Facebook Users Report Seeing Old Private Messages Showing Up On Timelines - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/24/reports-facebook-users-seeing-private-messages-pre-2009-showing-up-on-timelines-as-posted-by-friends/

<comment><USER2> Hey guys - I work on Timeline here at Facebook and just wanted to chime in here. I've looked into a bunch of cases today where people were concerned their messages were showing up, but as has been pointed out in many places (e.g. techcrunch), there was no privacy violation here.

If you've kept your old emails around (woohoo gmail!), one thing you can do is go back and look for the notification email you got for a particular post that you suspect was a message. There's a date search widget that makes this easier. I suspect you'll find it was a wall post.

Another thing to note (for those that follow our technology), is that the backends for these two systems are entirely different. The messages backend is hbase-backed, designed for real-time communication more than history. The timeline backend is MySQL / C++ backed. Migrating data from hbase to MySQL would have to take months of effort.

I know that even though there was no bug here, this can be an alarming experience to see old posts surfaced like this. We're working on ways to make this interaction clearer so people aren't so surprised in the future. That said, please rest assured that your inbox is not on your timeline.

<comment><USER3> _I know that even though there was no bug here, this can be an alarming experience to see old posts surfaced like this. We're working on ways to make this interaction clearer so people aren't so surprised in the future._

You ought to be doing more than that, actually. Having been an early user of Facebook, I can assure you that people viewed wall-to-wall and other types of posts differently from how they view wall posts now. No one expected their data to be exposed this way, so for practical purposes, this is tantamount to a bug or data breach from the user perspective.

Disabling this immediately for old posts or allowing users to opt out would be the right thing to do.

<comment><USER4> So you're suggesting that they replace the perception of a bug (data showing up when it shouldn't) with an actual bug (data not showing up when it should)?

<comment><USER3> Nice troll.

<comment><USER4> I was maybe a little snarky, but totally serious.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> (Cross-posted on TC)

These are all wall to wall posts. You can inspect for yourself using a Facebook Developer account.

Rollover the timestamp grab the POSTID.

<http://www.facebook.com/PROFILEID/posts/POSTID>

Example, <http://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/11111111111>

Throw it in the Graph API Explorer <https://developers.facebook.com/tools/explorer> with /PROFILEID_POSTID or curl <http://graph.facebook.com/PROFILEID_POSTID>.

The evidence speaks for itself, it shows up as a Status object.

You can push more with even browsing your conversation via

[http://www.facebook.com/YOURUSERNAME?and=FRIENDUSERNAME&...](http://www.facebook.com/YOURUSERNAME?and=FRIENDUSERNAME&sk=wall)

I don't think that private messages can transform into wall posts with such ease. This would have to be intentional, it's not a simple click of a switch that can do something like some are thinking that is occurring.

<comment><USER6> The fact that they are showing up as wall posts means nothing - it just means that the bug was that facebook swapped messages for posts somehow, and now they are all showing up on the wall.

<comment><USER7> True, I wouldn't give Facebook a free pass on this alone.

Is it really so hard to imagine that somebody, somewhere fudged a query and accidentally ran [pseudo-SQL] "UPDATE posts SET type='status' WHERE type='private-message' AND date = 'x' TO 'y'"?

I'll admit, it's a bit of a stretch; but the fact that these show up as wall posts is not necessarily an indication that there is no bug.

The bug may very well be that data has been manipulated to look like wall posts.

Unless Facebook discloses that these posts were flagged as "status updates" _in an archived version of their dataset_ (specifically an archive before the issue first manifested), this information means practically nothing. We could gather from the bug itself that these were flagged as wall posts in FB's backend.

<comment><USER8> No one is giving Facebook a free pass. We currently have no evidence whatsoever of a bug. On the other hand, we do know that wall posts could not be commented on pre-2009. Informal conversations were carried out with quick exchanges of wall posts. The whole conversation could be viewed with the "wall-to-wall" link. We used Facebook in a different way back then, and the conversations reflect that. If you have email notifications confirming that a private message is now public then please let us know. So far every person to check their records has found that there was no bug, they merely forgot how Facebook used to be.

According to one Facebook employee, private messages are stored on an entirely different system (MYSQL vs HBase). This seems perfectly reasonable, and precludes the possibility of a bad SQL query leaking private messages. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4567009>

Screenshot of old Facebook: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4566962>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This seems to be anecdotally confirmed by multiple people here. To me, _if true_ , this screams of a broken engineering culture inside Facebook, where the model for data privacy and security is secondary, not primary. If this is indeed verified, no one should ever use Facebook for anything truly private, regardless of what apologies or excuses are made.

It is difficult to think of something like this, where private emails are accidentally disclosed publicly en masse, happening with gmail (or any other email service).

<comment><USER10> If it is indeed verified I would be the first one to jump on the bandwaggon and delete the account and tell others to do so. But so far I have not seen anything to verify it and more reports on Facebook claims that it is indeed old user to user wall posts (something I remember and used in the past personally) just showing up from people now liking them which at the time they didn't have a like button.

<comment><USER11> Regardless of what the actual situation is, if these posts are being brought to people's attention by friends because they seem sensitive and are now more prominent than they once were, isn't that a concern in and of itself?

<comment><USER12> Good point. Mass hysteria being used as a carrier for sudden bursts of clarity would be an interesting phenomenon in itself. Thousands of people suddenly realizing _"Oh god, what have I been doing?"_

Edit: The more I read about this, the more it seems to me that this is what is going on. I think this has interesting implications for the _"Privacy is dead"_ attitude. It suggests to me that, contrary to popular belief in some circles, people are _not_ ok with their diminished privacy.. they just haven't been thinking about it.

<comment><USER11> I wouldn't put this on the users' lack of clarity as much as I would blame Facebook for changing the course of it's features so much so that this is now happening to people. People were using the site as it was once intended and we can't blame them for being infuriated when the logic behind that usage changes. To me it's no different than Quora deciding to make all of your posts public without the chance to opt-in, except because of Facebook's privacy settings mess, it isn't easily reversible without severely crippling the content you've posted over the entirety of your account's lifespan.

<comment><USER12> Fair point. In either event I think it is fair to say that this demonstrates that privacy _is_ valuable to consumers, despite what certain people might have us believe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> i can confirm this too. 3 private message threads from 2009-2010 were on my wall with the privacy set to "friends". these were conversations right out of my private messages (which were also in my private messages).

i'm deleting every facebook message as a result of this, which isn't easy as it has to be done one by one.

i am in the US, but my UK friends are the ones who alerted me to it, as it was happening to them as well.

<comment><USER14> Same here, my wife just called me crying because a large number of very private conversations she had with friends in the past are now visible on her timeline.

Is the quickest option a manual delete? She is freaking out.

Edit: I have set her privacy as strict as I can for now, but having pressed her on the topic, it isn't entirely certain that these messages were ever private.

My comment to her was that even if they were always on your wall, you (in hindsight) don't think they should have been. Don't let Facebook convince you that you are wrong to have thought differently. Facebook's model doesn't work like the arrow of time, memories and conversations don't fade out naturally and disappear, they just stay there permanently. And today, your present self wonders what you were thinking that made you post that. When you add that to the fact that your social graph on Facebook was different 5 years ago than it is today, it makes sense that you naturally think certain things should have been private.

In other words, you weren't fit in 2006 to know what in 2012 you would regret having posted and you aren't fit in 2012 to know what you are going to regret in 2018.

If you really are freaking out about stuff that your past self thought should be known to the world, then do your future self a favor and stop putting your life on Facebook.

<comment><USER15> quickest way to hide all of your friend's posts on your wall <http://cl.ly/image/0s1e093Q0s1m>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It's no coincidence that people that have tried to verify this by comparing to email notifications have posted as much, and people that have "confirmed" based on memory have yet to do so and post the result of their verification.

Do not trust your memory. Do not trust your assumptions. Just because this is plausible and everyone is claiming to be affected by it is not proof that it is in any way true. Check your notifications and find real evidence.

No one in here has even claimed to have confirmed this with email, let alone posted any evidence.

</comment><comment><USER17> Every time I hear of Facebook developer philosophies, it's always "Move Fast and Break Things."... Not with 800 million people's private conversations, please.

<comment><USER18> What can one do? They aren't a government entity -- you can't vote management out or change policies. They aren't regulated -- you have no complaint procedures or escalation mechanism. The best you can do is yell at them. They will gladly laugh at you through their young-and-rich-and-by-the-way-fu billionaire eyes.

If they decide to make public every thing you've ever written in rolling 10 year intervals there is nothing you can do to stop them.

The public has no idea how much can go wrong giving one entity essentially a copy of their entire private lives.

<comment><USER19> The Data Protection Act 1998 would presumably apply in the UK and Ireland, and the EU has a data protection directive. My expectation would be that they could not disclose everything without consequence.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> If I could short FB I would do so immediately. The fallout from this is going to be immense and long-term. I'd imagine they are facing two choices at FB right now:

1\. Take the site down and prevent any further leaks. But accept the absolutely massive flak that would come from that.

or

2\. Continue to let the leaking happen and try to hotfix the bug. Be accused of failing to get a handle on it, but perhaps get away with it if fixed in the next 20 minutes.

I'd bet that it's been like this for ages and only just been noticed. That will make fixing it a bit harder I should think - not simply a rollback to the previous push.

<comment><USER21> "Update: Facebook Confirms No Private Messages Appearing On Timeline. They're Old Wall Posts."

<comment><USER20> So TC have basically rewritten their entire article rather than add an update but anyway.

It's probably not private messages - but it is messages that people think should be private TODAY. But it doesn't really matter - it's perception that matters here. And also I guess this is an illustration of how people's attitudes to FB have changed over time.

"I would NEVER have shared this publicly." they say. But either they did, and now don't trust FB in the way they used to. Or they didn't and there's a bug. Neither are good for FB's brand.

<comment><USER22> _So TC have basically rewritten their entire article rather than add an update but anyway._

There is no good way to answer "how do we correct a story that was completely wrong," but this seems to be a decent enough way to do it.

<comment><USER23> The correct way is a rectification. You leave the old story and point prominently to the correction at the top.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> You know what's most interesting to me here? The tug between trusting my social network, and trusting FB and my own knowledge.

My friends are ASSURING me that these are private messages. But every media outlet is now running the story that this is not true. And I have seen no evidence. So what do I believe?

<comment><USER24> EDIT: zevyoura pointed out that I misunderstood the comment I was replying to. Please ignore if not applicable.

Trusting FB? I hope you are joking. You are the product being sold & FB will maximize the value of that at any cost.

Its all one big scam: They provide endless privacy controls over what your friends can see, but discreetly forget to provide controls over what they can sell to advertisers.

<comment><USER25> You seem to have misconstrued the parent comment; he was talking about trusting FB (and by extension the media outlets that are reporting their statement as fact) over his social contacts on this issue specifically.

<comment><USER24> I see. Thank you for pointing that out. I've added a comment highlighting the situation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> For a community that is usually quick to dismiss anecdotal evidence and fear, uncertainty, and doubt there seems to be quite a bit of all of the above going around in these comments.

Given the update on the Tech Crunch article, and the fact this is regarding wall posts from three years ago (which people probably don't have the best recollection of) my two cents is for those that believe that this is affecting them to temporarily deactivate their FB account, and the rest of us wait until we see some follow up blog/news posts with hard evidence before we start yelling that the sky is falling.

</comment><comment><USER27> I can confirm it too. Scary stuff. This is going to cause real world problems for a lot of people.

I am done with Facebook now. Bye.

<comment><USER7> I see a few messages on my timeline; thankfully they are all _really_ unimportant. (One liners like "hey thanks again.", etc.)

In principal, though, this bug shakes me to the core. Had it chosen to sample posts from 2010+ rather than 2008-2009; hell, I could easily be out of a job, or be dealing with some very upset family members.

This is unacceptable; it violates any shred of trust I had left in Facebook as a platform.

I'm done, too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Can at least one person making these claims actually show any real proof about this? Just one person. I mean if its such a major flaw and verifiable I would expect at least one screen shoot showing this to be the case.

</comment><comment><USER28> Im surprised at Facebooks response, which is basically, "Your all crazy and there is no problem".

<comment><USER10> Hum

[http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/24/reports-facebook-users- seei...](http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/24/reports-facebook-users-seeing- private-messages-pre-2009-showing-up-on-timelines-as-posted-by-friends/)

"TechCrunch has investigated more, and we have found no evidence that the allegedly exposed posts were actually private messages. Their email receipts show they were in fact wall posts, and the posts do not appear in users' Facebook Messages inbox.

Facebook also says in no uncertain terms that there is absolutely no privacy bug. What people are seeing are old Wall postings, not private messages. A spokesperson tells TechCrunch:

"Every report we've seen, we've gone back and checked. We haven't seen one report that's been confirmed [of a private message being exposed]. A lot of the confusion is because before 2009 there were no likes and no comments on wall posts. People went back and forth with wall posts instead of having a conversation [in the comments of single wall post.]

A small number of users raised concerns after what they mistakenly believed to be private messages appeared on their Timeline. Our engineers investigated these reports and found that the messages were older wall posts that had always been visible on the users' profile pages. Facebook is satisfied that there has been no breach of user privacy.""

This is why real reporters actually check into news stories first before publishing. I have yet to find a single shred of evidence anywhere that shows this has been verified and repeated. And I've been looking pretty hard for the last 30 minutes.

<comment><USER23> > And I've been looking pretty hard for the last 30 minutes.

You need not look so far, it's right here in this thread. People are confirming some of their private messages set to 'friends' only to be world visible on their timeline.

<comment><USER16> They aren't confirming anything. People are looking at wallposts and thinking/remembering they are private messages, but everyone that has tried to verify using email notifications has found only wallposts. Until someone shows that a verifiable private message showed up publicly, than there's no reason to continue spreading this. If it's a problem, it can easily be confirmed. Even Techcrunch, who criticised Facebook's response have now backpedaled.

<comment><USER23> "Same here, my wife just called me crying because a large number of very private conversations she had with friends in the past are now visible on her timeline."

Sounds pretty clear to me, I figure that the lady knows which conversation were private and which weren't, if only by their content.

<comment><USER29> Look at his edit, she isn't entirely sure they were private.

Amazing how many people have "confirmed" it but nobody has posted anything verifiable. Just a screenshot of the private message inbox/email + the post on the timeline. Redact as much as you want.

I've gone through the messages on my timeline, and truth be told I don't remember the context of a lot of the messages, so it wouldn't surprise me if people don't remember if something was private.

<comment><USER22> This feels like the "everyone go find weird stuff in your Wendy's food now" situation all over again. Except explained more by incompetence than malice.

I don't even like FB, but come on people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I too thought I found private messages on my timeline. But it turns out they were indeed wallposts. It shows how much facebook has changed from a friends- only environment where you used the wall of people for semi-private chats, to a place where you have to be carefull and try to present yourself in a decent manner. Noone would ever use the wall in the same way it was used back then.

<comment><USER31> I 100% think that this is what is happening. Before Facebook's chat feature became as prominent as it is, the number of 'trivial' wall-to-wall posts was very high, such as 'hey, what what you been up to?' or 'Thanks again'. These posts look like 'messages' because these days you would normally just send it as a message.

So much press on this 'bug' but so little proof

<comment><USER30> Yeah, I'm really certain too. Some of them seem surprisingly private though, so no wonder people get scared. It's still a bad thing that friend banter from long ago suddenly shows up for all your new friends / colleagues / family to see...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I'm deactivating my account because of this. I can manage without Facebook for a few days until they fix this bug.

<comment><USER33> Wow, a few weeks ago I was joking that if Facebook went through my private messages, I wouldn't be surprised, based on how scummy they've behaved in the past. Now apparently they've done this, except also shared everything with the whole world. I don't think I have to say this, but this is totally, 100% unacceptable. Back then I was using FB almost as a personal e-mail; the consequences of something like this could be cataclysmic. Can you imagine having your personal email "accidentally" posted to the general public?

<comment><USER7> This is where someone typically parrots: "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place." -- Eric Schmidt; Executive Chairman, Google, Inc.

To which I reply: I'm sorry, but my personal matters are personal _expressly because_ I've found people to be ignorant, bigoted, biased, or otherwise untrustworthy when it comes to matters of my identity.

The fact that I could lose my job because of my thoughts on cannabis prohibition? Or that I could be disowned because of my political and [lack of] religious tendencies? These things are private not because they're wrong, Mr. Schmidt. They're private because _someone_ thinks they're wrong; and _someone_ is making decisions that could impact _my future_ by judging what's publicly available.

I can no longer trust Facebook to be a secure messaging platform, which is basically all I used it for. I'm going to take charge of my web presence to whatever degree I can. I'm done letting large corporations abuse my data for their own gain, only to have shit like this happen.

<comment><USER34> And the obligatory full-context followup:

Q: People are treating Google like their most trusted friend. Should they be?

A: I think judgement matters… If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place. But if you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines including Google do retain this information for some time, and it's important, for example that we are all subject in the United States to the Patriot Act. It is possible that that information could be made available to the authorities."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> It might be only certain users affected; I have trawled through all the '09 posts appearing on my feed, and all of them are legit wall posts from then.

Indeed; it was actually interesting to see how different Facebook was back then. So much more intimately public in terms of messaging and back/forth.

</comment><comment><USER31> Haven't seen concrete evidence yet though...I went ahead and looked through some profiles and there's stuff that looks very revealing, as though it were a private incoming conversation but then every time I click on them, the convo box expands and I can see that people 'liked it', meaning it was public from the start.

Does anyone actually have real evidence? Maybe a screenshot of a message that CLEARLY is private and in no circumstance would they have forgot posting it on a wall THREE YEARS ago?

</comment><comment><USER36> Definitely seeing a bit of this. It's inbound messages only, not outbound, but there are some things here definitely not meant to be seen by some friends.

<comment><USER15> well, that's because your outbound messages are on your friends's wall, not yours.

<comment><USER37> correct, if u go back and forth you can read whole conversations.

<comment><USER7> This fact alone may also add a bit of credibility.

If they were originally wall posts, your "threads" of conversation would be comments, not individual posts on each other's walls.

<comment><USER8> Not true. This is the source of all the confusion. Originally you couldn't like or comment on wall posts. Conversations were individual posts on each other's walls. You could click the "wall-to-wall" link to view the whole conversation.

This system gave conversations a different feel, and is now causing people to confuse them with private messages.

Edit: see <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4566956>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Looks like FB have confirmed that these were old wall posts not the messages. Something is confusing.

<comment><USER39> I can confirm that messages meant only for me were public on my wall and I have found messages I only intended for others public on their walls. They were most definitely NOT wall posts.

<comment><USER22> This may sound snide, but you should contact TechCrunch. Offer up your proof to them on the terms that they don't republish it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> So it's, again, people forgetting that they used to write wall-to-wall messages in 2009, and that they were always visible to friends?

<comment><USER41> Not at all, I can assure you I had my _private_ conversations disclosed.

<comment><USER41> I seem to be mistaken. However I was twice as stupid because I have hidden all these messages, and now I can't recover them on my timeline. I don't find them in my activity log (not under "hidden" nor "all"). Strangely, if I update my status and make it "hidden" in my timeline, it shows under "hidden" in the activity log...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> The posts in this thread are a great example of the power of suggestion.

It seems pretty clear at this point that there's no evidence that private messages were made public- other than hearsay.

</comment><comment><USER43> That is deeply disturbing. Is it showing up as new or does one have to go back and find them in the timeline when they were sent?

<comment><USER17> They do not show up as new. The ones I found were mixed in with regular wall posts at the time of the post (2009 for mine).

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> If this is true, this is the first nail in a lot of very expensive coffins.

</comment><comment><USER15> True or false, it's not going to help Facebook stock.

Even if it's just people's perception, it actually matters a lot. Facebook need user to trust them on privacy issues, that's their core.

<comment><USER45> wha, 10% cliff-drop isn't good enough for you? <http://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ:FB>

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Yes I think I see some old wall-to-wall posts but no messages.

Now I don't even know if it's new as I never check my FB Timeline (which SUCKS btw) ...

I just heard on the radio that the French government is monitoring the issue. Yes, that's what the country needs !?

What is kinda hilarious is that even on 2007 people were confusing wall-to- wall messages with private messages !

</comment><comment><USER31> Old facebook that we don't remember:

A post on someone's wall had a link to 'Wall-to-wall' or 'Write on wall', in place of what we have today, the commenting system.

Screenshot: [http://blog.hishamrana.com/wp- content/uploads/2008/07/facebo...](http://blog.hishamrana.com/wp- content/uploads/2008/07/facebook_new_layout1.png)

</comment><comment><USER47> I just found some of my 'messages' on a friends public wall post from 2008. Not cool.

</comment><comment><USER48> i went to check my fb timeline and indeed some messages between 2008-2009 DO look like they must've been private messages - people writing their home addresses and phone numbers and similar stuff.. i doubt these were public wall posts to begin with .. i can't find any old fb notification emails as i am deleting this things, unfortunatelly. but i does feel a bit scary :|

<comment><USER49> The vast majority of FB users are confused enough to post this info publicly. Look at any "I got a new cell phone! Send me your digits!" post.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> One thing I'm walking away from this incident with is a better understanding of the power of the Facebook PR machine. I would be interested in a timeline of how this whole process unfolded... too bad only companies like Google and Twitter will ever know for sure how it all spread.

</comment><comment><USER51> I think its actually old private chat messages that are showing up.

</comment><comment><USER52> tl;dr: This is confirmed untrue at the bottom of the article.

</comment><comment><USER23> Bye-Bye Facebook.</comment>


Live SpaceX Impersonating Bitcoin Scam on YouTube - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tzVjDsY0Nc<p>Apparently someone has managed to make a spoof account that has gotten around YouTube's system and is impersonating SpaceX to scam people out of Bitcoin. <comment><USER2> Yeah, I've reported this scam around a half dozen times today. I assume they built up reputation then changed the channel name and deleted everything but the scam video.</comment>


Trump is set to announce an executive order against social media companies - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/28/politics/trump-twitter-social-media-executive-order/index.html <comment><USER2> Many threads on this. Some with comments: [https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=trump%20executive%20order%20comments%3E0&sort=byDate&type=story)

At this point we should probably wait until something actually happens, and then hopefully the discussion will have details to be grounded in.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> From the article:

 _The draft order, which was reviewed by CNN, targets a law known as the Communications Decency Act. Section 230 of the legislation provides broad immunity to websites that curate and moderate their own platforms, and has been described by legal experts as "the 26 words that created the internet."

It argues that the protections hinge mainly on tech platforms operating in "good faith," and that social media companies have not.

"In a country that has long cherished the freedom of expression, we cannot allow a limited number of online platforms to hand-pick the speech that Americans may access and convey online," the draft order says. "This practice is fundamentally un-American and anti-democratic. When large, powerful social media companies censor opinions with which they disagree, they exercise a dangerous power."_

</comment><comment><USER3> What's your take on social media sites curating user-generated content for accuracy? It seems like it might be worth it, but I'm not so sure. Thoughts?

</comment><comment><USER4> Regardless of what Trump's intents are and what his plans are for this EO, I think most rational people can agree that social media companies are not providing a healthy environment for discourse and that this is causing real damage to the nation. I don't know what the solution is but all I know is that there is something really wrong.

</comment><comment><USER5> I wonder what would happen if Twitter banned Trump, would be the ultimate social experiment.

Would he create his own app?

</comment><comment><USER6> Free speech for me but not for thee</comment>


iMac Pro 18-core Follow Up Review - <AUTHOR> http://hrtapps.com/blogs/20180202/ <comment><USER2> A lot of the negative comments wrt cost are versions of this: what a ripoff, you can get better components for way less money in some other PC and/or if you build your own.

That's nice but it's not Apple's market. Apple's market is not other PCs, and it's not build your own.

This criticism of Apple has been around ever since Apple has been around (1970s). While the criticism has basically stayed the same since then, Apple has not stayed the same, they have grown. Their products have improved. Their market share has grown and it continues to grow.

Some people pay more money for a Benz, and other people say Hey that's a ripoff, I can buy a Toyota that gets me to work and back, just like your expensive Benz, for half the price! What a ripoff!

Apple is not in the business of making inexpensive PCs (and accepting all of the tradeoffs therein). The trends show that more and more people are willing to spend their money on Apple products.

They are clearly doing something right.

If you are enraged by their success, perhaps you are not their target market. And that is ok.

<comment><USER3> Some of the harshest criticisms of Apple have been coming from diehard fans in Apple's market niche, such as Marco Arment. See: the Touch Bar, the keyboards: [https://marco.org/2017/11/24/fixing-the-macbook- pro](https://marco.org/2017/11/24/fixing-the-macbook-pro)

> They are clearly doing something right.

Mac sales are down 5%.

<comment><USER4> _Some of the harshest criticisms of Apple have been coming from diehard fans in Apple 's market niche_

My first Mac was an LC475 upgraded with a real '040 to run MATLAB, back in oh, '94 I think. Also had a second-hand SE30 to run Word 5.1 (still the best version). Next up was a Power Mac 7600 when I needed more grunt to run FORTRAN code. Amazing machine, the price/performance was incredible. It was faster than a DEC Alpha 3000 at a fraction of the price! A few more both desktop and laptop between then and now. So I think I count as a long-term Mac user and loyal customer.

My current machines are a 2008 MBP and a 2014 Mac Mini. Apple simply haven't given me any compelling reason to upgrade, in fact have pushed me to offload my compute needs to Azure. Now that I have made that leap, I'm actually not particularly interested in a real Mac Pro anymore, I just don't need it. I can't be alone, and this will bite Apple in the ass at some point.

Who's buying the current MBP then? Not professional users, just people looking to flash the brand. Which is fine, but the fashion crowd is fickle. Apple has chosen to court them rather than 20+ year customers. And that's OK too, it's their business to run as they see fit. But a third thing that is fine is for people to post their opinions of it...

<comment><USER5> Perhaps your definition of professional is too narrow. I'm a professional writer (and hobbyist coder). I used a MacBook Air for four years before upgrading to a MacBook Pro.

My reasons for upgrading to a MacBook Pro were: (i) the better screen (which matters when you're looking at it eight hours a day), (ii) improved performance compared to the Air or the MacBook, (iii) the ability to drive a couple of high-definition external screens, and (iv) all the above on on a portable device that runs MacOS. Number iv is probably the most important reason: I prefer MacOS.

If you construe "professional" as someone with high CPU and GPU processing demands, then perhaps I don't count. But that's a tiny market: most professionals who choose a MacBook choose it for the same reasons I did.

<comment><USER4> _Number iv is probably the most important reason: I prefer MacOS._

Yes, me too, so I find myself in a weird no-mans-land - I don't want to switch to another platform, and I don't want to buy anything in the recent line-up. I will be forced to when my Mini becomes unsupported for OS updates, then I will spend as little as I can to get back in the game, because they have already pushed me into the mindset and workflow of offloading the heavy lifting. But offer me a machine as radical my old 7600 was relative to what I had previously and relative to the rest of the market, and I'll jump at it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Sounds great, but I still have trouble with the idea of a $10,000 machine that is permanently married to one monitor and unexpandable. If I'm spending that much on a computer I want PCI slots. Especially now that it's common to keep a desktop for 5+ years.

<comment><USER7> I agree, and I'm eager to see what we get in the rumored "new Mac Pro tower" that is supposed to be announced some time this year.

Still, the iMac Pro can be considered a good buy if you do like many Apple users and sell it after a few years for a hefty percentage of the purchase price, using the funds to offset its replacement. It's how I progressed from a PowerBook Pismo G3 -> eMac G4 -> Mac mini G4 -> two Intel Mac minis (2006 & 2011) -> Mac Pro tower, only keeping the first gen Intel Mac mini when I moved away from the platform for daily use. Because I recovered at least half the purchase price of each successive unit (again minus the first Intel mini) I was able to upgrade for more or less the same cost as a comparable PC workstation.

Conversely, good luck selling a used custom built PC for pennies on the dollar even if you used top of the line components. Even name brand, quality PC workstations don't have a healthy used market; eBay is full of 2016 era corporate machines that were $800 new, now going for $200 or less.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> > Though I haven't mentioned it, if you look back through the various > benchmark results, you'll see that the 18-core iMac Pro shows no > disadvantage for single-core performance, despite running at a lower clock > speed (2.3GHz/4.3GHz) than the 10-core iMac Pro (3.0GHz/4.5GHz). Often > times, the price of scaling a CPU architecture to more cores is a loss of > single-core performance, but no such penalty seems to exist here. The > 18-core iMac Pro brings 8 more cores to the table on the high end with no > loss of performance on the low end.

I remember this being an issue on the older Mac Pros; it's interesting that this isn't an issue anymore. What's the reason behind it? Better thermals? Turbo Boost?

<comment><USER9> Turbo boost, yeah. Modern Intel chips generally have a much higher clock cap if only a core or two is active. I think to an extent this should be true of the 2013 Mac Pro, too, but less so for the cheesegrater, which used much older chips.

<comment><USER10> I wonder if per-core performance is impacted if every core is being blasted. I imagine most benchmarks do single-core runs by running one process of work, and do multi-core runs by maxing out the cores and then totaling the performance. Do any benchmarks max out the cores, but only report the performance of one process of work?

<comment><USER11> >I wonder if per-core performance is impacted if every core is being blasted.

Yes.

>I imagine most benchmarks do single-core runs by running one process of work, and do multi-core runs by maxing out the cores and then totaling the performance.

Aggregate throughput, yes.

>Do any benchmarks max out the cores, but only report the performance of one process of work?

Sort of. You can get that figure by dividing the aggregate throughput by the # cores. Sometimes it is reported explicitly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Would love to see a "real world" benchmark involving Lightroom, Photoshop, Camera raw and Premier. I don't think the target customer of the iMac pros would run CFD on them ;-)

<comment><USER13> Actually I think a good number of high-end Mac users are scientists and engineers. These benchmarks are good data for them.

<comment><USER14> I haven't seen very much of this in my experience. Most Mac using scientists and engineers I know use a MacBook for email/webrowsig etc. but when they need some serious computation they use an external cluster (which they talk to with their Mac).

That being said I do know one such scientist with the same workflow but who remoted into a Mac Pro, not sure what they are doing now.

<comment><USER15> Most of the scientists I know do both: interactive work to prove the idea or for moderate sized data sets, and the cluster for when they have stable code and a huge amount of data. Since the capacity of a laptop has steadily increased, the relative ratios have shifted over the years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > CFD tends to be a good real-world benchmark...If this was a car test drive, > running CFD would be like showing up at the dealership with three tons of > gravel on a trailer and hitching it up.

Ummm...perhaps the author has a different definition of "real-world" than I do?

<comment><USER17> It's an 18-core workstation. You don't buy it for photo editing and web browsing.

<comment><USER18> Unless you're a photo pro shooting sports or fashion with 50MP RAW images at 10 FPS then picking and correcting on a deadline. Then yes you do.

Top three consumers of CPU and IOPS on my Mac Pro or MacBook Pro: video editing and transcoding, photo triage and conversion, and Kubernetes clusters (minikube+xhyve) doing whatever.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Is anyone running production computational fluid dynamics simulations on a desktop anyway? Seems like something that would get farmed out on an HPC cluster with a couple hundred cores minimum.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's incredibly expensive with a mediocre AMD GPU. No Nvidia option, meaining no CUDA. No TensorFlow.

A really weird machine that seems overly strong in some areas and absolutely weak in fundamentally critical places.

<comment><USER20> Tensorflow has been supported on AMD GPUs since at least November.

[https://www.anandtech.com/show/12032/amd-announces-wider- epy...](https://www.anandtech.com/show/12032/amd-announces-wider-epyc- availability-and-rocm-17-with-tensorflow-support)

<comment><USER21> See peterspy reply.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> > My 10-core test unit prices out at $9,599, and a comparable 18-core unit > would be $11,199, a 17% increase in cost.

All I can say here is "Wow!!!" That's an amazing price for a computer that is completely user hostile to upgrade or repair.

<comment><USER23> Yes, it's insane. It's a lifestyle accessory.

But put in the context of _workstation_ prices -- which I guess is what it's sort of in the category of -- check out what a Sun 2 (68010) workstation cost in 1986:

"A color 2/160 with 8Mb of memory, two 71 Mb SCSI disks and 60 Mb 1/4" SCSI tape cost $48,800 (1986 US price list)."

That's $109,766.16 in today's dollars.

Or more modest and perhaps more comparable, an HP 9000 Model 705 PA-RISC workstation (32mhz, HP-UX) in 1991 was priced around $5000. That's $9000ish in today's dollars.

People bought stuff like that back then. Low volume, prestige item, specialized market, and I guess Apple must figure they will still do that now.

Workstation class machines have always been overpriced.

<comment><USER24> Yea, you know, if I'm doing work that requires 18+ cores of CPU and gobs of RAM, I'm going to pack that beast into a rack (bet I could build a sweet epyc based system with more capability for less than $10k) and connect to it from a laptop/small desktop.

Besides, that thing is going to get hot, and Apple doesn't exactly have the best track record when it comes to thermal design (see: apple ///)

<comment><USER25> Really the Apple /// a computer that came out in 1980? Is that what you are going to base your doubts on the thermal design of the iMac?

<comment><USER24> It was the start of Apple's long tradition of form over function.

<comment><USER25> How has Apple survived over 40 years if it were just about form over function while most of its contemporaries over the years have disappeared?

<comment><USER23> Arguably it's not the same Apple. I don't see a lot of continuity in approach between the company that brought us the Apple IIe and the company that makes the iPhone.

<comment><USER25> Both the company that brought the Apple //e and the company that brought the world the iPhone had Steve Jobs in charge and very much went for vertical integration.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> £4900 for the 8-core iMac Pro. It seems Apple worship has plumbed new depths of lunacy.

<comment><USER27> If you make 6+ figures a year off your computer, do you really care if your PC cost 5,000$ instead of 2,000$? Especially if you can write off a large part of that cost?

<comment><USER26> What does the figure you make from using your computer have to do with its retail value? By that measure Mark Zuckerberg's dorm-room Dell was worth billions.

<comment><USER25> in the grand scheme of things $5000 is not that much money if computer work is your livelihood. Especially considering that if you are a developer, that may be the only equipment or software you have to buy.

Even at a low rate of $100 an hour, I could make that on the side with 50 hours of work.

<comment><USER28> if your computer is your livelihood, presumably you already have work lined up for those 50 hours using your current hardware. you'd need to be able to bill an extra 50 hours due to the increased productivity from a faster machine to have this not be an impact to your finances. otherwise, it's still an extra expense you need to consider, and for a lot of people, $5k is still a non- trivial amount of money. if computer work is your livelihood, you're likely bringing in income and have regular expenses. adding an extra $5k in to that mix is not something most people will do without moderate consideration.

"I could make that on the side with 50 hours of work." if you're already working full time, fitting in another 50 hours of billable work is non- trivial, and may take months to actually do.

<comment><USER25> I had a $4000 setup in college in 1992. A Mac LCII with a //e card, 10 MB of RAM, a monitor, a LaserWriter LS and SoftPC.

But let me give you another real world example of how little $5000 is in the grand scheme of things. Last year, my after tax rate as contract to perm was a little over $50 an hour. I easily put in an extra 100 hours in a month.

I'm not going to spend $5000 on the iMac Pro because I don't need it. But I probably will spend around $3000 on a 27 inch 5K iMac with 32GB of RAM just because that's what I want and it should last at least 5 years just as a development machine for hobby projects and learning. What would be an extra $2000 if it were going to make me money?

<comment><USER28> > I easily put in an extra 100 hours in a month.

There are around 700 hours in a month. Most people are already "working" (billable/salary/etc) for ~180 of those. Eat/sleep/travel/family/friends/life eats up a lot more. Fitting in a _extra_ 100 hours of anything in a single calendar month will be extremely difficult for most people. If you have the spare time and money, I'm presuming you may be younger and not have a family that you have responsibilities towards (nothing wrong with that, and just an assumption). The majority of heads of households I know - even professionals earning decently - would indicate they have competing interests for $5-$10k on discretionary purchases.

You went from a 'low rate' of $100/hr to $50/hr in your examples?

I get it - $5k isn't a massive crippling amount of money for most western professionals. Most of those professionals would probably want the $10k pimped out version too, and that expense just isn't trivial for most individuals. Larger companies with equipment budgets and whatnot - less of an issue, for sure.

<comment><USER25> No, I'm neither young nor single. I'm in my mid 40s.

I went from $100 a month - as an independent consultant where you own your own business and the $5000 would be pre-tax to a real world example for me - Earned $80 hour as a W2 contractor where the consulting company gets a cut and pays the employer's part of the taxes. The $50 is after tax.

I'm not saying the extra 100 hours was easy. But I had to do what I had to do and I was willing to do it for the extra money. It's actually somewhat easier for a married person with a supportive spouse to put in extra hours. My one child who is in the house is in high school.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Your New Medical Team: Algorithms and Physicians - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/08/upshot/your-new-medical-team-algorithms-and-physicians.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fscience&action=click&contentCollection=science&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=sectionfront&_r=0 <comment><USER2> I'd be interested to hear from people that were around when expert systems were in vogue the first time around as to why they didn't take off in medicine, and what is new (if anything) in the new wave?

<comment><USER3> I think we are getting there. It's not easy to build an expressive and efficient formalism that combines structure and uncertainty. New approaches like Markov logic are promising.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why not "Your New Medical Team: Computer Scientists and Physicians" ...

<comment><USER5> Probably broader than just CS -- wouldn't be surprised if the teams include physicists, engineers, computational scientists, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> One challenge ahead--in most hospitals, the doctors have to choose to use these new tools and many aren't. Some don't see the need (maybe due to a generally conservative attitude), and others actually see them as a liability (if there's more data than they can personally review, they could be sued for missing an important signal). But at least the research hospitals are making headway in developing and testing new tech.

<comment><USER7> Right on point. I work for a firm that helps predict whether patients will be readmitted for various reasons, and while our algorithms are better than any standard rules, getting doctors and case managers to actually use and trust them is the greatest challenge we face.</comment></comment>


Mark Zuckerberg, give up on China before you embarrass yourself even more - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/global-opinions/wp/2018/07/31/mark-zuckerberg-give-up-on-china-before-you-embarrass-yourself-even-more/ <comment><USER2> Paywall shit, fuck off.</comment>


Talking about racism on Facebook is censored as hate speech - <AUTHOR> https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2019/04/24/facebook-while-black-zucked-users-say-they-get-blocked-racism-discussion <comment><USER2> Broken link. This appears to be the correct one:

[https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2019/04/24/facebook- whil...](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2019/04/24/facebook-while-black- zucked-users-say-they-get-blocked-racism-discussion/2859593002/)</comment>


Massachusetts Supreme Court Says It's Perfectly Legitimate for Black Men to Flee - <AUTHOR> http://dailysignal.com/2016/09/23/massachusetts-supreme-court-says-its-perfectly-legitimate-for-black-men-to-flee-police/ <comment><USER2> _In the meantime, in a unanimous opinion issued on Tuesday, the Supreme Court of Massachusetts gave implicit approval for black men to run when the police ask to speak to them._

Bad call!

The right thing to do, is stop and chat with the cop. If you think at any time during the chat that the cop is just trying to mess with you, you may walk away, something you're allowed to do under the protocol.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> OP here. Title is cut off. Full title is: "Massachusetts Supreme Court Says It's Perfectly Legitimate for Black Men to Flee Police"

Unfortunately titles are limited to 80 characters here on HN, and this one is 87 characters long.

<comment><USER3> Top MA court OKs black men fleeing cops

39 characters</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Did I get into the wrong field? - <AUTHOR> Lately, I've been having this looming feeling that I might have gotten into the wrong field. I've been out of college working full time as a software dev for a couple of years now. I've gotten promoted and a couple of raises so I guess I'm not terrible at my job (though I'm far from the best). However, anyone who knows me personally, knows how much I really don't like my work.
And that is probably the biggest issue with my current job. It has absolutely no value to me, outside of money. It's like being in college and writing essays just to get it done. Which is fine I guess, but I keep dreaming of a future where I could look forward to the work week and doing interesting stuff and not just yearn for the weekend. And it's so hard faking interest in things I'm not interested in. Really exhausting.
So then many people ask me, why don't you just switch jobs? And I've tried, but many of the jobs I come across in tech do not excite me. I'm not interested in building real estate apps, or finance tools, or marketing tools, etc. In fact, the only time I truly like even doing dev work if it's for my own personal projects or building stuff that directly impacts humanity (very cliche, I know). Like stuff that SpaceX is doing with low-orbit satellites I found really fascinating. I've also tried non-profits but many of them can only afford to bring a dev on as a volunteer.
So then what am I interested in doing then? I don't know. Maybe starting over, and going into psychiatry or being a radio host, or even politician. Unfortunately, I also don't want any more debt. So there's that issue.
Has anyone else experienced this and have any advice? I know this is absolutely a position of privilege as there are people in the world who don't have such choices. So I hate complaining but could use some advice. <comment><USER2> "So then what am I interested in doing then? I don't know."

That's maybe not the most important thing you need to consider.

What I did was a bit different. I was living LA and realized it didn't matter what I did there, it sucked. So I started focusing on where I'd like to live.

Everyone has their own criteria for that, but we don't often give it much real thought. There's family and friends and work that all stand in the way of even pondering where we'd really like to live.

I spent a few years looking into places I thought I'd like to live, found my spot, moved there, and have been here for 25 years now. I've never felt compelled to live anywhere else since and it hasn't mattered what kind of work I've done.

Now here's the real kicker... My parents, grandmother, two brothers and a sister, all moved here after coming to visit.

<comment><USER3> > I was living LA and realized it didn't matter what I did there, it sucked. > So I started focusing on where I'd like to live.

Your whole comment is the most beautiful and wise I've read in HN in a long time. Thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I know of someone who had a tenure job doing research in Humanities. Since his research challenges the dominant thinking, other faculty had someone file sexual allegation charges. In the end, the university administration couldn't find any proof at all.

So, be careful about passion. Passion is all good if you are in an environment that appreciates your work. Otherwise, it will lead to a different kind of hell.

</comment><comment><USER5> > or building stuff that directly impacts humanity

Does this have to be on a grand scale like the example, or would making something of great value for a specific/niche audience, and thus revenue generating be of interest?

Maybe work at a small startup company where you have influence not only on building but also shaping the product to solve identified problems.

<comment><AUTHOR> Definitely doesn't have to be of grand scale. But something that I also see the value in. I know that sounds kinda selfish, but it really does get me going.

<comment><USER5> This is pretty much the same with me. Working at a new company job can be interesting for about a year. Then it has to have some sustainable 'value' to keep it interesting. I've worked at a number of tech/startup companies recently for about 2 years each. Sometimes I think if I had an idea I could commit to I could start a company except for the non-technical side I don't have a partner for. I really used to really enjoy making programming tools and utilities since I'm the target user and can see the value in it. Nowadays the tools I use seem pretty good already.

No real answers, kinda in the same boat but have hopes my current job makes it past the 2 year mark.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Very few people are lucky enough to have a day job that is also their passion. And even fewer have a manager who is nice and colleagues that are nice etc etc. Based on that fact, I'm happy that I'm programming for a living and not welding or farming.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I get that perspective. Although, I don't think I would call programming my "passion." Sometimes I like to build cool things and programming is one way to do it.

<comment><USER5> > like to build cool things

Seems there is a clue here. The lack of excitement could be from lack of a feedback loop. When you recognize something as cool, that's the reward. For passionate programmers, learning or executing new techniques could be theirs.

I have one friend that switched to a company/team building internal tools. They're close to their users and get immediate feedback on the impact of every change that's made. There's probably many others ways to close the loop if you figure out what works for you.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! This was definitely something that I never thought about. Currently, my work does not have any type of "feedback" loop cause none of it is consumer facing.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Great Canadian Vowel Shift - <AUTHOR> http://www.macleans.ca/society/life/in-the-midst-of-the-canadian-vowel-shift/ <comment><USER2> The accents in north america are split east-west, not north-south. I'm from Vancouver but whenever I am in the eastern US they think I'm from california because I don't sound have the ontario/maritime accent they recognize as "canadian". "aboot" doesn't exist in the west. Never has.

<comment><USER3> I'm in LA and every time someone finds out I'm Canadian, they say, "But you don't have an accent" or "You don't sound Canadian", and on the rare occasion, people refer to my Vancouver accent as "fake Canadian accent".

I just half-smile or say "I don't know", instead of explaining how provincial their "typical Canadian accent" sounds to Vancouverites.

<comment><USER2> I've been told that my accent isn't so much a sound, but a mode of speech. You can spot the Canadians in LA because they are the ones using complete sentences.

There is a certain neutrality to the western-canadian accent, much like that of Minnesota. Take the word Going or anything else ending with ing. In much of the US it is pronounced "goin", dropping the g. In the UK it has become "going-g" ... they add an extra g sound. Right in the middle are the canadians and minnesotans who pronounce the word as written.

Canadians, watch this vid to see the similarity with minnesota: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-BCxjYoOl0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-BCxjYoOl0) (I know this guy)

<comment><USER4> > There is a certain neutrality to the western-canadian accent, much like that > of Minnesota.

??!? I don't think any American who isn't from the middle Northern tier can watch Fargo without at least noticing the accent, or cracking a mild smile. The accent was practically a character in the movie.

However, TBH, I don't know if I know any Minnesotans, and I've never been there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > _The English version of "baguette" stops rhyming with "vague-ette,"_

Coming from central Canada, "bag" always rhymes with "vague". I get funny looks sometimes when "lag" comes up in conversation here in the Pacific NW.

<comment><USER6> By central Canada, do you mean Ontario? I've lived in Manitoba for decades and I don't know anyone who pronounces "bag" that way.

<comment><USER7> Manitobans are the worst offfenders on the "bag"/"bayg" meter. If anything, it's the trademark of their accent. It isn't until I point it out do they hear it. anything that Americans (californians especially) say with the short A sound that ends with a hard consonant is liable to be mangled by a manitoban. If you aren't hearing it, it's because your accent is getting in the way (the one you probably swear you don't have).

Ontario residents mangle their A sounds a little different. when you have an "ar" combination in a word, they pronounce it like "air", but as if you're simultaneously having a mild stroke. "Marnie had an Enlarged Heart" is always fun to hear one say.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Interesting juxtaposition: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Cities_Vowel_Shift](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Cities_Vowel_Shift)

</comment><comment><USER9> There are many more linguistically-oriented articles than usual today. I like it.

Additionally, praat is really interesting software from the University of Amsterdam that allows you to analyze speech recordings and see what the vowels and consonants actually are. [http://www.fon.hum.uva.nl/praat/](http://www.fon.hum.uva.nl/praat/)

</comment><comment><USER10> Hmm, I left Western Canada 15 years ago to move to Denver. I thought I had grown out of the accent, but now it seems the accent is catching up with me?

I studied linguistics in school and was fascinated by the linguistic shifts in Germanic languages long ago. But it seems a shame for it to be happening now as pronunciation becomes homogenized.

</comment><comment><USER11> For anyone who's curious about the stereotypical 'oot' and 'aboot' vowels, Wikipedia has a nice overview[1] of the phenomenon (Canadian Raising).

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

</comment><comment><USER12> As a Western Canadian (who works with a lot of folks in California, Oregon and Colorado) one thing that gets pointed out all the time is my pronunciation of:

\- JavaScript \- Americano \- Pasta

<comment><USER13> Yup. Canadians often pronounce "a" as "ah" vs. "awh". A great is example of the Mazda brand. It's mahz-dah in Canada, but moz-duh in the US. Even the commercials pronounce it differently in each country.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> "These changes in the mouth are happening under our noses."

:)

Great line!

</comment><comment><USER15> I spoke all of the examples at the beginning of the article, and I don't sound like any of the "new" examples; furthermore my mother was from the U.S., so I should sound more like them if anything.

I've also lived on both coasts(as well as nearer the center), and honestly I don't remember anyone speaking like this.

I've never actually heard "aboot" either.

I don't actually see any references, so I'm not sure what "linguists" they're talking to.

</comment><comment><USER16> What a great thread - from one Canuck to all of you - "How's it goin' eh?"

<comment><USER17> In Nova Scotia the only people you hear saying eh are from Ontario, mostly from the Toronto area it seems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> It's a real life Pontypool ;-)

<comment><USER19> That movie was great. Yay Canadian arts!

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm going to miss 'oot' and the rest. RIP

<comment><USER21> "Soar-y" for sorry has always been my favorite. I've always associated that pronunciation with obnoxious child-actors since so many of the shows I grew up on were peopled almost entirely with Canadian actors/voice actors.</comment></comment>


A Coca-Cola plant in Mexico uses 1.08M liters of water per day as wells dry up - <AUTHOR> http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/41916-coca-cola-sucks-wells-dry-in-chiapas-forcing-residents-to-buy-water <comment><USER2> > ...the company has permits for two wells to extract a total of 499,918 cubic > meters of water per year, or 499.9 million liters. In 2016, the company > extracted 78.8 percent of the permitted total.

So the government gave Coke the permits, Coke used under 80% of the agreed amount, and now it's a crisis? It has the markings of some severe utilities planning blunder.

> "The city has been growing significantly since the 1970s," he says in an > interview at his office, which has a view of Huitepec mountain, where Coca- > Cola extracts its water. "But in San Cristobal, there was no urban planning. > And that's been aggravated by public policies that don't pay attention to > the Indigenous people of the state."

That sort of gets at the real problem.

There are a lot of questions. Would things would actually get better if Coke were to shut down operations? How many people would stop drawing salaries? How much tax revenue loss does the government face with halted operations? Would the freed up water volume be enough to avert disaster? Does the drought affect everyday citizens or farmers the most? Are there any other environmental externalities that result from the Coke plant?

These are some of the tough questions that we need to answer before we can readily assign blame to megacorps. It's easy to hate large companies, and I dislike my fair share, but boiling this situation down into a headliner shaming corporate avarice may not be the best way to make progress. Maybe they should shut down the plant, or maybe they shouldn't--I don't know, and it shouldn't be for armchair economists thousands of miles away to decide. It just seems more complicated than the solicited visceral emotions may suggest.

<comment><USER3> Coke is huge in this part of Chiapas, especially in indigenous areas.

I was there last spring, and my guide said Coca-Cola bribed the village curanderos (spiritual healers) to increase the consumption of Coke, so they incorporated it into religious rituals [0].

The water isn't safe to drink, and Coke can be cheaper than milk or formula, so many moms feed their babies Coke instead [1].

The point is, when the megacorp has subverted democracy from the national leaders [1] to the regional leaders all the way down to the village healers, how can you not hold the megacorp accountable?

[0] [https://costumbresporelmundo.files.wordpress.com/2014/05/tum...](https://costumbresporelmundo.files.wordpress.com/2014/05/tumblr_mbhn3smhdm1qa3j75o1_500-all- things-mexico.jpg)

[1] [http://robinewing.com/2013/09/22/cola-consumption-and-the- ch...](http://robinewing.com/2013/09/22/cola-consumption-and-the-chamula- indians/)

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

<comment><USER4> What kind of extra profits do you think Coke brings in from the excess consumption from religious rituals of Spiritual Healers?

Lets say Chiapas (3.4 million people) has (10% population of Spiritual Healers) = 340,000 Spiritual Leaders.

Each spiritual leader will now purchase a 1 Liter coke for a religious ceremony EVERY DAY that they otherwise would not have. Coke costs .73 pesos per liter in Chiapas. 340,000 x .73 Pesos = 248,200 Pesos per day.

248,200 Pesos coverts to $13,992.88 USD per day.

$13,992.88 x 365 (days in a year) = $5,107,401.20 USD Total extra coke consumption.

So Coke is now possibly selling 5 million USD more dollars per year of coke with this scheme. You must subtract the cost of making coke which we do not know, and the cost of the "bribes", to find Coke's total profit here.

But as someone involved in marketing the potential downside of this scandal doesn't seem worth the extra 5 million in sales from Coke used during religious rituals in Chiapas.

It seems more likely to me that if mothers are feeding their babies Coke instead of the expensive milk, or contaminated water, that the Spiritual Healers are making the same decision as everyone else. That Coke is the safest, most cost effective and pleasant drink available.

Full Disclosure: I am drinking my morning Diet Dr. Pepper as I type this.

<comment><USER5> Coca Cola has always a parasitic brand that attaches to things to sell product. You are forgetting about the implicit religious endorsement of the spiritual healer using Coke. That endorsement neutralizes negative factors. It's a sugary drink, but it must be good if it is part of religious ritual!

The high level process is: Create need (subvert the healers' credibility), make the product indispensable (attach to healing ritual), link to outcome and provide a sample (feeling better = Coke)

Most infamously, Nestle used techniques like this to sell powdered baby formula in third world countries -- a practice that literally killed thousands of children in the process. In the United States, Coke is co-branded with lots of other things that people like: McDonald's, Movies, Christmas (Santa = Coke), etc. Coke is _the_ master of applying this marketing pattern.

<comment><USER4> I appreciate the point you are making, and I don't disagree for the most part on Coke's branding process.

But does that type of strategy extend to local communities and Spiritual Healers?

I don't think the math supports that. The team of "expert consultants" who would come up with a plan like this and institute it would charge more in their salaries than the increased consumption in Chiapas is worth. Also, ask yourself why a strategy like that would even be necessary in Chiapas???

You don't need to trick people into buying Coke when they don't have access to clean and affordable water.

<comment><USER6> I think the idea would be less "sell more Coke" and more "become an integral part of the lives of the voting population of the town our factory is in". When Coke is holy, those who would stand against it are heretics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> So where I'm from we have a similar problem yet no end in site. After last years summer we had one of the worst droughts this region has ever had, but then it went into winter. It didn't rain much this winter and now we're back in summer... With water restrictions starting the summer as bad as they were when we ended it.

To the point of this though. One of the worlds largest breweries is situated in my city. My country has a horrendous alcohol problem, to the extent where paying farm labourers in booze only got outlawed just over 20 years ago.

Anyway this brewery makes most of the beer in the Southern Hemisphere, yet it was able to get so large because it is right on top of one of the biggest springs, and they claimed riparian rights many years ago.

My problem being is that up until this year, for the past 3 years, the public was allowed access to the spring on their land. Now they are denying the public access while we go through a drought and they continue to produce beer for next to nothing as they don't pay a cent for their biggest ingredient. Now I want to stop them making beer while we are in a drought, but in a country run by alcohol makers that will surely either be an impossible task or end up getting me killed.

<comment><USER8> Can you name the brewery / city?

<comment><USER7> Cape Town, South Africa. SABMiller, which was recently bought for £69 billion by Anheuser-Busch InBev.

<comment><USER9> Specifically this brewery, I'm guessing: [http://www.sab.co.za/the-sab- story/the-story-of-newlands-bre...](http://www.sab.co.za/the-sab-story/the- story-of-newlands-brewery/) [http://www.702.co.za/articles/250909/sab-urges- members-of-th...](http://www.702.co.za/articles/250909/sab-urges-members-of- the-public-to-stop-abusing-source-of-free-water)

<comment><USER7> Yes that's the one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This. The southern Indian state of Kerala successfully resisted and shutdown this company for good. Even the state made legislation to sue the company for those affected by its ruthless exploitation of ground water.

The factory was in the Palakkad district of Kerala which has historically low levels of ground water. The company was extracting more water than agreed to. The politics behind approving this plant in an already water deprived area is another story. The villagers were experiencing health problems, water depletion in their wells.

I would say the politicians approved this plant and the people shut it down. Even there was a smear campaign in the state against Coke depicting it as an effective insecticide so that people would stop consuming it.

This is not an isolated incident of foreign companies exploiting a third world country. I do not understand what companies means when they say "responsibly sourced". People need jobs and salaries, but not at the cost of their own environment & health.

[http://www.righttowater.info/rights-in-practice/legal- approa...](http://www.righttowater.info/rights-in-practice/legal-approach- case-studies/case-against-coca-cola-kerala-state-india/)

</comment><comment><USER11> Water is a tricky thing. Take almonds for example. One almond takes about 4 liters of water to produce. With 1.6 billion _pounds_ of almonds grown per year we're looking at almost 2.5 trillion liters of water. This is just one nut. Pistachios and walnuts use similar amounts of water, so do other things we eat like broccoli.

I blame Coca-Cola and their ilk for the obesity epidemic, but water shortages are more caused by farming and climate change than they are by breweries or bottling plants.

<comment><USER12> > Pistachios and walnuts use similar amounts of water, so do other things we > eat like broccoli.

What does this really mean though? In New England we have Walnut trees growing everywhere, and no one is watering them. If anything they're locking water into the soil that would otherwise just evaporate.

<comment><USER13> Those walnut trees are growing because of rainwater. They're not a problem. And if farmed nuts we're grown in similar locations, that would also be fine.

But most almonds and pistachios are grown in a desert, with water extracted from ground-water aquifers. Without the wells, the almonds would not grow.

<comment><USER14> I don't think the central valley of California is classified as a desert, it may be dry in the summer but it's not a desert.

<comment><USER15> The southern part is. Further north, it's classified as a Mediterranean climate. I'd suggest the western side is a desert as well. It's only possible to grow crops there by importing water from the northern part of the state. With out that water, it would look like dry mountains to the immediate west along I-5. It only averages a few inches of rain per year.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This exact situation in Venezuela made me think Hugo Chávez was not always completely nuts with _some_ of his ideas.

He was sick of multinationals like Coke buying water for a couple of cents a mega-liter. Coke would then add some sugar and color to it before selling it back to the people for dollars per liter. The expensive purification of that water was paid for by tax revenue.

Chávez decided this was not right, and put an extremely heavy tax on multi- nationals buying "resources" from Venezuela and doing that.

Personally, I think the world would be a better place if that was the law everywhere.

On a related note, Juneau, the capital of Alkasa needs a new water purification plant, theirs is running beyond capacity. The proposal was to increase tax so everyone pays for it. It came to light Holland-America (cruise line) buys millions of gallons for a tiny, tiny fraction of the price that locals pay. When it was suggested to Holland-America they should pay a little more to help fund the new purification plant, Holland-America simply threatened to stop bringing cruise ships to Juneau. So now the residents pay more tax so that Holland-America can continue to buy millions of gallons for much cheaper than the locals pay!

<comment><USER17> I really don't think you can put Hugh Chávez into any argument about making the world a better place. Venezuela is a disaster, and the human suffering is inexcusable.

<comment><USER18> Yeah its Chavez's fault. No mention of sanctions, sanctions. The people who are obsessed with sanctions don't care about the humantarian impact as long as they get what they want.

<comment><USER19> On a related note, the Trump administration exempted Venezuelan state owned oil company Citgo from the recent round of American sanctions.

Citgo happens to employ former Trump campaign advisors as lobbyists.

[http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/348007-trump- ex...](http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/348007-trump-exempts- citgo-from-venezuela-sanctions)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The article is not very clear. It looks like most of the problem is caused by population grow, without good infrastructure. Not by Coca-Cola.

Also, this is misleading:

> _FEMSA reports that it uses 56.9 billion liters of water a year in its > operations across Latin America. In Mexico, the company holds 40 water > permits._

The 56.9 billon liters seams to be a lot and it is a lot, but it's the total in Latin America. But this number is not related to the problem in Chiapas. How much water does the plant in Chiapas use?

<comment><USER21> It says:

"The Chiapas branch of Conagua confirmed to Truthout that the company has permits for two wells to extract a total of 499,918 cubic meters of water per year, or 499.9 million liters. In 2016, the company extracted 78.8 percent of the permitted total."

(Conagua is the National Water Comission)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> This article is just exploiting our desire to hate corporations.

What ever amount of water Coca-cola is taking it is surely a drop in the bucket compared to other uses of water. More likely it is a problem of water being contaminated for other causes. Chiapas is in the middle of the rainforest. They get 120 inches of rainfall a year. In any case their problem is that they get too much rain.

<comment><USER23> This is exactly what it is. 1.08 million liters of water, sounds like a lot, but needs to be put into context of other uses of water.

Agriculture is one of the biggest uses of water. The average US irrigated farm uses 1.6 [0] acre-feet of water per acre of land. Since 1.08 million liters is ~0.9 acre-feet of water. Coca-Cola is using 319.6 acre-feet of water a year which is equivalent water usage, in average, to an 178 acre farm. This is a very modest farm.

This wasn't Coca-Cola we were talking about, but a small 178 acre family farm. This discussion wouldn't be happening.

If you want to complain about Coca-Cola, fine. Perhaps attack it business practices or its contribution to obesity, but it is disingenuous to attack its use of water, when the amount of water used is a very small fraction of farm and industrial uses of water.

[0] - [https://ageconomists.com/2015/04/20/acres-and-acre-feet-a- lo...](https://ageconomists.com/2015/04/20/acres-and-acre-feet-a-look-at- irrigation-trends-in-the-us/)

<comment><USER22> Thanks to put it in numbers, I didn't know where to start. But I know that I use a LOT more water than what I drink.

Certainly their contribution to obesity is major reason to complain about Coca-Cola.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I have some family in McCloud, CA. Apparently this was a big concern when Nestle came to town and wanted their water. There ended up being a big legal battle, but in the end the town won [1]. I forget all of the details, but there was some shadiness on Nestle's part. They initially told people the new water plant would bring jobs back to the town, but when residents looked into it, they discovered almost everything would be automated, and only a hand full of new jobs would be created.

[1] [http://www.alternet.org/story/142645/after_6-year_battle%2C_...](http://www.alternet.org/story/142645/after_6-year_battle%2C_mccloud%2C_ca_defeats_water_bottling_giant_nestle)

<comment><USER25> > They initially told people the new water plant would bring jobs back to the > town, but when residents looked into it, they discovered almost everything > would be automated, and only a hand full of new jobs would be created.

Why didn't they just make it part of the contract?

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Same in India:

[https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/jun/18/indian-o...](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/jun/18/indian- officals-coca-cola-plant-water-mehdiganj)

everywhere!

</comment><comment><USER27> I get this is a mindless junk article, but this statement is ridiculous right?

"Surely the earthquake damaged underground caves in the aquifer, which could impact aquifer recharge in the future,"

You could give them the benefit of the doubt on a translation error, but no mainstream paper would be this sloppy.

</comment><comment><USER28> Another big issue is that Coca-Cola is an addiction in Mexico, The government knows it, Coca-Cola Inc. knows it but it seems that our people don't seem to care, taxes had been imposed on sugar watered beverages but nothing change, actually, the consumption went up (I don't have the numbers right now), so, as long as we still have this idea that this kind of beverages are "ok" we are still empowering companies like this to do as they please with this resources.

I'm not very fond of the Mexican government, and believe me, if companies approach them they will be willing to sell even the air we breathe. But we have to put our part to stop empowering this multi-nationals to do as they please.

</comment><comment><USER29> While Coca-Cola deserves a great deal of blame for this (obviously), surely the bigger part of the blame should go to the local government for _allowing them_ to do this? Isn't the people, and therefore the government, sovereign? Or are there some laws/constitutional issues that would prevent the government from restricting Coca-Cola in taking all the water?

By the way, this is why corporate-written and corrupt treaties such as TPP and TTIP can be so dangerous if they end-up preventing national governments from putting such restrictions against multi-national companies.

Another thought: expect more of this to happen when corporations start being run by AI - a lot more. A corporation is already an inhuman entity that's highly biased towards "increasing profits at all costs" without regard for much else. An AI-run corporation would be a supercharged version of that.

People who also "can't wait to be governed by their AI overlords" should take the same thing into consideration.

<comment> vertex-four The issue is that Coca-Cola et al, in practice, have enough power that they can cause problems for Governments which don't allow them to do what they want. Concentration of money is nearly precisely equivalent to concentration of power. And then you have international trade agreements and Governments willing to back this status quo up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Can an engineer chime in? I'm sure Coca Cola doesn't want this bad publicity and I assume that if a few dozen villagers gather at the plant every day it will get worst for them.

My question, is there any way to estimate the ground water? Why did the build there, or is the rate of extraction is really high?

edit: apparently over there they get some 3000mm a year rain!!

</comment><comment><USER31> Could be worse. It's not like a golf course resort is sucking up the water supply. Most of the water that goes into a Coke plant comes out in the product.

</comment><comment><USER32> Isn't this also related to climate change? Given the rate climate is getting warmer, it has been long predicted there will be shortages of drinking water and wells will be drying up as well as vast green areas of today will turn into desserts. Water will be cause of military conflicts in the future I believe. It will be more valuable than oil.

</comment><comment><USER33> At least it has electrolytes.

</comment><comment><USER34> No problem. They can water their plants with Gatorade.

</comment><comment><USER35> Resist the Right-Wing Machine!!

</comment><comment><USER36> I drink your milk shake.

</comment><comment><USER8> Why did somebody just change the title here on HN from the original 'Coca-Cola Sucks Wells Dry in Chiapas, Forcing Residents to Buy Water'?

<comment><USER37> HN has a rule against sensationalised headlines.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Do you really want to live in a world without Coca-Cola? -- WW

</comment><comment><USER39> Water is a scarce resource.

A market system is the objectively the best mechanism for allocating scarce resources.

(Of course, if you object to a pure market system, the government can regulate the market and subsidize residential tap water.)

Why isn't water priced accordingly?

<comment><USER40> > Water is a scarce resource.

Water is not scarce! We got plenty. The model of water being a limited resource we have to save does not represent an economic reality.

We have an entire planet worth of water and we are not shooting it out to space. We know how to use it, how to clean it, etc. We will never run out of water. We might run out of 'free' water, but thats the whole point of using a resource, consuming it.

<comment><USER39> If water isn't scarce, why complain that Coca-Cola is using so much?

<comment><USER40> I wonder what could someone extract from coca-cola for their own self interest.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> This is exactly, why I use functional programming language and prefer Pespsi even tho it tastes bit worse.

The facadian distance between Pespsi and Cocola water molecules is about 10nm which makes Pepsi efficient in terms of water requirements.

If only Coke fans got that right, maybe one day...</comment>


Dalvik ported to MeeGo, promising instant Android app compatibility - <AUTHOR> http://www.linuxfordevices.com/c/a/News/Myriad-Group-Myriad-Alien-Dalvik/

<comment><USER2> While the article mentions MeeGo, the N900 in the video is clearly running Maemo. The article briefly mentions that Maemo support might be possible, but the video out and out proves it.

Going even further than that however, the maemo.org folks discovered that they're using Qt in the background, and so presumably, this could be ported pretty easily over to a Symbian device.

</comment><comment><USER3> This doesn't mean that Google will give MeeGo access to the Android market, meaning that it will increase the work for developers to support the multiple platforms.

<comment><USER4> Having your APK in multiple markets is laughably trivial.

But regardless, what a way to try to dig a negative out of a story like this.

<comment><USER3> I realize how easy it is, I just wanted to point out that they still won't have market access.

I'm of the opinion that Nokia should just move to Android - they make nice hardware but they need better software and should stop spinning their wheels and partner with Google on Android. Don't get me wrong, I love my n810, but I'd like to see Android on a lot of hardware Nokia makes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't know much about how the UI widgets are implemented on Android -

Is it such that Nokia/Intel could reimplement these and have Android apps look consistent with MeeGo UI, or will developer have to do some UI tweaking in order to look reasonable on the different OSes?

EDIT: I suppose this same question also applies to the similar Dalvik implementation on the BlackBerry Playbook that's been rumored.

</comment><comment><USER6> Instant app compatibility? Wouldn't they also need to provide the same set of APIs that Android provides?

<comment><USER7> They do. I think they've ported almost the entire Android userspace and called it "Dalvik".

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Can anyone tell us how many more platforms/phones/devices and what not I'll need to think about supporting because of this? And I do mean "needt o think about" rather than "have to."

<comment><USER7> None; MeeGo was dead yesterday and now it's still dead.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> a) why didn't nokia do this 12months ago?

b) dalvic is apache licensed so Myriad wont have to release the code

<comment><USER10> You have to think like a Nokia exec.

They were a leader in smartphones but now have no viable smartphone OS.

Somebody ports Android to their smartphone hardware

The correct response is to delay the release of the next version of meego to improve the security to prevent this sort of hacking.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> That is actually great news. No Qt needs to be ported to Android. Then it's get really interesting.

<comment><USER12> Qt for Android? Done: <http://code.google.com/p/android-lighthouse/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Makes the "Blackberry tablet to run Android apps" rumor slightly more interesting, even if to think about rather than necessarily believing that particular rumor.

</comment><comment><USER14> the problem with maemo/meego isn't the app ecosystem, it's the half-assed platform itself! there were all the apps that I could possibly need on my n900, it's just wasn't very enjoyable to use them. for example the built-in browser sucks on both maemo 4 and 5. thankfully Opera is still building their mobile browser for both, so my n810 is quite usable device after 3 years.

<comment><USER15> I'm using the N900's browser right now. It's quite enjoyable for the most part :)</comment></comment>


Forget ideology, democracy's newest threats come from technology and bioscience - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/28/ideology-liberal-democracy-technology-bioscience-yuval-harari-artificial-intelligence <comment><USER2> Misleading as always. It is simple the incompatibility between democracy and capitalism. Science and technology are irrelevant here.

Democracy assumes people are equal and evolve equally.

Capitalism assumes that people start almost equal (== racism) and deviation from equality is amplified due to interaction (== animal like competition, corruption) and time evolution (== chance, results of human nature raping).

Meritocracy is a cheap excuse that hides racism and criminal insanity. If you do not lock a pedophile into jail, he will insist that pedophilia is a right.</comment>


AWS Amplify – A declarative library for application development - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/aws/aws-amplify <comment><USER2> We've been integrating more and more Firebase into our projects. It's saved a lot of time since Firebase provides both native and web implementations of many of the services that we would otherwise waste time implementing ourselves, such as auth, storage, analytics, and messaging.

The funny thing is that it's been sort of a gateway drug into the Google Cloud Platform. After dipping your toe into the Firebase Realtime Database, you start using Firebase Cloud Functions and Firebase Storage, which steers you toward Google Cloud Functions and Google Cloud Storage. Before you know it you've switched entirely from AWS to GCP

AWS really needs to step up their game in this area to compete with GCP. Hopefully this project is a start.

<comment><USER3> Aren't you worried about vendor lock-in?

<comment><USER4> I feel that worrying about that is itself premature optimization. Most startups never get to a point where vendor lock-in is an issue.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> We tried to use AWS mobile metrics in a project about a year ago and while it was easy to configure, the data was woefully limited compared to other mobile analytics solutions. Does anyone have recent experience that suggests its improved?

Also, what is the Authenticator? I couldn't find much with a cursory glance, just docs on the HOC.

<comment><USER6> [https://github.com/aws/aws- amplify/blob/master/media/authent...](https://github.com/aws/aws- amplify/blob/master/media/authentication_guide.md#4-compose-authenticator)

It's an easy way to build out your own UX for authentication flows and customize the experience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This looks very useful! Adding user authentication through the regular JS web SDK can be a pain.</comment>


Show HN: Top of the Morning is now available on the App Store - <AUTHOR>

Hi Hacker News!
I wanted to share with you my new iPhone app Top of the Morning.
Top of the Morning is a morning assistant. It provides a simple way to kick start your day with the right amount of information – weather, date and time, iOS synced reminders and calendar events, news, and the stock market.
Get it here:
https://itunes.apple.com/app/top-morning-morning-assistant/id662168296
Check it out here:
http://gettopofthemorning.com/
Thanks!
Michael <comment><USER2> Can't help but be reminded of Morning, an iPad app featured here the other day.

[http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5901251](http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5901251)

</comment><comment><USER3> Looks interesting. The navigation links on the top left of your site don't work though.</comment>


Cdecl: C gibberish ↔ English - <AUTHOR> http://cdecl.org/ <comment><USER2> Note that this is a web interface to a widely-available Unix tool of the same name (you can get it in Debian with sudo apt install cdecl). You can run it on your own machine and it works with the same syntax as the web interface.</comment>


Announcing the Scala IDE for Eclipse 2.0 - <AUTHOR> http://blog.typesafe.com/scala-ide-for-eclipse-20

<comment><AUTHOR> A great release in my opinion, and a brand new web site, too.</comment>