Younger women are more likely to be paid less than men in tech - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/younger-women-are-more-likely-to-be-paid-less-than-men-in-tech-2016-6 <comment><USER2> advice to anyone entering the workforce: form an honest opinion of what your skills can fetch at market by researching salaries, work on your negotiating skills, have a backup plan so you are confident to walk away if you don't get the number you want, hold out for the right deal.

The biggest difference I see (anecdotally, so I might be wrong) between women and men, particularly from women who are complaining about inequality in pay, is that women aren't confident to negotiate about money. Strong, opinionated, skilled women will get pushed over when it comes to money. In many cases they won't even realise they can negotiate.

Negotiate everything -- the price of your cell phone, your tv, your washing machine, ask your bank for better deals on your mortgage or better interest rates on your savings. Then when it comes to job salary you have some practice to fall back on. Stand your ground, use phrases like "that isn't what I was expecting, can you offer any more?" and be prepared to respectfully decline an offer that doesn't make you happy.</comment>


Why Stephen Wolfram's research program is a dead end - <AUTHOR> https://www.singlelunch.com/2020/04/23/why-stephen-wolframs-research-program-is-a-dead-end/ <comment><USER2> This is so much effort put into destroying something that probably nobody really had the time to digest and understand.Myself included.</comment>


Open Source: From Community to Commercialization - <AUTHOR> https://a16z.com/2019/10/04/commercializing-open-source/ <comment><USER2> > One of my favorite anecdotes from the early days of open source – when it > wasn't yet even called open source, and was just "free software"

Goddamned that's annoying, speaking as a Free software partisan.

On the off chance that anyone reading this doesn't already know what I mean...

"Why Open Source misses the point of Free Software" [https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the- point....](https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html)

> The terms "free software" and "open source" stand for almost the same range > of programs. However, they say deeply different things about those programs, > based on different values. The free software movement campaigns for freedom > for the users of computing; it is a movement for freedom and justice. By > contrast, the open source idea values mainly practical advantage and does > not campaign for principles. This is why we do not agree with open source, > and do not use that term.

<comment><USER3> In the isolated context of the quote you pulled, the authors were talking about _history_ (note that they wrote _" the early days of open source"_) and they're correct: in the time period _before_ Eric Raymond et al popularized the term "open source" (~1998?)[0], we also called non-GPL software _" free software"_.

Rummaging through my archives, I looked at a README.TXT I wrote in 1992 for a software utility (including the C source code) I gave away for $0 and I used the term "free software" even though it was _not_ GPL. (I wasn't even aware of GPL back then.) Today, my software would be called an "open source permissive license".

In other words, RMS's essay from 2007 _" Why Open Source misses the point of Free Software"_ may try to _educate_ us on the difference between "free" vs "open source" but it _can 't go back in time_ and rewrite my historical usage of "free" in my README.TXT in 1992.

[0] usage trend of label "open source" after 1998 essay "Cathedral & Bazaar": [https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=open+source&ye...](https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=open+source&year_start=1800&year_end=2008&corpus=15&smoothing=3)

<comment><USER4> _> I used the term "free software" even though it was not GPL. (I wasn't even aware of GPL back then.) Today, my software would be called an "open source permissive license"._

Free Software doesn't have to be licensed under the GPL. Open Source licenses and Free Software licenses are the same. Perhaps you're thinking of the distinction between copyleft (GPL style) and non-copyleft (BSD style)?

<comment><USER3> _> Free Software doesn't have to be licensed under the GPL._

Yes, I understand that but using RMS's criteria in his 2007 essay (subsection _" Practical Differences between Free Software and Open Source"_), my 1992 software (without strong copyleft protection) would be "open source" and not "free software". My point is that I called it _" free software"_ even though it violates RMS's definition because the alternative label of _" open source"_ didn't gain currency yet.

Also, the _" free as in libre vs free as in beer"_ wasn't a well-known meme in 1992 either: [https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=free+as+in+bee...](https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=free+as+in+beer&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=15&smoothing=3)

<comment><USER4> Which criterion did your software violate in RMS's definition—I fail to see anything applicable in the subsection that you point to?

<comment><USER3> _> Which criterion did your software violate in RMS's definition_

When I gave away my software for free (e.g. on a disk), it would have files such as:

\- foobar.exe (requires non-free proprietary Microsoft C compiler to rebuild this exe -- because of MS specific API calls)

\- foobar.c (had some proprietary C code in it)

Basically, a user could _run_ my software for $0, but they couldn't _rebuild_ the executable using non-free tools. But in 1992, I wasn't aware of RMS's philosophy about _" free as in libre"_ so I (and many others) just called it "free software".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is a fantastic article with valuable knowledge, though it really should be stressed that the conclusion are still opinions.

Open Core as 2.0 is a terrible ideology, as it is basically crippleware.

Open Source 3.0 as blockchain tokens is a junk idea promoting ponzi ideology.

Or the claim that Open Source will be advertising driven is just a horror waiting to happen as we've already seen with FB.

None of these are good ideas.

What is important to observe tho is that Open Source has driven all of the value creation that he's talked about. WITHOUT cheap memes or gimmicks. For 30 years!!!

OSS is just fine and will continue just fine, and I predict, will even transform other industries (medical, manufacturing, etc.) with the same type of value add.

<comment><USER4> > _For 30 years!!! [--] OSS is just fine and will continue just fine_

Don't you see the threats? Past performance vs future predictions?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Very informative. Curious of what others think of the measurements of the three pillars of open source:

\- Project-Community Fit: GitHub stars

\- Product-Market Fit: Downloads

\- Value Market Fit: Revenue

<comment><USER7> The first two are total bullshit metrics.

Basically any Github metric in isolation doesn't mean much. Anecdotally, I once worked on a ML framework in Rust[0]. For at least a few months after release the metrics looked good on paper (Top 5 Rust project by stars at the time) and also had a few smaller contributors. Sadly next to no actual adoption and no healthy community around it that was able to pick it up after we had to stop maintenance.

Downloads are about as bad. Just have one or a few users that have CI or deployment patterns that download the package a lot, and your numbers lost any meaning.

[0]: [https://github.com/autumnai/leaf](https://github.com/autumnai/leaf)

<comment><USER6> Thanks for sharing and I am sorry for your project. It was a cool idea. Any idea why no actual adoption? Is this possibly because of the product-market fit mentioned in this post?

I am thinking aloud here: maybe the product-market fit, project-community fit and the value-market fit were not so clearly separated or sequential but more interrelated from the very beginning. You have to find the value-market fit and define the business problem first and then the community will thrive? The value to the community is not only what the project can bring to the business, but also the value this project can bring to its contributors and adopters.

<comment><USER7> > Any idea why no actual adoption?

I would say the main reason probably was that it wasn't really usable. We first optimized for performance, so that we were able to show that we are competitive there and neglected usability. Anything more than a simple MNSIT example was incredibly verbose.

Adoption would've probably come with some time (and there was quite some interest in the niche), but the project was a last ditch effort of our dying startup, so we didn't have enough time really.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Precrastination: Worse Than Procrastination? - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/09/precrastination-worse-than-procrastination/380646/

<comment><USER2> I park at the furthest spot away because

* I want to maximize my walking time

* I don't want my door to get dinged by another car's door, and remote spots are usually desolate</comment>


Y Combinator will likely raise a fund that could be several billion dollars - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/y-combinator-raising-money-for-late-stage-fund-2015-3

<comment><USER2> Interesting -- pg had expressed previously that they didn't want to send signals by follow-up investing in some companies but not others.

However, a fund of this magnitude wouldn't be sending this kind of signal. Investing in, say, Dropbox's 2014 funding round doesn't send signals the same way that investing in Dropbox after Demo Day 2007 would've.</comment>


FTC rules 5-0 that Cambridge Analytica engaged in deceptive practices [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/cases/d09389_comm_final_opinionpublic.pdf <comment> munk-a It looks like a pretty nice outcome for CA, no persons involved are being hit with criminal charges, instead they're limited to just constraints on future actions - additionally CA has filed for bankruptcy and there is no initiative I can see in this order that goes after original investors as having conspired on these charges, so they'll lose their investment but that was probably a write off anyways.

<comment><USER2> > no persons involved are being hit with criminal charges

can the FTC or whoever else is involved _at_ _this_ _stage_ even file criminal charges against individuals?

we see over and over comments of the "omg no criminal charges" variety whenever a government body that can't file criminal charges fails to do so.

<comment><USER3> They're known for imposing fines that are minuscule relative to the amount of damage whoever they're investigating caused. For most deceptive operations large enough to land on the FTC's radar, whatever fines they might end up paying are considered a speeding ticket and cost of doing business. It's sad, really. They're also known for being massively understaffed relative to the amount of complaints they receive.

<comment><USER4> So what is the difference between CA, corporate banks, etc that are corporations that "shield" the employees from personally facing criminal action, and me running out to file an LLC/SCorp/etc to do illegal activities myself? Is it purely the size of their bank accounts?

<comment><USER5> It's the size of an organization and the complexity of the enterprise. Large, sophisticated corporations effectively shield executives from personal criminal liability because decision making is more diffuse--or at least they have an easier time arguing that.

If a prosecutor could establish that a Fortune 500 CEO had the same, unmoderated role in criminal activity as the CEO of a one man shell company, then he'd be just as easy to prosecute and undoubtedly would--that'd make the careers of the D.A. and the attorneys working the case.

There aren't many (or any?) laws that criminalize scheming, amoral profiteers who effectively (but not literally) promote a culture of lawlessness. Even if you write them they'd be very hard to prosecute--Due Process protections are strong in the US and Anglosphere systems, at least if you have the money and wherewithal.

A bigger problem is that executives and board members are financially shielded, often through corporate-bought personal liability insurance. Maybe things would get better if there were laws mandating clawbacks, with independent agents[1] tasked with drafting the contracts and enforcing clawbacks, and perhaps somehow preventing executives from insuring themselves, such as with mandatory right of recourse clauses (i.e. insurer can always recover their payouts from the insured, making them more like guarantors). This aspect of corporate law is really complex though because it touches on so many subject areas. And stuff like this has been tried--it's how we ended up with corporate-bought personal insurance policies, a response to a brief period where executives and board members found themselves financially exposed during the early years of professional shareholder lawsuits.

[1] Even though technically this is supposed to be the responsibility of board members. But that's an even thornier problem.

<comment><USER4> Essentially, you're saying plausible deniability? "I'm the CEO of 100s to 1000s of employees. I can't possibly know the complete details of what all of them are working on"? If you're a CEO like Steve Jobs or the Zuck, then I would never ever ever buy that argument.

<comment><USER5> Plausible deniability + army of lawyers + crapshoot of a jury trial = risk averse prosecutors. Lower-level employees who play a more direct role do often get pinched. For example, in the Libor scandal.[1]

Prosecutors don't get dinged for being risk averse. And the same is true, to a lesser extent, for regulators. But attorneys who specialize in class action civil suits can't _afford_ to be risk averse; they make payday by being aggressive and hunting out malfeasance, which is why business _hates_ class actions. Corporate America has successfully systematically demonized "trial lawyers" the same way they demonized labor unions. Even the most anti- corporatist activists tend to assume trial lawyer lobbyists and labor unions are more corrupt than corporations, which is dubious to say the least. (As Jimmy Hoffa said circa 1959, "Twenty years ago the employers had all the hoodlums working for them as strikebreakers. Now we've got a few, and everybody's screaming." That doesn't excuse lawlessness, but it should effect how we allocate limited enforcement resources.)

IMO, if we want to restore balance we need to make it easier for victims and shareholders to pursue civil remedies independently, and strip executives and board members of some of their financial protections. This way we realign financial incentives in a manner that, hopefully, maximizes disincentives for cheating (i.e. executives have to watch their back for trial lawyer "sharks"), without having to literally make a federal case out of everything. It will be costly, but corporate malfeasance is already costly, it's just that those costs are hidden--at least quantitatively hidden; qualitatively we all see it. Importantly, these costs won't need to be borne by tax payers[2] (i.e. growing ever-despised federal bureaucracy), which isn't sustainable politically. That's another reason why the SEC, FTC, and others don't pursue malfeasance more aggressively--their staffs are tiny and ill-equipped to perform investigations. It's why the SEC heavily relies on automated, heuristic algorithms for detecting financial fraud; and why reporting requirements are so invasive. We're relying on computers for lack of human resources, but computers are only good at detecting the simple schemes, the reporting costs are regressive, and prosecutions favor small fry--the type of people that taxpayers can more readily identify with, which makes prosecutions seem unfair and predatory.

Corporate America pushes back so heavily on this stuff because for 40 years large corporations have slowly turned into accounting and financing firms, with manufacturing and services as side businesses. They basically specialize in aggressive accounting strategies, which makes them feel vulnerable. And because that's just how business is done these days, legislators and think tanks have internalized the notion that permitting more corporate and personal liability for harmful accounting and financing strategies will seriously harm the entire economy, at least as measured by GDP growth. And, to be honest, for a brief period it very well might, until corporate America shifts away from accounting gimmicks and more aggressively pursues other profit opportunities.

[1] As an engineer I pitch myself to managers as someone who "gets things done". I'm an ask for forgiveness, not ask for permission kind of worker. And I assume many on HN are the same way, both in IT and other industries. So I don't doubt that executives often lack deep insight into the technicalities of various schemes. And in criminal law especially, _personal_ _knowledge_ of the technicalities is often a crucial element of liability.

[2] Hopefully most costs will be principally borne by the wealthy. But to the extent they're borne by consumers through higher prices or less choice, they'd be largely hidden, which is a _good_ thing, because consumers and taxpayers aren't very good at judging long-term tradeoffs. If we can agree democratically that corporate malfeasance needs to be aggressively addressed, then let's just use the best strategy--the one corporate interests have the least ability to capture and disassemble.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The real question is, which company is doing the unethical data collection and covert advertising _today_? Ready for the December UK election?

<comment><USER7> Cambridge Analytica -> Emerdata [https://www.fastcompany.com/90381366/the- mysterious-afterlif...](https://www.fastcompany.com/90381366/the-mysterious- afterlife-of-cambridge-analytica-and-its-trove-of-data)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The way I heard the story, Alexander Nix was a chronic exaggerator who pushed the narrative that CA had a huge impact on Brexit and other elections when it simply wasn't true. He did this in order to gain more sales. They said the Facebook data was deleted by the time of the Trump campaign.

My theory is that they are not so different than a typical digital ad agency but they got caught up in a political tornado. I think we should at least be open minded to the possibility they have been scapegoated here.

<comment><USER9> > Nix said that his company uses honey traps, bribery stings, and prostitutes, > for opposition research

VERY NORMAL DIGITAL AD AGENCY THINGS.

<comment><USER8> It is possible Nix made all that up as a weird form of bragging to close a sale to a sleazy customer. I couldn't find any actual evidence to the contrary. This isn't my theory, it is literally what a CA employee told me in person.

<comment><USER9> In the immortal words of Mandy Rice-Davies, "well, he would, wouldn't he".

People quite rarely say "why, yes, my employer does crimes".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> In this timeline a ruling like this probably increases their valuation, too bad they filed for bankruptcy.

</comment><comment><USER11> I'd be interested in seeing an unanimous FTC ruling on Barack Obama's campaign downloading and mining the entire Facebook social graph in 2012, with Facebook's implicit consent. And unlike the Trump campaign, Obama's did use this data for more than just winning the primary. It went something like this: you downloaded an app on FB and that app would grab not just your data, but also _that of your friends_. FB turned the blind eye. Nary a word from the press, too.

[https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/facebook- data-...](https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/facebook-data-scandal- trump-election-obama-2012/)

<comment><USER12> This is basically whataboutism. If you agree with the principle you should be calling for the people in CA to be personally culpable (and their investors and customers, who knew full well what they were doing). If you disagree, make an argument as to why the principle is wrong.

<comment><USER13> _" you should be calling for the people in CA to be personally culpable"_

I am all for it. But let's follow _first come first served_ and start punishing the earlier perpetrators first.

What you call "whataboutism" is simply people's natural feel for justice. When you advocate punishment make sure it applies EQUALLY TO EVERY ENTITY GUILTY. If not then people will start pointing fingers and quite rightfully. It is not them being "whataboutists". It is you behaving like/protecting a hypocrite.

<comment><USER11> "Somoza may be a son of a bitch, but he's our son of a bitch." \-- Franklin D. Roosevelt

It's politics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is what early stage regulatory capture looks like. Now that some token bad actors have been called out, we can go back to ignoring the elephant in the room of the too-big-to-fail surveillance companies keeping databases that would make the staunchest Stasi agent blush.</comment>


It's a 401(k) World - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/01/opinion/friedman-its-a-401k-world.html <comment><USER2> Debunked quite convincingly there: [http://blogs.reuters.com/felix- salmon/2013/05/01/the-systemi...](http://blogs.reuters.com/felix- salmon/2013/05/01/the-systemic-plight-of-labor/).

(don't stop at the ad-hominem attack on Friedman, though those are fair game, given how much of an hack Friedman is).

</comment><comment><USER3> Friedman is a hack:

[http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/contest-...](http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/contest- come-up-with-the-ultimate-thomas-friedman-porn-title-20130502)

TL;DR - Friedman's been doing minor variations on this "the world is increasingly hyperconnected" bullshit for years and years. It's bad writing and it means nothing.

<comment><USER4> Matt Taibbi practically makes a living writing takedowns of Thomas Friedman's Op/Ed pieces and books. Here's a selection:

<http://nypress.com/flathead/> <http://nypress.com/flat-n-all-that/>

<comment><USER3> He likes calling bullshit on other writers, and it just so happens Friedman is an endless font of bullshit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> In case you can't get enough of Freidman's mindbogglingly awful articles you can now generate your own!

<http://www.thomasfriedmanopedgenerator.com/>

<comment><USER6> I wish the the "About" page gave the faintest of technical details about its implementation... A couple different Markov chains for varying generic topics, with buzzwords inserted to give the text a shred of focus?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I found it hard to understand the point he was trying to make.

</comment><comment><USER8> 401k has confiscation risk.

<comment><USER9> Can you elaborate?

<comment><USER10> I predict the reply will involve how gold is a superior investment vehicle, because the government can't take it from you.

<comment><USER11> Never mind, of course, that this has happened. Executive Order 6102, I believe it was.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Count from 0 to 1023 with only 2 hands ( in binary ) - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finger_binary <comment><USER2> -511 to 511 actually, unless you're using unsigned integers.</comment>


An Engineer's 29-Year Obsession just became FAA Approved - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/joannmuller/2015/05/06/how-the-hondajet-took-flight-an-engineers-30-year-obsession/print/ <comment><AUTHOR> The HondaJet just became FAA approved this week [1], but I think the real story is in the journey building this innovative product.

[1]: [http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-12-10/honda-s-4-...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-12-10/honda-s-4-5-million- hondajet-cleared-by-u-s-agency-for-takeoff)</comment>


Time Cube - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Cube <comment><USER2> Took me a minute to decipher.

If I understand correctly, the theory is basically that the Earth consists of approximately 4 quadrants, all experiencing a different part of the day at the same time. So each day on the Earth is really 4 days.

Then somehow points of light from the sun are added up to arrive at a sum of 96 hours in each day. This doesn't make sense to me.

I rate Time Cube as: insane. I also love it, in a way. The spectrum of humanity and the ideas contained therein is colorful and vast. Remains to be seen what difference it will all make in the end.

<comment><USER3> My favorite thing thing about it is the site design. It is the canonical "insane rant" design style.</comment></comment>


Show HN: PicDoctors, a Photoshop marketplace - <AUTHOR> https://www.picdoctors.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> A while back I needed a simple photoshopping job. I didn't want to bother a friend, and I wanted to offer my own price on what I'd be willing to pay for it.

I couldn't find it, so I built PicDoctors. Let me know if you have questions or feedback.

</comment><comment><USER2> How is it different from freelance or elance websites?

<comment><AUTHOR> Obviously photoshopping services online are hardly unique, but it is a bit different. For people who want photoshop work done, it's got a pretty simple upload / describe what you want done interface. It also allows you to set your own price -- but you won't be charged until you're happy with the work.

For photoshoppers, it guarantees payment and allows you to easily see what they want done. It also provides an easy place to look for work that you want done.</comment></comment>


Why and How I Get Up at 4:30 - <AUTHOR> http://baugues.com/430 <comment><USER2> Yes, it might be very hard to get up at 4:30, or maybe the guy is just lacking sleep. 9:30-4:30 are just 7 hours of sleep (6h45m since he reads for 15 min).

If he'd go to bed at 7:30 maybe "the Blerch" wouldn't be on his back all the time. Maybe the Blerch is actually shouting that sleep depravation is unhealthy and that he really needs an extra hour or two.</comment>


SPDY of the Future Might Blow Your Mind Today - <AUTHOR> http://www.belshe.com/2011/11/17/spdy-of-the-future-might-blow-your-mind-today/

<comment><USER2> AFAIK there's no way to initiate TLS over a SPDY stream (i guess SPDY could be extended to add TLS handshake control frames, but that's downright crazy) which would mean that the third diagram is misleading. End to end SSL would not be possible with a SPDY proxy. Instead, the client's SSL connection would extend to the SPDY proxy, and the proxy would have it's own SSL (HTTP, HTTPS or SPDY) connection to the remote server. If that's the case, the proxy would have unencrypted access to all traffic.

This is arguably not a problem for clients that explicitly opt in for this sort of proxy setup. But it sounds like this is not the case for the Kindle Fire. Based on this article (i don't have a Kindle Fire to test this theory), i'm guessing the browser has custom CA's for the SPDY proxy so that the SPDY proxy can spoof any domain through the magic of SNI. If all this is true, then it's pretty evil. People who know enough to check for the "secure connection" badge in the browser would be fooled into thinking they have end to end encryption to the website they are viewing. In reality, the proxy, and whoever runs it, silently has complete access to your unecrypted traffic.

There's quite a few assumptions here. And I'm not a SPDY expert so I may be overlooking something. But this doesn't sound like an optimization i'd be comfortable with.

<comment><USER3> You might be able to run HTTP CONNECT over SPDY.

 _Based on this article (i don't have a Kindle Fire to test this theory), i'm guessing the browser has custom CA's for the SPDY proxy so that the SPDY proxy can spoof any domain through the magic of SNI. If all this is true, then it's pretty evil._

I don't think this is correct, although I can't describe how Silk actually works.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> speeding up that last mile concerned a lot of other people before, especially on slow mobile connections.

One example is Opera, they are even compressing http data, pictures etc. before transmitting to the client over a binary socket.

<comment><USER5> You don't make the same argument pivot yourself, but this is something that crosses my mind every time I read about SPDY too. _All this stuff has been done before_. It's not a new problem, and none of the old solutions caught on. What makes SPDY special?

<comment><USER6> Google makes SPDY special. If something is unquestionably useful but hasn't caught on, what you have is fundamentally a marketing problem. Google is the biggest marketing company on the Internet.

I mean, SPDY has some technical benefits of its own, but the biggest items in the "Pro" column are that it's an open spec and Google has thrown its weight behind it, even dogfooding it in their top sites and a major open-source project. This got people's attention, which previous efforts didn't really manage so well.

<comment><USER3> More specifically, because Google builds one of the most popular Web sites and one of the top browsers, they can break chicken-egg problems by JFDI. Things like SSL improvements, SPDY, SDCH, etc. have probably already paid for themselves.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> From November, so when it says "early next year" (w.r.t. Firefox implementing SPDY) it means "early _this_ year".

<comment><USER8> Specifically, SPDY is available in Firefox 11:

[http://download.cnet.com/8301-2007_4-57351535-12/whats- comin...](http://download.cnet.com/8301-2007_4-57351535-12/whats-coming-in- firefox-11/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Is there a good (fast, secure, stable) Apache or Nginx SPDY module yet?

<comment><USER10> There's mod-spdy for Apache, and that's the future of SPDY adoption.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> SPDY of the future today: opera turbo the article is about proxying SPDY, actually, like opera turbo does for http. in fact, using opera turbo gives a similar performance (except opera also compresses stuff, and the proxy is at opera, not at the isp, which adds some latency)

Note also that newest pre-versions of Firefox have SPDY (need to enable via about:config)

</comment><comment><USER12> If you don't trust your ISP, this doesn't really improve security at all. If anything, it gives them a choke point which makes it _easier_ to inject content or slurp your data.

</comment><comment><USER13> The whole point of IP networking was that you could connect to an unlimited number of destinations in parallel using a single phone line. How is this still a mind-blowing concept?

</comment><comment><USER14> What about infra-structure? That SPDY gateway will have to handle a hell lot of load. Will we really need that extreme optimization in 2 years?

<comment><USER15> I see this as awful for "real-world" because of the privacy concerns. Think Amazon won't analyze the heck out of that traffic? Uhh.

Also, before, gov't would need to install wiretapping stuff at central offices. With this, Amazon or whatever SPDY provider could just let them have "virtual wiretaps" which I'm sure won't be abused.

From an engineering standpoint, this is cool, but I can't see how this would function without introducing way worse privacy problems. In a world where we'll most likely need to rely on a decentralized Internet that is impossible to regulate, this is a step in the wrong direction.

<comment><USER16> The "SPDY gateway" is in no different a role than the "last mile" ISP. In fact, your SPDY gateway may for all intents and purpose be your ISP; or your ISP may offer an SPDY gateway.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> So, we need an open source SPDY gateway then? We all know our mobile ISPs won't develop it themselves...

</comment><comment><USER18> SPDY stands for SPeeDY? What the hell is that?

</comment><comment><USER19> "I spent a fair amount of time running network traces of the Kindle Fire, and I honestly don't know quite what they're doing yet."

That's a problem with binary protocols. How does Spdy help the 'open web' when you can't even tell what's even going on at the network layer even after spending lots of time trying?

This blog also like every other advocating Spdy ignores that HTTP tunneling in practice provides the same benefits. And the last graph is the same as for an HTTP proxy, nothing to see there.

<comment><USER3> Once everything becomes encrypted you're going to need specialized tools (Wireshark) for debugging anyway, so does it matter whether the inside is text or binary?

Also, efficient formats/protocols need to use byte counting, and byte-counted "text" protocols (BEEP and bencode come to mind) are effectively human- unreadable anyway.

<comment><USER20> Yeah, I've got no problem with binary protocols, especially when they need to encapsulate arbitrary data (e.g. containing NULLs, etc). Just keep the protocol design sane and it's trivial to write a pretty printing trace tool. Requiring machine-to-machine communication to do heavy parsing is a bad idea.

<comment><USER16> > Requiring machine-to-machine communication to do heavy parsing is a bad > idea.

Why? Machine-to-machine communication is for machines, after all, isn't it?

What you call "heavy parsing" is heavy parsing for humans. It's actually _easier_ for machines, because they simply reference (and verify) an offset.

Are you advocating designing a protocol primarily around how easy it is to interactively troubleshoot? Certainly that has value, but on the modern Internet, is it really the dominating concern?

<comment><USER11> To the point:

\- try checking what a webapp does. TRIVIAL. We're talking minutes.

\- try checking what a binary app on your computer does. one with DRMs or advanced "anti crack" stuff for example. FREAKING HARD. Even if you're a wizard, it still takes a few hours. For mortals, we're talking weeks. Weeks!

And that my friend, is why what you wrote is wrong.

<comment><USER21> Definitely not the case with HTTPS, which looks like binary garbage over the wire but whose payload is quite transparent once decoded by SSL.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Gospel in Brief - <AUTHOR> https://blog.licensezero.com/2019/06/13/gospel-in-brief.html <comment><USER2> License zero is "the gospel"? Sounds like someone's got a bit carried away with their inflated self-importance...

<comment><USER3> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gospel_in_Brief](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gospel_in_Brief)</comment></comment>


Show HN: Using Crypto for Data Ownership and Privacy with Virtru SDK and Dev Hub - <AUTHOR> https://developer.virtru.com/ <comment><USER2> Hey everyone, I'm a member of the team working on the new Virtru SDK, and Dev Hub. Would love to answer any questions/hear any feedback you all might have.</comment>


Novogratz's Crypto Trading Desk Lost $136M in Nine Months - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-28/novogratz-s-crypto-trading-desk-lost-136-million-in-nine-months <comment><USER2> The article is missing some critical details.

What does the fund do? The article suggests they do arbitrage. Those opportunities actually tend to increase when things are volatile. Also while you can lose money doing it you wouldn't expect a precipitous collapse in NAV. If you discover you're slower than everyone else you can shut down.

Volumes aren't necessarily correlated to price either, so that isn't entirely convincing.

I've also heard that plenty of arb guys are doing fine.

If he's speculating and not just running arbs, what is he doing? If he's just punting the cryptos that would seem more in line with what's happened, but it's not clear what he's up to from this.

Also, with arbitrage it's limited how much capital you need. A lot of HFTs use very little. If you're getting money like a hedge fund you have to be sure it can be put to use.

Ex HFT and fund manager.

<comment><USER3> This interview[1] sounds like they called bottom at 6k and then the floor fell out: "We thought it was a bear market. I went into it thinking in the long run crypto is going to be a real structural shift in the world and I can just hedge my portfolio. And to be fair, we did a really great job not losing money the first 60 percent down. What you forget is that a market like Bitcoin that's down 84 percent has dropped 60 percent—and then another 60 percent. That's where the pain happens. You start buying Ether again, because it's only $400 after being at $1,300. But then it drops to $100, and you've lost 75 percent of your money. We haven't done horribly in that context, but we're still down. [...] I did think Bitcoin was going to hold at $6,200. It stayed there for four months. It felt like the selling was finished."

[1] [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-12-11/mike- novo...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-12-11/mike-novogratz- explains-why-he-s-still-all-in-on-cryptocurrency)

<comment><USER4> I was pretty sure $6-7k was the floor for BTC, and it's interesting to see a high-profile fund manager made effectively the same, expensive mistake. The biggest surprise for me, though, was ETH, which given its better fundamentals, I had thought would be where the market went after Bitcoin popped – and yet, it was not only dragged down, but crushed even harder than BTC.

<comment><USER5> It was interesting to watch the crypto subreddits and see so many people make the same mistake. I was surprised that $6K held for so long, because if $6K really was the bottom, it would've been a pretty shallow drop from a very steep bubble. That's only 2/3 down, and it was the point Bitcoin hit in Oct 2017. Bitcoin was < $1k at the start of 2017. Any reasonable rate of return would put its price at under $2k if you ignore the bubble and focus only on fundamental metrics. Plus bubble busts tend to overshoot fair market value, where the underlying asset actually trades at a bargain because so many people got burned buying at the top.

The ETH drop is fairly easy to explain - it was the base asset for a very interesting double-pyramid-scheme on the way up, which meant that that leverage works in reverse on the way down. The ICO boom worked because many of the people investing in ICOs had bought their ETH for pennies and already recouped their costs; throwing $40M into a shitcoin makes a lot more rational sense when that ETH actually cost about $4K in real money, and the factor of 10,000 difference is the price appreciation of the asset you're putting in. That led to eye-popping dollar valuations for many of these companies (even though they were actually raising in ETH), which brought more newbies into the Ethereum world, which pushed the price even higher, which meant later ICOs were raising even more in dollar terms, even though the actual dollar amounts traded were tiny.

On the way down, this cycle works in reverse. Those ICOs don't actually hold $40M in a company bank account; they hold 33K ETH which was _worth_ $40M at the peak. Now that ETH is down to $94, they hold more like $3M, and they're getting scared about being able to pay salaries. So every ICO that still holds ETH is trying to liquidate it for dollars, but they're fighting over the much- reduced pot of money that is coming into crypto _now_ , which drives the price down every time somebody wants to sell.

Personally I still think we're not at the bottom yet (for either ETH or BTC), but we may be getting close. We're at the bottom when companies start going bankrupt, Solidity engineers start getting laid off, and people start going to jail. Assuming it's not _all_ smoke and mirrors and some useful infrastructure was actually built, it'll be the buying opportunity of the lifetime then, because everyone will think this whole crypto fad will be totally over and you'll be able to buy up that infrastructure at really cheap prices.

<comment><USER6> Re: your last paragraph

But if everyone thinks that (and most people who think crypto isn't _all_ shit do think that), the bottom will be a lot softer than what you describe (modulo people going to jail, I think this is mostly independent of the value of crypto).

It's the efficient market hypothesis all over again.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I mean, given how hard cryptocurrencies crashed this year is it really a surprise? The only way for him to make money would probably have been to short everything continuously but seeing how irrational and easily manipulated the cryptocurrency market has been in the past that seems rather foolish.

Given his pedigree you'd think he'd know better than to bet on something that's 99% pure unbridled speculation and 1% actual technology. It's like knowingly investing in a Ponzi scheme, what did you expect?

<comment><USER8> One of the best kept secrets in the hedge fund/financial industry is that most people really dont have a clue what they are doing. Sure they make bold predictions, appear on CNBC and use industry jargon. But at the end of the day, they arent much better than you or me at managing large amounts of money.

<comment><USER9> to back this up, read the expose in the economist this week about family offices and how they all divesting from hedgefunds because the fees are ridiculous and they are doing no better than the S&P, usually worse when you take into account the onerous fees those mgrs are charging.

<comment><USER10> To be fair, when you have $100 Million, the goal of the game is not "growth", but holding onto that money.

$100 million isn't much different from $108 Million (8% gains over the year)... or even $500 Million. In both cases, its still more than enough money to live on for the rest of your life. The S&P 500 has dropped 50% in the past (ie: 2008), and it doesn't make sense to risk that much money on that.

You can't use bank accounts: FDIC insurance only covers $200k per bank. You'd literally need 5000 different bank accounts to hold $100 Million safely. So what do you put it into?

Answer: things that don't grow as quickly as an S&P500 fund. Things that are safer: municipal bonds, international (German, Japan) bonds to hedge the dollar, and US Bonds. Maybe some high-quality corporate debt, like Apple's debt, and maybe a real-estate project or two.

All of which probably returns less than the stock market. But your $100 Million will still be there in the next crisis. That's not necessarily true for an S&P500 fund.

\</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>

Finally, the average volume of Vanguard Total Market ETF is only ~3-million (at a price of ~130 or so). Which means that Vanguard Total Market ETF only has ~$300 Million changed each day.

If you pump $100 Million into an ETF with only $300 Million worth of daily average volume, what do you think will happen? You'll over-centralize the price and get a bad deal. Its not easy to move $100 Million, even into a major fund like Vanguard's Total Market ETF, without a manager.

At $100 Million+ size portfolios, you need to start thinking of Dark Pools of Liquidity (ie: somewhat hiding the order book). So that when you execute the buy order, the wolves of Wall Street won't own you.

$100 Million+ accounts don't work the same as a normal account. Pump that into the market in one day, and the price will rise dramatically. Sell that in one day, and the price will drop dramatically (losing a % of your value on both legs of the transaction). Having an expert guide you, so that you can minimize Bid/Ask issues, is essential.

<comment><USER11> > _You can 't use bank accounts: FDIC insurance only covers $200k per bank. > You'd literally need 5000 different bank accounts to hold $100 Million > safely._

Not that it's a good idea, but there are other ways to insure cash than the FDIC.

One example, apparently Massachusetts offers unlimited insurance for banks: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depositors_Insurance_Fund](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depositors_Insurance_Fund)

(Also, 100M / 200k = 500, not 5000)

<comment><USER12> Massachusetts?

> Q: Is the DIF a federal or state agency?

> A: No. The DIF is a private, industry-sponsored insurance company and is not > backed by the federal government or the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I like how cryptocurrencies were launched as an alternative to central banking, wresting control of money away from the government and big banks. An open and level playing field that would democratize how people transact financially with each other.

And then the first thing the early adopters did was recreate the flawed financial institutions that surround "real" money so that they could pretend to be Gordon Gekko and throw around words like "arbitraaaaage".

Is there data on what percentage of cryptocurrency transactions are "Real, actual, humans buying and selling real, actual, things or compensating each other for their ideas and thoughts" and what percentage consists of "traders shouting at each other in the echo chamber"?

<comment><USER14> All you have to do is look at the buy/sell curves. Crypto is 80% market manipulation, 19% traders and maybe 1% genuine use.

<comment><USER15> > _All you have to do is look at the buy /sell curves_

What the hell are buy/sell curves?

<comment><USER16> How the orders are distributed in the order book.

<comment><USER17> This is incorrect. Orders and their distribution in the order book is called _liquidity_. Alone, they have very little meaning, and are often manipulated in the securities and commodities market(ie: you see a 5,000 bid, and place your own 5,000 ask - suddenly the bid is gone, and your ask gets rolled by huge buy orders). "Buy/sell curve" has no meaning, the closest term would be "yield curve", such as US interest rates. As the rate climbs and falls, there are inverse effects on financial instruments.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> "Remember, bubbles happen around things that fundamentally change the way we live," he said.

Ah yes, I remember how beanie babies changed the way we all lived. And tulips, of course. And rhodium?

Hmm.

<comment><USER19> And dot-coms! And real estate! Hmm.

<comment><USER20> I don't remember any innovation around real estate that changed our lives within the past few decades (or millennia even).

<comment><USER21> I think ~100 years ago they really got into vertical construction but other than that (and possibly central plumbing) your point stands..

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> With bitcoin down nearly 80% since all time high and the others down 90% ([https://www.coingecko.com/en?view=all_time_high](https://www.coingecko.com/en?view=all_time_high))

Not surprise anyone who came in and trade may be catching knives. Plus all the uncertainties in market participants

</comment><comment><USER23> It amazes me that funds hold long positions in a market without safeguards and regulations and that really has yet to formalize. I'm bullish on digital currencies but there's going to be a ton of turmoil while the world figures out how to deal with this new asset class and major shake ups as regulations start to formalize or continue to formalize in some cases.

Long plays in this market are massively risky bets. They seem completely unnecessary as well. With the volatility that exists and the decent level of volume, there's tons of easy money to be made.

<comment><USER24> Normal investment funds don't pretty much. Hedge funds are less regulated and and can punt on pretty much anything.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> FYI - article is from November. He's still bullish...

<comment><USER26> His stock, however, has only fallen an additional 10% or so since then

(It's hard to see exactly on the charts, because the stock price has fallen so fast +/\- 10% is now a matter of just two or three pixels)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Here's a deep _New Yorker_ profile of the man and his crypto ambitions from the more halcyon era of April 2018:

[https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.newyorker.com/magazine/20...](https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/04/16/a-sidelined- wall-street-legend-bets-on-bitcoin/amp)

</comment><comment><USER28> I found this article pretty good about the whole IPO "experience":

[https://equity.guru/2018/08/01/galaxy-digital-holdings- glxy-...](https://equity.guru/2018/08/01/galaxy-digital-holdings-glxy-v- debuts-market-early-investors-willingly-hooped/)

</comment><comment><USER29> From what I read when the firm launched, I thought this operation would behave like a traditional market making desk, profiting from spreads and hedging aggressively. If anything volatility would help P&L, but I guess there just isn't enough volume or liquid crypto derivatives to hedge effectively.

</comment><comment><USER30> I actually thought given the size of the position, he was part of the group manipulating transactions in order to liquidate at the top. Holding those positions long term doesn't seem smart.

</comment><comment><USER31> Picking up pennies in front of a steamroller

</comment><comment><USER32> point? alternative investments are risky?

</comment><comment><USER33> This guy showed up on bloomberg businessweek wearing a blazer and track pants. usually a recipe for losing that sum of money as a boomer....

</comment><comment><USER34> You can't win in a losing market ( market capitalisation). I explained it to a friend of mine and he didn't want to hear it.

Now we're one year further and he says it will go up again... Some people just don't understand :)

<comment><USER24> You can short it on the way down, in principle.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Buy high, sell low

</comment><comment><USER36> More proof from HN that cryto is bad.

<comment><USER37> It has its uses. It's just not free real estate.

<comment><USER38> > [https://morningchores.com/free-land/](https://morningchores.com/free-land/)

Even free real-estate has its drawbacks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> This article was published November 28 of this year. From mid-November to now, cryptocurrency exchange rates have fallen by about 50% across the board, with some much higher.

This move took many speculators, including Novogratz, by surprise:

 _" I did think Bitcoin was going to hold at $6,200," said Novogratz. "It stayed there for four months. It felt like the selling was finished. But then Bitcoin Cash decided to fork again."_

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/billybambrough/2018/12/12/bitco...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/billybambrough/2018/12/12/bitcoin- bull-mike-novogratz-has-a-stark-warning-for-the-crypto-community/)

I suspect many of these speculators are betting on a quick recovery. Should that not pan out, Novogratz and many others are headed for a world of pain.

Meanwhile, Bitcoin the technology continues chugging on. The most noteworthy development is the rapid build-out of the Lightning Network scaling solution, but there's a bunch of stuff beyond that which gets almost no attention.

<comment> village-idiot Lightning is never going to happen. They have absolutely no idea how to scale that network or handle the routing problem. The entire system is just rife with potentials for monopolies and abuse. No consumer in their right mind would ever commit their money to it.

<comment><USER40> Even if it does happen, I don't see the point of it. Why use centralized bitcoin based transactions vs centralized USD based transactions?

Isn't the whole point of bitcoin that you get rid of centralization? But apparently people want to bring it right back with lightning.

<comment> village-idiot I think you hit the nail on the head with regards to centralization.

I think there's a more important aspect here: there is very little demand for transacting in a second currency worldwide, and almost 0 demand within stable economies. As an American who does 100% of his transactions with other Americans in USD, why in the would should I introduce exchange rate risk into my daily transactions? The lightning network might be all the hotness, and I doubt that, but so long as its marked in a currency that I don't get paid in and my landlord doesn't take, I have no earthly incentive to tie up any of my hard earned money in a second currency in some lightning channel.

And that's not even starting on the absolute trainwreck that is general crypto UXD. Open a channel and tie up some of my money somewhere so I can eventually make a payment in the unspecified future? No thanks.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


At the Far Ends of a New Universal Law - <AUTHOR> http://www.quantamagazine.org/20141015-at-the-far-ends-of-a-new-universal-law/

<comment><USER2> [https://hn.algolia.com/?q=new+universal+law#!/story/forever/...](https://hn.algolia.com/?q=new+universal+law#!/story/forever/0/new%20universal%20law)</comment>


Awesome jq - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/fiatjaf/awesome-jq <comment><USER2> What awk and send are to files of lines, jq is to json. I find it indispensable on the command line. Jq is a functional language. It took me a bit to get used to it, but now it is one of the first tools I install in a new machine. The linked article is a curated list of jq related resources. After the manual, I found the cookbook helpful.

<comment><USER3> Did you mean sed by chance?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I started using jq recently for parsing JSON, and it's a wonderful tool. I usually do my data processing, especially JSON, in node but wanted to move more to the command line, and this does the trick. I recommend everyone take the time to learn it.

Thanks for this great list.</comment>


Ask HN: How to search on HackerNews? - <AUTHOR> Hey guys, I'm wondering why HN does not have search functionality. Or Am I missing something?<p>How do you search for topics here? <comment><USER2> Google inurl:news.ycombinator.com

The algolia search is okay. It frustratingly won't remember to search comments not stories and to sort by date, not popularity. So I need to adjust those every time.

</comment><comment><USER3> You can also search by using google, just add "site:news.ycombinator.com" after your search query without quotes.

</comment><comment><USER4> Look at the footer :)

One of the best search engines in popular sites.

You can actually find stuff you are looking for. Can't say same for Reddit search.

</comment><comment><USER5> bottom of the page?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!!!</comment></comment>


How Engineers Create Artificial Sounds to Fool Us - <AUTHOR> http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/click_online/9533769.stm <comment><USER2> There is a secondary purpose for sounds on digital cameras: it makes it obvious to people in the vicinity that someone has just taken a photo. This is, indeed, mandatory in some places. I don't believe there is an actual law on the books, but government guidance in Japan is that if you make a camera or phone with a camera feature it has to loudly announce itself and it should be impossible to turn that off short of damaging the device. (This is largely to prevent sexual misconduct.)

For example, if you turn down the volume to zero and set my phone to manner mode, it will ring on taking a picture loud enough to hear 20 feet away.

Similarly, current model electric cars (Prius et al) are designed to run less silent in certain circumstances, mostly for the benefit of pedestrians and cyclists around blind corners. (I don't know if they shipped that one to the US yet.)

<comment><USER3> I am a photographer and I know I'd hate this feature. It makes street photography a lot more difficult.

I assume by sexual misconduct you mean someone taking pictures in the bedroom (as opposed to photographing women at the beach, which is public space - unless specifically prohibited). I feel that is too specific a protection to make the lives of legit photographers difficult. Instead, more severe punishments could be implemented to protect men and women whose sex videos are filmed without consent.

<comment><USER4> In Japan, groping women and taking pictures up their skirts is a very very common practice among men. That's why they have women only passenger cars on trains[1]. The camera sounds are there to deter this behavior.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women-only_passenger_car>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I live close to a pretty crowded street. Lots of trucks, cars, motorcycles. Besides the environmental benefit, one thing I've been looking forward to for years is the reduced noise that electric engines would bring about. Reading a sentence like:

 _Nissan's new electric vehicle has a speaker fitted under its bonnet and a synthesiser in the dash to generate engine noise._

makes me so aggressive, I cannot even tell you. I think when you've never experienced any other kind of car than a loud one, then yes, you will start relying on your ears when you cross the street. But I think that's just a matter of what you're used to. If cars always had electric engines from the beginning, do you think people would get run over all the time today? I don't think so, because they would have adapted.

I think the transition from combustion to electric engines will be slow enough for people to adapt to them. And gosh, it would be such a niecer world with less car noise...

<comment><USER6> What about blind people? They rely pretty heavily on hearing the car.

Or what about people walking down the street and a car creeping up on them from behind. It's _scary_ having things rush past from behind if there is no warning. Let alone very dangerous.

As much as you might think humans are awesome and only need eyes, fact is that as most other animals, when it comes to danger, we mostly rely on our ears.

That's why phones ring. That's why fire alarms ring. That's why alarm clocks ring. Everything that needs our immediate and utmost attention ... is loud.

<comment><USER5> Electric cars still make noise: the wind, the tires, and for trucks the cargo can too sometimes. It's just that they would make considerably _less_ noise.

Blind people usually don't simply jaywalk a crowded street, they cross at the lights. And you'd still be able to hear moving cars.

I don't think phones ring because we rely on our ears in times of danger. It's because hearing is one of the senses that doesn't require exclusive focus (you would not want to stare at your phone all day until it starts blinking, although in some offices they do). Smell and taste wouldn't be alternatives for obvious reasons, but feel could be, and in fact phones can vibrate. Some wrist alarm clocks do too. And fire alarms are nothing we're exposed to every hour of the day.

I acknowledge that the fact that cars are pretty loud could be helpful in reducing accidents. But apparently your theory has a flaw, or else no one would ever get hit by a car. Now, one could say that _more_ people would get hit by cars if all cars were super-silent, but my original point was that this is just because we're not (yet) used to more silent cars. I think pedestrians would change their behavior and get used to them.

For people living on highly frequented roads, continous noise can become a very stressful factor. It drastically reduces quality of life and can negatively affect your psychological and physical health. That doesn't mean that every person living on a busy street gets sick. But I would still argue in favor of reducing noise where possible, and more silent engines could be one factor.

<comment><USER7> "I don't think phones ring because we rely on our ears in times of danger. It's because hearing is one of the senses that doesn't require exclusive focus (you would not want to stare at your phone all day until it starts blinking, although in some offices they do)."

One could say the same about cars. Silent cars would require much more focus and no amount of adapting will change that.

<comment><USER5> I disagree. Take for instance a city like Amsterdam (or any other Dutch city for that matter). People ride bikes there. Lots of bikes. Fast bikes. When you go there for the first time, you better make sure you walk on the right side of the side walk, or else you're actually in danger of getting run over - you're just not used to them, and the bike lanes often are on the side walks.

But you do get used to that - you simply start looking out more carefully.

I see no reason why it should be different with cars, especially since you would probably hear even a silent car more easily than a bike.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Another similar thing is voip phones. These don't bother transmitting if there is no-one speaking, but the other party will get worried that the call is disconnected if they don't hear any noise. So the other phone generates 'comfort noise' to indicate that all is still well. In fact, usually the comfort noise is generated to roughly match the spectral envelope of the real noise, so that when the silent party starts talking again, there isn't a strange transition in the sound of the underlying noise.

<comment><USER9> Don't GSM mobile phones work similar?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> A friend of mine once worked in a cosmetics factory and told me that by far the biggest difference between a £5 and a £20 lipstick is that the more expensive one makes a satisfying click when you put the lid on.

<comment><USER11> Market segmentation at work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> My favourite example of this is my iPod nano: it has a built-in speaker only to make a clicking sound when I use the (non-mechanical) clickwheel to browse through menus. The speaker is used for nothing else. If I have my earbuds in I can't even hear it. It only exists to say "click" whenever I scroll up or down a menu.

Logically, there is no reason to include such a useless feature into an MP3 player. But apparently the perfectionists at Apple's design department felt the clicking sound of the mechanical wheel on the old iPods was an essential part of the user experience. And that's the difference between Apple and the manufacturers of cheaper clones.

</comment><comment><USER13> My personal favourite one of these is the noise the ATM makes while you're waiting for your cash. The internal mechanism is almost silent in modern machines, but without some sort of audible feedback to tell them something was happening, customers reportedly started to assume machines were broken and walk away...

</comment><comment><USER14> Another classic example would be the "tone" sounds you hear when entering digits on a modern cell phone. Completely cosmetic, but probably just makes sense for consumers. And there's just something pleasant about hearing those tones rather than a generic beep (or nothing.)

<comment><USER15> On dialing they might be cosmetic, but the tones are still used to communicate with remote services. When the machine says "Press 1 for English," it's relying on getting the right tones (1209 Hz and 697 Hz in DTMF). Sure, they could be sent in the background without letting the consumer hear them, but they're still being generated.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual-tone_multi- frequency_signa...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual-tone_multi- frequency_signaling)

<comment><USER16> Except few modern devices actually transmit there frequencies in-band. They get encoded and sent out-of-band, then recreated (if needed) on the other end.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Interestingly, you can make a pretty good instant assessment of the quality of a piece of pro audio gear by its density relative to other devices of the same function. Denser is better, until you get up the the very top of the price range when density suddenly drops due to a switch in the tech used, eg. digital amps.

<comment><USER18> I'm curious as to weather or not this is sarcasm? I remember the owner of a small company that makes top of the line a/v equipment (the type of stuff Saudies wih oil money put in their private jets) come talk in one of my college courses. He showed us the inside of a case, and where they added weights on the inside, so it felt 'solid'. And thus sold it at a premeimum.

p.s. I'm a horrible speller, Somebody make a keyboard app with a spell checker, eh?

<comment><USER17> It isn't sarcasm. Good quality pro audio gear weighs a ton. I know this because I've schlepped lots of it around. I've seen enough of it opened up to know that it doesn't have weights added to it. The kind of people who buy this stuff often open it up as soon as it comes into their possession, out of curiosity. Any brand adding weights to their products would soon be laughed out of the market.

Good quality in this context doesn't necessarily mean audiophile sound quality, it means consistently high performance and low failure rates over many years of abuse.

As I said, when you get to the really top end stuff, it stops holding true. Weight is the last thing to be optimised as you go upmarket.

This is _pro_ audio gear I'm talking about, not so called "high end" consumer stuff. I mean the stuff which has rackmounting brackets, not the stuff with a delicate finish. "Audiophile" kit is synonymous with snake-oil, as that guy who came into your college demonstrated.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The engineers are NOT creating artificial sounds to fool customers. As the article describes, customers would not buy a good product just because it does not sound good (which means customers are fools). Engineers are designing the products knowing that their customers are fools.

<comment><USER20> People enjoy things that please their senses. This applies to cars, dating, software, food, and just about darned near everything. Perhaps on Vulcan everyone chooses strictly for logic, but humans base many decisions on such illogical concepts like how something makes them feel. I guess we're all fools that way.

<comment><USER21> Makes producing products/ services and marketing more interesting than if everyone acted in completely logical and rational ways.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> As a motorcyclist, the sound of traffic is almost entirely a non-issue; I can wear canalphones with music at a volume where I can't hear any traffic noise, and still negotiate peak hour inner city traffic.

But then, as a motorcyclist I pay more attention than just about any driver (including myself when I'm behind a wheel). For example, I'm never surprised by a vehicle suddenly appearing in my rear view mirror on a bike, because I move my eyes in a reflexive pattern between the road and both mirrors every few seconds.

If you're _really_ paying attention, sound is almost a non-issue on the road - but that puts you in a very small minority of road users.

</comment><comment><USER23> Hate the keyboard clicking sounds on iPads and iPhones. It's like the first thing I turn off.</comment>


You fired your top talent. I hope you're happy - <AUTHOR> https://startupsventurecapital.com/you-fired-your-top-talent-i-hope-youre-happy-cf57c41183dd <comment><USER2> I have to say reading the original story i was genuinely concerned for "Ricks" mental health, sounded like he was being burnt out.</comment>


103 Uber drivers accused of sexual assault or abuse - <AUTHOR> http://money.cnn.com/2018/04/30/technology/uber-driver-sexual-assault/index.html <comment><USER2> The cynical person inside me says, wow big surprise coming from this company. However I'm guessing this has more to do with people whom drive for Uber and other ride sharing companies, are more likely to not seek more traditional forms of employment where they'd be around coworkers, management, and other people in general, where they wouldn't be able to conceal their behavior for too long.</comment>


Turning brain signals into useful information - <AUTHOR> https://www.economist.com/news/technology-quarterly/21733192-once-data-have-been-extracted-brain-how-can-they-be-employed-best <comment><USER2> I work at CTRL-labs, a startup focused on electromyography (EMG) based control devices. This article has a bit more technical detail about what we do: [https://www.wired.com/story/brain-machine-interface-isnt- sci...](https://www.wired.com/story/brain-machine-interface-isnt-sci-fi- anymore/)

EEG--reading signals from the brain--is pretty hard. But EMG--capturing muscle contractions in the arm--produces relatively much cleaner data. This can then be fed into a variety of machine learning algorithms to map high-fidelity time series data to discrete signals or continuous gestures for which we have appropriate training data.

Want to find more? Come visit our offices in NYC!

<comment><USER3> Are you saying people can just show up to your office for a...tour?

<comment><USER4> In exchange for adding your EMG sensory data into their machine learning dataset while you are walking around? ;-)

<comment><USER5> Worth it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't think I've ever used my brain signals in a useful way, so this is a step in the right direction.

<comment><USER7> It's not just you. That title implies that brain signals per se aren't "useful information" to begin with. I wonder how any of us are able to read that headline at all.

<comment><USER8> "Useful information" means information that someone is willing to pay for, I think...

<comment><USER7> I suspect you are right, given the publishing venue. But I'd still find it a rather narrow definition of usefulness.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> If you find this topic interesting, Neuralink is hiring. We're looking for a lot of different backgrounds across applied physics, biomedical engineering, software and hardware. Though Neuralink sounds cool - I know many people are skeptical - the reality is even cooler.

Especially if you're great at firmware, robotics control software, or computer vision get in touch! Either through the links on the website, or there's an email in my HN profile.

<comment><USER10> Neuralink is certainly on my radar as a company to watch but I thought it was more in an invite only Ph.D heavy theory stage than a hire and build board stage. The idea to use an acoustic radio for transmission in a mostly water media is very clever even if I worry about the safety margins of the power density involved with transmitting that much data.

<comment><USER9> While a lot of people on the team have PhDs, I definitely would not describe Neuralink as "PhD heavy theory stage"! The overwhelming emphasis is on building things that work and testing them against reality as quickly as possible. Anyone capable of doing that regardless of credentials is welcome here. To get a better sense of what I mean, check out the interview advice thread here: [https://www.reddit.com/r/Neuralink/comments/70gehm/neuralink...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Neuralink/comments/70gehm/neuralink_interviews_any_tips/dn3nc9u/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm not sure how this would work in practice. Thoughts are incredibly noisy. Any mechanism that could filter out the noise basically can decipher intent. I'd argue intent deciphering is the actual problem trying to be solved by these devices (e.g. I wish I didn't have to type. I wish the computer just knew what I wanted to type, not that I wish the computer simply typed out what I thought). Solutions like "oh, just keep on thinking of the same thing over and over again" is highly error prone and will definitely be slower than typing. Say you wanted to type "[the quick brown brown quick the quick brown quick the brown]" a strategy of repeatedly thinking of the phrase to be typed will be error prone, regardless of any ML techniques you use, simply because it cannot be known in advance what you wanted to type unless you knew the intent.

Perhaps it'll pick it up as "the quick brown", or "quick brown the", and so forth.

\---

Another problem can be illustrated below:

Say you had your brain device on now. You're ready to reply to this.

Horse poop.

Oh, I guess you read the above and now have "horse poop" typed. Well, you can just remove that ---

"add comment"

"submit"

Too late.

<comment><USER12> I don't disagree with your analysis but I think you're making the assumption that brain signals.

So instead of "that is stupid", "add comment", "you're wrong on the internet", "submit", I think we could be able to have more information about the context of the words:

        (:commentary "that is stupid")
        (:request-interaction "add comment) ; from which the AI figures out it is a button on the screen
        (:request-input "You're wrong on the internet")
        (:request-interaction "submit)

In essence, maybe it is possible to detect beyond just words and understand the context, just from the signals too.

<comment><USER13> It's like XML for your mind!

<comment><USER14> *lisp

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I predict that BMIs are going to suffer from the same problem as AI, where the applications that are working in the short-term get very overestimated because they are confused with the long-term where you create a singularity. If you had a BMI that could read/write the entire brain on neuron-level resolution, you could create computer back-ups of people, and if hardware were fast enough you could create superhuman intelligence. If you just have cochlear implants and prosthetics, the best case is a world where nobody is impaired, which is good, but still very far from a singularity. The Neuralink version is that if you can do telepathy, that might be valuable in some situations, but it will probably just be like faster email until the computers become smarter than us.

</comment><comment><USER16> I once met an ex-apple engineer who created a hat that would read your thoughts and play the song you were thinking about. It only worked for certain people and had a limited playlist to choose from but it was really cool watching your "brainwaves" on a screen and then thinking "Daft Punk Get Lucky" and having it play on the speakers.

<comment><USER17> hey do you have any more info about this? have been wanting to do something similar.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> For a good review of the the brain learning to use BMI's, see:

[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S095943881...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959438817301642)

</comment><comment><USER19> Are we witnessing the very first steps on the long road to complete erosion of the privacy of our thoughts, the last remaining facet of privacy?

<comment><USER5> Yup. I hope you're prepared to live in the woods my friend.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> What if you could detect the vocalization somehow instead of relying on a very noisy data source (brain signals), which I see becoming a roadblock...subvocalization would be like being able to chat without typing...you would still be interacting with a UI that will make sure you dont give out your bank card number etc.

Maybe even hold up your phone and it will beam some sort of ultrasound or laser to detect tiny movements in the larynx (I have no idea what I'm talking about) but seems like there's patent in the works by physically attaching sensors...

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subvocal_recognition](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subvocal_recognition)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyN4ViZ21N0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyN4ViZ21N0)

</comment><comment><USER21> Back when I had to write a lot for my courses, I was wondering the same about the usefulness of EEGs [1]. At times all I wanted was to lie on my bed, point a projector to the ceiling, and write.

Alas the tech/understanding of neuroscience is just not here yet, but maybe it would be in a few decades?

There's a lot more in the way of interesting discussion in the link if you would like to read more.

[1]: [https://psychology.stackexchange.com/questions/9594/are- ther...](https://psychology.stackexchange.com/questions/9594/are-there-any- eeg-procedures-currently-available-in-development-that-can-formula)

<comment><USER22> EEGs (at least non surgical ones) provide only the highest level information about what's going on inside of brains. It's a bit like looking at a city as you're flying 10,000 feet above it. You can figure out when it's rush hour, but you're not going to be able to tell what the most popular restaurant is.

The most sophisticated EEG systems actually train your brain to use the EEG, no the other way around.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> This is one of the first broad-audience articles I've seen that actually acknowledges neuronal firing rates as an important practical consideration.

Usually it's simplified in explanations as "binary", on or off. This isn't wrong for any _instant_ in time (and is sometimes good enough for conceptual models), but in reality the firing rate varies as a function of the stimulus. Analog, if you like...

</comment><comment><USER24> I hope that before the end of my career I get to write code with just my thoughts. Add a method here, a loop there, refactor this block out with, etc.

<comment><USER25> It wouldn't be faster: coding is not input constrained, but thinking constrained. So just being able to connect your thoughts to the input method wouldn't change much, instead the computer really needs to augment those thoughts instead. The trick would be using this tech to create a much tighter feedback loop with the computer, but just having it isn't sufficient.

<comment><USER26> > It wouldn't be faster: coding is not input constrained, but thinking > constrained.

Well, it depends on how bad your RSI is. For some people it is input constrained.

<comment><USER25> Sure, but then this becomes niche to RSI sufferers and other people who can't type easily like voice input.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> The big question for me at least is, are these signals uniform or have some kind of similarities for specific concepts or actions from person to person?

If every brain has its own language, the effort is magnitude higher.

<comment><USER18> Some aspects of the signals are individual-dependent, some are consistent across individuals (for some definition of individual-dependent and consistent). I know that's vague, but it's accurate.

<comment><USER27> Very interesting.

Are any of these consistent aspects associated with the type of action or thought?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Now if we could turn useful information into brain signals...

</comment><comment><USER28> Ya most people's brain signals contain nothing of value ;P</comment>


Data Structure Visualizations (2011) - <AUTHOR> http://www.cs.usfca.edu/~galles/visualization/Algorithms.html <comment><USER2> For anyone currently going through algorithms and data structures, this is really nice. I would also like to suggest VisuAlgo.[1]

[1]: [http://visualgo.net](http://visualgo.net)

</comment><comment><USER3> For the interested, simulation of distributed synchronous network: [https://github.com/rkarthick/morpheus- client](https://github.com/rkarthick/morpheus-client)

Did this as my school project.

</comment><comment><USER4> I love this website! When I was hacking on a key value database it was invaluable for learning about B+ trees and other data structures suitable for indexing.</comment>


Show HN: Find a home close to work - <AUTHOR> https://www.openlistings.co/near <comment><AUTHOR> Hey HN, I'm a founder at Open Listings and did a lot of the engineering of this project. We got a lot of inquiries from tech workers who really cared about their commute times, so we used Googles Distance Matrix API [0] to sort listings by commute time.

I'll be on here with my cofounders today to answer any questions you might have.

[0]: [https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/distancemat...](https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/distancematrix/intro)

<comment><USER2> I clicked on my last company (Factual in LA) and the first listing was for a $18M penthouse. It also said that the buyer would get a $225k+ refund from Open Listings for buying through them - how does that work?

But seriously, it is a very neat tool, thanks for making it.

<comment><USER3> Thanks! We'd love to get you into that penthouse...

When you buy a home, your agent is paid a 2.5% commission to represent you in the transaction. As a real estate brokerage, Open Listings replaces your agent and facilitates the transaction on your behalf. At close, we refund you half of the commission we receive, usually crediting the refund against your closing costs.

Here's a more detailed explanation plus a fun slider: [https://www.openlistings.co/our-commission- refund](https://www.openlistings.co/our-commission-refund)

<comment><USER4> I've heard from multiple agents about how redfin agents don't know what they are doing. Of course, that is just one side of the story, but I'm curious about how receptive listing agents are towards working with you guys in hot markets like SF Bay area. Anything you can share?

<comment><USER5> As an Australian I have always been amazed with that in the USA you have to use a buyers agent. Here you visit the properties yourself and deal directly with the selling agent. Only the buyer pays the agent.

We do have very high stamp duty (basically a sales tax on real estate) which is 5% of the property price which the buyer has to pay.

<comment><USER6> I think you mean that only the _seller_ pays the agent. But yes, I agree the American system is a bit odd. For one thing the listings are WAAAAYYY old by Australian standards - here you list your house with an auction or "sale by" date usually six weeks in the future, and ... it sells (usually). It looks to me like the American system has longer listings because there are fewer open- house inspections - your buyers agent arranges a time to inspect on your behalf, or something like that?

<comment><USER5> Yes you are right - the buyer pays the agent.

At the moment is Sydney properties are selling off market which means 0 day sales. The time it takes in the USA seems amazing long.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The site is very nice, but how does anyone afford houses that expensive in those areas?

I live in Texas and my nice modern 2000 SF house is only $190.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's tough! As a company we're trying to make it cheaper by refunding half of our commission back to the buyer [0]. If you're doing an FHA loan, that can be almost 50% of the down payment. We can also help with the purchase of low income housing if you qualify [1]. We're actually thinking about building some tools to make this inventory more accessible. You might also try checking out our cheekily named list of fixer-uppers, Shitty Listings [2]. As you'll notice, a "fixer-upper" near the California coast can still be pretty pricy but I think there's just a fundamental supply constraint. Incidentally, that's most likely why real estate has been a lasting and valuable asset class.

[0]: [https://www.openlistings.co/our-commission- refund](https://www.openlistings.co/our-commission-refund) [1]: [http://sf- moh.org/index.aspx?page=262](http://sf-moh.org/index.aspx?page=262) [2]: [http://www.shittylistings.com/](http://www.shittylistings.com/)

<comment><USER8> FYI, your links in the footer on shittylistings.com point to localhost:3000 :P

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Curious where this number comes from:

> It's sad. The typical car LA or SF commuter spends more than 60 hours each > year stuck in traffic.

It seems low, it would be an estimate of just over one hour per week, which would be like 10 minutes each morning and evening.

<comment><USER10> The average commute in the US is something like 23 min, so the average commute in LA or SF should theoretically be a bit higher. I agree that 10 min seems incredibly low.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good catch, I'll fact check that number.

<comment><USER9> It should be closer to 2h per day off the cuff, I'm sure you can find better sources than my memory.

At that rate, though, you save something closer to a hundred hours a year, or more than two work weeks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> There's another solution to this problem: remote work. It's 2015, and with the plethora of Internet technologies that facilitate online collaboration I'm still dismayed to see so many tech companies behaving like it's 1985. The insistence and focus on physical location baffles me. Some companies seem to get it and have embraced an online/distributed workforce but many seem opposed to that model. I'd really like to hear others thoughts on why geography is still such a huge factor in knowledge-based industries.

<comment><USER12> I guess remote work is an option, but not quite a total solution at the moment. 1) not all work could be remote 2) self-discipline/communication is tough

Woofoo (about 7 people) did remote, but the founder admit it's tough and challenging even for such a small and motivated company (imagine your workforce > 1000 people), though there are some obvious benefits.

It's not just about tools (slack, skype, etc.) and finding a procedure that works, but more about company culture, motivation, discipline, adaptation to remote environment, family at home, etc. Not every employee could survive a remote environment and continue to be productive :(

Before everyone could work from home, maybe the idea of multiple office location/work-space (rather than centralized) could be explored, yet it will have many pros and cons.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> What about reverse search? I want to find a work close to home. :)

<comment><USER14> Same here. I don't want to move closer to work as the entire reason I don't live closer is cost.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The rent explosion article[0] seems relevant. No 1 bedroom apartments for less than $3000 near my San Mateo office.

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10050545](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10050545)

<comment><USER16> Odd. Just last year I was renting a 2/1 house in Belmont for $2k, until we bought a house. My buddy's renting a 2/1 in San Mateo for $3k. How close is "close"? I'd expect 1bd apartments to be cheaper than entire houses.

<comment><USER15> Whatever the default was, I believe it was looking for stuff within a 20 minute drive. I'm currently in a studio in San Mateo for $2.3k, but that's only because I stayed in the same unit I was in last year, so they only raised rent by 10%. If I were a new resident, my studio is around $2.7k.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Finally, a website where I can find homes for sale.

</comment><comment><USER18> Very interesting. The site looks clean and it's fast.

Where do you get your data? I used to work for one of the industry dinosaurs; our only competitive advantage was that we had agreements with most of the 674 MLSes to rehost their data for our clients, which were RE Agent companies. Zillow is still using Trulia as a pipe to funnel that MLS data from my former employer.

Is that one of the reasons for piloting in CA - fewer MLSes to partner with?

<comment><AUTHOR> As a California RE brokerage we join each MLS and get a direct feed from their RETS api. It's a dramatically better data feed than any of the aggregators offer and we get listings the minute they come on market (well our polling interval is more like 5 minutes). So far we have 100% coverage in San Francisco, Oakland/East Bay, Silicon Valley, and Los Angeles. We've just joined the San Diego MLS and will have data there soon. And yes, our strategy is to go deep on California, prioritizing data quality over sheer number of listings.

<comment><USER19> You should check out [https://rets.ly/](https://rets.ly/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Been on their beta list for almost a year. They've since been acquired by zillow so we're not holding our breath.

<comment><USER19> My understanding is that they are working hard to build APIs that will let Retsly power the _next_ zillow, and that there's support for that internally. Time will tell!

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool, if that's the case I hope the API is available soon. In the meantime our internal implementation makes use of this great open source library from estately: [https://github.com/estately/rets](https://github.com/estately/rets)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> For people looking for an apartment, padmapper[1] has a similar option where you can give it an address and it will draw a polygonal boundary around it showing the limits for an x-minute commuting distance for walking, cycling, or driving. I imagine the car commute could be inaccurate if there's bad rush hour traffic in that area, but the others should be relatively consistent.

I'm not affiliated with the site at all, I just thought it's a really cool feature.

[1]: [http://www.padmapper.com](http://www.padmapper.com)

You need to click on "More Filters", then "Super-Secret Advanced Features"

</comment><comment><USER21> Where does this site get its real estate and/or distance/time data? I ended up doing an address search for my employer (which isn't on the list), but got a "No properties were found within 20 minutes of this location." despite Zillow showing dozens of red dots within 20 minutes _walking_ distance from where I work.

<comment><AUTHOR> We get our data directly from regional MLS systems in the SF Bay Area and Los Angeles but we're actively expanding (San Diego is next).

If you email the address you're looking for to email@example.com, I'll try to prioritize your area.

<comment><USER21> No need, my query is quiet a ways out of any of those cities (Reno/Tahoe), but thanks anyway. Good to know.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> What's different now than at your launch ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9113240](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9113240))?

<comment><AUTHOR> Good question. We've done a bunch of transactions, learned more about our customers and built this purpose specific site for our biggest segment (tech workers looking to live closer to the office).

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Interesting. One of my short term plans is to display hiking trailheads near homes for sale. Not sure if anything like that exists (also haven't looked...)

<comment><AUTHOR> That's an awesome idea, pretty sure that doesn't exist. Definitely drop me a link if you end up building it! My brother in law keeps asking me for a Twitter feed of land near good surf spots. I gave him a bunch of mansions he can't afford :) [0].

[0]: [https://twitter.com/openmansions](https://twitter.com/openmansions)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Doesn't this assume you'll continue working with the same company for a long time? If you work at a company in SF now but 4 years later want to work at place down on MV, or vice-versa, not sure how this helps.

</comment><comment><USER25> Another website that does not works without sessionStorage enabled.

<comment><AUTHOR> Will fix.</comment></comment>


Intel Closes $7.68 Billion McAfee Acquisition - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/28/intel-closes-7-68-billion-mcafee-acquisition/ <comment><USER2> This is one of those deals that make absolutely no sense to me. Even less sense in fact then the Time Warner/AOL debacle.

Can someone explain any drop of rationale Intel might have for doing this? I am coming up empty.

<comment><USER3> It's a long term investment to bring security down to the hardware level.

<comment><USER4> A better investment would be to fix the holes in the first place.

Or, better yet, spend that money to educate users and administrators alike on how to protect themselves.

<comment><USER5> 1) How are they responsible for the holes? 2) How would this make them money?

<comment><USER6> I could easily see it becoming BigCo policy to only use hardware with Enterprise Security Robustness(tm), if only as an ass-covering move.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This seems like a huge waste of money to me.

</comment><comment><USER8> Hm. I see this as a play for DRM locking things across the stack. Deep scan and data analysis software would be ripe for implementing this. Maybe I'm just paranoid.

</comment><comment><USER9> Sun went for less. Oracle sure got a great deal.

<comment><USER10> Probably more like Intel got a bad deal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I have come across persons who cannot remove McAfee from their machines.

<comment><USER12> Maybe someone should start selling software to scan for such hard-to-dislodge software and remove it. An anti-anti-virus scanner.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Story is 2 hours old and has a bad href displayed as text in the body of the article. Is there no quality control at techcrunch?

<comment><USER14> No.</comment></comment>