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Show HN: thedaywefightback.js
- sinak 13y agoHey HN, Thomas and I (with help from a few others) have been working pretty solid for the last 10 days or so to get this banner ready, and wanted to get it out with plenty of time before 02/11. We realize there are a few cross-browser quirks and some of our code is messy, but it works, and any issues will be ironed out between now and February 11th. You can embed the code starting now without worry. In the meanwhile, if anyone wants to submit pull requests to fix any issues they see, that'd be wonderful. We'll clean up the code and fix any outstanding issues in the meanwhile. In case you missed it, this is a follow up to The Day We Fight Back campaign [1]. The site itself will also be updated on the day. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7037532 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7037532 Edit: If you work at a medium or large tech company and care about this issue, please take a moment to start a conversation internally about joining the day of action on the 11th. It can be adding the banner, or something else entirely. It's likely you'll find quite a bit of support amongst other employees. While we've reached out to the policy arms of some larger companies, we're pretty constrained on resources, and many of them are interested but hesitant. Engineers often have a lot of say in what actually happens; if you care, speak up.
- techwizrd 13y agoI'm working on a startup called postdot [1] that allows you to send physical mail the same way you'd send email. Would it be possible for us to help you add a feature to send a physical letter to your representatives? [1] http://postdot.org http://postdot.org
- fibbery 13y agothis is really generous and should definitely be followed up on. tons of email is easier to ignore than a cascade of real letters.
- derefr 13y agoIndeed, I hope they add the mail option, and get rid of the email option. Too many people will default to it (sending an email is much easier than placing a call) and as far as I recall, most representtatives don't tally "concerns raised via email" like they do for phone and mail (mostly because they have to open their mail, and take their calls, but they can just sit on email forever without the box getting "full.")
- sinak 13y agoThere is a callOnly flag for the widget that I really recommend people use. In brief there was a lot of debate over whether emails should be included at all, and the flag was the compromise. Some orgs, for example the EFF, will be promoting the call-only flag when they distribute the code.
- drivingmissm 13y agoI'm in the advocacy space and you aren't collecting enough information to deliver the emails to Congress, the web forms require many other pieces of information like a title (Mr./Mrs. etc) and often a phone number. Better to take off the email option than mislead the public that it will be delivered.
- eli 13y agoI don't think a form letter has much over a form email. Lots of advocacy groups already let you send a postcard with one click. (Though, in theory, both should get logged in the system. Whether or not the member cares is another issue.) A call or a letter/email you write and send yourself will be much more impactful.
- derefr 13y agoIn theory, both should get logged in the system. In practice, though, (I've seen this question answered in a lot of AMAs by congressmen et al.), they simply don't treat email as a constituency channel. The amount of attention your representatives tend to give your issue is directly proportional to the amount of time you can force them to spend listening. You can filter an email; you can skim a letter; you have to listen to a call all the way through. The best thing, though, is to set up an appointment, and talk to them in person.
- rubbingalcohol 13y agoHey, I couldn't find any contact info on your site, but this is something I would definitely like to learn more about. I'm working on a different project to help fight state surveillance, and sending physical mail could be a hugely useful feature. Could you email me jeff@rubbingalcoholic.com BTW, props on your generosity!
- sinak 13y agoYeah that'd be great. I've been wanting to do something like that for a campaign for a while. Feel free to send me an email (it's in my profile).
- xr09 13y agoThe Django Debug Toolbar is on, seems like you forgot to remove it from production servers.
- wallawe 13y agoHey, just a heads up: I went and poked around the site a bit and after submitting a blank form within the "Order Summary" modal, I got the following traceback page: http://postimg.org/image/74y6crfbf/ http://postimg.org/image/74y6crfbf/ "You're seeing this error because you have DEBUG = True in your Django settings file. Change that to False, and Django will display a standard 500 page."
- freehunter 13y agoNever, never, never push to production with debug mode on!
- Noxchi 13y agoSweet, I was hoping someone would make something like this! The thing that inhibits me from using your site is that I don't understand 100% what it does / how it does it, and how much it costs. I'd add A LOT more meat to your landing page. I want to know * What am I allowed to print? Show me examples of all the stuff I can do * Can I create campaigns, where it is automatically scheduled to send X on Jan 1st, Y on Feb 1st, etc.. * Can I have trinkets / widgets delivered to you guys and you combine that into one mailing? * I definitely want to be sure the printed thing looks like how I intended it to be. How will you do this? I would like it if I got the mail piece scanned or photographed (as a review copy, before it is scheduled to be sent) and emailed to me. * What's the cost? You don't have to do all the stuff above for free. You can charge a fee for everything, e.g. $1-$5 per trinket that has to be processed, $10-$20 for a review copy photo / scan. What's the cost per print + mailing? Can I choose the mailing speed (e.g. FedEx overnight, UPS 3-day ground, etc.)?
- futurist 13y agoDeath by feature-creep. Sorry, but you sound like you'd be a nightmare client.
- freehunter 13y agoWhile it might not be the best feature-set for this specific startup, those are features that I would be looking for if I wanted to use this for my business. However, the "About" page makes it very clear that this is nothing more than a project (not a business), so adding the feature request would likely take more time than it would bring in dollars.
- mherdeg 13y agoThe YCombinator startup whose product you may be able to use to build the service you want is Lob.
- smoyer 13y agoA platform play for "Snail-Mail as a Service (SMAAS)"! I love the idea, but most of my outgoing mail requires that I send along a specific piece of paper. Most of my bills can be paid on-line now, but my quarterly income/tax declarations require a coupon that's 1/4 letter size. I suppose it's the signature they really want (though my account details are on there too and for some people, that eliminates incoming payments that can't be read due to illegible hand-writing).
- timmclean 13y agoYour Django debug is showing! D: DoesNotExist at /letter/new Address matching query does not exist. Lookup parameters were {'name': u''}
- wyager 13y agoThat would be freaking awesome. I would totally pay 1mBTC or something to have a letter sent for me.
- bib971 13y agoAlways got "DoesNotExist" error whichever valid address I put in
- donw 13y agoYou've got an interesting idea, and I have no idea how to contact you from your site to talk to you about it. Or from your HN profile.
- Fletch137 13y agoLove the idea, but I don't really get the recipient field - whichever (valid) address I put in, I get an error. I also think it's a bit unclear on what should be entered here, a post/zip code, company name, etc.?
- viraptor 13y agoHey, I tried to check out the examples, but neither one displays the header for me. (FF-28a) There's only a black bar at the bottom of the page and this in the console: TypeError: options.location.country is undefined if(options.location.country.iso_code) {
- sinak2 13y agoSorry, our bad. Fixing that now, should be done in a few minutes. That's our GeoIP server not returning a value, and our javascript freaking out as a result.
- beaugunderson 13y agoShould be fixed now; sorry! Made the code that checks for geoip location more resilient.
- teawithcarl 13y agoThanks, Sina.
- darkotic 13y agoWordPress plugin to add the footer js. https://github.com/darkness/thedaywefightback https://github.com/darkness/thedaywefightback
- whitegloveapps 13y agoThanks for making the plugin! How do I add it in WordPress? I went to https://github.com/darkness/thedaywefightback https://github.com/darkness/thedaywefightback, downloaded it as a .zip, and tried to install it via http://www.my-site-name.com/wp-admin/plugin-install.php?tab=upload http://www.my-site-name.com/wp-admin/plugin-install.php?tab=..., but got the error "The package could not be installed. No valid plugins were found. Plugin install failed."
- darkotic 13y agoThe zip contains a subdirectory. Only the subdirectory should be uploaded to your site plugin folder. If you want to upload a .zip file in the browser, only the subdirectory should be zipped first.
- whitegloveapps 13y agoThanks--zipping the subdirectory, then uploading it, worked to install the plug-in. (If it's not too much trouble for you, putting it in the WordPress Plugin Directory, http://wordpress.org/plugins/ http://wordpress.org/plugins/, would let WordPress users find it easily.) Unfortunately, when I tried to activate it I got this error: Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_FUNCTION in /home/content/61/6806261/html/wp-content/plugins/thedaywefightback/thedaywefightback.php on line 13
- darkotic 13y agoThe official site has chosen a similar plugin that has some additional options you can configure. They've also added good instructions on how to install it. https://github.com/modemlooper/thedaywefightback.wp https://github.com/modemlooper/thedaywefightback.wp
- scoot 13y agoIt's not obvious from the call-to-action button or on the call info page whether the call costs the end user anything, and if so, how much. Judicious use of the word 'free' might increase conversions (if that's actually the case).
- bmelton 13y agoIt just occurs to me, though I'm signed up and all, that I don't actually want "new laws" that curtail online surveillance. I don't personally believe that the current interpretation of law is Constitutionally valid, and what I really want is for more gravitas to be given to the 'old laws', namely, the fourth amendment. I don't know that I expect you guys to change it, or whether or not my non-solution is actually workable, or that it will necessarily stop me from displaying the banner; Either way, while I'm not trying to be a pedantic nay-sayer, I couldn't let it go unmentioned.
- joshfraser 13y agoI agree. History has shown that new laws are largely used to legalize the behavior. The wording should focus on the fact that mass surveillance is unconstitutional and we want our leaders to support the constitution that they swore to uphold.
- midas007 13y agoAll socially-polished hustlers in the DC area might consider prioritizing some time to setting up meetings with congress people to continue this crucial conversation in person. It's important to underscore that their participation in the debate or not and their votes are being watched. On a personal note, a friend of mine promised to do this and I will bug him again to follow-through on it.
- thatthatis 13y agoThis trend suggests to me that a centralized, trusted "outcry" system would be useful. It'd be great if I could just add outcry.js, then on outcry.io enable this campaign instead of having to add new banners every time the Internet gets up in arms about SOPA/CISPA/NSA.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- sinak 13y agoSo the Internet Defense League [1] do this already, and we'll be distributing the widget through their code as well. The reason for not doing this natively through the IDL codebase [2] is that we are doing a load of custom stuff that they don't generally support. At some point we'll abstract it all out and add it to IDL though ... generally our Taskforce.is group builds something for a campaign and then reuses the code as much as we can. For example, this project recycles a bunch of code from Project Megaphone [3]. [1] http://www.internetdefenseleague.org/ http://www.internetdefenseleague.org/ [2] https://github.com/fightforthefuture/idl-members https://github.com/fightforthefuture/idl-members [3] https://github.com/tfrce/project-megaphone https://github.com/tfrce/project-megaphone
- thatthatis 13y agonice, thanks for the links
- tveita 13y agoI doubt many people really want to copy/paste a piece of AGPL 3 licensed code into their website. Is people "stealing" this code really that much of a concern?
- herokusaki 13y agoWhat counts as "linking against a library" for JavaScript code?
- richardwhiuk 13y agoLots of people won't want to take the risk of not knowing what the answer is.
- awj 13y agoThat's exactly the kinds of questions that this library shouldn't be raising.
- belorn 13y agoIf the result count as a combined work that requires copyright permission (ie, copyright law), then you must have a license. The question about linking is always about this question. If you are creating a combined work, AGPL would then provide permission under the condition that all users interacting with it are given an opportunity to receive the source code.
- sinak 13y agoSo that license was suggested by someone at FSF and I ran with it because I don't know enough about licensing. Can someone who does make a suggestion and I'll change it? We do use snippets in the code from other GPL/Apache licensed code in main.js for example, but we specify the sources and licenses for each snippet in the code. My original thought was to use http://unlicense.org/ http://unlicense.org/. Would that work? Do I need any other language in there to clarify that the licenses of the snippets we use stand? (Feel free to submit a pull-request with fixes) Edit: Made an issue for this -> https://github.com/tfrce/thedaywefightback.js/issues/31 https://github.com/tfrce/thedaywefightback.js/issues/31
- pnathan 13y agoI understand that phone calls are one of the more effective ways to communicate your thoughts with a US congressperson. I know tokenadult recommends the Albert Einstein Institution's writings. What are other effective and positive ways to influence the culture besides being "Angry Tech People"?
- ultramancool 13y agoIf you want to "fight back" as a technical person, please do something useful: - Learn some applied cryptography and use that knowledge to write and review cryptographic software. Develop and analyze anonymity networks. Work towards development of powerful peer to peer replacements for existing centralized technologies. - Deploy systems with this technology - Teach others to take advantage of it Don't waste your time and everyone else's with worthless campaigns such as this. The only real way to change is to defeat the useful purpose of spying.
- ajkjk 13y agoOf course, your whole point hinges on the last sentence, which many will disagree with. Awareness can go a long way if done right.
- ultramancool 13y agoWhy settle for awareness when you can have a real solution? Awareness is worthless when lies will be the only response. Never take a half-measure.
- ajkjk 13y agoWho's settling? Awareness is much more achievable for far less effort and has exponential effects in how many people can affect the issue. Always take half-measure, if cost-benefit or your own priorities indicate it's worthwhile, and don't hide behind canned responses to justify irrationality.
- zmanian 13y ago
- joeblau 13y agoI was going to add it to http://www.gitignore.io http://www.gitignore.io, but I need someone to give me a quick rundown of the License: Pro/Con style. Thanks.
- dkroy 13y agoImagine if Google did this in place of their search engine.
- godgod 13y agoKinda hard to see Google join this fight. They are in bed with the NSA.
- godgod 13y agoPure awesomeness. Dear NSA, this isn't over.
- joshuahedlund 13y agoAre there already representatives co-sponsoring the act the script asks them to co-sponsor? Would it helpful/possible to customize the script for those users to say "I very much support your sponsorship" (i.e. to encourage them to be more active about courting other reps, etc) vs. the same "Please co-sponsor..." text?
- einrealist 13y agoWhy only online surveillance? What about surveillance in general and the fact, that secret services are causing more damage than they prevent?
- dmix 13y agoEvery HN NSA thread has someone defending spying as something moral and ok, only taking issue with mass surveillance. So I doubt this comment will get much support. The more I read about the history of IC, the more I agree with the "causing more damage than they prevent". History is completely littered with good examples. For every success such as intercepted Nazi radio comms in WW2 there are countless interferences in international politics with temoporary economic benefit and long term poltical turmoil (Iran assassination, trained Al Queda fighters, CIA-supported Indonesian mass killings of communists, etc).
- lucastx 13y agoSlightly off-topic, but since the developers are listening: Is there a RSS feed for The Day's blog (https://thedaywefightback.org/blog/ https://thedaywefightback.org/blog/)? I want to keep up with the news.
- sinak2 13y agoHey Lucas, we need to add something like Jekyll-RSS-Feeds (https://github.com/snaptortoise/jekyll-rss-feeds https://github.com/snaptortoise/jekyll-rss-feeds) to our repo. I'm totally strapped for time, but will try - if you fancy submitting a PR though, the repo is here: https://github.com/tfrce/thedaywefightback https://github.com/tfrce/thedaywefightback
- dreamdu5t 13y agoThe bill this campaign supports is a joke. It doesn't stop the NSA from mass surveillance. It just legalizes it.
- 0ca0 13y agoYeah, I'm sure that if people just nicely asked their oppressors to stop then they would. This is the right idea here. Good job!
- stefan_kendall 13y agoRemember when fighting back involved marches and riots in the streets? Now it's a hashtag. Waaaay more convenient. Things are definitely going to change.
- orthecreedence 13y agoYou're right. Raising awareness is a waste of time. It's probably best to do nothing at all.
- 0ca0 13y ago>It's probably best to do nothing at all. False dilemma. >You're right. Raising awareness is a waste of time Raising awareness to what end? Things get done by doing, not by talking about doing. What you are doing is raising awareness about raising awareness. Your endgame is for everyone to be aware that nobody is protecting their freedom of speech. Your efforts are to keep a conversation alive, not the freedoms that the conversation is about. Raising awareness is only the goal when what you really want is to be included in a conversation in order to identify with a social circle. Raising awareness is a side effect of when you be an example by doing what you believe in.
- 13y ago
- bennyg 13y agoBoom. Put it on my site that links to a slightly relevant iOS app I made. https://www.onions.io https://www.onions.io for those that don't mind a shameless plug.
- alkonaut 13y agoAww I thought it was finally a campaign against js
- eli 13y agoWhat if my representative is already a co-sponsor of the USA Freedom Act? Seems like it would not be very helpful to direct people to call/email her office and demand she support something she already supports. There's a list here: http://sensenbrenner.house.gov/legislation/usa-freedom-act-cosponsors.htm http://sensenbrenner.house.gov/legislation/usa-freedom-act-c...
- benburleson 13y agoMy understanding is that staffers take the calls and basically tally numbers of support (positive or negative). If the numbers agree with your representative, they can use that as ammo in their debate.
- eli 13y agoOK, fair enough. But you mean like a debate on the floor? I'm not sure how many minds are changed on the floor of the house... especially based on a second-hand tally of constituent calls.
- cshenoy 13y agoBetter to have it recorded instead of nothing. Action seems better than inaction in this case.
- nej 13y agoThey should at least promote the good legislators that cosponsored the USA Freedom Act on the banner so the good ones don't get sent massive phone calls and emails and are instead promoted for doing what's right.
- fuqua 13y agoYes, for sure. As someone who works there, there's nothing more annoying for staff assistants sitting through hundreds of irrelevant calls from uninformed people reading a script. It's not a problem to call offices already in support of the legislation, but make sure those calling know that before they dial!
- ctdonath 13y agoJust more noise for the NSA to sift thru and for well-paid legislators to ignore. Americans: there's something called the Fourth Amendment. What we need is a free straightforward how-to guide to filing suit over this wholesale monitoring[1], such that thousands of individuals can act on for mere court filing fees. Overwhelm the courts with it, creating a proliferation of contradicting verdicts, forcing the Supreme Court to address it on terms of 300,000 individual citizens vs NSA. Rather than pouring vast sums into a single case with a couple carefully selected plaintiffs and hoping for an unlikely perfect outcome, crowdsource it. Just a recurring thought. [1] - which the Founding Fathers would certainly enumerated rights against had they been able to conceive of such pervasive intrusion on "papers".
- eli 13y agoAmericans elect their legislators. If enough people in their district don't like what they're doing, they can put someone else in office. It's a beautiful system. And careful what you ask for re: a SCOTUS ruling.
- ctdonath 13y agoThe problem is the "tyranny of the majority". Those who don't understand the issue squash the interests of those who do. Fortunately, the Founding Fathers wrote a Constitution which focuses on protecting and facilitating the rights of individuals such that no majority can (in theory) suppress them. For the issue at hand, getting enough voters in enough precincts to take a dominating stance on something as obscure as NSA spying is unlikely; a system as beautiful as the one you note is the one whereby a single person can stand up and say "you can't do that!" and, duly adjudicated, be left alone. Yes, asking for a SCOTUS ruling is playing with fire in a hay barn. I'm just annoyed that for all the ink spilled on this (and other such topics, see 2nd Amendment) there is precious little actual court activity addressing it, with most of it decided by either extremely big money or guilty-as-hell defendants grasping at straws; the legal system should be reasonably accessible by pretty much anyone without having to shell out big bucks for lawyers more interested in preserving their symbiotic relationship with the courts.
- inglor 13y agoSo, letting arbitrary javascript from an untrusted source run on our production website? No thanks.
- davexunit 13y agoYou are a grump. The source is right there for all to see, audit, and fix.
- shuzchen 13y agoThe problem with this widget is the majority of the widget contents are stuck in an iframe. The js code mostly just does time detection and places the iframe on the site. So even if you can audit and fix the js code you're running, you're still including content served straight from someone else's machine. When we did this similar thing for sopa blackout (https://github.com/sirpengi/sopablackout https://github.com/sirpengi/sopablackout), our widget was entirely self-contained (and under 200 LOC). And if you didn't trust our server you could host it entirely yourself.
- Sir_Cmpwn 13y agoYou've got MediaCrush's support, with ~10k average daily uniques. https://mediacru.sh https://mediacru.sh http://git.io/foPs6w http://git.io/foPs6w
- sundip 13y agoLooks to be a great way to spread the word for this day of protest. I cloned the github repo into a runnable; should make it easier to go through and try out changes to the script: http://runnable.com/UvKyrkfQ1xg-AAAN http://runnable.com/UvKyrkfQ1xg-AAAN
- ediblenergy 13y agoIs this to get only the NSA to stop collecting data on everybody, or Google/Facebook as well?
- plg 13y agoThe day we fight back against privacy violations run amock. Now enter your phone number and email into this JavaScript banner.
- athaeryn 13y agoWaiting for the NSA to submit a pull request with some sort of "back door" function.
- puppetmaster3 13y agoI'm about to give up on fighting NSA, I think they win.
- whitef0x 13y agoCool concept and idea, although I'm not sure whether this will make anything change up on Capitol Hill. Wikipedia's SOPA blackout sure didn't (they just waited 6 months after the fact to pass another) law. I think there has to be a better way to enact change than to voluntarily replace you website with a huge black banner. Maybe through lobbying or a SuperPAC type of organization (with donations?).