The Financial Times on Edward Tufte - <AUTHOR> http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/dda1cb5c-f4c0-11e2-a62e-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2aBj9w7FJ

<comment><USER2> I attended one of his day long seminars recently, and I was displeased with the lack of breadth and depth. Sure, he rails against PowerPoints like no other, we get that. My biggest issue is that everything he presented was from someone else-- he's literally just aggregating other people's work and postulating on them with fuzzy emotional thoughts-- and barely anything applies to dynamic, user driven displays such as you would find on a web dashboard.

How to save yourself $300 hundred dollars AKA My half page of notes from the seminar:

0) Get the books on eBay or Amazon if you _really_ want them.

1) Don't use PowerPoint. Try to convince your viewers to browse a web page as the presentation, after you've convinced your IT staff to set up a web server for your presentation.

2) Look at ESPN.com, Weather.gov and Google News and Google Maps if you want to see what he thinks are the pinnacle of data presentations on the web. This will save you a few hours.

3) "Use verbs not Nouns" Show comparisons and mechanisms.

4) "Do whatever it takes to express the information"

5) "Show interaction between objects"

6) "Don't use boxes or drop shadows". Avoid "Chart Junk"

7) "Use small multiples" (he peddled his spark lines and ESPN's groups of stats)

8) Make paper based, text presentations and supply that to people as the arrive at the meeting. This way they can read that before jumping in with questions. The paper allows them to skip ahead and read what they want to know about so they don't interrupt you.

9) Calm the f2ck down when you go to meetings. He spent about an hour giving a lame rendition of How to Win Friends and Influence People. In one sentence: Be nice, be patient, be persuasive.

10) Ask yourself:

==1) "What's the problem?"

==2) "Why does it matter?"

==3) "What are you going to do about it?"

Other issues I had with his seminar:

1) I disliked the way he was surrounded by his thug ushers, who seemed to comb the aisles looking for someone or some thing. It made me feel like I was at a cult meeting or that they were worried about someone recording the seminar.

2) I disliked his peddling of his mother's book and his sculptures.

3) His dour emotional expressions about not wanting to teach government how to visualize things (This meeting was in Arlington VA, so I'm sure there were lots of military folks/contractors) in wake of the leaks. That's fine but now you look like a sellout, 'teaching' them anyway.

4) The multiple videos presentations about visualizing musical data. That's cute, but the guy is off his rocker if he thinks people are going to use that in place of a traditional presentation.

5) The repeated videos. I think we watched the same video three times of a Swiss topological map with an ethnic female voice narrating. By the second time I was already thinking to myself 'I wish he would stop wasting my time with that'.

6) I understand there is a cult of personality around him, and I generally thought highly of his name until I went to the seminar. A coworker who went a few months before me told me it wasn't worth the time, but it was the cult of personality that caused me to go. He ended up pretty much being a douche in person. Not one visualization we saw was created by him, he is literally curating other's great works, and for that, you can pick up used books on your own or visit a library.

7) All in all it felt way too touchy-feely and not very concrete. He only _briefly_ made mention of R and D3, saying they were high end, advanced visualization tools, that we as an audience shouldn't be using, because they are too complex. WTF.

8) Things that are NOT covered: a) Moving data, aside from his video visualization of music that he found somewhere. b) Visualizaing dynamic graphs or Sankeys. c) Interactive displays, such as on a website for users to use. The closest he came was to extol the virtues of ESPN. He literally recommended to bring up your presentations to the level of ESPN.com, and you'd meet with success.

TLDR; To each his own, but I wish I had my day back.

<comment><USER3> His books are great, mainly as a collection of interesting examples, but I agree with you on his seminar. I was let down. Nothing that I would really complain about since I didn't have to pay for it and it was really a day off work for me, but his seminar itself is not something I would pay money for.

I do think ESPN, weather.com, etc., are interesting examples because they have so much information to present, and it is nice that he was so forthcoming with concrete examples of what he holds up as great presentations of data. But I didn't find his analysis of them all that deep, and I think he made the fallacy of assuming that these sites are popular because of their presentation rather than, well, they're just websites of immensely well-known organizations. And weather.com is _weather.com_ for God's sake--the URL alone guarantees readership.

<comment><USER2> I had weather.gov written down in my notes, I think we also saw weather.com. Thanks for clarifying. I also went for 'free' but that was 8 hours I could have spent writing code or playing with D3.

Did he also spend ~40 minutes ooh-ing over Google Image search? I remember seeing a bunch of blue sailboats or something and he was going on and on saying he _prints out_ pages of google image search collages (except he had some artsy name that was more hipster than collage).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Well that nearly gave me a heart attack. I thought for a moment that this was an obituary. Hope he sticks with us for a long time.

<comment><USER5> My reaction too. That's a rather odd way of presenting an article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Edward Tufte says Bret Victor [1] is someone to watch out for. I am curious: can someone who is into usability look at the site and comment on whether this is considered usable? I mean his site is incredibly innovative and beautiful. However, I find it kind of hard to navigate?

[1] [http://worrydream.com/](http://worrydream.com/)

<comment><USER7> It's not about the website, it's about the content. If you read the articles, I think you'll be suitably blown away. Example: [http://worrydream.com/#!2/LadderOfAbstraction](http://worrydream.com/#!2/LadderOfAbstraction)

<comment><USER6> Oh no, I am impressed. The guy is as close as one can come to be a modern renaissance man. The website is also a statement of art and I was curious how it came across from a usability perspective.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've put in a request to my boss to attend his one day seminar last year. However, recent reviews of attendees say his views haven't caught up with modern times and he just sticks to visualization techniques from years ago.

<comment><USER9> I recommend getting his books, or just The Visual Display of Information ([http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/books_vdqi](http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/books_vdqi)) if you don't want to go a seminar.

<comment><USER10> Just to put in a contrary opinion, I was really disappointed in this book and I don't understand the praise it gets. Here's my extensive review on Amazon: [http://www.amazon.com/review/R11NYC3OE3LBE](http://www.amazon.com/review/R11NYC3OE3LBE)

<comment><USER11> Personally, I came to very different conclusions. I found the book thought- provoking, and while your criticisms seem to be factually accurate, so was the original material you were criticising in each case I checked.

I am upvoting you anyway, because we should never take things for granted just because someone famous said them, and because I appreciate that you took the time to make a careful and reasonable argument even if I personally disagree with it.

<comment><USER10> I am really curious to know what you took from this book. I am really confused about why people like it so much.

For example, do you like Tufte's box plot? Do you like his revised bar chart? Do you strive, in your own graphs, to "erase redundant data-ink" in the way that Tufte advocates?

<comment><USER11> I read the book not long after it was first published and relatively early in my career.

What I found useful was not the spartan presentation. I do a lot of custom UI and data visualisation work these days, but even my plainest designs don't tend to be as extreme as many of Tufte's examples.

However, numerous projects I've worked on have been influenced by his underlying themes, like avoiding misleading presentation and unnecessary clutter, using graphics to convey patterns and relationships that wouldn't stand out from the raw data, and most of all how effective a customised or completely original presentation style can be depending on the nature of the data and what you're trying to illustrate.

Maybe if I read the book for the first time today I'd regard a lot of the ideas as obvious or trivial, just as I don't need to read another article on different types of colour scheme or how to choose well-matched fonts any more. For on-line use, where we have tools like colour and animation and interaction readily available, I certainly do things very differently. However, a lot of the way I look at data visualisation and graphical illustration today was no doubt shaped by reading Tufte early on, and so I give him the credit I feel is due.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> In the five years that I've practiced data visualization and analysis, the day-long Tufte seminar that my boss sent me to was likely the most important single day of my development career. Tufte has virtually nothing to say about how visualization should be done off paper, but his general principles are invaluable. I was still making annoying Flash charts at the time, shortly after attending Tufte's workshop, I realized how much of an anti-pattern it is to rely heavily on button-pushing and on-hovers.

It's true that Tufte's pioneering work was done in the age of paper, but that simplicity and clarity of purpose is even in greater need today.

(And I'll also say, Jesus Christ this submitted headline made me fear that he was dead)

Edit: I can't avoid saying that some of the more contemporary ideas he's really into are sometimes a little boring compared to his data visualization ideas...if you live in New York, Tufte has a gallery of art that he's done and space devoted to others' ideas...I thought the documentary on the designer mentioned in the OP was a little dry. Also, at his gallery, Tufte has a short video on loop about how he'd improve the Apple iPhone weather app...I forgot the details but I remember thinking that I disagreed with a lot of what he proposed.

(On certain days of the week, Tufte is actually in the gallery...he was very nice to talk to)

His gallery: [http://etmodern.com/ETmodern/ET_Modern.html](http://etmodern.com/ETmodern/ET_Modern.html)

<comment> fsck--off > It's true that Tufte's pioneering work was done in the age of paper, but > that simplicity and clarity of purpose is even in greater need today.

His principles aren't infallible. This 2007 study found that a group of students preferred a graph with "chart junk" to Tufte's minimalist style, although the study does note that this may have been caused by the students' familiarity with "chart junk" graphs.

[http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1362587](http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1362587)

<comment><USER13> There's a semi-recent study showing that people's recollection of the material two weeks later is higher when they see a chart junk version vs. the clean chart. That's the real game changer imho.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> For anyone wishing to emulate Tufte's style in books using LaTeX, [http://www.ctan.org/pkg/tufte-latex](http://www.ctan.org/pkg/tufte-latex).

</comment><comment><USER15> If you're looking for a more quantitative version of Tufte, I highly recommend Cleveland ([http://www.amazon.com/Visualizing-Data-William-S- Cleveland/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Visualizing-Data-William-S- Cleveland/dp/0963488406/)) and Wilkinson ([http://www.amazon.com/The-Grammar- Graphics-Statistics-Comput...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Grammar-Graphics- Statistics-Computing/dp/0387245448))

<comment><USER16> The difference between Cleveland and Tufte is that the former is "empirical" (he discusses lots of results from psychological studies on comprehension of graphics) rather than one man's opinion. Also, Cleveland actually has accomplished something other than scolding and praising.

Personally, I liked Cleveland's "Elements of Graphing Data" ([http://www.amazon.com/Elements-Graphing-Data-William- Clevela...](http://www.amazon.com/Elements-Graphing-Data-William- Cleveland/dp/0963488414)) better than "Visualizing Data", though they overlap a lot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> He's a legend from days of yore, but his books and presentations really don't talk about the web or even modern technology. It's great if you're working in traditional graphic design, and there are some core concepts you can take and apply to web design, but I don't see why people think he's some hero of modern design.

</comment><comment><USER18> I found Designing with Data ([http://www.designingwithdata.com/](http://www.designingwithdata.com/)) to be a simple and practical introduction to data visualization.

I attended Tufte's seminar years ago, and found it entertaining, but that's about it.

</comment><comment><USER19> Another good source on visual presentation (of data) is Cleveland (author of "The Elements of Graphing Data", see [http://www.win- vector.com/blog/2013/02/revisiting-clevelands...](http://www.win- vector.com/blog/2013/02/revisiting-clevelands-the-elements-of-graphing-data- in-ggplot2/) ). The neat thing is Cleveland formally tested a lot of his visualization principles (asking people to estimate things from different graphs).

</comment><comment><USER20> I've talked to multiple people who have been to Tufte's seminars. They all, unfortunately, say the same thing: in person, he's not a very dynamic teacher - maybe even a bit boring.

That does not detract from his ability to bring data visualization to the mainstream.</comment>


The Startup Toolkit: Tools to GSD - <AUTHOR> https://magazine.wework.com/inspiration/toolkit/ <comment><AUTHOR> What tools are missing? LOVE hearing about new tools to help me be more productive.</comment>


Democrats to push to reinstate repealed 'net neutrality' rules - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-internet/democrats-to-push-to-reinstate-repealed-net-neutrality-rules-idUSKCN1QL1W0/ <comment><USER2> > In October, California agreed not to enforce its own state net neutrality > law until the appeals court's decision on the 2017 repeal, and any potential > review by the U.S. Supreme Court

That was one positive "states rights" thing I was looking forward to, but they chickened out? It's their state law, why not enforce it.

It's also been some time so it would be good to see how the predictions panned out. Some of those were pretty grim:

[https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/net-neutrality- in-2017-...](https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/net-neutrality-in-2017-what- you-should-know_us_599debf0e4b06d67e334fa94) [warning: auto-playing video]

> "That means if Bing offers Comcast a hefty penny, you'll never make another > Google search for as long as you live. Yeah, it's that bad."

I can't say I have seen any changes in the 2 or 3 services I have. It could be because there are competitors in the region and they'd be afraid to rock to boat too much. Maybe in other parts it was much worse.

<comment><USER3> I haven't noticed any negatives yet either (to my surprise).

Saw some good news though - last year internet speeds increased nearly 40% in the US.

[https://www.recode.net/2018/12/12/18134899/internet- broafban...](https://www.recode.net/2018/12/12/18134899/internet-broafband- faster-ookla)

<comment><USER4> The argument in favor of deregulation of most things has some straight forward logic behind it. Imagine that some major player did begin to act badly. This would enable a competitor to offer a distinct value. Like the GP mentioned some predictions were things like e.g. Microsoft being able to pay Comcast to effectively disable Google search/products. That may be a legal possibility without regulation but it the Huffington Post 'analysis' seems to assume there are no consequences for actions. Google Fiber was a flop in large part because they could not meaningfully distinguish themselves from the competition. Imagine local monopolies start creating meaningfully poor experiences for internet users. They would not be monopolies for long!

Some might argue that lower speeds for higher prices were creating "meaningfully poor experiences" for users, but I think there is one important distinction. Let's imagine an upstart competitor comes in and offers some perk, such as lower prices for higher speeds. And the local monopoly ends up matching these offers, as they did in the case of Google Fiber. Is this action perceived as a 'de-crippling' of their system, or as an upgrade of their system? In reality it's almost certainly the former, but in practice it's going to be perceived as the latter. That means they actually gain public props for anti-competitive behavior following what is effectively price- gouging.

By contrast if some company is actively and outright blocking a site, then de- crippling would not be seen as an 'upgrade', but instead as what it is -- 'de- crippling.' And so it's likely that the competitor would be the one gaining the public props (and subscriptions). And in reality, it's possible that our incumbent monopoly might not even be able to de-cripple themselves due to a contract with e.g. Microsoft.

<comment><USER5> I think you're ignoring some very basic aspects of the ISP business and taking entirely the wrong lessons away from Google Fiber.

There is no cheap way to enter many/most/all of these markets. This isn't a world of cheap VC cash, because there is no chance of winning a lottery. Google of all people couldn't make this make sense. Sure, they would have had a better pitch if they were competing with incumbants who did things like block Google Search. Except it's even more trivial to unblock Google Search than it is to offer better service. This gets worse when you consider the possibility of not outright blocking, but intentionally slowing services.

So yeah. If Google couldn't make Google Fiber work, there is no way any new competitor is going to spring out of nowhere. The reality of the competition hasn't changed - incumbants are at a massive advantage even compared to most incumbants. Infrastructure is a massive barrier to newcomers, and any competitive aspects that can be used to differentiate one offer from another can be trivially and immediately matched by the incumbants. And in practice most all of the offers are difficult or impossible to really compare to each other in pratice, so most consumers have to rely mainly on the marketing materials and subjective experiences.

And again I've left out a whole other side of the issue, namely the relationships between ISPs and services.

This is just an awful system to rely on tradional markets. It uses expensive infrastructure, and the products are indifferentiable in any meaningful way over any period of time.

<comment><USER6> Google built a hugely successful Operating System ( Android ), Web browser ( Chrome ) etc because it was important to them that nobody won these platforms. If someone had monopoly control, they could squeeze Google for a lot of money through Traffic Acquisition Costs. Google currently pays potentially 100s of millions of dollars to Mozilla

The same applies to ISPs. Why do you think they are pushing for net neutrality ? Do you think it is out of the goodness of their hearts ? Without net neutrality Google might invest billions into building out a global, fast Internet infrastructure. They may have no choice but to do it, because it is strategic for them to own the entire ad delivery pipeline ( Computers/Phones/Tablets, Operating Systems, ISPs )

<comment><USER7> > Google built a hugely successful Operating System ( Android ), Web browser ( > Chrome ) etc because it was important to them that nobody won these > platforms.

Or was it important to them that they win? They certainly seem to have with Chrome at least. Does any company intentionally enter a space just to compete? Would google rather not absolutely win in the infrastructure as well?

<comment><USER6> I think it was important to them that someone else did not win. Winning it themselves was probably a bonus

> Would google rather not absolutely win in the infrastructure as well?

Probably, but it is up to it's competitors to try and prevent that.

If Google has no competitive advantage because of their other businesses it should not be a problem. But if it competes unfairly, fair competition laws should be applied

Either way, the customers could stand to benefit from increased investment

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> How about they do something about random price increases, geographic monopolies, bundling, or forcing customers to rent equipment that's cheaper to buy? These are issues that affect consumers. The only thing NN does is make Netflix slightly cheaper.

<comment><USER9> Net neutrality won't make Netflix cheaper. It will ensure that Netflix can use it's size and influence to scale better and squash any potential competitors, who don't have the influence to force ISPs to colocate their cache boxes for free. They're still probably continue to raise their prices on consumers, because that's what monopolies (like Netflix) _do_.

Net neutrality is the creation of regulatory capture for Netflix, and probably YouTube. Which is why it is _shocking_ these are the two companies funding every single supposedly grassroots effort to support it.

<comment><USER10> > monopolies (like Netflix)

I can't think of a single metric by which Netflix can be called a monopoly.

A comparable number of number have Amazon Prime Video and Hulu while trailing isn't in a david-vs-goliath situation.

Netflix has been struggling to keep licences, let alone licence shows exclusively.

Then you have groups like HBO-go who get a huge influx of users, when their flagship show releases. But, users quickly leave when they realize they don't like anything else.

Netflix is ahead atm, because it is better (or less worse) and not because of monopolistic practices keeping themselves in front.

<comment><USER11> Cable would also be reasonably called a competitor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Honestly, I think the passage of Senate bill H.R.1865 "FOSTA" has quite quickly done way more harm to the internet at large than killing Net Neutrality has.

<comment><USER13> Absolutely.

It was crazy to watch everyone go crazy about net neutrality with triple-bank- shot theories of how it might chill some site somewhere someday, but barely a peep about the far-worse FOSTA, which almost immediately forced sites offline.

I'm still not sure how to explain this. Perhaps people are just dumb and prone to irrational panics, perhaps I am dumb (i.e., NN > FOSTA), or perhaps movements like NN support are not really particularly organic, and being organized for reasons unknown.

<comment><USER14> "people are just dumb and prone to irrational panics"

Of any statement that I've read this year, this is the one that most succinctly captures the entire spectrum of political life. Left or right, fake news to hacker news... Understand that statement and you understand how far we've come.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> "The text of the proposed legislation has not been released."

<comment><USER16> You need to pass the bill before you know what's in it.

<comment><USER17> What? How would they know what their voting for?

<comment><USER18> That's a quote from a Nancy Pelosi speech about Affordable Care Act.

[https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/pelosi-healthcare-pass- the...](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/pelosi-healthcare-pass-the-bill-to- see-what-is-in-it/)

For the record, Snopes does a good job explaining how Pelosi's statement was taken out of context by the right, especially when compared to Republican actions that were much more questionable regarding a somewhat (?) comparable Republican-sponsored bill called the American Health Care Act.

<comment><USER19> That article (and it's rating of "Mixed") has puzzled me.

The context "We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it, away from the fog of the controversy." doesn't really change the way I think about her remarks.

Controversy or not, it's a ridiculous assertion.

<comment><USER20> It would be ridiculous if she hadn't spent the two previous paragraphs _which are quoted on the same Snopes page_ outlining what she claimed was the content of the bill.

Those paragraphs eliminate the possible interpretation of her sentence as _you can only find out what 's in the bill if we pass it_. They also eliminate _you can only be certain what 's in the bill if we pass it_\-- she was clearly claiming the bill as an obvious positive step in health care.

It even eliminates _we have to pass quickly to overcome the Republicans ' criticisms_\-- because obviously the Republicans would (and did!) continue vociferously critiquing it after it passed.

The only meaning left I can see is the obvious interpretation-- _we have to pass this so that you can benefit from the things I just said, and those benefits won 't be subject to controversy_. That's like bog standard political rhetoric-- what every politician claims for legislation aimed at the general public.

It's certainly an awkward sentence, but it's not difficult to figure out what she meant.

<comment><USER19> Asserting that

"We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it."

is equivalent to

"the bill as an obvious positive step in health care."

requires blackout-inducing inertial velocity.

> It's certainly an awkward sentence

Why not call a spade a spade and say she misspoke?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The internet has barely survived?

<comment><USER22> Lets not be reactionary here.

Legislation can halt a slow decline, and companies move as slowly as they need to.

Something taking 5-10-20 years to decline can often be traced back to a piece of regulation (or deregulation) that occurred a long time ago.

Legislation being repealed doesn't mean the next day everything goes to the dogs, it's often supposed to plug up a trickle, not hold back a flood.

That may or may not apply to net neutrality depending on your view. But just because things haven't gone completely gone to the dogs yet does not mean it wont in the future and that this legislation is or isn't necessary.

<comment><USER23> Exactly, these rights are going to be chipped away bit by bit, action by action, over a long period of time so that eventually it just seems like the new normal.

In the years before the repeal there were several enforcement actions of net neutrality violations[1]

1\. [https://reddit.com/r/KeepOurNetFree/comments/7ej1nd/fcc_unve...](https://reddit.com/r/KeepOurNetFree/comments/7ej1nd/fcc_unveils_its_plan_to_repeal_net_neutrality/dq5hlwd/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> "Net Neutrality" is one of the biggest misinformation campaigns I've ever seen in my life. I've never seen so many predictions of doom and gloom over such a small thing. More so those opinions put out by non-technical people to mislead non-technical people.

We've never had "net neutrality" and we never will. Doing so goes against how the internet fundamentally works. All packets are not the same. QoS exists and will always exist. Internet companies can't consume all the bandwidth and not pay for it. This has always been about Silicon Valley vs ISPs with ISPs wanting to charge the actual cost of service and Silicon Valley wanting a free ride to all of the ISPs customers. No customer will ever see any change from the creation of nor lack of net neutrality.

</comment><comment><USER25> can anyone steelman the argument against net neutrality for me? The only one i've ever heard was that its "government intervention". Which doesn't quite add up for me.

<comment><USER9> The primary impact of net neutrality, is that it prevents ISPs from charging tech companies like Google and Netflix for data usage.[1] Google (especially YouTube) and Netflix together take up about 75% of all bandwidth usage in the United States, so this is really about charging these two companies, and these two companies alone, for the amount of network buildout that's required to support their increasing demands. Any bandwidth costs anyone else faced due to this sort of thing would be inconsequential in comparison, if the ISPs bothered to bill anyone else at all.

Google and Netflix do not like this, of course, and have created or funded dozens of grassroots efforts to "save the Internet" by ensuring ISPs are legally prohibited from billing them. My personal view is that when you are on the "majority of the data usage on the Internet" scale, ISPs should have every right to negotiate with you, and that preventing that process ensures that Google and Netflix's economies of scale permanently win out as monopolists in the space.

[1]Insert rhetoric from supporters about double charging here, don't bother commenting to claim it. I've heard the argument before. And I was answering the parent's question, not trying to start an argument with the opposing position.

<comment><USER26> The primary impact of net neutrality is to regulate the internet as a utility in order to prevent an oligopoly of two ISPs deciding who is allowed to access what information online. What if all of the electricity in the United States was generated by two unregulated companies? They would have sole discretion over who got electricity, what time of day electricity was available to them, and whether they were able to access electricity at an affordable price. They could turn off an elderly person's air conditioning on a hot day because of "peak traffic" on the grid if the retired person on a fixed-income couldn't afford the surge pricing.

Of course that would be an unacceptable outcome. So why should we permit the same with the internet access?

A college student writing a paper on the FCC might only have access to academic articles opposing net neutrality because they can't afford the articles that express an alternate view and Comcast doesn't want her to see them.

The internet is about access to information. Net neutrality is about profiteering from that access.

<comment><USER27> practically however it is the services offered at the application layer that do all the censoring/wall-gardening, not isps.

<comment><USER28> This is irrelevant as long as we live in a world where anyone can set up a new edge service or application -- which is what net neutrality guarantees.

<comment><USER27> Not when it is happening in coordinated fashion, which crucially cuts off payment and revenue streams. NN would only guarantee a tiny fraction of neutrality, which has never been an issue anyway (i.e. ISPs have never cut off someone for political speech except when it's illegal)

<comment><USER28> Payments are a totally separate problem and basically irrelevant to a conversation about NN other than an ISP's technical ability to block access to a particular payment system (e.g. "we only support PayPal, go find another ISP if you want to use Venmo"). Net neutrality is about the Internet and the role ISPs and AS's play in providing Internet service; whatever other problems you are worried about can be solved separately.

<comment><USER27> the reason most services started censoring was to appease payment providers / advertisers. i dont think they are separate

<comment><USER28> Again, net neutrality is about _the network_ and not the policies of edge services that happen to use the network. Unless you are claiming that an ISP is blocking traffic to appease a payment processor you are talking about something that is _completely irrelevant_ and serves only to distract from the actual issue here.

Since you need this explained: when I said that in a world of net neutrality you can set up your own edge service, I was talking about _the technical ability to do so_ and not whether or not some other problem would stop you. Maybe no payment processors are willing to work with you and you cannot afford to pay for the kind of connection your service demands. Equally possible is that you simply lack the technical skills needed to set up an edge service and cannot find or afford to pay someone to do it for you. Maybe you are just too busy. None of the above is relevant to the debate over net neutrality because net neutrality only concerns the operation of the network itself and not the endless other factors that might impact your ability to run whatever applications you intend to run.

<comment><USER27> i was talking about neutrality in general (of which NN is a part)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> What strikes me is how Republicans didn't realize net neutrality translates to equal opportunity on the internet, which fits really well with free-market capitalism.

<comment><USER19> That's not really true.

"Free" means "lacking from government intervention" or laissez-faire, not "free of charge".

Good or bad, allowing ISPs to set their own rates are prices structures is more laissez-faire than regulating them.

<comment><USER30> That's an Austrian school conflation, and that largely because it refuses to recognize that market failure is a thing. Originally, "free" meant "where actors compete freely" \- this excludes not just government regulation, but also monopolies. Since in practice monopolies form in unregulated markets over time, at some point, such a market can become less free than one with active intervention to bust monopolies.

<comment><USER31> >refuses to recognize that market failure is a thing

So much this. I call it "Econ 101 Syndrome". My undergrad was in Economics, and the amount of damage that has been done by requiring Business majors (and others) to take Econ 101 and only Econ 101 is staggering. People walk away from those courses seeing the world through a lens of perfect competition, no externalities, no information asymmetries, no transaction costs, etc. and so end up coming to a faulty conclusion on every major policy question.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I'm sick of hearing about "net neutrality". Nothing changed when it was shot down. Report this or rage has much as you want but NOTHING has changed. I'm now more weary of "net neutrality" than ever before.

<comment><USER33> [https://nocable.org/news/whats-happened-in-the-three- months-...](https://nocable.org/news/whats-happened-in-the-three-months-since- net-neutrality-was-repealed)</comment></comment>


Viroids: mini-virus-like organisms (?) whose genes are only a couple hundred base pairs - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viroids

<comment><AUTHOR> As you might guess, I don't know crap about biology, but something about seeing something whose entire genes easily fit on one screen struck me.

<comment><USER2> It has no genes. What's displayed is the genome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Tiny whirls in the life stream.

An example: a small assembly program that loops infinitely and copies itself. Fully dependent on the overall framework that enables its existence.</comment>


RingCentral Support Sucks, but Why They Gotta Be So Shady? - <AUTHOR> https://telzio.com/blog/ringcentral-support-sucks-but-why-they-gotta-be-so-shady/

<comment><USER2> Great</comment>


We hire Data Scientists so you don't have to - <AUTHOR> http://www.sumologic.com/blog/company/we-hire-data-scientists-so-our-customers-dont-have-to

<comment><USER2> Wait, so Sumo Logic is assuming companies will pay them to analyze their data? Isn't data the secret sauce of any company? Why would companies lift up their skirts? Are they really too lazy/cheap to hire a data scientist?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sumo Logic provides easy tools that allow data analysts (vs. data scientists) of it's customers analyze the data. Sumo Logic never sees the data.</comment></comment>


Jepsen: VoltDB 6.3 - <AUTHOR> https://aphyr.com/posts/331-jepsen-voltdb-6-3 <comment><USER2> John here from VoltDB. We really enjoyed working with Kyle on this project. We've got some content on our website related to this work if you're hungry for more, including a blog post, a FAQ on transactions and consistency and more detail on the issues Kyle found in VoltDB 6.3 that have been fixed in 6.4. It can all be found here: [https://voltdb.com/jepsen](https://voltdb.com/jepsen)

There are also a number of us here to answer any questions about this Jepsen work or about VoltDB generally.

<comment><USER3> why would i use voltdb? serious question. this is the first time i hear about voltdb.

i mean, i can use a postgres or mssql cluster for SQL needs and/or i can use riak/... for kv and/or cassandra/... for column indexed storage and/or ... etc. why should i look at voltdb?

<comment><USER2> Well, one thing we can say definitively today is that VoltDB offers strong serializability, when almost no other clustered systems do, and when they do, they are slow.

But my more typical answer is the combination of throughput and transactional logic. No other system does both as well as VoltDB. This comes up a lot in policy enforcement, fraud detection, online gaming, ad-tech, billing-support and more.

Here are some blog posts that might help:

[https://voltdb.com/blog/winning-now-and-future-where- voltdb-...](https://voltdb.com/blog/winning-now-and-future-where-voltdb- shines) [https://voltdb.com/blog/apps-need-acid](https://voltdb.com/blog/apps- need-acid) [https://voltdb.com/blog/call-center-example-integrating- proc...](https://voltdb.com/blog/call-center-example-integrating-processing- and-state-make-streaming-problems-simple-solve)

This video's not bad:

[https://voltdb.com/resources/video/transactional- streaming-i...](https://voltdb.com/resources/video/transactional-streaming-if- you-can-compute-it-you-can-probably-stream-it)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Potential readers, not sure whether or not to make the slog: Do.

This is the most effective explanation (for me, anyway) of the difference between "serializable" and "linearizable" of any of aphyr's blogs so far. They've been keywords in that little cladistic tree of consistency models he draws for a while now, but with this explanation and the examples, I finally grok what they _mean_.

Thanks, aphyr.

<comment><USER5> I'm not so sure. The definition of strict serializable/linearizable given in this post is weaker than what most people use. Most people require that linearizable execution must happen as-if it matches a global clock. Simply requiring that the effects of a transaction happen within the start/end time of the partition executing the transaction does not guarantee this. Most distributed databases (from what I can tell, including voltdb) only guarantee that for operations which read/write the same keys. Non-conflicting transactions execute without any synchronization overhead - and that's a good thing! But in the presence of side channels, you need a truly global clock (like spanner) to achieve strict serializablility.

<comment><USER6> _Most people require that linearizable execution must happen as-if it matches a global clock. Simply requiring that the effects of a transaction happen within the start /end time of the partition executing the transaction does not guarantee this._

I'm not sure what you mean by "within the start/end time of the partition executing the transaction". Nothing in the informal definition I provided mentioned partitions, or even process-local orders (that'd be sequential consistency) so ... yeah, I dunno where you got this from. I agree that linearizability is a global real-time constraint, and I use that sense in the post and in the Knossos verifier.

 _Most distributed databases (from what I can tell, including voltdb) only guarantee that for operations which read /write the same keys._

You raise an interesting question: if I verify only that operations on a single key are linearizable, have I also verified that operations on _systems_ of independent keys are linearizable? The answer, as far as I know, is yes: linearizability is a local (or "composable") property. From Herlihy & Wing ([https://cs.brown.edu/~mph/HerlihyW90/p463-herlihy.pdf](https://cs.brown.edu/~mph/HerlihyW90/p463-herlihy.pdf)):

 _Unlike alternative correctness conditions such as sequential consistency [31] or serializability [40], linearizability is a local property: a system is linearizable if each individual object is linearizable. Locality enhances modularity and concurrency, since objects can be implemented and verified independently, and run-time scheduling can be completely decentralized._

This is a commonly cited property in the literature, and has been proven several ways--for instance, see Lin's recent constructive proof ([http://arxiv.org/abs/1412.8324](http://arxiv.org/abs/1412.8324)). There is research showing linearizable systems vary in the probability distribution of outcomes ([https://arxiv.org/pdf/1103.4690.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1103.4690.pdf)), but this does not affect safety.

However, your comment led me to Charron-Bost & Cori 2003 ([http://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/S012962640300...](http://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/S0129626403001100)), whose abstract claims a counterexample system of two linearizable objects whose composed system is nonlinearizable. I haven't found the full text yet, and I'm not familiar with their sense of "The Global Time Axiom", so it's possible their finding is still consistent with "linearizability is composable". Not sure.

In any case, the multi-key tests in this analysis _do_ perform single-key transactions (as well as multi-key transactions), and verify that their composed system is fully linearizable. Because the state space for composed systems is larger, these tests aren't as good at finding bugs--but if composability turns out _not_ to hold, I can use this strategy more often.

 _But in the presence of side channels, you need a truly global clock (like spanner) to achieve strict serializablility._

As I understand it, Spanner's global clocks are a performance optimization, not a correctness condition. If linearizability required a global clock, Zookeeper ([http://static.cs.brown.edu/courses/cs227/archives/2012/paper...](http://static.cs.brown.edu/courses/cs227/archives/2012/papers/replication/hunt.pdf)) and Raft ([https://raft.github.io/raft.pdf](https://raft.github.io/raft.pdf)) wouldn't be able to provide linearizable semantics. It is, of course, possible that these papers are wrong, in which case I encourage you to publish!

<comment><USER6> (I've since skimmed Charron-Bost & Cori, and it shows that linearizability is not composable when there does not exist a total order of invocation and response events. This might be of use in relativistic scenarios with... accelerating spacecraft which still need to perform linearizable computation? I don't think it's particularly relevant to clocks down here on the geoid.)

<comment><USER2> I will update the docs to acknowledge that consistency guarantees may be compromised if the relative speed between servers in a cluster or clients is a nontrivial fraction of the speed of light.

Let me know if I don't have that right.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> VoltDB is a real fun platform. I've used it around the v1 and v2 era. Incredibly high tx rate (on few-hundred-dollar servers 5 years ago could get 150K tx/sec.) Being able to use SQL is fantastic. The original research papers (Volt's diverged significantly now I understand) are good reads[1].

It's a good fit any time you're considering storing a bunch of data in-memory for performance reasons. (Like telecom routing info.) Instead of writing a custom daemon, just spit it into VoltDB. Get replication, performance, etc. for free! Very neat.

Sadly the open source version isn't very ACID. They dropped the D from community edition. So you can scale out, but if any node dies, you're toast. There's still some uses, where you're running a transient or easily- rebuildable dataset. Or where you can manually run multiple full nodes (though I guess you'd need to implement cluster failover manually).

I guess it shows that it is hard to make a living off of open source products if they're really great. I've heard this from other open-source companies: the product's fantastic, no one pays. But make a taste as open source, basically a demo/trial, and get them to upgrade to commercial.

1: [http://hstore.cs.brown.edu/publications/](http://hstore.cs.brown.edu/publications/)

</comment><comment><USER8> This post is all about the failings of version 6.3 but it buries the lede:

 _Version 6.4 includes fixes for all the issues discussed here: stale reads, dirty reads, lost updates (due to both partition detection races and invalid recovery plans), and read-only transaction reordering are all fixed, plus several incidental bugs the VoltDB team identified. After 6.4, VoltDB plans to introduce per-session and per-request isolation levels for users who prefer weaker isolation guarantees in exchange for improved latency. VoltDB's pre-6.4 development builds have now passed all the original Jepsen tests, as well as more aggressive elaborations on their themes. Version 6.4 appears to provide strong serializability: the strongest safety invariant of any system we've tested thus far. This is not a guarantee of correctness: Jepsen can only demonstrate faults, not their absence. However, I am confident that the scenarios we identified in these tests have been resolved. VoltDB has also expanded their internal test suite to replicate Jepsen's findings, which should help prevent regressions._

I read the top part and thought 'oh, another system that fails to meet their claims' but it's pretty impressive that they did the work to fix it. Nice job.

</comment><comment><USER3> delightful read for the inquisitive mind. do yourself a favor and consume this piece of technology writing at its best.

</comment><comment><USER9> [offtopic] May I know what was used to build those handwritten-but-not-really font in images? Any program or app that allows uses multiple glyphs for the same character?

</comment><comment><USER10> This is good to know.</comment>


The Thanksgiving Reader - <AUTHOR> https://thethanksgivingreader.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> We read selections around our Thanksgiving dinner table last year and really enjoyed the experience. It really pulled everyone into the experience of gratitude, even the children.</comment>


Scott Adams' startup idea: Hole Digger - <AUTHOR> http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/08/holes.html

<comment><USER2> Reading the comments here, I don't think the commenters are fully grasping Adams' point. Especially interesting is his desire that the hole-digging robots be self-replicating, so as to allow for ever greater numbers of replacements, lower costs, and so on. It reminds me of a post I read regarding the feasibility of space colonization written by an engineer who went on and on about the "long tail" of industrial production -- basically, there are so many thousands of parts in any sufficiently complicated piece of technology that there are whole billion-dollar industries employing thousands of people just to create a subset of the required components. Cars are a perfect example, although the idea has implications for many technologies we use (computers, anyone?). An interesting approach to this problem (I read about it in Make magazine) is the RepRap Project, at <http://reprap.org>. They are trying to solve the "long tail" manufacturing problem by creating an inexpensive machine that can be used to build almost anything, including copies of itself. Perhaps something like this will lead to the future Adams is hoping for...

</comment><comment><USER3> When I saw this title, I expected the post to be about enterprise software. How, instead of buying and installing enterprise software that costs millions and never works, an entrepreneur could just offer to dig them into a hole for a third of the price.

But surprisingly, Scott Adams actually meant real, genuine, physical holes.

</comment><comment><USER4> If I could license a hole digger, the first thing I would do is connect LA to New York the short way. If I'm really lucky they will have invented a room temperature superconductor by then so my now nearly frictionless train can fall across the country at break-neck speed with near zero energy expenditure.

</comment><comment><USER5> give me 2 ounces of whatever he's smoking...

seriously ... hole diggers? are you serious?!?

<comment><USER6> I would, but it grows deep underground...</comment></comment>


Show HN: Pigeon – React Query for SwiftUI (and UIKit) - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/fmo91/Pigeon <comment><AUTHOR> Hi everybody! This is a side project I've been working on during the last couple of week. I'd appreciate a lot if you could give me some feedback. Thanks!</comment>


Show HN: A chat app built for AMAs - <AUTHOR> http://geniushub.com/boris <comment><USER2> Absolutely awesome platform. I jumped on when I saw I could chat with Jason Fried, which was a great experience being able to interact with and ask questions I have always wanted answered around startups and culture.

Can't wait for the next one with Boris from TNW.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm a frequent redditor who loves the idea of AMAs. This is a great idea that would really help broaden the audience that tends to miss the opportunity to talk to these people.

I really look forward to what's next!

</comment><comment><USER4> It was great to be able to directly ask questions to Jason Fried. I know we can not make any suggestions but i'd love to see Joel Spolsky in your list anytime soon :) Looking forward to next session..

</comment><comment><USER5> I also attended the AMA with Jason Fried and it was quite interactive compared to other AMA apps. The names on the list also seems really exciting.

</comment><comment><USER6> It looks nice to have well structured AMA apps. I wish they will post questions and answers after the sessions.

</comment><comment><USER7> I attended the one with Jason Fried which was really nice – easy to use! Looking forward to the next AMAs.</comment>


YC startup Xobni launches beta at TechCrunch 40 - <AUTHOR> http://www.xobni.com/blog/2007/09/18/xobni-launches-invitation-only-beta-at-techcrunch-40/ <comment><USER2> I have been running it all day today and want to share my experience and thoughts.

First, our company is about 60 people. And every person I click on is "connected" to everybody, I suppose simply because at some point he or she emailed to the entire company. That makes the entire panel kind of useless.

Same happens to "Previous Conversations with Joe" panel: it contains a bunch of emails most of them I did not even read, because they were announcements and both of us happened to be on the list.

This is a general problem a lot of corporate email users face: we get tons of shit. You are tired of reading it all, because most of the time it is not relevant to you. Stupid announcements about stupid meetings, garage parking crap, financial results and what not. I only want to focus emails that were sent to me or maybe to me plus 1-3 other people. Everything else (well... in my case) is considered to be noise.

<comment><USER3> Good feedback. We do sort the connected people by how connected we think they are. We're also exploring more advanced ways to rank connections, as well as bringing you the conversations you actually care about.

Please keep in touch with us and let us know what else you need! We made our platform just to develop the stuff you are asking for. As our first beta stabilizes we will be integrating more features and improvements (especially w.r.t. culling the cruft).

This beta is really just the first step in our mission, to get feedback on something that is in the hands of real users.

<comment><USER2> Sure will do. By the way I should have mentioned things I loved :-) "Previous conversations" panel is very useful even though it has a bit too much noise in it. Connected people started to make sense a bit later (because of your sorting) - all hardware guys are at the bottom of that list: the top 10 are software/HR people. HR got there because of the company-wide announcements, I suppose.

"Previously attached documents" panel is priceless. And, finally, your search is the bomb: just don't over complicate it later on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Thanks Xobni. I always felt outlook was broken. I hated using it. The search is terrible and finding email address and phone numbers is a pain. Being that I am forced to use outlook at work, I was really excited to try out Xobni. I installed it as soon as I could download it.

I found the search amazing and email address information was very helpful. For example phone numbers are easier to find now.

Though, the social features seem elaborate, unnecessary and bulky. I am not interested in that right now. Maybe I'll find it useful later on.

Overall, great product. fast, effective, and useful. Keep up the good work!

</comment><comment><USER3> To shed some light on our strategy for Xobni Insight:

What we've really been working on is a general platform for aggregating communication data (and on your machine, not ours!). The current features you see in Xobni are just a few ideas implemented on top of our platform. We will do more.

We say it's beta for a reason (this is not going to be gmail-esque "it's always beta"), because we plan to add many fixes/features/platforms as we learn more about the needs of our (hopefully) growing user base. We really appreciate feedback, whether it is a problem report (firstname.lastname@example.com) or a new feature idea (email@example.com).

Thanks for sticking with us everyone!

</comment><comment><USER5> That is a really awesome looking product. I wonder why they built it as an Outlook extension though. With everyone's focus on web applications I'm interested to hear why they felt an outlook add-in was the way to go.

<comment><USER6> Their investors use Outlook... Xobni is solidly targeted at the enterprise.

<comment><USER7> Not all of their investors use Outlook :)

<comment><USER6> Alright then! Think it'll be a while until we get a Gmail version?

<comment><USER8> I believe they're headed in that direction -- the sooner, the better!

<comment><USER9> Hook up your GMail to Outlook :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Good start..but IMHO it is a number of features away from being a must have..Somethings I would like to see:

1\. Some of my friends email me with multiple addresses, there should be a way to merge them into one person

2\. I should be able to click on a converstion and delete the entire thread

3\. I should be able to sort my contacts by rank

I really like the scheduling thing..probably not hard to implement but very useful. Can I manually connect people?

Please don't take my views too seriously, afterall I have only used the product for 1 day.

</comment><comment><USER11> I give Microsoft 1 year or until the next release of Outlook Professional. By that time they will either buy Xobni or copy the functionality.

On a related note, you can see Bill Gates as one of the contacts of the test guy in the video.

<comment><USER7> You may be overestimating their speed. MS has very long cycles. If the features aren't already being developed, then they are unlikely to appear for a long time. Meanwhile, Xobni will keep getting better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> wow! i looked at the demo for the first time and i can see nothing useful or interesting about xobni.

this project has raised millions in funding?

a plugin that adds some functions to outlook? this project is as doomed as a project can be.

next in line:

etirovaf : a browser plugin that lets you search your bookmarks

rabksat : a plugin that displays all your applications right on the desktop

nwodtuhs : the easy power-off button - power off as its meant to be

<comment><USER2> I can't even begin to explain how stupid you look by bashing something you obviously _have not even tried_ to use.

Do you have any idea how much time an average Joe spends in front of Outlook? It is easily 2nd most popular (or should I say 'used'?) application after web browser.

<comment><USER12> "bashing something you obviously have not even tried"

Yeah, just like heroin, regular work and sex with old people.

Have you even tried bashing things you didnt try or did you just do, what you condemn?

<comment><USER13> There are a bunch of old people (relatively speaking) that would disagree with #3.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> What you're doing seems to make sense. If this becomes popular, microsoft could conceivably buy it.

I've just been using it for a bit, and there's one thing I find disconcerting. Let's say I click on "Joe Blow", and then I see "Conversations with Joe (150)". Okay, so I look at these "conversations"...now, maybe other companies are different, but as soon as you get more than a few people in an office, the bulk of the emails have 20 people in the To: [] section. Thus, if Jane Doe sends 20 people an email, among whom was me and Joe Blow, then all of a sudden there's a "Conversation" between me and Joe.

Not the case.

Because of that, the tool seems to add quite a bit of noise. Maybe make an option for "Types of conversation", "From Joe to me", and "From Me to Joe".

</comment><comment><USER15> Xobni beta users - if Xobni makes you happy, please help us out by voting all 5's at <http://www.techcrunch40.com/2007/presenter.php?presenter=27>

We really appreciate your support

</comment><comment><USER2> Xobni guys, I have been very curious about what you were doing.

I just installed it at work. Awesome! My email (actually, Outlook) does suck less now. I can finally search! ... which I don't need to do much anymore since most of the stuff I need automatically shows on the right.

I hope you do well. I hate email so much that personally need you to stay alive to help me deal with it :-)

</comment><comment><USER16> Here's a company that is building something users want, and has a better chance of making money from its users than all those _web2.0_ companies.

Enterprise might not be sexy, but is sure pays the bills!

</comment><comment><USER17> I was a Xobni-skeptic but I'm not to proud to reverse my opinion. Things are looking up in Xobniville. Congratulations.

</comment><comment><USER18> Why do email analytics matter? Why does it matter how many emails I sent/received from a given person?

<comment><USER19> It probably doesn't. What matters more is how you use email. I recommend GTD method (after personally trying half a dozen methods, GTD works the best). If you're on a Mac, try <http://indev.ca/MailTags.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I like that it seems to focus a lot on usability, ie giving people what they need most. I only wonder about the quote from the article: "a huge number of people who feel overwhelmed and frustrated by an ever expanding inbox". If that is the case, I wonder if technology is the right approach to solve it. Maybe if the Inbox is overflowing, something else is going wrong (messed up processes etc.). Especially if it is a trend that continues, even with tools like Xobni the information processing capabilities of the human brain can only scale so much.

</comment><comment><USER21> Looks great!

So, would the Hollywood Pitch be: Gmail features for Outlook et al?

</comment><comment><USER22> Pretty cool, guys. Any future plans for integration for Exchange? For example, if I click "Schedule time with (person)" and that person is inside my company, I might expect to have the Outlook "New Meeting Request" window open. The existing functionality is great for non-Exchange users, though.

</comment><comment><USER23> I am one of the many forced to use outlook for work. However, everyone I've interacted with uses web Outlook, not the installed client, myself included. Am I right that Insight does not work on the web version?

If so I might actually consider installing Outlook on my laptop just to get it, which is saying something. I would much rather not have to guess which page Ivanov is in my entire past history of alphabetized-by-sender messages.

</comment><comment><USER24> I don't get it personally. What problem does it solve? How is it better than gmail? Why do I need it?

Listing "It extracts phone numbers" as a feature seemed to be scraping the barrel a bit to me. Gmail extracts loads of things. Heck it even recognizes parcel tracking numbers and provides a link to track them afaik.

Am I right in thinking it plugs into outlook express? eugh eugh and eugh.

<comment><USER24> I forgot to say desktop email is pretty much dead or soon will be. Who uses a desktop email client these days?

<comment><USER25> you will need to come out of silicon valley to get that answer - way more people (at least in the enterprise) use desktop email than web email ...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Saw the demo video (I don't use Outlook, so I can't try the beta). It looks pretty cool. I may yet end up eating my words...

</comment><comment><USER27> i think it looks sweet. i was just thinking about how long it will be until they get bought...then i was thinking about who would buy them. anyone but microsoft? i'm guessing they will try to roll out for other email clients though? then who? interesting to think about...

</comment><comment><USER28> Ok, I'm sold. Where do I get a referral code?

</comment><comment><USER29> Looks like we have a winner. Best!

</comment><comment><USER30> congrats guys! looking good.

</comment><comment><USER31> When can I have the greasemonkey version? The thunderbird version?

</comment><comment><USER32> What language is it written in?

<comment><USER33> looks like C# from their website

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> how do i get an invite code other than signing up for a waiting list ?</comment>


Thoughts on Jack Dorsey, by Steve Jobs - <AUTHOR> http://stevejobsspirit.tumblr.com/post/29544010983/thoughts-on-jack

<comment><USER2> First thing that came to my mind was someone has too much time on their hands...

</comment><comment><USER3> So true.</comment>


Facebook's Email-Harvesting Practice Is Under Investigation in N.Y. - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-25/n-y-opens-investigation-into-facebook-s-email-harvesting <comment><USER2> I'm glad the attorney general is getting involved. We need to start charging Facebook execs for these flagrant privacy violations. They're being fined 3 _billion_ dollars for legal expenses relating to an FTC inquiry… and their stock price went _up_ by 8% [1].

The market just does not care; it's time regulators and law enforcement started to.

[1] [https://www.barrons.com/articles/facebook-stock-is-up- becaus...](https://www.barrons.com/articles/facebook-stock-is-up-because-its- earnings-report-was-mostly-positive-51556138491)

<comment><USER3> Not just execs, I hope. The engineers who wrote the code and managers who told them to do it should also face justice.

<comment><USER4> That would require all developers to become lawyers so they can make sure everything they are being asked to do is legal.

<comment><USER5> What's wrong with introspection about what you're doing on an ethical level? There's no legal standard involved so you don't have to be a lawyer, just a bit more thoughtful.

<comment><USER4> The law isn't just ethics. Companies have whole legal teams because laws are so complex. Should a developer be responsible because the cookie banner they implemented wasn't compliant with the laws of 100 countries even though the legal team already told them it was ok?

<comment><USER6> > Should a developer be responsible because the cookie banner they implemented > wasn't compliant with the laws of 100 countries even though the legal team > already told them it was ok?

Yes. 100%. "I was just following orders" is not a valid excuse, ever - Nuremberg is the obvious extreme example, but it's true everywhere.

<comment><USER7> In fact, "I was just following orders" often is a valid excuse. It didn't work at Nuremberg _because_ it was an extreme example. The orders there were to do things that could not even conceivably be legal, so those who carried them out were considered to have knowingly acted illegally.

When the orders are to do something that is plausibly legal, and you have good reason to believe that it is in fact so, "I was just following orders" will probably work in most jurisdictions.

<comment><USER8> Iff they have confirmation from their product lead that what they're doing is perfectly legal and it isn't obviously illegal, I agree that there's no liability.

If it's either obviously illegal or it's clearly at least dodgy and they didn't get explicit confirmation from the project lead, "following orders" is not a valid excuse.

To take the VW case as an example: if your project lead tells you to implement a way to recognise test conditions and adjust the performance to reduce emissions, that is dodgy af and you should at least get confirmation that this isn't illegal (i.e. that it's not intended to cheat on certifications but maybe just for certain internal testing scenarios). In the end the entire chain of command that led to this being implemented is guilty, but if the person implementing that behavior knew what they were doing was illegal or at least suspect and they didn't get confirmation, they're still guilty.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Did anything happen regarding LinkedIn's email harvesting from before when Microsoft bought it? I feel like that was far worse than Facebook's.

<comment><AUTHOR> They settled a class action lawsuite I think, but if I remember there was some form of consent involved that emails will be leveraged (probably not obvious either, and shouldn't be done). In Facebook's case it has clearly been misleading, possibly intentionally multiple times now (email, phone numbers,...).

<comment><USER10> I didn't like it (which is why they didn't get my damned password), but they were pretty open about what they planned to do with your credentials.

The problem isn't how open they are, it's that most people don't understand what the harvesting means. Facebook could have asked for the sacrifice of the firstborn and people would have snapped it up on the prospect of a few likes on their fake online alterego. It's human nature and the HN echo chamber exists far outside that normalcy. Most people don't "get it" (through no fault of their own) and that's why it's dangerous [edit] and effective.

<comment><USER11> >I didn't like it (which is why they didn't get my damned password), but they were pretty open about what they planned to do with your credentials.

From what I read FB had a "bug" where the feature was not removed properly, so the text about harvesting was removed but by "mistake" the harvesting code was left running.

<comment><USER8> I think what happened was that they had an "import friends from your email contacts" feature in the past and the code was reused for "verify your identity via email" but they didn't realise the code would still also upload the email contacts.

At least that's the story I've heard about why this was an "honest mistake".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Why is "we will never ask for your passwords at any time" not a thing anymore? What Facebook did was phishing, basically. With the password Facebook could be doing a lot more rather than just "upload contacts". Imagine those passwords landing (or accidentally leaking) into the hands of third-party services Facebook is working with! On the user end, what happened to "never ever give away your passwords"? I mean, that's why spear-phishing is so successful, because naïve people give away their passwords in the hopes that this darn annoying login-screen goes away.

<comment><USER13> Asking for passwords has been an industry standard for a decade or more. Bad security practice? Yes IMO but companies have been getting away with it.

Besides Facebook I can think of LinkedIn and Mint as two big examples of SaaS that ask for 3rd party passwords. Mint is even getting your banking information, whereas LinkedIn and Facebook were just doing contact import.

And of course before the era of SaaS giving applications passwords was normal, e.g. putting your email passwords into an email client like Eudora or Thunderbird. It only really becomes questionable in SaaS where the passwords inevitably end up on a server somewhere subject to a data breach, or, in Facebook's case, misuse by another piece of its own software.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is probably the third investigation against FB this week. How do we still continue trusting it with our personal data? I have been equally stupid in sharing freely on FB/Instagram, not anymore.

<comment> Funes- What about WhatsApp? Virtually no one in my country--not even the elderly, who now broadly use the app as well--is willing to abandon it, no matter how its parent company is depicted. In fact, last time I checked, around 75% of _all_ population use the app. I don't, and thus I'm paying the price socially-- mentally, I'm better off; it comes without saying.

<comment><USER15> Same - I don't really speak to some people anymore because I moved away from WhatsApp. The one's I do really want to speak to (family) have installed both apps now, simply because I messaged the group saying "I'll be moving away from WhatsApp - you can reach me through text, calling, and telegram" and just left/uninstalled WhatsApp. It can be that simple.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The article claims the practice "was uncovered by Business Insider last week", implying FB was being sneaky about it. But if you look at the Business Insider article ([https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook- uploaded-1-5-millio...](https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook- uploaded-1-5-million-users-email-contacts-without-permission-2019-4)), you'll see this:

> A Facebook spokesperson said before May 2016, it offered an option to verify > a user's account using their email password and voluntarily upload their > contacts at the same time. However, they said, the company changed the > feature, and the text informing users that their contacts would be uploaded > was deleted — but the underlying functionality was not.

> "Last month we stopped offering email password verification as an option for > people verifying their account when signing up for Facebook for the first > time. When we looked into the steps people were going through to verify > their accounts we found that in some cases people's email contacts were also > unintentionally uploaded to Facebook when they created their account"

so Facebook discovered this bug in an audit of its code, fixed it, and planned to notify everyone who was impacted.

<comment><AUTHOR> Can we please stop calling these privacy violations bugs? It sounds like a benign thing. These are not bugs anymore. It's unauthorized access to records of millions, and Facebook is the one who performed the violation.

I can give a dog walker or cleaning personel the keys to my apartment, still if they steal stuff and I have evidence they will be prosecuted. It's not a bug that they don't have business ethics.

<comment><USER17> So a hacker took all of Equifax's data including your SSNs, address, names, DOB etc. By your analogy, all of Equifax engineers should be in jail right now!

BTW, just in case you are unaware, Equifax got away with this hack with zero fines in US.

<comment><AUTHOR> Your are mixing things up.... In this situation the hacker is Facebook.

Most of the other Facebook data breaches where they didn't secure data accordingly would compare more to what you refer to.

This case is different though as Facebook performed unauthorized actions on email accounts, basically breaking in.

<comment><USER17> I am making a case for the OP's comment that Facebook may have made a genuine mistake by introducing this bug - like they literally called out in their statement.

A bug is a bug. Whether it allows a hacker to sneak in to steal all your data or whether it allows a company to collect data it wasn't supposed to (as in this case Facebook specifically mentioned that it didn't turn off the feature though it intended to).

<comment><USER18> > in this case Facebook specifically mentioned that it didn't turn off the > feature though it intended to

What you are describing here is in fact a lack of action, or a lack of change policy (to cause such action). That's not a bug. A bug is unintentional behaviour of some code, not some folk who've said they'll do something, but then don't.

And as for whether the original behaviour is/was a bug is also a point of contention too: that's a lot of willfully bad behaviour that's got chained together somehow to do what it did, then reviewed, signed off, and deployed — that's quite some 'accident' — I write code, and to me this whole thing just smells of a cover-up (by FB calling this a 'bug', when it very much looks to be otherwise).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Are there screenshots or something of this "asking for email password" thing the article talks about? I feel like anyone who sees a facebook page asking for their email password should already feel a bit warned and skeptical. I had personally never seen such a thing until 3 years ago when I deactivated my account. Is this a new thing?

<comment><USER16> The Business Insider article has this: [https://amp.businessinsider.com/images/5ca400acc6cc5023740b5...](https://amp.businessinsider.com/images/5ca400acc6cc5023740b5924-1920-1014.jpg)

[https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook- uploaded-1-5-millio...](https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook- uploaded-1-5-million-users-email-contacts-without-permission-2019-4)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> So this relates to their practice of ransacking all your email contacts without your consent, engaging in data theft as they upload them and analyze them for subsequent actions. And of course Linked In is also notorious for engaging in this criminal vile privacy raping practice.

I remember maybe 8 years ago it was here on HN that a company was found to be doing this and it was shocking to some. But an executive of that company showed up here and said that "everybody does it" and it's "standard practice" and for some years after that anyone complaining about the practice here was not only downvoted but sometimes warned by our glorious compromised moderators.

In my opinion the practice of contact list ransacking should never be allowed, is clearly unethical, and anyone defending it is an enemy of humanity who should be locked away in order to protect society.

<comment><USER21> LinkedIn is notorious for this. The app still asks for contact access all the time.

<comment><USER22> Off topic, but I have to ask - what do you use the app for? In my head LinkedIn is a 'work' thing so I only use it on my laptop.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Facebook stock is going up regardless of so many scandals.

</comment><comment><USER24> uh oh an investigation! as meaningful as the Charter Spectrum one I imagine.

[https://eu.democratandchronicle.com/story/news/politics/alba...](https://eu.democratandchronicle.com/story/news/politics/albany/2019/04/19/what- means-consumer-charter-spectrum-new-york-reach-deal/3523198002/)

TLDR Scammed consumers twice, gets to keep doing what it was doing.

"Charter and the Department believe that this action is an important step forward" indeed

</comment><comment><USER25> just.stop.using.facebook

<comment><USER26> Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to Hacker News?

<comment><USER25> what are you some kind of fascist

<comment><USER26> Ok, since you don't seem to want to use this site as intended, I've banned the account. If that changes, you're welcome to email us at email@example.com. We're happy to unban anyone who gives us reason to believe they'll follow the site guidelines in the future.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Please investigate 'everyone' for this.

</comment><comment><USER17> This might have been an honest mistake. To do this for 1.5M users only when Facebook's user-base runs into billions might indicate that.

<comment><USER18> > To do this for 1.5M users only when Facebook's user-base runs into billions

Well, put like that, it sounds just like they did it as a planned A/B test strategy (like they do to trial other features) — and, personally, I believe this to be the case.

Deploying such code/functionality is hardly an accident/bug.</comment></comment>


If You Think Electric Cars Will Save the Planet, Think Again - <AUTHOR> https://fortune.com/2017/11/15/electric-cars-climate-change-iea/ <comment><USER2> > Today, around 2 million of a total 1 billion vehicles on the planet run on > electric or hybrid engines. The IEA expects that number to rise to 50 > million by 2025, and to 280 million by 2040, as countries everywhere > encourage their drivers to make the change to e-mobility. That may sound > like a lot, but the problem is that that number of cars on the road will > have doubled by then to 2 billion. According to Laura Cozzi, the head of the > IEA's energy demand directorate,

The problem with that is governments aren't going to allow another billion gasoline powered cars to be manufactured. Not with global warming and peak oil.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Reader mode shows gets around paywall for me.</comment>


T. Boone Pickens thinks water is the new oil. - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_25/b4089040017753.htm

<comment><USER2> He is absolutely right. The US should leverage the Great Lakes, Panama, Gatun.

<comment><USER3> The trouble with "leveraging" the Great Lakes is that all but Lake Michigan are shared with Canada. Lake Ontario, for example, is pretty much split down the middle. 9+ million Canadians rely on that lake as cities like Toronto, Hamilton, Kingston and Mississauga are all on the lake. Would Canadians sit still while the US started draining off a resource so critical as their water?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I keep hearing this argument about water scarcity, but is it true that water is scarce? or clean water is scarce.

Unlike oil, populations are concentrated around water. With improvements in technology to clean and desalinate water, would this market for water still exist?

Oil is limited in quantity, isn't cycled by the environment quickly and must be shipped from the area where it is retrieved to where it is to be used.

To me, this means that clean water technology has huge value, but that water that is already clean is less valuable.

</comment><comment><USER5> Interesting.

He creates a new government entity, wins right for eminent domain, and can issue tax-free bonds.

That article could be a part of any book on world domination.</comment>


Ask HN: Are there any open-source bots that can "write" news articles using AI? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Here's a class about this subject (looks pretty barebones, though): [https://github.com/mattwaite/JOUR491-Storybots](https://github.com/mattwaite/JOUR491-Storybots)

Overall, doesn't look like there's much out there beyond (relatively) simplistic Twitter bots (e.g. [https://github.com/xdamman/ReplayLastGoal](https://github.com/xdamman/ReplayLastGoal) or [http://niemanlab.github.io/openfuego/](http://niemanlab.github.io/openfuego/)).</comment>


Fluffy Little Rovers Are an Effective, Adorable Way of Monitoring Penguins - <AUTHOR> http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/diy/fluffy-little-rovers-are-an-effective-adorable-way-of-monitoring-penguins#.VFemIk6WiSg.hackernews <comment><USER2> This is awesome but the pictures of the rover with the penguin chick on it got me wandering. Do animals, in this case penguins specifically, have their own version of the Uncanny Valley [0]? For an animal that does I'd imagine that this could actually have a measurable negative impact on their mood. Based on the information in the article it sounds like the penguins were OK with these rovers running around. But I wonder if they'd be even calmer if they looked just a tab bit more, or less, like another penguin to them.

[0] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley)

<comment><USER3> I suspect that's true. The article mentions the birds even tried talking to one of the rovers ... I suspect the researchers want to ensure the rover appears (visually and behaviorally) harmless, but at the same time also doesn't appear to be something worth attacking.

<comment> sjm-lbm I couldn't find a mention of this in the IEEE article, but a story on NPR on this topic this morning specifically mentioned that the penguins "sang to it and seemed disappointed that the rover wouldn't peep."[1] So, yes, it looks like the penguins did hit a level where they might have been (at least) confused about what was happening.

[1]: [http://www.npr.org/2014/11/03/361069792/scientists-find- snea...](http://www.npr.org/2014/11/03/361069792/scientists-find-sneaky-way- to-check-penguins-vital-signs)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Love the story! Interestingly, the fragment identifier has .hackernews in it... at first I thought that the poster was doing their analytics team a nice favor by adding it in, but turns out spectruman is either a bot or a media account for IEEE Spectrum (look at his post history). I know Reddit has rather strict policies for this type of account, not sure what HN's policies are. Either way, mods, please don't remove this story, or I'll just repost it as an interested third party and the comments will be lost :(

</comment><comment><USER5> Wtf, the Penguin in the second photo has a wrist watch around his wing?

<comment><USER6> From the paragraph above the photo:

> The researchers went about this by sneaking up on a nesting penguin from > behind, covering its eyes, and sticking a cardio-frequency monitor on its > back and putting the receiver (a watch-like device) around its flipper.

<comment><USER7> Add that to the list of jobs no one told me about in grade 11 Careers class.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The PBS documentary series Nature has a really awesome episode about penguins using this technology. Really amazing footage.

Not sure if the episode is streamable anywhere, but here is the site: [http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/category/episodes/by- animal/p...](http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/category/episodes/by- animal/penguin/)

</comment><comment><USER9> This is amazing! I would love to see the rover just operate autonomously, allowing the human to stay FAR away. It could seek out the tags and stamp the data while not bumping into penguins or generally not annoying them!</comment>


Where/how to find accurate human' 3D model? - <AUTHOR> By accurate I don't mean artistic 3D models or done by photogrammetry. I mean 3d models possibly built from CT scans or MRI scans.<p>Any sources? <comment><USER2> starting point: Visible human project [0]

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visible_Human_Project](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visible_Human_Project)</comment>


Proof that Snapchat is Facebook's biggest threat yet - <AUTHOR> http://recode.net/2016/04/01/facebook-snapchat-reach-engagement-comscore-charts/ <comment><USER2> Weak article. All it says is that Snapchat is growing across demos and needs to find a biz model.</comment>


Cloud-Native Technologies for Career? - <AUTHOR> Are there many companies out there that are looking for people with expertise in cloud-native technologies? If so, are the roles limited to people with many years of experience? I am a junior software dev who has some experience with cloud-native technologies and want to do more projects in this area. My only concern is, are companies going to hire a junior software-dev who has experience with cloud-native technologies? <comment><USER2> Cloud native technologies can mean a lot of things, what do you have experience with?

There are certain technology skills that are definitely highly sought after, Kubernetes and DevOps as one example. Knowledge of these is a leg up at any developer class level.</comment>


The future of embedded systems? - <AUTHOR>

So what is the future of embedded systems? Computers get faster so where are we in 10 years? Just use Linux code in some high level language and you are done, no need for using resources sparsely because we will have a lot of them? But then, realtime will still be a problem in garbage-collected languages?
On the other hand, new frontiers will open up, there will always be applications where you want to go even smaller and then you still want to use resoruces sparsely.
Is it a good choice for an engineering student to get into embedded systems today ? <comment><USER2> I truly believe that embedded system is going to be here for the foreseeable future, at least until a totally new paradigm comes online.

Looking at the current landscape of systems, the majority of electronics these days are still an embedded system of sorts. Even your ubiquitous mobile phone is an embedded system, and it uses a variant of embedded Linux. For smaller system, there are plenty of other options where embedded knowledge would be extremely useful.

A good choice for an engineering student? well, only the engineering student can answer that as there are many reasons for pursuing that engineering discipline.</comment>


Show HN: Jukebox, a music player for Dropbox for iOS - <AUTHOR> https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/jukebox-offline-music-player/id1072583255 <comment><USER2> A bit of an aside, but is anyone aware of a cloud player (for onedrive or google drive ideally) that supports audiobooks well? I'm using the onedrive app at the moment but it has a tendency to forget your progress which leads to a lot of manual scrubbing to find your place.

</comment><comment><USER3> Exactly what I need, exactly when I need it! I'm learning French and I have the Michel Thomas audio files in Dropbox. Turns out playing them via the Dropbox app is a horrid experience.

Downloading now. Thanks, Justin!

</comment><comment><USER4> Dropbox should support music features in their iOS app, natively. This is a feature I have wanted from them for a long time. Well done.

<comment><USER5> I don't think it will ever happen. They are too scared of the labels.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Nice! One question: You seem to have all free apps without in-app purchases (and ads?). How do you plan to monetize?

<comment><USER7> Must all products be made for monetization?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is something that I needed, thanks a lot justin.

It'd be a nice improvement if you could display the length of each song next to it instead of the ººº icon.

</comment><comment><USER9> I was literally describing this idea to a friend whose sitting on the opposite side of the table like 5 minutes ago - insane timing there mate. Lovely! I need this so much!

</comment><comment><USER10> Very nice! Can you do the same for Google Drive, please? I would love to be able to play all the music I have in it; I am sure I am not alone.

<comment><USER11> If you are already in the Google domain, you can use Google Music. I have uploaded a few hundred songs to it and so far it's been easy to use. I think free accounts can store 50,000 songs on it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is nice. Do you use a pod or anything for that player view, or is it entirely custom (incl icons)?</comment>


Ask HN: What VPN service do you use? - <AUTHOR> Hi everyone,
I think the moment has arrived, I will start to use a VPN from now on, bit first I will have to decide which VPN provider I should use and I thought I could get some help from someone with experience.
What service do you use ? What do you recommend ? Considering privacy, pricing and speed ?
From a quick search I came across https://www.tunnelbear.com/ and https://www.expressvpn.com/ and they both seem nice options, although a little bit pricey. <comment><USER2> Have a look at [https://thatoneprivacysite.net/vpn- section/](https://thatoneprivacysite.net/vpn-section/) to get a detailed comparison chart of many different providers.

Personally, I can recommend IVPN.</comment>


Show HN: Real-Time Collaborative Watercolor Painting Using Twitch - <AUTHOR> https://www.instapainting.com/twitch-paints <comment><USER2> Neat! I could probably do something similar with my 3D printer, although I'd make it more friendly - instead of using coordinates (i.e MOVE X0 Y0 Z0) I'd probably just do something like MOVE LEFT and set it to a fixed amount.

I'd want it to try and steer the commands towards actual creation, so I'd make a few commands for the printer like MAKE CIRCLE, MAKE SQUARE, MAKE LEFT LINE etc. and after each command, move the printer up one layer.

<comment> Syrup-tan I think it'd be cute to keep the absolute coordinate system, however create a simple web app which lets you point and click where you want it the brush go. For the Z coordinate, you could have a meter which goes up and down from 0-60 while you hold the mouse, and registers when you let go. (similar to many mini-game mechanics)

It could be done with the current Twitch stream in maybe 2-3 hours of dev work, thanks to Twitch using IRC for the chat backend.

Edit: s/coordinate system/absolute coordinate system/ s/but/however/

<comment><USER3> > create a simple web app which lets you point and click where you want it the > brush go

A lot of the "fun" and challenge from these TwitchPlaysPokemon / TwitchInstallsLinux type projects comes from using people's typing into Twitch chat as the only input.

Both of the projects I mentioned earlier would have been much easier with a custom UI outside of chat also but then it's not really a "TwitchDoesX" project.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> HA! Well, that's hilarious. I was just talking to @eliot at Hackaday supercon about making this with WaterColorBot and CNCserver at his suggestion, I guess if it's out there it's out there. Definitely a different setup than I would have done, but it seems like it might work.

Really though this is just asking for people to write interfaces and use twitch IRC chat as a terrible API. I'm forced to think that only when it's unpopular (but popular enough), anything resembling what a user intends will be created. At least in the end you're guaranteed to get art.

<comment><AUTHOR> What setup would you do?

Also, I was at hackaday too!

<comment><USER4> And joshu was too! Talked to him about drawing algos. He's too smart for his own good ;)

Oh I would probably do something along the lines of adding simple shapes (Circle x/y & radius, ETC), auto re-inking of last color for long lines... and who knows what else. I ran out of time to work on it.

<comment><USER5> That sounds ominous.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> streaming robots doing stuff... seems a big entertainment area in future. I could see a company that rents out 'teams' of robots/drones or whatever to subscriber groups and then these groups 'duke it out' or participate in whatever other contest remotely. The actual dangerous physical elements happening in some remote desert/warehouse and being streamed to the users/controllers.

<comment><USER7> There's a group in Waterloo called LabForge who set up actual physical lab experiments for undergrads to interact with over the internet. I think they may have pivoted since then, but there's a demo of it on YouTube:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uveI-8BrZ4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uveI-8BrZ4)

I'm with a robotics company, and we've also periodically toyed with setting up "robot playpen" where you could log in, pay by the hour, and run your algorithms or whatever on actual hardware. The reality is, though, that for a lot of the interesting problems in robotics (perception, mapping, localization), a recorded dataset is more than enough, and for the rest (controls, guidance), a sufficiently high-fidelity simulation is better for development anyway.

By the time you've made all those software investments, you probably own hardware anyway, so the total market for an "AWS of robots" is probably not really all that large.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> That was quick. I don't even have my robots back yet!

<comment><AUTHOR> It was already a week in planning when I told you, but hooking it up to twitch was relatively trivial.

<comment><USER5> yeah. i definitely thought about doing it with the whiteboard. i got distracted by the opencv stuff, but i am very happy with the results.

<comment><USER4> I'd love to implement your work in RoboPaint, might even be able to pull some color information to make portraits from black sharpie outline with your implementation and watercolor fill. I've completely failed at any attempts to make decent raster -> paint vector so far.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> fake-name Wanna take bets on how long some bored hacker with access to a botnet takes over and paints dickbutt?

<comment><USER8> I don't know if this already exists as a canonical rule of the Internet or not, but it seems like it ought to:

The more people involved in the creation of content, the more likely it is to have dicks somewhere in it.</comment></comment>


How to get a 10,000 points StackOverflow reputation - <AUTHOR> http://vladmihalcea.com/2015/01/16/how-to-get-a-10000-points-stackoverflow-reputation/ <comment><USER2> Well the most obvious way is to contribute to topics that most of the industry seems to work on, which is the frustrating truth.

For every ten thousand JavaScript questions worth 200 points each, there is a single well-thought-out answer on an obscure topic requiring a lot of knowledge and experience with a score of about 2.

What the system needs is a "difficulty" measure of some kind to encourage people to contribute across the board.</comment>