Zimbabwe's multi-currency confusion (Bitcoin to the rescue?) - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-26034078

<comment><USER2> Bitcoin to the rescue? The average person in Zimbabwe doesn't have access to clean water, let alone a computer and capability to use Bitcoin as a currency.</comment>


Start with iOS or Full Stack Web? - <AUTHOR> I'm just starting my career in software engineering. Should I dive into iOS or Full Stack Web? <comment><USER2> Whichever you're more curious about! There's plenty of opportunity available in both directions and there will be for a while still. And as your career matures, you'll be pulled in still other directions: domain specialization, breadth-building, etc.

There's no optimal choice, it's just personal. The most valuable thing you bring to your career right now is enthusiasm and curiosity. Lean into that by picking something you like.

<comment><USER3> Excellent approach! Software Engineering rewards (or even requires) curiosity. There is always higher hanging fruit if you're willing to climb the ladder.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Your career, or your education? Full stack web is going to be more broadly educational, and there are better resources for learning it, and it's cheaper, but iOS might be more lucrative starting out, if you already know both.

</comment><comment><USER5> Web.

It's easier to get started (especially on the backend), and web will teach you what you need to build a backend and an API, which you'll need for iOS apps anyway.

</comment><comment><USER6> IOS apps might also need a Stack (however full).

</comment><comment><USER7> Depends on what you want to build first ?</comment>


Tim Berners-Lee: The year open data went worldwide (TED) - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YcZ3Zqk0a8

<comment><USER2> I thought this was a re-post of his "Raw Data Now" talk, but instead it's actually a follow up. Especially interesting is the Open Street Map demo, especially for Haiti before and after the recent earthquake. (Then my browser locked up with about a minute to go.)

</comment><comment><USER3> Drupal is becoming an important player here because RDFa is now baked in. Both the US and UK government data sites run on Drupal (as does Tim's own site).</comment>


Anthony Burgess at 100: unearthly powers - <AUTHOR> http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/anthony-burgess-at-100-unearthly-powers-clockwork-orange <comment><USER2> As a teenager I came across the eclectic medley of Anthony Burgess novels in my school's library, and fell in love. They're all so vastly different and weird and yet they made for great reading:

\- The Wanting Seed: sci-fi about an overpopulated planet, full of dry humor

\- The End of the World News: a musical about Trotsky's final days in Mexico, mixed with Freud and an Earth-destroying comet. Supremely weird but entertaining

\- Tremor of Intent: Ian Fleming-style spy novel

He also wrote books on linguistics and was a composer. (Not sure about his compositions, but I have a degree in linguistics and found "A Mouthful of Air" to be solid.) Really underrated writer.

<comment><USER3> I had the same experience in my teenage years. I also remember enjoying 'One Hand Clapping.'

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The quasi-religious stuff in Burgess gets old fast, but boy, the man could write. His best novels are linguistic powerhouse rollercoasters, and they stand up well to repeat readings.

The Long Day Wanes trilogi and Kingdom Of The Wicked are among my personal favourites.

</comment><comment><USER5> His subtitling in English of _Cyrano de Bergerac_ (1990) was a major part of why I fell in love with that film.

</comment><comment><USER6> His memoir _Little Wilson and Big God_ is most interesting also.</comment>


How can I recover my hacked email account? - <AUTHOR>

A number of years ago, I created an email account under yahoo. I lost track of it, and eventually I lost interest in it. Recently though, it has been sending emails to all of my contacts that I had in it. Yahoo is of no help, so I figured I would ask a techsmart group of people for help. <comment><USER2> Try using this:

<https://edit.yahoo.com/forgotroot/>

Or contact Yahoo at email@example.com or 1-408-349-1572 and explain the situation.</comment>


Ask HN: Fine Physics? - <AUTHOR>

Do you think physics needs to be divided into Hard physics and Fine Physics to distinguish cosmogonic and eschatological speculations from local physics with practical applications? My justification for this division is here: http://science1.wordpress.com/2010/10/03/hard-physics-versus-fine-physics/ <comment><AUTHOR> [http://science1.wordpress.com/2010/10/03/hard-physics- versus...](http://science1.wordpress.com/2010/10/03/hard-physics-versus-fine- physics/)</comment>


Combining SGX and Rowhammer for undetectable malware - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1710.00551 <comment><AUTHOR> This is bananas.

We've known for about 2 years now that Rowhammer is nominally possible. This research is interesting, because it blows away all of our assumptions about mitigations to Rowhammer: it even defeats all of them _at the same time_.

For example: it turns out it's not necessary to hammer multiple DRAM rows to trigger the bug, you can just go after a single location. This makes the attack more stealthy but also faster. They've developed new techniques for deterministically modifying userspace binaries without exhausting memory. Preventing exhaustion-based page placement was thought to prevent Rowhammer attacks, but it turns that's not necessary either. The new technique is crazy clever, exploiting specific performance tweaks in the Linux page cache to place a page right where they want it (in physical RAM). They also made the techniques for memory pattern mapping (spraying and grooming) much, much more subtle, making it harder to track the attack from stats. And, in a final coup de grace, they shoved all of this into Intel SGX, which does a mostly-good job of hiding this from the rest of the system (including the kernel), by design. In particular, you can't look at performance counters anymore to know that something is banging the heck out of something, because SGX bypasses those.

The "obvious" attack is to go after sudo to get root. They do that. Another cool one is that SGX, when it detects tampering, will _halt the entire damn box_ until you power cycle it. So turns out you can cause some pretty serious havoc :)</comment>


Ask HN: Dealing with Low Quality .gmail, .yandex, .qq etc. Trial Subscribers - <AUTHOR> Hi,
I'm a bootstrapped SaaS owner and get a ton of trial users with email domains like gmail, qq, yandex.ru etc. They all have one thing in common: they log in, click around and never come back. Zero conversions up to now.
The obvious thing would be to block them, but I do see a valid use case for "personal users" that later convert or evangelize their companies.
I'm pretty early stage, so the problem is a bit of a balance between "learning from as many users as possible" & "not wasting time & resources"
My SaaS is a tech B2B service in the developer / devops market.
Any tips or experiences to share from SaaS owners? <comment><USER2> I'm not quite clear on why "the obvious thing would be to block them". Do you incur costs for each user that signs up? Otherwise: what's the harm?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, there is a $$ cost in the trial period. In my case they use cloud resources (lambda time mostly).

But there is also the "clogging" of analytics pipelines, reports and overview in general. If for every geniune paying business user there are 50 qq or yandex users lots of stats and metrixs get hard to interpret or use.</comment></comment>


DNA seen through the eyes of a coder - <AUTHOR> http://ds9a.nl/amazing-dna/

<comment><USER2> If DNA came about as a product of chance, would it be possible to create a computer coding language through some sort of electronic evolution/iteration system?

<comment><USER3> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_programming>

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Fundamental misunderstanding: human code is made by human brains. Human brains understand everything (including code) via embodied metaphors and deal with complexity by splitting it into modules, then understanding each module abstractly, pushing away the details. Evolution doesn't work that way, at all. Why would it?

<comment><USER4> I don't see a misunderstanding. The page points out that evolved DNA code and human-designed computer code use several of the same techniques.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Fastify has 13k stars on GitHub, but no traction in HN. Why? - <AUTHOR> Fastify [1] has been submitted to HN for several times [2], but it has never gotten more than 3 upvotes. However, it is hugely popular in GitHub. Can anyone explain this? I have no clue. Thank you!<p>[1]: https://github.com/fastify/fastify<p>[2]: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=fastify <comment><USER2> My take.

Believe it or not, I don't think the landing page for fastify makes a compelling value proposition. You would think that "fast" sells, and it appeals to me, but when I have test marketed "fast" I've found people don't respond the same way I do.

At the bottom of the page I see a whole bunch of logos and names that look like the logos and names of trendy modern companies except I don't recognize the names. It just doesn't connect to me.

There are so many web servers and frameworks out there that it's not easy to stand out, particularly in the Javascript world. As excited as people are about Node, and as much as using the same language on the front end and the back end is a "holy grail", most of the people I know who write front ends based on React and that kinda technology still use Java, Scala, Python, Ruby or something else on the back end.

Other than that, HN is not really a pure "technical" forum. I think it uniquely covers people who are interested in both technology and business so if want to get people's attention you have to show people something they haven't seen before and that they recognize they haven't seen before.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't think anyone can give a proper answer other than a shrug and/or a "dunno".

Off the top of my head: It could be popular with a crowd that doesn't visit HN. It could have fake GitHub stars. It could be a project with very bad PR. It could be the type of small project that Just Works, and therefore people don't feel a need to talk about it (see: the Mate Desktop Environment).

Answering for me, in case it helps: I never heard of it, I don't program in Node.js, and I already have a web framework of choice. Of these three, I believe the third to be the most likely answer for your question.</comment>


Hibernate Your EC2 Instances - <AUTHOR> https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/new-hibernate-your-ec2-instances/ <comment><USER2> This is pretty cool, only caveat to hibernate is the EBS volume has be encrypted beforehand.

<comment><USER3> And only applies to Amazon Linux 1, not other operating systems yet.</comment></comment>


On Settlement Finality - <AUTHOR> https://blog.ethereum.org/2016/05/09/on-settlement-finality/ <comment><USER2> > First of all, a very important philosophical point to make is that there is > no system in the world that offers truly 100% settlement finality in the > literal sense of the term. If share ownership is recorded on a paper > registry, then it is always possible for the registry to burn down, or for a > hooligan to run into the registry, draw a "c" in front of every "1" to make > it look like a "9", and run out.

This is a disingenuous straw-man argument. Of course _paper_ records can never offer settlement finality, but a centralized _cryptographic_ system certainly can (or, at least, it can offer settlement finality with confidence equal to that of the underlying cryptographic system).

<comment><USER3> I think the bigger point is that settlement, at some level, is a social fiction. Anything in the physical world can be altered or voided through the use of force. We're talking about ledgers across potentially unstable economies and governments.

<comment><USER2> > settlement, at some level, is a social fiction

No. This has been true historically, but with the advent of modern cryptography (and specifically with the invention of secure digital signatures) it is no longer true (or at least it need no longer be true). And the folks at Etherium surely know this, which is why the paper ledger argument is not merely a straw man but also disingenuous.

<comment><USER3> Look, I'm a big crypto fan myself. I appreciate what you're saying, but it doesn't match the real world. Put land grants on the blockchain. Crypto all you want, but the guys with guns can seize the land next regime change.

What you're saying is only true, AFAIK, for bearer bond type instruments.

<comment><USER2> > the guys with guns can seize the land next regime change.

Sure, violence trumps everything. But if civilization is sufficiently intact that the concept of "settlement of a financial transaction" is a meaningful concept, the crypto + a trusted third party can provide it. (Actually, the third party doesn't even have to be trusted, just agreed upon by all parties.)

> bearer bond type instruments

No, people with guns can steal those too. Violence trumps everything.

<comment><USER3> I know bearer bonds can be stolen. What I meant is that the idea of "ownership" is more complicated than you're admitting.

We can choose to ignore what the crypto says about who owns an underlying asset. The asset can be seized, destroyed, etc. I mention bearer bonds in this context because if the value is native to the crypto- as is the case with digital currencies- settlement is more meaningful.

<comment><USER2> I'm not talking about ownership, I'm talking about settlement finality. While these two concepts are closely related, they are not the same. Crytography cannot guarantee ownership. Ultimately force is the only thing that can do that. But crypto can guarantee settlement finality with a confidence equal to one's ability to keep a secret key secure.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


New Twitter Research: Men Follow Men and Nobody Tweets - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/cs/2009/06/new_twitter_research_men_follo.html

<comment><USER2> The instant headline from this, for me, is that 10% of Twitter users use it to talk: 90% use it, if at all, to read.

There's probably something deep here: about the difference between Facebook- style reciprocal friending, where you're probably talking with people you know pretty well, and Web/pub-sub style "give me these messages, please" arrangements like Twitter, and the dynamics behind these two media.

Twitter feels like a performance space; Facebook really doesn't. Myspace, if you're on there as a musician, is somewhere in between...</comment>


Fundamentals of Video Game Design (4-Part Video Course) - <AUTHOR> http://lifebyexperimentation.com/2014/05/fundamentals-of-game-design/

<comment><USER2> I looked the slides for the first class. They looked fine, although the video is probably where all the meat is.

But I was extremely dissapointed with your Resources slide. Reddit, Twitter and Indie Game the Movie? Where is "A Theory of Fun for Game Design", "The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses", "Andrew Rollings and Ernest Adams on Game Design", etc. Where is the real, valid and, may I say, academic knowledge we have?

You say have worked in the industry, and I believe you, but if this the direction you give people to learn more (or they are your sources), I kinda doubt the validity of your knowledge.

I mean, Indie Game the Movie? What does that have to do with Game Design?</comment>


Which is your (daily) favourite RSS feed? - <AUTHOR> In the last few months I started reading RSS feeds again. Unfortunately I only have three in my reader. My focus is on programming, electrical engineering, science and computer science.  Hereby I ask you what your favorite RSS feeds are, whose authors post daily. Please do not use feeds from popular magazines like Techcrunch or Gizmodo etc. <comment><USER2> I grab them from Reddit, there's subs for everything and it's all human curated so (generally) high quality.</comment>


The Benefits of Slower Traffic, Measured in Money and Lives - <AUTHOR> http://www.citylab.com/cityfixer/2015/10/the-benefits-of-slower-traffic-measured-in-money-and-lives/408472/ <comment><USER2> I think the article's argument is framed terribly bad. It's not about "increasing traffic jams". It's about bringing back a vital and necessary balance in our infrastructure, city planning, and our cultural approach.

You can not solve automobile traffic and long travel times by adding ever bigger roads/overpasses/tunnels without facing exponentially increasing maintenance costs, expensive land requirements, and massive works projects. On top of that, the surrounding property value and economic generation plummets as roads expand and become congested.

Everything points to an urgent call to scale back our automobile oriented country: for our health, humans lives, economy, foreign policy, and environment.

<comment><USER3> Funny, I thought the article was about safety, about not killing people, rather than any sort of car-bike urban balance.

>>One way to improve safety on this type of urban street is through a road diet. [...] with any leftover space going to curb parking and perhaps bike lanes.

It would seem that making thing better for bikes is a lower priority in the OP than pedestrian safety, even lower than on-street parking for cars. Given that the author draws the bike lanes between parked and moving cars, bicycle safety is clearly not the goal. They are out to protect pedestrians from all things faster than a walking pace. I wouldn't read in any car v. bike politics.

<comment><USER2> Unsurprisingly, I usually bike to work and take a keen interest on bike safety improvements. I hate the "protected bike lane" phenomenon with a passion. My most common incidents with cars start with not being seen by the driver. A "protected" bike lane destroys whatever little visibility I have to begin with and worse, the increased turning radius means that what was once a mild sideswipe will become a T-bone.

As a protected bike lane is usually also a wider than normal bike lane, ~8' vs ~4', I posit that you see a huge perceived and actual safety increase by just taking the existing normal bike lane and widening it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't see how increasing traffic jams is ever a viable long term solution. Why not consider things like pedestrian overpasses for large 4 lane streets. I guess in north America there's no point of even mentioning the possibility of having a reasonable public transportation system...

<comment><USER5> > I guess in north America there's no point of even mentioning the possibility > of having a reasonable public transportation system...

This is the main problem. If there was fast/rapid public transit available (read: not just crappy bus lines), much of the car traffic would be reduced, and you could safely remove traffic lanes and slow traffic down without increasing congestion or trip times.

But that would involve spending money on a public service. Which is an impossibility in the US. So instead, we get "urbanists" rushing to eliminate traffic capacity because that has no cost.

But in truth, all these "road diets" actually do is increase congestion, increase drive time, and _displace_ (not eliminate) the traffic accidents the author is concerned about.

<comment><USER6> You're assuming zero sum rather than supply and demand. When supply is decreased, fewer car trips happen in the first place because some marginal trips are combined or cancelled. This less likely to happen for commuting but can easily happen for shopping and entertainment where there are lots of choices.

<comment><USER7> This is a point that seems to be overlooked surprisingly often in transport debates: people generally travel _for a reason_. There are as many reasons to run a safe, efficient transport infrastructure as there are reasons for people to make a journey. Every time we make a change to the infrastructure that deters someone from making a journey, there is almost certainly a consequential loss to someone's business and/or someone's quality of life. We could obviously make the roads much safer and more environmentally friendly overnight by just banning all motor traffic, but the effects on our society wouldn't be pretty.

<comment><USER8> It's selfish to ask us to overlook the needs of the people who make their homes in a place for the benefit of some few who choose to pass through. People adapt. If a person decides that a trip is too expensive, they will find another trip that meets their needs. If a business loses some customers from outside it's neighborhood, then perhaps there will be an offset from within.

<comment><USER7> _It 's selfish to ask us to overlook the needs of the people who make their homes in a place for the benefit of some few who choose to pass through._

That may be true, but it's _also_ selfish for people who inevitably travel themselves as part of their own lives to expect everyone else to behave differently. The degree of NIMBY thinking in the setting of public travel policy is one of the biggest problems we have with making progress.

I saw some interesting but all too predictable research not long ago. It was about people who campaign for heavy restrictions on driving in their own (often expensive, desirable, close to local amenities) area, such as lower speed limits, traffic calming measures, extra crossings, or even closing roads to motor traffic entirely. A remarkably high proportion of those same people, when covertly observed, drove their own (often expensive, powerful, inefficient, dangerous) vehicles in _exactly_ the kinds of ways they cite as objectionable in their own back yard, as little as a half-mile down the road going through someone else's residential area, or past someone else's kid's school, or on the way to some other local shopping centre.

So, there is certainly a lot we can and should do to improve road safety, but like administering first aid, it should be based on evidence and real need, not who is crying the loudest or making the most emotional appeal for help.

Unfortunately a lot of the time these kinds of travel infrastructure decisions are made at a very local level, in response to very local pressure from relatively small numbers of very vocal campaigners. Local politicians with the authority to make the decisions are, in practice, more accountable to a few hundred people living within a mile of their home than they are to national governments and their evidence-based policy frameworks and even well-funded research organisations. Consequently, the number of people effectively influencing policy on their own doorstep may be far less than the number of people actually using that travel infrastructure every day, but the latter don't get a vote and so the systemic bias frequently results in effects akin to a tragedy of the commons. Maybe it's different where you are, but in the UK this happens very often and very obviously, and it's a real problem.

 _People adapt. If a person decides that a trip is too expensive, they will find another trip that meets their needs._

Or they'll stay at home and let their kids watch TV and play on their Xbox.

 _If a business loses some customers from outside it 's neighborhood, then perhaps there will be an offset from within._

If this really happened very much then it wouldn't be local businesses who are usually the first and most vocal critics of travel-hostile changes in local policy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Traffic and vehicle speed are two different things. Slowing cars can be done without slowing traffic. Traffic is limited by the carrying capacity of the road. More, but slower and smaller, lanes can handle the same amount of traffic while still slowing cars. Simply halving the number of lanes (4 to 2) without replacing the carrying capacity, only offloads through traffic to other areas. It would be better to replace the one fast+big road with multiple slower and smaller roads.

And the bike lanes in the OP are awful. Those bikes don't want to share pavement with moving cars. Put that lane on the other side of the parking lane, preferably with a line of grass/trees shielding it from moving traffic. That keeps everyone happy.

(Those painted green lanes are also a horror for motorcycles in the rain. They must turn, lean and accelerate all at once on that wet paint when entering such a road.)

<comment><USER7> You're right that the cycle lanes shown are awful in almost every way. They're too narrow, in the dooring zone for the parked cars, barely separated from the main traffic lane, and so on.

I just wanted to add that putting dedicated cycle paths along the outer edge of main roads with hard segregation also brings challenges of its own. In particular, if the cyclists then have to give way at every side street their path crosses, this is horrendously inefficient for cycling and will cause most experienced cyclists to simply use the main road instead in a residential setting.

From what I've seen so far, the Dutch seem to have some of the most promising ideas about designing genuine multi-modal transport routes, with proper attention paid to motor traffic, cycles and pedestrians both at junctions and on longer, faster, less interrupted routes. I wish more people were paying attention to their ideas, because they've figured out much better solutions to a lot of common scenarios than most of us have.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Not to put down the hard work these people do, but I really think slowing traffic is backwards thinking. Its the same advice that tells us to turn off electrical appliances to save the environment.

That kind of thinking is really about scaling back technological advances. To save something. Really technology should be employed to solve the problem.

Automated cars will solve the problem being reported here. New energy research will solve the power problem. Why do we need to take civilization back 50 years to get a benefit?

<comment><USER10> Why do you think everyone driving cars and using a lot of electricity is progressive?

I think it would make more sense to use metrics like happiness, health, education standard etc. of the population and whatever policies increase those should be deemed progressive.

The prevalence of cars for example, I would argue is a regression for society. They emit greenhouse gases, fill our air with toxins and carcinogens, encourage many diseases through lack of exercise, are the number one cause of violent death, and their popularity has changed the urban fabric into an environment that is not fit for humans and for human societies to grow.

<comment><USER10> Perhaps you simply think that all the changes that have happened since 1965 are progress. Well, in that time the wealth gap between the rich and the poor has increased, greenhouse gas emissions have continued to rise, contamination of soil, over-irrigation, flogging the land, overfishing etc. have all increased and many other non-renewable resources have been consumed or otherwise destroyed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> A bike lane _between_ traffic and parking lane? Are those people insane?

</comment><comment><USER12> Another day, another article filled with twenty something single professionals who don't own cars because they live in a 600 square foot apartment in a dense downtown core for $4000 a month saying "Why can't everybody be more like me?"

<comment><USER13> Or "Why can't everyone else pay for their own lifestyle choices instead of getting subsidized by me?"

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Similarly to the US's problems with gun violence. Other industrialised nations have implemented a solution to the problem of over-reliance on cars. Look at Denmark. They faced similar issues in the 70's and have since methodically scaled back car infrastructure in favour of rail, cycling, walking, made possible by suitable city planning.

[http://www.dst.dk/en/Statistik/emner/transport](http://www.dst.dk/en/Statistik/emner/transport)</comment>


Russia has developed a nuclear-powered cruise missile - <AUTHOR> https://www.cbsnews.com/news/vladimir-putin-russia-nuclear-weapons-including-invincible-cruise-missile/ <comment><USER2> This reminds me of this horrendousity: [https://jalopnik.com/the-flying- crowbar-the-insane-doomsday-...](https://jalopnik.com/the-flying-crowbar-the- insane-doomsday-weapon-america-1435286216)

</comment><comment><USER3> I doubt this will see much traction. A nuclear powered ramjet will not be a small device (like the ALCM, or the upcoming LRSO), and will not be cheap. If it's large, putting out a lot of heat, it will be detectable. If it can be detected, it can be shot down.

<comment><USER4> Cruise missiles fly very, very low. No chance of ground-based radar noticing them for long enough to shoot anything (milliseconds as they streak overhead). So space-based, or some pursuit missile seems like the only chance of shooting them down.

<comment><USER3> Current plans are for fighters to be directed by AWACs. But the larger the missile, the higher it has to fly. It's difficult on an airframe to fly low and fast, so the detection range will increase the higher the altitude.

<comment><USER4> Often height is for fuel efficiency? Thinner air up there. With an atomic engine, that's moot.

<comment><USER3> Higher altitude to avoid CFIT (controlled flight into terrain). The faster you fly, the less reaction time you have. So instead of being able to hug the ground at say 100ft AGL, you have to bump up to 1000ft.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Interesting that he's out rattling the saber after US opened a can of whoop a$$ on his undocumented mercenaries in Syria. The chess pieces are moving around the board a little more vigorously.

</comment><comment><USER6> The sad part is that they're kind of right in doing so.

NATO went too far with deploying anti-ICBM systems right next to Russia's border (with the Ukraine conflict being the most obvious result of this strategy) essentially nullifying their ability to strike back in case of war. So now they have to find a new way to deliver their weapons, with our missile shield in place, be it cruize missiles or something else, and this is escalating the new cold war.

I don't like seeing research in nuclear weapons done by anyone, especially Russia, but I can't help but feel like this one is on NATO and not Russia.

<comment><USER7> > NATO went too far with deploying anti-ICBM systems right next to Russia's > border

How can it be too far to install an anti-missile system on your own territory? That seems eminently reasonable and uncontroversial to me. It's not even a euphemism is it? It literally is purely a defensive system?

It's like saying you provoked a burglar by putting a bigger lock on your door.

I've seen this opinion put forward and I don't really get it - wondering what your underlying principles to reach that opinion are?

<comment><USER8> > It's like saying you provoked a burglar by putting a bigger lock on your > door.

This is a poor analogy due to a nation-state not being analogous to a burglar. Especially due to a burglar being a deviant and a nation-state not (inherently) being a deviant. Also in your scenario, one party is deviant and the other is protecting their home (one-sided).

A defensive act like setting up missile shields runs counter to "mutually assured destruction" (it's not so mutual when one side has a missile shield).

<comment> Const-me > and a nation-state not (inherently) being a deviant.

I think modern Russia is a deviant. Here's a recent news about high-ranking officials doing large-scale international drug trafficking, using a government jet for that:

[http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/russia- argent...](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/russia-argentina- cocaine-smuggling-operation-plane-air-drugs-embassy-a8231406.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I wonder how useful for space exploration this could be? That is, make a non- cruise variant for long distance satellite/human launches?

<comment><USER10> I assume the Russian missile is a nuclear powered jet engine, assuming it exists, while for space you need a nuclear powered rocket engine. Different tech. The US tested a nuclear rocket engine on the ground in 1967 and it looked well cool. I'd vote for giving it's development a go. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_thermal_rocket#/media/...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_thermal_rocket#/media/File:NERVA_XE_nuclear_rocket_engine_being_transported_to_test_stand_- _GPN-2002-000143.jpg)

The US also built nuclear powered jet engines in the 60s but found for piloted aircraft you'd either need tons of lead shielding or kill the pilots. It's rumoured the Russians actually flew one and killed said pilots.</comment></comment>


Debit Card (Lack Of) Security - <AUTHOR> https://eamann.com/biz/debit-card-lack-security/

<comment><USER2> I had my debit card # stolen from am e-commerce shop in 1998, my credit union made me whole but the security officer told me there was just one digit that could be changed so I'd better not let it happen too many times.

I think these days it would be a little harder because of the cvv code, which you almost always need to have for a card not present transaction. To test out numbers in a card present situation you'd have to make a lot of fake cards and try them out, and I think you'd get caught pretty soon.

Payment security practically depends on defense in depth; since financial transactions are fairly traceable you need to DL some kind of money laundering such as sending mules out to buy luxury goods and then selling them on e-bay; as the other commenter puts it, the fees are enough to eat some losses now and then.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think banks are aware of the shortcomings of debit cards, but the risk far outweighs the need for any more security, why? Debit cards are like credit cards in that they are insured by the bank that issue them. Most debit cards even though they are tied to a real bank account thus resulting in varied availability of funds still have a limit on how much you can spend per day (unless you get the limit lifted).

The bank knows that they can take the risk of credit/debit card owners getting their details skimmed and an occasional rogue purchase being made. The amount will be merely written off, a relatively minor loss compared to what your bank will lose in a day from bad investments.

Pretty alarming nonetheless, but it is what it is in the financial world. Losses are expected.</comment>


Ask HN: How many options should I ask while joining startup? - <AUTHOR>

I have an opportunity to join early stage Startup in key developer role.
What compensation should I ask?
How many stock options should I ask? <comment><USER3> You should not ask for a number of stock options - you should ask for a percentage of the company.

In other words the number of stock options you get means nothing unless you put it in the context of total stock options. Its like saying you want 1000 coins and not mentioning the currency.

Without knowing your situation - tell them you want market salary and .1-.5% of the company in options. During negotiations value your options at $0 - <USER2> they happen to somehow materialize it will be a nice surprise bonus.

</comment><comment><USER4> How much you ask for depends on your expectations. Generally, they should be realistic. Often, they are not. Google Chefs are the exception.

Here's my crude Fuck You Money calculator:

<http://fumoney.kludgecode.com/default.aspx>

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice calculator. Thanks

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> There is not enough details here. How early, how many key employees and founders are there already. Some of these factors will influence what the typical average are given. Also what location.

<comment><AUTHOR> There are 2 founders. Currently, this startup is self funded. There are two developers. The POC is tested by beta clients. The location is Tel Aviv.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I have no real experience, other than hearing about peoples stock options being diluted to become worth almost nothing.

I would go for a decent monthly salary regardless of stock options, unless I really understood the ways I could be screwed. If it all goes extremely well then I'd try to negotiate a good salary increase or use the momentum to find a good job elsewhere, otherwise (statistically very likely) I have at least some money in the bank when things turn ugly.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree with you, that I should ask for a decent monthly salary. But having stock options is one of Startup benefits.

Regardless salary, how many stock options should I ask for?

<comment><USER7> If you are the first hire, have a market rate salary, post angel round, I think the going rate is around .1% to 2% (on the high end) vested over 4 years or whatever. But seconding most of what other people are saying, the stock options are most likely worth 1 month's salary at best with the default value of $0. Thus, it's better to negotiate for better salary.</comment></comment></comment>