Why startups don't die at large hedge funds - <AUTHOR> http://jonsteinberg.com/2010/02/startups-dont-die-at-large-hedge-funds/

<comment><USER2> The perceived risk vs reward on a tech startup venture vs. playing the markets is completely different.

In hedge funds, earners get their big juicy paychecks when they prove they are earners. The methods by which you make money, while varied, are a far more known set. In general, you're not going to talk to a finance guy about what he's doing and then walk away thinking they're an idiot. Look at the scorecard, they must be doing something right.

In tech, the opposite is true. Ideas that seem far-fetched or absurd blossom. Sure fire hits crumble. Things that seem insane one year become obvious the next. Startups are incredibly speculative because we're exploring unknown spaces. But that's why you take the risk and go out there... because nobody else believes in it as much as you do.

If you add the bureaucracy of a large company to the mix, there are too many people in the way to say no. To crush the idea and the team before it even exists. And that's why as founders, we quit.

</comment><comment><USER3> Agreed. This is one of the areas of business where the MBA graduates of this century can and should really focus on: restructuring the modern corporation to allow for proper incentives and encourage innovation. Companies these days are more internally communist, with top-down centralized command. See [http://www.salaminder.com/2010/02/large-corporations- inheren...](http://www.salaminder.com/2010/02/large-corporations-inherently- communist/)

<comment><USER4> "This is one of the areas of business where the MBA graduates of this century can and should really focus on: restructuring the modern corporation to allow for proper incentives and encourage innovation."

MBA grads might be the worst people to attempt this. A typical MBA grad is no shape to make innovative changes in a corporation.

<comment><USER5> Sorry to be harsh about this - but this is borne out of the reality of having worked with MBAs at startups and huge corporations: If you want innovation, first step - fire the MBAs.

<comment><USER6> Or maybe you should learn to hire innovative MBAs ? - a lot of stupid MBA bashing completely ignores the fact that there are a lot of MBAs driving very successful start-ups and large tech companies. Especially if you look at business rather than consumer focused start-ups.

There are crappy MBAs just as there are crappy programmers. Thinking that all programmers are crappy because you've only worked with crappy programmers is a logical fallacy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I continue to be amazed that big companies don't do this. The first big tech company to figure out how to successfully do mini-startups within the company (with slightly less risk and slightly less reward for the engineers involved) will sweep all before it until their competitors figure out the trick.

<comment><USER8> Isn't Google a good example of this with 20% time?

<comment><USER9> No because the reward is small compared to starting a startup. You might be lucky at Google and get a huge bonus, but it is not the same as having a cut of the money generated by your product.

<comment><USER10> Agreed...the system doesn't fully work. This is why people have to leave, create value, and then sell their companies back i.e. Vark

<comment><USER11> If Google gave employees even just 20% of profits generated from the products they build or prototype, that system would fully work for everyone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Many people (including me) have wondered why large tech companies don't do this, and many people (including me) have quit and founded startups instead. I think it must be intrinsically hard to do. Look at it this way: there already is a mechanism for spawning startups that distinguishes winners and lets founders reap rewards. It's called the open market. So essentially, for an organization to succeed at this would mean beating the market. That's hard.

I'm unconvinced by the analogy between hedge fund managers and startups. The variation in what the former are doing is miniscule compared to the variation in the latter. That doesn't make it easy to be a winning trader, but it does make it far easier to identify winning traders and build an organization around them.

</comment><comment><USER13> I don't think the article is exactly right. Young managers stick around at hedge funds not just because they get incentivized with a percentage of their returns, but also because it is hard for them to raise sufficient capital to start their own fund. Most of them would probably prefer to manage that 25-100M in their own fund and take the entire 20% of generated returns instead of sharing it with the fund. Generally when they have the experience and contacts to do so they _do_ go out and start their own fund.

Quite the opposite, it doesn't take much capital to start a web company any more. Consequently, lots of teams of engineers can leave a big company and build up value on their own with out the support structure (i.e. capital) of a bigger company. Then they have the freedom to get paid the market value of their work in an exit, instead of their returns being determined by a single party (the company they worked for) with no competition.

</comment><comment><USER14> This is an interesting idea, but I don't think that there's any real substitute for going out and starting your own company. In any big company (no matter how good or liberal technology-wise), there's always an element of inertia. That is to say that there's always a sizable group of people who will resist change for resisting change's sake.

I simply don't think there's any way to remove that element without leaving the company altogether.

<comment><USER15> that's the point of what the op is suggesting - that you grant internal teams full autonomy

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This doesn't always work, though: Jeff Bezos worked for a large hedge fund (D.E. Shaw) before starting Amazon, and pitched the idea to management -- and only left to found Amazon on his own when Shaw wasn't interested.

<comment><USER17> Starting an online commerce firm from inside a hedge fund is not exactly what this guy is talking about. He's talking about allowing promising managers to invest money (which is a hedge fund's business) without excessive direct interference from more senior managers and with a direct stake in the outcome. D.E. Shaw is not an internet company (Juno aside). What the author is suggesting would be something like Google giving operational autonomy and a percentage of the profits to the guys who came up with gmail.

<comment><USER10> Yes that's what I meant. There is too much top down at all the major tech companies.

No one tells a pad manager at DE Shaw what to do. He either thrives or blows himself up and is fired.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I would wager that if you were to aggressively short other traders' portfolios in your own fund, you'd quickly find that there are limits to the independence of your pad.

Selling into the same consumer segment is much more cannibalistic than finding varying arb opportunities in different market segments.

<comment><USER15> No, the shortedn traders would either wise up quick and change strategy or get fired.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> The value of a money manager at a hedge fund is easier to objectively and fairly measure than the value of a startup.

Even if an Internet behemoth like Google paid engineers large sums for their successful 'internal startups', I don't see how they'd come up with the same value as a competitive acquisition process with the startup retaining the option to walk away and carry on independently. Entrepreneurs would still leave in order to avoid being subject to the whims of the one and only one potential 'acquirer'.

<comment><USER10> The valuing is tricky, but the M&A groups do it every day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is one reason large tech companies do spin outs, though I am not sure of any companies that have become overwhelmingly effective at it.

</comment><comment><USER21> Rather than the big companies taking the risk of funding many "pads" most of which will fail they let other people put their money at risk and only end up buying the proven winners. How much money would they have had to throw at failed "pads" before getting Aardvark? If the answer is more than $50 million then they got a good deal.

<comment><USER10> Thats a fair analysis. I bet its less than $50M. Also there's a lot of wasted value by not allowing for autonomy. Look at MSFT [http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/04/opinion/04brass.html?scp=2...](http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/04/opinion/04brass.html?scp=2&sq=microsoft&st=cse)

<comment><USER22> You wrote a good post. It reminded me of 'The Origins of Wealth' by Beinhocker. He spends a lot of time exploring why most companies spend most of their time playing it safe and why so little is spent on exploring new markets/business models.

He also makes the point that most companies don't survive very long. I don't think tech is especially unique in this regard.

People probably don't leave the hedge funds because they are in a great situation. Hedge funds managers get to play the heads I win tails I get a management fee game. People, once they have wealth, can be surprisingly risk averse and don't want to risk substantial portions of their own wealth as capital in a new venture.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> In tech companies market position matters. You can't just have everyone working on their pet project, because they all have to fit together to form a cohesive unit with adequate positioning and power. Except for the occasional market manipulation, that's just not true with hedge funds.

</comment><comment><USER24> Considering the overall poor performance of the hedge-fund managers compensated in this fashion, isn't this a model _not_ to follow?

<comment><USER17> I'd actually like to see the citation for the poor performance of hedge fund managers, or are you just basing this comment on the recent media portrayal?

<comment><USER24> Here's one analysis, which while not all bad, is not particularly positive either: <http://www.cfapubs.org/loi/doi/abs/10.2469/faj.v61.n6.2775>

<comment><USER17> Thanks for pointing this one out. I'm looking forward to a year or two from now when someone can do a study of hedge fund performance net of fees vs. a benchmark such as S&P500 over the last 10-20 years including 2008 and 2009. I would expect hedge funds to outperform, and the last 2 years have been a once- in-a-generation event to check that hypothesis against.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> "Otherwise we are resigned to this cycle of great tech companies having relatively short lives compared to industrial counterparts."

What's the problem here? Did I miss the lesson on why we need to create long lived legal entities? It's not even on my priority list.

</comment><comment><USER26> Of course tech companies don't do this, it's all about risk. Tech startups are difficult, expensive, and high risk. It takes the right kind of people to start something successful, most people can't do it. Places like Bell Labs don't exist anymore predominantly because it's cheaper to let other people cover the risk, and only buy companies that have a product and significant traction.

Hedge fund managers don't have a 90% chance of producing something nobody wants and losing all the money that was invested in them.</comment>


Hall Effect Sensing and Application (1998) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://sensing.honeywell.com/hallbook.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> "The Hall effect has been known for over one hundred years, but has only been put to noticeable use in the last three decades. The first practical application (outside of laboratory experiments) was in the 1950s as a microwave power sensor. With the mass production of semiconductors, it became feasible to use the Hall effect in high volume products. MICRO SWITCH Sensing and Control revolutionized the keyboard industry in 1968 by introducing the first solid state keyboard using the Hall effect. For the first time, a Hall effect sensing element and its associated electronics were combined in a single integrated circuit. Today, Hall effect devices are included in many products, ranging from computers to sewing machines, automobiles to aircraft, and machine tools to medical equipment."

</comment><comment><USER2> This is a great resource, recommended for anyone trying to build little electronic gizmos. I've found it super helpful in trying to use various hall effect sensors. It also has nice sections on basics about magnets, etc.

It's been around since at least 1998. 2003 version from the internet archive: [http://web.archive.org/web/20031005162109/http://content.hon...](http://web.archive.org/web/20031005162109/http://content.honeywell.com/sensing/prodinfo/solidstate/technical/hallbook.pdf)

In the PDF metadata on that file, Creation Date: Oct 14, 1998, 6:29 AM

Too bad there's no date written anywhere in the text; I'd still recommend adding a [1998] to this discussion topic though.

<comment><USER3> Thanks! We updated the title.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Please add "pdf" to the title.

Thanks!</comment>


React Relay Release Date - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/facebook/react/blob/86836c885d18664307beb52f3a8891a8ef569662/npm-react-codemod/test/class-test2.js#L25

<comment><USER2> For people who want to find out how their components can be hooked up to Relay, checkout React Transmit: [https://github.com/RickWong/react- transmit](https://github.com/RickWong/react-transmit)

It's basically Relay but using more powerful and generic Promises instead of GraphQL.</comment>


Python Oddities - happy-go-lucky https://twitter.com/i/moments/871564334832304128 <comment><AUTHOR> Vast majority of these are not actually oddities. A few stuck out at me, though:

\- since True/False are aliased to 1/0, you cannot have both 1 and True as dictionary keys. This could plausibly happen in real code.

\- there's no distinction between args/kwargs, at least when it comes to a function's __defaults__ attr. An arg can be turned into a kwarg by messing with the __defaults__ attr.

\- you cannot have a nested tuple/dict/list with more than sys.MAX_RECURSION levels, because each list access apparently counts as a new call frame? (This could plausibly happen when generating a dict from json or html or xml)

<comment><USER2> > there's no distinction between args/kwargs

At the python level, all _named_ args[0] are kwargs. The reverse is not true in Python 3, although it is in Python 2. At the C level, arguments can be exclusively one or the other even in Python 2.

> at least when it comes to a function's __defaults__ attr. An arg can be > turned into a kwarg by messing with the __defaults__ attr.

No, an arg can be turned _optional_ by manipulating __defaults__, that is a different (though not quite orthogonal) axis, especially in Python 3 (which supports python-level required keyword arguments).

> \- since True/False are aliased to 1/0, you cannot have both 1 and True as > dictionary keys.

They are not aliased (`True is 1` will return False) but they are equal and hash identically.

[0] *args notwithstanding

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I've got one! First, some context:

This is normal assignment unpacking:

        >>> a, b = 1, 2
        >>> [a, b]
        [1, 2]

(Mismatch gives errors)

        >>> a, b = [1]
        ValueError
        >>> a, b = [1, 2, 3]
        ValueError

Extra parentheses works too:

        >>> (a, b) = [2, 3]
        >>> [a, b]
        [2, 3]

Unpacking a single value:

        >>> (a,) = [4]
        >>> a
        4

Works without parentheses too:

        >>> a, = [5]
        >>> a
        5

No values does not work:

        >>> , = []
        SyntaxError

Neither does empty parentheses:

        >>> () = []
        SyntaxError

Now, the oddity:

        >>> [] = []
        >>>

This raises no error! Neither does this:

        >>> [] = ()
        >>>

<comment><USER4> This isn't doing what you think though. There are container objects underneath.

For instance "(a, b)" is "a tuple object containing two things, the values named "a" and "b" so you can still refer to them separately. "[a, b]" is a new list with those same elements, not an alias for "(a, b)".

<comment><USER2> The oddity is that unpacking an empty iterable works when the target is a "list", but not when it's a "tuple". In fact it so doesn't work it actually fails during parsing.

And there are no collections underneath the LHS, it compiles to an UNPACK_SEQUENCE opcode in both cases:

        >>> @dis.dis
        ... def foo():
        ...     (a, b) = bar()
        ...
          3           0 LOAD_GLOBAL              0 (bar)
                      3 CALL_FUNCTION            0 (0 positional, 0 keyword pair)
                      6 UNPACK_SEQUENCE          2
                      9 STORE_FAST               0 (a)
                     12 STORE_FAST               1 (b)
                     15 LOAD_CONST               0 (None)
                     18 RETURN_VALUE
        >>> @dis.dis
        ... def foo():
        ...     [a, b] = bar()
        ...
          3           0 LOAD_GLOBAL              0 (bar)
                      3 CALL_FUNCTION            0 (0 positional, 0 keyword pair)
                      6 UNPACK_SEQUENCE          2
                      9 STORE_FAST               0 (a)
                     12 STORE_FAST               1 (b)
                     15 LOAD_CONST               0 (None)
                     18 RETURN_VALUE
        >>> @dis.dis
        ... def foo():
        ...     [] = bar()
        ...
          3           0 LOAD_GLOBAL              0 (bar)
                      3 CALL_FUNCTION            0 (0 positional, 0 keyword pair)
                      6 UNPACK_SEQUENCE          0
                      9 LOAD_CONST               0 (None)
                     12 RETURN_VALUE

<comment><USER4> It's a good point that Python is smart enough not to build a mutable list on the right-hand side when not needed (e.g. for "x = [1, 2]" it will and for "y, z = [1, 2]" it will not). A right-hand tuple however is still a separate type, and if you disassemble the original cases you can see that "[] = []" is more wasteful than "[] = ()".

      >>> import dis
      >>>
      >>> @dis.dis
      ... def f():
      ...     a, b = 1, 2
      ...     (a, b) = [2, 3]
      ...     (a,) = [4]
      ...     a, = [5]
      ...     [] = []
      ...     [] = ()
      ...
        3           0 LOAD_CONST               6 ((1, 2))
                    3 UNPACK_SEQUENCE          2
                    6 STORE_FAST               0 (a)
                    9 STORE_FAST               1 (b)

        4          12 LOAD_CONST               2 (2)
                   15 LOAD_CONST               3 (3)
                   18 ROT_TWO
                   19 STORE_FAST               0 (a)
                   22 STORE_FAST               1 (b)

        5          25 LOAD_CONST               4 (4)
                   28 STORE_FAST               0 (a)

        6          31 LOAD_CONST               5 (5)
                   34 STORE_FAST               0 (a)

        7          37 BUILD_LIST               0
                   40 UNPACK_SEQUENCE          0

        8          43 LOAD_CONST               7 (())
                   46 UNPACK_SEQUENCE          0
                   49 LOAD_CONST               0 (None)
                   52 RETURN_VALUE

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Some of these are pretty simple and not odd, e.g. immutability of tuples, iterator behaviour or modifying collections during iteration.

—————————————————————————————————————

Somewhat related video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCGofLIzX6g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCGofLIzX6g)

</comment><comment><USER6> Good thing CPython is the spec for the language.

That said, many of these "oddities" are disingenuous to the point of lying, many of the error messages are omitted. Or the functionality converts to list before doing an operation. Not that it is good library or language design, but this is a great way to inflate bug counts.

<comment><USER7> I think you may be taking the word oddity different than I meant it. These are things that trip up my students when they're learning Python.

I left out error messages (and occasionally other things) because Twitter.

I don't think any of the ones I put in this moment should be considered bugs. Many of these are core language features.

<comment><USER6> Some of them seem like litmus test for a Python programmer interview, others feel like WTFs Python LoL! It is hard to disambiguate them. Standing on their own in that twitter feed, with little context, there is next to no enlightenment.

Lots of the oddities could be explained by

        In [1]: list({'a':1, 'b':2, 'c':3})
        Out[1]: ['a', 'b', 'c']

When people would expect

        In [2]: list({'a':1, 'b':2, 'c':3}.items())
        Out[2]: [('a', 1), ('b', 2), ('c', 3)]

Lots of Python makes sense. About 3% does not. It is good to know the 3% so it doesn't bite one in the ass. Maybe switch to image posts? 1 megapixel limit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Am I the only one who hated the mobile pop-out slideshow Twitter uses for this?

Also, the one about appending to arrays didn't seem too crazy.

</comment><comment><USER9> Here's one from [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/15171695/whats-with- the-...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/15171695/whats-with-the-integer- cache-inside-python):

      In [1]: a = 1

      In [2]: b = 1

      In [3]: a is b
      Out[3]: True

      In [4]: a = 257

      In [5]: b = 257

      In [6]: a is b
      Out[6]: False

<comment><USER10> Yes, because the smaller ints are 'pre-constructed' in Python (hence all 1's are the same "int(1)" object)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Aha, three ways to concatenate arrays! I see Python conforms to the TIMTOWTDI principle. :)

<comment><USER12> There should be one _obvious_ way to do it. The obvious way is using +, and is sufficient for 90% of programs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Reminds me of WTFJS: [https://github.com/denysdovhan/wtfjs/blob/master/README.md](https://github.com/denysdovhan/wtfjs/blob/master/README.md)

</comment><comment><USER14>
        >>> a = [1]
        >>> a += (2,)
        >>> a
        [1, 2]

        >>> b = (1,)
        >>> b += [2]
        TypeError

It's an oddity that an immutable type cannot be mutated in place?

<comment><USER7> This one is an odd one because initially most people I show this one to assume the oddity is that immutable types cannot be mutated in-place.

But tuples can be mutated in-place: >>> b = (1,) >>> b += (2,) >>> b (1, 2)

The odd thing is that lists can be in-place added (+='d) to any iterable, while tuples can only be in-place added to tuples.

I think it works this way so that += on lists works consistently with the extend method on lists, which also accepts any iterable.

<comment><USER2> > But tuples can be mutated in-place: >>> b = (1,) >>> b += (2,) >>> b (1, 2)

That's not an in-place mutation any more than

        >>> a = 1
        >>> a += 2

is.

The oddity is that most people assume `a += b` is the same as `a = a + b`, but Python allows overloading both separately _and_ list.__iadd__ is an alias for list.extend, hence being able to += any iterable onto a list whereas `list + non_list` generates a type error.

The original intent is an optimisation (to avoid copying the subject list) but it's a broken one as it behaves very inconsistently with regular concatenation/addition: it mutates the subject in-place _and_ allows a different (wider) set of parameters.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> cpython oddity: The following program (call it "20.py") takes a minute to run, but the reported time for the "x=..." line is a few microseconds.

      import time
      if 1:
        t1 = time.time()
        x = ((((((((0,)*20,)*20,)*20,)*20,)*20,)*20,)*20,)*20
        t2 = time.time()
        print(t2-t1)

      % /usr/bin/time python 20.py
      3.09944152832e-06
             70.91 real        70.91 user         0.24 sys

<comment><USER5> That's probably ARC.

<comment><USER15> ARC? The GIS language? Age Restricted Content? Advance Reading Copy? Activity- Regulated Cytoskeleton-associated protein?

<comment><USER5> Automatic Reference Counting, i.e. garbage collection. That's why the timer wouldn't attribute the CPU time to the line you mention; the GC cleans the structure up when the "x" goes out of scope, so after the timing has ended.

<comment><USER15> Thanks. No, it's not due to reference counting, at least, not according to the tracker issue which reports this oddity.

Add:

      import os
      os._exit(0)

to the bottom of the code and it still takes a minute to run, even though there's no final garbage collection.

Also, that code creates only a few hundred objects, and the 'x' data structure is acyclic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Best use of Twitter Moments I've ever seen.

<comment><USER17> First use of Twitter Moments I've ever seen. What is this? A collection of tweets? I'm confused because they all seem to be by the author, did he tweet them himself and collected them?

The page's UI looks weird, I'm not sure if Twitter had a redesign or if I'm blocking some of their CSS.

<comment><USER7> I think they're pretty much a collection of tweets. This was the first time I used moments and I'm not sure where I saw them used before I made this.

They're mostly by me because I made a goal for myself to tweet out one of these every week for a year. Others have shared their own and I've tweeted my own since then, but Twitter's hashtag search is pretty bad so I made a moment.

<comment><USER17> I think it works quite well, I just hadn't seen the feature before. I disagree with you a bit, though, in that many seemed pretty regular, and weren't really oddities, in my opinion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> There's no oddity in being able to extend an array in several ways (.extend, += other array, etc)

</comment><comment><USER19> Why does the _MyClass__number example work the way it does?

<comment><USER2> Within class bodies, symbols prefixed with two underscores get "mangled" (prefixed with the class name).

This is intended to avoid risks of collisions for classes built specifically for inheritance so you'd usually use it with attributes e.g. `self.__name = name` (that way if a subclass defines its own "name" things will work as expected for both). I was unaware this also worked for straight local variables.

I was unaware it happened for all symbols, but I guess it makes sense as the Python compiler does very little analysis.</comment></comment>


A deep look at BIND9 CVE-2015-5477 - <AUTHOR> https://blog.cloudflare.com/a-deep-look-at-cve-2015-5477-and-how-cloudflare-virtual-dns-customers-are-protected/ <comment><USER2> I wonder if this can be used to automatically shut down the DNS servers participating in a reflected DDoS recursion attack: those are unpatched.

<comment><USER3> With an attack like that, you know the inbound IPs targeting you are already vulnerable, so know what you can do? You can turn them back on themselves to attack the attack.

This approach is not recommended by legal professionals.

<comment><USER2> Attacking them back involves DDoS, I.e. time, infrastructure and legality issues. This stops an attack instantly.

<comment><USER3> Well, you can reflect their bad DNS back at them using their own methods. You can write less than 200 lines of code to destroy your attackers.

Morally right in an if-someone-tires-to-kill-you-kill-them-right-back way? Certainly legally wrong since most of the participants in these attacks are misconfigured "innocent" 3rd parties, not hostile entities themselves.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> You can check your server easily without doing the real attack. Because that would result into a denial of service. You just check the version of BIND in the linux terminal: dig @google.com version.bind chaos txt

If that is one of the following (or higher), you are save: 9.10.2-P3, 9.9.7-P2, 9.9.5-3ubuntu0.4, 9.8.1.P1-4ubuntu0.12, 9.9.5-4.3ubuntu0.3, 9.9.5-9ubuntu0.2, 9.9.4-18.el7_1.3, 9.8.2-0.37.rc1.el6_7.2, 9.3.6-25.P1.el5_11.3, 9.7.0-21.P2.el5_11.2, 9.8.4.P1-6+nmu2+deb7u2~bpo60+1, 9.7.3-1~squeeze16, 9.8.4.P1-6+nmu2+deb7u6, 9.9.5-9+deb8u2, 9.9.5-11

Ofcourse everything is easier if automated, so that is exactly what following page does: [https://scan.patrolserver.com/bind/CVE-2015-5477](https://scan.patrolserver.com/bind/CVE-2015-5477)

</comment><comment><USER5> The one-line patch to _dns_tkey_processquery()_ fixes the immediate problem, but until they clearly document the dangers inherent in _dns_message_findname()_ they're just asking to have this happen again.

</comment><comment><USER6> That's some odd code. What would be the point in requiring the pointer's target to be NULL?

<comment><USER7> n.b. it's a double-pointer. The /called/ code probably allocates a dns_name_t itself, updating the /callee's/ pointer. If the callee's pointer isn't NULL, there's a chance overwriting it will cause a memory leak (as the caller may no longer have a reference to whatever it was pointing to). The comment acknowledges that it's perhaps unnecessarily strict.

<comment><USER8> Hrm, it was a worthwhile check imho. Without the check, the memory leak you've indicated would have allowed the same packet to cause an out-of-memory DOS.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Looks like something that should have been caught with a unit test that would test all possible error paths.</comment>


Show HN: Multiplayer 3D Chess with WebGL and Websockets - <AUTHOR> http://client.scenevr.com/?connect=chess.scenevr.hosting/chess.xml

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm the developer, happy to chat with anyone!

It's only 180 lines of javascript to make this game, scenevr does all the heavy lifting.

[http://chess.scenevr.hosting/chess.xml](http://chess.scenevr.hosting/chess.xml)</comment>


Microsoft Is Winning the 'Cloud War' Against Amazon - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/sergeiklebnikov/2020/01/07/microsoft-is-winning-the-cloud-war-against-amazon-report/#19c31ff73bec <comment><USER2> Does it occur to anyone to mention that it might be OK for there to be multiple 'cloud' platforms out there? That it might even be _a good thing_? That there does _not_ need to be one winner (despite the fondest wet-dreams of MS/AMZN/GOOG execs)?

<comment><USER3> It would be a bad thing to have only one clear winner - you now have to deal with antitrust laws.

It's in ones best interest to look like they have a close competitor, but in reality so distant it won't catch up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> All this is based on a survey. It would be very interesting to know the number of people that participated in that survey and the tech they're working on.

<comment><USER5> I'd also like to hear what part of "Azure" they're using. Microsoft was smart to leverage (force) O365 customers into being Azure customers using AzureAD. What I'd like to know is how many have actually graduated beyond that and are hosting real infrastructure.

<comment><USER6> As a central European I would also like to know who hosts anything on Azure. They are building new data centers here I believe, but the connection speed their services are providing is laughable. It may work for a retro-site from the 90s to simulate a 56k modem.

If you restrict your employees to browser based office, you would loose a vast amount of productivity.

Their success is probably based on Office alone. AWS does supply extremely fast services and we use it for hosting. But business owners often prefer to use services from a single provider, so MS does indeed have an advantage.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Alright then, let's do a quick thought experiment:

We've seen AWS go down. The result: multiple major websites go offline or are broken to an unusable degree. Many people simply can't get work done. Everybody notices. Major news outlets put out stories.

Let's say Azure goes down. Lots of MS products would probably go dark, but aside from that? Not much. So yeah, I don't buy it.

</comment><comment><USER8> An interesting amount of "MS is winning over AWS" articles these days. Not buying any of it.

<comment><USER9> According to revenue estimates at the end of the article, AWS market share is more than twice that of Azure, so "winning" is a big word...

<comment><USER10> Also note that Azure revenue reports usually includes consulting work so the difference in market is even much larger than that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> There are a flock of pump and dump investors pushing articles like this ...I wouldn't be surprised if Amazon stock actually gets a hit ...oh well you know what to do then

</comment><comment><USER12> There is no substance to this.

Don't get me wrong, I think Microsoft is making all of the right moves. But AWS is releasing new services at breakneck pace.

MSFT has made a strategic investment in Databricks. This feels like where they can carve out more advantage.

MSFT acquired github... haven't seen much change here though. What if AWS acquires GitLab?</comment>


Protect your MacBook with style - <AUTHOR> http://matteodallombra.net/2011/12/20/protect-your-macbook-with-style/ <comment><USER2> 900g for a wooden case! How many did you get sold?</comment>


Svg.js - <AUTHOR> http://www.svgjs.com

<comment><USER2> Can anyone give an overview of why this is different / better than raphaeljs [1]?

[1] <http://raphaeljs.com/></comment>


Ask HN: What are the best open source solution for self hosted email? - <AUTHOR> I would like to host an email service for around 150+ people. It's not possible for us to offroad Protonmail which focuses on security. What are the some best open source email solution available? <comment><USER2> Postfix with Dovecot or Cyrus IMAP, along with a good sysadmin.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am don't have much knowledge as system admin. For security measure what action can be taken?

<comment><USER2> For 150 users _you need_ a sysadmin. Go and hire one.

<comment><USER3> Please stop with this advertisement. Yea, we know you are a sysadmin but whether its 150 users or 1500, it's not you who is going to decide if he needs one or not.

<comment><USER2> > Please stop with this advertisement.

And I am advertising what exactly?

> [...] whether its 150 users or 1500, it's not you who is going to decide if > he needs one or not.

Indeed, it's not me who decides, it's the reality that decides.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Postfix + Dovecot

<comment><AUTHOR> I am don't have much knowledge as system admin. For security measure what action can be taken?</comment></comment>


Revolutionary Angels' new business plan competition: $250K prize, $5K entry fee - <AUTHOR> http://www.xconomy.com/boston/2009/10/05/revolutionary-angels-launches-pay-to-play-business-plan-competition/ <comment><USER2> Boycott these guys. Never ever apply to them, please.

It's a simple rip-off. No serious VC or angel would _EVER_ charge you for pitching, if they're going to rip you off at the entrance you can be sure they'll be ripping you off at the exit too.

Until you have a deal, you pay your way, they pay theirs.

<comment><USER3> Not to mention that taking particularly stupid sources of funding can give you a scarlet A if you wise-up further down the line and need to raise more money. It's a bad deal even if you "win".

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Pay $5000 so you can fund someone else's startup!

A prerequisite of "angel investing" is that you actually invest. Here we have a group of "advisors" funneling other startups' money (not their own) to a company of their choosing, and taking any upside in their equity stake!

Sick. This makes Boston look pretty bad, and xconomy looks worse for even giving them publicity for this.

</comment><comment><USER5> Ok, I'm going to be unusually harsh for me, but here goes.

If this is really going to be quarterly, that's just shy of $800K in fees per year and 392 startups pre-paying for "services" and 10% (!!!) of your co. Yeah, no thanks.

Anyone in Boston is better off hitting the crowded myriad of events (Web Inno, Open Coffee, etc.) and spending the rest of their money on lottery tickets. At least with Web Inno and Open Coffee you can meet folks who actually matter in this scene, unlike their list of "advisers".

</comment><comment><USER6> _If_ this paid out more that the total in entry fees, with the sponsors making an additional contribution to the prize pool (which they internally justify as a publicity and lead-acquisition expense), then I could squint and strain to make a not-totally-laughable case for it.

Disregarding the time and distraction, this hypothetical alternate competition could have a slightly-positive expected return in cash for credible entrants. The feedback and publicity could be worth the trouble. And the whole process could be seen as a helpful winnowing process, siphoning money towards more- likely-to-succeed ventures.

But as structured, not only does Revolutionary Angels want their 40% overhead fee, but also equity in the winner. ("Here. let us buy some of your company with all of your entry fees.") That's double-dipping when even the 40% single- dip is excessive.

And gven how generous they've already been to themselves, I would be highly suspicious of the judging process as well -- they might triple-dip by awarding the prizes to cronies.

</comment><comment><USER7> This sounds a bit shady to me. They get 100 startups to pay 5k each, then they choose 2 of those startups to fund 250k and 50k, with 200k going to cover their costs? In the end, you have 98 unhappy startups paying for 2 startups to launch and to pay these people.

<comment><USER8> It is a free country, but this is a gross idea. Thankfully it seems not to be attracting any entrants. MIT's 100K competition gives almost the same cash outlay for no equity and MUCH better connections and support. According to his model he gets 10% AND $800K in "management fees" if everything was to go as planned (100 entrants per quarter). I hope this is the last we hear of them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The really odd thing is that they will find people willing to pay to be in this competition.

</comment><comment><USER10> $50 is questionable, $5k is laughable.

</comment><comment><USER11> It looks more like a lottery than a "business".

</comment><comment><USER12> I never understood business plan competitions. What's next, project plan competitions? Data flow diagram competitions?

This is just a bad idea. The business plan is just one (small) piece of what it takes to compete. What really matters is the business itself, not the plan.

To me, this makes as much sense as cancelling the election and going with the polls, or cancelling the football game and going with the bookies' predictions.

</comment><comment><USER13> "how long it can take for new entrepreneurs to win their first meeting with an angel or venture group" - has anyone had trouble getting meetings with angels or venture groups? In my experience this is the only easy part of running a startup.

</comment><comment><USER14> This is a well-established business model in poetry contests.

</comment><comment><USER15> You'd have to be very desperate and foolish to fall for this.

</comment><comment><USER16> New business plan. Host forums for business plans, charge $5k entry fees. 12 people show up, rent is paid for a year. Host 3-4 a year, buy a yacht.

</comment><comment><USER17> If you're a startup wasting 5k on a business plan competition, you don't deserve $2.50 let alone $250,000. Some don't know any better though. These guys should be boycotted, blacklisted, and shamed from anything that is startup related. Stuff like this really ticks me off.

</comment><comment><USER18> Would many YC startups be willing to pony up $5k for something like this? Little chance of winning or getting much visibility. Seems like the $$$ could be better spent on development, hosting/colo costs, paying the rent, etc.

</comment><comment><USER19> shmucks...

</comment><comment><USER20> Revolutionary Angels' new business plan: competition</comment>


Ask HN: What do you do to make your developers productive? - <AUTHOR> I've been in a lot of different types of shops. One thing I found in common across the board is no shop really dedicates any time to making sure developers are personally productive.
There might be read-me files and hints at setting up a development environment, but have any of your teams gone above and beyond to make sure that a developer can at least: Run, Debug, Install, Test any component without 1) A dependency on other people, 2) A dependency on a specific location or office or network, 3) A dependency on a shared system where your test data can be affected by others.
But I want to know more - what is it specifically that you are all doing to ensure developer productivity: are you asking them if X works for them? Do you test them? Do you hold training sessions?
I'm asking this question because of all the shops I work at I end up being the guy that makes the build, builds out the core code base, sets up the IDE environment files, sets up Git/Maven/Docker/Architecture/Test Data.
And I want things to go smoothly - it generally does, I think every iteration things are better, but I've definitely noticed most developers don't upstart like this. They don't try to improve, they don't attempt to make sure things are ideal.
Instead they code locally, have no way to test locally, debug locally, have no test data add log statements and commit - connect to a shared environment and see if their shit works.
Part of me wants the world of software craft to start at these basics and then work on the product - I believe our productivity gains would be through the roof, but instead I get to hear day in and day out how everyone is stuck.
So tell me, what does your org do to get this right? <comment><USER2> You won't find any arguments on an intellectual basis, but as you know, doing things right in software development is the "path less taken".</comment>


Ask HN: Short list of the best hacker/entrepreneur/startup-related meetups to attend in NYC? - <AUTHOR>

I'll be moving to NYC from Honolulu relatively soon, and I'm very interested to attend some good meetups or periodic events for hackers, entrepreneurs, and people running startups — that is, the kind of people who read HN. Of course I can and have Googled this, but it's hard to sort out the wheat from the chaff. Any suggestions for "the" meetups to attend to start networking? Thanks! <comment><USER2> New york linux user group(NYlug) . Good place to meet community hackers and listen to some interesting discussions.</comment>


Ask HN: Which search engine do you use, and why? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> DuckDuckGo. I went back and forth between DDG and Google a number of times before I managed to stick with DDG. I rarely go to Google at this point, only in cases where the search is _extremely_ specific and it really needs Google's omnipresent eye. DDG's results have gotten a lot better in the last year or so and the !bangs are super handy.

Meanwhile Google is experimenting tirelessly with AI that 'corrects' my searches, pushes mentally draining and content starved hype sites to the top and redirects me to buggy AMP versions of sites that were fine previously.

<comment><USER3> I was using DDG on iPhone to escape Googel AMP pages, but now both !g and !ge take me to www.google.com instead of encrypted.google.com.

Hopefully someone from DDG will see this because I have no clue where to send feedback.

<comment><USER2> encrypted.google.com is being deprecated by Google.

[https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/7631341?p=encryp...](https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/7631341?p=encrypted_deprecation&hl=en)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Google because I need the best results in the least amount of time. I've tried switching to DuckDuckGo and I just find myself using the !g way too much to justify the switch.

</comment><comment><USER5> Unfortunately, I think your results will be heavily skewed in a place like Hacker News, which may or may not be what you want.

So far, half of the replies are about DuckDuckGo, which doesn't even account for 0.1% of all searches globally.

Personally, I've switched to DDG about 2 weeks ago and it's been pretty much seamless. This depends mostly on what I search for; if it's something very specific, Google will provide better results. However, a lot of the time I simply search for standalone topics that do not require a lot of context, like 'Japan GDP' or 'blue shark'. In these cases, DDG is just as good as Google, given that you simply open the first result anyway.

I'd love to see more people switch to DDG, but most people simply don't care or are not tech savvy enough to understand how much tracking Google does.

<comment><USER6> Most people don't know that there are other options. Even among those, most people choose Google because they believe it's good and because they're are used to it. Google being the default search engine in many browser deployments across platforms and countries also cements its position further among the common crowd.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Saerx.me because it uses other search engines add a proxy, giving me the privacy I desire. Also, I live in China where, arguably, the best engine is blocked. Searx.me also gives me access to it without firing up a VPN.

</comment><comment><USER8> Google.

I've tried to use DDG several times in the past, and while the product works well, Google has the "familiarity effect" baked into its search. I've been conditioned for nearly two decades by Google's layout and visual cues. At a moment when I'm uncertain of something and am searching for an answer, the last thing I want is to be uncertain/unfamiliar with the search tool itself. Those stacking of anxieties, however small, is why I think people continue to use Google.

<comment><USER6> This probably may not help, but I'm just putting it here so that anyone reading this may benefit from it. If you use Firefox, there's an extension called Stylish [1] that lets you change the look of any site (Stylish is to CSS what GreaseMonkey is to JavaScript). The site userstyles.org has community contributed styles for many sites. Here's the list for all the themes available to style DDG. [2] There are even styles for a multi-column result page.

This can only change the look of the site by using the content on the page, but cannot provide missing features. Whether that's a UX improvement or not will depend on the style and the user.

[1]: [https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/stylish/](https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/stylish/)

[2]: [https://userstyles.org/styles/browse?search_terms=duckduckgo](https://userstyles.org/styles/browse?search_terms=duckduckgo)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> DuckDuckGo and Google, although I barely use any search engine.

I use Firefox search keywords to emulate DuckDuckGo's bangs (and much more), download, browse and search documentation on disk when possible, and use the location bar's immediate search on history and bookmarks to its extreme. I notice people have no idea how faster it is to actually wait half a second for the suggestions on bookmarks/history to load and quickly skim them and find what you're searching, although it only works if your history dates back to 7 years and you basically have half the web in your Firefox history.

When I really need a search engine, my algorithm is the following: do I just want the link to a specific site/page I'm thinking about? Yes -> DuckDuckGo. No -> Google.

</comment><comment><USER10> DuckDuckGo, but half the time I use the "bang" keywords to specifically use another site. I like the simple page layout, that they don't track people and that it does what I ask without trying to guess what I really mean. I don't know how it compares to Google, but most of the time I find what I want in the first page of links, so it's good enough for me.

My biggest complaint is that it doesn't index many forums and mailing lists, so it can be difficult to find answers for really specific questions. It does look at StackOverflow, but there's a number of communities (Linux users, some niche language developers, etc.) that don't use StackOverflow much. In that case I'll often use "!g" to get Google results.

</comment><comment><USER11> Searx because its good in both local results and in other categories. I feel like Google has been focusing too much on local results and so their other results are kind of odd now, they don't make sense anymore. With Searx I get a mix of everything, its perfect for me. Right now I use searx.me but I've been looking around to see if its the fastest instance. There's a page where they sort all searx instances by ping (can't find it on mobile). Maybe I'll run my own public instance one day. Would be a nice project if not too costly.

</comment><comment><USER12> Google because it works. I don't remember last time I had to visit the second page to find something. Also it's fast, and obviously well integrated to Google Chrome.

</comment><comment><USER13> DuckDuckGo because I get good results and also because I want to give them more data so that they will have a better chance at staying competitive.

</comment><comment><USER6> DuckDuckGo about 60% of the time, followed by StartPage and Google. The main reason for choosing DDG is privacy. And it's the same for StartPage too. I never search on Google when logged in, and I try to isolate browser activities in different ways (on Firefox, I clear cookies with Cookie AutoDelete, use Containers, etc.).

I usually start my searches on DDG, and move on by modifying the same search query with a !s prefix (for StartPage) or a !g prefix (for Google). DuckDuckGo's date search is comparatively limited. DDG still isn't adequate for me for tech related searches, though it's gotten better over time (StartPage, which is a proxy for Google, and Google itself, are much better). Image search also has more refinement options on Google than on the other two.

I also use DDG to search Wikipedia (!w prefix) and IMDB (!imdb prefix, which is a bit long to type though).

DDG has a bang search keyword for almost every site you may want to search on. [1]

[1]: [https://duckduckgo.com/bang](https://duckduckgo.com/bang)

</comment><comment><USER14> Duckduckgo, because I don't memorize rarely used git commands/language and/or library features, and so when I search for how to do something, it gives me the answer instantaneously without having to wade through stackOverflow pages. I use Google rarely for very specific things(like to check the date a TV show's latest episode is going to air)

</comment><comment><USER15> duckduckgo because i love of the bangs !gh !npm !yt !gm but also !g sometimes.

<comment><USER16> For those who might assume that setting up custom browser searches is the same as using DuckDuckGo's !bangs - it isn't.

DDG's bangs work across multiple browsers (provided that DDG is the default browser), and it takes less time to just do that than to set up thousands of custom searches. It's much faster than using the site: suffix too.

For example, the Arch Linux wiki is simply !arch <search term> and naturally, !hn, !reddit and !twitter (or !tw) are also covered.

[https://duckduckgo.com/bang](https://duckduckgo.com/bang)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I've been going back and forth between DDG and Google for almost two years. When I first started using DDG it wasn't great. It'd often be missing what you'd want or have worse results than Google. Over time it has improved dramatically while Google's quality has declined.

Today DDG is on par with Google. My biggest complain is that they _both_ have bad results for many searches. I don't necessarily fault them since search is a Hard Problem.

One thing they both do that's quite annoying is prioritizing ecommerce results over original source product pages. For example, if you search for a specific product you'll often get Amazon as the top result rather than the manufacturer's site.

</comment><comment><USER18> DuckDuckGo, because it gives me the answers I seek (if I'm not satisfied, I'll throw in a !g, but the efficacy of that has declined over the past years, as DDG has improved). The one exception is Google Scholar, which is still unmatched.

<comment><USER19> Google scholar is indeed amazingly useful, but oddly enough for me DDG is what makes it easy to use. I have no clue how to get the scholar results from the google page. If I'm honest I don't even know how to access google scholar _without_ using DDG, although I imagine I could probably figure it out if it ever became necessary.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Google on PC, DDG on the phone.

I use an extension on Firefox to be able to view images directly and reverse search images on Google Images since they removed that feature.

None of those extensions worked for Firefox Android, so I've just made DDG my main search engine there.

<comment><USER21> What's the name of this extension?

<comment><USER20> It's Make Google Images Great Again.

[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/make- google-i...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/make-google- images-great-again/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I use StartPage as my primary. If I don't see results I want, I'll fall back to encrypted Google. If you're looking for more alternative search engines, PrivacyTools.io is what got me onto StartPage

<comment><USER23> Sorry the 'encrypted' qualification for Google gave me a slight smile since G uses this 'private' information more than anyone else would.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Google, because when it comes to localized (aka non-US) content every other search engine pretty much sucks. That's why in Europe Google dominates the market with market share in search north of 90%.

<comment><USER25> Polish guy living in Chile, using DDG as a main search for something like 2 years ago now. on the occasion (once every week maybe?) I switch to Google (!g + search) if DDG doesn't give me good result, but with Google recently almost every time I have to switch to verbatim mode as normal one returns garbage... rest od the searches are rather ok, but I'm mostly searching in English and Spanish. in the latter case I sometimes have to force local results (toggle in the search pageof DDG) as it returns results from different Latin countries.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I used Yahoo! in the earliest days. Then I tried HOTBOT. Then it was Altavista, and it's Raging derivative as soon as it launched in 2000 or thereabouts. I've used Google almost exclusively since 2001.

</comment><comment><USER11> Does anyone know how searx gets around the Google captchas that trigger after too many searches at once (or by using a shared VPN). IP Rotation maybe?

</comment><comment><USER27> I've mostly switched to DDG. Google gives much better results in some cases but for the vast majority of my searches DDG works fine.

</comment><comment><USER28> !DuckDuckGo, switched from Google in 2013. In beginning I was !g a lot but now never. What I prefer is the straight-forward results, same results for everybody, instant answers, etc. And the fact they open source a lot (looked to contribute but ugh. failed, even i like Perl)

</comment><comment><USER29> My default is DDG, but I append !g so often that I am practically using Google at this point.

</comment><comment><USER30> Google.

Results are far more relevant than DDG or Bing.

And I trust Google more than Microsoft to keep my data secure.

<comment><USER23> Do you mean by intent, competence or both?

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> startpage.com as a proxy for Google results.

</comment><comment><USER32> Duckduckgo. It's good enough now, I am slowly moving away from Google products (only Gmail left). Rarely, I will use !g to go to Google but it has gotten lesser and lesser recently.

</comment><comment><USER33> DuckDuckGo has become the search engine of choice. Again I agree that HN is the type of audience that will skew the results, but personally I have DDG a more than capable search engine.

</comment><comment><USER34> duckduckgo w/ Firefox for personal things, and Chrome+Google for tech.

I find the duckduckgo search results for tech problems far inferior for some reason.

</comment><comment><USER35> I use Google. Too many times I'm searching for something so specific that even Google doesn't return a full page of results.

</comment><comment><USER36> Google. Inertia and "good enough" SERPs.

</comment><comment><USER37> Usually DDG. It's improved in the past year or so; I find myself falling back onto Google less and less frequently.

</comment><comment><USER38> Mostly Google. I am yet to find a search engine that gives better results for technical queries. Google just works.

</comment><comment><USER39> Bing, because it's good enough and it's not the Google monoculture.

</comment><comment><USER40> well, certainly not DDG, since it's blocked in Iran. :/

</comment><comment><USER41> I used DuckDuckGo for years: it's really nice.

Since December 2017 I am using Qwant: it just works.

I am using them because I want to keep the Internet interesting and full of variety. For me internet is more than google and facebook.

</comment><comment><USER42> all of them because i want to spread the wealth

</comment><comment><USER43> startpage.com (Google proxy)

</comment><comment><USER44> searx, because I can use google, bing, ddg and startpage in one go.

</comment><comment><USER45> Bing because google is evil.

<comment><USER46> When I started becoming a bit more privacy-conscious, a couple of years ago, I started using uMatrix. I used it, amongst other things, to disable javascript. I thought DDG didn't work with javascript disabled (then I realized I had mis- configured uMatrix) and because of that I used Bing for 1yr+.

It's actually quite good. Very rarely I need Google.

After I managed to get DDG working without JS, I moved to DDG. Also quite good.

I think Google is no longer miles ahead of the competition, and I suspect hasn't been in a while.</comment></comment>


Parsing the impact of Anonymous - <AUTHOR> http://neteffect.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/12/09/parsing_the_impact_of_anonymous

<comment><USER2> "As long as they don't break into other people's computers, launching DDoS should not be treated as a crime by default; "

Yeah, they should. Those attacks are the same as vandalism. They destroy some things that are hard to quantify, such as trust and image, as well as cost the companies money to attempt to mitigate the issue.

<comment><USER3> > Those attacks are the same as vandalism.

An analogy for you: What if all your (Anonymous) friends went to Wal-Mart and stood in line to buy something. Then when they got to the front they would fumble around in their pockets and say, "oh darn, I forgot my wallet", then they'd got out and come back in and do it again?

Would that be vandalism? Would it cost Wal-Mart money? Would Wal-Mart have to spend time dealing with the problem? Would it be illegal? Should it be? What if these anonymous strangers stood just stood outside and held up signs? Wouldn't the company hire someone to deal with them? Wouldn't that cost them money?

<comment><USER4> That is, indeed, illegal. In Japan, the crime is Disruption of Business (rough translation). In the US, as soon as the clerk wises up and tells you to leave, you're trespassing. It is also probably public nuisance and disturbance of the peace, and an enterprising DA could probably indict you for larceny.

But there's two or more of them doing it, with the intention of harassment. Ho ho ho, bad idea. Now we're up to conspiracy to commit racketeering.

Tech people seem to think that the law is a finite state machine, which has no memory and so cannot parse a crime out of a series of legal actions. Tech people are foolish about a lot of things.

<comment><USER5> Stop generalizing. _All people_ are foolish in a lot of things. One can't know everything.

<comment><USER6> Concert pianists are foolish about hamster care. They will chew right the hell through a cardboard toilet paper tube! what are you thinking, stupid pianist!

Audio engineers are foolish about contract law. It's called an implied-in-fact contract! IMPLIED IN FACT! It doesn't need to be spelled out in ink! Why do you always make this mistake, audio engineers?

Sanitation workers are foolish about bespoke tailoring. Functioning sleeve buttons don't work on off-the-rack clothes! You can't position the buttonholes until you've altered the jacket! Stop putting functioning sleeve buttons on those jacket and get back to collecting trash!

See, there, I can name three. What is your point? He didn't say tech people are simply foolish; he said they're foolish about _a lot of things_ , and he's right, and you literally agreed with him _the very sentence after_ you told him to stop.

Tech people sure are thin skinned. Way, way more thin skinned than audio engineers and san workers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Perhaps if the author had titled the article "Understanding the impact of Anonymous" people would be better able to parse the title.

</comment><comment><USER8> Anyone else sick of articles implying that anyone who doesn't want to support Wikileaks is "bowing to pressure" from some unnamed "they" (probably _Republicans_ )? Wikileaks very much seems to have an anti-US agenda and I can totally understand why an American company would want nothing to do with them.

<comment><USER9> Stances regarding Wikileaks cross party lines. The current Democratic administration is against them, and I noticed some attempts by narrative- seeking media to pigeonhole support for Wikileaks as being the province of Tea Partiers. But lots of the US left like Wikileaks, so that doesn't work well. A slightly better division might be that the extremes of both the Left and the Right like Wikileaks to some degree, and the middle mostly doesn't. But support on the Right seems to be scattered throughout the span of extreme to moderate, possibly based on whether they think of Wikileaks primarily as attacking the Obama administration (them) or primarily as attacking the US (us).

<comment><USER10> I don't think you'll find many folks on the right supporting Wikileaks on the grounds that they're attacking the Obama administration. But you'll probably find some supporting them on the grounds of radical libertarianism.

It is very much an us-and-them-ism issue though. I find that to a great extent it breaks down upon whom you consider to be "us"; a funny-looking geek with bad hair and some kooky political ideas, or the United States Government.

It's a sad reflection on my own consistency that I'd be much more inclined to support Wikileaks if Assange weren't so damn creepy-looking. Something about him just makes me want to flush his head in a toilet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> More from the same author/author background: [http://www.ted.com/talks/evgeny_morozov_is_the_internet_what...](http://www.ted.com/talks/evgeny_morozov_is_the_internet_what_orwell_feared.html)

I knew I'd seen that name before.

<comment><USER12> Evgeny's done a lot of writing on cyberactivism, and was one of the most outspoken critics of Haystack. Even when I disagree with him (which is a lot of the time) I think his articles are generally well-reasoned and well- researched. He comes from a foreign policy background, not engineering, but usually does his homework well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> "...empowering the likes of NSA/Cyber Command..."

This makes me apprehensive that a possible "sell" of this power would be "would you like us to get rid of most/all spam? With our new technology, we will have the ability to trace spam messages back to the source and take appropriate legal action."

On the other hand, I would imagine this will spark the digital DNA to rearrange chromosomes so that a distributed anonymous internet appears embedded in the current implementation to continue to avoid power wielders...

If adult content has been a driver of past innovation, will spammers be drivers of the future?

(I am guessing they already are...)

</comment><comment><USER14> Corrupt officials in the US government must be overjoyed at how this is playing out. What is on the news? Is it:

a) That US tax dollars paid for a US "security" company to throw a boy-rape for stoned Afghan police recruits,

b) The US Government is engaging in censorship

c) Wikileaks' personal army of hackers is stealing credit card information.

We have the most damning release of information ever, and yet the media is successfully portraying this as a hacker issue. And we're all fucking making it happen.

<comment><AUTHOR> The media is very adept at avoiding the real news so if it wasn't Anon it would likely be Assange's "rape".

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Anonymous punished some bad corporate citizens for doing the wrong thing, and bullied some of them into doing the right thing. This is in direct response to the bullying Assange has gotten. Legal or not, it's sort of awesome to see bullies get bullied back.</comment>


Court Rules That "Patent Troll" Is Opinion, Not Defamation - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/08/court-rules-phrase-patent-troll-opinion-not-defamation <comment><USER2> Shame! I was hoping for some detailed analysis of what constitutes a troll.

For example, from Oxford I see "(in folklore) an ugly creature depicted as either a giant or a dwarf." Well, which is it?

Further to that, is Troll always a derogatory term? Some think of them as ugly, but apparently in Scandinavian folklore, trolls may be ugly and slow- witted, or look and behave exactly like human beings, with no particularly grotesque characteristic about them.

Again, these important issues are left unresolved by the New Hampshire Supreme Court. Truly an opportunity lost.

<comment><USER3> I believe the etymology is from the verb troll, "carefully and systematically search an area for something" "fish by trailing a baited line along behind a boat."

<comment><USER2> TIL. That makes a defamation lawsuit seen even more farcical.

<comment><USER3> Of course etymology is not meaning. While the origin of the term is neutral, there is no doubt that "patent troll" is used as a derogatory term. But in order to count as defamation it also have to be _false_.

But since there is no clear agreed-upon definition of "patent troll", it is impossible to prove whether it is a false statement or not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> A robust win for freedom of expression, and expected insofar as American jurisprudence takes an atypically narrow view of what constitutes "defamation". This was a last gasp for this odious business, they couldn't have thought the odds were good that this would be upheld.

A patent troll is as a patent troll does.

</comment><comment><USER5> Good. It's an accurate opinion most of the time too.

</comment><comment><USER6> In a country that protects money transfers as speech, shouldn't this be obvious?

<comment><USER7> The US doesn't protect "money transfers" as speech as such. _Buckley v. Valeo_ upheld limits on campaign contributions, for example. What that and _Citizens United_ struck down was restrictions on using money to pay for political expression. If you want to spend $500 billion to put a sign on the moon that says "vote for Biden" you can do that. That's not protecting "money transfers as speech," it's striking down restrictions on speech and political expression disguised as restrictions on money transfers.

Of course that makes sense. If the government can stop you from spending $500 billion to put a sign on the moon, "because money isn't speech," then the government can stop you from spending $500 at Kinkos to print signs for a protest, for the exact same reason. If the government can use control of money to control speech, it has vast powers over speech because huge amounts of speech involves the expenditure of money. You pay AWS to host your political site? If _Citizens United_ went the other way, the government could control that! Indeed, during oral argument in the Supreme Court, the lawyer for the government defending the campaign finance law was forced to admit that under the government's view, Congress could ban books by controlling corporate expenditures: [https://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_transcr...](https://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_transcripts/2008/08-205.pdf) (pp. 26-30). (It's one of the most devastating concessions in a Supreme Court oral argument I've ever read.)

<comment><USER8> _> That's not protecting "money transfers as speech," it's striking down restrictions on speech and political expression disguised as restrictions on money transfers._

More like it legitimizes bribery as a "campaign contribution".

<comment><USER9> It's... not like that at all. Did you read the comment you replied to?

<comment><USER8> Citizens United? It in essence is. One of the worst outcomes when it comes to legitimized political corruption.

<comment><USER9> Bribery would be giving money to the politician, yes? Citizens United doesn't address such contributions.

<comment><USER10> If I can pay for the sign on a boat instead of the moon, and it just says that politician's name, and the politician gets the boat, the difference is negligible.

<comment><USER9> The politician doesn't get the boat though.

<comment><USER8> Politician gets the power, bought with money. How more corrupt than that it can be?

<comment><USER9> The politician gets whatever benefit the advertising produced in the minds of the voters. That's it. He doesn't get to keep the boat, the corporation isn't giving him money, etc.

<comment><USER8> Politicians get the power, those who paid for it will ask for favors in return. If you don't see this as corrupt, not sure anything would count as corrupt then.

<comment><USER7> You're mashing together two different things: helping someone get elected, and getting special "favors" in return for helping someone get elected. What the Supreme Court has said is that the first thing, _by itself_ , is not corruption, whether or not you use money to accomplish that. (And everyone uses money to help politicians get elected, from gross-roots organizations to newspapers who print endorsements. If merely using money to help someone get elected could be regulated as "corruption" the government would have vast powers over political speech.)

The second thing, giving special favors to people who helped you get elected, can be corruption, _whether or not money is involved_ , as long as a quid pro quo arrangement can be shown. For example, few people would disagree that its core free speech for newspapers to be able to endorse candidates. (Even the government in _Citizens United_ suggested that the freedom of the press clause might protect newspapers separately from general speech protections.) But if the Washington Post entered into a quid pro quo arrangement with Joe Biden to endorse him in return for favorable legislation that specifically benefited the newspaper, that might be prosecuted as a corrupt quid pro quo arrangement _even though no money changed hands_. The quid pro quo arrangement in your hypothetical--which _Citizens United_ does not address--is what makes the corruption, not spending money to get someone elected.

<comment><USER8> Problem is that first thing directly leads to corruption, so it's a rather poor excuse, and in practice simply legitimizes it.

<comment><USER11> By the logic this tossed-off comment employs, deploying any money whatsoever to help someone get elected, even paying Kinkos for signs, or a website hosted out of an S3 bucket, even for a grassroots reformer underdog candidate, "directly leads to corruption".

Do you have an argument that would be persuasive to someone who _didn 't_ think the entire concept of a market economy leads inexorably to political corruption?

<comment><USER8> I'm not looking to persuade those, who think that buying power is good for society, they pretty much support corruption by design. This is addressed to those who oppose corruption, but didn't realize, Citizens United enables it on huge scale.

<comment><USER11> That's fine and coherent, but we should recognize that there are two wildly different conversations happening here, because the users of this site broadly favor the notion of market economies --- if not for, like, health care, then at least things like "sign printing" \--- and most of them will not read your argument in the "markets are inherently corrupt" frame you intend them.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


MPAA Wins the Oscar Screener Battle, but Loses the War - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2012/01/oscar-screener-battle/

<comment><USER2> I know at least in my country release dates for movies have come much closer to there American release dates over this period. I only mention this because one of the reasons someone is likely to watch a telesync rather than waiting for a better copy is because they don't want to wait to watch it. This lends some more credence to the piracy is a service problem argument. Though of course you could argue that downloading 4gb to 16gb files is more reasonable now days so the change comes from there.

</comment><comment><USER3> Why do we care whether the screener was leaked "by nomination day"? That choice seems arbitrary.

<comment><USER4> Hey, I did the analysis. The nominations came out two days ago, so that's just shorthand for "at press time." I don't actually track that metric in the spreadsheet... I keep the data updated until the Oscar ceremony on February 26.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Appetite for DevOps Screencasts? - <AUTHOR>

Hi,
I am putting together a sysadmin/dev/ops screencast site, the kind of thing I wished existed, when I was coming up as a sysadmin.
I have produced five episodes so far @ http://sysadmincasts.com/

  - Am I on the right track?
  - Episode ideas? Automation seems to be taking off. Puppet for sure.
  - General feedback..
 Thanks, Jusitn <comment><USER2> I'd say you're on the right track. I wouldn't mind seeing some screencast of the following:

\- How to setup automated deployment for rails apps, scala play apps, node.js apps and so forth.

\- How to use Vagrant to simulate an app that uses riak clusters.

<comment><USER3> I'd like to see setup, automated deployment, and maybe going through some basic troubleshooting when you can't just search for it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I also have <http://makerops.com> coming soon, look for the first videos 7/1/13

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome, the more people in this space the better!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm interested in getting notified when new screencasts are available. Where can I add my email address?

<comment><AUTHOR> Okay, I could add a form, or would a RSS feed be better? Maybe I'll add both, and see what the turn out is. Thanks for the suggestion!

<comment><USER6> For the love of all that is holy, when people offer you their email addresses, take them! Don't look for alternate ways to engage prospects long term. Get email right, right now.

There's a reason email drip marketing is such a hot topic in startupland right now. It turns out that email is a pretty damned effective way to stay engaged with people, especially compared to "hoping someone subscribes to this RSS feed or ever remembers to look at this website again". Don't make your prospects remember things; do the remembering for them.

Try using Mailgun instead of an actual email server you run; we've had a lot of good luck with it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the detailed comment! _Do the remembering for them_ \-- I like that. I'll implement your suggestion asap. I'll checkout Mailgun too!

<comment><USER6> You're very welcome. It looks like you've got something people are interested in. Get everyone's email addresses and keep it rolling. Congrats!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Here's a clickable link: <http://sysadmincasts.com/>

</comment><comment><USER7> Very promising. Would like to keep up.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!</comment></comment>


Hacking... trees? - <AUTHOR> http://us1.campaign-archive.com/?u=2889002ad89d45ca21f50ba46&id=d747c1d468&e=df8918339e

<comment><USER2> And here's the wikipedia article that this was taken from: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_shaping>

<comment><AUTHOR> I actually relied a lot more on the Gilroy Gardens' website :)

<comment><USER3> How did you do that subscriber sign-up box only on your archive page?

<comment><AUTHOR> <http://www.mailchimp.com/resources/merge/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I first heard of this from the remarkable gardens of Peter Cooke, which can be seen at their website: <http://www.pooktre.com/>

And it also reminds me of the fantastic sci-fi novel by Leo Frankowski, Copernick's Rebellion in which the hero genetically engineers trees to provide housing & food for the globe.

</comment><comment><USER5> It's an art project but there are upside-down trees at MASS MoCA

<http://www.massmoca.org/event_details.php?id=29>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> By the way, this is from my daily "learn something new" email -- if you have any general feedback about the endeavor, let me know. Thanks :)</comment>


Les stats, c'est moi: So I make the statistics laws for everyone - <AUTHOR> If the Exec Director of the ASA says "don't say 'significance' must everyone follow? (even if he's only expressing his opinion?) errorstatistics.com <comment><AUTHOR> Karen Kafadar, the ASA president, would like the ASA to clearly distinguish itself from the ruling recommended by its Executive Director. She says he was only wearing his "author" hat when he declared he was adding a rule to the ASA 2016 guide. That rule is: never use the word "significance", and never use any P-value thresholds (e.g., .05, .005) in interpreting data. The ASA has so far not make this qualification and the lawyers are having a heyday.Is she right?</comment>


The Consumer Electronics Hall Of Fame: Sony Trinitron (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://spectrum.ieee.org/consumer-electronics/gadgets/the-consumer-electronics-hall-of-fame-sony-trinitron <comment><USER3> There's a whole community of "CRT enthusiasts" who search these out on Craigslist now, and buy them for retro video gaming setups. A big Trinitron CRT 27 to 36 inches in size, in good condition, is actually appreciating in market value now due to how many of them have been trashed.

Sony PVMs (professional video monitors), such as used in a tv production studio have been increasing in market value. Similar tubes but with more advanced electronics.

To the best of my knowledge there are zero remaining manufacturers of CRTs in the world.

<comment><USER4> For Super Smash Bros Melee (released 2001), it's an existential issue. Many high-level interactions in the game move so quickly that issues playing on modern LCD TV's a non-starter. 1000 entrant tournaments need enough CRT TV's to support them. Tournament organizers often will keep a cache of CRTs specifically to host melee tournaments.

<comment><USER5> The problem is the significant input lag most modern TVs have.

<comment><USER6> Not on modern TV's and monitors. They have less than 2ms latency now.

<comment><USER7> The vast majority don't, you _can_ get one that does but you have to do your research. The "response time" listed in monitor/tv specs is not the same as the input lag.

TVs are especially bad, in the default mode some of them have ~200ms input lag. "Game Mode" usually brings it down to more like 20ms though.

Edit: did a google, don't know how accurate these are: [https://www.rtings.com/tv/tests/inputs/input- lag](https://www.rtings.com/tv/tests/inputs/input-lag)

<comment><USER8> Also, latency claims are often misleading. For example, the 2ms response time is limited to grey-to-grey transitions.

A 20ms response time still means the signal is dropping every fifth frame in a 60 fps game.

<comment><USER9> response time has little to do with latency, it's purely a property of the panel. At 60Hz refresh, an LCD will have a minimum of 16.7ms latency because it buffers an entire frame before displaying. 20ms of latency would mean there is additionally 3.3ms of lag, not that it takes 20ms for each frame (it's already buffering the next frame in those 3.3ms, so the next frame will be displayed 16.7ms later).

Many TVs buffer several frames for video processing in their default mode, which is why they can have 100s of ms of latency when not in game-mode; the response time is identical regardless of which mode it is in though, as the response time is purely a property of the panel.

<comment><USER7> Are you sure all LCDs buffer frames for a full frame duration before displaying? I haven't heard that before. I was under the impression that they basically start displaying them as soon as the GPU sends the frame - <USER2> buffering being done on the GPU.

<comment><USER9> Thanks for asking. I'm pretty sure I was wrong. At 60Hz refresh rates it takes 16.7ms to _send_ a full frame to the display, so the minimum latency is 16.7ms even with a CRT (Which has no buffering).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> No mention in this article of the famous support wires found in Trinitron PC monitors.

These wires were needed in all Trinitron products, but the more exacting demands of high resolution (1024 lines!) meant the support wires were quite visible horizontally, especially on uniform backgrounds like a gray Windows desktop. They divided the screen into three equal areas.

Despite this apparent flaw, Trinitron still had huge market share amongst enthusiast PC owners. Maybe it was brand loyalty, or maybe they really were much better quality than any other CRT out there?

At least as I remember it, if you wanted to take (or be seen to be taking) color reproduction seriously, then you _had_ to have a 21" Trinitron. I guess the black horizontal support wires became just as much a part of brand signaling as the RGB lozenges in the logo. Lots of people I knew had amazing Trinitron CRTs and all they did was edit Word documents!

Kind of like a Leica red dot, or the white spot on Dunhill pipes.

[https://cdn.hswstatic.com/gif/q406.jpg](https://cdn.hswstatic.com/gif/q406.jpg)

<comment><USER11> You could tap the monitor and all the strings would move in this wave-like manner. The two horizontal wires were so cool to have. They were the sharpest CRT monitors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> There's an interesting video about the history of Trinitron.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0aFhzGEBQlk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0aFhzGEBQlk)

<comment><USER8> I love this guy. He's just wacky enough to be fun to watch by not so much that it's annoying. And his videos have the right amount of technical minutiae; detailed enough that you understand the important bits without having to pause the video for a while to chew on the explanation.

<comment><USER13> His content is most refreshing because he gives an engineer's level of understanding. Most "tech personalities" don't seem to dig very deep into the whys and hows of things.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Odd that they spend so much time talking about alignment, because all of my trinitron based CRT monitors over 20" needed to be adjusted seemingly on a daily basis to converge correctly across the whole screen. This was something that I rarely remember doing with the cheap shadow mask monitors (although frankly they were generally smaller screens) and at a lower resolution.

The trinitron monitors I had were running 1600x1200 or better and with a small font the convergence would give white text a purple shadow/etc. Very 1980's apple ][, which a lot of people seemed to be OK with, or maybe its just because they ran much lower resolution TV signals or much larger fonts.

<comment><USER15> Are they flat screens? Flat as in the glass is not curved of course, not flat as in thin. The flat ones are well known for developing a whole host of convergence/geometry issues that the curved ones either don't, or take much longer to manifest.

<comment><USER14> "vertically flat"

Yah, by the mid/late 1990's when I had a pile of them at work/etc they were mostly "flat" screens because that was sort of the default for a midrange+ monitor in that timeframe.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> My mother-in-law inherited a mid-90s Trinitron TV when her father died in 2005. It's been the TV in their guest room since.

Their flat panel TV died a couple weeks ago and they put that TV in their living room as a stopgap.

The picture tube on that TV is still so good after all this time, they now don't want to bother buying a new TV.

<comment><USER17> Do they only watch broadcast TV? Even DVD's look far better on my LCD flatscreen (though the TV or player may be upscaling to 720 or 1080) than on the old CRT in my parents house (admittedly not a Trinitron)

<comment><USER18> I don't know what kind of nostalgic glasses people wear, but CRT TV quality degraded over time, became noticeably blurry. Had Panasonics, Sony, JVC, all looked like shit. Monitors with degaussing were fixable for a short time.

<comment> TD-Linux Most modern enthusiasts replace dried-up capacitors and retune the bias/constrast and focus voltages, which brings them back to stock condition as long as the tube isn't too heavily worn (a rejuve will sometimes fix that as well)

<comment><USER19> Often it's just a case of tweaking the focus knob on the flyback.

<comment><USER18> Damn... I can't believe I didn't consider that. A thing to remember, thank you!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Here's a comment from down the rabbit hole:

> _Back in the day I spent an afternoon configuring my old 19 " CRT like that. > I ended up with settings like 800x600x167Hz, 1024x768x133Hz, 1600x1200x89Hz > and 1920x1440x73Hz. Many refresh rates were much higher than the stated > documentation, and I ran it for years like that._

I'm amazed at that those resolutions and refresh rates were achieved so long ago. LCDs were so thin as to ge unstoppable, but definitely came with trade offs.

<comment><USER21> Honestly RAMDAC was more the limiting factor.

<comment><USER22> Matrox could do it, later all-in-one Voodoos from 3DFX also, and anything with the shiny transparent blue chips where you could see the die from IBM [1], many better cards with chips from S3 had that. No blurryness at all.

[1] [https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cf/IBM_37RG...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cf/IBM_37RGB624CF22.png)

edit: link

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Growing up in the 80's and 90's with Trinitron TVs and Walkmans, seeing the SONY logo even to this date evokes a deep sense of trust, brand loyalty and pleasure in using their products. I think there is tons to learn from companies like SONY, Braun, Apple, IBM (old IBM that is). They innovated relentlessly, put excellence in design as part of the ethos, understood UX/UI, and deeply cared about the customer experience. Trinitron TVs were part of my childhood, a window into the world of imagination...in color :)

<comment><USER12> > and deeply cared about the customer experience

I'm guessing you missed the whole Betamax thing?

That's tongue-in-cheek though. I think the Betamax experience is what motivated them to listen to consumers.

<comment><USER24> Until their phone-home rootkit CDs[0]. Or is that also "listening to your customers?" /s

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootk...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootkit_scandal)

<comment><USER25> Also, the VAIO line of laptops, while stylish, came to me to represent a total lack of support or interest in the customer aside from selling them a cool- looking machine.

Maybe it's related to the root-kit DRM, etc -- on looking back, maybe this reflected a mismatch of a company culture that was stuck in the hardware- focused customer experience (and where careful thought ended with the hardware), while the software was some add-on nuisance that would work itself out.

<comment><USER26> Some of those VAIO laptops really pushed the envelope, in terms of packing a lot of computer in to a small package. They were great when everything worked, but could be a real pain to repair.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This only touches on the CRT portion of the TV. I had a 19" Sony from '82\. While other manufacturers were trying to save costs with fewer and less heavy duty parts, because the quality of the picture was better, Sony could charge a premium and did not skimp on the rest. It's evident when you look at the tuner/RF, power, and chassis what a quality product it was. Coming from Soviet TVs that would start on fire when they worked, it was no comparison.

</comment><comment><USER27> I finally got rid of my 1970's Trinitron TV because LCDs were so much lighter and sharper and didn't warm up the room. I used it for something like 25 years.

</comment><comment><USER28> Someone paid £1400 for a 32" widescreen sony crt with digital tuner in 2006. By 2009 they ebay'd it to me for £32. A pound an inch. Shows how fast the market collapsed when flatscreens became common. (Good tv, only stopped using it last year when the lack of hdmi got too much).

Incidentally why did europe get a last generation of widescreen CRT's but the USA basically went from humoungous 4:3 CRT's straight to wide flatscreens?

<comment><USER29> There were a few Stateside too. I owned a ~30" widescreen flat CRT (secondhand) for a while before I got a cheap LCD.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> And Sony Walkman/Discman! To me Sony in the 80s/90s was like today's Apple. In 2000s I bought a small Sony box that could stream Comcast cable TV from my house to my PSP when I was out and about so that I could watch my own TV while playing poker at my friend's house.

<comment><USER31> Jobs loved Sony products. I'm sure they were an inspiration to create good products.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Some people in the 1970's converted them into inexpensive color computer graphics monitors.

I don't mean hooking up to the RF or composite video input, but directly connecting to the guts of it to get a crisp bitmapped image.

<comment> TD-Linux It's a thing people still do to this day, especially to use with game consoles modified to output RGB directly. [https://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?t=56155](https://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?t=56155)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> My computer CRT uses the trinitron style of aperture grille. VX920, 19", 1600x1200@75. Still looks great today alongside my newer 1440p144 flatscreen.</comment>


Ask HN: Is Offering Lifetime Upgrades a Good Strategy? - <AUTHOR>

Some small apps, like Balsamiq, offer free lifetime upgrades. From a business perspective, I think that this is a mistake.<p>In the case of Balsamiq, there's a constant influx of potential customers from new developers who just finished college. However, wouldn't Balsamiq make a lot more money if they sold yearly-licenses or went with a pay-as-you-go model? Right now, once a developer or designer buys a license, they can reuse the license for the rest of their career, even on new projects. <comment><USER2> Hello! We only provide "free updates forever" on our Mockups for Desktop product. It's a low-cost tool, and I figure that harassing people to purchase maintenance would cost us more than not doing it. That said, as we scale our infrastructure, we might consider changing the policy in the future (for new customers only of course).

The other thing is that Mockups shipped 1.0 (in June 2008) in a pretty rough state, VERY MVP :) Even now I don't consider it "finished" or "implemented to vision" yet, so I'm happy to let people buy into the vision knowing that they'll be able to update without hassles as we get there together.

Hope this sheds some light!

</comment><comment><USER3> Giving someone a "lifetime" of anything is a huge liability. No business should dig a hole for itself like this.

Apple ran into a bit of trouble because they had offered iTools for free to anyone who bought a Mac. But the costs of maintaining were high, so they renamed it .Mac and began charging for it. (Now the service is MobileMe.)

[http://www.applematters.com/article/july-17-2002-apple- kills...](http://www.applematters.com/article/july-17-2002-apple-kills- itools/)</comment>


Tom Cruise will work with NASA on first movie filmed in space - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/5/21248460/nasa-tom-cruise-movie-international-space-station <comment><USER2> Way to go ruining another sci-fi movie</comment>


Show HN: A Launcher that lets you control every aspect of your connected life - <AUTHOR> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.thing.launcher <comment><USER2> I don't understand the interaction with agents. Are they basically like IFTTT? Ie, i can setup scenarios (when i walk into home, when i connect to my car bluetooth) and it will trigger an action?

I like the idea of more IFTTT-like apps, but i'm not sure what usefulness the fact that this is a Launcher has. But perhaps that's because i'm only paying attention to the IFTTT-like feature.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, my name is William Dahlheim from Stockholm, Sweden, and it's me and my team that are behind Thing. You're spot on - the basic idea is much like IFTTT but we allow for more steps and more triggers.

Triggers, for example, can be time, location, wifi and/or weather based. These will cause one or more actions to fire. We call them Agents and an Agent can look like this:

When I arrive at Grand Central Terminal play "Hotline Bling" in Spotify and request an UberLUX from 70 E 42nd St to Aquavit if it's snowing.

Here, the triggers are location and weather, of course. Actions are play a track in Spotify and request an Uber. Thing is a way of using building blocks such as Spotify, Uber, Philips Hue, weather, bluetooth, wifi and more to connect yourself seamlessly to services on your terms. The idea is that apps themselves are "just" containers for the service they connect to, so why not combine them in a coherent and seamless way? We chose to do this as a launcher as then Thing will be front row center between the user and the device and not an app like all other.

Anecdotally, as an example, a dear friend of mine was on a date recently that was going quite well. He set up an agent that got him an Uber form the restaurant and took him home. Another agent that he created in the Uber turned on his Bluetooth speaker at home and played some Barry White and dimmed his Philips Hue lamps to a reddish color. A bit of everyday magic.

There's more of course, but I think you get the idea. Thing also curates your apps based on your behaviour and presents you with the apps you're most likely to use at any given time of day. We're big fans of app discovery and grew tired of the wall of apps most phones are today. Rethinking mobile UX!

I'm happy to answer any questions you might have. We're super excited about it and hope you'll like it! Feel free to reach out at firstname.lastname@example.com to me personally or join our Google Group at [https://plus.google.com/communities/100847411380430672830](https://plus.google.com/communities/100847411380430672830) \- we'll post some tips and trick and discuss upcoming features and suggestions. Of course, for more info check out [https://thing.se](https://thing.se)

Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is crazy stuff. I'm not young enough to try it, but I hope other people do and that it is actually useful.

<comment><AUTHOR> Try it out, I think you'll like it! Age is not a factor, my dear father is 74 and he uses it (no pressure from the family, of course...). Even if you don't use the agents, the app stream that curates your apps and our overall approach of "within a thumb's reach" resonate very well with our users so far. Actually, give it a couple of days and I'm positive that you'll find that you get more efficient with your phone!</comment></comment>


HackBack - brings you back to HackerNews (Bookmarklet) - <AUTHOR> http://hackback.cloudfoundry.com/

<comment><USER2> Brilliant - thank you. Thank you for the work in creating it, thank you for the work in making it easy to use, thank you for the work in making it easy to install, thank you for the work in sharing it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Excellent! Very useful.

I often find myself in the situation where there are a few interesting links that I decided to open and read later and, after I'm done reading them, I'm not able to find the discussion so I have to search HN.

Plus it keeps me from having to open 2 tabs for each link. Thanks!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback! Could you let me know which browser you are using? I have tested it on OSX10.6 with Safari/Firefox/Chrome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This does not seem to work for me in either firefox 4 or Internet Explorer 9

<comment><AUTHOR> Could you try it again? A stupid mistake prevents it to work in firefox.

<comment><USER4> perfect, works fine, thank you :)</comment></comment></comment>