Peter Thiel at Center of Facebook's Internal Divisions on Politics - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/peter-thiel-at-center-of-facebooks-internal-divisions-on-politics-11576578601 <comment><USER2> Who is fact-checking political ads on television or in newspapers? Who is fact checking "opinion" shows on cable news that present overtly biased and occasionally outright false information?

The implication in this debate is that the "wrong" candidate only got elected because some voters had bad information and were tricked. Maybe parties need to look at what they are offering voters and what they have actually delivered in the past to get to the root of why people either don't want what they're offering or don't believe it will actually come to pass.

<comment><USER3> The issue with fact-checking Facebook ads vs. TV or newspaper is one of targeting and timing.

Facebook ads can be micro-targeted to the point where they're only seen by a very small audience, which is simply not possible in mainstream TV or newspaper. If you have a misleading campaign on TV (e.g., swift boat stuff on Kerry in '04), that can be recognized and called out (not that the dems were super effective at that then...). However with Facebook, it's much more challenging given the small sample size to (1) see all of the ads people are seeing and (2) figure out who has been exposed to them.

So at the end of the day, it's tougher to identify misinformation, and then if you do identify it it's pretty much impossible to re-message the same audience with the correct info. Add timing to that (many campaigns are only up for 24-48 hours) and you start to see why this is a fundamentally different beast from TV and newspaper ads.

One of the blunter but potentially effective solutions is to have a much larger minimum audience size, which is what Google moved to (although still at a pretty small scale).

<comment><USER4> Not to mention that Facebook for some time also enabled resharing those micro- targeted ads, which would then show those ads on friends/followers' newsfeed _without_ the Sponsored Content notice, thus further blurring the lines between what was "legitimately" viral content and what originated as micro- targeted paid advertising.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Interestingly this is the same guy who felt like he needed to use his billions to take down Gawker because he didn't like what they said about him. Evidently he doesn't care about ad messages on Facebook though as long as it doesn't impact him. Or maybe he thinks is okay because he can always use his money to protect himself. Long story short the Gawker incident just goes to show that Theil has absolutely no moral high ground here and that his reason for supporting these ads has absolutely nothing to do with "free speech" or any other positive moral trope.

Super curious what would happen if someone started an ad campaign on Facebook about Peter Theil though...

<comment><USER6> Gawker published a private sex tape (Hulk Hogan's) without permission on the grounds that it is "news" in order to make its publication legal. I can't see how anyone could say Gawker had the moral high ground, they were a despicable organization whose only business model was publishing private information/revenge porn for profit

<comment><USER7> The discussion isn't about Hulk Hogan v Gawker, it's Peter Thiel v Gawker, via Hulk Hogan. Thiel funded Hogan's lawsuit against Gawker, for personal revenge.

<comment><USER8> Personal revenge for outing him as gay while he was physically in Saudi Arabia, IIRC. Which I'd consider to be only half a step down from a murder attempt if it happened to me.

(Of course, I'm not a billionaire, so there's a far higher chance that I'd actually end up dead in such a situation. But still)

<comment> blaser-waffle It was a business meeting too -- great way of tanking that meeting.

But yeah, being gay in Iran or Saudi has serious consequences. Plus Gawker, posing a progressive media outlet via organs like Jezebel, shouldn't be airing anyone dirty laundry like that -- and then they did, repeatedly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Well, it's not surprising for someone who's been vocally "skeptic" about democracy to not care about one of it's deterrents; misinformation.

</comment><comment><USER10> Facebook is so full of themselves - they think they can run the world etc. Doesn't hurt that the mainstream media are (baselessly) convinced of it. Corbyn's campaign heavily dominated social media in the UK and it turned to a catastrophe. The rules for posting on their pages and using their API have become obnoxiously stupid. few days ago i got a request asking about a surge in calls to their API 5 years ago, as if i can remember (or give a shit about their API access for that matter). the witch hunting has gone out of hand , but i m loving to watch facebook and everyone else bursting in flames over who can manipulate the most. bring it on

<comment><USER11> Facebook has increasingly become a media property for boomers and the technically illiterate. It is the "spam folder" of the internet. We used to have to build tech to filter spam, phishing and forwards with stupid nonsense and now we've got it all wrapped up nicely in the various a Facebook properties.

Facebook doesn't realize that what it's really become is humanities supermarket tabloid.

<comment><USER12> Except they own instagram too.

<comment><USER11> Instagram is no better. Maybe worse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> [http://archive.md/1Vt4h](http://archive.md/1Vt4h)

<comment><USER14> Thanks

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Facebook took down an ad by a left-leaning politician that said Lindsey Graham supports the Green New Deal. It's only Republicans that are allowed to lie in Facebook ads. It's transparently a Trump-reelection strategy.

</comment><comment><USER16> > "Mark is friends with Peter Thiel and a lot of Republicans," said a former > Facebook employee who worked in its political group. "It's a reality people > aren't willing to accept."

Friends. With Republicans. The horror.

<comment><USER17> that's someone whose job is on the line being polite about a board member's political activism.

the less polite way to put it would be that Peter Thiel is balls-deep in all kinds of dark-money republican activism and would really prefer to keep Russian propaganda all over facebook because it's advantageous for his tax rates.

<comment><USER18> What is "dark money"?

<comment><USER19> No, it has a pretty precise definition. It's money spent on political activism that isn't publicly reported, typically through a specific category of non- profit organization.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> he is right. it is not because ads are not favorable to your agenda that you should ban them. what kind of democracy are we living in. California is a world outside of reality

</comment><comment><USER21> Is he still active in politics as a Trump supporter?

</comment><comment><USER22> > Mr. Thiel has argued that Facebook should stick to its controversial > decision... to continue accepting [political ads with no fact checking]

Okay, so just to recap:

1\. Thiel is the investor who made billions off of Facebook before becoming a high-profile Trump supporter.

2\. Trump is the guy who became president thanks in no small part to misinformation campaigns at scale made possible by Facebook's ad platform.

3\. Thiel is now one of the strongest voices arguing that Facebook should remain in the political misinformation-for-profit business.

I couldn't read the entire article due to paywall, but forgive me for having doubts that Thiel's convictions are based on a desire to do what's right for democracy.

<comment><USER23> ignoring the totally insubstantiable claim that facebook ads got trump elected, the alternative is making facebook the gatekeeper of political truth. this scares me much more than six figure ad spends in a presidential election.

<comment><USER22> > the totally insubstantiable claim that facebook ads got trump elected

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2018/03/22/a...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2018/03/22/all- the-ways-trumps-campaign-was-aided-by-facebook-ranked-by-importance/)

> the alternative is making facebook the gatekeeper of political truth

This argument is so played out. If it cared enough, or was forced to by regulation, Facebook could deploy enough fact checkers to greatly reduce the problem.

<comment><USER24> > forced to by regulation

So now you want the government to tell Facebook what is truthful?

Government approved media is propaganda.

Do you not see how flawed this is!?

The argument is not played out. I do NOT want Facebook telling me what is the truth. Period.

If you want to limit their targeting tools for political ads, that's an okay route for me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> It's funny how it's controversial for FB to not to want to be the Ministry of Truth.

If you don't trust them with your data, why would you trust them with the truth.

Allow all ads and let the people decide for themselves.

But if you're on the side that is providing the fact-checkers, I see how you'd want your propaganda be stamped with an approval and your opponents facts be dismissed with a fake news label.

Censorship is a slippery slope guys...

We don't fact check polical ads on newspapers or TV ads. There is a reason for this. Jesus fucking Christ.

<comment><USER25> Agreed! People think it's so easy to determine what's true or not at scale. Do I want Facebook employees or (algorithms written by them) making that call? No way.

<comment><USER26> Maybe they shouldn't be in the political ad business if it's too hard to do it safely. Imagine if we said the same about driving cars or sale of high explosives or thwarting counterfeit cash.</comment></comment></comment>


Why Americans don't buy DVD players that record - <AUTHOR> http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9851947-7.html?tag=newsmap

<comment><USER2> Here's the reason (FTA):

"Cable TV penetration is far higher in the States than Asia or Europe. With cable, the same show can appear on a channel several times. In Europe and Japan, you need to grab it when you can."

<comment><USER3> Hey, you're pretty good at that. You should write a few summaries for my site Squeezed Books :-)</comment></comment>


Tokyo Cabinet: a modern implementation of DBM - <AUTHOR> http://tokyocabinet.sourceforge.net/index.html

<comment><AUTHOR> This looks like a good Hash and BTree implementation. It's done in C99 with bindings for many other languages. English language specifications are here: <http://tokyocabinet.sourceforge.net/spex-en.html>

Benchmarks comparing to (among others) BerkeleyDB, TDB, and NDBM are here: <http://tokyocabinet.sourceforge.net/benchmark.pdf></comment>


The End of Verifiable.com - <AUTHOR> http://eagereyes.org/blog/2010/end-of-verifiable-com

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm leading a startup that does visualization, among other things. So I found this article to be a useful assessment of the challenges involved in doing datavis-as-a-service.</comment>


Domains4Good: Redirect your unused domains to social causes - <AUTHOR> http://domains4good.org

<comment><USER2> It's a neat idea, but I'd be interested to see at what rate these redirected visitors actually do anything on the sites they land on. I know that if I click a link and find something unrelated to what I was looking for, I general close the tab pretty immediately.

<comment><USER3> Amy here, one of the creators. Great point, and there will be some self- reporting necessary here since we obviously don't have access to anyone's Google Analytics. If you have submitted domains through the site, please let us know how it's working for you! The referrer should show as domains4good.org. A/B testing the copy/design of the interstitial page before the redirect is also something we can test in the future to see what encourages people to stick around the longest. Thanks for the comments.

<comment><USER4> Amy et al, very cool. Would be great if this could be used to really boost SEO for the featured nonprofit's keywords over time. Maybe pull some content keywords from the featured site for link juice and then create archived pages for the previous nonprofits. Like /handup -> [http://handup.us](http://handup.us) ???

<comment><USER3> Interesting idea, and I agree there's a lot more we could do to better support the social causes on-site vs. just the general domain redirects. We created this all in a weekend at the #hack4good hackathon in SF, so what you're seeing now is just the beginning.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Like antibiotic resistance bacteria, if you continue to flood the internet with begging, people will become completely immune to those types of requests (no matter what the cause or how worthy they might be).

<comment><USER6> Sounds true and I would have expected the same with Television / movie commercials, that people will stop buying those brands. But most of the people go to supermarkets and buy the product that are familiar.

This could happen here also. Creating a familiarity. So even if a person is initially irritated, after a month when he / she goes to make a donation, it would be to a charity that is familiar than a completely unknown one.

<comment><USER7> Branding takes quite a bit of work (and may be demographic/psychological profiling of the target audience). At best, randomly redirecting incorrectly typed domains to charitable org's websites just achieve nothing, or at worst, confuse the viewer, and associate "error" with charity.

But buying SEO juice with unused domains the same way spammers do is probably a better idea - then a google search is going to turn up the correct sites.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Loving the leaderboard:

... unicornfarts.com ponypenis.com ...

(:

</comment><comment><USER9> Congrats team Domains4good! So proud you gave birth to it at the Geeklist #hack4good 0.2 in Sam Francisco this weekend! ^5 - the Geeklist team

</comment><comment><USER10> Very neat idea. Maybe you can convince some of the registrars to make this a choice instead of the standard domain parking pages.

<comment><AUTHOR> On it. Have a couple requests about to registrars as well as to Rackspace for hosting. We redirected 6X the number of unique visitors today through unused domains than Facebook generated at launched.

<comment><USER11> fyi dreamhost offer free hosting for non-profits

<comment><USER12> So does Gandi.net

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is such a simple, yet great idea.

</comment><comment><USER14> Fantastic idea.

</comment><comment><USER15> Just wondering; could this negatively affect your SEO rating?

<comment><USER16> I have been in the really high level SEO space for a long time and the second I saw this it made me very uncomfortable for that reason.

Theoretically it absolutely could, in reality, it's hard to say but I wouldn't be overly enthused about people pointing random domains at any site I owned.

In short, Not to trash the people behind it, it is really well intentioned and I love the concept but reality may pose problems that end up doing more harm than good.

<comment><AUTHOR> To the causes, the referring traffic source likes like it's coming from Domains4Good.org.

A cause would only seeing referring traffic when it's promoted as the top cause of the day. Links onsite at Domains4Good from cause submissions would also ultimately add to SEO value. Social referring traffic through Domains4Good promotions across all channels, not just redirect, will add value as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Counts are simply hits.

Not that I tested it or anything.

</comment><comment><USER18> My particular favorite is "unicornfarts.com". :-)

</comment><comment><USER19> Seems like a cool idea.

</comment><comment><USER20> You need a favicon :)

</comment><comment><USER21> A brilliant idea!

</comment><comment><USER22> Great initiative

</comment><comment><USER23> Cool idea</comment>


How to make application scalable? - <AUTHOR> Hi, I am a junior software engineer and I have been searching about how to make application scalable that thousands of user can use it without facing any issue? Everywhere I read has some things like use cdn, program your application in such a way etc but I think I am not getting it. Can anyone tell me in a bit detail and using real time system, like how you will program your system, what programming language will be preferred, what will be the architecture (I have only used MVC) and I think if I will use MVC all the time, of course I am wrong but I don't think of any other pssible architecture because I never had any use case??? Can anyone explain me.. <comment><USER2> MVC like architectures have nothing to do with scalability. Scalability is the approach that you will need to take when your application concurrent requests grows such that the existing system is not able to handle these new requests load. The idea of a load balancer is one such approach for scalability. You will have to also think about how would you scale your database as the requests increases the database requests will also increase. There are some general guidelines you can follow but overall the best approach comes from what are the computational requirements of your particular application.</comment>


Life on a neutron star (2004) - <AUTHOR> http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/N/neutronstarlife.html <comment><USER3> I love these books (Dragon's Egg and Starquake). Robert Forward isn't great with the human characters, but they're only in a handful of scenes. He really brings the cheela to life, and the speculative physics is outstanding.

<comment><USER4> I remember some wit commenting that the strangest aliens in science fiction were the human characters in a Robert Forward novel...

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> also Flux [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flux_(novel)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flux_\(novel\)) by Stephen Baxter

<comment><USER4> That also adds the interesting aspect of _weaponized_ neutron stars...

<comment><USER6> For those who haven't read Stephen Baxter's Xeelee Sequence novels, a weaponized neutron star is actually fairly tame as far as weapons go in that series.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Before this, there was Mission of Gravity, by Hal Clement ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission_of_Gravity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission_of_Gravity))

He even wrote an article about the creation of his high-g planet, featured in Astounding SF in 1953.

<comment><USER8> As a kid, I read Hal Clement. He was lauded as one of the few authors to write aliens as alien. They had different goals. This was refreshing after so many 1-dimension aliens, or aliens who were just humans in a different guise.

Actually even as a kid I didn't think he'd gone far enough. Sure they had different outlooks. But fundamentally there weren't as different from me as some other people I knew. I was wishing for an alien that thought completely differently - different morals, different logic, different cultural blind spots and esthetics. Not just different solutions to obstacles they found, which they could explain in perfect western logic.

<comment> Iwan-Zotow > I was wishing for an alien that thought completely differently - <USER2> > morals, different logic, different cultural blind spots and esthetics.

"Solaris" by S.Lem

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Wouldn't enormous gravitational pressure on the surface of neutron star essentially make it extremely flat (as in nearly perfect elongated sphere)?

<comment><USER10> According to this article by David Darling, any surface irregularities ("mountains") would be no more than 5 mm in height.

[http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/N/neutronstar.html](http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/N/neutronstar.html)

Charles Horowitz estimates 100 mm.

[https://www.space.com/6682-neutron-star-crust-stronger- steel...](https://www.space.com/6682-neutron-star-crust-stronger-steel.html)

<comment><USER11> They can also have 'seas' of hydrogen pulled off a partner star if they're in a binary system. The resulting occasional thermonuclear explosions might make it a bit of an unpleasant place to live though.

<comment><USER12> The novel occurs on a free-roaming neutron star that has stabilized enough due to its isolation to permit life. Along with the open question of whether "nuclear chemistry" is possible, it would certainly be an open question as to whether it is truly possible for a neutron star to ever stabilize enough for life. I don't think it's much of a spoiler since it's right in the title... the second one, Starquake, centers around a neutron-star quake that happens to the Cheela civilization. Neutron star quakes are so devastating that the human ships and the humans are quite badly shaken up, merely being in orbit around a neutron quake. (Imagine satellites being destroyed because of a quake on Earth. We're very low mass, we don't think of things like that. Though I'm sure we can tell the differences in some trajectories from quakes and seaslides.)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


This isn't fun anymore (2017) - <AUTHOR> http://www.therandymon.com/index.php?/archives/338-This-isnt-fun-anymore.html <comment><USER2> Can I just take a moment to say how much I appreciate Hacker News?

In an internet filled with advertising, tracking, toxicity and trolls, HN is a relief.

The design is simple, fast and functional. The community does a tremendous job of legislating itself. The content is incredibly valuable.

Hacker News reminds me of the internet I grew up loving, not the thing it has become.

<comment><USER3> Yep.

Much as I rail against the overly pedantic nature of many, _many_ comments here, this place is a veritable treasure trove compared to Reddit.

On Reddit, _every single fucking thread_ gets derailed by shitty puns, basement-tier humour or a one-liner with all the nuance of a tweet. Doesn't matter how sombre a topic, some dickhead is going to make an oh-so-clever quip and legions of fellow dickheads will line up to suck his dick and upvote it to the top.

Even when there are substantive comments, the replies to those comments rarely make for useful reading.

"Take my upvote and fuck off"

"Nice"

"Mom's spaghetti"

"/r/Suicidebywords" on a comment about dick sizes

... and on and on

Not to mention the fact that Reddit's recent algorithms upvote the shittiest content to the front page to begin with. I mean, /r/dankmemes? /r/memeeconomy? /r/wholesome memes? Fuck outta here with that shit.

There are exceptions, of course. /r/financialindependence comes to mind. But overall, it's become an out of control shitshow that I visit ever less frequently.

So yeah, thank god for HN.

<comment><USER4> Reddit is way more enjoyable than HN. On reddit you can have serious discussions and you can have fun. HN is trying too hard to be serious. It may be interesting, but rarely it is fun.

<comment><USER3> Couldn't disagree more. If I want fun, I'd watch some comedian on YouTube, way higher quality. If I wanted serious discussion, Reddit has too much noise for the signal that it does offer.

The Reddit of today is about posting the "funniest" screenshots from Twitter, things like blackpeopletwitter, whitepeopletwitter, murderedbywords and so on.

<comment><USER5> >The Reddit of today is about posting the "funniest" screenshots from Twitter, things like blackpeopletwitter, whitepeopletwitter, murderedbywords and so on.

It's easy to say that Reddit has no discussions of merit when only using examples of subreddits which have no intent to have discussions of merit, and focus primarily on memes and light-hearted content. But it's purposely disingenuous to do so. That's usually what people seem to do.

But compare the quality of discussion between Hacker News and the programming subreddits from which stories are usually reposted, or the heavily moderated expert subs like /r/askahistorian, and see if HN really still stands head and shoulders above the rest in terms of quality. In my experience, with the minor exception that HN is allergic to any sort of humor, the experience is about the same.

<comment><USER3> Yeah I know. People bring up r/science and the history subreddits all the time. And you're right, they do stick to the topic. The trouble is that they're both very siloed. If you don't like those topics all the time, you have to go elsewhere. Hence my comment on signal to noise.

Totally agree about the no humour thing on HN though.

<comment><USER5> Hacker News tries to be siloed, it's just that the silo is vaguely defined and subjective ("anything that gratifies intellectual curiosity.")

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I have no experience with what this guy is talking about.

Maybe "They" are tracking me just as assiduously as him, and desperately trying to get their ads projected onto my retinas, but I never see any online ads at all. Hence, I never see targeted ads.

If I were ever to turn off UMatrix, I probably would be shocked. But why would I do that?

So my main complaint about The Web These Days is that everything works badly, when it works at all. Amazon search can never bring up what I want to buy, even when I know it exactly. Ebay, likewise. Google cannot find anything that might be vaguely connected to a Product they would rather I were searching for instead.

Google Maps was going all to hell until recently, but appears to have recovered, some, and arrested the slide.

<comment><USER7> There's one big difference here, I'd bet. Do you have children? Or a spouse? Because as assiduously as you can corral your own content for pesky ads there will be devices, services, and platforms that your children or your spouse use that will leak into your life.

The day your child asks you why youtube keeps giving him ads for diabetes medication and you have to face your still unresolved feelings about your mother's death and explain that he'll probably one day have to have daily injections and a few toes amputated and maybe deal with kidney failure is the day you'll probably feel the same as the author of this article.

<comment><USER8> I pay YouTube not so I don't see ads, but so my kids don't see ads.

<comment><USER7> Family requires compromise and, like diplomacy, cannot effectively function with unlimited transparency.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > "If people like me can't be sure our home life won't leak onto the sidebars > of corporate presentation, or the recommendations of software our kids are > using, we'll stop using it entirely."

What a fucking joke. You and I both know there's no escape, here; we're trapped here forever, and things will always only get worse and they will never get better, and there isn't a god-damned thing we can do about it.

<comment><USER10> You can start improving and reap what you sow in your next incarnation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The web isn't as much fun in many ways but seeing the jacket I looked at four years ago and rejected, appear over and over and over again since then, actually gives me much more of a chuckle than today's grim headlines.

<comment> d-d Email me your details.

I must set the jacket free.

<comment><USER12> [https://giphy.com/gifs/wgcm7vctFPlfO/html5](https://giphy.com/gifs/wgcm7vctFPlfO/html5)

[https://giphy.com/gifs/sMoT7sVhwBebC/html5](https://giphy.com/gifs/sMoT7sVhwBebC/html5)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The listening part is what is really the most mind-blowing. I routinely get mobile ads about things I only talked about with others and never typed anywhere. Google can deny as much as they want: They listen to every single word

<comment><USER14> I run a microphone blocker on my phone for these purposes.

Before that I used to wonder whether they were listening in; or it were merely coincidence and our brain just connects the dots where it shouldn't.

<comment><USER15> So did you notice an effect after blocking the microphone? Did the ads seeved to you change as a result?

<comment><USER14> Not really. And I can't say that I have formed an opinion either way yet. It's more of an experiment than anything else. I tend to not really browse much on my mobile anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> d-d The internet used to be a paradise of sorts. Sure, there was the occasional troll, affiliate link or Viagra ad in your inbox; but that was the spice of the 'net. Today it's all spice, no curry.

</comment><comment><USER16> Y'all been to Newgrounds recently? It's still incredibly fresh and creative, just like it was back in the day. In fact, you yourself can contribute to it with tools that make it easier than ever!

I'm beginning to think people just never liked the old web to begin with because they had to put real thought into contributing.

</comment><comment><USER17> I think of the Internet today as being in the "gathering" stage. All our data is just being slurped up, hanging around on the servers of a few dozen companies. It's alarming, to be sure, but just you wait! A few years from now - when computers are faster and storage is cheaper - we'll enter the "disseminating" stage.

That's the stage we'll enter as soon as an entire internet's worth of content becomes easily transferable.

That's when all your private information from 2019 (your medical history, gmail messages, bank details, your search and browsing and shopping history, your private photos, etc) will leak to the public.

It's just a question of time because any morsel of data only needs to leak once to be henceforth online forever. It will be a complete nightmare.

</comment><comment><USER18> I used to dream of switching out roots and making a new internet, but that seems like it'd never work. What about a TLD instead, with the simple tenent that no advertising or tracking was allowed, ever? Doing so would get your domain sinkholed. Something like that done right, with some free or ultra cheap tier for honest users, I could see attracting users. And more users maybe more companies would want to join in. I don't know, I'm just thinking out loud. I share the sentiments of the author, and find the modern web gross. Outside of maybe 4 or 5 websites(this one included), I don't use it much anymore. And this isn't just an old man hating change, it's objectively much different, and all worse.

<comment><USER19> > Doing so would get your domain sinkholed

Is there any party out there trusted to wield this much power to decide what's "advertising" or "tracking"? Given that modern technology is all about running programs on the Internet. And assuming this could grow into something big, and won't just wither or die like myriad of networks that were out there.

.nojs/.nocookie TLDs could be a fun idea, though. Doesn't need any trusted third party to govern, just a bit of browser vendors cooperation (so, a slim chance).

<comment><USER20> Why nojs/nocookie? Advertisers will still find their ways and it'll cut off a large chunk of legitimate developers.

<comment><USER19> Why not? The web of late '90s (as I remember it) worked just fine without those. Ability to serve only documents but not programs, and inability to persist any identifiers would mean that both website developers and visitors would know that website cannot be disruptive, and would serve content (or nothing of substance at all).

I expect that advertisers won't go there because it contradicts modern beliefs in targeted advertising and how behavioral data obtained by tracking is worth everything.

And it's virtually impossible to distinguish between paid-for "native" advertising and honest product recommendation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> While I don't disagree with the rant, I note that the latest post on this gentleman's blog is today (December 10. 2019).

Not using the internet isn't a real option anymore.

<comment><USER22> There's a difference between publishing to the Web and consuming published content on the Web. These complaints are about the state of the latter, as effected by less-than-benign actors doing the former. One can do the former without doing the latter (see also: Richard Stallman, who last I checked still doesn't use a web browser of any sort, yet somehow still maintains his own blog).

<comment><USER23> Huh, is there no FLOSS, Stallman-compatible browser?

<comment><USER5> There's no Stallman-compatible internet for him to use it on[0]. He goes through great pains to avoid identifying himself by accessing the internet directly, and to avoid interacting in any way with non-free content.

        "...I generally do not connect to web sites from my own machine,
        aside from a few sites I have some special relationship with.
        I usually fetch web pages from other sites by sending mail to a
        program (see https://git.savannah.gnu.org/git/womb/hacks.git)
        that fetches them, much like wget, and then mails them back to me.

        Then I look at them using a web browser, unless it is easy to see
        the text in the HTML page directly. I usually try lynx first,
        then a graphical browser if the page needs it (using konqueror,
        which won't fetch from other sites in such a situation)."

[0][https://stallman.org/stallman- computing.html](https://stallman.org/stallman-computing.html)

<comment><USER23> Thanks, but this very quote names a browser that he uses?

<comment><USER5> Fair enough, he "uses" a web browser, for very limited definitions of use.

His beliefs about the inherently non-free nature of the web and his fears about surveillance still make it infeasible for him to consume the web directly, unless it's with someone else's browser.

<comment><USER23> I'm pretty much boycotting Facebook/Twitter(/Discord), and seriously thinking about boycotting YouTube/Reddit - am I not using the Web (or the Internet - those are not the same...) ?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I need to get rid of my Alexa cuz I know it's listening but it's such a convenient timer

<comment><USER25> If simply switching things on/off on a timer is your killer feature, and not the voice activation, you can just use the free Home Assistant software.

<comment><USER24> I use my voice to set the timer :/ That's pretty much all me and the spouse do...would get a HomePod but they're so expensive

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Don't use the web on your phone.</comment>


Google still tracks app users when they've opted out, privacy lawsuit alleges - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/daveywinder/2020/07/15/google-still-tracks-app-users-when-theyve-opted-out-privacy-lawsuit-alleges-class-action-firebase-data-tracking/#155429863864 <comment><USER2> Hahaha, why be surprised? There is no such thing as Internet privacy for a long time. [https://utopia.fans/privacy/the-myth-of-the- privacy/](https://utopia.fans/privacy/the-myth-of-the-privacy/) Large corporations monitor users. all information about them is stored on servers. If necessary, there will be no difficulties in order to provide it at the first request of state services, for example.</comment>


Application Design Decisions - A blog covering the decisions made in designing an app - <AUTHOR> http://nextupdate.com/blog/archives/2008/02/issue-tracker-design-decisions/

<comment><USER2> Very cool!</comment>


Ask HN: Systems programmer(C/C++/Rust/), brainstorm/hack project together? - <AUTHOR> I am a generalist C/EC++/C++ programmer. Looking for other systems programmer to brainstorm/hack project together. Anyone interested? <comment><USER2> Maybe say something about what your project is about?

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't have any specific project in mind. This was a call to kickstarting something with other programmers.</comment></comment>


How Vine Wraps Up New Users - <AUTHOR> http://blog.jasonshah.org/post/43653530237/vine-ux-how-vine-wraps-up-new-users

<comment><USER2> The most appealing and inviting thing about Vine for me is its flat pixel design. There was a great article and debate about flat pixels / skeuomorphism a couple weeks back --> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5204380>

</comment><comment><USER3> Vine is ok but you can't say it shines in terms of usability. The major issue is the tap to record. As most of the iOs users are taping to focus, you are basically going against a natural behavior for a camera type app.

<comment><USER4> I think the tap feature is what makes Vine really great.

I used an app called Dirctr before, it provides you with storyboards that you can fill with videos you record in order to make interesting videos, that are not just long shaky plan of what's around you. <http://www.directr.co/> The results are great but I've only used it a couple of times because you have to go back to the story board each time you want to add a new shot. That makes the UX complicated.

I use Vine all the time because the tap to record is the simplest way to make videos composed of several shots. You can even start recording a couple of shots, turn off your iPhone and come back several minutes/hours later to add some more. And iPhones are pretty good at focusing so it doesn't seem to me like it's a big issue.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm curious about their hand-holding UX approach. It worked for me. But I don't know if it's something that helps most users, or just gets in the way. Would be great to be able to A/B test something like this on mobile.

<comment><USER5> i think the ux handholding approach is great.

HNers are different from most consumers, so even if it seems annoying to some of us, it probably wins by reducing ambiguity for a much larger set of users.

Obviously, it shouldn't happen EVERY time you use the app, but as an intro for new users, it seems awesome.

Are there tools like mixpanel that you could use to track engagement and usage patterns of cohorts afterwards on mobile?</comment></comment>


A Thanksgiving Request from Priceonomics - <AUTHOR> http://priceonomics.com/a-thanksgiving-request-from-priceonomics/

<comment><USER2> "You have to have something to sell" \- so true. One of my side projects, coffitivity.com, had millions of of users and was a Time Magazine top 50 website of 2013, but it wasn't until we made something to sell (our apps, which for a while we sold) that it clicked in our heads what this could mean: if we had things we could sell, even if they weren't the primary thing we were doing, we could make EVERYTHING we do better, because we'd have more time to spend on it.

We've moved to free to get our app downloads up in prep for an IAP model (which, so far, is very much on track), but having something to actually sell was a game changer for us. I know we're not writers, but niche website publishers have the same "have content people like but am not making money" problem, since ads blow and aren't particularly lucrative.

<comment><USER3> Coffitivity is a great site. I really liked the idea of having those small apps to generate revenue from the site when I saw you guys doing it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I bought the book. He's an established writer who does his job of writing well and he has an interesting story to tell.

</comment><comment><USER5> He should raise the price of the Kindle book. 5 dollars is a bit on the cheap side - he could easily do 7.

<comment> k-mcgrady I think a more important thing to consider is the huge price difference between the Kindle version and paperback. With the Kindle version so much cheaper there is no way I'd even consider the paperback. I think he'd do better overall if the Kindle version was $7-9 and the paperback was $12-15. (I have no data to back this up whatsoever). He'd be making more from the kindle version as you suggest but might also get more people who are willing to pay an extra few $ for the physical copy.

<comment><USER6> Looks like you said pretty much the same thing I did, while I was writing mine. A good point about people might go for the Paperback with a smaller price difference also.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Bought the book after having read the story on Priceonomics. As many have pointed out, the current price for the paperback makes the kindle book a steal, and he might be leaving some money on the table.

</comment><comment><USER8> Bought the book. His story on Priceonomics was very moving.</comment>


Progress Bars Are Surprisingly Difficult - <AUTHOR> http://prog21.dadgum.com/227.html <comment><USER2> > You could run a little benchmark and adjust the timing based on that, but > there are too many factors.

Or you could train an ML model, like so many academics have been doing: [https://arxiv.org/pdf/1211.0906.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1211.0906.pdf) [http://prl.korea.ac.kr/~pronto/home/papers/sas14-leohyi.pdf](http://prl.korea.ac.kr/~pronto/home/papers/sas14-leohyi.pdf)</comment>


Leaked images of the new Apple iPhone? - <AUTHOR> http://www.thinksketchdesign.com/2009/04/13/design/tech/leaked-images-of-a-new-apple-iphone

<comment><USER2> I think it's pretty clear that all of the images on the source site are community created design concepts.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Ahh, yes, I see. I found an article about the guy who the images give credit to - Isamu Sanada: Famous predictor of mac products before they come out- I guess while not a "leak" this could be the appearance of the new iPhone after all judging from Sanada's track record.

[http://www.wired.com/gadgets/mac/commentary/cultofmac/2002/0...](http://www.wired.com/gadgets/mac/commentary/cultofmac/2002/01/49918)</comment>


How Big Data is Going to Change Entrepreneurship - <AUTHOR> http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/news/headlines/entrepreneur-conference-2012.html

<comment><USER2> "The entire industry is predicated on a 2% success rate, and Google made its fortune by increasing that to 3%. It's still a 97% failure rate."

A 0.00small% success rate is spam. A 97% success rate is namshub. Clearly there's lots of room in between....</comment>


The laborers of content moderation on Facebook - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2014/10/content-moderation/

<comment><USER2> What does it say that there's no commentary here? Collective guilt over the human cost of maintaining these services? I also wonder how a site like Ello would deal with this, if they became big enough to need this kind of content moderation.

I can't imagine having to look at the worst humanity has to offer for eight hours a day. It should merit hazard pay and unlimited psychological counseling at the very least.

<comment><USER3> Do we feel collective guilt over having paramedics who need to scrape dead toddlers run over by trucks off the road, or hospice nurses who spent their days changing the diapers of dementia patients? It's a shit job, but they're stopping everybody else from seeing the worst of humanity.

<comment><USER4> In Europe (and I am pretty sure in the US as well) paramedics and hospice nurses have access to psychological help and support if something on the job demands it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _The Arab Spring was in full swing, and activists were using YouTube to show the world the government crackdowns that resulted. Moderators were instructed to leave such "newsworthy" videos up with a warning, even if they violated the content guidelines._

This seems related to the other front page article on google and geopolitics.

</comment><comment><USER3> I wonder how hard it would be implement automatic face masking for these videos, to increase the viewer's emotional distance from what they're exposed to.

<comment><USER6> Google did this with Street View for faces, house and vehicle numbers. But just masking the face won't decimate the negative effect.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This was an incredibly sad article. Traumatizing thousands of third (developing?) world citizens to keep our Facebooks and Youtubes free from the depravity and horrors of humankind....and, um, sex. If there ever was a need to effectively automate something it is this...for the sake of these poor workers, if nothing else. Replacing tens of thousands of workers with an algorithm would be insanely valuable as well.

<comment><USER8> Here's a way for you to solve the problem. Offer those workers better pay and conditions than what Facebook is offering. So far nobody's stepped up to the plate.

<comment><USER9> Because this is so stupid as saying to someone to solve the problem of slavery starting to pay the workers. The problem is that in a market where there's cheaper products being produced because someone doesn't pay for the labor force, someone who give salaries will be in economic disadvantage. The logic is the same if you substitute "slavery" with "bad conditions and poor salaries". When a problem is in the system, you can't solve it just changing individual attitudes.

<comment><USER8> You can by all means tell us how to solve it. Right now Facebook's the best job offer they got, you can't just wish that fact away. I guess you could do what the GP wanted and create a competing product that drives them out of the job?

> The logic is the same if you substitute "slavery" with "bad conditions and > poor salaries".

No, it's not the same. Slavery is an entirely different kind of bargaining position.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I would hope that these big services, like Facebook, use content matching techniques to quickly filter out repeat submissions...

</comment><comment><USER11> Along similar lines, an excellent article on the gendered nature of content moderation work from earlier this year: [http://thenewinquiry.com/essays/hate- sinks/](http://thenewinquiry.com/essays/hate-sinks/)

</comment><comment><USER12> If anything, the upside is that if we come up with better techniques for detecting unwated content we'll free these people for more productive endeavours.

</comment><comment><USER13> Off topic, but I would kill to have such view outside of office window like that in the headline picture.

</comment><comment><USER14> Instead of discussing alternative ways the "moderation" could be done, how about a different idea...stop censoring the content in the first place.</comment>


I Started a $50K/Month Professional Haircare Products Business - <AUTHOR> https://www.starterstory.com/professional-haircare-products <comment><USER2> Not very informative, what's the take away besides the assumed sufficiency of having a decent digital face to business? Nice milestones I guess, smart moves to that own experience.</comment>


The Life of a PHP Developer - <AUTHOR> http://www.jonkuperman.com/life-of-a-php-developer/

<comment><USER3> I think working in software involves a lot of shifting between making something that works and shipping it, and stepping back and thinking about the tools you use in a deep way. It's possible to dismiss one by focusing on the other. (I noticed that the author partially responds to criticism of PHP by pointing out who shipped with it) And it's possible to dismiss actual good ideas by noting how fashionable they are. I'm just sayin.

It's true that a developer using a tool doesn't say anything about their skill level, but as the author points out, those perceptions become reality so... yeah. Programmers are more fashionable than we like to think. But I would rather use that to my advantage than doggedly stick to something that I can't get a job with, just because I think it's so great. I mean... they're all Turing-complete, right?

There are a lot of things that I thought were pretty good, that fell by the wayside. Sure if I get riled up enough about it, I'll insist on how good they were, and how they died for unjust reasons.

If I came to work every day and felt like I was facing a torrent of people telling me PHP sucks -- even if I thought they were wrong I would start looking for a Javascript job. I mean... they're all Turing-complete, right?

The only other thing I have to say is that it's a bad idea to take personally the uninformed criticism of something you use every day. It's just not a good idea. Figure out why you think differently, but you have to stop there. Otherwise you will go nuts.

</comment><comment><USER4> Out of curiosity, have you looked at other languages and decided you don't like them?

I know what you mean about JavaScript. It has many alarming problems, like PHP. Unlike PHP, however, there aren't quick fixes for them (e.g. strict error reporting).

<comment><AUTHOR> Honestly, I spend a lot of my time writing JavaScript and Scala. My point with the article is just that PHP has a lot of stigma that creates a self fulfilling prophecy of being a 'bad language'.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I can definitely relate to the author's viewpoint. The dynamic he refers to is felt by talented developers who have an independent streak that runs to contrarianism. Not to toot my own horn but to speak up a bit in solidarity, I started programming on a TI-81 and then was lucky enough to attend high school where you could learn Pascal, so I got recursion early, then C++-based curriculum in college and also several semesters of AI in Lisp. So I'm not an absolute idiot at least.

My first real job was with PHP5 and it seemed fine to me then as now - <USER2> course I never used it as some do, with code and markup intertangled. My typical response to folks who denigrate PHP is similar to PG's discussion of Lisp as a competitive advantage (wonder what Zuckerberg might write if he were similarly inclined) - if you don't get it, fine with me. Except the author is right, developers are more trend-conscious than we would like to think, and without possessing a unique deep goodness such as Lisp's there's a real risk of PHP becoming redundant.

For my own projects, I've decided I will ride the PHP train as long as possible while spending a lot of time on the javascript side (so I have resume bullet points that are respectable to unenlightened folks) and then if/when the stars move too far out of alignment just switch to whatever looks best. I've got a framework (which I've been working on for a long time before it was trendy and then un-trendy) with the server components written in PHP but I seriously think it could be converted to Python in a few days. Clean code is clean.

</comment><comment><USER6> Yeah, I think this article explains his point of view. Scroll down to "The Blub Paradox". [http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html)

</comment><comment><USER7> PHP "was" a great motivation for someone starting out. It is far more understandable for non technical people and gets results witch fuel your motivation further. The above qualities "were very important" in a time where self learning material were rare, incomplete and expensive. I remember myself as a self taught back in 2006 that PHP gave me inner strength. For me this is the reason for PHP being popular back then.

But now things have changed. Self learning materials (MOOCs etc) are everywhere and in great format (videos, classes etc), so it is far easier to grasp harder and more complicated therefore more sophisticated topics and tools and be productive to fuel your motivation. Also things have changed, people have realized that web is not all there is in programming due to the rise of higher added value programming activities such as games, mobile apps, data science etc. So for me this is the reason PHP is not so popular nowadays. Many other languages support the above in expense of being more complex (for example python or java) but self learning materials nowadays make this problem obsolete.

TL;DR: IMHO the "only pragmatic problem" with php, which is also its great strength, is that its domain is mainly the the web. So in order to reach other cs areas which are of higher added value nowadays (eg algorithms, data, mobile, you name it..) you must switch tools.

</comment><comment><USER8> This article doesn't touch on any of the reasons why PHP is a bad language, entirely glossing over it's inconsistent and often baffling internal design, and instead defending it's validity by arguing that you can ship things with it. You can hammer nails with a rock too, and screw screws with a pocket knife, but that doesn't mean that people who've used hammers and screwdrivers will stop saying that rocks and pocket knives are bad tools to use for construction.

JavaScript is also a bad language - the === operator has no business existing, for just one example - but it's impossible to avoid, due to being the only language which runs client-side in a browser, and the same is not true of PHP.

</comment><comment><USER9> If Facebook can get Hack to go mainstream, PHP may have a second chance. But for now, it seems like PHP is dying. There are now 2x more Ruby jobs than PHP in the Bay Area. Here's a link to Google Trends for PHP

Worldwide: [http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=php%2C%20ruby%2C%20py...](http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=php%2C%20ruby%2C%20python%2C%20perl&cmpt=q&tz=)

US: [http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=php,+ruby,+python,+pe...](http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=php,+ruby,+python,+perl&cmpt=q&geo=US)

Bay Area: [http://www.google.com/trends/explore#geo=807&q=php,+ruby,+py...](http://www.google.com/trends/explore#geo=807&q=php,+ruby,+python,+perl&cmpt=q)

I have the most experience in PHP, but I've been purposefully avoiding it lately just in case it becomes Perl. I've been using Node lately and will probably start using Ruby.

<comment><USER10> That may be true for the Bay Area, but it's different literally everywhere else. In Europe for instance Ruby is still quite rare compared to PHP and .NET.

Also, Google trends is hardly a metric. Compare indeed trends or StackOverflow tags, and you'll see PHP is much more relevant.

<comment><USER11> ... And what a shock it was to see that Ruby is not more popular where I am in Europe. However, when I was looking for work, I had other skills to work with.

There is plenty of JavaScript jobs here, outside Java and .NET. Possibly though, that's a given.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "If PHP developers are made to feel terrible, they will leave and there will be less and less great developers working with PHP."

I don't quite see how this might be a problem. Does the author think those people would be less great in another environment? Does PHP own these people?

"Often times, people are just complaining about PHP because it's a popular thing to do."

No. We do not complain about PHP because it's popular. We complain about PHP because it sucks and we are forced to use it.

<comment><USER13> "We complain about PHP because it sucks and we are forced to use it."

No one is forcing you to use PHP.

<comment><USER12> No, you're quite wrong there.</comment></comment></comment>


Intel Reveals Three New Cutting-Edge Packaging Technologies - <AUTHOR> https://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-packaging-co-emib-odi-foveros-mdio,39840.html <comment><USER2> No mention of how this compares to EPYC?</comment>


Who Owns the Airplane Armrest? - <AUTHOR> https://beta.ctvnews.ca/national/lifestyle/2019/6/7/1_4456589.html <comment><USER2> I think the writer hasn't been on a large plane. The biggest one that I've been on had the typical 3-seats on the sides, but _5_ seats in the middle rows.

On that plane, the problem pointed out in the article appears again, because there are 3 people who battle it out in the 5-seater rows.

I only image in that case, thr middle person gets 2 arm rests, and the neighbours lean away towards their closest aisle.</comment>


GitHub's on your phone - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/blog/1559-github-s-on-your-phone

<comment><USER2> I'm not sure what took GitHub so long to _finally_ implement a mobile view for the site, but thank you. I have been waiting for this to happen for years, quite literally.

Edit: It's worth noting I've heard plenty of counter arguments to using GitHub from my phone. But I will say, sometimes I want to check out a project and possibly browse source and lo and behold I'm not at my desktop. For this reason alone, a mobile GitHub makes sense. Glad to see it at long last.

<comment><USER3> Maybe it's a coincidence but this was a sticking point during a discussion between a couple folks at GitHub and Scott Hanselman on the HanselMinutes podcast episode aired on June 14th.

Link: [http://hanselminutes.com/375/on-culture-and-remoteness-at- gi...](http://hanselminutes.com/375/on-culture-and-remoteness-at-github-with- paul-betts-and-justin-spahr-summers)

<comment><USER4> Likely a coincidence, but I'm a little bummed they didn't mention it if they knew it was coming. ;)

<comment><USER5> Secrets! We test things like that for quite some time before we release it. We know it's good when coworkers start asking, "Wait, this isn't shipped yet? Why not?!"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm sad to see this didn't come with a responsive design for the main site. You get horizontal scrollbars everywhere if your window is thinner than ~1000 pixels, making it impossible to have code + GitHub side by side on a laptop without some serious annoyance. The repo redesign made it worse, as now all the in-project links (issues, pulls, wiki...) are offscreen.

I'd happily work around this by using the mobile view from my desktop browser (as you can do on Wikipedia and many news sites), but GitHub doesn't seem to have made that possible, either.

If any GitHubbers are reading, please make the design (at least a little bit) responsive!

<comment><USER7> If it was responsive, all they would be doing is "hiding or relocating stuff", but the size (in KB) of each page would be the same for mobile and desktop.

That would make it unusable on a mobile. They NEEDED to do different pages for each, and make it much lighter for mobile.

<comment><USER8> Couldn't this be somewhat mitigated by using progressive enhancement versus graceful degradation?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've been hoping this would happen for a long time. Most of the views look really good, but I'm not very excited about the code view. The font on the code is bigger than necessary, in my opinion, and the word-wrap on the code text just makes it really hard to read.

Displaying code on a narrow window is difficult, but I'm not convinced that this is the right solution. I'd prefer to be able to zoom out.

</comment><comment><USER10> Fun fact: years ago I started building an ipad app for Github, but it was rejected multiple times by Apple because users could use it to create a new account but then Apple wouldn't get any commission.

[https://github.com/oscardelben/GithubBrowser](https://github.com/oscardelben/GithubBrowser)

<comment><USER11> What do you mean Apple wouldn't get any commission? For creating new GitHub accounts? Am I missing something?

<comment><USER12> I think what ocscardelben meant was that Apple wouldn't get any commission off of new, paid, GitHub accounts.

<comment><USER10> YES

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Interesting that they decided not to do a responsive design. Instead, it serves up different HTML if you send a phone user-agent. I've been trying to decide if this is a good idea for my own project.

<comment><USER14> For us, it made sense.

Our desktop site is pretty large. Check the graph in the blog post- the mobile pages are about 1/10th the size of the desktop CSS and JavaScript. By avoiding a responsive design, we can make things load disproportionately faster for our use case. On top of that, it's isolated so we're less likely to break views by adding features later. Pretty fun.

<comment><USER15> Zach, what was the reasoning behind using such large text for the code view? Will there be a zoom in/out option? Or a text size preference?

<comment><USER14> To make it easy to read code. :) It feels pretty comfortable- squinting isn't fun.

We tend to avoid user preferences. If it ends up being a problem, we'll lower the text size at some point.

<comment><USER16> It seems a bit extreme on my Nexus 4... [http://i.imgur.com/hagaiLR.png](http://i.imgur.com/hagaiLR.png)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I started an experiment of writing my blog purely on an iPhone via github web UI. ([https://github.com/ontouchstart/blog](https://github.com/ontouchstart/blog)). Since the mobile view doesn't have the EDIT option, I have to switch to desktop version to edit my posts.

I believe I am a minority in github users. :-)

</comment><comment><USER18> From Windows Mobile 8, I see a blue border around images that are linkable [1].

[1] - [http://i.imgur.com/bglIKU5.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/bglIKU5.jpg)

<comment><USER19> Can I just say that this is the worst "feature" in the world? It's not just mobile, desktop IE adds a border to images with links by default. As a non-web developer knocking up a site, I didn't think to suppress borders on random elements, and people were asking why the site was ugly in IE 9.

Why isn't there a common, default stylesheet across browsers? Please?

<comment><USER20> you want [http://necolas.github.io/normalize.css/](http://necolas.github.io/normalize.css/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Seems not fully deployed yet or not a full feature. The overview page if you're not signed in, as well as all profiles don't seem to have ombile versions. Same with the news feed.

<comment><USER22> Agreed. While I'm happy to see effort here, it seems half-baked.

Among the many things not there:

* Create new issues * Add tags to issues * View milestones * View diffs

<comment><USER23> They'll probably want to steer all mobile users to their Github app.

<comment><USER24> I don't understand this line of thinking. If I'm a Github user and I'm on the website from a phone and go to create an issue then that's actually what I'm hoping to do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Are there updates coming for the Android apps also, or is the focus on mobile web? The Android app doesn't support the one thing I could reasonably do on my phone - reviewing pull requests.

</comment><comment><USER26> Is there a way to change which branch of the repo you're browsing?

</comment><comment><USER27> Looks like Github used Angular.js. Would be interesting to hear how they settled on that. I've been using it for a side project and so far have had a positive experience.

<comment><USER28> I don't see any sign of angular - what makes you think that they did?

<comment><USER29> Yes, definitely not angural.js. It would be still interesting to see their mobile webapp stack.

<comment><USER30> It's currently very simple.

The mobile app is just part of our main web app. We use the same models and controllers as our desktop views. We have separate markup, different bundles for mobile JavaScript and CSS, and separate view models[1].

[1] [http://warpspire.com/posts/mustache-style- erb/](http://warpspire.com/posts/mustache-style-erb/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Mostly pretty great, but it'd be nice to see a couple of controls that have now disappeared.

I can't close or reopen issues anymore, which is something that's super useful to be able to do on the go.

Also there's no way to edit files from the mobile view. Again, something I've often found really useful for quick docs fixes, or adding contributors to the credits after merging a pull request.

</comment><comment><USER32> So you're trying to tell me my phone isn't even the right device to make line comments in pull requests?

</comment><comment><USER33> "Our phones, on the other hand, aren't great for creating things but they're perfect for browsing and reading content."

Tell that to Instagram, Vine, Twitter, or Smule. Mobile phones are amazing creation tools.

<comment><USER34> All of the tools you mentioned can be replaced by their desktop counterparts.

I would argue against using your mobile device to create relevant content. I know people want an all-in-one toolkit that does everything great but let's go with history on this, it won't work.

A jack of all trades is good but a specialized tool will always be better.

Instagram < Camera + Filter Vine < Video camera + Editing Twitter < (Medium seems to be getting more popular, maybe 140 characters really isn't the future)

I've never heard of Smule.

Again, this is simply my opinion but I feel like some folks are too fast to do everything on their 'mobile device' (let's not call it a smartPHONE).

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Whoops, the users profile page is redirect to desktop view. Is that on purpose?

<comment><USER36> Yup, we're focusing on the pages most likely to be clicked through on mobile first.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> WOOOOOO! This has been driving me insane. Trying to read issues and repositories, and I'm there pinching and panning around getting lost and frustrated. Thank you GitHub <3

</comment><comment><USER38> I remember they didn't go with a full client side app for the desktop version, instead opting for something like pjax.

What did they do there, media queries?

</comment><comment><USER39> This is by far one of the best updates GitHub has made recently. Using the current GitHub on a mobile device is difficult and slow. Really pleased to see this done!

</comment><comment><USER40> Hmm, they forgot the news feed. Or have I gone blind?

</comment><comment><USER41> Kinda useless without the newsfeed. :/

</comment><comment><USER42> wow, finally! this comes very welcome. although i suppose i must now bid farewell to another one of my repositories :) [http://github.com/catshirt/github-mobile](http://github.com/catshirt/github- mobile)

</comment><comment><USER43> Hm..is it me or there's no way to switch branch using the mobile view..

</comment><comment><USER44> How do I close an open pull request from this view? I don't see it.

</comment><comment><USER45> Is that Jurassic Park in the background of the first image???

<comment><USER46> Yes! Now guess the background of the second image :)

<comment><USER47> "Ferris, get off of the float!"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> How can I get the mobile version on my desktop?

</comment><comment><USER49> Octodroid is still the winner, in my opinion.

</comment><comment><USER50> About time! This is awesome!

</comment><comment><USER51> Github's in your base, killing your dudes! (OUTAGE!!)</comment>


Roku unveils Streaming Stick, squeezes box into MHL dongle - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2012/01/04/roku-unveils-streaming-stick-squeezes-box-into-mhl-dongle/

<comment><AUTHOR> I wonder how common MHL compatible TV's are. Anyone know?</comment>


Show HN: Ferrum.js – Rust features in JS: traits and advanced iteration - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/adobe/ferrum <comment><USER2> On a language level, I miss how many statements became expressions in Rust. For example, I would really love to `if` be an expression in JavaScript. This makes a language so much more expressive.

And no, I don't think that `do expressions` proposal is really great solution.

<comment><USER3> You want a conditional expression in JavaScript ? you could use the ternary operator : you don't have to use it if you don't want to though;

<comment><USER4> Ternary operator don't nest very nicely though (they do nest , but it's not very readable). IMO a bigger difference is Rust's match and blocks also being expressions. These have no alternatives in JavaScript.

<comment><USER5> Nesting multiple branches of ternary operators doesn't work well but if it's a sort of "if elseif elseif else" situation I think this looks pretty nice:

        x > 0 ? 'positive' :
        x < 0 ? 'negative' :
        'zero'

<comment><USER4> But not nearly as nice as:

        match x {
            0 => 'zero',
            x if x > 0 => 'positive',
            x if x < 0 => 'negative',
        }

<comment><USER6> I actually made a library for that!

It's published on npm and everything. It's small, a bit unpolished, maybe needs more docs, but it works pretty damn well if you ask me!

[https://gitlab.com/svartkonst/match](https://gitlab.com/svartkonst/match)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> nice README. I am a bit surprised that there is no reference to Ramda ( [https://ramdajs.com/](https://ramdajs.com/) )?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the tip!

Technically still on vocation so I added a ticket to update the Readme :)

I've taken a look at Ramda! It does look very nice; I think the goals of Ferrum and Rambda are a bit different: Rambda seems to aim at being a kind of FP standard library for JS so in that regard it is more comprehensive than Ferrum.

Ferrum on the other hand is primarily designed to introduce some new features for iteration libraries in JS: Reverse Currying, Objects as Sequences and Lazyness are not provided by Rambda. Both Rambda and Ferrum feature a `pipe()` function.

Also Ferrum provides a Traits and a standard library of traits like Eq, Rambda does not I think :)

So I would prefer using Ferrum/Sequence over the list transformation functions from rambda because of the above mentioned features, but that shouldn't stop anyone from using the rest of Rambda (or even underscore or lodash); you should be able to mix and match functions from rambda and ferrum without any issue; even in the pipe functions; so I would say use Ferrum/Trait and Ferrum/Sequence and keep using Rambda for the rest because it's great; I think I'll add another example for mixing Ferrum and Rambda and Lodash :)

<comment><USER7> Cool ! Thanks for pointing out those differences ! It helps when deciding on which library is best for the use-case at hand.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This reminds me of a rust match function I made. It would be neat to have a built in syntax for all of this stuff! [https://github.com/zackify/match](https://github.com/zackify/match)

<comment><USER6> Nice - I did a similar thing: [https://gitlab.com/svartkonst/match](https://gitlab.com/svartkonst/match)

Yours is pretty clever and explores a few things I thought about, too

</comment></comment><comment><USER9>
      // This is not very handy because you might need to scroll down to find the last
      // argument; you will also need to scroll down to determine whether the call to
      // each is using currying

..only if your applied function is more than a page tall, which it probably isn't if it's inline? I think Ramda gets this right and yes, there are a few times where the order seems a bit less aesthetic but it feels more correct to me.

<comment><AUTHOR> I do get where you are coming from and I do have to admit that even to me the entire reverse currying seems kind of alien…especially as someone coming from a very functional style where functions stay very short…

Unfortunately most JS code I work with is not written in such a functional style, so function bodys very often become larger than a couple of lines and in these cases having to search the argument somewhere a couple lines down does break the flow for me a bit…

It's the least problematic trade off I could find so far, trying to marry FP and procedural JS dev styles :)</comment></comment>


Reassessing Airport Security - <AUTHOR> https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2015/06/reassessing_air.html <comment><USER2> The TSA was created for one purpose and one purpose only: To remove liability from the airlines if someone tries to blow up a plane or bring a weapon onto one for evil purposes. (At the same time as it was created, the airlines had liability _retroactively_ removed after 9/11; without that, they'd have been sued into smoking craters by the families of the 3,000 people who died.)

The fact is, _nobody_ in this country has been willing to die to blow up an airplane since 9/11\. If there had been just _ten_ people willing to do so, then, from the statistics, nine planes would have been blown up, and, when the tenth guy was caught, he would have blown up the _airport_ instead.

The TSA is a failure, and an infringement of civil rights besides. Everyone responsible for it, up to and including members of Congress, should, by all rights, be fired and forfeit _all_ salary and pension benefits.

<comment><USER3> no, not a failure..No planes blown up and No huge Airlines liability..like it or not the politicians who made the law do not have the same expectations we do

<comment><USER4> _Homer_ : Not a bear in sight. The Bear Patrol must be working like a charm.

 _Lisa_ : That's specious reasoning, Dad.

 _Homer_ : Thank you, dear.

 _Lisa_ : By your logic I could claim that this rock keeps tigers away.

 _Homer_ : Oh, how does it work?

 _Lisa_ : It doesn't work.

 _Homer_ : Uh-huh.

 _Lisa_ : It's just a stupid rock.

 _Homer_ : Uh-huh.

 _Lisa_ : But I don't see any tigers around, do you?

 _[Homer thinks of this, then pulls out some money]_

 _Homer_ : Lisa, I want to buy your rock.

<comment><USER5> Homer, catching the essence of Idiocracy before Idiocracy...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If somebody wants to kill air travelers, TSA screening checkpoint line is the most attractive target.

Just fill big suitcase with explosives and wait until you are middle of the TSA screening line during holiday season.

<comment><USER7> To be honest, that's a huge fear of mine every time I'm waiting in a TSA line. What happens if they find a weapon and the person decides to use it right then and there? What happens if their equipment sets off a weapon? What happens if a domestic terrorist is trying to get back at the TSA directly?

Most of my flights are what Delta or United call "connector" flights, so there are only 40-50 people on the plane anyway. Not an attractive target, I would think. But standing in line at O'Hare, there could be 100+ people there. I'm not afraid of the TSA. I'm afraid of the massive crowd of people they create.

<comment><USER8> From the article:

"The TSA is failing to defend us against the threat of terrorism. The only reason they've been able to get away with the scam for so long is that _there isn 't much of a threat of terrorism to defend against_... Terrorists are much rarer than we think, and launching a terrorist plot is much more difficult than we think. I understand this conclusion is counterintuitive, and contrary to the fearmongering we hear every day from our political leaders. But it's what the data shows."

You're much more likely to get killed on the car ride to the airport than at the airport.

<comment><USER7> You're right. But there's something about standing in a high security area with these serious looking people wearing gloves and swabbing things and big x-ray scanners and leading people away in handcuffs and it puts all kinds of ideas in your head. It makes the threat of terrorism seem that much more real and prominent. And my mind says if it's going to happen, it's going to happen _right here_. Not up there.

I was just debating with my wife last weekend about how people are so terrified of guns when cars are so much more dangerous and random and senseless. But it's human nature to worry about danger when someone is actually threatening you with that danger. I worry more about accidents when someone is driving dangerously in front of me. I worry more about terrorism when someone is screaming at me to take my shoes off so they can check for a bomb.

<comment><USER9> > ...there's something about standing in a high security area...

High security areas take security screening seriously.

When an intoxicated man in a blue shirt can successfully impersonate a member of your security staff and perform multiple private screenings of (attractive, female) travellers [0], it's clear that you don't take security seriously.

[0] [http://www.loweringthebar.net/2014/07/drunk-gropes-two- posin...](http://www.loweringthebar.net/2014/07/drunk-gropes-two-posing- tsa.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> My favorite part about the TSA is that you can pay about $80, fill out some forms and show a couple of pieces of identification and now you can bypass most of their security. It's just a money making scheme; being able to pay money to bypass most of their security shows their security doesn't do anything useful (otherwise why would you be able to pay to bypass it?).

<comment><USER11> The TSA Precheck program, you mean?

At $80-100 a throw, I'm not sure it's a very good money-making scheme. For starters, when someone enrols in the precheck program, they must undergo both a background check and an in-person interview... how much of the $80 fee do you suppose that leaves?

And even once approved, you're still subject to metal-detector scans upon boarding, you just get to skip the whole shoes-belt-laptop game. Oh and they can still "randomly" subject you to those checks if they want to. So I don't really agree that it's some crude "anyone can just pay and receive carte blanche access at the airport" scheme.

Here's another good one: for nationals of APEC member countries, there's the APEC Travel Card[2]. Frequent travellers can pay for one of these cards, and they gain access to dedicated expedited immigration queues (or, in the absence of a dedicated APEC queue at your airport, you get to use the pilot/aircrew lane). The card costs $150 and is good for 3 years.

For business travellers making multiple flights per week, access to programs like these is a godsend (I used to fly internationally at least once per week for work).

I do agree with you that all the "security theatre" stuff is a transparent sham, but the existence of programs like precheck isn't proof of that.

[1] [http://www.tsa.gov/press/releases/2012/02/29/tsa-pre- check-T...](http://www.tsa.gov/press/releases/2012/02/29/tsa-pre-check-TM- begins-john-f-kennedy-international-airport)

[2] [http://travel.apec.org/abtc-summary.html](http://travel.apec.org/abtc- summary.html)

<comment><USER10> > At $80-100 a throw, I'm not sure it's a very good money-making scheme. For > starters, when someone enrols in the precheck program, they must undergo > both a background check and an in-person interview... how much of the $80 > fee do you suppose that leaves?

So I haven't gone through it but several people I know have and all of them report that they fill out forms, show identification and that's it. The "interview" is always a very short questionnaire and background checks are incredibly cheap to do nowadays.

> And even once approved, you're still subject to metal-detector scans upon > boarding, you just get to skip the whole shoes-belt-laptop game. Oh and they > can still "randomly" subject you to those checks if they want to.

The metal-detector scan is incredibly fast, no one is ever in that line and you don't have to remove your laptops, shoes and other related equipment. You just go through and you're done 99% of the time.

> So I don't really agree that it's some crude "anyone can just pay and > receive carte blanche access at the airport" scheme.

I don't agree with that either hence why I never said it so I'm not sure why you bring it up.

<comment><USER12> The interview is very short as is the paperwork. They run you through a back ground check as well which isn't something that you would actually see.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> While we're at it, can we be allowed to carry bottles of water through security? At least in Europe, having to pay 3€ for a 50cl bottle of water after passing through the checks is clearly just a money-making scheme and has nothing to do with stopping terrorism.

<comment><USER7> I'm not sure about Europe, but in the US we can carry an empty bottle through security.

I did once accidentally leave a large, full bottle of contact lens solution in my carry on, though, and it passed right through. Maybe that's the trick.

<comment><USER14> I typically don't bother to remove "liquids and gels" from my baggage. The detection rate is less than 50%, and even then, they'll only find the most obvious offending water bottle (or whatever). You shrug, say "whoops", and move on.

You could probably claim contact lens solution as a "medically necessary liquid," which is exempt from the rules anyway.

<comment><USER15> This must be a TSA thing; every damn time at LHR I forget anything, it gets caught, they get irritable with me, it needs redoing.

<comment><USER12> I agree the security at LHR is far more intense. They caught a lighter and topical gel buried way down in a traveling medical kit I carry. I have gone through TSA 100's of times with this kit and they never once mentioned it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> mark-r While I agree that the $7B spent on TSA is a waste, I can't agree with his conclusion that we should spend it on other security measures. That just leads to more "wiretap all the citizens" initiatives.

<comment><USER16> He does say "I'd rather see that money spent on intelligence and investigation". And I think it's evident from his other writings that "intelligence and investigation" refer to focused and targeted efforts, rather than dragenet surveillance.

<comment> mark-r Undoubtedly that's what Bruce would prefer, but what do you think are the odds it would turn out that way?

<comment><USER16> Similar to the odds that money would actually be taken away from the TSA's budget :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> One thing to note is that the testing was done by people with detailed knowledge of operational procedures, therefore they knew the weaknesses and took advantage of that. In other words, if you got 100 semi random travelers and tried to have them sneak things thru fewer than 95 would succeed.

Now, that's not to say the TSA isn't incompetent and shouldn't improve its procedures and policies, but rather the 95% is an exaggerated value.

One other observation to make. When driving down the highway over the speed limit and a patrol car becomes visible, it's quite clear the car would not catch every infringer, yet, nearly everyone slows to comply with speed limits. In other words, as Bruce says, you don't need 100% effectiveness for the system to be effective.

<comment><USER18> I got the opposite from the original CNN video. It appeared that they were using "basic" hiding techniques for these items. They weren't trying to go and reinvent the wheel by using techniques they know will get through TSA screening, but they used techniques that they figured TSA would be able to find, and they just failed.

I'm going to go re-watch the video to see if I missed something though. I'll edit this if I learn something new.

Edit: I looked for some more detailed articles and I found this quote, however it is coming from the TSA not the testing agency.

> The goal of the Red Team is to build tests that push the boundaries of our > people, processes, and technology. We know that the adversary innovates and > we have to push ourselves to capacity in order to remain one step ahead. > With that said, our testers often make these covert tests as difficult as > possible. It's not like they're using a cartoonish bundle of dynamite with > an alarm clock strapped to it. These items are extremely hard to spot.

[http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/06/tsa-fails- secur...](http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/06/tsa-fails-security- tests-gets-new-director.html)

Edit 2: I'm an idiot the TSA was the screening agency, or at least these tests are frequently referred to as internal tests. I didn't know the Department of Homeland Security Inspector General (IG) was a part of the TSA.

<comment><USER19> Even if they were using full-on, ninja terrorist techniques, _you would expect screeners to train to those standards_. If they train to and pass those standards, then Joe Terrorist shouldn't be a problem.

They did use that excuse in the past. Lame after-the-failure excuse making.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> My last TSA check took < 5 minutes, everyone courteous and professional. Ain't no thang. The bigger ballache for me (I live in the UK) is waiting at customs, sometimes 90 minutes in a line.

<comment><USER21> Try Melbourne, Australia... 2.5h last time in the "not privileged country" line :/

<comment><USER22> Australia is basically the hell-hole of the first world.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I just re-entered the US via JFK last night. There was an employee going up and down the line promoting "Global Entry" (skip the line). All I could think was how utterly farcical the whole thing came across.

<comment><USER24> Global Entry is for immigration/customs, not TSA security.

The trade-off is: they do a background check and take some biometrics, and in exchange you can skip the conversation with an immigration agent where they ask you where you're been, etc. - you just answer the usual customs-form questions at a kiosk.

It's actually a pretty reasonable trade-off, and speeds the process of going through Customs - which, unlike some of the TSA stuff, is in no way unique to the US (having gone through immigration/customs in 20+ countries, I can say with some experience that the US is far from the worst...)</comment></comment>