UK's Investigatory Powers Act is set to expand - <AUTHOR> https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/04/23/uk_snoopers_charter_sequel/ <comment><AUTHOR> > Taken together, the requests reflect exactly what critics of the > Investigatory Powers Act feared would happen: that a once-shocking power > that was granted on the back of terrorism fears is being slowly extended to > even the most obscure government agency for no reason other that it will > make bureaucrats' lives easier.

> None of the agencies would be required to apply for warrants to access > people's internet connection data, and they would be added to another > 50-plus agencies that already have access, including the Food Standards > Agency, Gambling Commission, and NHS Business Services Authority.

<comment><USER2> I find this deeply worrying, but among the people I work with and my immediate circle of friends and acquaintances I am in the minority. In my experience, people just don't care that much (a fact which I find very, very sad and troubling). My partner for example who is an otherwise intelligent woman doesn't really care - her 12 year old son even less so. In fact, I'm pretty sure he will be part of the generation that will grow up to regard privacy as some sort of slightly weird, exotic commodity.

I grew up behind the Iron Curtain, and for a chunk of my life we lived with this sort of government intrusion - nay, we expected it. We expected letters from abroad to be opened and read, we expected telephone calls to be listened to and so on. Obviously, there was no judicial oversight. I remember we looked at the West with something akin to awe and longing: in the West, they don't read your mail, they don't snoop on your calls and sure as s __t they don 't confiscate subversive magazines sent from abroad. It was like a fairy tale; in the West, they took your rights seriously.

30 years on, I look at the UK, my adopted home like a lover who fell out of love with the object of his desire. It turns out that when presented with the technical means to do so, the West is just as keen to eavesdrop and hoover up all your data: emails, phone calls, text messages, the lot.

Freedom and privacy are like a sausage comrades: you keep slicing at it until there's nothing left!

<comment><USER3> I'm a native Brit and whilst I agree our national lack of care about freedom is concerning I think it's slightly more nuanced than that.

My view is that people here are far too trusting of those in authority, and in particular counter-terrorist police and security services personnel. The attitude seems to be "if they think they need this then they know best". The collective psyche seems to take more comfort in the moral character of the people given the powers than in the safeguards against misuse.

On the positive side, almost noone I know thinks that it's appropriate that local councils or the Food Standards Agency have these powers. Those parts of government are largely viewed as "nannying busybodies" and the "nannying" bits of government are mostly distrusted - there does remain a British sense of freedom.

What's worrying though is that people don't seem to believe that minor agencies actually have been given these powers. When I've had conversations with people about this the reaction is "you're just exaggerating to make a point" or "they won't really do that, you're just concocting a far-fetched scenario that's technically legal but wouldn't happen in practice".

<comment><USER4> Another Brit here:

I'm not aware of anyone in my circle seeing such agencies as being "nannying". I'm of the opinion that the Food Standards Agency improves life for everyone in the UK. I would rather put up with a little bit of nannying if it means I don't get food poisoning from restaurants.

I used to be all for freedom of speech and anti-censorship, but these days I've seen too many friends and family fall for miss-information. My university-educated brother-in-law believes in all the "5G causes COVID-19" nonsense. He even sent me a video on YouTube from a "Top American Doctor". Sigh.

ps. I think the solution here is to teach more critical thinking in schools.

<comment><USER5> > _I 'm not aware of anyone in my circle seeing such agencies as being > "nannying". I'm of the opinion that the Food Standards Agency improves life > for everyone in the UK. I would rather put up with a little bit of nannying > if it means I don't get food poisoning from restaurants._

Is food poisoning from restaurants currently a problem for you? How will mass surveillance help?

> _I used to be all for freedom of speech and anti-censorship, but these days > I 've seen too many friends and family fall for miss-information. My > university-educated brother-in-law believes in all the "5G causes COVID-19" > nonsense. He even sent me a video on YouTube from a "Top American Doctor". > Sigh._

What are you suggesting the state should do to/for your friends and family who's opinions you dislike?

Do their views mean that they are undeserving of human rights?

<comment><USER4> > Is food poisoning from restaurants currently a problem for you? How will > mass surveillance help?

Yes it is - if health & safety and food quality are not set to a high standard (this applies to everyone BTW). Organized criminals will break all sorts of rules to make a quick buck - including selling horse meat as beef. How do you suggest the Food Standards Agency tackle this problem in the absence of a functional police force?

> What are you suggesting the state should do to/for your friends and family > who's opinions you dislike?

> Do their views mean that they are undeserving of human rights?

I have little patients for people who ignore basic scientific facts and believe the utter nonsense of so-called conspiracy theorists. It's their choice to ignore reality, and bring it on themselves to loose human rights.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Politicians and bureaucrats love the stuff that China does. So they want to have the same toys. They will never constrain themselves with stupid issues like human rights. And of course they will use these powers to our disadvantage. Sooner or later people will notice this. But tragically at that point there will be no way back except for violance. I make this sad prediction: The current trend to ever more oppression worldwide will backlash in violence. It might be that we will witness bureaucrats hang.

<comment><USER7> It's very rare for people to rise up against their leaders when they have food.

Since food is so very cheap in todays world, a country has to be in a very dire economic position before the government can't provide the people food and they overthrow it.

Even so, most governments will happily use their army against their own people, and with modern weapons being so efficient, even failing to feed your people doesn't necessarily lead to a change in government. Modern governments are very stable, except for outside influence.

<comment><USER6> I do not think it is a matter of food. I think that an oppressive regime will inevitably decrease the conditions for the poor masses. Look at how poor black people are massively overrepresented in US prisons. I think this is caused by the simple fact that the oppression takes the path of the least resistance. Now combine this with city-wide riots and you have a recipe for a "nothing left to lose" situation that could quickly escalate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> What's the official justification behind this? First, it was terrorism, then maybe a pandemic, what's next?

It was all so predictable, and yet so little has been done to prevent this.

Apathy is a powerful tool, how depressing.

What would be some practical solutions since democracy doesn't seem to prevent this from happening?

<comment><USER9> The justification is linked prominently in TFA [http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukdsi/2020/9780111195499/pdfs/...](http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukdsi/2020/9780111195499/pdfs/ukdsiod_9780111195499_en.pdf)

<comment><USER10> Indeed it is: "These regulations include the addition of five public authorities who will gain the power to obtain communications data as they are increasingly unable to rely on local police forces to investigate crimes on their behalf."

It isn't obvious to me that the proper fix for the police being inadequately resourced for investigating crimes is to grant policing powers to a wider range of departments. In principle the police receive both specialist training and supervision to ensure that their powers are properly used; abusive use of the earlier RIPA legislation by councils became notorious, e.g:

[https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/3333366/Half-of- coun...](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/3333366/Half-of-councils-use- anti-terror-laws-to-spy-on-bin-crimes.html)

<comment><USER11> The police have never investigated all crime. The various tax offices investigate tax fraud; local authority environmental health investigate a variety of piracy and weights and measures crimes; local councils investigate illegal landlords. There are loads of examples of crimes that are not, and never have been, investigated by English police forces.

> abusive use of the earlier RIPA legislation by councils became notorious,

But this is RIPA working as intended. Pre-RIPA those councils were engaging in this kind of surveillance unchecked. After RIPA they have to justify the surveillance, and we the public now have a way to stop them if they're going too far.

RIPA was never intended as "anti terror" law, it was designed to reduce surveillance and bring the rest under a regulatory framework.

<comment><USER12> The idea that any legislation brought forward since the Blair era was intended to _reduce_ surveillance and authoritarianism is quite simply laughable, though it turns out that May (as Home Secretary) and not Blair (though his government was the worst offender at normalisation of this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Ironically:

> the British government is asking that five more public authorities be added > to the list of bodies that can access data scooped up under the nation's > mass-surveillance laws: [including] the UK National Authority for Counter > Eavesdropping (UKNACE)

</comment><comment><USER9> The Register has an annoying habit of using very loose language that has the effect of overstating surveillance powers.

For example; _" And lastly, the Pensions Regulator, which checks that companies have added their employees to their pension schemes, need to be able to delve into anyone's emails so it can "secure compliance and punish wrongdoing."_

The phrase "delve into anyone's emails" here is an absurd mischaracterisation

<comment><USER14> Yep. Anything that implies 'direct access' or 'trawling' moves from being fear mongering to simply being untrue. 'Rifling through emails' and the like is showing a poor understanding of the legislation at best and deliberately trying to create fear uncertainty and doubt at worse.

<comment><USER15> Would you care to expand on exactly why you perceive that to be an inaccurate description?

<comment><USER11> In RIPA "Communications data" is explicitly not the content of the messages, it's the meta-data.

The Register have a good story if they focus on that access to metadata -- I don't think organisations should have access to meta-data without justification. But they haven't done that, they've said "rifling through your emails" and the implication (see other comments in this thread) is that this means access to the content of the email. That's untrue, it's misleading, and it's yet another example of piss-poor quality reporting from the Register derailing a thread by generating very many comments that miss the point.

<comment><USER16> I don't want people reading the metadata either.

And what is the definition of metadata? Is it just email addresses and dates or is the subject line included? Does it include any data extracted from email such as the names of other people or links to web sites? Does it just have web server IP addresses or the URLs and if the URLs does it have referrers as well.

Exactly where is the line drawn?

And yes El Reg is scare mongering as usual, but at least they stirred up some debate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> So the only way to keep my data safe is to rent a VPN in a country that don't get along with the "n eyes" countries. Wanna guess how many options are left ?

<comment><USER18> Using e.g. a Slovenian VPN won't help much if you're still accessing sites within the five eyes. You're still using HTTPS presumably.. the only thing VPNs would hide is what websites you visit, and if those are hosted in the US they can scoop up your traffic straight from the beam splitter.

The real danger is IC getting at the data in your accounts, which VPNs won't help with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> What is concerning about the UK is how apathetic the general public is to all this stuff. They have already accepted they need to opt _into_ adult websites and continue to vote for authoritarian govt.

I don't think this is unique to the UK, it's just the UK is at the forefront overt public surveillance. CCTV has been extensive in the UK since the early 90s. Fighting crime with the "if you aren't doing anything wrong, you don't need to worry" Orwellian attitude is generally accepted.

<comment><USER20> I agree with the second part of your comment, but the opt in for adult websites was dropped over fears it wouldn't be effective. [1]

[1] [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-50073102](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-50073102)

<comment><USER12> Also, I don't think this crosses people's mind when they vote. The U.K. effectively once again has a two party system, and at the last two elections no real choice at all, given the complete lack of functioning opposition. Thinking wishfully perhaps, now the opposition has a reasonable leader again, politics should become about policy again.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> >None of the agencies would be required to apply for warrants to access people's internet connection data

This is misleading. All requests for any kind of Communications Data require authorisation [1] and need to outline necessity, proportionality and collateral intrusion, including details of less intrusive means already tried. This is a similar process to the warrant application process - the difference is that a Warrant is authorised by the Secretary of State (the Home Secretary) whereas the CD authorisation is granted by the Investigatory Powers commissioner - previously Sir Adrian Fulford and currently Lord Justice Levison.

To say that any agency can get without a warrant is misleading. Also, none of the agencies cited (Food Standards Agency, Gambling Commission and NHS Business Services Authority) will have the authority to request to ICRs [3].

[1] [https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/office-for- commu...](https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/office-for- communications-data-authorisations)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Leveson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Leveson)

[3] [https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2016/25/section/62/enac...](https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2016/25/section/62/enacted)

<comment><USER21> Who do you represent?

The "warrants" offered by the IPA are meaningless and undeserving of the name, given that they're issued by the Secretary of State and not a court. The "judicial commissioner" process is equally farcical, since it basically just ensures the SoS filled out the paperwork correctly.

What is notably absent from any of this is a judge making any finding of evidential basis for warrant issuance, which is supposed to be the very premise of a warrant.

For a particularly amusing example of this, consider the fact that the new UK- USA CLOUD Act cooperation forced the UK to create a new kind of warrant which, unlike all other IP warrants in the UK, requires the involvement of an actual judge. I guess the US looked at the UK's notion of a "warrant" and was having none of it. Ironically, this means the UK is actually holding itself to a higher standard when asking other countries for data than when doing so domestically.

The requirement for "proportionality" is equally farcical. This is, as I understand it, a result of the ECHR striking down previous legislation on the grounds that it is not "proportional". The UK's "solution" to this is, AIUI, to add a line to the law saying "any usage must be proportional". It says it has to be proportional, thus it's proportional, right?

<comment><USER9> A judge doesn't make an evidential finding when issuing a warrant, they don't study the evidence at all. In fact no evidence is presented. The officer swears that the factual basis for the application is true. The court is there to check necessity and proportionality _on the assumption the officer 's sworn application is true_.

Edit: I'm sure they retain the right to inspect the evidence if they want to

<comment><USER21> That was basically what I was trying to say, yes. I wasn't saying a court would conduct its own investigation; obviously they assume the applicants are telling the truth and wouldn't commit perjury. But it absolutely is within the court's remit to consider the documents filed and decide whether the evidence presented therein amounts to enough of a case to issue a warrant. It's something conspicuously absent from the IPA, which puts this responsibility on ministers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> There isn't a reasonable argument that will change this. Hate to say it, but you just have to recognize the people who advocate it and socially isolate them. While the police became militarized, the public service have became a cluster of policing agencies, but without any of the limitations of powers or the accountability.

</comment><comment><USER11> The Register, as they usually do, have chosen to put the most sensationalist slant on this possible.

"communications data" does not mean the content of the message. Communications data is strictly about the meta-data. None of these organisations are given access to the content of messages.

And intercepts (the actual contents of the messages) are inadmissible in court.

</comment><comment><USER23> Does anyone know of a co-ordinated political opposition to RIPA, and how to support it?

</comment><comment><USER24> I'm not normally a libertarian but... There is nothing quite so permanent as temporary government powers.

<comment><USER25> This is true; the UK has suffered under "temporary" austerity measures for over a decade now as well, in practice it means the poor get poorer and the rich get richer, while the health care system is underfunded culminating now in a pandemic for which they don't have the means to handle.

It's been a short-term cost-cutting measure that is now basically killing people and damaging the economy, on top of what Brexit already cost them.

But hey, a handful of people made a bit of money off of it, it was totally worth it.

<comment><USER26> > This is true; the UK has suffered under "temporary" austerity measures for > over a decade now as well, in practice it means the poor get poorer and the > rich get richer, while the health care system is underfunded culminating now > in a pandemic for which they don't have the means to handle

Laughable number of mischaracterisations in there. Focused entirely on oft repeated spurious memetically distributed fake news items. Which no doubt you would Google and paste to support your assertions.

Political hatchery 101

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Full steam ahead to a brave new world.

No guessing involved either thanks to China

</comment><comment><USER28> Good thing this is being tried first in a nation that is pretty much guaranteed to sit and take it.

<comment><USER25> What country wouldn't though? I mean, take the US which literally allows people to have guns to rise up against the government, but they don't because they're too busy spreading their attention between the three jobs they need to make ends meet and pay off their student loan / medical bills and the ten streaming services or 24 hour news networks that demand what little remains of their attention.</comment></comment>


Ten years on, revisiting YouTube's first viral sensation - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jun/16/lonelygirl15-bree-video-blog-youtube <comment><USER2> The first YouTube viral video that blew me away, in terms of content and in showing the potential of democratized video, was the anonymous Korean kid shredding Pachelbel's Canon in D in his bedroom:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjA5faZF1A8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjA5faZF1A8)

The Times wrote a story about it here: "Web Guitar Wizard Revealed at Last"

[http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/27/arts/television/27heff.htm...](http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/27/arts/television/27heff.html?ref=arts&_r=0)

<comment><USER3> I remember watching that, and now re-watching it, it's still amazing. This kid has serious skill, I could watch it over and over.

My father, a life-long musician and music teacher, always told me the hallmark of a good piece of music is that it can be transposed and arranged into any other genre of music and still sound amazing. I don't know if he was right or not, but this seems like decent evidence he wasn't all wrong.

<comment><USER4> I agree in some sense, an astonishing number of Bach pieces have been rewritten for a bewildering array of instruments and sound absolutely amazing. But Bach is kind of like Math, it's true regardless if it's written in chalk on a chalk board or in mustard on an umbrella.

Yet there's also plenty of great music that really only sounds good on the instrument, something about it is very "subjective" with respect to the particulars of the orchestration.

I'll sometimes spend hours digging into covers of favorite songs on youtube, and it really is amazing how different kinds of music can survive this kind of instrument shifting.

 __just some sharing __

here 's a well known Bach Suite [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGQLXRTl3Z0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGQLXRTl3Z0)

now on guitar [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGipFrts650](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGipFrts650)

on piano [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhfxM5FOzjQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhfxM5FOzjQ)

flute [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWKQevA68DY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWKQevA68DY)

on Nyckelharpa [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zs3aUCM8BX8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zs3aUCM8BX8)

electric guitar [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bsr0MyH-3IU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bsr0MyH-3IU)

another electric guitar [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8OVpjdBevs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8OVpjdBevs)

Baritone Saxophone [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXz67syyse0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXz67syyse0)

Michael Hedges [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfnm__lNNUg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfnm__lNNUg)

Bass Guitar [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-tzPu7e2pg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-tzPu7e2pg)

Recorder [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PAhkoATipk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PAhkoATipk)

Tuba [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=neiTiiFp0bM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=neiTiiFp0bM)

Banjo [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLyM4gCrn1k](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLyM4gCrn1k)

Rock version [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIo59bHw54Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIo59bHw54Q)

Bobby McFerrin (not quite the same, but still...) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14LcvpXmb74](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14LcvpXmb74)

Pipe Organ [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRMrGo2UTH0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRMrGo2UTH0)

Marimba [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0eVALniBKE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0eVALniBKE)

Ukulele [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MC230wdYl1c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MC230wdYl1c)

Clarinet [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdTh4plaV9E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdTh4plaV9E)

Dubstep [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7qxeXNqCHw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7qxeXNqCHw)

Mandolin [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdKGI5zfkE0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdKGI5zfkE0)

Harp [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUWU4DdxdwU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUWU4DdxdwU)

Horn [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNsdcmDoDY0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNsdcmDoDY0)

Chapman Stick [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbWkDlPM8oI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbWkDlPM8oI)

Bassoon [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMl7j-Q1DEE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMl7j-Q1DEE)

Accordion [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGE4l7ObPvQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGE4l7ObPvQ)

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

It survives completely intact across instrument types, performance arenas, recording methods, synthesis, voice, octave...it's absolutely astonishing.

<comment><USER5> > Michael Hedges > [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfnm__lNNUg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfnm__lNNUg)

Judging from his manners in that video, what a nice guy!

<comment><USER6> He passed away too soon. My favorite Michael Hedges song: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTC7kPZZmuM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTC7kPZZmuM)

<comment><USER4> An absolute genius who probably pushed the art of the guitar ahead by two generations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> norea-armozel It's sad how much of the original spark that made Youtube interesting is long gone. I use to had a vlog myself where I would discuss issues particularly from a right-libertarian perspective (most of those vids are private or deleted now since I don't believe anything I've said back then anymore). I think the first thing that killed such vlogs at least in my opinion was the removal of the whole comment system. It wasn't the best thing in the world but you could actually setup reply videos which made conversations possible. It's weird how YT's dev team never though to reintroduce the reply system like that again. That was the best part of YT at least for vloggers even if they didn't like each other (Me and FringeElements/ConfederalSocialist didn't get along. Same with HannibalBarca/HannibalVictor.) because you could see if a thread going on via video replies. I doubt YT will ever reintroduce such a feature again since it led to weeks long flame wars that did eventually lead to some people getting doxxed like thunderf00t (I know a few others were doxxed well before him, but he's one that I remember in detail, especially with his spat against DawahFilms).

<comment><USER7> > It wasn't the best thing in the world but you could actually setup reply > videos which made conversations possible.

I had completely forgotten about that system. I really enjoyed video replies. Not only did they foster discussion, it was a great way to learn, discover music, and the replies allowed a great collaborative humor to develop as well. I seem to remember that they were starting to become very spammy about the time they disappeared though.

>That was the best part of YT at least for vloggers even if they didn't like each other

I remember reading a scientific paper a while back that suggested social networks grew much better when they had [likes/eprops/upvotes/etc] than they did without, but allowing negative feedback (beyond comments) stifled growth. We naturally try to surround ourselves with like-minded individuals as well. Our natural tendencies coupled with incentive social networks have to censor information that we disagree with means we all live in bubbles where our ideas are rarely challenged.

The YouTube reply system made viewing content from the "other side" really easy. I'm pretty sure I watched more vlogs from people I disagree in a single month before that feature was taken away than I have in the entire time since, especially with the new changes to the "recommended videos". Which is a shame. It makes it much easier to demonize the other side.

As a side note, someone on Reddit made a snide joke about the Demosthenes/Locke story arc in Ender's Game and how unrealistic it was; the point being nobody gives a shit about two bloggers having a fight. That story arc might actually make sense on YouTube, given how much better we empathize with people in a video than we do with people who are hidden behind the written word.

<comment><USER8> Even without downvotes it's unsettling how much of an echo chamber my Facebook list has become. The only points on which I disagree with any significant number of my friends on are those aligned with the hard left (draw from that what inference you will) but talking to new people I meet out in the real world, I get a totally different picture of the what other people think.

Edit: The whole point about Demosthenes and Locke was that any sufficiently persuasive person could be widely influential in an anonymous online system. Putting it on YouTube with videos destroys a portion of the anonymity. Who would take Demosthenes seriously, knowing that he was a girl in her early teens?

<comment><USER7> I wasn't thinking of a video of an actual person, more of a visual representation of one. I remember a few of those older videos had people who always talked with masks on or something similar. Video is more compelling and easier to digest than mediums that only work via one sense at a time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Side note: Holy cow. I was initially posting to say I distinctly remembered Lazy Sunday coming out in 2004, because I remember posting it on my blog in my dorm room freshmen year. Then I remembered if it was in 2004 I was almost done with college, and so it couldn't have been from my dorm. Then I check the Wikipedia and realized he was right about the Dec 2005 date, which means I had already finished school. The mind is weird.

<comment><USER10> It's an interesting field of research - [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reconstructive_memory](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reconstructive_memory)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I distinctly remember being 17 years old and being fascinated watching these videos on YouTube. It was really one of the first things to get me interested in logging into YouTube actively as opposed to simply being linked to the site from elsewhere. Nice to see that the actors didn't come out of it for the worse :)

</comment><comment><USER12> I also fondly remember "The Show with Ze Frank" from back in 2006:

[http://www.zefrank.com/theshow/](http://www.zefrank.com/theshow/) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvL6NITEozY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvL6NITEozY) (sadly the frame-rate in this reupload is messed up)

<comment><USER13> I know a lot of people (myself included) aren't huge fans of that frenetic, jump-cut-heavy style of vlog/video that's so common on YouTube but I'm pretty sure The Show was one of the first to really popularize it.

Still, I also loved The Show. At the time, I was used to IRC and forums and the comment sections of goof sites like Fark but it still felt like something really cool and unique when Ze would put out calls for submissions or contributions that would then be featured in episodes.

I'd done much smaller collab projects with forum friends in the past but his personality and fairly large fan base made it seem a lot more fun and like being part of a bigger crowd.

edit: it also led me to find the "pilot" for a show that was never produced: The Remnants. I'd watch that over The Walking Dead any day.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQFv0Le2DyI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQFv0Le2DyI)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> It looks like they might be doing something for the 10 year anniversary, as a new video was posted to the lonelygirl15 page today, the first in 7 years according to the comments: [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qwklfIbSAgA](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qwklfIbSAgA)

<comment><USER15> What an amazing coincidence: The Guardian article and the new video right at the same time... :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> So many articles from just ten years ago are dead links now. But I found this amusing:

"lonelygirl15 is the hottest thing on YouTube at the moment (18,222 subscribers, 1.5 million views)"

[https://www.theguardian.com/technology/blog/2006/aug/28/islo...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/blog/2006/aug/28/islonelygirl15)

18,222 subscribers! And they're still talking about it a decade later.

Meanwhile rocketboom.com was serving up QuickTime that required a plugin to install before you could view a video and claiming 400,000+ downloads _per episode_. (Later investigated and disproved by BusinessWeek.)

Early web video was a debacle. So many shady companies. Cool times, though. Fun to watch the history get re-written. Note how CAA was in on it from nearly day one.

</comment><comment><USER17> Pretty crazy to think some YouTube series like AVGN have been going on for ten years—only a few TV shows make it that far.

<comment><USER18> I'm glad the dude behind AVGN found success with that show. Seems like most YouTube personalities are broke.

<comment><USER17> I've been watching him since I was in middle school—I graduated college this year. It's pretty crazy and it speaks volumes about the power of the Internet and YouTube.

James Rolfe studied film in college and spent his whole childhood/teenagehood making home movies. It's probably a dream come true that he's able to entertain millions and got a "real" movie out. Pretty cool!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The first video I remember downloading from the internet was The Spirit of Christmas in 1996[1] followed by Troops[2] the following year. 30MB takes a _long_ time to download over a 28.8 modem. Streaming was out of the question.

1: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Spirit_of_Christmas_(short...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Spirit_of_Christmas_\(short_film\))

2: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troops_(film)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troops_\(film\))

<comment><USER20> South Park definitely set a precedent. There was also a very active community of sharing MPEG1 recordings of Futurama in the warez 'scene' from the very first episode which aired in March 1999.

<comment><USER19> I remember when VCD (subset of MPEG1) was the standard for releasing movies online. I was even in a group that converted them from VCD to MPEG4 for those for whom 2CDs (1400MB downloads) was just too big.

<comment><USER20> ... and god help you if you were a 'scene' group and released a movie in anything other than a multi-part RAR set of 15MB files containing 2 x 700MB files. nuked!

<comment><USER21> Ahhh those days from 98-99, being a courier for the biggest releases was frantic! Getting a PRE on your box was like Christmas.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Watching Lazy Sunday again made me go check whether Mapquest still exists. It looks weird now.

</comment><comment><USER23> I was expecting Numa Numa for some reason.

<comment> nommm-nommm That was pre youtube- it was on Newgrounds originally.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> You might think this format died after lonelygirl15 was exposed, but there are plenty of moderately successful copycats, like "14 year old" Pupinia Steward [https://www.youtube.com/user/Robloxobbystar/videos](https://www.youtube.com/user/Robloxobbystar/videos)

All it takes is one good troll video landing you on top of reddit [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYsi6Z6sXY8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYsi6Z6sXY8) (All about my Incest) hitting 1 mil views and you get the ball rolling. Throw in a plot twist of being madly in love with Trump (and into older men in general) and you have a success on your hands. Might even be Jimmy Kimmels long con for the election, like the Olympics wolf inside hotel video.

</comment><comment><USER25> First video I ever saw in youtube[1] is still up, worse than I remember, and has less than 500k views. That strikes me as so strange.

1\. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwVslAo8Cz8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwVslAo8Cz8)

<comment><USER26> Um, yeah, I clicked it and can't see how it got more than 10,000 views.

<comment><USER27> High production values, they even shot on location.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> For me it was smosh pokemon theme song lip sync.

Unfortunately, Smosh were sued for using the theme song and had to take it down.

Here's a duplicate of it: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOX3OmUhQoo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOX3OmUhQoo)

</comment><comment><USER29> Wow, I was watching YouTube from the beginning and I have never heard of this. I guess I was more in the sketch comedy and sudo public access side of it.

</comment><comment><USER30> Does anyone remember those Darth Vader parodies? Those were pretty good but totally forgot the name of the series.

<comment><USER31> Do you mean Chad Vader: Day Shift Manager? [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wGR4-SeuJ0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wGR4-SeuJ0)

<comment><USER32> Man, times sure have changed. Right now people would kill for that extra shift.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> so every social site lately required fake users?

this is not as direct as reddit own staff posting but pretty close

<comment><USER13> It was still user generated content. It was just telling a fictional story in a faux-realistic format...the vlog.

Not much different that the fake documentary style horror movies like Blair Witch. They just managed to keep the fantasy going for longer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> If I remember correctly what really rocketed youtube from being a website with nothing but crap to a site worth going to were the home videos from tourists caught in the the Tsunami in Thailand.

<comment> nommm-nommm The earthquake/tsunami was in 2004 but youtube didn't launch until 2005. Unless you are talking about another tsunami.

<comment><USER34> No, I'm talking about the same tsunami and your dates are correct, but there no reason that video taken from the tsunami wouldn't be posted later once there was a platform for them, which is what happened.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> That girl is super cute, but having been a Youtube addict back in 2006/07, I don't really recall her being that popular. As mentioned in the comments, the big one was Canon in D. Pokemon parody by Smosh. Evolution of dance. Urban ninja.</comment>


To compete with Google, Apple has to make MobileMe free - <AUTHOR> http://mobile.venturebeat.com/2010/05/25/mobileme-free-posterous/ <comment><USER2> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1378285></comment>


The coalition for diversity whose diversity did diversity just win? - <AUTHOR> http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2016/11/coalition-diversity-whose-diversity-diversity-just-win.html <comment><USER2> To take another example, so long as Silicon Valley doesn't move economic activity to other parts of the country, it is going to "succeed" because 49 1/2 states are redlined, not because it has any understanding of what people in the rest of the country (never mind the world) might want (or be able) to buy.

Unfortunately the #1 problem with the current American "meritocracy" is that it has enough control of the narriative that it can always frame itself as successful and blame its failings on other people. For instance, Marissa Meyer can manufacture "success" by buying worthless companies started by her friends, and now with a record of "success" they can go rip off more investors.</comment>


Something Weird Is Happening on Wall Street, and Not Just the Stock Sell-Off - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/12/upshot/markets-weird-coronavirus.html <comment><USER2> Is it really not obvious? 80% of the assets being sold belong to people who either A. are at risk of dying from this virus and B. don't expect to live through it.

They're not interested in bonds, they're interested in surviving. This isn't your typical "cash crunch" stress, this is real world survival.</comment>


Civil Forfeiture and the Supreme Court (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2014/02/civil-liberties-and-supreme-court?foo=bar <comment><USER2> In articles about "innocent until proven guilty" it is popular to say that it is better to let 100 guilty go free than one innocent be erroneously convicted. Yet, many are willing to seize assets before that person is proven guilty in case they try to hide the assets or spend them when the assets are possibly not theirs.

I would rather let 100 criminals hide ill-gotten gains than let one innocent person have their assets seized before they can mount a proper defense.

Prosecutors: Freedom means that your job is harder, but fairness and the rule of law is part of what makes this a great country to live in. We will appreciate your sacrifice if/when this issue is ever remedied

<comment><USER3> >it is popular to say that it is better to let 100 guilty go free than one innocent be erroneously convicted

It is popular to say, but so often I think people don't actually believe it once they are taken to task on it. For example, given evidence that there is a 98% chance someone significantly harmed a child, most people would vote guilty, even though this equates to jailing 2 innocent people to make sure that 98 guilty do get punished.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't know if it's telling that as of this moment, all of the top-level comments to this thread are currently gray (except for otterly's assertion that it should be dated).

I think it's worth noting that civil asset forfeiture, while controversial, isn't necessarily evil in itself, if done with a high bar to seizure. I think it's fair to say that someone who makes a fortune using illegal means should have to surrender that fortune.

Where asset forfeiture falls down on this is that FAR too often, no illegal acts are proven before forfeiture is initiated, and substantive due process should need to be the hurdle before that happens. This will of course lead to the unfortunate likelihood that "bad people" will use some of those fortunes in their legal defenses, but if "innocent until proven guilty" is to be our standard, and it's a mighty good one IMHO, then so be it. The alternative is much worse (again, IMHO), which is that those without fortunes, and hence, without the means of adequate legal representation, are simply unable to defend themselves at all except through court-appointed lawyers of potentially questionable effectiveness.

The trick, of course, is that the state has a hurdle before stealing goods, and they have no incentive to impose such hurdles upon themselves. I don't know what the fix for that is, short of being really loud and riotous, but someone else's off-the-cuff remark the other day struck a chord to me (though not without its own potential pitfalls) -- limit attorneys general and other positions of that sort to only defense and criminal attorneys with a history of having defended the rights of citizens.

If we accept that the job (or at least _a_ job) of the government is to defend the rights of the citizenry, then such an exclusion makes a certain amount of sense. As it stands, the state, and its agents, have a disproportionally stacked playing field.

<comment><USER5> I don't think it would be unreasonable to require that every prosecutor have worked for 2+ years as a public defender. Helps with the shortage of public defenders as well.

<comment><USER6> > I don't think it would be unreasonable to require that every prosecutor have > worked for 2+ years as a public defender.

There may be a serious problem with quality of representation if a substantial portion of the people working as public defenders are doing it to meet a checkbox on the way to their planned career as public prosecutors.

<comment><USER7> There's a serious problem with quality of representation already. Simply having more public defenders seems likely to me to help, even if some of them aren't as emotionally committed to the job as others.

There's also the possibility that someone who starts out just checking a box will discover that there are more shades of gray in these situations than they had realized.

<comment><USER6> If you want more public defenders, just fund the public defenders offices better, so that they can pay more lawyers, and pay each of them better.

No need to compel people who want to be prosecutors act as public defenders. Just arrange the economic incentives properly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> How on Earth is this possible? If you read [https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/forfeiture](https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/forfeiture) closely, you'll find an explanation.

 _Although the conviction requires the government to prove guilt "beyond a reasonable doubt," the forfeiture is subject to a lower burden--preponderance of the evidence._

This case demonstrates the real-life consequence of this difference in standards. In this case the government could not establish "beyond a reasonable doubt" but the accused could not demonstrate "preponderance of the evidence" for innocence either. So the accused don't go to jail but still lose their house.

And here we get to the real problem with how civil forfeiture is actually used today. How do you establish a "preponderance of the evidence" when no specific crime was ever alleged? It is effectively impossible! The TSA can always allege "a smell of marijuana" and claim probable cause for the seizure. They have a direct financial incentive to do so, and you have no way afterwards to prove that they were lying.

</comment><comment><USER9> If we want to have a reasonable discussion about this we need to first dis- conflate two things:

1\. Is pre-emptive asset seizure justifiable to prevent allegedly ill-gotten gains from being hidden away prior to judgement?

2\. Do such seizures unfairly prevent the accused from hiring the counsel of their choice?

My thoughts on #2: If you argue that this will result in an unfair trial and increased likelihood of a false guilty verdict, then what about people who couldn't afford to hire their counsel of choice in the first place? Any argument or system where judgements are biased by wealth is fundamentally not justice. In other words, my answer to #2 is no. The ability to hire good counsel should _not_ be dependent upon one's assets. The outcomes of trials should not be dependent upon which side has more money. Some alternative systems that would be fairer, in my opinion:

A. All counsel is provided by the state and each side gets assigned counsel randomly.

B. Each side contributes as much as they want to a pool of funds. Each side gets to spend half of the pool on the counsel of their choice.

B is the better solution for a free market-based society.

<comment><USER10> Except that if you had read the article, only $140,000 of the defendants money was "allegedly ill-gotten", meaning the government seized ALL of their money, not just the allegedly illegal money.

Your #2 is a non-starter because #1 is flawed.

<comment><USER9> > meaning the government seized ALL of their money, not just the allegedly > illegal money.

Red Herring. I made general statements, not opinions about the specific case in the article. Please judge the statements on their own. I was pretty careful in my choice of words, e.g. "to prevent allegedly ill-gotten gains".

> Your #2 is a non-starter because #1 is flawed.

You failed to de-conflate.

<comment><USER10> Your original comment was a top level comment on the article, and is verbatim:

> If we want to have a reasonable discussion about this

The "this" in that sentence (to any reasonable human) would mean that you were talking about the subject of the article, the people that got their money seized, not "in general asset forfeiture".

So no....not a red herring.

If you wanted to be careful, your first statement should read: "if we want to have a discussion about _asset forfeiture..._ ".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Submitter or mods, can you please add the date to this post? This was published in Feb 2014.

<comment><AUTHOR> Done, thanks for pointing that out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I don't think the "Supreme Court" is held in high esteem.

And it shouldn't be either.

Keyword #laughingstock

</comment><comment><USER13> This is why I don't respect the Supreme Court.

This is why I don't think Obama is a great president.

This is why as a liberal I agree much more than I want to with the conservatives who argue about big government.

Why does the conservative court members always take the side of government when going against people like me and you?

Why does the conservative court members always take the side of corporations when going against people like me and you?

Why respect the Supreme Court when its decisions mostly are against the middle class?

<comment><USER14> Maybe you're a 'libertarian'?

<comment><USER15> He lamented that the government always sides with the corporations. Libertarianism doesn't fix that; libertarian policy would be far, far worse for the middle class than what we have now.

<comment><USER16> Yes, it does. Our current system is based on corporatism (labor unions are not exempt from this behavior); where those with power and connections help make the laws that keep them in power and from competition.

In a libertarian society (or even in a Constitutional Republic sought out by the founders), laws are made as close to the people as possible, with the Federal government having 14 explicit powers (the power grab by interpeting the 'necessary and proper' clause broadly would not exist, and the 10th Amendment wouldn't be ignored), so you'd see Local ordinances, county ordinaces, and state laws most; and very few federal laws (again, they'd only need to cover their 14 expressly granted powers).

Corporations (and labor unions, and any other 'special interest') wouldn't have to just lobby the Federal government, they'd have to lobby all 50 states, plus any localities; in short, it'd be a monumental proposition (even if we assume they were capable).

Also, since the Federal Government would be necessarily weaker, there wouldn't be an incentive to try to lobby them -- no one lobbies the person that has no power.

Currently, you can lobby 51-60 senators and 271 Congressmen and effectively rule the country (Remember, the ACA was written in part by the insurance industry), and in a libertarian society, there'd be no basis for that to ever happen.

Also, sustained monopolies are a by-product of Government intervention (either through regulation, or explicitly by making rules against competition, much like the Railroads). In our lifetime, anyone who has 'had a monopoly' has sustained it with government help (think of Ma Bell; where utility providers are considered to have a 'natural monopoly' and as such competition is purposefully limited or non-existent). In Microsoft's case, nothing happened and their 'monopoly' was very short lived (1995-2005, Maybe?) because everyone innovated around them. There were no laws restricting who could get into the browser business, and Microsoft found themselves out-foxed. They're still trying to make up lost ground.

Before saying "Libertarian policy would be far, far worse for the middle class right now", you have to ask yourself if you really understand what a Constitutional Republic actually calls for.

<comment><USER15> I'm sorry, but what you're replying with is kind of the standard libertarian fantasy.

Shrink the reach of the federal government, and we'd be looking at rule by corporations, i.e. that don't answer to us not only in practice, but by design. How we know this? Weeelll, just look back a hundred years, when we had a significantly smaller federal government. Big businesses had far, far more power than they do now.

Libertarianism surely _sounds_ good. That's part of its enduring appeal. But for real-life workings? Nah.

For anyone interested, this is a pretty good place to start unraveling the usual libertarian fare: [http://world.std.com/~mhuben/libindex.html](http://world.std.com/~mhuben/libindex.html)

<comment><USER17> > Shrink the reach of the federal government, and we'd be looking at rule by > corporations

Nonsense. The corporations are _given_ free reign and support by the government. If the government didn't establish favorable regulations, they would be slowly whittled away by their smaller, nimbler competitors.

Economies of scale aren't a simple slope. They're a bell curve. After you get to a certain size, any additional growth is detrimental and you can only exist through artificial means.

Get rid of big government and you get rid of big corporations too!

<comment><USER15> There's no competitive advantage to _not_ polluting, or we wouldn't ever have needed an EPA in the first place!

There's such an imbalance of power between employer and employee that there's no meaningful competitive advantage to a safe workplace; if employees really were all self-empowered free agents, and not scared and hungry people with families and children to support, we wouldn't have needed an OSHA in the first place!

All the regulations the libertarians want to turn back, they all came about in response to the world working so imperfectly that it had to be changed with force of law.

Undoing that, on the basis of a theory with absolutely no real-world evidence of working? That just doesn't make sense.

<comment><USER17> > There's no competitive advantage to not polluting, or we wouldn't ever have > needed an EPA in the first place!

Why do you need the EPA again? My local government represents my locality. It can easily sue in civil court for any damage to the environment and use the resulting funds to make repairs. With the feds stepping in, makes this scenario much more complicated and difficult. They have jurisdiction.

> There's such an imbalance of power between employer and employee > self- > empowered free agents

Let me posit that if you have a traditional employer, you are not a "self- empowered free agent". Ditch your employer. Thank the maker we're slowly moving toward that eventuality.

> All the regulations the libertarians want to turn back, they all came about > in response to the world working so imperfectly

That's one possibility. Another is that "special interests" lobbied for those changes at which point the politician came up with a more pleasant justification for said regulations, sold them to the ignorant public, and now they're in place.

Which do you think is more likely?

<comment><USER15> The EPA's a good example, I think, because it's the big businesses that continually lobby _against_ it. Where are the big industrial players that sit back and laugh at how pollution restrictions are benefiting them?

Because it _seems_ like the big businesses always complain about the EPA as an emblem of government overreach, even though getting rid of it would be good for them and bad for everyone else, especially the people in the community suffering from the pollution!

And your answer is, "let them (all the people suffering from the effects of the pollution) all file lawsuits in state/local courts"?

If that wasn't working out before we had an EPA, why would it start working out now? And how would it be better/more efficient/an improvement to move from a condition of "pollution is limited" to "pollution is limited, but only after people file and win lawsuits"?

I mean, I'm really trying to see how we'd be better off if you took away the EPA, but wanted to keep pollution restrictions in place by this other, far more elaborate and far less accessible means. Hey, if really you just don't want pollution restrictions at all, then let's talk about that, let's ask, would we be better off without pollution restrictions?

Trying to say "no, the EPA is bad, but what they do is good and let's get to the same place through a complicated and lengthy process of local lawsuits"? Again, that don't make sense.

<comment><USER17> > If that wasn't working out before we had an EPA, why would it start working > out now?

What makes you think it wasn't working before? Those same corporations would shit a brick if they had to defend themselves from a 1000 lawsuits vs just one from the EPA. Everybody would have standing instead of just the EPA, because really everybody is getting fucked. You think they're complaining now? They'll go bankrupt if you get rid of the federal _protection_ , which was my point.

<comment><USER15> Ok, so we're agreed that pollution controls are a good idea. We're agreed that the basic functioning of the EPA is a good one.

But instead of us citizens charging one government agency to do this specific job, you think it's going to work out better for us people to have to, as individuals, research and understand the issue enough to file lawsuits?

That a bunch of regular folks, most of whom probably don't have a lot of cash lying around to file lawsuits, people who just own homes and work somewhere and whose community is now being polluted.. rather than use the specific tool of a government enforcer, the burden's on each of them to go file a bunch of separate lawsuits?

And this outcome is better for _them_ , and will lead to the same pollution restrictions they could get from the one agency doing its job?

I mean, that's what it sounds like you're saying, but it just still doesn't make sense.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google Hangouts - Cross platform messaging - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/+/learnmore/hangouts/

<comment><USER2> Is the Android version working for you? Gives me a failed link or something, like one of those "not available for your country" links, but it doesn't say anything about that this time.

<comment><USER3> It works fine. Here it is [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.and...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.talk)</comment></comment>


Show HN: Keza, Wealthfront for Your Bitcoin Launches Public Beta - <AUTHOR> http://getkeza.com <comment><USER2> I would be interested to see what HN thinks about this.

Who's name are the stocks kept in?</comment>


Show HN: The Road to GraphQL – A Journey to Master GraphQL in JavaScript - <AUTHOR> https://www.robinwieruch.de/the-road-to-graphql-book/ <comment><USER2> Seems promising, will check this out.</comment>


Hands-on: Blue Hydra can expose the all-too-unhidden world of Bluetooth - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/09/hands-on-blue-hydra-can-expose-the-all-too-unhidden-world-of-bluetooth/ <comment><AUTHOR> I wonder if the alarm industry has started working on using this kind of information, after all in certain applications _any_ unknown BT IDs coming into range would be cause for an alarm or at least a notification</comment>


Is Wikipedia for Sale? - <AUTHOR> http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/is-wikipedia-for-sale

<comment><USER2> My experience as a Wikipedian suggests that Wikipedia's administrators need to be much more alert than they have been to the possibility that the Wikipedians motivated by money (or by ideological bias) will stay with the project and persist in making edits contrary to Wikipedia policy. They edit more articles, and edit in greater numbers, than most admins guess or notice. And the point- of-view-pushing editors often inject so much wikidrama into discussions about how to improve articles that they drive away the participation of conscientious editors who know reliable sources about the article topics.

A current example is the article on Rupert Sheldrake,[1] which has recently been subjected to vigorous edit-warring, perhaps as part of a publicity campaign by followers of Sheldrake. (I just saw a new book by Sheldrake at a library yesterday, and perhaps that book's publication set the timing for the editing push.) But there are examples like this all over Wikipedia, and, again, I think most casual users of Wikipedia massively underestimate the percentage of articles that are edited mostly in the interest of pushing a point of view for commercial or ideological reasons.

The article kindly submitted here says, "Anyone can edit Wikipedia, but only a carefully vetted few are promoted to admin status on the site." And that is laughable. Describing the current group of Wikipedia as "a carefully vetted few" does violence to the English language. Nothing has ever been careful about the process for checking the background of administrator candidates or choosing which candidates become administrators. There are some very, very, very good administrators on Wikipedia (just as there are many very helpful everyday volunteer editors), but there are other administrators who are power trips to maintain conduct contrary to Wikipedia policies for building a good, free online encyclopedia. The Vice article submitted here does, at least, link to an Atlantic article[2] reporting that Wikipedia's rate of bringing new administrators on board is slowing. At least some of the administrators have been caught taking payoffs for editing articles to publicize the persons making the payoffs, so it will take more than just the current administrators being more alert to fix this problem on Wikipedia.

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

[2] [http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/07/3-char...](http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/07/3-charts- that-show-how-wikipedia-is-running-out-of-admins/259829/)

<comment><USER3> My experience as a Wikipedian:

\- provide content until an admin revert said content without explanation.

\- try to engage discussion with said admin and get referred to a wp policy that actually states this admin was wrong.

\- point the admin to his error and engage in wikipedia conflict resolution.

\- said admin sneakily changes said policy to confirm his views, and unleash a small army of followers to intervene to support him in conflict resolution and revert my edits. get banned

\- circumvent ban to protest, get banned for circumventing the ban. repeat until other admins take notices and discuss my case in secret channels.

\- find out that this has happened before quite a few times, escalate to head of wikipedia. get dismissed.

\- do as others did before, replace a specific high profile page with your story, revert the replace. now your story is there in wikipedia history for future investigators to find.

\- never contribute anything to wikipedia ever again, use wikipedia as a better than google search engine for official websites until duckduckgo.

<comment><USER4> > \- circumvent ban to protest, get banned for circumventing the ban. repeat > until other admins take notices and discuss my case in secret channels.

translation: be a dick

> \- find out that this has happened before quite a few times, escalate to > head of wikipedia. get dismissed.

be a dick

> \- do as others did before, replace a specific high profile page with your > story, revert the replace. now your story is there in wikipedia history for > future investigators to find.

be a massive dick

> \- never contribute anything to wikipedia ever again, use wikipedia as a > better than google search engine for official websites until duckduckgo.

be 5 years old

<comment><USER5> that is a legitimate counterpoint.

though in a dickish format, to be sure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The fact that companies, politicians, and other interests are paying PR people to edit or create articles shouldn't come as a surprise. Take a look at almost any living famous person's profile, and chances are you'll see a large amount of spin and fluff. And let's not forget the 2012 PR scandal involving a trustee of the Wikimedia Foundation UK and a Wikipedian In Residence who were "allegedly editing Wikipedia pages and facilitating front-page placement for their pay-for-play, publicity-seeking clients."(1)

PR also makes it into Wikipedia through sanctioned channels -- namely mass media citations which are considered "reliable sources", even though the content of the citation comes from a press release or helpful PR person.

This brings up an issue related to Wikipedia's policy that requires substantial third-party coverage for new articles. It is a flawed test for the importance of a subject.

Press coverage tends toward the sensational, visual, beautiful, controversial, current, language-specific, and easily explained. If a topic doesn't meet those criteria, it probably won't be covered by the press -- unless the topic in question has some well-connected PR firm or publicist pushing for it.

Another issue with press coverage is "established" media is contracting. There aren't as many editors assigning stories, or reporters crafting unbiased profiles of companies, organizations, topics and people. This has an significant, indirect impact on the types of topics that can be sourced according to Wikipedia's official rules.

1\. [http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57514677-93/corruption- in-w...](http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57514677-93/corruption-in-wikiland- paid-pr-scandal-erupts-at-wikipedia/)

<comment><USER7> "Take a look at almost any living famous person's profile and chances are you'll see a large amount of spin and fluff."

Citation needed.

According to recent traffic reports,[1] some of the most popular biographies of living people recently are as follows:

\- [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorde](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorde) (449,871 views) \- [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malala_Yousafzai](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malala_Yousafzai) (362,657 views) \- [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miley_Cyrus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miley_Cyrus) (342,994 views)

Other popular bios include Barack Obama and Ted Cruz. Obviously popularity of these swings heavily toward recent news items in most cases.

Now, I wouldn't argue against the assertion that fans of these celebrities have written in some amazing fluff in these articles. But you'd really claim that these articles have been spun by PR people? Looking at the history and the content, I seriously doubt it.

Now, if you don't care for how Wikipedia's reliance on third party sources bends content... well, there's not much anyone can do to help you. That's a problem of the media environment Wikipedia exists in, and you haven't really proposed a viable alternative to relying on secondary source material. The way we correct for bias in sources is to use more sources, and be selective about ones we use, taking in to account the fact that some are highly unreliable.

In the end, if you have a problem with how Wikipedia relies on certain sources or what it says on certain articles, there's an easy solution: edit the damn thing. I don't particularly care about the Miley Cyrus article, but if I did, I'd be doing something about it. Wikipedia's best defense against fluff, spin, and PR influence is for smart people (like Hacker News denizens) to participate.

1\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2013-10-16/Traffic_report)

<comment><USER8> > edit the damn thing.

TokenAdult makes a useful post to this thread about some of the problems of editing Wikipedia.

People pushing a POV _really_ want that pov to appear, but other people just don't have the persistence to keep slogging through it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> One mitigating factor (though not as mitigating as I'd like) is that PR fluff, at least of the direct-editing variety (versus placing positive media articles that then get cited in Wikipedia) tends to be most successful on the articles people read least. If a country hires a PR firm to insert propaganda into an article on an ongoing international conflict, it's much more likely to get removed or modified, vs. if an obscure company hires a PR firm to fluff its Wikipedia article. Likewise a major company like Microsoft or Google will have a harder time fluffing its article than the obscure company would, because more people are watching and editing the Microsoft/Google pages. One area where it comes up a lot is that a bunch of academics' articles are total fluff written by the university communications department, but also, nobody reads or cares about those articles.

There are admittedly areas where that isn't true, articles with many readers but relatively little editor interest. Some tourist destinations are like that: lots of people may google for them, but there often isn't very much to write about them in good, cited sources. So they get relatively little legitimate editing, and lots of travel spam. I personally make it a point to systematically go through the pages on Greek islands and island villages once a year or so to clear out the hotel/car-rental/etc. spam.

</comment><comment><USER10> I'd love to tackle this problem using "Big Data" techniques.

It's pretty clear from this story and from things like the Morning277 sockpuppet investigation[1] that the manual style of investigation to _so_ time consuming and slow that it limits the ability of Wikipedia to fix problems like this. While tools like CheckUser[2] help, it seems likely that a lot more of the "legwork" associated with the investigation could also be automated.

At the core, much of the work is network analysis, and that is something computers are better at than humans.

[1] [http://www.dailydot.com/lifestyle/wikipedia-sockpuppet- inves...](http://www.dailydot.com/lifestyle/wikipedia-sockpuppet- investigation-largest-network-history-wiki-pr/)

[2] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:CheckUser](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:CheckUser)

<comment><USER7> Wikimedia also provides several sources of data and infrastructure for hosting potential tools like this, if you'd like to take it on. In addition to public data streams like RecentChanges and public API access, we provide hosting infrastructure in the form of Labs ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikimedia_Labs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikimedia_Labs)). Not to mention the fact that anyone can write and submit a MediaWiki extension that could get deployed to Wikipedia itself.

One related piece of infrastructure is the automated tagging of edits. There are already several tags automatically applied to edits with a suspected conflict of interest regarding linking or autobiographies ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Tags](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Tags)).

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Why not just make the terms of service say something like "you agree not to edit the encyclopedia for money, and you agree not to pay anyone else to do so, etc." and then start suing people? As a bonus, no one could claim ignorance once the lawsuits started flying, everyone in the PR industry would know about it. The courts seem intent on giving more and more credence to ToS, might as well use that for something good.

<comment><USER7> There are related terms in the current Terms of Use, namely that you may not edit "With the intent to deceive, posting content that is false or inaccurate" and that also disallowed is "Attempting to impersonate another user or individual, misrepresenting your affiliation with any individual or entity, or using the username of another user with the intent to deceive;"[1]

So in other words, deliberate falsehoods or manipulation by PR people or paid agents that hide their affiliation with a company is already a ToU violation.

1\. [https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Terms_of_Use](https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Terms_of_Use)

<comment><USER9> That's true, although I think it would cause a huge controversy to sue someone over it (rather than just banning them). It implicates all sorts of questions that are already controversial in the free-culture community, like to what extent ToS should be legally enforceable as contracts. Even worse if the editor is from outside the U.S., and controversy over extraterritorial application of U.S. law gets implicated.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I enjoyed the article for the interesting story and its description of how PR manipulation of Wikipedia works, but its speculation on how the problem is getting worse was entirely unsubstantiated.

It's plausible enough that efforts by Wiki PR and similar firms are growing, but the article didn't offer any evidence or attribute claims like "In a few years, a significant percentage of Wikipedia's content could be spam." Given that Wiki PR seems to have had little success getting articles reinstated, it may be that the problem will be held at bay now that Wikipedia contributors have been alerted.

<comment><USER13> one evidence was from a contributor who quit.Being volunteers not everyone likes to be only cleaning someone's mess.Besides scale of Wikipedia might grow quite big for the 10,000 odd admins to manage and who know how seepage might happen!Also Wiki-PR was one, who knows how many more are left!

<comment><USER12> >Also Wiki-PR was one, who knows how many more are left!

That's exactly my point. From the article, we don't know if there are enough companies doing this to pose a serious threat to Wikipedia, yet it suggests there is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The problem is as old as mass media. The solution is the same. Make it illegal for a company pass advertisments as casual forum comments, wikipedia articles and generally forbid misleding the general public to believe that actual advertisments are part of other natural interactions. (This doesn't means that this practices will stop but that them can be punished)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advertorial#Legal_issues](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advertorial#Legal_issues)

<comment><USER5> That is a very good idea. I would love to see astroturfing be punishable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm surprised that Wikipedia hasn't found a way to integrate and regulate paid PR people. It's naive to think they're going to go away just because it'd be better if they did. Why not work with them instead?

PR people could publicly register themselves as such and, in exchange for extra scrutiny, have a chance to prove themselves as ethical and willing to follow the rules. These people would then build a reputation as very valuable "white hats", willing to help people and companies with their Wikipedia page without compromising the integrity of the encyclopedia.

They wouldn't be able to guarantee "we'll make sure you look good on Wikipedia", but then nobody can really guarantee that anyway. Instead, they could offer to ensure the page is as unbiased as possible, help protect it from vandalism, and generally improve its quality and detail.

This could lead to a large and very motivated base of editors with a significant personal and financial incentive to do the right thing (or lose their white hat status) and sabotage the financial incentives that currently motivate the black hat firms.

</comment><comment><USER16> Funny that no-one mentioned the fact that the page had a brazilian flag. Musicians has the right by law to veto biographies and personal information written about them in brazil, this also applies to brazilian webpages. It could be understandable that these people would make out a big chunk of the customers for a company as wiki-pr hence the page's Portuguese translation.

</comment><comment><USER17> This is why I think a GitHub-style model is more suitable for _certain_ open, collaborative information - it's simply less prone to abuse. The editing and submission process is significantly more structured than a wiki, which prevents attacks like this.

<comment><USER18> Wikipedia has "pending changes" which is a bit like a pull request type model: you make edit and it sits in a queue for a reviewer to approve.

It's running on some pages on English Wikipedia. I'd love to see it rolled out to a lot more pages. On some language versions of Wikipedia, it's running on all pages: Polish, for instance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Wikipedia is already morally sold to PR interests.

<comment><USER20> Can you expand on why/how?</comment></comment>


Grand Theft Auto V is 7 years old today - <AUTHOR> https://www.gamezone.com/originals/grand-theft-auto-v-7-years-later/ <comment><AUTHOR> Since 2018 it is also the most profitable entertainment product of all time, overtaking movies such as "Star Wars" and "Gone With the Wind" (adjusted for inflation). [1]

1\. [https://www.marketwatch.com/story/this-violent-videogame- has...](https://www.marketwatch.com/story/this-violent-videogame-has-made- more-money-than-any-movie-ever-2018-04-06)

<comment><USER2> They timed their releases perfectly. I ended up buying the game 3 times. First was PS3, then a year or so later on PS4 because it was night and day better graphics. Another year or so later I dropped yet another $60 on it for the 1080p60.

I'm guessing the next gen console dev cycle was just a little too short for GTA 6 to hit the same stride though.

<comment><USER3> Why make GTA 6 when people are still going to buy GTA V for the PS5.

<comment><USER4> Because then you sell GTA6 on ps5/Xbox, and a year later PC. And 6 years later PS6

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I miss the GTA: SA game. So many fun cheats to use when you've finally completed the game. GTA V appears to have none, in fact, no modern game appears to have them.

<comment><AUTHOR> There are official cheats in GTA V (not Online) too, entered by opening the in-game mobile phone (iFruit) and dialing a certain number, for example 1-999-MAKEITRAIN to change the weather. A full list is here: [https://gta.fandom.com/wiki/Cheats_in_GTA_V#Phone_Cheats](https://gta.fandom.com/wiki/Cheats_in_GTA_V#Phone_Cheats)

There are also many unofficial mods, including one called "Angry Planes," which has all kinds of aircraft following you and falling out of the sky all around. One big repository is: [https://www.gta5-mods.com/](https://www.gta5-mods.com/)

While mods are not allowed in GTA Online, the game has a history of various bugs and glitches, which have been mercilessly exploited over the years: duplicating vehicles and selling them to generate income, flying under the map and shooting other players from underneath, etc. God mode was also possible numerous times due to bugs, and there was a time when a payout for a mission would have increased up to 20 times if Internet connection was lost and then restored at a certain time when it completed. For some players finding these has been more appealing than playing the game itself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> You can do a lot of things, but not too many things - just enough things.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HZ21Lsw5WE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HZ21Lsw5WE)

<comment><USER7> Car radios in GTA never have on-the-fly volume control. When you're doing shit in GTA and you feel the need to bump the radio at a higher volume it's a big pain in the ass to actually do it. I've put together a dedicated stereo system so I can turn up the volume with a physical knob but it would be a lot nicer if this could be done natively with the PS4/PS5/PS6 controller. Ramping up just the radio volume in real time with a swipe on the touchpad would be a massive improvement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> GTA was always a game you go over a friends house play around for 30 min and it became mundane and repetitive after that. They usually had all the cheats available. But even without it was repetitive feeling of missions though. Punch a prostitute and see how high you can get wanted etc. entertainment value like Hollywood blockbuster all explosions no substance I guess the markets there of course and people enjoy that, for me felt like wasting my life after 30 min. Maybe when the iterations get more realistic as real life rather than Hollywood and you actually have to be a smart criminal to not get caught it would be cool to play or still or more clever unique scenarios. To each his own of course

<comment><USER9> The GTA games actually also have a story in them, at least since the PS2 days. I guess now GTA is mostly about the multiplayer, but the single-player stories are unusually well crafted, for video games anyway.

<comment><AUTHOR> There isn't much in terms of story in GTA Online but the classic GTA V (retroactively called Story Mode) is an elaborate satire on the contemporary American society, including the technology industry itself. While some of the jokes might be low-brow, in general it's quite entertaining. There's even talk radio, TV channels and social media (where you "stalk" instead of "like").

It might be fun just to take a look how some of the real-world brand names were mangled to create their in-game equivalents: the most common beverage is called eCola (after the bacteria), a common beer brand is Pißwasser (Budweiser). There's a high-fashion brand called Perseus (named after a Greek mythological figure who killed Medusa, and Medusa is featured in Versace's real-life logo). Among the car brands, there's Schyster (Chrysler) and since there's Vapid (Ford, made obvious by the logo), you can also find an in-game clothes brand Tim Vapid (Tom Ford). Lacoste is Lézard (with an acute e) and watersports equipment is branded Speedophile. These are just a few examples I recall. One can appreciate the amount of imagination that went into coming up with it all, especially considering these are such minor details.

<comment><USER10> It's my understanding that originally there was intention to flesh out the story mode aspect of the game with DLC / downloadable content quite significantly compared to what it is today.

As someone with no previous experience with GTA series since the original top down view version i enjoyed the singleplayer story and experience of GTA V a lot and the world building was amazing. I've run around the map for hours and there's lot's of places that serve absolutely no purpose but gives the impression that it was intended to play a part of some story at some point in the game.

In the end I guess the online part got 'too' successful and basically made Rockstar focus only on this portion of the game. The GTA V story mode world seems like the minimum version for getting story mode to work. And a certain fruit company sure gets mentioned a lot as well :)

<comment> o-__-o > In the end I guess the online part got 'too' successful and basically made > Rockstar focus only on this portion of the game.

Remember when TF2 found hats? Micro transactions killed Half Life 3</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Not a 'math person'? You may be better at learning to code than you think - <AUTHOR> https://phys.org/news/2020-03-math-person-code.html <comment><USER2> Shameless plug, I wrote about this two weeks before the article was published and I wrote a new post about it. [https://osaatcioglu.netlify.com/posts/i-am- not-alone/](https://osaatcioglu.netlify.com/posts/i-am-not-alone/)

I am curious if there are more people out there thinking the same.</comment>


Ask HN: Cheap Assets and how HN invests their money - <AUTHOR>

A lot of focus here on HN is increasing income through startups, consulting, etc and I've learned a lot about this from HN.  Now I'm curious how you smart folks invest your money or grow your money (through assets, stocks, rental properties, and the like...)
I can't seem to find much in the way of small assets (thinking a few thousand dollars or so) that provides dividends or grows in value other than stocks.  Stocks make me nervous because generally speaking they seem overpriced and I imagine that the specialists have grabbed most of the deals.
Thanks! <comment><USER2> Don't think of the stock market as being limited to buying Company A vs. B. You have access to other asset classes (bonds/commodities/emerging markets) through mutual funds and ETFs.

Building wealth is a long-term thing. Understanding what you're buying and knowing what your goals are will be key to building your assets so you gain access to the more interesting investment options (rental properties, hedge funds, etc).

Note, I said more 'interesting', not necessarily better.

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER3> I also would like to know more, it is a complex topic.

When investing you always have to consider the timeframe and risk you are willing to take. For example, for a long-term rather low risk investment you could buy an index fund - a fund that tries to replicate a market index such as S&P 500 - in that case you will know that your investment will do roughly as good as market does.</comment>


There are no bugs, only unintended causation  - <AUTHOR> http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/706-there-are-no-bugs-only-unintended-causation

<comment><USER2> "Bugs are always about a lack of good information"

Wrong.

Bugs are the result of either:

\- not knowing what you're doing

                or

\- knowing what you're doing but releasing prematurely anyway</comment>


Person announces they're missing via tumblr - <AUTHOR> http://lequaintrellenoir.tumblr.com/post/74045111070/im-meeting-with-this-person-today-wed-1-15-2014

<comment><USER2> It does turn out that she forgot to turn the scheduled post off, as her next post explains.

[http://lequaintrellenoir.tumblr.com/post/74119061271/urgent-...](http://lequaintrellenoir.tumblr.com/post/74119061271/urgent- please-share-that-i-am-safe)

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm curious. On one hand she does "commissioned pieces" for "Misogynist Shaming", on the other she's actively looking for a SB/SD (that's Sugar Baby / Sugar Daddy) relationship? "I want a relationship that's primarily driven by money, but not from someone who devalues the worth of a woman"?

</comment><comment><USER4> Hopefully she didn't just forgot to turn the scheduled post off.

<comment><USER5> Hopefully she did just forget to turn off the scheduled post, in which case she's not actually missing and the consequences are less bad.

<comment><USER4> Yes -- I somehow worded that backwards.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Wait what?!? That person added the posting on the 21st, but refers to 15th and 16th.

Seems like an awful way of bashing people IRL.

<comment><USER7> The post was written prior to the 15th/16th, but scheduled to be posted on the 21st automatically.

In the event nothing went wrong with the 'date', she would cancel the auto post.

If something happened to her, the auto post would function as a dead man's switch and notify her Tumblr followers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> clever.

probably more clever to warn your attacker that people know where you are, or not go in the first place though</comment>


Workers Security - <AUTHOR> https://blog.cloudflare.com/workers-security/ <comment> F117-DK > We do not allow our customers to upload native-code binaries to run on our > network. We only accept JavaScript and WebAssembly.

Since everything is compiled or transpiled to JS, does that make pure JS implementations the fastest (least overhead)?

Really looking forward to play around with the Unbound version!

<comment><USER2> Wasm isn't compiled to JS, it's a separate engine within V8. Depending on the kind of code it can be faster than pure JS -- but it depends. JS code benefits from using V8's native garbage collector and other high-level built-ins that Wasm code currently cannot access so easily. So, perhaps counter-intuitively, transpiling Python to JS will likely perform better than compiling CPython to Wasm. OTOH, Rust compiled to Wasm will probably beat JS on number-crunching tasks.

(There is work underway to expose the native garbage collector to Wasm apps but it's not here yet.)</comment></comment>


Show HN: Beautiful movie app for movie info, trailers, showtimes - <AUTHOR> https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/marquee-movies-trailers-showtimes/id954721891?ls=1&mt=8

<comment><USER2> Can you add a way to get a movie's nearby showtimes directly from its detail page? This is a common use case.

I usually use Flixster but this app looks much better.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi David, yes - that's a VERY common use case that is in our TODO list

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Very cool app, looks good and love how you can get lost in it for hours... Did you design it?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes I did most of the design myself. A lot of thought went into "engagement loops" as I call them.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Founder of the app here. Ever since Yahoo Weather came out, it's displaced my default weather app. I really liked it's intuitive and easy to use interface. That's what I was trying to go for here. Hope you guys like it.

<comment><USER4> Off topic but why is Keanu Reeves's age is 60!?

<comment><AUTHOR> You are the second person to point that out. I really should change that but I guess it's in reference to this? [http://rs1img.memecdn.com/keanu-reeves-is- immortal_o_676589....](http://rs1img.memecdn.com/keanu-reeves-is- immortal_o_676589.jpg)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Instant download once I realized wushupork made it. His apps are great!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the vote of confidence Peter. I appreciate it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Just installed it. Love the UX! How do you plan on monetizing it ?

<comment><AUTHOR> Monetizing? what's that? Currently nothing super innovative. affiliate and ads

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> can this finally be the app that let me surf trailers, click like and _send me push notification when the movie is out_ ??

(or available on itunes or netflix)

<comment><USER8> By any chance have you come across Trailers (Apple's own movie app) which does exactly what you describe with notifications for your favorite movies.

[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/itunes-movie- trailers/id4719...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/itunes-movie- trailers/id471966214?mt=8)

<comment><AUTHOR> Of course I have :) I used to use a combination of Trailers, Flixster, IMDB, and Fandango for my movie needs. This is sort of an amalgamation of all that with my twist.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> @wushupork, the app looks beautiful!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks - hopefully it's also simple and easy to use</comment></comment>


What I Learned From My Failed Startup - <AUTHOR> http://mixergy.com/postmortem-fit-fuel-luke-burgis/ <comment><USER2> I did´n like the video, a very poor quality. So i read just the excerpts. Nice observations. Good story. But they did well for around 10 years. I don´t think they were a startup anymore.

<comment><USER3> I listened to the audio version. The quality was good. There were a lot of good lessons from him and I thank him for sharing. I would have been interested in hearing more about the Rent-a-Coder developers he hired and how to better utilize the one-time hire system. As a freelancer on oDesk, I would also be interested in knowing if he thought he saved money in the long-run by only paying about $8-10/hour or if it would have been cheaper to hire someone more expensive but who could get the work done faster and better.

For those that didn't watch/listen, one of the problems he mentioned was having a bunch of different developers working on their website which caused it to turn into a big mess after some time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I liked that he put excerpts from the interview. Does he talk about financials in the video? Fit Fuel now redirects to <http://www.allstarhealth.com/fitfuel.aspx> So there must still be market for this.

</comment><comment><USER5> This guy was an investment banker before. If they plan and execute the same way in investment banking as he did in his startup, no wonder we are in this mess now.

I appreciate that he shared his story, though.

<comment><USER6> Could you please elaborate? I dont know anything about investment banking, but i would like to learn why that style of execution is a bad idea.</comment></comment>


Scientists harness bacteria to create 'living' liquid crystals - <AUTHOR> https://phys.org/news/2019-08-scientists-harness-bacteria-liquid-crystals.html <comment><USER2> I started experimenting with bio-digital lifeforms to see what behaviours will emerge. I am making videos with my results: [https://youtu.be/I6bHpJ2GV0Y](https://youtu.be/I6bHpJ2GV0Y)

<comment><USER3> I'm confused, is this actually controlling parameters in some physical system or is it merely a simulation of biological life?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Can anyone think of any potential applications for this? Wouldn't the benefits be limited to the life of the bacteria (which presumably would be pretty short)?</comment>


Selling Apple Stock - <AUTHOR> http://nerdr.com/selling-apple-stock/

<comment><USER2> Simple fact: Apple make the best and most profitable products in their categories. The iPod, the iPhone, the iPad and Macbook Air.

This strategy was probably chosen by Steve Jobs. The 'best' part comes from the design team, under Jonathan Ive. The 'most profitable' part comes from operations and sourcing, under Tim Cook.

They've nailed the mobile sector. They're starting to nail the computer market. People I know who have sworn by PCs for years are moving to Macs - why? They are the best designed laptops available, bar none. I'm holding Apple stock because they are the strongest company in a strong sector. Apple are going to take the profitable laptop market, the profitable music and video markets, and hang on to the profitable portable electronics markets. That's a massive market cap for them to usurp from Dell, Amazon, and Nokia/Samsung. Everyone else will be churning out cheap and cheerful low margin products.

</comment><comment><USER3> Wow, talk about completed misguided. He's making the mistake of conflating a company as stagnating based solely on the fact that the stock is still trading in the same ranges as it was 6 months ago.

First off, I don't see how you can call a company stagnant that reported a record profit in Q2 with 95% growth year over year, including a 113% unit growth in it's primary product.

Secondly, he ignores a number of factors that have influenced Apple's stock price independently of company fundamentals like the rebalancing of the Nasdaq and the current weekly option plays that are collaring Apple.

Not to mention he ignores everything that has been hammering stocks in general, given economic and political uncertainty in much of the world.

So outside of actual financials, other things also struck me wrong in his post. If iPads are for geeks only, then there must be a hell of a lot of geeks in corporate America, because I am seeing these things adopted everywhere for all sorts of uses. Also, his supposition that "Software doesn't move product" is probably the most ridiculous. Apple's whole proposition from the original Mac onwards was the software. It was the software that made the original Mac popular. It made MacBooks popular. It made the iPhone and iPod popular.

</comment><comment><USER4> I thought he was making sense up until he said only geeks care about the iPad. This isn't true. A future where only geeks care about laptops almost seems the more likely at this point. You could certainly say that about desktops already.

Also I'm not sure about the stock being stagnant point. What did the rest of the market do?

<comment><AUTHOR> Looking at the Yahoo chart linked in the article [http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=AAPL+Basic+Chart&t=2y](http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=AAPL+Basic+Chart&t=2y) it looks like stagnation from about January 2011 onwards. That really nailed it for me.

<comment> sans-serif From that chart you could have said the same thing in Sep '10, Feb '10, or anytime between Oct '07 and Mar '09, and each time you'd be wrong.

<comment><USER5> You are absolutely correct. See for an illustration of this: [http://seekingalpha.com/article/271991-apple-price-stall- is-...](http://seekingalpha.com/article/271991-apple-price-stall-is- foundation-building-not-topping-out)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Thunderbolt Macs are Here, But Where Are the Thunderbolt Devices? - <AUTHOR> http://www.i4u.com/46464/thunderbolt-macs-are-here-where-are-thunderbolt-devices

<comment><USER2> I was just wondering that because I just joined the Apple Religion (I did not buy a Centi-pad). Another member of the Apple Religion was hyping up Thunderbolt, but I have nothing to plug it into. Is there some hardware out there? It would be cool to have a backup with a thunderbolt attachment.</comment>


Bcompiler – Bootstrapping a simple compiler from nothing (2002) - <AUTHOR> http://rano.org/bcompiler.html <comment><USER2> My first compiler wasn't bootstrapped in nearly that extreme fashion.

I started with an assembler, and the first version was written in M68k assembly and was very simple:

It supported pretty much function calls with no arguments, and function definitions, and inline M68k assembly and that it for the first iteration. Then I "rewrote" the compiler using those facilities, and iterated, adding support for variables, function arguments, etc.. Over time I had a relatively decent object oriented language.

One of the "fun" parts of the language was that you could use M68k registers in any expression (with some caveats about having to avoid the ones the compiler used). So you might have things like "foo := D0.w + bar" where foo and bar where regular variables, and D0.w indicated 16 bits of the D0 register.

I spent a lot of time in high-school working on it on paper during breaks (if you want to come across as a geek, spending breaks reading piles of assembly printouts works wonders), and occasionally lessons.

</comment><comment><USER3> This doesn't scroll vertically on the Blackberry browser. You have to sweep right to find the special scroll bar, click on that (hoping you don't miss), and then sweep back left to read the new text. A few iterations and I gave up. Maybe I'll read it later, maybe not, but the page is, for me, a usability disaster.

Designers - please consider using widely tested techniques and systems so you are at least aware of the people you exclude.

<comment><USER4> the whole page is an iframe for this: [http://homepage.ntlworld.com/edmund.grimley- evans/bcompiler....](http://homepage.ntlworld.com/edmund.grimley- evans/bcompiler.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Awesome post. Can't wait to try something similar.</comment>


No Rent, Cheap Flights, $100 Art: How One Hedge Fund Keeps Costs Low - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/no-rent-cheap-flights-100-art-how-one-hedge-fund-keeps-costs-low-1522580400 <comment><USER2> I love low-cost funds. I also love not paying for newspaper articles so if anyone has a link to the full text...</comment>