skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Nothing concrete. I did not state anything, just a hunch.

> The secret to Baidu's success -- and Google's failure -- is largely positioning. First, Baidu has managed to win Beijing's favor, a trump card in this command economy. The government controls the Internet and appreciates loyal partners. Baidu understands that it operates under the good graces of the Chinese Communist Party, and continues to show it. As Robin Li, the company's chief executive, said in an interview with the Guardian, "As a locally operated company we need to obey the Chinese law. If the law determines that certain information is illegal, we need to remove it from our index."

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/09/29/where_googl...

> Privacy and Security. Google is committed to protecting consumer privacy and confidentiality. Prior to the launch of Google.cn, Google conducted intensive reviews of each of our services to assess the implications of offering it directly in China. We are always conscious of the fact that data may be subject to the jurisdiction of the country where it is physically stored. With that in mind, we concluded that, at least initially, only a handful of search engine services would be hosted in China.

We will not store data somewhere unless we are confident that we can meet our expectations for the privacy and security of users’ sensitive information. As a practical matter, meeting this user interest means that we have no plans to host Gmail, Blogger, and a range of other such services in China.

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/02/testimony-internet-in...
This discussion always reminds me of a poem by Herbert Kauffman printed in "How I raised myself from failure to Success in Sales":

You are the man who used to boast

That you'd achieve the uttermost,

Some day.

You merely wished a show,

To demonstrate how much you know

And prove the distance you can go....

Another year we've just passed through

What new ideas came to you?

How many big things did you do?

Time...left twelve fresh months in your care

How many of them did you share

With opportunity and dare

Again where you so often missed?

We do not find you on the list of Makers Good.

Explain that fact!

Ah no, 'twas not the chance you lacked!

As usual-you failed to act!
I really need a software called "Anti-GFW".
It seems they've already started that kind of spin. For example, in the wsj article:

"Chinese internet analysts said they were shocked by the Google announcement, but at the same time they understood the reasons behind its threat to back out of China. They said the cyber attacks have exposed Google's inability to protect its users' privacy..."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB126335402591827235.html
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那美国也和天朝一样，米有人权了
As an interviewer, after the third or fourth question, I would have said "If you could, in addition to writing the file copy function, list all the issues that you can think of that the code should take into account; the code sample can implement a subset of these" thus giving the interviewee an opportunity to show the familiarity with real-world concerns along with the ability to code.
Doubt it. Google search is instrumental in driving traffic to one's site. And its other products are integral in so many other areas, from docs to email, and so many other services I won't even try to list.
> Only until Google found itself on the receiving end of China's baton did it finally decide to change their relationship.

Maybe Google is lying to us, but what they were saying is originally it was 'well, even if censored, we can still be a positive factor'. Now they are saying, 'our presence is being abused by the gov't. We are now a negative factor'.

I'm sure they aren't giddy about getting hacked, but if not getting hacked was their primary goal, I doubt complete withdraw from China would be move #1
Default HTTPS access for Gmail
I really like the simplicity of the intro carousel. It feels like there is one screenshot missing though: how are the meeting notes inputted and displayed (arguably the most important screen).

What additional benefits do I get from using Ketchup that I wouldn't get from making a "Meeting Notes" folder in Google Docs or Etherpad?
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For all of you Avatar Blues Post Depression folks - this is a mighty good alternative... No really there is so much to explore in our Earth, instead of just being melodramatic about some movie.

Yes Avatar is frickin' cool.
That'd be great, if America was a democracy.
If you know enough to ask these questions, doesn't that prove that you can, in fact, code your way out of a paper bag? Each question he asked is basically the pseudocode representation of a diff to add each branch or feature to the code.
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Quite the opposite.

If a company has figured out how to give some of its profits to helping social cause X solve social problem y, that's great but ultimately sustainable only on the margins of our economic world. If this company has figured out how to make money from social cause X solve social problem y they'll do as much of that as they can. Other companies will join in. Social cause x will be far more helped.

You can always say that companies ultimately want to make money. Politicians ultimately want to get elected, preserve legacy, ego or whatever. Private people are only motivated by a desire to make themselves feel good, important, powerful, create a legacy, etc. etc.

You can always go back and question reasons. For serious movers you can usually find "ulterior" motives.

We applaud how politicians get elected. We applaud how companies choose to pursue agendas. That's all their is.

* It seems improbable to me that Google is ultimately motivated by a desire to protect IP.
> Privacy and Security. Google is committed to protecting consumer privacy and confidentiality. Prior to the launch of Google.cn, Google conducted intensive reviews of each of our services to assess the implications of offering it directly in China. We are always conscious of the fact that data may be subject to the jurisdiction of the country where it is physically stored. With that in mind, we concluded that, at least initially, only a handful of search engine services would be hosted in China.

We will not store data somewhere unless we are confident that we can meet our expectations for the privacy and security of users’ sensitive information. As a practical matter, meeting this user interest means that we have no plans to host Gmail, Blogger, and a range of other such services in China.

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/02/testimony-internet-in...
The 2-Billion-Eyed Intermedia
Official Testimony: Internet in China [2006]
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I thought Chrome kept [compiled] common js locally? I could be wrong. But it would seem explain some of the difference.
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Would it be possible to streamline taxes in USA? Would it not be interpreted as "making it easier to collect even more taxes"?

It depends. If you reduce the complexity of the tax system, thus reducing the required size of the tax agency, many of the same people who are anti-tax (or rather pro-lower tax) would be OK with it, because they would see that as streamlining the government.

The common idea seems to be that the tax code is very complex because there are so many add-ons to allow you pay less tax. Most US federal income tax payers can choose a simplified option, but they will not pay the minimum amount of taxes.

People, who for example think federal income tax is illegal, comprise a small enough group that they couldn't prevent simplifying the system (or any change for that matter).
So if we are going to judge programming as such, then what about all the plumbing and brickwork associated with art? Didn't an analysis of the Mona Lisa detect multiple layers of paint, indicating that the artist had retouched many parts of it? From what I understand, it's common practice.

For some reason, the plumbing and brickwork in programming isn't viewed the same way by all people. Perhaps it's because of the use of low level languages (and by low level, I mean anything less abstract than Ruby, Lisp or Haskell. you can't meaningfully remove boilerplate in the C family of languages.). I personally find it gratifying to refactor code into something more elegant, and I'm sorry if you don't see it that way.
Google May Close Operations in China
Right, if it was anything more than a comment on a message board, I agree, but just as borrowing a piece of paper or pencil during class without returning it is technically "theft", this is similarly justified.
OK, I'll delete it. Sorry.
Maybe Zoho should buy it.
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This is pure evil. I don't like it. Even if it works and it's fast and conceived by the ultra-smart people at Google, it is evil. Definitely sets off my "WTF" alarm. Storing code in comments and then later retrieving it for execution, what could possibly go wrong?

For example, there are ISPs (T-Mobile UK, I'm looking at you) that strip off any comments from HTML, as a compression measure. Now I don't think that's a good idea but it is a very widespread practice at 3G/GPRS ISPs and definitely breaks this "code in comments" thing, especially since this whole thing was designed with mobile devices in the mind.
I might be missing something here, but isn't David Ulevitch
affiliated with OpenDNS which should be more than capable of running everydns? Its maybe not their primary function, but its pretty close.
I'm surprised to hear so much negativity about Amtrak. I live in NYC and head upstate (to Rochester) for business regularly and Amtrak is by far my favorite way to make the trip.

A bus might make more sense on a shorter trip (like the aforementioned NYC to Boston example), but I think there's a real sweet spot for taking the Amtrak on trips longer than, say, 4-5 hours on the bus but shorter than a 2 hour flight (excluding baggage/security/travel to and from airport time).

Especially Amtrak's business class, which is extremely comfortable, with plenty of space for a computer and stretching out, quiet and spacious enough to get work done, and usually only an extra $20 or so.

I admit my fear of flying sways me toward Amtrak when a flight might make the most sense, but to me a bus is almost always the worst possible transportation option available.
> So if we are going to judge programming as such, then what about all the plumbing and brickwork associated with art?

In 'real' art (painting and sculpture for instance) the execution and the expression are inseparable, in programming you can delineate the one from the other reasonably well.

For instance, a mathematician without any programming skills could sketch out the basis of an algorithm, which could then be implemented by programmers familiar with their particular language.

> Didn't an analysis of the Mona Lisa detect multiple layers of paint, indicating that the artist had retouched many parts of it?

Yes, so ? He didn't get it 'right' or 'satisfactory' the first time and decided to change it.

But there is a reason why artists sign their works and programmers can collaborate, even across vast distances on the same work.

In the end it is all bits.

If Da Vinci had reduced the idea of the La Gioconda to 4 squares and you asked four different painters to create the 4 squares and you'd merge them the painting would probably not be hanging in the Louvre right now.

Even if he had sketched it and sent it off in four pieces as a guide it still wouldn't have worked.

And that process works quite well for software, which indicates to me that the two are fundamentally different.

> For some reason, the plumbing and brickwork in programming isn't viewed the same way by all people.

No doubt.

> Perhaps it's because of the use of low level languages (and by low level, I mean anything less abstract than Ruby or Haskell). I personally find it gratifying to refactor code into something more elegant, and I'm sorry if you don't see it that way.

Refactoring code and optimizations are a step above simply putting layers of stone above each other, effectively you've temporarily switched back to architectural mode.

And I definitely agree with you that that is a gratifying thing to do. But it also indicates to me that I should be more diligent during the design phase because refactoring, no matter how satisfying is an expensive thing to do.
By the definition of neoliberal, non-market structures are considered bad. But you don't know that, or you wouldn't have downvoted me, at least not the first time. Why you might have downvoted me is that you think a shift away from more socialist structures toward more market structures is a good thing, or (less likely) that we are not in a neoliberal era. In either case, to downvote an opinion because you think it is wrong seems silly to me. Why not write a rebuttal, if you're so smart?

I think I have come to take more pride in my vote volatility than in having lots of karma; when I watch it go up and down on a post I think -- wow, people actually care about what I said. And anyone who actually worries about their karma points on HN.... well, sorry about that.

Oh -- I do appreciate the explanation.
they seem to have roughly the same subjects over the long term as they did in the beginning

That's been my impression for a long time. Do your techniques allow you to measure the trend of people complaining about the site deteriorating? Because that's been going on for a long time too, and in approximately the same way (though possibly in cycles).

I think that has to do with an influx of programmers / people interested in technology in general whereas originally most of the people on news.yc were active in the startup scene.

Pretty clearly that is because the site was originally named Startup News and had a relatively narrow scope, then was renamed to Hacker News as part of explicitly broadening the scope.
Why on earth is this comment being downmodded? Netscan makes a completely valid point. What China should, in my opinion, do is slowly phase google out; throttle traffic to google's servers and then release some news articles with false statements from google that they can't support the traffic.

Getting the people of China to willfully abandon Google would be good in the eyes of the Chinese government.
Thanx jacquesm. I have very little knowledge regarding IPSPs. How do they differ from third party payment processors?
Do you have any links that validates these claims? This is the first I've heard of it, but I'd definitely avoid any ISPs that don't deliver me the page as the site intended it.
You really don't get it do you?

How do I go about explaining this in a way that the coin will drop...

Borrowing a pencil or a piece of (blank) paper during class concerns the use of raw materials.

There is no personal investment in to that piece of paper or pencil, they are the equal of any other piece of paper or pencil, which is why you can 'return' a piece of paper, you simply take another one that looks sufficiently like the original and you return it.

To take someone else's words with attribution is one thing, even when done without permission.

To take someone else's words and to pass them off as your own is the essence of plagiarism. You basically pretended to have come up with those words on your own.

That's 'not done', not because you can't but simply because if everybody would be doing that we'd be having a cut and paste discussion instead of a real one.

If you use a link to underscore a point you make (or even a cut-and-paste quote with a source) that's perfectly fine, but to simply copy someones words and make them your own is well over the line.

'Just a comment on a message board' has nothing to do with it, that's saying that it is ok to steal dollar bills but not ok to steal 100's.
After college I worked as a network administrator for a doctors office that dealt with pain medications. We constantly had problems with work mail going to the spam folder when it actually concerned drugs like Vicodin.
I think (judging by downvotes) that I am being misunderstood.

My thinking was along these lines: Mr Small Chinese Exporter wakes up tomorrow unable to access his Google Adwords account which is how he connects to foreign importers. He's out of widgets and wants to stop advertising them. He can't even suspend the campaign and they keep charging his credit card. That's bad business. I'm not sure China would want to do that suddenly even if they do plan to eventually block all of Google's stuff.

I took "al' Google service" to mean all the different Google products.
Anita Dunn: Fox News Is "Research Arm of the Republican Party" (Video)
Could someone post the text of this blog entry here into Hacker News Comments (if doing so isn't a copyright violation)? I live in China, therefore can't read the blog post (though have deduced much of its content from reading these comments!)

Before the Olympics, the Firewall would periodically block blogspot, but it was easy to get around it using proxies. However, post-Olympics, in May 2009, all of blogspot was blocked (not just those dealing with Fln G*ng, etc), including through proxies, newsfeeds, everything. Every few weeks, new sites are blocked. It seems the Olympics was a minor P.R. obstacle to the unrestricted censorship they really wanted; once over, the censors have gone into free fall.

The blockages seems arbitrary. One can almost understand a line of logic whereby all blogspot blogs are blocked, e.g. "The users are anonymous, their details not verifiable by our government officials..." blah blah. But how can you explain blocking http://www.python.org/download/ and subpages, blocked here for the last 3 to 6 months? The other Python website pages are accessible, just not the download page. Where's the logic in that? Those of us living here for a while automatically assume some other competing scripting language rep paid off some friend working at the censor bureau. "Who watches the watchers?" as they say.

Once a certain site has been blocked, it never reverts.
Some people here are starting to call the internet available within China a "Countrinet".
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But there is a reason why artists sign their works and programmers can collaborate, even across vast distances on the same work.
In the end it is all bits.

Ok, I have to admit, that is by and far the most compelling difference between art and programming that I've ever heard.
As important as this is to the spiritual debate I dont see it resonating that much with the Chinese. Google was a major underdog and lacked guanxi. The propaganda machine is undoubtedly unleashing its army of bloggers to talk about how it's a sorry excuse because baidu was owning them. China will raddle if and when Microsoft makes a similar announcement, but they have way too much at stake to do that.
I'm just a little disappointed though that they chose not to support IE6 (ya, I know).

I'm forced to use IE6 at work on my desktop, and so is everyone else. I think dropping support is leaving out a pretty large potential market - especially since most 'meeting minute takers' probably work for corporations, and most people forced to use IE6 are the very same people.
Well, other than it making my browsing experience a hell any time I'm forced to tether 3G off my phone, no, unfortunately not. The T-Mobile UK web proxy messes a lot with the HTML transferred, very often breaking the style sheets as well. The only 'defence' is using HTTPS whenever I can as they can't mess with encrypted data. It's a first-hand experience but if you're really interested I'd be glad to make a comparison of the HTML I get from any arbitrary site with and without T-Mobile.

I know O2 in the UK does something similar but as I'm not an O2 customer I can't check it.
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An IPSP is a third party payment processor. You are essentially suggesting that you wish to become one.

What you are about to do is to layer one IPSP on top of another so you control the stream of funds. Because you outsource the bulk of the problems to the IPSP below you you will have a relatively easy time of it.

If your merchants are going to use your platform (it is hard to say exactly what you will run in to without knowing a whole lot more about your project, but I understand you do not want to put all your cards on the table) then you will want to keep the balance you hold for them as low as possible to reduce the risk in case something goes wrong.

I'm actually working on a very long post (more like a small book) regarding the whole internet payment process, likely it will too much time for you to wait until it is done.

Ideally you would make a deal with an IPSP to see you as an affiliate, and get every merchant their own account with the IPSP. That way your exposure is limited and in case of conflict it will be between the merchants and the IPSP you pick.

Some, but not all IPSPs support this kind of functionality, the 'split' is usually either a fixed amount per transaction or a %age of the total sales volume.

You will have to figure in a two to six week 'holdback' period which is used to create a reserve in case of massive chargebacks due to fraud, it is also a major source of income for IPSPs and a major source of trouble in case one goes under.
The Chinese Singularity
I’m just left frustrated by those rallying around the move. Because, worst of all, Google is effectively walking away. A human rights situation that they could have had a voice.

Sorry to be idealistic but I think Google is having a strong voice. Google will likely to reachable to those enterprising enough to get past the great firewall.

If Google had just wanted to walk away, there are a thousand other ways they could have done this.
Next-gen iPhone rumored for April
It pains me to admit this, but I think that there are considerably more people who care about Brittany Murphy dying than care about this.

I suggest that you, instead, just subscribe to some RSS feeds.
What would be the reaction if we learned that the CEO of Ford didn't know how to drive a car?

Shouldn't confuse usage with fixing.
However, if it's a catalyst for other companies to follow suit it could be much more significant.
I've debated taking PG to task over this one:

http://www.paulgraham.com/philosophy.html

But I figure I don't need the internet drama, and I already find amusing ways to exercise my philosophy degree.
And Windows Mobile is free like the plague...
Agreed, with the exception that the proportion of articles tagged 'startups' decreased reasonably fast in the first quarter of the graph.

This was probably part of the iterative change from 'Startup News' to 'Hacker News'. I can't recall exactly when the name changed, or whether it was a response to that trend or precipitated the wider focus.

Edit: Change was made 14 August 2007.
You have to give them credit though for getting this much mileage out of it in the 'do no evil' department. I've never seen a more postive PR move before in my life.

First do something reasonably bad, then do an about face and come off like you smell of roses.

Impressive!
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