A Comcast Security Flaw Exposed Millions of Customers' Personal Information - <AUTHOR> https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/nicolenguyen/a-comcast-security-flaw-exposed-millions-of-customers <comment><USER2> The address exposure vulnerability is really, really bad. Just about anyone was able to impersonate another Comcast customer by sending their home IP address in the X-Forwarded-For header to Comcast's device activation page, and easily see a masked version of their address (first number of street number and partial street name; street name is trivial to figure out with IP geolocation, street number would need some trial and error).

I wonder how many Comcast customers were doxed with this method before it was fixed.

<comment><USER3> So, at the risk of getting murdered for this sentiment: Who cares? So what if someone knows your address?

I guess it's a bigger problem for celebrities or for those who are targeted. But even then, the police are there. Just call them.

I'm trying to understand the other side of this.

<comment><USER4> The information you obtain from vulnerabilities like these are used to obtain "original" social media accounts, and are then sold for a lot of money. To define what "original" is, take for instance "@shawn" on Instagram or Twitter. When these people target celebrities, they are mainly looking for a laugh and believe their "method" is about to be patched.

For example, T-Mobile and Verizon vulnerabilities are used to SIM swap and get around 2FA on instagram or twitter. Usually, they first try to find an employee who works at the store and has access to the database, before going through all the trouble of finding a vuln.

This has been an "underground" space for quite some time, but is slowly coming to light.

Source: I use to be in this space and made so much money off original usernames. To give you an idea of what a username goes for, I sold the Instagram @b*ss for $20,000.

<comment><USER5> How do users in this space securely transfer money without the FBI kicking down their door the next day?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> About two years ago, I spoke with Comcast's CISO over the phone about a leak of a sysadmin's home directory. It included private keys, log files, configs, licensed binaries, splunk(!), etc etc. A week before, her staff told me that they were going to use the chance to offer me a bug as part of a non-existent bug bounty, which didn't (and doesn't) exist.

She (paraphrased) told me that since it wasn't a "bug", it didn't deserve a bounty as part of a bug bounty program. She followed that dribble by saying that for them to implement a bug bounty program would be _far too expensive_ because it would lead to them having to fix all of the security flaws at Comcast. No joke.

Dear Comcast: put out a fucking bug bounty!

</comment><comment><USER7> Comcast leaks different bits of information in all sorts of ways. It would be relatively easy to combine the information they leak with public records to gain access to someone's account. This is just icing on the cake.

You can identify addresses that are Comcast customers simply by going to their website and shopping for service. If you enter in the address of an existing customer, it tells you.

You can cross reference this with open records like tax and voter registration to determine who lives their and potential phone numbers.

You can confirm the owner of the account by using Comcast's bill pay without login feature. It allows you to specify a street address and telephone number to view/pay a bill. And based on the bill amount you might be able to determine which services they're subscribed to.

If the person is renting equipment then they'll be broadcasting a hotspot that other customers can log into and use unless they're savvy enough to disable it. That could be used to determine their IP address.

Those are just the ones I know about off the top of my head. I'm sure there are many more.

</comment><comment><USER8> If you have an independent local ISP, _use them_!

In SF both Monkey Brains and Sonic are excellent, pro-Net-Neutrality, pro- privacy ISPs who offer non-exploitative contracts for internet access which is unfiltered, blazingly fast, and incredibly cheap!

<comment><USER9> When I brought up those two ISPs to coworkers, they said they experienced frequent enough outages. Do you use them? What has your experience been like?

<comment><USER10> Sonic quality depends on the quality of the AT&T wiring to your home. At my old house in Oakland, Sonic meant 3mbit DSL because AT&T had not updated the old twisted pair. It meant I bailed and signed up for Comcast.

My new place in San Jose has fiber to the premise, so I signed up for Sonic again. Good bandwidth, Rock solid service.

<comment><USER11> In SF, at least, Sonic has started stringing their own fiber. But it's not in every neighborhood yet, and even in places where they are installing fiber, some streets may be left dark, (Including, frustratingly, a big swath of Portrero Hill where the utility poles are "overloaded".)

If you're in a larger building (15+ units), there are a couple of other fiber providers that may be an option, if building management is up for it.

MonkeyBrains is a wireless ISP. I regularly get 25-40 Mbps from them (though they don't guarantee that). I've had only occasional slowdowns and one outage lasting a few hours. (So, more reliable than Comcast had been, at least for me.) I'd heard rumors MonkeyBrains was planning some equipment upgrades that would let them deliver 60-80 Mbps, but no official announcement or timetable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Does US federal or California law mandate that breach notifications be sent by postal mail? If not, then I wouldn't be surprised if Comcast sends any/all notifications to people's Comcast email addresses. That'll be a good way to bury the notification, since I doubt many people check or forward their Comcast email.

<comment><USER13> Actual legal text on CA data breach law from the following link. Notification requirements are near the bottom, starting with the section labeled "(j) For purposes of this section, "notice" may be provided by one of the following methods:"

[https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio...](https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=CIV&sectionNum=1798.82)

Email notice is an option if meeting the restrictions listed in the Federal law linked below. I think the relevant part is section (c), with the major restriction being "affirmative consent."

[https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/15/7001](https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/15/7001)

Alternatively if the breach affects over half a million people, they can send notifications by email, but also have to plaster their homepage and send "Notification to major statewide media." The homepage banner would only affect people who pay electronically but not by autopay. There are ways to minimize the effect of news broadcast, e.g. send the press release at 4 o'clock on a Friday when no one watches the news.

So, it's not quite as easy as you think but Comcast does have options to minimize the impact of notification.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This exact same bug existed and was widely exploited 4-5 years ago.

</comment><comment> King-Aaron I know shitposting is completely frowned upon here, but I can't help but have the image of that South Park comcast guy in my head right now. "Oh, you had your personal address and social security numbers stolen? Ooh that's too bad. "

<comment><USER3> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rja7tCtxSN4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rja7tCtxSN4)

It fits too well.

</comment></comment><comment> Paul-ish Meanwhile, DirectTV still requires SSN to sign up. Until something changes, (create a liability?) this will keep happening.

<comment><USER15> It is a hard problem for all these companies. How else do you authenticate someone remotely?

<comment> Paul-ish Why do you need to authenticate someone to sign them up for your service? Shouldn't a CC, name, and address be enough?

</comment></comment></comment><comment> D-Coder Can we send Comcast a bowling ball? An undrilled one? I'd love to see how they fsck that up.

</comment><comment><USER16> There was no mass exposure of sensitive data. Two paths existed for determined attackers to get the home address and possibly SSN for individually targeted accounts. The process was manual and would have been difficult to automate to compromise "millions" of accounts.

Based on the details in the article, this sounds like something that needed to be fixed, but probably not even worth the time to write this article.

<comment><USER2> Strongly disagree. This effectively granted anyone with basic HTTP knowledge the ability to dox anyone they interact with online, if that person is using Comcast. The attacker does not need to be "determined" at all; it's trivial to get someone's IP address (send them a link of any kind) and with this vulnerability, trivial to find most of their home address. In short, some asshole kid could send a SWAT team to your house just by knowing your IP address, with not many steps in between.

The SSN last 4 digit bruteforcing is really bad, too. I'd say arguably not as bad, since it's not very hard to get most people's SSNs on black markets these days.

This is not a breach, but these are two massive vulnerabilities and deserves many articles.

<comment><USER17> There is no shortage of asshole kids who use SWAT teams in exactly that way. See [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swatting#Injuries_or_deaths_du...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swatting#Injuries_or_deaths_due_to_swatting) for a list of some notable cases.

<comment><USER2> Absolutely, but this exposure made it much easier to do en masse, plus made it possible to dox targets who otherwise have good OPSEC and aren't easily identified.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: What are you focused on right now? - <AUTHOR> http://nownownow.com <comment><USER2> For anyone who is interested in Linux development, I decided to build this GUI app with `Python gobject` that fetches process-wise bandwidth consumed for each period (such as firefox 10GB, ssh 1GB, etc.) as they show in android. I know nethogs exists for this, but it doesn't save historical data, nor does it have a GUI.

So, I went about building this app with the standard way: of reading into `/proc/net/dev` for overall bandwidth and `/proc/<pid>/net/dev` for process- wise bandwidth.

It was a nasty little surprise for me when I came to know that `/proc/<pid>/net/dev` actually doesn't give me process wise bandwidth, it does the same as the overall `/proc/net/dev` :-(.

As a result, my [project]([https://github.com/prahladyeri/netpatrol](https://github.com/prahladyeri/netpatrol)) is stuck in limbo until I figure out how `nethogs` gets the process-wise bandwidth by going through its overwhelming source-code. I presently don't have the time to do that, but one day, I'll get it!! If anyone can help me with this, they are most welcome!</comment>


How a DIY YouTuber became the target of a sexist conspiracy theory - <AUTHOR> https://theoutline.com/post/2459/how-a-diy-youtuber-became-the-target-of-a-sexist-conspiracy-theory <comment><USER2> WTF is wrong with people. I watched one of her videos, and I saw a mind a work. It definitely didn't occur to me to question her credentials or abilities - they were plain to see.

I see that Dale has issued an apology, but the damage has been done, and will continue anyway. When you contribute to bullshit there are ongoing consequences and no apology will make those consequences disappear. I know I'm going to be approaching my support for him and Make in general with much more skepticism and trepidation moving forward.

<comment><USER3> What do you mean "I saw a mind a[t] work"? What did you see in her video?

<comment><USER4> Her videos show her engaged with various hardware projects-- making them and explaining them.

The article concerns the slander that these projects aren't hers; that she is merely a mascot presenting the work of her (male, engineer) boyfriend.

To notice "a mind at work" in the videos, is to suggest that the videos are her authentic work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> HN is one of the places Ive encountered people trashtalking and saying that shes a fake, I remember commenting that I was a fan of Naomi and really enjoyed her reviews of Shenzhen electronics a year ago and got a lot of responses hating on her.

Issue is why dont we doubt other people who could also just have downloaded instructions off the internet and then just did that or even never show their making process but doubt Naomi?

<comment><USER6> I don't have an idea about her being fake or not, but it's obvious it's the sexuality that she is promoting her videos with that draws the attention. It's very obvious that majority of the people come because of the fake tits and she knows it very well too. Just looking at the click bait YouTube thumbnails tells you that.

<comment><USER5> Issue about sexuality and her breast enhancements is that was her choice and she had those done before her videos as part of her body modification, honestly to me they just look sort of disturbing but to each their own.

Im not interested in saying what is overly sexual or not else I end up like those schools banning short skirts. I watch her vids cos I support her as a female maker.

<comment><USER6> I'm cool with her brests too, but just tried to give suggestions why did it get so much attention and doxxing.

More power to her, but you can't deny she is trying to sell the makers culture by using them. But maybe in the end it's good? Young Boys start to tinker because of that and Girls because she can be a role model? (you can debate about the latter)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> A person shouldn't have to prove they're not fake,the person making the accusation needs to backup his statement with proof(not speculation).

Obviously,there is no reason to even give ear to accusations against her.

But,I do have something against using your sex appeal and good looks to get more views,support,etc...

A woman wearing skimpy dress,cleavage or breast accentuating(?) Top is just as inappropriate as a topless muscular guy wearing only a speedo and his privates bulging out while making similar tech videos.

There are times and places to display what an awesome body you have and how sexy you are(for any gender)

That being said,this slander,gossip and spreading false rumors is a terrible thing. Even if she was a "fake" it would still be an unethical and inappropriate response.

Frankly,I think the people spreading the rumors are displaying nothing more than their own insecurity.

<comment><USER8> I don't like the sexual objectification in her pr at all, and I read her explanation of her clothing choices, which sounds like baloney. I'm half- chinese (100% asian though :) ), My parent said dressing like that IS socially frowned on there, and they doubt it would ever get more liberal under Xi. I don't believe sexycyborg completely to be honest. Her talk about china seems all wrong according to my parents who spent the first 35 years of their life there.

I REALLY don't want my daughter to think, she has to get a breast augmentation just to be popular on tech and youtube. youtube has enough videos of girls getting and talking about plastic surgeries.

This whole thing reeks on both sides.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, I don't have a problem with women in tech at all. They shouldn't have to sexualize themselves for success. Plenty of smart women (including likely the subject of the article) where their work is more than enough to compete with any man's work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Although a different article, it discusses the same event:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15653353](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15653353)

(And am I the only one hating this headline?)</comment>


Michael Phelps Says He Contemplated Suicide After 2012 Olympics - <AUTHOR> https://www.si.com/olympics/2018/01/19/michael-phelps-anxiety-depression-suicide <comment><USER2> I think it might be due to the fact that after you accomplish something that you really wanted for quite a while and/or that you prepared a lot for, you can end up realizing that while it was a great achievement, you are still the same person with the same habits and issues, and that the achievement doesn't really change anything outside that part of your life, and sometimes there is also no reason to think you can replicate the achievement itself. And then you realize that you are objectively really lucky and can't even properly appreciate and enjoy it, and that brings you down even more.

Even people who never had any great achievements can experience it with sex: sometimes you are alone for a while, and think how amazing it would be to have sex with someone, thinking about all sorts of happy feelings you'd have and how you would be happier overall and so on. Then you have a one night stand, and it's good, but you realize it hasn't really changed anything, that a relationship might not necessarily work out, that you are not necessarily going to be able to repeat it, then think about how you got exactly what wanted and that many other people would have really wanted to have your experience, and yet you can't appreciate it like you think you should.

I think the solution is partly to accept it, and just let your expectations about the happiness related to those achievements go down, and also trying to focus on achievements that have lasting effects, mainly those that involve getting wealthier or healthier, and finally trying to have a more balanced life, relying less on high-impact random once-in-a-while experiences and more on habitual routine experiences, although it can be hard to find the motivation for that for some people.

<comment><USER3> This theory is quite off, as most extremely successful sports heros lead a happy (and mostly drunk) afterlife as celebrity.

You either having problems with the celeb status, or more likely the constant cheating (doping) is hitting at your morale. They can always find you years after. Esp after upper management shakeups. As we saw with many confirmed dopers. I would certainly look more into that angle.

<comment><USER4> You could be right, but I can see how something that you have dedicated your entire life to, with much fanfare, riches and congratulation, coming to an end could make you feel directionless and depressed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What a beautiful and moving story, in my honest opinion. I think this will mean a lot of people that are struggling with these feelings and look up to Michael Phelps. I think this is awesome just like when Tim Cook "officially" came out as gay. For most people it doesn't mean anything, but for those internally struggling with this myriad of conflicting feelings it might be the difference between life and death.

</comment><comment><USER6> Phelps had been outspoken about his bouts with depression for several years now. (It's too late in the night for me to look for links, but I've personally read 4 or 5 articles regarding this subject)

I find hope in a "heroic" public persona bringing the condition the awareness and communal acknowledgement and support it desperately needs.

</comment><comment><USER7> _" Really, after every Olympics I think I fell into a major state of depression," Phelps said._

Bruce Springsteen talks a lot about his depression in his memoir and it sounds like this, dropping off a cliff when returning home after tours. It is super helpful that celebrities speak out so people can relate, but I think performers whose lives are so intensively oriented to performances and then abruptly return to home life rhythms have special needs when it comes to mental health and making sense of their lives. Most of us don't have such extreme highs.

<comment><USER8> One of the best set of podcast episodes I ever heard (there are many great podcasts out there, but this is one of them) was on Heavyweight.

It's about one of Jonathan Goldstein's friends (Gregor) who is trying to retrieve a CD set of Alan Lomax recordings from ... Moby, of all people.

This podcast is brilliant to me because, while it somehow manages to be comically absurd, it also raises all sorts of issues about success and credit and how it is achieved, and what worth that actually has. The Lomax recordings, for example, were arguably central to Play as an album, and it was Gregor that introduced Moby to them. So although Gregor just wants his CDs back, by the end of it, a lot of issues are raised about how much credit Gregor really deserves for Play, and Moby's resulting success from that album. Gregor himself isn't looking for financial compensation or anything, but you kind of start to wonder if Moby should have done more for him interpersonally or something, or in terms of acknowledgements and introductions and something, if nothing else as a friend.

But then you meet Moby, and you find out he was severely depressed after the album came and went, because he's realized he's been one fad in a stream of fads, and that a lot of the issues he had in his life weren't going to be addressed by the fame. But then again, he's sitting in this really nice house, and doing pretty well for himself, and he still doesn't give the CDs back to Gregor, and dodges the issue almost entirely, other than to say they're locked in an archive somewhere that Gregor can't get to.

I'm approaching a point in my career and age where I'm looking back and myself and looking at others, and starting to feel like a lot of success is just luck, or chance, or coincidence, or something like that. Not all of it, but more than we give it credit. I also feel like it operates in these subtle, cumulative sorts of ways. I'm also frustrated because it seems like people go through these contortions of hindsight bias and selection bias and all sorts of other things to justify these things post hoc, or that discussions become distorted.

For example, Phelps is a great swimmer and I don't mean to suggest he doesn't deserve his medals. I also don't want to suggest that Moby lacks talent or something. But what if Gregor hadn't shared those Lomax recordings with him? Would Gregor's career been different if Moby had actually shown thanks to Gregor, by forging connections for him, etc.?

I have a mentor and friend who is wildly successful in their career, at the top of what's achievable in that field, and well within the top 1% income- wise. At one point, for various reasons, especially because of their spouse, they moved to a position with a different organization. To me it seemed like a great fit. This friend had entertained other moves, that never seemed right to me, but this one seemed right. In the end, though, it killed his productivity, and he stopped being able to do much of anything, just because differences in culture and fit at the two institutions. He got out of it and returned to where he started his career, and things became ok again, but I've often wondered what would have happened if he had started at the second place he worked at. I have a strong suspicion people would have attributed whatever happened to him to him, rather than his circumstances or fit, and I'm not sure he would have had a point of comparison to know enough that he would do better someplace else (after all, everyone thought the move was a kind of win-win-win for everyone involved, when it turned out to be the opposite).

<comment><USER9> Would you happen to have a link to the podcast episode?

EDIT:

A good article on the podcast can be found here[1]. The podcast itself can be found here[2]. Because I just listened to this song for the first time in a while, here is my favorite song by Moby[3].

1\. [http://www.vinylmeplease.com/magazine/moby-best-podcast- ever...](http://www.vinylmeplease.com/magazine/moby-best-podcast-ever/)

2\. [https://cms.megaphone.fm/channel/heavyweight?selected=GLT174...](https://cms.megaphone.fm/channel/heavyweight?selected=GLT1741636493)

3\. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8d9SgRtEkBo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8d9SgRtEkBo)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> What's interesting is that apparently no one is safe from depression. Here is Phelps, an accomplished man by any means, saying he was thinking of suicide.

I always think "if I do this, if I do that, it will all get better". It does, for a while. I've changed my surroundings and life several times, used all the drugs, but depression always comes back. You have to just learn to live with it. Weird stuff.

<comment><USER11> Look at Robin Williams.

<comment><USER12> Just to clarify, whilst Robin Williams was known for suffering with depression, it was supposedly an unrelated illness that drove him to suicide.

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health-fitness/body/lewy-body- dem...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health-fitness/body/lewy-body-dementia-the- disease-that-killed-robin-williams/)

<comment><USER4> I heard an interview with Bobcat Goldthwait who is a good friend of Robin, and he said that Robin was losing touch with reality at times, probably due to the Lewy Body Dementia.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It would be so nice to live in a world where we could actually talk openly about mental health, without fear of repercussions.

<comment><USER14> I think we're slowly making progress. I'm even hearing more about mental health in the hip hop world, which has long been a scene where vulnerability is risky.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'd say the huge difference for Michael Phelps is that he has no obstacles in his way in seeing a psychiatrist. The rest of us have to worry about our health insurance, drug insurance, transportation, time off, etc.. I am not demeaning Mr. Phelps - I just want to make the point-- that seeing a psychiatrist regularly can make all the difference in mental health and state of being.

</comment><comment><USER16> Stay hyper focused on the present and achieve a flow state with your work. Do this for a prolonged period of time and you can accomplish great things. But, eventually you'll return to reality and find that your main skill to cope with anxiety is impractical in that it requires complete, devoted focus on a task at hand -- essentially putting issues on the back burner but never really taking them off.

It seems like Phelps had his moment of reckoning with his back burner issues in 2012 but he seems to have developed more emotional skills to deal with them. Good for him!

<comment><USER17> Yep, and for the millions of people who can't statistically be outliers we have to figure out how to live with being normal.

That means living with not being rich or famous or actually being particularly good at anything on a global scale.

Phelps was supported by a society that brought him burritos and clean towels and factory workers who made swimming caps and if he has stuff to teach all of us regular people about depression I think that's good to hear.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Microservices, Dependencies and Events - <AUTHOR> I've been doing a lot of googling regarding managing dependencies between microservices. We're trying to move away from big monolithic app into micro-services in order to scale organizationally and be able to develop faster and with multiple teams working in parallel.
However, as we're trying to functionally partition the monolith into the microservices, we see how intertwined business logic and data really is. This was not a problem when we were sitting on top of one big DB and were able to do big relational joins. But with microservices, this becomes a problem.
One solution is to make microservice-A go to 5-10 other microservices to get necessary data (this is equivalent of DB view with join). Another solution is to make microservice-A listen to events from 5-10 other services and populate local storage with relevant into (this is an equivalent of materialized view). Either way, microservice-A is coupled with 5-10 other services, and if new info is needed in microservice-A, the some of the services that it depends upon might will need to be release prior to microservice-A. Please note that microservice-A is itself depended upon by other services. Bottom line, we end up with DISTRIBUTED dependency hell.
Many articles advocate for second solution – i.e. something along the lines of Event Sourcing, Choreography, etc.
I would appreciate any shared experiences, recommendations and insights.
Philometor. <comment><USER2> I think it's interesting that you haven't got an answer from someone for this question. What you are describing is the problem people tend to ignore when describing microservices. The second solution won't help you with these problems, just give you another set of equally hard problems you still have to tackle.</comment>


What military supply lines can teach us about technical product management - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@owenbrown/wide-path-or-narrow-path-c6f499884fae <comment><USER2> This starts out as an amusing article, which it then rapidly transitions to a fairly boilerplate "Build MVP" sermon, while somehow managing to be insultingly insubstantial with its topic.

A more useful military lesson might be don't send tanks into a city fight (they'll die there), don't use tanks for defense (they're actually not so good at it), and when pushed to do something, figure out _why_ you're doing it, ideally before you commit to a course of action, but always be prepared to change plans, to better achieve whatever goal you actually need to accomplish.</comment>


Circa: A GUI for making circos plots with genomics data--biology [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Z1K5orBRb4 <comment><AUTHOR> Author here: I made Circa because creating circos plots was very difficult and time-consuming when I had to do it during my PhD research. Increasingly people who have genomic data to show are biologists who can't or won't spend days writing code to get a nice circos plot for publication or presentations, so I made a GUI desktop app that helps them do it. I made it extremely flexible so they can style it in every way imaginable, but I tried to keep the UI intuitive and very easy to use. Circa is a desktop application made with Electron and D3, and it is the first product from my new business OMGenomics, where I also put out free educational bioinformatics content in the form of YouTube videos.</comment>


From Flex to Silverlight - <AUTHOR> http://www.lostechies.com/blogs/rhouston/archive/2008/09/13/from-flex-to-silverlight.aspx

<comment><USER2> Can't say I agree with the substance of this article. A lot of the drawbacks seem to be either preference, something that has been improved already or something that just required a tad more effort (e.g. I found the testing resources for Flex to be pretty reasonable).

All things being equal, is there anything technically compelling to favour Silverlight over Flex?

</comment><comment><USER3> Flex :: " # No real testing support " .... Flexunit. This article is a bunch of MS dev's loving on silverlight. Biased.

</comment><comment><USER4> Fuck Flex and fuck Silverlight.

We want an open web based on standards and we will do all we can to keep it that way.

<comment><USER3> OK you have deliverables due in 3 months, go!</comment></comment>


The idea ain't the hard part. One writer finds out hard it is to create an app - <AUTHOR> http://www.unlimitedmagazine.com/2011/08/how-to-create-an-iphone-app/ <comment><USER2> Spoiler: At no point in the story does the author download Xcode.

<comment><USER3> Haha, I thought you meant he just paid someone else to do it... No, so much worse. He didn't even -try-.

His app could have had a working version on the store in 2 weeks, if he'd really tried. It would benefit from further work, but would have proved his point.

Instead, he got dazzled by how much work the -best- apps take and gave up. It's like looking at a guitar and realizing how much work it takes to become a rockstar, and just giving up before you've even picked the thing up.

Most people aren't rockstars, and most apps don't hit #1 on -any- list.

<comment><USER4> No, a non-programmer cannot create an iPhone app in 2 weeks, even a really bad one. You've been programming too long.

<comment><USER5> I interpreted 'If [reporter] really tried' in the grandparent post to mean, "if reporter earnestly sought out and hired an expert".

Of course, the know-how for doing that takes time to develop as well.

But, if this reporter's real goal was getting an app done, rather than writing a story, she probably would have spoken to more people who had actually hired devs for short projects. Instead, she seems to have spoken to just enough people to get usable quotes for the story.

She never switches from the layperson's "invent" terminology (a misnomer for the ideas-into-functions process of software development) and is only ever hand-wavy about going rates for expert help. There is _someone_ out there who has the expertise to make a simple version 1 of her app in 2 weeks or less; how much does that person charge?

<comment><USER6> I noticed the use of the word "invent" as well. It kind of hurt to read the first time. I thought after her first Google search she might realize that there was a better word for it, and start searching for how to "create" or "write" or "code" an iPhone application.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> In the late 90's, people thought they could strike riches by throwing up a webpage.

Today, people think they can strike riches by creating a mobile app.

Not much has changed.

</comment><comment><USER8> 25% to develop the app for the MEDL incubator? Is the other 75% for just coming up with the idea, or also for launching, getting users, promoting, etc?

EDIT: Apparently they handle everything and you get 25% just for the idea. Not bad.

<comment><USER3> I've had a few ideas that I'd gladly give up 75% of to have someone else do them... If they do them properly.

<comment><USER9> I have a boatload of ideas that I would gladly give up for a 10% equity stake.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The prices he quotes are WAY outsized. Low to Mid 5 figures will do a huge proportion of apps that "People have an idea about" using US or Canadian programmers. Some will go into 6 figures, but millions? Really? Not for most ideas.

(This is what I do for a living, 3rd party app development).

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for all the comments everyone. I was the editor who commissioned the piece. To give some context the writer had about 12 days to write the article. An impartial observer (not me obviously) might get the impression that the people offering up advice here might need to take themselves a little less seriously. Have a lovely day and thanks for reading and commenting.

<comment><USER11> To give some context, most of the people on this site are professional software developers. i.e., my full-time job is writing iPhone apps, so I've been thinking about that process for the last 2-3 years.

For me personally, 75% of my working hours is spent talking to people who have an app idea and don't have the funds to execute, and trying to separate those from paying clients. If I could cut that number in half, I would literally be twice as productive. It would be like adding 3 hours to every workday, or producing an additional ten apps a year.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fair enough. This is hackernews. I've passed the link to this comment thread along to the writer and we'll slowly educate the client base, one at a time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Should it (programming, creating an app, executing an idea) be this hard? Or would that only lead to more fart apps and more disappointment later in the process when the app doesn't hit it big?

<comment><USER13> I doubt it ever will become easy; the goalposts will keep moving.

For example, if, 20 or even 10 years ago, years ago, you built a webpage with nothing but a textarea and a 'save' button that allows people to save a single text per URL, you have a CMS that could have made you real money. Nowadays, wikis must be more advanced than that.

Having said that, it is possible to lower the barriers. I think it would be extremely cool and useful to have something HyperCard-like on iPad. I do not think everyone's five minutes of work should be on the app store, though.

<comment><USER14> Also think of spreadsheets. They allow normal people to write simple programs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> text cache -- [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:rhOH__L...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:rhOH__LLQwwJ:www.unlimitedmagazine.com/2011/08/how- to-create-an-iphone-app/+unlimitedmagazine+/2011/08/how-to-create-an-iphone- app/&hl=en&gl=us&strip=1)

<comment><AUTHOR> We're back up. Turns out hackernews can send quite a bit of traffic.</comment></comment>


Bootstrap-switch - <AUTHOR> http://www.bootstrap-switch.org/ <comment><USER2> This is cool, but I really dislike those kinds of switches. Pretty, yes, but also confusing to users unfamiliar with them.

Say the switch is to the right, and then word ON is to the left. If you click the switch, it moves to the left. Does that mean you turned the switch on, since the switch moved to where the word "ON" was? Or does it mean the switch is off because now the word "OFF" is visible?

Even knowing the answer, as an only-occasional mobile user I still find these switches require extra cognitive load, which is not what you want from a UI element.

<comment><USER3> I don't like these switches either, but I doubt they are generally confusing. They've been around for a long time in the physical world. [http://blogs.hillandknowlton.com/scottmckenzie/files/2012/03...](http://blogs.hillandknowlton.com/scottmckenzie/files/2012/03/Light- switch.jpg)

<comment><USER4> It's easy to tell when a light switch has been turned on or off. Not quite as easy when the switch is on a settings option called "email me a digest every week" or similar.

<comment><USER5> Which is exactly when websites want users confused.

I remember Real Player had a bunch of 'opt-in' email options, they where in a scroll box. By default the visible ones where unticked, but if you scrolled down there where pages of preticked ones.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Simple checkboxes work really well. Get fancy with an addon if you need more than just a label [http://jsfiddle.net/Ah6dz/](http://jsfiddle.net/Ah6dz/)

</comment><comment><USER7> Why use jQuery for this when it can be done with CSS?

[http://codepen.io/freshyill/pen/KavfD](http://codepen.io/freshyill/pen/KavfD)

<comment><USER8> This has actually been problematic for me and I'm sure others. I'm currently working on an app that is Angular based and trying as hard as I can to avoid a jQuery dependency, mostly because I have no direct use for it and would rather avoid the dependency as it is rather large in file size, actually my largest. I've gone through multiple states of 'this library fits my needs right now and is fast to implement, but I need jQuery' using it, then immediately placing a TODO to get rid of it ASAP when I have time to work something else into being what I want.

This comment shouldn't be taken as a rant or complaint, I know why the current state of libraries is what it is, just an observation that jQuery seems to be, at least for me, transitioning from being 'an assumption' into 'the thing I want to get rid of'.

<comment><USER9> I could be wrong, but if you use a CDN, won't jQuery be already cached for 99% of users? I can definitely imagine that filesize is an issue with less popular frameworks, but I'd wager that it really doesn't matter with jQuery.

If anyone has statistics on this, I'd love to see them!

<comment><USER10> You're in fact wrong, the chance that users will have exactly the same version of jQuery cached is pretty small. [1] If you want to read more about jQuery on cdns, there is a long discussion on html5boilerplate github page. [2]

[1] [http://statichtml.com/2011/google-ajax-libraries- caching.htm...](http://statichtml.com/2011/google-ajax-libraries-caching.html)

[2] [https://github.com/h5bp/html5-boilerplate/pull/1327](https://github.com/h5bp/html5-boilerplate/pull/1327)

<comment><USER9> Well dang, thanks for pointing out my error and providing sources to back it up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is nice work.

I don't know if it's just me, but IMO switches like these are inappropriate as a replacement for a checkbox in most forms. I could see it being useful in an app that changed the presentation of something (charts, styles, etc).

</comment><comment><USER12> If I click and drag the switch without taking my mouse off it gets stuck. I feel like if my mouse goes up the switch should go on or off, not stay in an inconsistent state.

</comment><comment><USER13> This no longer fits with the bootstrap aesthetic :)

</comment><comment><USER14> Ancillary question: What would be the motivation behind making a domain for something like this?

</comment><comment><USER15> This is great! I'll be using it in the coming weeks!

</comment><comment><USER16> should we always expect that the hidden input checkboxes are being checked? Wish the documentation addressed this...

</comment><comment><USER17> The animated switch is nice. Good work.

<comment><USER18> The animation feels wrong to me. It is too slow, and a switch should _not_ ease-out.

This is pretty easy to fix with:

        transition: left 0.3s;
        transition-timing-function: linear;

<comment><USER19> The animation also gets stuck from time to time. The overall experience is way better without it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Awesome. Was looking for something like this. Switch from jQuery Mobile sucks on the phone.

Edit: nevermind, extremely laggy on mobile.

<comment><USER21> The first ones are laggy on my iPhone 4, but the one after "Colors can be changed too:" is quite snappy.</comment></comment>


Microsoft's Gates Opens War on Spam (2003) - <AUTHOR> http://windowsitpro.com/article/articleid/39389/microsofts-gates-opens-war-on-spam.html <comment><USER2> I logged into an older Hotmail account the other day to be greeted with hundreds of spam messages in my inbox. My active gmail account gets maybe 1 spam a month that isn't filtered. At least for webmail providers, Google has won the war on spam and Microsoft is far behind.</comment>


Ask HN: What can you do as a software engineer who has lost their passion? - <AUTHOR> Quick background: I started with TI-Basic in high school math class and things snowballed from there. I'm about to graduate and I've worked constantly since I started college. I've either been coding part time during the school year or full time during various internships. I woke up today and realized that the spark that started it all is dead and has been for longer than I can remember now. I'm competent at my job and I don't dislike it, but I feel like I just go on cruise control completely devoid of interest or passion. I also don't really have the energy or excitement to start a personal project.<p>My question(s): Can anyone relate? Does it matter that I don't feel passionate as long as I don't dislike my job?  What steps can I take to reignite the spark that I once felt? <comment><USER2> I'm in the same boat, although I'm a senior systems engineer. I had considered a move to a dev or devops type of role, but I can't stomach the pay cut to start back at the bottom. I wish I had some advice for you, but I'm really searching for the answer to the problem myself. I've got some personal projects that I'm working on, but between work and my 18-month old son, I don't get much time to do that sort of stuff. When I do have free time, I find myself wanting to spend that time with my family instead of sitting at a computer like I do most of the time already, and that's a pretty rough fight to have with myself.

</comment><comment><USER3> Normally if we get burned out from regular engineering software or just feel like we need a change we switch over to another high paying field like financial engineering, game development, infrastructure automation, big data, statistics, cryptography, penetration testing, consulting, aerospace for us that have those special skills or can obtain them (normally requires a few degrees to become a rocket engineer due to not having the funds for a production scale wind tunnel or labs) and if the others do not seem that fun we normally start a business.

As a software engineer you have more outside the field opportunities then others may have. Since we are very quick learners we can pick up things unnatural fast compared to others which is why you see many software engineers or programmers owning multi-billion dollar businesses in Silicon Valley. Ever meet someone that people keep telling him or her they can't do x,y or z and they end up doing it on a massive scale way beyond what anyone thought they were capable of (Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, etc.).

It is all about finding what you like doing for fun, maybe the software your building at work is not fun, many go into game development mobile apps or cryptography and that excites them along with bringing in a nice paycheck if they do it for their own business.

</comment><comment><USER4> rigorous exercise did wonders for my passion, so did a sport fishing trip.

learning a new language or starting a new project will probably reignite that spark.

</comment><comment><USER5> Can relate. Coding from 12-45 y.o. I've burned out a few times. Now I'm at Uni doing a degree in Supply Chain Management. I will end up with a bunch of cross discipline skills and either keep coding or not, who cares.

Do something else. If your passion nags you after a while, all good. If not, time to let go.

</comment><comment><USER6> My personal experience I realized I love technology but don't enjoy many facets of application development. I have been doing it for 15yrs, I tried working for startups, tried middle management, realized it didn't get better just became a different animal. So I am finally getting out.

But my go too's were stepping back to interests before tech took over, read books on other topics. I did philosophy, some math, and books I wanted to read but didn't before. This was the best compartmentalizations for me and helped me gain perspective and reflect.

I also realized passion, dedication, happiness are all for the most part a choice we make and I needed something I could do for 10yrs+ and not regret. So I made my choices and am ready to stick with it.

</comment><comment><USER7> Here is how I got my passion, motivation, and ambition back. Let's call it my slump-buster.

1\. Find Inspiration. It could be music, watching a movie about a start-up or some other inspiring story. For me it was listening to Brian Stevens keynote speech from the RedHat Summit on YouTube. If you listen to the past 3 years he makes it clear that software developers and Linux are going to rule the world. Use this as a tool to get you into your command center to get stuff done.

2\. Do not come home from work and go to your command center or computer room. You need time away from the computer to remember what your passionate about. Watch TV, go exercise, spend time with your family, whatever makes you happy.

3\. Go to bed early. When your lying in bed, think about your side projects and what you want to build. Go into detail about the code, UI, technology stack, where your going to host it. This will help you dream in code and get you excited to wake up.

4\. Wake up early. I get up around 3am without an alarm clock now because after dreaming about my passion projects I'm so excited to get up and make things happen. You would be surprised how focused you can be at 3am with no distractions. In the last 6 months since I started this new me I have read over 20 books and wrote several documents for my passion project.

5\. Setup the perfect development workstation. I use my 27 inch mac for development but I also have 3 laptops running Linux. I told myself I was going to setup and learn all the best productivity tools to help me code better/faster. I setup my dotfiles perfectly with all the vim plugins I wanted to use, tmux scripts, and pushed it up to github and synced it to all my workstations. It is such a rush to have everything running perfectly.

6\. Start a ritual or habit and set goals. Document all your ideas for your passion projects in as much detail as possible. Go to Trello or Evernote and document everything. Include pictures, links, sound, video, whatever to help you describe your idea and get yourself motivated. I call mine my 5 year project plan even though it will only take me about a year and a half. (Part of my plan is to save money and move to SV.)

</comment><comment><USER8> Some advice I've heard in the past: don't be pushed from existing stuff, but be pulled to new stuff.

I.e. work hard to enjoy your current circumstances and only leave if there is a positive pull - something you really want to do - elsewhere.

</comment><comment><USER9> Read 'Hackers and Painters'.

Think of yourself as an artist. Your medium is software.

Do you have side projects? Unlike a lot of other professions, software puts you in control. You can build whatever you like.

Regardless of the job, an artist always produces...art. You are lucky to have a job that pays you reasonably well. Well enough to have enough free time to pursue what ever would make you happy. Pursue it now. Even if no one else will see it, get in the habit of producing stuff.

Put it somewhere for display and share it with others.

It's okay to burn out. Relax, take the time to recharge. Accept your cycles of creativity and periods of rest.

</comment><comment><USER10> Maybe it is related to your passion, maybe not.

Try to enjoy what you have, how lucky you are to be where you are with your skills. Some people can just dream of those.

Sometimes, it seems that we lose our passion but we just need to stop, refresh our mind and start enjoying small things in life. The excitement and passion will be back..at least, that's what happened to me.

Take it easy and stay positive :)

</comment><comment><USER11> The world is heaving with people who do their job to pay the rent. It's normal. The mantra "do what you love" and claims that programming should be some kind of wonderful life experience is self-selecting echo-chamber chatter. If you love your job, that's a nice bonus for you, but it's really not necessary.

</comment><comment><USER12> Can you combine your skill in software development with another interest? What other areas interest you?

</comment><comment><USER13> Build a motorcycle [http://www.rycamotors.com](http://www.rycamotors.com)

</comment><comment><USER14> Maybe your lack of passion isn't about the job.

</comment><comment><USER15> Have you another passion in your heart?

I think you have(like drawing,painting,etc).

I ever felt like this before I'm a painter but suddenly I like philosophy.

And now i hate painting!</comment>


Preview local websites on any Internet connected device - <AUTHOR> https://meetfinch.com/

<comment><USER2> A significant issue with this website (and a number of other services) is figuring out what the heck you're actually offering.

In this case, after a few minutes, I have no idea. It appears I can upload some sort of website using a node.js application that you provide.

However, websites are written in a variety of languages. Does your tool only support websites written in node.js? What about PHP or python or static websites? I don't know the answer to that question, and that answer is very important to the usefulness of your tool.

</comment><comment><USER3> Nice idea. I use [https://pancake.io/](https://pancake.io/), the app to connect a dropbox/githup.

</comment><comment><USER4> How is this different from ngrok.com?</comment>


The strange case of the inverted chart - <AUTHOR> http://lesswrong.com/lw/9sv/diseased_disciplines_the_strange_case_of_the/

<comment><USER2> Somehow I think this post would have been more valuable if it hadn't played stupid games about imagination.

Sorry to spoil it but the punchline is that the study that everyone claims proves "[software bugs] detected during system testing cost 10 times more to fix than in the construction phase and 10-25 times more to fix when detected post-release" actually didn't prove that and software engineering academics have been parroting it because they're citing a powerpoint presentation that doesn't mention the caveats of the study.

Would it have been so hard to lead with that fact?

<comment><USER3> It isn't entirely false:

If one assumes that bugs are introduced at construction (the writing of the software) then you can use that as a fixed point to determine the cost of bugs based on when they are found. Which, using the original study, would mean that in testing the bugs would be more costly and that in production the bugs would be even more costly.

What _is_ interesting is that it is a function of time and not phase. So, for example, if you were continuously deploying code and a QA found a bug the same day it would effectively be the same cost (assuming everything else is equal) as a code review done by a developer. It would also be significantly less than a bug found several months down the pipeline once your code was finally integrated into a QA environment in a non CD example.

<comment><USER4> Agreed: When I work on a block of code I am quickest at making changes to it within the hour (as I still have it's design and structure loaded into my brain).

I'm slower to make the same changes after a few days or a week, and even more so after six months.

My experience is that I'm not alone. Well structured code, unit tests, and documentation help - but will never eliminate the work of loading the system into your brain again.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> By the way, regarding _inverted charts_ per se.

There is an anecdote of one physicist showing an X-Y chart to another. Latter elegantly explains the phenomena, but then the first guy says "oh, you are looking at it upside-down", to which the other guy says - "ah, now it makes even more sense."

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a failure mode that's had quite a bit of attention at Less Wrong; see e.g. <http://lesswrong.com/lw/ia/focus_your_uncertainty/> and [http://lesswrong.com/lw/ii/conservation_of_expected_evidence...](http://lesswrong.com/lw/ii/conservation_of_expected_evidence/) .

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> ""defects detected in the operations phase (once software is in the field) cost more to fix the earlier they were introduced"""

I've never heard it phrased that way "in industry" (as opposed to academia, where I have no experience). Instead, what I've heard is:

""defects detected in the operations phase (once software is in the field) cost more to fix than those detected and fixed earlier"""

While perhaps not backed up with published results (again, I don't know), just by 1) taking the actual development cost of fixing a bug as constant (which is _extremely_ generous for comparing a bug in dev versus production) and 2) then counting the number of other people involved in identifying and resolving the bug shows it to be true.

</comment><comment><USER7> Has anyone ever made the claim that LW is lampooning? I have only heard that testing early is important because it is expensive to fix mistakes after development, and more expensive after release.

I guess the straw man argument is that design bugs are worse than implementation bugs in a project, but that's also true. In both cases, the issue is that time cures all wounds, where cure is used in the sense of made permanent, not fixed, or fixed is used on the sense of locked, not restored to working order.

</comment><comment><USER8> Feynman have a great little story about checking the facts behind the facts. Anyone got a link to that?

</comment><comment><USER9> The good news is that most people reading and using the data will be too illiterate to know the difference.</comment>


Ask HN: HTML client side scripting in browser - <AUTHOR> Is Javascript the only language I can use for functions? <comment><USER2> you can use web assembly [https://wasdk.github.io/WasmFiddle/](https://wasdk.github.io/WasmFiddle/)

</comment><comment><USER3> You can also use Typescript</comment>


South Korean Clusters: How coronavirus cases exploded in churches and hospitals - <AUTHOR> https://graphics.reuters.com/CHINA-HEALTH-SOUTHKOREA-CLUSTERS/0100B5G33SB/index.html <comment><USER2> > (...) doctors at the hospital said they first suggested she be tested for > the coronavirus, as she had a high fever. Instead, the woman went to a > buffet lunch (...)

<comment><USER3> Better go infect other people before being put in quarantine.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> key graf:

South Korea has announced hundreds of new coronavirus cases in the space of only a few days and raised its infectious disease alert to the highest level. The surge in cases has centered around two main clusters from a church in Daegu city and a nearby hospital. The new outbreak has pushed South Korea's tally of confirmed cases much higher than anywhere else outside of China.

\---

These two clusters are linked to a single infected person, case #31. The article provide a number of insightful graphics explaining the timeline and spread.</comment>


Twitch is making a reality TV show for aspiring streamers - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/19/16792998/twitch-stream-on-reality-game-show <comment><USER2> Please no...</comment>


Is New York's Startup Scene a 'One-Trick Pony'? - <AUTHOR> http://betabeat.com/2012/07/new-york-startup-scene-vc-funding-internet/

<comment><USER2> I'm not sure you can call the internet "one trick".

I do get what they're saying- New York doesn't have (m)any hardware startups, for example. But the city also depends on the startup industry less.</comment>


Obama Looking For Jobs In The Wrong Places - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/01/looking_for_jobs_in_all_the_wr.html

<comment><USER2> I agree with so much of that article that it's ridiculous... until he starts waxing on about patents. Patents are an abomination as far as I'm concerned, and should be scrapped completely. You want innovation, scrap the patent system and force companies to "innovate continuously or die," make it an arms race. I'll take that any day over adding another billion dollars to the USPTO's budget to "clear the patent backlog."</comment>


What happened to the flag feature? - <AUTHOR>

Few weeks, maybe a month ago, my flag feature disappeared. Hadn't flagged anything recently, so assumed it was a new feature test...now I'm thinking  it was more. Is there some sort of threshold? <comment><USER2> Yes, there are various types of thresholds and heuristics employed just about everywhere on HN, but the details are not public, and they are not included in the news.arc open source code.

When it comes to flags, it is not a simple count threshold, instead, it's a matter of the quality of your flagging. If you flag in an abusive manner, the automation removes your ability to flag. If you flag in a beneficial manner, the automation also notices your attempt to help control spam and abuse. Since the goal of the automation is to prevent abuse, I won't go into any more details. A few vague details were mentioned publicly a few years ago, but the system is constantly evolving, so things have undoubtedly changed.

I do a significant amount of flagging of spam/bad submissions on the 'new' page, and occasionally, I'll flag comments. I'm certainly not perfect, and occasionally, I get it wrong, but I just do my best. Since I've done this for a long time and have a history of flagging appropriately, the automation has never removed my ability to flag, The same is true for the humans involved; none of the mods or pg himself have asked me to stop, or removed my ability to flag.

If you made some bad flags and the automation kicked in to prevent abuse by removing your ability to flag, then don't take it personally. Also, pg has an interesting habit of leveraging time in interesting ways. The only publicly known examples are in the news.arc source and in the Guidelines/FAQ (at the bottom of the page) regarding how rank is calculated. This hints at _possible_ good news; the removal of your ability to flag _might_ be temporary. If it doesn't show up again after six months of "good behavior" then you're probably stuffed or you've hit a glitch.

<comment><USER3> I wonder if hellbanned flags are in place, or rather they are weighted. So once you are weighted 0, the flag is removed entirely.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Want to understand Hardware. Best resources for ~0 tech background? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> what do you mean "understand hardware"? there are a variety of levels of understanding.... if you want to design circuits, there are some great texts out there. If you want to know enough to build your own computer, that is not terribly difficult. Could you be more specific in your question?

<comment><AUTHOR> yes, now I see it was too generic. At this point, I'm afraid I know too little to even ask the right question. Need a more proper research :)

Basically, I meant the basic understanding of what is chip, what are circuits and transistors, how Software ane Hardware communicate, etc.</comment></comment>


Resizer: an interactive viewer for testing your responsive UI - <AUTHOR> https://design.google.com/articles/introducing-resizer/ <comment><USER2> It does recurse on itself, if you were curious

[http://design.google.com/resizer/#url=http%3A%2F%2Fdesign.go...](http://design.google.com/resizer/#url=http%3A%2F%2Fdesign.google.com%2Fresizer%2F%23url%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fdesign.google.com%252Fresizer)

</comment><comment><USER3> Fails on sites that prevent clickjacking with X-Frame-Options header set to DENY/SAMEORIGIN.

[https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/X-Frame- Op...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/X-Frame-Options)

</comment><comment><USER4> This seems nice, but not as handy as the devtools device viewport options.

<comment><USER5> They key here is that it's a shareable url.

That's much easier to send along to someone in product or a C*O who may not be comfortable with the dev tools.

<comment><USER6> Yep. I work on two 2560px wide screens, and it's impossible to get upper levels to understand why we "can't just put feature _x_ in the empty space on either side of the content". I'll be using this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I like viewport resizer: [http://lab.maltewassermann.com/viewport- resizer/](http://lab.maltewassermann.com/viewport-resizer/) As a bookmarklet, it's instantaneous.

<comment><USER8> No https for the domain unfortunately, bookmarklet won't work on secure sites.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> How is this different form just re-sizing the window to see how everything looks?

<comment><USER10> My immediate take-away was that this was some sort of stand-alone application or utility. After realizing it's a hosted service, the real benefit comes from being able to slug a URL and pass it along.

There is still a number of folks out there that might understand there is a mobile web, but might not necessarily grasp responsive design, or the variety of screen sizes and what they mean for a design... the initial UI on the resizer alone explains it pretty well.</comment></comment>


Time and time correction in Erlang - <AUTHOR> http://www.erlang.org/doc/apps/erts/time_correction.html

<comment><USER2> In the upcoming Erlang 18 time got a huge refactoring: [http://www.erlang.org/documentation/doc-7.0-rc2/erts-7.0/doc...](http://www.erlang.org/documentation/doc-7.0-rc2/erts-7.0/doc/html/time_correction.html)

There's a talk from Erlang Factory SF 2015 about the changes as well: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfsc2MyP8p8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfsc2MyP8p8)

I think the concepts presented are applicable to all systems and not really Erlang specific, so I highly recommend it.

<comment><USER3> Erlang team has an unparalleled understanding of time and how to manage it properly in highly available systems. Studying their time elapsed measurement code should be compulsory reading.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why isn't Internet considered a revolution? - <AUTHOR> When we talk about 4th Industrial revolution, the past revolutions are defined as,
1. Mechanical Revolution
2. Mass Production
3. Electronics Revolution
Among them it we don't see any relation to Internet which has changed the world. <comment><USER2> This isn't correct. It's obviously a revolutionary change.

</comment><comment><USER3> Why do you consider that it's not 'considered a revolution'?

<comment><AUTHOR> Because its not a industrial revolution people acknowledge in the industrial revolutions.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Create React Native Apps with TypeScript and Ignite - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/aerian-studios/ignite-typescript-boilerplate <comment><USER2> Mostly off topic, but has anybody been able to get hot reload working with TypeScript and React Native? I'm not sure if I screwed something up along the way in my set up when I made the switch about 8 months ago, but I feel like hot reload worked for a bit, and then stopped. Or maybe, my memory is just overlapping between having hot reload with plain JS and not at all with TypeScript

<comment><AUTHOR> Try the linked project. That has hot reloading working out of the box.</comment></comment>


China orders Bitcoin exchanges in capital city to close - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-41320568 <comment><USER2> As soon as I read this, two words came to mind:

Capital flight.

A growing number of Chinese nationals has been using Bitcoin to siphon money out of China over the past several years.[1][2]

Not surprisingly, the Chinese government is cracking down on this innovative form of capital flight.

[1] [http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/1891021-how-chinese-use- bitc...](http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/1891021-how-chinese-use-bitcoin-to- funnel-money-out-of-the-country/)

[2] [http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/markets/chinese- inv...](http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/markets/chinese-investors- use-bitcoin-to-get-yuan-out-of-country/news- story/7cd6f89ae7cd84aef91078326b6274cc)

<comment><USER3> I really don't understand the capital flight argument. The Chinese economy has seen overwhelming growth in the past 10 years. If you are searching for yield, it's in China.

<comment><USER4> Much of the money getting made in China is ending up in the hands of government employees who should not have very lucrative jobs, and the combination of lavish personal consumption by them and obvious advantages afforded to their children ("princelings") is causing audible social discontent about corruption.

The Chinese Communist Party considers audible social discontent to be an existential threat and responds to it with overwhelming force. Part of the response is banning public expressions of discontent. Part of it is shooting corrupt officials after show-trials. Part of it is rejiggering incentives, to make it clear that you'll have to keep your money under the watchful eye of the CCP rather than discretely investing it in a country which probably won't execute you.

<comment><USER5> >Much of the money getting made in China is ending up in the hands of government employees

BS

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> China will nationalize the domestic miners and treat Bitcoin as a commodity asset that the state controls.

I believe this will immediately cause a constriction in supply as those coins will not be sold at least initially on the open market.

Look for this messaging to coincide with the pronouncements around the new five-year plan(FYP)[1]. As the first major section of the 13th FYP, innovation is emphasized as a cornerstone of China's development strategy.[2] Bitcoin is a technology and has already come along way from the Satoshi whitepaper. State-Owned Enterprises will be emphasized as they strengthen SOEs as national champions at home and abroad and protect their interests in this emerging blockchain space. The goal of the One Belt, One Road (OBOR) initiative is to facilitate access to natural resources and encourage economic development in China's poorer western provinces.

While such an initiative can continue without bitcoin, it is interesting to think of how OBOR would be strengthened on the world stage with an instantly settled mechanism such as bitcoin behind its infrastructure.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/19th_National_Congress_of_the_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/19th_National_Congress_of_the_Communist_Party_of_China)

[2] [https://www.uscc.gov/sites/default/files/Research/The%2013th...](https://www.uscc.gov/sites/default/files/Research/The%2013th%20Five- Year%20Plan.pdf)

<comment><USER7> Interesting theory but how can China control Bitcoin if there's nothing stopping people in other countries from mining it?

<comment><USER6> China will nationalize the domestic creation of Bitcoin. This is their sphere of influence. Thus they will control the domestic production of bitcoins. This nationalization will kick off the next leg up of the exponential growth for bitcoin. Just as the US Marshals auctioning off the Silk Road coins established legality in the American market. China will want to control capital flight and will use bitcoin as the release valve for their outrageously overhigh investment in US Treasuries.

<comment><USER7> Bitcoins are not like some manufactured physical item where a group of people can collectively seize the means of production with force to control supply of said item. It would be kind of funny if the CCP views it that way but I doubt they do. They probably have more knowledge about how Bitcoin works than everybody on HN combined.

<comment><USER6> The miner's mining Rig's are plugged into the state controlled power grid. If China wants to control the means of production, they simply follow the power hogs, remember we're talking about operations that are industrial scale. The small players have 500+ mining rigs alone. The means of production will be seized. Existing coins are a toss-up. Although since the penalty could be a death sentence, I'm sure the business's that have these will comply with what ever orders follow.

<comment><USER7> You are still thinking about this in terms of a physical object. Miners don't "produce" anything except in the same sense that I "produce" the answer to a crossword puzzle. You can take away my pencil but it doesn't make the puzzle unsolvable.

<comment><USER6> Dude. The mining rigs are physical. All I said was that China will seize the 'means of production' so they control the manufacture domestically. It's a phrase that was used a lot to describe the basic tenets of different types of economy and harkens to a time when industrialization was a major focus of the first world and people trying to find their place in an industrial society. The "means of production" phrase has been distilled and entered the zeitgeist as a way to talk about communism.

<comment><USER7> Yep, thanks, I'm aware of the history of the term.

Think back to what I said about crossword puzzles. If China had a world-class crossword puzzle team, winning every competition, why on earth would they seize their own team's pencils? It wouldn't stop the competitions from happening, and it wouldn't stop other teams from winning them.

I'm not trying to be a pedantic prick on the internet, so please excuse me if I'm coming off that way, but I enjoy this topic a lot, probably too much.

<comment><USER6> Because it is the most efficient way to build a reserve of a limited commodity (bitcoin) that has a much longer exponential curve to expand along. Currently, the Chinese miners are operating as a business to squeeze a margin out of the discounted electricity available in China. It is in China's interests to treat this as a national resource wherein it is produced domestically. My thesis is NOT that they want to control Bitcoin, only the domestic production for their long term national interests. Remember mining will continue until approximately 2140, that is a significant horizon to look at.

<comment><USER7> Thanks for explaining! I finally understand what you were saying and it actually makes a lot of sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Right now, I like anything that helps normalize the white-hot hype of cryptocurrencies. There's some real utility in this technology, and we won't get to see it until companies are forced to make sustainable business cases and serve real customers.

However,

> A website set up by the Chinese central bank warned that cryptocurrencies > are "increasingly used as a tool in criminal activities such as money > laundering, drug trafficking, smuggling, and illegal fundraising".

That sounds a bit like lip service...are they really just protecting investors and citizens, or is it because the assets are much harder to seize? Recently, there has been a large crackdown on foreign real estate purchases[0].

What other incentives does the party have for this policy?

[0] [https://www.forbes.com/sites/ellensheng/2017/07/31/chinese-o...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/ellensheng/2017/07/31/chinese- overseas-real-estate-buying-spree-slows-delayed-by-tightened-capital- controls/#1dd5a37514f7)

<comment><USER9> I think all governments hate the crypto part of the currencies. You can't tax what you can't track. You can't manipulate what you don't have.

I personally fall a little to the left of currencies. I think these monetary systems are far right Libertarian's dream seeds. I do realize I am probably wrong but this is how they make me feel.

<comment><USER10> > You can't tax what you can't track.

Most cryptocurrencies are actually quite trackable. Significantly more trackable than fiat currencies. There are notable exceptions like Monero and currencies specifically meant to protect privacy, but the vast majority are quite public.

<comment><USER11> I'd say they're only more easily tracked than _cash_. It doesn't get much easier to track than a bank or credit card account. And of course cash has its own problems (namely, it's difficult or even illegal to get and transport in large quantities while maintaining some anonymity).

<comment><USER12> At some point, you want to buy something with your money. The minute you do, tax authorities in your country can detect the discrepancy between your stated income and your lifestyle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I have a different technological perspective on this. Having traveled and lived in Asian, Chinese-majority cities/countries, this is a typical Chinese govt. move. In China, WeChat is a dominant player (by Tencent), a LOT of the transactions in China happen through WeChat, which offers seamless payments integration. The penetration is so strong that even poor, road-side sellers accept money through WeChat. Almost everyone has a WeChat account.

This in my personal opinion - is to prevent BitCoin from posing a threat to their homegrown technology industry, which is honestly no match for what we have in the Americas.

List of banned companies:

Google - Because they want to protect their clone Baidu.

Twitter/Facebook - Because they want to protect their clone Weibo.

YouTube - Because they want to protect their clone YouKu.

.

.

.

(it's a long list)

BitCoin banned - Because they want to protect their homegrown WeChat.

Just my opinion.

<comment><USER7> Interesting - but isn't Bitcoin more of a protocol and WeChat more of an application? Couldn't WeChat offer Bitcoin payments?

<comment><USER14> Try to explain this to an average communist party member

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Bitcoin and for that matter all crypto currency is a libertarian ideal.

Libertarian ideals do not fit in communist societies. Regulation was always coming, as even liberal societies regulate.

But regulation is only there to keep the established order. The established order is very afraid of crypto right now in the same way the music industry freaked out over MP3.

I can't help it, but I get annoyed when crypto is branded with illegal activities like terrorism, fraud etc. No one talks about USD being used in the same way!

<comment><USER16> Cash is the original anonymous "crypto"-currency. Still the preferred tool of money launderers, drug dealers, pimps, black marketeers, and other neerdowells everywhere. Also, offers real anonymity with no blockchain records.

<comment><USER17> I completely agree with this. For years, I was a crypto-currency advocate, telling any and all that it's better than their credit and debit cards. When I took a look at _why_ , though, I realized that tool (in physical form) already exists: cash. As long as you trade a few with a few friends, or buy something from a Mom & Pop, no one can really know what bills you have, and there's no record, ever.

<comment><USER6> Every bill has a serial number. Social graph exploration of paper currency is possible with bill readers at only a few points in the bill life cycle.

If the same nodes repeatedly 'touch' the same serial numbers you can infer a relation.

<comment><USER16> You make it sound easier and more powerful than it really is though. For all intents and purposes, cash is mostly anonymous. Bitcoin, on the other hand, is traceable if you can map accounts to real people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> You gotta wonder if they will go after the miners. I suppose other cryptos have dealt with this issue, and one with the right properties will emerge, but BTC requires huge warehouses full of computers to mine, so the decentralisation part of the argument is a bit flawed.

And the big miners happen to be in China, which is pretty convenient for the government. Not sure exactly how much of capacity is in the country, but if a lot of it gets shut down I think there's a 2 week reset window before the difficulty can come back down. If it's a large proportion it will significantly lengthen the time between blocks.

Also in the bigger picture, if illicit movements bother the Chinese, will they pressure other countries to stop allowing BTC?

<comment><USER19> the core dev team for BTC already said they are prepared to either emergency adjust difficulty or change the hashing algo if a disaster happens with the miners .. yes this is technically a hard fork of the block chain but it has happened before in an emergency

<comment><USER20> Well the core dev team already classifies the miners as attacking the network when they don't vote for them and chooses another fork. I would take what they say with a huge grain of salt.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> So they're only mentioning bitcoin because every exchange offers bitcoin trading pairs, right? This is effectively suppression of every cryptocurrency, not just bitcoin?

</comment><comment><USER22> For those of you who know a bit more about the topic. Is this ban going to stop the large-scale cryptocurrency mining that occurs in China? Isn't it actually something interesting for the rest of the world, as mining could become a bit easier?

<comment><USER23> I don't know, but that's one of the two "real" questions:

1\. How will China treat miners?

2\. Will they go forward with blocking node communication at the port/GFW level?

Re: 1, if they shut down / limit mining it's nbd. If they co-opt it to try & launch 51% attacks it's a big problem, but not, I think, insurmountable and would be a tactical error.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Bitcoin price impact is the best way to gauge the significance of any particular news (this? not much):

[https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/BTCUSD=X/](https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/BTCUSD=X/)

<comment><USER25> This isn't new news. It was suspected/known 2 weeks ago and it tanked the price from ~4700 to ~3000, before it rebounded.

<comment><USER24> exactly - these changes were a bigger concern two weeks ago, and all these new stories are now noise

We'll know when something meaningful happens by the price impact

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> But.. but.. an 'analyst' for CoinDesk said this was normal and the exchanges will just need to get a license and China welcome them back with open arms.

The bullshit artists that already 'invested' in this scheme will now tell you that China did not matter and the people under them will parrot it.

Anybody that disagrees simply doesn't understand Bitcoin or just mad that they could not get on the choo-choo train at the right time.

<comment><USER27> >The bullshit artists that already 'invested' in this scheme will now tell you that China did not matter and the people under them will parrot it.

If you're so sure that it's bullshit you're free to put your money where your mouth is and short it.

<comment><USER28> 1) Shorting into a bubble is usually a terrible idea.

2) The only realistic way to short BTC is to do so via a very small list of exchanges. Even if you trust them (which, given the history of cryptocurrency exchanges is hardly a given) the borrow cost is huge: there's no way you could reasonably make this kind of macro BTC bet.

The combination of these two realities makes the "If you don't believe the price, you ought to be shorting it" assertion completely baseless.

<comment><USER29> Could you expand on point 1? Or maybe point to some references?

<comment><USER28> Once a security has entered bubble territory, by definition its price has become disassociated from any underlying fundamentals - bubbles form when rising prices drive positive sentiment which pulls in fresh buyers who buy into the rising price story, driving the price higher which in turn draws in more buyers in a self feeding cycle that only ends when the supply of fresh buyers dries up.

Because this is a self feeding cycle, the price can double & redouble from almost any point if the "story" is good enough. So you can be dead right about a given asset being in a bubble, but if you short it the odds are that you're going to get painfully stopped out long before the bubble collapse finally happens. As Keynes said, prices can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent: The history of investing is littered with individuals who were right, but lost their capital because they were simply too early.

<comment><USER28> & if you want evidence of this cycle in action for BitCoin, try this:

"The price of BitCoin has a 91% correlation with Google searches for BitCoin" [http://uk.businessinsider.com/bitcoin-price-correlation- goog...](http://uk.businessinsider.com/bitcoin-price-correlation-google- search-2017-9)

Obviously BTC can be in a bubble & whilst still having real value - the two things are not necessarily connected. (Although having a good future value story is helpful for a bubble to form in the first place I would argue.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> This isn't news, it's been known for a couple of days.

</comment><comment><USER31> I think this is a really good sign that it's a good idea to get out of crypto currencies. China is actually pretty good at making decisions to defend it's country from negative outside influence. Anywhere that hosts a bitcoin exchange is also hosting criminal activity. Consequently, Bitcoin exchanges are going to make areas more dangerous to live. It's just a bad business decision to allow it to exist in your country.

<comment><USER32> Many of us analysts who are deep in the game recognize that China is simply shutting them all down to start its own cryptocurrency that (probably) has ID/government name linked to it.

<comment><USER33> Cite this please.

<comment><USER32> [https://www.neowin.net/news/china-experimenting-with-its- own...](https://www.neowin.net/news/china-experimenting-with-its-own- cryptocurrency)

<comment><USER12> I don't get it. What's the point of a country issuing a cryptocurrency? isn't decentralization the whole point of bitcoin, ethereum, etc. ?

<comment><USER32> It is! unless you are China and you still want to make money while making sure the company line is toted by all.

China is able to track their populous really well, or at least have their population believing so, and thus anything that adds pseudo-anonymity kinda ruins their mission. In the future it is probable that all countries will have their own cryptocurrency, backed by some sort of tangible asset like Au (gold) or Ag (silver). What strikes me as very important for the US is establishment of a national cryptocurrency. It can be anonymous (everyday cash is essentially anonymous), but the consensus on how to regulate one is very much a process of education (elder generation finance people don't really get bitcoin yet). So once regulatory measures can be taken to ensure there's no theft etc, then it'll be easy. China's thinking on the matter is that if it cannot be regulated, shut it down and make a version that can be.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What is a good book or resource discussing how to create a data warehouse - <AUTHOR> I'm very aware of working with databases in a transactional environment (Oracle/SQLServer/Postgres) and I've done a lot of work creating reports and BI with Jasper, Oracle's tools and Business objects. I've never created a data warehouse or a star schema though. I'm aware of Ralph Kimball, but I was wondering if there are any classic texts I should be aware of or any modern takes on the subject.<p>I have a rough idea how to do all this and could knock up manual scheduled scripts to do the ETL and get close to the kind of schema design. I guess what I'm looking for is a case study or overview of best practice. <comment><USER2> I haven't actually built a cube myself, but I support a few right now. My boss, who built ours, always refers me to Ralph Kimball's "The Microsoft Data Warehouse Toolkit" (you mentioned Oracle, so maybe there are synonymous toolsets out there)

I know you said you're aware of Ralph Kimball, but the first ~100 pages are broken into 1) Defining the Business Requirements and 2) Designing the Business Process Dimensional Model. It's really helped me wrap my head around the original design of the Facts and Dimensions as they relate to the business.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks - amazon already tried to sell me this The Data Warehouse Toolkit: The Definitive Guide to Dimensional Modeling which I'd probably go for. I'm guessing the content would be similar but more database agnostic which suits my preferences.

I feel comfortable doing the reporting and scripting but it would be good to validate my ideas for the designs when I get some hands on experience - hopefully soon!

Maybe a new question but I wonder if the data warehouse has been superseded a little by the whole big data / multiple data sources thing?

<comment><USER2> Yea I've wondered that myself. I picked up a book a while back called "Data Science for Business" [http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920028918.do](http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920028918.do)

Something that stood out to me was their discussion about "Big Data technologies" (Hadoop, HBase...) and how they "support" data mining techniques. So sometimes I wonder if big data technologies are more for the processing of the data, like the ETL needed for data warehouses - but since it's big, we need those special technologies to process it (and do additional data-sciencey things on it - like calculate a probability of churn, probability of loan default, etc). End results can still be those high- performance in-memory objects that we can slice and dice, just like our data warehouses, if that's how we need to see them.

This is all coming from no practical experience with Hadoop / Big Data, just research so hopefully someone clarifies :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> This book is good (I've read it), highly rated on Amazon, and reasonably priced: [http://www.amazon.com/Agile-Data-Warehouse-Design- Collaborat...](http://www.amazon.com/Agile-Data-Warehouse-Design- Collaborative/dp/0956817203)</comment>


AgreementGrade: Startup That Grades Companies on Fairness of Employee Contracts - <AUTHOR> https://capitalandgrowth.org/answers/2981300/Launched-a-company-that-reviews-and-grades-companies-on-the-fairness-of-their-employee-agreements-Feedback-requested <comment><USER2> This seems... unnecessary? The free market guarantees fair contracts. If an individual is presented with an unfair offer, they merely seek employment elsewhere. It is just common sense that these sorts of things get sorted out by the free market; people just have to communicate when companies try to screw them, so that word spreads and the company either changes its behavior or (hopefully) goes out of business. The logic is simple and self-evident.

A startup to facilitate this is tantamount to government intervention in the economy: it is bastardizing a perfect natural order. This company idea seems naive at best and basically grifting at worst.

</comment><comment><USER3> Yes totally agree</comment>


NextGenBux.com - Paid to click website - <AUTHOR> http://nextgenbux.com/ New PTC websites, first 500 members to join will receive 1 month Silver membership. <comment><USER2> The "next generation" started and went out of business in 1997. There were a whole host of sites that uses this exact model in the late 90s. All of them failed. I'm guessing it's because the traffic the advertisers get doesn't convert to very many sales.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have a pre-budget of 200$ so it can`t fail. Join with confidence! And don`t worry about where I get my advertisers from, after all you`ll get paid. Who care`s if I`m on - balance. :)

<comment><USER3> Yeah, but that the half a cent doesn't add up to the energy expended in looking at the website!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> What's stopping people from scripting up clickspam? People already do this to competitors. Imagine what they'd do if there was direct profit.

And what's stopping advertisers from noticing this fundamental flaw?</comment>


OAuth Improvements - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/blog/1523-oauth-improvements <comment><USER2> Thank you GitHub!!

We lose so many users due to the permissions we need at [https://circleci.com](https://circleci.com), this is going to be awesome!

<comment><USER2> Oh, if you want to see what this looks like in practice: [https://github.com/login/oauth/authorize?client_id=78a2ba87f...](https://github.com/login/oauth/authorize?client_id=78a2ba87f071c28e65bb&redirect_uri=https%3A%2F%2Fcircleci.com%2Fauth%2Fgithub%3Freturn- to%3D%252F&scope=user%2Crepo)

(Obviously, if you accept this, you'd be giving CircleCI access to your repos).

<comment><USER2> Oh, you can play around with that URL and the scopes too to see how the permissions are affected. Eg change "user" to "user:email". See [http://developer.github.com/v3/oauth/#scopes](http://developer.github.com/v3/oauth/#scopes) for a list of all the scopes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Definitely for this. Clearer permissions are only a good thing.

(good timing too, as I'm using GitHub's OAuth flow for a small project!)

</comment><comment><USER4> Would be nice if they made the permissions more fine grained. For example split the 'Public repositories and organizations': instead of granting access to all public repos, grant access to only specific repositories.

<comment><USER2> Yes indeed. CircleCI needs read-access to the repos you need to test, and the ability to add a read-only SSH key to those repos.

Unfortunately, the only way to get that is to ask for read- and write-access to all private repos, which makes nobody happy (see [http://developer.github.com/v3/oauth/#scopes](http://developer.github.com/v3/oauth/#scopes) for the actual options).</comment></comment>


Show HN: IRAengine – buy Ethereum/Bitcoin with your IRA or 401k - <AUTHOR> https://www.iraengine.com/ <comment><USER2> Sure I'm going to invest my retirement savings in a volatile, unregulated, digital crypto-currency that isn't even quantum proof. \s Hell the core developers can't even increase the transaction block size limit to save their lives. If I wanted to take a stupid gamble I'd just do it here in Vegas.

</comment><comment><USER3> > We enable rolling over your retirement assets into Bitcoin or Ethereum in > just few clicks

Might as well just take out your retirement assets and go gambling with them, probably would have the same end result.

<comment><AUTHOR> Financial theory says that in order to have balanced and diversified portfolio (and not to have all your eggs in 1 basket) it may be a good idea to have up to 10% of your assets in more risky things with growth potential.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This seems like a really bad idea.

<comment><AUTHOR> Maybe you're right. However, it may be a good idea to have small percentage of your assets in high risky / high reward alternative assets

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Thanks for the hearty laugh.

</comment><comment><USER6> "We are launching soon"

"Leave your email to use the service as soon as it's available"

</comment><comment><USER7> Does anyone know a low-fee way to buy Ethereum?

</comment><comment><USER8> this turns the stupid up to 11....</comment>


Netflix Doesn't Care About Your Children - <AUTHOR> http://iparent.tv/netflix-doesnt-care-about-your-children/ <comment><USER2> Maybe this guy could raise his kids himself instead of expecting Netflix to do it for him. He sits his child down for hours and hours of unmonitored Television viewing, then blames Netflix.

This article should be changed to "Creator of iParent.tv doesn't care about his own children."

</comment><comment><USER3> A new drama every day.

<comment><USER4> It's helpful to flag stories that are nothing but drama.</comment></comment>