Who is inflating the oil bubble? - <AUTHOR> http://specials.rediff.com/money/2008/jun/03bubble1.htm

<comment><USER2> I don't think this is a bubble at all. It seemed ridiculous to me that 30-40 year oil futures were valued at 50$ a barrel when most scientific theories of oil production dictate a dramatic decline in worldwide production during the next few years. In fact, I played with the idea of speculating on the 10-year price of oil a few years ago, but my understanding of markets at the time was not good enough to realize that there was actually a thriving futures market. Gasoline can't be stored for more than a few months, and getting hold of and selling physical crude oil is probably more hassle than it's worth.

Perhaps the current development is a bit of an overcompensation..but not much of an overcompensation. The current price of oil is probably higher than is dictated by supply and demand, but when it comes to futures, a correction up has been in the coming for a long time. Unless all speculators are certain that we will have a dramatic increase in fuel-efficiency (on the order of 50% over the next ten years) across all markets that buy fuel, there is no hope that there will be an abundancy of oil in the future. Add this to the fact that China and India are expected to consume more oil in the future, and things look very different. I think what has happened is that speculators have finally realized this, and that the current price spike is caused by "speculators" correcting the price up to a realistic level. This is how markets are supposed to work, and no new laws or political hand-wringing will be able to do anything about it.

Saying that this is a bubble seems like wishful thinking. When politicians start investigations to check out whether this is the case, there should be reason to worry. Actual bubbles are rarely identified with this great unity. If they are so certain, why don't the ambitious politicians of the US short crude oil futures for a few billion dollars? I think that would be quite an interesting spetacle.

</comment><comment><USER3> Answer: Speculators.

Not a lot of meat in that article, cool motorcycle though!</comment>


Ask HN: How do I find a job in Switzerland? - <AUTHOR>

Hey HN, I am wondering if anyone can give me some insight into finding a job in Switzerland as an english-speaking(States) developer. Is freelancing an option?<p>I currently work as a web developer at a large media corp in NY and will be moving to Switzerland in the next month or two, but, any sort of tech-job-seeking advice would be appreciated. I actually have an undergraduate degree in electrical engineering and would take a shot at nearly anything that might interest. Thanks in advance! <comment><USER2> Freelancing is a possibility pretty much anywhere. You can do web development from anywhere and bring in money from anywhere. Technically it's probably illegal to work as a freelancer in Switzerland without the proper visa's and going through the legal steps to setup a Swiss business, but I'm not sure how anyone would find out either. ;)</comment>


Imgur Data Breach: Personal details of 1.7M user accounts stolen - <AUTHOR> https://blog.imgur.com/2017/11/24/notice-of-data-breach/ <comment><USER3> With a breach every other week (or even more than one a week) one's getting pretty indifferent to yet another one...

Use a password manager and consider everything you entered in a form somewhere to be public knowledge...

That being said, i want companies that have been breached being audited - <USER2> if proven careless, sued for damages.

</comment><comment><USER4> > "Imgur has never asked for real names, addresses, phone numbers, or other > personally-identifying information ("PII"), so the information that was > compromised did NOT include such PII."

This sounds somewhat cheeky at first, but is in fact the greatest prophylaxis against breachs. Do not store & collect data you don't absolutely need.

<comment><USER5> Most e-mail addresses are actually personally-identifying information (according to European data privacy laws and in also in, ehmmm, reality).

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> How about social sign-in data like tokens? Was that stolen as well?

</comment><comment><USER7> Imgur knew of this breach, just didn't bother to announce/investigate until an external party sent them their user db.

</comment><comment><USER8> When CDN like cloudflare are used (as in HN), won't cloudflare get the text I send?

If so, doesn't that mean that cloudflare can know many of my passwords?

<comment><USER9> Cloudflare, and Amazon AWS for many sites, and your browser's data compression proxy (if you have that enabled).

All of those companies have hundreds of people who could access the data. And any misconfiguration or bug could open a hole for the whole world to see the data...

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> If they don't know about how, it means it could be ongoing. But they are only informing users from 2014.

This is what happens when you use a hashing algorithm to encrypt things.</comment>


Hackers Bar: Drinking a Blue Screen of Death in the back streets of Tokyo - <AUTHOR> http://mobile.theverge.com/2014/7/19/5911437/drinking-a-blue-screen-of-death-in-the-back-streets-of-tokyo

<comment> josh-wrale They need a drink called "Guru Meditation"</comment>


Show HN: Follow lifetime changes of a pathspec in Git - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/nickolasburr/git-follow <comment><USER2> I don't know what this is.

<comment><USER3> Maybe read the documentation?</comment></comment>


Secure Go - Securing and exploiting a Go binary - <AUTHOR> http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/areece/securego/ <comment><USER2> A member of the Go team responded here: [https://groups.google.com/d/topic/golang- nuts/Jd9tlNc6jUE/di...](https://groups.google.com/d/topic/golang- nuts/Jd9tlNc6jUE/discussion)

<comment><USER3> Looks like a related issue entry as well: <http://code.google.com/p/go/issues/detail?id=3467>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I had to deal with some of this the other day when I was distributing a binary that I wasn't dying to have easily linked back to me.

        go build -ldflags "-s" .

will strip some (all?) dev info out of the binary. Or at least it go it some my path information didn't appear when running "strings" on the binary.

<comment><USER5> It strips symbol table information.

Relevant docs: <http://golang.org/cmd/ld/> <http://plan9.bell- labs.com/magic/man2html/1/2l></comment></comment>


Is Internet Voting Safe? Vote Here - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/06/cfp-evote/

<comment><USER2> Internet Voting is not safe... any electronic voting is not safe... we should go back to paper.</comment>


Ask HN: Podcast Recommendations? - <AUTHOR>

HN,
I'm looking for a new podcast/s to listen to. Ideally I'm looking for a smart show covering topics like economics, tech, pop science, trends in new media, pop culture, etc, with the tone of Freakonomics or similar. The kinds of shows I listen to already (and totally recommend people check out): some NPR, The Sound Of Young America, East Meets West. That's the kind of thing I'm going for.
If there's a podcast you like listening to and want to tell people about but it doesn't fit the criteria above, don't let me stop you from posting it here. In the event that I don't like it, I'm sure someone else here on HN will.
I've gotta go to bed soon, but I'll check back in the morning. Talk amongst yourselves -- I'm pretty boring anyway.
Recommend away, HN! <comment><USER2> <http://www.kcrw.com/podcasts> for To The Point, Left Right & Center

<http://wamu.org/help/podcasts/> for Diane Rehm Show, Kojo Nnamdi Show featuring Tech Tuesday and the Computer Guys

<http://www.npr.org/rss/podcast/podcast_directory.php> Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, Planet Money, All Songs Considered, Live Concerts

<http://thislife.org> This American Life

<http://www.wnyc.org/podcasting/> Radio Lab, On the Media, Leonard Lopate Show

</comment><comment><USER3> WNYC's RadioLab - It's this American Life meets Science Friday. Best show on NPR.

</comment><comment><USER4> POPTECH</comment>


Want To Hook Users? Drive Them Crazy. - <AUTHOR> http://www.nirandfar.com/2012/03/want-to-hook-your-users-drive-them-crazy.html <comment><USER2> _"At the heart of the desire engine is a variable schedule of rewards: a powerful hack that focuses attention, provides pleasure, and infatuates the mind."_

In other words, a casino. We've known about these for ages. Now we're going to repackage the idea as a 'desire engine'?

<comment><USER3> That's one way to acquire funding : redefining scientific terms as company brands to drive traffic to social networking sites. On a completely unrelated note, have you signed up for Klout, the completely new and different social net site with totally awesome and random rewards ;)

<comment><USER2> If I can get a comped dinner once in a while, sure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Or, build a product that they'll want to use, and do away with the psyche tricks altogether. The simplest "desire engine" is a product that people both want and need.

<comment><AUTHOR> Funny thing is, the "psyche tricks" are the reason they "want and need" to use the product in the first place, they just don't know it.

<comment><USER4> I felt that this article was aimed at companies to suggest different strategies for "hooking" (which I took to mean "intentionally addicting") their users. I meant what I said only in that if the company were to have a good enough product in the first place, they wouldn't have to resort to these methods ("psyche tricks") that I consider to be underhanded.

<comment><USER5> Depends on your POV. "How can we make the product better?" is usually synonymous with "What do users want?", which, following the rabbit hole down enough, you reach those psych things.

Look at all the terrible gamification implementations. These are responses to seeing a certain pattern in design, but they're not backed up with any real idea as to why users seem to respond (I'll avoid using the word like) to these systems, and they usually suck. Knowing exactly why one strategy is good and why one is poor can help create a better product.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Use this knowledge to trick yourself into doing what you want. Or said another way, to make yourself enjoy doing what you already need to do.

</comment><comment><USER7> I really enjoyed and feel inspired by this article. It's given me specific ideas for my next project that I'm excited about. So I was surprised to see mostly negative comments here. But I suppose it's because the ideas and conclusions in this article seem to have been derived more anecdotally than experimentally, and HN is a very scientific-minded audience. But I absolutely recognize the power of variable and unpredictable rewards as a hook in my own behavior. So that's just more anecdotal evidence, but in my opinion, applying this idea to your product will make it more fun for the user (assuming others feel the same).

On a sidenote, I disagree with the common aversion to applying psychology in the design of your product. Applying psychology to the user is a means of manipulating them, but so is interacting with people in any sense. It doesn't automatically make it a "bad" thing. Better understanding people's desires and making products that meet those desires seems to me like a pretty worthwhile goal.

</comment><comment><USER8> Great article! Reminds me of OkCupid and other dating sites - variable rewards (occasionally finding matches) and you have users coming back every single day.

</comment><comment><USER9> [citation needed]

But seriously, B.F. Skinner is hardly considered mainstream psychology anymore. The part about drawing conclusions about people that half pay attention while they are playing video games seems to strain too hard to arrive at the desired explanation.

Maybe there is something to this, I don't know. There aren't many human examples. I think you could probably make a lot of money _telling_ people this is true though. Maybe that's the point? :)

<comment><USER5> This was my response as well. I've been researching all of this stuff for a while now for my PhD thesis. I'm a CS guy, not a Psych guy. I'm largely interested in what works, not why. I've largely steered towards behavioral economics because there's clear experimental evidence that's easily understood. Social games use BE effectively and often (although it is not clear to me how many developers really understand what they're doing, and how many are just copying Zynga).

Skinner is not entirely rejected by everyone (Ariely uses variable schedules as to describe email addiction in Predictably Irrational), and it seems to make sense when you're discussing reduced problems like slot machines or email. However, it feels too reductionist for all problems.

I'm largely working more with Daniel Pink's Autonomy/Mastery/Purpose framework, which seems to do a lot better at describing why people are encouraged to perform more complex tasks over and over, particularly games. Games tweak AMP very directly, and they fail quickly when one isn't in alignment. Autonomy is the freedom to make decisions, mastery is the space to get better at something and continue learning, purpose is discovering that what you're doing matters to you.

What people are seeking is usually feedback. Feedback about themselves, feedback from others. Feedback is usually the only reward you get, but feedback is what is required for AMP to work; you need to know what choices you are actually making (autonomy), you need to know how well you're doing (mastery), whether what you're doing is affecting anything that matters (purpose). Feedback is what drives people that care about karma on Hacker News or Reddit.

HN is a decent example of this if you're karma-oriented: you can write what you want (autonomy), but you can't do much to encourage people to agree or upvote (mastery), and if no-one upvotes you, you lose your purpose. Instead, if you focus on a goal like "writing makes me better at understanding my own ideas", you really can get a real AMP thing going. How many blogs have died because the author thought no-one was reading?

I think designing for AMP is the real desire engine; a self-perpetuating intrinsic motivation built on feedback.

<comment><USER10> Interesting. Which department/group are you doing this in? It doesn't seem like the type of PhD you'd usually do in CS.

<comment><USER5> I'm part of the Center for Games and Playable Media at UC Santa Cruz, which is a video game research center.

You're right that this research isn't particularly pure CS. When I started it was very much focused on social games and whether the lessons from them could be applied to other software. It just so happens that motivation theory is a pretty wide body of literature, so you can spend a lot of thought cycles outside of CS.

You can spin it as a software engineering thing (architecting for retention), an HCI thing (how users respond to different interaction patterns) or even something outside CS altogether. Once you venture towards the user-end of the spectrum, you can put a lot of different hats on CS research. You just have to be careful that you don't end up either trying to end up spending lots of time learning another undergraduate major's worth, or worse, not knowing enough and being laughed at by a different academic group.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Oh gosh, I wonder how many upvotes this comment will get. _crosses fingers_</comment>


The Failure of Coin - <AUTHOR> https://blog.bolt.io/the-failure-of-coin-20615dca2de <comment><USER2>
      If your Roomba misses a spot in its daily vacuuming
      routine, it's not a big deal. Alexa may mishear you once
      in awhile, but usually we chuckle at the funny
      interpretation and enunciate more clearly.

Odd choice of examples. A lot of the criticism I've seen of the Roomba is about its random vacuuming pattern which is guaranteed to take forever and still miss spots. Many people don't use Siri/Alexa/Google voice search because it's so inaccurate, and if you have to repeat yourself then it's no faster than entering the search directly on your phone.

<comment><USER3> I think Siri is a great example of this. I've had it fail to work enough times that I simply don't think to use it, despite its improvement over the past year or two.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: When to raise from angels - <AUTHOR>

Hello everyone
What is the usual stage for a Web startup to start approaching Angels for investment (50-100K$).
Is it normal to do it during development (Which, for web, mostly can be done on "Ramen"), or do it once you launch and have some traction (not revenue) ? <comment><USER2> The simple rule is: do it as late as possible.

The longer you can delay fund-raising, the less of a share you'll be giving up (or the more money you'll be getting for it), and the stronger your position (presumably). Some businesses raise money on an idea. Others raise money once they have a product with traction. Others never raise money at all. None of those approaches are wrong, but the cost of funding definitely decreases if you wait and decrease the risk on the table.

<comment><USER3> _The simple rule is: do it as late as possible._

I'd add a rider to this: Raise money as late as possible, _but no later_.

Yes, the longer you wait before raising money, the better the deal you'll usually get... but only until you reach the point of "we need to raise this money or we're going to go out of business". As PG has said on several occasions, the term "angel" is a misnomer; they're sharks who can smell blood, just like any other investors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> From my experience, seed money from an angel generally doesn't take that much equity from you in return for giving you the ability to confidently work on your project (ie: pay yourself a micro salary, hire a person or two full-time, etc.). In most cases equity is going out the door -- you either give it to your angel in return for cash to make hires, or pay early-employees with more generous equity since you lack cash.

One thing that is particularly important to me is finding an angel that meshes well with you/the company, that you can learn from, and that can do a lot for the company once the product launches such as VC introductions, pull strings for marketing, product advice, etc. The right combination + luck may mean you can avoid VC money all together, or retain a lot more of your company during a series A. To summarize: someone that brings more value than just cash, therefore also deserves a decent equity position because of the additional value they'll return to the company in the future.

So to follow the advice already given, yes raising money late can be good but it can be a timely process. If you're picky about your angel then it will take even more time to find the right person, so you should start talking/networking as soon as possible. It took us almost 8 months to close angel money because of the "interview" process.

</comment><comment><USER5> In addition, I think it's wise to wait with approaching investors (be it angels or VC's) until you have some actual stuff to show them. People (and especially investors) are hard to get enthousiastic with only an idea, whereas a pilot/demo can really trigger them to see the success in your startup.

A friend of mine did the same thing and simpy used screenshots of a static HTML-version of their web-app to show the VC's, and even that was enough to get them to invest.

</comment><comment><USER6> I would do it only when absolutely necessary and there is no other way going forward.

I have a feeling that some people think about approaching a VC just because there is so much stuff written about VCs and funding and it seems necessary. I think it is not something you can't do without, and as other posters suggested, it's best to do it at the absolutely necessary point, if at all.

</comment><comment><USER7> When I do begin to work on my own startup, I plan to bootstrap as long as humanly possible. I want to avoid OPM (other people's money) as long as possible. Things will get a lot more complicated when you have other people to answer to</comment>


Report: Best Buy tells HP to take back its TouchPads - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2011/08/best-buy-wants-to-give-up-on-hp-touchpad-has-sold-fewer-than-25000-units.ars?comments=1#comments-bar

<comment><USER2> I think the TouchPad is a cautionary tale that exemplifies something Apple does right:

Don't ship broken hardware.

I have a tech journalist friend who knew I was extremely interested in the TouchPad prior to launch, and let me play with his review unit for a bit. I was ready to drop $500 on one at launch, and walked away crushingly disappointed. The software clearly wasn't ready and with the product launch only a few days off, it was clear that HP was pushing this thing out the door too soon.

Here's the thing - I could tell that the problems were software-related and could be fixed by HP down the road. But HP went from a willing customer with $500 cash in hand, to one that two months later says "eh, maybe I'll pick one up if I catch one of those $350 sales." And I'm sure it's cost them sales since my tl;dr when people ask me about it is "absolutely brilliant interface, awful performance. I wouldn't buy one yet."

If HP had left the TouchPad in the incubator another couple of months and sorted out the performance issues _before_ kicking the thing out the door, the reception would have been very different. I really, really wanted to like the TouchPad, and HP blew it.

You don't get do-overs on first impressions. Apple gets that. If the rest of their competition would figure this out and push out _complete_ products rather than rush them out on an arbitrary time scale, Apple would be a bit less dominant than they are now.

<comment><USER3> Amazingly, webOS/palm _got_ a do-over, in the form of HP buying them.

"We're too small to compete" was the Palm motto towards the end, and HP buying them was seen by the faithful as a way of "getting it right" - more money and resources behind them, they'll be able to _really_ get webOS out there.

And they did _the exact same stuff_ they'd done two years earlier.

Announce and briefly demo a product at start of the year? Check

Delay getting SDK to developers? Check

Ship poor hardware with buggy software to retailers later than anticipated? Check

WHAT THE HELL? The entire webOS unit got a do-over, and still hosed it, with the budget/muscle of one of the largest companies behind it. Of course, that doesn't mean HP actually was really supporting it as much as people expected.

The TouchPad (and webOS stuff in general under HP) seems to have been treated about the same as every other model of HP laptop/desktop rollout they do. Just another SKU on the balance sheet, it'll be on the shelf for a few months, then retired and shifted to overseas support.

Amazingly infuriating to watch company after company claim to want to be a player in the mobile/tablet space, and fail continuously against Apple. It's far less that Apple's doing so much right, but everyone else keeps getting it so wrong, _even_ with successful competitors to copy (this isn't revolutionary groundbreaking stuff any more, launching a tablet).

<comment><USER4> I find it amazing that people haven't learned the Apple lesson yet. Apple is doing well specifically because it doesn't release a product until it's perfect. They put a lot of thought and effort into every aspect of every device.

Why is it that companies like HP think that getting it out the door is more important that putting out a polished product? Just look at the white iPhone 4. Apple wouldn't release it until it was perfect, despite the fact that people were knocking down the door begging for it.

I've never owned an Apple product, but if I were going to get a tablet it would be an iPad. Everything else is just a cheap imitation and no one has proven to be anything other than that. I was really hoping the TouchPad would be the one device that could finally compete on polish and style with the iPad.

<comment><USER5> Maybe they are reading too much Hacker News and the "ship ship ship" we preach over here. I know I have heard some companies thinking like that without realising it's not the best strategy for every company.

<comment><USER3> It's a good observation. So many web startups think "ship early!" works for everything, and it doesn't. Certainly not hardware. Yes, for a website, where you can change the system in 5 minutes if you find a small mistake, or you can reindex a db and fix perf issues - yes, get it out there and validate and iterate. Hardware is a totally different beast.

<comment><USER5> There are many reasons why you shouldn't just ship and with tablets like the TouchPad there are at least two good reasons: the hardware (for the reasons you said) and the price (which is expensive for something that is not unique or particular innovative).

You can keep the features to a low though, just make sure they are tight. Like the Kindle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think the problem is that people still don't care about or want tablet computers; they care about and want iPads. All the companies jumping on the tablet bandwagon forgot what happened to 95% of the mp3 players that sprang up to compete with the iPod.

<comment><USER7> That's not really a 'problem' though if people understand what they want. What it really means is that HP needs to step up their game on all fronts to make a product and compel people to buy it.

I mean, I tried the TouchPad. It's good in a lot of ways but mediocre in other ways. It's a lot like how the G1 launched. Die-hards bought it, the tech-savvy liked it but weren't 'flocking' to it, and the average consumer just thought of it as another electronic device. HP needs something like a 'Droid' campaign to really spark interest in their products. You have to make it appear cool. Unfortunately, HP has never been able to do that and they're only just learning about the cool-factor with Beats by Dre.

<comment><USER8> >HP needs something like a 'Droid' campaign to really spark interest in their products.

I see a lot of Touchpad, Playbook and Xoom ads on TV. Atleast the Xoom ones seem to be on the level of the Droid ads(it's Motorola again, of course). The ads seem ok and cool but if the current sales figures are something to go by, don't seem to be very effective. As I said in another comment, it's easier to get people to buy a phone when their old ones gets too old or when the contract expires but it's hard to push people to a completely new kind of device where the use case is harder for the average consumer to see.

<comment><USER7> The way I see it is that Apple's commercials and most of the Droid commercials were compelling, head-turners. They were much more interesting. Whenever either of those commercials played, I wanted to watch them. I can't say the same thing of the TouchPad, Playbook, or Xoom ads. This quality of marketing were a part of what made the Droid and iProducts so successful.

<comment><USER9> \- The Xoom and Droid commercials are nothing but derivative, dystopian futurist fluff, and the Verizon Android (read: non-Droid) commercials involving their retail outlets are seriously contrived crap speaking to easily-swayed lowest-common denominators in the crowd.

\- The Touchpad's commercials are boring and tell me nothing about the device. Like others are saying, they tell me jack crap about the device, and the Russell Brand commercials that actually do? They might not be my tea, but at least they have some personality (comedic value debated). Haven't seen them on TV. Brilliant strategy there, HP!

\- Apple's commercials are so well-received that rolling a commercial out based on a _feature_ (see: Facetime) can generate sales because they know just who to market to and, by focusing on one device per form factor, have a history of trusted quality through said long-term focus on each of them. People actually know the models as opposed to the ton of "ManufacturerName Droidbot AspirationalPhraseHere" models being cranked out. They know the history. And, well, Apple's products "Just work" 99% of the time.

Disclosure: I own an Android tablet and an HP Touchpad. Fanboys amuse me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If tapping an icon on a home screen takes the tablet a fraction of a second just to provide visual feedback for that, I'm sorry, but this is simply not a good tablet. Not anymore, not with iPad in the picture.

<comment><USER11> If you apply the 3.0.2 patch (an over the air update), it resolves most of the performance issues with webOS on the tablet. Unfortunately all of the online reviews were done using 3.0, so the misconception that webOS on the Touchpad = slow has stuck.

<comment><USER12> I saw TouchPad at BestBuy last night and it was sluggish as hell. I don't really care if it had a patch applied or not. They had exactly one chance to make a great first impression and they failed. We can point finger at whoever, but what I saw pretty much explains why _TouchPad did not gather interest with BestBuy buyers_.

<comment><USER13> This is a known issue to HP. It really stinks. The demo units aren't even using 3.0, they're using a special demo build.

<comment><USER14> I understand the reasoning behind this (make the demos as cool as possible!) but I think you'd run a serious risk of high returns - if you take it home and it doesn't run as well as the one in the store, you're going to mess with it for a few days, get increasingly frustrated and eventually take it back.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Is there something interesting in the comments to the original article? The link seems to take you right to the comments (at least on a mobile device), the actual arstechnia post is at:

[http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2011/08/best-buy- wants-t...](http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2011/08/best-buy-wants-to- give-up-on-hp-touchpad-has-sold-fewer-than-25000-units.ars)

</comment><comment><USER16> I played with a Nook Color at B&N a couple of days ago. If I were to buy a tablet, that's the one I'd buy. It's dirt cheap ($249), seems reasonably fast, and can be hacked into a real Android tablet (not a reasonable thing for a normal consumer to do, but it wouldn't be a problem for me). But, the things I could think of to use it for, I already have a Kindle and a Nexus One and a netbook for...so, I opted not to add more electronics crap to my very small house. Maybe the next generation Nook Color will convince me that a tablet is something I need/want.

My point is that the price of the HP was _obviously_ wrong. It's not an Apple product...people don't expect to pay Apple prices. There's an assumption (right or wrong) that Apple imposes a stiff Apple tax on every product they sell, so I expect any non-Apple product to be much cheaper and have better specs. When that expectation is not met, I feel like the non-Apple product is over-priced. Apparently the TouchPad also sucks, while the iPad is apparently awesome, which makes the TouchPad an even harder sell.

<comment><USER17> That's a really good case for the mindset of a hacker. Buy a cheaper product that is hackable and customize the experience. With the current tablet wars, iPad is winning since it doesn't require hacking to achieve a high standard of features, performance, and user experience. This aligns with mainstream customers which is the giant demographic every company is trying to obtain.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Lots of discussion about this over on Precental.net about this today: [http://www.precentral.net/hp-touchpad-selling-poorly-best- bu...](http://www.precentral.net/hp-touchpad-selling-poorly-best-buy- retailers-general#comments)

</comment><comment><USER18> Shipping too soon and getting lukewarm reviews for it may have been a factor here, but I think the biggest one is in marketing: HP has never had a convincing story for the TouchPad.

The TouchPad campaign still has yet to make a solid case for choosing WebOS over iOS (or even Android). WebOS is a more flexible environment than iOS, and it's more consistent and seamless than Android; why can't HP marketing figure out how to vocalize that?

</comment><comment><USER19> I looked at the Touchpad at the local Best Buy. I was interested in buying one, but I was ultimately disappointed after using it for a bit. Unlike the iPad, which looks and feels like it was designed by a few people that might actually want to use it themselves, the TouchPad looks and feels like it was designed by committee.

</comment><comment><USER20> I think the numbers are suspect. And note that the source is anonymous so take things with a grain of salt.

<comment><USER11> Yep they are very suspect, and just so happen to be right on the verge of HP publishing their revenue figures, so may be some market shenanigans at play.

<comment><USER21> I guess we'll know if HP only talks about shipped unit and not sold, or activated, units.

<comment><USER9> It's a conspiracy!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If the TouchPad, with all its geek cred, is only able to move 25,000 units, then it really makes me wonder how well the other tablets are doing. I went to Best Buy (note: this is Canada) the other day and they had a huge number of tablets in their tablet section. The TouchPad, Xoom, Acer's Iconia, the Galaxy Tab, and various Windows 7-based tablets. If the TouchPad has only been able to move that many units, then there's no way that Best Buy can be happy with any of its other customers. While I see a lot of people playing around with the tablets, very few people are buying them regardless of brand (Apple excluded, obviously).

<comment><USER3> I'd loved to have played with some of them at my local store, but as is the case with almost most consumer PC stuff, the units are not on.

The Apple display section at our local Best Buys are always loaded with functioning units that are open for people to explore - not locked down with crappy "BUY GEEK SQUAD SERVICE!" screen savers.

The table with all the tablets at multiple Best Buy stores I've been in to recently are all filled with multiple tablets that are just sitting there with black screens. Not plugged in, not running on batteries, not in demo mode. Just... sitting there.

If Best Buy sold TVs like they sell tablets, they'd have 3 LG units running full color shows in HD with surround sound, and 85 empty screens just hanging on the wall, then they'd be sending all the TVs back to Vizio, Mitsubishi, Sony, etc, complaining that they're not selling.

<comment><USER7> Agreed. It's the same thing with the way they sell laptops or phones. Why leave dumb units lying around? Why would anyone ever buy a device that they haven't tried? Best Buy (as well as other stores) need to have well- functioning devices turned on and available for customers to try.

Additionally, they need their employees to go around and reset the devices to ensure a proper functioning system instead of the ones bogged down by apps/content downloaded by random kids onto the device.

<comment><USER22> Even going to Best Buy to try a unit does next to nothing. Pretty much everything that they sell has a flat battery, is stuck on a screen or suffering some other issue.

Except of course for the Apple display. All working. All looking good. All the time.

<comment><USER23> I'm going to guess that Apple's contract with Best Buy probably has specific requirements on how their products are displayed in every store.

<comment><USER3> Probably.

But if that's the case, why does _no other company_ seem to use this approach?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> The TouchPad didn't pass my two usability tests for tablets. I opened a book and tried to lookup the definition of a word. I think it was the TouchPad that opened a browser window and sent me to a Google search for the word's definition. I also opened two tabs for the browser. I couldn't figure out how to close a tab. If it doesn't pass these two simple tests then it's not worth buying.

The iPad is the only tablet that passes both tests in terms of performing the tasks easily.

<comment><USER11> Hmmm, the Touchpad doesn't have tabs in its browser, it opens up a new browser card which is an entirely different experience, so I'm not sure how you could have carried out this test?

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I think they should take them back, don't get me wrong, but who's the sales manager for best buy that decided these would be a good buy, and that they could compete with the iPad in price when they can't even come close in quality or performance?

<comment><USER26> In retail, these folks are called buyers.

Best Buy has plenty of long-term relationships with manufacturers. Any time you see fancy merchandising in the store, say an endcap with fancy graphics pimping the latest Whirlpool front loading washer, it's because the manufacturer has paid for that positioning.

So it's entirely possible that HP made a merchandising deal with Best Buy to promote their new product – and that the terms for the deal included some sort of buy back provision to mitigate the store's risk. Even absent such a provision, HP needs retail distribution channels for their business to work. It's in their interest to keep their partners happy and not leave them holding the bag on an experimental flop of a product.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I think ten years from now we will look back at this time period and be baffled by the incredible amount and variety of complete junk that was dumped on the market to try and capitalize on the "tablet craze".

Sent from my iPad

<comment><USER28> Cambrian explosion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I don't know how everyone else here feels about it but I have yet to see a TouchPad commercial that makes me want one. I think Apple has done a lot of good for themselves in the way they advertise the iPad.</comment>


A Linux user's review of Windows 7 - <AUTHOR> http://www.kumailht.com/blog/opinion/a-linux-users-review-on-windows-7/

<comment><USER2> The lack of built-in anti-virus can probably be attributed to Microsoft's history of getting sued for being a monopoly.

<comment><USER3> Microsoft bundled an anti-virus with DOS 5, IIRC. It was quite good for the time and ran under Windows 3.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Bay Area .Net Devs - Stigma on .Net - <AUTHOR>

I had a conversation with a technical recruiter today. She told me that there is a stigma on .Net among startups. Maybe it's just Microsoft in general.
I hear this a lot too when I get to meet other hackers. Somebody actually told me that there is no reason for .Net to exist.
My experience is here is that .Net jobs are hard to find in the Bay area compared to other cities. I'm lucky to have one right now.
Because of this, I have been coding in Python and Django for the past 6 months to at least broaden my options when I have to go back to the job market again.
Do other .Net developers have the same experience like I do? <comment><USER2> I think you're better off with the portable skill set. It introduces you to the non-Microsoft way of doing things, which in my experience is usually for the best.

What are some examples of unique/better/amazing things that .NET does? And what could make it worth requiring Windows to use?

If it's just yet-another-way-to-do-X, and Windows-only "for no good reason" (and Mono doesn't count), then you have your answer. Money is tight, especially in a startup; if I am to invest in Windows, it had better be to enable some _outstanding_ technology that will genuinely give me a leg up on the competition.

<comment><USER3> Wait - you answered a different question, didn't you? The question you answered seems to be, "Should I just learn .NET or should I learn more stuff along with it?"

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I work for a startup in sv. successful. we are all linux, python, ruby. we are building our infrastructure from the bottom up, (no previous decisions we are locked into). The idea of doing _anything_ with microsoft is just completely alien... its like another world that is just not relevant to us. could you imagine if we were discussing a new service and one of our engineers said "lets buy a win server 2008 license and an IIS license and check that out" ha. lol. "and if we have any questions we'll just pull up some stuff on the microsoft knowledge center or msdevnet to figure out how to use it." LOL!!

(feeling is similar towards java, but java people are seen as more redeemable. but if you worked on java at HP, you are pretty much lost to us.)

</comment><comment><USER5> I don't live in the Bay area, but i think Microsoft's problem concerning startups is that they haven't created many exciting platforms for some time. Take for example the activity around iPhone and Android. Apple creates more roadblocks for developers than Microsoft ever did and Java is not the most interesting language to program in. But both platforms are attractive so developers keep developing new applications for them.

</comment><comment><USER6> .Net isn't the most terrible framework but it comes with a lot of baggage and some technical problems that would deter startups from using it.

On the web development side ASP.Net is really hard compared to other frameworks out there. Until ASP.Net MVC, there wasn't a quick and easy method to implement URL rewriting for example. On the ORM side they seem to be changing their mind every year they ditched Linq to SQL in favor Entity Framework which really doesn't work as seamlessly as they make it out to be. Add to this the fact the startup has to buy licenses for the server, the costs add up as you scale up. I know there is Mono but there it isn't easy to port everything to it, the implementation isn't exactly complete.

.Net has its place for example if you are writing a Windows only desktop application .Net is by far the easiest framework MS had to support it. I believe Xobini uses .Net. Again writing cross platform desktop applications doesn't look as appealing to me. Silverlight 3 is almost here but it still yet to get font rendering and printing right.

<comment><USER3> What "baggage" does .NET come with specifically other than being from MSFT? And I don't know what "technical problems" .NET, the framework, has. That opening sentence is just so vague and full of very strong statements yet there is absolutely no defense of those statements. I'm no MS apologist but the guy's asking for reasons why there's a .NET stigma and the first sentence in your response is just hyperbole IMO.</comment></comment>


Datomic, Datalog, GraphQL, APIs, etc. - <AUTHOR> http://tank.hyperfiddle.com/:dustingetz!timothy-baldridge-datomic-datalog/ <comment><USER2> If "Hyperfiddle is after more of a vision where like, what would it take for my mom or my future kids to be programmers and yet not be professional software engineers." then I suggest you focus on drastically simplifying the vocabulary you use to explain what Hyperfiddle is.

For example: "This is a pastebin like environment for learning Hyperfiddle. Please namespace :idents with your username Schema changes are allowed To make a fiddle interactive, change tank.hyperfiddle.net to demo.hyperfiddle.net"

My mom no grok: pastebin, :idents, namespace as a verb, schema, "change" without a where to change.

Granted, this is a conversation between to engineers, so there's lexicon, but even listening, I get the sense that words get used without definition, or at least without a definition that speaker and listener share.

<comment><USER3> For those out of the loop - At Hyperfiddle we are building a tool for Clojure/Datomic programmers to make back of house dashboards easily. [http://www.hyperfiddle.net/](http://www.hyperfiddle.net/) Because Hyperfiddle/Datomic has such a simple information model, we see a path to eventually making this easy enough for code-savvy amateurs. But today you need to know Clojure.

<comment><USER4> How did you uncover the pain point around making these internal dashboards? What kind of resistance have you encountered from developers who typically enjoy rolling things from scratch?

<comment><USER3> Mostly the resistance is skepticism that this is even possible, which is totally justified because we weren't even sure ourselves until sometime last year. We ourselves are skeptical of all the Javascript and SQL centric solutions, including GraphQL. We see Clojure/Datomic as an opportunity to pave over all that complicated baggage and re-present programming in an accessible way. For example, a code-savvy product owner or data manager can make their own tools or diagnose problems without going through engineering, because the system is so operationally transparent.

Clojure programmers seem to be excited once they "get it". Hyperfiddle is hyper-extensible and built up in layers, most things can be customized with a Clojure/Script function. For example React.js views and Datomic transactions – in Hyperfiddle these are very simple, very often one-liners.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> For some context on "what Niko presented at the Conj",

        https://2018.clojure-conj.org/nikolas-gobel/

which is a reactive Datalog implementation built over differential dataflow. The .. um reported anxiety that to add new queries requires a recompile loop, replaying all of history, etc, suggests maybe they aren't entirely on top of how the system works.

Edit: and again tomorrow at clojureD:

        https://clojured.de/schedule/#nikolasGoebel

<comment><USER3> hi Frank, we are definitely not entirely on top of this stuff, but it is very awesome and we will get there eventually :)

Can you help me understand where we went awry here:

"Now of course the problem there with a rules engine... I have to look at the incremental dataflow, but I imagine it's kind of the same sort of approach. The problem with that is that if you want to sort by a new thing or you have a new piece of information, you have to change the network and backflow any... [You have to know compile time...] Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And there are systems where you can add a new rule at runtime, but a lot of those also involve then re-ingesting history into the network to repopulate anything they... 'Cause a lot of these systems to save memory, will just throw away any information you're not interested in, from compiled query."

If we are close can you tighten up the language and if we are far where did we go wrong? (In the context of differential dataflow, not rules networks)

<comment><USER5> No worries!

Niko's talk should probably be the reference material, but you definitely _can_ deploy new queries interactively, against maintained indexed representations of the historical streams. No recompilation required. Streams are maintained in indexed form and don't need to be re-flowed (they may need to be re-indexed if your query calls for an index that doesn't exist).

Deploying a new query takes ~milliseconds if the correct indices exist, and if not it seems to be no slower than purpose-built Datalog systems (e.g. LogicBlox, but performance seems solid compared with Souffle). This is despite then running against live-updated data.

As I suspect you know, we cannot report performance relative to Datomic. ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> also see the healthy reddit clojure discussion: [https://www.reddit.com/r/Clojure/comments/as16f6/transcript_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Clojure/comments/as16f6/transcript_of_timothy_baldridge_and_me_chatting/)

</comment><comment><USER6> I love Hyperfiddle, but I'm not good enough to use it.

<comment><USER3> Hyperfiddle 2.0 landing soon!

<comment><USER7> \o/ Can I squeeze a last minute request? Allow to login to [http://demo.hyperfiddle.net](http://demo.hyperfiddle.net) for users who don't have a Google account.

In any case, I love the idea. Looking forward!</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN:Is there a dedicated hacker icon? - <AUTHOR>

I was wondering if there is some kind of universally accepted hacker icon, logo or badge that represent the hacker culture. Do you guys know if it exist and if not is it good idea to have one? <comment><USER2> There is this: <http://catb.org/hacker-emblem/>

You see it around a bit.

<comment><USER3> Never seen that before...

I'd think something like a white top hat on black or vice versa would be a simple silhouette that would be descriptive, if there isn't anything.

<comment><USER4> But that wouldn't be an _injoke_ , would it? ;)

I've seen this around, but I assumed it was more security-hacking than startup-hacking.

Edit: "The basic difference is this: hackers build things, crackers break them." from <http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#what_is>

I stand corrected.</comment></comment></comment>


Gloria Steinem on the Unhelpful Bill Gates and Feminism's Third Wave - <AUTHOR> http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/interviews/a38562/gloria-steinem-on-feminism-bill-gates-north-korea/ <comment><AUTHOR> Related HN discussion on _Why we need data on what the poorest think_ : [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10210222](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10210222)</comment>


A Hybrid File Storage Backend for Django - <AUTHOR> http://tech.onefinestay.com/post/53434330047/using-your-production-assets-in-development-a-hybrid

<comment><USER2> One caveat comes to mind about the approach this technique supports. Anonymizing your production data and distributing it to developer laptops is something you should think hard about before doing it, and approach very carefully if you do. Sometimes the sensitive information you should be protecting isn't just the users' creds and addresses. Sometimes it's the ways in which they've used your app, the content they've created, and the graph of other accounts with whom they've associated.

A typical anonymized DB dump is likely to share primary key values with production, and often an adversary knowing that user X posted something they'd rather keep private on your app will be able to simply look up their identity on your production server without privileged access.

Generating useful fake data is also hard, of course, and won't hit your edge cases like real production data, but then again, the code you're writing now won't really be exercised by the unwashed masses until you release it, so using production data is mostly a protection against regressions. If you've got sensitive content in your app, you should consider stronger test coverage in lieu of production dumps. Of course performance regressions can be hard to keep under wraps with automated testing (though you can defend against things like N+1 query problems), so YMMV.

<comment><AUTHOR> Absolutely, the anonymisation method is an important consideration. You can probably safely drop most user-specific data, like any tracking you've done. Unless the dev is building functionality that actually depends on that data, such as data-mining, they're unlikely to need it.

I'll make another argument in favour of production dumps though. It gives developers a proper feel to how a website functions. For UI-oriented developers like myself, having just enough data to allow the website to function on a technical level, isn't enough. Your search code is going to feel very different with 20 million products vs a few dozen dummy products.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> We're just about to embark on moving our uploaded files to S3 and were discussing yesterday how we should structure our dev/production environments. Thanks for the timely article!

</comment><comment> iso8859-1 What's the advantage of using a Python VFS instead of FUSE?</comment>


Ask HN:Use the cloud? - <AUTHOR>

I'm working for a company, developing a social network/ marketing / etc website. I'm wondering if a distributed computing solution would be worthwhile. We're expecting to have a fair amount of images and video on the website. I wanted to originally program everything in Lisp. But time is of the essence. We have Php programmers, I personally have experience with Python.What do you recommend? Real server or Cloud? <comment><USER2> 1\. Don't do everything in Lisp. Go for Python. It's a decent language, and easy to pick up for your PHP colleagues.

2\. If you know your way around Linux, a few dedicated servers will be very powerful. Use Cloud as dumb storage for pictures and movies.

3\. Really, forget about Lisp.

</comment><comment><USER3> 1\. Language / Framework * your php programmers should use php: python is a great language but it takes time to learn it, plus a new framework, and to get efficient and stable takes even more. also, php is not a bad language and zend is not a bad framework. it's neither pretty nor cool or exciting but it works, is fairly efficient and will give you results the fastest with your team. * you should use python: for many other tasks (automation, backup, integration, sysadmin, boto for AWS if you use it) you already know one of the best and fun languages.

2\. Cloud or own servers * you can delay this decision (most likely), and try not to start buying stuff :) * this is actually two questions: (i) how much does cloud vs own cost - this is easier, e.g. the AWS calculator can help <http://bit.ly/RU8T> (ii) what kind of usage patterns will your site have - this is very important, as in case of wildly fluctuating demand or unpredictable scaling requirements you may have to go with the cloud.

</comment><comment><USER4> It probably comes down to how much money you have to buy servers (or rent ones) up front versus smaller cost increments for "utility" computing (can we stop calling this "cloud"? isn't everything in the cloud?).

<comment><USER5> it also depends on how much hardware and co-lo knowledge you have. Usually it makes sense to go virtual until you need more than 8 or 16 gigs of ram/ 4 cores. after that, it usually makes sense to buy hardware.

If you need a 32GiB ram/8 core box, and you rent, you usually end up paying 1/3rd to 1/5th the hardware cost every month, depending on how much you pay for hardware, which is something else that varies wildly.

What you pay to co-lo a server, and what you pay for bandwidth also varies quite a lot.

The important thing is to make sure you aren't locked in to one vendor. There is a lot of room for price competition in the server-outsourcing market, and you don't get any benefit from that if you let yourself become locked in to one vendor.</comment></comment>


TikTok's new CEO says company will reveal how its algorithms work - <AUTHOR> https://www.axios.com/tiktoks-new-ceo-says-company-will-reveal-how-its-algorithms-work-aff01b6c-8f33-454f-9b4a-7d52292ce501.html <comment><USER3> Sounds like a last ditch effort to prevent the app from getting banned in several countries. I have two takes, one it's very admirable for a company to release its algorithms and drive more transparency and I think it will help the public trust ByteDance more.

The other take is much more cynical. When they finally release the algorithm how will we know that's the whole story? I'm sure researchers will have to formally verify it somehow (not an expert here so I'm speculating). Also this does nothing to actually prevent them from further abusing user data. Seems like this release is just a red herring that diverts attention from the other shady stuff they are doing.

<comment><USER4> Clearly though neither Apple nor Google have thought TikTok problematic enough to not delist it from their app stores.

I don't think any app should be banned unless they indulge in criminality/illegality which needs to be proven in law.

<comment><USER5> Exactly, but all that has gone out the window when it comes to Chinese companies.

The US has waged an aggressive campaign to destroy Huawei - <USER2> governments around the world to ban use of their equipment and threatening Huawei's suppliers with sanctions (even its non-US suppliers) - based on completely unsupported claims of surveillance. The message to China is: we want you to open _your_ market to _our_ high-tech products, but you're not allowed to develop your own high-tech products, much less sell them abroad. The US was fine with China being a platform for low-wage labor for Western companies, but the US not okay with the existence of a peer-level competitor on the world stage.

Trump's impulsive tendencies make this even more dangerous. The closing of the Houston consulate was a dramatic step. The possible cutting off of diplomatic relations between the world's two largest powers is extremely alarming. As the election gets closer, however, I fear we'll see more such abrupt actions, especially if Trump's poll numbers continue to slump.

<comment><USER6> Uhm, how you even come up with this conclusions ?? China was throwing away so many US companies. Stole so many IP with no trials or fines for that. US didn't protect their interests for years. Any other normal country would protect their businesses years ago. This pressure is very soft and kind comparing how China treat any other foreign company not only US.

<comment><USER5> The IP theft claims are massively played up. American companies did business in China because it made them money, even despite possible IP theft or IP transfer agreements.

The US has protected its interests just fine in China. Its companies have made massive profits off of Chinese labor and in the Chinese market. In order to join the WHO, an institution created largely by the US, China underwent all sorts of business-friendly reforms, including privatizing parts of the economy, lowering tariffs, and establishing IP protections. Enforcement of IP rights has increased dramatically over the past decade, by the way.

> This pressure is very soft and kind comparing how China treat any other > foreign company not only US.

China isn't going around the world trying to force foreign companies to stop doing business with American companies. The US' actions against Chinese companies are far more extreme than the other way around.

<comment><USER5> *WTO, not WHO

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> As something of an outsider (being from West Africa), the extent of the panic over TikTok is more than a little amusing to me. I understand how it might be different for an American citizen, but to me much of it frankly sounds like one third party trying to paint another as the devil incarnate over much the same practices. Plus unlike many American data farms masquerading as services, TikTok does actually provide me with a measurably positive experience as a content consumer; a feed that contains fresh, relatively non-gamified content that I actually want to see.

I just treat the platform like I treat the likes of Facebook. Accessed only through the web in a sandbox, etc.

<comment><USER8> The american government isn't using the data to openly oppress entire groups of people though.

<comment><USER7> Didn't the US have that entire thing with PRISM/the NSA?

Ah, I forget, it's the US so its own surveillance programs are obviously above board and only used for good. The leader of the free world or some such.

<comment><USER9> >> The american government isn't using the data to openly oppress entire groups of people though.

> Didn't the US have that entire thing with PRISM/the NSA?

You can possess a gun, you can use that gun to kill someone in self defense, or you can use the gun to kill some innocent person. All those things are very different in important ways, even though they involve guns. It's true that US has surveillance and propaganda capabilities, but just noting that doesn't show equivalence to China in the areas that really matter.

<comment><USER7> I consider things like the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians in the Middle East or the treatment of children in US border camps to be "areas that really matter". For some very strange reason, most Americans I have spoken to find it unreasonable to treat companies like, say, Github or Microsoft with the same level of vitriol that is currently being leveled at TikTok for being affiliated however tenuously with the CCP.

My career would pretty much be a non-starter if I refused to use such companies' services for just as solid (if not more solid) ideological reasons as the ones that are apparently driving y'all to approve of bans/other boycotts of TikTok. As a pretty much neutral third party I've come to the quite logical conclusion that the outrage is largely hypocritical theatre and is thus not really much of my concern.

(It is worth nothing that there are Americans who for instance pressure Github to drop their ICE contract. As far as I can see they're a minority without the influence to make a difference.)

<comment><USER9> > For some very strange reason, most Americans I have spoken to find it > unreasonable to treat companies like, say, Github or Microsoft with the same > level of vitriol that is currently being leveled at TikTok for being > affiliated however tenuously with the CCP.

It's because this is the CCP: [https://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/20/world/asia/chinas-new- lea...](https://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/20/world/asia/chinas-new-leadership- takes-hard-line-in-secret-memo.html):

> Communist Party cadres have filled meeting halls around China to hear a > somber, secretive warning issued by senior leaders. Power could escape their > grip, they have been told, unless the party eradicates seven subversive > currents coursing through Chinese society.

> These seven perils were enumerated in a memo, referred to as Document No. 9, > that bears the unmistakable imprimatur of Xi Jinping, China's new top > leader. The first was "Western constitutional democracy"; others included > promoting "universal values" of human rights, Western-inspired notions of > media independence and civic participation, ardently pro-market "neo- > liberalism," and "nihilist" criticisms of the party's traumatic past.

Add to that practices like the Xinjiang cultural destruction/forced labor camps, the dystopian nightmare of what's happening in Hong Kong, and a domestic surveillance apparatus that makes the people who complain about Stingrays look like whiny babies, which all show that it's not just talk.

The US and Western companies like Microsoft definitely have issues, _but they don 't hold a candle to the CCP's._

And I wouldn't count TikTok/ByteDance's affiliation with the CCP as "tenuous." How much power to say "no" do you think they have?

<comment><USER7> America's involvement in the Middle East and Afghanistan are "not just talk". Drone strikes are not just talk. Its treatment of undocumented immigrant _children_ at its borders is not just talk. Pointing as many fingers as you can at China does not erase America's own atrocities - what, exactly, does the civilian death toll from America's manufactured conflicts struggle to hold a candle to? How, exactly, is the violent approach that the US has taken to the protests currently going on within its borders so much less of a dystopian nightmare than in Hong Kong?

> And I wouldn't count TikTok/ByteDance's affiliation with the CCP as > "tenuous."

Github clearly, demonstrably, directly supports ICE's operations with its contract services.

Microsoft clearly, demonstrably, directly supports the US military's operations with its contract services.

What clear, demonstrable, direct support does TikTok give the CCP that I can point to as a reason why I disdain it, the way I can point to Github's ICE contract or Microsoft's JEDI contract? I would actually be quite interested in evidence of such a thing.

Why am I expected to swallow my revulsion for the American war machine and use Github's or Microsoft's services, but not do the same for TikTok?

> How much power to say "no" to them do you think they have?

This...is not the gotcha that you might think it is. Even if they're implicated in harm, ByteDance at least has the dubious excuse of being compelled to do so by the state. Github, Microsoft and co _voluntarily_ choose to (and even compete to!) be a part of the American state's apparatus of violence because of _money_ of all things - that really, really does not translate into me having more respect and/or trust for them than for ByteDance.

<comment><USER9> > America's involvement in the Middle East and Afghanistan are "not just > talk".

Huh? I didn't say that. I thought it was pretty clear when I said "talk" I was referring to Document Number 9.

> How, exactly, is the violent approach that the US has taken to the protests > currently going on within its borders so much less of a dystopian nightmare > than in Hong Kong?

Because the dystopian part is the sense that the curtain is coming down there and it's all over, not anything to do with the quantity of bullets or tear gas. What's going on in the US feels more like a step on the long, dirty road of making progress. It was _good_ that the police acted against protesters the way they did, because that behavior wasn't new, and it reinforced the protester's points and lead to a tipping point in public opinion.

> What clear, demonstrable, direct support does TikTok give the CCP that I can > point to as a reason why I disdain it, the way I can point to Github's ICE > contract or Microsoft's JEDI contract? I would actually be quite interested > in evidence of such a thing....

> This...is not the gotcha that you might think it is. Even if they're > implicated in harm, ByteDance at least has the dubious excuse of being > compelled to do so by the state.

ByteDance's willingness or unwillingness is not my actual concern, and I honestly don't really care about that. What I do care about is the fact that they're under the control of an organization where Document Number 9 reflects official policy goals, and TikTok's popularity gives that organization potential capabilities here that it shouldn't have.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Hacker News is for technical people. They know this is bullshit. Its not their algo that means anything. Its the data collection and sending it to China/Singapore that is the problem.

<comment><USER11> What role does Singapore play in this? Genuinely curious and I do not have nor recommend the app to anyone.

<comment><USER12> \- Bytedance's global TikTok app is based out of datacenters in Singapore.

\- Bytedance's Chinese Toutiao app is based out of datacenters in China.

Bytedance itself is a Cayman company, so in regards to the Chinese National Intelligence law, TikTok technically isn't required to share data with China nor am I aware of any evidence that they actually do (despite the memes).

<comment><USER13> Your claim is that a Chinese company can simply opt out of Chinese law by moving their computing outside of China?

<comment><USER12> >Bytedance itself is a Cayman company

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Prediction:

Color me pessimistic, but it's obviously not going to be the entire picture. This explanation is going to live that sort of vague truth/lie land that the majority of news today exists.

It will instill confidence amongst less tech-savvy people, by "putting it out there" that TikTok is actually magnanimous in releasing it's secret sauce.

If by some magic they do release the real thing, it will be gamed so quickly that it will be rendered moot.

If I were them, I would do the second. That way you'll release the truth (at that time) and reap the benefits of good PR.

edit: grammar.

<comment><USER3> Like you I doubt they will release the entire thing. I think this is more of a marketing stunt than an actual drive for more trust. Less tech savvy users will see this as "transparency" and that will drive more trust.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Will he also accept that TikTok instructed moderators to "suppress posts created by users deemed too ugly, poor, or disabled for the platform"[1]?

There are already enough forces at play which feeds on inequality, hate, scarcity etc. making life miserable for the majority of human population, forces which we may have already lost the battle with; let's not give in to new ones just for the sake of entertainment.

[1][https://theintercept.com/2020/03/16/tiktok-app-moderators- us...](https://theintercept.com/2020/03/16/tiktok-app-moderators-users- discrimination/)

</comment><comment><USER16> This seems like a smokescreen for the actual problem, which isn't the algorithms(I don't think anyone has said the algorithms are the problem), but the fact that their app is effectively spyware.

<comment><USER17> Literally in the first paragraph

> He says TikTok will also reveal its data flows to regulators, and is calling > on its rivals to do the same

<comment><USER16> It remains to be seen what "data flows" actually means. That term is used again in the article but it doesn't sound like it explicitly refers to how TikTok acts like a surveillence tool. Maybe it will, but this is political theater. If they were run by people who actually cared, they wouldn't have gotten to this point in the first place.

> TikTok will launch a Transparency and Accountability Center in Los Angeles > for moderation and data practices that will house all of its data flows and > code moving forward.

Sounds pretty ambiguous. Like I said, remains to be seen.

These aren't friendly people. Their app not only harvests an assload of your data but has also been shown to be full of vulnerabilities. I'm not just going to take their word for it that making everything "open" is going to show that they've made things right.

If I ran TikTok, I'd pull off a stunt like this to fool technically illiterate politicians to get them off my back.

<comment><USER18> It's quite possible TikTok will go down the path of promising the moon regarding self-regulation and accountability just until the immediate threat from regulators subsides. This appears to be a trend among companies to stave off regulation while in the public consciousness, then remaining largely unaccountable to these toothless accountability committees when the news cycle inevitably moves on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Assuming their recommendation system is structured in the same manner as the feed ranking system at FB [1], I'm assuming this means they will be publishing their value models (easily interpretable by anyone), and not their probability models (black boxes, even to them). In other words, we'd be able to see that they value P(click) 2.5 times more than P(comment), but won't tell you how they actually predict clicks or comments.

This feels pretty meaningless to me, since knowing that they are ranking something highly because you are likely to click on it seems fine until you find out that the reason you are likely to click on it is that it is a viral hoax.

[1] [https://blogs.commons.georgetown.edu/cctp-607-spring2019/201...](https://blogs.commons.georgetown.edu/cctp-607-spring2019/2019/05/05/deblackbox- facebook-news-feed-algorithm-as-a-system-for-attention-manipulation/)

<comment><USER20> Are we worry about fab or google because of their ranking system? What tik tok can do is they can change the flip to send info over to their choices. That is the same as 5G. It is not what it does today but it can do on the next software or firmware upgrade will. The regime is so different it is a war our there already. Just you cannot see gunshot in software. But you can see casualties at least like HONG kong.

</comment></comment><comment> at-fates-hands This instantly reminded me of the classic magician misdirection engine. Get people looking at the fake algo's while the real damaging stuff stays hidden from view.

<comment><USER21> CEOs are out in force today.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> This could be the right step towards algorithm transparency. It is critical in the information age we're in, while Facebook is promoting alt-right conspiracies, and YouTube is feeding flat-earthers.

Yes. There are more technical issues to resolve. (e.g., How do we verify the algorithm they present is the actual algorithm they use?) Perhaps third party audit, APIs for third parties to test the algorithm? We need constructive criticism than cynicism.

<comment><USER23> I see another problem, and that is the one where they dump a model on the internet somewhere and whenever something goes wrong shrug their shoulders and say "well, that is what the model gave us…we don't know why; you can see for yourself how we didn't bias anything".

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I wonder what revealing how the algorithm works will impact content creators? We have entire industries built on poking at Google Search and Instagram to build exposure.

My prediction is that this levels the playing field, but doesn't solve the problem of people gaming algorithms to do what they want. The less shrouded the algorithm, the less snake oil that can be sold which is probably for the best.

</comment><comment><USER25> To me, drawing a diagram saying how it works isn't really gonna do it. How can anyone know you are telling the truth?

<comment><USER25> And if they are today, who knows what code changes are going in the pull request for the next day

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I was an elected 2008 Hillary Clinton DNC delegate and have ran numerous campaigns for the Democrats. I also work in tech.

Twitter supports Democrats.

If you study the trending tweets, those that tend to easily trend favor Democrat issues, ideas and movements. Comments on object news articles promote Democratic comments over conservative commenters.

Looking deeper, if you study campaign contributions by the staff of Twitter, its at North Korean levels (95% Democratic Party vs 5% All others) of popular support. How is this level of political support different than TikTok's support for the CCP?

How are the design patterns and motivations of TikTok worse than twitter?

<comment><USER27> Couldn't the userbase be more to blame than Twitter?

Pew Research says that "Twitter users [are] more likely to be Democrats" [1]. Also, 80% of all Tweets mentioning national politics were apparently made by users who "strongly disapprove" of Trump [2]. That provides a potential explanation for why comments and trending tweets may "favor Democrat issues" \-- supposing that even is the case.

I can't seem to find any reputable articles or evidence regarding the "trending tweets" political breakdown and "campaign contributions by the staff of Twitter" \-- could we be pointed to some sources?

[1] [https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2019/04/24/sizing-up- tw...](https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2019/04/24/sizing-up-twitter- users/) [2] [https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2019/10/23/national- pol...](https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2019/10/23/national-politics-on- twitter-small-share-of-u-s-adults-produce-majority-of-tweets/)

<comment><USER26> Campaign contributions by the staff of Twitter:

[1] [https://www.fec.gov/data/receipts/individual- contributions/?...](https://www.fec.gov/data/receipts/individual- contributions/?contributor_employer=twitter&two_year_transaction_period=2020&min_date=01%2F01%2F2019&max_date=12%2F31%2F2020)

<comment><USER27> Nice find! Based on this data, it does seem that contributions from Twitter employees are overwhelmingly to Democratic causes.

<comment><USER26> It's very fun, You learn who is political at work

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Will they tell us how they share data with the CCP?

</comment><comment><USER29> Maybe Google can learn a thing or two about how to do a recommendation engine that actually works for YouTube.

</comment><comment><USER30> Can we trust TikTok to explain in detail how the surveillance part works? Or to remove it entirely?

</comment><comment><USER31> Can anyone enlighten me the main difference between surveillance from China vs. the NSA exposed by Snowden?

I was under the impression that both countries (if not most countries) collect data one way or another. It's just that China does it more explicitly.

</comment><comment><USER25> Now can we trust what the diagrams say?

</comment><comment><USER32> All the TikTok people are gonna move to Triller

</comment><comment><USER33> Revealing how an algorithm works only provides a false sense of understanding/security. At any time, the algorithm can be modified. Further, mechanisms will be needed to ensure that the published algorithms are actually the deployed algorithms. There is such a thing as lying and deception. It's naive to believe that billion dollar companies are honest.

<comment><USER34> I doubt people believe. It just shows the power imbalance, they lie to the face and no one can do anything about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I've met Kevin Mayer and have two friends (one a roommate) who worked closely with him. There are some people who operate in life like an automaton or an NPC. They're completely ambivalent to principles so everything is relative. It's easy to justify leaving Disney as their COO to go work for a Chinese controlled company -- all you have to do is -want- to rationalize it.

</comment><comment><USER36> We are at war and data collection and social media influence serves as the ammunition and propaganda. If Bytedance is a truly innocent third party, then they completely misread the situation when they spent billions of dollars to expand outside of China and this amounts to a business failing.

The more likely situation is that the CCP is intimately involved in Bytedance's data collection, what becomes trending, what videos get promoted, etc. They crossed the proverbial line and now they are punished for it a la ZTE, Huawei, etc.

You can say goodbye to any Chinese, Russian, etc. app ever taking off in the "West" in the future. Scrutiny will be ever more stringent as the war continues.

<comment><USER37> The West isn't uniform on this at all. Eastern Europe and up to Greece and Italy have taken a fairly conciliatory stance on China, in particular the latter which joined OBOR. Western Europe is more mixed but still I very much doubt you'll see a TikTok ban in Germany (and neither a Huawei one), and even in the UK I'm not sure if we'll see a software ban.

I think it's more likely we'll see a differentiated response. Strongest in the US and Australia maybe Japan (although that's an unclear case as well), and mixed to not at all in Europe.

On the global stage in general the situation is very different and for that reason alone China's global expansion has made sense. The few billion dollars they've invested in the US have given them extremely valuable knowledge.

<comment><USER38> > maybe Japan

I suspect Japan's stance (and Australia) is more about U.S. alignment. Being in the pacific the situation is more precarious.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Inb4 the press release says "Machine learning".

Honestly, do we really need to consider TikTok's rebuttals about them basically being spyware? Sure, they spy for the CCP, but Facebook spies for the highest bidder. Not sure what's worse at this point to be honest.

And I'm not leaving Facebook, Google, Instagram, or these other services out of this either. You can tout "AI" and "Machine Learning" all you want, "We want to give you the best content", etc., it's all BS. Stop it.

Unfortunately, they won't stop it, because most folks simply _do_ _not_ _care_ about TikTok being spyware, including _most_ if not _all_ the people that I know (and yes, including developers, scientists, semi-high-ranking government employees, etc.)

</comment><comment><USER40> I have a nuclear take, as someone who still uses TikTok: Your data and life are not special in any way. The government will never be interested in finding out about you, and if they really wanted to they could do it with ease, and definitely don't need an app to do it. This is serious in terms of larger scale surveillance implications, but then that's not really a reason to stop using TikTok for individual purposes is it? We've seen people become presidents even after their entire dirty past was revealed. I literally do not care if a random Chinese employee knows everything about my life.

You're welcome to feel differently, I never force these opinions on other people. Yet everyone seems to want to tell me I'm crazy. Yeah, I'm the crazy one, not the guy who thinks the government is interested in him as an individual rather than a collective for policing and advertising purposes, which by the way has already been going on for decades.

<comment><USER41> "I personally have nothing to hide so I don't have a problem with intrusive surveillance" is not a nuclear or even hot take, in fact it's about the lukewarmest take I can think of.

<comment><USER40> You missed all the nuance. I have heard that argument thousands of times and i disagree with it. What I'm saying here is that long term, wider surveillance implications are the threat and they're happening in all countries. A random Chinese data mining app is irrelevant and individuals are still safe to use it. Probably only matters to people here because of the country of origin, and not the broader implications, otherwise we'd have this discussion about Linkedin too.</comment></comment></comment>