Hacker News Reader

jaceon India's telecom regulator cracks down on Facebook for its Free Basics campaign [pdf]

> So Facebook complained that its emails were blocked?

Even better: Facebook complained that Facebook's email infrastructure blocked Facebook from sending further email from Facebook's campaign, and Facebook failed to notice that Facebook's email infrastructure was doing this, so TRAI is now responsible.

jaceon Facebook submits to the TRAI supporting differential pricing of data [pdf]

Wall Street certainly has their hopes up:

http://www.nasdaq.com/article/facebooks-fb-free-basics-drive...

http://www.thestreet.com/story/13419399/1/will-facebook-fb-s...

Both articles fail to consider that the mood around Facebook in India is extremely negative, with widespread sentiment of them being a bully that doesn't mind destroying net neutrality for their own selfish goals.

jaceon Facebook submits to the TRAI supporting differential pricing of data [pdf]

TRAI is India's telecom regulator and is currently running a consultation on whether differential pricing of data should be allowed. Facebook has run a $44 million ad campaign in the country asking the public to lobby TRAI about something they're calling "digital equality". TRAI isn't amused at all and has thrown out their submissions as invalid, because they didn't answer the questions the regulator had asked.

http://tech.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/internet/trai-...

OP's post is Facebook's own submission to the regulator.

jaceon Facebook submits to the TRAI supporting differential pricing of data [pdf]

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/may/08/google-fac...

http://mashable.com/2014/05/08/fcc-letter-net-neutrality/#as...

jaceon Facebook submits to the TRAI supporting differential pricing of data [pdf]

It's remarkable that a company that stands strongly in favour of net neutrality in the US is so strongly against it in India. Speak of double standards.

So strong against it, they've spent $44 million in ads to tell the public to oppose net neutrality and instead support something they're calling "digital equality", aka free Facebook (and friends) without data charges.

Source for $44 million figure: https://twitter.com/raju/status/686000321965985793

jaceon Facebook's “free internet” programme hits a roadblock in India

That stat is misleading when you compare percentages against raw figures:

1 million: Free Basics users in India in 2015 (source: FB press release)

5.8 million: Data users acquired by Reliance, FB's sole partner in India, in 2015 (source: IAMAI)

109 million: Data users acquired by all telcos in India in 2015 (Sep 2014-Sep 2015, source: same IAMAI report)

So if Free Basics converted 50% of their users to the full Internet, that's about 500k users, or less than 0.5% of the industry's success rate.

Asking for dangerous policy exceptions because your flawed scheme has an actual success rate of 0.5% and presenting this as 50% is disingenuous at best.

jaceon Facebook initiates blitzkrieg ad campaign for Free Basics in India

One estimate said 50 crore rupees ($7.5m), another $20 million. We don't know for sure since neither Facebook nor the advertising industry association is willing to reveal actual figures.

jaceon Facebook opens up Internet.org amidst net neutrality row

Mumtaz is a female name. And since that suggests you aren't very familiar with India, I'll recommend not assuming that Internet.org is the only way people are going to get Internet.

It's not even taken seriously in India and got dragged into this debate only because of other proposals that are actually, intentionally malicious.

jaceon Facebook opens up Internet.org amidst net neutrality row

Wireless spectrum is a scarce public resource, allocated by government license, effectively granting the telco a monopoly. Simple market forces don't apply here.

jaceon Facebook opens up Internet.org amidst net neutrality row

Bad analogy, then? (Also, polio workers are getting shot in Pakistan.)

jaceon Facebook opens up Internet.org amidst net neutrality row

Under Internet.org, none of us activists would have that voice anyway. It's a carefully curated walled garden, not the internet. It doesn't include YouTube, email, or any videos at all.

We are agitating to ensure everyone else gets the full internet, not just Facebook. It's not that hard. The government already collects 5% of all telco revenues for a "universal service obligation fund" and has not spent it. The money sitting in that account alone could give everyone internet access.

jaceon Facebook Opens Internet․Org to All Developers Due to Net Neutrality Concerns

The pipe's fat enough. There's plenty of dark fiber. It's the last mile (wireless) that isn't cheap enough yet, because telcos want to protect themselves from being turned into dumb pipes before the users arrive -- internet.org is their smart pipe card (among similar, competing plans).

jaceon About Internet.org and net neutrality

> "some access is better than none at all"

Yup, like an hour a day instead of all day. Or 100 MB instead of 100 GB.

Not: Facebook instead of Google.

jaceon Blow to Internet.org as Indian Internet Companies Begin to Withdraw

But you're assured you've just seen the entire city and you're done and can go back now.

jaceon Blow to Internet.org as Indian Internet Companies Begin to Withdraw

They've completely pulled out for some services and conditionally for some others.

jaceon Blow to Internet.org as Indian Internet Companies Begin to Withdraw

Because there is no tradition of funding civil society organisations in India, CIS is mostly foreign-funded. That puts them under the purview of FCRA, which means they are explicitly forbidden from lobbying and politics, at risk of having their funding cut off. They necessarily have to limit themselves to policy research.

CIS is not and will never be the EFF of India until the FCRA rules change. We need another organisation.

jaceon Blow to Internet.org as Indian Internet Companies Begin to Withdraw

Wikipedia's charter requires them to increase access to Wikipedia, so signing up for internet.org was the right thing to do as long as it is not illegal. Let's put them aside for now and focus on the others.

jaceon Blow to Internet.org as Indian Internet Companies Begin to Withdraw

I think we're counting about 100k short of actual figures.

jaceon Blow to Internet.org as Indian Internet Companies Begin to Withdraw

With any luck we'll also turn out to be a campaign to be remembered. :)

jaceon Blow to Internet.org as Indian Internet Companies Begin to Withdraw

Precisely, which is why we're opposed to telcos scamming users with free lunches.

jaceon Blow to Internet.org as Indian Internet Companies Begin to Withdraw

For everyone interested in tracking the campaign: stats are posted here: https://twitter.com/bulletinbabu

jaceon Ask HN: What are the best developer conferences for 2015?

JSFoo 2015 will be the fifth year. That's the oldest. Rootconf 2015 in the third year is the youngest.

jaceon Ask HN: What are the best developer conferences for 2015?

Meta Refresh and Construkt have an open Call for Proposals:

https://metarefresh.talkfunnel.com/2015/

https://construkt.talkfunnel.com/2015/

jaceon Ask HN: What are the best developer conferences for 2015?

If you are in India, HasGeek's conferences are all for developers, and often pretty much the only conference on the topic in India (websites are still for 2014):

Feb 2015: Meta Refresh, on web UI (https://metarefresh.in) and Construkt Festival, on tech startups (http://construkt.me)

May 2015: Rootconf, on devops and cloud infrastructure (https://rootconf.in)

Jul 2015: The Fifth Elephant, on big data and analytics (https://fifthelephant.in)

Sep 2015: JSFoo, on JavaScript (https://jsfoo.in)

Dec 2015: Droidcon India, on Android (https://droidcon.in)

All conference videos are available at https://hasgeek.tv

jaceon Numeral.js – A JavaScript library for formatting and manipulating numbers

How do I do Indian-style comma formatting with Numeral.js? Like so: 10,00,00,000, with thousands grouped in three digits and everything else in two digits.

jaceon Peep: A "pip install" that is cryptographically guaranteed repeatable

I like it. I'm going to switch.

jaceon Indian generics and AIDS

I can assure you that is our concern too at HasGeek. It won't happen overnight but we will get there.

jaceon Indian generics and AIDS

You have my upvotes, Steve.

jaceon Instructions for switching to HTTPS-only with Nginx and Apache

I'm the OP and I'm happy to take recommendations on making this configuration better. In particular, I'm not sure what ciphers to disable to achieve FIPS compliance.

jaceon HN Meetup, Bangalore

I haven't seen any such behaviour on HSI. Prateek even goes out of his way to keep a low profile there.