WhatsApp sends Cease and Desists for apps that use native Android APIs - <AUTHOR> https://www.xda-developers.com/whatsapp-sends-cease-desist-apps-native-android-api/ <comment><USER2> The real problem here is that after this stunt I'd like to completely stop using Whatsapp and switch to something else instead, but I can't because other people use Whatsapp and communicating with other people is essential to me.

The problem is there no laws to stop whoever becomes the lucky recipient of such a network effect from doing whatever they want.

Instead antitrust law needs to be expanded to consider network effect platforms like social network as monopolies on ways of interacting with their users, and restrict them from several behaviors like this one.

<comment><USER3> It sucks. Here in the Netherlands, WhatsApp is used by the _vast majority_ of people. The holdouts (like me) consist of people who don't want to deal with smartphones (some elderly, some who deliberately avoid them because of addictive behaviour), or who own a smartphone, but don't agree with WhatsApp's terms of use (essentially paying for access with your data).

Not using WhatsApp has consequences. We sometimes miss out on family events when people forget that we don't use WhatsApp. Anyone with children is basically required to use WhatsApp for communication with other parents, organising school and social events, and what have you. Refusal to do so means you ostracise your kids.

So yeah, great. To participate in some parts of society WhatsApp is now a de facto requirement. A whole nation blindly agrees to whatever terms of use Facebook drafts. And when you do accept those terms, you are forced to use their client software on one of their approved operating systems. Owning a (Android or Iphone) smartphone is a hard requirement.

The network effect means that alternatives never gain any traction, and the price of WhatsApp ('free') is hard to beat.

<comment><USER4> To be fair, my Signal list of contacts keeps growing here in NL. I do some light proselytizing, but it seems to be moving along on it's own. Hopefully Arjan Lubach (Holland's Jon Oliver) will do a hit-peice on WhatsApp like he did on Facebook at some point in the future.

I'd like to delete WhatsApp, but any conversation I have in Signal vs WhatsApp is a small victory that I'll take. If at some point more than 50% of my messages are outside WA, I'll nuke it.

<comment><USER3> Signal inherits some of WhatsApp's limitations though. It requires that the primary device be an Android or IOS based smartphone with an internet connection; and your identifier is your telephone number, which has the same privacy implications as WhatsApp. With the centralised server model choosing Signal over WhatsApp is basically betting that Open Whisper Systems won't monetize your data, or won't be bought out by some bigger fish.

Why can't I use a messaging service from my desktop without having a smartphone with pre-approved operating system nearby?

<comment><USER5> Signal-CLI and Signald both allow one to register a number on a desktop for use with Signal, you can even pull your messages right into weechat if you want: [https://github.com/thefinn93/signal- weechat](https://github.com/thefinn93/signal-weechat)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wonder what Google thinks about this. If these companies only use standard Android API's, and they get sued over that, that isn't good for Googles platform at all. A reasonable response from Google would be to change their terms for publishing to the Play store, if they don't say it already, that you aren't allowed to sue other app makers, if they only use standard API to interop with your app.

<comment><USER7> This is key, I think. I recall Apple coming to developers' defense when they were targeted for using standard APIs, and if Google wants Android to be a useful platform it will need to do the same here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> > This letter is not a complete list of all of WhatsApp's rights you might > have violated.

Fortunately they added this statement because (IANAL) I believe those developers didn't perform any of the activities listed in the bullet points of the letter.

However all of third party WhatsApp automation is a gray area. Everybody knows that WhatsApp doesn't welcome it (I really don't know why) and they have the money to litigate, especially because no big business will ever build anything on the top of WhatsApp without a previous explicit consent. For example a bot API. I never understood why they didn't implement one. I hoped that after the FB acquisition they would, an exact copy of the Messenger one, but they still didn't. Now that all the founders left maybe things will change but I wonder what's FB's plan. WhatsApp is bigger than Messenger in many countries and with the EU stance against data sharing between the two companies I wouldn't be surprised if the plan is to move all WhatsApp users to Messenger.

<comment><USER9> > I wouldn't be surprised if the plan is to move all WhatsApp users to > Messenger. People use WhatsApp over messenger primarily because how "light" > the app feels. It feels exactly like SMS for free, which was always the > appeal of the app. Given the trend to make a Lite version of every Android > app, Facebook should be prioritising WhatsApp, not planning to migrate it to > Messenger.

PS - Has a mass migration of community from one product to the other ever been successfully pulled off?

<comment><USER10> WA doesn't require a Facebook account if FB does that they'll end up losing quite a bit of users.

<comment><USER11> Nor does Messenger.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Remember when Instant Messaging protocols used to be open? When there was a multitude of clients for any given service to chose from?

Now IM has left its early adopter stage and became an integral part of everybody's life, but in doing so we became stuck with 100% proprietary WhatsApp. Not undeserved, it works very well with billions of users, and is probably the most usable IM service ever made.

But it became so big and "essential", that it doesn't seem right that a large part of human communication is bound exclusively through their apps.

I think in the long run there would be a real benefit to opening up their protocol.

<comment><USER13> When was that? I always remember them being reversed engineered.

<comment><USER14> I remember a short time after AIM, MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, ICQ, etc. had fallen out of favor and Google Chat used XMPP and I think even Facebook used it.

<comment><USER13> I never had any significant use of Google Chat or Hangouts among my circle of acquaintances.

Those that left ICQ and Yahoo moved into MSN messenger, followed by Skype.

And now there is an uniform distribution across Whatsapp, Skype and Viber.

However this is anecdote data.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The legal claims seem spurious at best. The letter provides a list of infringements and claims that each of them is violated. I've not used the (claimed) offending apps, but from an overview understanding of how they work it seems like precisely no items from the list would be true.

<comment><USER16> Hopefully the app creators that received those notices are in a jurisdiction with good anti-SLAPP laws. If they really are only using Android APIs and not accessing WhatsApp through any other means, the claims are clearly designed to intimidate them into removing their apps and settling rather than go through a prolonged lawsuit that Facebook can easily afford, but small developers can't.

<comment><USER17> In the first world anti-SLAPP laws are not necessary because SLAPPs don't exist to begin with.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Next up: suing Google because "Wear OS" and Android Auto also uses these APIs to allow responses from the watch/car?

The whole _point_ of implementing these APIs is to allow the user to reply using a different app; replies direct from the notification on the device itself are a hook to encourage developers who don't care about the rich integrations to allow that functionality anyway.

And that's one of the things I really like about Android: "platform" apps like WearOS don't use private APIs, they use public APIs so other developers can build on platform features. I have seven apps installed that ask for notification access, five I've granted.

</comment><comment><USER19> The affected developers should "cease and desist" by stopping further development and releasing the code as open-source.

WhatsApp/Facebook will then have to send C&Ds to hundreds of potentially anonymous contributors if they want any chance of taking the open-sourced app down.

<comment><USER20> Or just removing WhatsApp support and supporting some other platforms instead. If they don't want people to find their platform convenient, no problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> If I understand this correctly then I think Google needs to step in here and defend users of the Android APIs. It can't be that developers are getting sued for nothing more than using these APIs as intended.

<comment><USER22> Google could add to their ToS of the Play Store that apps that try to enforce control over the use of Android APIs get penalized or removed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> At first, I thought WhatApps wanted to slow down automation and bots because they just _don 't_ want people to be helped in their communications (which would be weird, given their mission is to help people to communicate).

However, after the recent news about spreading misinformation in India which did lead to injustices, I can see how bots may harm uninformed users more than it would help them.

Shame on WhatApps for not being able to provide an official, controlled automation solution.

<comment><USER24> I don't see what any of these apps being targeted have to do with bots.

<comment><USER23> Ultimately, "Android" is about automation and integration (hence the name), and WhatsApp is fighting the spirit of the Android API.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> > Can't Talk's premise is simple. All it does is automatically reply to people > when you aren't around, making use of the quick reply (RemoteInput) API > native to Android. […] It's a paid application if you want to support more > than SMS and calls, such as WhatsApp, Slack, and a lot more.

> DirectChat is another useful application. It works just like Facebook > Messenger's chat bubbles but it supports a lot of different applications > too. It feeds your chats into another window where you can then reply back > as well. Its most popular usage was probably with WhatsApp.

I think the _" Cease and Desist"_ letters are being sent because these two specific apps, unless there are others not mentioned by these article, are making use of APIs that are not directly part of WhatsApp but interact with it in a _kind of_ direct way.

I wonder if the letters were sent directly to the developers or via Google Play.

<comment><USER26> You are right, they dont interact with whatsapp directly, but indirectly through a android API. The android API cannot be covered by the whatsapp terms (which the developers never agreed to according to the title)

<comment><USER27> I don't believe that. They never installed Whatsapp? The intersection of people who build chat accessory apps and people who have never installed Whatsapp is surely empty.

<comment><USER28> I think it depends on where in the world the user is from.

Where I'm located, it doesn't seem like WhatsApp is used much, or at all. I don't think I've ever met anyone in my personal or professional lives who uses it.

So if I were building an app using these APIs, it probably wouldn't even occur to me to test it with WhatsApp. I'd test it with Messenger, sure, and SMS. Maybe even Hangouts, or whatever the newest Google chat app is.

I don't think it's farfetched to think that someone could have received one of these notices even though they've never used WhatsApp.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> TLDR: Two apps are integrated with Android. WhatsApp is integrated with Android. Facebook wants the integration to stop, so they sue this other apps integrated with Android.

The solution is easy. Facebook should remove the integration from WhatsApp. Problem solved. If you don't want other apps to extend your functionality, you should not integrate with other systems.

The reality is that when a behemoth like Facebook tells you to do something and that they know were you live (probably literally), your company is at risk independently of how crazy the claims are.

Corporations are the new big abusive government. But we can't vote them out.

<comment><USER30> But we can stop using their services.

<comment><USER3> You and I can (and probably do), but the carrot it too sweet for the majority of users.

<comment><USER31> Now do that with the government.

<comment><USER29> > Now do that with the government.

It is a similar problem.

You can do that with education, healthcare, transportation, security... You can have a private version of that.

Probably you can't have your own military, even that in the USA is not so clear.

Most people just can't afford the private version. The government version of that services is way cheaper, so you are stuck with it even if the government does not want to invest to have a good service.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> In Brazil, everyone uses Whatsapp and companies have been pressured by consumers to offer customer service through this channel. I researched and saw that there are integrated apps, but I do not know what form they are using since for all I know, the API has not yet been made available to everyone.

<comment><USER33> yowsup and Android emulators

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Here's an idea. When a case like this is thrown out of court, the defendant is awarded 1% of the company's revenues in perpetuity as damages. Or replace that with any decent incentive for asshole companies like FB to pull this kind of shit. There need to be serious negative consequences for abusing the court system and loading it with bullshit cases like this one. There is no agreement here between the two parties. Case dropped. The alternative is fixing our fucked up court system so that it can be used for its intended purposes by non-b/millionaires, but that's highly unlikely to ever happen.

</comment><comment><USER35> What if the problem of auto-messaging is the potential for an infinite loop of message and auto-reply. That could cause a lot of headaches for whatsapp.

<comment><USER36> I would assume they have rate limiting for all clients if it affects them that much</comment></comment>


Uber can't keep down accusations of "vomit fraud" against its drivers - <AUTHOR> https://news.avclub.com/uber-cant-keep-down-accusations-of-vomit-fraud-agains-1827846144 <comment><USER2> Uber can easily compare image hashes so no image of vomit can be used for more than one claim. That should keep out less technically savvy fraudsters.

They could also demand a scan of a receipt from a cleaning place, and then verify via GPS traces that the driver actually went to the place after the supposed incident but before taking the next ride.

Uber should also make a notification or popup for the customer if they are charged extra after a ride. An "appeal" should be possible from the notification.

<comment><USER3> How about just require a photo upload and then look at the photo's metadata (time, date, GPS, etc) to match it up with the data they already have (i.e. where the driver is)?

Maybe built in the camera directly into the app so that the drivers don't have the ability to fake an image's metadata.

<comment><USER4> Any bulimic fraudster would have no issues supplying dishonest "evidence"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Maybe statistics can help. If a uber driver is a "vomit scammer" he's doing this multiple times, deviating too much from the normal, even if taking into account factors like being late hours, next to a club/pub, etc. Uber can then kick this driver out or, giving the benefit of the doubt, limit the number of "cleaning reimbursements" to force the driver to find better passengers (stay away from nightlife rides?).

</comment><comment><USER6> Easy fix: Require, maybe also supply in-car cameras and require footage as evidence for reimbursement. A very inexpensive fix to a burgeoning problem.

<comment> m-p-3 In Canada this would be illegal, and many customers would not agree to being filmed.

<comment><USER7> "By using this service you agree to be filmed. If you do not agree, feel free to use an alternative". Seems like it would work as nobody is forced to Uber, no?

I'm not saying that this is the outcome people want, BTW. Just that it could be the one they get.

<comment><USER8> This is coercive and is as such already pretty legally shaky. It would probably fly in the US, but that's not the only place they operate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Somewhere at Uber there is a database to organize a collection of pictures of vomit in cars.

</comment><comment><USER10> This is a recent meme (many articles lately) no doubt put out by the taxi industry.</comment>


Lock the Door Your Boomer Parents Have Decided to Downsize - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/lock-the-door-your-boomer-parents-have-decided-to-downsize-1478882973 <comment><USER2> Paywall... Booo! Come on WSJ, you need to understand your customers better. I don't mind paying for content if it's reasonably priced. But, paying 18$ per month isn't reasonable, especially considering that I might not use it that frequently. I'd much prefer a pay per use type of deal. Perhaps, you could charge like 5 cents per article. I'd sign up for that.

<comment><USER3> As mentioned in one of the other two comments on this submission, the "web" link should work to get around the paywall. Have you tried that?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Paywall... Boo.

<comment><USER3> Following the web link under the submission title worked for me. I've heard sometimes people still see the paywall. Do you?

<comment><USER4> Yeah I still get a paywall.

<comment><USER3> Huh. I'm using Safari 10.0.1 with Ghostery 5.4.10. You?

<comment><USER4> Chrome and Ghostery... yeah.

Just tried in Firefox as well.

Oh well, I think I get the gist of the article and agree with it... I don't want any of my parent's crap. Already told them to get rid of all their books and scan all their photos and all the "fine china" that has patterns from the 70s needs to go to the dump.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


"Don't work too hard, or you'll screw up the economy"? - <AUTHOR> http://paul.kedrosky.com/archives/2010/02/dude_im_not_sla.html

<comment><USER2> If anyone is curious, the author of the underlying paper argues that if the demand curve for labor is vertical (inelastic in the short run) that a sudden increase in desire for work will shift the supply curve out and cause wages to fall, reducing inflation. If nominal interest rates are near zero, a fall in inflation will amount to an increase in real interest rates. Increasing real interest rates reduces aggregate demand for goods and firms reduce their demand for workers in response.

Then a bunch of math is thrown in to make it seem sophisticated enough to get published.

It is an edge-case in a short-run model with carefully tuned parameters. Interesting, but probably not too important. Good blog fodder, though.

</comment><comment><USER3> This paper describes the one idea that I have repeatedly tried to explain on HN:

Demand is not unlimited.

When you have a flame-bait title like this, the many die-hard libertarian/Austrians here will be sure to pull out the "broken window fallacy" and other knee-jerk retorts as evidenced by the other highly voted comments here.

<comment><USER4> Demand may not be unlimited, but mass-(over)production sure tries to make it so. It's easy to artificially create demand that wouldn't have otherwise been there in a free(thinking) market.

<comment><USER3> Demand is still very very far from unlimited, __especially__ when you take into account mass-production.

[http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jan/07/h-m-wal-mart- clo...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jan/07/h-m-wal-mart-clothes- found)

In this example, if demand scaled along with production, there would be no need to junk clothes that didn't sell. According to you, they should've been sold! Instead, H&M is trying to maintain the scarcity/demand of their clothing by destroying excess products rather than give them to the poor. The people who have money simply don't need any more cheap clothes!

<comment><USER4> My point was, you know, sort of tongue-in-cheek... Of course demand can't be unlimited, but you're just further proving my point- corporations will produce and produce and produce far beyond the actual demand, because we aren't living in an actual free-market where if they get to a certain point they're losing money and go out of business.

In this case, yes, H&M would go out of business if they just kept producing and producing, but just take a look at the corn industry in the US for a great example of production far exceeding what demand would ever be in anything close to a free market- in fact, we (I say we meaning the US since I'm from the US, but I obviously don't condone this practice) keep inventing _new_ ways to use the corn because there's too damn much of it!

Also, it may not be unlimited in the case you mention, but the consumerism ingrained in our societies is still striving for the goal of making it "unlimited" (as in bandwidth)- just because they aren't _quite_ successful yet doesn't mean it's any good.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is an excellent excuse! "I'm not wasting time, I'm saving the economy" :)

<comment><USER6> Single-handedly nonetheless.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> And in next week's issue of "Gross Misunderstandings of the Very Nature of the Economy": Hot New Trend: Breaking Your Own Windows to Stimulate the Economy.

<comment><USER8> It really is the broken window fallacy, but in reverse; that working harder could decrease aggregate employment implies that working less hard (or more counter-productively) could _increase_ aggregate employment.

This is even more hare-brained than the suggestion that we should all work less to allow more people to be employed. Increases in productivity (e.g. working harder) can only be harmful in a closed economy with very fixed consumption practices. Pretty much any country or region, however, cannot be said to exist in isolation, nor does it have fixed consumption. When either world interest rates go to 0% or people become miraculously content with everything they have, let me know so I can slack off, but until then I'm gonna keep working.

<comment><USER9> >It really is the broken window fallacy, but in reverse; that working harder could decrease aggregate employment implies that working less hard (or more counter-productively) could increase aggregate employment.

Not all system responses are reversible. I can start working really hard, making it feasible for my company to lay someone else off. I could later stop working so hard, but there's no reason to expect that job to come back.

> This is even more hare-brained than the suggestion that we should all work > less

Did the article make a suggestion? I think it was more of a scientific statement that this would happen. Of course in a global competitive market it's irrational for any single individual to start working less. That in no way refutes the claim being made. Depoliticize for a second and consider the claims being made. Your stance is right, but you have no need to defend it here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> first of all, its irrelevant, the equilibrium behavior of the masses won't be affected of a few of us slack off. second, in the macro scheme of things, its not really possible to run out of value-add opportunities.

</comment><comment><USER11> > The conditions for the paradox to apply are that the short-term nominal > interest rate is zero and

Things are already broken very badly if free money is being given away. Or if things aren't broken very badly when the free money starts being given away, it will be broken very badly very soon.</comment>


Web Trolls Winning as Incivility Increases - <AUTHOR> http://nytimes.com/2014/08/15/technology/web-trolls-winning-as-incivility-increases.html?smid=nytnow-share&smprod=nytnow&_r=0

<comment><USER2> This is sad but true. One option is to remove anonimity, but with the online vigilantism(?) we see towards unpopular opinions, I personally would choose to be quiet than take the risk of voicing an unpopular opinion. And squelching debate isn't a good option either.</comment>


Google challenges U.S. gag order, citing First Amendment - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/google-challenges-us-gag-order-citing-first-amendment/2013/06/18/96835c72-d832-11e2-a9f2-42ee3912ae0e_story.html <comment><USER2> Now that EFF broke the barrier in filing with the FISC, I have a feeling we'll see a lot more of this. And that's a good thing.

I expect Google's filing to show up here shortly: [http://www.uscourts.gov/uscourts/courts/fisc/index.html](http://www.uscourts.gov/uscourts/courts/fisc/index.html)

<comment><USER3> Here it is: [http://www.scribd.com/doc/148608149/Foreign-Intelligence- Sur...](http://www.scribd.com/doc/148608149/Foreign-Intelligence-Surveillance- Court-Motion-for-Declaratory-Judgment)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> They are fighting for the right to tell their customers about the government mining their data(through google). Google already tells their customers what they mine in theToS and Privacy Policy. I see no hypocrisy.

<comment><USER5> Also, Google isn't brokering the information they gather. From what I understand they're simply using it to target ads (which is what they actually sell), while keeping the data itself very close to the vest.

If you've got something on offer, and want to know who might buy, Google won't tell you who is interested. They'll just deliver your message to the right people, and if you get a suitable response, you'll know that their service was worth the price.

There's a world of difference between the mediated transactions they have with their customers, and the exchange that takes place when the government says "hand over the data itself."

<comment><USER6> Google fanboys make this discussion hard to take seriously.

Google was caught pants down spying on everyone, stop trying to white wash it.

<comment><USER7> >Google was caught pants down spying on everyone

If you're referring to the whole wifi thing, tell me, what information do you expect the street view car to be able to pick up in the 10 or so seconds it would have been associated with the AP? Their engineers have basically come out and said that was a fuckup, and I'm inclined to believe them because I find it hard to imagine what use that random data would be.

And to be honest, I'm more likely to believe a Google engineer rather than a namecalling troll who's virulently against them for no good reason.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Anyone familiar with the constitutional law on this? From a laymen's perspective it seems obvious that the government has some ability to restrict 1st amendment rights on matters of national security. If that wasn't the case, there would be no way to enforce legal restrictions on classified information. It would be the end of all government secrets, both good and bad. Or is this debate simply about where the actual line is drawn for national security and whether this this type of disclosure crosses that line?

<comment><USER9> Here's a place to start: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strict_scrutiny](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strict_scrutiny)

National security most likely qualifies as "compelling state interest" in general, but it's not the only thing the government needs to infringe on constitutional rights. The government also needs to prove that the infringement is narrow and specific.

Even then, I wonder if the "compelling state interest" could be challenged on not being compelling enough.

(I am definitely not a lawyer, just remembering a con law class I took and refreshing my memory with Wikipedia.)

<comment><USER10> I'm a lawyer, although not one that regularly practices First Amendment law. That said, zachrose is right that strict scrutiny applies here. Usually, to restrict truthful speech based on the content of the speech, the government must show that (1) there is a compelling state interest and (2) that the government's restriction on speech is narrowly tailored.

National security is pretty compelling, but it's unclear how prohibiting disclosure of the number of requests is narrowly tailored to that interest. Without knowing more details about the nature of the program, it's hard to say why the number matters. But if the NSA can't demonstrate how disclosing a specific number, as opposed to an approximate range, has a noticeable impact on national security, the law would likely not be in their favor.

<comment><USER11> I guess I don't really understand "national security is compelling". National security, like basically everything else, is a matter of degree. There are presumably compelling and uncompelling national security risks. If the court is weighing some amount of speech restriction against some amount of national security risk, presumably the size of the risk matters?

What are the governments burdens here? Can they merely assert there's a security issue here or do they have to prove it? Does it have to pass some kind of severity test in order to restrict speech? I'm genuinely curious what the case law says on this stuff.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > In the petition, Google is seeking permission to publish the total numbers > of requests the court makes of the company and the numbers of user accounts > they affect.

Nice confirmation that the "in the last 6 months" numbers reported by Facebook et al are worthless. No company has yet said how many users are affected total. I assume it's _all_ users, by an earlier "request" (actually all but an order). Why shouldn't an organization that gains a bigger budget the more people it surveils demand the moon?

If we're to believe the number of requests reported so far are 1-to-1 with users, all the information could fit on a single drive. The Bluffdale, UT facility seems capable of handling a good amount of data for each of the entire digital population, even if half of the buildings is space for bureaucrats.

</comment><comment><USER13> Hey, Google. Reporting what the government is requesting en-masse is nice, but how about you actually give us end-to-end encryption for as many of your services as possible, so we don't have to second-guess our thoughts and chats anymore simply because we know the government is watching and _will_ be getting that data no matter what? It might help with the whole trust issue you're having now.

<comment><USER14> As has been replied to you several times, you don't want your web-based client in charge of client-side encryption. Yes, it may help as a second line of defence against run-of-the-mill phishing and hacking attempts, but it does absolutely nothing against government requests, as the government can either request the private key that you've stored on their servers, or the government can force them to give you broken encryption software. See, as always, [1].

Whether or not your browser client is providing the encryption, however, you've also rendered completely useless any reason for having web mail in the first place, as you've become next-to-useless to them (no content for ads, no content for things like Google Now) and all their infrastructure is useless to you (no content to search over, no content to spam filter, etc). You no longer have a relationship except they're your SMTP gateway and a backup drive. You can get those today all over the place, you don't need google. If you want to stick with Google, go download a desktop mail client and chat client and install the open source PGP and OTR plugins for them. You can do this _right now_.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hushmail#Compromises_to_email_p...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hushmail#Compromises_to_email_privacy)

<comment><USER15> First, that was the non-original version of Hushmail, and over a decade (of development of more capable browsers) has elapsed since the original. Second, the business model would then change to charging for email. Google does that for many services already; paid Google business apps accounts currently provide "no content for ads."

<comment><USER14> I'm not saying it's not possible (business-wise) as a product offering, I'm just saying there's not really any point to webmail at that point. You can pay Google to be an SMTP gateway and encrypted mail backup now, true, but there's no difference between that and any other email provider at that point, except maybe uptime. No web interface, no search, no spam filtering, no label filtering, no Google Now interaction. Those are all the reasons I like gmail, so I'm not sure about the point of it if those are gone. Just go client-side at that point; at least you'd be able to search your email. And if you're using an email client, you don't need (and probably don't want) google to provide content encryption.

As for the browser side of things, it seems like it would be much much better not to rely on google, but to write a browser extension that identifies the gmail textbox and runs some version of PGP using a private key in your OS/lastpass/whatever keychain. The main thing you'd want to do is somehow isolate the input textbox from the page so that keystrokes only go to the extension, and only the encrypted data goes into the page, preferably when the Send button is pressed.

If Google were to be technically capable of decrypting your email so they can show it to you in a browser, and you're a target for an investigation (a narrow one or an overly broad NSA one), why on earth would the court order/warrant not demand that they decrypt your email to show them, too?

<comment><USER15> All of these are good points. You make a strong argument that there might be little need for a web interface.

A few other thoughts, though:

\- You could still do spam filtering, of course. If it scores highly as spam and the user trusts the spam filtering, it could be deleted or moved into a likely spam folder. (I'm assuming plaintext email is encrypted automatically right away.)

\- There are provably secure techniques to perform searches on encrypted data assuming an untrusted server, such as: [http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~dawnsong/papers/se.pdf](http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~dawnsong/papers/se.pdf)

\- If the encryption is handled on the client side, Google would NOT be technically capable of decrypting your mail. They would not be able to comply with a court order demanding they decrypt your mail. This is what the original version of Hushmail did, before they added the flawed later version that was exploited by FedGov in, if I recally properly, precisely the way you describe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It's a start!

So what _can_ the gov't do if companies don't co-operate? With individuals, there is blackmail and illicit co-ercion. What does the gov't do to corporations worth updwards of 100B to get them to comply?

<comment><USER17> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Nacchio](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Nacchio)

<comment><USER16> So, if Google does continue like it should, at the very least we should watch out for Sergei & Larry's dirty laundry hitting the internet soon enough?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Yeah, that's right according to the Supreme Court, corporations now have citizenship, so they should have First Amendment rights too. Wouldn't that be ironic if that ruling actually did some good for our nation.

<comment><USER19> If anything good comes out of this NSA thing, I think it's the fact that liberals will be forced to concede that Citizens United was, in fact, the right decision. Do you really want the government arbitrarily banning speech by corporations that it deems to be impermissible? There is a reason the ACLU came out in favor of the ruling in Citizens United...

<comment><USER20> For as much as I'm familiar with the CU vs. FEC case, the reasons don't stack up all that well for corportation's 'right of speech' in this context. Trevor Potter I think very reasonably explains why here: [http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/09042009/watch2.html](http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/09042009/watch2.html)

Mainly, that it's essentially overstepping the speech of the less powerful. It results in the poor having unequal, _lesser_ freedom of speech.

I would have expected you to be on my side on this issue, as you seemed to be more of a 'spirit of the law' guy rather a 'letter of the law' kind of guy.

<comment><USER19> I've got a bit of a textualist streak. I'm more amenable to looking at the spirit of the law and the motivating justifications in something like the 4th amendment, where you can hang your hat on the word "unreasonable" than with something like the 1st amendment, which is written in terms of "Congress shall make no law."

<comment><USER20> I was recalling your take on taxes (and some other things): you can't possibly make them airtight, there'll always be loopholes: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5734713](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5734713)

Anyway, I'm curious to know more on why you think CU was the right decision. I advise watching all 31 minutes of the Trevor Potter vs. Floyd Abram debate if you have time and if you haven't watched/read it already.

I was very sad that ACLU came out in support of CU, I think they were wrong on this one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I don't see how freedom can last in a country for long with secret laws.

</comment><comment><USER22> Google's Court document is here: [http://assets.nationaljournal.com/img/MOTION.pdf](http://assets.nationaljournal.com/img/MOTION.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER23> I'm not a terrorist; I'm a law abiding citizen of the U.S. Can I opt out of the PRISM thing? All I'm doing is adding unnecessary noise to their data. I want to do the patriotic thing and help my country, and in this case the best way to do that is to shrink the pool of data that they must monitor. (And no, I'm not kidding!)

<comment><USER24> If you're ordinary enough you're probably not triggering any flags, so you'd probably already not really being considered part of the dataset.

One person opting out probably won't help them at all, but it would be interesting to consider a more scaled up "opt out" program whereby you go through a one-time deep check and might be granted less monitoring as a result. They would need to sufficiently automate it to make it feasible, though. I also suspect the people who feel most strongly about opting out would also be against the idea of even a one-time check.

<comment><USER25> > but it would be interesting to consider a more scaled up "opt out" program > whereby you go through a one-time deep check and might be granted less > monitoring

No, that would not be interesting, that would be treason.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Hypothetically, couldn't Google just decide to break the gag order, be charged with a crime, and then argue this issue in front of a jury of their peers, and then be acquitted, establishing a precedent? It would probably be appealed all the way to the Supreme Court. I know Google is probably risk-averse enough to not do this, but they'd garner a lot of good will I think. Maybe I'm missing some gotcha that they'd never be granted a trial and the board of Google would end up in secret prisons.

<comment><USER27> > ...argue this issue in front of a jury of their peers, and then be > acquitted, establishing a precedent?

This is conceptually confused. Juries aren't judges or lawyers. They don't get to rule on questions of law, and their verdicts don't set precedent.

If Google does what you suggest and then a judge rules that, as a matter of law, the FISC order was unconstitutional, that means that _what Google would have been accused of doing was not illegal_ \-- which means no jury ever gets involved.

If on the other hand a judge holds that what Google would be accused of _was_ illegal, then you get a jury to decide whether, as a matter of fact, they did what they're accused of. But in that case, an acquittal by the jury wouldn't set a precedent that their actions were legal, any more than a jury finding someone not guilty of murder sets a precedent that murder is legal.

All of which means there's no reason for them not to seek a declaration of the order's unconstitutionality _before_ breaching it.

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

A jury can rule on questions of law.

<comment><USER27> No. Jury nullification does not mean a jury gets to rule that 'thing X is not illegal'.

Rather, it's a jury saying 'I know thing X is illegal (and I can't change that), but I'm going to say that the defendant _is not guilty of doing thing X_ , even though I think he did, _because I think thing X shouldn 't be illegal_'.

That may sound like a fine distinction, but it isn't, it's crucial. A legal precedent that X is not a crime means no-one can thereafter get tried for X (where the precedent applies). A jury nullification doesn't have that effect.

<comment><USER29> True, but if it happens regularly enough that the law can't be successfully enforced, the law itself would be de facto nullified.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> This is, I think, the _only_ way for these tech giants to come out of this scandal better off than they went in -- to take a stand, and take the fight to the feds, hard.

Google does have legal resources far beyond anything a normal citizen has, and since they have been compelled to secretly give up their data, they also have the legal standing to file suit (presumably, although who can know when you have secret laws decided in secret courts via secret decisions...).

So uh, go google!

<comment><USER31> > This is, I think, the only way for these tech giants to come out of this > scandal better off than they went in -- to take a stand, and take the fight > to the feds, hard.

This is a PR-stunt, nothing more. Google could have "challenged" any and all gag-orders even _before_ PRISM was leaked.

Was giving NSA wholesale access to user data _bad_ in 2009? -Why not _challenge_ that shit in 2009? Gag-orders getting in the way? -Well why not challenge _those_ in 2009 then?

I guess they were too busy extolling the virtues of being Open and Transparent: [http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/meaning-of- open.html](http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/meaning-of-open.html) \- that's December 2009, with PRISM in place for almost a year. Fucking scumbags.

<comment><USER30> I'm not as emotionally invested as you seem to be in whether Google is good or bad. It's a corporation, so I assume they will do whatever they can to make money, and will be generally okay with fucking people over if needed, especially if not many people will know about it. Just like Yahoo, Apple, Microsoft, and everybody else on that scale.

So why didn't they challenge it in 2009? Probably because there wasn't that much in it for Google, since wasn't a big national shitstorm blowing that way. But now there is. _That_ is the point I am making.

So, _now_ , Google could serve their own corporate interests by fighting hard against the rise of the secret police. Would that make Google an awesome person? No, it would still be a selfish corporate entity trying to get money, just like it always has been

But, it would (rightly) be perceived as a force for good, on the right side of this particular battle with tyranny. That would help you, me, America, and the world... but it would also help Google, it would seem.

And some of these other "fucking scumbags" (which I assume is your term for "corporations acting normally"), like Apple, Yahoo, etc., might be encouraged to do likewise.

In other words, it takes public outrage to create the shitstorm (which you will have noticed is in the mainstream media, not just nerd forums like this one), but once the outrage is in place, that helps align the interests of corporate behemoths like Google with what you and I would probably agree is Good (i.e., not having fucking secret police using secret laws to evade the control by the citizens of the nation).

<comment><USER31> I'm well aware that they're all just huge corporations going after their own interests. That's beside the point. You seemed to be commending Google on _" taking the fight to the feds, hard"_, and I just wanted to point out that there's no reason to commend them.

> So why didn't they challenge it in 2009? Probably because there wasn't that > much in it for Google, since wasn't a big national shitstorm blowing that > way. But now there is. That is the point I am making.

Yes. I'm also well aware that corporations engage in damage control only when it's necessary. But again, there's no reason to _commend_ them for doing precisely that, especially when _that 's all this is about_.

>>> _So, now, Google could serve their own corporate interests by fighting hard against the rise of the secret police. Would that make Google an awesome person? No, it would still be a selfish corporate entity trying to get money, just like it always has been_ >>> _But, it would (rightly) be perceived as a force for good, on the right side of this particular battle with tyranny. That would help you, me, America, and the world... but it would also help Google, it would seem._

Even in 2009, all those huge corporations were well aware of the "rise of the secret police", because all of them were either already participating in PRISM, or in the process of being strong-armed into doing so. _Had they perceived fighting this kind of evil to be in their own self-interest, they would have done it right from the start_. They could even have joined their forces in opposing the government, but they chose to remain silent. _Not a word_ about the systematic raping of people's privacy all over the world.

PRISM was just as evil in 2009 as it is now, and taking a stand against evil was the right thing to do in 2009, just like it is now. Parading around as some kind of paragon of corporate virtue while _secretly shitting all over your users ' privacy_, on the other hand, was something that _only Google did_. Also, if a highly intelligent bunch of people running a powerful corporation is interested in fighting the rise of the secret police, it'll be aware that's something that should be done _right away_ instead of after waiting around for several years for the situation to get even worse.

Google can't be _rightly_ seen as a "force for good", no matter how eagerly you swallowed their disingenuous PR-bullshit about the joys of being Open back in 2009.

>>> _but once the outrage is in place, that helps align the interests of corporate behemoths like Google with what you and I would probably agree is Good (i.e., not having fucking secret police using secret laws to evade the control by the citizens of the nation)._

It's important to realize that they've already proven they simply don't give a fuck. As long as they're making pleasantly massive piles of money and their armies of lawyers are keeping their taxes low, they're quite happy with the Status Quo. Don't think Google gives a fuck or even thinks it can change anything. Don't think it even _wants_ to change anything.

<comment><USER30> I'm not commending them, I'm simply pointing out that in the new circumstances, these corporations might benefit from fighting the creeping police state, and thereby doing The Right Thing™.

Back in 2009, they wouldn't benefit from it, so none of them did it.

I don't believe Google is inherently "open" or "not evil" any more than I believe Big Macs are "nutritious" or "delicious".

What I am saying is that massive public outcry about secret police circumventing democracy may not affect the government or their secret police very much -- not until it gets a lot _more_ massive anyway -- but it could have the effect of making the interests of multinationals like Google more aligned with _our_ interests.

Which would be a force multiplier, since one Google has the firepower of two or three million average citizens.

<comment><USER31> Did they benefit from fighting the creeping police state in 2009? -Apparently not, because they didn't.

Do they benefit from fighting the creeping police state in 2013? -Apparently not, because they didn't - at least until there was that massive shitstorm blowing their way.

Again, if they considered fighting the police state to be in their interests, all of those companies would have done it long ago. Since they haven't, we can conclude that they don't, and therefore, if a massive shitstorm prompts them into doing damage control and _pretending_ they give a fuck, that _still_ doesn't amount to Doing The Right Thing. It only amounts to bullshitting us some more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I think too many people and companies are tip toeing around the issue. Some more people need to take a stand for what they believe in and stand up to the government. If google believes so strongly that their rights are being violated they should hold a press conference and publicly release all the gag orders and data requests they have received. Let the government try to charge them with violating the gag order and then they can really challenge the order Federal court not this secret court.

The justice department almost certainly wont try to charge them with violating the order because they know that it will get declared unconstitutional by the supreme court and a giant company like google has plenty of money and lawyers to take it all the way to the supreme court. Most companies are too scared to see what will happen if they violate the unconstitutional order

</comment><comment><USER33> My current theory on this is that companies such as Google probably generate vast amounts of metadata (there must be a fair amount of it behind Google Now), primarily for advertising purposes, and that it's this which PRISM has "direct access" to under some sort of gagging order.

</comment><comment> r-shirt Let's presume that PRISM is the NSA getting the ability to copy unencrypted data being transferred across these companies' internal networks. Is that one request that affects _every_ account or one request that affects _zero_ accounts? I would expect that the latter would be asserted while the former is more true. And I can almost hear the justification: "if people weren't sending email from Gmail to Gmail and instead from Gmail to foomail, we could be collecting all of this information. You need to give us access to your network, or we need to break you up into smaller pieces which need to send information unencrypted to work."

<comment><USER34> It's not copying data being transferred, it's copying data sitting on-disk (which does include sending along updates to that data on-disk). NSA was getting that data even before PRISM, but companies were compiling it and sending it manually.

<comment> r-shirt Was this stated somewhere that I didn't see it?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I appreciate how the article frames it as a matter of Google preserving their own reputation, as opposed to principle, or it being "the right thing to do." They have been receiving information requests with gag orders attached for years, but are only fighting it now that the cat's out of the bag and they have something to lose. Until then, it seems that Google was fine with the situation as it stood.

I think it's an important distinction to make, and underlines how companies ultimately serve their own self interest before anything else; they're not acting nobly, and the ultimate responsibility lies with the individual.

</comment><comment><USER36> Much as I would love to see Google prevail in this, there is just no chance that would happen. The implications to _any_ other form of Govt gag orders (think sealed court records) would be immense.

<comment><USER37> > ...The implications to any other form of Govt gag orders (think sealed court > records) would be immense.

Gag order also of Greenberg/Guardian, then what are ES' options?

> "....The Ministry of Defence has issued a D notice preventing the UK media > from 'publish[ing] information that may "jeopardise both national security > and possibly UK personnel"'.

[http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/17/defence-d-bbc- me...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/17/defence-d-bbc-me..).

what's left-- pastebin, Kim Dotcom, Prate's Bay, that New Yorker thing(no, gag order), Anonymous posting onto defaced sites, Wikileaks, ... ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> It will be interesting to see how few or many FISA requests there really are. Google implies its a small number. The government was okay releasing the numbers opaquely, inside an aggregate of all law enforcement requests, which also implies to me the number may actually be low. If it's conspicuously low, we're left to wonder what alternative sources of raw data they're relying upon primarily. They may be trying to avoid that implication, thus, release of a low number may appeal to Google, but not the government.

</comment><comment><USER39> _Google reputation in shreds; funds transparent PR stunt_

</comment><comment><USER40> I am sort of upset with Google. Why didn't they do this in the first place? Honestly, seems like they are back pedaling to save face.

</comment><comment><USER41> My initial reaction to all the positive actions by these companies is to be a cheerleader and urge them on for "fighting the good fight", but I can't help but then turn around and be cynical. After all, as far as we know they were not proactive at all until the leak happened.

Do they have the users' best interests in mind? I honestly can't say so.

</comment><comment><USER42> This is where we get see what "Too Big to Fail" actually looks like.

If Google's too big to fail on it's own, but the Feds want them to fail because they're (Google) are poking around too much, what happens?

<comment><USER43> This is where we need more than one company to stand up. If Google is the only one doing it, and the government vigorously slaps them around a few times, more than likely they'll stop before they go out of business. And then _all_ the tech companies get put in their place -- want to resist government overreach? You're going to get damaged.

On the other hand, if they all resist, who is the government going to retaliate against? The entire industry? It would be too great a hit to the economy.

So the question is whether Facebook, Apple et al are going to take the short view or the long view. If they let Google be the only one to stand up then maybe it will encourage the government to damage their competitor, but in so doing set the precedent that the industry won't stand together on issues like this, which can only make the government more brazen in the future.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Could this lead to an interesting development in the issue of "corporate personhood?"

I would love to see a ruling that corporations have no constitutional rights. But the people running them do, of course.

</comment><comment><USER45> I would rather see them challenge FISA requests on the basis of tax law. These requests are, in addition to everything else, a form of taxation.

</comment><comment><USER46> A little late, methinks. Why didn't they - in concert with the other large companies - do this before, if they're so not evil?

<comment><USER47> Ultimately, a company has to have a compelling business interest to justify pursuing something like this. Until this became a public issue for these companies, it might be hard to argue that they'd be acting responsibly to pursue a legal case where the only result would be more detailed disclosure of these requests (not any change to the requests themselves.)

Google's arguably been the most active of the major tech firms in getting permission to disclose ranges of requests to date (has anyone else?); it's not clear there would have been a good business reason to pursue what may end up being a very expensive case if it proceeds all the way up through the court system.

<comment><USER46> And herein lies the issue of "companies exist solely to line the coffers of shareholders", with no responsibility to other stakeholders which is a narrow interpretation which had come about especially in the last 30 years or so. It's not a certain thing, although very common. Thorsten Veblen would call it a problem of remote capital, although other factors have also been at work since the 1960s.

<comment><USER47> For your statement to be relevant, you'd have to show that if they were concerned about stakeholders other than shareholders, they would have acted differently. That's not self-evident. It's not clear that this suit would have a material benefit for _any_ stakeholders - including users - until now.

It would only do slightly more than the current disclosure to expose the issue of such requests, and it would incur significant risk and cost in return. Given the recent controversy, I'd say this suit now benefits Google employees and shareholders, but I'm not sure it really does a lot for customers in reality.

Let's say Google wins the right to disclose the exact number of requests instead of the range it's been reporting. Will that really materially improve the situation for users?

<comment><USER46> I do not see how your points are relevant to my argument.

Not everything needs material benefit. Symbolic benefit can be as structurally useful and beneficial as a countable material benefit. For if a powerful set of companies acts, the power relationship with the government (and consumers, not always beneficially of course) then changes.

the whole point is that Google did't ask before, so the benefit is less than it would have been had they (and others) acted earlier. I am suggesting this is because of a lack of real stakeholder accountability. The benefit to users now is still appreciable, even though they weren't looking after their customers' interests as strongly as perhaps they might have in another era.

Relevance to what? This is a most pertinent issue with respect to the actions of executives of a large business. If executives are competent, then if their concerns are broader, they will act. And there is certainly no requirement for me to demonstrate this in conversation such as this. Your statement appears to commit a burden of proof fallacy.

<comment><USER47> And the point I'm making (which you seem to miss) is that the value of taking this step has actually risen. Prior to PRISM, if Google did this, it would incur similar risks/costs but only a limited number of people would care. Post-PRISM, when it's a national issue, the PR benefit for it has risen tenfold, while none of the other prior benefits have decreased. Regardless of how they're prioritizing stakeholders, the overall balance of risk/reward has changed drastically, so it doesn't tell you much about which stakeholders were prioritized.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Its not a big deal, google should quietly announce they are retiring the API and the government can try and contact someone at google.

</comment><comment><USER49> I guess since now corporations are people, this should be no problem.

</comment><comment><USER3> Again with the 'carefully worded denials' \- the denials were similar because they were accused of the same thing, which is allowing "direct access".

The most worrisome and misunderstood part of these reports is the "direct access" bit: can the government arbitrarily query company servers? their denials address that, they clearly say that is not the case, instead they sftp the data after being served with court orders or warrants and yes also the secretive FISA requests.

So by revealing the number of FISA requests they receive and their scope they hope to clear this "direct access" mess. As even FISA orders are much more acceptable than wholesale access.

As for the development being reported here: I think it has merit seeing how this clearly falls under the first amendment, but I'd like a lawyer to chip in.

[edit: clarity]

<comment><USER50> From what Google's said, it appears the government can't arbitrarily query Google's servers. Google has stated pretty clearly that someone at Google has to check off before an account is pushed to a machine that the government can access and that the data cannot be accessed without this happening.

That's Google. We've yet to hear from many of the other companies in the program about whether this sort of access is technically impossible, or whether it's an honor system that the government is supposed to follow.[1] I haven't been closely following the Facebook, Microsoft, or Apple statements, so maybe they have also been explicit that it is a restriction that is implemented by technical means. Some of the companies haven't said anything yet.

How many of the companies really make sure there is legitimate documentation for each request? Do they really do this every time, or have they become resigned to the fact that there's nothing they can do, so they just rubber stamp each request coming through, even without the proper legal documentation?

[1] This seems to be a major issue--the President and NSA leaders have claimed that analysts "cannot" access your phone metadata and phone call content without the correct legal instruments. But by "cannot", they seem to mean "they are not allowed to" rather than "it is not possible for them to".

<comment><USER51> re: [1]... Right. In fact, this morning I think we heard this is definitely policy and not technology. We were told that for this to happen [paraphrasing from memory] "One person would have to break the law [analyst], his boss would have to break the law [because he's supposed to approve the access], and remember this entire process is 100% auditable, so we'd catch them for sure."

Of course, this isn't remotely reassuring for a bunch of reasons. Most of all though, I'd be curious to hear more about how the auditing process works. He kept saying "auditable" I noticed, not you know... _" actually audited"_.

<comment><USER34> Snowden mentioned in the Q&A that 5% of the GCHQ accesses are audited, as one example. He mentioned 5% as if it's a low value but that's actually fairly high, especially if randomly-picked.

<comment><USER52> There are targets that are worth the risk of 1/20 being caught.

<comment><USER53> Especially with what being caught means. It's a secret program so no one will know and I doubt the analysts risk jail time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I recommend everyone have a look at the leaked documents and the extent to which all those companies participated in it and then judge their public relations reactions afterwards.

After the scandal was revealed, and only after it was revealed in an unprecedented act by Snowden, did Google come out in favor of their customers. This is ridiculous.

Google was caught pants down and there's no amount of PR bullshit they can use to white wash this and pretend the government forced them to do it. They willingly participated in exchange for political status with the government, that is the raw truth.

<comment><USER54>
      | After the scandal was revealed, and only after it
      | was revealed in an unprecedented act by Snowden,
      | did Google come out in favor of their customers

Was Google not already in court opposing NSLs? Filing with FISA was something that the EFF recently spear-headed.

I'm not saying you should trust Google with all of your secrets, or even all of your data, but it should be an informed decision.

<comment><USER6> We have enough information for an informed decision now, thanks to Edward Snowden.

<comment><USER54> Right, but saying "Google only starts caring about its users now," is not true. For example, Google challenged the National Security Letters prior to the Snowden leak.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> _> > The court approved each of the 1,789 government requests it received in 2012, except for one that was withdrawn._

Scary as hell, considering that one request can be as broad as: _"It is hereby ordered that [Verizon Business Network Services '] Custodian of Records shall produce to the National Security Agency…all call detail records or 'telephony metadata' created by Verizon for communications (i) between the United States and abroad; or (ii) wholly within the United States, including local telephone calls,"_

Google should cut the crap with PR moves and stop hoarding so much data about everything we do online. If they have, NSA will get it--one way or another.

<comment><USER56> > Google should cut the crap with PR moves and stop hoarding so much data > about everything we do online.

I like that Google has a lot of data on me---it makes their services much more valuable to me. I don't like that the government can access it secretly.

These are distinct opinions and both can be reasonably satiated simultaneously if there are proper checks and balances in government.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Fucking Google is manipulating these threads, trying to white wash their secret spying deals.

Don't fall for this bullshit, Google has been in the spying business for ages now. They joined the NSA program in 2009 and have been in trouble constantly in every spy scandal there is some google product involved. Wake up already.

</comment><comment><USER57> This is sortof hillarious, Google fighting for this when they mine ALL of your data...

<comment><USER58> The government has a monopoly on violence. They can kill you, send you to gitmo, take all of your money and possessions, etc.

Google by comparison can turn off your gmail account.

<comment><USER59> > The government has a monopoly on violence.

No, it doesn't.

People who aren't the government, and who lack its sanction in doing so, apply violence every day.

<comment><USER60> I don't know why you're being downvoted.

I'm certainly not the government, and I can quite legitimately be violent when defending myself from illegitimate (aka non-governmental) violence.

For example, if someone breaks into my home and behaves threateningly, I can (rather violently) shoot them, and the government won't object in the slightest. So much for them having a monopoly.

<comment><USER61> Yeah but the world is not the USA. Some states DO have the monopoly of violence. E.g.: if you try to kill me in Spanish with a knife and I shoot you, I'll go to jail.

<comment><USER60> Since we're talking about Google and the American government here, I thought the context of the conversation was understood.

<comment><USER61> _Sorry, I was editing and just addressing that :( It 's a bad habit of mine. I moved the edit here._

Okay, I know that he specifically refers to the US (he mentioned Gitmo) but remember that even then the state is the one who lets you exercise violence. The monopoly's just lending some of its power to make you shut up and stop whining so he can keep minding his (evil) business.

Also: Windows had a monopoly even when Linux existed. Monopolies don't always have 100% of the market share, but they're still a monopoly _de facto_ and will fight hard to achieve the full monopoly.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Lybia is hacked, should I buy .ly domains? - <AUTHOR>

Will .ly domains go under or will they final.ly be the cute new thing every business wants? <comment><USER2> libya</comment>


A new development era - <AUTHOR> http://blog.ziade.org/2013/01/25/a-new-development-era-essay/

<comment><USER2> > In fact, I think Python is becoming the secret weapon behind every good > Javascript application ;)

My recent experience says this is not true. Python is so widely used as a backend that it is in no kind of secret weapon - at least not in the way Lisp was a secret weapon for Paul Graham with Viaweb. _Every_ startup I've dealt with recently is building their backend in Python, Ruby or Node. I think the real story here is that compiled languages are on a major downswing in use for startups that build web apps. I haven't run across a startup building their backend with .NET or Java in a couple of years, except for one payment application that built the business logic with C# and MS SQL Server (they still built their web API with RoR).

Recently I tried to go back to compiled languages for a new web project. I really wanted to try something fun in Haskell that wasn't just data processing (what I normally use it for). I picked up Snap, Yesod and a few other libraries only to find that it was just too much of a pain.

Dynamic languages remove so many little annoyances with web development that it's hard to justify going back to a compiled one when you could just cheaply spin up an extra VM or two to deal with the performance differential between dynamic and compiled languages.

Maybe I'll try Go next...

<comment><USER3> Well you have Go, D and Haskell: And Scala, Clojure, Erlang if you count VM languages.

<comment><USER4> Erlang has a VM version?! I thought it had it's own VM.

<comment><USER3> I said "VM languages", not "JVM Languages" :P

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> That which was old, is new again. I find the cyclic nature to be interesting, and possibly a response to the increasing nature of computer power.

Originally, the mainframe was where the power was. Then the PC was enough to do a lot of the work the mainframe was doing. Then the nature of delivering experiences to those around the world necessitated a shift back to the server for a lot of tasks (try running Google or Facebook locally), with a shift to making the Gui thin... Performance in the browser was woeful.

Now, the performance of the browser across our increasing amount of disparate devices is nearly adequate enough for thick guis once more, with the bonus of it working across a multitude of OSes (Windows, Linux, Mac, iOS, Android, Windows Phone, Chrome OS, etc.)

It truly is interesting to watch and play in :)

<comment><USER6> This is more a case of "old is still old", I think. We've been hearing about how web apps or browser-based apps will replace desktop apps for many years now, yet it never happens.

I can still remember all of the Java applet, ActiveX control and DHTML hype of the late 1990s. It died out when it was proven to be nonsense. Desktop apps continued to thrive.

Then it built up again a few years later, during the middle of the last decade, when AJAX and jQuery became all the rage. These offerings were marginally better than what we saw in the DHTML era, but still lacking. The only traction they gained was at the very low end. Most serious users still preferred to use real desktop applications.

Now it's a few years later, and there's been a lot of HTML5 hype. Yet the browser-based apps are still no closer to replacing desktop apps. Gmail, for instance, has been around for almost a decade, but a great many people much prefer a real mail client. We also haven't seen much traction when it comes to modern online office suites, and other web-based alternatives to more traditional desktop apps.

Native desktop or mobile apps are going to be around for a long time. I question whether it is even possible for any browser-based app to compete. In order to do so effectively, it would be necessary to eliminate the browser itself, as it is the browser and its related technologies which provide the poor experience we get from many web apps. It just looks like a complete no- win situation for web apps, aside from perhaps at the very low end.

<comment><USER7> This is all anecdotes unless someone's done a survey, but in my experience _very_ few people use a native app for email anymore. I do so, but can't think of a single other person I know who does. Almost everyone's on Gmail, and a lot of people only do IM (Gchat, Facebook Chat) in the browser, too. And there was never a native desktop app for Facebook, but that didn't prevent it from getting a billion users. Likewise, where's the native app for YouTube? We all used to download videos and then watch them in native video players. Not anymore.

Maybe it's a matter of age — I suspect you might be a little older than me and the crowd I hang out with (mostly mid-20s). From my vantage point web apps have obviously already replaced many categories of native apps, and are on the way to replace more. It seems as if you are denying something that already happened.

<comment><USER8> I think a lot of people who have only been exposed to web based email don't realize what they're missing in a good native client. I have several friends in that mid/late-20s age range that went to work in corporate jobs, used Outlook 2010 for the first time, and then asked me for help getting their personal Gmail/Yahoo/Hotmail accounts working with Outlook because they like doing email there so much more once they learn to use it well.

edit: BTW, I see your comment was downvoted while I was writing mine. I just wanted to say that I did not downvote yours; you make good points about Facebook and YouTube, to be sure.

<comment><USER9> Outlooks is so much worse than gmail in almost every way. The only good thing about it for work is integration with all the other MS applications. My experience with Outlook after many years of gmail has been nothing but frustrating, and I hear the same story everywhere.

<comment><USER8> I'm genuinely curious what you mean by "almost every way".

I use the Gmail web interface daily because its keyboard shortcuts for labeling, archiving, and deleting are unbeatable for triaging my inbox, but it pales in comparison to Outlook 2007, 2010, and 2013 for composing and scheduling (and I schedule against an Apps for Business account, not Exchange). In particular, pinning search folders like "Unread Mail" to the "favorites" area is invaluable to me because I filter a lot of my mail with "skip inbox" and "keep unread" so lower priority mail doesn't clutter my inbox or distract me with push alerts, but I want easy access to it later. I've tried using g + l "unread" in the Gmail web interface to replace that, many times, but the experience is just so much worse that I don't find it usable at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's funny, this architecture he mentions of one-page-app clients on the frontend and microframework servers on the backend with Python is precisely the model I choose for a recent side project.

What I learned: \- Javascript requires a lot of architecture to be sustainable over even medium size apps (I stole N. Zaka's architecture)

\- Writing functional tests for Javascript is difficult. (Writing unit tests is easy)

\- Most web browsers are nearly there with everything you need for one-page- apps. IE8 is the only real problem, and I think my problems are soluble.

\- Python's single threaded nature requires that you make explicit effort to add offline jobs (I added a priority queue using redis)

\- Elasticsearch is actually quite complicated once your needs move out of the completely trivial

\- Most of the documentation for Elasticsearch assumes a working knowledge of Lucene (which I don't have).

\- Mongodb is really really easy to develop against

\- Getting a single page app to be sensibly indexed by Google is not easy.

Here's the backend source:

\- <https://github.com/calpaterson/recall>

And the frontend source:

<https://github.com/calpaterson/web-recall>

And the current deployed version is here:

<https://recall.calpaterson.com/about/>

I'd love to answer any questions, I'm not as keen on one-page-apps now as I was when I started.

<comment><USER11> Do you have a link that elaborates on N. Zaka's architecture?

<comment><USER12> I've also successfully implemented Zakas' [1] approach after watching his presentation "Scalable Javascript Application Architecture" [2] and abandoning Backbone.Aura [3]. Aura theoretically implements this, but in practice we found that it made some assumptions that were incompatible with our needs. Consequently, we rolled our own implementation.

[1] <http://www.nczonline.net/blog/about/>

[2] <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXjVFPosQHw>

[3] <https://github.com/aurajs/aura>

<comment><USER13> Very interesting mateiral. I used backbone.js a while ago but missed Aura.

Do you know if that architecture is compatible with Angularjs' philosophy?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Although there is definitely a shift going on, I suspect it won't be half as radical as people like the author tend to evangelize. This model may be a big shift for a simple web app, but for larger applications with lots of business logic it will barely make a difference.

The "big web app full of things" will still be there, only with a few things less, and it will still be built with tons of tools, not just a micro framework.

The future of web development won't be that different. There will just be more of it, but that's pretty much what has been happening since the 90's.

There's enough exiting new stuff happening without going overboard and announcing it as a new era or a major paradigm shift. Maybe I'm getting old, but I find it tiresome.

</comment><comment><USER15> The people live in a bubble, they don't considerer that there is others kind of software that required more (so much more) business logic, that only an insane man can try to solve with js.

<comment><USER16> The problems that can be solved using js grow large with each passing year though. I wrote a video recording and exporting app for a client this year using web technolgies (html + js + node). I couldn't have imagined that being possible 10 years ago.

<comment><USER17> Very cool. So did your app somehow manage to do video capture on the client hardware, or did you access something equivalent to a webcam?

<comment><USER16> In this case, it captures and streams from the computer it is running on via a video capture card. The application is for archiving audio and video from an external box that it monitors.

The nice thing about doing it that way, is that adding the capability to stream real-time from the external box that is being monitored is as easy as opening the ports to external access.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> MVC isn't just a good idea for making development easier, it's also the natural resting state for most applications. In the future, well just be distributing the models, views and controllers across multiple machines and networks, just as was done on the past.

</comment><comment><USER19> Still Server will render the main page. Main page is " html + main content that user and search engine wants to see". Because the search engines need to index this page ( meaning the URL ), so the main content must be same, unless it is a private page. Also the browsers are designed to render html from the server. HTML5 brings in a lot of dynamic features, but the main feature is not going away.

</comment><comment><USER20> Interestingly enough we still prefer to use a Twitter client instead of twitter.com, in fact those clients are what made Twitter big or at least so a lot of people claim.

Why would that be any different for other things? Why should that change in the foreseeable future?

<comment><USER5> Actually, we might, but everyone else didn't. IIRC something like 90% of traffic on Twitter was directly on the site, not through a client.

<comment><USER21> I would argue that Twitter is bad example. I prefer the Twitter site over the apps. Reeder vs. Google Reader is a different story.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> wait... this guy thinks the future is going to be simpler? when has that ever happened?

However, I largely agree on the right side of the big vertical network line in his diagram, and I feel this has been obvious for years now. The left side, not so much. I think the reduction of web services to JSON type data will enable an explosion of client side diversity, and that is a good thing.

Also there is nothing classic about "server-side" MVC : it is ridiculous and never made any sense.

<comment><USER23> "wait... this guy thinks the future is going to be simpler? when has that ever happened?"

It happens constantly. It's such a strong urge that making things simpler itself has become simpler.

I'm touching simpler right now. This linux distro (lubuntu, doesn't matter) took me much less than an hour to download and install, fully functional with no configuration by me. In fact it was fully functional before I installed it, because it was a live distro that connected to the internet with no configuration on my part.

15 years ago that would have required me to download a bunch of separate files, copy them to a stack of floppy disks, and keep a book by Matt Walsh open on my knees while I tried to figure out again how to make my computer talk to my modem and to the wider internet.

I'll completely reinstall my OS on a whim, with confidence. I used to approach it with dread and a good night's sleep.

I also don't adjust the choke on my car when I start it, and I have no idea how to safely crank the engine from the front of the car; actually, I can't find the place to put the crank handle in, and I can't find the crank.

EDIT: s/router/modem/

<comment><USER24> That's easier, not simpler. When part of the stack breaks you're even less likely to know how to fix it than 15 years ago.

<http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple-Made-Easy>

<comment><USER23> The procedure that I use is simple, regardless of the underlying complexity that makes it simple.

Eating is simple, even though the body is complex. I'm glad I don't have to explicitly operate my pancreas.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Funderbuddy – Apply for multiple grants with 1 application - <AUTHOR> https://funderbuddy.net <comment><AUTHOR> Hey all,

So a couple weeks ago, I posted a collection of different grants/funding opportunities with deadlines and all that ([https://github.com/sakofchit/fund- my-project](https://github.com/sakofchit/fund-my-project)).

But as I was going through all these different grants/funding opportunities, I've realized that a lot of them ask similar, if not the same questions.

So I wanted to build a platform that simplifies the process of applying to grants and funding opportunities. Rather than having to apply to each grant/opportunity individually, you could apply with just one application. In order for this to work, there would need to be individual funders/grants registered on the site. (There are no funders at the moment, but I'm optimistic)

Searching for grants the fit your niche can be tough, and I genuinely think that this could help with the discoverability of various grants as well.

I wrote more about this here: [https://funderbuddy.net/blog](https://funderbuddy.net/blog)

There's still a lot of work that still needs to be done. Let me know what you think!

Also feel free to follow @funderbuddy on Twitter for updates! ([https://twitter.com/funderbuddy](https://twitter.com/funderbuddy)) and feel free to join the discord server ([https://discord.gg/4j8zqrZ](https://discord.gg/4j8zqrZ))

<comment><USER2> Targeting small-time private funders seems like the niche to go for when you are recruiting them. Getting the funder/researcher flywheel started will be slow/difficult at first.

I can't imagine the NSF/NIH/DOE engaging with something like this -- they have all the money, and they are bound by federal law, so they set all the rules.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep you're right––I probably should've specified this. I think larger/gov't-operated grants probably won't use this, but I'm hoping smaller and private funders like you suggested would be the way to go

Thanks for the advice!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I think you've got a great idea here.

Why?

To explain why, let's have a look at another recent post to HN: "First 100 Days Of Dio" (Programming Language): [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22828111](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22828111)

What's the deal with that post?

Well, as is all too common these days(!), someone wrote another programming language and posted a link to their site on HN...

But but!

Hear me out...

You see, YC (or any other large, or even small investor) won't touch such a new language inventor with a 10-foot pole.

But that doesn't mean that I (and other) HN users might not be interested in contributing a small amount of money to them, maybe $5-$100.

Now, what would sweeten that deal on the other side -- would be to get stock, even if the shares are unofficial or even virtual, even if the company hasn't been formed yet. If you can't call that "stock" for legal reasons, then call it "an agreement which will result in the actual awarding of actual shares when/if a company is formed in the future".

Now you've got a platform for microtransactions.

Oh sure, perhaps nothing ever happens with the language, perhaps the guy quits or goes under, but you are completely up-front and transparent with your users, informing them that precisely that sort of thing could happen...

Even better would be to take 100 such fledgling companies that only need $5-$100 from a small amount of investors, and put them into a "bucket". That way, if 98 of them fail, 1 of them stalls, but 1 of them goes on to form a sucessful company, then everybody wins.

That's the way large institutionalized VC's invest. They're always making 12 bets, knowing that 11 will fail, 1 will break even, and 1 will succeed and make them their money back...

Why not bring those same ideas to a smaller market of "untouchables"?

?

</comment><comment><USER4> I noticed you had a list of funding sources in your github. Maybe you could address part of chicken/egg problem by using those to seed your site. Maybe just submit on people's behalf, as long as it's clear what you're doing.

<comment><AUTHOR> Might actually just do that first and then I could eventually migrate to this. Thanks for the idea!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Funderbuddy is a community of over 1 funders

Yikes, you have a chicken and egg problem to solve.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, mainly just posted here for exposure/validation before I spent more time reaching out to grants & organizations, etc.

<comment><USER6> I actually really appreciated the honesty, rather than hiding and pretending that you had a bunch of users. Refreshing!

It also makes me think of Michael Sebel's comment (paraphrasing) about how if you have $0 revenue or other metric" if it's zero, that should f __k you in the face "

Keep up the honesty, our industry needs it!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! I never really understood why some sites fudge their numbers (other than for boosting one's ego)––makes it even more embarrassing when they get caught!

<comment><USER6> Dude, it isn't just fudging their numbers on their site. I've heard pitches (mostly in pitch comps) where presenters outright lie about usage numbers, revenue, and partnerships. I'm still shocked with the ease some people do this.

<comment><AUTHOR> And they manage to get away with it?! That's just pathetic

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Hi bro. Some weeks ago I. created this [https://app.grants.world/](https://app.grants.world/), we can talk if you want, my mail is firstname.lastname@example.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool! Sent you an email</comment></comment>