To Delete Facebook or Not to Delete Facebook? That Is Not the Question - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/04/deletefacebook-or-not-deletefacebook-not-question <comment><USER2> The annoying thing about Facebook from a Danish perspective is that everyone uses it to plan social events. There are a lot of articles on how you'll get a richer social life and still get invited, but the truth is that you become a bit of a hassle for everyone else.

They have to text you the details outside of Facebook, or alternatively, have to adopt a new platform because of you.

Of course I still think you should delete Facebook. With all this recent controversy they had a chance to right the wrong, instead they chose to double down on exploiting their user base - not only in the legal department but also by quickly running their facial recognition stuff before the GDPR goes into effect.

On the plus side, the more people leave, the less Facebook will lose its justification because right now, the sole reason to be on Facebook is that it's where everyone is.

<comment> mandrake-c-papi I totally agree. I deleted my facebook about 5 years ago and I now find myself extremely isolated socially. Friends made the effort for a little while, but eventually I'm sure I was just forgotten by the more distant friends and my social circle has dwindled to almost nothing. This doesn't really bother me though, it's sort of a natural filter whereby "low value" relationships are weeded out.

Probably more significant is the impact of not being able to make new friends in the same way. The communities that surround my hobbies seem to be concentrated on facebook. When I make new friends at the face-to-face events the friendship doesn't transition to anything more significant because there's no followup connection on social media. This seems to be one of the modern ways that friendships are built - meet IRL, connect via social network and then always have a connection of some sort which allows the relationship to grow if nurtured. In my case I don't see or talk to these people until the next physical meetup and so I'm "out of sight, out of mind". It seems to me that other newcomers join the group IRL and on social media and are quickly integrated, but I'm just some guy that occasionally shows up.

<comment><USER3> I also deleted my account several years ago, and I've since made the conscious decision to let relationships fade if the only thing that would keep them alive were passive 'keeping up' via Facebook. But that suits my needs - I'm really not interested in what hundreds of people I've met are doing on vacation or thinking about politics or eating over the holidays.

My wife, on the other hand, lives for this stuff. She is much, much closer emotionally to people she went through earlier stages of life with and she routinely moans and shrieks about the things I mentioned above. And this suits here needs, because she cares about that sort of information.

That said, even if we grant Facebook a monopoly on 'keeping up with old friends', every other 'social vertical' that currently relies upon Facebook for connection, networking, and event planning represents a startup opportunity with massive market potential. Big one: mommy groups.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Deletion is too extreme for most people. Facebook is a monopoly for users and in an oligopoly for advertisers. This is a market failure [1]. More reasonable: escalating partial dis-engagement. Here's what I did, sequentially, over the years:

1\. Turn off notifications for the Facebook app on your phone;

2\. Turn off notifications for the Facebook Messenger, Instagram, et cetera apps on your phone;

3\. Delete the Facebook app from your phone;

4\. Delete the Facebook Messenger, Instagram, et cetera apps from your phone; and finally

5\. Log out of Facebook on your desktop.

It took me 2 years to go through from step 1 to step 5. It has made me happier and more productive. I still have a Facebook account. But the friction of grabbing my laptop and logging in forces me to consider "is this what I want to do? Or am I thoughtlessly reaching for the crack pipe?"

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

<comment><USER5> Turning off messenger notifications seems drastic and unnecessary (it's real people contacting you). It's like turning off sms notifications of call notifications, I do it whenever I need to concentrate , but not by default.

The problem are apps that notifies us about useless or non direct communication stuff.

<comment><USER6> Stop using Messenger as SMS. Just use SMS.

<comment><USER7> Nobody really uses SMS anymore, unless it is Android <-> iPhone messaging, and if the the users aren't already connected via one of many other IM apps.

<comment><USER8> As an iOS user, I only use sms for friends who use android but don't use whatsapp or another end-to-end encrypted platform. IE, it's just a fallback for me.

<comment><USER7> I think this is country specific. Whatsapp is used heavily in Europe and parts of Asia.

If I didn't have friends in other countries I'd just be using Facebook Messenger and iMessage as well. In the US it's predominantly Facebook Messenger.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > As a social media user, you should have the right to leave a platform that > you are not satisfied with... Furthermore, if users decide to leave a > platform, they should be able to easily, efficiently, and freely take their > uploaded information away and move it to a different one in a usable format.

Data is not the one thing stopping people leaving facebook... friends are.

This force stopping people leaving is the same one that drove social media into a monopoly - there is no cross platform protocol. Platforms do not communicate with each other like email clients. In this scenario the very nature of communication encourages people gather into a single large group for convenience (if it wasn't facebook it would have been another).

The abuse of a company in such a position is inevitable.

The _question_ is not going to be how can we make a protocol now (it's too late, facebook doesn't care), the question is how long will it take for enough people to become disgusted enough to switch to something more open where protocols could be developed, or where the platform is open source anyway and corporate forces are not an issue.

<comment><USER10> > the question is how long will it take for enough people to become disgusted > enough to switch to something more open where protocols could be developed, > or where the platform is open source anyway and corporate forces are not an > issue.

There are some other options:

\- Phone makers create a "message center", a central place where emails and feeds are shown. Facebook must now adhere to these standards, and they lose their "gatekeeper" position.

\- Someone develops an API to interact with facebook on behalf of a user. This API performs a live export of friends, feeds, etc, so that other applications can use them. After a while, people will use those applications instead of facebook itself, and are ready to leave facebook.

<comment><USER11> Yes good ideas. Hhonestly I thought we'd have it by now. I've been waiting to have my social account outside of Facebook that could connect with contacts who "live" inside its walls.

Why is everyone so happy to be with one company? Why are they happy to allow one company to manage their social connections and notifications for life?

Social connection technology shouldn't be tethered to one company, everyone huddled under its "protective" wing. That is typical early 21st century thinking. It's eco-system lock-in mentality, which works against users in the end.

I heard a journalist recently call Facebook the "modern day telephone" (Leigh Sales, ABC), which is a stupid thing to say. Facebook is not the technology, it's a service that uses modern technologies.

Imagine if there was only one phone company or ISP everyone in the world used. Not a great scenario for competition, innovation, safety, privacy and open standards evolution. We need those new protocols and ways to connect by easily talking between social media platforms.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > Facebook and other companies must respect user privacy by default and by > design.

That would be really nice, but before that happens a major cultural shift would have to take place and I can't see that on the horizon anywhere. Until then, the only language those companies understand is losing users, or not gaining them in the first place. And that's only the part where we consciously decide whether we're users or not. It still doesn't touch the part where our data is grabbed beyond our influence.

<comment><USER4> > _the only language those companies understand is losing users, or not > gaining them in the first place_

Or being broken up. This is a classic case of market failure. Waiting for users or advertisers to force a change is futile, and not their faults.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Zuckerberg revealed his true colors years ago. I had a facebook for a moment in perhaps 2005-06. I deleted it. I have never regretted that, quite the contrary. I have enjoyed a life free of social media, and free of its trappings and influences. I watch my friends get sucked into "comparing mind," scroll through streams of advertorials and recieve the corresponding subliminal stressers, and constantly have their mindfulness interrupted by notifications. I think the general concept of social media is great, and a necessary thing for the world at large. I think facebook is evil, and it blows my mind that people still continue to use this platform (And similar ones) even though the company sells users out again and again. This era goes way beyond "jump! how high?"

</comment><comment><USER14> I think the thought of deletion is pretty much just one of the problems. I managed to delete my Facebook profile a few months ago, but the amount of pressure I often receive from people so that I create a new account is what impresses me the most -- not from the personal level, since I already made up my mind, but from the point that most of the people think Facebook is just an essential, irreplaceable tool which everyone MUST have. I'm glad this did not yet affect my work or study, but this "disease" seems to have already infected most of my family and friends.

Now personally, I think people fool themselves most of the time to find what seems to be a reasonable answer to why they use Facebook: be it networking, be it a way to communicate with family and friends, be it a way to stay "in touch" with the news (and that also opens up for the whole fake news discussion, but oh well). I'm not saying those are not legitimate reasons to have a Facebook account (these are actually the primary services that it claims to offer), but I really wish people could see that there are other means to that. Some don't even involve having any social media accounts.

</comment><comment><USER15> How is that not the question? Do you believe Facebook violated their users privacy rights? Do you believe in accountability? Then the question is why not delete facebook?

If you hold facebook accountable, then you send a message: users DO value privacy, and any platform that abuses the privilege may find themselves with far fewer users and a less profitable product. Don't hold them accountable, and you'll get a sorry note from Zuckerberg, and he'll violate it later when you aren't looking.

In fact, this article raises another question: how much does the EFF value privacy? Apparently violators just need to say "I'm sorry" and continue what they were doing, and the EFF will argue on their behalf that the benefits of their service outweigh the cost of your lost privacy.

<comment><USER16> If you look beyond just Facebook, these are issues that will continue to crop up no matter what platform you use. The EFF also makes the claim that there are people for whom deleting Facebook is not a viable or tenable option, and maybe they're right, maybe the tools for them to drop Facebook altogether just don't exist. In that case, they should still have an expectation of privacy and data portability.

Facebook's practices are a societal problem, but theirs aren't the only ones, and services that have the same exact problems are probably being developed right now or will be developed within the next few years.

So my takeaway from this, reading the EFF's post is 1. we should be looking beyond hashtag campaigns targeted at one specific corporation and 2. if for whatever reason #DeleteFacebook is not a viable option, then you should still have your privacy protected and 3. the subtext to point two reads to me as: if you can #DeleteFacebook, you should, but we're not in the business of telling you what services to use _wink_ _wink_ _nudge_ _nudge_.

<comment><USER15> If the EFF wants to write an article arguing that privacy violations are widespread, and therefore viable privacy-respecting options aren't available.. then I'm all ears.

Here's what the EFF says about Facebook: "Deleting Facebook is not a choice that most of its 2 billion users can feasibly make. ... Without viable general alternatives, Facebook's massive user base and associated network effects mean that the costs of leaving it may not outweigh the benefits."

Imagine that, a service a little over a decade old is now a dependency for life. It's not "feasible" to leave. Apparently privacy violations must be weighed against the size of the user base and network effects.

Last I checked, phones still worked. Messaging still worked. All of the solution that existed a decade ago are still there. You CAN leave.

I look forward to the EFF proposing a legal solution to privacy such as GDPR in the US. They haven't done that, and in the meantime, there should be consequences for Facebook. The EFF shouldn't be arguing for the lack of consequences for this specific privacy violation, without proposing a solution to the problem across the industry.

<comment><USER17> EFF is not saying that people should not leave Facebook. It is saying that currently for most of its 2 billion users, leaving Facebook is too difficult, they wont do that and if they did that they would loose too much.

Your argument is phone and messaging which does not replaces Facebook for most of those people. Phone being completely irrelevant. Just because those people are not exactly like you, dont have same needs, same usage patterns and similar social groups around them as you have, does not mean they don't exist. Nor it means that EFF should not use them as an argument.

<comment><USER18> So you are arguing that in the information age the only way to communicate for some people is facebook? why can't phone, sms or email work?

on the othe hand, how hard is to tap someones land phone and listen in to their conversations, yet people still used it a lot before so i think expectations of privacy in public space is just a fantasy... If you really cares about privacy you wouls not use facebook, and you would look for encrypted communication channels, most people don't care however...

<comment><USER19> How does one find old friend's phone numbers or emails, when they want to reconnect, nowadays?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I wonder if there are any other tools out there that are capable of mining valuable data (for the personal user) from the "Download my Facebook" .zip file dump .. it seems like this is a data format that is ripe for exploitation by other apps/services in the effort of freeing Facebooks' grip over peoples faces.

Has anyone looked into the data that Facebook provide, to see what potential apps/services could be built on it? It seems really ripe for exploitation, to me .. but I have yet to download the .zip and inspect its contents. Off to do that now...

</comment><comment><USER21> Everyone is using facebook ... because everyone is using facebook. The more people delete it, the weaker will the network effect be.

I would say that as a person who understands technology and the ramifications of facebook, you have a moral duty to not use it. And you have a duty of educating people about facebook.

You can't stop it alone (no single person can - even shooting Zuck would probably not stop facebook) but you can stop voting for it, just like you probably aren't voting for alt right/nazi parties in your local elections.

</comment><comment><USER22>
       The problems that Facebook's Cambridge Analytica scandal highlight—sweeping data collection, indiscriminate sharing of that data, and manipulative advertising

No. The problem is that Facebook as a company has the data and the capacity to manipulate any election in any country. And there is no law that is forbidding them from doing that.

That's what the Cambridge Analytica scandal proved

</comment><comment><USER23> I'm doing some research on alternatives to facebook. Social networks with different business models. Hopefully will have a spreadsheet with descriptions and info in the next few days.

<comment><USER24> As a user the value is not in the technology, but in the 'other users', yes, the old 'network effect'. So the essential question is ho to get overnight adoption of one of those alternatives by all your friends, which means, by extension, everyone. Since this is unlikely, regulating Facebook into a privacy respecting business, hard and erring on the safe side, is the true alternative.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm not sure it's possible for facebook to fundamentally respect privacy by default. It is completetly antithetical to both their stated mission of "connecting people" and their defacto mission of making money off advertising.

In order for them to achieve either of those goals, they have to increase time spent on site and engagement, in order to maximize ad revenue. That results in them serving content the user _wants to see_ at all costs. Besides the fact that content a user _wants to see_ may not be the best for the user, and can simply waste time, this can also mean a massive echo chamber reaffirming peoples' own beliefs. While it may serve to connect them with their like- minded peers, it emotionally and intellectually results in _disconnecting_ them from the rest of society. This results in a dangerous shift in factionism and idealogical siloing.

So the negative effects of simply serving what the user _wants to see_ at a primitive level is fundamentally tied to an advertising business model. This makes it probably impossible for facebook to positively incentivize users without fundamentally changing their own incentive structures.

You may think there's nothing wrong if facebook is merely delivering what users want, but facebook uses manipulation to only deliver what users want in the _short term_ for immediate gratification. It's similar to addictive drugs and cocaine. People's long term thinking know it's bad for them even thhough their short term brain _wants_ it now.

Therefore if anyone is to create a facebook killer, all they have to do is provide a social platform that has a business model that is both sustainable and not reliant on short term engagement and selling ads. Instead it should focus on ceding control of social interaction to the _user_ , rather than it being the byoroduct of manipulative user experience. It should tie its own success to ensbling users to achieve their own long term social goals. Since it would be the antithesis of facebook, they'd have too much inertia in their ad model to effectively clone it. Any other social platform can simply be cloned by facebook.

</comment><comment><USER25> I think most people including journalist are basically computer illiterate.

Facebook has web interface. Uninstall the app from phone, and login once a week to check messages and to plan events.

<comment><USER4> One, we are in a market failure. Unilateral withdrawal is difficult. Two, even if I withdraw, I am still subjected to Facebook's surveillance and negative effects on my democracy. The latter is what pisses me off. (The cluelessness of Facebook's management and culture, in respect of this problem, coming in at a close second.)

<comment><USER18> How are you still subject to facebook surveillance and "effects on democracy"?

For surveillance you can say same for Google and their analytics code installed everywhere.

For democracy, i ap pretty sure same tactics are used in any media channel...

<comment><USER4> > _For democracy, i ap pretty sure same tactics are used in any media channel_

Facebook's uniqueness, in reach, magnitude of damage, and negligence, has been qualitatively demonstrated, by its actions and employees' defenses of said actions, over the past months.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> My only connection to other people outside immediate family was Facebook. I deleted mine, and now am stuck with no methods of contacting many people I know or once knew. I miss most of the major events in their lives. It's interesting to see how easily disconnected one can be when you're no longer seeing people involuntarily in classes and through a university community.

</comment><comment><USER26> I left because it had developed into a bad habit of scrolling through a meaningless feed for me.

The data leak was just the trigger to take the jump.

</comment><comment><USER27> Every time there's a scandal and you don't delete your Facebook account, you're telling them that you're fine with that behaviour and that they're welcome to abuse you further. They'll keep pushing, whittling their users to a group who tolerates anything.

</comment><comment><USER28> Disclaimer - I was subscriber 7454 to FB, however I moved on and never used it. I'm a little surprised that the EFF didn't mention the proprietary nature of FB in the article. The EFF used to champion open standards... what has changed?

</comment><comment><USER10> We need an API to interact with Facebook, so that other tools can shield us from it and help us migrate away.

Facebook will never build this API, but perhaps someone can use DOM traversing as the underlying mechanism for an open source service that provides the API.

<comment><USER29> Some of us are working on it: [https://urbit.org/posts/overview/](https://urbit.org/posts/overview/)

<comment><USER20> Can I, somehow, take my downloaded Facebook .zip data and import it into something Urbit'ish, yet still give me control over it?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> The question is: what signal do we want to send ? Please go on (FB or every over ones sitting on privacy, past or future companies), or the game is over.

Perhaps, with the actual attention of the medias, it's the right time to make a point, whatever it is.

</comment><comment><USER31> Many people are just focusing on the social networking aspect of Facebook, which can provide cohesion, but it's more than that, and some aspects are profoundly useful. It connects people around the world, it makes event planning easier, it digitize communication to provide opportunities for augmentation, and it has elevated consumer advocacy. In the global and online trade age, it's important for companies to be more conscious of their image, and consumers to be able to organize. Raising a complaint on Facebook is one of the best ways to have an issue resolved these days.

Taking away these facilities would be a giant step backwards, like removing telephone lines or postal routes. It's really a matter of defining who has the authority of this position and how the information is distributed, where Facebook is problematic.

</comment><comment><USER32> Outside US many events are organized via WhatsApp

(I guess that's why FB acquired it for 19bn)

</comment><comment><USER33> For me, the answer is to not put your personality on FB. Just put on the platitudes of your life, and like the platitudes of your friends' lives. "Look my kid did this". "Isn't the weather great today". "Glad you weren't hurt in that disaster".

I log in most days, but all I do is ack my friends. When I put something on, it's some BS that lets them ack me. I don't think it takes me more than a few seconds to scroll through and hit like.

Next to that there's the occasional "I'm in town" which is a call for a face- to-face.

<comment><USER34> My friends behaving like this is the reason I quit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Wean your contacts off the messenger and #deletefacebook

</comment><comment><USER36> The obvious answer is #DeleteFacebook

</comment><comment><USER37> Don't register there to begin with.

</comment><comment><USER38> Oh, cool. I was really missing the daily post about deleting Facebook.

</comment><comment><USER39> What I really like about this is what the "hashtag" #DeleteFacebook says about us and our time right now.

Firstly, it speaks of how ignorant we all are, as a public mass, of how the world actually works, even the reality of an "obvious" situation we aspire to be commenting about. Because you cannot actually "delete facebook". Neither can you "delete" the entire service as if it is some "app" on your phone, or old-skool word document on your laptop, nor can you delete the data it knows about you. Even if FB actually deleted the data they had about you, you can't make their AI's "unlearn" everything they got from you, and you can't make their 3rd-parties delete your data as well ( no matter what you well- intentioned t&cs-ninnies might say to counter this, I just don't believe you that there's anyway to make these things happen ). So you can't Delete Facebook. The first rule of Facebook is: Facebook is eternal.

Secondly, even if you go ahead and delete your account, your protest is impotent. Your victory is symbolic. Your effort at self determination will be undone. Because it's sort of like people saying they were going to leave California ( or the US ) if Trump got elected. So you can do it, but it won't change anything. It will probably end up severely disrupting / hurting your life. And in the end, you most likely won't do it. What this reveals about our ignorance is how powerless we actually are, and how ignorant we are of what Facebook has become. It has become a utility. It is ( mostly ) essential. Even if you do not use it, other services assume you do, and your access to those is gatekept by your ( non-existant ) FB account. And if you do use it, or use Messenger, or Whatsapp, then it is a _good_ way to stay in touch with people you know. And if you really use it then of course you know why you need it. Second rule of Facebook is: Facebook is necessary.

So the third thing I like about this is, how ignorant this hash tag reveals us to be with regard to the way to deal with Facebook. It's not about individual actions. It's about the collective. FB has begun to impinge upon the collective. It has become a utility. And it exists forever, despite the actions of individuals. When it goes rabid / stray, what is needed is collective actions to bring it back under control of the commons. Within the bounds of the common good. Only regulation can subdue Facebook to the useful and the good. Not protest. The third rule of Facebook is: It's a utility, stupid. Regulate it.

<comment><USER18> Facebook is not a utility by it self, it is a web site, if you start regulating it what stops the government to regulate pretty much anything on the internet?

<comment><USER39> That's true. Once we start regulating FB we will never be able to stop regulating everything. Soon, tentacles of regulation will be everywhere. Even our thoughts will be regulated. Ok, let's not regulate it then. Good point.

But also, can't we say, if you start allowing FB to grow and operated un regulated what's to stop pretty much anything on the internet to do the same?

Hmm. What to do?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I think _" Social Media"_ is a complete abomination and should be burned to the ground and the earth salted that nothing may grow there.

But! Facebook has some really useful features.

I used to engage quite a lot with the _social_ features of Facebook, but now I only use it for a few of things: 1. Facebook Marketplace has now become more useful than Gumtree which used to dominate the local secondhand goods market; 2. Events; 3. Facebook Messenger.

I couldn't give a flip about reading anyone's opinion, posting my own, or looking at your photos.

But what I don't get is, the elephant in the room: why haven't the FBI raided Facebook HQ and seized control of all their data centres: it should obvious to everyone that minors have used Messenger to share lewd pictures and videos with each other, and we all now know that Facebook doesn't actually delete anything because they let download all your data and that data includes pictures and videos you've "removed / delete", and even ones you took with the Messenger app but didn't send!

Zuckerberg is _literally_ sitting on a mountain of child porn!

<comment><USER41> You mean literally figuratively</comment></comment>


Lindenmayer System in Clojure - <AUTHOR> http://nakkaya.com/2010/01/26/lindenmayer-system-in-clojure/

<comment><USER2> The best thing about this program is that it shows the power of Clojure's Java interop. Doing graphics programming in other languages often feels like a dirty hack, but this isn't so bad. This might lead me back to try Clojure again

Aside: A few months ago I decided to reproduce a program a friend of mine wrote, which was to draw Koch's Snowflake without using recursion. By the end of the day, this morphed into a throwaway Lindenmayer system viewer in C++ with OpenGL. Basically it just lets you toggle the number of iterations and switch between 13 different fractals. The Clojure code is a lot nicer than the C++ that I banged out, which probably goes without saying! I was trying to add 20, but they were a pain to derive and I didn't want to work on it for more than a day

<http://github.com/jakevoytko/fractals>

</comment><comment><USER3> Interesting; this article says the rewrite rule is _F - > F+F-F-F+F_ , but Wikipedia says _F → F−F++F−F_ . I think Wikipedia's is right, as (for a beginning) there are only four line segments in step N+1 for each line segment in step N. Take out the F between the minus signs in this article's rule, and it would be correct ( _F - > F+F--F+F_ ), allowing for mirroring of the Wikipedia formula.

<comment><USER4> My mistake linked to the wrong page, formula I used is from L-System article, example 4.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Don't miss the graphics at the bottom.</comment>


Ask HN: Flowchart tool suggestions - <AUTHOR> Hey Guys,
Do you know of a flow chart tool that would allow me to define flows between products and then dive into each product and define the flows within the product until i reach the lowest resolution possible within my project?
would be great also if supported generating the flows from text/markdown
Hope this makes sense :)
Thanks! <comment><USER2> Code2flow [0] may be worth a look. I don't have a lot of experience with it, but it's been useful for me so far.

[0] [http://code2flow.com](http://code2flow.com)</comment>


Python Enhancement Proposal 495: Local Time Disambiguation - <AUTHOR> https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0495/ <comment><USER2> I'm not sure the rationale behind this. That is, the rationale section of the proposal does a poor just of explaining any case where this is actually a problem.

In every case where I've seen this problem, it's a matter of people either not storing the timezone along with the local time, or not storing in UTC time. A local time with a timezone is a unique time, it does not occur twice. A UTC time additionally does not occur twice. Store a time zone along with the date and time or store in UTC and convert on use.

Note: If there are instances where a second is repeated, it's rare special occurrence that developing a formalized interface for seems like overkill.

<comment><USER3> > A local time with a timezone is a unique time, it does not occur twice.

If you define timezone as an IANA timezone, this is incorrect: a whole slew of local times repeat during a DST fallback event: you'll have a (1:30 AM (dst=True), America/New_York), and then a (1:30 AM (dst=False), America/New_York); that "dst=True|False" bit is the only difference, and that needs to get stored. If you consider "America/New_York" to be the TZ, then storing that bit on the TZ isn't appropriate, as it depends on a particular timestamp.

If you've ever worked with PyTZ, there's a sort of rule of "just call normalize() always"; otherwise, you'll get funny answers to some introspections on the datetime instance: things like the offset being not what a local would say the offset should be. My understanding is that pytz stores the dst flag on the timezone instance itself; things get funny because the timezone instance is not given a chance to update after arithmetic on the datetime instance.

(Really, I feel like the whole thing would work better if there was a separate class for "instant in time" and a function for, "convert this instant in time to Gregorian year/month/day/etc. in this TZ", which then returned a broken- out-type. (And a reverse, of course, for building "Instant" instances.))

UTC datetime + IANA TZ (if relevant) is the way to go. Alas, not all data is so nice.

<comment><USER2> Really I was thinking of it as a distinct timezone that must be tracked. Whether the DST and non-DST versions label themselves as such, the representation used to track time must distinguish whether DST is active or not to display the correct local time. Really, when I say store local time + timezone, I mean local time plus identifier that gets you to the same unique timezone representation in your medium (python, in this case).

Personally, I just _always_ convert to UTC and store that. It changes the problem from one of data fidelity to display or computation annoyance, and annoyances are easy to reduce or eliminate with tooling.

<comment><USER3> > Really I was thinking of it as a distinct timezone that must be tracked. > Whether the DST and non-DST versions label themselves as such, the > representation used to track time must distinguish whether DST is active or > not to display the correct local time. Really, when I say store local time + > timezone, I mean local time plus identifier that gets you to the same unique > timezone representation in your medium (python, in this case).

I guess that's my point: the IANA identifier is a well-known way to serialize a TZ, but doesn't include DST flags because they're not relevant. I think if you wanted to store something like a Python tzinfo object, the easiest way is just storing (local time, offset from UTC); (maybe (local time, offset from UTC, IANA TZ ID), if you want to keep the TZ)

tzinfo's don't really have a defining quality in Python, I've found. You can end up — depending on libraries used — with two tzinfos that both conceptually are "UTC", but don't compare equal…

Now that I've thought about it again, I'm not entirely sure that the DST flag + TZ name by itself is sufficient, mostly in the case of a TZ deciding to change their offset.

> just always convert to UTC and store that. It changes the problem from one > of data fidelity to display

The right thing to do, and for the right reasons.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Terrible PEP, I hope it gets rejected. One-off flags like this are hacks that shouldn't be in stdlib. It simply stinks, in an area (time handling) where the stdlib does not really smell like roses already.

Dealing with time adjustments is the OS's job, not userland. If your job has to be scheduled exactly and cannot rely on the OS, and you refuse to deal with UTC, it's your own damn fault and you can always just use a long-running process with timers.

<comment><USER5> I agree. It's library baggage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> So :

Time in UK is currently UTC +1 (BST) At 2am on 25 OCT we will return to GMT / UTC. It will therefore become 1am, and for the next hour all times will have happened before

The idea is to put a bit flag that says "alreadyseenthistime"

It seems to me this is a solution to the wrong problem.

Store all strings as bytes, assuming UTF-8, store all times as longs assuming UTC

If we convert all python datelines to non-naive (ie embedded with a TZ) then we are forced always to choose an encoding just like in strings. The right encoding is to always assume incoming dates are UTC, to throw error if they are non naive, and to assume that local clocks are set correctly (which we do anyway)

I need to read it more carefully - but it seems the wrong solution

</comment><comment><USER7> In general any solution to datetimes that doesn't involve the time being in UTC is solving thew wrong problem.

<comment><USER8> I would disagree. UTC is ambiguous and unpredictable. Computers should really be based on GPST (seconds since 1980-Jan-6 UTC).

<comment><USER9> If you want to be pedantic about getting rid of unpredictability in your time measurement, use TAI.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> When the clocks change, don't you shift timezone? There aren't duplicate times in BST, we just switch from GMT to BST and then back.

> In these situations, the information displayed on a local clock (or stored > in a Python datetime instance) is insufficient to identify a particular > moment in time.

Does the datetime instance not store the timezone?

<comment><USER11> Yes, you could get the information from the timezone, but how would one do that in code?

The only time that one has the time fold is when you turn the clock backward (let's just call that shifting from daylight savings to standard timezone). And this would only affect code which used wall clock time (time as it's read, e.g. 1:30am PDT), and would also only affect code which wanted to run something only once at a time within that fold (e.g. 1:30am ... not on both 1:30am's).

So, using the timezone method, just check to see if your current 1:30am is in your daylight savings timezone. Hurray! You're in the clear. Go ahead and do that thing you wanted to do only on the first 1:30am.

But the next day you're going to run into a problem. The only 1:30am you're going to get is in the standard timezone. So now you have to check for this timezone change only on the day of the change, which is yet another piece of data you have to keep track of. On the day of the change, do this timezone comparison, and on every other day don't worry about it.

When the clock hits your interesting time of 1:30am, just check to see if today is the day of the change, check what the current timezone is, check what the daylight savings time zone is, check to see if those those two values are the same, and now do your thing. Otherwise, just do your thing.

All of the above also ignores that people change times at different times (11pm, 1am, 2am, 3am), some don't change a full hour, and some don't change at all.

The proposal gets rid of all of that convoluted logic in everyone's programs, and instead it provides a single boolean value: is this the second time I've seen this time because of daylight savings shenanigans.

<comment><USER10> > The proposal gets rid of all of that convoluted logic in everyone's programs

Does it? It doesn't cover the scheduling problem the other half of the year when the clocks move the other direction.

> So now you have to check for this timezone change only on the day of the > change, which is yet another piece of data you have to keep track of.

If running a job twice is a problem, then why not check that the job has not already been run?

> is this the second time I've seen this time

Is this unambiguous? If it's 2015-10-25-01-30-00 GMT, have I seen that time before? In the UK, yes, in Mali no.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The more I'm exposed to other date/time libraries, the more impressed I become with Apple's date/time library.

[https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/Cocoa/...](https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/Cocoa/Conceptual/DatesAndTimes/DatesAndTimes.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/10000039-SW1)</comment>


Show HN: WordDiagram – explore relationships between words - <AUTHOR> http://worddiagram.com/ <comment><USER2> That's a pretty cool way to explore the dictionary! I suggest you make it so hovering over a blank definition dot will show the definition at the bottom, rather than having to click on it triggering an expansion / contraction. That would make it much easier to browse.

</comment><comment><USER3> Pretty nifty. I would also kind of echo a suggestion sort of already offered by `vinceguidry: when expanding, I have to drag the screen over a la Google Maps style, it would be nice if I don't have to do it. Lower the amount of actions like this for the user.

</comment><comment><USER4> Here are some other WordNet visualisers

[http://wordties.cst.dk/](http://wordties.cst.dk/) [http://visuwords.com/](http://visuwords.com/)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The definition should show up if you hover. May be too slow though...

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Site's back up, sorry about that.</comment>


Expand Your Definition of Content Marketing to Achieve More - <AUTHOR> http://www.ginzametrics.com/blog/expand-your-definition-of-content-marketing-to-achieve-more

<comment><USER2> Great post! Content marketing has always been a difficult one for me, since I would rather spend my time either writing code or talking to potential customers. Content strategy was the most important factor in high user acquisition or growth for most successful SaaS companies. I really liked the ladder of content types and the advice around starting small.

<comment><AUTHOR> Glad to hear it! I think it's difficult for a lot of people, at companies large and small.

Startups, in my opinion and us included, need to get better at separating marketing, lead gen and actual sales. It all starts with understanding where demand comes from. Based on the research I've read, for SaaS companies, about 65% of the demand comes from marketing activities.

Content marketing forms the basis of these activities, so figuring out how to really make it scale, regardless of the size or stage of the company, is critical.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Please critique my startup idea and landing page - <AUTHOR>

I would greatly appreciate any constructive criticism the community has about my startup idea, BakeLayer.
http://bakelayer.com/
The idea is simple -- hosted browser cookies. There are several advantages to storing data server-side that would normally be stored client-side:
- You can store more data in a database than you can in a browser cookie. That data can be accessed via a key/value interface (API)
- You can add, delete, and modify cookie data server-side without the need for the visitor to access a page on your site.
- There are multiple methods of tracking other than cookies, so I can use those methods to associate an ID with each client, making it harder for them to "lose" the cookie data you've assigned to them. Naturally, only methods that haven't met with litigation are employed.
I'm still kicking around ways to price this, as potentially it could be hit with a ton of traffic (each page view on a given website, similar to an analytics service). After reading the Dilbert comic today I'm pretty sure how I want to market it.
Any ideas or notes on the design or business idea are greatly appreciated! <comment><USER2> why wouldn't i just store cookie data in my local datastore, why would I want to use yours ?

Amazon offers simpledb, google app engine, both offers are very cheap, and wouldn't take much to create a simple datastore utilizing either of these services to simple key value pairs.. how would you differentiate ?

In all honesty.. cookies are usually lost between uses and not during the session, so I can't see the point really. If a user logs in , I usually set cookies based on loaded information at time of login ... so its a one time thing.

<comment><AUTHOR> >>why wouldn't i just store cookie data in my local datastore, why would I want to use yours?

The vast majority of my theoretical potential customers are the kind of buyers who need copy-paste solutions. This is most e-commerce sites and affiliate managers.

>>Amazon offers simpledb, google app engine, both offers are very cheap, and wouldn't take much to create a simple datastore utilizing either of these services to simple key value pairs.. how would you differentiate?

Technologically I would not be trying to compete. I would be competing on ease of use and having a system/dashboard that is specific to this use case. Infrastructure vs. product I suppose you could think of it as.

>>In all honesty.. cookies are usually lost between uses and not during the session

You mean between sessions? If so, that is the other major selling point. I am employing methods that will make the cookies as persistent as possible between sessions and even between browsers (yes, cross-browser cookies, via Flash storage).

The idea here is that if you already have a person logged in, you don't need this. This is for people who want to associate an arbitrary amount of data with a visitor and ensure (to the best of the service's ability) that it won't get deleted. I have a feeling my customers will be more concerned with this feature than any other.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm sure this is not a trivial technical solution to a problem but have you actually talked to anyone and confirmed they'd pay for this service?

Landing page seems nice though, easy on the eyes.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes I have, but not much. I have a few contacts who are either affiliate program managers for large online stores or are otherwise involved with affiliate-based marketing on some level higher than simply being users of some affiliate program. One person expressed interest in the service after a debacle involving Live's CashBack program. I'm going to gather feedback from potential customers via adwords campaigns. This should also give me some idea of the level of interest.

Edit: I don't know who downvoted you, or my other comment, but this is basically abuse of the voting system and it's been going on for a while now. I wish there was some moderator just hovering over all these threads going "Why did so and so just downvote that guy? Reversed."

<comment><USER3> Ok first of all I really don't know how you're planning to gather potential customer feedback via adwords but I really advise you to get out there and have some face to face meetings with potential customers. You probably have a MVP at this point but you haven't done any customer development.

Please go have a look at this document, it should help you with validating your MVP and startup idea: [http://www.stanford.edu/group/e145/cgi- bin/winter/drupal/upl...](http://www.stanford.edu/group/e145/cgi- bin/winter/drupal/upload/handouts/Four_Steps.pdf)

Also I really don't care about karma or upvotes. I'm here to learn and share my knowledge. If this message helps you in any way, I'll be more than content.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the feedback, and especially the link. I plan on getting customer feedback by developing over the course of a month or two a list of keywords that get a high conversion for sign-ups to the mailing list. Then actually talking to the people on my mailing list. Also, in the past I have found that many people are willing to contact me via the contact form I have on a landing page, and those individuals are easy to engage for feedback.

As for the karma and votes, I know it's not about the karma. And one down-vote doesn't mean anything. For me it's the principle of it. I want people here to act right because I try so hard to uphold the values this place represents. It just seems like more and more people don't give a crap about that. Sigh.

Thanks again!

Edit: Really started checking out the PDF you linked me to. This is a fantastic find. I'll be reading this tonight over my favorite episodes of TNG.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> hrm. cool idea. would have to make sure that accessing such an integral part of data from your servers would be snappy fast, though.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, and agreed. The latency of each request would have to be as short as possible. I'm guessing in order for it to be snappy fast I'm looking at requests taking around <80ms.</comment></comment>


Scientists may have discovered fifth force of nature, laboratory announces - <AUTHOR> https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/dark-matter-particle-hungary-atomki-nuclear-research-force-nature-a9210741.html <comment><USER2> Evidence of a 'Fifth Force' Faces Scrutiny (2016) [https://www.quantamagazine.org/new-boson-claim-faces- scrutin...](https://www.quantamagazine.org/new-boson-claim-faces- scrutiny-20160607/)

TL;DR: authors have a long history of discovering new particles at various masses, but these discoveries disappear on later studies with no explanation.

<comment><USER3> Yes, I see that. However, after reading the last paragraph of this news article on the same subject ([https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a29861192/fifth- for...](https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a29861192/fifth-force- nature/)), I'm intrigued, and I think this definitely warrants more investigation:

 _Science Alert points out that scientists on other teams have already been looking for a particle that fits the description of the X17 particle, like how the Atomki team gave a description to a criminal sketch artist who is now trying to matchmake the sketch with a logical explanation. The more scientists who are on the hunt for the fifth force, the more likely their research will all eventually cohere into one explanation._</comment></comment>


Looking for Beta Clients - <AUTHOR>

Hi, I developed an enterprise visual datamining software. Currently I am looking for beta clients. I can support 1 or 2 beta clients right now. If you are interested please let me know. You can send me an email at email@example.com <comment><USER2> I suggest you provide a screencast or something first in order to generate interest in your product.</comment>