Ending support for Dropbox syncing to drives with certain uncommon file systems - <AUTHOR> https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Syncing-and-uploads/Linux-Dropbox-client-warn-me-that-it-ll-stop-syncing-in-Nov-why/m-p/290065/highlight/true#M42255 <comment><USER4> It's not encrypted ext4, it's ecryptfs (which acts as a separate layer entirely, creating a virtual encrypted filesystem on top of ext4) - <USER2> doesn't support some inotify feature or some extended attributes that aren't set correctly when used through ecryptfs.

If instead you used dmcrypt and encrypted the whole device or partition you'd probably have no issue as it looks just like any other EXT4 FS to the system.

Would be a lot better if they specified what features they need the underlying FS to support.

<comment><USER5> Home directory encryption via ecryptfs is now the default in most Ubuntu variants, and it would be insane not to attempt to support it.

That said, given that my Dropbox subscription just renewed (and that Linux is pretty much the only reason I'm still using it, since there is no OneDrive client I can rely on), I am really sad this seems to be a future direction for Dropbox.

<comment><USER6> I get a terabyte free with onedrive, because of the office subscription. I wish I had a good way to utilize it on Linux.

<comment><USER7> Out of curiosity, what happens if you office subscription ends? Obviously you won't be able to sync but does onedrive have some sort of grace period to let you download your stuff and at what point would it go and completely delete your data?

<comment><USER8> If it's the business version, you have full access for 30 days, admins have access for 90 days, then it's deprovisioned (source: [https://support.office.com/en-us/article/What-happens-to- my-...](https://support.office.com/en-us/article/What-happens-to-my-data-and- access-when-my-Office-365-for-business-subscription- ends-4436582f-211a-45ec-b72e-33647f97d8a3))

On the O365 Personal/Home or direct OneDrive plans, it looks like your data remains available but read-only for 3 months, then your account is "frozen." You can do a one-time 30-day "unfreeze" to get access to download/delete (to get under your quota), then it gets "frozen" again. Eventually it'll be deleted, but I don't see documentation for how long that takes. (source: [https://support.office.com/en-us/article/what-does-it- mean-w...](https://support.office.com/en-us/article/what-does-it-mean-when- your-onedrive-account-is-frozen-5e76147b-b7d5-4bcb-ba28-b91e3eb636b6) linked from [https://support.office.com/en-us/article/OneDrive-storage- pl...](https://support.office.com/en-us/article/OneDrive-storage-plan-and- billing-questions-989fce19-ade6-4e2f-81fb-941eabefee28))

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> For those interested in open source alternatives, syncthing, NextCloud (fork of ownCloud), and Seafile are some of the big names in this space, as others have mentioned. Personally I'm on syncthing. It's one of the best pieces of software I've ever used. My only complaint is it's not really instantaneous for me. In theory it works with inotify, but I've never quite been able to get it to work. I'm confident it will eventually, though. It's a fairly new feature if I'm not mistaken. For now, if I really just need to get a file from point A to point B right now, I used File Pizza.

<comment><USER10> I used to use ownCloud. Just curious - why is it not in your list of alternatives? Did the project die?

<comment><USER11> Nextcloud is a fork of Owncloud that's led by the original Owncloud developer, and it seems to be more popular with the free software and Linux community. It looks like both are still active.

<comment><USER12> Nextcloud is the successor of ownCloud.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The kicker is in the couching - dropping support for "uncommon filesystems" \- of which their definition includes the default filesystem used by the most popular distro. Just dumb or wilfully ignorant?

<comment><USER14> I'd bet that by Dropbox's user metrics "the most popular distro" still qualifies as "uncommon" for a Dropbox client. Despite being the year of desktop Linux, non-server Linux boxes are comparatively rare.

That said, Ext4 is still supported, just not with encryption.

<comment><USER15> According to shittyadmin, it's not even encryption it's encryption _with ecryptfs_.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I basically only use Dropbox because it is supported on Linux. Also its syncing technology is sooo much better than Google Drive you would think Drive was built by interns. However, they are taking their sweet time with newer features like Smart Sync. It's disappointing because I'm paying for these features and yet they're not supported on one of the platforms my whole company uses. All in all I really hope Dropbox doesn't keep chipping away at Linux - I fought hard internally to use it and I don't want to be proven wrong.

<comment><USER13> There's a decent open source sync daemon for OneDrive on Linux - I'm the packager who looks after it on Fedora. With the odd exception when APIs change it just works.

<comment><USER17> OneDrive doesn't support dotfiles and thus can't sync Git repos.

<comment><USER8> _OneDrive doesn 't support dotfiles and thus can't sync Git repos._

This does not appear to still be the case based on testing just now (creating a folder named ".foldername", containing a file named ".testfile" then verifying that they've synced up to OneDrive). Several years ago it didn't support syncing folders with a . in the name, but that was resolved 3 years ago.

With Microsoft's relatively new focus on Git, I can't imagine that problems with repositories stored in OneDrive folders would remain unfixed.

I will note that there are names that Windows Explorer won't let you create - notably, names beginning with a ".". That's an Explorer issue, not a OneDrive or filesystem issue - you can create such files and folders programmatically or from a command prompt.

<comment><USER18> I think you can do that in explorer if you change some of the options.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It appears this might be related to dropbox (mis)using statfs's f_fsid field as part of its authentication system. The dropbox devs apparently assumed that this field was stable, but on XFS (for instance) it can change.

dropboxforum thread here: [https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Installation-and- desktop-app...](https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Installation-and-desktop- app/Dropbox-on-OpenSUSE-Leap-15-Linux-unlinks-after- restart/td-p/278624/page/3)

<comment><USER20> That sounds to me like the most likely hypothesis in this thread.

I mean, the Linux manpage itself says it's stable and can be used, with the inode number, to uniquely identify a file. [http://man7.org/linux/man- pages/man2/statfs.2.html](http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man2/statfs.2.html)

I'm not surprised, though. Fancy copy-on-write filesystems like btrfs have some other subtle gotchas. If you allocate (like, really, not as a hole) a big file on btrfs and mmap it for write, you might see a SIGBUS upon writing because btrfs needed to recompress a block and the new compressed block didn't fit where the old one did.

I've gained a new appreciation for the predictability and simplicity of ext4.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Another alternative is nextcloud... It also has a sync desktop client and works great in my company for sharing folders with colleagues or keep business documents in sync on desktop and laptop.

There are even third parties that install it and manage it for you.

[1] [https://nextcloud.com/](https://nextcloud.com/)

</comment><comment><USER22> Seeing how an encrypted home directory is as good as the default option in Ubuntu, and seeing as it _already works now_ , this seems like a dumb move.

This is a shame because I just started using Dropbox significantly more to back up shared photos. Time to search for something else, I guess.

<comment><USER19> Not in the latest Ubuntu installs. They do FDE instead of home folder encryption.

<comment><USER5> The option to encrypt your home folder is still there in Ubuntu 18.04 (which I set up only yesterday), and appears after you set up volumes upon initial user creation.

It is (funnily enough) even possible to enable _both_ kinds of encryption simultaneously.

I'd say that they don't use full-disk encryption _instead_ of home folder. They just prompt for it sooner (and it is not the same thing if you have a modestly old machine, or a machine you share with other users).

<comment><USER23> I just spun up an 18.04.1 install in a VM to check, and I don't see an option to encrypt the user's homedir during installation.

Edit: It's listed under "Other base system changes since 16.04 LTS" [https://wiki.ubuntu.com/BionicBeaver/ReleaseNotes](https://wiki.ubuntu.com/BionicBeaver/ReleaseNotes)

<comment><USER24> IIRC it does show if you use the advanced installer option (ie where you go manually through all steps).

Atleast the ubuntu server does that, though I wouldn't enable that either way since it's a pain to deal with from the outside.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Excluding XFS is an odd choice as it's _very_ common in the server world.

I'm assuming encryptfs-ext4 has some attribute issue that prevents them for doing efficient deltas. That aside, what's the use case for encryptfs at all? Isn't it strictly worse than LUKS on the underlying volume or a volume file mounted via loopback?

<comment><USER26> I would hold my horses on xfs being unsupported claim. They explicitly said any modern file system with xattr is supported. XFS does fit that description. OP has drawn his own conclusions from the Dropbox reply.

<comment><USER27> My /home is XFS on my Arch system and I received the same popup from the Dropbox client. I can confirm that this does apply to XFS as well.

<comment><USER28> Same for Btrfs

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Ugh, I use Dropbox on several platforms, some NTFS, some APFS, some HFS and _exFAT_. The majority of my files are synced to exFAT because it's the only bloody filesystem that's officially supported across all major OS. No it doesn't support extended attributes and I don't care, 95% of my files are photos!

If Dropbox go ahead with this I'm bailing. The only reason I use a managed service like this is so I don't have to care about the technical details (filesystems etc.)

</comment><comment><USER30> As a developer I understand that each supported filesystem adds development workload and potential for bugs and at some point you need to weigh this cost against the benefit. The problem with this is that the people who use these filesystem are more likely to be opinion makers for other people in the choice of file syncing solution. Dropbox is big enough so they think they do not have to worry about it. But there is a real possibility that they will alienate just enough influential people, that this will erode their user base more than they realize.

</comment><comment><USER12> This is exactly why I stopped using Dropbox and moved everything I have to my own [https://nextcloud.com](https://nextcloud.com) instance. It's very easy to install and upgrade, it is stable, have way more features than Dropbox and you have total control over your own data. Overall a superior experience. If they would do something I don't like, I would just never upgrade anymore and be done with it or just copy the files out of the /data/Nextcloud folder and move to another one open solution.

<comment> dylan-m I set up a little Ubuntu Core server with Nextcloud for archives and sharing, and Syncthing for slightly cleverer sync of files I'm actively working with. Syncthing is decentralized, and it's designed so you can just pick any folder and sync it between your devices, which makes for a really handy workflow. But I like good having a long-running server in the middle that I can treat as canonical. That way I have one place for backups, my devices can sync with the server over the Internet when they don't have each other, and I can access Syncthing files via Nextcloud.

I was expecting to still be using Dropbox for a while after that, but it's been surprisingly low maintenance after the initial setup, and it has replaced it perfectly for me :) Highly recommended for anyone bothered by this change.

<comment><USER31> This echoes my experience exactly. I use Syncthing for all the documents I don't need a web UI for or that I don't need accessible on mobile (only between computers), such as my ebooks, PDFs, things like that, and Nextcloud for everything else.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Dropbox isn't even the cheapest or best file syncing service, they're basically all a commodity at this point and if they don't want you as customers... just go elsewhere.

<comment><USER33> Would you kindly provide recommendations? I'm looking for a sync service which can run on windows AND linux (which is why onedrive and google drive are out)...and i'm willing to pay a fair monthly fee.

<comment><USER34> rsync.net seems to get mentioned around here every now and again. I haven't used them though personally, so not sure of good/bad/etc.

Unlike what their name (rsync) suggests, they do seem to support Windows clients and aren't *nix only:

[https://www.rsync.net/resources/howto/windows.html](https://www.rsync.net/resources/howto/windows.html)

<comment><USER35> The documentation for the Windows client (1) almost seems like a joke. In the screenshots the text gets cut off in the UI, there's sentences that say "don't use this versioning feature we're about to talk about" and tons of text that's been striked-through. There's also zero mention if the client supports backing up open files via volume shadow snapshots which is basically requirement number one for any Windows backup client.

1 - [https://www.rsync.net/resources/howto/windows_backup_agent.h...](https://www.rsync.net/resources/howto/windows_backup_agent.html)

<comment><USER36> We're really all about the direct unix to unix connection.

The point of rsync.net is that you can log onto any unix system, anywhere, and interact with your cloud storage - with no software installation or configuration necessary.

The Windows Backup Agent works very well and has recently been updated but the documentation you are seeing reflects the fact that it is a secondary function here at rsync.net that is mostly provided for the convenience of customers in mixed environments.

We are _not_ a dropbox alternative.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I continue to wonder about Dropbox's support for Linux. It's been the primary reason that I use them so heavily and recommend them so often.

If you look at the filename on the linux download is says 2015 in the filename. Has the linux client gone untouched for 3 years?

</comment><comment><USER38> This is a tragic decision on Dropbox's part. The service's popularity is a product of it being stable and running everywhere. If they start pulling back compatibility, where does it end? Even if this change only impacts a small percentage of users, it threatens everyone that their compatibility may be revoked.

Dropbox is violating their philosophy as a universal solution and squandering their key selling point for some small cost savings. What a horrible decision.

</comment><comment><USER39> Their reasoning of "you need a filesystem which supports extended attributes" sounds legit.

Time for some of us to start work on adding extended attributes to more filesystems?

<comment><USER40> I believe all 3 filesystems have support for extended attributes, so it doesn't seem legit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> This seems like the equivalent of user-agent sniffing. So even though the problem is a feature (xattrs), they will try to detect whether or not the filesystem is ext4 and stop syncing otherwise? Is that correct?

So, if other programs follow suit, will we start seeing options to lie about the filesystem type?

</comment><comment><USER42> This should probably link directly to the message from the community moderator: [https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Syncing-and-uploads/Linux- Dr...](https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Syncing-and-uploads/Linux-Dropbox- client-warn-me-that-it-ll-stop-syncing-in-Nov- why/m-p/290065/highlight/true#M42255)

Right now it just links to the second page of the discussion; the community moderator's message is on the first page.

</comment><comment><USER43> Self-hosted Nextcloud instance + AWS for storage puts you somewhere around $10 to $20 per month depending on how much space you need. Just throwing it out there.

The sync client has worked flawelessly for me so far. Plus you get CalDAV/CardDAV right out of the box.

</comment><comment><USER44> Well I for one will be taking the $0 per month that I spend on their free tier elsewhere

</comment><comment><USER45> This makes no sense. For example, XFS is a very robust and actively developed filesystem and is now the default on many distros. It also supports xattr.

</comment><comment><USER46> Why not run a small set of tests after installing and see whether the required set of FS features available?

Experienced users run plethora of filesystems which support the needs of dropbox.

IMHO, this is a lazy solution to a relatively simple problem.

<comment><USER47> Most likely Dropbox needs to set these limits so that they can allocate their quality assurance department to very thoroughly test what they claim they support.

I'm an architect for a Dropbox competitor. Sometimes we need to draw a line in the sand for what we support, and what we don't support. This is mostly due to balancing cost / benefit. A customer may do something strange that we don't support, and we have to weigh how many engineering resources it will take to support the customer. This can apply to unusual filesystems that we don't actively test our product with.

IMO, Dropbox did the right thing. It's only real technical users who get into different kinds of filesystems; and these are the same kind of users who can understand, "Dropbox only works on X, Y, and Z."

<comment><USER46> From a QA point you're actually right. I don't think Dropbox needs to support all filesystems, but as a programmer and and advocate of better user experience, I'd like to see a system which behaves a little differently:

a- FS is something we support, great! Go on... b- FS is an unsupported one, so run the tests and if they pass warn the user: "Hey! We don't support this, but it looks like working. If it fails we can not support you. Are you sure? (Y/N)" c- FS is an unsupported one, so run the tests and if they fail tell the user: "Hey! We can not work on this FS, sorry.".

The good thing is you implement the tests once. Since, POSIX standard is a standard, so run the tests over that interface. You practically don't need to maintain anything about the tests. Maybe run a couple of unit tests over a simulated environment, that's all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> I wonder if I'll get a prorated refund for the time I pre-paid. This is really silly of them, the entire reason to use dropbox is because they have a client for everything.

</comment><comment><USER49> Seems ludicrous when XFS is the default file system for RHEL.

<comment><USER50> Yep. Dropbox is going to lose some customers. Maybe it won't be too many (compared to Windows/Mac), but the customers they will lose will be their most technical.

<comment><USER51> How many customers do you think are running RHEL as a desktop workstation _and_ allowed to use Dropbox?

<comment><USER52> If any, I bet they can be counted on one hand.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Syncthing will do the job. Yes, it doesn't implement a cloud store like Dropbox. You have a couple of alternatives: 1) get a cheap vps host (digitalocean, vultr, etc.) and make it part of your syncthing 'cluster'. 2) get a raspberry-pi running syncthing and a big external HD and put that somewhere else (parent's, brother's, office, etc.).

</comment><comment><USER54> I gave up on Dropbox. Linux was always a second class citizen, and it only ever seems to get worse.

If you are going to pay for something, Insync and Google Drive make a decent Dropbox alternative. I'll be honest, though, I simply stopped using syncing solutions like these, so I really don't know if there are now better options across platforms.

</comment><comment><USER55> Is there any good alternative that has Linux support and isn't Google Drive? And supports shared folders?

<comment><USER56> Nextcloud

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> I have been using Resilio Sync on Linux, Mac, Windows, iOS, and Android, and it works a charm for me. In case this turns out to be a problem for you, maybe give them a try. Never an issue on Linux with Resilio Sync. I run a copy on my VPS in the cloud for remote storage.

<comment><USER58> I'm about to cancel my Dropbox subscription and move to Resilio, so I wanted to chime in and say I've had a great experience with Resilio in the past and my friends are also using it with great results.

Btw: Resilio Sync used to be known as BitTorrent Sync.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> Ecryptfa is the default for new Ubuntu installs, isn't it? They might have well just come out and say they were dropping Linux support going forward instead of dance around it.

Their focus seems to be on cost cutting and better value extraction than growth and features these days.

</comment><comment><USER60> Could people whose filesystem will no longer be supported work around this by making an ext4 filesystem in a file and mounting that file via the loop device, and moving their Dropbox directory to that?

<comment><USER61> Yes, but it's kinda ugly for regular Joe user. You'll have to know how to manage it: fragmentation, setting initial size and resizing, trimming, how to automate activating and mounting it. Etc.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> TL;DR:

Dropbox tells with a very unhelpful popup: _" Move Dropbox location - <USER3> will stop syncing in November"_.

And on the forums, dropboxer Jay precises that starting Nov. 7, 2018, they're limiting support to Windows / NTFS, macOS / HFS+ & APFS, linux/Ext4. They say missing X-attrs support is what guides dropping other fs.

They didn't answer yet if displaying this message to users of common-through- Ubuntu Ext4+ecryptfs is intentional.

<comment><USER62> Missing xattrs? What?

<comment><AUTHOR> See original message from Dropbox support: [https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Syncing-and-uploads/Linux- Dr...](https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Syncing-and-uploads/Linux-Dropbox- client-warn-me-that-it-ll-stop-syncing-in-Nov- why/m-p/290065/highlight/true#M42255)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> That's cool dropbox, us Linux users prefer services like tarsnap anyways: [http://www.tarsnap.com/](http://www.tarsnap.com/)

Colin is the founder, and also a HN celebrity because of this comment (which he regrets, but never gets old):

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35079](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35079)

<comment><USER64> As much as I like tarsnap, comparing it Dropbox makes no sense at all. They do completely different things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> For people looking to move to a service that supports Linux as a first class citizen: Mega works well enough as far as syncing files goes.

<comment><USER66> I had used Mega since it was introduced, and I had recommended it before with its generous 50GB free space and Linux support. However, Mega had become unreliable about a year ago, when it started to delete files after bad syncs. Be very careful about putting important files. Also sometimes, upload speed is very slow (took me over a minute to upload 120k file) and the sync on the iOS became really bad - it always get stuck on "Downloading...", but fails to sync. I hope they fix the problems, but until then, I've decided not to use it.

</comment></comment><comment> whitexn--g28h Aside from the performance hit, can't users of other file systems just add a loop back device and mount that for Dropbox?

</comment><comment><USER61> I wonder if the xattr issue has anything to do with there being adequate abstraction of underlying file systems by the VFS? Btrfs, ext4, and XFS all support xattr, but I don't know if they all support xattr the same way via a single interface?

And then how does that compare on macOS where there's JHFS+/HFSX and APFS?

</comment><comment><USER67> Its too bad there isn't a standard for Dropbox-like functionally yet. An RFC that everyone can write to.

<comment><USER68> Technically there is WebDAV. Yeah I know, but it's there and it's a spec. Another de-facto spec is rsync, iirc tarsnap was basically built on that. At some point there might have been even a business or two that offered rsync access.

<comment><USER67> Commercial rsync... [https://rsync.net/](https://rsync.net/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> Is this a new business opportunity?

<comment><USER70> Probably not as such users are just a vocal minority, and probably not enough to use as a consumer group.

<comment><USER71> And they _really_ hate paying for stuff. Doubly so for things they think are simple and can be done "by myself".

<comment><USER62> And you wonder why if this is what they get when they pay.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> So, what's the reason? I can't see it on the linked page. I would have thought that dropbox functionality is totally filesystem independent. I can't think of a reason why they'd do this.

EDIT: Found it.

</comment><comment><USER72> It's a shame that btrfs seems to be dead in the water. I guess nobody with the resources to build such a filesystem actually needs its snapshotting and integrity features at the filesystem level?

<comment><USER73> Does ZFS gaining steam on Linux in recent years have anything to do with the state of btrfs?

<comment><USER74> Does it really gain steam? Last time I checked the CDDL license incompatibility with GPL made it impossible to ship ZFS with Linux, and as such, distros have separate packages not maintained by the core team (I'm thinking of Arch right now).

For the record I would be very glad if I could seamlessy use ZFS, but from my perspective it looks like a lot of work that can break in unexpected places.

<comment><USER52> ZFS is owned by Oracle now. It's more or less suicidal to embed it into any Linux distribution.

<comment><USER75> LOL. I assume you're trolling. The official ZFS implementation has been Illumos for years now.

<comment><USER52> There is no trolling whatsoever. ZFS was originally made by Sun and Sun was acquired by Oracle almost 10 years. ZFS is owned by Oracle and is a legal minefield.

<comment><USER74> One can still dream: [https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Oracle-Z...](https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Oracle- ZFS-2017-Possibility)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER76> This appears to include ReFS on Windows (although with the creation of ReFS volumes being limited to enterprise-targeting editions of Windows 10, perhaps this won't affect too many people).

<comment><USER77> No, it doesn't. Only NTFS is supported: [https://www.dropbox.com/help/desktop- web/system-requirements...](https://www.dropbox.com/help/desktop-web/system- requirements#desktop)

</comment></comment><comment><USER78> I clicked expecting btrfs or zfs or something. Nope, NTFS is apparently "uncommon". Fascinating perspective.

EDIT: Shit, misread -- those are the _supported_ ones. Thanks for the headsmack. :-)

<comment><USER79> I think you misread. NTFS is one of the supported OSes

</comment></comment><comment><USER80> What's the reason for the move? I am on LUKs+EXT4 on my development workstation as full disk encryption on all devices is mandated by corporate policy and our contracts with clients.

</comment><comment><USER81> I'm fine with this cuz I'm using ext4, but why? As people in the thread say Dropbox have been supporting those filesystems without any problems for ten years.

</comment><comment><USER82> Why do they need to directly support the underlying filesystem? Can't they have support for the high level fs api? Sure not as performant but at least will work.

<comment><USER83> read the post. they need xattrs support from the file system. now, why btrfs wouldn't work is beyond me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER84> Not really contributing anything useful. Just have to agree that this is a terrible move. Now I have to find another cloud solution for all of my linux computers.

</comment><comment><USER85> Would this impact FUSE-based filesystems like EncFS?

<comment><USER11> Definitely EncFS (which Ubuntu used to use for /home encryption), most probably _anything_ besides ext4.

</comment></comment><comment><USER86> Well, that's just stupid. Why not check for extended attributes, and if they aren't there, call it unsupported.

</comment><comment><USER87> Maybe I can figure out a way to automount a file formatted as ext4 in my home directory using systemd mount units.

<comment><USER88> And then you'll have two problems...

</comment></comment><comment><USER89> Joke's on them because I already dropped Dropbox many moons ago due to poor performance and high price compared to the competition. Not to mention that they hadn't released a new feature in half a decade. I'm not sure they still have.

Also, I'm pretty sure Btrfs supports xattrs unless I'm missing something.

</comment><comment><USER90> XFS and BTRFS are uncommon? Filesystem should be transparent to such things.

</comment><comment><USER91> Wow, I'm glad I deleted my dropbox account a while ago and now use _gasp_ hard drives and usb sticks and github to put up all my opensource code and bitbucket for closed source stuff.

</comment><comment><USER92> > we're ending support for Dropbox syncing to drives with _certain uncommon > file systems_. The supported file systems... and Ext4 for Linux.

Yeah this is not how it works. This is not how any of this works

<comment><USER26> That statement is bit dubious. The next line also says:

> A supported file system is required as Dropbox relies on extended attributes > (X-attrs) to identify files in the Dropbox folder and keep them in sync. We > will keep supporting only the most common file systems that support X-attrs, > so we can ensure stability and a consistent experience.

Certainly XFS supports xattr and hence ideally should be supported. I don't know why they singled out ext4. I am running Dropbox on ext4 LUKS encrypted partition and I haven't seen the warning yet.

<comment><USER93> It's because Linux users know what they're getting and store more data then "regular" users. It's the same reason "unlimited" storage plans from Backblaze _don 't_ have a Linux client.

<comment><USER32> Yeah, this is probably about cutting out the big data users. They don't even offer an unlimited plan, but they probably noticed that certain linux users were using most of their 2tb plans while everyone else wasn't.

Lose the most active users, keep the ones paying for something they don't need.

<comment><USER42> Are you and XorNot guessing, or are you basing this off a statement they made?

Because the alternate explantation I assumed is that they don't want to continue maintaining a bunch of different filesystems. That complicates development quite a bit (because you need to have developers who know the quirks of the file systems) and testing _a lot_ (because all changes have to be tested on all variants, and it becomes multiplicative when a platform has multiple file systems).

<comment><USER94> > the alternate explantation I assumed is that they don't want to continue > maintaining a bunch of different filesystems.

But they _don 't_ have to maintain a bunch of different filesystems. That's the OS's job. From the application's PoV there shouldn't be _any_ difference between these filesystems, all they need to do is check if the required feature (xattrs) is enabled for a certain FS and that's all.

<comment><USER42> You still need to test. And I'm skeptical that there is _no_ observable difference from the application level.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER95> Well, so long Dropbox.

</comment><comment><USER96> Can anyone tldr the solution? I'm on Ubuntu and get the warning (stop syncing/move folder).

Move to where? How do I get it to work on Ubuntu again?

</comment><comment><USER97> Tragic

</comment><comment><USER98> Here is a direct link to the response from Dropbox: [https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Syncing-and-uploads/Linux- Dr...](https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Syncing-and-uploads/Linux-Dropbox- client-warn-me-that-it-ll-stop-syncing-in-Nov- why/m-p/290065/highlight/true#M42255)

<comment><USER99> Thanks, we've changed to that from [https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Syncing- and-uploads/Linux-Dr...](https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Syncing-and- uploads/Linux-Dropbox-client-warn-me-that-it-ll-stop-syncing-in-Nov- why/m-p/290122).

</comment></comment><comment><USER100> No problem, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem.

<comment><USER101> Just in case anyone doesn't recognize this quote, it is from the 2007 hacker news post about Dropbox: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863)

<comment><USER102> It's a really great example of worse is better.[1] We went from sophisticated network file system to a daemon that destroys your battery life (at least on Mac) watching for file changes in a directory.

[1] [https://www.dreamsongs.com/RiseOfWorseIsBetter.html](https://www.dreamsongs.com/RiseOfWorseIsBetter.html)

<comment><USER103> Your situation is different than mine; this is the first I've heard of Dropbox even _registering_ as a top use of battery.

How many files do you have? I've got 26000 files in my Mac's dropbox folder. (Granted, very few of them change more than once or twice a day; maybe 20 or so of those do.)

<comment><USER102> I last used Dropbox in 2011 or so (I stopped using it because it killed my battery life). It may have gotten better since then. (But my point is addressed to what it takes to get popular, _i.e._ that its easier to make a "dumb" tool popular, and Dropbox was popular back then.)

EDIT: Clearly not just me: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12464901](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12464901) (thread from 2016)

<comment><USER103> > i.e. that its easier to make a "dumb" tool popular,

If this was your intent, then using the tired "worse is better" trope and claiming an issue from 7 years ago, that no one else has claimed to have seen is seems a far cry from it.

Dropbox became popular because it was easy, it worked, and did exactly what it said it did. That might be "dumb" in that it's not feature packed, but you use a lot of negative connotations when none are required.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER104> I keep wanting to use ZFS's incremental syncing across SSH - guess this is now a great excuse to set it all up on a Linux laptop!

</comment><comment><USER105> It is time for Dropbox to die.

Seriously.

Dropbox is but a new Linux kernel module away from being completely and utterly irrelevant.

$ insmod ifps

</comment><comment><USER106> This sounds fine to me. Ya'll are making sound like they're refuseing to sync because the FS is encryped. The file systems mentioned are really old. You can use newer FS's that are encrypted. They need to support extended attributes for obvious reasons.

<comment><USER51> ext4: October 2008 btrfs: March 2009 ecryptfs: May 2016 xfs: 2002

Which one of these are old?

<comment><USER107> XFS is from 1994, ported to Linux in 2002, so it is contemporary with NTFS which is from 1993.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: The Programmer's Political Axis - where do you fall? - <AUTHOR> http://sweaxis.org/?src=hn

<comment><USER2> 44.44% Conservative and 55.56% Liberal

Provides no feedback on what they do with your age, startupness, or favorite language. No anchors to know what liberal vs conservative means. Bolded portion of questions can be redefined in the body, e.g. #2, #6. Not a useful experience/waste of time.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not sure (yet) what I'll do with your age etc. Re: 'no anchors to know what liberal vs conservative means' the original Steve Yegge essay is linked to on the front page. [https://plus.google.com/u/0/110981030061712822816/posts/KaSK...](https://plus.google.com/u/0/110981030061712822816/posts/KaSKeg4vQtz)

<comment><USER2> Yeah, that's worthless.

<http://www.politicalcompass.org/charts/us2012.php> That is anchoring.

If you aren't showing "Java coders fall here, Python coders fall here. Lispers here." Call your survey a work in progress, but it's pointless for anyone to currently fill out as it doesn't show meaningful feedback.

<comment><AUTHOR> Basically what you're saying is that any survey that's in the early stages of data collection is worthless.

I think that x% conservative y% liberal is 'meaningful feedback' to some people (<https://twitter.com/#!/search/realtime/sweaxis.org>)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> i'm 54.17% Liberal</comment>


Behind the Velvet Ropes of Facebook's Private Groups - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/16/business/behind-the-velvet-ropes-of-facebooks-private-groups.html <comment><AUTHOR> A very smart direction for Facebook. However, I can't help but feel disappointed that another facet of human discourse will be locked up in Facebook's ever-expanding monopoly of walled gardens. I am reminded of Matrix.org's existential struggle for survival; there need to be alternatives.</comment>


Did This 28 Year Old Chinese Entrepreneur Build a Car Better Than Tesla? - <AUTHOR> http://hyperlush.com/28-year-old-chinese-entrepreneur-builds-the-ultimate-tesla-knockoff/

<comment><USER2> Build? _The Youxia doesn't start producing the cars till 2016 and the first deliveries will be made in 2017._

No.

Better than Tesla? _Of course, all the information listed on their website are just production specs and could change by next year._

Not likely.</comment>


The SUIF Compiler System - <AUTHOR> http://suif.stanford.edu/suif/suif1/index.html

<comment><USER2> AFAIK this is _really_ old work. LLVM has pretty much dominated this space for the past decade.

[http://suif.stanford.edu/suif/suif1/suif- overview/suif.html](http://suif.stanford.edu/suif/suif1/suif- overview/suif.html)

As a reference, some of the grad students originally on this project are senior full professors now :) And the last author is now the President of Stanford University.

<comment><USER3> Judging by the papers, it looks like it was mainly active from 1994 to around 2000-2001 or so. Although there is also a 2005 journal article: [http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1075385](http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1075385)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Here's an interesting comment about this work by mahmud from 5 years ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=831568](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=831568). It would be great to hear more.</comment>


Where are the mobile standing desks? [video] - <AUTHOR> http://www.storkstand.com/

<comment><USER2> Interesting concept. I was slightly disturbed, however, watching the video when it showed someone's hand way to close to moving bandsaw [1:49] and miter saw [2:10] blades (what appears to be 1-2 inches away from the blade).

If you do use maker spaces, please learn how to use the equipment safely. StorkStand, please edit these clips out of the video and try to keep your fingers while helping others save their back!

</comment><comment><USER3> Wow. My first thought was "eh, mildly interesting." Then I saw it adjust and move and it instantly clicked how ingenious this really is.</comment>


Why India's air pollution is so horrendous - <AUTHOR> https://www.vox.com/2018/5/8/17316978/india-pollution-levels-air-delhi <comment><USER2> The author (Umair) only looked at air and wrote the article. If Umair had ventured to see water, the title would be "Why India's water pollution is so horrendous?", and if looked at soil, the noun will change leaving rest of the question same. What does one expect in a country of 1.5 billion with no sane governance? It is a land of madness.</comment>


Kathy's Gone Again - <AUTHOR> https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2014/10/05/Kathy-Sierra

<comment><USER2> Can't believe this didn't get more attention on HN. I only just found out yesterday evening, searched HN and found this, with 5 points and NO comments.</comment>


#Love: Thanks, Porn - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/13/love-thanks-porn/

<comment><USER2> Any guy who thinks that sneaking off and watching porn is beneficial for a marriage is deluding himself.</comment>


React 15.2.0 is out - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/facebook/react/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md#1520-july-1-2016 <comment><USER2> Other than a release right before a holiday weekend (as atomi mentioned)...

The changelog illustrates precisely one of the things I love about react, and why it's a bit larger than alternatives (like preact), and for good reason. Simply stated, the error messages... I love how good the error messages are with React. I've worked a bit with React, ng1 and ng2 at this point, and have to say React is second to none in this space.

There are very few WTF moments with React, and there's usually a very clear message indicating why.. from the warning when not running in production mode, to the messages when not setting the key property of child arrays. With angular 1 I'm pulling my hair out.. and with ng2 it's just as bad.

Here's to more great releases from the React team.

</comment><comment><USER3> Why release this on the Friday of the 4th of July holiday weekend?

<comment><USER4> So those of us with side projects can spend the long weekend upgrading. :)</comment></comment>


6m+ Instagram accounts exposed in hack - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/08/celebs-phone-numbers-and-e-mail-addresses-exposed-in-active-instagram-hack/ <comment><AUTHOR> Didn't realize it wasn't included in this article, so here are sources for the 6m+ number:

[https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/1/16244304/instagram-hack- ap...](https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/1/16244304/instagram-hack-api-bug- doxagram-selena-gomez)

[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4844804/Data-...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4844804/Data-6M-Instagram- users-sold-dark-web.html)

[https://twitter.com/selenalarson/status/903734446527881216](https://twitter.com/selenalarson/status/903734446527881216)</comment>


MYOPENID WILL BE TURNED OFF ON FEBRUARY 1, 2014 - <AUTHOR> https://www.myopenid.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> The not-social encumbered myopenid bows down to social login's only. This is an interesting decision in the light of recent steps back from social login's over privacy misuses.

There is a great potential for new services, which do not misuse globally trackable social logins.</comment>


Interpreting Noise - <AUTHOR> http://robjhyndman.com/hyndsight/interpreting-noise/ <comment><USER2> On a related note, we could take another simple step toward improving the way people communicate about statistics: ban point estimates in news reports. Using a point estimate, I can accurately claim that there's a 50% chance heaven and hell exist. This is technically true because my confidence ranges from 0% to 100%.

I get that people often need so-called "killer facts" — quick statistics that make an impression in press releases — but confidence intervals are more honest and they don't take much longer to communicate. Instead of allowing people to say that "x% of users prefer...", let's say that "x-y% of users prefer."

<comment><USER3> I get the point you are making, but confidence intervals are _completely the wrong solution_. They do NOT mean what you probably think they mean (where "you" is a generalized "you the reader").

[http://www.ejwagenmakers.com/inpress/HoekstraEtAlPBR.pdf](http://www.ejwagenmakers.com/inpress/HoekstraEtAlPBR.pdf)

Credible intervals are probably what you want. A lot of the time people misunderstand confidence intervals and treat them like credible intervals.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credible_interval](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credible_interval)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "What is going on here is that the commentators are assuming we live in a noise-free world. They imagine that everything is explicable, you just have to find the explanation."

They know full well that there isn't anything behind it. The problem isn't the news organization, it's the media consumers. People want stories to understand the world in easy bite sized pieces. Unfortunately what affects us doesn't come with a simple story line, it's just one damned thing after another. But no one would sell any news with "Stuff happens, we have no idea why. More stuff to happen later."

<comment><USER5> >The problem isn't the news organization, it's the media consumers.

I've always been somewhat disheartened by comments like this. People will blame consumers for how media is but then say this about technology:

"If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses."

At some point someone sold the idea of sound bite consumable news to customers and convinced them that it was good. the way that we know that is because news had never looked that way until cnn and networks like it started.

consumers either know what they want or they don't know what they want... but I hardly think that issue is cut and dry

<comment><USER6> >At some point someone sold the idea of sound bite consumable news to customers and convinced them that it was good.

What makes you say this? This seems pretty false in my opinion.

It seems much more likely that sound bite consumables are the outcome of testing/feedback and iteration. It seems entirely possible to me(if not probable) that consumers(for the most part) don't know what they truly 'want' in terms of news.

We live in a world of(largely) instant gratification; the fact that 'news' would have to adapt to fit that lifestyle makes perfect sense to me.

> People will blame consumers for how media is but then say this about > technology: "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said > faster horses."

What point are you trying to make here? I'm having difficulty parsing your meaning. Humans, when they aren't versed in the underlying operations of a system, WILL make broad assumptions(about said operations) and WILL have irrational expectations and 'wants' based on those assumptions. What would my grandmother(or even mother for that matter) ask me to improve about her spyware-ridden current-gen laptop? "Make it faster." If I asked her how to improve the news on the other hand I guarantee "make it faster" would not enter the conversation.

Soooo, what's your point here? That consumers do want 'faster' news? And why would a consumer's desire for more succinct news imply that they are okay with less accurate news...?

Obviously the issue isn't cut and dry, everyone is a consumer of the news and we all have our own opinions. That said, I have a hard time disagreeing with the parent comment. Have you watched the news recently? 'News' stories are NOT given time based on their importance to the world as a whole; and for good reason. When a media company(whose purpose is to provide fiscal return) is met with positive feedback for stories pertaining to popular culture, or pandering to popular opinion, they will invariably continue to publish in that vertical. The result is a 'news' which consists mainly of stories which are either racially/politically charged or major events(read: actual news) which are strung along for weeks(natural disasters, terrorists actions, etc...)

<comment><USER5> I guess I just don't like the way people talk about consumers as single decidable entity. It ends up being a wiping boy to distract from core problems. Example:

"Our technology succeeded that's because consumers are idiots, but we sure showed them a better way!"

or

"Our technology produced an offensive cultural phenomenon, that's because consumers are vultures who force us to bend to their will"

One of these statements can true but not the other... but frankly both of them are false as markets are infinitely more complex than boiling down to a mass generalization about consumption...

<comment><USER6> Agreed(that grouping consumers into a single entity is bad), sorry for the (aggressive? condescending?) tone of my comment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Errorbars are largely absent from public dialog. Can you imagine a world in which the weather report said:

"Tomorrow's high will be 30±3 degrees, and the low will be 25±2 degrees. We expect light precipitation, but our confidence is low."

That world is coming, I hope.

<comment><USER8> That world seems pretty pointless to me. What should the public do when tomorrow's high is forecast at 30±3 degrees but it's actually 35 degrees? Why was the hedge an improvement?

<comment><USER9> 30±3 is different than, say, 30±6 or 30±1.

If the temperature range is, say, close to freezing, or some maximum safe temperature for an activity or crop, then the error bound tells you how certain the forecast is, and whether or not an adverse condition might be experienced, for which you might want to take precautions (cover plants to protect them from freezing, ensure that they're watered for heat, say).

<comment><USER8> That's not true at all. Look at the example I asked about -- "what should we do when the forecast says the high temperature will be 27-33, but the high temperature is, contrary to forecast, 35?"

A minor amount of imagination can transform this question into "what should we do when the forecast says the low temperature overnight will be 2-6 degrees, but it's actually -1? If you think the forecast will tell you "whether or not an adverse condition _might_ be experienced", you're likely to do something stupid. A more sensible approach would be "if it's frost season, cover the plants".

Weather forecasts already treat the odds differently depending on (a) what they are, and (b) what events are being predicted. A 70% chance of rain tomorrow might be reported as a 70% chance of rain, but a 10% chance of rain is more likely to be "overreported", say as a 40% chance. They do that because people don't want accurate numbers -- instead, they get mad when the forecast suggests that they don't need to prepare for unfavorable weather, and unfavorable weather inconsiderately happens anyway.

<comment><USER9> _A more sensible approach would be "if it's frost season, cover the plants"._

If you're a homeowner and you've got a small garden or some potted plants, covering them in straw or bringing them indoors isn't a major concern.

If you're a farmer with a crop that may need to be harvested, smudged, or sprayed with water (ice coating protects some crops), with a nontrivial investment of time and materials, the distinction is meaningful.

<comment><USER8> If you're a homeowner with a small garden, losing the plants to frost isn't a major concern.

If you're a farmer with a crop that may need to be harvested, smudged, or sprayed with water, losing everything to frost is the kind of thing that might drive you to bankruptcy. Say there are 30 days over the course of winter where the overnight low temperature is forecast near but above zero. By your assumption, the forecast is using 95% confidence intervals. What are the odds of your crops dying if you rely on the weather forecast?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I have a principle to explain this, and much more : The universe sides with stupid.

There, there, take a look at Wild Poppies, near Argenteuil : [http://i.imgur.com/1bSp0TJ.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/1bSp0TJ.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER5> I think that there are two things at work here.

1\. Who is the designed consumer of this data.

In the US the CEW (census of employment and wage) is a data set that is primarily aimed at economists or modelers. The startling thing is how these data-sets became mainstream. I work in economics and for years no one was particularly conscious of when these figures are released(non quantitative people i mean) but now I am often surprised how many regular people know that the first Friday of the month is unemployment data day. The danger here is that modelers planning to work with the data are well aware of the signal to noise ratio and take it into account with everything they do. Unemployment data in the US at a granular level is also heavily redacted for a variety of reasons which makes this problem even worse.

2\. The second issue that I would have loved to have seen this article elaborate on is what are our core metrics as a society. This is something that we still haven't nailed yet.

I have friends who work at the government institutions the produce this data and they can tell you that most of this work is still done with a very mid 20th century mindset.

On the other hand I know people who work with large business data-sets such as supply chain data from Amazon Walmart and others. This data is far more robust and could be used to give a much truer picture of how the economy is doing but it is currently locked up under the veil of corporate secrecy. if gov't statistical agencies could figure out how to work with this data we could do significantly better.

</comment><comment><USER11> This is particularly evident during presidential election season, when the mainstream political news will do things like show a _real-time opinion poll_ accompanying speeches or debates. The article hits the nail on the head at the end: this phenomenon isn't going anywhere unless people start getting a whole lot less gullible.

</comment><comment><USER12> While I think the articles most point is reasonable. The choice of stocks as an example is a poorly one. Because prices are reacting in large part to news. To the degree that the news presents something material and unsuspected it influenced peoples trading. Of course good news doesn't always lead a stock to increase, because sometimes most investors are expecting better news. Certainly there is a lot of randomness, but for heavily traded stocks the impact of news is real and substantial. Unexpected good news most often leads to an increase in stock price, and unexpected bad new most often leads to a decrease.

<comment><USER13> Here's an example: [http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/business-27058146](http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/business-27058146)

Google's share price changes the same day as an announcement. The BBC attributes the change to the news as though they are monotonic. But who is to say that the news didn't stop the share price falling twice was far?

Also, every trade requires two parties, so one side thought they were getting a good deal.

I'm also amused that the share traders are called "investors" rather than "gamblers".

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> An example: a phenomenon that I think has come into play gradually over the past 3-5 years: national news broadcasts lead stories are based on the weather.

"3rd highest temperature seen in 5 yrs"

"4th coldest winter since 2001"

"2nd highest rainfall in March in the past 12 years"

etc etc

PS on a secondary note: shame on the news services for leading with weather so often. I guess it's laziness. No need to spend time, resources, expertise on investigating actual news.

</comment><comment><USER15> Warmists take note.

</comment><comment><USER16> Does anyone remember the unemployment rate dropping just before the 2012 Presidential election (and then rising again immediately afterwards)? These numbers can't be trusted, and are nothing more than a tool for party control of government.

<comment><USER17> Which statistic are you interpreting this from? The Bureau of Labor Statistics' publications? In glancing at their unemployment rate estimates, it looks like the overall trend throughout 2012 and continuing into 2014 is negative, with some noise in between. Though the methods used to calculate unemployment statistics are frequently discussed (such as their inclusion or exclusion of workers who give up searching for a job), it seems like you are interpreting the noise for some mischievous activity (ironically, in a way similar to what this post discusses), for which you provide no evidence.</comment></comment>


Free Software Needs Free Tools - <AUTHOR> https://mako.cc/writing/hill-free_tools.html <comment><USER2> Date: 2010</comment>


Proposed Info Sharing Legislation Could Worsen NSA Surveillance - <AUTHOR> https://cdt.org/702-info-sharing/

<comment><USER2> CISA is the government's way of writing into law that people have no right to privacy in any data held by third party service providers. By granting legal immunity for service providers to share so-called "threat" data—potentially containing unminimized private customer data—law enforcement agencies are opening a huge backdoor for uncontrolled warrantless mass surveillance. Because this surveillance would be done in secret, people would have no legal basis to challenge what amounts to an end-run around the U.S. Constitution.

Watch in the coming weeks as lawmakers point to the OPM hacks as justification for spying on everyone's Gmail activity.

<comment><USER3> > By granting legal immunity for service providers to share so-called "threat" > data—potentially containing unminimized private customer data—law > enforcement agencies are opening a huge backdoor for uncontrolled > warrantless mass surveillance

Section 4(d)(2) requires removal of personal information before sharing unless that personal information is _directly_ related to a cybersecurity threat.

A cybersecurity threat is defined as "an action, not protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, on or through an information system that may result in an unauthorized effort to adversely impact the security, availability, confidentiality, or integrity of an information system or information that is stored on, processed by, or transiting an information system" and "does not include any action that solely involves a violation of a consumer term of service or a consumer licensing agreement".

There is no mass surveillance implied in this.

> Because this surveillance would be done in secret, people would have no > legal basis to challenge what amounts to an end-run around the U.S. > Constitution.

The Constitution restricts government from forcing companies to give up information against their will. Nothing in the Constitution prohibits companies from voluntarily giving up information, and so nothing you have cited is in any way an end-run around the Constitution.

<comment><USER2> > Section 4(d)(2) requires removal of personal information

Section 4(d)(2) of _what?_ These minimization requirements have been removed or weakened in the various iterations of CIS(P)A that have appeared and been defeated year after year. There is currently no bill in front of Congress, so your citing of a specific provision is questionable. Congress is expected to take a new version of CISA up in the next few weeks.

> The Constitution restricts government from forcing companies to give up > information against their will.

Except under Section 702, companies are compelled to hand the information via secret orders with gag provisions. Fighting these orders is expensive and the gag orders prevent the companies from openly opposing them.

It _is_ an end-run around the Constitution if the data a company provides belongs to an individual and is disclosed without a proper warrant, unless you agree with the statement that "people have no right to privacy in any data held by third party service providers." Such an attitude ignores the reality that cloud services have become integrated into peoples' lives, and ubiquitous enough that the end-customer should have legal interest and Constitutional protection in data held by third parties.

<comment><USER3> > Section 4(d)(2) of _what?_

Section 4(d)(2) of the bill that the article you are commenting on is writing about, S.754, the "Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act of 2015".

<comment><USER2> Section 4(d)(2) requires removal of information that a company "knows at the time of sharing" to be private personal information. That's complete weak sauce. There is tons of leeway here for the government to demand threat indicators that could "accidentally" vacuum up private info without anyone "knowing" about it. And the bill hasn't even gone through committee. If the past is any indication, the GOP will try to strike it completely.

Anyway, I would appreciate if you could address the other point I raised because I'm very curious to hear your philosophical thoughts on this subject.

<comment><USER3> I don't see anything in (this version of, anyway) CISA that would let the government demand threat indicators. If the government wants to come demanding companies give them information, they have to turn to other laws for that.

On the Constitutional issue:

> It _is_ an end-run around the Constitution if the data a company provides > belongs to an individual and is disclosed without a proper warrant, unless > you agree with the statement that "people have no right to privacy in any > data held by third party service providers."

People have multiple rights to privacy related to such data. Some come from state law. Some come from federal agencies. Some come from federal legislation. Some come from the Constitution.

The ones from the Constitution protect against government compelling release of the data. They don't protect against the providers deciding on their own to disclose the information to the government (or to the public, or to private parties). If, for instance, PG&E decided to publish a list of its customers along with contact information and energy use records, it would not be violating a Constitutional right to privacy. If the government demanded that PG&E make and turn over such a list, then we've got a Constitutional issue to talk about.

In that hypothetical, PG&E would be violating some of those other rights to privacy that come from state legislation, federal legislation, and agency rules, and would run into a ton of trouble.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wow, this is a totally uncredited ripoff of some analysis by Stanford Law's Jonathan Mayer. The image is essentially a remake of one he put together. In favor of changing the link.

[http://webpolicy.org/2015/06/04/nsa- cybersecurity/](http://webpolicy.org/2015/06/04/nsa-cybersecurity/)

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm getting tired of finding out about all these ways in which agencies are allowed to use data which circumvent the Constitution. I have to wonder exactly what needs to happen for people to realize this. Then again, you also have to wonder why our own government is surprised people are using encrypted first communication.

</comment><comment><USER6> NSA/FBI surveillance is pretty unpopular - I'm pretty sure that Senator and Representative offices got a ton of calls about it, otherwise the PATRIOT Act section 215 wouldn't have sunsetted, it would have gotten a big sloppy wet rubber stamp. SOPA touched off a big campaign a couple of years ago, CISA gets nearly unanimous bad reviews.

So, why does the Senate keep trying to crank up this sort of thing? They need to be a little answerable to their constituency, they need to exhibit a little leadership in terms of not just blindly following party leadership and lobbyists.

Is this whole category of law a place where the DoJ has intercepted enough sketchy conversations that they've got leverage against key Senators and Reps? That's the only thing I can think of, other than the "intelligence community" is flat out lying in the secure sessions. Since the "intelligence community" has a long history of lying, with a lot of recent scandalous reveals, you'd think that oversight committees would be a lot less willing to just believe.

So, I'm torn. Why does this keep popping up?

<comment><USER7> > So, I'm torn. Why does this keep popping up?

Constituents may vote, but lobbyists pay the bills.

<comment><USER2> All the big tech companies want CISA because it legalizes data sharing programs like PRISM. To date, they've been forced to do this for years under Section 702 of FISA, but the whole thing has been in breach of their privacy agreements with customers.

Remember when EFF sued AT&T for [letting the NSA wiretap their Internet backbone facilities][1]? Congress killed the lawsuit by retroactively granting immunity under the FISA Amendments Act.

CISA is just the same thing, but for newer programs like PRISM, and tech companies want the immunity because they're otherwise being exposed to major liability.

Personally, I think a better idea would be to reform Section 702 of FISA to ban programs like PRISM. The government should be required to get a warrant when they want to look at private data.

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A)

<comment><USER8> for uncle sam to get a warrant is just dandy but thats not going to protect us from organized crime or the intelligence services of other nations.

We need security that my mother can understand. dad had a top secret clearance so mom understands why she needs to shred paper documents.

ive had no such luck explaining to her how to maintain her privacy with her imac.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> this is why I use tor.

Unfortunately many sites do not permit connections from exit nodes. cloudflare always requires one solve a captcha.

duckduckgo by contradt provides a hidden service.

Im planning on providing one too; I wouldnt want the FBI to know who is reading my articles about c++ memory management.

</comment><comment><USER8> Just now i read in The Columbian that obama has committed not to spy on the prime minister of france, after france called for an intelligence code of ethics in which the allies agree not to spy on each other.

There was no mention of spying on their own citizens.

<comment><USER9> And if someone else spies on the PM of France, and the US happens to get their hands on that data, then I'll bet they'd argue the US did not spy on them.</comment></comment>


Nobel Laureate Wants to Blast Nuclear Waste with Lasers Until It's Safe - <AUTHOR> https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/300954-nobel-laureate-wants-to-use-lasers-to-blast-nuclear-waste-until-its-safe <comment><USER2> This is somewhat off-topic, but I have a question for HNers who know more science than I do.

I have sometimes wondered whether a plasma torch could be used to safely dispose of exceptionally toxic waste? It seems to me that a plasma torch would break down anything fed into it into its constituent atoms/molecules, rendering it no longer toxic. I don't know what would happen to those atoms/molecules after they cool down, but I can't image that they would re- combine back into complex, toxic molecules.

I imagine that running a large plasma torch on a large volume of toxic waste would have a substantial energy cost, but would the cost of destroying toxic waste be greater than the current cost of dealing with all the toxic waste being produced?

Just wondering.

<comment><USER3> Don't know. Do know that incinerators were found to be producing dioxins.</comment></comment>


Solo living in a camper 727 as architecture of collapse – Kirsten Dirksen - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oquV0vvhjh0 <comment><USER2> Kirsten Dirksen has great channel content. Good to see it linked here.

[edit: spelling]

</comment><comment><USER3> According to the video he paid $100k for the fuselage, and another article quoted him saying he paid an additional $120k to move and renovate and the square footage is 1,066.

$100,000 initial purchase + $120,000 moving and renovation expenses / 1,066 square feet = $207/sq. foot.

For our foreign friends that is $2200 per square meter.

That does not seem competitive.

And anywhere other than outside of Portland where the average high seems to be 72 (22C) and the average low 71 (21C) (this is only a little bit jokey) will require a great deal more insulation.

As a charming project for a quirky retired engineer I am a huge fan. I really like it. It is a charming project done by a quirky retired engineer that made me smile and I would really like to visit, and maybe one day when I'm a quirky retired engineer do the same.

It is nothing more.

</comment><comment> skookum-skuad I saw this and similar projects a long time ago. The problems include: the weird shape of living in a tube, not being at ground level, and hazmat/toxic aviation materials throughout. Seems more like hipster "recycling" impractical bragging rights that anything else, and I'm all for unusual dwellings made out of reclaimed (almost) whatever, concrete culverts, or underground sprayed concrete+fiberglass "eggs," but some things need proper recycling. Living in a nuclear reactor containment vessel seems like the next thing, but why?</comment>


My new startup took 30 seconds to build, already has hundreds of users - <AUTHOR>

Telsaurus.com is a Custom Google Search Engine for the .tel namespace. It took me 30 seconds to build and launch yesterday and has already serviced thousands of queries.<p>In the future it will grow to become a fully fledged search engine in its own right, but for now it beats having a boring "coming soon" page :) <comment><USER2> I somewhat disagree with mronge (which reads as ummmm-wrong), i don't care how long it took you to build it. However, what is it for? What is the .tel space? Why does the .tel space need a search engine?

I could build a search engine that only returned results with .net or .biz, but what purpose would that serve. So unless you have a market, you don't have a start-up.

<comment><AUTHOR> General purpose search engines like Google aren't sufficiently appropriate for .tel, since its specific utility is for contact informaton, rather than content. You can find out more about it at telnic.org

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Congrats! Sounds like you successfully built a minimum viable product and you're getting a response from the market.

How did you let people know about your site? To me, the most interesting aspect of this post is that you had thousands of pageviews within 24 hours of launch.

<comment><AUTHOR> This forum post (<http://www.namepros.com/3416506-post4355.html>), and others posted it elsewhere.

It's a 20% project.. 80% of my time writing the post, 20% setting it up ;)

The people using it are .tel domain owners, performing searches to figure out how Google is indexing and ranking them. It will eventually grow into a real .tel search engine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Dude, if it took you 30 seconds, its not a startup

<comment><AUTHOR> Why? It's version 0. The next release will be in the summer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Why would anyone want to search .tel only?

Why isn't it telsaurus.tel?</comment>


3D Mid-Air Acoustic Manipulation  - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odJxJRAxdFU&feature=youtube_gdata_player

<comment><USER2> This is awesome. If I was the researcher, I would get a process patent for the levitation, and sell it to industrial engineers for manufacturing. I feel like acoustic machinery once finely controlled could gain an edge on more costly hydraulic systems.</comment>


Ask HN: Good resources for learning Git? - <AUTHOR> I've gone through basics of git and using the command line. Annoyingly, every tutorial talks about what commands to use and what they do.
I am looking for a more abstract guide that teaches about how to run a project using git. When to branch. How to pull and push from remote, how to fork from github --> modify and then push back to original repo with a PR...
Teaching people what commands to use is missing the point in these tutorials. I can download a git cheatsheet and look up the commands without any help. The real meat of learning Git is in the abstract use cases that leverage the git system. Hardly anyone talks about that.
If there are books, blog posts, anything that could help - I'd greatly appreciate it. <comment><USER2> I usually spend a lot of time writing thoughtful answers but since I'm in bed and your question is IMHO very easily googlable here are a few things to check out:

\- Gitlab flow: a variation of the Git flow system optimized for Github

\- Git flow: what the former is based off of

\- the search terms "git workflow" or "git branching model"

\- my two cents: your workflow depends on your team and project structure. For a single person project I commit to master and push to the remote. For a two person side project I'd recommend the same only we both push to remote master. If the team gets bigger I'd do pull requests to master. If it's a client project I deploy master to staging and version tags to production.

\- branches are cheap, use them to isolate small units of work, or don't if it's your personal project. But even then I run tricky experiments in branches and discard them if the fail

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


On the growing risk of the 51% attack against BCash - <AUTHOR> https://notehub.org/nz8d0 <comment><USER2> A 51% attack only allows you to (1) censor transactions for a short time, and (2) double-spend. The first part is a mild nuisance. The second one can be retaliated against off-chain, which puts the attacker (who must be a large entity) at great risk in the real world.

<comment><USER3> > The second one can be retaliated against off-chain.

What do you mean?

<comment><USER4> If you do a double spend attack of any significance, the other party will notice. Unless you are doing something completely anonymous, the other party will also know who you are and be able to pursue other remedies (eg. sue you for fraud).

<comment><USER5> How could you possibly sue someone for double spending on a blockchain? I don't get it, isn't the point of this blockchain stuff to be the wild west? What is the grounds for a lawsuit? Why would a 51% attack be illegal? "Code is law", right?

<comment><USER6> >I don't get it, isn't the point of this blockchain stuff to be the wild west?

I guarantee you no judge in the world is going to accept that interpretation.

>"Code is law", right?

From a legal perspective, obviously not, and given how well accepted the etherium hard fork was in the wake of the DOA smart contract being exploited, you can be pretty sure that a large percentage of the crypto-user population doesn't think so either.

<comment><USER7> Cardano is speaking out in favour of "code is law". Not sure what they do when faced with an actual catastrophy. There are others also taking this stance to some extend.

Anyway, Cardano is cool (Haskell, PoS, lots of papers published)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> tl;dr: younger coins have fewer miners, so they are more susceptible to 51% attack. In particular BCash has same hash function as BTC, so those BTC miners could easily switch into mining BCash, and so is even more at risk.

<comment><USER9> It would incur a huge opportunity cost for them to switch over, especially because they would tank bcash by doing it.

<comment><USER8> Yes it would. This article is surprisingly ignorant of past discussion of the %51 attack.

<comment><USER10> It also fails to account for the possibility that Bitcoin Cash becomes more valuable, and then Bitcoin is the "vulnerable" chain.

It also doesn't mention the name of the author, and the HN user who posted this was created two hours ago.

HNers should understand there is a huge political divide in the Bitcoin community right now on this very subject. Anonymous write-ups of known attack vectors framed as genuine warnings are nothing more than unsubstantiated fear, uncertainty, and doubt.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> When the BTC-BCH split happend I didn't really understand what everybody was talking about transaction fees. So after BTC continued to rise the past months and we have transaction fees >20$ I understand what was discussed earlier this year.

I just wonder why the core devs were against increasing the blocksize. Yes, it would not have been a solution for the next 20 years, but at least it would have left the fees at a place where BTC was still suitable for the everyday use until other solutions could be established.

<comment><USER12> There are many technical reasons, but I'll respond differently.

Bitcoin is not a business-coin. Bitcoin is an idea-coin. It was never about the price, the price is just a side-effect. For many early adopters and developers, Bitcoin is about changing the world. Not in a marketing bullshit- world, but in a real way. We really believe that the world would be a better place if we've put a stop to government and banks monopoly on controlling the money. You may disagree, and it's fine. We believe in it, and we want to have the most secure, uncensorable and attack-resistant value transferring network. If it takes $30 to pay to transfer on such network, so be it. Increasing the block size compromises on that property, so we are not willing to do it, even though it's painful for everyone. We will wait. We have credit cards, we PayPal, and we can use altcoins before we get there. The price will rise and fall, users will come and go. We held at $1, we held at $10, we held at $20k, and we will hold at $10 again if it's required. We will get our layer 2 solution and get both our uncensorable, government-resistant network and instant cheap micropayments. That's why most of us dumped BCH coins without thinking twice.

What most other coins are (not all!) is a business-coin. They are mostly pointless. Ethereum could be really a centralized smart-contracts platform run by Google or Amazon, and noone would care much. Actually, I believe that's how ETH is going to end. I believe Amazon engineers are working on it already. Because who cares about centralization or censorship resistance, if the main use case is breading virtual cats? No government will be interested in censoring that.

What BCash is, is a scam coin. It's all about ASICBOOST and Roger Ver's hurt pride. He would like to be a pope of Bitcoin, but noone really cares about him. Except for a talent for scamming people for his own gain, he is noone.

<comment><USER13> I couldn't agree more. I'll add, if you are interested in making money there are plenty of coin's, including BCash, to spend your time with. Go for it. But if you are interested in something beyond speculation, it's pretty hard to ignore the shady reputations and ecosystem of many of the most valuable blockchains. Dash written and rewritten to centralize everything to Evan. Ripple is basically the first ICO with all token being issued in the same manner. It's pretty surprising these issues don't matter to anyone. The only outlier really is Etherium. I think there should be both centralized and decentralized systems and Etherium fits the former well and with the least amount of scammyness in it's foundation.

<comment><USER14> While I'd agree that Ethereum was not created with an intent of scammyness, I wouldn't single it out as an outlier for good behavior. The dream of Ethereum was "code as law," yet key players have demonstrated the ability and willingness to implement hard forks in order to undo unpopular outcomes of valid Solidity code. So while I don't believe Ethereum was created with a scammy intent, I think it is certainly too premature for public release, and attempts to "fix" issues caused by this immaturity has let to some scammy behavior.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The was a long winded explanation of a 51% attack lol.

Was the author just talking about hashrate switching? Any solutions for exchanges or merchants such as just increasing the confirmations required?

Any interest in bitcoin cash changing it's algorithm?

<comment><USER16> > Any interest in bitcoin cash changing it's algorithm?

I doubt it. One of the reasons BCH hardforked was so large mining pools could continue to take advantage of Asicboost, a patented approach to Bitcoin hashing that provides a 20-30% speedup.

Asicboost is essentially taking advantage of a flaw in the original Bitcoin algorithm which leads to slightly predictable hashes. Segwit fixed this problem, nullifying their patented advantage.

All of the vocal BCH supporters are involved with large sha256 mining pools. I think it's very unlikely that they'll elect to change algorthms.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Not happening. ANT Pool has a huge investment in Bitcoin Cash and would swoop in with mining power to protect their investment.

<comment><AUTHOR> Please re-read the post, because you don't understand.

The 51% attack is carried in secret. Noone has any way to know if it is happening until the longer chain is published. And after that, it's too late already. Someone could try to catch up with (not anymore secret) longest chain, but the damage has been done - the state of the network has already changed. Actually switching it back is only adding salt to the wound. Noone would trust that coin again anyway, and it is worthless to try to rescue it.

AntPool is busy mining Bitcoin, because it pays better:

[https://blockchain.info/pools](https://blockchain.info/pools)

so it can't constantly police BCash chain by over-provisioning it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I can't take any criticisms against Bitcoin Cash seriously when the authors knowingly refer to it as BCash. It's not just a shortening of the name, it's part of a concerted effort by detractors to distance the chain from the Bitcoin legacy.

Any author that purposefully uses the term BCash is, on the face, incapable of being objective because they're advertising that they're detractors already.

The Bitcoin Core (no on-chain scaling at any cost!) crowd _asked_ the on-chain scaling fans to "fork off and leave". Now that the coin is doing very well in terms of market value and especially in growing merchant adoption, they're desperate to push the narrative that it's a scam or dangerous or can't be taken seriously. They know that if they can't destroy Bitcoin Cash now, it has a reasonable chance of eventually overtaking the legacy Bitcoin network in every important respect.

<comment><USER19> It's called bcash in hopes that too many newbies won't go deposit bitcoin into a "bitcoin cash" address and sadly lose it all.

<comment><USER2> Again, this is a myth spread by people trying to tarnish Bitcoin Cash's image.

The truth is that the money can't be lost. If you have the Bitcoin Cash private keys for the deposit address, you have the Bitcoin Core private keys on the Core chain. All that happens is that someone accidentally receives Bitcoin Core instead of Cash.

<comment><USER19> A lot of newbies put everything on an online exchange and don't bother with handling private keys. I haven't found a single exchange yet where you control the private keys. The public keys on exchanges I've seen are different for Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin. Also, can you imagine the end result of paying for a good or service that accepts Bitcoin with Bcash?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I like the math and theory on this. But really why would someone who's making millions on the status quo risk tanking the market for a one time gain? Seems unlikely.

<comment><AUTHOR> You don't have to risk anything. If the trend continues, at some point one would be able to rent the mining power required.

On top of it, if you are a small miner, and you can't afford capital investments required to keep up with latest mining hardware, while loosing market share, you can use your soon-osolete hardware to make a one last buck. A big buck this time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> OK, this is describing a 51% attack.

And who would engage in this 51% attack? The miners?

The miners are one of the biggest groups that SUPPORT Bitcoin Cash, so I find it unlikely that they would spend millions attacking it.

Anyway. It matters not. The people that want Bitcoin to be a settlement layer are free to spend 50$ per transaction to use Bitcoin, and those of us who want to use it as an actual peer to peer electronic currency will use Bitcoin Cash.

Everyone wins. It doesn't really matter what is the "real" Bitcoin.

<comment><USER22> Anyone who's mining Bitcoin could switch to Bitcoin Cash and work to perform a 51% attack.

> BCash shares hashing algorithm with Bitcoin. That means any hashing power on > the Bitcoin network can work on BCash network. And there is typically 10 > times more miners mining on BTC, than on BCH because of the difference in > the price and minning fees.

<comment><USER21> And which miner SPECIFICALLY would do that? There are only like 7 major mining pools. Which of those 7 do you think would do an attack?

The miners were the ones who helped create Bitcoin Cash. Why would they attack it?

The miners are the largest supporters of big blocks, so it make no sense that they would attack the thing that they helped launch.

Also, people don't seem to realize that it is already possible to do a ~20 percent selfish mining attack. And yet we don't see THAT happening...

These attacks aren't realistic in practice because it would be immediately obvious that something is happening, and the miners would lose all their money as Bitcoin crashes.

<comment><AUTHOR> Let me count some scenarios:

* a miner losing its share in the competitive game could make a one last money grab before its hardware is obsolete

* BCash backing miners losing confidence in success of BCH could just damage the whole space, for revenge or and profit

* complete outsider like an angry government could try to disrupt the space to ban all crypto or at least heavily regulate it / buy some time

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Who is seriously going to try and execute a 51% attack? It would be so incredibly expensive, you would have to keep spending more as people added hash power to shut you out, and most importantly if your attack worked you would instantly undermine the security of the blockchain making all the currency you've stolen worthless!

</comment><comment><USER24> > But I'll try to explain everything technically and stay objective

You failed inside of 3 paragraphs.

<comment><USER10> The headline used the term "BCash." It'd be tough to have an objective post by someone about "BCore," too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Is it possible it's already happened? I have no idea what the mining breakdown looks like - but I'd imagine it's only a couple players mining BCH. I'd think you could rewrite the chain at will pretty much.

<comment><USER3> We would see two chains forking of a shared block with a significant length (~10). Unless you count Bitcoin Clashic[1], there's no proof of that

[http://bitcoinclashic.org/](http://bitcoinclashic.org/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> The spectrum is really marvelous. It's amazing to see how many different kinds of people, with many different motivations, will waste their time on speculative crypto-coins.</comment>


A Privacy Bomb Is About to Be Dropped on the California Economy and the Internet - <AUTHOR> https://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2018/06/a-privacy-bomb-is-about-to-be-dropped-on-the-california-economy-and-the-global-internet.htm#CA <comment><USER2> Previously: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17420849](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17420849) (and [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17376772](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17376772) earlier).

</comment><comment><USER3> I dunno, it looks fairly reasonable to me. At this point I feel like the sooner everyone just shrugs and adopts a GDPR-ish like framework, the better. And this one looks serviceable, doesn't come into effect until 2020, and can be tweaked in the meantime if needed.

I'm open to the proposition that there's something horrible here but 1) the linked article doesn't seems to able to find any and 2) it _does_ do a good job of selling me on the idea that this law is better than the ballot initiative we'll get if this doesn't pass.

So...what are we meant to do with this info? Call up our local legislators (if we live in CA) and tell them to pass it? (Or...not pass it? I'm honestly confused what the author wants.) There's no call to action here I can see, probably because there's nothing meaningful to do, in which case...maybe take a few more days and make a readable analysis of whatever ends up passing? Because this just feels like fearmongering.

<comment><USER4> Right. If there are any major issues, the companies can pay the government to make it how they want. They surely will anyhow. Very sad for the small businesses that will suffer, but I can't reason to worry for them more than the all the millions mustering a life in the surveillance state _without_ small business capital. It sounds rough but something has to change yesterday. Let the corporations work out the details for once and if you honestly want small businesses to have a voice, simply vote for candidates who don't accept corporate campaign donations. That's where it starts.

<comment><USER5> There are no founders left on HN anymore: most commenters here with newish accounts have no idea what it takes to start or run a business themselves.

<comment><USER4> I have started a business and sold 4 years ago. I understand your point.

Mine is more about asking what pace of commercial enterprise a society can and should bear. Why must everyone carry the burdens of our greatest risk takers? Life has many facets. Some of them cannot be bought and sold, and some of them shouldn't be. Businesses come and go like flies. Civil societies are harder to come by.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Someone needs to do a better executive summary of this bill. Or at least do a better job of highlighting and explaining where it might be broken. Without all of the breathless editorializing. Because when I scan his summary, everything actually seems fairly reasonable, from a consumer privacy standpoint.

<comment><USER7> My thoughts exactly. Very poorly constructed article. They definitely buried the lead, which is that the law is reasonable. IMO it's crazy that it's taken this long for real regulation of web 2.0.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> > This bill would provide that a consumer shall have the right to request that > a business delete any personal information about the consumer which the > business has collected from the consumer. Upon such a request, the business > would be required to delete the information from its records and direct any > service providers to do the same. This right to delete would need to be > disclosed by businesses collecting personal information

How does this work when someone requests that a company delete all invoices related to them?

<comment><USER9> There's a whole list of exceptions included in both GDPR and this law. For example, a business does not need to delete information when it is required to: "Complete the transaction for which the personal information was collected, provide a good or service requested by the consumer, or reasonably anticipated within the context of a business's ongoing business relationship with the consumer, or otherwise perform a contract between the business and the consumer"

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I believe this is called FUD - lengthy "summarizing" of the facts, alternating with vague baseless allusions. The author condemns the bill for being 10k words long, while his own screed weighs in at 5.5k!

I _am_ a bit wary of something that pops up out of the blue, looking helpful - "never let a good crisis go to waste" and all that. And I'm generally skeptical of "making more laws". But what are the _specific_ flaws in this one?

The indictment seems to be focused on time, meaning there could be flaws we cannot find. But given this is an adversarial process, it also means there (hopefully) hasn't been much of a chance for every entrenched interest to compromise with each other at the people's expense!

The tech giants will eventually benefit from this type of legislation, because after the initial shock it will just help them consolidate. For instance (contrary to the linked FUD), "mom and pop [retail] stores" already don't have to worry about handling customers' information, as that's encapsulated by the payment processors.

So now every little business that wants to use surveillance against their customers will be pushed to go through some centralizer (eg Google). Though from the perspective of the unwillingly surveilled, this isn't really that bad either - eg gaining the ability to _actually break up_ with clingy and histrionic Faceboot.

The big question is if this ability to delete the files being kept about ourselves will remain unneutered, or whether the surveillance industry will eventually succeed in eroding it under some guise of indefinite consent or nebulous mingling of orthogonal purposes.

Another big test will be if the law can be successfully applied against say Experian.

<comment><USER11> > I wouldn't be surprised if the tech giants are actually positive on such > legislation, because after the initial shock it will just help them > consolidate.

It's really easy to check this, and the answer is no they're not positive on such legislation:

"Amazon, Microsoft, and Uber are paying big money to kill a California privacy initiative": [https://www.theverge.com/2018/6/15/17468292/amazon- microsoft...](https://www.theverge.com/2018/6/15/17468292/amazon-microsoft- uber-california-consumer-privacy-act)

Only facebook left this group of tech companies opposing this after his testimony in Washington (probably wanted to avoid even more bad PR).

"Facebook exits group opposing California's proposed privacy law": [https://www.cnet.com/news/facebook-drops-opposition-to- calif...](https://www.cnet.com/news/facebook-drops-opposition-to-californias- proposed-privacy-law/)

<comment><USER10> While I didn't phrase that well (everybody resists change), I do stand by the assertion that they specifically will benefit in the long term.

It's like how the health insurance companies were _really against_ "Obamacare", while now it has cemented their ability to compel your patronage.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> How is this rush to give people the right to remove themselves from databases going to intersect with corpuses of data that are immutably recorded in blockchain?

<comment><USER13> Aren't there bad things already encoded in the block chain, I thought I read that? How would a court order on an international open source software base be affected? You could order people in the us under court threat to alter the block chain to remove that information. People in other countries could have confusing legal implications. We already have this with us companies who stored info in other countries so the us govt would have a difficult time compelling them to give up info.

<comment><USER14> Publishing the block chain in question or running a node then becomes a civil and/or criminal transgression. Similar to how torrents were/are handled.

Whack a mole, with whomever has the most force winning (usually a nation state).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I don't know the whole story but maybe someone will enlighten me

I think the cat is already out of the bag. We saw how engaging the public works with the legislature. California net neutrality is a recent case in point.

I would argue that the being frozen thing is a good thing. In fact, I think we need to make this proposition system stronger. Once a proposal meets certification, the applicant or anyone may not withdraw it. This I think reduced chances of reckless gambling behavior.

</comment><comment><USER16> The self-serving wailing of a lawyer/lobbyist for the privacy invasion industry, how very droll.

The California initiative process, introduced around 1911 by crusading progressive governor Hiram Johnson to curb a venal legislature in hock to special interests, worked as designed in this case. Of course special interests adapted and learned to coopt the process, as the sugary-drinks industry is doing with its own initiative to arm-twist the State into preempting local soda taxes like Berkeley's or San Francisco's.

The privacy initiative took 2 years of preparation, not 7 days: [https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/06/29/california_data_pri...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/06/29/california_data_privacy_law/)

</comment><comment><USER17> It's pretty clear by now that many people, in fact, do not like being tracked and profiled. Most people, I suspect, could just not imagine what Google, Facebook and the programmatic ad industry overall have managed. But now, many are catching on. And they're pissed.

</comment><comment><USER18> This law sounds awesome, please implement something similar in Australia and New Zealand.

</comment><comment><USER19> > Among other major problems facing our country, we need to eliminate > California's initiative process to shut down this unwelcome workaround to > our democratic institutions.

Calling direct democracy an "unwelcome workaround to our democratic institutions" and saying it needs to be "eliminated" is a bit much. If the legislature was doing its job properly and giving the people what they want, they couldn't be motivated to support an initiative like this.

</comment><comment><USER20> > the text is locked down, so there's no way to improve the proposed text > based on comments from other stakeholders (which the legislative process > allows)

Or one of those stakeholders or a chairman beholden to those stakeholders would have pulled the same move that just happened with CAs net neutrality bill and used the process to poison-pill it.

</comment><comment><USER21> Such breathless, emotional ramblings really don't support whatever point the author is trying to make.

</comment><comment><USER22> > The GDPR took 4 years to develop; in contrast, the California legislature > will spend a grand total of 7 days working on this major bill

not a claim I would believe without a lot of evidence.

<comment><USER23> Which part?

<comment><USER22> 7 days.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I disagree

</comment><comment><USER25> Well maybe this will move the commercial internet more towards subscription or micro-transaction based models.</comment>