Coin Puzzle: Predict the Other's Coin - <AUTHOR> http://pratikpoddarcse.blogspot.in/2012/12/predict-others-coin.html <comment><USER2> If they both agree to use their own coins result as the guess of the OTHER person's coin, they should get it right 50% of the time instead of 25%.

Possible tosses:

TT win

HT lose

TH lose

HH win

Counter-intuitive though isn't it.

 _Why does using your own result improve the odds of winning the game!?_

<comment><USER3> >Why does using your own result improve the odds of winning the game!?

I find the result very confusing as well. I suspect the source of this counterintuitiveness is that I over simplified the puzzle when I first read it.

I simplified the puzzle to "A attempts to guess B's coin, and B attempts to guess A's coin", whereas in fact the true puzzle is "A and B together try to guess the total set of results".

When A and B guess randomly, they attempt to guess the total set without using the information they have available to them. When A and B both guess the results of their own coin, they use the information they have regarding the set of results (i.e. the results of their own coin) to reduce the problem space and increase their chances of success. Clearly, if you have heads, you know the chances of the set of results being heads-heads are much higher than choosing a random set of results.

In other words, the proposition for A is not "What are the odds of B having heads given that you have heads?" but rather "What are the odds of the set of results being heads-heads given that you have heads?"

<comment><USER4> I'm not sure the conditional probability argument explains it. Specifically, given A=H, the probability of (H,H) is the same as the probability of (H,T) so that alone shouldn't inform your guess.

I believe the core mechanism at play here is that _coordination_ eliminates the possibility of one player being right and the other being wrong, because one can partition the coin outcomes into "We have the same result" and "We have different results"; by agreeing in advance to only guess "we have the same result" every time you eliminate the "I'm right, you're wrong" and "You're right I'm wrong" failure modes (50% of the probability space under random guessing).

One could accomplish the same by always guessing the _opposite_ of what you obtain (i.e. always bet on "we got different results" which again has a 50% probability).

This is related to the "guess your own hat's color" riddle:

"You and a friend are on a game show. The host sets you facing each other at a table, blindfolded. A hat, known to be either white or black, is placed on each of your heads. The host removes the blindfolds, and asks each of you to write down the color of your own hat without communicating with each other. If _either_ of you guesses correctly, you both win a prize. How do you guarantee success by pre-communicating a strategy?"

The answer here uses the same partitioning into "either we're the same, or we're different". One friend agrees to always guess his own hat to be the same as the friend's, while the other always guesses that his hat is different.

<comment><USER3> I think that you are correct and I am incorrect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Humm let me see if I get this right

\- Assuming everybody is honest

The chance of A getting the guess right is 0.5, same for B, so the joint probability should be 0.25 (or 1/4)

You're out of 2 dollars (3 - the 1 you get) for something with a chance of 1/4 (in the other 3/4 you're being payed $1) SO

Looks like it's worth playing.

Expected losses: 2 * 1/4 < Expected wins: 1 * 3/4

Edit: see comment below

Edit 2, see the other comment below where the probability of prediction can be of 1/2, in this case: Expected losses: 2* 1/2, wins: 1/2 so you should not play

<comment><USER6> > You're out of 3 dollars for something with a chance of 1/4 (in the other 3/4 > you're being payed $1)

You're out $2 (since you get the $1 from the other players at the beginning, no matter what)

<comment><USER5> Humm makes sense =) Knew I was forgetting something!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Here is a bit harder version of the puzzle, with 100 players instead of 2.

100 prisoners are given either a blue or a red hat, at random. Each prisoner is told colors of every hat except their own, and has to make a guess about his hat with absolutely no communication. They win only if they _all_ guess correctly. They can agree on a strategy beforehand. What is the optimal probability of success?

<comment><USER8> Each should guess whatever would make an even number of red hats. That makes it a 50% chance they're all wrong, and a 50% chance they're all correct -- thus consolidating all their "rightness" into a single block of probability.

<comment><USER9> That assumes a uniform distribution. If there were more red hats than blue hats in general, it would be more advantageous for everyone to always guess whatever makes an even number of the majority color, as they would win more than 50% of the time.

<comment><USER8> I'm not following. With 100 hats, an even number of one color means there's an even number of the other color, too.

<comment><USER9> Yeah, sorry, I'm mistaken. If one color is more probable than the other, you can win more by guessing odd rather than even, but you'd have to know the distribution. If you got 51 red hats every time, for example, you'd never win making even hats.

For this to work, however, you'd have to know the exact expected probability of each hat (and if it was even or odd), which is improbable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The team of A and B can increase the chance from ¼ to ½ by consistently taking their output from step 2 and using it as the guess for step 3.

Same thing if they both agree to guess the inverse of step 2.

<comment><USER11> This does not work because the text says "Players A and B build a team, they have one fair coin each" NOT one fair coin total.

<comment><USER12> _but_ they can communicate a strategy ahead of time in step 1.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Spoiler. The below contains an exact response

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-- The fact that there is no communication ensures that whether A is right and whether B is right are completely indpendent. Conceptually, predicting a coin flip is like making a statement "1" or "0" which will then be XOR'd with a 1 or 0 from a securely, randomly, uniformly generated OTP of which no copies exist. In other words, the plaintext is immediately lost forever and you just have the ciphertext.

As a result of this, we must truly consider that A being right is a 50/50 proposition. It is also indpendent of B being right.

Thus we have the following four cases:

A right, B right - Result value * Percent chance = EV

0, 0 = +1 * 0.25 = +0.25

0, 1 = +1 * 0.25 = +0.25

1, 0 = +1 * 0.25 = +0.25

1, 1 = -2 * 0.25 = -0.5

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>- sum of above: +0.25. Therefore, as long as each team member is independently predicting their own coin (which means that their prediciton will be xor'd by a random bit) C should play this game long- term.

(The values of +1 is because each round starts with the team giving C +1. If at the end of the roudn C must return 3 then this is +1 -3 = -2 for the round.)

Now here is another interesting question. What if under the same conditions A and B both try to predict C's coin toss, of which there is only one? Should C now play? Here is the answer is: "No", because A can predict heads, B can predict heads, and then it looks like this: A right, B right - Result value * Percent chance = EV

0, 0 = +1 * 50% = 0.5

0, 1 = +1 * 0% = 0 } not possible

1, 0 = +1 * 0% = 0 }

1, 1 = -2 * 50% = -1

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-

-0.5

In this case, C should not play. This is because in this case the events are not truly independent, there is a way to break the 25% 25% 25% 25% into 50% and 50% - namely by picking the same prediction together.

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>--

<comment><USER13> The problem with this analysis is that with the "choose the same as your flip strategy", the case where A is right and B is wrong do not occur. Likewise when A is wrong and B is right does not occur. The results of each coin flip are independent, however the strategy produces a non-independent result.

      A, B, GuessA, GuessB, Winner, AmountC, Chance, EV
      H, H, H,      H,      AB,     -3,      0.25,   -0.75
      H, T, H,      T,      C,      +1,      0.25,   +0.25
      T, H, T,      H,      C ,     +1,      0.25,   +0.25
      T, T, T,      T,      AB,     -3,      0.25,   -0.75

Sum(EV)=-1 per round So C should not play

<comment><USER3> C loses 2, not 3, when he loses (he gets one from AB at the start of each round). C's EV should therefore be -0.5

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> To answer the actual question: whether C should play this game depends on C's estimated probability of A and B coming up with a winning strategy. In the real world, there would be many people with whom I would play this game.

</comment><comment><USER15> Both A and B guess the same as the results of their own toss. Their answers are correct if the tosses are HH and TT, 50% chance.

So no, C should not play this game.

</comment><comment><USER16> Dysfunctional teams never can agree. By that I mean, if A decides to use the strategy "guess what I flip"; B decides on the strategy "guess opposite what I flip". And vice versa. These teams can never win! So for dysfunctional teams, C can play the game no matter the payout.

<comment><USER17> Actually I've done the hash on this approach and this still results in a losing game for C.

Instead of HH and TT being winners with this approach, HT and TH become winners with this approach. Any combination of opposite or agreement will result in the same net odds.

The way for C to win is for A or B to treat it randomly.

A very interesting experiment would be to test how long it would take a random human subject A with no contact with a consistent B (but a memory for past results) to figure out how to win (in cases where they were told winning was possible, impossible, or neither).

<comment><USER16> Yes, but my point was that one team member uses HH & TT, while the other team member uses HT & TH. This is always a loss for the team regardless of how the flips turn out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Maybe you could do even better than the obvious "guess the same as your coinflip" strategy, by using quantum tricks.

</comment><comment><USER19> The question should really be rephrased to "Will C make money if he/she plays this game?" Maybe C doesn't like money, has too much of it but really only likes giving it out after coordinated acts of random chance. Then C would love this game regardless of A and B's strategy. Maybe C spends all of his/her free time at RPS tournaments, throwing singles at the winners like a rap video.

</comment><comment><USER20> Anyone find a solution? I have an idea but want to check.

<comment><USER11> Yes. Break it down into the possible cases, assign probability for the case, and value for the case. Multiply each probability by its value and sum these up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Hmm. If A and B are unwitting investors, and C is a quant with inside information, OF COURSE C should take this "bet".

It's not like C would ever everrrr....Lie....

And when G(overnment) comes around to fix this evil fraud, they fine for 10% of the profits. Everybody but A and B make out like a bandit. Sound like '09, doesn't it?

(tongue in cheek, only because there were multiple vald analysees of this question elsewhere in the comments.)</comment>


Egypt protests: live updates - <AUTHOR> http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jan/29/egypt-protests-government-live-blog <comment><AUTHOR> A nice poem to go with it:

Adaptation of OZYMANDIAS: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozymandias>

MUBARAK

I met a traveller from an antique land \\\ Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone \\\ Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand, \\\ Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown \\\ And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command \\\ Tell that its sculptor well those passions read \\\ Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, \\\ The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed. \\\ And on the pedestal these words appear: \\\ "My name is Mubarak, king of kings: \\\ Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!" \\\ Nothing beside remains. Round the decay \\\ Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare \\\ The lone and level sands stretch far away.</comment>


Facebook had 467 billion page views for June, not 1 trillion - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/facebook-had-467-billion-page-views-for-june-not-1-trillion/56377

<comment><USER2> The argument seems to be "someone else said otherwise, using different data, therefore they're correct." Or did I miss something?</comment>


A dim star passed through the Oort Cloud 70,000 years ago - <AUTHOR> http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-02/uor-acc021615.php

<comment><USER2> The interesting thing is, about 75 thousand years ago is humans were almost wiped out complete when the Toba supereruption happened in Sumatra.

<comment><USER3> Heck from where you got this information? specially about the Sumatra

<comment><USER2> See Wikipedia.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Now we need a science fiction storey about the race that travels by moving their star around - and what they did when they last visited us.</comment>


Show HN: tweet capturer - <AUTHOR> http://www.captweet.com I was just playing with phantomjs/casper.js.<p>example: http://www.captweet.com/paulg/304347618585235456 <comment><USER2> i'm not going to try it when i don't know what it does. 'capture tweets' doesn't tell me enough to entice me experiment with an app that suggests what I do might end up on twitter.

<comment><AUTHOR> that's what it does: <http://www.captweet.com/paulg/304347618585235456></comment></comment>


Is IBM Watson a 'Joke'? - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonbloomberg/2017/07/02/is-ibm-watson-a-joke/#7ca7f573da20 <comment><USER2> "Watson" is not a thing, it's a brand.

IBM have built several, individually successful pieces of technology, all branded as "Watson", and used the impression that they are a single entity to market it as far smarter than it actually is.

Under the hood "Watson" technologies seem to fall into 3 categories:

\- The very successful publicity stunt on Jeopardy. The technology here was good, although from what I understood from tech talks given by IBM, it was a bit more brute force than you might think.

\- Custom built software, often for medical and legal purposes, that is effective, if limited in scope, and comes with a hefty consulting and support contract. You're essentially buying a data science team at IBM.

\- Productised machine learning APIs, that aren't particularly great, and are very isolated in their abilities.

(1) is fun but not useful to anyone really, (2) is useful, but expensive and no better than what you'd get from most other consultancies, or might be worse knowing IBM's consulting practices, and (3) is too limited to build the core of a business on, so will likely only ever be used to provide a step up until companies move technologies in house.

<comment><USER3> How does 3 compare to something like sklearn and pandas?

I'm having a really hard time figuring out what Watson is.

<comment><USER4> > I'm having a really hard time figuring out what Watson is.

That is consistent with danpalmer's suggestion that it is a marketing construct.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Having worked on a project that tried to implement "Watson" in one of our use cases, I can say with some certainty that it is worse than a joke.

>"If you call IBM Watson a joke you call the hundreds of companies and startups that have built on it a joke."

This quote would be damnation by faint praise if it were not meant in earnest.

<comment><USER6> Can you give some more insight of the project? What problem was trying to solve and why was Watson chosen?

I am curious, because I got approached by a company to work on a project and when I went to do my evaluation I met the Watson team on site. They looked a bit arrogant and didn't want to answer to any of my questions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> In all this analysis we seem to be glossing over the fact that what IBM is selling in their Watson platform is not what played Jeopardy. The original point of criticism is that "Watson" in its current offering is little more than marketing hyped technology that is quickly becoming a widely available commodity. That criticism stands true and this article seems to agree that Watson _is_ a joke.

</comment><comment><USER8> "As the M.D. Anderson fiasco illustrates, IBM fell into the trap of over- promising and under-delivering. "IBM claimed in 2013 that 'a new era of computing has emerged' and gave Forbes the impression that Watson 'now tackles clinical trials' and would be in use with patients in just a matter of months," Freedman noted.

As to whether Watson will ever be useful in clinical situations? "This is hard," opined Stephen Kraus, a partner at Bessemer Venture Partners. "It's not happening today, and it might not be happening in five years. And it's not going to replace doctors."

And that's the crux of the problem with Watson. IBM routinely promises that 'cognitive computing' (CC) can solve literally any data-based or science problem in your business' enterprise. But once you look closer at their methods, you find nothing special; CC is the same old bag of data mining tricks everyone has been using for decades. IBM's real problem: Watson brings nothing new to the table.

At the Fortune 100 big pharma where I work we've gone through several rounds of evaluating IBM Watson's box of tricks for the value it might add to drug discovery in the chemical or clinical spaces. And each time we've taken a pass. IBM just hasn't shown that it has a track record of material successes in cutting edge AI, beyond what's available most anywhere.

In particular, the plate tectonics of AI shifted with the advent of deep learning, which came along _after_ IBM Watson won Jeopardy, and which still seems absent from their AI repertoire. Until CC demonstrates "competitive competency" in cutting edge AI and not more marketing jabber, I expect IBM Watson will continue to underwhelm.

</comment><comment><USER9> I think that, slowly but surely, companies are realizing that IBM's technology is no better than freely (or much cheaper) available alternatives, no matter how many enterprise-y buzzwords they wrap it up in.

<comment><USER10> this haven't stopped then from buying palantir services either.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Chamath Palihapitiya is doing nothing for the perception of VC's as a bunch of arrogant loud mouths.

Arrogant because they confuse past success with actual skill and loud mouths because they spend so much time pumping their copy cat investments to get people to focus on their "me too" efforts rather than their competitors' "me too" efforts.

</comment><comment><USER12> AI as a service is not scalable enough as it takes people being experts across AI and application domain. AI as a product is probably too challenging to get right but it is tempting to use as a sales tool. Utter these initials and you got a conversation going. Mission accomplished. Cost externalized: Company reputation.</comment>


A good example of why nice error pages matter - <AUTHOR> http://blog.browsermob.com/2009/12/cyber-monday-final-results-amazon-the-big-winner-borders-and-kohls-stumble/

<comment><USER2> Upvoted because I think this is a good point, but the statement "nice error pages matter" isn't backed up with any evidence. I would have loved it if there had been statistics showing how people reacted to different error messages, even though I know that kind of information might be difficult to gather.

<comment><USER3> I would be interested in this as well - but IMHO the effort involved in putting up something other than plaintext error (like Borders) is so trivial that it's practically a crime to not do it.

I think it's hard to argue that there isn't _some_ gain to be had with a proper error page - and implementation is just so darned simple.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed. I'd also argue that the "cuteness" of such an error page actually can have a major impact on how much the visitor will forgive you. Twitter's Fail Whale is the perfect example :)

<comment><USER3> _Anything_ is better than Borders' page (except possibly a blank one)... even a rather cold, drab, boring error page that at least describes the error (we are over capacity, sod off) would serve better. I don't think we really need to do any extensive focus group testing to agree on this much...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Amazon has repeatedly said that page load times matter. They decreased them once by 0.1s, and revenue dropped 1%. Google is also fanatical about speed (ever noticed how much GMail caches things?). Linus Torvalds said that because Git is so fast at what it does, it changes the way you use SCM.

Interaction times are CRUCIAL.

</comment><comment><USER5> This is a great idea for marketing:

Provide a walk-through of your product on an example client showing how it can be useful.

</comment><comment><USER6> A classic good error page (a 404)

<http://homestarrunner.com/foobar>

<comment><USER7> I just get the message that I haven't install a flash plugin....</comment></comment>


Garry Kasparov: The Last Revolutionary Technology Was The Apple II - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.forbes.com/oliverchiang/2010/11/02/garry-kasparov-the-last-revolutionary-technology-was-the-apple-ii/ <comment><USER2> It's rare I want to call someone with conservative technological estimates unrealistic. Usually I see the opposite. But I don't think Kasparov is on the mark here.

The cellphone was invented after that and has forever changed the way we reach people and _fundamentally_ how they are reachable.

Do you remember life pre-cellphones? When you left your house you literally dropped off the map. There was no way of anyone knowing where you were or where you were going. Unless you let them know beforehand, there was no way for people to catch-up with you when you got there. All sorts of tiny events required massive planning.

Now when you leave the house, should you so please (and the vast majority do) you can be reached. Climbing a mountain? In another country? Nobody knows this? They can still contact you! You can be at a place you've never been before and your friend can contact you and meet you there!

I actually think this disrupts my zen a little bit; I'd rather not be reachable at all times. I rarely pick up my phone - _maybe_ for my father, my brother, or my girlfriend. Everyone else can leave a message.

<comment><USER3> Ubiquitous cell phones are definitely a revolutionary development. This becomes obvious when you read or watch fiction of any sort. How many story lines would be completely disrupted by the presence of a cell phone? As it turns out, a great many, even for stories being written today, as many writers haven't fully absorbed the way things have changed.

<comment><USER4> Haha yes, even Star Trek, they can travel at warp speed but the away team can't send an MMS back to the ship, the captain has to beam down personally and see for himself...

<comment><USER3> This is even sillier in the case of Star Trek since they could use even a Polaroid or film camera and beam the film/photos back up to the ship (or, of course, a data crystal or what-have-you).

<comment><USER4> Beaming Polaroids back to the ship would be _amazing!_

<comment><USER5> That's silly. Everybody knows the transporter messes up Polaroid film.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Kasparov complains that there aren't enough revolutionary technologies that push the world forward, as opposed to incremental improvements driven by wanting to please consumers. And then he says the last genuine technological revolution was ... the Apple II? Huh?

The Apple II was a fine product. But it was an incremental advance on its predecessors like the Commodore PET and, er, the Apple I (whose existence Kasparov might perhaps have been able to guess from the Apple II's name).

And: Mobile phones (as already pointed out by _simonsarris_ ). GPS. Affordable laser printers. The internet. Functional magnetic resonance imaging. Compact discs. Digital cameras. Etc., etc., etc. There's no shortage of things at least as revolutionary as the Apple II since 1977. (Some of them are based on fundamental developments a few years earlier, but none of them as much so as the Apple II.)

<comment><USER7> The internet is older than the Apple II. Apart from GPS and FMRI, i dont agree that the other consumer-products are revolutionary at all. CDs are notoriously unreliable data storage mechanism which are already obselete; laser printers haven't done much other than enable people to waste more paper ; digital cameras are just dense CCDs, nothing great or new about that.

<comment><USER6> Are you serious?

> The internet is older than the Apple II.

Depends on what you mean by "the internet". The core protocols are older than the Apple II, but e.g. the linkup between ARPANET and NSFNet wasn't until the 1980s.

> CDs are notoriously unreliable data storage mechanism which are already > obsolete

CDs were revolutionary because they were the first widely used digital music format. And they may be "notoriously unreliable", but my CDs are holding up better in terms of sound quality than a similarly-aged collection of LPs would without heroic measures. Sure, they're certainly obsolescent now, if not actually obsolete, but so is the Apple II.

> laser printers haven't done much other than enable people to waste more > paper

Laser printers made it possible for anyone to produce near-publishable-quality documents. This is a Big Deal, even if for whatever reason you don't like it.

> digital cameras are just dense CCDs, nothing great or new about that.

And the Apple II was just a slightly better personal computer. Digital cameras have made traditional film cameras obsolete. They have completely changed the way in which people take pictures by drastically shortening the feedback loop from initial capture to inspection, and by making it essentially free to take large numbers of pictures. They have greatly increased the role of photography in most people's lives. (Still more as they have become commonly integrated into mobile phones.)

Now, if you wish to define "revolutionary" very strictly, then of course you can say that none of these things is really revolutionary -- but then the Apple II will come out also not being revolutionary. Kasparov is wrong either way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The next revolution is happening right now- it's consumer level 3d printers (cupcake, reprap etc) and they're going to change everything, more than computers and cell phones combined did.

<comment><USER9> The 3-D printing industry now, looks a lot like the computer industry around 1976, doesn't it? We have the equivalents of big expensive mainframes, as well as cheaper, but still pretty pricey, minicomputers. Cupcake & RepRap strike me as being analogous to something like the Altair 8800 or the Aim-65: fun for seriously geeky hobbyists, but not really ready for prime time.

So the 3-D printing industry doesn't have its Apple ][ / Pet / TRS-80 yet. In the computer industry, back in '76, those were only a year away. And then in 5 years there was the IBM PC, in 6 years the Commodore 64, and in 8 years the Macintosh, and suddenly these little machines were everywhere.

Is 3-D printing going to advance that quickly? I doubt it. The technical challenges, and especially the price issues, look pretty tricky. I do think we'll get there before too long, though. It should be interesting to watch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> We went from basic monochrome computers that could barely hold the text of a single book in memory to having instantaneous access to the sum of human knowledge from a device that fits in your pocket.

Perhaps my definition of revolutionary is different than his.

<comment><USER5> The Apple ][ had color, you insensitive clod.

<comment><USER10> Oh sorry, before my time. The general thrust of my point stands. You could always look back at the first breakthrough and call it revolutionary and every subsequent innovation derivative. Even when the "breakthrough" device was mostly useless in comparison. Evaluating innovation in this manner will always make the large advances appear to be in the past.

Good current example would be sequencing the human genome. As of right now its mostly useless, but 30 years from now it may be seen as that revolutionary spark. Then some other critic will talk about how nothing big has happened since.

<comment><USER5> Sorry for the "insensitive clod". It's a slashdottism that's hard to leave behind.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This clearly shows that being very wise and being very intelligent are not the same thing.

<comment><USER12> I'm not sure that being the best chess player in the world is evidence that Kasparov is _very_ intelligent--any more than being the best poker player, the best piano player, or even the best marketer. Chess is a learned skill just like any of those.

Put another way, looking at all of the world's very most intelligent people, the fraction that care enough about chess to become the world champion if they had the aptitude is very slim.

<comment><USER13> Point of fact: chess is learned but only to a point, probably around 2100-2150 ELO. That is the limit of what most people can accomplish with a lot of study and hard work.

Pushing beyond that and into the Super to Elite Grandmaster range (2550-2800) requires extraordinary levels of memory, concentration, calculation and pattern matching. Levels that can't be instilled in someone through any amount of training. A person either possesses them or (s)he doesn't.

I lack the evidence at hand, but I'm certain I've seen it before that aptitude in those areas correlates strongly to high intelligence.

<comment><USER14> I think Kasparov disagrees with you via "...working hard is also part of an individual's talent"

though to be fair he follows with

"I think working hard is sometimes just as important to having a talent."

<http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=6069>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The only industry left that might fit Mr. Kasparov's prescription is the aerospace industry. There are still cowboys with calculators if not slide- rules and things moving from cad space to real space that are more than revolutionary and a damn site more than an incremental improvement...

<comment><USER9> Your comment is interesting, in that I don't see how it can possibly be true. From my POV, aerospace is the quintessential example of an industry that showed great promise and was revolutionizing our world, and then ... just stopped. The planes I fly on today are basically indistinguishable from the ones my father flew on back in the 1960s -- except for the TVs, but that's not really aerospace. Meanwhile, no one has been beyond LEO since 1972. NASA has produced lots of nifty unmanned spacecraft with cameras, true, but the only thing they've done recently that I would call _revolutionary_ is the Mars rovers, but that's more robotics than aerospace.

So, could you explain? (Or were you perhaps being sarcastic, and I missed it?)

<comment><USER16> In a way you are both right. There are currently two aspects of the American space industry.

One, the moribund aerospace giants that are largely just making the same old rockets, entrenched in their job creation programs.

And two, the new space companies, which are making suborbital rocketplanes and cheap boosters. At present, they may not look impressive because of small steps they are taking, but you just have to look at Scaled's Space Ship Two to realize that radical innovation in their design is not dead.

This has been a long time coming, and there has been a dark age in aerospace.

If you are interested, in my view the seminal event in the new space industry was the Delta Clipper Program (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_DC-X>).

And now there are some really impressive companies trying to make space truly viable for everyone. Some of those companies are.

XCOR Aerospace: <http://xcor.com/> Scaled Composites: <http://scaled.com/> Masten: <http://masten-space.com/> Armadillo: <http://armadilloaerospace.com/n.x/Armadillo/Home>

Aside from aerospace. While I agree that there have been game changers like the cell phone, I do agree with Kasparov that there is an atmosphere of risk aversion. For instance I don't see any daring research programs like when DARPA funded Engelbart's augment research that led to Human User Interface objects like the mouse. And that disturbs me. Often visionaries look very crazy or at best very hard to understand because they are operating out of the scope of our context. I don't see people having the patience for these visionaries. And the people who do claim to be visionaries seem to have very conservative imaginations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Some very smart people here have mentioned mobile phones. Some other smart people have made the point that the original mobile phones predate the Apple II. Indeed, car phones go back way far in history but have more in common (historically) with radios.

There are three revolutionary things about mobile phones that came after the Apple II:

SMS (1984/5)

GPRS (1997)

The ubiquity of mobile phones (late 90s to mid 2000s) with data services.

The technology itself is rarely revolutionary (although developers of HIV treatment drugs may disagree - this also came after the Apple II). The thing that makes it revolutionary is what happens when it reaches ubiquity. Mobile phones with data used to be amazing things. I still remember using a Nokia Communicator for the first time, over an incredible 9.6k link from almost anywhere with GSM coverage. These days your average person in the street probably couldn't tell you whether they were on GSM, HSPDA or Wifi (my wife certainly can't, other than sometimes her phone goes 'slow'). That's what's revolutionary about mobile phones, that they're no longer magical and part of everyone's day.

</comment><comment><USER18> Well said! I agree with all of it. I'd only add that the U.S. isn't the only country that can innovate, and that innovation needs purpose beyond energy production. I feel that purpose should be:

\- Colonizing space.

\- Making better use of our land for sustainable agriculture to feed the hungry and the children of our future.

<comment><USER19> While I understand dream aspect of it, in practical terms, why and how would you colonize space?

<comment><USER20> The how is of course the tricky part, but as to the why - well, to quote George Mallory,

        "Because it's there"

That's good enough for me, but there are plenty of other reasons why. Species survival would be one of them.

There are plenty of possibilities for extinction events right here. Super- volcano eruptions, radical climate change, polar shifting, airborne super-bugs (hello zombie apocalypse!), nuclear mayhem, etc.

Our local environment also has plenty of hazards. Asteroid impact, engulfment in a large solar flare, orbital shifts are the ones that spring to mind.

Our little niche in the galaxy might also have to deal with wandering black holes, gamma-ray bursts from a supernova that is just near enough, the long- term problem of the collision with Andromeda, etc. We won't overcome any of those by colonizing Mars, but still some things to keep in mind.

On a more practical note, extreme endeavors like colonizing space require some radical thinking (and re-thinking of existing concepts). Colonizing means establishing a foothold outside Earth that is self-sustaining (i.e. can do without a lifeline to Earth). We can't actually do that right now. If we set that as a goal we're going to come up with some very interesting stuff, a lot of which is bound to be useful down here.

Life expands or dies, that's the way it works over here. What the universe really seems to abhor (apart from vacuum), is an equilibrium.

<comment><USER21> Earth serves as an effective spacecraft, we're just running low on supplies and making a mess of it; the economically and ecologically optimal move is migrate mining and industry to heaven.

<comment><USER5> Still, if we can get a couple more spacecrafts, the chance of everyon dying gets much smaller.

Not only that, but the skills and knowledge we gain with it make us even harder to kill. One of these days we may even surpass cockroaches.

<comment><USER21> Human migration hinges on sustainable interplanetary resource acquisition and processing; infrasttucture seems the priority first.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'm not sure that Kasparov (or anybody) has a right to criticize the rate of progress for the last few decades or centuries. Since the Renaissance, human progress has grown leaps and bounds at such an astonishing rate, compared with before, that we may have outpaced the ability for the human animal to adapt without negative repercussions. (Some might argue that this already happened all the way back to agriculture.)

Even if things have slowed down for the last few years, so what? Humanity may naturally have occasional refractory periods to catch its collective breath. Complaints like this make me think that such people regard light speed as too slow and try to push humanity to "ludicrous speed," right past "ridiculous speed."

<comment><USER23> We already have huge negative repercussions. Climate change, mass extinction, overpopulation thanks to industrial agriculture.

Now it might be more dangerous if tech slowed down, because we need new tech to fix disasters caused by the old.

In some industries, like energy, automotive, people have been catching their collective breath for decades and now we're in trouble.

<comment><USER24> IMHO, that's exactly the thinking that got us into trouble in the first place: that we have the capability to change nature, however we want, and yet we can't even predict earthquakes or give accurate weather forecasts.

Heck, we even have problems estimating the ecological footprint of anything.

E.g. that proof of concept electrical car that's extra efficient might require some rare metals to produce, and the manufacturing itself could have a bigger impact on nature than its usage. Only in the US there are tens of millions of drivers that will wait in line to buy such a car. And that electricity has to come from somewhere, like a nuclear power plant (which according to many, is less destructive to nature as wind or solar power).

This is a social problem that cannot be solved by technology. If you want to change the world, find a way to make people consume less.

<comment><USER25> Consuming less (I mean at the consumer level, not raw resources) is hardly a way to promote the progress of our civilization. Finding a way to _sustainably_ consume ever more will yield much greater outcomes in technology and happiness.

<comment><USER24> When the consumption rate is increasing exponentially, I don't know how you can even imagine that we'll ever be able to _sustainably consume_ more.

Unless you're talking about StarTrek where food can materialize at the push of a button, or after a "warp maximum; engage" they can arrive at an inhabitable planet in one minute.

In the meantime, this planet doesn't grow any larger and its resources are limited.

<comment><USER25> I'll provide an example of what I'm thinking, as it may be that we disagree less than it appears.

I believe that one of our goals as a species should be ubiquitous travel, so that any person can afford to travel anywhere within a reasonable amount of time. The current approach of burning highly refined fossil fuels to power airplanes is obviously unsustainable, but that doesn't mean we stop flying. What we should be doing (and this is a very long-term view) is developing alternative energy storage mechanisms dense enough to power airplanes. One approach that seems reasonable to me is using nuclear power to store energy as biofuel, then switching to solar/wind/hydro power once it is possible to do so. Hypothetically we could design fuels and engines that result in zero harmful waste entering the atmosphere, and direct any byproducts from combustion into the next batch of fuel.

I will concede that Star Trek's unlimited energy universe is a bit like playing Sim City with the money cheat, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I recall some Google engineers complaining that brute force was so much more effective than their cleverest algorithms. Work data not smarter.

</comment><comment><USER27> Though I agree with some of the above comments that the technological innovations since 1977 haven't been altogether uninspiring, I do wonder: Who right now is funding innovation that doesn't directly have a business model tied to it? i.e., innovation for the sake of innovation, without the startup pitch, killer ceo, etc - the scientist pushing the limits for the sake of science?

Is NASA a place where this happens? And is it frivolous to suggest that this kind of innovation without an obvious money-making scheme is important?

<comment><USER28> It's not frivolous because fundamental research often leads to unexpected commercial benefits. One example - Japanese physicists doing research into quantum tunneling led to the shrinking of satellite dish antennas from 2m to about 30cm.

On some levels I think Kasparov is right. You could fly from London to New York faster in 1977 (on the Concord) than you can today.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> As industries grow too large sweeping changes become more difficult. There are too many dependencies in the current tech stack for computers. Processor architectures, people used to certain UIs, lots of jobs dependent on the status quo. Society may have caught up with the possibilities of yesterday's computers, jumping on social networks, ubiquity of devices, but the tech stack itself is stuck.

The most recent opportunity to move it forward are mobile devices. Companies are finally rethinking the OS (iOS, ChromeOS), compilers (LLVM), processor architectures (ARM, integrated graphics).

Kasparov probably thinks such steps should not be driven by market forces alone, but by technologists interested in experimentation. The right market conditions came about after decades of the same old more MHz, more HD space rat race. The market is not fast enough, it has other priorities, like getting the products to everybody.

Our biggest technological leaps came about when people with vision got others to invest big. The Industrial Revolution in 1800s, World Wars, Manhattan Project, Space race, PCs, GUIs, .COM bubble, GPS, CERN, LHC etc.. were all obnoxiously big gambles. These have become less popular, people prefer mindless market driven evolutionary change instead of vision.

</comment><comment><USER29> Maybe I missed something here, but...when did Gary Kasparov suddenly become qualified to comment on technological and computing progress? No mention of the internet, for instance, which kind of tends to undermine the ability to take his comments seriously. For that matter, what makes the Apple II so revolutionary compared to it's predecessors and successors? No mention of that.

<comment><USER30> umm, I dunno, maybe since the time he beat friggin supercomputer at chess?

<comment><USER29> He beat it by being a better chess player. When he can explain how the supercomputer works and talk knowledgeably about the algorithms underlying the game software and it's design, _then_ he would be an expert on technology.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I think that it is wrong to say we aren't trying to innovate. I rather think we are at a point where incremental improvements are yielding better results in shorter time than revolutionary changes.

Examples: How many revolutionary replacements for DRAM have been proposed since the 1103 was introduced? Yet what do we use today? DRAM, because it could incrementally improve to be better and/or cheaper before competing technologies could be introduced

How many revolutionary replacements for the ICE have been proposed? Various jet engines have largely replaced it for aircraft, but the ICE is used just about everywhere else.

How about von neumann computers? There have been many other architectures proposed, but for general purpose computing it still wins out.

The fact that I am writing on this with something that is merely the sum of many incremental improvements to the Apple II just demonstrates the huge amount of untapped potential in the design when it was introduced, not that innovation has stopped.

</comment><comment><USER32> Apart from the internet itself I think digital content distribution is revolutionary, it certainly has drastically changes the way we acquire games, books, music, movies etc.

<comment><USER21> But has it drastically changed the games, books, music, and movies?

<comment><USER32> It's changed the content that an average person has access to without replying on what as being distributed locally. It has allowed those that would have never been able to get wider distribution of their content, those producing niche material to access a big enough market to make their projects viable.

So it may not have changed the content on the whole but it has certainly changed the content that most people are actually able to experience.

<comment><USER21> Ability to experience mayn't align with actual experience; while radio could've increased music diversity, it's effect seemed ultimately homogenizing, and the same may be true of online content.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Maybe Garry's limiting his discussion to computer-y tech, but for me, I think biologics-as-drugs is pretty damn revolutionary. Having an number of antibodies that can stop rheumatoid arthritis in its tracks is pretty amazing in my book.

Tech? Portable music/video players have totally changed how I travel, flash memory makes those little plastic thingies from Star Trek work and room-temp color sensors (digital cameras, etc) are pretty amazing.

Then, there's gene sequencing... PCR, ...

</comment><comment><USER12> I still think Google Maps is pretty cool.

<comment><USER21> As cool as pornography relative to sex.

<comment><USER6> Could you explain your analogy in a bit more detail? Google Maps is like pornography, and ... what ... is like sex? Physical paper maps? (I'm not seeing the big difference compared with electronic ones.) The actual full-size terrain itself? (OK, sure, but that's a bit tricky to carry around with you and use for route planning.)

<comment><USER21> The ecstasy of Earth from heaven; yes, impractical for terrestrial route planning.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> nice article! For those trying to do research, for research's sake... how many path-breaking PhD's in Computer Science has US produced? (For that matter, any country in the world-but let's stick with US) I feel that the entire culture has been skewed towards incremental improvements. I bet, 90% of papers churned out, would be having conclusions something like.. "improved the performance of X by y% under the conditions L,M,N" where (L,M,N) might be near-impossible to occur simultaneously in real life. You cant disregard/dismiss Gary's points- sure,Apple II might not have been the last technological innovation, but overall- he has raised a valid point.

</comment><comment><USER35> Rubbish. Everyone knows the last revolutionary technology was the MITS Altair 8800.

</comment><comment><USER36> A number of people has been saying that the US has not been leading technologically. So if not the US, which country is doing better technologically?

Japan? Even if it's Japan, its economy isn't doing that well either.

<comment><USER37> Innovation may be down in the USA, but it's definitely better than in other places. The potential is there - the same cannot be said for anywhere else in the world.

Europeans take their ideas to the U.S. because in Europe there's no money for innovations. There's no infrastructure for it. China is trying the wrong approach and producing nothing. Japan has incremental improvements ingrained in its culture.

However I think he's right about the stimulus and money. The big government approach doesn't produce anything innovative either. We're building roads in the USA - that's good, but... not gonna change the world now is it? Printing money is currently undermining the USA - it's surprising inflation isn't much worse than it is but at some point something will have to give. It reminds me a bit of the housing bubble - for years house prices were going up, way into silly territory, and beyond. But eventually, the market corrected itself. Now, we're printing US$ Tns every year and there seem to be no negative effects - but that, also, is going to eventually hit home. It's going to make America a country of cheap labor. Inflation will catch up.

<comment><USER4> A government will spent a trillion dollars on "innovation" before even contemplating relaxing a law that's stifling it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> "In the private sector, the energy industry collectively invested 0.3% of sales in R&D."

Does anyone know what that would be as a percentage of profits?

</comment><comment><USER39> What about a computer that is capable for beating a Chess Grandmaster? I think that's revolutionary.

</comment><comment><USER40> I think Deep Blue was pretty revolutionary, but I can see why he might not want to admit that...

</comment><comment><USER26> Work in constructed bacteria is revolutionary.</comment>


KintoHub and Product Hunt - <AUTHOR> https://www.producthunt.com/posts/kintohub-2 <comment><AUTHOR> Excited to say that Kintohub has launched on Product Hunt today!

We make it easy for you to build, test and deploy microservices and cloud- ready features without having to code every service.

Looking forward to hearing what you think!</comment>


Ask HN: Please review my startup - <AUTHOR> http://www.devicemagic.com

<comment><USER2> I think this is a good idea, but it's not obvious to me how and why I should be using it. A few case studies and examples would be excellent to show customers how valuable this service could be to them.

If you don't have any real customers using this yet, I would suggest making up some prototypes and get a real customers using it.

<comment><AUTHOR> We do have some interesting customers paying; so your point is well taken. We need to write these up and make the successes more accessible.

Thanks for your feedback.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> So it's like Wufoo for mobile phones?

The landing page is too generic, you should add examples of how to use this.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes exactly, we like to say "SurveyMonkey for Mobile", but perhaps yours is better.

When you say examples, do you mean more smartphone platforms? More screenshots? A video demo?

Thanks!

<comment><USER3> No, what I would actually use this for... ie. a usecase. What kind of survey? Why would I want to run a survey on mobile? Why wouldn't I use surveymonkey?</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Help remembering a site posted on HN? - <AUTHOR> Few months back, there was a post about this particular site/app. We could store notes about people we met, for future interactions; store birthdays & reminders, etc.<p>Does anyone remember what it was? Tried search with few keywords, but to no avail. <comment><USER2> google crm site:ycombinator.com

top result is

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14497295](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14497295)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! That's the one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> If you figure out the exact app please do share.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks to @steanne, here's the link [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14497295](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14497295)</comment></comment>


WHMCS Hacked - <AUTHOR> http://forum.whmcs.com/showthread.php?t=47644

<comment> rudhir-secpanel They claim it was a social engineering attack. Their entire database has been compromised and put on pastebin.

This is just months after the Local file disclosure vulnerability and the remote code injection vulnerability.

Looks like their twitter account has been compromised too. Tweet - "We laugh at your security. #UGNazi"

</comment><comment><USER2> And their twitter account confirms the potential risk: <https://twitter.com/#!/whmcs></comment>


A Netflix Web Performance Case Study - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/dev-channel/a-netflix-web-performance-case-study-c0bcde26a9d9 <comment><AUTHOR> A case study of how Netflix improved the Loading and Time-to-Interactive metrics for the "logged-out" homepage. Basically, it comes down to removing React and using Prefetch.</comment>


How China Is Building a Startup Boom - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/04/business/international/venture-communism-how-china-is-building-a-start-up-boom.html <comment><USER2> If you missed it, Paul Graham tweeted about this earlier today:

"A lot of these tactics are mistaken, but they show China cares about startups in a way the US does not."[0]

"China is doing to the US what the US did to Britain in the 19th century: growing their economy while we waste money on our empire."[1]

[0] [https://twitter.com/paulg/status/772343525199474688](https://twitter.com/paulg/status/772343525199474688) [1] [https://twitter.com/paulg/status/772344187995947008](https://twitter.com/paulg/status/772344187995947008)

<comment><USER3> That second tweet is pure gold.

Buut... It's just so difficult. Isn't it? The lure of that grand empire that we had. :/

<comment><USER4> Ironically it seems that China is trying to do a little empire-building of its own.

They're still a long-ways away from playing globo-cop, but all that island- building in the South China Sea is pretty telling. They're also doing a lot of infrastructure investment in Africa.

<comment><USER5> Why are Software Development world has such a naive world view? Why are we not a bit more enlightened about Nation-States and nature of power? I really do not know. As a person who enjoys Geopolitical articles and newsletters, I find HN discussions on Geopolitics range from naive to nauseating.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Yesterday I was wondering if is there anything left of communism in China or it's only a word in the name of their only party, left there for historical reasons. State subsidies don't matter because every capitalistic country has them.

China seems to execute their growth strategy pretty well, with some occasional slowdowns. This is another instance of that strategy, but any other country could do the same. Maybe having only one party helps, but in many other cases those parties seem to care only about keeping their power. China's party has that too, still they are forward looking.

<comment><USER7> The CPC would deem their current position as on the road to Communism, with Communism as the goal.

"The official explanation for China's economic reforms is that the country is in the primary stage of socialism, a developmental stage similar to the capitalist mode of production. The planned economy established under Mao Zedong was replaced by the socialist market economy, the current economic system, on the basis that "Practice is the Sole Criterion for the Truth" (i.e. the planned economy was deemed inefficient)." \- [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Party_of_China](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Party_of_China)

<comment><USER8> > was replaced by the socialist market economy, the current economic system

You're implying that current Chinese economic system is a 'socialist market economy'?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> all propaganda, much like any dictator run projects. if you go to any of them, you'll see run down buildings with barely any startup activities. just street hawkers selling stuff in the front.

this is like the talking points about 7% gdp growth (fake number if you look at how poorly electricity,freight,luxury sales,real estates,stock market are doing), one silk road (no progress), increased trade with Russia (no progress), asian bank (now that they've militarily threatened their neighbors for SCS, pretty sure none of them are up for it)

<comment><USER10> have you actually went and send these alleged run down buildings? no clue where you were looking, but your comment is not true.</comment></comment>


Sunshine: 24-hour weather forecasts generated using your iPhone sensors - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2015/10/07/sunshine-a-crowd-sourced-weather-app-goes-live/#.067qhe:lHVC <comment><USER2> I'm a huge fan of Sunshine. Been using it since launch. Much more accurate than standard out-of-the-box weather apps.... esp in SF.</comment>


iFixit Pixel 3a XL teardown [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anoFNPXo2yA <comment><USER2> Here is the relevant article for those who prefer HTML over video: [https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Google+Pixel+3a+Teardown/123...](https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Google+Pixel+3a+Teardown/123256)

<comment><USER3> awesome!

Now can we replace the video link with the actual article?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The current iPhone 8 is at $599 / $699, assuming Apple drop its price by $100 this year to $499 / $599, replacing the iPhone 7 $449 / $569 ( While lifting the entry level price yet again by $50 ). How well would this compete with Pixel 3a? I believe A11 Single Core will still be faster than the flagship current Qualcomm SoC. But its Camera and Design are quite dated.

>The Pixel 3a packs a slower processor and plastic construction, among other changes, to bring the price down a ton.

I don't believe Metal casing makes much difference in BOM Cost. The processor is at best, $50 Dollar different? POCOPHONE F1 can be had for under $400 ( £ 329 in UK inc VAT ) with a more powerful SoC. So I assume Google is still making some decent margin at this price.

It is no wonder people are questioning Apple's pricing. The price Gap has never been this wide. I hope Google does well with its 3A.

<comment><USER5> Very good point. It really makes you wonder: if Google can make a profit on such an overall-good phone at $400 (I have to assume that they aren't just taking a huge loss on every phone, though I suppose that could be a strategy to garner marketshare), and Apple has even shown that they historically can make a profit at $350 with the iPhone SE... what on earth is in the X/XS to justify the $1k price? Stainless steel? Maybe, but even the 4/4S had that. OLED? On the 3a, at a similar (though admittedly slightly lower) quality level. NVMe storage? On most phones these days. Haptic engine? A similar quality one is in the 3a.

The XS might be excused for being a luxury model. But the 3a _really_ makes you wonder about the XR, which is smaller, made of aluminum, uses an ancient LCD screen (same quality as iphones since the 5 with incremental improvements -- that must be a bargain compared to the XS's OLED), and even has a worse camera than the 3a. In fact the 3a even has a larger, nicer screen. Where on earth are those margins going?

<comment><USER6> " if Google can make a profit on such an overall-good phone at $400"

Are we sure they're making much of a profit from sale of the phone? Google literally pays Apple billions to be the default search engine on the iPhone. If they can chip away at Apple's market share, every user they can convert to Android will save them money and thus generate profit but indirectly. If your goal is to simply convert an Apple user to an Android user you can price the phone very competitively or even afford to take a loss.

<comment><USER7> > Are we sure they're making much of a profit from sale of the phone?

Yes, I think we can be pretty sure. Like Apple, Google will drop the price of the phone over time. And other manufacturers who must make a profit to survive (like Nokia) sell similarly speced phones for less.

You are paying a premium for Google phone, a premium Google pockets. They are justifying that premium by ensuring some of their software is only available on the Pixel. The outstanding low light performance of the Pixel camera is all done in software, as in the speedy voice recognition (they run the neural network locally on Pixel's because Google has the best neural network compression).

I think it's safe to say Google is leading software engineering company on the planet now, and here are leveraging that to charge a little more for their phones. As they should. Good luck to them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The 3a and 3a XL seem like sensible designs, the only disappointment here being how deeply the battery is buried.

This feels like a very dumb question, but are the current Google phones any less usable than other Androids for people who are keen to avoid going all in on Google services?

I have an Android phone and use the Play store with it, but I don't use Gmail, I don't store my contacts in my Google account, I have Assistant disabled, and I generally use an OSM maps app rather than Google Maps. I appreciate that this makes no meaningful difference to my online footprint, but it pleases me. Is there anything about the Pixel hardware or Android builds that would not sit well with this?

<comment><USER9> The pixel phones (and the nexus phones before them) tend to be a little easier on those who unlock bootloaders and load custom ROMs. I use LineageOS on my Pixel, with OsmAnd maps and no Google services. [https://lineage.microg.org/](https://lineage.microg.org/)

It works quite well! Having not used 'normal' Android (anything that's not Lineage/Cyanogen) for years, I attempted to start out using this phone with the stock Google Android build. I disabled all the bundled crapware (Play Music, Play Movies, Play Games, YouTube) and they all kept re-enabling themselves. If you're looking for a device that will help you avoid Google at least a little bit, look at this page first. [https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/](https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/)

<comment><USER10> How's the camera on Pixels w/ AOSP roms? I haven't installed a custom ROM in years now, and my last experiences were on Samsung where custom ROM means destroying your camera's picture quality.

<comment><USER11> On Pixel and Nexus phones, the Google Camera app works properly if you have either microG or Google Play Services installed. If you're using microG, you'll need to install the Google Camera app manually:

[https://www.apkmirror.com/apk/google- inc/camera/](https://www.apkmirror.com/apk/google-inc/camera/)

The camera quality and features are the same as in the stock ROM.

Google Camera is proprietary, but you can disable its internet access through the app settings (in LineageOS) or a firewall like AFWall+:

[https://github.com/ukanth/afwall/](https://github.com/ukanth/afwall/)

If you're using another camera app, then you'll lose Google Camera's optimized features. This may still be worth it if you prefer to use FOSS software.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's surprising they have both the "Titan M" security chip and a ST33J2M0 security microcontroller.

You would think just one would do for key storage. Skimming the hardware backed keystore overview, it only mentions one secure coprocessor: [https://source.android.com/security/keystore](https://source.android.com/security/keystore)

<comment><USER13> I was expecting see those chips mentioned in the video, but they didn't. Full tear down has them[1].

[https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Google+Pixel+3a+Teardown/123...](https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Google+Pixel+3a+Teardown/123256#s238163)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I just traded in my 5 year old iPhone 6 for $250 , effectively bringing pixel 3a to ~$175 which is pretty cheap for a new phone for Google.

If Google can break even with cost and this becomes a blockbuster, then this is good for the entire industry

<comment><USER15> I wouldn't even pay 25 dollars for a 5 year old phone. Was the battery replaced on it? Is it even possible to replace it?

Besides software support the battery is the major issue with phone longevity. I installed LineageOS on my Nexus 5X and gave it to my brother who was more than happy to have it. He'll likely enjoy it for 2 more years before the battery issues become too much to bare.

I used the Nexus phones for 5-6 years, 5 and 5x, now I have the Pixel 1 which I purchased for the equivalent of 280 USD in Sweden. New, but no longer in production. Still works like a charm. And when it stops getting security updates I can hopefully reinstall it.

There is no OS to revive old iphones. So I just can't understand how anyone would pay 250 USD for a 5 year old iphone.

<comment><USER14> Exactly, i was like "why would someone want my iPhone 6 for $250?!" . May be they can still use some of the internal parts? or this is a far greater marketing push to convert stubborn iPhone 6 users like me to Android(before they move to latest iPhones?)

<comment><USER16> They probably want to convert iPhone users to Android and are willing to pay for it. Galaxy S7 was released a year and a half after iPhone 6 and only has a trade in value of $75. It looks like market prices are similar for both at around $100 used.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Does this still have the much hyped Intel image coprocessor chip[1]? I wonder if it ever saw any significant use.

[https://www.pocket- lint.com/phones/news/google/143562-what-i...](https://www.pocket- lint.com/phones/news/google/143562-what-is-pixel-visual-core-inside-the-new- co-processor-from-google)

<comment><USER18> No, I believe that it doesn't.

Here's a link to the relevant section of the article: [https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Google+Pixel+3a+Teardown/123...](https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Google+Pixel+3a+Teardown/123256#s238152)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I bought the 3a on friday. Basically got the phone for free when I traded in my s8. Love it so far.

</comment><comment><USER20> Besides a nicer camera and just being newer, would I benefit coming from a 2 XL?

<comment><USER21> Audio jack!</comment></comment>


The New Economics of Saving the World - <AUTHOR> https://ericvanular.com/the-new-economics-of-saving-the-world/ <comment><AUTHOR> We can use the same economic engine which drove us down the hole of a carbon- based society to pull ourselves back out of it. Regardless of how you feel about capitalism, it is a strong machine for getting things done. Let's line up the financial incentives with the well-being of the planet.</comment>


The concept of happiness at work is alien to most American workplaces. - <AUTHOR> http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20080122/cm_csm/ykjerulf;_ylt=AtdOz_34uAtB.dd4L9skV_Ilr7sF

<comment><AUTHOR> That's what keeps sites like this so busy.

<comment><USER2> LOL! Agreed. In fact I was just having a conversation 20 min ago with a colleague about making work fun. I am from cubicle land, and wonder what is with the battleship gray cubicles. Why can't there be more color, more light? A little goes a long way. Just looking at endless cubicles, one after the other makes me depressed.

Even the internal applications that are developed by most orgs are depressing. The focus is on the "business" end, but if you ask me, it takes a little more effort to make any application pleasing to the eyes. I am not asking for a usability team ala Apple to kick in and tell us what makes a nice, easy to use application, just think of how you would respond to it. Most people go home and see sites like Gmail or Yahoo Maps, and wonder, why can't we have apps like these at work?

And don't get me started on the dress code...

<comment><USER3> Conformity is important for company cohesiveness. It's part of the DNA. It's just that most companies have boring DNA. A minority, some companies like startups have a more radical DNA. When a boring company buys a startup-type interesting company, usually the DNA gets a little mixed (maybe color cubes, even).</comment></comment></comment>


Cuomo Orders Emergency Measures to Protect Workers at Nail Salons - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/11/nyregion/cuomo-orders-emergency-measures-to-protect-workers-at-nail-salons.html

<comment> trimble-alum Hygeine businesses (i.e., salons) should be required by statue to publicly furnish state-provided informational pamphlets in a variety of languages that specify how to report human trafficking and wage theft. See also:

[http://www.wgbh.org/articles/Human-Trafficking-Nail- Salons-3...](http://www.wgbh.org/articles/Human-Trafficking-Nail-Salons-313)</comment>


EU government websites have undisclosed adtech trackers from Google and others - <AUTHOR> https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/03/18/cookie_government_tracking_report/ <comment><USER3> I think they should read their own rules and hit themselves with a fine of 10 million or 2% whichever is greater and distribute it among those who were effected.

Edit: or at least consider that their rules are ridiculous.

<comment><USER4> If the EU is sued by itself and needs to pay a fine, does that fine count as income and does that need to be factored into the fine? This might be the first case of an infinite payment.

<comment><USER5> The European Union is not its member states.

Let me put it another way: the European Union is not like the federal government in the US; it's mainly an economic union.

Or another way: European countries are independent, not states in a federation, and the European Union is a separate entity.

<comment><USER6> Or yet another way - even in the US system the federal government can fine the states.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> So... the report says 0 spanish websites were found having trackers. I've tried 3 random links of said websites, all taken from the report [1-3].

Ublock detected and blocked google analytics in all of them ([1] has urchin.js too).

[1] [http://www.lamoncloa.gob.es/Paginas/index.aspx](http://www.lamoncloa.gob.es/Paginas/index.aspx) [2] [https://www.riojasalud.es/ciudadanos/problemas-de- salud/30-e...](https://www.riojasalud.es/ciudadanos/problemas-de- salud/30-enfermedades-de-transmision-sexual) [3] [http://www.juntadeandalucia.es/servicioandaluzdesalud/princi...](http://www.juntadeandalucia.es/servicioandaluzdesalud/principal/noticia.asp?codcontenido=17319)

<comment><USER8> Analytics is not the same as ad tracking

<comment><USER9> What is it that they need to analyze that they can't get from their own servers?

<comment><USER10> This is a good question to which there are a lot of good answers that are often poorly received on HN so you're unlikely to get a solid answer.

I'll take the hit though.

It's not just pageview logs, but GA has great tools to analyze those logs, do reporting on some decent set of actions and to bring it all together in a simple to use interface.

You can take your server logs and then what will a non technical person do with them? Not much.

That said, you can deploy GA while opting out of behavioral data and ad network features, and even fuzz ip addresses.

Analytics has the stigma of ad networks because they historically existed to validate ad spend. We're past that point and they are often used with strict first-party intent.

There's nothing preventing us from imagining all the malicious things any analytics tool could do, and imaginations run wild.

Disclosure: I work for an analytics company that doesn't want to own your data, but I understand why folks have a knee jerk reaction to analytics of any kind.

<comment><USER9> That's actually a much more reasonable answer than the one I had imagined. The unfortunate part is that I don't trust anyone not to misuse the data, especially not government employees.

<comment><USER11> Interesting, the 'especially from government employees' bit feels like a very US-centric reaction. In many other places in the world people just kinda trust their governments. I have no problem with any European government collecting analytics data.

<comment><USER12> I disagree, as always the US is just 10 years ahead (so it will come to us as well, just later) and there are numerous law initiatives that show to what extent your privacy and freedom of expression is a concern of politicians.

<comment><USER13> >I disagree, as always the US is just 10 years ahead

At the same time the US is 10 years behind. GDPR is far ahead of anything the US has. Gun control is 50+ years ahead and lets not try to count years in social security nets or healthcare for the non-rich (or health in itself for that matter). In average I'd say the US is behind the curve and falling further by the day, especially now China has become a semi-great soon to be superpower.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Even my bank feels it is necessary to run Google Analytics tags on the pages with the _account balances_. Morons.

<comment><USER15> Google Analytics does not transmit page content like your account balance. It can see that you viewed the account balance url but knows nothing about what is displayed.

There are however other trackers that could send such information if they are not configured correctly.

<comment><USER14> What it does or what it does not is of no consequence to me. What it _could_ do is what matters because I don't have the time to check whether or not someone at Google or some US agency decided that they want to know. The easy solution is to make sure that it can't happen, which is to stop using GA tags on logged in parts of the website.

<comment><USER16> They would need to remove GA from all pages on the same origin. JavaScript in any page can perform an AJAX request to read HTML, and those requests will send cookies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> What are y'all using for self-hosted analytics? I have used Google Analytics and Mixpanel out of sheer convenience, but I know many users are uncomfortable sharing their data with those sites.

To relate this to the article: what should these government agencies be using? Or should they not be looking for Javascript errors, A/B testing, etc. at all?

<comment><USER18> I've actually switched to an old school "counter" that I wrote myself. I just couldn't find anything that was modern and that I was sure provided privacy. I also don't need much.

I look at the data in Google Sheets.

On the page I want to track I paste a script tag that includes a few lines of JS from my counter site. That JS script hits a PHP script with the URL the user requested. I don't track ANY user details. No browser info, no IP address, no fingerprinting, etc. It would be trivial to track those things though. The PHP script logs the data to a CSV file (which I plan to change to an SQLite DB soon).

I have a Google Sheet setup where the first field of data is '=IMPORTDATA("[https://example.com/data.csv")'](https://example.com/data.csv"\)'). Google Sheets automatically fetches that data every time you open the sheet; no API integration required. Then I have a simple bar chart on the data.

<comment><USER19> Just as a warning, it was pretty trivial to be able to look at your java script and get the csv file that you described.

I doubt that you care that much since the data isn't sensitive but just a heads up.

<comment><USER20> The GP commenter makes it clear that the CSV file is written to on the server- side (using PHP) as a consequence of request handling, not on the client side. There is no place that the CSV URL is visible, other than in the PHP source (that clients cannot access) and in the Google Sheet (which is presumably internal to the GP's GSuite domain.)

It's security-by-obscurity, maybe (as all public "secret token" URLs are) but it's better than what you're implying.

<comment><USER21> fwiw I was able to find the csv as well.

EDIT: You are right in theory though.

<comment><USER22> As a learning exercise, I tried to find it too, but I wasn't able to get it from the domain in the js file, could you explain how you got to the final file?

This is strictly as a learning exercise, no malicious intent on my part.

<comment><USER23> I was able to quickly get the CSV file as well.

The javascript is located at SITE/counter.js

My first guess for the CSV was SITE/counter.csv

It worked.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I doubt most government legislators would be aware of this sort of thing (the components, libraries, and platforms that make up a given government entity's web presence).

<comment><USER25> That's the major problem. A person writing regulation to deal with this problem would need to know what a CDN is, why they are required in modern web development, the pros and cons of self-hosted vs. cloud-based analytics solutions, etc.

I really wouldn't want to be the person tasked with explaining these issues to the average politician (although some rare exceptions obviously apply).

<comment><USER3> If you step back further, this is just one example of many where regulators don't understand the consequence of their laws. You can extend this to any policy like gun control/rights, abortion, etc.

Some facts:

* We will never know the full ramifications regulation has on a market. It is impossible to calculate objectively the _full_ effect. * Regulation _always_ has unintended side effects. (Alcohol prohibition and violence, etc) * A regulator that doesn't understand the entire problem will likely increase the unintended side effects.

<comment><USER24> I totally agree with you that it is not possible for a regulator to predict the future with respect to how their decisions impact a market. However, I think that is only an argument against hasty regulation, as opposed to regulation in general.

<comment><USER3> I agree that hasty regulation would probably have more unintended side effects; however the other points still stand. Prohibition, for example, is always accompanied by a black market. There is _always_ an unintended consequence of any regulation. GDPR will likely add a tax on individuals as large companies pass through compliance expenses to us. Real privacy threats (INCLUDING THE EU) GDPR is meant to block will still continue to operate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Isn't it a little disingenuous to call analytics tools "adtech". Yes, you can integrate analytics with adtech platforms, by even in isolation, knowing how your users use your own site and how they arrived there, allows you to better serve them.

In a physical place of business, for example, a retail store or restaurant, keeping track of what times or parts of the store were busiest, or where people spent the most time, would allow you to eliminate waste from your business, and sometimes that involves knowing how many unique customer foot traffic you're getting.

<comment><USER27> Is it possible to use google analytics without the resulting data being accessible by google ads or search teams? I would assume that they don't let you opt out of org-internal data sharing.

<comment><USER28> Absolutely. Corporate/Enterprise accounts can opt-out of it.

<comment><USER29> I wouldn't trust any opt-out functionality from a company whose bottom line is based on harvesting as much data as possible off everyone.

<comment><USER30> Moreover: opted-in should not be the default; I should not have to actively opt-out of anything in order to improve my internet security.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Thanks for bringing this to attention, so it can be fixed. Who would have thought that HN would become such a great advocate for the privacy of EU citizens?

<comment><USER32> I took it differently, personally. To me it's a double standard, we spent so much time going after the private companies with this law, that to have so much of the government's own groups fail to even do a review of their own damn sites? Ugh.

Since the governments are not subject to the GDPR, it doesn't have teeth, and I would not be surprised if it fails to get resolved.

<comment><USER33> A lot of them will be technically not in breach, claiming anonymisation etc gets them out of it. This is the line I have always had from Gov.uk, for instance.

But it's pretty crappy that they haven't tried to follow the spirit of the law. And it's pretty crappy that all my interactions with the government, as a UK citizen, are reported back to the Google mothership.

<comment><USER32> Thankfully we as savvy users are able to strip away information we don't want sent to companies, via browser extensions and what have you. I'm concerned about the less savvy users who, frankly, never have even thought about this being an issue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> The title is intentionally misleading (click-bait?). EU government websites does not equal EU members' government websites.

For our American friends, that would be akin to saying the federal government, when you mean the states' governments.

<comment><USER35> Indeed, major European Union websites do not use Google Analytics for 10 years or so. They switch to Piwik soon after the cookie law came into effect.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> www.parliament.uk:

Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager.

www.army.mod.uk:

All the above, plus Doubleclick and Google Ads.

Google Tag Manager is especially dangerous, because it's a Javascript injection system and a known attack vector.[1]

[1] [https://securityboulevard.com/2018/04/malicious- activities-w...](https://securityboulevard.com/2018/04/malicious-activities- with-google-tag-manager/)

<comment><USER37> from your link: "Any external assets which load on your website should be kept to a minimum so that you can maintain the most control over everything. " made me chuckle. that ship has sailed about 20 years ago.

<comment><USER36> For a site that's not ad-supported, there's not much need for external assets.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> "Do as we say, not as we do."

<comment><USER39> In the US a common version of this is for ADA laws on government websites. Many(most?) .gov domains aren't compliant. [1]

Interestingly, successful lawsuits for private company websites breaching ADA have increased over the past couple of years.

[1] Non-compliant: senate.gov , supremecourt.gov , congress.gov , justice.gov , etc

<comment><USER40> Working on a compliant application currently... the irony, is you can't use the main function of the app without being at least relatively sighted (the app displays scanned documents for confirmation)... but heaven forbid if my color contrast is 2% too little.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> In Chinese we have a saying: 「只許州官放火,不許百姓點燈。」

"Only state officials are allowed to commit arson; the populace is not allowed to light a lamp _. "

_"lamp" as in "oil lamp" or "candle" in general.

</comment><comment><USER42> Where I live (Denmark), these days nteraction with public administration mainly happens through web interfaces, like it or not.

And believe me, when I log into some state service, Google follows. Because even in what is supposedly my private business, pages are infested with links to analytics, fonts, tag managers, and assorted other Mountain View skullduggery.

In my daily life, I have uMatrix, cookie killers, and other defenses keeping me reasonable free of all that nonsense. But the mandatory, enforced central logon ("NemID") - which I must use for all public logging in as well as for my bank and similar stuff - is such an unholy clusterfuck of malice and incompetence that I long since gave up the fight and assigned it its very own, completely unfiltered Firefox profile, simply in order to at least sometimes get things done.

So yes, Google knows exactly where I'm going page for page, not only if I visit, say, the national police website, but if I am deep in filling out forms for the tax authority, consulting with health services, using my web bank, answering a court summons, whatever.

I'm fairly certain much of it is actually illegal. But any complaint goes up against a massive wall of ignorance and incomprehension, often a far greater challenge than an expert reply.

</comment><comment><USER43> In Canada, most of the health services / clinic websites I've been to over the last year use a mishmash of google scripts.

I'm actually not certain whether things like google fonts gives them any data (is it just an IP and nothing about the site in question?). It seems inappropriate to put google maps in there though, but again I'm not certain

<comment><USER44> They might get the referrer (i.e. the URL the page the request came from) and information about the browser since it's your PC/phone that actually contacts Google's servers to request the resource. As long as the URL doesn't encode any PII, that will be it.

I'd guess that bigger thing that companies like Google get from hosting resources like fonts etc. is that it provides them yet another, and much broader, market research data point re: what browsers are people using, what fonts/scripts are sites using and so on. So even if you completely avoid Google products/services like Android/Chrome/Chromebook/etc., they'll still get a bit of usage data from both you and the site.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> I was looking once (about a year or two ago) on Czech (EU member state) government websites and about 90% of them were using something from Google, usually Analytics. But some of them required even Captcha (so no way to access it without being vetted by Google, an US company).

</comment><comment><USER46> GDPR aside, the most annoying thing I saw was Polish 'Agencja Wywiadu' (the CIA equivalent) having a recruitment page[1] stating how careful people should be when applying. To not tell friends, to do it in person etc. and when you look at it, the whole page is filled with tracking from Facebook, Twitter and Google. I tweeted at them but they don't seem to care... [2]

[1] - [https://aw.gov.pl/rekrutacja/](https://aw.gov.pl/rekrutacja/)

[2] - [https://mobile.twitter.com/mulander/status/10239817413951283...](https://mobile.twitter.com/mulander/status/1023981741395128320)

</comment><comment><USER47> Third-party tracking is not inherently illegal under GDPR, even without consent. GDPR regulates personal data; if you're collecting genuinely anonymous usage data that cannot be attributed to a specific individual by any reasonable means, you don't need consent.

I can't say how compliant any of these websites are, but the presence of a third-party tracking cookie does _not_ automatically mean that a website is in breach. Nothing in the article clearly points to a breach of the GDPR.

Edit: I'm being downvoted for this comment, so I'd invite you to actually read the legislation.

[https://gdpr-info.eu/](https://gdpr-info.eu/)

<comment><USER48> I didn't downvote you, but from the article:

> The group said this could be used to "infer sensitive facts about [users'] > health condition and life situation" and be resold to target ads. "These > citizens have no clear way to prevent this leakage, understand where their > data is sent, or to correct or delete the data," it said.

The second quoted sentence in particular, if true, would seem to be in violation of GDPR, more specifically several sections/articles within Chapter 3.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> "The group said this could be used to "infer sensitive facts about [users'] health condition and life situation" and be resold to target ads"

Could. But will not. There are strict policies in Google ads on this.

<comment><USER50> Enforced policies? I realize there is probably not a good way to judge this but I have become skeptical to most big business and their adherance to 'policies'.

<comment><USER49> Reputational risk is too high for this. And medical ad targetting is being regulated in many countries.

<comment><USER51> I don't think reputational risk applies much to big companies. From Equifax through Facebook and yes, Google - lots of companies have done things in the past years that should have killed or crippled them, and yet they're still chugging along, none worse for the wear.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I've tried to raise this, specifically about UK government websites before. The gov.uk people didn't want to know, and told me it was OK - google promised to anonymise the data they were collecting.

And we should just trust this, that google are given all the data they need to track _everything_ that UK citizens do to interact with their government online, but they won't.

<comment><USER37> 1\. persoanlly i'd rather trust goog than any government out there. at least with goog i know where i stand, and i know what it takes for them to change course. with governments there's no recourse except for voting every 4ish years. 2\. if you've got ublock or some other tech installed then you can easily ignore your own advice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> It would be a great move from some of the more privacy aware countries to block entirely these trackers on national level.

<comment><USER53> Mass censorship is so hot right now!

<comment><USER29> Honestly, this is the kind of censorship I would support (as long as there's a way to opt-out). Would you be bothered if your ISP or similar blocked access to malware command & control servers? This is basically the same - <USER2> analytics services are essentially spyware and the companies behind them should be held to the same standard as any spyware operators.

<comment><USER54> > Would you be bothered if your ISP or similar blocked access to malware > command & control servers?

Yes, that would bother me. I prefer to make my own choices about what I can and cannot access on the internet. Why would I want my ISP doing that for me?

As far as implementing this on a national level goes - I would trust the government much less than I would trust my ISP with that kind of power. At least I can switch to another ISP if mine started abusing it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> The Australian Tax Office, Aussie Medicare and the my.gov.au site all use Google Analytics! Unless you use countermeasures (I have Privacy Badger installed), Google is getting quite a bit of information from your use of the sites, even if all they get is the metadata. It's freaking nuts.

</comment><comment><USER56> Just a side note in relation to the title, EU institutions are not subject to GDPR.

They are instead subject to the similar Regulation (EU) 2018/1725 of the European Parliament and of the Council.

Much smaller administrative fines among other things.

[https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?qid=15525770...](https://eur- lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?qid=1552577087456&uri=CELEX:32018R1725)

However, the linked article discusses not EU government/institutions but rather EU member states public authorities web sites. Such web sites are subject to GDPR but each member states decides whether administrative fines should be possible to impose on public authorities (and if so their max amounts) according to GDPR Article 83(7).

</comment><comment><USER57> So, what's the punishment for the EU not following its own legislation? Surely they should have to follow their own rules?

<comment><USER58> I don't know about the EU as a whole, but the Danish government just exempted itself from large parts of the GDPR, mostly regarding fines. That's a little idiotic, given that the government loses/leaks more personal data than anyone else.

<comment><USER59> Remember remember; The data leaked through CSC; That the government pretended; It never was important.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> like google font cdn.

</comment><comment><USER61> What happens if EU found to be violating GDPR. Does it fine itself 5% of tax rev?

<comment><USER62> Fines for GDPR transgressions are administered by the 28 national government's data privacy regulators. The money also goes into the countries' coffers, not the European Union. See for example [https://www.gdpreu.org/compliance/fines- and-penalties/](https://www.gdpreu.org/compliance/fines-and-penalties/).

But GDPR is mostly not about fines, but about the rights of citizen (/consumers) to get information, request deletion, etc. Citizen can file lawsuits in their local courts. It's somewhat improbable (as in: it has never happened) for the EU to disregard a judgement, just like the US government complies with adverse judgements by the Supreme Court.

<comment><USER47> The regulators can (and do) take enforcement action against government bodies. Some recent examples from the UK:

[https://ico.org.uk/action-weve- taken/enforcement/?facet_type...](https://ico.org.uk/action-weve- taken/enforcement/?facet_type=&facet_sector=Local+government&facet_sector=Central+government&facet_date=&date_from=&date_to=)

<comment><USER62> > The regulators can (and do) take enforcement action against government > bodies.

I did not dispute this. I merely said enforcement is usually not accomplished via fines when targeted against government bodies, because those are inherently expected to comply without the necessity of threats.

Skimming two of the linked pdfs, these did not mention fines.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> I think this story is gold. I like the GDPR, but I think this story shows how easy it is to violate it or how difficult to follow it.

In my opinion, the EU should offer reference implementations for all their 'internet' laws. If they make a law which requires privacy policies they should supply some examples (under some license which allows using them). If they create a law to let users choose if they want to be tracked, they should offer a script which does just that.

Such a reference implementation would give a concrete implementation of how the law could be followed and make it easier for everyone to implement it (e.g. for themselves). Otherwise, millions of people have to interpret the law and it is painful for everyone involved: creators cannot be sure that their implementation is correct and consumers have to use illegal implementations until everybody knows how the law is meant to be implemented.

</comment><comment><USER64> [https://www.reddit.com/r/adops/comments/b2nton/lets_be_hones...](https://www.reddit.com/r/adops/comments/b2nton/lets_be_honest_google_is_a_lazy_monopolist/)</comment>


Facebook Censored an Account Copying Trump's Words for Inciting Violence - <AUTHOR> https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/ep4zvz/facebook-censored-an-account-copying-trumps-words-for-inciting-violence <comment><USER2> it's well understood at this point that both Facebook and Twatter are applying a different set of rules to Trump's account than to "normal" accounts. So this is not surprising at all, it's what you would expect: Trump's posts on both platforms, when made by other users, lead to post deletion.

None of this should be surprising, both Dorsey and Zuck have explicitly decided to keep the Trump posts undeleted. This is probably due to a combination of their libertarian mindset, and some reasoning about what the expected outcomes of deleting Trump tweets would be.</comment>


Italian continues to test positive, 47 days later [translated] - <AUTHOR> https://www.n.com.do/2020/04/17/autoridades-no-se-explican-por-que-italiano-sigue-dando-positivo-un-mes-17-dias-despues/ <comment><AUTHOR> Sorry for the clipped, translated title, but this is the only link I could find, and the raw translation is too long.

In summary, apparently this guy has been in isolation for 47 days with minor symptoms and is still testing positive for COVID-19.

If this holds up, it could be a game changer, in a bad way. That is, there could be spreaders walking around, all but asymptomatic, and there's no way we can isolate a lot of people for months (?) at a time.</comment>


Ask HN: Any good Python App Engine Frameworks? - <AUTHOR>

What framework would you recommend for Google App Engine (in Python), besides the default webapp?
If it has a module for integration with Facebook Connect it would be a plus.
Pre-built admin like Django's would be great also (I know I can use Django on GAE, but I believe the  pre-built Admin area does not work with GAE). <comment><USER2> take a look at web2py.com. I used it in developing gowork.com.ng and I had no issues, worked perfectly on localhost and also on app engine. It has no inbuilt module for FB integration but you can try Janrain

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks. I'll check it out</comment></comment>


What is the best way to reach marketing guys of brands for advertising purposes? - <AUTHOR> http://www.quora.com/What-is-the-best-way-to-reach-marketing-guys-of-brands-for-advertising-purposes-Direct-emails-through-linkedin-through-PR-firms-through-digital-marketing-firms-of-brands

<comment><USER2> Have replied on Quora but generally speaking my advice is that it's really hard to get through to these guys. They're busy, they get hustled all day every day.

However if you approach their media or advertising agency you may be able to get in with a recommendation.

What specifically are you trying to pitch in? Feel free to drop me a line to discuss approaches that have worked for us.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Direct emails?through linkedin? through lead generation firms?through digital marketing firms of brands?For an ex,assume a company like foursquare or an ad network like admob how do they reach advertisers(in this case only brands like walmart,pepsi,Levis,Subway)?What is the best way?</comment>


Keurig's attempt to 'DRM' its coffee cups totally backfired - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2015/2/5/7986327/keurigs-attempt-to-drm-its-coffee-cups-totally-backfired

<comment><USER2> I think this is quite amazing - what they have done is essentially educated the masses why DRM is bad for them. I won't ever buy a coffee machine with DRM!</comment>