Ask HN: How do you know if someone asked/replied to your question on HN? - <AUTHOR> There's a thread I like: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12957371 and I asked some questions to some people.
Problem 1: I think they don't know about it, since there's no notification function. So it's kinda sucks.
Problem 2: when they replied, I got no notification. That sucks #2.
How do people deal with it? <comment><USER2> I imagine that no-notifications is an intentional part of the minimalist æsthetic of HN, but I would also like this feature. It seems that it could be made minimally obtrusive by just having a "Replies" entry on your profile page, so that it's never in your way, but you can find the replies without having to trawl through all your old comments.

<comment><AUTHOR> Anything would be better to what we have now. Right now I need to bookmark the link, visit it every now and then and search for my username... It's pretty bad.

<comment><USER2> For what it's worth, I do just what I said: I go through my list of comments occasionally, and see if any of them has grown a thread. If there's only one in which you're interested then this method is no easier; but it's a nice way of keeping tabs on all of them (or at least the most recent ones) at once.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> there is "threads" entry in menu bar, you can see your question and replies there

[https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=wkoszek](https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=wkoszek)

</comment><comment><USER4> I use hnreplies.

www.hnreplies.com

<comment><USER5> This. Brought to you by dang himself -- accept no substitutes.

<comment><USER4> While you're here Doctor, watch out today. Some weird things are going down now.</comment></comment></comment>


Trump won't allow you to use iPads or laptops on certain airlines. Here's why - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/03/21/trump-wont-allow-you-to-use-ipads-or-laptops-on-certain-airlines-heres-the-underlying-story/ <comment><USER2> This article gives some credence to the idea it may be a protectionist tactic since it does seems to address any threat: [https://skift.com/2016/06/28/u-s- airlines-set-to-lose-major-...](https://skift.com/2016/06/28/u-s-airlines-set- to-lose-major-battle-against-gulf-carriers-in-open-skies-debate/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Why's clickbait still allowed here?

<comment><USER4> If you'd like to write software that accurately detects all clickbait, we'd be delighted to try it out.</comment></comment>


Practical privacy tips for your business - <AUTHOR> https://blog.simpleanalytics.com/practical-privacy-tips-for-your-business <comment><AUTHOR> I wrote this blog post as a reference guide for both technical people and not technical people.

As the founder of Simple Analytics, I'm running into privacy issues while building our product. Based on those learnings I listed some practical tips in this blog post to improve the privacy of your visitors.

If you –as an HN reader– have any comments on extra tips or improvements, please let me know! I would love to keep this guide up-to-date.

<comment><USER2> I've heard that upvotes don't count if they're from people who followed a link directly to the story. And you're not supposed to solicit votes in the first place. Just say "Join the discussion on Hacker News". :)

Great article, by the way! People need to put more thought into this kind of thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I've been following your activity because of your strong stance on privacy and very much agree with this post.

In fact SimpleAnalytics is my only 3rd party call from my SaaS site (pritact.com)

What I take from this post is the importance of considering, even on basic web interactions, how much you can chip away at your client's privacy by making easy choices with "free" platforms.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your kind words and support!

You are right, it's easy to just install that extra little script to improve a certain metric. At the same time you're trading the privacy of all your visitors. I hope people will become more aware of this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm working on open source solution [https://github.com/vaulty- co/vaulty](https://github.com/vaulty-co/vaulty) that may help with data tokenization, encryption, etc. Few cases from your blog post may be covered. I also created a guide on how to tokenize email address (it can be anything like phone number, IP, SSN, etc.) and let application use tokenized email when sending emails via Mailgun: [https://vaulty.co/docs/cookbooks/email-list-with- protected-e...](https://vaulty.co/docs/cookbooks/email-list-with-protected- emails). Would be great to hear feedback if any :D

</comment><comment><USER5> Very interesting. I didn't know about `crossorigin=anonymous` and `referrerpolicy`. You wouldn't believe how many "privacy-focused", "E2E encrypted", etc. web apps are just blindly loading things from multiple CDNs with no SRI and no CSP (let alone anonymous CORS or no-referrer).

Speaking of CSP, should it be in this list? It allows you to whitelist scripts that run on your page, prevent 3rd-party scripts from loading media, and act as a kind of application firewall with `connect-src`.

<comment><AUTHOR> I totally agree on your point about CSP. Will add it to the post, thanks for sharing your feedback!

Edit: I just added a section about CSP [1]

[1] [https://blog.simpleanalytics.com/practical-privacy-tips- for-...](https://blog.simpleanalytics.com/practical-privacy-tips-for-your- business#content-security-policy)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The suggestions here are fairly good. One complaint, though: embedding tweets lets you select their text; taking a screenshot does not. Consider perhaps using some styled text instead. Also, I think your example of using share links might be more actionable if they actually worked instead of just being a static image ;)

<comment><USER7> I had a similar issue for the tweet embedding, so I wrote a Node.js script to download tweets via their API, and construct the HTML and CSS necessary to display it on my own website, without needing to include their JavaScript: [https://github.com/umaar/better-twitter- embed](https://github.com/umaar/better-twitter-embed)

As an example, to display 442 tweets on one page, it's around 2.4mb of network download - most of that is from media which some of the tweets use.

This way, text is selectable and links can be clicked.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think it is all good advice but I don't agree with anonymisation of IP addresses. Maybe better option is to remove logs after some time instead of removing it. When you are business owner you also have some right to protect your business. Logs with IP might help finding offenders. So it is a trade off.

<comment><AUTHOR> Why not hash the IPs with some changing salt for that purpose? There is I think no need for saving an IP.

<comment><USER8> Did you checked your logs in the web server and have seen how many exploits and malicious scans are daily coming? When by any chance you are hit with one of those it might be useful to have not hashed IP in logs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Great article. Would love to see something in this vein for App Store apps.

The elephant in the room: Facebook Pixel and the Facebook SDK.

I've held strong and refuse to add the SDK to our app. Or any Facebook integration (to the website). But per my marketing friends, we're essentially wasting our money on all our Facebook advertising. For better or worse, ads are very important for our consumer-facing product ([https://www.joyapp.com](https://www.joyapp.com)).

The fact that 90% of apps out there have what many consider spyware should alarm more people. This is even if you don't use Facebook sign in![1][2]

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23097459](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23097459)

[2] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23097873](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23097873)

</comment><comment><USER10> For remote links, you should add rel=noopener as well, to prevent reverse tabnapping.

Combined with rel=noreferrer, that'll be rel="noopener noreferrer".

 _Update:_ sorry, this is not necessary. noreferrer implies noopener ([https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/links.html#link- type-...](https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/links.html#link-type- noreferrer)). But while a Referrer-Policy of no-referrer renders rel=noreferrer unnecessary, you still want rel=noopener, so you might as well go with rel=noreferrer. referrerpolicy=no-referrer is superfluous in this location.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, added a comment about noopener.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Some great tips and solutions to help a web where most popular websites are plagued with JavaScript from as many as 10-30+ external websites.

Of course, many of those are profitable, but there's still technical room for improvement independent of that.

</comment><comment><USER12> Great reading! I am building a shareable journal/social network with a focus on privacy. It was very interesting, in particular the parts about CDN and IP anonymization.

I wrote some thoughts on the trade-offs of choosing privacy for a social network. It might help other people trying to make product/business decisions with a privacy-focused approach:

[https://blog.quidsentio.com/posts/the-trade-offs-of- privacy/](https://blog.quidsentio.com/posts/the-trade-offs-of-privacy/)

</comment><comment><USER13> I'm not surprised that Simple Analytics' gripe with cookie banners is regarding misleading designs instead of their existence in itself. Companies need to start thinking outside these norms.

Cookie banners are never necessary. If you want to collect analytics prior to obtaining consent, you should store this data locally on the browser so that you can ask for consent at a time that's more appropriate (e.g. during signup or content submission).

<comment><USER14> Didn't the EU just make cookie banners illegal in the last couple weeks?

<comment><USER15> It didn't make them unlawful (they were already unlawful), the European Data Protection Board just updated its guidance to make that clear.

Specifically, they clarified that scrolling, etc. or navigating cookie consent walls prior to accessing the site did not constitute valid consent for GDPR purposes.

This is because it wasn't freely given — to access the site, in most cases you were required to consent to cookies.

The Court of Justice of the European Union also ruled that pre-filled consent checkboxes for cookie banners, etc. were unlawful in October last year.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Have been using SimpleAnalytics for my websites for a while now and couldn't be happier. Please keep building.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your support! We will release amazing features in 2020.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I always wonder if there is value in extending the HTML spec to include contracts in webpages for 3rd party calls. Might help enforce a domain level policy by a domain owner making sure content creators have to oblige.

Exactly the reverse of the cross-origin request header.

<comment><USER18> Is this not just a tight CSP?

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> These tips are great and immediately actionable, the request maps are quite compelling, thank you. Limiting third parties' access to the user-agent is critical for a private (and secure!) web, and it makes it easy to create really legible, transparent privacy policies and adhere to them.

This type of advice works really well for a single-person company, or a small organization, but I think that they don't go far enough once your company starts to grow, and most of these things are not really "encoded" as truth unless they're expressed in the "contracts" signed between you and the customer, i.e. the T&C and Privacy Policy.

For example, consider what happens in the case of a company sale or bankruptcy: if the service along with your users' accounts and whatever else is in your database get sold to an antagonistic company, can they simply amend your privacy policy and start re-selling the data? Is your privacy policy even valid in the event of an acquisition? Most privacy policies include a quite wide allowance for disclosure in the event of sales, mergers, etc.[1] Consider adding clauses to your privacy policy providing users with strong data controls if you end up in a situation like this, even if it will make those your organization less valuable in these situations. This is a very tough call to make, of course, you're making yourself less attractive to people who can bail you out when you're most in need of bailing, but a more equitable relationship with your users may build enough trust in your product to keep from needing to be bailed :)

How do you design your systems so that they grow to be more privacy-preserving over time? Large/"global" tech companies will consider this in their security threat modeling, that e.g. anyone with root can dump the database, but even companies of 20-200 employees should be considering internal attacks like this. Businesses operating in complicated regulatory environments inevitably end up with some business-person running SQL against production once a week to get a CSV to send to a regulator, what else can they (or someone with their access) do with enough time and Stack Overflow?

I'm a big fan of considering and expressing privacy values (along with other values of your organization's choice!) in the entire business lifecycle, not just in the code+infrastructure, adopting privacy by design[2] methodologies in to your product design lifecycle, for example, if you've already started. But if you're a small company or a single-person side-dish, considering these things from the very beginning will pay in dividends as time goes on.

So much of this advice comes down to "treat your customers and potential customers with respect and dignity." I'm one of those weirdos who read the T&C and privacy policy before i sign up for most services, and I'm always taken aback by 1) how ambiguous they all are (in favor of the business) 2) how same-y they all are 3) how often they simply don't function [3]. I think that if business wants to continue to rely on the idea of "informed consent" for our data regulatory frameworks, we must be encouraged to build more transparent, informative controls for users, starting with those tiny fucking check-boxes at the bottom of every signup page.

[1]: [https://www.freeprivacypolicy.com/blog/privacy-policy- busine...](https://www.freeprivacypolicy.com/blog/privacy-policy-business- transfer-clause/)

[2]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privacy_by_design#Foundational...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privacy_by_design#Foundational_principles_in_detail)

[3]: One example: F1TV, the Formula 1 online streaming service's signup page didn't have working links to the PP or T&C, their cookie control tool didn't work, and their contact email address didn't respond to multiple requests for a copy of the contracts. I live in the US, but I am considering filing a UK ICO complaint about this, but who knows what help that'll be ...

<comment><USER19> gosh, this is so long, sorry!

<comment><USER18> The signup page for me (Subscribe?) has working ToS, PP, Terms links at the bottom, assuming this is now

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Logged in to HN just give you kudos

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you very much</comment></comment>


Fairphone 3 Teardown - <AUTHOR> https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Fairphone+3+Teardown/125573 <comment><USER2> [https://www.ifixit.com/smartphone- repairability?sort=score](https://www.ifixit.com/smartphone- repairability?sort=score)

There is only one other phone from the last five years (that isn't also a Fairphone) that has a score better than an 8/10 on ifixit's 'repairability score'. Well done!

</comment><comment><USER3> What about the software side? Fairphone 3 supports Android 9, Fairphone 2 supports Android 7. I see no use in a smartphone with replaceble hardware parts if I cannot install at least security patches for my phones OS on the long run.

<comment><USER4> Fairphone has had very solid software support. It is together with Nexus and Oneplus the hardware most enthusiasts choose, so there is a functioning community around it.

It is not only well supported in LineageOS, but also most alternative phone OSes such as UBports (Ubuntu Touch), Sailfish and postmarketOS have or have had people actively using the hardware.

It's quite a good track record considering the Fairphone 2 is already twice the age the minimum software update guarantee from Google for their own hardware.

<comment><USER5> Absolutely not. I don't download Windows updates from "enthusiasts" or "the community", and I don't consider community security patches to be "solid software support".

There's nothing wrong with LineageOS and I'm not criticizing their work. They do a great job keeping phones supported past the time when manufacturers have dropped support. But the Android community is far too willing to trust ROMs downloaded from forums that include who-knows-what and calling it "solid software support".

Solid software support is updates from the manufacturer, the company I originally trusted to provide updates when I bought the phone. If I have to rely on the work of people who once called themselves "Team Douche" [1] because the company who released the original software has stopped support, I'm not considering that "solid software support".

[1] [https://www.talkandroid.com/16074-modders-round-table- with-t...](https://www.talkandroid.com/16074-modders-round-table-with-team- douche-makers-of-cyanogenmod/)

<comment><USER6> Conflating LineageOS with forum sourced ROMs is FUD, and the vast majority of servers are run on software from the efforts of the "the community".

<comment><USER5> >Conflating LineageOS with forum sourced ROMs is FUD

Nonsense. CyanogenMod started off as a forum-sourced ROM on XDA just like anything else [1]. It may have grown beyond that, but only because people blindly trusted it and installed it on their phones 10 years ago, and XDA is still distributing hacked ROMs in the exact same fashion today.

[1] [https://forum.xda- developers.com/showthread.php?t=537204](https://forum.xda- developers.com/showthread.php?t=537204)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is great, especially since modern cell phones are not that revolutionary anymore and should be fairly static in terms of parts. In theory you should be able to upgrade your fairphone in a few years with new parts, like you can with a PC.

<comment><USER8> This is the 3rd version; their website doesn't list the previous two. Are parts still available? Can you fit the guts of the 3rd version into the shell of the 2nd?

I'm going to pay attention to this brand; it's very promising. But they still have a lot of work to do before its sustainable.

<comment><USER7> > This is the 3rd version; their website doesn't list the previous two. Are > parts still available? Can you fit the guts of the 3rd version into the > shell of the 2nd?

I have no idea, I was just speculating that in theory it should be possible to create a base phone that can be upgraded continuously.

<comment><USER9> A problem that often isn't considered is firmware/drivers. In the smartphone world you often can't simply install a driver for your new 5G module, for example. I haven't seen a solution for this, yet.

<comment><USER10> The Librem 5 seems to potentially solve this. If it is an m.2 card and there are Linux drivers, then it can be upgraded.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Congratulations to the Fairphone team for achieving a 10/10 score!

</comment><comment><USER12> The more I look at this sort of project, the more I wonder if the "hyper- repairable" approach is worth it. How many of those phones will need repairs? How much more resources have to be spent, and what other trade-offs have to be made, to enable that repairability? (One of the trade-offs being less economy- of-scale because not as many people are willing to buy a bulky yet expensive phone.)

At which point is it better to just build 12 non-repairable phones instead of 10 repairable ones + some spare parts?

Take, for example, the user-serviceable battery with its thick casing. Given that you'd expect to swap it 1-2 times during the useful lifetime of a phone platform, does it need to be _that_ easy to swap, or would it be OK to require some level of disassembly?

Not "melt the glue, pull with suction cup, pry open, disconnect 15 connectors, loosen two sets of 8 screws (all different), remove all innards, replace some single-use parts" level of disassembly, something like "losen two screws, pry off the back, loosen two more screws, swap battery" like with the Nexus 4: [https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Nexus+4+Battery+Replacement/130...](https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Nexus+4+Battery+Replacement/13039)

We don't complain when we take a wristwatch to a watch shop at the corner to swap the battery every few years, waiting a few minutes and paying $5-10 for the service and another $5 for the battery. I would be perfectly OK with a phone that works like that: Repairable (especially commonly swapped parts), but not average-user-servicable.

Edit: Looking at the Fairphone 3, it doesn't look as bad. I remember looking at the Fairphone 2, which looked like a brick made of cheap plastic all around.

<comment><USER13> The more you look at the e-waste that is being generated and dumped (often in developing countries, or.. out of sight of most westerners) the more you realize that increasing repairability/re-use/longetivity of devices is important for the planet. Can you imagine dumping your laptop in the garbage if one of the keys stopped working? Or if your CPU fan clogged up with dust? That's essentially whats happening with iphones, because Apple refuses to give customers the option to take their phones to reputable repair shops by prohibiting suppliers to sell to repair-shops, or in some cases using DRM to prevent repair.

>How many of those phones will need repairs? How much more resources have to be spent, and what other trade-offs have to be made, to enable that repairability?

Judging by the large amount of phone repair shops in existence, we already have the answer.

>(One of the trade-offs being less economy-of-scale because not as many people are willing to buy a bulky yet expensive phone.)

Why do you assume that the phone has to be bulky? That's simply a lack of imagination on the part of designers..

<comment><USER14> > The more you look at the e-waste that is being generated and dumped (often > in developing countries, or.. out of sight of most westerners) the more you > realize that increasing repairability/re-use/longetivity of devices is > important for the planet.

This is based on an assumption that making the device serviceable is actually going to help with this. I'm pretty sure that's just an assumption, mostly based on a hope that we can keep consuming like we do and somehow not wreck the planet if we just pick a phone with "fair" in its name.

> That's essentially whats happening with iphones, because Apple refuses to > give customers the option to take their phones to reputable repair shops by > prohibiting suppliers to sell to repair-shops, or in some cases using DRM to > prevent repair.

Apple actually takes the old phones and is fairly good at recycling and/or refurbishing them. If you're going to toss your phone with that being the case, I somehow doubt you'd repair them either.

> Why do you assume that the phone has to be bulky? That's simply a lack of > imagination on the part of designers..

I can imagine a phone that's also a horse and a vacuum cleaner, but it's not imagination that helps. Extra demands restrict options.

<comment><USER15> > _This is based on an assumption that making the device serviceable is > actually going to help with this. I 'm pretty sure that's just an > assumption, mostly based on a hope that we can keep consuming like we do and > somehow not wreck the planet if we just pick a phone with "fair" in its > name._

Why wound reparability not help with this? Especially since you note that we can't keep living like we do: Reparability is an active attempt to reduce the harmful effects of consuming by reducing waste.

> _Apple actually takes the old phones and is fairly good at recycling and /or > refurbishing them. If you're going to toss your phone with that being the > case, I somehow doubt you'd repair them either._

Bringing it to Apple for repair might take weeks to process, a repair shop might not always be available and I might lose my local data. That's definitely a lot more friction than ordering a new battery (or hypothetically even buying it at the store) and taking a few minutes to put it in, all in the comfort of my home.

<comment><USER14> > Why wound reparability not help with this?

Why would it?

> Especially since you note that we can't keep living like we do: Reparability > is an active attempt to reduce the harmful effects of consuming by reducing > waste.

Or is it an active attempt to soothe our consciences without sacrificing very much?

> Bringing it to Apple for repair might take weeks to process, a repair shop > might not always be available and I might lose my local data. That's > definitely a lot more friction than ordering a new battery (or > hypothetically even buying it at the store) and taking a few minutes to put > it in, all in the comfort of my home.

Do you know _why_ most phones are filled with glue? Vibration resistance. You're going to mess with far more than replacing the battery, meanwhile the expected lifetime of an unrepairable phone is limited by software updates and carrier support anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I think the repairability of the Fairphone 3 is a huge step forward, but in the long run I want a phone that allows me to run an up-to-date OS for as long as I want. The Fairphone 3 will get updates for 5 years, that's not enough if you ask me.

<comment><USER17> Would it be reasonable to you to get something like 2 years of monthly security/software updates included in your purchase of a phone and then pay a nominal (like $25) yearly fee to continue getting only security updates beyond the first 2 years? If not, then how would you suggest funding the people who perform the software/security update process for your phone?

<comment><USER18> Making people pay for security would be bad.

A solution to this is having an upstream kernel (like mainline Linux) work on the phone, and having fairly standard hardware in the phone with in-kernel drivers and free / standard libraries instead of these shitty blobs we need on current phones, and crappy unmaintainable Linux forks.

Android 9 works on my nine year old airis kira slimpad x86 tablet sold with Windows 7. It runs a standard Xubuntu though. And yes, the latest Ubuntu with latest security patches. I don't rely on the manufacturer. It just works with standard software. Have the OS builders and hardware device makers maintain each part for you.

This is not the world we live in though. In our world, Qualcomm and Samsung make their messy Linux forks and don't seem to maintain their Shit on a Chip.

The Librem 5 is promising on this matter though.

<comment><USER5> Making people pay for security isn't unusual. Windows XP is still supported by Microsoft... provided you're willing to pay extra for it.

<comment><USER18> Oh, yeah, absolutely. I can see a corporation / organization pay for Windows XP security updates. Regular people, not so much.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I had a fairphone about three years ago (I'm guessing fairphone 2). The software was for a very old version of Android and the update was very slow coming. I tried to update but had huge problems. There were no custom ROMs for it either - hopefully there are now.

I never got to the point where I replaced a hardware component because the software problems, especially software update problems, and perhaps some mild hardware problems, meant I eventually gave up and used another phone. I hope FF3 is a vast improvement.

Edit: I see lineage has a ROM for FF2 giving it Android 8.1. That wasn't there when I used my FF. It may have given me a good experience.

<comment><USER20> > Edit: I see lineage has a ROM for FF2 giving it Android 8.1. That wasn't > there when I used my FF. It may have given me a good experience.

The LineageOS 16 OS is based on AOSP / Android 9.x Pi; not 8.x Oreo. That was LineageOS 15.

(We also don't use the acronym "FF"; we use the acronym "FP".)

> I had a fairphone about three years ago (I'm guessing fairphone 2). [...] > There were no custom ROMs for it either - hopefully there are now.

I have a Fairphone 2 (FP2) for 4 years, and what you say is untrue. There have been alternative OSes for Fairphone for ages. Fairphone delivered a version of FPOS called Fairphone Open. It is Android without OpenGapps.

The OSes which have been around the past 4 years on FP2:

* SailfishOS (community edition)

* FirefoxOS [now defunct]

* Ubuntu Touch

* LineageOS (for approx 2-3 years?)

* /e/ (more recent, but also a newcomer)

* PostmarketOS (more recent)

Source: [1]

Especially the SailfishOS port has been around for ages, by community member mal (who now works for Jolla). Ubuntu Touch I'm not sure about when that was released, but it was the main development device for UT.

Assuming good faith on your behalf, are you sure this was 3 years ago? From the information you post, it was likely 5 years ago or so, and a Fairphone 1.

[1] [https://forum.fairphone.com/t/operating-systems-for- fairphon...](https://forum.fairphone.com/t/operating-systems-for- fairphones/11425)

<comment><USER19> It was 2016. A FP2? There were definitely other OSes available but I wanted an uptodate Android phone.

If FP could supply an uptodate stock Android version with painless update procedure I'd be happy to try again.

This looks like Android 8? [https://lineageosroms.com/fp2/](https://lineageosroms.com/fp2/)

<comment><USER20> Sorry but if you cannot remember the version of the device and the date it is pointless to discuss that further.

Fairphone delivers an uptodate version of Android on FP2 insofar that it has all the latest security patches despite efforts from Qualcomm to not support the SD 801 anymore. Android 7 officially does not support SD 801 either (via Google) but Fairphone delivered. The community even managed to run an Android 9 fork on it (LineageOS 16).

What you linked looks like a second hand, not updated source.

I am running LineageOS on the FP2 as my daily driver (with microG). Many in the community run it both with and without microG. LOS 16 works. See also this source [1]

[1] [https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/FP2](https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/FP2)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Does anyone know if the Fairphone 3 will support Android Pay? I've asked their support a few times now, but I've never gotten a clear answer.

<comment><USER22> Their website says it has NFC for card payments. So I would assume it would.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Wow, that's neat. This might just be my next phone. It's a little more expensive than I'd like, but not bad, really.

</comment><comment><USER24> What would be the use cases for such a easy repairable phone? Compared to other phones not so easily repairable (i.e. 6/10).

<comment><USER25> Everytime my macbook pro break, it becomes a session in anger management, because it's hard to fix or required lot of money to fix.

If an easily repairable phone breaks, it's not a big deal.

<comment><USER26> I don't have a problem with the MBP being hard to fix, but I have a problem with most repairs require a 2-week ground shipment (both ways) to get the apple store to send it for repair. This is with apple care. Right now I have a bulging battery and a ruined screen glaze that has to go in and I have to find a computer to live with for a few weeks while it's gone.

<comment><USER27> > I don't have a problem with the MBP being hard to fix, but I have a problem > with most repairs require a 2-week ground shipment (both ways) to get the > apple store to send it for repair.

I don't understand the distinction. The MBP is hard to fix because most repairs require a 2-week ground shipment both ways.

<comment><USER26> I meant I wouldn't have a problem if I had to have authorized repairs because it's not meant to be user fixed like they were just a few years ago. I just don't want to have to ship them to Texas for pretty much everything. They should be able to do battery, keyboard and screen replacements locally.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> It doesn't support USB-PD only QC3.0 [1]. I won't buy anything that uses a proprietary charging.

[1][https://shop.fairphone.com/en/accessories/usb-charger- eu](https://shop.fairphone.com/en/accessories/usb-charger-eu)

<comment><USER29> The SoC, baseband, WiFi, etc. chips are okay, but the charging isn't?

<comment><USER30> What's unreasonable about that? The charging standard is a lot more likely to affect day to day use. Being unable to charge quickly using a standard USB-C PD charger is much likely to affect me than some ethical argument about the proprietary baseband and SoC, especially when there are literally no alternatives to proprietary basebands.

<comment><USER31> If this is about practical use instead of ethical arguments: I think QC chargers are more widely available right now than USB PD chargers. Basically every Chinese charger or powerbank nowadays does QC. I've rarely seen one with USB PD.

<comment><USER28> You are right if we only looking at the phone chargers. Actually that's my problem. I don't want to QC be the de facto standard for phone charging. First, with USB PD we have the opportunity to use the same charger for every device we carry with us (Phone, Laptop, Camera, etc.). If my phone doesn't support it then I still have to carry another just for my phone. Second, the USB-C standard prohibits any charging solution other than USB PD. Any proprietary adds another level of confusion using USB-C. Is it supports USB PD, Qualcomm Quick Charge, OnePlus Dash Charge, Oppo Super Vooc, Huawei SuperCharge, Motorola TurboPower or MediaTek Pump Express? In the end, something will fry my laptop if I just plug in a random charger and I will be angry. That's why I hate proprietary charging solutions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> On specs this seems to be a mid-low level phone. I'm not sure I see the point of having a phone built to be repairable and last for the long haul if it's not got the specs to see that lifetime through, and as others have noted the lack up updates in prior iterations is troubling.

I also wonder if the repairability will really impact repair costs. Swapping a battery is one thing, but if the phone isn't mass produced in sufficient qualities then getting replacement screens might not be much cheaper. Other repairs seem much less likely to be needed-- battery and screen probably account for a huge majority of repair issues.

<comment><USER33> I've replaced my last 4 phones not because I wanted something faster or thinner or any hardware improvements at all in fact.

Just that something broke and fixing it was almost as much as getting a new one. Or the software was full of security holes or incompatibilities, and no way of upgrading.

Honestly phones are pretty much where PCs are now, upgrading every year is pointless except for certain specific use cases, and something that can last 4-5 years with minor repairs and regular software updates is enough for the vast majority of users.

My only concern with the Fairphone is the high initial price.

<comment><USER32> On security holes, that's exactly my point when I mentioned updates. It seems from other comments that fairphone was very lax on that front. As for repairs, which ones were almost as much as a new phone? New flagships run $1000. Battery or screen replacement are $200-300. How much will a new fairphone screen cost? Even at half that, it doesn't seem worth a low spec phone when I can get a much higher spec phone at roughly half the $500 fairphone price. (A pixel 2xl costs about $250 with a bit of smart shopping) I just don't see the savings here or the reason to sacrifice performance and software updates.

<comment><USER33> I keep to sub 300€ or even sub 200€ since I don't game and prefer my DSLR for photography. So a screen replacement on a phone that's not getting software updates is not really interesting to me.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Apple attempts blackmail with its Irish Staff - <AUTHOR> http://patphelan.net/apple-attempts-blackmail-with-its-irish-staff/ <comment><USER2> Wow . . . people ought to learn what 'blackmail' means before bandying the term about.</comment>


Show HN: Lipreading using Deep Learning - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/astorfi/lip-reading-deeplearning#1 <comment><USER2> Dupe: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18265074](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18265074)

From the FAQ: [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html)

> _Are reposts ok?_

> _If a story has had significant attention in the last year or so, we kill > reposts as duplicates. If not, a small number of reposts is ok._

From the guidelines: [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

> _In Submissions_

> _Please don 't submit so many links at once that the new page is dominated > by your submissions._</comment>


Ask HN: Anyone deployed OpenVPN and wouldn't mind sharing their experience? - <AUTHOR>

Mostly if you decided to create your own custom app for deployment? <comment><USER2> I've done it twice, once in 2010 and again in 2012.

At the first company we had been using PPTP and L2TP for remote access but our employees were having tons of problems establishing connections and staying connected. Then we switched to the OpenVPN server built into our Vyatta router, along with the standard OpenVPN client. This required a ton of manual configuration on each client, but the connections were rock solid.

In 2012 I helped my new employer deploy OpenVPN Access Server, the commercial version. This one didn't need the clients to be pre-configured. Instead our employees went to a webpage, entered their LDAP username and password, and then were given a download that would do everything. The automatic configuration worked perfectly on Mac OS, Windows, and iOS. (I don't recall if anyone tried it on Linux or Android, but I never heard any problems about those.)

OpenVPN Access Server is ridiculously under-priced -- it's $10 per concurrent connection. If your usage is typical, where most users only connect occasionally, then you can connect hundreds of employees for under $1000. Even if it was a lot more expensive, my experience was quite positive and I'd still recommend this.</comment>


Microsoft Blocks FSF Donation Website as a 'Gambling Site' - <AUTHOR> http://www.ubuntuvibes.com/2012/06/microsoft-blocks-fsf-donation-website.html

<comment><USER2> The "verify" link just takes me to an MS error reporting site, which doesn't present any of the error or informational messages from the articles.

I'm confused. O_o

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm worried for a future of a more locked down Microsoft (UEFI, encrypted bootloaders, allowing you to install only from app stores on the ARM machines) that doesn't have to be monitored for anti-competitive things anymore

<comment><USER4> Worried about RIAA? Don't buy (and don't obtain without purchase) their media.

Worried about Microsoft tech? Don't buy it.

Make them irrelevant.

Tell your friends.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> But it is; Gambling with Microsoft's future! ;-)</comment>


90s Dumb Phones Essentially Had Siri (800-44-ANITA) - <AUTHOR> https://timeline.com/voice-activated-technologies-like-siri-were-all-the-rage-in-the-first-dot-com-boom-b18ed9b48e1f <comment><USER2> The Tellme service; one much like the Anita number in the article is still running: 408-752-8052.</comment>


Holographic projection - <AUTHOR> https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/holographic-projector-mobile-new <comment><USER2> Is there a video of a working prototype?</comment>


Facebook chief faces tax bill of $1.5bn - <AUTHOR> http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/6dbffbce-4e8b-11e1-ada2-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1lQlRsbel

<comment><USER2> The NYT article ([http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/04/business/zuckerbergs- big-t...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/04/business/zuckerbergs-big-tax-bill- may-benefit-facebook.html?scp=3&sq=tax&st=cse)) made a more interesting point:

"The taxes Mr. Zuckerberg and other Facebook shareholders pay on exercised stock options will translate into a big tax benefit for the company. The I.R.S. allows companies to take a mirror deduction for the employees' option compensation. Facebook anticipates that the deduction will eliminate the tax bill on its $1 billion in 2011 profits, according to its regulatory filings. The company also expects the break to generate as much as $500 million in additional deductions, which can be used for refunds for 2009 and 2010 and for reductions in future years. Facebook declined to comment further on Mr. Zuckerberg's tax plans."

"Due to the stock option loophole, Facebook may not pay any corporate income taxes on its profits for a generation," said Senator Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat who has proposed changing the policy. "When profitable corporations can use the stock option tax deduction to pay zero corporate income taxes for years on end, average taxpayers are forced to pick up the tax burden," he said. "It isn't right, and we can't afford it."

</comment><comment><USER3> Socio-economic considerations aside, there's something subtly absurd about this situation— I think it's captured especially in the last line of the article:

 _Politicians in Sacramento, California's state capital, are arguing over how to spend the tax windfall expected from Facebook's IPO._

While conversely, NYT article noted that Warren Buffet paid under $7 million in taxes last year.

Personally, I'm of the opinion that taxing the flow of money doesn't make a lot of sense on the face of it. Taxing the static accumulation of money seems like it provides a more sensible set of incentives. Of course, I'm just a guy.

</comment><comment><USER4> Reported earlier (by a few hours) in the Wall Street Journal

[http://blogs.wsj.com/wealth/2012/02/03/mark- zuckerbergs-2-bi...](http://blogs.wsj.com/wealth/2012/02/03/mark- zuckerbergs-2-billion-tax-bill/)

with a different estimated tax bill, submitted to HN yesterday.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3550074>

For either story, the underlying primary source is the registration statement for Facebook's initial public offering of stock.

</comment><comment><USER5> Am I missing the story here? Man makes billions in income and has to pay billions in taxes?</comment>


More than 800 startups sign letter objecting to plans to kill net neutrality - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2017/4/27/15447394/fcc-net-neutrality-roll-back-startups-letter-y-combinator <comment><USER3> At this point the problem isn't Net Neutrality, it's the internet is privately owned by for profit companies.

Imagine what'd be if every single road and water pipe was ran by private company for profit without oversight.

Internet needs to be treated like infrastructure, because that's what is, both to service consumers and providers.

There are many ways to have private company to profit over infrastructure if they so chose it, but having a guaranteed baseline would resolve most issue about having to regulate private companies or stifling innovation. I.e. there could be private pipes with state subsidized access having guaranteed QOS. There could be public pipes with state renting access to private companies.

There are plenty solution, but the issue is that public can't lobby for what benefits them and deep pocket can and will buy legislation.

<comment><USER4> >Imagine what'd be if every single road and water pipe was ran by private company for profit without oversight.

We'd have higher quality, lower cost water and roads.

"Government agencies less likely than private to comply with environmental regulations, study finds" Here are key points from the article linked below:

For power plants and hospitals, public facilities were on average 9 percent more likely to be out of compliance with Clean Air Act regulations and 20 percent more likely to have committed high-priority violations.

For water utilities, public facilities had on average 14 percent more Safe Drinking Water Act health violations and were 29 percent more likely to commit monitoring violations.

Public power plants and hospitals that violated the Clean Air Act were 1 percent less likely than private-sector violators to receive a punitive sanction and 20 percent less likely to be fined.

Public water utilities that violated Safe Drinking Water Act standards were 3 percent less likely than investor-owned utilities to receive formal enforcement actions.

[http://archive.news.indiana.edu/releases/iu/2015/10/when- gov...](http://archive.news.indiana.edu/releases/iu/2015/10/when-gov..).

Here's another viewpoint on the benefit of road privatisation: [http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate-uk/2012/03/22/road- pri...](http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate-uk/2012/03/22/road-pri..).

As far as "imagining" what it would be like with private water and roads -- instead of imagining, perhaps we ought to look at the topic rationally.

Here's another (opinion) article about privatized roads:

[http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2012/05/a_glimpse_of...](http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2012/05/a_glimpse_of..).

[https://fee.org/articles/privatize-public- highways/](https://fee.org/articles/privatize-public-highways/)

And here's an academic study about water privatization benefits in Argentina: [https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=648048](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=648048)

<comment><USER5> > without oversight

Your examples are "with oversight" via environmental regulations and quality regulations.

<comment><USER6> That's a goalpost on wheels. Anyway, it doesn't change the fact that the GP offered than _even under the same regulations_ , public facilities perform significantly worse than private ones.

<comment><USER7> When privatization works it is good but it doesn't always work. The current cable industry seems to be just exploiting a monopoly so I think "privatization" has already failed here

<comment><USER8> So your cable broadband service has been stagnant for a decade? Mine has gotten about 10x faster for roughly the same cost.

<comment><USER7> I only have 1 possible cable provider and it's pretty expensive and their service is terrible. It's gotten better in they last 10 years but that doesn't mean that it is a competitive market.

EDIT: Maybe it's changed but when I checked last they had low customer satisfaction but really high profits, which is bad for consumers and (I'm not an expert here so take with a grain of salt) would be really unlikely if the market was competitive at all

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> To me the problem is not net neutrality, it is monopolistic behavior in broadband providers. If there was a true competition, providers trying to control the access of their subscribers would meet the same fate that AOL (with their custom email, browser, etc), they would become irrelevant.

<comment><USER10> Ah, but try to take away the monopolies and they throw money at it until you lose.

First they'll lobby. If that fails, they'll sue. They'll have all kinds of bullshit reasons why this is necessary for growth, investment and infrastructure.

They have better access to legislators and regulators, as well as more sympathetic ears in the government due to having, for lack of a better term, monopoly money to throw around.

It's frustrating to say the least.

<comment><USER11> Many big companies are suing smaller ones in their industries. And that is the result of regulation. We shouldn't be creating more of them.

<comment><USER12> >And that is the result of regulation

It might be the result of some local regulatory deal they have made to become a monopoly, but it isn't the result of FCC's net neutrality regulation.

Have you ever looked around the world and found a nation that has no regulations at all, or nearly so, that you want to live in? There are still places that are wild west like. Aren't really teeming with VC or good internet though.

Where do you people get this fantasy?

<comment><USER11> You are the one living in fantasy. Where you think, there are people in this world who want to live in a lawless society. Less regulation is dosent mean no regulation. Many laws are designed to stifle class mobility. Why, because rich are closer to the politicians.

<comment><USER13> By your own argument there is good regulation.

So, now rather than simply saying less you have to defend what's specifically wrong with each regulation as there are some you want to keep.

<comment><USER14> Come on. This is a super simple problem to solve.

All you have to do is get rid of all the bad regulations, while keeping all the good regulations. Boom, issue resolved.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Why don't these 800 startups, their thousands of brilliant employees, and the hackers on hacker news start a push to build a part-wireless and part-cable mesh network?

The only reason why the loons in the government or these companies have any clout is because they have the only working network that spans the US/Globe. If citizens just got together, on their time, and built a free and open network we'd have something better. It's not like it's never been done before [1].

[1] - [https://www.dailydot.com/layer8/greek-off-the-grid- internet-...](https://www.dailydot.com/layer8/greek-off-the-grid-internet- mesh/)

<comment><USER16> What is to prevent _that_ from becoming privatized and incentivized by whoever owns it?

Why rebuild the wheel?

We have decent infrastructure already. We just need society to not mess it up.

<comment><USER15> It's hard to privatize a system of radio links. When everyone's network is owned by themselves no one can really take that away from them.

The only reason most networks are privately owned right now is the extremely high cost of laying down physical infrastructure. We saw that severely slow the progress of Google(!) Fiber. If a giant like Google has troubles with the cost of laying down cable on ciy-land then imagine what you or I have to deal with?

This goes away with radios and building interconnects.

<comment><USER16> Aren't radio frequencies regulated by the government, which can be lobbied by private interests?

I still think focusing on net neutrality is best. If someone out there would rather work on a radio system, that's great!

Personally, I feel the government could take that away by punishing people who operate using rogue waves, so, why not work together and get it right in our existing society and infrastructure.

<comment><USER17> Yes. The underlying systemic issues do not get addressed or solved by "well let's just get to the next tech revolution first", that is simply a lazy idyllic 'solution' for those who don't think through their proposals.

In this case, meshnets would likely be lobbied into only being operable by licensed entities as radio waves are now.

\- Lobby to quickly fabricate and sell appropriate talking points (ensure some anti-terrorism or anti-CP laws in there to gain mass support) to congress and the media

\- catch a few mesh operators and bring the hammer down on them, quickly making an example that kills off support for the niche community

\- provide the alternative; enumerable 'licensed' operators to exist that sap demand for unregulated comms ('not worth the effort' or consequences of point 2) and maintain the same (or likely evolved - there'd probably be a smarter way to profiteer off meshnets than trying to meter mesh devices for 'fastlanes' but maybe they'd start there) regulations that maintain your profit margin

And there goes your 'fix'.

The reality is that whatever technology you develop, the monkeys with big sticks will always be able to skewer you, so it's up to you and everyone to collectively agree what we decide are skewerable offenses, not merely to say 'well let's just get to the iron age first so we don't have to worry about it'.

<comment><USER18> You could make transport-nodes illegal, as in a cellphone-virus which silently does transport duty?

I also wonder if people in non-democracies wouldnt be willing to have this app- aslong as there is a chance to provide ability to deny installing it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Is there a single good argument for removing net neutrality?

No conspiracy theories, or anything like that. Why is it a issue even worthy of debate? I am utterly confused

<comment><USER11> Yes Free Market. Less regulations is always beneficial in the end.

<comment><USER20> That's not an argument, it's a statement of ideology. You might believe it, but it's not going to convince anyone who doesn't share your premise that less regulation is always better.

Many people believe that regulations can create something far closer to the economic ideal of a Free Market than property rights alone. For example, food labelling regulation arguably moves the market closer to perfect information, which is a necessary feature of an idealised Free Market.

<comment><USER11> The problem is, its difficult to control people who create those regulations.

<comment><USER20> But is that an inherent problem with regulation? Or with the way they're created in (e.g.) the US?

Also, regulatory capture can lead to regulation that causes market inefficiency, but (if you accept my previous argument) lack of regulation may also cause market inefficiency (e.g. due to obfuscated product information) so it's not necessarily better.

<comment><USER21> If nutrition facts regulations went away tomorrow, I suspect the market would enforce their existence anyway.

I think consumers want to know what is in the food they're eating, so you would get many startups who study what makes something healthy, or finding cheaper ways to list calories and ingredients, instead of listening to the government telling you about the food pyramid etc.

Even if customers deem it too expensive to pay for the nutrition facts, then how do you or others gain the right to intervene in a voluntary act between two people?

<comment><USER22> This is demonstrably false as we've already seen companies fight against regulations that force them to provide information about products (like country of origin or GMO labeling). The companies actually argue that giving the consumer more information puts them at a disadvantage because consumers might be misinformed about the implications of this new information, e.g. "GMOs are bad, so I won't buy them".

For the record, I think the argument is correct, I just don't think it justifies concealing the information, people should be able to use whatever arbitrary or incorrect criteria they please when it comes to how they spend their money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Forget the red vs. blue politics for once.

This isn't about that. This is something that most of us, as techies, believe is a bad idea.

This should be a campaign issue. We don't need to build more silos.

If it's unpopular, politicians won't pass it.

</comment><comment><USER23> People signing letters should donate money to politicians' campaign with letters to those politicians advocating specific legislation. That legislation might also have compromises that consider all parties or at least concretely show benefit to them. Alternatively, convince rich people and profitable businesses to donate as well.

</comment><comment><USER24> 1\. Should a school or workplace be allowed to block specific websites? Why shouldn't ISPs be allowed to?

2\. Should cable providers be forced to distribute 100% of channels? Why should we apply a different standard to a different protocol?

3\. Should toll-free telephone number be banned?

4\. Should ISPs charge for data used to check your balance or account statement? Should phone companies bill the minutes used to call their customer services?

5\. Should ISPs be allowed to cache arbitrary content on their servers to reduce their loads (e.g., Netflix movies), and distribute the savings to their users?

6\. Should a taxi driver be allowed not to serve specific neighborhoods, or should they be forced to serve 100% of neighborhoods?

7\. Should posting a letter to someone in the same city cost the same as posting a letter to someone in a different country?

8\. Should ISPs that implement their own proprietary protocol as an alternative to the Internet be forced to be neutral as well?

9\. Should restaurants be forced to serve both Pepsi and Coca-Cola?

10\. Should Netflix be able to reduce your subscription price when used through a specific ISP?

11\. Should toll roads be allowed?

12\. Should a workplace be able to reimburse bandwidth fees associated with the use of their VPN?

13\. Should web hosts (e.g., Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, Heroku, etc) be neutral as well? Should Amazon charge the same fees to all of their customers (including themselves)?

14\. What should be done about small startups that can't handle all the incoming traffic? Should some other regulation subsidize their hosting cost so that they can compete with larger competitors?

15\. How many new laws and regulations will be required (if they don't already exist) just to address the above examples? Wouldn't these laws and regulations only make it more difficult for startups to emerge and compete with the so- called monopolies?

<comment><USER25> Why is this getting down voted ?

<comment><USER26> It's also attempting to argue by rhetorical questioning alone, rather than directly and honestly stating a position. I didn't downvote, but I find arguing in such an indirect way bad form and mildly disrespectful of the reader.

IMHO even a bad argument presented directly and honestly is better than a good argument that cowers behind questions.

<comment><USER24> Hopefully I'm wrong, but I'm convinced that most net neutrality advocates haven't asked themselves these questions.

I can't think of a better way to challenge an idea than by asking questions.

<comment><USER27> I think the past actions of these companies speaks for themselves.

The question _YOU_ should ask yourself is why you think ATT & comsat will do a 180 turn and stop their attempts to kill the free market after this.

<comment><USER11> They will not, that's why we need better ISPs.

<comment><USER28> But you've been an advocate of deregulation all over this thread. The barrier of entry to becoming an ISP is high. A sort of compromise is to use sensible regulation to protect users from the active players. The keyword here is sensible, because I don't care for government mandated regulations. I do recognize that they are necessary. Profits (among other things) cloud judgement, and there are some ruthless, despicable people running companies.

Unless a company with lots of expendable income is going to enter the market as a competitor, there won't be very many new ISPs that can offer more than aDSL speeds. Most US communities have one or two local ISP outside of the cable company and teleco providers like Time Warner and AT&T. The speeds are only good for people who check email and don't mind watching video at 480p. The other is satellite with similar speeds at even higher prices.

<comment><USER11> What created those barriers, regulation?

<comment><USER28> I edited my comment. The key takeaway from the edit was sensible regulation.

To answer your question though, no. It was misused infrastructure that was basically given away to telecos. Instead of sharing it like a utility, they took it and ran with it.

<comment><USER29> I don't at all agree with GP's point, but "the infrastructure being given away" is, objectively, an instance of regulation. Laws were passed, government bureaucracy was involved, papers were signed in triplicate.

If we're really on the regulation-is-bad-mmkay train, then also on the chopping block needs to be franchise agreements, agreements where high-density housing buildings can only use one provider, and so on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Startups asking for more regulation, very hypocritical of them. I understand need for regulation in mobile internet as it is a limited resource.

<comment><USER30> How is asking for a free market hypocritical? Most U.S. households have a single broadband option and the large ISPs have already demonstrated that they are willing to abuse their network control to attack services like Netflix when their own services aren't competitive.

<comment><USER31> Internet service is one of those areas where you can only free up one market by limiting another. You create an even playing ground for internet companies and users by heavily regulating ISPs.

I'm not a fan of either side to be honest - I think efforts should be made to make it easier to enter the ISP market so that competition and consumer choice forces competition between ISPs to provide the best service.

<comment><USER30> What market is being limited in a natural monopoly? "Market" is commonly used with the implication that multiple sellers exist and the buyer can choose any or none, all of which is unlike the ISP situation for millions of people.

What I think makes the most sense is going back to what we had with DSL: require the owner of the cable to the house to provide access at cost, allowing competition for the higher level services.

<comment><USER31> ISPs aren't a natural monopoly - trunk cables are. I can see a good case for having those be federally owned and managed if they aren't at the moment - <USER2> can't really speak to the US situation at that level because I'm from the UK and most cables are owned by BT who lease access to other ISPs.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Creating a presentation by hand using calligraphy - <AUTHOR> http://nibrahim.net.in/2017/11/04/pycon_india_2017_keynote.html <comment><USER2> Beautiful handwriting. Letter writing is a lost art, both in writing and meaning. Doesn't anyone know or recommend a pen-pal websites where people exchange hand-written letters just for fun? My hand-writing is horrendous (as my spelling) and I'd love to get better at it.

<comment><USER3> BBC carried an article today on the very topic of handwriting (Do we need to teach children joined-up handwriting?) [http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us- canada-41927258](http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-41927258)

<comment><USER4> I recall being forced to learn Cursive Script[1] in early grades, since 'it's all you would use to write Essays and assignments in once you got to high school'. Upon reaching highschool we were always asked to print.

I think it should be dropped in favor of Typing Courses. While I suspect youth are on devices a lot, it's likely mostly touch screens. This also would possibly help children learn more words quicker as well as a useful skill.

I grew up with awful handwriting, to the point of failing Standardized Testing, I recall being one of the first students to be allowed to type it(I suspect it's all done this way now).

Turns out I was holding my writing utensil wrong. With it resting on my Ring Finger knuckle[2]. This grip had my thumb, ring, and middle fingers all bearing down on the tip, causing far too much pressure. As an adult it took a while to learn a proper grip and I now enjoy writing.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%27Nealian](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%27Nealian)

[2] internet example [https://i.imgur.com/krdw7sT.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/krdw7sT.jpg)

<comment><USER5> _" I grew up with awful handwriting, to the point of failing Standardized Testing, I recall being one of the first students to be allowed to type it(I suspect it's all done this way now)."_

I was diagnosed with dysgraphia in 4th grade and was allowed to type most things from then on; except by a couple of shitty teachers who thought I was just being lazy or something (and, not coincidentally, those were the classes I failed and was held back in). This was back in the 80s when learning disabilities were somewhat novel in small-town schools in the south. I was lucky enough to have a computer (a C64, with printer!) at home beginning around that same age. I don't recall if it came into the house before or after my diagnosis...probably just before.

I've always thought I was really lucky to have had a computer at such a young age at the time, but now that I'm thinking of it on the timeline of when I was dealing with having trouble writing and being treated like I was stupid by teachers because of it, I'm seeing that luck and privilege in a new light. Once I got a copy of SpeedScript and later GeoWrite, I was able to do nice reports and homework...it became somewhat of an advantage or at least less of a curse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm always jealous of folks who can draw/write effectively and beautifully. I'm dysgraphic, so even writing legibly on a whiteboard is not really an option for me; I mean, I can struggle through and make it legible if I take about five times as long as someone else would take, but even then the writing won't be beautiful, by any definition. Writing on the chalkboard in school was a real source of stress.

One of my favorite presentations ever was a description of public key encryption where the presenter used hand-drawn cartoons and drew some in real time. And, one of my favorite explainer videos is the Food is Free intro video, which is all hand-drawn by one of the founders of the project (who's also in the band BLXPLTN, among others; he's pretty good evidence that talent isn't evenly distributed): [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlC-4MgfICU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlC-4MgfICU)

</comment><comment><USER6> That's good. I've seen your calligraphy passion and skills separately on twitter. This is a nice combo when a techie can be more than a techie which is very common in the west where a developer also fishes or surfs, but being in india Noufal you're an inspiration!

</comment><comment><USER7> this is cool

</comment><comment><USER8> tl;dr: Make beautiful presentations with calligraphy

I might be mistaken, the post doesn't link to an article providing insights on preparation of a keynote presentation.

<comment><USER9> The article does describe more than just the calligraphy, although that certainly is the main focus. Example of preparation unrelated to calligraphy:

> Mortimer Adler suggests making a detailed outline of the speech and then > using those as notes. I wasn't familiar with how to do this so I gave the > speech like I would usually do and recorded it on my phone. It was > excruciating to listen to myself but I did it. Took around 45 minutes. I > transcribed everything I said onto paper and that gave me my first draft.

<comment><USER10> I agree. the calligraphy was in some sense the excuse for going over and over the talk and making the result a considered effort. I think many speakers have the same problem I do. I stop being able to look at my own work far too early, and have to really force myself to go through more than two passes.

Practice talks help a lot, not even because of the feedback from other people but because it forces me to pay attention to what I've done and how lacking it is. (edit: obviously feedback is helpful too)

maybe if I wrote it out multiple times in longhand I would make sure to finish all my thoughts/sentences and actually read the thing through

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> tl;dr - writing your slides out in calligraphy is hard.

The post would be better reframed as, "calligraphy is hard and time- consuming." Doesn't necessarily have anything to do with a keynote presentation. The output is gorgeous, but I'd be curious if you couldn't get better results faster and cheaper with an outsourcing service.

<comment><USER12> Well, I certainly didn't expect that but then again, the business slant of HN is part of its nature.

This was as much about the process as the result. I practice calligraphy as a hobby and spend time and energy to get better at it. Getting faster, cheaper, and better results by outsourcing would rob me of the process and that's killing the project as far as I'm concerned.

(P.S. I wrote the post).

<comment><USER11> > This was as much about the process as the result.

Cool - but the process of WHAT? If you're working on calligraphy, make the post about calligraphy. As a frequent presenter, I read the title and went, "great, let's see how another presenter prepares." This wasn't really about the keynote at all - it's about designing slides with calligraphy. Step back and think bigger picture - you could write this as, "how to build slides with calligraphy" and get a bigger, happier audience. People would love to see how you lay out that kind of thing, how long it takes, how long you've been working at it, etc.

However, it has nothing to do with Python, PyCon, 2017, or a keynote. It's just long term presentation design. It's an evergreen post that's worthwhile for people who do any kind of presentation.

It's like saying, "2017 Range Rover sale preparation," and then writing thousands of words about innovative and timeless sales techniques. The title and first few paragraphs really undersell what you're doing.

<comment><USER12> Ah. Now I understand what you're trying to say. I titled it like that simply because after I delivered the presentation, a lot of people asked me about it and this was written more or less for them than for a general audience.

I think I should retitle it as you've suggested.

<comment><USER13> Yet another suggestion: the title is fine, you're telling the story of how your prepared the PyCon India 2017 keynote. I was a bit surprised to see it was about how you physically made every slide using calligraphy. If you just added a paragraph at the begining explaining that, it'd be fine by me. It was still good to see[0] though, and I loved Jouberts quote about teaching.

[0] I didn't read it entirely, but skimmed and took a quick look at the slides.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Websockets 101 - <AUTHOR> http://lucumr.pocoo.org/2012/9/24/websockets-101/ <comment><USER2> Encryption is not a panacea. As more websites use HTTPS, more corporate networks are installing content filters that passively filter HTTPS content.

Yes. I just said corporate networks are spying on HTTPS connections.

It's really simple to implement. Get some kind of web proxy that has support (Websense is pretty popular, amazingly) and generate a root cert on the box. Then use a group policy on your AD server to distribute the root cert to all the client systems. Now Websense can decode the HTTPS traffic by issuing its own fake certs to clients and handle the "real" HTTPS handshake on the frontend proxy side.

Result? Your websockets are still going to get fucked with by proxies. Can we please stop building fake protocols on top of real protocols now?

<comment><USER3> Interesting, I actually hadn't considered the possibility of an employer issuing fake certificates to peek at its employees' encrypted sessions.

For anyone unnerved by this, you can still get around it by routing your traffic via SOCKS proxy to an external host, but of course this assumes that 1) your employer isn't blocking SSH, 2) you have the authority to install PuTTY and Firefox (not sure if Chrome has SOCKS proxy support) and 3) you have an external server to proxy through (if you have a Linux machine somewhere, you're probably already configured to allow this). And make sure you route your DNS through SOCKS as well.

<comment><USER2> If they're proxying HTTP traffic usually they'll block SSH and other protocols. To work around this use an HTTPS/SSH multiplexer[1][2][3] or a simple reverse proxy to accept HTTP[S] connections and connect them to an SSH server on the backend. For the ssh client use a ProxyCommand tunneling app[4][5][6] to turn an HTTP[S] proxy request into a two-way socket, and you have an SSH connection over HTTP proxies.

[1] <http://www.rutschle.net/tech/sslh.shtml> [2] <http://www.pond- weed.com/multiplex/> [3] <https://github.com/stealth/sshttp> [4] [http://zwitterion.org/software/ssh-https-tunnel/ssh-https- tu...](http://zwitterion.org/software/ssh-https-tunnel/ssh-https-tunnel) [5] <http://proxytunnel.sourceforge.net/> [6] <http://www.agroman.net/corkscrew/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Very nice readable article. Having dabbled with implementation a bit I agree with most of his points.

The author complains about websockets being frame-based instead of stream- based, because he argues if he would want a frame-based system he could easily model it on top of it.

I think frames are awesome. It is easier to build a stream on top of frames than it is to build frames on top of a stream in my opinion (you don't need an extra protocol for starters). Besides that almost anything you would like to do can be expressed in frames, saving most of us a lot of headaches.

I would like to add that websockets are not the end-all answer for web-game programmers. It makes some stuff easier, and reduces some overhead, but it's still on TCP, meaning realtime multiplayer games are still as good as impossible to implement.

Sadly all the issues with proxies go for UDP and then some, so I don't think we'll see any ubiquitous browser UDP protocol anytime soon :(

<comment><AUTHOR> > I think frames are awesome. It is easier to build a stream on top of frames > than it is to build frames on top of a stream in my opinion (you don't need > an extra protocol for starters). Besides that almost anything you would like > to do can be expressed in frames, saving most of us a lot of headaches.

Maybe I'm just old fashioned but I really don't like the idea of frames forced onto me. I much rather get my data in small pieces and can already start processing data as it comes in than having something buffer up everything and then giving it me as a large chunk. Streaming json for instance over websockets is a lot harder than TCP directly.

<comment><USER5> IMO the built in framing is one of the things I really like about websockets. I'm sure it will become my transport of choice for non performance critical messaging even when a browser is not one of the peers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If anyone finds themselves needing to write a Websockets implementation, there's an awesome protocol test suite at <http://autobahn.ws/testsuite>

I wrote a C++ implementation for a side project and with the aforementioned test suite I actually found it pretty easy to get to 100% compliance. There's some ugliness in the protocol because of proxies, but it's definitely not the worst protocol in the world. The only big missing feature is compression and there's a proposal for that (you could certainly do application level compression, but I'd rather avoid writing compression code in JS).

</comment><comment><USER7> Browser vendors must start to move away from top-down innovation, where they hoard APIs such as TCP and UDP and release sub-standard specs in their stead. Instead they must expose only the bare minimum OS low-level APIs (TCP, UDP, POSIX), keeping the surface area as small and powerful and direct as possible, and then let open source grow around this. Innovation needs to be decentralized, bottom-up. Not designed by committee.

For that to happen, we need to stop conflating "web apps" (trusted, installed, annointed with machine power) with "web pages" (accessed by single link click). At present, Web Apps are suffering and crippled by being lumped under the same security policy as web pages. But Web Apps need to have access to raw machine resources in the same way that Native Apps have access.

Those that don't seem to care for any of this insistence, tend also to be naive as to the massive differences between TCP and WebSockets, and IP and TCP and the whole stack in general. The WebSocket spec is a good example of people doing things in the most indirect way possible, with a maximum of red tape, as opposed to people doing things in the most direct way possible, with a minimum of red tape.

The Web as we have it in these respects is very much Animal Farm and 1984. There appears to be little thought leadership from the major stakeholders in this regard. People like Tim Berners-Lee are asking for change ([http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public- webapps/2012JanMa...](http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public- webapps/2012JanMar/0464.html)), but the new incumbents don't seem to want to see.

<comment><USER8> I don't understand the point you're trying to make. Are you against standardization? What specific actions would you take to "minimize red tape"? You do know that TCP, UDP, and POSIX were all developed by committees right? How exactly is the Web in any way like Animal Farm or 1984?

<comment><USER7> Standardisation for the web targets too much surface area. Browser vendors need to agree on a smaller set of more powerful, more dangerous, more direct APIs so as to put the responsibility for innovation back in the hands of developers. Developers are being wedged further and further away from bare metal, with no right to return, even if they should so wish - this process needs to be reversed.

<comment><USER9> Raw TCP was considered for WebSockets, however briefly. Due to security reasons, WebSocket was designed so that it's impossible for a WebSocket client to spoof any existing protocol.

I would argue that things are actually swinging to the opposite direction right now. WebGL is very close to OpenGL ES 2.0, Web Audio API includes low level features, WebRTC 1.0 is slated to include datagram channels... Recent standards efforts are striking pretty good balance of flexibility, interoperability and security, IMHO.

<comment><USER7> I am referring to networking and storage, not graphics or audio.

At first glance it looks like the top-down massive surface area standards approach is making progress. But the APIs are really sub-par when compared to TCP, UDP, POSIX and what open source could do if given the chance to grow around them.

The security reasons keeping raw TCP out of the browser apply to web pages, not web apps (trusted, installed, annointed with raw machine power to act on the user's behalf). This means that it is not possible to build a SMTP/POP/IMAP etc. client in the browser without the use of a third-party proxy (which introduces additional security concerns). This is a terrible blow to web apps. WebSockets are a diversion.

WebRTC is a herculean effort. UDP should be beneath WebRTC not bundled alongside it. Again, web page security issues have been projected onto web apps, hence no directly exposed UDP.

There is no decent offline storage mechanism in the browser. No POSIX. No fsync. No way to build any kind of performant database. IndexedDB is the only thing available. It is poorly designed to begin with and implementations at present are slow, buggy or lacking. It looks good in the to-do list demo's but beyond that is a pain to work with. I have seen Chrome's IndexedDB reboot Windows over and over again on occasion. All the great open source database implementations are locked out. Everyone is forced to grow over IndexedDB. Much better if LevelDB were directly exposed. But POSIX is what is needed.

The major issue going forward with regard to web apps, is that they need to be seen as distinct from web pages, and when installed by the user, given access to the last 40 years of computing progress.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Excellent article, thank you for sharing.

As someone who has implemented a WS server and client and would like to be able to host them in Amazon's cloud, the notes about ELB are worrysome.

<comment><USER11> Websockets through ELB works fine if you use the TCP listener. You lose out on some HTTP-specific features like Cookie-based session stickiness, but it works great otherwise. We've been using Websockets/ELB in production for almost a year now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Why do standards like WebSockets don't include anything that can be used in pure HTML? This would be a great tool for building efficient dynamic apps, if you could "submit" forms without going to a new page, and then get incremental page updates as a response.

<comment><USER13> I'm not sure I see the use-case there as being more useful than JS based WebSockets. Writing a general JS library to do what you suggest would be pretty straightforward, and the server-side work wouldn't be any different (serving partial HTML based on request type).

If your users are worried about security / performance enough to turn off JavaScript, they probably wouldn't want "HTMLSockets" enabled, either.

If your users are browsing with a browser so old it doesn't have a reasonable JavaScript engine, then it wouldn't support "HTMLSockets," either.

Basically, there's nothing you could do with "HTMLSockets" that you can't do with WebSockets, and with only a small layer to make it so. However, there's a whole host of utility that you get from WebSockets that you could never get from HTMLSockets, or would require a huge amount of hacking in order to get it to work.

And all this is beside the "pureness" argument, where one might say that HTML is for data, CSS is for design, JavaScript is for behavior; WebSockets are behavior, not data.

<comment><USER12> This is like asking why we should bother having any (new?) HTML or CSS standards at all, when you could write a custom rendering engine in JavaScript for every website.

There is tremendous value in having a solid, usable foundation for web development that doesn't rely on an imperative language to work. To start with, declarative features are _semantic_ and allow for semantic upgrades on wide-scale basis. Do you like your Firefox/Chrome spell-checking in text areas? Do you like them being resizable? Well, this wouldn't be possible if all textareas were some JavaScript hack. (Hey, with only small layer you _could_ actually fake a textarea. Does that seem like a good idea in retrospect, though?)

Also, it would be great to be able to develop simple dynamic web applications (or prototypes) without doing something complex. Progressive enhancement is buried far too early.

 _If your users are worried about security / performance enough to turn off JavaScript, they probably wouldn't want "HTMLSockets" enabled, either._

I frequently browse with JavaScript blocked by default, and I can tell you right here that this assumption is invalid. There is a world of difference between JavaScript library and a standard, declarative technology. The latter is more likely to be faster, have less bugs, no side-effects and be secure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> An even quicker introduction to the final specification of WebSockets: <http://socket.io>.

P.S. I'm aware that a) this doesn't help anyone not using Node.js on their server (it's not even part of my production stack at work (yet!), even though I'm bringing it to light here) and b) it's more than just WebSockets, for instance it will gracefully degrade on legacy browsers.

I just can't miss an opportunity to sing its praises because it has so many benefits over the simple implementation.

<comment><USER15> It is not actually limited to Node. <https://github.com/learnboost/socket.io/wiki>

Though some of these libs do tend to lag in version support.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> (Shameless plug...)

I have a list of websocket libraries and a small echo server demo here: <http://ajf.me/websocket/#libs>

<comment><USER3> That first link there to your Github repo is broken: <https://github.com/TazeTSchnitzel/WebSocket.us>

<comment><USER16> Oops. I moved it to my main website's repo: [https://github.com/TazeTSchnitzel/ajf.me/tree/master/htdocs/...](https://github.com/TazeTSchnitzel/ajf.me/tree/master/htdocs/websocket)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> For folks thinking about using Socket.IO for websockets, it works very well, but remember that most open-source implementations _ONLY_ implement WebSockets and _NONE_ of the other fall-backs that are in the Socket.IO spec. So without some work, these libraries are often useless for mobile development, for instance.

<comment><USER18> I'm using SockJS (client and server: <https://github.com/sockjs/sockjs- client>) for project I'm working on, which does implement a variety of fallback methods (iframe tricks, JSON polling, etc.) and it's been working pretty well (some work better than others.)

For those who to opt for these libs, I recommend the following for protocols/fallbacks:

protocols_whitelist: ['websocket', 'xhr-streaming', 'iframe-eventsource', 'iframe-htmlfile', 'xhr-polling', 'iframe-xhr-polling']

This gets you a working system in pretty much every modern browser supporting WS, and /usually/ works pretty well in IE8/9. Just try to avoid page refreshes in those two browsers (very spotty results if you don't - I'd recommend putting up a message for your users) and implement the workarounds for finicky browsers (things like catching ESC in Firefox.) I've been pretty happy with it so far.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Man, I would have loved to have this about a year ago. Although then I would have missed out on some of the hilarious drama on the websocket mailing list (e.g. [http://www.ietf.org/mail- archive/web/hybi/current/msg08668.h...](http://www.ietf.org/mail- archive/web/hybi/current/msg08668.html))

</comment><comment><USER20> Pop-up Video Excerpt:

The author (Armin Ronacher) also authored Flask (Python web micro framework) and its template engine Jinja2. I've used Flask for a number of my most recent projects and really have enjoyed working with it.

Back to your scheduled broadcast!

</comment><comment><USER21> Loving the article! Just thought I'd point out: "needles complexity"

</comment><comment><USER22> > Messages sent from the client to the server are obfuscated with a basic > transmission mask of 4 bytes which is sent within each websocket package.

What is this? Some pretend security feature?

<comment><USER23> The purpose of the masking is to prevent malicious applications from being able to send arbitrary bytes over the wire, for fear that they may be able to screw with buggy proxies.</comment></comment>


VIZIO Settlement - <AUTHOR> https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/blog/vizio-settlement-smart-tvs-should-not-track-your-shows-without-your-ok <comment><USER2> So, NJ gets $1 million and the other 49 states get _nothing_?</comment>


What's the World's Worst Smell? - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/17/science/worst-odor-smell-thioacetone.html <comment><USER2> As a chemist, I got to smell a lot of compounds including some terrible ones.

Pure compounds might stink, but it's usually a very specific smell, so I never found them that bad.

What was the worst was when reactions went bad and created a black tar of decomposition products. Say all your solvent boiled off and the reaction mixture got too hot and burned.

I had done some selenium chemistry at one point and had this happen. Selenium is one row down from sulfur so it had similar odor properties, but more similar to garlic for me. When one of those reactions went bad, it was worse than a sewer.

And the best part was if you got a good whiff, you'd smell it for days since it stuck to your clothes, hair and inside of your nose.

One of the most obnoxious smells was a chemical used to protect nitrogens on a molecule (Cbz). It doesn't smell that bad, but it reacts with the nitrogen in your nose and it takes 2-3 days to go away. You learn to hate the smell pretty quickly.

</comment><comment><USER3> Someone eating durian in a Thai place comes to mind. Always smells like a dumpster in the middle of summer to me, bad enough to start my gag reflex.

<comment><AUTHOR> I knew at least one comment about the smell of durians would pop up. :-)

Note: I'm a durian lover and would inhale the smell.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Liquid Ass should be in the list. Orginally invented as a novelty prank item, it smells so bad that it is used to train surgeons and combat medics on abdominal wounds and procedures that risk puncturing the intestine.

</comment><comment><USER5> Kombucha, which I know is a flavor rather than a smell, but every time I've tried it, I have the sensation of smelling a rotting public waste bin on the side of the road on a hot day--and it's in my mouth.

</comment><comment><USER6> Swedish Surströmming -> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surstr%C3%B6mming](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surstr%C3%B6mming)

<comment><USER7> Youtubeing "surströmming challenge" usually means 20 minutes of entertainment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Don't know about smell but the worst taste is a Nintendo switch cartridge. Well done Nintendo!

<comment><USER9> Just speculating here, but it sounds like they could add this on purpose to avoid kids from putting cartridges in their mouths and reduce the choking risk.

<comment><AUTHOR> That is apparently true [1]. Article from 2017.

>Nintendo sent us a statement confirming that the taste is by design:

>> To avoid the possibility of accidental ingestion, keep the game card away from young children. A bittering agent (Denatonium Benzoate) has also been applied to the game card. This bittering agent is non-toxic.

[1] [https://www.theverge.com/2017/3/1/14778316/nintendo- switch-c...](https://www.theverge.com/2017/3/1/14778316/nintendo-switch- cartridge-taste-test-dont-lick-it)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Something like that would be very subjective.

</comment><comment><USER11> thiol chemistry is pretty potent stuff

</comment><comment><USER12> codesmell</comment>


CodingBat: Python - <AUTHOR> http://codingbat.com/python <comment><USER2> Instead of

        def sum_double(a, b):
            # Store the sum in a local variable
            sum = a + b
            # Double it if a and b are the same
            if a == b:
                sum = sum * 2
            return sum

I wrote:

        def sum_double(a, b):
            return (a+b)*2 if a==b else a+b

My solution was accepted. Apparently the site evaluates the python program. This is much better than some online C++ test I once took, where my entry had to match perfectly a pre-canned solution letter by letter (it would even balk on differences in whitespace).

</comment><comment><USER3> Awesome! Back when I worked at a bank we used to do timed challenges over at <http://javabat.com> (same thing but for java). Now that I hack Python all day this is much more my thing, although it's not that much of a challenge, it'll give me somewhere to send the greenhorns.

<comment><USER4> codingbat is javabat renamed. Presumably because they added python

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The idea is neat, but all of these problems are trivial (that is, they're about following a simple set of very concrete instructions rather than figuring anything out). It would be a more interesting site if there were some more challenging problems.

<comment><USER4> The real idea here is mentioned in the about page: <http://codingbat.com/about.htm>

Summarised... a CS lecturer noticed that students who struggle with the small things like syntax, have less time to focus on the big issues of algorithms and data structures. The site gives short practice problems to that effect.

More challenging problems would be interesting, but there's a limit to what you can fit in the stated goal of short problems. Although, I wouldn't say that more difficult problems could be solved in similar space :)

<comment><USER5> Okay, I agree that "you also need skill in the 'small' – 10 or 20 line methods", but almost all of these can be implemented in 1 or 2 lines.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Nick Parlante has done good with this project. At UCSB, I'm on a team that's doing research into running this kind of website with unit tests, etc. for even more languages and for harder problems, as a curriculum aid.</comment>


Tenn's Best Friend - <AUTHOR> https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2018/09/27/tennessee-williams-best-friend-james-laughlin/ <comment><USER2> "One of the principal justifications for that substantial claim is that he was Tennessee Williams's publisher."

Have a look at the list of authors published by New Directions, and you'll see some other notable justifications.</comment>


New York State May Get a $15 Minimum Wage. Ford Paid Workers That 100 Years Ago - <AUTHOR> https://theintercept.com/2015/09/11/new-york-state-may-get-15-minimum-wage-ford-paid-workers-100-years-ago/ <comment><USER2> Seriously? Ford was the [Google/Facebook/Amazon] of it's day. That'd be like 100 years from now making the argument that folks should earn today's $120k _adjusted for inflation_

<comment><USER3> While I agree with raising the minimum wage, you make a really good point.</comment></comment>


Instagram password automated checks - <AUTHOR> Instagram shows this on one of my account:
Keep your account secure Your security on Instagram is a top priority. Based on our automated checks, we've discovered that the password you use for Instagram is the same as one that was stolen from another site. We haven't detected any suspicious activity on your account, but we recommend you to change your password.
I wonder how extensive is their automated check and how do they compare it to Instagram credentials? Do they use the hacked credentials and compared it to their internal hashed password? <comment><USER2> siltin_5555557</comment>


16 million IPs blocked by the russian goverment. Part of blocking Telegram - <AUTHOR> https://2018.schors.spb.ru/ <comment><AUTHOR> On twitter, it was said that affected subnets are:

18.104.22.168/15

188.8.131.52/15

22.214.171.124/15

18.104.22.168/14

src: [https://twitter.com/CatVsHumanity/status/985914182959759360/...](https://twitter.com/CatVsHumanity/status/985914182959759360/photo/1)

Just in case the original website goes down, here's a screenshot:

[https://img2.picload.org/image/dogacarr/selection_120.jpg](https://img2.picload.org/image/dogacarr/selection_120.jpg)</comment>


Building a strong Product Culture by Nicholas Muldoon (Agile at Twitter) - <AUTHOR> https://www.blossom.io/blog/2013/08/30/building-a-strong-product-culture.html

<comment><AUTHOR> "Don't confuse what the customer asks for with what their problem is."</comment>