Americans have stopped using the Internet the way they used to - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2016/05/13/new-government-data-shows-a-staggering-number-of-americans-have-stopped-basic-online-activities/ <comment><USER2> I think this may be partly because the internet is becoming a lot less anonymous. There are lots of things that I would not mind discussing online, but which I really don't feel like putting into the public eye, or having related back to me. They're pretty bland, honestly, but for many of them they're not things I'd like to discuss. Hell, even recipes for pork are something I'd rather not have popping up in my strongly Jewish grandmother's news feed.

I'd imagine most people have things like this, from innocuous things that might just get them teased at the office, like an obsessive interest in historical reenactment, to embarrassing things like health problems, to even mildly illegal things like enjoying weed.

Paradoxically, at the same time, the internet is getting more private. Because everything is tied to a real world id, and people don't want to expose everything about themselves online, things are moving to private forums. Things like closed facebook groups for friends, instant messaging, etc. Personal websites that someone put up and made open to the world out of their own interest are getting harder and harder to find. Blogs seem to have killed them, and now even the blogs are dying.

And it really is getting harder to be anonymous, as far as I can tell. Most major email providers _really_ want some sort of information that ties your identity down, like a phone number. Same with a bunch of larger social networks. Forums seem to be dying slowly, and even there, often an email tied to a real phone number is needed.

<comment><USER3> It's harder but not impossible. An email can be on a domain with anonymized WHOIS and a burner phone paid for with cash bought at a place without surveillance cameras. Hell, I do that sometimes and I'm not even doing anything criminal.

<comment><USER2> That's kind of missing the point. For casual communities, it's easier to just not post.

I don't _care_ enough about posting that awesome recipe for brussel sprouts with bacon lardons to go through the effort of setting up a custom domain so I can sign up for an anonymized facebook account so that I don't have to worry if it will show up in my family member's news feeds. I barely care enough to tweak facebook settings to keep it hidden. I also don't necessarily want to share who I am, where I work, what my other hobbies are, and so on to the world, which means that in the absence of a good anonymous forum implies that I'd prefer to keep my posts restricted to a more private audience, so I don't necessarily feel like posting with my facebook account.

As the weakly anonymous communities are dying or shrinking, the separation of "who I am" and "what I do" makes it more difficult to share the interesting things I know publicly without exposing my real world identity.

Since I don't care much, the post doesn't happen, and I move on with my day. And the internet is a little bit poorer for it. I suspect that lots of little dyanmics and frictions like this are what's killing the 'old way Americans used the internet'.

It's theoretically possible to fight this. But for almost all casual content, the friction is just not worth overcoming.

<comment> Supi-lee Basically the internet is selecting for the people who are the opposite of you. Their voices, ideas and influence is being amplified. Unfortunate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Was just saying the other day how it sucks seeing the web change. It's like when musicians complain about the music industry being over produced and too commercialized. I remember back in the 90's how excited I was just by making links underline or change color (before CSS.) Thought it was the coolest thing ever. The web used to be a place to find people who shared the same interests and I feel that is no longer the case. Everything is hyper focused on metrics; likes, re-blogs, shares, comments, etc. It's pointless.

<comment><USER5> There are still pockets of resistance, specific forums that do not go away. The traffic have dwindled on some but still, there's enough. Others are thriving.

<comment><USER6> Same is true with music. There's a whole world of amazing music out there that never gets a second of radio play or mainstream exposure. Occasionally it shows up in movie and TV scores but that's as close as it gets.

Same goes for art, literature, etc. The great and ground breaking stuff is out there but you have to look for it.

There is and probably always will be a pop "matrix" and a "Zion" known to those who stray.

<comment><USER7> Honestly, even I was just thinking today the amount of garbage that has become radio today. Everyone just keep playing the same list of crappy songs by few artist, that I do not even understand why they are famous. Many times, when I switch the channel to escape a crappy song, the next one is also playing it. Once the same nikki manaj song was playing in 4 channels, that was scary.

I viewed radio as a medium to find new good songs and listen my favorite ones.

<comment><USER8> > Once the same nikki manaj song was playing in 4 channels, that was scary

I thought this too, until I realised that the 4 channels were actually broadcasting the same airing, albeit slightly out of sync.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> >Nearly one in two Internet users say privacy and security concerns have now stopped them from doing basic things online — such as posting to social networks, expressing opinions in forums or even buying things from websites, according to a new government survey released Friday.

Ha! I was asked to put in my email address before I could read the article. I almost didn't read it, but I put in a fake address and they let me through the gate.

<comment><USER10> usually just turning off JS fixes this

<comment><USER11> [Firefox's] Reader Mode also fixes this, though it does get confused and includes the "enter your email" text as if that were a part of the article, in this case.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> They've stopped because websites designed like the washingtonpost.com have made it insufferably annoying. Most of web used to be actually interesting and useful, now it's just a constant game to compete for marketing profiles and ad views.

</comment><comment><USER13> It helps that the web is now terrible. It used to be that when I typed in some band, movie, show, book, or piece of ephemera into Altavista, 50 sites would come up with 50 different voices commenting on it from 15 different directions. Now, 50 sites still come up, but they're all using the exact same anonymously-written copy.

Sometimes you get lucky and you can use Wikipedia to index into the Wayback Machine, and see a broken bit of the old web, hopefully with an unbroken link into another bit.

<comment><USER14> I think it's less that the web is terrible and more that the centralization of content to a few singular systems has made it very easy for junk content to be gamed to the top. There still is a grand amount of content out there but it does take significantly more digging to get to it.

Blogs for example are still striving very strongly, it's just that a lot of the content that you seem to desire (as I do as well) is buried past the first four pages of SEO items and various aggregation websites. It's like digging through strata of earth; for example finding good cooking blogs means you have dig through layers of Yummly, Cooks.com, Foodnetwork.com, and About.com search results. Then you have to drill through the various food labels such as Pillsbury or Kemps. Then you have to go through the chinese cloned sites that just scrape content and repost it along with thousands of ads. Finally, when you're down around the 20th results page, actual blogs start to pop up.

And exclusions in searches just aren't good enough. Every time you think you've excluded out the unwanted aggregate sites and food producer sites, you have thousands of auto-generated Chinese sites to prune through, or brands you've never heard of.

There is still great content out there after looking for it - the main methods of discovering this content has just been gamed and polluted. While Google, DDG, et. al. have taken steps to ensure that when you search for some content you get the most desirable result in a special pocket on the page, that's not the same as discovery.

<comment><USER13> One surprisingly simple way to break through all the SEO is through [https://millionshort.com/](https://millionshort.com/) which simply trashes the first million (or 100k, 10k, 1k, or 100) results.

<comment><USER14> This is a very nice website. Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I will sometimes stop myself from googling something I'm curious about. I imagine a situation where I become falsely accused of a crime and the search I'm about to make coincidentally incriminates me and is discovered with a subpoena.

<comment><USER16> You're being paranoid, that will never happen. Full stop.

I realize this attitude is unpopular around here, and tin-foil hat one- upsmanship is the name of the game, but seriously. Relax. You're over thinking it.

<comment><USER13> It has happened before, and will happen again. People will be rounded up en masse from lists generated by state intelligence organizations, interrogated, shot, and dumped into mass graves. It may not happen in the US any time soon, but what if you live in Saudi Arabia and the US shares your Google searches with them? How about Singapore? The West Bank? Indonesia? South Korea?

You offer no argument but your own comfortable middle-class security. Relax, you can probably get a job writing the software that makes the list. They'll never use it anyway, and shouldn't we keep an eye on those people?

<comment><USER16> That's a pretty manipulative pair of false comparisons, don't you think? To take them in order:

1 - search history of one person has strikingly little to do with mass "rounding up", that's almost always an ethnic/demographic thing

2 - OP isn't in any of those places. Context is important in these discussions, there are lots of things which are safe to do in the United States which are not safe in some of those places; should we stop speaking our minds as well? That's dangerous in all those places.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The article's premise implies that the trend is increasing - more people are worried about security online. But this isn't justified anywhere; there are no historical numbers.

I would find it more believable that people do more activities online now that actually require security, and aren't convinced it exists. This is a totally different problem than they think they are less secure than they were before. I doubt people find ecommerce and email less secure now than 10 years ago.

</comment><comment><USER18> When net started tons of people used to say how dumb of an idea it was to use credit cards on it and post information about themselves etc.

Was interesting to watch that opinion change and now change back.

<comment><USER19> I think: Those who predicted the danger, safely avoided it and warned people. Everyone figured these people were just naysayers and went ahead. Now they have experienced (perhaps second- or third-hand) the danger, they know that it's there.

The only thing is, it's a little too late now to backtrack entirely.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> The internet really should come with a warning, anything you say or do can and will be tracked and stored and used against you in a court of law (or guantanamo)

<comment><USER21> This used to be the case, particularly when submitting forms on non-HTTPS sites. Well, not the court-of-law and Gitmo bits, but that the information could be intercepted. Old Netscape browsers and such.

Not so much these days.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> The economic consequences of the chilling effect will have to be severe before they impress either lawmakers or internet companies. For the latter, there is too much riding on the monetisation strategies. And the race for the smartest exploitation of personal information is the new Wild West (or Gold Rush, if you will), only this time not confined by a limited amount of square mileage.

</comment><comment><USER23> > 26 percent of internet-using American households [self-reported in US Census > survey] avoided buying goods or services

The retail giant [Amazon] tallied $23 billion more in U.S. e-commerce sales in 2015 than 2014, the report found. [1]

The difference between reported behavior and actual behavior can be very large.

[1] [http://s831.us/229QeKz](http://s831.us/229QeKz)

<comment><USER13> I've purchased many things from Amazon, and I'm a member of Amazon Prime. I've purchased more items on Amazon this year than I did last year. I've also avoided buying goods and services on the internet because of internet surveillance. You seem to think that's not possible, likely, or common enough that a quarter of households would report it - because Amazon's sales have risen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I think the best way to be anonymous is to practice pseudo-anonymity and try doing sensitive-looking things ad nauseum until you do the actual anonymous activities for real. Similar to drills, or dry runs. Typically you don't want to do fully fledged Silk-Road type things if you haven't practiced selling lemonade out of the boot of your car at the seaside.

What you typically want to do is know your enemy and threat model. For example, when I got my first Android phone and naively downloaded all the apps I could find, I was super reckless and done some very sensitive things on the phone, and only when I plugged it into Wireshark and realized any number of beacons and analytics scripts running in the background did I stop using it entirely. I now vet all my apps before using them, and if possible, create my own ones where I know exactly what each line of code is doing and why.

In terms of threat modelling, I think things like TOR are sufficient enough to blackout the NSA as long as you're using it correctly and know of all the attacks (previous and current) which are used against TOR. What always annoys me is that people don't include the NSA in their threat model and make up stupid excuses not to use TOR, thereby downgrading the security of others and making the Internet a breeding ground for more spying.

I know TOR is not a silver bullet though, and there are many strategies to compliment TOR like compartmentalization. For example, separating work from play, using disposable email addresses, having no centralized e-mail account for ever single thing you do (a big problem that still hasn't been solved yet). And just general OS hardening. Using OSX over Windows, using disposable VMs (Think Qubes), and paying attention to the last mile of The Internet usually holds us in pretty good stead. Using crypto for everything, and locking shit down with 2FA are two other strategies entirely missing from vast swathes of Netizens too.

</comment><comment><USER25> Why are credit card fraud and identity theft so feared? Most often (always?), the bank/credit card company assumes the risk. The worst that will happen is you lose 1h of your time calling them.

My biggest problem with the internet today (like other people in this thread apparently) is that it's becoming quite hard to stay anonymous and having things tied to me is a risk I, most often than not, am not willing to take.

</comment><comment><USER26> +- 120.000 people is hardly representative of 320 million people... Is it?

</comment><comment><USER27> Bullshit.

People might be saying it, but it's obviously not true.

Commerce is continuing to rise.

Social media is continuing to spread across different mediums.

Old people who were afraid or couldn't use the net are dying and new young people are coming into the fold.

People are now more aware of privacy and security because they are using all the things so much.

<comment><USER28> Thank you. For a minute, I thought I had wandered into an old folks home and my shins can't take any canings.

What I'm seeing here is a bunch of people afraid and resentful of change: "it ain't like it used to be". Most of the things y'all are griping about were and are inevitable because it's not just the nerds anymore.

Why are y'all even in tech?

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> One change is paywalls.</comment>


Intel quietly launches 15TB Ruler SSDs - <AUTHOR> https://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-quietly-launches-153tb-ruler-ssds <comment><USER2> You can fit 32 of these in an 1U Unit. [1], That is nearly half a petabyte of Storage in 1U. Or 20PB per full size rack.

Or you would need 50 Rack per Blackblaze. ( Excluding Redundancy of course )

They are still built on 64-Layer TLC 3D NAND, and Samsung / Sk Hynix / Toshiba has been been sampling 128-Layer TLC 3D NAND since last year. That is a potential of Petabyte of Storage per Unit, and 40PB per Rack.

Personally I just want lower cost per GB even if it is at the expense of speed ( I would be limited by my 1Gbps Ethernet anyway ). I want to replace my 4TB NAS with NAND but it is still quite expensive. Cheapest 1TB SSD from decent manufacturers cost $100 / TB from Western Digital . And I would need 8 of those including redundancy. That is $800 excluding the cost of new NAS.

[1] [https://www.supermicro.com/en/products/nvme](https://www.supermicro.com/en/products/nvme)

</comment><comment><USER3> 3gb/sec read and write speed, about $4,700 for 15tb for these datacenter class hardware. So in about 3 or 4 years this will be less than a $1000, probably getting smaller, closer to a consumer product.

There's an old sf book about recording your whole life, we aren't quite there. At say 15 meg per sec (from a random site about 1080 dashcam video [1]), 86400 secs * 15 meg / 1024 / 1024 = 1.24 tb per day. Assume another 50% improvement by h265 and you still have about 600 gig a day per lifetime recording. [2]

[1] [https://dashboardcamerareviews.com/video-recording- time/](https://dashboardcamerareviews.com/video-recording-time/)

[2] This was more fun to speculate about than thinking about spreading covid-19 with no real plan for addressing it.

<comment><USER4> No reason to record oneself sleeping, in the bathroom, or reading a book 99% of the time. Slap some ai or sound/vibration/motion/location logic into the camera and I'll bet there's maybe 8-12 hours a day on average remotely worth recording.

Assuming: 78.5yr lifespan

3200mbps/400MBPS@60fps 4k video (Sony fsm72) for 8 hrs of video a day

yields:

5.50128 petabytes over 78.5yrs.

Or 687.66 8TB drives.

At $155/drive that's $106,587.3, or 1,357.8/yr at today's prices.

Assuming a 1.666r% price decrease per year, the final years drives will cost approximately $41.8.

Taking your 1.24tb as terabits, div 3 and applying the same pattern as above I get 1480.379166TB, 185.05 drives, rounded up, for a cost of 28,830 in today's dollars.

Hope my maths right..</comment></comment>


HTML5 visualization - <AUTHOR> http://dl.dropbox.com/u/18166613/cgr/cgr_home.html visualization of DNA sequences as 2d image <comment><USER2> WOW Amazing DNA visualization!

<comment><AUTHOR> Like it too :)</comment></comment>


Narcissistic Students Get Better Grades from Narcissistic Professors - <AUTHOR> https://hbr.org/2016/03/narcissistic-students-get-better-grades-from-narcissistic-professors?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=harvardbiz <comment><USER2> > the idea that narcissism has increased among college students over the last > 25 years is worrisome from an organizational perspective. Millennials are > the next generation of leaders.

When i was in school, everyone was raving at me, barking madly that all of us students had to be the leaders of tomorrow. Maybe it's because everyone is obsessed with who gets to be a leader that people presume that they should be leaders. Millenials are also the next generation of followers, or workers, or you know, discarding hierarchical considerations: millenials are the next generation of humans. Which is tautological.

Looking at the current field of candidates for leader of the most powerful (by a few metrics, but not all) government of the world, i think the bar has been set very low for millenials and the people who write articles like this merely have some heavily tinted rose-colored glasses on about their "generation of leaders".

That said, i don't think it's surprising that people in positions of power in a hierarchical structure, like a university setting, are biased towards people like them and hence create a selection effect within that power structure. Isn't that the basic observation that validates affirmative action? Nepotism, cronyism are commonly understood terms, but clearly they are specific cases of a general phenomenon. You cannot separate the exercise of power from its social implications. People being social creatures, they will exercise their power in ways that have social consequences. That's why people are put in positions of power in the first place.

<comment><USER3> This is an interesting point, and one I've seen from the other side as well: When leaving secondary (high) school, for university, a common piece of advice is: "You may have been one of the smartest people here, but be careful, you probably won't be where you're going, so you have to manage your expectations." But if everyone is being told this, then those who could become some of the "smartest people at university", are being told it too, and some of these people could be unnecessarily lowering their expectations. I've always thought this was a great shame.

<comment><USER2> Preoccupation with status hardly helps cultivate the virtue that status was supposed to indicate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Seems to me that "narcissism fit" definitely applies to a lot of schools and companies. (Though to be fair, it's particular subgroups inside those organizations that this really applies to.)

<comment><USER5> _coughivyleaguecough_

Yeah, definitely to subsets, but certainly not to a majority is my guess. There are always people who meet the stereotype of a school, and always those who don't. For every rich son-of-an-alum at Princeton there's someone on heavy financial aid, more or less.

<comment><USER4> _coughivyleaguecough_

I'm one. This is part of how I know.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> >And yet despite narcissists' flaws, there's lots of evidence that people are drawn to them, not least because they tend to be very charismatic.

Is it possible to be both charismatic and not-narcissistic at all? I can't think of a single example, to be honest, of a leader displaying charisma and not being somewhat narcissistic.

<comment><USER7> For someone to be charismatic, they may either inspire devotion by "followers" or claim they are receiving divine inspiration. If someone finds themselves with a bunch of people who are devoted to them, this is a form of implicit trust. i.e. the thing that inspired originally may have been trustworthy, but eventually the trust becomes implicit in that the "followers" will follow more regardless of inspiration. I've written about this effect on cloud services before.

Divine inspiration also deals with trust channels. If someone claims to be divinely inspired (which I personally believe is possible - see Buddhism Insight for example) then whoever they relate this information to will then have to implicitly trust the information coming to them is actually represented as the divine intended it (assuming they don't have direct access themselves). Obviously, that's caused a lot of problems in the past for us, so it's non-tenable. Teachers of the way[1] avoid dictating teachings received from insight because of this. It's also probably why sutras tend to be very terse, now I think about it.

The answer to your question is that it might be possible, but it's unlikely to be possible for long as the trust channels turn implicit, which then has an impact on the individual's relationship with their followers. When someone trusts you implicitly, there is no feedback on whether their trust is warranted or not, or put another way, there's no way for you to to trust if the trust you are receiving is real. And _that_ is just as bad as you not being trustworthy.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Maybe "narcissism" will be over and done with, by the time we come up with a popular stereotype for the next generation.

<comment><USER9> There is nothing new under the sun.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Me_generation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Me_generation) _The baby boomers ... were dubbed the "Me" generation by writer Tom Wolfe during the 1970s; Christopher Lasch was another writer who commented on the rise of a culture of narcissism among the younger generation._

<comment><USER6> Is it ironic that it is often the "Me generation" that derides millennials as being self-absorbed? Not that gen Xers don't as well.

<comment><USER9> _" [young]... lives are regulated more by moral feeling than by reasoning -- all their mistakes are in the direction of doing things excessively and vehemently. They overdo everything -- they love too much, hate too much, and the same with everything else."_ \- Aristotle

Griping about those wacky young folks goes way back.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> A true fairytale ending.</comment>


Ask HN: Do you prefer Go or Rust for enterprise software development? - <AUTHOR> For enterprise software development, do you prefer Go or do you prefer Rust? And why? <comment><USER2> After reading the problems that devs are experiencing with Go as soon as they start to scale up, I begin to wonder: Would Rust encounter these problems under the same situation. The answer is Less likely.

The argument to use Rust in constrained systems to reduce memory consumption with its speed is justified as a gain.

</comment><comment><USER3> Do you prefer a punch in the face, or a poke in the eye with a sharp stick?

</comment><comment><USER4> I guess it depends what sort of software you are building but overall Rust. Go feels like Google is telling me they know better, Rust gives me power.</comment>


Reflections on Social Networks and How People Use Them - <AUTHOR> http://piaw.blogspot.com/2011/08/reflections-on-social-networks-and-how.html

<comment><USER2> While I do agree with his assessment of G+'s circles invoking the paradox of choice, I find the subsequent hypothetical situation and anecdotal usage scenario all too easy to poke holes in. And the implication in the final paragraph is that he, and he alone, understands why Facebook has been so successful, which is irritatingly self-assured.

In short, really? You're basing estimations of G+'s success on your dating experiences?</comment>


The US bombing its own guns perfectly sums up America's total failure in Iraq - <AUTHOR> http://www.vox.com/2014/8/8/5982501/the-us-is-now-bombing-its-own-military-equipment-in-iraq

<comment><USER2> All I could think of reading this was: Man, some US company is making a ton of money selling guns.

<comment><USER3> and the war in iraq is probably an unqualified success [1]. Assuming, of course, you're a sociopath.

[1] [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7444083.stm](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7444083.stm)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's worth looking ahead to what to do now, as the ethnic conflicts ate motivated by non-US-related reasons, and there are plenty of Russian weapons also, and there is a humanitarian crisis.</comment>


Ask HN:  How to make $100 today? - <AUTHOR>

I decided to build a top ten list after reading James Altucher's How to be the Luckiest Person Alive ebook.  I thought this would be a fun exercise, but I've only gotten to 9.  So HN, how would you make $100 today? <comment><USER2> Panhandle in an unusual spot with a funny sign - like near a driving range with "need lessons badly". Fix 1-2 of my friends computers. Offer a one-day- only special on taking graduation / Father's Day pictures. Offer tutoring, especially to groups of kids at the same time.

</comment><comment><USER3> Quickest way I'd be able to make $100 today is to sell something I already own and no longer use.

Another way would be to get someone to prepay you today for a job you will do over the course of the week or something similar.

<comment><USER4> I actually always felt that no one would buy any of my old stuff. And then I stuck them on craigslist and was surprised by how many people bought stuff. Nearly 80% of everything I had put up sold within 5 days. Even old tae kwon do gear which was 7 years old.

I wish I had done this much earlier in my life. I would have had way less stuff. I unfortunately had a "learned helplessness" syndrome about selling old stuff.

The money is of course nice but the things you learn about selling is and negotiating is really cool.

And finally the peace of mind that comes with having less stuff is probably the best part.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Perhaps I've misunderstood the question but surely most people who have a normal job e.g. software development make $100 every day? For example I am self-employed and my hourly rate is $91/hr so today after 8 hrs I'll have made $728 which after the 50% tax in my country is $364. And today wasn't even a very stressful day.

</comment><comment><USER6> Most people who make $100 a day aren't going to come out and tell you exactly what to do. But the simplest method is to come up with, or sell a product with at least $100 profit and then try to make one sale a day, like I said, pretty simple.

I used to do it with facebook pages. I would check out local businesses (any city) that could go for a custom facebook page. I had some templates that I could customize really quickly and would throw up a mock page. If I could get through to the decision maker and show them the example, I was about 20% successful in a sale. Considering the costs were just my time, I was easily profiting $100+ a day by making 10-20 calls and emails a day.

<comment><USER6> I have another method that is even easier, in case you can't make facebook pages. It's all about arbitrage. Find a person who needs a service (web design, coding, etc) and then pay someone else less to do it. I do this all the time with freelancer.com and odesk for large projects, netting thousands of dollars in the middle, just for overseeing a project.

I recommend you keep it simple and small though, at least at first. There is a website, fiverr.com that has people who list jobs they will do for $5. I have resold some of these jobs for well over $100.

I don't really want to give away my best methods on here and the best gigs, but msg me if you really need some help. I would recommended combining the sales process in my post above with the outsourcing method of this one.

Good luck.

<comment><USER7> fyi, there is no contact info in your profile.

<comment><USER6> skype: socialmediaking

<comment><USER8> Thanks, Will add you

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> this is probably the most unoriginal suggestion, but you could always have a moderately popular site and get money off google ads or selling ad space to local businesses relevant to the site's subject matter?

</comment><comment><USER10> Find someone who wants to sell an ebook and offer him to post it to lots of sites?

</comment><comment><USER11> sell some dvds and ps2 games</comment>


Memories may be stored on your DNA - <AUTHOR> http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20026845.000-memories-may-be-stored-on-your-dna.html

<comment><USER2> They claim that how memories are stored in the brain over decades is a mystery. But even simple Hopfield networks have stable fix-points to a few gradual deletions, especially if new neurons come into replenish them. I very much doubt that the major mechanism in the brain can be explained with this phenomenon, though the protein mechanics of synapses could certainly be aided or realized with this as a crucial component.

</comment><comment><USER3> If true, doesn't this mean that you might possibly pass on memories to your children?

<comment><USER4> No, your not storing your memories in the cells that you use to have children. They are suggesting nerons are using their DNA like a message board to store information, but it's specific to each cell. I suspect like most processes in our cells DNA is involved, but what's changing is the wrapper around the DNA not the DNA's code.

Edit: think of DNA as program code, and what's wrapped around it as RAM.

<comment><USER5> Of course, last year we thought introns we junk dna, a few years ago there was no such thing as epigenetic information and rna was only an intermediary.

[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/bv.fcgi?tool=bookshelf&...](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/bv.fcgi?tool=bookshelf&call=bv.View..ShowSection&searchterm=methylation&rid=cell.figgrp.2114)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So the game Assassin's Creed was correct..

<comment><USER7> Frank Herbert's Dune saga was correct much before that...

<comment><USER8> And Jung's theory of the collective unconscious before Herbert was. (Jung was a bit more boring about it, though.)

<comment><USER9> And the Buddha had a few words to say on that, too.

<comment><USER4> Ok, it's an old idea and that article is vague, but this is talking about something else. Read the summary and focus on what _in the adult nervous system_ means.

"DNA methylation is a covalent chemical modification of DNA catalyzed by DNA methyltransferases (DNMTs). DNA methylation is associated with transcriptional silencing and has been studied extensively as a lifelong molecular information storage mechanism put in place during development. Here we report that DNMT gene expression is upregulated in the adult rat hippocampus following contextual fear conditioning and that DNMT inhibition blocks memory formation. In addition, fear conditioning is associated with rapid methylation and transcriptional silencing of the memory suppressor gene PP1 and demethylation and transcriptional activation of the synaptic plasticity gene reelin, indicating both methyltransferase and demethylase activity during consolidation. DNMT inhibition prevents the PP1 methylation increase, resulting in aberrant transcription of the gene during the memory- consolidation period. These results demonstrate that DNA methylation _is dynamically regulated in the adult nervous system and that this cellular mechanism is a crucial step in memory formation._ " (added italics)

PS: Sorry, if you where all just joking, but the summary is worth a read.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> So you're saying gene regulation controls cellular activity? Who knew.

</comment><comment><USER11> Of course memories are stored in dna -- the successes, failures, stops, starts etc of evolutionary history. I wish NS would kill these linkbait-style titles and stick to disseminating information...but I suppose they have bills like the rest of us...</comment>


Ask HN: Why is there no 'like' button on Twitter? - <AUTHOR>

I was on Facebook the other day and updated my status, it was nothing dramatic - just congratulations Ellie on the baby'. I could have just as easily updated this status on Twitter.
Around 4 hours later I logged into Facebook and to my amazement 9 people had liked my status. They didn't comment but were clearly happy that Ellie had had the baby and felt compelled 'to like'.
This got me to thinking - why is there not a 'like' button on Twitter. I know you can Retweet but some of the friends who liked my status have a different set of friends to me and so if they would have posted the news on their Facebook stream it would have meant nothing to anybody.
The amount of times I see good news on Twitter and think 'yeah that is cool' if I see it on Facebook I can like it and that person (however sad this may be) is pleased because they have brightened up someones day.
If Twitter introduced 'like' I would use it. Would you? <comment><USER2> Twitter and Facebook look at value in orthogonal directions.

On Facebook, the importance of every post is dictated by how much interaction it generates. This is very visible: comments and Likes are listed on every post. In a hurry, you can decide a post's value by how many people have already interacted. Liking a post keeps the interaction within the OP's profile page. By scrolling through someone's profile, you get a feel for how popular they are within the service.

On the other hand, the value of a Tweet is proportional to the number of people who see it. This is sometimes difficult to guess when inspecting the original tweet, since Twitter does not track old-style Retweets. It doesn't matter though, since your message is broadcast to dozens (or hundreds, or thousands) of people you didn't reach by yourself. The threshold of quality is a little higher with a Retweet: in a sense, you must be willing to say the original Tweet yourself. But a popular Tweet can reach more people than a good Facebook post.

</comment><comment><USER3> The fav feature is the like button. You can see your most popular tweets at [http://favstar.fm/users/<yourtwittername>](http://favstar.fm/users/<yourtwittername>);

From there click on the recent button to see what tweets of yours were recently faved, or the given button to see what you have faved.

I've recently started integrating RT tracking too, as tech tweeters do tend to use RT more than likes.

If you log into <http://favstar.fm> once, it will start collecting favs and RTs you give and receive almost instantly. Otherwise it collects them more slowly using twitter's REST api.

</comment><comment><USER4> The twitter analogue is the "re-tweet" which IMHO is pretty obnoxious; your stream gets clogged with your friends RT'ing things about people you've a) never heard of and b) if you had and you cared, you'd just follow them yourself.

Twitter at scale is a one-way "write only" medium.

<comment><USER5> How would you know if you cared, if you didn't know about them?

Besides, if there were a "like" button, it'd have the same effect since it would most likely show up in your timeline. A private "like" button? They have that as "favorite".

Ultimately, the re-tweet makes it easier to discover new people within your network. If you're into design, and you're following other designers, chances are they're following other great designers, and you can find about these other people through the re-tweet.

I'd say it's an (accidental) feature that was very important for twitter's success, and it's further validated by the fact that the re-tweet was brought upon by the users themselves.

<comment><USER4> Why would you care what someone you've never met's having for breakfast? Unless they were a famous chef maybe.

Likes on FB don't show on the newsfeed, only the person whose thing you liked gets a notification.

<comment><USER6> I only RT tweets related to my work, which is interactive design, gui, webdev . People following you that doesn't know you in person, probably follows you because of the stuff you do (work) not who you are (personal). This is proper use of RT, in my opinion.

Tagging a tweet as 'fav' doesn't show as clear as FBs like button. And it's more for saving good tweets, not sending 'I like this'.

Likes shouldn't come up in your timeline. This is Twitter, not FB. There is room for this functionality, but it's not there.

So for now, just @-reply and tell the persons in person, instead of a like- click. Gives more value.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> A lot of people treat the favourite button (star) as "like". Unfortunately neither Twitter's web interface nor its API expose this data in a very useful way, so it only really has an effect if the like-ee is using a sufficiently thick native client or a third-party site like <http://favstar.fm/> to keep track of who's faved their tweets.

<comment><USER8> Actually, favorites on twitter have their own API stream now. Sites like favstar now update in near real-time and you can get instant "fav" notifications from iPhone notification apps like Boxcar.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I have the feeling Facebook's leadership is dramatically pragmatic: if it works, let's use it. They borrow ideas from lots of people, "like" came from friendfeed I believe? And Twitter's leadership seems more, how shall I say it, more interested in doing it "right" or taking the high road in terms of features. They have stayed extremely minimal for such a popular service, in terms of features.

They could add "like", which would surely add value, but then again they could also add a dozen other features that add value. But in doing that, they'd dilute their simple value proposition: real time updates.

Whether laser-focusing on 1 feature/value is smarter than adding other features and having a more complete offering is smart, only time will tell, I'm really not sure at this point.

<comment><AUTHOR> Really fair set of comments. At times Facebook can feel like one big bolt on and twitter have done well to avoid that. I just wondered why when a feature as big as Facebook Like could work on Twitter why (if it hasn't already been) it has not been considered.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Even HN has "like"!

Well, it's an up-arrow, but it still servers the same point: to allow you to support a comment without requiring a low-signal comment to do so.

OTOH, twitter isn't exactly high-signal in the first place.

<comment><USER11> I would counter (this is not my original idea but I highly subscribe to it) that HN's up-arrow serves a dual-purpose...'liking' an article and 'bookmarking' it for later. There's no other way I can see to explain how articles get 40+ votes on the homepage but only have 5-10 comments on them. If PG would simply add a 'read it later' style link/button to stories, up-arrows would retain their 'like this' purpose and I believe the homepage would have 'better' content on it.

I'm guilty of this myself.... I very often will click an up-arrow if I'm viewing the feed and don't have time to open up an individual article so i can use my instapaper bookmarklet on it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Why stop at Twitter?

Why can't Hacker News have a like button for 'Ask HN' posts?

I don't really want to upvote this post, nor write a text-based reply communicating my feelings. Instead, I want to push a 'Like' button.

Conversely, why is there no 'Dislike' or 'Hate' button on Facebook?

<comment><USER13> Facebook has said that they don't want to put in features that would discourage participation. If someone updates their status and lots of people "dislike" it, they might not want to update their status next time.

For HN, I'd like to see a "track it" button - I don't want to upvote a lame article but often the HN community has a lot of interesting things to say so I'd like to keep track of those article's conversations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think what you're finding is that facebook is far better for 'personal 2 way communication', whilst twitter is better for mass announcement.

It's a different scale of working. FWIW, I much prefer facebook, especially for things like family announcements.

<comment><USER15> Well said. After struggling to "get" Twitter for a while, I've realized that _I don't have to post on it_. It's essentially a read-only medium for me.

That's fine: I post on Facebook a lot and really enjoy the conversations there, but I don't like to post on Twitter because its conversation capabilities aren't great and, equally importantly, I don't have an audience! I'm not famous and most of the non-spam followers I have on Twitter are also Facebook friends. (Also, I personally really don't enjoy having to deal with the 140 character limit.) It's still really useful to me similarly to how many other web forums on which I'm primarily a lurker are useful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> What about the little 'favourite star'? Surely that achieves the exact same thing ultimately?. I think, but I can't remember for sure, that the number of times a tweet has been favourited is returned by the api, so clients could show it if they wanted.

FWIW, I do not personally like the 'Like' button in Facebook at all. The most banal things get 'liked' which totally devalues it. A 'Does not like' button would have been more interesting :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes a dislike button is a must! I thought the star was me favouriting a tweet. I can see it but the person who's tweet is can't see that I have done that. I could be wrong though and like you say Facebook like is not for everyone anyway.

<comment><USER17> The dislike button has been suggested many times (and I think I have even seen fb groups demanding one). I think the reason they don't implement it is quite simple: it would damage the feel-good atmosphere. Imagine downvotes on new profile pictures or excited status updates.

<comment><USER18> Imagine if "Dislikes" exceeded "Likes" of a particular marketing campaign...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I use Buzz, which does have a like button. Twitter has the people, but it seems so primitive when you look at Buzz instead. Yes, I know its simplicity is part of its charm, but you shouldn't need URL shorteners to share a link and 3rd party clients just to be able to use the website easily (Just try following a conversation on the main site).

I highly recommend Buzz as an alternative, if you can convince your friends to switch over too.

</comment><comment> pat-mcnally A few of us have been interested in providing this feature on Twitter as part of more general effort in social sentiment (it's just a "is this anything?" project at this point). We see the similarity between 'Retweet' and 'Like' - however, we think the presence of a 'Dislike' would somewhat segregate what a 'Retweet' vs. a 'Like' is for.

You can see the most recent result of efforts in this 30 second YouTube video. It demonstrates where we are with a browser plugin to add 'Like' and 'Dislike' to every tweet viewed on Twitter.com: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlZVBCSXsK8>

Would love to hear your thoughts on it.

The more underlying sentiment "gathering and storing" system can be found at: <http://upprdwnr.com>

</comment><comment><USER20> Why? Because Twitter is not Facebook. Why do they need to have the same features?

<comment><AUTHOR> They don't. However Facebook felt the need to borrow Twitters @replies (<http://mashable.com/2009/09/10/facebook-mentions/>) so why can't Twitter borrow the Facebook like.

Yes they are different sites and yes they serve different purposes. However if functionality can work on both and can aid the users of that site then why should it not be introuced - just because you can already do it on one is not a good enough reason. If it was then you would not see competitors coming out daily with new sites that do what existing sites do but try and better it.

Twitter has millions of users who do not have a Facebook account and vice- versa. Providing they don't move too much from what makes them unique then giving their user base useful features can only be a good thing.

<comment><USER20> I'm not saying that they _can't_ do it just because Facebook already has, I'm more saying that they don't _have to_ just because Facebook does. Otherwise, every move they make would be to become more like Facebook. And that isn't the desirable outcome. They are unique pieces of software to provide unique needs. Twitter wants to forge its own identity and create its own features, not point at every Facebook feature and say "Okay, how can we do that?".

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry I misunderstood your point - you are right they don't have to. We don't want two sites doing the same thing. I think Twitter is doing a good job forging it's own identity, it is Facebook that seems to be borrowing ideas from everywhere else - Foursquare etc. I do think however that 'like' could be useful for Twitter and they could implement it in a different way. I take your point though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> "Like" seems pretty limited on Twitter.

News spreads on Twitter, and most of it you can't really "like" without looking like some kind of sociopath.

Tweets are also short enough to immediately show their relevance. In theory, anything that's retweeted should show its value at a glance, whether it's funny, interesting or tragic.

</comment><comment><USER22> Amazing, I've been thinking about it for the past few days and i feel it would be good to have a "like" button but maintained inside the twitter ecosystem.

With that we could build some kind of rating system to show the most liked or influential tweets around...

<comment><AUTHOR> I totally agree. This could then lead itself to an improved likestream which could then take on Digg seriously.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I don't want the feature.

Twitter and Facebook are different things. Facebook is for sharing things that are important to me as a person, whereas Twitter is about consuming and sharing information that is important to me as a professional.

</comment><comment><USER24> Twitter _does_ have this functionality - it's called a ReTweet. Terminology differs, but it's essentially the same thing - both likes and retweets show up in the user's timelines, and both indicate liking what someone else has said.

<comment><AUTHOR> If I like something in Facebook then only the person who's status it is sees that like. It does not appear in my stream to all my friends. If I RT something on Twitter then I am saying that I want all my followers to see this status. I don't want that, I just want to tell someone that I like their status without involving all my followers.

<comment><USER25> I think you're worrying too much about flooding your followers' timelines with spam. However, this is actually the point of twitter and I think it handles it pretty well.

Your followers probably follow you because your tweets are interesting to them. If you see something that you find interesting then chances are good that at least some of your followers will agree. Some followers may have seen it from the original source; others may only get it from your retweet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> The 'Retweet' button is Twitter's version of the Like Button, and it is for this reason they have disabled the ability to edit the tweet so as to mimic the 'single-click' behavior of Like buttons.

</comment><comment><USER27> While the retweet button is similar to like (my co-founder and I actually discussed this the day before), I do think that a Twitter Like button may come along eventually. In fact, I think it's even possible for an upstart Twitter client to decide (on its own or with some of the other clients) to implement a Like button protocol, in the hopes that Twitter would eventually adopt it.

Like buttons are great for monetization, so I think it could make sense for Twitter.

</comment><comment><USER28> It seems like if you haven't been on Twitter since 2007, you don't know what the hell you are talking about.

Favorite == Like

</comment><comment><USER29> Retweeting, even though does not mean the same thing, in practice works pretty close to "like" in twitter ecosystem.

</comment><comment><USER30> I don't understand your line of thinking. I agree that facebook status and twitter are essentially the same thing (and the same level of useless), but if you like one particular feature of one site why not just use that site and not the other site. If twitter keeps on replicating the same things fb does then why do we have two different websites.

</comment><comment><USER31> No.

<comment><AUTHOR> I appreciate that it is not for everyone, but given how many people use the Facebook like functionality do you think that this could not carry over to Twitter and be equally effective?

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Probably no. Twitter is good as it is: a mean of comunication

<comment><AUTHOR> The Facebook Status and the Twitter status are fundamentally the same thing. You are telling the world what is on your mind. The like functionality in Facebook is a means of communication - someone clicks like and says I like your opinion on this, your good news, your joke, the fact you are in a good mood.

Now if Twitter has the same status functionality could 'like' not be equally effective?

<comment><USER33> From a technical point of view they are the same thing, both are short 'status' updates.

However they are used in different ways, by different users for different things. People mostly use twitter as a 'microblog'. It's like a blog, but each 'blog post' is limited to be very small. People use Facebook status updates to tell people what they are doing and to tell their friends things. If I see your facebook updates, you can see mine. Twitter is not like that. Facebook is for socializing, twitter is like newspapers. They are different, ergo it doesn't make sense to make them identical

<comment><USER34> I don't really agree with you as many of my friends feed their twitter to facebook - I assume there is some kind of app for this. Thus many facebook status updates are actually tweets. So many of the end users see tweets and status updates as the same thing. Facebook just needs to come up with a snappy verb for it.

<comment><USER33> Yes many of my friends feed their twitter straight to Facebook aswell. It's quite annoying to me. There is a Facebook app to do it. There's another facebook app that will only update your facebook if your tweet contains "#fb", which is a much better way</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Follow up to "I'm building a TechCrunch alternative that focuses on startups" - <AUTHOR>

Three days ago I submitted an article describing my intentions to launch a news site that is focus on Startups. The original thread can be found here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2153038 .
The response so far has been over whelming. I've had over 100 startups reach out to me from HN and I've responded to every single email I received (before today). I must say, the quality of submissions was phenomenal. There are some really sharp people here.
If you're a startup and still want to tell us your story, please get in touch with me by emailing me at firstname.lastname@example.com.
In other news, MediaTemple has very generously offered to be a sponsor and handle our hosting for us. I've already began writing several articles and we will be soft launching this Thursday. The site is looking fantastic, and the startup coverage will be unparalleled.
If you would like to sign up for our weekly news letter, you can do so via MailChimp http://eepurl.com/csrmr
If you would like to follow us our Twitter handle is @startupfoundry .
Thanks for your warm reception HN, we have some great stuff coming down the pike! I'm really looking forward to unleashing this. <comment><USER2> Good Job Paul. startup foundry all the way!

</comment><comment><USER2> and please no Quora news anytime soon.

</comment><comment><USER3> I agree because TC seems to only focus on big business and well known startups.So I'm definitely for this idea.

</comment><comment><USER4> Are you looking for only success stories, or also stories from people who are having problems/can't seem to get things off the ground?

</comment><comment><USER5> Best of luck Paul.

</comment><comment><USER6> Signed up for the newsletter. I am excited to read about all of the projects that are brewing from HN.

</comment><comment><USER7> As several others asked last time, have you considered posting under a name other than "g0atbutt" for a more professional look?

<comment><USER8> I wouldn't have recognized him if he had.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> When you say you will focus on startups will this be on the emphasis of startup launches? Or will you report on already launched startups?

<comment><AUTHOR> We will talk about both. If it's relevant to the startup world, it will be on The Startup Foundry.

<comment><USER9> As long as the focus stays true to "actual" startups I am excited for this! :)</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: I am sick of being connected, how do you unplug? - <AUTHOR> How do we unplug when our jobs are all bits? The information age is causing me distress by overbearing itself onto my existence. FOMO? Has anyone gone of the grid? Why are you back? <comment><USER3> This feeling happens in waves for me. I have gone through it a dozen times every time I feel burnt out.

What I usually do is:

* Unsubscribe from all mailing lists and newsletters

* Unfollow everybody on Twitter/Facebook/etc

* Stop visiting HN

* Find something worthy to replace all that free time (book, meditation, vacation, hobby, etc)

After a while (12-18 months), these things start to creep in again. I don't have a long term solution.

I wish I were more disciplined and could keep meditating and having a hobby but computers and acquiring information is too tempting.

</comment><comment><USER4> Techniques and tactics I use to unplug:

\- Turn off notifications on your phone for everything but messaging apps.

\- Learn to ignore/not be bothered by unread email/messages counts. ("Inbox Zero" isn't a cure, it's a trap and feeds into the disease.)

\- Go through a period of being disconnected from the web. I did this for two weeks a couple of years ago when I was travelling. I thought I would be missing out on so much tech news and developments and falling behind (FOMO). When you end your self-imposed digital exile, you will see that you've missed nothing of importance, and catching up with any significant news is trivial (because there is so little of it).

\- Don't have a Facebook account.

\- Prefer face to face meet ups to communication over any other medium.

\- Try to read more books than blog posts. It's the difference between nutritious food vs junk.

\- If you are going to run a Twitter client on your computer use an app like Quitter to kill it after 5 mins of inactivity.

\- Have a hobby away from the computer. Something physical and preferably social too. For me its fitness, but I need to get another one as well.

\- Keep a log of your time day to day.

\- Keep a log or portfolio of things you create. They dont have to be significant.

\- The last two serve as nice way to check your level of creation vs consumption. "The Information Age" is mostly about low quality signals to disrupt your focus to serve someone else's agenda (aka "the attention economy")

\- Don't argue with people on the internet, no matter how tempting it can be. If you want to participate in online forums, use your energy to try to help people and share your knowledge and experience.

But more important I think, is the mindset. We suffer from FOMO and information overload because we are curious people who like to learn, in an industry which pushes fads and fashion trends and self-promotion constantly. So:

\- Recognize that there are an infinite number of things to learn in technology. Come to terms with the fact you cant learn them all, and that most of them wont matter to you. Realise there is a lot of value to be derived from learning about other, non-technical domains once you have mastered one technical one to some degree.

> Why are you back?

Once you know the game, you can come back and play it anytime you want - <USER2> on your terms. And you can switch it off easily too.

Edit: Formatting

<comment><USER5> I've been working on unplugging and your response matches a lot of what I've done. So far I've been pretty successful but still have a bit to go.

The biggest change for me was getting off of social networking. I always told myself it was a great source of news and articles but the truth was it was mainly junk.

Once that was done I unsubscribed from any e-mail list I was on. As soon as a product marketing e-mail came in I'd find the unsubscribe link. This drastically cut down on the amount of e-mail I got each day and helped me avoid checking it every time something came in.

The only thing my phone alerts me for these days are text messages and real phone calls. Also uninstall slack or your work e-mail app ASAP. I work in a field where there should be no after-hours calls so any e-mail that comes in is likely not an emergency so it can wait until the next business day.

Exercise! I hated running but have taken it up recently because it has a low barrier of entry and can be done basically anywhere at anytime. Since I've started I've actually come to enjoy it a bit because I feel great afterwards.

Read books and/or find a hobby. Mine is woodworking with hand tools. Because I don't use power tools I setup a small work area in my basement and can work at all hours without worrying I'll be keeping someone awake in the house. Most of the stuff I make is shit but it's still a great way to really get yourself in "the zone" and stop thinking about everything else going on in life.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This may be a bit extreme, but you may want to think about taking an entire day off from all technology one day a week.

As an orthodox Jew I've been doing this my entire life. It feels great and it gives me lots of time to read and see friends and family. Try taking a 24-hour technology shabbat this weekend.

</comment><comment><USER7> Try increasing your attention on what's important to you, instead of decreasing your attention on what isn't.

You can be asked for your attention, explicitly or implicitly, any time, for the dumbest stuff. Most of us have never learned to ignore it. And ignoring it is the only way to survive being constantly asked, because saying "no, stop bothering me" is pretty much just another way of saying "yes, you may take my attention right now."

It might help you to stop having a phone. I did this for a few years, and it was modestly helpful, and surprisingly easy to do. But in the end, there were some things I did need to pay attention to, and some I didn't, including on the phone. My partner, my kids, my family- they all really did need my attention.

Hacker News? Not so much.

Figure out what's important, pay attention to that. Might be that the feeling your having is precipitated more by the lack of connection that is really meeting your needs.

</comment><comment><USER8> Turn phone on silent and vibration off. Then YOU decide when you will check in on it.

This puts you back into control without fine grain tuning the notifications of all the apps and services.

</comment><comment><USER9> my phone can be turned off. when it annoys me, I turn it off.

</comment><comment><USER10> How often do you take time to go on a long hike or bike ride?

How many apps with notifications are installed on your phone?

How many hours do you sit behind a computer screen when you are not working?

</comment><comment><USER11> Turn data and WiFi off on your phone. Saves battery, too.

</comment><comment><USER12> \- Go jogging or walking \- Visit girlfriend \- Visit family \- Sleep more \- Leechblock (firefox) or the chrome alternative

</comment><comment><USER13> Go camping and leave your phone off and only for emergencies.

<comment><USER14> Well, I often go camping by myself. I need the phone on so that others can contact me if _they_ have an emergency.</comment></comment>


Net Neutrality Rules Would Dilute Concept Of Ownership On Internet - <AUTHOR> http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=514250

<comment><USER2> A few questions and critiques:

 _This principle of "nondiscrimination" will make illegal any attempt by broadband and content providers to offer the advanced services consumers want - prioritized high-definition movies, games, television shows and music._

Does anyone know of consumers demanding that their ISPs prioritize this kind of content at the cost of others? I've never heard of this actually happening.

 _Rest assured, these FCC principles will radically transform the way business is done in our information economy, and taken to their logical conclusion could do extraordinary damage to the information economy itself._

Does anyone know of any companies currently doing anything that would be restricted by the proposed FCC net neutrality rules? I thought all of the talk was about preventing future action.

 _Recent criticisms of the FCC's net neutrality proposal by FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell in this regard are enlightening. "Do you really want five unelected bureaucrats such as myself - none of whom have an engineering degree, we're all liberal arts majors - making these types of decisions?" he asked._

It's funny that this was written by a magazine editor with a history degree.

</comment><comment><USER3> _It appears the FCC has managed to redefine the definition of an Internet Service Provider (ISP), excluding Google from the category and thus also from its regulations. And so, although Google is in fact the largest ISP in the world (accounting for 6% of all Internet traffic according to a recent Arbor Networks study), it can continue with business as usual while Google's broadband competitors are saddled with heavy new FCC regulations._

The only definition of Internet Service Provider I have ever encountered is the entity that provides internet access to a customer. I pay an ISP and the ISP gives me physical access to their network so I can access the internet. Google is not an ISP by this definition. Google is certainly a huge part of the internet ecosystem, but they don't provide internet service to customers.

I have to wonder if Forbes purposefully tried to redefine the word, or if that's truly what he believes ISP means. I can see how Google (and other entities, like Hulu) might have conflicting desires from ISPs, but that doesn't make them competitors.

</comment><comment><USER4> Ugh. There's a reasonable pro-market way to criticize net neutrality, but this isn't it. The fact remains that broadband providers are by and large monopolies, so it enhances rather than restricts the market to force them to play the role of the common carrier while separate firms focus on selling content.

Google doesn't even especially stand to profit, nor are they at the most risk. That would probably be Hulu or Netflix, at the very least.

<comment><USER5> Hulu is not at risk. It's a joint venture between the various broadcast networks, not an independent site, and with Comcast now owning a majority stake, it's unlikely that they (or any ISP they have a peering agreement with) would mess with transmissions.[1]

Netflix, on the other hand, is vulnerable - especially since their future business model seems to be aiming for the on-demand market more than the dvd- by-mail market. And the on-demand market is something that Comcast (and perhaps other ISP/Cable company hybrids) would have a strong incentive to try and de-prioritize to help sell their digital cable subscriptions.

[1]Wikipedia: Hulu is a joint venture of NBC Universal (General Electric), Fox Entertainment Group (News Corp) and ABC Inc. (The Walt Disney Company)[4], with funding by Providence Equity Partners, which made a US$100 million equity investment and holds a 10% stake. -> <http://www.cable360.net/competition/web/25376.html>

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Why did I post this? It's a highly-emotional and slanted piece!

I posted it because 1) I never hear the other side of this argument, and 2) I'm guessing that everybody on the board will oppose the views expressed, thereby limiting the amount of BS that goes with typical internet-policy pieces.

I like Forbes as a TV personality, but he's way off-base in this piece. I can't decide if he's misinformed, purposely slanting the piece for his own gain (lots of red-meat political phrases in there), or just hasn't heard all of the arguments.

I'd bet on the third option, but I'm not so sure one way or the other.

<comment><USER6> If you want anti-NN arguments from people who actually know what they're talking about, look up Richard Bennett or George Ou; they usually don't resort to strawman arguments.

[http://www.internetevolution.com/document.asp?doc_id=180730&...](http://www.internetevolution.com/document.asp?doc_id=180730&); <http://www.itif.org/index.php?id=294> [http://www.digitalsociety.org/2009/11/what-is-true- neutralit...](http://www.digitalsociety.org/2009/11/what-is-true-neutrality- in-the-network/) [http://www.digitalsociety.org/2009/11/test-data-disproves- fr...](http://www.digitalsociety.org/2009/11/test-data-disproves-free-press- anti-prioritization-paper/) [http://www.digitalsociety.org/2009/11/debunking- the-myth-tha...](http://www.digitalsociety.org/2009/11/debunking-the-myth- that-prioritized-networks-are-harmful/)</comment></comment>


Wikileaks reveals CIA's Elsa: a geo-location malware for WiFi / Windows - <AUTHOR> https://wikileaks.org/vault7/#Elsa <comment><USER2> This is nothing new. Many IT departments at security-sensitive companies have been doing this for a while with their own gear. It's quite common for enterprised-managed laptops to scan for SSIDs and report this information back to HQ. This is primarily done to assist in the tracking of stolen laptops.

Many will quietly connect to open APs when they're discovered and use DNS requests to tunnel this information back, thus attempting to work around captive portals. They might, for example, send an A-record query like this:

chrissnell-laptop-DEADBEEFC0W.security.bigcorp.com

where DEADBEEFC0W is the ESSID of a discovered nearby AP and security.bigcorp.com is a specialized DNS server configured to record this data.

<comment><USER3> This is a big issue with the CIA tool leaks. The really interesting part is who they're using the tools against and how often; the tools themselves, devoid of context, aren't really very interesting.

If they're using this to track a dozen intelligence officials in Saudi Arabia, it's very different optics from if they're using this to track, say, tens of thousands of "red-flagged" families in the US. (Especially since the CIA technically shouldn't be performing any sort of surveillance within the US.)

The NSA leaks, or at least part of them, were a much bigger deal because they revealed warrantless, widespread, persistent drag-net surveillance of US citizens. So far, the CIA leaks have not revealed anything relating to surveillance of US citizens or even any civilians living anywhere.

The CIA may very well (still) be evil, but these leaks do not even begin to prove it, so far.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> To me, these stories are a) vital, and b) dis-heartening, and c) demonstrative of the fact that we need to continue to build better, open and secure, operating systems and tools for end users.

I think there is definitely something to be said for the fact that if the CIA is doing this, then criminals are too - since the fine line between what the CIA does and what a criminal does is simply, a sheet of paper with someones signature on it.

Most of all, however, I think its very important that we continue to reveal these secrets. For those of us not living under the CIA's nefarious shadow, it is good to see them get their secrets revealed.

<comment><USER5> I am curious as to what you believe the CIA is supposed to be doing?

<comment> oval-atom I doubt they have a clue.....disillusioned into idea that we are in a utopian world.

<comment><USER6> The CIA itself has a utopic mission

<comment><USER7> So they are as naive and shortsighted as they seem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This honestly doesn't sound very interesting. Just a regular piece of software using a few of many available location services that are based on SSID scanning. Mozilla for example offers the same: [https://location.services.mozilla.com/](https://location.services.mozilla.com/)

<comment><USER9> The interesting thing about it is not so much how it works as what they do with it: presumably track individuals' locations without their knowledge.

</comment></comment><comment> ju-st On page 22: " <wifi-ap> <ssid>TIPICOS GLORIA</ssid> <mac>68:7F:74:74:34:2B</mac> <rssi>-75</rssi> </wifi-ap>"

The SSID is the name of a Mexican restaurant in western Washington DC...

Unfortunately the document doesn't include API documentation for the geolocation services of Google and Microsoft. Would be interesting to know if CIA is aware of a way around api-key restrictions :)

</comment><comment><USER10> Why is there a judgement on the CIA's actions everytime a tool is leaked? It's their charter to spy on people, the targets being American or not is just semantic. For instance, if an American is a person of interest, the only thing required is for the FBI to be a (name sake) participant in the investigation.

Outrage against 3 letter security/intelligence agencies is silly, it's like blaming Google for being great at search

<comment><USER11> right, but not everybody lives in the us. and of course, their spy agencies dont spy :P

it's also interesting hearing the outrage about russian hacking, and the outrage about the cia having the abilities to hack. I hope it's not the same people complaining.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm curious what an intercept of Mac Product looks like in the Dark Matter scenario. It's not the first mention I've seen of the CIA intercepting the supply chain of an organization.

If one was to purchase a Mac and it was to be intercepted and infected, what does that resealing process look like?

</comment><comment><USER5> After reading through the user guide, this appears to contain no vulnerabilities/exploits, just a payload to fulfill a need to track the location pattern of a target.

This is very basic stuff which could be easily replicated with kismet and some scripts. I am guessing this is some sort of intern project.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, it depends on the target: using a sledgehammer to crack a nut can leave you with more damage than results.

<comment><USER5> Sorry, I am not sure I understand the analogy?

<comment><USER13> He's saying for some simple jobs you don't want to use a more complex too because there could be consequences. In this context, you don't need to use a fancy exploit that could get into the wild, lead to discovery and be blocked from other targets, or whatever else, when you can use something as simple as this exploit.

<comment><USER5> Got it, thank you! I was not trying to criticize this piece of software, just had thought it might be worth mentioning in case folks were curious (As past Vault7 releases had indeed made mention of exploits used).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Am I the only one wondering if they have a tool called Anna?

</comment><comment><USER15> Do you want to build a Snowden?

</comment><comment><USER16> As someone who is not that savvy about malware or persistent software calling "home," what is the best operating system that will avoid these type of attacks?

<comment><USER17> A typewriter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This type of thing might be very useful for preventing CIA's Harold Martin counterparts from leaking from CIA hardware.

</comment><comment><USER18> Isn't this the same principle google uses for their location services?

</comment><comment><USER19> Why don't they just use the location APIs? :D

</comment><comment><USER20> Is this just an article based on the (already posted) vault7 trove of documents?

Because it seems to be a lightweight blog post based on an already old leak, without much analysis.

<comment><USER21> vault7 has been announced and partially released, but wikileaks has been releasing a trickle of new documents over time (it seems they learned from the strategic timing of snowden release documents); these documents are new to the public. they seem to release new documents from the vault7 trove every week or two.

<comment><USER20> So Wikileaks is now in the policy of filtering documents and release timings to shape a narrative?

I seem to recall that their claim to fame was that they were above trying to manipulate the narrative and simply dumped documents when they got them.

Why should we trust a cabal of people who are not telling us the full scope of the situation, and instead filtering what we know based on their desire to shape our opinion over any of the other cabals doing the same thing?

<comment><USER5> If they are trying to filter something, they are doing a pretty awful job. Everything released so far in Vault 7 appears to simply be a dump of intelligence collection tradecraft/methods.

<comment><USER20> As a purely hypothetical example:

 __ __*

The vault7 trove could contain documents on CIA minimization and targeting rules, which show that they carefully avoid US targets and only go for high value targets with these tools, and further could contain mostly exploits targeted at industrial/military targets.

Wikileaks has focused on how they could use the (selectively) released tools to target civilians.

By selecting to release only tools that (could) target civilian appliances, hiding the fact that most tools are built for, eg, industrial/military targets, and that CIA procedures focus on industrial/military targets, Wikileaks effectively shapes the narrative to be about how the CIA is targeting civilians, when the reality is that they're targeting high value, perfectly appropriate things (which just happen to occasionally use technology others do as well).

 __ __*

Sowing that kind of distrust between US civilians and one of their intel agencies would be a perfectly normal PSYOPs goal, and in-line with what you'd expect from, eg, RT.

That Wikileaks has decided to editorialize their content in such a way means that you now need to evaluate those kinds of scenarios when thinking about the things they release, instead of just focusing on the content. It reduces their brand value significantly.

<comment><USER5> You make a good point regarding what they might be trying to do. But do you think many people are actually buying it? Anyone could think of malicious uses for all sorts of things, the only noteworthy revelations would be actual proof of misuse.

<comment><USER20> > Anyone could think of malicious uses for all sorts of things, the only > noteworthy revelations would be actual proof of misuse.

Does this same logic apply to the vault7 trove itself?

The entire leak is basically "Spy agency has capability to spy. _Yawn._ " once you take away the angle of "Oooo! Spooky! They might target _you_!"

So we're already in the case that Wikileaks is trying to editorialize the content for an agenda, which we know is to cause damage to the US intel community. (They haven't been friends for a _long_ time, in well documented ways.)

We also know that Wikileaks is withholding the full extent of what they know or not, and are choosing what to reveal (which is a tactic well know to be used to shape narratives).

Why should we care what Wikileaks has to say on this matter, for the exact reason you so helpfully pointed out?

They're a biased source, not disclosing their full knowledge and seeking to manipulate us, who haven't actually shown any evidence of wrong-doing.

<comment><USER5> You might be missing that I do fully agree with you. I guess if it is out there anyway though, makes some sense for there to be discussion on HN as it is a technical forum. Probably safe to skip their "analysis" and only pay mind to the source document.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Primitive Tech – Build Swimming Pool Around Underground House - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mn1DEeyqaT4 <comment><USER2> The person that started this type of videos has the channel "Primitive Technology" at [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAL3JXZSzSm8AlZyD3nQdBA](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAL3JXZSzSm8AlZyD3nQdBA)

It is nice that others are following the lead. I do doubt though in this video that they filled up the pool with just those two buckets.</comment>


Firefox Reenables Insecure TLS to Improve Access to COVID19 Info - <AUTHOR> https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/firefox-reenables-insecure-tls-to-improve-access-to-covid19-info/ <comment><USER2> More that Chrome stopped updates for the meantime, which meant that the simultaneous decommissioning of older TLS wasn't going to happen.</comment>


Show HN: A complete re-thinking of the desktop productivity app - <AUTHOR> We created Slash (https://getslash.co/hn) after realizing that todo list apps are hopelessly broken. They're great at making lists, but offer you no help in crossing them off. In fact, they often create even more stress when you're staring at a list 100 items longs.
Slash is a task "do-er" that helps you CRUSH your list by focusing on one task at a time.
Quickly enter your tasks, hit 'Start', and the window shrinks down to a small always-on-top window that shows your current task and how long you've been working on it. When you're done, hover over the task name and click 'Done'. Then you get a random ""You're awesome"" GIF, and the option to start the next task, or take a break. The idea is that you create your list once in the morning, and then never have to choose what to do next.
It also bakes in a ton of other productivity tools like:
- Pomodoros (20-30 minute work periods with 5 minute breaks)
- Eisenhower Matrix (Tagging tasks as urgent/important for automatic prioritisation)
- Timed Tasks (Type in 'Do _______ for 20 minutes' and the task will start with a 20 minute countdown)
- Time Tracking (Check out the analytics dashboard to see what you spent the most time on, your most productive days + hours, etc)
- Integrations with Trello, Asana, Todoist, etc. -- Coming soon! (Import your tasks from a list app, and get them done in Slash)
Our mission is to help people get more done, and actually move closer to their dreams. We'd love your feedback to help us better the app and enable a world of smaller todo lists :)
P.S. If you like the app, we'd love an upvote on Product Hunt! https://www.producthunt.com/posts/slash-904b91c8-4031-4e3b-b262-59f4bae85d22 <comment><USER2> Hey, cool concept. I downloaded and tried to add a task. Hitting "Enter" does nothing. I can't seem to add a task, no matter what I write.

</comment><comment><USER3> Although I don't use this kind of product, I completely loved your landing page, can you tell me more about developing it?

</comment><comment><USER4> This looks great! Wish you all the best with the product.</comment>


Searching for Cicada Song: a crowdsourcing project - <AUTHOR> http://opensignal.com/blog/2013/06/25/searching-for-cicada-song-a-crowdsourcing-project/

<comment><USER2> Another example of Android being used for highly specialised crowdsourcing projects, (and also in the woods!)[http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21829205.600-old- smart...](http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21829205.600-old-smartphones- called-in-to-save-indonesian-forests.html#.Ucl302SY5NM) \- use of phones to listen out for illegal logging.</comment>


Show HN: ExitIntent – Convert bouncing visitors to leads and customers - <AUTHOR> http://exitintent.io

<comment><USER2> Maybe I'm not "most users", but that would immediately kill any interest I had in a site I was browsing. The way I view it is, my attention is something I bestow upon a website, it's not something you have a right to grab without my permission like this.

On a more constructive note, how do you intend to deal with false positives among users that have multiple displays? If I were interested and wanted to share the link, by moving my mouse to the address bar it would trigger this popup.

<comment><USER3> I think this is a useful viewpoint on the matter - "Should I use those annoying popups?" = [http://socialtriggers.com/annoying- popups/](http://socialtriggers.com/annoying-popups/)

<comment><USER2> I suppose I can't really argue with the data (assuming it's generalizable). So it seems this tool will annoy people like me, but otherwise might be a net positive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This seems similar to bounceexchange[0], and I think the idea is generally good. Try to grab people's attention at the last minute when they're already planning on leaving your website anyway. Last-ditch effort that can't really upset too much, especially since you already lost them.

Of course it depends on how spammy those popups end-up being, but at least from a couple of sites that I've seen and who use bounce exchange, they do seem to get pretty spammy-looking in my opinion.

What I wonder the most is who would actually pay for this. The 'exit intent technology' as dubbed by bounceexchange can be easily done with a couple of lines of javascript. Perhaps it won't be as sophisticated, but it would achieve very similar effect. We ended up borrowing a small snippet from an open-source project[1] that does this and it's looking fine so far. All it does it checks if the mouse y-coordinates is below a certain threshold and then triggers the modal.

Perhaps the popups themselves and having them pre-designed or having a WYSIWYG editor and integrated without any coding would be a selling point here? (not being sarcastic, genuinely curious about the potential customer base for this).

[0] [http://bounceexchange.com/](http://bounceexchange.com/) [1] [https://github.com/carlsednaoui/ouibounce](https://github.com/carlsednaoui/ouibounce)

<comment><USER5> I get the idea and I think it's clever. It might even work to convert leads. But as a user, I find it rather intrusive.

I've come by quite a few websites recently who fire this in my face prematurely. It feels rather annoying to get a "please don't leave us" pop- over when all I wanted was to move the mouse out of the way so that I could read the site's content (which is now impossible due to the aforementioned pop-over).

</rant>

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This appears to be a clone of Bounce Exchange. The tactic works. Some of my clients have deployed it and site conversions went up dramatically. I personally don't love the user experience but it's hard to argue with the results.

</comment><comment><USER7> It seems significant that the ExitIntent site doesn't use ExitIntent, aside from in the demo.

Is it because they know deep down it's annoying and spammy?

<comment><AUTHOR> We do use ExitIntent on our site. Please click on "See it in action" link below. We kept it like this so that if user wants to see the demo multiple times , they can see it working. The actual exitintent wouldn't work if user wanted to see it multiple times, as popups are shown only once per user per site

<comment><USER8> Damn that was bad design. I clicked the massive green "Try it now" call to action, fully expecting that to be the demo. Since that comes before the tiny "See it in action" link, and it moves me to a new page, I didn't see it. Next I tried just actually going towards the close tab button, but the demo wasn't already activated. At this point I would have hit the close tab button if it weren't for these comments.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Once I click "Try It Out" I can't easily get back to the page I was on before -- both the logo and "home" link to a login page.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for pointing this out . We are fixing this now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I ran across this technique on a couple of sites last week when going for the back button (no idea if they were ExitIntent users).

I thought it was a neat idea, and I stopped and played with the effect for a couple of minutes, testing its behavior. I may not remember the sites that did this, but it did make me pause and look at the popup as my pointer left the page.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN, We have built ExitIntent to help reduce bounce rates and convert exiting visitors to leads. We have tried to make it very simple for anyone to run popup campaigns on their sites. Would love to get the feedback of the community.

<comment><USER11> You're competing with SumoMe, which does essentially the same thing + is free (with one-off cash charges for upgrades/prettier templates, etc).

What's the differentiation here?

<comment><AUTHOR> SumoMe is not exactly free(they have paid upgrades as you suggested). The differentiating factor is the WYSIWYG pop builder which lets you completely customize the popup to match your website.

<comment><USER12> So your differentiating factor is an UI feature that can be duplicated in a week?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This looks quite interesting. Looking forward to trying it!

</comment><comment><USER14> How in the world can you build a subscription based business off what's effectively a glorified javascript and analytical data??

</comment><comment><USER15> Things like this are why I use key commands or gestures for navigating from a page.

</comment><comment><USER16> I hope you get punched in the face.</comment>