for E. E. Smith's Lensman and Skylark of Space series: the book publication versions aren't on PG. (I have no idea who currently holds the rights to the Lensman series.)

It _is_ possible to find them on the darknet, but quality will vary.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Ah, cool, they've got some of E.E. Smith's stuff and Campbell's stuff. Capek's _R.U.R._ as well. A bunch of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells.

I also spy some cool short works of Phillip K. Dick ( _Second Variety_ ), some Cory Doctorow, some Harry Harrison. Very nifty!

<comment><USER5> Beware of the Jules Verne translations, they might be way worse than the recent ones.

<comment><USER6> I fail to see why older translations should be any worse. I mean this isn't great poetry, just very entertaining literature :)

<comment><USER7> There really is a quality difference. Several of Jules Verne's works were serialized in news papers at the time and then a slap-dash translation was made very quickly so they could publish them in other countries. The translations were often so bad that Verne himself commented on them. In some cases the translations omitted and abridged parts of the works as well.

It very much does a disservice to Verne's reputation to read such poor quality translations. Indeed, perhaps the reason why you do not consider Verne's work to be "great poetry" is because you've never been exposed to any good translations.

Here is a volume that might be worth acquiring, for example: [http://www.amazon.com/Amazing-Journeys-Journey-Circling- Leag...](http://www.amazon.com/Amazing-Journeys-Journey-Circling- Leagues/dp/1438432380/)

<comment><USER8> I only really began to appreciate what work it takes to make a definitive translation when I read about all the effort that Walter James Miller and Frederick Paul Walter put in to Verne's _20,000 Leagues Under the Sea_ \-- it's no mean feat.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Some recommendations for people:

Omnilingual by H. Beam Piper, known for his alternative time line stories.

Beyond Lies the Wub, by Philip K Dick, a collection of his early short stories.

A Princess of Mars, by Edgar Rice Burroughs. The beginning of his Mars series about its civilization's decline.

<comment><USER4> While I'm quite certain that this has nothing to do with anything, _Beyond Lies the Wub_ sounds like an awesome album name for a dubstep or EDM anthology.

<comment><USER10> You're not alone. The Verge published a feature titled "Beyond lies the wub: a history of dubstep"

[http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/28/3262089/history-of- dubstep...](http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/28/3262089/history-of-dubstep- beyond-lies-the-wub)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Is there a way to know what other Hacker News readers recommend?

I use Goodreads, but while I've found it pretty good as a source of new books to read, the ratings system ends up with everything coming within a few points of 4 (4.1, 3.9, 4.2).

I'm guilty of tagging books I read with either 4 or 5 usually, unless it's pretty bad.

Anyway, what I wanted to ask was if there was a way to know what a subgroup of readers thinks of a book.

<comment><USER12> We could make a HackerNews group on goodreads.

Edit: created: <http://www.goodreads.com/group/show/94469-hackernews>

<comment><USER11> Joined :)

Well, the first book recommended is The Pragmatic Programmer, we can all get behind that one :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> <http://www.gutenberg.org/files/32759/32759-h/32759-h.htm>

_"This is Good."_ \- Conan

<comment><USER14> There is a really good selection of REH on the Australian version of PG:

<http://gutenberg.net.au/plusfifty-a-m.html#letterH>

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I love Project Gutenberg.

For those of you who enjoy listening to audio books, there's a project called Librivox -- <http://librivox.org> \-- that provides volunteer-read audio versions of public-domain books. (The quality of the volunteers is mixed, and sometimes every chapter is read by a different person, which can be a little disorienting, but hey, it's free!)

<comment><USER16> Looked into that recently - what is interesting is that they have a rule against allowing ratings on the productions, because - due to the free effort aspect - they worry that it will make it discouraging for other producers to invest their free time in recording new productions.

I can't help thinking this is a less-than-ideal solution. What are some ways to make it easier for a listener to find a good production, while simultaneously protecting producers from discouragement?

<comment><USER17> I haven't heard of Librivox before, and I'm too lazy to actually check the site, but my thoughts:

Upvote-only, no displayed view/play count. This protects the producers by letting them assume neutral reasons for low approval ratings–maybe everyone who _does_ listen to their reading is just too lazy to upvote–while providing a mechanism to say, "This one was good."

I could also see making the upvotes invisible and using some magical algorithm to convert raw numbers into a range from "no one has given an opinion" to "lots of people liked this".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> What i really want to see is a great Tablet front end for Gutenberg. I haven't found one yet and haven't gotten around to making one either :-(

<comment><USER19> FBReader has an decent interface for searching, but you need to know what you are looking for. There's not a good way to browse via the app.

<comment><USER20> I'll second FBReader; works great on my N900. Though you do have to have your library organized outside of it, it doesn't browse well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> pleasantly surprised with the selection. a couple kurt vonneguts, a bunch of philip k dicks, lots of jules verne, as well as h. g. wells.

awesome!

</comment><comment><USER22> any recommendations where to start? :)

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm personally starting from the beginning. :-) [http://blog.fogus.me/2012/09/21/the-amazing-colossal- science...](http://blog.fogus.me/2012/09/21/the-amazing-colossal-science- fiction-ketchup/)

<comment><USER11> Are those available on Project Gutemberg? I saw some classic authors (A.E. Van Vogt, etc) which should be.

<comment><USER3> Nope. Remember that Project Gutenberg hosts books which have lapsed into the public domain. That's not true for a lot of the stuff mentioned. (A decent collection of Van Vogt is available through Baen Book's Webscriptions program, though it lacks classics like Slan.)

You will find the occasional oddity: a couple of Samuel R. Delany's early Ace Double publications just popped up, and Chip is still very much alive. Chip has been in the business a long time - if they've lapsed into the public domain, it's because he allowed them to.

(It _is_ weird when you see stuff appearing on PG by people you know/knew - Delany among the living, and Terry Carr and Laurence M. Janifer among the deceased.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> H.Beam Piper, amazing writer.</comment>


7-Year Updated Ajax Timeline of Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Amazon Acquisitions - <AUTHOR> http://www.shmula.com/blog/timelines/google-microsoft-yahoo/g-y-m.htm

<comment><AUTHOR> The first thing I noticed is that they're missing Zenter, but the timeline is still cool because it starts in January 2001 with updates through this August. Any more that they've missed?

</comment><comment><USER2> The timeline is kinda neat, but it woulda been a lot better with an accompanying list with sort controls.

Pretty good example of using AJAX to do something that you could've done easier and better without it.

</comment><comment><USER3> some of them seem to be hidden at the bottom of the timeline. I can see the very top half of the text, but not the whole lot. (FF+Mac)

</comment><comment><USER4> TextPayMe is on that list. Isnt this the acquisition YC still cant "talk" about?

</comment><comment><USER5> Arnie St. => Amie St.

Also, that was an investment, not an acquisition.

</comment><comment><USER6> Viaweb is missing...

<comment><AUTHOR> Viaweb was sold in 1999 if I remember correctly.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Anyone have experience with Rules Engines like Drools or FICO Blaze? - <AUTHOR> I am doing some work where we decided to use a rules engine. We are on a java/hibernate/struts stack. Are leaning towards Drools  as it has some integration points with AppFuse that we are using. Plus FICO Blaze is way more expensive <comment><USER2> Drools/JBossRules is actually pretty sweet (disclaimer, I worked on it once upon a time and JBoss gave me some kick ass headphones when they bought it from Bob and Mark). They have been taking it more in the direction of a traditional business rules management mabob, and I don't love their little language personally, but it is WAY nicer for programmers than Blaze, plus the devs are always in IRC and helpful, cannot beat that for support.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks - So your tipping me over to the drools side. One more question: When you used Drools did you use Governor as well. Any thoughts?

<comment><USER2> Guvnor didn't exist when I used drools :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I've used Drools - works well once you figure out the ins and outs of their DSL, and is actively developed. Haven't used FICO Blaze.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Yeah we had a small learning curve with the DSL as well. We are housing he rules in a csv file for now. When you used Drools did you use Governor as well. We will eventually need to have an interface for the business folks. Any thoughts?

<comment><USER3> Haven't used governor - the rules engine is embedded in an ecommerce platform for doing coupons/promotions with its own custom interface for defining the coupons/promos. Then those get translated into drools rules.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've had good experiences with Drools too. Never used FICO Blaze.</comment>


Python built-ins worth learning - <AUTHOR> https://treyhunner.com/2019/05/python-builtins-worth-learning/ <comment><USER5> Sets are my #1 favourite Python built-in. I used to have these tedious imperative functions for doing change detection on collections. Then I learned sets and it turned into obvious code like:

added = b - <USER4>

removed = a - <USER3>

repeated = a & b

Etc.

Of course this is set theory and not Python specific. But still. Learn sets!

<comment> joatmon-snoo frozenset is a really nice one for enforcing immutabolity :)

<comment><USER6> Frozensets can also be keys in a dictionary.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> A recent(-ish) addition to Python 3 I also think is worth mentioning is the statistics module: [https://docs.python.org/3/library/statistics.html](https://docs.python.org/3/library/statistics.html)

Every codebase eventually needs an averaging function, now you don't have to re-implement it yourself every time. Plus it's a nice toolbox of a few different utilities that you would otherwise need to install numpy/scipy/etc. to get.

<comment><USER8> Thanks, hadn't seen this before!

I wonder why they didn't have just one median function and control its behaviour with keyword arguments instead of creating 4 different median functions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I disagree with only one thing in this article. Frozenset is _super_ useful. You should prefer frozenset over set by default imo. Immutable objects are safer to work with, often easier to work with (frozenset is hashable, you can key a dict with it), and sets come up _all_ the time in a lot of work. You can get by with a sorted list, but sets are nicer and faster.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great point. I do agree that those who use sets heavily should probably know about frozenset. :)

I've never very rarely seen these used in production code though. I'm also not as strongly biased toward them because set objects in my own code are often pretty short-lived so their mutability rarely matters.

<comment><USER9> I found myself using them more and more often as I started to adopt type annotations.

As you do that, you start to realize that you don't need a MutableMapping. Just a Mapping will do, much less a Dict. Same with Set.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Relatedly, I highly recommend Dave Beazley's "Built-In Superheroes" talk: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6VSAsKAj98](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6VSAsKAj98)

I rewatch it every 6 months or so and usually learn a new trick or two.

<comment><USER11> Any idea what tool he's using for the "slides"?

<comment><USER10> believe it or not, that's iTerm2 and the ipython REPL.

To borrow a phrase from Avatar: The Last Airbender, dabeaz is, uh, a mad genius.

<comment><USER11> I was really asking about the keywords he typed that showed the "slides" in the terminal. For instance, when he typed in "builtins" at the beginning, it cleared his screen and then showed a quick ASCII art image. I suppose he could have just built these functions, but if there is a tool that he might be using, that would be pretty handy.

<comment><USER10> no no, that's what i mean: he hacked the REPL up to hell and gone, and is actually using it to run his presentation. It's nuts. See ~04:20 where he briefly alludes to that in the talk.

<comment><USER12> I was at pycon when beaz programmed a set of raw socket server/client scripts running fibonnaci sequences LIVE from scratch in front of 1000 people using nothing but a text editor. The man is truly a mad genius.

[https://youtu.be/MCs5OvhV9S4](https://youtu.be/MCs5OvhV9S4)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I always tend to recommend intermediate/advanced programmers to take a look at `functools` and `collections` packages - they are filled with amazing things that you haven't even though you need!

My favourites are `functools.partial`, `collections.Counter` and `collections.defaultdict` that are used very often by people who are aware of their existance.

<comment><USER14> I use defaultdict so damn often, it honestly should even be a builtin in my opinion. You also forgot `itertools`, which imo is even more useful than `functools`. I use `chain` and `groupby` quite often. There's also `collections.deque` which is a quick linked list implementation if you need either a stack or a queue.

<comment><USER15> Forgive me doesn't deque mean double ended queue? Also why can't a simple array behave like a list?

<comment><USER16> Yes it does mean double ended queue. I'll assume you mean a python list when you say simple array. One drawback of lists is that you cannot add a new element to the start of a list in constant time (with a python list it requires O(n) time), whereas you can with a deque.

<comment><USER17> I had a script a while back that created really long lists at runtime by continually appending data as it came over the wire. The lists would quickly get so long that I needed to remove items from the beginning to conserve memory though because reasons I could only remove items one at a time. Long story short, converting those lists to collections.deque and making use of popleft() rather than "del l[0]" improved performance considerably.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> If you are reading this, the orange bar at the bottom 5% of my screen is hugely distracting. Please allow us to close it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for noting this. I rarely look at my site on mobile and hadn't noticed how big that widget was. I just spent a few minutes making it less visually obtrusive. I may figure out more ways to improve it later.

<comment><USER18> Thank _you_!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I notice that "globals" is on the "you won't use this much" pile. I am wondering, when using Python interactively from Emacs, I often do this kind of thing:

        if 'myvar' not in globals():
            myvar = ...

That way I can just execute the whole buffer instead of having to carefully be picky-choosy about what I send to the interpreter. It's especially helpful if the line involves loading a large file, calculating something that takes a while, or downloading something. Is there a _better_ way to handle this in an interactive context? Like an automatic globals cache of some kind?

(Note, it's helpful to be able to dirty the variable when necessary by simply,

        del myvar

    )

</comment><comment><USER20> Amazing post Trey, as usual. This is a very comprehensive list. I can't think of any other important function missing. My students will love this :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Santiago! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> This article covers a lot of good material and I like the breakdown of categories from essential > maybe you'll look this up some day.

My one minor suggestion would be to cover getattr and related methods sooner. I stumbled across that one pretty early on as I was learning programming and it was a serious "Ah ha!" moment. Dynamic lookups with a sensible default value are useful in countless contexts.

</comment><comment><USER22> > Many Python users rarely create classes. Creating classes isn't an essential > part of Python, though many types of programming require it.

Huh. Okay.

<comment><USER23> It totally depends on the kind of work you're doing. My first few years with Python I never defined a class. I (and imagine most people) were working on code get from a to b. There's a lot of that kind of work to be had. Only later when I started writing modules and libraries did I need to.

<comment><USER24> I also spent years writing Python scripts without a single class. I didn't really understand the point of objects at all. I used them because they were part of library interfaces, but I never created them. The scripts didn't have to manage much state, so writing everything in a pure-functional style worked fine. Nobody could really explain to me what objects were all about - all the arguments seemed to apply equally to functional programming ("re-use", "encapsulation" etc).

Then I had to write a piece of software that heavily interacted with various bits of physical hardware, each with masses of state (serial communication and so forth). Suddenly the need for isolating state became terribly obvious. After seeing how some libraries did it, I wrote a class for every bit of hardware that abstracted the state away and provided a functional interface. It all worked terribly well, and it was a real lightbulb moment for me.

<comment><USER25> You could have still kept the massive state in a dict or a list or a tuple and passed that dict around from one function to another, could you not? Why did it become necessary to implement classes?

<comment><USER24> Because I don't want to "pass around" the state - I want to hide it. Yes, of course it's possible to mingle the state in all the rest of the program, just like it's possible to scatter gotos everywhere instead of using structured control flow. But what I really want is to call EnablePowerSupply(), rapidly followed by SetVoltage(30), and have all the messy business of statefully talking over a serial port (and not having commands stomp on each other) neatly abstracted away. EnablePowerSupply and SetVoltage need to share state to do that. That could indeed be done by passing an extra parameter - EnablePowerSupply(blobOfState) and SetVoltage(blobOfState, 30) - but that's basically _exactly_ what objects are syntactic sugar for in Python. Only blobOfState is more usually called "self".

Oh, and of course there's not one, but half a dozen power supplies. You could pass around the blobs of state seperately of course, but now you have to manage their scope independently from the functions that operate on them - <USER4> useless decoupling that adds overhead. What I ended up with was something like:

[psu.enable() for psu in psus]

Which you can always do, whenever psus is within scope. Hard to get terser and more idiomatic than that.

<comment><USER26> I know it's a contrived example, but it's worth pointing out that using comprehensions to cause side effects is considered by some to be at least unPythonic and at worst an abuse of the construct.

I know this because I wanted to do the same thing and have looked all over for a justification for it. In this case most people seem to agree that the bog standard for loop is the way to go:

        for psu in psus:
            psu.enable()

Some people (my boss) will even put it on a single line, so you don't lose much terseness.

I think the rule of thumb is don't use a list comprehension unless you're going to use the list afterwards, else you're wasting an allocation.

<comment><USER24> Thanks for the heads up. I'm not totally convinced about "Pythonic" as a figure of merit for anything (often it seems to merely mean "clunky"), but it's a good point about the wasted allocation [1]. And the one-liner for-loop is almost identical to the comprehension anyway.

I think the reason I instinctively write it this way is because in my mind, I basically think of list comprehensions as sugar for map + lambda. I'm "really" trying to write map(enable, psus). But of course, it's a method, so you need the instance[2] - map(lambda psu: psu.enable(), psus). The reason I prefer a map over a for loop is because it's a habit borne of the principle of least power - map provides a guarantee than no "funny business" (data dependency) is going on between the elements of the list you're iterating over. I scrupulously avoid for loops on principle, unless I _need_ that kind of funny business. Of course in this case the for loop is so short as to make no difference, but like I say - it's a habit. In my code, "for" means "funny business here".

[1] not that it matters in this case - you're not toggling power supplies in a tight loop.

[2] Technically, in Python, map(psus[0].enable, psus) would work if psus was not empty. Or you could spawn a new instance: map(PSU().enable, psus). But ugh, talk about defeating the purpose.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> what was fascinating to me was how I fitted into the MUST SHOULD MAY MAYBE-NOT DONT matrix (in pseudo-normative form)

I used all but one of the MUSTS.

I used a few of the SHOULD

I used a similar few of the MAY

I only used one of the MAYBE-NOT (pow, and I am doing base arithmetic but not crypto)

I don't think I use any of the DONT

I'm interested in moving up on the SHOULD and MAY

</comment><comment><USER28> I am honestly a bit surprised divmod and complex are so high, I have only used them a couple of times myself - but I think they're almost always mentioned in "Intro to Python" books so most people should at least be familiar with them right?

</comment><comment><USER29> I've been writing Python for a little over a year mostly as glue code and scripting around AWS. I always had a sneaking suspicion that there was more I needed to learn and that I wasn't doing things the "Pythonic" way.

This article confirmed my suspicions. Great post.

</comment><comment><USER30> For a few moments I thought of all these years during which I could have just typed "breakpoint" instead of "import pdb; pdb.set_trace()".

Luckily it's been added only recently (3.7) :)

<comment><USER31> Wow I had the same reaction.

And that's despite the fact that I read an article a few weeks ago about this new feature! If you haven't read it, I highly recommend it, because there's more to the breakpoint feature than mentioned here (basically, you can set an env variable to choose which callable is activated on breakpoint, meaning you can turn on and off debugging on production systems, or even set prod systems to open a web port for debugging): [https://hackernoon.com/python-3-7s-new- builtin-breakpoint-a-...](https://hackernoon.com/python-3-7s-new-builtin- breakpoint-a-quick-tour-4f1aebc444c)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I miss the "map" function. Sadly it was removed in the transition from Python2 to Python3. In Python3, "map" is a class.

</comment><comment><USER33> i cannot remember the last time i used str() instead of a string format.

</comment><comment><USER34> Wish Python would get 'study' from Perl.

<comment><USER35> It sorta does, now that study() is a no-op in Perl: [https://perldoc.perl.org/functions/study.html](https://perldoc.perl.org/functions/study.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Stop using python, let it die for god's sake!</comment>


Is this mouseover effect too much? I like how porn sites animate onMouseOver - <AUTHOR> http://fandalism.com//

<comment><AUTHOR> Chrome is doing something funky with the nav bar text when you do the mouseovers.

Works perfect in Firefox.

<comment><USER2> I've noticed this a lot, just today I was doing a hover animation (using CSS) and for some reason my navigation and input elements all fade while hovering over this one item. Not sure if it's a webkit bug (it's the same in the latest Canary build too as well as Safari) or maybe it's a bootstrap thing as every site i've seen this problem on happened to be using bootstrap.

<comment><AUTHOR> Weird. Interesting. Thanks.</comment></comment></comment>


AI Software Learns to Make AI Software - <AUTHOR> https://www.technologyreview.com/s/603381/ai-software-learns-to-make-ai-software/ <comment><USER2> I think it really boils down to coder intention. Asimov's Laws be with us!</comment>


Google Sold Us Out: The Viacom Decision - <AUTHOR> http://www.profy.com/2008/07/05/google-sells-out-user-privacy/ <comment><USER2> What exactly constitutes "personally identifiable" is a very complex issue -- almost anything can be personally identifiable with enough data processing or in combination with other data sources.

The judge and Viacom are the guilty parties here, trying to blame google only distracts from that fact. These are the same people who are working on laws that will mandate ISP logging, allow them to search your laptop and iPod at the airport, etc. Google keeping or not keeping logs isn't going to help you -- it's just running from the problem.

<comment><USER3> "The judge and Viacom are the guilty parties here"

Are you sure? I swear Google was the one violating copyrights..

<comment><USER2> They are guilty of harming privacy, which is the topic here.

<comment><USER4> But they're only "harming privacy" because Google, supposedly, allowed copyright infringement to take place. That's how the law works-- in order to investigate crimes, your privacy is sometimes invaded (when there is due cause).

I'm on your side, though. This philosophy of breaking privacy for investigation doesn't scale with the internet.

<comment><USER5> This is a civil case though. If my doctor was accused by a patient of overbilling him, would it be acceptable for that patient to peruse (and perhaps leak) my medical records during discovery? No.

But for some reason it's OK for Viacom to see my name on every YouTube link I've ever clicked. Why are some things private and other things not?

<comment><USER4> If the doctor was accused of negligence, the court would be able to requisition all the medical records of his patients. (Actually this might not be true of a doctor, but in any other industry this would be perfectly legal.)

We're talking about YouTube being the accused, not an individual anonymous user. Am I understanding that right?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Honestly, I wouldn't be at all upset if Google turned only IP addresses over to Viacom. It's my username I don't want them to have.

</comment><comment><USER6> So if the judge believes that the ip addresses are useless for identifying users, why does he want viacom to get them? Doesn't make any sense?

</comment><comment><USER7> Sucks to be Alma Whitten right now. Hope all her stock's already vested...

<comment><USER2> Your concept of how Google works is way off. These blog posts are not off-the- cuff remarks by random employees -- a whole team of people put together that policy and statement as part of some other legal battle.</comment></comment>