From Damocles to Socrates: The Classics In/of Hip-Hop - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/eidolon/from-damocles-to-socrates-fbda6e685c26

<comment><USER2> Hmm... very interesting. Either hip hop is much, much more sophisticated than I've been giving it credit for, or a Classics professor is inappropriately shoehorning his interpretations onto the lyrics. My initial impulse would be to day "mephistopheles" and "damocles" are used because they sound cool and rhyme.

I don't know hip hop well enough to say which is the case, but it's certainly a thought-provoking article.

<comment><USER3> Well, you have to know the words before you can put them in a rhyme. In the poor black neighborhoods where hip-hop emerged, that's no mean trick. The only reason I ever heard the word "Mephistopheles" growing up was because of Magic: The Gathering. I don't think I knew who or what "Damocles" was until well into adulthood. And you have to know the stories before you can invoke their meanings. Kanye is almost certainly far better read than people give him credit for.

A good intro to hip-hop history is _Can 't Stop Won't Stop_ by Jeff Chang

[http://www.amazon.com/Cant-Stop-Wont-History- Generation/dp/0...](http://www.amazon.com/Cant-Stop-Wont-History- Generation/dp/0312425791)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Boy this resonates with me (though I'm 10-20 years older than the author). East coast hip hop in the 80s & 90s was more creative and wry than what you hear today. But then it got sucked into the music machine and excreted as either pap or a violent product.

BTW if you speak the language, a surprising number of French rappers still reference classical and modern philosophers.</comment>


Ask HN: What quarterly journals do you read? - <AUTHOR>

Inspired by https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8010609, I'm wondering what quarterly journals you guys read- doesn't have to be tech related.... <comment><USER2> Code Quarterly, of course. Ah, unfortunately it didn't take off.

</comment><comment><USER3> Does 2600 count?</comment>


Show HN: Generate SVG parliament charts (JavaScript) - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/juliuste/parliament-svg <comment><USER2> It would be cool to generate these using Vega ([https://vega.github.io/vega/](https://vega.github.io/vega/)) and embed them directly on Wikipedia ([https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Graph/Demo](https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Graph/Demo)).

<comment><USER3> What a neat idea!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Thanks for making this! I create a lot of similar diagrams using this[1] tool, but it's always frustrated me that I can't define the data in a form like JSON, so your library looks perfect. Will you consider adding the Westminster style diagram in the future?

[1]: [https://tools.wmflabs.org/parliamentdiagram/parliamentinputf...](https://tools.wmflabs.org/parliamentdiagram/parliamentinputform.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Sure, I'll work on Westminster in the next few days.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Nice and useful tool. Thanks!</comment>


Make a backup NOW - <AUTHOR> I feel obligated to make a public service announcement after an incredibly close call today. I had my backpack stolen, and (luckily) was able to recover it hours later. Inside, was my computer. More importantly, inside was my data, and it was not backed up.
I have been intending to set up my backup system for a long time now, but hadn't yet found the time to do so. Somehow, I managed to convince myself that nothing bad would happen in the mean time; this was a wake-up call. Don't be like me. Start making backups. I'm doing it right now. I'm enjoying borg backup (https://github.com/borgbackup/borg). <comment><USER2> In a timely note, World Backup Day is March 31st: [http://www.worldbackupday.com/en/](http://www.worldbackupday.com/en/)

Sadly, in my experience, we only back stuff up after personally seeing a big loss. And there's a strong cobbler's-children effect: we who are technical and should have the best backups often forget to, because we're confident in the technology, or have too many other tasks on our lists.</comment>


Debian turns 23 - <AUTHOR> https://bits.debian.org/2016/08/debian-turns-23.html <comment><USER3> Debian is my favourite OS[0]. I've been using it full time for years: I use it on my desktop and laptop (Debian testing), and servers (Debian stable). I've installed it with big success on parents and siblings computers, and the extended family's computers.

Debian takes freedom seriously[1]

It's getting better with age:

\- Since Sarge (2005) there's been release every ~2 years

\- Debian LTS allows you to run Debian securely for 5 years (with caveats)

Things I agree with, that may be somewhat controversial:

\- Debian takes packaging software seriously (it splits the application and development files)

\- Debian follows the FHS (e.g. config goes in /etc, data goes in /var/lib, etc)

\- Debian stable is stable. Apart from security patches, it really doesn't change.

Other great things:

\- Debian is a great base to build on (see the many derivatives[2])

Cool things to come:

\- Reproducible builds[3]

[1] [https://www.debian.org/social_contract](https://www.debian.org/social_contract)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debian#Derivatives](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debian#Derivatives)

[3] [https://wiki.debian.org/ReproducibleBuilds](https://wiki.debian.org/ReproducibleBuilds)

[0] I think Debian is one of the few Linux distros that can truly call itself an OS, as opposed to just a "distro"

<comment><USER4> I've recently taken an interest in NixOS after switching to Debian from Ubuntu about 2 years ago.

Could someone kindly enlighten me as to point [3]? Is the term "reproducible builds" used in the same context as NixOS? Otherwise stated, does this reflect the same goals? On the surface this seems to be the case, but I'm struggling to understand how Debian's approach compares/contrasts.

I quite like Debian, but the transactional approach to package management in NixOS is ... titillating...

<comment><USER5> Debian is currently leading the way on deterministic builds, I believe. I had a fork at one point that integrated _most_ of the changes in NixOS to make the system tarball (what comes on ISOs) etc deterministic, but it fell to the wayside a few years ago as I lost time to work on NixOS (it works well enough on the servers I've had it on for a few years, after I put some work in).

However, there is another axis to this question that NixOS does address, which is "reproducibility". To clarify, for the purposes here, I define:

      - Reproducibility: I can always create a copy of a system state, in terms of the set of steps taken to build it, given some known description.

      - Deterministic: I can always exactly reproduce a copy of the system state, down to bit-for-bit replication.

To make this more explicit, by these definitions: NixOS is reproducible, but not currently deterministic (except for a few things like the kernel). Debian is becoming deterministic, but not reproducible. These do not imply each other in any direction, IMO, from the POV of a user.

The reason for this is because, in short, when you run `apt install foobar` on Debian, while you may _exactly_ be able to build a bit for bit copy of `foobar-1.2.3`, exactly matching those results based on the Debian package, the result of actually _performing_ `apt install foobar` is not deterministic.

Today I may run that command and install 1.2.3. Tomorrow it may install 1.2.4 if the maintainer updated `foobar`. In both cases, I could make a bit-for-bit replica of 1.2.3 or 1.2.4, given the Debian package descriptions. But I cannot, without pinning package mirrors explicitly, always ensure the act of running those commands gives the same result.

This is kind of a problem with systems like Docker, for example. Two people may run a Dockerfile running `apt install foobar` at two different times, and get completely different copies of `foobar`! So you have to base determinism on the Docker image, not on the _description_ of the image (the Dockerfile). Because the image you built might not actually match whatever you deploy.

In NixOS, the entire 'system' is actually defined by a single Git repository (called 'nixpkgs'). That means if you and I both have Git revision 0x12345678 of Nixpkgs, and we have the same configuration file for our NixOS systems, `nix-env -i foobar` will _always_ install the same version of foobar, as it was described in Nixpkgs, at that exact time.

In practice this means I can do awesome things, like configure my NixOS laptop in VMWare at first, get my configuration.nix right, pin down the right Nixpkgs version. Put new hard drive into laptop, start ISO, checkout right Nixpkgs git version, copy configuration.nix, hit 'nixos-install' and reboot. My laptop is now identical to what I had before. Obviously this is also great in production environments because developers can get essentially-identical setups to production environments.

Note the definition of 'reproducible' above: _you will take the same steps to produce the output_. This does not imply fully bit-for-bit determinism. That means if installing `foobar` requires running `gcc -O2 foobar.c -o foobar` and running `copy ./foobar /usr/bin/foobar` (roughly), both you and I will always take those exact steps to install it. But maybe `foobar.c` embedded the `__DATE__` macro into its source, so it is not bitwise deterministic.

NixOS has the story for reproducible builds right, straight from the design -- so bitwise determinism is "only" a matter of some work and not any philosophical hurdle. But it's naturally something that requires care and tooling to do correctly and there are some unresolved bits that meant I never got done with the original work. But it's nothing fundamental.

The Debian developers have really pushed a substantial amount of the work into doing all this and making these tasks feasible, fixing many upstream packages -- including helping get extensions to GCC (to make things like `__DATE__` always a specified constant for packagers), and writing lots of documentation[1]. They deserve much, much praise for this endeavor, IMO.

[1] [https://reproducible-builds.org/docs/](https://reproducible- builds.org/docs/)

<comment><USER6> If you want `apt-get install foobar` to always do the same thing, just use snapshot.debian.org in your apt sources.list:

deb [http://snapshot.debian.org/archive/debian/20091004T111800Z/](http://snapshot.debian.org/archive/debian/20091004T111800Z/) lenny main

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> ~13 years ago, I picked up a KNOPPIX 3.3 CD on the front cover of Australian Personal Computer and experienced the wonders of a Debian-based distro for the first time.

13 years later, and here I am, still using Debian on my home desktop, my personal laptop, my work machine and my VPS, and working professionally as a Free Software developer.

So thanks, Debian devs!

<comment><USER8> 13 years ago, I downloaded Debian stable. The 'nv' driver for XFree86 didn't work on my machine, so my first Unix experience was learning how to use vi to edit the configuration file. Never did get it to work, but Knoppix did (in those days it had famously good hardware detection - I think the key might have been using the 'vesa' driver instead of 'nv').

The graphical environment provided by Knoppix gave me enough comfort to learn how to use the command line and install the proprietary NVIDIA drivers, and I was running pure Debian a few weeks later, and still am on my laptop (although I now prefer OpenBSD on my server).

<comment><USER7> All those, uuuuuh, positive and happy memories of editing modelines in XF86Config...

<comment><USER9> Mandatory xkcd reference: [https://xkcd.com/963/](https://xkcd.com/963/)

I tend to agree with the graph, though - editing XF86config / xorg.conf was not a lot of fun.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I understand the desire to keep corporate communication positive, but it's sad to see the absence of Ian Murdock so soon after his passing.

<comment><USER11> Strangely, Murdock's death is mentioned, but not a word about his founding role.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm old enough to remember all the "Debian is dying" posts on Slashdot back in the day. As a very happy convert since the potato days, it's amazing how far Debian has come and a testament to the power of free software. Go Debian!

<comment><USER13> > I'm old enough to remember all the "Debian is dying" posts

Sadly, the Ian (Ian Murdock) in Debian did pass away (death had something to do with police). [http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/12/ian- mu...](http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/12/ian-murdock- father-of-debian-dead-at-42/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Debian you are my hero! And I cannot think of a more fitting tribute to all of Ian's hard work. This is how he should be remembered.

</comment><comment><USER15> I've been using various forms of Unix, Linux , and BSD since 1998. Early days were a lot of Slackware, and eventually moved into FreeBSD, where I was happy for years. In the end the usability, stability, and package management of the Debian system has me using it for all of my server setups. I've found it the easiest of the Linux environments to get up and running quickly. It's what I would consider the "standard" for a Linux OS at this point.

</comment><comment><USER16> After fighting RPM hell so much in the late 90s, Debian linux was such a revelation. I've been using Debian and its derivatives ever since.

</comment><comment><USER17> I used to use debian. But their bureaucratic self righteous organization have -at my own personal- opinion created a drift between them and upstream packages.

Countless decisions of debian maintainers (that are proficient at packaging and NOT at coding) to think of themselves has «smarter» than upstream open source software maintainers have resulted in countless teeth grinding:

\- the openSSL randomness «fix» that resulted in openSSH being shipped with only 65535 potential keys

\- the complexity of building clean src vs bin packages (in opposition with RPM or slackware packaging) and the numerous kombinat called debian helpers makes packaging a hell,

\- latex packages being a tad broken

\- ruby/python packages requiring a tad of contorsion to have them work the way they were inteded to work natively (the overzealous package slicing which in python/ruby required you to install non trivial package to use gem/pip)

\- the multiplication of packages for «ease of use» that cluttered debian with so many fixed dependencies hell that it makes stable often hard and slow to upgrade vs testing that can break and the hell of version pinpointing

\- the bureaucratic approach of splitting configurations in so many directories that it is mind blowing and as usual not always following upstream simpler conventions

\- poor default config (like apache cgi-bin being global to help install 3rd party modules)

\- and the debian community above all that has taken «the melon» and kind of been evolving to be a tad overconfident leading to impose choices that are more than disputable to the users (such of course as systemd) but let's say that ubuntu having sucked most of their community of maintainer during the split it is even more obvious that they have a «microsoft» syndrome of we know better than you what is good for you (desktop choices...)

As a result, I have almost happily left debian as my main OS, but I still am hating that «securing/hardening» an OS after default install has become the norm in free/open source main distribution.

The more I have seen open source project take a turn of «sectarism» the less I am convinced in the so called intrinsic values of openness in free software.

Yet, there are still enough valuable open source projects out there for my comfort

</comment><comment><USER18> For my birthday in 1996, I ordered a Debian CD and some game. I played the game once or twice, but am still using Ubuntu, a Debian derivative. Debian has its faults, but has done a lot of good work over the years.

</comment><comment><USER19> I've been using Debian for ever .. but honestly it's mostly b/c the critical mass it has. If I have a problem it's pretty straightforward to find solutions. I think there are distributions that are more advanced and interesting (NixOS) and with quicker updates to their packages (Arch), but since I don't want to fiddle with my computer all day I just use use Debian.

Maybe some day something a little more modern will take off but for the time being I'll stick to what works - <USER2>

</comment><comment><USER20> around 17 years ago i remember flapping betwee slack and debian .... debian package management was always superior so i stayed ... still using debian today. Also remember that I've always liked gnome-panel but not the whole desktop env , so i would use window maker + gnome-panel :) .

</comment><comment><USER21> Never did get into Debian, only because the configure files were in different locations than red hat, at least back in the day. Using fedora and Slackware.

</comment><comment><USER22> I a week ago I upgraded an oldstable debian installation to stable and now it hangs on shutdown and reboot due to systemd.

Thanks Debian.

</comment><comment><USER23> Does anyone know what happened to the case of the debian founder?

</comment><comment><USER24> Don't use stable. Stable doesn't mean what you think it means. It means that, among other things, it doesn't get any major updates to core software.

<comment><USER25> Some notes as to your use case would add to your comment I think. I have in the past run Sid (aka Unstable) for non-critical use on a laptop without too many issues.

<comment><USER26> major problem with unstable is that you get completely addicted to upgrading your system each time a package evolve. That's a huge time sink, thanks Debian :-)</comment></comment></comment>


Puzzle: LgN algorithm for Index == Value - <AUTHOR> http://idiomatic-fu.appspot.com/puzzle/3002/view <comment><USER2> Given that the list is sorted you can just modify the basic binary search to do what your want. Choose the middle and then compare the index with the value - depending on the relationship look to the left or right and repeat.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is a binary sort. How is that interesting?

<comment><USER4> For those that like these puzzles there's tons at TopCoder.com, spoj.pl, usaco, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> bool f(vector<int> v){

/* use 0-based indice*/ int lowerBound = 0; int upperBound = v.size() - 1;

while(1){

    		if(lowerBound == upperBound) return v[lowerBound] == lowerBound;

    		int i = lowerBound + (upperBound - lowerBound) / 2;

    		if(v[i] == i){

    			return true;

    		}else if(v[i] < i){

    			lowerBound = i + 1;

    		}else if(v[i] > i){

    			upperBound = i - 1;

    		}
    	}
    }

<comment><USER5> Typo alert! You meant

        int i = lowerBound + (upperBound - lowerBound) / 2;

<comment><USER4> ok corrected. thanks.</comment></comment></comment>


Casual games make us smarter ? - <AUTHOR> http://www.techflash.com/seattle/2010/05/casual_games_make_us_smarter.html

<comment><USER2> So all that LabPixies' Line Up playing wasn't a waste of time & brain power? Whew, I is smart now.

While I would wait on seeing this study peer-reviewed before believing it wholeheartedly, it's a very interesting study. There are lots of puzzles that purport to improve memory. It's even arguable that Bejeweled can improve visual pattern recognition.

What I wonder is, how soon after playing a casual game did the researchers test their subjects? Does this cognitive improvement decrease back to average levels over time? Can it be sustained with frequent gameplay? And does this effect occur in people under 50 years of age?

</comment><comment><USER3> Sounds like a subclass of the phenomenon "solving puzzles makes us smarter" which should have been well known a long time ago.</comment>


Someone's Been Siphoning Data Through a Huge Security Hole in the Internet - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/12/bgp-hijacking-belarus-iceland/?cid=co15315354 <comment><USER2> Bah. Real simple cure for this nonsense. Too bad it's unlikely to happen.

Back when Usenet mattered, there used to be something called a "Usenet Death Penalty". What we need here is an "Autonomous System Death Penalty".

BGP works between "Autonomous Systems" (aka AS). ISPs almost invariably are. Bigger companies usually are. Anyone who wants to be independent of their upstream IP connection gets an AS number. The only way some ISP in Belarus can interfere with your IP packets is to announce over BGP that packets should be sent to their AS.

So anyone who was affected by some rogue ISP in Belarus should simply tell their BGP routers to totally ignore anything from that AS. Forever. And if they're a govt agency they simply tell Comcast, Verizon, AT&T, etc to drop any and all packets from that AS. To anywhere! And if it's a govt agency making this "request", there's a good chance that the Tier 1 IP providers will comply.

Done. That podunk ISP in Belarus has now been disconnected from a large part of the Internet. And good luck with them trying to get Verizon etc to undo that.

So, what the death penalty means is "you get to intentionally mess around with routing just once, then you go away forever". Now that podunk ISP can either go out of business or it can go begging IANA for a new AS number. And since ICANN (which operates IANA) answers (at least for now) to the US Dept of Commerce, it might not be too easy to get a new AS.

Yes I know the propeller-head nerds who operate the "technical" Internet would immediately think my proposal is much too harsh. But, ultimately, nerds need to understand that sometimes things are done for "political" rather than "technical" reasons. And the managers who sign the nerds' paychecks are political creatures; they almost invariably aren't nerds.

<comment><USER3> "propeller-head nerd who operates the 'technical' Internet" here...

I don't think it's too harsh, but it would never happen, of course. It would all go out the window the first time some large corporation was affected.

There are already solutions for this (filtering inbound announcements, RPKI, etc.), but people (ISPs) don't use them. BCP38 solved the "IP spoofing" issue years ago but AS's don't even implement that.

(Side note: IANA doesn't directly issue ASNs to entities. Here in the U.S., for example, you get them from ARIN. And they'll gladly give 'em out ($500 each).)

<comment><USER4> RPKI ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_Public_Key_Infrastruct...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_Public_Key_Infrastructure)) is getting increasing use and looks to be the consensus solution among RIRs, ISPs, etc. Events like this, and there have been quite a few recently, will drive faster adoption.

HTTPS wasn't rolled out with 100% in a year or two either.

Disclaimer: I am an RPKI researcher.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Here's the post at Renesys upon which this article is based: [http://www.renesys.com/2013/11/mitm-internet- hijacking/](http://www.renesys.com/2013/11/mitm-internet-hijacking/)

FWIW, I found the renesys post more informative than the Wired article (though on a standalone basis it is pretty good too).

<comment><USER6> We know. The article you linked to is mentioned and linked in the Wired article at least twice, if you read through it.

<comment><USER5> I know you know :) Just wanted to say that there's a difference in the way both were written, and that I personally found the Renesys piece more interesting. I don't think all readers will have the time to read two long pieces on the same subject, so a bit of context helps.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Let's assess the damage. Says the article:

"The stakes are potentially enormous, since once data is hijacked, the perpetrator can copy and then comb through any unencrypted data freely"

Apparently then, the harm amounts to:

H1. The method is a little stealthier than the NSA's other modus operandi, the badge + "national security letter" \+ secrecy order, and similar conduct of other state actors.

H2. The reach extends surveillance capabilities outside the attacker's territory.

On the other hand:

M1. There is no new MITM that was not possible before. Well-encrypted traffic is still opaque, and plaintext traffic is still vulnerable, regardless whether it is hijacked BGP-wise or by the on-premises tactics.

M2. This does not go unnoticed, there is no way to force affected parties to shut up about it, and like the other wiretapping, this will bring on countermeasures. It's self-limiting.

</comment><comment><USER8> Related discussion [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6773889](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6773889)

</comment><comment><USER9> a map where blue is land?

who the hell made this map? Buster?

</comment><comment><USER10> Very interesting - is BGP fundamentally vulnerable to this attack? Is there a way to put the equivalent of a certificate revocation list on top of BGP?

<comment><USER11> And the best solution to replace BGP out there is LISP. However, even in LISP there are fundamental flaws that weren't designed for from inception.

When I had control over an AS I made a very specific point to always monitor path changes for performance and security reasons all the time. If you have an AS and you're not - then you're doing it wrong with the most critical piece of your infrastructure.

<comment><USER3> Heh, most AS's don't even adhere to BCP38 and you expect them to be monitoring for path changes and hijacks?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Someone or the NSA? If I was them I would hijack some poor country ISP and siphon everything through them. At this point assuming it's the NSA should be the default assumption. Remember that Snowden's encrypted data (assuming it's real) includes everything not yet public. So likely we only know a fraction. Thus assuming NSA is probably safe.

<comment><USER13> I think from the NSA's perspective this is both crude and unnecessary. They have better ways.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Off-topic: I alwyas liked the idea of like loose source routing. And the original netcat supports it. Does your kernel support it? Would you use it if you could?

</comment><comment><USER15> That someone in Minsk may well be US operative working at huge IBM facility in Minsk.

</comment><comment><USER16> I love the picture of Iceland.

</comment><comment><USER17> Is this realy a bug?

</comment><comment><USER18> Maybe Dr Evil in his secret volcano lair.

</comment><comment><USER19> I can't understand it.It seems to be business so, why did`nt make`em pay ?

</comment><comment><USER11> _sigh_

Another BGP finger-pointing article that still doesn't get it right.

<comment><USER20> So the totality of your criticism of a story from one of the best security reporters in the business is _sigh_ and "doesn't get it right"?

And this is the top comment on Hacker News?

 _Sigh_

<comment><USER11> Best security reporter does not equte to any level of understanding of BGP. You're asserting a false parallel. And, see my other comments.

<comment><USER21> Never mind that, the article is simply written horribly.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to promote landing page? Can't use Adwords - <AUTHOR>

I've been hearing about how great landing pages are for years (4HWW, HN, and various sources). So I made a custom one the other day that briefly describes the product, collects emails, and does a little A/B testing.
I didn't realize until now that this landing page concept is specifically forbidden by Google and my adwords campaign (I think not my account luckily) has been halted:
>Google allows sites that collect personally identifiable information from users as long as this is not the primary purpose of the site.
>Google doesn't allow the promotion of sites that offer incentives in order to collect users' personal information (such as free quiz/survey results, horoscopes, etc.) where collecting this information is the primary purpose of the site.
All I was "offering" by the way was 'free updates', but I'm guessing the canonical landing page strikes out on the first criteria.
So now the question is: how the hell does anyone actually promote a landing page? I have not heard good answers beyond advertising. <comment><USER2> What is your product? Have you considered using interest based targeting on Facebook ads to test your landing page?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a lending library for businesses. I've sold it as in-house solution to two game companies (who apparently often manage a huge library of games/books for employees), but was planning on moving it to a SaaS model.

Since it's not at all a consumer app, I didn't think Facebook was the best choice. I figure I would throw up a landing page while I worked on it and my best chance is to target someone searching for a solution... but that's not allowed on adwords.

My only other thought it producing content/starting a blog. Could work with a lot of time and effort. But everyone always treats this landing page deal as something you throw together and gather emails easily.... maybe I've being naive.

Here's the page in case anyone wants to have a look (warning: hosting is acting wonky right now): <http://vulgat.com/?toggle_vars>

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> _All I was "offering" by the way was 'free updates'_

What? I don't get it. What is a 'free update'? Sorry - your whole post is just weird and I don't get it.

<comment><AUTHOR> >Sorry - your whole post is just weird and I don't get it.

Uh... ok.

People often, before launching a product, put up a landing page advertising that the product is coming soon. On this page, they give a brief description (or hint) about the product and they have a form in which people can submit their email in exchange for updates about the product.

It was covered 5 years ago in The 4 Hour Work Week. There are even several tools to do it. Landing pages are posted to HN all the time. I didn't think this concept was especially strange. I'm surprised you have never encountered such a page.

<comment><USER3> _I'm surprised you have never encountered such a page._

It's not that I've never encountered such a page; it's that you did a rather poor job of explaining what you were doing in the first place. If you'd said, "Here's what I want to do" and then explained what that was in even _minor_ detail, people would've been able to follow you. Instead, you said _I made a custom one the other day that briefly describes the product, collects emails, and does a little A/B testing._ That's it - that's your only explanation of what you were doing. You then further said _All I was "offering" by the way was 'free updates'_. It made no sense then, and it still doesn't make sense when I read it an hour or so later.

No need to write an insulting reply to me when I've basically asked you for clarity in an attempt to help you solve your problem. That's a jerk reply and it implies that I'm an idiot for not "reading between the lines" of your text. Screw that - I don't need to help when people act like that to others who try to help.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HM: Why do i see some usernames in green color (mostly in new section)? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> It's for freshly minted accounts, presumably to make it easier to flag spam.

See <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2434333>

<comment><USER3> Nice addition!</comment></comment>


A Historic Day for the World of Competitive Rubik's Cube Solving - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@jblake17/a-historic-day-for-the-world-of-competitive-rubik-s-cube-solving-33a92a5f3d1c#.x89rnc6y7 <comment><USER2> I assume the time depends very much on the initial state.

<comment><USER3> I wonder how they set the initial state. I think it's fairly easy to calculate the minimum number of moves required to solve from a given state, so you'd think they would control for this.

<comment><USER4> It is, in fact, not easy at all to calculate that.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God%27s_algorithm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God%27s_algorithm)

(There isn't as much info as there should be on that Wikipedia page but it was an open area of research for decades.)

<comment><USER3> Isn't it though? I thought the hard part was proving the minimum number of moves that can solve all possible initial states. Korf's algorithm and several subsequent improvements seem to be able to find the minimum number of moves to solve any given initial state.

<comment><USER4> A yes. You are correct.

Finding minimum # of moves from a single state = not so hard.

Finding the worst possible state (the state where the minimum # of moves is a maximum) = pretty hard, though now solved.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There is a point at which the elites of any activity become so proficient that meaningful differences between them disappear. Competitions are then won based on factors seemingly outside the nature of the activity. These rubik solvers seem to be at a point.

Looking at the comments on this thread few talk of the actual solving. Most are concerned with the circumstances of the competition, I think because most here realize the differences between competitors are so slight that one must look to the competition rather than the competitive act to determine validity.

So I offer this alternative:[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5Zi054Fa5k](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5Zi054Fa5k)

By increasing the underlying difficulty of the task to the point that even the elites make many mistakes during competition, the focus returns to the underlying skill.

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

<comment><USER6> Few comments are about the solving because few commenters are actually cubers.

If you look at discussions of this on actual cubing forums, then you'll see that the differences between competitors are actually significant.

Edit: As a direct example of competitors making mistakes, Etter's 4.9s solve could actually have been trivially improved if he had done a U instead of U' U' U' on the 2nd pair.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Rubik's cube always gets me thinking about group theory. Eg. [http://www.gap- system.org/Doc/Examples/rubik.html](http://www.gap- system.org/Doc/Examples/rubik.html)

<comment><USER8> Relevant TED Ed video: [https://youtu.be/FW2Hvs5WaRY](https://youtu.be/FW2Hvs5WaRY)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The human reaction time is about 0.1 seconds. They shouldn't use a manual chronometer to measure these results 4.9+/-0.1 is the difference between a world record and a good score.

<comment><USER6> I believe WCA officially uses StackMats for the timing. Timer starts when you lift your hands from the touch pads and stops when you return them to the pads.

This isn't perfect either but it doesn't rely on someone else's reaction time.

<comment><USER10> Correct.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This happened with the 2x2 cube too, 3 world records in the same competition: [https://www.worldcubeassociation.org/results/events.php?even...](https://www.worldcubeassociation.org/results/events.php?eventId=222&regionId=&years=&show=100%2BPersons&single=Single) (Trentin Open 2011)

The scramble was too easy, required only 4 moves.

</comment><comment><USER11> WRs of people solving Rubik's cubes with their feet is a thing these days. These seem much more skill based.

[https://youtu.be/DDWdSWfUAeo](https://youtu.be/DDWdSWfUAeo)

</comment><comment><USER12> It looks like he picks it up and examines it for a while, then puts it down. The timed solving starts only when he picks it up again -- is this correct? Is there a time limit to the examination stage?

<comment><USER13> 15 seconds

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The video embeds on this story say they're stopped because I have Do Not Track set on my browser. They imply that if I do watch the videos, it's my own damn fault if I get tracked. So thanks for reminding me to never visit medium.com, I guess.

<comment><USER15> Hmm? This is Medium doing a reasonable thing.

They comply with Do Not Track, but people can embed videos on sites that do not comply. Here they do a reasonable thing, and show a message to people with "Do Not Track" enabled, letting them know that they can still click through and see the video, but the site they are directing you towards might track you.

Medium is just a blog hosting platform, as far as I know they don't control the content that gets posted. What would you prefer they do; not allow embedding YouTube videos? Not warn you that the linked content tracks you?</comment></comment>


To Change The World, Write Mobile Apps  - <AUTHOR> http://www.news.com/News.com-Extra/8300-9373_3-55.html?tag=nefd.only

<comment><USER2> Sounds like an interesting story, but I think your link is wrong.</comment>


Naked mole rats can survive 18 minutes without oxygen - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/04/naked-mole-rat-oxygen-take-my-breath-awaaaaaaaay/523515/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> I guess this is kinda cool, but you have to look past the headline.

18 minutes without oxygen isn't far-fetched for humans. The Guinness world record for "longest time breath held voluntarily (male)" is a bit over 24 minutes.

So, yeah, that line in the article that says "no warm-blooded mammal can...come close to the naked mole-rat's 18-minute record" seems to be painfully and stupidly wrong.

The interesting part is not that they survive for 18 minutes. The interesting part is that they do fine at 5% oxygen and that seemingly they (almost?) hold their breaths involuntarily after they pass out at lower levels.

<comment><USER3> Not to mention Dolphins, seals and great whales?

<comment><USER4> yup, Sperm whales can hold their breath for 90 minutes they divert voluntarily all the blood to focus in the most important organs only.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Can someone explain how the mole rats that stop breathing and are revived after simply reintroducing oxygen into the container? How does the O2 get into the animals lungs/blood stream if the animal stopped breathing?

<comment><USER6> They stop breathing, but don't die. Presumably, when whatever mechanism they use to measure oxygen concentration tells them that oxygen levels are high enough, they start breathing again.

<comment><USER7> Yes, obviously, but parent asked _how_!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Uh weird, they survive through glucose metabolysm instead of the aerobic pathway.. which is exactly what cancer cells do to operate with their bad blood supply. NM rats are cancer free yet live like one.

<comment><USER9> Regarding the set of things that look like cancer, I recently realized that _human hair_ is quite like cancer. It just grows and grows and grows, seemingly without limit.

So are the fingernails.

<comment><USER10> But hair and fingernails are not alive. They are just extrusions of dead material. 3D printing, basically. Plus all hair has a growth limit after which it's discarded. Head hair of course has a longer limit than other hair.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> In addition to all of these strange features listed in the article, they're also the only poikilothermic mammal. Most of the time their body temperature is not regulated and it changes with the environment. But unlike reptiles or fish, if the outside temperature goes too high or too low, naked mole rats can switch back to normal homeothermic behavior and self-regulate the body temperature as needed. This way they can survive extreme conditions, and still when conditions are right they can save a lot of energy and survive long periods of hunger without going into hibernation.

<comment><USER12> Id always thought they werr just cold blooded. This is so much more interesting!

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Can't some whales go hours? I mean these guys are still strange, but this headline is terrible.

<comment><USER14> Yeah, sperm whales can do 90 minutes and the longest recorded beaked whale dive is over two hours.

Heck, the _human_ record is something like 20 minutes, by some free diver.

<comment><USER15> To clarify, the static apnea record breathing normal air beforehand is just under 12 minutes.

The record you are referring to involves breathing pure oxygen beforehand, is 24 minutes, and is nonetheless amazing.

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

I'd always thought the egg laying, electrolocating Platypus was the strangest mammal:

 _" The platypus feeds by neither sight nor smell, closing its eyes, ears, and nose each time it dives. Rather, when it digs in the bottom of streams with its bill, its electroreceptors detect tiny electric currents generated by muscular contractions of its prey"_

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

<comment><USER16> FWIW geckos need quantum mechanics just to walk.

<comment><USER17> ...and I, for one, welcome our new platypus-gecko hybrid overlords!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I thought the egg-laying, duck-billed, beaver-tailed, otter-footed, electrorecepting, venomous platypus was the strangest mammal.

<comment><USER19> Naked mole rats are very interesting, if I remember correctly, they behave just like social insects (bees, termites, ants, etc.) in many ways, but they're mammals.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Picture a snake trying to invade the naked mole rat tunnel system. There is almost no oxygen.

Maybe normal parasites also die from lack of oxygen.

</comment><comment><USER21> They metabolize fructose, rather than just holding their breath. And they can survive for over 5 hours in a low oxygen environment. [https://m.phys.org/news/2017-04-naked-mole-rats- oxygen.html](https://m.phys.org/news/2017-04-naked-mole-rats-oxygen.html)

</comment><comment><USER22> Humans are gonna need this soon with how climate change is going..

</comment><comment><USER23> Why do people do such things or even talk about such stuff? This is so depressing that such experiments are conducted to just know the fact how long a rat can survive :(

<comment><USER24> The state of medicine today is built on top of similar experiments. Countless people -- yes, people, not just animals -- have died for us to discover so much about the human body and its inner workings. It's unfortunate that most people are either oblivious to this fact, or simply take the immense work going on behind the scenes for granted. Keep this in mind next time you visit the hospital ;)

Performing this experiment could have far-reaching implications. Perhaps it ends up helping scientists understand whether or not such an adaptation could transfer to humans. Or maybe it ends up being crucial in helping us understand the function of a seemingly unrelated process in the human body.

It's important to note that ethics committees nowadays are _extremely_ strict when it comes to using live subjects, humans or otherwise, so rest assured that the experimenters did their best to minimize the suffering of the rats. If they didn't, their work would probably never be accepted for funding and/or publication.

<comment><USER25> When you talk about people dying for science is it Marie Curie and the radiation poisoning, or Nazi's testing hypothermia? One is someone boldly (of her own volition) pushing the bounds of science, the other is an oppressive group performing horrendous experiments. Perhaps cancer patients on the verge of death opting for a potentially life extending drug?

When humans test on humans (in modern societies where things haven't gone horribly awry), care is given as to whether it's safe for the individual and would help them. Consent is a big word you'd never hear in an animal study. Animal testing is weighed against what benefits "science" in some way and some sort of "unnecessarily cruel" metric which doesn't seem to account for much. Anecdotally, my girl friend is a neuroscientist and has heard about things going on in labs that would make your skin crawl. One study that came to mind is on rats defending their territory based on how much food they were given, led to rats basically ripping each-other apart on camera.

We say these things are okay, and important, but when I think that almost 13,000 animals were killed, beagles, cats, monkeys, rats, just so we could have splenda, I think that whatever we value non-human life at must be so trivially small.

<comment><USER24> What I had in mind were the people who volunteered for experimental medical procedures. Transplants, blood transfusions, neurosurgery, skin grafts, etc. The techniques were only perfected through the suffering and death of a vast number of nameless people.

> Animal testing is weighed against what benefits us in even the slightest way > and is some sort of "unnecessarily cruel" metric.

> We say these things are okay, and important, but when I think that almost > 13,000 animals were killed, beagles, cats, monkeys, rats, just so we could > have splenda, I think that whatever we value non-human life at must be so > trivially small.

That is a deeply philosophical argument. We can obviously agree that -- all things being equal -- a human's life is worth more than an animal's life. But exactly how much more valuable is it? Can we accurately quantify how many mice can die so one human can live? Does it depend on the animal and its intelligence, at least as we perceive it? The questions can go on and on with no end in sight.

Now, I'm honestly not intimately familiar with what goes in the life sciences, particularly when it comes to experimenting on live subjects. Nonetheless, I am convinced that modern ethical standards are a good way to set universal limits to what can be done to animals in a laboratory setting, while also ensuring that we as humans benefit from the results. The alternatives would be either to delay the discovery of new procedures because we don't want to hurt animals, or to just experiment on humans directly. Neither of these sounds like a better option to me.

<comment><USER25> I think splenda is a good example, in the end after killing thousands of animals to approve it people discovered it can actually cause weight gain[1]! Kind of destroys the original reason for it.

That's the thing with models, they're just models and ultimately they will have flaws. We rely heavily on animal testing and have built up reasoning to say why it's right, and that it helps, but we also don't know how much it hurts our own science with ridiculous blunders like that. Another recen inflammation, and they've been used for decades![2]

That being said, do I think science would progress slower without animal testing, or just far less and safer for the animal testing? Sure, probably, but it's worth the cost, and we'll get some benefits with less horrible blunders by relying on models. Another example, science could progress a lot faster if got rid of safety laws to test on humans, but somethings are just wrong so we don't do it.

[1] [https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2016/09/08/the-awful- trut...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2016/09/08/the-awful-truth-about- diet-soda-and-weight-gain-according-to-science/#5ad67369462f)

[2] [http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2014/08/08/mou...](http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2014/08/08/mouse_models_of_inflammation_wrong_or_not)

<comment><USER25> Wow, looks like I accidentally a secente there and I can't change it.

> Another recent study showed that rats handle inflammation very differently > than humans, making lots of past research useless and they've been used for > decades![2]

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Do they have to be naked for this?

<comment><USER27> Yes they do. If they had fur it would be another specie so wouldn't work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> How long can they survive when dressed?</comment>


Da Chip II: Chiptune Daft Punk covers (Music for coding?) - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2012/2/22/2816171/da-chip-volume-two-daft-punk-chiptune

<comment><USER2> Summary of io9's summary of [http://thecreatorsproject.com/blog/chiptune- renditions-of-al...](http://thecreatorsproject.com/blog/chiptune-renditions- of-all-things-daft-punk)

I love the way these junk blogs mutually link to each other before the actual sources they collectively summarize.

</comment><comment><USER3> The download links are super slow. Since it's a free album, here's a torrent magnet:

magnet:?xt=urn:btih:F22BA09E895D1C192348D97F6FFE5A1A823AF44D&dn=Da%20Chip%20II%20%28chiptune%20Daft%20Punk%29&tr=http%3a//inferno.demonoid.me%3a3418/announce</comment>


Winklevoss Twins Aim to Take Bitcoin Mainstream with a Regulated Exchange - <AUTHOR> http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2015/01/22/winklevoss-twins-aim-to-take-bitcoin-mainstream-with-a-regulated-exchange/ <comment><USER2> This may be tangential, but it's been on my mind for awhile, so I was hoping to get your thoughts. If it's slightly offtopic, I apologize.

It doesn't seem like you can regulate BTC, and the reason is because of something unexpected: arbitrage.

(To be clear, you can create a regulated exchange, but that doesn't really help you. I'll explain why.)

When exchange A's price is different from exchange B's, that represents an opportunity. As the difference grows, that opportunity becomes more lucrative. That's why, at any given time, all exchanges are at roughly the same price.

But that means if one exchange is playing by some bad rules, or is acting in a shady way, like the behavior described in [https://willyreport.wordpress.com/](https://willyreport.wordpress.com/), then that directly affects every other exchange.

So unless all exchanges are playing by the same rules, having a single "safe" exchange won't save you. One exchange's shadiness will always affect every other exchange.

Whether this is a fatal flaw is a separate question. I don't think it is, but it seems hard to know.

What do you think? It _seems_ true, but perhaps I'm overlooking something obvious.

Also, this is strictly about price manipulation. It's probably true that no amount of bad behavior at exchange A can result in a catastrophic failure of exchange B. But one question I've been trying to figure out the answer to is: does price manipulation even matter?

<comment><USER3> What you say is true and applies to ANY commodity market (or in fact any non- centrally regulated market): FX, precious metals, oil, textiles, fruits, etc.

I can set up my own independent exchange to trade, say, gold in the same way there are thousands of online gold exchanges. Then I can artificially inflate the gold prices on my exchange, using fictitious money (like the willy bot did), leading customers to come to me to trade their gold for high prices, and therefore impacting the worldwide market price of gold... at least a tiny little bit for a tiny little while... until customers find out that they can't withdraw their fictitious money from my exchange, so my sham and its impact ends right there. This is what happened to MtGox in February 2014.

The bigger the market you are attacking is, the less time it takes for the sham to be discovered, because the tiny percentage of people who try to benefit from the fictitious high prices quickly overwhelm your ability to fake solvency. A huge market like gold would pretty much suffer no effect due to its size. And as the Bitcoin market continues to grow, the hypothetical impact of such a sham should diminish over time.

<comment><USER3> I wanted to add that naturally it is very costly to run this sort of attack. Because as you are artificially manipulating the prices, you have to keep paying out the customers' arbitrage profits. This is why willy caused MtGox to lose tens of millions of dollars in the end. Mark Karpeles was simply clueless or naive in thinking willy would help him. So don't do it, or you will lose money :)

In summary, I do believe regulation can and already does help BTC. They bring finance professionals in the market who have a clue (unlike Karpeles). They bring trust. They bring more trading volume. These are all things that make BTC less manipulable, hence less manipulated.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Considering just how much Bitcoin the Winklevoss twins own, it is in their best interests to do right by Bitcoin holders and create a secure and accountable exchange. Historically every bad thing that has happened to Bitcoin mostly indirectly has affected its price which from an existing investment perspective obviously sucks, but is great for new buyers to get into the market.

I have no doubt if they can pull this off that it'll be a successful venture, especially after the horrible year of 2014 which saw tonnes of cryptocoin exchanges (including Mt. Gox) get hacked and disappear, driving down the price each time. They have a bit of competition in the space, I think overcoming the regulation issues and having actual proper accountability will help bolster the credibility of the exchange.

<comment><USER5> >get hacked and disappear

Is this the accepted narrative? It seems overly generous to bitcoin and the various exchange operators. A lot of these exchanges were shutdown by their owners so they could, with impunity, steal the coins of their customers and other dirty dealings. Hacker attacks, which are often used as cover for these criminal activities, seem to have been the least of bitcoin's problems.

> I think overcoming the regulation issues and having actual proper > accountability will help bolster the credibility of the exchange.

If I wanted to use an easy and stable regulated currency why not the USD? I can trivially pay using a variety of sources: my own bank, paypal, my credit cards, direct deposit, wire, etc. If bitcoin gets turned into a strongly controlled and regulated currency then I don't see its competitive advantage outside of very, very narrow use cases (darknet purchases, investing, ransomware, illegal activities, etc).

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The regulated exchange thing is interesting, but I want to see the details. The expected way to do this would be to register with the SEC as a broker/dealer, like every stockbroker does. That gets SIPC insurance protection (for which the broker pays), and means FINRA enforcement and audits, background checks on the principals, and such. It also eliminates the need for state by state approvals.

So far, no Bitcoin exchange has done this. Over half of them have gone bust, often taking the customers' funds with them. This is not a coincidence. There's a lot of big talk about how some exchange is safe. Coinbase doesn't have a real business address and has "it's not our fault if we lose your money" terms of service. Most of the others are worse. After seeing the terms of the Winkelvoss EFT, which are awful (if they lose the Bitcoins, they're not responsible), I suspect this new exchange may be equally sleazy.

<comment><USER7> In fairness, Coinbase has

1) A multi-sig product, meaning you can store money using their product purely as a software layer. You control the private keys and you have full autonomy. If they disappear or go bankrupt your money is still as safe as you kept it.

2) USD wallets are kept in an FDIC insured bank account. As a money transmitter without the proper licenses they're not allowed to invest custodial funds or use them to finance business operations.

3) They're pretty reputable. Fred Ersham is one of their principle agents and on their board, just like Chris Dixon. They've got a great legal team, guys from big startups like Facebook or AirBnb as well as big finance firms like Goldman Sachs and Visa. They've received $106m in funding at close to half a billion in valuation and partner with Paypal and process payments for fortune 100 companies worth tens of billions of dollars, their investors include top VC firms, the New York Stock Exchange, a megabank and one of Japan's largest telecom companies. they're registered with Fincen and have licenses in 15+ states. That may not protect them from tech failures, but these aren't the type of people who operate an anonymous company that's super shady and will disappear and leave you with no recourse.

4) They store the vast majority of funds in cold storage. I can't argue how safe this is as not much is disclosed. But I do know that cold storage is pretty easy to set up and that their basic descriptions include a lot of redundancy and distributed trust. The gist of it is that keys never hit any network (not hackable) and are stored physically, encrypted, in locked vaults in the same banks we've trusted with storage of value, and require multiple people in different geographical locations to unlock funds. No system is perfect but this is a very secure system. 97% of funds are stored in this way, you can read a bit about it here:

[https://www.coinbase.com/security](https://www.coinbase.com/security)

5) Their bitcoin funds are insured. The insurance includes cyber security, accidental loss and employees going rogue. Insurance is through Aon ($11b revenue in insurance premiums) and they claim only to use A+ underwriters according to S&P ratings.

Again, they're not perfect and there are certainly issues I can point out and more details I'd want to receive more information on. But if I could make a bet on (or an investment into) Coinbase I'd be very comfortable making it.

I do share the sentiment that many exchanges and bitcoin services just aren't anywhere close to bank-grade security. That's just a function of a new and nascent ecosystem. It happens in every industry and it takes a long time to get up to speed. The problem is that bitcoin is extremely sensitive because it's about carte-blance value tokens essentially, it's an extremely sensitive industry for this reason, so there's not much room for amateur-hour. But I think Coinbase, and the likes of say Xapo or Circle, and potentially Gemini, show that we're seeing an entirely different class of entrepreneurs from the likes of say last year's Mt. Gox, already.

Completely holding judgement on Gemini. I know the twins are going to strive for complete regulatory compliance, and that they're already rich and want to build a solid long-term reputable business, not a get-rich-quick scheme, and that they've got the funds to hire the right people and besides financial capital have some human capital in the VC/Tech space in their networks. So there's certainly the potential for this to work out, but we'll have to see.

<comment><USER6> Their terms: "THE LIABILITY OF COINBASE, ITS AFFILIATES AND SERVICE PROVIDERS, OR ANY OF THEIR RESPECTIVE OFFICERS, DIRECTORS, AGENTS, JOINT VENTURERS, EMPLOYEES OR REPRESENTATIVES, TO YOU OR ANY THIRD PARTIES IN ANY CIRCUMSTANCE IS LIMITED TO THE _LOWER_ OF (A) THE ACTUAL AMOUNT OF DIRECT DAMAGES; OR (B) FEES PAID TO COINBASE BY YOU IN THE PRECEDING THREE (3) MONTHS."*

So if you deposit with them, and they lose it, the limit of their liability is limited to the fees you paid them. Which is zero for their so-called "vault".

That's a totally unacceptable EULA for a depository institution.

Their insurance only helps you if you are a beneficiary of the insurance. That's the case with SIPC (all US stockbrokers) and FDIC (all US banks) coverage, but not at Coinbase.

Live by the EULA, die by the EULA. Those guys are no better than the other low-rent Bitcoin exchanges.

<comment><USER7> Yeah yeah I've heard that convo before. Look I'm not going to argue their EULA puts liability on Coinbase for losses of your funds. And yes I fully agree that in time it'd become ridiculous if they hold on to this part of their TOS (and will probably let it go because large institutions won't be comfortable with the lack of assurance).

But I will argue that if they insure customer funds and say $5m of them get stolen by a malicious engineer (again, noting their security practices this is extremely unlikely) they're not going to tell their customers 'sorry you're all losing money' when they get that money reimbursed and it'd destroy their business to do a greedy one-time money grab like that. Hell we even saw this with Bitstamp who paid for the $10m of lost customer funds themselves, despite zero such liability in their TOS, and despite the fact they were not insured and had to pay it out of their own pockets. (amounting easily all of revenues, let alone profits, for all of 2014 by the way, paid in full by themselves, without any obligation to do so).

To think Coinbase would then not give back these funds to the consumer despite it not costing them and being insured for that is a ridiculous assumption. It goes completely against them continually claiming that customer funds are insured against non-user related losses (e.g. not when a user gives his PW to his friend and he gets his money stolen, but rather say when Coinbase has a fuckup). And yes, I know technically Coinbase is the recipient of the insurance and that the EULA claims it's not liable, it's besides the point.

I mean, what do you think that insurance is ultimately going to be there for? Do you really think Coinbase will insure customer funds, and when they're lost say 'sorry, they're lost', and then keep whatever amount was lost after the insurance pays them out? It's a ridiculous assumption and much less likely than 'we've got you covered, we're not perfect but your funds are safe with us either way'.

So while I appreciate that you're not granted protection strictly by law (although I have my doubts about whether this part of the EULA stands up when it conflicts with so many written and implied statements by Coinbase which yes, do matter in the court of law), I hope you also appreciate that a statement like this:

> Their insurance only helps you if you are a beneficiary of the insurance

Is absolutely myopic. It's more likely that Coinbase will make their customers whole, especially with their insurance policy, than not. To say that Coinbase is no better than other low-rent bitcoin exchanges is also completely ridiculous, even if neither of them were insured, there's a gigantic difference between Coinbase and say Mt. Gox.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I don't see the lack of a regulated exchange as a show-stopper for mainstream adoption. I remember when people were generally uncomfortable with PayPal because the whole idea of an online wallet that wasn't provided by a bank just seemed unsafe. It was pull of eBay, the killer use case, that overcame that in the minds of everyday people, not regulation coming along and making it safer. Online wallets added value.

Imho, Bitcoin is and will continue to be an interesting niche until someone comes up with something truly compelling to do with it that you can't do with traditional currency or banking. A regulated exchange is nice for traders and financiers, but it's still just a boring old exchange... another friction ordinary consumers have to overcome to walk the blockchain life.

<comment><USER9> I've never been that bullish on Bitcoin because I don't see why the mainstream, developed world would have much demand for it. It certainly has it's uses, but they are limited. I suspect the number of people transacting in Bitcoin are far out-numbered by the people who are mostly hoarding Bitcoin, which illustrates it's lack of valid use-cases.

<comment><USER10> I once thought that bitcoin's usage as a secure decentralized database, not as a currency, would be the source of some major use. But there are no big results here, so now, not so sure.

<comment><USER8> Namecoin is promising but then whoever can afford the most ASICs will just buy up all the popular names.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Wasn't CampBX the first US Bitcoin exchange? And then TradeHill and then Coinsetter and then Digital Currency Group? And then there's LedgerX...

</comment><comment><USER12> What competitive advantages does a bitcoin-based exchange in the U.S. have over other [U.S. or otherwise] exchanges?

<comment><USER13> It's easier to hold any fraudulant owners accountable if you are an American account holder, for one.

Also some clients feel safer knowing that financial regulators of some kind are overlooking the accounts and transactions of the business they are working with.

<comment><USER12> I guess I should have been more specific. Other U.S. exchanges already have this, so what competitive advantage does bitcoins give an exchange?

<comment><USER14> If I'm reading you correctly: it gives the advantage that you can buy or sell bitcoins... which if you're someone wanting to do that is a significant advantage over exchanges that don't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I found it interesting that they chose Gemini as a name for an exchange; given that the ISE runs already runs an options exchange named Gemini.

</comment><comment><USER16> What's the motivation for the twins to hold so much bitcoin? They're already taking on a lot of risk with their BTC business investments. Is it just to show faith in themselves and the coin? Or are they so confident that it makes sense to them? Personally I'd want to diversify.

<comment><USER17> They bought a lot of bitcoin before the late 2013 bubble. I think they're quite diversified - they're just Bitcoin proponents who are taking a chance, kind of like venture capitalism.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> They should carefully consider the possibility of creating a decentralized exchange (like bitshares or nubits) and not merely a new centralized exchange for a decentralized currency (bitcoin). There will be a future for blockchain technology that can eliminate MtGox type events.

<comment><USER19> Why would they want that? You know they aren't working _ad honorem_ , right?

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> _The twins say none of this has dented their faith in the promise of the technology — they say they continue to hold every Bitcoin they ever purchased_

This is a common refrain seen around /r/bitcoin as well.

If few people use it as a currency now, and the majority of people that buy it simply sit on it hoping it will appreciate, why do people think lots of people will want to use it as a currency in the future?

If cryptocurrencies were to become significantly more user friendly in the future and there was an economic niche revealed where their use made sense for lots of people, wouldn't people be more likely to choose a cryptocurrency that didn't come with a built in rentier class of people who have piled up large amounts of the cryptocoin while praying that a vapor future demand be made manifest?

 _The twins have placed themselves firmly in the camp of those who believe that Bitcoin will survive only if it has regulatory oversight._

At present bitcoin's two main use cases seem to be buying recreational drugs[0](which I have no problem with) and paying for things related to computer fraud(which I think is a destructive waste of time by misguided minds.) Both of these things are presumably things that regulators would like to regulate out of existence as best they could. So if they are even partially successful in doing that, what is going to drive the demand for bitcoin?(tell me something other than remittances, or if you insist on remittances then please explain why if it is not a suitable option for many now, how it could become one in the future.)

\- - - -

[0] As a side note on this, bitcoin does seem to be very well suited to the online drug trade, it of course has already proven itself in this area, but from my outside perspective it seems current or potential future problem areas are the on and off ramps, the exchange between fiat and crypto. But imagine if the loop could be closed between the drug buyers and sellers.

So after a drug dealer has accumulated a large amount of crypto, he'll need to convert it to a more widely accepted currency to pay for the cultivation/production of more drugs, food, housing, etc. I guess the current method is to use a mixer then cash out at Bitstamp or btc-e or something, but say that bitcoin becomes regulated to the point that this becomes much more difficult to manage. So to close the loop, using bitcoin or another crypto, the drug dealer with the accumulated crypto sells to a network of crypto dealers, these crypto dealers then sell to a smaller hub in the network and on and on until the drug buyer instead of going over to the neighborhood weed dealer, goes over to the neighborhood crypto dealer, then buys his weed online with the crypto.

There would likely need to be some profit incentive in this, so maybe the drug dealer would sell their cryptocoin to large hubs in the crypto dealing network at a discount in exchange for not dealing with more onerous regulated off- ramps, that discount then gradually being reduced as the crypto radiated out through the network.

Of course with the way drug laws are being re-developed, hopefully all of this becomes moot in the not to distant future.

<comment><USER19> Ah, the good old "if no one uses it as a currency it will die, so you have to spend it!" argument. The answer is that we _are_ using it: as a store of value. But every time we explain this, detractors will invariably reply either that it's not a good store of value because it went down in <insert cherry- picked timeframe>, or that saving is bad for the economy because central bankers say so.

For these sort of questions, simply compare it to gold: Is it dying because "no one is using it" to buy groceries? Does it sometimes go down, and yet a lot of entities, including central banks, consider it a great store of value?

<comment><USER21> See the Capitol Hill Baby Sitting Co-op[1] for how real life hoarding of stores of values mean that exchange completely stops. It is a classic currency story.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitol_Hill_Babysitting_Co- op](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitol_Hill_Babysitting_Co-op)

<comment><USER22> It doesn't seem like exchange is stopping:

[https://blockchain.info/charts/estimated-transaction- volume-...](https://blockchain.info/charts/estimated-transaction-volume- usd?showDataPoints=false&show_header=true&daysAverageString=7&timespan=all&scale=1&address=)

I love how Bitcoin is destroying all these economic "theories".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> While I hope Bitcoin ultimately succeeds I know the early investors will lose millions building infrastructure that gets thrown away when late arrivers come and blow away the early adopters.

It couldn't happen to a more deserving set of twins.

</comment><comment><USER24> I don't understand why you would want to have a regulated exchange for a currency that's designed to be deregulated. That seems counter-productive for the entire BitCoin community.

<comment><USER25> "deregulation" isn't a religion. Just because there are options to use it in a way outside of regulation, does not mean all uses have to fall under it. Forcing that is like forcing anything else, and would be more statist than libertarian.

Bitcoin provides the _option_ to remove yourself from the system _if you decide that for you, in your personal context, it is the right thing to do_. It's the option that matters, not just doing it for the sake of it to follow someone else's concept of what's important.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Hasn't this been known for months now?

<comment><AUTHOR> Not to be confused with the forthcoming ETF [1], Gemini [2] is the first US- regulated bitcoin exchange.

[1] [http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1579346/0001193125144...](http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1579346/000119312514457552/d721187ds1a.htm)

[2] [https://gemini.com/](https://gemini.com/)

<comment><USER27> I think it's widely assumed that the ETF is a way for the Winklevii to cash out their bitcoin holdings.

Also: [http://www.reddit.com/r/Buttcoin/comments/2rv44y/the_winklev...](http://www.reddit.com/r/Buttcoin/comments/2rv44y/the_winklevoss_sec_filing_is_an_absolute_comedy/)

<comment><USER28> No it's not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> After the losses they must have taken with the price decline this is probably a desperate attempt to boost the price.

<comment><USER30> Well, if I remember correctly, all the Winkelvii Bitcoins were bought for under $70, I'd say the average price is around $35-40, so no, they're still trading at 300-400% above what they bought them for. Not bad for a 2 year investment.

<comment><USER21> Unsaleable in volume while maintaining that price though. Thats why they are concocting these schemes to actually get an exit eventually.

<comment><USER30> I think if they were in it for a quick buck, they'd have exited during the run up to $1200. But they didn't.

Actually when they were buying Bitcoins it ran up to $250 over the course of a few weeks, then crashed down to $75. That's my recollection of events.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> No news here. They keep high hopes that if they pull this off, they can save their huge investment in Bitcoin, but a legit marketplace does not equate to an evergrowing price.

</comment><comment><USER32> _> "Our philosophy is to ask for permission, not forgiveness", Cameron Winklevoss said._

So, a complete opposite of what Bitcoin philosophy is. Gotcha.

<comment><USER33> One could easily argue in response that there's no such thing as bitcoin "philosophy." There's only what you can and can't do with the protocol. If they can implement their ideals under the strictures of what the protocol allows, that's their prerogative.

<comment><USER34> So one might argue that that is a philosophy in and of itself. An agnostic one that is founded on technical specification, not moral imperative.

<comment><USER35> No, not really. The entire purpose of bitcoin network's design is to reduce or completely remove the need for trust amongst participants. It was designed so that it operates in the same fashion regardless of the moral, political and regulatory climate surrounding it. That is not philosophy, but fact.

<comment><USER34> Philosophical inquiry doesn't necessitate an adjudication on morality, politics or regulatory climate. It can simply be a formalization of concepts observed in a system.

Bitcoin doesn't exist without human input, it requires active agents to engage it. So even if the rules are set in the code there is an element of humanity embedded in the protocol. Just look at the core developers. I can guarantee you they have a philosophy on what should and should not be done during maintenance and major upgrades to the protocol.

But if you want to reduce the definition of philosophy to those things you mentioned, I'm happy to rephrase: the philosophy of Bitcoin is thus that there is no philosophy. Think of it this way: if you have a rule that says you have no rules, you still have one rule that there are no rules.

<comment><USER35> You are begging the question. The design of Bitcoin has a philosophy. The instantiation of Bitcoin, the Bitcoin network itself, does not. Saying that bitcoin has a philosophy because the developers have a philosophy is like saying that air has a philosophy because the developers breath air. No matter what the developers do, the Bitcoin network will continue to exist on its own and act in an exacting way, despite your claims to the contrary. The miners are in control of the network, and not the developers. But no single miner is in control either. If the developers or miners could freely enact change on the network, then there would be a fuzzy line between the design and the implementation, and you could lay the philosophy on the implementation. But interestingly, of all technologies ever created by man, the bitcoin design and implementation may be the most decoupled in history, as bitcoin is built to be resilient to tampering. It is not a representative democracy. Until someone controls hashing power over a certain percentage, or the majority of miners agree to a serious protocol modification, no real change will occur to the bitcoin network's behavior.

From another angle, would you say that a car engine has a philosophy? No. But the designers had a philosophy when they designed it.

edit: Further analogizing with human designed artifacts, such as a towel or a laptop, I think this is a debate on semantics. An object can't have a philosophy, but it can embody or reflect one.

<comment><USER34> No, you have missed the essence of my post. Technology doesn't pick a side. I'm not arguing against that.

In the relationship between Bitcoin and it's users/developers/miners/nodes there are of course the ideologies of each individual interacting with the protocol (libertarian, anarchist, etc...). Then of course there is the protocol itself. Then you can step back and look at the whole set of individuals each having their own (potentially hostile) philosophies, but still interacting with the protocol in the same way (i.e., they are following the rules) to achieve distributed consensus. How do you categorize that phenomena (embedded was the wrong word choice)? That is the question that I was referring to with the comment "philosophy of Bitcoin."

Now, let's address some points in your post.

>If the developers or miners could freely enact change on the network, then there would be a fuzzy line between the design and the implementation, and you could lay the philosophy on the implementation.

Not one miner is in control? The two largest pools (Discus, ANT) are both located in China. Ghash just shut down it's cloud mining to take back control of the hashing power because of low prices.

Eligius, a pool known for extending the will of Luke Jr. (submits to Bitcoin Core frequently) can change IsStandard to exclude OP_RETURN or Mastercoin transactions or whatever else. That is emergent behavior that is a result of someone's will.

Blockstream has a handful of core devs and many influential minds in the space on their team to work on sidechains. Who knows what that will end up causing? Maybe a split in allegiances and a hard fork? You give Bitcoin more credit then is due. It still requires human input, after all.

edit: we are arguing different points here, let's leave it at that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> digital-rubber Is there already a company that tied the 'donated' cpu power to a real product with revenue/profit to a crypto currency?

I mean all these hashes are nice and all, but the little magic math hash.. is about as valuable as a painting. Whatever the idiot gives for it.

Imho, if there is a real product developed with the donated cpu power in exchange for crypto coins which stand for a money value in relation to the developed product/medicine etc.

Like combining distributed computing, crypto currency and a product (e.g. medicine) which we could all benefit from. And those miners aren't simply wasting electricity.

Yes i consider bitcoin, and sort in current form, mining a waste of electricity.

<comment><USER36> This has little to do with the linked article and has been gone over repeatedly. Stack Exchange points out some of the problems securing a blockchain with 'useful work':

[http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/20879/why-cant- we...](http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/20879/why-cant-we-design-a- bitcoin-that-does-useful-work/20886#20886)

<comment> digital-rubber It's about bitcoin, exchange of value, etc. Seems quite related to me. Thanks for the link though.

And just because something has been discussed more often, doesn't mean it should not be mentioned at all?

<comment><USER36> It's not a yes/no binary rule, it's a sliding scale. For this story, your comment is over towards the "ugh, not again, they didn't even bother to understand the basic responses to their criticism" side of my scale.

What it comes down to is that I don't think every story about bitcoin needs to have a bunch of facile criticism of bitcoin attached to it. Criticism specific to the story is great, as is well thought out, deeper criticism.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Warren Buffett said Bitcoins are a mirage and I agree. They are worthless hashes. Why do they have any value? The answer is they have no value. I said so here when they were worth over twice what they are now. If there is any sign of a bubble in tech, it would be Bitcoin market cap. Which is $3 billion at the moment.

Who are the fools who exchange cash for them? Why do they have any value? Some people say you can use them as currency. You can use dollars as currency. Or gold. Some say it can transfer money, but so can wire transfers. Perhaps it is decentralized (who cares? Not I. Wire transfers work for me) etc. But gold has value, while Bitcoin has nothing. I remember during the dot bomb days when there were commercials for Flooz and Beenz.

The leaders in the Bitcoin community are being sued and jailed for fraud, the price has gone from $1100 to $230, yet suckers are still bamboozled to trade cash for these worthless hashes. It will go to $115, then $57, then eventually $0. I doubt all those who already lost money or who are being jailed will learn anything.

<comment><USER38> How is a piece of paper any more valuable than a hash though? They're all just place holders.

<comment><USER39> The piece of paper is more valuable than the hash because more people will accept it as legal tender.

<comment><USER22> Actually, Bitcoin is already accepted by more people than many fiat currencies.

<comment><USER22> Downvoted for stating facts. Way to go, HN!</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How much do you make from Adsense? - <AUTHOR>

I know we usually like to talk about SaaS and mobile apps here on HN but I'm sure there's a number of folks earning serious amount of cash from Adsense.<p>You don't have to share the details if you don't want to but it would be great if some of you could give us some insight into how much you're earning and maybe even the verticals you're involved in. <comment><USER2> I'm running a website with adsense ads as an extra income to my day job. Last month I earned about $1400 on it. Witch definetly is a nice extra income since I'm not spending much time on the site.

Here's a graph over my adsense income the past couple years. [http://s3.amazonaws.com/awesome_screenshot/2293121?AWSAccess...](http://s3.amazonaws.com/awesome_screenshot/2293121?AWSAccessKeyId=0R7FMW7AXRVCYMAPTPR2&Expires=1370506490&Signature=C16BImdrXLBvOEaE8Oe4nFcTzIU%3D)

</comment><comment><USER3> AdSense for Content Last Month May 16,982 183 1.08% $0.71 $7.66 $130.12

Swing $30 in off season and $300/month season now for regular website. Basically one small banner ad. Spent 0 on advertising, but took time marketing until this year (Still on free Adword credit $1.00/day - maybe 5-10% traffic).

</comment><comment><USER4> Most I ever made was about $30,000 in one month back in 2006. I had about 1 million unique visitors that month.

</comment><comment><USER5> I am using adsense with youtube only and getting around 5-10$ a month. However nowadays Iam not uploading anything. I've got payment only once since the payout limit is around 87$, but when I got it I've also earned a singing youtube-bonus which payed me a 126$ sum.

<comment><USER5> Link to my channel: <http://www.youtube.com/user/LezuziuszHUN>

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I have AdMobs on a couple of free Android apps - motorsport calculators. They make about $20 every 3/4 months, which has come from 6,000 total downloads / 1,200 active installs.

</comment><comment><USER7> $15k a month. 90% through Adsense. Could make more with AdExchange if hey accept me. Difference of 68/32 vs 80/20 is pretty major.

</comment><comment><USER8> approx $13.00/year - blank pages

</comment><comment><USER9> now $30/month (max: $120/month, about 1k visits/day)</comment>