Why do we tolerate shitty, mean behavior like this in programming communities? - <AUTHOR> Exactly one month ago Linus sent an angry email over the gmane.linux.kernel group:
http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel/1414106
It also resulted in the site: http://shutupmauro.com/ (where you can see the response as well)
You can find many defenses of him when this was discussed 30 days ago on HN: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4962912
If you want to be spared the reading it is Linus Torvalds berating someone, and every top level comment in the HN thread is a defense of Linus.
I think its salient to bring up in light of the #1 topic right now, "What It's Like To Be Ridiculed For Open Sourcing A Project": http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5106767
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Linus' mission and position do not excuse his language. In defending users, he's still attacking a person. In the topic 30 days ago and commentors in the #1 topic right now are defending the same.
I think rooting out this kind of shitty behavior is the most important thing we can do to advance programming communities and make others feel welcome. By miles. Especially gender and general newcomer disparities.
The fact that so many here and elsewhere seem to think think this language is OK or justified completely blows me away.
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> Mauro, SHUT THE FUCK UP!
> It's a bug alright - in the kernel. How long have you been a maintainer? And you still haven't learnt the first rule of kernel maintenance?
> If a change results in user programs breaking, it's a bug in the kernel. We never EVER blame the user programs. How hard can this be to understand?
...
> Shut up, Mauro. And I don't _ever_ want to hear that kind of obvious garbage and idiocy from a kernel maintainer again. Seriously.
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If you talked to your spouse like that it would be called abuse.
Why do we tolerate shitty, mean behavior like this in programming communities? </comment><comment><USER3> Here is a story that happened to me on a totally different part of the internet:

Someone on a music-related board posts a song and a request for someone to take out the chords. Nobody replies and the post lingers. A few weeks later I come around and figure that even though I'm an amateur, maybe I can help this guy. So I spend about two hours listening and relistening to the song and writing down the chords I hear.

Then I reply with the chords and include a caveat that I'm not very good.

15-20 minutes later one of the veteran 1000+ posters come around and totally chews me out for getting some of the chords wrong. Basically giving me a lesson in how much I suck. Though he later that day posts a much better version than mine with all the chords correct.

The moral of the story? Douchebags are verywhere. Anecdotal evidence yes, but I'm sure the douchebag concentration is not higher among hackers than in any other subculture. In fact, I believe hackers are much nicer than most folk.

</comment><comment><USER4> Because theres a large difference between yelling at a kernel maintainer who should know better and yelling at somebody for reimplementing sed in a high level language and posting it to github.

The former could cause widespread losing on millions of machines. The latter isn't even a drop in the ocean.

</comment><comment><USER5> In the first example I think that being rude is the way Linus shows his love; joking aside as a developer for kernel you should be aware of the implications of an apparently small bug; and if you don't like Linus,ok, don't work with him.

Regarding the second example... my personal opinion is that people overreacted. I appreciate comments about my code, but when the person that makes them explains what I've done wrong, or how it could be improved but if they just say that my code sucks and no arguments... ignore them.

</comment><comment><USER6> A few evenings ago I was talking with a small group of local developers about a situation at one developer's company. He was head of Team A and another developer, head of Team B, was leaving the company. My friend is going to now head A and B. Team B has suffered over the years because their manager was a "nice guy," and so Team B does not criticize each other very much. In Team A, on the other hand, my friend is critical in a diplomatic way, and members of his team will say things like "that code is fucking horrible" to each other if it's bad (followed by specific examples.) The result is that Team A, where people insult each other, has much better code and it's now a challenge to get B to accept even mild direct criticism of code without being offended and an even greater challenge to improve their work without offending them.

I think that is a typical story. Good, tight teams are harsh with each other. More skillfully spoken criticism sounds nicer, but the message that the code or the program design is bad is still there just as clearly.

A lot is being made of this person's treatment on Twitter. I agree the when presented with stranger's code in a situation where it doesn't matter, it's best to say nothing. But I would expect that if the developer wrote a poor program on the job, for the job, the code should be criticized and the developer should know they did a bad job on that particular task, and they should be shown how to do it better or how to figure out how to do it better. It's only because the developer in the Twitter story had no relation to their criticizers that the criticism can be considered inappropriate.

Regarding women in programming, my experience is that the serious ones, just like the serious men, would rather give and get harshly and be counted among the best than to be treated like a child and progress slowly for years. We should really think about whether we are making things worse by refusing to give anyone the benefits of a trial by (controlled) fire.

</comment><comment><USER7> I don't understand your using the headline "Why do we tolerate...". This particular discussion in no way, shape, or form involves me. Maybe it involves you but it doesn't involve me. So why do you say this is about _we_?

In other words, I don't care what/how _they_ treat each other in their own forum because it's not my business or care. If Mauro, Linus, or other members of that forum don't like it, then they should do something about it. It's elitist of you to try to make it any bigger than that. It's silly and asinine of you to say that I "tolerate" such behavior when, in fact, I had nothing to do with it (nor will I).

<comment><USER8> Some people take the perspective that by not speaking out about something, you by implicitly accept how it is, or even embrace it.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, I get that, but clearly OP has taken liberties here to correlate "Everyone on HN" and "Everyone on the gmane.org site". It's just silly to bring "us" into this argument. We have nothing to do with that site. If he/you/they/anyone argues otherwise, then the logical counter argument is "So I'm supposed to police every internet fight about everything I like or identify with now?" It's just fallacy to think that this is anyone's fault other than the people involved.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> We tolerate shitty behavior because we are not told otherwise.

Growing up you you could meet a new kid on the block and play with some random game without much of a issue. We had bullying in High School and we tried to learn to deal with it.

Personally I know where I went left, I expected the best out of people and I treat people how I expect to be treated. Unfortunately it does not always work out that way, even if you work for them.

I won't generalize if there are more takers or bullies then yesterday, or tomorrow. I just know that people need to realize they give the bullies power over them. Once they stop giving that power they can /start/ to recover.

</comment><comment><USER10> Because Linus Torvalds is brilliant at what he does, but is a shitty, mean- spirited human being? Or as I call him, an antagonistic rude sarcastic egotist, commonly shortened to "ARSE".

</comment><comment><USER11> Big deal. If you can't handle it don't become a kernel maintainer. If you think this is bad go try to submit garbage code to the openbsd devs and see what they call you.

If you want to be coddled work for the government or a corporation. This is the hacker way if your skin is so thin you cry to the bullying police you aren't cut out for it. Turn off IRC, join the hand holding php cms dev groups and resume your livejournal pity posts about how cruel the world is

<comment><USER12> Oh this is so much macho posturing.

Have you ever worked for the government or a corporation?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's responses like Linus' that has kept me out of open source development. Seriously these guys aren't getting paid, they're contributing. Does that give them license to write shitty code? No, but also doesn't give anyone license to be a snotrod about it either. I've found it's much more constructive to help a team recover from an individual's

</comment><comment><USER9> One last comment.

I always wondered, what gave some random asshat on the internet the right to ridicule my code and beat me up.

They have no right, but until you know that...

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm a few days late to the conversation, and this will probably fly under the radar, but here's my two cents.

I'll start by saying that I believe Linus was justified in the _intention_ of his response, but not the execution of it. Linus, like it or not, is one of the lead maintainers (if not THE lead maintainer) of one of the most used pieces of software in the world - the Linux kernel - and is responsible for how well it works. If one of the other maintainers screws up, it's his job to make sure that (a) it gets fixed and (b) it doesn't happen again. This is the intention of his response - informing a maintainer that they screwed up, how they screwed up, and not to let it happen again.

Now, I think the most important thing to take away from both Linus' response and "What It's Like To Be Ridiculed For Open Sourcing A Project" is the relationship of the abuser to the abusee.

First, in Linus' case, Mauro is a _volunteer_ and working under Linus, for all intents and purposes. Do I think Linus is justified in his response? No - <USER2> response is overwhelmingly immature for a professional. But I do believe that his response is expected; Linus is not exactly known for his tact and kindheartedness. I also believe that it is Linus' responsibility to keep those working under him aligned to the goals and values of the project, especially a project as far reaching as the Linux kernel. It's up to Mauro to learn from his mistakes or pack up and go home. Sure, it's abusive, but Linus and Mauro are not spouses.

In Heather Arthur's case however, the relationship is that of peers. The way her and her project were treated are downright despicable, especially in a community that is normally so constructive and welcoming. What happened here is completely opposite of Linus' response; this is not a supervisor chastising his underling for a poor job, these are fellow developers baselessly bullying another for publishing code that was useful to her. Heather was not forcing this project on anyone, nor did she claim it was better than anything else; it was merely useful to her and wanted to share it.

Here's the thing though: we _don't_ tolerate "shitty, mean behavior" in programming communities. In Linus' case, most of us have simply accepted him for who he is: an immature, obscene, yet brilliant developer. We put up with him only because of the impact he has had and is continuing to have on computing as we know it. However, he is an outlier - any one else who acts as mean-spirited and childish as he does is immediately called out. Look at the outcry from Heather's blog post and the immediate apologies by the perpetrators. As a community, we almost unanimously frown upon "shitty, mean behavior".

Just because it happens, doesn't mean we tolerate it. The internet is full of immature, self-righteous, sarcastic, arrogant, elitist, and/or antagonistic assholes, and as we grow larger as a community we will see more of them. But that doesn't mean we support it. I love the programming community because of how open, constructive, sharing, supportive, and welcoming it is to newcomers and existing members alike. The thing that stands out to me, though, isn't the aforementioned assholes; it's how we respond to them that matters.

</comment><comment><USER15> No one's pointing a gun to this Mauro person's head and forcing him to interact with Linus. I doubt Linus ever took a vow to love, honor, or respect Mr. Mauro. If someone with whom I am only interacting by choice says something mean to me, you know what I do? I take my ball and go home.

You are being an idiot and should get the fuck over this nonissue.

<comment><USER16> Well, someone isn't in touch with their emotions. You apparently run away from conflict and try to bully others into doing the same.

<comment><USER17> It's not bullying.

<comment><USER16> Yes it is. Refer to this:

"You are being an idiot and should get the fuck over this nonissue."

<comment><USER17> The word "bullying" implies repetition. And that's not the only aspect missing from its definition in his posting.

<comment><USER9> Twisting the definition so it benefits one person is not helpful here.

<comment><USER17> Huh? I'm not twisting the definition, and my comment isn't benefiting anybody. You make no sense.

You're an idiot and should get the fuck o--KIDDING! I'm not sure why you bothered replying to me other than to play the "I am more mature than you" game, so I hope this reply entertained you.

<comment><USER9> Are you trying to act like Linus?

I feel like this comment came straight out of Middle School..</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Where did you get your best product feedback during development? - <AUTHOR>

Our startup Lucolo (http://www.lucolo.com) is creating  a message exchange service for enterprise environments. It's an alternative to email and, as being such, we're trying trying to determine the best features to build and market for our launch but we'd love more feedback from our prospective users to help us hone in on this market and how they'd use Lucolo. We've created a Google form (http://goo.gl/forms/DbDhxD81rB) and have been sending it out to legal, government, and financial organizations via email (we've found contact titles and emails through sites like http://www.lead411.com) but I'm curious to hear what other folks have done to engage with prospective user groups to garner feedback to validate product-market fit.<p>Thanks in advance and I can't wait to hear the responses! <comment><USER2> I started December 1'st 2014 building what was then known as SpaceTimeHQ, a funnier way to do time tracking.

We started building based on our own needs and ideas, but luckily I did some things that helped me realize that I know nothing about building something people actually wants to pay for.

Before I even started the project I build an accountability email list with around 20 people i respect - I email them every 3-4 week about my progress and what I will do next. The feedback from this email/these guys helped me steer in the right direction.

After I got steered in the right direction I (quickly) read the Lean Startup book by Eric Ries and Immediately stopped building and started booking demo's (on paper!)

These demos/talks made me pivot into building an app that helps support a new way for makers and managers to work together, called the TimeBlock method ([http://timeblock.com/](http://timeblock.com/)), this method works fine without the app. so people understood and reacted to my paper demo (some even started using the method and agreed to pay for access to me until the app is ready)

So, a long story short - I got my best feedback from talking to potential customers - and the funny thing is that I discovered that they actually loves that!

</comment><comment><USER3> I try to find end users in my target market and somehow get them to use it during the process. It's a tough sell, but you can always find someone who is fed up enough to try anything new.

On the project I am currently working on, we are building software for real estate agents. I actually brought in the owner of a small firm (10 agents) as a co-founder in exchange for him forcing his team to use the application. This ended up working very well, we got instant feedback and were able to update the software generally same day. I hold regular meetings with the team, two or three times weekly, to make sure they have no roadblocks in doing their job. They are happy because we are molding the software as we go to specific needs, and we are happy because we are able to find out instantly what works and what doesnt.

We also brought in another team once we felt it was at least close to beta status. We offered them free usage of the application through public release, and then six months free after release.

</comment><comment><USER4> What made you decide to build what you are building? Have you talked to any end users in your target market?

<comment><AUTHOR> We've spoken to many folks in the legal field and they love the idea of having a messaging platform that puts all conversation components in a timeline so docs, comments, etc stay easily readable. We think that those pain points exist in other verticals (who want a email-like UX but with an updated feature set) so we're trying to scope that out with this round of feedback.</comment></comment>


Coder and developers, what do you think of this tool? - <AUTHOR> https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/ <comment><AUTHOR> I started using this tool last month, still training myself on it.</comment>


Metamaterials: Engineers Design Stretchable Material Based on Geometric Art - <AUTHOR> https://blog.followiot.com/2016/03/21/engineers-design-stretchable-materials-inspired-by-1000-year-old-geometric-islam-art-followiot/ <comment><USER2> A BBC account: [http://www.bbc.com/news/science- environment-35818924](http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-35818924)</comment>


Higher-Dimensional Type Theory - <AUTHOR> http://existentialtype.wordpress.com/2011/05/30/higher-dimensional-type-theory/

<comment><USER2> Every time I read something about type theory I just can't get past the notation. I've taken two classes on it, and somehow it just never stuck. I struggled with it as much in those classes as I do now. Once I parse the statements the ideas always end up coming through as elegant and intuitive, but getting there is a slog. Does anyone else have this problem? Is my brain just broken w.r.t. type theory symbols?

Type theorists must use such strange notation to make sure there's never a collision between something in their meta language, and something that someone would actually use in a language. :)

</comment><comment><USER3> For the interested, Steve Awodey has an introductory article, with pointers to the relevant literature: <http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/awodey/preprints/TTH.pdf>

</comment><comment><USER4> This is the kind of thing I like to see on HN.

</comment><comment><USER5> A big topic in type theory nowadays is equational reasoning. The classic example is, how can you prove that two functions are observationally equivalent -- that they give the same output for all inputs? Bob discusses that in his book.

More generally, you can discuss various other notions of equivalence, both for functions and (in this case) types. So if we do allow a programmer to define their own notions of equivalence, is that good enough? Not quite -- it can be difficult to propagate this notion through to derivative constructs. You'd like for there to be a way to get all sorts of "free" theorems basically. So I think that is what this blog post is beginning to talk about, in somewhat technical terms.

</comment><comment><USER6> For a second I was imagining Helvetica in 4D+

</comment><comment><USER7> Anyone want to explain this using less jargon?

<comment><USER8> Well, Benjamin Pierce has a 600 page book: <http://www.amazon.com/dp/0262162091/>

Followed by a 600 page book: <http://www.amazon.com/dp/0262162288/>

<comment><USER9> Professor Harper's own book (free! while in draft form), <http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~rwh/plbook/book.pdf> , is a better source for understanding the material in this post.

But, to be perfectly honest, I'm a systems-focused PL graduate student and have spent quite a bit of time studying this stuff and doubt that I could easily produce a more accessible version of this post. I tried (in the comments block here) and ran on to about two pages before realizing I had only covered the back story on his "trinity" analogy without even getting to this post itself. Someone far smarter than I probably could, but don't feel disappointed if you found this post mathematically challenging even if you normally follow PL theory. It took me a solid cup of coffee and a half an hour to deeply understand what he was saying.

Pierce's TAPL primarily covers the type side of this "trinity" and TAPL2 really only has one relevant chapter, covering Dependent Types.</comment></comment></comment>


Why desktop apps are coming back - <AUTHOR> https://blog.hiri.com/why-desktop-apps-are-coming-back-b1699ac168c5 <comment><USER2> Hi there - I'm the author of the original author. Happy to hear your opinion and discuss!</comment>


America Needs a 'Metropolitan Party' - <AUTHOR> https://www.citylab.com/politics/2017/04/america-needs-a-metropolitan-party/523065/ <comment><USER2> Another commenter mentioned that the Democrats are effectively the metropolitan party (and the "Clinton Archipelago" map [0] from this NYTimes article "Two Americas of 2016" [1] shows it fairly well).

But, I think the article misses an even more important factor.

 _what_ problems the government fixes is less divisive than _how_ those problems are fixed. This _how_ question is much more important in preventing Republicans and Democrats from working together.

Both parties want to solve most of the problems that plague cities: housing, transportation, poverty, education, etc [2]. What differs is _how_ they intend to solve those issues.

The ideological underpinning of the right is to solve problems by reducing government involvement and/or increasing people's ability to be responsible for their own lives (and possibly suffer bad outcomes, deserved or not): deregulation of business, lowering taxes on high-end professionals and rich people, school choice, public-private partnership in infrastructure.

Meanwhile, the left generally tries to increase outcomes universally, even for people who have made bad choices: increasing services used by the poor, focusing on public education that is accessible to everyone, investing in public transportation provided by the government (and with subsidies so that the poor can afford to use it).

The difference is that the right doesn't address issues directly. I think this is because they don't think it's the government's problem in the first place. Rather, they try to fix the broader environment instead. Free from this ideological aversion to government, Democrats advocate for directly investing in the issue.

[0] [https://static01.nyt.com/newsgraphics/2016/11/14/trump- clint...](https://static01.nyt.com/newsgraphics/2016/11/14/trump-clinton- islands/af7a8cd53827480ea1547b3a5bfcea013c158609/clinton_v2-Artboard_6.png)

[1] [https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/11/16/us/politics/t...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/11/16/us/politics/the- two-americas-of-2016.html)

[2] For people on the left who are unfamiliar with right-wing interest in these issues, AEI has tons of research and events on them. Granted, most Republicans are not interested in these issues.

Edit: clarity

<comment><USER3> Those maps aren't nearly nuanced enough. There are a lot of blue voters in red areas and red voters in blue areas, both go unrepresented.

<comment><USER2> That's true. But, would you agree that there are very few conservatives in urban cores?

For example, I used to live in Washington, DC. Trump got 4% of the vote.

<comment><USER3> Fewer, but I'm not sure what the real number would be. If you're a conservative in an urban core you probably wouldn't bother voting. There could be a lot that would vote third party.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The first thing Trump was supposed to do was introduce an Amendment for term limits (Washington Post). Cruz proposed one that would limit Senators to 2 terms and Representatives to 3 terms.

This seems like an idea almost everyone would support and would do so much to move politics forward.

<comment><USER5> But it needs to be passed by the current people there

      All 27 Amendments have been ratified after two-thirds
      of the House and Senate approve of the proposal and
      send it to the states for a vote. Then, three-fourths
      of the states must affirm the proposed Amendment.

First step is to get Congress on board, and telling them to vote themselves out is unlikely.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> We need a system that allows for representation of minority opinion that isn't strictly tied to geography.

<comment><USER7> America was established as a federalist collection of states so that opinion and geography were intentionally tightly coupled.

If you didn't like the prevailing opinion in your state, you moved to somewhere where your opinion was the majority.

The federal government was not meant to have a significant impact in your day- to-day life. Your city and state governments were supposed to have the most impactful policies, which were supposed to be tailored specifically to the needs of your geographic locale.

Somewhere over the past 100 years, states' powers have been eroded and we're left with a one-size-fits-all federal government which is failing to keep everyone happy.

<comment><USER6> Agreed that that was the intention, and that made a lot of sense when almost everyone was involved in some way of working the land/sea near their home.

Granted I don't think I have popular political opinions, but given that I have to be in at the very least a district where 50% + 1 of the people have similar approaches to problem solving means that it will never happen.

Obviously this slows down the introduction of new ideas and parties, and perhaps that's a feature and not a bug, but it does mean a total disinterest for many who feel that they'll never be represented in any meaningful way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> So, first off, the article's headline and subheadline/abstract blurb talk refer to a party. What the article actually proposes is not a political party but a per-state nonpartisan group that approves/disapproves of politicians based on how their policies effect urban areas.

Second off, the author presumes that local politics are nonpartisan because the stakes are higher at local levels than at state and federal levels. I think the actual reason is that running a campaign at the state or federal level needs a lot more funding. The support of a political party's machine is necessary in order reach all voters and convince enough of them to vote for you.

Third, the author proposes to start at the state and local levels. The 50 most populous cities in the US are located in only 29 states (plus DC). A lot of states don't have cities.

I would characterize the following states as not having any cities to speak of based on the size and density of their largest towns: Alaska, Arkansas, Alabama, Delaware, Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Maine, Mississippi, Montana, New Hampshire, North Dakota, South Carolina, South Dakota, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wyoming. That's 17 out of 50; over 1 in 3 states.

<comment><USER9> You're looking at overall density but not actual population centers. Over forty percent of Maine's population is located in the Portland metro area. Over eighty (!) percent of Alaska's population is in the greater Anchorage area. Large and sparsely populated states consolidate _more_ in city centers, not less, which is why it makes so little sense that rural residents have so much more relative worth to their votes.

<comment><USER10> It would be a terrible idea to give Portland any more power to swing things in the state of Maine than it already has. Already, there's some pretty big tensions because Portland and its suburbs can effectively dictate to the rest of the state - and the situations in Portland and Scarborough are quite a bit different than the realities of Fort Kent, or Rumford, or Calais.

It would be nice if we could give different areas greater levels of autonomy, but with the way that government funding structures work, that is unlikely.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> We already have a political party whose primary function is to represent the interests of well-off city dwellers. They're called the Democrats.

<comment><USER12> Perhaps you could make a much more informative comment instead. Reddit is a nice place to just say things, but HN is nice because of information.

<comment><USER13> To be honest, HN is not all that much better if you're not a fan of the chosen party and it's liberal inclinations. You just get brigaded to death.

<comment><USER14> It's not really a chosen party. It's a flavor of some kind of techno-anarcho- libertarian capitalism.

<comment><USER5> Don't leave out the communistic-socialistic-opensource portion of the group, which has an awkward dependent relationship with the capitalistic group

<comment><USER14> True. In truth, there's probably more than one faction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> (I know it's flagged, but .02 cents). Sorta, not really.

The traditional alignment had been D: cities-tolerance-open society, R: country-religion-traditional society but so many people live in cities now that it doesn't make sense to have everyone in one, giant party. Either another bikeshedding wedge issue or major issue will end up splitting the majority along (new/different) lines.

With two interchangeable, heavily corrupted parties, Bernie and progressive need to split and make their own, viable party. Also, sensible R's like Lawrence Wilkerson gotta retake/remake/splinter off a party that puts common sense ahead of Freedom Caucus & fringe.

Right now, the 800 lbs gorilla socioeconomic tension is (re)distribution of wealth (inequality). Whichever group tackles that realistically will capture the majority of independents... I don't think lies on this issue will endure, people will eventually wise-up.

Bottom line: 2-3 viable parties are necessary for balanced, countervailing powers to operate correctly (balance of power) and prevent collapse into Rome- style end-game. If the elite continue to exclude the grassroots and corruption reaches titanic levels, they (or someone) will eventually be replaced a-la Korea.

</comment><comment><USER16> Why do we even need political parties anymore? I understand that it was harder to transfer information back in the day, and so politicians aligning with parties made things easier. Now that we have the internet and media, all parties seem to do is serve as a marketing brand that politicians can hide behind.

Without parties, each candidate would have to run on their own views, rather than defaulting to whichever side they want to win over. Trump might be the biggest example, a liberal elite from NYC who ran as a Republican because he saw a weakness in the candidate pool there, and knew he could hide behind that R to gather votes. It's just lazy and serves as more of a tool to manipulate the populace than it does to inform.

</comment><comment><USER17> This isn't a party, it's an interest group.

</comment><comment><USER18> I understand the reasons to feel that way but it will only entrench the divide _more_ \- which seems like a bad idea

</comment><comment><USER19> What America needs an amicable divorce. (Several, actually.)

Since that won't happen, America will eventually get a nasty one.

</comment><comment><USER20> Let's call it the District 1 Party.

</comment><comment><USER21> America needs to embrace "local government." That means devolving budgetary power to the states. The federal model has failed. The current system is broken. The people who pay the most into the system (highly productive cities) are the people who actually have the _least_ voting power. Once people wake up and begin to understand what's really going on this will not last. 'Taxation without representation' tends to rub people the wrong way.

End the Federal Highway/Farm/Energy Acts. Heck, even blow up Medicaid and Obamacare. Cut the military budget by 2/3\. All of these enormously expensive federal "programs" are just elaborate means to extract hundreds of billions of dollars from the wealthy and efficient urban counties and distribute them to the relatively poor and inefficient rural counties. None of it is fair and none of it is sustainable.

This is one good thing that will come out of runaway polarization in America. As all trust dissolves and the two (highly geographically correlated) classes move apart this illusion of "one republic" acting in everybody's interests will fall away.

</comment><comment><USER22> The fact is, due to an 18th century hypothesis that didn't play out 228 years later, a metropolitan based political party is doomed in presidential politics. My _city_ has more people in it, than the entire states, and yet it's political clout is diluted away.

Seriously, the electoral college is an abomination that is only going to get worse with the long trend of urbanization.

<comment><USER23> The problem you identify isn't with the electoral college but with the centralisation into the federal government of states powers in a way that is directly against the federalist and Republican ideas of the constitution.

<comment><USER22> No it is not. You're assuming that a majority of country should cede their right to having a say for the president, because acreage.

And even if it was true, who cares? The central thesis of the 18th century was that people would have more allegiance to their states rather than the national government, and that hasn't been true for over a hundred years.

<comment><USER24> > You're assuming that a majority of country should cede their right to having > a say for the president, because acreage.

The majority of the country elects the President, because the United States are composed of the several States (not the people thereof), and the states elect the President. Frankly, I wouldn't mind every state having an equal voice, rather than unfairly privileging populous states.

<comment><USER22> "The majority of the country"? Did you sleep through the 200 and 2016 elections, or are you confusing people with acres?

The whole problem is the breaking it up by states, because states are quite frankly not that relevant. No one has allegiances to states. States are subordinate entities, that pretty much subsist on the largesse of the federal government. They're basically counties.

The central thesis behind the electoral college simply didn't play out, and holding up today is simply necrocracy. There's a reason why no other government on Earth has one of these things.

<comment><USER24> > Did you sleep through the 200 and 2016 elections, or are you confusing > people with acres?

Are you confusing the states with the people? The United States are composed of the several States, and the States elected Messrs. Bush & Trump in those years.

> No one has allegiances to states.

They ought to.

> States are subordinate entities, that pretty much subsist on the largesse of > the federal government. They're basically counties.

No, states are the sovereign entities which constitute the United States. The people did not ratify the constitution; the states did. Misconceptions like yours are why we should repeal the 17th Amendment, replacing it with one mandating that legislatures appoint their federal senators. Frankly, I'd love to see legislatures appoint electors, too. The people have a voice in the House; having voices in the Senate and in the Executive is too much.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Starting a Consulting Business - <AUTHOR> Hey HN - I remember some threads in the past about starting a consulting business. I am not a developer but I can do Product consulting (surveys, user interviews, pricing and data analysis).<p>Do you have suggestions on how to get started? <comment><USER2> Start networking if your not already, and talking to your existing contacts - Consultancy opportunities more often than not come from your immediate network of people, certainly in the short term.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, yeah already doing that a ton!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Hey if you're getting into Product Consulting, I'd love to speak to you. I have a product that we think might be useful for product consultants and would love to get your thoughts on it

<comment><AUTHOR> Sounds awesome, I am happy to help. Email me - firstname.lastname@example.com</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Character vs. Skill for hiring? - <AUTHOR> I have read that while hiring skills should be assessed first and then character. What's the general practice by HN readers? Do you generally have character assessing mechanisms at place? How do you weigh in between character (beliefs, POVs) and skills? <comment><USER2> I'd never hire or work with someone with poor character. However, it's often impossible to tell someone has poor character from an interview. That makes it kind of moot.</comment>


Strange Loops: Ken Thompson and the Self-referencing C Compiler - <AUTHOR> http://www.scienceblogs.com/goodmath/2007/04/strange_loops_dennis_ritchie_a.php

<comment><USER2> The original essay is Reflections on Trusting Trust. <http://cm.bell- labs.com/who/ken/trust.html>

Having already read it, I found the blog post linked here to be convoluted. While I guess I understand the desire to publish a blog post on the subject, I think it's weird to a) not include original thought to add, instead just essentially paraphrasing the story, and b) not link to the more coherent primary source.

</comment><comment><USER3> Nice hack.

So how do we know modern compilers don't do this?</comment>


FC5025 USB 5.25" Floppy Controller - <AUTHOR> http://www.deviceside.com/fc5025.html <comment><USER2> There's been a lot of open hardware floppy controller projects lately. Here's some I know.

Fluxengine (multi-format): [http://cowlark.com/fluxengine/](http://cowlark.com/fluxengine/)

Arduino-based : [http://amiga.robsmithdev.co.uk/](http://amiga.robsmithdev.co.uk/)

USB meant specifically for Amiga floppies: [https://github.com/jtsiomb/usbamigafloppy](https://github.com/jtsiomb/usbamigafloppy)

DiskIO. IDE+Floppy for ECB bus: [https://www.retrobrewcomputers.org/doku.php?id=boards:ecb:di...](https://www.retrobrewcomputers.org/doku.php?id=boards:ecb:diskio-v3:start)

xt-fdc. Floppy controller for ISA bus: [https://www.retrobrewcomputers.org/doku.php?id=boards:isa:xt...](https://www.retrobrewcomputers.org/doku.php?id=boards:isa:xt- fdc:start)

zfdcv1. Floppy controller for S100 bus: [https://www.retrobrewcomputers.org/doku.php?id=boards:s100:z...](https://www.retrobrewcomputers.org/doku.php?id=boards:s100:zfdcv1:start)

<comment><USER3> You forgot [https://github.com/keirf/Greaseweazle](https://github.com/keirf/Greaseweazle)

<comment><USER2> I didn't forget. I hadn't heard of it. Thanks for letting me know about it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Thanks for all the interest. Our shipping operations are temporarily stopped due to COVID-19 so please do not order if you expect to receive your order promptly!

The stay-at-home order in our area is "until further notice" with no expiration date. We can't provide an estimated ship date.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm currently using a Floppy Emu on my Apple IIe- it maps disk files on an SD card to the Apple controller's wire protocol.

My main complaint was that it doesn't sound like a disk drive (Apple drives had a very distinctive sound), but the creator also has a device that makes that sound if you want.

My second complaint was that it's slightly slower than an actual disk drive (however, since my disk drives keep breaking/corrupting files, I can live with this).

Finally, it seems to corrupt some of the data on transport (or somehow work differently than an actual floppy), so some programs crash or fail in a different way.

That said I continue to think it's hilarious that the disk drive for my Apple has a far more powerful processor and more storage space than an Apple IIe ever did, and I just use it to act like a fake disk drive.

<comment><USER6> I'm using a FloppyEmu model B on a IIgs. I haven't used it extensively for writing, but I did find that Bank Street Writer II will not format or write to a DSK image properly.

I'm really impressed w/ the FloppyEmu. The creator added WOZ disk image support fairly recently and I threw him some extra cash when I downloaded the new firmware, to show my appreciation for his continued development on the device.

<comment><USER5> It's really quite amazing what a hobbyist can make these days (and sell on the internet).

I would prefer a device that supported network storage, so I could just point it at my server which has thousands of disk images.

<comment><USER7> > I would prefer a device that supported network storage

You may be able to do this using a Wi-Fi enabled SD card with a floppy emulator.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> For anyone else curious about the index hole thing, there's a diagram here:

[http://electronicstechnician.tpub.com/14091/css/The-5-25-Inc...](http://electronicstechnician.tpub.com/14091/css/The-5-25-Inch- Floppy-Disk-Construction-261.htm)

This page discusses a hardware modification that can be done to allow _two_ TEAC-55GFR drives to work together, where one is loaded with an unflipped disk and supplies the required index signal to the other drive:

[http://www.oldskool.org/disk2fdi/FLIPPY.htm](http://www.oldskool.org/disk2fdi/FLIPPY.htm)

</comment><comment><USER9> If you want to reminisce about old floppy drives, and the other floppy formats that never made it, the 8-bit guy did a good video on old storage mediums: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvXXkB2jic0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvXXkB2jic0)

<comment><USER10> ...and destroyed some perfectly good floppy media while he was at it! _Grrr_

<comment><USER11> _crunch_

The sleeves are usually contact welded shut on the sides, so if one wants to keep the discs working, one of the edges can be undone and the disc can be removed like a letter from an envelope. "Transplants" are also possible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> As far as I know the state of the art is reading and writing the raw magnetic flux to/from a disk with something like this: [http://softpres.org/glossary:kryoflux](http://softpres.org/glossary:kryoflux)

This method supports more or less any platform, and images can be made with copy protection in place (for emulators that support it), or copies to new disk media preserving the original copy protection.

<comment><USER13> Kryoflux was the state of the art in 2013 (and is pretty capable for non C64 disks) but their shady legal practices asserting copyright of ripped images[1] makes their images blacklisted by the Internet Archive.

In 2019 a lot of people migrated to FluxEngine [2]. Though there are plenty of alternatives [3].

[1] [https://www.reddit.com/r/vintagecomputing/comments/buyj9f/co...](https://www.reddit.com/r/vintagecomputing/comments/buyj9f/comment/epjwsut)

[2] [http://cowlark.com/fluxengine/index.html](http://cowlark.com/fluxengine/index.html)

[3] [https://www.archiveteam.org/index.php?title=Rescuing_Floppy_...](https://www.archiveteam.org/index.php?title=Rescuing_Floppy_Disks)

<comment><USER14> > asserting copyright of ripped images

I don't think there would be a legal basis here. If I sell a pen, I can't claim ownership of the things people write with it, no matter what EULA I make people sign. The same holds for a Xerox machine. And similarly it holds for a tool to copy bits or flux transitions.

<comment><USER13> Not quite. As I understand it, the hardware rips disks and encodes them in proprietary SPS flux image formats (.IPF, .STREAM, and .DRAFT) subject to a very weird license agreement.[1] SPS does not assert ownership of the encoded content but does assert that content encoded with their software can not be used for commercial purposes. I suspect this "bit coloring" is at the root of why the Internet Archive made the decision to no longer accept Kryoflux based images and why it is not a good candidate for archival purposes.

[1] [https://www.kryoflux.com/download/LICENCE.txt](https://www.kryoflux.com/download/LICENCE.txt)

<comment><USER2> It's a shame they're doing this.

But at least, there is hope that fully OSS+OSHW solutions will effectively replace it.

What they're doing is certainly not magic. Warpers existed in the 90s already.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> _Most PC-style drives can 't read the second side of "flippy" disks_

That's baloney. The whole idea of a 'flippy disk' was to be able to read the second side of a single-sided disk. To make a flippy-disk you merely had to make an index hole in the correct position of the floppy's envelope and a write-enable notch in the correction position of the envelope also.

I made a cardboard template to mark those positions and used a hole-punch of this kind:

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

to make the holes themselves. Note that for the index hole, you had to carefully punch a hole in the envelope _only_ , not the actual magnetic media itself.

<comment><USER16> Making a flippy disk was to use the back side of a floppy when you only had a single-sided drive (like I did back in the day).

If you put a flippy disk into a double-sided drive which is expecting to read double-sided disks, you're going to have a bad day. The data on the back side of a flippy disk is written backwards compared to how it would be written on the back side by a double-sided floppy drive.

<comment><USER15> If you already have a double-sided floppy drive, then you don't have any reason to make flippy-floppies to use that second side of the floppy.

To read the second side of flippy-floppies _that you already have_ , you use the single-sided software that wrote the disk and that only uses a single side of the floppy and flip the floppy over. Then you transfer the data to a normal double-sided floppy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> When I found this sight, I was uncertain if one could still buy this device or if the owner was even still active, but then I checked the front page: "March, 2020: Orders may be delayed due to the COVID-19 situation. Thank you for your patience and understanding." The previous news post was from 2017. I think the owner's commitment to this project is amazing. I think that that the owner had to explicitly call out delays due to COVID-19 is also noteworthy.

</comment><comment><USER17> Is there a similar VHS reader anywhere?

I've looked for a VHS-to-digital converter, but couldn't find any. The only seeming solution is getting a TV tuner card, plugging an old VHS player to it, and actually playing the VHS on it, and using TV Tuner software to record it.

<comment><USER18> I don't know that there are any VHS devices that go straight to digital... Mostly it does come down to capture cards... if you can, use an SVHS Stereo of higher quality for the player, and svhs input... you'll get slightly higher quality.

Though it's been well over a decade since I've touched/used anything like this. I do have a friend that does some conversions as a business... he uses pro grade svhs player and it's slightly better quality, but far from ideal.

Similar for old super-8 videos, mostly comes down to playing and recording via webcam in a controlled environment. If you go completely black, the recording washes out, so want some light in the playback/recording, and then runs through some filters.

<comment><USER19> For film transfer, you should at least be setting manual exposure control on the camera. But realistically, matching the film frame-advance rate precisely to the camera shutter rate will be all sorts of tricky, and you should either have proper synchronization, or do it a frame at a time and then capture the audio separately.

For any video format, you're spot-on -- using S-Video instead of composite does wonders for the quality, although if it was recorded from a composite source, you won't squeeze blood from a stone. There are plenty of capture cards with Y/C inputs, and modern PCs are fast enough to keep up with even the pathetically buffer-starved models.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> AFAIK, the cables were identical in 3.5" and 5.25" drives.

So this interface probably works for both.

I swapped out a 5.25" drive on a BBC Micro for a modern 3.5" drive and even got it to work using HD media (the BBC used SD).

<comment><USER21> They were. The connectors at the end of the drives were different and that was all (adapters were common, probably still available)

There's also scsi 3.5" drives out there. Some ThinkPads had them. In fact, those drives were 2.88MB, just like on the NeXT, the 1.44 was common but one of a large number of capacities in that form factor...

If you do this, use dd, not cat. Why? dd has this

noerror continue after read errors

You're going to get errors. Lots of errors! However, 80% or so of the time, most of the disk is still recoverable, but only if you use the right tools.

It's going to be slow, real slow. A few minutes a disk with errors.

Now that I think of it, you can probably swap the NeXT and thinkpad drives with a little effort. I bet there's a good arbitrage on eBay here if I'm right.

There's systems that go the other way, sd card/usb disk to fake floppy but what I really want is usb to fake floppy. In this model the usb exposes itself as a configurable given capacity drive on both ends of the pipe, fake on both ends

At the modern computer I copy over the files to the fake drive disk by disk and on the old computer I tap enter accordingly. Then someone can do a 20 disk install or whatever without a bunch of effort. It's not a hard device to make but i checked and i still don't see it

<comment><USER22> Theres some open source firmware available for these I believe that makes them work with more computers: [http://www.gotekemulator.com](http://www.gotekemulator.com)

Found it: [https://github.com/keirf/FlashFloppy/wiki](https://github.com/keirf/FlashFloppy/wiki)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Pricing is here for the curious: [http://shop.deviceside.com/](http://shop.deviceside.com/)

</comment><comment><USER24> I think I encountered 5¼" floppies only near the beginning of my computing life so I only had a couple at the school lab but this is the first I've heard of _flippy_ disks. What a clever name! If most PC drives couldn't read these, which manufacturer drives did people use?

<comment><USER25> IBM pcs generally had double-sided drives. No need to flip, because the drive had heads for the top and bottom. Other computers varied, usually depending on when they introduced floppy drives (double sided is more complex, but better experience).

Note that the data orientation will be different on the bottom of a single sided disk written with the disk upside down than if written on a double sided drive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Isn't there an USB FDD standard? Why are they using a proprietary protocol instead of that?

<comment><USER27> This acts as a controller that attaches to a conventional PC floppy disk drive (which does not have internal controller electronics like a modern hard drive).

It's different than a USB floppy disk drive, which is more like a weird integrated ATAPI device on a USB-ATAPI bridge

<comment><USER28> For anyone buying this, please keep in mind USB-ATAPI floppy drives are _especially_ broken in nearly all modern OSes.

I'm speaking from experience with ZIP drives, including the internal ATAPI and IDE versions. Support for Linux was dropped a while ago, but you can load that in as a Kernel module. I still haven't gotten that to work.

Current Win10 install _kinda_ works, but the best success I've had is with an old 32-bit installation of WinXP. Even then, doing the things you'd like to do with a floppy drive (reading reliably, reading when inserted, decoupling the unmount/eject ((as opposed to the old way Mac handled it))) mechanism is difficult. Also, some USB->ATAPI bridges simply don't work with ATAPI floppy devices.

If you've ever wanted to solve a problem that no one else has attempted (because no one cares, at all) there's a project for you.

<comment><USER29> Thanks for confirming my suspicions with this comment. Was just messing with an internal Zip-750 drive. I tried both SATA to IDE adapters and an internal USB to IDE adapter. I tried with two different drives using Ubuntu 20.04 and jazip.

With both drives there was a brief moment the the zip disk showed up, once. Then never again.

I eventually just purchased a PCIe IDE controller card and that works as expected.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Interesting device. would be great if this supported odd formats like this one does: [https://www.vesalia.de/e_catweaselmk4.htm](https://www.vesalia.de/e_catweaselmk4.htm)

<comment><USER31> Did. That product, and its successor, are discontinued.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I always wondered why PCs maintained support for 3.5" disks, but not for 5.25". Fortunately, beforehand I had presciently copied my hundreds of floppies to CD-ROMs. But I still keep finding more :-)

<comment><USER25> PCs still support for 5.25" discs, but the 3.5" disks are better (smaller, more durable, more data per disk, unless you're comparing 5.25" high density vs 3.5" double density. By the 90s, cd-rom was clearly the future, but a boot disk came in handy, so one floppy drive was enough for most people. 3.5" disks also had the 2.88 drives, and LS-120 drives with compatible form factors.

<comment><USER32> > PCs still support for 5.25" discs

Not for the last 10 years. Even though the cable fits, the BIOS does not recognize it.

<comment><USER2> I haven't seen any motherboard with FDC for over a decade.

And I could use one... I actually do use floppies still.

<comment><USER19> Guess I'll be keeping my socket AM2+ board around indefinitely, then! I just tossed a Phenom into it to buy it some relevance as the AthlonX2 which it held for the last decade was feeling a bit old, but I'm considering going back just for thermal reasons -- my god, Phenoms run hot.

That machine has all my floppy, cdrom, and internal Zip drives in it right now. I could stand to upgrade it to SSD though; the old 120GB is getting noisy and I suspect the bearings are shot.

<comment><USER2> Yeah, I use some even older athlon K75 for this.

I do actually wonder if there's any sort of EFI support for floppies.

Edit: [https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/windows/en- US/f1...](https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/windows/en- US/f17db175-d1)

What a mess. Likely just works on netbsd, but I hate this sort of thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I see that it's been tested up to MacOS Sierra. I wonder if this could be used on Catalina.

I've read online that even USB floppy drives are no longer supported in macOS. Which is disappointing.

<comment><USER4> It can be used up to Mojave. The current drivers don't work on Catalina. We hope to release an update soon, but there is no ETA.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> The limitations of this one are pretty crippling. It hardly counts as a controller, it's just a USB floppy reader. Even the software has some absurd limitations.

</comment><comment><USER34> Is there any 5.25 or 3.5 floppy drive hardware remake project out there for reading/writing floppies without using ancient hardware?

</comment><comment><USER35> I don't need one, but I want one. Knowing my dad he still has all of the software from our Amstrad 1640 stashed in the garage!

</comment><comment><USER36> The computer I use today still has 3.5" floppy drive.

<comment><USER2> Many of my computers which I still use do.

But my main workstation doesn't. The primary reason is the motherboard lacks a floppy controller.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> ok</comment>


Scanse's "Sweep" Laser Rangefinder: Long Range and Affordable - <AUTHOR> http://www.hizook.com/blog/2016/04/04/scanses-sweep-laser-rangefinder-long-range-and-affordable <comment><USER2> Cheap laser rangefinders are absolutely an enabling technology for the next generation of robotics. I sincerely hope they can deliver.

</comment><comment><USER3> FWIW I know one of the guys behind the Scanse LIDAR. Pretty sharp guy. I saw a demo a few days ago at the Homebrew Robotics Club. Pretty decent specs, although the minimum distance using the current software is a little on the long side -- at least 1/2 meter IIRC. The max distance is huge. They say this is a true time-of-flight LIDAR. IMHO this is an interesting unit and I am confident enough that I put in a Kickstart pledge. One interesting point is that the RPM is independent of the point update rate, so you can trade off resolution agains full-360-scan update rate. I have enough confidence in the founders and what I saw to believe I will get a decent unit, perhaps with minimal, reasonable, schedule slip (this stuff is hard).

</comment><comment><USER4> Looks a lot like [http://www.seeedstudio.com/depot/RPLIDAR-360-degree-Laser- Sc...](http://www.seeedstudio.com/depot/RPLIDAR-360-degree-Laser-Scanner- Development-Kit-p-1823.html?cPath=14)

<comment><AUTHOR> (Author here) RPLidar is great for home use... but the 6m range is severely limiting outdoors and in larger indoor environments such as warehouses, retail stores, etc. Anecdotally, you really need at least a 15-20m range to effectively map and localize in such environments -- which is the sweet spot for the Scanse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have been wanting one of these for years! Last time I looked into building my own robot, the lack of a low-cost LIDAR is the thing that held me back. Last time I looked, it was like $10k for similar functionality. This is a total game-changer. This will also be my first Kickstarter to back.

<comment><USER3> Go buy any vacuum cleaner from Neato, cost: $300-$500. Give it a LIDAR-ectomy and also save the nice battery pack. Toss the vacuum parts. Now you have a nice LIDAR with a well-known interface protocol (thy friend is Google). This is the cheapest good LIDAR around. 360 data points, 5Hz scanning, 1 degree resolution, 5m indoor range, 2+ meters outdoors if you provide a sunshade. Or, if you like the Neato base, use the USB protocol and Neato ROS node to drive the unmodified vacuum around.

The Neato LIDAR is a structured-light Laser Distance Scanner (LDS), accuracy about 1-2cm depending on distance. Resolution 1mm. Minimum sensing distance about 20cm, IIRC.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's definitely mentioned in the article. :) Downside is the reduced range (see previous comment). I wish Neato would make their LRF available separately for purchase! I even wrote about it back when it was under development in 2009!

[http://www.hizook.com/blog/2009/12/20/ultra-low-cost- laser-r...](http://www.hizook.com/blog/2009/12/20/ultra-low-cost-laser- rangefinders-actualized-neato-robotics)

<comment><USER3> Yes, well, a lot of us have told Neato the same thing. They are not interested in pursuing the OEM market. I can see their point.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Mortgage Morass - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/15/opinion/15krugman.html?_r=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss <comment><USER2> My question is, how can an individual figure out whether the mortgage they pay is actually legitimate?

<comment><AUTHOR> Good question. Asking the bank to provide documentation would be a good first step, but I'm not sure if there's anything obligating them to furnish that information to you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> That's why they make the big bucks, baby.

</comment><comment><USER4> Disaster sounds like a better word.</comment>


Why Twitter Deleted Those Tweets - <AUTHOR> http://www.buzzfeed.com/alexkantrowitz/why-twitter-deleted-those-tweets <comment><USER2> Or in other words, why the DMCA system is broken. Because a company or individual can claim anything is breaking their copyright to get it removed, and the site seemingly has to act regardless of whether they've even got a case.

We so need a strong law that's applied to false claims that makes the claimant liable for it. Make it so its genuinely costly to send dubious DMCA claims and other copyright notices.

</comment><comment><USER3> TL;DR: because they received DMCA takedown notices.</comment>


Ask HN – How do I find a back office provider for my startup? - <AUTHOR>

	Quora? Ask other founders? Google? It's a painstaking process that takes a while. How can it be made simpler to find the back office (accounting, HR, payroll, etc) provider that fits my startup? Thanks! <comment><USER2> Having done this many times over the last few years, as either technical co- founder or technical director, I've often wondered whether a list of useful sites/tools would be worth putting together.

You mentioned a particular need for financial backoffice software... After a long and painful investigation, I settled on Xero ([http://www.xero.com](http://www.xero.com)), and I've never looked back.

Here is a brief list of other services I rely on absolutely:

Google Apps - Office platform (6 companies using) AWS - Cloud infrastructure (5 companies using) Mailchimp & Mandrill - Email delivery (5 companies using) Zapier - Automation (5 companies using) Buffer - Social Media automation (5 companies using) Github - Source control (5 companies using) Braintree - Subscription payments (4 companies using) Stripe - Credit card payments (4 companies using) Geckoboard - Status monitoring (3 companies using)

This is not intended to decry any providers I haven't mentioned, this is just a list of my go-to companies/services that I use to get new companies running fast.</comment>


Lies, damned lies and statistics: Most popular Help Desk Software in the world - <AUTHOR> http://blog.jmedwards.net/post/3054665566/lies-damned-lies-and-statistics-most-popular-help

<comment><USER2> 30,000 customers makes a piece of software "the world's most popular?" Wow, the help desk market is way small.

I wonder how they missed all the traditional help desk vendors (like Remedy) from the picture ;-)

<comment><USER3> That wasn't quite what I was getting at - that sentence was tongue-in-cheek. I cleaned up the admittedly messy paragraph</comment></comment>


How to fight the surveillance economy - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@vvecsei/fighting-the-surveillance-economy-a-practical-guide-for-individuals-and-companies-cb9719fe1098 <comment><USER2> The surveillance economy is a direct result of advertising becoming the default business model for Internet companies.

At its root, advertising is attempting to predict an individual's preferences and subtlety nudge their preferences toward specific buying behaviors.

With more granular and pervasive data inputs, you can arguably do better predictions and thus better targeting.

The only counter to this is either:

1: proof that more individual data /= better ad targeting as DDG is attempting to do

Or

2\. Changing the default business model for internet companies

Surveillance capitalism is a natural result of our form of consumption driven economy.

The most interesting thing here actually is that there's an argument to be made that this is also a good approach to building very complex artificial intelligence, effectively aggregating how people respond to input.

<comment><USER3> > The surveillance economy is a direct result of advertising becoming the > default business model for Internet companies.

This is sad because advertising is a poor monetization scheme. For instance, let's say you make $0.10 per user through ads. Now let's say you want to increase the price to $2.00 per user. Then oops, you can't, because ads don't allow you to make that much for any given user. So depending on your preferred price-point, which may be variable, you may have to switch monetization schemes, which is terrible.

<comment><USER4> Facebook seem to have been able to constantly grow their per user revenue: [https://www.statista.com/statistics/234056/facebooks- average...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/234056/facebooks-average- advertising-revenue-per-user/)

<comment><USER3> But Facebook has an enormous user base. Also, this is a different kind of scaling, as the value they provide is the same as before. And they had to work hard to change their price point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Addendum to the solution 1: "Don't assume that, because you paid for something, they aren't harvesting your data anyway".

Example: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19113960](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19113960)

</comment><comment><USER6> > How to fight the surveillance economy (medium.com)

Step 0: publish on your own platform without trackers, not on medium.

<comment><USER7> From TFA:

 _Install Privacy Badger by EFF that uncovers and blocks scripts on websites that track you; this Medium page has 2 active trackers that would have been blocked if you did - Google Analytics and Parse.ly_

<comment><USER6> That is the wrong attitude. Yes, I know how to shield myself; nobody else in my family does.

There's nothing wrong pushing links to the article to platforms like HN, Reddit, etc, but the source shouldn't be medium. If you write a piece like this, it deserves to go on a platform without trackers; otherwise it's a bit hard to take it seriously.

I'm aware that medium.com might bring in a broader audience and that it's simple to "publish without starting a blog", but so is doing an HTML export from a text editor these days. It's also similar to adding "why quit Facebook" on Facebook itself - it doesn't work.

The article itself is decent though.

<comment><USER8> > Yes, I know how to shield myself; nobody else in my family does.

Another thing is that we should both educate those who don't know how to shield themselves - and make it easier to be protected. The latter is related to network protocols and processes and to client (and server) software.

Can we simplify Internet?

<comment><USER9> I think think in the future the lightning network will be great for subsidising cost for hosting open source, non profit internet infrastructure. We already have projects like Tor and FreeNet, but without micropayments they are not scalable solutions. Lightning network still needs about 10 years to become practical for every day use though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Poison the well - generate noise. By generating false signals you will devalue the harvested data hopefully to a point it is not worth harvesting.

<comment><USER11> Speaking of which, AdNauseum is a useful extension for Firefox for devaluing the ad economy. Google of course banned it from the chrome store.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Some valid points. At the end of the day, until the governments around the world reign in the offenders with regulations and potential jail time (GDRP and such), nothing is going to change for the masses.

Just like every other cycle in the human history - abuse until a breaking point is reached, regulations come in, find some other niche ripe for "disruption", repeat the cycle.

Unrelated to the main topic - writing about the surveillance economy in a Medium post, which itself is a textbook example of the surveillance economy devaluates the core message a little bit for me.

<comment><USER8> Judging by how fast advertisers left some political outlets, it could be possible to discourage cooperation with aforementioned corporations. For software engineers to work in those may become career-limiting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> How about F/OSS communities, programming blogs, and forums like HN stop allowing Google, Fb et al to index and link to their pages? Soon Google and co will find out there's not much content of value left in their garden. I for one can get along well with a couple sites such as github, stackoverflow, arstechnica, some EU quality journalism sites, etc. Most other stuff turns out to be self-promotion or ad-ladden feedbuzz for the digital precariat anyway (the kind of which you see on the subway and who can't stop fumbling with their smartphone for a even a second).

</comment><comment><USER14> If you're a software developer the way to fight this is financial. Make a ton of money then pay journalists to write about it and pay other software developers to build the tools to evade it.[0]

Regarding VPNs:

What I want is a very small, open source program that I can give my credit card. It will light up little DigitalOcean droplets (and other VPSes to stop potential monitoring from them) and create VPNs here and there. I also want to build my own browser that will be capable of making the rendering happen on these rented-for-a-minute servers then pipe back just the PNG. I also would make certain things local. I can use machine learning to predict which areas of Wikipedia I will probably want to read in the future. This should just be local and occasionally synced. Same with Stack Overflow.

Fingerprint me now bitches. (They still probably can, at least partially. It just raises me up to the top of the trees in the jungle.)

[0] Though I will say I see the downsides. Surveillance is how we stop malice and per-individual power is going up.

<comment><USER15> >I also want to build my own browser that will be capable of making the rendering happen on these rented-for-a-minute servers then pipe back just the PNG.

I think you want a browser running on a servet you access over a VNC, which will pipe back just the parts of the screen that have updated.

<comment><USER16> x2go is perfect for this. I used to run an instance on AWS, but I just keep one at home now. It pipes everything through a PIA vpn.

<comment><USER17> How does x2go compare with xpra?

<comment><USER16> As far as I can tell, xpra uses the X protocol, which is laggy over links under 10 Mb/s.

X2go uses the NX protocol, which is designed for slower links, so it works better across the internet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> >Searching for and writing about topics online deemed inappropriate are known to authorities within a second thanks to cooperating companies.

This is already happening. I used to mock conservatives and free-speech advocates who claimed that Twitter, Reddit, Facebook etc. were censoring speech unecessarily. I'm pretty far to the left, and obviously I think racist and sexist harassment are bad things...however, these platforms have automated any features that allow users to report "problematic" posts or comments, which makes it VERY easy for people to abuse and mass-report anything they disagree with.

Why would I trust a corporation to correctly determine whether a comment is abusive, or just an opposing point of view?

What does it mean when corporations are in charge of determining what speech is offensive, and effectively control the "acceptable" range of discourse? In the UK a man was investigated by the police for retweeting an offensive limerick - [https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/01/24/man- investigated...](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/01/24/man-investigated- police-retweeting-transgender-limerick/)

I don't really agree with what he retweeted, but it still seems kind of ridiculous to investigate someone for a tweet that isn't threatening or violent.

</comment><comment><USER19> Or instead make the information public/transparent as possible. To level the playing field. Yes there are going to be many issue arise from this, so it's these issue that need to be fixed instead of trying to fight to make information private.

>They know more about us than we know about ourselves or than we know about them

Right so we need to fight for knowing more information about them as much as they know about us

Governments want surveillance the citizen, fine, the citizen should fight for ability to surveillance the government as well.

<comment><USER20> > Right so we need to fight for knowing more information about them as much as > they know about us

I don't see how that actually solves the problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I suspect this is an inseparable part of the wide open Internet we love to talk about. Changing revenue to something more direct and less invasive is an extremely difficult task. I wonder if we will see the return of big walled gardens (e.g. Prodigy, Compuserve, etc from the old days) with all-you-can eat subscriptions to content within.

</comment><comment><USER22> > Look for businesses that accept anonymous payment options and don't force > everyone to share personal information with a third-party payment provider.

What anonymous payment options are there (other than many cryptocurrencies)? I do remember the days of sending cash through the post but I don't think that's what the author is suggesting.

<comment><USER23> On my country at least there is a trend that only registered costumers have promotions and discounts, but what really happens is that the price of the things go up and the registered costumers pay the 'normal' price.

I'm not buying anymore on theses type of stores (markets and restaurants mostly), but this is keeping growing difficult because every other week more and more business are starting to ask for my 'credentials'.

<comment><USER24> Use fakes. In the US there's a famous song called Jenny with the phone number 867-5309 in the lyrics. Everyone over age 30 knows that number by heart, and a fair number younger too.

Simply give (your local area-code)-867-5309 and there's a very good chance that someone's already signed up with that number. If not, I'll complete the signup with that number and whatever bogus name comes to mind. Jacob Blues, 1060 W Addison 60613 works well.

Just like AdNauseam, simply chaff the system until it's futile.

I'm sure there are similar characters in the public consciousness of every country.

<comment><USER25> Shouldn't the first name always be Jenny for 857-5309? Otherwise the next person is screwed when the cashier (potentially) asks for a name.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I understand the concern but it does not bother me much. You are much more likely to have you data logged and used against you by visiting a small website than twitter or Facebook. CIA/FBI agents are known to hack websites and install trackers. The Firefox tor JavaScript exploit comes to mind.

</comment><comment><USER27> How do you reconcile the novel "1984" (published 1949) with the comments about the internet and millenials?

</comment><comment><USER28> Oppression is always structural. Organize.

</comment><comment><USER29> Step 1: Don't use a smart phone.

The problem is it seems to increasingly become a necessity for participating in modern society.

</comment><comment><USER30> VPNs do literally nothing to protect your privacy.

if anything they make it _more_ obvious who is using your internet connection. Yes, your ISP will be less able to snoop, but you are now exchanging your ISP's complete oversight, with a VPN provider's.

Now, if you VPN is based in the EU, then you have GDPR to help you. However the burden of proof is still on you.

So what can you practically do?

1) container tabs

Each service you _have_ to sign into has its own container. This stops each service like google, facebook, ebay et al form a complete picture of you.

2) check your unique browser ID, [https://panopticlick.eff.org/](https://panopticlick.eff.org/)

3) trash your browser's profile every month.

4) on your phone, keep in private mode</comment>


A Japanese Social App Contacts New Shores - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/06/technology/a-japanese-social-app-contacts-new-shores.html?pagewanted=all

<comment><USER2> When we have gotten ourselves in an economy that encourage smart people to dedicate weeks to think about how to get people to buy as many silly virtual stickers and virtual packages of gold as possible to progress in games designed to get uncritical people to get hooked, it feels like it's time to get out, move to some remote place and start hacking on something that is actually important.

<comment><USER3> Nobody is stopping you. There is the door. Add to your list commenting on articles about said technologies on a site for nerds.

<comment><USER2> You are quite right.

<comment><USER4> I don't mind if really smart people decide to spend their time building cute chat apps and games. I think that, if a virtual sticker makes someone smile, it's earned its 170 yen.

For me, it's the smart people that are building surveillance systems and killer drones that are wasting their lives.

<comment><USER2> While I mostly agree - that surveillance drone technology could and will probably be used over again for beneficent purposes as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Living in Japan, I have to deal with Line but I don't like it. My major complaint is that Line encourages you to spam your friends advertising their games. For example, Line Pop artifically limits the number of times you can play the game, but you can easily nag your friends to send you more 'hearts' so you can continue. Pretty sure Line Play gives you in game currency for inviting anyone to play it, whether they are your friends or not, so I have tons of people I don't know send me requests. This stuff was so spammy I had turn off Line notifications, so I prefer to use normal text messages whenever possible. I could see other users get sick of it the same way I did.

<comment><USER6> Interesting, I live in Japan too and use Line often, but have never received any requests of this sort. Sounds really annoying, but luckily it seems that no one I know actually plays those games.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> East Asian or "Big in Japan" software rarely ports to the United States because the software flourishes under corporate nepotism. While installed on 72% of Japanese iPhones, Line's Android app is vastly more popular, mostly because it comes preinstalled on so many devices.

Not that coercive software installs are limited to Android. Baidu, Tencent and AliBaba live and die by shipping their own stores on iOS[0], where according to old estimates nearly 1/3 of iOS devices in China are jailbroken by carriers.

By these standards, Minesweeper is an enormously popular game. But we all understand its success as a creative product is owed largely to shipping with Windows.

Software in East Asia would export better if it grew in a more meritocratic environment. Say what you will about the top charts of iOS and how they got there, but the teams behind the top charts deliver great stuff in short time better than their competitors. No corruption.

[0] [http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/19/business/global/baidu- deal...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/19/business/global/baidu-deal-may- reduce-app-piracy-in-china.html?pagewanted=all)

<comment><USER8> > Software in East Asia would export better if it grew in a more meritocratic > environment.

That sounds about as antiquated as "Asians can't innovate, they just copy". I actually heard that line out of an American kid who had just arrived in Asia. He was, needless to say, a complete idiot.

The penetration rate of Line in Thailand is _very_ high. My friends and I were early adopters and saw it grow organically, mostly because of the stickers included in the app (they're funny).

Having used Line daily for one -- probably closer to two -- years I can say it's a well made app. You don't need a conspiracy theory or to insult Japanese culture to account for its success.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I went on a trip to Japan in May, and line came back with me. It's got excellent group chat support for a mobile chat app, good quality voice calling, and is a really 'solid' feeling app. If you're going on a vacation with a bunch of friends I can't think of a better app to keep everyone in touch while you're on your adventure.

<comment><USER10> Seriously, for all that some people might dislike the silly/cute games/stickers/addons/yadayada, the basic LINE app is very good, vastly better than most of the other free voice/talk apps I've tried: _much_ better voice quality and far less buggy than skype, much better quality and less buggy than kakaotalk, etc, and there's no point in even comparing to garbage like vibber or whatsapp.

Moreover, because it's so popular, as soon as I ran it for the first time, a bunch of people I knew just popped up automatically in my contact list (presumably matched with numbers in my phone's address book)...

<comment><USER11> I'm fairly new to Line, but with anime/manga lovers bias aside, I find those stamps feature very useful. It's not necessary the way to augment conversations but it helps to respond to subject that I don't have insight or prefer not to respond in details; I think it lowers a bar on burden to prevent awkward silence.

As for the software, my 91 years old grandfather in Japan just got iPhone as his first smartphone ever. He also signed up to Line as well so he can communicate with rest of relatives (including myself) who happened to be three different all over the US. I am impressed that he is learning it quick. I think the part of it is the fact it's not as intimidating as other solutions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Although twitter has been getting more and more closed it'll take them a long time before they're as closed as Line. The word that best sums up Line and the company behind them is 'opaque'. My kids both had Line installed on their phones. When we got a Nexus 7 tablet they naturally wanted to do Line there as well. Bad idea. Line doesn't allow the same account on two devices. Line's solution? Instant deletion of the account. They lost a year of accumulated stickers and chats. The positive thing from my point of view is that they were completely discouraged and they no longer waste time on it.

</comment><comment><USER13> It's super popular all over south-east asia. One of the reasons are the cute and fun "stickers" that can convey 80% of your daily emotions and situations. Stuck in overcrowded subway? there's a sticker for that.

<comment><USER14> WeChat is also super popular in SEA. So we have Line from Japan, WeChat from China, KakaoTalk from Korea as the leading contenders in Asia. You see TV commercials of the apps endorsed by celebrities. They are evolving from simple chat app to a full social platform with own apps and games. You can say they compete with Facebook. I overheard a teen asking his friend why he is still using Facebook. Social apps to the teens might not be utility, more like clubs. And they want to be associated with cool clubs of the day.

<comment><USER15> You can add Whatsapp to that list, in Hong Kong at least. It's the dominant messaging app here and the company claims 50% penetration, although it's not clear by what measure.

WeChat and Line are definitely growing though. Not sure about elsewhere, but they've both been marketing pretty aggressively of late with TV and print commercials, billboards, store promotions etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm not sure why the private messaging apps in the US died off (MSN messenger, AIM, ICQ, etc).

Was it because something like Facebook and Twitter appeared? I know in China, without facebook, they continue to use private messaging apps like QQ and WeChat. But it seems the trend might be in all of Asia, even in places where facebook exists.

<comment><USER17> I'd say it is definitely because of sites like Facebook. Why bother getting peoples screen names for AIM when they're already on your Facebook contacts list?

<comment><USER16> Japan and Korea have Facebook and twitter (though I'm unaware of the penetration) yet they clearly still use apps like LINE.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Just a data point - line has been dominating the free category in the Japanese app store for about the past 6 months now they've expanded their base to include games.

</comment><comment><USER19> > purchasing emoji stickers

> people over-sharing mundane details of their lives

> games with for-pay DLC

> "Don't worry, we won't sell your personal information or share your private > conversations with the government. We promise." <\- bullshit

Sounds awful. Thank you NYTimes for un-selling me so efficiently.

</comment><comment><USER20> Reminds me to play zookeeper! Haven't launched that app in like 6-7 mo... Just turn off that music; line cannot compose for crap.

</comment><comment><USER21> It seems you cannot install Line without divulging your whole iPhone contact list.

Skipping this.</comment>


China Makes Socialist Students Disappear - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/if-i-disappear-chinese-students-make-farewell-messages-amid-crackdowns-over-labor-activism-/2019/05/25/6fc949c0-727d-11e9-9331-30bc5836f48e_story.html <comment><USER2> Going to be the same with assange... it's sad when governments make people disappear :(</comment>


Show HN: Browser Inside Browser - <AUTHOR> https://start.cloudbrowser.xyz/?%F0%9F%98%8A <comment><USER2> First thing I tried was running this in itself recursively, a browser in a browser in a browser in a..

[https://imgur.com/a/DLnP5hO](https://imgur.com/a/DLnP5hO)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah I'm always a fan of that. :)</comment></comment>


Stop Blaming Trolls for the Patent Problem - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/opinion/2013/03/stop-blaming-the-trolls-or-we-wont-be-able-to-fix-the-patent-system/ <comment><USER2> No.

The article makes several references to "licensing" and "pricing." These are euphemisms for shakedowns.

Patent trolls shakedown developers with patents that never should have existed in the first place. Why should a developer have to pay ANYTHING to a patent troll? Why should a developer have pay ANYTHING to defend themselves against a patent troll?

The only solution is to eliminate software patents. Entirely.

</comment><comment><USER3> Very very well said. IMHO, Microsoft is as much patent troll as some of these NPEs given its aggressive use of patents (such as its ex-FAT patent) against competitors.</comment>


Missing Person - Tracy Williams, Technorati Employee - <AUTHOR> http://technorati.com/women/article/missing-person-tracy-williams-technorati-employee/ I saw this on Twitter and thought perhaps the HN community could help. My heart goes out to her family and colleagues. <comment><USER2> Technorati people, in case you are reading this, it might help to post more than one photo of her. Sometimes, it is hard to remember or recognize faces, when you have only seen one photo.

I hope everything turns out all right.

<comment><USER3> And post different angles if possible (front, profile, etc). It matters.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I saw this on Twitter and thought perhaps HN could help get the word out, particularly around downtown San Francisco where she was last seen. My thoughts and prayers go out to her, her family and her colleagues.

</comment><comment><USER4> "Tracy was last seen at 7:45pm PDT on Wednesday evening at the Whitehorse Bar located in San Francisco." <\-- does the bar have a security camera, and if so has anyone reviewed the footage from that night?

"After leaving the bar, we believe Tracy texted a friend to let him know she was going home." <\-- Has anyone asked her friends if she sent them a text message that night?

(these should be obvious, but there was no indication, from what I've read, that these avenues were explored)

<comment><USER5> > these should be obvious, but there was no indication

I would assume the latter (txt msg) refers to the possibility that the text message was not sent by her but sent by someone whom has been involved in her disappearance. There was a text message from her phone to a friend, but they don't know if she actually sent it. That's my assumption about what it means anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Tracy Williams WAS FOUND:

"November 7, 2011 at 9:15am PDT - We are relieved to share that Tracy Williams is indeed alive and safe at a local hospital. We want to thank everyone who helped spread the word about Tracy's disappearance."

Source: [http://technorati.com/women/article/missing-person-tracy- wil...](http://technorati.com/women/article/missing-person-tracy-williams- technorati-employee/)

<comment><USER7> How can it take 3 days to find someone at a hospital? I mean, obviously it can, but still, this seems to be an inordinate amount of time to find someone.

<comment><USER8> You can't just go calling hospitals asking if a certain person has been admitted. That's actually confidential information, and they won't just give that out.

<comment><USER7> But after filing a missing persons report with the police, it seems that the police would be able to quickly find out if they were in an area hospital and contact the next of kin/emergency contact, this should take less than 3 days.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Does a product exist combining a panic button with a gps (or mobile location) that links to police, ambulance or fire. 1 click police, 2 clicks ambulance, 3 clicks fire... sort of thing?

<comment><USER10> Dial 911 from virtually any cell phone and hang up. No need to say anything.

PS. 112 in Europe.

(edit) I meant to say that American 911 is European 112. I don't know if the police in European countries is supposed to react to dropped 112 calls or not. In Canada and in the US it is. A friend of mine saw it in action. He saw something, dialed, realized it wasn't a big deal, hung up, walked away 100 m, then, boom - not 2 minutes later a fire truck and a police car _exactly_ where he called from. Their precision was really freaky.

<comment><USER11> I'm not sure how it works on all European countries but at least on my home country if you do call 112 and hang up nothing is going to happen. If you call 112 and say something and the call gets cut for some reason nothing is going to happen either...

<comment><USER12> German anecdote: A few years ago my 2yr old son seems to have dialed 112 by accident. We learned about this a minute later when the fire department called back to check if we needed help.

<comment><USER13> When my kid was three or four, I called the sheriff's business number, asked to talk to the 911 office, and asked them if I could have my son dial 911 and talk to them, for training (his). They checked if they were busy, then said OK.

It puffed up his chest a bit, but we talked about emergencies, how to get help, why we don't call 911 unless it's an emergency, etc.

I suppose if everyone did it they wouldn't be agreeable, but no one does, so you should too. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Has anyone checked the local hospitals already?

Tracy could have left the bar like her co-workers assumed, only to have some sort of medical emergency (heart attack? Seizure? Hit by a car?).

<comment><USER15> _We have notified the San Francisco Police department and hospital checks are being conducted._

<comment><USER14> Thanks! I either missed that or it was an update to the post.

When walking around alone in SF, I'm actually irrationally afraid of getting hit by a car and nobody knowing what happened to me. So yeah, if this is what happened that would be terrible and one of my worst nightmares come true.

<comment><USER15> Well, there are fall detectors out there, both as hardware devices as well as smartphone apps, which can send an SMS automatically in such cases. Of course, they have to be installed a priori.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> If someone could get her to leave with them without her making a fuss, I'd suspect someone she already knows. Assuming she _did_ leave with someone.

<comment><USER17> Yes, most crimes like this are committed by people the victim knows. :(

<comment><USER18> Crimes like what?

<comment><USER19> This is beyond scope..

..or to put it more bluntly: this is not appropriate for HN.

<comment><USER18> Fair call. I intended to say the same thing with my comment, but I should have been clearer (rather than appearing to encourage a flame war). Sorry 'bout that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The FBI should use Facebook and RSS to crowdsource manhunts. California has "Amber Alerts" for abducted children that are announced on TV, radio, and highway signs. But the FBI might be able to get more eyeballs Facebook and RSS feeds announcing with photos of missing people or wanted criminals. They could have national, state, and local feeds so people can choose fewer but closer announcements.

<comment><USER20> I literally thought about building a Facebook app like this not more than an hour ago. This is definitely something that should be built, I wonder how difficult it would be to get the data out of the police departments...

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Assuming that she has a smartphone, has anyone checked to see her last known gps position?

<comment><AUTHOR> Usually the cops are on that sort of thing. I hope. But it might be worth checking Google Latitude, MobileMe, Loopt and the like; if she used any of those indirect passive GPS services.

<comment><USER22> I believe there were major issues getting & sharing information regarding cell tower pings when James Kim's family went missing a few years back. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Kim>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> _Tracy Williams Found_

[http://technorati.com/women/article/missing-person-tracy- wil...](http://technorati.com/women/article/missing-person-tracy-williams- technorati-employee/)

</comment><comment><USER24> This doesn't sound good. :-(

</comment><comment><USER25> Why the quotes on "smoke"?

</comment><comment><USER26> I hope she is ok and has just gone walkabout. Even then, a courtesy "I'm ok" call goes a hell of a long way.

</comment><comment><USER27> Wow, technorati is still around? That's news.</comment>