Blind: an anonymous, corporate social network - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/08/11/blind-loyalty/ <comment> rc-1140 Blind is actually a cool, if at times strange, place. I've posted legitimate requests for advice on here, Reddit, and Blind, and the quality of responses were overwhelmingly in Blind's favor. Blind actually gave me real, if not blunt/brief, feedback about what I could/should do for various situations I've been in. Here and Reddit? The same tired old platitudes from well-meaning people that make them feel like they're helping and making a difference, but are in reality providing highly generic advice that could apply to just about anyone at most skill levels and just showed that those who did respond skimmed the title and nothing else.

Of course, there are in-jokes, people who take those in-jokes deathly serious, people with mental instability (though that poster is actually taking a break after receiving feedback, fortunately for them), people who lean waaay too hard in one political direction or another, and other unsavory people and topics. However, this atmosphere allows for some brutally honest questions that would normally get shadowbanned/shoved somewhere else/otherwise manipulated by others or people in discussion board positions of power. There have been a few interesting relationship threads, a really good AMA about someone who works in Japan (I wonder if it's Patrick McKenzie, the posts in the thread were REALLY informative to the detail he's gone into before. I've forwarded stuff he's written before to people I know who want to dream about working over there), salary numbers, advice for H1Bs, people going through rough times at work without having to reveal who they are without jackassing around with a throwaway yet still having an identifiable company attached to their username, and so on.

Dunno how long Blind will last for, but if you download the app and find you really don't like the cons, just don't use it every waking moment.

<comment><USER2> Currently, Mastodon is in a very similar state. I often have deep, insightful conversations with interesting people, some of who are even local! Its like Reddit circa 2008, but easier to find quality users to add to your feed.

<comment> rc-1140 Is Mastodon good now? I've never been able to have a conversation on Twitter that isn't with people I already know, yet people apparently do; I don't know how they do it. Mastodon has always seemed like an even bigger mess than Twitter was with the same issues but it's "federated," as if that's supposed to solve any actual issues.

<comment><USER3> With joinmastodon.org you can try to narrow in an instance that meets your interests. I signed up for three to just explore which ones I wanted to be on. One was Mastodon.social which is fairly large, and then two more niche ones. Being able to explore the niche ones for their topics, but knowing I can hop into federated or .social is kind of like utilizing lists.

I think all of this allows you for to more easily just throw a thought out there and get some engagement since your smaller niche instances will have less noise.

<comment><USER4> mastodon.social is closed/invite only now. Do you know any way to join that instance now?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've seen several anonymous corporate networks before (three other full implementation actually, all reach exploding point). The same four things always pop-up, unless you ban one explicitly:

\- mental health; single-handedly justifying the existence of every instance. The posts are boring overall: introversion, depression, burn-out, what to do (and the well-meaning responses to go see a doctor and hopefully links to internal references claiming the company will support you); it's as exciting as a waiting room, but it's helpful. On that note, if you feel like something is wrong and you are not sure: GO TALK TO A DOCTOR.

\- salary; kind of hard not to have it here, but anonymity takes off the ability to tell people "Nah, you are incompetent, that's what you deserve" so it's a little locked; I really like the idea that Blind turns it to a conversation recommending LeetCode & co. because that's an interesting, objective exit from that conversation.

\- bitching about bad manager: I think that's the best aspect of those, but the tone can be very nasty and trollish. Unless you have great leadership who can take it, own it and improve, not the best idea. With good leadership, it can be staggering what feedback can accomplish.

\- internal in-fighting, notably around incompetence and team rivalry, Social Justice, etc. Same as previous: good to take the temperature overall, but the tone is structurally problematic, unless you have really good content moderators. I'd recommend to limit some of that explicitly.

</comment><comment><USER6> >> "With Blind, users are completely anonymous, but are required to submit a verified work email to join a company channel."

That sentence doesn't make sense. How can it be "completely anonymous" but you have to submit an e-mail address?

<comment><USER7> I interpreted that as "completely anonymous to users". The owners/operators of Blind have the mapping between pseudonyms and email addresses. These will not be available to others until the inevitable data breach or exit (possibly to one of the organizations whose employees use the service).

<comment><USER8> One possible approach is to relax the gate-keeping guarantees, so that every "wait for email and click the link in it" exchange allows the user to create one new account which is _not_ scoped to their work-email address but simply associated with the company-name. (Like almost all privacy, this requires some basic "we're not recording that" choices by the social-media site.)

During the creation process, the user gets the _option_ to set a non-work email for password-recovery etc.

The main risk of this scheme is that a single email@example.com could easily create a thousand sock-puppets or "give" new accounts to people who don't work at the same company.

This can be minimized by only allowing a corporate e-mail address to be used once, but that does mean keeping lists of which users in a given company happen to _have_ accounts, even if a direct email-to-account link doesn't exist. (It seems pointless to hash the "already used" emails for privacy, since the search space is so small.)

<comment><USER9> One could probably use some crypto to not even require any "we're not recording that", e.g. let the user use a ring signature ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_signature](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_signature)) which could have been produced by any of the people registering a work address.

You should probably put in some extra work to make sure that people really are anonymous, e.g. you could make the Blind server a Tor hidden service, forcing people to connect to it using Tor and therefore not revealing their IP address. Basically making sure that Blind is not even accidentally exposed to any personally identifiable information.

<comment><USER8> Neat, I hadn't heard of ring signatures before -- but unfortunately it sounds like it involves (A) a _predefined and fixed_ set of users and (B) all of them already having public keys.

If so, then you can't really use a ring-per-company, because you'd first need an authoritative list of all current employees (whether they have an account or not) and their public keys, and you can't easily add (or drop) employees without creating a new ring.

<comment><USER9> I was thinking, each time you register a company email you would get a reply with a list of all the public keys from people who registered with the same email domain. It would mean that the first few people to sign up would have a small anonymity set---but they could wait a bit, and then send another email and get an updated list of the public keys of people who have registered since then. As long as you wait until (say) 100 people have signed up, you'd still have some cover.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I like Blind, but I also hate Blind. It's full of excessively cynical replies and people who like to troll each other. I have found lots of great advice, yet still come away feeling really annoyed or frustrated.

To contrast the character, Reddit comments are usually full of jokesters who make me laugh, and Blind takes itself way too seriously. Sometimes humor and lightheartedness go a long way to building a powerful social network platform.

<comment><USER11> Is there a recommendation system within Blind? It seems it would be the obvious solution to remove 'undesired content' to the user..

<comment><USER12> You can block users so you never see their posts/comments which might work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Blind is the quintessential "I feel worse after opening it" app for me. The self and company loathing is pretty incredible and I would hope many of the extremely negative posters find greener grass elsewhere.

<comment><USER14> So you're saying it's "'Nextdoor' for work"?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I signed up for this a few years ago when I was working for a larger company. It was full of people using the anonymity to be very petty. I deleted my account without posting anything.

<comment><USER16> This has been my experience. Most posts I see criticize a team, product, or person (usually an executive) — and it's often clear they have very little context / criticism is usually directed from one part of the org to another.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I found Blind a pretty good social network for the niche. I got a useful info on industry salaries and interview prep from the general section. The company I work for had a section that was pretty negative and I think doesn't reflect the overall thought of employees but still had great info regarding salary data and promotions. Along w/ entertaining (albeit hard to verify) rumors.

</comment><comment><USER18> How do they guarantee the anonymity? Is it only because the promise it? If we look at criticism against Proton Mail / Lava Bit you have the same problem that they will only be private if they can be kept honest? See [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8755492](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8755492)

Also, how do they expect to monetize this? Selling users data that is anonymized?

</comment><comment><USER19> It's the yik-yak for the corporate world; an absolute cesspool. Whatever valuable information exists on that platform isn't worth sifting through all the toxicity, as some others here have alluded to. I installed it and deleted it forever within 45 mins. Don't do it to yourself, folks.

</comment><comment><USER20> I checked Blind and total compensation info is pretty much in the right ballpark (for my company and my partner's company). This must be a nightmare for HR, who wants to hide that data as much as possible.

<comment><USER21> If Blind's TC information is accurate, I am criminally underpaid.

<comment><USER22> Right?? Apparently everyone on blind is making $400k TC with four years of experience.

<comment><USER23> They're buying those $1.2m houses somehow; making 1/3rd the median price is a pretty tame explanation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> The lack of a strong karma system on Blind(the "likes" are a pretty casual form) makes the advice so good there. With karma, you write for the entire audience to gather points. Without karma, you write to a person. Also the lack of political correctness makes for outstanding real world applicability. I've done a similar comparison with asking about cycling on bikeforums.net vs Reddit. bikeforums responses were far more informative and open minded and diverse, most of all specific to me.

<comment><USER25> It's easy to get banned. People use the report button to wage war on posters that they don't agree with. That's not better than a karma system.

I started two of the most popular threads on Blind and was banned for life. I contacted their support and the response was one word, "DENIED." Great people over there.

<comment><USER26> > I started two of the most popular threads on Blind and was banned for life

Knowing what gets popular on Blind, I have a feeling that these topics were intentionally inflammatory and probably deserved a ban. Feel free to prove me wrong.

<comment><USER25> I don't have anything to prove. Continue posting your feelings if you like.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> "and the US Navy coming online recently."

What could go wrong?

Certainly an app that helps rebalance the information-asymmetry between employers and workers is welcome, but I think it could be quite open to abuse when it comes to national security. Are the CIA and FBI going to join? Will we see the development of cyber 'sentiment/morale bombs'?

</comment><comment><USER28> Who owns Blind? Where are they based? Sounds like a great way to mine insider info from tech companies naive employees.

<comment><USER29> Some koreans

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I still don't really get why these companies that have absolutely no specific regional relevance are limited to sign up from two countries. Is there a problem with someone from say Germany, working for a German company signing up?

<comment><USER31> It might have to be with i18n and load (and bill) on infrastructure too!!! You don't want to pay too much too soon... at least not until there's a sufficiently validated product/market fit and there's a strong business model generating some cash. For what I've seen, it's free for now and I'm not sure that companies can be a good target for selling informations: it would be a hard sell to the content-producer (common users) and to the so-called awfull HR. So I guess that they're just test-driving in "local" markets (Silicon Valley & S.Korea) to validate the business model without too much technical hassles

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I've heard of Blind but I'm too chicken to give them my work email address. Can anyone on HN testify to having done this? If so, aren't you concerned that your employers can see you're using Blind?

<comment><AUTHOR> Blind is approved by my CEO. Your employer shouldn't discourage you from being on Blind.

<comment><USER33> I had never heard of Blind til now, from what I read in this thread it seems like a workplace Ashley Madison waiting to happen.

Let everyone vent about their employer anonymously until there is a breach and all employers get to see who said what.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I like the idea of the service. But I am having a hard time trusting it. It does require a verified work email address, which seems logical, else how would they know who works where. My worry is the chink in the armor that allows for abuse or exploit. You would be anonymous today, and not so much tomorrow.

Seems to be active only in US and South Korea. Any reason for this?

</comment><comment><USER35> I love it! This same idea has occurred to me but I didn't realize somebody already did it.

</comment><comment><USER36> i.e. yik yak, but centered around employer and not location?

<comment><AUTHOR> Correct.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> "With Blind, users are completely anonymous, but are required to submit a verified work email to join a company channel."

That sentence seems to contradict itself.

</comment><comment><USER38> I just download Blind for iOS, denied it the ability to send me notifications and it just crashes on launch. Does that happen to anyone else?

</comment><comment><USER39> Are Blind conversations still indexed by Google?

</comment><comment><USER40> wow, i thought about making exactly this a while ago, so glad someone did it ! haven't been this excited in weeks.

</comment><comment><USER41> Microsoft has 124,000 employees. You're telling me one in three are on Blind? Yea right.

<comment><USER42> Do you use Blind? You'd be surprised. Especially how it works at companies that big - aka network effects.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> >It has over 2 million users, including 43K at Microsoft, 28K at Amazon, and 10K at Google. In

It's remarkable how unhappy the people at Amazon on Blind are.

Literally everyone is just leetcoding to get out or bragging about getting in early enough to make a killing on the stock surge.

<comment><USER44> I just browsed through it and there's a ton of Amazon workers bragging about how hot they are and how much money they make, how girls in Seattle won't suffice because the "attractive ones aren't well educated", masturbation, "dealing with dumb people".

Seems like a tech bro nightmare.

<comment><USER29> The key is to just laugh it off and consider it trolling, jokes, whatever. Most of it is but there's useful info there also and people who feel oppressed by the SJW movement at work let off the steam in a safe space (how ironic).

<comment><USER45> God forbid people address an issue directly. I accidentally upset a coworker by a comment I made, we had lunch and it was addressed. I realized why it bothered the person, we hugged and moved on and have a good working relationship.

Blind just sounds plain stupid and a terrible idea for work place culture.

<comment><USER43> >hugged

Oh jeez I hope you didn't create a new issue

<comment><USER45> It's hard to describe the context of the situation but it was more of a funny moment. We hashed something out as adults.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Super interesting.

<comment><AUTHOR> very interesting.</comment></comment>


Why not drones or bluetooth devices to make the traffic stop interactions safe? - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/4rmo35/graphic_video_shows_black_man_bleeding_after/d52yzfy <comment><AUTHOR> In the days where we can talk across the world in a matter of miliseconds, why can't we make the interaction at routine traffic stop easier?

In light of tragedies of police shootings, it is deplorable for the tech community to not think about simple, cheap solution to the interactions between citizen and police. It should be easy to exchange information with cops from safe distance about driving licence, vehicle registration, audio/video inside the car if permitted by driver, insurance information etc.

Please don't stop because it can't be monetized easily. May be municipalities would pay per transaction to get information remotely or drivers insurance would pay for the each safe exchange. I am sure insurance companies, citizens themselves and municipalities are interested in making routine traffic stop safe.

Can we do this please?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Why don't they use $500 Phantom drone to ask for identification and look inside the car? It's cheap and it would keep police, individual person serving as a cop, out of harms way on first interaction. It would give everybody a chance to breathe and take it easy. The cops could have a clear vision of the vehicle's interior much better than they can get through their own eyes. No risk of officer getting physically harmed. If the risk of officer getting harmed is removed then routine traffic stops would again turn routine instead of posing a risk of the citizen being shot down just because office considered an act by the citizen as threatening. The drone can record audio/video of interaction. The drone can carry out certain tasks by itself like reading rights. The drone can act as two way communication between the people in the vehicle and the officer in the police car that stays back at a safe distance. It can drop a walkie talkie in the car or just extend a microphone inside the car for them to talk to one another. It can quickly scan the driver's license, registration and insurance information back to the police car. It can match the driver's license with the face of the driver. It can drop handcuffs inside the car and verify visually that citizen did put the handcuffs on the hands. It can give instructions to the citizen about laying on the floor in a non threatening manner before the police comes near. It can metal-scan the citizen for presence of firearms or knife before the police comes near. It can phone the responsible person for the citizen, wife, mother, father, husband, siblings or friend who can talk to the citizen as the citizen goes through the more tougher part of arrests. The drone can be parked behind the lights on top the car and charged when not in use. It would know to phone home with its location. It would know how to fly back to the top of the car, park itself and lock itself to the car. Attacking the police drone would be considered attack on the cops, drone being extension of the cop. It would be punishable crime to attack the police drone. This can be done. Nothing said above is outside the realm of existing technology. Google, Phantom - please do this. $1000 per police car in America is not a lot of expense. It would make lives better for citizens and safer for policemen. Why not have a bluetooth device, inside citizen's car, with your registration, identification, insurance, medical, information that cops can request access to from their car. The cops can then remotely pull information from this device in your car from safety of their car. The bluetooth device could have a camera that cops can request access to and see audio/video inside the car. This will be much much cheaper option. Bluetooth 4.0 LE is easily within reach on safely parked cop car. Car manufacturers can build this, it can be after market addition. $40 device per car can make things a whole lot smooth and safe at routine stops.</comment>


Tesla Motors on Detroit Bailout - <AUTHOR> http://www.teslamotors.com/blog2/?p=66

<comment><USER2> From Peter Klein (via 37s)

"The proposed bailout of GM, Ford, and Chrysler overlooks an important fact. The US has one of the most vibrant, dynamic, and efficient automobile industries in the world. It produces several million cars, trucks, and SUVs per year, employing (in 2006) 402,800 Americans at an average salary of $63,358. That's vehicle assembly alone; the rest of the supply chain employs even more people and generates more income. It's an industry to be proud of. Its products are among the best in the world.

Their names are Toyota, Honda, Nissan, BMW, Mercedes, Hyundai, Mazda, Mitsubishi, and Subaru."

I think that foreign automobile makers would fill the space rather quickly. Some brands would disappear, but most would be continued one way or another.

It would also open up for innovation in the car space, something america hasnt had for a long time.

</comment><comment><USER3> I find myself enormously frustrated by this whole situation. I don't like many cars produced in detroit and I would never buy one. I don't want to prop up companies whose products I don't admire. At the same time, I don't want to see so many people out of jobs because the big three go bankrupt. I've never been to detroit, but I can imagine that if the big three went bankrupt the city would be in dire straights.

The people that are pondering these problems are going to have some very tough decisions ahead of them. Balancing what is better for the country as a whole and what is good for "detroit" (all the companies, people, and suppliers that are interwoven with the big three) is an enormously tough job.

<comment><USER4> Agreed, it's a tough situation. An important question is this: are the big three on life support anyway and close to death?

If so, giving them bags of cash may only extend their life a few more years before they crash and burn. Then we (the people) are out bailout cash and the people that might have lost jobs have now officially lost them.

<comment><USER3> This is what I worry about. The whole SUV debacle is interesting because it showed the US automakers making a comeback, but then gas prices soared and nobody wanted a big car like that anymore. It shows poor leadership to me that they weren't diversified into cars that would be feasible after a gas hike. Even if those cars weren't best sellers, they would enable a faster retooling into cars like those now.

I drive a '96 subaru outback. There is _nothing_ like it from american automakers. I used to live where it snows a lot, and I would only consider buying a subaru.

<comment><USER5> Ford Taurus X is pretty much the equivalent of the outback or Dodge Caliber AWD

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm no expert on Detroit's economic situation, but the detail I will never forget is how much it cost to park in a lot downtown for the day last time I was there. $5.

It's an easy $27-40 to park in downtown Chicago for the day.

I actually got chills when I saw how cheap it was.

<comment><USER7> You _can_ park for free in downtown LA, or even for paid parking.. $8 for the day in Pershing Square, and similar $5-$10 amounts all over the place.

I know this is a somewhat unfair comparison, but if the parking prices in Detroit had crashed I'd say there's something in it, but not in comparing to another city with different dynamics.</comment></comment>


I made a cheap home motion sensor and controller - <AUTHOR> https://www.stavros.io/posts/building-cheap-home-sensorcontroller/ <comment><USER2> For people looking to do interesting things with MQTT messages passing between devices, take a look at Home Assistant.

[https://home-assistant.io](https://home-assistant.io)

You can use it to integrate various 'smart home' devices, generic MQTT messaging, and a variety of web services.

<comment><AUTHOR> Home assistant looks great, I had installed it a while ago but didn't have time to really configure it. I should go back and devote some more time, thanks for the mention.

<comment><USER3> I've been using it for a while and quite like it. it isn't as flexible as OpenHAB, but I actually think that's a positive because it is a million times simpler to set up and tweak. Home Assistant really feels like the fully realized version of the various scripts and dashboards I had made myself before finding it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, I'm going to change all my embedded controllers to be compatible with it and blog about it. Home Assistant also led me to OwnTracks and I love that too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wow, I really liked this article. The entire process looked great and the explanation was rather simple.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! I was afraid it didn't contain enough code, or enough interesting bits. I'm glad you like it! You can take a look at the code on Github, hopefully it'll be easy enough to understand (it's a bit ad-hoc, so I don't know how much sense it will make to others).

<comment><USER5> I liked the use of the Expounder tool as well. Less work than jumping up and down to read footnotes, the explanations were well-written and fit into the article flow, and the animation was quick but nice. Nicely done!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! I hate footnotes as well, so that's part of why I made Expounder.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> That looks awesome! I made a similar thing: [https://email@example.com/flux-irl-building-a- hue...](https://email@example.com/flux-irl-building-a-hue-clone- bd62df85a456) Would you be interested in a collaboration ?

<comment><USER7> I'm working on a project like this as well!

Still in the early stages -- I just got my parts. I'm planning on using the ESP8266 chip + Arduino core ([https://github.com/esp8266/Arduino](https://github.com/esp8266/Arduino)) controlled with a simple web-app.

There's a handy library for doing the Chromecast style wifi setup here ([https://github.com/tzapu/WiFiManager](https://github.com/tzapu/WiFiManager)).

<comment><AUTHOR> The hardest part of the LED project for me was finding the right components (especially MOSFETs). Send me an email at hi at stavros dot io if you want to talk about it, I can also send you my KiCad files for the controller PCB (which I'll blog about after I get the fabricated PCBs).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> More circuit boards should have a label 'BRAINS'!

</comment><comment><USER9> expounder's pretty neat, wish there was a way to click on the explanation after reading it to hide it tho

<comment><AUTHOR> I got that from other people as well. My rationale is that, once clicked, the explanation now becomes part of the text, so why would you want to hide it? You read it and move on, so there's no sense for the link staying there and cluttering the text.

If there's significant demand, though, I can certainly make it an option. It sounds like leaving expanded stuff expanded bothers some people's OCD, which I can certainly understand :)

<comment><USER10> I'm in agreeance with you here. I like how it becomes part of the text. It's not like your adding paragraphs and that make the page unruly longer and cause you to lose you place. I say leave it as is. I thought it was really nifty when I saw it too. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, exactly. The idea is that you'd write the sentences being part of the text (as you would normally), and then just hide them behind an expounder link. You just need to take some minimal care for the next sentence to make sense, but other than that, it produces great results. For example, I like the effect it has on the "NodeMCU" link in the article, which you can click if you're unfamiliar with it and you'll get a fitting explanation.

Another section I like is the "rather optional", which explains the rationale for people who may not be aware of it. An author should not fall into the trap of hiding information that's not strictly relevant to the link, though, because then they trap the user into a "okay I need to expand all the links because who knows where the author has hidden useful information" mentality, which kills its usefulness.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is really cool. How does one print these PCB's after design, is there some consumer grade printer?

<comment><AUTHOR> I just send them off to dirtypcbs.com, and get 10 boards 2-4 weeks later. They're pretty cheap.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> How hard would it be to add AI that could distinguish between human and dog/cat motion?

<comment><AUTHOR> Impossible right now, as the sensor just gives you motion/no motion readouts. I think it has a way to configure for mass, though, so it only considers large masses moving. If anyone has any information on that, please let me know, because my blind cat keeps making my lamp turn on :P

<comment> squeaky-clean I really don't know much, but was looking up exactly this because of your post. It seems like there are two ways. With a single device, you're limited to just smart placement (orienting it away from the floor or surfaces the animal climbs on) and adjusting the sensitivity of the detector, which will reduce the range and still trigger if the animal gets very close. The Adafruit PIRs come with a pot for this [0][1].

The other method, which most of the ones that seemed high quality used is a dual-sensor system, tuned for different ranges and sensitivity. Most of the commercial ones on Amazon seemed to use a combination of PIR and something else, like sonar or microwave detection.

My idea for a quick "hacky" way to do it, would be double up on the sensors and place one 3-4 feet above the other and maybe use some tape on the lenses so the detection areas don't overlap. This way it would trigger for a person walking by, but not a cat walking on the ground, or jumping past a higher sensor.

Awesome project by the way. I'm also working on my own home automation project as well, I'm mostly avoiding low-level hardware stuff for now, but definitely want to play with it in the future. Bookmarking this and your other posts for inspiration.

[0] [https://learn.adafruit.com/assets/13829](https://learn.adafruit.com/assets/13829) [1] [https://learn.adafruit.com/pir-passive-infrared-proximity- mo...](https://learn.adafruit.com/pir-passive-infrared-proximity-motion- sensor?view=all)

<comment><USER13> PIRs measure temperature changes, not motion. I set one up in my kitchen and it got very confused whenever I turned on the kettle or the toaster. :)

Sharp make a range of IR distance trackers that are more useful for checking whether or not there's an object/person in front of the sensor.

[https://acroname.com/articles/sharp-infrared-ranger- comparis...](https://acroname.com/articles/sharp-infrared-ranger-comparison)

Adafruit sell one of the short range models, but the GP2Y0A710 is better for domestic applications.

If you're clever you could probably track the level of multiple WiFi receivers in an area and watch as people and pets change the distribution pattern. I think there was a commercial system that did that.

It sounds quite hacky and potentially unreliable to me, but I haven't tried it in practice.

I would have expect some kind of domestic super-RFID system to have appeared by now, but it doesn't seem to. There are issues with RFID and longer ranges but they should be solvable, and the potential market could be huge.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> At last year's Startup Conference, I really liked one of the pitches: Realiteer. It works with Google Cardboard, and it's the cheapest controller you'll ever see: 100% paper. And it worked really well, I tried it.</comment>


Apple CEO Tim Cook Happy with New Apple Pay Service – WSJ – WSJ - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/articles/apple-ceo-tim-cook-happy-with-new-apple-pay-service-1414474181 <comment><USER2> If you want non subscribers to be able to read the article you should link like this: [https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c...](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CB4QFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticles%2Fapple- ceo-tim-cook-happy-with-new-apple-pay- service-1414474181&ei=OSJeVOuIN5PesASWo4K4Ag&usg=AFQjCNEqikxz7IEIWOO_ltve3qCh4rRLjA&sig2=AnD- HYm8uCsGV8K3_gEpxQ&bvm=bv.79189006,d.aWw)</comment>


Ask HN: What Are Some "Garbage Deployment" Strategies? - <AUTHOR> The recent vote on rolling back FCC privacy rules highlights the fact that our browsing data is definitely used by many different companies to ostensibly create market analytics based data and either sell or sell and process that data.
So that's the law of the land now - fine.  That being said, as an individual entering into a contract with an ISP, I know that they are earning money off of me in different ways, but I have very little visibility over how much money that is, and how those savings are passed on to me, the consumer, if at all.
What I basically see is a business relationship in which I am giving money (in the form of data) for free without getting any money back in return (in the form of reduced fees, a check at the end of the month, whatever).  I would like to opt into with-hold the money according to the contracts that I have already signed with those third parties, but receive the same amount of service.
So excluding using Tor, is there a program or app out there which can totally muddy my browsing history up, basically an invisible browser that just randomly goes out there and starts visiting pages, clicking links, doing all sorts of things, thereby making the data about me worthless to these ISPs who are collecting it?
Going further...could such an app be built and installed on a large number of users, and then could that app pay that user base from money raised from those ISPs, essentially selling back the right to view that data again?
Edit: to clarify, in the "Going further" section I am referring to a service that one signs up for. <comment><USER2> [https://cs.nyu.edu/trackmenot/](https://cs.nyu.edu/trackmenot/)</comment>


Show HN: BidOnMyDay, bid to have me fly to you and do anything - <AUTHOR>

Looking for feedback on my newest project, BidOnMyDay: http://bidonmyday.com
I came up with this idea a few weeks ago when JetBlue reopened sales of their BluePass. You bid to have my fly to you, using my BluePass, and do whatever work you need done. I'm a web developer but I'm willing to do almost anything. Bids start at $1.
To add additional value I'm doing a video and blog post of each job, with do-follow backlinks.
http://bidonmyday.com <comment><USER2> This is a great idea and I hope it brings you a month of interesting adventures.

That said, hope you'll be cleaning my home some time soon. :p

<comment><USER3> I concurr, this is a fantastic idea. A book and/or blog series on your adventures would definitely count me as an avid reader!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> <http://bidonmyday.com>

</comment><comment><USER5> You might want to put a comment somewhere that bids will only be accepted if it is actually possible to fly JetBlue to get to the bidder's home/business.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll accept any location if the bidder wants to pay for the additional transportation. Antartica? No problem!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Seems like a great way for a startup to get some inexpensive attention via your services. Wish I had something to offer right now, good luck!

</comment><comment><USER7> Good luck! I was considering bidding, but learned that JetBlue doesn't fly to where I am.

</comment><comment><USER8> Any plans to turn this into something similar to Kickstarter where bidders can post their task for you and others can attempt to pay additional money to see it happen? Or is this meant to me more of a surprise for you on arrival?

</comment><comment><USER9> Pending Success, consider opening this up to anyone with the Blue Pass. I'm sure there's plenty of people who would be interested in this work model, should be easy enough for you to take a small percentage of each accepted bid.

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm viewing your site with Chrome on Ubuntu and your linked text is overlapping onto your other text. Sounds like a fun idea, though. I hope that you'll keep records for us to see. EDIT: So is your bolded text.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm looking into it. It's probably a font issue since Linux fonts are a bit different than OS X and Windows.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Interesting idea, though I can't help but think that you should have left a little more time for this to spread (it's labour day weekend after all)?

<comment><AUTHOR> Had I thought of it a month or two ago I would have given it a lot more time for promotion.

I've been working on it for a few weeks and needed to launch. The BluePass is only good Aug 22 to Nov 22. There are still parts I'm working on completing, like outgoing email and automatic confirmation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I have Dan this Saturday. A day of brainstorming the re-architecture of my website. No coding. Just thinking.

</comment><comment><USER13> ... is this right - someone bid $20,000?

</comment><comment><USER14> I like the idea, a pretty radical one too! :) All the best!! Do share the results with the community

</comment><comment><USER15> No bids yet? Come on people, looks good! Would bid but we are in London :(

</comment><comment><USER16> Wow good idea man.

</comment><comment><USER17> Doesn't mention whether this includes the option of "adult" services.

<comment><USER18> tangential: it amazes me more attractive women don't pull a natalie dylan.

<comment><USER19> My guess is that most women who decide to try prostitution has had sex before.

<comment><USER18> I dunno, once you hit 6 figures calling it prostitution seems...like it violates the connotations built into that word. Much less seven figures, enough to retire on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Any plans for carbon offset? Please?

<comment><AUTHOR> If I can find a legitimate way of doing it that's backed by science and not some feel-good greenwashing I'd consider it. Recommendations?

<comment><USER20> <http://store.terrapass.com/store/c/18-Carbon-offsets.html>

I know South Park-style anti-liberalism can be fun, but we don't have to let the word "green" be sucked up by big business.

Offset your carbon for this little adventure of yours, please. Sometimes, flight travel is unavoidable, and, sometimes, people can barely afford the flight yet alone offsets. However, this whole experiment is obviously not about affordability or unavoidable flights, right?

Thank you!</comment></comment></comment>


PSA: Don't Rebrand (If You Rely on Google for Traffic) - <AUTHOR> My hard-learned advice for other companies: if you're thinking of rebranding and rely on "organic" traffic from Google: don't do it.
Our story:
In mid-November, I rebranded our company from RepeaterStore.com to Waveform.com.
Why? We've been RepeaterStore since we first started the company back in 2007. The industry has moved to calling the devices well sell "boosters." And a big part of our business is now installing Distributed Antenna Systems in larger buildings.
I spoke it over with our team and got buy-in. I explained the risks as I understood them: from every piece of guidance I'd read, we'd expect a significant loss in traffic, but a relatively quick recovery over the course of 2-3 months.
We checked to make sure our new domain had a clean history. We set up 301 redirects from every URL on RepeaterStore to our new domain. Everything on our backend stayed the exact same, as did our overall URL structure. We ran crawl tests. We followed every piece of guidance that Google provides for moving domains, including submitting via their "Change of Address Tool."
The loss in rankings happened immediately: the next day, we lost 65% of our referral traffic from Google.
We waited 90 days, expecting our traffic to begin to recover. But there wasn't even the slightest bump.
We reached out to SEO consultants. Had we done something wrong? They found some minor issues, but nothing that wasn't also an issue on our old site.
It's now been 170 days. Our traffic remains 65% lower than before we changed our domain. Things may rebound at some point. But I can't continue to wait for that to happen.
As time has gone on, I've learned that Google's algorithm simply doesn't "understand" when a company rebrands. Their
Change of Address" Tool is meant to help. But it's far from being a panacea.
If you're considering a rebrand and rely on traffic from Google: please heed this warning. Don't do it. <comment><USER2> Did you ensure your new domain was indexed before doing the switchover? that seems to be a common mistake - people just turn off one domain and turn on the second domain the same day.

I've had success with launching the second domain (resolving to the same server as the first domain), waiting for the pages to be indexed, then 301 redirecting the old domain to the new domain / submitting the request via webmaster central.</comment>


Ask HN: What does good look like for an ISP? - <AUTHOR> I'm on the verge of going live with a new venture which as an ISP.
(We're in the UK, and for those not in the US you may not be aware that the ISP market in the UK is heavily regulated to facilitate competition. For detail, Google for the history of Openreach)
At the moment my existing business is a content ISP, which means we have racks in DCs serving content to the world on behalf of customers. What I'm about to launch is an access ISP, which is the other side of the coin: providing connectivity to end users. This means that network etc is already in place, and I'll be using the other half of the duplex.
I have a pretty good idea what good looks like in this space, but I also want to avoid both wasting my time on unnecessary and also missing something valuable.
So, I'm asking HN: what does good look like for an ISP to you? What differentiates the best from the worst? What services should they supply? What services shouldn't they supply? How do you want to pay? DHCP vs static vs ppp? IPV6? DNS? NTP?
For a little more context, this is a B2B venture and pure fibre. <comment><USER2> I'm in the UK too. My tuppence, after working with a number of companies big and small (and huge):

\- reliability, reliability, reliability. It doesn't matter if your network is superfast at 3am in the morning if it doesn't stay up properly at 2pm because Americans come online; I will always just note the latter.

\- most businesses would love to get a prepackaged vpn solution that works with little fuss and supports a lot of different devices. They should also be able to turn it off if they later move on to some other product.

\- make it super-easy to associate a server name to an IP, and have it reachable from the entire network. That's what most people care about, from their networks.

\- ignore basic mail services, Office365 and GMail are unbeatable. But you can offer admin services, like managing O365 for them, making regular backups and so on.

In my book, the best ISP is the one that gives me simple tools for the most common tasks, offers tons of reliability, and gets out of the way. For others, it will be the one they can call and tell "make it so".

The worst is always the one where you have to fill some Word document with complex network details you don't know anything about, just to open port 80 for machine X. Nobody likes bureaucracy.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback :)

Based on the comment about firewalls and VPN, would you prefer to be given a router/fw then? (as opposed to a wires only service)

<comment><USER2> A lot of customers will want the full service, yes.</comment></comment></comment>


Google who? Expedia largest traffic source for Priceline - <AUTHOR> http://www.tnooz.com/2012/02/06/news/google-who-expedia-largest-traffic-source-for-priceline/

<comment><USER2> It looks to me like they have a pretty healthily balanced of traffic sources. Quite a few within a few percentage points, nothing really dominating.</comment>


Skype for Business Alternatives: Why Nuro, the Cyber Security Messaging Choice - <AUTHOR> http://nuro.im/skype-for-business-alternatives/ <comment><USER2> I scanned the website, but there's nothing about the architectural or technical aspects of Nuro's security model, so I am still wondering what it actually does to achieve its claims.</comment>


Snowflake's shares soar 130% in early trading after IPO - <AUTHOR> https://fortune.com/2020/09/16/snowflake-shares-soar-after-ipo/ <comment><USER2> Bill Gurley is not happy [https://twitter.com/bgurley/status/1306012664582361089](https://twitter.com/bgurley/status/1306012664582361089)</comment>


Ask HN: Are Australian Encryption Laws Affecting Employees Already? - <AUTHOR> Mentioned in a [1] previous post, some people are worried about employment opportunities for Australians, based on these restrictive new encryption laws. Has anyone encountered trouble as an Australian or working in Australia?<p>[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19507211 <comment><USER2> By some readings of the legislation, if it is affecting employees they're not allowed to tell you.</comment>


Computer Specialist Who Deleted Clinton Emails May Have Asked Reddit for Tips - <AUTHOR> http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-09-19/paul-combetta-computer-specialist-who-deleted-hillary-clinton-emails-may-have-asked-reddit-for-tips?src=usn_rd <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12535358](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12535358)</comment>


Germany: Migration experts propose cash-for-visas for Africans - <AUTHOR> https://www.dw.com/en/germany-migration-experts-propose-cash-for-visas-for-africans/a-53267249 <comment><USER2> Considering how much people are willing to pay to criminal gangs in order to enter the EU illegally, I see two possibilities:

1\. This cash deposit is lower or in the same ballpark, and people will gladly pay it and forfeit it by not leaving.

2\. It is much higher. This seems very unlikely but would keep the incentive to enter illegally.

I think that effective migration control cannot avoid strong and effective enforcement, especially control of borders.</comment>


Show HN: Use Windows 10 Apps APIs Directly from Node.js and Electron - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/NodeRT/NodeRT <comment><USER2> This is very nice! A while back, I attempted to interact with Bluetooth/BLE on Windows 10 with Node.js, which didn't go particularly well... I switched to ChakraCore (pretty rough at the time but required for node-uwp support) which was supposed to give me access to the Windows APIs but nothing was working out as expected, so I ended up dropping my project. Thanks to this, I might be able to give this another shot! I see there's an open issue for Electron, I'll try and give it a shot over the weekend too.

It would be very nice if the WinMD thing could be system-agnostic (within reason of course), so that the generated modules aren't specific to a particular version of Windows. I admittedly know very little about this, so I'm guessing it's a lot more complex than I realize.

<comment><USER3> Yes I'm wondering about this too. Say I want to build a windows application with electron, and I want to use geolocation or bluetooth, does the app need a module for each version of windows if I want to support multiple versions of windows? Or would it perhaps even be possible to generate the modules for the appropriate windows version on the fly from the app itself?

<comment><USER4> The Windows runtime is backwards compatible, so there are no breaking changes in WinMD files. You should be able to just generate a module for the latest available version of Windows.WinMD.

Attempting to call functions which don't exist on the OS you are using should just result in E_NOINTERFACE being surfaced by this projection.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Actually what I like more is the generator.

It looks quite nice idea to fork and re-purpose it to generate projections for other languages besides JavaScript.

Specially because the documentation how to create language projections is quite sparse and requires COM knowledge.

So the generator accessing the .NET metadata from a .NET language is more appealing than the existing COM API to work with WinRT types.

In any case, nice work.

<comment><USER6> There's also a work-in-progress (but working - it processes all WinMDs) generator for Rust, being developed by Patrick Reisert: [https://www.github.com/contextfree/winrt- rust](https://www.github.com/contextfree/winrt-rust)

(I started this GitHub repository but this has been developed 100% by Patrick so far, since everything I was working on was done much better by him. His fork is at [https://github.com/Boddlnagg/winrt- rust](https://github.com/Boddlnagg/winrt-rust) )

<comment><USER5> Quite nice. Thanks for the heads up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The generator is cool, but I'd focus more on the output; that is what people will care about. It's output is also fairly static, so focussing on the generator doesn't make sense (although it's very awesome!).

So, in short: cool project!

<comment><USER8> As one of the PMs at MSFT that built WinRT, this makes me smile :)

<comment><USER6> I really hope the WinRT type system/metadata (and Windows APIs) continues to be updated to follow advances and trends in the languages that bind to it. e.g., non-nullability annotations in metadata, to project to non-nullable references in languages (currently in newer languages like Rust, Swift, F#, Typescript, but potentially making their way into future versions of C#)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I guess you can't make win32 calls like with pinvoke?</comment>


Leaving Instapaper for Readability - <AUTHOR> http://agblog.com/entry/3932

<comment><USER2> Regarding the thought that Instapaper is somehow robbing writers of ad revenue, I think it needs to be noted that you actually have to visit an article to add it to your Instapaper queue. On top of that, Readability's model of paying authors isn't all that effective, a recent article on The Brooks Review[1] showed that even a moderately popular site such as his generates nearly no income from Readability's service, especially now that the service has gone free with optional payments.

Also, what happens to all those authors that don't opt in to receive payments from Readability? Does readability just take money on their behalf and not actually pay it out to them? It seems like that would be a legal grey area.

[1]: <http://brooksreview.net/2012/03/readability-ios/>

<comment><USER3> I know that lots of services let you add to Instapaper, but with Instapaper itself it's impossible to add articles without visiting them. I think I recall Marco talking about the fact that this is on purpose for the previously stated concerns. Also, Instapaper doesn't let you stitch articles broken up into multiple pages.

<comment><USER2> Actually multi-page stitching just got added to the browser bookmarklet, relevant blog post: <http://blog.instapaper.com/post/18556429689>

<comment><USER4> Marco previously felt uncomfortable implementing this feature (<http://www.marco.org/2011/07/19/siracusa-multipage>), so I wonder what prompted the change in policy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I left Instapaper for Readability as well, but my reason was entirely different and a first for me (at least on the web): Marco. I'm not even sure what it is about him exactly, but after listening to some of his Build and Analyze podcasts and reading his slanted blog posts I just found myself not wanting to use or support Instapaper anymore.

<comment><USER6> I can certainly imagine that making you want to stop listening to his podcast and stop reading his blog, but it is surprising that it would be _the_ reason you switched to a competing software product. Are Instapaper and Readability otherwise so similar that the merits of the apps themselves didn't tip the balance?

<comment><USER7> I think it's quite a good reason - for example, I try to avoid flying Ryanair because I find the guy who runs it objectionable. If I don't like the person providing the product, putting money in their pocket feels wrong.

<comment><USER8> Sure but the biggest claim I could make from listening to BnA is that marco is kind of a dick. I'm sure that a good 30% of the software I used is written by someone who is kind of a dick. He's not Pol Pot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> As far as aesthetics go I actually prefer the approach Marco takes with Instapaper. I think Readability does have more of a polished feel but in no way does this polish make the service any more usable. The Instapaper apps are top notch in my book.

The moral angle of feeling guilty and thus using Readabilty to compensate authors is total garbage. I disagree with this guilt trip blog post on so many levels. The 30% cut that Readability takes is the whole reason Readability exists. Essentially the writers are providing free content to Readability that they get to make a nice profit on. This is exploiting the writers to a far greater degree than Instapaper. Also, not every article I save I deem worthy of a contribution to the author. I may utterly hate an author's guts and am simply reading their article to better understand their insane philosophies before I decide I despise them. I'll fall back on an old Techdirt term: CwF+RtB. If I like a writer and want to support them I'll visit their site enough to earn them ad impressions, or I'll buy their book, or I purchase something using their affiliate link. I certainly don't need Readability paying people for me while pocketing a handsome chunk of change in the process.

</comment><comment><USER10> I really like Instapaper. I only really use it within the iOS ecosystem, and only by adding articles directly from the instapaper site, or from longreads or longform. I use an ad blocker anyway, so the sites aren't losing out on marginal ad revenue from me.

Maybe Readability or Read It Later are better, but instapaper is the first one I found, and I'm happy with it, and have a queue of about 500 nice articles built up, so I'm not likely to switch unless I see a better reason than "Marco is a bit presumptuous in podcasts" and "a competing site integrates a tipjar."

</comment><comment><USER11> I think Readability's model is a little presumptuous. Why do they get to decide unilaterally that they deserve 30% of the revenue? It's not like the App Store where you agreed to it. Given all the work that goes into creating an article, is extracting the text worth 30%? If I was a publisher, I wouldn't think so.

To me, Instapaper's approach is much more straightforward. You have to have gone to the publisher's site in the first place and seen all of the ads. You pay a flat fee for the Instapaper app, and can subscribe if you like the service. Why make it more complicated than it has to be?

<comment><USER12> Yes, Instapapers model is more straight forward, but you do not have to go to the publishers site and seen the ads, to add the article.

Instapaper provides and API to add links without visiting the site that is used by a number of other applications.

And I've written an app (<http://www.ryanwatkins.net/software/papermache> \- webOS and Android Instapaper app) that allows you to browser a feed of articles and add them to Instapaper directly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Do you feel guilty when you skip commercials on your TiVo? I don't, sorry.

An ad on a page is no different than a billboard or some other passive advertising. I am not required to notice it.

<comment><USER14> [http://blakemccreary.com/2012/03/banksy-on-advertising- quote...](http://blakemccreary.com/2012/03/banksy-on-advertising-quote/) *

"You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don't owe them any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don't even start asking for theirs." -- Banksy

* Just one of _many_ hits on google reproducing it, I'm not endorsing that blog in particular…

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I used Instapaper for quite a while, even wrote a small Android utility app to quickly bookmark a link to my Instapaper account and read it later on a bigger screen. But it was a long time ago.

I use Read It Later these days. Simply because it's a better product than Instapaper. It runs on all devices I own and use daily: iPhone, Android phone and tablet, MacBook, Linux laptop, Linux workstation. I bought Instapaper app and still have it on my iPhone mostly to check if its latest update has anything great which I miss in RIL. Nothing.

PS Marco's personality certainly "helped" me switch. But it's minor.

</comment><comment><USER16> As we all already know, Readability has been running what could be considered a scam by pocketing some of that money simply because the authors don't know about it.

And, I really don't see why I would have a moral obligation to pay for every single article I read. Not every article is worth paying for. 90% of the stuff I read is trash. Plus, a lot of blogs offer their own ways to donate. If a writer is good, they'll get my money anyway. I'm not handing out cash to everyone, and I'm definitely not giving it to Readability.

</comment><comment><USER17> Ever wonder if any publishers have actually collected any of your contribution? There's NO accountability about how much money actually makes it to publishers; since Readability does not seek the publishers, each publisher must be aware of their money, and go collect it from Readability, and if they do not, eventually it becomes Readability's. It's a great model, and the ethics are wonderful, but it suffers from this fatal flaw.

</comment><comment><USER18> Following this train of thought simply leads to a further moral dilemma. If the concern is that Instapaper is bad because it bypasses the content providers income methodology then Readability is also bad because it does the exact same thing. The only difference is that Readability has created their own income methodology, of which a portion they feed back to the content providers (sometimes). At no point does either service require a content provider opt-in before the service's users are able to pull content from the providers.

I believe Instapaper has an opt-out function for content providers whereby Instapaper users are prevented from adding that content providers content to their Instapaper account. Does Readability have that opt-out capability as well? If not, Readability could very well be considered worse than Instapaper on a moral scale since Readability then becomes a form of blackmail: agree to accept payment for your content that we decide is just, otherwise we'll simply eliminate your existing payment method anyway.

I fail to see how any moral analysis of either service could conclude one is good and the other bad. They are both bad from the perspective of the average content provider. Half measures, and possibly blackmail, do not assuage the moral concern.

</comment><comment><USER19> I left because I felt readability has a lot more features I like. The ability to hit ` on any webpage is awesome. I am also a click away from saving the article.

The latest iteration of Instapaper looks nicer in some ways, (looks like Reeder was an inspiration), but is painfully annoying in others. i.e I now have to touch twice to delete an article. Instapaper needs a stripped down Lite version that all it does is show articles and then let you delete them.

My 2c.

<comment><USER20> > The ability to hit ` on any webpage is awesome.

What does that do?

> I am also a click away from saving the article.

So're you in Instapaper? Depending on the browser you're using anyway, I guess. There's an official bookmarklet (1-click in browsers which still have bookmarks bars) and there is probably a chrome/button extension for your browser (I see a dozen or two on the Chrome extensions site)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I do not like to use ad-blockers but ads have made internet really impossible to use. Some sites have few layer of ads before you can actually access the content. I feel content providers don't respect their customer by putting hundreds of ads on their website. You do not always appreciate intrusive ads like music or video or resource intensive flash. If content providers can be considerate of the number of ads they put on their website, I will not have to use ad-blocker at all.

Read-It-Later is the only solution on Android, so, I go with it.

</comment><comment><USER22> Only one feature keeps me with Instapaper: Readability's crappy bookmarklet implementation. On my iPhone, I can save a page to Instapaper with a click of the bookmark. Readability, however, will throw up a prompt page asking me to confirm that I really want to save the page. The extra latency turns out to be really annoying in practice. If you're going to prompt, at least do it client side.

<comment><USER23> I have installed the bookmark recently and on the iPhone it does not ask for confirmation. Maybe they have changed the code?

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Revenue distribution is an interesting variation of Flattr.com's business model.

Flattr is more general as it's a platform for distributing micro-donations to creators of music, games, etc., whereas Readability is specifically about publishing and effectively offers a product/service directly to micro- donators. You could see the same model being applied to other verticals.

</comment><comment><USER25> Instapaper has a great api and yes it is not usable as readability. But I can still use instapaper on any platform.

</comment><comment><USER26> Like Instapaper, Readability doesn't have an android app, so any other advantage it may have is meaningless for me.

<comment><USER27> Instapaper has several (not offical, but good non the less) android clients:

[https://market.android.com/details?id=com.codecarpet.reading...](https://market.android.com/details?id=com.codecarpet.readingo.dev&feature=search_result#?t=W251bGwsMSwxLDEsImNvbS5jb2RlY2FycGV0LnJlYWRpbmdvLmRldiJd) [https://market.android.com/details?id=com.homelinux.hilo.eve...](https://market.android.com/details?id=com.homelinux.hilo.everpaper&feature=search_result#?t=W251bGwsMSwxLDEsImNvbS5ob21lbGludXguaGlsby5ldmVycGFwZXIiXQ.).

there's only one readability client, which is not that good....

[https://market.android.com/details?id=com.fahimk.readability...](https://market.android.com/details?id=com.fahimk.readabilityclient&feature=search_result#?t=W251bGwsMSwxLDEsImNvbS5mYWhpbWsucmVhZGFiaWxpdHljbGllbnQiXQ.).

<comment><USER28> I use InstaFetch on my Android phone: <https://market.android.com/details?id=pl.immortal.instafetch>

Even the Lite Version has everything I need: Saving links and from time to time even read them on my phone (now that I've got a Kindle that's not so often anymore)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I've left Instapaper and Readability for e-mail/desktop shortcuts and Readable.

</comment><comment><USER30> Read It Later beats both.</comment>


Amazon's algorithm is hiding the best deal from many customers - <AUTHOR> https://www.propublica.org/article/amazon-says-it-puts-customers-first-but-its-pricing-algorithm-doesnt <comment><USER2> I'm a little too lazy to create an account in which Amazon Prime is not enabled, so I'm looking at listings in Incognito mode (i.e. not going through to the order confirmation screen, which requires creating an account).

In the ProPublica article, the example of Loctite Liquid glue is used:

[https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer- listing/B004Y960MU/ref=dp_ol...](https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer- listing/B004Y960MU/ref=dp_olp_all_mbc?ie=UTF8&condition=all)

The first listing is indeed from Amazon.com as the seller. It has the cheapest price at $5.97 with "FREE Shipping" if you have Prime. So I assume that without Prime, there is a cost for shipping.

The next listing is as the ProPublica article claims, from "TheHardwareCityCo", with a price of $6.75 with free shipping.

Assuming that that free shipping, unlike Prime, is unconditional, it is worth pointing out that TheHardwareCityCo offers a shipping date from "October 3-12". I'm assuming that you also don't get the return guarantees that you do from Amazon.com.

Furthermore, the massive markup cited in Quartz/ProPublica -- $1,400 extra for buying a basket of the 250 most popular products -- only applies if you decided to buy each item individually, as Amazon automatically gives you free shipping (Prime member or not) if you buy $50+ worth of items.

Not seeing the big problem here, to be honest. Frankly, I get annoyed when the default seller for an item is _not_ Amazon, and I have to dig to find the listing that has Amazon as the seller. I have Prime, so that makes a big difference, but I prefer Amazon's reliability over spending time trying to figure out which third-party seller is the least shadiest.

<comment><USER3> > The first listing is indeed from Amazon.com as the seller. It has the > cheapest price at $5.97 with "FREE Shipping" if you have Prime. So I assume > that without Prime, there is a cost for shipping.

When I'm not logged in, it shows it has free Prime shipping. When I do log in to my account without Prime, it shows it has free shipping with an order of $49 or more. The only way I can find to see the shipping cost is to add it to my cart and proceed to checkout, which makes it a bit difficult to comparison shop.

> Assuming that that free shipping, unlike Prime, is unconditional, it is > worth pointing out that TheHardwareCityCo offers a shipping date from > "October 3-12". I'm assuming that you also don't get the return guarantees > that you do from Amazon.com.

Amazon also seems to overstate these shipping dates to make Prime shipping look better. Almost every time I have ordered something via a 3rd party like that, it arrives before the earliest date Amazon says it could.

<comment><USER4> >Amazon also seems to overstate these shipping dates to make Prime shipping look better. Almost every time I have ordered something via a 3rd party like that, it arrives before the earliest date Amazon says it could.

They do that for themselves as well. Their shipping estimates for super saver shipping is always exaggerated, with packages arriving in 2-3 business days rather than 5-7 estimate

<comment><USER5> Also worth noting, is new third parties are not allowed to give lower time estimates until they achieve a certain rating.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This article is complete nonsense.

I expect Amazon to recommend me products that it itself is selling or it itself has in its own warehouse, the sellers are secondary, if I wanted to buy from another seller I would use eBay.

The fact that there is even an option to then price compare with other sellers and purchase direct from the seller while on the Amazon website is a pretty cool bonus, not Amazon trying to scam me.

It's not a price comparison site searching for the best price and giving it to me (if I wanted that I would use a price comparison website) and it's not eBay or a marketplace, it's Amazon, a direct retailer with an added bonus of allowing you to search a separate marketplace but it's main business is selling directly!

The marketplace is mainly clever marketing by Amazon, people use Amazon because they don't need to look else where because it has everything, since even direct order companies sell on there, hence once some people discover this they just use Amazon for everything (I know lots of people that do this)

<comment><USER7> _almost wholly unregulated_

Is the key bit. They aren't trying to be coherent, they are advocating for anti-democratic law, aka regulation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> > Amazon bills itself as "Earth's most customer-centric company."

In general, when a person or company proclaims something like this, it should be viewed with robust skepticism.

If it were undeniably true and obvious from evidence, they wouldn't need to say it.

If they need to say it, it could be because no one else is saying it.

Similarly, if your boss or a co-worker says "I'm all about X," it may be that they just read a book that mentions X, or heard it in a meeting and just now decided that it would be good to be seen in that light. If they really were all about X, you'd already know it.

<comment><USER9> At some point in my life I realized I need to apply this to every single claim made by everyone, including people I trust and even my own thoughts. It's exhausting, but I can't not do it.

<comment><USER8> Self-skepticism is particularly hard.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The buy box prefers FBA sellers over FBM because customers prefer FBA sellers over FBM.

It also takes into account length of time as a seller, feedback, valid tracking, and other things that customers want.

If you want the lowest price, you can easily choose that one. But most people do not, and it's silly to expect Amazon to cater to the minority at the expense of the majority.

</comment><comment><USER11> Actually I prefer to sometimes spend more on a product, especially if the marketplace seller has negative comments.

If I buy directly from Amazon I mostly now that if it's broken I can easily send it back and that they are actually using most german laws (except financials), so as a Customer I know I have protection and the company won't die in the lifetime of the product.

</comment><comment><USER12> This article seems to be much ado about nothing. Amazon's buy box algorithm is weighted towards sold or fulfilled by Amazon because Amazon's metrics show that Amazon's customers prefer sold or fulfilled by Amazon.

Many Amazon customers prefer sold or fulfilled by Amazon even if the final price paid is higher than the best price. Sometimes the best deal is not the best price - one has to factor in the hassle of deciding whether a given 3rd party is worth dealing with.

Lastly, I'm also not sure how many customers use Amazon in a way where this supposed hiding of the best prices would be detrimental to them. Speaking as a non-Prime customer of over 15 years, I have never once paid for shipping for an Amazon.com/FBA item. I tend to accumulate items that I'll order eventually in my cart's "Saved for later" and use them to pad out orders I want shipped now up to the free shipping threshold.

</comment><comment><USER13> This doesn't even bother me, but the fake reviews are driving me nuts.

You have the influx of Chinese sellers that "bribe" top reviewers into writing "unbiased" reviews (lol!). I am a Top Reviewer, and I get about 3-5 emails a day asking for reviews in exchange for free items.

Not only that, sorting by Best Rating no longer sorts by a weighting of the number of reviews and the average rating, so items with 3 reviews all 5-stars beat items with 1000 reviews average 4.9 in the search results.

No wonder people play this game now.

</comment><comment><USER14> How is this surprising, given that Amazon is a privately owned, profit driven company?

<comment><USER15> Two quotes:

1\. "Amazon doesn't count shipping costs for its own products, or those it fulfills for others, when customers rank a product by "price + shipping.""

2\. "Amazon said: [..]The sorting algorithms [..] are designed for that 90% of items ordered, where shipping costs do not apply.""

This is not just misleading, this is a step beyond. It's a big company, it should take care of its customers and if it does not, customer protection agencies should go after it.

<comment><USER16> It's really not surprising that Amazon's algorithm takes "of _course_ you'd want Prime" into the calculations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Price discrimination in eCommerce has been known for some time now. This is an interesting read on the subject:

[http://personalization.ccs.neu.edu/papers/price_discriminati...](http://personalization.ccs.neu.edu/papers/price_discrimination.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER18> "The prices Amazon shows are ranked correctly for those who pay $99 per year for Amazon's Prime shipping service "

This may not refute the main point of the article, but if you are a prime customer it seems Amazon is still doing the right thing for you. (Unless I missed something).

</comment><comment><USER19> Consumer protection rules should require up-front labeling of final price paid, including all taxes, shipping, and fees.

Maybe, as some have argued in this thread, the algorithm is agnostically detecting Amazon's popularity. So I don't want to pick on just Amazon.

I have the same problem if I drive to a new state. I'll have no idea how much things really cost, because I made the mistake of not memorizing all local sales tax schedules along my route before getting in the car.

We should make all merchants play on the same playing field, one with the lowest possible incentives to confuse customers by showing them any price they won't actually pay.

<comment><USER20> >Consumer protection rules should require up-front labeling of final price paid, including all __taxes __, shipping, and fees.

I disagree specifically with the taxes not being added on a sale separately. I live in Mexico, a country that does mark any sale price as the sale price + taxes. Your taxes are already included in the final price. I will attempt to explain why I believe this is a bad thing below.

It's hard to appreciate it as someone on your side who grew up always seeing the taxed amount in receipts and the like, but here in Mexico people are largely uneducated about how much they are paying for purchase taxes. We are currently paying 16%[1] on purchase taxes aside from frontier states.

Every time this comes out in conversation people tend to be shocked, usually thinking the amount paid would be less. The sad part of this is that it's common not to know, if I had to guess around 95% of the community likely doesn't know how much purchase tax is, with a big part of the other 5% being business owners that have to deal with it in a daily basis.

What I believe is that constantly seeing how much you are being charged when it comes to your taxes makes you politically aware of how much your state is charging you. Having this number hidden for you is certainly convenient, I won't lie about that. Having the number you see on a shelf be the exact same number you are going to pay certainly is easier, however, I believe this knowledge by the population helps towards keeping politicians honest.

Since all of your citizens are painfully aware of exactly how much you are paying on every purchase, raising that number becomes substantially harder, since it would be met with much bigger backlash.

This is a theory that I have bouncing around in my head, and I don't have any hard evidence to back it up, but in conclusion I think that having visible taxes helps educate the population, and keep the government honest. Which would be my argument against hiding that number in a "purchase total" figure.

[1] [http://www.itimbre.com/impuestos/](http://www.itimbre.com/impuestos/)

<comment><USER21> In the US we have lots of hidden taxes too - corporate taxes (some of the highest in the world), regulatory fees, that kind of thing.

Additionally, we impose various surreptitious tax-like requirements on companies: health insurance can't charge your actuarial price (equivalent to taxing the healthy and paying the sick), rural and city customers must pay similar prices for various resources, etc.

But I agree with you - we should replace all these taxes with a single transparent consumption tax.

<comment><USER22> >corporate taxes (some of the highest in the world)

Highest theoretical rates, the effective tax rate is another story.

"The top statutory tax rate of 35% in the U.S. is somewhat higher than that of 30 other OECD countries, but the average effective tax rate — the actual rate paid after deductions and credits — is slightly lower than our competitors" [0]

[0][http://www.americansfortaxfairness.org/tax-fairness- briefing...](http://www.americansfortaxfairness.org/tax-fairness-briefing- booklet/fact-sheet-corporate-tax-rates/)

<comment><USER23> The quoted statement is highly deceptive. It is backed up with "Our average effective tax rate is 27.1% compared with 27.7% for the other 30 OECD countries, according to CRS", but 27.7% is the rate _including_ the US, which is not a sensible comparison. According to the cited CRS report, the average excluding the US is 23.3% [edit, see below: note that these are GDP-weighted averages].

Additionally, the PwC study the CRS uses [1] provides a full list and ranking. The only OECD countries with higher effective rates are Japan, Germany, and Italy. So, the US effective rate is lower than that of only 3 of "our competitors" and higher than that of the other 26.

[1] [http://businessroundtable.org/sites/default/files/Effective_...](http://businessroundtable.org/sites/default/files/Effective_Tax_Rate_Study.pdf)

<comment><USER24> At a glance I feel like I am missing something. If the average without the US is 23.3% and the US average is 27.1% then how can the combination of the two lead to an average of 27.7%? That doesn't seem right.

I understand that including the US would raise the average, but it shouldn't take it from below the US average to above the US average.

<comment><USER23> The average is weighted by GDP (another reason it is important to examine the rankings).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I think the article helped me realize that Ebay is a better match for me philosophically. Ebay is incentivized to provide a fair and transparent marketplace that empowers anyone. Their product is really the marketplace.

<comment><USER26> It's too wild for my tastes. I'm always worried about the seller, genuine brand, shipping .. Amazon built a reputation of good enough customer service I believe.

<comment><USER25> The reputation engine built into Ebay seems to be taken very seriously. OTOH as someone who has avoided joining Prime, typically waiting until I have enough purchases to qualify for free shipping, I've experienced constant nudge (the increase in free shipping sale amount moving from 35-50, the obvious skew towards Prime in search results) shopping at Amazon in the last two years. I'm just suggesting that for me, having a philosophical reason to support Ebay over Amazon (democratic, bottom up, vs. top down) will help assuage the nuisance factor.

<comment><USER26> I understand and agree with all your points. Just saying that amazon tames the psychological risk factor better than ebay, at least to my eyes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> and I quote from the article, "It is not clear why Amazon's algorithm now pushes its own products ahead of better deals offered by others."

Really now? Can you be that obtuse? It's to sell directly and make more profit than having a 3rd party sell an item.

Tl;Dr. Amazon prefers to return Amazon's stuff on top of searches. News at 11.

<comment><USER28> I've noticed in the last couple of months that amazon will tag things as AMAZON CHOICE or BEST SELLER that Amazon doesn't sell itself.

For instance, if you search for mouse pad in the US you'll see the Amazon Choice is a third party product as is the Best Seller.

The Amazon Choice has this right under the price:

Note: Available at a lower price from other sellers, potentially without free Prime shipping.

When you click on it you see you can save $1.30 if you're willing to wait 3 weeks. To me, this is handled properly.

<comment><USER29> But you don't really need to wait three weeks, so that delivery "estimate" is misleading.

UK suppliers tend to ship same day or next day, with delivery within one to three working days.

If a supplier isn't overwhelmed with orders, the rational choice is to ship ASAP, because it increases positive feedback and the prospect of reorders.

Not all suppliers understand this, but most do.

You only have to wait weeks on orders shipped from abroad. But the product source country is usually obvious from the listing, so you can allow for that - if you want to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> One thing i don't get: what role do small retailers play in this world, between the manufacturers and the large retailers/distributors like Amazon ?

Because idealy the manufacturer just sends stuff to FBA, pays FBA it's 15% percent, and becomes the lowest cost supplier, right ?

<comment><USER31> This can be very dangerous, because if for any reason Amazon decides to stop doing business with you, you must pay them to either ship back your stock or to destroy it.

A little time with your favorite search engine should find plenty of horror stories, especially from merchants selling used CDs, DVDs and Blu-rays, there's been suspicion in the past that false claims of piracy were being used to suppress the supply of these items.

And don't they charge for holding your inventory? They'd be insane not to, and that charge might be higher than you can arrange.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> This is a sensationalist title thrown onto a rehash of the real article, which can be found here: [https://www.propublica.org/article/amazon-says-it-puts- custo...](https://www.propublica.org/article/amazon-says-it-puts-customers- first-but-its-pricing-algorithm-doesnt)</comment>


Idealism of Ideas - <AUTHOR> https://abhinavrajagopalan.in/2019/09/02/idea.html <comment><AUTHOR> I'd posted a first draft earlier that day, and realized I had to add a few more lines, and give it a better heading. Sorry about that.</comment>


Mac Pro Build-to-Order Upgrade Pricing Revealed - <AUTHOR> http://www.macrumors.com/2013/12/16/mac-pro-build-to-order-upgrade-pricing-revealed/

<comment><USER2> _RUMORED_ MacPro Build To Order pricing revealed.

The clue is in the name of the website that you linked, and the article couldn't make it any clearer that these are guesses.

<comment><AUTHOR> True, sorry for not being more sceptical in the title. If I could edit I would. I don't particularly follow the Mac scene, I picked this up on Twitter from some hardcore game developers I follow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> RAM pricing is ridiculous, no one will order it like that, you can buy RAM for 1/3 the price and just replace it yourself. But i will buy a stock version. Plus a Dell 4K 28'' monitor. As soon as my Christmas bonus arrives :)

<comment><USER4> Where are you getting 1866MHz DDR3 ECC RAM for less than those prices?

The cheapest 8GB module I could find[1] is £75 ex VAT, 4x is £300 which is approx. $490USD. I think this compares fairly well with the $400 upgrade pricing on that rumour page.

[1][http://www.crucial.com/uk/store/partspecs.aspx?IMODULE=CT8G3...](http://www.crucial.com/uk/store/partspecs.aspx?IMODULE=CT8G3ERSDD8186D)

<comment><USER5> Newegg has 16GB and a 4GB sticks for $209.99 and $72.99 respectively. I have no idea if they would work with the Mac Pro though.

[http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820239...](http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820239756)

[http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148...](http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148771)

<comment><USER3> Yes real prices announced by Apple are not that bad. With this being ECC memory, that is okay - bit overpriced, but not an outright ripoff.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> These look really cool, but what is the target market for $3000+ desktop machines? I don't doubt that there are some people who could take advantage of that much power on a desktop, but it seems like kind of a niche product. I work with machines that do use their 256GB of RAM, but they're all servers. I'm a Linux user, so maybe the thin workstation model feels more natural to me. My MBP has 8GB of RAM and I rarely even come close to using that much, even running two or three VMs at a time.

<comment><USER7> Video editing and fx work can easily use 64 GB of RAM for even modest level of work. Large DTP and image editing work can also hit those levels. So basically anybody working professionally with video or print will have no problem putting these machines to use.

At the last place I worked they had people doing fluid dynamic simulation and they always complained about having too little RAM despite having 128 GB.

<comment><USER8> Wow! That's a crapload of RAM. Do you happen to know / able to say any metrics on how big the data/computations were in order to have to use that much memory?

<comment><USER7> Sorry, I never really had anything to do with that department so I don't really know any numbers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm typing this on a windows PC with 192GB ram.

64GB RAM LIMIT? WHY OH WHY?

it is 2013. 64GB is not enough for many serious tasks.

<comment><USER4> >it is 2013. 64GB is not enough for many serious tasks.

Pretty sure the Mac Pro only has 4 DIMM slots and I don't think 32GB DDR3 modules are available.

<comment><USER10> you can buy 32GB DDR3 modules on newegg: [http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820239...](http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820239607)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Hmm, will Apple be blocking non-certified CPUs and RAM? Cause those princes are kinda high, would be cheaper to get the base config and upgrade it yourself...

<comment><USER12> It's possible that it is like the Macbook Air and even the RAM is soldered on. The thing about the air was that everything was so jampacked, so they were forced to do that. Hopefully not the case with Mac Pro :<

<comment><USER11> I don't think so - the RAM is definitely removable based on the pictures on the Apple website, and I believe Xeons are PGA only, no BGA version like with mainstream chips.

But if Apple limits the processor and RAM models/types in the BIOS, it would make it very hard to upgrade...

<comment><USER13> I would be shocked if Apple sockets the CPU, they haven't done that in their other Macs for years, why would this one be any different?

<comment><USER11> Looking at Wikipedia, there _are_ BGA Xeons - a couple of new quad core, low power E3 models. However, all other Xeons are socketed, including the ones used in earlier Mac Pros. And all the 6/8/12 core Xeons are using either LGA-1356 or LGA2011 sockets (not PGA, my bad)...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Ouch. Very overpriced.

<comment><USER15> Feel free to produce a competitively priced, comparatively specced workstation in a similar form factor.

[/obligatory reply]

<comment><USER14> Got one next to me which cost less than the base Mac Pro for a better spec:

[http://www8.hp.com/us/en/campaigns/workstations/z820.html](http://www8.hp.com/us/en/campaigns/workstations/z820.html)

The form factor is not important if you're not carrying it around. In fact I'd go as far as saying it's retarded for a workstation class machine. Nothing swappable, nothing replaceable, graphics are shit, max memory is pitiful, no internal disk worth mentioning.

It's a joke. A fucking expensive one designed to get slightly mental people to spend money.

<comment><USER16> Where do you see that it is cheaper? That base model is $2300 without real RAM and no graphics cards.

Where are you going to get "Dual AMD FirePro D500 with 3GB GDDR5" for under $699?

<comment><USER14> You don't pay the retail price. Take 40% off if you call them up.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How I Won a Copyfight  - <AUTHOR> http://www.kyle-brady.com/2009/06/10/how-i-won-a-copyfight/

<comment><USER2> I hate to be contrarian, but was this really a fight worth winning? All that was accomplished is that the professor now needs to spend time every year retooling all of the homework problems so students can't easily copy from the now web-published version of) last year's answers.

<comment><USER3> I agree. I normally am all about openness and transparency but I can see the prof's concern over this particular issue.</comment></comment>