We're creating a culture of distraction - <AUTHOR> http://joekraus.com/were-creating-a-culture-of-distraction <comment><USER2> Perhaps some of the most enlightening years of my life were towards the end of high school, when my computer died. At the time I was going through a youthful phase of freeing myself from worldly attachment. I just didn't bother fixing it or getting another. All my electronics and possessions, save for my stereo system, some books, and writing tools were packed away or sold. I wore pretty much the same clothes every day.

At school, I got in trouble for writing my essays on paper, when they were to be typed. I had no way of communicating with my friends who were all using cellphones and IM, so I just talked to them at school if I saw them. If I wanted to play video games, I went to the arcade, and since I had no car, it was always a fun adventure getting there and back. From the perspective of others, I was becoming an outcast. From my new perspective, they were the outcasts - out of touch with themselves, mindless robots in an artificial reality.

I spent my time reading books, writing my thoughts down, sketching ideas, taking walks, observing humans and nature, introspecting, and developing my personal philosophy and plans for the future.

Eventually I grew out of the phase, bought a bunch of new stuff, including a new computer, and got addicted to the Internet harder than ever. It led to a lot of great things - getting better at programming, participating in a bunch of online communities, making money, sharing my work and thoughts, and finding inspiration from others. However, there is always a nagging feeling that my younger self is questioning my lifestyle.

No matter how far in the zone I am, how much effort I take to remove the distractions from my environment, how secluded a place I go to get away from it all - I cannot reach the level of clarity and the perspective from those days. Just knowing that sweet feeling that awaits once I am jacked into a live connection again, and hit the browser tab, is enough.

The crux is not a culture of distraction - it is that our culture, especially our technology, is too heavily skewed towards consumption over creation. To make full use of our humanity, we need to be able to take the time to look inside ourselves - we need to allow ourselves to be distracted from within. The Internet by nature creates connections outwards - perhaps balance can be restored by finding its inverse. An Intronet _?

_ A computer, much like paper and other creative mediums, is an impressive tool for exploring and expressing the inner self. An Intronet may actually be a cultural shift in computing rather than a technological development.

<comment><USER3> Your story reminds me of Thoreau's motivation for Walden (highly recommended to anyone who hasn't read it).

With this in mind, it feels like the sentiment expressed by the author of the posted link, yourself, and many others (including myself) might just be a constant of humanity, no better or worse now than it ever was (much like many other things; for instance adults saying that teenagers are more disrespectful than ever, which is a feeling that the ancient greeks expressed several millennia ago).

<comment><USER2> Funny you mention. Walden was one of the books I read during that period of my life, and it heavily influenced me.

Also related, the idea of Degrowth (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degrowth>).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Oh the irony of distracting myself by reading this on Hacker News, then making a comment which I will flip back to and check reflexively for the next two hours.

<comment><USER5> I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one that goes back and checks their comments.

I know it's superficial, but it still gives me a buzz to wake up in the morning and see a bunch of up votes and replies to something I wrote the night before. It's equally frustrating when I say something I think is smart and it gets ignored.

Damn you internet, validate my existence!

<comment><USER6> Here, let me feed your habit a little more. ;-)

I don't think it's about validating your existence. I think it's that internet communities are gradually replacing more traditional forms of interaction. We, even introverts, still crave some amount of interaction; if we don't get useful interaction elsewhere, we can maybe get it online.

HN, and email, and everything like it becomes a _lot_ less important to me if I've spent the day having fun with other people. (Counterpoint: I also wind down on HN after a stressful day of dealing with other people.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> While this was certainly not a manic episode I did go through a period where I threw out or sold many of my possessions. I decided to leave all my electronic items at work. This included my laptop, netbook, computer monitor and various other gadget doohickeys from a lifetime of impulsive Thinkgeek shopping. Now I have a cluttered desk at the office and virtually nothing at home. But not having a computer at home has been incredibly liberating. Four weeks ago I lost my smartphone and seeing as how I don't have a computer at home I couldn't check my emails, my messages or log into Skype. All I had was an old iPod shuffle filled with Melanie Safka songs. Those few days without my phone and without any way to connect to the internet were the two greatest days of this year. I read comics from the comic book store, took a walk around the city and at night when the city noise gets too much, I put on my little earphones and listen to Melanie on my iPod.

I eventually got my phone back thanks to a honest taxi driver and on occasion, I've simply left it at work choosing instead to go home with only my trusty iPod.

I haven't done this in the past two weeks and think I'm about overdue. As for Hacker News as a distraction, I love this infinitely useful HN newsletter[1] by Kale (@duck). Avoid HN for the week and dedicate one day of the week to just reading through the stories posted in the newsletter. I've noticed I tend to pay more attention to the posts and there's less chance of me making impulsive comments.

[1] <http://www.hackernewsletter.com/>

<comment><USER8> I spend more time at my desk at work than anywhere at home. My work desk should be clean and peaceful!

<comment><USER7> I spend a lot of time at my desk but being a small office, my co-workers tend to use my desk if/when I'm not present. I simply don't have as much control over my office environment to put effort into keeping it clean and pristine. It is what it is and so I'd rather focus on the environment that is within my control. At least that's how I've come to rationalize it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> 'As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny "failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions".'

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_New_World>

</comment><comment><USER10> "Distraction is the only thing that consoles us for miseries and yet it is itself the greatest of our miseries."

\--Blaise Pascal (17th century)

</comment><comment><USER11> I felt that full-screen mode in OS X was in part a response to avoiding distraction.

Also, in social settings, I've noticed I'll check my phone if I'm alone, or near people where conversation has ended. Part of that is a mini-escape, and another part is caused by insecurity/peer pressure. If you're all alone doing nothing, you have less perceived worth than if you're all alone doing something.

<comment><USER12> Full-screen mode did nothing for me. I can enter and leave full-screen instantly. It added the kind of speed bump that has room on the side to be perfectly circumvented.

I don't think it's possible to create a distraction-proof UI that is also user-friendly.

<comment><USER11> Books are a distraction-proof UI. Their simplicity focuses you only to read. Magazines and newspapers are books plus distractions. Ads divert your attention. Thoughts in newspapers must be hunted like a wild animal, scattered all over pages. Books only compete with external distractions, such as noise, or you're own thoughts.

You can build a distraction-proof UI on a computer, but all parts must cooperate. If a single one annoys, the UI has failed. This is difficult to do if the UI's foundation, its OS, doesn't play along nicely. That's probably the way to do it, build a new OS, or train an existing one into submission.

"I see there are wireless networks available. Would you like to connect to one?" (...currently connected to a wired network, concentration lost...)

<comment><USER12> The problem, then, is that the OS is interested in helping you multitask.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> We're not creating anything. We've always found ways to distract ourselves.

Life is a horrible place underneath fishing, video games, Twitter, hiking, stamp collecting, sports, coding, horticulture and everything else we've invented. It would be impossible to live with the knowledge that you're going to die and have nothing to take your mind off things. That's why solitary confinement really is torture.

I had the "get rid of all my possessions" phase too. I sold everything and lived out of a 28-liter backpack in South America for 18 months. What did I learn? That everyone just wants a distraction. Often with some combo of drugs, booze, sex and music. Yeah, sometimes I climbed mountains or got cultural and moved in with a local but it was all done to keep my mind off death.

It's all the same crap. Even criticizing others for their preferred distraction is in itself a form of distraction.

I like cheap red wine, vicodin, and PlayStation myself. Sometimes I suck down caffeine and crack open Knuth to read up on data structures but I don't feel it's any better than the former. Whatever keeps the dopamine flowing is fine by me.

<comment><USER8> The one risk is whether today's distractions prevent you from enjoying future ones. That is, do they interfere with your ability to obtain sustenance, shelter, sex, and social status. This is why drug addictions are frowned upon, but recreational use less so..

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I wonder how much of this argument will always be made-- one generation after another. As a thought experiment I put myself in my father's shoes and replaced every reference to phone with television. The text still resonated. I'm tempted to try seeing how many generations I could go back (all the way back to Buddha maybe)... but I have fruit to slice.

<comment><USER8> Heck Adam and Eve got bored and wandered into trouble with the snake when they had more important things to do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Please do yourselves a favour and look up Neil Postman. I can recommend "Amusing Ourselves to Death" and "Technopoly", in particular.

<comment><USER16> I read his "The Disappearance of Childhood" many years ago, I should put one of these in my queue soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> There is another angle to this: a distracted population is a happy population. Or at least a population that isn't marching and burning in the streets.

</comment><comment><USER18> I don't think its a crises of attention or a culture of distraction. I think it's that literally everyone can publish grammatically incorrect rantings with terrible spelling and incoherent structure and we've gotten really good at wading through the chaff. There just isn't that much good stuff out there and yet every single person thinks they are Shakespeare. There never has been that much great stuff it's just we relied on other means to filter it for us (publishers, editors, etc.).

</comment><comment><USER19> When I take my kids places, I take the sim out of my iphone and put it in a dumbphone I got off ebay. It's like a time warp.

<comment><USER7> Ah but that cursed SMS still exists on dumbphones. I'd like to see alternatives to the John's Phone[1] which just gives us the basic calling functionality, all we really need.

[1] <http://johnsphones.org/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> We created our distractions, and we will surely limit them if doing so becomes worthwhile.

If a company that banned non-enterprise smartphones during work hours was more profitable than one that did not, if the difference was great enough, the banners would quickly overtake everyone else.

This is where culture comes from.

<comment><USER21> How are you so sure? It seems like the red queen effect to me. We do it because become the norm, not because we actually get anything from it. Actually it seems to be related more to this:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernormal_stimulus>

<comment><USER20> I don't think you quite got what I am trying to say. Addictive smartphone checking isn't culture, it is a problem that culture will be generated to solve. (Well, it could also turn out to be not nearly as much of an issue as we think it is, and then we will all forget about it save for the odd blog post making fun of how we were scared of something as normal as walking or watching a movie.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I would invite Mr. Kraus and all here on HN to look up Maggie Jackson's "Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age", a great read on this very issue. Se was talking about this years ago and has since built on her previous work.

</comment><comment><USER23> Ability to focus (or defocus) improves with practice, so for example reading a book for one hour every day will make wonders for you. And almost no cravings.

</comment><comment><USER24> Creating? I drove to high school listening to AM radio, with three-minute songs and short punch commercials. I did mostly quit watching TV while there were still just three channels, and before the remote became popular. But I still read newspapers in which the three-sentence paragraph is a long one.

</comment><comment><USER25> THe best part about this post is that as I whizzed through my RSS feeds in google reader, I saw the title of it as "We're creating a culture of distinction" and said to myself "That looks boring." Yes, I am over-stimulated and distracted...

</comment><comment><USER26> Everything in moderation! Check out <http://thedigitaldetox.org>. There are those of us who have been thinking about this problem for a while!

<comment><USER7> If there's a local New Zealand version of this, sign me up! I'd love to meet fellow hackers away from our hacking tools.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Related:

Is Google Making Us Stupid?

[http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/2008/07/is- google-...](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/2008/07/is-google- making-us-stupid/306868/)

</comment><comment><USER28> Great blog post... but the grammatical errors were a huge distraction.

</comment><comment><USER29> TL;DR

<comment><USER30> Observe a sabbath?</comment></comment>


This machine kills fascists (pic) - <AUTHOR> http://www.woodyguthrie.org/images/29_6.jpg Slightly OT I know =) <comment><USER2> OK, so I thought this picture was great. But Paul Graham has expressed a desire that we keep the "(pic) virus" off of this site which I think is pretty much a blanket ban... even the Y Combinator tattoo picture came wrapped up in a short article.

Sorry.

By the way, do you know where I can get a copy of The Live Wire: Woody Guthrie in Performance 1949? $30 is more than I ever pay for recorded music.</comment>


Use Linux to fix a dead computer - <AUTHOR> http://www.itworld.com/operating-systems/95275/use-linux-fix-a-dead-computer <comment><USER2> My current favorite Linux LiveCD is Grml (<http://grml.org/>), a Debian-based distro. It's like Knoppix without KDE, Gnome, OpenOffice.org, et cetera (but with X Windows), and with a multitude of command-line utilities. I _cannot_ recommend it highly enough.</comment>


Elon Musk trashes story that argues Tesla relies on government handouts - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-has-always-been-completely-open-about-depending-on-government-money-2015-6

<comment><USER2> ironically, teslamotors.com still will ONLY show you prices with incentives subtracted, if they apply for you or not.

also, like a 90's blog, they have javascript that does not allow you select text on that page. way to go! not even dealership sites are that silly.

<comment><USER3> The page I see says "After incentives and gas savings" in the middle, and the right side, there is a "Cash Price" without incentives subtracted.

Even if you were correct, it's not really that interesting.

<comment><USER2> interesting. not getting cash price on the right.

edit: i get when over a vpn...</comment></comment></comment>


Illustrating That Free Will Must Be an Illusion Using 25 Lines of Ruby - <AUTHOR> http://danielmiessler.com/blog/25-lines-ruby-show-free-will-impossible/

<comment><USER2> There are several problems with author's argument.

1\. Future outcomes are not entirely determined by just past state + laws of physics. There is a very important component that author seems to be only eluding fleetingly: Randomness. So future = past + laws + randomness. Here laws are implicitly understood to be probabilistic that requires some randomness source.

2\. An all important question now is this: What is the source of randomness in universe? I think if we can answer this question, we will likely have understood pretty much everything that is to be understood about the universe. A perfect random generator is theoretically required to store infinite amount of information. If universe is finite in the sense that (space X time) is finite then perfect true randomness is not possible. BTW, concept of true randomness is not some fuzzy thing. It's very well defined mathematically (see Vol II by Knuth). Summary: Let's say a random number generator produced a sequence of 0s and 1s. The perfectness of RNG can be measured by the distribution of every possible permutation of all length of 0s and 1s occurring in that sequence.

3\. Let's say universe has _some_ master random number generator that sources randomness in to all its outcomes. Is it possible to add or subtract _randomness_ from this generator? Can processes or particles within universe themselves be _source_ of randomness? If so these particles or processes would meet the definition of free will. In other words, _free will_ is nothing but random number generator itself because no one can predict or influence its behavior.

So in essence, our question becomes _can humans be source of randomness?_. As humans are made of same fundamental particles, it would imply, if humans have free will then particles must also have free will (i.e. Convey's Free Will Theorem). The difference that humans make over fundamental particles is this: Humans can _filter_ their free will by setting up complex set of computation on the top of it. So imagine normal particles simply generating random behavior while humans acting as some algorithm like hash function that sets up the computation on the top of their "free will" to generate probabilistically desired outcome. Obviously keyword here is _desired_. Are our desires simply deterministic or influenced by free will? Our desire to survive is obviously programmed by genes. However our desire to climb a mountain because _its there_ or draw a painting is probably much more influenced by free will.

<comment><AUTHOR> 1\. Randomness is part of the laws.

2\. Determining the source of the randomness is like figuring out why the strong and weak force constants were set the way they were. They exist at the ends of our epistemological limits.

3\. You seem to be missing that even if we were a source of randomness, we would not be in control of it. Free Will isn't about a lack of predictability, it's about control.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Since the code will never finish executing, it isn't correct to say that free will has been proven to be an illusion. Even if it could, the most that can be proved to be true is that a certain aspect of the universe is fully determined.

It does not follow that simply because certain aspects of the universe are determined (such as a computer program) that human action is wholly determined. That would be like saying that because certain aspects of the universe are conscious and self-aware, the entire universe is conscious and self-aware.

<comment><AUTHOR> It is true that the program doesn't show free will is completely impossible for all instants in time (because it cannot test infinite instants), but one has to wonder why any instant n would be different than the first.

Your second point equates to, "Well, we don't know everything about everything in the universe, so there might be a mechanism for free will we haven't discovered."

True, but that also applies to every other proposition that we can safely disregard because there's no good reason to accept it.

In the case of free will, we as potential authors of action need a lever for injecting ourself into the universe's chain of events. We need a hook. We need an influence point. But since we ourselves are products of that universe, such a mechanism is purely speculative.

The only reason we think free will exists is because we _experience_ it. But given our understanding of the brain and its propensity for projecting all manner of illusions onto our consciousness, I submit we should not consider this evidence.

Show us how we have gained control over a previous state of the universe in one of the instants between the big bang and now, or show us how we can control the physics of transition from one state to the next.

Only then will one have made a case for free will.

<comment><USER4> > Only then will one have made a case for free will.

That's why it's generally considered to be an open question.

You, on the other hand, haven't nearly made a case against free will, but still act as if you had definitive proof.

This is not a situation where the free will advocates have to prove it to you, and unless they can, you win.</comment></comment></comment>


Http://perldoc.perl.org/ (redesigned) - <AUTHOR> http://perldoc.perl.org/

<comment><USER2> That's really nice actually. I love the highlighting and linkification on the documentation. Not so keen on the white-on-black navigaton aids, but that's just me.

<comment><USER3> I also prefer low-contrast. _Especially_ for a site that's primarily docs which you'll be reading a lot. Keep eyestrain to a minimum.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Menu fonts too small. JavaScript warnings are a pain in the neck. Drop-down box on the right doesn't fit in its alloted space on my computer. No attempt at a fluid layout. Obnoxious and unexpected title bar that stays with you no matter where you scroll. Utterly insufficient tables of content for the length of the pages (see Special Variables). I find the code samples too small as well. But um... other than that I like it.

</comment><comment><USER5> It's always bugged me how deficient perldocs seemed compared to php.net's layout. Hurray for change!</comment>


An iPhone App Market That Doesn't Require Jailbreaking... Which Apple Can't Stop - <AUTHOR> http://techdirt.com/blog/wireless/articles/20100730/00083610420.shtml <comment><USER2> It's not exactly like this is a secret. Steve Jobs talked about the "openness" of the web as a platform explicitly at WWDC.

</comment><comment><USER3> > First, it's good to get more people realizing that HTML is already pretty > damn good at creating app-style experiences,

That would be good if it were true. It's not.

<comment><USER4> Actually it is. "app-style experience" is the easy part - but there's more examples of bad then good.

The failing is when HTML/JS needs to do 'heavy lifting' that native code does better (such as large memory based tasks, 3d rendering for now, animations, heavy math, or hooking into hardware).

<comment><USER3> If there are many more examples of bad than good, and for JS apps, this is a dramatic understatement, this is a great pragmatic definition of it not being good for apps.

For example, I've never played a JS/Canvas game for the sake of it being a good game. Has anyone? I see a lot of frameworks, and a lot of demos to advocate for the platform, but no good games. Why is this? At this point, the novelty of the platform is no longer an excuse. It has been a forum darling for several years now.

<comment><USER5> Sadly this is true. Canvas is still very much in its infancy. I see two main issues with Canvas for games right now.

First, canvas really needs to be hardware accelerated (someone already does this, Microsoft?). Having a few objects move around should barely take any CPU but with Canvas today it can be anywhere from 10%-20%.

Second, their needs to be game engines/abstractions on top of Canvas. Most developers don't want to have to write there own render/clear loop with all the utility functions to do movement, render shapes, texture elements, and keep object state. I know their are a few out there now but they are no where near the quality needed. This second step will not happen until my first point (HW acceleration) is in place.

<comment><USER6> Writing you a snarky reply about your misuse of "their" and "there" and erasing it was somewhat cathartic. But not enough, so I had to write this. _Please_ make sure that you can use some of the most basic building blocks of your native language.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Wasn't this originally going to be the only way to release apps for iPhones? Later they caved in & allowed native. I didn't get an iPhone until a couple of years after all this though so my history may be off somewhat.

Point being, if true, this was no 'secret' - it was originally plan A.

<comment><USER8> No, you're exactly right. In fact, when the iPhone was first released, all the pundits and bloggers were practically screaming that it was so unfair that Apple didn't allow developers to write native apps and that HTML web apps were a poor substitute for what you could do natively. They pointed to how Google got to write a custom app for maps, and how it was unfair to competitors who would be locked out.

It was like that for the entire first year of the iPhone. Then, once the app store was announced, it's like all the bloggers and pundits suffered coordinated, selective amnesia. The irritating thing about this article is that the tone suggests this is somehow something Apple would be upset about, when in fact, Apple promotes HTML apps as an alternative to the restrictions of the app store.

The success of the App Store is 80% linked to the fact that it's a frictionless purchasing environment. I can buy an app from some random person for 99 cents and not have to worry that he/she has my credit card number. Furthermore, you're likely to think twice as you go to purchase a 99 cent fart joke app and you're entering your credit card number into a web form. That feels like you're spending money. But punching your password into iTunes _rarely_ (if ever) feels like spending money. Apple is excellent at separating consumers from their money. Developers of App Store apps get to use "the hand of Jobs" to ply your cash from your wallet.

I suspect that if Apple allowed web apps to bill against itunes accounts, you'd see a huge explosion of pay iPhone-optimized web apps that would otherwise go into the App Store. With a little bit of Safari integration, you could allow developers to put little "buy now" buttons on their web apps and it would feel just like an app store purchase. I doubt Apple would ever roll out such a feature, since it sounds like it would be minimal benefit but have a fair number of headaches.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Good start, OpenAppMkt. Keep it up.

Without going into flamewar about native vs. HTML5, HTML5 apps have their pros and cons. But they still need a commercial distribution channel. People should be able to buy HTML5 apps as simply as they buy native apps.

</comment><comment><USER10> The OpenAppMkt app has a nice interface for being HTML only -- wonder how they got the fixed position buttons on the bottom while allowing scrolling in the body of the page?

As far as I knew, that was impossible due to Safari Mobile on the iPhone not supporting fixed position elements.

<comment><USER11> Most likely they are using JS to secure the position, and yes you are right Mobile Safari doesn't support position:fixed;

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Is there a good tutorial to be found about making an HTML5 app?

<comment><USER13> <http://sixrevisions.com/web-development/html5-iphone-app/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's about control of distribution. Apple clearly is cool with HTML5, that isn't new. Everyone is also right that Apple clearly dominates distribution, but it's not an absolute lock. The only way you can ever wrestle control away from Apple is if someone creates an alternative, which is what OpenAppMkt has started. Just because it's not huge now, or it's not dominate now, doesn't mean that it can't become a player in the future.

</comment><comment> joe-mccann Apple could "stop" this very easily. Don't allow access to native hardware APIs through the browser via JavaScript; thus, making "webapps" inferior to "native apps" based on capabilities of interacting with the hardware.

Phonegap, FTW.

</comment><comment><USER14> I've often wondered just how many people have ever used the "add to home screen" button, or even really noticed it. I assumed for a long time that the "+" icon just added a bookmark to mobile Safari.

Note that HN is clearly not a good sample group to poll this.

</comment><comment><USER15> So we're showing off the power of HTML5 by locking it to iPhone only... Nice.

</comment><comment><USER16> People hate the App store regardless of the iPhones HTML app capacity because they want what the App store offers without the compromise that Apple makes them take.

They want centralized marketing, distribution, security and payment handling which the HTML option doesn't have. They could build a website selling these apps if they wanted, but that would be work outside of developing, which they don't want to do.

Everyone wants to be on the App Store because that's where you go for apps. You don't Google for "html iPad App RSS reader". So no one is going to install your app.

With the recent security issues with Android phones (this will happen with Apple apps too, but maybe to a smaller degree) Apple's controls are looking nicer and nicer.

Sour grapes.

Also, what's with the title "which Apple can't stop". You're thumbing your nose at Apple with a feature they developed and encouraged?

<comment><USER17> Regarding: _With the recent security issues with Android phones (this will happen with Apple apps too, but maybe to a smaller degree) Apple's controls are looking nicer and nicer._

I respectfully disagree. App approval process has nothing, repeat _nothing_ , to do with security. As an example I can create a time-bomb app, which does nothing nasty for 6 months and then once it is deployed on several Apple devices it begins to do whatever it was programmed to do.

There is no way an app approval process can handle that or catch that. That requires disassembly and careful analysis of the source or disassembled code.

That apps on Apple's devices are more secure is an illusion.

<comment><USER18> "That apps on Apple's devices are more secure is an illusion."

Yeah, and careful sandboxing of each app and control of the functions you use has nothing to do with security either.

Apple knows what functions you use and when, and the data you send receive using them. They know the format, nothing else is needed. That's one of the reason they only let you use documented calls.

For me its easy to make a software that monitors that activity,so with so many people smarter than me, I can not imagine that Apple has not done it. I know they have automated tools for analyzing Apps proposals, so I'm confident they monitor live the apps activity.</comment></comment></comment>


How People Think Facebook Connect Log‑in and Log‑out Work - <AUTHOR> http://skinnywhitegirl.com/blog/how-people-think-facebook-connect-login-logout-work/861/ <comment><USER2> Suggesting that people don't implement multiple auth systems seems short- sighted. Right now, if I service requires an OAuth login and doesn't actually use the service it's authing against, I won't use it.

Those of us that use LastPass / 1Password are better off creating independent accounts with separate passwords rather than centralizing auth to a service that still basically relies on a single username / password combo.

<comment><USER3> I favor using independent accounts, but I never mind using OpenID for insignificant site access, when more sites were implementing it back then (not sure why it isn't used much lately).

<comment><USER4> > (not sure why it isn't used much lately)

Because it never gained traction and Facebook Connect pretty much killed it because it doesn't require setup of an additional service. Mind you, Facebook Connect is a big privacy and security risk, but it's much 'easier' to a user than setting up OpenID, which is why it won.

I only hope Persona takes off, as it's a much better solution.

<comment><USER5> I'd be so much happier implementing Facebook Connect if it gave me an OAuth scope that didn't include access to your friends list. I don't WANT that access, so why don't you provide a way for me to not look sneaky to your users?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Actually, the issue is that the site in question implemented it wrongly, and the users have the correct mental model. On my site, the users in red would actually be correct, i.e. logging out of my site would log you out of Facebook. This is also the more logical, consistent and secure approach, because if the user stays logged in on Facebook even after pressing "log out" on my app, just pressing the "connect on facebook" button again would log the user in without asking for a password. This is not secure.

It's quite simple: when a user is signed out on your app, use the javascript SDK to sign-out the user from Facebook as well. You can easily do this by loading the SDK, subscribing to the status-event, and if (user is not signed in in my application) && (facebook SDK says user is signed in to facebook), then call FB.logout().

This is a workaround though, you should just combine both when pressing the "sign-out" button of your website - i.e. send an ajax request to the sign-out page, send an FB.logout request to facebook, redirect user when complete. That has the added advantage that any time a user visits your page, and the client- side SDK tells you the user is connected through Facebook, you can automatically sign-in that user.

I've just completed going through the API and everything so I have a pretty good grasp of things right now, I should write a blogpost about how to properly implement Facebook sign-in, because Facebook is traditionally quite lacking on documentation, and definitely doesn't give a clear view of best practices.

<comment><USER7> That's also potentially problematic though. I'm not a regular Facebook user, but re-cast in terms of Gmail - if your site logged me out of Gmail every time I logged out of your site, I'd get quite annoyed (and probably quickly stop using your site).

Perhaps if your site can detect at login time whether I was already logged in to the site providing the OAuth service (maybe you could use time-to- authenticate, if there's nothing in the API to tell you?) - and only call OAuth-providor.logout() if you knew your site/login triggered the original OAuth site's login - leaving the Facebook (or Gmail) login session active if it was already there before I used it to log in to your site.

<comment><USER6> That was how I was planning on doing it at first, indeed! But after giving it some thought that still doesn't make sense. Basically if you sign in using Facebook connect, your accounts are linked, and the third party site should be thought of as an extension of Facebook: If you're signed in in Facebook, then you're signed in to all the apps you've "connected" with. If you go to the site of an app you're connected with, the client-side SDK will alert the app within 2 seconds that you're signed in and connected, and could reasonably redirect you to the signed-in version of their site.

I think it comes down to personal preference, and if you're sharing your PC with people you trust, but a sign-out button is meaningless if "signing in" afterwards is possible without any confirmation. The only reason why you would have a sign-out button that signs you out of the third party site, and not out of Facebook, if is someone else wants to use your PC to sign-in on the third party site, without Facebook. That's such a narrow use-case though that I don't think it's worth it to mess up the user's model of security.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> There are 2 issues being raised here. Firstly, Facebook Connect keeps people logged into Facebook once they've logged out of then authentication consumer site. From the user's perspective, this may be desirable behavior or not. If it's their personal desktop and they like to leave themselves logged in to Facebook then it is. If it's a shared PC at an Internet cafe, probably not. As part of the Connect API, Facebook could force the authentication consumer site to ask at the time of logout and to propagate through.

The second issue is that of honeypots and tricking people into providing credentials. People very seldom check the URL to verify that Facebook or Twitter are the actual sites that the data is being submitted to. In fact, they've been trained to do that with services like Mastercard Securecode usually implemented inside a frame to "arcot.com". This is a much bigger issue that requires a more imaginative solution.

<comment> robinson-wall > In fact, they've been trained to do that with services like Mastercard > Securecode usually implemented inside a frame to "arcot.com".

Even worse, the domain used varies based on your card issuer so there's no consistency.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The problem of users mistakenly entering Facebook credentials into a Facebook- lookalike login form is definitely a honeypot vulnerability...but what percentage of these users would also, when asked to register an account on an entirely new service, would just end up deliberately using their same FB credentials anyway?

</comment><comment><USER10> Phishing sites are already using the misconception that to log-in with OAuth (or OpenID, or Facebook Connect) you enter your username and password on the site. I wrote about it last month after a friend got caught by a phishing scam. [http://www.antoncohen.com/2013/05/phishing-failure-of- oauth....](http://www.antoncohen.com/2013/05/phishing-failure-of-oauth.html)

</comment><comment><USER11> Logging out of the service can log you out of Facebook. Depends how Connect is implemented by the service. See Airbnb as an example.

</comment><comment><USER12> I like the idea others had of just logging you out of facebook too.

The honeypot problem I think is most serious. That can be mitigated by having a 'challenge' question (e.g., "What is your favorite...") on the SSO managers such as facebook.

But I think the better solution is that we seriously need to push browsers to encourage public/private key auth. That we don't have public/private keys standardized and easy to use is a shame. You could just have a little button on the browser that asks for a global password. When entered, it then populates your user-agent with your public key, and a localhost cookie with your private key. Then this entire mess maybe goes away (but I'm no security researcher). Maybe we could even then encrypt text boxes easily. That would be something: right click a text box and select 'PGP' etc.

<comment><USER7> The problem is - browsers != people. I have 3 browsers open on this machine, another 3 browsers on the phone in my pocket, four browsers on my iPad, and at work I keep separate browsers up logged in as either me-at-work or me- personally. There are also a few machines/browsers I use more-or-less regularly which aren't "mine" (the meeting room and board room machines, the girlfiend's laptop…).

While client certs "work" (StartSSL.com's login for example), they fall a fair way short of "working well across multiple devices". (I'm not even sure if I could install a client cert on Safari/Chrome/AtomicWeb on iOS if I wanted to.)

Maybe something like Chrome's bookmark/tab syncing could be extended - but I'd want it to work across Chrome/Firefox/Safari on at least OS X, iOS, Android, and Linux (and though not important for me, it'd need to work with IE on various Win versions too, if it's to get any real market penetration). I fear there's no secure way to make that happen though - who's "cloud" could you trust with your private key? (Hell, can you even trust Windows with your private key? I've _still_ not put my real GPG key onto my iPhone because I'm not convinced that'd be smart…)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> We had to tackle all these kinds of things when building the Q framework. You can see the result at [http://qbix.com](http://qbix.com) login

Consider this ... what if on a public computer, User X is still logged in with Facebook, and User Y is logged in with Twitter. In the past, both used Facebook, Twitter respectively to auth with our service. Now, which user should be logged in?

Or consider that the user could have logged out of facebook and another user logged in, while our site was in the background. The user comes back to the site, and what should we show?

Well, we show this:

[http://cl.ly/image/281I2T2H0W33](http://cl.ly/image/281I2T2H0W33)

[http://cl.ly/image/1C1l0A2n1U3V](http://cl.ly/image/1C1l0A2n1U3V)

Our framework notices stuff like this and just "does the right thing"

<comment><USER14> OT: your blog is being overrun with comment spam.

<comment><USER15> I am regular reader, how are you everybody?

This piece of writing posted at this site is truly nice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> From a clarity perspective, I really like how Stackoverflow.com (or StackExchange in general) implements this. When you go to login, it presents clear icons to choose from, but no form fields. You have to explicitly choose what you are logging in with.

That said, it does not address the security concerns raised by the article. The honeypot problem is a pretty prolific one. Same can be done for any provider that implements it's authentication for 3rd party websites. I'm sure there is some policing going on from FB/Google/etc, but not sure on the effectiveness.

</comment><comment><USER17> > User 4) "Yes. I do not see a separate window for my facebook site so I would > assume that Buyosphere would have set it up to log me out when I'm done on > their site. I think I can check to see if I'm logged out by opening facebook > and seeing if the login boxes come up or if it takes me straight to my FB > page. I will try it right now….I was wrong it didn't log me out. I am > surprised by that. That makes the process of logging off take longer if I > have to log out of this site and then go to FB to log out of that site > separately."

This one has the makings of a programmer.

</comment><comment><USER18> Two things:

First off, having multiple login systems doesn't necessarily enable you to honeypot credentials off of people that wouldn't otherwise give them. The people using Facebook credentials to try to log into a site with Facebook Connect is probably going to reuse the same username and password when they register for your site. People who don't understand security are completely terrible at password reuse discipline.

Second, the solution to this requires a collaborative effort from both the auth provider and consumer. If I sign into Facebook and check "This is a public computer", then Facebook should remember that. Then, Facebook should provide a "finishSession" API call or whatnot, which a site calls when the user logs out. This lets Facebook determine what to do with the user's facebook.com cookies - if it's a transient session, wipe them. If it's a persistent session, don't do anything with them. OAuth clients shouldn't have to care about the semantics of the Facebook login - just like authentication is delegated, so should management of the user's session be delegated.

This would preserve user expectations in both cases.

</comment><comment><USER19> I wonder if a metaphor for sign-on services would help disambiguate this?

Would using your "Facebook Card", perhaps signified with a little "ID card" icon be more comprehensible than the "Connect with..." or "Sign in with..." which look very much like a sign-in to the source.

I'd expect many people already have a mental model of an ID card or badge granting "local" access to different things.

<comment><USER20> There would still be some people that would think "Well I'll just enter my Facebook credentials to verify my Facebook Card". The problem the site creates is the login form that has a username input, password input, and a "Connect with Facebook" button. The user interpreted it as "If I type in my FB credentials and click this FB button, then FB logs me in."

Instead, they should start with making the user pick "1) Log in using a Buyosphere account, or 2) Log in using Facebook Connect". It's much less user friendly, yes, but that's the consequence of having multiple authentication systems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Doesn't this just reinforce the fact that using a third-party service for authentication is a bad idea? Most users don't understand it. You app is, generally, forced to ask for more permissions than desired. And you are at the mercy of the third party. I don't see any way in which a third party authentication service is a win.

<comment><USER22> It's a win because users aren't forced to go through the typical create username/password --> email verification --> sign in flow. Is it worth it to the end user? Maybe, maybe not. But it saves them time, and there's lots of empirical evidence that sign-up rates are drastically higher with social login.

<comment><USER23> >and there's lots of empirical evidence that sign-up rates are drastically higher with social login.

Where? I've never seen any evidence at all, just claims from social marketing weasels. The only empirical evidence I've seen shows it doesn't help at all, and that the majority of users don't like it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I'm all for Oauth integration in principal, albeit the "standard" has its (reasonable and well-criticized) issues, but I think there's more of a case to be made here for what's important to highlight to avoid user error on the part of the web browsers / clients themselves.

Maybe incognito mode should be the default state of any new browser install and non-incognito is a preference or toggle? This would avoid mass consumer public consumption auth issues.

</comment><comment><USER25> To me the moral of the story is to include a notice that the user has only logged out of _this_ (the auth consumer's) site, but may still have an active session with auth provider X. That exact language probably isn't appropriate, but it's at least the information a responsible auth consumer should try to convey.

</comment><comment><USER26> This is context scramble. Why would anyone think they'd be logged out of Facebook because they logged out of a site that uses Facebook auth? That'd be like expecting you to have to unlock your front door again because you locked your car.

<comment><USER6> Because else logging out is meaningless - just pressing the "connect with facebook" button again would instantly the user back in, without asking for confirmation or a password. Hardly secure.</comment></comment>


Nuclear Reactor Renaissance - <AUTHOR> http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/nuclear/nuclear-reactor-renaissance/0

<comment><USER2> This paragraph is wrong:

> Some analysts have expressed doubts that the EPR is the world's safest > reactor. Their main concern is the spent fuel: The reactor's higher burn-up > rate makes the waste more radioactive, raising concerns about proliferation.

They got this exactly backwards. Higher burn-up rate makes the spent fuel _even harder_ to use for nuclear weapons, by screwing up the isotopic mix. The way you make weapons-grade plutonium is to construct special reactors designed for _very low_ burn-up. And then I come to this gem:

> Despite its higher temperature, the reactor operates at one-fifth the power > of a PWR. That reduced power density enhances overall safety. What's more, > additional heat naturally increases the carbon's ability to absorb neutrons, > so the carbon acts as a passive safety mechanism capable of shutting down > the core.

First, the power of a reactor depends on its size and power density. Phrases like "one-fifth the power of a PWR" are meaningless. It's confusing power with power density.

Second, they say "additional heat" when they mean "additional temperature". Heat and temperature are completely different things, and you'd think the IEEE would know that.

Third, high temperatures make the non-fissile U-238 in the fuel more likely to absorb neutrons, not the carbon. The carbon is there as a structural component of the fuel, and to act as a moderator to slow down the neutrons.

Finally, it's not so much that it shuts down the core, as that it keeps the core at a roughly constant temperature. If you stop coolant circulation, then sure, the core is going to reduce its power output drastically; in some pebble bed research reactors they do this to turn it off at night. But the true beauty of this negative feedback loop is how it regulates the temperature, not some hypothetical "What if there's a stupendous accident?" application.

<comment><USER3> Another one is

>"Because it's a fast reactor, the HPM doesn't consume vast amounts of water, making it attractive for areas where water is scarce or unavailable."

There's no reason a fast reactor should be different from an ordinary LWR in water use. A thermal power plant uses river or ocean water as a heat sink; nothing about a fast reactor changes the thermodynamic need for a heat engine to have a cold reservoir. Of course there's no longer water in the closed loop that cools the reactor core (which is what confuses them?).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Sadly no mention of thorium or LFTR.

<comment><USER5> No mention of pebble bed reactors[1] either, which is a shame, because AFAIK they are still the only ones that cannot melt down. They produce less energy the hotter they get and one can design them to, for instance, never exceed 1800K. If the cooling system fails, the system simply reaches a steady state at that temperature. There is thorium variety of this reactor.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble_bed_reactor>

<comment><USER6> Funky, the english Wikipedia page. It says that the German pebble bed reactor was abandoned due to 'political and economic' reasons.

The truth can be read in the German version of the article, it simply did not work problem free. It is also mentioned further down in the English article. The German article about this specific reactor, the THTR-300, goes into detail.

The pebbles were breaking. The concrete got too hot. The reactor got too hot in its center. Taking out pebbles could only be done when he reactor was running with reduced power. It also had an accident where the reactor was leaking radioactivity.

All in all the handling of the pebbles had many ugly surprises for pebble bed reactor designers. They were breaking at a rate of 1000 higher than expected.

<comment><USER2> The German pebble-bed was built in 1983 and shut down in 1989. Pebble bed reactor designers have had 21 years to improve on that design, and they've not been idle. All real nuclear reactors have problems before you've had time to work out the bugs in the design. They're big, complicated machines, and they have to meet some pretty stringent engineering specs.

The German THTR-300 was the first attempt to build a full-scale pebble bed reactor, after they'd run just one smaller research reactor. Problems with the design are to be expected. That's not an indictment of pebble bed reactor designs; that's just how nuclear engineering works. I'm glad that the pebble bed guys are finally picking themselves off the floor and continuing on with the Chinese HTR-PM reactors, which were designed to avoid the problems which plagued the THTR-300.

<comment><USER6> This German study (2008) from Jülich (!) was quite critical about the whole concept:

[http://juwel.fz- juelich.de:8080/dspace/bitstream/2128/3136/1...](http://juwel.fz- juelich.de:8080/dspace/bitstream/2128/3136/1/Juel_4275_Moormann.pdf)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ways Startups Can Deal With Patent Troll Demands - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/07/10-ways-startups-can-deal-with-patent-troll-demands/ <comment><USER2> Start-ups generally don't have a problem until they get into the making-money or getting publicity stage. After that you'll pick up all kinds of parasites, patent trolls are only one of the many classes these fall into, and they're not nearly the most frequently encountered ones.

Look out for: rogue angels, investment bankers, bad partners, bad leave co- founders and so on. Lots of people want a slice of the start-up pie without pulling their weight.

<comment><USER3> What are rogue angels, and why are investment bankers bad?

<comment><USER2> Rogue Angel -> Angel that will use some of their money in order to get a bit of stock which they then use in a minority shareholder lawsuit in order to try to leverage that into a larger amount. Start-ups can't have distractions like that so people that pull that stunt can hold you over a barrel. I've seen this up close and it isn't pretty.

Investment bankers are not bad by definition, but on the whole they're worth a lot less than they give themselves credit for. They presume to be an in- dispensable part of the deal universe but in actual fact they can be as much of a hindrance as they can be a help. Oh, and they _always_ want to be paid, even when they don't perform at all.

<comment><USER3> I see, thanks. I didn't know about rogue angels, it's too bad such scammers exist.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> From time to time, my dad would be asked to answer alleged patent infringements where he worked. He said he was able to easily deal with them by looking at the initial claim of the patent and explaining that the initial claim did X where as they did Y. That was good enough to stop any further allegations of patent infringement.

This was 20+ years ago. Perhaps, in todays "market", lawyers would still push.

<comment><USER5> I think there may be some merit to this. The assumption of the patent troll may be that you will not look at their patents. (They are junk, remember?) They may just assume you will believe you need to hire a patent attorney and that the patents cannot even be assessed with so much as a sniff test without first spending thousands of dollars. And the cost will scare you into submission.

If you were to call the troll's bluff and go the distance (rare), eventually your patent litigator that you are paying through the nose is going to be challenging every possible claim in discussions with the troll's lawyers before anyone steps foot in a courtroom. Chances of success in court are going to be considered, and argued. The simple fact is the troll's chances might not be so great. Why do so many cases settle? The troll only needs to scare you into settling, and that's all. Mission accomplished.

I'd say the sooner you start asking those questions about the troll's chances, the more pressure you put on the troll. They have to pay their lawyers, by asking them to devote time to the matter, to deal with the questions in order to maintain fear in you. Meanwhile, in asking these questions you haven't had to pay any lawyers to look at the patents yet. (And they don't necessarily know that.)

The whole patent trolling system is built on fear and the high expense of patent litigation. Even for the most bogus patent claims, it can cost thousands of dollars to have a court declare them as such. Take away that expense, and the fear of having to pay it, and the trolling business goes "Pfft."

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> If I will be small and troll persist - I will close and open new company.

If I will be big and troll persist - I move all operations out of USA except office with sales people working on a contract.

What troll get from this - nothing. What USA get from this - negative tax income. What will change for me - employer.

</comment><comment><USER7> Has anyone here on HN been on a receiving end of such letters?

</comment><comment><USER8> "Don't make it easy for them. Require registration before granting access to whitepapers, detailed documents, or video tutorials that delve into the behind-the-scenes details. Think twice about being on customer lists or advertising the ins and outs of your business, the products you use, etc., unless there's a good business reason for doing so."

This seems like a great way to kneecap your business. Make it hard for potential customers to evaluate you (so they end up choosing companies that are more open), make it less likely that you will get positive buzz in tech or press circles, make it less likely that people will feel confident about your product as a result of understanding it, and make it harder for new customers to learn how to use your product. All because you're afraid of patent suits!</comment>


Show HN: App for my grandpa to help him read printed text (OCR+TTS) - <AUTHOR> https://www.helpmereadthis.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> My grandpa (88 y/o) is pretty active, but his eyesight is very bad. He manages to use his tablet in limited ways because some apps can make the font enormous.

But what is really problematic is the tiny text on prescriptions, medicine leaflets, bus stop timetable, etc. I get a call at least once a week that some letter has come in and he cannot read it and I need to help him. (the most annoying part is that's usually spam or some incomprehensible gov document sent for compliance).

So I built an app for him, where he can snap a photo and it is recognized and later read out loud to him.

Stack:

\- A Web App (full JavaScript)

\- Native camera capture

\- Google Cloud Vision for OCR

\- Web Speech API for Text-To-Speech

All Open Source, available here [https://github.com/artpi/help-me- read](https://github.com/artpi/help-me-read) . Google Cloud Vision API is called directly from JavaScript (if you have a token), so you don't have to rely on my servers. PRs welcome :)</comment>


Ask HN: What is the most successful trait to have? - <AUTHOR> Out of all the traits one can have, which one helps you the most (overall) in life?<p>I have to say that by far, the most successful trait to have is discipline. With discipline, you get things done, you push through obstacles, you grow and are constantly challenged which keeps you adaptable for life ahead. <comment><USER2> This is a really unpopular answer but honestly intelligence. I've seen the undisciplined, poor communicators, dickheads, etc succeed. Never seen a real dummy succeed in software.

And this is backed up by a good amount of evidence that shows intelligence is a pretty important trait.

</comment><comment><USER3> Communication

</comment><comment><USER4> Patience.</comment>


Show HN: Node.js node_modules file pruning - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/tj/node-prune <comment><USER2> Rather than two giant 440px high images consisting of tiny text in the readme I'd quite love to read exactly what it does and why. Does it prune files in modules that are not needed? If so what heuristics does it use to prune files? Or does it prune modules that are not needed?

Reading the code[1] it appears to delete directories and extensions based on a blacklist.

1\. [https://github.com/tj/node- prune/blob/master/prune.go#L15-L5...](https://github.com/tj/node- prune/blob/master/prune.go#L15-L51)

<comment><USER3> It looks like it removes the files necessary for "npm install" assuming that the module will do npm install immediately when you install it. This is not true for all cases though..which is why the files should be kept around. Disk space is cheap. This isn't bad for deployments though.

<comment><USER4> It's especially good for deployments to AWS Lambda.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Love it. Saved 600MB... and test cases still passed :)

I ported it to bash really quick, as thats probably easier for people to drop into their dotfiles if they don't have a Golang env setup.

[https://gist.github.com/gpittarelli/64d1e9b7c1a4af762ec467b1...](https://gist.github.com/gpittarelli/64d1e9b7c1a4af762ec467b1c7571dc2)

If we all just do our part and send a PR setting up .npmignore for one or two of these projects, maybe we won't need this anymore

<comment><USER6> Great. I wrapped your script into npm package [https://www.npmjs.com/package/node-prune](https://www.npmjs.com/package/node- prune)

<comment><USER7> And here is a project that helps you decide upfront if you should rely on that bloated module:

[https://www.npmjs.com/package/download- size](https://www.npmjs.com/package/download-size)

The tool is available online too:

[https://arve0.github.io/npm-download-size/](https://arve0.github.io/npm- download-size/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> [https://github.com/tj/node- prune/blob/master/prune.go#L57](https://github.com/tj/node- prune/blob/master/prune.go#L57)

Doesn't this also result in .d.ts files being removed? These are type declaration files (Kinda like C's .h files) that provide types for you without the file size overhead of the full TypeScript source.

<comment><USER9> They aren't needed during runtime though, that's what this project is attempting to clean up.

<comment><USER10> ts-node no longer works.

<comment><USER11> What's the benefit of running ts-node in production?

<comment><USER10> I don't have to distribute .js files.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The Yarn autoclean command also does something like this: [https://yarnpkg.com/lang/en/docs/cli/autoclean/](https://yarnpkg.com/lang/en/docs/cli/autoclean/)

<comment><USER13> [https://github.com/tj/node- prune/blob/20703f18e9a7996683f1b8...](https://github.com/tj/node- prune/blob/20703f18e9a7996683f1b89769c7fda4654aed52/prune.go#L14):

      // Copied from yarn (mostly).

I infer that TJ used `yarn autoclean` as a starting point for this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Awesome idea. Especially if you're packaging your projects via something like Docker this can shave hundreds of megabytes. (Even if you're using the Docker layer cache, any change to your dependencies will bust the entire node_modules cache.)

The caveats is that this won't work 100% of the time. There will be a dependency deep down in the tree that needs to read a markdown file from the file system or something of that sort. These issues could be hard to debug if this tool doesn't provide good visibility into what's being deleted.

<comment><USER6> you're looking for `yarn autoclean`. they have `.yarncleanrc` IIRC

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Is this serious?

I mean, kudos for helping push node module developers to make better use of `.npmignore` et al, but this project strikes me as overly snarky or even trolling...

Seems like what we really need is for some volunteers to tackle the most- installed packages on npm that publish with many extraneous files.

Hell, you could even automate it by writing a bot that (politely) points out likely-extraneous files and opens a pull request with changes to `.npmignore` to clean things up... Hmm... Weekend project brewing...

<comment><AUTHOR> It's not a troll, this is for AWS Lambda, where size impacts deployments and cost starts. See my comment below about the automation, I think it could/should be done too!

<comment><USER16> Wouldnt it make more sense to bundle, minify and treeshake your package than to delete unused files in node_modules? Tree shaking will remove unsused code even from files you are using.

<comment><AUTHOR> You can't always do that (native modules, other non-js assets..)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Shouldn't this be handled entirely by npm? If these files are unnecessary why do they get downloaded in the first place?

<comment><AUTHOR> Ideally people use the "files" array. It might be nice if someone writes a bot to go around and fix large packages by adding that.

<comment><USER18> Many authors are strangely against it for some reason. One time I sorted my node_modules by size and opened issues for the top offenders, you can see their resistance here:

[https://github.com/crypto- browserify/sha.js/issues/5](https://github.com/crypto- browserify/sha.js/issues/5)

[https://github.com/medikoo/es5-ext/issues/11](https://github.com/medikoo/es5-ext/issues/11)

<comment><USER19> Speaking as very-much-not-a-JS-developer: Isn't this essentially the same problem Linux package managers solve with -dev, -doc, and -dbg packages? I.e. the default install only contains the minimum necessary to use a program, and if you need the header files/documentation/debug symbols, you can just install them separately.

Is it too hard to meaningfully separate these parts of a package, or is it more of a philosophical issue?

<comment><USER20> It really is not too hard to separate these things in npm, but very few packages do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> No disrespect to TJ (he did many awesome projects I use almost daily), but wouldn't simple: 'find node_modules -not -regex ".*.[js,json]" -delete'

do the same job? Why project in go?

<comment><AUTHOR> Maybe it's meta satire :D

<comment><USER21> ok then my comment can be forgotten. :D

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Oh wow TJ is working in nodeland again. I thought he had moved entirely towards Go.

Glad to see more of his work!

Edit: It's Go lol.

</comment><comment><USER23> Even better: submit a PR auto fix these issues on the corresponding GitHub repo when pruning

</comment><comment><USER22> TJ, [https://apex.sh/](https://apex.sh/) is so beautiful. Did you design it entirely yourself or did you get help and if so who helped? Also mind if I ask what your inspirations were?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I do all the design stuff myself. I wouldn't call myself a designer, but I do enjoy it either way!

<comment><USER13> Just one thing—please increase the font size. `--font-size: 14px` is just too small for comfort. The standard default of 16px is a good balance. (`--font- size-small` also naturally needs to increase.) Other than that, it's a pleasant minimal design.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I've been thinking about this in a different way: what about bundling things with rollup.js? Then each package in require() would be just a package.json and an index.js. I think this might even help with performance.

Edit: lightened up (;

</comment><comment><USER25> Symptomatic of the npm community's overloading of "npm install" to serve both users and contributors. It's easy to configure "npm publish" to do essentially this for all users, but it's considered bad practice. Which I don't understand, since the dev use case is still fulfilled - and better - by "git clone". And merging the two doesn't scale - Chrome's dev download is several GB and takes hours to build.

</comment><comment><USER26> We've started publishing modules with a whitelist in the npmignore to help combat this.

        *
        !dist/**/*

</comment><comment><USER27> Nice job TJ. This definitely scratches an itch. Thought you were a Go dev these days. ;)

<comment><USER28> Sarcasm?

<comment><USER22> [https://medium.com/@tjholowaychuk/farewell-node- js-4ba9e7f3e...](https://medium.com/@tjholowaychuk/farewell-node- js-4ba9e7f3e52b)

Update: I see now it's written in go... :-P

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Usually I don't care about what language an executable is written in. After all, as a user I'm just interested in whether it executes or not.

But these small-software situations amaze me. Someone with a node_modules problem will have readily available sh, node and maybe python. So why golang? What could those not do, or golang can do better to such extent that it trumps availability? Similarly there's a price to pay in terms of people contributing with a fix: who is interested in pruning node_modules and will send in a golang PR?

In other words, if a dev would prefer Java (specifically chosen because it exacerbates the startup time), would it still pass as ok? Luckily golang can compile to binaries but that implies you give up availability on the other end, now being confined to someone compiling and publishing on a regular basis, as opposed to just pushing a fix commit to a git url.

None of the above would be of importance if this would be a personal-quality repo with a note: hey i did this at 2am out of frustration, i chose the tools that i knew best, use it at your own risk, opensourced to share knowledge and to access it from my own projects, not as a "productified" software.

EDIT: I would much prefer a commenter's solution in sh for the reasons above but also readibility: [https://gist.github.com/gpittarelli/64d1e9b7c1a4af762ec467b1...](https://gist.github.com/gpittarelli/64d1e9b7c1a4af762ec467b1c7571dc2) :clap:

<comment><AUTHOR> Man it's free code, you're reading into this far too much.

<comment><USER29> I'm trying really hard to see what price has to do with anything I've said.

<comment><USER30> Well, that's your problem right there.

This line particularly reveals your very sad flavor of entitlement:

> hey i did this at 2am out of frustration, i chose the tools that i knew > best, use it at your own risk, opensourced to share knowledge and to access > it from my own projects, not as a "productified" software.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> This is completely useless because npm still downloads those files and the hdd space is pretty negligeble. It should def go under the category of troll driven development. This might be useful for docker images that will be distrubuted and will be downloaded a lot, but even there it's a stretch.

That being said, it would be great if npm had some functionality around packaging only the necessary files for actually running the module and removing all unnecessary files (tests, source code, documentation) and have an opt-in option to install those.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's for Lambda

<comment><USER31> Maybe documentation should include uses cases? Newer users to npm + node might think this does something different. Just a suggestions.

<comment><USER32> Maybe documentation for everything should contain use cases, first, before anything.

Every Javascript tool has documentation the wrong way round. Quick start guides and installation instructions are useless if you don't even have a good reason to use the tool in the first place.

<comment><USER30> Dunno, if you need to be convinced to use a tool, then maybe you aren't yet in the market for said tool. I think it's a cherry on top to describe use-cases but not so critical that there's some sort of ecosystem problem that you describe.

<comment><USER32> The purpose is to _un_ -convince people from using it. Way too often people have already made up their mind by the time they reach the docs, based purely on how popular the tool is, how flashy the front page is, or whatever bad advice they've received from someone who feels the need to justify their library of choice.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's good to have critical thinking skills, if people can't figure out if they want to use a tool or not, they should probably work on that a bit!

<comment><USER32> For sure! Doesn't mean we shouldn't strive to give them a helping hand though. I know I fell victim to the exact same problem when I was learning front-end dev. I'm sure everyone in that space has had a "why on earth have I been using this for the past 6 months?" moment for one library or another. I just feel like we should be taking more preventative measures against that.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Will Congress agree to a Skype testimony from Edward Snowden? - <AUTHOR> http://www.newsweek.com/edward-snowden-line-two-849

<comment><USER2> The title is misleading. The use of Skype specifically is only in the _last sentence_ of the article, _No problem, say his allies - if Rogers is ready to move beyond name-calling. Skype is only a computer click away._ This is not in quotes, and is sourced blindly to "his allies."

There's a period, not a semicolon, between the "No problem" clause and the "Skype" clause, weakening the attribution. Because of that, I think the article author may have made that leap. In my opinion, "Skype" is used by sources as simply common parlance for "some kind of secure video conferencing", and the author perhaps unintentionally, and unfortunately provocatively, overemphasized Skype as the literal option to be used. For security, Skype is a touch radioactive, and Microsoft knows it. That's one of their published reasons for centralizing its server architecture. I would expect Congress, and Snowden, to prefer to use something better, and more securely routable.

</comment><comment><USER3> Skype, backdoored by M$ & the NSA? At least they'll know exactly where he is if they need to send a drone strike.</comment>


Mathematics of Eternity Prove The Universe Must Have Had A Beginning - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/27793/

<comment><USER2> I've found one useful way to think about the question "what was before the Big Bang" is to ponder "what is North of the North pole"?

Don't stretch the analogy too far - I'm not suggesting that spacetime is topologically shaped like that - but to me it's a useful example of a co- ordinate system which seems locally euclidean going whacky at/near the boundaries.

Roughly, "But there has to be something _before_ the big bang, you just go back a bit further in the same direction!" == "But there has to be something North of the pole - you just go a bit further in the same direction!"

<comment><USER3> The problem is that you an use words like "go" and "direction" in a situation where they make sense. In the incipient phase of the Universe the space-time did not exist as we can perceive it with our brains, themselves based on physical and chemical properties of the mature Universe - so would be impossible to "imagine" that there is no "north" because there is no direction available.

Kant deducted that our conscience and brains are born with the sense of space- time and we cannot override this. The only way in which we can access this ideas is only through highend mathematics and AIs that just need to do a job, but not to explain to our limited brains how.

<comment><USER4> Kant may have deducted that, but he's talking about a neurobiological phenomenon born from evolutionary pressures in a very limited environment.

Michelson–Morley mesured, and Einstein explained, how speed of light, not time, is constant through the Universe. To the point of questioning simultaneity.

If we've already got non-constant time, then the concept of a time origin prior to which there is no sensible physical description is at least plausible, if not something I can, spacial geometric puns pardoned, wrap my brain around in the same sense that there's a limit to "northness" on a spheroid.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "A universe from nothing" by Lawrence Krauss presents the possibility of a universe without a beginning, even one containing "nothing", yet still be compatible with present cosmology. My general impression is that by "nothing" he means "averaged out, zero energy" and with a set of laws (quantum mechanics) that can generate fluctuations. Out of these fluctuations you can have particles of various energy arising (which normally live short lives and decay back into nothingness).

But given enough time you could have a large enough fluctuation that generates a big bang, followed by very long inflation and cooling. Equally so, you could have a fluctuation that winks all the known universe into a void, suddenly and without warning.

<comment><USER6> The question would be then what the beginning of quantum mechanics is. They are also laws and why do they exist? The question "why" is probably wrong here, that implies a reason where we will never find one. These thoughts that we are a product of nothingness with fluctuations make me really feel weird. There is probably an eternity outside of our universe, something that we have to accept and that there is no reason for it.

<comment><USER7> The question "why" does not necessarily point to a purpose, although we can not 'a apriori' exclude that possible purpose from being there.

You could see it as two folds answer: either the laws and this "nothing" simply exists, or something else created them.

There's really no need to keep asking "what, then, created the creator", for simply things are the way they are and not necessarily as in the explanation we find satisfactory. It could be that the Universe has no creator (I personally find it highly improbable), it could be that it has one creator, or N. I can't be absolutely certain and we can't really check. All we can do is have an opinion/belief about it.

<comment><USER8> >There's really no need to keep asking "what, then, created the creator", for simply things are the way they are and not necessarily as in the explanation we find satisfactory.

The same thing could be said for anything and why wouldn't you just stop at the universe instead?

>It could be that the Universe has no creator (I personally find it highly improbable)

How is this improbable? Do you have evidence or something that would lead you to such a claim? Also, what do you mean by "creator"?

>I can't be absolutely certain and we can't really check. All we can do is have an opinion/belief about it.

How do you know this? Isn't that a claim of certainty that you said we don't have. If we don't have evidence or any logical reasons for something, then guesses aren't sufficient explanations.

<comment><USER7> As I said, I have an opinion/belief. If I had evidence, it would be more than an opinion. But it's not.

As for the certainty, no one so far has created a test, not even theoretically, to discern between a created and an uncreated thing. At least I'm not aware of any.

Still, epistemologically, beliefs can be shown to be true, although they are not justified. Sometimes it's pure luck, some other times it's insufficient justifications.

When I say it's improbable, it's a statement of belief. Not my intention to be persuasive.

<comment><USER9> > As for the certainty, no one so far has created a test, not even > theoretically, to discern between a created and an uncreated thing.

It's simple: Demonstrate the existence of the creator.

> As I said, I have an opinion/belief.

Why?

<comment><USER7> If you prefer Mercedes to BMW, and a total stranger comes to you asking "Why?", would you feel obliged to answer?

<comment><USER10> Is this really a matter of trivial preference like that?

<comment><USER7> I don't it's trivial. It's a matter of life and death. But _my death and my life_. It's not that I don't have an answer, but I don't like feeling interrogated. :)

<comment><USER8> This isn't an interrogation, but you said some things which I think deserved critique. Just because you have an opinion doesn't make it so, nor is it something that should be respected. You don't have any legitimate reasons to say these things so you hide behind opinion as if because it is an opinion it's above scrutiny.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> You can read John Rennie's excellent answer to this question ([http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/24018/how-can- som...](http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/24018/how-can-something- happen-when-time-does-not-exist)) that always comes up during discussions on time.

<comment><USER12> it was a good read, I +1 you.

what literally gives me a headache if I think about it for longer than 45 seconds is this question how come something could exist before anything existed. It had to exist, otherwise what existed after that wouldn't be created. But it was, and our universe and we are a prove of it. It feels like an almost perfect crime that we are a result of, if you can follow my thought here. I dont care how many billion of years in past I have to dig into. I dont care how many billions of lightyears I need to travel. At the end, at some point, there must be an end. Whats after it? Just think of it, for a moment. It exists right now in this second. Sure you wont see it in your lifetime, or experience it, but taken out time and distance from this equation, you would be there and experience it. Awesome stuff...

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> this builds on an earlier theorem, which i haven't looked at (and probably wouldn't understand anyway) which apparently makes rigorous the intuitively attractive idea that if you trace back in time something that is getting bigger then at some point you reach zero.

the reason oscillating universes are caught out by this is that (apparently - this is all just my impression on a quick skim, having never understood things much and leaving astronomy - not even astrophysics - decades ago) even though they oscillate, they need to get systematically bigger to work around some problems with entropy.

another model they considered is a universe that "just sits there" like a seed, forever, until (randomly) deciding to grow. and that has problems with quantum mechanics (which you can imagine - how can something be stable for an infinite amount of time?).

one problem is that it's a paper that really only attacks current models. they don't _prove_ that no other model could be thought up.

you could also argue another weakness of the paper is a reliance on our notions of basic physics (quantum and statistical mechanics) holding true even in the distant past. but then, what else can you do?

</comment><comment><USER14> Creation of something from nothing seems rather functionally equivalent to destruction of a something into nothing with time reversed. Is there any known process or way to take something and destroy it utterly into nothing? If not, then what would make such an utter destruction possible given a reversed direction of time?

Except as an abstraction, it seems to me that no one has any real experience of nothing. As an empiricist, that gives me quite a bit of pause when anyone starts making claims about nothing (myself being no exception).

</comment><comment><USER15> This is _my_ theory.

After watching Steven Hawking's series on The Universe, he talked about Black Holes and how they keep growing and growing; sucking in more mass and getting denser and denser, whilst at the same time amasing more gravity.

i.e. the more mass something has, the more gravity it exerts, the more mass it attracts -- a viscious cirle.

So my theory, don't laugh, is that the universe if cyclical. After a Black Hole has consumed everything, including other Black Holes etc. it explodes and all that mass gets released creating the universe as we know it. And so on and so on over a _gazillion_ years.

Is that absurd?

Edit: Many thanks for the informative replies...

<comment><USER16> Isaac Asimov has a brilliantly-written, chilling (indeed, to some, downright terrifying) very short story on this very topic:

<http://www.multivax.com/last_question.html> "The Last Question"

I won't spoil it for you. But go read it.

<comment><USER15> Wow, oh wow, that was absolutely fantastic. Cheers!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm a fan of the white-hole theory (big bang is opposite side of a super massive black hole in another universe)

<comment><USER18> Theory or "idea"?

<comment><USER17> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_hole>

_White holes appear as part of a solution to the Einstein field equations known as the maximally extended version of the Schwarzschild metric_

We may be one of a processes of cosmological natural selection:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fecund_universes#Fecund_univers...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fecund_universes#Fecund_universes)

<comment><USER19> Alternatively, the Red Dwarf explanation: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxWN8AhNER0>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Paper: <http://arxiv.org/pdf/1204.4658v1.pdf>

</comment><comment><USER21> The question is not whether the universe had a beginning but rather how many times.

<comment><USER22> Big bang is not certain. Yes the cosmological background radiation is evenly distributed, and yes Hubble law makes accurate predictions, but these aren't proofs. I watched a documentary recently on this subject and most theoretical physicists surveyed did not believe in the big bang.

<comment><USER23> I'd be interested in the documentary if you could provide a title!

<comment><USER22> It's called "Horizon: What Happened Before the Big Bang?".</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Mission Control: A History of the Urban Dashboard (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://placesjournal.org/article/mission-control-a-history-of-the-urban-dashboard/ <comment><USER2> "They don't merely seek to display information about a system but to generate insights that human analysts use to change that system"

Hasn't everyone noticed by now that it's those with the least knowledge of business and economics that are very often tasked with doing BI reports? Dare I say that the majority are "trained" in completely different socio-political institutions than the ones they are supposedly advising for? Seems like a recipe for data science disaster.

</comment><comment><USER3> A bit from back then: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9182905](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9182905)

<comment><USER4> Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> those things were sold in Rio with the excuse that it would make it faster to respond to floods and landslides.

Turn out landslides take the cameras/cables first thing.

In the end, this is only used for policing, tracking individuals, and issuing tons of traffic tickets.</comment>


Why am I envious of Hadoop and Big Data geeks in the Valley? - <AUTHOR> http://www.unfoldingcode.com/2012/06/why-am-i-envious-of-hadoop-and-big-data.html

<comment><USER2> s/bigdata/tulipmania/g

<comment><USER3> I work in this field and I have to agree with you. I think most serious engineers and statisticians would too. It's just that decision makers are nervous that they are not doing "big data" or need a "data scientist" (which from their descriptions to me sounds like a fairy god mother who magically makes fundamental weakness in your business model disappear) and therefore try to get into it. Of course there are a huge bunch of players who have sort of adopted the red hat model and try to sell a Hadoop solution by rebadging it as "enterprise-ready" or "business analyst friendly". I guess one just rides the wave and prepares for winter...

<comment><USER4> People who are in the industry realize that words like "Big Data" and "Cloud" are usually buzz words. People who use the technology on a day to day basis appreciate it for what it is, and don't really try to embellish beyond that, and I work for Cloudera :P</comment></comment></comment>


Baby steps toward replacing Google Reader - <AUTHOR> http://www.marco.org/2013/03/14/baby-steps-replacing-google-reader <comment><USER2> Personally, this could be a killer use of App.net. Blend social with RSS and get something like Pandora for newsfeeds. Not sure how hard it would be to pull an RSS feed and then push that into an App.net stream, blended with some meta data on content and a machine learning algorithm which enhanced your feeds by finding similar feeds that has a high correlative match to what you read most. Just sayin'

<comment><USER3> No damn it. This is exactly why Google is closing down Reader. Most people who have stuck with Reader do not want anything to do with mixing RSS and social crap.

<comment><USER4> > This is exactly why Google is closing down Reader.

The large number of vocal people complaining specifically about how much worse Google+ is than the old reader sharing system (search for "sharebros" or <http://www.buzzfeed.com/robf4/googles-lost-social-network>) would suggest this is not true.

With the exception of hardcore introverts, most people like the idea of sharing - but only when it's actually doing something they like rather than the gamified meaningless actions Google is chasing right now.

<comment><USER3> I'm not against sharing. What I hate is when sharing turns into blasting everything I do out to the world without my consent each time. I don't want people to know every song I listen to, every news article I read, or every HN post I open. If this makes me introverted, then I don't want to be cool and hip.

See the recent stories about LinkedIn blasting out stuff to every contact in an address book or the historical fubars of Facebook changing defaults on the fly.

<comment><USER4> > If this makes me introverted, then I don't want to be cool and hip.

It just means you want good social software rather than things designed for advertisers. The original Google Reader sharing model was exactly what you describe: use it in private until you choose to share something.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm working on an opensource implementation of the API here if anyone is interested in helping out :) <https://github.com/devongovett/reader>

<comment><USER6> Did I miss something in their API, or was there absolutely no way to tell whether you had renamed a feed or not?

<comment><USER7> FYI: <http://undoc.in/subscription.html#edit>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> All I know is that I will be on whatever reeder supports. So basically whoever makes that thing is going to be deciding my fate. I hope they choose wisely.

<comment><USER9> Bingo. This is what's up for grabs - who wants to be the underlying infrastructure for all these great apps like Reeder or RiverOfNews Note: most folks are opting for Twitter/FB + Flipboard-style apps, so most of the market will be the privacy oriented elite.

<comment><USER10> Feedly's first out of the gate already here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Also, an implementation independent test suite would be nice...

I'm sure there are plenty of corner cases where all the new implementations might fall down, or make different decisions than are expected.

<comment><USER12> Marco should write it.

<comment><USER13> why?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm the project lead for Vienna, the open source RSS client for the Mac. We support Google Reader, and we want to support this:

<https://github.com/ViennaRSS/vienna-rss/issues/160>

If you're a Cocoa developer, feel free to jump right in. If you're going to implement the server side, shoot me a note @mstroeck (app.net preferred).

<comment><USER15> I tried Vienna today -- downloaded, installed, then tapped OK on the "Google Sync" option…

…an hour later, the application still was "not responding", though the little red number circle on the dock icon continued to climb. About a half hour later with the application still in a "not responding" state, I force quit and then proceeded to delete it.

<comment><USER16> Perhaps you're not a very technical person then. Or you have some bizarro ideas about testing new apps.

If an app is "not responding" after one hour, and it's not doing physics simulation or renders a 3D movie for Pixar, then you kill it and try again. Damn, I wouldn't even let it stay stalled for 10 minutes.

If you genuinely want to test the app (instead of only being interested in Google Sync), you'd also try how it does some other stuff, like adding some RSS feeds directly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> That's a good idea but I nevertheless think big clients (client reader + integrated access to server api) will win anyway because if you have to pay a client and then pay a subscription to a server to have access to an implementation of this API I don't think it will be very appealing. All the current model of 'small' clients was based on the fact that the access to Google's (non official) api was free. That part won't be replaced.

<comment><USER18> It would be nice if one of the self-hosted server-side apps (Fever, Tiny Tiny RSS) replicated the Reader API. It's not really worth it for me to bother with a self-hosted solution if I have to use a web client.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I just wrote something similar on an another site:

"For now, Google Reader was the standard. Now that it isn't it anymore, I hope that it will get developed a nice API to sync feeds between decides, and that the major reader will implement it. This way every application would be able to sync with every backend, without any problem. And if a backend close, you could easily switch to a different one by changing one line in the configuration."

I seriously hope that this will be true. What has got me stuck on Google Reader for now (beside the "it just works" interface) is that every major application synced with it. I don't really want this to happen again, only with a different company.

</comment><comment><USER20> OAuth rather than POST. I don't want a bunch of client apps storing passwords in plain text.

</comment><comment><USER21> Here a link to Mr Avocado? He the former engineer who created Google reader project in the first place.This is Just a suggestion from a user. Maybe getting him on board would help a lot in your project?

<http://www.massless.org/?area=Projects>

</comment><comment><USER22> Please, as an advice to general HN posters, please avoid posting marco.org links here on HN, because his sole intention is to sell his readers out more than focusing on writing. That's a fairly grande accusation, but it's justified.

Do you know why is he writing about Google Reader now? Go to your HN homepage right now, as of writing this comment, the Google reader announcement has about 1700 upvotes. Ouch, that's a lot of views for someone to let go of. Hence, if someone writes something that compliments this announcement, common sense tells me that they would get more page views.

There's nothing wrong in having ads on your blog/website, people do it all the time. What's wrong is trying to create an impression to your readers that your sole intention is to write quality content, while you care just about pageviews. Please, realize that marco.org is no different from Techcrunch!

Marco isn't innocent, if you've been following him closely. Also, I think it would help if you take a look at this page where he just blatantly sells us, his readers like some piece of junk commodity. <http://www.marco.org/sponsorship>

<comment><USER23> Are you completely stupid or are you just trolling us?

On the off chance you're just stupid, here's some enlightenment. Marco Arment is a cofounder of hugely successful Tumblr and creator of Instapaper, both of which certainly make or made him more money than he'll ever make from ads on his blog, however popular. He's also created The Magazine, which probably makes a fair bit of cash already, and will be making more in the future. He has a solid reputation in the tech space, and it is stupid to argue that he's somehow spending his days trying to bait HN with empty crap articles.

marco.org is very different from TC, in that if marco.org had no ads, Marco would certainly still write to it, as it's his personal platform, whereas if TC had no ads, it would fold in a week.

<comment><USER24> _Marco Arment is a cofounder of hugely successful Tumblr and creator of Instapaper, both of which certainly make or made him more money than he'll ever make from ads on his blog, however popular._

The GP post should be nuked from orbit, but the reasoning you put there is hilariously specious. If it is so irrelevant, then why are they there? Why does Arment stuff entries full of credibility-diminishing "sponsored by" text, or worse insidious Amazon affiliate links?

Every ounce of reality says that he cares very much about his blog income, your imaginings of his external wealth notwithstanding.

<comment><USER23> He can make something in the thousands of dollars a month of income from his blog. That's pretty good, and it probably pays for quite a few monthly expenses, so he'd be stupid _not_ to put this one nonintrusive ad on there.

Not putting a small ad on there that pays thousands of dollars would just be silly.

As a comparison, swombat.com has no ads because the amount of money attached to it would simply be too small to bother (tens of dollars a month at the very most, if that much). If it was a few thousand, I'd put a small ad on there even if I had millions in the bank.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Volvo or Volkswagen?</comment>