Net neutrality is dying with a whimper - <AUTHOR> https://www.vox.com/culture/2017/7/19/15971344/2017-net-neutrality-protest-fcc-repeal <comment><USER2> This article buys way too much into the concept of "democratic efficiency", that "being heard" leads directly to government action, and therefore lack of action (or the wrong kind of action) is _caused by_ a lack of "being heard". This is so, so, so wrong, and is just further setting the stage for net neutrality to be repealed and for the blame to be cast at activists' feet. Net neutrality is one of the most popular policies in recent memory, and for it to be constantly assaulted by the same handful of large ISPs is a perfect encapsulation of why capitalism is failing our society. We're going to get tiered Internet not because the "Day of Action" was unsuccessful, but because there is no way that Ajit Pai would have satisfied himself with anything except a repeal of net neutrality. Do you really think he's going to sit there reading the comments, and think, "I have been wrong my entire career!"

The issue at hand is clearly about a government that is utterly unresponsive to its people.

<comment><USER3> Pai's immediate predecessor literally flipped his position on net neutrality, owing largely (at least as is commonly assumed) to political pressure from the White House, itself driven by clearly expressed sentiment among the democratic base. Absent the earlier burst of activism, it's unlikely the Obama administration would have cared enough to lean on Wheeler.

That doesn't mean that it's going to work on Trump and Pai in the same way, but arguing that activism "doesn't work" based on this one data point is silly. It does work, sometimes. The details matter.

<comment><USER4> There's a number of studies showing how legislation doesn't represent the preferences of constituents. See for more info, represent.us or the Anti- corruption act [1]. The last net neutrality outcry was unique in that nearly every major internet-based company joined in the protest. I don't think I've ever seen that happen for any other issue before.

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Anti- Corruption_Act](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Anti-Corruption_Act)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Net neutrality is dying because no one has been able to make a compelling case for it that can be understood by constituents, let alone politicians.

There is one thing that just enough politicians do understand, however, and that's money. In their pockets. From ghouls who will profit handsomely when online access in the USA becomes effectively equivalent to shitty cable-tv service.

<comment><USER6> Funny, isn't it, that a free and neutral Internet is one of the key technologies that allowed the acerbic alt-right movement to bubble up from the fringes, to become grassroots, and then mainstream, finally to put Trump in office. Then, his team gleefully work to destroy it. I suppose they think that greedy, unfair measures that currently benefit themselves will never be handed to their opponents. That's a lesson the left never learned. _sigh_

<comment><USER7> The alt-right is a small fringe movement with outsized presence in election post-mortems due to their visibility on digital platforms used by journalists and bloggers.

Trump voters were (mostly) Romney voters.[1] Clinton lost by failing to galvanize voters who turned out for Obama in prior elections[2] and neglecting to campaign in Rustbelt states.[3]

[1] [http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/11/09/behind- trump...](http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/11/09/behind-trumps- victory-divisions-by-race-gender-education/)

[2] [https://www.forbes.com/sites/omribenshahar/2016/11/17/the- no...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/omribenshahar/2016/11/17/the-non-voters- who-decided-the-election-trump-won-because-of-lower-democratic-turnout/)

[3] [https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/11/trumps-...](https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/11/trumps- road-to-victory/507203/)

<comment><USER8> Clinton lost because the DNC cheated to get her where she was in the first place... She was supposed to be the candidate that could never lose, and Bernie Or Bust isn't a real thing... Sure as heck was, I know Bernie supporters who voted Trump out of spite (mostly the independents) -- I wrote Bernie in personally, because I'd rather see the shit storm that is Trump -- piss people off so badly and ruin the entire reputation of the Republican party that progressive politics will come back in full force in 4 years. Than see clinton in office starting more wars we don't need and doing more regime change and taking money from special interests.

There's a real hatred for the elite class right now in America, some idiots thought Trump was that answer but he IS an elite. Bernie was the answer but the DNC thought they could quash him, now he's the most popular member of congress - and more progressives are running and winning than ever before.

2020 will be interesting to see if he runs again, if he does he'll probably be the next president. Even Nate Silver has said that Bernie is currently the front-runner for 2020 much as Clinton was in 2013.

<comment><USER9> > Clinton lost because the DNC cheater to get her where she was in the first > place

There is no grand conspiracy. Stop kidding yourself. More Democrats preferred Hillary over Bernie. End of story. The reason is obvious: Bernie Sanders is not a democrat. Bernie Sanders is a democratic socialist. He joined the Democratic party solely for a larger support base and because the Democrats align more with his ideals than Republicans do.

It is absolutely no surprise that the DNC establishment preferred an establishment candidate who had long been a prominent member of the party. Not some coat-tail hanger-on using the predominantly liberal base of a party that he only nominally belongs to. He does not represent the interests (arguably) of the majority of the Democratic party voters. That's why he lost.

<comment><USER8> So you're sayin no Bernie or Bust movement existed? Because there was a petition w/ at least 100k signatures of people who were #BernieOrBust.. do you think 100K votes mattered at all in the last election cycle? Do you think many people who were pro-bernie and never vote for clinton might be closet Bernie or Bust, or vote Trump, or Jill Stein?

I'm guessing for every outspoken Bernie/Bust person there were 2-3 more people who voted 3rd party or abstained...as a result...

It was an ugly primary, and if you don't think the DNC cheated then you haven't watched any of the news... DNC chair was fired because of it, CNN anchor got in hot water for GIVING CLinton the questions to the debate before hand... that's not conspiracy because it's fact...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The government's response to its constituents has been a flatline for many years now. I don't expect today's FCC to be any different.

However, the battle will continue with some of the heavy hitters that have been so instrumental for creating real change: advocacy groups with good lawyers. (EFF, Fight For the Future, Public Knowledge, et al.)

They will be the ones that really take the fight to the Pai-hole. It's an uphill battle, but probably our best hope.

*edited for grammar and clarity

</comment><comment><USER10> We may need to first live with some ISP shenanigans before everybody fully understands what network neutrality is about.

A few years ago, I noticed that frontier was hijacking Google searches. A search bar search for "Amazon" went straight to amazon.com, complete with an affiliate id!

I wrote a letter to the Frontier CEO, sent it via FedEx, and she called me directly within hours of receiving it. The gist of my letter was, "by behaving this way, you are bringing the debate on yourself." She was unaware her company was doing this and stopped the practice.

This is a small example that's easily detectable externally (unlike internal network traffic shaping). But we may need to cycle through a few stories like this to cut through the rhetoric.

<comment><USER11> My concern is that they won't make it so obvious though. If they simply install fast lanes and the big-players start paying, will the average internet user notice that the few small sites they visit load slower? Would it really be that much more obvious then traffic shaping?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think it is a growing sense of complete helplessness in American politics. Corporations and politicians will do as they wish, and we'll sit back and watch it on CNN. What can we possibly do? Yes, there will be protests and such. But as we've seen endlessly in this country, the money always wins. The slacktivism shown in this article exemplifies the state of complete cynicism we've reached as a society.

</comment><comment> d--b Is there any hope that some new ISP gets created that does follow net neutrality? What's likely to happen to an ISP that doesn't play the fast/slow lane approach?

<comment><USER13> I would expect the major hurdle by any new ISP to be ownership of infrastructure. If anti-neutral firms own the poles, they are likely to put up one hell of a fight to keep them.

That being said, it would make sense to me that scrapping neutrality might be the very thing needed to encourage Google to finish their fiber roll out across the US. Incumbent telecoms have incentive to restrict access to content. Google being an advertising company, has incentive to encourage the flow of content.

Google owning the internet is probably way worse in the long run but it might just be a great short term solution to the neutrality problem.

<comment><USER14> Screw poles. In sufficiently dense metro areas, microwave or similar is competitive on price and bandwidth.

This is deeply unfair to less dense areas, though. Google Fiber is shiny and alluring, but there's other solutions for us urbanites. What I'd love to see, and would make a difference, is competition for last-mile delivery _outside_ of cities.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Politicians will always be voted into office for something that looks important to people but politicians do not care the least.

Then they silently implement what they really care about.

<comment><USER16> Or because Net Neutrality is not as popular in the society at large as it is in the SF headquarters of big tech companies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> After FCC rule change[1], it seems the Telco mafia is also seizing control of available wireless spectrum which could be viable for alternate ISP service/media broadcast options. Although I do think there's more productive utilization of this frequency spectrum than broadcasting digital video signals, unfortunately it looks like the same oligopoly will soon control all the terrestrial broadcast licenses[2][3], essentially owning the whole spectrum. Then I'd suspect they'll lobby to repurpose all of them for authenticated (subscription-based) wireless IP/data use[4].

[1][http://fortune.com/2017/04/20/fcc-broadcast-tv-station- owner...](http://fortune.com/2017/04/20/fcc-broadcast-tv-station-ownership/)

[2][https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/05/01/business/dealbook/tv-s...](https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/05/01/business/dealbook/tv- station-owners-rush-to-seize-on-relaxed-fcc-rules.html)

[3][http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/comcast-nation/FCC- announ...](http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/comcast-nation/FCC-announces- results-of-spectrum-auction-Comcast-big-buyer-for-cell-phone.html)

[4][http://www.foxbusiness.com/features/2017/04/13/fccs-tv- airwa...](http://www.foxbusiness.com/features/2017/04/13/fccs-tv-airwaves- auction-drew-19-8-billion-led-by-t-mobile.html)

</comment><comment><USER18> I work at BigCo and heard that we wanted to do more for the net neutrality day of action but were deterred due to getting "gentle reminders" from certain politicians and regulators from within the government about other avenues for potential consequences. Which makes me suspicious that the other BigCos were put into a similar position.

</comment><comment><USER19> Non-neutral internet bandwidth packages will only be offered if there is profit to be made. Cell phone companies didn't give us free long distance out of the kindness of their heart - it was simply too expensive to administer the billing. So, the trick is to make non-neutral packages very expensive to maintain or support for the ISP's. How? By making it too hard for them to implement in a way that isn't easily subverted or disrupted. (And by simply not buying the premium packages in the first place.) Too few customers with too much maintenance and software and administrative overhead, and the companies will flee from this idea except in the cases where they are intentionally engaged in censorship of some sort.

<comment><USER16> I think competition was more responsible for free long distance than the cost of billing customers.

<comment><USER19> One of my friends was a software developer for the billing software for a cell provider, so I had some "inside scoop" in learning that...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I don't see what this fuss is all about. If Facebook wants to offer cheaper Internet with their services prioritized, why not?

Plus Internet is far from being neutral right now. Emails got deliver depending on your server IPs. CDNs already pay to be hosted by ISPs for a fast lane. Torrents don't reach the full capacity of your bandwidth. Etc.

The case against government regulations for the Internet is easy to make: Easier to start an ISP, cheaper services for the end consumers, less government expenses to enforce all of that, etc.

<comment><USER21> Because the fear is that the internet will become like TV: you can't buy access to 'TV', despite the fact there's no technical limitation. You have to buy packages, from different providers in order to get what you want. You have to sign up to hefty subscription packages with loads of bundled shite just to watch 7 hours of Game of Thrones.

Currently you buy access to the internet, and that's _all internet_ , at equal priority. You can connect to my little $6 VPS or raspberry pi as easily as you can to Google or Facebook. And that's a great thing. If I want to get my show on TV, I have to negotiate with different channels and studios to try and get it broadcast, anywhere. And even then it would probably be on some shitty channel with tiny viewership, interspersed with ads for medication and financial scams.

On the internet I can publish on my own terms, and anybody else with an internet connection can view it, on my terms. Undermining net neutrality threatens this.

In the UK some ISPs are providing 'free unlimited access to WhatsApp'. It's just the start of a road that leads to the default model changes from paying for internet access, to most people getting free 'internet', restricted to just those companies who pay the ISP instead to provide free access. This is a slippery slope: once it starts, it will continue until smaller sites are no longer visible to people without 'premium' internet - who will be a minority. This is bad.

<comment><USER22> > Because the fear is that the internet will become like TV

But I would rather take that than Internet becoming like TV, where govt can pass 'fairness doctrine' and other stuff, or restrict it significantly during war time.

I'd rather trust economic incentives to keep Internet free than political incentives. If people are willing to pay for full coverage of the War, then even though govt is pressuring ISPs, it results in a losing prisoner's dilemma for ISPs (take for instance the popularity of Al Jazeera during Iraq War).

<comment><USER23> What are the economic incentives to keep Internet free?

<comment><USER22> There are economic incentives to deliver what people want. Fox news is hugely profitable because it delivers to people what no other media organization delivers, and that is a right wing perspective on events. Throughout the Obama years, Fox News made insane amount of money precisely for this reason.

<comment><USER13> You're being downvoted for making people read the words "Fox news" but you're absolutely right about this.

I would state it another way though. Fox news is hugely profitable because it provides information to people that validates, reinforces, and legitimizes their particular social and political beliefs. It thickens the walls of their bubble. Fox news led the way with this and every other network quickly followed suit.

<comment><USER24> No, they really are not. "Economic incentives" only come into play when there are choices. Most people do not have any kind of choice in their ISP, thus the "Economic incentives" argument carries no water.

<comment><USER22> Currently there isn't a strong enough economic incentive. You may think that your service sucks, but that does not create an enough economic incentive.

This does not counter the argument that if tomorrow an ISP not delivering the content you desire, then there wouldn't be a rise of a newer service/solutions (they don't really have to be a new ISP btw) which allow consumers to access the suppressed viewpoint.

<comment><USER24> Which will then be shut down by the ISP, as the new site won't have enough money to pay the toll.

I'm sorry, but this argument that "everything will work out for the better" isn't convincing me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> The best way I have seen to describe net neutrality to laypeople was uttered by John Oliver: "preventing cable company fuckery".

A good example: like the water company suddenly saying that you're not allowed to use your water to fill reusable water bottles, unless you pay a further monthly fee, but they do have a partnership with Dasani to deliver water bottles to your door for cheaper than the store price.

</comment><comment><USER24> So question: Google, Facebook, Netflix, et al all say that Net Neutrality is extremely important to their business. Why are they not drowning legislators in lobbying and "campaign contributions" to make sure it stays? I mean, they have to be able to outspend the cable companies. And if the GOP position suddenly flip flops to be in favor of NN, it's not like any of their base will notice.

<comment><USER26> Google and Facebook don't really care - they are big enough to be in the fast lane or zero-rated no matter what, and their startup competitors being killed is good for them.

Netflix alone is just not big enough by itself to outspend the half-billion or so that the Media Big 6 and the Baby Bells spent on buying politicians, ads and spin.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> If this is so important to our industry, why are people in our industry helping to destroy net neutrality?

</comment><comment><USER28> Internet and consequently, ISPs, should be a public utility. Like water and electricity.

</comment><comment><USER29> Why would Ajit Pai care what we think? How much money have we given the GOP? What kushy job do we have lined up for him if he does what we want?

</comment><comment><USER30> The mistake was for the internet to grow on the ISPs infrastructure in the first place.

Now they will murder anything new by slowing it to a crawl. So to succeed, on must have superior compression- and/or a alternative infrastructure.

Or- one could try to hijack the fastlanes.

<comment><USER6> Sufficient competition in the market would be enough. Unfortunately, the government has allowed total monopoly on fixed line broadband. They've done it in two ways: first through exclusivity contracts with companies such as Verizon, ATT, Cox, and Comcast. They give fat payments in the form of cash, tax breaks, and local monopolies in exchange for the companies to build out infrastructure. Second, they have allowed consolidation in the marketplace to a level that should never have even been considered.

I agree that, long term, only a replacement infrastructure will be a viable solution. Unfortunately the only technology that currently has a chance is 4G/5G mobile service, and it is even more consumer-hostile.

In the mean time, we need Net Neutrality.

<comment><USER13> I also expect new infrastructure to be the most likely solution. I wouldn't expect it to be 4G/5G mobile service though.

I always thought that the next infrastructure would be a series of wireless mesh networks. They are extremely censorship resistant and can operate on unlicensed frequencies which makes them resistant to centralized control.

I've heard about projects like [https://nycmesh.net](https://nycmesh.net) and [http://guifi.net](http://guifi.net) that have sprung up even while the internet was fairly neutral. That leaves me hopeful that this type of project will quickly replace wired infrastructure if it quickly becomes needed.

I'm nowhere close to an expert in this field so I would love to be corrected if I'm wrong about any of that. I would also love someone more informed than myself to talk about the current state of wireless mesh and/or 4G/5G mobile.

<comment><USER31> Mesh can work for short-haul. But long-haul routes are a problem. For instance, how would you mesh network between Los Angeles and Phoenix? Or Phoenix and Las Vegas? Those are "local" but long-haul routes for me. I can see the (slim) possibility of Phoenix to Tucson or Flagstaff. There is (almost) enough intervening users (potentially) to form the mesh (although it would be very bottlenecked).

Mesh networks right now are great for large urban populations - megacities, dense sprawl areas, etc. But for everything in between, at least here in US where the issue of Net Neutrality is the thing - not so much.

<comment><USER17> My understanding is that the "internet backbone" market is fairly competitive, as it's not too difficult/costly to install new infastructure across rural land areas if existing network operators are price gouging, etc. Do you think mesh networks combined with consumer hardware could be a viable option to bypass "last mile" ISP/Telco mafia infastructure?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Wouldn't getting rid of net neutrality actually be good for startups and smaller companies? People are effectively subsidizing the internet giants right now, if telecoms charged extra for them people would move on to different services?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it's odd to see people banding together to defend Google, Amazon, Netflix, etc. Although the companies on the other side are obviously scum as well.

<comment><USER33> Suppose that we eliminate net neutrality. Further suppose that, in a few years, I start a video streaming service called "Notflix".

Because ISPs are no longer required to be dumb pipes, they've started charging their customers a premium for access to video content. This is bad for Netflix, of course, because it cuts into their subscriber base.

They crunch some numbers and come up with an amount they're willing to pay the ISPs to exclude their subscribers from this segmented pricing scheme. The ISPs accept this mutually beneficial deal, and everyone's happy, right?

What about Notflix, though? We don't have the capital that Netflix has to pay into this protection racket, so our subscribers must choose between paying the ISP video premium + our subscription fee, or Netflix's subscription fee.

That's an uphill battle and straightforwardly anti-competitive, but is also the precisely the promise of a world without net neutrality.

I also disagree with your assessment that anybody is subsidizing internet giants. All those players pay for the bandwidth they consume to dump their data into the network. The end-user pays for the other end of the connection. Everything is being paid for, proportionally to the usage.

The last-mile ISPs simply want to double-dip. Comcast thinks Netflix should pay both Level 3 AND Comcast for using the pipes, which fundamentally undermines the architecture of the internet.

<comment><USER32> >I also disagree with your assessment that anybody is subsidizing internet giants. All those players pay for the bandwidth they consume to dump their data into the network. The end-user pays for the other end of the connection. Everything is being paid for, proportionally to the usage.

I know very little about the situation, hence the naive question, that statement was based off all the websites like reddit putting up fake pay walls to show what things would be like without net neutrality.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: My startup has a crush on two designers, how do I show them? - <AUTHOR>

They have at least a few opportunities as they are very well respected. We're in the process of raising our seed round (150k of 550k in) so we can't compete on salary or benefits.
What we can compete on is:
- Titles
- Significant equity
- Creative control
- Flexible hours & plenty of work from home
- Badass team with a successful exit and a huge opportunity
I know nobody can speak for an individual but I'm wondering: What other things I could do or offer to show a great designer that nobody will treat them better or value them more than us?
I've got a ton of experience hiring rock star engineers, it's easier because I am a strong engineer myself. They tend to be convinced of my earnest with a Macbook Pro and a Das Keyboard. What sends the same message to a rockstar designer? I'm willing to go pretty far out of my way here to let these dudes know how much we <3 them. <comment><USER2> Have you already contacted them at all?

the first thing I would do is just contact them and let them know you love their work. What designer doesn't love to hear that. See if you can get them interested in your project at all. That has to be number two on your list. It's better to have a good designer who is in love with your product than a great designer who is only half engaged.

See how the conversations go, and if they are interested at all. You should get a feel for it. If you can't engage them directly, maybe they have other contacts they would recommend for you. I'm assuming you're in an area where designers are in high demand, so realize you'll likely have a difficult time getting anybody, let alone your top picks.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh yes, we're past the initial contact phase. They know we're going to make them an offer. I'd like to just make the best offer possible.

<comment><USER3> The best would be to ask them what would make them happy at new job, which conditions, etc. Then be honest, and offer them what you can.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, that's just really good advice to anyone. I'm looking for something creative that would put me over the top. I'll keep thinking.

<comment><USER4> Don't be creative. Be honest.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Extended BPF: A New Type of Software [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.brendangregg.com/Slides/UM2019_BPF_a_new_type_of_software.pdf <comment><USER2> Recent discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21691024](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21691024)

</comment><comment><USER3> BPF is an awesome VM. A huge thanks to Brendan on the work he has done to make it usable outside the kernel.

We built a whole rust tool chain around it.

[https://github.com/solana-labs/rust-bpf-sysroot](https://github.com/solana- labs/rust-bpf-sysroot) [https://github.com/solana-labs/rust-bpf- builder](https://github.com/solana-labs/rust-bpf-builder)

<comment><USER4> Can you elaborate on what makes it a good VM? I know very little about VMs, but I'm curious.

<comment><USER3> It's doesn't have a stack pointer, just stack frames. So hardware that doesn't implement a stack can execute BPF kernels.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Is there a good explanation for why saying this is a 'new type of software' and a 'fundamental change to the 50 year old kernel structure' isn't hyperbole? I understand that it is some sort of constrained virtual machine that can analyze packets, bit it seems like the marketing here is a little much.

<comment><USER6> It can do much more than analyze packets. It's a way of running user defined programs in kernel space with fairly strong assurances that it won't crash the kernel.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This seems like a roundabout way of getting to something much more like what wikipedia calls a "Language-based System"[1], which is something I've been thinking about a lot lately. Very cool.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language- based_system](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language-based_system)

</comment><comment><USER8> If this isn't really about packet filtering we could call it something else, right?

xmlHttpRequest became Ajax after all.

</comment><comment><USER9> eBPF seems like a great privesc path of the future.

</comment><comment><USER10> ED: Can't delete.

<comment><USER11> The presenter expresses BPF has become a technology name for this type of kernel application and is no longer an acronym</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Reading comprehension for young kids? - <AUTHOR> I have a 5 year old that is reading chapter books, but the reading comprehension aspect needs work.<p>What methods, tips, or materials have you used to help your child develop reading comprehension skills? <comment><USER2> Try slowing down a bit. Read a sentence together, then pause. Let the words sink in and talk about what it means.</comment>


Bypass Paywalls for Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Financial Times - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/njuljsong/wsjUnblock <comment><USER2> Author works for a major newspaper publishing conglomerate... what is going on here?

Quote from blog About Me page:

>Currently I work for Hearst Digital Media [[https://www.hearst.com/magazines/digital- media](https://www.hearst.com/magazines/digital-media)] to help building enterprise media platform.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've always marveled that The New York Times can know exactly how many free articles I've consumed across different apps/entry points, but cannot ever keep me logged in.</comment>


Tyson Foods Invests in Startup Beyond Meat - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/tyson-foods-invests-in-startup-beyond-meat-1476140287 <comment><USER2> That is great news! Beyond Meat is not the only player on the block, though.

The challenges in the alt.ag. sector lie in the development of mass production technology. From the side of the market, consumers need an extra benefit (animal cruelty free products are not enough) in order to be converting. Outside of the startups, the time to maturity is hypothesized to be 5-15 years.

Tyson is a very forward looking company, very much worried about the future of protein food supply. I had the pleasure of meeting some of their folks, and at least the top level very well outlined the problems we are going to face.

Current business model in the sector is focused on high volume production with strong attrition, little regard to animal ethics (low regulations) and consolidation among manufacturers.

Just the numbers make me shudder:

* Livestock produces 18% of greenhouse emissions

* Feed animals occupy 70% of arable land on our planet.

With the classic animal protein supply chain being almost max'ed out in terms of capacity (and energy+matter conversion effiency), we have some grim perspectives here.

Disclaimer: I work in the alt tag tech startup sector.

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure why this is a scary stat:

 _" Feed animals occupy 70% of arable land on our planet."_

If we didn't raise animals on that land it would just go fallow. It's not like we need more land to grow crops.

<comment><USER2> Well, good point, I typed my comment up fairly quickly.

It is a lot of land occupied by a very recource hungry industry and less efficient industry e.g. you need 100x more water to make animal protein when compared to plant protein. We use 25% of our freshwater consumption for animal protein production - not even mentioning other recourses. With a growing number of people on the planet, efficiency is key.

<comment><USER4> If that water is from rain then it's a renewable resource, and if it's not used it will just flow to the sea and be wasted. There are places like Wales, with a wet climate and hilly terrain that are poorly suited to arable cultivation but ideal for livestock. See [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture_in_Wales](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture_in_Wales)

However, freeing up more land for plants means we could grow the same amount of food using less intensive cultivation techniques, eg. rotating in nitrogen- fixing crops instead of relying on energy-intensive Haber process fertilizers.

<comment><USER5> > If that water is from rain then it's a renewable resource, and if it's not > used it will just flow to the sea and be wasted.

This is simply not true. A large amount of rainwater goes to (or would go to) replenishing aquifers, which we use to provide our drinking and irrigation water. Unharvested rainwater is not wasted--it replenishes our natural freshwater storage.

Additionally, not all water used is captured rainwater. Some comes from those aquifers being replenished by rainwater, and some comes from fossil aquifers, which DON'T get replenished on a human timescale and are truly non-renewable.

If all our livestock were grown in places like Wales, maybe the idea of "use it or lose it" holds true, but we've got a lot of cattle sitting atop the Ogallala Aquifer in the US, and you can find similar situations many places where we raise livestock.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Here's a link from LA Times (no paywall): [http://www.latimes.com/business/la- fi-tysons-beyond-meat-201...](http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-tysons- beyond-meat-20161010-snap-story.html)

</comment><comment><USER7> Only 5%. It's not an exit yet.

It's not very tasty meat.[1] However, it compares favorably with over- processed, over-seasoned real meat, and it's way ahead of most soy-based meat- like products.

[1] [https://www.technologyreview.com/s/536296/the-problem- with-f...](https://www.technologyreview.com/s/536296/the-problem-with-fake- meat/)

<comment><USER8> I've tasted a few bean based "chef" veggie burgers that were quite close especially malted ones that replicated some (good) meat flavors somewhat well.

I'm happy there is a non soy alternative comming as i don't touch most soy based products because they contain a lot of soy protein.

I'm not a vegetarian or a vegan just don't mind having a good and healthy alternative to be able to use if I do need to host those who are or just feel like getting of meat for a few weeks.

<comment><USER9> Out of interest, what's wrong with soy protein?

<comment><USER8> Soy especially unfermented soy has pretty bad health effects when consumed in any meaningful dose daily.

Soy isn't "healthy" it's not used as a replacement for food in Asia, it's mostly used in small amounts to add flavour or as a condiment, and it's almost always fermented.

In the west people use unfermented soy as replacement for many type of foods including dairy, meat and wheat in excessive amounts.

What worse is that Soy protein prevents the absorption of other proteins as it contains a fairly large amount of trypsin inhibitors [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trypsin_inhibitor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trypsin_inhibitor) To render soy "safe" it usually need to be heat treated to break down STI and a several potentially risky amino acids, this isn't viable with all soy products (e.g. milk) or products that already contain soy as an ingredient (you can't microwave a candy bar), and heat treating soy tends to lower it's nutritional value considerably as well as ruin the flavor and the texture in many cases.

But as stated before fermented soy products (various soy sauces, miso etc.) aren't as an issue the fermentation breaks apart most of the potentially risky stuff in soy including STI's and amino acids like Valine (which is causally linked to insulin resistance, while most foods contain valine 10g of soy protein would contain about 400mg of it), honestly the fact that most traditional soy foods are fermented to begin with probably isn't a coincidence.

<comment><USER10> The health effects of soy aren't well enough understood to say eating it has "pretty bad health effects". Some studies indicate it has positive health impact, even while some studies of specific things found in soy (and some theories about some specific things found in soy that don't have a lot of evidence to back them up, but they sound good). I think we should consider soy a suspect ingredient, but not an indicted one. I don't eat a lot of it, but I don't go far out of my way to avoid it, either.

There's just too much history of soy consumption in Japan, and too much evidence indicating that Japanese people who eat soy have longer/healthier lives than those who never eat soy, that I think there's some stuff we just don't understand about it yet...making it more complicated than simple ingredients like simple sugars (that we know are generally bad) or fiber (that we know is generally good).

I've gone back and forth on avoiding soy; these days I do prefer it fermented, but I'll eat non-fermented soy foods now and then without feeling like I'm taking a big health risk.

Anyway, I don't necessarily disagree strongly with you, and there's probably a good argument that you should prefer fermented soy foods. But, I think the science is up in the air enough to make me think maybe the "smoking" gun really isn't.

Also, black beans, and some other kinds of beans that are commonly consumed whole and without being fermented, contain more of some of the stuff that allegedly makes soy bad for you. So, if you're cutting out soy for those reasons, you also have to cut out black beans, among others. That doesn't feel like a good choice, to me...since those beans have so many healthy characteristics.

<comment><USER8> I don't eat raw black beans either in large amounts ;)

No issues with eating some soy, the issue is using soy as a food replacement for dairy, meat and wheat which results in consuming very large amounts of it.

Also non-fermented soy products in Asia are also treated either with heat or chemically (acid, salts, enzymes) which reduces the amount of the risky stuff and are more safer for consumption.

The problem in the west/mass produced food is where raw soy is used as a filler/replacement ingredient without proper consideration for pretreatment.

Also FYI traditional chinese and japanese soy milk is boiled (for a fairly lenghty duration upto 30 min) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soy_milk](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soy_milk), some western brands are not, an easy test to know if it was heat treated or not is to check how much does it foam, if it foams excessively it's likely unboiled cold pressed milk (tho silicone (e is intentional) might have been added as an anti-foaming agent, so in doubt heat it up for 10 min).

<comment><USER11> I'm a bit confused about some of the stuff you're saying. Do you have any sources I could check out? I'm a vegetarian, and while I don't eat tons of soy, I'm genuinely interested because I haven't ever read about this. Soy haters usually talk about how I'm about to gain a second X chromosome or something.

I've never heard of soy milk not being cooked. From what I've read, Silk definitely cooks their milk, and so does a company called Sunrich (which has at some point been what's behind Kirkland, Costco's brand)[1]. I haven't really looked into others, but I've read that in order to remove the "bean" taste from the finished product, it requires cooking, and the longer the better. Like you said, though, if it's cooked, it's fine. I personally make my own soy milk.

You said in another reply that tofu and edemame are safe as well. According to Wikipedia, the soy protein in TVP is heated to 150-200ºC[2], which I assume is hot enough to "fix" the soy? Tempeh is fermented, so I guess that's okay too.

I suppose that basically just leaves soy protein powder (and what they're used for, e.g. protein bars) and heavily processed meat substitutes? I don't know much about the former, but given that processed food in general is typically unhealthy, I'm left to wonder if soy is the main issue, or even an issue at all.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vd1s179yWGM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vd1s179yWGM)

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This, or something like this, was bound to happen because this is the nature of business. Hopefully Beyond Meat will not disappear but instead be able to grow bigger and become better.

</comment><comment><USER12> If these are voting shares, couldn't Tyson theoretically exercise their (albeit small) influence in favor of making Beyond Meat fail? I'm unfamiliar with safeguards against potential conflicts of interest like this, if any.

<comment><USER13> I see it a bit differently: They may be interested in integrating Beyond Meat into their distribution pipeline with this purchase in order for their investment to pay off.

And why not? Growing animals for 300days in very poor conditions while paying pesky humans to take care of them, slaughter them, slice them up and transport them.

You can just mix a couple plant-based ingredients and produce a decent burger instead at a fraction of the cost and time - it scales way better.

Then you have all those reporters with their hidden camera of what goes on in those factory farms - why do you need all that bad publicity anyway.

This is good publicity for them, cheaper to produce, healthier for humans and the environment. I cannot see a downside to this for any company or society.

<comment><USER14> Asimov sold me. Yeast and algae are the (maybe distant) future.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> this can be a double edged sword, a company that contributes to animal suffering is profiting from the non-meat industry. but on the other hand the investment should be welcome. one compromise that may arise is the creation of a hybrid "low-meat" type product which still contributes to animal suffering but drastically disrupts the meat market.

</comment><comment><USER16> > "we really can't feed a whole planet with meat."

If the food supply is limiting the population and making it more efficient increases the population, you're back where you started.

Same with any limit to the population.

<comment><USER17> "if" being the key word there, and fortunately this is not borne out by data. When resources are more abundant, people have _fewer_ children.

Edit: here's a source. [https://ourworldindata.org/fertility/#correlates- determinant...](https://ourworldindata.org/fertility/#correlates-determinants- consequences)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Too bad that the good "fake" meat is milk based. Is there perhaps a way to produce milk without animals? Or at least a way to make cows produce milk without pregnancy?

<comment><USER19> The Beyond Meat products are 100% plant-based (vegan). I don't know if they are any good though (can't buy them in Germany).

<comment><USER20> Their beef grounds are quite convincing and good, IMO though their extreme leanness gives them away. I have tried the chicken strips product as well and was not impressed. The burgers did well in the toaster oven but when I tried on a grill, possibly due to my mistakenly overcooking them, they were not good. All in all, their products have been the best substitutes that I have tried so far and I like that they are soy-free and contain the ingredients to form a fairly complete protein.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> As an ethical V, I'm conflicted that one of the worst actors in the space would profit off of my purchase.. luckily there are many alternatives for me to buy. Perhaps they are counting on most people not knowing, or don't really understand their core market.

</comment><comment> norea-armozel Are these products much better than say the morning star farm soy paddies? Because for me it's not so much texture as it is over all taste that affects what I eat. And most soy based products seem to taste so bland at least the ones we make here in the States.

</comment><comment><USER22> I've tried most alternative meat products on the market.

Beyond Meat is fairly low on my list of favourite meat alternatives. The texture and taste just aren't quite right, sort of in the uncanny valley, if you will.

My favourite alt-meat product would have to be Quorn.

<comment><USER23> I haven't found a single company that I think gets it right across their product lines. Quorn have some really good items- I really enjoy their pork roast type item, but I sometimes find their stuff to be overly dry and the texture is a bit off. Beyond's chicken strips have a closer texture in my opinion. Match has the best option for ground beef and sausage. Sweet Earth's seitan burgers are by far the best tasting veggie burger I've had, although they are not like an actual hamburger at all.

I'm really looking forward to trying some of the newer alternatives that use plant-derived heme to increase the similarity to actual meat, but as far as I can tell those aren't widely available for purchase yet so who knows how good they'll actually end up being.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Maybe Tyson can help Beyond Meat use their distribution channels to supply more stores. I find that BM products are always out of stock in Whole Foods in certain regions.

</comment><comment><USER25> "Branding is important" In other words... You're trying to get people that already eat meat to eat fake meat instead of people that already eat fake meat? I don't see why you would target a different audience. There are some benefits to meat that will take a little more work to replicate in a lab concoction. I, personally, would prefer eating something that once lived than eating lab made imitation... I also don't like when something says it's fruit but it's really somehing fake or foods that are mislabeled.

</comment><comment><USER26> Margarine is a plant based alternative to butter. My concearn with alt.meat is whether or not this is just margarine 2.0.

</comment><comment><USER27> What do you guys think about food based startups? It seems like there are lots of opportunities for disruption?

</comment><comment><USER14> Options are always good.

</comment><comment><USER28> This made me do a double take:

 _Whole Foods Market Inc. this year began stocking them in the meat section of dozens of stores mostly in the mid-Atlantic [...]_

Not being from the US, I had to look this up since it sounds like they're stocking veggie burgers in the middle of the Atlantic ocean. They're not, though. :) It's a reference to the state of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Washington, D.C., Virginia, and West Virginia (although the exact definition varies, this is from the Wikipedia page [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid- Atlantic_states](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid-Atlantic_states)).

So, I learned something today. :)

<comment><USER11> Don't worry. I'm from New York, and I've never heard this term before. I got a huge chuckle out of your comment :D

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Could we stop with the links to WSJ? Very few people can get past the paywall.

<comment><USER30> The common workaround is to click "web" under the story link, then click the first result. Gets around the paywall. Or you could just pay for the WSJ.

<comment><USER31> This doesn't work for me on mobile.

<comment><USER32> You can also copy the article title and run a google search for it. WSJ isn't paywalled for links from search engines (Google for sure at least, not sure about others).

<comment><USER33> We have come full circle. How about the submitter of the story does that?

<comment><USER34> It seems like WSJ inspects the Referer HTTP header, so it disables the paywall if it seems that you navigated to it from a search engine. So, it is not a property of the link.

This, of course, makes sure I do not get around the paywall, since I have disabled that header in my browser. (I dislike the tracking aspect)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Fastest Speeding Tickets in Texas in 2018 - <AUTHOR> http://www.thedrive.com/news/26337/exclusive-here-are-the-50-fastest-speeding-tickets-in-texas-in-2018 <comment><USER2> _" The most unlikely? A 2013 Ford F-150 clocked at 150 mph just outside Fort Worth."_

Indeed. The F150 has a limiter that cuts in at 100mph. Something is amiss there. I'm not even sure the gearing makes it possible. We Maybe it was clocked driving off a cliff? Assuming terminal velocity is even that fast for a truck :)

<comment><USER3> The 2013 VelociRaptor (likely listed as an F-150 in most databases) has a top speed of 155 mph. I'm sure most people could relatively easily modify a normal F-150 Raptor to get there as well. Electronic governors are common for this class of vehicles due to stock tires that are not chosen for top speed runs.

[https://www.topspeed.com/cars/ford/2013-ford-f-150-raptor- sv...](https://www.topspeed.com/cars/ford/2013-ford-f-150-raptor-svt- velociraptor-by-hennessey-ar156201.html)

<comment><USER2> Well, the 155mph top speed is for the Hennesey modified Raptor that has 600hp, versus the stock 410hp. And the total price is $149,500. So, if you buy Ford's fastest F150 and pour a shit ton of money into it, you can get to 150mph :)

<comment><USER3> Definitely. You could probably buy another car that would reach 150mph for the price of the overhaul alone, but in an ordinary supercar you wouldn't be the topic of a random internet thread about the fastest clocked speeds in TX. ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The stopping distance at 166mph is about _a quarter of a mile_ in good conditions!

<comment><USER5> I know this will be an incredibly unpopular opinion around here but most official sources for stopping distance seem to use a very slow to react person driving a vehicle on 10yo economy tires to generate the baseline for their stopping distance calculations. This is at the high end of what to expect in reality. Non-terrible tires and non-terrible reaction time can shave a lot off that.

Think about it like a reverse drag race where you start at trap speed and reach 0 ASAP and the vehicle always has more power than it can put to the ground (indeed brakes are basically always capable of enough torque to break the wheels free). Pretty much anything on good tires should be able to stop from that kind of speed in under 1/4mi. It won't be 1/8mi but it will be solidly under 1/4.

I can say from personal experience that if you have non-terrible tires and you're stopping in the kind of distances insurance companies, driver's ed and state drivers' manuals like to quote then something is wrong because those sources are very, conservative with stuff like that (for obvious reasons).

<comment><USER6> You have to assume something other than a best-case stopping distance because almost all drivers assume they are a "good" driver and will assume they can stop in the minimum distance even when they can't. Most drivers also don't pay enough attention to what's going on to have good reaction times.

<comment><USER5> There's one right turn I take off a rural road where the telephone poles are 200ft apart. I usually try and see how fast I can stop if nobody is around. I've been doing this for years. The difference between bald Douglas all- seasons one week and the same tires but brand new the following week is the difference between ~400ft@80mph (approximately textbook stopping distance) and about 350ft. I could probably shave off more distance if I had ABS and could plant my foot and make the computer do all the optimization for me.

I'm not trying to assume best case. I'm saying we should not assume worst case either. Most sources do the latter because most sources seek to coax everyone into driving conservatively (which is not a bad thing).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Some notes are interesting;

> VIOLATOR ADMITTED TO SPEED AS "BEING A RECORD"

another one

> First checked at 85 mph northbound on I-45 driving in the left hand lane. > Sped off at a high rate of speed "sped off at a high rate of speed".

Is that proper english?

>DRIVER ADMITTED HE WAS RUNNING LATE TO WORK AND THOUGHT HE WAS GOING 130 MPH NOT 137 MPH

that's a 80pmh zone. Is there some cutoff at 130 that would have made the driver's situation better if below 130?!

<comment><USER8> Probably 50mph above the limit is the point at which the vehicle can be confiscated or something like that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> In high school I got my mom's civic up to 135MPH, at which point it felt like it was about to take off so I slowed it down, gently.

but that was on a completely empty, open road, where no cars could be seen for miles.

I can't fathom going that fast in traffic.

edit: It should be mentioned I had a long history at that point of driving 100+ nearly all the time. That stopped when I finally got pulled over the summer before college and got a $300 ticket. I can't afford to speed like that. lol

</comment><comment><USER10> How much $ and or jail time would one get for a 166 mph speeding offense ?

In my country (France) you would loose your driving license for up to 3 years, pay a hefty fine between 1500 and 4000 euros, have your car confiscated and might even go to jail for a few months if you're a repeat offender.

<comment><USER5> Totally depends on the cop and prosecutor.

The US tends to have much more lax laws than Europe when it comes to minimum punishment but reserves the right to screw people hard if it wants.

In most states if the cop doesn't like something about you they can make 20-over (which BTW is normal traffic speed on a lot of highways when they aren't clogged with traffic) a misdemeanor which can carry all sorts of penalties if the prosecutor wants to throw the book. There's also "catch-all" violations that are vaguely worded that they can nab your for even if you're doing nothing (at which point it's basically up to the court to decide WTF to do).

<comment><USER10> There's no standard amount to pay for speeding ? I understand that anywhere in the world a cop can "find" something to charge you, but in the case of a speeding ticket I would expect some kind standard fine say $500 for 20mph or less and $1000 for more.

<comment><USER11> Cops won't always give you a ticket for "driving over the speed limit" either. Sometimes, if a cop is letting you off easy, they will give you a smaller fine like "disobeying traffic signs" or something similar. Each has a different minimum. I think they may also vary from state to state.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The scariest thing I noticed was the 166mph (15 year old) Porsche was apparently in heavy traffic?!

Also a bit concerned that lists like this gaining publicity may cause the problem to get worse. Some may see last year's "high score" as a challenge to top.

<comment><USER5> Yeah. That's what bothers me. I have no problem with people going stupid fast on almost empty highways but traffic where you're passing people regularly is very dangerous because you never know whether or not someone is going to be an inconsiderate jerk and move left at the last minute. At that speed you probably can't drop speed fast enough to not rear end them and most people don't do a good enough job checking their mirrors (lol, if they check them) to see that you're actually coming up fast.

That said, finding the space to get up to that speed in heavy traffic is somewhat of an achievement in itself.

<comment><USER13> If by "be an inconsiderate jerk" you mean "move left to make a left turn or pass someone going below the speed limit, having misjudged the speed of someone in their rearview mirror going twice what a speeding car normally does".

<comment><USER5> People always seem to move left at the last minute with little to no warning (blinker on when you begin moving does not count as "warning". Like if you are in the left and there is a big gap in front of you a car in the right will wait until the end of that gap to move left. That is being an inconsiderate jerk. A lot of times you can predict when someone will do this but sometimes it is not expected (which is the primary reason it is highly unwise to be passing people going 20+ faster than them).

<comment><USER13> Eh, there are two jerks in that situation, usually, and either could be considerate of inconsiderate.

You've got three drivers, A, doing whatever, we'll assume speed limit +0.

Then you've got B, doing speed limit +5 and closing the gap between him and A in the right lane.

And finally you've got C, doing speed limit +10 in the left lane, coming up behind B.

B _could_ be considerate in that they are assuming that C, being the sort of crazy speed limit who drives faster than themselves, would prefer the chance to accelerate to +15 or +20 and pass both A&B before the A/B pass is executed, but C isn't going to do that because they're happy doing +10 and not a penny over. Or they could be the inconsiderate jerk who isn't paying attention to C at all.

C _could_ be considerate in that they assume B wants to be going faster than +5 and are giving them an opportunity to pass A and go at least +10, but B is happy going +5 and doesn't want to go a penny over. Or they could be an inconsiderate jerk who just wants to drive +10 in the left lane and thinks everyone should get out of their way.

The end result is that B ends up pissed off that that asshole C refused to pass him and then tailgates him for the next 30 seconds until the pass is complete, while C ends up pissed off that the asshole B waited until the last second to pass and then did so extremely slow.

A stays blissfully happy so long as neither B not C hit him, and B doesn't merge back too aggressively while completing the pass, forcing him to decelerate, or C attempts to pass B on the right because B is taking to long to merge, again forcing A to decelerate to maintain proper following distance.

In any case, both B&C are jerks for exceeding the speed limit and then acting entitled about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Am I the only one who wouldn't trust a Mustang or Challenger above ~120?

<comment><USER15> Why wouldn't you trust a car built to drive comfortably at those speeds?

<comment><USER16> I personally would, but those cars aren't, really.

I've driven highish end German cars at speed, and American muscle at speed, and there's NO question in my mind which is better engineered for that kind of behavior.

<comment><USER17> A modern Mustang GT is absolutely built to go that speed.

<comment><USER16> On paper, maybe. Build quality for Ford ain't what it is from BMW or Porsche, IME.

<comment><USER17> I'm not saying that, I'm saying a Mustang GT can easily handle 130.

Watch the driving portion of the GT review by Doug DeMuro, he's blown away by the driving experience: [https://youtu.be/l5zT005oGbA?t=1123](https://youtu.be/l5zT005oGbA?t=1123)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> LOL at the Ford Focus (#41, 135mph). I'd say that's a much bigger surprise than the multiple F-150s.

<comment><USER2> One hint that the Rodney King incident was fishy was the LAPD claiming he was fleeing at 115mph in a 1988 Hyundai Excel. Top speed of which was 100mph, and probably took a not windy day and quite a bit of runway to hit.

[http://articles.latimes.com/1991-03-30/news/mn-850_1_police-...](http://articles.latimes.com/1991-03-30/news/mn-850_1_police- officers)</comment></comment>


Peter Norvig's Sudoku solver: Clojure & Python side by side - <AUTHOR> http://jkkramer.wordpress.com/2011/03/29/clojure-python-side-by-side/ <comment><USER2> It is not really comparable, yet, I will post Arthur Whitney's Sudoku solver (in the K language) , in its entirety here:

      p,:3/:_(p:9\:!81)%3
      s:{*(,x)(,/{@[x;y;:;]'&21=x[&|/p[;y]=p]?!10}')/&~x}

( can be found with a test case in <http://nsl.com/k/sudoku/aw3.k> )

The Norvig code is smarter - it always tries to fill the square with the least options. The Whitney code is dumb - it just recursively tries everything that's not blocked by peers in order. Both backtrack on failure.

The codes are equally general - both work off a data driven peer list (peers, p). The K code runs much faster for most boards, but there are boards in which the Norvig heuristic makes a x100 difference.

Personally, I prefer the K version, although I'm aware I am in the minority.

<comment><USER3> Arthur's languages are awesome, no doubt about it. But the fact remains that they are proprietary and prohibitively so. As much as you romanticize k/q, I bet you can't even afford to run it on your home computer, let alone do any real work on it.

<comment><USER2> J, which is close enough, was always free-to-use and recently open sourced <https://github.com/openj/core>

K4/Q 32-bit is free for noncommercial use <http://kx.com/trialsoftware.php> and has been from the day it became generally available. (And before that, k2/k3/ksql were similarly available)

A free / open source K3 interpreter is being developed in <https://github.com/kevinlawler/kona> , and while incomplete it is already quite capable.

Oh, and Kx are (or at least were) quite reasonable with commercial use licenses for businesses that can't yet afford them.

> Arthur's languages are awesome, no doubt about it.

That is the only true thing you wrote.

<comment><USER4> Not what I heard last time I asked ;-). How about > 250K for a small multi- core installation?

<comment><USER2> Last time I asked (3 or 4 years ago), the smallest installation was ~$100k, and it was a multi-core installation.

IIRC in 2006 they mentioned that they were willing to entertain other financing models (such as equity) if it makes sense, although I have no idea how common that was, or if they are still considering it.

Regardless, the claim that "you can't afford to run it on your home computer" is preposterous - k itself is free for noncommercial use, and kona and J are free, both libre and gratis.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Interesting that the clojure stuff is slower than python. From what I gather most clojure stuff never actually gain any of the possible multi-core performance boost that is one of promises of the language.

Not that I don't like clojure, but part of the hype is that it's supposed to do a lot of the scaling inherently just by the design of the language. But in reality it's never that simple. Switching from map to pmap doesn't do much, actually a whole different way of writing the code is necessary. I'd like to see a version of this that tries to maximise multi core performance, and see what a 12-core mac pro can do with the execution times.

<comment><USER6> > Interesting that the clojure stuff is slower than python. From what I gather > most clojure stuff never actually gain any of the possible multi-core > performance boost that is one of promises of the language.

Clojure always sad its designed for CONCURENCY and he said that Clojure has great primitives for parallism. Most people just dont know the diffrence.

> Not that I don't like clojure, but part of the hype is that it's supposed to > do a lot of the scaling inherently just by the design of the language.

That wasn't a designgoal of clojure to provid parallism just out of box. It maybe is a designgoal now because everybody wants it to be.

> But in reality it's never that simple. Switching from map to pmap doesn't do > much, actually a whole different way of writing the code is necessary. I'd > like to see a version of this that tries to maximise multi core performance, > and see what a 12-core mac pro can do with the execution times.

pmap does work great for some things but just thinking you can throw in some 'p'-s want wrok. Rich or anybody else never claimed that this will be possible he infact always said that it wan't but people in the internet just dont listen that well.

<comment><USER7> _Clojure always said its designed for concurrency and he said that Clojure has great primitives for parallelism. Most people just dont know the difference._

Well, here's the difference (according to Wikipedia):

Parallelism - a form of computation in which many calculations are carried out simultaneously, operating on the principle that large problems can often be divided into smaller ones, which are then solved concurrently ("in parallel"). There are several different forms of parallel computing: bit-level, instruction level, data, and task parallelism. Parallelism has been employed for many years, mainly in high-performance computing, but interest in it has grown lately due to the physical constraints preventing frequency scaling.

Concurrency - a property of systems in which several computations are executing simultaneously, and potentially interacting with each other. The computations may be executing on multiple cores in the same chip, preemptively time-shared threads on the same processor, or executed on physically separated processors. A number of mathematical models have been developed for general concurrent computation including Petri nets, process calculi, the Parallel Random Access Machine model and the Actor model.

<comment><USER8> I would remove the word "simultaneously" from the concurrency definition. Two threads can be executing concurrently on the same processor - strangely, the next sentence seems to acknowledge this. My personal definitions, based on my experience in systems and high performance computing research:

Parallelism: simultaneous calculations executing in the service of a single problem, usually with the goal of improved performance.

Concurrency: executions in the same time granularity, but not necessarily simultaneous. Also not necessarily in the service of the same problem, but some form of synchronization is required.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Same thing for Erlang implementation: <https://github.com/apauley/sudoku-in- erlang>

Initially Python was faster, however after some discussion and some performance optimisations Erlang got faster: [http://erlang.org/pipermail/erlang- questions/2011-March/0571...](http://erlang.org/pipermail/erlang- questions/2011-March/057176.html)

Of course, it is worth keeping in mind that they didn't also go and try to optimize the Python version. So perhaps after doing that Python would win again.

</comment><comment><USER8> The design of the Clojure code can be clearly seen from the Python code. But I'm not sure if that's idiomatic Clojure. I'd like to see what the Clojure version would look like if a Clojure programmer solved the problem without looking at the Python code first. That would give me more insight into the differences between the languages.

<comment><USER10> Follow Norvig's lead from Paradigms of Artificial Inteligence - write fast embedded paradigms. So write a performant Constraint Solver DSL couple it with a performant Prolog DSL. Solve all kinds of problems declaratively instead of just Sudoku. I've been working on that <https://github.com/swannodette/logos> ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Why is Clojure so slow (more exactly, why is it as slow as Python)? Naively I would have expected it to be much faster than Python - it's not.

<comment><USER12> My guess is because the Python example was written by Peter Norvig.

<comment><USER5> Clojure is not a very fast language.

<comment><USER13> Remember the mantra: servers are cheap, programmers are expensive. If you have a language that's significantly faster to develop with but at a small performance price, i'd still go with it.

If the app becomes a Google-sized success, then I'll worry about performance. Chances are I'll never have to.

<comment><USER2> That's so wrong it's not even funny.

You know, part of the reason Google _is_ Google is that they were worried about performance from day 1 - every possible kind of performance.

AltaVista was king at the time. It gave low quality answers, true -- but it was also slow. All the early adopters that I know of that switched to Google were impressed more by its speed than by its quality - if you knew what you were searching for, you DID get high quality content from AltaVista at the time (much like you could with Google even before the recent "farmer" update, despite the complaints from all over). What you couldn't get from AltaVista, no matter how much you tried, was a speedy answer. AltaVista would take 5 seconds; Google would have a response in 0.05 seconds.

Unless your app is defining a new niche, you have to compete with the current players. Facebook needed to compete with MySpace. Google needed to compete with AltaVista.

Google did it by storing an index of the whole internet in Ram. That's performance you worry about from day one, not something you can add in retrospect.

<comment><USER13> > Google did it by storing an index of the whole internet in Ram. That's > performance you worry about from day one, not something you can add in > retrospect.

It really depends on implementation. I have changed many applications from RDBMS-based to file-based to memory-based when the need arose. Of course, if you intend speed to be your competitive advantage, then you need to optimize early.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is very, very cool. I wanted to look at that for a long time. This gives me a good reason.

</comment><comment><USER14> To those questioning Clojure's performance I will just leave this: <http://meshy.org/2009/12/13/widefinder-2-with-clojure.html> here.

</comment><comment><USER15> Don't want to start a religious war, but to me the Python code just looks more clean.

I am amazed that Python ran anywhere close to Closure in terms of speed, let alone faster!

<comment><USER6> Its a straight code port. I think it would if norvig would of used CL or Clojure you could say the same thing to a python port.

I do agree that the python code looks a little cleaner but both look fine.

<comment><USER16> I really like Python, but CPython is an ugly monster.

Edit: did the down-voters ever cared to read the code or even write a Python module in C?

<comment><USER17> I think that, like me, the downvoters don't understand what CPython has to do with anything.

<comment><USER16> To be aware there's a mess under the hood and it's not going away anytime soon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I feel like his reduce-true could be implemented with take-while and reductions, but my Clojure isn't strong enough to produce it. (last (take- while identity (reductions f ns)))) is close, but we need to take one more element than take-while does.

</comment><comment><USER19> The spikes you are mentioning might be due to the OS lowering your process priority. If you are on a FreeBSD machine, try running rtprio(1) to avoid the OS changing the process priority upon extensive CPU usage.

<comment><USER20> The spikes are from hard problem instances - he's not running on the same data set each time.

From Norvig's post:

      But the main message is that the mean and median stay
      about the same even as we sample more, but the maximum
      keeps going up--dramatically. The standard deviation
      edges up too, but mostly because of the very few very
      long times that are way out beyond the 99th percentile.
      This is a heavy-tailed distribution, not a normal one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> to see the code side-by-side

<http://tin.nu/sudoku.html>

</comment><comment><USER22> As much as I like lisp the beauty, strength and philosophy of Lisp, it seems like I can't make the switch in my real production project. Why? Because of the readability: (Taken from the article)

        (let [width (inc (apply max (map (comp count values) squares)))
              line (join \+ (repeat 3 (join (repeat (* 3 width) \-))))]

So, I see that and I'm like, wtf, where do I start.

let width .. inc apply max of map comp coun, wtf. Let's start from the end. map all squares with comp count values, take the max of those, increment it, put that in width. ok

then, line join repeat 3 join.. wtf. let's try it from the end; minus three times the width repeat.. ok, repeat 3 _width '-', then, join this, repeat it 3 times, then join again with +, and put that in line.

I always struggle like that when reading lisp, people always give example like:

(map square '(1 2 3 4)) where you can read it all in one pass.. but real code is usually more complicated. So, if I had to rewrite that more clearly, I'd probably just separate it in more functions so I don't have to have more than, say 4 nested ().

And, yeah, the problem is not that much the "read from the end", but more about the actual work of each line of lisp being a puzzle to guess where to start reading it. Some are better to read up front, others are better to start from the last. Sometime you skip the first part, and read the last part, then come back at the beginning. That is what trouble me. I want to be able to read code as fast as possible - skim over it while understanding it.

Now, you might argue that you can write nested stuff in every languages. True enough BUT it seems like the philosophy in python is more about making things clearer and using more function if it makes everything simpler/easier to maintain and understand.. while in practically all lisps code I read, it feels like it is a write-only code without thought about you will read it after.

Is it because all the "Here's why lisp is better" are written by new-lisper who are too much excited as they can now use closures and nest everything rather than using simple, yet useful, normal functions?

When I read lisps forum, it's always about how that or that doesn't support tail recursive function or why macro rocks everything, but never talking about readability and good practices about not nesting everything up. Yeah, they say to use real editor, to never look at the (), to align thing smartly.. I don't know for you, but I feel like my brain works in a kind of stack. I can put some stuff in my short memory, but I can't put more than say 5-6 stuff at once. And when I see this:

        (let [width (inc (apply max (map (comp count values) squares)))

It just seem too much to read it quickly; I need to stop and think. Yeah, some laugh at me saying "Yeah, you need to _think*! You are not used to that! Well, no, when I'm reading a book, I like to think about the concept or the story, not trying to figure out how to read that complicated sentence.

When I read python code, I think about pattern, modularity, what's the goal of the actual file. When I'm reading lisp, I can't go quickly into it because of those 10 levels nested function.

/end of rant.

<comment><USER6>
        len(values[s]) for s in squares)
        (map (comp count values) squares)

How is that better! If you know the standard function this is super easy (in both languages). Note clojure is just one pure function call nothing fancy.

       (inc (apply max
       1+max

The expressivness is tiny bit better in python because the max function looks at the type of the input. apply is a commen pattern that is easy to anderstand. The python way is a little bit easier to read but the clojure way makes the library simpler.

       line = '+'.join(['-'*(width*3)]*3)
       line (join \+ (repeat 3 (join (repeat (* 3 width) \-))))

The thing that makes python shorter here is that they alow math on non number. I don't think that a good idea in general but that up to the language designers taste. The diffrence between the code is basiclly that in clojure you have to use repeat two times instead of * and one more join.

So only real diffrences are on the first line clojure uses apply and on the second repeat instead of join.

I think is just a matter of training. Much harder then the language reading is to know what the standard functions really do.</comment></comment>


What's common knowledge at your workplace, but blow the rest of our minds? - <AUTHOR> http://www.quora.com/Whats-something-that-is-common-knowledge-at-your-workplace-but-would-be-mind-blowing-to-the-rest-of-us?share=1

<comment><USER2> The reply from "Tech Recruiter @ Facebook" is probably of interest to a lot of people on HN.

</comment><comment><USER3> As a programmer/analyst I do a lot more than just program. Or did when I worked from 1997-2001. I had to do the work of other people, communicate with them, and troubleshoot a lot of issues.

I'm not always at my desk because people need my help elsewhere.

Help Desk gets issues with my programs that are basically tech support issues a technician should be able to handle. Like MSCOMCTL.OCX is missing or invalid errors. I have to go to each user's PC and download the latest version of that file from the server and then run regsvr32 on it to activate it unless it doesn't require activation.

I'm often found near QA were I go over bugs as they try and replicate them for me so I can track them down in my code and fix them. I often get asked by a QA worker to come over to their cubical to look at a new bug they found.

When the DBA messes up on SQL Server, I have to fix it for them and teach them what went wrong and how to fix it. Most of the time it is an index problem or they used the wrong foreign key. As a result on Linkedin I get more sponsoring for Databases than I do with Programming because people remember that I fixed the database a lot.

The Business Office uses VBA and MS-Word and MS-Access and when they can't get things to work they call me to come down there and fix their VBA code or data, etc. They do data entry work and enter null into records, which my code has to check for before it is processed to avoid invalid use of null errors. Don't know the client's name on an account, enter null for the first and last name. Don't know the billing attorney, enter null into that area.

I also have to attend meetings with managers and supervisors who want new features and programs designed.

I have to do analysis of data and create reports for it. Managers want the figures to be correct and the correct fonts used on the printers. I use Crystal Reports and they use a form of Ada in the scripting language that my co-workers don't understand but I took Ada in college.

Just because you don't see me at my desk doesn't mean I am not working. Most people judge a programmer/analyst by how many lines of code they write per day, not how many coworkers and managers and supervisors they help out, how many problems they solve, how much documentation and reports they write, how many different departments they work with in a team environment, how they work with QA to fix bugs, and even the occasional employee who tracks you down to ask what computer to buy for their son or daughter who is attending college, etc.

I actually delete more lines of code than I finish shipping with. I always find better ways to do things and often have to rewrite stuff. If I can use fewer lines of code to do the same exact thing it saves RAM and runs faster. So less is more actually.</comment>


The Darling Project - <AUTHOR> http://darling.dolezel.info/en/About_Darling

<comment><USER2> > As Android currently dominates the market, there is probably little reason > to invest time in such an effort.

What a snarky comment. I suppose because Windows dominates the market there's little reason to invest time in Linux then?

</comment><comment><USER3> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4893022></comment>


Streamus turns YouTube into the music player you always wanted - <AUTHOR> https://streamus.com

<comment><USER2> Man, I showed you guys this days before Reddit and nobody gave a damn, [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8896228](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8896228).

Ah well, author here. Feel free to ask questions as you see fit. I'll re- iterate what I had said in my other post:

Streamus has been my personal project for almost three years. I had become frustrated with managing music hosted on YouTube and decided to streamline the process.

The client is written with Backbone/Marionette and is backed by a C# server. The entire project is open-source:

\- [https://github.com/MeoMix/StreamusChromeExtension/](https://github.com/MeoMix/StreamusChromeExtension/)

\- [https://github.com/MeoMix/StreamusServer](https://github.com/MeoMix/StreamusServer)

Streamus enjoys ~150K weekly users and continues to grow after recently updating the UI with a design inspired by Google's Material Design principles. Screenshots: [http://imgur.com/a/vyd56](http://imgur.com/a/vyd56)

I have no concrete plans to monetize; Streamus is mostly serving as an invaluable learning experience. I went into this with very little knowledge of JavaScript, design, and development workflow. Pushing myself to better the product has forced me to markedly improve in all aspects.

I'd love to have feedback, critique, or possibly find other developers interested in implementing some features. :)

<comment><USER3> I haven't even tried the thing itself, but your website already turned me off. Now, i realize you most likely didn't realize this yourself, since Opera ASA intentionally seeded a lot of confusion and fucked over their original userbase, but please:

When you say "Opera", make it clear that you mean "Opera 15+", since Opera 15 and upwards are completely different software packages than Opera 12, share no code whatsoever, and are in fact just Chromium clones with some amount of reskinning and less than 1% of the original features of Opera 12 added.

<comment><USER2> I'm aware that Opera wasn't running on the Webkit browser before... but they shifted to WebKit several years ago. How many years have to pass before you'd find it acceptable to start assuming new software is for the new stuff?

The website's meh. It was quickly bootstrapped, but I'd rather focus on delivering a quality product than quality marketing. There's only so many hours in each day and many of the installs come from the Chrome Web Store itself rather than through my landing page.

<comment><USER3> > How many years have to pass before you'd find it acceptable to start > assuming new software is for the new stuff?

It's not about the time passed, it's entirely about the usability. They didn't shift to webkit. They didn't just change the engine. They threw away literally all they had, fired most of their development staff, took a stock chromium, and started building new stuff on top of that, at a glacial pace.

So far they've managed to add only an utter miniscule amount of the hundreds of features found in 12, and from what they've communicated, much will never make it into the new codebase because they don't care, or because the features are impossible to implement in Chromium.

> How many years have to pass before you'd find it acceptable to start > assuming new software is for the new stuff?

I wasn't asking for an overhaul, only for 4 added characters: " 15+" English isn't my primary language, so: Was i unclear about that?

And lastly, some feedback on the plugin itself: It's quite nice, and i like the quality of life thing of having it available from any page. However as far as i can tell there's no way to add existing youtube playlists to it wholesale, and if i have to add every video manually, i'd rather stick to bare youtube. Did i overlook something?

<comment><USER2> Heya, sorry for the delay. I got swamped with messages :(

I suppose your points about Opera are fair. It's just that even the Opera team made it very clear to me that I should only be providing screenshots using the newer version of Opera. I figured that the old version was all but dead, so why mention it?

That said, I'll throw it in on future publications + add it to the website when the user is browsing w/ Opera.

You can import playlists by going opening the left-side panel, clicking 'Create Playlist' and then copy/pasting a YouTube URL into the 2nd input which says 'URL'. However, I've come to learn that this is totally not intuitive from the number of times I've had to answer that in the past few days. I've logged a GitHub issue to rework it and make it more intuitive and obvious. Sorry about that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> c--misura Sean,

Streamus is fantastic. Great job. I've been looking for something like this. I'm building a couple of Chrome extensions, any tips would be appreciated.

<comment><USER2> Hummm,

Could you be more specific? I know pretty much everything there is to know on extensions (or I'd like to think I do...), but there's so much to them!

What're your goals with them? What do they do?</comment></comment>


Password reuse and credential stuffing - <AUTHOR> https://www.troyhunt.com/password-reuse-credential-stuffing-and-another-1-billion-records-in-have-i-been-pwned/ <comment><USER2> We see credential stuffing quite a lot, with attacks varying from the blatantly obvious (1000s of requests in a minute, to the login page, from the same IP, with a scripting UserAgent like python-requests) to highly distributed attacks across 100s of IPs with a random but current useragent. While some malicious folk do this all manually and write their own scripts, tools like those mentioned in Troy's post are pretty common. One mentioned that I'd like to call out is SentryMBA - this tool is easily adapted to any business via a shareable config, written by anyway. Want to know if your service is probably affected or targeted? Google "Sentry MBA" \+ your businesses name. There are trading forums for these configs, and they range from banks and big businesses, to CRMs and utility services.

SentryMBA also has the ability to scare certain information on a successful login, helping to identify those key accounts that'll earn you more on the black market, such as recent successful orders on Amazon, or a high number of points on Starbucks accounts.

If you've got a business with an online login page, it's well worth checking the logs these types of attacks, to see if any of your users or even employees need to have their passwords reset after being successfully popped from a credential stuffing attack.

<comment><USER3> > We see credential stuffing quite a lot

Thanks for sharing. Super interested to know what line of work you are in?

<comment><USER2> I work in the UK for a large telecoms provider, who I'd like to think are pretty good when it comes to security and monitoring. Take a look through the Sentry MBA configs and I'm sure you'll see a tonne of names you recognise, including my employer.

In regards to my side project, as mentioned below, it's something which should hopefully helps businesses spot when their user data has been leaked, so that they can be proactive in their investigations and alerting customers to take a look at their passwords. Hope to get a first draft out soon!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Shouldn't we just stop using email/password or username/password entirely? It's already relying on the single point of failure being the users email account, because that is where you send your password reset emails. Just add a simple requirement to passwords: 1) user can't choose them and 2) they are single use. Now you don't need to store them in a database.

If an attacker controls my email account then they basically control all my other accounts too.

So how many here tend to not even try to remember passwords, and instead just always hit "forgot password" to log into a site?

Why isn't that the default? I.e. why aren't _all_ passwords single use? I just enter my email, the site generates a secret and sends it to my email account and that's it. It might sound like a hassle - but personally I think it's _less of a hassle than using a password manager_ (I use LastPass and their browser integration is more cumbersome than a copy & paste from inbox!)

<comment><USER5> Medium did this and it is horrible. Your suggestion solves nothing as you already considered, email bring a single point of failure. So why would anyone sign into a completely different service (for most people that being signed into Google which has its own baggage) just to use an app?

1\. Sending emails is not very secure

2\. Delegating your authentication to a 3rd party is probably not a very good idea

3\. You still need to use a password somewhere e.g. accessing your emails, it can't be mitigated all the way down

4\. Increasing the importance of social media accounts / email and allowing walled gardens to act as gatekeepers to services is annoying at best and very harmful at worst if you are concerned about your data

<comment><USER6> Isn't Oauth delegating your authentication to a third party, and which is generally regarded as a good idea?

<comment><USER7> It's all about trust. If you trust the 3rd party more then it's good. That could be because the authentication provider has more resources to devote to things like intrusion detection. A separate service also isolates your credentials from the various services.

Downsides include telling that 3rd party every time you sign in and putting all your access rights in one place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I use a password manager, have done over the past 6 or so years, but definitely had poor password habits before that.

There are probably a number of websites I used between 2000-2010 that I no longer access, so that's somewhat worrying.

This is a really interesting article though, I think Troy is doing the world a service with the work he's doing.

<comment><USER9> Why is it worrying? If you have good password habits now, nobody will be able to get into your current sites using the old password, and you presumably don't care about the old sites any more.

<comment><USER10> There are possible reputational effects if they're linked to your current identity somehow.

<comment><USER11> If they are still linked to your current identity than change the passwords now (or better yet, yesterday) or delete the accounts altogether.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > treat it as a reminder that your data is out there circulating around and > that you need to go and get yourself a password manager and create strong, > unique passwords.

I think that the real solution to the problem is not to tell people to use password managers, but to make it easy for people to do so.

Unless they've been pwned, the person you're trying to convince probably doesn't prioritize password security during account creation. They just want to make an account. Telling them to do so with no other reason than "don't endanger yourself like everyone else!!" might not have the best success.

Meanwhile, when Google Smart Lock (Google's password manager) was built into Chrome, Now suddenly people who would never think about installing a password manager is using a password manager. It became the default option.

But the security of password managers comes from secure password generators, and Chrome does not provide this by default; it exists under `chrome://flags`. And no one I know uses this. Even the effort of changing a single flag is too much to ask people to do!

There is a similar story for Safari -- one needs to enable iCloud Keychain Support to generate passwords. (*EDIT: this is false, it is enabled by default!!) And while Firefox can store passwords, it has no built-in password generator. There are many great Firefox add-ons, but then we are back to our original problem of convincing others to actually install and use them.

Now, consider that, just like password storage, password generation was default. I'd argue that if password generation was also default, /people will use it/.

Instead, rather than go the path of default built-in password generators, browsers -- recklessly blind to the discussed issue of password reuse -- recommend 'secure' passwords like "#Hihas4ei:YtB"[1] and "sPo0kyh@ll0w3En"[2].

Security shouldn't be a question of convincing others. It should be a default option.

[1]([https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/create-secure- passwords...](https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/create-secure-passwords- keep-your-identity-safe)) [2]([https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/32040?hl=en](https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/32040?hl=en))

<comment><USER13> > There is a similar story for Safari -- one needs to enable iCloud Keychain > Support to generate passwords. And while Firefox can store passwords, it has > no built-in password generator. There are many great Firefox add-ons, but > then we are back to our original problem of convincing others to actually > install and use them.

Wait, is that true? I don't use iCloud on my machine (macOS 10.10.5 with Safari 10.0.3) and it does password management automatically, generating and storing passwords. I forget what update it was, but just out of the blue Safari started recognizing password creation fields and offering generated passwords.

<comment><USER12> Just tried it myself and you are right!

That's good news, perhaps I should go back to Safari.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Interesting to see that some companies do proactive audits by running a list of their current user emails against HIBP. I guess that was bound to become a thing sooner rather than later.

However, I also note that if such a company detects that an email address used by one of their users has been compromised on another site, that this fact is communicated carefully. Specifically I can see the confusion with the Digital Ocean case in the OP - it _could_ sound like their email address in DO itself was compromised, when all DO did was check it against HIBP and discovered it was pwned previously probably from another web app...

</comment><comment><USER15> I would love Apple to start rejecting apps that didn't integrate with Password Managers. Or at least failing those which disable paste in password fields.

</comment><comment><USER16> Troy does great work running HIBP.

It's an incredibly useful service - I highly recommend sending over a few dollars to help with infrastructure costs if you feel inclined to do so: [https://haveibeenpwned.com/Donate](https://haveibeenpwned.com/Donate)

</comment><comment> awinter-py is rate limiting a defense against this? I get that these attacks could come from a botnet, but it at least increases the necessary size of the botnet.

Is there a service for correlating failed login attempts across sites?

<comment><USER17> It's only a deterrence, not a defense. The attacked can always wait it out, or attack multiple sites at once to slow things down.

You also have to watch out for rate limiting becoming a way for attackers to DDoS your legitimate users.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Also don't forget HIBP has a Domain search functionality which is great if you want to find out which employee accounts have been breached. The service lets you download a spreadsheet. Troy is doing the lord's work. [https://haveibeenpwned.com/DomainSearch](https://haveibeenpwned.com/DomainSearch)

</comment><comment><USER19> If I use a password manager, I'm trusting some random company with all of my credentials. What company deserves that level of trust?

<comment><USER20> Don't use an online password manager then.

[https://www.keepassx.org/](https://www.keepassx.org/)

<comment><USER21> KeepassX hasn't been updated in a while. [https://keepassxc.org/](https://keepassxc.org/) is the maintained and updated version.

<comment> FLUX-YOU >KeepassX hasn't been updated in a while.

Is it broken somehow?

<comment><USER22> "broken" is highly subjective, but here's a list of the issues that originally motivated the fork:

[https://github.com/keepassx/keepassx/pulls](https://github.com/keepassx/keepassx/pulls)

Discussion for context: [https://github.com/keepassxreboot/keepassxc/issues/43](https://github.com/keepassxreboot/keepassxc/issues/43)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Getting started with Ruby and Sinatra - <AUTHOR> http://getting-started.md/guides/2-ruby-sinatra

<comment><USER2> The guide is alright, but it could be improved. I'd add/mention/change the following:

Installing Ruby on Windows: [http://rubyinstaller.org/](http://rubyinstaller.org/)

Running `bundle install` is not a good idea, because it will install gems as root (and globally); unless you use bundler version >= 2, which isn't the stable release yet (it defaults to the behaviour in the next sentence). A better alternative is to use `bundle install --path .bundle`.

Another thing that's maybe worth mentioning that Sinatra has a "DSL" with lots of interesting settings, which can be changed using `set`, `enable`, `disable`, and mention how to access those settings using the `settings` object.

For example, an interesting settings that could be mentioned are `:port`, `:public_folder`, `:static`, and `:sessions`.

Also, perhaps you could link to the official website, if people want to look into more details of the guide.

A side note, and a design idea for the website (although it would require more effort overall) is to add "tabs" for Linux/Windows/OSX/etc operating systems. For this particular guide, there's not many differences (if any).

</comment><comment><USER3> Really great work, J. Your guide goes into the right about of detail about getting Sinatra up and running, without any fluff, or 'humor'.

</comment><comment><USER4> Title should read "getting started with Ruby and Sinatra."

<comment><USER5> .. and not on windows. Those installations are not so simple on windows.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, sorry, I should do some windows guides down the road.</comment></comment></comment>


How to Turn Your Apple Watch Gold by Casey Neistat - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMF9I_9DAcs

<comment><USER2> TLDV; spray-paint and painters tape.</comment>