Leaked Snapchat emails: Anti-gun group told to pay or NRA ads may appear - <AUTHOR> https://mic.com/articles/170019/leaked-snapchat-emails-anti-gun-charity-told-to-pay-or-nra-ads-may-appear-on-videos <comment><USER3> I have to wonder how much this was intentional and how much was very poor communication.

My initial response was that it's a horrible shakedown, but on reflection, I wonder if it really was just Saliterman acting in both Everytown's _and_ his own best interest. _If_ it's a common tactic for the NRA to advertise where possible during anti-gun media, and if it's something Snapchat does not involve itself in mediating for journalistic purposes, then it's entirely possible the team that offered Everytown the free media deal _inadvertently_ set them up to have the NRA run messages during their event, and Saliterman was trying to come across as "hey, I would have advised you against this for this exact reason, as the NRA is trying to get in on your ad spots and that's not something we can really prevent."

How you interpret it is probably highly dependent on your opinions of the companies involved as well as how it is presented here. I only wonder because it seems like it's in vogue to call out bad behavior of tech companies right now, and that undoubtedly leads to _at least some_ articles that purposefully misinterpret events to convey that story.

To be clear, this story certainly makes it sound like a shakedown, and it very well may be. I have no idea if that's what happened here, and I doubt at this point we'll ever know know that it's in the realm of PR spin for damage control, but given that _both parties_ refused to comment, I think chances are high that we're getting the author's assumptions rather than something reasonably close to the truth, whatever that may be.

<comment><USER4> > as the NRA is trying to get in on your ad spots and that's not something we > can really prevent.

Eh, surely snapchat _can_ prevent it?

<comment><USER5> OK, but why should they? Prioritising one customer over another isn't good business sense, you're likely to lose the less loved customer.

<comment><USER6> In this particular case, you don't have a choice. If you run an NRA ad in Everytown's campaign, Everytown _is_ the less-loved customer.

<comment><USER7> Why is that? Is Everytown's message so shoddy that it can't hold its own against a ten second NRA ad?

<comment><USER8> Basically, yes.

<comment><USER9> Why do you say that?

<comment><USER10> Numbers have been crunched and conclusions have been drawn.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> To be honest, this is standard operating practice for almost every advertising venue.

If you work at Amazon and want to show Amazon ads at the top of the page, whenever a user searches for eBay, Google will happily let Amazon do that. If eBay wants to prevent it, they need to pay money go secure the advertising spot on "eBay" search results. Ditto for Windows/Mac, BMW/Mercedes, etc etc.

At its foundation, advertising spots are content-agnostic. Anyone is able to buy advertising slots on any page, and as long as everyone follows the rules, whoever has the best bid*click-through-rate will win. And to be honest, that sounds like a perfectly reasonable way to run a business that's funded almost entirely by advertising revenues.

<comment><USER12> I'm glad you are making an effort to be honest, thank you. However that is really too simplistic.

This is not competing retailers, it's people fighting over matters of life and death and they will use any tactic against each other no matter how distasteful because they believe the end justifies the means.

Clearly any media company has to carefully weigh controversial issues from different perspectives. Making money, preserving the integrity and their brand, potential bad press or defecting customers, etc.

Often there is no simple rule. A judgement call has to be made factoring in what's best for company overall and if we're lucky maybe integrity is mentioned by someone along the way.

<comment><USER13> > A judgement call has to be made factoring in what's best for company overall > and if we're lucky maybe integrity is mentioned by someone along the way.

I'm pro-gun, and have given money to the NRA, and I'd be upset if snapchat wouldn't sell ad-space to the Brady Campaign during an NRA-sponsored event like if the 1000-person shoot had been captured using Snapchat.

I think it's a basic moral standing that whenever someone is saying something I want it allowed for the oposition to say the exact opposite.

I also think that the only people who'd be afraid of a pro-NRA ad in or during an anti-gun ad would be those who cannot defend their moral possition.

Personally, I'm happy when I get the opprotunity to see the anti-gun arguments on HN and that we can discuss ideas about these subjects. It broadens my understanding of what others think and vise versa.

There isn't a problem with saying "I sell X, and all I care about is the money I get from doing that" and then turning around and selling Xs to the highest bidder.

<comment><USER14> That would be principled but not in Snapchat's interest.

Their audience demographics would probably hate to see an NRA ad in a story about gun control, and it would hurt Snapchat's reputation, brand, and loyalty. You might even see hashtags trending about it, calling them "insensitive" and worse.

<comment><USER13> > That would be principled but not in Snapchat's interest.

It would definetly be in Snapchat's interests. The best thing for an arms dealer is a war, the best thing for a place of discussion is a clash of ideology.

They'd just sell the space to both sides, run the ads, say "We are a neutral party who doesn't get involved in politics; if we give one side a stand we're fine with giving the other side a stand. Complain to the NRA if you think it's poor taste, we just sell bilboard space"

> Their audience demographics would probably hate to see an NRA ad in a story > about gun control, and it would hurt Snapchat's reputation, brand, and > loyalty

Sadly, a lot of pro 2a people use Snapchat despite my, and many others, protestings.

Also, we need to ask a few questions about this "brand loyalty" and "repuation". What "reputation" does Snapchat have? What "brand" does Snapchat have? Their a service to send small clips of your life to other people. Wheather that's to send videos of you speeding at >100MPH, of crying people talking about how guns killed their relatives, or the NRA saying that it wasn't the guns but instead was a criminal who killed their relative.

That perception of their essential function is not damaged and in fact, if anything, a lot of pro-gun people would just be happy that their willing to be unbias in their ad-space.

> You might even see hashtags trending about it, calling them "insensitive" > and worse.

I'd surely hope the anti-gun crowd can come up with a worse insult then "insensitive". Even still, I've never seen something come of the hash-tag-nag that happens after every major screw-up of a company. The demographics we're talking about come from a time when voting with your wallet isn't even a faint idea in the back of their head.

If Snapchat came out pro-Hitler, financially supporting neo-Nazis, I'd bet good money that after the initial hash-tag-nag craze the same crowd would _still_ use the app.

The fact is that Snapchat has poised itself as a key piece of the communication networks that the younger generations are forming. It would need a suitible replacement for them to think about leaving it.

That's why it's an advertisers gold mine. All you have to do is keep the market clean and you'll be able to reach this century's bread-and-butter demographic.

<comment><USER15> Out of pure curiosity, would you be willing to explain _why_ you'd protest 2A people using a service that you also use?

<comment><USER13> > Out of pure curiosity, would you be willing to explain why you'd protest 2A > people using a service that you also use?

I have snapchat installed on my phone. I do not use it. I do not like the company. I'm not in their demographic. I don't like taking pictures of myself nor of my suroundings.

I'm about as much of a use as I am Verizon Messanger+ user. It's there on my phone, I'll never use it, and I don't like it.

The extent of my usage of the app pretty much goes to telling people who message me on it to text me instead.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> According to their Form 990, Everytown for Gun Safety spends 5.5 million a year on lobbying, legal, and accounting fees. Their advertising budget is another 7 million. They spend 2 million a year on travel. Their top executive earns $350,000. Honestly, they seem to be a pretty well funded charity. I don't think SNAP was in the wrong here.

[https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/208...](https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/208802884)

<comment><USER17> 2.1% of your budget for a single campaign of that size does seem like a reasonable tradeoff.

<comment><USER18> What if it wasn't about the money? I wouldn't buy an ad alongside editorial content about my brand. Savvy media consumers tend to see that and think that the editorial content is actually paid content.

<comment><USER19> It is telling that they declined both the free editorial and any advertising.

<comment><USER18> Telling of what??

An intelligent brand manager has to weigh the positives and negatives of paid and earned media. In this case, in light of Saliterman's email, a brand manager would weigh the (seemingly high) possibility that the NRA would advertise alongside fearful messages from grieving families. Since Everytown knew that this was a possibility, the advertising alongside the editorial had the capacity to damage the brand and (perhaps more importantly) cost jobs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Would people have the same complaints if it was the other way around? Snapchat reached out to the NRA and offered a free Live Story as partnership for Gun Appreciation Day. Another division then threatened the NRA that it could run anti-gun ads during the NRA's free Live Story.

If the complaints would be different, then it's just your political bias. Some people think the NRA is important and its message is being harmed by groups like Everytown. In that case, why not focus on the heart of the issue which is "Snapchat allows NRA ads but I don't like guns".

<comment><USER21> You're suggesting there is a type of symmetry around relative moral beliefs on the gun debate, and it is somewhat arbitrary to be upset on one side of it but not the other.

If that was all there was to it, I would agree.

However, that's missing the huge asymmetry at play here: money. Specifically, the NRA is an industry-funded group that has lots of it, and the people who's family members have been victims of gun violence don't.

If this was a spat between, say, Google and Oracle, each of which has boatloads of money to buy the competitor's advertising spots, no one would care.

But this story feels scummy because it's a human story, one where the little guy is fighting a noble cause but is being shaken down by organizations who write weekly checks larger than some of these people will see in their lifetime.

If you pretend that money doesn't create an asymmetry, then yes, you being upset this way but not the other is all relative.

<comment><USER22> > [...] money. Specifically, the NRA is an industry-funded group that has lots > of it [...]

The NRA is a _member_ -funded group. Five million members paying annual dues -- that's where their money comes from.[1] They use some of this to fund gun safety education and training (Everytown For Gun Safety does not, oddly enough). Sure, industry chips in, but it's just a couple million $ (which is tiny compared to member dues).

[1] [https://www.quora.com/Where-does-funding-for-the-National- Ri...](https://www.quora.com/Where-does-funding-for-the-National-Rifle- Association-NRA-come-from) (graphs data from NRA's public tax filings)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Hmm, other than a communication blunder I don't see the foul here? I don't know how Snapchat advertising works internally, but if the NRA is a known purchaser of advertising, and can choose to target its ads in specific content segments it would seem like Everytown might want to be warned that leaving their ad segments unclaimed means the NRA claiming them is a possibility. Even if the ads get assigned randomly or through some sort of automated process you'd still think a good client relationship manager would want to give his or her (prospective) client a heads up that an NRA ad in their time slot is possible, no? Imagine if he had said nothing, and then the NRA _did_ run ads in the Everytown slot? Would that have been better? If I was Everytown I'd be angry at Snapchat for not warning me that this was a possibility. As far as I can tell, Saliterman did his job, his job just happens to have intersected with an emotional flash point, and is by nature manipulative.

Now, how someone got to his professional level without knowing how to handle this conversation more tactfully is beyond me. And further if he was trying to convince them this was a possibility when it _wasn't_, or some other nefarious ploy then sure - let's jump on the outrage bandwagon, but from that article? Nothing to see here.

<comment><USER24> Editorial is supposed never to communicate with advertising so that the latter can't influence the former.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Social media sites really need to face the decision of whether they're "common carriers" or are liable for consequences of discrimination against common/normal views.

<comment><USER26> They seem to want it both ways:

when an ad causes serious consternation in the press, they pull it because "we've a private site and can regulate speech".

But if there isn't sufficient controversy, they can hide behind the banner of free speech.

Sites like Facebook need to either commit to allowing all lawful ads, or admit they exercise editorial judgement on what is "proper" speech, and start a larger conversation about what sort of speech should be restricted.

<comment><USER27> > admit they exercise editorial judgement on what is "proper" speech

Facebook does exactly that, with slightly different rules for posts & comments and with ads.

[https://en-gb.facebook.com/communitystandards](https://en- gb.facebook.com/communitystandards)

[https://en-gb.facebook.com/policies/ads](https://en- gb.facebook.com/policies/ads)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I remember in the Facebook pre-IPO days they invited a handful of notorious internet marketers / affiliates to sit down with senior executives to figure out how they could work together to drive higher CTRs for fare like ringtones, weight loss pills, etc with the goal of goosing revenues upwards.

I'd guess these are similarly interesting times in the SnapChat ad sales department on the way to an IPO - they are under tremendous pressure to drive results.

<comment><USER29> source?

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Looks like a combination of bad team communications (one team tries to sell service, another offers essentially the same for free) and even worse attempt to rescue the sale by FUDing the client ("if you go with free option, we might run competitor's ads inside your content!"). I hope that's not a routine way for them to work, because that would be rather stinky practice.

<comment><USER18> I don't think that you understand. Advertising and editorial cannot communicate in trustworthy media outlets.

<comment><USER30> I think there's different ways of communicating. Trying to hard sell the same service other team offers for free looks stupid, and I don't think sales team being aware of the editing team's actions and behaving in a smarter way would not hurt the trustworthiness. It's not like this "if you don't pay us, we'll run your competitors ads inside your content" snafu did wonders to the trustworthiness.

<comment><USER18> Great response - that's one of the classic arguments against having a wall in between ad sales and editorial. And, for what it's worth, I agree with you.

Editorial staff would reply, "Okay, in that situation, it might be okay. But what happens if we want to run a well researched/sourced story that is highly critical of one of our biggest advertisers?"

Their fear would be that if there is too much communication between advertising and editorial, advertising would use its control over revenue to hurt editorial independence. And, then ad sales people tend to reply, "Well, if you won't give us the chance to kill a story, it is better if we don't even know about it. That way, when the person who I have sold ads to calls me up yelling, I can truthfully say that I didn't know because there is a wall between advertising and editorial."

In other words, the wall between advertising and editorial mostly sucks for both sides, but it's better than any alternative. It preserves editorial independence while giving sales people the chance to save relationships (in anticipation of their next job).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Why do people expect ethics and morals from startups? Snapchat here and Uber all year. Is it because they are startups and someho the HN crowd assumes they will be good citizen? The same thing if done by some pharma company or may be some division inside Johnson and Johnson would go unnoticed and expected even.

It looks to me that most people on here work for startups and new companies and some how want to work in a field that has higher morals and ethics. Why would a sales guy try to behave differently and not make a sale? We have seen this again and again with other sales teams from Yelp and others. I am not trying to explain the actions of sales people just to understand where the outrage is coming from.

<comment><USER30> > Why do people expect ethics and morals from startups?

People expect ethics and morals from people. Startups are run by people.

<comment><USER32> Pharma companies are run by people; Monsanto is run by people. And yet nobody expects ethics and morals from those: that was the point of the parent.

People don't expect ethics and morals from all people or organizations in the same amount.

<comment><USER33> What specifically has Monsanto done lately that was unethical or immoral?

<comment><USER34> Promote pesticide-resistant GMO crops in order to drive pesticide sales, for one.

<comment><USER33> How is that unethical or immoral?

<comment><USER35> GMO!!!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I only see this as a problem if Snapchat put NRA ads up for free just to extort money or vice versa.

<comment><USER6> I don't think it would have to be free. If they specifically reached out to the NRA to initiate the process, I'd call that pretty gross, whether or not they gave them a break on pricing.

<comment><USER36> > I'd call that pretty gross

Just to be clear, if roles were reversed and the NRA advertised you would _not_ want Everytown to have ad placement as a rebuttal or do you just find it gross because you disagree at a political/personal level?

<comment><USER6> If I'm your customer, I don't want to feel like you're going to devote time and resources to finding the optimal way to fuck me over if I don't cough up more money. That sentiment is completely independent of the editorial content we're talking about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> What is the issue here? Seems perfectly reasonable to me.

If I post an video on Youtube for my spaghetti event. And it has reach, then of course other spaghetti vendors may want to run ads on it if they pay up.

Slow news day?

</comment><comment><USER38> I wonder if they also try to get the NRA to pay so that Everytown for Gun Safety ads don't appear. This actually seems like a decent way for social media companies to make money, although it sure does feel smarmy.

(as an aside, Everytown for Gun Safety is not actually a gun-safety charity: it's an anti-gun organisation)

<comment><USER39> Actually, it seems they wanted the NRA to fund the editorial content being given freely to Everytown.

<comment><USER40> I didn't get that from the article, but it would make sense. The NRA has long- standing and well-funded firearms safety programs, ranging from training for adults to the "Eddie Eagle" program for kids.

Everytown's budget for political contributions last year was about 1/3 of the NRAs, but the the overall organization budgets are vast different - <USER2> shows the NRA having $348m in revenue in 2013, while Everytown brought in $4.9m in 2012.

From a purely financial perspective, Snap should be prioritizing the NRA's business over Everytown's.

<comment><USER39> When an ad agent solicits an advertiser, they literally are asking the advertiser to pay for the production. That's how ads and productions work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> This is a perfect example of why a firewall between editorial and advertising departments in a news organization is not sufficient. I would really like to see a subscription only news service exist that doesn't take any advertising dollars. It would make very clear that it serves the readership, not advertisers. Alas, I don't think enough people are willing to pay what it would take and media companies are too risk averse to even attempt it.

<comment><USER42> What about organizations like NPR and PBS? It seems like that is as close as you can get to a subscription only news service that doesn't take advertising dollars. Their news reporting is really top notch.

Technically it's not a subscription, it's a donation. And technically they do make money with underwriting but I think user contributions make up the vast majority of their funding.

<comment><USER43> Both organisations' underwriting credits raise plenty of questions.

For much of the 1970s and 1980s, major PBS programming was funded by oil companies (Mobil in particular, if you watched Masterpiece Theater). Today, Nova receives heavy funding from Koch sources. Even nonprofit sources are tainted -- the John Templeton Foundation (look it up) has a very specific agenda, and there is/was a two-part series, "The _Real_ Adam Smith", which was essentially a straight-up, full-on propaganda piece put out by the Mont Pelerin Society / Atlas Network, funded by Templeton, and with Chicago PBS affiliate WTTW's name specifically attached to the production. The content is highly slanted, and I found (and find) the whole matter exceedingly questionable.

I'm not saying there isn't a lot of good work coming through PBS, NPR, PRX, and similar sources. Or that the quality isn't, generally, vastly superior to commercial media. But that bar is set miles below floor level, and the problems with co-option of public media have been increasing with time.

Part of that I attribute to "Woozle's Epistemic Paradox": because of a high percentage of the population being present, there is now substantial power to be had by influencing the discussions that take place.

A problem which attaches to other (really, any) media, including online: BBSes, Usenet, Geocities, Facebook, Reddit, HN.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/5wg0hp/when_ep...](https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/5wg0hp/when_epistemic_systems_gain_social_and_political/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Why is a company the size of Snapchat not using a CRM so that their various divisions _can 't_ step on each other's toes like this?

Apart from the highly dubious ethics being exhibited, it suggests it's a surprisingly unsophisticated organisation.

</comment><comment><USER45> A corporation wants to use another corporation's services to distribute content, but does not want to compensate them in any way, expects that the facilitating corporation will prevent a charitable organization from paying them to reach out to the same audience.

 _Everytown for Gun Safety_ is a private lobbying effort funded by Michael Bloomberg, and believes that they can use a company's service for free while censoring paid ads from a true community charitable organization which is funded primarily by membership dues. Mic deliberately characterizes _Everytown for Gun Safety_ as a "gun safety charity", and avoids using similar language to describe NRA, a registered charitable organization with a considerable number of members. Are they trying to say that the NRA doesn't care about gun safety?

I don't really see why Snap Inc. should have to promote Michael Bloomberg's fantasies for no pay, and prevent the voice of an established charitable institution from being included alongside it through the standard advertising process.

</comment><comment><USER46> Another reason why Snapchat might be so stingy-there long term prospect is severely limited.

IPO will increases the exit valuation when Snapchat inevitably fizzles and gets bought out by a tech giant with actual positive net profit.

</comment><comment><USER47> I really don't see the issue here.

There's no reason that Snapchat should voluntarily censor ads on that story at their own financial loss.

<comment><USER48> Uhm, they should restrict the ads embedded in that story in order to convince that partner to contribute content?

Like, if a LGBT organization wanted to give a television network the rights to air an Orlando Shooting documentary on the condition that they don't sell ads for conversion therapy in the middle, that's kind of their right to make that sort of offer. It's a very short distance from making those demands to the distribution side preemptively seeking out those sorts of deals.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> The headline oversells the story in a way that makes its overselling of the story completely deniable. Reminds me of something… Oh yeah—of the actual behavior the story describes. Is this a postmodern meta-storytelling piece?

</comment><comment><USER50> Good. Why is Snapchat doing political activism?

<comment><USER51> Why does any organisation? Why does the NRA? Perhaps it would be nifty to split the world into commercial entities without no permission to lobby, and political entities with no permission to deploy commercial activities, but that sure isn't this world.

In any case, the issue isn't political activism, it's the tastelessness of the threat. It also doesn't help that it exposes how this particular employee apparently felt no compunction in undermining what others in his business were working for - it sure looks like he wasn't actually handling in the best interests of his employer, and I can't imagine he didn't know it.

<comment><USER25> Social media sites are generally perceived as "common carriers" whom we expect no political activism from (beyond refusing illegal activity & promotion thereof) - to wit commercial entities whom we expect will not lobby (legislators nor customers) re: non-sequitur topics.

<comment><USER51> Well, we expect social media sites to try and avoid blatantly taking sides. But they definitely thrive on human-interest stuff (such as this), especially if it's something with a social mobilisation aspect, and that's almost bound to skirt the political rather closely. As it does here. At best you might expect social media firms to give opposing sides equal opportunities (even more business!). But even openly biased media is common - e.g. Fox news, but really many other news outlets too - and I see no reason to think social media firms couldn't evolve in the same direction.

I'm not saying we should applaud this development...

In any case, I don't see no evidence that snapchat it being particularly biased based on one story they're pushing. It's pretty much impossible to make that conclusion based on one story, given that they push so many. It looks more like sheer incompetence to me than anything else.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Too bad they didn't reach out to the NRA for comment.

<comment><USER53> What would that have added to the article? The issue seems to be between Snap and Everytown. NRA ads just happen to be the thing they're disagreeing over but it could've been pandas.

<comment><USER54> I am pretty sure if the email had read "a panda petting zoo might advertise during the campaign" this article would never have been written. The only reason this is controversial at all is because it involves the NRA. The article repeatedly mentions the NRA and leaves it as an open question if the NR A was interested in running ads. Requesting comment from the NRA would be appropriate in my opinion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Companies opt-out of advertising on shows or events that revolve around programming they don't feel aligns with their company values. So, when I see the NRA opting into advertising for this event, I see it as sponsorship and support of the message.

If I saw an Exxon Mobile commercial during a climate change documentary, I would take that as tacit support of the subject.

Now, obviously I'm wrong. So can someone explain why this advertising is so valuable to the NRA? I guess it's just trolling.

<comment><USER56> It's probably valuable since they see it as a potential avenue to sway opinions of those who may be closer to the fence between anti-gun and for guns.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> As soon as the head of political sales found out about the editorial he stated:

> We are also talking to the NRA about running ads within the story.

Later in the article it says that the NRA advertised on Snapchat in 2015, have they since? Or was it that now we will contacting the NRA to tell them it's a good idea to advertise during your editorial.

Seeing the comments it looks like the majority doesn't see a problem with this because the NRA is free to do advertising. To me it's just bad business to be featuring a good cause as a so-called partner and then extorting them like this. It certainly also seems like that would be a negative experience for the viewers and the partner.

In the end Snapchat lost both an editorial partner with a group that resonates with their target demographics and any potential advertising revenue from the event.

</comment><comment><USER57> Saliterman was a former spokesperson for George W. Bush, by the way.[1] I'm shocked.

This was absolutely an unprofessional move and not simple targeted selling. The story would not have been as attractive a target for the NRA without Everytown's cooperation in the first place. So now that Snapchat's roped them in, to maintain the integrity of their story they need to pay up? This guy put his division ahead of Snapchat's reputation as a company.

[1] [http://www.potomacflacks.com/pf/2011/09/former-bush- spokesma...](http://www.potomacflacks.com/pf/2011/09/former-bush-spokesman- saliterman-departs-bloomberg-lp-in-nyc-for-google-in-dc.html)

</comment><comment><USER58> Well I for one was bothered to find out that snapchat would give away ads through their news decision to such a political advocacy group.

</comment><comment><USER59> How double dumb, gun people do not want ads targeted to those that will not buy and those that do not want to buy guns do not want the ads. A waste AND a shakedown.

In fact the anti gun lobby should tell their members to click on all these ads (or get a 'clickbot to do it) since that will burn gun company cash for zero gains

</comment><comment><USER60> This title is very clickbaity, and the first half of the article does a very poor job of communicating what's really going on.

Snapchat has no obligation to favour one side of the gun reform debate over the other. But the way this article frames it, they're actively blackmailing the gun-reform side.

</comment><comment><USER61> I can't help thinking that the anti-gun group could exploit this by specifically running content that attacks NRA advertising tropes, thereby turning the NRA ads into an exercise in deconstructing NRA propaganda.

</comment><comment><USER62> The timing of this is more interesting than the fairly standard advertising practices itself. I would say this is pretty bullish for Snap since they have leverage over the organizations founded by movers and shakers!

</comment><comment><USER63> It seems we are in the middle of an unfortunate trend when industry disruptors also seem to be conveniently "disrupting" (ie ignoring) established ethics at the same time.

</comment><comment><USER64> An additional nuance here is big guy vs. little guy. If this was Coke vs. Pepsi where either could afford buying up the ad spots, it wouldn't be a big deal.

<comment><USER65> Everytown is bankrolled by Michael Bloomberg. I'd hardly call them the little guy.

<comment><USER64> They said they couldn't afford the $150k.

<comment><USER66> > They said they couldn't afford the $150k.

It's likely more accurate to say they didn't _want_ to afford the $150k.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> No one seems to be mentioning that doing so would presumably screw over the NRA harder than Everytown. The target viewer for gun control content would presumably not be interested in an NRA ad, but the NRA is nonetheless paying to run it.

Oddly the "threat" is essentially that you might become ritually unclean by proximity to such content.

<comment><USER68> Were I in charge of NRA advertising, I would consider my ad running along a gun-violence-awareness campaign to be a misfire, akin to running a smoking ad alongside a story about smoking-induced lung cancer or a Coke ad alongside a story about Crystal Pepsi coming back.

<comment><USER69> Gun violence is the best recruitment tool the NRA has. When someone shoots up a school in the US, NRA membership goes up (as do gun sales.)

<comment><USER70> No, democrats using a shooting event to blame guns and call for bans and stricter gun control causes gun sales and membership to go up. Obama has been the best gun salesman for the United States ever.

<comment><USER69> You're just repeating my point, but applying a predictable anti-liberal bias.

>Obama has been the best gun salesman for the United States ever.

Because of all the extremist gun control legislation he passed?

No, wait.. people just believed Obama was coming for their guns but he never actually did that.

It's almost as if people have been trained to respond to gun violence by supporting the NRA and buying guns ... in some sort of Pavlovian response.

But I can't imagine what organization or industry could possibly have spent decades and millions of dollars in political capital engineering such a virtuous cycle for themselves.

<comment><USER71> If Obama, Pelosi, Schumer, and other ilk had their way, there would be guns bans and confiscation. Intent is 9/10 of the law.

<comment><USER69> The weird thing though, is they did have their way, and that didn't happen.

<comment><USER71> No they didn't have their way. several draconian bills never made it out of comitee.

<comment><USER69> Fair enough, then. Which bills?

I still don't know why the political process working as intended justifies the degree of paranoia that leads to mass stockpiling of guns and ammunition, though. Or why that paranoia manifests behind _all_ gun control legislation, not just the "draconian" attempts which fail.

<comment><USER71> [https://www.google.com/amp/www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/how- many...](https://www.google.com/amp/www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/how-many-gun- control-proposals-have-been-offered-since-2011/)

<comment><USER69> That article's thesis appears to be that nearly all attempts at gun control legislation, _including those by Republicans_ , fail regardless of their intent because of the political and lobbying influence of the NRA.

I don't see evidence of the "draconian" bills you mentioned, or of nefarious intent by "Obama, Pelosi, Schumer, and other ilk."

<comment><USER71> [https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/house- bill/4269...](https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/house- bill/4269/text)

[https://www.congress.gov/bill/113th-congress/senate- bill/691](https://www.congress.gov/bill/113th-congress/senate-bill/691)

[https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/22/us/politics/senate-gun- co...](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/22/us/politics/senate-gun-control-no- fly-list-terrorism.html?_r=0)

<comment><USER69> I see a bill to ban assault rifles, to limit the sale of high capacity magazines and an article about a Senate proposal to ban the sale of firearms to people on the government's no-fly list.

The first two don't seem draconian to me, they seem reasonably targeted to address specific concerns. The bills listed appear to provide exceptions for weapons owned before the bill would take effect, for law enforcement, etc. I don't see the typical doomsday scenario of wholesale banning, mass confiscation or disarmament that we're told the democrats are always working towards. Maybe I need to read between the lines?

The third is disturbing because of the no-fly list, not the ban itself. Felons are already banned from owning firearms as a class, and no one would argue that terrorists or criminals _should_ have guns, so the premise of banning firearms in some cases seems acceptable even to many gun advocates. The no-fly list wasn't created by Democrats, but it was expanded in scope and overwhelmingly supported by Republicans, so I can't really consider that part to be a Democrat issue per se - blame the Democrats for the ban, but blame the Republicans for the blacklist that makes the ban unacceptable.

If gun legislation is, as stated earlier by jonnycoder, "using a shooting event to blame guns and call for bans and stricter gun control," then the typical response by gun advocates amounts to "using a shooting event to promote guns and call for higher gun sales." Why can gun advocates criticize the former, but not the latter?

<comment><USER71> Well we can agree to disagree. The AWB would require registration, like has happened in NY. Registration leads to confiscation. Their goal is an Australian style ban; turn them in and melt them down.

There was other legislation and regulation; .50 caliber ban, steel core ammo ban, mail order ammo ban, import ban of Korean War surplus rifles, import ban of Russian guns.

Though I agree with you about Republicans; they can support gun control too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER72> What is wrong with this ? I love NRA and I think they are doing a wonderful job of protecting our rights. If anyone want s to compete with them they should obviously pay.

<comment><USER73> I'm consistently amazed by how often I see Americans brag about their "right" to shoot up a school. As someone from another country it's such an absurd thing to see that it still surprises me.

Such a crazy cognitive dissonance. What about your right to have a bomb? Or a biological weapon?

Such an actively harmful hill to die on.

<comment><USER61> I've often wondered how "the right to keep and bear arms" can be abridged for, e.g. a shoulder-launched surface-air missile, but not for a hand gun or rifle. Surely both are "arms" within the meaning understood at the time the Bill of Rights was ratified.

US courts have tried to get around this by finding a right to self defense, and finding that preventing someone from carrying a handgun infringes this right, but preventing them from carrying a missile does not. However this makes no sense: if someone points a gun at you then its already too late to pull your own gun out and shoot them, so guns are only useful for self defense against criminals who don't have guns.

Its true that there are some extremely narrow circumstances in which a legal gun carried by a bystander can be used to stop a gun crime, but only in a tiny fraction of cases.

<comment><USER71> One should be able to own & buy a shoulder launched missile. In fact you can (at least a bazooka; non-guided). It's destructive device, and requires a $200 tax stamp. It's perfectly legal to own hand grenades too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER74> What a great salesman.

</comment><comment><USER40> I realize it's the title of the article, but "Everytown" is not a charity.

There are two legal entities:

1\. Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund, Inc; a 501(c)3

2\. Everytown for Gun Safety Action Fund, Inc; a 501(c)4

The NRA is structured similarly with the NRA being the traditional non-profit and the NRA-ILA being the political lobbying entity.

It's disingenuous to cast one group as a charity and not the other.

<comment><USER75> Ok, we replaced "charity" with "group" and "gun safety" with "anti-gun" (per the URL) in the title above.

</comment></comment><comment><USER76> Disgusting.

</comment><comment><USER77> Click the shit out of them. Happy times.</comment>


Ask HN: What tool(s) do you use to spec out a software product? - <AUTHOR>

Just wondering if anyone had any great suggestions for any great prototyping / technical specification tools to provide programmers with an accurate spec to work from. Or is the consensus that you need a combination of documents. Be interested to hear other peoples approach at the very start of a project before code has been written. <comment><USER2> I love paper prototyping, so we make an app called "POP - Prototyping on Paper" that turn paper into interactive prototype. Take a look :) <http://popapp.in></comment>


Alert It's Insanely Easy to Steal Someone's Internet Identity - <AUTHOR> http://www.lifestyleignition.com/2010/07/alert-it%E2%80%99s-insanely-easy-to-steal-someone%E2%80%99s-internet-identity/

<comment><USER2> I wasn't aware there was such a thing as an "internet identity" to steal in the first place.</comment>


Show HN: iBooks Resume - <AUTHOR> http://www.brian-dillon.com

<comment><AUTHOR> I thought it was a cool idea to be able to present my work history in a more in-depth and interactive format. While it may be overkill for a first glance, I think it is a nice option for someone who is interested in learning more. It almost takes the place of a first/preliminary interview perhaps. What do you guys think?</comment>


AirGigSter – Get a Gig App - <AUTHOR> AirGigster is an app for the gig market <comment><AUTHOR> [http://airgigster.com](http://airgigster.com)</comment>


Pony 0.29 - <AUTHOR> https://www.ponylang.io/blog/2019/07/0.29.0-released/ <comment><USER2> I've started learning Pony recently and I definitely recommend checking it out.

Pros:

\- Checked exceptions are pretty awesome

\- Built in object capability system means you are forced to be explicit about granting access to files, sockets, etc

\- Supports both structural and nominal subtyping

\- Generates very fast code as far as I can tell (it uses LLVM on the backend)

\- Actor model combined with reference capabilities means you don't have to worry about a huge class of concurrency bugs that the type system just rules out.

\- Very good C FFI support so if something isn't available you can easily create C bindings

\- Very helpful community on Zulip. You are pretty much guaranteed someone will give you a high quality answer to any of your questions.

Cons:

\- Steep learning curve for reference capabilities

\- It can be tricky to find the right stdlib functions/types for what you want to do. It wasn't clear to me at first how some things worked, e.g. the relationship between Array and Iter. This is no fault of the API design, just a lack of tutorials on some things.

\- Missing a lot of things you might expect to find in other languages like all kinds of built in libraries to do HTTP stuff, etc.

</comment><comment><USER3> I was very interested in Pony a few years ago but haven't kept up with it.

I loved the idea of a compiled, actor based language with safe concurrency primitives; somewhat like a high performance Erlang.

How has Pony faired after the company trying to monetize it failed?

Anyone using it for something serious?

<comment><USER4> I was also intrigued by Pony -- but lost interest when the company backing it shut down. I don't think it was due to monetization though, I think it formed a foundation, but do not quote me on that.

I only know of one (there may be others) that constantly talk about how they're using Pony -- Wallaroo[1][2]. I think they're still actively working on it, based on their Github[3].

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15558051](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15558051)

[2] [https://www.wallaroolabs.com/](https://www.wallaroolabs.com/)

[3] [https://github.com/WallarooLabs/wallaroo](https://github.com/WallarooLabs/wallaroo)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi Pony core team member here and also, VP of Engineering at Wallaroo Labs.

Wallaroo Labs is the most vocal user of Pony. There are a few others who are playing around with Pony and we hear about from time to time, but we are still in the very early stages as a language. It's definitely a great time to get involved with Pony if you are interested in guiding the direction of the language.

Re "the company backing it". You would be referring to Causality. They shut down quite some time ago. The general belief with Causality was that they would be able to get folks in finance to pay for Pony development and support given that an early version of Pony started at a large bank in London and the open source version was a vast improvement. That didn't happen and so Causality had no path forward.

Sylvan Clebsch, the "inventor" of Pony, has since gone on to work at Microsoft Research. He's a member of the Pony core team that he, myself, and Darach Ennis formed as Causality was shutting down.

Since that time, we've added a couple people to the core team, lost some, and added a bunch of contributors and worked on making steady progress pushing Pony forward.

The Pony core team isn't a foundation but we are on Open Collective and are quite happy to take donations (that at this time, go towards paying for hosting costs and whatnot)

[https://opencollective.com/ponyc](https://opencollective.com/ponyc)

We also have a Zulip community that folks can stop by, chat, and learn more:

[https://ponylang.zulipchat.com/](https://ponylang.zulipchat.com/)

<comment><USER5> I really wish someone from the Pony community would write a book. The official tutorials are nice, but the parts on the various reference capabilities onwards is extremely confusing (and sort of bare).

I know it's a small community, and there really is no official corporate backing, but right now I see the lack of good learning resources as the biggest obstacle, and we have to admit that Pony has a very steep learning curve. I really do love whatever little Pony that I have explored, and the compile times are superb compared to something like Rust, and the generated executables seem to be quite fast as well.

<comment><AUTHOR> Re: a book.

The most likely candidate would be me and it's 100% certain I do not have the time right now.

We've done several attempts at getting other folks to contribute more in that area and it's really hard to find people who are interested.

Finding folks to contribute to most open source projects is hard in general. Finding folks to contribute to documentation, learning resources and what not is really hard.

If anyone reads this and gets inspired to try and help, ping me on the Pony Zulip and I'd be happy to assist in a general "mentoring/guiding" capacity.

[https://ponylang.zulipchat.com/](https://ponylang.zulipchat.com/)

<comment><USER5> Yes, that's what I feared as well. If I had had some solid experience with Pony already, I'd volunteer in a heartbeat. Still, many thanks for helping keep Pony alive, Sean!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Can someone elaborate on this point a little bit:

> It's deadlock free. This one is easy, because Pony has no locks at all! So > they definitely don't deadlock, because they don't exist.

It seems like it'd be possible to have a deadlock without actual locks, so I'm curious what exactly is meant by this, or how they achieve it.

Edit: Thanks for the explanations! That helps clear things ups.

<comment><USER7> It would be possible to livelock the system but deadlocks are easier to avoid: don't use locks [1] at all in the runtime and don't expose them in the language.

The longer answer of how the possibility of a deadlock in user code in Pony is prevented:

* messages are handled FIFO so w/o selective receive or multiple channels, there is no way to skip or wait for a specific message w/o doing work (_progress must be made by receivers_)

* combined with the last one, the sender can't wait for a response as it has to be sent as a FIFO message back (which can come interleaved with other messages; _progress must be made by senders_)

* multiple actors cannot simultaneously modify anything (you can't create a lock out of shared memory + Lamport's bakery algorithm because memory can't be r+w on two threads and even then, your exclusion failure would require explicit looping, so the thread is technically livelocked/starved)

What this results in is a system that always makes progress when more than one actor is involved.

Now that doesn't stop hanging the system (imagine putting N actors in infinite loops, one for each scheduler thread in the pony runtime, which we should call a livelock rather than a deadlock) and of course you could call some kind of C code via the FFI that decides it wants to take a lock or similar exclusive operation. Or there could be a bug in the runtime [2] which is tightly integrated with the language design and its guarantees so it avoids using locks for common things and uses atomic operations which provide a wait-free properties.

[1]: Pony uses atomic operations exclusively last time I looked. Relatively clever and there is room for bugs but theoretically this allows for wait-free progress in the runtime (there's a lot more to say here about theory vs practice but generally lock-free properties are enough here anyway).

[2]: I believe there have been edge cases in Pony's GC which might fall into the bug category but it's been awhile since I've used Pony myself so I can't comment on the current status.

<comment><USER8> Regarding [1], I think there's pain to be had with memory barriers and such like unless one is very careful. In short, they're expensive.

<comment><USER7> It's definitely true, though likewise, it's expensive to use locks in such places too. The main idea with Pony's runtime is that contending for an actors attention will certainly incur costs but independent pairs of actors should not, even during GC.

I also glossed over the I/O system and back pressure support which make the above discussion a bit more nuanced but my goal was to lay down some form of intuition around thinking in terms of progress in a system as a guarantee of the concurrency model.

Empirically speaking, there are real limits to what hardware will hide and plenty of room for leveraging knowledge of the system as a whole (esp. the memory model) rather than sticking to one set of abstractions. Pony is no exception here, though the co-design of various features might make that less necessary than it might be in other systems with similar properties as it matures.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Got this confused with FiM++ for a second, reading the comments was a bit surreal.

</comment><comment><USER10> How is it compared to the D language?

<comment><AUTHOR> Rather different.

Our goals when creating Pony are two make a high-performance, safe languages for writing highly concurrent applications. Pony is much more opinionated than D.

A really quick version of "what is Pony" would probably be:

"Like Erlang meets Rust"

<comment><USER11> > "Like Erlang meets Rust"

Pony is more like just Rust and nothing like Erlang.

<comment><USER12> Concurrency by using an actor model is the Erlang part...

<comment><AUTHOR> Scott Fritchie did an excellent talk on the similarities and differences called "The wide world of almost-actors: comparing the Pony to BEAM languages"

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0m0_qtfzLs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0m0_qtfzLs)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask YC: MySQL vs. SimpleDB for startups? - <AUTHOR>

Basically, currently we contemplating between MySQL db and cloud databases. We are looking for a scalable and reliable database. Consider large user data in multiples over 100k to 1M users. We understand that we need to make this decision sooner than later as it may get difficult to turn back. The things that worrying us are, 1. Is simpledb (by Amazon) is reliable? 2. Can professionals or enterprises or startups opt for simpledb. 3. what roadblocks we may get considering long term plans, if we opt for simpledb.
Please feel free to point databases other than these.
Even citation of other articles is appreciated.
Thank you. <comment><USER2> Until Amazon adds the ability to sort result sets, then I imagine it won't work very well in scenarios where you have very large result sets and need to present sorted query results to users -- especially when pagination is required. Of course I haven't used SimpleDB personally and perhaps people have found a way around that limitation.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes this is one pointer to study...there are some ways...but we will have to continue to study limitations in this direction too. thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> My concerns about using something like simpledb would be about what if Amazon decided to discontinue the service, upgrade/change the service which broke your implementation etc etc. Personally I would not feel comfortable running my site on machines/software I did not have control over.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm not familiar with simpleDB but are you compairing a database server with a db service?</comment>


Show HN: Medalist, an elegant website builder for athletes - <AUTHOR> http://medali.st/

<comment><USER2> Hey guys!

I'm a Team USA athlete & the co-founder of Medalist.

A couple months ago I tried to build myself a website so I gave a shot at Wordpress, Blogspot and couple others but they were too complicated and didn't fit with my athlete reality.

So along with some of my friends, we created Medalist – a website builder for athletes that makes it easy to create a beautiful website in 5 minutes (for free).

Any feedback would be appreciated! Thanks for trying it out!

Antoine</comment>


Ask HN: Do you backup your data when leaving a company? - <AUTHOR> Or do you leave a blackhole for all those years of your life that you can't refer back to?
This is for personal records, not pulling a Levandowski. Just nice to know what inane email you wasted time writing and what stupid meeting you were stuck in on any particular day when you look back at your life a few years later.
I am sure it would be against all company policy to do this even though you're the author of the content you're saving. So on a technical level, how do you not get flagged by IT doing this? I am assuming they aren't adding event/key loggers to all the laptops they give to employees? <comment><USER2> It depends on a few things, primarily what the data is you are backing up, who the company is and what your role is.

If you are backing up source code from their systems onto your own drives, you are pretty much in violation of both moral and legal obligations. Emails could be argued could go either way, if the email contained trade secrets or other IP or protected data then you could still be in violation. If you forwarded an email on personal appointments that you had on your work calendar than generally that is safe.

As for the black hole of life, I have a couple of fairly significant times periods you could consider black holes. One especially is sad because I feel it is where I did some of the most awesome work of my career but I just don't have anything to share or show for it since it was all the companies work. I didn't keep one iota of anything from them because it wasn't mine.

I know of some companies that do install file transfer watchers. So the moving of any file on or off the computer is logged and monitored, but keystrokes are not. So doesn't take a keystroke logger. When I ran IT and development for a medical company we installed network based file detection so we could also see if people were moving more data or data that matched certain patterns around on the network. This let us take those logs and tie them to computers and people and see if it was authorized. We also had software on all the computers that monitored files on/off and blocked USB and CD/DVD drives. Eventually we uninstalled all CD/DVD and started ordering machines without USB (that was a chore and so not worth it IMO).

</comment><comment><USER3> Why reminisce on old work emails? I can't think of anything less interesting...

But if you wanted to ex-filtrate that data (like some sort of spy) your best bet could be to connect to your email remotely via IMAP and replicate all the messages off site. This is probably much less traceable than physically copying data on your work computer...

</comment><comment><USER4> That sounds exactly like "pulling a Levandowski."

But also, no, because I have a simple rule: Don't store personal data on company property (including logins/session cookies). When I leave every night, if I never got access to that PC again it shouldn't matter.

I do occasionally log into public websites using personal credentials. But the way the browser is configured, they're ephemeral (meaning if the browser is closed/PC powers off, they no longer exist; this is all trivial with via Firefox's config pro-tip: Set browser.sessionstore.resume_from_crash to false).

As to taking stuff with me: Memories. I highly doubt I'd ever want to read inter-company email years later even if I could, I cannot see the nostalgia value there. Plus it is illegal.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm sure you could make a case for a few non-sensitive emails – but I think what you're talking about might be a civil or even a criminal offence (depending on where you live and the relevant jurisdiction), as the work and communications records are likely defined as your employer's property in some sort of binding document(contract/handbook/law).

There are of course exceptions to this, for instance in the case of whistle- blowing.

</comment><comment><USER6> I made an "essential notes" along the work in restrictive place that proved to be super useful 2-3 years after.

</comment><comment><USER7> No, if I leave a job, then I have left. There is no reason I would need details of business communications or meetings from a former job in my personal life.

</comment><comment><USER8> I think most people do keep backups, especially of email. Email clients are designed to download mail and its easy to keep it offline.

I'm pretty careful and delete previous work product unless its open sourced.

On a technical level, unless your company has DLP software, there's no way to know.

</comment><comment><USER9> No, I don't need to. And I have heard about keyloggers, forced usb encryption and even burnt out USB ports.

</comment><comment><USER10> Try Evernote.

</comment><comment><USER11> > Just nice to know what inane email you wasted time writing and what stupid > meeting you were stuck in on any particular day when you look back at your > life a few years later.

That sounds so bizarre that I'm pretty certain you're not really asking about "personal records".

And no, I don't steal my employer's data. You shouldn't, either.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is an anonymous account. The unscrupulous part of my user name is in reference to another thread where I used stealing and sharing interview questions as an example so I am not really trying to hide anything: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20812755](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20812755)

But when I wrote that comment I actually did think that backing up emails would be universally agreed to be morally fine. It's just so tame in comparison to acts of the pirates who get idolized for building silicon valley.

The motivation for this question is genuine. I hate having a gap in my google calendar or not being able to recall the details of some project I was working on. But I did choose to move on so yea they are stupid fucking projects even though I might need to reference them later on when updating resumes and such.</comment></comment>


How do you tackle fear? - <AUTHOR> How do you drown your fears? <comment><USER2> I think you need to do things that build your self efficacy. If you start with small wins, larger things will not be as intimidating.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> (F)alse (E)vidence (A)ppearing (R)eal

<comment><AUTHOR> Most of the time,it's as real as day.

<comment><USER3> If that's what you believe, I'd argue the opposite. Most of the time people fear things that haven't happened yet. Give us an example of your fear?</comment></comment></comment>


Storm Area 51: US Air Force Warns over Facebook Event - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-48989949 <comment><USER2> Area 51 was moved some time ago, but the land is still federal property, still has sensors and people will still be detained. That is a long way to travel to be detained.

I watched the interview with Mr. Lazar and my BS detect went off continuously. I believe that Joe should have also invited Brian Cox to co-interview Bob and that likely would have preempted some of this.

</comment><comment><USER3> No mention of Stanton Friedman, how sad.</comment>


Top Israeli prof claims simple stats show virus plays itself out after 70 days - <AUTHOR> https://www.timesofisrael.com/top-israeli-prof-claims-simple-stats-show-virus-plays-itself-out-after-70-days/ <comment><USER2> > Isaac Ben-Israel, who is not a medical expert, says analysis worldwide shows > new cases peaking after about 40 days, slams economic closures; leading > doctor dismisses his claims

</comment><comment><USER3> The guy has no idea what he's talking about. The virus is not playing this game by itself but against humans. When the host is dumb then the virus can play out based on how fast it infects, incubates and kills the host. In this case, despite a high R0 and a long incubation time, man is fighting this with social distancing meaning that the virus can't burn itself out. What the prof is suggesting is letting everyone get infected. Sure, that could be done, but at what cost? Say 1/2 the population 3.5billion people at 1% morality that's still 35 million dead.

</comment><comment><USER4> I can't read Hebrew, but this doesn't seem that controversial. For example, many countries plotted on the FT coronavirus website show similar plots of deaths/day vs time.

[https://www.ft.com/coronavirus-latest](https://www.ft.com/coronavirus-latest)

</comment><comment><USER5> >...no matter where it strikes, and no matter what measures governments impose to try to thwart it.

Governments take measures to avoid overwhelming the health system, it's not the same having 200k infections in 2 months than in 2 weeks.</comment>


Regulate Free Web Services? Let's see why that's wrong, and dumb. - <AUTHOR> http://seaneby.com/regulate-free-web-services-lets-see-why-thats

<comment><USER2> I have to say I agree with Sean here... Read the fine print before you commit your digital life into the hands of strangers... Yes, even if they come dressed in slick Web2.0 shininess, they are still strangers and once you hit that "I Accept" button you actually (surprisingly!) do accept those Terms & Conditions... and almost always the T & C fine print has the information that says this website/company/service may be gone without warning anytime !!!

Don't expect to be bailed out just because you were dumb... Oh wait, this is the USA, people expect to be bailed out all the time here, don't they?

BTW, a very true saying, quite relevant in the USA is: "VOTE WITH YOUR DOLLARS"... if you don't like a service, don't support it... and if you do like the service, be ready to vote for it with your $$$s.

<comment><USER3> I agree completely with your observation about Ts&Cs. OTOH, I have a legal background and I know that agreements like this one (they used to be called 'rip-and-sign' back in the days of packaged software) are hard to enforce. I know of the problems and I still seldom do more than scan them to see if they contain an egregious paragraph or two that I look out for.

I'm not sure if Americans "expect to be bailed out all the time," but I do know that we expect as consumers not to have our rights trampled on arbitrarily. As a nation of laws, that's inconvenient sometimes but it's vastly preferable to any alternative I've seen.

<comment><USER4> > I'm not sure if Americans "expect to be bailed out all the time," but I do > know that we expect as consumers not to have our rights trampled on > arbitrarily.

Right. Personal responsibility means companies must be held responsible if they don't follow ethical standards, something that goes strictly beyond obeying the law. Personal responsibility is thus the foundation of a free market.

<comment><USER5> And what ethical standard do you see broken here?

Ning provided a service, has realized that it's not financially feasable, and in the interest of (I presume) their owners/shareholders have decided to discontinue that service. They're allowing groups to continue using the service for a fee if they so desire.

Personal responsibility means weighing the pros/cons of trusting services to "the cloud". It's why there are a few things I still run on a machine in my basement, rather than move to an online provider, even though it could be cheaper for me. It's why I actively back up important documents (and yes, photos) to more than one location.

<comment><USER6> It's your ethical responsibility, whether as an individual or a corporation, to only let people _rely_ on you if you're _reliable_. If you're not, you have to go out of your way to prevent people from leaning on you, because you know they'll fall over when you step aside. It is their ethical responsibility _as well_ to find out if you're reliable, but it goes both ways.

<comment><USER7> > If you're not, you have to go out of your way to prevent people from leaning > on you

How do you do that? That's a serious question. How about two different ways to "prevent people from leaning on you"?

Did Ning ever promise reliability for free?

Are there any free and reliable services? If not, isn't "free" an indicator of "not reliable"?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Prime That Wasn't  - <AUTHOR> http://zmievski.org/2010/08/the-prime-that-wasnt

<comment><USER2> What's scary here is that PHP returns 0 (meaning no match found) rather than FALSE, which is the error return value of preg_match. It's this attitude of failing silently that makes PHP feel like a dangerous language.

Granted, it's smart that PHP does have a default backtrack limit. I believe this would have prevented errors like the django forms DoS vulnerability from a while back.

<comment><USER3> Line 64 of [http://svn.php.net/repository/php/php- src/trunk/ext/pcre/php...](http://svn.php.net/repository/php/php- src/trunk/ext/pcre/php_pcre.c) shows that they do handle it.

And you use the preg_last_error() function to see it.

The return false is for php errors (i.e. programming errors, which also raise warnings), not library errors.

<comment><USER2> Setting a flag and failing silently is still failing silently.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This pattern is usually attributed to the famous Perl hacker, Abigail. Abigail is also noted as one of the people who popularized the idea of a JAPH. That is a short piece of Perl that prints out "Just another Perl hacker". For instance the very misleadingly commented:

      $;                                   # A lone dollar?
      =$";                                 # Pod?
      $;                                   # The return of the lone dollar?
      {Just=>another=>Perl=>Hacker=>}      # Bare block?
      =$/;                                 # More pod?
      print%;                              # No right operand for %?

<comment><USER5> Do you have a link to a breakdown of that?

<comment><USER4> <http://www.perlmonks.org/index.pl?node_id=24173>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The idea behind how this works using regular expressions is very similar to how some C++ template metaprograms work.</comment>


Noisomeness - <AUTHOR> https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v42/n14/keith-thomas/noisomeness <comment><USER2> Heh: "Tryon, for example, denounced musk, 'the dearest of stinks', as 'an excrementitious matter - or the fume or froth proceeding from a fierce, fiery, violent-natured creature'. Had it been scarce, he said, hog's dung would have been equally sought after; as it was, some people esteemed cows' dung as 'a good perfume'."

<comment><USER3> In certain parts of the world you can easily find cow urine sold as "medicine".

[https://www.google.com/search?q=cow+urine+medicine&oq=cow+ur...](https://www.google.com/search?q=cow+urine+medicine&oq=cow+urune+medicine&aqs=chrome..69i57j0l4.4593j0j1&sourceid=chrome- mobile&ie=UTF-8)

<comment><USER4> It was used to make ammonia at one point, wasn't it? I'm not sure of ammonia's medicinal uses though.

<comment><USER5> In the early 1900's ammonia was needed to make sulfa drugs but that's on a commercial production level and there's much easier ways to get mass amounts of ammonia without milking cows for urine.

On a more accessible level, low amounts of ammonia is useful for topical treatments of itch, like from bug bites.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> [https://archive.is/yzBXY](https://archive.is/yzBXY)

</comment><comment><USER7> One thing that stood out to me when reading Arabian Nights is how central the smells are in every story. Makes one wonder what we're losing with this sensory deprivation in our overly hygienic lives.

<comment><USER8> I'm also interested in the quotes about some people smelling "sweet". Does that mean they don't have a scent, or that they naturally smell good?

People often act as if any body odor is bad, and I disagree -- many people have a pleasant natural scent. I wonder to what extent that perception has changed over time, and to what extent people's _odors_ have changed over time. (Skin microbiome?)

<comment><USER9> The Feynman story: [https://books.google.ch/books?id=_gA_DwAAQBAJ&pg=PT109&lpg=P...](https://books.google.ch/books?id=_gA_DwAAQBAJ&pg=PT109&lpg=PT109&dq=feynman+smelling&source=bl&ots=HCD0k_- MNI&sig=ACfU3U3HqHI1-lMqIplZcUa5wGdL2blPzw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjkwOu6hczqAhWOw6YKHf1OD0IQ6AEwAHoECAoQAQ#v=onepage&q=feynman%20smelling&f=false)

As for the daily shower, these days I guess a class distinction is between whether one showers before or after work. (idem for hand washing and urinals?)

<comment><USER8> Google Books is telling me I've reached my page limit, despite not having used the site in a month.

Is this the story about him honing his sense of smell?

<comment><USER9> yes.

"People's hands smell very different—that's why dogs can identify people; you have to try it! All hands have a sort of moist smell, and a person who smokes has a very different smell on his hands from a person who doesn't; ladies often have different kinds of perfumes, and so on. If somebody happened to have some coins in his pocket and happened to be handling them, you can smell that."</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


What Languages Fix - <AUTHOR> http://paulgraham.com/fix.html

<comment><USER2> Haskell: there are too many experimental pure lazy functional languages.

Scala: why should you have to choose between functional and object-oriented programming?

F#: OCaml has no libraries.

Erlang: C doesn't scale.

</comment><comment><USER3> Arc: Common Lisp is a kludge, and Scheme has no libraries.

This seems to address the reasons the languages were created more than the reasons people continue to use them today. The former is insightful, but the latter might be more useful.

<comment><USER4> >...and Scheme has no libraries.

That's a strange reason to write a brand-new language that has even fewer libraries. If that's the problem with Scheme. I hope PG and JAR had better reasons than that.

<comment><USER5> jar is working on Arc?

<comment><USER4> No, but jar was involved with T, which had the same reason according to pg.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is interesting because it's a good way to look at the domain of language not in its power or application but its audience.

Haskell: Because programming isn't enough like math

Mozart: Because Prolog is pretty foreign

Lisp: Because parens are really underappreciated ; )

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> My favorite is "Lisp: Turing Machines are an awkward way to describe computation", especially given that McCarthy originally only intended Lisp to be used as a theoretical device, and not for actual programming! (so goes the story, anyway)

<comment><USER7> I wonder if that is true or a myth? I wouldn't be surprised if it was true.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Perl: C isn't as good with text.

PHP: I'd rather write my own Perl.

Visual Basic: Crap, we desperately need a way to inflate the number of apps available for Windows.

The same is true for most companies.

</comment><comment><USER9> PHP: Doesn't [insert other language] have that function? Let's add it, too!

</comment><comment><USER10> Original JavaScript: HTML can't validate forms

Modern JavaScript: we are the best language committee in the world

</comment><comment><USER11> Perl wasn't the motivation behind creating Python.

</comment><comment><USER12> will there ever be one language to rule them all?

<comment><USER13> maybe Arc 2...

<comment><USER14> Hopefully the version digits of Arc will converge to e.</comment></comment></comment>


Would you pay for a Super Bowl commercial out of your own pocket? Steve Jobs did - <AUTHOR> http://sachin.posterous.com/art-and-copy

<comment><USER2> It says in the video that he paid for half of it, and Woz paid for the other half.</comment>


Economist: WikiLeaks is more of a legal hack, than technical hack - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2010/12/wikileaks_again

<comment><USER2> I agree with the headline point (it's more a matter of navigating laws than technology), but I'm not as sure about the argument that Assange ought to be forced to choose between not using the protections of various jurisdictions, or choosing one and submitting to its laws fully.

Isn't avoiding that precisely what anyone with sufficient power does in today's globalized world? Large corporations purposely site different activities in different jurisdictions to take advantage of each jurisdiction's benefits and avoid each jurisdiction's pitfalls, as the company's self- interest dictates. Why can't Assange try to engage in the same sort of jurisdictional arbitrage, living in one country, running servers in another, accepting mail in a third, etc.? If there's something inherently objectionable about that (because it shows a sort of divided loyalty and game-playing), then it's far more people than just Assange who are guilty of it.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree with your comment about jurisdictional arbitrage (lovely phrase). Look at Google, Microsoft, and Linkedin using Ireland as a tax haven. Not only do they play arbitrage, they flex their economic muscle by telling Ireland, if you raise corporate taxes (above the current 12.5%) we'll leave. Instead, Ireland cuts the pay of all govt employees.</comment></comment>


Valve ordered by French court to allow resale of digital games [in French] - <AUTHOR> https://www.nextinpact.com/news/108209-ufc-que-choisir-vs-valve-justice-consacre-vente-doccasion-jeux-dematerialises.htm <comment><AUTHOR> In a very brief summary, the French court here has held that the EU doctrines relating to rights exhaustion -- that a copyright holder cannot control the resale of physical goods -- also applies to digital games sold on Valve's platform. This will apparently require Valve to allow transfer and sale of games on the Steam platform.

Additionally, the court also struck various limiting terms in the Steam ToS, including a total disclaimer of liability for damage caused by betas. (I'm uncertain if this liability waiver was to apply to beta versions of games or beta versions of the Steam client.)</comment>


June 8th: the day your phone won't stop ringing - <AUTHOR> http://blog.ioshints.info/2011/05/june-8th-day-your-phone-wont-stop.html <comment><USER2> "Expecting everyone to have IPv6 connectivity sorted out throughout the enterprise network before June 8th is ludicrous..."

It's 2011. What's ludicrous is enterprise desktops with broken dual-stack support.

If IPv6 day weren't happening, remaining problems would not get fixed. Then in a year or two, major companies would start dual-stacking their public webservers in an unsynchronized fashion, and end users would be complaining about miscellaneous brokenness off and on for months, possibly years.

</comment><comment><USER3> Tip: Point your customers to <http://omgipv6day.com/> , now.

The site will tell if your Internet access will be fine on World IPv6 day. A positive answer means that you either have IPv4 only connection (no broken IPv6 DNS responses or routes), or have a fully operational IPv6 nameserver and route to the Internet. A negative answer means that your computer was tricked into using IPv6 while no actual IPv6 connectivity exists (and thus you are going to have problems on June 8th).

For a more detailed test: <http://test-ipv6.com/>

<comment><USER4> I've run that on all manner of devices and infrastructures and it has never told me I will have any problems on World IPv6 Day. That's not because it is inacurate, it's because the vast majority of setups will continue to work perfectly on June 8th.

<comment><USER5> The more out-of-the-box your setup is, the more likely it'll work (modulo a few broken OS/browser combos listed in the ARIN wiki).

You might experience problems in environments where someone has been playing with IPv6 and left it half-broken (or, in my case, tried to be too smart and used DNS server on Cisco router ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I also suggest test-ipv6.com which gives interesting results and feedback

For exemple, today while looking to replace my DSL modem local DNS server for different reasons (<http://en.blog.guylhem.net> if you want to know) I realized usual DNS servers such as 220.127.116.11 or 18.104.22.168 couldn't work for aaaa.v6ns.test-ipv6.com.

Yes I know, using 188.8.131.52 makes baby jesus cry, but it was easy to remember and faster than 188.8.131.52. Yet now I've got a new favorite - ordns.he.net

Try it for yourself : dig aaaa.v6ns.test-ipv6.com at your favorite server and see if it works.

<comment><USER7> I assume you just mean that test-ipv6 gives you the warning:

      "Your DNS server (possibly run by your ISP) appears to have no access to the IPv6 internet, or is not configured to use it."

I get that too (I have IPv4/IPv6 connectivity)

I really wouldn't worry about it too much. We're FAR from the day when anybody could contemplate publishing their public DNS zones using just IPv6-only nameservers. Therefore a recursive IPv4-only server will continue to work for a LONG time.

The more immediate problem is _publishing_ servers running IPv4-only (making a fully-recursive IPv6 only server impossible) The good news is that the large DNS-providers seem to be mostly on the ball about this. There are, however, still a few TLDs with IPv4-only DNS (.co is one example)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> IPv6 has existed for over 15 years. It's time to have one day of bugs and pain to move deployment forward.

I'm personally looking forward to this: I've had IPv6 connectivity for quite a while. I can resolve names over IPv6. Google works fine.

If I can do it, anyone can do it.

</comment><comment><USER9> Is there any way to get residential IPv6 access easily?

<comment><USER10> In the UK, Andrews and Arnold (aaisp) offer IPv6 by default for their DSL customers. There aren't m/any consumer routers that support it, but a Vigor 120 ADSL PPPoA to PPPoE bridge can be used in front of a single PC or Linux router.

<comment><USER6> I also recommand the FritzBox 7390, VDSL/ADSL2+ modem with SIP over DECT and fully IPv6 capable with "out of the box" support for 6to4 or sixxs tunnel. Great purchase, runs linux, very hacker friendly</comment></comment></comment>


Advice for New Managers and AMA with Aaron Epstein of Creative Market - <AUTHOR> http://themacro.com/articles/2016/10/advice-for-new-managers/ <comment><USER2> Hey HN! Aaron here. I hope you find this post helpful, and happy to answer any questions!

<comment><USER3> Thanks for this. Very concise and covers a the important stuff. I've shared it with my team and asked them to let me know if I'm not delivering or could approve on any of the points you cover.</comment></comment>


Power outages caused by squirrels - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/01/opinion/sunday/squirrel-power.html <comment><USER2> Squirrels stole a chunk of fiber we had between two buildings years ago. They used it to make nests with. We even had a video of them hanging upside down going along the supporting cable. Cost us 3 days of downtime though (this was internal office network).

mitigation was simply rubbing vaseline (petroleum jelly) all over it once a quarter so they just fell off.

Wildlife is incredibly destructive :)

<comment><USER3> >Wildlife is incredibly destructive :)

Said the guy whose office occupies the space where the trees that grandma and grandpa squirrel used to live in once stood.

<comment><USER2> Well hardly. The building was built on an old air strip and we had the trees planted!

I agree with your sentiment though entirely.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Koprowski's explanation from the last page is probably the most correct part of the article. Having done some time in the "greater telecom biz" I assure you that squirrels do not solely eat copper power wires, they are ravenous for aerial optical fiber and most any coaxial cable (CATV, communications/RF stuff, etc)

I have not studied this at length but I'm told the carcass from turning a squirrel into a power line fuse is substantially different than the carcass from shorting out a couple KW of broadcast transmitter RF and a tech can tell at a glance which cabling needs replacing when they see a smoking carcass on the ground. But I never worked outside plant so this might just be a tall tale they tell cubie dwellers.

Unlike what the article claims, I'm told there's off the shelf nearly perfect repellants based on hot sauce and at least some cables like coax are often flooded with a dielectric gel which is designed to taste awful, or so they claim.

</comment><comment><USER5> _Matthew Olearczyk, a program manager with the Electric Power Research Institute, explains that typically a squirrel will cause a blackout by scampering across electrical equipment and touching simultaneously both an energized component, like one of the cylindrical transformers at the top of a utility pole, and a grounded piece of equipment. The squirrel completes the circuit, generating an arc. There is an instantaneous flash of blue light. At its center is the squirrel, combusting._

It's written in a very Dave Barry sensibility throughout.

</comment><comment><USER6> We've had at least one datacenter power issue where the root cause was a cat. 9 lives tend to get used up quickly when 115kV is involved.

</comment><comment><USER7> My significant other works at the local power company, I'm always receiving SMS pictures of charred raccoons etc.

<comment><USER3> Isn't that romantic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> 2009: 'A bird dropping a piece of bread onto outdoor machinery has been blamed for a technical fault at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) this week which saw significant overheating in sections of the mighty particle-punisher's subterranean 27-km supercooled magnetic doughnut... As a result, temperatures in part of the LHC's circuit climbed to almost 8 Kelvin - significantly higher than the normal operating temperature of 1.9, and close to the temperature at which the LHC's niobium-titanium magnets are likely to "quench", or cease superconducting and become ordinary "warm" magnets.'

[1] [http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/11/05/lhc_bread_bomb_dump_...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/11/05/lhc_bread_bomb_dump_incident/)

<comment><USER9> 1945: A Japanese fire balloon[1] was responsible for causing "a short circuit in the power lines supplying electricity for the nuclear reactor cooling pumps" at the Hanford Site of the Manhattan Project -- but "backup safety devices restored power almost immediately".

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Peter Neumann has collected extensive archives on squirrelcides resulting in power failures. Search the RISKS archive at [http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/RISKS](http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/RISKS) for lots of reports.

</comment><comment><USER11> I've had a squirrel segment my Christmas lights into easy to carry pieces twice now :(

</comment><comment><USER12> I used to work at a large telco in Australia, and one of the most infamous support tickets in the system had the summary "Bird attack at the Hellfire club".

The Hellfire club is a BDSM club in Melbourne, and apparently a bird had attacked the cabling leading into the building, bringing down the phone systems.

</comment><comment><USER13> squirrels are badass. they use the power lines as highways and they even have off-ramps (tree branches). and then there's this squirrel i see sometimes that has dark fur and it isn't afraid of humans and goes right out in the open eating all the nuts that the other human-fearing squirrels would never get close to and one time it gave me this look

<comment><USER14> Probably a Crack Squirrel - [http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2005/oct/08/drugsandalcohol.pa...](http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2005/oct/08/drugsandalcohol.patrickbarkham)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> They cause quite a few Internet outages too. We have a lot of change management tickets filed under 'squirrel damage' so at some point I started using it for some of my change management requests. BGP blip? God damn squirrels.</comment>


Bitbucket Pipeline now in beta - <AUTHOR> https://bitbucket.org/product/features/pipelines <comment><USER2> That escalated quickly..... unlimited repos and CI.</comment>