Show HN: PeerGym – A Health Club Database Made with Elixir/Phoenix - <AUTHOR> http://www.peergym.com/? <comment><AUTHOR> I finished up the first round of my side project: PeerGym [http://www.peergym.com](http://www.peergym.com) let's you search for quality gyms in your area by membership price and amenities - the kinds of things services like Google Maps and Yelp don't do. Most people do a particular kind of workout (running, weights), and need special equipment (treadmill, barbells), and you can't always guarantee you'll know what you're getting just by the name and a few pictures.

It was mostly an excuse for me to learn Elixir and Phoenix. I've tackled auth, uploads, geolocation/geospatial DBs, SSL and more, so it's been a lot of fun and hopefully I can turn this into some sort of tutorial series on building out a real-world app.

For the future I want to add reviews, community edits, and advanced filters to make them easier to search and populate. And hopefully, accept payments if people want to buy passes to their gyms online (or automatically renew their memberships.

<comment><USER3> I think it's a nice project, well executed and sorta scratches an itch. I think if you actually want to try to get some usage, you're going to really have to put your business/growth hat on and really try and understand why people would use it, how they're going to find it, one or 2 key "wow" features, etc.

<comment><USER4> It seems like the focus is more to get one's feet wet with Phoenix/Elixir (especially as the OP refers to a tutorial series he wants to write) - <USER2> making this site into a wildly successful business

<comment><USER3> And that's totally fine (sort of). But sounded like author wanted to take it further.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Are people supposed to be able to contribute to this? I'd love to update the info on the gym I go to (Price/equipment/etc) but I don't see a way to do so.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes! I wanted to have community edits available by the end of the week, but it's been a crazy week for me (I'm a competitive powerlifter and I have a full time software development job) so it's not out yet. If you sign up on the site I'll let you know as soon as that feature is available, or hit me up personally at firstname.lastname@example.com and I'll let you know when you can edit your gym's info!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> When you have no gyms nearby you get an error msg: "SORRY BRO..." <\- so if im not a bro but a brolady what do I do besides complain?

<comment><USER7> "Bro" is gender-neutral, as far as I'm concerned.

<comment><USER8> If "bro" is gender-neutral, I'm pretty confused about that whole "bros before hoes" thing.

<comment><USER7> "Prioritize your friends ahead of your sexual pursuits."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> How do gyms make it into the database? I'm looking at where I live (Brooklyn), and almost every single gym listed is a CrossFit gym. There are a considerable number of missing gyms.

Otherwise, this is awesome. I work out at home now, but when I was looking for a gym a while back, it was extremely annoying. New York is especially bad since most gyms are small and/or prioritize cardio equipment and weight machines as opposed to free weights. Anything with more than one squat rack is in Queens and/or has a huge price tag.

<comment><AUTHOR> So the original idea for this was that I wanted to find quality gyms in my area with vast arrays of equipment. I specifically disregarded globos like Planet Fitness and WorkOutWorld, which have shady contracts and terrible policies.

So my initial feed was the 3500+ Crossfit gyms, plus an additional 600-700 powerlifting, weightlifting, and strongman gyms across the country. I knew these places would have great equipment, great staff, and the amenities fitness enthusiasts would need to get in a great workout.

That said, as you can see, Crossfit dominates more than 80% of my current results. If you sort by Price you may find a smaller, niche gym in your area that will likely be much cheaper and will accommodate your workout type.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> What does it matter what it's built in if it's not an open project?

First issue. I click an icon on the right yet the menu it controls opens on the left.

<comment><USER11> Often times people are curious on what it's built with. It was one of the very first questions asked when I showed my recent project.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Some suggestions:

1) signup: state your password constraints up front, and when a chosen password doesn't qualify, the "oops" message overlays the email address. Then rather than have the "Your account was created" in tiny type at top, have it overlay the "Create your free account" button.

2) having signed up, there is no indication of where to go; there is no sign- in directive. (Note: the _Google map_ has its _own_ sign-in button which could get confused for your site sign-in. And I received no emailed confirmation.

3) Aside from Crossfit, the only nearby gyms that show have very little data to show _why_ they qualify,

e.g. [http://www.peergym.com/gyms/catalyst- athletics](http://www.peergym.com/gyms/catalyst-athletics) has almost no data, yet it qualifies, while 24 Hour and Gold's do not

4) rather than a blanket "who's best" concept, you might consider having categories. Somebody looking for Olympic lifting will not want a conventional gym, and vice-versa. Maybe something like:

\- bodyweight exercises (martial arts, yoga, aerobics studios

\- "basic" gyms (some cardio equipment, perhaps weight machines, and at least dumbells or kettlebells)

\- "common" chain-type gyms like 24 Hour or Gold's that have a lot of cardio equipment, machines, and free weights but not necessarily an Olympic or Powerlifting platform

And searchable by feature set, e.g.

\- showers and lockers

\- instructor-led group classes, like spin classes

\- childcare

\- pool

\- spa

etc.

(I'm not saying you should _recommend_ chain gyms, but they do have the basics that satisfy a majority of patrons... crowdedness aside)

</comment><comment><USER13> This is great.

Reminds me of my first node/angular project [http://gymnear.com/](http://gymnear.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool! I like that project, how did you source your feeds - directly from Google Places?

My data is sourced in-house specifically because I didn't want to include globos that had crappy policies or insufficient equipment.

<comment><USER13> Yeah exactly, all the data is provided from Google Places API. I had hopes of somehow tying in other API's (facebook, yelp, etc.) to get more data (mainly reviews) for the different gyms. But, configuring the database for that was over my head at the time.

I think the idea of having an in house database that users could add information (type of gym, type of equipment, etc.) could be very powerful.

Your project seems to be heading down that route. I would love to help contribute!!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Clicking on 'Price' under 'Sort by' results in the error message:

> Sorry bro! We couldn't find any gyms in your area, so head up to search bar > and try again.

when there are gyms displayed for same area when sorted by location

edit: looks like it's triggered when area's gyms don't have any associated prices

<comment><AUTHOR> This is correct! You're likely in a smaller demographic where I don't have a lot of price information. I haven't fully fleshed-out how I want to handle this, originally I wanted to order by any that had a price (lowest to highest), and THEN show the remaining gyms which have no price info (as by default they are listed at 0 dollars in the DB, I think).

<comment><USER14> Not displaying 'Price' as a sort option, or no sort options, in this case, would solve the problem and be good UX.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> We're building a real estate research tool to help people find the right home based on their lifestyle.

This could be really interesting for us if ever there's traction. I'm particularly interested in ratings and reviews and the filtering capability.

<comment><USER16> If you like this, you might be interested in my current startup Membi [https://membi.co](https://membi.co). It's a similar tool, for discovering sports and fitness venues in your local area. We're currently based in London, UK but growing quickly. Happy to have a chat if you want to know more.

<comment><USER15> Just checked it out and agree that it's interesting. Are you guys focused on UK venues only?

<comment><USER16> For now yes, but will be hopefully be expanding to other locations in the near future

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I keep on hearing about Elixir/Phoenix. What is the advantage of putting this on Elixir vs something like Rails or Laravel?

<comment><USER18> You get the whole Erlang VM and toolchain. So, improved scalability, faster runtimes, compiled code...

This discussion fleshes out some of the benefits:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9427371](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9427371)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> For me up in the North of England, I only get two gyms. Both are in London which is not feasible in the slightest to get to.

<comment><AUTHOR> My apologies! Most of the 4300 or so gyms are located in the US (where I'm based) so unfortunately I don't have a very vast network at the moment, but if you let me know where in north England you are I can see if I can find a few for you! Sign up and send me a message at firstname.lastname@example.com and I'll get you hooked up!

<comment><USER19> Newcastle-upon-Tyne</comment></comment></comment>


Getbookd - Looking for some early feedback - <AUTHOR>

Looking for some early feedback on a site that I built in the last couple of weeks :) .
Needless to say some things will probably break and some things will not be perfect. I greatly appreciate your constructive feedback and I am looking forward to getting your opinion on getbookd!
GetBookd: http://www.getbookd.com/ <comment><USER2> It looks like right now it doesn't require a location (such as a city).

Something like that would be useful so I could search by stuff happening in my area.

I would hate to show up to a "will be at Pete's on 15th" meetup only to find out they are talking about NYC and I am thinking of the Petes in Dallas.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! That's a great feedback. That's one of the things I left out and will address with the next push.

I didn't want to make the event creation very complex, so I was thinking of pushing the location/map specification as a step after the base event is created.</comment></comment>


Ruby & WebSockets: TCP for the Browser - <AUTHOR> http://www.igvita.com/2009/12/22/ruby-websockets-tcp-for-the-browser

<comment><USER2> Websockets were featured pretty prominently here for a while. A lot of interest died down when people found that Firefox 4 and Opera 11 aren't supporting websockets right now, and Chrome may follow suit pending security issues with the technology.

<comment><USER3> There are _no_ security issues with WebSockets. There are security issues with broken proxies, which already could be exploited with Flash or Java.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Websockets was a google initiative that they pushed for their own product, google wave. Since wave failed, the push from google is not as strong.</comment>


Facebook Pledges $130M to Fund "Supreme Court" for Content - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-pledges-130-million-to-fund-supreme-court-for-content-11576166992 <comment><USER2> In fairness, here in the UK at least, the print media are going nuts about Facebook and Google failing to stop fake news and politicians' lies. Coincidentally they're bashing their competitors for something they themselves do just as much, make of that what you will...

That is one reason fb (and maybe Google too and twitter and whoever else) are donating: make an independent sock puppet, they can decide and you just point at the when people complain. They're a "sin eater".

Its not different to how music and movie companies have banded together in the past to deal with "moral" crusades. I guess this is like regulatory capture technically, but where you build the regulator yourself. "Regulatory farming" maybe?

Personally I'm very dubious about fb (or anyone else) setting up an "arbiter of truth" and deciding who can advertise and what they can claim. But I prefer to think it's a marketing/political ploy than a dastardly plot to control our reality. They make 1000 times more money selling us sugar and then diet pills than political bs, but the political bs is upsetting that market.

<comment><USER3> The mass media is going nuts about not controlling the narrative anymore, that's why they want to bury big tech. They will lose in the end, so I don't know if it's worth it to fight.

<comment><USER4> Big tech also wants to control the narrative. Due to the nature of their platforms, it's much more difficult to do but that hasn't stopped them from making a mess trying.

<comment><USER5> I think each time Big Tech tries to control the narrative more and more is a step in a direction that is short sighted.

I get wanting to pull down literal Nazis and I mostly agree. But scope creep on who is a Nazi and the ever vaguer "hate speech" will spell true trouble as they get even more unclear.

<comment><USER6> The reason this is happening is becoming more clear. Despite what tech types like us believe and echo to each other on forums like HN, there is the reality of an apathetic environment in which most people live.

Most people, most content creators, most content consumers, most people in general, really don't give 2 mosquito dicks about any of the issues I think are important.

Privacy from the government? Nope. If you're not a crook, you've got nothing to fear.

Tech companies having too much info about you that they will share with the government? Ditto.

Nazis can't get free speech? Who cares. In fact, GOOD, I don't want that crap popping up on my kids' recommended list anyway. Good job YouTube!

Lately I have been beginning to understand the magnitude of the problem. Apathy is far more powerful than any government.

And the worst part of all? The only thing they have to do to fuel apathy is keep the trains running on time and keep the walmart/grocery store shelves stocked. That's all.

I'm becoming convinced that this problem is being attacked wrong. We need to stop talking about Nazis and politicians and start talking about some group that is actually respectable that may be shut out. I don't know off hand what that content would resemble. But I do know that almost no one likes politicians, nazis, and pedophiles. So it's making me believe that continuing to have those groups attaching themselves to our arguments is counterproductive at this point.

<comment><USER7> Surely there should be something disconcerting about being massively disagreed with, and finding that you can't imagine any cause more respectable than pedophiles and fascists?

I agree with you that these things are important, but why do you think so if you can't formulate a good argument for them that doesn't rely on peoples' sympathy for Nazis?

<comment><USER6> Because I'm of the opinion that Free Speech is important to protect speech that most people do _not_ like. Not really to protect speech that most people have no problem with in any case.

Why do you think it's important if not to protect speech that most people do not like? I mean, if it's speech or behavior that no one has a problem with, why does it need your protection?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > _A corporate trust managed by financial services firm Brown Brothers > Harriman will in turn oversee the board's budget and administration_

Any details on how board members will be appointed, vetted and selected?

This looks like Facebook creating a red herring it can blame for the consequences of policing its platform.

<comment><USER9> from the article,

> While Facebook will select the first 11 members of the board, the eleven > will choose the remaining board members, with terms lasting three years.

facebook picks the first 11 board members and then those 11 staff new appointments for 3 year terms, but not sure if the first 11 also control staffing throughout the org.

if this is a "facebook supreme court" then its kinda fishy if the stakeholders get to appoint the first 11 judges...

edit: also, tsk tsk wallstreet journal. if you use numerals (11) in a piece of writing, dont switch to the written number (eleven)!

<comment><USER8> > _its kinda fishy if the stakeholders get to appoint the first 11 judges_

So it's a Facebook-controlled board.

An honest mechanism would involve outside groups from the start. A legitimate mechanism probably requires the government to step in.

This is simply a deflection mechanism, a board for PR.

> _if you use numerals (11) in a piece of writing, dont switch to the written > number (eleven)_

This is common style advice. The numeral represents a quantity. Written out, it represents the body _per se_.

<comment><USER9> Frankly i agree about gov intervention in such matters because how can you really, honestly take a company at its word that its self-appointed accountability board is actually independent? Or has power to make decisions that would hurt Facebook. And companies shouldnt really be expected to do that, or at least we shouldnt expect that over a government solution. Something like this is exaccccctly what governments is designed to handle vs what business can be expected to do on its own.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The millisecond I clicked on this article, the first sentence looks very strange:

> Facebook Inc. will pay $130 million to establish an independent board > charged with reviewing how the company moderates its content...

First of all, isn't it ironic that the owner of the largest social networks in the world is attempting to fund a independent court / board for content with Facebook money? If they're not the only ones backing this, then both them and private corporations funding this whilst trying to maintain this institution's independent nature is going to have lots of trust issues.

Sounds like this is the establishment of the Facebook "Supreme Court" for Content.

<comment><USER8> > _a independent court_

Facebook picks board members who then pick more board members. The sole financial backer is Facebook. At a whim, Mark Zuckerberg could ignore, re- constitute or disband the board.

It's far from independent.

<comment><USER11> This is about the time when I pine for a higher fidelity knowledge of history so I could make a pithy comment about the similarities between the reign of the Candy King and ....?

Alas I cannot, so I'll just continue to foo(); bar(); baz(); my way along.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Hey I am a Facebook employee and I am really confused by all the comments here. Really feels like a "Damned if you do/Damned if you don't" situation. Can anybody actually suggest a better alternative? Not saying there isn't one, I am just not seeing one being proposed.

<comment><USER8> > _Can anybody actually suggest a better alternative?_

Ban non-geographically targeted political ads. Create a public repository of all political ads.

Creating a puppet entity and calling it a court is dishonest and insulting.

(The only proper solution, of course, is breaking up Facebook into, at the very least, Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. Concentrated market power is the fundamental problem.)

<comment><USER13> I have no obligation to use any of these services, why do they need to be broken up? Google is a far more threatening power over my day to day activities.

<comment><USER14> Even if you don't use these services, they use you. The tools these companies provide to different websites to use will collect data about you. So just visiting a website you are affected. You seem to recognize how Google affects you, but the FB products do as well.

<comment><USER15> So in that case you are essentially using their products, because their software and services power lots of other services. There are alternatives, I just don't care enough to pursue them. Who cares if someone has tracked my data I like having the internet the way it is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Are we supposed to believe that the people receiving the $130M will be somehow independent and make decisions without influence from Facebook? That doesn't sound very plausible.

<comment><USER17> > The money marks a significant investment in an organization that doesn't yet > exist, but could take on responsibility for some of the company's thorniest > decisions.

I hope what doesn't happen is that this turns into a way for Facebook to delay/confuse/distort how decisions are made, and ultimately give Facebook itself a way to shirk the blame.

<comment><USER18> That's exactly what this is. They're trying to avoid regulation of any kind, and "third party audits" are historically a good way to keep the federal government out of your hair for at least a measurable period of time. The financial industry learned this quickly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This actually does feel like a step in the right direction. Having _any_ sort of appeals process in place is definitely a step up from the Google/YouTube approach of: you can be banned by an automated process for no apparent reason and if that happens there's absolutely nothing you can do about it except raise a stink on social media and hope your story gets enough traction that someone capable of doing something about it notices the problem and fixes it.

<comment><USER20> Facebook already has an appeals process for content. This just adds another level, and I'm fairly dubious it'd be any less capricious.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> They don't want to be held responsible for moderating content, so… they're creating an organization funded solely by themselves. How is that any different from just doing it in-house?

<comment><USER22> It worked well for the movie studios and MPAA. The MPAA ratings board has the veneer of being independent without actually being too independent.

<comment><USER23> The MPAA is an Association. It's a small government for studios. It's not intended to be independent, it's intended to balance power along its members. If there was only one studio it could do ratings in-house.

<comment><USER22> It is likely that an organization like this will become a defacto standard used by all big social networks as a way to get government off their back, much like the Hayes Code and then the MPAA ratings board by the movie industry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This sounds like the Hays Office.[1] That was the Motion Picture Association of America's censorship unit from 1934 to 1968.

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

</comment><comment><USER25> They should name it Goskomizdat

<comment><USER26> "Ministry of Truth" has a nice ring to it [1].

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ministries_of_Nineteen_Eighty-...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ministries_of_Nineteen_Eighty- Four#Ministry_of_Truth)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> > While Facebook will select the first 11 members of the board, the eleven > will choose the remaining board members, with terms lasting three years.

Call me skeptical but that's not enough to distance yourself and set up a "fair" court. Facebook still has lots of influence and I doubt they'll recommend something that would truly hurt Facebook's bottom line.

</comment><comment> j-c-hewitt How is the board "independent"? Just calling it "independent" does not make it "independent." It sure sounds better, but "Facebook Creates Star Chamber of Moderators to Rubber Stamp Decisions It Wanted to Make Anyway" doesn't sound as respectable.

</comment><comment><USER28> Facebook: a place to share things approved by a board of corporate trustees.

</comment><comment><USER29> The wolves voting for free range sheep.

</comment><comment><USER30> Why does facebook continue to allow the running of political ads and all the headache that comes with it (despite it being a minuscule piece of it's overall revenue)? Power. You can see this as being the most tone-deaf way possible to address the problem, or as a power grab to become an arbiter of truth.

<comment><USER20> The right-wing has been claiming anti-conservative bias in big tech for a while now. Banning political ads, even if done across the board, would be likely to ramp that up dramatically. [https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/6/20756734/trump-google- anti...](https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/6/20756734/trump-google-anti- conservative-bias-claims-tweets)

For example: [https://www.marketwatch.com/story/republicans-criticize- goog...](https://www.marketwatch.com/story/republicans-criticize-googles-new- policy-reining-in-political-ads-2019-11-26)

> President Donald Trump's reelection campaign and other Republican election > groups criticized tech giant Google on Tuesday for making it harder for > political advertisers to target specific types of people. The GOP groups > said the changes will lead directly to suppressing voter turnout and would > "disproportionately" hurt Republican candidates.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> They're just trying to avoid a ruling like this one: [https://www.mtsu.edu/first- amendment/article/583/pruneyard-s...](https://www.mtsu.edu/first- amendment/article/583/pruneyard-shopping-center-v-robins)

for social media platforms.

</comment><comment><USER32> What will be the equivalent to the Bill of Rights, on which this new court will base its opinions?

</comment><comment><USER33> The forest was shrinking but the trees kept voting for the axe as its handle was made of wood and they thought it was one of them.

<comment><USER34> In the absence of any context, adages like this don't add anything to the conversation. Every reader who encounters it will nod and say "yes, that's so true of the other side".

<comment><USER33> Thankfully there's the context of OP's post.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Hrm. I'm curious how this "Supreme Court" will interact with Facebook's cadre of paid content moderators and if that "Supreme Court" will be/will have the power to advocate for that group of workers--or if this is strictly going to be a single-serving organism in the company.

I'd certainly be less incredulous about this move were there answers to these inquiries.

[https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/25/18229714/cognizant- facebo...](https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/25/18229714/cognizant-facebook- content-moderator-interviews-trauma-working-conditions-arizona)

</comment><comment><USER36> I am not picking on FB here. I find it interesting humans created this network. It has some benefits and plenty of issues due to its business model. There is strength in the network but the network could succumb to a loss of participants and thus lose its power. Why are we not advocating for folks to simply leave the network? I know I am removing lots of the gray areas, but I am genuinely curious. Is there really no other group of builders that can provide the market with a FB alternative? I keep reminding myself that at one point in time AOL felt like the only access point to the internet that mattered...

</comment><comment><USER37> "Supreme Court"..this sounds nothing like the Supreme Court.

</comment><comment><USER38> So what happens is that Facebook chooses 11 people and gives them money so that they could make Facebook censorship decisions look like they don't come from Facebook. But since they people in that "court" still are appointed by Facebook, that's all just a shell game. But now they can point at "independent verification" by people they chose to pretend there's some objectivity behind it (even though there can't possibly be).

</comment><comment><USER39> Wolfs are funding supreme court over fate of sheep.

</comment><comment><USER40> I can't wait for this brave new world where you will need to implement a $130 million supreme court to start a new social network.

</comment><comment><USER41> $130M sounds like a tiny sum for content arbitration at Facebook's scale and the number of jurisdictions it crosses. I mean, nobody's done it before, so it will be interesting. But I don't think this is or could be a serious attempt to solve the systemic issues at stake with the platform.

</comment><comment><USER42> [http://archive.is/kzokf](http://archive.is/kzokf)

</comment><comment><USER43> Great! Corporate takeover of our commons. Sounds completely kosher to me.

</comment><comment><USER44> They'll need to hire idubbz so they can have a proper content cop for the content court.

</comment><comment><USER45> HN et. al. have become really quite cynical about FB these days, but I suggest reality is something more pragmatic, however ugly --> yes, FB likes taking money from anyone, but I'll bet they really, really don't want to be in the business of content filtering, or having to make such decisions, and would rather wash their hands of it.

There's little pragmatic leadership coming from the powers that be over this stuff - obviously there's a good deal of noise out of governments concerning 'fake news' \- but I'd argue it's much more difficult than one would imagine given 100 different nations, different laws, lobbying power, even aside from the concerns over really deciding 'what is fake'. I think a lot of TV spots might reasonably fall under the category of 'not exactly factual' as well.

If there were reasonable, clean and coherent direction from US gov (probably not going to happen), it would be easier. A lot of the EU thinking/legislation I suggest mightn't be specifically nuanced enough as well.

I am not cynical about this announcement. I'd wager FB would be somewhere in the range of 'happy' to comply with a set of reasonable bits of legislation, especially if was applied universally and coherently. In the absence of anyone actually doing anything, they're going to set it up themselves.

Impartial? Hardly, but it's probably better than nothing.

$130M is not chump change, this is a big deal. Perhaps wit a change in governance maybe something will happen. (I'm not making a political statement other than to say the Trump regime will never do anything about this).

Absent any real collective movement on this issue ... I think this is a positive step. It's better than the status quo.

</comment><comment><USER46> No thanks!

</comment><comment><USER47> Who is going to run this board? It's probably going to be the last people on earth you want in those positions.

</comment><comment><USER48> Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

<comment><USER49> > Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

Actually, it sounds an awful lot like "damned if you don't, damned if you pretend you do to keep not doing it".

<comment><USER48> And what exactly do you think "it" is? In terms of _concrete_ actions for content moderation, not some vague "be good, don't be bad" moralizing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Far better* than the alternative, a transparent process to decide what is acceptable content on social media that is managed by the government, you know, democratically. At least this way Facebook owns the process from the get go, it's the purest form of 'regulatory capture'.

Just imagine if technology companies had to adhere to publishing standard like broadcasters and journalists do, because of regulations. All that money from conspiracy theory political ads targeting niche social groups would evaporate. Social media platforms would be far less political influence.

*For Facebook.

<comment><USER51> In the United States of America we already have something like this, it's called the 1st Amendment in the Constitution. Since Facebook enjoys the privilege of being classified as a "public square", they do not have the legal right to censor content at all, unless the content is illegal (threats, etc.). This is not currently being enforced.

Imagine being so oppressed that your ego feels the need to down-vote this comment :(

<comment><USER50> 1\. We also have a Federal Communication Commission which regulates to prevent information broadcasters from abusing their power.

2\. > Imagine being so oppressed that your ego feels the need to down-vote this comment :(

I don't have the ability to downvote replies. I notice too that your comment has not been edited, so you must have written it at the same time you originally posted before anyone could have upvoted or downvoted you. Why don't you do a quick edit, for appearances sake...</comment></comment></comment>


Cue – Discover yourself - <AUTHOR> https://cue.me <comment><USER2> The concept itself is pretty exciting - A simple home based device capable of providing some bio markers that indicate different conditions.

The science behind these - i.e. the correlation of said marker with the linked condition is not as cut-and-dry but still within the bounds of usefulness.

The execution is something we will have to see - the many 3D renders are not exactly promising

The Web site is an abomination - terrible scroll hijacking, Stock pictures of Gross things, low info density, etc, etc

<comment><USER3> Came here to say just this. Product could be interesting but their abomination of a website is such a turn off.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Now if they would only promise not to sell off your personal health data.

Call me skeptical, but there has to be some negative consequence for giving this kind of personal info out in the future.

I imagine it being like, "Sorry sir, your health record indicates you were sick 5 times last year. You're a health risk, so we can't hire you".

"Your elevated testosterone levels indicate that you'll be an overly- aggressive employee.."

Anywho... Cool video, right?

<comment><USER5> My thoughts immediately strayed to the same notion. From the FAQ, however:

 _Your data will be stored on your phone, and you decide how long you want to store your data, if at all. You are the only person that has access to your data. You can choose to share the data with your doctor, your family, or your friends. You are in control of your data, and how you use it is entirely up to you.

As a first customer, you will be invited to take part in a usability study and provide feedback and anonymized data to our company as an important part of Cue's path to FDA approval. You may opt out of this at any time._

And, with respect to selling:

 _Absolutely not. Your data belongs to you. Data collected using Cue machines are linked to your smart phone solely. Again, you are the only person that has access to your data._

Yes, yes, TOS and privacy policies can change at any time, but this is a quite bit more forthright statement about data, than say the Microsoft Band/Strava/Fitbit/etc. My reading of it is that it's never uploaded to any sort of remote cloud storage.

EDIT: The more that I think about it, and the more features that I see that the app has, I'd have to guess that there may be some sort of catch down the line in the above statement. Perhaps your blood work data is never transferred to their servers, but analytic gathering is probably going to take place based on your location, meal planning, exercise records, etc., even if only for "recommendations for you".

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This seems... ambitious. The prospects for reliable home flu testing alone seem challenging; for instance, here's WBUR reporting on an NSF-funded, CDC- advised pilot to get home flu tests to Boston residents:

[http://commonhealth.wbur.org/2014/01/home-flu-test- goviral](http://commonhealth.wbur.org/2014/01/home-flu-test-goviral)

The "good" version of the test requires an offsite lab.

Also: if you have a product that detects influenza and fertility, why lead off your marketing with "inflammation" and recommendations for green smoothies? It's hard to tell whether this is a serious product or something for people who shop at GNC.

The founders have math backgrounds but no biotech pedigree, although they do have a gold-plated advisor board.

</comment><comment><USER7> I can't imagine how this company won't get sued out of existence. They are making some pretty broad and probably inaccurate statements, and also offering medical advice.

Detecting inflammation probably isn't that hard, but I'd bet they are detecting a particular marker of inflammation and reporting that as inflammation. Which could be meaningful in combination with other factors, or it could mean the person being tested has a cold, or ate a 12 inch Subway Sandwich.

Also advising someone to drink a green smoothie may lower the particular marker they are measuring, but probably won't alleviate actual inflammation or it's related symptoms at all.

My wife has had a chronic inflammatory disease for years and has tried it all, including smoothies, and has find even really powerful anti-inflammatory drugs don't cure the inflammation or remove all symptoms.

I do like the idea of the device and applications though, but I'm really worried about the way they present information.

</comment><comment> at-fates-hands A lot of this stuff seems rather obvious.

Vitamin D low? Pretty sure people know whether they should be more active. If I'm sitting at a PC all day (like most developers) I know when my activity levels are low, I don't need a machine to tell me that.

Inflammation? I've been an athlete my whole life, so I'm pretty tuned into my body. If I have inflammation somewhere, and it's not sports related, I'll most likely leave that to a trained professional, not some machine.

Influenza? See above. If I get really sick, I got to the doctor. Since there's really no pill you can take to cure you of the flu (it's a virus), by the time I'd check this machine, I'd be better off just seeing my doctor, which is most likely a worst case scenario.

Testosterone? I'm an athlete by trade and have never had any issues with this. I have a healthy diet and am still very active for my age. Not sure this would help me other than to confirm I have normal levels; something I can find out at my yearly physical if I really want to.

Fertility? Not even going to go there.

Basically if you're a couch potato, and have a shit diet, this might be helpful to you. The vast majority of people I know who smoke and have a crappy lifestyle and diet, they know it. It's just up to them to make the change. Not sure this machine would get them to do that.

</comment><comment><USER8> Horrible website. I don't want to watch a video, and couldn't figure out what it was from the text on the page.

</comment><comment><USER9> This has shown up on HN before: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7743036](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7743036)

That said, "inflammation is elevated, recover with a green smoothie" seems like questionable medical advice. I pretty much gave up on this right there.

<comment><USER10> Their core competency is building sensor systems, not delivering medical advice. If you know you're more inflamed, that's useful information in itself.

<comment><USER6> In the thread I linked down downthread, a physician questioned the utility of the inflammation marker they're testing.

<comment><USER10> That's a different criticism than that their medical advice is unsound.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'll just wait on Integrated Plasmonics to ship something. Cue might have fit some market with existing tech, but it looks pretty niche. "Deep" monitoring...and then testosterone. Wonderful. I'll know if lifting weights really affects testosterone levels while completely missing that prostate cancer on the way. We have deep testing. We don't have broad or cheap testing. The fact that the tests aren't cheap, (fertility???) and the marketing strikes me as pretending existing things are new makes me think this is investment fodder. I didn't wake up today decided to be negative. The product gives me signals that seem to betray a lack of sincerity in terms of delivering anything with truly new value propositions.

</comment><comment><USER12> This page is a lot more clear about the product I think: [https://cue.me/product](https://cue.me/product)

I still see no information on how long the "wand" (sample taker) lasts.. Can I take 10 drops of blood? 100? Infinite?

<comment><USER13> The sample wands and cartridges are single use - see the FAQ page: [https://cue.me/faq](https://cue.me/faq)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Green smoothies? Gross.

Instead of stock photos of people running, it'd be great if they laid out the specific features/sensors of this thing.

<comment><USER6> They claim:

* Inflammation

* Influenza

* Vitamin D

* Fertility

* Testosterone

It's unclear from the media photos on the front page, but this is something that stays in your home, and accepts sample swabs for blood and spit (you buy different swabs for different tests).

This was a really useful comment, linked from upthread:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7744251](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7744251)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> _A 5-pack of inflammation, vitamin D, fertility, or testosterone cartridges costs $20 /pack. A 3-pack of flu cartridges costs $30._

Pricey

<comment><USER16> A private blood test that reports total serum testosterone costs between 50-100 dollars, and requires going into a lab to get blood drawn. If the cue is accurate this it will be ridiculously better.

<comment><USER15> That's true, but the motivations here are quite different. I wouldn't go to a lab just to check if I am properly recovered from a workout [1] or to check if the kids have the flu.

[1] that's assuming that a free testosterone test can tell you that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> There is something to be said for keeping track of your health, but with too much monitoring (without an external reason), you're just generating too much data and will end up with false positives. They need to make a much better case for _why_ I would want to monitor these things...

</comment><comment><USER18> All the people shown in the video didn't need cue. Why don't they show moms with sick kids, the elderly, or those stricken with diseases?

</comment><comment><USER19> This looks awesome. It seems ridiculous that in the age of information, we still need to go to labs to get our own basic vital information.

<comment><USER20> While it's cute to think that way, the truth is you have the government to blame for regulating medical equipment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> They even invented medication for the flu!

<comment><USER13> I thought that was questionable too. Why was there a prescription to pick up to treat a viral infection, which there is no treatment for?

<comment><USER22> orly? [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amantadine](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amantadine)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I admit I LOL'd at the fertility test...

<comment><USER24> Why the LOL? Fertility tests are a perfectly valid and useful thing for those struggling to get pregnant.</comment></comment>


Walt Disney's MultiPlane Camera (1957) - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YdHTlUGN1zw

<comment><USER2> What i love most about this is how very simple concepts can sum to produce very complex systems.</comment>


Ask HN: (how often) do you clear your cookies? - <AUTHOR>

In light of the discussion w.r.t. Google working around Safari's "do not accept third party cookies" setting, I wonder whether people clear their cookies (web and Flash) regularly, and if so, how often. Related to that, do you use private mode as a means to fight tracking? <comment><USER2> Almost never.

I used to clear history, cookies, everything on browser restart.

I've let the water wash over me, and now I like typing things in the address bar and already being there, or being remembered like Norm when I visit a site again.

Rarely a site will piss me off and I'll go in and delete _their_ cookies. I know they can feel it when I do that.

</comment><comment><USER3> Never manually. But I use multiple browsers (Opera, Chrome, sometimes Firefox) simultaneously (well, in parallel) and I have separate work and personal computers. Sometimes I even use private browsing; and not only for "buying presents".

But I believe this doesn't prevent me from Google knowing all about it. Whether I use one browser or other, private browsing or not. Some do-not-track extension which would completely block downloading and executing of tracking scripts might have help. But I'm not that paranoid. Yet.

</comment><comment> mike-cardwell I use a Firefox addon named Cookie Monster. All cookies, not just third party cookies are blocked by default. When you come across a site where you need cookies, you select one of four options from the icon on the status bar:

      1.) Temporarily allow cookies from example.com
      2.) Accept cookies from example.com
      3.) Reject cookies from example.com
      4.) Accept session cookies from example.com

For news.ycombinator.com, I selected option 4 the first time I needed to log in and it is persistent.

The only time you ever need to accept cookies from a site, is when you're logging in to something, or buying something. And there's never any need to accept anything other than session cookies. You don't _need_ cookies at all to browse news sites or blogs etc.

This is an incredibly small amount of work. It is considerably less work than NoScript or RequestPolicy for example. And it provides so many benefits. Most days I don't even need to touch the Cookie Monster configuration. It's only when I sign up for something new or buy something from a new site, and it's a two second job, and I can usually recognise that I'm going to need to do it before anything even breaks.

EDIT: Also, Firefox is set to completely clear my history on exit. Including history, cache and offline website data. I've never felt that doing this made my web browsing any more inconvenient.

<comment><USER4> Does any know if there is something similar to Cookie Monster for Chrome?

Since recently I only visit Facebook in an incognito window for the purpose of cookies. I'd like to block all sites by default as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Never, for regular browsing.

I use Firefox's Web Developer plugin to clear cookies for a specific domain if I'm developing and need to test clearing cookies.

If I don't trust a site or don't want it leaving traces I'll use Chrome's Incognito mode.

Never really got the fuss about cookies, some people seem really paranoid and diligent about clearing them. I don't really care, and I'm usually very mindful of privacy issues.

<comment> mike-cardwell Here is one reason you might block/clear cookies, and be concerned about these issues:

If you want to use a Google or Facebook account, but at the same time, you don't want them to be able to link your general browsing history outside of Google/Facebook with your account. ie, the sites you visit and when you visit them.

I don't think it's fair to call people with that sort of concern, "paranoid". I think "prudent", "informed" or "sensible" are more appropriate words.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I set Firefox and Chrome to clear everything when they're closed. All my logins are managed through KeePass, so logging back into a website is just one keypress away.

<comment><USER7> Do you use an extension in Chrome to do this or surf permanently incognito? I was under the impression that it's not (yet) possible to do so automatically in Chrome (vanilla).

<comment><USER6> Wrench -> Options -> Under the Hood -> Privacy -> Content Settings... -> Cookies -> "Clear cookies and other site data when I close my browser"

<comment><USER7> Thanks, my fault, I mixed it up with "Clear Browsing Data".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I reset Safari on OSX frequently, and do the same with Chrome.

On iOS I run Safari in private browsing mode all the time. Not really to auto- delete cookies (it does that), but because if you have a history of websites and you start typing in the address bar, it attempts to auto-complete the URIs, which freezes Safari for a second, and delays keyboard inputting. Apple doesn't have a time-delay of 1-2 seconds after the previous keystroke, so its auto-complete is really annoying and slows down/breaks the UI. Bookmarks have to be empty too to work.

That said, private-mode iOS Safari crashes a whole lot more than non-private mode. This usually happens on newspaper websites (UI hell) when all of the ad network and javascript widget garbage attempt to load. If you hit Stop-Loading after the article text is loaded, but before that other crap does, it fixes the problem. Funny, but disabling Javascript seems to crash more than leaving it on, but on different websites, likely for different reasons.

</comment><comment><USER9> Until recently, never. Now I've started allowing them only for the session, except for a few websites like HN. Of course, my session usually lasts for days, even a week or more (I rarely shutdown the laptop, I just put it to sleep).

I wonder if there's an addon for Firefox to clear them after a few hours.

</comment><comment><USER10> I have Firefox configured to remove almost everything on exit, including cookies and flash cookies, also do it manually when I'm switching proxies, have disabled third party cookies which seems to be working in Firefox (<http://www.google.com/ads/preferences/?hl=en> returns "Cookies are disabled").

As preventive measures I have Ghostery, NoScript, and Adblock with EasyPrivacy list <https://easylist.adblockplus.org/en/> installed and only use Chromium in private mode when the site is some cool demo from HN, as those tend not to work with all the limitations. Next up: full blown paranoia and Qubes (I'm only half joking).

</comment><comment><USER11> Firefox : everytime I close it, and third party cookies not allowed.

Chrome : never

I use Chrome almost exclusively to check my gmail account and Firefox for everything else.

I am aware that Chrome and Firefox share a flash cookie on the subdomain mail.google.com, but apparently it does not contain tracking data. Moreover it is not supposed to be sent when I use the main domain (if adobe follows the RFC). Google.com could hide an iframe pointing to mail.google.com but they wouln't dare, would they ?

So I think I am pretty safe from google tracking for now. Anyway, when I have time I will search HN comments and the web for a list of hostnames to map to 127.0.0.1 in my hosts file.

</comment><comment><USER12> Rarely, and usually unintentionally. I have tried tools to prevent tracking such as Ghostery in the past, and my experience is that it breaks the web so much it's not worth the trouble.

<comment><USER13> How does it break the web exactly? I use ghostery and don't experience it.

<comment><USER12> I spent far too long finding web sites that failed to load or experienced problems, and constantly tracked them back to Ghostery. It was actually interfering with web development, and so I uninstalled it after 5 days or so.

I use adblock plus* and click-to-play flash embeds now. Occasionally a website breaks because of it, but very rarely.

*I whitelist websites I want to support, but a lot of websites go too far. I've been the 1,000,000th site visitor too many times.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Never (well, once a year manually or so). But if there was a Firefox plugin that let me clear my cookies on shutdown _except_ for cookies of sites I want to keep, I'd use that!

<comment><USER15> Check "Accept cookies from from sites" and choose "Keep until I close FF". Then add exceptions w/ status "Allow" for sites you want to store cookies.

<comment><USER16> This is what I do, too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I believe the most common cause of cookie deletion is hitting the browser cookie limit, and old cookies rolling off. The sheer number of JavaScript tags on websites (I've seen a list of over 600 third party trackers), multiplied by the number of sites you visit for those trackers that create per domain cookies (for example google analytics), then add in the multiple unintentional cookies created by programming frameworks on each domain, and the limit gets hit pretty fast.

</comment><comment><USER18> I run with the most strict settings that firefox has to offer. No cookies, private browsing, no JS, etc.

On top of that, I use noscript, ghostery, the web dev toolbar, better privacy, and adblock.

Only use cookies to log into HN to post (I browse without logging in), my email, and other programming-related page (such as /r/programming).

I also use a proxy for those times that I must use Google (my search engine of choice is Duck Duck Go (it works great)).

</comment><comment><USER19> I am a web developer, so I delete them quite often while working. Although when I am not working, never.

</comment><comment><USER20> I reset my cookies all the time, when doing development on my machine sometimes, the browsers just need a good reset to behave normally again.

</comment><comment><USER21> I do it weekly, but mainly because I experiment a lot with my OS and will generally have to re-install it once a week.

</comment><comment><USER22> I can't remember when I do this. I use ubuntu - so I do not afraid of malicious programs, and only I have got access to my computer.

<comment><USER23> You realise the ignorance and nativity in this statement? I use Ubuntu also, but that doesn't absolve/protect me from all potential issues I may run in when browsing/using the web.

Heck, the original poster may have actually been refering to clearing the cookies to avoid tracking.

However, when things like <http://samy.pl/evercookie/> exist, it makes it even more harder to avoid tracking cookies.

Andd moreover, "only I have got access to my computer". You are every non- ecrypted hop you make from your system to the target network has access to your requests, making you vulnerable to man in the middle attacks.

I think you were/are just a little misguided.

<comment><USER22> What are you afraid of?? Did smth bad happened with you?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Never, I dont need it.

</comment><comment><USER25> Never.

</comment><comment><USER26> I set Firefox to auto-remove cookies when closing it. I mostly navigate in private mode. Whenever I find something slightly interesting I bookmark it. Later I switch to normal mode, navigate all the new links to put them in history, and remove them from bookmarks. So I can keep a tiny[1] searchable history and not spam the bookmarks.

[1] it was tiny until I met HN, now it grows like a monster.</comment>


GitHub blocked in Russia - <AUTHOR> https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=ru&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.opennet.ru%2Fopennews%2Fart.shtml%3Fnum%3D41171&edit-text= <comment><USER2> I live in Russia (Moscow) and I'm working for leading russian internet company. I'm very annoyed by current political and economical situation. I was so upset by events happening last months that I simply stopped reading russian news at all. And I spent all the time in places like GitHub, Topcoder, English Wikipedia, Hacker News etc. Yesterday, I've tried to make yet another commit to my private repository and suddenly I failed to connect to GitHub. After basic checking of network, I started searching for a news, and I got it.

In a big picture, it's not just russian politicians who tight control over the free internet. The main problem in russia is not just politicians, it's a vast majority of russian people who voted for Putin and his party and totally support current regime.

May be for western people it's hard to believe how can it be possible to support this crazy regime. I can tell you that even top managers from leading russian internet company (from my private conversation with them) dreamed about great russian firewall because in that case, they won't have competitors like Google. Furthermore even IT guys like Putin regime and don't get worry about crazy laws passed against the internet. I assure you in that because many of my colleagues really like Stalin and really like what's happening in Ukraine. Almost all people in Russia really hate western world. They don't care about currency exchange rates and inflation, they care only about imperialism. When Putin made desision about Crimea, and when people totally supported it, I stopped believe in Russia at all.

Russia is a pure soviet country, with pure 100% soviet mindset, vast majority of russian people like idea of self-isolation. This is why Russia has no future as a liberal market-driven country.

And this is why I'm actively looking for a job abroad.

<comment><USER3> Hi, pal. I live in Moscow too, and I agree with you: what's happening is really really sad. I use github for everyday work, and suddenly I failed to connect. I need my job actually, you know? And they just broke it. For what? For blocking one file, which nobody cared about? Are they serious? This is fucking insane. And regime is fucking insane. And "replace your t-shirt with a patriotic one" ads on streets are just too fucking dumb to be true. WTF?! 2013 wasn't too bad, and I had no thoughts about moving to another country, but in just one year everything gone to shit.

<comment><USER4> How do they ban it actually? In my West (!) European country (I don't know of any European country that doesn't do some censorship) they just serve court order to the providers, the providers remove the entries from the DNS but the banned sites are still reachable using the IP address. They you just need to fix your etc hosts file.

Try with [https://184.108.40.206](https://22.214.171.124) and accept the certificate if it has A0:C4:A7:46:00:ED:A7:2D:C0:BE:CB:9A:8C:B6:07:CA:58:EE:74:5E SHA-1 fingerprint.

(The uploaders can be related to the companies selling VPN access to Russians.)

<comment><USER3> In Russia they seem to force all ISPs to ban specific IP addresses. Obviously, it blocks many stuff, and not just one page. I really HOPE that it'll be resolved soon, because a few months ago we had similar problems with wordpress and even youtube (!), but it was fixed in 1-2 days, because, you know, everyone watches youtube, and blocking half of it makes everyone mad. But github is not what everyone uses, it's just a thing for coders like me, so I'm also afraid, they wont give a shit, because only a "minority" of their clients complained. \--- Can't load suggested IP as well

<comment><USER5> I'm travelling frequently to both Russia and Turkey - to avoid having stupid spatial location based limitations I've been using privateinternetaccess.com for more than 6 months now. it's pretty cheap and has gateways all around the world - I recommend it without any hesitation... I especially like having access to streaming video for the shows I watch that is limited to country ip's like the daily show...

<comment><USER4> We're hackers, let's promote using our own servers and service providers, don't support the VPN sellers who can be behind this particular blockade, maybe even bribing the censors. See the comments here, ssh is enough.

<comment><USER5> yes of course but that requires to have an always on computer to connect to...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Official reason for blocking: the site hosts texts describing methods of suicide. Because Github uses HTTPS only, it's impossible to block only the offending pages, so the whole IP range is blocked. Github ignored their requests to remove the offending content, so the site remains blocked.

I hope Russian citizens get a big fat boost of morality from blocking Github.

Really, it's not the alcoholism, injustice, corruption, poverty and now economic collapse that causes people to commit suicide in Russia, it's... Github !!

This just shows how braindead the people holding power in Russia are. Oh, and these censorship 'laws' have been adopted by people who've stolen billions and who've built a corrupt police state, which is really scary, because the same people have their fingers on the red button.

<comment><USER4> Don't worry, practically every European country censors something on the internet (example: (1)) Some level of absurdity is always present as there are almost always some methods to get to the data when the person is determined enough.

1) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_the_Unit...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_the_United_Kingdom)

I'm writing from one another West European country. Here even teens share the IP numbers of the video sites banned on the DNS servers of the providers, to type that in the browser's link bar. The providers were served the court orders. It's just on the DNS level at the moment.

<comment><USER7> > practically every European country censors something on the internet

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_and_surveil...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_and_surveillance_by_country) doesn't support that

<comment><USER8> That page isn't very good.

It says that the UK doesn't censor the Internet yet we know that there are two levels of censorship in England:

i) the IWF lists - these cover sites that distribute images of child sexual abuse

ii) court order - these cover sites like the PirateBay.

<comment><USER9> 3 levels.

The third is the opt-out censorship to protect the children from file sharing, vpn & privacy related info, extreme content (gore), extreme political content (neo-Nazi, maybe even Britian First related but not confirmed), sex related, etc.

By censoring file sharing & privacy related content, it does damange the "path" to becoming a programmer for some people. I know that if these were filtered by default I'd have never learnt how to program.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Hello there.

I live in Russia, too (St-Petersburg, to be precise), and I would like to discuss the issue on a different angle. Russian government is done anyway (economic situation will finish it in a few years), so why bothering? What is more important, I believe, is GitHub's attitude here.

You see, GitHub is sending polite-but-firm emails right now, asking users that hosted the file in question to remove it and hinting that they otherwise will remove it themselves. I'm deeply worried about this, because GitHub faces a tough decision: either it will stand to it's ground and stay banned in Russia, or it will comply, possibly changing TOS to be able to remove content if it's illegal in some god-forsaken country. Think LGBT-supporting groups and Nigeria, if not Russia.

In the first case, they will moderately annoy a most active part of Russian society and loose SOME subscribers — GitHub is for programmers, after all, we can handle VPNs. It will remind people that something is broken about their country, serving a good purpose. In the same time, GitHub will prove itself trustworthy to it's true customers — programmers.

In the second case, the ban will be lifted, but now they have to comply more and more, as more and more programmers will deliberately post that suicide satire in their repos. GitHub will probably lose less subscribers in the short term, but in the same time they will help the devious "divide and conquer" KGBsque strategy, which is no good. Additionally, GitHub case will become a poster child of Russian Propaganda Machine Winning, which is no good, either.

So, it's money-vs-face situation, when GitHub is forced to choose between helping one or another party. I strongly hope that they will choose The Right Thing To Do™.

<comment><USER11> This is the strongest argument against democracy I've ever heard. When it comes right down to it, fact is that >50% (and more likely >80%) is in favor of laws against LGBT. At least 50% of the 7 billion humans is in favor of criminalizing freedom of religion. In favor of censorship is probably >75% as well, because when push comes to shove, a large majority of muslims, chinese and russians are in favor of it, as is most of Africa.

The problem I do see is that the "other side", specifically the UN, is not really any better. Freedom of religion is constantly under attack in the general assembly, and so is freedom of speech.

Take for example [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defamation_of_religion_and_the_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defamation_of_religion_and_the_United_Nations) (TLDR: attempts to introduce blasphemy laws world-wide supported by the UN) ... details a constant campaign against freedom of religion that's entering it's third decade now of majority support in the general assembly. And this is but one of many examples. This makes it clear that defending human rights using either the UN of the ICC is like asking Putin to solve Ukraine's internal government crises. Whatever the solution is to guarantee freedom, it's not the UN.

Sad part is, if anything, these groups are growing, not shrinking.

I know it doesn't look like it in the middle of the US, but you should remember that the US is barely 350 million people. The number of people that would like their country to attack the US today, no matter how stupid an act it would be, world wide, is bigger than that. The number of people that would like to see the US taken down several notches even includes >50% of Europeans, so you can imagine what it is in the rest of the world (talk about a moronic position : China will replace the US should that happen, and it is blatantly obvious that will not be an improvement, not even for Chinese, although most Chinese I've talked to argue otherwise). In most places it doesn't even have anything to do with the US, other than that the US culture is leaking into their countries perhaps. In Europe, it's mostly political jealousy, the US has all this power, and is not using it "for good" (good can mean climate change, economic stuff, various wars, and now that 10% of europe or so is muslims "because it is destroying islam", not that you can ever get a straight answer of what that means, though references to Gaza seem common). It's not exclusively the US either. India seems to be as hated as the US sometimes, except for in Europe. And this is ignoring the wild cards, like how >30% of Europe constantly votes for the extreme right, more than that even in some countries (and less in Germany, but it's being repressed, so there's no real data on the actual number). Japan is re-arming at a speed that if you told me 5 years ago that might happen I would have laughed).

Russia is but one example of a nation that seems to be regressing to the situation before WWI. Turkey is similar. As we know, most of the middle east and northern Africa sees a return to the pseudo-roman-empire caliphate of the 7th century as a solution. China pretty much is an empire, including conquered colonies, and however dictatorial the current government is, from talking to Chinese people here I believe it would actually win an election, should there be one. All want an empire, and of course their own empire to win.

None of these attitudes seem rational to me, as people are worse and worse off, yet that only seems to fan the flames. All of these empires are calling for war, to some extent. I fear that as time goes on, the amount of sparks needed to light the powder kegs seems to be going down, and I feel really queasy about how little energy it took to start the ISIS war in the middle east, for example. How much sparks would it take to start something similar in Europe ? (yes there's less muslims there, but it's not like ISIS has even 10% support in Iraq)

<comment><USER12> How is this an argument against democracy? What is your proposed alternative that would be superior?

Can a broad statement like 'the strongest argument against democracy' even be made when democracy takes many forms and has varying degrees of adherence to the principles behind their expression?

What of countries that had laws against racial intermarriage or same-sex marriage and have changed those laws because there was a means for people to instigate change (i.e. democracy)?

<comment><USER11> I don't have an alternative. The point is that if we really were fully democratic world-wide, we'd be locking up or killing gays/lesbians, we'd have blasphemy laws for every religion and some ideologies enforced world-wide, ...

Assuming you do not consider this a desirable situation, it forms an argument against democracy itself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> What next, also StackOverflow blocked? Next headline would be Russian software development comes to a sudden halt

Edit: downvoted again. My mind is just not made for this hateful community here.

<comment><USER14> It probably won't, but it'll evolve in a different direction, and knowledge from abroad (and from inside Russia) won't be distributed as much as before.

<comment><USER15> Indeed, I believe that is going to happen this way.

But in the same time, it's a strong signal to avoid to do software related business in Russia. The blocking works both ways. Just look at what happened in China, they do have their own tools and networks but almost nobody is outsourcing work to China compared to other countries.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> What a nice attack vector. Deliver a "suicidal" payload to a website, report to Russian authorities and watch it go offline in Russia.

It might as well be SO or any other site with user content.

<comment><USER17> It's not that easy. The site will also have to deny to remove the contents. I'm pretty sure SO would remove such content, simply because it's off-topic there.

<comment><USER18> I'm sure there is sub-exchange on stackexchange, where it's not an off-topic. And as soon as stackexchange share the IP with SO it will be blocked all over. Thanks for the idea.

<comment><USER17> Then, there's still the question whether SO will comply or not. Given that reports of suicide trigger more suicides than without, I wouldn't be surprised of SO community guidelines which discourage such content, even though it might otherwise be ontopic in that specific sub-exchange.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Not sure if anybody offered here, but if you're in Russia and looking to leave and Paris sounds like a good place, maybe I could help out. Currently I'm doing a lean startup and that means that I don't have a lot of resources, but I do know a few people who are hiring.

The area is: golang, python and js mostly.

alex @plugaru org

p.s. I speak russian.

</comment><comment><USER20> Interesting... Google Translate did a very decent job on the article, but the comments are all kinds of hilarious. Looks like informal speech is much harder to translate correctly. Although on the second thought it's not surprising.

<comment><USER4> I guess some Russian reader hand corrected the translation of the article. Otherwise, Google translate is very poor for Russian text. the best example is the translated sentence from the text that caused the ban:

"Skopostnye train DURING topmozhenii ppohod more about kilometpa" (...)

(The sentence makes advice where the person doing suicide is best to do it, related to trains. Don't correct it and please don't post it in full here).

<comment><USER21> Why not? It might be inconvenient to read, but it _is_ an article about the censoring of that exact information. Celebrate freedom by translating it properly!

<comment><USER22> Willing to translate it, but the piece posted here is not comprehensible. Post a direct link and I'll do it.

Also, original: [http://www.opennet.ru/opennews/art.shtml?num=41171](http://www.opennet.ru/opennews/art.shtml?num=41171)

Edit: it does not look like sth about suicide. Words in order:

High-speed (adj), Train, Customs (on the border), Passage, More, About, (of) kilometer.

<comment><USER23> >Words in order: >High-speed (adj), Train, Customs (on the border), Passage, More, About, (of) kilometer.

Higher-speed rail passes at least kilometer while slowing down.

>it does not look like sth about suicide [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_methods#Rail](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_methods#Rail)

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the Wikipedia link, now we know what the basis for the text was. Obviously the author started from there and added his "funny" options like "start the third world war."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Good, let the oppression reach the breaking point sooner and let the people rise and throw away the tyranny.

If only that was true :(

<comment><USER25> More realistically the people will just run away from Russia leaving only those that are happy with the situation. Users of github are tiny minority in Russia. Even tinier is the part of those users that care enough to do anything about it besides leaving.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Github is down for Russian developers because some anti-Putin political activists are eager to make a point.

It works like this:

\- they push some content deemed illegal in Russia to a github repo (something like instructions on committing suicide or on growing marijuana).

\- then they themselves post a complain to the Russian internet regulator, accompanied by the link to illegal content;

\- the ugly bureaucrats machine (which is mostly automatic) bans the whole of Github.

\- at some point later in the day a human intervenes and unblocks the site, as happened several times in the past.

However, by that time the media has picked up the story, and many oppressed Russian developers who don't know how to use a US proxy, have received job offers.

<comment><USER27> 1\. This is not true. It was actually blocked on purpose with head of federal agency speaking about it and posting funny picture.

2\. (some) Content in question is work of satire about censorship agency and ridiculous laws written and hosted on github in Feb 2013

3\. (some) of the links in question are not even posted by Russian citizens or residents, not even speaking about political activists

<comment><USER28> [https://github.com/stevebest/suicide/blob/master/suicide.md](https://github.com/stevebest/suicide/blob/master/suicide.md)

Here you are. Posted by a Russian citizen from a commit labeled "Privet, Roskomnadzor!" Such a rebel! Demonstrating the world unspeakable horrors of the Putin's regime.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Sincerely hope GitHub won't give up an inch to censorship and handle the situation with "your government is your problems, not ours" attitude.

With all seriousness - I think the whole situation just can't be solved otherwise. All this censorship things went generally unnoticed and went along the "oh, they're blocking evil child molesters' sites, it's alright" line of thought. To raise the awareness, some high-profile sacrifices are necessary. Hope they'd also block Wikipedia.

Disclaimer: yep, I'm Russian. Had some issues accessing GitHub. Between inconvenience and censorship I'd chose the former any day.

<comment> xor-ed-wolf They are also blocking sites that have references to virtual (drawn or CG) molesting like danbooru or chan.sankakucomplex nowadays. I.e. this bullshit stepped into domain of thought police already. And a thought police is a certain "Nope!" sign whether it is for good (awareness) or not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Looks like this happened a couple months ago too: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8401784](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8401784)

</comment><comment><USER31> This is shit. Few weeks ago I looks to the situation with "black list" afar. I absolutely wasn't involved and don't believe that this "initiative" will "touch" me someday. Yesterday it happened. Important website that I use everyday was blocked. And now its seriously. I cant access it. My internet provider said that it's a law and he can't help me. Now I need to setup VPN for commit to github. And I already understand that it's temporary solution and the government can forbid VPN too in future.

I really don't now what to do and how to affect the situation. The most fun thing - that 85% of persons in this country now think that "it's just some another porn site was blocked, Putin care us and our children's". Sad reality.

</comment><comment><USER32> Yes, it is. We have to use VPN in order to pass the filter.

<comment><USER33> I often find `ssh -D` to setup a local socks proxy far easier than using VPN assuming you have a machine you can connect to in a state that hasn't blocked the sites you are trying to reach.

<comment><USER34> Checkout sshuttle if you want an easy-to-use "VPN" over SSH.

[https://github.com/apenwarr/sshuttle](https://github.com/apenwarr/sshuttle)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I suppose not all ISPs are obliged to comply with the ban (or not willing to; or maybe it takes time to propagate). I'm from Moscow and have not had a problem accessing github.com with my local provider either yesterday or today. However, it is banned on my cell network.

</comment><comment><USER36> Github works for me, I'm in Yekaterinburg. I don't belive that ban, if realy exists and enforced, will last long. They, people with that list, do stupid things from time to time, but it's fixed most of the time.

</comment><comment><USER37> Wow, a whole thread about Internet censorship and not one mention of the Tor project and their bridges and obfuscated pluggable transports? Tor is not just for anonymity but also for censorship avoidance.

[https://www.torproject.org/](https://www.torproject.org/) [https://www.torproject.org/docs/bridges.html](https://www.torproject.org/docs/bridges.html) [https://www.torproject.org/docs/pluggable- transports.html](https://www.torproject.org/docs/pluggable-transports.html)

</comment><comment><USER38> Interesting development. Github was temporarily blocked in China in january because it was used to host politically sensitive information. However, it was later unblocked because the site's economic importance is too great to the Chinese government to warrant a complete block [https://en.greatfire.org/blog/2013/jan/github-blocked- china-...](https://en.greatfire.org/blog/2013/jan/github-blocked-china-how-it- happened-how-get-around-it-and-where-it-will-take-us)

<comment><USER39> Since "gitlab.com" have no relation to "gas and oil" business, it has zero economic importance for russian government.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Russian here.

Guys, let's face it: we have a Great Firewall of Russia now, like in China.

Everyone who wants to continue to work with Github should install TOR, here's how to do it for Linux Mint 17: [http://procedural.tumblr.com/post/104233731883](http://procedural.tumblr.com/post/104233731883)

Also, you can discuss it with me on HN: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8695299](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8695299)

</comment><comment><USER41> I am glad I don't have to put up (and put in) with censorship shit like this. I wonder if Hacker News is also blocked in some countries?

What does it take to get the privilege to get blocked in Russia and China? Is it enough that someone on HN post things like "Justin Bieber is so cute I wish I was gay" or "the only difference between a suicide and a martyrdom really is the amount of press coverage"?

</comment><comment><USER39> To make "git clone [https://github.com/xxx"](https://github.com/xxx") work, just add '188.8.131.52 github.com' to /etc/hosts. Only git will work, not web browser.

</comment><comment><USER42> This is sad!

I work with some people from Russia on some stuff on GitHub and this is not going to help. :(

</comment><comment><USER43> I live in China and many websites has already been blocked here such as Google, Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, etc.

How could you imagine that one person in this planet do not know Google? And this will be happen in China.

Here, some freedom has already been lost.

</comment><comment><USER44> [https://github.com/stevebest/suicide/blob/master/suicide.md](https://github.com/stevebest/suicide/blob/master/suicide.md)

sic!

There is something about suicides on github in russian.

<comment><USER4> One more copy of the "want to be funny" text which includes the "start the third world war" advice. But also "chop your own tongue, die from bleeding." The guy who posted it maybe isn't involved with the VPN tunnel sellers but it seems it simply became a meme. People like to do something easy (like just copying a file) and feel good for "provoking" something. At the moment it's just a denial of service for the programmers in Russia. Let's see how long it lasts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Does anyone know of any other information that's politically sensitive to the Russian authorities that was posted on Github? It can't be just this on text on suicide methods, right?

</comment><comment><USER45> "I understand why he has to do this—to prove he's a man. He's afraid of his own weakness. Russia has nothing, no successful politics or economy. All they have is this."

-Angela Merkel

</comment><comment><USER46> Good thing git is decentralized...

Oh. People won't deal with changes from outside GH pull requests? Damn.

<comment><USER29> Hah, I've actually some discussions in spirit of "oh, we really need some distributed, peer-to-peer GitHub."

I literally facepalm'd.

(And, no, that wasn't about the issue tracker.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> repost to reddit - [https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/2o90sp/russia_ba...](https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/2o90sp/russia_banned_github/)

</comment><comment><USER48> It's really interesting to read the comments of Russian HN readers.

</comment><comment><USER49> Damn Microsoft. If only they had made NTFS Object Idenitifers easier.

</comment><comment><USER50> Why are there text files describing methods of suicide on GitHub anyway? From what I can tell they show up in seemingly unrelated repos. Are these just bandwagoning in protest or am I missing something?

<comment><USER50> I have no idea why my question was downvoted. GitHub is a social site built around a software for version control, primarily for code. GitHub also has a history of removing content that uses GitHub for other purposes (e.g. GamerGate raid/doxing coordination).

The reason I'm confused is that most of the examples I was able to find that match the claim are text files in otherwise unrelated repositories. It _is_ odd to find a text file describing ways to off yourself in a source code repository that has nothing else to do with suicide.

Also, unless it's a more complex document (e.g. an e-book), sites like GitHub Gists or Pastebin would seem to be more likely choices than GitHub proper.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> In Soviet Russia, repository commits you.

</comment><comment><USER52> Holy shmoly! Is wordpress.org the next?

<comment><USER22> These two can't be compared. I wouldn't mind much them blocking wordpress.org (I rarely visit it and when I do, I can circumvent).

GitHub, or, for the matter SO, will be a big hit.

<comment><USER53> Note the domain. Wordpress.org, not wordpress.com.

<comment><USER22> I understand perfectly, I'm just saying not as many people depend on Wordpress as on GH or SO.

Personally, I don't recall last time I had to deal with it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Very sad thing. I feel for you.

</comment><comment><USER55> git commit suicide

</comment><comment><USER56> That's surprising to hear. I thought in Russia, Github blocks you.

</comment><comment><USER57> Has an official reason even been given? or is it just a case of "this site is blocked, suck it up, Mother Russia ftw"

<comment><USER58> According to the article, Github was blocked due to "the placement of text describing the methods of suicide".</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What B2B SaaS Apps do you pay for? - <AUTHOR>

I am interested in knowing what apps you pay for monthly that you use in your business.
The last such discussion was done 3 months ago at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8932731 - but did not get many replies.
If possible, please also put the monthly amount you pay for the service. <comment><USER2> Heroku ~ $200 Intercom: $150 Amazon Web Services (S3, Route 53) < $10 SendGrid < $50 MailGun $60 Slack < $50 GitHub $50 BareMetrics: $29 ChurnBuster: $59 DNSimple: < $50 Evernote < $10 Gauges $6 Olark $49 Pingdom $10 Stripe(if you call it SaaS) 2.9% plus 30cent per transaction

<comment><USER3> And you run a saas too? Just curious to to know how many users you serve with this. Only if you are okay to say it in public.

<comment><USER2> A couple of hundred users(smaller number of accounts since each account may have more than 1 user)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> We wrote a blog post about how we're spending $55K on SaaS products [http://blog.sawhorsemedia.com/post/104076088572/how-were- spe...](http://blog.sawhorsemedia.com/post/104076088572/how-were- spending-55-930-08-a-year-on-saas)

</comment><comment><USER5> Stripe AWS ~ 200/mo FreshDesk ~ 16/mo ReSrc.it ~ 14/mo Phone.com ~ 40/mo

</comment><comment><USER6> AWS (S3, EC2, Route 53) - $40/mo

Digital Ocean - $50/mo?

Stripe

RingCentral - $34/mo? (Paid annually)

Grasshopper - $25/mo?

</comment><comment><USER7> Email: Google apps: $10/email

Dedicated Server - A Small Ornage: $250/month

Phone - Skype credit (variable)

Vimeo Pro: $199/Year

Live Chat: $36/seat/Month

Stripe & Paypal: transaction fee

Mandrill: pay based on usage

Hookfeed - $10/month (stripe notifications)

</comment><comment><USER8> Linode - $100/mo

SendGrid - $5/mo

Facebook Ads - $200/mo (roughly - not fixed)

<comment><USER9> Out of curiosity, what industry and what type of ROI on the ads?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm probably missing some.

Unbounce Baremetrics Optimizely MailChimp Zendesk Adroll SproutSocial Stripe Mandrill Intercom

</comment><comment><USER11> PersistIQ, Front, RelateIQ, Segment.io, Google Apps, AWS, GitHub, probably some others I'm forgetting.

</comment><comment><USER12> AWS - $50,Clicky.com ($80/year), Braintreepayments.com

</comment><comment><USER13> AWS (mostly S3): $150-$300

Chunk host: ~$30

Honeybadger: $30

Stripe

Mailgun: ~$10

</comment><comment><USER14> Linode

Trello

Sendgrid</comment>


Upcoming Go protobuf release - <AUTHOR> https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/golang-nuts/F5xFHTfwRnY <comment><USER2> The three breaking changes are interesting in how, one by one, they describe flaws in the Go language (and I say that as someone whose day job is Go development).

The first breaking change means unkeyed literals such as Foo{"bar"} no longer work. This particular Go feature (which arguably came from C) is so open to future compatibility breakage that I wish it had never been included. I prefer Rust's approach here, where fields always have to be speciifed, but a ::new() constructor can be furnished to make fieldless construction possible through the type (as opposed to Go's NewFoo() style which is semantically disconnected from the type).

The second one, about structs no longer being usable as map keys or comparable with ==, is a bit more esoteric, but it does demonstrate how Go's type system is too weak to allow such a change to be made without breakage. In Rust or C++, this would presumably have been accomplished with an equality trait, so that the new struct _could_ be made comparable with ==.

The third one, about breaking reflect.DeepEqual(), also reveals how the lack of trait support at the language level exposes cracks in the language. When a user is forced to use a blunt tool such as DeepEqual(), which disconnects the equality code from the underlying type being used, then this is what you get. That said, I'm not sure why Protobuf can't optionally generate equality methods for the types it generates in the first place, which is something Gogo can do [1].

Go is a great language, but it's things like this that give me Rust envy.

[1] [https://github.com/gogo/protobuf/blob/master/plugin/equal/eq...](https://github.com/gogo/protobuf/blob/master/plugin/equal/equal.go)

<comment><USER3> "This particular Go feature (which arguably came from C) is so open to future compatibility breakage that I wish it had never been included."

This is the community consensus view. I strongly disagree with it. Unkeyed literals are useful for when you _want_ to get a compile-time error if any fields change, which is common in tuple-like structs. If there is anything wrong with this, it is that in theory you ought to be able to specify at the type declaration whether you must use unkeyed (IMHO a valid use case), must use keyed, or may use either. However this would not generally fit with Go's philosophy.

As a consequence of that theory, I would never use unkeyed literals to create a generated type; too likely that something will change in the generated type with future generators, exactly as I stated.

I suppose this could be layered on in another linter, although since the community and I part ways here even if I wrote "nobody" would use it.

"The second one, about structs no longer being usable as map keys or comparable with ==,"

One of the weirdest things about Go to me is the whiff on making several operations interfaces, like how Python has __del__ and such. == is a particularly weird case; the rules for == are downright dynamic language-ish: [https://golang.org/ref/spec#Comparison_operators](https://golang.org/ref/spec#Comparison_operators). I imagine they may have considered this "operator overloading" but IMHO that's only a problem on operators that come with a lot of implicit semantics like +, not the "lookup operator".

<comment><USER4> Unkeyed literals wont produce a compiler error if fields of the same type and position are replaced. Or if a field is "renamed" to something semantically distinct.

<comment><USER3> I tend to use lots of little types, so I don't generally end up with {int, int, int} but {Width, Height, Depth} or something. In practice I don't have this problem. YMMV depending on your own practices.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Nothing wrong with Go protobuf, but if you need a lean and mean Protocol Buffers implementation I can recommend Nanopb. It's just a few kB and you can run it even malloc free.

[1] [http://jpa.kapsi.fi/nanopb/](http://jpa.kapsi.fi/nanopb/)

<comment><USER6> If only I had known this existed last year... I linked in Google's C++ library compiled for ARM to a project and it bloated the binary to ~12 MB...

<comment><USER7> We use nanopb on embedded devices; it's quite small & efficient. No real complaints.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Hmm, this seems like it might create security leaks for developers using protobuf at public interfaces. They should probably have some kind of static configuration variable `DefaultDiscardUnknown = true`.

</comment><comment><USER9> will this fix slow gRPC performance in Go compared to Java/C++ or that is different issue.

<comment><USER10> Do you have any sources about gRPC being slow in Go?

<comment><USER11> Not sure, but I saw this video: At 26:16 Gopherfest 2017: Upspin (Rob Pike) - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENLWEfi0Tkg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENLWEfi0Tkg)

<comment><USER12> That specific problem was resolved in July last year: [https://github.com/grpc/grpc-go/pull/1310](https://github.com/grpc/grpc- go/pull/1310) [https://github.com/grpc/grpc- go/issues/1043](https://github.com/grpc/grpc-go/issues/1043)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I wonder how this compares with Gogoproto. Nobody in their sane mind uses the standard protobuf package anyway.

<comment><USER14> I've been using the standard protobuf package for years, yet I am entirely sane. My mother had me tested.</comment></comment>


FSF responds to Jobs's "Thoughts on Flash"  - <AUTHOR> http://www.fsf.org/news/fsf-responds-to-jobss-thoughts-on-flash

<comment><USER2> I think the FSF has misrepresented Steve Job's response. It sounds very much like the line "We have legal assurances from the only publicly claimed patent holders that Ogg Theora can be used both commercially and noncommercially, in any software, by anyone, without royalty." is about to be proved untrue.

<comment><USER3> I'm relatively sure, from his phrasing, that Jobs was just inaccurately quoting the MPEG-LA CEO.

[http://www.streamingmediaglobal.com/Articles/News/Featured-N...](http://www.streamingmediaglobal.com/Articles/News/Featured- News/Ogg-MPEG-LA-and-Submarine-Patents-65782.aspx)

" _no one in the market should be under the misimpression that other codecs such as Theora are patent-free. Virtually all codecs are based on patented technology, and many of the essential patents may be the same as those that are essential to AVC/H.264. Therefore, users should be aware that a license and payment of applicable royalties is likely required to use these technologies developed by others, too. MPEG LA would consider offering on additional licenses that would make these rights conveniently available to the market under a single license as an alternative to negotiating separate licenses with individual patent holders._ "

If you read that quickly it says the same thing as Jobs. On a second read it's all hypotheticals, maybes and weasel words.

It's not in their interest to point out all the patents that a codec that isn't even in use yet infringes. That just makes it easy to work around them. Just like Microsoft and Linux, unspecific patent threats are much more powerful than actual patents.

It's interesting to note that the MPEG-LA CEO is also the CEO of a genuine patent troll company that just sued a bunch of phone manufacturers... including Apple.

[http://thepriorart.typepad.com/the_prior_art/2010/04/mobilem...](http://thepriorart.typepad.com/the_prior_art/2010/04/mobilemedia- ideas-v-apple.html)</comment></comment>


The Computer Language Benchmarks Game - <AUTHOR> http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/

<comment><USER2> Java, Scala and Go are slower than C but on the same order of magnitud.

On the other hand, PHP, Python, and Ruby are an order of magnitude slower, and Perl is two orders of magnitude slower.

Python and Ruby syntax is cool, but performance is taxed. My current choice remains Scala at the moment, as a balance in concisity/verbosity, performance beautyness y power.

<comment><USER3> You make it sound like Java and Scala and Go are almost as fast as C/C++. The inference is that they are within spitting distance.

But they are not. They are pretty take twice as long or longer. That's a long time to wait for something.

Humans think of speed on a logarithmic scale.

<comment><USER4> >>twice as long or longer.<<

[http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/u64q/performance.php?test=...](http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/u64q/performance.php?test=nbody)

[http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/u64q/performance.php?test=...](http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/u64q/performance.php?test=fannkuchredux)</comment></comment></comment>


Top Social Media Sites of 2008 (Facebook Still Rising) - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/12/31/top-social-media-sites-of-2008-facebook-still-rising/ <comment><USER2> I know there's a fine line differentiating "social media" sites from everything else, but if a list like this is going to compare Flickr, Facebook and Blogger.com as if they're in a single category, then I don't see why sites like YouTube or Digg aren't included as well.

</comment><comment><USER3> Odd that Myspace doesn't start until a few months in. What's up with that?

Also I'd love to see the U.S. (aka monetizable) chart.</comment>