Open Sourcers Race to Build Better Versions of Slack - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2016/03/open-source-devs-racing-build-better-versions-slack/ <comment><USER2> A hundred different chat systems mentioned here. _None_ of them compatible with one another. Well, I guess a couple of them have IRC gateways, but you have to actually set those up.

Gee, wouldn't it be nice if you could pick and choose your UI? Pick and choose your "integrations", your "plugins", your client, etc without having to lose your entire userbase, history, contacts?

Some sort of _open_ protocol.

Urgh, I've been working on this lately and the entire field is depressing. Between one side that doesn't understand the legitimate need for open protocols, and another side that doesn't understand why IRC isn't the end-all- be-all of group chat (and why UX matters), it's just people talking past each other.

Every new attempt at making "the slack killer" makes this problem worse, because it comes with its own protocol. Its own users. Etc.

PS: If somebody has free time to work on an open source multi-protocol group chat gateway, email me, I have something started.

<comment><USER3> Here's a timeline we put together of about 60 incompatible chat services: [https://cdn.sameroom.io/chat-timeline.pdf](https://cdn.sameroom.io/chat- timeline.pdf)

Our service Sameroom ([https://sameroom.io](https://sameroom.io)) is a commercial solution to the chat incompatibility disaster, not too different from an AC adapter thingy with a bunch of different plugs, one or two per continent.

After implementing the protocols of quite a number of these systems (~20), we're seeing a scary acceleration toward further incompatibility. It's good for our business, but really pretty bad for the world.

<comment><USER4> This is so disappointing.

Especially Jabber/XMPP was created to fix that issue by standardizing the protocol. The idea is that IM would be like email - no central server.

Others (GTalk, Facebook, WhatsApp, HipChat to name few) started implementing it but did not enable server to server communication (ok GTalk did, but as soon as they became popular they intentionally broke it with Hangouts).

So now we have bunch of services that use same protocol but still can't communicate with each other, the XMPP seems like it is dying.

A while ago there were plenty of server-side transports to help migrate to XMPP, but it doesn't seem like they are no longer being developed.

I don't understand why no one cares anymore about decentralizing and standardizing IM.

<comment><USER5> The problem is that the IM protocol space seems very opinionated. "XMPP? XML sucks!" "Web sockets? Web sockets suck!" "JSON? JSON sucks!" "Binary? That prevents telnet, binary sucks!"

People do care, it just seems as though they care about their pet peeves more.

<comment><USER6> That "XML" sucks thing is why we don't have single-sign on (YuBiKey is doing a great job getting half way there though). We keep on reinventing the wheel re: authorization & authentication despite the fact that there are well-defined, cryptographicly secure[0]. SAML2[1] has been standardized, implemented, operates in a similar fashion to SMTP/Kerberos (i.e., your identity is established (i.e. authentication) purely through a trusted-source), after which you can proceed.

      * This eliminates the whole issue for users (I don't want to have to remember 40 million passwords, and I don't want to rely on Google as my SSO).
      * It helps the developer because all he has to do is implement one protocol (rather than make 8 different accounts to register passport.js with).
      * It helps the tin-foil hatters like me, because I can revoke access from any source at any time & if my account gets compromised I call my buddy Bill hosting the IDP and invalidate my credentials.

It's SMTP mail back in the late 90s when your buddy ran his own server as your primary MX, and his buddy as a secondary MX (i.e., you host an IdP similarly to hosting a mail server).

I've been working on this problem on and off for about 10 months, the last 4 of which have been fairly rigorous. I've got a solution for the "buddy" willing to host the IdP. [https://github.com/bergie/passport- saml](https://github.com/bergie/passport-saml) is a low friction add-on to your node app for the developers. The last piece of the puzzle is dev adoption (i.e., getting traction on par with LetsEncrypt) to _actually_ spend 5 minutes for that passport-saml stuff.

The other issue is developing an easy solution (easier than SSO with Google) done by mobile App authentication. User-flow is basically: you click "Login with <name>", the IdP forwards the message to your mobile via APN, and you swipe left or right to auth. That's the last technical barrier (user adoption is 80% of the problem). I need to take ~3 mo off and pony up high-five, low- sixes in fees re: getting a great UX guy (I'm abysmal [[if you're great at UX, contact me]]), lawyers, liability insurance, a security firm to audit, etc (there's already a monetization model for this venture, though the whole thing will be GNU AGPL[3] / free for universities / research institutions, etc.)

[0] Like, in the formal mathematically proven sense, both in concept, and implementation (though which one slips my mind).

[1] [http://wso2.com/library/articles/2010/07/saml2-web- browser-b...](http://wso2.com/library/articles/2010/07/saml2-web-browser- based-sso-wso2-identity-server/)

[2] Encryption is basically a subset of privacy, which I think we have a constitutional right to, though other people object.

[3] The whole point is to do this first as a human good, but profiteer off expensive licenses a la Exchange modules, et al. I don't really want to shop around Sandy Hill but if any of you successful Angels (who are historically privacy advocates, I'd give Karsten Nohl or DJB (or hell, PG if you're reading this message haha, 30% and 2 seats in a second, but Larry Ellison could offer 3MM for .1% and that meeting would conclude rapidly) are interested, e-mail me me -- we'd be able to go to market a lot quicker with 2 or 3 FTE's. I'm going to complete this anyways, but we're fighting cryptowars again so there might be a rush.

<comment><USER5> We integrate pretty deeply with SAML and, yes, it's awesome tech. It makes complete sense that XML was used because real namespaces are important for claim extensibility. Sadly, _" XML sucks!"_

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> For talking about a race, Wired seems to have neglected a crucial technology: ircv3[1].

I'm not very fond of IRCv2, and have moved away from it where I previously used IRC. But IRC is popular, has a lot of clients, and v3 has a lot of promise. Why didn't the author bother to mention it?

[1]: [http://ircv3.net/](http://ircv3.net/)

<comment><USER8> IRCv3 lacks a logo, a startup, and VC funding. So people who write tech news seem to often be unaware that it even exists.

<comment><USER2> It's also lacking adoption (which is understandable since it's not "officially released" yet).

<comment><USER9> I believe twitch uses ircv3.

<comment><USER2> Wow, you're correct. I did not know that. Fun!

<comment><USER10> Twitch is fairly-conforming to IRCv3... they don't prefix their non-standard capabilities with their domain in CAP LS. :>

I'm sad because I applied to Twitch directly stating what I'd want to work on with the IRC portal and never got a response. My entire work history is IRC. XD

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's good to see a bit of a variety – we all know that monoculture ends up being a bad thing, and there are obvious downsides to applications hosted by third parties (though of course in some cases it's not a problem!). Of course, there's no real network effect with applications like this either (beyond integrations support) so there's a relatively low bar to switching when compared to something like Facebook.

I do hope to see some work on better user interfaces. Our team recently switched to Slack from Hipchat - many features are better, but the desktop UI is really unpleasantly sluggish. It seems unreasonable for a chat application to stutter and freeze on even small amounts of data. The trend for wrapping web UIs in desktop apps is not a good one, in my experience. Hopefully open equivalents will encourage the development of native clients.

<comment><USER12> Mattermost claims to have "Native Applications". ([http://www.mattermost.org/community- applications/#native](http://www.mattermost.org/community- applications/#native))

Turns out they mean "electron is a native application, and our app is a webpage inside of electron, so our webpage is a native application."

Bummer. I use both Slack and Hipchat for different groups, and I'm not happy with the wrapped webapp for either of them.

<comment><USER13> What's wrong with that? VSCode is also such a thing, high performance and beautiful apps are obviously possible.

<comment><USER14> Apps built with front end web tech are nearly always heavier than their fully native counterparts, for one. It's nothing for an electron-based app to gobble up 150MB, 250MB, and higher amounts of memory while doing (in terms of resources actually required for the given task) nothing. A great comparison is Sublime Text, which takes up ~35MB of memory at cold start, even with a few plugins enabled. Compare this to VS Code or Atom, which take around 200MB right out of the box. That's downright comical, and I can't accept the "but resources are cheap" excuse. That mentality has been robbing users of the lightning-fast, ultra-silky experiences that are possible even on decade-old hardware for years now and it needs to stop.

Aside from that, non-native applications inevitably introduce accessibility issues and UX incongruencies with the rest of the system that are difficult if not impossible to resolve entirely. There's a huge trade off made when using web tech for desktop applications and developers would do well to deeply consider their choice of technologies before acting.

<comment><USER15> It's not just RAM, either. If you measure "energy usage" however your OS allows you to (powertop or OS X's Activity Monitor, etc), Electron-based apps are absolute _battery killers_.

You'll lose literally hours of battery life simply by running Atom instead of Sublime. It's absurd how little regard Electron devs are showing for end-user resources.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> What about reusing and polishing XMPP and existing decent software for it? About donating money to people who develop it all these years? No, we'll spread FUD upon XMPP or just ignore it but will proceed to use and abuse its legacy behind the closed doors.

[http://risovach.ru/upload/2016/03/mem/novyy-- shablon_1085837...](http://risovach.ru/upload/2016/03/mem/novyy-- shablon_108583764_orig_.jpg)

<comment><USER17> For one thing, XMPP is complicated and difficult to implement.

<comment><USER18> It may look intimidating at first, but it's really very easy once you get the basics.

HTTP and IRC on the other hand look easy at first, then you get past that and there's just more and more complications and edge cases and horror. Like all the various cache headers and behaviors in HTTP, or how all IRC networks have their own dialect that's subtly different.

I once tried to work on an IRC server interface, I read all the RFCs, wrote code, then tested with a client. Nothing worked, so I had to resort to replay what the client sent to a different network and reproduce whatever they did.

If you go read the XMPP RFCs, you should be able to write a client or a server that gets along pretty well with the rest of the XMPP world.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> In my org we started using slack and the people who talk the most say the least.

Important conversations already took place on our internal jabber server. People with nothing to say never connected, but now with animated gifs and embedded youtube they use slack for entertainment.

Never thought I'd see Eternal September in a professional environment.

<comment><USER20> In our team, we created a "random" channel for animated gifs, unrelated links, etc. to keep from cluttering the work-related ones. So far, it seems to have worked well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> It's been built: [http://matrix.org/](http://matrix.org/)

<comment><USER22> I've been using matrix for a few months replaced our XMPP setup with it. XMPP feels like the stone ages compared to matrix.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> No mention of Zulip? It's the first to come to mind for me if you ask for an open source Slack competitor.

</comment><comment><USER24> I think the Achilles heel of almost every open source projects is [end-]user experience. The first time I used Slack I was sure it was trivial to replicate the software (not the business) by a small team of developers but a short time after I realized a lot of UX details that a normal open source team will not prioritize ever (e.g. conversationally educating the user about new features).

Probably the weakest point of Slack is their price. A similar open source SaaS offering will not be free so Slack has margin to compete.

</comment><comment><USER25> One thing that nobody's mentioned yet is encryption. A Slack alternative that's end-to-end encrypted (at least for private messaging between users) and has encryption for chatrooms would be worth my time.

<comment><USER26> Is a slack alternative that can never support search truly a slack alternative?

<comment><USER27> "Practical techniques for searches on encrypted data" (2000)

[http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~dawnsong/papers/se.pdf](http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~dawnsong/papers/se.pdf)

Highly-Scalable Searchable Symmetric Encryption with Support for Boolean Queries (2013)

[http://eprint.iacr.org/2013/169](http://eprint.iacr.org/2013/169)

<comment><USER28> Homomorphic encryption would be great, is it likely to become practically usable soon? That is, is it safe enough against attackers, while allowing useful search?

<comment><USER27> Homomorphic encryption is about doing computation on encrypted data, but you don't need it just to search. All you need is some way to get the server to send you the encrypted blocks which contain the messages you want (and which you can decrypt); you don't need the server doing computation on the encrypted data itself.

A simple solution: divide the data into N blocks. Create an index that maps words to blocks (e.g. word "hello" is on blocks 36, 43, 84). Then encrypt the blocks and the index and upload them to the server. When you want to search, you just download the index, decrypt it, then use it to identify the blocks you need to download from the server.

The first paper I linked has some more advanced techniques of the same sort.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> We need open protocols.

Then let a thousand clients with different paradigms bloom

<comment><USER30> For reasons that have never been entirely clear to me, chat has been reinvented more times than perhaps any other common Internet utility, and every time it is, there are no shortage of investors lined up for it. I think the cycle is largely driven by fashion, as youth get online and demand chat apps that are distinct (if not different in any meaningful functional way) from the existing ones.

<comment><USER31> Perhaps because "chat" is the oldest human activity there is, so the idea that chat will ever be "done" is a chimera.

<comment><USER30> If the medium is the message, then yes. A chat on ICQ is different from a chat on WhatsApp, because the app itself is part of the tribal identity. Like slang for existing words. So even if the functionality stays identical (and I would argue that it has, there's only so much you can do with a chat app), the cultural context of the app is different.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I work in consultancy, and the client I currently work for has us working on- premise using air-gapped computers. No internet, only intranet, meant finding new ways to communicate. So far Mattermost works well. We have it integrated with Jenkins, Stash etc. and do the typical "chat-ops" things.

</comment><comment><USER33> Hopefully Mattermost and Rocket.Chat both build mature, robust HA systems since their features [honestly] are on par with Slack. Then move into SaaS hosting of their service in VM clusters across ~3 regions. :)

Really, the only thing that stops me from wanting to use these services at $DayJob is the fact I have enough stuff I have to maintain. I'd really rather just pay $99/month for a 10-20 person team.

<comment><USER34> I set up rocket chat on my home server as a test and it's been great. I use it to chat with my family. So far the maintenance has been _very_ minimal.

<comment><USER33> I deal with production stuff at my $DAYJOB and it needs to run for 6+ months without a single on-call event for me to consider it minimal.

<comment><USER34> I've had zero problems with the server (like memory leaks or random crashing), but the iOS app started complaining when the server was roughly 3 months out of date. To stop the errors there I had to upgrade the server code (which was itself pretty simple). That doesn't meet your criteria, but I've find it pretty minimal by my standards.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Regarding IRC... I started using Gitter a few months ago and have used various IRC clients for over 20 years.

I was blown away on how much better the UX was in Gitter compared to IRC. The history, the notifications, the markup, the UI...you name it.

And Gitter is a pretty crappy client. If there was a nicely implemented client, it would be even more impressive.

<comment><USER36> I've been using Gitter for a few months now, I think it's just polished enough to use consistently. If it were even slightly unstable I'd have to stop using it.

<comment><USER35> Until recently, Gitter had some weird bug where it the process would be in the background after you closed it, and you thinking that it was gone, would try to fire up another one it would just go to a background process or something.

But Gitter has other issues - mostly of the UX kind. One of them is that you can search for other rooms, but you can't really save that search. You have to start over everytime. Also, the default of sending you an email for every freaking message when you star a room is absolutely atrocious.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> This reads like that old XKCD where someone tries to build a standard that unifies all the existing 14 incompatible standards but it just becomes the 15th incompatible standard itself - [https://xkcd.com/927/](https://xkcd.com/927/)

Getting a critical mass of people to use a chat system is the defining factor of success, not the technical genius or features of the system.

Slack is successful because it IS one of those standards that a critical mass of people use and is modern.

There are plenty of systems that are far superior. However they are failures because they didn't achieve the critical mass of users.

</comment><comment><USER38> If someone want performance, simplicity and encryption, take a look at our project: [https://actor.im](https://actor.im)

<comment><USER39> The download page lists "Mac OSX, Linux x86", Linux x64, Windows x86, Windows x64". The average user does not know what x86 or x64 means, and if they assume that the larger number is the latest (because duh) then they'll be causing problems down the line by installing the 32bit version on their (probably 64bit) machines.

Traditionally, this is solved by autodetecting their OS and giving them a big link in giant UX-ey button form as "recommended", and only mentioning the other platform links in smaller letters below that.

So, I don't think it's quite ready for grandmas yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I know what we need: an open protocol so that people can chat easily, whichever company you work for, wherever you are... We should call it IRC or XMPP

:)

Seriously I know XMPP is pretty un-popular, but deep inside I kind of wish it was the default protocol everybody used to communicate...

</comment><comment><USER41> This is one of those applications that is always being rewritten somewhere. JWZ's law may even be relevant here: "Every program expands until it reads mail". It seems there is always a large group people out there working on messengers.

The question really is what made Slack special. Why is it the Slack revolution and not the HipChat revolution? What about the veneer has allowed it to become a pervasive trend, expanding into non-tech companies and being hailed as a permanent replacement for most emails? This is the only interesting question around Slack, since, as numerous other commenters have pointed out, it doesn't really bring anything to the table that the messaging space hasn't seen a good number of times before.

<comment><USER42> Revolution? Drinking the kool aid much? My team has it. We've had it for a month or two now. There has only been a handful of posts and most of them are "TGIF" posts.

<comment><USER41> >Drinking the kool aid much?

As you can tell from my post which states that Slack doesn't offer anything unique or special, uh, no, I'm not drinking the kool-aid.

<comment><USER42> I realize you're skeptical too, but I'm saying I wouldn't even go as far as to call it a revolution. Call it a trend if you'd like, that's giving it too much credit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Oh man this entire field is madness... especially when you realize this when trying to get ahold of someone:

I'll try Slack... let me check Skype... no maybe they're on HipChat... SMS... oh hell I'll just call them!

<comment><USER44> Yes it is fairly ridiculous. Which is why an open protocol / non-closed environment would help solve this.

Yeah, IRC is from the 80s and is lacking some modern features, but at least it was a fairly unifying chat system in its day. No one company owned it, most people could use it trivially, and there were many different clients out there to suite one's taste.

There's still a market for wrapping a protocol in a nice web app UI and hiding the complexities from the user, which is why this closed chat systems trend is getting frustrating.

Can't different chat services communicate with each other easily, without the need for a bridge?

<comment><USER45> > "Can't different chat services communicate with each other easily, without > the need for a bridge?"

If more chat services supported Matrix.org we could get there.

[http://matrix.org](http://matrix.org)

[https://matrix.org/docs/projects/try-matrix- now.html#clients](https://matrix.org/docs/projects/try-matrix- now.html#clients)

Someone's suggested it in the Mattermost suggestions site:

[https://mattermost.uservoice.com/forums/306457-general/sugge...](https://mattermost.uservoice.com/forums/306457-general/suggestions/10208583-integration- with-matrix-org)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> If we are going to go with the name Open Sourcers why not make it Open Sourcerers.

</comment><comment><USER47> I dunno, I love being able to easily switch between different teams. Plus, they've just introduced audio, and video is next.

Everyone is talking about open protocols but when you're client agnostic you have to store/manage data somehow so surely Slack with its integration friendly mentality could go in that direction?

</comment><comment><USER48> What about Telegram? It's partially open source (clients only for now) and provides end-to-end encryption.

<comment><USER21> [http://unhandledexpression.com/2013/12/17/telegram-stand- bac...](http://unhandledexpression.com/2013/12/17/telegram-stand-back-we-know- maths/)

<comment><USER48> Thanks for the link. However it is quite old, and Telegram was responding to the discussions and comments, demonstrating at least some respect for the feedback and perhaps doing something about it. Is there a more recent audit? I came across this - [https://www.eff.org/secure-messaging- scorecard](https://www.eff.org/secure-messaging-scorecard) \- a while back but it doesn't seem very thorough.

Then there's also Ricochet: [https://ricochet.im/](https://ricochet.im/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Has anyone compared Rocket.Chat VS Mattermost?

What are the significant differences (advantages/disadvantages)?

</comment><comment><USER50> So, is any of those projects proposing something better than XMPP as IETF standard, or may be someone is proposing to improve XMPP further? Without interopearibilty it will be just +1 to the sea of incompatible solutions.

</comment><comment><USER51> I wish we could just hurry up and come to the ultimate conclusion that we always had everything we needed with IRC. I can't understand why we're still in the jungle of high level applications replicating a low level protocol.

I get that IRC never had a particular client that galvanized the protocol as much as the many iterations of proprietary real time chat that has came and went over the past 10 years, but honestly the problem isn't the protocol, the problem is that no one was making clients meant for the mainstream.

</comment><comment><USER52> matrix.org with the vector.im and android client have been pretty great so far.

Matrix has solved the right engineering problem first which is the persistence of the chats across all of your clients.

</comment><comment><USER53> If only there was a well supported, standard, open and interoperable text messaging protocol (with multiple implementations) that companies could host themselves...

Oh wait, IRC.

<comment><USER11> This comes up every time, and as usual you have _totally missed the point_.

IRC is difficult to configure, difficult to host, difficult to use, and does not offer the same feature set as Slack. There is an obvious use case for something like Slack (obviously, because otherwise it would not have millions of users!) and covering one's ears while yelling _" IRC! IRC! IRC!"_ is sort of wilfully ignoring that if it were a suitable solution, Slack would never have taken off.

<comment><USER53> Maybe slack gets enough momentum to overtake IRC. Right now it looks a lot like Google Wave to me.

<comment><USER54> You are seriously out of touch if you really believe that.

<comment><USER21> Yeah, comparing it to Google Wave probably is a bit too much. In my neck of the tech woods HipChat is still pretty hip. I suspect that by the time we discover Slack, something else will have taken Slack's place as the new wave. Meanwhile I'll just keep visiting the same IRC channels outside of work that I have been frequenting for a decade. Will Slack be around in 10 years? Maybe. Will it be the poster-boy of internal chat? Unlikely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> I don't know why people think Slack is any good to begin with. It's fine at first but the more people use it the more unwieldy it gets.

Email's pretty crappy but at least with email I get small, contained threads of conversation that can be searched and organized easily. Slack is like having a few giant never-ending email threads. It's horrible.

And there's still no voice.

</comment><comment><USER56> What I conclude from this is that open-source developers are all hungry for good specs (for a killer application).

Therefore, wouldn't it be nice if there was a website where product designers (not software developers) could post their product designs, so that the developers have something to work from?

</comment><comment><USER57> Between phone conferencing, email, and shared desktop video conferencing, I don't get what more is needed in professional contexts.

I don't even get IRC or IM. "Chat" is noise and distraction. Write proper emails or arrange phone calls.

What exactly are people using slack for? I don't get it.

<comment><USER58> They're all different when it comes to communication bandwidth and effectiveness.

We need to discuss something visual as a five-person team? A phone conference is the wrong medium.

We need to collaborate on a significant technical document? Slack is the wrong medium.

We need to have a searchable back-and-forth discussion, interleaved with other things that are vying for our attention? We should probably use a chat tool.

<comment><USER57> > We need to have a searchable back-and-forth discussion, interleaved with > other things that are vying for our attention?

This is email.

> We need to discuss something visual as a five-person team? A phone > conference is the wrong medium.

Shared desktop conference, such as gotomeeting.

<comment><USER58> If those work for you and your team, that's great!

However, the growing number and popularity of alternatives should be a strong signal that they do not work for every team.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> Connect IRC with Mattermost: [https://github.com/42wim/matterbridge](https://github.com/42wim/matterbridge)

You can also talk to Mattermost team on #matterbridge on Freenode.

</comment><comment><USER60> We started to use Slack in our company but it wasn't adopted by most of the people. Desktop version requires too much resources and it was unacceptable. We backed to Skype again. Has anyone ever had same experience?

</comment><comment><USER61> It's already here - Bitrix24. Light years ahead of Slack. Free for unlimited users without silly restrictions on search and other crap. And GASP it comes with actual work tools beyond IM.

<comment><USER62> It looks like it has 500 features on the screen and it tries to do everything for you. Its not even in the same ballpark as slack.

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> Could not read this from wired.com due to my router has adblock enabled. Wired says if you don't let us do ads you can't read on. How did they detect that?

</comment><comment><USER64> adblock blocker on wired, so upset

<comment><USER65> I don't mind them, normally, but in the case of Wired their detection is broken for uBlock. It continues to detect the blocker as on, even once disabled. So, reading Wired is now impossible for me, even if I accept their ads (which, I tend to be fine with for companies I trust not to be too invasive, and not to have ads that make noise or start video without warning).

<comment><USER66> Ghostery counts 27 trackers for me on this single Wired article, 19 of which are classified as "Advertising". I would not call this "not to be too invasive".

<comment><USER65> I didn't look too deeply, but yeah, that's ridiculous. I don't need any Wired article that much.

<comment><USER67> Exactly. The whole piece is < 900 words, mentions about 4 meaningful pieces of info (current Slack stats, names of 3 OSS competitors and a line or three about their rationales, history, 1-2 added features). Hardly "must-read" territory.

For those ~15 lines of unwrapped text, the whole page is 1900 lines in total.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> Too bad Google insisted on dead-birthing Wave by throttling access via beta invitations.

It generated incredible hype, but a lot of people (including me) could not use it due to this bullshit; maybe they can acquire Slack and reengineer it using the much more mature Wave foundation.

</comment><comment><USER69> IRC comes to mind.

</comment><comment><USER70> This is why I sort of hate open source. Slack is doing a great job, their prices are right. So why is it OK to destroy that? With what is going to be not as good stuff?

I'll get down voted to hell but come on. It's cheap, it's good, so why not let the guy make a living? And for the record I don't even know who the guy is (or woman is).

I just hate the "it's cool, lets rip it off attitude". Because the ripoff is rarely better than the original.

<comment><USER71> Do you really hate open source? or is that just an exaggeration? I find it hard to believe anyone could actually hate open source.

<comment><USER70> Nah, I use open source every day, I've contributed to it.

I just don't like that as soon as something becomes popular then it's a target. It's always bothered me that open source seems to copy more than innovate. I'm sure there are open source projects that invented something new but it's hard to think of them (for me at least). But I can think of zillions of copies of closed source things (linux, gcc, etc).

In the case of slack, it seems sort of mean spirited to try and clone it. They give it away for free for most people and charge for some sort of extra functionality and it's cheap, $7 or $8/month/person. I can understand something like Postgres, Oracle is expensive and cumbersome. But slack? Really?

For the record I have no connection to the slack people, don't know them other than what I've read in the press.</comment></comment></comment>


Why video game music is different from every other kind of soundtrack - <AUTHOR> http://www.strangehorizons.com/2008/20081201/1newheiser-a.shtml

<comment><USER2> In my own experience, from a creator's standpoint it's quite a bit different. You have to make sure pretty much every track loops well, and for non- cinematic music you don't really have the luxury of an "intro" section of a song; you have to hit the hook or otherwise the "meat" after the first measure at the latest. This is especially true of intro or menu music; the player is probably only going to listen to 10-30 seconds of the music before they move on to another screen that plays different music.

For someone who tends to make music based on "whatever sounds cool" and experimentation, it's very jarring to actually have to make the music accompany some on-screen, non-linear action and fit the theme of the game. It forces you to use instruments you might not be comfortable with (ex: an orchestra for a fantasy game) but also lets you explore instruments that would never fit in one of your personal tracks (ex: panflute and mandolin in an electro house track). It forces you to rethink your melodies and arrangements; it's surprising how bad or unfitting some non-game music can sound when played in a game, because it was designed to be the center of the audience's attention. Thankfully, because of this and the fact that the player is generally distracted with the game, the tracks only need to be about a minute or two minutes long, which is a lot simpler to make than a five-minute or longer track, and allows you to just focus on one set of patterns and be done with it. It's sort of like how a short story doesn't allow the space to develop subplots or excessive exposition, you've just got to get your point across and be done with it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Great article.

I've always looked at video games at a form of gesamtkunstwerk: an artistic medium where every element has to work to further the whole. It's unlike movies because you can't skimp out on certain elements. Each song is played a ton, the graphics will be severely tested, there needs to be a lot of writing if you're telling a story.

(I actually just recently wrote a testament to my favorite video game composer: <http://unalone.tumblr.com/post/80433745/uematsu>)

<comment><USER4> Could you elaborate on how it is unlike film? I'm not sure I see the distinction you are trying to make regarding the ability to "skimp out".

<comment><USER3> Film soundtracks are rarely played continuously. They're used in snippets. Very often, a movie soundtrack will consist of tracks that are 30-60 second hooks, since that's all the director needs. In any event, the soundtracks are tools to be used by the director.

In a video game, it doesn't work like that. Most tracks are played in their entirety and looped. It means that a song from a video game very often requires some integrity that a song in a movie doesn't need, because the song has to be replayable again and again without losing its meaning. Furthermore, game soundtracks are _long._ The Final Fantasy soundtracks started with 50 tracks in the original NES versions; the Playstation games ranged from 80 tracks to 160, which is _incredibly_ long. That's longer than a good deal of operas, for instance (and back in Final Fantasy VI, an operetta was included in the soundtrack itself).

 _Gesamtkunstwerk_ is a term Wagner used for his operas, actually, and it's that operatic mindset that video games most remind me of. When you compose for a video game, you've got enormous potential at your hands: your music determines the mood of everything that happens. When you write, you're told how your tracks will be used, how they'll blend together, and that gives you an incredible freedom to really do whatever you can.

In my article, I mention how Nobuo Uematsu very frequently shifts genres: he's written waltzes and ragtimes and celtic pieces and rock pieces and piano ballads and he's had two pop hits, once of which (originally written for Final Fantasy VIII) sold half a million singles. If he'd been writing for a movie, that wouldn't have been possible: the best movie soundtracks all integrate around a sonic theme, similarly to how a symphony works. A video game's music is far grander: when you're writing over 4 hours of music for a single soundtrack, you can create music that goes over and over themes, and _still_ have space for two hours' worth of whatever you see fit.

Because of the circumstances in which you're writing, you have a freedom to use your mind in a way that no other composer today really gets a chance for. It's similar to having a patron in some ways.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've found that video game music can make fantastic background music while working - there's hardly ever any distracting vocals and it feels like you're attacking something mythic.

Movie soundtracks have a similar effect on me: The Incredibles, Dark Knight, Primer.

<comment><USER6> I've done the same. I think the best group of game soundtracks I've heard are by Jon Hallur Haraldsson, for Eve online. They really help to immerse you in the game universe. I think you can listen to some of the composers stuff on last.fm

<comment><USER3> Eve Online's music is hauntingly beautiful. Definitely one of the things that makes Eve so addicting: the music feels as vast as the game itself.

If anybody feels like importing the CD/torrenting it, Shadow of the Colossus's soundtrack ( _Roar of the Earth_ in English) is superb. I'd put it above most movie soundtracks. It's very subtle and very thrilling in all the right places.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> In my opinion the interactive form basically allows a kind of meaning that is different from narratives. Environments, character designs, and other elements that are tangential to a narrative experience(such as music), often come to dominate a game more than anything in the story surrounding them.

Basically it comes down to the workings of the game mechanics; with repetition and reward/penalty systems they point the way towards deeper inspection of any desired element.

</comment><comment><USER8> For a great retrospective on videogame music, listen to this Retronauts podcast: [http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3?http://download.game...](http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3?http://download.gamevideos.com/Podcasts/Retronauts/012507.mp3)

They start the discussion from the NES days, and the music they're talking about is often spliced in. It's a fun listen.

</comment><comment><USER9> You know what would be really cool? Not canned music played in dynamically chosen snippets. Music that is dynamically generated.</comment>


Yegge, Clojure, and Arc - <AUTHOR> http://blog.fogus.me/2009/02/06/yegge-clojure-arc-and-lolita-or-days-of-future-past/

<comment><USER2> "Eventually, Mr. Graham himself seemed to spurn the language"

Imagine how ridiculous this was to read while taking a break from working on HN, surrounded by windows full of Arc source I was in the middle of editing.

A lot of people seem to feel that a language isn't real unless the designer is talking to them every day. But that's not the only way languages happen. Nor possibly the best way. I feel like you get better ideas if you think in units of occasional essays rather than a stream of tweets. It seems likely the same will be true with language design.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm definitely catching a lot of flack for the spurn comment, and justifiably so considering this window into your work day. I would say that the essay in general was an attempt at levity, as I hoped smart-alecky comments like "birds sang", "voices of children", "Christopher Hitchens", etc... would convey. Although a word like spurn may imply the opposite, having enjoyed your essays, interviews (when I can find them), and especially Arc itself, I am the last person in that world that would tell you how you go about your creative process.

<comment><USER3> The second footnote, in which you qualify that comment, should be inlined instead. That clarification, or the lack of it, has too much of an impact on the tone of the rest of the article.

The point of footnotes is that their content is not worth interrupting the flow of the main text. It should be safe for the reader to leave them for later, or skip them altogether.

<comment><USER4> The only reason that line has become the focal point of the essay's tone is because we're discussing this on "Mr. Graham's" site.

<comment><USER3> I didn't say it was _the_ focal point, but it is indeed quite central to the thesis defended.

There are comments to this effect in the blog's site too, and the author felt the need for the footnote. Thus, it's not just HN bias.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _However, I think that a language such as Clojure (or more likely one of its inevitable derivatives) will instead be the language of 2109._

That's laughable. The JVM will play as big a role in 2109 as horse-drawn carriages do today. Clojure doesn't even try to be a 100 year language.

More and more, I'm getting the feeling that wondering what kind of language we'll use in 100 years is kind of like people a century ago ago wondering what breed of horse people will ride today.

<comment><USER4> I'm tempted to agree, but then realizing that FORTRAN and Lisp are both over 50 now and both still actively used, and C is in its 30s, it wouldn't blow my mind if things weren't radically different in another 50 years.

<comment><USER2> _FORTRAN and Lisp are both over 50 now and both still actively used_

These two languages are "still actively used" in very different senses. The mathematical idea at the heart of Lisp is still around, but those don't time out. And Fortran is alive in the sense that there is something called Fortran, but it probably has less in common with Fortran I than with other more recent languages.

<http://www.paulgraham.com/history.html>

If Java survives till 2109, it would probably be in the latter sense. Curiously enough, the fact that it is so popular in big, hidebound industries tends to make that likelier. It's tomorrow's legacy software.

<comment><USER4> Fortran 77 is still pretty widely used in physics, with some relaxed compiler rules that make it a little less ugly. Fortran 90 is however, I find, a lot more like Pascal.

I suspect you're right on Java surviving as a legacy language.

While I'm not sure (and really don't care) if Java or the JVM will survive for an extended period of time, I do find it interesting to note that programming languages seem to be comparatively resilient to change relative to everything else in computing. While the FORTRAN in that photo looks odd, it's still a comparatively small gap between it and FORTRAN from 40 years later than if we were to compare the operating systems, applications or user interfaces from similar time spans. I can still figure out what it's supposed to do. I'd be completely lost if you put me on a batch terminal or a VAX/VMS prompt.

The last really transformational idea in programming languages hit the world the same year I was born -- in 1980 -- with Smalltalk. There are a lot of variations on the themes of functional, imperative, and object oriented languages, and I expect new metaphors will evolve, but it's interesting seeing that really, now for at least the last almost 30 years, we've basically been remixing ideas.

And that's where I'd revisit Java for a moment -- perhaps the only transformational change that it brought to the table was the use of a formalized VM in a widely popular language. Even if Java's VM doesn't survive, I'm pretty sure that's a notion that we'll still have in programming environments for many decades out.

<comment><USER6> I don't mean to be pedantic, but Smalltalk is a lot older than that (think 1971). Which raises the interesting question of when the last truly fundamental innovation was.

Edit: it's an interesting enough question that I posted it separately: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=470927>.

<comment><USER4> Wikipedia said 1980 was when it was publicly available, so that's what I went with.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Shrug - not sure what the author is trying to say. Seems to be a whole bunch of random quotes to justify the position he's taken.

<comment><USER8> > _Seems to be a whole bunch of random quotes to justify the position he's > taken._

Much like the average college essay or, dare I say it, mass media story.

<comment><USER4> Huh? It's a very tongue in cheek essay. It's well written and in good humor. You guys need to lighten up a bit.

The central point, even if not popular here, seems valid:

Arc seemed like it might be the Lisp family's answer to developing web apps, but didn't hit the ground with quite the maturity that some were hoping, and now it's looking like Clojure is emerging as an interesting leader in that world.

Paul of course might have some more Arc-iness coming down the pipe, but having played with and read some of the source of both Arc and Clojure, as of the currently available releases, Clojure feels like it's less rough around the edges.

<comment><USER7> I'd be more interested in why. This article doesn't touch on that - this seems to boil down to, "this isn't fit for purpose, this is", but doesn't say what that purpose was, or how it didn't fit.

<comment><USER4> "It was running on top of mzscheme? It didn't support UNICODE? No module system? Few libraries? Unhygienic macros?"

"Adding powerful namespacing coupled with the fact that it's built on top of the JVM dispels the questions and gripes aimed at Arc from the start."

That's the real meat. The rest is mostly anecdotes and humor, but it's cute writing.

<comment><USER7> Those were quoted a part of the initial public response to Arc, it didn't really go into why they were bad things - and the impact they had. The fact that they were part of blog chatter when Arc was released only is, to be blunt, really at best only marginally interesting. e.g. Have these things changed? Are they still relevant?

Being built on top the JVM gives you access to libraries - is this the meat? If so, I think most people already knew that. I think the "Ipso Facto therefore Clojure will be the 100 year language, not Arc" is a bit of a leap given all that.

I don't think the Author needs to justify anything - I don't need to agree with him - I'm just saying I got no real content out of this article.

You're right, probably taking it too seriously, but I'm of the view that even something lighthearted has to have some content (in fact, that's where humour is at it's peak).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Arc may or may not be a success, I won't judge. But I do know that the one that does not try will never have success.

So here's to trying.

</comment><comment><USER10> I believe PG said he is taking more of a long-run view on this. He's not trying to make Arc what's hot right now, but rather thinking more about a "hundred-year language"

<comment><USER11> True enough, but I do think there might be a lot of validity in the comparison with hurd. After all, Hurd is still under development, but there is little question that it has been eclipsed by Linux. While many have certainly become aware of the advantages of Lisp, they also want something that just works as much as possible, and the large collection of Java libraries will be a great help in this regard. By the time that arc is "ready" to be the 100 year language, it may be that it is too late to gain acceptance.

Still, I'll admit that only time will tell. Both languages are still quite young, and it is hardly uncommon for languages to develop slowly in obscurity before rising to prominence. Maybe it will gain traction, maybe it won't, but either way I think we will benefit from the increase in competition and the ideas that are generated in its creation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> So arc has finally got beyond the stage of initial hype (remarkably fast), and simply continues happily evolving. No need to feed the novelty crows. Please keep up the nice work!

[Edit: and nobody forbids me from using clojure, which is a great way to deal with tones both nice libraries and legacy applications.]</comment>


Reading source code: The rise of F# - <AUTHOR> http://www.hanselman.com/blog/TheWeeklySourceCode34TheRiseOfF.aspx

<comment><USER2> F# is very cool since it mtight bring functional programming into the mainstream.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is nice to see; F# is a cool language, and Hanselman's series has been excellent so far.

<comment><USER4> For which kind of problems it's a better choice comparing to C#?

<comment><USER5> Domain Specific Languages, parsing, new language creation in general, rules- based systems, highly-scalable applications, cross-language compilation.

As an example of the last item, the Web Toolkit allows you to write one, er, server page with F# on it. Kind of like C# or VB with old-timely asp pages, where the code and the html was all together.

The cool part is by flagging the methods to either run on the server, client, or both, you just write code to do stuff -- a server method can call a client one which then can call a server one, etc. The system figures out how to do the work. And even cooler, everything is in F# -- the F# language abilities are programmed so it automagically turns the F# into Javascript when the page is rendered.

Cool stuff.

<comment><USER6> Cool stuff indeed. You can do the same in Scheme -write stuff to be run in server or client very easily and make them both interact, and also have Scheme being compiled to javascript - using HOP ( <http://hop.inria.fr/> ).</comment></comment></comment></comment>


French National Assembly approved Internet traffic monitoring system (French) - <AUTHOR> http://www.lemonde.fr/pixels/article/2015/04/16/les-deputes-approuvent-un-systeme-de-surveillance-du-trafic-sur-internet_4616652_4408996.html <comment><USER2> La Quadrature du Net has also affirmed that while they were demonstrating in front of the National Assembly, there were two IMSI Catchers. And the law wasn't even passed yet. Great example of what will happen. ([http://www.franceinfo.fr/actu/politique/article/des- appareil...](http://www.franceinfo.fr/actu/politique/article/des-appareils- pour-espionner-les-conversations-pres-d-une-manifestation-contre-la-loi-sur- le-668469) link in french, can provide a translation if needed)

Bernard Cazeneuve, our ministre de l'Intérieur (Tasked with internal security, i.e. police etc.) has also declared the right to private life to not be a freedom. ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WODKfxtJQbE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WODKfxtJQbE))

This law was voted by 30 delegates. From a total of 577. This is what we can expect of our National Assembly. I expected a bit more of them considering they were 40 (!) to debate it. And they were granted a whole two minutes to explain themselves. To debate a law that allows bypassing judges, installing black boxes (read: DPI tools) anywhere without needing a judge, and quite a few more fun things.

To any french reader here (or any reader in a country whose laws explicitly allow this type of mass surveilance) :

* Use LetsEncrypt to get an SSL certificate for your website (or selfsign one with the proper configuration). Not that this will matter much because this law will allow them to ask you to hand over your private keys

* Use TrueCrypt v 7.1a, the latest and audited version for you hard drive, or use LUKS if you're on Linux.

* Use TextSecure and RedPhone. While I'm not aware of any recent audits, it's a hundred times better than going through regular channels.

* Use Pidgin+OffTheRecord for your private chats.

I am so fucking mad. And have no doubts, the senate will pass this. The worst (best) that could happend to this law is a few minor changes, but the key points will stay. And I doubt our constitutional council will reject it.

<comment><USER3> Encrypting all communications is certainly the way to go.

But, I wonder if we can make these systems completely inefficient by flooding them with false positives. Assuming we can figure out the patterns they are looking for in our communications, could this be a possible solution to force them to withdraw they "black boxes"?

<comment><USER4> Encryption won't solve the problem.

1/ They're after the meta data. Whether you have plaintext or encrypted communication, they still know to whom you talk. Unless you use TOR or VPN yourself out of the country, it's not going to help...

2/ Strict key disclosure laws. You can be thrown to jail, if you cannot decrypt some information when requested by a judge. That's true even in the case where you can prove the key is no longer in your possession...

<comment><USER5> > 2/ Strict key disclosure laws. You can be thrown to jail, if you cannot > decrypt some information when requested by a judge. That's true even in the > case where you can prove the key is no longer in your possession...

How the heck is this supposed to work when TLS supports Diffe-Hellman?

<comment><USER6> It makes about as much sense as putting a poor person into debtors prison until they pay off their debt. Anyone who supports this is unethical.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> French National Assembly has 577 delegates. According to Le Monde article, 25 voted for and 5 against. The rest, I suppose, didn't care to show up. This is beyond WTF.

I am a client at OVH and Gandi and I hope they send a big FU to the French government and relocate. I am willing to pay a premium for that.

<comment><USER8> _The rest, I suppose, didn 't care to show up._

I'm assuming it's largely strategic. "Everybody" wanted to pass the bill, but no one wanted it on their voting record since they knew it was controversial. So everybody got together and selected a small number of martyrs to go sully themselves while everybody else could keep their hands clean.

<comment><USER9> Why would they want it to pass? What benefit are they reaping from such a thing?

<comment><USER10> It is a law against TERROR: you cannot oppose it!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> (French here). This was quite expected, the government slowly adopted more and more laws to restrict freedom and to watch everyone during the past ten years, this is not the first nor the last law, this is just another step for the next law which will be even worse. The government is even censoring comments on social media about the law when it's not going in their direction (I'm not even joking).

The French democracy has been completely broken for a long time and a few relics from the past are still working now. The times when the country was called "the land of the human rights" are long gone. I see a few people trying to contact their representative but it's already too late, the democracy is gone, forget about it, it will just slow things down a bit but that's all, the politicians in power are too corrupted and the system too broken for that to work.

The best solution now for us now is the technical one, to prevent them to do it. But even that solution is temporary, one day or an other, when they will start to attack random citizens, things will have to change... as the quote is saying, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.".

<comment><USER12> > The government is even censoring comments on social media about the law when > it's not going in their direction

Do you have a source for that? I'm genuinely curious.

<comment><USER2> OP is going a bit far, but I believe he's referring to [http://www.numerama.com/magazine/32780-loi-renseignement- qua...](http://www.numerama.com/magazine/32780-loi-renseignement-quand-le- ministere-de-justice-trahit-la-pensee-de-taubira.html)

Basically, our Defense Minister's twitter account posted a quote of Christiane Taubira (the Defense Minister) saying "It is obvious that the methods of retrieval [of data] are potentially endangering private life".

It was quickly removed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> French president Hollande is visiting Lausanne, Switzerland this afternoon. His trains supposedly arrives at 3:20 at Prilly-Malley station. He will then proceed to the EPFL (Polytechnic school). [Full schedule [http://files.newsnetz.ch/story/3/0/0/30072626/11/topelement....](http://files.newsnetz.ch/story/3/0/0/30072626/11/topelement.jpg) ]

Allegedly to protect the people, the object of that law is rather to decriminalize and widen the PM's surveillance capabilities.

The law just exempted french agents for any illegal data acquisition done on foreign targets. One of the seven goals the law encompasses is "major scientific and economic interests". Don't deal with France, starting from may 6th.

Kudos to the couple deputies that show concern and bear with the long hours and kafkaesque atmosphere.

Mandatory handling of encryption keys on request is also part of the package. Hosters and ISPs like it.

"DPI algorithms shall remain secret, for they'll lose their effectiveness otherwise." Such StO.

Oversight over it all will be restricted to a 7-ish member court.

We must not remain silent as France openly turns into a police state.

<comment><USER14> Forgive my ignorance, but what is StO? I couldn't find anything in my searches.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> It is not a hasard to have this kind of laws in France. France hasn't known dictatorship for long. French representatives don't know what a Stasi-like security state would look like. It would be harder to have such a law in Germany.

The low number of delegates during the vote whows how archaic the French politic system is: they are against their own party so they prefer to be missing. There is little discussion. And there is no way to make a petition in France that would go to the parliament or provoke a referendum.

France just shows how current institutions are overwhelmed by new technologies.

<comment><USER16> >It would be harder to have such a law in Germany. No, we already have this law. Companies with over 10k users need to install a black box to make easy access for the state. There is also a proposal to save communication for 8 weeks, of course just to protect against terrorists.

<comment><USER17> Do you have a source for the black box law in Germany (can be in german)?

<comment><USER18> [http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telekommunikations-%C3%9Cberwac...](http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telekommunikations-%C3%9Cberwachungsverordnung)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Richard Stallman wrote [https://stallman.org/millions.html](https://stallman.org/millions.html) a few days after the 9/11 attacks.

Sadly still so true. The attacks from January 2015 have led to this horrible secondary damage.

</comment><comment><USER20> La Quadrature du Net (French EFF equivalent) posted a campaign website with a rundown of which députés (congresspeople) are in favor or against the bill: [https://sous-surveillance.fr](https://sous-surveillance.fr)

Also had VOIP phone to contact députés. Many were and avoided questions or said they would toe the party line. Evidence here: [https://pad.lqdn.fr/p/PJLdeputes](https://pad.lqdn.fr/p/PJLdeputes)

</comment><comment><USER3> > _Les traitements automatisés repèrent des comportements suspects, non pas > des personnes pré-identifiées_

It's actually worse. Listening to all communications in the hope of catching something suspect is the exact thing that make this law extremely dangerous.

<comment><USER20> Yep, it's called anomaly hunting: [http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/anomaly- hunting...](http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/anomaly-hunting/)

It's very bad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> THIRTY FUCKING ASSHOLES. There are 577 deputies in France and only 30 of them are present to vote Big Brother. Fortunately, there are several steps to go: it has to be approved by the Senate and then the Conseil Constitutionnel (in charge of the Constitution) might still reject it. Nevertheless, this proves how much our political leaders DO NOT understand the Internet.

<comment><USER22> Actually, five voted against, so you may want to revise that number of assholes :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> So, will the National Surveillance Agency file a patent suit or copyright infringement? After all, the French clearly stole the U.S.'s recipe of destroying civil rights & democracy.

</comment><comment><USER24> Suggested improvement to the French political system: if < 50% of the delegates are present there is no quorum and no laws can be passed.

<comment><USER25> government has a majority in the French assembly. The result would have been the same with more deputies: law would have passed. Each deputy seems specialized in a few fields and does not attend discussions to have time to work on other things (mayor, meetings,...) So, not sure if quorum > 50% would be useful.

<comment><USER26> ...to work or not. Some of them never show up at the parliement.

But laws are not really discussed in the main chamber. The way it works is that laws are really discussed, debated and modified in commissions, and the main vote is only for the TV, and for MPs to demonstrate publicly their opposition.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Can anyone point to an alternative to Gandhi.net for domains / SSL? Works well, good service, not godaddy.

<comment> UVB-76 I've never understood the cult of Gandi on HN.

They're overpriced, and in my experience, their customer service is disgusting. I would never recommend them.

Namecheap are cheaper, better, and have done more for HN-related causes than Gandi ever will.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guillotine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guillotine)

</comment><comment><USER29> Most of what the law is allowing, was already done before. It's more about legalizing some illicit methods, even if methods are debatable...

<comment><USER30> Widely adopted behaviours can't be legalized simply because of their widespread. Do that with murder…

<comment><USER31> Sure they can. For most of history murder was broadly legal (that's the beauty of really small government). ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> the law draft in english [http://wiki.laquadrature.net/Patching_the_French_Intelligenc...](http://wiki.laquadrature.net/Patching_the_French_Intelligence_Bill)

</comment><comment><USER33> Here is the amendment if anyone is interested: [http://www.assemblee- nationale.fr/14/amendements/2697/AN/437...](http://www.assemblee- nationale.fr/14/amendements/2697/AN/437.asp)

</comment><comment><USER34> Just curious, is this different from what the nsa is doing in the US?

<comment><USER35> Well, the NSA was really pissed when Snowden revealed they did it secretly but France is passing a law to do it officially.

<comment><USER36> I don't know if being open and going through the legal means is better than secretly spying.

<comment><USER37> If that's the only two alternatives, it's absolutely preferably to it being in the open. This at least allows to have an open discussion like it's worthy of democracy.

<comment><USER36> I agree but there's always a tiny 'ignorance is bliss' ring in my head while I'm thinking about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> A sad day for privacy once again, governments need to fuck off and stop spying and realize some bad things are going to happen, but not at the cost of sacrificing our personal privacy.

</comment><comment><USER39> Some key points from the article, translated...

\---

      It was in a nearly empty senate that around thirty deupties
      cast their votes [...] on the installation of "black boxes",
      a controversial device designed to monitor internet traffic.
      [It was] approved by 25 deupties to 5 following heated debates.

      The plan: to force ISPs to "detect, through automated
      processing, a suspect succession of connection data" that
      appear to match patterns typically used by terrorists. In
      practice, this would involve installing a "black box" at ISPs
      to monitor traffic. The content of the communications would
      not be monitored, but only the metadata: the sender or
      receiver of a message, the IP address of a visited site...

      [...]

      "The black box is the Pandora's box of this draft law," said
      socialist Aurélie Filippetti in the senate. "They say that the
      masses of data that will flow through it will only contain
      metadata. But they contain even more information about the
      private lives of our fellow citizens! [...] And there is a
      paradox in saying that these data will be anonymous when they
      are to be used to identify terrorists".

      An accusation that was then defended by the government in the
      house, "The automated processing marks out suspect behaviour,
      not pre-identified persons," emphasized the Defence Minister,
      Jean-Yves Le Drian, "It is after that the services are able to
      access the identity of the persons."

      [...]

      Some deputies also pointed out the "economically damaging"
      consequences of these black boxes, such as the ecologist
      Isabelle Attard, for whom "French IT companies will see their
      foreign clients start to desert them as they lose their trust".
      Last week, seven large French hosts made their opposition to the
      draft clear, stating that it would push them "into exile" so as
      not to lose their clients.

      [...]

      The government nevertheless eluded the more technical questions
      throughout the debate, asked, several times, by a few deputies,
      among those was Laure de la Raudière (UMP), "Where are you going
      to install your probe on the communication networks?", "How will
      you optimize the algorithms?", "Will you use deep packet
      inspection?".

      Bernard Cazeneuve ended up replying to this last question,
      repeated several times by the deputy, "We will not use this
      technique at all", a technique that involves the deep inspection
      [translation of a translation...] of all passing communications
      data.

      Several deputies have also demanded a precise list of the type of
      metadata collected by the black boxes to be clearly defined.
      In vain.

\---

</comment><comment><USER40> As sad as it is, how many countries with low cost hosting providers [e.g. OVH] don't have these sorts of laws [or might as well have them in the case of the US]?

Germany/Hetzner?

Literally is there no one else you can get cheap dedicated servers and avoid this kind of surveillance directly inside the DC? :/

</comment><comment> maze-le Good Luck catching Terrorists, who are, no doubt, using VPN, Tor and Face-to- Face communication.

<comment><USER41> If they're all conveniently using the same tools, their system will work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Is there anyone here believes we need open government and liquid democracy?

</comment><comment><USER43> Does anyone know what kind of metadata they will be logging? Are they logging every HTTP request that comes out of my computer for instance? (Including my user agent, the specific page I visited etc.)

<comment><USER44> If the law is so permissive as described, I bet someone will go for the full take.

<comment><USER43> What do you mean by full take precisely?

<comment><USER44> As said, everything.

Take everything, analyse later, break crypto even later.

If encrypted or not, doesn't matter to these folks. Their buddies at GCHQ do the same, remember?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> There is a theory that says that the terrorist attacks, and the rise of violence and crime are caused (at least allowed) by decision makers and governors. There is a lot of money at stake...

</comment><comment><USER46> Oh, la merde =/

<comment><USER47> "Oh, merde"

<comment><USER48> "Et merde!"

<comment><USER46> Non, non, c'est bien "la merde" que je voulais dire... :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> No one of you Frenchs using HN has traslated the article to English yet? This does not help!

<comment><USER50> Really? You couldn't be bothered to put the article into google translate?

[https://translate.google.co.uk/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&...](https://translate.google.co.uk/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.lemonde.fr%2Fpixels%2Farticle%2F2015%2F04%2F16%2Fles- deputes-approuvent-un-systeme-de-surveillance-du-trafic-sur- internet_4616652_4408996.html&edit-text=&act=url)

(Sorry for long link)

<comment><USER49> I could be bothered, but I was talking about a human made, good and clear translation. Had it happened in my country first thing I would have done is translate it to English and probably involve someone else to do that for other languages too, so to spread the news as much as possible.

Moreover, that would also have a strong symbolical value. I find it a bit weird you're being more like "don't be lazy, couldn't you find a bad level translation yourself and be happy with it?". No. I'm not happy because you're not giving it the appropriate coverage this way. But oh well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> First step in the wrong direction.

</comment><comment><USER52> Get VPN and secure online traffic monitoring by anonymous this tools are perfect for online privacy and security: [http://www.bestvpnservice.com/blog/personal-vpn- service/](http://www.bestvpnservice.com/blog/personal-vpn-service/)

<comment><USER53> The algorithm considers someone using Tor or VPNs as "suspect"

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> At least there the Congress approved the changes, while in the US everything is hidden from the citizens.

Which means that the french people are socialists in their hearts.</comment>


The Brainstormer -- creativity booster with neat design - <AUTHOR> http://andrewbosley.com/the-brainstormer.html

<comment><USER2> Nice! If you don't know about the history of such random phrase generators using dials (and if you haven't read about them in Eco's _The Island of the Day Before_ ), spend 10 minutes reading Ramon Llull'ls life (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramon_Llull>) and his Ars generalis ultima.

"At the age of 82, in 1314, Raymond traveled again to North Africa and an angry crowd of Muslims stoned him in the city of Bougie or Béjaïa in present- day northern Algeria. Genoese merchants took him back to Mallorca where he died at home in Palma the next year. It is said that before evangelizing he would openly denounce Islam in areas dominated by Islam."

Interesting guy ideed!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thats neat, thanks for the link.

I knew that there was plenty of historical precedent for this kind of thing, but I hadn't heard of Llull before. That's really neat that he also used concentric dials. But I doubt his wheels had Twitter integration, hehehhh..

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm a writer and an iPhone dev, and I found the original version of this to be very useful, so I worked with Andrew to build a version for iPhone. I'd love to hear feedback from HN folks about this app, and any tips to help promote it.

Also, more info, screenshots, etc <http://www.tapnik.com/brainstormer>

First update is going to be support for iPad, any other ideas for features or things that could be useful to you?

Thanks! Joel

</comment><comment><USER3> I like the look and feel of this product. I wish I could input a word where it says "Random", then press enter and have that affect the output in some way. To me, an interactive feature would add more WOW Factor to the product.

<comment><AUTHOR> The iphone version is a bit more interactive in that you can edit the list of words. Is that what you mean?

And since the iphone has touch input, you can spin the wheels with your fingers, they have some inertia and keep going for a bit. The flash one doesn't have any inertia when you are dragging.

<comment><USER3> Actually I was thinking about a text input box with a spin button below it. The input text would give a clue to the innermost wheel as to what universe of random words to choose from. For instance inputing Blue might produce berries, bird, feelings, ect., vs stop sign or school bus on the inner wheel. It seems like it would be more interesting to "play with" when someone is bored too, which could translate into more sales.</comment></comment></comment>


3 NJ Sex Offenders To Be Charged With Using MySpace,Facebook - <AUTHOR> http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/djf500/200805161347DOWJONESDJONLINE000710_FORTUNE5.htm

<comment><USER2> Oh no! A throwaway Dow Jones newswire article contains a minor and obvious error! What is the world coming to?

</comment><comment><USER3> Please don't editorialize in the titles. That's listed in the site guidelines.

</comment><comment><USER4> Please don't waste everyone's time hyping a trivial reporting error.

</comment><comment><USER5> I think they meant "The Google."

<comment><USER6> I think they meant "teh interwebs"

<comment><USER7> I don't think non-geeks say 'teh'

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> no. CNN made a error. They should be getting a letter from MS and Facebook soon.</comment>


"Old Layout" browser extension is an escape hatch for Facebook's hated redesign - <AUTHOR> https://OldLayout.com <comment><AUTHOR> [Disclaimer: I am the author of this extension] [https://OldLayout.com](https://OldLayout.com)

Billions of people around the world will soon be forced into Facebook's newly redesigned layout, and based on the outcry already, many will hate it (typical).

For over a decade, I've been empowering internet users through software, allowing them to take control and use sites as they wish, rather than how the site creators wish.

"Old Layout" is my new extension that reverts Facebook to the old layout, even if you've been forcibly switched to the new one.

It does this by pretending to be an older browser - one which Facebook has determined it can't support in the new layout. So, it serves you the old one instead! It's not perfect, but most users will not experience any problems or differences from the experience they are used to.

At some point, Facebook may remove this fallback option. But until/unless that happens, users can once again use the site in the way that they wish.</comment>


Decline of Global Extreme Poverty Continues but Has Slowed - <AUTHOR> https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2018/09/19/decline-of-global-extreme-poverty-continues-but-has-slowed-world-bank <comment><USER2> A lot of people seems to be skeptical about this. There is a wonderful book called Factfullness which is written exactly for this kind of audience. In his book, Rosling suggests the vast majority of human beings are wrong about the state of the world. He believes his test subjects think the world is poorer, less healthy, and more dangerous than it is. Bill gates sponsored this book for all the students graduating from college and I can exactly see why by going through this thread.

<comment><USER3> I've been driving around Africa for over 2 years now. 25 countries in West and Southern Africa.

There is _a lot_ more development, infrastructure, happiness and success here than the majority of "First Worlders" have any notion of. Even when I tell my family directly they don't really believe me.

4G Internet, chip n pin (or contactless) Credit card payments, multi lane freeways, high rise buildings and of course electricity and drinking water. That's not just South Africa either, all of those exist in Rep. Congo, Nigeria, Cameroon, Mali, Zambia just to name a few examples of where people think of "poverty".

I have come to the conclusion that anyone who hasn't actually set food on this continent (and ventured outside a guided "safari") has no way to discover the truth about this place. There is no media outlet that actual portrays an accurate picture, I have never even seen one that gets close.

<comment><USER4> I'm an African, I've lived all over the continent (until very recently). What you say is correct. By many metrics life has improved, and that is to be celebrated. But internally, I'm a bit conflicted because for sure this development has also come at a cost: (1) some of us now have electricity, but we've poisoned our city air, (ii) some of us have running water, but we've destroyed our watersheds and the severity of droughts is increasing, (iii) we have better roads (thanks China!), but we're extensifying our farm land into forest because we've been caning our soils, (iv) we've got 4g and mobile money, but man, our leaders still brutalize us if we step out of line.

In conclusion, I don't dispute what you say, there is a great deal of wonderful progress on the continent, but the narrative should not be either/or, and of course varies by country, but it's neither dystopian famine, or development utopia.

<comment><USER5> It seems as if the onset of development is always coupled with horrible environmental problems. Another 20 years in the future, Africa will have more money to mitigate them.

<comment><USER4> The gyst of Grantham's essay which I posted below (also at the bottom of this comment), throws into question that optimism. With evidence, Grantham demonstrates the possibility that a nexus of climate change, soil degradation and population growth threatens Africa's development trajectory. My view is that this will happen within 20 years as banks pull credit lines from farmers at risk of weather shock. Indeed this is already happening and farmer's production goes off a cliff when they can't get loans for good seed and fertiliser.

I don't write this because I'm a doom and gloom merchant. It's because we need to get real about investing sufficiently to course correct.

Edit: here's Grantham's essay:

[https://www.gmo.com/docs/default-source/research-and- comment...](https://www.gmo.com/docs/default-source/research-and- commentary/strategies/asset-allocation/the-race-of-our-lives- revisited.pdf?sfvrsn=2)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> That article should come out of Delhi or Beijing, not Washington. Thanks to the western world, for stopping their evil doing in Asia (excluding Near East). When US/France/UK get their ass out of Africa and Middle East, expect further decline of global poverty. [https://indianexpress.com/article/india/india- brought-271-mi...](https://indianexpress.com/article/india/india- brought-271-million-out-of-poverty-between-2005-16-similar-to-china-undp- oxford-report-5368980/) Expecting a lot of downvotes in the HN crowd.

</comment><comment><USER6> Well who was to blame for the poverty, the hard working men and women got out off, in the first place. When can we get a report on that?

</comment><comment><USER7> Does anyone know exactly why? I conjecture to say it's broadly the result of capitalism. I really feel like it's a shame that word is almost toxic in intellectual circles.

<comment><USER8> Capitalism was the cause of extreme poverty, from enclosure movements to slavery to industrialization to colonialism. To say that capitalism is to thank for lifting people out of the tragedy is hilarious. Especially as capitalism causes 8 individuals to be richer than half the world.

<comment><USER9> It's not hilarious to thank Capitalism for lifting people out of tragedy - It's what has happened. Coal power plants in low income countries; iPhone factories creating an economic explosion in China; T-Shirt factories in Bangladesh. All of these things are the result of Capitalism and the free market, and participating countries are doing well. They are accepting some environmental damage, though. Consider that the company making the most progress in sustainable energy is, well, a capitalist company.

Alternate systems have not worked out so well, as you know. Communist planned economies led to the starvation of tens of millions, and that number increases to hundreds of millions when you add the persecution, jailing, and sometimes immediate execution of citizens of Communists states that had a history of political activity of the wrong sort. Recall that in Soviet Russia it was beneficial for each individual to "inform" on their neighbours to the KGB, so that they could claim their apartment. And it's suspected that Vladmir Putin is actually the richest person in the world.

Colonialism and slavery are pretty rough, but they are not a product of capitalism as much as a product of human malevolence and brutality. I'm sure you would find evidence of colonialism and slavery in pre-civilization times and in non-capitalist societies, so that argument falls flat.

Also, regarding the 8 richest individuals - If the rest of the world is getting on OK, why should we not have a couple of super rich people around? Why is that inherently bad? Why do _you_ think you should have a say of where that money belongs, exactly?

<comment><USER10> "...and that number increases to hundreds of millions when you add the persecution, jailing, and sometimes immediate execution of citizens of Communists states that had a history of political activity of the wrong sort..."

Why is that not a product of human malevolence and brutality?

I'm sure you would find evidence of persecution, jailing and sometimes execution of citizens in pre-civilization.

<comment><USER11> Communism is about centralized control of a population. The central authority determines what you get, what you pay, what you do, and so on. Capitalism, by contrast, is a decentralized system. What you pay for something is little more than a product of the market. And you're free to do anything you want, so long as there is a demand for it.

Imagine I want to send a rocket to Mars. And then I go and check the prices and see these companies want hundreds of millions of dollars to launch one. That makes me confused. The materials to make that rocket cost at most on the order of tens of millions of dollars, and labor certainly doesn't explain the rest. I bet I could make one for less. And it turns out I can. Then a couple of decades later, I'm the biggest rocket supplier on the planet. In a communist system your only option there would be to try to appeal to the bureaucracy, and if you're lucky you _might_ eventually, some years later, get a reply to your filing of form FNE-34821.43-z: _' We disagree. Thanks for your input, comrade.'_ Of course this probably isn't a fair comparison. In a communist system nobody would ever have the resources to even dream of being able to do something like launch rockets to Mars. Instead you'd have to beg old entrenched government bureaucrats to do it. I'm wouldn't hold my breath.

This notion of an economic system being driven by the people instead of being driven by the government is why in a capitalist system you're generally free to argue for a communist system - with some unfortunate exceptions, yet in a communist system arguing for capitalism is often enough to get you 'disappeared' \- with some fortunate exceptions. Maybe even more visibly in a capitalist system you could even _start_ a communistic system. Want to buy 5000 acres of land and start communitopia? Feel free to! Want to buy 5,000 acres of land and start capitalitopia in a communist nation? It's simply not possible.

<comment><USER12> Good points, but bad example. The Soviets invented spaceflight.

<comment><USER11> You bring up a good point, but I think this actually really nails the issue. The point is not that government bureaucracy _cannot_ achieve great things. Our achievement of putting a man on the moon was supposed to be a product of the capitalist system. In reality it was mostly socialist in execution as a heavily publicly funded affair directed by a state level organization primarily with state employees to achieve a bureaucratically directed goal. The point is what happens when what the government thinks is good and what the people think is good differ?

And we also saw this exact scenario play out in space. We never really managed to bring space to into the capitalist system. And once the government 'won' the space race, their interests shifted from space. Not only did progress halt but we technologically regressed. We put a man on the moon in 1969. Today, half a century later, we're struggling just to try to send a man _around_ the moon - let alone land on it. No human has left low earth orbit since 1972! But at the same time space has now been _genuinely_ introduced into the capitalist system and so long as the people have a desire for more, the odds of us entering into another 50 year regression are rapidly approaching 0.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> [https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press- release/2018/09/19/d...](https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press- release/2018/09/19/decline-of-global-extreme-poverty-continues-but-has-slowed- world-bank)

Non pay wall link with the same info

<comment><USER14> Thanks..I don't understand why people continue linking WSJ even due the fact that not everybody has a subscription with them

<comment><USER15> Probably be cause they found an interesting article there and didn't realize it was available elsewhere (and sometimes it actually isn't).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I think credit should go to Globalization;

<comment><USER17> Yes, globalisation plus free trade and capitalism.

<comment><USER18> IMO that only works when it's coupled with progress in governance. Compare Venezuela to India over the last 30 years, and extrapolate into the near future what will happen there.

Edit: Just to anticipate the obligatory "Venezuala communist -> bad outcome" comment: Yes, but _why_ are they communist?

<comment><USER17> >Compare Venezuela to India over the last 30 years, and extrapolate into the near future what will happen there.

Compare how? What do you mean will happen?

<comment><USER19> > _What do you mean will happen?_

Even in its deepest crises, India's army did not play kingmaker. Furthermore, India's federated structure–while annoying to reformers–checks the power of aspiring dictators. Every uneducated population, it seems, elects populists from time to time. The damage they can do in India appears to be more limited than the damage done to Venezuela by Chavez and Maduro. Venezuela will probably be an impoverished nation for decades; India has a chance of becoming a middle-income or even developed country by 2050.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Still seems like quite a lot

<comment><USER21> Consider that we started with nearly everyone in extreme poverty 200 years ago.

<comment><USER22> What about 500 years ago?

<comment><USER23> Almost everyone was extremely poor then too.

You can tell from the percentage of the labour force who worked on farms that most people couldn't have been wealthy, and the industrial revolution changed everything.

[https://ourworldindata.org/employment-in- agriculture](https://ourworldindata.org/employment-in-agriculture)

<comment><USER24> Interesting charts, thanks.

[https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/agriculture-value- added-p...](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/agriculture-value-added-per- worker-wdi)

Shocking that corn and cow producers in India are 90% less productive than in the US.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Lenovo shows off a 13.3" folding-screen thinkpad tablet prototype - bauta-steen https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/05/lenovo-shows-off-a-folding-screen-laptop-coming-some-time-in-2020/ <comment><AUTHOR> How about they make a thinkpad laptop up to the quality standards of the old thinkpads? I have several lenovos, all of which exhibit "case flex" syndrome in which random typing occurs, and jacks come loose etc, as in cheap netbooks. They are simply not built robustly as the IBM thinkpads were, regardless of the manufacturer being Lenovo in either case. There IS a market for a quality non-luxury workhorse for those who work for a living.

<comment><USER2> Hmm? which ones are you talking about? I use both a T480 and some previous ones and I haven't seen loose jacks or random typing on mine.</comment></comment>