BTC-e and its founder charged in 21-count indictment over hack of Mt. Gox - <AUTHOR> https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/pr/russian-national-and-bitcoin-exchange-charged-21-count-indictment-operating-alleged <comment><USER2> The question for me is: why US? He is a Russian citizen, the company is based in Bulgaria, servers in Russia, legal HQ in Cyprus and all the services operated from Seychelles - arrested in Greece. The MtGox hack affected a Japanese company. I'm not debating the nature of the crimes, etc - I am just wondering, when does it become a US case?

I can get the "there were US customers" \- but why not Europe? Or Japan? Or Russia? Or Australia? I'm sure BTC-e had customers from all over the world (and money laundry is pretty much a crime everywhere).

So, when does it become "you have broken the US law and you are under arrest"?. Does it work the other way around too? If you start a gay social network in US, can Russia come in (the first time you are flying in one of the Russia's partners territories) and say "you are breaking Russian gay laws, you are under arrest"?

<comment><USER3> Look at the actual charges in the indictment. All the BTC-e stuff is not what he's charged with. He's charged with transferring stolen Mt Gox Bitcoins to Tradehill, a San Francisco based exchange (now defunct). That's the US connection that will seal his extradition.

They also allege that BTC-e is (at least partially) hosted in the US and does business with many US companies, which is likely true. But that's not what they charged him with. Maybe that will come later after he's extradited and they have a chance to go through the evidence they no doubt collected when they arrested him.

On an unrelated note, it looks like the traceability of Bitcoin transactions played a major role in this. It turns out that Bitcoin is really not a great way to launder money, unless you want a record of your money laundering archived forever, redundantly, on a distributed system of computers around the world! I expect future crypto-locker viruses to switch to Monero instead of Bitcoin now that they can no longer cash out through BTC-e. Subsequently I expect to see Monero delisted from any exchange that follows KYC after some pressure from law enforcement.

<comment><USER4> As an actual cryptographer who has looked into it, I wouldn't put too much faith in Monero's fungibiliry. The story is not as good as the PR would have you believe, and is really not all that different from Bitcoin with CoinJoin.

<comment><USER5> Elaborate. Your statement says nothing but "I'm a software engineer so believe me what I say Slack app sucks'

<comment><USER6> Analysing monero traceability is hard. Early wallets picked addresses to use in bad ways. A lot of academic work us needed. Luckily ZeroCoin exists.

<comment><USER4> I don't know why you are being down voted, since you said exactly what I was alluding to. Monero's ring signature traceability is very hard to analyze. Even if the ring signature is not broken in a cryptographic sense, transactions can still be linked by the other fingerprints they leave, or by wide spectrum analysis.

It's a bit like a game of sudoku. A mixin input could have 4 different coins, and technically you can't be certain from the signature which is the real input. But in reality you can do downstream or source analysis and come up with probabilities for whether the prior transactions were authored by the same wallet, or associate with other keys used by other mixin inputs. Every little bit adds to the probability of two addresses being linked, and it really doesn't take many bits of information to confirm or eliminate mixin inputs as being real or fake.

This is notably different from how ZeroCoin operates, where the anonymity set is everyone and it is fully untraceable. However ZeroCoin has problems with respect to performance and deployment :\

<comment><USER7> You also forget Confidential Transactions. How can you do any kind of useful downstream or source analysis when you don't know the amounts and you have stealth addresses? Also you can have huge amount of mixins which use the total pool of TXs ever done.

It's the same as RSA4096, in theory you could bruteforce eventually crack a key, but in reality it's not a viable attack.

You're just saying abstract things without backing them up with details. Also Zcoin has scaling issues with TXs being 50x of Zcash (another Zerocoin-based implementation)

<comment><USER4> There are more ways of linking transactions than just values. I enumerated some of them in my comment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> BTC-E has been seen by the Bitcoin community as "shady" for years. People have always recommend others to avoid using it. It was rumored to be an easy place to sell stolen Bitcoins. It has always offered strangely convoluted pathways to transfer fiat to financial institutions (see [http://bitcoinworldwide.net/how-to-deposit-money-into- btc-e](http://bitcoinworldwide.net/how-to-deposit-money-into-btc-e)). I'm glad BTC-E finally got taken down. I am not surprised it was involved in illegal activities. One less shady Bitcoin company.

Now the top 12 or so volume-ranked Bitcoin exchanges listed at [https://cryptowat.ch](https://cryptowat.ch) are perfectly legitimate trustworthy companies. The ones I'm not sure about are CEX.IO and Luno (not saying they aren't trustworthy, I just don't know them that well) and, well, Bitsquare which as a decentralized exchange is bound to have some shady participants.

<comment><USER9> > It has always offered strangely convoluted pathways to transfer fiat to > financial institutions

Your link is not evidence of "strange convolution." The reason there are so many steps/screenshots is because the payment service is in Russian, and the guide is designed for non-Russian speakers.

Most people never dealt with fiat on BTC-e, and would use someone like Coinbase to fund the purchase of coins, and trade exclusively in crypto on BTC-e.

> Now the top 12 or so volume-ranked Bitcoin exchanges listed at > [https://cryptowat.ch](https://cryptowat.ch) are perfectly legitimate > trustworthy companies.

BTC-e was number six on that list...

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I still don't understand, the U.S. is charging a Russian with a white collar crime?

The crime was committed outside the U.S., he didn't come to the U.S., the servers weren't in the U.S., Mt.Gox was based out of Japan, and Greek police arrested him.

I've seen this enough to know this is common, but what is going on with this world?

<comment><USER11> As others have noted, the US didn't just make up jurisdiction here or declare that they can prosecute anything anywhere -- the charges include an allegation that he transferred stolen BTC to a US-based company. That creates a crime the US has jurisdiction to prosecute.

It really is time for people to stop being gobsmacked at the idea that once you get entangled with an entity in a particular country, anything you do to or with that entity which violates the country's laws is fair game for them to extradite and prosecute you over. Shouting, "But I didn't do it in your country, I did it _on the internet!_ " does not get people out of that.

Also, given just how much global network infrastructure passes through the US, and the near-impossibility of productively cashing out of most criminal schemes without involving a US institution, people should stop being surprised that their clever attempts to commit the perfect stateless crime are neither clever nor stateless.

<comment><USER12> You haven't really explained or justified anything. "Them's the rules!!!"

What if Thailand wanted to extradite you because you joked about their king on HN?

You would just laugh, not make a point about "well, what do you expect when you challenge a nation's royal sovereignty? Have some respect on the internet! Thailand takes this _very_ seriously."

<comment><USER13> You would laugh because they have no power to enforce their laws globally, and possibly also because the country you live in has free speech laws that make them unlikely to extradite someone for lese-majeste. The US does have that power and the cooperation of foreign governments.

<comment><USER14> And does that inspire confidence?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> 1) Arresting btc-e admin made all US customers to lose their balances on btc-e exchange. I highly doubt btc-e will come back online.

2) If you run online exchanger and have a single US customer, then you have to register your operation in USA. I find it ridiculously stupid.

<comment><USER16> > If you run online exchanger and have a single US customer, then you have to > register your operation in USA. I find it ridiculously stupid.

When you don't know much about something, it can often look stupid.

This isn't new or complex, though. If you do business across a border, governments on either sides of the border may take an interest in the transaction. If you don't like that, don't do business across a border. "Online" isn't a special magic transdimensional place. It's just a web of connections between existing places.

<comment><USER12>
        > When you don't know much about something,
        > it can often look stupid.

This is just a rude remark. Do you think it's appropriate if I said "Heh, cute, wpietri, but many things are only defensible when you don't understand them."

Also, "if you don't like it, don't do it!" is not a commentary on the issue.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> An interesting comment validated here, from 7 years ago:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1533033](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1533033)

<comment><USER18> That comment is very general though. Exchanging bitcoins for cash, gold, diamonds for example would be harder to trace.

<comment><USER19> Exchanging BTC for cash, gold or diamonds is much more difficult ( and there's a higher perceived danger ). How would you go about trading your BTC for diamonds?

Btc-to-diamonds.website ? If it's online, it's tracked by 5 eyes Tor? 5-eyes is even more interested Craigslist? Great, go meet a stranger in a parking lot and gamble that you don't get robbed.

The comment is general but it's right. As it & other posters in this thread have pointed out - existing power structures control the world. The internet does not exist in an imaginary "stateless" vacuum.

<comment><USER18> If you are in the underworld you know people who you can do dealings with. Effectively a dark pool. Dark in both senses of the word.

<comment><USER19> The average BTC holder is not, so it's not a good option.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Interesting. Bitcoin stolen from Sheep Marketplace also ended up in a BTC-E account.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/SheepMarketplace/comments/1t0ueq/sh...](https://www.reddit.com/r/SheepMarketplace/comments/1t0ueq/sheep_marketplace_scam_scheme_figured_out_scammer/)

[https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/dec/09/recoverin...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/dec/09/recovering- stolen-bitcoin-sheep-marketplace-trading-digital-currency-money)

<comment><USER21> I wonder how much BTC-e knew about these money sources. Were they a general "don't ask, don't tell" laundering operation that just so happened to be used by these people because it was their best laundering option, or were they directly involved in some of the hacks?

<comment><USER22> What are the odds that whoever was running BTC-e also happened to be involved in any of those hacks? It's definitely a case of "don't ask, don't tell" and perhaps, making that policy known.

<comment><USER23> I always thought this was possible, btce was set up by a group of crypto currency hackers, they are in a perfect position to know how exchanges work and the possible security issues they may have, they also have an easy way to launder the stolen coins. Further, bad publicity for their competitors is good publicity for them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I would like to know _how_ he was arrested in Greece. Was there an Interpol warrant or something or they just made a phonecall and the Greek authorities promptly put the guy on a ship to US?

</comment><comment><USER25> This illustrates how the DOJ is years behind when it comes to understanding cryptocurrency technology and markets.

It won't take long for one of the cryptocurrencies with private transactions to rise in dominance, since this sort of crackdown imposes costs and uncertainty on all participants.

If the goal of the DOJ was to fight crime, the most effective approach would have been simply to infiltrate mixers and trace money flows relevant to investigations, something BTC is perfect for.

Instead, this move sends a strong signal to the cryptocurrency community that hardening measures are needed.

For instance: [http://zerocoin.org/](http://zerocoin.org/)

<comment><USER26> Pretty sure that won't matter. Monero will hinder blockchain analysis, but if you're wiring out millions they can just demand you prove the legitimacy. "I got untraceable coins" is on the level of excuse as "I got this sack full of cash".

So long they prevent people from cashing out big time, then they're on the same level as cash (see, needing to deposit boxes of cash with HSBC).

<comment><USER25> Good point. I think it will take a fairly significant transition away from fiat currencies before that situation is eliminated...

But one of the incentives of getting rid of cash is to transform the money into something that can be efficiently sent over a large distance, which is something cryptocurrencies already do.

<comment><USER27> > I think it will take a fairly significant transition away from fiat > currencies before that situation is eliminated...

Not really, so long as the IRS and taxes remain a thing. And someone notices the guy who hasn't had a job in the last five years is driving around in a brand new Tesla and living it up in a mansion.

<comment><USER25> Perhaps, but I think you assume a much greater level of enforcement than actually exists.

Most tax evasion enforcement is on relatively small subset of taxpayers and is for fairly easy-to-detect fudges. There has been a lot of work between the IRS and banks to set up heuristics and flag suspicious activity, but that all ends up pretty worthless with an anonymous cryptocurrency.

<comment><USER27> You're assuming that in a world with only anonymous cryptocurrency there won't be banks and credit cards and the like. Keeping cryptocurrency saved on your personal hard drive with backups or something is equivalent to keeping your money under your mattress today. Banks provide you with interest on your savings and security.

I suspect in a world with only cryptocurrency instead of fiat, trying to make a direct peer-to-peer transaction to purchase an expensive item like a house or car will be met with the same reaction as trying to do that today with a duffel bag full of cash.

<comment><USER28> There's no need to suspect - looking at the regulations, it seems that the standard AML/KYC laws everywhere in the first world _already_ require anyone selling anything large with an untraceable payment instrument (i.e. anything other than through a financial institution; which commonly means cash, but not exclusively so, bags of diamonds or Monero count as well) is required to report the transaction and the identity of the customer.

It doesn't mean that everyone reports that, quite the contrary, but all _legitimate_ businesses do and will.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Interesting, I have been using BTC-E for a while, I had no idea this sort of thing happened. Was it knowingly assisted by someone at BTC-E, or did BTC-E just act as a dumb machine?

BTC-E was one of the eastiest ways for me to change BTC and LTC in day trading. Are there comparable websites with small fees? I'm not interested in buying with fiat money.

<comment><USER30> > Was it knowingly assisted by someone at BTC-E, or did BTC-E just act as a > dumb machine?

The defendant is who run/ran BTC-E, so it's alleged to have come from the very top. The reasons why you found it so easy are probably related to why the US sees it as a criminal enterprise:

> According to the indictment, since its inception, Vinnik and others > developed a customer base for BTC-e that was heavily reliant on criminals, > including by not requiring users to validate their identity, obscuring and > anonymizing transactions and source of funds, and by lacking any anti-money > laundering processes.

It continues:

> The indictment alleges BTC-e was operated to facilitate transactions for > cybercriminals worldwide and received the criminal proceeds of numerous > computer intrusions and hacking incidents, ransomware scams, identity theft > schemes, corrupt public officials, and narcotics distribution rings. Thus, > the indictment alleges, BTC-e was used to facilitate crimes ranging from > computer hacking, to fraud, identity theft, tax refund fraud schemes, public > corruption, and drug trafficking. The investigation has revealed that BTC-e > received more than $4 billion worth of bitcoin over the course of its > operation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> An interesting analysis of the evidence here:

Breaking open the MtGox case, part 1 [http://blog.wizsec.jp/2017/07/breaking- open-mtgox-1.html](http://blog.wizsec.jp/2017/07/breaking-open-mtgox-1.html)

</comment><comment><USER32> Question is who has the control over BTC-e's crypto? Will they be returned to users?

<comment><USER33> The will be auctioned since they were forfeiture by Feds, like this:

[http://thehill.com/policy/technology/290745-feds-to- auction-...](http://thehill.com/policy/technology/290745-feds-to- auction-16-million-in-bitcoin)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> The website still says "down for unscheduled maintenance"

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> There's been no mentions of coin seizures anywhere as far as I can tell. Usually you'd see some boasting about that.

Perhaps these guys were actually smart about their cold storage?

<comment><USER35> Page 6 article 20 says they operated their servers in the United States. If that's true then I'm pretty sure they've already been seized. They were probably on aws

<comment><AUTHOR> That shouldn't give the feds any more than their hotwallet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> >The takedown of this large virtual currency exchange

I haven't kept up to date on exchange volume. Was btc-e still a popular exchange (up until this takedown of course)?

<comment><AUTHOR> [https://data.bitcoinity.org/markets/volume/30d?c=e&t=b](https://data.bitcoinity.org/markets/volume/30d?c=e&t=b)

BTC-e was still pretty big.

<comment><USER37> When they say that "Bitcoin Exchange Alleged to Have Received Deposits Valued at Over $4 Billion", does that really mean $4 Billion USD? How is that exchange value established?

<comment><USER38> As I remember, all exchange transactions on btc-e were public, so anyone could sum/verify the amount of money going through exchange. I've used btc-e actively in 2013, earning good money on trading BTC to USD and back during the period of rapid price growth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> They are boasting about how they caught the guy who robbed Mt. Gox but they just did the same - a lot of people just lost access to their money on BTC-e. They are not all criminals, BTC-e was a convenient way to exchange bitcoins to/from rubles and was used by many people in Russia who were interested in cryptocurrencies.

</comment><comment><USER40> I am so happy right now that I moved my litecoins from btc-e to a personal wallet. I've learned my lesson.

</comment><comment><USER41> So, does that mean I can't get the BTC I deposited in BTC-e ages ago? I somehow didn't even know any of this was going down. (I have no idea how much it was...maybe a quarter of a coin, which is a reasonable amount of money today.)

<comment><USER42> You may get it back in the future, if they open again… or not. Sorry for your loss

It is reasonably well-known that it is dangerous to leave money on exchanges. BTC is only yours when it's in a wallet with a private key that is known to you, and no third party.

<comment><USER41> I've lost more in my own local wallets due to losing both of the USB flash drives that contained the keys (as ridiculous as it sounds, I think my girlfriend's cat stole one of them).

Realistically, I've come to think cryptocurrency just isn't for me; it's too damned easy to lose. I also forgot my passphrase for some other BTC (I _think_ I remember it, but it doesn't work, so, there those went). It's not huge sums; 1 BTC here (which was only worth about $300 when I "lost" it), a half BTC there, but the only BTC I still have access to is the half of one I have at Coinbase.

I may yet find one of those flash drives, or figure out what my passphrase actually is for the others. But, what I have found for sure is that BTC is too hard to keep safe (mostly from myself).

<comment><USER43> Well that is just your own mistake. You are supposed to backup the 'seed' into a safe location that can be used to recover the wallet

<comment><USER41> Sure. I acknowledge it is my own doing. And, I won't do it again, by not holding any significant funds in cryptocurrency.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Justice playing whac-a-mole

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

</comment><comment><USER45> >Russian National And Bitcoin Exchange

So nothing will happen to the site or its owner, other than maybe they won't be able to transfer out USD.

<comment><USER46> >So nothing will happen to the site or its owner

"Defendant Alexander Vinnik Was Arrested in Greece to Face Charges in the United States; Bitcoin Exchange Alleged to Have Received Deposits Valued at Over $4 Billion" \- article subtitle

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Where is the FBI in this? It was a FBI black op against silk road -> follow the money! Who was silk road's bank < Mt Gox - Who bankrupt Mt Gox < FBI Who had access to Trademill database < FBI Who authorized the attack on BitCoin after saying don't use it's not safe < FBI Today the seizure of all BitCoin in BTC-e is done by the FBI - Hopefully the number of FBI SA's going to jail over this Black Op will be limited. But, their greed is transnational to hide their seizure of overseas assets.. that is, What was seized and who accounted for it! Think DrugWar - we will be looking for SA's living beyond their means as with silk road

</comment><comment><USER48> Although I don't understand the US's involvement in this -- a man breaking the rules is being put to justice, and I'm very glad. I'm also impressed by the feds work in the cryptocurrency space. In recent years the fed has really started to reverse the trope of the government not being technologically adept. There are too many that become wealthy through illicit means and it's good news that something effective is being done about it.

<comment><USER12> >Although I don't understand the US's involvement in this -- a man breaking the rules is being put to justice, and I'm very glad.

This is a terrifying comment.

Not much different than a Thai person saying the same about a German rotting in their jail because he offended their king on Twitter. "Justice!"

<comment><USER49> Because insulting someone and stealing millions of dollars are equal somehow?

<comment><AUTHOR> Whose money did BTC-e steal?

<comment><USER48> I suppose you're not very familiar with BTC-e. It had a reputation of taking funds from users -- there was nothing effectively stopping them (until now) from locking users out of their accounts randomly, or disappearing user's funds.

<comment><AUTHOR> >I suppose you're not very familiar with BTC-e.

There's probably 5 or less people more familiar with BTC-e than I am.

>It had a reputation of taking funds from users

Compared to the other big exchanges they've mostly had a reputation of not doing that.

Essentially all the people I can find complaining about suspended BTC-e accounts got shut down due to inconsistencies in their incoming wires.

I'm looking at BTC-e user database right now, only 0.2857% of the users are banned. Much fewer than you'd see at any other exchange, but I suppose that's not a very meaningful metric given the ease of registrations.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Can you tell us what you think of the Conference Call widget we made? - <AUTHOR>

We made a widget that we think is really cool.  It lets you easily embed in browser conference calls into any website in a matter of minutes.  Works with webrtc or flash depending on the browser.
Give it a try and let us know what you think, what is missing, what else you would like it to do... etc.. etc... Any and all feedback is appreciated!!! :)
You can find it at http://voic.io
Thanks! <comment><USER2> Very cool on the web, but who uses WEB anymore? Get me one I can use on my iPhone. THEN I'll be excited. Now it's just a cool idea and a demo.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Ittai! One step at a time. We are also working on a mobile solution! :)</comment></comment>


What's it's like to be on HN front page for 20 hours - <AUTHOR> http://blog.lessmilk.com/hackernews-20h/

<comment><USER2> I hope we don't see a blog post next week titled "What's it's like to be on HN's front page for 20 hours for previously being on HN's front page for 20 hours"

<comment><USER3> I like it. Very nice recursion.

</comment></comment><comment> B-Con > At its peak, I was getting between 100 and 200 page views per minutes.

It seems like it peaked at just over 3 hits per second, which is, frankly, a little lower than I would've expected, and seems very manageable. I'm curious what the loads are on sites that end up going down from the traffic.

</comment><comment><USER4> 35,000 uniques for ~330 upvotes? It's a little strange to me, but the few times I've been on HN, I've also noticed that near exact ratio: 100 uniques for every upvote, whether its for 20 upvotes or 200.

Anyway, I'm surprised it didn't result in more uniques in your case, given all the useful content you've posted...I spent some time going through your other blog posts. Great resource!

<comment><USER5> Sometimes google analytics doesn't count all numbers or the site was down for many people. I've seen some differences (around 20%) between GA and Woopra.</comment></comment>


Why geeks get all the girls - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cL65rnXiQHg&feature=related

<comment><AUTHOR> I with there were subtitles or some dialogue or something... but damn this is all kind of novel and lucky.

cute girl too!</comment>


Former NASA chief unveils $100M neural chip maker KnuEdge - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2016/06/06/former-nasa-chief-unveils-100-million-neural-computing-chip-company-knuedge/ <comment><USER2> This part of the article struck me as very interesting:

KnuVerse solutions are based on patented authentication techniques using the human voice – even in extremely noisy environments – as one of the most secure forms of biometrics.

Of course that requires a very significant [[citation needed]]. I would like to see their performance in that task or at least the specific patents that allow them to provide the most secure authentication method even in extremely noisy environments.

EDIT: Google Patent shows nothing for KnuEdge, KnuPath or KnuVerse. They must have a very-differently-named shell company for the patents.

<comment><USER3> I find it amusing that they're touting it for an application where I find it quite likely that similar NN algorithms will excel at generating speech in someone else's voice. (c.f., "neural style transfer" in images, but applied to speech.) We're already getting pretty decent at this for video -- see, for example, [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohmajJTcpNk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohmajJTcpNk) (Face2Face: Real-time Face Capture and Reenactment)

<comment><USER4> was just trying to find papers for that yesterday - neural style for voice/audio. Conceptually it sounds it should be doable, but looking at the actual implementation, I'm not sure it's doable at all with a CNN for audio.

<comment><USER5> Unsure if it's CNN-based, but check out [http://www.wowtune.net/](http://www.wowtune.net/)

<comment><USER4> very impressive, even if a bit out of tune on the Autumn Leaves demo!

They have a very good team with actual audio industry experience. Look forward to seeing more demos.

It sounds like a phoneme based speech/singing synthesizer, similar to Yamaha Vocaloid. I wonder how much training data is required to extract the phonemes to create a "voice"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> _-__--- Here's some spec on the chip itself (KnuEdge seems to be a larger holdings company of sorts, the chip is more associated with subsidiary KNUPATH):

[https://www.knupath.com/products/hermosa- processors/](https://www.knupath.com/products/hermosa-processors/)

<comment><USER6> i do wonder what the ARM license is being used for - acting as an interface to the cores themselves?

<comment><USER7> Looks like an FPGA with only the DSPs and no logic units.

The SoC is probably used in the same way (high level tasks like networking etc.) as it is in FPGA land.

<comment><USER8> Agreed. I've seen a few similar mockups that used a processor IP as the chip- level "traffic cop".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> There isn't much technical in the article, but it does remind me a bit of the adapteva epiphany.

</comment><comment><USER10> > "I thought, holy smokes," he said. "It's going to be too expensive. It's not > propulsion. It's not environmental control. It's not power. This software > business is a very big problem, and that nation couldn't afford it."

I think the difficult thing about space travel and exploration is that it is all of the above.

</comment><comment><USER11> Wonder how similar to [http://www.artificialbrains.com/spinnaker](http://www.artificialbrains.com/spinnaker) this is

<comment><USER12> From the article and their website, it doesn't seem like KnuEdge's compute units are spiking neurons. Spinnaker and IBM 's TruNorth using spiking neurons to compute.

<comment><USER11> Well, not quite. Spinnaker is OPTIMIZED for spiking neurons, but in theory you could run standard computations on it. It is just really messy (speaking form experience).

The main idea behind Spinnaker as far as I understood it is "cheap cores, lots of them, architecture for message passing and load distrubtion vaguely inspired by human brain". This rang similar on a first read

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Super nice, is it an asic designed for ML algorithms? Which ones? Well, I wouldn't call it a startup though, 100 employees, 10 years of development.

</comment><comment><USER14> I must admit to being reminded of the Cell CPU hype, which is perhaps another case of a solution looking for a problem.

<comment><USER15> Mmmhmmm. I agree.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I wonder what the clock network topology looks like on a chip with 256 cores.

<comment><USER17> If they're implementing neural nets they don't necessarily need to do so cycle synchronously. Think of it as a specialized cluster on a chip.

<comment><USER18> I think the commenter is talking about the KnuPath chip.

>And it (each core) will run C++ software, something that is already very popular. Programmers can program each one of the cores with a different algorithm to run simultaneously

Running C++ almost certainly has to be done synchronously

<comment><USER17> [https://www.knupath.com/products/hermosa- processors/](https://www.knupath.com/products/hermosa-processors/)

Is a diagram of that chip. You don't actually run 'C++ software', you run a binary and if you have a cluster on a chip you are perfectly capable of running each node in the cluster on its own clock net, with high speed links connecting the nodes.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


"Trump Should Not Be Our President" Says Ex-Facebook CPO Chris Cox - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2019/11/08/chris-cox-since-facebook/ <comment><USER2> Facebook doesn't like Trump? I don't see that as a negative about him.</comment>


O'Reilly Media No Longer Selling DRM Free Books - <AUTHOR> http://shop.oreilly.com/category/customer-service/faq.do <comment><USER2> This is so disappointing ... my favorite way to read a book was purchase on oreilly.com, and download the ePub to iBooks or Google Play Books (tablet reading). If the ePub wasn't great, which is common for tech lit, I'd use the PDF in OS X Preview instead.

Safari is too expensive, and a lot of technical stuff looks like crap on Kindle / AZW.

Also, publishers like Manning aren't on Safari so the subscription only covers some of the materials I read.

I feel like I just got punched in the stomach.

</comment><comment><USER3> This makes me sad. It was great to purchase books directly from O'reilly to learn more about technologies I was working with and to purchase the occasional half priced daily special that just looked interesting. PDF format was the best for preserving the book's format. I've had enough problems with kindle-formatted technical books that I won't be buying O'reilly books from Amazon. $40/month or $400/year for Safari online is a little too steep for my budget.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hey everyone. This is my first submission on Hacker News. O'Reilly also created a short blog post announcing their shift from selling ebooks direct to Safari subscription service and Amazon.

[https://www.oreilly.com/ideas/were-reinventing- too](https://www.oreilly.com/ideas/were-reinventing-too)

</comment><comment><USER4> So, no more DRM free ebooks, no more multiple format ebooks and Safari subscription cannot be used offline and cannot be used out of their apps.

Difficult to buy more O'Reilly books</comment>


OnStartups.com - Seeking Stellar Software Entrepreneurs - <AUTHOR> http://onstartups.com/home/tabid/3339/bid/202/Seeking-Stellar-Software-Entrepreneurs.aspx <comment><USER2> I'd bet this describes most people on news.YC - after all, being a relatively new, non-mainstream site that focuses on written articles delivered electronically, it'll attract folks with half the qualities in this article right off the bat.

I'm more curious how many people have all these qualities, start a company, and then fail. That'll give me a better idea of what my true odds are. It's possible that there are _lots_ of people with these 10 qualities, yet there are only a few people who cash out with multi-million-$ payouts.

<comment><USER3> "I'm more curious how many people have all these qualities, start a company, and then fail."

I think this is a poor metric. Individual projects fail all the time for no reason. What's more telling is the chance that you'll succeed big somewhere at some point. Part of being smart is trying lots of random stuff and failing or getting bored and doing something else.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This describes me very well _except_ for the email response time bit. I have an awful tendency to mull over my responses for days, editing and re-editing to get them "perfect", when I know I shouldn't. Anyone else have this?

<comment><USER5> My problem is different. If I fail to respond to an email within the first few hours, I'll often forget to respond to it at all.

It's not that I'm mulling them over, it's that they get overridden by a new flurry of messages. It's hard to keep up.

<comment><USER2> I'm like that too, except I don't have the "flurry of new messages" excuse. More often, if I let it go when I first see it, it slips out of my mind. It's like "Well, it wasn't important enough to respond to the first time, what's different now that makes it important enough to respond to?" (regardless of whether it actually _is_ important enough to respond to).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Ergo, if you are a successful entrepreneur, you are probably an exceptionally intelligent, considerate artist with a proclivity for action.

Maybe it was not meant that way, but it sounds to me like over-the-top flattery.</comment>


Ask HN: do cloud hosts delete your systems if there's a credit card problem? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> With respect to AWS, the answer is "eventually;" they try multiple times to reach you first. First they'll suspend your account before deleting everything.

There's no "dodge their calls indefinitely and thus win free service for life."

</comment><comment><USER3> Had an issue with our credit card on Azure. It had been maxed out on unrelated charges and could not process for Azure.

Microsoft waived the fee for the month, in the region of 100s as a good will gesture. However, they did warn us to resolve the problem before the next billing cycle or face service disruptions.</comment>


Ask HN: Why are mobile apps ballooning in size recently? - <AUTHOR> Many of these well-known apps on the App Store are ostensibly just a skin over an API. Are they not just pushing and pulling text, images, and videos to and from a service and presenting it? Why have they grown to such huge sizes? None of these appear to have significant media assets:
Facebook: 59.3MB LinkedIn: 51.3MB Pinterest: 37.8MB Google+: 35.3MB Yelp: 30.0MB Sleep Cycle: 25.8MB Twitter: 18.9MB Clear: 13.7MB Speedtest: 13.9MB
For contrast, here are a couple apps proving a decent amount of functionality can be contained in sensible bundle sizes:
McTube: 6.6MB Hacker News by Ashish Gandi: 405KB
Safari.app's application bundle on OSX is 28MB. <comment><USER2> A lot of it has to do with multiple renditions of creative assets, such as @2x images. Because even if I add multiple code frameworks and libraries it usually doesn't amount to much. Creative assets typically take up the most space.

I will say one thing though - I do wonder if some of it is driven by multi- platform tools that are stuffing their own internals in there. Then you throw it all into one big package instead of splitting it up for different platforms. I've seen some internal app builder tools become quite large before. Especially by firms that think they need to roll their own version of everything, which AFAIK is standard operating procedure for a lot of those you mentioned.

</comment><comment><USER3> @2x png's take up a deceptive amount of space

</comment><comment><USER4> Facebook 11.0.ipa - the app downloaded from iTunes to your computer is 62.2MB. Uncompressed it is 88MB. Facebook binary is 54MB of that 88MB. The rest of the files are mostly .png files, a few audio files and assorted other file types.</comment>


Realities of the Game Industry and Entrepreneurship - David Allen of Quest Online - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_M5IMVjeSM

<comment><USER2> Nice review of the industry and challenges of building a company to create an mmog.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> This talk is in 9 parts (10 minutes each), and was posted only 2 hours ago. Menu here: <http://www.youtube.com/user/QOLTube></comment>


BEKANT – New IKEA electric adjustable height desk - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yyl2NvKIK7M

<comment><AUTHOR> Just arrived in some US stores I think, not in US catalog yet[1], but is on swedish version[2].

[1] [http://www.ikea.com/us/en/search/?query=bekant](http://www.ikea.com/us/en/search/?query=bekant)

[2] [http://www.ikea.com/se/sv/search/?query=bekant](http://www.ikea.com/se/sv/search/?query=bekant)</comment>


Why you shouldn't use a web framework. A rant - <AUTHOR> https://dev.to/gypsydave5/why-you-shouldnt-use-a-web-framework-3g24 <comment><USER2> More inflammatory and light on substance than it could be, but to extend charity to the author and talk about the subject: the decision isn't between a framework and no framework, the decision is between an existing framework and your own. At some point you will (you should) start to come up with your own abstractions and these will become the framework.

There are real benefits do doing this, but there are also drawbacks (if this is your first time doing it, you're probably going to make mistakes).</comment>


On being sane in insane places - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenhan_experiment <comment><USER2> My girlfriend became acutely psychotic when quitting methadone and alcohol cold-turkey. She was taken to the hospital. After a week she was mostly out of it, but it was too late - the hospital had started the process for an evaluation for involuntary psychiatric treatment. When I realized what they were doing I tried to protect her by obtaining a court order, but was unsuccessful.

My girlfriend's treatment by the system has been worse than I could have possibly imagined. These psychiatrists certainly have good intentions, but don't realize the collateral damage inflicted by their treatments.

Today I found a copy of "Drugs and Behavior: An Introduction to Behavioral Pharmacology", by William McKim. Hopefully this text will help me figure out how to talk reason into a psychiatrist.</comment>


Flash Fill Gives Excel A Smart Charge - <AUTHOR> http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/news/features/flashfill-020613.aspx

<comment><AUTHOR> Original paper : [http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/um/people/sumitg/pubs/po...](http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/um/people/sumitg/pubs/popl11-synthesis.pdf)</comment>


Amazon EC2 issue - cannot provision new servers - <AUTHOR> http://developer.amazonwebservices.com/connect/thread.jspa?threadID=27667&tstart=0

<comment><AUTHOR> Is anyone else affected by this? WebMynd is currently running very slowly because we can't provision new EC2 instances. To handle daily variations in load we usually double the number of webservers between midday and 3pm GMT.

Despite a number of messages in their forum, Amazon don't appear to have noticed yet as their status dashboard shows no issue: <http://status.aws.amazon.com/>

<comment><USER2> Have you submitted the "Report an issue" form from the status dashboard? Amazon doesn't have people reading their forums all the time (especially on the weekend), but always looks at issues reported via the status dashboard promptly -- there have been several instances when issues have sat in the forums for hours without any response but then been fixed within minutes of me reporting the problem via the dashboard.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've tried that as well. No response so far. We haven't paid for Premium Support so I don't think there is anything else to do at present.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Elastic IP addresses are also flaky right now. But I have worked around the issue by specifiying a particular availability zone when provisioning a new instance:

ec2-run-instances $LATEST_AMI -k gsg-webmynd -t m1.large --availability-zone us-east-1b

"us-east-1b" does not appear to be affected by the problem</comment>


From Underwear to Cars, India's Economy Is Fraying - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/21/business/economy/india-economy-trade.html <comment><USER2> I am an Indian, in India. To be honest I think our current situation is not just a slowdown. I feel the country has become largely divided when it comes to day-to-day economics.

I am sitting in a co-working space in Bangalore, I do that in Kolkata often and will head to Mumbai soon. I hardly see people talking about slowdown in these spaces. The cities seemingly are powered more by funds from outside and are alienated to the issues in agriculture or manufacturing.

Not just the government, but the well-to-do educated class have simply stopped looking at the country as a whole - that is my feeling and I am guilty of the same.

<comment><USER3> This is hardly a new phenomenon.

India has for the past few hundred years been run by an elite linguistic minority - the so called Macaulay's children. It's hardly a wonder that the deep state in India both despises and organizes self-righteous protests against local linguistic communities, all while simultaneously ensuring that education, the bureaucracy and employment remain isolated to English speakers. Little wonder that most of India's bright minds leave for the US right after (or even before) graduation.

It's astonishing that Social 'Scientists' have paid such little attention to such glaring structural disparities (compared to say China), while they go on wrecking what's left of Indian society using theories entirely developed by foreigners. Education has definitely gone downhill as a result over the past few decades - while my parents tell us stories of great education in Public schools (run, quite sensibly, in the local languages), I can see the abysmal state of these today. The state has tried to offload its duties (while imposing one of the highest tax rates in the world) by emburdening Hindu-run schools (somehow this is 'secular') using RTE, but the competition and the fees at some of the better schools has become quite absurd of late, costing people close to ~$3000 annually, and an additional one time 'donation' which will help cut the long queues for these schools.

Considering that this kind of colonial social structures are absent in most countries, it is to be expected that the Indian economy can't really outgrow its ~100 million elite, while the underclass remains bound in a sub-saharan level educational and cognitive achievements (that is if they're even literate).

It is very interesting that the self-labelled "Left" in India is at the helm of further pushing these colonial policies, while the supposed "right", in their bombastic arrogance, are happy to implement them (see Shiv Sena, BJP etc., and also the DMKs in Tamil Nadu). It's very unlikely that India will ever achieve parity with China in our lifetimes, considering its self- destructive tendencies.

<comment><USER4> >>> It's very unlikely that India will ever achieve parity with China in our lifetimes, considering its self-destructive tendencies.

And to add to that, we don't really exist in the most peaceful part of the world with at least two of our neighbors ( Ch, Pk ) having fought wars with us in the last fifty years.

<comment><USER5> I don't think that is all that relevant in this context (see Israel).

<comment><USER4> I tend to agree with you that Israel, as a country of its size and kind of neighbors its surrounded with, is not placed very pleasantly. But it is a country far more homogeneous than India in all the respects that make a nation ( religious, social, demographically and economy wise ).

As GP pointed out that India has the potential to self-implode given the inequality and poverty that has been bred for a long time ( hundreds of years ) by various rulers of the land.

The self destruction reaction might just fasten up if a catalyst is provided by anyone of the hostile neighbors.

<comment><USER6> Israel is very far from being homogeneous. It's made up of people who immigrated there from all over Europe and the Middle East. There is a big cultural divide between the people from European backgrounds and people from Middle Eastern backgrounds. It also has a significant Muslim population (17%).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> An absolutely avoidable problem.

On the day the Indian govt announced demonitization, the first phone calls I made were to economists and to people with actual experience working in the hinterlands.

Because the fact that was true in 1990, 2000, and the day of demonitization was that more than 70% of India transacts through cash.

This has never changed. Demonitization meant that for those people, the economy didn't just stall, it stopped.

However, people are resilient and the belief was that people would recover.

Except that the govt followed up with a new tax regime that applied to everyone - including these cash driven workers.

These are people who don't have electricity, and aren't even necessarily literate.

I think most people can appreciate the cost to their razor thin margins when the costs of compliance, translation, formal accounting and more get tacked on.

The part that most people forget, because this govt has superb PR, was that before The elections the largest protests by farmers was taking place in Delhi.

Farmers commit suicide in india at some rate measurable in multiple dead farmers per day. It was bad before and was getting worse.

However this was obscured A few days later, by India's assault on terrorist camps in Pakistan territory.

The dramatic and muscular response changed the focus- people went from complaining to "I should endure, see what my country is doing to my enemies."

In short : the signs have always been there, they have never been hidden, and it's likely the relatively more privileged classes who were unaware of what was happening.

<comment><USER8> There are over 100 million farmers in India. If India farmers had the US suicide rate you would expect ~40 suicides per day.

<comment><USER7> Unsurprising-

>The US farmer suicide crisis echoes a much larger farmer suicide crisis happening globally: an Australian farmer dies by suicide every four days; in the UK, one farmer a week takes his or her own life; in France, one farmer dies by suicide every two days; in India, more than 270,000 farmers have died by suicide since 1995

2015 had about 37 farmers killing themselves everyday if I'm not off.

[https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/dec/06/why-are- amer...](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/dec/06/why-are-americas- farmers-killing-themselves-in-record-numbers)

And Wikipedia article on Indian farmer suicides.

<comment><USER8> I get what your saying, but ~630 people per day commit suicide in India. That's ~50 million people since 1995.

In other words Indian farmers are not unusual likely to commit suicide, it's just a sick talking point.

<comment><USER9> That works out to ~5 million, not 50m. Still horrible to think about. 5.518 million people killed themselves?

630 _365_ 24

<comment><USER8> Ops, had 5.5 million figured that was false precision, and somehow edited it to 50 :(

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I live and work in a Tier 3 city in India. I generally find it more comfortable and liveable in (though perhaps a little too slow and boring).

Anyway, one of things that I've reading about and slowly beginning to align with is the massiveness of the unorganised sector in the country. Lots of transactions and activity takes place in a way that the central government and planning agencies don't have direct visibility into.

To use a programming metaphor, it's a huge ball of legacy code with patches on top of patches on top of workarounds and special cases. Trying to systematically manipulate this is hard, to say the least. I'm not sure if the push to digital transactions, the demonetisation and other things will change this. I don't think it's likely but neverthless, it's an interesting thought exercise.

One interesting podcast that recently discussed this is [https://www.thinkpragati.com/podcast/the-seen-and-the- unseen...](https://www.thinkpragati.com/podcast/the-seen-and-the- unseen/7954/demystifying-gdp/). It specifically discusses GDP as a performance measure, what its limitations are and how those are relevant to India.

<comment><USER11> I live in a Tier 1 city and online transactions have gone up over the years. Not sure how much of this is due to the Demonetization, but UPI has played a significant part.[1]

1\. [https://www.financialexpress.com/industry/banking- finance/in...](https://www.financialexpress.com/industry/banking- finance/india-loves-upi-90-crore-upi-transactions-so-far-10-crore-in-august- alone/1697018/1).

<comment><USER10> My experience as well. A lot of people even in Tier 3 places ask whether if you have Tez or something especially if they don't have change.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> India's policymakers seem to have no idea how the country actually works. Both Demonetization and GST are classic examples, as is the constant back and forth on taxes. The GST system is so draconian that most small businesses can't use it without seeking outside help. And this outside help is expensive - at least for a small trader making tiny profits.

The surcharge on FPIs is another example. Could the government not have foreseen that there will be a flight of capital because of the surcharge? They ended up retracting it anyway.

<comment><USER13> Formallization of economy does come at a price

<comment><USER12> Does the price include weekly rule changes and the assumption that your largely poorly educated population will somehow learn to use your poorly designed, complicated software?

<comment><USER14> Yes. Things that have never been done before on such large scale can be only be perfected with incremental changes after gathering data.

<comment><USER12> Easy for us to say sitting in our ivory towers my man. Draconian laws aren't impacting our ability to feed and clothe ourselves.

<comment><USER11> I'm not sure how complicated GST software impacted someone's ability to feed and clothe ourselves.

Most of the key laws in India do impact many people in India because it's a country with a huge population. Nowadays there is the talk of banning single- use-plastic in the country. Companies are likely to lose business and some people will be severely impacted. Does that mean we should continue to use that kind of plastic(which harms the environment)?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I've a theory but that is not backed by data.

Land prices in India are dropping rapidly. Here how (my hypothesis): People for generations have thought that land prices will always increase. It might have been true before Demonetization. But now it is almost impossible to do anything with cash (expect the purchase of land). So if anyone thinks of buying land for any residential, commercial or industrial purpose, they will not able to use their cash in building because there are subsidies available for those who take loans to finance such building. So people will use loans (accounted money) to build their buildings. You cannot also buy cars with cash (unaccounted cash).

Because of this, land purchases have either gone down or vanished (by unaccounted cash which was majority of the purchases).

So the prices are rapidly falling as people decide on selling and don't find a buyer at the perceived market rate. So they lower the prices and the vicious downward cycle continues.

Put simply: There was a land price bubble because of black money. Now the bubble is slowly bursting. IMO the bubble was so huge (as a % of the GDP), I think we're in serious trouble with the spillover effect of fallen property prices.

<comment><USER15> >>There was a land price bubble because of black money. Now the bubble is slowly bursting.

High value transactions were already tracked AND you can't register a property anywhere in a city without a PAN card. So enough with this depicting investors as cheats.

There is no bubble because India is in the beginning of urbanization phases, and land rates are obviously high because the demand is way beyond the supply. So the prices being high is basically Econ 101.

Instead of framing arguments this way, try understanding how some people are able to anticipate and buy lands years in advance, while some people can't even maintain discipline to invests in SIPs.

<comment><USER16> > High value transactions were already tracked AND you can't register a > property anywhere in a city without a PAN card.

I don't how you never experienced or know that this PAN card requirement is not much. A lot of land/home transaction involves large amount of unaccounted cash and this does not reflect on registered property price. Also if land price is 'obviously high' why rental yields are lowest in India compared to price of property. Who would really buy real estate if bank fixed deposits give better returns than rental income?

<comment><USER15> >>I don't how you never experienced or know that this PAN card requirement is not much.

You literally can't register a property in Bangalore without a PAN card. So please... AND the registrations are online. Everything is tracked. And in fact people themselves prefer its tracked because it prevents encroachment, double registrations etc.

>>A lot of land/home transaction involves large amount of unaccounted cash and this does not reflect on registered property price.

This was there long back. People keep repeating this, without any basis. The government can evaluate every single property and its evaluation traded as of at least 15 years now.

>>Also if land price is 'obviously high' why rental yields are lowest in India compared to price of property.

Because of several things. Firstly Land prices are high because individual people want them. Second when home units are built they are built several units over a single piece of land. Thirdly rental yields are also dependent on quality of construction, access to infrastructure, locality etc.

>>Who would really buy real estate if bank fixed deposits give better returns than rental income?

Simple reason. If you put money in fixed deposits inflation will eat the principle and you will eat the returns. Liquid money is easy to spend so it goes fast. Real estate is hard to dispose, so it stays and can be transferred over to the next generations.

Plus land rates appreciate, and you get rental yield and you can use the deposit money to earn interest. Beyond this you get the advantage of owning a piece of real estate in prime locations as time passes.

Stock investments require a lot of baby sitting and economic problems like these its hard for people to make decisions. Money once gone cannot be recovered easily. In case of real estate lands don't rot or vanish.

Looking at it from multiple vantage points, Land ownership is by far the best investment you will make in a country like India.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This was due. It was disguised due the euphoria of the election year.

I think the current government is going to find out the hard way that one cannot tame the economic beast. There are things like delays, feedback, international events, the weather which you cannot control and can render your models ineffective. Huge expenditures were lined up expecting increased tax revenues which declined due to faulty policies/increasing compliance cost leading to a downward spiral. No transparency in handling the NPAs. Instead we get bank mergers, saddling good ones with the bad.

Also the increased exposure to sovereign debt denominated in foreign currency will be a greater risk.

Everything is glossed over/tinged by nationalistic fervor which makes admitting you were wrong or you made a mistake an anathema.

<comment><USER11> > Also the increased exposure to sovereign debt denominated in foreign > currency will be a greater risk.

Borrowing from outside could be good if the interest rates are lower.

<comment><USER11> To expound further, the government borrows roughly INR 5 lakh crores net per year. In the next year, the estimate of revenue that we want to collect just taxes, Indians will collect about 16 lakh gross, the government will pay 6.5 lakh crores in debt interest payment. About 40% percent of all of money that you're paying as a tax, is going not to build infrastructure, not to feed the hungry, not to pay farmers for food. It's going towards interest payments on the debt they borrowed in the past. Why would this be a problem? because we borrow debt at extremely high rates part.[1]

1\. [https://podcasts.google.com/?feed=aHR0cDovL2NhcGl0YWxtaW5kLm...](https://podcasts.google.com/?feed=aHR0cDovL2NhcGl0YWxtaW5kLmxpYnN5bi5jb20vcnNz&episode=NzM3YTRlNjc3NGFlNGU4MzhjMjk1MDU5NGFmYWNhYTI)

<comment><USER17> I know most of the revenue goes into interest payments. The solution to that is not to borrow more at lower interest and waste on profligate projects which won't generate revenue.

<comment><USER11> We cannot exactly determine in advance if a project is going to be a waste.

The Government has to get more money in one or the other for purchasing weapons, infrastructure building and financing social schemes. One way is to increase taxes which we all hate, the other way is to borrow. So, why not borrow at low interests?

<comment><USER17> >> We cannot exactly determine in advance if a project is going to be a waste.

Really ? Please stop the doublespeak.

Purchasing weapons, social schemes (read subsidies/guaranteed income), mega infrastructure projects are all wasteful.

Borrowed money when not invested in revenue generation is an extra tax on future generations.

<comment><USER11> Obviously, those things will not bring in revenue and they are wasteful from that perspective. But they are still required for national security, upliftment of poor and to facilitate people of the country.

> Borrowed money when not invested in revenue generation is an extra tax on > future generations.

That's true. But Government isn't a business, they've to finance a plethora of things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This article states the symptoms without even remotely touching the root causes. When the current government took control in 2014, they moved swiftly and banned entirety of 1000 and 500 notes in circulation. This was a move called _Demonetisation_. This effectively killed the economy. This was originally hailed as an ace move by the government's supporters. Because it was originally thought untaxed money(also known as black money) is the root cause of India's illness. What happened in reality was a lot of capital intensive businesses suffered as an immediate aftermath. The most important of them being Real estate, which employees a huge section of people and drives a lot of business. Cement, Paint, Plumbing, Electrical, Logistics etc etc. Indian public is also very price sensitive. It's not considered wise to be spending money buying cars if you don't even have a home. This was the first blow.

Secondly, there was a tax policy called GST. This was the next big blunder made by the government. The Indian economy is a result of tons of hacks carefully evolved and put into place over decades. GST had a flawed execution and with equally screwed up tax rates. Revisions are painful to impossible. Quarterly filing is hard for small businesses and rates are just unworkable. Combined with a lot of extortion like activities from Tax authorities. Tons of start ups suffered too.

This is above and beyond the fact that the current government has possibly the worst possible social policy. India's diversity is at risk. Choice of food or religion can get you lynched. The government is planning a country wide citizenship register, on the same lines of Reich Citizenship Law, detention(concentration?) camps are already being built. This is a serious threat to India's future on the very longer run. These experiments have never worked anywhere in the world, and will be an even bigger disaster given how big and diverse India is.

For what its worth stating, economy isn't even in the top ten list of priorities this government has and its constituency doesn't care either.

<comment><USER18> RE: The government is planning a country wide citizenship register, on the same lines of Reich Citizenship Law, detention(concentration?) camps are already being built.

Can you expand on this? Why are these camps being built?

<comment><USER11> It's typical fear mongering.

It deals with Assam which is a state in India that has suffered decades of illegal immigration, so much that the locals have often resorted to violent agitations to protest. Failure of successive governments to act on the issue has further complicated the issue.

The current Government is implenting NRC which was decided by a previous government. Those who can't prove their citizenship as per NRC will probably loose their citizenships.

<comment><USER19> It is not as simple as that because the government is deciding citizenship based on religion as well. Multiple members of the government have made it clear that Hindus will not face issues (implying that others will)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> It's tangential, but I hate sentences like:

> Dollar pays him a monthly salary of 12,000 rupees, or about $167, and > provides lodging and some subsidized food.

It reads like it's supposed to illicit a 'Cor, just $167?' response, but what do I know of what $167 means to him? How hard would it be to include alongside it the retail cost of the underwear he's contributing to the manufacture of?

<comment><USER21> A couple of dollars: [https://www.amazon.in/Dollar-Bigboss-Cotton- Trunks-890288931...](https://www.amazon.in/Dollar-Bigboss-Cotton- Trunks-8902889315232_BB-LONG-COFFEE-90/dp/B01MRBV6GJ)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> The fact is at average indian income level the consumption has drastically increased compared to Income in last 2 decades. So slowdown like this inevitable.

It is strange that some people claim GST is bad which is kind of forcing lot of firms to pay taxes which otherwise operated in grey area for a long time and never really being captured by existing tax mechanisms. As if not paying taxes is better if well-off people continue buying more cars and eat out more often.

Saving rates in India is much lower so it can not fund further economic expansion. Government and financial media is generally obsessed with petty money in form of Foreign investments for growth. No country has sustainably developed just by foreign funds. It must have substantial saving level to provide low cost funds for investments.

</comment><comment><USER22> Looking at the CO2 pollution charts ...

It's clear that India is the next China: The country that we order cheap manufactured goods from, so our own CO2 numbers keep looking good and we don't have to concern ourselves with worker rights, pollution, etc.

Also, what many people forget, that the country is so big, their middle class (or even rich class) is bigger than their/my entire country.

</comment><comment><USER23> I think the average Indian consumer has become more aware and conservative in their spending. Thanks to the wider reach of the internet, financial literacy is gradually increasing. Combine that with an economic slowdown and people are just more thoughtful about where they spend money. This is a natural consequence of a slowdown as Indian people are very risk-averse.

Prices of Cars and Houses have increased at a much higher rate than the Incomes, so people are delaying spending on expensive purchases. However, this is probably just one of the factors.

Demonetisation has definitely had an adverse effect on small individual businesses that operated on cash. Cash was the primary mode of transaction for maximum number of Indian people, especially the non-urban population. Unavailability of sufficient cash in the system for a long period of time has hit them hard. You cannot expect a barely literate rural person to suddenly start using digital form of payments.

</comment><comment><USER11> The Government has recently slashed Corporate tax.[1] We will have to see how much it helps in addressing the economy.

1\. [https://www.livemint.com/news/india/govt-proposes-to- slash-c...](https://www.livemint.com/news/india/govt-proposes-to-slash- corporate-tax-rates-1568954944900.html)

<comment><USER24> Obligatory reading:

The IMF Confirms That 'Trickle-Down' Economics Is, Indeed, a Joke

[https://psmag.com/economics/trickle-down-economics-is- indeed...](https://psmag.com/economics/trickle-down-economics-is-indeed-a- joke)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I come from TN in India where it is an open secret that the politicians, their thugs and benamis [proxy] own a large chunk of the economy. Nepotism had become the norm.

Indian industries have also woefully lagged behind China in technology and sophistication. And even new entrants like Vietnam & Bangladesh pushed on by their export oriented economy have surged ahead.

The changes made since the new government took to power has shaken up this. The backbone of the old network of big wigs thriving on subsidies and crony capitalism has been broken.

This is both a short term pain and a great opportunity to fill the void with more advanced industries. There is no fundamental reason India can not aim for 10+% growth rate, given its young population and the fact that it has a lot of productivity growth to catch up with.

My own prognosis is that even with a global recession, this might be a temporary realignment of industries.

Unlike many other commenters here, maintaining "Status quo" is not in India's best interests.

<comment><USER11> I think it's important that proper lessons are learned and reforms are taken. Just like what happened in 1991.

[https://www.capitalmind.in/2019/09/dont-waste-a-slowdown- par...](https://www.capitalmind.in/2019/09/dont-waste-a-slowdown-part-1-whats- going-on/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Indian economy is in a mess. The National Saving Scheme (NSS) which is where a lot of people store their life savings has been raided by the present government to fund the Food Corporation of India (FCI) in a very scandalous way to artificially hide the fiscal deficit. The Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) has also been plundered by the present government and most recently the Reserve Bank's coffers have also been raided.

The GST collections have fallen, the employment figures have skyrocketed to being the worst in over 45 years and now the govt has stopped releasing unemployment data, all the largest industries are in turmoil. Commercial vehicle sales have shown nearly a 60% dip.

But the govt continues to spin stories of how things are just wonderful. Modi continues to fly on tax payer money to meet his overseas supporters and to hug Trump.

</comment><comment><USER26> >Families are even skimping on the 7-cent packets of Parle biscuits that are a staple of India's morning milk and tea. They are turning instead to even cheaper snacks made by local food vendors, according to Mayank Shah, a Parle executive. Biscuit sales are down about 8 percent, he said, and if current trends continue, the company may cut as many as 10,000 jobs.

Sounds like grave news for the "economy", and good news for India's next seven generations of humans and their habitat.

<comment><USER27> How is this good for future generations?

<comment><USER26> A smaller portion of their habitat will be ground up and reshaped into factory farms.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> global economy is slowing down, it's not just India.

</comment><comment><USER29> skip-the-paywall link: [http://archive.is/IHh34](http://archive.is/IHh34)

</comment><comment><USER30> Funny to see how the nytimes manages to shoe horn in blaming Trump for this somehow. Hard to find anything bad these days without trump to blame.

<comment><USER31> It's referencing the trade disputes between the current US administration & India. So it's of relevance when talking about the Indian economy:

[https://www.piie.com/blogs/trade-and-investment-policy- watch...](https://www.piie.com/blogs/trade-and-investment-policy-watch/trumps- mini-trade-war-india)

<comment><USER32> Problem is, for those of us that don't buy into the incessant 'Orange Man Bad!' narrative it's becoming like The Boy That Cried Wolf trying to determine the signal from the noise as regards Trump. And the fact you responded to point out 'no, this one is actually true' suggests it's a genuine problem.

<comment><USER33> Wait you're blaming the parent for self-inflicted burnout not reflecting reality?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Well, this might actually be very good for the environment. Like the environmentalist keep repeating, the expectation of eternal economic growth is having a big toll on the environment and India was set to almost double their (already quite hight) CO2 emissions by 2030.

This might actually be a blessing for the environment.

[https://climateactiontracker.org/countries/india/](https://climateactiontracker.org/countries/india/)

<comment><USER35> Stupid statement. Nature doesn't care about country borders. Per capita emissions from India are extremely low compared to countries like the US.

The same site says that the US has "critically insufficient" commitments towards climate change.

[https://climateactiontracker.org/countries/usa/](https://climateactiontracker.org/countries/usa/)

Maybe look at your own country before blaming others. You have more work to do towards climate change than the Indians.

<comment><USER34> > Nature doesn't care about country borders.

You are right, what nature actually cares greatly, is about exponential population growth with no regard for future sustainability.

Maybe we should look at India's over-population before demanding other countries to sacrifice for India's (and many countries in South East Asia) shortsightedness.

<comment><USER35> > You are right, what nature actually cares greatly, is about exponential > population growth with no regard for future sustainability.

Perfect, I was waiting for you to say this. Now I have the chance to educate you (which should have been done by your "superior western education" but anyway).

Read these articles and you will find that exponential growth is a myth. We are already close to replacement levels. The population is high in India and China only because of historic reasons - they are one of the most fertile lands on the planet.

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

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

Then watch this video to understand the real trends in population growth.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezVk1ahRF78](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezVk1ahRF78)

Great! You finally rid yourself of these myths.

<comment><USER34> > We are already close to replacement levels

We are at those levels for almost 50 years now in "the west". Guess you are conveniently disregarding the mess you created over this last half century(and long before when the growth in India was 6 children per couple while in the USA it was 3).

Here is a novel idea for you: you use the resources available by your territory as you see fit as long as you don't destroy the rest of the planet for us. If you choose to do it with double your population or half your population, is solely your sovereign choice and we have nothing to say about it. The same way you shouldn't have anything to say about how we use our resources with our - in check - population where people - for a very long time now - mostly think twice about if they can actually support a child with the resources available (natural or economic) before having it.

<comment><USER35> > We are at those levels for almost 50 years now in "the west".

Even with 1/4th of the population of India, and having access to latest technology, the US has emitted obscene levels of CO2 in the last 50 years [0] and has not shown much signs of improvement. And you are blaming a 70-year old country that was in post-colonial shambles 50 years ago. You should be ashamed of yourself.

> don't destroy the rest of the planet for us.

Peak arrogance. Isn't it you who is destroying the planet with your luxury lifestyle? Take a look at [0]. You expect poor people that barely have enough food on their plate to reduce their living standards? That's never going to happen - it is you who needs to do that. The people in India will continue to work towards improving their living standards, as they deserve to.

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

<comment><USER34> > Good luck stopping us.

It's so sad that you don't even realize that:

1\. You are doming us all, you included.

2\. India will actually be one of the first countries to deeply suffer from an increase in temperature.

> Guess why that happened? Because of illiteracy due to poverty - because of > your colonising ancestors.

Mugal empire reaps the territory for over 400 years, nobody bats an eye. British are there for 90 years... suddenly everything is their fault, even if India continues with their totally backward ways 70 years after the British left them to rule themselves as they see fit.

P.S.: I don't know why you continue to wave the anti USA flag. I have nothing to do with the USA (or UK for that matter). So sad.

<comment><USER35> > You are doming us all, you included.

Nope. India's rise was always going to happen. It's not their fault if they want to increase their living standards. Thus, India is not "dooming us all".

But if you are from a country that has high per-capita emissions (I'm assuming you are from one) then your country is much more responsible for the problem. So _you_ are dooming us all, because you can do something about it but you choose not to (because of your selfish need to live luxuriously).

> India will actually be one of the first countries to deeply suffer from an > increase in temperature.

That's the harsh reality, but we have to accept it. Because of the large population, many will still survive. And I hope they then get to have the same lifestyle enjoyed by others in the developed world. Being a massive country, India has a lot resources and will prevail even after such a disaster happens.

> Mugal empire reaps the territory for over 400 years, nobody bats an eye. > British are there for 90 years... suddenly everything is their fault

Another chance to educate yourself :) Please read [1]. Unlike British, Mughals (not Mugals) stayed in India. So this did not really result in wealth flowing out of the country.

[1] [https://www.quora.com/Who-hurt-India-the-most-the-British- or...](https://www.quora.com/Who-hurt-India-the-most-the-British-or-the- Mughals)

<comment><USER34> > But if you are from a country that has high per-capita emissions (I'm > assuming you are from one) then your country is much more responsible for > the problem.

It's interesting that you expect someone in a country that has 1 brother and 2 children and 4x times more natural resources per capita (our population density is 1/4 of a India's), to enjoy the same level of life of someone in India that has 4 brothers and 3 children.

Now is my turn to say it: good luck with that.

<comment><USER36> We've banned this account for proliferating flamewar on this site. That is not allowed here.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> India just like any developing country needs outside funds to run projects. Not easy, but that is just the way it is.

</comment><comment><USER38> Oh...and India is running of water.

[https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/27/india/india-water-crisis- intl...](https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/27/india/india-water-crisis-intl- hnk/index.html)

You don't know scary until 1.3 billion people all decide they have to leave India at once or they'll die of thirst.

And India has nuclear weapons.

<comment><USER39> No its not. India has a ridiculous number of rivers and surrounded by ocean on all sides.

What India is facing is distribution issues and there are already broadly understood solutions to the problem.

<comment><USER40> Many of the ridiculous number of rivers depend on disappearing glaciers and worsening erratic rainfall patterns though.</comment></comment></comment>


I Was Interview by CBC Radio Today (2009) - <AUTHOR> http://www.warplife.com/mdc/books/vancouver-diaries/wiretap-interview.html

<comment><AUTHOR> My interview by Jonathan Goldstein for "Wiretap" was the second of my two CBC interviews, I also appeared in 2004.

I was interviewed by Rick Sanchez for CNN in 2010 when Andrew Joseph Stack III burned down his own home then crashed his airplane into the Austin, Texas IRS building, to draw attention to Internal Revenue Service Section 1706 - I got a call from a CNN producer about twenty minutes later because she found my own essay about 1706 in a web search.

I have an article about that as well that I'll submit real soon now.</comment>


Elon Musk throws down with Porsche, sends a Model S to the Nürburgring - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/cars/2019/09/tesla-to-take-on-taycans-track-time-at-the-nurburgring/ <comment><USER2> Tesla hasn't booked any track time to do a proper timed lap:

[https://www.roadandtrack.com/car-culture/a28942079/tesla- mod...](https://www.roadandtrack.com/car-culture/a28942079/tesla-model-s- nurburgring-lap-attempt-porsche-taycan/)

They'll just be doing testing with plenty of other cars on track.</comment>


Ask HN: Hackers - mediocre programmers? - <AUTHOR>

My software Engineering lecturer was taking us through some types of Software Engineering methodologies. On one end of the spectrum was the Milestone plan-driven model, and the on the other were the Hackers. He told us that hackers produce crappy software with no documentation whatsoever, while I believe its the opposite case(Linux, the Internet etc ) How would you explain to such a person who hackers really are, and what they do? <comment><USER2> What is "crappy software"? Is it certain that hackers, per your lecturer's definition, produce no documentation? What is the criteria for ranking software produced by people following certain processes? How do you pretend to isolate those from other factors in the process of writing software?

Software development methodologies are just processes, followed by people (yes, programmers are people too). You can't enforce them rigorously and you will deviate; dev teams under the milestone plan-driven model will produce some pretty horrible code (I wish I could showcase some), and hackers will in fact write some pretty neat documentation.

I'd expect a lecturer to have the wisdom to stay away from blindly labeling and generalizing in such a crude fashion. Yeah, I'd tell him that as well. :-)

</comment><comment><USER3> You should look up the case of Torvalds vs Tanenbaum.

</comment><comment><USER4> "Software engineering, of course, presents itself as another worthy cause, but that is eyewash: if you carefully read its literature and analyse what its devotees actually do, you will discover that software engineering has accepted as its charter "How to program if you cannot."."

\-- Edsger W. Dijkstra

[http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD10xx/EW...](http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD10xx/EWD1036.html)</comment>


Could Atom be used as an on/offline web application, entirely in the browser? - <AUTHOR> Atom is developed primarily with web technologies, so the leap shouldn't be too large, should it?
My internet these days is excellent. I have a 150mbps connection that is always stable.
I also use multiple devices: a laptop, a desktop, a tablet, a phone (with a keyboard).
If Atom (or something like it) were made available as a web service, all these devices could be effortlessly synced to share settings and of course, code.
So what is stopping this future, lack of interest, or technological limitation? <comment><USER2> If by 'Atom' you mean the editor, then pretty much yes. Electron [1] is a refactoring of Atom to an application framework. Microsoft's VScode [2] editor is an example of a commercial grade application built on the platform. I say 'pretty much yes' because Electron is designed to hit the sweet spot of desktop apps and not really be explicitly browser based...so your mileage or opinion may vary.

[1]: [http://electron.atom.io/](http://electron.atom.io/)

[2]: [https://code.visualstudio.com/](https://code.visualstudio.com/)</comment>


Overview of Jekyll - a static site generator written in Ruby - <AUTHOR> http://oiledmachine.com/posts/2008/12/27/overview-of-jekyll--a-static-site-generator-written-in-ruby.html

<comment><USER2> I'm the author of Jekyll and cofounder of GitHub. This is a great review of Jekyll in its infancy. We're using Jekyll as part of the GitHub Pages stack, and because Jekyll is a very young project, we're giving our customers a chance to shape the future of this feature. If, after you read this article, you find yourself trying out Jekyll and/or GitHub Pages, think about what else you'd like to see included, and if your ideas (or code!) align with our goals, I'll be happy to implement (or merge!) them in the project. I wrote Jekyll to scratch my own itch, but now that it's in use by a broader audience, I'd like to help you scratch yours as well.

</comment><comment><USER3> I switched my blog over to Jekyll last week. It feels much better to be using Git and Emacs to manage the blog instead of random Web apps and crappy text editors.

Since then the number of jekyll forks on GitHub has exploded. I've added tagging, fixed numerous bugs, made the templating work a little better, and added the ability to insert arbitrary script execution results (I use this to generate the tag cloud on my site).

You can find my fork at http;//github.com/metajack/jekyll/tree/master

I've also written an MT -> Jekyll convertor and an MT -> Disqus convertor which are at

<http://github.com/metajack/mt2jekyll/tree/master>

I imagine it will be a little while before the development free for all settles down, but until then, it is easy to hack on and easy to grok.

</comment><comment><USER4> >The worst aspect in setting up this site was dealing with the templating engine Liquid.

The article author should look at existing ruby/rake based static website generator <http://webby.rubyforge.org>. It offers a choice of templating languages (ERB, Textile, Markdown, HAML, SASS).

Another killer feature is webby's ability to process LaTeX snippets and generate formula images for the web page.

So more templating choices and webby-like custom text processing filters (LaTeX, graphviz, tidy, coderay etc) are my feature requests for Jekyll.

<comment><AUTHOR> One thing I can see that Webby supports that looks interesting is ERB. How flexible is ERB as opposed to what seems like a more restricted templating language like Liquid? It looks like ERB allows for actual Ruby to be used in your templates which would have ultimately solved the issues I had.

<comment><USER4> ERB is simply embedded ruby, it has no limitations. It is also totally not secure when used on a server.

My guess security of GitHub Pages is the reason for using Liquid in Jekyll. For generating static pages on your desktop before uploading Liquid is simply not needed.

I am a bit surprised jekyll is so heavily promoted as a static site tool(saw it twice on HN front page already) while an elegant and seemingly more powerful ruby application (webby) already exists for this purpose.

<comment><AUTHOR> From what I have just read about Webby, it seems like it does not support topics and categories like Jekyll does. However it does have a wide range of rake tasks which do some things like offer a variety of deployment options, logging to growl, and validating links.

There are differences in the philosophies behind the 2 projects. They are both static site generators however Jekyll is more oriented for maintaining blog- style sites. Webby lacks the ability to organise content the way that Jekyll does.

Perhaps most importantly, Jekyll is now available as a free, hosted solution with GitHub - a great way of inviting the large community of developers active in that community to contribute to the project.

I am not saying one is better than the other. They seem to accomplish slightly different things although the method in which they go about it is somewhat similar.

<comment><USER4> Sadly, you have not read enough before making your conclusions. Webby shines with blogs, check <http://www.locomotivation.com> to see an example.

You can create a blog with two commands in webby:

       $ webby-gen blog "My Blog"
       ...
       $ webby blog:post "Nice weather today"
       [13:27:47]  INFO: creating content/blog/2008/index.txt
       [13:27:47]  INFO: creating content/blog/2008/12/index.txt
       [13:27:47]  INFO: creating content/blog/2008/12/28/nice-weather-today.txt

And it obviously does support categories/tags/article statuses etc. since you can give any property to your page.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well if that's the case and if properties are available on a _site-wide basis_ like Jekyll's topics and categories are, then yes - it certainly seems very capable and something I would like to have a crack at using.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I was actually quite interested in jekyll and was going to write a how to post about getting it up and running.. enjoyed this post.</comment>


Taste Test: Puppet, Chef, Salt, Ansible - <AUTHOR> http://devopsu.com/books/taste-test-puppet-chef-salt-stack-ansible.html Hi HN!
I joined Hacker News 6 and 1/2 years ago and it's been a great community to be a part of. I was one of the early karma leaders and I remember writing a blog post (hilariously embarrassing now) about reaching the top spot with ~650 karma points. I'm sure tptacek and patio11 beat that nowadays before their morning coffee :)
I've only had about 300 visits to DevOpsU.com from HN so far, but of those, over 100 signed up on the email list to be notified of this book.
Given my history with HN and the early interest from here, naturally this is where I'm launching my first book. And here's a special early-bird HN discount link that's good for today's launch: http://gum.co/taste-test/hn
It's very important to me that this be available to everyone that wants it, so if you're a student or for any reason can't afford to buy the book, please contact me: firstname.lastname@example.com
Of course, if you can afford it and it will be a win for you, please buy it and support the creation of more business-focused devops training.
Cheers! Matt <comment><AUTHOR> I joined Hacker News 6 and 1/2 years ago and it's been a great community to be a part of. I was one of the early karma leaders and I remember writing a blog post (hilariously embarrassing now) about reaching the top spot with ~650 karma points. I'm sure tptacek and patio11 beat that nowadays before their morning coffee :)

I've only had about 300 visits to DevOpsU.com from HN so far, but of those, over 100 signed up on the email list to be notified of this book.

Given my history with HN and the early interest from here, naturally this is where I'm launching my first book. And here's a special early-bird HN discount link that's good for today's launch: [http://gum.co/taste- test/hn](http://gum.co/taste-test/hn)

It's very important to me that this be available to everyone that wants it, so if you're a student or for any reason can't afford to buy the book, please contact me: email@example.com

Of course, if you can afford it and it will be a win for you, please buy it and support the creation of more business-focused devops training.

Cheers! Matt

<comment><USER2> I've seen your entry while I was working on a highly long and complicated salt state. And compelled to read it.

Graphics of the site is great, book seems to be a good one too and possibly very helpful for someone new to configuration management mess :). I've run over all four systems to choose one for my tastes so it would be a bit late for me. Thus 39 bucks is a bit high for me to re-run over CM ;). Sorry about that.

I've read your blog posts but a bit disappointed of quantity of them. I would really like to see more of your posts. They seem to be compelling and helpful.

By the way It's a shame that our (devops or sysadmin guys) experiences are this alike and all the mistakes are replicated from corporation to corporation.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Yeah, I'm going to be blogging a lot more now that the book is released.

Would love to chat about devops - feel free to email me anytime: email@example.com

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I love the landing page - I was able to see WTF this thing was all about, and the email opt-in and buy links were persistent but not intrusive enough to piss me off :)

Have an upvote for doing IM right.

</comment><comment><USER4> I use shell scripts for deploying and configuring new servers. Hope to move to CM soon. Bought your book so I can get a feel for the different choices.

<comment><USER5> I also bought the book to compare puppet/chef/ansible/salt. If you are interested in learning about puppet (or any of these), I would highly recommend using something like Vagrant to herd virtual machines into example configurations. I have been using puppet for over a year and I have found this configuration to be extremely helpful for testing new scripts. Vagrant knows about puppet/chef/ansible, so you do not even need to install the client software, just point vagrant at your scripts!

I have put together a couple screencasts about Vagrant [1] and Learning puppet with Vagrant [2]. Hope you find these helpful.

[1] [http://sysadmincasts.com/episodes/4-vagrant](http://sysadmincasts.com/episodes/4-vagrant)

[2] [http://sysadmincasts.com/episodes/8-learning-puppet-with- vag...](http://sysadmincasts.com/episodes/8-learning-puppet-with-vagrant)

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the tips. Watched the videos and found them helpful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It says there's a free chapter but that just points back to the original url. Am I missing something?

<comment><AUTHOR> It might seem like the same page since the book cover is at the top of both pages. Just in case, here's the direct link: [http://devopsu.com/books/taste- test-shell-script-sample-chap...](http://devopsu.com/books/taste-test-shell- script-sample-chapter.pdf)</comment></comment>