To End Soccer Riots, Brazilian Club Forces Fans to Sit Next to Rivals - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcoexist.com/3047102/to-end-soccer-riots-this-brazilian-club-forces-fans-to-sit-next-to-rivals#2 <comment><USER2> Beautifully done. Break down the norms of having the fans shouting at a muddied "them," and possibly start some good long-lasting friendships. I also think that Recife's idea of having mothers of troublemakers, as was linked to [1] is also a pretty clever way of keeping things from getting out of hand. It is rather heartening to see new ways of enforcing civility that aren't based around the use of force.

[1] [http://www.smh.com.au/sport/soccer/brazilian-soccer-club- dep...](http://www.smh.com.au/sport/soccer/brazilian-soccer-club-deploys-fans- mums-to-stop-violence-20150210-13ag2k.html)

<comment><USER3> Oh dear I can't see this ending well most country's teams that have "ultras" and high levels of violence - there is an underlying political and in some cases religious tradition gong back in some cases 100's of years.

<comment><USER4> For a dark perspective on this sort of issue (UK, not SA): [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Among_the_Thugs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Among_the_Thugs)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As a brazilian citizen, I can clarify the hidden reality in this article.

Gremio (Blue Team) and Internacional (Red Team) are teams from the most rich and evolved region of Brazil. The people of the south descend from germans and italians. They love those soccer teams and the culture is grow up with their "rivals"... brothers, cousins, etc, cheering for different teams. It was possible due to cultural reasons, not due to an "experiment".

In Sao Paulo, Southeast region, the culture is not like that, and the favelas and poor neighborhoods have their own criminal factions associated with "organised fan clubs".

Its incentivized, the fans from different teams can't mix up in any place, metros, streets, stadiums... We see deaths everyday, people pushing rivals from metro's windows (causing their deaths)

You can't put people of Palmeiras, Sao Paulo, Corinthias (the worst case) together.

<comment><USER6> I'm sorry, but your comment is misleading and spread some things that are not true at all.

The only factor on the match between Gremio and Internacional was the "gaucho pride", "we'll set an example for the rest of the country". They are nationalists and the marketing guy played well with that. Remember the chorus on their state anthem: "Serve our achievements as example for the whole Earth".

About Sao Paulo clubs, you said about Corinthians as "the worst case", which is far from the truth. Organized supporters from Palmeiras and Sao Paulo are way more violent, their fan clubes presidents were arrested several times, most of them accused by murder, even during carnival.

So please, if we want to help non brazilians to understand our reality, we got do it with facts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> In Recife (NE Brazil), they hired fans' mothers to 'police' the fans.

[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2959929/Brazilian- fo...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2959929/Brazilian-football- club-hires-mothers-stewards-bid-curb-violence-matches.html)

</comment><comment><USER8> Brilliant! Funny enough, that's the teams from my hometown. Had no idea they were doing this.

I haven't gone to a match since I was a kid, but remember the constant fights. These are the two main teams in that state, which made rivalry more intense. More than winning, you just wanted for your rivals to lose.

</comment><comment><USER9> In Australia this (fans of different teams sitting with each other instead of separate) has been normal for AFL (Australian Football League) matches since forever. It creates an atmosphere of friendly rivalry and discussion amongst people sitting near each other instead of animosity. You commonly get some quite funny and friendly banter going on between rival supporters.

<comment><USER10> Pretty normal for UK Rugby too. I've been the only away supporter sat in the middle of several hundred home supporters without incident (apart from some gentle mockery as we meekly capitulated.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> One of the reasons why this would work is that you'd need to befriend a rival spectator before you enter the arena for the match just to get entry inside the stadium. Spending some time with a rival spectator would make one realize that even the rival team's supporters are football fans too at the end of the day. Great initiative !

<comment><USER12> This has been working for years in Rugby. The next World Cup won't be segregated either [1].

It makes for a much friendlier environment. Being able to banter with the opposing supporters prevents frustration, and I'm sure is fairly self regulating.

Complete opinion, but throwing abuse at the other side is far more likely to reach fever pitch(..) when everyone around you is shouting the same way. If half of those around you are shouting back that, no, it's you that's the idiot, then it'll come to a natural head far quicker and less violently.

[1] [http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2014/may/06/fans-not- segreg...](http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2014/may/06/fans-not- segregated-2015-rugby-world-cup)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> That's cool.

As someone who doesn't follow sports, or anything that I'm purely a nonparticipant in, it baffles me how much people can care about stuff like this, especially enough to injure another human being. It's a crazy thing that it does to the human mind.

<comment><USER14> "Assembled in a crowd, people lose their powers of reasoning and their capacity for moral choice. Their suggestibility is increased to the point where they cease to have any judgment or will of their own. They become very excitable, they lose all sense of individual or collective responsibility, they are subject to sudden accesses of rage, enthusiasm and panic. In a word, a man in a crowd behaves as though he had swallowed a large dose of some powerful intoxicant. He is a victim of what I have called 'herd- poisoning.'"[1]

[1] [http://reasontostand.org/archives/2011/01/19/aldous- huxley-o...](http://reasontostand.org/archives/2011/01/19/aldous-huxley-on- propaganda-and-why-we-fall-for-it-2)

Also, for historical interest the blue-green riots in Rome: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nika_riots](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nika_riots)

<comment><USER15> See also Deindividuation: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deindividuation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deindividuation)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm South American , been going to games all my life , the people in the pictures aren't the "problematic" supporters... this is pure and utter bs

</comment><comment><USER17> Next, a solution to the Middle East crisis.

<comment><USER18> There (and elsewhere) certain parties on both sides do not want a solution. They owe their existence and power to the problem.

<comment><USER17> I agree. But maybe the people who really want peace can arrange something like this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I happen to have attended this game and both the article and the video ad are not only misleading but also untruthful. Basically, there was just a small sector (< 10%) of the stadium where fans from both clubs were side by side.

Also, no one was forced to sit next to rivals as they are claiming. Fans of the away team had to be invited by a supporter of the home team in order to join the mixed sector.

Although it was a great initiative, they are trying to make it seem way bigger than it really was.

</comment><comment><USER20> Will this really work long-term, or is it a short-term disruption? I know that in the NFL (American Football), fans are always integrated, but may become very violent. This is particularly true when there are rivalries of teams in close geographic distance allowing large numbers of fans from both teams to be in attendance. For example, games between the Philadelphia Eagles and NY Giants may be particularly dangerous.

<comment><USER21> If anything college football is worse. Rivalries there run deep, nearly as long as gridiron football has been played in many cases, and often come with family ties.

Combine that with its popularity in the south and the combination of honor culture and largely being dumbasses and theres almost always some fights before/during/after a big rivalry game in the ares where a visiting fan is close to or surrounded by the home team.

That said, its nothing like soccer riots.

<comment><USER22> I've only been to college games at Notre Dame and VT, and both of those are very segregated stadiums. There's an entire "student" section, a "visiting team" section, and tickets are sold like that.

<comment><USER21> Thats right, the edges of sections or when a visitor finds himself surrounded by home fans is when things tend to get interesting. But again, its miniscule compared to soccer riots, usually one or two guys who have had too much start a conflict and security usually gets them out before anyone even pushes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Maybe their neighbors should also take note of this - [http://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/news/boca-juniors- vs-...](http://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/news/boca-juniors-vs-river- plate-5700462)

</comment><comment><USER24> The interesting thing is that in Japan, for baseball, they forcibly separate the home fans and the visitor fans into separate areas. And the cheering is relegated so each side has the opportunity to cheer (while they politely stay quite when it's the other side's turn).

</comment><comment><USER25> Just like the best way to promote integration of immigrants to have them live among "natives" and not put them in ghettos. Same principle at work, make them realize that they are not so different and they should both respect each other's.

</comment><comment><USER26> How do they figure out which people are the fans and which are the rivals?

<comment><USER27> By the shirts, see the video.

Porto Alegre has 2 big teams, fierce rivals. The Internacional dresses in red, the Grêmio dresses in light blue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> First sentence..

> In soccer-obsessed Brazil, going to a match means a chance to see some of > the best players in the world—and face the possibility of getting beaten up > or even killed.

To say nothing of the sweeping stereotypes here there's also a glaring inaccuracy. Sorry, but by most definitions of 'best players in the world' this is simply false, sadly.

Brazil is perhaps the best example of a country that consistently produces world-class players yet struggles to keep them playing in their domestic league. The best players mostly all go to European clubs.

<comment><USER29> As a football (soccer) fan myself, this is one of the things I hate about the hyperbolic media; not withstanding the blatant ignorance of not knowing that none of the top players play in the Brazilian league. Possibility of being beaten or being killed? Gimme a break. Sure there is the occasional riot, hooliganism etc. but you're more likely to die or get injured in a car accident than at a stadium. I'm not belittling the fact that these things happen, it's just the hyperbole that I'm amazed at. I don't see the equivalent reaction when there is trouble in the inner cities, which in essence is same on principle.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Ridiculous measure that destroys the fundamental atmosphere of football and reduces supporters to American style spectators.

Not surprised football haters and Americans (where active support has been removed from the equation anywhere but in college football) here love this.

</comment><comment><USER31> Why are soccer riots even a thing? Soccer leads the world in fan tomfoolery. Of course I guess after spending 90 minutes and having a game end with a 1-1 tie, I'd riot too.

<comment><USER3> Religious , Sectarian, Anti Semitism, Political take your pick

<comment><USER32> Yeah, the biggest rivalries are typically rooted in some pretty heavy stuff

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I don't understand how this article belongs on Hacker News.

<comment><USER34> Because it's the classic definition of a "hack", it's a clever solution to an ugly problem. Not everything on HN has to be about javascript frameworks or making millions on startups. It's called "hacker news" not "san francisco tech startup echo chamber news".

<comment><USER35> How is this a hack? This is ridiculously old psychology. Here's the same "hack" from the 50's: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jigsaw_%28teaching_technique%2...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jigsaw_%28teaching_technique%29)

Just because people on the san francisco tech startup echo chamber news site aren't familiar with it doesn't make it novel, clever, etc..

Or should I just post the jigsaw classroom wikipedia link or a link to the original paper and rake in the upvotes?

<comment><USER36> If upvotes are what float your boat, and others are interested in the article, then why not?

As for the "it's been done before" bit - hacking is often about applying an idea from one area into another area.

<comment><USER35> But this is not applying an idea from one area to another area -- it's taking the pre-existing idea and just applying it again. There isn't any novelty here.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Venture Capitalists Get Paid Well to Lose Money - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.hbr.org/2014/08/venture-capitalists-get-paid-well-to-lose-money/

<comment><USER2> In a healthy economy there is a need for bad investments. Otherwise capital would simply accumulate. Many VCs perform a service by making bad investments seem reasonable and attractive to foolish institutional investors. It isn't that easy to do. You need a plausible story about how you could generate a huge return. You need to convince people that the investment is sensible. This article makes it sound like anyone could do it, but actually I am sure it is very hard.

<comment><USER3> I like the way you think, if you're being facetious that is. But yes, without bad investments moving money from the 1% to the bourgeoisie and the petite- bourgeoisie, then it just stays trapped up there, which makes politicians turn into street-walking whores - over-eager to sell out the populace. Venture capital is the new communism. They're the new "takers" in our economic society, or perhaps the new "Robin Hoods."

And I applaud their efforts. It's not easy turning bull into gold. And there's a big difference between regular bull (the news, everything you see on all media, advertising, your co-workers' worthless opinions) and turn it into _convincing_ bull.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is a scathing article. An open question... Is seems like the public market is not participating in the run-ups of many companies. For example, Facebook grew on private money, not public. Are these run-ups just too small to move the industry needle? Are public markets benefiting or hurting by not being involved in as many IPOs?</comment>


Show HN: The Entrepreneur's Guide to Finding Your First Customers - <AUTHOR> https://yourfirstcustomers.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, everyone! I just wanted to share a new book that I co-authored with Adii Pienaar called The Entrepreneur's Guide to Finding Your First Customers. Adii and I created the book because often many new businesses and startups fail. We want to help people create successful businesses, and that's why we created this book. Most businesses fail because the founder of founders either: aren't working on a product that people really need and that provides lots of value to people, or they don't know how to effectively market a product and get people to buy it. With this book we address both of those issues. We teach you how to discover and come up with profitable product ideas and then get the first customers and many more customers for those products. If you have any questions about the book, I would love to answer them. Thanks!

<comment><USER2> How did you find your first customers, for the book, if any?[1]

[1] Except maybe through this HN post :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Most of our customers have come via email marketing and content marketing, but HN has definitely sent a few :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Looks like an improvement on [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6514305](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6514305)

</comment><comment><USER4> If I am a bootstrapped start-up with a very limited budget, and about 100-150 inbound leads how will spending $30 on this book help me?

<comment><USER5> I haven't read the book but this is a very myopic comment. Information is the only truly valuable asset and the first thing you should be thinking about is learning.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Just a quick design note: the text color is a bit light on the white background. It's legible, but definitely unpleasant to read: [http://i.imgur.com/oq1wPM9.png](http://i.imgur.com/oq1wPM9.png)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the tip! Will definitely improve that design issue!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Looks great. The one thing I'd also offer is a .mobi version so it can be read on a Kindle/Kindle app. I do a lot of highlighting in books and PDFs don't work well for that.

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm quite interested in the book. However, was hoping the sales page would discuss the author and his/her background a bit more. I'd like to know who wrote the book and what makes the author an expert on the subject. Tnx!</comment>


Object-Oriented Programming – The Trillion Dollar Disaster - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/better-programming/object-oriented-programming-the-trillion-dollar-disaster-%EF%B8%8F-92a4b666c7c7 <comment><USER2> While the article is written as a rant, which hurts the author's credibility, the points, IMO, are valid.</comment>


Can innovation be disciplined without killing it? - <AUTHOR> http://www.pwc.com/us/en/technology-forecast/2011/issue2/features/innovation-disciplined.jhtml?WT.mc_id=Social+Media_Twitter_US+traffic <comment><USER2> There might be some good information here, but it seems to be buried in an avalanche of buzzwords and management platitudes.</comment>


Ask HN: What are good things about PRISM? - <AUTHOR>

With all the news about PRISM and it's obvious darker side towards privacy and freedom, I thought we should ask what some good things are about it. How does it help, if at all? How will it affect the future in a positive way? Since it is here, are there any ways we can look on it in a good light? Thank you. <comment><USER2> PRISM seems like the biggest information leech in the world. For good to come from it, they should "accidentally" let the whole world see everything they collected. Then they'd be the biggest seeder ever. It's not that I don't have anything to hide, I have lots to hide. But sooner or later everyone will know everything they want to know anyway.

Almost every bad movie plot I've ever seen has one point where someone says "We have to keep this secret". From that point on, things always go wrong. Light can always help a situation.

How are we ever going to get to a true collective consciousness if we are always keeping secrets from one another. Just realize that we are all human, we all have hopes and dreams, and we all have things we are ashamed of. A public panopticon could be just what the doctor ordered for our society to get to the next stage.

</comment><comment><USER3> Someone somewhere is learning a lot about big databases and data mining and big storage.

I guess there's a bit of trickle through with academia getting funding to study that stuff.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, the neuroscience research could use this, also sociologists

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> They should charge people a fee and rebrand it as a data archive /cloud storage service. Every email you've ever sent, every phone call you've ever made, every online purchase, the whole architecture of your online existence, preserved forever with no effort on your part. And maybe someday when you die, they'll finally copy _you_.

Won't that be fun?

<comment><AUTHOR> The 'Digital Twin' idea. I like it. I saw it earlier on HN, and I'll repeat it here: I wish I could just skip the middle man and use the NSA as my cloud provider directly. Ya think they'd just let me telnet in?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It provides high paying jobs for high school drop outs.

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha! Love that one!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The plot of the TV show 24 is a bit more plausible.

<comment><AUTHOR> Amen

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Popularizing cryptography, hate of state-institutions and more so their people, growth market in constructive paranoia, enforcing boundaries and greater respect(fear) of the individual.

What part of "best left alone" and "shearing a pig(ty Vlad)" they don't understand?

</comment><comment><USER8> NOTHING. ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. Stupid question. You might want to consider that the government is breaking the law of the land and spying on citizens. That is unconstitutional.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, nothing in this world is entirely bad or good. I thought, if it all became public in a hundred years or so, we could gain insights into sociology and whatnot. Like psychohistory could actually exist because of this data. Also, it 'levels' the playing field quite a bit if the data is publicly accessible; the world is not only flat, but concave in that scenario.</comment></comment>


Poland arrests Huawei worker on allegations of spying for China - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jan/11/huawei-employee-arrested-in-poland-over-chinese-spy-allegations <comment><USER2> >However, a spokesman for the Polish security services told Reuters the allegations related to individual actions, and were not linked directly to Huawei.

Well that's plausible, in the same way that we are all given training to avoid violating laws in other counties, and if we do the company may not be liable if they did not give you direction for your actions and in fact did provide training that contradicted it.

</comment><comment><USER3> From Polish media: Huawei sales director in Poland Weijing, Polish name "Stasio", had graduated from Bejing University of Foreign Studies. He had studied Polish. 2006-2011 worked for Chinese Consulate in Gdansk. He spoke good Polish and had been very popular and well liked in IT and Polish administration circles.

Piotr D. had been working until recently for different branches of Polish Security Services at top positions. He had been responsible for implementation of SŁR (Government Secure Network) - a communication network for government VIPs.

</comment><comment><USER4> Ask HN: Which Western country is next? Either to have their own national nabbed in China or to nab someone on their own soil for spying for China.

<comment><USER5> > to have their own national nabbed in China

Poland obviously.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> During last Christmas _every single commercial break_ on _every TV station_ had Huawei commercial, some for phones, some for phone+plan bundle from one of the providers. It was bizarre.

</comment><comment><USER7> Poland is rightfully scared of Russia and would do anything USA asks. But it's also too small to deal with China's wrath.

Tit-for-tat, I doubt he was just discovered as a spy

<comment><USER8> So Poland should just accept spies or beware China's wrath?

<comment><USER7> Do what USA says :). They can't change geography.</comment></comment></comment>


Conditional error messages in javascript - <AUTHOR> http://codereview.stackexchange.com/questions/24141/new-way-to-handle-javascript-errors

<comment><AUTHOR> I would love any feedback on this! Thanks for checking it out.</comment>


Ask HN: What was your first programming milestone? - <AUTHOR>

I've just started my first big (personal) project. What was your first programming milestone, and why? <comment><USER2> My first milestone was to write a C+4 basic program alone, without my father's help.

My first program was a little dancing stick figure, which my father helped me to write when I was about 6. I wrote my first program without assistance (it drew a few circles) a year and a half later.

To this day, I believe that's the biggest and most important milestone in my programming career.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hah that sounds pretty cool. You started pretty young then?

I'm just in the process of building a program in ruby inspired by a comment in Learn to Program (Chris Pine). I want to make a interactive 'pet' (or plant, for that matter) with an ascii-art output. It's a big challenge for me, but I'm enjoying doing it!</comment></comment>


Show HN: Erase your support, employment from Lambda School from your Twitter - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/WillManidis/GoodbyeLambda <comment><USER2> What's the backstory here? I thought Lambda School was the darling of the tech industry?

<comment><USER3> Their "education" is piss poor, they say that you must have essentially achieved 100% attendance to be able to make any claim that their training was no good and they failed to meet their claimed effectiveness.

Then they garnish your wages from any job subsequent claiming that they got that job for you.

Part of their employment "success" is them hiring graduates from the school to teach (poorly), this maintaining their high employment rates.

Now it turns out they're bundling and reselling the ISAs to arbitrary investors/collection agencies (who are known for behaving legally and ethically w.r.t to collections laws).

Essentially they're frauds.

<comment><USER4> Why would it be an issue to resell the ISAs?

<comment><USER3> because they explicitly make the claim that you can trust them because they don't make money until you make money - e.g. it's not in their interests to just take on as many people as possible, and that the education will be good enough to make money.

But they do make money more or less immediately upon getting the ISA, so that claim - and the motivation to provide the quality of service they've claimed they'll offer isn't actually there.

<comment><USER4> Yea that's a good point, I realised that after I posted! But the alignment of incentives is not gone, it's just less direct. In the long run, they will not be able to sell off the ISAs if their students don't make good, because then the ISAs will not be worth much. Although looks like they're already pretty cheap, 10k?

Lambda school still seems shady, looks like he lied about this and other important stats and facts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Goodbye anything you've ever said about AWS Lambda, too.

<comment><USER6> Reading code before you run it. No fun in that.

<comment><USER7> Seems like it actually would delete any tweet containing the word "Lambda".

[https://raw.githubusercontent.com/WillManidis/GoodbyeLambda/...](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/WillManidis/GoodbyeLambda/master/src/keywords.txt)</comment></comment></comment>


Bill undermines video viewing privacy laws - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/11/business/bill-would-let-video-consumers-disclose-all-their-choices.html?hp

<comment><USER2> Not sure how I feel about this. On the one hand, it's nice to have these kinds of privacy laws in place. On the other, it seems arbitrary that other similar services for music, articles, locations, etc. don't have to play by the same rules. I don't see video as particularly different from any of them so I think either they should be similarly regulated or the law that applies only to video should be dropped.</comment>


Ask HN: Do developers have a version of writer's block - <AUTHOR>

I've not been a developer for long but the blank look of the text editor has hit me. Is there really a version of writer's block for developers? <comment><USER3> Maybe not so much writers block as periods of indecisiveness - <USER2> theres soooo many ways to do something, it can be hard to decide the best way or the easiest way to do it. Or if a problem is complex, it can be hard to pull the trigger and commit to a way to do something.

If I find myself starring at the screen for more then 10 minutes and not writing a single line, I try to walk away - don't open a news site and waste time - literally walk away and go do something completely different. Take a walk, go for a bike ride, clean the house, take a shower, make something with your hands, whatever you do. Your mind will work on the problem in the background - it helps me often.

<comment><USER4> I totally agree. It doesn't feel like the writers block I used to get with college essays, but an over-abundance of choice.

When working from home, I talk these problems through with my cat. By the time I have finished explaining things to him, I usually know what I need to do next.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Not necessarily a block, but I tend to procrastinate by "yak shaving" when I have something boring to do.

If you are really blocked in front of your editor, it is likely you are opening your editor too early, or trying to solve something too big. Go back to the drawing board or user and split the task in smaller chunks.

</comment><comment><USER6> I like to think of it like this: If you're facing that 'block' feeling, it means the problem isn't fully understood. So, see that as an opportunity to improve your personal process. Qualify the problem, build the solution, then optimise.

</comment><comment><USER7> Speaking for myself, no. Sometimes I don't know which approach I have in mind is best, which can delay me a little. If I have no idea how to tackle a problem, there's always been enough literature to give me ideas.

</comment><comment><USER8> I agree with the above. Spend some time thinking about the problem before you dive in and start coding. Once you've identified the necessary pieces, start chipping away.</comment>


A galactic visualization of the prime factors of the first million numbers - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/jhnhw/status/1031829726757900288 <comment><USER2> Looks familiar... [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observable_universe#/media/Fil...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observable_universe#/media/File:Observable_universe_logarithmic_illustration.png)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> A longer explanation can be found at [https://johnhw.github.io/umap_primes/index.md.html](https://johnhw.github.io/umap_primes/index.md.html) though the twitter discussion is also quite informative</comment>


High Technology Brings Small Bank into German Homes (1981) - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/1981/12/28/business/high-technology-brings-small-bank-into-german-homes.html <comment><USER2> Apparently this article discusses the Videotex technology [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Videotex](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Videotex) , where Minitel [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Videotex](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Videotex) was the most prominent brand. This seems to be a kind-of predecessor of the 90s modem uplinks with personal computers.</comment>


Ask HN: What's the best way to handle internal tech support? - <AUTHOR> My company has around 1000 CS reps and 200 engineers. The CS reps very often need to ask the engineers questions, report bugs heard about from customers, etc. Us engineers also get bug reports about the internal tools we've developed for CS.
Currently, all this is handled via a simple Slack channel. This is actually great, since there's no bureaucratic cost to getting in touch, unlike with a proper ticketing system, and having actual public conversations is the fastest way to resolve issues.
But of course, we started seeing inefficiencies in other aspects. The same questions keep being asked over and over again. There's an FAQ linked in the channel topic and it's automatically posted in the channel every 12 hours, but it's still not enough, we still get tons of questions that could be self-solved without engineers' intervention.
So, that made me curious, how are other companies handling this? Could we somehow maybe auto-respond to Slack messages with the correct answer with some bot, or just come up with something that actually makes people check the FAQs before posting? Or is there some way better solution to replace all this? <comment><USER3> A couple strategies I've seen work:

* have more-experienced CS reps act as "expert reps"; they handle more of the triage & answering routine questions. They're also a valuable information source since they see more questions than any individual engineer.

* similar but different: have a point person from engineering responsible for answering & collating questions. This is a tricky role to hire for, since it's not a standard "pull ticket, ship code" setup. This person also typically carries the "user perspective" into engineering planning meetings.

* interpret the repeated issues as design feedback. If CS reps are "always getting stuck", figure out what about the UX is causing them to get stuck. If the problems are fixable by the user, can you add messaging to the interface that points them towards a resolution when they get an error? Even better, can you design the system so those errors _can 't_ be made? (see also Elm's "make invalid UI states unrepresentable" philosophy)

<comment><USER4> > _This is a tricky role to hire for, since it 's not a standard "pull ticket, > ship code" setup._

Instead of hiring someone extra, you could also rotate the assignment on a daily/weekly basis to one of the engineers.

<comment><USER5> This defeats the purpose of having someone know the answers to repeated questions. Rotating the role ends up with a lot of overhead and some increased turnover as a few people really hate this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It does sound a bit abnormal to have gotten that large without a more formal system. But instead of jumping into a big change, which is just as likely to cause organizational stress, it is worth thinking about that - you are somehow mostly succeeding with Slack, with just a few problems. You need refinement of your system, not replacement.

I like your own suggestion of a bot to try to guess the correct question/answer. The first thought that comes to mind to make that would is to build out a wiki and a bot that will try to match up questions to the information in that wiki. Engineers could start a process to put answers in the wiki, and send the link to the asker. The askers can start asking the bot, and the bot can provide a few possible questions and answers back, with an option to say, "None of these are right, ask the engineers".

A system like that would solve your problem, while building the knowledge base needed to self-service information gathering, without throwing your entire process into a big change cycle.

</comment><comment> cup-of-tea Slack is clearly the wrong tool for the job. You should be answering questions on a persistent Q&A system and force all questions to come through that channel. Larger topics that come up all the time need to be documented on Confluence or something. Remember, everyone thinks that they are special and will come to you directly on Slack or whatever if they have the opportunity. It will waste your time so just close that channel.

<comment><USER7> I agree. Using an immediate channel like slack is like using gasoline to extinguish flames: the requester has an immediate response no matter how complex is the question.

Also your support process lacks of accountability and this is a huge risk: sooner or later you will need to allocate resources to support and you need both an estimate and a trend.

If you want to keep using slack, use it to record ans triage problems first. Then, use any channel you have to follow up and close.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Treat CS rep (and end-user) questions as bug reports. Almost every time a CS rep asks a trivial question (more so even if it's asked repeatedly), it is a sign that something's wrong in the app's UI; or in the docs; or in the docs' discoverability; or in the marketing/sales messaging (e.g. customer bought a screwdriver thinking it was a hammer). Fixing whatever it is will save everybody's time - end-users, CS reps, engineers, and managers.

</comment><comment><USER9> Keep in mind you're never going to have a perfect system - call me a defeatist, but you're never going to get the repeat question problem to drop to a point where it's "gone". So first maybe it's good to get a very cold look at the situation and see "how bad is it really?" If the issue is just that the response to the same question being asked is the same copy/paste, it may not be an issue worth chasing down too much.

Information dissemination can be very tough, because a system that works for one person doesn't work for another, so two otherwise equally skilled persons may not find the same information in the same manner. It's very tempting to think you can engineer away this problem, but it introduces many more.

If you have repeat offenders who really are eating up a lot of time for everyone (I'm not getting from your description if other CS also participate in providing answers or if only Engineers do), then it's worth having an educational talk with them. "What did you try checking first? What search terms did you use? What information did you get on the problem first before coming to the channel to ask?" Often times the problem isn't the process in the information store (i.e., your FAQ and Engineers + more experiences CS reps), but in the way that the information is being processed by the CS rep, and how they try to feed that information in their available sources.

To clarify on the sources bit, different systems treat search differently, adding weight to different parts of articles and entries, etc. We switch our internal wiki system over a few months back, and it took awhile to get used to the search on the new system; it offered more granular search arguments, but people had gotten used to the relatively simple Title+Document Content > Title > Document Content search on our previous system. We had to retrain people a lot on how to "search" for information, and also had to really take time to structure the content in our new system to be discoverable by how our team was searching.

So, in short, figure out how big the issue really is. It's never going to be perfect, or even close. For your repeat questions/offenders, investigate - <USER2> what the people tried before hand, and figure out if it's an issue with what the CS reps are gathering/presenting or of there is an issue with discoverability in your FAQ/other information systems.

</comment><comment><USER10> We specifically hired a "support engineer" and got lucky finding an excellent person for the role. She understands how software works so can debug strange things without needing developers to get involved, but is also extremely patient and understanding with people that just don't know how to use our tools or have technical issues from clients. Prior to her being here we had a rotating developer system going. That had an upside of forcing developers to learn odd parts of the system they hadn't seen before, but mostly frustrated people since developers didn't like doing that sort of work. We had also tried the Slack bot system, but nobody wants some automated answer or queue when they have a sales call in an hour and need some reports fixed up now. People just learned to skip that and ask developers directly, which was frustrating, but also probably the right decision given the scenario and available options. Some things aren't high priority and our support engineer uses a ticket system to keep things sane, but is still always available as a real person first. Having a real person can cost more than some automated system but in our experience, has been well worth it.

TLDR: Pay for quality.

</comment><comment><USER11> Stack Overflow for Teams - might that work? (edit: I had a look at this for us, a team of ~20 devs, with regards to our internal processes and frameworks- unfortunately for us it's a little expensive, compared to the other options)

<comment><USER12> Did you find any less expensive & self-hosted alternative to StackOverflow teams?

I'd love to setup one of those for a small group of researchers who use the HPC cluster that I administer.

There are so many repetitive questions about common errors in in-house scientific tools. It would be better to provide a search interface to a local knowledge base before those questions get to me..

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I know there are Hipchat bots that can automatically respond to public rooms based on filters. I've mostly seen them in the context of "Hey, we saw you asking about <product we don't support>. Go ask at <the other team's room>.". If there's something like this for Slack (and I'm sure the API exists if not), that could be a way of integrating the FAQ into their workflow.

</comment><comment><USER14> It sounds like an area where the organization has scaled past a solution that worked when the company was smaller. I mean, Creating a staff with 1000 knowledgeable and well trained CS reps is probably a ten year process...even if that number was stable and not growing and there was only 10% turnover, there's two new reps every work week.

My first thought is to look at the Slack stats and see which engineers seem to enjoy helping CS and make triaging Slack their job priority for a while with the goal of improving interdepartment communication processes. In my opinion, saying "read the FAQ" is about as helpful an answer as "read the manual" is on StackOverflow...over the long term it's a good solution, in the moment it's bullshit.

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER15> I may be off base here, but you may want to consider figuring out how to optimize flow of work. Analyze common questions and where they came from in order identify specific areas of training to provide to the CS rep, to determine how to restructure your engineering team to include 1st 2nd etc line support. Also think about replacing slack with a ticket based solution to support a more controlled flow of work, prioritisation etc (e.g. You may want to prioritise requests from high value client base). In way this is all a pretty old school way of figuring out how to scale an operation, improve left to right flow, and monitor metrics.

</comment><comment><USER16> I think Spoke is probably the best solution for your problem because it can plug directly into the Slack workflow everyone is already used to.

Their site is [https://www.askspoke.com](https://www.askspoke.com)

</comment><comment><USER17> > The same questions keep being asked over and over again. There's an FAQ > linked in the channel topic and it's automatically posted in the channel > every 12 hours, but it's still not enough, we still get tons of questions > that could be self-solved without engineers' intervention.

Perhaps make a slackbot that tries to parse and question and return the relevant FAQ link.

</comment><comment><USER18> We have customers with the same requirements and they started using my system at [https://helpmonks.com](https://helpmonks.com)

They are conversing internally with it. You can also use Slack to get notified. If a conversation is worth it they then either use the Trello plugin to create a card there or link to a new conversation in Discourse.

Hope this helps.

</comment><comment><USER19> Interesting issue. We had the same issues albeit on a much smaller scale so we actually are building a bot that tries to parse some common words and checks to see if it has been answered by an engineer already and presents the responses.

We could've created an FAQ but thought it was cool to do something like that.

We might actually end up with a hybrid solution after giving the bot a go.

</comment><comment><USER20> We use TinyTracker ([https://tinytracker.co](https://tinytracker.co)) with 6 technical support, 3 customer success and 20 engineers.

</comment><comment><USER21> If the same questions keep coming up, isn't this a usability issue? Can the user interface or workflow be improved to address this confusion?

</comment><comment><USER22> [https://taskwarrior.org/](https://taskwarrior.org/) could help you.

</comment><comment><USER23> Holy cow. Jira or Bugzilla.

<comment><USER24> Close, I'd suggest jira service desk with confluence knowledge base hooked up. As the rep is typing the question suggestions from confluence pages start appearing if none of those help they can submit a ticket. Respond with a confluence page so the next person gets that result over time you have a huge faq.</comment></comment>


Throw away your old projects - <AUTHOR> http://justinjackson.ca/old-stuff/

<comment><USER2> Good one. What happens if you actually do find the huge money making product? Let's say it's constantly bringing in around $5k/month from sales (I know that's hard for downloadable one-off sales). Are you still going to kill it after one year? :)

</comment><comment><USER3> I think this is really cool and am stoked for Marketing for Devs.</comment>


Show HN: Globo – Go carbon neutral and reduce your carbon footprint - <AUTHOR> https://www.globo.earth <comment><AUTHOR> Hey HN,

I made Globo in an endeavor to help myself and others take effective climate action. Pre-Globo, I cared about climate change but wasn't doing much in my personal life to reflect my concern, mostly because I found it tough to sort through all the noise in the media and figure out what actions would actually make a difference in my impact on the planet. Everyone's got limited energy for lifestyle change, so I wanted a tool to help me weigh my options and make gradual improvements over time rather than change everything overnight.

With Globo, you can get a quick carbon footprint estimate and (optionally) sign up to go carbon neutral via a monthly offset subscription. From there, you get personalized, data-driven recommendations about how to reduce your footprint, and can track it month on month to see your progress.

I hope some of you find this useful, and would appreciate any feedback you have!</comment>


Ask HN: What are your thoughts on .NET Core and its adoption - <AUTHOR> Its been a while now since the stable versions of .NET Core were released. Its currently on version 2.x. Can you give your opinion on the state of tooling and library support. Thanks <comment><USER2> It is a very good platform for a wide variety of tasks.</comment>


Johns Hopkins engineering students build custom walker for tiny toddler - <AUTHOR> https://hub.jhu.edu/2017/12/21/v-linc-custom-walker <comment><USER2> I hate to overplay these things (I'm a stereotypically emotionally repressed Brit of the old school), but it's nice to see a positive story and have something to celebrate.

Bravo guys and girls.

<comment><USER3> We are inundated with news that outrages, saddens, and depresses. Whether it's because we have a natural affinity and attraction to such news, or because algorithms put them in front of us for profit, I believe it greatly detracts from the human experience.

Bravo, and thank you OP for sharing.

<comment><USER4> "Whether it's because we have a natural affinity and attraction to such news, or because algorithms put them in front of us for profit..."

Obviously, it's both. If humans didn't have an affinity for it, it wouldn't profit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There was a senior design class I took at JHU in Mechanical Engineering where outside companies and a few individuals would sponsor design projects, some which are similar to this story. In my class one group build a pedal for a bike for someone with a prosthetic leg. It was an amazing class where you were presented a problem, and then you designed and implemented, or created a prototype of, a solution. It was 20 years ago but I would imagine they still have something similar.

<comment><USER6> Fellow alum here, most engineering majors still have a similar design project as a significant chunk of how they spend senior year.

For mine (I was a biomedical engineering undergrad) we built a computational model of the metabolism of HIV drug cocktails are various dosages modulated by factors like age, weight and phase of HIV infection.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'd like to see something similar to an adult version of this. My father had a stroke about 2-3 months ago. Best I can tell what's being passed off today as "physical therapy" hasn't changed in 25 - 50 years.

Holding a guy by the belt of his pants while he pushes a walker that too easily rolls ahead of him just feels dumb. I also think he finds the approach demoralizing. I have to believe there's a better way(s) that don't coat some ridiculous amount of money.

</comment><comment><USER8> Not directly about the story, but just wanted to note what a fantastic resource 3d printers are for kids needing prosthetics and other enablement hardware (like this walker).

From both a technical and humanitarian perspective I think it's far and away the best current use for consumer level 3d printing.

[https://3dprint.com/180365/e-nable-robotel-turkiye- chapter/](https://3dprint.com/180365/e-nable-robotel-turkiye-chapter/)

<comment><USER9> A few years ago i learned about a company (well, a couple) trying to make 3D-printed orthotics (back braces and so on) for children, based on scans of their bodies:

[http://andiamo.io/](http://andiamo.io/)

[http://andiamo.io/background/](http://andiamo.io/background/)

The key thing is reducing the turnaround time; at the moment, the lag between a child getting measured and getting the orthotic means they've grown out of it by the time they get it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> If anyone is interested in supporting the use of technology to assist those with disabilities, you might consider donating to the Seth Teller Memorial Fund: [http://courses.csail.mit.edu/PPAT/SethTellerMemorialFund.pdf](http://courses.csail.mit.edu/PPAT/SethTellerMemorialFund.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm inspired that engineering students would make something useful for a change and something so impactful to a beautiful little life. Hopefully more higher ed programs will follow this example.

<comment><USER12> Most things engineers make are useful. Note I'm talking about traditional hardware engineering, not software engineering of things like Tinder.

<comment><USER13> I'm not sure by what stretch of the imagination Tinder isn't useful, maybe not to you personally but to its intended audience.

By that standard, I could say hammers aren't useful because I personally don't have a use for them, or payday loans aren't useful because I'm personally opposed to them.

<comment><USER7> Tinder might be useful but in the bigger scheme of things it's low hanging fruit. Nothing wrong with that per se, but it's not the cure for cancer.

P.s. If you don't need shelter or something to eat then yes a hammer will be of no interest to you. Likely, you've found your sugar daddy / mama on Tinder ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The chair of my CS department at school worked on a project like this years ago: [https://faculty.ithaca.edu/sstansfield/totsOnBots/](https://faculty.ithaca.edu/sstansfield/totsOnBots/) Not sure what's come of it in recent years.

</comment><comment><USER15> Tragically, this device is illegal in Canada - and would result in a $100,000 fine if imported.

<comment><USER16> Why? (I understand it is some law or regulation, but what is it meant to prevent/encourage?)</comment></comment>


Is Poland Becoming Europe's Tech Startup Capital? - <AUTHOR> http://www.purelythemes.com/poland-becoming-europes-tech-startup-capital/ <comment><USER2> Do you really want to base your startup in an increasingly authorian state, where the ultimate power is located a conspiracy theorist, and the prime minister and her government are only marionettes?</comment>


Jeff Atwood's security blunder regarding email - <AUTHOR> http://fuscata.com/blog/atwood-drops-the-ball-on-email-security <comment><USER2> The assumption he implicitly makes is that Google is not going to do anything malicious with his password, and has a secure enough network. If you take this assumption to be true, then his practice of emailing himself private information (over SSL, you can't access gmail without it), is reasonable.

Now if you want to take issue with his assumption, then go right ahead, but this is not an instance of Jeff Atwood misunderstanding how [eg]mail works.

<comment><USER3> The only reason for this would be that gmail -> gmail email doesn't leave their servers. However, I think it's irresponsible to suggest emailing oneself private information without explaining the caveat, because others might, say, do the same thing from their work email to their gmail account, and consequently send private data in the clear through random mail servers.

<comment><USER4> The GMail smtp service supports STARTTLS for incoming mail. It could very well be encrypted every single hop, from sending client to origin SMTP relay, from SMTP relay to GMail, and then from GMail to receiving IMAPS client.

The situation is a lot better than it was a handful of years ago. It's not quite the "don't ever do this!" it once was.

<comment><USER5> It doesn't just support it, it requires it.

<comment><USER6> GMail does not require STARTTLS.

I am sure you can send email to GMail accounts with unencrypted SMTP. Just look at the incoming "Received" headers. If they do not contain a "cipher=" section, the connection was not encrypted.

I think what you mean is that GMail requires you to use https for their web interface.

<comment><USER7> > GMail does not require STARTTLS.

        $ telnet smtp.gmail.com 587
        Trying 22.214.171.124...
        Connected to gmail-smtp-msa.l.google.com.
        Escape character is '^]'.
        220 mx.google.com ESMTP ea6sm27303065wib.5
        HELO zwp
        250 mx.google.com at your service
        AUTH PLAIN [elided]
        530 5.7.0 Must issue a STARTTLS command first. ea6sm27303065wib.5

        $ telnet smtp.gmail.com 587
        Trying 126.96.36.199...
        Connected to gmail-smtp-msa.l.google.com.
        Escape character is '^]'.
        220 mx.google.com ESMTP ff2sm43397967wib.9
        HELO zwp
        250 mx.google.com at your service
        MAIL FROM:<firstname.lastname@example.com>
        530 5.7.0 Must issue a STARTTLS command first. ff2sm43397967wib.9

<comment><USER8> This is outgoing SMTP. It does not require it for _incoming_ SMTP.

<comment><USER5> Gmail recommends (or requires) SSL for both IMAP[1] and POP[2].

[1] [http://support.google.com/mail/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answe...](http://support.google.com/mail/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=78799) [2] [https://support.google.com/mail/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answ...](https://support.google.com/mail/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=181714)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> All due respect, I've been unable to take Atwood very seriously after I read this[1], and, shortly afterwards, this[2].

[1] [http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2009/07/software- engineerin...](http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2009/07/software-engineering- dead.html) [2] [http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2008/11/your-favorite-np- co...](http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2008/11/your-favorite-np-complete- cheat.html)

<comment><USER10> It's a serious problem that this is currently the topvoted comment. It means that people are upvoting it because they agree with the sentiment, while not realizing that neither their nor slavak's opinion of Atwood's writing should be interesting to anyone. They shouldn't be interesting, because the opinion is on the one hand _unsupported_ and is on the other hand based on the fundamental attribution error [1].

I say unsupported, because if anyone actually read the supposed supporting links, there would at least be a discussion concerning the first link in these comments. At least, I don't see how the contents of that post disqualifies Atwood. I don't think upvoters are actually reviewing the evidence to see if they agree with _this_ reason for disliking Atwood.

Concerning the second link: if you write off Atwood based on occasional mistakes, you are committing the fundamental attribution error [1]: thinking that _someone_ , and therefore _all_ his writing, must be worthless, simply because he _sometimes_ writes nonsense. Never forget that smart and interesting people also make mistakes.

Atwood takes the time to air and explain his ideas about programming. He's not a great writer or a deep thinker [2], but that doesn't matter: he _is_ one of us thinking about what it means to be one of us. I find all of his thoughts interesting, if only to see how someone can come to a different conclusion based on the same premises. They are interesting even if I disagree and even if he is wrong, because it shines a light on how colleagues may think about things. For instance, the second link clearly warns me that I can never take for granted that someone understands what NP-completeness means and have to verify it. That makes even that post worthwhile.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error>

[2] Though certainly not a bad writer or a shallow thinker

<comment><USER11> You make a good point here but the fact remains that Jeff Atwood is a pseudo- expert, not a serious authority. His opinion shouldn't be trusted. About anything. Ever.

Each time I see some piece of writing from him, on a topic about which I am reasonably knowledgeable, I find some error. As a consequence, I tend to distrust anything from him on any topic about which I am not as familiar with.

<comment><USER12> Appeal to authority (or in this case the reverse) is a common logical fallacy.

<comment><USER9> Appeal to authority can be a perfectly valid inductive method when used as a statistical syllogism. It is only a fallacy in the realm of formal logic, where the truth or falsehood of a statement is independent of its source.

This is a common but quite annoying misconception. The following is a perfectly valid deduction: 1\. Authority A is correct on matters in subject X _p_ percect of the time. 2\. A claims Y regarding a matter in subject X. \--> Therefore, Y is correct with probability p.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Emailing yourself password-protected MS Office files isn't much secure either (unless something has changed in 2010 version). I've routinely cracked passwords for my users using freely available tools when they couldn't remember the password to unprotect an Excel workbook.

<comment><USER14> Were their passwords more complex than "secret"?

There is a known flaw that Office uses (used? I believe it's unfixed) the same RC4 stream for multiple versions of a document, which could be bad news if you used the same password for them and an attacker has old revisions, but even so, that may be hard to leverage if the doc in question is just a list of passwords. [nm, it's been fixed for a while. thanks, nhebb.]

<comment><USER15> There was two RC4 keystream reuse flaws in the Office binary formats. One involved salt reuse on save (an implementation bug) and was fixed in Office 2007. But there is still another one that can't be fixed without changing the file format. The original Office 2007 file formats used AES-ECB, but later switched to CBC in SP2.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> In fairness, if you're e-mailing yourself, chances are it's not going out over the public internet at any point. In Gmail, it's likely not even going anywhere except straight into Google's database.

<comment><USER14> It's still stored unencrypted, which is not the ideal state for a password at rest.

<comment><USER17> gmail has been revamped so that China, with a fuck-ton of resources and desire, cannot get into it. they hired the NSA to help them. maybe it's no longer secure from the NSA, but it is from everyone else.

<comment><USER18> Source?

It's very hard for me to imagine truly trusting that China cannot get into Gmail. Even if you have a great source. :-P

<comment><USER19> In late 2009, China tried to get into Gmail. According to the forensics done at the time, they managed to compromise 2 accounts. And even then they only managed to read subject lines but not email contents for those accounts.

Google detected them, locked them out, identified over 20 other companies that had been compromised and notified all of them. Furthermore getting compromised was a wake-up call - they immediately took a lot of steps to improve their own security.

See <http://techcrunch.com/2010/01/12/google-china-attacks/> for verification of some of this.

So China went after the easier target - users. Users are easy to compromise.

Therefore in 2011 Google notified hundreds of users (including many members of the government) that their accounts had been compromised by China. See [http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/06/01/gmail- compromised-...](http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/06/01/gmail-compromised- chinese-hackers-google-says/) for verification.

Note that this time Google's infrastructure was not targeted. Just end users and still Google tracked it down and notified people.

No system is perfect. I guarantee that Google knows this. But Gmail has a far better claim than any other email system I know of to claim to being able to beat Chinese hackers. (That said, I'm sure that China has not given up.)

<comment><USER14> From TC link: "We are telling you this because we are committed to transparency, accountability, and maintaining your trust."

You'd think, if that were true, Google would indicate somewhere that, yes indeed, they do encrypt your email.

<comment><USER19> Have you thought of the operational costs of both encrypting email and still being able to support efficient searching of said email?

It really makes more sense to store unencrypted, and then secure access. The difficulty that motivated and well-prepared attackers have had in getting access demonstrates that they have done a very good job of securing access.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> One thing nobody is commenting on here is that the easiest way to avoid your passwords being stolen is actually just to ensure that nobody other than yourself knows that that they are passwords. Develop an estoteric system (don't use the word 'password' anywhere, don't store passwords with the full name of what they access, don't repeatedly access the same encrypted document [telling anyone looking for your secrets 'Decrypt this!']) and you are likely to put off all but someone ridiculously determined to target you.

Even better - don't put it online and don't even save it digitally if you can avoid it (is anyone that steals your wallet or burgles your house going to really bother trying to figure out what a hand-scribbled series of characters might mean?).

</comment><comment><USER21> Jeff regularly "drops the ball" on most things. He blogs about what he is learning about, and not what he has mastered.

Remember him getting his knickers in a twist over AES ECB? Or more recently conflating secure hashes with hashes for other purposes? Or back-peddling on, well, everything?!

I love his writing and read every blog entry. But I shudder if we hold him up as an expert in recommending how to secure passwords and such!

</comment><comment><USER22> The 'recently closed tabs' feature in recent browsers also makes closing your session more difficult. A few years ago it was considered good practice to close your window after checking your account. Now it is just a click in the browser to fully restore that window. Remember to 'Sign Out' all the time, 2 factor doesn't help in this case.

</comment><comment><USER23> Atwood's solution is flawed because law enforcement only need to give correctly formed documents to Google to get all your passwords over a bunch of services.

Imagine someone using Hushmail in the same way. It should be a lot more secure. Hushmail uses strong encryption, but has in the past served specially crafted Java applications to the customer because they were cooperating with law enforcement.

Admittedly, if you have law enforcement after you then you need to start being a lot more careful with everything.

</comment><comment><USER24> I hope you remember that Gmail scans your email for their stats and adverts and that your email storage is in NO WAY private. Go read the TOS, or the various websites explaining the TOS if it's easier. More than that, many Google employees, for stats or project purposes may read them. More than that, you'd think gmail has never been broken into? Public info != reality.

Emailing yourself sensitive data unencrypted is simply dumb.

</comment><comment><USER25> I have to agree with this. I hadn't read Jeff's post yet since, really, I haven't regularly read his stuff in probably two or three years, but I just did.

The only mention of emailing things to yourself is wholly contained in the following paragraph:

> _The upside is that once you enable this, your email becomes extremely > secure, to the point that you can (and I regularly do) email yourself highly > sensitive data like passwords and logins to other sites you visit so you can > easily retrieve them later._

To me, that's really dangerous advice. It relies on the assumption that you're only emailing things from your own gmail account, to your own gmail account. This means that the only transfer happens between you and Google over a secure HTTPS connection. Your data is transferred securely, stored on Google's servers, and securely transferred back to you when you request it.

At no point is this specific assumption pointed out, nor are the problems with it discussed.

First, although I can't think of a particular reason why gmail-to-gmail emails would be routed outside of Google's servers, that doesn't mean it doesn't happen. If someone could point a blog post discussing it, I would appreciate it.

Second, All bets are off if you use a separate provider. One example might be work email. If you're signed in to a work account already, you might be more inclined to just use that to toss an email at yourself for later. I've certainly done that before, even though I _could_ sign into gmail from work. People could make the mistake of thinking he's saying "send an email to yourself _from anywhere_ " which isn't correct. Incidentally, activating two- factor auth makes it _more_ likely that someone would do work-to-home emailing since there's now an extra barrier to just logging into gmail.

Finally, this seems to rely on the assumption that you're only using the web client to access gmail. If you're using POP3 or IMAP to access your account, you could still be at risk, since I think (though admittedly I'm unsure since I only use the web interface) that these protocols aren't encrypted by default.

<comment><USER5> > At no point is this specific assumption pointed out, nor are the problems > with it discussed.

To "email yourself" implies using the same service.

> If you're using POP3 or IMAP to access your account, you could still be at > risk, since I think (though admittedly I'm unsure since I only use the web > interface) that these protocols aren't encrypted by default.

Gmail IMAP requires SSL: [http://support.google.com/mail/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answe...](http://support.google.com/mail/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=78799)

<comment><USER25> > _Gmail IMAP requires SSL_

Good to know. I did specify that I never used it, so my understanding could be flawed.

> _To "email yourself" implies using the same service._

To you, but not necessarily to everyone. People do have multiple accounts (gmail, personal domain, work, even Facebook gives you an email address you can send things to), and it's really easy to conflate "email yourself" with "send an email to your account", or even to abstract "sending an email to yourself is secure" to "email is secure".

My point was simply that if you make an argument about something as important as security, it's vital that you spell out the limitations to your advice. "Email yourself" is ambiguous enough that it needs a proper disclaimer.

Admittedly, the audience for Coding Horror is mostly people who know this stuff already, but it's certainly not limited to those people exclusively. I started reading his blog midway through college, and it's amazing to me, looking back now, just how naive I was about a lot of things back then.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Atwood often makes blatant mistakes like this. I truly don't understand why his blog is so popular.

</comment><comment><USER27> "Using a secure connection (HTTPS), which Atwood fails to mention"

Is it possible to use GMail without HTTPS? Somehow I can't imagine Google would enable that?

<comment><USER28> I think it's required nowadays, or at least used by default, but less than a couple years ago HTTPS was a setting you had to manually enable and before that wasn't offered at all. Also HTTPS is only secure if you trust the cert companies, which I don't after the multiple fake certs issued last year (with at least one *.google.com presumably issued to Iran). The best way to secure your sensitive emails has been the same since the 90s: PGP encryption. (The tradeoffs have also been known.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> This gives me an idea. A secure web notebook where you can record things that only you can get out. They will be encrypted on the server basically, and your password will be used to decrypt them. Also you will use SSL to post. Is there any vault like this that's freely accessible?

<comment><USER30> The problem with such a service is that there's no practical way to figure out whether they're reading your data on the sly. (Even if your data is technically being encrypted on the client side, there's nothing to stop them from slipping in some extra JS one day to start sending your encryption key to their server.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Data on the move -- TLS via OpenSSL. Data at rest -- GPG.

Don't trust anything else.

(OK, technically there are cases where you should trust other stuff, but if you can recognize it you are probably a professional cryptographer).

<comment><USER4> Great idea in theory, however, I'd like to know how you search your emails on your smartphone while traveling when all of your mails are GPG-encrypted on the server.

Or do you carry your GPG key around on your smartphone?

This solution, while technically pure, does not work. Those of us that live in the Real World send our regards.

<comment><USER31> My email is accessed over TLS. I have no idea what to tell you if yours isn't.

Oh, and my email isn't GPG encrypted. I just don't store sensitive data in my email.

<comment><USER4> The argument could be made that if your email doesn't contain anything sensitive, then you're not living life correctly. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> if you are emailing yourself, you are doing it wrong

<comment><USER33> I'm surprised more people don't email themselves.

Gmail indexes messages, which makes it incredibly fast to find a note that I sent to myself. I also use it to remind myself about something important to eventually remember, but I can't work on it right now.

<comment><USER34> I use Notational Velocity + Dropbox for this

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> And for the next six weeks get stalked around the web by "Buy Tfk166acq at Nextag.com".</comment>


Show HN: A yield curve application made with quantra.io - <AUTHOR> https://terminal.quantra.io/ <comment><AUTHOR> I already posted this but it seems it was flagged (not sure what it means) and the administrators said I had to improve it. So that is what I tried to do adding a small help and making it more user friendly.

Thanks!!</comment>


Show HN: schemafreedb.com - new, dream database service for web developers? - <AUTHOR>

Hello, I'm Eric, developer and co-founder of Xornet, Inc. the company behind our new service, SchemafreeDB. This is a 2nd submission... we removed some obscurity from the original submission title.
SchemafreeDB was designed from the ground-up to enable Rapid Database Development for web developers.
SchemafreeDB's unique combination of features include:
* Creation of free-form data structures on the fly at insert-time.
e.g. Simply add an attribute 'phone-extension' to any phone object, without disturbing your existing phone objects, all without visiting a schema design stage.
* Full SQL support for querying across disparate object structures.
* You don't have to worry about issuing UPDATE TABLE on large data sets. In fact, we did away with the entire concept of UPDATE TABLE.
* Support for complex, nested data structures. Objects can contain simple attributes (String, Int, etc) or other Objects.
* Familiar SQL query language.
* Simple join-free, dot-notated syntax (e.g. WHERE $s:person.address.city='Rochester' AND $i:person.income>50000). This is familiar to the ease of working in an ORM, but without the impedance mismatch between in-memory objects and database objects.
* Free indexing. Delivers fast index-like queries without index configuration, AND at the same time delivers inserts at fast no-index speeds.
* Lightweight, consistent, platform-neutral connection library - JSON over HTTP.
Access your database the same way from from any network-enabled platform.
We are currently in Alpha.
Please check us out at http://schemafreedb.com <comment><USER2> The obvious question: how is this significantly different from Couchdb and such?

<comment><AUTHOR> Several document-based database systems claim to be schamaless, yet when your data demands cross-document relations (esp. many-to-many), something ugly rears its head which usually ends with you performing multiple queries and relating (or JOINing) data by hand. This essentially forces the work away from the locality and fast speed of the database level, and up towards the remote and slow speed of the client-to-database connection. The difference in speed is akin to the difference between registers and RAM, or between RAM and Disk.

The resultant design pattern often ends up a mirror of what you would have done in any standard SQL database, but without the low level optimizations that a SQL database brings to such a pattern.

Additionally, with a non-native design pattern now in place to deal with your data relationships, concurrency issues may begin to surface.

In SchemafreeDB, your data relationship possibilities are essentially unbounded; yet consistent in both design patterns, access patterns and performance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Clickable link: <http://www.schemafreedb.com></comment>


Ethereum smart contract tutorial: building a simple auction contract - <AUTHOR> https://firstname.lastname@example.com/solidity-tutorial-building-a-simple-auction-contract-fcc918b0878a <comment><AUTHOR> Long time lurker, just wanted to share some tutorials I've started writing. Let me know how it reads (and if you can get the example project working)!</comment>


Guy Kawasaki: A Dozen Don'ts for Entrepreneurs - <AUTHOR> http://www.openforum.com/idea-hub/topics/the-world/article/a-dozen-donts-for-entrepreneurs

<comment><USER2> Nothing new here, and upwards of 80% of it is common knowledge on HN.

Pick which two of the following three items are desirable: revenue, launching early, hiring your uncle as CTO. Wow, you're a sharp one, aren't you.

On the other hand, I sort of liked this phrase:

 _Don't believe that the exception is the rule. ... Twitter is the exception. Facebook is the exception. YouTube is the exception. There, I listed all the exceptions. Everyone else needs revenue asap, or you will fail._

<comment><USER3> At least this one is getting discussion vs. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=682892>

Goes to show that adding "Guy Kawasaki" to the title makes a difference.

<comment><USER4> Guy Kawasaki used to write good articles based on insight gleamed from his personal experience. But these days he seems to be more about just generating some content to get eye balls so that he can push alltop. He is losing credibility fast.

<comment><USER5> Sadly this is true. I've removed his blog from my RSS reader quite a while ago. Seth Godin got ditched for the same reason :(

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> You should work with your spouse. It's great, and a lot of companies have successful husband/wife teams. Here's an HN thread that lists a few: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=663881>

I've liked some Guy Kawasaki articles, like the 10/20/30 rule of PowerPoint, but this article seems hastily written.

Another fallacy is to think partnerships are bad. Partnerships are great in certain markets. Seek out people... you'd be surprised who'll take a phone call.

<comment><USER7> This was the only piece of advice in the article that I really liked. _It doesn't matter whether you work well with your spouse._ It could be a truly great working relationship and still present a problem for your firm.

The problem is that _other people_ will hate working with you and your family. You will fail to recruit the best, you will have to pay the workers you do recruit more money, and morale will always be lower than it would have been if you had not hired your family. Other employees will simply assume your family gets special treatment. (And they're always right.)

<comment><USER8> People will hate working with you if your company is failing to execute. If you haven't hired your husband, they will find some other reason to hate you. In any group of smart, opinionated adults, there are 100,000 reasons to hate your coworkers --- compensation, effort, strategy decisions, nepotism, cliques.

Kawasaki's comment ignores the upsides of working with your spouse. You can both keep longer hours. It's easier to balance childcare needs. You can get another unquestionably committed team member.

Singling out family involvement is a fallacy. There are thousands of successful family businesses. There are hundreds of thousands of companies that fail that never even considered hiring a spouse. There's simply no data to back this point up, just supposition.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Wow, you could reverse all these and have a pretty good blog post.

</comment><comment><USER10> The other problem with hiring or co-founding with your spouse is putting all your eggs in one basket. Startups are always in turbulent waters (often financially and always emotionally). A spouse whose main occupation is not your startup can be very helpful as an anchor.

</comment><comment><USER11> The probability that a blogger can confidently say 100% is 0%.

</comment><comment><USER12> I would really like to know the details of Guy's contracts with these publications. He must be raking it in shuffling and reshuffling his posts from site to site.</comment>


Iceland to build first temple to Norse gods since Viking age - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/02/iceland-temple-norse-gods-1000-years <comment> k-mcgrady It would be interesting if religion was 'repurposed' eventually in this way. Without getting into a 'does God exist debate' it would be interesting if people who were, for example Christian, that decided there was no God took the good parts of the religion (peace, forgiveness, some of the rituals etc.) and created a branch of it. Maybe it's already been done?

<comment><USER2> The thing is you don't have to decide there isn't a God, you don't have to change your religion at all, if you have any, to be a good person. We see a very vocal minority who are so loud, obnoxious and get so much air time we think there are a lot of them. I choose to believe there are far more good, moderate and reasonable religious people than there are idiots I see plastered on TV spouting nonsense. Being a good person is not connected in anyway with belief. Christianity already made a new branch to handle all the branches [http://www.wikiwand.com/en/Nondenominational_Christianity](http://www.wikiwand.com/en/Nondenominational_Christianity)

<comment> k-mcgrady >> "The thing is you don't have to decide there isn't a God, you don't have to change your religion at all, if you have any, to be a good person."

Of course. My comment was made as someone who 'doesn't know' but leans towards theism. And you certainly don't need religion to be a good person but as with any writings/teachings there can be value there. For example some people find the guidance of the writings by the Stoics useful. If we took the element of God out of the bible and distilled it down to useful teachings on life I wonder how useful non-religious people would find it. Would it be useful in a similar way to the writings of the Stoics for example?

<comment><USER3> >> "If we took the element of God out of the bible and distilled it down to useful teachings on life I wonder how useful non-religious people would find it."

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

Thomas Jefferson. Yeah... that Thomas Jefferson... not just some random dude with a common name.

There is a propaganda campaign to convince people that americans were united as hard core puritan evang neocon christians continuously from the earliest days until a very recent fall like when the Beatles arrived, but that fantasy has nothing to do with reality, of course.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's interesting to see how much Christianity changed Scandinavia by suppressing parts of the culture, while at the same time so many symbols remains. From the maypole to wishing my relatives God Jul. :)

<comment><USER5> I had no idea the use of the maypole was quite so widespread - I thought it was a particularly English thing. I've never encountered any reference to them here in Scotland.

<comment><USER6> It's a thing even in Northern Germany, which usually isn't very traditional.

<comment><USER7> And it's even bigger in the more Catholic parts (ex-pagan symbols often didn't sure survive the Reformation and its _sola scriptura_ ideal). Although there's more larceny and alcohol involved than dancing with ribbons.

But while we're talking about stealing things, I think this went in several directions, with lots of Norse views and figures being influenced by other religions, _including_ Christianity. Vikings and their sagas aren't exactly ancient.

<comment><USER5> Speaking about Vikings and ancient stuff, the Maeshowe tomb on Orkney has a lot of entertaining Viking graffiti left after a group of warriors sheltered there from a snowstorm:

[http://www.orkneyjar.com/history/maeshowe/maeshrunes.htm](http://www.orkneyjar.com/history/maeshowe/maeshrunes.htm)

[At almost 5000 years old Maeshowe definitely qualifies as _ancient_.]

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I wouldn't be surprised if this is a ploy by Iceland's official tourism bureau. They're quite savvy and very in tune with popular culture. Check out one of their official videos: [http://vimeo.com/12236680](http://vimeo.com/12236680). BTW, I've been to Iceland and it really is a cool place.

</comment><comment><USER9> > _We see the stories as poetic metaphors and a manifestation of the forces of > nature and human psychology._

A perfect religion for atheists.

</comment><comment><USER10> Must be that TV series - quite a boost for national pride.

<comment><USER11> What TV series?

<comment><USER12> Vikings [1]. I haven't watched it, heard mixed reviews from friends. Critics seem to like it though, and it gets good viewership numbers.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vikings_(TV_series)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vikings_\(TV_series\))

<comment><USER13> It's rather historically accurate (though it's build on a legendary figure[1]), and is a good cool-down show for you and your loved one, when Game of Thrones ends since it's in a similar universe. I'd definitely recommend it. If nothing else, I feel they capture the mindset well, speaking as a Dane.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ragnar_Lodbrok](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ragnar_Lodbrok)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I would go there just for that!</comment>


Feelspace - electronic compass belt - <AUTHOR> http://feelspace.cogsci.uni-osnabrueck.de/en/technology_01.html

<comment><USER2> There was also an interesting article in wired on the belt: <http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.04/esp.html></comment>


Congress's failure to act on fentanyl despite warnings, deaths - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/investigations/fentanyl-epidemic-congress/ <comment><USER2> I find it sad at how fast the government is acting to ban the e-cigs and vapor juices after what, 8 alleged deaths? I understand wanting to curb it before it becomes a major problem...

Meanwhile some doctors are given incentive to act as literal drug pushers for certain opioid companies despite knowing all too well that many people may become addicted and eventually overdose.

Opioids - It's up to the individual to be responsible and not get addicted and use more than prescribed.

Nicotine - It's up to the government to be responsible for our youth and we need to ensure they don't fall victim to becoming addicted. Regulate everything and destroy all vape pens!

<comment><USER3> ^This exactly!

8 deaths now? Which, CDC and others dont know the root cause yet. It seems to be an issue with e-cigs, and people smoking them excessively over and over and over. Who knows the oil they used and its quality.

While those deaths are unfortunate America has bigger issues killing WAY more people daily. Look at alcohol for example. We all know how bad it is, but it gets a pass.

Although, DOJ has gone after several of those responsible for "Fueling Opioid Epidemic" there is still major issues when Docs get a kickback for pushing Drug A over Drug B.

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-09-11/purdue- op...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-09-11/purdue-opioid-plan- pits-state-against-state-over-epidemic-s-cost)

[https://www.npr.org/2019/09/19/762455218/as-drugmakers- face-...](https://www.npr.org/2019/09/19/762455218/as-drugmakers-face-opioid- lawsuits-some-ask-why-not-criminal-charges-too)</comment></comment>