I bought netflix.soy - <AUTHOR> https://tinyprojects.dev/posts/i_bought_netflix_dot_soy <comment><USER2> A Google domain name is lying on the ground. An IT guy walks past it. A friend asks: "Didn't you see the Google domain name there?" The IT guy replies: "I thought I saw something, but I must've imagined it. If there had been a Google domain on the ground, someone would've picked it up."

<comment><USER3> For anyone unfamiliar, this is a clever riff on a classic economics joke about the Efficient Market Hypothesis [1].

"Two economists are walking down the street and one of them notices what appears to be a $20 bill (or a $100 bill—the monetary amounts vary) on the sidewalk. "It's not a real $20 bill," the other economist declares. "If it were a real $20 bill, someone would have picked it up off the sidewalk already."

[1]: [https://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/if_...](https://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/if_it_were_a_real_20_bill/)

<comment><USER4> Except the $20 bill in this case is a $-10 bill (or whatever the domain name costs), as there is no profit to be made by registering a top company's trademark as a domain name.

<comment><USER5> While it is an unwinnable case, there is a positive dollar amount to settling out of court.

<comment><USER6> Especially if you have a cute story like the MikeRoweSoft guy did.

<comment><USER7> I think Nissan.com is more illustrative -- it was a guy named Nissan[1] who had an actual computer business in his name and got to keep it away from Nissan Motors, but now his site has a lot more to do bragging about his fight with the motor company than actual computer stuff.

[1] Hebrew/Israeli name usually transliterated as "Nisan"

<comment><USER8> Interesting, why doesn't Nissan motor just paid more money say a million for it?

Surely they can afford it.

<comment><USER9> Took a quick look at the case. I'm guessing some corp lawyer, maybe even general counsel, didn't have enough "real work" to do and needed to make a name for himself. Then it became a giant d __* measuring contest.

Source: Went to law school. Never practiced though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Interestingly, I recently saw a couple a couple of google.* domains available on Google Domains, including some reasonable-sounding ones: IIRC, google.tech (edit: google.page), google.business, and google.camp. Tried to purchase them but they instantly became unavailable the moment I tried to do so. The cynic in me thinks that Google has a special check for those and renews it themselves if someone tries…

More generally, however: all these TLDs are kind of stupid, and trying to make sure you own every single TLD for your business is similar to a protection racket where you have to pay just so something bad doesn't happen to you. Perhaps we should stop trying to make a billion of them.

<comment><USER11> Even better yet, it would be interesting if we just abandoned TLDs. There is no reason why [http://google/](http://google/) can't work, really, with a bunch of infrastructure changes.

<comment><USER12> Infrastructure changes aren't even needed; Google already owns the .google TLD. All they would need to do is attach an A record to the root.

<comment><USER13> ICANN doesn't allow A records on the DNS root on gTLDs. If they did, we already would've.

<comment><USER14> [http://cm./](http://cm./) used to resolve

<comment><USER15> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=974111](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=974111)

[http://to./](http://to./) used to be a URL shortener.

Either the rules on ccTLDs are different, or it's a recentish crackdown.

<comment><USER16> There are no rules for ccTLDs, which their countries like to claim as sovereign property (see [https://meetings.icann.org/en/dublin54/schedule/wed- ccnso-me...](https://meetings.icann.org/en/dublin54/schedule/wed-ccnso- members/presentation-sovereignty-property-rights-21oct15-en.pdf) and [https://gac.icann.org/principles-and- guidelines/public/princ...](https://gac.icann.org/principles-and- guidelines/public/principles-cctlds.pdf) for some of the views)

Some ccTLDS voluntarily agree to abide by the same rules and operational requirements as the gTLDs - [https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/cctld-2012-02-25-en](https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/cctld-2012-02-25-en) has more details.

This means, for example, than ccTLDs aren't bound by the findings from SAC053 at [https://www.icann.org/en/system/files/files/sac-053-en.pdf](https://www.icann.org/en/system/files/files/sac-053-en.pdf) which have been included in the gTLD contracts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > google.com in Hebrew! And I could actually buy it. It bloody worked.

In a couple of weeks the follow-up "Google cancelled my Gmail account and won't tell me why"

<comment><USER18> Was driving to my local park when Android Auto directed me down a dark alley whereupon I was beaten by some hired goons.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> There's a terrible enterprise security product that can be configured by IT to quasi-MITM your company web traffic. Instead of relying on enterprises pushing their own trusted root certs and MITMing the whole session this terrible product redirects all traffic to (and I'm not kidding here) urls like "www.terriblesecuritycompanyname.com/www.originalurl.com" when the user accesses www.originalurl.com.

So this "enterprise security" company encourages end users to put information such as passwords into www.terriblesecuritycompanyname.com/owa.office365.com for example. Of course everyone has SSO enabled for Office 365 but everyone is also used to SSO sometimes breaking and falling back to forms based auth so people have no issue typing their passwords into any page that looks somewhat legit as long as the URL is close to what they expect and has a little lock next to it.

Anyway www.turriblesecuritycompanyname.com is available and I'm waiting for someone nefarious to purchase it and start sending phishing emails with links to www.turriblesecuritycompany.com/owa.office365.com embedded in them.

<comment><USER20> It depends on which ethical framework you subscribe to, but if I were in your shoes using my ethical framework, it seems like the small cost to me to purchasing an available domain (making the assumption here it's a standard buy and it's not one of those "make an offer for $10k" domains...) to mitigate a lot of potential hurt to other people would make me lean toward just purchasing the domain myself, or at least making the correct people aware. An equally valid counterexample would be a framework where you didn't cause the harm, so you have no obligation to intervene.

<comment><USER21> Your ethical framework in this case could clash with the arguably broken legal framework that we currently live in.

Buying a domain like that could get you into legal trouble once it is found out and people track sensitive traffic funneling to the domain. Even if you aren't doing anything with the information.

<comment><USER19> This, exactly.

One thing I've learned about "infosec" companies is that their litigiousness is inversely proportional to their actual level of security.

The similar domains I've seen are only $9 though so it's just a matter of time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> One winter day, my wife looked down the coast and noticed that the bell buoy that marked the entrance to Plum Island Sound was lying on the beach. This thing is enormous, about 30 ft long. We drove down and walked around it with some other curious people. Took some pictures.

She thought that we ought to report it. I told her that many people would already have done that. A couple of days went by and there didn't seem to be any action.

So we finally called the Coast Guard. They said, "Wow, we didn't know that, thanks very much!"

<comment><USER23> The validity of this effect has been called into question, but for a long time, this was the "standard response" to situations like this:

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

<comment><USER24> Yeah the Kitty Genovese (sp) story is an example right? Wasn't that proven to be a myth or something?

<comment><USER25> Yes, just like Stockholm Syndrome, it was made up to cover up a bungled police response. Neither one is a real thing.

<comment><USER26> Source? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome#FBI_Law_Enf...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome#FBI_Law_Enforcement_Bulletin_\(1999\)) says it's rare but FBI seems to be saying it is a real thing.

<comment><USER25> FBI isn't exactly a trustworthy source of psychology. Psychologists and the DSM do not recognise it as a real thing.

Here is the backstory of how it was created: [https://twitter.com/sezmohammed/status/1252500993972948992](https://twitter.com/sezmohammed/status/1252500993972948992)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I don't really agree with the premise of this post. Why _should_ Netflix or Google have to buy a domain for every stupid gTLD that someone paid a few $100k to create? The author makes it sound like that's somehow an oversight on their part.

If anything, it's sad that they ended up having to own so many gTLDs just to prevent abuse.

<comment><USER28> I think that's what he's saying: that this system of hundreds of TLDs means that companies can easily miss one and that becomes a vector for phishing, etc. It sounded like he was blaming ICANN, not Netflix or Google.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I'm from Israel, and this is the first time I've heard about the .קום tld. I've never seen any website that uses it.

The author mentioned that creating a new tld costs a minimum of 185k USD. This makes me wonder who would pay this kind of money for this completely useless tld.

<comment><USER30> If they managed it for only $185k I'm impressed, maybe if you did several on the same infrastructure.

It's a gold mine offering. There was a long queue of people quite sure that .binglebongle would be the new .com. Sometimes it was a marginally less stupid plan, like we can be a regional alternative - and Russia even has one that's actually making money - it isn't taking over the world, but it's Cyrillic and was never intended to. But most gold mines never produce gold, they just suck up people's money and dreams and spit out the bones.

The obscure brand TLDs are funnier. Not brands you've heard of like google, brands who are their own tiny corner of the non-IT world and figured they ought to have a TLD, so now they do to the tune of maybe six figures a year.

The Kerry Group for example owns several, as do some US financial outfits. Why? Because nobody who knew this was a stupid idea was in the room when it got decided.

<comment><USER31> > The obscure brand TLDs are funnier. Not brands you've heard of like google, > brands who are their own tiny corner of the non-IT world and figured they > ought to have a TLD, so now they do to the tune of maybe six figures a year.

While everyone here has certainly heard of Softbank, I find it amusing that they have their own TLD too (with sites like [https://group.softbank/](https://group.softbank/)).

<comment><USER32> > everyone here has certainly heard of softbank

not until your comment had I heard of "softbank"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> If these companies notice, they can file a UDRP ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_Domain-Name_Dispute- Re...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_Domain-Name_Dispute- Resolution_Policy)) request, on the basis that the domains infringe their trademarks, and were registered and used in "bad faith".

<comment><USER34> >and were registered and used in "bad faith".

How were they registered in bad faith? He's not extorting money from netfilx, nor is he trying to deceive people into thinking he's neflix.

<comment><USER13> UDRP typically rules in favor of the holder of the unambiguous trademark in these kinds of cases. As an example, "Exxon Mobil" refers unambiguously to a single entity only, and has no other possible uses, so anyone registering exxonmobil.{anything} would lose if the company came after them. No one else has any right to that trademark, and ICANN enforces trademark rights on domains.

If the trademark already existed when you bought the domain, and especially if it's widely used and ambiguous, you're gonna lose that domain if the company comes after you.

Contrast this with the case of, e.g., McDonald, which is a widely used surname that predates the existence of the trademark. So long as you specifically aren't trying to cause confusion with the McDonalds restaurant trademark, you _can_ use "mcdonalds" in a domain name.

<comment><USER35> What about .sucks? Couldn't one claim free speech? [https://www.forbes.com/sites/rogerkay/2015/06/29/saga-of- suc...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/rogerkay/2015/06/29/saga-of-sucks-domain- generates-laughter-agony/)

<comment><USER36> Free speech is a right issued by governments to the people.

It is not a valid concept between two private parties.

[https://money.cnn.com/2017/08/08/technology/google- workplace...](https://money.cnn.com/2017/08/08/technology/google-workplace- free-speech/index.html)

<comment><USER37> Yes, but the argument GP responded to was that "ICANN enforces trademark rights on domains" and that "If the trademark already existed when you bought the domain, and especially if it's widely used and ambiguous, you're gonna lose that domain if the company comes after you."

He argues that the practice has its basis in trademark laws. If it is so, nominative use of a trademark to e.g. criticize a product is considered fair use and shouldn't be ruled out by ICANN on that basis. It either wouldn't be, or ICANN have some other basis than trademark law for their rulings.

So GP's point raises an interesting question. If you had registered e.g. "google.sucks" or something similar in which the FQDN arguably forms a valid nominative use in itself in good faith to use that domain to criticize Google's business decisions and products, does ICANN have some other policy outside respecting trademark law that would compel them to take the name back and give it to Google?

The answer to that question isn't "Free speech is a right issued by governments to the people". That's a pointless non sequitur at best, and I'm frankly tired of hearing it used in defense of huge monopolies that are well deserved of scrutiny in the interest of defending freedom of expression.

<comment><USER36> I agree in that perhaps entities with a public platform (in this case, literally the internet domain) should be compelled to provide reasonably equal access/equal speech rights to everybody.

However, the law is not in that rationale's favor. US courts have repeatedly rejected the argument that private companies are state actors subject to the 1st Amendment [0].

The reality is that the internet is governed almost entirely by private companies.

[https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R45650](https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R45650)

<comment><USER37> _> I agree in that perhaps entities with a public platform (in this case, literally the internet domain) should be compelled to provide reasonably equal access/equal speech rights to everybody._

Agree with who? I said that _I 'm tired of seeing the defense_, especially when it's in response to a concrete question that it doesn't answer. You apparently disagree with that entirely. I'm not tired of the defense because I don't understand it, I'm tired of it because I _do_ understand it and don't need constant reminders of it to derail legitimate discussions of how ICANN deals with possibly trademark infringing uses of their services.

I don't know what makes you believe that I don't understand that and keep posting links irrelevant to how ICANN deals with these cases, which again is the question being asked. I'm frankly not sure how I didn't make that clear in my last reply.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> The whole framework arounds TLDs is very strange to me. One one hand, opening up all these gTLDs was supposed to alleviate problems with domain parking and name clashes (e.g. you could disambiguate your .blog from a .pizza restaurant). But all this did was shift the parking to other domains, some of which are ludicrously overpriced (anyone remember the .io hype?)

Secondly, regardless of where your site is hosted, you're also bound by the registrar's laws/restrictions (especially for ccTLDs), which doesn't make sense for something that is purely a routing mechanism that translates a name to an IP. It'd be fine if domain names were plentiful, but domain hacks[0] also make people use TLDs without regard to considering their territory or any implications.

The whole .org fiasco only proved further that this model with ICANN and for- profit registrars isn't tenable and a horrible fit for an open distributed internet. All these perverse incentives and political fuckery should not exist for something that is an essential part of a worldwide utility.

I'd love if HNers could share any promising alternatives to our current DNS system.

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

</comment><comment><USER39> This is the first time in a couple years that I have seen a reference to myself while reading an article. Thanks for the surprise!

> No. They're welcome to have them back anytime they want. They could probably > do it pretty forcibly if I refused to budge too (see Microsoft vs. > MikeRoweSoft).

<comment><USER40> Do you still have that Xbox?

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> 26 years ago: [https://www.wired.com/1994/10/mcdonalds/](https://www.wired.com/1994/10/mcdonalds/)

</comment><comment><USER42> I was just talking to a friend yesterday about "domain hacks" (where you spell some word using the TLD) in the context of country-code TLDs. Those raise some interesting issues for political reasons [1, 2].

For the newer TLDs like .soy, .pizza, .restaurant, etc. I really can't imagine that these would be adopted quickly. Even to me, these are barely recognized as URLs at all. And the possibility for domain name confusion really skyrockets, as demonstrated by the submission.

[1] [https://priceonomics.com/the-rise-and-fall-of- ly/](https://priceonomics.com/the-rise-and-fall-of-ly/) [2] [https://www.thewebmaster.com/hosting/2016/feb/27/io-tld- top-...](https://www.thewebmaster.com/hosting/2016/feb/27/io-tld-top-level- domain/#1-the-chagossians-do-not-benefit-from-the-io-tld)

</comment><comment><USER43> These sorts of "I found a name collision" blog posts often use the possibility of phishing to justify their implication of alarm.

I don't really buy it, though. I mean, I know that phishing is a major problem, but I don't buy that this discovery makes the problem of phishing any worse. There are an infinite number of ways to configure URLs to pass a glance test, which is the most you'll get from most users.

</comment><comment><USER44> > large sum of money

No, they will file a dispute and get them at registration cost, because they own the trademark.

<comment><USER45> Not always, i had for a few years the domain name of a top 10 website we all know, with a TLD for my country (.pt). I just kept it and did nothing with it and one day got a €30k offer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> I used to work for a Big Media Company. They used to scramble to by BigMediaCompany.<new tld> whenever there was a new tld.

Then one day they stopped. The legal department decided that if someone were to buy it and use it in a way that infringed on their trademark, it would be cheaper/easier to sue or file an injunction.

For a while it was an extortion game. A new .tld like ".mobi" or ".music" would start, and they'd offer the names to fortune 500 trademark holders for $$$$$.

</comment><comment><USER13> Registering unambiguous trademark domains falls under the category of "play stupid games, win stupid prizes".

<comment><USER47> Could anything worse than losing out on the registration fees ever actually happen?

<comment><USER13> Yes. You might have to deal with the hassle and expense of being sued.

There's all downside and no upside to playing this particular stupid game.

<comment><USER48> I mean technically, maybe, but it's _extremely_ unlikely that they'd sue without sending a C&D first. And given the lack of damage even if they did it'd likely get dismissed quickly with him just giving up the domain.

But... INAL and this is not legal advice.

<comment><USER13> The biggest trouble people get themselves into with this kind of thing is if they, upon being contacted by the company, ask for money instead of immediately offering to transfer the domain to them free of charge. At that point it's trademark cybersquatting and they have your own words in the email as proof.

Speaking from personal experience here: being on the end of any kind of notice with the threat of legal force, even if it's not a lawsuit yet, is the kind of stress you just don't need in your life.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> If anybody wants it, I compiled a list of Alexa's top 50 domains and their available TLDs:

[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1VaGA8344-13eGn9D1LAj...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1VaGA8344-13eGn9D1LAjC_xKXrLhAbzQZ2hCh3Agr9w/edit?usp=sharing)

Now with price!

</comment><comment> half-kh-hacker I own 인스타그램.닷컴, and (actually!) use it to share photos with my Korean friends.

But, uhh, I would certainly not decline if Facebook were to try to purchase it to make it reroute to Instagram.

<comment><USER50> I really like the landing page. heh.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> There is a service ran by ICANN called the "trademark clearlinghouse". It is a subscription service that trademark owners, e.g. Netflix, can use to be notified of any domain that is registered and may infringe on their trademark. It even allows for wildcard patterns in ongoing searches.

How do I know this? Because i received a takedown notice regarding a domain I run to sell background job licenses (oban.dev). The business is entirely unrelated, but the clearinghouse alerting system still brought it to the trademark holder's attention.

<comment><USER52> Was it from the Oban distillery? Trademark issues aside they make a great whisky.

<comment><USER51> Indeed. It was from their parent company. I'm a fan of their scotch, so it's a little bitter sweet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> gTLDs are nothing but a money play by ICANN and registrars and really make the internet a (slightly) more confusing and dangerous place. Within epsilon, all the money spent by companies on gTLDs is dead weight with no payoff in increased usability but only to prevent some naive user from being tricked.

The advice I give my non-techie friends is avoid going to any business website that is not a ".com"

<comment><USER54> > The advice I give my non-techie friends is avoid going to any business > website that is not a ".com"

You can't actually mean that? Country TLD? (Eg .CA) I'm actually pretty impressed by how the .CA registry (CIRA) has branded itself in Canada. There's even a bit more legitimacy for sites because it's clear they're operating in Canada (or have at least made an effort for Canadian representation).

<comment><USER55> Yeah, my default behaviour for any international company is to navigate to companyname.ca. Even if they don't use TLDs for their regional websites, it typically redirects to their Canadian site. (e.g. apple.ca redirects to apple.com/ca, microsoft.ca redirects to microsoft.com/en-ca, ikea.ca redirects to ikea.com/ca/en, etc.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> There have been some efforts to prevent this kind of thing like the Domains Protected Marks List [1] which allows a company to block a second level domain registration which is an exact or partial match of their registered trademark, at a cost.

In this case, a company can block their trademark being registered in 241 TLDs administered by Donuts, Inc. Other registries have equivalents but it only really works for large TLD holders (like Donuts, Minds+Machines etc) where you can block registrations on dozens or hundreds of TLDs.

1\. [https://donuts.domains/what-we-do/brand- protection](https://donuts.domains/what-we-do/brand-protection)

</comment><comment><USER57> > Did you know it costs a minimum of $185,000 to create your own domain name > ending?

If I were a blackhat with money, I'd register the ".con" TLD.

... Sure hoping a whitehat gets it first.

<comment><USER58> At least it would be self-descriptive! :D

<comment><USER57> Another self-descriptive one would be .orc

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> >Did you know it costs a minimum of $185,000 to create your own domain name ending? For that kind of money, I think ICANN, the registries and registrar sites have a massive responsibility to ensure that this never happens.

Which is why ICANN hasn't approved any new TLDs in years, and has a set of standards for registries and registrars to follow less they lose their licensing.

</comment><comment><USER60> Strange that Netflix hasn't drunk the Registry cool-aid and bought their "all- encompassing" TLD package which registers their trademark across all TLD's for a special price. On top of that, I'm doubly surprised Google hasn't taken action and already put this domain on hold in preemption of selling Netflix one of these deals.

<comment><USER34> >their "all-encompassing" TLD package which registers their trademark across all TLD's for a special price

That's a thing? What's preventing a predatory registry from being a holdout and demanding exorbitant prices?

<comment><USER60> That is a thing for at least one Registry that I know of (and worked for), I don't know if Google does the same, but I don't believe there is anything stopping them (please correct me if I'm wrong).

<comment><USER13> Google does not do the same.

<comment><USER60> Which makes me doubly surprised! It was my impression that this product offering was quite lucrative.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> The weird-looking symbols also go the other way around: if your language uses umlauts, you can score very good .com domains. For example, I have the equivalents to email.org, entrepreneur.com, and hacks.com in my native language. Some of these domains receive so much type-in traffic that they pay themselves in ad revenue each year.

</comment><comment><USER62> A somewhat relevant project of mine, where you can test how good you are at spotting these sort of domains: [https://www.jamieweb.net/apps/lookalike- domains-test/](https://www.jamieweb.net/apps/lookalike-domains-test/)

</comment><comment><USER63> The netflix.soy image is fantastic.

</comment><comment><USER64> > _Truthully, I think its pretty bad that I was able to do this._

It is not. The explosion of TLDs is bad. It's simply a racket. But, Google supported it. So if they happen to suffer some of the consequences... so be it.

<comment><USER65> Explosions of TLDs is bad!? Why?. It got rid of impossible to buy good sounding and short names, largely massive multi million dollar companies holding onto them.

Explosions of TLDs literally has absolutely no downsides besides the security and phishing implications. It just wiped out the domain mafias and replaced it with a massive competitive marketplace.

<comment><USER66> Many of the gTLDs charge exorbitant yearly fees for "premium" domains as a means of recouping costs. I pay $300/yr for {myFirstName}.dev. It's extortion, and I might drop it.

With many of the common domain suffixes now becoming TLDs, branding seems much more difficult since you have to buy multiple domains. Is it audiotech.com? audio.tech? tech.audio? Who knows.

I don't think that I would call this better.

My opinion is that Google wants to erode the open web and is using gTLD proliferation to make it confusing to consumers. Instead of remembering a URL, _just Google for it_.

<comment><USER35> > I pay $300/yr for {myFirstName}.dev. It's extortion, and I might drop it.

From where? Google? I just paid $12/yr for a .dev domain on Google Domains.

<comment><USER66> Yes, from Google Domains. Some of their domains are "premium".

Here's an unregistered one. "red.dev" is $720/yr from Google:

[https://domains.google.com/m/registrar/search?searchTerm=red...](https://domains.google.com/m/registrar/search?searchTerm=red.dev)

"god.dev" is cheaper at $180/yr:

[https://domains.google.com/m/registrar/search?searchTerm=god...](https://domains.google.com/m/registrar/search?searchTerm=god.dev)

And, of course asdfasdf.dev is only $12/yr:

[https://domains.google.com/m/registrar/search?searchTerm=asd...](https://domains.google.com/m/registrar/search?searchTerm=asdfasdf.dev)

Most of the {firstname}.dev domains are in the $300/yr range, but it's uneven. Some names cost more or less than others. I remember seeing one as $1000/yr, but I can't remember what it was.

I double checked my cost. "$180 plus tax"/yr. From Google.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> > There was one left: netflix.soy (if you didn't click the link, soy means "I > am" in Spanish)

apparently netflix.tofu was already taken (tofu is the infinitive form of the verb "fu" in TLDish)

</comment><comment><USER68> My mom is unable to pronounce "Netflix" correctly (Spanish is her mother language), she always said something like "nesflis". So yeah, years ago I bought nesflis.com for her.

</comment><comment><USER69> Somewhat off-topic, tinyprojects.dev and netflix.soy both have DNSSEC, is this required for some of the newer TLDs (like how .dev has mandatory HTTPS preloading)?

Just it's rare to see it in the wild.

<comment><USER70> Nope. As for .dev, Google controls the tld and the HSTS list baked into Chrome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER71> Does anyone aggregate access to all 1500 TLD's? Is there a guide available on which combination of registrars to use to query them all?

<comment><USER72> Not all registries participate in the SRS registry protocol. Some of the lesser known ccTLDs must be registered by the individual authorities.

It's not accurate to run a DNS query to determine whether the domain is available because one can own the domain, but decide not to set any DNS records.

<comment><USER73> Wouldn't non-existent domains just return NXDOMAIN?

<comment><USER72> Yes, but so do registered domains without DNS records.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER74> I tried to register a google gtld before but namecheap wouldn't let me. I believe they have some phishing blacklist that they enforce.

</comment><comment><USER75> Fun article, however: ".coms are slowly becoming less relevant" no they don't. They are becoming more relevant if anything.

</comment><comment><USER76> did the same thing 2 years ago, scanned for available domains of known companies, bought pornhub.it and made redirect to actual pornhub.com

to my surprise, there were around 200 clicks per day, mostly coming from italy of course. i didn't want to do anything malicious with it, so in the end i didn't extend. domain was snatched by someone else as soon as it expired.

</comment><comment><USER77> They can UDRP it from you in less than a week, but if you were trying to waste time (and money) guess there are worse things to do.

</comment><comment><USER78> As an aside, having your entire blog italicized might look « better » on the eye but it's incredibly laborious to read.

</comment><comment><USER79> > I actually paid for google.gi (gi for Gibraltar), only to get this email a > few hours later

They did refund you, I hope?

</comment><comment><USER80> Those domains can easily be seized by the respective companies, which is a bigger problem imo.

</comment><comment><USER81> If they wanted to, they could take it from you because they own the trademark.

</comment><comment><USER82> apple.beer is actually a pretty good domain name for a cider company. Not technically accurate of course, but pretty good from a marketing perspective.

</comment><comment><USER83> I bought space.sex

</comment><comment><USER84> Fuck ICANN for pimping out the internet to make a quick buck. We need to replace them with an organization that is truly neutral and not for profit.

<comment><USER14> [https://www.opennic.org/](https://www.opennic.org/)

</comment></comment><comment> david-cako Haha, I love the drawings.

</comment><comment><USER85> I wonder if there is any SEO magic to having those domains. Might be worthwhile to test it out?

</comment><comment><USER86> Soylent flix is people!

</comment><comment><USER87> "I was just a soy boy"

</comment><comment><USER88> "Did you know it costs a minimum of $185,000 to create your own domain name ending? For that kind of money, I think ICANN, the registries and registrar sites have a massive responsibility to ensure that this never happens."

No they don't.

The same problem exists with subdomains, for example some users may visit "netflix.trustworthy-sounding-domain.com" and not notice the issue.

Meanwhile, using a weird TLD can raise suspicion even for legitimate sites. Get a dot com.

<comment><USER48> netflix.trustworthy-sounding-domain.com isn't really the same though. If I own netflix.trustworthy-sounding-domain.com, I can create facebook.trustworthy- sounding-domain.com, google.trustworthy-sounding-domain.com, etc simply by creating new DNS records. No one but myself is involved, or even know they exist (unless I put links to them somewhere public).

On the other hand, someone owns and operates .soy, and has to actually approve new domains getting created. Part of that process could be a step that automatically screens for scammy looking registrations.

<comment><USER88> Let me explain. The problem is that somebody malicious might impersonate another company through a domain name.

So they send people emails with URLs like "netflix.user-support.com" where "user-support.com" is owned by the malicious actor. This is extremely common.

I honestly don't see any other problem. How else would you get people to visit "netflix.soy", if not by the same mechanism? It doesn't matter who controls which part of the domain, users are either going to notice the odd parts of the domain, or they are not. The fact that one is a TLD and the other isn't doesn't really make a difference, at least for uncommon TLDs.

> On the other hand, someone owns and operates .soy, and has to actually > approve new domains getting created. Part of that process could be a step > that automatically screens for scammy looking registrations.

Yes, but that wouldn't do anything to solve the problem. It would only make things more expensive. I honestly don't see the issue with anybody owning "netflix.soy" unless they're malicious, but in that case owning "netflix.anything-else.com" would be just as bad, if not worse. Since we can't really prevent the latter case, preventing the former case is moot.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER89> I attempted to do this in the past on namecheap for an Amazon domain based out of some obscure African country (domain was showing as available). The domain order failed, presumably due to reasons similar to authors Gibraltar example. I messaged namecheap live-chat support to ask why, and they basically said "we don't know why it failed, but even if it went through, if Amazon asks us to transfer ownership to them we'd go ahead and revoke your ownership"...which is BS kowtowing in my opinion.

</comment><comment><USER90> One of my favourite shortcut domains is [http://aws.moe](http://aws.moe)

</comment><comment><USER91> Welcome the the club.

These are my domains

[https://mythos.one/brianswichkow?q=my_domains](https://mythos.one/brianswichkow?q=my_domains)

</comment><comment><USER92> Yesterday I was doing a search and found weblogs.app (remember them?) I thought - wow, I'll grab it. Then I thought, nah - who uses weblogs? But it's nice to find domains with easy-to-remember names. I've bought one too many domains in my life, which I've been moving to my new tool - [https://newsy.co](https://newsy.co)</comment>


Generics in Go: a friendly, down-to-earth tutorial - <AUTHOR> https://bitfieldconsulting.com/golang/generics <comment><AUTHOR> Worth noting that the Go team are currently considering a square-bracket syntax for type parameters, instead of the parentheses shown in this tutorial.</comment>


How Adobe should respond to Apple - <AUTHOR>

Port Photoshop etc to Linux. <comment><USER2> 1.) Fix the Flash player properly on the Mac by showing Apple that Adobe developers can work within the constraints of the underlying platform: so not using private API calls, not working around the Apple-provided API, and working in the same sandbox as other applications. The argument that Adobe needs direct access to the GPU hardware to fix it's performance problems sounds odd considering the number of Mac applications that deal with the same types of media without needing this direct hardware access. So basically demonstrate to Apple a willingness to work within the Mac platform, and potentially the iPhone/iPad platform, and remove the key arguments Apple has for locking the Flash player/common library out of the iPhone/iPad environment, and build back trust with Apple. Adobe need to do this themselves.

2.) Change their Flash-to-iPhoneApp converter to emit/generate Objective-C code that then compiles cleanly using Apple's compilers, and then publish the source code openly to demonstrate that the generated code is using the Apple API calls properly and correctly, not using private API calls, not duplicating/emulating/simulating functionality already available through the iphone API. Then with the compiled Objective-C code, submit that to the Apple App Store and keep track of the path it takes to acceptance/rejection (basically mirror the Opera browser count-up clock).

3.) Fix the stability issues with Adobe software running on a Mac, and demonstrate to their loyal user base as well as Apple that Adobe takes good care of their customers.

4.) Ensure that the Flash player runs as a first-class citizen on every other suitable mobile device.

5.) Teach their Flash/Flex developers about the importance of accessibility, and how it's even more important to consider on mobile devices now. Teach them the correct techniques. This also includes fixing the accessibility issues within the Flash player and the AIR platform.

I can't really see Adobe cross-compiling Flash applications to work in HTML5, since that eats away at their Flash platform mindshare/lockin.

</comment><comment><USER3> They should just accept HTML is becoming the more appropriate foundation to the multimedia web, and stop trying to control it via their dumb plugin.

They already can do it, to some extent: <http://www.9to5mac.com/Flash- html5-canvas-35409730></comment>


17th century Damascus sabres contained carbon nanotubes - <AUTHOR> http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/News/2006/November/15110602.asp

<comment> patrickg-zill Interesting but not added to the article is that the rise and fall of the users of those swords, correlates in some ways with the rise and fall of the supply of the material used to make the swords. That is, when the supply dried up, they lost their power because the swords represented a technological advantage.

<comment><USER2> Or because of firearms proliferation. It was the 18th century, after all.

<comment><USER3> Firearms can't be overwhelming combat weapons until U.S. civil war. That's why the expansion of United States to Indian nations were faster than expansions of all previous civilizations before U.S. Civil war. Rifles after mid 19th century reduced the chances of closes combat between gunners and sword swingers and archers.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, conquistadores such as Fernando Cortez didn't have any sort of overwhelming combat advantage against the Aztecs...

<comment><USER3> You are right. But I think the small pox brought by him helped a lot?

<comment><USER5> That and the Indians gave his conquests a mythological spin, giving him a psychological advantage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> And so does a burning candle. Carbon nanotubes(CNTs) can be formed from just about any reaction involving an excess of carbon. It is the amount and purity involved that is interesting. If you look hard enough you'll find them everywhere.

I would like to know what volume fraction of CNTs and cementite (Fe3C) nanowires were present. If it was a significant fraction they could have contributed to the swords properties by the rule of mixtures.

</comment><comment><USER7> Yet another Indian invention, ascribed to the middle east through medieval ignorance. The wootz steel is the key.

See: <http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/647868/wootz-steel>

</comment><comment><USER8> _Damascus steel blades were forged out of small pure cakes of steel containing around 1.6-1.7 per cent carbon, called wootz. Produced in India, wootz cakes were shipped to Damascus where expert sword smiths fashioned them into blades._

<comment><USER9> Neal Stephenson has a fun depiction of wootz manufacture in _The Baroque Cycle_. I can't evaluate its accuracy, but it's certainly a fun scene!

<comment><USER10> He had a dedicated researcher on the Baroque Cycle books.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Fantastic essay by Manuel Delanda on the importance of materiality:

<http://www.t0.or.at/delanda/matterdl.htm></comment>


Ask HN: Algorithm arranging posts on HN? - <AUTHOR>

I have noticed something on hn, that the posts on the main page gets arranged in a peculiar way. For example, a link posted 4 hours ago with less than 20 upvotes might be on the main page still, while another similarly  aged link with twice as much upvotes might be on the second page.<p>I am wondering what algorithm is used in ordering them. Any idea? <comment><USER2> There are several small tweaks that I've noticed. There's something about the length of a post, possibly something about the number of comments, and possibly others. There are also penalties for various things. Items without a link are ranked more lowly than those with a link, and some topics _du jour_ have a penalty applied.

All in all, it's actively curated by PG, with small changes to keep the system in balance and running smoothly. Enquiring too closely is discouraged.

It's also plausible that this item will get deleted. After all, this is a site for hackers, not a site about Hacker News.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed!

I understand that there's always more chance that if its fully disclosed, it might be used to game the system.. but could stop my curiousity, hence the question :).

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1781013>

quoting from PG's comment on that post:

(= gravity* 1.8 timebase* 120 front-threshold* 1 nourl-factor* .4 lightweight- factor* .17 gag-factor* .1)

        (def frontpage-rank (s (o scorefn realscore) (o gravity gravity*))
          (* (/ (let base (- (scorefn s) 1)
                  (if (> base 0) (expt base .8) base))
                (expt (/ (+ (item-age s) timebase*) 60) gravity))
             (if (no (in s!type 'story 'poll))  .8
                 (blank s!url)                  nourl-factor*
                 (mem 'bury s!keys)             .001
                                                (* (contro-factor s)
                                                   (if (mem 'gag s!keys)
                                                        gag-factor*
                                                       (lightweight s)
                                                        lightweight-factor*
                                                       1)))))

\-----

or simplifying a bit:

Score = (P-1) / (T+2)^G

where, P = points of an item (and -1 is to negate submitters vote) T = time since submission (in hours) G = Gravity, defaults to 1.8 in news.arc

</comment><comment><USER4> I noticed that this morning too:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1966201>

</comment><comment><USER5> One word: Yes. (Duh!)

FAQ: <http://ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html>

<comment><AUTHOR> umm, the faq on this doesn't really explain the scenario...

the question was something like this... how come a 20 upvote link gets displayed _higher_ than a 40 upvote link when both are carrying similar timestamps?

<comment><USER5> Yes. Vote/Time Elapsed

<comment><USER4> You're stating the obvious without really replying to bhavin.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Tips to build an OpenBSD Thinkpad for airgap use? - <AUTHOR>

I'm interested in setting up an airgap machine. My gut says I should run OpenBSD on a ThinkPad and just figure out all the dependencies. Tails sounds good too, though that's a slightly different problem. I want a permanent system. I just don't want it on the network much and I do want it to handle protocols well. Seems like OpenBSD is the way to go in that regard. But then, I'm definitely not an expert.<p>There are any number of gotchas to managing an airgap machine though, and there are any number of problems with installing a new OS on a laptop. Wanted to solicit for opinions while I wait for my copy of Absolute OpenBSD to arrive. <comment><USER2> INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR MEANINGFUL ANSWER [1]

Why?

What does the OS or network config matter if it's "airgapped"?

What do you consider an "airgapped machine"?

1\. [http://www.multivax.com/last_question.html](http://www.multivax.com/last_question.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> > What does the OS or network config matter if it's "airgapped"?

Fundamentally, you're still moving data on and off the machine. The software implementing the communications protocols can still be vulnerable. So the procedures for maintaining the airgap matter. Schneier has some good pointers on this.

> What do you consider an "airgapped machine"?

A machine that, once set up, never sees a network. At the limit, set up one machine, scan that disk image for viruses, then install it on a second identical machine.

<comment><USER2> Yes but why? What are your goals? What conclusion are you trying to arrive at? Is TEMPEST a concern? Is hardware that may break your airgap (bluetooth, any weird IPMI stuff, etc) a concern?

A meaningful answer cannot be given if we don't know your goals, here.

<comment><AUTHOR> Mostly academic curiosity, but being in the government, there's always an non- theoretical risk someone will decide to come after you.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Applicant Tracking + Code Reviews = Simplified Hiring - <AUTHOR> http://handshakecentral.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey Folks

We've been cranking on a new project that we're calling Handshake to help companies, especially smaller tech companies, do a better job hiring.

We're still in development right now, but we wanted to get the conversation going with people that we think would benefit from this kind of service. With all of the entrepreneurs and business owners on HN, I'd love to hear what pain points their organizations face when it comes to hiring people.

Handshake comes out of our experience growing an engineering team. Our problems were a lack of formal process that led to disorganization on our part when figuring out things like : Who will review incoming resumes? Who will interview this candidate? What'd we think of them? All the while, of course, coordinating this with our team and getting back to people who applied in a timely way.

If you're like us, you set up an email alias (firstname.lastname@example.com) and had people send you resumes that blast out to a few people on the team. Great start, of course, but you also know that once you have more than one or two people on the email thread it gets tough to have a conversation about or with candidates. Quickly, reviewing these emails becomes a bottle neck in your hiring process, creating context switches throughout the day for your team, lowering productivity. Handshake sits transparently between that email inbox and your team, centralizing all incoming resumes and conversations associated with a job post and giving your company a sane workflow that to help you collaborate on your hiring decisions.

Please sign up for our mailing list if you think your company can benefit from having a tool like Handshake. We'll be sure to reach out to you so you can give the app a trial run once we get closer to release and make sure that we're providing the value you need to help you make great hiring decisions.

[http://handshakecentral.com](http://handshakecentral.com)

Thanks everyone!

</comment><comment><USER2> I wish you didn't have _so much text_ on the front page. After reading the first two lines, I just skipped through the rest.

What do you guys do differently from agencies? What's special? I can't tell that from your page unless I read the entire block of text, which, frankly, 0.1% of hits will do (maybe).</comment>


Security experts on Java: Fixing zero-day exploit could take 'two years' - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/security-experts-on-java-fixing-zero-day-exploit-could-take-two-years-7000009756/

<comment><USER2> This isn't what the article says at all. It's two years to fix all the known security holes, not two years to fix the 0day.

"HD Moore, chief security officer with Rapid7, a company that helps businesses identify critical security vulnerabilities in their networks, said it could take two years for Oracle to fix all the security bugs that have currently been identified in the version of Java that is used for surfing the Web."</comment>


Show HN: Feeble – A React/Redux Architecture - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/feeblejs/feeble <comment><USER2> Curious if it is deployed in production and if so at what scale.</comment>


Power BI, Microsoft's Business Intelligence set of tools, is getting smarter - <AUTHOR> http://www.ishir.com/blog/4621/power-bi-microsofts-business-intelligence-set-tools-getting-smarter.htm/ <comment><USER2> I've recently switched to start working with Microsoft products, with both this and their Dynamics 365 platform. It really seems like there's a huge opportunity here for guys like me to bring years of experience hacking on UNIX systems into the Microsoft world because there's a lot of "this is how it's done" and legacy systems thinking.

Many of the developers I've seen working in this space seem a few years behind, so I'm excited to see this published here. Gives me faith that I'm making the right call (even if it is a bit painful to develop for these things. XML and all.)

<comment><USER3> I'm curious too, what you mean here. Azure is cutting edge, HDinsight is world class. The stuff they are doing with R is great. Even Excel probably does a lot of things you don't realize, do you know it comes with a built-in in- memory columnar DB and a Facebook client now?

<comment><USER4> > Even Excel probably does a lot of things you don't realize, do you know it > comes with a built-in in-memory columnar DB

...if you have the right Office tier.

<comment><USER5> Which Office tier doesn't come with the Power BI tools in Excel?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I found Power BI's natural language Q & A to be the real killer feature that Tableau, et al currently don't have.

[https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/powerbi- se...](https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/powerbi-service-how- to-use-q-and-a/)

It actually works 90% of the time and helps you answer fairly complicated questions about your data set, visualize them and add them to your dashboard.

</comment><comment><USER7> I recently compared Qlik, Power BI and Tableau as a reporting system for our customers. I would say Qlik was the most eager out of the 3. They got me in contact with their OEM team and were very forthcoming with information. Microsoft gives you all the information you could want up front. Tableau never responded.

Power BI also has Power BI embedded for Azure services which bills report views on a per session basis. This might be what wins me over to Power BI if it makes financial sense.

R also has [https://shiny.rstudio.com/](https://shiny.rstudio.com/) which is pretty neat as well.

In the end we would like our small/medium sized customers to build on top of this platform so we will probably stick to one of the big 3 rather than completely roll our own.

<comment><USER8> Just curious why Tibco Spotfire was omitted from your process. If you're looking at Qlik, Spotfire is pretty feature-similar.

<comment><USER7> Because I didn't know anyone that had used it. Nor had it come up in other conversations. At 200$/User it is probably going to be out of our price range.

Thanks for pointing it out though. I will dig around and see if it is a contender for our use case.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Pretty much everything mentioned in this post is standard fare among the major self-service BI vendors now - and if they don't have it it's on their roadmap.

I would say the big advantages of Power BI are 1) Cost: In some cases it's an almost 5:1 cost advantage 2) User Community: Far more important than costs. There's a ton of third-party resources (books, blogs, forums, etc) on how to get the most out of Power BI's underlying technologies: DAX and M. I think you're going to be more likely to find a Power BI meetup in your city than one for another BI vendor.

<comment><USER10> I'd say that biggest advantage Power BI has is that its plugged right into the Office 365/Azure world.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> We recently looked over PowerBI and it didn't cut it. Crude mapcharts & limited viz capabilities. Lots of tools feature R integration. If your small to medium organization goes down the MS dynamix route then it may be worthwhile. There was a lot of potential there but not enough finished features to move us off the hybrid BI approach.

<comment><AUTHOR> Have you tried free or Premium Version ? There are many more options with Premium Version.It's better to talk to experts before forming one's opinion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I was pretty impressed how easy it is to create new custom visuals for Power BI in R.

<comment><USER12> The integration with R is awesome. I was amazed to see that you can create a chart with R code - with ggplot for instance - along side "native" power BI charts, and the ggplot graphic responds to filters and other report-level manipulation the same as others. Do other BI products do this?

<comment><USER13> I believe Qlik Sense has an R plugin but you'd need to have the R session running somewhere.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I work for a large organisation using Qlikview and there is currently a migration underway to Qlik Sense. To me, Power BI looks similar to the features that Qlik Sense provides. Is anyone out there considering moving from Qlik to Power BI?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi Scott,

Though I'm not moving to Qlik but has read about comparisons between top few analytics tools including Qlik, Power BI, Tableau, QS etc. Out of all, QlikView is highly adaptable and provides wide-ranging deep analytics. It also has integrations to Deltek products, so if you use Deltek for time & expense or earned value management (EVM) reporting, QlikView is a natural choice. Overall, QlikView also continues to have one of the industry's highest customer satisfaction ratings.

On the other hand, Microsoft's Power BI is inexpensive and plugs-in seamlessly with MS Office. It is a solid option if you need quick access to specific analytics or intensive reporting (and have personnel who are skilled in MS- based data queries). In the long run it may challenge QlikView, Tableau or other analytics tools. Microsoft Power BI is the only one of these three data visualization and analytics apps that have extensive R and big data-related integrations, ensuring this specific apps' scalability for larger projects.</comment></comment>


How Tech Companies Conquered America's Cities - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/20/technology/tech-companies-conquered-cities.html <comment><AUTHOR> In which we learn that Domino's is a tech company and that everything is tech's fault. Also, the problem is those damn techies who see problems and try to solve them, not the actual... problems they're trying to solve. Clearly a filled pothole with a logo on it is worse than an unfilled one.</comment>


Bill Gates: Textbooks are becoming obsolete - <AUTHOR> https://www.gatesnotes.com/2019-Annual-Letter#ALChapter8 <comment><USER2> I greatly prefer text to video and/or interactive elements for learning.

The pacing of video content tends to be much slower than I'm capable of taking in, so watching lectures becomes a frustrating exercise. I usually watch the videos at 1.5 speed or just read the transcript, if it's available. And interactive elements are usually so clumsy to use that they become worthless.

I also don't want my learning materials spying on me and reporting back about my progress. That's just creepy, and is one more step in the march towards making the world a particularly dreary cyberpunk dystopia.

I think the problem is that most textbooks these days are hot garbage - instead of building a professional library, you end up with irrelevant dead weights. I have textbooks from back at University which I still refer to today (data structures and similar topics), but most modern textbooks seem to really focus in on particular technologies and frameworks, which become useless in just a few short years.

</comment><comment><USER3> I find textbooks painful, but I also think I grow the most when reading them. This is because textbooks are organized, the material often goes into more depth than a blog post, and most importantly for me, I can be away from electronic distractions.

</comment><comment><USER4> May be, but Textbooks provide a single purpose usage that doesn't distract you in ways in the back of you mind you know what these iPad could do ( Gaming, Youtube ) etc.....

</comment><comment><USER5> The title is somewhat misrepresenting. Textbooks as _teaching means_ are becoming obsolete.

</comment><comment><USER6> Textbooks will always be relevant as long as states use standardized testing.</comment>


The Smartest $23.07 Ole Ever Spent - <AUTHOR> http://willhardison.com/random/ole/

<comment><USER2> Error establishing a database connection :(

<comment><USER3> The blog post is a well-known joke with an added line about 'thinking outside the box' [http://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/park...](http://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/parking_joke/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think outside of the box by avoiding cliche.</comment>


Ask HN: Mobile-friendly version of mouseover? - <AUTHOR>

There's a lot of cool stuff I'd like to do on my site with mouseover effects. Mouseover a character and get a longer description. Mouseover a control and get a tooltip. All that kind of jazz.
However, more and more of my users are using mobile browsers like iPhones that don't really have a concept of mouseover.
How are other people dealing with this? Do you add the mouseover effect anyway, knowing that mobile users will never use it (and probably never know it exists), or use another control? <comment><USER2> [http://htmlpad.wordpress.com/2010/02/12/tracking-touch- event...](http://htmlpad.wordpress.com/2010/02/12/tracking-touch-events-on- the-ipad/)

Campaign monitor is using this for their graphs - [http://www.campaignmonitor.com/blog/post/3161/say-goodbye- to...](http://www.campaignmonitor.com/blog/post/3161/say-goodbye-to-flash- with-our-new-javascript-charts/)</comment>


How Spotify Works - <AUTHOR> http://pansentient.com/2011/04/spotify-technology-some-stats-and-how-spotify-works/

<comment><USER2> "79% of server requests were for the most popular 21% of all tracks on Spotify."

Pareto principle, bang on!

</comment><comment><USER3> I've always been very impressed with the Spotify client - instant streaming, quick searching, responsive UI, never crashes, near-seamless version updates, automatic syncing. And cross-platform too! The guys that wrote it know their stuff.

<comment><USER4> I was really surprised trying out the ubuntu client, I am used to very sub par implementations on linux but it was identical

<comment><USER5> I am not quite sure but I think I spotted pieces of Qt in the Spotify client. That would explain a lot of its somewhat odd behavior on OSX (wrong focus states on some buttons, nothing serious) and its very consistent cross- platform looks.

In Germany, its only competitor uses an AIR app. Since Spotify is not available in Germany and thus a slight pain to use, I would really like to use an alternative. But AIR vs. Qt... the AIR app does not work on case sensitive file systems (solvable), it does not recognize the Mac media keys, it is sluggish and playback is nowhere near instantaneous. And you have to install AIR and suffer through regular AIR updates and the like. Oh, and audio quality is noticeably worse.

<comment><USER6> Well, if the competitor you're talking about is Grooveshark: AFAIK, their adobe air client is for the most part a legacy application. Grooveshark used to be all flash in the past, so they made the desktop app with AIR.

They seem to invest all their effort into the (very good) HTML(5) client and into mobile apps now.

<comment><USER7> I think he was talking about Simfy.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simfy>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Since it's p2p and it's TCP-based, I wonder if they do TCP hole punching for NAT'ed peers - not that this is hard to do [1], but it is far less common than UDP hole punching.

[1] Just need to predict the Internet-facing ports for both peers and then instruct them to connect() towards each other at these ports. The rest is handled natively by TCP, via the _simultaneous open_ scenario [2].

[2] <http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc793.txt>, sect. 3.4, fig. 8

<comment><USER9> They don't do any NAT traversal, but that use UPnP to open ports. During a talk Gunnar Kreitz said that they still got a 60% success rate for connections (if I remember correct, varied between countries also). And that this was good enough for them. More can be read in this paper: [http://www.csc.kth.se/~gkreitz/spotify-p2p11/spotify-p2p11.p...](http://www.csc.kth.se/~gkreitz/spotify-p2p11/spotify-p2p11.pdf)

<comment><USER10> Since I'm NATing my network and don't allow UPnP the statement that they don't do any NAT traversal seemed suspicious since I know spotify does stream to other peers from my machine (400 MB since last reboot (13 days)).

Got the answer from the paper: _When a client wishes to connect to a peer, a request is also forwarded through the Spotify server asking the connectee to attempt a TCP connection back to the connecter. This means that as long as one of the two peers can accept incoming connections, the connection will succeed._

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> One of the reasons I canceled my spotify subscription is that I learned I was participating in a p2p network without my knowledge. If I'm paying for it, I don't want to be a node in their network. Most users are probably clueless about that because they aren't up front at all.

<comment><USER12> > _If I'm paying for it, I don't want to be a node in their network._

You are paying for music licensing and you get the delivery for free because of the p2p nature of their system. Traditional client-server delivery would've simply translated into higher monthly fees, which I am pretty sure would've not been any more popular among their average user base.

<comment><USER13> Perhaps, but I agree they should be more up front about the way they use bandwidth.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> the star coder of spotify. the guy behind their p2p is ludvig. creator of µTorrent. in many ways a remarkable engineer. only in swedish.

[http://chalmersalumni.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/ludvig_str...](http://chalmersalumni.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/ludvig_strigeus_fkraft_2011.pdf)

<comment><USER15> He was also the guy who originally reverse-engineered Transport Tycoon Deluxe which led to OpenTTD. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Site seems a bit unreliable to me, timing out, so here's the original research PDFs that the article is based on

<http://www.csc.kth.se/~gkreitz/spotify-p2p10/>

</comment><comment><USER17> There is a newer paper than the one described in the linked article available (<http://www.csc.kth.se/~gkreitz/spotify-p2p11/>) that has some interesting measurements on the network.

</comment><comment><USER18> How much bandwidth are they saving by making a P2P network? I made up some numbers and got about 30k$ a month at S3 prices, is that worth building and maintaining this P2P network instead of just a bunch of servers?

<comment><USER19> Even if it's only $30k/month now, P2P is infinitely scalable for (essentially) free. That's pretty valuable

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> "Only 8.8% of music playback comes from Spotify's servers. The rest comes from the peer-to-peer network (35.8%) or your local cache (55.4%). The exception here is Spotify on smartphones, which gets all the music directly from the Spotify servers."

That point about doesn't quite make sense. Most of the time on my phone I'm playing from the local cache in off line mode. So it all comes from the servers originally but 98% of it is repeated plays from the local cache.

<comment><USER21> There's a distinction between songs which are from playlists explicitly "available offline" and songs in Spotify's cache. Presumably the mobile version doesn't have a cache for non-downloaded songs.

<comment><USER6> I think the Android version does have a cache beside the offline playlists. At least there is an option to set the size in settings.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> 500 Internal Server Error. Google Cache: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?hl=de&sourc...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?hl=de&source=hp&q=cache%3Apansentient.com%2F2011%2F04%2Fspotify- technology-some-stats-and-how-spotify-works%2F&meta=&aq=f&oq=)

</comment><comment><USER23> One should also discuss their revenue streams. Here in Sweden, we pay 99 SEK (about 14USD) each month, and I learned yesterday that the artists only get 5 SEK from that 99 SEK. 60 SEK goes to the record companies...

Source (in Swedish so please use translate): [http://jardenberg.se/b/lite-mer- spotify-siffror-hur-99-krono...](http://jardenberg.se/b/lite-mer-spotify- siffror-hur-99-kronor-blir-en-femma/)

<comment><USER21> That's just how the record companies work.

There was an interesting breakdown from the CEO of Mog discussed his revenue model on this pretty good Fast Company article: [http://www.fastcompany.com/1796382/mog-ceo-on-artist- payment...](http://www.fastcompany.com/1796382/mog-ceo-on-artist-payments-its- like-a-black-hole)

<comment><USER24> Which is why their business model is now flawed. If you look at what a music publisher actually does. From wikipedia:

 _"In the music industry, a music publisher (or publishing company) is responsible for ensuring the songwriters and composers receive payment when their compositions are used commercially. Through an agreement called a publishing contract, a songwriter or composer "assigns" the copyright of their composition to a publishing company. In return, the company licenses compositions, helps monitor where compositions are used, collects royalties and distributes them to the composers. They also secure commissions for music and promote existing compositions to recording artists, film and television."_ [1]

So basically the publisher is getting money (a large portion of it) to make sure they get paid and provide contract negotiations. Spotify can easily (1) ensure the artist gets paid and (2) provide negotiations (you get X for Y amount of plays). The excessive overhead of the middle man is unnecessary now. IMHO, recording labels should just provide artists access to studios/producers/etc and become glorified marketing (music specific) firms. Also it might still be interesting for publishers to collect royalties for things like tv-ads, inclusion to movies, etc. But to the mass public it's a service that's no longer needed.

Lots of business models are built on assumptions. The assumptions have changed.

[1]- <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_publisher_(popular_music)>

<comment><USER25> I've thought about this. We aren't really getting rid of middle men. Rather, if what you proposes runs its course, we are shifting the middle man from old media distributors to... new media (internet) distributors.

What's to say streaming services wouldn't run up the price on artists once record labels are out of the picture? You could argue that artists could simply take their music to another service but if one service has A LOT of users (ie, Spotify) that might not be a viable option.

<comment><USER26> Because streaming services wouldn't own rights to artists' work and they wouldn't be tying them down with multirecord deals. With these constraints lifted, there'd only be free market mechanisms left, which would force the services to be nice both to artists and users.

<comment><USER27> Or spread artists amongst competitive services, forcing us users to subscribe to multiple services.

I'd rather take a copy of the music, and own the copy the rest of my life, thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Seeing this link on HN reminded me to give Spotify a try. Going to their website reminded me that they don't provide a non-Facebook option. That's a shame.

</comment><comment><USER29> Doesn't matter how amazing their technology is when they leave critical bugs in the client unresolved for over 2 years: [http://getsatisfaction.com/spotify/topics/error_message_offl...](http://getsatisfaction.com/spotify/topics/error_message_offline_access_for_this_computer_device_has_been_withdrawn)

</comment><comment><USER30> A curious bit about the P2P stuff - although it's clever as can be, it makes bootstrapping on lighter network hardware excruciating. Such a shame.

</comment><comment><USER31> All this technology and Rdio is still growing faster around these parts. Guess amazing technology doesn't always help you win the game.

<comment><USER32> I choose Rdio over Spotify because it has a web client which probably means they couldn't leverage p2p even if they wanted to (without using a browser plugin).

<comment><USER12> Is there any Flash involved? One of the biggest features in Flash 10 was the addition of p2p streaming.

<comment><USER33> Upgrading flash does ask me to close Spotify.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> very insightful. esp. the bit about how they use a combination of server based and p2p based streaming to ensure a seamless experience.</comment>


I cheated on my Microsoft interview - <AUTHOR> https://www.facetdev.com/blog/posts/i-cheated-on-my-microsoft-interview/ <comment><USER2> I mean IQ tests by proxy are pretty universal in intellectual employment. Personality issues and such that might interfere with job success can't really be evaluated in any short amount of time unless the person is so out of it that they are throwing the signals out left and right, but in most cases they obviously hide these issues the best they can. The ratio of bad hires that pass the interview tests for this system are probably lower than that of other interviewing methodologies anyway. Mental health issues will interfere with thinking on the spot and withstanding social pressure, potentially. I think most jobs still have the soft skills portion as well, which probably is more useful for the company than the problem solving, anyway. There's a lot of emotional involvement in problem solving capacity and consistency.

</comment><comment><USER3> Yet another week and yet another blog on how hiring sucks in software engineering. For whats its worth, I took a phone interview at the company. Their feedback for me and my feedback for them are below

Feedback to interviewer. </comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>

The interviewer was knowledgeable, smart but is unhelpful in guiding towards answers. I had started on correct path of using two pointers. When I got stuck, he expected me to resolve it myself. You can view it in two ways. Either he expects interviewee to solve end to end,(Employees must perform tasks on their own so we should not help). or we expect rockstar candidates who don't need any help. Depending on your company's reputation in market place, you need to decide what path you will take. Otherwise, you will be interviewing many many candidates before finding one you like(not one who can do the work). Also, There was no reason to make me compile the whole code. I had adequately demonstrated that I can write Java syntax(or that I cannot write Java syntax, depending on your expectations). When I write an algorithm or code and you want to test it in a interview setting, you must walk the code with me and evaluate a few cases. Or ask me to walk through the code with a few test cases. Its just a travesty if you expect me to use the "run" button. That just introduces additional complexity where I have to write absolutely correct syntax. In a real world job setting, I would have IDE support which shows compile errors as we type. There it is easy to complete compilable code in less amount of time.

Their feedback to me. </comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>===

The candidate had some ideas in the right direction, yet it appeared challenging to conceptualize an acceptable solution and implement end to end. The candidate understands CS fundamentals and I certainly see potential in the candidate. To continue practicing, the candidate can continue working with these algorithmic patterns: DFS/BFS greedy sliding window divide and conquer recursion dynamic programming. A popular site to practice algorithms is leetcode.com. To ensure practice conditions close to the interview setting, I encourage 1. Code in a notepad 2. Setup a timer 3. Talk during a practice 4. Create some psychological pressure, e.g. ask somebody to watch you during practice, record yourself on a video, etc.

<comment><USER4> Lol. They are literally asking the candidate to simulate an Asian style entrance exam or a crammy SAT test

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> better lucky than good :) well played.</comment>


Ask HN: Rate my site - delishbits.com - <AUTHOR> http://www.delishbits.com

<comment><USER2> I think your going to need something else to drive attention/use of the site.

Right now it's basically a standalone GIST app with out any of the social networking bits.

If I were to rate the idea as-is I'd probably give it a 5/10 it seems like core functional works but there needs to be more...

How do you intend to monetize the site? (premium services, ads, acquisition?)

Somethings I'd look into.

1\. Add Group Feature (Private Group Bit Repository) 2\. Maybe some kind of game mechanic to drive initial traffic and increase the sites stickiness. (pts for posting, badges, etc) 3\. Plugins for Wordpress, BBS, Facebook, etc. 4\. Try narrowing your niche "Business, Open Source" you can always expand it later.

Just some thoughts...

Good Luck

-N

</comment><comment><USER3> It seems like an OK site. With these things polish is really key.

\- Use fixed width layout

\- align the sign in link the the right margin

\- let people see submit links even if they aren't signed in. If they click on it, then sign them in.

\- stock it with a lot more bits. Right now there are just 3!

\- have more than one user. Get your friends in on the beta first.

\- make it seem alive and constantly changing, so people come back.

\- make the bits shareable on twitter / facebook, etc

\- the iconography is sort of weird, I saw a pancake, an asparagus (?), and the logo looks like a green folded piece of paper with eyes and a bite out of it. If you don't know how to design (which is totally OK), then go for minimalism.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, these are all really good suggestions, I've already fixed a couple of them. They are pretty general too, so I'll also be considering them when making future sites.

As far as the design goes: I'm not much of a designer, so I used vegetables. It seemed like a good idea at the time, anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What makes your site unique? No clue why I'd choose to remember your site over and of the other 10 million versions of the same thing.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, admittedly I made it partly for my own personal use and partly for fun. I just thought that most of the sites that did this weren't very well done, or didn't achieve what I was looking for completely.

It is a little discouraging to have your work dismissed in a couple sentences though. I put an awful lot of time into it.

<comment><USER5> I'd get used to feeling discouraged because this is the reality of competition on the net. As someone's already noted, a couple of sentences is more than you'll get from most people who just look and then dismiss it. There's great feedback to take from the original comment even if it's short - if you have a point of difference, it's not obvious.

FWIW, I also viewed it, thought 'what sets this apart from all the other alternatives?' and then left. I think your design is really loose. Other than that, I use a snippets function in my text editor and the things that doesn't cover aren't enough to warrant using a site like yours. There might be some advantage I'm missing though?

<comment><AUTHOR> No, you're right, it was a totally valid criticism. Sorry, I just haven't been having a very good week :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Bug <http://www.delishbits.com/languages/c#> shows same as <http://www.delishbits.com/languages/c>

<comment><AUTHOR> That's just URL encodings. Try <http://www.delishbits.com/languages/c%23>

(foo.com/c# is parsed as an anchor)

<comment><USER7> make the url /c-sharp rather than /c#, or check the location.href to see if there is a # in it. Hardly anyone is going to remember that # is %23

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I changed it. (languages/c++ is now also languages/c-plus-plus instead of languages/c%2b%2b). Seems like a no-brainer now that you've pointed it out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I really like your integration with Google accounts.

It made me log in and try it out straight away.

<comment><USER9> What do you guys think about it?

I've been wrestling with this question for several weeks. It seems easier if you already have a google account. Otherwise, you will force them to get one and make the login process a bit more complicated.

What about Disqus? Anyone else using this?</comment></comment>


US tries, and fails, to block "import" of digital data that violates patents - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/11/us-tries-and-fails-to-block-import-of-digital-data-that-violates-patents/ <comment><USER2> unless the digital data represents weapons? [http://www.wired.com/2015/05/3-d-printed-gun-lawsuit- starts-...](http://www.wired.com/2015/05/3-d-printed-gun-lawsuit-starts-war- arms-control-free-speech/)

<comment><USER3> I do wonder how BIS and ITC differ in this issue.</comment></comment>


Linus Torvalds: Life is good again.. - <AUTHOR> http://torvalds-family.blogspot.com/2008/12/life-is-good-again.html <comment><USER2> Update to <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=387074>

Disappointed that he didn't include more details of what the problem/fix was.</comment>


A home button with a display - <AUTHOR> http://wietsehage.nl/post/9502729296/a-home-button-with-a-display

<comment><USER2> Interesting idea, but what would they display on this button?

It a way, this is such an old technology. Remember the old flip phones with a secondary screen on the front, displaying time and showing you number of new text messages? Maybe something like this, but then again, why?

<comment><AUTHOR> If it where a small high resolution oled display (32x32) they could show an app icon for when attention is needed for this specific app. You could have a little Facebook icon slowly fading in and out as an extension tot the notification center.

<comment><USER2> Interesting, I guess they could, although personally I'd disable that feature immediately.</comment></comment></comment>


Putin gives FSB 2 weeks to get Internet encryption keys - <AUTHOR> https://meduza.io/news/2016/07/07/putin-dal-fsb-dve-nedeli-na-poisk-sposoba-polucheniya-klyuchey-shifrovaniya-v-internete <comment><USER2> From what I understand this is a provision where companies and services who use encryption in Russia are required to provide the keys to unencrypt the data to the Russian government or else face fines and other penalties. This seems like a very vague and far-reaching provision. I would imagine this would heavily interfere with 99% of respectable companies who use HTTPS nowadays. And what about all of the storage and messaging services which encrypt data? Would they have to make special provisions for their Russian customers so that the Russian government could have access to the data of those users, while not being able to interfere with the rest of their customer base and data?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I imagine they'll back down from this if Google just says no, finishes closing their Moscow office and tells Russia to go ahead and block them. No way the big cos want to set the precedent and hand out keys to 200 governments.

Just a note, the title is less "lol series of tubes" in Russian. One of those times when using more articles and possessive pronouns would have served Russian well at least for machine translation.

</comment><comment><USER3> As a result of a recent security audit, the Internet encryption key has been changed from 12345 to 1234567890. We apologize for any inconvenience.</comment>


Ask HN: How to give cryptocurrency to people in need? - <AUTHOR> My name is Joe Waltman and I a recently started working with GiveCrypto.org (https://www.givecrypto.org/), a non-profit that was started by Brian Armstrong. I somewhat stumbled into this job after my previous company (VetPronto) went out of business. I am far from an expert on cryptocurrency and have zero experience working with non-profits.
GiveCrypto.org aims to help by making direct transfers of cryptocurrency. There is a growing body of evidence suggesting that the best way to help poor people is to give them cash, rather than traditional support like food, medicine or training.
One of the big challenges for GiveCrypto.org is finding people that are both in need and can use cryptocurrency. I've done some experimentation (https://medium.com/givecrypto/givecrypto-work-trial-a-new-fi...) and it is a quite a brain teaser. There is a sad irony wrapped around this problem; the poorer you are, the more 'expensive' it is for you to make use of cryptocurrency. I'd love to tap into the HN network to help brainstorm clever ways to get cryptocurrency into the hands of people that need it.
Thanks in advance. <comment><USER2> I can't think of a situation where a donating cryptocurrency would be better than a donation of fiat cash to the same groups. Honestly, I can only see negatives from going down that route (lack of accountability for fund usage is a major one) and very few, if any, positives. If the concern is volatility of the local fiat currency, make the donation in another more stable currency. Cryptocurrency will only add to that instability.

>There is a growing body of evidence suggesting that the best way to help poor people is to give them cash, rather than traditional support like food, medicine or training.

I've not seen this (but have seen the inverse often); do you have any references or examples?

<comment><USER3> > lack of accountability for fund usage is a major one

So you give them money and then tell them how they can use it? I thought the whole point of giving them cash was to allow the recipient to determine how best to use it, given their circumstances at the time.

<comment><USER2> Likely with most organizations built around donating funds to pre-existing efforts, the lack of accountability would come from the NGO/Government Organization itself, who (for better or worse in terms of enforcement) often have regulations in regards of spending donated funds in terms of documentation and accounting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> >There is a growing body of evidence suggesting that the best way to help poor people is to give them cash

Then why not just do that, then?

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree that fiat currency would be more useful if the recipient lives in a place with a functional financial system and/or a competent government. However, in places where money is broken (i.e. venezuela) or government is broken (i.e. refugee camps), it is possible that a crypto-currency might be more useful than fiat.

<comment><USER5> It's common knowledge that refugees streaming across border regularly bring computers, cell phones, solar panels, and large batteries to keep all those things going. Plus unlike most people in first world countries, most refugees are well versed in cryptocurrency wallets, trading, and the relative value of those coins to the daily needs of life like bread, and vegetables.

.... end sarcasm.

<comment><USER6> I can't seem to find too many sources that speak to the raw percentage, but it appears that many to most refugees from syria (to take one example) have a cellphone and take great lengths to keep it safe & charged.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> One group of people desperately in need is Venezuelans. You could circumvent the government restrictions and install a form of Exchange in neighboring towns of Colombia e.g Cúcuta. This would be more helpful than cash because 1. They can't receive/withdraw money in Venezuela at this point reliably 2. They will know they have money saved for their journey out of Venezuela in Colombia and will take the decision to leave the country now.

Source: I live in Colombia and talk with Venezuelans all the time about their situation.

<comment><USER8> This is the n-th time I'm reading a suggestion to help Venezuela using Bitcoin/cryptocurrencies. I wonder whoever came up with this and whether there's any save reasoning behind it or if it's just a cryptonerd fantasy. Venezuela has a very low average internet connection speed, reportedly one of the lowest in the world. Sources I've found say it's no better than 2 Mbit/s. On that speed, downloading the current Bitcoin blockchain would take about __18 days __.

With such an internet infrastracture, is the country even capable of maintaining an up-to-date connection to the bitcoin network?

<comment><USER9> The full bitcoin blockchain from Satoshi's first transaction is huge, but that's for a "full node". A "lightweight node" needs much less [https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Lightweight_node](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Lightweight_node) . The amount of internet connection needed is fairly minimal.

Ecuador moved to the US dollar in 2000 because their handling of their own currency wasn't working (and maybe because oil is often traded in USD?). Whether Venezuela uses BTC or some other currency sounds like a good idea at this point. The corrupt actors in their monetary system probably want people to keep using their bolivar though, because that's what the corrupt people stole, are holding, and printing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> No offense, but "let's give the poor people cryptocurrency" reads a lot like the start of a satire piece, a lampoon of out-of-touch Bay Area tech culture denizens.

</comment><comment><USER11> Step 1: Convert to fiat currency.

Step 2: Give them cash.

</comment><comment><USER12> 1\. Target specific towns and villages in need; perhaps anywhere M-Pesa is used is a good place to start??

2\. Hire mobile money agents in those places to facilitate crypto to fiat exchange (when necessary)

3\. Monitor progress extensively.

4\. Incentivize merchants in the selected towns and villages to accept crypto for payment (granted, easier said then done, but I have some ideas there as well)

</comment><comment><USER6> Focus on places that already have good cell network/free wifi penetration and smartphones.

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

People aren't going to care much unless they can spend it though. Maybe find places that have a higher concentration of places that accept cryptocurrency and focus on those? Maybe Ghana, China or Nigeria?

[https://coin.dance/volume/localbitcoins](https://coin.dance/volume/localbitcoins)

</comment><comment><USER13> Hi Joe.

This answer is a bit rambly, but I think my subconscious has a point to make, and I'm trying to tease it out.

This may come across the wrong way, but: which poor people? Your town, your country, or your whole planet?

I'm not an expert, but my hunch is if you start with a very local project (depending on where you live, it shouldn't be hard to find your local poverty), you'll get the answers you need - and I think if you're going to make a big impact, it will grow from that.

When I lived in L.A., young-me sat down with someone I thought was homeless - a panhandling gent sitting on some steps in Hollywood - we talked, about a bunch of things, he told me about his routine. Said he made about 30 bucks at night at that spot - also turned out he had a home, so I'd made an incorrect assumption.

A lot of my friends thought it was pretty weird that I would engage with the guy. Guess they had bad experiences with similar situations? I don't know. I doubt it; I suspect people were afraid. But what do you have to lose?

Talk to some of the people you're looking to help. A few small things will stand out in your mind - scale those.

I'm jumping the gun here, but if your mind's reaction is that that's not 'global' enough - I don't think anything grows to be a global force without a solid kernel, and that should be able to succeed at a small scale.

For what it's worth, that's my take.

Best of luck.

</comment><comment><USER14> The Steemit community seems to be giving crypto (steem)directly to Venezuelans in need. [https://steemit.com/venezuela/@drutter/mission-agua- possible...](https://steemit.com/venezuela/@drutter/mission-agua-possible- week-2-update-the-pump-is-2-paid-for)

</comment><comment><USER6> Are y'all going to do work in the US? Maybe not long term, but potentially as a test case? Are you looking for part time or volunteer staff in those areas?</comment>


F18 Fortran compiler and runtime project is accepted as part of LLVM project - <AUTHOR> https://lists.llvm.org/pipermail/llvm-dev/2019-April/131703.html <comment><USER2> I write code in modern Fortran 2018, making extensive use of the new language features, so this is welcome news. I use Intel Fortran Compiler 2019 at work and gfortran-8 at home.

Modern Fortran looks completely different from the old school FORTRAN77 that most people envision when thinking of Fortran. For reference, I did this past year's Advent of Code contest all in Fortran[0].

[0] [https://gitlab.com/bwearley/advent-of- code-2018/tree/master](https://gitlab.com/bwearley/advent-of- code-2018/tree/master)

<comment><USER3> I always feel that Fortran is under-represented on the benchmarks game, so let me take the opportunity to say _fyi_ that we are usually happy to accept better programs.

If you wish to contribute a program then please follow these instructions:

[https://salsa.debian.org/benchmarksgame- team/benchmarksgame/...](https://salsa.debian.org/benchmarksgame- team/benchmarksgame/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md)

[https://benchmarksgame- team.pages.debian.net/benchmarksgame/...](https://benchmarksgame- team.pages.debian.net/benchmarksgame/faster/fortran.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is awesome! Fortran is still in use in many of the "hard" sciences. It will probably take several years, but this may mean we could consider deprecating one of the compilers we have to maintain for people.

<comment><USER5> According to TIOBE, Fortran is more popular than Google's Dart and Mozilla's Rust. Not to mention Kotlin, Lisp, and Erlang.

<comment><USER6> Fortran used to be more popular. However, TIOBE is a lacking indicator, as stated here: [http://pypl.github.io/PYPL.html](http://pypl.github.io/PYPL.html) (do a in- page-search with "Why is PYPL so different from TIOBE ?") Some other indicators such as Redmonk ( [https://redmonk.com/sogrady/2019/03/20/language- rankings-1-1...](https://redmonk.com/sogrady/2019/03/20/language- rankings-1-19/) ) show that both Dart and Rust are more popular than Fortran. (Although each of them have their own set of biases.)

<comment><USER7> I think you mean lagging indicator.

<comment><USER8> While the page they link to uses "lagging", "lacking" actually seems to fit better with the context it's used in there:

The paragraph it's used in ("Why is PYPL so different from TIOBE ?") seems to argue that TIOBE is lacking, not lagging.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> For those that don't know:

'The LLVM compiler infrastructure project is a "collection of modular and reusable compiler and toolchain technologies" used to develop compiler front ends and back ends.

LLVM is written in C++ and is designed for compile-time, link-time, run-time, and "idle-time" optimization of programs written in arbitrary programming languages.'[1]

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

</comment><comment><USER10> Great news! Curious - are there any selfhosting Fortran compilers?

<comment><USER11> If a Fortran compiler were self-hosting, I might think twice before using it... I can't imagine implementing a parser/lexer in Fortran of all languages. Considering that loops and procedures are the main supported models of indirection/abstraction, I expect the defect rate per kLoC would be rather high.

Edit: Looks like OOP support arrived in Fortran 2003. Does anyone know how much of a difference it made?

<comment><USER12> As the very first high level language, plenty of compilers were implemented in FORTRAN during the 60's.

<comment><USER13> I'm not sure people used HLLs to write compilers at that time.

<comment><USER12> You just need to search for papers, quite a few available.

In fact, during the 60's Algol variants were already being used to write compilers and OSes.

<comment><USER13> That's true. Not only compilers, but a lot of MCP was written in Algol.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > The board also recommends that f18 evaluate (over time) whether it is > reasonably possible to eliminate the dependence on C++'17 features.

Alright...

> Using C++'17 is not a blocker for inclusion into the project, but will be a > blocker for certain other infrastructure (e.g. build bots and integration > into official releases), but those may or may not be relevant now given the > early state of f18.

C++'17 is too new for the __developers of the premier C++ compiler __to use in their CI? What is this hot garbage!

<comment><USER15> LLVM, like a lot of compilers, tries not to require the latest version of itself to bootstrap. See [https://llvm.org/docs/GettingStarted.html#host-c- toolchain-b...](https://llvm.org/docs/GettingStarted.html#host-c-toolchain- both-compiler-and-standard-library)

GCC is similar.

<comment><USER14> They should still be able to CI it on the min version that does work. Eventually c++'17 will be old enough, so definitely the thing to do is just wait.

<comment><USER16> LLVM supports old platforms: some CI bots are targeting stable Debian, or Ubuntu 14.04.

LLVM is currently moving to C++14, which is a pain for some users like TensorFlow for instance which supports Ubuntu 14.04: the c++ standard library is too old. There are technical solutions for everything but for a component like LLVM, not pressuring its users into convoluted workflow is important.

Of course the LLVM developpers would love to just use the latest version of the standard all the time. For the library part of the standard, it is worked around by having its own: [https://github.com/llvm/llvm- project/blob/master/llvm/includ...](https://github.com/llvm/llvm- project/blob/master/llvm/include/llvm/ADT/STLExtras.h) (and others in the same directory)

<comment><USER14> The bootstrapping policy and the capabilities of the CI infra should be decoupled. I'm not not arguing the the policy.

In three years when LLVM bumps to C++'17 or whatever, then flang starts obeying.

But also I personally think is fine for parts of the project _not needed to build C++_ to use newer C++. Just use the newly built clang to build flang!

<comment><USER16> This is ignoring that LLVM is first and before all designed as reusable libraries.

Bumping requirements is causing other problems than just being able to build with the just built compiler: namely deployment and integration in other products. For example, you may be forced to isolate components in dynamic library that talks with each others through C APIs and each statically link the C++ standard library. It can become fairly complicated when this does not fit your setup and you get forced into this because LLVM decided to bump their standard.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Engineering Culture at Airbnb - <AUTHOR> http://nerds.airbnb.com/engineering-culture-airbnb/

<comment><USER2> > I'm not sure why, but sometimes a team will applaud a small victory, then > more people will start clapping, then suddenly the entire product and > engineering area is a din of applause and cheers. Most people don't know why > they're clapping, they just want to show support and have fun.

In other words: mindless group think, tight social control and an interruptive work environment.</comment>