Google Plans to Launch Censored Search Engine in China, Leaked Documents Reveal - <AUTHOR> https://theintercept.com/2018/08/01/google-china-search-engine-censorship/ <comment><USER3> There might be many tech companies in China, no doubt, including big names, and companies should comply with local regulations if they want to do business, however the fact that Google pulled their search engine out of China, defying their censorship attempts, is one big reason for why I respected Google, in spite of my reservations for them.

So let me tell you what I think as an EU citizen that's actively concerned about both freedom of speech and privacy ...

I couldn't give a crap about what companies are active in China and complying with their local regulations. That Google took a stand showed they valued freedom of speech above their bottom line, but now if they are going back in, we can talk about the primary concern with Google ...

Google is the destroyer of privacy. Google tracks their users at an unprecedented level in the whole history of humanity and if they do this, we now have concrete proof that they don't have values that are above their bottom line.

Therefore we have a problem and the next time the EU slaps them with another multi-billion fine for violating EU's anti-trust or privacy laws, I'll cheer them for it, because it's all about _the dough_.

<comment><USER4> > pulled their search engine out of China, defying their censorship attempts

They didn't pull their search engine out of China because of censorship requests, they pulled their search engine because the government kept trying to hack them and steal their source code, which they eventually did. So Google up and left.

Source: [https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702303493904575167...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702303493904575167290011111402)

They like to cite censorship and free speech to look better, but they knew _exactly_ what they were getting into before setting foot in China -- the government of China made specific requirements before they could do business in China and Google agreed to those requirements. In fact, Google was criticized heavily for doing so. So don't buy into their history revisionism, they were on board with censorship from day 1. They had to be, or the PRC wouldn't allow them in.

<comment><USER5> Fwiw I think you're being mildly too revisionist in the other direction. The major issue with the hacking wasn't stealing source code, but attempts to access user data. Certainly accessing source code is bad, but imo in general Google protects user data much moreso than source code.

(I work at Google)

<comment><USER6> >in general Google protects user data

How is storing and cataloging reams of private data 'protecting' it? If your significant other was constantly noting every friend you talked to, every purchase you made, videotaping your every move, would you call that protecting them?

To protect a user's data, it shouldn't even be collected in the first place. I think a better choice of words is that Google does a better job at _monopolizing_ user data.

<comment><USER3> People mistake _privacy_ for _security_.

Google has one of the most secure services on the Internet. At the same time Google is the biggest threat to privacy.

These two statements are not mutually exclusive. People simply don't get what _privacy_ is about.

<comment><USER7> Security is complicated. I think the point was that if you don't store the unnecessary data then that data is 100% secure.

<comment><USER5> Sure, but the corollary to that is that security is complicated. Do you really expect the average user to have a more secure system than what they would otherwise have. In other words, is a Gmail account more or less secure than what you would have otherwise.

I think the answer depends, but it certainly isn't always "less". There's some information that you have to store somewhere, and is having a world class security team who works to actively mitigate things like phishing better than storing it yourself?

<comment><USER7> I'm just saying not saving data is simpler than saving data and avoids the complication. The average user doesn't need 99% of the data that google saves about them and would have no reason to store it themselves. You can have phishing protection and the world class security team while also not saving the unnecessary data resulting in an even more secure model. Protonmail seems to be just as secure without requiring data collection, for example.

<comment><USER8> Right. If google were just black hats trying to help everyone with their data security, then OK. But, since they aren't, the mere fact that they have the personal data stored to begin with undermines it's security from the moment of storing it.

I had my car stolen last year. If I had found a note left that informed me it is in a secure place, I'm not sure I would have felt any better. And I'm not sure I would appreciate someone expecting me to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Why should there be a different standard for Google and other tech companies to not expand into China. If we have a problem with how their government works policy should be applied that prevents/manages how businesses subject to our laws operate abroad.

The majority of people don't really care how corporations behave. If they did Google search/gmail/maps would not be so popular. They have the right price point(0$) for people to ignore any moral misgivings they may have. I'm guilty of this and up to my neck in google services

<comment><USER10> >Why should there be a different standard for Google and other tech companies to not expand into China.

This exactly.

I would even make a stronger case. It's not fair to expect a technology company to fight a major world economic power. This is a failure of US and EU governments. They should pressure China to liberalize their government and provide a level economic playing field (it is insane what China gets away with with respect to the roadblocks it places on Western companies to do business there).

<comment><USER11> Neither US or EU are the world police. They have no rights and should not have any to pressure any country to push their own idea of how things should work in another country, just like how China and others don't demand such and even if they do that doesn't make it less wrong.

<comment><USER12> > They have no rights and should not have any to pressure any country to push > their own idea of how things should work in another country

To believe that China does not attempt to influence other countries is naive. China puts a great deal of pressure on other nations with regard to things like recognition of Taiwan or inviting the Dalai Lama to speak. These have occasionally been in the news over the last few years, e.g. China's retaliatory measures against Norway for Liu Xiabo winning the Nobel Peace Prize, but in fact they go back decades – when Michelangelo Antonioni was showing his documentary film _Chung Kuo_ around in the early 1970s, in European countries where a screening was organized the local Chinese embassy would raise scandal.

<comment><USER13> China certainly has a very strong view on the make-up of the region, much is historical, some of it fair. However, we don't see them going around converting everyone to communism. In fact, even all the investment they are doing in Africa right now, very little of the social aspects of china are being exported. Xi Jinping has always maintained: china is not for export.

<comment><USER12> > In fact, even all the investment they are doing in Africa right now, very > little of the social aspects of china are being exported.

China has repeatedly lobbied, with some success now, for East African nations to adopt its "Great Firewall" network infrastructure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The hypocrisy of western activist types on this issue is astounding. One week, they demand that tech companies across the US censor what _they_ find "harmful", but the next week, they condemn the Chinese for doing _exactly the same thing_ for content they find "harmful".

Either you're in favor of free speech or you're just partial about which content you want to censor. The activist crowd in the west lost all moral standing on this subject years ago.

<comment><USER15> I think there is an important distinction to be made.

Censorship that is meant to block all criticism of the current rulers to keep them in power forever is unlike all other kinds of censorship because it is self-referential and self-reinforcing.

If a government censors, say, sites that distribute pirated movies or sites that glamorise suicide, I can still protest against that ban or campaign to get a different government elected.

But if a government censors both those sites and my criticism of the ban, then that is a wholly different kind of censorship.

Making that distinction is not hypocrisy.

<comment><USER16> Any censorship is almost be definition self-reinforcing. If you censor something, there's less of it and the ideas that aren't censored proliferate more, getting stronger.

<comment><USER15> In that sense, censoring criticism of rulers in general is doubly self- reinforcing.

It reinforces the specific laws and rules they make and it reinforces obedience, lack of critical thinking and intransparency of the censorship decisions themselves.

I don't see how anyone could deny that censoring political opposition in general acts on a meta level and is therefore categorically different from all other stuff that gets censored.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm having a hard time understanding how Google employees will shut down "immoral" project's for the US Dept of Defense programs like "Project Maven," yet hold their tongues in building an application that limits speech, aiding a repressive regime.

<comment><USER18> You realize this is an article that exists because a Google employee leaked it to the press right?

<comment><USER19> The difference is significant however.

The Google/Maven project just barely got started and people were resigning in protest.

The Google/China project has...

 _Teams of programmers and engineers creat[ing] a custom Android app, different versions of which have been named "Maotai" and "Longfei." The app has already been demonstrated to the Chinese government; the finalized version could be launched in the next six to nine months_

and nobody is resigning or internally protesting.

Not only that, Fei Fei Li set up an AI research shop in China for Google and was one of the most outspoken advocates of keeping Maven quiet, yet is loud about Google/China AI cooperation on literally exactly the same technology.

So Google, employees and management, have clearly chosen a side here, even if it wasn't an intentional policy.

And just to be excruciatingly clear, the work that Google is doing in China includes a heavy specific computer vision piece around object detection/recognition/segmentation, which will be used with the Yilong UAV systems (and others) as well as the Guangdong social experiments.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Google employees practically rioted when they found out their employer was trying to get a contract with the American Government, but will just cash their RSUs when they help the Chinese government censor its citizens.

Sad.

<comment><USER21> The Chinese government is going to censor its citizens regardless though.

<comment><USER22> The US government will just give the AI contract to Raytheon/Northrop instead of Google. What's your point?

<comment><USER16> The difference is that providing a censored service is better than no service. Android for example is a much more limited experience in China. Do you honestly not think a Chinese citizen would prefer having a limited Play Store than none at all? Chinese people don't go around searching about Tiananmen Square every day, and they would much rather have access to all the cat videos on Youtube than none at all.

Whereas the Maven project, there wasn't really a user benefiting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> So what had fundamentally changed here? Is it just that China is a bigger market now? Did Google think they actually had enough leverage to get the Chinese to back down? Are the founders simply less idealistic than before?

<comment><USER24> Hypothesis: the rise of the right to be forgotten in Europe served as a stepping stone. Free speech absolutists within the company could not be defeated in one step, but could be defeated in two steps.

I am _not_ saying that right to be forgotten is halfway through from free- speech absolutism to full-blown state control of information, but come on. If you ever jumped from a high place, you know that every foot of height makes a lot of difference.

<comment><USER25> Relating this to RTBF is interesting, but your thinking is muddled. Europe created RTBF, not Google. So the hypothesis that RTBF is part of a Google corporate plan to "defeat" internal activists is baseless. It just makes no sense on the face of it.

<comment><USER24> What I meant was: EU created RTBF, Google went "well, we must comply with local laws, and we can't get out of Europe". From there, it's a smaller leap to comply with worse local laws.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> There was another hn post a week or two ago, about how China is basically taking over the world, and could leave the USA in it's dust.

Google, may be aware of this 'transition', which is a scary one, considering the 'big brother' scheme they have in China, but if China becomes the king of the world, Google and many other companies will have to play ball to stay viable.

I'm reminded of a commercial where Americans are speaking Chinese, and there are also I think Japanese commercials that show poverty and feature American kids. Kind of disconcerting, and dystopian, but not out of the realm of imagination.

<comment><USER27> China surpassing the US as an economic powerhouse doesn't imply poverty or the inability to have viable companies there. What a silly dichotomy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Why should Apple be the only ones making money hand over fist from China (and be lauded for their eye popping revenues every quarter)

<comment><USER29> Making phones is different from helping censorship.

Although admittedly, their phone operation is also controversial by letting works work extensively.

<comment><USER16> Yeah, why censor when you can collect all your users' data and give it straight to the government.

[https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/17/apples-icloud-user-data- in...](https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/17/apples-icloud-user-data-in-china-is- now-handled-by-a-state-owned-mobile-operator/)

Do you honestly think that's less bad than blocking a few websites that are already blocked and can be bypassed by VPN?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> There are lots of tech companies active in countries like China, Russia, Iran, and other countries with varying ideas about privacy, human rights, etc. This generally requires complying with local legislation, whether you agree with that or not.

Singling out Google for not opting to exclude a fifth of the population of this planet from their products is a bit overkill. I'd rather they offer choice to the Chinese people on their terms than opting to not be in China at all. Google has huge stakes in China with Android, related production of many Android devices, and a lot of their other products. I imagine pulling out of China is not very practical for them at this point nor is selling phones without Google search.

When I was still working on search Nokia Maps (now Here maps) we had to comply with all sorts of rules internationally, including for China. In addition to being weird about certain POIs (e.g. Tien an mien square) we also had to deal with their obfuscated GPS coordinates. They use some weird shifting algorithm that you have to license from them. The point is not the algorithm (you can find it online if you dig hard enough) but the fact that you had to talk to them to get a license. It's a control point for them.

Another weird thing was that Iran insisted on referring to the Gulf as the Persian Gulf. One nice edge case there is the inflight maps of planes flying over their territory.

The point here is that doing business internationally is hard and taking the moral high ground basically means not doing business with a lot of countries.

<comment><USER31> How precisely does the fact that these countries exist 'require' complying with local legislation? Google is free to host their servers in other countries, which are free from censorship laws. It's not like Google needs to be present in that market to survive.

In a bigger context, the Internet business, and Google in particular, is a product of a free, liberal society. It couldn't have existed without freedom. Thus freedom is linked with success. So, as long as Google is innovative, it has that inherent advantage over its Chinese competitors.

<comment><USER32> Are you sure the Internet is a product of a free and liberal society? It may just be coincidence; America happened to be the largest economy on Earth when the Internet was developed.

I would argue that the basic design of the Internet is the most efficient way to build a large-scale, general-purpose computer network; this is why it has subsumed or is in the process of subsuming every other system. Had China been the world's largest economy at the time I think they would have developed the Internet too -- maybe they would have tried to build some kind of censorship in, but they would have quickly discovered that it is just more efficient to censor at the edges (I think they are already aware of this fact, given the amount of censorship they require from social media websites and the last- resort role the Great Firewall plays; there is also the general tolerance of businesses using VPNs to avoid the Great Firewall).

For what it's worth, there is innovation coming out of China, and it is happening at an increasing pace as the Chinese economy grows. The freedom to criticize your government or to organize a protest movement is not really necessary for technical innovation.

<comment><USER31> Is it a coincidence that USA was the largest economy on Earth? I don't think so. On the contrary, I think it became the most powerful country on Earth due to the free competition of talent and ideas, which is impossible without free speech.

Besides, Internet, being as wide open to anonymity as it is, simply never would never have been developed in a country like China, it would be deemed too dangerous. They may compete these days in electronics, but it doesn't mean they can compete in everything. Totalitarian society is always rotten in one way or another, and it manifests in all its output, including business, science, technology and culture. I'm saying this as a person born in the USSR.

<comment><USER33> The US became the largest economy on Earth because it had 1700's era technology with which which to settle a colossal landmass rich in natural resources and with no real enemies to contend with, plus all the immigrants from all over the world to help make it a reality.

The US started a game of Civilization on easy mode.

<comment><USER31> Actually, it had colonial powers to contend with, but more importantly, internal factions. The fact that instead of disintegrating into multiple warring entities, it united and grew to become the powerful USA, speaks volumes to the strength of its foundation.

Incidentally, this is precisely where your Civilization analogy goes wrong: the real newly formed states have way more powerful centrifugal factors than those embedded into mechanics of the game.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> For those inclined to disengage with Google and its products, this is a previous HN post on exactly that: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17280558](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17280558)

</comment><comment><USER35> I would not tolerate a company that build physical handcuffs to keep an entire population from expressing their opinion.

I feel comparably icky about "mental handcuffs."

<comment><USER36> What a beautiful description.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Brilliant business strategy. 1. Profess "Don't Be Evil" 2\. Dominate the market. 3. Be as evil as you like.

<comment><USER38> Americans call this simply "business strategy".

The "brilliant" descriptor depends how many millions of dollars they make.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> When Tim Cook backs China's vision of an 'open' Internet in a Chinese forum, HN says that at least Apple is providing some service to the Chinese users, who will have worse services if apple drops out of China. Apple routinely blocks apps on the request of the Chinese government. But if Goole too decides to provides services to China, in accordance with Chinese law, the reaction is so different here. Not taking any sides here, just highlighting the different ways different companies are judged on HN.

<comment><USER40> HN is not an entity that says things, you're referring to specific people. Yeah, it is known that there are many supporting various despicable practices.

If you cared about doing the right thing instead of keeping score you would support this criticism of Google (and also criticize Apple and others).

<comment><USER39> The point of highlighting Apple's behaviour is not to discount Google's, or to prove an aggregate bias in HN's comments, but to put to light the fact that another corporation much respected for it's stance on privacy as a fundamental right does similar things. It helps in collating the big picture(which does indeed look bleak), which may get lost amidst voices criticising the behaviour of a single corporation.

<comment><USER41> But I think you're missing that Apple's encryption model protects user data from hostile servers (Secure Enclave). Google's encryption model... does not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Small reminder that companies must submit all source code for review if they do business in China

<comment><USER43> That seems not believable at all i'd like to see source for that, i find hard to believe Apple, Oracle and such companies that are very protective for their code to submitted to one of most copy past countries in the world.

<comment><USER44> I've heard about this in the form of "if you want to sell hardware, you have to give them the blueprints", and companies doing it because they want to do business there.

I wouldn't be surprised if this included the source code of everything that ships with the device, but I'd think it doesn't extend to server-side code.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> China slows down all non-domestic traffic. Even using a VPN, sites still load slow. It's kind of a tariff system to encourage local internet companies and discourage outside companies. Which is why they have WeChat and not Facebook dominating their society. And anyone who doesn't want to play by the government rules is blocked.

</comment><comment><USER46> The $100b+ they have in the bank made it inevitable they needed to open a massive new oppressive market ASAP.

Succumbing to an onerous government is something companies with $100b+ in the bank just have to do to survive, like classify workers as contractors to not pay health care or move profits around to not pay taxes.

</comment><comment> awinter-py Wonder how Uber's experience in China will play out here -- people variously interpret it as state interference clearing the path for local competitors OR Didi being much better at meeting chinese cultural expectations for taxis.

This feels like a very different world than 1998 when G could launch an upstart search engine with 'free the world's information' in their DNA. in 1998 even in the tech bubble people still had no idea how the open web platform would be used. Now it's some combination of closed platform dominance, cookie farms, land grabs and spam.

Not surprising G is under pressure to play ball in china; the prevalence of android there (albeit in weird open forms sans G maps & tools) gives the government a geopolitical interest in tying some strings.

</comment><comment><USER47> Where are the troves of Googler's who were against helping the US military? They're totally cool with helping China censor information?

<comment><USER48> Yes, people that support the PRC regime tend to also oppose the US military. How is this even the least bit surprising?

<comment><USER49> Are you seriously arguing that folks against maven were PRC shills?

<comment><USER27> Nobody said anything about shills. You can be anti-US and pro-China without being a shill.

<comment><USER49> I guess I just don't get the original comment. Even if some prc supporters oppose the US military, what on earth does that have to do with the (equally silly but for different reasons) "where are all the people who were against maven?" question if not to paint the majority of maven opponents as prc shills?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> As much as I don't like Google, lets not forget that corporations aren't subject to human morality, which is the number one problem in our current economic model. All companies soon or later become "evil" if that translates into more profits. That evil has nothing to do with the biblical evil or a comic book villain concept ("Muhaha, I'll conquer the world!") but rather with total lack of empathy which in a human is usually a sign of serious, more often dangerous, mental issues. We gave corporations the power of ruining lives; that's the problem, not just Google which is simply a creature adapting to the environment it lives in.

<comment><USER51> But they are subject to the law, which I know ≠ human morality, but it is a machine that our economic model does interact with in the real world.

And on this, maybe there could be international / trans-national legal rules (enforced by major legal jurisdictions like US/EU) that could ban companies who economically operate in the west (with all our human rights freedoms), from breaking these human rights institutions in the east (i.e. even outside the US/EU jurisdictions) - forcing them to choose between one region's human rights standards or the other.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> I don't get why people are complaining about Google doing it in China. They obviously need to test their innovations somewhere. Do you expect Google to drop new features like this on the North American market without proper QA?

</comment><comment><USER53> Thank God please bring it back. Some Google is better than no Google at all. Freedom of speech sounds and looks aloft but in reality Google's absence does far more harm to Chinese customers and citizens than a censored version.

</comment><comment><USER54> IMO, obeying Chinese law is similar to obeying GDPR. It's not smart for any corporation to fight governments.

<comment><USER55> And many corporations that don't specifically do business in the EU chose not to comply with the GDPR, which is fine. (I mean, I like the GDPR, and wish they would comply, but it's valid.)

The consequences for Google not obeying the demands of China are just... getting blocked in China, no?

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> This is interesting timing. I just released a podcast episode today about the history of the relationship between Google and China. To get caught up on what's going on listen to this. [https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/19/](https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/19/)

</comment><comment><USER57> Just when I thought the US-China tensions would lead to positive progress in reducing China's censorship.

</comment><comment><USER58> "chinese government controversies"

google: "your search did not match any documents"

"alternative political parties"

google: "your search did not match any documents"

...that said the titanic amount of noise and misinformation on the web itself becomes a sort of censorship.

</comment><comment><USER59> What I recently heard is that there are Google workers actively protesting against Google's involvement with projects connected to US DoD and US Army. What I am not hearing now is Google workers actively protesting against Google enabling censorship and oppression in China. I wonder whether this is an artifact of how news are reported (or how I am consuming new) or a genuine phenomenon? And if the latter, why is that?

<comment><USER60> It sounds like the source for the leak is an insider, although the author is very cautious to tiptoe around saying that.

> which is being planned by a handful of top executives and managers at the > company

This quote also paints it as a very hush-hush project that isn't under development yet, so maybe not widespread internal knowledge?

<comment><USER59> > It sounds like the source for the leak is an insider

Possible. Then again, why public open protests in one case and a clandestine leak in another? Does it imply protesting some things would be tolerated much easier by the management than the other - like protesting working with US government is OK, but protesting working with Chinese government is risky?

> This quote also paints it as a very hush-hush project

Possible. Though not that hush-hush anymore, so let's see what happens now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> if this is true, google has lost its soul! So disappointed...

I will have to switch to duck duck go

</comment><comment><USER11> Each country has its own rules and for sure any company wishing to operate there should abide.

Be from North Korea or Cuba etc and then see if PayPal opens an account for you. I don't see PayPal fights for it, they simply abide the law and move on.

You have a company and the gov gives you tons of regulations that most of them are unfair? Your problem, take it or leave it.

<comment><USER61> You cannot open in NK because it has a trade block imposed by the US. Something similar was happening with Cuba or Iran. Let me tell you that abiding and legitimating freedom opressing regimes is not very american, even if it is for money.

<comment><USER43> > Let me tell you that abiding and legitimating freedom opressing regimes is > not very american, even if it is for money.

This is really far from the truth,Israel and Saudi arabia are example how this is bullshit.

<comment><USER35> If you have examples where America puts money before the freedom of the individual to have a political opinion, then it's those examples that need to change, not our standard of America.

<comment><USER61> Nailed. I tried to convey both things. First how America is blocking some countries for political reasons linked with democracy and liberty. On the other side of the spectrum there is the need to trade with some shady regimes. This is the side in which America needs to be more firm. Regarding China, we should not celebrate that an American company legitimates this censorship. Moreso (more-so?) when the company itself made billions on top of a technology designed for sharing information in an open way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> Because Google's search engine isn't censored in the rest of its locations?

<comment><USER63> Yeah it's strange how nobody talks about the fact that google search is getting less and less relevant and more and more filled with garbage every year. It's downright terrible, I have to go to social media or search with lots of domain operators (if I can remember them) to actually find what I'm looking for.

I'm sure google's "analytics" say they are doing great and results are more relevant and engaging for them and their corporate partners than ever, but I am often walking away from a search not finding what I know still exists on the web. They are just a massive media conglomerate trying to promote other massive media orgs and their content, content that doesn't live in that bubble is increasingly out of bounds.

<comment><USER64> It's funny you say that. DDG, 2 years ago, was hard for me to use (less relevant). The last 3 months especially, they are about the same. I have a limited search set though...mostly .NET code searches.

<comment><USER65> I personally find that for a lot of queries, especially ones of the "trivial" or "smart" kind where I'm looking for some old meme or bit of fandom trivia, DDG often returns results that are noticeably worse. Not _much_ worse, and not _always_ \- but often enough that if I don't find something on DDG, I frequently try the same search on Google anyway.

That said, DDG isn't _that_ much worse than Google in terms of search quality, and is perfectly fine for more "serious" queries - It's an inferior user experience, admittedly, but I'm willing to drink RC Cola instead of drinking cane-sugar old-recipe Coke that also is contaminated with lead.

<comment><USER66> I always try DuckDuckGo first, and if I have trouble, then I fall back to Google. It doesn't cost me much, and I figure if I just default to Google then I'm endorsing a stagnant search market. It's better to support competitors to give them space to improve.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> I wonder if Google employees will be as outraged about this as they reportedly were about Project Maven...

<comment><USER68> Google has no morals. Only marketing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> This is less of a moral cliff than it was a few years ago, given how many restrictions the EU is placing on Google right now, between right-to-be- forgotten and hate speech laws.

</comment><comment><USER70> Once this happens once... for one country, is it too far off to be available to any other country, regardless of it's interpretation or practice of politics?

</comment><comment><USER71> Wonder if there will be another internal petition of google employees, this time demanding that google not kowtow to government of China.

</comment><comment><USER72> Trade War - US is barking and CN is ignoring.

Google - Google bluffed and CN called. Now Google seems to stop bluffing.

Maybe I am wrong, but it seems to be the case.

</comment><comment><USER73> Related: [https://gizmodo.com/setsession?r=https%3A%2F%2Fgizmodo.com%2...](https://gizmodo.com/setsession?r=https%3A%2F%2Fgizmodo.com%2Fgoogle- removes-nearly-all-mentions-of-dont-be-evil- from-1826153393&sessionId=e6dccfad-0392-4efb-9a49-18d4cd9b7023)

<comment><USER74> Except that story headline is a lie.

See my post in the other Google thread from today about this: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17663090](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17663090)

</comment></comment><comment><USER75> Wow hopefully this means I'll be able to use Firebase in China.

</comment><comment><USER76> another thread [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17661214](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17661214)

</comment><comment> your-nanny Do no evil... unless it's gonna make us a TON?

</comment><comment><USER77> From a business standpoint, I think it's only stupid for Google not to revisit such a huge market, then I wonder if they really have other choices that make business sense?

</comment><comment><USER78> Sad, but ultimately unsurprising

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> A tactically-'ethical' startup of the near future's motto: "Don't be Google".

<comment><USER79> It is definitely worse to have a startup phase with the motto "don't be evil" and then later remove it once they've got everyone's data.

<comment><USER80> Please do not spread misinformation. They never changed their motto.

[https://abc.xyz/investor/other/google-code-of- conduct.html](https://abc.xyz/investor/other/google-code-of-conduct.html)

<comment><USER81> How about this for accuracy: "It is definitely worse to have a startup phase with the motto 'don't be evil' and then later heavily demote it once they've got everyone's data"

<comment><USER80> Still reads as irrational to me, but at least it's technically accurate.

It's worth remembering that "data" as they say stales very quickly. Knowing that you ordered a package two months ago is far less interesting than knowing you're expecting one next week. Or that you'll be booking a plane trip soon, and wouldn't you just love to know Delta is cheapest on that date?

"Having your data" isn't a binary concept. Their services degrade substantially once you turn off the firehose. You'll still get ads, but they won't be tailored to you. Maps won't be able to show your current position. Assistant won't be able to recognize your voice.

And that's fine, if you prefer that approach. But the concept of "having your data" in a historical context is meaningless. The only thing that matters is if that firehose is still available to them.

Turn it off if you like. It isn't a lost cause.

<comment><USER59> > It's worth remembering that "data" as they say stales very quickly. Knowing > that you ordered a package two months ago is far less interesting than > knowing you're expecting one next week.

Comparatively less, yes, but knowing about all your packages is still _very_ interesting and hugely privacy sensitive.

> You'll still get ads, but they won't be tailored to you.

TBH, all tailoring I've seen is comically bad. Yeah, they can know I bought shoes so they would show me shoe ads for the next three months. As if that's how humans behave - once we're in "shoe heat", we do nothing but buy shoes for three months and the task of the good ad system is to capture when the "shoe heat" starts and capitalize on it. I think if one wrote a comedy show about robots trying to understand human society and getting it hilariously wrong every time, the behavior of ad networks could supply great material for years.

> But the concept of "having your data" in a historical context is > meaningless.

No it's not. There's a lot of private things in one's past than can be dug up and (ab)used. Ask any politician who went through an electoral campaign.

<comment><USER80> >Yeah, they can know I bought shoes so they would show me shoe ads for the next three months.

You might be surprised. Some people buy far more shoes than they need. Be it for fashion or simply the love of shopping, I wouldn't be surprised at all if targeting shoe ads at recent shoppers actually made sense.

>No it's not. There's a lot of private things in one's past than can be dug up and (ab)used.

I'm speaking strictly in terms of their business model and services. That's where live data is essential. Fear of potential blackmail seems pretty far removed from that context.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER82> Nice, hopefully this will make my trip to China less annoying.

</comment><comment><USER83> What does "censored" mean in this context? No anti-communist or anti-party propaganda?

Personally I feel that Google has slowly become more and more censored over the recent years, to the point that I do searches on multiple search engines if I'm not so sure about the Google results.

More than often there's not only a filter-bubble in my results, but there's more and more sites that suddenly disappeared over the years, but are high- ranking on DDG, Bing, Yandex, ... — especially in February / March 2018 there was a kind-of-extreme disappearance of sites in the results where I previously used Google to get to them.

<comment><USER84> Means they will hide the same stuff Bing has and will hide more stuff as and when the gov tells them to. You want to be inside the firewall you need to be "legal"

</comment></comment><comment><USER85> Too late...

They will never overtake Baidu, who have leaks of Googles algorithm, more data to train AI on, government support, an existing (better) product in asian languages, and a massive userbase.

<comment><USER86> I'm sure they'll be able to overtake Baidu. Baidu's search product is terrible. The results are almost always unusable. The only times I find them useful is when it links to a quora-equivalent website where someone has asked your exact query.

<comment><USER87> However good or bad the product is, I would be very surprised if the Chinese government would allow Google to win significant market share against domestic companies. They might want Google in China for leverage, but they certainly wouldn't want them to be dominant.

<comment><USER88> My immediate reaction was "how can the CCP possibly cripple Google so much that Baidu can compete?". Anyone who's lived in China will have passionate views on how terrible Baidu's product is.

If there is any eastward leakage of Google's code, it's certainly not obvious in day-to-day usage of Baidu's search engine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER89> Could have sworn I read about this some years ago.

</comment><comment><USER90> Search terms about human rights, democracy, religion and peaceful protests will be among the words blacklisted in the search engine app

This is disgusting! I am not using Google Search anymore because of Firefox+DDG, but where are alternatives to YouTube, Gmail, Gmaps?

<comment><USER91> PeerTube as a YouTube alternative Fastmail, tutanota, protonmail, etc. as a Gmail alternative OpenStreetMap as a Google maps alternative.

<comment><USER66> > Fastmail

I can wholeheartedly endorse them. One other benefit is that they actually have real live humans doing customer support. I haven't needed it much (only when I was setting up my custom domain and feature requests), but it's very reassuring to know it's there.

It was the stories of people who were permanently locked out of their gmail accounts _with no recourse and no one to call_ that ultimately caused me to abandon Google.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER92> Why do the 1.4 billion people living there put up with it in the first place? Why they have just made Jinping a lifetime president? Why are they fine with their own Chinese tech companies doing this already?

It would help to understand the geopolitical causes of this environment instead of the constant faux outrage over Google doing what any business does, which is provide services in accordance to the laws where they operate.

I do not want a world where a few major US tech companies become political powers. This effort should be directed towards the government forces where it matters.

<comment><USER93> What is the difference between censorship and management of spam, fake news, sock puppet accounts etc?

<comment><USER92> Isn't there a big difference? It's removing fake junk vs hiding truthful information.

<comment><USER94> Who decides what Junk is? who guards the guardians?

<comment><USER92> There is such a thing as objective truth.

<comment><USER94> I disagree, facts do exist, the truth has always been a valuable asset for the ones who knows it. This is what most modern journalists or glorified bloggers don't get.

<comment><USER92> What exactly are you disagreeing with then? Or did you reply to the wrong post?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER95> There are a couple of recurring themes here:

1\. the hyper-moralising over google's business decisions, they're not the only company that modifies its business to access the chinese market nor is the chinese government the only one that demands censorship.

2\. google employees' attempts to sabotage the company's business prospects.

<comment> wu-ikkyu >hyper-moralising over google's business decisions

People are hyper moralizing because Google is hyper powerful.

"With great power comes great responsibility".

>google employees' attempts to sabotage the company's business prospects.

Perhaps they are doing so because they see these as attemts to sabotage Google's mission:

"To organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful."

<comment><USER96> It is because Google put that hyper moralising hat on itself.

In their hay days, they crafted that hippy/liberal/sensible young alpha image to win customer approval, reducing government regulation and eat market shares against those faceless corporates.

Now they are the new baddies in town, the image no longer does them any good. They will retire it by then and be a normal company.

<comment><USER97> No, they will concentrate their hyper-moralising and virtue signalling on the US.

China, et al, will get a pass.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER98> I wonder if Chinese people will be able to search for Winnie the Pooh.

<comment><USER99> Sure they will, but they'll never be able to leave the country, fly or get a train ticket again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER100> I wonder if this will be met with the same intensity of internal backlash as their participation in that DoD object detection competition (AKA project Maven). I mean, helping the authoritarian Chinese government censor the web seems worse than helping the US government recognize whether there are people and cars on the ground.

</comment><comment><USER101> Money doesn't stink.

</comment><comment><USER102> Google already has a winsome search engine for mobile platform

</comment><comment><USER103> not be evil

changed to:

Why not be evil

</comment><comment><USER104> Seeing how launching "a limited Chinese lite version" went for many many many Western companies in China, I can tell following:

Communists are totally ok with these limited versions, they are more than eager to "lure in" foreign dotcoms. Their logic is: "let them grow business in China, when the time comes, their business in China becomes so big, that it can be held hostage, we can demand them anything"

Look at AirBnB:

They were swearing on the graves of their fathers that you ID verification data is gone the moment it is verified, .... yet you will be super surprised to see that if you book a place in China, ALL YOUR ID DATA will be automatically filed into the form that hotels have to send to Chinese ministry of interior.

</comment><comment><USER105> Google has two choices:- to be outside - looking in, or to be inside - <USER2> engaged. It is axiomatic that China has roots in an oppressive communist titled government. I say titled because it was not communist in the classical sense, any more than the former USSR was communist - again in title only. China will gradually change and adapt - converge, to a more truly representative government as the middle class expands and the government learns they have nothing to fear but fear itself. Both former communist countries are doing far better than under their former party dictatorships.

I suggest everyone read "Gulag Archipelago"

I hope North Korea also is also opened up - engaged, in a similar manner.

<comment><USER106> "...doing far better than under their former party dictatorships..."

Not trying to split hairs or anything, but China _is_ "...under their former party dictatorship..." It's the same party, the only difference is that the leaders today are mostly trained engineers and scientists instead of the mainly political thinkers who preceded them.

<comment><USER105> Hopefully change will proceed at a faster rate as political hacks go to pasture.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER107> They have crossed a threshold and, if you continue to use Google products, you have crossed a threshold.

Google is now a willing and active participant in the coverup of massive human rights violations, including the open air murder of political protesters. If you pay for AdSense or G Suite, or even consume the "free" services, you are financing this.

</comment><comment><USER108> I love free speech. I love individual liberty. I respect the sovereignty of nations. I believe societies are feee to choose. Should we impose our value system on the Chinese? No. We should try to relate and understand why the Chinese people have taken their route.

If and when we find our value systems at odds with those of other people we cannot conclude that ours is superior and undermine their freedom to choose. That's just arrogant and — most importantly — unbecoming when you describe yourself as an advocate for freedom.

<comment><USER41> > We should try to relate and understand why the Chinese people have taken > their route.

The _people_ have not taken this route. The _people_ were mowed down in the thousands during a peaceful protest in Tienamen Square.

> undermine their freedom to choose

They never had the freedom to choose in the first place.

</comment></comment><comment><USER109> People who are neck deep in the surveillance economy and have long sold out can't suddenly pretend to care about ethics without looking insincere.

Given the large majority seem to have no problem with Google, Facebook and others, and their ability to attract employees is unaffected it's obvious ethics is not a high priority for current or prospective employees, if anything the fawning is often cringy.

That also explains why inspite of Snowden's revelations no one really cares and there is no change. So there is little basis for ethical concern about China, unless the motive is purely posturing and grandstanding.</comment>


Ask HN: How Does a TPM /Project Manager Help Your Team - <AUTHOR> Trying to understand what value a TPM or PM provides and what are the situations when a team/effort warrants having one the team.<p>I have seen a lot of TPMs become "catch all's"- work nobody else on the team wants to do. This is detrimental in multiple ways - for the Tpm he/she is doing unexciting work. The team mostly views them as overhead and have no clue what they do. I have seen very few examples where they feel provide value. Is it just my perception or  is the fact of the matter that very few situations need PMs in the first place? <comment><USER2> I worked as a project and later program manager at a multinational. I am unsure what a TPM is...

Hopefully it is just your perception that they provide no value, and if it is their own perception, hopefully they will gain sufficient experience to recognize their own value.

PMs, besides planning, measuring project progress and making sure the budget, tools and people are allocated, are also responsible for building the team, its values/culture, managing conflict, communicating the needs/issues/achievements of the project team to management and assuring the project goals align to business needs.

I know... blahblahblah... maybe an example works better?

The very first time I acted as a 'project manager' was in a team of 2 (me included). I was hired to replace a toxic employee and tasked to clean up the IT operations of a company's European field offices. As my technically brilliant colleague was getting me up to speed on the history, IT architecture, issues, etc., would often say: "I think we should do ABC," to which I often replied, "That's a great idea! Let's do it!"

Quite quickly, our collaboration took the form of me manning the phones, handling the communications with the regional leads, getting sign-off for the budgets and him implementing the solutions he himself proposed. I basically created the space for him to be successful.

Though initially I did miss doing the technical work, eventually I found it more satisfying enabling his, and therefore our mini-team's success.

Years after we had both left the company (our local field office was closed and neither of us opted to relocate) he told me how impressed he was that I had fixed all of their IT issues in under a year. I had to point out to him that all I did was listen to him, take his advice, and make it possible for him to implement his own proposals.

That is what a PM does.</comment>


Opposite of the BulletBall Post -- (BTW, poor guy...) - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZELPH5k7rhc&NR=1

<comment><USER2> Damn, I actually want that thing.

</comment><comment> daniel-cussen His game might actually be fun. I remember thinking guitar hero was really stupid when I saw the miniature guitar...

</comment><comment><USER3> Paper wheels? How do you fold up paper wheels?

Reminds of robotix (remember robotix?): <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPMfm16zNjE>

</comment><comment><USER4> Reminds me of <http://www.tamasoft.co.jp/pepakura-en/> Though, I am curious about how the paper wheels fit with the rest.

</comment><comment><USER5> I wish I could have seen one of the airplanes fly..

<comment><USER6> Wish granted.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDprAFI1UaI>

<comment><USER7> Wow, it flies much better than i thought it would

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> pretty brilliant

<comment><AUTHOR> I think it's great because it will help young, budding engineers get excited about science and technology.</comment></comment>


Show HN: WebRTC Serverless 2-player 2048 Game with Annotated Source - <AUTHOR> http://www.instapainting.com/2x2048/index.html <comment><USER3> "Serverless" ? how do players connect with each others? I bet it isn't serverless at all. When will developers stop using these buzzwords that are effectively lies, from a strict technical point? There was no need to shove "serveless" anywhere in that title.

<comment><AUTHOR> Its webrtc, so direct peer to peer connections during gameplay.

If you just looked at the code you can see for yourself.

<comment><USER3> > Its webrtc, so direct peer to peer connections during gameplay.

How does one player knows I'm connected without a server that tracks remote connections ? please explain.

edit: no need to explain, the library you are using does use a server, off course, I quote your comment :

> I believe PeerJS does use a server to broker conmections.

this isn't serverless, since it relies on a server. This is an important point and shouldn't be obfuscated by "serverless" buzzworld. Furthermore I doubt your project is going to run if I double click on an HTML page on my harddrive to launch it, it has to be hosted somewhere.

<comment><USER4> It'd be cool if you knew what you were talking about. These definitely can be made to be serverless if you really needed to stick to that strict definition of the word. However, there _is_ a small "introduction" broker (server) involved in most of these kind of WebRTC apps. It basically says, "player A - meet player B. player B - meet player A" \- after that the clients talk directly to one another and that server can completely go away and the multi- player functionality will work just fine. The clients communicate peer to peer after that.

<comment><USER3> > It'd be cool if you knew what you were talking about.

It'd be cool if people stop using bullshit buzzword in order to promote a project. There is a server period. It doesn't matter if "it does only a small thing". that bullshit needs to stop and I will call anybody engaged into bullshiting others out as long as they keep doing that.

The client talks directly to the other client but in order to connect 2 clients at first place you need a server to connect peers.

That's what you call serverless ? then that's a lie, period.

It's obviously you who don't have a clue what you are talking about.

"serverless" needs to die, no application that relies on the web is serverless, there is always a server.

<comment><USER4> Dude. You're really focusing on the wrong thing here. No one is lying or attempting to deceive. At worst, the term is being used loosely - at worst. At best it's only referring to the portion of the work that happens during "multi player".

I get your frustration with software development jargon but this seems like an odd choice to attack.

And to two of your points, here's a version that is "serverless", and can run completely from the file system.

[https://github.com/cjb/serverless-webrtc](https://github.com/cjb/serverless- webrtc)

But is it truly "serverless"? I mean the file system is serving the file up to the browser!

C'mon.

Oh, and in case you were going to point out that there's a server involved in the link I posted because, "the WebRTC offer/answer exchange is performed manually by the users, _for example_ via IM", (emphasis mine) - <USER2> information could just as easily be written on a piece of paper and exchanged via carrier pigeon. The pigeon may still technically be a server, in an architectural sense I suppose, but hopefully at that point you'd agree we're taking the argument past the point of any sensibility.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Note: due to lack of support for WebRTC in Safari, the demo won't work on iOS or Mac Safari.

</comment><comment> n-gauge This looks like a good source to learn WebRTC data channels. Correct?

<comment><USER5> I've searched the internet for a quick demo/tutorial of WebRTC that teached me to send a text from one computer to another. Couldn't find anything small and simple enough and still usable. Wrote this: [https://gist.github.com/fiatjaf/229a5db2f431ab707e3fb909240d...](https://gist.github.com/fiatjaf/229a5db2f431ab707e3fb909240dcdf2), it may be worth of your reading.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Happy to answer any technical questions.</comment>


Ask HN: VM Automation for Unit Testing? - <AUTHOR>

We are developing a desktop tool and would like to unit test this in different environments automatically. Are there VM providers which are more or less suitable? I don't want to have only one proprietary solution which is not interchangeable anymore - Hyper-V would be the most obvious choice as we are working on Windows 8, but are there better options?<p>Thanks! <comment><USER2> It should be easy to build something using Vagrant (based on VirtualBox) and Jenkins, see: [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6941547/how-to-combine- va...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6941547/how-to-combine-vagrant-with- jenkins-for-the-perfect-continuous-integration-envir)

<comment><USER3> I also support this.

Another great resource: [https://github.com/WinRb/vagrant- windows](https://github.com/WinRb/vagrant-windows)</comment></comment>


Would you give up having children to save the planet? Meet the couples who did - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jun/20/give-up-having-children-couples-save-planet-climate-crisis <comment><USER2> to save the planet? no, i dont have them to spare myself the cost, restrictions on life and other annoyances children bring</comment>


Ask HN: How do you take notes? - <AUTHOR> First of all what medium do you use (paper, one kind of software, etc)and second what do you write down? Plain text seems to be pretty ineffective compared to mindmaps or scribbled arrows between bullet points, but I'd love to use vim <comment><USER2> I just started using vim wiki and it's been great - totally revolutionized my workflow! When I make my daily diary markdown file, I write down my TODO list from yesterday, and add one for today... then I jot down some notes as I write code or attend meetings (it's especially nice because I can pop into hyperlinked references easily). Everything I do now feels way more organized, efficient, etc.. 10/10 would recommend. Get started here: [https://github.com/vimwiki/vimwiki](https://github.com/vimwiki/vimwiki)

</comment><comment><USER3> Markdown and plaintext files is really perfect. I start writing without formating and then organize later.

Plaintext file is great to copy / paste snippet code (wich is more complicated with handwriting notes ).

Finally for mindmap, Dot graph [1] does job

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOT_(graph_description_languag...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOT_\(graph_description_language\))</comment>


New study finds small startups typically overspend 50% on AWS - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2012/04/25/new-study-finds-small-startups-typically-overspend-on-amazon-web-services-by-50-or-more/

<comment><USER2> Totally agree. We moved from AWS to Hetzner and reduced the costs by 66%.

</comment><comment><USER3> Heroku!</comment>


R at Microsoft - <AUTHOR> http://blog.revolutionanalytics.com/2015/06/r-at-microsoft.html <comment><USER2> Microsoft buying Revolution Analytics is another piece of evidence shoes Microsoft has its A-game back. R is massively popular in the statistical community, it is basically the PHP of analytics (huge standard library with no namespaces but very easy to get started with and powerful for advanced users).

Additionally R is one of the few languages where you can be productive in a non-unix environment. At my old Windows workplace, R was the only open source language with working network NTLM authentication out of the box. Everything can be self-contained in RStudio, an interpreter and gui package manager to stop you jumping to the command line, and a help system to stop you using man.

By buying becomming closely associated with R, Microsoft is more likely to be a component in large analytics investments i.e. "let's get Microsoft's R distro, oh and why not their big data plaform too?", and ensures its services and databases are well integrated in this upcoming language.

<comment><USER3> "PHP of analytics"

I started laughing, then I realized you meant that as a compliment.

R has a great community and a ton of unique packages, though many of those great packages are thin wrappers over Fortran/C libraries and are available in a host of other languages (Python, Julia) that, in my opinion, have better features when it comes to testing and group-based development.

In my experience, R degenerates into a rat's nest more easily than the other candidates. I've been hired twice for this explicit reason.

BTW, I think your comparison with PHP is apt. R has many of the same strengths and flaws.

<comment><USER4> Slight typo: compliment is correct here, rather than complement. Excellent discussion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The write once run anywhere concept is intriguing. R has major scaling issues and a lot of the algorithms and packages in the CRAN just don't scale to any reasonable amounts of data. It really was designed in an era of controlled experiments with minimal data.

<comment><USER6> > an era of controlled experiments with minimal data

This world hasn't disappeared, y'know. Many of the specialized packages on CRAN deal with things like missing data, removing selection bias from longitudinal studies and distinguishing mediated from direct effects. These concerns are by and large not even applicable to the data the average data scientist deals with, so why even bother making them scalable?

On the ML front, on the other hand, R has never really been a forerunner.

<comment><USER7> I don't know why this comment is downvoted. It is true. The vast majority of businesses will never deal with machine learning. ML has very limited applications in the "real world", as opposed to regression analysis with some small samples.

<comment><USER8> Your point that simple regressions with small(ish) sample sets are important is valid. This:

> "The vast majority of businesses will never deal with machine learning."

However, is myopic. It plausibly will not hold for much longer in most areas, and is already not true for a significant number of industries.

<comment><USER7> I find ML and "3d printing" very similar in the expectations and extent business will adopt them.

<comment><USER8> On what basis? They are not similar in any respect that I can think of.

3D printing has had limited impact for prototyping in the many decades it has been around, and in the expected quarters. That's pretty much what every analysis I've seen except a very few boosters have predicted, for what it's worth.

On the other hand ML has fundamentally changed: document processing, search engines, remote sensing, retail sales, e-commerce, etc. ; It has also strongly impacted areas of logistics and shipping, manufacturing, (e.g. computer vision & robotics), medicine, law enforcement, finance, defense, also etc.

It's also poised to find market advantages in many non-obvious industries as larger scale data becomes available... unclear how far that will extend.

Where's the parallel you see?

<comment><USER7> Poorly understood, high hopes, a lot lower practical applications. Predictions are not as applicable as one might think at first glance.

I hope you do not confuse machine learning with statistics and data mining. They are very different.

<comment><USER8> No, I do not make such a confusion. I hope you do not make the converse one, of re-categorizing techniques "out" of machine learning as soon as we understand how they work.

At any rate, your experience in industry seems to be quite different than mine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Does someone know how does this work with regards to the GPL? I have heard that they have a complete reimplementation of R. Really? What about all of the GPL'ed packages at CRAN, do they just not ship those?

I also know that the R developers don't really enforce the GPL. Is that what's going on here?

<comment><USER10> If they ship their own from-scratch-not-using-any-third-party-code implementation, they are fine

If they are shipping a GPL version of R, then this is a legal grey area, with different opinions from differing lawyers, mostly on whether it's a derivative work covered by the GPL or not.

It's honestly, not worth getting into the whole discussion, because there are no lights at the end of the tunnel, only opinions on all sides that are usually supported by reasonable arguments.

<comment><USER11> I'm surprised that no one in this thread (or on the broader Internet, as far as I can tell from a cursory web search) has any information the status of this "Revolution R" package that Microsoft recently acquired.

Is it a clean-room reimplementation of R? (like the relationship between .NET and Mono) Or is it a "distribution" of R? (like the relationship between Debian and Ubuntu?)

Whether the R implementation here is non-GPL, or whether it actually is running in a "fork-and-exec" separate process, I'm sure that Microsoft has their bases covered. They know more than a thing or two about software licensing, and certainly wouldn't take any risks of subjecting their flagship enterprise database to the GPL.

However, I'm completely uncertain as to what the legal status of Microsoft's R implementation means in terms of libraries that one can use from CRAN (aren't many of those GPL'ed as well?).

For me, I work in the real world, where you're not allowed to touch the GPL with a 10-foot pole, so this is of idle curiosity only. I'm not sure if Microsoft is trying to appeal to academia here, or if it's just a P.R. move in general... but if they expect to sell this to business users, then they're going to have to put a LOT more effort into clarifying its legal status.

<comment><USER9> > I work in the real world

I must work in the imaginary world, since we are allowed to use GPL'ed stuff at work. In fact, I got hired at my current job to improve GPL'ed stuff. And I don't work in academia.

Whenever I hear stories about how big companies can't touch the GPL, I always call "bullshit". Of course they can; and in fact many large companies do. Some, sadly, are just full of inefficient bureaucracy that feeds their employees big fat lies about how the GPL will destroy us all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I don't know a lot about R, but apart from the fact that it's made for stats, isn't it a great language because it's also aimed to handle embarrassingly parallel programs, and no other other language do it as well as R ?

I guess R is used in machine learning fields.

Is R opencl enabled, or is it planned to be ?

<comment><USER13> R doesn't have built-in parallelism features that I know of. There are a lot of packages, though: [http://cran.r-project.org/web/views/HighPerformanceComputing...](http://cran.r-project.org/web/views/HighPerformanceComputing.html)

<comment><USER14> The 'parallel' package has been included in recent versions of R and has RNGs for parallel execution and variations of the `apply` functions. For "embarrassingly parallel" calculations these work as drop-in replacements. It's built-in in the same way that MASS and lattice are.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Anyone able to read the slides? I have difficulty accessing the slides.

<comment><USER16> They worked for me (Chrome, Linux). Perhaps you can try the direct link:

[http://www.slideshare.net/RevolutionAnalytics/r-at- microsoft...](http://www.slideshare.net/RevolutionAnalytics/r-at- microsoft?ref=http://blog.revolutionanalytics.com/2015/06/r-at-microsoft.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I have to say I am very disappointed in the information, after the title got me so excited.

No announcements about Excel? I really hope R lands in Excel, it will open big opportunities for developers and businesses.

Also there was a guy from MS, who created python tools for VS and asked if anyone would want R tools for VS. After receiving a very warm response, never heard from him again. What's up with that? Parallel to that RA has an IDE, which uses the VS shell. Will we have more streamlined R workflow in VS? This is important for a lot of people...

What about R.NET?

<comment><USER17> hi there - it took a while to make our 1st hire, but i'm happy to report that work is underway as part of the Azure ML group. as soon the project has a pulse i'll post on HN. current plan is to have it be free & open source like Python Tools for Visual Studio.

i'm also hiring for the project, so if you're into dev tools (editors, debuggers, profilers, languages, ...) and looking, pls drop me a line. looking for devs and a technical PM.

re R.Net - no effort that i know of.

<comment><USER7> Glad to hear you are making progress then!

Can't help you with development. but I will be more than happy to beta test. I make analytics applications, encapsulated in asp.net and additionally use R for market research.</comment></comment></comment>


Yahoo Jerry Yang: Please Don't Fire Me - <AUTHOR> http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/6/yahoo-yhoo-yes-we-blew-microsoft-deal-but-please-vote-for-us-anyway

<comment><USER2> Inclusive of taxes, that's a biggie. The net effect, inclusive of taxes, really wouldn't have put Yahoo! in a much more favorable position or made it any more liquid. As the article states, "Yahoo reiterates that the deal would have added nothing to Yahoo's cash flow, despite Microsoft's claims that it would add $1 billion a year."

</comment><comment><USER3> Who runs alleyinsider? It has a sensational, vacuous, valleywag linkbait look and feel.

<comment><USER4> I was just thinking exactly the same thing, that these guys were for companies what Valleywag is for people.

The web seems to be making content sites evolve in the direction of linkbait.

<comment><USER5>
      The web seems to be making content sites evolve in the direction of linkbait.

The currency of the web is links. That incentive system alone is enough to explain it.</comment></comment></comment>


US to leave UNESCO - <AUTHOR> http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/10/11/u-s-to-pull-out-of-unesco-again/ <comment><USER2> I think the UN is inept at most things but UNESCO I I think is worth staying on for. As an American I am so dissatisfied and ashamed of our current president — a pumpkin of a man.

<comment><USER3> Agreed, UNESCO is one part of UN I hear about in a positive context. Granted I heard more about its activities outside the US, but still I think this is unfortunate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is a really important topic, but the Internet is full of other forums for it. Can we keep hacker news for things at least a little more closely related to its traditional discussion domain? I flagged this item, something I have done with things that make the front page maybe twice over the last several years.

</comment><comment><USER5> Does this mean we can sell our parks to the Chinese now?

</comment><comment><USER6> WTH?</comment>


Bad Design in Star Wars - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.amctv.com/scifi-scanner/2009/08/bad-designs-in-star-wars.php

<comment><USER2> If you like this, you'll appreciate "The Inbox of Nardo Pace, The Empire's Worst Engineer."

<http://www.somethingawful.com/d/news/nardo-design-empire.php>

(That may not be the original link, but it was the first result on google.)

<comment><USER3> This is getting silly, but it reminds me of,

<http://www.mcsweeneys.net/2002/01/02cobra.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> And yet this is realistic. Wouldn't you expect a big, clumsy organization like the Empire to be inept at design? They should've outsourced. It's inefficiencies like this that keep people like Boba Fett employed.

<comment><USER5> _They should've outsourced._

How do you know they didn't? Predatory consultants and contractors absolutely flourish by hanging off the underbellies of large institutions. Somewhere in the Empire, some corporation is billing $450 per replacement blaster trigger.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Flagged. It's humourous, but there's no real intelligence or insight here worthy of Hacker News.

</comment><comment><USER7> How about those AT-ATs the empire used on Hoth? All you need is some rope and they fall over?

<comment><USER8> And what are aerial intercept fighters doing with harpoons?

<comment><USER9> Looking for air whales.

<comment><USER10> The big white X-Wing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> How weird is it that I just read this webcomic from 2003 yesterday. And it did the same joke <http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/177.html>

</comment><comment><USER12> Is this serious? It's a movie - you know 'make believe'

As technology, yes of course there are loads of flaws, Dr. Who's Darleks must surely be the classic though. As far as movie design and art direction goes, John Barry the Production Designer spawned an entire new genre of sci-fi style.

<comment><USER13> And you've never had fun poking holes in movies?

<comment><USER14> In Star Wars' defense, it _did_ happen a Long Time Ago.

<comment><USER15> Unfortunately, it wasn't far enough away.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Ewoks are cheap Wookies: [http://www.filmthreat.com/index.php?section=features&Id=...](http://www.filmthreat.com/index.php?section=features&Id=172)

</comment><comment><USER17> Hilarious. Valid points. I'm sure he could go on and mention another 100 or even 1000 things. I love Star Wars still.

</comment><comment><USER18> It is not true that R2-D2 can't handle stairs. You can see him walk the stairs in Episode 2.

</comment><comment><USER19> regarding C3-PO: Remember that Anaking skywalker built this guy when he was around 12. Imo it is just realistic that C3-PO is no super-agile-perfectly- engineered battle robot, but a bit quirky

</comment><comment><USER20> This was fantastic. Very well done and hysterical.</comment>


Apple now holding more cash than USA - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-14340470 <comment><USER2> Of course, there's actually a much deeper and more important connection. The huge cash hoards of Apple, Google, Microsoft and other big multinational corporations are a direct outgrowth of clever tax strategies they use to shift profits to low-tax countries and avoid US taxes. [http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/07/27/us-microsoft- tax-i...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/07/27/us-microsoft-tax- idUSTRE76Q6OB20110727)

Corporate tax payments as a percentage of total tax revenues are low and historically low compared to the size of the economy. [http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/Tax- VOX/2011/0209/Corporat...](http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/Tax- VOX/2011/0209/Corporate-tax-only-a-piece-of-tax-revenue-pie)

[http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?Doc...](http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?Docid=263)

<comment><USER3> Note that those big multinational corporations can't move money made outside the country to back home in the USA without incurring an absurd ~30% tax on top of whatever other taxes they paid whoever already. Word is Apple has been pushing for an amnesty so they _can_ bring their money home; until then, that money earned outside the US stays outside the US.

<comment><USER4> Last time we had an amnesty, all the money that flooded back in to the USA wasn't reinvested the companies or used to grow the economy, it just want straight into bonuses and dividends.

<comment><USER5> I'm not sure I follow. Distributing profits to employees (bonuses) or to investors (dividends) is bad? The employees and investors now have more money to buy things or to re-invest.

I'm not an economist, but I think that when money flows from A to B, the economy does grow. It doesn't matter if that flow is to employees as bonuses, investors as dividends, or to vendors as business expesnses.

<comment><USER6> > I'm not an economist, but I think that when money flows from A to B, the > economy does grow.

Money moving from one place to another does not always help the economy. When money flows from the corporate coffers directly into the private accounts of its executives, generally little of that money actually flows into the greater economy. When you consider that under normal circumstances 30% of that money would flow into the federal government to fund programs, it's pretty clear that less money flows into the economy in cases of tax amnesty.

<comment><USER7> "private accounts of executives" is an interesting phrase when you cold have said "checking accounts of employees". It conjures up the image of Scrooge McDuck sitting on a pile of gold.

But that money is in the economy. If these "Executives" put it into stocks, then it funds company growth. If they put it into municipal bonds then it funds cities. If they put it into a checking account, then it funds home loans. IF they were to turn it into cash and put it under their mattress-- then it still funds government spending (via inflation.)

The only possible way I can think of to take that money out of the economy-- and granted this is even if your assertion that "all the money" goes to these fat cat "executives" were true, and I'm not buying it--- the only way they can take the money out of the economy would be to buy actual physical gold bullion coins and put it in a basement.

So, if these guys really were like Scrooge McDuck and literally had a basement full of gold coins then it would be out of the economy. But that is pretty much nobody.

<comment><USER6> You're ignoring the part where we were discussing a tax holiday. When executives hoard money overseas for a decade and then bring it back tax-free, they are basically depriving the government of the tax revenue that money transfer should have brought in.

Beyond that, there's not a lot of evidence for the notion that execs making more money is a net gain for the economy. It seems intuitive that more money in the hands of the wealthy would result in more investments and growth, but to the best of my knowledge there's not much evidence for that.

The real question is not whether handing the wealthy extra money is bad, but whether it's as good as doing something else. Sure, giving a wealthy man another million might get him investing more. Giving that million to the economy at large might do more, though. After all, those same investments you say the wealthy will make could be made by average joes.

<comment><USER8> If you distribute a million dollars across the entire US economy, that's roughly 30 cents per person, and it's likely to be spent on some chewing gum or a very small amount of food. It dissipates before it has a chance to grow. If concentrated, the million dollars can be applied to things that are only possible when money is concentrated, like doing research and development, investing in large construction projects, etc. Instead of spending the money directly on basic resource acquisition, when concentrated, it can amplify resource production, which lowers prices and provides a greater benefit to the average Joe than having another 30 cents in his wallet.

<comment><USER6> Money doesn't "dissipate" because it's spent. Money changing hands is what fuels the economy.

There's also no reason to assume that tax money goes from wealthy pockets to poor ones directly. The government can build infrastructure (which they do a lot more of than private industry), fund R&D, etc. Individuals could also invest their money into funds that fuel R&D, fund startups, etc. It's incorrect to claim that only the wealthy invest.

<comment><USER9> "There's also no reason to assume that tax money goes from wealthy pockets to poor ones directly. The government can build infrastructure (which they do a lot more of than private industry), fund R&D, etc. Individuals could also invest their money into funds that fuel R&D, fund startups, etc. It's incorrect to claim that only the wealthy invest."

And there are some project that only the government can take on due to how long cost recoup would be or the risk levels (Space, Internet...) but those things fund high paying jobs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> To be fair, just about everyone reading this will probably have more cash than the USA in another week or two.

<comment><USER11> At this burn rate, it's more like 3 days...

[http://www.zerohedge.com/news/treasury-cash- drops-15-billion...](http://www.zerohedge.com/news/treasury-cash- drops-15-billion-overnight-516-billion-5-billion-sgp-bills-roll)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Steve Jobs only pays 15% taxes which is probably part of it.

(seriously, this is a fact [http://seekingalpha.com/article/183086-steve-jobs- thrives-on...](http://seekingalpha.com/article/183086-steve-jobs-thrives-on- dividend-income) )

Take money from USA consumers, pour it into China manufacturing. They certainly aren't the only ones doing it but add them all up and you'll start to understand the problem.

<comment><USER13> And how many millons does he pay more than you?

Stop whining about the wealthy. Steve earned his money, you have no right to them.

<comment><USER14> >Steve earned his money, you have no right to them.

Are you implying Steve earned all the money Apple has?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> A corporation holding cash means they're not investing as much as they could according to supply-side economic thinking.

This should make people reflect on the state of the economy. While it's true that some companies just like to hoard cash (e.g. Microsoft), this may just be the symptom of a bigger problem. With consumers low on cash due to the recession, it simply makes no sense to invest any more. This in turn guarantees that consumers will stay low on cash because a lot of slack remains in the job market.

<comment><USER9> Here's why I believe the economy in the shitters : <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velocity_of_money>

Money needs to move and it's not right now.

<comment><USER15> I agree. The question is: how do you fix it?

In the case of the big corporations, for example, I see no direct, freedom- compatible way of getting them to spend that money. The only way I see that might work (though here Apple might still be a special case) is to create an environment where businesses see an increase in demand as an incentive for increased investment.

Then the question becomes where that demand should come from, and the most feasible short-term answer (the government) is almost universally ideologically opposed (yes, even Democrats these days seem to shy away from direct spending to stimulate the economy).

<comment><USER16> I could think of a number of ideas that would be severely unpopular.

One idea: Start taxing people based on their net worth. It'd be for the greater good after all, right?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> "the country has an operating cash balance of $73.7bn"

How is this so? I thought the annual budget was in deficit. Quite significantly, in fact.

And not to mention the country has a massive debt. Although I understand how that may not affect the operating cash balance.

The headline definitely seems like it could be used as a sound bite for corporate tax increase commentary.

<comment><USER18> A compulsive gambler, already hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt, goes to a loan shark to borrow another five hundred bucks. He now has an operating cash balance of five hundred dollars, while still having a net worth of minus six figures.

<comment><USER17> Then I agree that the number is pretty much meaningless. The government can easily increase their operating cash balance simply by incurring more debt. It's the debt, and the deficit that seem most relevant to my untrained mind.

In fact, if you want to compare with a corporation, I'd compare the entity's deficit as a percentage of its revenue.

<comment><USER18> _The government can easily increase their operating cash balance simply by incurring more debt._

Except, and this is the whole reason that we currently have big problems, the Government currently _can't_ legally incur more debt, unless Congress passes an increase to the debt ceiling. So cash-on-hand is currently a serious issue.

<comment><USER19> And so trillion dollar changes to a major world economy of 310 million people are made by last minute bickering.

It's boggling.

<comment><USER20> Yeah, it's a titanic game of chicken between the dominant parties. As _The Economist_ put it, "biggest unforced error in history still on schedule".

[http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2011/07/democrac...](http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2011/07/democracy- america)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> How do giant stacks of uninvested cash in corporate coffers improve the economy? I wish someone could explain this.

<comment><USER22> Those "corporate coffers" you refer to are real investments. Apple is not going to settle for getting a 0% return on the cash it holds. It has to put the money _somewhere_. It's going to invest it in _something_ , whether it be stocks, bonds, or a bank account of some type...all of which benefit the economy in a different way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Supply-side economists, take note.

<comment><USER24> Unfortunately, they will take note of it as "run the government like a business", which tends to be how supply-side economists would prefer the government to be run anyway.

<comment><USER25> They want lower revenues for the government. I would hope that it's not the same philosophy for their businesses.

<comment><AUTHOR> They also want a smaller scope for the government. So it's not like saying 'I want to run this business but bring in less money', it's more like saying 'I want to run a smaller business, so what departments can we do without'. Smaller business may actually make more profit (read: be more efficient) than the larger one.

I try not to claim a political preference left or right[1], but to prevent confusion I do feel they're trying to make this 'business' much smaller than it needs to be.

[1] My political preference is merely that politicans are like diapers. They need to be changed regularly, and for the same reason.

<comment><USER21> Does part of corporate "efficiency" include billions of dollars in bonuses?

That doesn't seem very efficient to me. The effect of large bonuses on the cost of administration seems a bit high.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> What exactly will Apple do with this cash other than buy billion-dollar patent portfolios? Are there potential big acquisition deals in the works that make sense?

</comment><comment><USER27> The government will get the money eventually through increased taxes or through printing more money and deflating the value of the apple "cash" pile. All the Government has to do is to print money and they can take Apple's money without Apple being able to do anything about it!

<comment><USER28> Nothing says Apple must keep the money in the form of US dollars in a bank account. If it's sitting in any kind of investment that tracks inflation, printing money won't take the money. If they choose to keep it in other currencies, printing money won't take the money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> What will happen to the American if the congress does not vote on the rise ?

<comment><USER30> No one can say for sure. It's a doomsday scenario that no one is really prepared for.

The only thing anyone can say with any certainty is that the next president of the USA will be a Republican, because that's what this is all about. Destroy the economy, blame the incumbent, and scoop up the next election.

<comment><USER31> > The only thing anyone can say with any certainty is that the next president > of the USA will be a Republican

And they'd be lying.

<comment><USER30> I admit, I was being trite, but it's a good bet.

<comment><USER31> It's really not. I'd say odds are Obama gets a second term. Congress is broke, but the president is doing just fine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> So...when's the buy-out?

</comment><comment><USER33> It's time to nationalize Apple, sell its assets and use the money to take off of the crisis.

<comment><USER34> Sarcasm?

<comment><USER33> Just kidding, but some people aren't just able to accept a joke about Apple.

All this does not make my initial comment less true, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> If you have $1 you are holding more cash than the US.

<comment><USER36> If you have $1 and don't have a mortgage or other debts

<comment><USER35> I said more cash, not more worth or value. Thanks for the downvotes, great to see everyone is using their noggins these days.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Can't wait to see what iBama will look like :)</comment>


Ask HN: Any good online Discrete Mathematics courses? - <AUTHOR> So a bit of a disclaimer:  I've already tried the MIT Math for Computer Science, and it was difficult for me to be motivated to take it, perhaps because it was a slightly too advanced for what I am ready for at the moment.
I have also tried reading Rosen's textbook, which I found much more approachable.  (problems tended to be easier, relatively easy to read the textbook, etc) My only issue is the shear volume of chapters and problems, making it difficult to figure out what to learn in a reasonable time.
I'm giving myself five months to learn introductory discrete mathematics.  What is a good online course that I can take?  I am willing and able to pay for a course.
Thanks in advance for the help. <comment><USER2> I took the discrete math specialization [https://www.coursera.org/specializations/discrete- mathematic...](https://www.coursera.org/specializations/discrete-mathematics) but I already had took a course at college, the coursera material was really helpful to fill my gaps.

</comment><comment><USER3> Berkeley has course material for their discrete math course online. Much more accessible and fits within the constraints of a quarter / semester.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks rmk! This looks to be perfect for what I'm looking for.</comment></comment>


Performance at Any Scale - <AUTHOR> http://ehcache.org/ <comment><USER2> Am I missing something? What's the news here? Ehcache has been around for a while.

</comment><comment><USER3> There is no news here. OP's Post/Comment ratio is really bad.

</comment><comment><USER4> It bothers me to see claims like this. Plug and play and everything goes fast just doesn't always work no matter how great your product might be.

</comment><comment><USER5> I have a feeling of deja vu, I think I've seen this link here on HN before.</comment>