The Wall Street Journal to Close Google Loophole Entirely - <AUTHOR> http://digiday.com/publishers/wall-street-journal-close-google-loophole-entirely/ <comment><USER3> If anyone's looking for another workaround, the article actually hints at the solution: Facebook's l.php redirect that it uses when you click on a link shared through the platform. It functions similarly to the Google redirect, and you don't even need a Facebook account for it to work.

E.g. [https://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=https://www.wsj.com/article...](https://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=https://www.wsj.com/articles/daniel- tarullo-federal-reserve-regulatory-point-man-resigning-1486751401)

<comment><USER4> How come this isn't culturally perceived in the same way as not paying for software or movies or music? I've read various reasons why people don't want to pay. That's fine. But then simply don't read it.

<comment><USER5> > How come this isn't culturally perceived in the same way as not paying for > software or movies or music?

Perhaps it is? I've almost never had anyone remark that I was doing something bad when not paying for a software or movie or music.

<comment><USER6> Let's pretend you developed a piece of software you want to sell. People download it without paying you. What do you do in that case?

<comment><USER7> it's a logical fallacy to assume that people who downloaded your work would have discovered it and actually paid for it if there was no free option

a lot of artists would PAY to get millions of downloads/views

<comment><USER8> Let me know when you can pay rent or buy groceries with retweets.

<comment><USER9> it's unclear if you do not realize thousands of people make their living full- time as promoters on social media. They _literally_ pay rent with money that was paid to them proportionate to their retweets. Or if this was hyperbole to underscore your disagreement with a freemium business model

<comment><USER10> this seems like an equivocation

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Tangent: I'm not sure I can think of recent money I've spent better than a year-long Washington Post subscription.

Not because I want to support journalism (though I do), but because having a whole newspaper to flip through every day is so much more productive and efficient than getting dribs and drabs through Twitter and free news sites --- many of which are ultimately sourcing through the journalism that organizations like WaPo do anyways.

Realizing in retrospect how trifling the amount of money we're talking about for a subscription is (it's a tiny fraction of my monthly information services bill [cable/Internet, Netflix, &c]), I feel kind of embarrassed for not having done this a long time ago.

I like WaPo but you might prefer something else, like NYT or WSJ. I'm sure all the major papers are solid choices. Most of you are younger than me. Don't be like me! Subscribe to a damn newspaper already.

<comment><USER12> The Wall St. Journal is the single highest quality news source I'm aware of.

<comment><USER13> They dropped in quality sharply when Murdoch acquired them, and fired a big chunk of the team. Then they started focusing on offensive conservative propaganda on their editorial page. At that point I stopped reading or paying attention to them.

Frankly, I welcome the news about the paywall since it will mean I see fewer links to their "journalism".

Has something changed in the last few years? Did they somehow turn things around?

[edit: Just wanted to point out that the events I'm referring to were about a decade ago. Concretely, before the acquisition, it seemed like the WSJ was driving something like 50% of the daily news cycle with a difficult to discern bias.

Upper management intentionally destroyed that, at least from an outsider perspective.

Reading the other comments and stories about the whole fake news phenomenon makes me think no one has managed to replicate the function they used to serve.]

<comment><USER11> The WSJ editorial page was famously a conservative bastion long before Murdoch bought them.

But this conversation is a rat-hole. We can generate 1000 comments about any major newspaper. I think my point was just: pick one and subscribe to it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The larger problem here is that unless they plan to have their Google search results all say "click here to pay" or similar, this entire scheme violates Google's cloaking policy and should result in their being deindexed. This has traditionally been the entire reason that sites offered this workaround - <USER2> wasn't out of the goodness of their hearts.

Here's hoping Google actually enforces their policy.

<comment><USER15> What I don't get is that they could just leave the first two paragraphs and let every see that, then require you to subscribe for more - google would accept that and they would still show up in search, right?

<comment><USER16> That's what Experts Exchange was doing. Back in the days before Stack Overflow, EE was one of the hot places to go for answers to software engineering problems. It was a free site for many years, then one day they decided to require a subscription to read the answers. Google still indexed the question, so that you would open up a EE link, only to be greeted with "the answer requires a subscription". Google allowed that for a number of years before finally deindexing their results, but it took bloody forever!

<comment><USER17> If I remember correctly EE had the real answers waaaaaay down on the page. They were banking on people not scrolling.

<comment><USER18> From memory you could scroll to get the results IF it detected you clicked on a google search result to get there, otherwise the answers were not displayed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> First of all, I think it's great that journalists can get compensated for their work.

but, strictly speaking as a consumer, I must say their paywall is completely out of touch with the way I want to pay for news consumption. I don't mind paying 5c or even 10c per article, but I'm certainly not going to sign up to pay 120$ for 6 months, if I'm only going to read 1 or 2 articles here and there. but since they've done it this way, I can only conclude that most consumers prefer it that way.

<comment><USER20> The amount you want to pay for news is not anywhere close to the value it is providing you or that they make from ad revenue.

<comment><USER21> Let's say you're standing in a field strewn with gold bars. A man comes up to you and offers to sell you a gold bar for $400,000. You point out that you are standing among hundreds of gold bars, all of them free for the taking. He points out that it was a lot of hard work extracting gold from thousands of tons of ore, casting it, assaying it, etc.

Just because something cost a lot to make, doesn't mean it's worth a lot. Sorry.

<comment><USER22> To be fair, we do not exactly have an oversupply of WSJ caliber journalism.

<comment><USER23> To also be fair, WSJ is hardly high caliber journalism, and since the sale to Murdoch has degraded significantly in quality

<comment><USER24> And therin lies the situation. WSJ is worth very little to the very many. I see it as just another editorialized website. Was it always that way? No. Paper editions of the wall street journal were very good, on occasion. Web editions in the new age of journalism, not even close. No where near worth even trying to go around their paywall.

<comment> gm-conspiracy The beginning of the end for me with the WSJ was when they changed the printed size.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> [https://support.google.com/news/publisher/answer/40543?hl=en...](https://support.google.com/news/publisher/answer/40543?hl=en&ref_topic=2481296)

According to this, it will need to mark WSJ links differently in Google News.

Interestingly, I tested it and links from Google news still had a "First Click Free", contrary to OP. To test:

1\. Go to [https://news.google.com/](https://news.google.com/) from a computer that hasn't visited any WSJ articles that day

2\. Click on a WSJ link (mine was [https://www.wsj.com/articles/daniel- tarullo-federal-reserve-...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/daniel-tarullo- federal-reserve-regulatory-point-man-resigning-1486751401))

3\. See if the whole article is displayed. For me, it was, but when I tried again it only showed a snippet. So it seems like they're only showing the very first click, which does not comply with Google's guidelines above (which require 3 articles a day to be viewable). Anyone else want to offer data points?

Edit: oh, OP says it's only starting Monday.

(Of course, WSJ may be exempt because of direct communication with Google, which I'd expect anyway at their size and at the fact that they weren't banned when they started testing this. But Google should really note any exceptions in their policy.)

<comment><USER25> Update: WSJ articles that are paywalled are now marked as subscription in google news.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I see in the comments there are still some workarounds to this paywall. Good to know. Cheers.

Just a reminder another workaround to the paywall is to you know actually subscribe to the newspaper. That is an option they offer. Obviously not possible for everyone. But if you have the money and want to read and support journalism... WSJ is really far from perfect but it's not the worst newspaper one could be subscribed to.

Also I think their discounted corporate plans program is huge, so depending where you work you may get a discount or it could be free, never hurts to ask.

Also, maybe YC could negotiate some sort of group WSJ discount for Hacker News users above a certain karma count? Just an idea...

<comment><USER27> I don't think it's smart to pay to read stuff from a group that also gets money from advertisers. You're either the product or the customer, when in doubt you'll be the product.

Real subscription journalism doesn't do advertising.

<comment><USER28> What 'real subscription journalism' big-name newspapers that don't do advertising can you name? I am honestly struggling to think of any.

<comment><USER27> Sorry, I'm French, so I can only cite you 2 French ones: Le Canard Enchainé (100 yo, no website) and Mediapart (pure web).

We are talking serious news: the first one discovered that a minister had sent 1500 Jews in a train during WWII, the second one has discovered the minister charged of tax collection had an undeclared bank account in Switzerland.

<comment><USER28> Thank you for your reply. I can read a little bit of French, so Mediapart is something I'll keep an eye on in the future.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Out of curiosity I searched for the Wall Street Journal subscription page. I selected my country (UK) and then clicked on the subscription offer. I was then taken to a Hong Kong page with no obvious way of changing it back to the UK.

If they want subscribers, they're going to have to do a better job than that.

<comment><USER30> I agree their pricing page is confusing. I just got information about a discount offer but its not clear how much is the full price after the discount.

<comment><USER31> It took me a couple times to find it. Go to [https://buy.wsj.com/wsjuspresday17](https://buy.wsj.com/wsjuspresday17) and click the "Act now" link.

$32.99 (plus tax) a month, for digital access.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> The problem is that newspapers believe the myth that they were really efficient at reporting on and delivering news, when really their core competency was their ability to deliver print advertising to every doorstep in a given market on a daily basis. This is similar to the music industry, whose core competency was not developing talent or setting the standards of taste, but rather delivering precisely molded disks of vinyl to far-flung stores every Tuesday.

Oh internet, what myths do you believe about yourself? That you are the harbinger of universal enlightenment and democracy?

</comment><comment><USER33> Has any publisher tried out a paywall along the lines of the following?

"Hey, you've spent 29 hours so far this year reading 119 articles. Suggested donation: $62"

<comment><USER34> The Guardian is doing something similar but without tracking the hours spent. They just say "Hey, we see you spend a lot of time around here. Why don't you help us out a bit so we can stay afloat?"

<comment><USER35> The Guardian's tactic actually got me to pay for news for the first time in my life. For some reason I'm really turned off to the idea of buying a ~$100 subscription to a single paper, but I'll gladly toss $25 here or there in response to good journalism.

<comment><USER36> Wikipedia did the same thing for me. They request donations and I used it so often that I felt like I had to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Hmmmm. In the FAQ, under the question "Are paywalls ok?", there's this:

>It's ok to post stories from sites with paywalls that have workarounds.

If this loophole is closed, will there be any workarounds? If that's the case, then I wonder if it'll still be OK to post WSJ links to HN.

<comment><USER38> For what it's worth, whenever you share an article from the WSJ as a subscriber it seems to generate a custom link that bypasses the paywall for the recipient. I hope they retain this feature because I do enjoy sharing articles with people that might not subscribe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Sadly for most newspapers, WSJ is in a special position. It has the highest circulation of any paper in the US, and it has a target audience that really doesn't mind paying.

A paywall wouldn't work out well for many others.

<comment><USER40> I suspect most of the others would be better just posting teaser material on the web and trying to make the rest up in the paper edition.

<comment><USER41> The Houston Chronicle has a similar dual system. The print newspaper is online but paywalled: houstonchronicle.com the "chron.com" version is mostly buzzfeedish fluff that's free.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Paywalls have been tightening up recently. The Washington Post now has stronger anti-ad-blocking. So do the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times. The New York Times is still accessible.

It's a concern that the newspapers which have actual reporters in the field are disappearing behind paywalls.

<comment><USER43> Actual reporters need to be paid :) The idea of free access to news is relatively recent, since wide-spread web access. Prior to that, people paid for subscriptions, or bought papers at new stands or from boxes. Sure, people might share a few papers at the office or at a restaurant, but having access like we've had for the past 20 years or so is pretty remarkable. I think it's becoming increasingly clear that purely ad-based publishing is encouraging an increase in yellow journalism.

<comment><USER44> I was under the impression that the subscription fee for newspapers was to cover printing and delivery. And that the ads were how the publishers got paid.

<comment><USER45> That's true. But it was a bundle that couldn't be separated at the end of the day. So given print ad dollars to digital dimes the subscription fee needs to cover web readership as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> So does this mean Google is going to stop indexing the text of WSJ articles?

<comment><USER47> Google should absolutely not index, at least not under the current organic and news search. Why should they send traffic to articles that people can't freely view?

I would support some kind of premium news offering from Google where they do index these and you are allowed access through a revenue share subscription made via Google.

<comment><USER48> > Why should they send traffic to articles that people can't freely view?

what if WSJ paid google to index, but not give out for free? Or, rather, partnered with google so that you can pay for WSJ (or individual articles) via google's payment infrastructure?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> The WSJ is a fantastic source of information. I no longer subscribe since I no longer live in the US but I easily made more money from the information in the paper than I paid in.

It was also very informative.

If you can't derive value from it, I understand all the trouble people go through to bypass it. It's just that I see that people's stated aims and revealed preferences are in contradiction. Everyone wants high quality news. No one seems to want to pay what it costs.

</comment><comment><USER50> So... is this good reason to stop posting WSJ on HN yet?

<comment><USER51> It might be, if it happens.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> I prefer Reuters. They seem to have less bias, their articles are free and many stories at other news outlets are bought from Reuters anyway.

<comment><USER53> There's also AP.org [http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/fronts/RAW?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME](http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/fronts/RAW?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME)

Many news agencies are just editorializing AP news anyway.

<comment><USER54> When I realised that, I stopped considering the majority of "news regurgitation" worth my money.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> With every single news outlet taking polical position lately - it became intolerable to read or find somewhat objective news source.

I don't mind paying <$10 / mo for clean no BS objective and detailed coverage.

<comment><USER56> Is WSJ not a political news source? They're owned by News Corp and at least in the UK that conglomerate is responsible for the most politicised and polarising media.

<comment><USER57> yes, wsj is politicized.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> I think this is great news. I'd love to see WSJ ad free and funded with subscriptions.

I'm not sure I would subscribe, but I want to live in a world where it's possible.

<comment><USER59> I would love to see the NYT completely ad-free. I subscribed for a few months thinking my subscription fee would remove the ads, but that wasn't the case.

I want a good source of news, ad-free, and I'm willing to pay for it. Unfortunately it seems like I'm in the extreme minority.

<comment><USER43> I'd like that, too. However, subscriptions alone—unless raised significantly—won't cover the costs for the NYT (or other paper). Note that the physical paper always carries ads and each paper is paid for—either the cover price or through a subscription.

Hopefully subscriptions _will_ encourage better quality ads, headlines, and stories. Subscriptions do allow for less click bait.

<comment><USER60> Financial Times has nearly no ads.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> It's easier to not read Rupert Murdoch owned content.

</comment><comment><USER62> Another way to get around many paywalls is to change your browser's user agent string to 'Googlebot'. I've got a subscription to the Financial Times, but if there's a one-off article somewhere else that I want to read, that's my go-to method for getting through a paywall. I wonder if their fix will close it off too.

<comment><USER63> Google recommends using reverse DNS lookup to determine if a client claiming to be Googlebot is really from Google – [https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/80553?hl=en](https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/80553?hl=en)

It isn't hard for paywall website operators to use this to block Googlebot fakers. (Rather than doing a reverse DNS lookup on every request, you'd want to maintain a local cache of those results, so you only need to do DNS lookups on new client IPs.)

I believe Cloudflare already does this, and possibly some other CDNs too.

<comment><USER64> DNS lookups are expensive at server scale. Bot traffic ranges from maybe a quarter to 80% of traffic, though googlebot was only a subset of that.

Cheaper to look for Google ASNs.

<comment><USER63> > DNS lookups are expensive at server scale.

Even if you use a distributed in-memory cache to store the DNS lookup results? If User-Agent contains "Googlebot", then check for client IP in cache – if cached as "Google" continue, if cached as "Not Google" display error page. If client IP not in cache, do DNS lookup and then update cache – or, you could even let the request continue if there is a cache miss, and do the DNS lookup on another thread. That might let a Googlebot faker get a few requests through, but they'll be blocked very quickly unless they keep on changing IPs (something your average paywall bypasser will find hard.)

You don't need to consult the cache for every request, only for requests with User-Agent contains "Googlebot". (And any other bots you are choosing to let through your paywall, e.g. Bingbot.)

> Cheaper to look for Google ASNs.

How does one do that as an application developer? Do you need to speak to a BGP server?

<comment><USER64> A local caching DNS server should offer high-speed response. You could build out a tier if necessary. High-capacity, high-speed DNS is not a greenfield.

The genuine Google requests will typically be cached quickly, and given HTTP codes, you could give a nonpermanent error whilst you're adding new entries, so there's that.

The problem is your misses may come from all over. So they're both expensive and (potentially) large.

Even if Googlebot is only a fraction of requests, it's a _large_ fraction, and I've not investigated how many of same are suspect.

For ASN, either the CIDR Report or Routeviews.org offer information. The latter has downloadable tables, in CIDR format, for IP-based lookups. I've long advocated that this be incorporated into routing hardware with reputation data allowing for linespeed determination of traffic acceptability and rate- limiting. Shifts toward VPN and Tor are making this slightly less useful than previously, but it should still be a generally worthwhile option.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> They are 'striving' to hit 3M subscribers? Sounds like they are trying very hard to go right out of business anyway.

</comment><comment><USER66> This article makes no sense.

The Google loophole only works half the time at best.

All articles posted on HN invariably end up with the same discussion:

1) "Behind a paywall. Can't read it."

2) "You need to use the google link"

3) "The google link also gives a paywall."

4) "It worked for me."

5) "Doesn't work for me."

<comment><USER67> If you cant just click on it, its paywalled. Idk why we put up with all this bs for the so so rag that is the WSJ. I just downvote paywalls and move on.

<comment><USER68> >I just downvote paywalls and move on.

I am confused. I always thought that on HN only comments can be downvoted.

Did you mean "flag paywalls and move on"?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> I welcome this move. It will stop their articles being posted here and in other forums, we simply can't read them. While WSJ does have good content, I will not pay for it and this will make sure it doesn't trick me into clicking links and have to close browser.

On other hand, for their business to continue to grow, they need to come up with way to show us that content somehow, maybe not the one they charge for but something that can display excellence.

Good examples would be ArsTechnica and Nautilus.

</comment><comment><USER70> Something people don't appreciate about the culture wars: as left-facing publications paywall, they yield ground to free right-facing ones.

</comment><comment><USER71> So the best offer the WSJ can provide is "All Access Digital" for $198 over 12 months, after which the price is doubled to $396 for the same length of time. That means, eventually, you'll be spending about $33 a month just to read what are mostly AP stories without even the guarantee of an ad-free experience.

How is this attractive?

</comment><comment><USER72> This is why google needs to get into social search. WSJ is basically moving discovery from traditional search to social search. how many searches across social platforms is google completely missing out on? I know for certain topics, i run to twitter to search as opposed to google. buy google already

</comment><comment><USER73> I am just wondering if sites can have affiliated material subscriptions like with hn have free clickthrough for 2$ a month or 5$ a month to all sites from where the articles originate from.

</comment><comment><USER74> My pain at the loss of the Google loophole is tempered by the realization that the WSJ has largely become a propaganda organ of the GOP.

<comment><USER41> Luckily every other major newspaper has you covered then.

<comment><USER57> most of them smeared sanders and fawned over clinton, so that's not a guarantee.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER75> I would pay if I don't fear them. They constantly trying to push a propogenda, and you have to pay for it is indigestible

</comment><comment><USER76> I have found that the best way to get past editorial bias is to aggregate using Realclearpolitics.com

</comment><comment><USER57> after this election i'm even less interested in any newspaper subscriptions than i was before.

they're all biased liars, or at least run stories buy such authors.

</comment><comment><USER64> Archive.is is another frequently viable workaround.

</comment><comment><USER77> >The Journal is a rarity in publishing in that it gets more money from readers than advertising

This is probably a good indicator of quality.

<comment><USER78> It's true that it indicates quality, but I suspect it also indicates the exceptional wealth of WSJ's readership.

</comment></comment><comment><USER79> Fuck the Journal then. Above everything else, I will never reward their bad behavior by paying them money.</comment>


Congress wants to extend the copyright on some sound recordings to 144 years - <AUTHOR> https://boingboing.net/2018/05/18/orrin-fucking-hatch.html <comment><USER2> > _Music Modernization Act_

I don't know if/how it could legally be done, but I'd love to see "cute" names for laws barred from use in Congress. Refer to them all by number not brand names dreamed up by marketing professionals to make the proposed law seem unassailable ( _" Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act"_ aka USA PATRIOT Act).

<comment><USER3> How about having a mechanism to allow the opposition to vote on a secondary name which will be included alongside the primary name in official correspondence?

Yes, it will degrade into "Bill to Save America / Bill to Destroy America" most of the time, but that's the point: it makes the absurdity easy to spot and difficult to ignore.

<comment><USER4> This is actually an amazing idea.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Here's the EFF link to contact your senator:

[https://act.eff.org/action/stop-another-expansion-of- copyrig...](https://act.eff.org/action/stop-another-expansion-of-copyright- tell-the-senate-to-vote-no-on-s-2823)

If you do so, be brief, polite, and state your position, for or against as well as the strength of your position (strongly against, etc.). The staffer will simply aggregate everyone's for/against positions. Verbal abuse or extra emotion is not helpful.

<comment><USER6> I agree that it's not helpful. I do think the verbal abuse and anger comes from the helplessness people feel since they know that these senators are greedy sociopaths that already know bills like this are bad and won't take your voice into consideration.

<comment><USER7> And yet people vote them in.

<comment><USER8> Emotional capture is a thing

Basically a nation state forces people to adopt Stockholm syndrome under the guise of pragmatic acquiescence

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Extending copyright long after the life of an artist is bad economics. Because of the value of future money any revenue from future sales 30+ is essentially worthless now. So it doesn't induce people to create more works of art and entertainment.

<comment><USER10> Is that if the price is constant over that time? Couldn't you just price the product to reflect roughly constant value, giving you linear return over time?

<comment><USER11> Only if demand is relatively constant.

Nothing is less constant than the demand for entertainment, and that's reflected in current pricing.

A new blockbuster movie costs $15 in 3D, $12 in 2D.

A month later it costs $6 at the second-run theater.

Three months later it costs $20 on Blu-Ray for as many times as you want to watch it.

A year later it's included in your HBO subscription.

A year after that you can buy the disc for $10.

Ten years later you can buy the whole series for $30.

Forty years later it gets shown as 3AM filler on a cable network you don't pay for separately.

144 years later there are film scholars who have heard of it.

<comment><USER12> There are notable exceptions. The Bambi DVD, which was created in 1942, is listed on Amazon for $28. In 20 years, it will be $50.

<comment><USER11> Well... the Bambi film came out in 1942. You can buy the Signature Edition DVD+BR for $30, but you can also buy a 2 disc special edition for $7.49, the Anniversary Edition for $15.96, and a Blu-Ray for $14.27. We haven't reached the used market, where eBay can get you a copy for $5, most of which will go to shipping it to you.

<comment><USER13> There won't be a "used market" for media in the future, because media won't be delivered on physical substrate. The publishing interests have been working to eliminate it for years. Between DRM and streaming I think they'll manage to kill used markets.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The main motivation for extending copyright 'till the cows come home is most likely to keep material from becoming public domain and thereby from making sure it doesn't compete with the latest thrash the industry is producing. If their latest auto-tuned plastic one-hit wonder had to compete against a wealth of free-as-in-beer music the risk would be for the latter to become popular among the cool kids. No free music means no risk of that happening.

<comment><USER15> That makes me wonder, is there already something akin to Project Gutenberg but for music rather than books? Would be interesting to browse.

<comment><USER16> I ran into this the other day: [http://radio.publicdomainproject.org/](http://radio.publicdomainproject.org/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> They say that in ancient roman times during a triumph there would be a slave that follows the triumphant general whispering to him "remember you are mortal".

They should have a congressional page follow Orin Hatch whispering in his ear "remember you are not a singer songwriter, your songs all suck, and nobody would ever listen to them if you were not a senator."

<comment><USER18> I very much doubt it's anything to do with musical aspirations and more to do with campaign contributions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> It's there any point in fighting this sort of thing anymore? Shouldn't 'we' just make sure digital copies are available somewhere; like scihub does for scientific papers? It seems to be impossible to reason with the politicians everywhre on this subject, not just in the US, so perhaps direct action is all that is left.

</comment><comment><USER20> I'm completely unsurprised that it's Hatch. At least he's gone at the end of the year.

But if I understand the article, the current state of play is that Hatch introduced this into a bill that had already passed the House. If the Senate passes this, then it's different from the bill that passed the House, so it goes to a reconciliation committee. If the copyright extension survives that, then the modified bill has to pass both the House and the Senate.

So, yes, this is bad, and we need to work against it. But we still have several chances to block it.

</comment><comment> d--b At some point, people need to realize it's not the copyright system that's rotten, it's the incentivization of congressmen...

<comment><USER21> There's no reason it has to be one or the other.

<comment><USER22> But one is the cause of the other.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> What's crazy to me is that this legislation really only needs one person to get it there, because Congress is nothing more than a club of mutual backscratchers. Why focus on real issues when you can spend all your your time acquiring IOUs that will eventually pay off big?

<comment><USER24> And for long term issues like this you can wait around years until you have a favorable Congress to pass these kinds of legislation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> As if the music industry, an industry I dearly love, isn't shit already, now congress wants to make it even worse. I don't see how they justify the current streaming deals or how they are even legal. They certainly aren't fair. It seems that congress is solely concerned with the profits of distributors and couldn't give a rat's ass about the livelihood of all the musicians who create this music. Extending copyright is just another example of how wrong congress is on this issue. At this point, I don't even know what to say. Musicians had a chance to ditch the so-called record labels, yet they seemingly decided to trade them in for even shittier deals with the likes of Spotify and Pandora. And somehow it got codified into law. It's amazing to me that there are still musicians producing music for a living. I do not see this profession lasting much longer as a viable profession, except for the most popular, biggest artists. In other words, these idiotic copyright laws that are supposed to incentivize creation have essentially ended the aspirations of most professional musicians. Ironic that it was claimed that piracy would do this. From a musician's standpoint, however, what is the difference between piracy and Spotify when both generate a revenue stream asymptotical to zero?

</comment><comment><USER26> Called it! [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16966918](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16966918)

<comment><USER27> and apparently highly unlikely :D

[https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/01/hollywood- says-i...](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/01/hollywood-says-its-not- planning-another-copyright-extension-push/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Counterpoint: _No, the CLASSICS Act is not a "term extension"_

[http://www.copyhype.com/2018/05/no-the-classics-act-is- not-a...](http://www.copyhype.com/2018/05/no-the-classics-act-is-not-a-term- extension/)

I'm hardly a fan of copyright, but the arguments that this is not actually an extension seem sound.

<comment><USER29> Hmm. The argument seems to be that pre-1972 sound recordings (only recordings, not compositions) enjoyed protection under a patchwork of state laws and aspects of common law, protection that was arguably unlimited. (It's not clear to me whether these are technically considered copyright protections; I guess not.) Therefore, protecting artists' right to receive royalties from streaming, as long as the performance is still under copyright, isn't technically an extension; in fact the 2067 cutoff could be considered a new limitation.

So I guess my take on this is that I still feel that copyright terms (95 years or longer, depending on certain circumstances [0]) are too long, and I can see that this bill might technically not be making the problem worse.

[0] [https://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ15a.pdf](https://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ15a.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Which recording was this bill written for?

<comment><USER31> Elvis. Then the early beatles stuff. In the next couple decades some actual pop songs are ready to hit public domain.

<comment><USER32> Wait, isn't it life plus 70 years? If so, the only Beatles music that would be public domain any time soon would be if there were songs by Stuart Sutcliffe...

<comment><USER31> Now, but until a few years ago some countries (Canada) only gave 50 years from publication. So the law was changed. Google the "mickey mouse copyright graph" to see what I mean. The US has repeatedly extended its copyright terms coincidentally in time to protect Disney assets.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> >>"The beneficiaries of this monopoly need do nothing to get the benefit of this gift."

That's unfair. There is nothing for free, specially in politics. It's more probable that, the work, has been already done and now they are receiving the prize for their lobbying efforts.

</comment><comment><USER34> The linked Lawrence Lessig op-ed [0] makes reference to a Supreme Court case he argued, where the 70-year version of this law was upheld. Luckily, unlike the sound recordings in question, Supreme Court oral arguments are available to posterity unencumbered, under a legal framework that encourages small, innovative providers like oyez.org to deliver them to the public. Here's the argument in question:

[https://www.oyez.org/cases/2002/01-618](https://www.oyez.org/cases/2002/01-618)

It's fascinating to hear these oral arguments, because you have some of the smartest legal minds in the world making references on the fly to obscure two- hundred-year-old case law, stringing things together in logical ways in much the same way that the most exciting engineering conversations in _our_ line of work involve rapid conversations at a whiteboard, where deep technical knowledge and logic come together to create frameworks and business models that have never existed before.

But while lawyers and justices are engineers in one way, building case-law "frameworks" to improve the citizenry's experience based on a wide range of constitutional knowledge and common sense... lawmakers are engineers in another way, "hacking" those frameworks to see what they can get away with. Sometimes "hacking" is good, but it's entirely dependent on the moral compass of the hacker.

In this specific case, the Supreme Court had argued on the basis of a balance of harm to different types of "progress" as laid out in the Constitution: is it more likely that progress will be economically incentivized if copyright terms are extended retroactively, or if copyright terms are not extended retroactively? At the time, a lot of this was tied up in ensuring consistency with international law. But that's not the case under the 144-year CLASSICS Act now being considered - as Lessig describes in the op-ed, "no other jurisdiction creates a similar right anywhere."

So to me, the balance if the Supreme Court were to review this case would be to consider a streaming music provider's incentives. Do more people hear and become inspired by 1930's public-domain jazz music if:

(a) it's all public domain, anyone can start a startup streaming it; or

(b) it's protected, and large streaming companies like Spotify can invest more money into the propagation of the work because they have exclusive rights to a subset of it, even if the subset that is now "orphaned" is not accessible as it would be in (a)?

It's a complicated question, and as a technologist I would lean towards (a) if harmony with international law is no longer a consideration. But, as I mentioned, legislators are "hackers," and with the Supreme Court unable (by design) to proactively limit their ability to build on the existing precedent that extensions are possible... it all comes down to their moral compass and alignment with their economic incentives.

...and per [1], Orrin Hatch has received $664k over his career from the "TV/Movies/Music" industry.

(IANAL but things like this make me want to be one.)

[0] [https://www.wired.com/story/congress-latest-move-to- extend-c...](https://www.wired.com/story/congress-latest-move-to-extend- copyright-protection-is-misguided/)

[1] [https://www.opensecrets.org/members-of- congress/industries?c...](https://www.opensecrets.org/members-of- congress/industries?cid=N00009869&cycle=CAREER)

<comment><USER29> Here's what the Constitution says: Article I Section 8. Clause 8 – Patent and Copyright Clause of the Constitution. [The Congress shall have power] "To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries."

So, what is a "limited" time? The current trend seems to be toward considering any mathematically finite number of years to be "limited". A hundred, a thousand, a million, a billion, a googol (10 ^ 100), a googolplex (10 ^ 10 ^ 100) — these are all finite numbers.

I would argue that the Constitution was written by and for human beings, and therefore "limited" means "limited on a human timescale", and therefore the upper limit should be about half a mean human lifetime. Certainly, if a typical human can be born after a copyright is established, and live their life and die before it terminates, in their experience that's effectively an unlimited duration.

<comment><USER35> Quoting corrupt congresswoman Mary Bono: "Actually, Sonny wanted the term of copyright protection to last forever. I am informed by staff that such a change would violate the Constitution. I invite all of you to work with me to strengthen our copyright laws in all of the ways available to us. As you know, there is also Jack Valenti's proposal for term to last forever less one day. Perhaps the Committee may look at that next Congress."

They want copyright forever. They have the _entitlement_ to think it should be forever.

Since those in power no longer respect it being for a limited time, I put forth the "exclusive rights" should not be respected either. I do not consider or respect any copyrights held by Mary Bono as a result.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I'm sure this is bill sponsored by some of the finest Congressmen money can buy.

</comment><comment><USER37> It's funny that the senator's party's platform is based around little to no government regulation and healthy capitalistic competition. Here he is granting an artificial monopoly for 7 generations. I'll bet his hands were well greased.

Gotta love corrupt America.

<comment><USER38> Copyright is about the least artificial monopoly that exists. An artificial monopoly is the government sending men with guns to keep bigger stronger men than me off my land. It's a chunk of dirt that existed millions of years before I was born and will continue to exist millions of years after I'm dead, but the government allows me to call it "mine." That's as artificial as it gets, but we call it "natural rights."

A monopoly on creative works--something that didn't exist before the person who created it--is far less artificial. (And granting a monopoly on something that's non-rival, so everyone can have as much of it as they want so long as they're willing to create their own, seems far better than granting one on a scarce natural resource.)

<comment><USER39> I don't accept that for a moment. Monopoly over land predates humans, as any observation of territorial creatures will let you know.

<comment><USER38> Territorial creatures have possession, not property, which is completely different. Bashing someone's head in and taking their property is natural right. Having the State send men with guns in response to that action is a highly artificial deprivation of that natural right.

<comment><USER40> I think you should read about natural rights. The traditional natural righta are life, liberty, and property, which is the opposite of what you describe. And natural rights only exist in an organized society, they are just the limits of what a human should give in its social contract with the society.

<comment><USER28> I'm pretty sure rayiner knows what the concept is, he's criticizing it for misusing the term "natural" and he's replacing it for something that is actually _natural_.

Besides, current property is quite far from the Lockean concept of mixing your own labor and only taking it when "there is enough, and as good, left in common for others", which the original "natural right of property".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> So glad I live in Canada. American corporatist evil seems boundless.

<comment><USER42> Canada signed the TPP which makes copyright 70 years after the death of the creator.

Not exactly paradise.

<comment><USER43> But to be fair, those were provisions demanded by the American negotiators, and have been dropped in the updated CPTPP.</comment></comment></comment>


Sleeping in on weekends linked to health problems - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/11/sleeping-in-on-weekends-linked-to-health-problems/ <comment><USER2> >>The finding suggests that regular sleep shifts could rouse long-term health problems...

Which is why I sleep in every day, not just at weekends. Problem solved!</comment>


Adding "hacker news" to duckduckgo search term shows Hacker News submissions - <AUTHOR>

Like here: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=duckduckgo+hacker+news <comment><USER2> Also ddg has a bang code for hacker news searches: !hn

which submits your search to HN's algolia search site.</comment>


Screen Recording on macOS Catalina - <AUTHOR> https://outklip.com/kb/screen-recording-on-mac-os-catalina/ <comment><USER2> At some point we may need to discuss the cumulative effect of all these ill- considered UI changes on system security.

<comment><USER3> It's a big hassle when you first upgrade or if you find yourself having to reinstall MacOS and are installing a lot of programs at once. In normal use day to day with the occasional security prompt when installing an application, it's less egregious.

<comment><USER4> And then you mistakenly dismiss a prompt, and suddenly "File Desktop could not be opened" (just got this when trying to save from Safari)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> But it is not granted to an app but to chrome. I guess it is a bit dangerous.

For the Yi issue, it problem as it is new. But I guess after awhile it should be ok. You really want to know these permission s and explicitly approve it.

</comment><comment><USER6> Doesn't this grant Chrome itself permission to see the screen - meaning also any website-hosted malware the user happens to pick up?

<comment><AUTHOR> If a website attempts to record screen, Chrome will pop up a modal dialog asking user to select if they want to record entire desktop, application window or tab. The user has to opt in every time before any screen recording takes place.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I normally use QuickTime for screen recording, what does this offer in addition?

<comment><AUTHOR> Outklip is a Chrome extension with a few additions compared to QuickTime:

* It lets you record camera along with screen, so you can be seen in the video. Gives videos a personal touch.

* Videos on Outklip are automatically uploaded to cloud storage, which lets you share them via a link instantly after recording. Saves you the step of uploading the video to gdrive, dropbox, etc. before sharing. The video creator can see who viewed and when.

* An easy to use video editor, which lets you add text labels, remove parts of video, crop region of video, convert to gif, etc.

* A YouTube integration that lets you post videos quickly and easily.

One thing Outklip lacks is the ability to record a selected portion of the screen, which Quicktime supports.

Hope this helps.

<comment><USER8> On this note does anybody happen to know an alternative to [https://recordit.co](https://recordit.co)? It used to be a minimalistic screen recorder, where you'd select a selected area of the screen and it would automatically upload it to a url, both as a video or animated gif.</comment></comment></comment>


BuzzFeed is Watching You - <AUTHOR> http://barker.co.uk/buzzfeediswatching

<comment><USER2> As I pointed out on Twitte(1), this looks like it might be illegal in the UK.

Things such as ethnic background, political opinions, and religious beliefs are classified as sensitive personal data(2)

Such data can only be recorded in specific circumstances and only with explicit consent(3). Such quizzes, from my point of view at least, do not make it clear that you are consenting to the data being collected.

(1) [https://twitter.com/p8952_](https://twitter.com/p8952_)

(2) [https://www.gov.uk/data-protection/the-data-protection- act](https://www.gov.uk/data-protection/the-data-protection-act)

(3) [http://ico.org.uk/for_organisations/data_protection/the_guid...](http://ico.org.uk/for_organisations/data_protection/the_guide/conditions_for_processing)

</comment><comment><USER3> Sensationalist post... It mentions Google Analytics (duh, sadly everyone uses it) and quizzes where users choose to participate. Nothing else. Yes, if you answer things in an quiz, those answers can give the host information about you. Duh!

The site itself (barker.co.uk) lets the following sites spy on its visitors: gravatar.com, googletagmanager.com, google-analytics.com, addthis.com, doubleclick.net, scorecardresearch.com, media6degrees.com, adnxs.com, reson8.com, pippity.com

PS: If the author is reading this, your design makes reading the screenshot impossible on small screen as it makes it tiny and forbids zooming out. :( Oh, and that annoying mail newsletter pop-up further down the page? Can't even read that.

</comment><comment><USER4> Yes, it's about advertising.

"Quizzes are free data mining tools for brands" [http://www.marketplace.org/topics/business/quizzes-are- free-...](http://www.marketplace.org/topics/business/quizzes-are-free-data- mining-tools-brands)

"BuzzFeed Quizzes: What Data Set Do You Belong To?" [http://www.npr.org/2014/03/01/284338543/buzzfeed-quizzes- wha...](http://www.npr.org/2014/03/01/284338543/buzzfeed-quizzes-what-data- set-do-you-belong-to)</comment>


How to Murder a Byzantine Emperor - <AUTHOR> http://www.medievalists.net/2017/06/murder-byzantine-emperor/ <comment><USER2> For all you people that expected something by Leslie Lamport, yesterday I learned something very interesting:

Apparently, after the success of the Byzantine Generals paper, his Paxos paper was written as the description of an ancient Greek democracy. Paxos is not initials as I thought but the name of the island described in the paper. His editor didn't like the humor and didn't publish, and the paper was only published years later, after it reached some other researchers and had a lot of impact on the field, in the guise of a "recently rediscovered ancient manuscript".

[http://lamport.azurewebsites.net/pubs/pubs.html#lamport- paxo...](http://lamport.azurewebsites.net/pubs/pubs.html#lamport-paxos)

<comment><USER3> Actually, I was expecting a post by James Mickens.

<comment><USER4> I logged in to post exactly this. How great would be a piece by Mickens with that title?

For all HN readers that don't know Mickens yet: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6905536](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6905536)

<comment><USER5> And its link expired, but it's now here: [https://www.usenix.org/system/files/login- logout_1305_micken...](https://www.usenix.org/system/files/login- logout_1305_mickens.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> In a composition of some days, in a perusal of some hours, six hundred years have rolled away, and the duration of a life or reign is contracted to a fleeting moment: the grave is ever beside the throne: the success of a criminal is almost instantly followed by the loss of his prize and our immortal reason survives and disdains the sixty phantoms of kings who have passed before our eyes, and faintly dwell on our remembrance. The observation that, in every age and climate, ambition has prevailed with the same commanding energy, may abate the surprise of a philosopher: but while he condemns the vanity, he may search the motive, of this universal desire to obtain and hold the sceptre of dominion.

...I shall not descant on the vulgar topics of the misery of kings; but I may surely observe, that their condition, of all others, is the most pregnant with fear, and the least susceptible of hope.

\-- Edward Gibbon, The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire

<comment><USER7> Man, I can never understand stuff written like this.

<comment><USER6> My translation to casual modern English:

In just a few days of writing - a few hours of reading - six hundred years have passed, and the life or reign of a king seems but an instant. Death is ever present, and the criminal who seizes the throne immediately loses it. From our remote position we look down on the rapid passing of sixty dead kings, who together barely make an impression on us. We might be surprised at their ambition for a throne that seems to bring nothing but death. But that surprise is lessened by the fact that the ambitious turn up everywhere and always. Nonetheless we might wonder why there is this constant desire to rule.

...I won't bore you with a long discussion of how miserable it is to be king, but it's clear that they are pretty miserable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> In Umberto Eco's "Baudolino" there's another darkly humorous account of a murdered Byzantine emperor. In 1185, an adviser to emperor Andronicus convinces him to kill Isaac Angelus ostensibly because of disloyalty but in actuality to satisfy some personal grudge, but Isaac ends up fighting back, becoming the new emperor and letting a mob brutally kill Andronicus. It's unclear whether Isaac even planned to become the emperor in the first place.

</comment><comment><USER9> As an interesting aside, Ottoman tradition forbade shedding the blood of kin, so the usual route was strangulation of the emperor if he was a relative.

<comment><USER10> Perhaps I misunderstand the history, but how is an Ottoman tradition relevant to the Byzantines?

<comment><USER9> The overly simple answer is Romans-->Byzantines-->Ottomans.

Rome is at one point divided into two empires, West and East.

West Empire collapse, but East Empire keeps going with its capital at Constantinople. East Empire becomes the Byzantine Empire now.

East Empire actually ALMOST reunites with the West, and Justinian's top general, Belisarius, actually captures Rome in the mid 500's. He fails to hold the Italian peninsula for a variety of reasons, and Western Europe slips away.

The Turkish Empire then begins rising around the 1300's, one of many many trends driven by the Mongols and their invasions.

In the 1440s the Turkish Empire (the Ottomans basically), wipe out the kingdoms of Eastern Europe. Eastern Europe actually has a really rich history but unfortunately has had the thankless task of saving Europe over and over by being a "bullet sponge" for the powers on either side.

In 1453 the Ottomans capture Constantinople and begin their empire.

By the 1800s the empire falls into disrepair, and is now regarded as the "sick man of Europe". This is further compounded by choosing the wrong side in World War I. At the end of the war the Ottoman empire is dissolved by various treaties.

This leaves the remaining core of Turkey. Interestingly it also puts Iraq, Iran, and Palestine into the hands of the British, beginning a long road to the revolution in Iran, the various Israeli / Palestinian negotiations, and eventually, the war in Iraq.

TL;DR: Basically you can trace the fall of the Roman empire in the 500's to ISIS today somewhat simply.

<comment><USER10> Sure, I understood that. My interest was that given the knowledge that the Byzantines and Ottomans were enemies and then the Ottomans conquered the entire region, what would be the relevance of an Ottoman tradition to assassination of a Byzantine emperor? Was there some mixing of cultures at some point to the extent that strangulation was adopted in Byzantium? Now that I've re-read the great grand parent post, I assume that it was meant as an aside about Ottoman emperors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> All the accounts seem to indicate the emperor's wife was involved or at least somewhat to blame.

Wonder if this is the norm in kingly assassinations, a coincidence that they were chosen or a tendency of ancient schoolers to ascribe bad events to women.

<comment><USER12> Blaming the wife/mother/Livia is an ancient Roman tradition, so I wouldn't be surprised by the latter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is funny to read, but please take it with a grain of salt. For instance, medievalist.net's story of Leo's murder is based on a single source, John Skylitzes, who lived more than two centuries after the events (circa 1040-1100, when Leo's death was in 820).

Other historians have serious doubts on the veracity of this story. By crossing with other sources, though none is as detailed as Skylitzes' romantic prose, they try to distinguish the (probable) facts from the pure inventions (and the reality-inspired inventions). See "The Conspiracy of Michael Traulos and the Assassination of Leo V: History and Fiction", Dmitry Afinogenov, 2001 : the paranoia of King Leo seems more realistic than a conspiracy by Michael.

It's historians hard work to separate the fiction from the facts, and to learn even from the fiction. One can try the same today: most modern media are less emphatic than John Skylitzes, but they can't always be right and neutral. Yet it's often very hard and time-consuming to find when a reporter stated a fact and when he exaggerated or wrote what he wished or was told.

</comment><comment><USER14> Man this makes me want to play Crusader Kings II again

<comment><USER15> Would be a _shame_ if something, ehhhh, untoward befell your liege? During his routine walk on the balcony?

</comment></comment><comment> bjelkeman-again It was interesting to see that the new emperors only seemed to be emperores for a few years, six-seven. One wonders if they where murdered next.

<comment><USER16> _I, Fry, who drank Bont the Viscous, who drank Ungo the Moist, who guzzled Zorn the Stagnant ... who slurped Hudge the Dewy, who enjoyed a soup composed principally of Throm the Chunky, do solemnly swear to rule with honour and insanity-- Uh, integrity!_

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> With the help of traitor generals. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byzantine_fault_tolerance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byzantine_fault_tolerance)

<comment><USER18> Assuming more than 1/3 are traitors

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I was expecting something about distributed systems. Still interesting though

<comment><USER20> Indeed, it would be the perfect title for such research, if there is a way to to solve it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> These stories seem almost as implausible as those in the mainstream media, but I'm starting to understand where the term "Byzantine" comes from.

</comment><comment><USER22> Related:

12 byzantine emperors is a great podcast.

<comment><USER23> It's...okay. I think Brownworth adopts way too much of a great man model that oversimplifies the sweep of history. The podcast provides an OK outline, but the History of Byzantium is far deeper and holistic. Robin captures a lot of the drama of events like the Nika Revolt and the outbreak of the Justinian Plague with aplomb too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> For all you hungry people- Game of Thrones is back Jul 16th [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/04/arts/television/game- of-t...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/04/arts/television/game-of-thrones- is-back-heres-where-we-left-off.html)

<comment><USER25> Semi-related, and with all due props to GOT: Check out the first couple of episodes of Michael Wood's The Story of China on PBS. The Westeros plotters were pikers compared to the real history of Chinese dynasties.

[http://www.pbs.org/story-china/home/](http://www.pbs.org/story-china/home/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I would guess that getting murdered counts as "death by natural causes" in that demographic.

</comment><comment><USER27> This is a nice correction for traditionalists who think modern world is a vast decline from the past.

</comment><comment><USER28> I totally expected this to be a subtle viral marketing piece for Crusader Kings II, haha ;)</comment>


Whiteout: end to end encrypted mails - <AUTHOR> http://tuxdiary.com/2015/02/09/whiteout/

<comment><USER2> The concern I have with all these OpenPGP based attempts to secure email is the lack of forward secrecy.</comment>


Tech Talent: How the UK lost six potential titans - m-i-l http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-37373937 <comment><USER3> As a Software Engineer in London I have noticed a gigantic push from recruiters to get some talent to move to Berlin after Brexit.

The sad thing is I now consider it a net gain to move, whereas before London was the best place to live.

<comment><USER4> Bullshit, London hasn't been a good place to live in at least 20 years. You just hung around because you were used to it. London as good things (lots of money, lots of entrepreneurial people), but being "nice to live" isn't one of them.

<comment><USER5> Would you mind unpacking that further? I love living in London and would be keen to hear your grievances.

<comment><USER4> I know that some of these can be sorted by having an obscene amount of money... which I don't.

\- insane rent. i'm living in a single bedroom

\- poor quality of houses. i can hear the steps of my flatmates outside my rooms

\- crowded: neighbourhood in london are either shit, or if they're not they're so crowded you can't do anything. you go to a coffee shop and every seat is taken or if it's not you have to seat between two guys. on the street you can barely walk, bump into people all the time, etc

\- travel time: this just sucks my soul away. there is no casual meeting someone, meeting someone is always a taxing excursion.

\- Here's one that I've never seen mentioned: is it just me, or is there an abnormally high amount of poserism in London? It's fucking posers everywhere, trying to show you how they know THE BEST place to eat THE BEST food and drink THE BEST wine. Who gives a shit? Is your life so uninteresting that you spend it thinking about food?

sigh. After brexit I've started learning german, so maybe I'll try Berlin next.

<comment><USER6> > "\- Here's one that I've never seen mentioned: is it just me, or is there an > abnormally high amount of poserism in London? It's fucking posers > everywhere, trying to show you how they know THE BEST place to eat THE BEST > food and drink THE BEST wine. Who gives a shit? Is your life so > uninteresting that you spend it thinking about food?"

I can see your other points - but this one seems kind of strange. I've not lived many places, but I'm pretty sure everywhere has people talking about the best restaurants, breweries, bars, etc. It's a part of culture - food and drink! It's a thing literally every human partakes in.

Beyond that - is your life so full of engagement and interest that you literally don't think about food? That just seems pretty exceptional to me. Not trying to judge - there's a reason that products like Soylent exist! Some people legitimately don't care, and I get that. But let other people enjoy whatever they want to - and try not to get upset if they share that with you (:

<comment><USER4> No, it's not full of engagement, I'm definitely not saying I have a nice life, at all. But I don't think about food, no. Very very uninteresting. And I can understand someone whose mentality is "you have to eat, might as well make it tasty". But some people it seems have nothing else in their life. And it's not just their food, it's also making sure that you know about their food. It can't be my imagination that people do this. You just need to look at instagram to see it's full of pictures that people take of their food. Ok, so maybe it's not specific to London, maybe it's just my bitterness.

<comment><USER6> Hah, I think I see where you're coming from. It's definitely universal - <AUTHOR> people who have to put down what you're eating or doing because they did something SO MUCH BETTER last weekend or whatever.

Those people suck. People who pull out their phones to take a picture of their food rather than their company tend to be showing where their interest lies. Meh.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Sorry, but Sinclair was _never_ a potential titan. His problem was always he was happy to shave off 50% of the capability to save 10% of the cost. Tho' this is a mentality that is all too common in the UK - just look at our defence procurement.

A _real_ story would be that of De Havilland and the Comet airliner - <USER2> and Airbus should never have existed, the UK had that market sewn up until the government of the day blew it...

<comment><USER8> Shaving cost was a good goal when computers were still too expensive for the average home though. Another notable one was what could have been an IBM competitor: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LEO_(computer)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LEO_\(computer\)) .

Britain was a great innovator back when individual inventors could manage a project, they never seemed to transition into corporate innovation though.

<comment><USER7> FTA:

 _But the firm got unstuck when it tried to enter the business market. Its Sinclair QL was designed to outperform IBM 's PCs, but its tape-based Microdrive storage was unreliable and the British company did not offer the kind of telephone support the corporate sector required._

His failure wasn't in terms of price but of price/performance.

<comment><USER9> And the QL didn't have a real business quality keyboard. It was just cheap and hard plastic keys.

It was too expensive for a home computer and too much of a toy for a business: between two chairs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I am surprised it does not mention Psion. With better management we could had iphone 10 years earlier. Psion Series 5 has no replacement even after 19 years (keyboard, display, battery life..)

<comment><USER11> I'd say most netbooks or tablets replaced it for all of those things now... But you're right that Psion were super innovative. More important than their series 5 hardware was the operating system. EPOC was a 32bit embedded OS long before anyone else was doing them. It was nice to program for and dealt with multiprogram which even the first iPhones didn't think about.

<comment><USER12> 32-bit EPOC became very popular (for a while) as Symbian, but the "nice to program for" aspect was definitely lost in Symbian's heavy-handed multi-vendor committee approach to software design.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm not English, I don't live in the UK, but the approach and wording in this article bothers me.

Are these companies "sell outs" because they sold, or because they sold to foreign companies?

Shouldn't they be lauded as successes for having been sold in the first place? Is this part of the problem that the root of the article (as I see it) is actually talking about?

<comment><USER14> The issue is that these companies were doing really well, got acquired as a result, but then mostly shrivelled to nothing. Let's hope ARM doesn't get cursed that way...

<comment><USER15> Well, no, they weren't. With the exception of ARM that genuinely is doing very well, quite a few of the others sold out because they weren't doing well. In the case of SwiftKey it sounds like they were losing money and decided to double down on it by giving it away for free and then charging for things nobody cared about!

SwiftKey's problem is that they had a tiny window of time after inventing it where they could have charged lots of money to power users before the Android team just included their invention in the core product. Apparently they were unable to capitalise on that time and ended up selling to Microsoft who now gets to fund their loss-making product. Although I loved SwiftKey as a product, business wise I'm not sure that's a loss for the UK.

<comment><USER14> SwiftKey is not in the same league as the others apparently, but I didn't know that much about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Softbank is a cellular phone company not a competitor to ARM... And Softbank said it will double head count and keep the offices in the UK.

I guess any sell out is termed "lost".

</comment><comment><USER17> They missed Imagination[1], which seems to be suffering from (allegedly) poor management decisions at the moment, but is the hardware behind the graphics in many mobile phones.

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

<comment><USER7> The BBC is funny like that, they latch onto companies that they worship (e.g. Apple, Google, ARM, Flickr) and ignore all the others in the same sector. I suspect they see no further than the products their own staff use, or more cynically, individuals there are positioning themselves for lucrative job offers they hope will come rolling in...

<comment><USER18> I think it's possibly that the journalists don't actually know the sector beyond the big "flashy" names, like ARM or Sinclair.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> More to come... Skype though wasn't strictly UK, has a huge engineering office in London. Microsoft just announce it will close it.

Some of the losses are inevitable. Even in San Francisco Bay Area a lot of titans has died/been acquired. The most fundamental metric is net new titans/value created. New Startups - old titans that are winding dow.

</comment><comment><USER20> I think they missed the most of important of all, DeepMind.

<comment><USER21> Was DeepMind 'lost'? It was bought by Google, but it's stayed in the UK (even if it might have made more sense to be folded into Google Brain) and iirc the founders are very keen that it stay in London.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Autonomy being on the list is a little weird - given that it appears to have been all smoke and mirrors.

</comment><comment> guard-of-terra Last.fm is still an amazing resource thanks to its listening statistics that I participate in.

</comment><comment><USER23> As an EVE player this headline made me feel a bit uneasy.

<comment><USER24> I doubt they would be pimp fit though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Unfortunately the UK couldn't innovate faster than others could steal

</comment><comment><USER26> I dunno, if the UK can pull off smaller government then they might continue to be attractive to businesses chafing from the high regulations and taxes of the EU.

<comment><USER27> The EU doesn't control member country tax rates and most of its regulations are to harmonise products sold within the market - ie products would have to meet the regulations to be sold in the block no matter whether they are produced inside or outside the EU.

Other regulations affecting things like working hours or environment wouldn't necessarily be great for the UK to cut back on. These are designed to prevent beggar-thy-neighbour policies that turn into a race to the bottom in a zero sum game. It's better for everyone to agree to the same rules here, game theoretically.

And less freedom to hire people from the continent would just push up labour costs.

So personally I don't think there's any upside from Brexit here. That would have to come from somewhere entirely hypothetical, like significantly better trade deals than the EU currently has.

<comment><USER15> The EU very much wants to control member state tax rates, hence the recent Apple case and the VAT changes they made.

There are lots of EU regulations that are basically pointless busywork. Look at the cookie rules. Huge cost and expense to implement millions of warnings, no benefit, and their plan is to double down on them.

<comment><USER27> They didn't make VAT changes in the Irish case. They ruled that Ireland didn't apply its own laws fairly and with equal treatment. It's a highly contentious issue and is being appealed by Ireland, particularly since it's retrospective and involves a massive clawback. It makes the rule of law look shaky in Ireland. It's not likely to stand as is for that reason alone, IMO.

Some countries - particularly ones with larger economies - want to stop smaller economies undercutting their tax bases. The current laws mean that profits get taxed in the country where the company doing the sales is based. There is some talk of changing this so that the profit is more balanced based on where the sales are targeted. I think this is fair; this again comes under beggar-thy-neighbour common rules.

<comment><USER15> My sentence was perhaps overly hard to parse. It was a list of two things, related only by the general area of tax. Not that the Irish case is VAT related. Indeed it's not.

I was talking about the change to EU wide VAT rules that force sellers to charge VAT at the buyer rate not the seller rate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> It will be interesting to see how quickly this post will disappear from the front page of HN ( especially when SF wakes up)

Edit: My comment is relevant. How relevant is the UK tech scene in the world ? one measure would be HN ranking during the day.

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An Overview of the Spring System (1994) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.cs.fsu.edu/~awang/courses/cop5611_s2004/spring.pdf <comment><USER2> This was initially driven as a joint attempt by Sun and AT&T to "merge" the two strains of a Unix at the time, while introducing cutting edge features (object orientation, distributed computing, ability to run multiple OS) [0]. A "1.1" version of the "Spring Research Distribution" was available from Sun for a fee [1].

I don't suppose anybody here has a copy? I can't find any legitimate way to procure a copy. Did Oracle get this as part of their acquisition? What were the terms of the original license? Would love to know.

[0]. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spring_(operating_system)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spring_\(operating_system\))

[1]. [https://www.cs.albany.edu/~sdc/CSI400/Resources/comp.os.rese...](https://www.cs.albany.edu/~sdc/CSI400/Resources/comp.os.research.FAQ/FAQ-2.html#Distributed- systems-and-microkernels)

<comment><USER3> I would not say this is a fair interpretation of events.

At Sun, the effort to merge BSD and System V was called the "lulu" project and the end result was System V release 4 from AT&T and Solaris 2 from Sun. I was part of that effort and responsible for the transport independent RPC piece amongst others.

The Spring project was, in my opinion, an aspirational project to re-imagine UNIX according to Mike Powell and others at Sun, as opposed to Plan 9 which was re-imagining UNIX according to Rob Pike and others at the Computer Science Research Center (CSRC) of Bell Labs.

There were interesting rivalries in AT&T about who "owned" UNIX. On one side was the staff at CSRC who had invented it, and on the other side was Murray Hill which had commercialized it. For nearly identical reasoning, AT&T would not let the CSRC folks call their new OS UNIX, and Sun would not let the Spring folks call their new OS SunOS. Both groups had, at their core, some of the original architects of the OS that their respective company had become known for.

<comment><AUTHOR> So glad to see you in this thread; thanks for sharing! I've considered mailing you about Spring & Sun before (among other things: Blekko is also fascinating given how impressive it was, how much talent it had behind it, and then how it just sort of got subsumed/murdered into/by IBM); it's such an interesting project! You wouldn't happen to have a copy or know anyone who might have one, would you?

<comment><USER3> You might consider putting a contact email in your profile.

<comment><AUTHOR> Shot you a message to the one in yours, though it might have gotten sent to spam.

I'd throw a contact address up on my HN profile if I used a provider with something resembling decent spam-filtering, but I don't presently and I don't really use mail enough to justify switching.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google Might Be Uploading Your Photos Without Your Knowledge - <AUTHOR> http://sfist.com/2015/07/11/google_pictures_uploading.php

<comment><USER2> "Hate-tweet"? Since when did mild criticism (and valid such IMHO) become classified as hate?</comment>


Redesigning the Office App Icons to Embrace a New World of Work - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/microsoft-design/redesigning-the-office-app-icons-to-embrace-a-new-world-of-work-91d72608ee8f <comment><USER2> I mostly hate self-congratulatory redesign blogs, please don't tell me what "inspired" you to redesign an icon that's about a centimeter across.

My main peeve here though is that this is just Material Design. The multi- layer icons with heavy use of shadows. The more rounded look, the color palette choices. Microsoft's Metro/Modern design stood out from it's competitors, and this does not.</comment>


Ask HN: Which Vim plugins / config line can you not live without? - <AUTHOR>

I'm sure most of us know about the following plugins, so please don't include these in your response.
- SuperTab
- NerdTREE
- Surround
- MatchIT
- Snipmate
- NerdCommenter / TComment
- Ack
- Bufexplorer
- Ctrl-P / Command-T
- Syntastic
- Fugitive
A simple description of the plugin and how you use it would be great. Always willing to improve my toolset :)
PS: I've heard a LOT of good things about EasyMotion and Gundo plugins, but haven't really given them a fair shot. If anyone uses them, do let us know. <comment><USER2> For those writing a lot of HTML: ZenCoding

<http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=2981>

<comment><AUTHOR> On a related note, has anyone tried <https://github.com/hayaku/hayaku> (available for Sublime Text 2 only at this time)? How does it compare to ZenCoding?

<comment><USER3> You should now use Emmet <http://docs.emmet.io/>, since it's like ZenCoding 2.0. As for Hayaku, it's CSS oriented and does a great job.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> SudoEdit AutoComplPop TagList

btw, you don't wanna miss repeat.vim if you stick with surround.</comment>


A Quantum Network Flow Puzzle - <AUTHOR> http://strilanc.com/quantum/2015/05/01/Quantum-Network-Flow-Puzzle.html

<comment><USER2> The page doesn't render very well for me, so it's hard to tell what's going on. There's lots of "[Math Processing Error]" garbage.

Here's how I'd approach solving it. First, I'd split it into two subproblems, each sending two bits.

The first two bits are straightforward. B makes a Bell pair and sends half to A and half to Sender. A forwards its entangled qubit directly to the receiver. Sender superdense codes two bits and sends the resulting qubit to the receiver via C. The receiver decodes the two bits the usual way. This costs one qubit each on the B->A, A->Receiver, B->Sender, Sender->C, and C->Receiver links.

Now for the other two bits. B generates a Bell pair and sends half to C via A and half to Sender. Sender superdense codes the remaining two bits and sends the coded qubit to C. C decodes the two bits. Receiver generates a Bell pair, keeps half, and sends half to C via A. C superdense codes the two bits it just decoded into the entangled qubit it got from Receiver and sends the coded qubit to Receiver. Receiver decodes it. This sends one qubit each B->A, B->Sender, Sender->C, C->Receiver, and Receiver->A as well as two qubits A->C.

Adding it up, this uses exactly the allowed capacity on all links. Problem solved using standard techniques.

Edit: fixed a typo

<comment><AUTHOR> Yup, that solution also works. I completely missed it. It's even a bit more flexible, in that the A-to-Receiver edge could be flipped or turned into a broadcast-from-third-party without breaking the solution.

I did generate the puzzle by trying to find a network that forced the superdense bell pair coding + cleanup, so it's a bit embarassing that there's another solution. Maybe it's just always possible to flip the cleanup into an intermediate decoding and re-encoding.

As for the rendering: do you use noscript? The latex is rendered with mathjax. I put a note at the top of the page when scripts are disabled... but it might fail to show up in some cases. Knowing those cases would be useful (maybe if you unblocked the blog but not the mathjax cdn?).

<comment><USER2> I'm using plain ol' Firefox on Linux. I just refreshed and it rendered correctly. Go figure.

I'll try to find some time this afternoon to re-read the flat coding thing now that the math is there. But I'm a bit confused -- if I have a one-qubit state that's restricted to the set of states that are linear combinations of ±|0> ± |1>, then are only two such states up to global phase, and those states are orthogonal, so I can just measure without loss and treat it as a classical bit. Am I missing something?

It's a neat puzzle, though, and I imagine that there are variants with very interesting solutions.

<comment><AUTHOR> > _if I have a one-qubit state that 's restricted to the set of states that > are linear combinations of ±|0> ± |1>, then are only two such states up to > global phase, and those states are orthogonal, so I can just measure without > loss and treat it as a classical bit. Am I missing something?_

It's not a one-qubit state limited to ±|0> ± |1>, it's a two-qubit state limited to a|00> \+ b|01> \+ c|10> d|11> where a^2+b^2+c^2+d^2 = 1 and a,b,c,d are real. Also the state can be entangled with other qubits, as long the non-180-degree phase information is not between the various a's, b's, c's, and d's.

For example, if you have the state (1/2 |000> \- 1/sqrt(2) |010> \+ i/2 |101>)(|00> \+ |11>), then you can copy the first two qubits into the bell pair on one side then pull them out on the receiving side to end up in the state 1/2 |00000> \- 1/sqrt(2) |01001> \+ i/sqrt(2) |10110>. E.g. see this circuit doing just that: [http://i.imgur.com/wlcVAZG.png](http://i.imgur.com/wlcVAZG.png)

Glad you liked the puzzle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm not even going to pretend I understood any of that

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a pretty common comment. Unfortunately, explaining the background details turns any quantum computing post into an "intro to quantum computing" post.

My current compromise is to just slip in links to the video series Quantum Computing for the Determined [1] and/or a good textbook with a free version available [2], so people at least have the opportunity to get a toe-hold (if they want).

1: [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL1826E60FD05B44E4](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL1826E60FD05B44E4)

2: [http://www.johnboccio.com/research/quantum/notes/QC10th.pdf](http://www.johnboccio.com/research/quantum/notes/QC10th.pdf)</comment></comment>


New EU Proposals Seek to End Anonymous Bitcoin Trading - <AUTHOR> https://news.bitcoin.com/eu-end-anonymous-bitcoin/ <comment><USER2> This proposal is moot. Whether or not it's a good idea, the EU is technically unable to effectively regulate bitcoin. Sure, you can place rules on exchanges, but since anyone with bitcoin can send it to any other person, identified only by one of an infinite number of wallet IDs, the EU will never be able to stop peer-to-peer bitcoin sales.

<comment><USER3> Just because it's impossible to effectively regulate in all circumstances doesn't mean that it cannot be effectively regulated in many or most circumstances.

You can compare this to most laws - people have the capability to break the law, but sufficient enforcement reduces the incentives to do so to the extent that for many classes of crime the number of people who commit them is pretty small.

In particular, if all businesses dealing with bitcoins are required to KYC and large transfers are tracked and prosecuted where possible, then there probably would not be a huge amount of anonymous transfer.

<comment><USER4> > In particular, if all businesses dealing with bitcoins are required to KYC > and large transfers are tracked and prosecuted where possible, then there > probably would not be a huge amount of anonymous transfer.

Or, more likely, a huge number of bitcoin businesses will go where these laws don't exist and interact with other services to get in.

I've managed to avoid any exchange that follows KYC practices with no issue so far.

<comment><USER3> > I've managed to avoid any exchange that follows KYC practices with no issue > so far.

That's because no-one has made a serious effort to regulate this so far. I'm not arguing that there wouldn't be grey market bitcoin exchanges operating on a pirate-bay like basis, just that a serious attempt at regulating would have a serious effect on how bitcoin is used.

This is even leaving aside ideas where a government could declare particular bitcoins to have been involved in illegal trading and claim the right to confiscate them from anyone under their jurisdiction.

I imagine that this would take the same form as money laundering regulation, which while not perfect still has a massive effect on how easy it is to launder money.

<comment><USER4> > That's because no-one has made a serious effort to regulate this so far.

Some places certainly have, it's just that you'd basically need a global effort between many countries to do so to have any real effect. Until then most of these regulations are just a joke.

<comment><USER5> While there is a bit of truth to that bitcoin will inevitably need to interact with the real world, so it needs to be convertible into other currencies. This will in the end require interaction with regulated institutions. If this were to be implemented at the bank level it would become difficult (not impossible) to get around. The way the US went after poker sites will probably be the model. While it was not impossible for US citizens to play online poker there were enough barriers that most opted not to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Wonder how long it will take before they realize that current tax system won't last in the long run. Right now only rich have the resources to offshore the profits, but technology will drive the cost down.

<comment><USER7> They've done a pretty good job of closing offshore havens.

<comment><USER8> And they don't even need to close them. They can just request that data be shared with other countries for the purpose of identifying tax avoidance.

This idea that the future will consist of everyone using tax havens is ridiculous. Most ordinary people are scared of the taxation impacts of using them (and rightly so).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I welcome this. It's ridiculous that we have strict regulation on other monetary instruments but for some reason not for crypto currencies.

<comment><USER10> The only reason the EU haven't already got regulation in place is because BTC popped up out of nowhere in a relatively short space of time and regulation takes time to implement.

That to one side - why do you want strict regulation on cryptos? What are your concerns?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Good.

Bitcoin has been around for YEARS. It is not going to gain broad acceptance.

Bitcoin right now is like the stock market before the Securities and Exchange Commission was created in 1934, due to the fallout from all the fraud that led to the Great Depression.

A regulated currency market has both pros and cons; no question about it. But consider this:

\- A decree comes down: "From this point forward, bitcoin users can no longer use any other currency. All transactions, savings accounts, etc. will have to be bitcoin-based."

Assume, hypothetically, that this could be enforced.

Would you agree to stop using any non-bitcoin store of value?

If you say "no, I'd still want to be able to use non-bitcoin currencies"

.....then you need to take a look at that. Because it proves that bitcoin fails to perform some type of monetary function for you.

</comment><comment><USER12> Having read all the comments below, it appears to me that people most fervently pro-bitcoin are the kind of people who convince people towards the other directions with their arguments. Whatever merits cryptocurrency might have, "we need no goddamn taxes or governmetn" is likely NOT bound to convince people FOR bitcoin etc.

</comment><comment><USER13> I am still trying to find legitimate reason why someone will want anonymous pay. Bitcoin is almost always associated with underground markets, ransomware, money laundering, etc.

Can someone tell me a legitimate reason why I need anonymous cryptocurrency? Or what is used for?

<comment><USER14> Yes, here are four reasons that only took a minute of contemplation:

(1) Because not all masters are benevolent

(2) Because it removes the possibility of charge backs

(3) Because not everyone enjoys being monitored by companies and/or governments (foreign or otherwise)

(4) Underground markets are only "underground" because of laws. If a society outlaws birth control and abortions, but a women wants an abortion she probably wants an alternative (I.e. something an underground market with provide). An anonymous crypocurrancy (or cash) is the easiest way to do this. If it's not a crypocurrancy or cash, they can always trade goods. So in all honesty, there's no way to stop it.

There may even be other reasons, but it seems pretty obvious it can inherently good to have.

<comment><USER15> > Because not everyone enjoys being monitored by companies and/or governments > (foreign or otherwise)

So the solution to that is publishing all your transactions to a public ledger?

(yes I know there are "tumblers" etc, but these come with operational and practical issues)

<comment><USER16> Keep in mind the amount of monetization that occurs around purchase data in the present system. The ease with which you can associate transactions to real identities isn't even comparable.

<comment><USER8> What monetisation ?

The bank isn't authorised to provide that information to third parties.

<comment><USER16> Are you confusing the spirit of the law with the letter of the law? Or do you really think that banks aren't selling your transaction data?

[http://www.cardlytics.com/technology/](http://www.cardlytics.com/technology/)

Despite the "firewall" between the bank and the marketers, information is being sold - it just requires an extra step on the part of the marketers (leaving the banks legally in the clear).</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


We Fixed an Issue with Our Primary Forecast's Calculation of Candidate Strength - <AUTHOR> https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/we-fixed-a-mistake-in-how-our-primary-forecast-was-calculating-candidates-demographic-strengths/ <comment><AUTHOR> This sort of forthrightness is why I choose to consume certain types of news from fivethirtyeight above the alternatives.</comment>


Exercise Bike Startup Peleton Seeks $1.2Bn Valuation - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-03-10/stationary-bike-startup-peloton-seeks-unicorn-valuation <comment><USER2> I can well understand the health benefits of pedaling a regular bicycle or a stationary bike. And maybe "spinning classes" provide people with the structure and extra social benefits that will help motivate them to stick with it. But my reaction to the Peloton commercial that has been shown so frequently on US TV in recent months has been WTF???

I just don't get it.

</comment><comment><USER3> What valuation did Bowflex startup seek</comment>


Children of recent immigrants lead America's scientific competitions - <AUTHOR> http://www.mercurynews.com/health/ci_18124146?source=rss&nclick_check=1

<comment><AUTHOR> wrt. meme "what happens to Asian overachievers when tests end" - the Intel's competition isn't a "test":

>But the largest number of Intel finalists -- 16 -- had parents who hailed from China. Ten were born to Indian parents.

from <http://www.mercurynews.com/science/ci_17209589?source=pkg> :

>...Liu explained how he used computer algorithms to identify immune system pathways activated during organ transplant rejection.

Also interesting side effect of H1B, may be even more important than the original H1B itself:

>The results are evident in Silicon Valley classrooms: Children of immigrant parents, particularly those with skills-based H-1B visas, are abundant in the top tiers of academia.</comment>


Show HN: Pond.JS – JavaScript assembler/vm - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/MichaelBurge/pond.js <comment><AUTHOR> I wrote this a while back to teach myself Javascript. It's supposed to be reminiscent of Tierra or Nanopond from the '90s or early 2000s.

I think my instruction set was poorly chosen, because the results aren't as interesting as those older ones.</comment>


San Diego: Join us for Hacker News meetup #14 (Fri 2/25) - <AUTHOR> http://anyvite.com/hkbggjx8u1

<comment><AUTHOR> Last month we had over 40 people attend. Can we top that this time? Let's find out! (Please RSVP by clicking on the link above so we can tell our friendly coffee shop owner exactly how many people are taking over his space Friday night!)

Want to be notified of future San Diego tech/hacker events? Join our Google group: <http://groups.google.com/group/sd-hackernews> (low volume; mostly announcements)

<comment><USER2> And just to add the SDHN wiki page <http://bit.ly/sdhackernews>

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I am a 7 out of 10 sure I will be there.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'll be out of town. Again. :(</comment>


Self-made men, debunked  - <AUTHOR> http://www.salon.com/2012/04/30/self_made_men_debunked_salpart/ <comment><USER2> This article (and presumably the underlying book) seems to be defining "self- made" in an odd way - anyone who purchased services is not self-made.

I.e., if a person bought and paid for an education, roads or IP protection, they are not self made. Similarly, I suppose (the article doesn't follow it's own logic), if a person buys AWS services they aren't self-made.

I wouldn't describe the article so much as a "debunking" as a "redefinition". If you adopt an extremely restrictive definition of a term, then no real world objects may meet the definition of the term. So what?

<comment><USER3> Personally I'd agree with your definition, that anyone who participates in an economy cannot, by definition, be self-made, but the article seems to be taking a slightly different tack. It is arguing that everyone benefits from government intervention. Some of these are arguable (e.g. would totally private education system be worse or better than what we have? If you believe it would be better then can someone therefore be described as being helped by the current education system, rather than harmed?) but I think the basic point that some government is better than no government is fairly incontrovertible.</comment></comment>


How to get Free Comcast Internet - <AUTHOR> http://vinhboy.com/blog/2010/03/25/how-to-get-free-comcast-internet/

<comment><USER2> How do they bypass the account lookup page they mention? (Screenshot from the article: [http://vinhboy.com/blog/wp- content/uploads/2010/03/account-l...](http://vinhboy.com/blog/wp- content/uploads/2010/03/account-lookup.png))

Presumably, there's some sort of verification that the account's valid and has paid for Internet there.

</comment><comment><USER3> Awesome... anything to take from these guys, the "worst company in America" [http://consumerist.com/2010/04/congratulations-comcast- youre...](http://consumerist.com/2010/04/congratulations-comcast-youre-the- worst-company-in-america.html)</comment>