Biohazard: Iconic Symbol Designed to Be "Memorable but Meaningless" - <AUTHOR> http://99percentinvisible.org/article/biohazard-symbol-designed-to-be-memorable-but-meaningless/ <comment><USER2> That's neat, the symbol had no agreeable associations back then, but now it's become this nefarious looking thing, at least for me, due to things like 28 days later: [http://imgur.com/Ym1PqPE](http://imgur.com/Ym1PqPE)

I can't tell if the symbol itself should be nefarious or not, due to all the cultural baggage. From psychology research, we know that shapes are commonly associated with sounds within a culture [1], but it's a very flower icon in an abstract sense.

[1] [https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/talking- apes/201505/do-...](https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/talking- apes/201505/do-sounds-have-shapes)

<comment><USER3> I can't tell if it's just cultural association, but the biohazard symbol looks viscerally evil to me. It suggests the barbs of a stinging insect or the mouth parts of a parasitic worm. I feel an instinctive aversion to it, akin to disgust or horror.

The ionising radiation symbol doesn't have anything like the same gut impact; aside from the yellow and black colour scheme, it looks quite neutral and unthreatening.

<comment><USER4> _The ionising radiation symbol doesn 't have anything like the same gut impact; aside from the yellow and black colour scheme, it looks quite neutral and unthreatening._

They seem to have fixed that nicely:

[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/35/Lo...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/35/Logo_iso_radiation.svg/2000px- Logo_iso_radiation.svg.png)

<comment><USER5> That's the symbol for "The extractor fan in this room is haunted"

<comment><USER6> I thought it meant "turn up the speakers and head over to the mosh pit or die."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Yes, as the article points out, please do not use biohazard, radiation, or high voltage warning symbols on decorative objects.

<comment><USER8> And if you personally own products which have decorative biohazard or radiation symbols on them, make sure you _NEVER, EVER_ bring them into a context where they might be taken literally. (Ideally, don't bring them out into public spaces at all.) In the wrong situation, leaving (say) your "biohazard" lunchbox sitting on a desk could lead to a panicked security lockdown.

<comment><USER9> I work at a medical device company, and a coworker of mine uses this lunchbox - [http://www.thinkgeek.com/product/e72e/](http://www.thinkgeek.com/product/e72e/)

The first time I saw it in the company fridge I completely freaked.

<comment> xkcd-sucks It could totally be BSL2+ if they bled on it accidentally

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Find this and other symbols in Hornung's Handbook of Designs and Devices, first published in _1932_.

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

[http://www.amazon.co.jp/Handbook-Designs-Devices- Pictorial-A...](http://www.amazon.co.jp/Handbook-Designs-Devices-Pictorial- Archive/dp/0486201252)

</comment><comment><USER11> There's a new style of hunting arrowhead that is reminiscent of this symbol (and called "Toxic Broadheads". Apparently it's very effective against large game, because it tears out a few ribbons of flesh, and it's much harder for the wound to seal back up.

[http://www.bowhunting.net/wp- content/uploads/2013/08/front-3...](http://www.bowhunting.net/wp- content/uploads/2013/08/front-3.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER12> It's not completely meaningless. Apart from the association with the radiation symbol due to the symmetry, it looks strikingly unfriendly, with sharp tentacles reaching out to grab you like a biohazard well might.

</comment><comment><USER13> How did the swastika one even leave the designer's sketch pad?

<comment><USER14> It's an ancient symbol representing the sun. It predates brown-shirted thugs by thousands of years. I've seen old printings of Kipling's works from the 1920s that have it stamped on the bindings, which is a bit jarring. But as I've said, it's a great deal older than that.

<comment><USER15> Prior to the 1930s, it was actually fairly common. It even wound up as the logo for an Vancouver-area women's hockey team[0].

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fernie_Swastikas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fernie_Swastikas)</comment></comment></comment>


Google makes file transfers four times faster in Files Go - <AUTHOR> https://www.neowin.net/news/google-makes-file-transfers-four-times-faster-in-files-go <comment><USER2> No They haven't done the impossible , they just decided to use 5ghz wifi .

</comment><comment><USER3> Go is just a language. Surely any language can be used to enumerate network resources, tickle an API or twiddle some counters.

<comment><AUTHOR> "Files Go" is part of "Android Go" which is about being lightweight and fast for more modest hardware -- doesn't have anything to do with the Go language.

<comment><USER3> Ah, I see. I was thrown off by the naming. Thankyou for the clarification.</comment></comment></comment>


Poking around /usr/lib/git-core - <AUTHOR> http://kamalmarhubi.com/blog/2016/10/07/git-core/ <comment><USER2> Are there any documented attempts of fuzzing Git? I would be surprised if there weren't any bugs in its file format - I once tried to fuzz it myself and found bugs in xdelta3, used by Git [1][2][3][4], but it feels like there's much more to find.

[1]: [https://github.com/jmacd/xdelta- gpl/commit/413efde5877d8a698...](https://github.com/jmacd/xdelta- gpl/commit/413efde5877d8a6983ef5f567c2739d617f5cd86)

[2]: [https://github.com/jmacd/xdelta- devel/commit/995f5e6bde7b8b2...](https://github.com/jmacd/xdelta- devel/commit/995f5e6bde7b8b27d2fd6cd278b68c2d9d9b27fd)

[3]: [https://github.com/jmacd/xdelta- devel/commit/093e0652845fe93...](https://github.com/jmacd/xdelta- devel/commit/093e0652845fe93a7f8036e1a5c3192053023b17)

[4]: [https://github.com/jmacd/xdelta- devel/commit/0602d66d9582c20...](https://github.com/jmacd/xdelta- devel/commit/0602d66d9582c20e3e989eb075e194eff0422da0)</comment>


Secure email provider Tutanota launches free encrypted calendar - <AUTHOR> https://www.tutanota.com/blog/posts/free-encrypted-calendar/ <comment><AUTHOR> After what seems a very long wait Tutanota now provides a free encrypted calendar along their secure email, a most requested feature. It's still beta for now but usable and I for one welcome it. I like the simplicity of the Tutanota interface but a calendar was definitely something I was sometimes missing.</comment>


Ask YC: What do you know about ARGs (Alternate Reality Gaming) - <AUTHOR>

Hey Guys,
I'm helping a friend gather research on ARGs to help her launch her startup.  I figured some of you may know yourselves or someone who does know something about ARGs.  You can leave the comments here or email me at jason [at] publictivity.com
Examples of popular alternate reality games/campaigns are:
-i love bees (halo 2) -lost experience (lost) -the beast (AI movie in 2001. it started the genre off) -recent dark knight campaign with citizens for gotham <comment><USER2> I have created two small ARGs, Faceless Invasion and FCLSNY. Since then I have spent extensive time researching the genre, trying to figure out how & why it is effective. I'd be happy to share what I know if your friend has some specific questions.

<comment><AUTHOR> awesome. is faceless invasion the same one as this:

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

Let's connect offline. jason [at] publictivity dot com

<comment><USER3> Wow, if this is the one this sounds cool... I live in Montreal and would love to try this out.

<comment><USER2> Unfortunately, that was a one-time event. A great time was had by all, but I am no longer living in Montreal. It will continue, but in another city and in a completely different form. Faceless Invasion is a broader organization, and each game aims to be both subversive and unique.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I played perplexcity. It was fun and interesting, and the fact that they had money behind it (and could hire helicopters and actors and stuff) made it stand out.

That said, I think you can do a good job without much money if you shoot for the niche. I live in a small, boring town with a lot of bored college students, and I've thrown around the idea to make a local low-budget ARG more than once and it's been met with a lot of interest.

<comment><AUTHOR> mind sharing what interested people?

<comment><USER4> Well like I said, I live in a small town with lots of bored college students. It's easy to get support from:

* Local historical society, has a ton of info and is only too happy to share ("Youngin's these days don't care!") etc. etc. Excited that young people will be researching the town's history.

* Local newspaper, willing to let us have the entire newspaper archives in exchange for digitizing it for them. At the end of it we will have an entire searchable DB of hundreds of years worth of plot and character info.

* Local newspaper, willing to give us free press because it's more exciting than printing about Sherrif Farmer's dog or whatever else they fill up space with

* Local college students and student associations (engineering/nerd school), bored to tears with Nerf Wars or whatever else it is they do on weekends and are willing to do insane amounts of work for even a modest reward

* Local college is based around a historical person and is only too happy to learn he is a major character in the plot, instant writeups from student journalists and support/goodwill from college staff, invaluable help from professors

* Lots of bored CS students with nothing better to do. There's plenty of bored website designers and so on, and enough really competent people that we can roll out a small voip network or build a few robots into the landscape (trapdoors in abandoned buildings and whatnot)

This is, I think, the recipe for our success in a small college town. I would not take this route at all if you're trying to hit some urban area (from your initial post it looks like you're doing it as marketing, so quite frankly I wouldn't recommend doing any of this if your intent is to reach large groups of people). I should also note that this is just a side project (and a long- term one at that), I expect to take a few years planning before I actually do it (I have a startup that requires all my attention in the meantime).

<comment><AUTHOR> I think doing smaller ARGs can definitely have benefits. When doing events and real life interaction you want to focus on smaller communities if your budget is small.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm currently reading "Halting State" by Charles Stross, it contains some good scenes showing the characters interacting with an ARG. Not necessarily research material, but it goes to show how playing an ARG could fit within life.

</comment><comment><USER6> I was way into ARG's... I played The Beast and Dave Szulborski's excellent "Chasing the Wish," as well as a few others. I also PM'ed (puppetmaster'ed, for those not up on their ARGonyms) Lockjaw, and I believe I wrote a puzzle or two for Urban Hunt. ARG's are a lot of fun and tend to be surprisingly innovative, though actively keeping up with their goings-on can quickly become a full-time hobby.

If you're interested in talking further, let me know: dan [d0t] delany [at] gmail

</comment><comment><USER7> In the UK, Cancer Research commissioned an ARG competition. Proposals were taken and the winner got £1k to develop their ARG.

The person behind the idea runs a small ARG consultancy, <http://www.sixtostart.com/>

[http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/gamesblog/2007/oct/02/b...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/gamesblog/2007/oct/02/buildagamesavetheworld)

</comment><comment><USER8> Check out the Institute for the Future: <http://www.iftf.org/> and their resident game designer Jane McGonigal.

From their site:

 _Chronicle the dark world of 2019. Then help us figure out how to fix it.

On September 22nd 2008, the Institute For the Future will launch the world's first Massively Multiplayer Forecasting Game: Superstruct._

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> btw, here is an AWESOME whitepaper on ARGs:

[http://www.igda.org/wiki/Alternate_Reality_Games_SIG/Whitepa...](http://www.igda.org/wiki/Alternate_Reality_Games_SIG/Whitepaper)

</comment><comment><USER9> Delve deep into everything Trent Rezner does. Not only is he a master of exploiting the power of ARG's but you can see hints of his ARG mindset when he and NIN release product/content.

</comment><comment><USER10> i really love playing ARGs myself when i can find the time, and i have some ideas on the back-burner for making one someday down the road -- in the mean time i have another project i'm working on, but i would imagine making/executing an ARG would be rather fun -- if you're looking for more info, the people at unfiction.com are great and despoiler.org is a great resource as well...good luck!

</comment><comment><USER11> Dennou Coil is an uses an 'alternative reality/VR' that overlays the real world with transparent glasses as it's plot device. It's pretty good!

</comment><comment><USER12> Well, you didn't mention The Game (movie, 1997). It actually started the genre, and inspired a real-life game called Majestic which technically predates The Beast. It's very much worth watching for inspiration.

Majestic was lackluster but ambitious: it wanted to be a realization of The Game but lacked the necessary good writing and good acting to pull it off.

I've often wondered at what point technology and its side-effects will allow people who are dissatisifed to create or join alternate realities and literally tune in, turn on, and drop out. At what point can you say that you have effectively stopped living in 'reality'?

<comment><AUTHOR> ive seen the game before, but rewatched last night. awesome movie. yeah, majestic was just right after the beast. those two are the fathers of the genre. EA discontinuted majestic though.

I think technology is making the line blurred between two realities.

<comment><USER2> The Game didn't really start the genre. Microsoft was doing ARGs internally before 1997, and possibly provided some of the inspiration for the film. There was also Dreadnot which predates the film as well.</comment></comment></comment>


Hacker working for Yahoo? Listnerd.com needs intro - <AUTHOR> http://imgur.com/xcffO9W <comment><USER2> Spam is not the way to get on Yahoo's Radar. Nor the way to win friends in the HN community.

<comment><AUTHOR> I fail to see how asking for an intro is spam.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Any and all introductions to the right people at Yahoo would be welcome :) erling (at) listnerd dot com

</comment><comment><USER3> "The idea was simple enough.. what _if_ there was..." Typo. Might want to fix it ASAP!

</comment><comment><USER4> Is this for a M&A discussion or a Business Development/Partnership discussion?

<comment><AUTHOR> Business Development/Partnership discussion, first and foremost.</comment></comment>


Announcing Weduary: Make Your Own Social & Beautiful Wedding Website - <AUTHOR> http://www.brit.co/weddings/announcing-weduary-make-your-own-social-beautiful-wedding-website/ <comment><USER2> Remember this is the same person that created a video explaining how to cut two $60 Apple power cables to make an extremely dangerous, electrically unsafe $120 jump rope.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_w9e1uWg8fM>

<comment><USER3> I can't believe someone at Kleiner funded this. Although I am not in the target demographic for Martha Stewart meets tech, the quality of the video content being put out by her "production company" is truly awful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Interesting - I can't tell by looking at it whether or not it supports same- sex weddings.

It'd also be cool to be able to tour the site without signing in through Facebook, especially if your SO is unaware that you're thinking of proposing :)

<comment><USER5> It does. You can be groom and groom as far as I can see.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Nice! As a serial-startup-dev _and_ someone with experience in the industry (wife and I run a successful wedding biz) I'm always stoked to see people do compelling things in the space. I think there are _TONS_ of awesome things to do with for-wedding sites that no one's really getting right, and you guys look well poised to set a good example.

FWIW, I'd test a landing page that makes the theme preview a bit more forward.

</comment><comment><USER7> As a groom myself, I'll echo the problem statement. Definitely a space that needs some innovation, but other than pretty designs, not sure this really rethinks a wedding website much. Still seeing a lot of links, for example. I applaud the effort and hope to see more on this in the future, though once I'm married, I'll never have the need to build one again. Maybe as a guest, though...

</comment><comment><USER8> Sorry, but the name is very close to obitaury, not sure whether it rhymes (weduary is made up word, and fine otherwise).

</comment><comment><USER9> Friends of mine built something similar - <http://wedful.com/>

</comment><comment><USER10> like the idea but clicking on the try it free button does nothing.. i need a wedding website soon, and i hated everything out there, so hope i can try this out or i have to build my own site

</comment><comment><USER11> What about those without Facebook accounts?

</comment><comment><USER12> This woman is obsessed with weddings (especially her own.) She's a Miss Havisham.</comment>


What Does the HN Community Think of Burst (Green Crypto)? - <AUTHOR> Naturally decentralized, Energy efficient, Infinitely Scalable, is the claim. <comment><USER2> Why do we need or want it?</comment>


Anycast in 9 easy steps - <AUTHOR> https://www.samir.ca/2016/12/11/build-your-own-anycast-network-in-9-steps.html <comment><USER2> Great article. See also the linkedin comments: [https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/build-your-own-anycast- networ...](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/build-your-own-anycast- network-9-steps-samir-jafferali)

</comment><comment><USER3> Says 9 easy steps, then in nearly every single step the author mentioned how it was a painful slog to complete the step...</comment>


Show HN: Node.js module for Brazilian Zipcode (CEP) updated in real-time - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/filipedeschamps/cep-promise <comment><USER2> man, its not updated in real time, it just queries another API, the way you put looks like it has some database, or it stores something internally. Also, you should really consider to add support for non-promise, not everybody like promises, and native promises in node world are not that good yet.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's make a lot of sense, thanks for the headsup :)</comment></comment>


Now Instagram Wants to Be Source for Real-Time News - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/06/23/now-instagram-wants-to-be-source-for-real-time-news/?mod=ST1

<comment><USER2> In reality though, Snapchat seems to be the better contender for that title.</comment>


Partnering with Mozilla - <AUTHOR> https://blog.torproject.org/blog/partnering-mozilla <comment><USER3> One major challenge:

Using Tor, end users can easily and unintentionally compromise their confidentiality by disclosing information explicitly (e.g., their email logon) or implicitly (habits, browser fingerprints, and other identifiers); it takes discipline to remain anonymous on Tor and even technically skilled hidden service operators, with reason to be paranoid about illegal businesses, fail to do it. Also, leaked documents say that use of security services, including VPNs and I think Tor also, causes the data to be retained by the NSA for future decryption.

How can Mozilla and their partners provide confidentiality in a way that increases end-user security, rather than attracting further scrutiny or, far worse, providing dangerously false assurances? The answer cannot depend on end users understanding the technology or subtle tradeoffs; the vast majority will never understand.

One thought: Route all Firefox users through Tor relays by default, creating some security-through-obscurity. There are problems with that, of course, including the blacklisting of Tor relays from many sites.

<comment> ryan-c Routing all Firefox users through Tor relays by default would be madness.

* It would make Firefox slow.

* It would place a tremendous load on the Tor network.

* It would defeat content filtering (which includes blocking malware) on enterprise networks.

* It would expose users to traffic interception and manipulation who wouldn't otherwise be so exposed.

<comment><USER4> Here's what could help - turning all users into (exit) relays. That strategy has worked for torrents very well - all downloaders are also seeders (I think it's a similar situation).

This solves multiple things:

1) makes it much harder to do traffic analysis

2) makes it almost impossible to "go after relays". Sure, they'll still try to arrest some here and there, just like they try to arrest people who torrent movies, and even with the mass copyright laws they couldn't stop piracy. There were just many more who did it, making the hunted down but a tiny percentage.

3) _should_ make the legal defense case even stronger than it is now for relays. You can say today that "you don't know what's happening through your relay", however you still _have to choose_ to become a relay. I think that says something. It may not be a huge case in the prosecutor's favor, but it may convince the judge to be against you in some cases. But if everyone is a relay and you can use the defense that "this is just how Tor/Firefox works", I think that would work a little better

4) should improve speed since relays can't be choked anymore

5) I'm not sure about this one, but I think it should make it much harder to DDoS Tor users/hidden services as well?

I think having the way Tor works currently is a _design flaw_ in Tor. Tor should be "fully distributed" in a way.

As for the argument "but then no one will use Tor if they are forced to be relays!" \- I just don't buy it. I think there may be some that will get scared in the short term, but then see Tor actually gets _more secure_ this way in the long term, and will return. I also believe Tor will get more new users in the long term this way.

EDIT: What I'm referring to is turning everyone into exit relays/nodes. My arguments remain the same. If it's not illegal for people to have an exit node in US (as Tor claims [1]), then it shouldn't be illegal for _millions_ to do it either. In fact it could be a sort of _stronger_ civil disobedience thing.

Plus, even if _it is_ illegal, so is piracy. That hasn't stopped millions from doing it. Just like "being gay", what's legal and what's illegal is a matter of how we shape our laws. To _change_ those laws, first you need someone to break them and change the society in a different direction. If you didn't have anyone to break a law in a certain direction, then laws would never need to be changed.

[1] - [https://www.torproject.org/eff/tor-legal- faq.html.en](https://www.torproject.org/eff/tor-legal-faq.html.en)

<comment><USER5> The problem is that you do not make the distinction between a regular relay and an exit node. There are enough regular relays in the tor network, but people hesitate running exit nodes because of the legal liabilities: many ISPs do not want you to run a tor exit node, because of the nature of some traffic coming through the tor network (illegal marketplaces, child porn, etc -- as you can read in the article, even Mozilla doesn't want to host exit relays).

If you make this the default, you're opening a can of worms legal-wise. If you make only non-exit relays the default, your whole plan defeats its purpose, because then exit nodes remain the weakest link (as they are now).

<comment><USER6> I agree that it's too crazy for Mozilla to seriously consider it.

But, assuming Tor did receive widespread adoption of exit nodes at this scale, the internet would have to adapt to accommodate this many people rerouting other people's traffic. ISPs would encounter the same backlash for throttling or blocking users who run exit nodes as they currently face when doing it to users running Netflix.

Unfortunately, it takes mass adoption to force this kind of adaptation, and it's generally an easier fight to maintain venues of freedom than to open new ones. So we have a chicken and egg problem essentially; Mass adoption is necessary to force regulatory and infrastructural accommodation, and that accommodation is necessary to foster mass adoption.

<comment><USER7> "The law just _has to_ change to adapt to our new technical ways" ist a common fallacy with techies. And has been working /splendidly/ for decades now.

More importantly, letting every of your users out in the rain with his legal problems until you have finally been successful in changing the law is not a recommended way to treat your users.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This sort of this is pretty exciting. Now that users are aware of NSA hijinks, and are familiar with the Privacy modes of their current browsers, I'd like to see Mozilla move towards a "Super Privacy" mode where they route over a built- in Tor client.

Of course, the dream would be to have all Firefox clients run Tor relay nodes out of the box, backed by Mozilla-supported exit nodes.

<comment><USER9> As hackuser says elsewhere, Tor is not really a fire-and-forget security solution. My understanding is that in order to use it without compromising yourself you need to have a fairly sophisticated understanding of its limitations.

<comment><USER10> That could easily change with the help of a well funded team like Mozilla.

<comment><USER11> A lot of internet usage is logging in to Email, FB. If you do that an attacker knows that this particular user is _you_. Not sure how that can be "fixed" easily.

To recap the current situation: You need to run a normal browser (for convenience) for facebooking (of course running NoScript, Ghostery, RequestPolicy etc.) and the Tor browser for researching things you don't want to be associated with your identity (yet nothing that law enforcement or intelligence agencies care about).

<comment><USER12> "A lot of internet usage is logging in to Email, FB. If you do that an attacker knows that this particular user is you. Not sure how that can be "fixed" easily."

When data is inputted to a HTML-form an alert could pop up. "Disclosing your login details may compromise your privacy" At least that would educate users, similarly as the warning text on Chromes New Tab incognito page.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> More relays? That's great, but why not exit nodes?

Mozilla certainly has the manpower and infrastructure to operate a bunch of exit nodes, and if they have any legal qualms about it, hey, they just partnered with an EFF project, right?

<comment><USER14> What I don't understand is why Tor doesn't bundle their relays with their clients and have a network that scales better naturally, like I2P, and instead relies on people hosting their own, hopefully high bandwidth, relays.

<comment><USER13> I'm guessing that hosting relays could get people in trouble in some jurisdictions, even if they're just middle relays and not exit nodes.

Since the goal of Tor is to let people use the internet safely in such jurisdictions -- in fact, _especially_ in such jurisdictions -- some might consider the loss of relay bandwidth an acceptable compromise.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Hm. I'm thinking Mozilla may be a modern day NRA.

The point of the right to bear arms is to protect the people from a government engaging in tyranny. The point of TOR is ideally the same. Maybe it's time to classify encryption as a weapon again.

<comment><USER16> That's sort of true, except guns are used to assault while anonymity is used to defend.

<comment><USER17> Anonymity can be used to assault, too.

<comment><USER18> ...and guns to defend.

<comment><USER19> Guns are NOT defensive weapons... You could be standing in the Starbucks line with any weapon of your choosing and I can just walk up to you and pull out a pistol and splatter your brains across the counter. No problem...

EDIT - Why is my off-topic comment with an argument being down-voted in a reply to a off-topic statement with no argument is not? There must be a lot of gun lovers on Hacker News...

<comment><USER20> Because your argument makes no sense at all to the majority (me included). A tool is a tool. Its how you use it that makes it good or bad.

I tend to believe that people who see a tool as one that can only be used in one direction, to be the ones most likely to use it in that direction.

<comment><USER19> Did your comment have something to do with what I posted? I was pointing out guns (yes, they are tools) are not good defensive weapons (the wrong tool).

<comment><USER20> that's your opinion. they're used as defensive weapons everywhere. your opinion is that its not effective.

<comment><USER19> Really? Just you saying they are defensive weapons makes it so?

You remember that news story from a couple of years ago in Seattle (I think)... Four professionally trained and armed policemen sitting at a coffee shop and one person walks up and shoots them all dead? Their guns were useless...

If we were living in movie world I would say guns are great defensive weapons because the good guys always know the bad guys are coming and have their guns drawn (or have super human reaction and aim). In real life? Not so much...

<comment><USER20> Yes. If you own a gun it doesn't mean that you're planning to shot anyone with it or that it's bound to happen. If you say you use it as a defense weapon and you actually do that (which is what a lot of gun owners in the USA say) then its a defensive weapon.

It's not about shooting back with lightning fast reflexes. It's dissuasion, or sometimes against wild life too. It also doesn't mean its going to save you every time either. Nothing works every single time, we'd know by now.

Of course its also used to kill. For homicides, what not. Heck flower pots are used for homicides too.

The point is that the decision is in the hands of the human behind the trigger, if guns didn't exist, they'd use swords. If sword's didn't exist, they'd use blunts. and so on.

<comment><USER19> Once again your comment has nothing to do with what I am talking about...

I am not making a moral judgment about guns. I am merely stating they are not defensive weapons as they not designed for that...

Swords? Well, if you had a sword and I had a sword it is possible for me to block your strikes with my sword. Guns? No gun blocks bullets...

Walking around with a gun offers one no protection (unless you have it drawn and ready to fire at all times then maybe) but a false sense of security as my real life examples illustrated. Now, if you want to shot someone dead, guns (I would not suggest flower pots) do work really well for that...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> _" Mozilla will help address this by hosting high-capacity Tor middle relays"_ Mozzila has my trust (at least for now), but concentrating large part of Tor infrastructure in a single point inside USA jurisdiction does not seem like a good and future proof idea.

<comment><USER22> Won't these high capacity middle relays eventually become fast guards (and because of the new flag assignment process, possibly both guards and exit relays simultaneously) or can the directory authorities restrict flag assignments even if the relay is eligible? By "can" I mean "should they" I suppose?

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> We need adblock and noscript in Firefox, not tor.

<comment><USER24> Tracking Protection is coming! [http://monica-at- mozilla.blogspot.com.au/2014/11/tracking-pr...](http://monica-at- mozilla.blogspot.com.au/2014/11/tracking-protection-in-firefox.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> This is great. Even if not all changes in the Tor Browser fork are appropriate to be merged back into Firefox (and certainly not all will be), for every one that they can merge, it both makes Firefox more secure and frees up Tor developers from maintaining those differences. Sounds like a win all around.

</comment><comment><USER26> "Mozilla is an industry leader in developing features to support the user's desire for increased privacy online"

Is that why they enable 3rd party cookies by default and hide the option to block them?

(Unlike Apple's Safari)

<comment><USER27> Looks very hidden [https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/disable-third-party- coo...](https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/disable-third-party-cookies)

Also that's not hidden that's under options. No digging around in about:config

<comment><USER26> Yes, it's hidden indeed. You don't get to see the checkbox to disable it until you change a select box

"Firefox will: [Remember history]"

It's totally unintuitive to look for the 3rd party cookies options there.

I know because it took me a while to find it. And I don't think it should be required to look at the documentation to do something as trivial as blocking 3rd party cookies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'm guessing Mozilla's Tor middle relays will soon be a part of PRISM

<comment><USER29> mozilla, like few other companies, has my full faith and confidence that they would pull a Lavabit and close up shop before letting something like this completely erode their users' trust.

<comment><USER30> I don't believe they would simply close in that case; I strongly believe that they would instead choose to remain open under the logic that compromised but still working for user security / web "openness" is superior to folding and losing a force which aims to work for the "greater good". I believe this given their past choices in things like H264 and EME.

Given that, though, I also believe that enough smart people are in Mozilla that they would try to prevent themselves from being in a position where they would be a target such that they would face the dilemma. Which might be why they're only hosting middle relays, and not exits or guards :)

<comment><USER29> regarding H264 and EME, there are legitimate reasons for them having conceded on those fronts. Content providers do have a legitimate interest in protecting copyrighted work. Likewise, H264 is widely deployed and is already a sunk cost for most consumers and migrating away from it will take at least a decade, it was never going to work to forcefully go cold turkey; not everyone can pull an Apple and yank Flash support.

while those choices certainly limit user freedom (as in choice), they do not compromise user security (assuming EME is properly sandboxed, etc)

i don't think they would just up and close, they'd likely just sunset/curtail the services which would be subject to interception. in Lavabit's case, that was the entire business.

<comment><USER31> >Content providers do have a legitimate interest in protecting copyrighted work

Except DRM in the browser doesn't really accomplish that, does it? Hit The Pirate Bay or Google up a torrent and done. Things like Netflix DRM are only one step above HDCP.

<comment><USER29> regardless of how misguided their attempts are, doing _nothing_ is a non- option for studios, right? what alternatives are there? there are none - <USER2> who make the content make the rules, it's something i'm confident will not change.

[https://hacks.mozilla.org/2014/05/reconciling-mozillas- missi...](https://hacks.mozilla.org/2014/05/reconciling-mozillas-mission- and-w3c-eme/)

anyways, this is off-topic.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


In-DRAM Bulk Bitwise Execution Engine - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1905.09822 <comment><USER2> Brilliant idea, but if ever implemented would require an absolutely transparent audit process by as many people as possible because of security implications...

That being said, it's a brilliant idea!

In fact, I'll do you one better -- publicly accessible CPU or CPU's inside of each memory chip, having access to that chip's RAM...

Great idea for speed/scalability -- but to have that the requirement for security is absolute transparency/auditability/accountability/documentation in the engineering and manufacturing processes... No NSL's, no backdoors, everything documented, public and auditable by everyone, etc., etc.

Which is a tremendous responsibility...

Also, cooling might become a problem...</comment>


txtr Beagle eReader to Cost Less than 10 Euros - <AUTHOR> http://www.the-digital-reader.com/2012/10/09/new-txtr-beagle-ereader-to-cost-less-than-10-euros/

<comment><AUTHOR> The offical german announcement is here: <http://de.txtr.com/beagle/>

</comment><comment><USER2> Combine this with open source textbooks and you really have something...</comment>


Ask HN: Why not just use ssh for everything - <AUTHOR> We have all these so called secure messaging apps, some are OSS, some are not, it's kinda a mess.
I can open an ssh connection to a remote server, a friend can do the same, and we can use wall or tail files or whatever, essentially, we can chat, insecurely on a box that we have a secure connection to.
I am sure it would not be hard to make the ssh libraries the core of an app that chats, talks, walks, runs, or does whatever, securely.
Why aren't we just doing thing instead of reinventing all these secure transports? <comment><USER2> Classic "Worse is better"

I shall let Rob Pike explain :

When I was on Plan 9, everything was connected and uniform. Now everything isn't connected, just connected to the cloud, which isn't the same thing. And uniform? Far from it, except in mediocrity. This is 2012 and we're still stitching together little microcomputers with HTTPS and ssh and calling it revolutionary. I sorely miss the unified system view of the world we had at Bell Labs, and the way things are going that seems unlikely to come back any time soon.

[http://rob.pike.usesthis.com/](http://rob.pike.usesthis.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> So this is just a dev wanting to scratch an itch issue and/or arrogance and/pr ignorance?

I always wondered why there was a separate layer for VPN's when you can so easily use ssh for a VPN at least for a secure way to use the internet. I suppose if you want it for the act of "being" on a remote network as if you are local is a VPN advantage, but I'm pretty sure ssh has a way to make that happen as well.

If I get this correct, it is a good idea to use ssh as a chat app's security methods?

<comment><USER2> "just a dev" \- do you mean Rob Pike ?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> SSH or SSL doesn't get you e.g. end-to-end security; the model you propose is equivalent to chatting via a server over HTTPS, which is indeed very common. (In general, OpenSSH is great but the SSH protocol itself isn't all that special.)

Something like TextSecure improves on the security of SSH/SSL for its specific use case: end-to-end security, message-level forward-security even if the receiver is offline at the moment, deniable messages (instead of allowing the receiver to prove you sent them), etc.

Many other applications use SSL as a transport and try to add some X-factor (integration with Facebook/GMail/$GAME/...); these applications would still get made if the underlying transport changed to SSH.

</comment><comment><USER4> __tl;dr: security is the issue, users can 't be trusted __

SSH is a 'general purpose' protocol for remote filesystem access. Clients with lax permissions are an attack risk. Non-technical users can't be depended upon to handle permissions. As such, SSH is commonly blocked at the firewall to prevent such malicious access.

HTTPS is rarely blocked. HTTPS is inherently safe because it doesn't grant access to anything that isn't explicitly defined the HTTP-layer API. HTTPS connections are usually handled via browsers that come with sandboxed memory spaces; even if a malicious actor manages to establish remote code execution in the client there's little/no risk of compromising the user's OS via a buffer overflow or equivalent attack vector.

</comment><comment><USER5> It takes a long time and many round trips to establish an SSH connection. You can keep a shared connection open as a workaround. But mobile devices (laptops included) don't persist connections, because batteries.

Maybe you could do it on top of mosh? [https://mosh.mit.edu/](https://mosh.mit.edu/)</comment>


Show HN: Meet me for lunch - <AUTHOR> http://colunchers.com

<comment><USER2> Why does it have to be an app? I don't have an iPhone and don't intend to get one, so I can't even try out your project.

<comment><AUTHOR> A mobile app makes sense for one reason: geo-location. Your phone knows where you are, so it can find lunches instantly without having to do anything. And that's the one thing you keep with you on your way to lunch, you don't carry your laptop around usually :-)

EDIT: also, notifications are important, you want to know whether your lunch is on or not. Emails would work too, but that's kind of old school.

<comment><USER3> Geolocation is possible in a web app as well, and is supported by both desktop and mobile browsers: [http://caniuse.com/#feat=geolocation](http://caniuse.com/#feat=geolocation)

<comment><AUTHOR> True. Don't take this the wrong way: As a programmer, I would also add that it was a pleasure to work with a real UX API again, and not have to deal with HTML's crazy issues, centering text, jQuery, browser incompatibilities, etc. I always had a <div> that didn't quite work the way I wanted.

In the end, a native app looks much better for fewer lines of code (assuming you can stand Objective-C).

<comment><USER4> But if it was built in html, js, etc it'd be accessible on all platforms for far fewer lines code than building separate apps.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Not available on the Google app store? Bummer.

</comment><comment> nathan-muir I like the general concept;

It would be great as a web app too. I'd like to post on my linkedIn / personal sites / profiles:

"Want to meet me for lunch? join me via colunchers.com/########"

They could see what public lunches I was hosting / attending . Or create a lunch and invite me.

<comment><USER6> Reminds me of the messages you get from camgirls on Tinder...

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I have been wanting this exact app for years. I have no idea why no one built it yet. Unfortunately I'm an Android user haha

<comment> nathan-muir The app is the easy bit. It needs a community.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I would actually pay for an Android version

<comment><USER9> So you're the guy!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Damn, that's good.

</comment><comment><USER11> Too few categories.

I don't want to meet venture captialists. I want to meet other marketers, authors, and artists.

<comment><AUTHOR> You can create your own categories (there is an add button).

<comment><USER11> Orly.

I only scrolled through the startup portion and then said fuck it.

I'll have to give it another shot.</comment></comment></comment>


24 days of Rust – docopt - <AUTHOR> https://siciarz.net/24-days-of-rust-docopt/

<comment><USER2> tl;dr A python argument parser that uses your cli "-h" explanation as its config file.

<comment><USER3> It's not Python. It's in Rust, and it supports type based decoding and tab completion.</comment></comment>


FTC Is Investigating Intuit over TurboTax Practices - <AUTHOR> https://www.propublica.org/article/the-ftc-is-investigating-intuit-over-turbotax-practices <comment><USER2> God I hope this suit is successful. Lots of people here are discussing the regulatory trap they've got, and that's a big problem. But the actual problem mentioned in the suit is deceptive marketing. TurboTax is the worst in this regard.

Last year, I, at every step of the process, declined the expensive options that say "maybe you'll save more money if you permanently switch into this paid mode". Yet after a couple hours of filling out forms, they said at the end that it wasn't possible to file using the free version, and that I would have to pay a couple hundred dollars. That ticked me off. They have all of the information required to figure this out much earlier in the process (income), yet they continue to allow you to pick the free tier up until the very end where the tedium of starting over with a different service is too high. Fuck em.

Their UI is very nice though, especially for guiding people through a process that they almost intrinsically hate.

<comment><USER3> I have tried nearly all of the DIY tax offerings out there. CreditKarma has a relatively new completely free offering that I feel rivals TurboTax in ease of use. I also feel that it is superior to paid offerings such as H&R Block.

Another completely free offering is freetax.com. I used them for a few years, and while not quite as easy to use, it works well.

Note that both of these free offerings include free state tax filing and have no income limits or up sells.

<comment><USER4> Did you mean freetaxusa.com? (freetax.com goes to a site called DIY Tax which doesn't look like they offer free returns anymore.)

I've used freetaxusa.com for the past couple of years. They don't do the same level of hand-holding that TurboTax and TaxAct are famous for. So what I have done in the past is fill out the tricky parts in TaxAct using a free account and if the number look right, copy them into FreeTaxUSA.

I used to use TaxAct until their prices, tiers, and upsells got to be flat-out usurious. FreeTaxUSA federal filing is free but you have to pay a small (around $15) fee if you want to e-file for state. _That_ is a price I can live with. I don't mind paying it at all if it means escaping the TurboTax and TaxAct traps.

<comment><USER5> I switched to freetaxusa.com this year after 15+ years in Intuit. I have more complex taxes than the average person and I felt like it went just fine. Really happy with the service. Went from about $150 per year to $15.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Why are we bothering with the small potatoes in the room (TurboTax not putting URLs to free tax filing, etc. etc) when the elephant is:

"Why isn't the IRS giving people a way to prepopulate and file taxes for free with the financial info that the IRS already has on everyone?"

Well, I suppose it's just a product of the corporate interests and congressional deadlock that prevents us from doing a multitude of things right now. Other countries manage to do this just fine.

<comment><USER7> Because we know the answer: the IRS is prevented from doing that by law. Lobbied by Intuit. If you google around, you can find stories on it.

edit: save_ferris linked to an excellent story below: [https://www.propublica.org/article/filing-taxes-could-be- fre...](https://www.propublica.org/article/filing-taxes-could-be-free-simple- hr-block-intuit-lobbying-against-it)

<comment><USER8> Ok so I don't know much about the us legal and political system, but a couple of questions:

\- why does a judge in a lawsuit get to make the decision here? I.e. why is this kind of law not debated as part of public discourse and a decision made through a democratic path?

\- given this benefits a tiny fraction of people in the US, why doesn't a particular party/politician take a stand on it as a policy to win a chunk of votes?

For the first point, a UK former judge spoke extensively on the topic of the courts overstepping their remit as part of the 2019 Reith lectures: [https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00057m8](https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00057m8)

<comment><USER9> > \- why does a judge in a lawsuit get to make the decision here? I.e. why is > this kind of law not debated as part of public discourse and a decision made > through a democratic path?

What judge?

The FTC investigation mentioned in the article may end with the FTC filing a lawsuit, but that would be about whether Intuit deceived taxpayers (by directing them towards a paid version even if they were eligible to file for free), not whether the Free File program should exist or whether the IRS should develop its own software.

The Free File program as it currently exists is the result of executive action, a "memorandum of understanding" between the IRS and tax software companies. [1] Last year there was a bill in Congress that would have codified it into law, but that part of the bill was dropped due to concerns it would permanently bar the IRS from developing its own software. ProPublica's reporting about Intuit's obfuscation played a part in that outcome. So there was a "public discourse" of sorts, although it's a pretty obscure issue.

Also:

> given this benefits a tiny fraction of people in the US

Keep in mind that a large fraction of Congress follows the ideology that, broadly speaking, the government can't do anything right and it's best to outsource as much as possible to private companies. Intuit's lobbying was obviously a major factor, but they were playing for a receptive audience. Congress is also not particularly tech-savvy, by and large.

[1] [https://www.journalofaccountancy.com/news/2019/jun/congress-...](https://www.journalofaccountancy.com/news/2019/jun/congress- approves-irs-reform-bill-201921474.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> In France you can fill your tax form online since 1999

[https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%C3%A9l%C3%A9d%C3%A9claration...](https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%C3%A9l%C3%A9d%C3%A9claration_de_revenus)

In the past years banks and companies give tax related information to the tax authority so for lots of people the online tax form is already 100% filled and correct.

For the past year tax filling I just had to add to the web form renting income, tax deducible donations, and that was it.

<comment><USER11> Same idea here in Ireland.

Reasons you might need to interact with the income tax system here:

1\. You have significant (>€5000) non-employment income.

2\. You worked for less than 12 months and are claiming your tax refund.

3\. You disagree with the government assessed tax reciept (which is based on what your employer fills in).

For 90% of people then, they don't need to interact with it. Their employer reports their income, deducts an appropriate amount of taxes, and sends it to the government. End of process.

<comment><USER12> > Their employer reports their income, deducts an appropriate amount of taxes, > and sends it to the government.

How does your employer know what "the appropriate amount of taxes" is? In the US I have always had trouble setting this to where I'm not at least 5% off in one direction or the other, and I know more than my employer about what my withholding rate should be.

<comment><USER13> It's not set by the employee, rather the employer looks at expected income for the year and withholds accordingly. At the end of the financial year, the Tax dept. does a final calculation and if the amount was too high/low, they send you a notice.

Tax deduction at source is a common concept in a lot of countries, incl. dissimilar ones like India and the NL, where I have both worked. Super convenient and frictionless for the vast majority of employees.

<comment><USER12> > It's not set by the employee, rather the employer looks at expected income > for the year and withholds accordingly. At the end of the financial year, > the Tax dept. does a final calculation and if the amount was too high/low, > they send you a notice.

That's my question, how does an employer or taxing authority know what that amount is? My employer doesn't know my withholding status until I tell them via a W-4, and that doesn't take into account how the appropriate amount to withhold may change due to my spouse's income. Is the taxation scheme just different in most European jurisdictions?

Edit: corrected a brain fart (see below)

<comment><USER11> Withholding =

(Taxable income in each bracket * tax rate for each bracket) - (annual tax credits / number of annual payments from your employer).

If you're married and want to be taxed as a couple, you simply send the documentation as such to the tax office after your wedding.

You can tell your employer and they'll try adjust appropriately in payroll, or you can not tell them and the government will send you a tax refund at the end of the year for the partner with the higher tax bracket. It's optional to be taxed as a couple, so presumably you're opting into it because it will reduce your tax obligations, so there shouldn't be a case where you have to pay more because you're married. The same applies for tax credits that you don't want to tell your employer about.

<comment><USER12> > If you're married and want to be taxed as a couple, you simply send the > documentation as such to the tax office after your wedding.

So that's one difference. I have never sent the IRS proof of our marriage, and they have never requested it. I simply updated my wife's name and our filing status in the year we got married.

> (Taxable income in each bracket * tax rate for each bracket) - (annual tax > credits / number of annual payments from your employer)

> You can tell your employer and they'll try adjust appropriately in payroll, > or you can not tell them and the government will send you a tax refund at > the end of the year for the partner with the higher tax bracket.

I'm confused by this. Are tax brackets always individual in Ireland? The reason I need to specify additional withholding is because each of our income withholding calculations starts from the lowest bracket and tops out at a bracket below our actual top marginal rate, which is determined by adding our incomes.

<comment><USER14> It's achieved in three ways

1) far less deductions/carve outs in tax law, or ones that people can use without contacting the tax service. Eg pensions and charity contributions deducted by employer, so tax is calculated. Charity contributions paperwork for one off donations dealt with by the charity (Gift Aid scheme)

2) "tax code" five digits representing your tax status, that the tax office will give your company to update calculations when your status changes. Possibly starting from a phone call from you. Eg using marriage tax laws.

3) tax summary P60/P45 provided by your last employer(required by law) that you can give your next employer so they calculate correctly

Sounds complicated, but it's all geared towards moving the burden to employers who just pay for payroll software, for everybody else it is very simple.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Ironically, for most people the IRS has a copy of most your forms (W2, 1099s, etc.) already and can do your taxes for you if you want.

<comment><USER16> I work and live in different states, but those states have a reciprocal agreement: any local taxes I pay to my employer's state are a credit for my home state income taxes.

Last year a Turbotax glitch (combined with my inattentiveness!) accidentally marked my local taxes as belonging to my home state – this made it appear like I paid significantly too much for local taxes. I filed and happily but surprisingly expected a large refund. Instead, I received a more typical refund and a letter from the Dept. of Revenue showing that the state had amended my return to match their records and that no further action was required.

My taxes could be this simple every time. What a bummer that they aren't.

<comment><USER15> I moved from IL to IA one year and had to file both states.

I did it by hand and screwed up the IA one somehow. =(

They eventually sent me the corrected form and a refund I was actually due.

It was like drawing the Monopoly card "Bank error in your favor. Collect $200."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The government (IRS) gets most of the data and can make a reasonable tax estimate. They should send us a bill. This find the loophole game is really counter productive and time consuming.

</comment><comment><USER18> Intuit has already done the math. The actual profits from this practice will far outweigh the ensuing fines with "No admission of wrongdoing".

</comment><comment><USER19> Obligatory mention of [https://www.turbotaxsucksass.com/](https://www.turbotaxsucksass.com/), which takes you directly to _real_ free file option of each major online tax prep site, bypassing all the misleading not-actually-free filing options that the sites loudly advertise.

<comment><USER20> I thought the official IRS form filler was discontinued? Does this just take you to another intuit competitor?

EDIT: it just sends you to the free version of turbo tax and has links for the competitors heh

<comment><USER21> > I thought the official IRS form filler was discontinued?

IRS's own service was discontinued after an agreement with tax preparation companies that _they_ would provide such a service (the IRS Free File Program) if your AGI is below 69k (nice).

Which they do, but try to hide as much as they can via negative SEO and various dark pattern, so that you unknowingly get directed towards "free" offers which quickly require you to pay.

There's plenty of information all over the net. And I thought I remembered LWT doing an episode on that recently, but apparently it was Patriot Act… in what I now learn was the last episode, that _would_ certainly explain why it's been so long I've seen an episode pop up in my feed.

<comment><USER22> Unfortunately, _Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj_ was canceled[0]. The last episode was June 28, 2020: "Why Doing Taxes Is So Hard"

It's too bad. I thought it was a really worthwhile show.

\---

[0]: [https://variety.com/2020/tv/news/hasan-minhaj-patriot-act- ca...](https://variety.com/2020/tv/news/hasan-minhaj-patriot-act-canceled- netflix-1234738562/)

<comment><USER21> Yes, that's what I meant by "last episode". I should probably have written "final" or "ultimate".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Finally. Turbotax is fraud on so many levels I cannot even get started.

</comment><comment><USER24> Personally I think that there needs to be fundamental structural tax reform. To the degree that Intuit's business model goes away.

But Intuit probably owns all of the decision makers somehow. Which to me means that there needs to be radical government reform.

I actually believe that government and money need to be radically modified and modernized.

</comment><comment><USER25> From reading the comments here, it sounds like creating a great tax product that people could use for free would be a great way to get Intuit to acquire you.

</comment><comment><USER26> I just buy one copy of TurboTax Home and Business each year and then everyone in my family uses it one at a time and free Federal efile. My parents both have different LLCs, I have a business, my sister has a business. We print and mail state returns because no reason to pay yet again for each State efile. I've become the defacto family accountant/keeper of tax file backups.

</comment><comment><USER27> What's the least scammy alternative to TurboTax? I keep paying for it every year because it's what I'm used to, and I have capital gains and all that junk so I can't free file.

<comment><USER28> You can pay a tax professional for about the $100 that turbo tax apparently charges.

There is an OSS tax solver here: [https://opentaxsolver.sourceforge.net/](https://opentaxsolver.sourceforge.net/)

Only does IRS, not state, works fine for me so far.

<comment><USER29> For some reason that link doesn't work foe me (may be a DNS issue on my part). Appears to be here: [https://sourceforge.net/projects/opentaxsolver/](https://sourceforge.net/projects/opentaxsolver/)

And it does seem to have a few states, at least in text form.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Didn't donate enough campaign contributions?

</comment><comment><USER31> I used H&R block the last few years and I feel like they also try to trick you into paying when you don't need to.

<comment><USER32> I even felt that way with TaxAct recently.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I've been happy using express1040.com for 14 years. It's always easy, updated and free for federal filing.

</comment><comment><USER34> Not sure I understand the hate for TurboTax. Literally not a single person is forced to use it. I do use it and it's a very good product for the most part.

Perhaps energy should be directed at the actual tax code complexity rather than software built to help navigate filing.

Ted Cruz's tax plan would have practically eliminated the need for TurboTax- type software. [https://taxfoundation.org/details-and-analysis-senator- ted-c...](https://taxfoundation.org/details-and-analysis-senator-ted-cruz-s- tax-plan/)

But, let's not forget what Milton Friedman had to say about tax reform: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TruCIPy79w8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TruCIPy79w8)

<comment><USER35> I 100% agree, to bad all you will get in response to your comment is how it is evil companies that prevent the noble and universally good government from helping the people.

Unfortunately very few people seem to understand that government, intrinsically, is inefficient and bad at everything it does. This can not be avoided or changed it is the natural state of a monopoly.

They seem to be able to recognize that when a large corporation that has become monopoly that is bad for people, however they fail to recognize that government is the worst kind of monopoly as unlike a corporation, they have the legal authority to put you in a cage if you refuse them, and kill you if you resit the governments attempt to put you in that cage.

<comment><USER36> > Unfortunately very few people seem to understand that government, > intrinsically, is inefficient and bad at everything it does.

This is a laughably false statement. It's easy to find stories of government projects that came in ahead of schedule and under budget, but you have to look for them because those stories don't get nearly as much attention as the inverse.

Take the Hoover Dam, for example. That was one of the most ambitious infrastructure projects in American history, and came in years ahead of schedule, and millions under budget.[0] Google around infrastructure publications and you'll find dozens more stories like this.

To say that every thing a government does is bad is to fundamentally ignore reality, which is that no, not everything the government does is bad. You can never be taken seriously making sweeping generalizations like that.

0: [https://www.marketplace.org/2010/05/28/why-we-might-not- have...](https://www.marketplace.org/2010/05/28/why-we-might-not-have-built- hoover-dam-today/)

<comment><USER37> I'm not here to argue that "everything the government does is bad" because I think it's a very nuanced situation. That said, I feel like the Hoover Dam needs to be mentioned in the same breath as Hoovervilles, and as a precursor to the Great Depression.

Arguably, this high-level decision making is the only part that the government _did_ , and should receive credit for, as the Six Companies consortium actually executed the construction.

It's unfortunate that these arguments often involve people talking past one another; governments (being made up of people) are obviously capable of good outcomes. They're also capable of generating bad or inefficient outcomes. Those two latter points are where I think there is value in the discussion: is a governmental act _moral_ , and does it increase _efficiency_ (in the sense of humanity prevailing against its default state).

<comment><USER36> > Arguably, this high-level decision making is the only part that the > government did, and should receive credit for, as the Six Companies > consortium actually executed the construction.

I agree with this, but couldn't it also be applied inversely? If a government project experiences cost overruns due to a private contractor poorly estimating the project, shouldn't blame also be placed on said contractor? Success is so often privatized and failure socialized.

<comment><USER37> Sure, absolutely, and this is a good point. However, much of that comes from changing requirements or an unrealistic bid process to begin with. Shady business practices by government contractors should absolutely be scrutinized. It's a complicated undertaking all the way around.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Lessons learnt: running very large outbound campaigns with Asterisk clusters - <AUTHOR> http://blog.wombatdialer.com/post/121914898366/power-dialing-its-best

<comment><USER2> Isn't outbound evil?

<comment><USER3> Not necessarily. It has a lot of room for useful and even positive applications. For example, I have worked on a non-profit project to track class attendance around Cape Town and it proved being quite effective.</comment></comment>


Which position in the string caused the regular expression to fail? - <AUTHOR> http://stackoverflow.com/a/23839795/1253312

<comment><USER2> I think there is a simple and obvious way to define that position.

"the longest prefix string of the input where a suffix exists that would cause the regex match to succeed" is well-defined and easily determined (by looking at the characters a normal regex engine inspects during matching).

The character after that should be the asked for offset. That could be one more than the length of the string, for example when looking for a digit in a string that doesn't contain one.</comment>


Why Web Pages Suck - <AUTHOR> https://stratechery.com/2015/why-web-pages-suck/ <comment><USER2> AdBlock renders most advertising a moot point. What's far more annoying is how every website insists on blocking out the page with a popover asking me to sign up for their newsletter when I'm not even halfway done reading the article. Does this actually work? Do people actually sign up for newsletters from these things? Usually it makes me just abandon whatever I was reading because I want nothing to do with such an obnoxious website.

<comment><USER3> Those are the worst, it's gotten to the point that I couldn't even tell you what is on those popups. If I'm reading an article and you get in my way I will close the distraction so fast that there is zero chance I will even see what you were saying AND now I'm pissed at you.

<comment><USER4> Sometimes I can't tell what's on the pop overs because they don't work properly on my phone. So I start reading an article and then the whole thing is overlaid with dark grey and I can't scroll...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This article misses one key point: sales and product people.

Specifically, sales and product people who neither understand nor care about user experience. These are the kinds of people who say yes to every deal, since the only metric they are judged by is quarterly income. Typically these people are also (rightfully so) terrified of losing their jobs. So they close tons of ad deals, by which point it's too late for the developers to stop them.

Back when I worked for Newsweek they were the biggest barrier to a quality user experience. The site developers _wanted_ to built and the site had to was the main reason I left that industry behind.

<comment><USER6> But this is a double-edged sword, is it not? I mean, "the site the developers want to build" will invariably be a site with no ads whatsoever. It loads so _fast!_ Look at how _clean_ the code is! Then everybody loses their job because there's no actual revenue.

In theory, reconciling these opposing forces should be what top management does. In reality, top management is usually too terrified to do so, because they're subject to the same pressures the sales people are: they have corporate masters of their own, demanding a revenue chart that always drives up and to the right, who will cheerfully throw them overboard the moment they appear to not be 100% behind that goal. So it's ads ahoy and UX take the hindmost.

<comment><USER7> Well it'd be a pretty unusual graph if it did not go to the right.

<comment><USER8> Stop drawing revenue, and the graph _will_ eventually stop going to the right...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I look forward to the day that the tech industry realizes not everyone is on (or can get access to) an unlimited broadband connection.

The modern ad-filled web is devistating if you're not on broadband. A site like iMore (I think Gruber was too kind—I find the content to be regurgitated dreck) is unbrowsable for someone like my parents on a satellite internet connection: takes way too long to load, and costs quite a bit of money to view. They're not even rural, just a little too far for DSL, and the cable franchise agreement isn't required to cover them. I understand that content creators have bills to pay, but you're shooting yourselves in the foot re your available viewership when you take it to the extreme of iMore. It's easy to pick on iMore, but it's the same story for many other websites.

<comment><USER3> > I look forward to the day that the tech industry realizes not everyone is on > (or can get access to) an unlimited broadband connection.

I think the day when everyone is on (or can get access to) an unlimited (or unlimted-enough) broadband connection will come first

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm not sure people are picking up on what Thompson's arguing here; he's looking at it from the business side, not the tech side, and making a prediction that strikes me as worryingly plausible.

Essentially, he's arguing that the refusal of most readers to pay for content combined with the way advertising has made the web suck -- and is encouraging an ever-larger number of people to block advertising entirely -- is creating a scenario that leaves one practical option: driving content off the open web. This is exactly what Facebook's Instant Articles, Apple News, Flipboard and similar services are betting on -- creating environments where loading times are much faster, the reading experience is generally more pleasant, and advertising is by and large less intrusive than what we're increasingly ending up with on the web:

 _The future for most publishers is likely that of pure content production only, save for the few who are destination sites capable of selling native advertising in stream or selling subscriptions. What is very much in question is exactly how users will feel when they finally get what they claim they wish for._

This ultimately isn't a question about AdBlock and loading times, it's a question about how to pay for content. If neither of the predominant payment models on the open web -- advertising and subscriptions -- turn out to be viable, if we want content producers to stay on the open web we need to come up with better answers than "hey, I'm sure there will always be people out there willing to produce everything we want at the highest possible quality level without worrying about how they'll get money for it."

<comment> qu4z-2 Yeah. It'd be a shame if the ad-supported model stops being viable, and sites like www.gwern.net stop being able to produce quality content.

<comment> loup-vaillant Have basic income,keep www.gwern.net.The current model isn't the only alternative.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've found that installing Ghostery has vastly improved my web browsing experience.

It's not just adverts, though - the amount of pointless javascript on web pages these days is almost embarassing. The concept of optimizing web pages for quick loading and judder-free browsing seems to be completely lost on today's web designers.

<comment><USER12> That's absolutely true. I'd also like to add that there is an explosion in ancillary imagery and video that often measure in megabytes. Do we really need all those parallaxed full-screen background images?

<comment><USER13> we need way better compression algorithms

<comment><USER2> Something with optimal tip-to-tip efficiency

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I don't mind most advertising. As with magazines and newspapers, I mostly ignore them, until I am interested in something. It was amazing how much more I was inclined to look at ads in the newspaper while we were building a house (a lot of stuff to buy!). Ad-blockers are silly. To demand the web to be free and then block the one avenue for revenue available is completely contradictory. Content is not free! Can they be better optimized? Of course. Let the users and search engines flesh out the good from the bad.

What I really hate are site pop-ups that suddenly interrupt reading and play hide and seek with the "close" option. That's the last way to get my feedback or make me a subscriber. but it must work!

<comment><USER15> Presumably, for advertising to work, your ad has to stand out. If every ad tries to stand out more and more compared to other ads, the result is more and more invasive ads. I'm not an expert on the matter, but it seems to me like the free-stuff-sponsored-by-advertising model isn't very sustainable. On the other hand, I do like free stuff as much as everyone else.

<comment><USER16> Of course it's sustainable. It's sustainable forever until there is some other option. TV and news paper and magazines never found an alternative. If someone can think of one, they'll get very wealthy I'm sure.

<comment><USER17> TV found several better models. PBS asks the public directly to give them money, and they allow corporations to buy sponsorships which don't interrupt the content. HBO, Showtime, Cinemax, etc. have subscribers who pay directly for the privilege of watching their shows. Netflix delivers ad-free content to your home either via postal mail or network for a fee. There are plenty of other models available to try out.

<comment><USER14> In many cases PBS does interrupt their content to solicit donations – but you do get a coffee mug and tote bag. Is it better, as you suggest? Maybe. An alternative, certainly. Don't see many others doing it.

Akin to a "Donate" button on a website. How well does that work for most?

<comment><USER17> I've never seen them interrupt a show in progress. I've seen them do pledge drives where they preempt a show, but I haven't ever had something I was watching on PBS be interrupted, personally. Maybe I'm just lucky, or maybe they do it differently in the places I've lived?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I think there's too much blame being placed on programmatic advertising. That's no excuse for 14MB pages, fixed position ads, trackers pinging the network for a full minute, etc.

There's no inherent reason why so much of the cost of ad networks, tracking (regardless of the arguments about tracking itself), and ad content needs to be born by the user. Better ad stacks should, and probably already do, exist, but it seems like most publishers and ad networks are lazy, incompetent, or both, and with iOS9 they'll soon see that they've shot themselves, and everyone else, in the foot.

</comment><comment><USER19> This linked article that talks about web pages sucking is 1.3mb and is first visible/readable after 4.9 seconds:

[http://www.webpagetest.org/result/150715_SE_YM1/](http://www.webpagetest.org/result/150715_SE_YM1/)

An article from the site it complains about sure uses a lot more bandwidth (2.9mb) but at least it's visible/readable in 2.2 seconds:

[http://www.webpagetest.org/result/150715_KC_YQK/](http://www.webpagetest.org/result/150715_KC_YQK/)

The bandwidth/resource waste sure sucks but having ads load asynchronously isn't as bad as a blank screen for 5 seconds.

<comment><USER20> Visible, but not necessarily readable: "This does not necessarily mean the user saw the page content" [1]

[1]: [https://sites.google.com/a/webpagetest.org/docs/using- webpag...](https://sites.google.com/a/webpagetest.org/docs/using- webpagetest/quick-start-quide#TOC-Start-Render):

<comment><USER19> The link I added has a filmstrip view where you can verify that this isn't the case. Alternatively visit the two sites yourself! The multi-second difference is perceptible to a human being.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> > Advertising should be respectful of the user's time, attention, and battery > life.

This struck me. I think it's the other way around: Users should be respectful of advertising, or, since this sounds ridiculous: Pay for content. Everything else seems unsustainable (and the status quo seems pretty unsustainable, hence 1 minute tracking traffic).

I'm wondering if the free-everything web only evolved due to the lack of a proper built-in payment method or if there is an underlying economic reason (the near-zero cost of publishing?) that would have forced the current situation anyway.

</comment><comment><USER22> The underlying issue here is not programmatic advertising, but the proliferation of content itself. The cost of setting up a publishing operation is effectively zero, and anybody who wants to publish online is. The value of an impression will continue to slip as long as it more and more content becomes available and more of it is consumed.

It is unrealistic to expect or hope that the supply content should be restrained. The other side of the equation is advertiser demand, and that is restrained by complexity at this present moment: The best DSPs (demand side platforms, or ad-buying tools) are typically met with very high minimums (10K/month to 250K/year) because the cost of supporting advertisers with account reps is so high. Yes, ad tech stacks are also pretty damn hard to build, but most at this point are built for scale.

My vision for my company is to democratize the advertising process so that access to the best tools, talent, and strategy is available to anybody with a message to share. If we can pull that off well, anybody that aggregates a quality audience with media should be able to benefit from their effort. Eventually individuals should be able to freely pay for the content they choose with their attention itself, detached from the act of consuming a specific piece of content.

</comment><comment><USER23> It delights me to no end that we are starting to see people take notice the slowdown of the web and the overuse of unnecessary libs and frameworks.

*Note: I did not in any way say frameworks and libs are unnecessary. I know people will read it that way, however, so this is to clarify for them.

<comment><USER7> ...Not really relevant to this article, which is about ad networks.

<comment><USER23> One of the first links from the article:

[http://pxlnv.com/linklog/safari-content-blockers-shit-ass- we...](http://pxlnv.com/linklog/safari-content-blockers-shit-ass-websites/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I don't understand why everything we do in society has to rely on capitalist concepts. The internet has shown that we can have a system that works without the usual capitalist market concepts that are somewhat needed in the "real world".

Via decentralized applications, we're seeing that we can build services that are not powered by hungry corporations which sponsor segregation, unethical behaviors, inequalities, competition and destruction. Instead they're powered by the people that use them.

</comment><comment><USER25> A healthy installation of Ghostery, Facebook Blocker, and Flashblock has a fair amount of overlap, but seems to improve my web experience a great deal.

I used to have AdBlock in the mix, but I develop web sites, and sometimes you actually need to have a div called "ad" or "adv" when you're integrating other people's code. It's hard to develop sites when those divs just vanish.

<comment> white-flame That's why it's nice to have multiple web browsers installed, or have multiple accounts or VMs with their own browser configurations, leaving your main personal browser config exactly how you'd prefer to have it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I think it's interesting that anyone would use the iMore web site. I looked at it, and if I had accidentally stumbled upon it, I would immediately run a way. When a web-site response so poorly, I just feel like I can spend my time else- where. Does anyone disagree? If so, what would cause you to go to that site?

<comment><USER27> You have a point about the clickbaity look of the site.

The editor, Rene Ritchie, has a following. He was relatively early to iPhone punditry, and there is a perception that his opinions are well-founded.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> It sounds that content creators are going to be funneled through walled gardens to survive and that I'm going to be required to use those services to get content. Otherwise it seems that it's going to be more expensive to go do it on your own and not go through Apple or Facebook.

</comment><comment><USER29> This is not why web pages suck, this is why society sucks. The smartest minds of our generation are being employed all over the Valley to build this crap. This humongous waste of talent is a great travesty.

</comment><comment><USER30> > iMore is not the exception — they're the norm.

[citation needed]

Sure there's a lot of sites out there with ridiculous page sizes, but I'd hardly call 10+MB "the norm".

</comment><comment><USER31> [... description of ad bidding ... ] _All of this happens on a just-in-time basis_

I had to chuckle at that.

</comment><comment><USER32> Divide the bytes by 10 and we are in 1998... The suck level remains the same.</comment>


Group Messaging Startup hits 10,000 Messages in 6 Days - <AUTHOR> http://sidaza.posterous.com/sidaza-hits-10000-messages-in-6-days

<comment><AUTHOR> Between when I made that post and now, an additional 100 group messages and 500 messages have been pushed through. I haven't seen a jump like this before, presumably due to Bin Laden's death.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I can answer specific questions here if anyone has any.

<comment><USER2> Sure, I'll bite. How do you compare yourselves to existing group sms tools like Fast Society, GroupMe, Disco, Beluga etc?

<comment><USER3> With fast society its used for a single night out where they delete your group at the end of the day. We give the option to keep your groups by adding or editing group members freely. Group me is the closest competitor yet we can do what group me does at less than 1% of their cost.Beluga is used for smartphones whereas Sidaza can be used by any phone which includes the 70% of "dumbphone" users in America. Although Disco is similar to Sidaza, Sidaza supports picture messaging also which most if not all the others do not support.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Python for Android -- Help needed - <AUTHOR>

I am trying to set up Kivy on my Android. I have gotten through bits and pieces of the instructions but I find myself stuck at the moment because I cannot determine which specific Python 2.7 to download. My googlefu is coming up short.
http://python.org/download/releases/2.7.3/
I am guessing I need one of the three that say "tar ball" but which one? Can anyone tell me which one or tell me where I might find the answer?
I also cannot find a functional virtual box download. From what I have read, I am not the only one. Does anyone have a solution for this problem?
I no doubt have a lot more to do, but these two sticking points have me completely stalled. <comment><AUTHOR> Clickable: <http://python.org/download/releases/2.7.3/>

The instructions I am trying to follow:

[http://kivy.org/docs/guide/packaging- android.html#packaging-...](http://kivy.org/docs/guide/packaging- android.html#packaging-your-application-for-kivy-launcher)</comment>


Why Americans Are the Weirdest People in the World - <AUTHOR> http://www.psmag.com/magazines/magazine-feature-story-magazines/joe-henrich-weird-ultimatum-game-shaking-up-psychology-economics-53135/

<comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7684650](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7684650)</comment>


Conway's Game of Life in HTML 5 - <AUTHOR> http://sixfoottallrabbit.co.uk/gameoflife/

<comment><USER2> Html5, pfft :) Many years ago I wrote a version of the Game of Life where the html to display a step of the game was both html and c code that could be compiled and run - the output being the duel html/c code for the next iteration. It involved the horrendous of abuse of what netscape (this was 1996 or so) would accept as html, and lots of #defines for the c code. This was for the international obfuscated c code competition - I thought it was pretty badass, but it didn't win. When I dug up the code many years later, I don't think I could ever really get another browser to accept the "html" so maybe it was a better idea than implementation.

<comment><USER2> Hey I found the code, this first iteration actual reads a file in '.lif' format or a simplified version thereof, and then produces the duel html/c code:

      /*

_________________________________________________________

      _________________________________________________________

      _________________________________________________________

      _________________________________________________________

      _________________________________________________________

      _________________________________________________________

      _________________________________________________________

      _________________________________________________________

      _________________________________________________________

      _________________________________________________________

      _________________________________________________________

      ___________OOOOOOOOOO____________________________________

      _________________________________________________________

      ___________________________O_____________________________

      ____________________________OO___________________________

      ___________________________OO_______OOOOOOOOOO___________

      _________________________________________________________

      _________________________________________________________

      _________________________________________________________

      _________________________________________________________

      _________________________________________________________

      _________________________________________________________

      _________________________________________________________

      _________________________________________________________

      _________________________________________________________

      _________________________________________________________

      _________________________________________________________

n
<TD */
            for(i=1; i<a; (i!=(a-1))?p("%cTR /*%c%cTD*/5%c\n",60,62,60,62):i,i++)        for(j=1; j<b; j++) {          n=0;            for(k=-1; k<2; k++) for(l=-1; l<2; l++) if(k||l) n+=x[i+k][j+l];          p("%c",(n==3)?'O':((n==2)?(x[i][j]?'O':'_'):'_'));          j!=(b-1)?p("%cTD%c",60,62):j;        }      p("%cTr N(%d)/*%c%c/TABLE%c%cA HREF=t%d.c%cn%c/A%c%c/HTML%c%cTD */\n",        60,f,62,60,62,60,f,62,60,62,60,62,60);      p(t,34,92,34,34,34,34,34,34,92,34,10);  } /* > */

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Here's something I've been meaning to ask someone: are there patterns that can "survive" in some degree of random static in a GoL board? As in, are there spaceships which can fly through other patterns on the board (either leaving behind other patterns, or acting as an "eraser")? Note that they don't necessarily have to "survive" in emptiness.

<comment><USER4> Plenty of patterns can survive in _some_ degree of static. One of the rules is "Any live cell with two or three live neighbours lives on to the next generation." Therefore, a spaceship cell that normally had two neighbors could run into an extra blip, and there would be no effect.

As far as specific patterns that are just generally resilient, Life patterns tend to be pretty fragile, and I would expect this to be an unavoidable consequence of the game's rules, one that would scale to any complex construction you built.

Also, I'm not going to attempt a proof but it sure seems that for any pattern X, you could construct a (pretty simple) pattern Y than would destroy it.

<comment><USER5> Assume a slower moving boat which fires quick boats forward. In that the 'bullets' would interact with the pattern first, you have a possibility of the things destroying everything in the path of the slow boat. Could work, but the boat itself would need to destroy everything in its path.

<comment><USER4> Rendering the bullets redundant, no?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6>
         "Bill Gosper discovered the first glider gun
         (and, so far, the smallest one found) in 1970,
         earning $50 from Conway. The discovery of the
         glider gun eventually led to the proof that
         Conway's Game of Life could function as a
         Turing machine."

fascinated by this quote ~ [https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Gun_%28cellul...](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Gun_%28cellular_automaton%29)

</comment><comment><USER7> Does this even use any HTML5 features, or did it just need a buzzword?

<comment><USER8> I have used some in a few projects, that said its limiting because of support by browsers.

But its more of a buzzword, lots of people call things html5 even when its not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9>
      {"width": 52, "cells": "AAAAABgAAABgAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAABwAAACIAAAEEAAAEEAAAAgAAACIAAABwAAAAgAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAAAAHAAAAIgAAAAAAAAYwAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGAAAAGAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA"}

</comment><comment><USER10> Somehow, even after programming my own version of the game of life, I can still sit there watching it evolve. It never ceases to amaze me how such a set of simple rules can cause such interesting behavior.

</comment><comment><USER11> Is there a stash of interesting imports available anywhere?

<comment><USER12> I just made a Gosper Glider gun

{"w":200,"h":200,"cells":" _A/_ A/ _A/_ A/ _A/_ A/ _A/_ A/ _A/_ A/ _A/_ A/ _A/_ A/ _A/_ A/ _ANM_ AfD _A/_ A/ _A/_ A/ _AqDg_ AeBE _Afgg_ AeII _AfQ_ AfR _AfDg_ AfQ _A/_ AhDg _Af4_ AfR _A/ADG_ A/ _A/_ A/ _A/_ A/ _ALM_ AfD _A/_ A/ _A/_ A/ _A/_ A/ _A/_ A/ _A/_ A/ _A/_ A/ _A/_ A/ _A/_ A/ _A/_ A/ _A/_ A/ _A/_ A/ _A/_ A/ _A/_ A/ _A/_ A/ _A/_ A/ _A/_ A/ _A/_ A/ _A/_ A/ _A/_ A/ _A/_ A/ _A/_ A/ _A/_ A/ _A/_ A/ _A/_ A/ _A/_ A/ _A/_ A/ _A/_ A/ _A/_ A/ _A/_ A/ _A/_ A/ _A/_ A/ _A/_ A/ _A/_ A/ _A/_ A/ _A/_ At"}

<comment><USER13> You've also managed to mangle the formatting of this entire page.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Who clicked expecting something to do with Ron Conway?

<comment><USER7> Non-programmers?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Doesn't work on the iPad.

<comment><USER16> Works just find on mine!

Always loved the Game of Life. Programmed in Python & OpenGL a while back, but this is just cool. Glad to play with it every once in a while.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Wow. It's so beautiful.</comment>


I'm Batman – 5 Lessons for Success by Bruce Wayne - <AUTHOR> http://www.techjuice.pk/im-batman-5-lessons-for-success-by-bruce-wayne/

<comment><USER2> Balance your personal & professional life - too difficult right now for us.

<comment><AUTHOR> You should read this:

\- You don't think work/life balance; you just think life. Symbolic work-life boundaries are almost impossible to maintain. Why? You are your business. Your business is your life, just like your life is your business--which is also true for family, friends, and interests--so there is no separation because all those things make you who you are. Incredibly successful people find ways to include family instead of ways to exclude work. They find ways to include interests, hobbies, passions, and personal values in their daily business lives. If you can't, you're not living--you're just working Full article: [http://goo.gl/XWTpj5](http://goo.gl/XWTpj5)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> 6\. Coming from an insanely rich family and affording to fund expensive toys.

<comment><AUTHOR> Would Tony Stark be an exception then?</comment></comment>


Ask HN:  Game where the participants change the rules? - <AUTHOR>

On HN I once saw some discussion about a game meant to be played via bulletin board or email.  Each turn, a participant may change a rule.  The game ends when a player wins, but players can also change those win conditions.
Surprisingly, some googling doesn't turn up very much, and I figured an HN post would be more valuable anyway.
It's amusing to think about trying to get a game going via this HN post.  Each comment subtree would become its own strange little game.  It'd never work; chaos would ensue.  Amusing chaos.  Probably best not to do that though.
Anyway, does anyone remember this game?  What was it called? <comment><USER2> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nomic](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nomic)

</comment><comment><USER3> Calvinball.</comment>


This cold email technique worked for me - <AUTHOR> http://www.therisetothetop.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/ColdEmailTemplates.pdf

<comment><USER2> This is brilliant, thanks for posting! Also, the best times to send an email and ensure a response is from 9pm-12am, and during the weekends. Learned that from another article.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting. Do you have the link for that article? I'd love to read it!

<comment><USER2> You know, I can't find the original article, but there are a ton of articles if you search for it. Here's a good one: [http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/whats- best-t...](http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/whats-best-time- day-send-email-148113)

The point that the article I read made is that it's not so much about when an email gets Opened, but when the response rate is the highest, and that occurs mainly during low traffic times, such as late at night, and on weekends. It's more about being one of a few "unread" than being available during peak traffic times.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Should I relocate for a junior iOS developer role? - <AUTHOR>

I have about 6 months of iOS development experience. I'd like to grow this skill set but, I'm based out of Dallas. I'm considering checking out Austin as well but, junior iOS developer roles have been challenging to come by. Any thoughts or tips are appreciated. Thanks so much. <comment><USER2> I'm an iOS developer in Dallas too. Without going into too much bagging on our terrible developer community, I will say that you have a couple of choices:

1\. Bag a few freelance gigs. Build up your skills and confidence.

2\. Try to get your foot in the door with a creative agency. Dallas has a lot of agencies and they generally are always looking for iOS developers for projects. The work is usually pretty simple.

3\. Get in touch with Bottle Rocket. They're a local iOS development shop and may have need of junior developers.

If you ever want to grab coffee let me know. My contact info is in my profile.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're not kidding about the lack of a developer community. Thanks for the tips. I'll look into the creative agencies. I'll definitely reach out to BR and see what happens. I'm pretty green though so, we'll see. Thanks for the offer for coffee, I may take you up on that!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Are you unmarried? Are you in your early 20s? Definitely do it.

Are you unmarried? Are you under 30? Probably do it.

I never regretted those kinds of crazy decisions I made when I was young.

<comment><AUTHOR> 25\. Just married. That's why I'm partial to Austin. We could do the distance thing for a while, no big deal. No kids.

<comment><USER3> If your new wife truly supports you, go for it. Encourage her to follow a similarly crazy dream. Live frugally until you build a solid base.

You are young with plenty of time to make "mistakes". I put that in quotes because its not really a mistake, but rather an experience with a little risk. You can always fall back on accounting, later.

<comment><AUTHOR> She definitely does. I'll encourage her to do the same. Thanks! If you know of mobile dev firms in Austin that look for Junior devs, let me know :)

<comment><USER3> The only person I know of in Austin who may be able to help is @danbenjamin or his followers. They may provide good info.

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool. I'll reach out to him on twitter. Looks like he's quite popular. Thanks very much for the tip!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm an iOS developer with a similar amount of experience. I'm based out of a small city in Georgia which has no developer community so its very hard to stay motivated and keep challenging myself. Glad to hear you got a job, mind me asking what your process was for finding it?

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't have a dev gig yet. I work in my spare time outside of my regular job.

I'm just focusing on my personal projects and taking classes at my local community college. :)

<comment><USER4> I see, let me know if I can help you out on your side projects

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Can't you make some apps in your spare time? It might be even better to learn instead of a junior position.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have been doing that actually, and will probably keep pressing on doing that. Only issue is I work in public accounting which takes a ton of time.

I have a prototype of one working but, at the end of the day, I need to be coding all day to really learn iOS development.</comment></comment>


Solving twenty-four puzzles - <AUTHOR> http://blog.plover.com/math/24-puzzle.html <comment><USER2> THERE ARE NO WEASELS ON THE MOON</comment>


Fantastical calendar moves to a subscription model - <AUTHOR> https://flexibits.com/fantastical/pricing <comment><AUTHOR> Fantastical 2 was a great app and if you didn't mind paying about $25 for each platform separately, you got a great app worth the money. Now, the greediness of Flexbits reached another level and they are releasing Fantastical 3 which is basically Fantastical 2 costing you $40 / year... Even there is some grandfathering offer for the current Fantastical users seems to be very unhappy by this move.

</comment><comment><USER2> I don't want the new app. I want to stay on v2 on my phone. Or if that's not an option I'd like a refund so I can buy an alternative.

I'm not paying $40/year for an iPhone app.</comment>