Ask HN: What do you think of authentication tied to your passport? - <AUTHOR>

I've seen a lot of online games in China and Korea that require users to sign up with their passport number in order to play. This seems like a great way for the government to make sure kids don't play too much.
What do you think of signing up with a passport number to online games and social networks in North America?
On one hand, it seems like a further privacy breach. At the same time, it's a good way to track down anyone with bad intentions. Thoughts?
(I have neither a Chinese nor Korean passport, so if anyone has experience with this it would be great if you can add in any detail I missed.) <comment><USER2> How much do passports cost? What proportion of North Americans don't have passports?

What proportion of people signing up to social networks have bad intentions? What proportion require pseudonymity and have good intentions?

</comment><comment><USER3> About as much as I think of attaching electrodes to my private parts and giving the government an activation switch.</comment>


Show HN: Colossus – open-source, self-hosted email marketing built with Django - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/vitorfs/colossus <comment><USER2> I look forward to trying this out and I like that it has a one-click deploy to Heroku. The pricing with some of the common tools out there can get ridiculous.</comment>


Proof by Mask - <AUTHOR> http://www.mondaynote.com/2011/10/30/proof-by-mask/ <comment><USER2> Youtube (<http://i.imgur.com/VIwYx.png>) doesn't fare too well. It's like they've never heard of the law of diminishing returns. Which is surprising seeing as though Google adwords was launched and is heavily based around an unobtrusive targeted ad-mix as opposed to the flashing GIF / "punch the monkey" style of ads which were prevalent before adwords.

<comment><USER3> YouTube is dreadful with the ads these days, both inside the videos themselves and all over the rest of the page. It reached a point sometime in the past year where I actively avoid going to YouTube (even when just following a link in directly to a video) because of the ad noise.

Other sites are quite bad too (and getting worse). I've gone this long without running any ad blockers, but we're almost to the point where I'm losing the battle and can almost rationalize doing it for many sites.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> First, they didn't red out all of the ads on some of the English-language websites. I'm guessing this is an honest mistake.

Second, if they masked all of the non-news 'news' things would look a lot worse, but that's another issue entirely.</comment>


Google's Web Search Quality. A picture is worth a 1000 words - <AUTHOR> http://jakenbake.com/googles-web-search-quality-a-picture-is-worth-1000-words/ <comment><USER2> The article shows BING & GOOG'S search results for "the film where no new babies are born"

BING returns gibberish results, GOOG returns an IMDB link to "Children of Men", the perfect answer.

But one search out of billions is easy to gimmick, what are the results with a slightly different search string:

"the movie where no babies can be born anymore"

[http://www.bing.com/search?q=the+movie+where+no+babies+can+b...](http://www.bing.com/search?q=the+movie+where+no+babies+can+be+born+anymore&go=&qs=n&form=QBRE&pq=the+movie+where+no+babies+can+be+born+anymor&sc=0-0&sp=-1&sk=)

[https://www.google.com/#sclient=psy- ab&hl=en&safe=of...](https://www.google.com/#sclient=psy- ab&hl=en&safe=off&site=&source=hp&q=the+movie+where+no+babies+can+be+born+anymore&pbx=1&oq=the+movie+where+no+babies+can+be+born+anymore&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&gs_sm=12&gs_upl=513l513l0l1474l1l1l0l0l0l0l98l98l1l1l0&gs_l=hp.12...513l513l0l1474l1l1l0l0l0l0l98l98l1l1l0&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.,cf.osb&fp=88c33d31734d390&biw=1024&bih=683)

Bing's search is more accurate in the above example

Not "knock it out of the park" accurate but GOOG returns the complete wrong answer

How many of these could you find if you had the time in your day?

That said, as a guy with a bunch of MSFT stock I can't remember the last time I used BING

<comment><USER3> Smallest grammatical change to get the correct result: [https://www.google.com/search?q=the+movie+where+babies+cant+...](https://www.google.com/search?q=the+movie+where+babies+cant+be+born+anymore)

"the movie where no babies can be born anymore" ->

"the movie where babies can't be born anymore"

There is definitely some room for improvement here, I'll submit this internally.

<comment><USER4> Also, compare these:

"movie where no babies are born anymore"

"movie where no babies are born"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> One of my pain points with Google is that the page is now bloated beyond belief. At one time, I'd hit the "home" button (G was my home page), the page would pop up instantly and I'd start typing my search.

Now, with "instant search", "google plus" and all that bloat, the page pops up, but when I start typing, nothing happens (as it's still loading the gobs of JavaScript); and then it'll miss the first few characters and then start pulling in random search results based on the last few characters I typed, while trying to load previews of pages. In all this confusion, the time taken for me to enter a search term and get results has gone from, say, 3-4 seconds earlier, to 7-10 seconds now. I know it doesn't sound much, but this is a company where Marissa used to count the individual characters of the homepage. Now that she's not in charge, the page has ballooned like Kirstie Alley.

<comment><USER6> Really. Are you on a particularly challenged connection? I just tried exactly that test and could barely get anything typed at all before the page display was finished. And it certainly didn't miss any characters. Obviously there _is_ a lot more content on the page now than there was a few years ago, but AFAICT they've hidden it exceedingly well.

Honestly, the above seems like pretty bald hyperbole to me.

<comment><USER7> You may find this hard to believe but, there are places that exist that are not America.

We like to call this "The rest of the world". It's nice and there are many friendly people.

Now let's take an example of a place in the rest of the world:

Perth, Australia.

What's the flight time of a packet from Perth to Mountain View? 300ms -400ms? Taken each way that's almost a second.

Hyperbole? not at all.

You may now continue living in total oblivion to the world around you.

Also you say they've hidden the extra content. The same extra content which was just more ads. You're actually making the contention that google was cleverly hiding all the ads from you?

No it wasn't. It was cleverly pushing real results below the fold where they will stop distracting users from the ads.

see this: [http://www.seobook.com/excuse-me-where-did-googles- organic-s...](http://www.seobook.com/excuse-me-where-did-googles-organic- search-results-go)

This is only heading in one direction - "Pay up for adwords or you're on page two, buddy".

<comment><USER8> You do know that your Google searches don't go to Mountain View, right? Google has datacenters all over the world. I think you know better, and I'd love to see some actual numbers from you.

<comment><USER9> I disagree with most of the OP's points, but...

You do realize that Google doesn't have a datacenter in Australia, right?

Our searches go to California, so I think the OP's point about the round trip time to Mountain View are reasonable.

I'm not in Perth (which - to be fair to Google - is the most isolated city in the world), but from Adelaide my timings look like this:

GET <http://www.google.com.au/s?hl=en..>.

Waiting: 205ms

Receiving: 218ms

Total: 423ms

Having said that, I usually get results before I can press Enter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I just tried this with a different movie in mind. The results are pretty interesting, but see for yourself:

[http://www.google.de/search?q=the%20film%20where%20a%20house...](http://www.google.de/search?q=the%20film%20where%20a%20house%20is%20flying%20with%20an%20old%20guy%20and%20a%20young%20one&hl=de&prmd=imvns&biw=1188&bih=702&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=iw&ei=C6xST7HqDtSQ4gTMmaDJDQ)

[http://www.bing.com/search?q=the+film+where+a+house+is+flyin...](http://www.bing.com/search?q=the+film+where+a+house+is+flying+with+an+old+guy+and+a+young+one&go=&qs=n&form=QBLH&filt=all&pq=the+film+where+a+house+is+flying+with+an+old+guy+and+a+young+one&sc=0-0&sp=-1&sk=)

[http://duckduckgo.com/?q=the+film+where+a+house+is+flying+wi...](http://duckduckgo.com/?q=the+film+where+a+house+is+flying+with+an+old+guy+and+a+young+one)

If you get the same results as I do, you should find the correct answer as duckducks first answer and bings 4th one. Google's first page of search results has no reference to the correct answer (though in the picture search the first one picture is from the movie).

I use google day in day out. Maybe I should overcome that habit :-)

<comment><USER11> My first result in Google for that query is: "National Geographic real-life floating house: Pixar's Up! can be ..."

In any case, I think I have my search-fu already optimized for Google: I'd search "animation film flying house" instead, which results in:

Google → 1st result, Wikipedia page for Up!

DDG → 3rd result, reference to Up! in the title, although not a page about the movie specifically.

Bing → Up! nowhere to be see on the first page.

<comment><USER12> I see several relevant results in Bing including the wikipedia entry for Up as the fourth result.

<comment><USER11> Well, it definitively doesn't here: <http://i.imgur.com/zaiCy.png> (I joined two screenshots in Gimp, that's why the scrollbar is strange)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Google has many cute gimmicks built in, no doubt. But honestly I've been frustrated at Google's results as of late. Google simply has been SEO'd to death. Plus, uncommon phrases are completely swamped by more common similar ones. Search is just waiting to be blown wide open again, at least in some specific cases.

<comment><USER14> My only real beef with Google search at the moment is that it seems to give too much weight to "current events." If there is some big piece of news (like the recent school shooting), it funnels you towards that result. I was looking for some statistics on suburban schools, and a search for 'suburban schools' returned 9 results about the shooting that occurred the day before, and result from ehow.com

:\

It would be pretty cool if we could have knobs that would control the weighting of different factors - news, wiki, help websites, etc.

I guess I don't really know how it works though, so maybe that's not very feasible (or maybe it'd be too easy to game?).

<comment><USER15> With sort of the opposite result for tech searches. It's very common to get links to blog and forum posts from several years ago when it's far more likely that information posted in the last year would be more helpful.

<comment><USER16> You can limit the time span of your search in the sidebar on Google. I'll often do that when I'm searching for something technical.

<comment><USER17> Excellent for "best way to install X" posts when X is fast-moving :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> [the film where no new babies are born] → [no babies movie]. The rest of the query is superfluous or implied.

<http://google.com/#q=no%20babies%20movie> finds it.

"no babies" does not appear on the IMDb page itself, but I expect it appears near many links to the IMDb page.

Edit: rewriting queries is a necessary step to do question-answering with a search engine. Query rewriting + some sort of knowledge graph is a large part of the Watson recipe; the graph is comparatively sparse but simplified queries can be entry points into that graph.

<comment><USER19> Google does a stellar job correlating click through and click back actions + times to determine what people were most likely looking for with each query, and then raising or lowering results accordingly (Panda amplified this metric in their scoring system). I suspect they stomp Bing in that department.

<comment><USER18> Bing too shows results based on user interactions (collected via a toolbar or via IE's "suggested sites" feature):

[http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2011/02/google-results- one-...](http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2011/02/google-results-one-of-bings- ranking.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The problem is when the cleverness doesn't work. Then it's clippy time.

I desperately want a "don't be smart button". Searching for code is pointless, even on quotes and verbatim.

<http://www.google.com/search?q=%22this%3Aempty%22>

<comment><USER21> [http://support.google.com/websearch/bin/answer.py?hl=en&...](http://support.google.com/websearch/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=136861#exceptions%5Fpunctuations)

That's not cleverness gone bad. You've never been able to search with a colon on regular google. I miss code search too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> about a year ago this came up

[https://www.google.com/search?q=that+hipster+song+with+whist...](https://www.google.com/search?q=that+hipster+song+with+whistling)

<http://i.imgur.com/63uJd.png>

the keywords in description were added _after_ this search got popular!

</comment><comment><USER23> This thread is filled with great anecdotes. If you do encounter something where Google is not returning the best result for your query, fill out the Search Quality Feedback form: <http://www.google.com/quality_form>

This will help the team improve the search engine.

</comment><comment><USER24> I'd be interested in how those results were obtained, because when I search google with that exact same query, the results look pretty much like bing's results.

</comment><comment><USER25> Looks like Google finds ways to keep getting better. It's an arms race... Geogle wants to be so much better than everyone else that people won't mind ads thrown in. That's ambitious. They also have to stay ahead o SEOs who compete with their ads.

<comment><USER26> Google is getting better for "general searches", but I have gotten consistently worse results over time for obscure things, like searching for code or searches for things where the results would overlap with something popular but unrelated.

<comment><USER25> This makes a lot of sense. Their search results can't self teach for obscure things.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Similar queries give incredible accurate results ("movie with Brad Pitt and Edward Norton","movie where james stewart is afraid of heights") , but it seems to work just with movies...

I got spottier results trying with music and games related queries. Google probably picks up the words "movie" or "film", and than search the rest of the query restricting the first few results to movie-related websites.

Still, it's clearly not a "Number of French military victories" kind of gimmick, search is definitely going in that direction in the following years.

</comment><comment><USER28> great example! another improvement from google - recognize search queries typed in wrong keyboard layout, ie: [https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%D1%81%D1%80%D1%88...](https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%D1%81%D1%80%D1%88%D0%B4%D0%B2%D0%BA%D1%83%D1%82+%D1%89%D0%B0+%D1%8C%D1%84%D1%82)

</comment><comment><USER29> Adding some very popular words to a query really messes up the results of all three.

I tried combinations of the movie with (four) guys in white clothing/suits. It wasn't until I searched for 'the movie with guys dressed in white' that any relevant results were returned.

[http://duckduckgo.com/?q=the+movie+with+guys+dressed+in+whit...](http://duckduckgo.com/?q=the+movie+with+guys+dressed+in+white)

[http://www.bing.com/search?q=the+movie+with+guys+dressed+in+...](http://www.bing.com/search?q=the+movie+with+guys+dressed+in+white)

[http://www.google.nl/search?q=the+movie+with+guys+dressed+in...](http://www.google.nl/search?q=the+movie+with+guys+dressed+in+white)

Arguably it's Google > Duck > Bing

</comment><comment><USER30> Google web search's secret: it's not searching what you tell it to search.

\- suggest spelling corrections and alternative spellings \- personalize your search by using information such as sites you've visited before \- include synonyms of your search terms to find related results \- find results that match similar terms to those in your query \- search for words with the same stem, like "running" when you search for [ run ]

[http://support.google.com/websearch/bin/answer.py?hl=en&...](http://support.google.com/websearch/bin/answer.py?hl=en&p=g_verb&answer=1734130)

Also <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_bomb>

</comment><comment><USER31> If you search for chrome, Google thinks you probably want to do the following things more than you want to download Chrome from Google: buy a Chromebook, use the Google Chrome Beta, buy a Google Chrome messenger bag, read about Google Chrome on Wikipedia, download Google Chrome from download.com, download ad block for Chrome, read news about Chrome, download Angry Birds for Chrome

If you search Bing for chrome, the first result will allow you to download Chrome from Google. :)

<comment><USER32> This is probably why: [https://plus.google.com/u/0/109412257237874861202/posts/NAWu...](https://plus.google.com/u/0/109412257237874861202/posts/NAWunDzJSHC)

 _the webspam team has taken manual action to demote www.google.com/chrome for at least 60 days. After that, someone on the Chrome side can submit a reconsideration request documenting their clean-up just like any other company would._

<comment><USER33> That could explain this: Google Chrome loses market share for second consecutive month.

[http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/google_chrome_coughs_m...](http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/google_chrome_coughs_market_share_second_consecutive_month)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Counter example query that returns the same first hit: "movie where they use math to find patterns in the torah"

[http://www.google.ca/search?q=movie+where+they+use+math+to+f...](http://www.google.ca/search?q=movie+where+they+use+math+to+find+patterns+in+the+torah)

[http://www.bing.com/search?q=movie+where+they+use+math+to+fi...](http://www.bing.com/search?q=movie+where+they+use+math+to+find+patterns+in+the+torah)

</comment><comment><USER35> The success with negation-based queries displayed in the example is thoroughly explained in The Structured Search Engine -- <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lCSDOuqv1A>

TL;DR - Google has added phrase chunking, weights positive/negative words in phrases, and allows negative phrases to modify the search impact of the affected phrases.

</comment><comment> why-el No one is interested in why bing is suggesting word "baby" instead of babies? I submitted the same query and it does not suggest that anymore.

</comment><comment><USER30> Paradoxically this is also the reason why the biggest advertiser's search engine sucks more and more. This fuzzy search where he looks for all kind of synonyms instead of what he's asked means it often returns no useful results and misses the target by a solar system or two.

Looking for a film on the web = imdb no babies are born = no procreation

So let's search for "imdb no procreation": <http://lmgtfy.com/?q=imdb+no+procreation> and <http://www.bing.com/search?q=imdb+no+procreation>

Now let's turn off this fuzzy synonymous search, go on the results page for "the film where no more babies are born", click on "more search tools" in the sidebar and click "verbatim". Not only the actual results doesn't show up anymore but we now see this very story referenced several times further skewing the results towards confirmation bias: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_bomb>

I switched from metacrawler to google for my web searching in 1998, I can testify that it's getting worse and worse at providing relevant results for a while now and at the same time it gets better at tracking users and raising privacy concerns, censoring results, adding clutter, spam and ads, silently removing useful features. I've switched to duckduckgo in 2010 and rarely go back to google anymore.

</comment><comment><USER36> [http://www.google.com/search?q=that+movie+where+the+guy+miss...](http://www.google.com/search?q=that+movie+where+the+guy+misses+his+sled)

[http://www.google.com/search?q=that+movie+where+the+guy+gets...](http://www.google.com/search?q=that+movie+where+the+guy+gets+raped+in+the+woods)

<comment><USER36> [http://www.google.com/search?q=that+movie+where+the+guy+solv...](http://www.google.com/search?q=that+movie+where+the+guy+solves+the+mystery+backwards)

[http://www.google.com/search?q=the+movie+where+that+guy+solv...](http://www.google.com/search?q=the+movie+where+that+guy+solves+the+mystery+backwards)

<comment><USER36> [http://www.google.com/search?q=that+first+movie+with+the+din...](http://www.google.com/search?q=that+first+movie+with+the+dinosaurs)

[http://www.google.com/search?q=the+movie+with+the+space+miss...](http://www.google.com/search?q=the+movie+with+the+space+mission+that+barely+makes+it+back)

<comment><USER37> Isn't that second one "every movie with a space mission"?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> This says nothing about search quality. No single query can. The fact that I've completely stopped using Google search for about 3 months now and don't miss it at all is probably more telling. Five years ago that wouldn't have been possible, but today Bing is as good (sometimes worse, sometimes better).

<comment><USER39> You appear to be arguing that one anecdotal query "says nothing" but one anecdotal user experience says something. What is it about your anecdote that makes it meaningful in a discussion about services with hundreds of millions of users?

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> There is no point of linking to google search results because it is personalized. Everyone sees different pages.

<comment><USER41> use &pws=0

<comment><USER40> Doesn't help. [https://www.google.com/search?q=internet&pws=0](https://www.google.com/search?q=internet&pws=0) returns only sites in local language. Zero English.

And nobody else uses &pws=0. Real Google isn't "&pws=0" Google.

<comment><USER41> &hl=all

&filter=0 (if you like)

yes there is no "real google result" but the impact of personalization (as long as you are not self spammed with google plus your world) is in generally overrated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> This post illustrates the reason I cant seem to shake my Google addiction.

</comment><comment><USER43> Whatev. So one search result (or even 100) are better on Google. Bing could be better at other things. The problem is no one uses Bing, so it's hard to know. <http://imgur.com/peK58>

</comment><comment><USER44> Very bad example because Google trends to favor large and authority websites. Try a query where the answer is on a small (but very well informed) site.

<comment><USER44> Thanks you for the downvote. But if you try this query: "film no baby", you get the same result again, just because IMDB if a first choice for Google for any query related to "film". The query "film end of baby" shows different results. This downplays the presence of any intelligence in Google's results.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> you mean baby born with two heads isn't it?

</comment><comment><USER46> Microsoft's entire business is based around the idea that inferior products don't matter as long as you have the monopoly position, backed by business and sales channels that enable them to shove half-baked products and poor support down customers throats.

Microsoft is long past the point where they will continue to get away with shipping turds. I think they've lost the entire mobile computing market forever. It doesn't matter how much they polish Windows 8 because consumers and business alike are finally starting to see the light from the permanent hangover that Microsoft has cast upon the entire IT industry since the mid-1990's.

<comment><USER47> Yea Office 2007 and Windows 7 are turds compared to the competition and we are better off with Google having 100% because only they have access to the most keyword click data. I am surprised you didn't call them M$.

<comment><USER46> You haven't really given me much to dispute, but I digress. Neither Office or Windows 7 is geared toward mobile computing, which for all intensive purposes is the future of computing and which Microsoft is at an enormous disadvantage. Microsoft is currently dominant in every area of computing that is declining in every metric worth measuring. Nearly every way Microsoft makes money has become stagnant largely due to the dominance of Microsoft in these areas and the lack of innovation required to continue making money. Microsoft is in much graver danger than they let on. The entire MS stack has been abandoned by the next generation of innovators. Find me an 18 year old MS Visual Basic programmer and I'll show you a minimum wage earner for the rest of his career.

Microsoft is a dying company, and the sooner young people abandon this company and all its technologies the better off they are.

<comment><USER47> > Neither Office or Windows 7 is geared toward mobile computing, which for all > intensive purposes is the future of computing and which Microsoft is at an > enormous disadvantage.

Yes, too bad that MS isn't making something like Windows 8 or Office 15 that are geared for mobile and touch friendly launching in like six months or so.

>The entire MS stack has been abandoned by the next generation of innovators. Find me an 18 year old MS Visual Basic programmer and I'll show you a minimum wage earner for the rest of his career.

I just searched for 'Visual Basic' on indeed.com and came up with the following results:

Salary Estimate $20,000+ (35031) $40,000+ (16019) $60,000+ (9512) $80,000+ (4628) $100,000+ (2151)

Minimum wage is 12K/year.

Do a search for C#:

$50,000+ (28977) $70,000+ (18380) $90,000+ (8590) $110,000+ (3348) $130,000+ (1337)

These are counting only the open jobs(many of which are going unfilled).

>The entire MS stack has been abandoned by the next generation of innovators.

You mean by people like StackOverflow?

>Microsoft is a dying company, and the sooner young people abandon this company and all its technologies the better off they are.

Yes, people should do that. It will make hiring for all the above open positions easier, since it will weed out people who are easily misled by people like you and who live in a well and shout la-la-la to any voice of reason.

<comment><USER46>
      Windows 8 or Office 15 that are geared for mobile and
      touch friendly launching in like six months or so.

5 years behind the competition. Windows is so far behind iOS it's embarassing.

      I just searched for 'Visual Basic'... Salary Estimate

What you're not able to do a bing search for is how long-term these high- paying Visual Basic jobs are going to last. There's no future in Visual Basic because it's not for building apps in a mobile computing paradigm. It's an old-school desktop GUI paradigm, the paradigm that is quickly being replaced with mobile computing... where Microsoft is at an enormous disadvantage. Nobody is building mobile apps using Visual Basic.

      >The entire MS stack has been abandoned by the next generation of innovators.
      You mean by people like StackOverflow?

Out of every 100 Silicon Valley startups, I think you'll find about 1% or less are using any Microsoft technologies. You conveniently provided one of those 1%.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> This thread is quickly filling up with anecdotes and such which is fine, but I thought I'd throw out a tip. Do not be afraid to play with the date range for limiting or further specifying your search. I probably use it 2-3 times a week, it's very nice.</comment>


How Government Data Can Improve Lives (Richard H. Thaler) - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/13/business/13view.html

<comment><USER2> It may seem so obvious that more data is better for social welfare, and in 95% of cases it probably is better.

But parties incur costs when processing more data. For e.g., Dodd-Frank mandates that issuers of ABS securities issue loan by loan data that the credit ratings agencies used to crunch. Private parties will now become their own ratings agencies. More disclosure is probably still good on the whole, I'm just pointing out there are costs too.</comment>


SourceForge Announces Hosted Applications - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/sourceforge_announces_hosted_apps.php

<comment><USER2> So, this means SourceForge is not completely asleep at the wheel, as they seem to have been for the past few years or maybe they just woke up. Y'all recall, I assume, that SourceForge was a spin off of VALinux, which in its day (the first boom) was, I seem to recall, the fastest rising IPO in history (which means the funders, founders, and underwriters made off like bandits, and the company ended up with far less capital than it should have gotten out of the deal, and I won't even mention the folks who bought shares at those prices). And, certainly, it was the biggest Open Source related IPO in history.

I've often wondered why they've waited out the whole web 2.0 thing, as seems to be what happened. Now that we have another bust on our hands, they're starting to try something new. Fixing Sourceforge might have been a good place to start, in order to slow the bleed of projects to other hosting options, but I guess trying new things is good, too. (We're still hosting our OSS stuff there, but I wouldn't choose it for a new project.)

<comment><USER3> "We're still hosting our OSS stuff there, but I wouldn't choose it for a new project."

We're welcoming all SourceForge projects and their maintainers over at GitHub :-)

<comment><USER2> You might regret the offer. We're pushing something like ~2.5TB a month off of the SF mirror system.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is it possible to compare JavaScript frameworks to e.g. Django or RoR? - <AUTHOR>

I still haven't made a choice which framework I should focus on and writing enough code in all of them to familiarize myself seems daunting.
I used Django for a long time for my personal projects until I realized what I like about Flask. Their design philosophies differ greatly and so do the JavaScript ones.
I'm aware that JavaScript in the browser adds another level of complexity, but is there a way to compare those frameworks to the ones found in other languages?
Which are the ones that allow choices, modularity? Which ones are opinionated and which even insist on things beeing done certain ways, like bringing their own template engines or module loaders?
I've been trough a lot of blogs, reading opinions and direct comparisons, but I haven't seen anyone approach it by saying "If you love Django you'll love X".
Is it just not possible? <comment><USER2> If you love Django, you'll love spine.js. It's ORM is the only one which has a decent Active Record implementation.

Angular takes the gold when it comes to being opinionated. If you agree with the philosophy it's a breeze, if not you'll be fighting it every waking hour.

Backbone is the least opinionated and to be honest I don't see the point of a framework with so few opinions. It just encourages you shoot yourself in the foot.

Horses for courses, I suppose. What's the purpose of your personal projects? If you are doing them in hope that it will be a business one day, go with Angular as it does a lot of magic and things move very quickly after you succumb to its wisdom. If you are doing them to beef up your portfolio, go with Backbone as it seems to be most popular among businesses. If your purpose is to learn, write your own framework, at least initially. You'll get an appreciation of what weight they are trying to lift. Choosing a framework after that will be a much informed decision.</comment>


The featherweight version of a Python class - <AUTHOR> https://www.chrisbarra.xyz/posts/let-me-introduce-slots/ <comment><USER2> Seems to be down - the HN "hug of death" ??</comment>


Ask HN: How do I delete evercookies on Safari? - <AUTHOR> I have some really annoying cookies/databases that I can't get rid of in Safari 11.0.3 on Mac OS 10.13.3. Everytime I delete all website data, some entries keep coming back.<p>I have even deleted the ~/Library/Safari/Databases and ~/Library/Safari/LocalStorage folders manually. I can't her rid of these zombies. Any ideas? <comment><USER2> You're probably going to get both a faster and more thorough answer on [1] or [2]. They're both sites made for discussions of this nature while HN generally has a different focus.

[1] [https://apple.stackexchange.com/](https://apple.stackexchange.com/)

[2] [https://superuser.com/](https://superuser.com/)</comment>


Amazon Head of Robotics Joins Scale as CTO - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-08-31/amazon-top-robotics-engineer-joins-scale-ai <comment><USER2> > Scale makes software to help people train autonomous driving technology and > other computer vision systems.

True; I would also point out Scale is also involved in various fields independent of computer vision, eg NLP[1], document processing[2], and recently, ML dataset management[3].

[1] [https://scale.com/text](https://scale.com/text)

[2] [https://scale.com/document](https://scale.com/document)

[3] [https://scale.com/nucleus](https://scale.com/nucleus)

(disclaimer: I am an employee at Scale.)</comment>


Review my startup: MasterIncubator.com - <AUTHOR> http://www.masterincubator.com

<comment><USER2> Master... Incu... bator...

seriously??

<comment><USER3> I thought so too. LOL.

<comment><USER4> thank god I wasn't the only one who saw this</comment></comment></comment>


Next Stop Mars: Huge NASA Rover Launches Toward Red Planet - <AUTHOR> http://www.space.com/13738-nasa-mars-rover-curiosity-msl-launch.html

<comment><USER2> Watched the launch with the kiddies on NASA TV.

Then went outside and saw it come over South Africa. Got a picture of it as well.

To see the little white dots we saw check... <http://imageshack.us/photo/my- images/600/igotapicofit.jpg> <http://imageshack.us/photo/my- images/14/picofitand2nd.jpg/>

Now I can justify to the wife that I NEED a 15" telescope

-edit-

Sorry, it is more like, see if you can spot the white dots with these pictures. 52mm lens is not that great.

The dots are about 5mm to the left of the arrows

-edit-

<comment><USER3> I see the dots. You definitely need that 15" telescope -- tell her I said so. ;-)

Reminds me a bit of being in the Palm Beach area and seeing a shuttle launch. That's some distance away, but it was still very visible. IIRC, we had binoculars, which made the details much more evident.

Then, a few days later, I looked out the kitchen window to see some rather distinct exhaust plumes. No official announcement. Turns out it was a secret launch/payload, later confirmed in that non-confirming way the government sometimes has.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "NASA began planning Curiosity's mission — which is officially known as the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) — back in 2003. The rover was originally scheduled to blast off in 2009, but it wasn't ready in time.

Launch windows for Mars-bound spacecraft are based on favorable alignments between Earth and the Red Planet, and they open up just once every two years. So the MSL team had to wait until 2011."

I can't imagine how agonizing that decision to delay the launch must have been. "Do we work our asses off to try and meet the launch, and risk 1.5 billion usd, or wait two extra years?" Managers nightmare!

<comment><USER5> They had been working 24 hour shifts for weeks to make the prior deadline. The delay was mainly due to a problem with the reliability of the mechanical actuators used by the robot. This happens, but it was an embarrassment to all concerned.

I just found a good link to the story:

<http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1319/1>

The amount of planning and risk management for large projects like this is amazing. I remember seeing the chart of subsystem deliverables and dependencies for a medium-size instrument (~100M$, far smaller than MSL), printed out from a large-format printer, tacked to a hallway wall. It was about 20 feet long by 4 feet high, printed just large enough to read.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Congratulations on a successful launch! I just hope it lands without problems - the landing sequence looks quite complicated and this is the biggest probe yet - it would be a real drawback if it failed (like Russia's Phobos-Grunt).

</comment><comment><USER7> Here is a video of the launch: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irBg4DvHI6c>

</comment><comment><USER8> I heard Nick Begich say today in an Alex Jones interview that rocket launches punch big holes in the ozone layer, and have done far more damage than CFCs have ever done.

<comment><USER9> > in an Alex Jones interview

my impression of Alex Jones is the man is at the center of his own little right-wing/conspiracy/propaganda empire. i'd take anything that comes from his direction with skepticism, if not avoided altogether.

<comment><USER8> Thanks for the tip. He does have some good guests, which makes for interesting viewing. His main problem is that he cuts people off midway before they make their key points or conclusion. And there is no common organized enemy, "the globalists" -- he may as well talk about "the CEOs" or "the Politicians" and these groups do organize around greed, especially "the Bankers."

So yes, when he cuts people off, he replaces the ending with his own agenda. But that's not to say he should be totally ignored, I think.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Simply put: this is the most ambitious space mission since the Apollo program. I hope it succeeds.</comment>


Introduction to APL - <AUTHOR> http://aplwiki.com/LearnApl/IntroducingApl <comment><USER2> J (<http://www.jsoftware.com/>) is a modern and free (though not open source) APL dialect. It has some of the best documentation I've seen for any language, ever.

Q (<http://kx.com/> , previously known as K) is also pretty amazing, but unfortunately isn't free.

</comment><comment><USER3> Does a language like APL/J really offer something more than other matrix/math oriented languages (Matlab comes to mind)?

Other than extreme conciseness (unreadable at times).

<comment><USER2> Making looping implicit seems to have huge benefits, in particular. It shrinks the code down quite a bit, much like the implicit search does in Prolog.

As for the unreadability - I can't read Turkish, but that has more to do with me than Turkish. Good APL really isn't that hard to read: The syntax is _incredibly_ consistent, and while unfamiliar symbols are used, there aren't that many, and most are mnemonic - for example, the reverse operator is a circle with a vertical line through it, like a semicircle being mirrored.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is this microservices madness? - <AUTHOR> A bit of background: I work in a small finance company in Tokyo with ~20 people in IT. The structure of this department is everyone responds straight to the CTO so it's somewhat chaotic.
I am the front-end person in a team doing a single product. Besides me, there's only the back-end guy (our direct boss is the CTO). As per our CTO instructions, the back-end is structured with microservices in go. So 1 developer is designing, launching and maintaining something like 8-10 microservices. Things also change quite frequently from our CTO random recommendations.
I feel this is madness, and our main back-end guy works very long hours and is visibly burned. I am worried both for him and for the quality (or even launch) of the product. There's no single process or workflow that works smoothly.
How common/rare is this about microservices? What would you recommend me doing (besides jumping ship)? <comment><USER2> 4-6 people (the two pizza rule) per microservice makes sense, so you're only off by two orders of magnitude.

<comment><AUTHOR> They wanted the back-end guy to be only 50% of his time in this project and the other 50% in another project initially! Luckily they understood it didn't make any kind of sense at some point. Not that now it makes more sense, but...

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The unfortunate thing is that this kind of stuff happens in our industry, regardless of architecture choices. Many developers are overworked through a combination of being short staffed and poorly managed.

The odds of being able to change this company are quite low. So, you'll need to make a choice. Do you want to stay until it starts to hurt your health, or do you want to leave and risk long term unemployment?

If you want to stick it out, you might need to take control of the team. In that case, I'd start by figuring out why the developer is having problems maintaining 10 microservices. Is it death by agile, is Go the wrong tool, or is it a case of massive technical debt? Or, was the whole project built by a burned out developer?

Once you figure out what's going on, you'll have to be open and honest with your CTO. Maybe your CTO needs to back off? Maybe your CTO needs to get more involved and start writing code? Maybe the other developer just isn't cut out for the company?

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh, _I_ am great now. While it's not fulfilling, I have a fairly relaxed timeline (since it's the same deadline as the back-end) so I've done some learning, refactoring, cleanup, and extensive testing without any overwork.

The project is new, so he has to create those 10 microservices from scratch. Someone is helping out managing the infra, but still there's quite a big burden on the dev.

I think some optimal solutions might be to put a manager/dev lead in the middle to help out, let the team self-organize properly (cannot do that though since it's finance) or hire more devs. All of those would take months probably.

<comment><USER3> First, I hope that you stay great. You've got compassion for the other developer, plus a good sense of what's wrong in an engineering culture. It would be upsetting for our industry to lose that to burnout or worse.

In your CTO's defense, assuming we define microservices in roughly the same way, I think a single developer should be able to handle 10 microservices. If a developer couldn't, I'd want to look at contributing factors like death by agile, technical debt and a shitty stack. If none of those are the case, is the developer burned out? Or does she have the skill/demeanour to even do the work in that company?

And sadly, you likely don't have time to ship the project and lobby for a major organizational change. I think you either need to be that manager in the middle (you're definitely capable, Manager), or alternately, how is your Go???

Good luck - I'll be thinking about you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> That many microservices from the beginning is premature optimization. I'm not really convinced it would ever be an optimization, honestly.

It sounds like your manager sucks and work culture isn't great. Why not apply for other jobs while you're there? It doesn't hurt to have options.

<comment><USER5> we know nothing about what this system is doing. Being finance there could be a lot of out of band requirements that mean SOA/microservice architecture is the correct paradigm, and that the number of services is the least they need right now.

But without actually knowing what the system is doing and what it's constraints are, there is no blanked too-many, not-enough, they're-doing-it- wrong.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think the backend guy should raise the problem to CTO. If he doesn't do it, either he is fine for that or he is not brave to say it out. (Is he a Japanese?)

I am also working in Tokyo but I resigned yesterday. I think frontend developer is easier to get a job than backend developer (me).

</comment><comment><USER7> There was a similar thread on HN a few days ago. Tl;dr: Likely some incredibly dumb architecture choices were made in your situation.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17585936](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17585936)</comment>


OneDeck Comes Out of Beta - <AUTHOR> https://www.producthunt.com/posts/onedeck <comment><USER2> has anyone tried this and have feedback?</comment>


Professor Brian Cox: "It's Very Difficult to Argue with an Idiot" - <AUTHOR> http://www.iflscience.com/editors-blog/its-very-difficult-to-argue-with-an-idiot-says-professor-brian-cox/all/ <comment><USER2> Im reminded of this scene from Jam:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGex0kLgNok](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGex0kLgNok)

and the more recent "interview" with brian cox himself from charlie brookers 2016 wipe:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87zd_BGY4UU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87zd_BGY4UU)</comment>


Upsurge in big earthquakes predicted for 2018 as Earth rotation slows - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/nov/18/2018-set-to-be-year-of-big-earthquakes <comment><USER2> I wish they had described the mechanism that was used to measure Earth's rotation rate to the millisecond 100 years ago.

<comment><USER3> Various sources for day-length estimates are available, see for example [https://design-of-time.com/slowing.htm](https://design-of- time.com/slowing.htm) (appendix A).</comment></comment>


Is Java "pass-by-reference" or "pass-by-value"? - <AUTHOR> https://stackoverflow.com/q/40480/745828 <comment><AUTHOR> Spending my Saturday reading various answers with different perspectives on the the genesis of the holy war between "is Java pass by reference" and "is Java pass by value" proponents.</comment>


The snowball stemmer - <AUTHOR> http://snowballstem.org/ <comment><USER2> Not sure why this pops up here. It's a pretty old stemmer, and stemmers themselves aren't exactly newsworthy...?</comment>


ARM charts out the path to printed plastic chips - <AUTHOR> https://semiaccurate.com/2015/11/18/arm-charts-path-printed-plastic-chips/ <comment><USER2> Can someone explain what this technology is about, I wasn't able to get any sort of understanding from this post.

What exactly are they printing ? Are the transistors actually made of plastic instead of doped silicon ? If so what feature sizes are possible with this technology ? How does the manufacturing process compare with Si ? etc...

<comment><USER3> They printed a microcontroller die using organic semiconductors. The feature size is 2 microns. The technology is somewhat comparable to burning optical discs.

What you can imagine out of this technology is a moore's law type reduction in feature size. Not too far off you could imagine a box where you could print arbitrary chips on a whim.

What it is is orders of magnitude cheaper and faster production of complex microchips.

<comment><USER2> I've heard of organic semiconductors but I had no idea they had advanced to the point where they could be used for an SoC. Is 2 microns small enough for an ARM core ?

This sounds like it could become very important. Do you know of any sites that do a better job of explaining this technology ?

<comment><USER4> It's smaller than the ARM2 (first commercially available ARM), which was 2.5µm according to [http://everything2.com/title/ARM2](http://everything2.com/title/ARM2) .

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If I understand this correctly, this opens the path to 3D-printing plastic chips. If so, this is amazing.

</comment><comment><USER6> The graph looks linear because it is using a log scale.

<comment><USER7> > as ARM shows above, the imprint and deposition transistor world is following > a shrinking path that looks like Moore's Law, or in our view it is somewhat > linear.

Red flag when a guy writing about bleeding edge transistor technology doesn't understand the main point of Moore's law - exponential growth in density, which is usually converted to a log scale making it appear linear in nature.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I don't understand, transistors are already dirt cheap compared to what you pay for IP and market segmentation.

<comment><USER9> The great advantage would be for individuals to create their own designs. Right now chips are very cheap as long as you produce millions of them. If you come up with your own chip design it is very expensive to produce them. The ability to crate your own chip can make it possible for individuals to design customized machines, where the instructions would be created to solve particular problems. For example, a Lisp machine could be easily created to support exactly the instructions needed by Lisp.

<comment><USER10> More importantly IMO, it lets you potentially get rid of dark silicon, and make open source hardware a reality.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> How's power consumption in comparison?</comment>


Tardisk doubles the size of your primary MacBook storage - <AUTHOR> http://tardisk.com/ <comment><USER2> This is great. I wonder how it affects read/write speeds.

</comment><comment><USER2> Oh, also, $400 is pretty expensive.</comment>


Xz-ordering: A space-filling curve for objects with spatial extension - <AUTHOR> http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.73.4894 <comment><USER2> Here's an implementation of the algorithm in Scala: [https://github.com/locationtech/geomesa/blob/master/geomesa-...](https://github.com/locationtech/geomesa/blob/master/geomesa-z3/src/main/scala/org/locationtech/geomesa/curve/XZ2SFC.scala)

</comment><comment><USER3> This is from 1999 - which doesn't make it any less interesting, but I'm curious if any new insights have been found in the twenty years since.

<comment><USER4> Here's a list of citations of it that might be interesting: [https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/XZ-Ordering%3A-A- Space...](https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/XZ-Ordering%3A-A-Space- Filling-Curve-for-Objects-with-B%C3%B6hm- Klump/28250184156b06a9a3a784eb61572f771e102e83#citing-papers)

<comment><USER5> Or the google citation graph version, [https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=1122180852070095073](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=1122180852070095073)</comment></comment></comment>


The Rat Spill - <AUTHOR> https://www.hakaimagazine.com/features/the-rat-spill/ <comment><USER2> I am a huge fan of Hakai Institute. I've read of so many rat infestations on islands around the world, but never realized they were happening so close to home. It's fascinating that rats, despite being so tenacious and versatile, never made it to some islands that seem so close to others which have always harboured rats. I guess they don't like the ocean.

If you enjoyed this, they have many other stories (typically to do with the Canadian West Coast's ecology) that are well worth reading.</comment>


Keeping News of Kidnapping Off Wikipedia - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/29/technology/internet/29wiki.html?src=twr

<comment><USER3> It's a shame that the Times framed this as a Times editor's personal intercession to help a journalist, rather than as an application of Wikipedia's "Biographies of living persons" policy:

"Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a tabloid paper; it is not our job to be sensationalist, or to be the primary vehicle for the spread of titillating claims about people's lives. _The possibility of harm to living subjects_ is one of the important factors to be considered when exercising editorial judgment." [emphasis added]

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biographies_of_living_persons>

<comment><USER4> "The possibility of harm to living subjects is one of the important factors to be considered when exercising editorial judgment."

Thanks for pointing directly to Wikipedia's stated editorial policies. That makes clear how Wikipedia had already announced it would resolve such trade- offs.

<comment><USER5> Wikipedia is not a single entity that can simply announce how "it" will resolve such a thing. The idea that a perfect consensus can be reached on any given issue among the myriad of interested parties (including among the administrators and other higher-ups themselves) is simply naive.

In particular the BLP policy has likely been the center of the most controversy and debate of any policy (using this in the official meta- Wikipedia term for policy). Most of this debate surrounds over how far the interests of the subject should be respected over the truth, particularly when the truth is reported in what Wikipedia considers reliable sources. As Jimbo Wales himself states in that article, HAD this incident been reported in such a source, it would have been much more difficult to deal with.

Frankly, when BLP was drafted and discussed, no one foresaw an event like this occurring. This was the first time a subject was actually in real-time danger and any edit could literally damage his well-being. The events that BLP had in mind were things like libel (google for daniel brandt), unsubstantiated celebrity gossip, invasion of privacy (Allison Stokke, the star wars kid), misinformation (sinbad's death).

What's interesting is that Wikipedia has a culture of decision/discussion transparency that is at odds with protecting privacy in this situation. This could not have been discussed on the typical Wikipedia boards without totally giving up privacy. It's amazing they were able to keep this under wraps as they did.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _When the news broke Saturday, the user from Florida reposted the information, with a note to administrators that said: "Is that enough proof for you [expletives]? I was right. You were WRONG."_

Wow, so do we have a name for this phenomenon yet? I think I'll write up an RFC for "Monroe's Law"[1] tomorrow.

[1]: <http://xkcd.com/386/>

<comment><USER7> You don't understand that user's frustration? You edit the article, source the information, and all you get is baffling bureaucracy. Then it turns out that the people who'd been quibbling with you all that time _knew_ you were right and were maintaining a front to keep the information hidden.

It's the sort of thing dystopian novels are made of...

<comment><USER4> What's the user's interest in posting the information? How does that compare with the interest of others in keeping the reporter alive?

<comment><USER8> > How does that compare with the interest of others in keeping the reporter > alive?

Does it matter that the person is a reporter?

> What's the user's interest in posting the information?

US journalists are on record saying that they wouldn't help US troops avoid an ambush. CNN admitted censor its Hussein-era coverage to maintain a presence. I can go on and on about how journalists pick stories in ways that don't paint them in a very good light.

I've nothing against questioning the interest that someone has in saying something true, as long as we're going to question everyone in that situation. Deal?

<comment><USER9> If a journalist is in-place, then exposing an ambush would both endanger them and ensure that all journalists in similar situations would not be trusted by those they are embedded with.

Exposing something from the comfort of your living room is different.

The choice between limited reporting in an environment of external censorship, and a choosing not to report at all in protest, is distinct and has different tradeoffs; but generally speaking, engagement has historically been the approach that gives better results in the long term.

<comment><USER8> > If a journalist is in-place, then exposing an ambush would both endanger > them and ensure that all journalists in similar situations would not be > trusted by those they are embedded with.

Curiously, they gave neither reason.

> Exposing something from the comfort of your living room is different.

The NYT had no problem reporting on the kidnapping of an American in Afghanistan (<http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/27/world/asia/27afghan.html>) or on the abduction of an American U.N. official in Pakistan (<http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/03/world/asia/03pstan.html>)

Same circumstance, but different media reaction. Observed differences - <USER2> weren't reporters and US newsroom vs US living room.

> but generally speaking, engagement has historically been the approach that > gives better results in the long term.

Some evidence would be nice. It would be especially good if said evidence tried to look at the priority of "we're in it for us."

I'm not saying that journalists have to be altruistic or are wrong if they're not. I'm asking how they live up to their claims. If it's fair to criticize others for those failings....

<comment><USER8> And 4 Red Cross workers kidnapped in Afghanistan ([http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9906E6DA1F3EF...](http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9906E6DA1F3EF93BA1575AC0A9619C8B63)).

> I'm asking how they live up to their claims.

That should have been "how well", "whether" or "if".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If the New York Times had a policy of never publicizing kidnappings, I could respect their policy.

However, it appears that they are entirely hypocritial on this topic: I've read TONS of articles in the NYT about people being kidnapped.

I guess that the alleged danger to the captive is only a motivating force when the captive is one of their own. When it's a mere aid worker, or military contractor, or something, then the calculus changes.

Color me disgusted.

<comment><USER11> Different circumstances are sometimes, well, different. Sometimes a captive's life is more in danger if the captors consider him or her valuable (like a NYT reporter). Sometimes publicizing the situation helps bring attention in a positive and helpful way (shaming the captors, forcing the government to do something, etc).

And sometimes - often, in fact - you just don't know, and you make the best judgment call you can.

I'm not claiming that the Times always acts correctly in these situations, and it's certainly worthwhile to question what the motivating factors are in whether, when and how to hold a story.

But it's also not really correct to say that all kidnapping situations are exactly the same and must be [not] publicized. They're simply not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Wikipedia is officially large enough that all of the abstract futurist notions of the internet community about freedom of information are coming in contact with some really real-world roadblocks. It's one thing to imagine wikipedia (or whoever else) valiantly fighting against some repressive third-world government, and thus striking a blow for freedom, democracy and the like. But it's situations like these where the really interesting stuff happens.

<comment><USER13> Exactly. By the way this example shows how people with good intentions on both sides of the conflict can fall into the frustrating state of edit wars. Add there the <http://www.geocities.com/bigcslewisfan/> mechanis of corrupting those in power and it gets pretty messy (as the wikipedia review site can attest).

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Am I the only one who finds it a bit disturbing that editors can just call a few buddies and a piece of information doesn't get published? All the conspiracy theories seem a bit more likely now...

<comment><USER15> That's the way the world works.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> So maybe this secrecy was justifiable. But maybe it wasn't. Here's a list of parties who would have benefited from the information:

\- Other reporters and nonprofit workers considering going to Afghanistan. How many of your colleagues have been kidnapped doing something you're considering doing is pretty useful information. Even if you still decide to do it, you might demand extra compensation for the risk. The editors of the New York Times may have saved themselves substantial hazard pay by keeping this secret. \- The kidnappers, obviously, who apparently represent the former government of Afghanistan. This might seem unremarkable (who would side with the kidnappers, after all?) except that it is very unusual for Wikipedia to take sides in a contentious international issue like this, even in cases where there are clear issues of right and wrong (Scientology, Guantánamo, the US's support for terrorist guerrillas in Nicaragua in the 1970s, etc.) There's a strong tradition of letting the reader decide. \- Old friends of David Rohde wondering why they hadn't heard from him in months. \- Anyone who, in the future, seeks information that fairly presents all sides of an issue without the fear that some sides have been entirely suppressed. (This is the first such case, to my knowledge.) I imagine this case will be brought up every time some kid from a radical madrasa tries to convince his buddies that actually the US did take action to save Muslims from persecution in Bosnia, using Wikipedia and the sources it cites to make his case.

I agree that there is a plausible case to make that secrecy was the lesser of the evils, but I don't think it's an open-and-shut case. If nothing else, it's possible that this secrecy has already resulted in the deaths of other journalists.

<comment><USER17> Most journalists in Afghanistan/Iraq and well, the HQ of most major western news will have known that Rohde was kidnapped. As pointed out by the article, it's easier to call the editors of the major papers and ask them to hold any stories. In turn, they'll pass the message thru to the ranks of journos who are out in the field and might happen to write that story.

It's also interesting how this story was kept quiet for over seven months- however Prince Harry's deployment to Afghanistan didn't last four months before he had to be pulled.

So it's a different case on the ground than it is here in the safety of our homes and offices- and I am certain that people share _lots_ on the ground - that's how they keep safe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm really glad to hear the guys escaped, even though it was obvious from the premise. However, the final line sounds terribly Orwellian to me:

> "But the idea of a pure openness, a pure democracy, is a naïve one."

</comment><comment><USER10> > Around that time, Catherine J. Mathis, the chief spokeswoman for the New > York Times Company, called Mr. Wales and asked for his help. Knowing that > his own actions on Wikipedia draw attention, Mr. Wales turned to an > administrator

Sounds like Jimbo broke both the "sock puppet rule" AND the "three revert rule".

<comment><USER16> No, perhaps unfortunately, suggesting edits to someone else is not a violation of the sock-puppet rule. I don't know what causes you to believe Jimmy made three reverts on the same page within 24 hours; there certainly isn't any evidence for that in the article itself, and actually there's a considerable amount of suggestion that not only didn't he do any reverts to the article himself, he didn't do any edits to the article.

When you are accusing someone of hypocrisy and serious misconduct, it is a good idea to have both a clear idea of the definitions of the kinds of misconduct you are accusing them of, and some iota of evidence that the person in question committed them. It is not generally considered good practice to throw around serious accusations in the complete absence of any incriminating evidence. And that is what you are doing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I wonder if they considered showing this person (or at least people on that ISP or region) custom content?

Forking the entry so that they could carry on editing in ignorance would, I imagine, be a rather large challenge, but just hard wiring a divertion to some sort of explanation might have been feasible.

<comment><USER20> I think a better solution would be to allow elevating a page to non-anonymous users only. That way when situations like this arise, they can make a page "user only" and create a line of communication with the person on the other end.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Isn't this ironic? Hasn't the Times printed stories despite being told that doing so endangers "national security" (i.e. could result in the deaths of citizens)?

<comment><USER22> Are you talking about their publication of the NSA's wiretapping program? Or about European cooperation to track terrorist funds that was in violation of EU privacy law? Or maybe their publication of excerpts from the Pentagon Papers in the 1970s?

Just because a presidential administration or governmental agency says publication of information will "endanger national security," it does not necessarily mean it will cause Americans to die - it might just embarrass the organization.

<comment><USER23> I suspect it's not about the government or the press -- it's about the specifics. If NYT had written the Wikipedia folks and said, "Don't add this information, it compromises our security." they'd have been laughed at. If they say, "There's this specific guy, and this specific information, and we think there's a good chance if you say this it'll do this bad thing to him." it's another story. I think the government would probably be able to make a similar appeal. "Bob might get killed." is a lot more actionable than "National security might be compromised."

<comment><USER21> Perhaps. I'm not a fan of any recent administration or the Times but that argument strikes me even more ironic considering that the Times' ethics (as presented on and off the editorial page) has always been in favor of violating the rights/security of individuals in favor of "groups."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> "Information wants to be free."

I have to believe that if someone was posting this to Wikipedia, the information was already publicly available. If you want something to be a secret, don't tell people about it. (See also, the Streissand Effect.)

</comment><comment><USER25> 1) If the kidnappers "obviously" would have benefited from the publicity, why didn't they create publicity deliberately?

2) Great, now we know how to manipulate Wikipedia into censoring articles.

</comment><comment><USER26> Seems like any reasonably intelligent kidnapper would take a peek at the edit history of the article and see all the edits and reverts, which would be even more suspicious.

<comment><USER27> I think it takes a pretty dedicated and thorough kidnapper to look at _edit history_ to figure out who they've got. If it's someone significant, there is almost no way that all of the information on the internet will be cleaned before a kidnapper knows who they're holding.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Recently it seems like the NYTimes jumps on every opportunity to write articles about the downsides of its new-media competitors. First LinkedIn crowdsourcing, now problems with Wikipedia decentralization. Just getting a bit old.

<comment><USER29> On the contrary, this article barely seemed newsworthy, and certainly not befitting of coverage in (still) the most influential newspaper in the world. To me the whole thing seemed like a way of thanking Jimbo Wales and the editors of Wikipedia. Although given the hell that is now going to rain down upon them from the tinfoil-hat crowd, I kind of wonder if this was the best way to go about it :)

<comment><USER30> Not newsworthy?!?!

It's a great article, revealing heretofore unreported aspects of Wikipedia governance. (Wikipedia is the top hit for so many topics that its importance is up there with Google, the NY Times, and network TV news.) And, the events are in relation to a vivid, emotional, recent story with relevance to journalism, terrorism, and foreign policy in the middle east.

This could have gone much earlier in the paper than p. B4, and deserves some independent reporting by another outlet not directly involved.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Alternatives to Fogbugz - <AUTHOR> We're considering moving away from Fogbugz in light of recent events. What are medium (23 people) sized dev teams who are distributed using for bug tracking? <comment><USER2> Try Jira and/or whole Atlassian family [1]. Or Github now have Projects [2].

Interesting to see what others are using too.

[1] [https://www.atlassian.com/software](https://www.atlassian.com/software) [2] [https://github.com/blog/2256-a-whole-new-github-universe- ann...](https://github.com/blog/2256-a-whole-new-github-universe-announcing- new-tools-forums-and-features)

<comment><USER2> UPDATE: if some traveler stumble upon this thread

As super cool alternative to Jira see ClubHouse [1]

[1] [https://clubhouse.io/](https://clubhouse.io/)

</comment></comment><comment> charlie-r We've found JIRA to be the best option for our small (5 person) team. We enjoy the ubiquitous integrations, powerful project management tools and reliability. Keyboard shortcut support is fantastic.

I would warn that (as of 1.5 years ago), JIRA Cloud is very slow. We've since moved to JIRA Server and solved the speed issues.

<comment><USER3> Used JIRA in a medium team (~50-100 people) and it also works well. Integration is super, great UI.

Whatever you do, don't use anything by Rational/IBM. I know people who've left because of Rational Team Concert, it's that frustrating day to day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've recently begun using fogbugz (don't love it, but it's been "good enough"). I'm curious what recent events have caused you to reconsider. If the company has behaved in a manner counter to my sense of ethics, I would also consider switching away. Can you please elaborate?

<comment><AUTHOR> They were down for a few hours yesterday morning and again this morning. Also been slow when not down during the past 2 days. They had some kind of incident with their storage systems AFAIK. They've worked well for us so far, but this is hurting us e.g. dev meetings yesterday and today had to be done without bug tracking system, so we couldn't discuss current sprint progress, individual bugs, etc.

Lots of other customers affected: [https://twitter.com/search?f=tweets&vertical=default&q=fogbu...](https://twitter.com/search?f=tweets&vertical=default&q=fogbugz&src=typd)

<comment><AUTHOR> Received a detailed update from Daniel in their CS team as soon as we reached out. They're hoping to have everything back to normal tomorrow. Happy with the response.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've never used Fogbugz, but of all the open source options, my favorite is Redmine: [http://www.redmine.org/](http://www.redmine.org/)

</comment><comment><USER6> Something like phabricator is always a reasonable choice

[https://www.phacility.com/](https://www.phacility.com/)

</comment><comment><USER7> Atlassian Jira.

I have used it solo and on teams of 20 or so and I would be hard pushed to recommend something so highly.

</comment><comment><USER8> Is this for web development? Then have you considered visual bug tracking systems like zipBoard, bugherd?

</comment><comment><USER9> What recent events have I missed?

<comment><USER10> I think he's talking about [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12959755](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12959755)

[http://status.fogcreek.com/](http://status.fogcreek.com/)</comment></comment>


Is developing open source software a viable route for a startup? - <AUTHOR>

The startup where I work is developing enterprise type software. The software itself is great, and have been selling ok in our home marked (Scandinavia). But now we want to venture out in the wider world. Unfortunately we are having a hard time reaching out to potential customers that are located far away.
We feel that we basically are left with two choices:
* Hire more sale and marketing staff to get the sale pipeline going. This is a known and safe route, but may require more VC.
* Make our software open source and hope that it spreads in the wild.
Does it make sense to follow the open source route for a startup? Can it somehow come back to haunt us (for  example making it harder to get VC founding in the further, because we got no ipr)? <comment><USER2> I'm a big supporter/user and small contributer of free software. That being said...

 _Make our software open source and hope that it spreads in the wild._

This is not a business strategy. You are going to give away for free what you are currently selling? How would that help?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Agreed, Naner raises a very good point. Just uploading it on GitHub won't help much. However wouldn't I be right in thinking that it would be easier to get press, adoption and attention to something that is open source?

Maybe my question instead should be something like: Given relative small resources, is it easier to succeed as a startup if your product is open sourced?

For business strategy so are we leaning towards the usual rout of releasing the software as open source, to encourage a more rapid adoption, while the company sells ongoing support contracts, custom integration, services and consultancy.

</comment><comment><USER3> By making the software open source you can sneak into enterprises under the management radar. You can make friends among ordinary developers in the enterprise. They can recommend your additional plug-ins, services or whatever you are selling to the management. However, at that point you'll need strong sales department to make the sale actually happen.

So, the two options are not alternatives, rather they complement each other. You'll need sales staff in any case. Making the product open source can help the sales staff to sell related products.

Whether it's worth it is up to your consideration.

</comment><comment><USER4> Is he trolling us? I can't tell. It's such a ridiculous scenario/question that I just find myself unable to take it seriously. On one hand, I want to help - to answer with good info - but on the other hand I don't want to waste my time with a joke of a question. I'm choosing to believe that he's trolling.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, but it was not my intention to troll anyone. I am fully aware that both open source and propertarian software models are viable business models. However most successfully open source projects were probably open source from the start.

I am more wondering if open sourcing propertarian software are a good way to reach the masses? And if so, what risk would we be taking on?

I don't think I am the only on wondering about this. Tom Preston-Werner (Cofounder & CEO at GitHub) has written about some of the same issues at [http://tom.preston-werner.com/2011/11/22/open-source- everyth...](http://tom.preston-werner.com/2011/11/22/open-source- everything.html) .

<comment><USER4> Fair enough...

I probably disagree with your premise that you likely have to hire VC to go a more sales/marketing approach (hard to say w/o more context). Of all the jobs/areas, sales is the easiest to hire without a large cash outlay. If you had said, "We likely need VC money because we need to rewrite a huge chunk of the code", I would've bought that but to say you need that money to build a sales team doesn't make sense to me.

For example, let's say I have a $1m/yr enterprise software company and we have no sales staff. If I want to go hire a sales person, what is it they want out of the deal? They want a product that meets marketplace needs, is well supported, is easy to demo, has a track record, and then I want to get paid as much as possible for each sale. You've proven that you have a saleable product and a track record, it seems. The next important part is the last part: "for each sale". You pay them commission - maybe not 100% commission at the start but, by month six, they are likely no less than 50% commission. It's far from a no-risk strategy but it's far cheaper than hiring engineers and having to pay 100% salaries w/ no add-on to sales. You could hire a sales manager and three sales people who, after six months, are on 50% commission. Within a year, they're on 100% commission plus bonuses.

With all that being said, yes, I'm making it seem simpler than it is. But, at this stage (and without knowing more about your business), it seems like the above hasn't been considered. A good sales person will drive your marketing for you, at least initially. He/she will say, "I need x and I need y to sell this product." You can then contract out x and y. The big cash outlays are going to be buying lists for the sales people and sending them to conferences.

Lastly, I would say that, if you find it tough to hire/find salespeople willing to work on commission, that either (a) your product price isn't being seen as profitable from a commission salesperson's POV, or (b) they believe either your support or product/market fit are just not good enough for them to make a high commission.

Sorry - I just don't see that as a big deal for a company selling enterprise software.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Naner raises a very good point but there's more to it. Your problem right now is reaching customers, a github repo is going to suffer the exact same problem.

If you're able to market your github repo to your potential users/customers why not market your software instead?

</comment><comment><USER6> If you aren't currently offering support and training with your software, that might actually be a reason why companies are reluctant to start using your product.

</comment><comment><USER7> Redhat has been selling service contracts to support their free software for more than 10 years.

<comment><USER8> Red hat started out selling their software. Their transition to a services company was facilitated by Linux software being integrated into enterprise in a mission critical manner.

Most software is less critical to an IT department than an OS, and few things justify the scale of support within enterprise.</comment></comment>