Microsoft is cutting free OneDrive storage from 15 to 5 GB - <AUTHOR> https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Microsoft-OneDrive-storage-changes-bf91132d-d0cb-4cbb-96ba-86278c5c1c2f?WT.mc_id=PART_OneDrive-Email_OneRM_StorageChanges_FAQ&ui=en-US&rs=en-US&ad=US <comment><USER2> If you read the announcement you get an idea of just how messed up this is.

Quoting: "We overcommitted with our free storage limits and we want to focus on delivering high-value productivity and collaboration experiences that benefit the majority of our users. If we continued with the current offerings, we wouldn't be able to sustain our growth and deliver the reliable service that you count on."

Quoting further: "We will be actively communicating with our users as these changes start rolling out via email and in-product notifications. These notifications will start at least 90 days before the changes take effect to ensure that you have enough time to act or make changes."

In other words, Microsoft, a $400 billion company with $100 billion of cash in the bank, misled consumers when it said it could provide a service better than Dropbox, a measly startup. It can't sustain its growth, so you get 5gb cloud drive, or about a third the size of a GMail mailbox.

But wait, there's more! You thought you could rely on their cloud offering to backup your data? well, you'll have 90 days to clear that space. Because you can't really get any peace of mind from Microsoft.

I don't understand people who can avoid Microsoft products and services yet still opt to pay to this awful company.

<comment><USER3> > well, you'll have 90 days to clear that space.

Actually 18 months.

Did you actually read the announcement?

Say what you will about what they are doing, but at least they are giving people plenty of time to get their data.

(Or did you mean something else with "clear that space"?)

<comment><USER2> "If you do not claim this offer, you will need to purchase additional storage or remove some of your files. Otherwise, 90 days after you receive your first notice, your account will become read-only."

Examples for things that will break once your account is read-only:

* Any program that modifies files on open (Word, Excel, others)

* Any program or device that would sync to a cloud folder on OneDrive

* Any existing workflow that relied on OneDrive files for easy access and/or sharing

Have you ever mounted a filesystem read-only? You should try it and then come back and tell us that people have plenty of time. They might not lose their data immediately, but virtually anything that touches OneDrive will break once it becomes read-only.

<comment><USER4> > You thought you could rely on their cloud offering to backup your data? > well, you'll have 90 days to clear that space.

Your wording suggested the data backup was at risk. You can still rely on the safety of the data backup, they're doing fine there, even after 90 days. Just don't expect to be able to add additional data, which will of course break workflows trying to do that. The data is safe though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wish MSFT would get their shit together on their "cloud drive" offering. First it was...I don't recall, what was the product they bought? Anyway, that turned into Live Drive or something, which was in parallel for a short bit with Sky Drive. So which one do I use? Which one will win the internal power squabble? Oh, okay, OneDrive won out (what?), here's your 15Gb, umm, make that 5Gb. (EDIT: just looked on wikipedia to try and find the name of the company/product they bought. Could find it, but found the list of prior names: "OneDrive (previously SkyDrive, Windows Live SkyDrive, and Windows Live Folders)". _Five_ different names?)

Gawd, I'm supposed to trust this with family photos? I happily pay Apple for iCloud. The only change I've seen them make is to increase storage for the same amount of money. I pay you, you give me the product we originally agreed to. So far Apple has held up their end of the bargain. Pick your own provider if you don't like Apple. Dropbox works just fine, host your own with OwnCloud, hell, put it on your Synology NAS with DS Cloud (which I highly recommend). Just don't use the MSFT product.

<comment><USER6> > First it was...I don't recall, what was the product they bought?

It was called "Live Mesh", and it was good until they started "improving" it.

<comment><USER7> Yes live mesh was amazing. I had to switch to Dropbox which now holds a live mesh folder

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I have never made use of the 1tb space that comes with office 365 exactly because ms do these sorts of things. If you're storing 1000gb and later they suddenly decide to reduce you to 500gb, what do you do? Any course of action is going to be painful.

<comment><USER9> Went through this with Dropbox when I lost space provided under a time-boxed promotion. I could keep data that was already in my Dropbox, but I couldn't add anything more until I dipped below the new limit.

<comment><USER10> Well I tried out Symantec's/Norton's Cloud Storage (25GB freebie) They lock you out.

I expect what Amazon does: Amazon just let me keep the files, but won't let me change aanything when they removed their free ofering.

Dreamhost had 50GB of backup which they no longer offer, their file permissions were so mangled you could traverse and download stuff from a good portion of their clients.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's sad, really (Seeing a grown company make these kinds of 'mistakes'). We're using OneDrive for business, and it is a PAINFUL solution to even deploy it in a windows-only environment without some major hacks that you need to keep maintaining (due to the fact that Microsoft keeps making arbitrary changes to that environment)--not to mention user data synching, even on Windows 10 hosts. Not to mention the amount of issues you get when you hear from uses who used to have Microsoft accounts with their corporate email addresses, and now are having issues connecting because Microsoft is confused about who you really are--and no, there is not corporate way to fix this proactively :|

Frustrated? YES!

</comment><comment><USER12> I wonder how much MS is saving by cutting the free storage from 15 to 5 GB. I assume most people using the service are using less than 5 GB anyway. Is it worth it considering the huge amount of PR backlash that this caused?

<comment><USER13> I was wondering if they're not actually using it as a cost saving exercise, but one to encourage people to pay up for the paid version.

I imagine there's a few people using between 5 and 15GB that before were on the free version but now would have to pay to carry on using it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I never used OneDrive, but I was a hotmail user back in the day. Sometime in late 2003 early 2004 Microsoft decreased the max inbox size from 6 MB to 2 MB [1]. A few months later gmail came out with a 1 GB inbox. It was clear to me Microsoft was standing on the wrong side of internet history then and it looks that way to me now.

[1] I could not find a citation for this. Sorry, you will just have to trust my memory from a decade ago.

<comment><USER15> For 3 Months, i did not log on to my Hotmail account and they deleted all my emails & contacts and locked my account.

Gmail was savior in those time. I had perfect email id on Hotmail but even that couldn't stop me from switching to Gmail.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> There is a saying in my culture, which describes those, who give a present and later take it back, as "dog eating what he threw up".

I'm migrating 40 GB of photos from OneDrive to AWS since days.

</comment><comment><USER16> Why? I really wonder why.

I doubt that 15GB vs 5GB really matter from point of view of costs.

I'm concern that is solution to "solve" some scalability problems with their design or infrastructure. This reminds me when Evernote issued ridiculous API throttling - that point of time was beginning of the end of Evernote.

This could be also that they are hoping that people will upgrade OneDrive storage - but I doubt that 15GB matters: 15GB today is 5GB in one year.

</comment><comment><USER17> That's less than what I have on my free dropbox account...

</comment><comment><USER18> Can't you grandfather your 15GB by ... asking? That's what I did.

<comment><USER19> Yes they let you the option to grandfather the old plan, like they did when they reduced from the original SkyDrive with 25GB.

I currently have 140GB free (15 original + 15 camera roll + 10GB loyalty (+ 100GB bing bonus you would get with Bing rewards, this one expires at some point))

I find it nice that they let you keep the old free plans

<comment><USER20> I got the "info" email a few days back. I thought I had some storage because I'm paying for my Hotmail account (I use it daily as it's my oldest remaining email account, and it's my "Microsoft Single Sign On" account), but apparently that offer has been rescinded.

I, too wonder how long the Bing "award" data is good for. If that were to go away I'd have to move a bunch of data. maybe I should just pony up for Office 365.

<comment><USER19> on [https://onedrive.live.com/?v=managestorage](https://onedrive.live.com/?v=managestorage) My 100GB bing bonus says it's valid through February 2017 (I thought the bonus was valid one year, I got it sometime in 2014 or 2015, so I'm fine with that)

I'm not a big user of Onedrive, I'm currently using only 8GB, so I don't really care about it, even when I go down to 40GB, I will still have space.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I tried to use onedrive for business and it was so bad, I faced an internal user revolt! I now pay extra for another service with identical specs on paper but far better performance.

<comment><USER22> once mesh replaces groove stuff like this might not happen.

microsoft seems to think they can take their time though, and doesnt have it scheduled till the end of the year.

they are going to lose a lot of people to dropbox/googledrive/box by the end of the year, because groove.exe is so terrible.

<comment><USER23> Any chance you might be able to expand on this? I don't dislike OneDrive, but I've started to run into more and more issues with various machines falling out of sync unless I restart the OneDrive service to force changes to be detected... Dropbox has the same issue on those machines, so I'm not really sure what 'causes it.

<comment><USER24> OneDrive and OneDrive for Business used different client, the "Current" OneDrive for Business is the "groove" client, it basically a simply file scanner and sync to a Sharepoint Document Libary, it is terrible (This is the same Client that is Integrated into Office 2016/2013 as well... awful)

the OneDrive "Consumer" client was/is based on the orginal Live Mesh product that MS bought

Last year MS announced they were merging the Code Base and Having OneDrive for business operate on the better OneDrive for Business Client, this is the Code name "Next Generation" Client for OneDrive for Business.

[https://support.office.com/en-us/article/OneDrive-for- Busine...](https://support.office.com/en-us/article/OneDrive-for-Business- Next-Generation-Sync-Client-release- notes-845dcf18-f921-435e-bf28-4e24b95e5fc0)

Dropbox clients is still better than both of MS offerings however.

<comment><USER22> >merging the Code Base and Having OneDrive for business operate on the better OneDrive for Business Client

You got that backwards. Mesh is the good client, groove is the bad one. The next gen one is the consumer client getting sharepoint support.

Currently, right now, mesh can sync OneDrive for Business but not OneDrive Groups.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This makes me think that Microsoft is having trouble with the Azure storage back end. Maybe it is not as scalable as they would like everybody to believe. Microsoft wants to be "cloud first, mobile first". An key area of that strategy is to get your users to store their information with you. The fact that they are making it less likely for users to store their information with them, is very suggestive that there are deeper underlying issues.

</comment><comment><USER22> this was announced lathered in doublespeak back early november.

[https://blog.onedrive.com/onedrive_changes/](https://blog.onedrive.com/onedrive_changes/)

</comment><comment><USER26> I wonder if it would make more sense with this kind of product to offer longer term contracts (say 4 year) and avoid the monthly billing. No one would ever buy a USB hard drive on a monthly rental, that would be ridiculous! Regular billing for something so mundane just invites people to cancel and lets MS meddle with pricing.

<comment><USER27> ISPs rent their modems to most of their customers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Except they aren't: [http://www.theverge.com/2015/12/11/9890966/microsoft- onedriv...](http://www.theverge.com/2015/12/11/9890966/microsoft-onedrive- free-storage)

<comment><USER29> An opt-in system for existing users? That's mean-spirited and insulting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Haven't they recently cut back from free storage to like 15gb. But if you stored photos or something, they'd expand it to 50gb? And now it's 5gb?

I've been seriously using OneDrive for years now (under all of its names). Even got family members signed up so I could share photos with them because Dropbox's 2gb (I've got 20gb due to referrals) was not enough.

My wife recently reached her limit even after she deleted most of her files and was just like "Wtf is going on?"

Great, now I gotta migrate all my shit to another service. Heard Amazon's equivalent was pretty worth it but this really sucks. I've always preferred OneDrive to pretty much anything else on the market.

</comment><comment><USER31> I have a Surface Pro 2, solely purchased for it's notetaking abilities (a la OneNote) and OneDrive is too tightly integrated into this.

All OneNote files are saved in OneDrive's folders, and OneNote doesn't make it easy to switch to another location. Every time I save a new file (in any Microsoft product, not just OneNote!), it will default to OneDrive even though I have changed the default save locations.

I have moved all my data away from MS, but due to OneNote, I cannot move fully. I wish I could.

<comment><USER32> Looks to me like it's possible, it's just not the default, as you say. I remember when OneNote first introduced syncing -- you'd basically put the OneNote notebook on a shared drive and I believe it would warn you if others were making edits at the same time. I don't see why that's not still possible today. That said... OneNote on other platforms does not have this feature, apparently, which now suddenly seems strange. Do they think their competition is Evernote?

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Yet another garbage solution from Microsoft that would be far less repulsive if they weren't actively working to cram it down your throat.

</comment><comment><USER34> They sure are good at this. Next, it will be moved to 500 MB.

[http://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-reneges-on- unlimited-...](http://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-reneges-on-unlimited- onedrive-storage-promise-for-office-365-subscribers/)

<comment><USER35> What you posted is a recap of all of the announcements in the Original Article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I always wondered if two users upload the same catpicture and the only difference is metadata.. Does theire cloud hash that..merge that and create a ref to that file. So twice the pr disaster not only does there offer not scale.. The same thing goes for there tech

</comment><comment><USER37> Microsoft sends emails with "Try Microsoft Office 365" every week. I wonder when I'll get a notification about this space reduction :)

Thanks for posting this!

</comment><comment><USER38> Man, now I'm really glad that I avoided OneDrive.

</comment><comment><USER39> bait and switch?

<comment><USER40> On a free service? It has now gone from 7.5x larger than Dropbox's free tier to only 2.5x as larger. Oh well.</comment></comment>


Edward Snowden's Father Gives Interview: My Son Is Not A Traitor - <AUTHOR> http://www.today.com/news/edward-snowdens-father-my-son-not-traitor-6C10480514

<comment><USER2> This story is not relevant to the privacy issues at hand. This is distracting from the conversation we should be having.

<comment><USER3> I don't fully agree. The article mentions that Snowden has offered to come back to the US if Holder agrees not to detain him before trial. Certainly a very important piece of news.

<comment><USER4> I disagree with you. Snowden coming back to the US for trial is irrelevant to questions about the actions of the NSA and the behaviour of your government.

<comment><USER5> Perhaps Snowden is afraid of what could happen to him before trial. The fact that his concerns might be well motivated is certainly relevant to the actions of NSA and the behaviour of your government.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The Government does not want him for being treasonous. The Government wants him for espionage.

<comment><USER7> If espionage is acquiring information to give to the enemy, and Snowden is wanted for giving information to the American people, does that mean that the Government thinks that the American people are the enemy?

<comment><USER8> I know this is a Ron Paul line, but the logic doesn't clearly follow. Snowden isn't "wanted for giving information to the American people". He didn't only release information to American citizens.

Of course, it is impossible to leak classified information publicly and not leak it to the "enemy", but this particular platitude bugs me. There are many reasons to be upset with the government right now, but the charges against Snowden don't imply the government thinks citizens are the enemy.

<comment><USER9> The definition of "enemy" has moved beyond state affiliation. It's not "the Russians are coming". We're worried about extremists of various ilks these days. So a citizen can be an enemy in the current line of reasoning.

Let's be real here -- nobody who follows these issues was surprised by what Snowden said or found it implausible. Our potential nation-state enemies, who are not completely inept, or operate assuming that the NSA had the capabilities described by Snowden. It's publically known that the US compromised Soviet undersea cables almost 40 years ago -- I'm sure Chinese Intelligence didn't assume that that capability still existed today. Anyone who has any business or knows anything about doing business in China knows about the Great Firewall and knows that a State entity has the ability to broadly and deeply monitor network activity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think at this point in time we can assume the Government gets the right to define what is a traitor and what is not a traitor.

Thus, if the Government says Snowden is a traitor then Snowdon is a traitor. I don't think Snowden is a traitor but the Government gets the final say.

Different Governments might have different definitions of what would be a traitor but any sufficiently powerful Government can turn anyone into a traitor if they want to.

EDIT: I don't think this is right, but thats the way they work.

<comment><USER11> Perhaps a little more complex...The legislature should get to define a traitor (the criminal laws anyway); the legal authorities should get to arrest and charge the suspect (then again under the Constitution police powers were reserved for the State, but we say that Constitutional protection whittle away years ago, and now people accept the Federal police powers without question); finally the court should ensure due process and fair trial to every defendant.

However, like you elude, when the Executive creates a war on terror complete with special powers to identify individuals and non-state organizations as enemy combatants without any standards or review process, which in turn allows the government to circumvent due process to the point of allowing targeting kill lists and indefinite detentions without any due process or review there is a problem. In fact there is a word for people in power who centralize power and circumvent law and judicial review under the notion of necessity or "nation security"...well anyway we can all be thankful for terms limits (so long as terms limits are not circumvented under the notion of necessity...kind of like Bloomberg in NY)

<comment><USER12> > under the Constitution police powers were reserved for the State

No, they weren't. There is no such provision anywhere in the Constitution. The states are sometimes described as being different than the federal government under the federal Constitution because the former have _general_ police powers while the latter has _limited_ powers, but the key distinction there is "general" vs. "limited"; both have police powers.

<comment><USER11> First, the Constitution gives Powers (to the Gov.) and Rights (to the People), so you are not likely to find a "provision" expressly stating what the Federal Gov. does NOT have the Power to do, however, the Constitution has an Amendment on point:

10th Amendment: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

You can look as hard as you want you will not find policing powers delegated to the US government within the Constitution. Ergo police powers, that is the power to regulate behavior and enforce order within their territory for the betterment of the health, safety, morals, and general welfare are reserved to the State.

Moreover, " nowhere in the federal Constitution is Congress given authority to regulate local matters concerning the health, safety, and morality of state residents. Known as police powers, such authority is reserved to the states under the Tenth Amendment." (See: [http://legal- dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Tenth+Amendmen...](http://legal- dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Tenth+Amendment))

In fact your comment proves my point that people accept Federal police power without question, to the point you make an legal argument supporting your point of view (and that of the US Gov.) and provide no support, other than stating "there is no such provision anywhere in the Constitution"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Yet another mobile device hostile site

</comment><comment><USER14> "My Homer is not a communist. He may be a liar, a pig, an idiot, a communist, but he is _not_ a porn star!"

I know, I know: this isn't Reddit, but I couldn't resist.</comment>


Fancy a self-hosted programming language for the Rubinius VM - <AUTHOR> http://www.fancy-lang.org/

<comment><USER2> Back when I was looking at hosting Ruby on Smalltalk VMs, I was playing around with parsers and compiler-compilers.

From what I saw, the Ruby language has about 108 terminals+nonterminals in its grammar.

Python has something like 29 term+nonterm.

Smalltalk (an advanced dialect with namespaces and syntactically distinct class bindings) has 8 term+nonterm.

The Ruby syntax is about 3X bigger than Python's, which in turn is about 3X bigger than Smalltalk's.

I'd like to peruse the syntax of Fancy. If it's significantly smaller than Ruby's, then programming tools will appear in the Fancy community at a much faster rate than they did in Ruby. If large swathes of it are homomorphic to Ruby, then lots of Ruby library code could appear in Fancy at a high rate.

EDIT: Yes, size of the syntax is a real consideration. Just two guys wrote the widely used Refactoring Browser for Smalltalk, which includes a recursive meta-syntax parser engine. I have hand written a top-down parser for Smalltalk, and I completed it in just one afternoon. Contrast this with the situation several years ago, of multiple teams of Ruby syntax "study groups" that each labored many months to produce parsers outside of the Matz Ruby VM. (Yes, an "interpreter" is still a VM! The distinction is nonsense at this point.) Smaller syntaxes mean faster language/tool innovation!

<comment><USER3> Out of curiosity, by parsers and compiler-compilers did you mean Lex and Yacc? It is always a significant undertaking to implement a dynamic language in that way.

<comment><USER2> Lex, Yacc, the RBParser, and SmaCC, and perhaps some others.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the info. Surprisingly, when I was googling RBParser, I got two different results: one being the RBParser class from Smalltalk (I guess that's the one you meant), the other is a new project with the same name hosted on github [1] -- a Ruby code parser written in OCaml. Both make perfect sense in my search.

[1] "Pure and fast Ruby source code parser for OCaml" <https://github.com/m2ym/rbparser>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> When I saw that this was inspired by Erlang, I expected to see light-weight processes and built-in language constructs to support Actor style message passing between processes. I don't see that or anything else Erlang like.

<comment><USER5> I'm pretty tired of languages that claim 'erlang-style' concurrency without any of the erlang features that actually make it useful (process isolation, link/monitor, supervisors etc).

EDIT: Personally, I would also add to the above list: algebraic data types, optional static typing with a (mostly) sane type system, no inheritance / minimal indirection, immutable by default, (reasonably) good introspection, support for live code replacement.

<comment><USER4> Yes, thank you for reminding me how awesome Erlang is!</comment></comment></comment>


Esverify: LiquidHaskell inspired verification for JavaScript - <AUTHOR> https://esverify.org <comment><USER2> I had the pleasure of taking a functional programming course taught by one of Liquid Haskell's core contributors. Since then even relatively robust type systems have always felt a bit lacking. Strict/static typing allows a compiler to provide certain guarantees that dynamically typed languages rely on manually written unit/integration tests for, and liquid types take this a step further by allowing inline narrowing of types and specification of invariants.

The emergence of technologies like this and Rust's borrow checker have me dreaming of a future where the writing tests is increasingly unnecessary, as your language requires that you specify your invariants etc up front. That combined with something like QuickCheck may make manually writing test cases a thing of the past.

<comment><USER3> There will invariably be some need for a kind of testing. Though we very rarely utilize traditional unit tests. Property-based tests are our common testing entry point.

"Model conformance" issues can go both directions. The model can diverge from the implementation. The designer's intent can also be incorrectly expressed in the model.

Some forms of testing can be useful in describing the problem domain and expectations in a more approachable/transparent way, and those tests can be used as part of an ensemble of methods to attempt to ensure the model represents the designer's intent, and that the implementation conforms to the model.

It's also extremely unlikely that even if you're able to verify your software, that every other part of the stack/system will have the same assurances, and in those cases some forms of testing can also be useful for building trust in components that you have no proof for.

Disclaimer: this set of problems is what my company works on for life-critical systems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> About 15 years ago it was good practice in JavaScript to check the function parameters to make sure the caller didn't do anything wrong, which would throw a friendly error message to the developer. But this seem to be thrown upon by new developers, they argue that it's "code clutter". This "code clutter" however solves almost all problems with the dynamic nature of JavaScript. Also type annotations and static typing do not substitute good documentation, nor does it substitute testing.

</comment><comment><USER5> This combined with TypeScript (which seems to be on their roadmap), and property-based testing ala QuickCheck would be a serious toolkit for writing more correct JavaScript.

</comment><comment><USER6> This is tangential but this is the second post recently using fancy ligature fonts in code examples and it's... jarring.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, they can definitely be jarring at first. But if you use them for a little while in a terminal that supports them (I use kitty[1]), the non ligature font will look jarring instead. I'm not so sure about using them for online code samples, though...

[1]: [https://sw.kovidgoyal.net/kitty/](https://sw.kovidgoyal.net/kitty/)

<comment><USER6> Right- I did look at them when they first came to my attention and I do like the look. If I were more of a fan of terminal customization I would probably give them a go. But it's weird to see them in code samples online.

I remember when I first was looking at them, I realised that they aren't even all consistent. I think it was the the "<=" ligature. <= can either be glossed as a left arrow or a less-than-or-equal, and at least one font decided somewhat inexplicably that it was an arrow. These fonts have no idea what the semantics are of what you're actually coding (since they're just ligatures) so insofar <= always means less-than-or-equal then you're fine, but if you find some language where it means assignment you'll need a different font!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This seems similar to .Net Code Contracts. Although I've never used either so couldn't say for sure.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Can I blame HN for the first letter being capitalized ? Could someone change it to be all lowercase?</comment>


A list of public JSON APIs for use in web development - happy-go-lucky https://github.com/toddmotto/public-apis <comment><AUTHOR> some time ago I enjoyed using coursera API[0] for building apps for educational purposes, the idea was something like "oh here is a new interesting JS framework, let's build the coursera viewer with it". the api doesn't require any consumer keys or auth to be applied, it provides the meaningful data, thus it was so appealing to me.

[0] - [https://docs.google.com/document/d/15gwppUMLp0s1OhbzFZvFSeTb...](https://docs.google.com/document/d/15gwppUMLp0s1OhbzFZvFSeTbvFkRfSFIkiIKrEP6cUA/edit#heading=h.wpqp7pmo0g4y)

</comment><comment><USER2> Maybe I am missing something, but how does this differ from www.programmableweb.com? Seems more complete and more used

<comment><USER3> Compared to a Github list, Programmable Web

\- is ad ridden,

\- tracks the bejeezus out of you,

\- looks a bit sketchy in some places,

\- has a lot of junk you have to wade through before getting to the interesting part,

\- and of course is not community-driven the way a Github list is.

On the other hand, when they do have a summary - see e.g. some API I picked up at random[0] - it's _significantly better_ and more useful than what is on the Github list.

\--

[0] - [https://www.programmableweb.com/api/nationbuilder](https://www.programmableweb.com/api/nationbuilder)

<comment><USER3> Too late to edit now, but I feel that the criticism of PW I presented here is pretty unfair to the site - especially that I meant the post to be more of a comparison than evaluation. A better list would look like:

\- has plenty of ads (vs. no ads on GitHub),

\- tracks the bejeezus out of you,

\- the site itself looks more like a news site than catalogue (possibly because it _is_ also a news site about APIs),

\- it's not so community driven compared to a GitHub list (OTOH, it seems much more organized),

\- it's heavy (resource-wise) compared to GitHub,

\- _but_ , it has much better summaries of APIs and links to plenty of related resources for each,

\- _and_ it has much more APIs than the Github list.

So please don't be discouraged by my comments; if you're into APIs, check the PW site out and form your own opinion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Another list of APIs:

[https://github.com/abhishekbanthia/Public- APIs](https://github.com/abhishekbanthia/Public-APIs)

</comment><comment><USER5> This is great, next time I feel the urge for a side project I know which page to start on.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm disappointed nobody's made a public version of this yet: [https://github.com/jaimeMF/youtube-dl-api- server](https://github.com/jaimeMF/youtube-dl-api-server)

I'd use the demo server, but its youtube-dl is out of date, and it just feels wrong.

</comment><comment><USER7> I just built out an Alexa skill using one of these! Great source for ideas when you don't know where to start. Open sourced on GitHub.

[https://github.com/nickcoury/alexa-adopt-a- pet](https://github.com/nickcoury/alexa-adopt-a-pet)

</comment><comment><USER8> just out of curiosity people make public/free API: for profit and/or fun?

<comment><USER9> I think it's great.

People collect much stranger things than public APIs :)

<comment><USER10> Ok, I have to say it, before someone else does :)

Someone needs to make an open API to query a list of open APIs

<comment><USER11> The APIs.guru [0] API sounds exactly like you want.

[0] [https://apis.guru/api-doc/](https://apis.guru/api-doc/)

<comment><USER10> Yes that definitely qualifies. Thank you for sharing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> You sir get my github star of the week award. Much thanks

</comment><comment><USER13> Hi all, I was on vacation when this thread popped-up and I'm now just reading through it all and wanted to say that we at ProgrammableWeb strive to be the very best resource for anyone that's searching for APIs to use in their apps. I'll be the first one to say that achieving this objective always presents a challenge as there are many things we'd like to do by tomorrow, but not the unlimited resources I wish I had to make everything (including your suggestions) happen so fast.

Just to be clear, we have recently re-engineered our underlying data model to better reflect the complex state of the API economy. That data model is really at the foundation of all the functionality that our site offers. So, nailing that model has been critically important. For example, many (not all) developers love SDKs and these days, a large percentage of APIs ship with a full complement of SDKs. Our data model makes it easy to go from one to the other. If you land on an API, you can find all the related SDKs (even if they are third party SDKs that don't come from the API provider). If you land on an SDK, you can quickly get back to the "parent" API. I know.. not a big deal... the sort of basic task that MySQL and other RDBMS are made for. But you'd be surprised how, once we enabled this obvious capability, users started to move back and forth between them. There are many more not-so-obvious capabilities that taken together, will result in not only a very robust power search capability (ie: I'll take RESTful Storage APIs that aggregate all the other storage APIs - dropbox, gdrive, box, etc. -- and offer CSV, XML, and JSON- formatted responses), but also a much more powerful alerting service (our most popular feature).

That data model also had to be nailed to enable a great API for APIs which is also on our road map. I could go on, but hopefully, you get the point. We absolutely hear you on the many things we can do better.

Finally, I would like to address the part about ads, tracking, and so forth. Yes, we do have ads. To build our technology, to run a research team that's constantly finding the latest APIs and SDKs and adding them to our directory, etc, we need sources of funding. We have worked hard to ensure that the ads are not what you're seeing elsewhere on the Web.. you know the ones that have pop-ups on top of pop-ups and auto-playing video on top of already playing video content and so on. Our pages are not littered with text ads either. I would love to run a site without ads at all. But knowing that this isn't possible, I hope that you would consider the minimally invasive ad environment as one that isn't following the rest of the pack to do anything to keep you from your task of searching for APIs or reading our great content.

And regarding tracking, I suspect that it's mostly connected with the ads and retargeting (again, both necessities to help subsidize the cost of us running the site). And we use Google Analytics for measuring traffic which may trigger tracking detectors. But we (ProgrammableWeb) are not deliberately tracking you with some nefarious intent. We do very basic stuff like looking to see if people are finding their way from APIs to SDKs and back again to ensure the usability of our site.

We welcome feedback on everything that we're doing and have an open door policy. You can write to the entire team by writing to email@example.com or you can write to me directly by writing to firstname.lastname@example.com.

</comment><comment><USER14> API's have become essential components in applications to utilize third party services and data resources. In a perfect world the integration between a web API and a deployed application works without any issues, but we all know this is never the case. I'm actually currently investigating what causes problems related to API integration and what we can do to mitigate these. Best practice guides are nice, but they can only do so much.

Ever used a web API and ran into production problems? You can help out by taking this survey: [https://www.surveygizmo.com/s3/3708659/4963a5d97d3e](https://www.surveygizmo.com/s3/3708659/4963a5d97d3e)</comment>


Ignition: An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants (1972) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://library.sciencemadness.org/library/books/ignition.pdf <comment><USER2> Wonder why Firefox doesn't seem to display this PDF correctly...

The book is excellent though.

<comment><USER3> Same here in Chrome v46. Downloading and reading via Adobe Reader works though.</comment></comment>


A guide for how to talk to a developer - <AUTHOR> https://hatchapps.com/technical-dictionary <comment><USER2> This is painful.

If, as an employee you're so engrossed in technical jargon that you can't explain it at an understandable and reasonable level to a competent adult, there's a problem.

Likewise, as a manager, you memorized some flashcards and now "understand" enough to throw around some buzzwords and jargon, that's going to have it's own set of problems.

Talk like a human, ask questions, and don't be an idiot.

<comment><USER3> And if one of the two things you "know" about C is that it's "uncommon".. Best not to remove all doubt.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> 1\. Is this for real?

2\. Here are exactly two things that you need to memorize in order to make this sort of talk productive:

a) I don't know what X is, sorry. Can you tell me what that is/Can you explain to me what it does?

b) I'm not sure I follow. I thought X is [...]/does [...], what am I missing?

3\. Did anyone who _actually knows what these things mean_ review these definitions? E.g:

Vanilla:

"Plain or basic, often used in reference to coding languages or other computing-related systems that remain unmodified from their original form."

There's nothing plain or basic about the vanilla Linux kernel. What makes it vanilla is the absence of distribution- and/or vendor-specific patches that are not in mainline.

API:

"A set of rules that developers follow to create software that can interact with an external system or application."

This sort of matches what an API is in web land, if you squint a little. If someone were to ask me what that definition describes, "API" is about the last thing I'd say.

Django:

"A style sheet language that extends from CSS."

Last time I wrote web-related code, my girlfriend dragged me to see The Aviator twice because it was all the rage, and I haven't really kept up, but I could swear Django is not a language and that it doesn't extend from CSS, whatever that means.

<comment><USER5> >This sort of matches what an API is in web land, if you squint a little. If someone were to ask me what that definition describes, "API" is about the last thing I'd say.

I struggle with defining simple things like this, and I think what author offers is a good generic way to define API. This definition includes any actual way I can imagine one can get (programmatic) access to generic service that does not belong to them. I would really like to know how you would define it though.

<comment><USER6> A user interface is how a person talks to software. An API is how software talks to software.

An API is like a restaurant menu, but for software. A menu tells a person what they can request from a restaurant. An API tells a programmer what their software can request from other software.

<comment><USER7> Excellent definition.

The second part is true when there is a documentation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Rather than memorize a bunch of flash cards it seems much easier to just talk to them like humans and if they say something you don't understand don't be embarrassed to ask them what it means.

<comment><USER9> I know non-technical people who, when they think they are hearing anything remotely technical, seem to shut down and go into "I don't know technical stuff!" mode...

Not that flashcards are going to cure _that_.

<comment><USER10> I think you're right. I also know technical people who obscure gaps in their own knowledge with jargon. So clarifying questions that might expose the gap are responded to with increasingly technical rambling. Bad habits all around, feeding off each other.

<comment><USER11> Increasingly technical rambling is good. What I hate is when techies start to imply that whoever they talk with is an idiot after they reach limit of their knowledge. That tactic is used surprisingly often.

It makes people scared to ask and passive.

<comment><USER12> No he means increasingly technical rambling that is also meant to obscure the fact that they don't know the answer. Definitely not good.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It looks like it's just several flash cards to help managers talk like Pointy Haired Boss from Dilbert.

<comment><USER14> It is. And it should be titled as such. The current title calls it a "guide", which is misleading.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Some of these are just wrong. "Django" is not "A style sheet language that extends from CSS."

<comment><USER16> And an API is not quite " _A set of rules that developers follow_ to create software that can interact with an external system or application" [emphasis added]... (Gives the impression of a design pattern or something, IMO)

This is awful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> The UI is pretty, but that's about it.

How about you just talk to a developer like a regular person? Don't understand what an API is? Just ask them. Great folks love explaining things to others, and if you're not a developer yourself, it's not too stupid of a question to ask (or simply Google it).

</comment><comment><USER18> The "computer science" terms are funny. That's not computer science, that's web project development.

 _" Agile - A adapted method of project management in which tasks are divided into short phases, and plans are regularly revisited and modified in response to new information."_

What does "adapted" mean in this context, anyway?

<comment><USER19> I think they mean "adaptive" in that it adapts to changing circumstances.

<comment><USER18> That's worse. "Adaptive" in web-level tech speak is related to features for disabled people.

Just leaving the word out would improve that sentence.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> If you're a manager of developers and you need these cards to tell you what some of these things are (database, stack...) you probably shouldn't be managing developers.

</comment><comment><USER21> Surely as developers we should be able to reduce or explain our use of jargon for the person we're speaking to, rather than the rest of the world having to learn our industry-specific language?

<comment><USER22> I try not to use any jargon at all when communicating to non-dev stakeholders, and they still complain about jargon.

Words like "server" or "database" are not jargon. There are literally no other words to use for those things. And if you don't want to hear any technical- sounding words at all, then don't ask technical questions. Or better yet, don't work at a tech company.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> This is as condescending as it is wrong.

<comment><USER24> IMO, being wrong makes for the most amusing condescension. This website is excellent in that regard, but otherwise remarkably wrong!

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Shoot, well if this is the way the world works, I better get some flash cards to talk as a doctor/mechanic/craftsmen/anything-else before I even think of talking to them. The horror of asking what something means is too much!

</comment><comment><USER26> Django - "a style sheet language that extends from CSS" what blasphemy!

<comment><USER27> "Django is a free and open-source web framework, written in Python, which follows the model-view-template architectural pattern. It is maintained by the Django Software Foundation, an independent organization established as a 501 non-profit. Django's primary goal is to ease the creation of complex, database-driven websites."

The flashcard is uhh, close?

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Just No. It doesnt't even feel human. It's like throwing bunch of things at the developers and will give out output. It's upper management version of random button smashing.

</comment><comment><USER29> I sent them a message offering to review their definitions. There's a lot that are incorrect, but complaining about it doesn't solve anything :)

</comment><comment><USER30> This is quite funny. Not the website itself, but the comments on here. And it proves the point so well! The website in question is a seemingly obviously quick project that someone whipped up quickly on the hatchapps website. But almost all of the responses here seem to think it's a serious project, taking it at face value.

And therein lies (one of) the problem(s) in talking with developers. We (developers) assume what you (the customer) said is what you meant, but it rarely is.

</comment><comment><USER31> First there was mansplaining, now there's devsplaining.

<comment><USER32> 'Mansplaining' "You Keep Using That Word, I Do Not Think It Means What You Think It Means"

More clearly. I don't think you know what mansplaining means.

<comment><USER31> > More clearly. I don't think you know what mansplaining means.

That is unnecessarily hostile comment.

I don't care what you think. I know what it means and you have exactly zero reason to publicly doubt that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> If you look past the poorly-thought-out title, this page is actually a good information resource for non-technical people.

<comment><USER34> Except for the part where a bunch of the definitions are wrong, misleading, or woefully incomplete.

<comment><USER33> _> Except for the part where a bunch of the definitions are wrong, misleading, or woefully incomplete._

Examples?

<comment><USER34> Have you read this thread? I personally stumbled hard on the definition for Firebase ("essentially equivalent to AWS" \-- I might be paraphrasing slightly since it's been a day).</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Threading In Ruby - <AUTHOR> http://dev.zeraweb.com/threading-in-ruby/ <comment><USER2> Color me the unimpressed.

Anyone writing an article promoting the use of threaded concurrency and using PHP as an example of threading done right obviously doesn't know what they're talking about. PHP has basically zero support for threads, and historically has basically barred you from using the threading MPMs in your Apache setup, too, since so few extension modules were thread safe.

Even worse, he obviously has some trouble understanding the relationship between threads and processes in any modern multi-tasking OS, which leads him to say silly FUD-esque things about processes being unable to effectively utilize multi-core systems.

Threads are just processes that share some state. They offer no inherent performance advantages over plain processes in a "shared-nothing" architecture, unless your bottleneck is copying of data between processes on a single machine.

A fully-threaded Rails stack would kick ass for one reason: RAM. Instead of having 6, 8, or more 100+ MB Mongrel listeners, you could have a single 150-200 MB process with only one copy of its shared state, loaded libraries, etc.

</comment><comment><USER3> How can demand-threading _possibly_ be faster or more memory-efficient than event processing? Web apps are, to a one, I/O bound. Event programming schedules those applications on I/O.

The hand-waving on threading bugs is funny, too. "They're both hard, they both have learning curves!". Nobody has ever livelocked competing events. It's awfully hard to serialize an entire event-based program on a single shared variable. This post gives me the impression of an author who has never scaled real threaded code.

</comment><comment><USER4> Apparently the author thinks that "event-driven" means "multi-process", which it doesn't. This mistake made the article pretty unreadable for me.

For the curious, the Flash paper provides a good overview of this topic: <http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~vivek/flash_usenix_99/>

</comment><comment><USER5> I stopped reading at this sentence: "Ruby itself uses 'green threads,' which is basically faking it." Erlang has green threads, too, and it has excellent threading performance and ease of use.</comment>


Comcast Tries to Derail Fort Collins Community Broadband - <AUTHOR> http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Comcast-Tries-to-Derail-Fort-Collins-Community-Broadband-140604 <comment><USER3> So the info from people I know who live in Longmont, was that Comcast was as sleazy as their reputation in dealing with the city.

Comcast executives said in statements to city council that it was physically impossible to deliver higher bandwidth over the existing cable. Edit to add: now over the existing cable they are offering higher speeds. YES, that same cable that pre competition, they stated could not handle higherspeeds.

When Longmont decided to proceed with their own network, lots of FUD from Comcast both before it was successfully delivered and after, but everyone who has it, loves it. And it very rarely goes down.

Comcast then tried to say that they had exclusive contracts with the landlords... but under CO law such restrictions placed on tenants are illegal.

Etc. Etc.

<comment><USER4> > Comcast then tried to say that they had exclusive contracts with the > landlords... but under CO law such restrictions placed on tenants are > illegal.

We could use such a law in California.

<comment><USER5> You don't need one! Exclusive telecom provider agreements with multiple- dwelling units (MDUs) have been prohibited federally since 2009.

Now, it's a fair bet that the current FCC leadership will flip on this - <USER2> published a "Notice of Inquiry" to "seek comment" on what they're now calling "multiple tenant environments" earlier this year: [https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-345161A1.p...](https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-345161A1.pdf)

But for now, exclusive provider agreements like this are not actually enforceable.

<comment><USER6> > have been prohibited federally since 2009.

Well, for now, at least. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if the current clowns in office reverse it

<comment><USER7> Hey those clowns went to Ivy league schools in some cases! Best clown college ever?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Comcast did the same thing to Longmont CO about 3-4 years ago. Luckily the local residents were not fooled: [https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/11/19/longmo...](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/11/19/longmont- internet-service/19294335/)

I am a former resident of FC - I hope they are able to put a little competition to Comcast.

<comment><USER9> Those type of executives will be going to jail soon enough.

There is a theory, I think first proposed by Arthur Schlesinger Jr (who won two Pulitzer prizes, had an equally renowned father, and was one of Kennedy's top advisors) that American history tends to move in 80 year cycles divided into two forty year periods or so. Every 40 years US society shifts from capitalism and individualism to community and strong federal government. Neither period is inherently bad, but it's just that capitalism and democracy don't coexist as much as rule independently, taking turns.

Schlesinger dated the capitalism period to 1980 starting with Ronald Reagan. That means it should end in 2020 or so.

For all the crimes that fall out of the statue of limitations, I can imagine, not necessarily in a good way and probably will be frowned upon by later historians, that McCarthy-style commissions will be set up and these executives blacklisted from business.

<comment><USER10> > American history tends to move in 80 year cycles divided into two forty year > periods or so

~80 years ago was World War 2.

~80 years before that was the US Civil War.

~80 years before that was the American Revolution.

I'm hoping this time around will be a little more boring. The previous events look like a little too much excitement for my taste.

<comment><USER11> Amazingly and coincidentally enough, when was the last time you had a president where you were actually worried a multi-regional war might start?

<comment><USER12> Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Reagan, Bush Jr., Trump.

Noting the exceptions: Eisenhower, Carter, Bush Sr., Clinton, Obama.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> _But Colorado is unique in that town and cities in the state have been able to vote locally on whether to overturn this ISP-lobbying-for-law_

Once again Colorado has impressed me on the level of pragmatism they show in their state laws. They have been looking very politically healthy compared to the rest of the US, in my opinion, and I think it is going to pay off for them in the near future.

<comment><USER14> We have a lot of citizen involvement. You see it in these kind of local activities and overrides, but it goes to the state level ballot initiatives as well.

Sadly, there are some inroads against it. In a rare show of bipartisanship, both the Republican and Democratic parties supported this 'Raise the Bar' initiative to make it more difficult to add initiatives to the state ballot. It doesn't remove the right, but it requires a lot more organization by requiring 2% voter signatures from _each state district_ within a 60 day collection window.

It sucks, but I'm not too distraught. A little more authority was ceded to the political parties but I still have faith that the citizenry are active and involved. We don't all believe the same thing (it's a swing state), but at least we act.

What I absolutely love is the freedom to be independent. As an independent voter, I can vote in the primary for any of the political parties, as long as I only vote once. I don't need to pre-register for that party to be eligible. There are a lot of other improvements to the electoral process we could potentially make, but I'm glad we at least pulled down this low hanging fruit as a first step.

<comment><USER15> 2% from each district sounds like an absurdly high barrier. Can you imagine how hard it would be to hire enough people just to say hello to 2% of Colorado in 60 days? I think you're underestimating the magnitude of this.

<comment><USER16> It does seem like a lot but I havent done canvassing before

5.5 mil people about 110k signatures.

Colorado only has 7 districts, 2 (eastside and westside of the state) comprise of almost 40% of the landmass each. 1 district to the north of denver and one to the south. 3 that make up the denver metropolis.

It would be alot but its the 2 outside districts that probably would be the toughest to get

<comment><USER14> Perhaps I should have clarified that to 'state senate districts', of which there are 35.

[https://www.census.gov/geo/maps- data/maps/sldu/st08_co.html](https://www.census.gov/geo/maps- data/maps/sldu/st08_co.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Sometimes just faking Comcast out with the threat of doing a competing service is helpful.

The president of the HOA in the neighborhood next to mine was sick of poor service from Comcast, and put a neighborhood broadband proposal on their HOA association agenda. Comcast (the only choice for wired broadband here) got wind of it, and immediately started upgrading their infrastructure and digging new fiber to the curb. Now they have faster and more reliable service than we do.

<comment><USER18> If you could post details of the events leading up to this it might be useful for other neighborhoods...

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> WOW. The really revealing quote in this article is this:

"But it remains easier and cheaper for companies like Comcast and AT&T, with the help of groups like ALEC, to instead convince clueless lawmakers to pass laws restricting your right to determine for yourself how your money gets spent, and what it gets spent on."

I then googled "ALEC" (and looked past the Alec Baldwin twitter scandal of the day) and was amazed to discover a shadowy group that steers local legislation just about everywhere. Holy crap!

<comment><USER19> 13th has a bit on ALEC, or here's a clip: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buO1KubTfQo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buO1KubTfQo)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> This linked article has much more reporting: [https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/a37v4z/big- teleco...](https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/a37v4z/big-telecom- spent-dollar200000-to-try-to-prevent-a-colorado-town-from-even-talking-about- a-city-run-internet)

</comment><comment><USER21> How realistic is the idea of creating commmunity/neighborhood level wireless networks to sidestep anti-consumer manipulation?

Anyone tried to do so?

<comment><USER22> There's at least two people on HN that operate community wired networks. I have my notes on the wrong computer, but you could probably find them with search. The economics sound not great.

Fixed wireless may have nicer economics with the right geography. My parents use it on a farm. I doubt you're going to be able to stream HD netflix/amazon over it through.

<comment><USER23> Since the Santa Rosa fires, I have been trying to figure out some combination of community broadband and/or mesh network that would provide service during and after emergencies.

Our fire chief lives in Santa Rosa (and lost his house) and his description of the incredible chaos caused by a lack of communications was heartbreaking. i.e. People were evacuated to hospitals that were in the process of being evacuated.

I wish there was a way to run a mesh network on a USB stick Pi Zero sort of thing. Just spread them around town and have a wifi network for when shit gets bad.

<comment><USER24> Rather than giving full internet connectivity, some kind of local minimal bbs might be both more feasible and just as handy.

You could maybe link nodes with ham digital radio, and serve clients with wifi. Each node would have a mirror of the bbs and sync changes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Wait...

Aren't monopolies illegal? I was under the impression they were, but maybe I'm wrong to assume that.

<comment><USER26> I think we're still (politically) in the phase of convincing people that cable companies are both a monopoly, and an abusive one.

E.g., here in the Bay Area, I have a choice in my area to go with AT&T[1] for _Internet_ connectivity, but IIRC, they don't meet the FCC's definition of "broadband", so really, for _broadband_ Internet access, my only choice is Comcast. (Now, the FCC was recently trying to re-write the definition of broadband s.t. mobile connectivity could count, but that's such an absurd stretch of the imagination when discussing the market of high-speed Internet access.)

While there is also TWC, I've found that where TWC exists, typically they also enjoy a similar status.

Chattanooga, TN, interestingly, offers ~50x the speed for the same price as Comcast here.

As for having abused their status,

[http://www.tennessean.com/story/news/local/2016/10/25/comcas...](http://www.tennessean.com/story/news/local/2016/10/25/comcast- sues-metro-over-google-fiber-backed-pole-otmr- ordinance/92748490/?from=global&sessionKey=&autologin=)

[https://www.theverge.com/2015/5/1/8530403/chattanooga- comcas...](https://www.theverge.com/2015/5/1/8530403/chattanooga-comcast-fcc- high-speed-internet-gigabit)

[1]: AT&T also has a history of disregarding consumer privacy (e.g., [https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/08/att-selling- data_n...](https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/08/att-selling- data_n_3561263.html)), so I avoid them for that, too.

<comment><USER27> [https://www.wired.com/story/san-francisco-municipal- fiber/](https://www.wired.com/story/san-francisco-municipal-fiber/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> It's understandable that Comcast wants to shut down the competition. They know how much customers hate them. If any competition shows up, Comcast is history.

</comment><comment><USER29> This is the corresponding 'FU Comcast Thread' from reddit.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/792tq3/comcast_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/792tq3/comcast_tries_to_derail_fort_collins_community/?utm_content=comments&utm_medium=front&utm_source=reddit&utm_name=technology)

</comment><comment> user-on1 how to encourage other cities to get such alternate broadband options? can colorado guide the rest of the cities and states to go through similar initiatives?

</comment><comment><USER30> Wow, I never even knew something like this was an option on the table! Makes me think of open source infrastructure. So what exactly does it take to get independent broadband?</comment>


Fatalities per capita vs miles driven - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/09/17/science/driving-safety-in-fits-and-starts.html

<comment><USER2> One thing I find amusing about traffic fatality statistics is that it shows how distorted peoples' perceptions of threats are. Using 10-15 as the estimated number of traffic fatalities per 100,000 people, the number of traffic fatalities one would expect among an NYC/LA/Chicago-sized group of people is on the same order as the number of people murdered in those cities every year.

Moreover, unlike murder traffic accidents don't discriminate. If we look at just whites (who in Chicago account for 4% of murders but 31% of people), the number of people dying from murder is about 1/5 as many as one would expect in a similarly-sized population to die from car accidents.

Indeed, the people we care the most about protecting, our precious middle- class kids, are much more likely than average to die from a car accident, while they are far less likely than average to die from inner-city violence.

Statistics like these really call into question those who move to the suburbs because of perceived safety. I grew up in a suburb, and drove everywhere like suburban teenagers are wont to do, and with that in hindsight I'm raising my daughter in a city where she doesn't have to ever get behind the wheel.

<comment><USER3> "Traffic fatality rates were highest in exurban areas. combined traffic fatality and homicide-by-stranger rates were higher in some or all outer counties than in central cities or inner suburbs in all of the metropolitan areas studied." [http://www.minority.unc.edu/sph/minconf/2004/materials/lucy....](http://www.minority.unc.edu/sph/minconf/2004/materials/lucy.et.al.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> That visualization has an Edward Tufte feel about it. I wonder if he influenced the author at all. It's pretty cool.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> "Americans drive a staggering number of miles — close to three trillion every year, according to the government. (That is half a light-year, or 120 million trips around the world.)"

It's not often that you see light-years used as a unit associated with driving!</comment>


How a Theoretical Claim About the NSA Magically Transformed Into Factual Reality - brown9-2 http://thedailybanter.com/2013/07/how-a-wild-theoretical-claim-about-the-nsa-transformed-into-factual-reality/

<comment><AUTHOR> > In reality, it would take 18,918 days or 51 years for 550 analysts to listen > to just one day's worth of fiber optic data gathered for Tempora.

This sort of statement is so misleading it hurts. It's kind of sad that people are so ignorant of what computers and modern data processing can do, that someone can go around saying this sort of things and not be laughed at.

The analysis of the citation chain is pertinent, though.

<comment><USER2> The dumb mistake of this article is assuming that all captured data all has to be analyzed hot off the wire. Obviously the data would be warehoused and indexed for specific searches later.

<comment> brown9-2 or filtered by software.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> grey-area This article is full of holes itself.

The actual headline he's decrying is 'Millions Of Gigabytes Collected Daily'. This is, according to the estimates and information he includes in the article, _an accurate estimate_. It is also suitably vague given the uncertainty over the estimates - it means anything 2 million gigabytes, up to 21 (the theoretical limit). We just don't know, what we do know is the ambition is to collect every communication, and they are nearing that ambition in reality, if only for a few full take days at GCHQ - the storage capacity in terms of internets/day at NSA I'm not sure on, does anyone know what their current capacity is?

 _Put another way, no! NSA and GCHQ are absolutely not gathering and /or analyzing that much data per day._

How does this follow? What has analysing got do do with collecting?

 _It's an inconceivably big number meant to frighten readers._

2 petabytes per day would be just as frightening, and yet is well below the theoretical limit - I don't think the exact numbers here matter, this is an estimate meant to show just how much information is being collected.

But he saves the most bizarre assumptions for last:

 _As a group, and barring some sort of vortex, 550 analysts could only listen to 1,100 gigabytes of phone conversations per day, and that's if they worked 24 hours per day and listened constantly. In reality, it would take 18,918 days or 51 years for 550 analysts to listen to just one day's worth of fiber optic data gathered for Tempora._

Is he seriously contending most of this data is only telephone conversations, that collection without immediate analysis by a human being is not just as dangerous, that humans actually analyse each piece of information individually, without using filtering algorithms?

This comparison is far more misleading and inaccurate than the headline he decries.

</comment><comment><USER3> There are a number of misrepresentations in this article.

He talks of the impossibility of the 550 (where has this number come from?) GHCQ and NSA analysts reading all this data. As if people are claiming that humans are individually watching it themselves. Even if they were, he completely ignores the obvious method: that machines under those agencies' control are the ones collecting this data, in favour of a hand-waving 'it's impossible'.

His statement that it's illegal for the NSA analysts to read these communications nicely sidesteps the strong evidence that they are doing it.

Even the focus of the article, the 21 million GB claim, tries to stoke up something much madder than what actually happened. The Guardian's reporting of the potential volume of data on the cables is not 'wild' in any sense. That the telephone game translated that potential figure into an actual one is not desirable, but also not particularly surprising. Notably, he doesn't take the opportunity to find out the _actual_ average data rate on those cables and correct what he's criticising.

Of course, he also takes the opportunity to ladle on some criticism of Greenwald and the Guardian, and play up the 'it's a complex issue' angle which discourages any kind of public outcry.

</comment><comment><USER4> I've always thought this is interesting, if not directly related.

Apache Accumulo:

 _Like Google, the [NSA] needed a way of storing and retrieving massive amounts of data across an army of servers, but it also needed extra tools for protecting all that data from prying eyes. They added "cell level" software controls that could separate various classifications of data, ensuring that each user could only access the information they were authorized to access._

[http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/07/nsa-accumulo- go...](http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/07/nsa-accumulo-google- bigtable/)

Then:

 _How will graph applications adapt to Big Data at petabyte scale?_

 _Brain scale. . ._ : 2.84 PB adjacency list, 2.84 PB edge list

 _Largest supercomputer installations do not have enough memory to process the Brain Graph (3 PB)!_

[Accumulo gives] _linear performance from 1 trillion to 70 trillion edges_ [on the 1 Pb Graph 500 benchmark]

From "An NSA Big Graph Experiment": [http://www.pdl.cmu.edu/SDI/2013/slides/big_graph_nsa_rd_2013...](http://www.pdl.cmu.edu/SDI/2013/slides/big_graph_nsa_rd_2013_56002v1.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER5> An interesting example of how journalists play telephone, but let's not distract ourselves by questioning the volume of data they intercept from the problematic fact that they do this at all.

What would worry me is a chain of citations where the pertinent facts changed (e.g. "celebrity X has the potential for Y" -> "X did Y"). This happens too, as you sometimes find in issues of Private Eye.

</comment><comment><USER6> Deduplication. 753785 people watching the same video. The video can be stored once, or even not at all. Storing 753785 requests for the video is easy and takes 0 analysts.

In fact, by storing only what users send rather than what they receive you get everything that really matters.

</comment><comment><USER7> Is there any doubt that if the NSA _could_ store 22 petabytes per day that they would do so? That they are limited by practicality to merely snooping through or scanning 22 petabytes per day rather than storing all of it is I think a really minor quibble.

<comment><USER8> According to the NSA[1], their Utah center is "measured in zettabytes"

Let's break this down:

>1,000 gigabytes is a terabyte.

>1,000 terabytes is a petabyte.

>1,000 petabytes is an exabyte.

>1,000 exabytes is a zettabyte.

>1,000 zettabytes is a yottabyte.

Assuming they use the Microsoft standard to count and not 1024 bytes to a kilobyte. Let's assume they have 1 yottabyte of data storage. That's 1000 zettabytes. That's 1,000,000 exabytes. And, finally, that's 1,000,000,000 petabytes.

At a rate of 22 petabytes per day it will take approximately 45454545.45 days or 124,533 years to fill only the Utah data center. (Thank you Wolfram alpha [2])

So the scary answer to your rhetorical question is that "Yes, the NSA has the storage capacity to easily, if not comfortably store 22 petabytes of data per day, or even 500 times that without breaking a sweat."

\</comment></comment><comment>----

[1][http://nsa.gov1.info/utah-data-center/](http://nsa.gov1.info/utah-data- center/)

[2][http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%281%C3%9710%5E9%2F22%2...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%281%C3%9710%5E9%2F22%29+days+to+years)

<comment><USER9> > is "measured in zettabytes"

Yah right. That would require the ENTIRE worlds production of hard disks for several years.

At 3TB per hard disk you need 350 million of them. Total world production is about 600 million - but the vast majority are much smaller than 3TB.

And that would require a building 1/5 of a mile on each side - just to hold the hard disks, never mind power, cooling, computers or network.

It would require 2.5GW to power just the hard disks - and never mind cool them, or power the computers and routers.

So: Yah Right.

<comment><USER4> It's not as simple as that.

Large scale commercially available SANs advertise de-duplication in the order of 50%[1].

Commercially available _backup_ software advertises de-duplication rates that reduce storage requirements by up to 99% [2]

I don't know how they measure "storage", but the The Utah data center requires 65 MW of power[3] which is a non-trivial amount.

[1] [http://www.netapp.com/us/products/platform- os/dedupe.aspx](http://www.netapp.com/us/products/platform-os/dedupe.aspx)

[2] [http://thebackupblog.typepad.com/thebackupblog/2011/07/insid...](http://thebackupblog.typepad.com/thebackupblog/2011/07/inside- avamar-global-client-deduplication.html)

[3] [http://www.npr.org/2013/06/10/190160772/amid-data- controvers...](http://www.npr.org/2013/06/10/190160772/amid-data-controversy- nsa-builds-its-biggest-data-farm)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> the NSA and GCHQ have way more than 550 employees and I guarantee that the remainder is not all just janitors, secretarial staff and management.

This article and most others have failed to mention the technological force- multipliers (the bread and butter of HN) that their developers, sysadmins, and other technologist are constantly working on.

With the right search capabilities and filtering that 21 million GB gets a lot smaller.

<comment><USER11> Bamford stated ~70,000 in the seventies in one of his books. The Wiki estimates 30,000. 550 is a comically low guess. We can get at a much larger guess than 550 merely by counting parking places at Ft. Meade, and that wouldn't include the many employees who don't work at Ft. Meade.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The LHC grid (as of 2010) had storage capacity of 150 petabytes. So yes it is feasible. Efficient compression could probably increase that capacity 5-10x if you're storing primarily textual data.

</comment><comment><USER13> Hey they're wrong about the amount of the data, therefore we've got nothing to worry about!

</comment><comment><USER14> This should be called "How a Trivial Fact Check Became a Hyperbolic Article".

</comment><comment><USER15> 550 security guards each in a little stadium of cctv's

always watching

</comment><comment><USER16> Yes, the worst part about the security state/NSA story is listening to and reading those who are most upset about it. They get on an emotional tear and play loose with facts and sources. This hurts much more than it helps, because it begins to paint anybody concerned about what we've created as a crank. I'm much more concerned about the ranters than I am about those that are apathetic.

This is an issue to be _intellectually passionate_ about, not emotionally passionate. It's something I have to keep reminding myself of daily.

News outlets and bloggers are all too willing to play telephone and translate emotional energy into pageviews. That's not a good thing for the discussion.

<comment><USER11> As soon as you boil it down into boring work, it will be forgotten about by the proles.

<comment><USER16> The problem with this strategy is that all you get is a mindless angry mob. This the Egypt scenario: everybody knows things are broken, but nobody can agree on what it's supposed to look like.

Contrast this with the Federalist Papers, where an intellectual debate was held to vet _solutions_.

You don't want "any change" to take the place of "fix what's broken" By dumbing this down, you make what could be a productive movement into something much more dangerous.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> As a rule of thumb, conservatives base their public policy agenda on theories that have no basis in reality, whereas liberals base their public policy agenda on statistics that have no basis in reality. This is a good example of the latter.</comment>


For this New Zealand parrot, 'laughter' is contagious - <AUTHOR> http://exactlyscience.com/archives/11471.html <comment><USER2> Full paper, with video:

[http://www.cell.com/current- biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(17)3...](http://www.cell.com/current- biology/fulltext/S0960-9822\(17\)30156-2)</comment>


Principality of Hutt River - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principality_of_Hutt_River

<comment><USER2> There's some documents released under Freedom of Information about this place.

[https://www.righttoknow.org.au/request/principality_of_hutt_...](https://www.righttoknow.org.au/request/principality_of_hutt_river_provi)

It's mostly diplomatic cables</comment>


My phone is spying on me, so I decided to spy on it - <AUTHOR> https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-10-25/my-phone-is-spying-on-me-so-i-decided-to-spy-on-my-phone/10306586 <comment><USER2> This is really interesting! Have been doing something similar myself on my own phone (Android) for about a month using the wonderful NetGuard app ( [https://f-droid.org/en/packages/eu.faircode.netguard/](https://f-droid.org/en/packages/eu.faircode.netguard/)) which allows one to see the source and destination for each request from all apps.

It doesn't display the content type enough, afaik

<comment><USER3> Anyone know of a similar app for iPhone?

<comment><USER4> Don't think such an app would be accepted by Apple. Why are using iPhone if you want ownership over your device?

<comment><USER5> This is a naive response I see given to iPhone users when they ask about how to get a certain feature. It's obvious no research was put into this answer as a sibling comment to yours clearly helped out by suggesting Charles proxy which is now available natively on iOS.

<comment><USER6> Well, 'VPN' apps that are really ad blockers or data loggers are not allowed on the App Store.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> How does this work? If application has certificate pinning then MITM is not feasible, correct?

Would love if someone could enlighten me :)

<comment><USER8> A lot may have changed but here's a few blog posts on various MITM/cert pinning bypasses that some people have done:

[https://blog.tendigi.com/starbucks-should-really-make- their-...](https://blog.tendigi.com/starbucks-should-really-make-their-apis- public-6b64a1c2e923)

[https://jeffhuang.com/extracting_my_data_from_the_hello_sens...](https://jeffhuang.com/extracting_my_data_from_the_hello_sense.html)

[https://blog.dewhurstsecurity.com/2015/11/10/mobile- security...](https://blog.dewhurstsecurity.com/2015/11/10/mobile-security- certificate-pining.html)

I just had these bookmarked from when I was wondering the same thing

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I am interested to see the result. I might pay for a vpn that I control that blocked things.

<comment><USER10> I'm using Blockada for that, which acts as a vpn, but just filters all requests through a big hosts file.

[https://blokada.org/](https://blokada.org/)

<comment><USER11> This looks interesting. Is there something similar for iOS?

<comment><USER12> You can use DNSCloak[1] for this. It runs a local DNSCrypt client and acts as iOS VPN. You can run your own DoH server that blocks tracking domains, or use a public DoH server that does, or use a well-known provider that provides DoH (e.g. Cloudflare DNS, Google DNS and OpenDNS does) with your own blacklist[2]

[1]: [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/dnscloak-dnscrypt-doh- client...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/dnscloak-dnscrypt-doh- client/id1330471557)

[2]: [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/dnscloak-dnscrypt-doh- client...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/dnscloak-dnscrypt-doh- client/id1330471557)

<comment><USER13> > You can run your own DoH server that blocks tracking domains

Do you mean your own dns server which will be accessible to (anyone on) the public internet?

<comment><USER12> That's certainly an option if you want to run public DNS-over-HTTPS server, but you don't have to do that – DNSCloak do provide a way to specify a local blocklist.

DNS-over-HTTPS spec also mentioned that you can use a standard HTTP authentication if you want to run a DOH server but want to keep it private (although I've never tried this)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm seeing potential for VPN providers to bolt this reporting on as a regular service. Maybe this is already set up in things like Streisand? Honestly, more and more people need to have the ability to administer their phones this way - for too long, its been a black box.

(If we still had real OS vendors, it'd be handy if this were builtin to the OS, duh...)

<comment><USER15> > (If we still had real OS vendors, it'd be handy if this were builtin to the > OS, duh...)

RedHat, Canonical, and Microsoft are not "real" OS vendors?

<comment><USER16> RedHat, Canonical and Microsoft make phones?

<comment><USER17> Ubuntu Touch & Windows Mobile (heh) are/were a thing though.

<comment><USER14> Yeah, we all know these are dead in the water.

What I mean was, the old OS vendor ethos just doesn't exist any more - its no longer about giving the user the tools required to get the best value out of their computer, but rather give the computer the tools required to get the best value out of the user... RedHat/Canonical are real OS vendors. Microsoft is an also-ran ad-agency wannabe. Google: same. Apple: I give them a pass, but only because they seem to be taking privacy seriously - if only they'd give the user more control over what's going on with their devices, and stop doing things designed, clearly, to just sell more hardware ..

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> re: opening up Safari on the iPhone 'any website you have in your bookmarks can track that' I assume that's because it's checking/refreshing favicons? If that's all it is there's nothing nefarious about it but he sure is opaque in his statement.

<comment><USER19> Owner of jailbroken & firewalled iPhone(s) for many years here.

"Safari" is the app that does the browsing.

"com.apple.Webkit.networking" is the app that works in the background doing things like the icons refresh. Some other applications also use this "channel" (app) to reach out, and I usually have it on "Deny all". I like it better when apps do their own connections and don't hijack the "backroards".

The only two reasons I jailbreak ALL my idevices(s):

a. Firewall IP

b. Protect My Privacy (PMP)

You literally have no idea what goes in the background when you install and run an app if you don't spy on your phone.

The disgusting part is that even my bank's (NatWest) app, as well as LastPass talk to irrelevant companies when I fire them up, with (my) most hated being Facebook (which is of course blacklisted and added on my hosts file).

For my Android devices I always run "NoRootFirewall" which is a pretty good firewall.

Edit: Both FirewallIP (iOS) and NoRootFirewall (Android) have logging mechanisms so you can track what goes in/out and what is rejected. I am really looking forward to a NoRootFirewall-app for iOS. Something that creates an internal VPN allowing you to manage it.

<comment><USER7> > LastPass talk to irrelevant companies

Please, do tell us more. Or write a post about it!

<comment><USER19> As requested:

[https://pastebin.com/9g3B0rRB](https://pastebin.com/9g3B0rRB)

Also on my deny list I seek the following which do not appear in the logs right now: _segment.com,_ fiksu.com, _youtube.com,_ redirector.gvt1.com

Other notes:

1) I never use the LastPass browser.

2) When a service has a "lastpass.com" AND amazon/cloudfront/azure, I prefer the "lastpass.com" over the alternatives/load balancers.

Edit: if you see, these are the logs for only 10 seconds. I know that there are multiple "Denied" since the poor thing keeps trying. It is amazing to see it on many other apps (e.g. games) that talk to apjust, appsflyer, doubleclick, duaps, feeldallapps, glispa, mobileapptracking, segment, startappservice, taprica, app-measuremenet, and HUNDREDS more.

<comment><USER20> You keep using Lastpass? If so, why?

<comment><USER19> I got it on all my devices, and I use both passowrd vault and secure notes. I just make sure it behaves as I want it to and doesn't tell facebook when do I use it.

A carefully managed firewall and an extensive hosts file is a must.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This, BTW, is IMHO why recent Android versions refuse to use self-installed certificates for all traffic: to prevent you from knowing what apps are sending back home. It's not in Google's interest for you to control your phone and know what it's doing.

<comment><USER22> Or it could be the reason they've said they did it - this was a primary vector for malware authors to compromise user's information and devices. Not everything is a conspiracy.

<comment><USER23> Then why not offer a confirmation box to add certificates, and let the user decide?

<comment><USER24> Probably because users will just follow instructions they found on some sketchy website without actually reading the text in the confirmation box.

<comment><USER23> Then a confirmation box saying, "only do this if you know what you're doing - it can have dire security consequences".

Just because some people are idiots who don't read what's in front of them, doesn't mean others should be impacted.

We all know the real reason it's not an option.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Nice project. I considered doing something similar but in Android at least some apps use certificate pinning and thus mitmproxy would break them. How does this work in ios?</comment>


Ask HN: Want a write-up about rails and devise and stripe for subscription websites? - <AUTHOR>

Hi Friends,
Over the last week or so I've been heads down in setting up a rails + devise + stripe subscription app. I'm about 70% of the way done and looking at the number of resources / gems / blog posts / videos I've used, it seems like there is missing a soup-to-nuts write up for getting such an app going.
I have a ton of notes I've taken as I've gone through the process and was wondering if there was any interest in seeing something like this... <comment><USER2> It's a paid product, but there is such a thing on the Rails + Stripe side: [https://www.masteringmodernpayments.com/](https://www.masteringmodernpayments.com/) .. can never hurt to have freely available notes as well, of course, so go for it!

</comment><comment><USER3> I've built many Rails+Devise+Stripe websites, but I can't think of any reason for Devise and Stripe to be tightly coupled. If you follow a good Rails+Devise guide and you follow a good Rails+Stripe guide, you should be fine I think. Why does your app have a special relationship between Devise and Stripe? That said I'm sure many developers would appreciate any guidance you'd like to offer!

</comment><comment><USER4> Yes would be awesome!

</comment><comment> what-no-tests Yes.</comment>


Top 6 Tips for Overcoming Entrepreneurial Depression - <AUTHOR> http://entrepreneurialhonesty.com/top-tips-for-overcoming-depression/

<comment><USER2> "Sleep" \-- indeed. There's something more to it though, than just the sleep itself. There's a lot to be said for giving yourself a break from the (self- imposed) mental demands and deadlines and stress.

For context: I've been working on bootstrapping a startup for a couple of years now. About 6 months ago, I stepped down to a part-time position at my regular job, to free up more time for the startup. That, to me, was the beginning of "the big push". I decided to sell-out and give everything I could possibly give, mentally, physically, spiritually, emotionally, etc., for at least 6 months, to see how far we could get.[1]

That period culminated with a series of product demos to some pretty important potential customers over the last week of November and the first week of December.

In the lead-up to that, I was routinely working 16+ hour days, and had no idea of a "day off"... Saturdays and Sundays were looked at as cool because "they're more time to work on the startup".

Needless to say, by the end of all that, I was feeling pretty run down. So I have chosen to take the rest of December as "relax time". No, I'm not going to quit working, but it means that for the entire month, I am not working under any deadlines. And I'm going to spend a lot of time reading research papers, doing exploratory stuff, reading books, catching up on my "to read later" bookmarks, etc., along with watching a few movies and catching up on TV.

After only 3-4 days of that, I already feel markedly better. Just waking up knowing that I'm not "under the gun" to get something or other done by some deadline, and not having to worry about prepping for a demo or a meeting of some sort, makes everything feel different.

So yeah, part of it is allowing myself to get 8 (or more) hours of sleep consistently, but the escape from the stress is significant in its own regard - or at least it subjectively feels like it is.

So the point of all this? I guess I'd say "find a way to make a period of time when you can cut yourself some slack". Even if it's not an outright _vacation_ , just a month with no deadlines and no meetings, or _something_ to let yourself recharge mentally.

[1]: Aside: For anyone wondering "well, how did it all work out?" the answer is: "TBD". We didn't close any deals, but we made a ton of progress on the product front, and got our foot in the door at two S&P 500 firms and at least one other company you've probably heard of. And I like our odds of landing some kind of deal with at least two of the three. Of course, nothing is guaranteed, but we are poised to enter 2014 with some good stuff going on</comment>


Square is rolling out its first debit card - <AUTHOR> https://www.recode.net/2017/5/4/15552912/square-cash-debit-card-black-rollout-launch-jack-dorsey <comment><USER2> Why do we need another debit card? Why can't we progress towards nfc like technology? Android pay, Apple pay. These things words so good in Asia</comment>


Show HN: Pokemon Go Controller – iOS - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/kahopoon/Pokemon-Go-Controller <comment><USER2> Don't have much to say, but that's a pretty cool hack. I didn't know the Xcode location thingy made the location "global" in the phone.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, me too. But we must keep the Xcode open while playing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> totally cheating but cool. Was thinking it would be easy to do something like this. Just careful not to get the ban-hammer</comment>


Apple Becomes World's First Fair Trade Tech Company - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/blog/foremski/think-fair-apple-becomes-the-worlds-first-fair-trade-tech-company-whos-next/2073

<comment><USER2> Apple themselves maybe, Foxconn not so much.

<comment><USER3> If you actually look at what we'll know it's virtually nothing. All the info anyone will see are some vague statistics that help no one. FLO would be very unhappy to see their certification dragged around like this. While this certainly will make fanbois feel good about themselves, the people paying attention see that nothing is really changing.

[http://www.thisamericanlife.org/blog/2012/01/a-response- to-t...](http://www.thisamericanlife.org/blog/2012/01/a-response-to-the-news- from-apple)</comment></comment>


Programming Parrot [Perl/Python April fools from 2001] - <AUTHOR> http://www.perl.com/pub/2001/04/01/parrot.htm <comment><AUTHOR> And the follow up "The Story Behind the Parrot Prank" a few days later: <http://oreilly.com/news/parrotstory_0401.html></comment>


Pizzigati Prize 2009 competition - <AUTHOR> http://www.pizzigatiprize.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3

<comment><USER2> And why is this notable exactly ?</comment>