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New Startups Aren't Keeping Big Mattress Up at Night - prostoalex http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-12/new-startups-aren-t-keeping-big-mattress-up-at-night ====== Scoundreller They're merely in the early adopter phase. The internet didn't destroy printed newspapers overnight, but one by one, they're finishing them off (in print and in organization). The sad thing is when people don't work less when their costs go down but instead spend the freed money on something else, like higher rents or mortgage payments.

I Do Not Want Your Stupid App - sagivo http://techcrunch.com/2015/10/03/with-apologies-to-theodor-geisel/ ====== greenyoda Ironically, TechCrunch, the publisher of this amusing rant, has an app: [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.aol.mobile...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.aol.mobile.techcrunch) [https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/techcrunch/id526058642?mt=8](https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/techcrunch/id526058642?mt=8) ~~~ minimaxir TechCrunch, in fairness, doesn't beg the user to download the app. ~~~ Quanttek Also: Just because the publishing media has one of _those_ apps, it doesn't mean that one of their writers can't express his dislike for those apps. If anything it proves that he has a certain independence from the business facing side and that's always good. ------ staunch > _Redecentralize the web!_ Redecentralize all internet services! Shameless plug ahead, I believe in this idea so much I co-founded a company to help spread the idea and see it through. Every person should have their own domain name and have the ability to run arbitrary services in the cloud. The price of computing power and bandwidth has come down so much that it's completely practical to do this now. Would love feedback/thoughts: [https://portal.cloud?invite=hn](https://portal.cloud?invite=hn) (invite code is just there so free domain discount is applied). The most important thing is that no company (including mine) should ever have the ability to dominate the internet the way Google, Facebook, and Twitter do today. We should be able to move from cloud provider to cloud provider with very little friction. If we truly control our own domain names, apps, and data this isn't even hard to do. Google, Facebook, and Twitter could be just apps we run (webmail, web search, photo sharing, status updates). We shouldn't have to give up our privacy and be locked into a service that feeds us a hundred ads a day just to be able to check our email, search the web, share photos, or post 140 characters to the web. ~~~ acconrad I like the headline! I was initially intrigued because I just started a side project, bought the domain, and set up Google Apps for email. Then I'll probably set up a Medium blog for the project. I thought "oh neat, it's all contained in here, and a free domain that's cool!" Then I saw the price point: $8/mo. Yeah sorry, you need to be more competitive for groups that only want a few services. Google Apps is $5/mo and Medium is free...is it worth an extra $3/mo for me to decentralize project/business type emails and documents? Not really, because I don't have any sensitive documents that I don't care for Google to have access to. Maybe if I were a journalist starting a secretive blog and needing to communicate between journalists over sensitive information - yeah, I could see that. I think those are the kinds of people you're going to want to market to. Reasonably priced for sensitive documents and files, but more than conventional app solutions who don't really need the extra decentralized security. ~~~ jlgaddis I think I must be misunderstanding. You talk about "decentralizing" but you mention Google Apps for e-mail and Medium for a blog. If you want to decentralize, you should be running these things on your own server(s) that you control. What am I missing? ~~~ narrowrail I think acconrad is just saying: Decentralized is for sensitive things with a need for "extra decentralized security," and that most conventional needs can be met more adequately, and cheaply, with the services 'everyone' already uses. Basically, it's a philosophical difference, but the ideas expressed may give proponents of decentralization some insight into why we are currently in another centralizing phase of the internet. ------ radicalbyte But how else can these sites get access to your contact list and call history? ~~~ adevine Require Facebook login - close enough. ------ SCdF See, I agree, but this is what this article looks like on my phone: [https://imgur.com/VqchKIp](https://imgur.com/VqchKIp) Perhaps one should become a good example of an enjoyable mobile experience before one starts throwing stones. ~~~ Bahamut Installing an app for everything is not what I call an enjoyable mobile experience... ~~~ SCdF Sorry, not sure if I was clear. What I meant was: Techcrunch shouldn't proudly point out that everyone else is making reading on a mobile device unenjoyable by asking if you want to install an app, because they themselves crap so much non-content on your screen and make their own mobile experience an unenjoyable one. ------ jgh Maybe get a windows phone or something if you want to surf the web and not have to worry about installing any apps... ~~~ toomuchtodo Or just use ad blockers to block app download notifications on the website ~~~ LeoNatan25 But then poor publishers might be forced to abandon their terrible ways! How undemocratic of you to suggest that! ;-) ------ omarish This is why I'm super bullish on The Information ([https://www.theinformation.com](https://www.theinformation.com)). ------ jagermo I always thought: "Well, those apps, I don't know. I don't use webapps on the pc anymore, because the browser does everyting. And some day, the mobile browser will be just as good and no one will need those apps." That was before peope discovered mobile ads, access to phonebook/email etc pp. Maybe it'll change. ------ sagivo Apps are only popular because we don't do mobile web good enough. Most of the mobile web is either a banner asking download the app, or tons of adds with no room for content. ~~~ corndoge Mobile web doesn't come anywhere close to replicating the fluidity and functionality of a native app and it never will. Running a dedicated application designed for the system will always beat an application designed for the system on top of the system (web browser). I prefer native applications every time. ~~~ currysausage Yeah, but maybe I just want to, you know, read an article and not _replicate the fluidity and functionality of a native app._ Reading articles worked just fine with NCSA Mosaic, I promise it works fine mith Mobile Safari too. ~~~ corndoge OP's argument was that mobile apps are only popular because the mobile web is not good enough. Obviously when the mobile web is used for it's original intent -- pages of information, mostly text, some images -- and not full web applications with heavy JavaScript dependencies and animation and share buttons and shit, it's a pleasure to use. ------ paulpauper Email subscription popups ...those are annoying

The Nano Membrane Toilet - ph0rque http://www.cranfield.ac.uk/research/research-activity/current-projects/research-projects/nanomembrane-toilet.html ====== matt_wulfeck Is residential water usage really a large problem? I assume that municipalities have a decent ability to reclaim and reuse much of the water flushed down the drain and toilet. I know at least for California residential water use makes up just 15%[0]. I know every little bit helps, but a toilet is an incredibly simple invention and it would be a shame to replace it with something so much more complicated. [0] [http://www.environment.ucla.edu/media/images/water- fig1-lrg....](http://www.environment.ucla.edu/media/images/water-fig1-lrg.jpg) ~~~ glibgil I wish you would read the article and watch the video. The target market and business model is well explained. Can you imagine a region in the world that does not have running water and sewers and may actually enter in the "first world" before those services do? Well then, that's what this toilet is for. ~~~ roywiggins Composting toilets don't need water either. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Composting_toilet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Composting_toilet) Alternatively, just try to divert urine so it never mixes in the first place: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urine- diverting_dry_toilets](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urine- diverting_dry_toilets) Both of these seem on first glance to be easier to maintain. ~~~ glibgil Yeah, this toilet isn't for rural use. It is for places that should have sewers but don't and that probably never will get sewers. It is for dirty cities in the third world. ~~~ brianwawok Will the cost of these toilets ever make sense for that? When I see things like "Turn a 2L bottle into a light" for a really poor area - I think awesome, something they already have laying around can make their lives way better. When I see things like "Nano-polmer super toilet for those without running water" I just kind of shrug. Seems to cost more than adding running water, while still not providing a clean place to drink. What am I missing? ~~~ cpayne (I think!!!) it is a problem of scale. In 3rd world locations, you can be walking 3km every 2nd day to fill a jerrycan of water. If that's the case then you aren't going to use that to flush. And even if you do (using grey water after cleaning etc.), then you won't have the toilet inside the house. ~~~ brianwawok So how much does installing this super toilet cost, best case? How much to run a line of fresh water to the house? If <cost of toilet> is not less than <cost of fresh water line / 10>, it seems like not a win - as fresh water can solve both drinking and help with sanitation (though not get you all the way there). ------ jasonpeacock And yet this problem has already been solved with composting toilets for many years. Why do we need to build such a fancy and complicated device when all you need is to pee in a separate bucket from your poo, and let the poo aerate/dry naturally? Mix in some dry mulch and you're done! Urine itself is sterile and can be easily treated/recycled. ~~~ serf >Urine itself is sterile This is a misconception that particularly annoys me, probably because it was the (incorrect) excuse a nurse once gave me when he accidentally spilled a urinal filled with liquid all over me while I was bed-ridden in an ICU. [0] [1] [0]: [http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/turns-out-urine- isn...](http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/turns-out-urine-isnt- actually-sterile-180954809/?no-ist) [1]: [http://www.stritch.luc.edu/newswire/news/study-debunks- commo...](http://www.stritch.luc.edu/newswire/news/study-debunks-common- misconception-urine-sterile-0) ~~~ tomcam he accidentally spilled a urinal filled with liquid all over me while I was bed-ridden in an ICU. [0] [1] Well that's a horrible experience. I too am quite surprised the sterile urine legend lives on. ------ evanlivingston So, My late father recently developed a waterless toilet which is significantly simpler and likely cheaper than this one. [http://www.dry-flush.com/videos/](http://www.dry-flush.com/videos/) ~~~ hmottestad Neat. Reminds me of the nappy bins. However, the one in the video seems more geared at sustainability and reuse. They filter the water out of the pee. Dry out the poo for fertilisation. ------ joezydeco That schematic view of human feces is....let's just say it's incredibly optimistic. ~~~ ph0rque Agreed. The whole concept is too complicated for the real world, in my opinion. But, if the team is willing to iterate based on feedback, and incorporate some of the advances of other composting and incinerating toilets, the end product might work really well. ~~~ codingdave That is exactly what i was thinking - making this produce compost instead of waste intended for a collection facility would be not only more useful in developing areas, but could even improve the urban gardening/homesteading movement. and lets face it - in developed nations, it is us crazy hippie folk who would buy this anyway. ~~~ erroneousfunk In developing areas, people grow food as close to their drinking water as possible to make watering and/or irrigation easy. I don't know if anyone wants to recommend that they start adding human waste to the mix. ~~~ codingdave I'd love to know where you are talking about, because everyone I talk to does exactly the opposite. We know we are going to use animal waste, and other compost, to fertilize our garden beds. So we pull our drinking water from upstream of any food production. my family does not use humanure in our systems, but it certainly is done by other people and in other areas. If there really are developing areas who fail in this design principle, they need education on how to design their food production. Holding back a useful tool just because some people might use it incorrectly doesn't make sense. But most people who are even somewhat self-sufficient know that the flow of water is a crucial design point. If not composted and used productively, then human waste is just a pollutant. But if you can increase food production and have a productive recycling of materials at the same time, you are killing two birds with one stone. ------ Xeoncross The problem is that the toilet's estimated cost is $0.05 per user. So for a 4 person family potentially living on only a couple dollars per day this would make up 10-20% of their living expenses. This isn't like our budgets where we can afford 10-20% because we are WAY past trying to eat and live. This is 10-20% of all the money you have for food, clothing, and medicine. Also, I'm assuming the toilet will go up in price as more people try to make more off the system. All that said, I welcome the Nano Membrane toilet to the much needed market. I'm all for composting toilet technology as our current system of simply creating raw sewage then trying to treat it with massive amounts of chemicals (which are very bad for the environment) isn't sustainable. 1) Natureshead, 2) Airhead, and 3) Separett toilet These three all much better suited to low cost, rural uses. For more hi-tech versions we have Sun-Mar. However, all these still cost at least $1,000 USD. ~~~ ghshephard For "low cost, rural use" \- nothing beats a hole in the ground. :-) ~~~ david-given Digging a safe latrine pit is more complex than you might think! [http://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/hygiene/emergenci...](http://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/hygiene/emergencies/fs3_4.pdf) Plus they have a limited lifetime; they fill up, and you need to dig a new one. ------ fab13n It would also make sense in developed countries: shitting in water makes it much more complicated to treat afterwards, and greatly increases the ecological footprint of that processing. Moreover, it makes failures to properly treat much more dangerous (human feces are where you most easily find pathogens specialised in human invasion, besides human cadavers). Feces compost just fine in a dry environment, if you mix it with enough carbon (dried plants or sawdust). No treatment, except letting it decompose over a couple of years, and very little smell if the nitrate/carbon/humidity balance is respected. Of course, water companies wouldn't be thrilled by such a simplification, and people like the illusion that their poo-poo just magically disappears when they press a button. ------ nikolay Even simpler mechanisms clog and I don't think this scraper can do such a good job, but this still could be better than a septic tank or others alternatives. ------ ww520 This device has quite a bit of moving parts, needs periodic part replacement, and requires electricity to operate. ------ rayiner What does it do with the toilet paper... ~~~ fab13n that's just more fiber. Besides, in many of the countries targeted by this, people wash with water, rather than sweeping with paper. ~~~ brianwawok It is designed for no running water, so I would assume no bidet water also. Could go for the shared sponge ala Rome (was that really healthy?) ------ noobie Can someone create a social enterprise that uses this idea to generate profit and make a wider impact? ~~~ glibgil yes

How easy did people find RTML to use? - omouse ====== omouse I'm thinking about using context parsing as in "I need to go to the store tomorrow" will add the event "I need to go to the store" to the calendar for tomorrow. But for some things I need a certain structure like this: "Wait for Bob to finish report, do whatever". And "wait for Bob" would send an email off to Bob that he needs to finish the report. I want to know how easy it would be to train a user to follow that structure for certain things and would like to know if any users had trouble with something like RTML. ~~~ byrneseyeview Livejournal uses something vaguely similar (a special HTML-y tag that creates an automatic link to a particular user's journal). If you use a known schema like "Getting Things Done" (<http://www.43folders.com/2004/09/08/getting- started-with-getting-things-done/> ), users can represent a task in a hierarchy of Context/Goal/Project/Task (so Store/Prepare dinner/Buy ingredients/Go to store).

Language Aptitude Not Math Predicts Programming Skill - ukj https://www.i-programmer.info/news/99-professional/13517-language-aptitude-not-math-predicts-programming-skill.html ====== 0xff00ffee I guess it depends who you are talking about. Computer Scientists are generally great at math, but it doesn't mean they are good programmers. A good programmer has style: from how the code looks, to how it is arranged, test, regressed... to how defensive the code is to soft-failures. I've worked with spectacular computer scientists who wrote compiler kernels, but their code looked like a big pile of... well, you get it. ------ tj-teej Makes sense, as naming is the one of the two hardest problems in programming! (the other is maintaining distributed cache consistency and catching off-by- one-errors :D) ~~~ tobmlt Agreed! Questions though... about two... is this two where two comes from 0,1,2 ? Also, on a relational note, what kind of “and” are you using? ‘Could be my isolation talking, but the further I look into this comment the more dad/logic jokes I see. Caveat: am dad. Eh hem... I will see myself out. ------ anta40 In general, you don't need to be exceptional at math for doing programming. A basic understanding of arithmetic is sufficient. Okay, perhaps if you work with numerical analysis on daily basis, or doing type theory/lambda calculus/any theoritical computer science stuffs. ------ ttizya20 It's 2020 and the g factor ism't mainstream

Banks, Arbitrary Password Restrictions and Why They Don't Matter - weinzierl https://www.troyhunt.com/banks-arbitrary-password-restrictions-and-why-they-dont-matter/ ====== mquander _He turned to me and said, "Do you really think the only thing the bank does to log people on is to check the username and password?" Banks are way more sophisticated than this and it goes well beyond merely string-matching credentials; there's all sorts of other environment, behavioural and heuristic patterns used to establish legitimacy. You won't ever see a bank telling you how they do it, but those "hidden security features" make a significant contribution to the bank's security posture._ Their response to having visible security that sucks is to say that they also have a lot of super complicated invisible security which is actually really good? Why am I supposed to believe that? Their invisible security probably sucks even more. ~~~ tialaramex I agree, Troy is way too gullible here. > Do you really think the only thing the bank does to log people on is to > check the username and password? Yes. I assure you that when bad guys with your username and password log in and steal all your money the bank _won't_ say: "Doh, our sophisticated environment, behavioural and heuristic patterns used to establish legitimacy let you down this time. We'll pay for this" No, they'll say it is your fault because the bad guys had your username and password. And that's all you need to know. ~~~ Swizec On the other hand I log into my bank with my computer using the same browser as always and my username and password, but this time I'm in a different country. Even just a different Wi-Fi (like at a coffee shop) And the bank _freaks out_. Omg omg omg hacking hacking! Quick to the 2FA mobile! Should we call you? Can we text you? Do you prefer email? That's before we even get into how trigger happy they are about credit cards being used in weird ways. You buy one thing out of the ordinary (like a $3000 downpayment for a motorcycle) and immediately get 5 texts, 10 emails, and 2 phone calls. YO did you do that? Or the one time my girlfriend deposited a physical cheque and it was so out of the ordinary the bank had a melt down and started shutting down all her accounts and blacklisting her from the bank. I don't know about "sophisticated", but they definitely do _something_. ~~~ dpark You really want to work yourself into a frenzy about minor inconveniences, huh? You’re so hyperbolic here that you sound like you’re basically making stuff up. > _You buy one thing out of the ordinary (like a $3000 downpayment for a > motorcycle) and immediately get 5 texts, 10 emails, and 2 phone calls. YO > did you do that?_ First, dropping 3 grand at a motorcycle dealership is extremely out of the ordinary for most people. Second, my money says you got exactly one text, one email, and either one or zero calls. It makes perfect sense that they’d want to do the fraud check here. It also makes sense that they’d use multiple means of contact to reach you quickly. As for the girlfriend blacklisting story, I don’t know if you’ve just horribly mangled this story or what. It doesn’t make sense. If you deposit a check, there is no potential fraudulent withdrawal from your account. Also, a bank cannot randomly close your accounts and “blacklist” you. They are _holding your money_. Stealing money from your depositors is generally frowned upon from a regulatory standpoint. ~~~ NewsAware I didn't understand the gist of the GP to criticize bank actions, but wanting to point out that banks do indeed have alarm systems in place beyond simple IP-change rules. ~~~ joshjje Some do. Many do not. ------ viraptor > Do you really think the only thing the bank does to log people on is to > check the username and password? Yes, I do think that. I automated some banking functions for myself and the last 4 retail banks worked just fine when accessed with curl, or headless chrome. I didn't even change the user agent for curl and used no delay between requests. Not only do they trust credentials, there are no extra checks in most cases. This is experience from UK and Oz. Lloyds, CommBank, ANZ, ING. ING is actually the "hardest" one. Their 4-digit scrambled keypad varies colours slightly so it requires closest-match comparison to known samples. That was like 3 extra lines of code. ~~~ throwaway201606 Access control is not on a binary 'yes-or-no ' decision on a per single-signal basis. It is usually a weighted result of multiple signals. For example, it may look at say 20 factors and have a failure threshold of 15 passed. Most of the signals are evaluated server-side. By design, some signals used are picked such that customer convenience, among other things, is not affected (e.g. the account holder data pull automation that you describe in your example ). Examples of signals include timezone, time of login vs. past logins, hardware profiling (OS, screen resolution, IP, ISP, VPN vs. no VPN - based on known VPN server lists ) etc. I agree that not all banks are doing this but the more sophisticated ones are (quite a few of them). Point here is curl or headless browsers working is not evidence of only account and password being checked. ~~~ viraptor I did it scheduled past midnight, from "abroad", from known AWS us-east ranges, with headless resolution set to 1000x1000, completely ignoring their browser detection JS, identifying as either curl or "bank bot", not following links and redirects, causing lots of unexpected failures which should be impossible with a normal browser while developing my scripts. (including 503s from bad csrf token passing) Basically if there was any check, I would fail it. I did that on purpose - better to know immediately than get silent failures later on. I really don't know what else I'd have to do to trigger "this it not a real person" detection. ~~~ throwaway201606 Thanks for taking the time to explain this: it does indeed seem clear that they are just doing username and password detection for access. A followup question: I have lived in Europe and have accounts in banks in Ireland. For those accounts, actually executing any financial transaction requires entering a one time token generated by a device that uses your debit card and PIN. Like so: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kEOEQzC8-Fc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kEOEQzC8-Fc) Do the banks you tested have a similar setup? Just trying to find out if these specific banks have chosen to control view transactions with just the username / password but require some other additional authentication for actual financial transactions. ~~~ viraptor None of them required extra authorisation to get data. (even transactions going back 5+ years) They did have the SMS validation when adding new transfer targets, but not for executing transactions to existing contacts - which is potentially an issue if you can pay off a different credit card just by changing the reference field. ------ hyperman1 The 5 number 3 tries bank does not seem very secure: It is (at least in my country) very easy to guess valid acount numbers: They are incrementally numbered + have a checksum. So while 1 account of a 5 number 3 tries bank is safe, attacking all of them in volume is not: With N numbers, T tries, A accounts, the chance of guessing at least 1 account is pow(1-T/pow(10,N),A) 5 numbers 3 tries means a chance of 0.9997 of being locked out of 1 account. For A=100 000 accounts, the chance is 0.049, so more than 95% chance you guessed one account right. For A=1 000 000, you're almost certain. And that's the dumbest possible way. Try guessing with the most common password like 12345, take only 1 try each month so people unknowingly reset the account number when doing payments, and use a botnet to spread the load over tons of IP adresses and randomize the numbers. ~~~ SamBam Exactly. The math is not in their favor at all if the attacker is able to work out or guess numerous account numbers. ~~~ bscphil I think this is exactly right. My bank has predictable account numbers too, and if they had one of these 4 or 5 digit password limitations, they would be a very ripe target for someone using a botnet to just go through all the accounts. The risk isn't that someone will target you personally, the risk is that someone will happen to hit you while attempting the profitable activity of hacking every account. (Plus, at least with a bank, if they manage to hack in and steal the database, one of the most profitable ways to use it would just be to log in and steal money. No effective hashing on a 5 char password.) I also _completely_ distrust the "advanced security measures" claim. I have no trouble logging into my bank via curl, including from remote IP addresses. (They finally rolled out 2FA, but I can still type the text code into my script.) A couple years ago I discovered a number of vulnerabilities in their account site, too (including some many years old software with vulnerabilities with a CVSS of 10). After I reported this to them, the response from the guy who worked there was basically "Yeah, that's from the crappy vendor who supplies us with this software. Please don't say anything about this because we're replacing it with a new in-house backend in a couple months." ------ RHSeeger >> Hey [bank], does that 16 character limit mean you've got a varchar(16) column somewhere and you're storing passwords as plain text? > As much as I don't believe that's the case in any modern bank of > significance, it's definitely not a good look. Inevitably the root cause in > situations like this is "legacy" \- there's some great hulking back-end > banking solution the modern front-end needs to play nice with and the > decisions of yesteryear are bubbling up to the surface. It's a reason, > granted, but it's not a very good one for any organisation willing to make > an investment to evolve things. But the only reason that "legacy" system would have a limit is because it's storing your password. So > I don't believe that's the case in any modern bank of significance It _is_ the case. It may not be the case in their most recent systems, but a chain is only as strong as it's weakest link. You can be hashing/salting the user's password and locking it behind a vault door to make sure noone can access it. But if you _also_ keep a copy of the password in plain text on a piece of paper taped to the outside door, the vault copy doesn't protect it. ------ kemiller2002 Wow this made me laugh. I spent long time working for banks, financial institutions, and credit agencies. "So many things that lock the account down" Really? Out of ALL of articles about breaking into systems leveraging techniques like lateral attacks on systems, and this is supposed to be believable. People ask me what it was like working there as far as processes etc. I always say the same thing. "Banks are like the mafia. They have a lot of money, and they don't like giving any of it away." Banks (especially) care about 2 things, money and risk. They spend just enough money to mitigate the risk and then stop. What this means is that they may buy good systems to help with security administration, but rarely did I see them take extra time to make sure they have multiple security redundancies like Troy describes. Employees were "trained" to what the letter of the law required. Don't get me wrong, there were some great people there, but let's not pretend they only hired from a select group of highly trained and extremely smart people. It's just like almost anyplace else. Employee's and contractors are there to get a paycheck and go home. They do what risk wants and when their done, bam they go home til tomorrow, because the fights just not worth it after a while. I briefly worked with a sales guy from a vendor we used, and he used to work in the banking industry. He had the best quote (that I shamelessly stole) to describe banks. He said, "If people knew what I know about banks, mattress sales would skyrocket." ------ ufmace I think basically everyone in this thread is looking at this all wrong. Banks don't have a ton of fancy hidden security gating the login itself most of the time. Trying to build a digital Ft. Knox in front of the login page and then paying no attention to what the users do after they login is the wrong way to go about securing these types of accounts. I'm pretty sure they have much more security around detecting and blocking suspicious behaviors after you've logged in, like adding new payees on bill pay systems, requesting transfers of large amounts of money to random accounts, particularly overseas, etc. I also argue that banks have much, much better security than anything most of us have ever touched, because they handle billions of dollars moving around routinely and manage not to lose it. Meanwhile, half of the internet can't manage not to lose the email addresses of everyone who signed up for their cat picture website. If they're trying that hard to steal something of little value like that, how hard to you think people are trying to steal the billions of dollars that banks handle? ~~~ Radle " I also argue that banks have much, much better security than anything most of us have ever touched, because they handle billions of dollars moving around routinely and manage not to lose it. Meanwhile, half of the internet can't manage not to lose the email addresses of everyone who signed up for their cat picture website. If they're trying that hard to steal something of little value like that, how hard to you think people are trying to steal the billions of dollars that banks handle?" Exactly this is the reason why I don't think Troy is being gullible here. ~~~ lawn There's a logical fallacy here that I don't know the name of: "Because it's so important, surely they must be competent." Which does __not __follow. ~~~ ufmace I do not argue that they're competent because they're important. I argue that they are competent because there is a multi-billion dollar pile of cash that they're guarding. If they aren't competent, how come nobody has stolen it all yet? Look at the efforts spent hacking Bitcoin exchanges and identified large holders. Lots and lots of money being taken there. Look at the efforts made to hack much less important things. How come no big banks have suffered a serious compromise leading to the loss of 9-figure plus amounts of money yet? ~~~ syrrim Banks normally don't actually transfer any money. There's a funny story from the 1920s of the Bank of England pushing money across the vault floor to indicate a transfer to France, who held an account with them. The money doesn't actually go anywhere, it just says so on the balance sheet. If someone "steals" 1 billion dollars by making the system think they took it, someone will eventually notice, then they'll send somebody down to the vault to push it back to the other side. Bitcoin is very different: when the bitcoin blockchain says someone else has your money, they have it. Imagine someone had heard that Ethereum had suffered no major attacks on exchanges, but hadn't heard of the DAO attack. They must think that Ethereum is extremely secure. Actually, Ethereum is very insecure, but a large enough target will get special treatment. Bitcoin doesn't have the same tendency as Ethereum (and real life) towards hard forks, so of course it will have more attacks on it. But this doesn't imply that anyone will hard fork when you get hacked, nor will the banks necessarily reverse the transaction when someone guesses your password. ------ shanecoin I would argue that this is not just banks but a number of different services. This entire Github repository [1] and this Twitter account [2] are dedicated to sites with dumb password rules. Passwords are not meant for humans. Here is a link to a hackernews thread discussing the worst of the requirements in the repository is here [3]. [1] [https://github.com/dumb-password-rules/dumb-password- rules](https://github.com/dumb-password-rules/dumb-password-rules) [2] [https://twitter.com/dumb_pw_rules](https://twitter.com/dumb_pw_rules) [3] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20890381](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20890381) ~~~ pingyong The PayPal section doesn't mention that they have a 20 character limit too. I honestly wonder what kind of buffoons are in charge of making this shit up at multi-million dollar companies. ------ londons_explore If someone guesses the _2 numeric digits_ necessary to gain telephone access to my pension fund, and they then transfer out the $10M value to the cayman islands, will they really give me back the money? Would I have any chance in court? - proving it wasn't me is near impossible. Yet this pension company has millions of customers, and presumably isn't seeing widespread fraud. How come? ~~~ patio11 Because you're evaluating the effectiveness of one control in isolation, whereas the pension fund has a lot of controls, including e.g. an operational team which knows that wiring money to the Caymans is intrinsically high risk, a written procedure that they'll follow for high risk transfers specifically to papertrail up evidence in the event it is contested, a legal environment which will put the burden of proof on them rather than you if they did something that self-evidently stupid, the medallion guarantee program and associated regulation, etc etc. Fraud happens. Financial institutions spend a lot of money defanging it; they also, when push comes to shove, have budgets for it. ~~~ whitepoplar I'm curious--how big are those budgets? ~~~ throwaway201606 For the really large banks: $XYYMM (i.e. hundreds of million dollars aka the cost of doing business) across all lines of business. All this is mostly public info as it has to go into financials, you can find it under "Operational Losses" for any public bank (Note that "Operational Losses" are not the same as "Operating Losses"). A sample multi-year summary can be found here from an industry body in Europe for losses for debit. (losses are demonimated in Euro):look at page 7 under the last column for the rows "Retail Banking". Important to note that credit ops losses are an order (or maybe two) of maginitude higher. [https://managingrisktogether.orx.org/sites/default/files/dow...](https://managingrisktogether.orx.org/sites/default/files/downloads/2018/09/annualbankinglossreport2018-printversion.pdf) ~~~ whitepoplar Thanks! ------ PhasmaFelis > _That very first tweet touched on the first reason why it doesn 't matter: > banks aggressively lock out accounts being brute forced._ Until a hacker steals the salted password database and brute forces it as much as they like. A truly strong password is secure even when the attacker has the salted version. (Anyone who tells you that it's completely impossible for a hacker to ever get their password file is lying either to you or to themselves.) ------ kardos This 'hidden security features' explanation sounds a bit like security by obscurity. Mouse movement fingerprinting? Browser fingerprinting? Locking people out when they get a new laptop doesn't sound like a good time ~~~ mobjack It likely means they use reCAPTCHA. They could be doing 2FA when someone logs in with a new device too. ------ pridkett The challenge is that if a system only offers a four or a five number passcode, you can still attack accounts by just guessing passcodes for account names/numbers. This is addressed a little bit by pointing out that it’s sometimes not easy to enumerate accounts - but if you’re malicious and have purchased a list of compromised accounts, you could then pound the system from a botnet even after the passwords have been changed. In this case you’re not concerned about a _specific_ account, but rather you’re concerned about _any_ account. And with a 4 or 5 number passphrase, you’d get hit pretty quickly. ~~~ philliphaydon If you knew the bank and the account, you could assume that people login to their account atleast once a month. So every month you could try a combination. Known passcodes could be tried first. If a dump also has the person Birthday then their birth year is a good Guess for a 4 digit pass code. 2 failed attempts reset when the user succeeds their login during the month. There’s so many things people could do. Limiting passwords is a bad idea :/ ------ Thriptic What's odd to me about this post and all of the responses in this thread so far is that everyone is only thinking about password length as a way to defend against online bruting attempts when in reality long passwords mostly serve to protect against offline bruting attempts. The reason you don't want 6 or 8 character passwords is that when your password hashes get dumped it's a lot easier to crack them. ~~~ throwaway201606 "What's odd to me about this post and all of the responses in this thread so far is that everyone is only thinking about password length as a way to defend against online bruting attempts when in reality long passwords mostly serve to protect against offline bruting attempts. The reason you don't want 6 or 8 character passwords is that when your password hashes get dumped it's a lot easier to crack them." This is: i) not accurate and ii) bad info Password hash dumps are worthless if the password hashing scheme used is i)crypto-hashing based and ii) uses salt. 6-8 char passwords are not an issue under this scenario. Current password management best practice is to use both standard crypto-hashing algorithms and salt. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_(cryptography)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_\(cryptography\)) Almost all platforms use standardized crypto-hashing packages that come as standard libraries in the language these days and those require salt. Further, _almost_ all banks will all use these packages. This is the reason you do not see rainbow tables these days, they are worthless in face of almost any current acceptable crypto-hashing implementation ... assuming one does break rule #1 of crypto and try to roll their own crypto ... [https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/18197/why- shoul...](https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/18197/why-shouldnt-we- roll-our-own) [https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2015/05/amateurs_prod...](https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2015/05/amateurs_produc.html) .. ad nauseam Salting also has the additional benefit of making brute-forcing magnitudes of difficulty harder. This is because salting rules can be implement that always add non-standard chars.. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_(cryptography)#Common_mis...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_\(cryptography\)#Common_mistakes) As others have said, the 6-8 chars limits are are a function of legacy system somewhere in the application chain (online banking is never a single platform, it is usually a front-end that talks to a standard backend that tellers, operations etc also access, usually some type of _greenscreen_ app - which is where the password hashes end up). ~~~ Thriptic I'm not talking about rainbow tables or hash tables, I'm talking about straight up bruting with GPUs and hashcat. You seem to be implying that using a salt adds entropy, but the salt is known (plaintext) and it's added in a set way so it doesn't. Sure your choice of algorithm and complexity factor will definitely affect your guess rate and ease of bruting, and yes using a salt prevents the use of precomputed hash tables, but it's not like it's impossible to crack a salted 6-8 character password hashed with bcrypt if you throw enough GPUs at the problem. The only question is if it's cost effective. ~~~ throwaway201606 Am confused here, is there something I am missing ? Brute-forcing bcrypt-hashed passwords on GPUs has a ridiculously low success rate even on most commonly used password data sets. Failure rate on passwords outside the most commonly used list is more than 95% [https://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2015/08/crack...](https://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2015/08/cracking-all-hacked-ashley-madison-passwords-could-take-a- lifetime/) ~~~ drblast So let's assume a 6 character alpha-numeric password with upper and lowercase. 36^6 possible passwords or about 2.1 billion. The article linked is one guy and one machine who can do 156 bcrypt hashes per second, with salted hashes. That's ~161 days to hash them ALL. If you have a dump of thousands of passwords it's extremely probable to get a few of them in under a day. Which is what the article shows - common short passwords were owned. What's funny about the additional restrictions (you must use 2 upper, 2 lower, etc.) is that they _reduce_ the complexity of this problem so there are fewer possibilities the attacker needs to check for. So you're making it more difficult for users while decreasing actual security against this kind of attack. Much better policy is something like, "at least 16 characters, whatever ones you want." Easier for users because then passphrases are possible, easier to implement because there's only a string length check on the client, and more secure because it doesn't completely rely on users not choosing trivial passwords. ~~~ FabHK > common short passwords were owned. > What's funny about the additional restrictions (you must use 2 upper, 2 > lower, etc.) is that they [...] decreasing actual security against this kind > of attack. Not necessarily - the additional restrictions might prevent even more common short passwords from being used by the users, thus making it harder for both the user and the attacker. (If the bank says you can't use "Password" as your password, then yes, the attacker only needs to check 62^8 - 1 passwords instead of 62^8, making it insignificantly "easier" for the attacker, but at the same time a lot of people must switch from "Password" to something else, making it much harder for the attacker). EDIT to add: Having said that, what you propose (at least 16 chars, no other restrictions) makes perfect sense (maybe introduce a maximum of 32k chars). ------ yellowapple Yeah, this is thoroughly disappointing - and alarming - coming from Troy Hunt. "Secret" security mechanisms that may or may not actually exist (let alone actually prevent attackers from successfully attacking) do not in the slightest bit excuse banks from their abysmal password policies. That he would not only accept that half-baked excuse at face value, but go so far as to regurgitate it and present it as if it's in any way reasonable, means that my perception of his trustworthiness now has a pretty substantial dent. I'm glad he at least acknowledged that banks should modernize their password policies regardless of their other security measures, but he's quite wrong to claim that we end-users shouldn't be incensed by banks' bass-ackwards security policies just because "well um uh they told me they're doing secret things so I'm gonna totally take their word for it and you should too". And no, account lockouts do not address the concerns caused by arbitrary password limits. Arbitrary password limits - be they for length or which characters can or cannot be used - are a rather bright red flag for storing passwords in plaintext, which means that when - _not if_ \- that bank inevitably has some kind of database leak, congrats, now the attackers don't even have to go through the trouble of brute-forcing or rainbow-tabling or whatever a bunch of hashes to get my plaintext password. ------ exabrial My favorite is "locking the account after x number of password attempts". Ever want to annoy the hell out of someone? Try their username or email a bunch of times and lock them out of their accounts. Bonus points if it's one of those super duper ultra secure banks that does password resets via snail mail. /s [I don't condone doxing anyone. My point is that an attacker should not be able to modify the state of a system he's unauthorized to access] ~~~ SamBam That seems to be the least objectionable to me. You need to have _some_ protection against brute-forcing. Whether it's limiting the rate of guessing or whatever, the attacker is still "modifying the state of a system." Indeed, that's a weird rule. When someone stole my credit card number and ran up charges, my bank called me to verify them. How was that not "modifying the state of a system?" ~~~ zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC > You need to have some protection against brute-forcing. Yes, that protection is called "password". > Whether it's limiting the rate of guessing or whatever, the attacker is > still "modifying the state of a system." Which is why you should not limit the rate of guessing (or at least offer that option--limiting the rate of guessing does help users who use terrible passwords, after all). > Indeed, that's a weird rule. When someone stole my credit card number and > ran up charges, my bank called me to verify them. How was that not > "modifying the state of a system?" Which is exactly why that shouldn't be a thing. Being able to pay with a semi- public number is just stupid. You should have to authenticate using a strong password, and "stealing credit card numbers" simply wouldn't be a thing anymore. ~~~ SamBam > Yes, that protection is called "password". [...] Which is why you should not > limit the rate of guessing _Any_ password can be brute-forced if you neither limit the number of guesses nor limit the rate that you can guess them. ~~~ zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC No, it can't. If you are willing to say that a cow can not jump over the moon, then a strong password can not be brute-forced, even though it might theoretically be possible for a cow to quantum-tunnel over the moon, and it might theoretically be possible that an attacker guesses your password. The probability is so vanishingly small that you would call it impossible in any other context. ------ cm2187 Amazon really understands what security means. When it does 2FA, sends you a unique code by email, it disables the option to paste that code back into the login form, you have to type it. You know you are dealing with really competent people when you see that! ~~~ jjoonathan Ah, yes, messing with paste, the ultimate in security. /s ~~~ darkhelmet Hence wonderful addons like "Don't f*ck with paste" to fix such stupidity. ~~~ jjoonathan I've got it installed, and it's good, but the world built a better idiot: sites that use flash, implement their own key event processing, etc. ------ mnm1 Good points, however this one is wrong. > Banks typically use customer registration numbers as opposed to user-chosen > usernames or email addresses so there goes the value in credential stuffing > lists. I've had accounts at most of the major US banks and I don't think I can think of a single one that did this. Almost every single bank allows the user to select a username or occasionally uses email for login. This is not a good argument for Chase, Citi, Amex, Discover, Capital One, Barclays, and a whole bunch more I can't think of off the top of my head. ------ lovehashbrowns That whole blog post was sad, but this quote was particularly dumb: > Banks like ING will give you your money back Now, I don't have any experience with having my bank account hacked, but I have had experience with my credit card getting used without my consent, and it's NOT a fun process. I can't even imagine how that'd go with a bank and a checking account. I can only guess that you have to 1. get the right customer rep on the line and 2. wait a good while. ------ blackbrokkoli People tend to get lost in mathematical technicalities in these discussion. Yes, even really dumb limitations leave 100k+ possibilities open, much more than you can brute force with a three-strike-lockdown. But that's not making it ok. Even if some crafty hackers on the other side of the world find a way to crack my account I'm confident the bank will look at the possible PR and legal costs and just refund my money fully, yes, yes, wonderful. That is not the problem. The problem is _user inertia_. Let me speak as an averaged one, mixed with my own deeds prior to being knowledgeable in cyber security. If I'm forced to remember my password because my password manager gets shut out or because of weird requirements, like uppercase letter + two numbers + non-alphanumeric, I'm nudged to use the same variation of my "default password" I used before, 27 times. "DognameBirthyear&". "+KeysThatAreCloseOnTheKeyboard1234+". And of course, I use a slight variation of that for everything. Shady web- server-under-the-desk web forum in 2007 three of my friends were on. Indie game servers, another classic. Bank. Google. It also was my facebook password which I gave to my bff once to check if that cute boy really liked me. It also can be guessed by obtaining my ID and watching me super slowly type the added non-alphanumerical at the end. _This_ opens the very real possibility of revenge of ex partners, witty people at the coffee shop gaining access and the like. Crimes are committed overwhelmingly by people knowing the victim. No fancy AI is gonna help you with that, reasonable withdraws in the middle of the day in your time zone from your own MacBook's IP address. Good luck with customer support. You are enabling THAT with your dumb requirements. And why?? You are a _bank_ , hire someone who knows their job and does not just act on blog spam FUD or whereever you got the idea of exactly 5 digits numbers only. No, I choose to be mad about this because there is no excuse for such horrifying UX _and_ security. Just enforce a minimum limit of like four characters to prevent breach by putting down coffee mug on keyboard, enforce a maximum limit so you don't fall victim to an embarrassing flavor of DOS attack. If you feel fancy, throw a bunch of money at haveibeenpwned to check whether people are putting dumb passwords and let your local RegEx wizard check against all other silliness. There you go. I even waive you the $150k fee for that extraordinary piece of consulting. ------ whitepoplar Given the nature of HN, I'm sure many of you have had inner-contact with financial technology infrastructure. Are there any banks that stand out for their technical competence/incompetence? Which bank(s) would you patronize/avoid? ------ pier25 Not sure why but banks seem to be consistently bad at web dev, at least on the front end. I have never used a good looking modern web app from a bank. Usually it's a slow bloated crap that looks and works like a project from 10-15 years ago. ------ joeblau I have USAA and they are pretty bad as well. Max password length is 20 characters. They only do MFA through cell phone numbers and email which allows someone to Sim-Swap if they are able to get your username and password. To top it off, they have a mobile app knock-off 2FA screen, but you _can not_ see it when you're trying to log in to your account via the mobile app because the modal doesn't let you leave the input screen. I was going to write them an email, but they have no clear email to report security concerns so I figured they don't care. ~~~ yellowapple Extra stupidity: you literally can't use the USAA app on a rooted Android device; it'll detect that the phone's rooted and refuse to let you login. God forbid I assert control over my own goddamn device, right? It ain't USAA's job to lecture me about my own device security; its job is to shut up and show me information about my car insurance. ------ paulpauper the money is in hacking bitcoin/crypto-related stuff anyway. Get the 12 words and there is nothing than can be done to recover the $ and nearly untraceable. hacking banks is overrated unless you can not onyl produce a facsimile of the victim including ID and other docs but also get past all the restrictions and then not be found and arrested in the process. ------ evanb I recently lived in Germany and was impressed by the security mandated there. In order to do anything of note (meaning where you could lose money) you were challenged to produce a TAN, one six-digit number from a one-time pad of ~100 that the bank mailed you. You produce that number, cross it out, and never use it again. Also available were SMS TANs, where they texted you a code. I avoided these after reading about SIM swapping. But, further, was a photoTAN. The bank mailed me a private key that I entered into a reader app. Then they would present me with a QR-code-like image that the app could read and decrypt into a six-digit code via the secret key. Type that in, good to go. The reader app and the banking app also had some message- passing thing where if you were banking on your phone (and couldn't take a picture of your own screen...) it could still work. ------ ineedasername If the thesis of this article were correct then there really shouldn't be much of any account hacking. I couldn't find anything that gives the prevalence of this, but there's tons of "what to do if hacked" articles and lots of posts on reddit/message board about "I was hacked! Will I get my money back?" Also, if the first line defense with passwords is poorly designed, why would these security-by-obscurity hidden ones be any different? Sure, you sign in form a new computer (or one that had its cookies deleted) and the site says "You haven't used this computer before, answer this security question: What is you Father's middle name?" That isn't a high barrier. If you know my name and a little about me, plenty of white-pages style sites show relatives etc. ------ daveFNbuck Having 100k possible passwords and locking my account after 3 failed attempts does a pretty good job protecting a single account from being brute-forced, but you can still brute force access to some accounts if you can guess enough usernames. ------ NotATroll > Do you really think the only thing the bank does to log people on is to > check the username and password? Yes. Yes I do. If you're putting arbitrary limitations on a user's password length, down to _6_ characters even. I see no reason why you wouldn't be equally as insane with the rest of your system. And, frankly speaking. The whole "you're locked out after 3 attempts" non- sense is complete crap. What is this now? We're supposed to believe databases don't get hacked into, and hashed passwords aren't leaked on the net for countless people to hack at and break? This sentiment leads me to believe the passwords are stored in plaintext. ------ shin_lao When the accounts of our company started to be beyond the low 6 figures, we got upgraded by our bank to a different online banking system with a smartcard and a keypad for strong 2FA. Our admin team is informed every time someone logs in the system, and wiring money is a 2 phase process. If a transaction is unusual, the bank usually contacts us. So yes, I do think banks have additional protection measures, it's just not worth it for smaller amounts where the insurance will just cover it. ------ atoav I don’t see how a bank that in 2019 doesn’t manage to have a decent password policy earns any trust on that front. If they allow for longer passwords with more characters the perceived security rises and in the age of password managers the usability gets better. If these advantages don’t outweigh the disadvantages of a bank, one could read this as a red flag regarding the systems behind that interface. ------ nitwit005 > banks aggressively lock out accounts being brute forced This is good, because it means people can't brute force the 5 digit password they forced you to use, but also bad, because if someone doesn't like you, they can easily block access to your bank. If the account numbers are sequential, or otherwise patterned, they may be able to block access to all users without using all that much bandwidth. ------ te Sure, three-strikes-and-out reduces probability of brute forcing any particular account with forced 5-digit password, but if an attacker has a list of just 25k usernames, odds are that at least one is going to get brute- forced. ------ JulianMorrison A bad short password is only protected against crude online guessing by aggressive lock-outs. If those passwords leak in hashed form, having a small search space means they can be broken offline with ease. ------ meuk My bank allows arbitrary length, but enforces certain special characters while disallowing others. Which means I can't use the (long and secure) password and have to write it down. Not sure what they hope to accomplish. ------ zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC Sorry, but that article is just dumb. For one, obviously, the possible existence of other security mechanisms is exactly no reason for intentionally breaking password security. Either you store passwords as plain text, in which case you have just failed, or you are storing a hash, in which case there is no cost to doing the right thing and accepting arbitrarily long passwords. There is no way to start with "we have other security mechanisms in place" and end with "therefore, we should weaken password security". And if an organisation is incapable of understanding that trivial piece of logic, I have very little hope for their supposed magic security solution. But even worse: The idea that locking users out after so many failed attempts is a security mechanism. When a small bandwidth of unauthenticated requests can disable a critical service, that is known as a denial of service vulnerability and not a security mechanism. If you have proper passwords, locking users out is completely useless for security, but it's still a DoS vulnerability. A brute force attack will not crack a 128 bit random password, no matter the rate at which it is tried. And while non-public user IDs can help mitigate that risk, it is not at all a given that banks don't use essentially public account numbers as user names, even ones that have 6-digit password limits. Plus, the user ID at that point effectively becomes part of the password, just that it's a password that you can't change, which isn't exactly brilliant either. And finally: It's quite a failure at assessing attack scenarios if you think that user lockout actually solves a problem. Your typical bank has a failure counter per account. A failure counter that is reset on every successful login. So, the real number of attempts an attacker could make is the number of attempts you have before lockout minus one, multiplied by the number of successful logins by the customer. An attacker might not necessarily be able to know very well when the user has logged into their bank account, which sure will limit the exploitability somewhat, but then, that very much depends on the circumstances. If you know someone pulls their transactions every 15 minutes, say (especially a business, which might even leak the time they pull transactions by sending payment receipts in response, for example), then you might very reliably be able to make 8 guesses per hour, or ~ 70000 per year, without causing lockout. If you instead want to target the general public, you might also just use a bot net to attempt login into accounts only occasionally, risking some lockout, but statistically compromising a certain number of accounts over time. And all of that when proper passwords do solve all of those problems perfectly reliably. Oh, yes, and the idea that some banks will give you your money back? Seriously? Now, if that isn't a failure at assessing risks, I don't know what is. Who seriously believes that banks will give you your money back on your word that you didn't authorize some transaction? Of course, they won't, they'd be wide open to fraud if they did. If the attacker is good enough at making it seem like the customer authorized the fraudulent transaction, obviously, the customer won't get back a cent. Those claims by banks are marketing bordering on fraud, and obviously not something anyone claiming to be an expert in security should just trust to be something you can rely on. ~~~ gruez >When a small bandwidth of unauthenticated requests can disable a critical service, that is known as a denial of service vulnerability and not a security mechanism. But what's your threat model here? Some attacker who's targeting you that somehow got your randomly assigned username but not your password? Or someone hitting every account number for "the lulz"? In the first case, it can be resolved with a 10 minute call to the bank to get your username changed (although you have bigger issues if your attacker was able to get sensitive information such as your banking username). In the second case, the attacker will get ip banned/rate limited very quickly. >If you know someone pulls their transactions every 15 minutes, say (especially a business, which might even leak the time they pull transactions by sending payment receipts in response, for example), then you might very reliably be able to make 8 guesses per hour, Sounds like a very non typical use case. Most businesses I know pull transactions end/start of day. Considering most/all banking transactions (ie. not done through a third party platform like venmo) are done daily, this isn't surprising. Even then, this exploit only works if there isn't a persistent login fail counter. Getting a password wrong twice before getting it right is ususal a couple times a day. Doing that 10+ times a day is definitely suspicious. >Who seriously believes that banks will give you your money back on your word that you didn't authorize some transaction? Of course, they won't, they'd be wide open to fraud if they did. AFAIK they're obligated by law. ~~~ zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC > But what's your threat model here? What do I know? DoS attacks are a thing, so that's the threat model?! > Some attacker who's targeting you that somehow got your randomly assigned > username but not your password? You are assuming the username is randomly assigned. > In the first case, it can be resolved with a 10 minute call to the bank to > get your username changed Wut? For one, how is being denied access to your capital for ten minutes in any way "solving" the DoS risk? Then, how does that even solve anything if the attacker simply disables your account again within a few seconds? If your suggestion is that using the username as the password somehow is supposed to protect you, I have bad news for you: You usually can't change your username, so you can not change that "password" to something the attacker doesn't know. > (although you have bigger issues if your attacker was able to get sensitive > information such as your banking username) You have it all backwards? The sensitive part is what is called the password. If your username is sensitive, you are already doing it all wrong. Especially because, see above, you can change your password, you can not (usually, easily) change your username-pretending-to-be-your-password. > In the second case, the attacker will get ip banned/rate limited very > quickly. You have heard of this thing called a bot net, right? Also, congrats, you have just introduced the next DoS risk: If you happen to use an ISP where your IPv4 connectivity is only through NAT, and given that most banks are IPv4-only, suddenly, some random customer of that ISP, or the malware on their machine, can disable your access to your account. You know what would actually solve that problem? Wait for it ... it's passwords! Like, proper, real, high-entropy passwords. Who would have thought? > Sounds like a very non typical use case. The idea that banks should only be secure for "typical use cases" primarily sounds like a very bad design principle. > Most businesses I know pull transactions end/start of day. Considering > most/all banking transactions (ie. not done through a third party platform > like venmo) are done daily, this isn't surprising. Except other countries have a slightly more modern banking infrastructure. All of the EU is currently introducing realtime money transfers with a guaranteed payment delay of maximum 10 seconds between any two banks in the EU. Pulling transactions only every 15 minutes seems like quite a massive delay in comparison. > Even then, this exploit only works if there isn't a persistent login fail > counter. Getting a password wrong twice before getting it right is ususal a > couple times a day. Doing that 10+ times a day is definitely suspicious. Well, yes, sure. But for one, that there is a persistent login fail counter is a big if. If you are lucky, maybe there is. If there isn't, the bank will blame you. And also, regardless, the problem still remains: There definitely is no permanent login fail counter. Customers occasionally do mistype their passwords, and that does not lead to lockout. But whatever the real maximum rate of failed attempts is: The total number of possible attempts is more than the advertised supposed maximum number of attempts. > AFAIK they're obligated by law. They are obligated to do what? Give you back your money because you say so? Certainly not. Be able to determine with 100% accuracy whether a transaction was fraudulent? Yeah, sure?! ~~~ gruez >What do I know? DoS attacks are a thing, so that's the threat model?! It matters because you need to consider the attacker's motivations, goals, and resources. >You are assuming the username is randomly assigned. So? If not randomly assigned, the best you can do is enumerate all users in an unpredictable manner. It's not like sequential usernames allows you to easily guess the username for a specific person. >Wut? For one, how is being denied access to your capital for ten minutes in any way "solving" the DoS risk? Then, how does that even solve anything if the attacker simply disables your account again within a few seconds? It solves the DoS risk because it makes subsequent attacks sufficiently hard to perform afterwards. If your username can be leaked within seconds, the attacker probably has access to perform more devastating attacks than a simple DoS. >You usually can't change your username, so you can not change that "password" to something the attacker doesn't know. You might not be able to change your username online, but support can probably change it. >You have it all backwards? The sensitive part is what is called the password. If your username is sensitive, you are already doing it all wrong. Especially because, see above, you can change your password, you can not (usually, easily) change your username-pretending-to-be-your-password. Yes, usernames are supposed to be identifiers only, but keeping it a secret from your enemies isn't particularly hard. Please explain how the attackers are getting a hold of your username in the first place. >You have heard of this thing called a bot net, right? Here's why you need to consider the threat model. If it's some guy out for the lulz, using a botnet incurs a cost (both in terms of actual risk in terms of detection, and opportunity cost in terms of other things he could be using it for eg. credit card fraud, DDoS for fire, etc.). And the guy is willing to expend unlimited resources, then all bets are off. He could use amplification attacks to take down the bank's website by raw bandwidth alone. Worst case the bank mails/emails everyone new high entropy usernames. >Also, congrats, you have just introduced the next DoS risk: If you happen to use an ISP where your IPv4 connectivity is only through NAT, and given that most banks are IPv4-only, suddenly, some random customer of that ISP, or the malware on their machine, can disable your access to your account. Strange. I can log into my financial accounts while using VPN without a problem. You'd think that a VPN service that anyone can sign up for anonymously would invite more abuse than an ISP that you need to provide real credentials for. >You know what would actually solve that problem? Wait for it ... it's passwords! Like, proper, real, high-entropy passwords. Who would have thought? You seem to be misunderstanding Troy's position. He's not saying it's ideal, or even good practice. He's merely saying it's not as bad as you think. ie. having a 6 digit numeric password doesn't mean you're going to get you hacked within minutes. >Except other countries have a slightly more modern banking infrastructure. All of the EU is currently introducing realtime money transfers with a guaranteed payment delay of maximum 10 seconds between any two banks in the EU. Pulling transactions only every 15 minutes seems like quite a massive delay in comparison. I have a feeling that businesses that need low latency transactions aren't doing so by scraping their bank's web page. They're probably using some sort of payment provider, or the bank has an API. >Well, yes, sure. But for one, that there is a persistent login fail counter is a big if. If you are lucky, maybe there is. If there isn't, the bank will blame you. If anything, having a weak password gives you more plausible deniability than having a 256 bit entropy password. >They are obligated to do what? Give you back your money because you say so? Certainly not. Be able to determine with 100% accuracy whether a transaction was fraudulent? Yeah, sure?! That's the point of obligating it by law. It's consumer protection to give them the benefit of the doubt. If you have an airtight case against the bank you wouldn't need it in the first place. I'd think you understand this concept, given that you're from the EU. In any case, here's a citation for you: [http://www.nbcnews.com/id/8915217/ns/technology_and_science-...](http://www.nbcnews.com/id/8915217/ns/technology_and_science- security/t/know-your-rights-bank-account-fraud/) ~~~ zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC > So? If not randomly assigned, the best you can do is enumerate all users in > an unpredictable manner. It's not like sequential usernames allows you to > easily guess the username for a specific person. ... or just use their account number that's on their website. Really, what's your point? Yes, you can potentially use some usernames as passwords. Doesn't mean it's somehow more sensible than using passwords as passwords. > It solves the DoS risk because it makes subsequent attacks sufficiently hard > to perform afterwards. If your username can be leaked within seconds, the > attacker probably has access to perform more devastating attacks than a > simple DoS. What? Denying you service prevents denying you service because it makes denying you service any longer sufficiently hard, except it doesn't, because that's just another three requests? > You might not be able to change your username online, but support can > probably change it. So, now you are just pulling stuff out of your ass? And in any case, how does any of this make any sense? Having bad passwords is a good idea, because we can use the username as a sort-of password? Sure you can, but why the heck not use the password as the password? > And the guy really does have resources for a botnet, then all bets are off. > He could use amplification attacks to take down the bank's website by raw > bandwidth alone. Erm, yeah? And why should he do that if a low-bandwidth attack does the job just fine? And in any case, how is the fact that there is one kind of DoS attack vector that you can not prevent a reason to also add another DoS attack vector, and to then use that to justify that you put in effort in order to weaken password security? Like ... what's your point? > Strange. I can log into my financial accounts while using VPN without a > problem. You'd think that a VPN service that anyone can sign up for > anonymously would invite more abuse than an ISP that you need to provide > real credentials for. Which is a reason for building weakened security how exactly? > You seem to be misunderstanding Troy's position. He's not saying it's ideal, > or even good practice. He's merely saying it's not as bad as you think. ie. > having a 6 digit numeric password doesn't mean you're going to get you > hacked within minutes. Yeah, having a root ssh account on your server with password "test" doesn't get you hacked within minutes. So, how is that an argument? There is real security, which doesn't get you hacked in decades, and then there is everything else that is pointlessly insecure, and in this case way less secure than he suggests in any case. > I have a feeling that businesses that need low latency transactions aren't > doing so by scraping their bank's web page. They're probably using some sort > of payment provider, or the bank has an API. ... and banks use the exact same idiocy on their APIs, correct. Why would they not if they are convinced that that is how you are secure, as they seem to be? > If anything, having a weak password gives you more plausible deniability > than having a 256 bit entropy password. Well, sure. But then, not ever having any unauthorized transactions means you don't have to worry about plausible deniability? > That's the point of obligating it by law. It's consumer protection to give > them the benefit of the doubt. Erm ... you do realize that that can not possibly be the case, right? That a bank can not possibly be obligated to give money to a customer simply because the customer demands it? > If you have an airtight case against the bank you wouldn't need it in the > first place. I'd think you understand this concept, given that you're from > the EU. You are completely missing the point. There are cases where the bank is at fault (like, they simply handed your money to someone else for no reason) and you can show it. That's the case where the bank's general liability would be all you need. Then, there are cases where the bank received an order to execute some payment that was authenticated with your credentials. Now, as subcategories of that you have the actual legitimate payment that you ordered, the somehow fraudulent order where you were defrauded and the bank can tell, somehow, and the somehow fraudulent order where the bank doesn't see any signs of fraud and you can't demonstrate it either. Banking regulation and/or voluntary guarantees usually (mostly) cover that second subcategory. But there is no way to possibly cover the third subcategory: That is the category or fraudulent transactions that are indistinguishable from legitimate transactions by anyone but you, and you obviously have a conflict of interest, so your word that some transaction was fraudulent obviously is worthless in determining whether it was. Anyone who wanted to defraud a bank could submit a legitimate transaction and then claim that is was fraud, so that alone can not possibly be sufficient to get your money back. ~~~ NLips In the UK at least, the regulations cover the third category i.e. where you can't demonstrate fraud, but neither does the bank have reasonable grounds to suspect you acted fraudulently. From [https://www.fca.org.uk/consumers/unauthorised-payments- accou...](https://www.fca.org.uk/consumers/unauthorised-payments-account), explaining when a bank is allowed not to refund you (although they are allowed to refund you and then ask questions and report you to the police). """ Why a refund can be refused Your bank can generally only refuse a refund for an unauthorised payment if: \- it can prove you authorised the transaction – though your bank cannot simply say that use of your password, card or PIN conclusively proves you authorised a payment \- it can prove you are at fault because you acted fraudulently or because you deliberately, or with ‘gross negligence’, failed to protect the details of your card, PIN or password in - a way that allowed the transaction \- you told your bank about an unauthorised payment 13 months or more after the date it left your account, so make sure you contact the bank as soon as possible. """ [edit - remove block formatting] ~~~ zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC Gee, what is your point? Whatever the exact rules are: There are cases where the bank will not be able to distinguish an actually fraudulent transaction from a legitimate one. In those case, you, the customer, will be stuck with the loss, there just is no way around that, other than preventing the loss in the first place. ~~~ NLips "There are cases where the bank will not be able to distinguish an actually fraudulent transaction from a legitimate one. In those case, you, the customer, will be stuck with the loss" No, that's contrary to the FCA regulations. In cases where you can't tell if there's been a third party committing fraud, the benefit of the doubt must be given to the consumer. If the bank cannot demonstrate that the consumer is committing fraud, they cannot refuse the consumer their money. It's obviously complete nonsense to say "_whatever the rules are_, in scenario X the bank will be able to do thing Y"; in this case the rule is "in scenario X, the bank is not permitted to do thing Y". ~~~ zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC > In cases where you can't tell if there's been a third party committing > fraud, the benefit of the doubt must be given to the consumer. Which is why I obviously was not talking about that. > If the bank cannot demonstrate that the consumer is committing fraud, they > cannot refuse the consumer their money. OK. Now, the bank demonstrates that you committed fraud (that you didn't). Now what? ~~~ NLips If the bank satisfies a court with evidence to show the customer committing fraud, then the customer won’t get their money back. Just like if the CPS satisfies a court that someone committed murder, prison will follow even if the person didn’t kill anyone. This thread is rapidly losing value to readers now, since you seem to be dishonestly representing what you’ve previously said, at best guess because you don’t like to be wrong. Quoting you: “the somehow fraudulent order where the bank doesn't see any signs of fraud and you can't demonstrate it either.” “That is the category or fraudulent transactions that are indistinguishable from legitimate transactions by anyone but you” “There are cases where the bank will not be able to distinguish an actually fraudulent transaction from a legitimate one.” Only now have you changed this to apparently mean the bank can falsely prove the customer committed fraud. There’s nothing wrong with not being up to speed on recent banking regulation changes in the UK. There is something wrong with pretending you were saying something you weren’t, just for the sake of internet points. ~~~ NLips I’ll add an example to help get across how the regulations have changed: If someone calls me pretending to be my bank and tricks me into giving them enough details (passnumbers etc) to move money out of my account, or persuaded me to authorise transactions they’re making (because I think they’re the bank saving the money from being stolen by someone else), then the transactions will look real to the bank. Previously, that was my problem. Now it is the bank’s - I may have divulged my details in good faith, but I didn’t give the criminal any money. The bank, unwittingly, gave the criminal money. The bank is no longer allowed to claim it was my money. Rather, the bank still owes me my deposit - nothing has happened to change that. This has been a more commonly occurring crime in recent years, and the regulations are specifically there to: Protect the consumer Put the onus on the bank, to encourage them to do better protecting their money. ------ mark-r I haven't been able to log into my bank for something like 10 years, because their password restrictions made me pick a password I couldn't remember. ------ systematical Still waiting on two-factor authentication from my bank. Even just basic SMS with a 4 or 5 digit code like Vanguard does would be nice. ------ htfu I cannot believe _ANY_ banks are using passwords at all in this day and age. Reading discussions like this makes my brain hurt - even a decade and a half back we were on chip and pin card readers for login/signing verification, now since a long time back there's a universal app-based 2fa equivalent (Mobile BankID). That's not the case for "my bank(s)" but all banks here. I wonder what makes the US/UK/AUS so special? It's all incredibly alien. ~~~ jbarberu Moving from a country with Mobile BankID to the US, all I can speculate is that it's not a big enough problem for the banks to make the investment. Similar to the healthcare system keeping the status quo is "cheaper" until you're one of the unlucky ones... ------ nsfyn55 They do matter but not for the reason you'd first think. It's about liability. Imagine a bank testifying in a hearing about a recent data breach. They are going to want to give the perception that they have done everything within reason to protect their user's data. Password restrictions are a cheap feather in one's due diligence cap. ~~~ zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC So ... how exactly is "your honor, we didn't allow passwords longer than 5 chars" going to help them, you reckon? ~~~ nsfyn55 Easy. Civil law operates on a concept called "preponderance". It's not absolute in nature it's a measure of likliehood as measured by non subject matter experts(a judge and some randos). Imagine a person has fallen on your property and injured themselves. If you are known in the neighborhood as a person that takes care of your sidewalk(shovels, patches broken concrete, etc.) and can produce evidence(character witnesses, testimonials, visuals) to that effect your case is strengthened. No one ever got directly hacked because their password was too strong, but lots of people have had passwords guessed by brute force. So put the two together. Its beneficial to have strong passwords because they can be presented as evidence of due diligence and there is no security risk to enforcing them. There may be some business risk(people fleeing because they don't like your password policy) but someone needs to quantify that its a problem for it to be considered in the calculus. ~~~ zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC That is a lot of text for not addressing my point at all!? ~~~ nsfyn55 You asked how it would help and I explained exactly how it would help. I directly addressed your point. Your content free, one sentence response not withstanding. Is there something specific you'd like clarification about? ~~~ zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC How exactly you think preventing your customers from using secure passwords is going to demonstrate due diligence? ~~~ nsfyn55 Look at that sally, a false equivocation right out of the gate. I'll just change your text so that it represents what I actually said .... >How exactly does taking steps that have previously been used in civil suits to demonstrate due diligence such enforcing password requirements going to demonstrate due diligence? Well I'm glad you asked billy! The answer is tautology. Thanks for playing. This argument is stupid. You want to talk about yak shaving, theoretical nonsense. FWIW I agree with you and think that password requirements are dumb, but you live in the real world. These are the legal realities of IT policy. ------ QuantenGhost What I hate is the impression. You can have mitigation controls galore. I trust that they all do. However, it's difficult for average customers to understand that. When even NIST has longer password recommendations, people who hear that "long passwords are safer" should have that option. Banks are relatively arbitrarily depriving security conscious people of that nominal opportunity to try to practice good password hygiene. The line is that password resets increase with password length. I'd be fine with that. I am an Information Security professional, customer of financial institutions, and started my earliest engineering career for a large bank.

Show HN: How to stop iOS9 daily prompts for iOS10 upgrade - walterbell iOS9 automatically downloads iOS10 and then prompts daily for permission to upgrade. The dialog only allows deferral of upgrade, no option to decline. Since it usually takes a few point releases for Apple to stabilize a new major version, you may not want to spend the next few months postponing this dialog box every day.<p>To stop the iOS10 upgrade prompts:<p><pre><code> Settings General Storage &amp; iCloud Manage Storage, scroll down through the list iOS10 Update -&gt; Delete </code></pre> Go back to enjoying stable iOS9 workflow and battery life. Avoid security threats for which fixes were disclosed in iOS10. ====== rubyfan Thank you.

On the Moon, astronaut pee will be a hot commodity - rbanffy https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/05/on-the-moon-astronaut-pee-will-be-a-hot-commodity/ ====== nurettin Does this mean that all this pee on earth is going to waste along with all the water that carries it simply because we haven't thought long and hard enough on this issue?

Westinghouse Files for Bankruptcy, in Blow to Nuclear Power (2017) - mzs https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/29/business/westinghouse-toshiba-nuclear-bankruptcy.html ====== dang Discussed at the time: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13987046](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13987046) ------ epistasis This article is more than three years old, but the story hasn't changed much. VC Summer was abandoned, leaving utility customers with massive bills. Vogtle soldiers on, but seems to be unlikely to finish. Nucleae's problems are not the politics, the problem is that basic competency in design and construction logistics have been lost. Plans get delivered to construction that are "unconstructable," but construction soldiers on and wings it. Then it al has to go through design review again. And maybe redone. Delays delays delays. Incompetence abounds. All the partners are planning from the beginning for a massive lawsuit at the end, and work harder to limit their liability (or create liability for others?) than to make the project work. Executives lie about the progress, there are guilty pleas to fraud: [https://www.postandcourier.com/business/former-scana- executi...](https://www.postandcourier.com/business/former-scana-executive- pleads-guilty-to-fraud-charges-tied-to-failed-sc-nuclear- project/article_26e23ca8-c50b-11ea-8377-e7b39854212b.html) 20 years ago, I though nuclear was essential to fighting climate change. Today, I don't see how nuclear can ever help. We can't build it before it's too late, and by the time we build anything other technology has completely leapfrogged it. We started these two AP-1000 reactors in 2008! A dozen years later we have nothing to show for it except for bankruptcy, plea deals, billions of dollars that would have been more effectively spent on solar and storage. ~~~ CydeWeys Yup. For all the people boosting nuclear power, the reality on the ground seems to be that it just does not work anymore. It's way too expensive and never gets done, and this problem is global, not just in the US; see e.g. [https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/a33499619/fr...](https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/a33499619/france- nuclear-reactor-epr-expensive-mess/) At some point the results have to speak for themselves, and solar/wind plus battery storage is actually working and being built. That seems a more realistic path forward than nuclear power, which is demonstrably failing over and over. ~~~ kurthr Yes, but what will we do if/when wind and solar just "doesn't work anymore". In the US trains "don't work anymore"... but they do in other countries. This gradual erosion of technical capability is a generic problem the US needs to solve. Nuclear is a case study of what is wrong and where the problems are (political, business, education). ~~~ manicdee The way the US chose to address accidents in rail was to armour plate their rail cars. In Europe they worked on better processes to ensure trains don’t run into each other in the first place. The erosion of technical capability in rail is driven by the legislature. You have many states that will need to work together to completely abandon the US regulations on rail, adopt European regulations, and replace every piece of rolling stock to comply with the new regulations. That’s quite the undertaking, but achievable since the required expertise still exists outside the USA. The erosion of technical capability in nuclear power is likely unsolvable. There is no brains trust outside the USA from which to borrow the knowledge of metallurgy, concrete, site preparation, building design, or even design for manufacture. This is rebooting the entire industry from scratch to produce an unprofitable product. ~~~ bobthepanda Actually now the US has alternative compliance regulations that let operators use European stock without waivers: [https://pedestrianobservations.com/2018/11/20/fra-reform- is-...](https://pedestrianobservations.com/2018/11/20/fra-reform-is-here/amp/) Now the problem is getting operators to actually buy such equipment, and then operators getting the slots and ability to run these at a usable frequency, speed, and reliability. ------ danans Anyone know of there is a connection beyond history and a logo between the nuclear power plant company and the household lighting company? [http://www.westinghouselighting.com/](http://www.westinghouselighting.com/) ~~~ kn0where They used to be the same company: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westinghouse_Electric_Corpor...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westinghouse_Electric_Corporation) ------ LanguageGamer Somewhat tangential, but wikipedia has good article on the cost of different energy sources: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source) The cost of nuclear energy has been flat for decades, but the cost of sources like solar has been plummeting. Nuclear doesn't have much of change without some technological break through. ~~~ nabla9 Nuclear and renewables are not 1:1 match or comparison. Nuclear provides steady source of electricity 24/7. If you want same from renewable, you must add the cost of energy storage and the cost of overcapacity. ~~~ epistasis Same for nuclear though, a steady source of power is not a good fit for our energy use. You have to start building thermal or battery storage, or do specialized more-expensive designs that can operate at variable power, or get customers to shift their load. ~~~ xenspidey Just make hydrogen during off-peak hours and get the hydrogen powered vehicles up and running. ~~~ epistasis Same goes for renewables, but the electrons are cheaper and easier to get on the grid! ~~~ xenspidey Off-peak hours for solar is also when there is no sun, so no. Wind isn't constant either. We need a constant 24/7 source of uninterruptible energy. ~~~ epistasis Important to define the "peak" part of "off-peak" here. Is it peak production, peak differential between supply demand, etc. Mid-day is off-peak for solar in many markets, and they curtail their output so that they don't oversupply. As there is more solar built, more and more will be curtailed. Both nuclear and solar would need a hydrolysis system that was economical even if not run 24x7 in order to utilize their supply-demand mismatches. This is the biggest road block to hydrogen production with the GWh of "free" electricity that we could currently be generating in the spring in California, but currently just don't use. ------ HPsquared Traditional light water reactors are pretty much dead at this point, they are not economic with the layers upon layers of required safety equipment. What's needed is simplification - there are a wide range of inherently / passively-safe Generation 4 designs - of which my particular interest is in the molten salt designs (e.g. Terrestrial Energy's Integral MSR) which could be made MUCH smaller, simpler and cheaper than traditional reactors. These might never clear the various financial, regulatory and technical hurdles, but one can hope... ------ look_lookatme Why is this article from 3 years ago on the front page? ~~~ arkanciscan Sweet sweet karma points

Facebook told by Belgian court to stop tracking non-users - denzil_correa http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-34765937 ====== tdkl Good, I hope they'll pay as much money as it gets until this is removed. FB is a sleazy company by its core. In other news, their FB Messenger app will scan the phones Camera roll for new photos, recognize faces and offer sharing to your friends it recognized. In certain regions only for now and of course it's opt-OUT by default [1]. [1] [http://9to5mac.com/2015/11/09/facebook-messenger-photo- magic...](http://9to5mac.com/2015/11/09/facebook-messenger-photo-magic-scans- friends/)

Apache Mesos is not as reliable a we used to think - tailhook https://medium.com/@paulcolomiets/evaluating-mesos-4a08f85473fb ====== preillyme Pretends to be a common standard for different solutions? ~~~ tailhook Ah.. yeah, my English is not very good. I mean Mesos tries to be platform to build on top. Some common denominator for other solutions.

Why I like comments - brilliant http://scripting.com/stories/2010/08/24/whyILikeComments.html ====== aphyr _But rebuttal, esp principled rebuttal, really doesn't add anything to a comment thread._ Ever wonder why Winer's purportedly popular blog has so few comments? Now you know!

Australia says it's under nation-state cyberattack - CalmStorm https://thecyberwire.com/newsletters/daily-briefing/9/119 ====== dang [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23569524](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23569524) ------ dicomdan Should the international laws be amended to consider state-led cyber attacks an act of war in additional to traditional aggression? Seems like UN Security Council should deal with these matters. ~~~ caymanjim International law barely exists and is unenforceable. If a superpower-- especially a permanent Security Council member--wants to do something, there's absolutely no recourse. Look at Russia and Crimea. That's the most egregious violation of the notion of international law in recent history, and nothing of consequence happened. The big powers can do whatever they want, and the worst response will be token economic sanctions. China is so economically intertwined with the world that nothing at all would happen unless they nuked someone. ~~~ speeder There are better examples than Russia and Crimea. I am not Russian, and have nothing to do with Russia or Ukraine or whatever (I am Brazillian, of Iberian descent). Still, Crimea was not a "invasion" or "conquest". Long story short: Russia invaded Crimea in 1700s, taking it from Tartars. When a Ukranian became leader of URSS, he "gave" Crimea to Ukraine, it was only nominal, nothing changed in Crimea itself, the place still was basically a navy base for Russia. When URSS broke up, because of previous decision, it was decided Crimea was Ukranian, except most of population there is Russian (including a huge amount of Russian military), and their only warmwater seaport deep enough for the good warships Russia had, was still there, to make this work, Russia "rented" the place from Ukraine. When Ukraine most recent revolution happened, do you think all the Russian military personel families that live there since 1700s would want to leave? Now... if you want to claim what is happening in Donbass is a invasion, then that is more plausible. ~~~ 8ytecoder Is URSS a Brazilian way of saying USSR? Edit: it’s an alternate spelling. I had not heard that before. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/URSS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/URSS) ------ trabant00 What a low effort article. Zero details. And the page is in huge part advertising and unrelated stuff. ~~~ TedDoesntTalk Agreed. I want my two minutes back. ------ ve55 Just as covid seemed to hit many with little warning and little preparation, serious cyberattacks will at some point too. Nations need to have more preparation, funding, and simulations, for potential large future cyberattacks before one causes significant destruction. ~~~ cheez They simulate all of them, still screw it up when it happens. 9/11 was simulated, pandemic was simulated, etc. ------ wallacoloo So the attacker is using “open-source code exploits” followed by phishing. To what effect? DoS of govt services? Ransoms? Something more ambitious? ------ yumraj China is going rogue again. Cyberattacks against Australia, bullying in South China Sea, border fights against India and so on. We need a unified world approach. ~~~ nix23 Can you please give me a proof that it's China and not someone else...or nothing at all? I always hear cyber-attack's from Russia, North Korea or China, but never from Israel or the US, are they just so bad in covering up or is maybe something else behind it? ~~~ bawolff Well tbf, stuxnet & flame are probably the two cyber-attacks that can actually beyond all doubt be called cyber warfare. Most everything else seems more about finding a scapegoat to blame. ~~~ nix23 Yes your right, i am not saying cyber-warfare does no exist, i just don't see often good point's for the origin of the attack...often its like HAHA we found the timezone of Peking in a file....as if a professional agency is that stupid (well sometimes they are) ------ adventured Not just cyber attack, Australia is also under economic attack [1] for the same reason. And China just suddenly decided to sentence an Australian to death (same move they made against Canada), after five years of sitting on the case [2]. It's all about intimidation and leverage. China will press until Australia capitulates. Fortunately the Australians have backbone. As a superpower capable of standing off with China, the US should be stepping in and offering very public political and economic support to Australia. It's the only approach that will work when dealing with China's new era of extreme belligerence. If the US were currently being led by a wiser politician, they would be rallying allies old and new (such as India) at China's expense. [1] [https://www.theguardian.com/australia- news/2020/may/21/austr...](https://www.theguardian.com/australia- news/2020/may/21/australias-iron-ore-exports-hit-by-rule-change-as-china- escalates-war-of-words) [2] [https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/13/china/australian-drug- smuggli...](https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/13/china/australian-drug-smuggling- sentence-china-intl-hnk/index.html) ~~~ fit2rule Why is it the US' problem? If _AUSTRALIA_ were currently being led by a wiser politician, or indeed had in the last .. 20 years .. been led by wise politicians .. it wouldn't be in this mess right now in the first place. Its only because Australia kowtows with fluidity every time the US snaps its fingers that its in this mess right now. Australians need to stop being the lapdogs to the American empire, and start thinking about their own future. Australias future isn't white American: it is multi-cultural and mostly Asian. ~~~ jacquesm Because Australians have been led to believe that the US and Australia are allies, resulting in Australia punching _way_ above its weight in giving the USA cover whenever it went abroad, for instance in Iraq, Afghanistan and so on. The usual understanding is that such loyalty is a two-way street. Not that the current US government cares about such pesky details but that's where it stands. ------ microcolonel Every time PRC turns up the heat, we should get closer with Taiwan. ------ m0zg I'm old enough to remember everyone here shitting on Trump for suggesting Huawei 5G is a national security threat. This opinion is now so uncontroversial that even Eric Schmidt agrees: [https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2020/06/18/huawei- pos...](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2020/06/18/huawei-poses- national-security-risk-warns-ex-google-boss-eric/) ~~~ dane-pgp > everyone here That's an interesting claim to test, actually. Could you provide links to one or more discussions on this site where the overwhelming consensus was that Huawei 5G would not be a national security threat to the US? ~~~ slacka Below are the top stories. No consensus, let alone overwhelming. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21757097](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21757097) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19954673](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19954673) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23191055](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23191055) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19923655](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19923655) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20279227](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20279227) ~~~ m0zg Now do the following: search the threads you provided for "Trump". The decision might have been "right", but easily 90% of posters say that Trump was "wrong" to make it somehow, because saying he was right at anything is socially unacceptable here. Note that I did not say HN disagreed with the decision necessarily. I was just saying it was shitting on Trump for making it. ~~~ dane-pgp > Now do the following: search the threads you provided for "Trump". Okay then. The first two links have 8 occurrences of the string "Trump": 1\. "Meaning while Trump is trying to make other country buy more Boeing planes?" I don't think this person is complaining that Trump is trying to support American businesses, but in any case they aren't saying that he shouldn't have opposed Huawei. 2\. "... Trump only says pleasant words [about trade] which is completely legal in both countries?" This seems to be a defence of Trump. 3\. "Trump considered [purchasing Greenland]." A criticism of a different Trump policy (in the context of an article about the Faroese prime minister). 4\. "I think that Trump's move with banning Huawei is bad for the US in the mid and long run." An actual criticism of Trump's Huawei decision, based on fear of retaliation from China. Two child comments support Trump, while one supports the criticism. 5\. "Trump's trade war with China, as many contract manufacturer move out of China, will prove none of that supply chain myth is true within a year or two." A comment supporting Trump's approach. 6\. "These things, and I'm not passing judgment on them, are simply pushing the Chinese to be self-sufficient on everything. Stroke of the Trump pen and X chip for your hardware is denied." A comment trying to look at the long term consequences without being critical of Trump. 7\. "I'm sure that the EU/australia/the west is breathing a sigh of relief that Trump did this instead of forcing them to make up some more draconian law..." A comment supportive of Trump. 8\. "FYI: Trump says U.S. "wants to be the leader' in 5G development" A comment potentially trying to explain Trump's actions, but not critical of them. If that is an accurate analysis of a random sample of comments, I would say that most posters agree with Trump about Huawei. I don't know where you get your "easily 90%" statistic from. ------ AngeloAnolin I am pretty sure that nations with the resources are pretty much doing some stealth cyber attack to nations they consider a threat - whether by economic or defence policies. Likely the scale of the attack happening is something that may have surprised the victim nation that they are calling out the attacks in the hope that it would at least calm down the intruder or even have the government intervene. On a side note, reading the article in a mobile device was a big PITA. Lots of ads and unnecessary information included. And they had the temerity to tell me that I am using n/3 free articles. I think I would pass from subscribing if on the limited free version and the reading experience was just worst.

Using Magnets to Reduce Beer Foaming - allisterk http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0260877414003380 ====== allisterk A much fluffier article with video is at: [http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/12/how- to...](http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/12/how-to-keep-beer- from-foaming/383775/)

Ask HN: how to go about finding internships? - zxcvvcxz How's it going HN.<p>It's summer time, and students much like myself are having a tough time finding interesting summer jobs. It's not that I don't enjoy waiting tables or anything, but at some point I think it's time to look for more meaningful employment.<p>Some background on myself - I've just completed my second year of engineering education, and have project experience coding C/C++ and assembly. As well, I have web development experience with PHP and MySQL on the backend, and Javascript/html/css/Ajax. In terms of non-programming technical knowledge, I've probably taken a course on "$subject mechanics" (fluid, statistical, quantum... you name it).<p>So I figure my best way out of waiting tables would be to apply for some internships. In particular, being an HN reader, I'd love to work at a smaller company closer to a start up.<p>But I'll be honest - I have very little work experience. Just a lot of drive/motivation to work on something interesting and challenging, and a few projects to show.<p>What advice would HN give? ====== potatolicious Go for all the big companies - they have established internship programs that they recruit heavily for. Try Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and any other BigCos you can think of. That's generally the easiest way to go since these companies make it a point to hire a _lot_ of interns every year. It is probably way too late to make it anywhere for _this_ summer at these companies though, given their structured schedule in recruiting (the intern season at Amazon has already started). Talk to small companies. I have a friend who literally drove down the highway with a stack of resumes. He walked into every place that seemed like it would be beneficial to work at, walked in, demanded to speak to a manager of sufficient seniority (didn't take no for an answer), explained to said manager his skills and how he could contribute to their business, gave them his resume, and left. He's also the guy I know who never seems to be lacking a job. ~~~ rednum It _is_ too late for google, microsoft and facebook - their hiring processes for summer start in winter (I even know some guys who had interviews in november) and most places are taken; you can however try autumn if you want - I know that fb hires for autumn now. Try some smaller ones - you are on site dedicated to startups so you should find some that hire! My algorithm when searching for interns was going through lots of companies, look into their jobs/careers for interns ad and sending my cv, starting from the most intersting. Edit: I didn't have lots of projects to show either, but many companies don't really ask for them during interview (however for some it's a must - eg my friend wanted to work in android apps startup and they wanted him to already have something done for android) - algorithm puzzles seem to be popular, also you may be asked to read/write some code and some easy questions checking what you wrote about technology you mentioned in cv. That's really all I think. ------ c_t_montgomery I hope everything works out for you! Next year, I'd start looking for summer gigs around December or so, just because that's when companies (in my experience - I'm a sophomore CS major) tend to hire for the summer. Typically, they like to get you on for a few months part-time before the summer starts, too, to work out any kinks. If that doesn't happen to fall into place for you, the only thing stopping you from creating your own little side company while waiting tables or something is yourself. Analyze your day, see what irritates you or you wish could be done better (programmatically), and write up something to fix it. Put it on Github, get to know some other coders (maybe even from around your area - I highly recommend hnDir - <http://www.hndir.com/> \- just to see who all is around your area, and in college as well). Also, to note, to add on to the dev experience you have, I'd highly recommend checking out some iTunesU or MIT OCW courses on Algorithms and Data Structures. I would do this regardless of your situation this summer. Heck, I'd do both of these regardless of your situation this summer. There are great opportunities out there to be taken advantage of! If you ever want to work on anything, email me (in my bio)! ------ ZackOfAllTrades This might only work for some companies, but it worked out well for me: Take one of a company's flagship products and remake it using open source technology. You don't even have to do the entire thing: just enough to show that you understand the subject material and are a potential threat if left to your own devices over the summer with nothing to do. Put it up on github or your own website depending on the product, and include all the url's in the application or email that you send to the company. It will make you stand out and show that you are interested in working on the types of things they work on. All it takes is one open source project gaining momentum to completely change a product space. It's less troublesome/expensive for the company to hire you than it is to try and fight a grassroots opensource movement later on. If you can make a company engineer think that they are getting a deal by hiring you early on, then you are pretty much set. Bonus points: get the sales department to email the engineers for you. ------ Zev _But I'll be honest - I have very little work experience._ Neither do most other summer interns. Don't worry about it. The benefit of an internship is skewed in your favor and not the companies; you get to learn (and gain work experience that you need). Depending on where you are, you might be working on an important product, but, it isn't expected that you'll be as productive as a full-time engineer is. The real benefit that a company gets from having interns is that its basically a two or three month hiring process. If it goes well, you'll be able to another internship with them next summer and/or possibly get a job offer at the end of college. Practically everyone out there is looking for smart people to hire. If you want to intern at a startup, find one you like and make yourself known. Send them an email with your resume attached and a quick note. At the very least, you'll get a real response from someone (rather than a canned one, or none at all). ------ veyron Do you have a portfolio to show? Also, you should put your email in the HN profile ------ dtwwtd Where are you based out of? At least here in the Ann Arbor/Detroit area the demand for good developers/interns is huge, and it seems most people that want a software job around here have one. My best advice would be try to get involved in local startup/entrepreneurship events if you have such things. Connect with the community, in my experience everyone is happy to talk to others about what they're working on - they won't bite :). Talk to people about their needs and your skills. Good luck! ------ wyclif Best strategy I've found is to email the founders of companies you're interested in and need the skills you have, and ask them flat out if they need interns. ~~~ rrwhite This ------ olalonde I'm in a similar position (completed 2nd year of software engineering, about same skill set plus some work experience). What I did is email a niche mailing list as well as contact some startups I like directly. Even found about an internship opportunity on Freenode. Started working on this yesterday and currently have about 6 interviews scheduled :) ------ sebkomianos I am graduating next month (last exam in a few hours literally) so I started sending emails for job opportunities a few weeks ago. I found the "Who's hiring" threads (<http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=whoishiring>) of great help. ------ qq66 Email me at amal@editring.com . I am still hiring interns starting June 1st in San Francisco. Paid internship of course. ------ danzheng My startup is looking for software engineering interns, send me your resume, danz@eggcartel.com ------ onwardly <http://jobzle.com/> ------ bauchidgw do what woody allen did: just show up! works, not always, but often enough. ------ yarone Internships.com ------ szcukg internmatch.com ------ stupidhurts Where are you? ~~~ zxcvvcxz Toronto! =)

Show HN: Personalize Every Article for Every Reader - sahadeva http://sahadeva.com/interactive-article-experiment.html ====== RyanHamilton This is cool, I like it. Though I worry about a future where everyone reads only what they agree with. ~~~ jlg23 Indeed, though it is just the logical extension of the status quo: People tend to follow news sources whose overall tone/agenda they agree with (let it be online sources or good old newspapers).

What happened to the inaugural class of travel startup Remote Year - aaronbrethorst http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/remote-year-promised-to-combine-work-and-travel-was-it-too-good-to-be-true?Src=longreads ====== reustle It's amazing how much money these people are spending on this trip, especially with such inexperienced founders/staff. $3k down, $2k a month, and $2.5k to leave, while many don't have solid income streams in place? Unfortunately, after having been in this "digital nomad" scene for over a year and a half now, it is nothing new. I've lived across 14~ countries since 2014 and have met my fair share of people who dropped everything to come to Chaing Mai, Ubud, Saigon, etc to work on their next big company, only to end up struggling to make a living off a travel blog or affiliate marketing tactics. It feels like many don't make it past a few months, before it sets in that not everyone is cut out for it. ~~~ soneca I always assumed the term "digital nomad" would refer to a kind of stabilished digital freelancer that had relevant (if unstable) source of income. I indeed don't see it working for founders developing a company. ------ phantom_oracle for $2000, all they are getting is a workspace and shared-accommodation? That amount of money is a lot in countries like Vietnam, Thailand, etc. You could easily get yourself a 2-bedroom place and cooked-meals everyday for less than that. ~~~ chrisfosterelli Yeah, simply taking a bit more initiative to manage those things yourself could easily save you 75% of what they are paying... As someone who has done some travel while working, I'd say it sounds very cool in theory but the price you're paying to have them manage your accommodation and office space is _way_ too high. ------ sneak I heard through the grapevine that it was total amateur-hour, drunk American bro nonsense. This article doesn't really dispel that.

Novel Laser-Based Method Effectively De-Ices Aircraft - rajnathani https://optics.org/news/11/1/97 ====== blakesterz Sadly it appears this is not a giant laser that shoots the plane when it's covered with ice. It's a way to change the surface of the wings so that ice/snow doesn't stick in the first place. ~~~ zwieback Yeah, I was expecting to read about how to get a gigantic laser out onto the runways. Still cool, though. ~~~ NovemberWhiskey Right - this is anti-icing; not deicing. ------ ghastmaster What happens when they paint the parts to prevent corrosion? I imagine all the properties of the laser etching are negated. ~~~ oliveshell As far as I understand it, corrosion isn’t that much of a worry with aluminum airframes— as long as the plane doesn’t spend too much time near salt water. There are many past and present airline liveries where the fuselage is left largely bare, for instance: [https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5f/Boeing_7...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5f/Boeing_767-323-ER%2C_Oneworld_%28American_Airlines%29_AN2217029.jpg) ~~~ metaphor Just because it looks bare doesn't mean it's unfinished. If I specified sheet aluminum for Type II Class 3 chemical conversion per MIL- DTL-5541, any materials QC professional would be hard pressed to visually determine that anything was actually done to the material. To be sure, no, MIL-DTL-5541 isn't an uncommon spec constrained to military applications. ~~~ hinkley I know I've noticed on airplanes before that while some of the wing is aluminum colored, some areas in particular are painted a vaguely aluminum- colored shade of grey. And I think the... it seems they're called Krueger flaps? Those are often painted aren't they? And those I'd think you'd definitely want to de-ice. ~~~ handedness On an aircraft that has a mixture of polished and painted surfaces, the painted surfaces often aren't bare aluminum. Often that's the wing root fairings, winglets, nacelles, radar cones, vertical stabilizer, and so on. ~~~ hinkley I don’t think I was meant to get a giggle out of this. Can you explain using other words? Of course a painted surface isn’t bare. It’s got paint on it. Did you mean it’s not aluminum? Or a different grade? ~~~ handedness Thanks, I laughed at it myself, in hindsight. I should have stipulated "underneath" and likely appended an "if you follow...". Yes, well, they may either be materials that have other surface textures/coatings/treatments/finishes that aren't conducive to polishing, or they may be other metals, or non-metallic composites (can't put aluminum over a radar, for example), and so on. TL;DR: The painted surfaces are generally instances in which polished aluminum won't really work, for a variety of reasons. ------ AWildC182 Interesting approach and hugely useful if practical, though it bears mentioning that the leading edges on aircraft experience a fair amount of abrasion from dust, debris, and insects. I wonder how long this treatment would be effective for in a real world environment ~~~ jcims Super important question, first thing that came to mind. How would you even test it for efficacy? Just look for ice building up and say 'welp, time for refinish?' ~~~ colechristensen There are wind tunnels for testing icing behaviors, not too hard to do an accelerated aging test and come up with standard procedures. ~~~ AWildC182 Could be easier said than done. There are lots of edge cases that could become a problem in real use. Stuff like surface contamination from various fluids or environmental factors. ~~~ dmurray Do 90% of your testing in the wind tunnel, and sanity check your results by flying it for real. ------ forkexec If it can be manufactured for reasonable cost, effectiveness and sensible power consumption, seems like a fit for small aircraft, fighter jets and any aircraft that don't have deicing boots or anti-ice systems. ------ AWildC182 Anyone with a better background, are micro surface features required for this kind of thing or could teflon/rain-x type chemical coatings create a more durable/corrosion resistant/easily repairable effect? ------ frandroid Did Fraunhofer just repurpose MP3 codecs to aluminium surface patterns? ------ DailyHN Very clever. Also seems like something pulled from ancient aliens. ~~~ excalibur I was thinking Tony Stark. "How did you solve the icing problem?" ~~~ pjmorris Nice. I'd drummed up Dr Evil, "Mr. Powers, you'll notice that all the sharks (planes) have laser beams attached to their heads. I figure every creature deserves a warm meal."

What's the best way to find UI/graphic design company for a $10,000 budget? - andrewstuart Is there some site where you can say (for example) "I have a $10K budget and I'd like to choose a designer to work with"? And then designers respond with some expression of interest.<p>Note: not looking at crowdsourcing solutions, just a way to find one designer/design company to work with. ====== calebcjb We might be interested. Please email me caleb@oxzenmedia.com Let me do a needs audit with you to see if we are the right fit for you. ~~~ andrewstuart Sorry I should clarify - I am not asking for submissions, I'm asking if such a site exists where buyers can state their budget and designers respond.

The 4-hour workweek for startups - pius http://www.mystealthstartup.com/2008/04/14/the-4-hour-workweek-for-startups/ ====== flux The book is mainly about building a business that sits in the background making a dependable but not necessarily huge income. It's not really surprising that it's popular with internet marketers because they generally are not concerned about the quality of products they are producing, more about if they sell and make money. Tim's example was selling supplements online, do you think he was really passionate about this business? I doubt it but that's kind of the point of the book, focusing on enjoying a lifestyle rather than your work. For people wanting to create an internet site/service of value and are really passionate about technology and the internet and enjoy focusing a lot of time on that then this probably isn't a good book to read. ~~~ tjakab On the other hand, is it necessarily bad to follow the techniques in the book to create a steady revenue stream (even if it's just enough to cover some basic debt) while putting your energy into a proper startup? The general point of the book is to find a way to separate income from labor and thus free up your time to do things you really want to do. That probably includes founding a startup just as much as it would traveling around the world or cage fighting or whatever else. ~~~ flux I guess if it's necessary to get your startup off the ground it could be a good idea. It's just that I see a lot of people looking at the internet just as a source of money, rather than thinking how can I improve this or add something of value. Having said this I do think some of his techniques could be useful and the book was quite interesting. ------ truebosko The whole idea of spending 4 hours a week to run your startup business is just silly. Yes, I've read the book and know what kind of techniques he mentions but it doesn't fit for many businesses. As an example. I could outsource my customer service to someone else, but then I lose that connection between the customer and I. I like having that connection, it allows me to see what my customers are looking for, what irks them, and allows me to further advance my business Basically, I can't stand this book. :) ~~~ pchristensen That aspect gets talked about a lot (both in and out of the book), but the truth is he already had a business with paying customers, and he streamlined it so he could run it easily instead of trying to maximize revenue. A rarely mentioned part of the book is where he gives you steps to build a business like his. First, you have to do a _lot_ of work, including doing _everything_ from answering phones, writing marketing copy, packaging every item, etc _by yourself_. Only when you have a product, traction, customers, and experience managing them, can you write the scripts, evaluate vendors and outsourcers, and streamline the business so that a customer can buy, receive, return, or complain about your product without ever encountering you. Despite the popular misconception, Tim Ferriss says you still have to _build_ your own business. But if you pick the right business, you can put it on autopilot _once it's built_. But that aspect isn't controversial enough to get a lot of press. Did you read the book or just hear about it? ------ noodle i'll summarize the article for everyone: "buy and read tim ferriss' book and make sure to click on my amazon affiliate link to buy it." ~~~ pchristensen It's not affiliate link.

Harvard: The Class of 2013 Senior Survey - ekm2 http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2013/5/28/senior-survey-2013/?page=1 ====== hkmurakami I was going to comment on how only 5% of the class sees a permanent future in the finance industry while 20% of the class sees a long term career in health/medicine, and how it reflects the perceived attractiveness of the various industries as our population ages and finance is increasingly bound up by legislation. But then I saw this: _39 percent of respondents said they sought some form of mental health care during their time at Harvard._ A culture and society that coerces its most potent individuals to develop depression and other mental issues is one that we cannot by any means be proud of. While I technically didn't seek mental health care during my college years, I should have by all means. During those four years, one friend visibly broke down and took a leave of absence for a year. Another committed suicide using cyanide from her lab. I can't imagine things are any better at my alma mater both compared to my years of attendance and compared to Harvard today. I really wish I could even have _hope_ that things are getting better. ~~~ w1ntermute > finance is increasingly bound up by legislation. The health care industry is also bound up by legislation. The difference is that the legislation is in the favor of those who pursue a career in the industry. ------ acjohnson55 I find it really interesting that 11.1% of men identify as gay coming out of college, yet only 1.7% of women do. Those numbers are respectively higher and lower than I would expect. It really speaks to the differences between male and female sexuality, even outside of "normal" heterosexual identity. Any thoughts as to why these numbers are so different? Is our conception of sexual orientation fundamental or just a social construction? I'm endlessly fascinated by these questions. There's so much we don't understand, complicated by politics of heteronormativity and equality. Wikipedia has an interesting article here: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_sexual_orientat...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_sexual_orientation) ------ beloch Ivy league students, on average, come from wealthier families than those attending other universities. Even ivy league students from poor backgrounds are likely under higher pressure to succeed than similar students going to other universities. The result is a stronger than average motivation to cheat and a stronger ability to cheat (e.g. Ghost writers do cost money). Couple this with a higher probability of litigation when students are punished/expelled, which causes Harvard to typically go easy on cheaters, and it's no surprise that cheating is more common at Harvard. The question for HN employers is whether or not this should impact the value of an Ivy League degree. ------ aashaykumar92 The cheating statistics really don't surprise me. In fact, I think they are underestimated, understandable considering some students may fear that their answers could be held against them despite being assured it won't. "Why is this on HN?" Well I think the cheating part has a some transferrable takeaways, the main one being online education. Online education is much like Harvard's honor system in that every assignment, quiz, and test can be completed on your own time (at least that's what I hear Harvard's policies are) and just have to be turned in by a certain date. But what you do to finish in that time is totally unknown to the administrators. Personally, I think it is the biggest obstacle for online education and this so-called Honor system. When there are people who want to succeed, and in class succeeding is generally represented by high grades, they will do whatever it takes and if using external resources is the way, why wouldn't they if no one is going to stop them? Not saying this is everyones mentality, but it obviously exists in many intelligent brains. The problem is outlined and has been for a while...the solution will have to be amazing. ------ wavefunction These are the people being groomed to make decisions that affect our world? Terrifying. ------ ggamecrazy Why is this on HN? I'm not seeing it. ~~~ ruswick Admittedly, it might not coincide with the ostensible subject matter of HN (other than it being tangentially related to statistical analysis and the technology sector), but evidently, a nontrivial number of people see value in reading it. The entire point of HN is that is to organically select superior content. Differentiation and evaluation shouldn't happen before posting, it should happen afterwards and be conducted by the community. The whole point of HN is that nothing has to be strictly topical. Everyone is free to throw whatever the fuck they want into it, and the readership will identify and promote the best content. ~~~ ggamecrazy ...or to put it another way: "Lets see if this shit sticks"

Using the /proc filesystem to monitor progress of script - shanemhansen http://www.whitane.com/blog/uncategorized/proc-filesystem-to-see-progress-of-script/ A tip for using the /proc filesystem to monitor file upload/processing progress. ====== obfuscate `lsof' is a nice front-end to this particular usage of /proc, and also works on other Unixes (/proc is, I think, a Linux innovation, and absent at least on OS X). ~~~ shanemhansen Oh, I never realized that's what the offset column is for. Leave it to me to reinvent (poorly) lsof by digging in some obscure corner of the kernel.

The script Uber is using to make anti-union phone calls - Trombone12 http://qz.com/621977/this-is-the-script-uber-is-using-to-make-anti-union-phone-calls-to-drivers-in-seattle/ ====== hackuser It's hard to imagine why the drivers wouldn't unionize. Why wouldn't you want to increase your negotiating leverage? It's just part of business. I'm sure Uber management increases theirs every chance they get, as does everyone else running a business.

Apple axes 1,600 full-time retail positions - yvesrn http://www.macnn.com/articles/09/04/24/apple.loses.1600.at.retail/ ====== electromagnetic This is misleading, they lost 1,600 full-time (or equivalent) workers. This could mean a lot of their part-time workers getting extra hours could no longer get extra hours, it doesn't mean they 'axed' 1,600 full-time positions, they likely cut the hours of 1,600 part-time employees. Then there's the whole, it was the Christmas season. I bet if you look back at records for the past decade there's either been a decline in employees in Q2 as apposed to Q1 or that their growth rate stalls in the Q2 as they no longer need new workers. Then I bet if you look at Q4, there's a big employment spike for the Christmas season. There's too many variables here to say Apple predicted the recession. Maybe they did, however there's much more practical reasons why this decision would have been made. The best reason I can think of is that when the economy started to falter, they reduced part-time workers hours. I don't know about Apples statistics, but most retail companies tend to have double (or more) the number of part- time workers as full-time (usually due to paying less in benefits). This likely means Apple has 28,000 part-time employees, 1,600 of which could have been working extra at Christmas to, you know, pay _for_ Christmas. ------ TJensen Once again, a title shouts "Panic at the economy" while the actual meat of the article says something completely different.

XEP-0280: Message Carbons (2013) - dgellow http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0280.html ====== imaginator Background: XEPs are the protocol building blocks of XMPP. The XSF (XMPP Standards Foundation) are working hard to make XMPP more mobile friendly. (disclaimer: I'm an XMPP board member). There are three problems to solve: 1\. knowing when to retrieve messages (push notifications) 2\. retrieving messages (message archive management) 3\. synchronising messages between devices (what this solves) More background: XMPP is designed around keeping a connection open to the client and pushing through updates and new messages. These assumptions worked well in a desktop environment on a solid TCP connection. But for power, intermittent network, and mobile OS design reason, holding open a socket isn't ideal. Push notification work because the OS provider (Apple, Google, Mozilla etc.) keep one socket open and then push through important notifications. This keeps the phone's radio from powering up for silly things like "contact came online/went offline" type messages. A push notification might be "xyz posted ... ". Your phone needs to now come online and synchronise messages that might have been posted on your tablet or desktop client. Hence XEP-0280. It helps resync messages from other clients. The XSF is also writing up a push notification XEP that makes it easy for mobile apps to use XMPP as a signalling channel and throw out push notification where necessary. ~~~ etherealG Thanks for the hard work on this. It's a problem I find particularly bad in my day to day use of chat on various clients across a phone, tablet and laptop. ------ schneid Though as described here: [http://op- co.de/blog/posts/mobile_xmpp_in_2014/#index2h2](http://op- co.de/blog/posts/mobile_xmpp_in_2014/#index2h2) \-- Message Carbons don't help if your phone is out of coverage for a few minutes, as your desktop client will get the carbons, but when you come back online, you'll be oblivious to any messages sent during that time. ~~~ imaginator Ge0rg wrote that post shortly before the last XMPP summit. Then we put together the plans for push notifications ([https://github.com/legastero/customxeps/blob/gh- pages/extens...](https://github.com/legastero/customxeps/blob/gh- pages/extensions/push.md)) working in conjunction with Message archive management ([http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0313.html](http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0313.html)) to catch up on messages that might have been missed (in your example: on your desktop client). ~~~ schneid Cool, thanks for the link. I knew about MAM, but hadn't seen the push stuff. ~~~ imaginator Be aware that push is very early. But there are two working implementations already - oTalk and Buddycloud ([https://github.com/buddycloud/buddycloud- pusher](https://github.com/buddycloud/buddycloud-pusher)). What's interesting is that we both came up with very similar solutions. So specing something official and then adapting our code to match the spec should be trivial (in the grand scheme of things). ------ tete Does anyone know how this will work when combined with OTR? I guess the alternative would be PGP, which has disadvantages, but no sessions. ~~~ Zash Not well. OTR doesn't integrate with XMPP in any way, so adding carbons is just going to feed undecryptable garbage to your other clients. Solving that is pretty much the same problem as mpOTR aims to solve. There's also a new proposed end-to-end encryption spec for XMPP being developed: [http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-miller- xmpp-e2e](http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-miller-xmpp-e2e) ~~~ simoncion Doesn't this resolve the issue that you describe? [http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0280.html#disabling](http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0280.html#disabling) ------ davexunit Using this and XEP-0313 allows for syncing conversations to all clients, whether they were online or offline. I helped implement an XMPP chat feature on a large web application last year and I think that implementing these two XEPs are critical to fixing the things users complain about most: Receiving a message in one browser window, opening a new tab or window and not being able to see those old messages, just new ones. ------ brugidou this XEP is supported by the most popular XMPP servers (prosody, ejabberd) but it is still quite difficult to get a good XMPP client on all platforms that can support this. this is especially important for mobile clients on iOS or Android or web clients. I don't see another way to have OSS multi-client chats with XMPP similar to hangouts/Facebook/WhatsApp. ~~~ andor yaxim supports message carbons ------ dfc One of the nice things about the "do not change the title"-policy is that submitters do not need to be concerned with spelling. Unfortunately, pg can not save you from yourself if you do choose to violate the policy and change the title. ~~~ dgellow Can you tell me what was wrong with the old title ? ~~~ dfc You spelled conversations incorrectly. I forget what word your computer autcorrected/substituted for it. ------ tomphoolery noooooooooooooooooice! something i've wanted for a long time, and it seems only iMessage has perfected. ------ Fasebook TIL piping data together for big data purposes is called a protocol and not a dragnet.

Our Software Dependency Problem - dmit https://research.swtch.com/deps ====== tc The security of package managers is something we're going to have to fix. Some years ago, in offices, computers were routinely infected or made unusable because the staff were downloading and installing random screen savers from the internet. The IT staff would have to go around and scold people not to do this. If you've looked at the transitive dependency graphs of modern packages, it's hard to not feel we're doing the same thing. In the linked piece, Russ Cox notes that the cost of adding a bad dependency is the sum of the cost of each possible bad outcome times its probability. But then he speculates that for personal projects that cost may be near zero. That's unlikely. Unless developers entirely sandbox projects with untrusted dependencies from their personal data, company data, email, credentials, SSH/PGP keys, cryptocurrency wallets, etc., the cost of a bad outcome is still enormous. Even multiplied by a small probability, it has to be considered. As dependency graphs get deeper, this probability, however small, only increases. One effect of lower-cost dependencies that Russ Cox did not mention is the increasing tendency for a project's transitive dependencies to contain two or more libraries that do the same thing. When dependencies were more expensive and consequently larger, there was more pressure for an ecosystem to settle on one package for a task. Now there might be a dozen popular packages for fancy error handling and your direct and transitive dependencies might have picked any set of them. This further multiplies the task of reviewing all of the code important to your program. Linux distributions had to deal with this problem of trust long ago. It's instructive to see how much more careful they were about it. Becoming a Debian Developer involves a lengthy process of showing commitment to their values and requires meeting another member in person to show identification to be added to their cryptographic web of trust. Of course, the distributions are at the end of the day distributing software written by others, and this explosion of dependencies makes it increasingly difficult for package maintainers to provide effective review. And of course, the hassles of getting a library accepted into distributions is one reason for the popularity of tools such as Cargo, NPM, CPAN, etc. It seems that package managers, like web browsers before them, are going to have to provide some form of sandboxing. The problem is the same. We're downloading heaps of untrusted code from the internet. ~~~ faissaloo This right here is why Go's 'statically link everything' is going to become a big problem in the long run when old servers are running that software and no one has the source code anymore. ~~~ stcredzero Given the ease with which the parser and AST are made available to developers, we should be able to implement tools which can detect naughty packages. Also, given the speed at which projects can be compiled, the impetus to keep the source code should remain strong. ~~~ viraptor [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tools_for_static_cod...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tools_for_static_code_analysis) They're either going to miss things or have false positives. They sure improve the situation, but you can't find all of the issues automatically. ~~~ stcredzero Granted. But it will at least raise the bar for building an exploit package from "knows how to code" to "knows how to code, knows something about exploits, and knows how to avoid detection by an automated scanner." ------ smacktoward It's an interesting line of inquiry to think about how many of these evaluation heuristics, which are all described as things a person can do manually, could instead be built into the package manager itself to do for you automatically. The package manager could run the package's test suite, for instance, and warn you if the tests don't all pass, or make you jump through extra hoops to install a package that doesn't have any test coverage at all. The package manager could read the source code and tell you how idiomatically it was written. The package manager could try compiling from source with warnings on and let you know if any are thrown, and compare the compiled artifacts with the ones that ship with the package to ensure that they're identical. The package manager could check the project's commit history and warn you if you're installing a package that's no longer actively maintained. The package manager could check whether the package has a history of entries in the National Vulnerability Database. The package manager could learn what licenses you will and won't accept, and automatically filter out packages that don't fit your policies. And so on. In other words, the problem right now is that package managers are undiscriminating. To them a package is a package is a package; the universe of packages is a flat plane where all packages are treated equally. But in reality all packages _aren 't_ equal. Some packages are good and others are bad, and it would be a great help to the user if the package manager could encourage discovery and reuse of the former while discouraging discovery and reuse of the latter. By taking away a little friction in some places and adding some in others, the package manager could make it easy to install good packages and hard to install bad ones. ~~~ DoctorOetker those are really good ideas! a vague additional idea: can we improve rough assessment of code quality? 1) suppose we have pseudonym reputation ("error notice probability"): anyone can create a pseudonym, and start auditing code, and you mark the parts of code that you have inspected. those marks are publicly associated with your pseudonym (after enough operation and eventual finding of bugs by others, the "noticing probability" can be computed+). 2) consider the birthday paradox, i.e. drawing samples from the uniform distribution will result in uncoordinated attention, while with coordinated attention we can spread attention more uniformly... \+ of course theres different kinds of issues, i.e. new features, arguments about wheiter something is an improvement or if it was an oversighted issue etc... but the future patch types don't necessarily correlate to the individuals who inspected it... ALSO: I still believe formal verification is actually counterintuitively cheaper (money _and time_ ) and less effort per achieved certainty. But as long as most people refuse to believe this, I encourage strategies like these... ~~~ EvilTerran There's some relevant work going on in the "crev" project, discussed here a couple of weeks ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18824923](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18824923) The big idea is for people to publish cryptographically signed "proofs" that they've reviewed a particular version of a given module, allowing a web-of- trust structure for decentralised code review. I particularly like how, thanks to the signatures, a module's author can distribute reviews alongside the module without compromising their trustworthiness - so there's an incentive for authors to actively seek out reviewers to scrutinise their code. ------ peteforde This paper lends significant legitimacy to a casual observation that I've been concerned about for a long time: as the standard for what deserves to be a module gets ever-lowered, the law of diminishing returns kicks in really hard. The package managers for Ruby, C#, Perl, Python etc offer ~100k modules. This offers strong evidence that most developer ecosystems produce (and occasionally maintain) a predictable number of useful Things. If npm has 750k+ modules available, that suggests that the standard for what constitutes a valuable quantity of functionality is 7.5X lower in the JS community. Given that every dependency increases your potential for multi-dimensional technical risk, this seems like it should be cause for reflection. It's not an abstract risk, either... as anyone who used left-pad circa 2016 can attest. When I create a new Rails 5.2 app, the dependency tree is 70 gems and most of them are stable to mature. When I create-react-app and see that there's 1014 items in node_modules, I have no idea what most of them actually do. And let's not forget: that's just the View layer of your fancy JS app. ~~~ jrochkind1 When I create a new rails 5.2.2 app, I see 79 dependencies in entire tree. Which is about what you said, and a lot less than 1014, sure. There are various reasons other than "low standards" that the JS ecosystem has developed to encourage even more massive dependency trees. One is that JS projects like this are delivered to the browser. If I want one function from, say, underscore (remember that?), but depend on all of it... do i end up shipping all of it to the browser to use one function? That would be unfortunate. Newer tools mean not necessarily, but it can be tricky, and some of this culture developed before those tools. But from this can develop a community culture of why _shouldn't_ I minimize the weight of dependencies? If some people only want one function and others only another, shouldn't they be separate dependencies so they can do that? And not expose themselves to possible bugs or security problems in all that other code they don't want? If dependencies can be dangeorus... isn't it better to have _surgical_ dependencies including only exactly what you need so you can take less of them? (Makes sense at first, but of course when you have 1000 of those "surgical" dependencies, it kind of breaks down). Another, like someone else said, is that JS in the browser has very little stdlib/built in functions. Another is tooling. The dependency trees were getting unmanageable in ruby before bundler was created (which inspired advanced dependency management features in most of the rest subsequent). We probably couldn't have as many dependencies as even Rails has without bundler. Your dependency complexity is limited by tooling support; but then when tooling support comes, it gives you a whole new level of dependency management problems that come with the crazy things the tooling let you do. These things all feed back on each other back and forth. I'm not saying it isn't giving rise to very real problems. But it's not just an issue of people having low standards or something. ~~~ peteforde You are correct, sir: 79 dependencies. Need more coffee! The influence of Bundler is just another example of Yehuda Katz doing something initially perceived as unpopular having a massive long-term impact on developer ecosystems. He is the Erdős of the web dev world. I wish he would sell options on his future endeavours like David Bowie did. Anyhow, in trying to keep my initial comment relatively brief, I held back on several points; what I really and truly don't get about the 750k thing is how anyone can track the libraries available. You know... with their brains. In Rails, gems are big ideas: authentication, an ORM, the ability to address all of AWS, send tweets. The idea that someone would even think to publish a "left-pad" (which I understand is just missing from the also-missing stdlib) as something people should import is what seems crazy. What makes you stop and think... wait, I'm typing too many characters, I need to see if there's anything on Github that can insert spaces at the beginning of a string. How would you even know what it's called? Is there a module for concatenating two strings? When does it become silly? How is it possible that finding a library to add padding which may or may not exist, doing even cursory code review and integrating it not take longer than just writing a few lines of code? Using the example of the escape-string-regexp module mentioned in the whitepaper... this would be a deeply flawed thing to add to your project. It has a hard-coded error message that has zero affordances for localization strategies. It is, at best, a few random lines from someone's hobby app. If every one of those 1014 modules in an empty project have weird, unknown- unknown failure modes, that sounds like a recipe for trouble. Finally, 1014 packages getting frequently version bumped is way less reliable in terms of unfortunate conflicts. Your surface area of all things that can go wrong shoots up and to the right... all to save a few lines of code? ~~~ IggleSniggle I don’t really disagree with anything you’ve said, just want to add. It’s not really 750k packages you’re keeping in your head. Instead, there are swirling communities of standard convention. This happens because the js community is so large and the code syntax so “forgiving” that many different “dialects” of js exist. There’s a reason “Babel” is called “Babel.” Within your dialect, one package may be better suited than another package, which does the same thing. A great example of this is where ‘_ => result’ may look perfectly coherent in one sub-ecosystem, another sub-ecosystem would more readily understand ‘function AsyncCalculationProvider(callback: CompletionFunction) { return callback }’, both for perfectly legitimate reasons. That people wish to ‘standardize’ on one common way of doing a thing within their sub-ecosystem is the reason people accept dependencies for dumb little things. That people disagree on how those things should manifest in the context of their subculture is the reason there’s 10 different popular ways to do the same exact little thing. This isn’t even just ECMAScripts fault. The Web APIs provide a lot of great fill-in as a standard library (for example, for Date localization), but even here we do not see consistency. For example, the “fetch” api for browsers is nice enough, but is not implemented in Nodejs. If you want to share a signature for HTML requests between nodejs and browsers, you’re going to use “axios” or maybe “node-fetch” (which replicates the Web api but is more verbose), or you’re going to end up rewriting a wrapper for that functionality, and why would you do that when there’s a community that will immediately see and understand what you mean when you import the “axios” module? Big optional standard library needed, but minimized deliverable also needed. Recent tooling (eg tree-shaking and Babel), make this more reasonable today than it was in the past. ~~~ peteforde If historical lessons continue to apply, what will likely happen is a few more significant iterations of shakeout as the community coalesces around something closer to consensus. It's important to remember that the vast majority of developers in any ecosystem are simply trying to use a tool to do a job; they are far less likely to commit a significant amount to the ecosystem and that's okay. Wikipedia is very similar in this regards. Perhaps the best comparison is the evolution of the Linux distribution ecosystem. Maybe React is Ubuntu? The story is still being written. ------ Sir_Cmpwn >Is the code well-written? Read some of it. Does it look like the authors have been careful, conscientious, and consistent? Does it look like code you’d want to debug? You may need to. This, 10,000x. I've repeated a similar mantra many, many times, and it's one of the most important reasons I refuse to use proprietary software. You should consider no software a black box, and consider the software you chose to use carefully, because it's your responsibility to keep it in good working order. ~~~ bunderbunder Making it someone else's responsibility to keep it in good working order is the value proposition behind (good) proprietary software: You give them money, they give you a support contract. For a company with more money than development resources, or even just a company whose development resources can be more profitably focused elsewhere, this can be a quite reasonable trade to make. ~~~ vharuck If a company behind proprietary software goes belly up, there's no support. But there are always companies or even freelance devs who can be paid to support open source code. ~~~ IggleSniggle Proprietary _and closed source_. We make use of open source (but not open license) proprietary software on my team. ------ raphlinus My personal sense, from watching developments in this space, is that we are going to have to find some way for taking on an open source dependency to be an economic transaction, with money actually changing hands. With open source, the code itself is free (in both the libre and gratis sense), but there are other places to identify value. One of them is chain of custody - is there an actual, somewhat responsible human being behind that package? Many of the most dramatic recent failures are of this nature. Other value is in the form of security analysis / fuzzing, etc. This is real work and there should be ways to fund it. I think the nature of business today is at a fork. Much of it seems to be scams, organized around creating the illusion of value and capturing as much of it as possible. The spirit of open source is the opposite, creating huge value and being quite inefficient at capturing it. I can see both strands prevailing. If the former, it could choke off open source innovation, and line the pockets of self-appointed gatekeepers. If the latter, we could end up with a sustainable model. I truly don't know where we'll end up. ~~~ skybrian On the other hand, it seems like making automatic payments to dependencies would be easy to screw up. Adding money to a system in the wrong way tends to attract scammers and thieves, requiring more security vigilance, while also giving people incentives to take shortcuts to make money. (Consider Internet ads, SEO, and cryptocurrency.) Monetary incentives can be powerful and dangerous. They raise the stakes. You need to be careful when designing a system that you don't screw them up, and this can be difficult. Sometimes it can be easier to insulate people from bad incentives than to design unambiguously good incentives. ~~~ x0x0 A counterpoint: the system has already attracted scammers. see eg the bitcoin injection in npm. And now that someone smart has blazed the way and demonstrated the opportunity, others are sure to follow. ------ jasode Fyi, the article's title and sibling top-level comment by austincheney may give the wrong impression of what Russ Cox is talking about. His essay is _not_ saying software dependencies itself is a problem. Instead, he's saying software dependencies __evaluation__ methodology is the problem. He could have titled it more explicitly as _" Our Software Dependency Evaluation Problem"_. So, the premise of the essay is already past the point of the reader determining that he will use someone else's software to achieve a goal. At that point, don't pick software packages at random or just include the first thing you see. Instead, the article lists various strategies to _carefully evaluate_ the soundness, longevity, bugginess, etc of the software dependency. I think it would be more productive to discuss _those evaluation strategies_. For example, I'm considering a software dependency on a eventually consistent db such as FoundationDB. I have no interest nor time nor competency to "roll my own" distributed db. Even if I read the academic whitepapers on concurrent dbs to write my own db engine, I'd still miss several edge cases and other tricky aspects that others have solved. The question that remains is if FoundationDB is a "good" or "bad" software dependency. My evaluation strategies: 1) I've been keeping any eye on the project's "issues" page on Github[0]. I'm trying to get a sense of the bugs and resolutions. Is it a quality and rigorous codebase like SQLite? Or is it a buggy codebase like MongoDB 1.0 back in 2010 that had nightmare stories of data corruption? 2) I keep an eye out for another high-profile company that successfully used FoundationDB besides Apple. 3) and so on.... There was recent blog post where somebody regretted their dependency on RethinkDB[1]. I don't want to repeat a similar mistake with FoundationDB. What are your software dependency evaluation strategies? Share them. [0] [https://github.com/apple/foundationdb/issues](https://github.com/apple/foundationdb/issues) [1] [https://mxstbr.com/thoughts/tech-choice-regrets-at- spectrum/](https://mxstbr.com/thoughts/tech-choice-regrets-at-spectrum/) ~~~ SmirkingRevenge A couple questions that I like to ask myself... \- How easily and quickly can I tell if I made the wrong choice? \- How easily and quickly can I switch to an alternative solution, if I made the wrong choice? To contextualize those a bit, its often when trying to pick between some fully managed or even severless cloud services vs something self-managed that ticks more boxes on our requirements/features wish-list. Also, its pretty important to consider the capabilities and resources of your team... \- Can my team and I become proficient with the service/library/whatever quickly? ------ athenot > Does the code have tests? Can you run them? Do they pass? Tests establish > that the code’s basic functionality is correct, and they signal that the > developer is serious about keeping it correct. This is one thing I thoroughly miss from Perl's CPAN: modules there have extensive testing, thanks to the CPAN Testers Network. It's not just a green/red badge but reporting is for the version triplet { module version, perl version, OS version }. I really wish NPM did the same. Here's an example: [http://deps.cpantesters.org/?module=DBD::mysql](http://deps.cpantesters.org/?module=DBD::mysql) ~~~ SomeHacker44 My opinion... That implies too much faith in tests. Tests are no better or worse than any other code. In fact, writing good tests is an art and most people cannot think about every corner case and don’t write tests that cover every code path. So, unless you audit the tests they add no practical additional layer of trust, IMO, to just using the “package” with or without tests. ~~~ nobody271 Many times I've had the most use for a test that didn't fit into the conventional unit test format but I didn't try to get it approved because I didn't want to get into a dogmatic argument about what a test should or shouldn't be. A lot of what I worry about doesn't get tested well using unit tests. ~~~ woolvalley Why not call it an integration or e2e test and be done with it? ------ jancsika Modest proposal: do the opposite of everything suggested in this article. After all, if you spend all your time inspecting your dependencies, what was the point of even having them in the first place? This will ensure that maximum time possible is spent implementing new features. _Everyone_ on your team can pitch in to accelerate this goal. Even non-technical outsiders can give valuable feedback. At the same time, this ensures minimum time spent fiddling about in a desperate attempt to secure the system and slowing everyone else down. Besides, unless you're already a fortune 500 company, _no one_ on your team knows how to do security at all. (And even then the number of experts on your team is probably still dangerously close to zero.) The software you ship will obviously be less secure than if you had focused any time at all on security. However, the utility of your software will _skyrocket_ compared to what it would have been if you had sat around worrying about security. So much that your userbase is essentially _forced_ to use your software because nothing else exists that even has a fraction of its feature set. Sooner or later the insecurity will catch up with you. But this is the best part-- your software has so many features it is now a _dependency_ of nearly everything else that exists. There is no chess move left except to sit down and somehow _actually_ secure it so that arbitrarily tall stacks of _even less secure_ software can keep being build atop it without collapsing like a house of cards. And it's at this point that the four or five people in the world who actually understand security step in and sandbox your software. Hey, now it's more secure than a system built by a cult of devs tirelessly inspecting every little dependency before they ship anything. Problem solved. ------ et1337 Worse than package dependency is platform dependency. My code runs on top of 10 million lines of Kubernetes insanity that no one really understands, including the thousands of authors who wrote it. In theory, that means at the drop of a hat I can switch to a different cloud, kubectl apply, and presto! Platform independence. In reality, every cloud is slightly different, and we now depend on and work around a lot of weird quirks of Kubernetes itself. We're stuck with what we've got. ------ austincheney Easily explained in two points. 1\. Convenience at cost to everything else. Easier is generally preferred over simplicity. If the short term gains destroy long term maintenance/credibility they will solve for that bridge when they come to it at extra expense. 2\. Invented Here syndrome. Many JavaScript developers would prefer to never write original code (any original code) except for as a worst case scenario. They would even be willing to bet their jobs on this. ~~~ RealDinosaur For me (Javascript Developer), you have to stand on the shoulders of giants if you want to compete. Any code you re-invent is code you have to maintain. I've found though, some engineers love to create everything from scratch, and this greatly hinders their ability to hire/fire as everything is proprietary, and usually not documented. Most decisions are pretty grey, but for me, choosing to handle stuff yourself is never a good choice. In the same way as no-one should ever try and create Unity from scratch, no-one should try to create React from scratch. You simply can't compete with the support and effort of a global development team. If you wanna learn though, that's a different kettle of fish. Reinvent the wheel all day. Just don't use it in production. ~~~ loup-vaillant > _no-one should ever try and create Unity from scratch_ Some game developers do write their game engines from scratch. I know of at least one successful example: Jonathan Blow, with _Braid_ (2D engine) and _The Witness_ (3D engine). Note that in both games, a generic engine wouldn't have worked, or at least would have required such an amount of customisation that it's not clear it would have cost less, or looked and felt as good. Sure, don't go rebuild a generic engine from scratch. But a custom one, tailored to a very specific use case? That's not such an obvious no-no. Another example would be Monocypher¹, my crypto library. Why would I write such a thing when we already have Libsodium? The reason is, I saw that I could do better for my use case: an opinionated, easy to use, portable package. The result is _massively_ simpler than Libsodium. I don't care that I cannot compete with the support and effort of Libsodium team. I made sure I didn't need to. [1]: [https://monocypher.org/](https://monocypher.org/) ~~~ RealDinosaur Braid and Witness _could_ have been written in Unity though. I'd argue that dealing with high level concepts such as game/level design and art direction and low level stuff like graphics and rendering simultaneously is insane. I don't know how Jon Blow did it, but personally being able to abstract away all that low level stuff makes the design process way easier for me. There was a recent game, 'Return of the Obra Dinn', which went the opposite way. It was the dev's first game with Unity, and he attributed most of his success to the Engine. It doesn't look like a Unity game, it doesn't play like a Unity game, and it has won several game of the year awards. ~~~ loup-vaillant Come to think of it, there's _Antichamber_ , a non Euclidean labyrinth based on Unreal Engine (4, I believe). As for how Jon Blow did it, I suspect having his own engine let him explore gameplay ideas more readily than using a generic one. The time travelling in Braid and all its variations would be pretty hard to bolt on a generic engine: it's not just rewind, it's _partial_ rewind, with some entities being immune to the rewind. There's even a level where time goes forward and backward depending on the _position_ of the main character. Go right, forward. Go left, backwards. For The Witness, it's a bit more subtle, but about a third of the game required pretty crazy 2D projective analysis of the 3D world (the "environmental puzzles", don't look them up if you don't want spoilers). While it didn't en up being central to the game, it was basically the starting point. The engines of Jonathan Blow's games are more central to their gameplay than for most games. Still bloody impressive, but probably less unnecessary than one might originally think. Also, Jonathan Blow has pretty strong opinions about game development, and I got the feeling that he disagrees with most generic engines out there. Working with them would probably caused suffering, whose cost he didn't want to pay. (Speaking for myself, my productivity drops pretty sharply when I spot stuff I too strongly disagree with, _and I can 't fix it_.) ------ jsty It might be that data protection regulations start to 'encourage' movement in this area regards more careful consideration of the software dependency chain. If you pull in a malicious dependency which results in personal information being exfiltrated, I doubt the "we pulled in so many third party dependencies it was infeasible to scrutinise them" defence is going to mitigate the fines by very much. ~~~ DoctorOetker that is the ideal path, but sadly most things indicate the system prefers the opposite path, especially if we look at "responsible disclosure" where the contributor is expected to give a _centralized_ temporary secrecy agency advance warning, and we blindly have to trust them not to weaponize what essentially amounts to an endless stream of 0days (or trust them not to turn a selective blind eye to malicious exfiltration of these 0days) ------ rossdavidh I like (and basically agree with) the article, but I have to think it basically does a good job of pointing out the problem, and a bad job of suggesting a solution. The sheer number of dependencies of most commercial software now, and the ratio of backlog-to-developers, basically insures that the work required to check all your dependencies does not normally get done. Hypothesis: it will require a massive failure, that causes the ordinary citizen (and the ordinary really, really rich citizen) to notice that something is wrong, before it changes much. Hypothesis 2: after that happens, the first language whose dependency manager handles this problem well, will move up greatly in how widely it's used. ~~~ alkonaut For a 100 man year project we have accumulated around a dozen external dependencies and only two of them are transitive (one for zipping and one for logging). I think that’s fairly reasonable and about what I’d expect. So as you might have guessed it’s not a node project, but that’s my point - perhaps the idea of dependencies is manageable so long as the platform allows you to keep it reasonable. Meaning, at the very least, a good standard library. ------ bluetech I think object-capabilities are one way to have much safer code reuse. Suppose a dependency exports a class UsefulService. In current languages, such a class can do anything - access the filesystem, access the network, etc. Suppose however that the language enforces that such actions can only be done given a reference to e.g. NetworkService, RandomService, TimeService, FilesystemService (with more or less granularity). Therefore if UsefulService is declared with `constructor(RandomService, TimeService)`, I can be sure it doesn't access any files, or hijacks any data to the network - nor do any of its transitive dependencies. The method of sandboxing using OS processes + namespaces and what not is too heavy and unusable at such granularity. The method of per-dependency static permission manifests in some meta-language is also poor. The method of a single IO monad is too coarse. Also using any sort of `unsafe` should not be allowed (or be its own super-capability). Obviously there are many tricky considerations. [For example, it is anti- modular - if suddenly UsefulService does need filesystem access, it's a breaking change, since it now must take a FilesystemService. But that sounds good to me - it's the point after all.] But does any language try to do this? ------ 3xblah The problem I see is not in the fact the develpers choose to rely on third party software reuse and thus create dependencies, but in how developers _choose_ which third party software to use. If their judgment fails, the consequences for the user can be dire. For example, Google chose to reuse the c-ares DNS library for their Chromebooks over other available DNS libraries. It is maintained by the same person who oversees the popular libcurl. The company issued a challenge and a $100,000 bounty for anyone who could create a persistent exploit with the Chromebook running in guest mode. As it happened, the winnning exploit relied on an off-by-one mistake in the c-ares library. Users are not in the position to decide which (free, open-source) code is reused in a mass market corporate product. They must rely on the judgment of the developers working for the corporation. On my personal computers, where I run a non-corporate OS, I prefer to use code from djbdns rather than c-ares for DNS queries. If someone finds an off-by-one mistake in djbdns, and this has negative consequences for me, it will be my own judgment that is to blame. ------ Felz The real dependency problem is that most languages give out way too much trust by default. Any code can have any side effects. I'd like ways to guarantee my dependencies have no side effects, like they were Haskell with no IO/unsafePerformIo, or to aggressively audit and limit those side effects. Malicious event stream package suddenly wants to use the network? No. ~~~ beardedwizard Another way to state this is: accept the state of the world and approach the problem using an existing methodology - treat code as untrusted and whitelist execution paths. SElinux and others do this, intrinsic is another product that uses the same approach for app runtime, I think this is probably the future of this problem space. This is zero trust, and this pattern is showing up everywhere (again?). ------ tabtab There used to be talk about how to increase "reuse" of software, and now that systems use masses of libraries, the down-sides of heavy but casual reuse are coming to light. I'm not sure of an easy answer. Perhaps the libraries can be reworked to make it easier to only use or extract the specific parts you need, but it's difficult to anticipate future and varied needs well. Trial and error, and blood, sweat, and tears may be the trick; but, nobody wants to pay for such because the benefits are not immediate nor guaranteed. OOP use to be "sold" as a domain modelling tool. It pretty much _failed_ at that for non-trivial domains (in my opinion at least), but made it easier to glue libraries together, and glue we did. ~~~ jerf It's not _that_ hard. You just need to think of dependencies as something that has non-zero benefits _and_ non-zero costs. The problem is that, as usual, whereever you've got a "zero" showing up in your cost/benefits analysis, you're overlooking _something_. Sometimes it's minor and negligible stuff, but sometimes it's not. Act accordingly. One thing that I believe we will come to a consensus on is that there is a certain fixed cost of a dependency, analogous to the base cost of a physical store to manage the stock of _anything_ that appears on the shelves no matter how cheap the individual item may be, and that a dependencies will need to overcome that base cost to be worthwhile. I suspect that the requisite functionality is generally going to require in the low hundreds of lines at a minimum to obtain, and that we're going to see a general movement away from these one-line "libraries". I say generally more than a few hundred lines because there are some exceptional cases, such as encryption algorithms or some very particular data structures like red-black trees, where they may not be a whole lot of lines per se, but they can be very dense, very details-oriented, very particular lines. Most of our code is not like that, though. ~~~ tabtab Re: _It 's not that hard_ Do you mean creating libraries that are flexible and partitioned well for _future_ needs? I do find that hard and almost no library maker I know of gets it right the first time. Analysis of current needs is difficult; analysis of future needs is extra difficult. Experience helps, but is still not powerful enough. The future continues to surprise the heck of out me. Tell God to slow things down ;-) ~~~ jerf No, I mean that it's not _that_ hard to do some due diligence when picking a dependency. You just need to get over the idea that it's something you don't need to do. No, you're not going to read every single line, but you ought to be running through the basics outlined by Russ in his post. If you're being paid to code and you're not doing those basics, you're being negligent in your professional duty. And knowing the internet and its inability to deal with nuance, let me say again, no, it's not _trivial_. But it's not _that hard_ , either. If a dependency is worth bringing in, it's bringing you enough value that you ought to be able to spare the effort of doing the basic due diligence. ------ trhway 15 years ago adding an external module was an endeavor involving approval forms, lawyers, etc. so that it frequently were much easier just to develop required functionality yourself. These days i still shudder seeing how the build goes somewhere, downloads something (usually you notice it only when whatever package manager being used for that part of the build didn't find the proxy or requires very peculiar way of specifying it - of course at the companies with transparent proxies people didn't notice even that ) ... completely opaque in the sense that even if i spend some time today looking into what is downloaded and where from, tomorrow another guy would just add another thing ... ------ jayd16 Is the package management story significantly worse for js/node than other languages or is it just a meme? If it actually does have more issues, why? Are the npm maintainers less rigorous than, maven central (for example)? Java is lucky enough to have a lot of very solid Apache libraries built with enterprise money. Is the culture different for js and npm? ~~~ aaaaaaaaaab Java/.NET/C++/etc. people don’t have the urge to publish every other line of code they deem “useful”. They also don’t have the urge to import said one- liners when writing a helper method in 15 seconds is perfectly adequate. ~~~ saagarjha > Java/.NET/C++/etc. people don’t have the urge to publish every other line of > code they deem “useful”. I do for my code sometimes, except I make GitHub Gists out of them instead of putting them on NPM. ------ baq > Adapting Leslie Lamport’s observation about distributed systems, a > dependency manager can easily create a situation in which the failure of a > package you didn’t even know existed can render your own code unusable. Gold right here. Makes me wonder what Lamport’s TLA+ could be used for in the problem area. ------ jrochkind1 > We do this because it’s easy, because it seems to work, because everyone > else is doing it too, and, most importantly, because it seems like a natural > continuation of age-old established practice. And because we literally could not be creating software with the capabilities we are at the costs it is being produced without shared open source dependencies. I guess this is the same thing as "it's easy", but it's actually quite a different thing when you say it like this. ------ BinaryIdiot Dependencies are such a huge pain but I kinda liked the way we handled it when I did contracting work for the NSA years ago. Essentially we told them _exactly_ what dependencies we needed, including subdependencies, and we audited them the best we could and then we included them. To avoid this headache meant we were less incentivized to just pull in a module for every little thing and, instead, write our own where necessary or used modules that had less subdependencies. I think we're ready for a new class of dependencies. Dependencies that have little to no subdependencies. Dependencies that you can more easily audit because of fewer subdependencies. Also, we need less building of JavaScript code in npm packages. Instead, let people access the raw code so they can not only do tree shaking but they can examine the code that is running versus the code that may be in git. You can still include it and minify it with your stuff. This would also mean you could have larger libraries that do more stuff because you'd only include what you use (think how many Java libraries work except you could pull out what you need). I don't think there is a good software / npm solution. I think we need to change the way we work with dependencies entirely. ------ mberning I am reminded of this gem: [https://www.mikeperham.com/2016/02/09/kill-your- dependencies...](https://www.mikeperham.com/2016/02/09/kill-your- dependencies/) ------ jackfoxy I ran across a great quote that sums up the situation. _...functionality is an asset, but code is a liability._ [http://widgetsandshit.com/teddziuba/2010/10/taco-bell- progra...](http://widgetsandshit.com/teddziuba/2010/10/taco-bell- programming.html) Don't know if the OP came up with it himself, but he is now a candidate for the California State Senate. ------ quantumwoke I much prefer Java's model of software dependency consisting of (for the most part) well-documented, large, feature-filled libraries distributed in an easily discoverable and maintainable manner (maven/gradle/...) to the dependency hell that is modern JS libraries. Hopefully newer languages like rust don't succumb to the same trap. ~~~ willtim I once took a close look at a Java Web service application running internally at a large bank. It depended on over 3000 jar files, most of them likely transitive. When I queried the rationale of this, the dev team just shrugged it off as common Java practice. I do not think Java is in a significantly better place than the JS world with regard to dependencies. ~~~ rhacker I am curious if it was actually 3000, or if that is embellished. I've been in about 6 java shops from Nike to startups, and the number is USUALLY around 100. The reason is really simple - Jar files used to be required to download manually to add as a dependency. So there was a history of about 15 years of doing it the hard way. After maven was introduced, it took a while before OSS libs started adding other libs. Most of the time OSS libs are just including other Jars from their own organization. ~~~ willtim It's possibly an embellished number, I cannot remember the actual number but it was significantly larger than 100. I seem to have remembered it as 3000. The project had many frameworks: spring, glassfish, camel among others. ~~~ rhacker Gotcha, I'm guessing 300 range. That is quite a bit for Java actually - so still counts as pretty bad. Contextually here's a fairly complicated program in our current stack (which is all JS), the node_modules folder has 722 dependencies in it right now. Edit: I was replying to your first edition of the reply. If it's truly 3000 that's quite insane. That being said, the projects with a few hundred would have Glassfish, CXF, Spring, etc... ------ m0zg Yes, that's why I package as much stuff as I can into a hermetic Bazel build, including Python modules (and yes, I build Python programs in Google PAR format using Subpar). They're all stored in my own cloud bucket, the entire transitive closure can be tracked down, and they don't change underneath me willy-nilly. For C++ cross-builds I also package toolchains in a similar fashion. You could also package a toolchain for the host if you'd like, I just don't bother. And I package test data likewise. The build isn't 100% hermetic, but I'd say about 90%. I feel pretty good about this set-up and recommend it to others. Grabbing random packages (and worse, their transitive closures) from the internet as a part of the build sounds insane to me. ------ romeisendcoming Article kind of mangles the relationship between software reuse (which _has_ been here for a long time) and specific language library, etc..management. many years ago now systems administrators were tasked with providing a safe and sane environment for end user and developers by performing the exact due diligence that is described in this article. In the 'move fast and break things age' all this has been thrown to the wind and everyone decries the language manager code sprawl and breakage. Of necessity enterprises revert to 'immutability' as if it was a desirable and necessary deployment characteristic. This is an ugly time in IT. ------ mrdoops The way I see it, our over-dependency (sorry for overloading the phrase) on Javascript as the de-facto web language has the pendulum far in one direction. How much longer can we keep this up? What's the maximum capacity of a developer ecosystem before dependency-hell and framework churn reaches critical mass? This is still a complicated information system - how far can it scale? What's the breaking point? There's so much amateur work and muddied merit-sense-making of what's good software, who to listen to, and how to move forward - my feeling is that pendulum is just about at peak. ~~~ k__ For me this sounds like FUD. Sure, you can install a bunch of deps for every small problem, but you don't have to. If you just take a bit time to think, you can roll your own solution for 90% of the deps, which are tiny packages anyway. ~~~ mrdoops But what of the newbie developer? Is he/she going to just roll their own dependencies and do so in a way that's tenable? Green developers make up most of the category. I guess I was trying to approach a few concerns beyond just dependencies: learning curve, conventions/standards, framework volatility, and merit assess- ability of ideas. The more people involved (popularity), the greater the difficulty to parse the merit of an idea without pre-existing competence. How easy is it for a new developer to find a cogent way of doing things in Javascript land compared to a smaller more specific ecosystem? In the smaller ecosystem the experts are easier to determine due to a smaller population, whereas in Javascript-land there's so many people, opinions, articles, and conventional disparities; a much more challenging exercise. ~~~ k__ In PHP people would (often badly) reinvent the wheel on every project. In JS people would install packages for every small problem they have. Neither is good. I always check if I can write it myself in reasonable time, if not, I install a package for it. I'd install React, but I'd write the navigation myself. I'd install a video-player, but I'd write a SVG animation myself. etc. ------ simonjgreen Along the same lines is Docker Hub. Blindly building your own images via dockerfiles that pull from others images should warrant serious consideration, especially given those images can be updated at any time. ------ jorangreef "Dependency managers can often provide statistics about usage" Using module usage statistics as a proxy for trust is not always a good idea. For example, I confirmed with the security team of npm that they do not audit module download statistics, i.e. no detection of gaming the system through multiple downloads from a given IP. It's quite possible for a module to have 10,000 weekly downloads, all generated by a cron curl script run by the module's author. I wouldn't be surprised if this was the case for not a few modules on npm, especially to develop trust for later exploits. ------ adgasf Great article. Some thoughts (mostly informed from design of Buckaroo [https://github.com/LoopPerfect/buckaroo/](https://github.com/LoopPerfect/buckaroo/) ): \- Cost of creating a package must be low (ideally the package just lives in source control). This encourages code reuse and therefore testing. \- Verification of changes must be easy. Git is a great tool for this - we can review patches between versions, rather than whole versions at once. \- It should be easy to extract dependency graph (including transitive deps) so that you analyze who you are trusting. \- There must be a verifiable chain from package source to package bundle (NPM fails here, do you really know the source code reviewed on GitHub is what went into the bundle on the NPM registry)? Better yet, have no bundles at all, just source code + build instructions. \- Reproducible installations (usually implemented via lock-files) are critical. Many package managers have lock-files that do not actually give reproducible installs. Beware! \- Package builds must be isolated from each-other (otherwise one package might tamper with another; I believe this is possible in NPM packages) ------ rdiddly This is excellent. Not only for the subject matter but the quality of writing. I often take an article like this, distill it into my own (usually fewer) words and save it as a text file. This one I kept "distilling" only to realize, nope, nope, the way he said it was more exact/precise/correct. ------ iand This is probably a prelude to a deeper discussion of the module notary service that the Go project intends to run. First announced in this post from the end of last year: [https://blog.golang.org/modules2019](https://blog.golang.org/modules2019) ------ monksy On dependencies: There aren't a lot of tools out there to keep you 100% up to date and to keep moving. There is maven-dependencies that can auto upgrade, however, that's just a simple version upgrade and may have issues with non-standard versioning. Also it doesn't help with transitive dependency conflicts. We need good tools to alert and stop transitive dependency conflicts in their tracks. Versions helps with this, but it doesn't tell you much. What we do need: Jenkins dependency triggers for the projects. We need something that will automatically work wtih SCM and CI to create commits based on new found dependencies. If there is something that changed your tests should confirm if it works or not. ~~~ riyakhanna1983 What about existing tools, such as Synk, OSSIndex? ~~~ monksy That's good for reporting. There should be an automated approach to keep projects up to date. ------ richardwhiuk If you can easily write a replacement for it, then the cost of depending on it is very small - because the worst case for the fix is replacing it.... ~~~ jeremycw Worst case is more along the lines of a bad actor makes malicious changes to the dependency which you then unwittingly deploy to prod potentially compromising your entire system. ~~~ cortesoft Or if the dependency disappears and breaks deploys [https://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/03/23/npm_left_pad_chaos/](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/03/23/npm_left_pad_chaos/) ~~~ Nasrudith Really I couldn't help but facepalm when I heard about that. "Haven't those people heard of local caching?!" Really and also freeze the version number to what you know will work while you are at it. Unless it is an actual security and/or standardization important component (say SSH) it can wait until you know what it will do and that it won't break anything. It is good for bloat avoidance, security, and reliability. ------ zzo38computer Reducing the number of dependencies can avoid many of the problems, and makes it easier to examine the code, as well as less likely to cause problems (of several kinds). Many code has too much dependencies. Whether writing in JavaScript or C or something else, I will usually not use many external libraries; most commonly none at all. ------ rurban I wouldn't qualify zlib as trusted high-quality code. He really needs to look deeper. ------ profalseidol There's a talk from Rich Hickey about this. ~~~ LandR Got a link? ~~~ profalseidol I think it's this one: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyLBGkS5ICk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyLBGkS5ICk) HN Post: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13085952](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13085952) ------ yyyymmddhhmmss I am pretty new to development, and I keep trying to prove myself wrong over my apprehension to willy-nilly accumulate dependencies just because “the time savings add up”. Before starting any new project, I research and try all the existing similar projects I can find. I can predict their stability with overwhelming precision just by glancing at the dependencies, so the few projects I have built use only the most vanilla version of mainstream dependencies. And another result of this observation has been that I have come to devalue the word of devs with that happy-go-lucky approach to dependency accumulation. It seems to correlate with the exaggerated optimism that persists around everything in the development community. I’d like to be more optimistic just like everyone else, but ignoring debt like this doesn’t seem like the right way to do it. ------ ilaksh I'll just go ahead and take the downvotes/burial/lectures/ridicule whatever but I need to say it anyway. I've been programming for thirty years and in my opinion effective code reuse with npm is one of the greatest achievements in the history of software engineering. It's not perfect but it should be appreciated more and the issues are being overblown.

We overcomplicated the hell out of both our products - joelle https://medium.com/p/1816bd8a341a ====== goldvine It's interesting to hear from some people that the direction we've ended up pursuing is the direction they originally perceived us to be pursuing. #CommunicationFail Anyone else experienced this?

Ask HN: What technologies can we use to minimise data collected into PRISM - mark_ellul We all now know the news about PRISM, so I was wondering on your thoughts on how we can stop the majority of our data going into PRISM.<p>So I thought this would be a good Forum to discuss the technical approaches to minimizing our Data making it into PRISM?<p>There are essential services and tasks that we all use and do and I was wondering what suggests we as a community can provide to minimize the Privacy Invasion.&lt;p&gt;Here are some examples:<p>Browsing: Tor<p>Email: Private Mail Server with PGP<p>Social Network &#x2F; Media Sharing : Diaspora?<p>Storage: Mega?<p>Etc....<p>Looking forward your comments. ====== gesman Wasting less time on facebook will leave NSA emptyhanded! :) ~~~ mark_ellul Yes, I guess removing Facebook account and completely stop using the service would definitely be an option.

Lean Domain Search Adds 450 New Search Results; Now Checks 2,500 Domains/Search - matt1 http://www.leandomainsearch.com/blog/8-lean-domain-search-adds-450-new-search-results--now-checks-2-500-domain-names-per-search ====== petercooper I've seen a lot of projects like this come and go or, most often, sit around getting few updates. For some reason I started to follow Matt on Twitter when he first launched LDS and I've been impressed at how he's kept chipping away at it making it better. (His technique for catching people who don't use his links to register the domains found is genius and, I've inferred, works well.) He just put a graph of his traffic on Twitter as well and it clearly shows the value of continuing to hammer away at a project over time rather than releasing and forgetting about it: <http://cl.ly/3C181Q3A1n2k142C0c0L> So big thumbs up to Matt.

Do Difficult Job Interviews Lead to More Satisfied Workers? - gcz92 https://www.glassdoor.com/research/studies/interview-difficulty/ ====== at-fates-hands I would think this is pretty obvious. I don't think it's a direct correlation as much as it feels like a side effect of said process. An example would be you find a great candidate who is a great fit, and then they demonstrate this with a great technical interview. I would also think when you go through a tough interview and are successful, that candidate feels vindicated they have the chops to compete and succeed in a company with a lot of competition. A lot of these companies in my area are well known and the guys who work there like to say they work there - since it's like getting accepted into an Ivy League school, there's a sense of satisfaction with getting chosen to work there. In my experience, I've had it go both ways. One shop I had three interviews, a code challenge and a final interview with the IT director. Afterwards, I got the gig, and then they low balled my salary. It was a very hipster startup and well known among developers as a "cool, geeky" place to work. I was surprised at how they promoted all the perks, "All the Red Bull you can drink! Free video games! Beer:30 EVERY DAY!!" but failed to say how little their developers get paid. It was eye opening to say the least. On the flip side, I've had "one-time" interviews where you get one shot to impress somebody and have been successful and loved the job and stayed there for many years.

Advice for Startup CEOs - randfish http://www.seomoz.org/blog/advice-for-startup-ceos ====== mixmax Some good advice in there. But the best advice is this: be lucky :-) ------ igorthetroll I am glad you are self analyzing yourself. Wag of the Finger at you, You got me Wrong! Igor The Troll

Show HN: Stig – A CLI tool for searching GitHub from the terminal - octobanana https://octobanana.com/software/stig ====== octobanana Hello there! For a weekend project, I wanted to write a program that would use the C++ HTTP client library I've been working on recently. I was curious to put it to the test in a real scenario and see what works and find any pain points. I decided on making a CLI program that utilized GitHub's HTTP API to perform search queries. Stig is a CLI tool for searching GitHub from your terminal. It has all the same sorting and filter options that are present on GitHub, and outputs coloured, formatted results to stdout. Feedback and thoughts are welcomed! View on my personal website - [https://octobanana.com/software/stig](https://octobanana.com/software/stig) View on GitHub - [https://github.com/octobanana/stig](https://github.com/octobanana/stig)

Ray Dalio – The Changing World Order: Where we are and where we are going - Lx1oG-AWb6h_ZG0 https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/chapter-1-big-picture-tiny-nutshell-ray-dalio ====== chewz This is the moron who said 'Cash is trash' just few weeks before market sellout... and his alpha strategy is to sit out the losses [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tZyWVxGXPHo](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tZyWVxGXPHo) [https://www.ft.com/content/6addc002-6666-11ea-800d-da70cff6e...](https://www.ft.com/content/6addc002-6666-11ea-800d-da70cff6e4d3) [https://www.reuters.com/article/health-coronavirus-funds- bri...](https://www.reuters.com/article/health-coronavirus-funds-bridgewater- idUSL1N2B803V) ~~~ jmeister That’s harsh, he has a multi-decade track record ~~~ chewz They all do have track record until they don't. The LTCM guy, the PIMCO guy etc.. There were so many of them. You simply don't hear about guys who do not have track record until they do..

Ask HN: Which stock market website/app are you using? - dodoflying Im curious to know: Which stock market website/app are HN users using? What's the reason? ====== pjd7 In Australia comsec.com.au, large financial institution. Solid financials. Easy to transfer money in and out. Has a regular bank account with it that earns above 4% interest when my money isn't in stocks. In the USA scottrade.com, colleague uses them. Read some reviews of them vs etrade, tdameritrade etc. And scottrade has the least evil reviews based on my limited sample of what I read. ------ 1123581321 If you mean broker, I am in the United States and use Scottrade. I use them because their fees are low, their tools are good enough and their service is excellent -- especially because they have an office in my city where I can fill out transfer paperwork in front of an employee to reduce the chance of time-wasting mistakes.

Diabetes Gene Common In Latinos Has Ancient Roots - rosser http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/12/25/256832685/diabetes-gene-common-in-latinos-has-ancient-roots ====== tokenadult I read through the submitted article here to find the link to the scientific journal article[1] that has just come out from this research group. The abstract tells the basic story: "Performing genetic studies in multiple human populations can identify disease risk alleles that are common in one population but rare in others1, with the potential to illuminate pathophysiology, health disparities, and the population genetic origins of disease alleles. Here we analysed 9.2 million single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in each of 8,214 Mexicans and other Latin Americans: 3,848 with type 2 diabetes and 4,366 non-diabetic controls. In addition to replicating previous findings2, 3, 4, we identified a novel locus associated with type 2 diabetes at genome-wide significance spanning the solute carriers SLC16A11 and SLC16A13 (P = 3.9 × 10−13; odds ratio (OR) = 1.29). The association was stronger in younger, leaner people with type 2 diabetes, and replicated in independent samples (P = 1.1 × 10−4; OR = 1.20). The risk haplotype carries four amino acid substitutions, all in SLC16A11; it is present at ~50% frequency in Native American samples and ~10% in east Asian, but is rare in European and African samples. Analysis of an archaic genome sequence indicated that the risk haplotype introgressed into modern humans via admixture with Neanderthals. The SLC16A11 messenger RNA is expressed in liver, and V5-tagged SLC16A11 protein localizes to the endoplasmic reticulum. Expression of SLC16A11 in heterologous cells alters lipid metabolism, most notably causing an increase in intracellular triacylglycerol levels. Despite type 2 diabetes having been well studied by genome-wide association studies in other populations, analysis in Mexican and Latin American individuals identified SLC16A11 as a novel candidate gene for type 2 diabetes with a possible role in triacylglycerol metabolism." The most novel and startling part of the factual claims in the abstract, and definitely the part that I am most dubious about, is "the risk haplotype introgressed into modern humans via admixture with Neanderthals." Well, maybe, but maybe not. There have been very few samples of ancient hominid DNA so far, so we are still not sure what range of variation was found among ancestors of today's _Homo sapiens_ species to which we all belong. [1] [http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/natu...](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature12828.html) ~~~ csense Since the "Latino" category encompasses people of European, African, and Native American ancestry [1] [2], I was thinking the headline/article would be more informative if it stated which of these ancestral populations had the gene (assuming that question could be answered from the research methodology used). Your comment answers my question; the gene occurs at highest frequency in Native American samples. [1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latino#Terminology](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latino#Terminology) [2] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_Americans#Demographics](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_Americans#Demographics) ------ DonGateley Does this imply that Neanderthals skedaddled to the Americas? There was equal mention of Neanderthals and native Americans in the article but they seem to have avoided making the connection explicit. ~~~ gonnakillme No. It's disputed, but Neanderthals almost definitely died out before the human migration to North America. ------ kimonos Very interesting! Thanks for sharing!

Ask HN: Going in circle – no traction, no investors - gab007 I am the single developer of a note-taking app. I&#x27;ve reached a point where the app needs a team and some funding to move forward. I would like to apply for seed-investment, but given the fact that investors like to see (among other things) traction, some customer base, etc - I know that chances are slim for me to get any investment. Did my homework and I am able to articulate the key differentiators properly.<p>Right now I cannot get any traction with the current state of the app (not consumer-ready). So I am stuck in this loop... I am reluctant to apply for seed investment as a single developer - as I know that this does not look good to investors. All I have is a website, screenshots, a blog, a demo and a deck.<p>I know that&#x27;s not enough, but I also know that this has some potential. How do you break this loop? ====== thecupisblue Because, as you say it yourself - there is a million note-taking apps out there. Your "differentiator" feature isn't that big of a deal. The UI is ugly- ish. Honestly, if I was an interested investor and you pitched me this I'd be out of that meeting faster than you can say elevator pitch. It's not a niche, you've got competition that raised a ton of money and is dominating the market and the competition is showing wounds that point at the market being not just saturated but not profitable as much as some investors thought. Don't waste your talents on this. ~~~ gab007 Thanks, thecupisblue. This is a "cold shower" \- I appreciate you being straight-forward. I agree that the UI is not the best, that's not what's worrying me :) Initially I've started working on this because I needed an app that does this, this and that - and I could not find one. As it is now, I am actually using it on regular basis. Right now I am trying to figure out if there are any others looking for the same features - and validate that. Thanks for the input. ~~~ quickthrower2 Its a nice feature set, but its hard to sell me on a separate app. I persevere with google keep and google calendar even though they are less than ideal because I already have a login for them. For notes at work its one note because everyone else uses it. So great features are less of a sell than convenience for me. ~~~ gab007 Same here - I only sign-up for services that are a "need" not a "want". If I implement a "Sign up with Google" feature - would you try the app? Thanks for checking! ~~~ quickthrower2 I'm still not sure. I am not sure it solves any pressing need. Sure Google apps have problems but I can get by with them. It's kind of an 'activation energy' thing where if Google were to cancel keep/calendar I would hunt for another solution. But it might be a .txt file on Dropbox because then again I don't need another service. It is a bit like JavaScript fatigue. I have SaaS fatigue! Especially as a developer using Azure, Dropbox, Travis, GitHub, Keepass, Google, etc. then at home using Netflix etc. ~~~ gab007 > I have SaaS fatigue! I've smiled at this one. Taking a moment to think about it, it's true. If you've looked at the presentation, one the things I'm looking at - is to market this as a personal device, for exactly that reason. Thanks for input. ------ mygo what exactly do you need seed money for? what’s its purpose? Is it to keep you eating so that you can finish building the app? IMO you need proof that people actually want this thing. I wouldn’t write another line of app code. put up marketing material and get your market to sign up to be notified for when it comes out. Treat those sign ups as validation of demand. It won’t be as good validation as actual payment, which would validate the business prospect... but those RSVP numbers will indicate that this is something probably worth investing your time in (and other people’s money in). and you can get your beta users from that list. ~~~ gab007 The funding would be for driving the development of the application further, and not to "keep me eating". Right now "it screams" single developer all over. I agree that the app needs validation. About a month ago I've put Mailchimp signup forms on my website - to see if there is any interest in the app. This is not ideal however, without a demo of the app (sign up for what?) Proof that people actually want/need the service - yes, this is a good point, I am still trying to figure out how to validate this without having a finished product... Thanks! ~~~ mygo You need validation. You don't need to develop the app to have a demo of it. You can put together mockups that look and function the way the finished app is supposed to look and function. You can have someone to put together an animation based on the mockups. If there's a problem it's addressing that people are trying to address, someone's going to want to be notified when the solution is brought into the world. ------ fundamental Looking at the app/block/deck in question, it feels like it is still somewhat unfocused. You compare it to your competitor and it comes off as "like them, just better". Obtaining 1-2 alpha users could help refine how you would present and target specific differentiating factors. Since I'm not very familiar with the space, feel free to take this with a large grain of salt. ~~~ gab007 Thank you! May I ask where did you see the deck (you can use the email associated with my account)? ~~~ fundamental The deck appears to be the second google result when searching for "NoterBox". ~~~ gab007 Thanks - got it. ------ DrNuke > How do you break this loop? Crowded market, half-baked product, no sales? Honest answer is stop here, learn from your own post-mortem, add this project to your portfolio and move on. Next time you will do better. ------ navd Probably not what you want to hear but, the next step is that you continue iterating to test to see if you can get traction. If you can’t convince people to use the product it might mean that it is not something people want. Try treating your product like a science experiment. Your idea and execution is a hypothesis for what you think people want. If you’re an engineer then the above doesn’t cost any money and hence doesn’t require investors. If not you have to get good at convincing people to work with you. ~~~ gab007 I have not attempted to convince anyone to use the app so far :) Initially, I've built the app for personal use (and I am using it). And yes, it will cost a considerable amount of money to have the app live - for testing purposes. "If not you have to get good at convincing people to work with you". That is actually very good advice. Without money and proper market validation, this is not a bad idea at all. Thank you. ------ ezekg If you don't have traction yet, how have you reached a point where you need a team? ~~~ gab007 That's actually a valid question - never thought of it this way. It's probably what an investor would ask. Thank you ezekg. ------ zachguo How about serving a tiny niche first and aiming at profitability?

Ask HN: Someone ripped off my app, is there any recourse with Apple? - wacheena I built a simple Android app: https://market.android.com/details?id=com.tenromans.birthdaycake.free<p>And I discovered today that a developer has taken the graphics and rebuilt it for iPhone: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/make-birthday-cake/id469010303?mt=8<p>Frankly, that's the nature of the business. Things get copied all the time. But it also kinda sticks because the graphics and whatnot are my IP.<p>Is there any recourse with Apple to have them remove the app from the iTunes store? ====== tstegart You should be able to file a copyright complaint with Apple: <http://www.apple.com/legal/contact/> ~~~ squidbot This is definitely the appropriate response, and I've found Apple very reasonable in these situations if you are able to prove copyright. ------ kentnguyen I have witness a similar case where one Apple dev rip off another developer by repacking and then resubmit the same app. He submit a request to Apple and then a few days later that clone app got pulled. ------ chris_dcosta The was a thread here on HN about another copycat app but I can't find it for now. It was a slightly different case in that both apps were in the Apple App store, and I guess it would be easy to prove "prior art". Your case is different in that Apple hav no record of your app being in their echo system, you would have to demonstrate prior art somehow, otherwise it could be argued that you have copied them. If you have any documentation proving the dates on which your app was accepted into the Android market, that would help. ------ smashing You could send a DMCA notice to Apple for the app, but I find it strange that you would ask people on this site on protecting your copyright when YC is so vehemently opposed to copyright monopolies like yours. I support copyrights though, so good luck. Here is the link: <https://www.apple.com/legal/trademark/claimsofcopyright.html> ------ wacheena Android link correction. This is the paid ($0.99) version: [https://market.android.com/details?id=com.tenromans.birthday...](https://market.android.com/details?id=com.tenromans.birthdaycake) ------ coryl Quick question, do people buy your app on android?

This one guy is in every tech video - 0898 https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/article/20141010151209-25388572-the-guy-in-every-tech-video?trk=object-title ====== minimaxir Linkbaity titles don't work if you're not BuzzFeed or Business Insider. ------ 5414h fake title damn u ~~~ razster How is the title fake? I'm not awake enough to catch it. The Sandwich dude is in almost every start-up companies video ad. Title seems accurate.

The 21st IOCCC Winners - dlowe http://www.ioccc.org/2012/whowon.html ====== hafabnew The way the site is run really lets the contest down. ~~~ TazeTSchnitzel Why? How? They have a single page with all the winners ever, and for each C file they also have a hint.text/hint.markdown/hint.html file. They also have a Twitter feed. What's so bad about that? ~~~ hafabnew Weeeelll: 1) As others have pointed out, the separate release of code/writeup. I wager that most people really just want to see the code. Why bother doing both? If it's just to attract attention, that's a reasonably valid reason -- but it probably has the opposite of the desired effect, people get annoyed that they can't view the code now, and therefore start disliking the contest in general. 2) Even when the code is released, the format they use makes it difficult to actually look at the code. Let's take the 2011 winners for example [1]. One would assume that clicking each entry (e.g., the top entry[2]) would perhaps show the code, perhaps annotated in a useful way... nope! Surely it must link to the code then... nope! Perhaps it links to a page that links to the code... nope! You have to go to the 'Winning Entries' page from the main menu (from [1]), scroll down to the appropriate year, then play a fun game of matching up entrant's surnames to their entries (yes, I know the surname is in the URL of [2]). [ 3) While not a 'real' complaint: the I-just-learned-how-to- use-a-3D-modelling-program logo really is awful. It makes the contest look juvenile, when in fact the quality of the winning entries is very high. The site looks much better without the logo -- try it yourself, delete the img node from the homepage using Inspector/Firebug/whatever. ] In conclusion: show us the code, delete the logo :). [1] <http://www.ioccc.org/2011/whowon.html> [2] <http://www.ioccc.org/2011/blakely/hint.html> ~~~ lifthrasiir 1) The primary reason to do separate releases is because the winning entries do not appear in the website as is. As far as I know the judges have to write separate remarks, the authors have to check any remaining problems and judges and authors have to agree on the finished write-ups. While it is a bit tedious, given the number of winning entries it seems reasonable. 2) Yup, agreed. For example the current website does not allow inspecting the code without downloading it first. (That's why I love www2.us.ioccc.org...) 3) They are not ordinary logos. They are made from the ray tracers from previous IOCCC winners (2004/garave and 2011/zucker, respectively). I do think that those logos should really link to the relevant entries, however. ~~~ ioccc (2) and (3) are now fixed. (2) The mime types for the .c and .h files are now set to text/plain on <http://www.ioccc.org>. (3) I (Simon) have added a link to the winning entry that generates the current logo. ~~~ lifthrasiir Oh, thank you a lot! Should have sent emails before, but I always forget... ------ VMG So - where is the code? ~~~ dbaupp I wondered that too. But in the news section[1] of the front page: _The winning source will be released later this year after the winners have reviewed the writeup of their entries._ [1]: <http://www.ioccc.org/index.html#news> ~~~ tisme The whole fun of the ioccc is to go through the code and figure out how it is done. Without the code this is a non-event. ~~~ pmr_ Reading the write-up in combination with the code is usually really entertaining. Having the code before that would make it a lot less entertaining. But you are of course right, as long as there is no code, there isn't much to actually see here.

Brilliantly coded 64k pc demo by Approximate released at Revision 2012 - carlhblomqvist http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Kx66_i3ue4 Brilliantly coded 64k pc demo by Approximate released at Revision 2012 in southwest Germany (April 6th to 9th). All in a 64kb executable file. ====== sp332 As usual, YouTube doesn't do this demo justice. If you have the hardware for it, you really should watch this demo as it was intended: rendered in real- time! It's available from pouet.net <http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=59107> Just click the "download" link. You can see the binary is exactly 65,536 bytes :)

Google readies its own chip for future Pixels and Chromebooks - rbanffy https://www.axios.com/scoop-google-readies-its-own-chip-for-future-pixels-chromebooks-e5f8479e-4a38-485c-a264-9ef9cf68908c.html ====== est31 In the north american phone market, Google has 2.3% market share. The other two vendors with their custom chips have 55% (Apple) and 26% (Samsung) and are market leaders globally as well. Globally, Google's market share is even worse. They certainly have the capital and manpower to design chips, but as selling phones and chromebooks isn't such a great priority for Google, they might not pour as much money into it as Apple so the resulting performance might be disappointing. Furthermore, no matter the amount of money spent, they likely won't it get back unless they start licensing the SoC but for that to work it has to be much better than the alternatives. Overall, with Moore's law dying, there _will be_ a trend towards more and more vendors building custom chips, but that's a rather long term trend and I think Google is a bit early for it. From a strategic point of view though it does make sense because it gives Google a foot in the door, seats on committees, etc., giving Google both information as well as influence. But I wouldn't be surprised if the project gets cancelled in 3 years.

[re]Designing the Nutrition Label - ajaimk http://www.ajaimk.com/2010/11/03/redesign-1-nutrition-labels/ ====== charliepark Red and Green are colors with an inherent value (at least, in the US), suggesting good and bad. Unless there's a reason that they're the colors they are, you should use a color (I'd suggest a dark gray) that doesn't have a specific value. I normally rail against pie charts, but in this case, you're comparing a part (calories in the serving size) to the whole (recommended calories per day), so I'm okay with it. But the bigger thing I'd want to comment on: If you're redesigning the label, REALLY redesign it. Show the volume of the serving suggestion with a photo on a standardized plate / bowl. Or bring in some other piece of data that helps people make decisions. Do something wholly different with it. (Basically, what DanielStraight said.) ------ DanielStraight Aside from the pie chart and Christmas colors (which I can't figure out the logic of intuitively), I don't see what's much different, and since we know that people are terrible at reading pie charts, I don't see how the pie charts will help. I would like to see numbers per 100 g, or some other standard that can be compared across foods. I would also like to see a nutrient density score of some kind.

Programmer Is Bringing Bricked Flywheel Bikes Back to Life - elsewhen https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/v7gxga/this-programmer-is-bringing-bricked-flywheel-bikes-back-to-life ====== 1f60c Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24022751](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24022751)

Birth and Death of Microsoft Bing - domino http://myprasanna.posterous.com/birth-and-death-of-microsoft-bing ====== raganwald Perhaps a bit OT, but... The post seemed to be riddled with formatting and grammar errors. This rubbed my old-school English sensibilities at first, but then I began to enjoy its rough feel. After all, it's a post about how people who worked tirelessly to bring a product to market were shipping things while the rest of Microsoft slept. The story very clearly describes a dichotomy in Microsoft's culture between process/rules/superficial quality on the one hand and relentlessly shortening the ship/fix cycle on the other. This post is not just about shortened ship/fix cycles, _it is itself an example of a shortened write/fix cycle_. When that struck me, the style of post suddenly "clicked:" It was as if I was reading an email that was furiously blasted out to Posterous while the author's compiler worked, and thereafter there was no time for extensive editing and proofing by a circle of reviewers. What mattered was to get the idea out and to start the conversation, editing and polish would follow later. Great stuff! ~~~ myprasanna I'm the author of this post and by no means I expected this to be on the top of HN today. It was a surprise. I din't do any good editing on this, since it was my personal blog and I had sent to Michael Arrington, who wanted to edit/publish it. For some reason, he backed out at the last moment and it din't make it to TC. Welcome to the world of citizen journalism. Sorry about the typos/errors. I'm looking into this now :) ~~~ AJ007 Was this get modified? I didn't notice anything reading through. ------ latch The OP seems to attribute the "failure" of bing to common problems associated with Microsoft (in specific) and large companies (in general). With a specific point that it all started wonderfully, then got corporatized. I'm happy believing that this was the main problem. But...as an end user i don't think Bing was/is ever as as close to Google as the OP seems to think. ~~~ exit why was kami8844's comment instantly flagged? it's really disgusting to see people quietly being blacklisted. \--- 1 point by kami8844 0 minutes ago | link [dead] I had to do some web scraping for an application that I recently wrote and only when my app's performance started to rely on the results provided by the various search engines out there, I started to fully appreciate how good Google is. It's just no comparison; in edge cases and unconventional searches (where it really matters) Google completely creams the competition. While Bing came closest to providing search results as accurate as Googles it still wasn't at any comparable level, so all in all I agree with your point. \--- ~~~ gjm11 I wonder whether it's an automatic consequence of having substantial negative karma. (I'm ambivalent about the stealth-blacklisting thing. It's probably the right thing to do with genuinely abusive users. It might be the right thing with people genuinely incapable of contributing much. But I've seen too many cases where someone's comments are all being auto-deaded -- invisibly to them, AIUI -- with no obvious reason why they should deserve it.) ~~~ jules Right, the system is far too trigger happy. Instead of showing a newcomer what kind of comments are valued here and possibly gaining a valuable new contributor, the system severely punishes beginner mistakes. We can't reasonably expect that a new user knows what kind of comments are valued because on the rest of the internet such comments are perfectly acceptable. Perhaps something like Quora does would help: before you can use the site you have to do a quiz on what kind of comments are good comments. ~~~ redthrowaway "Perhaps something like Quora does would help: before you can use the site you have to do a quiz on what kind of comments are good comments." Really? Sorry, but that sounds like a terrible idea. HN is already insular enough, we don't need to start demanding newcomers pass a test before we let them comment. ~~~ jules Let's see. There are two groups of people: people who would have passed the test and people who would not have. The people who would not have would most likely be hellbanned after their first 3 comments (and of course people are allowed to take the test as many times as they want). So you lose nothing. By using a test fewer legitimate people get hellbanned. In other words, this is only going to improve the situation. I'm not talking about a difficult test here: just a couple of questions like: Comment: LOL Is this an acceptable comment? Right now people are used to that being an acceptable comment on the rest of the internet. These people currently get hellbanned on HN because other people downvote these comments. It's not a test for testing whether the people are acceptable on HN, it's method of teaching customs and a test for whether people have read the guidelines. ~~~ redthrowaway I'm not opposed to it because I think it wouldn't keep bad posters off, I'm opposed to it because it would keep _most_ posters off. It's arrogant and self-righteous. "Sorry, you have to _prove_ you're good enough to post on our holy news aggregator." It leaves a bitter taste in my mouth and it's the last thing this community needs. ~~~ jules So you're saying that the current method of silencing those people without even notifying them is preferred? They keep posting and most times their posts add value. Yet these posts are invisible to users without the showdead option on. ~~~ redthrowaway The karma metric is pretty transparent. You learn very quickly which comments are and are not appreciated. Dropping a friendly comment to someone you see who hasn't caught on yet works, as well. What do you think the likes of a Matt Cutts would do if they were trying to sign up for HN and the site forced them to say whether "LOL" was an appropriate comment before allowing them to post? It's insulting and arrogant and will drive away the kind of people we want posting here. All that for a "problem" that is invisible the vast majority of the time. ~~~ jules Stopping famous people from signing up is a good point. On the other hand the system is clearly broken now. > The karma metric is pretty transparent. You learn very quickly which > comments are and are not appreciated. Dropping a friendly comment to someone > you see who hasn't caught on yet works, as well. This is not the case as it is currently implemented. If one of your first comments gets downvoted you get hellbanned. There is no chance to learn from your mistakes. Dropping a friendly comment doesn't work either because you cannot respond to hellbanned people. Do you have showdead on? Try it and you'll probably see that about half of the hellbanned people still posting invisible comments are legitimate. For example you will find 3 of those people commenting on this post, two of them having no idea that nobody is reading their comments. For example look at <http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=bshock> This guy has been banned for 2 downvoted comments and has been posting legitimate but invisible comments for over a year. You can clearly see the learning effects: his first couple of comments are not HN quality. Unfortunately by the time he got accustomed to HN he had been silenced. ~~~ redthrowaway I think we can fix hellbanning without too much tinkering. Perhaps a simple notice if someone's first posts are downvoted advising them to check the submissions and comments guidelines, perhaps with some common first time mistakes and their more preferable counterparts added. That should help the noobs while still allowing trolls to be banned. ------ enjo This is tangential, but somehow related: My level of frustration Redmond has reached epic levels. My company spends thousands of dollars a week managing advertising campaigns on Adcenter. They have an API which has been nothing but issues, but given the breadth of our advertising base it's absolutely necessary that we use it. Today we have entered day number FIVE of an outage in which the API (at least one critical portion of it) simply errors out no matter what call you make. So for five days we've been unable to pause campaigns, change bid prices, or otherwise do anything to effectively manage our campaigns. It's nuts. This is the second major outage in the last couple of weeks. The part that KILLS me is that nobody in Redmond seems to give a damn. They announced that they had a problem two days after I brought it to their attention. They are apparently working on some sort of fix that may or may not be pushed sometime in the last three days. Meanwhile we are absolutely blowing through cash because of the things that we can't adjust. We're tens of thousands of keywords spread out over more than a thousand campaigns. We don't employ anybody to manage these by hand... ~~~ forwardslash I assume you're using the REST API? While they try and roll out a fix, have you tried to use the adCenter Desktop to at least somewhat manage the ads? ~~~ AJ007 That might work if adcenter desktop was actually stable! ~~~ robryan That would be of little comfort I'd imagine if you had a lot of custom stuff running through the API. At least they opened the thing up recently to add customers, that's a step in the right direction. (Although that could also be the cause of instability, they did have years to prepare for it though.) ------ mattmanser The whole article seems to be back to front. As far as I knew Live search was essentially failing then they made it Bing and it's started to succeed. Am I missing something here or what? I'm no expert on the history but it seems to me that the opposite of what the author is saying actually happened! ~~~ nchlswu I think that's one of the objectives of this article; provide that alternate perspective. I thought that Bing was the true turning point as well, but I never gave Live Search a fair chance then, and I don't think many others did either. To me, it looks like the author saw Bing/Live Search as something truly transformational within Microsoft. Public perception was that Live was a failure. But if I understand currently, the team was easily beating internal estimates extremely fast . For one reason or another there was a team reorganization that coincided with the PowerSet acquisition and the Bing rebrand. While there was a jump in market share, the foundation of the Bing team was taken out from under them and replaced with MS status quo. Bing's death isn't a result of their success or failure as a search engine. Bing's death refers to the loss of something that could have made a difference in Microsoft, internally. The death of a team that could have done something truly great , (EDIT: as said by Cicero, when they were at their peak). ~~~ dwc _> Public perception was that Live was a failure._ At that time I was paying a lot of attention to search results, from two perspectives: 1) I had some slightly unusual / difficult searches I performed regularly, and 2) examining search terms that brought people to some sites I ran. For case 1, Google simply wiped the floor with Live. Note that Live had the most relevant results in their index, but they'd be _way_ down on the 5th page, 10th page, wherever. For case 2, the majority of people coming to my sites from Live were coming there with search terms indicating that they did not want my site. For example, I had content for Phoenix, AZ and some polls. My site stayed within the top 5 on Live for search terms like "phoenix polling locations." Of course every site gets some of this from any search engine, but with Live is was problematic. My perception was that Live was a failure, and I think my reasons were valid. ~~~ nchlswu I was too young and never paid attention to search results. I definitely think your reasons are valid. I didn't intend to say people's perspectives weren't, rather that from an insider's perspective, Live was very much approaching success. ------ Matt_Cutts "They [Bing] had weekly release cycles - faster than Google back then" Hmm. I'm gonna have to disagree with that part. :) ~~~ myprasanna Matt, How long would you estimate, for a search changelist to hit the production at Google? I've got friends working there. Prepare to be surprised. ~~~ hexis I think you've got a bit of a surprise in store for you, too, when you find out what Matt does for a living. ~~~ myprasanna Got it :) I still know for a fact that, it takes at-least a month on average, for a search change list to reach production. Would you disagree Matt? ~~~ shadowmatter I'm an ex-Googler, and I disagree. Before I left the GWS team (<http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/01/29/google_web_server/>) became a model for how frequent, stable releases should be done within the company. That's all I'll say. ~~~ myprasanna I've just recently spoken with my friends, and I know for a fact that it atleast takes a month from point of checkin to review/test/stage/production. If you disagree, I think what you are talking about, is probably an exception and not the norm. Being secretive about release cycles is pointless stealth. ~~~ Semiapies What else do you "know for a fact"? ------ athom "The report of my death was an exaggeration." -- Mark Twain I was having a look at Terabyte drives in Best Buy yesterday, and while wondering how well a model might work with Linux, I realized, now the display computers actually have internet capability, I _should_ be able to look it up right there in the store! So, I wander over to a convenient laptop, kick it out of screensaver mode, start up the browser, and plug in the product name. Only after I hit the search button did I notice WHAT service I was using. Added bonus: Google was NOT an option. I'll believe that Bing is dead when it isn't the default search engine in the default browser on the default operating system at the default computer store. ------ jdp23 Interesting perspectives. I was there in 2006-2007 when they made the decision to throw resources at the problem and challenge Google head-on in algorithmic search. The strategy at the time was to become #2 in a duopoly by investing at a level that Yahoo! couldn't compete with, and focus on the most valuable searches (travel, shopping, etc.), and leverage Microsoft Research a lot more. From an abstract business perspective it's worked remarkably well. But if so many motivated and talented people are leaving, then there's something fundamentally flawed. And there were a lot of other much-less-expensive approaches they could have taken instead (or in addition, if they wanted to shoot for the moon) that would have also created a lot more opportunities for growth and excitement for younger engineers in particular. Ah well. ------ hanifvirani Strange. To me, as an outsider, it looks like Bing has just started to get good enough to be considered as a threat to Google. Of course, they have a _long long_ way to go. But it appears as a rapidly emerging product rather than a dying product. ~~~ kenjackson I agree. It was only in the last year that I could use Bing as my primary search engine. ------ scorpion032 The biggest problem that comes in the way is the condescending attitude of the "grown ups". It is very important for the "management" to realize that they are actually only facilitating what is "happening" and they should let the system handle itself and get out of the way than get into and disturb the existing norm. ~~~ raganwald One of the most serious problems with modern "management" is that the incentives are all wrong. Imagine that I hire a programmer and pay him by the line of code. This idea has been so thoroughly debunked that it is nearly impossible to write out the consequences without sounding cliché. Yet it happens all the time: Companies promote "Architects" who are evaluated by the weight of their "architecture." The result is stultifying and demoralizing. The architect does not work to facilitate the programmer's work, he works to produce evidence of his contribution in the form of frameworks, standards, and software process. So, how are most managers evaluated? By the amount of "managing" they do, as measured by the amount of process they impose on their team. Evaluating a manager by the amount of managing they _do_ is exactly the same thing as evaluating a programmer by the amount of code they write. And it produces results like you describe, where the manager works to produce evidence of their management in the form of processes and decisions from the top down, rather than facilitating the work actually being done. In a simplistic world, the answer would be to change the incentives and the behaviour would change itself. But as they say, "correlation does not equal causation." The incentives have to change, but so do the people. Results- oriented managers don't work in those kind of environments to begin with, and after a year or two in such a place they will already have left. You need to change the incentives and the culture and the people all together. ~~~ JoeAltmaier Middle managers are rewarded for making budget and meeting release dates. Seems good, right? So they agitate for (wait for it) maximum budget and minimum feature set. So that success is assured and their metric is optimized. Unfortunately those things are exactly contrary to company goals. Why does this happen? {opinion} Middle managers are too remote from either customers (financial goals) or top management (company goals). They're in the middle, right? With layers between them and either end. And when you try to optimize any process with too many degrees of freedom, you have too many variables and get to choose which ones to look at. So middle managers look at their own career and ignore the rest. My suggestion: line up all middle managers in the parking lot (important), stand at the end of the line, and put one bullet through all of them (optimizes cost in bullets). If my company Ever has middle managers, its time to call it quits. ~~~ ajays I think it's not the presence of middle managers; but how they are evaluated and incentivized. I don't envy their jobs; the upper managers have entire teams with clear tasks; the engineers on the other side have stuff to do; the middle managers are, well, caught in the middle. So they try to make themselves relevant by injecting themselves into various processes; by blocking things to make sure that everyone knows that they are present; by taking credit wherever possible. So eventually it's the fault of the upper management, if they can't come up with the right incentive scheme to keep things moving smoothly. I hate middle-managers too with a passion; but having seen them operate, I can't blame them for doing what they do. They're just playing the game by the rules. Blame the one who made up the rules. ------ rufugee _Bing was extremely lavish in compensation, making offers to the best hackers for $90K/year when the adjacent teams were making $75K/year offers._ This is what really stood out to me. I'm in tech management these days...I pay my good developers close to $90K, and I'm no Google or Microsoft. What's wrong with this picture? Bing was created what...four years ago? Is this really a realistic salary for the best hackers? ------ fferen For all the people saying X search engine is better, here's a tool to compare Google and Bing (and Yahoo) results without bias. It simply shows you three columns of results, you click on the one with the best results, and it reveals which ones came from which search engines. <http://blindsearch.fejus.com/> Note: I am not affiliated with this site in any way. ~~~ GFischer Hmmm, it's giving me the wrong results... it shows the results I voted from are from "Bing", but when I went to Google it showed me those results, and Bing's results where the ones marked "Yahoo". See here [http://blindsearch.fejus.com/?q=21+de+setiembre+y+sarmiento&...](http://blindsearch.fejus.com/?q=21+de+setiembre+y+sarmiento&type=web) it would have me believe that Bing's were the better results (they weren't for this particular search). Also, when I'm logged in and using my country-specific search, Google is way, way, way better than the competition. Edit: I'll probably message the creator (parent is not affiliated with the site) ------ InclinedPlane I don't know that Bing has "failed" yet, but I highly doubt it'll be anything other than one amongst many in the pack in 5 years. Microsoft has always been good at the pivotal turnaround. Recognizing when a key moment was on the wind, mustering together a tremendous effort, making a good number of smart decisions and putting out a solid anchor product that (re)cements their position in the industry and reinvigorates the brand in doing so. Windows 95 and Windows 7 are perfect examples. IE4 (yes really), Bing, and Windows Phone 7 are also good examples. One of the big problems with Microsoft is that its organization and its culture are extremely tied to the traditional 3-ish year ship cycle. A hugely successful diving catch every other ship cycle or so is rapidly becoming less and less feasible as a means to hang on to or acquire a market. Microsoft does not seem to get the web at a fundamental level, it doesn't seem to have the capacity to release software at a pace of yearly, monthly, or continuously. And that will ultimately be the undoing of Bing and the Windows Phone. The only way MS knows how to crank out releases faster is the deathmarch, and that is a certain route to doom. Worse yet, since Gates left MS has no real technical or managerial leadership, it's bureaucracy all the way up and down. This has been affecting the culture at Microsoft little by little, also partly coupled to the stock price having plateaued. More and more talented devs are finding that MS lacks the excitement and the reward of cutting edge development, so they are moving elsewhere. Also, without that talent around fewer good projects are pushed forward, fewer projects succeed, people become less satisfied with their jobs, etc. (think about the movie "It's a Wonderful Life" only translate the bad stuff, on a corporate level, to hundreds and then thousands of George Bailey's going away). This makes the environment that much less rewarding for everyone else who remains, so yet more people leave. And slowly but surely the creep of a more rigid and bureaucratic corporate culture and organization fills in the gaps left by the people who had the most clout in the company, causing yet more and more talent to evaporate away. It's a self-reinforcing cycle that will lead to the rapid diminution of the company and its prospects over time and the examples the article provides of the process as it happened at Bing have played out throughout the company. Nobody young with high prospects seriously considers Microsoft as a destination anymore, and increasingly the older devs are either retiring on their massive earnings from the glory days or they're just looking for somewhere else to be that's a better use of their time and talent. MS continues to make a crap-ton of money from its core products, but it will be institutionally ham-strung in responding to the threats that will steal away that revenue (such as mobile-heritage operating systems). Because those threats will grow at a rate MS is incapable of competing with. ~~~ brudgers > _"I don't know that Bing has "failed" yet, but I highly doubt it'll be > anything other than one amongst many in the pack in 5 years."_ For Microsoft, having a full featured reliable non-core product with measurable market share is a success because it allows Microsoft to offer vertical integration without the specter of anti-trust allegations - imagine the howling in DC and Europe if Bing controlled 70% of search (never mind the valley). Bing's robustness helps Microsoft sell software and services, while it's modest market share keeps infrastructure costs lower and Microsoft's core revenue stream coming from areas other than search reduces the pressure to game search algorithms towards their advertisers in order to increase revenue in the way that Google does. What the article shows is not that Microsoft is inept, but rather that they are able to create an internal unit with many elements of a startup, scale that unit massively, and then transition it into a solid corporate structure capable of surviving over the long term - in other words, the article shows that Microsoft was not only able to successfully foster internal entrepreneurship in order to quickly move into a new market and capture meaningful market share in the face of a mammoth, entrenched, and powerful rival which dominated the market, but also to consolidate that position swiftly before their rival could respond in a significant way. ~~~ Splines I'm not following you. I imagine that the Bing team would gladly increase their market share in exchange for the costs involved. ~~~ mredbord Of course more market share is good. But Microsoft is not purely interested in growing share with Bing; non-differentiation with Google is a good thing in and of itself. The less differentiated Microsoft is from Google, the greater perception of their platform having feature parity with Google. That way consumers are not forced to choose based on features, just ecosystem. This is a the reason that Microsoft is a fast copier of market leaders, so that everything consumers could want, on paper, is housed within their roof (and Google's). It seems counterintuitive that less differentiation would be useful, but I think it's what Microsoft is going for. ~~~ Cossolus Microsoft used to be able to "embrace and extend" in order to extinguish the competitor. With Bing it seems they can only "embrace", by which I mean copying and trying to decrease differentiation. But look at the trend. In the future, when/if Google search incorporates social feedback effects (ala +1), Bing won't even have the user-base to be able to copy the competitor, let alone extend and extinguish. One look at my website statistics tells me Bing is already as good as dead. ~~~ DaveMebs Yeah, except Bing gets to mine Facebook and Google doesn't. Maybe that's why it has a higher success rate? [http://www.bing.com/community/site_blogs/b/search/archive/20...](http://www.bing.com/community/site_blogs/b/search/archive/2010/10/13/bing- gets-more-social-with-facebook.aspx) [http://www.stateofsearch.com/bing-gaining-share-in-the-us- su...](http://www.stateofsearch.com/bing-gaining-share-in-the-us-success-rate- much-higher-than-google/) ------ jeremydavid Just thought I'd let you know your text rendered _very_ small on my browser, and the light grey quotes were almost unreadable. ~~~ steve-howard Indeed, I have no idea why bloggers are so insistent on using gray-on-white quotations. ------ tocomment Bing is dead? ~~~ bartl Well, according to this post, everyone who was technically knowledgeable about Bing has left. That implies that there will no longer be any relevant technical progress, any more. ~~~ cdesmar Not sure this is relevant progress but 18 march bing for "HG download" gave no mercurial results (hg was assumed to be a mistyping of HD), by 24 march it was giving all mercurial results. I twittered about both. That is at least anecdotal evidence that things are progressing in some way or another. ~~~ code_duck Unpredictability is progress? ~~~ cdesmar Returning meaningful results is progress. Why would you want a predictably wrong answer, you must be a manager. ~~~ code_duck Actually, you've plotted two data points here. That doesn't tell you much. How do you know it doesn't go back to showing irrelevant results on the 28th? ------ wightnoise The only value I ever had for Bing was their cashback shopping engine, and they've gotten rid of that. Birth and Death of Jellyfish.com <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jellyfish.com> ------ RyanMcGreal > They totally din't see Google as a threat, till it had a huge market cap. > (Don't be evil, was a joke?) Does having a huge market cap automatically make a company evil? ~~~ dstein Not automatically. But I think it would be easy to prove there's a correlation between market cap and corruption. ~~~ antiterra If it would be easy, then perhaps you should do it. Such a conclusion would have a nice amount of academic value. I imagine there are a large number of small and/or untraded businesses with dishonest or illegal practices. Perhaps data would even show that larger market cap indicates corruption is less likely, depending on your measurement for corruption? ------ TheCondor A buddy and I were drinking months back, and for whatever reason (most likely several beers was the reason) he misinterpreted the Bing and Facebook arrangement that was made for "Facebook is buying Bing." Completely un-Microsoft, I can't see it happening but if it did.. Damn that could make things interesting. Bing is interesting, it's a great attempt. The problem is Microsoft, so long as they're running it and setting the "standard" for it, it's going to be a failure. It's not going to knock Google off their perch. It's just not. And anything less than that will be a failure. Cut that team and product free, hand it over to like a facebook? IBM went through some similar stuff, MS should be spinning stuff out, if their current phone effort fails again to live up to their hype, they should just cut that group free too, let them go and be successful. that stuff creates new industries which in turn create new opportunities for everybody, including MS. Let Bing or Bing + FB cultivate an army of guys that want to get rich and can control their own destiny, the output will be far more interesting ------ arihant But what if Bing uses Microsoft's Facebook ties to bring social to search? Isn't that the root of "Google is scared by social" thing that's going on? A lot of times when things seem to be dead, they are on the edge of killing everything else. ------ rjhackin I am not sure about the death of Bing, Bing has momentum and they should take it forward and not lose ground. Competition is important to bring the best out of technology. ------ rebelidealist Would you consider likealittle.com a startup? The definition of a startup is company with a limited operating history and a company is an organization aimed at making profits. ------ tedsbardella The web site he is promoting is very creepy. ------ rorrr > _Bing was extremely lavish in compensation, making offers to the best > hackers for $90K/year_ Is this a joke? ~~~ aChrisSmith No. Remember the article talked about poaching students right out of college. $90k a year isn't much for an experienced developer, however right out of college (and at the time) that was 10-20k more than they could expect joining another company. ~~~ rorrr "experienced hackers" and "students right out of college" are quite different in my world view. ------ franklindholm Is this written in English? ------ dvfer Bing is not really providing anything more than google's service. It only shows "big company's" routine of trying to drive others out of business. Death for Bing. ~~~ parfe I disagree. I remembered Bing's decision engine commercials when looking for a plane ticket. Turns out that Bing is way better for flights than Google is, by far. Just try typing New York City to Los Angeles into both search engines. Bing finds what you are after and Google does not. ~~~ kami8845 I prefer how Google handles that search query. If you're looking for a flight does entering 'fly' after your two destinations really hurt that much? 'to' is -more often than not - a pretty meaningless keyword, and I'm pretty sure most people don't want half of what's above the fold to be taken up by flight information if all they enter is a very general 'New York City to Los Angeles'. ~~~ parfe It's not just the flight specific widget bing has, but the fact is consolidates several sites worth of data into a single interface. On Google you don't get a unified view of data. The ticket vendor is not important to me. It's only the flight cost and number of stopovers that matter, which google does not help with.

Do we still need photoshop to create great website? - damaru But even further, do we still need proprietary software in our workflow to create the best web design, now that we have tools like css3, saas compass and a plethora of javascript tools ? ====== robotys It is the same with hand sketching, nothing beats fast mockup of what the end result could be. Unless we can code faster than using photoshop. Untill that, photoshop will be around. ~~~ damaru But that's what I see with generator like yeoman, bootstrap template and compass mixin, it's getting really fast to get a UI up and running. I mean making a quadratic color palette in sass is simple 3rd grade math, shading, grading and other color transformation are few mixin away. I can't have a function in photoshop that tell give me the best contrast on the font I use when I change the color of my button for example. And I am wondering how it has affected the workflow.

Kramera - samlassman https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/kramera/id753155884?mt=8 ====== samlassman seinfeldify your life!

Show HN: Kickstarter project for snap-together, desktop trebuchets - carpdiem https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1803756771/trebuchette-the-snap-together-desktop-trebuchet ====== vnchr This guys need 1600 pre-sales to make this happen? (their unit price of the smallest product divided into the fundraising minimum goal) Even if they get an array of donations/sales for their smallest to biggest versions, that's a lofty goal to set as the minimum requirement to produce these things for the public. I call that this is truly a niche product and the fundraiser won't hit $48k... ~~~ carpdiem Well, it's a combination of two things: 1) We wanted to keep the price / trebuchet low, so our margin after materials is slim. and 2) The laser cutter that we need to produce these is expensive. But such is life!

Show HN: Borg Voice Generator - dsteinman https://jaxcore.github.io/jaxcore-say/borg-example/ ====== agucova I've always wondered if there is something like this for the voice of Majel Barrett-Roddenberry (Computer). I know her voice was recorder phonetically before she died ([https://io9.gizmodo.com/the-voice-of-star-treks-computers- co...](https://io9.gizmodo.com/the-voice-of-star-treks-computers-could-be- coming-to-bo-1786251988)), but I don't think there's public access to that. Perhaps transfer learning could be used to copy the style, using something like SV2TTS. ~~~ dsteinman As far as I know they have not released those phonetic recordings. But even without those recordings it might be possible to use those deepfake voice fingerprinting systems to build an STT engine from sound clips from the show. ~~~ makerofspoons IIRC there are a lot of sound clips voiced by her on the Star Trek Encyclopedia CD: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Star_Trek_Encyclopedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Star_Trek_Encyclopedia) ------ UI_at_80x24 Very cool effort, but I think it sounds more like Daleks from Dr. Who. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQLbwOGT8eM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQLbwOGT8eM) ~~~ nerfhammer Incidentally the Dalek voice is an effect that can be accomplished really cheaply in hardware or software, called a ring modulator: [https://webaudio.prototyping.bbc.co.uk/ring- modulator/](https://webaudio.prototyping.bbc.co.uk/ring-modulator/) ~~~ davidw Dr Who used cheap special effects?! Say it ain't so! I loved the Tom Baker version as a kid. ------ nulbyte Fun project, I'm sure, but sounds nothing like the Borg I remember. ~~~ Gys I agree, this is how I remember it: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyenRCJ_4Ww](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyenRCJ_4Ww) ~~~ UI_at_80x24 Same here. It's obvious from the other clip provided that the voice evolved over time; but it's not something I noticed at the time. The voice you linked to is the one that is most memorable to me. ~~~ mathgeek > It's obvious from the other clip provided that the voice evolved over time I'd be surprised if this wasn't intentional, based on the premise. ------ devbas It doesn't work for me in Safari on Mac ~~~ greggman2 Safari has all kinds of issues with audio. Every report just leads to a rdar: url and then silence, both from Apple and from Safari haha (cry) For a while couldn't send streamed but redirected audio through the webaudio api on Safari only. Workaround was to manually catch the redirect but the latest safari that doesn't help. Like WebGL I don't think Apple wants Web Audio to work. They've got several outstanding bugs in WebGL (3yrs+) and their non-existent WebGL2 support as not seen a single commit in > 3yrs. Web Audio appears to be the same. It's frustrating. ~~~ tinus_hn They do have their own Apple Music streaming platform, perhaps you can just do what they do ------ greggman2 This is cool but I'm curious why it sounds so much worse than the built in speech to text API [http://greggman.github.io/fanfictionreader/](http://greggman.github.io/fanfictionreader/) Which voices are available are browser and OS dependent and there's no "borg" voice anymore. There used to be several alien and or non human voices but Apple removed them from the OS and most browsers just call the OS's text to speech API \--correction-- You need to go into the VoiceOver Utilities and add all the novalaty voices back in [https://recordit.co/ZGgw9MhepW](https://recordit.co/ZGgw9MhepW) ~~~ dsteinman This wasn't made with the window.speechSynthesis API, it's using 2 older systems (espeak and sam) that have been ported to JavaScript. They don't sound as good but they generate AudioContext data which can be processed, mixed, and visualized in the browser. I don't think it wouldn't be possible to make this kind of Borg voice using the speechSynthesis API -- I did it by generating the speech using 6 voices, 3 in each channel. I totally agree the built-in OS speech systems sound better over and I may end up adding window.speechSynthesis support to the API I made so it'll expose more voice profiles, but those ones will lack the visualization ability. ------ degenerate Can this be modified to include the original voices from the 1998 _Microsoft Sam TTS Generator_ , or is that voice technology not open-source? ex: [https://tetyys.com/SAPI4/](https://tetyys.com/SAPI4/) ~~~ dsteinman I like the way that one sounds. But it looks like it's using a server-side script to generate the audio: view- source:[https://tetyys.com/SAPI4/scripts/tts.js](https://tetyys.com/SAPI4/scripts/tts.js) ------ durpleDrank It would be fun if you could generate a link with a hash of a message so you can send it to your friends and coworkers with a silly message that autoplays. ~~~ dsteinman It already does this, when you click the "say" button it generates a base64 url. You can share that url. The problem is when someone loads the URL the browser will not autoplay the clip. You have to click a button (or some other user interaction) to start the Web Audio API, it's a really annoying limitation that I wish Firefox and Chrome would change to a one-time popup confirmation. So what I did was hide the text box until after playing the audio. ------ m4r35n357 scary!

Learn Echolocation like a Dolphin - wglb http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/06/echolocation/ ====== wglb When I was in high school, I had a blind friend who used something similar to do some rather amazing things. He would follow me on his bicycle (!), tracking by the sound the bike made. Solo, he could turn into the driveway next to his house. When prompted, he told me he could tell where he was by the trees. What? "Yes, I can hear the sound the trees make". The light rustling of the leaves, the reflection of the bike's sound off the tree itself. I suspect that we may use a bit of this already without being aware of it. I have always felt that there are opportunities to extend our senses, not only by practice as suggested by the article, but also by some sort of electronic assist. ------ RiderOfGiraffes A few months ago I had to spend four days with my eyes closed. I was surprised to discover that I could tell where my coffee was just by holding out my hands and tracking the heat source. I also tended to stop suddenly when walking around, feeling that something was wrong, and then finding that there was indeed an object out of place and in the way. Sometimes these were quite small - mug-sized (although not mugs). Feynman had more to say about training the senses. You can read about it in his semi-autobiographical books. ------ Bjoern Comparing Human Echo location to a Dolphin is highly unfair, at least for the human. The Dolphins brain has specifically adapted to use this technique and it is quite impressive. Dolphins are actually able to see through things which block their view of an object. Meaning that they can distinguish objects without actually seeing them directly. Here is more on this: [http://www.guba.com/watch/2000977386?duration_step=0&fie...](http://www.guba.com/watch/2000977386?duration_step=0&fields=8&filter_tiny=0&pp=5&query=404934828&sb=7&set=5&sf=0&size_step=0&o=3&sample=1231730837:f40ae2aaa7e3b1508fe84d3aa954dc6b786be741)

File sharing is for everyone. With Dropshare Cloud - tisba https://dropshare.cloud/ ====== tisba That service is actually a batteries included hosting service for the very well made desktop file sharing tool Dropshare ([https://getdropsha.re/](https://getdropsha.re/)).

New theory explains the origin of Saturn's rings - japaget http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/12/12/science/AP-US-SCI-Saturn-Rings.html ====== DupDetector If you like that, you'll like this: "Elegant New Theory Explains Origin Of Asteroid Belt (technologyreview.com)" <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1991448>

Polygonal Map Generation, HTML5 Version - signa11 https://simblob.blogspot.com.au/2017/09/mapgen2-html5.html ====== indescions_2017 "New algorithms" for tilemap generation? Maxim Gumin’s WaveFunctionCollapse is fast and produces nice results. A recent paper has been published outlining its technique. WaveFunctionCollapse is Constraint Solving in the Wild [http://isaackarth.com/papers/wfc_is_constraint_solving_in_th...](http://isaackarth.com/papers/wfc_is_constraint_solving_in_the_wild/) Combine WFC with a touch of "domain distortion" to add some organic panache: [http://www.iquilezles.org/www/articles/warp/warp.htm](http://www.iquilezles.org/www/articles/warp/warp.htm) Or if you have space for several terabytes of high resolution NASA satellite imagery, you can always use that as a training set ;) A step towards procedural terrain generation with GANs [https://arxiv.org/abs/1707.03383](https://arxiv.org/abs/1707.03383) ~~~ amitp All cool techniques — also see this paper about procedural terrain generation with GANs [https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01583706v2](https://hal.archives- ouvertes.fr/hal-01583706v2) ~~~ indescions_2017 Now there is a potential demo ;) And thanks to you Amit for your gamedev resources. I reference your site all the time and know many have learned a lot from them! ------ timvdalen I really like this generator and the original tutorial. In fact, I implemented a version of this in C++/OpenGL a few years back for a school project: [https://github.com/Heightened/2IV06-map- generator](https://github.com/Heightened/2IV06-map-generator) We also built a 3D viewer that could then display the generated maps: [https://github.com/Heightened/2IV06-map- viewer](https://github.com/Heightened/2IV06-map-viewer) It was a fun project, we got some really nice results: [https://imgur.com/a/VlkYk](https://imgur.com/a/VlkYk) ------ wiz21c I tried it, it looks very much made of hexagons... It feels like a wargame map. I wonder how it looks if it's rendered in 3D. ~~~ fenwick67 It's using "barycentric dual mesh", which is a lot like Voronoi, so you get lots of 5,6, and 7-sided polygons. [https://www.redblobgames.com/x/1721-voronoi- alternative/](https://www.redblobgames.com/x/1721-voronoi-alternative/) If you turn on "lighting" you will get a good idea for how it would look in 3d, I agree it would be cool to set this to a heightmap and look around it in 3d with Google Maps style controls. Dangit, there goes my weekend. ~~~ wiz21c Maybe it's because it's based on some noise ? Maybe there are actual geology simulator somewhere ? That'd be interesting, a simulation of a mountain growing over 1 billion years... ------ Zelizz Reading through these articles and the linked papers was both thrilling and disheartening. Thrilling, because it's a huge amount of information that is immediately interesting and useful to me. Disheartening, because I have been working on similar things for two years now and always feel like I'm struggling more than the authors. ------ drabiega Link doesn't work for me, but I found the article on the site: [http://simblob.blogspot.com/2017/09/mapgen2-html5.html](http://simblob.blogspot.com/2017/09/mapgen2-html5.html) ~~~ falsedan Apparently flagging a submission doesn't get the mods attention, and we should email them if we see these kinds of errors in links/typos in titles. What's the email address to use? ~~~ grzm You can contact the mods via the Contact link in the footer. ------ CodeCube If the author happens to read this, thanks for Realm of the Mad God. Fantastic game :) ~~~ amitp Glad you liked it! It's still going, with new owners :) I'm revisiting the map generation because the authors of RotMG are working on a new game, and have asked me to work on the maps. ~~~ cultureulterior Will you put this html5 version on your github? ~~~ amitp The javascript data structures and algorithms are on my new github page: \- [https://github.com/redblobgames/dual- mesh/](https://github.com/redblobgames/dual-mesh/) \- [https://github.com/redblobgames/mapgen2/](https://github.com/redblobgames/mapgen2/) However the html5 UI isn't (it's a big hack I'm abandoning, and working on a different version). Feel free to View Source if you want to see the ugly UI code :)

Rockset does to Elasticsearch, what Snowflake did to Redshift - ssb006 https://rockset.com/press/rockset-shatters-operational-barriers-for-real-time-analytics/ ====== tarun_anand Amazing stuff. We have been investigating for a few years and wondering why someone has not done this. Congratulations.. Looks exciting. Any plans to run this on premises with serverless stack being available for on premise also.

Keybase launches encrypted Git - aston https://keybase.io/blog/encrypted-git-for-everyone ====== malgorithms Keybase team member here. Interesting fact: git doesn't check the validity of sha-1 hashes in your commit history. Meaning if someone compromises your hosted origin, they can quietly compromise your history. So even the fears about data leaks aside, this is a big win for safety. From an entrepreneurial perspective, this is my favorite thing we've done at Keybase. It pushes all the buttons: (1) it's relatively simple, (2) it's filling a void, (3) it's powered by all our existing tech, and (4) it doesn't complicate our product. What I mean by point 4 is that it adds very little extra UX and doesn't change any of the rest of the app. If you don't use git, cool. If you do, it's there for you. What void does this fill? Previously, I managed some solo repositories of private data in a closet in my apartment. Who does that? It required a mess: uptime of a computer, a good link, and dynamic dns. And even then, I never could break over the hurdle of setting up team repositories with safe credential management...like for any kind of collaboration. With this simple screen, you can grab 5 friends, make a repo in a minute, and all start working on it. With much better data safety than most people can achieve on their own. ~~~ eropple So I _love_ Keybase unconditionally and if you guys weren't rolling in physical offices (and not one in Boston) I'd have been beating down your door to come work there--I think what Keybase is doing is important and it's something I'd love to work on. But I have a serious question that maybe you can answer, and it's something everybody who I've showed this to has asked me: How is Keybase gonna make money? How am I assured that this, and everything else in my Keybase storage, is going to be there in six months? Like, I _still_ have a private server in a closet in my apartment that syncs all the stuff I trust Keybase with because I don't know what the business-side failure case is. You guys should be taking my money, is what I'm saying. Also probably hiring me. But definitely taking my money. ~~~ malgorithms We believe the right long-term answer for Keybase is finding a way to charge large corporations and offer pretty much everything else for free. Obviously there would have to be some paid tier if you really wanted 10TB of storage or something, but very few people want that right now. We're still just getting started. Of course to achieve our goal, we'll also have to find a way to distinguish communities - which we'll want to use Keybase for free - and companies. Many of us on the team have come from ad-supported businesses and we really, really never want to do that again. I personally guarantee I will never be a "publisher" again. Fortunately that just can't work with Keybase, so no fears there. But charging for anything on Keybase right now would be a big mistake. We only have ~180,000 users, and we want to bring crypto to _everyone_. That basically means making products we believe are better. Another way of looking at your concern: I think if we were charging right now, it wouldn't actually _decrease_ the odds we disappeared in a few years. It might distract our attention from working on the best product and cause our bloody demise. So maybe we're not choosing the path that gives you the highest impression of safety, but I think we actually are. ~~~ QuinnWilton Everything you just said makes perfect sense. That being said, I think Keybase is one of the most important companies around right now. I would gladly pay $10/month, even if literally all it did was put a "Supporter" badge on my profile. I'm sure hundreds of other people agree. Crypto is far too important for it to remain locked away behind GPG. ~~~ malgorithms The outpouring of positive energy (on HN!) is really inspiring. Everyone on the Keybase team is feeling good about our work right now, so thanks! ~~~ QuinnWilton The team seriously deserves it. For what it's worth, I think my above comment is my highest upvoted comment of all time. There's a lot of people out there who want Keybase to succeed. ~~~ eropple My comment that started this subthread is in my top ten, and I have been here entirely too long, so, yeah. Keybase is good. It staying around is important. People around here, at least, seem to know it, and that's awesome. ------ zeroxfe I'm really happy about this. I have private repos for personal information (e.g., tax spreadsheets going back a decade) that I keep synchronized across machines, and have to jump through hoops to get an encrypted authoritative remote source. Right now I do that with an encrypted partition on a private VM. And, it really sucks that GitHub does not encrypt data at rest: \--- SNIP from [https://help.github.com/articles/github- security](https://help.github.com/articles/github-security) \--- We do not encrypt repositories on disk because it would not be any more secure: the website and git back-end would need to decrypt the repositories on demand, slowing down response times. Any user with shell access to the file system would have access to the decryption routine, thus negating any security it provides. Therefore, we focus on making our machines and network as secure as possible. \--- SNIP --- Encrypted disks are now the norm across various cloud providers, as is HTTPS. The crypto overheads are really low, and their benefits significantly outweigh the risks of leaving clear-text data on disks. Also, defense-in-depth is always worth pursuing. The claim "it would not be any more secure", is so far from true, it's almost insulting to their target audience. Keep killin' it, Keybase! Great job! ~~~ Remed Out of curiosity: why do you keep such documents in repositories instead of simply in a filesystem (on an encrypted volume, backed up and possibly synced across devices)? Tax spreadsheets usually don't change, so there's no need for version history (if anything, new rows for new years are added, but without changing past data). I ask this because I'm trying to figure out a solution for myself for keeping sensitive personal information and I never thought about storing such documents in a repository. Maybe I am missing something and your use case will open my eyes. Thanks! ~~~ Too For me one big benefit is that it's distributed. I like to keep my important documents backed up on all the computers i have, on a USB drive stored in a safe location and also store the data with a cloud provider. Now, if i update one document on computer A, and another document using computer B, i have to sync it to all other devices which is a PITA without git. You get into the situation where you don't know if the version on the USB drive was newer or older than the one on computer B etc, whereas with git all this is available in the version tree and there are nice merge tools available. I've been planning to do this even for photos, for all the reasons above, but haven't taken the full step yet. ~~~ dx034 Wouldn't encrypted files with a service like Dropbox help? Containers usually sync well (only syncs changed parts). Only downside is that you can't access files without decryption software. ~~~ Too Dropbox, as all other "just-works" sync services, don't handle merge conflicts very good. Suddenly you have thousands of Filename_EditedByX(3).txt in every folder and dont know which one of them is the newest and don't have their most common ancestor version easily available for a 3-way merge. ~~~ dx034 To be fair, they cannot handle merge conflicts with encrypted containers. I find that merge conflicts almost always cause more trouble than the work of avoiding them from the start. As long as you don't share data (with containers unlikely), merge conflicts should be extremely rare (and anticipated). ------ theptip Has anyone seen a security audit of the Keybase platform? I love the product from a usability perspective, but have no idea if it's actually a safe repository for my team's key material. ------ jack12 This is exciting, but I'm new to Keybase and don't entirely understand it yet. How can I clone a Keybase-hosted repository on a remote server? Can gpg-agent proxy through ssh similarly to ssh-agent to allow access to GPG keys (and is that what keybase uses?), without having to store my keys on the remote server? Or would I need to create a new Keybase account just for the remote server, with that account's private keys stored on the server but at least segregated from my account's full access to communication, team-management, etc? Or would the best approach be to clone the Keybase-hosted repository locally and then push it to the remote server over SSH? ~~~ ptspts Yes, probably you need a new Keybase account just for that remote server if you want the remote server be able to do git pull after the initial git clone. If all you need is a single git clone, and you already have a Keybase account, just do a git clone locally, and use rsync to upload the result to the remote server. ------ chishaku In case you're wondering... > ~ Anticipated q's ~ > What if we're living in a simulation? > Keybase offers no guarantees against sophisticated side-channel attacks by > higher-level entities. ~~~ seanlane It appears that this may no longer be an open question: [http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/next/physics/physicists- confirm...](http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/next/physics/physicists-confirm-that- were-not-living-in-a-computer-simulation/) There was a Hacker News post about this a few days ago, likely from a different source, but I can't find it. ~~~ qudat This only applies to classical computers not quantum, some combination of both, or by some means of computation we haven't discovered yet. ------ falsedan Nice to see people work on git remote helpers, a shame that there's already a fine remote helper that is not tied to a specific hosting provider & uses GPG[0] already. 0: [https://spwhitton.name/tech/code/git-remote- gcrypt/](https://spwhitton.name/tech/code/git-remote-gcrypt/) ~~~ zeveb I came here precisely to see how this compares to git-remote-gcrypt (which I use to protect my password-safe filenames). Anyone from keybase prepared to comment? ~~~ ptspts I'm not a Keybase developer, but I'm a user of Keybase Git, git-remote-gcrypt and git-gpg, and I've just written a comparison of the 3. Here you are: [http://ptspts.blogspot.com/2017/10/comparison-of- encrypted-g...](http://ptspts.blogspot.com/2017/10/comparison-of-encrypted- git-remote.html) If I missed some of the aspects, please let me know. ------ RKlophaus For anyone interested in alternatives, we built a utility (creatively named git-gpg) with the same goal: end-to-end encrypted git. It works over ssh, is self-hosted, and requires no additional software on the shared server. [https://github.com/glassroom/git-gpg](https://github.com/glassroom/git-gpg) ------ ericfrederich This removes the ability for collaborating, browsing online, basically any feature of GitLab/GitHub/BitBucket. ... I think I'm in favor of this. I think of the things that those services provide on top of Git should actually be ported or mapped to Git itself. Branches, pull requests, comments, etc... should all be Git objects of some sort. ~~~ quadrangle Branches are Git objects. Incidentally, here's a distributed VCS that includes bug tracking: [https://fossil-scm.org](https://fossil-scm.org) ~~~ falsedan > _Branches are Git objects_ That's not how I understand refs, they don't even live in the .git/objects hierarchy. ~~~ ericfrederich You're correct, they're just files. To create a new branch off of master you can just... cp .git/refs/heads/master .git/refs/heads/WTFFF ... no SHA-1 involved at all, no parent, history, etc. ~~~ swsieber However what they point to are git objects. And being pointed to prevent them from being garbage collected (pruned). ------ ams6110 _Remember, it is impossible to delete cloud data with any kind of confidence, and your host may already be compromised._ Should be the epitaph of the current era of computing. ------ notheguyouthink As an aside, does key base offer tools to encrypt data from code, lets say from Python/Go/Rust/etc, that is moron proof? I say tools, because while a library would be cool, I'd understand if it was a binary/application to provide the functionality/user-experience that key base is aiming for. I know this likely doesn't sound like something key base _should_ be aiming for, but to me, programmers need encryption just as much as users. I'd like to write my libraries/programs with encryption, but I also want to be able to trust it and not fear some inherent vulnerability I'm adding. To me, Keybase is aiming to solve/reduce these complexities for users, and I'm hoping they also aim to solve it for developers to. Thanks for all the hard work folks @ Keybase, it's definitely appreciated! ~~~ ofek This is a perfect use case for [https://github.com/ofek/privy](https://github.com/ofek/privy) ------ Walkman I have a private repo on GitHub which contains my dotfiles with SSH private keys, tokens, secrets and all kinds of secret stuff. I was uncomfortable storing it there, but my laziness/lack of time kept it there. Finally I will be able to encrypt the entire repo, yay!! ~~~ philsnow if you're uncomfortable storing them there, you're going to rotate all the secrets after you move the repo to keybase, right? ~~~ Walkman Yes, I will. That's a long overdue also :D ------ OrangeTux Keybase has quite a few interesting and unique features. But I'm cautious, because it's not clear to me how they are going to monetize it. ------ NikolaeVarius My first initial gut thought is, could this be as a good ol cross platform method of password management? I've never been able to properly manage keepass due to syncing between different platforms being a pain. ~~~ tehno Maybe combine Keybase git with gopass, that one stores data in a git repo: [https://www.justwatch.com/gopass/#features](https://www.justwatch.com/gopass/#features) ~~~ NikolaeVarius That sounds promising. I can't be the only one with this problem. (aka secure cross platform synchronized password management without requiring personal/managing cloud infrastructure. ------ ex3ndr Was expected one question but haven't found one: how it is actually encrypted? Any whitepaper or information how diffs could be handled over encrypted data? Or it is a just encrypted .git folder? ~~~ pfg Looks like it's built on top of kbfs[1]. [1]: [https://keybase.io/docs/kbfs/understanding_kbfs](https://keybase.io/docs/kbfs/understanding_kbfs) ~~~ FullyFunctional The "actually encrypted" part is NaCL (ED25519 + sha256) as supported by Go [2]. Interestingly, the common way to use NaCL applies Curve25519 to encrypt a symmetric key which is the used for the payload. They don't do that. AFAICT, everything is using the ECC curve. [2] [https://keybase.io/docs/crypto/kbfs](https://keybase.io/docs/crypto/kbfs) ------ kazinator These benefits can be obtained by sharing a remote encrypted _filesystem_ , in which sits an ordinary git repo. Then simply check out that git repo using a _file: //path/to/repo_ reference, creating a clone on a local drive out of the encrypted volume. The encrypted filesystem can then reside on an untrusted server in the cloud. Ultimately, this is a cleaner solution than the whack-a-mole approach of hacking every application one by one to retrofit it with crypto storage capabilities. ~~~ timerol This question has a FAQ entry near the bottom of TFA: > Why not just make a bare repo in KBFS? The Keybase filesystem journals changes and syncs them after writes, kind of like Dropbox. Which means you and another team member could be fighting each other and make a conflicted HEAD, where there'd be 2 copies side by side. Similarly, you shouldn't put git repos in Dropbox. Keybase's git prevents this by locking. Also: it's nicer to use the Keybase app to discover and manage your teams' repositories. ------ phren0logy I really like keybase, and I wish they could issue certs for me to sign PDFs. I would pay for that. ------ elahd This is excellent. I've been looking for practical uses for my Keybase account -- it's been sitting around, verified but idle for years. The chat app is nice, but none of my friends or co-workers use the service (or understand crypto, for that matter). ------ FullyFunctional Let me be unoriginal and sing your praises also. I'd LOVE to replace my use of Dropbox with Keybase, but I pretty much use every single feature of the iOS Dropbox App [1] and Keybase really isn't an alternative right now. Also, one unique design choice of Dropbox is to use the underlying file system which means that working out of a Dropbox folder is native speed, even for high intensity IO. Keybase is a lot better than, say, Wuala was, but it's still noticeable. [1] In prioritized order: camera uploads, viewing and editing plaintext, show photos, playing music and video, uploading to Dropbox from random other iOS apps, and finally selective offline access. ------ ptspts On Linux, you can try this encrypted Git without installing Keybase or using the Keybase GUI. You need the following Go binaries from keybase*.deb: keybase, git-remote-keybase and kbfsfuse. Start kbfsfuse (specify a directory as a mount point); put get-remote-keybase to your $PATH; run keybase git create myrepo; you can stop kbfsfuse now; then this works (after substituting $KEYBASEUSER): git clone keybase://private/$KEYBASEUSER/myrepo ------ ericfrederich Awesome... any plans to support LFS? I know with LFS you can write custom backend handlers. ~~~ sridvijay Was just thinking that as well, the hard part about changing GitHub hosts like bitbucket/github is the feature parity between them. This is really enticing though. ------ patrick_haply Nice, this is perfect timing for me to see this actually. I've been slowly building out a little cli tool that I use to track .env files (and other files that you don't want to check into source) in a git repository that is parallel to your project's git repository. The way it works is you identify a file that you don't want to check into source. The cli moves it to a parallel repo, commits the file to the parallel repo, and symlinks the file back to the original location. From then on, you get all of the normal source control features like local changes, revision history, etc... that you get with every other file in your project. I basically got fed up with "crap what was that value I was using before? Let me dig through my credentials store" or resorting to commenting out old lines just in case I needed to revert. So far, I've just been keeping those parallel repositories local for lack of an encrypted remote to push to. Definitely checking this out. ------ rcthompson It's amazing how many new features and even new complete products Keybase has been able to build on top of their core in such a short span of time. Even more so considering that a large part of that core is "just" a much better UX for a technology (GPG) that has existed for decades. ------ AdrianRossouw The two most interesting companies in crypto for me right now are KeyBase, and Wire. I kind of wish there was some way for them to interact with each other, because it feels like they each have a piece of some bigger puzzle. ~~~ choosegoose Are you not concerned with the data Wire collects? [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14069674](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14069674) Versus the data Signal collects: [https://signal.org/bigbrother/eastern-virginia-grand- jury/](https://signal.org/bigbrother/eastern-virginia-grand-jury/) Although I agree Wire looks like a much more (visually) polished chat service, it seems like they (Wire) collect more data than is necessary. ~~~ AdrianRossouw Wire has open sourced it's server code (gplv3 even) and is working on federation support : [https://medium.com/@wireapp/wire-server-code-now-100-open- so...](https://medium.com/@wireapp/wire-server-code-now-100-open-source-the- journey-continues-88e24164309c) So you can run your own copy of it, and be in complete control of any information it collects. ~~~ choosegoose That seems really exciting. When that occurs I will most likely switch over. Unfortunately you can't quite host it your self yet: [https://github.com/wireapp/wire- server/issues/2](https://github.com/wireapp/wire-server/issues/2) ------ payomdousti is there some way to verify what was actually uploaded, and that it was indeed encrypted properly? ~~~ ptspts You can ask the same question about copying the .git directory with rsync over SSH, and the answer for that one applies to your original qustion as well: * You can take a look at the packets (using e.g. tcpdump). * You can take a look at what the binaries (rsync, ssh vs. keybase and git-remote-keybase) read and write (using e.g. strace). * You can read the source code. * You can read the white papers and other analyses about the crypto used, and decide if you trust it. The average user probably won't bother with these, because they need time, effort and experience. If you can imagine a fundamentally better possible way for the average user to verify crypto, please let us know. ------ TomasHubelbauer This is amazing. I've been aware of KeyBase for some time now, but never really explored it. This is the push. Typing this comment as I am setting up my proofs. ------ jboynyc I made a test repository and proceeded to clone it using the keybase:// uri, expecting it not to work, but by some dark magic, it just did. Impressive! ~~~ pqs Not in my case. $:~/projectes$ git clone keybase:// [uri] Cloning into 'something'... fatal: I don't handle protocol 'keybase' I'm on an ubuntu machine. What can I do to solve the problem? Keybase version 1.0.34-20171006000413+5fe91ae13 ~~~ jboynyc Have you installed and are you running the keybase client software? I start it on my system (Arch Linux) using the run_keybase command. ------ philip1209 Some hypothetical questions: \- How could CI/CD be set up? (Is read-only access possible to the repo? Would Keybase work on a Jenkins box? Could a deploy server verify signatures before deploying?) \- Could one set up mirroring to GitHub? How would this work? (I could see the signing without encryption as a value-add) \- What happens in the event of a force push? Could certain users destroy history? \- Could protected branches eventually be added, eg only certain users can push to master? ~~~ strib > \- How could CI/CD be set up? (Is read-only access possible to the repo? > Would Keybase work on a Jenkins box? Could a deploy server verify signatures > before deploying? You could have a deploy/CI user as a "reader" in your team. But we don't yet support hooks or anything (as that implies running arbitrary code on endhosts without their knowledge), so it would have to pull the repo. > Could one set up mirroring to GitHub? How would this work? (I could see the > signing without encryption as a value-add) You can of course continue to use Github as a regular remote, but you'd lose all the encryption and signing unfortunately. > \- What happens in the event of a force push? Could certain users destroy > history? We do currently allow force pushes. Being able to turn that off on a repo-by- repo basis is something we'll consider in the future, definitely. > Could protected branches eventually be added, eg only certain users can push > to master? Yes, but again, as with any "server"-side feature, this is complicated by the fact that it has to run on the client itself, and thus isn't really strictly enforceable against modified clients. As we get more experience with people using this, we will definitely be thinking about how to make it better by adding power features like these. Thanks for the feedback! ------ iamthirsty This actually got me to signup for Keybase today. ------ ryanqian I have a long running vm on Google cloud with only tiny configuration. I communicate to it with strong crypt way to access my 'pass' s git repo. So far so good, but I'm good to see what keybase's good work on how to improve the personal data safety, that's a good choice. ------ earlybike I could basically store all my sensitive data there? Passwords, SSNs, private keys of ETH wallets, etc.? ~~~ aeorgnoieang Yes ------ j7ake Hi security newbie here, I have private bitbucket repo for storing my pass data. One problem is that pass often leaks some metadata like headers of directories. From security standpoint does this mean it is more private to host the git repo on keybase versus bitbucket ? ~~~ jredmond That depends - is that data encrypted on your system? Since git is decentralized, there's a chance that any plain-text copy (such as a clone on your system) could be compromised. Keybase even addresses this in the FAQ, to an extent: > What if my computer is compromised? > Your work is only as safe as your endpoints, so we can't help you there. This applies regardless of host or protocol, BTW, and it isn't even specific to computing. (It doesn't matter how many locks you have on your front door if you leave the back door propped open.) ~~~ j7ake Hi pass uses gpg encryption on the text files my only concern are the file names which can leak meta info, for example just searching GitHub [https://github.com/zurchpet/pass](https://github.com/zurchpet/pass) shows this person has passwords in a public repository but encrypted. Nevertheless I can see that the file names are credit card info and other sensitive info. It's like having a safe with a label "important stuff inside" ! Does keybase solve this problem ? ~~~ tanderson92 Yes, the contents of the git repository holding your pass files are encrypted, meaning that the file names are not visible to anyone without the private key (you). You may also want to look at [https://github.com/roddhjav/pass- tomb](https://github.com/roddhjav/pass-tomb) ~~~ j7ake Thanks for that I'll consider it. ------ ValentineC From the article: >> _What are the limits?_ > _You can have as many repositories as you want, but the total for your > personal repositories can 't exceed 100GB. Each team also gets 100GB._ Is there anything stopping people from creating team after team just to hoard data in Keybase? ------ tln This is pretty cool. I've used git-crypt before to encrypt parts of a repo, but this approach seems much easier to manage. [https://github.com/AGWA/git-crypt](https://github.com/AGWA/git-crypt) ------ gwenzek I don't really understand how it works. Are the git objects encrypted before being pushed? In that case how are they handled by the server? Does it accept them even though they make no sense? What Github is going to show? ~~~ mrsteveman1 Keybase is just another Git remote you can push to, one that transparently encrypts whatever is pushed to that remote. The Git repo itself is completely normal in every other respect, so if you push to Github, everyone can still see the entire repo. This is a good design as it lets people move repos easily and avoid too much lock-in, but it may (will...) come back to bite people soon, who push things to Github thinking they were "encrypted by Keybase", which is not what's going on. ------ WindowsFon4life If only their app did not have so many pages marked writable and executable... ------ ris Keybase, please just support web of trust already. In _some_ way. Not everyone I want to be able to authenticate necessarily has public social media accounts. ~~~ JBiserkov Do they have a website/server? #1. Host a file on your site You can host a text file, such as yoursite.com/keybase.txt. This is preferred, if you have a website. #2. Set a DNS TXT record Instead of hosting a web page, you can place a keybase proof in your DNS records. ~~~ ris > Do they have a website/server? Not necessarily. I'm talking about people who want to remain anonymous (or pseudonymous) and might want to keep as low a public online profile as possible. ------ ryanpcmcquen This is amazing and convinced me to install Keybase on all my comps. I would like the ability to browse the repo in the Keybase app though. ------ squashmode My thanks to the keybase crew, I've waited for a practical PGP solution for nearly 20 years. Keybase delivers, thank you! ------ jancsika > Keybase team member here. Interesting fact: git doesn't check the validity > of sha-1 hashes in your commit history. Not sure I understand. git clone blah cd blah git fsck What am I missing? ------ hollander Does this work for a local repository? ------ dorfsmay I'm confused. Is the entire repo encrypted, or some files only? If the former, what are case where this is needed? ~~~ aeorgnoieang The entire repo is encrypted. Consider a repo containing passwords. It's easy enough to encrypt the files containing the passwords but the names of the files or even the directories in which they're located are also info you might wish to hide, e.g. that you _have_ an account at some-site-you-do-not-want-anyone-to-know-you-visit.com. ------ gigatexal This is really friggin' cool! Best of luck to you guys, hope the work continues. ------ payomdousti is there a way to view / verify that the payload has actually been encrypted? ------ voanhduy1512 Thanks for nice product. From now on I will move all my git repo into keybase ------ zrg I give gitlab 2 months before they implement and launch encrypted git ------ paule89 just to clarify: 1\. Do you need a private git repository? 2\. Is everything really encrypted? 3\. If everything is encrypted how can i access it through Git Desktop? ~~~ strib You can have team-based or private repos hosted by Keybase. Everything is encrypted and signed before it leaves your computer, and decrypted and verified when your computer downloads it. But your local checkout of that git repo is unencrypted. It's just a normal repo. So Github Desktop has full access to it, like it does for all files in your local filesystem. ------ Zynjec This is awesome, thanks for the heads up. ~~~ simonRedwards Yup! Definitely not just posting this to verify myself. ------ daveheq Just wait til the government bans this because people will store kiddie porn, terrorist communications, and copyrighted media into it. ~~~ sorokod "Just wait til the government bans this because people will store kiddie porn, terrorist communications, and copyrighted media into it." More precisely, the government will _claim_ that ... ------ LeicaLatte Fantastic! ------ hasenj Wait, what exactly _is_ keybase? The home page says: > Keybase is a new and free security app for mobile phones and computers. ok, so, what does it do? > For the geeks among us: it's open source and powered by public-key > cryptography. Still have no idea what it does .. > Keybase is for anyone. Imagine a Slack for the whole world, except end-to- > end encrypted across all your devices. Or a Team Dropbox where the server > can't leak your files or be hacked. ok, so what is it? what does it do? > [picture that looks like a chat app] So it's an encrypted chat server? What is it? How can you have a homepage for a product that doesn't talk about what the product is and what it does? Why so obscure? Are you trying to hide something? Is this really a home page for a product aimed at people who care about security? Compare it to, for example, tarsnap's[0] homepage, which explains exactly what the product does and doesn't leaving you wondering about anything. [0]: [https://www.tarsnap.com/](https://www.tarsnap.com/) ~~~ OJFord It's a lot, isn't your third quote a pretty good description? > Keybase is for anyone. Imagine a Slack for the whole world, except end-to- > end encrypted across all your devices. Or a Team Dropbox where the server > can't leak your files or be hacked. It's not much of a reach to assume familiarity with Slack and Dropbox; the message is clearly that Keybase is those (via Keybase Chat & FS) but encrypted. For what it's worth, it's also a keyserver, and (now) git remote. ~~~ hasenj > isn't your third quote a pretty good description? It's not. I think the person who wrote it think it's good marketing, but even that, it is not. Here, try to see if this makes any sense as a product description: > FeedHamster is for anyone! Imagine a Yelp that's customized just for you! Or > a YouTube feed that only shows you interesting videos that _you_ would like! > Install FeedHamster now! Now, can you guess what FeedHamster does? Maybe it curates content? Honestly I have no idea. I just made it up. It doesn't really say anything useful at all, but I think it makes more sense that that description on Keybase's website. ~~~ kinoshitajona Tarsnap was a good example of a service selling to technically apt customer base. Guys who have years of IT training would love to read about deduplication and picodollars. Keybase isn’t charging money to begin with, so “sales pitches” are not their primary concern. Also, they are marketing to “the masses” with the idea that more people should have secure e2e encrypted communication and collaboration solutions where identity is cryptographically proven. But if their welcome page started showing diagrams of encryption pathways and key derivation algorithm names with server client relationship diagrams, I guarantee no one besides people in tech will download it. I still think they need to do better selling the idea to the masses, I in no way think their current front page is sufficient, but I understand that right now they aren’t concentrating on sales pitches. ------ adiosdfisndf Tried to create an account and no matter what I tried to name my devices all I got was "keybase has reserved this name." Welp. ~~~ cjbprime Ah, it's not the device names that are reserved, it's the username itself. ------ feelin_googley Does it use libgcrypt? [https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/07/04/gnupg_crypto_librar...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/07/04/gnupg_crypto_library_cracked_look_for_patches/) Maybe it only uses the Go crypto libraries? ------ aauthespian [http://www.aauthespian.news/2017/10/why-are-some-nigerian- mo...](http://www.aauthespian.news/2017/10/why-are-some-nigerian-mothers.html) ------ hdhzy Sounds intriguing but I'm missing the deep technical info on how it works. > All data you push is signed by your device's private key, which never leaves > your device. For the reference git already supports signed pushes (git push --signed): [https://github.com/git/git/commit/a85b377d0419a9dfaca8af2320...](https://github.com/git/git/commit/a85b377d0419a9dfaca8af2320cc33b051cbed04) ~~~ welder Signing a commit does not encrypt that commit's contents, just adds a signature to prove you wrote that commit. From the Keybase FAQ: > So is this signing my commits? > No, this is happening at a lower level, (1) to allow encryption, and (2) to > ensure no unsigned or unencrypted data makes it in. Intuitively you can > think of it as you and your teammates using a cryptographic secure storage > layer for your git origin that doesn't really understand git. > Your commits themselves are untouched from git's perspective, so if you > mirror your repository elsewhere, it'll be a regular checkout. ~~~ hdhzy I did not mention signing commits but signing push requests and that was a reference to: > All data you push is signed by your device's private key, which never leaves > your device. ------ therealmarv If you go crypto don't use git. It's not designed for cryptography in mind and the Keybase approach looks nice IF I can control every chain or can keep using github (or any other git server) with it. But for the storing part alone I would not trust Keybase. I would even say if you do crypto and need cloud storage then store it in multiple places and avoid git. Better flat file and some daily backup strategy with e.g. encfs as the bottom layer. In worst case you get your data back. Sorry keybase.... you are not a trustable cloud storage for me. It feels like betting on your company... I want to bet on your company without feeling dependent on worst case restore scenarios (computer dying while your company dies). ~~~ eridius > _But for the storing part alone I would not trust Keybase._ Why not? You're making a bunch of claims about this being bad but you're not providing any reasoning for it. ~~~ therealmarv It's basically new closed source one bucket crypto on one company which is not known for storage. A little bit too much of uncertainty for my taste. ~~~ kristianp A large portion of their code is open source: [https://github.com/keybase](https://github.com/keybase) ~~~ sigjuice How easy is it to build and run my own copy of this code, especially the server side stuff?

On the detection of quantum insert - ingve http://www.tedunangst.com/flak/post/on-the-detection-of-quantum-insert ====== noinsight Well, who actually does packet-level analysis of every connection they make? Maybe some troubled/paranoid individuals are constantly running tcpdump and analyzing all the traffic to/from their computer but that can't be a large subset. This sort of discussion is also hard to come by - people/organizations rarely, if ever, actually advertise what kind of traffic analysis / security systems they're running, yet it's extremely interesting (at least to me) and I've always wondered. To detect (and actually analyze) some sort of unknown zero-day you probably need to have entire network packets/connection streams stored so you can see what sort of traffic and data was incoming? Who does that and what sort of system can do that at large enough scale? The topic of moving beyond protection (firewalls etc.) and into actual detection (log analysis, traffic analysis etc.) seems to be rarely discussed. ------ joosters All the author is showing is that no-one who he tried to scam spotted his fake duplicate packets. At best, none of the people were running any QI-detecting code, and if they were, no-one reported the incident to a forum that he read. It's not a very conclusive result, really. ------ majke Maybe detecting QI is actually hard? You need a buffer of TCP data, that was possibly already passed to application. 1) Is there a kernel patch yet? 2) "HoneyBadger is a passive TCP protocol analyzer whose only purpose in life is to detect and optionally record TCP injection attacks." [https://github.com/david415/HoneyBadger_docs/blob/hackpad1/s...](https://github.com/david415/HoneyBadger_docs/blob/hackpad1/source/how- to-badger-the-puppet-masters.rst#tcp-injection-attack-categories) ------ hkparker I wrote a script a while ago in Go to detect quantum insert attacks. It's not perfect but its well commented. I noticed quite a few detections when I ran it for a few days but they seemed to be benign, probably retransmissions. [https://gist.github.com/hkparker/97548b2c0c79a9149f50](https://gist.github.com/hkparker/97548b2c0c79a9149f50) ------ tempodox _... I can only churn out so much linkbait, even for the sake of science._ As a consolation, I offer the idea that the sum of linkbait in the universe is constant. And since the days of Max Planck & Erwin Schrödinger, no-one can know the contents of a link until you klick it. If we produce enough quantum haze, the NSA might just get confused. ------ agd If you detected a Quantum Insert attack against you, would you even say anything? Why alert your adversary?

Cache eviction: when are randomized algorithms better than LRU? (2014) - signa11 http://danluu.com/2choices-eviction/ ====== ordinaryperson Related: the author, Dan Luu has, IMHO, one of the best IT-related Twitter feeds out there: [https://twitter.com/danluu](https://twitter.com/danluu) Highly recommended. ------ falcolas One thing I've seen is that a weighted LRU is usually slightly better for unpredictable workloads. i.e. it will never evict high use cache data when there's a flurry of one-off traffic that would normally start evicting a normal LRU cache, and even a 2 random LRU scheme. This is particularly relevant for databases and keeping rows in memory. The algorithm is something like "add two weight when an item is used, and decay one from every item every second, evict items under pressure from the lowest weight to the highest." ~~~ rozim Well, once you go down this path you gotta consider ARC: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_replacement_cache](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_replacement_cache) as I believe it is designed to be scan-resistant. ~~~ logophobia Which is, unfortunately, patented: [http://patft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph- Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=...](http://patft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph- Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=6996676.PN.&OS=PN/6996676&RS=PN/6996676). ~~~ takeda Hmm given that patents span for 20 years, and that's essentially forever in computer world, once this patent expires it probably will be worthless. In a world where advances are built on top of other advancements, patents just stifle innovation. ~~~ noonewhocounts And yet innovation proceeds at a pace unmatched in history, and is so commonplace it gets dismissed as not counting when it's not a revolutionary breakthrough. ~~~ takeda When you're referring to innovation, you're talking about everything. I'm referring to software. ~~~ stilldontcount It's relatively impolite to tell someone what they meant ------ jandrese Are there any languages that allow you to give the compiler a hint that you're about to grind over a gigantic dataset so don't bother to cache any of this data because it won't be accessed again for a long time? It seems like it could be helpful in keeping a big crunch from obliterating the cache constantly. You might also be able to apply other optimizations, like preloading the next data blocks so they're ready when the CPU rolls around. Maybe compilers already do this behind the scenes? ~~~ dom0 Don't. Yes, there are instructions for this. No, don't use them, unless you really exactly know what you are doing and optimizing towards a specific, single µarch _only_ , otherwise they will invariably hurt performance, not improve it. Similarly explicit prefetching usually does not improve performance, but reduces it. (Non-temporal stores are quite a good example here, since a game engine used them in a few spots until recently, causing not only worse performance on Intel chips, but also heavily deteriorated performance on AMD's Zen µarch. Removing them improved performance for all chips across the bank. Ouch!) ~~~ vvggff Links, examples, tutorials? ------ SomewhatLikely This 2 random cache scheme reminds me a lot of the 2 random load balancing scheme laid out in "The Power of Two Choices in Randomized Load Balancing" [https://www.eecs.harvard.edu/~michaelm/postscripts/mythesis....](https://www.eecs.harvard.edu/~michaelm/postscripts/mythesis.pdf) Which shows an exponential improvement in choosing the less loaded of two randomly chosen servers over just random. ~~~ colonelxc It is indirectly referenced near the bottom of the page, with a pointer to [http://brooker.co.za/blog/2012/01/17/two- random.html](http://brooker.co.za/blog/2012/01/17/two-random.html), which references [http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/~michaelm/postscripts/handbook20...](http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/~michaelm/postscripts/handbook2001.pdf) ------ j2kun The "2 random choices" idea also shows up as a good idea in other settings, such as load balancing for hashing. I wrote a writeup[1], but if you google "power of two random choices" you'll see a lot of literature on it. [1]: [https://jeremykun.com/2015/12/28/load-balancing-and-the- powe...](https://jeremykun.com/2015/12/28/load-balancing-and-the-power-of- hashing/) ------ krallja Redis supports LRU and random eviction: [https://support.redislabs.com/hc/en- us/articles/203290657-Wh...](https://support.redislabs.com/hc/en- us/articles/203290657-What-eviction-policies-do-you-support-) I wonder if it would be worth adding a k-random eviction strategy, for a balance between the two. ~~~ antirez Hello, now Redis (4.0, still in release candidate) supports LFU (Least Frequently Used) which should work better in most cases since LRU also is also just a way to approximate LFU, since the most frequently used items are often the last recently used ones. ~~~ danbruc _[...] since LRU also is also just a way to approximate LFU, since the most frequently used items are often the last recently used ones._ That is not really true. LRU and LFU favor different items, LRU ones used frequently in the short term, LFU ones used frequently in the long term. Only under special circumstances does one approximate the other, for example if your cache is large enough that LRU does not evict the most frequently used items when many less frequently used items are placed in the cache before the most frequently used items are accessed again, then LRU approximates LFU. ~~~ antirez What I mean is that, the most frequently used objects, if accessed roughly with an even period of time, tend to be also the least frequently used objects, so if the accesses are very even LFU and LRU tend to be similar. For uneven access patterns, they are different, but usually LRU is used because access patterns are even so that it approximates LFU, since what we want to have in cache is, without other application-specific clues, the objects that we use more often. Knowing _exactly_ the access pattern one can use an application-assisted strategy which is optimal, but without clues LRU adapts well to different scenarios while LRU may fail in a catastrophic fashion. Also note that your idea of LFU (in this context), from what you write, is perhaps one that does not adapt over time. Redis LFU employs a decay strategy so that the recent frequency is computed, not the whole-lifetime frequency of access, so even short lived items accessed very frequently for some time, will do well and will not get easily evicted. Full story: [http://antirez.com/news/109](http://antirez.com/news/109) ~~~ danbruc That is what I meant, under specific assumptions about the access pattern they can show similar behavior. Classical LFU tracking the absolute frequency of items will keep items that are used frequently in absolute terms but infrequently in terms of the instantaneous frequency in the cache while LRU will evict such items in favor of items with high instantaneous frequency. Those two algorithms are in some sense two extremes, LRU cares about what is most frequently used right now, LFU cares about what is most frequently used over the entire lifetime of the cache. The LFU variant you describe in the linked article is somewhere in the middle, it tracks the absolute frequency of access just like classical LRU but then it also decays this frequency and therefore turns it into something like a weighted and averaged relative frequency. But it is, at least for me, hard to tell what exactly the algorithm tracks, how the accesses are wighted over time and therefore were exactly this falls on the spectrum between LRU and classical LFU. Algorithms like ARC and CAR also try to strike a balance between LRU and LFU with the difference that they adaptively control where on the spectrum to operate. ~~~ antirez Yes, there is a tuning problem indeed. I made two parameters user-tunable (the decay and the logarithm factor of the Morris counter), but tuning needs some expertise. I've severe limitations on the number of bits I can use per object, but depending on the user feedbacks I may try some auto-adaptive approach as well in the future. ~~~ NovaX I used hill climbing to tune TinyLFU. A larger admission window improves recency-biased workloads, while a smaller improves for frequency. By sampling the hit rate and making an initial adjustment, it can determine when to change directions and hone in on the best configuration. Other than a small warm-up penalty, it quickly optimizes itself. ------ danbruc _[...] choosing the least recently used (LRU) is an obvious choice, since you’re more likely to use something if you’ve used it recently._ There are many other cache replacement policies [1] and they can outperform LRU especially if the quoted assumption is not true. It is for example quite common to have two types of data, one is frequently reused over very long periods, the other is reused over short periods after the first use. In those cases a more complex policy like ARC or CAR can provide noticeable improvements. [1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cache_replacement_policies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cache_replacement_policies) ~~~ bnegreve > There are many other cache replacement policies [1] and they can outperform > LRU especially The article is about CPU caches so speed and memory usage are very critical. One of the main benefit of LRU is that it only needs one extra bit per cache line. ~~~ flgr > One of the main benefit of LRU is that it only needs one extra bit per cache > line. This might be well known, but why's that? I've recently seen a Go implementation of LRU and it uses a lot of memory. Maybe this would allow us to save some of that in a better implementation. ~~~ danbruc Requiring only a single bit is only true for a two-way set associative cache, i.e. the content stored at every memory address may only be cached in two different cache slots. In this case you can simply flag the other corresponding cache entry you did not access as least recently uses every time you access a cache entry. The implementation in software was probably fully associative, i.e. every item can be cached in every slot. This requires a lot more memory and it is the same for caches in processors, they require more additional bits and logic the more freedom they have where to cache the content of every address. To be more precise, you have to keep track of the order all cache entries were accessed which requires at least about n * log(n) bits unless you only implicitly store the access order by using something like move to front. ------ kazinator LRU is predicated on locality of reference. Ideally we could peer into a crystal ball and know which items are going to be accessed in the near future and keep those in the cache at all costs. Since we don't know that, we use a predictor based on past behavior. If past behavior is random, then prediction is for shit. So we assume that behavior has locality: something referenced recently is more likely to be referenced again than something not referenced recently. Based on that guess, we sort things from least recently used to most recently (or approximately sort, using aging tricks to avoid actually sorting), and boot out the least recently used entries. If accesses are completely random, then the LRU selection is pure overhead. Or worse; some patterns, like repeated sequential accesses of something large through a small cache, are anti-locality. If we are accessing a big buffer in a circle, then the next thing we are accessing at all times is _precisely_ the least-recently used item that LRU wants to boot out. For situations like that, caching mechanisms sometimes support some API for providing a hint. "These memory locations are going to be needed soon". "This memory mapped file is being sequentially accessed". And such. ------ SomewhatLikely Another characteristic of the data which would make random particularly bad is if reloading/recomputing the most popular items took significantly longer than reloading unpopular items. This could be the case for instance if item data size grew in proportion to popularity. ------ mapgrep Dumb question, what is "2-random"? ~~~ sethammons From the article: ...on real workloads, random tends to do worse than other algorithms. But what if we take two random choices and just use LRU between those two choices? __ " 2-random" is his short hand for the above scenario. [edit: formatting, I have no idea how to signify a quote; I don't want preformatted because it makes a scroll box.] ~~~ AnimalMuppet On HN, typically a quote is done like this: > This is a quote. It won't become a scroll box, no matter how long it gets. > It will just wrap to the next line. True, the next line won't begin with a > ">" character, but the convention is that the whole paragraph is a quote if > the first line begins with a ">". ------ PaulHoule Often you can get away with dumping the whole cache when it fills up and starting fresh. ~~~ Coding_Cat that's a horrible pattern. As soon as you go 1 bit over your cache size in a hot loop you'll have a 100% miss rate. (assuming each element is loaded once in the hot loop). ~~~ rspeer You don't use this pattern while looping. You use it while memoizing results that you don't want to compute again. Here's an example, in the Python package wordfreq [1]. When you look up word frequencies, there's some normalization it has to do to your text. Some words are very common, and it would be silly to normalize them repeatedly. So frequency lookups are cached. The cache dictionary has a maximum size of 100,000, so that exceptional or malicious cases don't use up all your memory. It is extremely rare for text to contain 100,000 distinct words, but if that happens, the cache gets full and the entire thing is dropped. It will quickly be re-populated with common words, of course. Yes, you can make this perform horribly by looking up frequencies of ["zero", "one", "two", "three", "four", ..., "one hundred thousand"] in a loop. That's not realistic data. Do you actually have a suggestion for how to do this faster? We benchmarked this against other cache strategies (with smaller cache sizes so it would drop sometimes) on realistic data. It's much faster than Python's LRU decorator, for example. [1] [https://github.com/LuminosoInsight/wordfreq/blob/master/word...](https://github.com/LuminosoInsight/wordfreq/blob/master/wordfreq/__init__.py) ------ nsebban When the cost of retrieving an item from your slower storage is pretty much the same for every item, may it be old or new, small or big, popular or not. ------ pacificleo11 Ajax made predictive (random)prefetching mainstream .its only natural that random eviction algorithm are coming along . when you pick one end of stick you pick another too

Countly | Mobile Application Analytics - basil http://count.ly/ ====== nickpresta Awesome demo! However, I seem to have trouble finding the "docs" section for developers. I see: * <http://support.count.ly/kb/sdk-installation> (but there is nothing about how to call init(), etc). * [http://support.count.ly/kb/web-installation/installing-count...](http://support.count.ly/kb/web-installation/installing-countly-server-v12051-to-ubuntu) (but nothing about the requirements in the event I'm not on Ubuntu and have to install from source/other packages) Having these two things are paramount to the usage of your software. Thanks! ~~~ onur We have shortage of documentation for now thats for sure. We will be providing more documents about installation on different platforms in the coming days. If you have any problems or questions we will be more than happy to help if you open up a discussion from <http://support.count.ly> ------ Parseco This is really cool! Have you thought about the possibility of contacting the gamers via SMS or USSD (for polls and feedback). When you see that they haven't used a game for a while?...etc...? Give our Rest api beta a try! ~~~ gorkemcetin Yes, polls, surveys and feedbacks are in the roadmap. We are not a lot interested in SMS/USSD since it's really under control of operators, but would like to invest more in exchanging data using 3G/4G networks. It's really a good idea to trigger rules when an app is not used after a certain period of time. Will think on it :) ~~~ Parseco (thumbsup!) :) ~~~ onur It would be interesting to play with your API since Countly team is composed of all telco professionals :) ------ kenrikm It's cool, I'm interested in trying it out. Rethink the use of Lobster as your logo/text font a bunch of different companies Including Codecademy and HireAry use it. So it's Generic at best. ~~~ onur Thanks for pointing that out. I'm pretty sure our co-founder/designer Osman knows about this but anyways being unique is always better :)

Abusing Contributors is not OK - joeyh http://www.curiousefficiency.org/ ====== polemic Let's add: flag killing [the original, multi-upvoted front page] links to articulate and well reasoned pieces about why abusing contributors is not OK, is not OK. ~~~ dang We've unkilled that post and are burying this one as a duplicate. ~~~ mjg59 You've unkilled that post, but left it buried on the third page. ~~~ dang Yes, what we usually do when there is a tug of war between upvotes and flags is prevent the flags from killing the post so active discussion can continue, but not override the flags altogether. This happens on controversial posts where the community is divided, and it's not uncommon to see large fluctuations in rank under the tug of war. ~~~ mjg59 Your voting system actively discourages discussion of topics that upset portions of the community, which results in many people not being exposed to those topics at all. Does this seem like a desirable outcome? ~~~ dang That isn't an accurate description. Those topics come up on HN all the time. There's no one who reads the site regularly who isn't well aware of them. ~~~ mjg59 How, when they get pushed off the front page within minutes?

The Bonfire of the Humanities - benbreen http://www.thenation.com/article/195553/bonfire-humanities ====== aridiculous As a lover of the humanities and social 'sciences', I am always cheered up when a postmodernist snaps out of it, so we can actually have intelligible conversations again. Paraphrasing famous modernist designer Massimo Vignelli, postmodernism was/is a critique, at best. It doesn't actually provide a worldview. To me, it's intellectual madness. Fun, in moderation. Useful, to shake things up. ------ jseliger I'm surprised Moyn doesn't mention Edge.org, whose founder John Brockman has explicitly talked about starting Edge and becoming a literary agent to offer alternatives to what he calls "book reviewers" dominating "intellectual" conversations. Incidentally, the Edge.org annual question books are excellent. In addition, WRT this: _It seems as if, in roundabout ways, all of our current historiographical trend-followers finally agree with White, in the face of what they regard as a great crisis for historical writing today. But it is one thing to call for speculation for the sake of relevance, and another to bring about a new marriage of history and philosophy._ writers like Keith Windschuttle have been discussing these problems since _The Killing of History_ , if not earlier, and Camille Paglia has been discussing them in essays since the 1990s. Finally, the lack of jobs in the humanities has been acting as both a negative IQ test and a conformity test for decades. I wrote a little more about that in the context of English here: [http://jakeseliger.com/2012/05/22/what-you- should-know-befor...](http://jakeseliger.com/2012/05/22/what-you-should-know- before-you-start-grad-school-in-english-literature-the-economic-financial-and- opportunity-costs) . This may relate to the willingness of academic historians and other academics to speak to the public or avoid conformity more generally. ------ walterbell Are there any non-academic professions which employ a high percentage of humanities PhDs, e.g. publishing, think tanks? Phrasing the question differently, if the economics of a humanities education means that only the already-wealthy need apply, where do such people put their education to work? The article could have benefited from a historical perspective on grad school economics and tenure opportunities. When and why did these change and what does it mean for society? ------ joshdick I'm surprised that this doesn't mention Fukuyama's "end of history" idea [1]. When it looks like the world is full of liberal democracies and nations becoming liberal democracies, history feels less compelling. [1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End_of_history](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End_of_history) ~~~ nyolfen the state of affairs since the neoconservatives attempted to implement this philosophy through the iraq war, or the direction russia has tacked since 91 to name just two prominent examples, has made this idea kind of a joke

On Silos - panarky https://blog.ethereum.org/2014/12/31/silos/ ====== marak830 A little offtopic, but that minutes left counter on scrolling is a little disquieting. I cannot put my finger on exactly why, but rushing to read an article didnt feel right (i prefer to take my time).

Show HN: Parametric Activation Pools greatly increase performance in ConvNets - clmcleod http://blog.claymcleod.io/2016/02/06/Parametric-Activation-Pools-greatly-increase-performance-and-consistency-in-ConvNets/ ====== Ono-Sendai What does 'loss' mean on your graphs? Error fraction?

Jack Abraham (Milo.com) on being an entrepreneur and why to drop out of school - wesleyzhao http://wesleyzhao.com/2011/02/17/inspiring-words-from-jack-abraham-pdf/ ====== yoshyosh wow great read, especially liked the last part, just goes to show how easily I give up when acquiring new clients

Rebol is back - neuro http://www.rebol.com/cgi-bin/blog.r ====== Garovix Where was it?

How I Turned Down $300,000 from Microsoft to go Full-Time on GitHub - jseliger http://tom.preston-werner.com/2008/10/18/how-i-turned-down-300k ====== jmtame Loved Tom's social hack for finding cofounders, from Startups Open Sourced. He also has a really good outlook on the role of design in startups. Q: So, the best way to get to know somebody is to go drink with them? A: That is absolutely the best way to really get to know a person and what they really like and are interested in because if they are interested in technology, then they will have no problem geeking out with you about Ruby or Node or something for three hours, over drinks; that’s when you know that you found someone that could be a really successful cofounder. I think there really is something to doing business in bars. In the early days when there were four of us—we had hired Scott Chacon—we would go to this bar called O’Reilly’s, up in North beach. We went there almost every week and that’s where we would talk about what we had done. This is after we had started full time and it was where all the decisions were made. A couple of drinks in, you start to just say what you mean instead of thinking so much about whose feelings you are going to hurt or whatever, you say things very bluntly, like, “I think we should do this, and I think you are wrong for saying we should do it a different way,” and now you can have an honest argument about what needs to get done and what the concerns are about the company or how it’s structured or how the stock is going to be split. All this stuff will come up over drinks and as long as you are not too drunk, it can be helpful. ~~~ sahillavingia Warning: this restricts you to finding cofounders that are 21 and over. :) ~~~ i386 Not if you live in a country where you can vote and drink at the same age :) ------ larrykubin I'll be honest. When I first read this post nearly three years ago, I barely knew what Git was, the stock market was crashing hard every day, hundreds of thousands were being laid off, and turning down that offer seemed pretty foolish. Now I can't live without GitHub. ~~~ jrockway Honestly, I don't think turning down an offer is ever a real problem. You can always ask for the offer again; does a company as big as Microsoft ever have enough smart programmers? People come and go every day. There is probably room for you somewhere. ~~~ hammock This is very true, just want to add the caveat that the notion of low cost of foregone opportunity you are talking about could apply to mature-stage companies, not necessarily fast-growing ones. Also there is tremendous selection bias in which of these "I turned down X to do Y" stories get told, of course. ~~~ notJim I would definitely read the "How I turned down a $300,000 job at bigcorp to found a startup that crashed and burned 18 months later" story. ~~~ tlipcon I turned down a job at Google (not 300k but hey, it's Google!) to join a startup. The startup started to sink about 2 years later. I learned a ton and didn't regret it for an instant. Moved on to a new startup 2 years ago when it became clear the first was a dead end. Google recruiters continued to ping me religiously every 6 months regardless. Moral of the story: Google, MSFT, Facebook, etc will all still be there in 2 years. Especially if you're early in your career and don't need the cash today, go wherever you will learn the most. ~~~ akronim it was 300k over 3 years... so your offer probably wasn't that far off! ------ BrandonM _> When I’m old and dying, I plan to look back on my life and say "wow, that was an adventure," not "wow, I sure felt safe."_ A great conclusion to a great article. Definitely a motto to live by. ~~~ davidw A cynical mind might say that a really adventurous life might also expose one to more risk of being _young_ and dying, rather than old. Or other less than pleasant outcomes. ~~~ acangiano That's why our brains afford us both desires: the need for adventure, and the need for security. The two keep each other in check. Adventurous people, who aren't reckless, simply choose to be more adventurous than fearful when there aren't too many real safety risks, but mostly perceived ones. ------ pjhyett It's worth noting that none of the Ruby guys Tom worked with at Powerset are still working for Microsoft 3 years later. The guys I've spoken with had a miserable time working there and left to work for other startups like Greplin, Bank Simple, and Square. ------ lawnchair_larry How did github get early users? ~~~ mojombo We invited everyone we knew in the Ruby community. We all attended local Ruby meetups and talked to anyone that would listen. We used it for our own open source projects and invited would-be contributors to join the fun. We used an invite-only model during the private beta to create artificial scarcity and encourage people to invite their friends. ~~~ brandnewlow Am sending this to every person I know building a community-driven site. You've perhaps unwittingly boiled the general solution down to its base components. ------ twakefield Great post, but dammit, now I'm going to have "You’re The Best" by Joe Esposito stuck in my head all day. ------ joelhaasnoot This story is encouraging! I'm soon to graduate college and am figuring out what exactly I want to do next. One of the options is to work part time on my startup, next to another part time job or freelancing. It's a lot easier when you have savings to make such a leap, then again, I live lean and live cheap. ------ vipivip Turned out to be the best move. ~~~ jmtame No kidding. Coming from a guy who has never raised a single round of funding and has operated profitably every single month since launching (except for one month where he hired two people), they're doing really, really well. ------ wildmXranat Very nice read. That also leads me to mention that Github, as good as it is in 'social' coding or whatever that means, does not fill a gap for a proper resource on how to use Git. Not that it should and it clearly doesn't carry that mandate, but there is hefty amount of respect to be made for any group that de-mystifies git in all it's glory. Hell, there are plenty of comments here, on groups and proggit from users that lose their hair over advanced use of git. In my opinion advanced consulting services and migration planning for currently SVN,CVS engaged companies would be nice. ~~~ dasil003 > _proggit_ One too many Gs: progit.org ~~~ drbaskin I'm having trouble determining whether you are serious, but I suspect the original poster was referring to reddit's programming community. ~~~ dasil003 I'm suggesting that's a better place to learn about git not to mention being created by one of the Github guys. ~~~ dasil003 Okay since I'm just getting driveby downvotes, let me explain the source of my comment. The original comment said: > _That also leads me to mention that Github, as good as it is in 'social' > coding or whatever that means, does not fill a gap for a proper resource on > how to use Git._ Well, Scott Chacon (#4 githubber I believe?) wrote the book to demystify Git. Of course, there is a certain irreducible complexity there, but I think Github has made a significant contribution there, so I don't think it's fair to level this criticism at them out of passing unfamiliarity. ------ chopsueyar "You're the best around, Nothing's gonna ever keep ya down!" ------ greg_gti When I’m old and dying, I plan to look back on my life and say “wow, that was an adventure,” not “wow, I sure felt safe.” Great quote and I try to live my life by the same philosophy ------ emehrkay I pay for github, great decision :) ~~~ zackattack GitHub makes using version control fun. ------ louislouis "The next night, Friday, October 19, 2007 at 10:24pm" Was there a time-machine involved overnight or is it supposed to be 2008? ~~~ spacemanaki I think the post was published in 2008 but it was talking about events from a year earlier: "2008 is a leap year. That means that three hundred and sixty six days ago, almost to the minute, I was sitting alone in a booth at Zeke’s Sports Bar..."

The Inconvenient Truth About Dynamic vs. Static Typing - redshift1010 https://blog.jooq.org/2014/12/11/the-inconvenient-truth-about-dynamic-vs-static-typing/ ====== oldandtired Since static typing systems use dynamic typing to determine the static types, his comment about dynamic types languages being dead is simply wrong. Many years ago, it became obvious that static typing is useful in some class of programs, dynamic typing is useful in another class of programs and soft typing is useful across them all. A range of typing systems exist now, they will continue to exist into the future as long as we have need of digitally based computing systems. We live it and we continue to solve the problems put before us. As a side not, it was interesting that he didn't specify a List("abc", 0, 0.2) and answer what the static type of such would be. There are many examples of data structures that has non-uniform base types which can only be determined at runtime. Let the silly season start. ~~~ lukaseder In Java, the type of such a List("abc", 0, 0.2) would be List<? extends Serializable & Comparable<?>> or something like that. There's always an appropriate type for any expression. ------ tedmiston > Dynamically typed languages are dead The author seems to overlook existing efforts from the dynamically typed end of the spectrum to add type inferencing and optional static typing to dynamic languages. Either as type checkers e.g., mypy [1] or for runtime improvements. [1]: [http://mypy.readthedocs.io/en/latest/index.html](http://mypy.readthedocs.io/en/latest/index.html)

Using Travis-CI with Python and Django - craigkerstiens http://justcramer.com/2012/05/03/using-travis-ci/ ====== pydanny Time to switch to Travis-CI!

Ask HN: Should I pay programmers I hire per hour or per task? - MavropaliasG ====== ToFab123 It depends on if it is possible to make precise time estimate of how long the task is expected to take for an developer with same level as your dev. It also depends on the quality of the specifications you have written. If you are unable to write clear and precise specs then hard for someone to commit to a set numbers of hours. If there are elements of research and development in the task it is also hard to set a firm price. So the answer is that it depends on the quality of your specifications and ability to describe and explain the work that needs to be done ------ gregjor [http://typicalprogrammer.com/how-to-work-with-freelance- deve...](http://typicalprogrammer.com/how-to-work-with-freelance-developers) ------ catacombs Pay them by hour and pay them fairly. Simple as that.

3D images of tissue may help spot and treat cancer - ximeng http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-17817146 ====== ximeng Paper (abstract, paywall for full text): [http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0002944012...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S000294401200168X) Press release: [http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/authored_newsitem.cws_home/...](http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/authored_newsitem.cws_home/companynews05_02300) Alternative article: [http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-04-virtual-reveal- disease...](http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-04-virtual-reveal- disease-3d.html) Apparently 1.45 TB data for 5000 slices of data.

Zenefits Scandal Highlights Perils of Hypergrowth at Startups - tpatke http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/18/technology/zenefits-scandal-highlights-perils-of-hypergrowth-at-start-ups.html ====== throwaway-zcs It's so convenient for everyone if this is all on Conrad. Mr Sacks did an excellent job of throwing Conrad under the bus, but as COO for 16 months, a board member and with a desk adjacent to Conrad and a seasoned guy, it strains credulity that he didn't know. There's some schaudenfreude here (and an anonymous account) because these guys all acted like they were smarter than everybody else. I hope regulators do a real investigation and I suspect Mr Sacks will come out more culpable than he would have you believe. ~~~ mathattack My guess on this situation... You have a group of people sitting around the table saying, "If we do nothing, the value of the company goes to zero. We have to do something visible and credible." Conrad had to agree to jumping on his sword - as the largest shareholder, he has the most to lose if the company goes under. So he jumps on the sword, and lets everyone kick him while he's down, because it increases the likelihood that the company survives. I have no real information though, so for all I know he could have been stabbed in the back instead. ------ gkoberger It's interesting how Uber, Airbnb and Draftkings blatantly broke laws and won. They set the precedent that if you're growing fast enough, the laws will change to fit you. Didn't work out that way for Zenefits. They seemingly lost. ~~~ ___ab___ I think the reason that {Uber, AirBNB, DraftKings} succeeded in flouting the law is that they operated in industries that are consumer-facing, and where the cost of regulation is obvious to consumers. Many people understand that taxi regulations (for the most part) negatively affect them, and in many cases are extremely frustrated with them: see Washington, DC. Most people aren't familiar with and don't care about the company that manages their health insurance, and as a result there's little public support. ~~~ pron Exactly, but I'd phrase it a bit differently: when it comes to taxis and apartments, regulations are bad for _you_ , the consumer, and good for the people in your community (taxi drivers, neighbors), while in insurance, regulations directly protect the consumer. Because people (especially in the US) couldn't care less about other people, regulation that annoys consumers is "bad", and the consumers then defend the companies breaking those particular laws. Those companies exploit the fact that in _every_ industry, consumers always outnumber providers (or conversely, every person consumes from many more industries than those where they provide), and so the disregard for this kind of regulation will always work. Every new company will get consumers to gang up on the far fewer incumbent providers until they break the regulation that protects them, and so on, industry by industry. It's a little like the robber barons, who used every new wave of immigrants to beat up the previous generation of immigrants who tried to unionize, and then hired the new ones in their place... that is, until the next wave of immigrants. Except the new way of doing this is far more effective, because it's always easy to obtain a majority that supports you _and_ feel like they're doing the right thing at the same time. ~~~ lazerwalker For the most part I think you're spot-on, although it's worth emphasizing the nuance that not ALL taxi/hotel regulations are bad for the consumer. Most of the AirBnB and Uber horror stories you hear are things that don't happen, or happen far less relative to the overall volume, in a world of licensed taxis and professional hotels/B&Bs. Does the good of current regulations outweigh the bad? Likely not, in many cases. But there are reasons (at least some of) these regulations exist outside of capitalism being terrible and the successful trying (and succeeding) at pushing out competition. ~~~ nommm-nommm I would argue that many (most?) housing regulations are good for the consumer. My landlord has to provide me with a safe and structurally sound place to live, which is good for me. If my heat breaks in the winter he's obligated to fix it, he can't evict me and leave me on the streets on a whim, or turn off my water if I am late on the rent, etc. Laws around security deposits are usually good for the consumer as well. Nobody wants what is referred to as a "slumlord." Landlords often are annoyed about regulations (and some tenants unfortunately abuse them) but many came about because of the abusive practices of the slumlords. Our society deems having a safe place to live pretty essential so landlords have a massive amount of power over their tenants if unchecked. ------ rifung It seems like a recurring theme in these "scandals" is that if you put too much pressure on your executives, they end up either quitting or doing something they shouldn't be doing in order to keep up with your demands. Another example is with VW and their diesel emissions. I feel like people just have a difficult time saying they were wrong or pushing back and saying they can't do something. I am guilty of this myself. ~~~ mcguire "You" who? The system can be as rotten as you like, but in any particular case, at some point, someone said, "Let's start cutting corners." ~~~ bsder > The system can be as rotten as you like, but in any particular case, at some > point, someone said, "Let's start cutting corners." Yes, but... Normally things like this build up gradually from "just one step" on something that is patently stupid. And, let's face it, if you can get a certification from an online course, it's stupid, prima facie. So, you need to get one more person online to file benefits. Get them certified. Okay, these certifications are stupid and any idiot can sit through these. Okay, let's get the same idiot to sit through each one. Okay, we're still not getting certified fast enough. Okay, hire more idiots to sit through this. Okay, but they'll have to learn this. Okay, let's put some programmers on this so we only need one idiot to do things on multiple sessions. Okay, now that we have the macro, we don't need the idiot anymore. etc. If the feds weren't clamping down on this, everybody would be singing their praises like Uber and AirBnB. It's all about the bandwagon, baby. ------ stygiansonic From the article: " _Growth broke stuff. To increase revenue, the company moved beyond small businesses to customers with hundreds of employees — and the software struggled to keep up. Instead of pausing to fix bugs, Zenefits simply hired more employees to fill in where the software failed, including repurposing product managers for manual data entry._ " From a different article about the downfall of Target Canada[1], which also suffered from trying to ramp up too fast: " _Getting the details from suppliers largely fell on the young merchandising assistants... “There was never any talk about accuracy,” says a former employee. “You had these people we hired, straight out of school, pressured to do this insane amount of data entry, and nobody told them it had to be right.”_ " Don't underestimate the proliferation of data entry jobs, especially when there is chaotic growth/lack of a proper plan. 1\. [http://www.marketingmag.ca/?p=166300&preview=true](http://www.marketingmag.ca/?p=166300&preview=true) ~~~ Lawtonfogle >“You had these people we hired, straight out of school, pressured to do this insane amount of data entry, and nobody told them it had to be right.”" My first guess is that it was worse than this. The people doing data entry who took the time to do it right were likely showing up as doing worse on what ever metrics were being ran and were replaced by people who were fast but error prone. Bad metrics leading to bad optimizations. ------ yummyfajitas I wonder why "The Macro" doesn't also highlight the perils of clueless regulators imposing moronic laws on HR departments. The specific law that Zenefits violated was a law insisting that before selling insurance, your employees need to sit at a computer and click "next" for 52 hours. Once they've clicked "next" sufficiently many times, only then are they permitted to take the exam to determine whether they have enough knowledge to sell insurance. Shouldn't this scandal also highlight the perils of a regulatory state? ~~~ maxerickson Modest amounts of wasted time? Oh no. I suppose one way to estimate how onerous this requirement is (I agree that to the extent it is arbitrary that it is dumb) would be to compare how much compensation the insurance license makes available to how much compensation spending the equivalent time learning a skill like welding makes available. (I think most people wouldn't be very good at welding after 50 hours of training and practice) ~~~ yummyfajitas All you propose measuring is the _individual_ benefit to sitting through training. That's a terrible way to measure the social cost of a bad regulation. The social cost is 52 hours of productive output from moderately skilled employees. (Or moderately less - if learning the material takes 20 hours, then the waste is 32 hours assuming people can simultaneously learn the material and click.) The right thing to do is simply make people take the test, and if the test isn't accurately measuring people's insurance selling ability, fix the test. ~~~ st3v3r And what's the social cost of unlicensed, untrained people selling insurance? What's the societal cost of people who have not studied selling insurance that they might not understand? ~~~ yummyfajitas I don't see a very high social cost from licensed insurance salespeople who passed the exam selling insurance. Do you? If so, what is it? Again, note that we are discussing _spending 52 hours clicking through a powerpoint_ before you are allowed to take the test to get the license. ~~~ st3v3r "I don't see a very high social cost from licensed insurance salespeople who passed the exam selling insurance. Do you? If so, what is it?" How do you know that they passed the exam? They told you? "Again, note that we are discussing spending 52 hours clicking through a powerpoint before you are allowed to take the test to get the license." No, we are not. ~~~ yummyfajitas All anyone has accused Zenefits of doing is using a macro to prevent people from being auto-logged out of training. E.g.: [http://www.buzzfeed.com/williamalden/zenefits-program-let- in...](http://www.buzzfeed.com/williamalden/zenefits-program-let-insurance- brokers-fake-training#.qmexedRMl) _The Macro functioned to keep a person logged into the course and prevented the person from being logged out for inactivity. The Macro did not advance through the required material or quizzes in the education course — the Macro only kept the person logged in. The Macro only pertained to the prelicensing education course and did not affect the broker exam taken later._ If you have even accusations of some other activity (let alone evidence of it), go ahead and post it. ~~~ manigandham Have you not read any of the articles? The cheating on the time is just one issue. They had unlicensed brokers selling insurance in two states, which is an actual crime. ------ GCA10 Rhetoric aside, isn't this really just another example of "... Highlights Perils of Hard-Charging CEOs"? It's that simple. We can wander far from fast- growing startups and find the same kind of conduct anywhere in business. The guy running my corner grocery store decided to set up a sit-down cafe without getting a city license. The folks running a nearby office suite are in no hurry to put in city-mandated sprinklers. Business founders/owners like to get things done without asking permission. That's how they roll. Trying to invoke unicorn valuations, VCs, etc. is silly. It's a classic case of finding an exciting anecdote and trying to attach causality theories after the fact. ~~~ unoti > The guy running my corner grocery store decided to set up a sit-down cafe > without getting a city license. The guy at the corner grocery store isn't discussing my employee's private medical records with me in between slamming down hits on the beer bong. ~~~ mdonahoe Are you referencing something in particular with this beer bong comment, or just being hyberbolic? ~~~ untog Reasonably sure it is exaggeration for comic effect. We are not in a court room. ~~~ mcguire Bam! mdonahoe is overruled! ------ coldcode Being good at starting a company and raising funds is no guarantee of being any good at running a company. Add to that growth from 15 to 1600 in two years is also likely to be a massive failure. Add to that insane pressure from investors to do the impossible (that you promised). I've seen a lot of people crumble at a much smaller size. ------ chillingeffect Come on now, NYT, there is virtually no evidence of corruption at startups being any worse than any other business or human endeavor. NYT, you're just spreading FUD because people look to you for guidance and you need to respond to their fear. Yes, these guys (Zenefits) were, in one area, dishonest and cheated. But it's not like Cigna, PacTel, BoA, Citizens and zillion other companies are paragons of virtue. Nevermind Volkswagen. [1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accounting_scandals](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accounting_scandals) [2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_corporate_collapses_an...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_corporate_collapses_and_scandals) ------ jmckib Alternative title: "Zenefits Scandal Highlights Perils of Excessive Occupational Licensure". What exactly is the purpose of requiring a license for selling insurance? If consumers desire some assurance of quality in their insurance brokers, then certification, not licensure, would be sufficient. The only justification for licensure over certification is a paternalistic one: consumers are simply too ignorant to choose their own insurance brokers, even if some are certified and some are not. As Milton Friedman said in Chap 9 of Capitalism and Freedom, this argument "amounts to saying that we in our capacity as voters must protect ourselves in our capacity as consumers against our own ignorance." This isn't to say that Zenefits hasn't made a huge misstep for seemingly little benefit (bypassing a 56 hour course?), but I wish there was some discussion of the absurdity of the law that was broken alongside the bashing of Zenefits for breaking it. ~~~ CPLX Insurance is _important_. Unlike many other consumer products you really don't have any idea what you're buying until after you've bought it. Making an incorrect or misled choice in health insurance is sufficient -- literally -- to completely ruin your life financially in a matter of hours, or cause unnecessary death via untreated illness. If you want to claim that you can read a health insurance policy binder and understand it be my guest. I am a frequent writer and editor of technical literature and capable of writing code and I have a pilots license and I find health insurance policies almost incomprehensible. We make sure that you don't get a bad _haircut_ by requiring licenses for barbers. You can't fix my sink or chimney without licensing. We require licensing and testing to act on someone's behalf in the legal system, and in nearly all sales of securities, and of financial products, of which insurance is one mind you. If Zenefits wanted to make an in-public argument that these rules are not necessary they were free to do so. I would have disagreed, and I'm sure others would have shared my opinion. Maybe they could have won the argument. They didn't do that. They aren't righteous crusaders passionate about consumer choices and regulatory issues, they're opportunistic business people who broke the law and committed fraud instead of following the rules or working to change them. ~~~ yummyfajitas Since you would have disagreed, can you explain why you think 52 hours of clicking "next" is a necessary step in becoming a broker? Zenefits employees did pass the exam, and they possess the knowledge you believe is necessary. It's just that the law requires 52 hours of clicking before you are even permitted to take the exam. Why do you think this is a good law? ~~~ CPLX You're being disingenuous. The requirement isn't "clicking next for 52 hours" it's spending that amount of time studying an online course. You're required to actually pay attention for 52 hours and then certify that you did. For another example, the requirement inherent in a multiple choice exam isn't a matter of "filling out a semi random sequence of the letters A, B, C, and D" it's _knowing the answers to the test._ The filling out the letters is a signal that you know. Signals aren't perfect, in that example if you don't know but copied answers from someone else that's cheating and the signal would be unreliable then, and you've subverted the actual intended requirement. The requirement in this case is _spending about a week of your life actually studying this material_ and the clicking of the next button as well is a signal that you did it. Don't confuse the means with ends. You could have argued that the amount of hours spent studying the material is also a useless metric. But that's a more nuanced argument that you haven't made, and one that has defensible positions on both sides. Clearly clicking next isn't a meaningful requirement, but so what, it's not actually the requirement. Spending time studying is, and they cheated and lied about it. ~~~ yummyfajitas What the law actually requires is clicking for 52 hours. But lets take your claim as a premise; why is it important that a person spend time learning? Suppose two people know the material equally well, but one of them learned it faster than the other. Why is that a good regulation? How does it benefit consumers to make it illegal to learn things fast? I know a former algebraic geometer (lots of category theory) who learned Haskell very rapidly. Would it benefit consumers of his services to pass a law saying he needs to learn Haskell at a slower rate comparable to a RoR hipster without a math PhD? ~~~ CPLX I'm going to go out on a limb and guess you have no idea what the law actually requires in detail. It's ok neither did I. Here's an example of what it looks like, there is a _lot_ more on the linked pages, which collectively comprise the actual requirements: [https://govt.westlaw.com/calregs/Document/ID813F6A0622011E4A...](https://govt.westlaw.com/calregs/Document/ID813F6A0622011E4A9828577DD5F1BF2?viewType=FullText&originationContext=documenttoc&transitionType=CategoryPageItem&contextData=\(sc.Default\)) > why is it important that a person spend time learning? Suppose two people > know the material equally well, but one of them learned it faster than the > other. Why is that a good regulation? How does it benefit consumers to make > it illegal to learn things fast? I don't know. But I do know that basically every educational institution requires some level of engagement measured in time. You can't just pass tests to get an undergrad degree or a PhD either. The requirement to spend actual time is hardly cruel and unusual. I also know that the requirements were clear enough to be known to Zenefits and they willfully evaded them. What is the difference between a Harvard graduate in Economics and someone who attended and completed all the requirements for an Econ degree but was short one art elective class and never got a degree? Should he just fudge his job applications since the art class isn't important? What's the difference between someone assigned 100 hours of court ordered community service who did it and someone who went back to court with forged paperwork saying they did it? In all the examples, and Zenefits as well, the difference is that the person is committing fraud, is lying, and is not ethical. Cheating on requirements isn't the same as arguing to change the rules, regardless of how confused you continue to pretend to be about it. ~~~ dsp1234 _You can 't just pass tests to get an undergrad degree_ Yes you can. Almost every school has a procedure for taking a test or convincing a professor that you have the knowledge the class provides. You still pay the cost of the course, but do not actually attend it. Getting my degree many, many years after entering the field, I skipped a huge swath of undergrad classes this way. Stuff like non-computer related classes was all that I needed to do 'in person'. In other words, I skipped 'pressing buttons' for a large chunk of time due to fact that I knew the material and could prove it. The main difference to the above being that the school recognized that it was possible for a student to understand the core material completely without taking the class, and the above rules do not admit that possibility. ~~~ frotak _Getting my degree many, many years after entering the field_ So would you say you had experiential learning in the subject matter of the classes you were being allowed to skip after demonstrating both evidence of this experiential learning and the attendant competency? Testing out of a course due to earned knowledge is different from passing a multiple choice exam with Cliff Notes awareness of the material. ~~~ dsp1234 _is different from passing a multiple choice exam_ Some of the classes did just have multiple choice tests that would have been easy enough to 'Cliff'. Though it's not really relevant to larger discourse. That still doesn't change the facts of the original situation. The test is the determining factor of whether or not they 'completed' the course. Indeed, someone who 'Cliff'ed the notes, and passed the test, and watched Netflix on a second screen while pushing all of the right buttons would still be accepted. Which is the ultimate failure here. Either the time limit is necessary and can't be skipped (due to the physical limitations of some inherent process), or the time limit is artificial and the actual possession of knowledge is sufficient. Who is served by putting an artificial time limit in place that does not actually prove knowledge of the material? ------ Pxtl Wait, all it did was prevent auto-logout? That's it? Seriously? ~~~ ritchiea It does seem to be low scale cheating but a culture of writing and distributing internal software to cheat on tests required for certification sounds toxic. ~~~ jmckib Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe they were cheating on the broker license course, not the exam. It would be similar to skipping a class with an attendance policy because you already know the material. ~~~ st3v3r It still shows an incredible amount of unethical behavior, and more of this pattern of "I'm a startup! I'm special! The law shouldn't apply to me!" Special snowflake syndrome, just exhibited by a company. ------ amsilprotag If we are to use this [0] definition, then "Hypergrowth at" can be omitted. It seems like a better title would include "in highly regulated industries." It's interesting to note that the essay only includes discussion of law as it relates to defending startups from incumbents, not as a caveat to the advice: "The good news is, if you get growth, everything else tends to fall into place." Is it the case that Zenefits merely failed to grow fast enough to present a more credible threat to state prosecutors? [0] [http://www.paulgraham.com/growth.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/growth.html) ------ pbreit This article is terrible. The takeaway is the hypergrowth ultimately overcomes. Cleaning up the mess will be comparatively easy. Zenefits flouting regulations was silly and didn't appear to be necessary. With Sacks at the helm, a huge and growing business and $500m in the bank, Zenefits is very well-positioned. ~~~ tyre You may be right, but it isn't that one-sided. 1) Sacks was COO when all of this happened. These were specifically lapses in policy and operations. Are you sure he is immune to the repercussions? 2) "[H]uge and growing" as of last year. Every one of these articles discourages new companies from signing up and talented people from joining the company. Trust is a tremendous factor in health insurance, especially when there are many other options on the market. If I have other options, why go to a company under investigation with a horrendous culture? 3) Based on the state of their operations (poor), company culture (dismal), and customer feedback (even worse), I would push back on them being "well- positioned." $500 million can buy you a lot, but if culture, brand, and operations were that easy, Comcast could turn itself into a modern company in a few months. ~~~ pbreit 1\. Sacks has a sterling reputation (and a JD from U of Chicago). He's immune. 2\. Zenefits now has a PayPal CEO, exec staffer and board member plus the backing of A16Z. It is an attractive to place to work and obtain services from. 3\. I think those things will come around (if they are even as bad as you opine). Comcast is a 50 year-old, former monopoly, $140b company. SO not only a bad comparison but a terrific outcome. ------ financedfuture Regarding unicorns (> U$1 billion valuation), the U.S should implement certain regulations. These startups have market caps that are larger than thousands of public companies that go through several laws and openly disclosure their financial information. Not only does this lack information hurt shareholders that are not "part of the club", but also stakeholders that rely on the company in other matters. [http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Papers.cfm?abstract_id=2674420](http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Papers.cfm?abstract_id=2674420) "Regulation of unicorns should recognize that outsized power." ~~~ alexc05 I'm not actually sure I agree with this. Consider that the people & companies investing in pre-IPO U$1B companies are _extreme_ expert investors. They take the risk on. Now if we're talking about post IPO, then actual financial regulations kick in and market-traders are afforded the protections that they have now (which is still sometimes significant) Imposing additional regs on a 'privately held' company simply because they accepted enough money to give them a U$1B valuation punishes them for growth. Additionally, valuations are sometimes voodoo calculations for example (and someone else can check my math) but is someone gave me $1 for 1/10,000,000 of my company, wouldn't that be a billion dollar valuation? Obviously not a _credible_ one - but - where's the line? $1M for 1/1000? It's still not a billion real dollars. If you look at linkedin's valuation it's based on current potential for future revenue. But revenue that is like 10 or 20 years in the future. (reference: my foggy recollection of Peter Thiel's lecture in Sam Altman's startup school) Maybe I'm confused as to how valuations actually work. ~~~ st3v3r "Consider that the people & companies investing in pre-IPO U$1B companies are extreme expert investors" And regular employees getting paid in options. "Imposing additional regs on a 'privately held' company simply because they accepted enough money to give them a U$1B valuation punishes them for growth." No, it doesn't. It shows an acceptance of reality. ~~~ alexc05 > And regular employees getting paid in options. Ahhh... That makes more sense to me. > No, it doesn't. It shows an acceptance of reality. Fair point. Consider my mind swayed. I'm not sure valuation is the right meter stick, but as another point in the thread, total $$ raised _might_ be closer to the right answer. There is probably something there. ------ dpweb Had some personal experience in bending the rules (a very ugly experience) - and its better to follow the laws, even if the laws don't make sense. In a B2B business especially, follow very closely and to the letter. ------ whoknowsnotme It is unfortunate that the public doesn't know much about insurance or how it's regulated. While what Zenefits did was wrong in several cases, there are some important things to understand: \- This macro program didn't have anything to do with whether an agent would/could pass an insurance exam. That's separate and in order for someone to practice, they need to pass the test. \- If this training program were so critical to understanding and effectively selling insurance, why wouldn't all state adopt it? \- The unfortunate fact is that the details you must study and know to pass the test have very little do with how you will sell insurance. The study packets, courses etc. do not prepare you in any way to sell these products better. Actually a lot of the test talks about annuities and things completely unrelated to medical insurance. \- The licensing issues largely relate to non- resident licenses, not the actual resident license where the test is required to pass. It's a common practice in brokerages across the US to get licensed when business is closed or about to be closed in the different state. \- If you want a comparable, lawyers obviously have to pass the bar to practice. But they can actually practice legal advice before ever passing the bar as long as they are working under a licensed attorney. This is how many pro-bono cases are worked by students in law school etc. ------ manishsharan So what will Zenefits eventual business model look like if they survive this ? I don't think they can be an insurance broker; customers would have to be incredibly stupid to buy insurance from them. If they are going to be an HR software company, then do they even deserve that kind of valuation, as their current valuation seems to be base on an expectation of hypergrowth. HR s/w companies rarely have hypergrowth , what with SAP and Oracle owning large chunks of the enterprise market. ------ Fede_V What I found particularly illuminating was this: 'Some investors said Mr. Dalgaard was as instrumental as Mr. Conrad in pushing for steep revenue targets, and that both men’s ambition pointed in the same direction — toward hypergrowth.' (in fairness, later on, the article says this: Another person familiar with the board disputed this, saying Mr. Dalgaard, who formerly ran the cloud software company SuccessFactors, was among those asking Mr. Conrad to restrain Zenefits’ growth plans and fix the culture. ) This is the same person that had a glowing profile written about them in the NYT: [http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/18/business/lars-dalgaard- bui...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/18/business/lars-dalgaard-build-trust- by-daring-to-show-that-youre-human.html) With this beautiful paragraph: 'I learned so many things from my dad, but in particular he taught me about ethics and that there is no easy way to get to your goal. You’ve got to be like Lambeau Field in Green Bay and build for bad weather. That’s basically the only way to achieve any type of success. But you often see with some companies, particularly start-ups, that they’re telling themselves and others a bit of a story, and not being honest about what the real issues are. Instead of taking all that energy and focusing on the core outcomes, they’re just glazing over it and hoping it will be O.K. There is no such thing as a quick fix.' There's no way to know what the real truth actually is - but, wow, that's quite a contrast between the two articles. ~~~ poof131 The most telling quote for me was “The two men also differed over whether to address employee morale by re-pricing stock options to the new lower valuation, according to people familiar with the matter. Mr. Conrad favored the move, but Mr. Dalgaard believed it would train employees to expect a re- pricing any time the company’s fortunes changed.” So the “we support founders” mantra may also mean we support founders and ourselves at the expense of employees. Despite all Conrad’s miss-steps, such as the ill-mannered Quora response, I now have a new respect for him. At least he was trying to fight for the employees. Sad to see a16z in this light. With fantasy valuations crashing to reality, repricing options should become the standard. Or you can follow the current SV playbook and hope employees don’t really understand what’s going on with equity. ~~~ JoeAltmaier Ok, so I have a new interview question for any startup job: "Will you reprice options should valuations decrease?" They say No, I walk. ------ kneel At the center of this 'scandal' is a program that prevents auto log-out during license training. Being licensed: Sitting at a computer for 52 hours and clicking on it before passing an exam. What a waste of time. Pretty much an entire week and a half of full time staring at a screen to get a license to sell insurance. They were just skating bureaucracy, plenty of companies do this. ~~~ run4yourlives2 At the centre of this scandal is a company selling insurance with unlicensed brokers. That means people advising others on what insurance to buy where their health is concerned who didn't know what the hell they were doing. The software made to skirt the licencing requirements is only a subset of the overall issue. Frankly, I'm getting a little tired with the group of commentators on here that think its a-ok for a company like zenefits to tell people "Sure, you're covered for that in this policy" when they frankly have no idea if that is the case. Selling insurance advice without a license is exactly like selling financial services advice without a license. And both actions are illegal for very good reasons. ~~~ mattmanser I worked with mortgage brokers for a while. They had a big exam, all complicated and they were supposed to be able to advise. What they actually did was put 5 figures into a computer and pick the mortgage nearish the top with the biggest commission. I have no idea how complicated health insurance is in the US as I'm from the UK but I'm willing to bet £100 that's what 90% of health insurer brokers do too. ~~~ run4yourlives2 >I have no idea how complicated health insurance is in the US Exactly. ~~~ mattmanser Your comment just drips with enlightening anecdotes and interesting exposition explaining how picking health insurance is so much more complicated than all the other financial advice that today is basically little more than: Put client's answers in brokerage program Choose highest commission in top 10 Recommend product ~~~ run4yourlives2 1\. Mortgage brokerages are not financial advice brokerages. A mortgage broker finds the best deal for the consumer, usually for products that are more or less the same. 2\. A financial planner or investment advisory is about helping a client gauge what product works best for their particular situation, and being able to communicate the very real downsides of certain courses of action. 3\. An insurance broker acts in a very similar way to #2, in that there are some very real concerns that may not be obvious to the layperson that the broker should be providing advice on. For example: what a health insurance product covers, and why (for example) not providing coverage for children in your female dominated company could result in very real losses to your employees, and by extension, you as a company. >Put client's answers in brokerage program; Choose highest commission in top 10; Recommend product ..is PRECISELY the type of thing that licensing is designed to protect the consumer from. Group health insurance is extremely complex, particularly in the US where it is really the ONLY health insurance a person has. These are people's lives we're talking about here...you can't wait until you HAVE cancer to find out that your plan doesn't cover it. The only thing this entire thread is showing is exactly why not having licensed, knowledgeable professionals advising on insurance is a very real concern. ------ wslh It is very interesting to read about other approaches for growth. For example, Google waited patiently several years until a business model worked. Imagine Google starting today with a protoversion of PageRank. ------ snappy173 it's a matter of risk. when you're trying to be a billion dollar company, you have to take big risks. in that context, the risk of getting caught for breaking the law becomes palatable. when you're trying to create a stable, profitable, but more modest sized company, that risk becomes a threat to your business. it's a big problem when these types of risks start to make sense from a business perspective, because it's the public, not the people that create this environment, that end up suffering. ------ pascalxus I don't understand what all the outrage is about. The online training keeps you logged in for a period of inactivity that COUNTS towards your 52 hours, which is perfectly legitimate. All they did was create and use a tool which extends this period of inactivity. How in the world is it that this is outragous in any way? This is a very minor fault, certainly not worthy of all the sensationalism that NY times has created, once again. ------ jonesb6 "Zenefits scandal highlights the perils of breaking the law at startups" ------ auggierose >Mr. Conrad had overseen a company that had become _derelict_ in its culture and ethics Zoolander much?

Harmony OS and Compatibility - ingve http://commonsware.com/blog/2019/08/10/harmony-compatibility.html ====== roca > Simply making an operating system open source is insufficient on its own to > guarantee success. If it were, Ubuntu Phone and Firefox OS would be > significant players. Unfortunately, neither “crossed the chasm”, in part due > to lack of manufacturer and carrier support. Actually FirefoxOS pretty much has "crossed the chasm". It's just that that happened after Mozilla abandoned it and KaiOS took it over. They've shipped 100M units. [https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/22/kaios-raises-50m-more- hits...](https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/22/kaios-raises-50m-more- hits-100m-handsets-powered-by-its-feature-phone-os/) Weird that a mobile- focused developer site would miss this. It's true that Huawei open-sourcing HarmonyOS is no guarantee of success, but that's a bit obvious. ~~~ rahimnathwani Earlier in the same article, they quote "Huawei will need to solve the biggest hole in the adoption of Harmony OS: the app ecosystem". I think that's part of what they're talking about when they say these others never crossed the chasm. And, yes, KaiOS has crossed the chasm, but I don't see: \- that being open source helped with carrier deals and hence adoption, or \- that they've solved the app ecosystem issue ~~~ fabrice_d Having official apps for WhatsApp, FB, GMaps, Youtube, Google Voice Assistant, Twitter helps a lot with the ecosystem part. ------ jhcl I am not a mobile developer nor am I a web developer but can't Huawei base their apps on web apps? That would mean they could port any web app from IOS or android to Harmony OS as long as there are no native bindings as react native has. Eventually they can incorporate webassembly when that really gets of the ground. ~~~ s_y_n_t_a_x Wouldn't be very battery (or other resource) friendly. ------ Tinfoilhat666 Android and iPhone app stores are already saturated. The app store for HarmonyOS isn't. This could be a good opportunity for new mobile app developers. ~~~ Kipters The same thing has been told referring to the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace though ~~~ addicted This OS, if it’s anh good, should at least have the Chinese market locked up though. Which is a few hundred million users. If it’s good, and Huawei follows up on making it truly open source, I suspect every Chinese manufacturer would at least have a line of Harmony OS phones, because they could always be the next trade war target. And once the Chinese manufacturers are supporting it, you can also add a huge chunk of the South and South East Asian markets as your customer base as well, since a lot of users in those areas basically just buy the latest Xiaomi or Huawei phones. ------ JohnStrangeII Of all the efforts at an alternative mobile OS so far, Harmony OS seems to have the best chances of success, because it is backed up by the Chinese state and its pervasive surveillance apparatus. With government help and full integration into the total surveillance of all Chinese citizens, they can get their share of the Chinese market and break the application barrier. ~~~ pjmlp As if Google and Apple don't have to obey the wishes of FBI, CIA, NSA,... regarding "making the world safer". ~~~ JohnStrangeII The US doesn't have a citizen score, political re-education camps, Tiananmen Square massacre, widespread censorship (like disconnecting a phone when you say a certain word), filtering of all foreign content and blocking of sites like Wikipedia or New York Times, BBC News, massive displacements and forced re-settlements, a vast number of political prisoners, massive squelching of protests and demonstrations (right now, there are videos of large troop movements towards Hong Kong), and so on. Not to speak of Tibet... Anyway, my point was not primarily meant political, it was more that Huawei has good chances of succeeding with this OS, because they are backed up and supported by the Chinese government. That's true even if you are 100% pro Chinese one-party government. ~~~ pjmlp You mean like Guantanamo? Or the ones managed by CIA outside American borders to do it more cleanly? ~~~ camgunz Guantanamo is bad, no question. But there's a chasm between holding 800 foreign nationals (and, from time to time, traitorous Americans) and rounding up millions of ethnic minorities for re-education based on their race, religion, or politics. If you looked up false equivalence in the dictionary, this would be Exhibit A. ~~~ pjmlp [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haska_Meyna_wedding_party_ai...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haska_Meyna_wedding_party_airstrike) ~~~ camgunz Moving the goalposts isn't helpful; let's skip to the end. I'm no believer in American Exceptionalism. I've read A People's History, I'm pretty familiar with the crisis of mass incarceration and the general failure of our criminal justice system, I'm well-informed about widespread domestic surveillance and espionage programs, and I'm deeply cynical about US foreign policy as a whole. But even someone like me has to admit that the US is closer to a free state than China. Here's why I think that: \- Our court system is constantly in the throes of "freedom" vs. "tyranny" (lots of judges disagree with _Citizens United_ , for example. \- We have a free press that is _constantly_ critical of our president and government. \- I can be critical of our president and government with absolutely no repercussions from my government. \- We give billions in foreign aid. \- We still accept tons of asylum and immigration applications \- In fact many of our cities are "sanctuary cities" for immigrants \- We celebrate the history of Americans who have fought for fundamental freedoms and civil rights \- We are the most diverse nation on the planet, and many of us are intensely proud of it. \- We have free elections. - Don't @ me about election problems; they're still nothing like the fraudulent elections in Russia/China/etc. \- We have healthy opposition parties. \- We actually believe the US is a work in progress, not "perfect as it is" (see: "a more perfect union"). Sure there's a lot of work to do. And I'm sympathetic to the fact that China and Russia face different challenges than we do. But I absolutely refuse to accept the assertion that the US is anywhere near the same point on the authoritarian spectrum as they are. Such comparisons are facile, ignorant, and reinforce a nihilistic vision of Western, classically liberal values that is at the root of the rise of nationalism and authoritarianism -- which is itself responsible for the destruction of many millions of lives across the world. These things are not the same, any more than Democrats and Republicans are the same. One is clearly better than the other, and it is literally a matter of life and death that we figure that out. ------ jotm If only Huawei devices will use it, it's doomed. I've said it before and got downvoted, but here's the truth again: Android's app ecosystem is what makes it popular, followed by the huge number of manufacturers using it. Microsoft failure with Windows Phone was partly because even after incentivizing developers, they still could not get a critical mass of apps on their platform. Plus any new apps were not getting WP versions along with Android/iOS. Huawei is huge, but not outside China, for consumers. Couple that with everyone being wary of their spyware and whatnot. Samsung tried this at some point with Tizen, but quickly gave up, as well. ~~~ iforgotpassword > Microsoft failure with Windows Phone was partly because even after > incentivizing developers, they still could not get a critical mass of apps > on their platform. Plus any new apps were not getting WP versions along with > Android/iOS. My thoughts exactly. For the Chinese market everything might work out just fine, as the article says. But for the west, as soon as one or two killer apps won't get ported, it's game over. I think Google never did for Windows phone, which probably did play an important role (among the many other mistakes made. Microsoft didn't exactly make it easy to jump into app development, probably due to arrogance.) If harmony doesn't get YouTube, Facebook, Spotify or Snapchat, it doesn't matter how great the OS is under the hood. ~~~ addicted Other than YouTube, all the other apps have a vested interest in seeing a new competitor to Google controlled Android. If Harmony OS is a decent and open OS, I suspect they will all jump onto it. The only concern may be Google apps, but then, it’s possible that Google may also create Harmony OS supported apps so they can access the Chinese market. ~~~ iforgotpassword That's a good point, but it's also a hen and egg problem. If the platform isn't that widespread you might be hesitant to support it. (assuming it's not actually super easy to port over Android apps as suggested). While Windows phone definitely was a very different platform from both IOS and Android, it was still amazing how shoddy some major players' apps ran on it. Stability, performance and features were often lacking. The tools, documentation and lack of sample code was definitely to blame, but even then you still need to learn a new platform.

Show HN: Minimal and clean ordinal date utility - pngmangi https://julian.today ====== pngmangi I need the 'julian date' frequently at work, and got tired of searching a table, or clicking through a site filled with lots of other 'stuff' looking for it, so I created this instead. My intent was to make it as single-focused, clean, and fast as possible. Clicking on the day number allows you to type in another to get the date for that ordinal date. Feedback/criticism welcome!

LispyScript - amelius http://lispyscript.com/ ====== lighthawk Neat! Now look at: [https://github.com/clojure/clojurescript](https://github.com/clojure/clojurescript) And try it: [http://himera.herokuapp.com/index.html](http://himera.herokuapp.com/index.html) ~~~ zupatol Clojurescript has to be compiled by the google closure compiler on the server side. The closure compiler doesn't work out of the box with other libraries, you need some kind of bridge. Lispyscript has the very nice advantage of being able to run directly in the browser. Since it's translated directly to javascript, I expect it won't have problems using other javascript libraries. ~~~ swannodette Some inaccuracies here. ClojureScript does not have to be compiled by Google Closure. That pass is an optional one for production builds. There is no "bridging" when using the Closure Compiler with non-Closure compatible code. The issue is that in production mode the Closure Compiler will make aggressive assumptions about what it can rename. So it's not about bridging it's about preventing renaming - again this is only relevant for advanced production builds. That said for non-Web applications or applications where advanced compilation isn't that useful providing a bootstrapped ClojureScript is desirable. We've been working on that slowly for a long time now. In the coming months you'll see changes such that the ClojureScript compiler can itself be compiled into JavaScript. ~~~ didyoucheckthe > "again this is only relevant for advanced production builds" So, all real-life builds that anyone would care about. ~~~ moonchrome Think about where you would use CLJS - my use cases would not have an issue with extra 100kb of code - you don't use CLJS to do jQuery animations on your web page - you would use it to build complex single page apps or write server side code/scripts. You don't use clojure for performance anyway, it's going to be slower by default (because of immutability/persistent data structures, and yeah I know about react benefits with immutability that's not my point - you're still going trough a lot more memory and stressing GC) - you use it to help you deal with your code because of it's semantics. But in reality last time I tried CLJS I didn't really feel like it delivers on the productivity part and it's mostly because of implementation issues. IMO the decision to implement CLJS on top of Closure compiler and in Clojure (instead of going for a self hosting compiler) was a mistake - you can't overstate the value of REPL and fast iteration in a language like Clojure - and my last attempt to use CLJS the compiler/REPL environment far from what I would consider fast iteration : compiler took forever to start because of JVM and while it could run as a service it needed to be restarted frequently enough that it mattered, REPL was very unstable it would just die randomly - sometimes you'd need to refresh the page, sometimes you'd need to restart the server process. Oh and don't even get me started on the voodoo needed to get the damn thing running - install piggieback, then install austin and then add this weasel thingy then configure the server process all so you can get a halfworking repl and pray it doesn't break because good luck figuring out what's actually going on. Compare this to JS where I just go in to the devtools panel and test my code. ~~~ minikomi Things are progressing and I encourage you to have another look. $ lein new figwheel myproject $ cd myproject $ rlwrap lein figwheel Browse to http://localhost:3449 If you return to the terminal, you should have a connected REPL now running. Along with live code reloading on save of your cljs files. ~~~ moonchrome Maybe, but things progressed way further outside of CLJS space. If you told me this 2 years ago when I was in to it I would be jumping right on it - back when people were saying coffescript fixed JS problems :D Right now JS has persistent datastructure libraries and TypeScript is a huge productivity boost - tooling is top notch - it makes JS manageable, once it gets async/await (which it should in the next couple of months) I'll be pretty happy with JS development story. I'll miss some niceties like collection operations, homoiconicity and macros but on the other hand I have working optional type checking, excellent tooling and I don't have to code in AST serialization format with macros :D ~~~ minikomi Interesting. Do you have a link to a very basic "get-started" in this space? Right now, figwheel / om or figwheel / reframe are very quick to get started with (although familiarity definitely plays a part..). Last time I looked at js there were 5 or 6 or so flux implementations competing for mindshare and I had to stumble my way through setting up a project with webpack / babel.. ------ evmar Coincidentally, I've been fiddling with a rather similar project, just as a hobbyist thing. It looks like this one is much farther along, kudos! Unfortunately from the contributions graph perhaps interest in it is dying off -- the last 10% (aka the last 90%) is always the hardest part to slog through... I've been meaning to write up the various approaches to sexpressions+macros in JS. Mine differs from the others (and perhaps is closer to LispyScript) mostly in that it's close to JS in its names and semantics (e.g. "function" defines a function and you're still required to use a "return" statement), but then it lets you write macros to e.g. define "fn" where the return is implicit. Anyway, here's some sample code from mine (which is itself defining macros used elsewhere in the compiler): [https://github.com/martine/pjs/blob/master/lib/macro.pjs](https://github.com/martine/pjs/blob/master/lib/macro.pjs) ------ lispm Doesn't look like Lisp, more like Clojure. Basically none of the functions, macros or syntax is from Lisp. The documentation says: [http://lispyscript.com/docs/](http://lispyscript.com/docs/) > LispyScript is not a dialect of Lisp. There is no list processing in > LispyScript . LispyScript is Javascript using a Lispy syntax (a tree > syntax). That's about right. It actually uses some kind of s-expressions, but not Lisp syntax. ~~~ gjm11 > Basically none of the functions, macros or syntax is from Lisp. Sounds like it's extremely well named, then. LispyScript is to Lisp as Javascript is to Java: an entirely different language with different syntax, semantics, standard library and performance characteristics, but with just enough superficial similarity to provide plausible deniability for the name. ~~~ lispm Well said! ;-) ------ aidenn0 See also: [https://github.com/vsedach/Parenscript](https://github.com/vsedach/Parenscript) TLDR: s-expression syntax for javascript, macros are written in common lisp. ~~~ TeMPOraL Macros can actually be written in Parenscript as well, AFAIR. But the language blends itself very naturally with CL code. ~~~ aidenn0 parenscript macros are in straight common-lisp. They expand to parenscript, of course. ------ 1971genocide Also check out LiveScript. [http://livescript.net/](http://livescript.net/) and its awesome FP library inspired by haskell's prelude.hs [http://www.preludels.com/](http://www.preludels.com/) I have done all forms of projects using LiveScript - robotics, simple websites, blog, cryptography, computer vision. Its actually becoming silently fairly mature. It helps when it doesn't generate any hype like most languages. The community around is also very helpful ! And LiveScript is awesome with React.js or any other virtual DOM based MVC framework. ~~~ amyjess Why did they name it that? LiveScript was Netscape's original name for JavaScript, before Sun asked them to throw in some Java branding. ~~~ rane > Name > > LiveScript was one of the original names for JavaScript, so > it seemed fitting. It's an inside joke for those who know > JavaScript well. ------ jestar_jokin Doesn't it say something about JavaScript, dissatisfaction with it, and the overwhelmingly splintered ecosystem, when _every_ comment is suggesting alternatives to the solution in the article? I guess we chalk this one up to "neat if you're a hobbyist or solo dev with no maintenance handover, but generally commercially unviable." ------ grayrest > An inherent problem with Javascript is that it has no macro support, unlike > other Lisp like languages. [http://sweetjs.org/](http://sweetjs.org/) There are macro systems for Javascript, just not native ones. ~~~ JoelMcCracken Not that you're wrong -- you're correct -- but I want to bring up that this was likely true at the time this was written. LispyScript has been around for a while. ~~~ drunkcatsdgaf First commit for lispy - march 5, 2012 First commit for sweet.js - August 1, 2012 im actually pretty shocked they are that close together. ~~~ JoelMcCracken I bet they both started around the time CoffeeScript started to get big -- it showed there was a market for compile-to-js-but-almost-js langs. ------ breuleux I wouldn't say Lisp-like syntax is necessary for a macro system. It helps a bit... but all things considered, I believe pattern matching is a bigger boon to macro writing than syntax per se. For those it may interest, I have made a language with mostly conventional syntax which supports macros: [http://breuleux.github.io/earl- grey/](http://breuleux.github.io/earl-grey/) The macro system is modular, so you can easily write and publish macro libraries. I have written some for testing, gulp, and react. It's not _super_ mature but it's getting there. ------ frakturfreund Also Spock (Chicken Scheme wiki): [http://wiki.call- cc.org/eggref/4/spock](http://wiki.call-cc.org/eggref/4/spock) ------ elwell Wisp should also be added to this list: [https://github.com/Gozala/wisp](https://github.com/Gozala/wisp) ------ woadwarrior01 Nice. This is reminiscent of HyLang[1], which is like this for Python. [1]: [http://hylang.org/](http://hylang.org/) ------ rndn There is no shortage of JavaScript-Lisps, that’s for sure! ------ ktg LispScript | [https://bitbucket.org/ktg/lispscript](https://bitbucket.org/ktg/lispscript) Try LispScript | [http://ktg.bitbucket.org/lispscript/lispscript.html](http://ktg.bitbucket.org/lispscript/lispscript.html) ------ sebastianconcpt Nice! reminded me of [http://ympbyc.github.io/LittleSmallscript/](http://ympbyc.github.io/LittleSmallscript/) ------ Turing_Machine BiwaScheme is also pretty decent. [http://www.biwascheme.org/](http://www.biwascheme.org/) ------ Touche also [http://sibilantjs.info/](http://sibilantjs.info/)

Sniff browser history for improved user experience - skorks http://www.niallkennedy.com/blog/2008/02/browser-history-sniff.html ====== tptacek Respectfully, this is a batshit crazy idea. History sniffing is a gaping security flaw. The thing we need to do with it is eliminate it. What we don't need to do is arm unscrupulous developers with arguments for why the behavior should be protected. ------ whyenot _In this post I will teach you how to mine the rich treasure trove of personalization data sitting inside your visitor's browser history for deep personalization experiences._ There is no discussion of the privacy issues, which seems like a huge omission. I wouldn't use this on a website unless you like playing with fire. ~~~ angelbob He mentions it (very) briefly with the Audi example. But yeah, this is a bit terrifying. I hadn't thought about this trick before now, and I don't see how you could easily turn it off... ~~~ Fixnum See <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=800693> and associated link. Summary: To mitigate, either (a) tell your browser not to save any history, or (b) in Firefox, go to about:config and turn off layout.css.visited_links_enabled. (Chrome doesn't seem to have about:config ...) This should probably be the default ... ~~~ akamaka Agreed about making that the default. Another workable approach are keeping a full history graph, and only showing visited links on the site where you originally clicked on them. Or, the browser could highlight visited links in a way that can't be detected with JavaScript code. This isn't hard to fix, so obviously we just haven't been complaining loud enough. ------ DrewHintz People have been using this technique in this way since at least 2006: <http://int2e.com/blog/improved-digg-integration-script/> [http://jeremiahgrossman.blogspot.com/2006/08/i-know-where- yo...](http://jeremiahgrossman.blogspot.com/2006/08/i-know-where-youve- been.html) Since changing browsers to prevent this will not happen tomorrow, this can be partially worked around both server and client-side. Server-side: If you have any sensitive URIs you don't want leaked or brute- forced, add an extra parameter containing a random value. URIs you might want to protect are those with XSRF tokens or session IDs. URIs can be brute-forced locally on the victim at a speed of approximately 40,000 URIs per second. Client-side: Use incognito mode for sensitive surfing. Plugins such as noscript can partially defend against this, however it's possible to do history detection using pure CSS which I believe will work even if you're using noscript. Update: Fixnum posted another client-side solution "in Firefox, go to about:config and turn off layout.css.visited_links_enabled" ------ gridspy It was just a matter of time before the CSS history trick was put to use. I can see the benefits, though I don't like the privacy implications. History trick here (JS, no cookies, can poll user's web history): [http://jeremiahgrossman.blogspot.com/2006/08/i-know-where- yo...](http://jeremiahgrossman.blogspot.com/2006/08/i-know-where-youve- been.html) ------ dotBen Niall wrote about this in 2008 (see post/url of post), and there have been several interesting write ups about this across the various outlets. I'm pretty sure it's beeing used in loads of places by now - there's probably (/should be) a jQuery plugin for it, even. I'm wondering why this is making it to HN now, 2 years later? ~~~ orangecat _there's probably (/should be) a jQuery plugin for it, even_ No, there shouldn't. Taking advantage of this design flaw is no better than trying to send a Javascript exploit to read my history file directly. I'm surprised that supposedly legitimate sites think using it is an acceptable practice, but I guess I shouldn't be. ------ sambeau Please, don't do that.

Show HN: ChargeBack.cc - Get your money back - myotherthings https://www.chargeback.cc/ ====== aristidb That seems a bit sketchy to me - black-mailing merchants into signing up for your "service" of not sending them chargebacks?! Maybe you should explain why it's not. ~~~ mario1900 Merchants don't need to sign up to resolve chargebacks. If we receive one, we'll send them links to resolve it before it gets sent to the banks. They can choose not too respond and it becomes a normal chargeback. Even if they do respond - all they have to do is acknowledge they're making a refund or change the customer's mind. The basic resolution service is free for merchants. They only have to pay or even sign up if they want to use any of the premium features to help them reduce future chargebacks. Hopefully this isn't too dodgy :) I definitely think we need to be more upfront about what we get out of it. A lot of people seem skeptical when they first see the site. ~~~ blantonl The existing chargeback process is already enourmously skewed against a merchant from an online transaction perspective. _all they have to do is acknowledge they're making a refund or change the customer's mind_ Well, that means the merchant continues to be at a significant disadvantage during an even more complex chargeback process. ~~~ mario1900 Absolutely. We've found that under the existing chargeback system only 21% of claims are decided in the merchant's favour. We started ChargeBack.cc with the aim to level the playing field a little more. Under the existing chargeback system in most cases the merchant receives very little information about what has gone wrong and who the customer is. Our aim is to use data to help merchants resolve chargebacks with less cost to themselves. By keeping the chargeback outside of the banking system we take away a lot of risk and cost from fee, fines etc... so that's one step. The next step is to give merchants the tools to provide the best response to the customer. Yes, it's still not going to be equal, but hopefully it'll help merchants spend less time, less money and generally get a better result than they used to. ------ robryan It is better if charge backs are seen as somewhat of an inconvenience to do, so customers will think more about if they really want to chargeback. Lots of things can and do go wrong in ecommerce, if anyone slightly annoyed reached for a chargeback rather than trying to resolve an issue with the merchant it would be a big hit for merchants. ~~~ blantonl it is actually worse than that. There is certain type of online customer that will literally click through "Interested->Purchase->Yes->Confirm>Pay>Done" without every really looking at what they purchased or why they did so in the first place. After they realize what they actually purchased which is a legitimate product but not appropriate for the customer, they just uses the chargeback process to get their money back. ~~~ notatoad it is actually worse than that. There is a certain type of customer that will click through the whole process like you describe, and be perfectly satisfied with their purchase but not remember the name of the merchant. Then when it comes time to pay the credit card bill, it's an 'unrecognized charge' and they do a chargeback. They don't look through their email receipts and try to figure out what they've bought, they just initiate a chargeback blindly. fortunately it's fairly easy to fight these as a merchant, but it still takes valuable time. ~~~ saurik Slightly _less_ worse than that (sorry to break pattern), but another irritating example: it wasn't them that made the purchase, it was their son, husband, niece, whatever; I often get people sending me threatening e-mails about how I stole money from them, when in fact they share their credit card, PayPal account, etc. with other people and didn't have the courtesy to ask "anyone else know what this is?" before going all ballistic and demanding their money back. ------ notatoad chargeback only works because most users don't know it exists. If you start telling people all they have to do to get their money back from a merchant is to click a button, it won't be long before credit card companies are forced to get rid of it. please don't abuse this. ~~~ myotherthings The goal with ChargeBack.cc is to divert unhappy customers away from the traditional chargeback system and into direct contact with their merchant. It is backed by sending unresolved disputes through the banks, but if we get to that stage I consider the chargeback failed on our behalf. ~~~ notatoad The banks will put you in direct contact with the merchant. From a merchant's perspective, your service is just another unnecessary middleman to deal with. The damage you're doing is advertising the chargeback feature. You are encouraging users to initiate chargebacks (whether through your service or not), which is not a good thing. ------ lionhearted Feedback / thoughts about potential pitfalls: You're probably going to get a cease and desist letter at some point if you haven't already talked with the various financial institutions and have contacts there... you're almost certainly violating their terms of service (and maybe people filing through you are too). You might want to be proactive about reaching out and making some contacts with the financial institutions. Or maybe not, maybe it's OK. Just uninformed intuition there. Also, you probably want to add some pretty serious language in bold saying "You must be telling the truth, not telling the truth here can cause serious harm, etc." You probably also want to do some basic confirmation of a person's identity so you don't get whacky results. Ask for a phone number maybe, and occasionally spot check calls? I could see this being used for pranking, harassment, or inappropriate use (disgruntled employee, uninformed spouse/boyfriend/girlfriend, etc). ~~~ mario1900 Thanks for the feedback. I've spoken to a few financial instituions. The general consensus seems to be that we're not doing anything they didn't wish customers did already - which is contact the merchant for a refund before creating a chargeback. We've been told that in only around 18% of chargebacks have the customers even told the merchant they have a problem before filing the chargeback. I do expect someone along the line will have a problem with it, in which case we don't offer services for customers with that institution (after attempting to change their mind!). We do have a layer of manual checks on each chargeback before they are processed. I like the idea of spot phone calls though - might add that in! ------ ericcholis Ugh...charge backs. I work in an industry that has high charge back rates and amounts, most of the time because people are disgruntled. Most people don't realize how easy a charge back is. ~~~ jarin I do too, and I wish people would realize that we practically trip over ourselves to issue refunds whenever they are requested, because we want to avoid chargebacks at all costs. ------ Sire This business will fail even though the idea to improve the chargeback process is a good one (for both merchants and customers). Most customers don't know what a chargeback is. Those who do will never find your site. Only if you sell your service to the credit card companies will this work. ~~~ saurik That seems to be how BillGuard (a site that seems to have a similar purpose) is attempting to play this: to provide a service to users, but really attempt to get the ear of banks as a value-add to their online offerings. ------ mikeash I've never had trouble with chargebacks, personally. I try the merchant, and if they don't play ball, I contact my card issuer. It's been pretty painless, so I don't see the point of this service. Is my experience just abnormal? ~~~ BryanB55 I think it depends on your credit card company. American Express is well-known for very good customer service and easy no hassle chargebacks. My Bank of America card was a bit more of a hassle though trying to find the correct form to fill out online then they had to mail me papers and I had to sign them and send them back and talk to 3 different people. ------ jasonlotito So, who are your customers? Businesses with chargeback problems or customers filing chargebacks? The followup is how are you intending to step between customers filing chargebacks and their banks which are a phone call away? ------ saurik How is this different from BillGuard.com? (edit:) Well, I mean, for the features this site offers; BillGuard also seems to scan your bills proactively trying to help you deal with charges, but at the end of the process seems to be fairly similar: I (the merchant) receive an e-mail from them rather than a chargeback, combined with information that might be useful to look into the matter and fix the problem. (I only started dealing with BillGuard yesterday, so I don't know much about them yet, and certainly not much about this new site.) ~~~ mario1900 The concepts are similar, but the implementations are quite different. In order to use BillGuard you must sign up for constant monitoring of your credit card. ChargeBack.cc is more of an a la carte service - you only use it when you want to perform or resolve a chargeback. ~~~ stpsg "In order to use BillGuard you must sign up for constant monitoring of your credit card" - simply not true. Anyone can file a dispute, without signing up. ------ tyrelb How would consumers find out about you? If I buy something online, I would call merchant first, then bank. How would I find out to use you first vs. going to merchant and/or bank? Thanks! ~~~ Evbn Advertising like this thread. ~~~ tyrelb Would be hard though... PR/blog hits only lasts so long. ------ Petefine In my experience as a merchant, disputes can be very time sensitive (i.e. travel cancellations). On one hand, finding out about a misunderstanding from you (rather than a chargeback fax two months later) may allow a much easier dispute resolution and be so be valuable to a merchant. But on the other hand, customers who cancel/complain by charging back instead of calling the merchant may therefore lose a chargeback because they miss an agreed deadline. Adding your service as a middleman could lead to further missed deadlines. This is especially true since any good merchant privacy policy/PCI DSS would of course prevent them from discussing anything with you without direct approval from the customer first - and if they did that, they may as well discuss the issue direct anyway. Lastly, the toughest chargebacks can take months to resolve. Help with that (as a merchant) would be very useful(and so I can imagine you providing a compelling service), but are you really committing to take on a potentially complex issue for the customer? And wouldn't it be a conflict to represent both parties? Still, a tool that eases the admin of chargebacks could be great for both sides... ------ iusdfhsdfiuh Your terms and conditions at the end of lodging says <http://james/something> I like the service (just used mailinator to test it) but in the end I'm left with the feeling there is some hidden cost to me. I'd like if it was clear that it was a free service for me. I notice you are Australian? Or have you localised your site really well? >You must not modify, adapt or hack the Service or modify another website so as to falsely imply that it is associated with the Service, ChargeBack.cc, or any other ChargeBack.cc service. You must not do illegal stuff? >ChargeBack.cc reserves the right to update and change the Terms of Service from time to time without notice Please change your policy on this, tos-dr.info will likely rate that section badly. Have yet to get a notice as a "merchant" but I love the experience as a consumer. ~~~ myotherthings Ah thanks for that TOS fix. The feedback about the "hidden cost" is great. I've heard that a lot. I definitely need to communicate somehow that we attempt to up-sell merchants with premium services and use the chargeback essentially as a lead to talk to them. Yup, Australian :) Although the site does localise to the US and UK as well. There will be a short delay before the merchant notification emails come out. We put them through a degree of manual approval and due to load from HN traffic it may take some time for them to be fully processed. ------ eCa I think a page called "Who we are" [1] should answer that question, and not describe "what we do" (again). Especially with something involving such sensitive information. [1] <https://www.chargeback.cc/who-we-are> ------ twodayslate I'd rather just file a chargeback with my credit card company. It is just as easy imo. ------ breck I think there is a big need for this type of service. The majority of my transactions are fine, but there are times when I have a problem and getting it resolved is a huge hassle. Like last month when the NYTimes charged me $15 but a bug in their database prevented me from actually using my account. Took 2 painful hours to get a refund. In those cases I assume the merchant has better things to do as well, and it seems like a service like this could offload some work from their support staff and, by adding things like exit surveys, turn those small number of bad experiences into positive, constructive experiences for all parties. ------ malbs Well I had a disputed charge I was planning on seeking to have overturned, so I've just tested the chargeback.cc system with this dispute as a trial ~~~ myotherthings Please do. If you have any feedback, please post it here or email it to james@chargeback.cc ------ iusdfhsdfiuh [http://www.sedo.com/search/details.php4?language=us&doma...](http://www.sedo.com/search/details.php4?language=us&domain=chargeback.cc) <\-- might want to fix that ------ kkt262 One thing that popped right out to me was how similar the top banner looks to the Paypal top banner. ------ hnwh free services.. hmm.. whats in it for you? ~~~ mario1900 Premium services for merchants. Essentially the basic chargeback resolution is free, but we charge merchants to access additional tools like exit surveys, the ability to configure questions on chargebacks for their business. Also we're working on a set of tools to help merchants reduce chargebacks in general - like domains to put on credit card receipts, that type of thing. The value is that each chargeback is a lead to a business with a chargeback problem :) ------ wilfra This is the online equivalent of "protection" money the mafia asks for when they say they're going to burn down your store if you don't pay them. I applaud making it easier for people to file chargebacks but shame on your business model. Edit: after reading the explanation given below perhaps the business model is not as bad as it first seems - if that's the case, you need to make it more clear! It looks like you are encouraging people to file chargebacks and then shaking down the merchants for money with the threat of the chargeback getting filed if they don't pay you. ~~~ mario1900 Maybe using the word "protection" on the business page was a bad idea. Merchants don't need to pay us to resolve chargebacks. We just try to make their services better in the future through premium data services. Please see this comment <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4799225> ~~~ wilfra you're also not being honest with your users. you're not actually filing chargebacks on their behalf, at least not at first. you're asking for their permission to harass/spam/threaten the merchants they have a problem with - then filing a chargeback if you don't get what you want.

Comcast Is Threatening to Cut Off Customers Who Use Tor - bndr http://finance.yahoo.com/news/comcast-threatening-cut-off-customers-092817979.html ====== ufmace I know it's popular in tech circles these days to hate on Comcast, and I'm not saying they don't deserve the hate or that they wouldn't do something like this, but I'm not buying this one just yet. This is all supposedly statements by 2 telephone support people. The actual source article seems to be confusing running a connection to Tor and the Tor browser with running a Tor relay node or exit node. Prohibiting the Tor browser would be a bad move on the part of any ISP who isn't part of a police state, but none of their document suggest that they're doing that. I can understand them prohibiting running a Tor node on your residential internet connection though. Almost all residential ISPs officially prohibit running servers, though it usually isn't enforced as long as you aren't pushing too much traffic. A Tor node can easily fall on those lines. I think even the Tor project doesn't recommend running nodes on your home connection rather than actual servers with server-class connections. ~~~ sailfast Thank you for this. This may be a stupid question, but how would your ISP know you were actively running a Tor (non-node) connection? Obviously I need to read up on all the back-end tech but I would assume that if it was easy to identify someone using Tor, it would no longer provide the anonymity / security because it would clearly identify outliers. It makes sense to ban someone running a node off their Comcast connection (not because it's logical but because of their high traffic / server banning track record) but for Comcast to detect a browsing session? Seems odd. ~~~ nitrogen Using DPI or even just flow analysis (sizes, port numbers, destination addresses, protocol (TCP/UDP) bits, and timings of packets), it should be possible to distinguish between encrypted TOR and other encrypted protocols with ease. ------ w1ntermute Sounds like a great way to cancel your Comcast service when they just won't let you go: [http://www.theguardian.com/technology/shortcuts/2014/jul/17/...](http://www.theguardian.com/technology/shortcuts/2014/jul/17/comcast- customer-services-call-ryan-block) ------ jrochkind1 Where I live, comcast is pretty much the ONLY broadband provider. There are lots of places like this. These are the risks of a monopoly on broadband internet access. (Did you go send your comments to the FCC saying to treat ISP's like common carriers yet? 1) Go to [http://fcc.gov/comments](http://fcc.gov/comments) 2) Click on Proceeding 14-28 3) Say "I want internet service providers classified as common carriers." ) ------ orr94 > Comcast Is Threatening To Cut Off Customers Who Use Tor, The Web Browser For > Criminals Uh, it's not "The Web Browser For Criminals". It's for people who want anonymity. And being slightly pedantic, Tor is also not a web browser. Tor Browser is. ~~~ ObviousScience I find it hilarious that they pitch Tor as for criminals, despite the US military being the largest backer (and source) of the Tor project. ~~~ fluidcruft [insert typical libertarian talking points about government being criminals] ------ cik This is how it begins. First they come for TOR, then they come for VPNs. Eventually, they come for your SSL certs. ~~~ smnrchrds Done, done and done. Well, not necessarily in that order. Living in Iran sometimes feels like living in the future. Unfortunately it's a slightly dystopian future. ~~~ cik It's also like the past. It blows my mind that the dystopian future we read about is always the UK - and that so much dystopian fiction comes out of Britain as well. ------ Zikes AT&T U-Verse admitted to actively disrupting my connection whenever I used torrents. ~~~ mayneack Was it based on connecting with the wrong tracker or identifying torrent traffic? ~~~ Zikes As far as I could tell it was by identifying the type of traffic. I was primarily torrenting various linux distros, and I tried a wide variety of them on various clients and systems. It was fairly consistent behavior, even if I torrented a 'buntu distro on my phone and throttled it to a few KBps my TV's Netflix would stutter, degrade, and ultimately drop out entirely within a few minutes. If I stopped the torrent the connection would resume normally a few minutes later. One thing that really bothered me, though, was that every time I experienced this problem I could go to speedtest.net and run their tool and get consistently good results every time. Even when the rest of the internet was bollocks. It makes me wonder if they intentionally toss speed test traffic into one of their "fast lanes" to trick people into thinking they're getting faster speeds than what they're actually getting. ~~~ cmdrfred I've always thought this myself, what prevents them from doing so? ~~~ Zikes Apparently, nothing. After I had narrowed the issue down to torrents, I called AT&T and confronted them with the evidence. On the phone with me they directly said "we do that to prevent illegal activity over our service lines." No amount of "torrenting is not illegal" worked, and I didn't really expect it to. They don't care about the legality, they only use it as an excuse to keep customers from getting the full usage of the service they pay for. ------ dj-wonk The source article is more detailed and worth reading: [http://www.deepdotweb.com/2014/09/13/comcast-declares-war- to...](http://www.deepdotweb.com/2014/09/13/comcast-declares-war-tor/) ------ kstenerud The title of this posting is wholly inaccurate. Comcast is DENYING that any threat to cut off Tor users occurred. They deny most points in the article on DeepDotWebm including all alleged evidence, and have flatly stated that customers can use Tor all they want. ------ at-fates-hands I got lucky. I went with Century Link when I found out the D-Mark is about 50 yards from my house and haven't looked back. Dropped my bill by about $40/month and the customer service is a bit more. . .reliable than Comcast. ------ stevekl I use TOR and I would really like to get a call from comcast so that I can inform Comcast I am using a Navy funded project. ------ illumen Comcast denies this. ~~~ mark-r I don't know much about how TOR works, but could you use it over a VPN so that it's outside of Comcast's network before connecting to TOR? Surely they'd never ban VPN. ~~~ herge > Surely they'd never ban VPN. Wait until all file-sharing is done through VPNs. Or maybe they'll require people to pay for a "business" plan to use such a "business" feature. ------ Nanzikambe Could someone take these guys to court and force them to rebrand themselves as a SISP (Some Internet Services Provider) ? ------ doubt_me 1\. Be comcast 2\. How do I get the NSA off my back as much as possible? 3\. Oh lets threaten to cut off customers service because of Tor! that will totally work (comcast logic) 4\. ....NSA still on our backs guys what do I do? 5\. Ban Tor 6\. Make NSA happy = TWC merger will happen 7\. NSA still not happy 8\. Spend millions on trying to kill net neutrality because the survival of comcast/ twc/ NBC universal depends on it

Why does Facebook change my link to translate.google.com? - szeldon Hi.<p>Maybe it's just me, but whenever I try to put any link to translate.google.com (for instance http://translate.google.com/#en|cs|asaasa) I see this link on my board: http://translate.google.com/#en|cs|Suck%20my%20balls<p>Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but this looks weird, to say the least.<p>Best regards, szeldon ====== jasonhe This happened to me and a friend earlier today, but it seems the problem has been fixed. ------ szeldon Now it works just fine... Argh, probably just a stupid bug. ------ drivebyacct2 Not sure what you're talking about to be honest. <http://imgur.com/B7HAZ.png>

Baggage Handling System – Schiphol Airport [video] - curtis https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rv-Y0-ruzi8&feature=youtu.be ====== masida This reminds me of one of my first programming jobs as external consultant for the Baggage Handling System at Schiphol in 2000/2001, I was 17 years old. My employer at that time was using MS Excel to parse the log files of all sensors of the predecessor/older part of the system that is shown in this video. I told her that I could probably do it 10,000 times faster by creating a simple program in Visual Basic. Visual Basic was way too slow on our "high-end" Pentium laptop to parse that many 1MB log files, so I rewrote it in C++ (learned it on the job)[1]. The managers got insight in the performance of the various components of the system which they never dreamed of having (they were hardly aware that the system was creating this detailed log messages). By the way, the system is developed (at least partly) by Vanderlande [2]. [1] Took me a couple of days, probably even weeks back then. I would write the code in 1 or 2 hours now. [2] [https://www.vanderlande.com/](https://www.vanderlande.com/) ------ david-given Is there a version without the edits? Because I found this practically unwatchable; it kept cutting away just as things started to get interesting. ~~~ mike_hearn This video of the T5 system at Heathrow is better and shows equipment just as cool (though no robot at the end) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wn8qogHH9bM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wn8qogHH9bM) Oh and if you want a REALLY crazy version of the Schipol video, this one is actually a 360 degree live draggable version of it - no kidding! [http://www.schiphol.nl/Reizigers/OpSchiphol/Bagage/BagageVid...](http://www.schiphol.nl/Reizigers/OpSchiphol/Bagage/BagageVideo.htm) ~~~ david-given The first one isn't an FPV... and the second one is _also_ full of edits! ------ codejoust Was looking for some backgrojnd and found an overview presentation [pdf]: [http://netlipse.eu/media/77918/11nwm-bratislava-lex- pepping-...](http://netlipse.eu/media/77918/11nwm-bratislava-lex-pepping- baggage-handling-at-amsterdam-airport-schiphol-implementing-new- technologies.pdf) ------ elcapitan Wow. It's actually a miracle that this works most of the time. That suitcase is pretty standard, I could imagine a million ways how some backpack or other unusually formed piece of baggage would jam that thing. And how on earth do they route individual packages through the system with that speed? Is there some pattern recognition system that identifies them on the fly and then routes left, right, left right, etc? This reminds me of a funny part of a book I read about automation (and its impact on human labour), which described how modern corn mills identify bad grain: they shoot every single grain through a high speed tunnel and identify malformed (bad, moldy) grain with pattern recognition and then filter them out. ~~~ mike_hearn They have sets of barcode scanners dotted around routing points. With enough of them and the big barcodes on the baggage tags, they can scan most automatically. Any that fail scanning are diverted to a side belt where a human scans them with a handheld unit. ------ darkvertex That was incredible. Remove the "flip aside" parts and it's much better than your average rollercoaster! :D ------ bronz This is unbelievable. How can they possibly justify the cost of this system? ~~~ mike_hearn Same as for any automated system: reliability and throughput. Some of these airports are enormous, Schipol especially so. They're handling 150,000 bags per day at peak times. If you generously assume a 1% error rate ([http://panko.shidler.hawaii.edu/HumanErr/Basic.htm](http://panko.shidler.hawaii.edu/HumanErr/Basic.htm)) and that each bag is touched by only one human, then you'd be misrouting or losing 1500 bags per day, which is huge. But of course bags aren't going to be handled by just one human, there would be many making complex routing decisions, over and over again. So the true loss rate would be much worse. Bear in mind that if the airline doesn't get the bag to the right place then the bag has to be sent onwards later, and then the airline has to pay for home delivery of the baggage. So the cost of mistakes adds up fast. Then you have the sheer amount of manpower needed to move all the bags around by hand. And not just any manpower, it often has to be _literally_ manpower because you need strong men to do this as the bags are so heavy, and they can't work long shifts because they get tired. It's pretty easy to see how such things can be justified. You wouldn't be able to scale air travel to the current levels it sees without such systems. ------ rosege not sure if this is a new system but I flew through Schiphol a lot around 2010-2012 and the baggage was very slow. Typically half an hour wait. Whenever possible I flew with carry on as I found it frustrating to have an hour flight then half an hour wait.

Introducing Bloom: The Future of Credit - el_duderino https://blog.hellobloom.io/introducing-bloom-the-future-of-credit-3b0d6ee04f24 ====== sschueller A little thin on details how this exactly works. Does anyone have a TLDR as I can't open the white paper in my phone for some reason?

Eric Schmidt's book is wrong about how Google works - mandeepj http://venturebeat.com/2014/11/30/why-eric-schmidt-doesnt-know-how-google-works/ ====== gilgoomesh If we take this article at face-value (that Google is as big as it is because of its monopoly in search) a related question is immediately raised: why is Google's search engine a monopoly? If the monopoly is due to superior technology, why are Google able to write a better search engine and maintain this search engine lead? If the monopoly is due to other effects (buying favored search-engine status in Safari, Firefox and pushing Chrome/Android) why don't the browsers have all the power? I guess I agree with the article that Google's power is search-engine derived but there's more to the source of that monopoly than I think the article discusses. ~~~ mixmax Google's monopoly is based on their early superior technology. That's it, pure and simple. I'm old enough to remember the web before google, and it was terrible. Back then we switched between hotbot, altavista, yahoo and a few others - and they all sucked. Some of them ranked searches _alphabetically_ \- try searching through 100.000 results that are ordered alphabetically. I remember the first time I ever used google. From the very first day I never used anything else, and recommended it to all my friends. If you haven't experienced the web before google I think it's hard to imagine what it was like. Pagerank made the difference. ~~~ twelvechairs Unfortunately since this time results have gotten worse ( anecdotal I know, but I know many who agree). I think this is down to a mixture of issues - the SEO industry has made search optimisation much harder, googles probably been a bit complacent with no competition too. Also introducing big changes like search personalisation and localisation which (IMO) has taken away more than it adds. ~~~ jodrellblank _Unfortunately since this time results have gotten worse ( anecdotal I know, but I know many who agree)_ Showing results for _I know many who disagree_. To search for what you typed in and wanted to search for, jump through {this hoop}. ~~~ username223 It's worse than trying to write a paper on the Teh tribe in the Amazon in Microsoft Word with autocorrect. The relationship between query terms and results is complex and opaque. ------ fivedogit > the authors are confusing causation and correlation... they are all > consequences of Google’s success. For example the authors write: “Their plan > for creating that great search engine... Hire as many talented software > engineers as possible, and give them freedom.” Well, this worked because the > search was already successful enough to fund that freedom. This is the key point and the clickbait-y headline notwithstanding, it's a very valid point. People look at Google and say "wow they have super-smart engineers and let them work on whatever they want with 20% of their time" and tons and tons of products sprung up all over the place. But after a while, management seemed to back off of that philosophy quite a bit. In 2011, Google killed off many of its less successful projects, including Google Labs, and I read in some nook or cranny of the Internet that the 20% time has been quietly deemphasized over a number of years. So the idea that you can just hire smart people and magic will happen, though often copied and lionized, is not all it's cracked up to be. <Insert quip about monkeys, typewriters and Shakespeare here.> ~~~ deciplex For an even more dramatic example, look at Valve. Great company to work for, no doubt, and open allocation which makes 20% time look like a death march. They can fund this because of the money fountain that is Steam. But improvements to the Steam client are underwhelming and come at a snail's pace, if they come at all (e.g. Steam has been delaying my shutdowns in Windows now for _two years_ ). They are about a year behind now with SteamOS, and have pissed off most of their potential partners with SteamBox delays as well. And, of course, Half Life 3, which should be renamed Half Life Pu-239 based on when we should expect it to be released. (How is episodic gaming working out?) "Freedom" certainly makes a place nice to work for. It might even get you some really good technology. And it probably can, eventually, indirectly, _maybe_ eventually manage to achieve some of a company's goals. But if it is the most efficient way to do this, I am struggling to come up with any good examples. ~~~ cpks Conversely, neither Valve nor Google are digging their graves, like much of the rest of the industry does over time. See the prior post about Dell. Look at Microsoft. Focus helps, but good people make a bigger difference. The overhead, be that 20% time or whatever else, is peanuts in comparison. ~~~ nicklaf Interesting. One might go further and postulate an inverse relationship between the focus of a company and it's ability to attract 'good people'. It's tempting to argue that the kind of long-term vision usually shared by the best researchers is at odds with having pressure from management to compete. To be sure, companies with focus also fund pure R&D, but non-monopolies won't usually be able structure an an entire corporate culture around the research mentality. ------ bronbron Hmm. Preface: I do not work at Google. > I would love to see one single company that isn’t dominating a market with > no cash cow in-flow that can succeed without strict discipline, sharp focus, > hard work, and hands-on management I've worked for plenty. I'm not going to name them because it's tactless, but they were both huge monolithic corporations and small-ish companies that were pretty profitable. I'm sure others have too. Those companies that you think to yourself, "how the fuck are we making money when we're so fucked up?". I wouldn't say it's a rare scenario. The idea of companies as "hyper-efficient market machines" is pretty laughable. In fact, I've met plenty of people who worked at IBM (the company he alludes to being one of these strict discipline companies) who said IBM was/is a complete mess. > why have the majority of initiatives at Google either failed or been > financially inefficient and unprofitable The majority of initiatives full stop are failures, or unprofitable. This is kind of pointless without comparing Google to other companies. > When interacting with sales people at Google, I am shocked to see how > untrained and inefficient they are This is admittedly one of Google's faults: they're awful at customer support and the like in general. Well known, but it seems to be working out fine for them. > If there are known companies with great sales cultures such as Oracle, Google is doing considerably better than Oracle in most senses of the word. One possible conclusion is the author's, that Google succeeds in spite of this because of their search monopoly. The alternative is that maybe a strong sales culture doesn't mean as much as the author thinks for the bottom line. > everything else in the Google world, you get $5 billion or 10 percent of > Google’s revenue. Peanuts! Peanuts? Facebook's revenue last year was $8 billion. > Google is in a situation of monopoly with its search business Why do they continue to be a monopoly? There are certainly competitors. One explanation is because they continually offer the best results, because they hire the best software engineers, because they have free food, and offer "20% time", and etc... ------ abalone _> why have the majority of initiatives at Google either failed or been financially inefficient and unprofitable? If they were standalone startups, they would have most likely already been dead._ It takes a lot of experimentation to produce hits. Even the best companies are going to have a lot of failed projects. One reason Google "appears" to have so many failures is that they're more open then other companies. No doubt Apple has tons of internal failures. Projects that don't see the light of day, get canceled if they're not looking good. Tim Cook even talks about it in interviews. I do think that Apple's producing more hits overall, but the point here is that they are not failure-free; they just don't ship crap. Google likes to publicly experiment. In the startup world this experimental function is fulfilled by the startup pool as a whole. Most will fail. Most winners have "focus, discipline, hands on management", but I'm sure that's true for most product teams at Google too.. where "management" = the local team's product & engineering management, which is more equivalent to a startup's executive team than the CEO of Google. If bigger companies want to stay innovative I think there's still a lot of value to supporting experimentation and freedom within the company. It's going to look like a lot of failure. But then so does the startup universe. ------ candybar This article is aggressively awful. His entire premise: "According to the company’s 2013 financial filings, 83 percent of Google’s revenue came from ads, about 7 percent from Motorola (which is now gone), and 10 percent from everything else. In other words, when you add up all the revenue from Google Apps (Gmail, Docs, Drive, Maps, etc.) together with the Android and other mobile businesses, and then add Chromebooks, Chromecast, Chromeboxes, and everything hardware and everything Chrome, Google Developers Network, Google+, Google cars, Google robots and drones, Google Glass and other wearables, Google Cloud, and everything else in the Google world, you get $5 billion or 10 percent of Google’s revenue." is completely wrong because Google's ad revenue cannot be separated from its products outside of Search. Google+, Gmail, Docs, Drive, Maps, Android and Chrome are all designed to add to their ad revenue. Saying that Google's ad revenue is the vast majority of their non-Motorola revenue, therefore Google's non-Search products must not be adding much to the bottom line is to conflate Google's advertising businesss with their Search product, when Search is one of their many products that lead to their advertising revenue. Once you destroy this premise, this whole notion that Search is the only thing Google does well (or makes a lot of money from) becomes obviously absurd. Gmail, Google Maps, Android, Youtube and Chrome are all market leaders in absolutely gigantic markets. Edit: The synergy between many of Google's products and advertising should be obvious. They all capture information about the user, which improves their ability to display "relevant" ads or at least ads that advertisers will pay more money for. They also prevent other dominant players in that space from getting a foothold in advertising. Chrome and Android ensure that Google's various services are not a disadvantage on the web and in mobile computing respectively and may gradually be used to advantage their services over competitors'. Edit2: jjoonathan, your point regarding Amazon and competitive threats they face is correct, but it has very little to do with the article, which is taking Google's successful position for granted and asking how they got there. And the idea that Gmail, Maps, Android and Chrome haven't helped and won't help in the future is fairly absurd. Edit3: Multiple downvotes seem a little fishy, as does this article getting voted to the top of Hacker News. Edit4: Another thing the article is ignoring is that Google's continued dominance in search and web advertising is a massive accomplishment that was not at all guaranteed from its initial success. And its massive investment in engineering that the author sees as excess I'm sure has a lot to do with how it was able to sustain that dominance. ~~~ jjoonathan Google has some very impressive moats, but the real question is how much protection they actually provide. Business-idea-space is super high dimensional. You can't just walk the perimeter and say "yep, the moat protects us from all viable routes of assault." Specifically, if all the valuable searches start going through Amazon how quickly can Gmail, Google Maps, Android, and Chrome make up the missing revenue? Of the products you listed, Youtube is the only one that I think is really orthogonal in the sense that it could bring in significant revenue if google's core product were disrupted. Perhaps maps and docs as well, to a much lesser extent. Gmail and chrome exist in competitive enough market spaces that I don't see them being able to stand on their own at all. It's the familiar old adage about backup systems: interdependencies lead to concerted failures. A nuclear reactor with 500 backup systems that all depend on having a stable electrical supply isn't safe at all. ~~~ arfliw Android could. If they spun that off into it's own company it would be worth tens of billions, minimum. It's headed toward a mobile OS monopoly. It would be difficult to overstate how valuable that is. AdSense could as well. They roll that into 'advertising' but it has nothing to do with search or any of G's products - and it's a huge chunk of their advertising revenue. Even if search lost all of its marketshare overnight they would still bring in many billions every year via AdSense. (AdSense is their ad network where they display ads on 3rd party sites, acting as a middleman between publishers and advertisers). ~~~ pron > Android could. If they spun that off into it's own company it would be worth > tens of billions, minimum. That's tricky. Android's success depends heavily on phone vendors, and the vendors -- at least the large ones -- have only bet on Android because Google's control over it is relatively subtle. If Google tries to extract too much money off of Android, you'll see phone manufacturers forking it in a heartbeat. ~~~ jpdus This is just wrong. Android forks were never successful (see eg Amazon's fire phone) an will never be - the lock-in factor is incredible. In the opposite direction, more and more customers want "pure" software and good hardware is increasingly available from many different manufacturers. Nokia arguably has made the best hardware and hardly sold any phones with WP because customers wanted Android. Google knows this and moves more and more parts from AOSP in its proprietary play framework because manufacturers are way more dependent on Android than Google is dependent on any single manufacturer (including Samsung). ~~~ gbog This depends. If Google is able to run ahead of the others fast enough and have very compelling updates to force competitors to follow them, then yes, their grab on Android is still strong. But my feeling from having looked at Android 5 (which is apparently superficial) is that Google still try to run fast, but there is not more any very compelling innovation to propose. So quite soon a normal two years old version of Android will be just good enough for manufacturers and users. Then Android will still be the main player, but it will exist as multiple forks and Google will have to adapt and propose apps compatible with the most successful forks (just like they propose apps on Apple store). ~~~ bad_user Google's lock in is more about Google Play than about what is coming in Android. Basically as a manufacturer, if you don't play nice, then you don't get Google Play (or YouTube, or Gmail, or GMaps), which then means that your smartphone is just an expensive brick with no apps on it. iOS is special because it is popular and was here first. But do you see Google giving a shit about Amazon's stuff or about the Windows phone? You know, i'm an Android user because of its openness, because of its ability to be forked, but Google practices a kind of lock-in that is very hard to escape. Basically everything they do is technically excellent, plus they end up dominating the underlying platforms. ------ AndrewKemendo Being dominant is not the same as being a monopolist. I wish people would quit bringing that term up anytime a company is at the top of a market because it has legal and social implications. I have even heard people say that they have a natural monopoly which is just silly if you understand how natural monopolies work. In fact Google isn't a monopolist on any terms, but they do currently dominate search. My guess is they could be knocked off their perch fairly swiftly if someone came along with an amazing recommendation service (not like what we see now) that was more advisory than search as it would necessarily absorb search. ------ millstone I would disagree with characterizing GOOG's P/E (27.5) as "low" or "not on par with its financial performance." That's well above the average. The comparisons are suspect: Facebook is an outlier, MSFT in the 90s was surely overvalued along with most tech stocks, and Amazon is deliberately pursuing growth at the expense of profitability. Why not compare instead to other mature tech companies today: Microsoft, IBM, HP, Cisco? Or Apple, who has had a P/E under 20 for the last five years, yet whose stock has outperformed GOOG by 3x over the same period? ------ jpatokal _Another special characteristic of Google is its sales force. When interacting with sales people at Google, I am shocked to see how untrained and inefficient they are._ Did the author just make a wild generalization about a very large number of people, backed up with no evidence whatsoever? Why yes they did. Come on, the least they could do is offer up an anecdote to justify that bizarre claim. ------ wahsd Interesting article. It also adds more validation to my theory that Google is "successful" in spite of itself in many ways. I really think Google's search supremacy is vulnerable, although there is no one really positioned to disrupt Google's domination in search quite yet. ------ leoc "First off, the authors are confusing causation and correlation. Schmidt points out a series of characteristics of Google as a company and presents them as the reasons for Google’s success, but in my opinion, they are all consequences of Google’s success. For example the authors write: “Their plan for creating that great search engine, and all the other great services was equally simple: Hire as many talented software engineers as possible, and give them freedom.” Well, this worked because the search was already successful enough to fund that freedom. [...] The key is market dominance. If you have a de facto position of a monopoly in your market, money pours in, and you can afford to give your employees even more than 20 percent of their time free." This is itself backwards, yes? ISTR that [http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2007-09-03-n78.html](http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2007-09-03-n78.html) AdWords — and thus the profitability of Google's search business, if (arguably) not the search monopoly itself — was the product of early Google's 20% time and employee freedom, rather than the other way round. (Oh, and they got GMail into the bargain.) Similarly for: "I would love to see one single company that isn’t dominating a market with no cash cow in-flow that can succeed without strict discipline, sharp focus, hard work, and hands-on management." I thought that Google's 20% time was modelled after practises at 3M and Hewlett-Packard? I have no doubt that in their day these were companies that enjoyed comfortably high margins on many of their products, but from my limited knowledge I don't have the impression that they were monopolists sitting on their laurels from one of two huge hits. (As Xerox apparently was.) I also don't know how reasonable it would be to claim that private-project time didn't contribute anything to the bottom line of these companies either: 3M itself tends to claim that the Post-It note was a product of its 15% time [http://solutions.3m.com/innovation/en_US/stories/time-to- thi...](http://solutions.3m.com/innovation/en_US/stories/time-to-think) . Accordingly I'm unsure why this article has been voted to the top of HN. None of which is to say that _How Google Works_ is a model of candour and insight, or to suggest that Google has no problems with how it handles innovation, of course. ------ rajlalwani Google is one of the most innovative companies. It has successfully maintained agility (start up culture) even after becoming multi billion dollar giant. What Eric might be hinting and what author of the article sees may not be contrary! ... It's perceptual difference deliberately created. ------ zobzu " “Their plan for creating that great search engine, and all the other great services was equally simple: Hire as many talented software engineers as possible, and give them freedom." Man I so dislike these. Its pure bullshit. (its a quote from the book, mind you). ------ mathattack He had me at "Correlation doesn't equal causality" but it rapidly went downhill. I get that the concept of "Cut loose smart creatives" is not universally successful, but the article seems to go rapidly downhill from there. ------ jackmaney I know that the old saying of "don't judge a book by its cover" has been around a long time for a very good reason, but I honestly can't get past the title of this article. I find myself incapable of taking it seriously. ------ dang We changed the title in a somewhat feeble attempt to make it less baity. If anyone suggests a better title, we'll edit it again. ------ ajhsieh Its certainly not in Schmidt's interest to proclaim in a book that Google has a search monopoly even if he did realize it. ------ BrandonM _> I would love to see one single company that isn’t dominating a market with no cash cow in-flow that can succeed without strict discipline, sharp focus, hard work, and hands-on management._ I would not work for this person. It's ironic that he thinks Schmidt is the one that has it wrong. ~~~ gumby I disagree with you (even despite the fact that the author describes himself as a buzzwordy "Enterprise SaaS Executive" \-- he writes better than someone with a description like that should be able to). It's no secret, within Google or without, that Google is not particularly well run. This article cites the sales team (without backing up the talk) but talk to any of the tech folks and most will tell you the same thing. And as the article says, the Street seems to think so too. What Google _does_ get right are two things. First, they _do_ get the core stuff right: search, search infrastructure, and adsense. That's sine qua non and they aren't bozos! Second, at the other end, the stuff that's flakyest is the stuff that _should_ be flaky: Google X (and as the article says, it's a tiny amount of money). In between, however, the company isn't great. Not a mess, but mediocre on execution. The article says that the company's killing of products is a sign they are trying to get their house in order. I don't see it, but it could certainly be true. The good news for Google is that they have a huge cash flow so can actually afford to take their time to fix things. The bad news is that they have a huge cash flow which removes any sense of urgency. Big cash flow covers a multitude of sins. Big cash flow kills a lot of companies. In such a circumstance hard to do anything new, especially since while it's new it doesn't move the needle on revenue. That's why great, paranoid companies like Intel and Microsoft that had dominant cash flow suddenly struggled when the tide went out. In the case of IBM they had an existential (near death) experience and it forced them to get their act together. The point of books like these is to be talismanic. The company is successful so others look for the surface gimmicks that made it successful. It almost doesn't matter what is inside them, since the readers generally aren't looking for insight but rather validation (they are the business equivalent of self help books). ~~~ BrandonM I wasn't responding to the entire article. I agree that he got a few things right. The specific part I quoted, though, stands out to me as a rather old-fashioned management philosophy, one that is unlikely to attract and retain top talent in a competitive hiring market. ------ mickreggel "As a fan of his, I’ve followed most articles, interviews, and slides about his latest book" The author of this piece of shit is a fan of Eric Schmidt??? WTF? Someone needs a life. This article is the biggest load of bullshit I've ever read.

FPGAs for Dummies [pdf] - vonmoltke http://www.altera.com/literature/misc/FPGAs_For_Dummies_eBook.pdf ====== asynchronous13 I've been using an embedded system based on a combination of FPGA and DSP for about ten years now. If I could go back in time and start over, I would ditch the FPGA. The reason I say that is because of the time costs associated with realizing any benefit of an FPGA design. 1) FPGA based design is "future proof", we can use the same hardware to interface with new sensors in the future! Reality: we could spin a new rev of the circuit board faster than we can develop and debug the new interface in the FPGA. 2) everything can done in parallel! Reality: it's faster (development time) to put a soft core CPU on the FPGA and write linear c code to get the job done. When that solution runs fast enough, why spend more time optimizing? Bad FPGA developers are hard to find, good FPGA developers are nearly impossible to find. FPGAs are super cool. For certain niche applications they can't be beat. But most of the time, the development cost is just not worth it. ~~~ vonmoltke Sounds like the program I used to work on, though we were doing FPGA cards feeding into a small MPI cluster. The only real reason I can think of to use FPGAs in production is that you need ASIC-like functionality, but the total build out isn't worth the cost of taping out an ASIC. On my first program the hardware had several FPGAs and CPLDs for that reason. That design was finalized in 1994, though. Today those chips could be replaced by microcontrollers. As microcontrollers and soft-core processors get more capable, the applications for FPGAs will decrease. ~~~ reportingsjr Any time you are dealing with massive amounts of data in a fairly restricted environment (something out in the field) FPGAs are about your only solution. Image processing is really one of the largest and best uses of FPGAs that I have seen. I think they are very overblown for many things though. I'm sure eventually when semiconductor technology slows down (Moore's Law) that FPGAs will start becoming worthwhile for most things simply due to their efficiency. We are still a long way from that though! ~~~ asynchronous13 Do you have any examples of FGPAs used with image processing? I've done a little, and I've seen some academic examples. But I haven't seen anything in production. ~~~ wcunning The acquisition systems in almost all medical imaging, along with their noise reduction and such are built with FPGAs. An MRI machine costs several million dollars or more, and GE sells a handful each year, so spending $10,000 on the FPGA that it's built around makes more sense than millions on spinning an ASIC that will be out-of-date the day the machine is put in the field. Not to mention the need to maintain these machines for decades, given the replacement cost. Nothing else will do, when an applications processor is too slow to do data acquisition and an ASIC isn't cost effective. ------ tryp I am truly excited that there is a push to popularize FPGAs. They often allow a fundamentally different approach to problems and afford a massive improvement in efficiency and flexibility when applied to a given task. This book is a very approachable high-level answer to the question "wtf is an fpga and why do I care?" but I'm a bit disappointed that is lacks much direction on where to look next for more depth. I'll take the liberty to suggest a couple possibilities here: [http://www.fpga4fun.com/](http://www.fpga4fun.com/) Fpga4Fun is pretty accessible. [http://opencores.com/](http://opencores.com/) Opencores is kind of a SourceForge for FPGA stuff. There are lots of interesting components there to mix into a project. nitpick: This is my first encounter with the ASSP (Application-Specific Standard Product) initialism. It seems like a needless distinction from ASIC to me. ------ malanj Interesting, they claim a 5x power efficiency for FPGAs over GPUs in Monte Carlo Black-Scholes simulation. [http://postimg.org/image/6o52lcgir/](http://postimg.org/image/6o52lcgir/) I wonder if Amazon will start hosting FPGA boosted compute instances anytime soon... ~~~ aylons At Amazon scale, most of the time they could use an FPGA, they would be better served by an ASIC. The only exception I can think of would be if they dynamically implemented different algorithms in a FPGA in a just-in-time model. Or, at least, in a regular basis. ~~~ adamnemecek He's talking about FPGAs for AWS. ASICs would not make sense for that. ------ chuckcode I'd love to see a higher level language binding for FPGAs like CUDA for GPUs. I've seen real experts make data fly through an FPGA but it seemed like development was slow (no surprise given 8hrs just to compile) and getting the clocking/pipelining right to run at really high speeds was non-trivial. In contrast using CUDA for GPUs was pretty approachable even for regular developers to get started although it did take expertise to squeeze all of the performance out of them. Hard to beat FPGAs though when you need low latency though... ~~~ oflordal I have not tried it myself but both Altera and Xilinx can compile opencl for their FPGAs nowadays ------ sargun FPGAs have finally become used in some compute clouds. Specifically, Microsoft published some work in this space called Catapult: ftp://ftp.cs.utexas.edu/pub/dburger/papers/ISCA14-Catapult.pdf I predict that we'll see FPGAs become in use more often, but there are certain hurdles in both the operational, and programmability model that need to first be solved. Disclaimer: I used to work for MSFT. ~~~ agumonkey I second that, the parallella board comes with a Zinq 6000 IIRC, it's amazing to me that you can get a nice FPGA at such low price. ------ linker3000 Minor point: The book refers to LEGOs (sic). That will upset the pedants. /Proof readers lose 1 point. ------ radikalus I've still never really seen any FPGA deployments beyond using them basically as DSPs in finance which is too bad as I would LOVE to play with something that can rip through the generation of stochastic processes quickly. ------ aniijbod FPGAs for dummies? _This_ is FPGAs for dummies (and it's in pure Australian) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUsHwi4M4xE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUsHwi4M4xE)

Missing the point about microservices - zbb https://erikbern.com/2018/06/04/missing-the-point-about-microservices.html ====== ankurdhama IMO the idea of micro services makes sense when you have a bunch of services and they don't call each other. If they do call each other then they are coupled and that bring whole slew of problems and they are not independent anymore. Soon your system will looks like a messy graph.

6 MAC Apps. 6 Design Goodies. 1 Shokingly Low Price - sourabhmca14 http://bundlehunt.com/?holidaybundle ====== Udo How is this not spam?

Sad to see Google Reader go? Come on, folks...it's 2013. - christopheraden http://www.zdnet.com/sad-to-see-google-reader-go-come-on-folks-its-2013-7000012596/ ====== phasevar Twitter and social sharing doesn't fit my use case. I want to be able to scan all the articles on Hacker News even if I can't log onto Hacker News for days at a time. There's useful information here that I want access to but I can't be at my computer clicking reload on the Hacker News homepage every 30 minutes.

Ask HN: A List of HN-esque TV Programs - DarrenMills I'd like to get a list all in one place. I'll edit this post with your suggestions as they come, then migrate to a google doc. I'll add my ideas shortly. ====== DarrenMills The complete lack of response I got from fellow hackers today was surprising, if not disheartening. Does timing play a much larger role on HN than I realized? ~~~ philwelch Have you watched TV lately? There's no such thing as an HN-esque TV program. ------ marilyn Dragon's Den (Canada & UK) & SharkTank for the pitch/investment side of business, though not exclusively tech focused. ------ DarrenMills The Big Idea (Donny Deutsch - CNBC) How'd you get so Rich? (Joan Rivers - TV Land) ------ emarcotte <http://www.makezine.tv/>

Show HN: Converspace, kinda like what blogs should have evolved into - sandeepshetty https://github.com/sandeepshetty/converspace ====== mikkel The one big issue I see is lack of a small concrete goal. > Like a blog that allows publishing of content of any size or type (long- > form, mirco-updates, videos & photos using oembed, links, quotes) via a > single textarea. Take any one of those things, and you can find entire sites devoted to just that. A picture is worth a thousand words - so a mockup of the screen layout would be helpful to envisioning this product. ~~~ sandeepshetty I'm only implementing textual content at the moment (long-form and micro- updates). Think about the textarea like Facebook's status update box: You usually add text, but if you add a link it figures out if it's a video, etc. Think even Twitter's web interface does this now. Note to self: Finish mocks ASAP. ------ sandeepshetty I've updated the link with a basic mock: [https://github.com/sandeepshetty/converspace/blob/master/REA...](https://github.com/sandeepshetty/converspace/blob/master/README.md) ------ sandeepshetty I have some running code but it isn't ready for launch yet. Just putting this out there to get feedback on what you like and what you think needs improvement. ~~~ wmf To understand this I feel like I need to see some examples or mockups showing how it would be used. ~~~ sandeepshetty I've primarily worked on the backend and have been some sketches on paper but nothing concrete to share yet. If you have any specific questions I'd be glad to answer them.

GPL version 2 is a bare license. Rescind.(Re linux Code of Conduct Bannings) - e67f70028a46fba https://www.spinics.net/lists/kernel/msg2909797.html ====== throwaway5250 The whole thing is very sad, but this is not a useful response. ~~~ __d How is it sad? ~~~ throwaway5250 Linus has spent decades of his life creating and tending one of the most socially useful pieces of software ever created. Now he's being vilified by a bunch of craven busybodies. Although he's treating it with undeserved grace in public, it seems entirely possible that this will end his serious involvement with the project. Which is tragic.

It's time for Slack to get physical - ahmadss http://code.viget.com/slackalert/ ====== stopshinal Hey everyone! I worked on SlackAlert (along with several other talented folks at Viget), so I’m happy to answer any questions you might have. We were itching for a screenless UI when we decided to make SlackAlert. It’s fully functional with lights, sound, and four tactile buttons. You can easily make your own for ~ $50 and customize to your heart's content. Check it out and let us know what you think!

I'm a founder, I'm at Bootup Labs - domino http://dshan.me/blog/2010/04/im-a-founder-im-at-bootup.html ====== ghshephard One of the events that comes to mind, as I read through the roller-coaster that is Bootup Labs, was an event that happened about five years ago in our company's early history. We had a tiny little engineering staff, and were working out of a small office in San Mateo, CA, and had invested a _ton_ of time and energy into fund raising, but finally had managed to get a term sheet from a good second-tier VC. Based on that, we managed to get a board member, hired a few employees, and in general thought that we had 6-9 months of runway...and then the funding dropped through. The VC basically just walked away - to this day, I don't think we know why - certainly no developments on our side. We had to scramble to make payroll (and pay the rent) and our executives _truly_ earned their salary/equity for those months while we tried (and eventually succeeded) to raise funding from somewhere else. It was a defining moment in our company's history. I guess this is just my way of saying that _every single_ entrepreneur should be prepared for their funding to disappear until they have the check cashed and sitting in their bank account. You have to have a Plan-B that leads to success, whether it be consulting, credit-cards, friends-and-family, or living on zero dollars. That's just the reality in this completely unfair world of ours. I particularly like the fairly positive attitude of the statusly guys - they aren't vindictive, or whining - they're just sharing their war story, and they finish off with just excellent advice: "If you’re a Startup, and you’ve been accepted into one of these incubators, be sure to get some sort of paperwork done where money is provided, or proof of income is shown, or something. No matter how nice the people seem, and how badly your heart wants your business to succeed, don’t get yourself into a similar grey-area/possibly unethical situation." ~~~ anamax > I guess this is just my way of saying that _every single_ entrepreneur > should be prepared for their funding to disappear until they have the check > cashed and sitting in their bank account. You have to have a Plan-B that > leads to success, whether it be consulting, credit-cards, friends-and- > family, or living on zero dollars. The above suggests that you "finish" fundraising. You don't. You can't stop fundraising when the check hits the bank because you're already behind schedule for raising the next round. ~~~ whatusername I think DHH (and others) would disagree with you. At some point you need to stop raising money and start raising revenue. ~~~ anamax > At some point you need to stop raising money and start raising revenue. Actually, you need to start raising revenue before you stop raising money because you need to keep raising money until you've got sufficient revenue. My point was that you're continuously raising money until you hit that point ------ solutionyogi OT: Summify is a fancy Snap (<http://www.snap.com/>) and is equally annoying. Is there anyone who likes these link preview plugins? ~~~ dnsworks Michael Arrington seems to be fond of them. ~~~ bvi I think he was, but he scrapped it. I don't see those preview links on TechCrunch anymore. ------ joegaudet I wonder if this guy would be seeing things this way, if his company was among the 4 that got cut and not the 3 that didn't. ~~~ chc I wonder if he's seeing things this way BECAUSE he doesn't want to be the next one to get cut. See, now Bootup Labs are "receiving something in return" from this startup like they wanted. (I don't mean to imply that this guy is dishonest, but when your situation is as precarious as his was just shown to be, you will want to curry favor.) ------ dshanahan Hey guys, so that's my post. I'm the founder who was here with Jamie, who I consider a friend and think is a really talented and genuine guy. I've watched this story grow and I think even Jamie might agree that it's been hard (and largely inappropriate) to communicate all the specific details which might inform such a wide audience on the events around here. I was specifically emailed by 'icey' to jump in and be a resource. He/she asked me specifically regarding the stated financing situation prior to my moving to Vancouver from Chicago and joining Bootup. It was contingent on closing the round. I'm not sure what to say other than that was clear. I took that risk knowingly. ~~~ icey It was made clear, or it was clear because you read through all the agreements? I'm asking because I think it's a different story if it was buried in some fine print versus stated clearly up front. Jamie is the one who brought such a wide audience to the story, but he didn't mention anything about being aware of the chance that there may not be any funding. I still think that what Bootup has done is pretty shady, but it may end up being less shady than the blog posts have made it sound. ~~~ dshanahan I re-read my answer to your question and wanted to clarify; the fact that funding wasn't secure was clear before I moved to Van. It was included as a contingency on the (simple and short) term sheets. ------ icey They knew that all of the funding was contingent ahead of time? I wonder how that was communicated to them. ~~~ chc The fact that everybody at Bootup Labs keeps using the vague, single-word description of "contingent" is makes me suspicious. If the terms were presented to the founders that vaguely, I wouldn't blame some of them for not realizing just how "contingent" they were. ~~~ jarek When it comes to getting money, assume "not vague" to mean "cheque cashed, not bounced". ------ kylebragger Imagine your bank saying (discounting the existence of the FDIC) "sure, you can deposit your money here, we'll probably have some cash around if you ever want to withdrawal it — maybe!" Obviously, there are multiple sides to the story, but this is the gist of what I'm interpreting from it thus far. ------ unconed I'm next door to Bootup Labs... all I know is, Hackernews needs to chill out. The people at Bootup, both the startups and management, are great folks who care about tech, care about the community and about innovation. The character assassinations of the people involved are unwarranted. Securing funding is always hard, and the whole VC scene is crazy. Some companies get millions thrown at them even though they've been burning cash for years, others have great ideas and just can't secure some pocket change to get going. As far as I can see, Bootup is doing a pretty good job. ~~~ kls \--After everything that we did for you and Steven Enough said about their attitude towards these individuals. Like they did them some type of favor, business is business and deals fall through all the time, but to then turn it on those guys like they should be grateful for getting screwed is just absurd and then to complain that they did not get anything in return for paying 2 months rent for the guys. Dan's post reeks of a self entitled prick, like he some sort of benevolent god or something and that is why they are getting their just crucifixion, not because a deal fell through.

Show HN: Site calculates how long it takes famous authors to write books - batub http://rabbitwriters.com/ ====== dalke Out of curiosity I looked for Isaac Asimov, but he wasn't there. Instead, I looked at Mark Twain. The site only lists his novels, and curiously one of his short stories. Twain wrote a lot of short stories (also available in collections) which aren't on the list. Also, it uses a line graph to connect publication dates and word counts, but the line between those points is meaningless. At best it should be a step graph, where the height is based on the number of words for a publication divided by the time between publications. Otherwise it looks like Twain wrote less and less from 1875 to 1880, until finally publishing The Prince and the Pauper. ~~~ batub I'll look into the missing short stories. The tool I created that aggregates all the metadata is pretty good at finding novels, but it still needs A LOT of work with short stories. It'll probably be easier if I focus on collections, though. Yeah, after thinking about your comment, a line graph doesn't make a lot of sense. As you said, it kinda skews the viewer's mind about how the author was writing his books. I'll look into step graphs and change all the graphs soon. Thanks for the feedback! This is just a pet project, but it's nice to have some helpful criticism. ~~~ dalke You're welcome. The premise is nice - how long it takes famous authors to write books - it's just that the graphs don't answer that question. It looks like you made the change to a step function. I think you have the direction wrong. Consider C. S. Lewis. I don't think he wrote 150K words per year for almost 5 years to produce the 36K words for The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. Lewis was also an essayist. Take a look at [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._S._Lewis_bibliography](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._S._Lewis_bibliography) for the many essays not included in your list. In fact, the bio says "His most distinguished and popular accomplishments include Mere Christianity ..." but Mere Christianity isn't on the list of books. Or consider that 'The Great Divorce' was originally written as a serial for The Guardian, and at the same time as writing 'That Hideous Strength', so it's not that he worked full time on first one then the other. I hope your project it's a labor of love, as the complete answers (the sort that won't irritate fans or detailed oriented people like me) will get you bogged down in details that require a lot of manual research. But you'll have the admiration of the few who really do care. ~~~ batub So you think a right step graph would work better? I changed the graphs to have a right step instead of a left step, but the graphs still don't make a lot of sense. The lines in the graphs are supposed to represent the time it took between publications, but I think people are thinking that the author was writing at a constant X amount of words for however long the line between publications is. Yeah, there's probably a lot of books that were being written while others were being finished up or started as well. When I first started developing this, I thought about finding data about how long it takes an author to WRITE book X, Y, or Z, but I couldn't find accurate information about that for most authors. So that's why I decided to use publication dates. I understand how people think that books are written in a linear fashion - one after another - because of this, but there's not much I can do about it, because most authors don't share this information and a lot of ones are already dead. For the missing works, I'll have to revise my tool to find anything that are not novels or just enter the data for essays, short stories, collections, etc. manually, though that'll probably not be feasible time wise. ~~~ dalke Assuming all the information were available, I would like to see how many words (of the published version; not all the intermediate drafts) were written during a given year. If it took 2 years to write 100,000 words for a release on 2014-01-01 then 2012 and 2013 would be at 50,000 words each. That would indeed be a 'constant X amount of words for however long the line between publications is'. (This also assumes no publication delay. I have no idea how to tell how long it took to get edited and reviewed.) It's possible to fake it. You could compute the average publication rate then backtrack that amount for each publication date, assuming a constant rate. Then let overlapping publications sum, and use a smoothing function to interpolate. It's still a mess. Especially if there are any posthumous publications. Yes, getting the actual rate requires a lot of research, including perhaps talking to people who study those authors. Eg, a Twain scholar probably knows a lot more about when things were published. But this gets into serious labor of love (or Master's thesis) territory. ~~~ batub hahaha, I like working on this, but researching each individual publication sounds like something that I wouldn't be able to do. What I'll probably end up doing is open sourcing the database + website and allowing others to contribute. Again, thanks for your help.

If we work day and night, we can match our competitor's features within 12 mos. - kevindication http://dilbert.com/fast/2009-12-09/ ====== nroach I got a good laugh out of that comic, and it's frighteningly familiar for a lot of enterprise developers. But taken too literally, it sends entirely the wrong message to a startup. In some cases I guess you really do want to swing for the fences and bypass everything that's been done in your industry. However, I suspect that the failure rate among those that take a completely divergent approach is pretty high. Maybe you don't have to match the competition feature-for-feature, but you do need to match them need-for-need. If you don't address customer needs, good luck with your conversion rate. And in the end, a feature matrix is just one company's articulation of what it thinks those customer needs are. Maybe you disagree or maybe you have a better way, but if the same 70% of features show up over and over again amongst your competition, you'd better find a way to satisfy those needs. In the interest of not posting a tome, I've elaborated on my blog (see profile for link). ~~~ patio11 _you do need to match them need-for-need_ I disagree. In particular, you may not be addressing the same niche that the "competition" addresses. To use an example I've been thinking a lot about today: it is stupid and suicidal for any startup to go head to head with Google on a core Google competency, right? Well, Wingify just released an A/B testing product which is about 5% as featureful as the Google Website Optimizer/Google Analytics tag team o' doom. It lacks on enterprise features, it doesn't have the Google ops team backing it, etc etc. It also won't be free due to a cross-subsidy from Google AdWords. Instead of trying to reach feature or need parity with Google, they said "There is a portion of the market here which is untechnical and knows they want to do A/B testing but whom are undeserved by EVERY vendor. We're going to make A/B test easy enough for them to incorporate it into their businesses in a few minutes." With respect to those users, they're going to eat Google's lunch. Granted that might only be a couple hundred thousand customers but, well, how many customers do you really need, anyhow. ;) ~~~ nroach Well, my surreply would be that for those customers, there is only one one need, and Google's feature matrix attempts to address more needs than actually exist in that segment of the marketplace. But segmentation is a good point that I hadn't really addressed. I'd presumed competitors going after the same market. A more mature competitor may simply be seeking a bigger market (and thus requires more features). If you're satisfied with attacking just one segment, everything else is extraneous. ------ mrcharles I've had this conversation in the game industry more times than I can count. ------ SamAtt We were just talking about this in my office the other day. How "feature match" is such a popular strategy because it's something a non-technical manager can say without having to rely on his technical staff (which in many managers' eyes makes them seem weak) ------ Anon84 Or... you can work just as hard to find a new approach to the same problem that gives you an edge over them. ------ mnemonik Ah! A modern example of Zeno's Paradox! <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeno%27s_paradoxes> I bet Douglas Hofstadter would appreciate at this one. ------ seasoup 37 points for posting a dilbert? ~~~ kevindication It's my opinion that this dilbert is fairly relevant to HN. A lot of pg's early articles were addressing this feature-matching sentiment and how they approached it at viaweb.

Show HN: Lofi – A Minimalist Spotify Client with Better UX - dvt http://www.lofi.rocks/ ====== dvt Hi HN, a few weeks ago I made a "replacement" for the Spotify desktop app because I wanted a tiny player instead of a whole window I need to bring up to skip songs/etc. It's free & open source, works on Windows and MacOS and even has visualizations (remember those?). Anyway, I thought I'd share it here. Any feedback is welcome. Download it by going here: [http://www.lofi.rocks/](http://www.lofi.rocks/) MIT-licensed source code here: [https://github.com/dvx/lofi](https://github.com/dvx/lofi) ------ new_guy Spotify has revenue in the billions each year. And while this is a nice bit of code and obviously scratches your itch, don't you feel maybe a bit silly doing their work for free? ------ newsbinator > "Lofi is light-weight and runs on less than 100MB of RAM." Ah, when I first started programming this would have been tongue in cheek. But times change!

Ask HN: 3 months in - where should I take this project? - bazookaBen A few months ago I made a prototype HTML5 game called Private Joe. Got tons of great feedback from HN.<p>I just released a radically improved facebook version of the game at http://bit.ly/rhoHkH . It has everything set up, social elements, invite system, leaderboard, store , etc.<p>My question is, how do I get to the next level?<p>Some major barriers that I'm facing:<p>1) As an indie student developer, I find it very hard to compete with other social game developers.<p>2) The pros work in teams, have a marketing budget, and iterate very fast. They seem to have all the right ingredients to scale.<p>3) I can't afford a marketing budget. I can only put more sweat equity in game design.<p>4) Because I don't have a solid user base, I can't even start working on the 'business intelligence' side of social games (metrics monitoring, A/B testing, k-factors, etc). I'm missing out on that big time.<p>5) Mobile-wise, I'm working on porting the game to iOS+Android. Using existing frameworks like appMobi and PhoneGap decreases development time.<p>6) I considered starting a company solely developing multi-platform games. No luck so far (don't have VC connections, no access to talent, not based in the Valley). I also submitted my application to mobile game funds (TinyCo, YouWeb).<p>How do I get my skin in the game? Should I join a game startup? Can my talent be used in other startups? Should I form one myself?<p>Honestly, I don't think I can go far by working alone. I need to get into the major league.<p>PS: Am a grad student in Indiana (international citizen). Non-CS major. ====== Feeble I think that the important part is that you keep being productive. Keep improving your game our push out new content if you can. Opportunities usually arise with time around talented people. Like you say, it is very hard to compete with developer studios, but realize that to design, develop and actually _ship_ a game by yourself is no small feat. I can assure you that this will not go unnoticed in your future company/work/career choices =) ------ superted Private Joe is really a solid game. Excellent work! Would you mind sharing some basic usage stats? Have adding the elements you list been worth the effort? The reason I am asking is that I created a HTML5 a couple of months ago (<http://www.thearca.de/gardenmadness/>), and I have been pondering whether it is worth the effort to create a FB version or not. ~~~ bazookaBen at this early stage, the facebook version doesn't have many users Private Joe's core audience is male, 18-24. I really can't tell if adding a leaderboard/store/gifting system has helped the game. All I can do is to make sure i have those systems in place, so I can at least compete with the big guys. in a way, it's similar to an arms race - if the other guy has it, you got to have it too. ------ bazookaBen link to the game is <http://bit.ly/rhoHkH>

A Heretic's Guide to Deplatforming - StuntPope https://easydns.com/blog/2018/11/02/a-heretics-guide-to-deplatforming/ ====== dleslie > The tech giants today are by their own actions cultivating the motivation > and the will to necessitate the creation of their own challengers and > everybody is watching closely what works and what doesn’t. And this is why I find the trend towards deplatforming to be altogether _exciting_. I haven't been this _excited_ about potential changes in how we communicate since I first installed Skype; when it was still P2P. There hasn't been this much social pressure on individuals with technical ability for some time, and sufficiently many appear to be attempting to turn that pressure into new ways to communicate. Safely, securely, and in a way that is resilient to outside attempts to silence. Our current state of affairs is distressingly centralized; we have but a handful of _enormous_ silos of personal information and communication, and progressively less independent sources of content distribution. While it may seem a non-issue when it's ethnic supremacists and fascists being silenced; it's a situation precariously vulnerable to abuse by the powerful. These experiments in decentralized communication and data storage couldn't come any sooner. ~~~ wuliwong I am right there with you! I am oddly excited by the recent waves of de- platforming. I think they are hastening the next step of development. ~~~ arto Indeed, sometimes things have to get worse before they can get better. ------ evrydayhustling Reading this article is like watching someone beat the ocean with a stick. What would it look like for an "anti-deplatforming" initiative to succeed? All ideas have equal access to all platforms? Just the big ones? The objective is so poorly formed, it's not even wrong. A platform's identity and ability to attract an audience are determined by the activities they accept / cultivate, not vice versa. Infowars wanted to be on Facebook because it made it easier to sell your grandparents vitamin supplements, but Facebook felt that leaving them on make it a place families (and their grandparents) won't visit. Gab would like to use Stripe or Paypal because they are trusted payment providers, but those networks felt they'd stop being trusted payment providers if they let Gab stay on. And there's plenty of reason to think they're right: super-permissive platforms exist and work (4chan et al.), they just don't attract the same broad audience. When people complain about being deplatformed, they're just saying "the platforms that accept me aren't popular enough". I'm glad our internet is enough of a distributed commons that many platforms are broadly accessible -- but nobody owes you an audience at the most popular ones. ~~~ im3w1l First people get kicked off their platforms "build your own platforms" Then platforms got kicked off the platform platforms "build your own platform platforms" What reason is there to assume those platform platforms will not get kicked off the platform platform platforms? These people are not arguing in good faith. ~~~ amputect What's the alternative to "build your own platforms" though. Are you willing to compel Stripe by threat of force to keep processing credit cards for nazis? Are you willing to completely torpedo freedom of association, as long as the people demanding your company continue associating with them are sufficiently monstrous? ~~~ hakfoo What makes the 'deplatforming' threat viable is that so many critical aspects of an online business are a choice between private-enterprise players. Stripe or Authorize.net. AWS or DigitalOcean. GoDaddy or Namecheap. As you suggest, they have no individual legal obligation to serve a business that may cause bad press/high risk/whatever. But when you can enough of them pointing in the same direction, it creates the chilling effect-- a business that's technically legal but can't get the services they need. It basically creates am unspoken private regulation well beyond the actual law of the state. I tend to think the answer might be non-profit or state-run "service providers of last resort" \-- charter-bound to provide service for any legal purpose, no matter how distasteful. Not necessarily cheap or slick, but they won't pull your plug because people complain about your content. Such a provider would defang the deplatforming strategy pretty fast. ~~~ Faark > it creates the chilling effect-- a business that's technically legal but > can't get the services they need They can get it, but have to pay for that. Just like the porn industry had to build their own payment providers. The chilling effect is working as intended. You need something in society to make people find common ground and live in a similar reality. The current US seems like a great example of people not being able to do so. They blame more and more blame other side for their problems. And i wonder if that trend can be reversed before you guys start shooting each other. Recent developments like social media made and the US TV landscape make it easier than ever to live in your favorite filter bubble. Algorithms getting better and better at giving you what you want to hear. I don't see developments emerging to counteract that. If de-platforming is bullet we have to bite for society to keep functioning, than so be it. It's still somewhat mild tool you can work around... i take that over government intervention any time. ~~~ hakfoo >They can get it, but have to pay for that. Just like the porn industry had to build their own payment providers. There are two problems with that argument. First, it's nowhere near as trivial as you make it sound. A one man shop could potentially build and maintain a custom forum service himself, but trying to create a real-world ready payment processing infrastructure from scratch is going to mean a team of tens of specialists. The porn industry was able to solve it because it was a big, industry-wide problem that left a lot of money on the table-- a need big enough to create a market for specialists. Second, it may not be possible to bypass every firm that presents a deplatforming risk. The porn industry may have avoided rejection by the mainstream gateway providers, but they're still dependent on retaining good relationsips with Visa and Mastercard at the end of the day. I'd think those guys are the nuclear option for deplatforming-- no matter who you line up to take your payments, if you can't accept 90% of the cards on the market, you're not going to be able to monetize effectively. ------ tptacek It's probably unrealistic to expect us to stop seeing threads about this (Gab's #1 objective at this point will be to make more noise and surely something "newsworthy" will happen with them sometime soonish). But it's worth noting that we've had several recent discussions about Gab stemming from the events that occurred after the mass shooting. Here, Jeftovic is arguing from faulty premises. Correcting those premises might not change the conclusions he draws, but they're worth fixing anyways. While it's true that the worst speech on Gab.ai doesn't come from the operators of the site themselves, it's _not_ true that the site operators have clean hands. Gab's (verified) Twitter account has repeatedly been screenshot posting anti-Semitic comments, and retweeting white supremacist posts from others (for instance: they pointedly RT'd a white supremacist mocking Ken White, of Popehat fame, for being the adoptive father of Asian children). Gab itself openly embraces white nationalism. Gab is white supremacist Twitter (you might have called it "white nationalist Twitter" before whatever weird Brazilian politics thing conspired to begin its transformation into Fascist Orkut, which is where it's heading now). That doesn't mean you have to agree it should be taken off the Internet by GoDaddy; you can form coherent arguments in either direction. But the idea that it's being taken offline solely because of the actions of its users is false. It has the users it has because those are the users its operators begged to get. ~~~ StuntPope Jeftovic here. I actually wasn't aware of many things you cite above, having cursorily examined, then abandoned Gab I never followed their twitter feed, etc. Without having seen any of that myself, I wrote the article extending a certain benefit of the doubt, trying to look at it from a neutral (ostensibly) vendor vantagepoint. ~~~ pvg You've added an update to your article pointing out it was 'flagged' after 'rapidly ascending'. Flagging is done done by users, so both the (brief) rapid ascent and the flagging are results of user action. ~~~ StuntPope So what's your point? ~~~ pvg There's nothing 'ironic' about it, flagging is like downvoting. You aren't being 'deplatformed' by some inscrutable power, users just don't think it's a fit for the site. ~~~ StuntPope No, flagging is not like "downvoting", this isn't reddit. As somebody else here already pointed out: > From > [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) > > If a story is spam or off-topic, flag it. This isn't spam and given the interest it's garnered it's obviously not off- topic. So if you're flagging it you're basically throwing your opinion over it and preventing others from seeing it and from upvoting it. That's imposing your opinion over everybody else's. If you don't like the post, then don't upvote it or better still, post an erudite missive on why the author is a brain-dead moron, but don't mis-label it as spam or off-topic. ~~~ tptacek Can I offer a different complaint? Mine is: you updated your post to reflect that it had been flagged by HN users, but _not_ with material new information you acquired from the thread before that flag had occurred. That feels a little dishonest. ~~~ StuntPope What material new information is that? ~~~ tptacek You acknowledged it upthread! ------ asdfasgasdgasdg > Most successful deplatformings are Pyrrhic victories Big fat citation needed on this. You speculate as to how they _may_ become pyrrhic victories, but it's far from concluded that this will be the case. Previous deplatformings (Milo, Alex Jones) haven't produced any visible negative consequences for the platforms. There's little reason to think this will either. Surprisingly few people care if a den of hate speech has trouble finding a DNS registrar. Especially, surprisingly few important DNS registrar customers care. ~~~ stcredzero Likewise, almost no one cares what a Jehovah's witness has to say. The US government coming in and telling a private entity, no you must tolerate free speech on your property is historical fact and precedent. There is a lawsuit where a company owned this mining company town, including all of its roads and sidewalks. A Jehovah's witness won a lawsuit on the basis of the First Amendment, enabling her to walk about that town and distribute her pamphlets. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBozijndSLc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBozijndSLc) Originally, it was once widely recognized by US jurisprudence, though property rights and freedom of association are important, the First Amendment was even more important and trumps property rights. _Surprisingly few people care if a den of hate speech has trouble finding a DNS registrar._ Surprisingly few people cared when the US government carted off my bandmate's parents to concentration camps. That's a very poor metric to apply to a principle of rights and justice. ~~~ tptacek It sounds suspiciously as if you're drawing a direct comparison between the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War 2 and Gab getting kicked off GoDaddy. That can't possibly be an argument you really want to make. ~~~ badatshipping His argument is that few people caring about something doesn’t mean that thing doesn’t matter. ~~~ tptacek Isn't that, like, an extremely banal observation? It doesn't mean it _does_ matter either. Meanwhile: what was the point of comparing this situation to internment camps? ~~~ PavlovsCat Banally true, yes. > It doesn't mean it does matter either. Someone said something doesn't matter because "few people care", just one example of something that mattered and about which also "few people cared" refutes that reasoning. They're not making an argument, they're refuting one. edit: Another example would be Linus' announcement of Linux at the time. Few people cared, in contrast to the people who today find Linux extremely important, or depend on it without knowing. And there you go, I now made a "direct" (whatever that means) comparison between Linux and Japanese being put into concentration camps in the US, as well as a "direct" comparison between Linux and neo-nazis being deplatformed. The point matters more than the comparison used to make it. ~~~ TheSpiceIsLife > The point matters more than the comparison used to make it. Only if we assume the soundbite _it 's just like when Japanese Americans were put in concentration camps_ didn't happen. The point could have been made without the comparison, by writing something like this: _" Surprisingly few people cared" is a very poor metric to apply to a principle of rights and justice._ And then we can discuss how _social norms_ and _the legal system_ interact, rather than have _this_ conversation. ~~~ PavlovsCat The complaint wasn't that it was worded poorly, but that a direct comparison was made at all, using kinda spooky language such as " _It sounds suspiciously as if you 're drawing a direct comparison_" and " _That can 't possibly be an argument you really want to make._". English isn't my first language, even I had no problem understanding the intention of the words, and arguing against the "strongest plausible interpretation" is in the guidelines. > And then we can discuss how social norms and the legal system interact Personally I'm content with it being settled that "few people care" is an invalid argument. ------ mattsfrey It seems like many people are caught up in the details here and missing the wider principles.. What kind of internet do you want? I grew up with an internet that was entirely open and free, there have always been the hate dens and their garbage. I view domain services as essentially infrastructure, not arbitrators of content. If sites/services are being shut down at the infrastructure level, we've entered a new age of the internet and it is terribly frightening. ~~~ tptacek Stormfront is still up and running. They had a hard time getting access to the same QOS and pricing as do sites that companies actively want to host, but at some point we're complaining that white nationalists don't get FRAND terms, and it's a little hard to get worked up about that. Gab ran Twitter for White Nationalists off Digital Ocean, Azure, and who knows where else. Gab's users have a disconcerting tendency to blow up synagogues. Gab itself has a disconcerting tendency to recruit people who cheerlead anti- Semitism. Are we surprised they aren't getting the $15,000 startup promo credit from AWS? ~~~ mattsfrey Again, details.. What if every single domain company decides to blackball them? What do they do then? Nothing, they are off the internet. ~~~ wpietri I guess they'll have to return to sharing their desire to kill black people the old fashioned way, in person. Something you aren't grappling with here is the way the Internet has enabled previously-scattered terrible people to connect and self-radicalize. David Neiwart, who tracked various "patriot", white supremacist, and other fringe groups since the 90s, wrote a very readable book about how things have changed since then: [https://www.amazon.com/Alt-America-Rise-Radical-Right- Trump/...](https://www.amazon.com/Alt-America-Rise-Radical-Right- Trump/dp/1786634236) I definitely appreciate the early ethos of the Internet. It's a good founding myth, and I would like to work to keep things open by default. But if the worse 0.1% of humankind ends up not being able to host anything because otherwise they will work together to murder people, I am 100% ok with bending my "anything goes" bias a bit. ~~~ mattsfrey Actually inciting violence or conspiring to do so is covered under common law statutes and can be easily prosecuted. This is far different, it is companies deciding on their own volition to unilaterally ban entities from accessing the very "pipes". Today it's at the domain level, so the convenience of being able to type in a name versus an IP is what's at stake. What next, ISP's blocking traffic?.. Like I've said it's the principle. I believe in free speech and a free and open internet, if there is criminal activity the FBI, et al. can easily get involved. This is about the fact that the very infrastructure of the internet is largely dictated by private entities who are now imposing their own discretion based on content they object to, odious as it may be. I for one am not keen on allowing the sociopolitical whims of the time to dictate who is allowed on this great thing called the internet. I see something once pure, beautiful, and glorious entering its first stages of death. ~~~ b1daly I’m responding to your comment more as a representative of a general sentiment. The implicit psychological construct behind this little “mini-panic” around fringe groups be “de-platformed” is a common one: something bad is happening, and we are losing freedoms/rights/capabilities we (society) has in the past. It’s a variation on the notion that “the world is going to hell a hand basket.” The rhetorical fallacy is called “false idealization of the past.” In fact, the access of everyday people to a variety of mediated forms of communication is at historically unprecedented levels. In virtually the entire history of human society, access to powerful methods of communication was completely under the control of the elite power structures of the society. The problem that these new communication platforms are trying to deal with is unprecedented. It turns out there are unexpected consequences of allowing access to mass communication, and means of spreading propaganda, to “fringe” groups like “white supremecists” The problem is unique in a couple of ways. One is that it is only very recently, very recently, in our society (the US in this case) that the precepts of white supremacy have been “fringe!” In fact these are the hateful ideologies that built much of our modern world, on the backs of those unfortunate to have not been born “white.” This has been hard fought-for progress, and banishment to the “fringe” of these ideas is a major success. The attempts to drive these ideas even further to the fringe represents a triumph of humanistic values. Especially as reactionary groups inevitably fight back with whatever means they have at hand. It just happens to have happened right around the time that technology put methods of mass media into the hands of more and more everyday people. Using “De-Platforming” as a method of social control is entirely civilized, and justified. We have bedrock principles of free speech in the US, but those are almost entirely based around the idea of preventing the government from jailing speakers it diagrees with. To raise an alarm about, “well, what if your currently considered ‘progressive’ movement is deemed deserving of De-Platforming in the future” is a false alarm, because there simply are no historical examples to draw from. These technologies are too new. (Not just the technology, also the increasing ubiquitousness of networked communication.) It also pretends that in some philosophical sense, all ideas are equally valid, and is divorcing the content of ideas from the form. I don’t agree that all points of view are equally valid, and viewing ideas through the lens of “form” over “content” is antithetical to the very core concept of ideas and thought itself. IMO, people are too quick to trot out “slippery slope” fears about difficult problems. However, we can’t get “off of the slope” in a metaphysical sense. We are alive, until we aren’t,and must navigate the treacherous slopes of reality to the best of our capabilities. As both individuals and as members of society. ~~~ cousin_it > _The problem that these new communication platforms are trying to deal with > is unprecedented._ The early internet had to deal with the same problems, yet it was much more free than the internet of today. This isn't a false idealization of the past - I was around at the time. To me the only reason the internet matters is to let individual people speak and be heard - without being silenced by advertisers, the government, or the mob. If we let these entities institute censorship for the common good, we might as well have TV. ~~~ tptacek Large portions of the Internet were cordoned off from commerce altogether. There was a weekend back in the 90s (probably more than one, but this is the one I remember) where there was an Internet-wide netsplit that cut commercial ISPs like Ripco off from the rest of the Internet. Most conversations on the Internet took place on Usenet, and even in the alt. hierarchy, there were rules and politics behind what stuff got propagated. ~~~ hollerith I spent a decent amount of time on news.admin.net-abuse.email in 1993 and in the mid-1990s. (ISTR that is where spam on Usenet was mainly discussed.) I was very curious about Usenet, but recall no restrictions on any unmoderated newsgroup (and most newsgroups were unmoderated). I always believed that the reason it took years for Usenet to do something about spam is because (1) before spam got so bad they had to do something about it, there were no existing restrictions on the propagation of messages and (2) a widespread ethic among those running news servers that _any_ restrictions on propagation, even restrictions on spam, were to be avoided. What sort of content, in your opinion, was denied propagation back when most conversations on the Internet took place on Usenet? I got the impression that the ban on commerce over the US backbone was to prevent making any business big enough to be able to afford a PR person or a lobbyist in Washington afraid that the Internet was a threat to its revenue stream. Back when only a small fraction of the public knew anything about the Internet, the US Government was spending a relatively large amount of money keeping it running, and was consequently vulnerable to sniping from journalists and politicians to the effect that the US government is spending money to giving, e.g., people who are sexually attracted to people dressed up as animals, a forum to communicate with each other. You and I know that the _marginal_ cost of adding an alt.sex.furries news group to the Internet was so low as to be not worth thinking about, but it would've been hard to get that point across to the voting public. People were worried for example about the National Science Foundation, one of the major funders of the Internet, getting one of these: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Fleece_Award](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Fleece_Award) Or maybe the ban on commerce over the US backbone was a concession the US backbone's patrons in Washington needed to make to get Congress to continue to allocate funds for it. The ban was mostly successful only because very few people _wanted_ to do commerce on the internet while the ban on commerce over the US backbone was in place. Possible exception: the last year or so of the ban when the internet was growing very quickly. Exception: people seeking W2 workers or W2 jobs rather than 1099 workers / jobs would've liked to be able to use ba.jobs to advertise, but IIRC it was a moderated newsgroup, and the moderator, like most people running internet infrastructure back then, grudgingly recognized the need for the ban (i.e., to protect the Internet's supporters in Washington from ridicule or from the animosity of powerful groups). ------ throwawaysea This is a good article that explores many of the angles involved. Deplatforming is a dangerous step for a free society, especially when so much power is accumulated in a few platforms* The big risk is this: when only a few entities funnel so much societal discourse or control our communication infrastructure or process payments, those entities making arbitrary decisions about who they serve has similar impacts and risks to the government imposing similar restrictions through the law. These companies should not act as a moral police and should not impose their own personal governance above what is minimally required by the law. Nor should they rely on the judgment of an angry mob to make decisions. Case and point, take a look at Medium blocking Gab, as referenced in this article. Gab's _statement about the shooting_ is being blocked? That is ridiculous, and unacceptable. And we should not patronize such businesses. * Spare me the tired arguments that these private companies have a right to not serve customers at will. That seems like self-serving cherry-picking, when in other situations the same folks would be against granting freedom of association. ~~~ roenxi > has similar impacts and risks to the government imposing similar > restrictions through the law We can't really compare them to the government until they have a standing army. That said, pure scale does matter. There will debate over whether powerful organisations are currently benign or hostile, but there is no doubt whatsoever that they are a mighty force. If Google or Facebook ever decides to seriously wake up politically, China's internet strategies will start looking very sensible. I don't agree with them either though. ~~~ dragonwriter > We can't really compare them to the government until they have a standing > army. While I disagree that the firms in question have government-like comprehensive power, even without their own army, a monopoly or coordinating oligopoly able to lock out new participants on essential communication services would have such power, and be a de facto part of the government, even if they lacked formal command relationship over the armed forces of the host state. ------ DoreenMichele _Gab illustrates a “catch-22” around setting out to be specifically a “free speech platform”. You initially appeal to the most fringe elements of public discourse. Your first wave of users are going to be people for whom this has been a problem, and if you’re an absolutist and let them on then suddenly that’s your base._ For me, this is one of the more profound take-aways from the article. This piece is very thought provoking. ~~~ teddyh Yes, the first wave defines the project; if the first wave has problems, the project is infused with these problems. This is true of free software projects also. I have a couple of examples: • The KDE project (to create a nice graphical desktop environment based on the X windowing system) was initially formed around using the Qt library for graphical user interface widgets. The Qt library had, at the time, a somewhat friendly but distinctly non-free license. The first wave of developers on KDE, therefore, were developers who considered proprietary software and/or sketchy licensed to be A-OK.¹ This will probably forever define the development practices of the KDE project. • The Go language is, by many accounts, a very nice programming language. But it was started, and still run, by Google people, for Google purposes, and with Google backing. This means that the first wave of developers were and are those developers who think it’s perfectly fine to _work at Google_ , or to work with Google to further Google’s goals. People who don’t like Google will of course have stayed away from the Go project at the outset, and so the developer elite of the Go project will probably always reflect Google values and priorities. 1\. Those developers who did not agree went on to start Gnome, which is in fact the very reason Gnome was started. ~~~ DoreenMichele Yeah, that's obvious on the face of it and not what grabbed me. I'm fascinated by the power of positioning of the creators of the project and how easily that can go wrong. That has long fascinated me and this is an incredibly powerful example summed up in a nutshell in the paragraph I quoted, which is a rare thing to see. ------ woodruffw > Most successful deplatformings are Pyrrhic victories We have reasonable (not perfect!) empirical evidence that this is _not the case_ [1]. It appears that toxic and hateful movements can only resist disapprobation when they develop a sufficiently large, sufficiently public (in the visibility sense, not the publicly-owned sense) channel. Continually disrupting those channels works. [1]: [http://comp.social.gatech.edu/papers/cscw18-chand- hate.pdf](http://comp.social.gatech.edu/papers/cscw18-chand-hate.pdf) ~~~ stcredzero For awhile, the Soviets could "deplatform" people from their lives entirely by threatening them or sending them to the Gulags. They held things together for many decades through that continual disruption. Yes, you can coerce people with your advantages, and it will work for awhile. You can even create enclaves where you can keep undesirables out. But no, that never wins in the end. ~~~ woodruffw > For awhile, the Soviets could "deplatform" people from their lives entirely > by threatening them or sending them to the Gulags. They held things together > for many decades through that continual disruption. I take the scarequotes there to be you admitting that gulags aren't really deplatforming -- it's a government terrorizing its citizens. Nobody in this conversation is interested in building gulags or putting the undesirables in them. > Yes, you can coerce people with your advantages, and it will work for > awhile. You can even create enclaves where you can keep undesirables out. > But no, that never wins in the end. I don't understand this reasoning. I've presented some research indicating that banning hateful online communities actually does have some kind of positive effect, and your response it that it "never wins in the end"? What is the "end" here? Do we have _any_ sort of evidence or overarching political theory that suggests that it _doesn 't_ win in the end? Most of us are on board, intuitively at least, with the notion that you can't have both a dictator and be a democratic republic. Why are we so hesitant to accept that other entities fundamentally conflict with the notion of liberal democracy? ~~~ stcredzero _I 've presented some research indicating that banning hateful online communities actually does have some kind of positive effect_ I'm sure that you can find a Soviet study indicating that certain of their programs had an effect against Bourgeois oppressor thinking and activity for some number of years. _Why are we so hesitant to accept that other entities fundamentally conflict with the notion of liberal democracy?_ Conditioning a society to accept the practically suppression of free speech fundamentally conflicts with the notion of liberal democracy. ~~~ woodruffw > I'm sure that you can find a Soviet study indicating that certain of their > programs had an effect against Bourgeois oppressor thinking and activity for > some number of years. Again, no gulags here. Just Twitter, Reddit, and bad clones of the aforementioned. It's also worth noting that the Soviet Union, at its best, simply _was not a liberal democracy._ The position that I'm taking is nonsensical outside of a liberal democratic context, so comparing it with various inhumanities under a non-democracy is unconvincing at best. > Conditioning a society to accept the practically suppression of free speech > fundamentally conflicts with the notion of liberal democracy. We're talking about the scope and structure of liberal democracy itself, a discussion that's been going on for as long as liberal democracies have existed (others have brought up Popper, but Popper cribbed the idea from Immanuel Kant). There's no conditioning going on. ------ jstanley > Does this mean that if Zerohedge, or Black Lives Matter, two of our clients > from opposite ends of the political spectrum, post something, or even if one > of their users posts something, that is beyond the pale, then we have to > worry about having our finances cut off? > I know as “the DNS guys” we have a near pathological aversion to single- > points-of-failure, but it’s not a stretch to come to the conclusion for any > business that it’s not an acceptable risk to have that possibility just > looming there and to do nothing about it. > That means we will now be looking for backup payment processors. FWIW, this is _exactly_ what Bitcoin does well: uncensorable payments with no single points of failure. And, by way of anecdata, I currently pay for domain names in Bitcoin already (from gandi). People buying domain names are probably one of the best demographics to have if you want to take Bitcoin as they are likely to be technically savvy. ------ djsumdog What's interested about Gab is that it wasn't content hosting on another platform (Facebook/Twitter). It was their own platform, that people wrote and built. What if you run a Plemore/Mastodon server that has users with controversial content? Is it okay for Vultr or DigitalOcean or Amazon to just yank your account? Sure you can claim capitalism and find another provider, but we've seen here that finding another provider is hard and migration is expensive! I wrote about this almost a year ago when it happened to The Daily Stormer and I still think it's more relevant today: [https://fightthefuture.org/article/the-new-era-of- corporate-...](https://fightthefuture.org/article/the-new-era-of-corporate- censorship/) Shutting down platforms just drives people to more extreme platforms. You can't just yell "decentralization" because then you could have providers pulling individual instances of federated ActivityPub/OStatus based software. At some point we're going to need to address free speech online, because it's not like the real world. You can't just go to another news stand or buy your own printer. There are a limited of people that can host general purpose VMs at a reasonable price with a decent provisioning API. The domain issue is the most troubling. I don't see any reason a registrar should be allowed to pull domain services from people. Right now it's just content some people don't like, but what if a business starts pulling domain registrar service for business they just don't like, and claim it has to do with hate? ~~~ wuliwong I agree that there is a difference between deplatforming gab and someone like Alex Jones. I don't think that any solution is going to be a permanent one, whether it is a law or a technology. I tend to look towards technological advancement to first outpace laws and then the govts slowly catch up. I do think that decentralized storage solutions behind decentralized applications are pretty interesting. There is even something called IPFS which is being pitched as a possible challenger to HTTP. In some of the distributed solutions, the computers holding the data only ever see it encrypted, so the possibility of censorship on that end is mitigated at least for a while. I'm not expert on the topic but I've recently found it very exciting and has given me a glimmer of hope. ------ kmooney > We run the risk that the act of deplatforming can become as extreme as the > hate speech it seeks to banish. Let us cross that bridge when we get to it. ~~~ colonelpopcorn Pretty sure we're already here. Ignorant or evil folks won't become enlightened or good if they can't use the internet. ~~~ fhood No, but they will be isolated, and an isolated person is powerless person. ~~~ colonelpopcorn Seems like a recipe for creating a lot of people with very little or nothing to lose. ~~~ fhood Nah, I think the real danger is when they find others who re-affirm their convictions. ~~~ jesssse You are advocating isolating, deplatforming, etc.. These are tactics that hurt. Hurt people hurt people. If people are allowed to be heard and socialize, they gain happiness and are less likely to hurt people. ------ wuliwong The conclusion of the article where it speaks about the consequences of de- platforming people leading to 'counter measures' is what I'm thinking will happen. In my opinion, the difference between government censorship and godaddy censorship is that I can just stop using godaddy. Then I can either close my business, use a different service, or try to help build something new to circumvent godaddy. I've been back and forth on distributed storage and blockchain in my mind but my current thinking is that the recent de-platforming is going to hasten the development of alternate solutions that are more robust with regards to censorship. I'm not even considering about whether it is right or wrong, I just think that's going to happen. ------ justaaron Despite all the handwringing here, there's no concrete proposal for what to do with rent-seeking attention-seeking deliberatvely difficult individuals whom one has no obligation to entertain the ideas of. If I were NYU, I would simply never book Milo Whatever-his-name-is. Having to deplatform him indicates that someone wanted to platform him in the first place. Kick his useless ass to the curb/kerb, as the case may be. ------ superkuh As long as the ISP stays as a dumb pipe there will always be alternatives. Self hosting is the best hosting and these days ISP connections are definitely fast enough to host anyones' small personal site up to a medium size forum. Hopefully as this wave of authoritarian practices sweeps the globe and the 'net people will simply adopt federated services like IRC or notabug for communication and host it among themselves. ------ tomohawk A private company has quite a bit of latitude, until it becomes a monopoly (or part of an oligopoly). Monopolists always hide behind the "but, we're a private company" defense. Who wouldn't? Settled law and legal tradition holds that we tolerate a monopoly only when they are regulated and conduct themselves in a manner that is fair to all. It is unacceptable for monopolists to infringe on peoples constitutionally protected rights. When a monopolist offers a service, they have to provide it to everyone. We can't have electric monopolists cutting power to people because they voted for the "wrong" party. We can't have banks and payment processors making it practically impossible for people to conduct commerce. Going down that path leads us to where China already is. Calling someone on the phone leads to a message about how the person is socially unacceptable and that proceeding with the call may cause you to be similarly blacklisted. Or, you just get phone access cut off. ------ adamrezich The problem with free speech on the Internet is that our human minds have not sufficiently evolved to even remotely begin to understand just how fundamentally the Internet changes our perception of our fellow humans. Dunbar's number shows that we're only able to keep track of a very small number of ongoing human relationships relative to the Internet-connected population of the planet, and at a societal level we're used to only hearing ideas from people around us, and those in published works or in mass media such as radio and television. Yet now anyone, literally anyone, can go online and proclaim whatever they want in certain online public spaces. If I walked into a local bookstore and saw a whole shelf dedicated to white supremacy, I would rightfully be appalled that it was allowed to exist, because stocking such books would reflect on the bookstore. The Internet is like a bookstore where anyone can write a book and guarantee it's stocked, and free to read, and therefore completely unlike a bookstore at all. Yet we tend to think of online discussion platforms in these terms because the idea of a true online free speech platform where only content that is Actually Illegal is taken down and reported to the authorities accordingly is still incredibly foreign to us at a societal level. Someone who's never used the Internet and never met any (for example) white supremacists in their lives may go online for the first time and see an active discussion among white supremacists taking place, and this causes cognitive dissonance: "I've never met a single white supremacist in my life, yet here's _dozens_ of them, virtually congregating and discussing their racist viewpoints! What the hell is happening? Is the Internet full of racists?" Humans are terrible at comprehending numbers on the scale of "the number of Internet-connected users in the world," so it's hard to understand "the proportion of vocal white supremacists online compared to the total number of people using the Internet in the world is just about as small as you previously thought it was" when they're given the same equal voice as everyone else. There's no easy solution to this. Unless a massive societal shift in understanding how the Internet works and fits into modern human society happens, "safe" yet censored platforms like Twitter will always be more popular with normal users compared to "true free speech" havens like Gab, and generally-offensive extremist viewpoints will congregate on services like the latter after being kicked off of services like the former, making services like the latter a hard sell to people who don't hold extremist viewpoints themselves, in spite of the promise of unrestricted free speech. It's been wild seeing the increase of people openly advocating _against_ unfiltered free speech on the Internet as the Internet has gotten popular with the rise of smartphones, to the point where some people seem to consider "free speech" a "talking point" or "dogwhistle" of "the other side." Until the singularity happens and we become one global consciousness and ascend to a higher plane of being, we're never going to have uniform beliefs as individual members of our species, and people with offensively extremist views will always exist. Silencing their views on a given platform out of a sense of righteousness and justice may feel good but solves nothing. You cannot change peoples' minds or eliminate ideas by making them illegal or against platform policy to express. Once you acknowledge and internalize this, browsing the Internet and occasionally coming across extremist opinions becomes a lot easier to grapple with. ~~~ stcredzero _The problem with free speech on the Internet is that our human minds have not sufficiently evolved to even remotely begin to understand just how fundamentally the Internet changes our perception of our fellow humans._ Douglas Adams understood. (Babelfish) ~~~ YouAreGreat > our human minds have not sufficiently evolved They're also not evolved to deal with TV news. ~~~ stcredzero Hell, I don't think we're all that good with distorted print media either! ------ SideburnsOfDoom > We run the risk that the act of deplatforming can become as extreme as the > hate speech it seeks to banish. So, they're saying "I won't help your speech reach millions" runs the risk of being as bad as encouraging the idea that "all $ethnics must die" \- speech which as very real and deadly consequences. I don't know where to even with that. Someone has not though it through at all. Is the rest worth reading? ------ cauwelaert People should have a chance to speak their mind but in an ideal world decency would prohibit some things from being said. It's dangerous when certain platforms who coordinate with government agencies decide what is acceptable and what is not. I'm not ready for a ministry of truth like snoopes. ------ InclinedPlane Read this instead: [https://datasociety.net/output/oxygen-of- amplification/](https://datasociety.net/output/oxygen-of-amplification/) ------ wstuartcl Freedom of speech is a right provided by the constitution. Me, You or privately held platform(s) providing the venue for that speech is not. Just like I will not be allowing GAB like speech from my properties, I will also look poorly upon anyone else hosting that garbage. ~~~ neuralk >Freedom of speech is a right provided by the constitution No, it is not. It explicitly is not. Freedom of speech is one right among many other unstated rights held in common by the people. The first amendment merely prohibits Congress from passing a law that restricts it. The wording is clear that this freedom is something that exists inherently beyond the scope of the Constitution, and is certainly not "provided" by the document. We naturally have rights such as freedom of speech. It is from institutions like the government that restrictions are placed on them. Also, the 9th amendment was included precisely to clarify and codify the fact that the Constitution, in enumerating the rights, is not itself granting those rights or even stating that these are the only rights people have. ~~~ tptacek The 9th Amendment does not mean that Twitter must allow your speech. In fact, at the time the 9th Amendment was drafted, it didn't even require _the states_ to grant you a right to free expression; that right wasn't incorporated onto the states until Reconstruction. So, no, not so much. ~~~ dragonwriter > that right wasn't incorporated onto the states until Reconstruction. Much later, actually; while the Supreme Court grounded incorporation in the Due Process clause of the 14th Amendment, which was part of Reconstruction, the doctrine of incorporation was articulated and developed in the 20th Century, starting, IIRC, with _Gitlow v. New York_ in 1925. ------ mlillie This reeks of both-sides-ism and enablement. "Where does it stop?" is the same slippery slope garbage peddled by #HimToo and #BlueLivesMatter acolytes. But even engaging with the question at face value, the answer is very simple, and the author of this piece didn't try very hard if he couldn't find someone who is able to answer it. In fact, the best answer was given by Karl Popper in 1945. > In order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must be intolerant of > intolerance. That's it. Platforms like Gab are themselves intolerant, and we must continue to be intolerant of them. ~~~ stcredzero _This reeks of both-sides-ism and enablement._ The whole point of Free Speech is to enable all sides of any issue to have their say. That is a fundamental mechanism against totalitarianism. _In order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must be intolerant of intolerance._ Sorry, but Karl Popper's idea is just Orwellian nightmare fuel. "War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength." Tolerance is to live and let live. Oppressing those you disagree with is the very opposite of tolerance. (Even if they are truly horrible people.) If Silicon Valley were tolerant, they'd let Gab live and possibly be a cesspit of horribleness. A society that de-platforms and un-persons everyone and every idea it doesn't like isn't a free society. That's not a free market of ideas. That's totalitarianism through economic hegemony. ~~~ archagon Totalitarianism is gaining power _right now_ through bad actors operating under the cloak of free speech. The bigger their communities get, the more they infect the communities around them with their hatred and lies. This should be blindingly obvious if you’ve been online for more than a couple of years. Your mechanism against totalitarianism will lead you straight into a dictatorship. ~~~ BurningFrog This is the "fascism is infectious" theory, under which we are all potential fascists if we just get exposed to the "infection". By this theory fascism is somehow so inherently attractive that is has to be regulated similar to an addictive drug. ~~~ archagon People are surprisingly easy to reprogram. You can read countless stories of once-liberal parents turning into hateful conspiracy nuts in their old age out of prolonged exposure to right-wing media. If you see people around you saying “white males are undergoing a genocide” or “brown people are criminals” every day, chances are you’ll eventually start to internalize some of those talking points. Without tremendous effort, we’re nothing more than a rough aggregation of the opinions we surround ourselves with. ~~~ philwelch > People are surprisingly easy to reprogram. Not you, though. No way could YOU be under the influence of a totalitarian ideology despite the fact that you are _openly advocating restricting basic human rights_. ~~~ archagon I am advocating the right for private organizations to ban fucked-up ideologies from their services. That this is being framed as some sort of totalitarian assault on free speech shows just how far the right-wing rot has gotten. The balance fallacy will be the death of democracy in America. ~~~ ThrowawayR2 > _I am advocating the right for private organizations to ban fucked-up > ideologies from their service._ Can we start with yours? /s This has nothing to do with "right-wing rot". We already have ample historical examples of what happens when those wielding power, whether religious, royal, or financial, can suppress views and speech and it wasn't a good thing! The Enlightenment and the birth of the liberal movement (now classical liberalism, I suppose) were in reaction to those abuses and they fought many hard battles to get us the rights we enjoy today. It would be insane to throw that away for a little temporary advantage. ~~~ archagon You're speaking as if these groups are working to amend the Constitution. It's a ridiculous comparison. Worse yet, all this anger is a massive distraction. We should be talking day and night about the rampant voter suppression and e-voting security flaws that _do_ actually pose an existential threat to our democracy. But no, let's just focus all our attention on Gab for weeks on end. ~~~ ThrowawayR2 > _We should be talking day and night about the rampant voter suppression and > e-voting security flaws that do actually pose an existential threat to our > democracy._ In that much, at least, I will agree with you. ------ throwawaysea Why is this article being flagged? From [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) > If a story is spam or off-topic, flag it. This story is not spam, and it is not off-topic since it clearly relates to current news in technology. ~~~ hcg People flag controversy because they want to avoid flame wars and this place devolving into political discussion constantly. ------ happilycentrist In my other writings, I've touched on how these tech companies compromise their stability and reliability when they engage in witch-burning campaigns. For example - once upon a time, I could trust the google search engine, g-mail and the chrome browser. I recommended them to other people, and utilized them myself. But now, I can't in good faith steer folks to any google property, because they run the risk of losing access to their data. Today it's fashionable to cut off GAB, what will the moral panic of tomorrow be? Another example - I used Pay-pal weekly to make purchases and send money to people and causes I supported. But after PayPal began denying service based on what keeps the outrage mob mollified, I've closed my account and have been helping website operating on the dissident right to transition away from a system that might deny them service on a fit of whimsy. Paypal, like so many other platforms, has become too unreliable to be a single point of failure. All of these institutions were, until the last few years, treated like utilities - which bolstered their reputation for reliability. But now, so many of these giant Near-Monopolies have decided to become overtly political, denying their services without any manner of due process or even a reasonable amount of notice to the people being cast off. This damages the brand reliability, and where once customers could rely on their Registrar, Host, or Payment Processor, they now must consider it imperative to have redundant systems - lest they risk having their service cut because they suddenly find themselves on the bad side of "the fashionable opinion" of the hour. (Goal- posts that move by the hour, and today's cleric of the faith can easily find themselves tomorrow heretic). A high-trust business environment is required to maintain the sorts of business relationships a content creator enters into with a platform/host/registrar. The fact is, as it stands now, no content creator, business or group can trust these tech-corporations to maintain a stable relationship - or even adhere to a basic contract - in good faith. Once a company - like PayPal for instance - has proven itself unreliable, it has already done half the work of replacing itself. ------ StuntPope Article flagged. Nice. Love the tolerance and receptiveness to discussion here. ------ wisty While Americans seem obsessed with defining "free speech" as being exactly the same thing as the 1st Amendment, it might help to ask exactly why the 1st Amendment is a good idea. JS Mill argued that censorship is wrong on a rights basis, that it leads to bad ideas being unchallenged, and it leads to people not being able to understand the reason why ideas are rejected. If censorship by a government is harmful, how is deplatforming by a near-monopoly different? I suspect some left-wingers argue this in a hypocritical way, because they think it will "trigger the conservatives" to force them to attack the actions of private companies, but this is hardly a good argument. ~~~ YouAreGreat > "trigger the conservatives" to force them to attack the actions of private > companies Conservatives will come to understand that big capital is not a conservative. ~~~ wisty I'm not personally a conservative, but I'm pretty sure conservatives are not all hardcore libertarians or objectivists. Some of the intellectual brain- trust of conservative thought is libertarian or objectivist, but a lot of the broader conservative movement is not. ------ CM30 I've said it before, and I'll say it again; online platforms needed to be treated like their offline equivalents. Why can an ISP not censor traffic but a web host can? Why can the utility company or a credit card processor not 'shut down' customers they disagree with while the likes of Cloudflare or PayPal or Stripe can? There's no logic behind this. No, you can't just say 'offline stuff has a monopoly', because it doesn't. It might in some parts of the US (where choice in ISPs is limited), but it certainly doesn't in much of Europe, other parts of the US or other countries around the world. You've got multiple choices for banks and building societies, multiple choices for electric companies and multiple choices for ISPs, yet we're sane and don't let them discriminate by political views at will. It's time similar standards were set up for online services too. If you market yourself as a platform or network or service that should be morally neutral, then you should be obligated to act that way, just like your offline equivalents generally do. There should always be a way to host a platform for your views, no matter how many people hate them and you in the process. Google and Apple should also be looked into in regards to their app stores too. They're defacto monopolies on their platforms (unless you jailbreak them), and their standards for what's 'acceptable' are clearly broken and biased to all hell. Apparently something like Gab isn't allowed, but dozens of copyright/trademark/whatever infringing ripoffs are? It's fine for apps to ripoff consumers and target kids with exploitative in app purchases but not provide a platform for 'questionable' views? Yeah, that doesn't add up much, and it's clear they're falling short as both a platform and a publisher. Finally, something should definitely be done about the whole 'contact their employer and try and get them fired' crap. I'm not really sure what, but there should be a legal way to stop people trying to screw over people's livelihoods based on online disagreements. Maybe an actual ban on contacting someone's employer/company/coworkers unless it's about illegal activity? I don't know, anything I can think of seems like it'd hurt freedom of speech more in the attempt to save it. But something does need to change, before the laws basically become ineffective and trial by media/mob becomes the judge, jury and executioner. ~~~ TheAceOfHearts Unfortunately, credit card processors can and do deny services to people with which they disagree. To give one example: you can't use any mainstream payment processors for anything related to pornography. Also, on Android you can run alternative app stores without having to "jailbreak" the phone. One example of this is f-droid [0]. You just need to change a single configuration option to allow installing APKs from third-party sources. Fortnite is an example of a popular Android game which you have to download and install outside of the Play Store, presumably because they don't want to pay for the large cut that Google normally takes. I think domain name registrars should probably be treated like utilities, although I'd have to think it through very carefully to consider any consequences. I'm generally in agreement that platforms should be neutral, otherwise they should be treated as publishers and be forced to deal with the consequences. It sets a poor precedent when rules are not enforced evenly. [0] [https://f-droid.org/](https://f-droid.org/) ~~~ amanaplanacanal Are there any platforms that are still neutral? It seems like reality has shown those that tried to be, that really, they can't. Spam takes over your email, hostile ads take over your advertising space, trolls take over your forums. Maybe there is some way around this, but I have no idea what it might be. ------ Krasnol > The next challenger to Twitter will not be another centralized platform like > Gab. It will be decentralized – perhaps a federation like Mastodon, where > each node runs its own CoC and community standards – similar to IRC days. You might want to ask Wil Wheaton what he thinks about Mastodon... ~~~ mmirate Why is some random actor's opinion unusually important, let alone on a technical topic such as this? ~~~ Krasnol Because what happened to him is relevant to the topic.

We have bought followers fo $5 and discovered 15M botnet on Twitter - investjtravolta http://sadbottrue.com/article/15/ ====== MichaelGG 15M is nearly 5% of Twitter's active users, or all the growth they've had in 2015. Assuming these bots are "active". ~~~ marak830 If it's true, I wonder what effect it will have on the value of Twitter(I do assume this isn't the only one). If it turns out half the use base is made out of bots or non-active registered users that is. ------ DougN7 Besides these 'obvious' bots, there are more that have humans in control, but which the humans never read tweets, they just post them. I would bet, though have no data, that there is a large percentage of these 'post-only' accounts. Not sure if they should be called bots or not... ------ imaginenore $1M from 15M fake accounts is rather low. 6.67 cents per account. Isn't it easier and much more profitable to fake click ads at such scales? Also getting 15M fake accounts means getting 15M fake emails, which isn't cheap: [https://buyaccs.com/en/](https://buyaccs.com/en/) ~~~ ryanlol >Also getting 15M fake accounts means getting 15M fake emails, which isn't cheap Unless you create them yourself, which seems rather logical if you're in the account creation business anyway. ------ ikeboy So you spent $40,000 to reveal those bots? All to write a short blog post? Am I missing something? ~~~ marak830 I think that's how much it would cost or the full amount. I do think they spent $400 though. Very weirdly written article.

How the Feds Took Down the Silk Road Drug Wonderland - hepha1979 http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/11/silk-road/ ====== belorn If this has not been posted before, its good to see that all the worries about the tor protocol can be laid to rest. They did not identify the server by some advanced technical hacks against tor. They used simple basic police methods and arrested an administrator with the use of an undercover agent posing as a drug seller. The administrator purchased a kilo of cocaine, and by doing so, gave his home address to the undercover agent. After interrogation, they gained user credentials that even included DPR's private messages. This could have easily been a episode script for the wire. ~~~ bediger4000 If simple, basic police methods sufficed here, then why the massive dragnet surveillance the rest of us are caught up in? Either (a) the dragnet surveillance isn't doing what it's supposed to or (b) there's another reason for the spying. And yes, I could be accused of whipping on the NSA no matter what, that in my view, they're damned if they do, and damned if they don't. So what? Even if I don't have "standing", and the NSA is doing "legal" things, and the 3 Prong Test for Violations of Privacy hasn't been met, the NSA is still doing things that until recently were considered grossly unamerican, a violation of the principles that made the USA different than commie Russia. ~~~ nitid_name You're forgetting: (c) parallel construction lead to the "simple police work" success. It possible that this wasn't such a cut and dry case of police work, and instead the police were handed leads that came from the NSA work. ~~~ belorn The differential factor of an conspiracy theory, and a plausible event is the matter of indicating clues. In this case, there is not a single indicating factor to point towards the conspiracy theory of parallel construction, so why should it be considered? An other equally plausible would be that the silk road was a false flag operation, run by a undercover unit. Nothing points in that direction either, but hey, it "could be" right? ~~~ aliakbarkhan I think you're too quick to dismiss the possibility. The point of parallel construction is that the police construct a plausible (and, more importantly, legal) means of finding the evidence that they used in an investigation that masks its true, illegal origin. More importantly, unlike false flags -- where the only "evidence" for their use is the ravings of conspiracy theorists and some internal suggestions by government officials in the 60's -- parallel construction is a technique that we know the government uses by their own admission. From Reuters ([http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/05/us-dea-sod- idUSBRE...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/05/us-dea-sod- idUSBRE97409R20130805)): > The undated documents show that federal agents are trained to "recreate" the > investigative trail to effectively cover up where the information > originated, a practice that some experts say violates a defendant's > Constitutional right to a fair trial. [...] > After an arrest was made, agents then pretended that their investigation > began with the traffic stop, not with the SOD tip, the former agent said. > The training document reviewed by Reuters refers to this process as > "parallel construction." > The two senior DEA officials, who spoke on behalf of the agency but only on > condition of anonymity, said the process is kept secret to protect sources > and investigative methods. "Parallel construction is a law enforcement > technique we use every day," one official said. "It's decades old, a bedrock > concept." > A dozen current or former federal agents interviewed by Reuters confirmed > they had used parallel construction during their careers. Most defended the > practice; some said they understood why those outside law enforcement might > be concerned. > "It's just like laundering money - you work it backwards to make it clean," > said Finn Selander, a DEA agent from 1991 to 2008 and now a member of a > group called Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, which advocates legalizing > and regulating narcotics. Given how they talk about parallel construction, it certainly sounds like it's not an uncommon technique, so do you think it's so implausible? I'm not going to say they did or didn't use it, because the simple fact is that I don't know, but given that "Parallel construction is a law enforcement technique we use every day" that is "decades old, a bedrock concept," it doesn't seem too implausible that they would use it in such a high profile and important case. ~~~ belorn One should not quickly to dismiss the possibility. Especially, one should keep a eye out since the proof of parallel construction as a tool is indeed verifiable true. But in the mean time, one should not jump to it directly when more simpler explanations are available. Using undercover cops to entrap drug sellers is even older, and even more common method than parallel construction. It also extremely simple and effective. I would also suspect, that entrapping a first time offender, an 47 year old administrator who sells drugs anonymously on-line from his home, to not be very hard. Especially if the undercover cop could impersonate flawlessly established "trusted" drug sellers by taking over their accounts, as it seems to be in this case. All points toward parallel construction as an something that might had been, but in this case, is less likely to actually have happened. ------ tptacek _Investigators staged the torture and killing — which included mock waterboarding according to officials — and sent Dread Pirate Roberts about half a dozen pictures, including photos depicting what they said was his corpse._ So much for the absolutely inane "it was all a face-saving ruse" theory of the murder-for-hire scheme. ~~~ MichaelGG I think that "face-saving ruse" was in relation to the second "hit", which sounded incredibly implausible. Someone says they need $500K and blackmails DPR, then the creditor shows up and is willing to kill the blackmailer for 20% of that? Yeah, OK. The details on the first "hit" weren't known before, were they? And it still doesn't invalidate the logic behind it some people were proposing: _Given the prior that the USG will do harm to SR users and dealers_ , is it less harm to kill one person that is going to give information to the USG? (Again, that logic only works if you take the assumption that the USG is acting immorally and will impose a large amount of suffering onto many others.) ~~~ tptacek It freaks me out that anyone would believe that any amount of message board political bullshit could justify murder. But I bet you're right. ~~~ MichaelGG Murder is justified for all sorts of reasons. IIRC, the US was founded on a base of murdering people over disputes on taxes and government. Treason was (or is?) punishable by death. I'm not sure why message board political bullshit is intrinsically less valid than "official" government or LE reasons. Additionally, most people believe lethal force is justified in cases of defense. It's not a huge jump of logic to view these hits as defense. ~~~ georgemcbay "Additionally, most people believe lethal force is justified in cases of defense. It's not a huge jump of logic to view these hits as defense." uh, wat? The dude was a drug dealer protecting his criminal empire. If I'm robbing a bank and shoot a cop who is going to shoot me, is that also defense? So I should be charged for the original crime but not for killing the cop? Because that's pretty much what your argument sounds like to me. ~~~ MichaelGG I'm not saying he's right and not criminally liable for his actions. I'm just questioning why people are so confused as to why this is justifiable, in some peoples' opinions. As to the specific example: If someone is trying to shoot you, no one would wonder why you shoot back. The bank robber would be held responsible because it's his action of robbing the bank that started the whole mess. If you were sitting peacefully in your home, and someone broke down the door and started firing, you'd be quite justified in returning fire. (Even legally, depending on state, AFAIK.) Folks sympathetic to DPR are more likely to view him in the second category. He was peacefully minding his own business running a marketplace when someone threatened him, his buyers, and his vendors. These folks are likely to view access to medicines as a moral action, and thus DPR and people involved with SR to be people doing the right thing, despite an oppressive government ------ jdmitch This seemed a bit worrying: _Federal agents say the use of Tor and Bitcoin were major obstacles for them and that investigating the site was “uncharted territory” that involved a reversal of their usual investigative methods. Instead of starting with probable cause against a specific suspect who is already identified and then obtaining a search warrant to collect more evidence, the investigation of Silk Road involved collecting evidence from the site first and then trying to identify individuals._ Sure it is "uncharted territory" in terms of the technology for maintaining anonymous identities, but shouldn't most investigations start with evidence of the crime and an empirical investigation into who could have committed it, rather than starting with suspects and trying to link them with the crime? Maybe I am naive, but sounds like dodgy criminal investigation methodology to me... ~~~ saraid216 > shouldn't most investigations start with evidence of the crime and an > empirical investigation into who could have committed it, rather than > starting with suspects and trying to link them with the crime? This might surprise you, but there are very often situations where the police and the public are remarkably aware of the facts of the crimes being committed, but unable to do anything about it. Drugs fall into this category. Everyone knows that "that's where the deals go down" and "that's where they count the money", but that's only because we're not completely stupid. Proving direct culpability, on the other hand, is an entirely different story, as is proving the culpability of people who matter. (Street level dealers, for instance, are pretty interchangeable: one gets shot, you get someone else to do his job. Ain't no thing.) If you find a druggie on a corner, it's not exactly a stretch of the imagination to recognize he's probably guilty of possession. It's also sort of pointless to prosecute him, since the actual issue you're fighting is lots of people _taking_ particular drugs, which means what you care about are the people _managing_ the city-wide operation. You want evidence of that crime? That's also the druggie on the corner. Half of whom can tell you exactly who it is who manages the city-wide operation. None of which are willing to take the witness stand to accuse him in a court of law. Because he knows that he goes right back to that corner the next day and not only does he no longer have someone bringing him drugs, but he's also get a bullet in his head for the trouble. If you want a visceral primer, watch _The Wire_. ~~~ WildUtah _the actual issue you 're fighting is lots of people taking particular drugs, which means what you care about are the people managing the city-wide operation_ That is a complete non sequitur. Actually, if you really want people to stop using drugs, arresting and imprisoning users is the single most effective technique yet known. It's especially effective against the middle class white population that consumes most drugs in the USA, but it works against poor minorities and addicts, also. And if you want to stop dealers, arresting and imprisoning retail dealers is the most effective technique. It clears the ones that work in public or sell to strangers out quite quickly. Arresting the kingpins or traffickers is totally ineffective at reducing drug use or reducing drug availability. If reducing public harm were a priority, the kingpins and traffickers could be ignored. Once the users and retailers are imprisoned, the bosses are out of business, anyway. And if you do catch the kingpins and traffickers, your efforts are completely ineffectual. There are always more kingpins in line to get rich quickly and easily. Decades of police targeting kingpins has only seen increases in drug availability. In fact, the faster you turn them over, the more violent the whole business becomes. The reason police agencies target kingpins and traffickers is because the purpose of the war on drugs, from the point of view of police administration, is to seize cash to fund police operations. There is no law enforcement justification for such a policy, merely an agency budgeting justification. ~~~ saraid216 > That is a complete non sequitur. Agreed. I'm not remotely a fan of the war on drugs or its consequences for the prison-industrial complex or the militarization of the police. The real root is really shitty legislation based on shitty moralizations based on shitty philosophical grounds, the absurd nature of how the police are funded, and the ridiculous political reality of law enforcement offices. It's such a multifaceted problem that I'm unwilling to try to tackle it myself. But all of this was just a handy example for why wishing for an "empirical investigation" is not necessarily the right way to go about things. ------ Xeroday I wonder how much of this was actually parallel reconstruction vs "investigative research" ~~~ tptacek How exactly would parallel construction have helped here? To effect a search, with or without "parallel construction", you have to have probable cause. ~~~ bandushrew the entire _point_ of parallel construction is to construct a legal explanation for the presence of data needed for the conviction. ie, I would use illegal means to obtain proof that you have convicted a crime, then I would use parallel construction to provide a legal explanation for how I obtained the proof. iee, parallel construction is what they use when they did not have probable cause. I am having trouble believing that you do not understand that? what am I missing? ~~~ tptacek You're having trouble because you are incorrect about how parallel construction works. Parallel construction is not the Orwellian term for simply "coming up with a bullshit story about where you got your evidence when it in fact came from NSA". Instead, it is the Orwellian term for "coming up with the complicated story of what precise piece of unrelated probable cause enabled you to effect a search that was motivated by evidence that came from NSA". Notice that the latter definition includes some notion of some kind of probable cause. The NSA is not PC in a "parallel construction" scenario. ~~~ bandushrew ok, I do understand the distinction you are making. I am not sure how you are so confident that the NSA was not at all involved in this capture, and that parallel construction was therefore entirely unnecessary. When reading that article, and various other sources, one thing that stands out is that even after arresting an administrator - which did lead to various other arrests - they still had no direct link or identification for Ulbricht. Ulbricht was careful enough that although the police were apparently communicating directly with him, and arresting a number of others that were more directly involved, there was no way for them to locate or identify him. Note, that this remains true even after he believes that one of his contacts has murdered someone on his behalf. He maintains the firewall between himself and that contact. Frankly, that is fairly impressive, he must have been a careful man. Suddenly they find a link buried in the forever webs between a nickname he uses and his actual name and bingo, they have him. Now, it entirely could have gone down like that. It is completely plausible. Most likely the link was there all along, just waiting for someone to stumble on it. BUT, that is rather the point of parallel construction, isn't it? to bridge the gap between the information they have and the information that they can present in court, in a totally plausible way. I am not claiming the truth to be one way or the other, who knows (hell, who cares in this case), but I am claiming that to disregard the possibility and maintain that it is absurd is to ignore the fact of parallel construction and the fact of its frequent use. ------ ChuckMcM Sounds like a police thriller novel. That said, and BitCoin hitting an all time high, is it even possible to convert BitCoin into dollars any more? I note that the article says the agents seized over two million dollars from the Mt GOX founder [1]. So given how many btc to dollar exchanges have been targeted how does that work now? Western Union or something? [1] "The seizures included $2.9 million from a Dwolla account that was controlled by a U.S. subsidiary of Mt. Gox and $2.1 million seized from two Wells Fargo accounts, one controlled by the same subsidiary, the other by Mt. Gox CEO Mark Karpeles." ~~~ Synaesthesia Yes, it's easy to convert Bitcoin to USD. You can sell them at Coinbase, Bitstamp, LocalBitcoins and all kinds of other exchanges. ------ etler Wow, this is the funniest thing I've read all week!

The Story of the Apollo Guidance Computer, Part 1 - sohkamyung https://www.universetoday.com/142897/the-story-of-the-apollo-guidance-computer-part-1/ ====== sohkamyung Part 2 at [1], Part 3 at [2] [1] [https://www.universetoday.com/143102/the-story-of-the- apollo...](https://www.universetoday.com/143102/the-story-of-the-apollo- guidance-computer-part-2/) [2] [https://www.universetoday.com/143113/the-story-of-the- apollo...](https://www.universetoday.com/143113/the-story-of-the-apollo- guidance-computer-part-3/)

State of Startups - ValG http://stateofstartups.firstround.com/2016/ ====== GrumpyNl “One of the problems with raising money is it teaches you bad habits from the start,” said Jason Fried, the co-founder of the software company Basecamp, who has written frequently on the perversions of the venture capital industry. “If you’re an entrepreneur and you have a bunch of money in the bank, you get good at spending money.” But if companies are forced to generate revenue from the beginning, “what you get really good at is making money,” Mr. Fried said. “And that’s a much better habit for a business to work on early on, to survive on their own rather than be dependent on money people.” ~~~ justinzollars I've worked at startups that have taken no money (0) and those that have taken boat loads (Hundreds of Millions). I made much more money from the former situation. ------ pascalxus The 2 biggest reasons start ups fail are: 1\. No/not enough market demand for what your building 2\. User acquisition costs exceed LTV. Those 2 things should be the very top concern of any software entrepreneur/founders. I don't understand why the survey doesn't reflect that. They say hiring good talent is a primary concern, but if that were really the case, wouldn't start ups be moving to cities where the labor supply was greater than the labor demand? And wouldn't there be a corresponding willingness to hire remote workers (as this greatly increases the pool of candidates)? Moving to an area where labor is 1/2 as cheap, could double your runway, assuming there aren't other timed restraints. >Nearly 1 in 5 founders say they're raising a unicorn This is not necessarily optimism. some companies require that kind of scale in order to get the economies of scale required for profitability. ------ nedsma I love this one: How confident are you that you're building a billion dollar company? Answers: 1\. I'm certain that we will - 18% 2\. I'm confident we have a decent shot at it - 42% Thumbs up for the optimism! ~~~ porter Well, they are telling this to VCs afterall... ~~~ kornish Recently on a John Oliver segment, Oliver was speculating on how Trump University received 98% excellent approval ratings from current students. Turns out that the students were asked to give feedback while still enrolled in the course, meaning that giving a bad review could negatively influence their grade or relationship with the teachers, and thus the students were motivated to give more positive answers than they otherwise might have. I wonder if founders giving answers here had names attached to their answers or if they were anonymous at submission-time. ~~~ tedmiston That's how every university course evaluation I've ever done has worked. Though they say data is shielded from the instructor until after final grades are submitted. Not sure if that applies to the Trump thing. ------ benmarten Are we in a bubble answered yes is declining from 73% -> 57%. That means the real probability of being in a bubble just increased ;P Remember the 2008 crisis was only seen by very few in advance... ------ EduardoBautista > 9\. Are you optimizing for growth or profitability? > Profitability - 39% > Growth - 61% This is what happens when your business goal is to get acquired and not to have a business sustained by paying customers. ~~~ pc86 Well this is one of the few but key differences between a "startup" and a "business." A business that isn't profitable is either a hobby or a bad idea. A startup that isn't growing is dead. Personally I'd rather make $5/10/15/25k a month with a _business_ than kill myself trying to get millions in funding, pay myself a $10k/mo in salary and leave with nothing through either failure, dilution or some combination thereof. ~~~ rsp1984 Given that you can make $5/10/15/25k a month with a cushy 9-5 corporate job where everything's taken care of for you, in most cases the choice is not small-business vs. startup, it's corporate job vs. startup. The "lifestyle" self-running company that spits out a comfortable amount of cash and is easier to handle than a corporate job is somewhere between a myth and a unicorn. It's _very_ rare. If you want to stay on the legal side of things it takes a great amount of connections, experience, time and effort to build such a company. You might as well invest that time in a "proper" startup and get some funding. Chances of success will be similar in the end. ~~~ WhitneyLand I don't notice that many people making 15/25k a month that think their jobs are cushy. There are usually high expectations at that level. ------ vsloo There's a disconnect between founders who want to build a startup and founders who want to build a business. They think the two are the same but they're really not and this study clearly shows that. There are situations where startups turn into businesses but I'd rather build a profitable business for myself from the start and our team than to build a startup purely focused on "growth". ~~~ monkmartinez I am very disconnected from the "startup" world, and something in your comment has me asking: What is the difference between a startup and a business? To me, they ought to be one in the same... ~~~ GFischer Paul Graham (and Y Combinator I guess) believe that the difference is the goals. _A startup is a company designed to grow fast._ PG, 2012 [http://www.paulgraham.com/growth.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/growth.html) [http://www.forbes.com/sites/natalierobehmed/2013/12/16/what-...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/natalierobehmed/2013/12/16/what- is-a-startup/#6b2321f14c63) _a startup is a company designed to scale very quickly_ Steve Blank believes a startup is determined by the search of a business model. If you have a business model, then you have a small or new company, not a startup. [https://steveblank.com/2014/03/04/why-companies-are-not- star...](https://steveblank.com/2014/03/04/why-companies-are-not-startups/) ~~~ angersock Quite right. Another distinction worth making, almost its own axis really, is the difference between "a tech business" and "a business that uses tech". Companies like Cisco, Facebook, Apple, Google, Canonical, and so forth are companies that are tech companies--without their technology, they wouldn't be in business at all. They provide a service or product that is IP in its own right. Companies like Chipotle, Subway, Uber, Lyft, AirBNB, DoorDash, Dollar Shave Club, and so forth are companies that use tech to achieve economies of scale and growth that wouldn't be as easy otherwise but could still be done. You can imagine a way of making something that to the user is substantially like the Uber today without a complicated backend, even just using call centers and massive dispatch. The key part of their business is part-time contractor drivers, which is a business and not tech innovation. It's easy to assume that all startups are tech startups, but that's not quite true and it also can limit and slow developing a good business model. ~~~ pzh But then, can't you make the same analogy for early stage Google--basically, a big marketing firm that manually places ads in the yellow pages? Similarly, Facebook can also be executed over a phone system ("Press 1 to hear your friends' updates, press 2 to post an update...") I'm not sure there's such a strong distinction between a tech business and a business that uses tech nowadays. ~~~ angersock Google's core beginning was PageRank (under license from Stanford), without which it would've been no better than similar offerings at the time. Additionally, their approach to setting up their equipment and making use of cheap gear and managing said cheap gear probably gave them a leg up...something they still do today at scale. So, no, you can't really make that analogy. Facebook was a tech company specifically, and not a company using tech, because the entire product was devoted to rapidly filling social profiles and spinning up the microsites that were user accounts, mining those accounts for information, and then integrating as a platform for advertisers and game developers. None of that tech is really stuff they could've outsourced and still had a business--they couldn't have just white-labeled MySpace for example and gotten away with it. ------ coldcode Did anyone else find the constant shifting colors irritating? ~~~ Etheryte Yes! Closed the page as soon as I figured out what was going on. ~~~ Kiro That seems like an extreme reaction to be honest. ------ aedron Interesting answers on lack of gender diversity in IT: Most of the men believe the reason is that there just aren't that many women entering the field, while almost all the women blame bias at various stages of education, hiring and promotion. Someone has a cognitive dissonance. ~~~ whoops1122 there were less than 5 girls on my computer science class, so unless woman are claim that they should have the job without education. I can totally see the reason why there is a gender diversity in IT? ~~~ beat Why is a computer science background necessary for an IT career? I know many, many IT professionals who did not study CS in college. ~~~ ci5er "IT Professionals" is a broad label. Maybe we can think of getting a 'degree in a field' as a proxy-variable for 'interest in the field'. What's astonishing to me is through the 60s, 70's and into the mid-80s, computer-tech interest in female cohorts tracked with science, law and medical fields. Then it flattened and fell, while female participation in those other three fields continued to expand at the rates they had before. (So, what happened in 1985?) ~~~ rrdharan This Planet Money episode attempted to tackle that question: [http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-...](http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when- women-stopped-coding) Their tl;dr answer is that video games happened, and they were marketed exclusively to boys; that's what created and drove the cultural rift. ~~~ ci5er Thanks for that link. My original sighting of the phenomena used the exact same graph, but made no attempt at being explanatory. I have since then, been searching, but failed to re-find a copy of that graph to stick into my files. Now, thanks you you, I have! Thanks! ------ codingdave State of Venture-backed Startups. Just to be clear. It is a specific subset of the larger startup picture. ~~~ tedmiston This really depends on your definition of a "startup" vs small business, lifestyle business, etc. ~~~ codingdave I guess that is technically true, but if anyone who is NOT a VC is buying into the idea that VC backing is the only valid definition of a startup... you have drunk too much of the kool-aid. ~~~ tedmiston I would say they more just look at it as an easy filter. While there will be some false negatives, you have very few to none false positives i.e., venture- backed companies that turn out to be non-startups but don't close or exit. The example that comes to mind that breaks this is the failing startup turned dev shop in attempt to revive the startup pattern. ------ traviswingo Oh yeah, startup founders with venture backing aren't biased about this topic... ------ gnicholas > And it only gets less balanced with time. Among respondents' companies, the > boards of later-stage startups are almost three times less likely to have a > woman on their board. If later-stage companies are older (probably correlated, but not perfectly), then this could be a function of the year in which the boards were created. There's more of a push for diverse boards now than there was 3 years ago, so if a company got funding and formed a board back then, it's not surprising their board would look different. ------ personjerry > Now’s the time to launch companies and set sail. > Though the majority of founders say we’re in a bubble, 9 out of 10 founders > believe that it’s a good time to be starting a company. All aboard! Wow that's the worst example of sample bias I've ever seen. It betrays the fund's motives behind this post, I suppose. ------ jdavis703 I think this is a very interesting question to ask when interviewing at a startup: "If you're not successful, why do you think that will be?" And also "what leads the culture" (engineering, sales, design etc). ------ contingencies Sector spread (Q51) is very biased; perhaps the method of sourcing respondents was insufficiently broad or random. ------ misiti3780 1 out of 5 founders thinks they are raising a unicorn ? ~~~ almostarockstar 1 out of 5 founders want you to think that they think they are raising a unicorn. ------ dmark3 So 10% of startups give out more than 1% of equity to a mid-level engineer ? Perhaps this is a small sample, but it sounds odd. ~~~ brianwawok What should first and second hire get? 1 or 2% doesn't seem crazy after a seed round. ~~~ taneq Anyone who puts in sweat equity should get double digits IMO (unless the company has been around for years as a one man band, and maybe even then.) ~~~ ptero Double digit ownership usually means the person is a cofounder. This question was about engineers. ~~~ taneq ...who by definition aren't cofounders? Maybe I'm on the wrong site. O.o ~~~ brianwawok If you join BEFORE seed money, and do a bunch of work for free, you can be a cofounder. If you join AFTER seed money, and get something like a market salary, you are an engineer. The gray area is the in-between places. If you join before seed money, but only work 1 hour a week (say to help out a buddy), are you a cofounder? I would likely vote no. Or if you join AFTER seed money, but work for 75% of market rate. Or 50%. At what pay do you appear to be a cofounder vs engineer? ~~~ taneq So you're saying it _is_ a definition issue. Regardless of what work you do at a startup, you are considered a "co-founder" if you put in initial sweat equity (ie. did work for free) but an "engineer" if you only joined after the company was funded and paying wages at market rates? As for the grey area, it seems as if common-sense should prevail but sadly that doesn't always happen so you always need a contract laying out exactly what each side gets, even for volunteer work. I seem to recall a story earlier this year (can't remember the company involved) where one of the founders' friends had helped out occasionally before they got funded, then the company got funded, ended up with a fairly large valuation, and the 'friend' reappeared and claimed that they were owed a significant share of the company. ------ demonshalo sigh... Europe does not stand a fucking chance! ~~~ cbcoutinho What does this article have to do with Europe? I know First Round is based in SF, but they don't state where the startups are located - the only mention of the US is when comparing demographics of the workforce with the US itself. ~~~ demonshalo What I mean is, Europe generally does not even come close to that level of pay/compensation. So I assumed that these are US based startups. I could be wrong though. ~~~ jdavis703 Yes but you (generally) get other things like universal healthcare, free or cheap university, retirement plans, no need for a car due to proper urban planning, etc. In the US you have to shell out for all these things, paying into a private 401(k) for retirement, paying back student loan debt, paying for your health insurance etc. And these are at well funded tech firms. ~~~ discordianfish While true, that doesn't even come close to filling the gap. In Berlin "the silicon valley of Europe", as people here like to say, there are pretty much zero engineering jobs paying >$100k/year. There is some magical ceiling of around $90k/year, no matter how senior you are. This isn't only true for startups but pretty much any company. That's one of the reasons I work remote for Silicon Valley. ~~~ dx034 On the other hand, costs in SV are way higher than Berlin. Berlin has very low living costs, even compared to other European (and German) cities. With $90k/yr you probably have the same living standard as in SV with twice as much. Probably even a higher standard, with $90k/year in Germany you can afford a large appartment, eat out regularly, don't have to worry about retirement or health care. Of course living in a cheap area and being paid the salary of the high cost area is always better. But that's not specific to Berlin. ~~~ discordianfish "$90k/year in Germany you can afford a large appartment, eat out regularly, don't have to worry about retirement or health care" \- That's definitely true. But I'd argue with similar profile you can make at least 2x that in SV at which point I don't think you have to worry about those things either, even if you pay $5k/month for your apartment. ------ greenspot tl;dr because the presentation is super long. I just picked data which I find interesting and not obvious, there's much more information which I don't cover. Data is in chronological order and often aggregated to less numbers. 700 founders inside and outside of FirstRound were surveyed. \- 7 of 10 say bitcoin is overhyped \- cofounder relationship: 5% fired their cofounder, 5% are strained, 40% collegial, 28% best friends \- 13% sold secondaries \- 61% optimise on growth, rest on profitability \- 52% want to fire up to 10 people, 32% up to 50, 10% more than 50 the next 12 months \- Hardest people to hire: tech, sales and marketing leader \- 90% of mid-level engineers get <1% equity, 64% <0.4% \- Most (55%) of mid-level engineers get between $100K and $150K \- Primary drivers of company culture are tech, sales and design \- Most (43%) people leave between 6-7pm, 10% work longer than 8pm \- 75% could close a round in 4 months or less \- 78% pitched less than 20 investors \- 76% raise exactly or more compared to what they planned \- 55% expect that raising gets harder the next 12 months \- 22% of investors didn’t meet expectations \- 20% <= 30yrs, 32% older than 40yrs, rest inbetween \- Most popular sectors are enterprise, consumer, fin-tech \- 43% web, 29% mobile, 1% VR ~~~ spyspy What defines a mid-level engineer? ~~~ mi100hael I'd say someone who's not in a senior position like team lead but more than 3 years removed from college. ------ Dowwie This is a duplicate post. First post: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13080477](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13080477) ~~~ ValG Didn't see that when I posted. Usually HN catches dupes, but I posted this on mobile on the go. My bad. ~~~ Dowwie It's not on you. :) HN ought to match on dupes like this. ~~~ sctb The software allows resubmissions of stories that didn't get significant attention after enough time has past and there's no longer any hope for them. It does this so that those stories have more than one chance, which is often needed before they catch on. Sorry that it wasn't yours that did! Community members have analyzed the submission data to see if there's any way for submitters to do better than random here and it seems like there isn't.

VuePress: a fully Vue-powered static site generator - tomcam https://vuepress.vuejs.org/ ====== dang Comments moved to [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16836394](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16836394).

Sex, lies, and video games: Inside Roblox’s war on porn - car https://www.fastcompany.com/90539906/sex-lies-and-video-games-inside-roblox-war-on-porn ====== Traubenfuchs As an adult, it feels weird to say this, but it's probably the former child in me speaking: This is absolutely beautiful. It sounds like the vibrant, lawless communities no longer found on 4chan and obscure forums that are now dead. Children and teenagers finding their own way without adult supervision. If I was 15 years younger I would probably download Roblox right now. Keeping the pedos and other bad actors out is probably impossible, instead society and parenting should focus on educating children on the dangers and mitigation. Teach them not to give out personal information, not to send pictures they wouldn't want the whole world to see and not to be too trusting and they should be good. If they follow those rules, this kind of exploring and creation of (youth) culture is actually safer than anything that happens irl. Whatever happened to Second Life, where all of this should be possible without fighting censorship? ~~~ bitwize > This is absolutely beautiful. It sounds like the vibrant, lawless > communities no longer found on 4chan and obscure forums that are now dead. Leaving aside the fact that a lack of strict moderation where kids congregate is a virtual smorgasbord for pedophiles, remember that the "vibrant, lawless community" of 4chan and the like gave rise to a right-wing movement powerful enough to put Trump into office. It was Marcuse's repressive tolerance being played out before our eyes. An increasingly censored and regulated internet is inevitable, _for the good of civilization_. ~~~ jimmygrapes I am sure this goes against HN rules, but I found your comment particularly disgusting. Just wanted you to know.

Mega Man for TempleOS - robertelder https://github.com/tramplersheikhs/megaman ====== LVB Whenever I watch one of Terry's videos, I get highly motivated to program. Not read a blog post comparing frameworks, or a debate about some programming idiom, or even designing some larger project. But literally type stuff into a computer and make things appear on the screen. It is remarkable how watching his TempleOS videos uncovers the fascination I had of computers from my youth, 30 years ago. ~~~ runeks You've got me curious. Who's Terry? And where can I see one of his videos? ~~~ pkd One should probably add a trigger warning. He is schizophrenic and not quite himself at times, especially in the comments. Not to take away from his technical feats. ~~~ dajohnson89 I think it's worth being specific here -- he uses the word "nigger" frequently and regularly makes other nasty comments about black people and other minorities. ~~~ panglott When I've seen his website in the past, the crazy religious stuff has always been there, which I can look past, but now it seems like the crazy racist stuff is way way more prominent, which I just cannot. ~~~ dajohnson89 Completely agreed. I understand that he's mentally ill, and I wish him all the best in that regard. But I can't help but see him as just another racist hick. Super cool project he has, but I want nothing to do with him or anything he works on. ~~~ ng12 Do you understand what schizophrenia entails? If it makes you uncomfortable that's one thing, belittling him as a "racist hick" is another. ~~~ dajohnson89 See my post below. He is a racist hick, who happens to be ill. If that's "another" thing, then so be it. Don't really care which came first. I will not let racists duck undercover of his illness. I stop short of being genuinely​ upset at him, but hate speech is hate speech. Since he has a large-ish audience, his ideas are becoming part of culture. Agree with him or defend him or apologize for his racism all you wish -- you are kinda/sorta part of the problem. ~~~ ng12 What an absolutely absurd opinion. I really don't think you appreciate the manifestation of schizophrenia. Would you feel the same about someone suffering from Tourette's for swearing in front of a child? The guy believes lots of crazy things: men in suits are after him, aliens put things in his body, that he has conversations with god about music, etc. He translates random number generators into ASCII attempting to divine messages from god. He writes long-winded nonsensical rants jumping from detailed technical dissertations to rambling about old war movies. Schizophrenia literally means "split mind" \-- ideas, concepts, hallucinations attack his brain and he has no basis for dispelling which are grounded in reality and which are not. It's the biological equivalent of radio interference or a loose wire. A large chunk of the things he writes are unintelligible. Yes, people focus on his work, because it's pretty amazing that somebody suffering so profoundly from an illness can do such interesting (and esoteric) work. The fact that a subset of his schizophrenic attacks include racist language is something I feel sad, not angry about. ~~~ dajohnson89 Yeah, the sadness really shows. I wish I could share your clinical detachment. I guess I'm too PC (as someone else implied) or ignorant of mental illness (as you implied). Let's agree to disagree about our opinion of Owens. He's a deranged and schizophrenic genius, I get it. We can agree that he's brilliant and is producing something really cool. I'm not bothered by his racism -- it's too common for me to be really upset by it. What bothers me is how you and others are so quick to point out how cool TempleOS is, and how smart he is, and how his hate speech is OK because he's ill. You've defended him more than you've defended my disapproval of what he says, which is telling. Enjoy his streams, hell -- make TempleOS your default OS and mail all of your friends/family a copy of it. Just consider that white males happen to make up the vast majority of his audience. Blacks and whoever else he hates will have a harder time than you do sympathizing with his hateful speech, schizophrenic or not. Again, Hitler was a schizophrenic but that doesn't make his hateful rhetoric OK does it? Oh wait, Mein Kampf was recently a bestseller in Germany and we have a former Breitbart editor in the White House. Touché. ~~~ kstenerud "You've defended him more than you've defended my disapproval of what he says, which is telling." It's very telling. When someone does something out of mental illness, there is no reasoning them to change their course. When someone does it out of bigotry, there is. ------ tsheikhs Cool! This project started out as a way to learn Gr library routines in HolyC, and kind of Frankensteined its way into a game engine. In the coming weeks I'll be doing lots of refactoring to bring the code in line with proper TOS guidelines naming conventions. (Author here: I cross-posted this comment from a reddit thread, hope it isn't against the rules..) ~~~ abrookewood Can I ask why you decided to do this rather than learning on a more conventional platform? ~~~ cyberpunk I was kind of interested in writing something for the temple (well, okay, I spent a bored afternoon contemplating giving it a go and half heartedly booting vms and reading code ....) While I can't answer for the OP, my motivation was _specifically_ that this is kind of an alien environment and the challenge involved in even getting to hello world would definately have seen me walk away at the end the better for the exp, even if walking away from those hours without having gained some marketable understanding of framework foo or language bar. In the end I didn't do that because the code is insanely complicated (all single letter vars) and my downtime is too precious for such masochism currently; I don't think it's too much of a strech to understand why others might be interested though. I'm glad to live in a world where such an outstanding personal achievement like Terry's OS really is can exist, and that there are people out there prodding at it. Isn't it cool that we don't always do things for the money? I dearly hope that none of the recent templeos projects are attempts to antagonize Terry though. He is a profoundly accomplished software engineer and deserves nothing but respect for his technical achievements from us all alongside understanding of the rest of the package. ~~~ timv > half heartedly booting vms I initially read that as VMS rather than VMs. Very confusing. I don't think too many people half-heartedly boot VMS. Reactions tend to be one extreme or the other. ~~~ bluejekyll Wouldn't a half-hearted boot of VMS be Windows? ------ huangc10 Per wikipedia: TempleOS (formerly J Operating System,[1] SparrowOS and LoseThos)[2] is a biblical themed lightweight operating system created over the span of a decade by the American programmer Terry A. Davis. The software is a x86-64 bit, multi-tasking, multi-cored, public domain, open source, ring-0-only, single address space, non-networked, PC operating system for recreational programming.[3] The operating system was designed to be the Third Temple according to Davis and uses an interface similar to a mixture of DOS and Turbo C. Davis describes the operating system as a modern x86-64 Commodore 64 with C in place of BASIC. ~~~ corndoge I'll bite. Why did you paste a paragraph from the Wikipedia article? ~~~ tracker1 Because many people will have no idea what TempleOS is from the link, or the demo video on the GH page. ~~~ corndoge But if they are reading HN, surely they know how to use Google and Wikipedia and could acquire this information in seconds? ~~~ largeprime as an incredibly lazy person i found it to be helpful ~~~ udkl You logged out, signed up for a temp account and then logged back in - just to post this comment. That IS incredibly lazy ;) ~~~ rangibaby He probably doesn't want to be on record saying that he is lazy ~~~ udkl Is that you there, Mr Obvious ? ------ fiatjaf I find TemploOS a pretty normal name, but HolyC is an amazing name for a language. I always laugh when I see it. ~~~ wolfgke > but HolyC is an amazing name for a language For those who don't understand the pun: > > [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_See](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_See) ~~~ fiatjaf I didn't think of this pun. ~~~ sambeau Me neither, I assumed the pun was to do with "Holy Cow" ------ mikejmoffitt It's interesting and fun that Terry's odd but impressive project is getting a little cult traction. This is kind of neat, though the physics and animations could use some work. ------ jancsika Can someone explain the TempleOS author's sprite and graphics interface? From one of his videos it appears that: 1\. Once a sprite set has been defined the user can manually (programmatically?) rasterize it 2\. User can set affine transforms 3\. It _seems_ like the boundary between 2d and 3d API is small, or easily traversable, or non-existent. In one of his 2d examples it appears he changes a parameter to get animation in the z-axis. 4\. Sprites are somehow part of the language (or at least seem to be integrated deeply into it). To me it looks a bit like editing an SVG, automatically converting it to HTML5 canvas, then switching to WebGL, seamlessly. ~~~ evv Sometimes it is nice to browse HN with 'showdead' enabled, because you can see Terry commenting on these threads. (his comment is sibling to mine) Terry, keep up the great work! Its super refreshing to see your commitment over the years on such an ambitious project. ~~~ jancsika > Sometimes it is nice to browse HN with 'showdead' enabled, because you can > see Terry commenting on these threads. (his comment is sibling to mine) Did he give a relevant technical response to my technical questions? If so, are you or someone else willing/able to repost that here? I _really_ don't want to dig into HN caves and learn about its subculture. I just want to discuss a technical topic that I find interesting (and apparently others do, too, if those little numbers next to the post mean anything). ~~~ kennethbgoodin He said "I wrote everything from scratch. I am the smartest programmer ever lived with divien intellect. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1EDLCs4fBJc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1EDLCs4fBJc) " ------ milkey_mouse 4chan's /g/ is especially obsessed with TempleOS and Terry's livestreams; there's typically a /tosg/ thread somewhere on the front page. ------ frostirosti [https://youtu.be/5gfoDHycEi0?t=2m12s](https://youtu.be/5gfoDHycEi0?t=2m12s) That sentiment! I know that feeling so well. ------ PhilWright "God's favorite game is Donkey Kong." Surely the best quote of all time. ------ dylz What the hell is that top comment on the YouTube? ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DepFpVt- mIo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DepFpVt-mIo)) ~~~ lobotryas It's a meme. Google "defend kebab" for more info. As for why it's there? ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ ~~~ muterad_murilax The in-game music is a chiptune version of the "Defend Kebab" song. ------ kristofferR Some background, for those who haven't heard about TempleOS before: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8658283](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8658283) ------ nikolasavic Vice wrote a piece on him in 2014: [https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/gods-lonely- progr...](https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/gods-lonely-programmer) He drinks a lot of caffeine and lives mostly on a 48-hour schedule: "I stay awake 16 * 2 and sleep 8 * 2." ------ register Did I understand correctly that HolyC is a C like dynamic Language with AOT compilation and dynamic binding? Does this mean that functions can be redefined in the REPL while the code is running? Looks like a pretty cool language! ------ nickpsecurity So, they put a game I used to love and hate on TempleOS. Guess I finally got a reason to visit the Temple. Although that comment about the HolyC going into the shell, compiled, and running was pretty cool. ------ bitwize Looks better than Mega Man for DOS! ------ partycoder TempleOS is a very interesting OS with many original innovations, as mentioned in the "constructive review of TempleOS" (which you can look up). However it is a ring 0 only OS, with all the consequences that implies. You can make irreversible mistakes in this way, especially outside a VM. Other OSes worth looking into are: \- Redox OS (Rust) \- MenuetOS / KolibriOS (x86-64 Assembly) \- Haiku OS \- GNU Hurd ~~~ pekk Did you pay attention to what TempleOS is for? Do you know what it was like to program for the C64? It is ring 0 only on purpose! That's the whole point! The idea that someone would go into a thread about TempleOS, trash TempleOS for one of its central and distinguishing features, and then use the thread as an opportunity to promote some new OS written in Rust is boggling my mind. ~~~ partycoder Well that's one aspect of TempleOS that appeals to some and that is fine. But you an also appreciate TempleOS from other perspectives such as how HolyC is compiled, dynamic documentation, etc. ------ knd775 This isn't Terry, is it? ~~~ thesmallestcat No, but the Github user sure is interesting. Have to wonder how Terry feels about [https://github.com/tramplersheikhs/hgbd](https://github.com/tramplersheikhs/hgbd) and [https://github.com/tramplersheikhs/uriel](https://github.com/tramplersheikhs/uriel) \-- is the Temple being desecrated?? Either way, seriously cool stuff. ~~~ mintplant Terry has stated that, apart from serving God, the goal of TempleOS is to encourage C64-like hobbyist experimentation. He seems quite happy with outsiders writing software for his system, and has endorsed this MegaMan game on the TempleOS software page: [http://www.templeos.org/Wb/Home/Web/AppStore/AppStore.html#l...](http://www.templeos.org/Wb/Home/Web/AppStore/AppStore.html#l1) ~~~ shultays Supposedly, there is a guy on E-Bay selling TempleOS merchandise. It's okay. Heh, what a cool guy. ------ bredren Is it just me or is the official templeos site hacked / defaced right now. ~~~ problems Nope, it's standard, Terry Davis is the author and he's a very religious schizophrenic. He's a very smart guy, but he got banned many times on HN and Reddit for going off about "India niggers" and spamming blocks of random words. ~~~ pekk Actually all the times I've read him use the word "niggers" (and it is an offensive word, I won't dispute that) he actually means something different than you would expect. ------ faragon Amazing project! :-D ------ amsheehan Weird. Makes me want to start a crusade. ~~~ sctb We detached this subthread from [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13973144](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13973144) and marked it off-topic. ------ Orangeair A cult following for the God-given operating system. Huh. Sounds a bit sacrilegious. ~~~ krylon Isn't that exactly what God would want? I just wonder how long it'll take for some heretical sect to start a fork and add blasphemous features like networking or 32-bit colors... ;-) ~~~ bri3d Fear not: [https://github.com/minexew/Shrine](https://github.com/minexew/Shrine) ~~~ krylon Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction, as Bad Religion used to sing. ;-) (NB what a great name for a band that is in this context!)