Agbogbloshie, the world's largest e-waste dump - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agbogbloshie <comment><USER2> I've spent some time there and I can share a first-hand perspective.

It looks like a dump in the pictures, but it's not. It's an active scrapyard. No material stays in Agbogbloshie for very long. Electronics show up, are mined for raw materials in crude fashion, and then the raw material is sold. Unprofitable material like copper cable jackets are burned.

Some of the footage I shot is in this video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMwLUnd_ydI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMwLUnd_ydI)

The other thing about Agbogbloshie nobody talks about: encircling the scrapyard is a huge repair yard where people fix everything they possibly can. It's only the stuff that can't get fixed and resold that goes to the urban mine.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I've seen a fair bit of poverty in my travels around Africa and elsewhere, but I'm still rather astonished by how utterly and totally low-tech and unorganized this is: it's _literally_ just a bunch of people scrabbling about heaps of garbage on an open field, only that garbage has been carted in from the other side of the world!

For example, you'd think it would be worth it for somebody to set up some sort of smelter where you could bring your cables to get the plastic melted off, but when labor is essentially free and the competition is Darwinian, it's unlikely any scavenger would pay for such a service when they could just sit around an open flame instead.

And for an even more Dantean version of this, Glawegger's _Workingman 's Death_ covers a Nigerian slaughterfield in Port Harcourt. (And yes, the footage is pretty damn disturbing.)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukSAfBulphU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukSAfBulphU)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workingman%27s_Death](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workingman%27s_Death)

<comment><USER3> Given the low tech nature, a lot of the 'value' could have already been extracted via any widespread method, and this is the byproduct of already processed recyclables being sold on.

I highly recommend the book Junkyard Planet by Adam Minter, who follows the global scrap trade.

Link to his site: [http://shanghaiscrap.com/books/junkyard- planet/](http://shanghaiscrap.com/books/junkyard-planet/) Link to the book on Amazon: [http://www.amazon.com/Junkyard-Planet-Travels-Billion- Dollar...](http://www.amazon.com/Junkyard-Planet-Travels-Billion-Dollar- Trash/dp/1480592870)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is something I can't get out of my head: as a tech user (and as an IT worker), I am an active part of the e-waste problem.

I always find it hard to relate to some tech enthusiasts that often appear to me like compulsive, irresponsible buyers.

I can't help but ask myself: can a culture shift within the IT community lead to raise awareness among the larger public?

<comment><USER5> When I saw the post on the fp of HN, my first reaction was "hey wait I know that name... ohh..ooohhh". (Disclaimer: Ghanaian here. Currently an SE in the US )

I think a culture shift in the IT community will definitely make the message loud, but the truth is that this dump comes from businesses who deal primarily with the average consumer, not the tech-savvy minority. And until the majority cares, nothing is going to change unfortunately. Every step in that direction helps though, by all means, we as a community need to be much more vocal about this (well, be concerned first of all)

<comment><USER6> "Early adopters" are a much smaller segment of the market, true, but they also buy a ton _more stuff_ than regular people by definition. :)

<comment><USER7> Without seeing numbers, I would highly doubt that premise. Sure, the maybe a couple hundred thousand geeks will buy a few more laptops and phones, but the couple hundred million consumers will surely win by volume, no? (Strictly speaking US here)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Some impressive pictures from Kevin McElvaney:

[http://www.derkevin.com/Agbogbloshie.html](http://www.derkevin.com/Agbogbloshie.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Video too: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSbPjtY2YPg&feature=youtu.be](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSbPjtY2YPg&feature=youtu.be)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Ok, so how can we make cleaning this mess up profitable?

<comment><USER10> First, it is already profitable depending on which mess you're talking about. I'm defining the mess as the glut of used electronics in the world. The scrape yards aren't burning things and employing people to simply burn things and spend money. They get money from the scrap.

Second, if we define the mess as the act of burning things to mine the valuable minerals within, we have those already too. Recycling in US is about a 5 Billion dollar industry[1]. Sure some of that gets exported, but much of it doesn't. We refine the materials here in a regulated, probably safe way.

Third, the issue is more around developing countries pushing their garbage to Africa. That is a complex solution. The producing country has to see it as a problem (their problem). They have to be willing to create infrastructure to process the e-waste. They also have to adjust their present manufacturing capabilities to use recycled goods rather than transform raw materials.

There might be a market solution for the third point. Maybe? A lot of that comes with time and maturity. The US polluted a lot. We didn't really start to care until the '70s. It then took twenty years to get cleaner air, ground and water. That's from an already advanced economy. Developing markets will not likely put the money into that while they try to get their people out of the muck (literally).

[1] [http://inhabitat.com/study-finds-that-the-us-electronics- rec...](http://inhabitat.com/study-finds-that-the-us-electronics-recycling- industry-is-booming-with-billions-in-profits/)

<comment><USER11> > The scrape yards aren't burning things and employing people to simply burn > things and spend money. They get money from the scrap.

It sounds to me like they aren't employing anyone. They have a big scrap heap, and desperately poor individuals pick through it on their own accord hoping to scavenge some valuable metal they can sell.

To put it in terms startup types can relate to: The trash-pickers are independent entrepreneurs and the scrap yard is like Uber, facilitating their trade.

<comment><USER12> > The trash-pickers are independent entrepreneurs and the scrap yard is like > Uber, facilitating their trade.

[http://globalrec.org/2013/07/31/philippines-waste-pickers- fr...](http://globalrec.org/2013/07/31/philippines-waste-pickers-frame-common- agenda-fight-for-right-to-socio-legal-recognition/)

Don't joke. Scrap pickers really do believe themselves to be independent entrepreneurs with an important job to do. You push on them, they push back. Its their way of life.

<comment><USER11> They should unionize and demand safer working conditions as a group.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> These western descriptions of Agbogloshie are really becoming a farce. It's the scrap dump where African generate cars and old appliances go. It is not the repair hub. There are ZERO sea containers of Western e-junk showing up. NONE. The place handles less per day than the average e-waste processor in Indiana. The World Bank stats show that Accra has 4.5M residents, and the majority of households have had TV and computers for a decade. They buy used working electronics because the average income is under $3K. But it's obscene that environmentalists go to a dump and take pictures of kids and raise money and don't tell the truth about the waste origins and don't share any money with the kids. I'm going back at the end of the month. Just stop it people. (With all due respect, You too, Kyle). Your video says you saw no evidence of repair, it's the scrapyard it isn't where the repair is done and it isn't where the sea containers arrive.

And this has all been painstakingly documented in major reports!

[http://www.basel.int/Portals/4/Basel%20Convention/docs/eWast...](http://www.basel.int/Portals/4/Basel%20Convention/docs/eWaste/E-wasteAssessmentGhana.pdf)

[http://www.basel.int/Portals/4/Basel%20Convention/docs/eWast...](http://www.basel.int/Portals/4/Basel%20Convention/docs/eWaste/EwasteAfrica_Nigeria- Assessment.pdf)

And the original source of the statistic that it's the biggest e-waste dump in the world, junking 80%, made it up. Look!

[http://retroworks.blogspot.com/2013/05/basel-action- network-...](http://retroworks.blogspot.com/2013/05/basel-action-network- explains-80-or.html)

This is environmental malpractice.

</comment><comment><USER14> I have a cardboard box with a decade's worth of personal e waste. I see articles like this and wonder if I would better serve the world by simply putting it in the dumpster. It would likely pollute our ground water locally, but perhaps that's better than being burned in Ghana? What do HNers do with their e waste?

</comment><comment><USER15> Yes, this is a terrible problem, but: what's the solution?

<comment><USER16> Government regulation and laws.

Really with pollution the incentive in capitalism is to just pollute, and not deal with waste properly. It is cheaper almost always and following regulations if they even exist usually eats into profit.

I used to work for an environmental engineering firm that had to do some site clean-ups in a previous career. Companies hate being forced to pay to clean up their messes, its one of the big incentives not to pollute, as that certainly eats into profits.

creating less waste is a good goal too (shaving weight from a phone your going to sell millions of saves a lot of resources) or as a consumer buying less means you'll throw away less (swap in an ssd for your hard drive to keep that computer another year..).

Computers and phones keep getting better and better (more energy efficient too), so there is a strong motivation to upgrade (although this is less stong then it used to be).

<comment><USER17> Yep, government regulation and laws. The question is: which government?

Normally one would expect that in the areas were this work is done, the local governments take care of environmental and work safety regulations and laws. But they don't - due to greed, corruption and whatever.

So should, for example, OECD countries forbid export of electric waste to non- OECD countries, to enforce proper disposal of hazardous materials and recycling? I don't have very clear answers to this, because there are obvious reasons both ways (do we want to exclude poor countries from the world markets?). But I think it is a good question.

<comment><USER18> There are existig laws to prevent e-waste dumping -- most of the e-waste from the EU in Agbogbloshie was illegally exported.

[http://www.euractiv.com/sustainability/new-law-seeks- limit-d...](http://www.euractiv.com/sustainability/new-law-seeks-limit- dumping-wast-news-514282)

<comment><USER17> Yes, in addition to laws and regulations, there needs to be enforcement, otherwise they do nothing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Four comprehensive studies have found that 85%, 87%, 91%, or 93% is reused. The sea containers go to another part of town, where the geeks and technicians are. Agbogbloshie is mostly managing used scrap (cars, appliances, electronics) generated by the 4.5M inhabitants of Accra. Over half the households in Accra had television in 2003.

Links to Ghana specific studies here [http://news.slashdot.org/story/14/06/21/231250/uk-man- senten...](http://news.slashdot.org/story/14/06/21/231250/uk-man-sentenced- to-16-months-for-exporting-e-waste-despite-91-reuse)

</comment><comment><USER19> There are homegrown solutions in the pipeline, I worked with a couple of guys on a project there:

[http://accrareport.com/feature/agbogbloshie-a-local- solution...](http://accrareport.com/feature/agbogbloshie-a-local-solution-for- a-global-tragedy/)

[http://accrareport.com/feature/e-waste-in-ghana-where- death-...](http://accrareport.com/feature/e-waste-in-ghana-where-death-is-the- price-of-living-another-day/)

</comment><comment><USER20> Africa is the shame of western society

<comment><USER20> You can downvote me, but that's the point. Western countries go on exploiting Africa for its space and its resources, and then can't handle their inhabitants migrations. A shame, what else.</comment></comment>


Equity Investment Simulation: Illustrating Dilution - <AUTHOR> http://www.ownyourventure.com/equitySim.html <comment><USER2> Note in particular how option pools dilute founders, not investors. My understanding is that is actually negotiable, but it is an easy way for unsavvy founders to have the valuation they negotiate not mean what they think it means. (Ditto not understanding what Pre- and post-money valuations mean.)

Example: suppose I, a clueless tech guy, am negotiating with a savvy and aggressive money-guy. Assume for sake of argument we're raising $1 million, and my naive thoughts are that "The company is worth $5 million."

Me: "The company is worth $5 million."

Him: "We can totally work with a $5 million post-money valuation."

Me: "Great."

Almost everyone on HN knows I screwed myself. You think I just priced the company down to $4 million, right? Yeah, even worse.

Him: "So you know, it is customary for companies in Silicon Valley to make generous equity grants to attract and retain employees."

Me: "Oh totally."

Him: "The standard is 20%. You could get a lower number, but honestly, you'd look like a greedy bastard out to screw his employees, and our firm would probably not do business with you."

Me: "Oh, I am not greedy."

Him: "Great! So, $5 million post minus $1 million investment leaves $4 million Pre, reserving 20% of the post for employees, means you have $3 million in equity in this company."

Me: "Waitwaitwait, that sounds..."

Him: "That sounds like I just made you a millionaire. Son, you don't want to be unreasonable here. This is how business has always been done in the Valley. Besides, 100% of nothing is nothing. Don't worry about a bit of dilution, it happens, worry about that huge pile of money you'll have when you IPO."

Edit: I originally wrote it as 20% of the Pre, but checking with VentureHacks suggests that it would probably be calculated as 20% of the post. Easy to screw this stuff up, right? It's almost like it is designed that way...

<comment><USER3> One thing I've always been curious about: Why not just have a large option pool, with the condition that in a liquidity event all unused equity in the option pool goes back to the common stockholders?

<comment><USER4> Because the common stockholders don't have a seat at the table. Instead, when the company decides to sell, the execs fully dilute the common by granting themselves the remainder of the pool (with acceleration on change of control, of course).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Perfect, something I needed to model out what amount I would need to raise, how to compensate employees and possible co-founder split in the equity. Very helpful, thanks for sharing!

</comment><comment><USER6> looks really cool and useful. One gripe: 3D pie charts are evil.

[http://www.gilliganondata.com/index.php/2009/12/02/how- succi...](http://www.gilliganondata.com/index.php/2009/12/02/how-succinctly- can-i-explain-why-pie-charts-are-evil/)

Use bar charts instead, or if you're really stuck on the pie chart thing, don't make it 3D

</comment><comment><USER7> I don't get why this expresses stuff in terms of percentages instead of absolute dollar amounts. I can't buy a house with 15% of a company but I can buy a house with a million dollars.

<comment><USER8> if you own less than controlling interest in a company that has not gone public, my understanding is that you only own anything at all at the whim of the person (or group of people) that does have controlling interest; My understanding is that there is really no way to make it so that the people that own the company, legally, can't screw you if they want. The whole system is based on trust.

The smaller your percentage, the smaller your vote, and the less power you have when negotiating with others to form a coalition that would have controlling interest in the company; So yeah, I think your percentage does matter a lot.

<comment><USER9> If you take reasonable precautions.

A) There are few legal ways of really screwing over investors. B) You can sue for most of the legal ways.

Unforgettably, it's vary easy to screw yourself over when dealing with a start up. But, the real problem IMO is that employ's generally have less leverage and can't afford to sue. "We got an offer that's very good for us and acceptable to the investors. So, sure you get nothing but I don't need to care because this is no longer my company have a nice life."

<comment><USER8> As for A, how do I keep the majority shareholders from voting to bring in expensive management, rent expensive offices and equipment, then issuing more stock when they run out of money and repeating the process until I am diluted to nothing?

I mean, I've worked at many places where that looks like the company plan; they spend all their revenue, which is fine, but then they act like the investment money is revenue as well. It's like they plan for explosive growth, which is great, but they buy stuff that only makes sense if that explosive growth were real, and it ends up killing the company when the growth turns out to be only reasonable.

Sure, if the majority shareholders end up voting themselves huge bonuses or spending most of the company money on consultants that happen to be their friends, sure then I can sue them and maybe get something back; but the first case I describe is far more common, and the result, really, is the same.

<comment><USER9> The board of directors is based off of stock holders and can always fire the CEO and bring someone new in. But, there is also legal protections for minority shareholders should the majority shareholders decide to dilute the minority shareholders etc. Most notably they can forcibly sell there shares forcing them to dissolve the company if necessarily. But, they can also sue for damages should management fail to protect their interests.

See: C. United States [http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/law/lwsch/journals/bciclr/23_2/...](http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/law/lwsch/journals/bciclr/23_2/03_TXT.htm) _As dissolution is viewed as a drastic remedy,169 courts and legislatures have created remedies for oppressed minority shareholders that fall short of requiring the extinction of the corporation.170 Examples of alternative remedies generally include judicial action by means of an injunction or order, appointment of provisional directors or custodians, and buyouts.171 Buyouts, however, have been the focus of alternative relief.172_

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Aack, 3D pie chart... Arguably the worst of commonly-available plot types.</comment>


EleVR leaving YC Research - <AUTHOR> http://elevr.com/elevr-leaving-ycr/ <comment><USER2> I'd suggest that maybe expanding YCR to YCombinator Research might have been a better title, no way to edit a title though alas.

Sad to see their VR work go unfunded now though. There have been several opinions voiced recently that VR is effectively dead; I think it's just that we don't really know how to use it best yet - and this group was one of the only groups I was aware of taking a full head-first jump into figuring out what can work in VR</comment>


Literally IPv6 - <AUTHOR> http://labs.apnic.net/blabs/?p=309

<comment><USER2> > and to send my mail I use STMP

I think the author means SMTP...</comment>


Our entire database was maliciously deleted - <AUTHOR> https://sendtodropbox.com/update <comment><USER2> This is why you should _always_ have backups.

I'm astonished that this post doesn't have any discussion on the security implications: they _say_ that the database was not copied, but I'd still be nervous about this--presumably it contained access tokens to Dropbox as well as email addresses. If it didn't I'd still want to hear verification of that.

Their homepage claims "Secure" as one of their four main features, which is rather belied by the presence of a default administrative user on their database server--not to mention that the database itself seems to have been publicly accessible from the larger internet. This seems like it would have been prevented by simply putting a firewall on the server and not opening unnecessary ports.

</comment><comment><USER3> > I believe MongoDB shares some blame for the 20,000+ databases that were > compromised for shipping a product with insecure default settings

No, its your job to have backup and proper review of _your_ infrastructure, not someone else.

<comment><USER2> Here's an extensive discussion about this problem, with good points on both sides: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13374715](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13374715)

<comment><USER4> The biggest point is to at least take your own backups, and better yet try to restore from them once in awhile. Even more betters, have a look at your security settings.

<comment><USER3> And take off this "secure" info from this page.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


One Kings Lane, Once Valued at $900M, Is Likely to Sell $150M or Less - <AUTHOR> http://recode.net/2016/01/06/one-kings-lane-once-valued-at-900-million-is-likely-to-sell-for-fraction-of-that/ <comment><USER2> Color me not shocked. One Kings Lane just seemed like a rehash of another overvalued flop, Fab.com</comment>


Show HN: Collapsible, easier-to-read HN threads - <AUTHOR>

I put together a simple collapsible comment browser for HN earlier today, as I'd found long HN comment threads to be somewhat difficult to parse ("Wait, what is this guy replying to?")
It's written 100 lines of javascript + jQuery, and the more enterprising could probably turn the code a bookmarklet as it can run entirely on the client side. Also works fairly well on iOS.
Hat Tip: Built on the Hacker News API: http://api.ihackernews.com/. Great stuff, although if you click a link and nothing appears, it's probably because the API returned a server error.
http://hncomments.com/ <comment><USER2> Crashes a few times upon initial loading. Had to refresh. After it did load, I find the examples are much harder to read than helpful. There are a couple of Chrome plugins I currently use for hacker news for helping identify new comments as well as collapse comments that works out well without having to leave the actual hacker news site.

1] [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hockhafcdegocajmjh...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hockhafcdegocajmjhafgjncjpodihkd?hl=en)

2] [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/imeeonmdbakdmilnnc...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/imeeonmdbakdmilnnccaddiplgjjhbog?hl=en)

Those are the ones I use and they work fairly well. Of course that doesn't actually help stuff like iOS browsing but it doesn't bother me too much.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Clickable: <http://hncomments.com/>

Example: <http://hncomments.com/2530663></comment>


Writing functional DSLs for business domains - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/bigdatarepublic/writing-functional-dsls-for-business-domains-1bccc5d3f62b <comment><AUTHOR> Converging to an elegant design remains one of the hardest technical challenges of software engineering to me. I found the approach of trying to find a DSL in code helpful, and often applicable to the core domain problem a service is trying to solve. Especially well suited for rule engines/matchers, pipelines, or sequential process descriptions. And in fact, libraries for those domains that use a DSL are often the ones I keep coming back to.</comment>


Julia 0.6.0-rc1 new language features - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/JuliaLang/julia/blob/v0.6.0-rc1/NEWS.md <comment><USER2> There are lots of exciting new parts to Julia 0.6. I believe the linked NEWS.md is still in the process of being compiled and refined throughout the release-canditate cycles. Some of my favorite parts:

* Actually being able to safely redefine methods. Julia is now much more dynamic (and correct!).

* Dot-broadcasting is absolutely amazing and way more capable in 0.6: [https://julialang.org/blog/2017/01/moredots](https://julialang.org/blog/2017/01/moredots)

* The `@views` macro is a very small addition but much appreciated.

</comment><comment><USER3> Sorry not to see a rehaul of the module system. I've talked to the devs and know its not a direction they want to take but I really wish they had tried to make Julia a language you can build modular applications around (like Python) instead of an all batteries included runtime (like R).

IMHO I think thats the sweetspot that could have been what many scientific computing developers are looking for. Python is good but has its problems when doing scientific computing (most addressed and fixed by julia btw) but you still use python because its much better than julia for building modular applications, and you use R because its much better than julia at doing exploratative work. So in the end julia is in this limbo of having fixed most of the problems with python but not being able to be used as a replacement for python.

Thats just my opinion though. I'm sure others will disagree :)

<comment><USER4> Are you talking about breaking modules (like linalg) out of base or changing the semantics and mechanics of modules?

I think the former is planned before 1.0?

If the latter, what do you think is the issue? Do you not like julia packages are separated into interface/abstract implementation and then concrete packages that can then have submodules that call each other?

Seems more modular than working around a python inheritance mess.

<comment><USER3> "Are you talking about breaking modules (like linalg) out of base or changing the semantics and mechanics of modules?"

Well, I'd be all for making Base as small as possible since I'm not big on monolithic standard libs and think everything possible should more or less be a package which you can include on a per project level.

As for the semantics and mechanics, I'd like to have the ability to have true public/private like rust or go, so that you can have a tightly defined public api and be sure your users only have access to that. Also I'd like to see the whole thing simplified it is way more complex than it needs to be. Just have import act like a function for example it could take a module, a keyword, and a vector like this:

        import MyModule, :all             # import all public defs
        import MyModule, [a, b, K]        # use as MyModule.a, MyModule.b, MyModule.K
        import MyModule, :alias, [a,b,K]  # use as a, b, K

compare the above to [https://docs.julialang.org/en/stable/manual/modules/](https://docs.julialang.org/en/stable/manual/modules/) as far as I can tell the functionality is the same. Anyway those were some of the things that I didn't like about it and would have changed.

<comment><USER5> Adding enforced access controls is certainly within the realm of possible future language enhancements, as is some tweaking of the module and import system (I'd like to collapse `import` into `using`, for example). But you seem to be doing a bit of a bait-and-switch in your comparison here: is Julia being compared with permissive, dynamic languages like Python and Ruby, or static languages with strict access controls like C++, Rust and Go? In terms of permissions and enforcement, Julia is quite similar to Python where access control is entirely by convention. In terms of binding resolution and modularity, it is quite similar to C++. People seem to be able to build large systems in both languages fairly effectively.

<comment><USER3> "But you seem to be doing a bit of a bait-and-switch in your comparison here"

You're right I might be conflating the comparison but does it matter? JavaScript is a dynamic language which allows strict access controls (although its semi-hacky to do it).

Also, when is access control by convention a good idea? Sure you can live with it as Python and Ruby devs like myself do, but compared to languages which give you stricter controls like Erlang (which is also dynamic) its pretty obviously worse when it comes to building large software systems because it weakens the guarantees you can make about your libraries and the libraries you use to build those libraries.

"People seem to be able to build large systems in both languages fairly effectively."

People can and have built large systems in assembly. That doesn't mean assembly provides the optimal means for building composable software. Why settle for something thats mediocre when you're still unstable and change it for the better?

<comment> one-more-minute Your argument is deeply confused. First Python is "much better than Julia for building modular applications", now it's flawed for the same reasons as Julia? Feature requests are fine but let's make them coherent please.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is a small thing and probably not very publicly visible, but I'm really happy with the progress we've made on the libgit2 module in Base.

</comment><comment><USER7> The list of breaking changes is pretty long. Hope that things can get to the point where a 1.0 release is ready as it is suppose to happen in Qtr 2 or 3????

<comment><USER5> Most of the breaking changes are effectively bug fixes in the sense that the old behavior was either not what you would want or not what you would expect. The single most breaking change is the first one listed: removing new lines from line-oriented I/O functions – but it really makes these functions more pleasant to work with. The next two most breaking changes are actual bug fixes: one was a macro hygiene fix which a lot of packages happened to rely on the broken behavior of, and the other was to make new method definitions reliably take effect (#265), which is a huge benefit but also breaks some code that was relying on the old wrong behavior.

<comment><USER8> You have such a way with words with stuff like this. Modern tech circles feel like such a minefield, there's always some guy waiting to scream ACK CHEW ALLY. Anyways, I'm so glad you are dedicated to the julians. Have our back, we'll always have yours.

0.6 is the highlight of my year so far.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I wonder if one of the most important changes is pure nomenclature: the updated type definition keywords. In prior versions the "obvious" way to define a type gets you a mutable type, and going forward the obvious way gets you an immutable type. Of course this doesn't change what the language is capable of, but I hope/expect it'll encourage better practice.

</comment><comment><USER10> If you want to compare Julia with Python and Matlab here is the comparison cheatsheet [https://cheatsheets.quantecon.org/](https://cheatsheets.quantecon.org/)

<comment><USER11> Here are the code examples: [http://rosetta.alhur.es/compare/python/julia/#](http://rosetta.alhur.es/compare/python/julia/#)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Still no static compilation, being able to make executables would be huge.</comment>


Ask HN: Why doesn't anyone care who set up drop-dropbox.com and why? - <AUTHOR>

The site is cleverly constructed in the sense of invoking sentiment to support a campaign through fearful, shocking and distasteful pictures, supporting links, and quotes. The inclusion of the war pictures, of Dr. Rice in a menacing manner; this website reads more like one of those slander campaigns you'd see on Fox than a disgruntled Dropbox user. Perhaps the competitor? A disgruntled employee? If that is the case, and although we support the campaign, we should still question the motives of the creator of this website. It's a very opportune time to drive users away from Dropbox by jumping on the Dr. Rice wagon. <comment><USER2> Why should we (that is, people who aren't deeply invested in this issue for either partisan reasons or due to deep financial involvement with Dropbox or its competitors) care, exactly?

Someone setup a website on the internet advocating something. I get that. You haven't really raised any reason why most people should care that this occurred.

</comment><comment><USER3> It seems well sourced, nothing seems false or even exaggerated to me. The site downplays the challenge of running Dropbox which makes it hard to assume it's written by either an employee or competitor. It also seems balanced when it considers alternatives. There doesn't seem to be much to question to be honest.

</comment><comment><USER4> Probably because it plays to the gallery. If you were concerned about how Rice conducted her life and dealing with companies that would have her on the board then it's likely none of the items on that website would be new to you.

If such things did not concern you then your conscience would remain unpricked.

Is there a large body of people who lie somewhere inbetween?

If Tony Blair were suddenly on your board of directors, you would expect a similar website to appear about your business, that's what you get by engaging with controversial people.</comment>


A Pinterest spammer tells all - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailydot.com/news/pinterest-steve-amazon-spammer-tells-all/ <comment><USER3> There are multiple angles to this story, and each has a compelling narrative.

Social sites are not just games or freebies. They exist based on the premise that they can use human nature against itself in order to create free content from users to be consumed by other users. At the end of this road we have Facebook, where they spend tens of millions of dollars to program users to create and consume like you'd program an alarm clock.

The spammers of course are in it for nobody but themselves, so it's tough to ding them any more than the rest of folks. At least most of them seem honest about it.

There's a third party here too, though: the honest internet citizen who likes creating and sharing content and making money while doing so. They don't run bots and they actually review the stuff they talk about.

The spammers make their money because they can "fake out" the system to think they're the honest money-making folks. The danger here is that we're going to only end up with two giant contenders, the addictive social sites and the spammers. That the little guys get crushed. To me it seems that the web, once wide open, is closing in bit by bit. (That probably sounds hyperbolic. Apologies.)

<comment><USER4> _The spammers make their money because they can "fake out" the system to think they're the honest money-making folks._

None of this is any different than basic capitalism. Now this isn't an anti- capitalism rant, it's just an observation. Rite-Aide and Walmart can buy entire city blocks and run their businesses at a loss for years to _fake out_ and overcome _honest citizens_ ' businesses and we celebrate their success.

I suspect if people could invest in spammers there'd be a different public perception of them.

<comment><USER5> For your Walmart example, wouldn't that violate section 2 of the Sherman Act? In principle, it isn't a strategy the United States government allows.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Will Skimlinks (or someone similar) offer a reverse-affiliate service that _strips_ affiliate IDs from links on your site instead of adding them? Does this already exist?

(It would be trivial for Pinterest to manually do this, say, for Amazon, which could instantly crush a spam model based only on Amazon, without any spam network detection/banning required)

Personally, though, I think affiliate links in social networks are pretty innocuous, if not slightly positive.

<comment><USER7> You'll always lose in an arms race that you didn't start.

If you start stripping affiliate IDs, I'll just write a redirector and link to that, or link to an existing redirector. Are you going to ban all of bit.ly? Or t.co? or letter.obscure_tld from your website?

<comment><USER8> There's a better way.

Make a crawler that follows your redirects. If it hits an affiliate page, you can presume (with some likelihood) that it's a spam link.

If you put in intermediate redirects that the crawler wouldn't pick up, there's a chance your targets won't either and you'll lose customers.

<comment><USER9> The crawler better be undetectable as such. For instance, it better send "expected" headers (User Agent, Accepts, etc.), and it better have cookies enabled, and also operate from many distinct and perpetually changing IP addresses.

Otherwise, the spammer will be able to run his/her own URL shortener service in a 5USD/month VPS and be able to show a spammy link to the users and a regular-looking link for the crawler.

BTW: a "crawler" implemented with Mechanical Turk workers would be a little bit harder to detect, but would also have its downsides.

<comment><USER8> _"For instance, it better send "expected" headers (User Agent, Accepts, etc.), and it better have cookies enabled..."_

How are these challenges exactly? Just set the user-agent and enable cookies. Done.

 _"...also operate from many distinct and perpetually changing IP addresses."_

Okay. Change the IP it operates on every few days.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm not suggesting that this is trivial to implement, but in principle, wouldn't it be fairly simple for Pinterest to identify these guys based on their 'social networks'? If a group of accounts only 'pins' posts of other accounts in that same group, that suggests either a spambot farm, or a very inclusive group of friends. False-positive detection could be decreased by looking at account sign-up dates, or profile photos.

<comment><USER11> It sounds like he only has one Amazon Associates account. Identifying all his accounts would be trivial, then -- find all accounts that have posted an Amazon link with the same associate ID in the URL.

<comment><USER12> Most of the experienced spammers fake the referrer. They'll have a scrub site setup which will appear as any blog. The spammer will spam links to the blog page (often using a url shortener); however the link will contain a id. If you visit the page with the id it will selectively redirect traffic to their amazon affiliate link, without the id link it will appear as a normal blogpost.

Amazon will think the traffic comes from the blogpost. The person getting spammed won't get any protection if they filter amazon links.

<comment><USER13> All they'd have to do is add a captcha to the submit. Trivial to implement and it would reduce the spammers.

<comment><USER14> CAPTHCA is trivial to implement, but is terrible for usability.

<comment><USER15> And in many cases trivial to circumvent <http://www.wausita.com/captcha/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> If he is pinning relevant pictures to themed board and simply doing it at scale, is he really abusing the site?

e.g: pictures of cakes on a recipe board about desserts that link back to a cookbook and he gets 4 cents per click through...

<comment><USER17> > _simply doing it at scale_

That's the most abusive part. As a Pinterest user I want to see what other real users are pinning. I don't want to see what 4,000 bots are pinning.

<comment><USER18> Everyone talks about authenticity in social media (that somebody wants to see "real" content from "real" people) which really makes sense because it is the most human thing. But what if the bots pass a Turing test and deliver relevant content with said links? Does it not become spam anymore? That's the weird part. All of the spam I get in my email I don't want because it is completely irrelevant. Same goes for ads on nearly every site. That's why it's spam: I don't want it, it's being forced on me, and is completely irrelevant to my productivity. But if some bot dug up something cool, isn't that just what gets defined these days as "targeted advertising"?

The utilitarian argument here invalidates this premise of the pins needing to be human, which is what is interesting. If you are getting utility out of it and you didn't know it was a bot, you are actually still better off.

<comment><USER19> It's not going to be cool though is it? AI is nowhere near being able to know what cool is.

<comment><USER20> <https://twitter.com/#!/Horse_ebooks>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> As Google is killing more and more content farms, it makes sense spammers are moving towards sites that have tons of authority, and spamming there. Can't get "buy car insurance" to rank for your spamblog? No problem, create a fake question in Yahoo Answers with the keywords in your title, and a fake answer with your affiliate link. Repeat in Pinterest, Amazon Askville, Quora, etc.

<comment><USER22> Affiliate links are filtered out of Yahoo Answers, or at least they were 4 or 5 years ago when I posted one.

<comment><USER23> You could use a redirection service. If they actually follow the redirects to the final destination, you could simply inspect the User-Agent header and redirect their automatic checker to a different page. If they pretend to be a browser by faking the agent, you can create a page with a hidden form (method=get, target=your_affiliate_url) that is submitted using Javascript.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Aside from the (good) conversation here, I'm actually shocked the guy agreed to an interview. How many HN people just spent some time thinking about how you would do one of these? Not that nobody could have possibly thought about pinterest spamming before, but this interview has certainly increased knowledge of it

<comment><USER25> Probably because he knows the end is coming quicker than he said in the interview.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Wouldn't be surprised if 90% of their amazing growth is actually spammers creating accounts by the million daily.

The interesting thing is that Pinterest founders have an incentive to look away, while promoting their growth to the VCs, raising massive rounds whilst potentially cashing out big time. Tumblr seems to be going a similar route, maybe its a Twitter-initiated trend of bot-generated companies?)

</comment><comment><USER27> sounded very tempting at first, but since spammers are already releasing tools to do automated spamming, they might have realized that their methods wont work forever (otherwise they would be making an irrational decision, since they could make much more money by using them themselves).

there are actually plenty of bots out there already:

[http://www.blackhatworld.com/blackhat-seo/buy-sell- trade/419...](http://www.blackhatworld.com/blackhat-seo/buy-sell- trade/419090-my-personal-pinterest-com-bot-collection.html)

<http://pinblaster.com/>

<comment><USER28> Pinblaster, you have got to be f __* kidding me.

<comment><USER29> Please elaborate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> An easy way to find Pinterest spammers.

<http://pinterest.com/source/amazon.com/>

I think the spammer moved his affiliate tag to womansdesign-20.

<comment><USER31> How are they not picking it up as spam? The same affiliate link from multiple accounts... The description also looks like a snippet of one the product reviews on Amazon

<comment><USER32> They aren't picking it up as spam because they aren't trying to stop spam. They will soon, and it will become very difficult to make much smaller amounts of money. Or, if they don't, they will end up in a place where pinterest is the Myspace of pinboards.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> So-called "skimming" of links does not strike me as being terribly wrong (or different from what Pinterest does itself), but the practice likely still undercuts their bizmodel because they don't skim links that already have affiliate ids attached to them.

<comment><USER13> It seems to me that it's pretty dumb to leave the affiliate ids attached. If anything, I think their initial idea of replacing affiliate links with their own affiliate smart. People don't like it, they can use another site.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> In life there are often short-term gains that can be made by someone either lacking in principle or who simply fails to exercise it. In simple terms, in this world there are always going to be temptations to travel down a road that in the end leads to death. In this case, it is eventual financial death for the marketer.

I know the temptation is for this road to be traveled because it's most often the easier road in the short-run for someone to take. There is no doubt in marketing a product or service that you are going to have to knock on many doors. Most often this will mean having to spend money in the process of running ads in order to get the word out. Bots such as those used by the Pinterest spammer automate the process but do so by taking advantage of loop- holes in the system and in so doing exploit whatever platform they are using (in this case Pinterest).

It is one thing to offer a product or service and to let people know about it and quite another to use technology to exploit a Platform for the purpose of sending unsolicited information to those who you do not know. There are better ways to market products and to profit from the sale of them through proven, sound marketing strategies.

The use of spam bots are not a reflection of anyone who has pursued an education of good marketing techniques. Such people only serve to give marketers in general a bad name. Those who pursue get rich quick strategies like this are not they type of people that endure for the long-run.

</comment><comment><USER34> Frankly this sounds like what Pinterest should be doing for revenue. Isn't basically what promoted tweets are for Twitter?

<comment><USER10> Promoted tweets are a fucking scourge, at least so far. I've seen two - <USER2> times for something totally irrelevant to me. (What the hell is the Shell Houston 2012 Open? I have zero idea, and less than zero interest.)

<comment><USER34> I agree I don't like them either. I thought Twitter was going to settle on having people with >XX,000 followers pay something, Freemium style. But I guess ads are a better moneymaker and they will convert better in the feed.

<comment><USER10> > I thought Twitter was going to settle on having people with >XX,000 > followers pay something, Freemium style.

That seems weird, like punishing people for their success, or letting others decide how much they should pay. (Unless, I suppose, that once you hit XX,000 followers nobody could follow you until you paid up.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> What exactly is outrageous about a community service like Pinterest or a forum using Skimlinks?

<comment><USER36> If they had just disclosed that they were doing it no one would have cared.

<comment><USER37> I disagree. The story of Pinterest using Skimlinks became controversial because bloggers made it so. It was fake, manufactured outrage. If they disclosed it beforehand the same thing would have happened anyway. It would've been in their TOS or something and we all know that when bloggers have nothing to write about they peruse a bunch of TOS agreements looking for some outrage to manufacture. They would have come across it, manufactured the outrage, and Pinterest probably still would've ended up ceasing use of Skimlinks.

I'm being speculative here, I know but I think you are too. I think there'd be controversy regardless of disclosure though not disclosing it sure helped make the outrage easier to sell.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Let's say you are a "regular" user. You "pin" x number of pins/frequency (hr/day/whatever). This establishes a normal activity baseline. Filter by "pins" that have links that have affiliate codes in them. Now, it has been shown that Skimlinks can identify these links and replace them. If that is the case, they can count the number of affiliate unique id's in their system across pinterest accounts, thereby linking seemingly disparate accounts by their affiliate links. Unless this guy is running game with multiple affiliate links or affiliate links are uniquely generated on a per item basis then I think Pinterest can put a stop to this.

</comment><comment><USER39> Sucky thing for pinterest to deal with and it's only going to get worse for them - the obvious spam is just the tip of the iceberg, the more insidious stuff can go undetected pretty much forever judging by HN, Reddit etc.

<comment><USER40> you can't say that without elaborating, lol.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> First of all: They believe a screenshot to prove identity?

I could've faked that in 10 seconds with Firebug and then told them I make like $10,000 a day with my super hardcore h4ck0r bots and the would have believed it I guess.

</comment><comment><USER42> > _we found tons of bots that traced to your Amazon affiliate account_

This suggest a trivial fix for the problem on Pinterest's side, doesn't it?

<comment><USER43> I think he is using URL shorteners or custom URLs that looks like a blog but are a redirect to an affiliate URL. Now they'd have to start examining the URLs in detail, which is a lot harder. Especially if he cloaks for access that looks to be coming from Pinterest themselves.

<comment><USER44> If I were tasked with detecting these, nothing would run from a Pinterest IP address. Use throwaway VPS hosts on different blocks and replace them regularly.

For that matter if I were tasked with posting this spam, I'd do the same...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> I own 10K bots, each one post 10 pins daily, 1 random pic + 9 good pics. 9 over 1 makes the pin quality above average. Everyday I choose 10K pics for every bot to pin as random pic. The 100 pics get most clicks become good pics in the next day. I call my bots collaborative content election system, but not spamfarm.

</comment><comment><USER46> Does anyone know if Steve's actions are legal under United States law?

<comment><USER25> I don't think it violates any specific law, but I'm guessing that a prosecutor could come up with some charges if the website hired good enough lawyers. Charges similar to the ones you see for denial of service or computer fraud.

<comment><USER47> There's also FTC disclosures to worry about, although I'm not sure if it covers posting affiliate links to another site.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> "Trust me when I say Pinterest is NOT invite only."

How is that? Where is the hidden registration button? Or do you simply get an automated invite after you request one?

<comment><USER49> The latter. The delay (if there is one) isn't too long.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> I had no idea it was that lucrative. I expected revenues maybe in the 100s per day.

This story is going to bring a lot of new "fresh blood" into spamming SNs.

<comment><USER51> That's what I was thinking... I assumed the click-through rate of Pins was terrible, it's quite difficult to even figure out that you can.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Where can I get one of these bots? This seems too good to be true!

<comment><USER53> Here's where you can find it > <http://bit.ly/GZd7I1>

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> Everywhere I go, I find a spammer has been there before me.

</comment><comment><USER55> How do these scumbags get so many IPs? Botnets?

</comment><comment><USER56> "And women will fall for it instantly"? WTF</comment>


Making a big high quality comic book using only FLOSS from scratch - <AUTHOR> https://www.davidrevoy.com/article735/the-english-book-printed-project-production-report-1 <comment><USER2> FTR, there is _sK1_ [0] — vector editor for DTP, FLOSS alternative to _COREL Draw_.

[0] [https://sk1project.net/](https://sk1project.net/)</comment>


The Math Required for Machine Learning - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/technomancy/the-math-required-for-machine-learning-af0d90db3903 <comment><USER2> I am not sure when you are using neural nets how much knowing the underlying math helps you. Yes we are doing matrix multiplies and using gradient decent. That is stuff you probably learned in high school. Usually you just learn partial derivatives in two dimensions instead of 10s or 100s of dimensions.

Even if you understand the math you are training tens of thousands of parameters inside your model. You are also passing them through non linear elements like sigmoid of ReLUs. I am not sure what insight knowing calculus or linear algebra will provide you in building the model unless you can process more than 3 dimensions non linear elements in your head. I am sure there are people that can do it, but how many can do it?

<comment><USER3> Actually very much. Think of it from an industry perspective.

If you are a software engineer that needs to use a network as a plug in module, then you may not need much understanding of linear algebra. But then you also don't need to know much ML either. It is simply a software engineering job.

However things change for anyone who gets their hands dirty or actually builds (even just implements know networks ) from scratch .

It is common to find that error caused by transferring a known model to your problem, was because of making key mistakes in how the question was posted mathematically. I am currently implementing Neural nets in my job, and have made many errors because of misunderstanding the mathematical operation of a layer.

PGMs are almost entirely math and so are embeddings and matrix factorization models. VAEs and GANs also need a solid grasp of the math behind them. Want to touch your loss function ? -> Math. Want to change optimization methods ? -> Math.

The visual designs of almost all neural nets are grounded in math, and this fact makes it vital to be good at it, if one wishes to gain anything beyond a surface level understanding of it.

<comment><USER2> I am not arguing there is not math involved, but gradient decent is basic calculus MSE, MAE, etc. This is something you take in high school. This stuff is pretty basic. Even in gradient decent you might have multiple minimums. The minimum you get will dependent on which set of points you start at. Imagine a 3d curve you might have different valleys.

Let me quote François Chollet: "Neural networks" are a sad misnomer. They're neither neural nor even networks. They're chains of differentiable, parameterized geometric functions, trained with gradient descent (with gradients obtained via the chain rule). A small set of highschool-level ideas put together

<comment><USER4> You need a great knowledge of math to internalize the complexity of neural nets. One particular area of mathematics that is not in the set of highschool- level ideas is topology.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have been getting more into machine/deep learning et al recently and have been pleasantly surprised that the calc and linalg I learnt 25 years ago I just need to review, it all still works the same! So refreshing after the short shelf/half life of many tech skills. These are the skills that matter (and that if I'd been entirely self-taught I never would have learnt)

<comment><AUTHOR> Well said! It's pretty funny, back when I was studying neuroscience i used to constantly loathe the fact that my undergrad made me study linear algebra, calc, etc. Now, a few years later i'm neck deep in all this theoretical ml and boy am i thankful for it haha

<comment><USER6> As someone who took calculus, linear algebra and a couple CS related courses on my economics program in university 6 years ago, I wish I had someone around who could explain me (better) why and how all those courses can be helpful to me. ML and AI were not big those days (at least I didn't hear much about them as I do know). Now, looking for my first python web developer job and dreaming about switching to something more ML related eventually, I am thankful I hadn't completely fail those courses, but feel extremely sorry I didn't study them properly.

<comment><USER5> You can get a fair way these days without knowing any maths at all, the tools and libraries are very good and there are a ton of tutorials and sample code out there. But what a grasp of the maths really gives you is intuition which you will really, really need as soon as you go off the beaten track. Without it you will just get bogged down in hyperparameter sweeps and other tasks that just don't scale

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Aren't statistics and optimization techniques required too? There was a similar post here couple of weeks ago and that had quite more. Here's the link: [https://blog.ycombinator.com/learning-math-for-machine- learn...](https://blog.ycombinator.com/learning-math-for-machine-learning/)

<comment><USER8> The author links to a statistics course.

<comment><USER7> I checked again. Maybe I am missing something, I only found a probability course in OPs blog post. Statistics is quite different.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> There was an interesting HN thread about this topic two weeks ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17664084](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17664084)

Check ^ for other useful recommendations and links.

</comment><comment><USER10> It is concerning to me how many people are deploying these techniques without first understanding the principles and limitations of multivariate regression and time series analysis.

I'm not sure why people are diving into modern techniques without knowing how to properly specify a simple (but powerful) regression model.

<comment><USER11> One might reply by saying:

 _It is concerning to me that people are driving cars without first understanding the principles of mechanical engineering, thermodynamics, and fluid dynamics. I 'm not sure why people are diving into modern cars without knowing how to properly build a simple (but powerful) steam engine._

The point being, there's a distinction between "machine learning research" and "applied machine learning". Of course those points are on a continuum, not separated by a bright line. But the point is, there are different roles and those different roles have different goals and requirements.

Of course knowing more math and theoretical foundations enables you to do more in some senses... just like a basic knowledge of fluid dynamics would be useful if you want to "port and polish" the cylinder heads in your car. But in reality, a minuscule portion of the population of car owners will ever want to do this. OTOH, it is essential if you're the person designing the car engine in the first place.

No, it's not a perfect analogy, but I think the overall point stands: some people need to know the deep, deep details of linear algebra, multivariable calculus, probability theory, measure theory, topology, etc., etc., for their goals in machine learning, while other people can achieve quite a lot without all of that knowledge.</comment></comment>


The stealth launch - <AUTHOR> http://pragmaticmarketing.typepad.com/productmarketing/2009/08/alas-the-stealth-launch.html <comment><USER2> This is a little misleading... most launches that are "stealth" really aren't, because they're just trying to build hype or make sure their servers don't get overwhelmed because people already know about it.

What this is describing is the majority of product launches, where you put it out there and no one comes. You're not really being stealth about it, it's more like the Unknown Launch.

</comment><comment><USER3> Also known as the Google launch.

<comment><USER2> I'd say the way Google launches products is much more about exclusivity than stealthiness (sp?).</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Do I need to register a lot of redundant domains? - <AUTHOR> I am asking this question because I find myself occasionally registering redundant domains that relate to my company/service. For example, my company has a .io domain, but I have also registered a few other TLDs like .app, .cloud, .email and .online just in case.
I already have a subdomain mail.<example>.io but I am about to register mycompany-mail.com because someone else might register and misuse it. I stopped to think if everyone did this or I'm being super paranoid.
For the same <example> name, I have more than 20 domains registered while I could have easily settled for subdomains. I have <examplegames>.com as well as <example>.games domain and few more typos and double 'aa' variations, just in case.
Please share if you have a similar experience or wisdom. What's the best practice in your opinion? <comment><USER2> 1) No, you don't need alternate TLDs or mis-spellings.

The exception is if you're a bank, you might want to monitor those.

2) The .io TLD in the past was mismanaged, and has been pwned by security researchers. I don't consider it secure enough for SaaS use, and I won't signup for business services with companies that use it.

<comment><USER3> Another huge issue with the `.io` domain is about [ethics]([http://www.thedarksideof.io/](http://www.thedarksideof.io/)).

<comment><USER4> Had no idea about this, thanks

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> IMO, if you register n domains to keep someone from misusing them, whoever is out for you will will just register the n+1th domain. There's not really much point to having a higher n. Get the .com, maybe one with your country code, maybe the .io.

</comment><comment><USER6> If you're using .anythingbesidescom (for example.io) then get the .com too

Besides that it really doesn't matter unless you're a million dollar brand.

There's better ways to spend $10 in your small business.

If you have a trademark on your brand name, and someone else tries to squat your name in another TLD, file a trademark dispute to force them to release it. (Assuming your trademark isn't a generic word like "apple" where someone could conceivably have something like apple.accounting without being confusingly similar)

</comment><comment><USER7> I think you should focus on making your product as the best instead of worrying about other people leeching off your domain name. If you get that far, you must be doing very well so no need to worry about leechers.

</comment><comment><USER8> Realistically, you might want three domains.

One that looks nice for your website (ideally .com). One where your service actually runs. One to host user content (so if you insufficiently sanitize something, it can't be used to exfiltrate cookies or whatever from your userfacing domain).

I wouldn't get example-mail.com or example.bike unless those are actually relevant. Only get mispellings if your name is easily mispelled (but then, consider a different name), at least until you have a large number of users or dollars coming in. Each domain is individually inexpensive, but buying a lot isn't, and spending time on it isn't.

</comment><comment><USER4> I have actually written a tool to help organisations understand their own digital exposure/privacy. It is very much an MVP but check it out, it should help you with some of your concerns - [https://www.privacytrail.com](https://www.privacytrail.com)

I think DDR0 makes a strong point, a determined malicious actor will always find a domain you haven't considered so defensively registering dozens of domains is usually only an action taken by large banks or significant brands. Unless you are likely to be impersonated or have a duty of care similar to that of a bank then a single/small number of domains is probably sufficient, especially for a startup. Buying additional domains can be done as you get larger and the threat of impersonation increases.

However, that doesn't mean you shouldn't monitor domain purchases that are similar to your own. Blacklisting domains that you believe have been purchased for nefarious goals can prevent your own employees from being duped in convincing phishing attacks and it is always good to occasionally remind customers/third parties of the domains you operate from.

Anyway, I could waffle about this for ages - there is more info on the above link and you can try your own domain out!

</comment><comment><USER9> I think .co is a smart get for any .com's where someone impersonating you could hurt you. Otherwise it's not a concern. Definitely wouldn't worry about the ones you listed.

</comment><comment><USER10> Wow! I'm on a very similar boat. A few years back, I was able to coax myself that I do not need to go after most of the TLDs. I'm not one of those who trade in domains but I realize I might have spent around $10,000 on domains since I booked my first domain in 2001.

Like other "entrepreneurs", ;-), I also had the tendency to book domains when an idea comes to mind. If nothing else, I usually start writing about the topic and keep it there. I also tend to realize that I might not be pursuing it, and then abandon them.

Of course, the side-effect of this is also that I have sold quite a few domains. A quick calculation on the back of a napkin puts the income to about $25,000+. Two of the most notable ones I remember being a HTML5.(TLD), and a hackathon.(TLD). I remember giving them the grandfathered GSuite, and Twitter handles to the buyers.

Right now, I pretty much own all of the known TLDs for my family name. ;-)

</comment><comment><USER11> I think many domains for one company might lead to confusion to users.

If I received an email from mail-fb.io for example it wouldn't look legit to me. Any of their subdomain would be good.

<comment><USER12> That's funny because FB uses facebookmail.com for some communication for example, recruiting

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I have domains based on future plans. So of those plans are now getting implemented much sooner than expected to help our clients get through this crazy situation in the world. Some of those domains are coming in really clutch right now.

</comment><comment><USER14> Just focus on shipping your product. Most products never get any traction and one of the reasons is lack of focus (defending your brand before it's established is hard work). Register your company name as a trademark, if possible.

</comment><comment><USER15> If you only have a couple of domains but you have a trademark on the name, does that help claim other domains when needed?</comment>


Facebook ordered to explain deleted profile - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-44537048 <comment><USER3> While it's not exactly the same thing but Facebook needs to tighten up their rules. I got in a squabble with someone who wanted my FB identity.

Even though I didn't follow him he filled out a form online and had me declared deceased. It took me close to a week, with the intervention of a friend who worked at Facebook, to get my account back.

How can someone who you don't even follow back be allowed to do something like this to someone? I had to prove that I was alive, complete with photos of me with my drivers license.

But why is a complete stranger without any proof whatsoever able to have me declared dead? Facebook needs to rethink these rules. Seems to me in this case the guys widow should be the one who has final say over his account.

<comment><USER4> You can also go to usps.com and declare someone has moved and have all their mail sent to somewhere else (probably don't pick your own address if you don't want to get caught).

<comment><USER5> I don't know about the USPS's implementation, but the UK's Royal Mail not only collects ID for this service, but sends an unredirectable letter to your old address saying 'we're starting a redirect, contact us if this is odd'. So it is possible to do sanely. Like Facebook, I suppose - require a scanned death certificate?

<comment><USER6> Last time I did this, the "we're starting a redirect, contact us if this is odd" letter was sent after the redirect started, and it was helpfully redirected to the new address!

<comment><USER7> The USPS sends two - one to your old address and one to your new address. The one sent to your old address does indicate that they're redirecting - that is, it is sent after the fact, it is not asking for confirmation or providing a grace period before they do - but it is marked clearly as something that should not be forwarded.

I suppose it could have been forwarded by accident (at scale screw ups do happen), but perhaps you confused one with the other?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think there is a sea chnage coming in how we (society) deal with problems that require subtly and judgement.

Let's give FB the benefit of the doubt here, there were legitimate conflicting requests over this profile, with some degree of documentation.

A human would have been needed to look at the case and make a decision. Let's say that human would take 6 minutes - and is a well trained professional. Full time that's about 10,000 6 minute cases per year. A room of lawyers like this is maybe 1/4 Million cases per year flat out.

Facebook probably generates 1/4M edge cases a day.

Automated cars will be making billions of decisions a year that affect human lives more deeply.

We will have to change our rules in society - from post-hoc review as in court today to _mainly_ decide the rules upfront - from the trolley problem in automated cars to what are the rules around deleting digital assets.

We are heading for an open / closed society

</comment><comment><USER9> GDPR request over some embarrassing information, perhaps? Facebook probably can't win here. Presumably they have a policy that compels deletion in some cases and they don't want to argue about individual cases

<comment><USER10> I don't think dead people can make GDPR erasure requests. No idea about the legalities involved if an executor or heir tries it.

My bet would be on a fake profile report.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's not only Facebook who have this process unsufficiently secured. The process for administering real death is also not really tamperproof. There is a hilarious defcon presentation on virtually killing someone and getting a real death certificate: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FdHq3WfJgs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FdHq3WfJgs)

Improperly reporting someone dead, or misrepresenting someone's will is something "you don't do" so the system is designed to minimize friction/pain.

</comment><comment><USER12> Two ideas to improve this:

Transparency. If Foo dies and Bar reports them as dead, then inform all of Foo's friends about what Bar did. Foo's friends have a right to know that Foo has died and that Bar wants Foo's data deleted. In the real world, this is basic human decency.

Appeal process. If X number/percent of Foo's friends say that he isn't really dead or that his profile shouldn't have been deleted, then ask all of Foo's friends what to do. Simple vote, majority wins. If someone is still unhappy with the result of this, then they can take it to the real world court system.

<comment><USER13> I would not want to first hear of my friend's death via an automated Facebook notification, still less in the form of an invitation to vote on whether to honour a family member's request to remove the profile.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Maybe this is how we find out if Facebook really deletes user data, or if it just hides it.

</comment><comment><USER8> The change.org petition had 850 signatures over the year or so before the article was written - it is up to 1150 now.

Side note - change.org has an interesting UX there - roughly they replay the last ten minutes of sign ups as you visit the site (so I went twice and saw the same people "sign up"). It gave me a real sense of momentum the first time I went ... had to readjust as I realised.

</comment><comment><USER15> I kind of feel sad for person that feels like loosing someone for second time. Where "kind of" means what kind of universe person is living in where FB posts or messages mean something. I am too cynical or and too technical. Maybe totally different person who thinks while loosing someone "it is sad, but after couple weeks I accept it".

So am I bad person?

Or is it just clickbait article trying to get attention on Facebook bad publicity?

Full disclosure, I just removed my FB account after GDPR went into effect, still have to see people crying over it.

<comment><USER16> I agree. After a reasonable period of mourning, the mentally healthy thing to do is move on. It's not good to ruminate over old letters, Facebook posts, photographs, or whatever of a dead person. OK to a keep a few things as fond mementos, but keeping and revisiting every scrap of history is unhealthy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> While reading the article, I was struck by not only the impact that Facebooks actions had, but also on how the presence of the online content changes how someone is remembered and grieved. I could see in some cases how it might range from unproductive to unhealthy--like a digital equivalent of keeping a shrine and living in denial. I don't believe that's true in this case as 6 months is no time to get to grips with such loss.

</comment><comment><USER18> The more I see this sort of thing, the more I'm heartened that individuals are fighting back against Facebook.

<comment><USER19> I don't necessarily thing Facebook was in the wrong here. Sure maybe somebody made that request to delete the profile against the family wishes but Facebook doxing someone also isn't very acceptable.

<comment><USER20> You missed the story. It was _not_ about whether Facebook was allowed to delete the profile - it was about giving information to family members of the guy who died.

What causes outrage from companies such as Google or (here) FB is not what hey do - but that it is impossible for normal people to get _any_ information about anything! Your Youtube video was deleted - why? No response. My dead partners data disappeared - why? No response. No response to anything. This IS outrageous! Not responding to reasonable requests - and that has nothing to do with "legal" \- is one of the worst ways of humans to interact with one another. Try it at home. Their behavior of ignoring you - and again, this has _nothing_ whatsoever to do with what is "legal" \- is what gets to people. Psychologically that's just really, really bad, the worst way to treat someone. Which raises the issue to another level: How arrogant as well as stupid are this mega-companies that they think they can do that, that there will be no long-term repercussions? This can't go on forever, people don't accept that, so wouldn't it make business sense to treat your "data-providers" (if not customers) just a bit better? How mighty do they already think they are that they don't have to answer very reasonable questions of people impacted by things they do? Nobody says they can't do it, we just want to TALK! Give me a human, not a bot response!

What makes it especially bad is that the requests are _tiny_! They could be handled easily (yes yes - needs actual humans, i.e. "expensive", oh the horror for those mega-companies who don't know what to do with all their money - <USER2> it's easy).

<comment><USER21> Favebook's policy for not giving information to family members came out of situations where the decreased was not on good terms with their family. When to give out information and to whom are not obvious or easy decisions when you have a billion users.

<comment><USER20> As I already wrote: _Nobody_ (reasonable) asks them to do anything other than TALK. If that is the issue, then say so! Of course, they would also have to provide a way out if the issue can be shown to be invalid.

<comment><USER22> From the article: Ms Sabados said she spent a year talking to Facebook before pursuing legal action.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> If they figure out who did it then let me know. I'd pay to get my old profile deleted.

</comment><comment><USER24> To Facebook, we are all just so much data. They just don't care. Who doesn't have a personal story or two about Facebook's indifference by now? Just...Delete Facebook. It is time.

<comment><USER25> It doesn't matter if you delete Facebook, they will just maintain a "shadow profile" on you anyway. (See [https://spideroak.com/articles/facebook-shadow- profiles-a-pr...](https://spideroak.com/articles/facebook-shadow-profiles-a- profile-of-you-that-you-never-created/), [https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/11/facebook-shadow- profiles-h...](https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/11/facebook-shadow-profiles- hearing-lujan-zuckerberg/), [https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/11/17225482/facebook- shadow-...](https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/11/17225482/facebook-shadow- profiles-zuckerberg-congress-data-privacy))

We flatter ourselves that just deleting the app will be enough to stop Facebook from tracking us. Their appetite for our data is much too voracious for that.

<comment><USER26> Doesn't GDPR require them to really delete?

<comment><USER27> If you look at the answers Facebook provided to the US Senate they say:

"When the person visiting a website featuring Facebook's tools is not a registered Facebook user, Facebook does not have information identifying that individual, and it does not create profiles for this individual.

...

We do not create profiles for non-Facebook users, nor do we use browser and app logs for non-Facebook users to show targeted ads from our advertisers to them or otherwise seek to personalize the content they see. However, we may take the opportunity to show a general ad that is unrelated to the attributes of the person or an ad encouraging the non-user to sign up for Facebook."

[https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/meetings/facebook-social- me...](https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/meetings/facebook-social-media- privacy-and-the-use-and-abuse-of-data)

It's conceivable that Facebook could deanonymize users/aggregate the data they get from like buttons etc, but they claim that they don't use that data for ad targeting and it's only used for security.

<comment><USER28> Not a lawyer but I'd dig into this:

> We do not create profiles for non-Facebook users

What is a "profile"? Is a shadow profile a profile? Not "creating a profile" may be very different from not tracking someone.

<comment><USER24> Even some of the ancient congressmen who know nothing about technology already have figured out that Zuckerburg lied to them extensively. I hope that our representatives will start to do their jobs. It has to be a crime to lie to Congress, no?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> This is what happens when you don't have many staff and your algorithms aren't nearly as good as a decent person. Facebook has no way out of this, as currently set up.

Would you believe it: If you want to have others vouch for you after losing credentials, you can't pick a single person, you're forced to pick 5. If you don't want to pick 5 you can't use the facility. What kind of mind comes up with a system like that?

The thing that may be bothering them is that this will reveal that they don't actually delete an account.

If they got out of the way as gatekeepers, let you use your own data, and that which you're permitted to see, on your own terms it would be better.

If they remain as gatekeepers they will suffer pain, potentially lethal pain.

</comment><comment><USER30> I'm guessing they're checking some sort of database for recently-deceased automatically. I don't see why it'd trigger an automatic deletion rather than setting the account to some sort of inactive status, though.

Edit: I'm wrong, it has to be specifically requested. I wonder how they determine whether the requester is privileged.

<comment><USER31> Nope. You have to specifically request that an account be "memorialized", otherwise it stays there just like they've not logged in. I had to do it with my wife's when she passed away.

<comment><USER31> And "memorialization" just makes it so that the account can't post, log in, etc - but other people can still post _to_ that account's "wall" \- "we miss you" messages, etc.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Could a Basic Income Be Paid by Carbon Tax? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Coincidentally, some Republicans just today proposed a carbon tax that would be returned in the form of $2,000/person/year basic income. Because carbon tax is regressive it makes sense to offset it with BI, although that may still leave some people worse off.

Most BI advocates are thinking more like $12,000/person/year which implies that the carbon tax would have to be far higher. A carbon tax that's too high may destroy the economy which would prevent investment in clean energy, potentially creating a death spiral.</comment>


Should You Stay Late or Go Home? - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.hbr.org/ashkenas/2011/10/should-you-stay-late-or-go-hom.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+harvardbusiness+%28HBR.org%29&utm_content=Google+Feedfetcher

<comment><USER2> I wonder. If hourly labor was more closely monitored and people who were paid hourly were compensated for the tike they put in... What would that look like in the market? People sent home, new people hired, or at least people fairly paid for their work?

Though I suppose you also have to consider the people who lie, those who don't put in a full day's work or leave early, but claim a full day.

Ahhh, working unappreciated overtime. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot.</comment>


As a comp engg freshman, what should I be aware of before I become a sophomore? - new-user

I come across many junior, senior, and sophomore students who regret some decisions ( or no decisions) they took in  freshman year. Some of them seem to be very common ( know your programming languages, be efficient in programming, signal systems course is going to be tough etc ). I just don't want to build up on existing mistakes :P Thank You <comment><AUTHOR> Understanding grammar and spelling (more generally: communication) is one of some of the most important skills you can possibly learn. Go take an English Comp class, or something similar. It'll pay huge dividends for the next 40 years of your life, far more so than knowing one more programming language possibly could.

<comment><USER2> This is critical. IME, you're probably not going to get _very_ good at programming while in school. That only comes with doing it several hours a day for a long time. So, certainly work on being efficient so that you can finish up the degree, but don't think about it much beyond that. You'll get there, and realistic people don't expect brilliant programmers right out of undergrad.

On the other hand, I haven't yet had a job where written communication wasn't important from virtually day one. You may start out thinking, "Oh, I'm just going to code," but in reality you have to talk to clients (even if they're your coworkers), your bosses, prospective hires, etc., and this often takes the form of written communication. If you write unintelligibly to a customer or your CEO about why a feature is taking a while to implement, you're going to have a bad time. If you issue a poorly-worded question to a prospective hire, you'll muddy the waters in an already difficult decision. And there's no substitute for dodging the heat with a well-worded CYA email.

Learn to write precisely and concisely. Rhetoric classes, if your uni offers them, are a great investment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The biggest mistake I made in college was _not_ listening to my advisor and thinking that "recommended" courses means I could get by with taking something out of order. For example, taking Circuits I without taking Electromagnetics (and likely Diff Eq) first is a bad idea even if it's technically allowed. Another mistake is to not understand that some of the harder classes need to be spaced out or you get burned out. There seems to be a big ramp up from first year to second year coursework.

75% or more of what you learn is going to be obsolete or not needed in your career. The problem is you don't ever know which is the 25% you'll use. That may even change over time. And those English/Comms classes are helpful while still being less of a PITA than your other coursework so they prevent some burnout. The most fun classes I had were a Foreign language which was taught by an actual native speaker, and a Comms class which just had a nice mix of students.

<comment><USER4> >taking something out of order

I'd say the important thing to do is to really see what is and isn't necessary. At my college, it was very common to skip prerequisites and so on. My favorite class as a sophomore was a graduate applied mathematics class where I skipped both prerequisite undergraduate classes. At first I'd assumed from the course catalog that it wouldn't have been feasible and didn't even bring it up with my advisor, but then a couple of friends pointed me to it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Communication skills are as important to Engineering within World-Class Engineering teams as your actual technical skill is.</comment>