What is the best Ad Network? - <AUTHOR>

I'll looking for an ad networking for a site of mine. Could you guys share some of your rates and experiences? <comment><USER2> The best ad network depends on your site type and results. In reality you need to check which is the best network for YOU. Google Ad Sense can be good for one site but bad for another. The issue here is try and see. There are others ad networks that might give more infromation like ad brite, and etc. (I can give you the full list if you like of most of the known companies). If you are a forum on a certain product (such ipod) you might need to check other sites that are more designated to this kind of product. All in all it is just depends on what is on your site...and your traction

<comment><USER3> Do you know if any of the major ad networks will take ads for adult or otherwise NSFW sites?

<comment><USER4> Usually no, but there are ad networks and TONS of affiliate programs available to you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This might seem like a strange question. We have made it so that it is very easy for one to click on our adsense ads by accident. Do you think google will block out account?Would they even notice?</comment>


Kite learned the hard way that you do not piss off open-source programmers - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/1043614/this-startup-learned-the-hard-way-that-you-do-not-piss-off-open-source-programmers/ <comment><USER2> In what way did they learn not to piss off open source programmers? I don't see any obvious quantifiable consequences, just some loss of reputation, as you'll get if you piss off any group...</comment>


Show HN: Hero – Superhuman for Task Management - <AUTHOR> https://mytaskhero.com <comment><AUTHOR> Hero is a chrome extension to manage your tasks and help you focus on one task at a time. Several features are designed to help you focus on exactly one task at a time: 1\. You can create a task with a wake-up time from anywhere in Chrome under 10s. 2\. Only one task can be "awake" at a given time. 3\. The woken task has its own tab and its text is shown every time you open a new tab.

We've had decent growth the past 12 weeks, from ~100 tasks created per week to 1432 this past week. We're looking to expand our pool of 60 users, so if you're interested, schedule an onboarding with us through our website and one of the two co-founders will onboard you on a 15-min Zoom call.

Thanks for reading this far :) -Fernando</comment>


Shell Script Set Operations - <AUTHOR> http://wordaligned.org/articles/shell-script-sets <comment><USER2> See also join(1).</comment>


Ask HN: Open-source advice – any recommendation? - <AUTHOR> Hi,
In our company we have built a product that makes perfect sense to release as open source.
At the same time, we are willing to generate revenues from this product.
We have zero experience with the legal, product and community aspects of this process. All I know is that it can work as it did for MongoDB, Nginx, Redis, and zillion others.
Should you know an expert in the field or might it be yourself, kindly contact me at email@example.com.
I am looking to hire a consultant for the process.
Thanks, Tzury <comment><USER2> Maybe consider dual-licensing. For those who want FOSS, offer them the code under GPLv3 or AGPL.

For those who want to use the code in a proprietary setting, offer a commercial license.</comment>


Masks-for-all for Covid-19 not based on sound data - <AUTHOR> http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/04/commentary-masks-all-covid-19-not-based-sound-data <comment><USER2> Looking at masks for all as a tool to prevent the spread of the disease makes complete sense.

The CDC has said over and over that asymptomatic individuals can still pass the virus and that it's mostly transferred via respiratory droplets. The mask would at least reduce transmissions.

[https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting- si...](https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-sick/how- covid- spreads.html?CDC_AA_refVal=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cdc.gov%2Fcoronavirus%2F2019-ncov%2Fprepare%2Ftransmission.html)

As individuals we can wash our hands to help us from getting infected but we can't prevent someone else from spraying us with droplets. Only the wareing of masks will help with that.

So, MASKS FOR ALL WORKS.

</comment><comment><USER3> Who ever wrote this FUD should get their professional qualifications revoked. None of the reasons offered address the core issue: everybody is better off wearing protection.

This is pure white-wash to justify concentration of PPE among medical workers 'who need it most'. While admirable, it does not address the issue at hand: am I safer by wearing a mask? YES. jfc.

</comment><comment><USER4> Nothing is going to be "based" on "sound" data in this case. This is the first time we're experiencing an event like this. To get "sound" data you need to do massive, multi-year studies for which we do not have the luxury of time.

So we'll have to just go ahead and cargo cult what e.g. Korea did for now. As other spots where response was successful appear, we should cargo cult that, too. And try out every promising drug whether Trump endorsed it or not.</comment>


How to do what you love (2006) - <AUTHOR> http://www.paulgraham.com/love.html

<comment><AUTHOR> I've recently come across the article "What gets measured gets managed" - <http://www.sebastianmarshall.com/?p=202> \- and while it's mostly trite, I decided to put it into action to avoid having to declare email bankruptcy. I had over 1500 emails in my various inboxes, and 20 inboxes that were remnants of previous, abandoned attempts to get organised.

So I wrote a script to count the outstanding emails and display the total number as a function of time. (This is also related to <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1933523> )

I've been watching the number steadily go down - I'm now down to about 300 outstanding emails, and feeling pretty good about it. I'm catching up with lost friends, tidying away loose ends, and generally feel like I'm getting a grip on things.

On the way I found a reference to this PG essay, and I thought that if the dup detector let me, I'd share it.

We can't all put it all into action, but we can try, dammit.</comment>


Update on Tesla's Combination with SolarCity - <AUTHOR> https://www.tesla.com/blog/update-teslas-combination-solarcity <comment><USER2> If you're interested in money lying on the floor, and believe the SolarCity + Tesla acquisition will go through, you can buy SolarCity shares while they are below the strike price of 22.19 and make instant profit in November.

[https://www.bloomberg.com/gadfly/articles/2016-09-16/solarci...](https://www.bloomberg.com/gadfly/articles/2016-09-16/solarcity- tesla-deal-spread-150-percent-return-no-takers)

<comment><USER3> Reading that piece, it's probably more accurate to state:

>believe the SolarCity + Tesla acquisition will go through

and that Tesla stock doesn't instantly take a dive as a result.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, an arbitrageur would buy SolarCity and short Tesla. So that isn't a risk for them.

<comment><USER5> Or buy calls on SCTY and puts on TSLA. Much less risk (only the options premiums).

<comment><USER6> Don't do this.

You have worse data, less training and slower connections to the exchanges than the competition. You're spitballing in an arena (merger/stat arb) filled with smart people thinking day in and day out about this specific phenomenon.

I used to build market-making algorithms for exchange-listed stock options. Many of our counter-parties were stat arb funds; we'd try to pre-empt their moves. We'd then predict how their likely trades would interact with our merger views as well as our predictions around how _other_ stat arb funds would trade, and trade on those meta predictions.

I'm sure there were turtles another level down trading based on predictions of how our meta models would interact with other market makers' meta models and the stat arb funds themselves.

TL; DR options are complicated, stat arb is complicated, and lots of smart and dedicated people are making it all more complicated every day.

<comment><USER7> Why does exchange speed matter if your internal model shows profit at the current bid/ask prices and volatility? Is it because in the event of a massive change in the underlying you can't exit the positions fast enough to recover some of the premiums?

<comment><USER6> > _Why does exchange speed matter if your internal model shows profit at the > current bid /ask prices and volatility_

The implication is that every sophisticated investor who focusses on this domain ( _i.e._ merger arbitrage with options) have probably either (a) seen and passed on _or_ (b) already executed on the pricing you're witnessing. You need an extremely high level of confidence in your models to act. Given you are the less-sophisticated agent, the Dunning-Krueger effect merits consideration.

This is not a blanket statement against individual investing. Individual investors _have_ been shown to possess statistical edge, particularly over 20+ trading-day time horizons. But if you're stacking yourself against the experts in a domain marked by legal theory, board-executive politics, other- stakeholder politics, shareholder-board-management politics, _et cetera_ together with thinly-traded non-linear derivatives, you're unlikely to succeed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> SolarCity is not the solution. I contacted them about getting a large array installed, and the actual arrangement is much different than what is conveyed via marketing materials and during the sales process. Many, many customers end up paying substantially more for electricity.

<comment><USER9> I'd love to hear the details. Even when it's simply a discounted rate for installing the panels?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> All I ask from this is a new SolarCity commercial involving Ra driving a Tesla.</comment>


Please show me cool career sections of tech companies - <AUTHOR>

Hello,
For years (yes, believe it or not), i've been doing my own research and observing the career section of many companies.
A while ago I saw some YC start ups that had really cool / non-mainstream career sections.
One of them is Xoni http://www.xobni.com/about/jobs .
Any other ones please?
Thanks <comment><USER2> <http://mashable.com/2008/09/10/startup-jobs-sites/>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, but that's not what I'm looking for.

I'm looking for the career sections of startups...you gave job boards for start ups.</comment>


Android Internals: Vol I. (made free by author after "Vault7" leak) - <AUTHOR> http://newandroidbook.com/ <comment><USER2> I was about to post this, then I searched and it was already posted.

The author says the book was being illegally distributed by a CIA agent and then Wikileaks and that you can't trust their copies because it may include PDF zero days. But he is another security guy so, can we really trust his copy?

I just downloaded and started reading anyway :) I think it looks pretty fun. A nice complementary book besides Karim Yagmour's Embedded Android.

You can also buy the original one if you want to have info on Marshmallow and Nougat. Or you can wait until files of another intelligence agency is dumped on the internet :)</comment>


Using Sonar for Laptop Power Management - <AUTHOR> http://stevetarzia.com/sonar/ <comment><USER2> pretty cool idea. I was going to use bluetooth pairing between my phone and pc for this purpose since my phone is always in my pocket, but the battery drain on the phone was not worth it.</comment>


California once had mobile hospitals, ventilator stockpile but dismantled them - <AUTHOR> https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/california-once-had-mobile-hospitals-and-a-ventilator-stockpile-but-it-dismantled-them/ar-BB11O8Gs <comment><USER2> I kind of wish Arnold was more vocal about the stupidity of them dismantling what he built. Was only $5.8million/year to maintain the $200million+ initial investment. What a huge waste.

<comment><USER3> Makes you wonder what earthquake emergency infrastructure has been shut down during cost cutting.

<comment><USER4> Santa Clara County is hell bent on closing Reid Hillview airport — how quickly they forget that in times of serious disaster, those airports are lifelines. Watsonville was cutoff during the 1989 earthquake and it was the relief flights from GA pilots that kept that town alive during that time. Disaster preparedness is a fundamental role of the state, especially a state like California where you have the potential for huge catastrophes mixed with difficult geography and lots of people.

<comment><USER5> I don't get it. What disaster preparedness role does RHV play that the much larger and extremely nearby SJC cannot play?

<comment><USER6> It gives you more loading zones and more approach/departure windows.

<comment><USER5> The idea that a bunch of GA misfits flying their mosquitos will be helpful in case of a major city being cut off by land is something only the AOPA could come up with. In that event they'll be landing C-5's and 744's full of potatoes at SJC. One flight of a 744 is worth 400 GA flights.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Thing about disaster preparedness that needs to be mentioned over and over. When you do it right, everything looks very easy, like it wasn't a big problem. A good plan may look like you didn't do very much at all, whereas efforts when stuff goes bad because of bad plans can look like a lot of amazing impressive stuff getting done heroically.

</comment><comment><USER8> Current worst case projections for New York State are for around 30,000 ventilators needed at the peak of the epidemic. 2400 is not insignificant but hardly enough in this case. Nobody predicted or projected the scale of the current crisis in terms of ventilators needed. Germany is best prepared of all countries, has around 30,000. Hopefully we flatten the curve enough so those worst case projections never materialize.

</comment><comment><USER9> There is going to be a lot of second-guessing after this is all over.

I find it difficult to blame the governor of a state with a $26 billion budget deficit in 2011 for cutting this. How many people were thinking about pandemics then? How many voters would have chosen to keep this program or discontinue it?

We are about to enter another deep recession and similar cuts will be made, which may seem unwise to people a decade from now.

<comment><USER2> Only needed $5.8million/year in an overall budget of $129billion. It also resulted in an ultimate loss of an already spent $200million initial investment.

<comment><USER10> Not only that but per the article:

"In televised remarks Monday, Newsom said the state will lease beds in struggling hospitals around the state and is eyeing convention centers, motels and state university dormitories for use as hospital wards. One such lease, in Daly City, may cost the state as much as $3.2 million a month for 177 beds."

Making small investments for the future is what economics is all about.

<comment><USER9> > Making small investments for the future is what economics is all about.

This isn't economics. It's politics.

How could you sell something like pandemic preparedness in 2011? How could you present a long-term picture, knowing what was known in 2011, and argue that such a thing was a budget priority compared to jobs and social services?

I can't imagine that any politician in 2011 would have been taken seriously when talking about pandemic preparedness, given the context of the massive recession that we were still climbing out of.

<comment><USER11> Maybe by mentioning the swine flu pandemic that had just happened in 2009? Californians live in earthquake country – they understand preparing for cataclysmic event in the medium-to-far future.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Edit: I see the msn link was chosen because of no paywall. I wonder if there is a way we can give a h/t to the LATimes as well for the fantastic reporting though.

It would be nice to point at the source, rather than a repost on msn.com: [https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-03-27/coronavi...](https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-03-27/coronavirus- california-mobile-hospitals-ventilators)

<comment><AUTHOR> LAT is clearly credited in this version, but this avoids the native paywall.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm still of the opinion that pandemic preparedness should be treated like a threat to the nation and part of the military budget. It should not be up to the states to prepare, it should be federal and treated as any other military threat of an unknown enemy. It's crazy to think that we spend so much on tanks and fighter jets and military but can't find some loose change for viral pathogens. What about when the enemy deploys a virus against us?

</comment><comment><USER14> Does anybody else find it ironic that a Republican governor (Arnold) commissioned the $200m mobile hospitals and that a Democrat (Jerry Brown, subject of one of the best Punk songs ever) dismantled the project?

<comment><USER15> A good question, but not really.

It depends on the economics and politics of the day. Richard Nixon (R) was a gun control advocate. Most Democrats were on the wrong side of Civil Rights.

Different day, different context.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I might be projecting; but there is probably a fair amount of overlap between people who are in favour of enacting good emergency preparedness are the same sort of people who like balanced budgets (whether by raising revenue or decreasing costs). Those sort of people seem to struggle in US politics and the electorate doesn't seem to prioritise that sort of thinking.

It isn't surprising that the government would be caught flat-footed by anything that wasn't needing a regular response. Long-term thinkers only get voted in by accident; the public prefers charisma.

<comment><USER17> >the electorate doesn't seem to prioritise that sort of thinking.

>the public prefers charisma.

Democracy is not really tuned to long term thinking. It's tuned to "the next election cycle", and in places like California elections are happening all the time.

<comment><USER18> I think Democracy in the USA would have a better shot if it weren't for the two-party system.

<comment><USER17> I disagree. A multi-party system exacerbates the problem I'm talking about (lack of long term thinking). If we get government that swings back and forth between multiple parties with vastly different visions for the country every cycle, that seems much worse than swings between two parties that are fairly aligned at their cores.

<comment><USER19> Coalition governments are often very stable across many election cycles. There's rarely one single party entirely in charge.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> "The respirators were allowed to expire without being replaced"

WTF? How difficult is it to keep the reserve as FIFO buffer in respirator supply chain? You probably don't even have to take them out of standard shipping container.

<comment><USER21> When your FIFO is suddenly flooded with a massive time-limited over-supply: a lot gets lost, and re-creating that over-supply really isn't part of your normal operations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Without paywall: [http://web.archive.org/web/20200328132638/https://www.latime...](http://web.archive.org/web/20200328132638/https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-03-27/coronavirus- california-mobile-hospitals-ventilators)</comment>


Pigeons as Trainable Observers of Pathology and Radiology Breast Cancer Images - <AUTHOR> http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0141357 <comment><AUTHOR> Representative quotes from the article: "The birds proved to have a remarkable ability to distinguish benign from malignant human breast histopathology after training with differential food reinforcement; even more importantly, the pigeons were able to generalize what they had learned when confronted with novel image sets." and "Accuracy was scored on a per-bird basis as well as through a group-voting scheme that we termed 'flock sourcing'."

I heard about this via comment: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13807415](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13807415)

Scientific American: [https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/using- pigeons-to-...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/using-pigeons-to- diagnose-cancer/)</comment>


Apple files patent to have the ability to block shooting mobile video - <AUTHOR> http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/3641676/Apple-to-ban-iPhone-gig-filming.html

<comment><USER2> Earlier discussion here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2613508></comment>


Tell HN: PayPal is borked for most merchants - <AUTHOR>

If you use PayPal to process payments using services such as PayFlow or WebSite Payments Pro you should be aware that PayPal are currently royally screwing up some system migration activities, leaving (thousands of ?) merchants unable to process payments.
They are supposedly keeping merchants up to date here: https://www.x.com/community/ppx/system_status/payflowstatus/blog/2011/03/18/bulletin-system-maintenance-notification
That page hasn't been updated for the last 2 hours.
What they aren't mentioning is:
- The new endpoint for PayFlow processing is down (payflowpro.paypal.com [18.104.22.168])
- The old endpoint for PayFlow processing is also down (188.8.131.52)
- When it was up earlier delayed capture payments failed
- Anything related to trying to process new recurring payments also seems broken
Thanks PayPal ! <comment><USER2> What surprised me (last night as I wrote my paypal integration) is that Paypal's API is broken by design. Horribly.

Even their new APIs are based on the IPN "reliable messaging" notification system. But there's nothing reliable about it:

* You receive a message from Paypal

* You post it back to Paypal

* You get back "VERIFIED" or "INVALID"

* The burning stupid: This postback is also what acknowledges the message and stops the retries.

In other words, your code must either:

1) Commit transactions in your database based on unverified information, then figure out how to revert the changes if the message comes back invalid. Or:

2) Verify the message (stopping retries) and _then_ try to commit your transaction, possibly failing and losing the IPN message entirely. Your customer may never get his product enabled.

Oh, and let me mention that the verification postback can happen only once. It's impossible to build an idempotent handler for IPN messages.

Paypal's documentation and sample code push you towards solution #2. This is just negligent. I've built porn-serving infrastructure that was a thousand times more robust. People trust this with real money?

And don't get me started on Paypal's near-useless morass of documentation. And the fact that IPN messages don't have any kind of unique identifier.

Technology FAIL.

<comment><USER3> This is wrong. All you have to do is return a "200 OK" and PayPal will stop sending IPNs. You don't even need to perform the validation postback at all. It's completely optional.

<comment><USER4> But if you don't do the validation postback, anyone can fake an IPN message if they know your IPN URL.

<comment><USER3> I'm just saying the validation is not required. There are different ways to ensure the IPN is valid.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Clicky: [https://www.x.com/community/ppx/system_status/payflowstatus/...](https://www.x.com/community/ppx/system_status/payflowstatus/blog/2011/03/18/bulletin- system-maintenance-notification)

</comment><comment><USER5> This happens far too often. It's time to get a real merchant account...

A couple of useful links I found on here:

Use <http://activemerchant.org> for rails implementation of authorize gateway and <http://feefighters.com> to find and setup a merchant account (awesome service)

</comment><comment><USER6> Yet another validation of our (fivesecondtest.com) decision to stop supporting PayPal. No other "financial institution" fails so comprehensibly at so many basic fundamentals. My merchant account costs me a small fortune, but it's worth it for the amount of pain and suffering PayPal have caused us...so glad we're not having to suffer again through this.

</comment><comment><USER7> OT, but is the PayPal bashing necessary? I know everyone loves beating up on PayPal, but for a big company they do still bring some innovation to the space - take their micropayments service (<https://micropayments.paypal-labs.com/>). How else can I process a $1 payment and only pay 10¢?

<comment><USER8> Innovation is only valuable if it _improves_ the situation. Paraphrasing George H Smith, "Inventing a new method of torture may be innovative, but that doesn't make it good."

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Thanks, I just had a weird message from a customer saying they never received their order... but I have no record of a payment from them. I suspect this is the cause :(

</comment><comment><USER10> I am just getting into doing paypal payments through one of my websites. I found a opensource framework for C# and looks like it works well. I only expect payments of up to $5.00 at the moment, but I am open to new solutions. Anyone have a better place to make payments for purchases on a website?

Hopefully, there will be a framework for C# developers for this alternative...

</comment><comment><USER11> Uh oh. Looks like their update didn't go as planned. Last notice says they're rolling it all back.

</comment><comment><USER12> We just did a test transaction on our account with Payflow Pro and everything seemed to work fine. Wondering if it is fixed and we just missed some transactions earlier in the day.

Or maybe we are just lucky and did not get affected?

</comment><comment><USER13> Our payments using payflow pro and payflowpro.paypal.com seem to be processing normally. I think this only affects one processor, or merchants using "Website Payments Pro Payflow Edition," after reading the linked page.</comment>


Branson announces one year paid paternity leave for 0.2% of his employees - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/06/10/richard-branson-has-announced-a-great-paid-leave-policy-for-2-percent-of-his-workers/?tid=pm_business_pop_b

<comment><USER2> This is funny in a sad way:

 _" One example from Facebook: complimentary egg freezing packages, valued up to $30,000."_</comment>


Apple threatens to remove 750,000+ apps from the App Store - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/data-bits/apple-threatens-to-remove-750-000-apps-from-the-app-store-df7e1609bf04#.rpbc17bex <comment><USER2> A bit misleading of a title since they are estimating how many will violate the rules. 50 characters seems like a really long name but good to know "Very best app you could possibly download ever" wouldn't break that rule.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm pretty sure the goal of the 50 character limit was to keep it possible to have descriptive names that go beyond a word or two, but prevent extreme keyword stuffing (ex. Car racing game - race cars, trucks, bikes, people, animals, temples, and run like the angry bird, or go with pokemon). Obviously not a real app, but I've seen a lot worse...</comment></comment>


Why lunar colonies will need to live underground - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20151218-how-to-survive-the-freezing-lunar-night <comment><USER2> Just once I want to see someone say that helium-3 is valuable because of dilution refriderators rather than fusion. They're technology we have now and using needing lots of them for quantum computing isn't any more out there than needing lots of helium-3 for fusion.

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

</comment><comment><USER3> What about lava tubes? Or am I thinking of Mars?

<comment><USER4> "Lunar lava tubes may potentially serve a role as enclosures for human habitats. Tunnels larger than 300 metres (980 ft) in diameter may exist, lying under 40 metres (130 ft) or more of basalt with a stable temperature of −20 °C (−4 °F). These natural tunnels provide protection from cosmic ray radiation, meteorites, micrometeorites, and ejecta from impacts. They are shielded from the variations in temperature at the lunar surface, which would provide a stable environment for inhabitants."

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

<comment><USER5> That's a big if... and they'll be pretty hard to find.

They would need to set up some seismographs and either use explosives or meteor impacts to map the interior of the moon to try to find accessible lava tubes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Cool - just like all cartoon brochureware from my early childhood:

[http://paleofuture.com/blog/2010/3/3/lunar-colonies-of- the-f...](http://paleofuture.com/blog/2010/3/3/lunar-colonies-of-the- future-1969.html)

</comment><comment><USER7> Isn't this a solved problem? People have been living in the ISS for years.

<comment><USER2> The article mainly talks about temperature control but the other big reason to bury a lunar base is concerns about radiation. On Earth we have a big magnetic field to protect us from charged particles (like the helium-3 that ends up in lunar regolith) and an atmosphere to protect us from cosmic rays.

The ISS gets the full dose of cosmic rays being outside the atmosphere but those aren't that large a risk. For charged particles the ISS sits inside the inner Van Allen Belt which is the layer of charged particles that have been trapped by Earth's magnetic field. So astronauts are safe from all the high speed electrons and atomic nuclei that you'd have to endure during the day on the Moon's surface.

<comment><USER8> The Moon should grant a little more protection than the ISS since you can shovel regolith on top. As far as the raw radiation environment, it's about the same, in both cases half the sky is covered by a large planetary body.

The Earth's magnetic field gives no distinct advantage to radiation protection if you're already in a thin metal capsule.</comment></comment></comment>


U.S. stock valuations haven't been this extreme since 1929 and 2000 - <AUTHOR> http://www.marketwatch.com/story/us-stock-valuations-havent-been-this-extreme-since-1929-and-2000-2017-08-22?link=sfmw_fb <comment><USER2> If you're working a job that isn't directly related to the stock market, and are not about to retire, then you really shouldn't care if the stock market is about to crash or not.

Set up automatic investments into a Vanguard Target Retirement fund (or whatever), and know that whenever the next crash does come, you'll get an exceptionally good deal that month.

Here's some good advice on the subject: [http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2017/06/20/next- recession/](http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2017/06/20/next-recession/)

<comment><USER3> >a job that isn't related to the stock market

No such thing, except for _maybe_ the government. If your business isn't sensitive to its stock price, its customers/suppliers/financiers are. Or their customers/suppliers/financiers are. Everything is connected, if you exist in the modern economy, you don't exist in a vacuum.

<comment><USER2> You're correct, I'm gong to edit it to say "not _directly_ related", but the point I was trying to get to remains: don't worry about things that you have absolutely no control over and no good reason to worry about.

<comment><USER4> I'm sorry but that's just awful advice. Just because you don't have control over something doesn't mean you can't foresee it and take appropriate action to protect yourself in advance.

<comment><USER5> You cannot time the stock market. Trying to predict a crash and taking money out in an attempt to avoid losses is a recipe for disaster.

For individual investors who use the stock market for their retirement funds, the appropriate action to protect oneself from the fluctuations of the market, including crashes, is to have the appropriate retirement target set, along with the proper level of acceptable risk (which automatically allocates the funds among different asset classes). After that, it's a matter of waiting... and not doing anything rash during extreme events.

<comment><USER6> >have the appropriate retirement target set, along with the proper level of acceptable risk

You make that sound so _easy_. It's not. None of the maths of retirement planning is hard - but the actual decisions really kind of are.

For example, I've got 10% in corporate debt. Is that more or less risky than Equity? What's the distribution? What's the correlation? How does it compare with Reinsurance, or Property? Is property strongly correlated with the stock market at the tails, or is it a diversifying asset class? Does my passive fund hedge currency risk? Do I want it to? Is private equity a good or a bad idea? Do I want FTSE ALL or FTSE 100?

How about looking at risk appetite. What is the most time it could take for my retirement savings to recover to inflation adjusted parity after a crash (I feel like 15 years is the historical max, but it's a vague memory). Should I look at risk in terms of retirement income or retirement date? Do I expect Annuity rates to improve (e interest rates to go up) or should I mark to current rates for planning purposes.

I think about the amount of context that trustees for DB pension schemes needed to make investment decisions that were sound, and I can't help but wonder how we've ended up with individuals making these decisions on their own. I've long felt that outside of fees Diversified Growth Funds (Multi Asset Funds?) are a pretty good place to "inactively" manage retirement savings. After fees I'm less convinced. I suspect the Australian model might be closest to what I internally model as best?

<comment><USER7> If it's any consolation, 2008/9 proved that everything is pretty much correlated--stocks went down, bonds went down, everything went down. There were no safe havens except for massive government bailouts. To this day, the illegal acts that banks undertook to stay afloat have not been prosecuted (moving all unperforming assets to "off balance sheet vehicles" like holding companies). Also, mark-to-market accounting was suspended and has never been reinstated.

<comment><USER8> One notable exception: Farm land.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The 10 year US bonds haven't had such low rates and for such a long time at least since 1962 (as far back as the Yahoo Finance data goes). Inflation is low. Your belief in the valuation should be linked to how you feel about rates and inflation. If rates stay this low for a very extended period than the valuation might be on the low side. At any rate, these are unchartered territories in terms of investment returns and valuations.

EDIT: even going back to 1912 the 10 year rates are unusually low for an extended period. The closest historic period is during the 1940's valuations back then (P/E ratios) were lower (peaking around 1946).

<comment><USER10> (US Loan) interest rates (which are related to bond prices) are around the lowest they have been in recorded history (~5000 years): [https://www.businessinsider.com.au/chart-5000-years-of- inter...](https://www.businessinsider.com.au/chart-5000-years-of-interest- rates-2015-9)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This article felt more like an ad for active money management (and ignoring index funds) than anything else.

Which makes sense. It's driving active managers nuts the techtonic shift to passive investing.

This was a good podcast on active vs passive investing: [http://freakonomics.com/podcast/stupidest- money/](http://freakonomics.com/podcast/stupidest-money/)

<comment><USER12> Yep, the opening claiming leaving your money in an index fund amounts to "speculation" seemed bizarrely backwards to me. So trying to pick winners and losers isn't speculation, it's investing, but investing in a balanced portfolio spreading risk over the long term is? The latter is only speculating that over the long term, there'll be more winners than losers in your portfolio. The former relies on making individualized bets correctly.

How many portfolio managers beat long term returns to the S&P 500? Not many that I've seen.

<comment><USER13> That's not what they claim though. They claim that significant exposure to US stocks, especially via indexes, right _at this moment_ looks risky since the entire US market is overheated and it requires an active investor to find any reasonable deals, if there are any left.

At the same time, they could be both wrong about overheated part, and lobbying to get some active investing fees, sure, but if you do take the viewpoint of the currently overpriced market, then the speculation claim doesn't seem too bizarre.

<comment><USER14> If the entire US market is overheated because too much capital is chasing too few investment opportunities, which is the likely cause, then trying to cram that money into an even smaller set of investments is obviously not going to help matters. It'll sure help line the pockets of the people running the active investment funds though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The miscalculation that I believe economists are making is the massive shift in leverage between the laborers and the owners. Historically, the two were balanced to the point that creating greater economic growth would tip the scales in the laborers' favor, thus increasing wages and inflation. What's happening now is that, due to many factors including outsourcing, illegal immigration, lobbying(bribery), capital concentration, anti-union legislation, anti-small business legislation, and a lot more, the scales are tipped so far in big business's favor that monetary policy is having a limited effect.

I honestly don't know if this trend can be reversed without something major happening.

<comment><USER16> That sounds like a suggestion that something very bad has to happen.

<comment><USER15> Nothing _has_ to happen. Mass media makes propaganda much easier to spread, and I consider it very likely that nothing will happen and inequality will strengthen for a long time. My point is that the system seems to be stuck in a positive feedback loop where greater capital concentration strengthens the system that created capital concentration in the first place. _Something_ would need to facilitate the movement out of that loop, and historically events required to lower inequality(world war, civil war, lower-class uprisings) haven't been pleasant.

<comment><USER17> >(world war, civil war, lower-class uprisings)

You forgot plagues, not that those are more pleasant.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Assuming the market keep on growing over time as it has done for a very long time, all time highs aren't something spectacular or unusual in the stock market, in fact it occurs almost on a daily basis.

As an analogy; if you go to a grocery store, all the items on the shelves are at an all time high price, but no one is expecting the price of milk to drop drastically just because it's at an all time high.

<comment><USER19> The price of milk is not generally subject to speculative bubbles, though. When it is (let's say some kind of shortage rumor or disaster prep) the price indeed crashes after reaching absurd levels.

<comment><USER9> I wouldn't call where we are a speculative bubble. If you look at the P/E or dividend rates of stocks and compare that to other investments you'll see they are still favourable. So a decision to e.g. own MSFT stock that a higher dividend than you'd get in a 10 year bond, while not without risk, isn't pure speculation. MSFT has a business with good prospects and it makes money and pays it back to you. Where else do you put your money?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> At the market level, stock returns only come from 4 things: dividend yield, real earnings growth, inflation, P/E expansion/contraction.

Looking at 10yr+ returns, the dividends and real earnings growth are likely to be relatively stable. The big wild card is P/E expansion/contraction. Dividend yield + real earnings growth gives us a baseline real return of around 3.6%.

A 30% PE contraction over the next 10 years would bring that return down to 0% and would still leave the PE at historically high levels. A return to historical valuation levels would mean a negative return in the neighbourhood of -3% annually.

Of course, it is also possible for PE to expand another 30% over the next decade causing stocks to deliver great returns.

Which scenario the world follows is more due to sentiment than economic performance which is why it is not predictable. Although there is certainly a probability bias towards the downside

With that said, valuation levels tell you a tremendous amount about risk levels, which are VERY high right now. Which might inform you to lower your stock exposure if you can't handle a large drop in pricing (either due to not being able to sleep at night or the effect it would have on your lifestyle).

<comment><USER7> I think PE has failed as a marker because there's too much capital chasing too few investments so of course PEs will be astronomical. High PEs don't mean what people think they mean or once meant.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Some dude with a blog predicts an impending stock-market crash. Well, Robert Shiller, the Nobel Prize laureate, has been predicting a stock-market crash since what, 2016? And the market kept on rising. This is not to imply that a crash or a long period of low returns is not coming, just that the opinions of financial pundits are just that.

<comment><USER22> It's the same news cycle over and over:

[https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&q=...](https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&q=stock%20market%20bubble,stock%20market%20correction)

Doomsday predctions have always been good at generating ad revenue for publishers.

<comment><USER23> Sure, but recessions and depressions are not something that is really all that rare. Unlike doomsday predictions, if you predict a crash you'll probably be right within a decade at least by pure chance alone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Even if there is a global downturn, the US economy will remain strong. Where else is capital going to go? If developing economies go bust, developed nations like the US will buy up their assets in a fire-sale.

<comment><USER25> China just opened up outside investment this week. Chinese capital already owns way more of America through various investment vehicles than we are willing to admit.

We abdicated our global leadership to China the day Trump was elected. Our economic leadership will likely follow in the next decade.

<comment><USER24> China's economy is highly dependent on Western consumption of their goods. If the US went into recession, and Americans significantly cut back on their consumption, which many of them certainly could afford to without going into poverty, wouldn't that wreck China's economy?

<comment><USER26> >China's economy is highly dependent on Western consumption of their goods. If the US went into recession, and Americans significantly cut back on their consumption, which many of them certainly could afford to without going into poverty, wouldn't that wreck China's economy?

No, they will manipulate their currency or adjust prices so that more people from China and India buy that stuff. Adding a few hundred million consumers will not be that difficult with those measures.

<comment><USER27> The Fed manipulates US currency too. We just don't call it "currency manipulation" because, conveniently, the definition of currency manipulation is buying _foreign_ currency. Buying up your own currency/bonds or increasing reserve requirements achieves the same result.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Between monetary policies from the Fed that have increased the base money supply by a factor of >5 since 2008 [1], and sustained trade imbalances on the order of tens of billions per month [2], it should not be surprising that stock prices are at records highs.

There is just so much more money around that has to be invested but cannot be used; the recent high in the stock market is not just based on the business cycle and traditional productivity/population growth.

If this is your take on the stock market's dramatic rise beyond 2008, then investing further in stocks and indexes may still be the thing to do even if it feel we're getting ripped off on the price.

1\. [https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WALCL](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WALCL) 2\. [https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/BOPGSTB](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/BOPGSTB)

</comment><comment><USER29> So don't try to time the market.

Except this time.

<comment><USER30> Don't time it but do value it. Given the low expected returns from the current levels you might look for something else with better ones. Thought I'm not sure what exactly.

<comment><USER29> Or just diversify and wait. The returns will find you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> We are long overdue for a correction. Put your money into bonds and buy into the fire sales in inevitable upcoming crash.

<comment><USER31> Bonds are like the biggest bubble! With interest rates being so low they have almost nowhere to go but up in interest meaning today's bonds will lose incrediable amounts of value.

If you're going to buy bonds the should be rather short term and at today's interest rates and low inflation you could also hold cash.

For that reason I'm mainly in stocks with a some bonds and cash.

<comment><USER32> "They have almost nowhere to go but up" has been being said by people for many years now when it comes to interest rates. It's a leading statement that somehow implies that rates are destined to go up because they are so low.

This isn't true. They have a few places they could go. They could go up. They could go down (ZIRP is a thing.) Or they could do what they've been stubbornly doing for a long time now, wobble around basically within the same range.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> "Stock prices have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau."

Yale economist Irving Fisher, 1929

</comment><comment><USER4> Anytime a story or study like this comes out I can always visit the HN comment section to find armchair economists pooh-poohing it. It's like clockwork.

<comment><USER34> It's a blog on marketwatch. not exactly hard-hitting research</comment></comment>


Huge 'Dead Zone' Predicted in Gulf of Mexico - <AUTHOR> http://www.livescience.com/37534-huge-dead-zone-expected.html

<comment><USER2> It's easy to create a market for exploiting the environment, especially when the individual contribution to the whole of the exploitation is small. Sadly it's very difficult to create a market for preservation, especially when the individual impact is just as small.

I ask this non-rhetorically: how the hell does anyone turn that on its head, especially without government involvement?

The Ocean Research and Conservation Association is a nonprofit that's trying to promote the visibility of this problem (hypoxia caused by harmful blooms). They're doing this through the use of very low cost in situ sensor networks [1] and broad spectrum toxicology assays [2]. It's headed by Dr. Edie Widder [3], the scientist who got the first footage of the giant squid on last year's Discovery Channel cruise.

In combination with measuring physical/chemical parameters, they can automatically measure biological parameters of the environment. They've done this by miniaturizing and cost-reducing bathyphotometer [4] technology.

To the best of my very limited knowledge _nobody_ else is looking at the problem this way. Everybody else measures physical/chemical parameters, and either infer what's happening to the biology, or they do point or small area biological sampling on an infrequent basis. And because it's so damn expensive there's always a big tradeoff between temporal and spatial resolution. With techniques like that everything is aggregate and there's little ability to tie specific action to specific consequences, let alone enforce any kind of feedback loop.

One of ORCA's biggest goals is to create a realtime water health gradient map that's promoted to and accessible by the general public. In a perfect world this would be used on the news right alongside the weather report.

I hate to cast a light of negativity but frankly I doubt they'll ever pull this off. Not because of lack of technical ability or people with the passion to do the work, but because of lack of stable funding. What's crazy is their technology is downright _cheap_ , especially compared to the magnitude of the problem. If they could ever pull together the funding to engineer for manufacturability and do a full volume run, it'd be orders of magnitude less expensive.

I freely admit that I suck at marketing, so the best I can offer is a shameless plea. If this problem is important to you do something to solve it. Read up on nutrient limiting and how it impacts hypoxia. Find a polite way to tell your neighbor that their super green lawn might be sucking the life out of the waterways. Spend a bit more to buy your meat and produce from farms that limit runoff. If you have loose change, donate to organizations like ORCA or perhaps to someone more local to you.

1: [http://www.teamorca.org/cfiles/kilroy_technical.cfm](http://www.teamorca.org/cfiles/kilroy_technical.cfm) 2: [http://www.teamorca.org/cfiles/fast.cfm](http://www.teamorca.org/cfiles/fast.cfm) 3: [http://www.ted.com/speakers/edith_widder.html](http://www.ted.com/speakers/edith_widder.html) 4: [http://www.teamorca.org/cfiles/biolum_study.cfm](http://www.teamorca.org/cfiles/biolum_study.cfm)

Disclosure: I'm a former ORCA employee, but otherwise I'm no longer affiliated.

Edit:

Bathyphotometer link [4] refers to a larger, more expensive model Edie designed for the US Navy. See edited [1] for reference to smaller cost-reduced version.

<comment><USER3> This dead zone is, in large measure, the result of US agriculture and ethanol subsidies, which encourage expanded and more intensive production than would otherwise exist.

<comment><USER2> In the case of the Mississippi outflow I'm with you to an extent. There's no doubt in my mind that agriculture runoff is the biggest contributor. Unfortunately removing agriculture subsidies won't fix the problem.

A number of people in the Chesapeake basin point the finger at chicken and pig farms in the region due to their controversial use of manure lagoons [1]. To the best of my knowledge these industries aren't heavily subsidized like corn and soy.

Then there's the whole issue of baselining. What's normal for the Mississippi river outflow? We've been observing the impacts to the fisheries there and the Chesapeake for hundreds of years, but we've only been measuring DO for a few decades and DO is far from the only thing that impacts fisheries. Further, the Mississippi dumps a ton of relatively still water that's full of tannins directly into the relatively still and warm gulf. I'm nowhere near qualified to say this conclusively, but I'd bet there have been yearly cycles of hypoxia there for millennia. Does this multiply or dampen our impacts?

This is a crazy complex multi-headed monster that looks completely different in every region it inhabits. For every one of these massive hypoxic regions there's a ton of other smaller ones. Next time you're bored take a look at the waterways in your area on Google maps, especially where small local canals or drainage ditches empty into larger bodies of water. Then go look at the topography of the area and try to back-of-the-envelope account for what all is pouring out of there. Then go do that for a completely different region. The diversity if nutrient inputs is insane.

The only reliable long-term way I can see to fix the problem is to get people to understand the impacts of their actions, and to associate those impacts with the things that they buy, consume, and produce. When you flush the toilet your poop goes somewhere. The same is true with your lawn clippings, farm waste, fertilizers, antibiotics, birth control, etc.

1: [http://nc.water.usgs.gov/flood/floods99/photos/IMG003.html](http://nc.water.usgs.gov/flood/floods99/photos/IMG003.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Some sources of more information, for those interested:

Summary of the mechanisms behind hypoxia (site also includes data sets and other information): [http://www.gulfhypoxia.net/Overview/](http://www.gulfhypoxia.net/Overview/)

NOAA Gulf of Mexico Hypoxia Watch: [http://www.ncddc.noaa.gov/hypoxia/](http://www.ncddc.noaa.gov/hypoxia/)

Interactive map of eutropic and hypoxic zones worldwide, w/ data set from 2011: [http://www.wri.org/project/eutrophication/map](http://www.wri.org/project/eutrophication/map)

</comment><comment><USER5> This article doesn't mention it, but I've heard the suggestion that far more of the runoff is from over-fertilized suburban lawns than from agriculture.

At least commercial agriculture tends to be a bit more concerned about wasteful inputs, etc. (At least where subsidies haven't distorted it too much.)

But I see some incredibly excessively perfectly green lawns which are such a waste of resources unless you're playing golf or lawn bowling.

<comment><USER6> Lawns in general are goddamn stupid idea. The most common irrigated crop in the United States? Turf grass. They're a huge waste of water and a huge waste of fertilizer and both of those have very negative impacts on our immediate environment.

<comment><USER7> Excuse me, but a huge portion of the US population lives in places that do not have water scarcity problems. I live in Iowa, we have more water than we know what to do with. Irrigating my lawn doesn't hurt the environment or any of my neighbors. Not everyone in the US lives in the southwest.

<comment><USER6> I bet you irrigate your lawn with potable water which takes energy to purify. So you're wasting clean water to maintain a furry green carpet (try some FieldTurf or native plants) that serves no purpose since it doesn't feed you (grow some vegetables) or act as that good of a carbon sink.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> You actually wanted:

[http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2013/20130618_deadzone.h...](http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2013/20130618_deadzone.html)

[http://www.gulfhypoxia.net/News/default.asp?XMLFilename=2013...](http://www.gulfhypoxia.net/News/default.asp?XMLFilename=201306191312.xml)

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm curious if the dispersants used in the Deepwater Horizon oil spill of 2010 may have been a contributing factor in addition to fertilizers and agricultural runoff? Or should I consider the Deepwater Horizon aftereffects _water under the bridge_ by now?

<comment><USER10> FTA: "Last year's dead zone was smaller than average"

I'm guessing that means that the oil spill isn't a contributing factor, and it's just the excess rain and subsequent runoff this year.

<comment><USER2> Hypoxic regions are caused by an influx of various nutrient-limited organisms (hence why fertilizer is bad) which trigger a feeding cycle that destabilizes and ultimately kills off the oxygen-producing organisms in the impacted region. Once they're gone, carnivorous inverts which survive well in low oxygen environments move in and stabilize the environment to its newly-barren state.

I don't know for certain, but I'd guess that the chemical dispersants actually contributed to the reduction of hypoxia, since it introduced a new limiting factor for the organisms which start the cycle. That said, I'm sure dispersants aren't biased in what they poison, so it's important to note that this is probably a positive-looking indicator masking devastatingly negative phenomenon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Is something like this an accepted tradeoff when using fertilizers for farming?

<comment><USER12> Not really. This would be a prime example of a negative externality, or a cost which results from an activity or transaction and which affects an otherwise uninvolved party who did not choose to incur that cost or benefit.[1]

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

<comment><USER13> Now fishermen will suffer so farmers can pull a profit. It's kind of the most simple form of unfairness. The kind that small children easily identify and question.

<comment><USER14> It's confusing that the only externality considered in the article or in the HN comments so far is "effect on fisheries".

Coastal regions are (typically) teaming with life of all kinds. I can live without people getting fresh fish quite as often as they're used to. I can't swallow destroying entire ecosystems out of wilful ignorance quite so easily.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> so will the farmers get the shit sued out of them like BP did?

</comment><comment><USER16> Now we know how things affect the environment, I'm curious on what people will do about it.</comment>


Glucosamine promotes longevity in worms and mice, study says - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-glucosamine-promotes-longevity-in-worms-and-mice-study-says-20140408,0,6839184.story

<comment><AUTHOR> As with any study of this nature, there is a good chance that the observed effects won't apply to humans, but it's interesting nonetheless.

The researchers point out that there's been a couple observational studies (not RCTs!) that have found decreased mortality in humans that supplement glucosamine:

[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3557824/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3557824/)

[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2869514/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2869514/)

What I'd really like to see, now, is a randomized controlled trial that looks at mortality in healthy, non-arthritic people who supplement glucosamine - alone, without chondroitin or other stuff.</comment>


The Emperor's Old Clothes (1981) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.cs.fsu.edu/~engelen/courses/COP4610/hoare.pdf <comment><USER2> My favorite quote: "I conclude that there are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to make it so simple that there are _obviously_ no deficiencies and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no _obvious_ deficiencies."

</comment><comment><USER3> Considering Hoare implemented Algol 60 and is in his early 80s, it's amazing what a young science we have.

</comment><comment><USER4> Got about half way through this and then realized that this is off my old professors site and I probably already read the whole thing for class a long time ago lol!

</comment><comment><USER5> OCR please.

<comment><USER6> It's already been OCRed. Just Ctrl-A, Ctrl-C, flip to a text editor, Ctrl-V.</comment></comment>


I've Been Mixing Employment and Startup for 3 Years - <AUTHOR> https://hackernoon.com/ive-been-mixing-employment-and-startup-for-3-years-here-s-what-i-ve-learned-90f59bee9318 <comment><USER2> how did you find your first customers? did you start your business by accident or by someone you helped in the start? Also how did you manage your startup time for getting more customers? vs writing content etc., ?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi! Finding first customers was a bit tricky. I used several ways - first, i offered my service to ex-employer (this was the best, as they already knew me well), next, I started blogging about my research and experiments and some customers came from this writing, and finally the word of mouth started working.

<comment><USER2> that's smart.. keep going

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Do fewer things; do them better; know why you're doing them - <AUTHOR> http://calnewport.com/blog/2009/03/27/what-the-hell-is-study-hacks/

<comment><USER2> A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.

-Robert A. Heinlein

<comment><USER3> He's wrong. If everyone were a generalist, we'd achieve very little as a species.

<comment><USER4> None of his statemetns suggest that anyone should be a true generalist, but that people should not focus on a single field to the exclusion of even a basic understanding of the rest of human knowledge.

<comment><USER3> There comes a point where the breadth of human knowledge is so vast that's it's not possible to have even a basic understanding of it all; I believe we passed that point long ago. All men are necessarily ignorant about a great many things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> For all critics of this article, there's much more to Cal Newport's ideas than presented here. Stuff I often disagreed with, for sure. But this post is basically an 'About' page and should be treated as such (and as such, makes a poor candidate for HN)

</comment><comment><USER6> I think "do fewer things" is dangerous advice, especially given the relative inexperience of college students. I would say do more things, explore more areas. You shouldn't obsess about getting good grades, but rather you should obsess about learning as much as you can. The things that are truly interesting will stick, but you risk never discovering them if you try and do as little as possible.

</comment><comment><USER7> Bad advice, especially if you're under the age of 35 or want to evolve as a person.

I would suggest the exact opposite: do many things, fail better, be open to new possibilities.

<comment><USER8> I think you are not completely disagreeing with the most important part of the message: knowing why you are doing something. When young, you can be trying lots of news things, e.g. drugs, casual sex, going to Tibet, etc. etc. either as a clueless youth (which is how it's done mostly) or doing them for consciously in order to learn from your experiences.

The options become less less as you get older, obviously. In fact I think the best description of the change in career outlook as you get older is a switch from breadth-first search of new experiences to depth-first search.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> At first I thought this post and the whole blog were an awesome idea. It seems to describe really well what I was never able to put into words. How exactly did I get through school and my BSc/MSc with awesome grades while always having a feeling that everybody else is working so much harder and still incredibly intelligent?

I thought this blog had the answer. But then I relaized that this will not work in every major / profession. My girlfriend is doing lots of things and somehow suffers under the heavy workload. But I can't give her this kind of advice because (at least here in Germany) it does not apply to someone who studies philosophy and politics and wants to get into the best positions as development worker. Why? because nobody cares about your marks. You basically get a degree for the sake of the degree itself and for living a students life while doing as much extracurricular activities as possible. Internships, important roles in local divisions of NGOs and so on are almost everything that counts for getting the job you want.

Personally, I still think "Do fewer things; do them better; know why you're doing them" worked incredibly well for me and may help many other students, I is probably not for everyone and certainly not for every subject.

<comment><USER10> So the, for her the fewer things is the coursework itself, timeboxing each assignment as to know how to do enough for the target grade which likely is not an a

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This article assumes that only goal of going to college is to earn good marks. Colleges are wombs where ideas are born and birth is messy process :)

</comment><comment><USER12> Although it's only in the context of studying...

This core philosophy is very close to the spoken truth and highlights my biggest gripe with cargo cults:

Blind faith and regurgitation of process/teachings without a deep understanding of what and why it works.

</comment><comment><USER13> It's just the lean methodology applied to studying. But the point is interesting, because while learning you do get a lot of informations that you have to assess in order to focus on the essential.

</comment><comment><USER14> mirror?</comment>


Ask HN: What was your first ever hack? - <AUTHOR>

By 'hack' I mean some kind of software or hardware project you put together kinda hastily for fun and learning, I guess. "Hello world" does not count. <comment><AUTHOR> To start, here's mine...

When I was about 15, I spent a lot of time on web forums.

These were the types of forums where you'd ask your fellow forumites — the ones with 'm4d photoshop skillz' — for a new avatar based on some character from some video game, or with some crazy visual madness using the infamous Render Clouds… tool in photoshop, or maybe a cool typographic avatar with your username in it. (I was "Frag_of_lag" back then.)

Well, I was fickle, and I liked to change mine a lot, so I came up with a PHP script which chose from three random images to cycle through whenever that script was hit. So as an avatar, somebody could set that script, with their username as a query string, as the URL, and every time that person was seen on the forum they'd have a different avatar. There was a little control panel and you could upload new pictures whenever you liked, after logging into your account.

This was cool! I had an actual thing, that actual people could use, and they actually did! I think I probably had about 50-100 users, which isn't a huge amount, but it felt good. I even had a feature which allowed people to add more pictures if they sent me a little bit of money on PayPal. Premium features! What an app! I think only one person ever did this, and it might've been my mum.

On refection, this app was ripe for abuse. I didn't protect against SQL injection and I stored the images in the database. There was every chance that simply by putting someone else's username in the querystring, and encoding something in the right way, a malicious user with a hilarious sense of humour could replace their enemy's avatar(s) with lots and lots of penises. Well, nobody ever did this, luckily.

It wasn't pretty, and it wasn't clever, but it was cool to me, and I'd found a problem that apparently some people had, and come up with a solution that they were willing to use. I was proud.</comment>


Curiosity Rover leaving 'Mars rat' behind | Fox News - <AUTHOR> http://www.foxnews.com/science/2013/06/06/curiosity-rover-leaving-mars-rat-behind/ <comment><AUTHOR> NASA's PR just kills me. Would it really hurt them to simply take a second picture from a different angle?

This is the kind of stuff that gets people interested in space exploration.

</comment><comment> jack-r-abbit > _The trek will cover about 5 miles of straight-line distance and will likely > take about a year._

This is interesting to me. Does the rover just move really slow because it is collecting data the whole way? or because the terrain is hard to navigate?</comment>


The Joy of Standards - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/16/opinion/sunday/standardization.html <comment><USER2> > _Access to standards also poses challenges. Since the consensus-building > process is costly, organizations like ANSI often try to cover expenses by > selling or licensing access to standards documents. For example, the book of > standards for concrete blocks and masonry structures costs $150. This > business model strikes many critics as unjust, since private standards can > be built into regulations, yet sometimes only citizens who pay can look at > them._

This. Incorporation by reference is a real problem.

Carl Malamud--the lawyer behind law.resource.org and public.resource.org--has spoken a bit on this topic.

Just wanted to highlight this blurb[1] from a PHMSA committee discussing the impact of commercial standards incorporated by reference as it applies to federal regulation:

 _The only common thread that I see in associations in terms of their business model--and they are businesses despite being not-for-profit, and 501(c)(3)s or (c)(6)s--that you charge somebody to be a member, you use those members and their intellectual property to develop products, and then you sell them back to them. It 's a crazy business model in some way. You can't imagine how that would work._

[1] [https://youtu.be/Sdm698P2AkA?t=88](https://youtu.be/Sdm698P2AkA?t=88)

</comment><comment><USER3> Coding to an API spec is one of the most freeing things I have done as a backend engineer. We use JSONAPI at work, and while it still leaves things open to interpretation and places to fill in gaps, having a standard just frames everything for the better. Tooling can be created on either side with explicit expectations, and we can give new employees a link to the spec to know how things are supposed to work. It's great.

</comment><comment><USER4> I grew up referencing RFCs in network software land. Then I got a few gigs with eletronics and the first years were the most depressive of my life. every step started with a research for some standard, then the request to purchase it, then in some cases the mailing of some agreement contract, then the wait, to finally see the standard just referenced some other standard, so back to step one.

<comment><USER5> It's the same in information technology too when you move beyond the actual protocols and languages (which tend to be free and open). You get the joy of having to buy some healthcare related standard from your national registry, only to find that it refers to the corresponding ISO standards with hardly a change, so you get to shell out some Swiss Francs for one of those.

Sensibly enough, the Dutch government made a set of related healthcare IT standards free of charge when the legislature started mandating their use (NEN 7510, 7512, 7513), but they still reference loads of non-free ISO standards for the most trivial of things. You don't really know whether a reference is relevant or not without looking it up.

When you read these things it is always a relief to find a reference to an IETF RFC; that at least means you get a searchable HTML document available at a reliable location for anyone to read.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> A pitfall not mentioned in the article: a private-industry member of the standard-setting body may fail to disclose that they are applying for a patent on an essential component of the standard.

For instance, in the 1990s, the oil company Unocal managed to insert a patented technology into the mandatory Reformulated Gasoline standards in California [1]. Eventually Unocal was hit by a class-action lawsuit and an FTC action, but that took years, and in the meantime all refiners in California had to pay royalties to Unocal in order to comply with the state mandate.

[1] [http://www.greenpatentblog.com/2008/09/01/chevron-to-pay- cal...](http://www.greenpatentblog.com/2008/09/01/chevron-to-pay-california- drivers-48m-to-settle-unocal-patent-suit/)

<comment><USER7> This has happened with the ETSI DMR spec. Several key technologies needed to implement it require patent licences from Motorola. On the plus side, ETSI requires patent disclosures, and those are on their website.

MPEG is similarly encumbered.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Not all standards are for the good, sometimes it's just part of the anti- competitive measures

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

<comment><USER9> Thanks for the interesting read. I think the WSJ should have touch upon "open standards" vs. the standards aka patents. They may have alluded to it, but only slightly. WSJ kinda missed the boat here.

<comment> frosted-flakes This is a New York Times article.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Overall I loved this article, in particular the anecdote about construction materials. One sentence jumped out for me.

> These facts should prompt some reflection about the exercise of power in a > technological society: Amid concerns about the excesses of market power and > government regulation, nobody seems to worry much about the private groups > of experts who created 80 percent of the laptop's standards.

While I think this is overlooked, sure, I don't think this holds very true. I and other engineers I know do worry about which private companies and interests are controlling standards, and what perverse incentives are associated with them.

Recently, there was a big scandal and worry around the NSA creating subvertible weaknesses in technologies deployed worldwide by working on standards committees (a reason academics and the open source community has worked hard to produce alternatives).

Another example that comes to mind are the stardards around Javascript/ECMAScript. During the first few "rounds", there was an anticompetitive effort being waged against browser giants like Microsoft, who were thought to have been pursuing standards choices that favored their market positions.

I'd say there's lower public visibility into these processes, but it isn't like these conversations aren't happening.

</comment><comment><USER11> > Our modern existence depends on things we can take for granted. Cars run on > gas from any gas station, the plugs for electrical devices fit into any > socket

As a world traveler I can attest to how untrue that statement is.

<comment><USER12> Eh, it could be a lot worse. In my limited experience it works fine in regards to "one plug per country" in most of the developed world.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The web stuff standard, lately, is more like big corps' OSS projects, some are marketing heavy.

<comment><USER14> [https://www.w3.org/2017/09/pressrelease-eme- recommendation.h...](https://www.w3.org/2017/09/pressrelease-eme- recommendation.html.en#testimonials)

<comment><USER15> C level management gotta get their name out there somehow

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Something I liked about the IETF, no cost to get the standard, there was always a running code example. It changed as it go too dangerous.

There isn't any reason to have these big organizations as "standards bodies", all you really need is trademark protection and a test suite. And not even that some times.

I often point people to the Arduino "standard" which immortalized some poor sods PCB layout mistake in spacing the shield connectors.

Basically you define a standard (no consensus required, it just has to be useful). Give it a trademarked name. Offer to let anyone use it on their gear for a one time license fee. Then market/sell/advocate things with the trademarked name until you get people associating the name with the standard thing you have. And at that point you're done. If your licensing price is reasonable (say under $25,000), people will just license it and use it rather than try to compete with it.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm curious about the Arduino mistake - do you have a reference or URL?

<comment><USER17> [https://electronics.stackexchange.com/a/941/7277](https://electronics.stackexchange.com/a/941/7277)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> USB-C and the resisting walk of Apple.

The mandatory XKCD comic.

The last minute envelope (or napkin) design job Pike and Thompson did on UTF-8

Its 220 volts right? not 240, or 250. Or that abominable 110. Anyway, at least its 50 hz. Sorry, sorry, 60hz. Except when its DC and its 48v. Except when the DC is PoE and its 32V to 60V depending...

<comment><USER19> And the metric system.

<comment><USER7> At least the 1-10-100 scaling makes metric easy for critters with 10 digits...

And calculations like "how much energy is needed to heat 1 litre of water by 10 Celsius" are a simple multiplication task.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Hiring: two strategies - <AUTHOR>

If you needed to fill a position in your firm excluding senior manager jobs which two strategies work best for you.
1. Passive) Post a job listing on your corporate website and/or through sites like Monster/Career Builder/Dice etc and then filter out the candidates who respond.
2. Active) Look for potential candidates who fit your ideal hire and contact them directly or through sites like LinkedIn. <comment><USER2> #2 and court them hard. Show them why they should join with you. Why #2? Because when that person joins, they know that they are wanted, that they are needed and that you respect what they bring to the table. It will be hard to sustain #2 in a very large organization but that is one of those "we'll burn that bridge when we get there things"

</comment><comment><USER3> Why is this an "OR" question? Why can't you do both?

<comment><USER4> I agree, especially since one is passive and one is active :) The entire nature of passive is you don't have to do very much :P

However, I think the question is a bit deeper. What method seems to be best, or better yet, what method seems to get the best results/hires?</comment></comment>


The Illustrated Children's Guide to K8s - <AUTHOR> https://www.cncf.io/the-childrens-illustrated-guide-to-kubernetes/ <comment><USER2> > "Kubernetes" is the Greek word for a ship's captain. We get the words > Cybernetic and Gubernatorial from it. The Kubernetes project focuses on > building a robust platform for running thousands of containers in > production.

I thought Kubernetes was Greek for more containers than customers. [https://twitter.com/srbaker/status/1002286820078571532](https://twitter.com/srbaker/status/1002286820078571532)</comment>


DMCA Does Not Apply to U.S. Government - <AUTHOR> http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/08/dmca_does_not_a.html <comment><USER2> Patry's Copyright Blog (<http://williampatry.blogspot.com/>) also discussed this case at length on August 2. Since Patry took the blog down temporarily and is now putting it back up, I'm going to copy paste the relevant post here.

The Executive Branch of our government has been on an IP public relations binge lately, strutting like a peacock and showing off its finest colors of commitment to strong IP rights. Alberto Gonzalez has been paraded out much like Johnny Depp without the eyeliner, vanquishing those pesky pirates. The Office of United States Trade Representative (before Mr. Zoellick's recent departure to Wall Street), strides the globe like the Colossus of Rhodes, mau- mauing ("Mzungu Aende Ulaya — Mwafrika Apate Uhuru!") small and medium size countries into agreeing to DMCA and even DMCA+ provisions. The Administration is solidly on message: IP 'R U.S.

Except, perhaps when it comes to the Government's own conduct. In Blueport Co. LLP v. United States, the Government successfully asserted a defense of sovereign immunity against a charge that it had violated 17 USC Section 1201, the DMCA's anti-circumvention provision. Federal Federal Claims Judge Lawrence Block described the factual allegations:

The bare facts of the matter now before the court are quite simple. It involves a copyrighted computer management information program and the alleged attempts by the U.S. Air Force to circumvent technological safeguards designed to protect the program. Plaintiff is a limited liability corporation, organized in the State of Idaho. On March 6, 2000, plaintiff acquired all the rights to a computer program entitled AUMD and AUMD Admin ("computer program") from Mr. Mark Davenport, who was then a Technical Sergeant in the Air Force. Allegedly, the computer program greatly increased the efficiency with which Air Force manpower resource requirement reports were generated. The computer program contained an automatic expiration function, so that the program would stop operating on a particular date. This feature was included in the program to control licensing and to prevent unauthorized use beyond the license expiration date. Plaintiff alleges, in essence, that Air Force personnel unlawfully "hacked" into the computer program to alter the automatic expiration function, to the Air Force's advantage.

The defense was not as one might have expected, that the work was ab initio one of the United States government and therefore not protected by virtue of Section 105, but that the governement cannot - ever - be sued for DMCA violations because Congress did not expressly provide for express waiver of such immunity. Plaintiff referred the court to a number of exemptions in Section 1201 that refer to conduct by federal employees, exemptions that would not make sense absent liability, but the bottom line was simple: without express liability, the Government is free to be a DMCA scofflaw.

The ball is now in Congress's court.</comment>


DDoS Protection With IPtables - _o-O-o_ https://javapipe.com/blog/iptables-ddos-protection/ <comment><AUTHOR> The author has one start out by implementing sysctl changes which have no relation to the subject matter at hand (printk, sysrq, panic, etc.). A number of comments on the article point out flaws and misconfigurations in the rulesets presented.

<comment><USER2> The complete lack of an explanation as to why those config changes have been made is also frustration. I think that these types of articles- where you're told what to do but not why- do a huge disservice and result in people building out on maintainable or hard to upgrade systems. A few comments would go a long way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> A lot of people seems to be thinking that it is pointless to use iptables to drop unwanted traffic in 2019. That is far from the truth.

Most attacks are usually small(<10 Gbps) and effective iptables rules can go a long way, both against unwanted application traffic and packet floods.

<comment><USER4> The problem is when you are not able to "eat" the whole DDoS without filling your link/links to your ISP/s. Then it does not matter how god you are at dropping at the edge of your datacenter, or what solution you are using.

<comment><USER5> While you can't block volumetric attacks on the server, this is something a hosting provider can help you with. Some have automatic volumetric DDoS detection and protection, like OVH, and some might be able to ask upstreams, internet exchanges to completely block all UDP traffic for certain subnets or even setup completely custom firewall rules, effectively preventing volumetric attacks from filling links within their global networks and of course from reaching your server. But you are still left with non-volumetric attacks that you need to use a firewall for, maybe even with some scripting to gather statistics and whitelist known good IPs and IP subnets in case of an attack. Maybe with mitigations on, for example, frontend web servers to avoid overloading much slower backends, databases, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> From the article: "This drops all ICMP packets. ICMP is only used to ping a host to find out if it's still alive."

Please stop this non-sense, there are too many ICMP blackholes already.

<comment><USER7> if you are running IPv6, disabling ICMP is a very bad idea because it disables MTU path discovery.

don't be lazy, don't drop ICMP and just do proper filtering.

<comment><USER8> Same for ipv4.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is not real DDoS protection since it does not deal with jamming the pipes. It is more of a resource exhaustion protection.

<comment><USER10> Would this be useful for small lightly trafficked sites that may get hit by small time attackers?

Would this hit a sweet spot between a grandma's blog with straight HTML and massively trafficked sites like Wikipedia?

Resource exhaustion seems like a useful feature of _some_ kind of system. What does that system look like?

<comment><USER11> It is not useful for small time attackers - small time attackers/children/etc just use booters which at least usually output double digit gbps, often spoofed, costs a cent or pay in runescape gold or other bullshit like that. Your upstream will need to mitigate this. No small scale attacker will be launching their own attacks (from their own machines), unless they were seriously incompetent but also think they're some form of power user, which doesn't really happen...

It is not useful for straight HTML - volumetric DDoS will take it out (not l7), it's not even going to make it to your machine. It does not mitigate well against any real major l7 flood either, just by virtue of "your pipe is smaller". A formal l7 attack would at least do basic recon to find a high resource consumption page (like search.php?q=%20 or something)

I guess this would come in maybe slightly useful with someone running ab or jmeter from a single machine toward you? But I don't know a single instance of that happening in the last decade..

<comment><USER12> It's great against mistaken API clients. Murphy is the most frequent adversary I encounter.

<comment><USER11> I feel like there's a bunch of other things in play, like for example if you're running a public API, one api key should not be able to take you down - you should be rate limiting them against repeated hits, for instance.

I'm not saying iptables is bad per se, but this article in particular is just some overpriced hosting provider's blog that tells you to set things like kernel.panic in sysctl. The article also claims all of this to be a defense against DDoS, which really will probably just eat through your pipe completely most of the time, not single-person DoS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This can protect you from simple DoS attack by some script kiddie, not real DDoS attack. Just use CloudFlare or a provider that have active protections against DDoS attacks. Iptables will NOT help you with any real DDoS attack.

<comment><USER10> Is there any other provider besides CloudFlare for DoS/DDoS protection?

<comment><USER14> OVH servers include a pretty efficient DDoS protection. It was the only option for hosting my online game servers that didn't cost tens of thousands.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Submissions like this one make me wish Hacker News had a downvote button...

<comment><USER16> Why? Isn't this the kind post hacker news is all about ? Is there something about this post that's misleading or false? I don't see any explanation of facts to make me believe your comment ?

<comment><USER11> iptables to defend against an attack will not accomplish much in 2019. It's pretty much futile to even try.

<comment><USER16> It can't hurt or are you saying this is bad if you only have one server what about if your balancing your traffic over thousands of servers wouldn't this help?

<comment><USER17> The only way to protect yourself is having a bigger pipe than the bad guys. Only a handful of companies have these big pipes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I wouldn't bother with iptables. I've done it before and it quickly gets overrun on any large scale attacks. Cloudflare on your front end will stop a lot of garbage and take the brunt of volumetric attacks, or use nginx/varnish/haproxy to rate limit and or block attackers before they reach your app.

<comment><USER19> cloudflare used to use iptables with SYNPROXY, simple blocking rule and later BPF matching.

Your server would be dead in any large scale attack anyway, iptables is fine and works well</comment></comment>