Tim Berners-Lee's Solid is a platform designed to re-decentralize the web - <AUTHOR> https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/07/the-man-who-created-the-world-wide-web-has-some-regrets <comment><USER2> It's amazing to me that a huge component of the problems TBL and colleagues are trying to solve are not discussed in the article, or here: we exchange our data to access services that are valuable, and expensive to develop to maintain.

Because our personal data is incorporated into a highly networked system (the various ad platforms), is worth much more than if it isolated, or "decentralized."

Unless a new system, that allows individuals more fine grained control over how their data is designed to aggregate with mass numbers of other users' data, this personal data will have a marginal value approaching zero.

This implies that other means of financing the vast client-server system,that is increasingly dominant in the first and second world societies, will have to be found.

It will also require pretty restrictive regulation to prevent companies from simply proceeding as they are, aggregating mass quantities of user data, from which they profit.

While awareness of the problems, potential and real, is slowly dawning amongst the "civilian" population, it is a confused and ill- informed type of concern.

I'm thinking of friends who get upset at learning the government is spying on everyone, who simultaneously post countless intimate details of their lives on Facebook (or Instagram, Twitter, Reddit, etc.)

<comment><USER3> You are making a huge assumption here, namely that advertising-supported services that cost billions to develop and maintain, and which generate billions in advertising revenue, would still cost billions to develop and maintain if they were not generating billions in advertising revenue. This assumption is in my opinion entirely incorrect.

<comment><USER4> The underlying reason for those services having both high costs and high revenues is that they have extremely high volume of users. I'm sure something like Duck Duck Go has much lower operational costs, even though it's providing not substantially different service than Google's search engine.

My point is that the cost and revenues are not a function of each other as much as they're both a function of usage. Once you get a high volume of users, it's pretty natural to convert at least a small part of that to advertising revenue, even if doesn't fit well to your platform (cf. Twitter). It takes a principled decision _not_ to dip into that revenue source -- I remember once reading how Jason Calacanis was pissed at Jimmy Wales for not wanting to include ads on Wikipedia.

<comment><USER5> Compare Twitter with Mastodon Social. Twitter employs 3000 people and it's a hugely complex piece of software. Meanwhile, Mastodon is mostly built by a single guy, and a small volunteer community.

Majority of that complexity is not there to make user experience better. I actively use both platforms, and I find that Mastodon provides a better user experience in pretty much every way. The UI is snappier, it has better features for interacting with others, it doesn't restrict the API, and so on.

The main cost of Twitter comes from building tools to monetize and exploit the users of the platform.

<comment><USER4> > The main cost of Twitter comes from building tools to monetize and exploit > the users of the platform.

Which is precisely my point. Or at least one half of it.

<comment><USER5> Yup, I'm just expanding on that to illustrate with a concrete example that you don't need megacorps to build these kinds of platforms in practice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> [https://solid.mit.edu](https://solid.mit.edu) \- for anyone who wants to see the basics in more detail.

</comment><comment><USER7> How does decentralizing things combat the scourge of misinformation and fake news? Wouldn't it exacerbate the issue?

Not to sound like a hipster, but I feel like the internet went downhill when it went mainstream. That's when there was a huge incentive to take advantage of people, whether it's spam, scams, or propaganda campaigns.

The centralized control of our data is a separate issue, no?

<comment><USER8> When did the most "fake news" started appearing? When you could promote it on one of the most centralized platforms around: Facebook.

I think it's easier to manipulate a centralized platform's algorithms. That "high efficiency" of a centralized platform is also what's making the manipulators more effective.

Same with malware makers and so on. It's always easier to do something when there's a single dominant platform.

<comment><USER9> > When did the most "fake news" started appearing?

Must have been when humans started to speak. Fake News is nothing new, just the name is. In the past there were gossip and rumors, sketchy newspapers who spreaded whatever sold best, and sometimes even satirical things like Bonsai Kittens ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonsai_Kitten](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonsai_Kitten)) in the '90s.

The only difference today is that people moved from the streets to the net, and gossip-snakes have upgraded their game in quality because of modern tools. But whether centralized or decentralized, the game was and will always be there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I notice there are semantic web / linked data / foaf folks on board. These were some of TimBL's past, largely failed attempts to redirect the web's future.

Is there any published post-mortem on what went wrong before, and why it's different this time?

Solid has exactly the right vision, but with the wrong architecture because it attempts to re-purpose those failed projects.

<comment><USER11> You mean "failed" like neural networks had failed before they suddenly took over the world?

The popular success of technologies depends on countless factors that keep changing at a fast pace, and those factors include a great deal of luck and randomness.

There is no reason to believe that repurposing some basic technologies for something different in a different environment is more likely to fail than inventing entirely new technologies.

<comment><USER12> If we assume that the previous constructions weren't perfect, and it wasn't pure luck (or lack thereof) that shut them down, then our 20/20 hindsight should be capable of distilling (some of) those imperfections, environmental constraints and perhaps even a root cause for failure.

Assuming this, it would be smart then, to note those imperfections and constraints, and make a point of not mimicking them when embarking on a new attempt. Instead of, say, blindly flailing about, rehashing the idea indefinitely until it accidentally works.

There might have some chance to the procedure, but its difficult to argue that we can't affect those probabilities, by thinking real damn hard on it, and maybe even working hard too. But working hard without thinking... I'm not so sure about.

<comment><USER11> Of course it makes sense to think about the ways in which specific technological choices and designs may have negatively affected the chances of success. I'm sure Tim Berners-Lee has done a lot of thinking.

I just don't think it's justified to rubbish technologies purely based on a lack of massive traction in a particular environment.

<comment><USER12> sure but if he's going to rehash an old idea, it's reasonable to ask why he expects it to work _this time_ , when it failed last time. If done the research, providing it isn't a large ask; and if he hasn't, then...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Media centralizes. This is fundamental.

There are zero marginal costs, so media providers are incentivized to spend huge amounts of money to create the most compelling content so that they can dominate the contest for attention. This creates a system with winner take all dynamics. Then, once you have won, you are incentivized to spend your winning to ensure that you continue winning. One of the ways you do this is by buying smaller competitors. Hence centralization is fundamental.

<comment><USER14> Ban media organizations larger than some size (or some better proxy). Nothing is fundamental when you can control the rules.

<comment><USER15> Companies like Sinclair would probably love that, they can more easily control lots of small, key media companies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Can anyone explain how Solid [https://solid.mit.edu/](https://solid.mit.edu/) compares to (or relates to) Mastodon [https://joinmastodon.org/](https://joinmastodon.org/) ? They seem to have the same goals.

<comment><USER17> mastodon is only federated microblogging. The Solid webpage suggests address and contact management, file sharing, article publication and web annotation.

<comment><USER18> The protocol underneath mastodon can do all that too. I'd like to see federation with existing decentralised protocols with similar intent.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Here's a somewhat related question on peer to peer systems.

Is there peer to peer VoIP that works? Discovering the other end isn't a problem; this is chat for a game, so there's a way to tell the other end about IP addresses and such. The question is whether you can reliably set up a VoIP connection between N known endpoints, including proper echo suppression and conference bridging, without a central server. Are the issues of getting through firewalls with cooperation from both sides solved? Is there anything that works well enough that non-technical users can use it reliably?

<comment><USER20> Isn't that what WebRTC does?

<comment><USER21> Somewhat, but in practice, WebRTC punts half of the problem to the site's own code. That's why some sites using WebRTC work great almost everywhere, and others seem to work great as long as you're not on any kind of unusual connection/firewall/proxy.

<comment><USER22> WebRTC behaves properly until you support multiple browsers. Then it becomes a nightmare to maintain.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Does this solution entail DNS roots outside of ICANN's purvey? The United States regularly seizes private domains under abusive legislation similar like the DMCA. in many other cases such as Wikileaks, private corporations simply casually agree to the US Governments demand to rescind registration. [https://www.theguardian.com/media/blog/2010/dec/03/wikileaks...](https://www.theguardian.com/media/blog/2010/dec/03/wikileaks- knocked-off-net-dns-everydns)

</comment><comment><USER24> Does anyone have some links on Solid that aren't media articles? I can't find anything, not even in Tim's homepage.

<comment><USER25> Home page: [https://solid.mit.edu/](https://solid.mit.edu/)

<comment><USER26> Spec: [https://github.com/solid/solid-spec](https://github.com/solid/solid- spec)

Source: [https://github.com/solid/solid](https://github.com/solid/solid)

...

From [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16615679](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16615679) ( [https://westurner.github.io/hnlog/#comment-16615679](https://westurner.github.io/hnlog/#comment-16615679) )

> _ActivityPub (and OStatus, and ActivityStreams /Salmon, and OpenSocial) are > all great specs and great ideas. Hosting and moderation cost real money > (which spammers/scammers are wasting)._

> _Know what 's also great? Learning. For learning, we have the xAPI/TinCan > spec and also schema.org/Action._

Mastodon has now supplanted GNU StatusNet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Amusingly, the Solid website's SSL cert isn't compatible with centos 7, either curl or Python. Which is kinda the state of web security in a nutshell, sometimes.

I wanted to run my web metadata extractor on it, but there isn't any metadata there anyway. Which is kind of fun for a project about web metadata.

<comment><USER28> I'm on mobile so I can't fully inspect the cert but since it's hosted at MIT, my guess is the Comodo-backed cert is though Internet2. The site maintainer probably neglected to include the intermediate cert which is fine for many browsers because they cache those but is a problem for some.

<comment><USER27> Yeah, I think Qualys is agreeing with you, they say the chain is incomplete:

[https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=solid.mit.edu](https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=solid.mit.edu)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> The only commits from Tim himself are some documentation and a typo fix: [https://github.com/solid/solid/commits?author=timbl](https://github.com/solid/solid/commits?author=timbl)

The project doesn't look particularly active from a commit standpoint, though I can imagine a whole lot of non-implementation work has to be done.

Best of luck to Tim and the Solid team!

</comment><comment><USER30> Will he officially support EME DRM in this new platform? You know, for the good of the web, or something.

</comment><comment><USER31> Related, Ted Nelson recently posted a series of videos describing the important ideas on Xanadu, the original hypertext project: [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hMKy52Intac#](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hMKy52Intac#)

<comment><USER32> There is almost nothing like his ideas out in the wild. The closest analogs I know of are, ironically enough, tools for software developers.

We can take this farther. There are a lot of people trying to raise the bar on development tools and at least some of us believe that people tend to do what they know. What is demonstrated for them.

Give them crappy tools and they will be satisfied to create crappy things with them. Give someone a better tool and many will rise to that level.

There are several aspects of code comprehension that I think would be conducive to his designs. And monitors are getting wide enough now that we nearly have the space to do them.

<comment><USER33> > There is almost nothing like his ideas out in the wild.

Go to Ted Nelson's Wikipedia page and mouse over the "Project Xanadu" link.

> Give them crappy tools and they will be satisfied to create crappy things > with them. Give someone a better tool and many will rise to that level.

The value of Wikipedia page previews has very little to do with the quality of the technology. The quality of the technology is perfectly adequate for at least one version of what Ted Nelson is describing.

The value is determined by what those tooltips are legally allowed to link-- can they show all primary documents which anyone on HN can trivially discover and access in a digital format, or can they merely show other Wikipedia pages?

As long as it is illegal to link _at least_ primary documents that whose authorship was funded by public money (like everything on Scihub), it really doesn't matter what type of view or even doc format you have.

<comment><USER12> that may not be entirely true; if you imagined a universe where xanadu exists, and was popular as a general tool, then you can envision that open-source primary documents would be preferred over closed, simply on the basis that you can actually consistently link to them (in the same fashion that, today, non- paywalled sites are naturally favored over paywall for sharing on HN).

And if xanadu documents were more useful (because of their interlinking and history) than the close-able flat documents (or perhaps closed documents that only link to closed source), then naturally things would slowly trend towards open documents by default, as it becomes more difficult to constrain yourself to the closed-source world.

The problem today might be then, that everyone already accepts that primary documents are likely to be sealed off, and there's no significant incentive otherwise. But if the idea of having a sufficiently useful document upgraded from a flat pdf to a historically-archiving xanadu document...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Seems like a great idea that won't go anywhere. Consider: Solid has to fight the network effects and the marketing/lobbying budgets of all the major players including Google, Facebook, et al., all of whom have a vested financial interest in expanding their walled gardens, driving lock-in, and harvesting user data as insidiously as possible.

<comment><USER35> They're fighting a headwind, for sure, but if the argument you're making was absolutely true, we'd all be using AOL today.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I had a few reactions to this concept.

1) The idea of a set of reusable APIs around data ownership could actually be the foundation of a new internet. If it becomes impossible to concentrate data, the system will be more resistant.

2) The appeal of the Internet lies in the services that are available to users. A decentralized system doesn't appeal to capitalism, value is best captured through centralization and intermediation. Capitalist enterprises produce the bulk of services at the moment. This is a major adoption hurdle.

3) Dr. Berners-Lee appears to be a (digital) anarchist at heart, and it's a painfully beautiful vision.

4) He is partnering with capitalists to try to achieve an anarchist vision. This is a contradiction in terms. Capitalism is about competition for the working class (i.e. users), domination and centralization.

5) It sounds like what he wants is a more egalitarian and democratic system. He might want to talk to more radical political theorists (I assume he may have already in the decades he's been kicking around).

I wish Dr. Berners-Lee the best. I hope Solid gets some adoption. I've heard some people are using Mastodon. Here's hoping it's a trend. Nonetheless, if enough people start migrating, the corporations will offer them something to come back. After all, they can afford to, tech profits in established companies are obscene.

<comment><USER37> "Capitalist enterprises produce the bulk of services at the moment."

All. You meant all the goods AND services. Unless you count the kids living on a commune who sell berries at the farmers market.

<comment><USER38> did you forget public schools, hospitals, roads, fire services, police services, military, medicare and libraries exist for a second there?

<comment><USER36> I am generally supportive of your position, but these are actually organized as "State Capitalism". They are not subject to internal democratic controls. Hierarchy still exists though there is nominal democratic political control.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Clickbait title.

Not surprising given the source, but I like to think Hacker News expects better than an "I Was Devastated" headline.

</comment><comment><USER40> Clickbait title

</comment><comment><USER41> Yeah, but didn't Al Gore invent that?

<comment><USER41> -4 for a little joke? what, am I back on fucking reddit? I figured "hackers" would appreciate what is, in essence hacker humor that any hacker or computer nerd worth his salt would get. Damn it is hard to find like-minded people on the Internets these days..used to be much easier back in the 1990s......</comment></comment>


Cold Boot Attack - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_boot_attack

<comment><USER2> I always wondered if I should memset() things after im done with them, maybe I'm not being completely paranoid on this one.

Scary and amazing.

<comment><USER3> This would not fundamentally solve the issue, just reduce the attack surface, since the RAM needs only to be in state before memset() for attack to success. A better approach would be to encrypt at least the sensitive area even in RAM and never store plain-text value of a key.

On the side note Mac Books unexpectedly turned out to be partly resistant to this attack because of integrated nature of elements.

<comment><USER4> If you are talking about normal user space applications, any encryption key would be in RAM as well, so this would be useless.

As a more advanced example for measures against cold boot attacks, the research project TRESOR provides a patch for the Linux kernel that enables you to keep the encryption key for your hard disk in CPU registers all the time, without ever leaking them to RAM.

[http://www1.informatik.uni-erlangen.de/tresor](http://www1.informatik.uni- erlangen.de/tresor)

<comment><USER5> Presumably at some point the kernel will have to do a context switch and subsequently store the contents of those registers in ram.

Perhaps the solution could be a small usb dongle containing an embedded arm soc with a kind of RAM that doesn't persist at all -- maybe even no RAM at all, just the cpu. The dongle would support just three commands: init, encrypt, decrypt. Init sets the key and algorithm, after which the device doesn't let you change them until the system is powered off. En/decrypt do block-level crypto.

<comment><USER4> No, the AES encryption key really never leaves the CPU, that is the whole point here.

TRESOR uses the four x86 debug registers to store a 128 or 256 bit key and then uses this key to calculate the AES round keys on-the-fly on each block of encryption using Intel AES-NI instructions. Also, they patched the kernel not to touch these registers at all. Therefore, after the initial loading of the encryption key, it never leaves the CPU again.

This approach also means you cannot use the ptrace(2) syscall anymore to attach to a program using a debugger such as gdb. However, if you don't want to debug a program, this proof-of-concept already works quite nice.

I noticed the PDF link to the paper on their site is broken, so please see the USENIX publication for details: [https://www.usenix.org/legacy/event/sec11/tech/full_papers/M...](https://www.usenix.org/legacy/event/sec11/tech/full_papers/Muller.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> CIS/CS major here - any particular reason we don't yet store encryption keys in L3 CPU cache? From my (basic, and quite possibly flawed) understanding, this would invalidate the possibility of cold-boot attacks entirely. The average modern processor has 2-16MB of L3 so a few 2048/4096 keys for an application such as TrueCrypt couldn't possibly dent performance that much.</comment>


Man behind Carder.su racketeering, other cybercrime pleading guilty  - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/04/man-behind-carder-su-racketeering-other-cybercrime-pleading-guilty/

<comment><AUTHOR> found this bit interesting: " As many as 55 members of the Carder.su group have been charged in the nation's first case in which old-school racketeering laws were invoked against a cybercrime group. Eight others have pleaded guilty. Trial awaits some of them and many remain at large"</comment>


Stop Saying the Brain Learns by Rewiring Itself - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/blog/stop-saying-the-brain-learns-by-rewiring-itself <comment><USER2> One sentence summary of the article:

Interval-duration memory might be stored inside the neuron, not in its synaptic inputs.</comment>


Ask HN: Open Source Hardware Kits for Children - <AUTHOR>

Hi HN!
I'm looking out for a modular electronics kit for my 10year old brother that supports Open Source Hardware - http://freedomdefined.org/OSHW I would love to see him building his own stuff 'n toys using non-proprietary electronic parts. I don't know a kit that can grow with him just by buying new electronic parts and learning from more sophisticated handbooks.
I'll order him a RasperryPi [when available] and I'm looking for something that builds on top of a RasperryPi board.
The ideal scenario is that he can use the modular electronics kit to build something. Connect with his RasperryPi board through USB and write a program in C to do something with the sensor data.
He learns fast from his K&R C Programming book and was fascinated when I told him that he now can program many devices in C. I think it would be a nice gift for Christmas to buy him a modular open source hardware kit instead of those toy-kits from Walmart and co.
Best Wishes :)
me <comment><USER2> Though it probably won't comply with your licensing demands, you might want to look at:

<http://www.open-electronics.org/>

Arduino is always fun, and there are lots of people hacking on it in different ways, but again, it often won't comply with your licensing demands.

If you want your brother to learn something really useful, get him a FPGA development board from Xilinx or Altera. After he learns the default (proprietary) tool chains, point him at the OpenCores project which typically enforces licensing demands similar to your own (LGPL).

<http://opencores.org/>

Though USB connectivity is fun, learning I2C, SPI, JTAG and similar is even more fun. A gift like an Aardvark or Beagle kit might be too expensive for a present, but the pay-off in what can be learned is well worth it.

<http://www.totalphase.com/protocols/i2c/>

To me, freedomdefined.org/OSHW is very offensive. I see little point or benefit in arguing about licenses publicly, so if you want to know why it is offensive, contact me privately via email.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your valuable response Mr. Roberts!

The RasperryPi developers argued that it's more powerful and extensible than an Arduino or Beagleboard. I can't tell if it's the case or not, b/c I've not played with those yet. But Wikipedia also confirms that it's more powerful: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BeagleBoard#Similar_products>

<comment><USER2> It seems I may not have be as clear as I should have; the "Beagle" I mentioned is an I2C/SPI protocol analyzer (about $550 for the full kit), rather than the "BeagleBoard" you mentioned.

<http://www.totalphase.com/products/i2c_devkit/>

Working with devices through I2C/SPI (and JTAG) is both fun and challenging to learn. It may or may not be "too much" for a 10 year old, but of course, that depends on the specific 10 year old. Most of the small/hobby boards come with I2C/SPI/JTAG support, so the skills you learn are very reusable.

An inexpensive or used oscilloscope is another avenue you might want to look at as a gift since it makes learning and debugging electronics a whole lot easier.

If you're in the SF Bay Area and would like to borrow a BeagleBoard, PandaBoard or Arduino to see if it fits your needs (or for just random fun hacking), let me know and I'll lend you one.

If your ten year old brother is learning from K&R already, you need to worry about keeping him challenged or he might lose interest --this was the main concern I had behind my suggestions. You may or may not be right about the RasberryPi being a better fit since it is designed to be an educational board, but if they dumb things down to where "most kids" can work on it, I kinda doubt your brother will remain interested for very long. ;)

As far as I can tell from spec sheets, the RasberryPi is running the Broadcom BCM2835 containing an ARM11 core running at 700MHz. Since a snowball in hell has better chances of survival than you or anyone has getting "design files" out of Broadcom, the main ASIC on the RasberryPi does not comply with the demands in freedomdefined.org/OSHW. Additionally, the ARM core used in it is proprietary, so even if you had the design files for the chip and 50+ Million to spend spinning your own ASIC, there's no way you could create your own version without getting sued into oblivion. --And this is from someone that met with hardware vendors to convince them to release just the required documentation needed by open source developers to write/maintain drivers.

RasberryPi does look interesting, and it is very inexpensive by comparison. I'll probably get one to tinker with it after it gets stable. New designs always have a higher degree of risk, so unless you want to (and can) compensate for design flaws, it's best to stay away from the bleeding edge. For this reason, I would not suggest a PandaBoard because it has a wee bit too much personality (read "bugs") in it's design, and you need to be able to handle them.

The Arduino boards from sparcfun.com are solid, and there are lots of interesting and inexpensive add-on kits available for it. There is a lot of fun Arduino hacking happening, both on the web and off (in Arduino user groups), so the "supporting resources" for Arduino are superior to RasberryPi. I agree that Arduino is more limited in hardware specs/features than RasberryPi, but that is only _part_ of the decision, and "community support" may be a more important part.

<http://www.sparkfun.com/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you Sir. You're right I've confused Beagle with Beagleboard, that of course is a huge difference. I stay in accord with your opinion about dumbed down environments.

The Arduino boards, a "Beagle" and an Oscillator surely make out a nice learning environment for hacking and learning. I'm not requiring full compliance with OSHW licensing. It's because 3D-Printing will allow cheap custom devices and because I'm not fully agreeing with point 3, 12 and 13 for specific cases. When a specific hardware centric or locked design is the only requirement, or more efficient; when the software provided cannot be disclosed without risk of patent infringements etc.

Coming up with challenges is hard. But an unlocked environment to learn the principles of electrical engineering will offer interesting ones and combined with computer science it'll reveal the perspective a creator has to our world.

Thanks again for helping me and others =))

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Lead free, and/or take a few minutes to explain proper care around components containing lead. Not to be excessively paranoid, but I recall settings where such was not explained and as a result people did somewhat stupid things.</comment>


Flipping Web Sites, Selling the Niche - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/29/technology/29flip.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

<comment><USER2> I've been thinking about doing something along the lines of starting up a bunch of sites.

I know that when I see a spammy, single page site, I immediately click back and move on to the next google link. That's zero revenue for the owner, and zero use for me (as somebody looking for something). I'm thinking that there is a nice middle ground where you can provide good value to the user, while still getting a fair number of click-throughs. Spend the time to write up good content, have a halfway decent design, and then leave it with little maintenance over time.

Basically, I think I can do better than the sites I just checked out on sitepoint.

Feedback? Am I scum? Am I lifting the web out of the dark ages of crap?

</comment><comment><USER3> All they talk about is ebay as a marketplace, but when I search ebay for "web site" all I get is a listing of worthless template sites. I wonder where they sell them?

</comment><comment><USER4> Who buys these sites once they're fixed up?

<comment><USER5> For a site like bird-cage.com, perhaps a bird cage manufacturer so they can have a direct sales presence online instead of selling only through pet shops.</comment></comment>


Tesla patches exploit - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2016/09/20/tesla-patches-exploit-that-left-model-s-potentially-vulnerable-to-remote-access/ <comment><AUTHOR> that's right. They patched the very last exploit there was only one and there will never be another. Problem: solved.</comment>


Definitive Guide for Investor Updates - <AUTHOR> http://www.aaronkharris.com/investor-updates#awesome

<comment><USER2> This might seem obvious, but I have a style of email for any kind of update where the recipient is not as day-to-day or emotionally involved as I am (investors, executive management, other business units, etc.)

Basically, you bullet out the key raw metrics and status items at the top, with as little narrative or opinion as possible. You assume that everyone who sees that email is only going to read those bullets, so it has to convey all of the core data.

Then, below that, you can do a longer narrative form with discussion and opinion and background, formatted to align with each bullet point. That's where you ask non-critical questions, explain why you think last quarter's growth was slightly off, or a project was delayed, etc.

I started doing this when I would get replies to long-form project updates that made it clear that the reader had missed the point, or not even read the email in its entirety. Bulleting up all of the data upfront helped prevent me from trying to excuse away mistakes, made the readers' lives easier, and allowed people to self-select if and when they wanted to get a fuller picture.

Maybe it sounds obvious and self-evident, and once I started doing it, it seemed like common sense, but I get tons of emails all the time that don't follow these kinds of guidelines and it is occasionally frustrating.</comment>


WebViews Are Not To Be Trusted - <AUTHOR> http://matthodges.com/2013/09/webviews-are-not-to-be-trusted/

<comment><USER2> And what is the difference between an untrusted application presenting a login webview for your service of choice, and a GUI form doing the same?

I must not understand the article.

<comment><USER3> Do native apps really use third-party authentication services? That would scare the shit out of me too.

I think the point of the article is that there's a trend with web applications to use third-party identity providers like Google or Facebook. This itself is (mostly) harmless; their login procedures are designed so that you can verify that it is, in fact, Google or Facebook you are logging into, because the login form is hosted on their domain, it goes through SSL, and you can verify all that in the browser's address bar.

There's also a trend toward eliminating the address bar, by eg. putting your webapp in a WebView which doesn't show it, or by using native-only apps, or Chrome's move toward not showing the full URL for certain sites. When you combine this with the trend toward third-party identity providers, it's very dangerous, because you have no way of verifying that you are giving your identity to the people you think you are giving your identity to.

<comment><USER2> > Do native apps really use third-party authentication services? That would > scare the shit out of me too.

I would not underestimate the callousness of someone chasing revenue one or two dollars at a time. I see this all the time in Android applications, digging around with AndBug [1] -- just set a hook on various apache.http.client.HttpClient methods, and watch the interactions.

[1]: [https://github.com/swdunlop/andbug](https://github.com/swdunlop/andbug)</comment></comment></comment>


Facebook isn't happy about Apple's upcoming ad tracking restrictions - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2020/08/27/facebook-vs-apple-ad-tracking/ <comment><USER2> ... And nothing of value was lost.

If it's detremental to your business to not be able to track users on such a granular level, it's a bad business.

I'm sure Facebook will survive here.

100% biased, can't stand that company.

<comment><USER3> > If it's detremental to your business to not be able to track users on such a > granular level, it's a bad business.

Except that Apple still allows tracking on this granular level, it's just that now they have to explicitly ask users to allow this.

Says a lot about Facebook's (and others) business model if it only works when the vast majority of users are mostly unaware of the amount of tracking they do, but the minute you make these users aware of the tracking and ask for their permission, the business model falls apart.

<comment><USER4> To be fair if you add an opt-in step to anything, it will kill that thing. No moral judgement, just human laziness. If it doesn't kill it, it still becomes something everyone loathes (e.g., how you need an extra click to accept cookies on every site you use).

<comment><USER5> I think in some situations if users see value in the opt-in then it can be ok. E.g. your phone asking you if you're happy to share your location with an app. I sure as hell want my mapping app to know where I am, but I also feel very comforted that I still get a say in the process. The thing about this tracking opt-in is that no user would ever want it because it's solely there to exploit them. So in this case I think you're 100% right.

<comment><USER6> Wouldn't the value in this situation be "you get to use Facebook"? If they didn't make money off their users, Facebook wouldn't exist.

Would you be ok if they did it that way? A warning that says "by using Facebook, you are agreeing to be tracked", at which point the user could either continue or uninstall the app?

<comment><USER7> I think the new changes will hurt facebook competitors more. Everyone knows Facebook and it has a brand. They want to collect some info? Most people won't care - they just want to use the app like they always have. They might think twice with a new app that they don't know

<comment><USER5> I hope it might have the effect that those newer apps instead choose to innovate with their business models and pursue directions that don't require the user to sacrifice their privacy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Facebook is 21st-century cigarettes. Thousands of brilliant scientists and engineers testing and optimizing their product to be as addictive as possible. No concern for the effects on their users or on society. The only concern is making money. Just like with cigarettes, at first it was cool, then it became mainstream, then the dangers became better known, then the CEO was ordered to appear before Congress and gave a lot of misleading and empty responses, now it's used primarily by laggards and poorly-educated demographics. I'll be glad to see them go. Because one day they will go.

<comment><USER9> Too bad you had to ruin an otherwise good post with

>now it's used primarily by laggards and poorly-educated demographics

I dislike Facebook too (and don't use it) but the above statement is a clear lie. Normal people are who use Facebook, like it or not.

<comment><USER10> I agree with this: closest family, well educated, use Facebook though I ask them not to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think we have to get away from calling these things "ad tracking." They're not tracking ads, they're tracking people, and their response to the ads.

If Facebook was a guy with a notepad and a trench coat doing what it does in meatspace, you could get a restraining order against him.

<comment><USER12> yeah, and almost everyone would

You take a normal parent and tell them - This guy from Facebook is going to follow your teenage daughter around high school, the mall, her room, everywhere she goes, and keep a record of every single thing she does on the computer

and they would be running for their guns or their lawyers

Online, Facebook does all that and most people don't even have a clue

<comment><USER13> What Facebook (and adtech writ large) does is sniff your farts trying to figure out what you had for breakfast. If you shoo them away, they sniff your friends' farts to indirectly infer that.

I'm sure the folks who work on this are proud of their accomplishments.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is a tsunami for ad tech. Facebook just being the tip of the iceberg here.

Tracking or not tracking is not really the topic here. Rather, this is yet another proof of how abusive Apple is. They claim killing IDFA is for the sake of users' privacy, while they do track users and their behavior and feed them sponsored search results on the App Store (via Apple Search Ads). This ability is just too good to share!

Apple is giving 3 months notice to an entire industry, this is just not nice. They do it for tracking this time, 'social' login next, and you name it. This idea of doing business unilaterally will backfire at some point...

Regardless, the next 12 months are going to be as interesting as the rise of Facebook Ads on mobile, the rise of re-targeting or SEM. Because the entire ad tech stack is looking for alternatives and doing anything it can to remain effective on iOS. Get ready for some good and some ugly! Looking forward to seeing what Google will do with their own advertising ID on Android.

<comment><USER15> Seems like they have to overcompensate for the PR to appear as the good guys after all the PR damage they took lately. Nothing more, nothing less. Perfunctory privacy efforts.

<comment><USER16> What damage? Outside of here and tech/gaming sites, the Apple v. Epic Games slap fight is low on the zeitgeist, at least in the US. Outside of those tribes, no one knew about the case, or cared enough to want to know when I explained it to them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > Now Apple is going to slowly shut off the oxygen in order to take the value > for themselves.

what happened was that developers left the facebook platform and all those viral games consolidated into zynga .

Also , with targeted channels closed, ad money will have to flow to non- targeted ads, which actually benefits small publishers who can sell a lot of impressions. It's not like ad spending will stop

<comment><USER18> Untargeted ads are worse for small publishers, not better. Avg cpms right now for targeted ads are around $3-3.50. Untargeted, ~$.50 (Safari/Firefox CPMs).

What I think we'll see is ad spend will flow more to the walled gardens since targeted ads still will be available, and perform significantly better than untargeted.

Source: I own websites that make money with ads.

<comment><USER17> if there are no targeted ads, cpms have no way to go but up

There is only so much inventory to sell in walled gardens, people don't spend all their time on FB properties. And if apple makes it more difficult for FB to target users, the line between targeted/untargeted gets blurry

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I wonder how long it will be before Apple gets into serious ad business themselves.

<comment><USER20> Well, one side effect of this is developers will rely on App Store adverts to promote their apps, whereas before Facebook ads were an effective way to promote them. So indirectly, Apple will be gaining revenue from this move.

<comment><USER17> It's probably their plan, though tbh the App Store discovery process is atrocious. You re much more likely to find an app through google, and then you have to type the exact full name of the app in the store to have a chance of finding it

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm sure they have plenty of other data points to help them get a pretty good idea of who the phone belongs to

</comment><comment><USER22> It just occured to me that we're looking at Facebook wrong.

Why do people come to FB? For the content that other people post. There would be no eyeballs for the ads if the users didn't post content.

Shouldn't Facebook give _us_ a piece of that ad revenue then?

<comment><USER23> That sounds like youtube

<comment><USER22> Oh, so there is a precedent :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I bet they're talking about how the heck they can own their own platform/browser.

Facebook is too big to be under the thumb of the operating system and browser vendors, who are possibly hostile towards Facebook's way of doing things.

Not an easy problem to solve.

<comment><USER25> Apple's control over its app ecosystem is unsettling at times. The tactics against Epic seem heavy-handed.

But then you have to remember how Facebook scraped the contacts list on Android phones, when users installed the Android app. Ugh.

Maybe an ideal world is one where there's more than one app store for iOS, but Apple still maintains control over the developer APIs. Apple bans plenty of legit content that isn't Disney kiddie-ish enough for its tastes. Imagine if the web were like that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Not a rhetoric question, I'm honestly curious:

Has there been any case where an entity who complained about Apple's restrictions, turned out to genuinely be in the favor of users, instead of just trying to make more money?

<comment><USER27> This is genuinely in favor of users and small business: [https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/14/facebook-says-apple- refused-...](https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/14/facebook-says-apple-refused-to- waive-30percent-fee-on-new-feature.html) For example, some of my friends run a dog care training business and they had to switch to using facebook streaming to make money. This 30% fee is something they are quite unhappy about because it runs in the thousands of dollars for their scenario.

<comment><USER11> I think the OP's definition of "user" is the end user, meaning the person who sees the ad, not the company placing the ad.

 _they had to switch to using facebook streaming to make money_

This I find hard to believe. The could easily have streamed on another service like YouTube, Zoom, or any of a dozen other solutions. Nobody "has" to switch to Facebook streaming.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I think it's really kind of funny that you've got all these companies decrying Apple completely destroying their business with onerous conditions. Then you have facebook chiming in. No Facebook. Not you.

<comment><USER17> If facebook pulls its app though, and goes web-only it will be a big blow to apples products. Users spend most of their time on those apps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> This change is _good_ for Facebook. When it plays out that way they just don't want to get blamed for it.

A lot of articles seem to think Facebook won't be able to monetize you anymore. Far from the case. Within their apps -- the Facebook app, Instagram -- where they make most of their profit, there won't be any change. They don't need anything like IDFA because you're signed in.

What this will hurt is the ROI on non-Facebook apps. Publishers will get less money & advertisers will see less return.

So where will those dollars start to shift to?

Facebook.

</comment><comment><USER30> This may actually be good. For years, all the mobile app developers had motto "iOS first", because iOS users are bringing more revenue per install. If ads in iOS apps will underperform because of Apple keeping all the user's data to itself, those money could flow to Android devices.

</comment><comment><USER31> As this is about a terrible company suffering another terrible company, I don't know who to cheer for.

</comment><comment><USER32> so if epic wins their lawsuit, will facebook just make their own app store and track as much as they want?

<comment><USER33> I don't think Epic are asking to be able to add their own APIs to iOS so I doubt it, unless Apple's implementation of these permission requests is tied to the App Store for some reason and disappears if the app is distributed some other way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Good to see that they're not happy, it's our time to be happy.

</comment><comment><USER35> Good!

</comment><comment><USER36> Well, Facebook can go to h*ll with their complaints. There is a little something called freedom: corporations like Apple have the right to make their own business decisions as long as they don't break laws. People have the right to buy and use products that make it more difficult for Facebook to harvest their digital data.

Facebook also has the right to run their business as they see fit, again, as long as they don't break any laws.

An entirely different conversation: as much as I like free markets and capitalism, without governments enforcing laws that put some restraints on capitalism, that take into account externalities/costs to society, then capitalism and free markets will die.

</comment><comment><USER37> a bit off topic, how much time does your spouse spend on Facebook? I just peeked at her iPhone time tracking thingy and it's 26 hours a week. That sounds crazy to me. The scarier thing is that she doesn't see anything wrong with it. But I can't say anything to her; I chose being happy than being right. But then again not very happy either. Oh well.

<comment><USER38> Don't know you so take this with a grain of salt, but personally if I could not discuss how we spend that much of our time with my spouse, I would feel that we had a fundamental problem with the way we communicate. You should also be talking about how you are not that happy. Maybe it is related to other things left unsaid.

That is quite a deal of time that you all are choosing as a couple to spend on FB instead of in person.

For my spouse and I, we quit FB a few years ago (for similar reasons - mindlessly scrolling, fomo and jealous feelings about others, watching everyone's highlight reel instead of real life.) We did the same with IG and Reddit. Now I read HN and she IGs/YouTubes some for her business, and we spend the rest of our time away from social media, playing games, making art, reading, working, etc.

<comment><USER37> Thanks for the input. It makes sense.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Maybe this will encourage switching to context-based ads. If I'm reading blog post about Rust, I might be interested in buying books or online training in Rust. Or, if I'm watching a video on how to take care of kitten, food or vaccination for kitten might be of interest for me. Nobody needs to track all my activity to guess that.

<comment><USER11> _If I 'm reading blog post about Rust, I might be interested in buying books or online training in Rust_

I have been repeatedly assured by ad tech experts on HN that Facebook (and Google's) advertisements which are custom-tailored to my tabulated interests are far superior to the ads I would get through traditional context advertising.

You can tell by all the ads I see on Facebook for feminine hygiene products for the lady parts I don't have, the concert ads for bands I don't like, and the restaurant ads for cities where I don't live in places I've never been.

Life is so much better with the ad tech algorithms in charge.

<comment><USER39> >advertisements which are custom-tailored to my tabulated interests are far superior to the ads I would get through traditional context advertising.

actually my post is not arguing with that, however facing the reality where interest tracking/profiling will become harder or impossible good old context- based ads might at some point become better alternative. Not because they're inherently more efficient but because, with changes like that, interest tracking might become infisible or too resource consuming</comment></comment></comment>


Verizon closes $4.5B acquisition of Yahoo, Marissa Mayer resigns - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/13/verizon-closes-4-5b-acquisition-of-yahoo-marissa-mayer-resigns-memo/ <comment><USER2> A list of Marissa Mayer's/Yahoo's accomplisments with her at the helm....

[https://marissamayr.tumblr.com/post/161775943139/nostalgia-g...](https://marissamayr.tumblr.com/post/161775943139/nostalgia- gratitude-optimism)

Even though all of these gains, plus more as core yahoo lost value was from Alibaba this does look impressive at a first glance.....

> We oversaw the creation $43B in market capitalization and shareholder value. > Our market cap has gone from $18B to $51B (increasing our valuation by > $33B), while we returned nearly $10B in cash to shareholders.

Sadly the list of employee gains seems very spartan compared to the shareholder gains.

For those of you wondering what the Yahoo/Altaba shell contains now...

\- approximately 15 percent equity stake in China's Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.,

\- about 36 percent in Yahoo Japan Corp.,

\- cash and marketable debt securities,

\- certain minority investments and Excalibur IP, which owns some patent assets.

<comment><USER3> > Our market cap has gone from $18B to $51B

> approximately 15 percent equity stake in China's Alibaba Group Holding Ltd

15 percent of Alibaba is about $52.5 billion. I'm not sure why we're even discussing anything else. It's like saying that my contribution to family finances is:

a) not selling my parents' house, which is now worth half a million.

b) having $1.32 in change in a little ashtray by the door.

<comment><USER4> Well, except that your change in the ashtray _is_ a positive contribution.

<comment><USER5> Yeah but a negligible one.

As a long time Yahoo mail user, I was very disappointed with Yahoo under Mayer. Firstly they did a terrible job with the Yahoo mail web client; it became slow and clunky and inherited the worst parts of Gmail and none of the good parts. Secondly my account was hacked and to this day my old contacts still receive spoof emails from "me" (though not actually my email address) about weight loss supplements.

I am ashamed to tell people my email address. I started moving to Gmail.

<comment><USER6> _[Yahoo Mail] became slow and clunky and inherited the worst parts of Gmail and none of the good parts._

Yahoo and LinkedIn are basically right next door to each other and employees from one routinely hop to the other, so it makes sense that they share production values.

<comment><USER7> That's stupid. Google is also walking distance from LinkedIn and had buildings by the yahoo campus as well (tech corners).

<comment><USER6> You're right, the poorly implemented copies of Gmail features could just as easily been written by Xooglers, but it's a funnier and longer-standing joke that the entirety of LinkedIn is as a hodge-podge of other peoples' ideas.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Her mega-salary, like that of other comparable executives, is decided by other mega-rich people. It's no hardship for them to hand her (one of their own) enough cash to buy a small town.

Let's ponder that $260M compared to every time an outgoing job offer was dialed down from $145K to $135K. Or when the yearly bonus for a rank and file is a healthy $25K (1/1000th her accumulated comp).

Sour grapes? Yes, and why not? We're all giving our lives to these same companies.

<comment><USER9> It seems alot of the critcism is focused on Marissa Meyer but I'm more interested in understanding how Yahoo got to such a bad state where they had to ask Marissa Meyer to come rescue the company, why it was in such dissarray when she got there and what led to her inability to save the company, from a logistical and business standpoint as opposed to just the constant banter about her being a horrible person and her salary being more than everyone elses (I never heard this criticism about the previous Yahoo CEO who let the company fall to pieces before she got there despite having similiar income)

Also, on a separate note, I've noticed multiple multibillion dollar companies who fall into disarray, have CEOs sit quietly in the background, hire a woman to come in and try to save it when to me the finances, business portfolio but most importantly jaded work culture and workforce of thousands of people seems hard to face, and then I see these women get relentless criticism, one particularly being related to their salary, which is comparable to the men previous to them in their position as well as men all over the world who earn a disgusting amount more than they should for their contributions as leaders of their organizations, but I only ever see woman CEOs in the spotlight for making too much money. Is there a slight bias here or is it just me?

Edit: I'd also like to add that I'm not rephrasing your comments as Marissa Meyer hate, just the thousands of non stop comments and general immediate focus on her income and failures as opposed to the failures of yahoo as a company that led to there being a new CEO (male or female) in the first place and what was faced during that time.

From what I know, Marissa Meyer worked many late nights for months going through every line item cost trying to understand what noone was hired under a man to summarize in the line item costs while she was pregnant, but the only news headlines I saw was how unfair it was to her employees that she was going to have a nursery in her office while asking her employees to not work remotely, when I'm pretty sure that decision was made purely based on her line item evaluation and the evaluation that the culture was lacking the accountability other software companies who had remote workers adhered to.

Nonetheless, everything she does or attempts to do seems to be immediately commented/overshadowed by how much money she makes or how its unfair she can afford childcare when noone else can. This is really quite bizarre to me being a woman because I never see overwhelming responses about a man making too much money or their negligence to employees about their ability to take care of their children (or criticism for having or not having nurserys in their offices because obviously why would I man need that when there is a presumed woman at home taking care of them?). Is there a relevance to this and why does it seem to overshadow and be constantly associated with everything she does despite not being the case for every other CEO who has been at the helm of a failed company?

<comment><USER10> There are countless articles on male CEOs being overpaid.

Recently there was even an article on how Apple's new headquarters doesn't have childcare facilities despite having a gym, orchid, cafes galore etc; a reflection of the male 'visionary' who created a company to reflect a vision of a world where childnren don't exist (too messy!).

I suggest that rather than the world being unduely harsh on Yahoo!'s former CEO, it is an unfortunate instance of selection and (un-)survivorship bias. There are simply less female CEOs. The fact that Yahoo blew itself up and the CEO is leaving with a quarter of a billion in incentives is noteworthy, and it doesn't really matter who was at the helm. It would be hard to imagine many people relishing the idea of converting a declining Yahoo back into a google competitor back when they were hiring

<comment><USER11> > a reflection of the male 'visionary' who created a company to reflect a > vision of a world where childnren don't exist (too messy!).

I'd love for a quote somewhere from this visionary to reflect this statement. If it doesn't exist then this is misandrous propaganda.

<comment><USER10> because it's binary, and you're either male and hate children, or female and love them?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I have disliked her ever since being influenced by this gawker screed some years back:

[http://gawker.com/5162532/marissa-mayer-googles-biggest- fail...](http://gawker.com/5162532/marissa-mayer-googles-biggest-failure).

Subsequent reporting has hardend my opinion: [https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/21/magazine/what-happened- wh...](https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/21/magazine/what-happened-when-marissa- mayer-tried-to-be-steve-jobs.html?_r=0)

I have tried to examine what role gender plays in my visceral dislike for Marissa Mayer. I hope it is a small one. I give myself some consolation that I recoil almost equally when reading any news coverage of Travis Kalanick.

<comment><USER13> Small consolation, then. The activities which took place under Kalanick's watch -- sexual harassment, _greyballing_ , the Waymo trade secret case -- are much more reprehensible than what Mayer has done. I think gender plays a big factor for many people's opinions of her.

The comparison with Steve Jobs is particularly telling. Steve was notoriously cruel and difficult to please, yet he is much-loved as a visionary. Women are given a very hard time for being unlikable, no matter how talented they are. Granted, she was no Steve Jobs. Despite being in a glass cliff [0] situation, she was far more successful than any of the Apple CEOs prior to Jobs' return.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_cliff](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_cliff)

<comment><USER14> The difference is that Jobs succeeded.

Meyer didn't do anything bad, she just didn't turn around Yahoo. She landed the plane though.

<comment><USER13> Jobs succeeded, but plenty of male _rescue_ CEOs failed without drawing the sort of ire that Mayer has.

<comment><USER15> She was also a _celebrity_ CEO, basking in the exposure of being touted as Yahoo!'s great new hope. She didn't push back on any of the publicity or press then, so it's only right she maintains exposure regardless.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I find it interesting that the comments section of the WSJ (a pretty capitalist-friendly corner of the internet) is filled with complaints about Mayer's "overpay" as CEO and outrage over her "golden parachute," while HN (a much less capitalist-friendly corner of the internet) has gone through 40 comments and I've only seen a couple questioning her pay as CEO, and several comments praising her job in the role.

Take away Marissa Mayer from this story, and replace her with a generic CEO, and I'm not sure we'd see the same mood in either comment section.

Why is this? Is this because she's from Google? Because she's a former engineer? Because she's a female CEO? Is she just a politically polarizing topic ala Elon Musk?

Genuinely curious. Anyone have any ideas?

<comment><USER17> One other thing I noticed is that every time there is a post about her here, everyone calls her Marissa, or Marissa Mayer, or Ms. Mayer (seriously!)... never Mayer. I might be "attributing to malice" but dudes never get called "first name", only "last name".

It might just be the way it is in the US, but I can't help read it as a way to depower someone. I dunno if "depower" is the right term, but it feels something like that.

Again, that might just be a cultural thing that I'm not aware of.

<comment><USER18> I noticed the same thing with the US presidential election. He's Trump, but for some reason she's just Hillary.

<comment><USER19> Well, there is the difference between

this (Trump):

[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c1/Trump_20...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c1/Trump_2016.png)

and

this ("Hillary"):

[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ec/Hillary_...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ec/Hillary_for_America_2016_Logo.png)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Coming soon: All Verizon phones will contain tons of Yahoo crap and use Yahoo by default.

<comment><USER21> People that don't buy unlocked phones but on contract seems so be ok with carriers treating them poorly.

<comment> erik-g Well some people don't have a few hundred dollars to drop on a new phone when they need one. At that point you're at the whim of the carrier anyways.

<comment><USER22> I would rather buy a phone like moto g than get a super phone that is locked to a career and bloated with all the shit. But then if you are on hacker news, you most probably are not an average joe when it comes to tech.

<comment><USER23> I have a Moto G, outright. It cost as much as a night out, and it works perfectly. It's got nearly stock Android, and the battery is good.

The camera is HORRIBLE, but the difference is not worth >$650 to me

<comment><USER22> Yeah Moto G was my phone for an year as well till i got a proper job and could afford Nexus 6P.

If you don't care about camera, it really is a great phone for 250 CAD.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I really wonder what the ultimate fate of Flickr and Tumblr will be, especially the latter since the acquisition was deemed "essentially worthless" lol

<comment><USER25> For some context to pram's comment, by essentially worthless he's referring to how Yahoo recently completely wrote off Tumblr's goodwill value from when they acquired it, which was most of the purchase price. In other words, Yahoo paid a premium because they thought Tumblr had a lot of potential, then... wrote it off.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodwill_(accounting)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodwill_\(accounting\))

For more context see:

2013 talk of 75% value being goodwill: [http://money.cnn.com/2013/08/09/technology/yahoo-tumblr- good...](http://money.cnn.com/2013/08/09/technology/yahoo-tumblr- goodwill/index.html)

Then 2016 writedown: [http://gizmodo.com/yahoos-latest-earnings-report- basically-c...](http://gizmodo.com/yahoos-latest-earnings-report-basically- confirms-that-t-1783873667)

<comment><USER26> im sure david karp isn't complaining

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Congratulations to Marissa on a job well done. That boat was a sinking ship that no one wanted to captain, and she kept it alive long enough to a satisfactory outcome.

<comment><USER28> Yeah, that wasn't really how her appointment was sold:

[http://www.reuters.com/article/us-yahoo-ceo- idUSBRE86F13T201...](http://www.reuters.com/article/us-yahoo-ceo- idUSBRE86F13T20120717)

"Yahoo turns to Google's Mayer for revival"

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/dorieclark/2012/07/16/3-reasons...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/dorieclark/2012/07/16/3-reasons- why-marissa-mayers-hiring-is-a-huge-win-for-yahoo/)

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-07-18/yahoo- hel...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-07-18/yahoo-help-us- marissa-mayer-dot-youre-our-only-hope)

<comment><USER29> Who are reuters, forbes, and bloomberg to say? They don't know the market; it's not like rescuing yahoo was actually in any way possible. The site was a finance site, a sports site, and a shitty email server stuck to a link farm.

Not to mention flickr, tumblr, etc that had little to no role in the revenue generation of the company. RIP del.icio.us.

If the company had been saved it would not have been Yahoo! anymore.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Kind of a sad day for me. Yahoo was so instrumental in the early web where I cut my teeth. Seeing it now sold to some telecom giant at around what a handful of unprofitable mobile apps go for is a bit depressing. For Millenials, imagine if Google was sold to AT&T 5-10 years from now after beaten by hungrier competitors. I guess all these companies fold eventually but Yahoo had quite the terminal illness and it lasted far longer than I assumed and often with bouncebacks that made you think things were getting better.

Perhaps Verizon can do something useful with the brand, but the Yahoo I knew is dead and probably has been since Mayer took over. She was brought in as a hatchet-woman to get an acquisition and got the job done.

<comment><USER31> >Perhaps Verizon can do something useful with the brand

They are abandoning the brand completely. After the merger goes through VZ will combined AOL and Yahoo! into a single new brand Oath. [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/03/technology/verizon- oath-y...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/03/technology/verizon-oath-yahoo- aol.html)

<comment><USER32> They are 100% not abandoning the brand-either yahoo or aol. Oath is just the umbrella organization.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> When she took over, there were numerous articles about how Yahoo's core business had negative value (the business plus the Alibaba investment was worth less than the Alibaba investment).

Since then she's given a lot of cash to shareholders, raised the stock price, and is selling the "negative value" core business for $4.5 billion.

That's an astounding success.

</comment><comment><USER34> If anyone knows what impact Verizon's ownership will have on Flickr, please could you share?

I've been on Flickr for a _long_ time now and it works well for me, should I be worried?

<comment><USER35> I jumped ship from it after the Verizon ownership. I only used Flickr for storage, not for the social aspect, so I just moved everything to Google Photos. I don't personally notice a huge decrease in quality in their compressed pictures, but your mileage may vary.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> > As expected, Marissa Mayer, who had been the CEO of Yahoo and recently > received a $23 million 'golden parachute' for her work there.

Nice!

I dream of a day when the Engineers who make the Tech Company what it is, are also offered 'Golden Parachutes' as part of a Job Offer.

</comment><comment><USER37> I give it about 3 years until Verizon unloads it onto someone else for half the price.

<comment><USER38> You have to consider things like:

\- Defaulting search for Android. \- Owning the search engine behind their DNS hijacking. \- Setting Yahoo as the default search when you install their ISP software. \- Being able to eliminate Verizon mail (and integrate with Yahoo's mail platform). \- Having less reliance on Google for mobile.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I've said it before, and I'll say it again.

Marissa Mayer took on a shit job to pull a losing company out of a hole. She knew what she was getting into, and she knew what was going to happen.

She deserves every penny for the reputation hit that she's taking over this. This entire thread is why she deserves the money. Most people in tech hate her for some reason. (Let's guess what that could be . . .)

Good for her for bargaining well and pulling a dream deal out of an assclown.

Yahoo was a joke when she took over, and now when she leaves it's a much more valuable joke. On paper, at least. But still a joke.

If you're going to leave google to run the laughing stock of the internet, you damn well better get paid the big bucks to get it sold for more than it has any right to be worth.

Good for her.

<shameless pandering> (Also, if you're reading, Marissa, hit me up. I know you're going to start something up soon. No way you are just going to sit still.) </shameless pandering>

<comment><USER40> With sums of this magnitude the notion of just deserts quickly becomes a fuzzy concept, if it really made sense to begin with. Nobody really deserves anything.

<comment><USER39> If I were going to take a very high-profile job as the head of a failing company with the mandate that I fix it, a high probability of failure, constant criticism from the press, the issues around being a woman leader in a major silicon valley company, and low expectation of another similar gig after, you bet your sweet ass I would negotiate a golden parachute.

Did she make some mistakes? Yeah. The weekend redesign of the logo was probably insulting to a lot of people at the company, and it seemed kind of ridiculous to people outside the company.

But the bottom line is that for the rest of her career she's going to be branded as the woman who failed to save Yahoo!. A much more likable Carly Fiorina. Likable, but still a failure.

That's a shit thing to have to live with, but it's a risk she took. Who is going to hire her next? She's way over qualified for most positions in the tech industry, and she will always be perceived as under qualified as a CEO.

You take a risk like that, you deserve the reward she got. Her career is toast for a while unless she starts something up on her own, which she has the money to do.

What kind of package would you trade in exchange for likely never being able to work in your capacity anymore and having your name very publicly and widely shit all over?

I'd take everything I could get if I thought that was going to happen. The board made a deal with her, and she took it. I don't see a problem. Good for her.

Also, considering so many of the comments in this thread about how this has nothing to do with her being a woman--what do you think the HN threads are going to look like when Kalanick gets kicked out of Uber and makes millions?

Guarantee you there won't be any criticism. The narrative will be that he was a smart guy who made a savvy deal.

<comment><USER40> I didn't mean this as a personal attack on Mayer. I actually quite like her. It's the whole system that has evolved into something bizarre. In general terms, how can a person deserve a salary equivalent to the lifetime earnings of thousands of people when it is not even clear if their performance actually helped or hindered a company and to what extent? Mayer and Kalanick are just a few examples in a long list, but an illustrative one since she actually did explicitly fail (even if the job itself was indeed very difficult from the get-go).

Sexism certainly has an influence on coverage, but it's also a red herring. The real question is the absurd pay packages in general, and the disturbing belief that these are somehow justified. It's not only a recent phenomenon but also a localized one, and CEOs with less gargantuan salaries seem to be incentivized just fine. In Mayer's case, it's hard to frame her decision as some kind of huge sacrifice, in a world where most people have to scrounge for a meager living. I doubt she'll lose much sleep over negative press and feelings that will be forgotten after the next controversy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I am still waiting for Silicon Valley TV show to pick up this vast subject of Myer's tenure at Yahoo into one of its episodes.

<comment><USER42> You think they are brave enough to touch the "inspirational female leader" topic? Theranos and HP would be enough alone...

<comment><USER43> It doesn't have to be about a female leader. It can be about a grand old company that has fallen on hard times and whose board ponies up big bux to attract a promising young CEO. Unfortunately the promising young CEO can't deliver a return to the glory days, so the second best is a carefully negotiated sale.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> They should probably just end all fantasy baseball leagues for this year too. I'd hate to have this year count.

In all seriousness, Yahoo! has done an amazing job with their fantasy sports.

</comment><comment><USER45> I thought the job of a CEO was to increase shareholder value. Yahoo stock is up roughly 230% since she was officially signed on as CEO. Sounds like she did her job to me.

<comment><USER46> All of that increase is due to the increase in value of the Alibaba stock - which was pushed through by Yang long before she got there. If she hadn't sold half of their Alibaba holdings when she got there, the value of the company would have been about double.

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2014/09/30/how- jerry...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2014/09/30/how-jerry-yang- made-the-most-lucrative-bet-in-tech-history/)

<comment><USER47> Mayer didn't sell the 40% stake. The deal was begun and going through before she was CEO. It was only finalized and completed with her as CEO. Not like she was going to be allowed to stop the deal. The bad board and activist investors are the ones to blame.

<comment><USER46> >...Not like she was going to be allowed to stop the deal.

I am not sure how you can be so sure about that. I wasn't privy to the discussions with her and the board, were you? If she recognized how bad of an idea that was she could have made it a condition of taking the job. My guess is that she saw the 7 billion from selling their position as free money that would take the pressure off of her for a while.

<comment><USER47> No of course I'm not privy to everything. It was known the board wanted to get rid of some of the Alibaba stake for cash. So they just wouldn't hire Mayer if she wouldn't allow the deal as part of her being CEO. You can of course say we don't know for sure but if we know the board really wants some cash from Alibaba and has kicked out Jerry Yang already, then it isn't hard to think that Mayer hasn't no leverage here.

Also just for basic timeline sake - in 2012, the deal was announced in the media in May, Mayer is CEO in July, and the deal completes in Sept.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Verizon is combining the AOL and Yahoo operations and calling the new organization "Oath"

<comment><USER49> My initial thought was, "How did they misspell OAuth like that?"

<comment><USER50> Also isn't "OATH" like the group that standardized TOTP?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> I for one hope this works out well, more diversity is good for consumers. IMHO, anything that chips away at the dominance of Google and Facebook are positive too.

<comment><USER52> how is two major corporations merging an anti-monopoly move?

<comment><USER47> The point OP was making is that this gives the internet ad industry a 3rd major player. Still far short of FB and Google but a lot closer than anyone else.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Marissa Mayer was already on the sinking ship - but I admire her ambition on trying to make that thing work. God speed on her future en-devours for sure.

</comment><comment><USER51> I can't help but think about the Microsoft buyout offer back in 2008. From a $44 billion dollar offer to an offer 1/10th the value 9 years later.

[1] [https://techcrunch.com/2008/02/01/wow-microsoft- offers-446-b...](https://techcrunch.com/2008/02/01/wow-microsoft- offers-446-billion-to-acquire-yahoo/)

<comment><USER47> Jerry Yang, the most competent higher up at Yahoo for the past decade and a half, is the one who said no to the buy out. And rightfully so. The Alibaba and Yahoo Japan stakes would be worth over $80B today. Unfortunately the board and some activist investors first kicked Jerry out and then continued on with selling almost half of the Alibaba stake.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> > _Those who are keeping jobs in the media division in the newly merged > operation include Jared Grusd leading the News vertical (including > yahoo.com, aol.com, HuffPost, and Yahoo News); Geoff Reiss leading the > Sports vertical; David Karp leading the People and Community vertical > (including Tumblr, Polyvore, Cabana, Yahoo Answers, Yahoo View, and Kanvas); > Andy Serwer leading Finance media (including Yahoo Finance and Autoblog); > Michael LaGuardia leading Finance product and utilities; Ned Desmond leading > TechCrunch and Engadget; Alex Wallace leading OTT video production & > distribution as well as lifestyle & entertainment (that includes BUILD, > RYOT, Yahoo Celebrity, Yahoo Style, Yahoo BeuYahoo TV, Yahoo Movies, Yahoo > Music, and Yahoo Entertainment); Dave Bottoms heading up distribution > products (Newsroom and video OTT products) as well as growth, monetization, > and syndication; Tim Tully leading all of engineering; Dave McDowell leading > subscriptions, commerce, and customer care (including Yahoo Shopping and AOL > Shopping); and Mary Bui-Pham leading our operations (including design, UXRA, > analytics, and program management)._

The problem with consolidations like this into bigger and bigger conglomerates is that it reduces editorial independence in favor of a false sense of corporate unification among all the "verticals". The heavy and overweight company has a "great" vision which involves being everything to everybody. But that never works. End result will likely end up providing a lukewarm mediocrity in them all.

What Yahoo probably should have done was divest; instead it allowed itself to be swallowed whole by an ISP whose sole goal (as evidenced with its malfeasance to destroy Net Neutrality) is be able to selectively prioritize traffic in the ways that are most profitable to them... Ergo, the objective of this kind of empire is not to track down the truth and inform people about what is really going on, but to entertain and distract.

<comment><USER55> I dunno, did you really look at Yahoo for content that profits from editorial independence?

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> What if Mayer's actual role was determined by Google? could it have simply been "keep them alive so we're not viewed as a monopoly"? Or maybe "put them out of business but make it look good"?

I don't think that anything quite so evil went on but you have to wonder, given Mayer's investment in Google, whether there weren't sub-conscious components to her decision making. One advantage to hiring a successful CEO from another industry is the lack of this background (of course, one of the disadvantages is Scully).

</comment><comment><USER57> She should become COO of Uber. Perfect!

<comment><USER58> Not quite related but I always thought Sheryl Sandberg would be a great CEO of Uber. Of course, I don't think she would want the job.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> What do you think is going to happen to Tumblr?

Tumblr has a massive audience, but some of the worst tech among the social media, and now it seems like it might get abandoned completely. So people will eventually migrate to something else, right?

What can other platforms, like Medium, do about this? If you had a platofrm that might be valuable for a similar usecase(though, hopefully, much better), what would you be doing right now? Any ideas or advice?

<comment><USER47> Does it still have a massive audience? I would think it has lost a lot since Yahoo wrote of 2/3 of its value already.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> Didn't Microsoft extend a $40+B (however hostile) bid a decade ago or so? I'm still at a loss as to why Jang et al didn't sell then...

<comment><USER47> Just going to mostly reiterate a previous comment - Jerry Yang, the most competent higher up at Yahoo for the past decade and a half, is the one who said no to the buy out. And rightfully so. The Alibaba and Yahoo Japan stakes would be worth around $80B today if I'm not mistaken. Unfortunately the board and some activist investors first kicked Jerry out and then continued on with selling almost half of the Alibaba stake.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> 1996-2017. Rip. [https://goo.gl/images/WYRMqj](https://goo.gl/images/WYRMqj)

</comment><comment><USER62> Question - Can someone explain the $4.5B valuation of Yahoo-Verizon deal versus the $49.46B Market cap of Yahoo! Inc. ticker on Nasdaq. Thanks.

<comment><USER63> Yahoo owns 15% of Alibaba, due to an investment done a long time ago. Alibaba is considered to be quite valuable -- so they are spinning off the core of the company in order to be able to behave more as the investment company they became, since they couldn't extract the Alibaba shares without paying a massive amount of capital gains tax on the increase in value.

<comment><USER64> So if someone is doing market cap of Alibaba + Yahoo based on Nasdaq calculations, he is counting Alibaba twice? (or 15% twice for this one). How do you calculate the global market cap without falling into this duplication.

<comment><USER47> Oh right. Either I'm not thinking right or I'm also confused now with what you're saying. I hope someone can respond.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> Yahoo thought the media they provided users was important, Google thought user data was important -- it's possible Mayer tried to bring some of Google to Yahoo. But I don't think it was enough to bring Yahoo anywhere close to competing.

</comment><comment><USER66> For 2 weeks now I'm fighting an enormous amount of spam that start popping up from nowhere and I did trail-back in my memory to not find a single instance in last 3 months where I would give out my email address to anyone new.

Its insane how much of it goes to my direct mailbox right in front of my eyes! Some even have "viagra" word in subjects, they come from weird addresses like firstname.lastname@example.com and open up with images and everything ready for my click.

I suspect Verizon is already working hard on break the remaining thing that worked fine until now - yahoo mailbox.

But I'm fine with that. I had it in my pipeline to move out of them for so long now another incentive to actually do so :)

</comment><comment><USER67> I noticed the YHOO stock ticker is still active. Is that now the empty shell that still has the Alibaba stake, or something else entirely?

<comment><USER68> Mostly Alibaba stake, and they also still own Yahoo Japan. I guess they might change their ticker symbol, since they announced a name change to "Altaba"?

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> Does anyone know any significative achievement made by Mayer in Yahoo?

<comment><USER70> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14545456](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14545456)

</comment></comment><comment><USER71> The whole Net Neutrality situation just got more interesting.

</comment><comment><USER72> "Ye to hona hi tha "

English : this was going to happen anyway

</comment><comment><USER73> Another empire fall down. Bless!

</comment><comment><USER74> does this mean i should stop using Flickr as backup?

</comment><comment><USER75> Wow

</comment><comment><USER76> Savvy PR move doing this on the same day the Uber report drops and Jeff Sessions testifies in the Senate

<comment><USER77> Why ?

<comment><USER78> It's a way of hiding/burying information. The info is legally required to be disclosed, but with so much else going on the news is unlikely to be widely covered.

<comment><USER79> This wouldn't have been widely covered regardless.

Nobody cares about Yahoo! anymore except in niche tech circles. That's why you're reading this on techcrunch.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER80> Whoa! The beginning of the end of the end.

<comment><USER81> When will the end of the beginning begin or end?

</comment></comment><comment><USER82> I love how everyone here thinks they can do better. Yahoo was a deadman walking before she took over. Overall she did what she was suppose to do as a CEO of any company, return value to the shareholders. Now you can disagree with that being the goal, but it is the way it works today. By that measure it worked. Is it the right thing long term, most likely not. We have lost focus on long term planing in favor of quarterly reporting. It is the world we live in. Please go can change it, but don't sit here and say you could do better as I do not see any of you saying you have the job as a CEO of a multi-billion dollar company.

Oh, I expect this to get down voted to oblivion. Prove me wrong.

<comment><USER83> Once more, from the guidelines!

        Please resist commenting about being downvoted. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.

        Please don't bait other users by inviting them to downvote you or proclaim that you expect to get downvoted.</comment></comment>


What I Learned Writing a Haiku Every Day for 100 Days - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/the-lighthouse/what-i-learned-writing-a-haiku-every-day-for-100-days-ad23865ef760

<comment><USER2> I would have thought that the difference between Haiku and Senryū would maybe be something to learn after writing so many.</comment>


Piracy Advert Used Stolen Music - <AUTHOR> http://www.atomicmpc.com.au/News/309432,piracy-advert-used-stolen-music.aspx

<comment><USER2> Surely the MPAA are on the hook for this. It doesn't matter if they bought it legitimately as they'd still be infringing - in the same way the MPAA can claim that your download of a torrent of a movie [made by employees of one of the companies it represents] is infringing despite the torrent site not having informed you that it's not a legally acquired work.

If the argument "we didn't know" works for them then surely that sets precedent for everyone else. If it doesn't work then damages of 10¢ for every instance of infringement of the work would seem reasonable. That's for every DVD they make with it on, for every showing in a movie theater, for every use in advertising ...

though it looks like the MPAA have already set a damage level of $30k per instances [TorrentSpy case as reported at arstechnica]. Now last week the top ten selling movies [which may not be all MPAA ones of course, nor carry the infringed work, but this is just for scale] had sold collectively about 15 million units in the US. From that I'd expect damages of the order of 30k * 10 * 15M = 4.5 trillion, or 25 years of the MPAA's total revenue [as reported on their website] to be reasonable. /tongueincheek

</comment><comment><USER3> What we really need to do is make take these things out of the realm of the tech press, and into the realm of the main stream media. Make sure that every person in America, from the average Joe to the Congress-critter on Capitol Hill, knows that the MPAA/RIAA are hypocrites when they talk about IP rights to benefit all IP holders. They care nothing to the rights of others, and will run roughshod over everyone that they can, so long as they aren't called on it.

Not only this, we need to make sure that the execs at the MPAA, the RIAA, and the studios/labels that they represent feel personally embarrassed over these incidences.

 _Then_ we might see some change. Otherwise, we're just rah-rah-ing ourselves while they take what they want.

<comment><USER4> No they won't. The populace doesn't care. Even on issues that affect _far_ more people, they're relatively mum. Most people don't have strong opinions about the *AA, and there isn't enough controversy to justify any sort of news coverage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's even worse. When the artist complained during a TV interview [the Dutch MPAA board member] Gerrits suggested that the composer should sign his track over to High Fashion Music, a label owned by the board member himself and one that would take 33% of Rietveldt's royalties for its trouble."</comment>


Ask HN: What's your best framework setup experience? - seph-reed I've got a framework, I want it to be really smooth to get up and running.  There are many ways I've seen this done in other projects, some better than others, for instance:
1. clone a boiler-plate repo
2. run an installer
3. follow extensive start-up docs
-----
All of these have pros and cons, but I'd like to hear your subjective opinion on the nicest setup experiences you've had. <comment><AUTHOR> Like, you care about it, therefore the comment. Just go ahead and put it out, no need to reinvent wheel ([https://jamdocs.netlify.app/](https://jamdocs.netlify.app/)). If something is missing you can add it later. You will be expanding it anyway over time.

Some very obvious examples: [https://svelte.dev/](https://svelte.dev/) [https://reactjs.org/](https://reactjs.org/) [https://vuejs.org/](https://vuejs.org/)</comment>


The inner experience of time – a wide range of perception models reviewed (2009) - <AUTHOR> http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/364/1525/1955#ref-list-1 <comment><AUTHOR> PDF: [http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/364/1525/1955...](http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/364/1525/1955.full.pdf)</comment>


Best Practices for Speeding Up Your Web Site - <AUTHOR> http://developer.yahoo.com/performance/rules.html

<comment><USER2> dupe?</comment>