Enhancing Pwned Passwords Privacy by Exclusively Supporting Anonymity - <AUTHOR> https://www.troyhunt.com/enhancing-pwned-passwords-privacy-by-exclusively-supporting-anonymity/ <comment><USER2> Marco Arment just updated the excellent Overcast podcast app to be anonymous by default.

[https://marco.org/2018/04/27/overcast42](https://marco.org/2018/04/27/overcast42)

The only reason he still supports usernames is because you need it to log into the website to listen to podcasts.

<comment><USER2> What is more remarkable about his stance, is that he's also on three or four podcasts himself - including I believe the second most popular Apple related podcast.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> What is k-anonymity?

<comment><USER4> Rather than providing the service a password hash for it to look up in its database, you download k password hashes that have the same prefix and do the matching locally. That way, the user's real password hash is never sent over.

<comment><USER5> You download however many passwords match the prefix (N). If the process has k-anonymity then it's guaranteed that N >= k for any possible prefix.

<comment><USER6> And in this case, k = 381. (Though more by coincidence than design.) [https://www.troyhunt.com/ive-just-launched-pwned- passwords-v...](https://www.troyhunt.com/ive-just-launched-pwned-passwords- version-2/)

<comment><USER7> It's much larger than that, really -- if you know that the user is definitely looking for a hash that's present, there are 381 they could have been looking for. But here we're just as interested in elements that are outside the set, and there are a lot more of them.

<comment><USER8> I was initially extremely skeptical of sites using Pwned Passwords' API until I learned how this worked/realized this.

I was super skeptical of "send Troy your whole SHA1 hash", because many many SHA1 hashes have been reversed. Then when I was looking at V2, I was considering the fact that in a given set of 381 passwords, there were probably only a couple you might be meaning to check (if you look at a range set, each one generally has a couple of repeatedly used password hashes).

But if my passwords fall outside of that set, someone might think I am maybe checking against one of the more commonly leaked passwords, when mine isn't even in that range set at all.

Partially for my own comfort, and for fun, I ended up writing my own short checker in a .NET console app: [https://github.com/ocdtrekkie/PwnPsswords](https://github.com/ocdtrekkie/PwnPsswords)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Apple Trichotomy - <AUTHOR> http://raganwald.posterous.com/the-apple-trichotomy

<comment><AUTHOR> I submitted this in order to comment on it.

The standard economic analysis would say that Apple's "profit share" simply represents opportunity, and is bait for competition. The guy with the biggest share of the profits attracts the most vociferous competitors. Unless there are barriers to entry, of course.

Apple under Jobs' leadership was very good at creating new profit centres, staying one step ahead of this competition. But that kind of innovation - creating new markets, essentially - is seldom a sustainable competitive advantage. And frankly I don't think they'll be able to sustain it for much longer, without Jobs.

There certainly isn't any new kind of company strategy here. The idea of "maximizing profit share" isn't something that can be picked up and willed into action. Good execution in a growing market - or creating a market - should maximize profit share, but markets mature. Reliably creating new markets is much harder than creating new products; and eventually, the competition will create products that reduce that profit share.</comment>


The golden quarter - <AUTHOR> http://aeon.co/magazine/science/why-has-human-progress-ground-to-a-halt/ <comment><USER2> This piece is of amazingly low quality. Almost all the "discoveries and innovations" are echoes of work performed before the golden quarter. For example, Alexander Fleming noticed the effect of penicillin in 1928. The engineering of a useful drug didn't happen until 1942. Sulfanomides were in regular use in the 1930s. But, hey, let's assign "antibiotics" to the Golden Quarter.

But the laugh out loud quote is this:

"if you were a biologist, physicist or materials scientist, there was no better time to be working"

Physics is slower now because the energy levels to probe new phenonmena is getting awfully big, but biology? That is simply ludicrous. The golden age of biology is right now, and for the next fifty years. Today's material scientists are building things atom by atom, with undreamed of properties, and nanotechnology wasn't even a dream back then.

I'd summarize the Golden Quarter as that time when the low hanging fruit dropped into the exponential growth of scientific and engineering advances. But the idea that we aren't innovating at a blistering pace today - so far off the mark.

<comment><USER3> Can you recommend any other articles that share your view? The perspective of the present time is strange. I share the authors view that progress happened much more rapidly in the past, and that the future always seems 10 years out. Is that simply my brain playing tricks on me or is there any validity to it?

<comment><USER4> > Is that simply my brain playing tricks on me or is there any validity to it?

Just look at whatever device is currently in your pants pocket.

<comment><USER5> Really? I feel like I can do mostly the same - and possibly a little less - with my pocket device than I used to do with my PC in the 90s. (For context I grew up in the 90s as a child programmer.)

I feel like the devices do mostly the same stuff, just more of it, and more portably. With new caveats.

Obviously the hardware improvements have been incredible. The software capabilities? I'm less inclined. (Software is probably more stable - I'll give it that.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Arguing for a lack of progress today in comparison to half a century ago is simply a matter of not paying attention. Progress today in the fields I pay attention to, e.g. biotechnology and related materials science, is stupendous and accelerating.

As late as the 1940s it might have been argued that we lived in a world in the process of an exponential growth in power: storage, transmission, application, availability, falling costs. At the same time few people then saw the information revolution ahead. The high power/low computation path expected was an E.E. 'Doc' Smith future of slide rules and hand calculators contemporary with fantastical applications of raw power generation. But it turned out to be much harder than envisaged to keep that trend going for a variety of reasons good and bad.

If we'd got the power future instead of the computation future we'd all have a life expectancy much the same as it was in the 1940s, but be living in a transhuman world where $100 buys you the output of a pair of today's power stations that can be cached in your clothing. It is somewhat interesting to speculate just what would be done with that level of power in relation to practical, day-to-day concerns, but getting into orbit and about across the solar system is the least of it.

Anyway, we got the computational future because it turns out that making that happen is much easier - and probably for the best given that computation drives medicine, not power.

<comment><USER7> Personally, I'd expect that caching the output of a pair of power stations in my clothing would dramatically _shorten_ my life expectancy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Could it have something to do with the increase in quality and quantity of pleasant distractions? It's in our pockets, at our desks, in our living rooms, everywhere. What if technological, political, and social progress has slowed down because it's so easy to escape? _Soma_ in the form of apps, games, and screens. Surely it is harder now for most people to concentrate on something hard and HUGE in scope when there's something easy and fun in their pocket, ready whenever they are. This seems to be the case for me, anyway.

<comment><USER9> This ails me as well, but I don't think the people who push the world forward are tripped up by this.

I'm not a fanboy, but I just can't think of a better person to use for my example: you think Elon Musk is playing Angry Birds?

I just think some people have an insatiable desire to [do something]. They're not interested in distractions--the [something] is the distraction. They're consumed.

My father has spent his whole life consumed by pool (pocket billiards). He's hit millions of balls. He watches videos of pool matches at home on youtube, hours and hours of them. He reads weird, niche books with tales from pool's storied past. He can think of nothing else, for long.

I'm more of a generalist, often to my own disappointment. I have so many interests that I don't have those blinders on that push me to be the best at something.

But those people exist, I think, as much as ever. And now, they have a quicker path to success--my father could learn now in one year on youtube what it took him 20 years to learn by trial and error.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> > Sure, our phones are great, but that's not the same as being able to fly > across the Atlantic in eight hours or eliminating smallpox.

I don't understand why the author is so down on phones. You know, on the original _Star Trek_ (which aired during the "Golden Quarter"), people found it outlandish that someone could make a communicator that could fit in the palm of your hand. Then cell phones started coming out, which is why they switched to having communicators in badges in The Next Generation. Nowadays, I guess we just take the idea for granted.

Beyond that, I have a computer in my pocket right now that is more powerful than a giant supercomputer 20 years ago.I can take photos using my phone that are higher quality than anything you could have found in a fancy camera 20 years ago _and_ I can send it to the other side of the world in minutes if not seconds.

</comment><comment><USER11> There has been a lot of social progress in reality. More households with computers and in more modern times, smartphones galore. Engineering of very tiny scales has grown at a strong pace especially given the difficulties and expenses of working at the smaller scales and the huge amount of mystery that still is there for how materials behave in small dimensions/quantities.

Infrastructure has improved. Internet, Wireless Cell Coverage, etc. These things have been limited not just by the available technology but by the available money.

Solar panels have gained enormous advances in terms of price and even pretty great advances in efficiency and other technological feats. Agriculture has been heavily researched and arguably improved. (although there is a large discussion which seems ready to turn into a movement before too long...of getting more investment into aquaponics, hydroponics, vertical farming, permaculture...not large monoculture farms and water pollution from agri- chemicals)

Software has come a really long way in the last few decades. Accessibility of data. Price of data storage has plummeted rather fantastically.

What still needs focus IMO is the sort of 'application of the application' ie. the use of inventions beyond just their function, what is their function ultimately solving for humanity?

</comment><comment><USER12> I hope that I may answer to this article with its own words:

"During periods of technological and scientific expansion, it has often seemed that a plateau has been reached, only for a new discovery to shatter old paradigms completely"

</comment><comment><USER13> _> > "Half a century ago, makers of telephones, TVs and cars prospered by building products that their buyers knew (or at least believed) would last for many years. No one sells a smartphone on that basis today; the new ideal is to render your own products obsolete as fast as possible."_

I enjoyed the article, but this paragraph doesn't exactly bolster his argument that technological advances have ground to a halt.

<comment><USER14> Something can be made obsolete without advancement having occurred. "Oh, let's just change the design of our proprietary charging cable for our entire product suite next generation for zero or marginal benefit to the consumer."

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's important to distinguish discovery and adoption. Why don't we have graphene furniture or software that works like a Bret Victor demo? Plumbing existed in Roman times, but my grandparents' generation was the first to take it for granted.

It's also important to distinguish _depreciating_ and _expansionary_ adoption. Each generation of Intel chips depreciates previous generations and largely replaces them in the field. The innovation increases the efficiency of computing units more than their quantity.

I think the "golden quarter" was real. It was a time of tremendous expansionary adoption. Scientific discovery has not slowed since then. Efficiency-improving adoptions haven't slowed. Expansionary adoptions have.

Why? The author rightly dismisses Cowen's hypothesis of diminishing returns but suggests something equally implausible: our attitude toward risk spontaneously changed and sabotaged progress.

In my view, civilization is a physical process and there should be a physical explanation for long-term trends like this. Cultural changes like attitudes toward risk are manifestations.

</comment><comment><USER16> Lots of idealization and whatnot in that article, as well as some glaring errors and apparently completely ignoring the recent developments, such as various countries (and NASA) planning journeys to the moon, asteroids, and Mars again (although the asteroids are probably because of the promises of huge amounts of wealth to be gained there)

<comment><USER17> I think the article is trying to demonstrate a contrast between the "Golden Quarter" to our current quarter.

Consider comparing the recently posted Orion project vs. the first moon landing. 8 years of development time to get to the moon vs. the estimated 22-27+ years development time to get to Mars [NASA said ~2030's for the actual Mars voyage].

I believe that's the point the author is trying to get across, that in our quarter, everything is moving along very slowly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> The problem with this is that it assumes progress in these areas is linear. For example, it's easier to leap from bi-plane to jets than it is to go from jet airliner to something faster because a system gets more complex based on both its components and the connections between them. Simply put--there's more that can go wrong.

"Why can't I travel to my destination is less than 8 hours?" isn't so much the question as "Can we carry enough fuel to power an engine that's faster?", "Do we need entirely new propulsion?", "If elevation could help, how do we keep this thing skirting the edge of the atmosphere and still function?" etc. I don't know anything about aeronautics, so forgive my oversimplification, but this seemed like an easy to grasp example of what I'm talking about.

</comment><comment><USER19> There are lots of areas where we've seen significant breakthroughs. Astronomy is one. And the future for astronomy is bright indeed. The Gaia telescope will soon give us a vast trove of new data to learn from.

Virtual reality is on the brink of mass adoption. It has the potential to be more significant than the invention of the TV.

Let's not even talk about nano technology, smartphones, tablets, notebook computers, satellite tv, ...

</comment><comment><USER20> Why can't recovering from WW2 have been the cause? Re-building institutions and cities from scratch causes people to think more creatively.

</comment><comment><USER21> I have a feeling that a lot of the advances of the Golden Quarter have a lot to do with the Cold War. Parties on both sides of the war were pushed to create progress in order to best those on the other side. That kind of fierce competition doesn't exist at the same scale in today's world.

Am I wrong?

<comment><USER22> The article says on this point:

"Conflict spurs innovation, and the Cold War played its part – we would never have got to the Moon without it. But someone has to pay for everything. The economic boom came to an end in the 1970s with the collapse of the 1944 Bretton Woods trading agreements and the oil shocks. So did the great age of innovation. Case closed, you might say.

And yet, something doesn't quite fit. The 1970s recession was temporary: we came out of it soon enough. What's more, in terms of Gross World Product, the world is between two and three times richer now than it was then. There is more than enough money for a new Apollo, a new Concorde and a new Green Revolution. So if rapid economic growth drove innovation in the 1950s and '60s, why has it not done so since?"

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Another one of these "Innovation is Dead" articles. yay

<comment><USER24> It is not "Innovation is dead" article. It is "Innovation adoption/spreading is unnecessarily slow" article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> They killed the golden quarter when they killed the gold standard.

Innovation was replaced by massive plundering and easy money from criminal politics instead of creativity and productivity from healthy economics. The promotion of parasites who suck the tit of the state replaced the brilliant minds who gave us all the progress of that beautiful era.

Only the internet survives as a fountainhead of innovation because it still is considered ungoverned territory.</comment>


The End of the Shared Hosting Era - <AUTHOR> https://10web.io/blog/the-end-of-the-shared-hosting-era/ <comment><USER2> The best hosting in the world can't save you from top down bat shit crazy engineering decisions.

Who needs prepared statements and parameterised queries when you can just roll your own string escaping mechanism?</comment>


Intab: Quicklook for your browser. - <AUTHOR> https://news.layervault.com/stories/2406-show-dn-i-made-my-first-chrome-extension-intab

<comment><USER2> This is great! To make it even more quicklook-like, what I'd like to see is an option to:

* change keyboard combo to Spacebar (I never use it while browsing anyway)

* on keycombo press, open the link the mouse is currently hovering over, without needing to actually click the link

That would make it even better for me, but it's already looking very useful.

<comment><USER3> Wow, switching to mouseover instead of click is an amazing idea. Going to play around with it and ship an update soon.

Spacebar scrolls the page by default so might run into some conflicts there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Can we make no social spam a rule? I'm happy to see this extension, but it adds no value to make me clickthrough Designer News first.

</comment><comment><USER5> Nice, I'll try it out.

Direct link to the extension: [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/intab- beta/bfaekma...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/intab- beta/bfaekmalldododidalckpccilpcdefme?hl=en)

And for Windows: The key combination is Windows-Alt-Leftclick.

<comment><USER6> And a direct link to his blog post about it, eliminating the trip through Designer News first: <http://iansilber.com/intab/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Here's a Youtube video that shows it in action: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ugcbwmDzMc>

</comment><comment><USER3> Site down :(

Here's a mirror: <https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1483019/intab/index.html>

</comment><comment><USER7> Pity it doesn't work on Ubuntu, and I'd assume Windows. Looks pretty interesting.

</comment><comment><USER8> that's a lot of marketting has been done for that plugin</comment>


Ask HN: Where do you host your mailing lists? - <AUTHOR>

Do you manage your own mailing lists on your own servers? Pay for 3rd party mailing list hosting? Use Google Groups? Or, do you just forgo the mailing list all together, and instead use forums, or some other communication method? <comment><USER2> Emails and forums are definitely not the same thing; some people prefer one over the other, and are very vocal about it.

I know that solutions such as discourse are trying to make forums sexy again, but I still find that mailing lists are the way to go for decent discussion, and searching. (I keep thinking there should be a forum which uses NNTP as a back-end, or even a view on a shared IMAP folder.)

For hosting mailing lists I abhor mailman's monthly reminder-day, but there are a few good simple list managers out there. Enemies of Carlotta, etc, personally I use a small plugin to qpsmtpd which gives me decent control and it's otherwise hands-free.

</comment><comment><USER3> ezmlm</comment>


#NobodyKnowsYoureADog - <AUTHOR> http://www.hackerfactor.com/blog/index.php?/archives/441-NobodyKnowsYoureADog.html

<comment><USER2> _It was only 60%-70% accurate, but that is much better than 50/50 random guessing._

Everything like this (there's other attempts at the same thing, with similar results) is more than useless for most practical purposes. More so, it's a great example of machine learning used all too wrong.

You can blindly apply machine learning to almost any corpus and "predict" almost anything with 60% accuracy without gaining any real understanding of the corpus or the correlations you're trying to tease out. Often the only reason you can do better than guessing at all is because your corpus isn't perfectly unbiased itself. And with 60% accuracy, good luck using the results for anything!

This is doubly the case here, where they're actually just using word frequency, not a real analysis of sentence structure. It's the simplest, dumbest form of natural-language-based machine learning, and it shows. I've used the tool derived from their research and it's beyond useless: it classifies every single one of my posts wildly differently.

Because it's solely based on a few dozen words' frequencies, it's more affected by the _topic_ than anything else. Topic might actually account for a large portion of the bias in their corpus. But if we start claiming topic to be a sort of "gender identification" system, all we've done is enforce stereotypes.

<comment><USER3> I can't speak to how good this particular example is, or any other similar solutions either.

However, if it can predict better than 50/50 (e.g. 60-70%) then that can certainly be useful. Take digital advertising for example, many advertisers want to target either female or male demographic exclusively. 60% might not be enough to sell adverts as "this will only be shown to men", but it might help you behind the scenes serve the most relevant adverts to people, potentially increasing click-through rate, and therefore the value of your service. Sure there are other examples, but my mind is stuck in digital banner advertising this afternoon.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Podscripter – Automated Transcription for Podcasters - <AUTHOR> https://www.podscripter.co/?ref=hn <comment><AUTHOR> Hey HN!

Craig from YC here. This project is a follow-up to SpeechBoard, which was a text-based audio editor - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15670827](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15670827). Thanks for all the feedback there :)

We were surprised to find that many users just wanted transcripts, so Podscripter is an attempt to solve that.

Here's how it works: every time you publish an episode (or give us a file) we run it through a speech to text service. Then we split up the speakers by hand, which ends up being a fair bit of work and is why it's 24hrs instead of minutes . Then we email you the transcript.

Before I was podcasting at YC I had my own podcast and couldn't justify paying $1 a minute for transcripts. These machine generated transcripts get you most of the way there for a lot less money :)

Let me know what you think!

<comment><USER2> For $10, I'd expect above 99% accuracy, especially since I can get an automated transcript for $5 for 60 minutes that presumably has a similar error rate to what you are offering.

Also, I'd expect it sooner than 24 hours, since I can get automated ones back in under an hour.

Not trying to be cold water. I _am_ actually interested, but what sets you apart from the other cheaper automated solutions? Am I wrong about the error rate I can expect elsewhere?

<comment><USER3> By way of context, human transcriptions cost about $1 to $1.50 per [EDIT: minute] --which is what I use for my podcasts. Accuracy is extremely good, especially if you flag obscure terms when you submit.

<comment><USER4> For a podcasts with good audio quality(which is usually a case for podcasts) you probably can use speech recognition tools that will cost you a fraction of this price. They are pretty good nowdays

<comment><USER5> Is there a way you can record then edit a podcast but keep track of which microphone different voices are coming from? Seems like you could make speaker identification easier that way?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, if you record on multiple tracks it's pretty easy but podcasting setups vary a ton.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Great project!

My podcast search engine project Listen Notes ( [https://www.listennotes.com/](https://www.listennotes.com/) ) does transcription as well.

It's not as accurate as Podscripter, but good enough for in-audio search. Example: [https://www.listennotes.com/e/1dae4f4c2c0d4202a1180bd9c9f17d...](https://www.listennotes.com/e/1dae4f4c2c0d4202a1180bd9c9f17d5a/121-chamath- palihapitiya-chamath-on-facebook-aim-and-winamp/)

Website visitors can request to transcribe episodes on Listen Notes websites.

<comment><AUTHOR> Listen Notes is awesome. Just found out about it recently.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> To drum up business you should just do all the Joe Rogan podcasts for free.

<comment><USER8> FluidDATA has the Joe Rogan podcasts for free at [https://fluiddata.com/search?channel_id=9853](https://fluiddata.com/search?channel_id=9853)

Not to mention, FluidDATA has transcribed over 8.2 million podcast episodes from over 230,000 podcast feeds.

<comment><USER2> I can't find a single transcript at that website, though it's a cool service, kind of like Google for searching within audio (Podcasts).

<comment><USER8> FluidDATA definitely has a different model than PodScript.

FluidDATA doesn't expose the entire transcript. It currently only exposes the ability to search the transcripts of millions of podcasts.

For example, you can find podcasts that talk about SpeechBoard and Craig by searching: "speech board" \+ "craig canon"

[https://fluiddata.com/search?term=%22speech%20board%22%20%2B...](https://fluiddata.com/search?term=%22speech%20board%22%20%2B%20%22craig%20canon%22)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I really would love something like this: to transcribe chinese podcasts into pinyin and characters. this would really help me learn the language better, as listening skills are the hardest to learn when learning a foreign language.

<comment><USER10> Wouldn't you be concerned about transcription errors interfering with your learning?

A lot of movies have Chinese subtitles. Pick an action movie and the dialog is quite easy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> What distinguishes it from popular competitors like Trint, Temi, etc. who also do speaker identification?

<comment><AUTHOR> We're hoping to provide better speaker detection and an easy workflow for podcasters.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This brings up a point that has long puzzled me: why is it so uncommon for podcasters to write out what they intend to say? It seems like it would eliminate a lot of the misspeech, circumlocution, and unclearness that make podcasts so frustrating to listen to for me. It would also eliminate the need for transcription after the fact.

<comment><USER3> That might make sense for one person basically reading a script. (Which, with a few exceptions, aren't a very good format.)

But most podcasts are interviews/conversations. You're not going to get most podcast guests to write out full responses in advance.

I do usually review topics and some potential questions for a few minutes with my guest before we get started and do editing if a question or answer goes off the rails or there's an error. I also do some light editing to cut down on umms, you knows, etc. But a lot of casual podcasts created as sidelines wouldn't make sense if they were going to take a week to put together.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've never listened to a podcast but does this work on YouTube and Ted talks?

<comment><USER11> TED talks and YouTube videos already have closed captions/subtitles.

<comment><USER14> YouTube captioning tends to range from bad to horrible. TED talks are probably hand-transcribed, as I remember them as being higher quality.

<comment><USER11> > _YouTube captioning tends to range from bad to horrible._

Yes, and I mentioned YouTube specifically because it's representative of the best machine transcription (which this service is) can offer.

TED talks are indeed transcribed by professionals, and so the quality is a magnitude better than what this service can provide. TEDx talks are transcribed by volunteers, so their quality is more variable.[1]

[1] [https://www.ted.com/participate/translate/transcribe](https://www.ted.com/participate/translate/transcribe)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: A paper magazine wants my app for its companion DVD. Should I accept? - <AUTHOR>

I have a Windows application that I am selling from my website using PayPal and a home-made protection/activation system. I have been contacted by an IT paper magazine that wants to make an editorial of my app and put it on the companion DVD. The app will also be available for download on their website for two months. I sell the app around $10 a copy on my website, and they offer around $500 of license fee for me giving them the right to put it on their DVD and website. The sells on my website have not been great, so I might take their offer.
Is the license fee of $500 that they are offering an industry standard, or should I negotiate for more money? I know I'm greedy =)
Should I do it?
Thank you HN! <comment><USER2> Do you have a trial version? I'd rather have them include that, possibly for free if they review the app, than 500 dollars.

That is assuming they have a bigger subscription base than 50 users.

<comment><AUTHOR> I do have a trial version, with limited features, and I think that trying to give them the trial version for free is a good idea. But honestly, my sales have been so ridiculous that $500 for the full version does not look that bad at this stage.

Also, they claim to have a circulation of 500,000. This seems huge to me, but they are a monthly magazine so it might be possible. I am going to ask them if this number really is the circulation of their paper version, or if it also includes the visitors on their website...

EDIT: The licensing/activation system I developed for the full version would allow me to limit the time period with which I allow free activations. This means that I could make a "special" version based on the full version, which allows users to register for free for let say, two months, and then blocks the free activation process. That way, even if the app is distributed on the internet outside of my control (and it will), the number of free licenses will be limited to a two-month period (I checked, and the license agreement that the magazine offered would allow this two-month restriction).

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Ask for $750 and negotiate from there don't go below $501 though. #classic

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for answering :) Why $750 and not $1000? Is it a negotiation thing to ask for 1.5 times the offered amount?

<comment><USER3> That is just what I would do, you gotta follow your gut!</comment></comment></comment>


The Future of the Feed, the Read, and the Reader - <AUTHOR> http://blog.betaworks.com/post/45430896555/the-future-of-the-feed-the-read-and-the-reader

<comment><USER2> Yay for Betaworks.</comment>


Not Ready for Takeoff: Face Scans at Airport Departure Gates - <AUTHOR> https://www.airportfacescans.com/ <comment><USER2> We have these in NL. They malfunction frequently, people don't understand what is going on and the people staffing them are unable to do much to improve throughput. It was just a cost savings measure so that fewer border guards can process more people but from the point of view of the travelers it is a net loss.

Before there would be a very short wait, you'd walk up to the border guard (one of three or four on duty typically), put your passport on their desk, they'd look at it for three seconds and swipe it, then you'd be on your merry way 10 seconds later. Now you wait for 10 or 15 minutes (if you're lucky), insert your passport into the machine, wait for the silly glass doors to close, have your passport spat back out again, repeat the whole thing, find that you were looking a bit too low, so re-do that and so on until finally the second set of silly glass doors opens and you can move on.

It's a complete failure from a usability point of view.

<comment><USER3> I just went through a similar system at Hong Kong. It worked well and I breezed through the automated gates while a long line of people were backed up at the traditional line. Perhaps they just did a better job of designing the system, but you scan your passport at one station and then step forward into a scannner with a sign telling you where to look. A gate closes behind you. If it fails, it flagged a human to that lane but kept you locked in the box. In my case, it beeped and opened the door into the terminal.

I've lost a significant amount of weight since my passport photo was taken. Several human border guards in other counties suggested I get a new passport. One required me to show a second form of ID. The camera system had no issue.

<comment><USER4> Are you sure about that? The Hong Kong frequent flyer e-gates are supposed to check your right thumbprint.

<comment><USER3> Now that you mention it, I did scan my fingerprints. Don't know what they compared them with - I literally crossed the border an hour before by car and didn't scan my fingerprints there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> One step closer to our amazing future. This is really getting out of hand...

Why do 300m people have to suffer for the boogeyman terrorist? I mean isn't this the whole point of terrorism? To get you to do things you don't want to because hey 1 in a million potential threat? Where does this stop?

This has nothing to do with security and everything to do with control and mass surveillance. It's pretty depressing.

<comment><USER6> Devil's advocate: What is so bad about everyone being tracked and accountable for where they are at any point in time? It would seem a lot of mistaken identity, fraud, and he-said she-said issues could be removed if we can locate people at any point in time.

<comment><USER7> Let's say I make frequent visits to mosques, and there's a government unfriendly to Muslims in power, as one of many hypothetical scenarios where this could be a real problem.

<comment><USER6> Sure but all your activities and everyone else's activity would be tracked. Assuming rule of law continues to be upheld and we don't devolve into something worse it should be pretty easy to show innocence if needed.

<comment><USER8> Innocence is remarkably difficult to prove.

Let's say I visit a church regularly, and someone who later turns out to be a terrorist was often there at the same time. Not surprising, since houses of worship often have predictable schedules of events.

How do I prove I wasn't collaborating with the terrorist?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Ignoring false positives for a second, isn't this easily fooled by putting on a prosthetic nose or something? Or plastic surgery? Hollywood makeup is pretty good at drastically altering someone's appearance in a few hours at the most. I don't know why a motivated terrorist can't just change their appearance before bombing a plane.

Who is this really going to stop?

<comment><USER10> It's not even that hard. Grow a long beard and get punched in the face the day before your flight.

<comment><USER11> The goal isn't to have a 100% success rate, it's to work most of the time in order to speed up processing.

<comment><USER12> I believe you are confusing the _rationale_ provided for the _goal_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've often wondered why the us does not have any exit passport controls. It is the only country I've been to that only checks incoming and not outgoing.

I'm not saying they should or shouldn't, just observing.

<comment><USER14> It's literally the definition of "a free country"

Specifically it was always used as a sharp contrast with the policies of the Soviet Bloc which did not allow people to freely leave their countries.

<comment> LV-426 The definition of "free country" is not zero passport controls on exit, and:

        Robeson declared that it was "rather absurd" that he was
        not "allowed to travel because of my friendship - open,
        spoken friendship - for the Soviet people and the
        peoples of all the world."

[http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/paul-robeson- lose...](http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/paul-robeson-loses-appeal- over-his-passport)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Is there currently no possibility of opt-out for this - what happens if you refuse on legal grounds? Will DHS not allow US citizens to leave the country unless they consent?

<comment> GuB-42 How can they tell you really are a US citizen unless they check your ID?

The cameras do just that. The problem is that it is done poorly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> >For its part, DHS says that airport face scans are designed to verify the identities of travelers as they leave the country and stop impostors traveling under someone else's identity."

And yet you already have to show an ID and a boarding pass to a DHS agent as part of security in order to get to the gate in the first place.

If only those clowns could focus on making the absurd bit of theater they currently have even just the slightest bit more efficient.

<comment><USER17> > If only those clowns could focus on making the absurd bit of theater they > currently have even just the slightest bit more efficient.

Maybe efficiency is not the goal. Cui bono? We got all those nifty body scanners in part because Michael Chertoff, right after serving as director of DHS, went around promoting scanners on behalf of his consulting client, body scanner manufacturer Rapiscan[1].

[1] [http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2010/01/airport- scanner-...](http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2010/01/airport-scanner- scam/)

<comment><USER18> Follow the money…

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> If DHS stops doing this, there's still lots of companies that will including Delta. I think if they fix the failure rates they could make it a much more efficient system and perhaps turn it into a form of preclearance for supported countries.

[http://news.delta.com/delta-opens-first-biometric-self- servi...](http://news.delta.com/delta-opens-first-biometric-self-service-bag- drop-us)

</comment><comment><USER20> Who makes the rules about how long these records can be stored and so on? Do citizens have a say? I feel I'd be ok with this as long as the data was used once for a quick criminal check or whatever and then discarded. Of course, we need strong verification that the data is really deleted.

<comment><USER21> Absolutely. This is the real problem. It's not bad that they came up with such a system. It's that they haven't thought it through so it's ripe for abuse. There definitely need to be safeguards in place before it's actually implemented that spell out what can and can't be done with the data, who has access, how long it will be retained, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Personally I don't have a problem with this. I do want gov to take ID control at borders seriously & if face rec helps with that fine.

Less pleased about stuff like "we need your passwords". That's invasive bullsh.

</comment><comment><USER23> Shouldn't they just do a fingerprint scan then?

<comment><USER10> That would be much harder to fly under the radar because fingerprinting is what you do to people who are arrested. People wouldn't put up with that so easily.

There's been some rumblings of the "uniqueness" of fingerprints being far less than you'd think. Fingerprinting everyone who flies would just produce more false positives. The people that's bad for overlap a lot with the people who stand to benefit from invasive security theater.

<comment><USER24> I'd be very interested in any source material you have detailing these 'rumblings', both from the first hand experience of having been fingerprinted (which is oddly misrepresented in TV and movies) and from a general interest in forensic history.

As a child I recall an antique book on criminology which spoke glowingly of the reliability of fingerprints in investigations, and cited the unsuccessful defense of one convict who claimed (sometime in the late 19th century) that fingerprinting was a 'hazy and fallacious method imported from France, where many innocent men have been convicted by it." It is true that juries have an unfortunate tendency to believe in the first order results of any technical procedure, from ducking stools to DNA matching.

<comment><USER10> Some guy from IIRC Texas got arrested in connection with some letter bomb terrorist stuff. IIRC the only connection was the fingerprint. His lawyers basically assumed he did it until some other law enforcement agency finger printed some guy in North Aftrica who fit all the other evidence (i.e. he was known to them as the kind of guy who would be involved in that stuff) and his prints matched as well. I saw it mentioned as a small anecdote in a paper/article/blog about the "rigor" of the forensic "sciences".

Google couldn't help me find the original source.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Not that I approve of this in any way but I'll run out of money long before I run out of places in The US and Canada I want to go visit.

<comment><USER25> 'Traveling broadens the mind.' Some people never leave their hometowns, either. I can't speak for you in particular, but generally, staying in our home countries greatly narrows the ideas and experiences we are exposed to. It's a big, big world, and there is nothing in the U.S. which can substitute for Delhi or Tokyo or Vatican City.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: App shops all telling me frameworks not worthwhile; only use native code - <AUTHOR> I've been shopping around to outsource the initial development of iOS and Android apps for AutoTempest.com to a dedicated app development shop, since we don't have any mobile app experience in house.  Haven't decided whether to go that route yet, but wanted to get an idea of the process and costs.  I've been surprised to find that every shop I discuss with is adamant that straight native code (Swift for iOS and Java for Android) is the only way to go.  Opinions range from, "Hybrid frameworks are useless, and will give you a noticeably inferior app," to the slightly less extreme, "You might save a bit of time using a hybrid framework initially, but you'll pay for it over time as you have difficulty adapting to changes in the platforms and adding features."
Coming from a web develop background, this obviously sounds a bit backwards to me.  But all of the teams I've talked to have great portfolios, and have build beautiful apps for major companies, so I have to think they have some idea what they're doing.  Is it possible they all have this position just because of inertia?  I could see there being significant tradeoffs with a hybrid framework like PhoneGap, but what about something like React Native that (at least, as far as I understand) allows you to use native code wherever necessary?  It seems like that should save time, especially if 1) you're developing for iOS and Android, and/or 2) you already have a web app that uses React.  Or do they know what they're talking about, and even RN would only be good for a quick & dirty throwaway app? <comment><USER2> Consider the economics of the companies who build web apps.

1\. They have a process for producing quality work.

2\. Changing that process entails learning a new process and the risk of producing work of lower quality.

3\. The value the firms provide is in the quality of the apps.

It seems that your argument is that using a framework should reduce the effort a firm expends on producing an app and there is an implicit assumption that that reduction in effort should be manifested as a lower cost to your company rather than higher profits for the firm or higher quality in the app. That may indicate that your company is not a good fit for the services of the firms you have talked.

Nothing wrong with that, it's just market segmentation. Might even be a good thing since it avoids misaligned business interests. I mean if your company is a profitable ongoing concern without an app, then a bells and whistles app probably isn't critcal to success and a simple wrapper on a web app might be a reasonable first pass at implementing 'mobile app as a feature' because it is the simplest thing that might work.

It doesn't have to be rolled out multi-platform. It doesn't have to be rolled out to everyone right away. It does not have to be all grown up to be shown to committed users for feedback. Later on when there's a good 0.87, it might make sense to hire a consultant for the 1.0.

Good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> > Nothing wrong with that, it's just market segmentation. Might even be a good > thing since it avoids misaligned business interests. I mean if your company > is a profitable ongoing concern without an app, then a bells and whistles > app probably isn't critcal to success and a simple wrapper on a web app > might be a reasonable first pass at implementing 'mobile app as a feature' > because it is the simplest thing that might work.

Yes, these are the lines we're thinking along currently. I just wanted some feedback to make sure I'm not missing something about the hybrid option, that perhaps it truly is far worse that I had come to understand. But from the responses I've received here and elsewhere, and my own research, it really does seem like a logical approach, at the very least for an MVP.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I primarily do web dev work and I've been diving deep into React Native recently and have worked with Ionic for a little bit. What I find with these hybrid frameworks is that they aren't perfect.

I _love_ React Native. I think it's an incredible piece of technology and the level of accessibility and empowerment it gives web developers to venture into the realm of mobile development is a great thing. But at the same time, there are so many things that React Native cannot take advantage of -- at least, not at the Facebook-developed level (remember, Facebook's RN team is going to focus in on the parts of the framework that they can get the most value out of internally).

You're going to miss a lot of things that you would normally take for granted in real native iOS and Android development such as a Camera module (yes, I know!) and OpenGL. There are third party libraries that support these things, but your tradeoff here is that you are going to either become dependent on the maintainers' ability to fix bugs and introduce new features or (if your app becomes the biggest consumer of those libraries) you will become the lead maintainer.

RN is still _great_ for letting web developers add components to an existing Swift/Obj-C/Java codebase and I really enjoy using it. However, I think the maintenance and dependency costs of building a larger-scale RN-first app might not be the best idea

Regarding Ionic/Phonegap/Other "Write once, run anywhere" frameworks: I feel this is a large UX tradeoff and would never make it. Things don't feel smooth when emulated. I would never use one of these types of frameworks for production purposes.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you, this is exactly the kind of insight I was hoping for. My understanding is that RN allows you to fall back to native code wherever necessary. Is that not as easy in practice as in theory? It just seems like at worst it would allow you to share many parts of your application between iOS and Android, as well as possibly your web app, and then anything else could be built natively as necessary. As someone with no experience using this tech, that seems like it would simplify and save time, both in initial development and future revisions, but avoiding duplication between code bases. I can't help wondering if these teams tried older hybrid app frameworks like PhoneGap, found them lacking, and have written off RN as being basically the same thing, while it's actually considerably more powerful. It's also possible that adding that layer adds more complexity than I'm accounting for, and really isn't worth it for the duplication saved.

<comment><USER3> I actually haven't used RN with the intention of falling back into native code before. I was working on contributing an RN-built component as a CocoaPod dependency into an existing Obj-C code base but that project ended up not getting very far for reasons beyond my control. Before it was scrapped, we were exploring performance issues in loading up RN in each individual component.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> We're using React Native as well, but we decided to have parts of our app in Java/Swift:

\+ Third parties should be integrating part of our core technology in their app. I can't force them to use a framework.

\+ We're using Bluetooth Low Energy and need to be as close to that radio as possible.

\+ The implementation of BLE differs too much from iOS to Android to make one library a good idea.

Apart from that if I would run an app shop, I would write dedicated for each platform.

\+ More hours.

\+ More experienced personnel.

\+ More stable than frameworks.

<comment><AUTHOR> As someone buying _from_ an app shop, your second and third points would be a plus for us as well, whereas the first would obviously be a minus. Having some of the app built in a framework would probably be easier for a team of web developers to take over too, although that's not a given, since it would also add complexity.

It may be moot though if there are no shops out there using RN anyway!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> As others have said, these companies probably have experience (and love!) with building native apps. Now if they haven't built anything serious with the latest non-native solutions, then their opinion will be just that: an opinion, but not expert advice. Also worth noting that their advice (go native!) can't be wrong technically. The native app will never be worse than the non-native one (given, of course, that the same level of effort and knowledge goes into them). If they don't do non-native apps, then they either take extra risks and efforts (which will very probably eat up any theoretical savings).

I would say that you should find a company that does hybrid apps as well and ask them too. Or, instead of a company, you could look for an expert for advice and have him help you make a decision and pick a subcontractor based on your detailed requirements.

Speaking about the technology: both PhoneGap and RN allows you to implement parts in native. React Native is called that, because it renders the UI using native components. (With PhoneGap you're running in webkit and thus your UI is html.)

Here's my 2 cents on hybrid apps: I have build one using PhoneGap over 5(!) years ago. Well, almost 6 now. The MVP for my first startup. It was pretty simple, but looked nice, worked well on low end android smartphones (of the day!) and had everyone wondering how I was able to build all that (app, backend and a component running on a Shiva Plug) by myself. In hindsight, one of the mistakes I made was that I gave in when we got funded and agreed to have the app reimplemented in native for both platforms (ios+android). This cost us quite some money and time and it turned out that the users didn't really use our app anyway.

One of the strengths of having a cross platform app is that you can do experiments with it a lot cheaper and quicker, for you don't have to implement everything twice. Especially, in your case where you have in house web devs, but no mobile devs.

I have just met one of my former employees from the above mentioned startup of mine. He now works for an agency as a mobile developer. Back then he only did iOS, now he does Android as well. He showed me one of their newest apps for a big sports brand. They did that in RN. It looked pretty neat. It used OpenGL for the graphics on at least one screen (that was implemented in native). It was something that I would have said not to implement in JS, but the guy told me that it was a pretty successful project for them. The agency he works for only has 2-3 native mobile devs and a lot of web devs. I think he was the only mobile dev on this project with 6-7 web devs doing most of the code in JS. Of course, RN is fresh technology and can cause surprises.

Another thing to consider, if an app is barely more than the mobile version of a website, then going 100% native might not make a lot of sense. Also, until you have enough mobile users, you might want to try something simple. Maybe even just a progressive web app.

</comment><comment><USER6> First I would notice that this is a problem that has remained unsolved for 34 years, since the diffusion of PUI (GUI from PARC). At the time, we had the Mac "framework", the Atari (Gem), MS-Windows and X11 "frameworks", and already then, people tried to design meta-frameworks allowing them to write a single PUI application and deploy it on those multiple systems. Whole books were written about the, describing by the minutiae the commonalities and differences between those frameworks, and explaining how one could write a common application, or port applications from one to another.

Needless to say, not much progress or success has been made since.

You have things like Delphi or the JVM that can let you develop applications that can run on all those platforms, but they still always remain somehow alien to each of the platforms where they run.

Yes, indeed, there are such tools to build Android and iOS applications from a single source. If your application is not demanding on the user interface (ie. if it has a simplistic user interface) and on other features of the platforms (sensors, toolkits), then basically it will do.

However in practice, and this is why you get those responses from app dev shops, your application will want to use specific features on each specific platform, or will have some UI sophistication that won't be handled satisfactorily by the meta-framework, and this is when it'll start to be a lot more work trying to build the applications with them, instead of writing two native UI applications.

In addition, to do it correctly with a common meta-framework, you would need a developer who knows well both target platforms, and who is capable when developping on the meta-platform, to think ahead how his code will run on both platforms! This kind of developer are more expensive than two developers each specialized on his own platform.

All is not lost however, since you should modularize your software anyways, you will have components that are generic to your application, and components that are specific to the user interface. Only those later components need to be developped in two different versions, on the target platforms. The generic core components can be developped once for all, in the form of a library that will be used by the native applications. The only downside here is that these generic core components will have to be written in a common programming language, most probably C or C++, if you don't want to fight with development environment (you could try Common Lisp, wich translators such as MoCL [https://wukix.com/](https://wukix.com/), or Java which has a few compilers that you could use to target iOS such as [http://j2objc.org/](http://j2objc.org/), but in all those cases, batteries are NOT included).

There's a caveat: iOS and Android applications are often only user interface, they're not functional programs. Without a back-end server, in general you cannot do anything with those applications. This is both a blessing and a curse: blessing since this means that now your generic core components are implemented on the server; a curse because when there's no connectivity, the user cannot do anything.

But if those generic code components are implemented on the server, then you see that there remains on the handheld computers only the user interfaces, and therefore that you don't have any common code in the Android and iOS applications.

Hence the conclusion and advice given: develop two independent native applications by two specialized teams. This will be the cheapest and fastest way to do it, since the two teams can work in parallel. You have in common only the specifications, and the core components on the server, the later you can develop yet in parallel by a third team.</comment>


List of Startups - startup jobs - <AUTHOR>

I don't see many startup job openings on YC JOBS. Is there any site with list of all US startups? Or any special site for startup jobs? <comment><USER2> techcrunch.com simplyhired.com</comment>


Microsoft's commitment to GDPR, privacy and customers' control of their own data - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2018/05/21/microsofts-commitment-to-gdpr-privacy-and-putting-customers-in-control-of-their-own-data/ <comment><USER2> Privacy: ability to opt out of all data collection.

Microsoft privacy: inability to opt out of all data collection unless you pay for enterprise edition.

This makes a mockery of any policy.

<comment><USER3> Also ads for Candy Crush in you operating system.

Microsoft is scum. They have not changed from the 90s, they are just better at hiding it.

<comment><USER4> Microsoft is reinventing itself.

You can disable those ads. You can remove apps like Skype. Manually or with an app such as O&O Shut Up. I also use Classic Shell instead of the new start menu.

<comment><USER2> You're missing the point.

Do you buy a car and have to peel all the advertising stickers off the windscreen, disable the tracking devices and scrub candy crush off the dashboard.

Nope.

<comment><USER5> > Do you buy a car and have to peel all the advertising stickers off the > windscreen

Yep, something akin to that. Nearly all dealerships - whether luxury brands or not - place some form of dealership identification / promotion on your car when you buy it and without asking permission. That can be a sticker in the door well, it can be an obnoxious attached badge physically on the car surface (never happens with luxury dealerships), it can be a license plate frame, and so on.

<comment><USER6> Do they put them back with every servicing too?

<comment><USER3> And do they track you?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Here's a question I haven't seen asked or answered:

Can I now (in 4 days time), ask Microsoft for all the data it's hoovered up from my Windows 10 installation?

I've only seen people talking about GDPR as it applies to websites, but as far as I'm aware, it applies to all software.

<comment><USER8> There is an option to delete all diagnostic data collected (Windows 10 1803). You can find it under Settings->Privacy-> Diagnostics & feedback-> Delete diagnostic data. As others have mentioned you can access and manage it using the portal that is linked.*

* _I work at Microsoft._

<comment><USER9> Would that delete the data that has already been transferred to Microsoft?

And as others mentioned: the portal is useless for people without MS account. What about those?

<comment><USER8> That's exactly what this option does. It deletes everything that has been collected up until that point.

<comment><USER9> Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Ok so there's a privacy policy on this website and a standard "we use cookies" header but where is the consent management platform that's supposed to let me review all the purposes and vendors used on the site so I can choose which ones I want to give consent to and which ones I don't. The [https://github.com/appnexus/cmp](https://github.com/appnexus/cmp) appnexus cmp is the only cmp I've found that's open source and provides a clear reference to what GDPR means as far as integrating the actual GDPR spec for an euconsent signal, a UI for managing consent, and deferring cookies/data- collection until after consent. Gdpr goes into effect in 4 days and I still haven't seen any CMPs integrated in the wild. Has anybody?

<comment><USER11> Here's a marvelous example I've stumbled upon yesterday: [https://juro.com/policy.html](https://juro.com/policy.html)

The entire privacy policy is very well done (and beautifully designed, I may add). Clear options, transparency over who gets your data, ability to use the product without providing PII and all sorts of other goodies.

Specific quotes related to consent:

> If you have previously given consent to our processing your data you can > freely withdraw such consent at any time. You can do this by emailing us at > firstname.lastname@example.com. If you do withdraw your consent, and if we do not have > another legal basis for processing your information, then we will stop > processing your personal data.

Disclaimer: I'm not affiliated with Juno nor am I their user. I just randomly stumbled upon their privacy policy.

<comment><USER12> It may be a good policy, but this is unrelated to the point on cookie consent made in the parent post. In fact the Juro site uses a variety of analytics cookies without even having a cookie banner in place, let alone any granular system for managing cookie consent.

<comment><USER11> Fine, here's a Dutch public broadcaster: [https://www.npo.nl/](https://www.npo.nl/)

Upon opening it, you'll see a button labeled "Cookie-instellingen aanpassen". Clicking on it allows you to fine tune their cookie policy. "Functional" and "Analytics" categories can't be disabled, while the other (third-party) cookies can.

<comment><USER12> Thanks! Although I gotta say that they offer no options in relation to analytics cookies which is technically in breach of the e-Privacy directive as those cookies are not strictly necessary here. There are a few cookie solutions that can be used here - BT.com has a decent user flow.

The new e-Privacy Regulation coming into force next year will however, as presently drafted, provide an exception from consent for analytics programmes that only use gathered data on a per-site basis (so excluding Google Analytics for example).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm not convinced.

I run a Pi-Hole [0] to redirect all advertising-related queries to a black hole. When tracking the most-blocked domains, Microsoft is at the very top [1].

For instance, when I enter "Office" into the start menu, Microsoft immediately sends a ping to bing.com and Microsoft's telemetry servers. That is, Microsoft is sending all of the data entered into the start menu to Microsoft's servers, even when using the 'Pro' version and with 'full' telemtry off.

When it was first detected that Microsoft was adding telemetry calls to all compiled programs in Windows [2], Microsoft said it was mostly for event debugging for programmers. Now I'm not so sure -- look at your Microsoft account privacy settings to see that Microsoft tracks when you open applications. (They say on the page that not all data is shown there).

Unforutnately, there is no way to opt out of this. You can "disable" full telemetry, but you still have to opt into "Basic" telemetry, which still sends your advertiser ID, the programs you run, and the queries you put into the start menu. I'm concerned that Microsoft is not going to stop here. They have a real incentive to capture as much data about you as they can -- they currently earn about $1 billion in advertising through Bing.com search queries. Unlike Google or especially Facebook, however, it's much more difficult to opt out of Microsoft's tracking -- so many people depend on Microsoft Office or other Windows programs that I can't fully switch to Linux.

I don't know how this is acceptable through GDPR. There are so many problems with what Microsoft is doing:

1\. There is no way to opt out of telemetry

2\. There is no way to see all of the data that Microsoft has collected

3\. Microsoft has severe lock-in because so much software is written for Windows-only

4\. Microsoft has an incentive to increase their telemetry, not decrease it.

[0] [https://pi-hole.net/](https://pi-hole.net/)

[1] [https://imgur.com/a/MbjtYJe](https://imgur.com/a/MbjtYJe)

[2] [https://old.reddit.com/r/cpp/comments/4ibauu/visual_studio_a...](https://old.reddit.com/r/cpp/comments/4ibauu/visual_studio_adding_telemetry_function_calls_to/)

<comment><USER14> How much I would pay for EU to make a good example of Microsoft and fine then billions for not complying to GDPR policies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I was just wondering whether there is an automatic update to Windows disabling (all?) telemetry, then let the user make the choice to opt in without grey UI patterns and fud.

<comment><USER16> Yes. I got my configuration reset and needed to set up some features again.

This is an example of what you get on startup, and cannot be skipped: [https://twitter.com/baekdal/status/996391978957987845](https://twitter.com/baekdal/status/996391978957987845)

<comment><USER17> I keep looking for the "None" option; but I guess that's Enterprise only?

<comment><USER18> Explicit user consent is not the only way to get GDPR compliant

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Smart business from Microsoft, and a gauntlet of sorts for other global tech firms.

<comment><USER20> Agreed. There's no reason why Microsoft - a software and hardware maker - couldn't be more like (or even supercede) Apple in this regard - i.e. treat the user as the customer not the product.

Further to that (without wanting to be cynical), it's probably also easier for MS to avoid the potentially complex jurisdictional issues that GDPR raises. One privacy code-base to rule them all.

<comment><USER21> > Agreed. There's no reason why Microsoft - a software and hardware maker - > couldn't be more like (or even supercede) Apple in this regard - i.e. treat > the user as the customer not the product.

Besides Apple's sky-high margins and complete control over the iPhone ecosystem, with a vice-like grip on app developers, no reason whatsoever.

If Microsoft made $400 per Windows PC that was sold, and 30 cents on every dollar of windows software ever sold (And had a competitor called Froogle with a steady 70% market share, whose business was based on user monetization), they'd probably be less interested in monetizing their users. I'm not entirely sure that's a world you'd want to live in, though.

<comment><USER22> For context, Microsoft's fiscal 4th quarter, as reported last July, saw profits of $6.5 billion, doubling year on year, largely due to strong growth in its cloud offering.

Strong privacy offerings might cut that to - what? $6bn?

<comment><USER17> Leveling the playing field means that people who provide good privacy options are no longer out-false-competed in a race to the bottom.

It's entirely plausible that companies will actually see their income increase.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> >Respecting the privacy rights of consumers everywhere

Anyone who tried to disable the Windows 10 tracking knows what a load of shit that statement is.</comment>


Steampunk Game Boy Ultimate Modification - <AUTHOR> http://wireninja.com/steampunk-game-boy-ultimate-modification/

<comment><USER2> That's kind of weird that the blogger didn't link back to whoever actually made the gameboy. Nice picture, but I would have liked to see a link to the original source (not the submitter's fault).</comment>


Complex societies precede moralizing gods throughout world history - <AUTHOR> https://www.archaeology.wiki/blog/2019/03/28/complex-societies-precede-moralizing-gods-throughout-world-history/ <comment><USER3> Quickly scanned through the references and didn't see one interesting perspective: Julian Jaynes' theory of the "breakdown of the bicameral mind" in response to increasing societal complexity.

His idea is that the voices of "gods" in premodern societies were literal command hallucinations experienced by members of these societies, in the place of having self-identified conscious thought. In a way, he argues, premodern peoples could be considered to be "not conscious", as they had no inner locus to consider or contradict the voices they heard. This contrasts with the "conscious" experience, in which we personally identify with a sort of homunculus inside our heads that is watching and judging its surroundings.

Jaynes argues that societal upheaval and complexity led to changes (maybe cultural, maybe biological) that caused the "voices" to disappear, becoming absorbed into a new "conscious" stream of self-identified thought. From the perspective of societies experiencing this change, their inner gods would have been thought to have gone silent, leading to greater identification with (and societal organizing need for) externalized, idolized god figures.

<comment><USER4> The hypothesis is completely implausible, and it is quite irritating that it keeps popping up in discussions in the 'hacker' sphere.

There is simply no way that bicameralism would be the dominant phenotype only a few thousand years ago, and be completely absent in any present-day population, anywhere. We would still see it in isolated populations.

<comment><USER5> What I find interesting about this hypothesis is that consciousness is just a stream of thoughts which we do not control. Like whenever you think something it just arrives to your mind. Often we experience thought as spoken words in our mind but we don't know where they come from. They come from the subconscious but we are not aware of that part of ourselves. In dreams we have information expressed to us from the subconscious through symbolic representations. What if we could talk to our subconscious mind? When thinking about this I allways remember how John Nash described his paranoic ideas comming from the same voice his mathematical ideas came from.

<comment><USER6> Nash said "the same way", not the "the same voice":

"the ideas I had about supernatural beings came to me the same way that my mathematical ideas did. So I took them seriously." - Sylvia Nasar, "A Beautiful Mind"

<comment><USER5> Thanks. Fair enough, but he did say "they came". And if you think about it he does not specify "the way". I remember that he heard voices. Because he said that to get cured he just stop listening to the voice or voices.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's important to take this with a grain of salt. Looking at the fit of the model itself, it seems to be a bit overconfident/overfit to the current configuration of society: [https://twitter.com/babeheim/status/1108737930804293632](https://twitter.com/babeheim/status/1108737930804293632)

<comment><USER8> That seems a pretty devastating critique. The model is so confident it takes hardly any concrete data points that don't match to disprove it. (Note I'm speaking math in that sentence, not English.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I haven't read the paper yet, but this idea shouldn't be terribly surprising. Augustine of Hippo did a pretty thorough analysis at least of the Greco-Roman gods in the early 400s and wrote about how pagan gods generally aren't moralizing, and how the punishments or favors they give often have little to do with how moral a particular person is and the behavior of the Greco-Roman gods is also not an example worth following. One of the arguments that he and others made in favor of Christianity is that in our faith, the religious and moral come together, and that this was a mostly novel concept at the time.

<comment><USER10> Greco-Roman gods absolutely punished immoral behavior. It's just that "what is moral" has changed a lot over time. For example, the classical Greek period was a time when pederasty and war were considered perfectly moral. It's often pointed out that pre-Christian morality seems to differ considerably from post-Christian morality.

Also, Ancient Greece/Rome definitely count as "complex societites".

<comment><USER11> I think the OP's point is crudely valid. Greek gods basically wanted you to pray and appease them, more or less. Jesus and the Buddha wanted you to be a fundamentally better person, moreover, they were themselves enshrined in a metaphysical spirituality.

I always found it odd that Greek philosophers spoke of 'spirit' and 'soul' but that seemed for them to be a completely separate domain from Zeus et. al.

Here's chapter 1 of 'Plato's Republic' [1]

Talk of 'soul' and 'appeasing the just/unjust god's' seem to be a different kind of subject material, whereas in most modern religions they are inherently related.

I often wonder if there's a populist bent to that: a 'soul' is an abstract, intellectual concept, removed from our daily lives. It'd be hard to get the plebes even to pay attention to such haughty ideas. But give them some Gods and Goddesses warring at each other's throats, tales of jealousy, death, intrigue ... now there's something they can buy into.

[1] [http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/republic.2.i.html](http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/republic.2.i.html)

<comment><USER10> > I think the OP's point is crudely valid. Greek gods basically wanted you to > pray and appease them, more or less. Jesus and the Buddha wanted you to be a > fundamentally better person, moreover, they were themselves enshrined in a > metaphysical spirituality.

"Being a better person" means different things in different moral frameworks. Plato fought in wars. Jesus didn't. We don't live under a moral framework where "dying in battle is the ultimate virtue, regardless of which side you were on". The Greeks did, though.

It's unclear to me how anyone familiar with Greek mythology could make the claim that the Greek gods were unconcerned with morality. The story of Sisyphus is a moral lesson. Greek myths are full of that stuff: characters are punished for some sin or rewarded for some virtue.

<comment><USER11> I don't think anyone is suggesting that Greek mythology is absent any kind of moral impetus.

But the Greek Gods seem fairly petty, jealous, vain etc..

Their description in the Ilyad puts them as 'superhumans' more than anything, there is definitely no overarching metaphysical appeal to either morality, or towards stoic search for meaning of life etc.. It's like they're just the superhuman overlords humans have to deal with.

<comment><USER12> Homer wasn't the only person writing in the classical period. His contemporary, Hesiod, depicted gods as immortal arbiters of justice in _Works and Days_.

The Ilyad clearly has struck some narrative gold, but was in no way the only manner in which the pantheon was portrayed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I haven't read the paper yet, but the headline/summary keeps getting bandied about reddit, imgur, facebook, and twitter.

The implication seems to be that because complex society formed without complex religion(s), said religions are superfluous and maybe even unnecessary or deleterious to said society. I may be reading the implication incorrectly.

If I am not, then I'm quite puzzled by this line of inference. If complex society formed prior to complex religion, and the only complex societies still around* today hold, or used to hold until very recently, a complex religion as a core element of societal identity, would the implication be that complex religion is an evolved trait of successful complex societies?

*Around of their own volition, not relegated to reservation regions or whose cultural pelt is being worn by its vanquisher.

<comment><USER14> You're moving the argument too far. As complex societies developed without a moralizing god, religion is not necessary for morality. You can't use this to then say religion is unnecessary, as nobody has said morality is the only reason for religion.

Even today, many religious people will say that atheists are incapable of having morals. This is evidence showing that claim is ridiculous, not an attack on religion.

<comment><USER15> Atheists can certainly act morally, and many do. But I would say that atheists don't have a basis for having morals.

dictionary.com says that morals have to do with "right conduct". But in atheism, there is nothing with the authority to give you a definition of "right". There's nothing _absolute_ in the way that, say, the Christian God is absolute, except the universe, and the universe doesn't tell you what right conduct is. (I mean, there are the laws of physics, but that doesn't really help.)

So the atheist usually takes something non-absolute and makes it an absolute - society, or the human race, say. The choice is probably whatever corresponds most closely to the atheist's innate sense of moral right and wrong. And that gives that particular atheist a basis for morals within their own thinking. But "I chose this standard because it matches my sense of what's right, and then I think my conduct is right if it matches the standard" is, essentially, "I do what I decide is right". It's something weaker than what I think of as morals.

<comment><USER12> >But I would say that atheists don't have a basis for having morals.

>So the atheist usually takes something non-absolute and makes it an absolute

Okay, so that's a basis. The only issue here being that you don't consider a non-absolute basis to be valid. However, the deity of choice isn't absolute either - you have to deem it so in the same way that the atheist does. So either way there's no perfect ontological solution provided by either path.

<comment><USER15> > The only issue here being that you don't consider a non-absolute basis to be > valid.

Well, it's not just me. A lot of people have, going back at least to Plato. Plato thought that you needed to have something absolute for there to be morals, but his problem was that his gods weren't big enough to proved that.

> However, the deity of choice isn't absolute either - you have to deem it so > in the same way that the atheist does.

Yes and no. Yes, you have to deem the Christian God, say, to be absolute in order for Him to provide an absolute basis for your morals. (This is true whether or not that God exists.)

But the Christian is not in the same position as either Plato or the atheist. Within the Christian's position, God _is_ absolute, and therefore can provide a rock-solid basis for a moral standard. In contrast, Plato's gods were inadequate as a moral basis, both in theory and in practice (that is, in practice they often behaved in ways that were not very moral).

The atheist has an absolute (at least, I think most atheists do) - <USER2> physical universe. Within (most flavors of) atheism, that's the only thing that can be really absolute, but it provides no moral standard whatsoever. (C. S. Lewis remarked that "what the universe is doing" is working toward the final and irreversible extinction of all life forms, and taking that as a moral standard would leave suicide and genocide as our only moral values. It seems better to just say "there's no moral standard there".) The atheist can pick a different basis for a moral standard and ascribe validity to it - say, the human race, or the atheist's society, or whatever. But the atheist has made a somewhat arbitrary choice - there's nothing within the atheist's position that compels that particular choice of moral basis. What's more, the atheist knows it. This is very different from the Christian's position, where there is one clear moral basis that can only be accepted or rejected.

<comment><USER16> It seems like you're making an implicit distinction between deciding to be a Christian and accepting God

> But the Christian is not in the same position as either Plato or the > atheist. Within the Christian's position,

Yes, the position they just chose. It's like saying after you've made a choice, you can either take it or not

<comment><USER15> > It seems like you're making an implicit distinction between deciding to be a > Christian and accepting God

I wasn't intending to, but perhaps I should have been. A Muslim has the same situation as a Christian - somewhat different morals, but the structure of the situation is the same. The distinction I was drawing was between polytheistic gods and a monotheistic, absolute God.

> Yes, the position they just chose. It's like saying after you've made a > choice, you can either take it or not

I see the "choosing the Christian position" as parallel to "choosing the atheist position". But my point is that, when you choose the Christian position, that defines morals for you. When you chooses the atheist position, that does _not_ define morals for you.

<comment><USER14> > see the "choosing the Christian position" as parallel to "choosing the > atheist position". But my point is that, when you choose the Christian > position, that defines morals for you. When you chooses the atheist > position, that does not define morals for you

The parallel to "choosing the atheist position" would be "choosing the theist position," which would not define your morals either. From there, you can choose from a massive range of Christian positions which have different morals.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Most Eastern belief systems don't have moralizing gods. So, there are multiple ways how societies can virtualize authority.

<comment><USER18> This is correct. However, these belief systems do have a concept of good and bad karma. It may be thought of as an authority that is not personified.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Link to PDF: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19462452](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19462452)

</comment><comment><USER20> Why is it not self evident that cooperation is driven by self interested paired with intelligence? Animal A sees animal B in its territory. This tends to result in an immediate battle where both animals expose themselves to risk of death. Higher intelligence would instead tell you _' hey if I cooperate with this guy, not only can we both keep all this land - but we can go take over the land owned by animal C'._

There's plenty of evidence of this happening in animals with greater levels of intelligence. For instance chimps tend to join up into groups and then go engage in war with other groups. But they, in turn, lack that intelligence to go even one step further. The same logic of '2 individuals can go kill 1 individual and take their land' leads to 'two groups can join up to go kill one group and take their land.' Presumably some outlier will eventually manage to start realizing this at which point you're well on your way to to the evolution of another highly intelligent species spreading themselves all over the place.

I also think there's even evidence of this in society today. When social order collapses, for instance due to a natural disaster, we turn to some pretty nasty behavior quite quickly even when it's in no way necessary. This seems to suggest cooperation, in and of itself, is not innate - but rather something else drives that cooperation. We can even see it in higher order systems. Corruption is a regular part of all societies at all levels. And that is people simply determining that they can get more by working outside the interests of society than working within it. It's quite easy to see how the same intelligence can drive both corruption and cooperation. Once again, self interest driven by intelligence enabling an accurate assessment of probable outcomes. Do I work just for myself, or do I work with this guy?

\---

One argument against this are simple creatures that possess no semblance of higher order thinking, yet cooperate. Examples would include most types of ants. But I think there are too many differences to start considering these sorts of species. They tend to be extremely short lived and have extremely minimal needs relative to the quantity of resources out there -- that's unlike anything we can imagine. Imagine if a single banana could feed thousands of chimps for days. That rather reduces any motivation or incentive for competition. Well, except for when your thousands of other familiars run into a group of thousands of unfamiliars - which does happen and can lead to 'ant wars'.

<comment><USER21> Because "self-evident" doesn't hold up to analysis. Just because you see a pattern, and you decide that it's obvious and common sense and everyone would recognise it, doesn't mean you're right in any of those assertions.

Without formulating hypotheses and then proving (i.e. testing) those hypotheses, your assertions are opinions; good for the pub, questionable-at- best for basing arguments on.

Especially when dealing with "common sense": don't believe yourself. The moment you go "but it's obvious that", actually prove it to yourself. And if you can't (and very often, we can't) then by all means keep thinking it _might_ be true, but that you have no true basis to believe that and you can't use it to back up arguments.

<comment><USER20> You surely appreciate that I absolutely could formulate various toy experiments to prove this hypothesis. And I'd of course also concede that you could similarly form toy experiments to disprove it.

This is ultimately the problem with social science. You can prove, or disprove, whatever you want with anything short of non-toy experiments. But non-toy experiments tend to be either impossible or unethical to execute. And even if we set ethics aside, there are so many confounding variables that even these unethical experiments don't necessarily resolve the question. E.g. - would isolated individuals completely separated from humanity since birth behave differently in a favorable climate, unfavorable climate, in areas with rich natural resources, or with minimal resources, etc. And then you even get into genetic questions on top of it. Ultimately, you're not really going to be able to prove anything in these fields. Consider that > 60% of psychology studies in well regarded journals cannot be successfully replicated. And psychology is more of a 'personal' science. Introduce a social scale to these studies and it's all just a grand demonstration of pseudo-scientific bias confirmation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> > "Our results suggest that collective identities are more important to > facilitate cooperation in societies than religious beliefs," says Harvey > Whitehouse.

Then it's pretty awkward that the West is engaged in a long program to critique and dismantle its collective identity.

<comment><USER12> The West isn't dismantling its collective identity. It is refactoring it. Key elements of what construe western identity are restated in more defensible, universal terms through the process of critique.

Human dignity is a stronger foundation for our system of thought than a few statements from the first council of Nicaea or some other arbitrary religious authority.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Paywall, but there's a good abstract. I hope someone has a workaround.

In the meanwhile, here's a couple of blogs with a little more description.

[https://www.archaeology.wiki/blog/2019/03/28/complex- societi...](https://www.archaeology.wiki/blog/2019/03/28/complex-societies- precede-moralizing-gods-throughout-world-history/)

[https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/03/190320141116.h...](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/03/190320141116.htm)

<comment><USER23> Since that summary appears to contain more information than the abstract, I've changed the url above from [https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1043-4](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1043-4). Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> In the beginning there is no God.</comment>


Smart LMS for Advanced Corporate Training- a Review of Teachr - <AUTHOR> https://elearncommunity.com/news/smart-learning-management-system-for-advanced-corporate-training-a-review-of-teachr/ <comment><USER2> Great, very useful! I used often Teachr LMS for project about the training of my employees, and I have always been satisfied in terms of productivity and scalability. Thank you for the share.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm looking for a LMS, I enquired about affiliate in Litmos, but there is no such option. Whether it is available in Teachr?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, Affiliate is available in Teachr. I will share the link of features which is available in Teachr over Litmos.

[https://getteachr.com/litmos-lms-alternative](https://getteachr.com/litmos- lms-alternative)

<comment><USER3> Great..! Surely I will look into this Teachr. Thanks you so much for the share.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hey Benjiwillis, great share. when compare to Litmos, it has One time fee and nominal AMC support options.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Good share</comment>


Growth vs. Size - <AUTHOR>

What are your views on what the aim of a company should be;
a) a target size or
b) continuous growth of some rate.
Also, should it be relative to what else is out there?
For example, should Microsoft continue its pursuit of Yahoo! (at the costs of its stock value)? Once upon a time MS was probably happy with their size, but since Google is a bigger kid on the block now, they feel they need to grow more simply to be #1 again.
Someone else recently asked why YC startups don't strive for even grander visions of Facebook proportions (the fact that is easier said than done is a different issue).
So my question is, should you as a company decide a target size/market-share to reach at which point you will be happy, or is it a continuous growth that matters more regardless of your current size (or lack thereof). And does the existence of a bigger competitor mean you must do whatever it takes to outmatch them?
Somewhat related, is the question poised by Michael Arrington as to whether YC News wanted to grow or stay under the radar. <comment><USER2> What I've learned is that revenue and growth are in some ways meaningless. For example you can have a billion in revenue, but if your costs are greater, you are moving backwards. Incredible growth is not helpful if you don't make money from it.

It is net profit that counts for a business.

</comment><comment><USER3> For a public company the goal (by law) is to maximize profit per share. I think Microsoft should split itself up. Most of its businesses outside of Windows and Office lose money, and there is little overlap between an operating system and an internet advertising network.

For a YC company the goal is whatever the founders want. Personally, I'd want to maximize growth, but in a capital efficient way. Slower growth from bootstrapping can often make founders more money than fast growth from VC dollars.

</comment><comment><USER4> Whats amazing is that before the internet you would have never even considered questions like this so early and immediately in the life cycle of a business.

<comment><USER5> I'm pretty sure that VCs (which predate the internet) considered these issues.

I'd be surprised if outside investors (which predate VCs) didn't consider them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wonder if the target should be 100 million $ in revenue, or 1 billion $?

Sorry - puzzled about the questions people ask themselves at times...</comment>