Why Everyone Should Take 30 Seconds to Opt-in to the Delicious Data Transfer - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/why_every_single_person_should_take_30_seconds_to.php <comment><USER2> Yes, good lord. Why haven't you already spent your previous time to make money for other people? Are you people selfish? C'mon, hurry up and go do things for other people that you've never met.

I migrated mine because I want them migrated. If you people don't, they don't, and they shouldn't bother. And they definitely shouldn't be giving personal information to strangers without anything in return. (And your list of favorite websites IS personal information.)

<comment><USER3> Agreed. I'm going to do it later today, but this post is the _stupidest_ reason to do so I can think of.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Just because it might be the foundation for another bigcorp is not a particularly strong reason. People should migrate if they want to keep using it, and Yahoo/Delicious will probably anonymize the leftovers regardless.

</comment><comment><USER5> Wow. That's some of the worst reasoning I've seen in quite a while. And _the_ most intrusive on-copy behavior I've _ever_ seen.

> _To preserve that which is most popular._

Because what's popular doesn't change quickly, and if we lost some Delicious data how would we know if something is popular or not?! OH THE HUMANITY!

> _To preserve the system of classification, the taxonomy, the tags per URL._

 _What_? How in the hell did they connect those two dots?

> _Hopefully new things will be born._

Because... free old data will encourage them to make new features?

Migrate if you'll use the migrated service. Its success will be based off where Delicious _goes_ , and if it re-gains traction, not your stagnant data.

</comment><comment><USER6> I used to use Delicious, but I amm-scrayed to Diigo during the rumours of it's collapse. So what's my point?

1\. I'm not going to sign in to Delicious. 2\. They won't get my data. 3\. My data won't be lost, because it's now on Diigo.

So there! Nyah! :)

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm confused. The article says that it's important that I do this, because my "data exhaust" is going to be the future currency of the web. In exactly what way? They never explain how I'm supposed to use this currency to benefit from anything. I can only assume they mean that it's someone _else's_ currency that they can use for _their_ benefit, which I couldn't care less about.

Also, I _already_ migrated my Delicious data -- to pinboard.in -- where the emphasis is on _anti-social_ bookmarking. I just want to have a great way to archive and organize my bookmarks and access them on the most devices with the least difficulty in doing so and maybe have a few great features like saving cached copies of the web pages I bookmarked and doing fulltext search of the entire contents of the pages I've bookmarked. I couldn't really care less about my bookmarks being used for everyone else's benefit.

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm sick of having account here and there. Some of my peers remained at Delicious, some ran to Diigo, and I'm currently using Pinboard.

I'd prefer that bookmarking sites would cooperate in some way. Not just importing data or having some sort of master-slave replication, but making inter-site social networking possible (OStatus?) and actively exchanging data.

Sure, from business perspective, the data (and the user base) could be considered as assets, so site owners have no incentive in doing this. But I still have a dream...

</comment><comment><USER9> Better time would be spent ensuring that out-of-date data doesn't get replicated.</comment>


Creating Culture and Being Attractive - <AUTHOR> http://mattamyers.tumblr.com/post/23491026414/creating-culture-and-being-attractive

<comment><AUTHOR> I submitted another blog post of mine to HN a few days ago and it started started some conversation, so figured I'd make another go at it and see if I should more regularly post / see if what I write about is something HN is interested in.</comment>


Cool Concept: BarCardz Is the Cyber Calling Card - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2007/05/01/barcardz/ <comment><USER2> This is great. It's like a business card, except the information is already there, you just punch in a 5 digit code (or such.)

<comment><USER3> _This is great._

Really? It seems like a lot of extra work for no additional benefit.

Think of it from the girl's perspective: if she doesn't like you, it's easy enough to blow you off or give you a bogus number; conversely, she can just give you her number if she likes you.

The same principle applies to any kind of networking with new people.

So why go through the whole registration process (leaving your personal details on someone else's server), then have to remember to carry around these special barcoded cards, etc.?

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the reply. I actually have a very good reason why I think it's a good idea, but I decided to edit my post down in case I want to pursue my idea.</comment></comment></comment>


US Core Inflation Jumps by Most Since 1991 - jules-jules https://confoundedinterest.net/2020/08/12/us-core-inflation-jumps-by-most-since-1991-while-rent-inflation-fell-to-lowest-rate-since-2015/ <comment><AUTHOR> Clickbait. The month-over-month rate of change "jumped," but that's just recovery of deflation in the prior three months. The overall inflation rate remains well below what it was for all of 2019.

</comment><comment><USER2> Looks like it had a recent jump, but is still below the trend line. [https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CPILFESL](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CPILFESL) (You can zoom in on the recent year by using the slider at the bottom.)

</comment><comment><USER3> Year-on-year inflation is still below the inflation target!

</comment><comment><USER4> Shouldn't inflation decrease during a recession?

<comment><USER5> Totally depends on how much the Fed prints money. They're literally buying stocks last I heard.

<comment><USER6> And quite expectably, stock prices inflate at larger rates than the prices of other goods.

Stats show that people save more cash than they did before corona. Very reasonable decision as times are more dangerous but it will be a major catastrophy when all of that money gets back into the economy.

<comment><USER5> I'm not really that concerned about inflation from people moving money from their savings to expenditures in the future. For one, deflation is way worse than inflation. For two, inflation isn't as bad as widely assumed. If anything we're seeing in real time how awful completely stable ie 0 rates can be on society as it's pushed people into investments purely because There Is No Alternative (TINA).

The oddball hoarding is pretty scary-though seems to have been confined to the short term across all the things people hoarded.

Back to savings, people increasing their savings is a rational choice right now. For all they know they may need that to survive in the future. Those savings will probably sit on the sidelines until we reach herd immunity. Being that could be a year away and lots of time without meaningful work the savings are likely to be spent at non-inflationary rates. It's much more likely people need further stimulus to avoid huge booms in homeless populations through rent and mortgage shortcomings.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


John Siracusa on Papermaster's departure from Apple - <AUTHOR> http://siracusa.tumblr.com/post/923458979/papermaster

<comment><USER2> Regurgitated speculation with nothing of value added.</comment>


UBiome (YC S14) Raises $4.5M to Crowdsource Microbiome Research - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/08/18/ubiome-raises-4-5m-from-angel-investors-andreessen-horowitz-to-crowdsource-microbiome-research/ <comment><USER2> This is similar to 23andMe in that lots of people can obtain this type of genomic data. I know how to PCR your poop and can do it for less than $89. Alternatively I can happily teach you how to do it in less than one hour for free. The MAJOR issue that nobody has any real answers for what to do with all this information. That simple fact is always neglected in all these "we can analyze your genome and will change the world!" types of stories.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm Jessica Richman, Co-Founder and CEO, happy to answer any questions!

<comment><USER4> Isn't there a close relationship between the human microbiome and the local environmental microbiome?

If so, wouldn't the data be more meaningful if local soil, air, and water samples were also included; or is that just too complex?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> So, I should pay them to have my data in order to sell it.

<comment><USER3> We don't sell the data. It's used to generate better results for our users. You can also just download your own data if you prefer and it won't become part of our dataset.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to handle one cofounder not being committed? - <AUTHOR> We're a growing startup with 3 founders equal in equity but one of us is not able to commit as fully as the rest. We've been building a product for about a year and self-funded the efforts. We're seeing some promising traction and modest profits of about $2000/month.
At this point we need someone to really promote the product and get our revenue numbers higher but the marketing cofounder isn't able to fill the role due to personal obligations.
Given that we can't afford to hire someone for marketing, what is the right path at this point?
Some options we're considering (would require agreement from all of us):
- Restructure the company so that equity scales with commitment. This way the less committed cofounder would free up some equity to bring on a 4th cofounder for the marketing role
- Bring on a 4th cofounder and everyone reduces from 1/3 to 1/4 equity
- Bring on a cofounder for small equity (~3%) which comes out of our equity amounts equally
- Seek seed investment, use that to hire an employee
Are there any options I'm missing in this situation where an essential cofounder isn't putting in enough effort? <comment><USER2> > Are there any options I'm missing in this situation where an essential > cofounder isn't putting in enough effort?

one way I have seen this play out often is to get rid of them, then dilute the shares of the original investment.

ethical or fair? depends on the situation but nothing is as expensive as keeping a non performing asset on your team when starting out. not solving the situation can be what makes all of you fail collectively later.

</comment><comment><USER3> Seed investor partially buys out your underperformer.</comment>


Vote Leave data firm hit with first ever GDPR notice - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-45589004 <comment><USER2> While I applaud the GDPR showing it's teeth, this seems like a fishy precedent to start with. Lets hope it is truly non-partisan... there without a doubt have been more flagrant and obvious abuses than this one imho.

<comment><USER3> 100% it's targeting brexit supporters and is a weapon of censorship.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Dude, I Got It! – Anonymously share ideas and profit - <AUTHOR> https://dudeigot.it

<comment><USER2> I think your site needs a lot more explanation of what it actually is you're doing. I read the "How this works", but that's not written for someone completely out of the loop.

<comment><AUTHOR> Got it, thank you. I'll re-word it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Dude, didn't get it! didn't get the email after signup.

Also, any idea gets 10 penny? no threshold for how good the idea is? You just submit and you get the money or someone needs to like the idea?

Edit: Dude, I got it! Got the mail, I mean. Edit2: Dude, I also got how it works now.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good, great to hear. Sorry, I need to explain how it works better. You create a Gotit (an idea) for 1 Penny. It starts in the market at 1 Penny. Someone buys it for 1, and if they like it, it goes up to 2 Penny. If they dislike, it goes down to 1 (floor is 1). You get the Penny people pay minus the toll, which is 10%. I'm going to improve the instructions today.

<comment><USER3> Yes. Specify what each click does, when you click just to see an idea, you loose 1 penny from your account. And when you like the idea you loose 2 more pennies from your account. All the money goes to the idea guy. 10% is our commission.

<comment><AUTHOR> When you click on an idea, you pay whatever the current price is. It doesn't cost anything to like an idea. All of the money minus toll goes to the idea creator. 10% is the commission at payout.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Bringing Vulkan everywhere - <AUTHOR> http://gfx-rs.github.io/2018/04/09/vulkan-portability.html <comment><USER2> Correct me if I'm wrong: 1) this is an effort to provide an abstract graphics API for any OS/CPU instruction set 2) it is rust and therefore usable from rust and C(++).

If so, great news! Maybe we'll one day be free from tyranny of Windows when it comes to gaming. In my ideal world, operating systems should be interchangeable like web browsers and competing to provide the best implementation of an open standard rather than trying to trap developers and users by providing the most enticing proprietary API.

Have there been any previous attempts to do this? Any success?

<comment><USER3> _> it is rust and therefore usable from rust and C(++)._

They want to provide C bindings (vulkan.h).

 _> Have there been any previous attempts to do this? Any success?_

MoltenVK translates Vulkan into Metal. Looks like gfx-rs has a potential to break these lock-ins one step further with translating Vulkan into DirectX 12. They should also consider making GNM backend for completeness.

<comment><USER4> Is there any hardware that supports only DX12 and not Vulkan?

My understanding is the only extant device is the Xbox One, which doesn't support Vulkan not because the hardware lacks the ability or drivers (since its an AMD SoC shared with the PS4 and using GCN 3 tech) but because of politics trying to lock developers into their API over the industry standard.

Trying to fight politics with software rarely ends well, especially with hobbyist software. Microsoft has complete control over their console and are probably willing to take moves to prevent the use of transpilers on their platform in the same vein Apple has.

<comment><USER5> 5th generation Intel chips support Direct3D12 and not Vulkan.

[https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000...](https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000005524/graphics- drivers.html)

<comment><USER6> If I'm not mistaken, Mesa/ANV supports Vulkan back to Haswell (with some limitations until Broadwell).

<comment><USER7> Not on Windows unfortunately :/

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Hopefully this will offer some way forward for FOSS software like Blender running on macOS when Apple kill OpenGL off.

<comment><USER9> Is Apple "killing off" OpenGL? Isn't it just deprecated ie not further development but not removed?

<comment><USER10> In this year's WWDC I asked the same question one of the GPU software engineers and he claimed that Apple is going to completely remove support for OpenGL in about two years from now.

Regardless, "deprecated" means "no longer maintained", meaning that if any regressions will appear in the near future, it's possible no one will fix them, as these issues will not be prioritized.

<comment><USER11> I'd take that with a grain of salt. Apple likes to threaten removal of technologies they have deprecated as a way to increase adoption of their replacements but rarely if ever go from deprecation to removal so aggressively, at least on the Mac.

<comment><USER12> [https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/alias- products/troubl...](https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/alias- products/troubleshooting/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticles/Discontinuation-of- Mac-Support-for-Autodesk-Alias-and-VRED.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> So gfx-rs will expose Vulkan frontend?

Is there a plan to support GNM backend in gfx-rs?

<comment><USER13> gfx-rs _does_ expose Vulkan frontent: [https://github.com/gfx- rs/portability](https://github.com/gfx-rs/portability)

I'd love to get started on GNM but licensing is tricky, given that gfx-rs is a community project.

<comment><USER3> You mean getting Sony's SDK is a problem? May be you can partner with some developers who already have access to it?

<comment><USER13> I think the time will come for it when we prove ourselves useful on Metal/D3D12 and get those developer partnerships in the first place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> OpenGL, may you live long and prosper!</comment>


Please stop piping curl(1) to sh(1) - <AUTHOR> http://output.chrissnell.com/post/69023793377/stop-piping-curl-1-to-sh-1

<comment><USER2> I agree that it's insecure but so is ./configure && make && make install

Or what about places that give you a Yum repo to install

cd /etc/yum.repos.d/

wget [http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/isv:ownCloud:devel...](http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/isv:ownCloud:devel/RedHat_RHEL-6/isv:ownCloud:devel.repo)

yum install owncloud-client

It's all the same to me. A user is just saying "I trust you enough to run this thing or this system isn't that important to me so the risk is acceptable".

I'd argue the Yum way is even more dangerous because if bad stuff isn't sent down now, an update could cause bad stuff to be installed in a month during a yum update. That's much harder to catch.

<comment><USER3> Well, a yum repository would have to be maliciously modified to cause bad things to happen. Piping curl could end up with fatal consequences even by accident, if the shell script is cut off at the worst possible moment by accidental connection loss...

<comment><USER2> What if the repo was malicious from the start just waiting for you to install the first safe version only to give you the trojan later?

The shell script prematurely terminating isn't really a security concern and could be fixed by downloading and running the script separately.

I guess my argument is that if you don't trust the source, don't install the application without looking through the code or running through some analysis software.

I would say that sites that tell users to install software in this fashion should warn them about the dangers so people can make informed decisions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Someone needs to make a utility which does a gpg check of the input before passing it on to shell:

        curl ... | gpg-check-pipe | sh

Hey, that someone could be me :-0

</comment><comment> vezzy-fnord Previous discussion on the same topic: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6650987](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6650987)

A fun and educational game that demonstrates why you shouldn't do this: [http://russianroulette.sh/](http://russianroulette.sh/)</comment>


The demographic inversion of the American city. - <AUTHOR> http://tnr.com/story_print.html?id=264510ca-2170-49cd-bad5-a0be122ac1a9

<comment><USER4> I was shocked to read that Chicago had torn down the Robert Taylor homes as well as the Cabrini Green projects. But, really, they had to go. I worked as an ER/trauma nurse in Chicago in the 90's. The year that I moved there, there were 994 murders within the city limits. That doesn't include the ones that we were able to patch back together. I'm sure that a large percentage of those murders happened within those housing projects. Between tearing the housing projects down, whatever Chicago PD is doing and the changing demographics of the city, the murder rate is half of what it was in the mid 90's.

I'm sure that people can't really understand what those housing projects were like, but to give you a couple of examples--people use to snipe at police men and paramedics from the top of the buildings in the Cabrini Green projects. Cabrini Green was about 2 square miles of 10 story slums, and within those two square miles, there were two full police precincts. Paramedics would not enter the Cabrini Green projects unless they were escorted by one or two police cars.

I worked two ER's within a mile of Cabrini Green. It was an adventure to say the least. One of them was a small 16 bed ER, and we staffed 6 security guards for our department. Every single ER stretcher had restraints to tie patients down, chained to the frame of the stretcher. There were a number of times that I got called out to the entry way to see a car parked, riddled with bullet holes. The driver and passengers usually had couple of holes in them as well that needed to be patched up.

And, the Cabrini Green housing project was about 1 mile away from the "Gold Coast" of Chicago, which was one of the most expensive zip codes in the nation when we lived there. Mayor Daley slated Cabrini Green for removal, and last I heard, they had built a hip new development for the neo-urbanites moving in.

So, they relocated thousands of the cities poorest people. And, they removed a bunch of gangs in the process. The crime rate went down quite a bit after that, but those people took their Section 8 vouchers to the local burbs. Those local burbs just don't have the resources or the tax base to deal with problems. Just Google for images of Gary, Indiana if you want to see what those local burbs are becoming.

But, even back in the 90's, there was a lot of gentrification already occurring. One of the things the article didn't mention was how beneficial to the city it was to have a large gay and lesbian community. Some of the first areas of Chicago to get gentrified were because gay and lesbian couples who didn't have kids and didn't have to worry about the school system. They moved in to neighborhoods in Chicago like the Halstead neighborhood and Andersonville, and really turned them into hip, trendy and safe areas to live.

<comment><USER5> OK, I thought I was having a bit of a tough day at work today (slight head cold but not enough to go back to bed).

I now feel like a whimp.

Thanks for the detailed writeup !

<comment><USER4> LOL. Thanks. It's just a job and it's paid the bills while I've chased my dreams. I must say, though that there are a lot of tough men and women working as nurses in Chicago. I learned a lot from them.

Buy me a beer some day, and I'll tell you about the time my friend Sue was an hour late for work because she and her paramedic husband were trying to revive her next door neighbor who had just been shot 3 times in the chest.

I'm 6'6" and 300 pounds, and I'm a complete wuss compared to Sue.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It'll be interesting to see how this goes in the future. In San Francisco, there has been a huge resurgence in the number of families with small children.

That's _small_ children, not necessarily school aged children, which is why I'm still wait-and-see on this. I attended public elementary school in SF in the 70s, which surprises a lot of the parents I meet now (I have a three year old). I don't, unfortunately, have very encouraging things to say. It was a rough environment. Fights (and by that, I mean fist fights) were extremely common, even among eight year olds. Then again, a lot of people didn't enjoy school, so I'm not necessarily saying things were all peachy in Marin or Palo Alto.

I have to wonder if the middle-class people will stick around once they are faced with difficult decisions about school. San Francisco still uses a lottery to determine school assignment, while wealthy suburbs guarantee you access to the "free" wealthy local school.

I know a lot of people with three year olds, and I really like these folks, but very few of them grew up here, and I wonder how they'll react when the city tells them they've been assigned to a poorly performing school across town. Will they accept the assignment (hard to swallow)? Pay $17K+ for private schools (hard to do when you're struggling to make the mortgage payments)? Or will they just move out of the city? Keep in mind that SF is very expensive, just as pricey as these tony suburbs.

It could be that city centers become wealthy, safe playgrounds for singles, retirees, and young couples who stick around until their children hit school age.

<comment><USER7> San Francisco is building many high-rise residential towers right now - <USER2> City is _the_ place to live, until the kids need to go to school. But there are a growing number of good private options, and even a ray of hope on the public side.

One of the worst Public schools in town (William Cobb Elementary) is being transformed into an AMI certified Montessori school with complete replacement of the staff. I have no clue how this is happening here politically, but it sure is encouraging. A nice side effect to the certification requirement is that all the old teachers don't qualify :)

The new direction started with a pre-school program with the support of the top international Montessori school in Marin. The Cobb Montessori program now has a 5 year track record with glowing reviews from parents. We are enrolling our 4.5 year old there now. I never dreamed of having our child in public school until I found this one.

<comment><USER6> There is definitely a ray of hope on the public side. A lot of the parents I know are extremely committed to staying in the city.

But you sure do need to be committed. The numbers just don't look good for SF. If you rely on private schools, you are looking at about $17K/yr for the K-8, followed by $25k/yr for the high schools. The numbers boggle the mind. I have one kid and another on the way. That means that tuition would run me between $34K-$50k a year. It's not tax deductible, so this actually translates into about $50-$70 in salary. I know some two income families that could swing it without too much pain, but unfortunately, I'm not in one of them.

But even if you _can_ afford it, imagine if you moved to a good school district in the suburbs and invested that money instead. The education is "free" - and in a way, you _make_ money on it. You have to pay taxes to support it, sure, but you'd have to pay them in SF anyway. And because houses in good school districts tend to hold value or appreciate more rapidly than others, the tax becomes, in a strange way, an investment (ie., you're essentially buying a share in a school district when you buy the house). Living in SF must be very important to these folks, because I wouldn't be surprised if they're walking away from well over a million in lost revenue over a lifetime.

Lastly, SF's school district is in particular trouble because of the deals it cut with the unions in more prosperous times. I read about this in the chronicle a couple of years ago (sorry, no link). Anyone who worked for five years for SF Unified (in almost any capacity) gets subsidized health care in retirement. In other words, someone who worked as a janitor from age 19-24 before moving on to other things is on the pension and health care plan.

Because it's a relatively old school district (newer suburbs simply don't have retirees to support, because they didn't exist 30 years ago), this problem is compounded. SF will spend a huge amount of its school budget simply supporting its pension and health plan obligations.

In a way, it's almost a relief that so many childless people live in SF - because of these obligations, we may need a much larger tax base to educate the same number of students as a suburban district.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> One interesting bit from the article:

 _Each morning, there are nearly as many people commuting out of the center to jobs in the suburbs as there are commuting in._

As far as I'm concerned, this defeats the point, unless there is excellent public transportation to the suburbs.

Another commenter mentioned Pittsburgh, and yep, this is even happening here. The developers, however, are very much pushing this toward "young" (read: single, or married without children) people. I don't think we'll see an influx of families/children into the downtown area (which is quite small by comparison) because there are very distinct urban neighborhoods with things like trees and grass within 5 miles of the city center. I can be in downtown Pittsburgh on my bike in 20 minutes, and I live near one of the rivers, have two parks within walking distance, and own a house that costs a fraction of what they are charging downtown. There are at least half a dozen other neighborhoods like this, too. Most of these neighborhoods also include a small business district with enough amenities to keep people in the neighborhood (and out of their cars).

<comment><USER9> _The developers, however, are very much pushing this toward "young" (read: single, or married without children) people. I don't think we'll see an influx of families/children into the downtown area_

A side effect of having singles or newly married folks is children. Families with children don't so much "influx" into new neighbourhoods like that as "spawn" there naturally.

<comment><USER8> This is true, but when there are amenities for families (playgrounds, green space in general, and schools) this is less likely happen, especially given that in Pittsburgh, at least, you can live in the city, within 5 miles of downtown, in a walkable neighborhood, for less money.

<comment><USER10> This description applies to Columbus, OH, as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I live in NYC and, over the last decade, can attest to this reverse migration phenomena. The city is definitely becoming gentrified, safer and expensive. For the first time in years the city is expanding public grade school capacity in area long deserted by families.

<comment> daniel-cussen I vividly remember going to Manhattan in 1998 and not seeing a single child. (I was 12 at the time).

<comment><USER12> I remember moving to Manhattan in 2000, and not realizing at first almost all of the people pushing strollers around were not mothers, but nannies. The lack of physical resemblance to the children (nannies generally darker in skin tone) should have clued me in sooner.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I live in Austin, TX, and can attest to a boom of downtown condo construction in the last few years. Most of these are 300k and up, which is a fair bit above the median house price (roughly 175k or so).

</comment><comment><USER14> As a kid growing up in the nineties, the city seems the inherently obvious place for anyone who enjoys life to live. City-dwellers are flanked on all ends by some of the highest forms of functional art (architecture), not to mention the huge supply of dedicated people who spend waking hours forging enjoyment out of hard work. Cities seem to encapsulate all the qualities of youth. Unfortunately, residence in a prominent city seems to be growing more unattainable by the minute. This should not be the case.

Cities, even during periods of prominent trendiness, should have cheap domiciles on account of the various methods of bulk housing construction used. Things like rent control provide a scathing impediment to the expansion and cost effectiveness of urban areas. Rent control, for example, is a hugely negative incentive for an entrepreneur to throw up a high rise. For my sake, I wish this were not the case, but I know I'll make it anyway.

<comment><USER9> if i understand you correctly, you want trendy architecture and stuff to happen in an area with cheap housing without rent control...?

is your city doing this, or do you have a plan for how that can be incorporated?

<comment><USER14> are you familiar with capitalism?

<comment><USER9> I'm not following.

In a capitalistic society a trendy area of "high value" will push the prices up unless some sort of socialistic program like rent control steps in, no? My question was what's your take on how cheap residences can coexist in a trendy neighborhood.

<comment><USER12> No. People will just build more residences until supply and demand meet a happy medium.

Rent control actively pushes prices up for everyone by discouraging new development (unless you win the rent control lottery).

Of course, there will be certain ultra trendy neighborhoods that will still be out of reach for all but the wealthy. But allowing developers to build new residences in urban areas make it more likely that poor, just out of college graduates will have some place they can afford to live.

And if you think it is not possible to build new residences in already urban areas: note the article says that residences in lower Manhattan have doubled to house 50,000 people since 2001.

<comment><USER9> Ah. I think I see what you mean.

But I disagree that we can "just build more". It isn't just simple supply and demand because land, and hence living spaces, is finite. You can't just increase production until everyone is happy. And in a good neighborhood all new residential developments will be priced completely out of range for college grads and the likes. Availability isn't affordability. [edit: And I certainly believe in build-and-rebuild in urban areas. I've been to Hong Kong where the speed of urban renewal makes ones head spins. But all subsequent new projects are progressively more expensive than the existing projects. Building more units never made anything cheaper unless they were specifically slated as "social projects" funding by the government.]

With regards to lower manhattan: are residences cheap there?

Anyway. Sorry this turned into somewhat of an argument. The point is: it is impossible to have a trendy desirable neighbourhood with cheap residences.

<comment><USER14> Analogy: you can get a MacBook (i.e., trendy, desirable computer) for a reasonable price. If I were to tell you that the MacBook's production was inhibited by the finite supply of metals and silicon, you'd look at me like I'd just crapped a swan.

The difference between city housing and a MacBook is that there is no restriction on how much you can sell a MacBook for after buying one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is even slowly happening in Pittsburgh, whereas until very recently absolutely no one has lived downtown and the area adjacent to downtown, uptown/"The Bluff" is the most blighted area in the entire city. I'm optimistic that the area will eventually revitalize; it's just that they just built a damn highway along the best riverfront land.

<comment><USER12> 'the area adjacent to downtown, uptown/"The Bluff"'

Isn't that The Hill (or am I not following your geography)?

<comment><AUTHOR> This map has a few too many subdivisions for my liking (no North Side?) but it's all here. [http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Pittsburgh_Pennsylva...](http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Pittsburgh_Pennsylvania_neighborhoods.svg) The Hill District is on the hill above the Bluff -- if you drive from downtown to Oakland along Centre Ave you drive through The Hill and if you drive from Oakland to downtown along 5th then you drive through The Bluff.

<comment><USER12> That's an awesome map! Thanks for the link!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I think tourism is also part of this - I know that in Barcelona large numbers of the lower class were convinced to leave the downtown because they were causing problems for visitors (crime, poorly maintaining housing) - <USER3> gentrification side by side with hotels and sightseers works pretty well.

<comment><USER16> Can you convince a population to move somewhere else without doing something villainous?

<comment><USER17> Sure - just add things like parks and restrictions on new construction that increase property values. This will lead to higher rents. The population that can't afford it will eventually have to move somewhere else.

<comment><USER18> Restrictions on new construction to increase rents count as villainous in my book.

<comment><USER19> At some point, someone will have to post eviction notices, and the sheriff will have to show up and throw someone's stuff out on the sidewalk.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Are there really suburbs in America without sidewalks?

<comment><USER21> I live in downtown Seattle and walk or take public transportation. It feels strange to visit my parents in the suburbs of Atlanta. They recently moved about 10 miles further away from the city, to a new suburban wasteland of cheap but expensive oversized wooden houses and badly landscaped enormous lawns. There are no sidewalks in their neighborhood. The closest restaurant is at least 1/2 mile away.

The main reason they moved is that had begun to feel unsafe in their previous neighborhood. Apparently a lot of poorer people have been moving out to the suburbs, some of them bringing crime and gangs.

I'm glad that they enjoy their new house and neighborhood. But I wonder if it will still be a nice place to live when gas is $15/gallon.

I could tolerate living in a suburb if there was public transportation to reach some decent restaurants. It would need to be a streetcar, train, or bus that runs every 20-30 minutes until midnight.

<comment><USER20> In Germany we pay around $8.50/gallon for gas, now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> _The era of the mom-and-pop grocer, the shoemaker, and the candy store has ended for good._

I disagree with this idea. As we have seen on the Internet, the more people that one can reach at low cost, the more niche the needs a business can successfully fill. The best candidates to fill such niche needs are small startups, not corporations.

If people with money are moving into the city, then by definition, more people can be reached at a lower cost. If these people have money, then they will be willing to spend it on something that improves their lives.

The argument is really easy when you just look at shops today. Even without a rich population, the denser downtown areas are full of small businesses. In the suburbs, where people are more spread out, chains rule.

In Europe, where the author claims this gentrification has already occurred in several places, are there not small town book stores, restaurants, coffee shops, and even shoemakers?

I'm really curious what made the author even add this comment to begin with. It was like he was too afraid of saying that city life in the future is going to be wonderful, so he had to throw something negative in there.

<comment><USER22> > The argument is really easy when you just look at shops today. Even without > a rich population, the denser downtown areas are full of small businesses. > In the suburbs, where people are more spread out, chains rule.

Part of that is zoning.

But, how many of those stores are bookstores? How many of them would have sold food if Webvan hadn't screwed the pooch?

Frankly, I don't see the appeal of small stores, especially for things like drugs and food. The prices are higher, the selection is smaller, and they tend to have lousy hours (unless they're liquor stores). If they employ anyone outside the owner's family, they don't pay much and they don't pay benefits.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Thank Rudy Giuliani and community policing and predictive law enforcement software for making cities relatively safe again.

<comment><USER24> Thank video games and the gay community for making cities safe again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I've been working in Detroit this summer.

I can confidently say: Detroit sure hasn't inverted.</comment>


A quantum version of Darwinian natural selection - <AUTHOR> http://fqxi.org/community/articles/display/189

<comment><USER2> Poor headline: The article has nothing to do with either Darwinism or natural selection. The subject is a novel approach to the "epistemic" and "ontic" problems of quantum mechanics, one aspect of which is a Darwin-inspired concept of information dissemination and selection by observers of quantum states.

Not a bad read, really, an intriguing approach. Always nice to know that there are serious researchers dissatisfied with the Copenhagen Interpretation and searching for more.</comment>


One Scientist's Bid to Build Cancer-Killing Nanorobots - <AUTHOR> http://recode.net/2014/05/04/self-assembly-required-one-scientists-bid-to-build-cancer-killing-nanorobots/ <comment><USER2> There is a lot of experimentation going on now that cells can be manipulated readily and cheaply. It's still the very early days, but much can be done.

The sort of work described in the article overlaps with that of efforts to enhance cells with additional machinery, such as additional organelles [1] or programmable surface chemistry [2], and the equally interesting approach of creating entirely artificial cell-like entities, designed machinery [3] wrapped in a membrane. [4]

We will have microrobotics in our medicine before nanorobotics, I think, and those microrobots will look a lot like cells. There will eventually be a blurring at the boundary between engineered cells - such as those used in trials of some immune therapies and stem cell treatments - and things that are not natural cells but look very much like them.

The discovery and development of the moving parts is very similar to that of raw nanomedicine and rudimentary medical nanorobotics, but riding on the back of all the existing cellular machinery enables more to be done sooner and with less.

[1]: [http://www.unibas.ch/index.cfm?uuid=E11708E2A1B6CA17E9F30BEA...](http://www.unibas.ch/index.cfm?uuid=E11708E2A1B6CA17E9F30BEA67B66F72&show_long=1)

[2]: [http://www.mccormick.northwestern.edu/news/articles/2014/04/...](http://www.mccormick.northwestern.edu/news/articles/2014/04/building- smart-cell-based-therapies.html)

[3]: [http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/06/110620161300.ht...](http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/06/110620161300.htm)

[4]: [http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/04/130404142457.ht...](http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/04/130404142457.htm)

</comment><comment><USER3> I think we've already got such robots and they're components of our immune system.

What we need is a means of programming/issuing commands to them more effectively.

<comment><USER4> We already have this - they are called bispecific monoclonal antibodies [0]. If you gave me the job of curing Cancer (and the resource to do it) then this is what I would spend your money on.

[0] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bispecific_monoclonal_antibody](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bispecific_monoclonal_antibody)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> A nanorobot is a lot different from what you might think of as a macroscale robot. Most of these systems have perhaps two or three functional states, like an enzyme that can switch more than one active configuration. These are still much much less complicated than even the simplest of viruses.

<comment><USER6> Precisely this formulation of "nanorobot" is mentioned in one of the _Venus Prime_ books. Basically, they're very complex enzymes that can be regulated by chemicals and each other, mediated by the protagonist solving systems of differential equations with a supercomputer she screws on the end of the kitchen faucet. (So it can dissipate heat by producing gobs of steam.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Does anyone have any suggestions on resources to learn more about this field?

<comment><USER8> What parts would you like to learn more about? Shawn's construction is a pretty straightforward (and brilliant) combination of 3D DNA origami and DNA aptamers. The paper can be found at [https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/5290041/publications/223...](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/5290041/publications/22344439.pdf) ; the best way to learn about something like this is often to look at the paper, and then work backwards for the references. If you don't have journal access, lab websites usually have copies of their papers on them; I know our lab (dna.caltech.edu) has our papers there, including Paul's original DNA origami papers.

This paper is actually a bit annoying in its focus and tone regarding the field. DNA origami is actually surprising _simple_ ; the design is not at all "as complicated as it sounds." Short, synthesized strands of DNA that are complementary to various bits of a long scaffold strand of DNA (often single- stranded plasmid DNA, like M13mp18) in a manner similar to the way one pushes different faces of paper together with paper origami. Details of design can be tricky, but it really is something that can be done by hand. CADnano is great from a convenience level, not from some fundamental necessity level.

And the major challenges facing this particular technology really aren't, in my opinion, the cost of synthetic DNA. Instead, as many people have pointed out since this was first presented several years ago, the major problem with _in vivo_ use is that nucleases are everywhere, and it's really expected that things like this will get entirely ripped apart in, for example, mammals. Even if it isn't ripped apart, it needs to not end up with stuff stuck around to it to the extent that it won't operate. Without some way of protecting the structure, it's not going to work well.

Still, this has long been the example I've used of an application of our field.

<comment><USER7> _What parts would you like to learn more about?_

I just need a good introduction. Its a field I'm interested in but know very little about.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> ...or perhaps just killer nanorobots?

What happens if they malfunction, and don't just kill cancer cells?

<comment><USER10> then we are at our current solution, chemo.

<comment><USER9> Are you sure about that? Killer nanites could pose a far more urgent and terrible threat to a human being than any old neoplasm.

On the slow side, maybe they're as destructive as a nasty dose of prions. On the fast side, maybe they're as destructive as a blister agent like mustard gas.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> One Mad Scientist's Bid to Build Cancer-Causing Nanorobots

</comment><comment><USER12> but the weed?!

<comment><USER12> hey why the two points less!! the biochemistry that takes place in our cells is kind of a hack no? So if we invest more in the cannabis investigation maybe we could check why the CDB in the sativa strains helps in the apoptosis process which in turns destroys the bad cells. This is more natural and cheap than a lot of robots inside ourselves. or I'm wrong?</comment></comment>


People Don't Buy Products, They Buy Better Versions of Themselves - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@zandercutt/people-dont-buy-products-they-buy-better-versions-of-themselves-d481390bfcee <comment><USER2> In the advertising industry, this is called a lifestyle brand. I suspect that the earliest lifestyle brands were luxury watches and cars, not Pepsi.</comment>


The time paradoxes of Back To The Future - <AUTHOR> http://www.denofgeek.com/movies/652270/the_plot_holes_and_paradoxes_of_the_back_to_the_future_trilogy.html <comment><USER2> I wonder how many people after having bought the VHS, then the DVD will now buy the Blu-Ray box..

The article is entertaining.</comment>


Ditch all alerts that aren't actionable - <AUTHOR> http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2012/05/ditching-alerts-that-arent-actionable.html

<comment><USER3> I feel much the same way as Gabriel does, in this post.

The method of using email as a sort of alert queue is a terribly broken system. Yes, it's a system that I have to deal with every day. Yes, I get 100-200+ emails a day, between alerts and recoveries... often of which are rolled up in "alert packages", which are just as useless.

There needs to be a separation for all the to-do list, alert-spam, bullshit that typically ends up in my email inbox. I'd really love it if I could get back to using my email, ya know, like an electronic replacement for mail. Little communications or thought out letters. Not this inundation of crap that I currently deal with.

The startup that fixes this, wins.

<comment><USER4> I did the same thing when cutting over our old system to the new one: I fired an e-mail for every WARN in the system, including 404s that have always existed. 1k+ emails that day plus GMail disabling SMTP from our server was the sign that e-mail is meant for _alerts_ , not _logging_.

We've since tried out and signed up with NewRelic with an extremely low error threshold of 0.01%. As a result, we have more data than we had in the past for our errors, notifications on when the threshold is crossed (not for each error), and, most importantly, less dev work to manage them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I was expecting this to be a post about machine monitoring.

It's not, but the same rule applies.

Much of the past year has been tweaking Nagios and other alert settings. Some have been disabled entirely, some simply set to much more sane values (as in: if this value is hit, things are _not_ sane).

My read:

If you can't take some action within an alert interval to change / make things better, you don't need to know about it.

If alert A means that condition B _has already occurred_ (e.g.: site is down, whatever), then alert A is 1) useless and 2) will be polluting your (likely already overstressed) mental bandwidth / handheld device constraints at a time when it's least convenient.

E.g.: while you're trying to read a really, really crappy vendor manual in Android's PDF viewer, which helpfully resets you back to page 1 of 892 every time you navigate away from the document -- say, because a new mail/SMS alert has just arrived.

The anomalous condition _should_ be logged for forensics, and explored for predictive ability, but if it's not triggered until the shit's already hit the fan, ditch the alerting, keep the logging.

</comment><comment><USER6> _Consequently, I'm often trying out newsletters and then ditching them after a week or two._

I remember you doing exactly that with Hacker Newsletter. :)

That is great advice though - I had several Google and Twitter alerts setup, but then I realized I was never doing anything with them so I axed 'em. Another thing to watch out for is recurring todo list items that you never actually do.

<comment><AUTHOR> Conversely, it is the basis for pragmatic advice for companies or non-profits that manage to get someone to subscribe to a newsletter: Don't send a newsletter for the sake of sending one!

Non-profits that send monthly updates that merely highlight a member are particularly infuriating to me. Tell me of a new project when it launches or a big milestone reached. Letters sent for the sake of "just checking in" make me ignore subsequent emails. I get newsletter blindness almost as fast as ad blindness.

<comment><USER7> To wit:

        Date: Mon, 7 May 2012 18:01:40 +0000 (UTC)
        From: Codecademy Team <email@example.com>
        Subject: Get started with programming!

It appears these will be arriving weekly. Thanks for rewarding my early interest, Codecademy!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Interestingly, I remember hearing much the same advice given, except in regards to Starcraft strategy. In Starcraft (as every strategy game) scouting has always been incredibly important, particularly in the early game - <USER2> want to know what your opponent is up to, so you can react to it. But Day9 (a popular Starcraft commentator and player) once pointed out that there's no point scouting so early that there's nothing you could detect that would cause you to change your plan.

Put mathematically, if P(X|Y) = P(X|~Y), then knowing Y really doesn't help.

</comment><comment><USER9> One of those things that seems obvious, but that teams often fail to do.

My last job "errors" would get logged and the team would get emailed. We'd get 5+ error emails a day, but they were always expected and always ignored. Of course, when a real error comes in, you just write it off as one of the expected errors. 30 minutes later users are screaming at you....

</comment><comment><USER10> Email is meant for asynchronous communication (or at least it is supposed to be).

Any immediate alerting that relies on email communication is broken. You should not be constantly having to watch your inbox simply to be parsing messages to figure out what alerts are meaningful. Let the machines do that work for you by setting up and constantly refining your alerts correctly.

</comment><comment><USER11> _yawn_ Not a very good rehash of: <http://teddziuba.com/2011/03/monitoring- theory.html>

<comment><USER12> Well, yeah. For me its:

\- alert = something that i need to know right f. now

\- passive email (does not generate sound alert, etc) = something that I need to know within the next few hours

\- everything else: goes right into a file that i can lookup if needed, but rarely do

\- finally theres always some program generating some heavy logging activity with zero useful data in it so if its really overboard i disable it, just for the sake of grepping speed if i need to look at the archived logs.

didn't even need a blog post! ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I would argue that "false-positive txt messages about server outages in the middle of the night" are actionable from the point-of-view of the recipient, as they are not immediately known to be false-positives in most cases.

</comment><comment><USER14> Informational alerts are useful, even though you rarely act on them. I get a mail every few minutes from a script on my web server (it gets archived automatically). In case the server explodes, I can see the status of that application just before it went down, that is when the informational alert will become an actionable alert.

My conclusion is, use many alerts, you never know when they become useful. But use the filter functions of your email client (auto-archive in Gmail for instance) even more.

<comment><USER15> That's more logging than alerting, however.

You should have your logs sent to an accessible location, be it an specific email address or location.

Having the errors sent to your standard email address just clogs up your own inbox, and causes you to ignore serious errors of the kind "The server is about to go down" until you get a phone call telling you the server is down.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> There is an analogous saying in programming: "Do not check for error conditions you don't know how to handle." Tongue-in-cheek but contains a grain of truth.

<comment><USER17> My friend Mike Rowe (great name for a computer company) says it this way: "You don't need an altimeter on your car, so you know how far it is to the ground when you drive off a cliff"

<comment><USER16> > Mike Rowe (great name for a computer company)

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_vs._MikeRoweSoft>

This Mike Rowe? It seems that this name is no longer so great for a computer company.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Yeah man, if I can't find the verb, it's outta here.

</comment><comment><USER19> After reading this, I think I may write some filters for my incoming email to just keep tha actionable stuff. Now determining exactly how to do that is going to take some time.

</comment><comment><USER20> It'd be interesting to see a service that could act as a floodgate for notifications, with scheduled release times when you're ready for a deluge of distractions.

<comment><USER21> Agreed - I feel that as we have more filters, customisable searches, auto- folder moving and so-on then we're actually creating a big headache of curation, categorisation and taxonomy-creation for the end recipient.

What would be great IMO is for some of this to happen a little bit more automatically with the option for me to give the system feedback as to how well it did with it's filtering attempts. This would allow me to, over time, state my intentions (e.g. I really only want to be bothered with REAL problems) rather than implement the mechanisms to do so. I often feel I work for the machine - not the other way round.

<comment><USER20> Yeah I quite like the idea of using machine-learned automation to do categorization and filtering of information for us. It seems that this is an ideal role for the computer, an extension to the mind doing the hard/tedious work of curation and classification so we can just sit back and observe.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> If I was sufficiently focused on productivity to follow this advice, I wouldn't spend so much time reading HackerNews.

</comment><comment><USER23> This post, short and to the point, is excellent as a thought-provoker. I am currently struggling with finding ways to keep the noise level down, due the number of hats I wear and the large number of systems, and people, competing for my attention and time.

I am, simultaneously, running my own startup, doing freelancing development work for clients, and running the Infrastructure Consulting arm of another successful small company. That's all not to mention running my own personal sites and web projects. Each of these positions result in my getting a HUGE deluge of email, automated alerts, and spam - every single day.

I've tried a number of different methods for reducing noise, and none of them have worked very well for me yet. I tried setting up folder routing rules in Outlook - it resulted in my missing a couple of key alerts for client systems which resulted in very unhappy clients asking me, "Aren't you guys monitoring our systems..." when they had to call to let me know their critical systems were down.

I've tried scheduling set times during the day for email (and ignoring it outside of those times) and, while this has been my most successful method to date, it still just makes me dread the Email Hour in the morning and the other one in the Afternoon - resulting in my subconsciously finding excuses to skip "Email Hour"...

If any of my fellow HN'ers have suggestions in this regard, I'd love the feedback!</comment>


Python 2 Is Dead - <AUTHOR> https://www.enricozini.org/blog/2020/python/python-2-is-dead/ <comment><USER2> 16 years after the start of Python 3 and we're still discussing this. I hope other languages and platforms have paid attention to this transition.

Sometimes one's only purpose in life is to serve as a warning to others...

<comment><USER3> Not sure what you mean.

This was the best way to do it. Slowly and painlessly. Any project that matters is now on 3.

For a bad transition, look at Perl 6, a debacle so big it was renamed Raku and became a different programming language.

<comment><USER4> Python tried to pull a Perl 6 and failed. Python 3 was done as a flag day, a big breaking change you need to switch over to. Originally Python 3 and Python 2 lacked features that would make it possible to write code that is compatible with both versions (like `u"foo"` syntax). Slowly they added things to Python 2 and 3 to make it easier to slowly transition.

But it was still full of unnecessary breaking changes.

\- The `print()` function is nice, but they could have left in the `print` statement for a transitional (deprecation) period. Or left the `print` statement in, and advise against its use.

\- A lot of the incompatibilities are just stdlib modules being moved around unnecessarily. They could have made both import paths work for a transitional (deprecation) period. Or let the old paths continue to work forever, and just document usage of the new paths.

\- All the new features in Python 3 (async, nice helper functions, etc.) are compatible with Python 2. They could have added them to Python 2.

The only true breaking change was unicode literal strings. But again, that could be handled with a slow transitional (deprecation) period. The Python 2 stdlib could have been made compatible with both types of strings (as nearly all third-party libraries have). And users could have been told to `from __future__ import unicode_literals` for a transitional (deprecation) period, to ensure their code is compatible before it becomes the default.

Basically Python 3 could have been a single hard breaking change (unicode literal strings), with a smooth transition. Instead they decided to make Python 2 and 3 diverge from each other, making it harder to do the transition.

<comment><USER5> I think next time, when you need to do breaking changes, give it a new name, so the new thing gets to be hot and new, rather than a problem.

Or do what javascript did: stay compatible with the stupid old way, but build a brand new language on top of it.

<comment><USER6> That's exactly what Perl has been doing since 1987.

Where do you think the idea for `"use strict"` in JavaScript came from?

        use v5.8;
        use strict;
        use warnings;

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I didn't get the point of this at first (and still kinda don't). I think the most useful thing might be this link: [https://python-release- cycle.glitch.me/](https://python-release-cycle.glitch.me/). It's a nice visual representation of Python version lifetimes, which is useful when deciding which versions you want to support. I wish they'd put something like that on python.org.

<comment><USER8> It's just a gag based off Monty Python. I don't think it's meant to be anything more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> python2: just works. If you install python2 you get the same stable version everywhere.

python3: Oh, sorry, you used a feature that was added in 3.x and this system has 3.(x-1) so now you get SyntaxErrors, or worse, random runtime exceptions.

If you can target a container, buildpack or a specific platform python3 is fine, but it's been terrible for developers and users since day one. At least, it's been terrible for me, which is why I still have a pile of stuff to port to python3.

It's fine for something like go or rust to add new features in a dot release, where you just need to upgrade your development hosts. Besides, if it compiles it will work, no surprises later.

But python3 adds new features in 3.5, 3.6, 3.7 and then immediately breaks all new code on older systems.

Used f-strings? Now your code is broken on 3.5.

A new feature used the walrus operator? Now your code is broken on any system that doesn't have 3.8 yet.

And 'dead' python2 keeps working.

<comment><USER10> > python2: just works. If you install python2 you get the same stable version > everywhere.

> python3: Oh, sorry, you used a feature that was added in 3.x and this system > has 3.(x-1) so now you get SyntaxErrors, or worse, random runtime > exceptions.

Maybe you were used to Python 2.7 only as "Python 2", but when it was in active development, major 2.x releases had the exact same thing. I had some serious troubles when the latest version of RHEL was on 2.4 while the rest of the world had 2.6 with very large changes. There were all kinds gross hacks just to make things work on an older, common version.

<comment><USER11> I think you're making a very similar point to the comment you're replying to --- that "dead" really means _stability_ ; no more worrying about changes that make things stop working.

Personally, as a developer who has been working on software for a few decades, I've gotten increasingly irritated with the growing churn of platforms today and the astonishing waste of time for everyone who has to deal with it. It's hard to hit a moving target or build on a shaky foundation, but that's what the state of software seems to be today. Instead of platforms approaching stability and spending time on the actual problems at hand, countless developer hours are wasting solving problems created by others "pulling the rug out from under them".

I guess the younger generation of developers just hasn't felt enough of that pain yet, or they're overeager to try new things without thinking of the consequences. I've always taken the conservative approach and as a result some of the software I've written has needed little if any new attention in decades. Some utilities I wrote 25 years ago (not in Python, obviously), I still use regularly. "It's not the tool, it's how you use it."

<comment><USER12> I think it will eventually settle down once people have tried all the ideas and the needs of programmers have stabilized. Kind of like how bolt threads were eventually standardized after decades of everyone doing their own thing. First comes the end of progress, then comes stability. We already have that with some computer things like basic Linux commands or HTML.

You can always stop now if you want. Download the versions of everything you need and never change. But you'll miss out on the cool new hotness that you're wanting everyone else to miss out on if they stop changing too.

<comment><USER13> I would believe you if it wasn't for the fact that most things being invented in software today are new. The industry keeps reinventing things that people did in the 60's without even doing it properly.

Why doesn't any recent programming languages implement a proper condition system for example? It's not like working implementations hasn't been around for decades.

This industry has a severe case of inability to learn from history so I strongly doubt we'll see things settle down in the near future.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's still alive where I am. Our eight hundred pound gorilla of its industry depends on another, lower eight hundred pound gorilla in a _different_ industry, to the point of tying the version we are on (and one that is only rarely, carefully changed), to a X.Y.Z version of the gorilla below. Upper gorilla upgrades are expensive, frightful, and slow to come due to the cautiousness of the industry.

That second, lower gorilla comes with its own 2.Y.Z version of Python installed and a help page in a large, bold font explicitly forbidding upgrading that Python 2.Y.Z version, lest some dire things happen. And so in my little niche of the world, Python 2 Is Alive. I am not holding on out of stubbornness.

As I learned in a previous job, software lives for a lot longer than expected or even desired, like some declared extinct species popping up decades later.

</comment><comment><USER15> Best transition ever IMHO: I started Python end of 2008, approx 1 year prior to Python 3 release, which I started learning at the same time I was learning Django.

I disregarded Python 3 for a few years, then started accepting pull requests for Python 3 support on my packages when Django started to support Python 3, added it to the CI build matrix.

Then, I started to code compatible with Python 2 & 3 while keeping Python 2 as my main Python (private codebases). A few years later (not so long after Arch Linux made Python 3 the default) I started using Python 3 as main Python, contributed to other packages for Python 3 support as I needed it.

It was hard, until I became sufficiently efficient at it, then it became a joy to have "such easy" contributions to make to the Python ecosystem, note that at the same time I was doing the same with Django versions which did break user code often on upgrade.

Perhaps it's because I worked so hard to upgrade codebases during Django 1.x days, and Python 2 to 3, that every upgrade now seem so easy, anyway, it basically feels like I have nothing to do anymore given the current state of the parts of the ecosystem that I depend on.

As of this day, I must admit that the whole operation has been a great success. I could jump in the train when I felt like it, and nowadays upgrading has never been easier, asyncio has become really fun to use with Python 3.8, Django 1.x days were hard on users to upgrade, but since Django 2.0 it's mostly been a no-op for me, most of my Django 2.x codebases just work on Django 3.0.

For those who had left Python or Django, or decided not to try it at all, it really seems to me that now is the best moment than ever to try it out, again or for the first time. Yes it was pretty hard, yes it took a while, but I really feel golden about the current situation. I'm glad I sticked with Python and I see people coming back to it, it's really useful for a wide variety of use cases.

<comment><USER16> It's not normal to have to write new code to retain compatibility. ES6 was a huge change, but was sufficiently compatible with ES5 that you didn't need to double your test matrix. C++11 is another example of a major evolution that retained backwards compatibility.

There have been other painful upgrades (Swift, Rust) but these have been in younger languages with less established codebases; both have since shifted to a mature-language model. Python3 is unique in attempting to aggressively evolve a very mature language with deep established codebases, and has paid a heavy price.

<comment><USER15> I'm not convinced that spreading the BC breaks over more Python major versions would have been more helpful or worse ... Hard to say of course, will we ever know for sure ? It seems to me that the problem would have been multiplied.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Python 2 isn't dead. What they really mean is: "See all those countless developer-hours spent into adding features, fixing bugs, patching vulnerabilities for free in a language you use every day to make boatloads of money without us ever asking anything in return? Well we won't do it anymore. For free, at least."

<comment><USER18> If enough people say it's dead and believe it in their heart, it makes it true.

Personally it's long been dead to me.

<comment><USER19> > If enough people say it's dead and believe it in their heart, it makes it > true.

except for COBOL, which has the Schrodingers' property of having been (called) dead for 40+ years, but also somehow powering the world and its' infrastructure.

<comment><USER20> Who besides "government" and related spin-offs such as DoD contractors use COBOL?

Does "subsidized zombification" count for a programming language being otherwise dead?

Side Note: 20 years ago a SciFi book introduced me to the idea of "Software Archaeology". These days, such a term is slowly gaining traction as a job description. I've had to professionally dabble into this myself from time to time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I came across Tauthon [0] a while back, it seems quite active. I have a codebase that has proven difficult to port, so this is the backup plan.. "Tauthon is a backwards-compatible fork of the Python 2.7.18 interpreter with new syntax, builtins, and libraries backported from Python 3.x. [...]"

[0] [https://github.com/naftaliharris/tauthon](https://github.com/naftaliharris/tauthon)

</comment><comment><USER22> Software is never alive or dead. And python2 can certainly be found in the wild. Just yesterday I tried to use buildroot to build an image for my rock64 board. The build failed because a python2 script was executed by a python 3 interpreter.

<comment><USER23> Every shebang should say python2 or python3. Whatever you want, "python" is not a reliable way to get it.

<comment><USER24> True. And certainly a python3 script should never, ever assume that 'python' is python3.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Are there any companies out there that might sell supported updates to Python 2 going forward? Seems like a decent business idea considering how much Python 2 is still in the wild.

<comment><USER26> Seems like that would quickly fragment unless the ecosystem consolidates around one particular vendor or all such vendors consolidate on a standard fork.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I was planning to host and maintain a fork of Python 2.7 in perpetuity (I was gonna call it "Bladders" ;-)

It turns out that Pypy will have Python 2 support. I don't know the details but it sounds like you'll be able to run py2 code using pypy (not pypy3) for N more years.

</comment><comment><USER28> Regardless of Python 2 vs 3, what is sad is that every new language, be it Go, Rust, Swift, Dart, Nim whatever is dividing whatever set of 'good, smart, and creative' engineers we have into smaller group each implementing their own sorting algorithm in their own language. Just to be clear, I am not counting myself among them. I am talking about those who design languages, write runtimes, JITs, stdlibs whatever - people much smarter than us. They do this in their free time!

I am surprised that even 1,000+ languages (at least 50+ mainstream) haven't satisfied all the wishes and itches. May be that is humanities curse! Creative people constantly want to create a new language and redesign everything while bigger and better problems remain unsolved.

Python 2 vs 3 just seems like yet another thing that breaks up the creative talent pool to waste time solving the same problem in two ways.

LLVM is the first thing I have seen that removes at least some of this duplication. But I hear even Rust is looking at alternate backend! Go doesn't even use LLVM, all for good reasons I am sure.

<comment><USER29> Are they really divided? Maybe if people only used one language. I would suspect that almost any Rust, Go, Swift, Dart, and Nim developer today is proficient in one, probably two other languages, at the least. I doubt that even 10% of "Rust programmers" are employed to write Rust full time.

What I might agree with is that interoperability is something that should be considered more going forward. I'm unsure about some of them, but Rust focuses a lot on interoperability via FFI, Go's FFI story is bad, as far as I know, Nim's is decent, and I don't knwo about Dart or Swift.

The top languages are all virtually identical. There's so little difference between, say, Java and Python, despite there being _so much_ difference. So maybe there are 50 "serious" languages, but they all fall into a few buckets. There's less meaningful diversity than it seems, I think.

<comment><USER28> Your point about interoperability is probably a better expression about what I had in mind. Whenever there is a new advance in algorithms, at least all languages should benefit from the "reference implementation", be it C-FFI (the current story - write in C first and everyone wraps) or something like WebAssembly. Then when a fancier/more idiomatic one is available, use that. Current story with the C library path is so hard to use in practice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Don't make the mistake I did: do not delete python2 from Linux. My python environment on my Linux box was hopelessly messed up, so I thought I'll delete all python installations and start afresh. I did not realise how much Linux(Ubuntu) depends on python2. When I attempted to do an apt install, it started deleting all kinds of programs in /bin, /usr/bin and so on. The machine wouldn't boot up. It had to be restored from scratch. But it did achieve the original objective of having a properly functioning python :)

If someone can explain this dependency of the package management system or the behavior I saw, I'd be very grateful.

</comment><comment><USER31> PHP is still used by 78.2% of the internet according to some sources [1]. The death of any language or version is always greatly exaggerated. Maybe new projects aren't being spun up with it, but many old projects never die and need ongoing maintenance. Until very recently the most recent project I was working on used python2.

1\. [https://w3techs.com/technologies/details/pl- php](https://w3techs.com/technologies/details/pl-php)

<comment><USER32> PHP is one of the few languages that advertises itself by default in server headers, so I would take that data with a grain of salt.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Society if Python 3.3 was the first version of Py3k

(picture of utopian society)

</comment><comment><USER34> Here is a link to the Monty Python sketch where this post takes its lines from: [https://youtu.be/vnciwwsvNcc?t=154](https://youtu.be/vnciwwsvNcc?t=154)

</comment><comment><USER35> I'm wondering, can't existing Python 2 software be automatically converted to Python 3? It might be ugly at times, but still better then vulnerable...

<comment><USER36> To join in the other comments here: because it's not safe to do so automatically. There are semantic changes to the language that do not have automate-able solutions. E.g. how strings/unicode/bytes work, to name just one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> One piece of software (a kind of custom package/build manager) I'm using at work still runs on Python 2. If it still works, why change it?

<comment><USER35> Because of potential vulnerabilities due to the lack of patches (in the future)?

<comment><USER38> There will be patches. Ubuntu 18.04 LTS shipped with 2.7 and is supported until 2023. RHEL 7 shipped with 2.7 and is supported until 2024. What will be interesting to see is if there will be a "standard" fork that everybody pulls patches from, or if every vendor patches himself ...

<comment><USER37> Though it's deployed on Windows...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vK3WhJGg7PM](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vK3WhJGg7PM)

</comment><comment><USER40> That page may say that, but I still maintain a ton of Python 2 work stuff that will never be off of Python 2 while the work ecosystem lives.

</comment><comment><USER41> Always felt like Python 2 is going the way of Latin, it won't develop anymore, but it will still be used, in ever fewer niches.

<comment><USER42> Actually Latin is still being developed, as official language for Vatican documents and they have language experts to update the dictionary for modern terms to keep the language updated.

 _Telephono mobili Android decurrit_

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> So is OSX going to have python by default now?

<comment><USER44> Do you mean is MacOS going to have Python3x installed by default now?

<comment><USER45> Apple has said that Python will be removed from the default macOS install.

<comment><USER46> Looks like only python2 is being removed:

        $ /usr/bin/python2
        WARNING: Python 2.7 is not recommended.
        This version is included in macOS for compatibility with legacy software.
        Future versions of macOS will not include Python 2.7.
        Instead, it is recommended that you transition to using 'python3' from within Terminal.

<comment><USER45> The Catalina release notes do say "Future versions of macOS won't include scripting language runtimes by default."

<comment><USER43> Thanks. Sad, especially considering they moved to zsh. Trying to write short scripts that work both on Linux and Mac is getting more difficult.

<comment><USER45> I agree, yet I think it's for the best. Apple has not been a motivated steward of the Mac Unix layer, so it's best for them to get out of the business entirely, and make space for the community to converge on a standard package manager.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Python 2 is not dead. [https://www.pypy.org](https://www.pypy.org)

</comment><comment><USER48> The first IPv6 RFC(1883) was published back in 1995, 25 years later, IPv6 only network is still rare.

</comment><comment><USER49> What motivated the Python devs to abandon backwards compatibility with Python 3? I don't see any major departures or revolutionary new features transitioning from 2 to 3. While there's certainly upgrades (e.g. strings), there's enough small changes that upgrading to 3 is rarely a pleasant experience.

<comment><USER50> [https://snarky.ca/why-python-3-exists/](https://snarky.ca/why- python-3-exists/)

<comment><USER28> What that article casually ignores is the fact that there _could have been_ a Python 2 fix (as Python 3) that took the approach of fixing encoding to utf8 only. If that was the only thing Python 3 vs 2 was breaking, life could have been so much better.

<comment><USER51> The go approach was not well known at the time, maybe would have worked. Water under the bridge.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Cobol is still alive, so I very much doubt Python 2 will be dead anytime soon...

<comment><USER42> Actually Cobol got its latest ISO revision in 2018, so it is more Python and less Python 2.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> It's just resting.

</comment><comment><USER54> What would kill Python 2? RCE in pip?

<comment><USER7> The pip docs say support for Python 2.7 will be dropped in January 2021 or if there are show-stopping bugs in Python 2.7 that affect pip before then: [https://github.com/pypa/pip/blob/master/docs/html/developmen...](https://github.com/pypa/pip/blob/master/docs/html/development/release- process.rst#python-2-support)

<comment><USER55> Does that mean that random things that rebuild or restart and require "pip install requests" before they start up or whatever will just gleefully break on Jan 2021?

<comment><USER7> I'm guessing you'll get a warning when installing or updating pip on Python 2.7. I know for Python 3.4, pip has been showing a deprecation warning whenever it's installed for a while now. I assume they'll do the same for 2.7.

So, I suppose the answer to your question is yes--if you blindly update pip and/or you don't heed those warnings and pin your pip version accordingly.

Edit: I was curious, so I installed the latest Python 2.7 and pip. `pip install` (or any other pip command) shows a deprecation warning with info about dropping support for Python 2.7 every time you run it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> Python 2 has been zombified!

</comment><comment><USER57> Long live the King.

</comment><comment><USER58> LOL Try telling that to Mozilla

</comment><comment><USER59> Netcraft confirms it.

</comment><comment><USER60> knife and fork

</comment><comment><USER61> I will not buy this python, eet is scratched.

Do you want to come back to Python 3, bouncy bouncy?

<comment><USER62> Sorry, my hovercraft is full of eels.

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> Long live python 2!

Edit: this comment is meant to be funny but serious, it's not going anywhere, I've seen older tech that's still going strong in the "enterprise".

</comment><comment> mark-r I was wondering what could be added to the discussion at this late point, and the answer is - nothing. The page is nothing but a transcription of one of Monty Python's better bits. I'm sure someone else has done it before, perhaps better.</comment>


1996: Yahoo co-founders turn down $3 million each - <AUTHOR> http://www.metroactive.com/papers/metro/04.11.96/yahoo-9615.html <comment><USER2> My favorite part:

"Netscape... will soon include several leading directories... rather than sell a single featured directory location to one company...

The strategy is a classic win-win... it promises to spur the growth of several (web directory) companies at the same time, rather than... loading up one "winner" with expenses that are so high, financial success becomes problematic."

Does anybody know if Excite was supposed to be an exact clone of Yahoo! (including the peppy name), or did they innovate in anything?

<comment><USER3> Excite was a search engine, while Yahoo was a directory; they were quite different.</comment></comment>


Fork() can fail (2014) - <AUTHOR> https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2014/08/19/fork/ <comment><USER2> There's lots of interesting discussion from the original post in 2014:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8204007](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8204007)</comment>


We Can Choose an Internet Without Surveillance - <AUTHOR> https://blog.torproject.org/we-can-choose-internet-without-surveillance <comment><USER2> Can you imagine if Mozilla went with the nuclear option and replaced "private" tabs with Tor tabs? Going further, what if every Tor tab (by default, letting you opt out) acted as a node on the network and donated some minuscule bandwidth? I can see some tech heads being against such a thing, but your average user would have no idea 0.5Mb/sec (or some % of a speed tested value) is being used while their private tab is open and the number of users/nodes would _skyrocket_. Imagine the ever Tor tab potentially being an exit node!

<comment><USER3> > Can you imagine if Mozilla went with the nuclear option and replaced > "private" tabs with Tor tabs?

That's one thing I really like about Brave. There's an option for a private Tor session.

<comment><USER4> Sending traffic over Tor and using the Tor browser are different things: The former is just a proxy, the latter an anonymity tool. Is Brave doing the former or the latter?

<comment><USER5> i run security at Brave and here's the answer from Taylor, our lead Tor dev:

Using the Tor network is one part of internet anonymity, serving to conceal where you are. But using the Tor network does no good if the application helpfully adds X-My-Actual-IP-Address: 22.214.171.124 to every HTTP request, and browsers tend to do a lot of things like that which we have to play whack-a- mole with. What we implement in Brave is somewhere between (a) naively just setting a SOCKS proxy, like you can do in vanilla Firefox or Chromium, and (b) mimicking everything about the Tor Browser and following the Tor Browser Design Document to the letter ([https://2019.www.torproject.org/projects/torbrowser/design/](https://2019.www.torproject.org/projects/torbrowser/design/)). So, while you are right that there's more to Tor and that we're not the Tor Browser (and that's why we are careful to say 'private windows with Tor' and not 'Tor windows', per agreement with the Tor Project about branding), there's also more to what Brave does than just setting a SOCKS proxy like in Firefox or Chromium and leaving it at that.

<comment><USER4> It is great to hear that Brave is indeed doing more than just proxy.

It has a great UX already and with VPN0 announced a month or so back, Brave is really pushing the envelope and do seem to have the right mindset.

Also, thanks a lot for responding.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What if there was a browser extension that randomly selected, say, about 1% of requests to be routed through tor? Everybody using it would help make Tor safer, while being just minimally annoyed by the latency and the CAPTCHAs. Plus it might incentivize hosts to be less annoying to Tor users, if they saw a bigger fraction of legitimate traffic. I think I'd chip in and use it...

Anything wrong with that idea?

<comment><USER7> It would be lacking the isolation and anti-tracking stuff that Tor Browser does, so the level of anonymity that users would get would be much worse. But it seems like in your proposal the users aren't _expecting_ to get anonymity, so they wouldn't necessarily object when they don't get it.

Many clearnet sites would be extra-confused by seeing requests that are partially Tor and partially non-Tor (with subresources being requested from different locations). But the behavior isn't necessarily invalid in any way, so maybe sites should get used to it. :-)

I think the performance hit would be pretty considerable if you think about the optimization that some sites, browsers, and CDNs have been doing. If you imagine users who choose browsers (or sites) based on perceived speed, they might not react that well to deliberately slowing down connections for privacy.

(I think your idea is interesting.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The Tor browser helps with websites, but with a "privacy router" you can make sure connections from apps and the OS are routed as well. E.g. [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/glinet/mudi-4g-lte- priv...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/glinet/mudi-4g-lte-privacy- router-for-road-warriors)

<comment><USER7> I was excited about this concept a few years ago and talked it over with the Tor developers. Their concern is that the Tor Browser has an elaborate ongoing effort to prevent tracking by removing unique identifiers and isolating session state. A regular browser used through Tor would be extremely trackable because it wouldn't hide or isolate any of these things, and indeed you could associate Tor activity with non-Tor activity easily.

Other software doesn't normally take these precautions, and so you would often end up leaking a ton of identifying information when applications that didn't expect it were proxied by Tor.

<comment><USER9> So it would be pretty much similar to all these dime a dozen VPN companies shilling "Ultimate anonymity! Safe from hackers! Screw the fed!" but it's just in a physical form.

Interesting!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The problem with TOR adoption is being able to act as an exit node without getting a subpoena, and that depends on the laws of each region.

</comment><comment><USER11> You want to help? Add a native .onion address to websites you work on.

You save bandwidth and contribute to normalization.

<comment><USER12> To add to this, with v3 onion services you can designate your site as a single-hop rendezvous if your service doesn't need to be truly "hidden". This helps reduce latency significantly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> There don't seem to be any good choices here. Use normal Web browsers and you will get tracked/have your privacy invaded. Use Tor and you will look/get monitored like a terrorist. What do we do next?

<comment><USER14> 1.) Download (IceCat) or roll your own (FF+addons) security-focused browser

\+ Very secure if done properly

\+ Fully controllable/customizable

\- Takes a considerable amount of time and energy to create & keep updated

\- Unique combinations of addons exacerbate fingerprinting concerns

2.) Encourage anyone who cares about privacy to use Tor, with the aim of normalizing (de-terrorist-izing?) Tor traffic (think HTTP->HTTPS transition, HTTPS traffic was suspicious 15 years ago)

\+ Most maintainable/viable long term solution

\+ Standard configuration cripples some fingerprinting

\+ Easy for anyone to set up and keep updated

\- Concern regarding US intelligence controlling a large number of exit nodes and/or currently have the capability to de-anonymization Tor users

\- Hard to get people to switch browsers

\- Very hard to get people to switch to a slower browser

\- Will take a while

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Didn't FBI track down and catch Dread Pirate Roberts despite all the Tor network/browser anonymity? Did he do something stupid to break his anonymity or did FBI break Tor in some way?

<comment><USER16> Ross Ulbricht made some mistakes by reusing account names etc that he had made on the clearnet[0, 1]. But at the time there were (tinfoil-hat-wearing) folks that thought that this was actually parallel construction and Tor was backdoored.

Here is the relevant section from the Times article on the IRS agent that figured it out:

"""

Mr. Alford's preferred tool was Google. He used the advanced search option to look for material posted within specific date ranges. That brought him, during the last weekend of May 2013, to a chat room posting made just before Silk Road had gone online, in early 2011, by someone with the screen name "altoid."

"Has anyone seen Silk Road yet?" altoid asked. "It's kind of like an anonymous Amazon.com."

The early date of the posting suggested that altoid might have inside knowledge about Silk Road.

During the first weekend of June 2013, Mr. Alford went through everything altoid had written, the online equivalent of sifting through trash cans near the scene of a crime. Mr. Alford eventually turned up a message that altoid had apparently deleted — but that had been preserved in the response of another user.

In that post, altoid asked for some programming help and gave his email address: firstname.lastname@example.com.

"""

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_Ulbricht#Silk_Road,_arres...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_Ulbricht#Silk_Road,_arrest_and_trial)

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silk_Road_(marketplace)#Arrest...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silk_Road_\(marketplace\)#Arrest_and_trial_of_Ross_Ulbricht)

[2] [https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/27/business/dealbook/the- uns...](https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/27/business/dealbook/the-unsung-tax- agent-who-put-a-face-on-the-silk-road.html)

<comment><USER17> The Silk Road guy was using _GMail_ ? Heh. Interesting.

<comment><USER18> And not move from time to time? May be you always get caught.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> If DARPA created the internet aren't there are all sorts of backdoors and systems we don't know about built in? I've never really understood - if you can - those fundamentals.

<comment><USER20> You should read up on the history of the internet. ARPA was funding researchers who ended up creating what we call the internet today. This doesn't mean it was "ordered" by Pentagon or something of that sort. Most of the ideas came from individuals acting on their own accord.

<comment><USER19> Very aware of the history of the ietf public internet, and the US Military Network (MILNET) for Unclassified traffic Defense Secure Network One (DSNET 1) for Secret traffic Defense Secure Network Two (DSNET 2) for Top Secret traffic Defense Secure Network Three (DSNET 3) for Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information (TS/SCI).

<comment><USER7> What sort of backdoors does that history make you suspect?

<comment><USER19> Something at a progenitor level that no one is aware of but which is called by certain actions

<comment><USER7> Implemented in hardware? Software? Protocol flaws? By ISPs? By other infrastructure operators?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>