How does this scam work? - <AUTHOR>

(Mail to the brand holder, thanks)
Dear CEO/Principal,
I'm sorry to disturb you so abruptly.
We are the department of registration service in China. On April 11,2013, we received an application formally. One company named "TianFeng Investment  Co.,Ltd" had applied for the Brand Name "rocketlease" and some relevant domain names through our body.
Now we are handling this registration, and we found that the keyword of these domain names and Brand Name is identical with your company's. So now we need to confirm a couple of things with you: 1. If your company consigns that company to register these domain names and Brand Name, we will send an application form to them and help them finish the registration at once. 2. If your company has nothing to do with that company, they maybe have other purposes to register these domain names and Brand Name.
We haven't finished the registration of that company yet, and we have postponed the application of this company temporarily already. In order to deal with this issue better, please contact us by telephone or email as soon as possible.
In addition, we hereby affirm that our time limit for dissent application is 7 days. If your company files no dissent within the time limit, we will unconditionally approve the application submitted by that company.
Best Regards
Anna Liu Regional Manager
AnHui Office: Phone: 0086 551 6512 0117
    Fax: 0086 551 6512 3308
Postal Code:230022
Address:AnGao World Cities,No. 99,WangJiang West Road,HeFei,AnHui Province,China ShangHai Headquarters: Postal Code:201315 Address:No.11,Lane 788,Xiupu Road,Nanhui District,ShangHai,China <comment><USER2> If I were a scammer, 1. I'd pretend to need processing fees for this and processing fees for that (perhaps I'd pretend that I needed to bribe some officials by your additional money), 2. prolong this process as long as the mark ("brand holder") is willing to give you money, 3. PROFIT!!! (The actual "formal application" need not actually exist.)

Of course, this is all based on the assumption that it _is_ a scam (of which I don't have any data either way).

</comment><comment><USER3> The claims in the messages are lies designed to trick website owners into unnecessarily registering a series of domain names at inflated prices.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> got this in my inbox this morning and i've not come across this sort of email before.

the site seems legit when you look at it, but is clearly bogus (all links are broken, searching for domains doesnt work)

I'm curious, so I'm trying to understand what they get out of this by doing this.</comment>


Wanna know when someone has commented on your post? - <AUTHOR>

(Blantant product plug ahead :-)
I recently posted a question on Hacker News about receiving online payments in the UK - I got a lot of really great answers - thanks everyone.
Because these answers are important to me, I didn't want to miss any valuable comments. Very simply, I created a Femtoo tracker pointing to this URL:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1074860
that monitors the small text "33 comments" text below the post title. Everytime a new comment was posted, I received an Instant Message telling me how many comments there are.
I think this may be really useful to other Hacker News readers... so please check out 'Femtoo.com' :-)
If you don't want to register - fine, you can still receive notifications of trackers that other people have 'published':
http://www.femtoo.com/index.php?action=TrackerLibraryLoad
thanks for you time. <comment><USER2> Sounds like an excellent way to get your server banned. After all, if it does that 'the instant' it happens then it has to periodically poll the server.

Since HN is already creaking at the seams I'm really not happy with this kind of bot based service.

<comment><USER3> That's not what he said, he said the notification was by "Instant Message", not that the notification was "instant".

Obviously it have to poll the page, but in principle that can be polite, ideally it'll have a decay feature where if it hasn't been updated in a while the checks will by steps decay to, say, once a day, then once a week, then once a month, and give up after, say, 5 years.

<comment><USER2> But it would have to be polling to get a response in a way that is quicker than you could get by visiting HN a couple of times.

So, the question then becomes how frequently does it poll?

<comment><AUTHOR> at the momment, every 30 minutes.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


German court rules domain owner faces fine for domain squatting - <AUTHOR> https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ksta.de%2Fkoeln%2Fprozess-gericht-spricht-1--fc-koeln-nutzungsrecht-fuer-domain--fc-de--zu-24532076 <comment><USER2> He has to release the domain, the fine is if he doesn't comply with the court order to so.</comment>


In Search of a Beautiful Mind: MIT Mathematician and Logo inventor Seymour Papert  - <AUTHOR> http://www.boston.com/lifestyle/articles/2008/07/12/in_search_of_a_beautiful_mind/?page=1

<comment><USER2> Thanks for that link, I don't think I'd have seen that story if not for your submission.

For the last year and a half I've been reading everything I can get my hands on that Seymour wrote. (Some of his more technical books are out of print and hard to find. Amazon tried for about 6 weeks to find his book with Idit Harel for me, but came up empty.) I didn't know that he was in the middle of a new one when the accident occurred. The possibility that his new, unfinished book is trapped inside his head, incommunicable to the rest of us, is a sad irony.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Also, I think the Get Well, Seymour! page [<http://papert.media.mit.edu/>] is a pretty awesome gesture from his Media Lab friends.

</comment><comment><USER3> Good for Lego, and shame on MIT.</comment>


St. Louis Gives $50K To Startups [video] - <AUTHOR> http://techli.com/2012/06/st-louis-gives-50k-to-startups-video/

<comment><USER2> we'll be building on feedback gained this year to narrow our focus in yr 2. we aimed to be as transparent as possible in our selection process, providing feedback to applicants at each stage of the competition. with one competition cycle under our belts, we've learned a lot and hope you'll consider recommending arch grants to startups willing to base their businesses downtown and scale.

</comment><comment><USER3> As a local, I hope Arch Grants increases the specificity of their grant offering. It is currently a challenge to recommend Arch Grants as a funding option to prospective entrepreneurs as their process is very opaque.</comment>


Tell HN: Search is weird on mobile devices - <AUTHOR>

This is meant as polite feedback of my experience of using search on mobile.  Maybe other HN users have more feedback?
On Chrome, on iOS.
I enter a search term and get a page of results.  I am unable to modify that search.  (I can't sort it by date, for example.)  The results are not relevant.  There are no search instructions on that page.
I look at a clean search page.  There are no instructions there either.  There is text in the search box, but that's not instructive either.
None of the links give me instructions.
A high barrier to entry is good.  But that barrier should be on posting, not on searching.
http://imgur.com/syiG0aT
http://imgur.com/4pg8yL9 <comment><USER2> Yep right, filtering options are currently hidden on mobile devices, showing only stories. Will improve that asap.

Btw, do not hesitate to open feature-requests on our github project: [https://github.com/algolia/hn-search](https://github.com/algolia/hn-search)</comment>


Is there a point to studying philosophy? - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/askphilosophy/comments/3of8i3/is_there_a_point_to_studying_philosophy/cvwpdy5 <comment><USER2> Scott Aaronson's view on academic philosophy could maybe of help to decide between philosophy and math/science courses:

       Scott: Well, let's start with the positives of academic philosophy!

       (1) I liked the philosophy of math and science courses that I took in
       college. Sure, I sometimes got frustrated by the amount of time spent on
       what felt like Talmudic exegesis, but on the other hand, those courses
       offered a scope for debating big, centuries-old questions that my math and
       science courses hardly ever did.

       (2) These days, I go maybe once a year to conferences where I meet
       professional philosophers of science, and I've found my interactions with
       them stimulating and fun. Philosophers often listen to what you say more
       carefully than other scientists do, and they're incredibly good at spotting
       hidden assumptions, imprecise use of language, that sort of thing. Also,
       philosophers of science tend to double in practice as science historians:
       they often know much, much more about what, let's say, Einstein or Bohr or
       Godel or Turing wrote and believed than physicists and mathematicians
       themselves know.

       (3) While my own reading of the philosophical classics has been woefully
       incomplete, I don't feel like the time I spent with (say) Hume or J. S.
       Mill or William James or Bertrand Russell was wasted at all. You're right
       that these "old dead guys" didn't know all the math and science we know
       today, but then again, neither did Shakespeare or Dostoyevsky! I mean,
       sure, the central questions of philosophy have changed over time, and the
       human condition has changed as well: we no longer get confused over Zeno's
       paradoxes or the divine right of kings, and we now have global
       telecommunications and the Pill. I just don't think either human nature or
       human philosophical concerns have changed quickly enough for great
       literature on them written centuries ago to have ceased being great.

[1] [https://intelligence.org/2013/12/13/aaronson/](https://intelligence.org/2013/12/13/aaronson/)</comment>


Ask HN: Would you provide your ID(s) while registering with a website/app? - <AUTHOR> If a social network, any web service or an mobile app asks you to upload a photo(copy) of any of your valid ID, how willing would you be to do it? Please explain why.<p>IDs - National, College, Driving license etc.<p>(Excuse my English, if incorrect) <comment><USER2> No.

If anything, I'd want the opposite - an anonymous social network.

Things like requiring ID only lead to harassment and suppression of free speech. There are so many examples of Trump supporters losing their jobs because of their political beliefs, it's not funny.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your opinion, really appreciate it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I personally wouldn't provide it. However I use Google and Facebook (messenger) so I'm probably just a hypocrite (you provide them far more information then your ID alone would give, e.g. income proxies, education, code, interests, multiplied by friends and connections).

</comment><comment><USER4> First off, as pointed out below, making copies of national IDs is illegal in some jurisdictions, but there are many other IDs which according to the issuers may not be copied. Think drivers licenses, library cards, and so on.

That being said, all IDs that I own are issued for a particular service, any app/webservice asking me to upload a copy of them, would most likely re-use some aspect of value that these IDs provide for a different purpose, and I can't think of an actual, compelling _reason_ why I would give someone else access to it.

And that's before even thinking about security and the possibility of a breach.

Would you mind sharing why you are asking ?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure, I am building an app so I wanted to know how willing would people be. The idea is to only verify the registered users against the ID and not store them for later use.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> You do realize that in some countries this is an illegal activity? That random private company is not allowed to collect and store government-issued IDs?

<comment><AUTHOR> Okay, I didn't know that. Would it be illegal just to verify an user too?</comment></comment>


Interview with Aubrey de Grey - <AUTHOR> http://nextbigfuture.com/2009/07/aubrey-de-grey-interview.html

<comment><USER2> Also worth checking out his TED talk: [http://www.ted.com/talks/aubrey_de_grey_says_we_can_avoid_ag...](http://www.ted.com/talks/aubrey_de_grey_says_we_can_avoid_aging.html)</comment>


Startup Life: Our PR "Crisis" with TechCrunch and How We Came Out On Top - <AUTHOR> http://blog.markerly.com/2013/02/09/startup-life-our-pr-crisis-with-techcrunch-and-how-we-came-out-on-top/

<comment><USER2> Oh TC... you give me much amusement while i browse the internet while i poop</comment>


Why not hiring people with amnesia for testing product? - <AUTHOR> Let's forget the ethical limits for a sec.
Advantages :
- Giving job, integration for amnesiac
- New look on the product at each tested version.
- Testing the simplicity of the UI
Notes, it concerns certain types of amnesia only. <comment><USER2> I was developing a scheme to evaluate synthetic voices and found very quickly that you never want to listen to two different voices say the same text because once you have memorized the text you can't evaluate the legibility of the voice anymore.

</comment><comment> xkcd-sucks Because there aren't many people with procedural anterograde amnesia, and because employing mentally disabled people is tricky</comment>


What does the HN community use for bookmarking sites? - <AUTHOR>

I am trying to find the most seamless bookmarking tool for my daily digestion of all things internet. What does the HN community recommend to save/search bookmarks. I use to use del.ic.ious. Right now im using evernote and it is a bit cumbersome.<p>Any suggestions? <comment><USER2> Diigo...wish the search was a bit better but I suppose if I was better about tagging that would be less of a pain. Would love to know if someone has a tool they use with powerful search capability and ingestion of content (diigo does this, but for a fee)

Edit: Just looked at [http://pinboard.in/](http://pinboard.in/) \- looks great.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> [http://pinboard.in/](http://pinboard.in/) without hesitation

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, i'll take a look</comment></comment>


Getting Started With Riak & Python - <AUTHOR> http://pragmaticbadger.com/latestnews/2010/nov/16/getting-started-riak-python/ <comment><USER2> I'm glad the mentioned the pain in the ass that protobufs are under python right now.

</comment><comment><USER3> On how it's being used:

"We're not about to drop PostgreSQL as our primary data storage layer, but Riak seems to make a great complimentary datastore . . . "

<comment><USER4> We do most of our development in Django, so Postgres is a natural fit. Every tool has its sweet spots, so you should use the tool that best fits the task.

For instance, Postgres is great for highly structured data (say, photos on a website). Riak shines when your data flexs more & you have a lot of it (say an activity stream).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> A key-value store written in Erlang, stores JSON and executes MapReduce queries, and is accessible as a web service.

Why no mention of CouchDB and how Riak differs?

<comment><USER4> I was tempted to do some comparison, especially to Couch/Mongo/Cassandra, but ran out of time. I'll consider a follow up that compares them.

In short, Riak wins out to me against all three:

* Faster than Couch & easier clustering * Better data integrity than Mongo * Less conceptual overhead & simpler code than Cassandra

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Another key/value store? I'm sure it has its own specific advantages and disadvantages which make it different from all the others. Still, there's a lot of those popping up lately...

<comment><USER7> Riak has been open-source and freely available since August 2009.</comment></comment>


Human detection in webcam in JavaScript with ml5.js - <AUTHOR> https://www.codespeedy.com/human-detection-in-webcam-in-javascript-with-ml5-js/ <comment><USER2> This actually doesn't work. Put the camera up to your dog and it still shows that it's a person.</comment>


Ask HN: Taking a sabbatical during a global pandemic? - <AUTHOR> I'm 27, with enough saved up for about 4-5 years of expenses at my current expenditure rate (8-10 years if I'm conservative enough). I'm considering taking a break from my job for a few months (maybe up to 1 year), and wondering how bad of an idea this is.
I've got a great job on paper. My boss is great — he's trying to help me grow and taking me under his wing a little. My pay is great and I get to work on stuff that impacts the world in a positive way, although only to a few users right now.
The problem is that I'm feeling very bored and unmotivated. I'm not sure if the career path I'm on is the right one for me long term. I think I might be suffering from burn-out and I'm not sure what to do about it. I'm worried that mentioning it to my boss would be basically saying that I can't handle my current responsibilities and that I should be given less of them.
My (probably naive) solution is to take a break from work after getting my bonus around November. I would like to use this time to learn, to workout, and to work on a non-profit project that I'm passionate about, but don't have the time for. I also just want to take a break from the corporate grind, and figure out what I want to do in the longer term.
Part of me feels like a fool for even thinking of this during a global pandemic. Another part of me, feels like I'm financially secure enough to take a break from the corporate world for at least a few months (accounting for ~3 months of job hunting).
How bad of an idea would it be to quit my job for a few months?
Are there any non-obvious risks I face other than just losing money and delaying career progression? <comment><USER2> You mention that you have enough saved up for 4-5 years (8-10 years if conservative) - and then you also mention "quit my job for a few months".

So my suggestion would be to get clear on the timeline you are looking at for your break. For example, i am taking a year off no matter what.

Once you are clear on that, moving to the next aspect of your story is that, you have everything that a typical professional would aspire for "pay, great boss, good work" etc. So when considering this, it could also be that your mind is playing some tricks on you.

Give it a few more months (maybe 6 months?) and see if you feel the same way. If you think you won't be able to push that far, then you are ready to quit.

Obviously, quitting during a pandemic (and with no clear signs of when the economy would recover) is not ideal, if you think you might change your mind later and would want to get back to work. Since the unemployment rates are high right now, your place will be taken up by someone else pretty quick, and you would have to wait for openings etc (which could get frustrating)

But if you decide on the time you want off, you can always plan around that. 6 months to 1 year off and things can start recovering by then, and jobs will be available etc.

Honestly, if you have enough saved for 4-5 years, you can take a break. But decide what you want to do after you have quit. Since you cannot travel much during these times, so you would be pretty much stuck at your place for most of the days, and during a pandemic sitting at your place with nothing to keep you busy could quickly drive you nuts. So that's there. So have a plan like the non-profit project after you have quit.</comment>


Settling in Tibet required a Western import - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/science/2014/11/settling-in-tibet-required-a-western-import/

<comment><USER2> Few facts to consider. First, the _dee butter_ is the most important commodity among nomads. Most of Tibetan nomadic population of high-altitude Plato still live out of Yak herds and caravan trade, not agriculture, unlike fertile western provinces.

Second, there is much more influence in traditional households from closely related tribes of neighboring Nepal and Sikkim and Bhutan (Sherpa, Lepcha, Tamang, Bhutia) than from Ladakh or Chinese mainland, so it is more reasonable to think of Nepalese/Indian influence.

Third, there were more trade and migration with Nepal and North India than China or Kashmir. Some caravan routes ran there, of course, but they were not that busy as those to Kathmandu, Sikkim or Bhutan.

You could see that most of heritage buildings in Lhasa has been decorated by Nepalese craftsmen and artists.

<comment><USER3> 'North India', 'Nepal' and the like are reasonably clear locations based on modern states but China and Tibet's relationship to it is less clear in what you say, both for its current status (let's not forget most of historic Tibet is not in the Tibetan Autonomous Region) and history of shifting borders and smaller states.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > Yet there are traces of human life there dating back at least 20,000 years > BP (Before Present, Present being defined as January 1, 1950, as used in > radiocarbon dating).

What's wrong with writing '20,000 years ago'? Seriously, 'BP' instead of 'ago'‽

<comment><USER5> Because the real present is constantly moving. To prevent confusion several sciences use 1950 as the present, so if somebody quotes an article where something is radiocarbon dated as 80 years BP, you don't then have to look up the age of the article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> 'Western' is a bit of a stretch ... _Wild barley (H. vulgare ssp. spontaneum) ranges from North Africa and Crete in the west, to Tibet in the east._</comment>


Ask HN: Would you like to read "Perspectives on Projective Geometry" with me? - <AUTHOR> I became very obsessed with hyperbolic geometry and from there, projective geometry, and finally complex projective geometry (& Cayley Klein geometry).
I've bought dozens of books on the subject, but one in particular has been working for me: "Perspectives on Projective Geometry: A Guided Tour Through Real and Complex Geometry" by Jürgen Richter-Gebert. In my opinion, it's an exceptionally clear book and it should be accessible to anyone with a basic understanding of high school trigonometry and high school algebra,  and basic linear algebra (no calculus seems to be required). It would also be helpful to know what a complex number is and why they are useful.
I'm trying to read it cover to cover, and I was wondering if anyone would be interested in reading it along with me and doing a weekly video call to discuss.
pdf: https://www-m10.ma.tum.de/foswiki/pub/Lehre/WS0910/ProjektiveGeometrieWS0910/GeomBook.pdf
Hard copy: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00DGERAQY/
If you're interested, please maybe add a comment saying what interests you about this subject. My email address is in my profile as well. <comment><USER2> Hey man, I am interested in doing this. Can't see your email in profile.

<comment><AUTHOR> sorry, fixed that! Here it is here as well: johnafries

(At gmail)

<comment><USER2> mailed you</comment></comment></comment>


Mobile Dev market demand slowing down? - <AUTHOR>

I have a few friends that freelance as iOS devs. Before, they were always overwhelmed with demand for their services, but now three of them are sitting without projects. Since I am considering becoming a freelance developer, I am curious: did the demand for iOS developers slow down? Do other freelancers experience the same thing? <comment><USER2> Interesting... It's funny how, when a tech/thing is "hot", you just don't really look ahead 5-10 years and think about it being anything less than "hot" then too (or at least that's my tendency). Looking at your question today in a new light, I can see how many factors would cause this:

1) More time = more competition. The more time has passed, the more developers have been able to learn to code.

2) More competition = better marketing by the competition. If your marketing skills stay the same, it's likely that you'll see lower/diminished call for services if your competition's marketing skills increase.

3) More marketing = more generalization. If everyone is advertising the same services, what are the differentiators? Price and design are easy ones for even the most uneducated clients to see. Architecture and "quality" are not.

4) More generalization = more commoditization. Everyone does "it" so you have to do "it". And you'd better not charge too much more/less than everyone else.

5) More commoditization = lower profit margins.

6) Lower profit margins = adding new services to make up those costs.

Sorry for the ramble - just thinking out loud a bit. I'm probably off on one or more of these but I like the thought process.

<comment><USER3> I don't think it is rambling. I think your observations are right on and not just for mobile devs.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Scott,

good observation. On the other hand, one would expect the demand to be rising, too - everybody and their dog wants a mobile app.

The reason I posted, though, was to see of other mobile devs see the same trend.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm not as tuned into iOS right now but a guy I work with just got an Android gig. As soon as he started looking he got a ton of calls and found one he liked in less than a week.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, JamesInSeattle. Do you know HOW he looked for them? The methodology, so to say?

<comment><USER4> Nothing special. He put his resume on job boards and started getting calls from recruiters. He looked at jobs offered found some he liked, applied to some, and one of those hired him.

I'm not looking right now but I check craigslist from time to time and there are more iOS jobs now than 12-18 months ago when I was looking.</comment></comment></comment>


Want your opinion – social product discovery platform - <AUTHOR> I'm Patricia, co-founder and CMO of Birdie.
We're about to launch our Beta - a community for users to recommend & review products with the help of AI-generated content. You can view our promotional video at http://bit.ly/birdie-video
We are looking for beta testers to give us feedback and interact with our Product team to help us develop something that's really useful for online shoppers.
I'd love to hear your thoughts! <comment><USER2> It seems to be amazing!!!! Google and Amazon just show me products from companies which paid them to rank better. I would love to have a better option and ad-free!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Anybody who wants the Beta can sign up at www.birdie.ai

</comment><comment><USER3> Looks nice. I'm in for beta.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, we will get in touch with you!</comment></comment>


Show HN: I'm building an app to plan trips to Europe and rate locations - <AUTHOR> https://eurotripr.com <comment><AUTHOR> Hi, I'm in the early stages of building a web app to allow travelers to score European Countries, Cities, and Attractions, as well as tracking costs for travelers and build and share travel itineraries. The site is a work in progress, and there are features / functionality still unfinished, but I'd love some constructive feedback so i can make the tool as useful as possible once travel is open again. I'm a solo maker, so be nice (but honest) if possible :/

There's a feedback form in the lower left of the site for comments and bug reporting.

Would you use this (when its finished)? Any comments on feature set?

The URL is [https://eurotripr.com](https://eurotripr.com)

TL;DR: I'm building a web app to help European travelers plan trips, rate locations, and track costs for European Travel, I'd love some constructive feedback.

Thanks for anyone with the time to look.

<comment><USER2> Hi, I just saw the tour page, it's still too early to give a feedback because it's still too early to say anything.

But I really like the concept, hit me up if you like to get in touch @justruky on Twitter

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for looking at it. It's very early stage, so yeah I will definitely hit you up when its a bit more polished.

Thank!</comment></comment></comment>


What Las Vegas casinos won't tell you about gambling - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/travel/feature/20130919-what-las-vegas-casinos-wont-tell-you-about-gambling

<comment><USER2> I'd disagree about poker.

(1) The house takes a rake from each pot in cash poker games. Often the rake is much less or nonexistent in tournament games.

(2) Scarne wasn't particularly a poker expert, but he had one bit of simple advice: if you want to win, play against people who are weaker than you. Las Vegas attracts the best players in the world (who might win enough to make up for the rake playing against 'average' players) so you're going to have a hard time winning in all but the lowest stakes games.

In general it's hard to find a good poker game. If you go looking for one in your community, it's very possible you'll find some guys who'll cheat you by signaling each other about their cards, and there's nothing you can do to prove it is going on. This goes on all the time in Vegas poker rooms, and the casino has no motivation to do anything about it.</comment>


Ask HN: Why tech portals are writing about attack on UN convoy in Syria? - <AUTHOR>

I follow several tech portals quite daily, and today it stood out that several, The Verge and Fast Company among them, run a story about sniper fire on UN convoy in Syria. Is this deliberate? I mean, what's so special about this news that it made into tech space?<p>It's not a breaking news in the sense of "we interrupt this regular program to bring you the breaking news". It's not even surprising (the shooting), given they have a regular civil war out there, and the rebels are not strictly under a chain of command (so any freemen could have done that, for any reason). <comment><USER2> They're just doing what they're told. Of course it's no coincidence. I would think persons who frequent tech news are the more paranoid at the moment, so that demographic will need the extra prompting to go along with another war effort.</comment>


Nginx 1.8.0 Stable released - <AUTHOR> http://nginx.org/en/CHANGES-1.8

<comment><AUTHOR> nginx.org: nginx-1.8.0 stable version has been released, incorporating many new features from the 1.7.x mainline branch - including hash load balancing method, backend SSL certificate verification, experimental thread pools support, proxy_request_buffering and more.</comment>


Obama defends Bradley Manning's detention in informal discussion - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.forbes.com/andygreenberg/2011/04/22/video-of-obama-on-bradley-manning-he-broke-the-law/

<comment><AUTHOR> Transcript provided by the author:

People can have philosophical views about…

[Questioner: unintelligible]

No, no, but look, I can't conduct diplomacy on an open source. That's not how…the world works. If you're in the military, and…I have to abide by certain classified information. If I was to release stuff, information that I'm not authorized to release, I'm breaking the law…We're a nation of laws. We don't individually make our own decisions about how the laws operate…

He broke the law.

[Questioner: 'You can make it harder to break the law.']

Well, what he did was he dumped…

[Questioner: something about President Nixon's prosecution of Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg]

It wasn't the same thing. What Ellsberg released wasn't classified in the same way. So. Anyway. Alright.

<comment><AUTHOR> Personally, I think "he broke the law" is a terrible argument and he should know better. I don't have to tell you where we'd be without countless people standing up for what's right and yeah, breaking the damn law throughout history.

<comment><USER2> _Personally, I think "he broke the law" is a terrible argument and he should know better._

More so because Manning has not yet even been tried, let alone convicted.

Manning is an extreme example of the shitty treatment afforded the accused, unless you're a banker who's fucked people over for millions of dollars.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Which APIs do you dislike? Why? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> \- The Elasticsearch DSL is obscure on good days and makes absolutely no sense on others.

\- Matplotlib - both the object-oriented api and pyplot - I need to look up the same things over and over again

\- More generally - any Python/R function that has only (args, kwargs) or (...) as parameters in its documentation

</comment><comment><USER3> The Atlassian apis. They are prone to making breaking changes or just removing some endpoints altogether. Disappointing when you are relying on their api being stable to do part of your work.

</comment><comment><USER4> don't like

vulkan,

rapidjson,

libgit2,

for the first 2, they are too verbose.

for the last, I have trouble translating git command into api calls. They don't seem to match well.</comment>


Portable Ideas - <AUTHOR> http://raganwald.posterous.com/portable-ideas <comment><USER4> I thought this article sounded familiar but it took me a while to place it. It's the parable of the sower, Matthew 13:3-8.

3 And he spake many things unto them in parables, saying, Behold, a sower went forth to sow;

4 And when he sowed, some seeds fell by the way side, and the fowls came and devoured them up:

5 Some fell upon stony places, where they had not much earth: and forthwith they sprung up, because they had no deepness of earth:

6 And when the sun was up, they were scorched; and because they had no root, they withered away.

7 And some fell among athorns; and the thorns sprung up, and choked them:

8 But other fell into good ground, and brought forth fruit, some an hundredfold, some sixtyfold, some thirtyfold.

<comment><USER5> I think this is the wrong analogy... The parable seems to say that if you spread your seeds across many areas, it's bound to grow somewhere.

That would be a good analogy if the post was actually about spreading ideas in as many bubbles as possible and hoping one bubble picks it up.

The post is actually about making 1 idea of high enough quality and insight such that it can be transferred from one bubble (yours) to the next by the "edges".

So you'd have to find a parable that speaks of getting a good seed and planting it in your garden, in the hopes that the flower that grows from it spreads its seeds to your neighbors!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Fundamental ideas are portable ideas. Lisp didn't start out as a programming language. It was an abstract model of computation. As an ex-Symbolics employee friend of mine says, "Math never goes out of style."

Eschew what's popular and what gets attention. Seek the fundamental instead. This is the difference between learning about Ruby because Rails is the current big thing versus knowing enough to be interested in Ruby because it embodies the objects+messages model and you find that beautiful. (And if you value the objects+messages model because it was a big thing in academia at some point, you are still missing the point!)

Programming has many of the features of "pop-culture" because the rate of change in the field is faster than the rate of actual progress. Learn in-depth the actual progress.

EDIT: Switched the positions of fundamental and portable, since fundamental => portable.

<comment><USER7> Everyone is some kind of fundamentalist, but people keep their ideas to themselves to keep an even keel because inexperience in expression tends towards bad outcomes. I have no scientific evidence for this, but this is my amateur reasoning in observing the personal growth in others.

<comment><USER6> _Everyone is some kind of fundamentalist_

This is an awkward phrase, as the word "fundamentalist" carries anti- intellectual baggage.

 _...inexperience in expression tends towards bad outcomes. I have no scientific evidence for this..._

You now have one data point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is an insightful post. I think a stellar example of what you get when you run with this concept and try to use it as a tool to influence others is seen in the right wing propaganda machine in the U.S.

Often one has to sit back and wonder how reasonable, decent people can support horrible policies such as banning gay marriage, torture, and so on. At least part of the reason for this is because those in power who want to enact these policies have mastered the art of making them portable outside their own extremist spheres. They do this by "attaching" these ideas to more innocent, pure, and (generally) positive beliefs that are universally held by many conservatives, if not all Americans: love of country, love of God, the fear of harm to your children, belief in fairness, belief that hard work begets success, belief in the benefits of family and community, and so on.

The magic that makes it possible for decent, loving, hard working people to support things like torture is by making the idea of torture "portable" into their worldview, by hanging it onto one or more of these core beliefs. If you don't support torture, you're not protecting your children. If you support gay marriage, you're laying the groundwork for families to unravel. It's all bullshit, of course, but these are the root things people are being convinced of: not that torture is good, or that gay marriage is evil (though it often morphs into that), but that these things are natural conclusions based upon beliefs you already have. It takes the work of an evil genius to figure out how to connect these two things together and make them portable towards groups of people who have otherwise innocent and positive beliefs, but we see it happening every day.

<comment><USER9> s/right wing propaganda/propaganda/gn

this is a basic principle of all propaganda, right wing, left wing, anti gay, pro gay, white suprematism, black power, the list goes on.

Let's give these banks just a little trillion dollars or our country would suffer. Let's burn just a few Jews in the furnace or they would sell our country. Let's take all the money from the rich and kill them and make everyone equal(ly poor). Let's bomb these Muslims into the Stone Age because they threat our children. Let's help those Muslims kill Serbs or World Democracy is in danger. Let's allow these morons squeeze our balls and tits or our airplanes would fall from the skies.

It's just marketing, a way to sell the bad idea to people and make them feel happy. It has nothing to do with right and left.

<comment><USER10> It's true this pattern of "Accept <wrong> to prevent <worse>" has nothing to do with left or right. However I don't think it applies to pro-gay propaganda, because the whole point of the left-wing stance on this issue is that there is nothing wrong with being gay in the first place.

Side note: the pattern "accept <wrong> to prevent <worse>" is of course not bad in itself, but rather when false assumptions are used to connect <wrong> and <worse>...

<comment><USER9> I stand corrected - being a liberal (in the original sense, not a leftist) I used to consider all propaganda as bad. But there's indeed a 'good' propaganda. Or at least 'not bad'.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Sounds to me like a cognitive escape velocity. An idea needs a certain amount just to get out of your head, and an even larger velocity to get out of the 'bubble.' People encountering the idea can either increase or decrease its velocity, like booster rockets. Now, I wonder if the escape velocity of a given bubble, or the current velocity of a given idea are measurable in any meaningful way, so that we could act to change them?

<comment><USER12> Love the concept of "cognitive escape velocity" - a perfect example of a portable idea that spans psychology, physics and social media!

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> _"If you write an angry rant about sexism in the workplace, it may never leave the bubble. But a thoughtful piece may plant some ideas at the edge of the bubble that will escape"_

I've been on Hacker News a while, and have noticed across many posts that raganwald often writes well meaning, but sexist comments. He seems like a nice guy, and I've actually considered writing him a polite email about it.

But I end up not doing it. For no other reason than _it's really hard and time consuming_. When you criticize someone, it's understandably met with resistance. And if you make any kind of rhetorical mistakes whatsoever, people will take the opportunity to discount your entire position. It's a minefield. And there's so much sexism in the world, there's not enough hours in the day to write "portable" responses to all of it. Writing an "angry" blog post is often as far as one can get.

And so while I appreciate raganwald's point, that it's incredibly powerful when you can write a gentle, persuasive, portable argument.... I just don't think that's enough of a strategy for us, _as a group_.

I think when someone calls you out on sexism, you have some responsibility to wade through the anger and rhetorical mistakes and try to understand what their beef is..

<comment><USER14> I'm always interested in and grateful for criticism.

Feel free to make suggestions here if you think they will be instructive for others as well as for me. If you prefer to make them privately, I'm firstname.lastname@example.com.

Sincere thanks in advance...

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I will have to disagree. Or rather, I think that while some bubble are pretty closed, some are very permeable. I'll take Hacker News for example.

Although some people complain about the fact that there are strong biases on HN, I actually think that it is not that bad, and there are plenty of topics on which the community is divided (on top of my mind: internet piracy is acceptable vs bad, windows is a good tool vs it sucks, google is evil vs it is awesome, linux will never be a good desktop environment vs it will, etc..).

I think that there is a distinction between bubbles that are created around certain opinions (windows is bad + piracy is good + linux rocks) and bubbles that are organized around values (I disagree with you but I like debating with you + I like to learn about different subjects + etc..).

<comment><USER16> I like using the word "genre" instead of "bubble" as a metaphor for this sort of thing.

Genre's are useful - they act as a nice shortcut in the bookshop if you're looking for a particular kind of book. But I never pop my head outside of the SF section I'm going to be missing out on a lot of good reading and some interesting outlooks on life.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> It's sometimes very hard to create "universally" portable ideas - the metaphor or story that's going to get everybody to understand and communicate an idea. You often need to bring people together a bit first so that all the groups can actually see the common ground - even if they've not reached it yet.

For example - I have some fairly strong beliefs, based on the teams that I've worked with, on how design/UX and development fit together. I've learned from experience that I usually can't just jump to the "you need to play nice - <USER2> at all the advantages" pitch. Instead I have a bunch of arguments and points for developers, and a bunch of arguments and points for designers.

The talk I giving at the mostly developer GOTO Copenhagen next week is going to be very different from the one I gave at UX Cambridge last year - <USER3> of the audience not the ideas.

Once you nudge folk a little out of their comfort zone - then you can sell the larger changes that either side would have initially rejected.

Keep looking for the portable ideas - they always help. But in the mean time I'd also pay a lot of attention to why different groups reject ideas, and use the knowledge you gain there to hone your presentation to that group.

(BTW for folk who've not already come across it "Resistance as a resource" is a good read <http://dhemery.com/articles/resistance_as_a_resource/> )

</comment><comment><USER17> An unstated principle embedded in the post, sometimes made elsewhere (particularly in econ and political circles): change happens at the margins.

</comment><comment><USER18> Portable green ideas sleep furiously.

</comment><comment><USER19> Good points.

What does you mother think of this? I'd like to know her take on it, because she is an amazing example of someone who lives in the edge of the bubble. A black woman who became a programmer during the times when there were no women or blacks can put some insight into how to build portable ideas.

</comment><comment> wes-exp How do you make an idea portable?

<comment><USER14> I honestly don't know!

Here are some of the things I've tried. First, I've tried writing parables. Some of these seem very portable, but they also often annoy the people in the bubble who already embrace the idea and want more practical insights or advice. Nevertheless, parables have a way of side-stepping the logical critic in people's brains and appealing directly to their emotions. Sometimes that's a big win.

Second, I've tried to come up with sound bites. I'm not sure this is an effective example, but off the top of my head: "Discrimination doesn't scale." Sound bites are the refined sugar of ideas for good and for bad.

Third, I've tried to write without demonizing the people I disagree with. I tried to portray "Ted" as well-meanininged but a little too caffeinated here: [http://raganwald.posterous.com/bob-and-carol-and-ted-and- ali...](http://raganwald.posterous.com/bob-and-carol-and-ted-and-alice). But I think I blew it here: [http://raganwald.posterous.com/a-position-of-the- highest-mor...](http://raganwald.posterous.com/a-position-of-the-highest- moral-principle).

The truth is, I have no system or method for generating portable ideas, just some observations that many portable ideas have certain characteristics in common: They have emotional impact (tip 1), they are easy to remember (tip 2), and they avoid being divisive (point 3).

YMMV.

<comment><USER6> _parables have a way of side-stepping the logical critic in people's brains and appealing directly to their emotions. Sometimes that's a big win.

Second, I've tried to come up with sound bites...Sound bites are the refined sugar of ideas for good and for bad._

As you note, those are equally applicable to ideas with and without substance.

 _The truth is, I have no system or method for generating portable ideas, just some observations that many portable ideas have certain characteristics in common: They have emotional impact (tip 1), they are easy to remember (tip 2), and they avoid being divisive (point 3)._

I'd posit that looking for ways to popularize substantive ideas will produce portable ones.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> as an alternative to "going viral", I know a company that's trying to "go bacterial". Bacteria reproduce much more slowly than viruses - and yet they still have a viable contagion curve, and are at least as ubiquitous in nature as viruses.</comment>


Quora Redesign - <AUTHOR> http://folyo.me/guides/quora-redesign

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm the guy who did the redesign. Let me preempt some criticism by saying that I'm fully conscious that a redesign done over the week-end cannot magically improve a site like Quora.

There are a lot of factors to consider in a real redesign that I obviously didn't address here (usability testing, stats, business model, etc.). So please consider this like a fun experiment and nothing more.</comment>


Uber bids $3B for Nokia's Here maps - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2015/05/07/uber-nokia-here-bid

<comment><USER2> Nokia bought NAVTEQ back in 2008, and that became part of the HERE business unit.

My old Garmin standalone GPS used the NAVTEQ maps, and they were really good. Whatever it is that Google and Apple use now just doesn't compare.

So why hasn't Apple bought them? $3 billion is a rounding error to Apple. To a VC funded company like Uber, $3 billion is some serious coin.</comment>


Understanding Latency Hiding on GPUs (2016) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www2.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/2016/EECS-2016-143.pdf <comment><USER2> I'm jealous. Dan is reading my twitter and re-posting stuff here :)

[https://twitter.com/majek04/status/1267388797278400512](https://twitter.com/majek04/status/1267388797278400512)

You should definitely follow me on twitter :)

Anyway, the question is about optimally using GPGPU resources. It's desired to keep both ALU units and memory units busy, and it's not trivial what ratio of memory vs alu operations should there be. This paper addresses it _very_ nicely.

> Substituting the hardware parameters listed in Table 4.1 into the solutions > above suggests that hiding arithmetic latency requires 24 warps per SM and > hiding memory latency requires 30 warps per SM if on the Maxwell GPU – which > are similar numbers. This is despite the dramatic difference in latencies –6 > cycles in one case and 368 cycles in another – and in contrast with the > prevailing common wisdom.

The paper doesn't answer if there is a disadvantage in having too many warps, but considering that the max warps/block/sm is 32, we can say that you need 32 warps / 1024 threads per SM for optimal performance most often.

<comment><USER3> Note the results you quoted are for a test case in which all instructions are back-to-back dependent, which is good for testing the hardware and developing performance models, but not representative of well-tuned GPU codes.

> doesn't answer if there is a disadvantage in having too many warps,

There are disadvantages in having too many warps - the first is that the more warps per block you have, the fewer registers/thread you can use and the lower your achievable instruction level parallelism.

> but considering that the max warps/block/sm is 32, we can say that you need > 32 warps / 1024 threads per SM for optimal performance most often

I don't think any well-tuned GPU kernels use 32 warps/block, most are at 4 to 8 warps/block.

See also:

[https://github.com/NervanaSystems/maxas/wiki/SGEMM](https://github.com/NervanaSystems/maxas/wiki/SGEMM)

[https://www.nvidia.com/content/GTC-2010/pdfs/2238_GTC2010.pd...](https://www.nvidia.com/content/GTC-2010/pdfs/2238_GTC2010.pdf)

<comment><USER2> This is great. Thanks

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> One common pitfall with many cheap blog posts describing why GPUs are "fast" is the focus on the number of CUDA cores.

The author here does a great job at highlighting how it's not necessarily the amount of cores that makes the big difference, but rather the memory bandwidth.

He also brings the memory bandwidth into his own models, which supposedly lead to much more accurate models that can help developers understand the underlying GPU technology a lot better than just "we run 5000 cores on a matrix of data".

<comment><USER5> GPU architecture newbie here. Why isn't the memory interwoven with the cores, so you have faster local access and more streamlike data flow like in a systolic array?

<comment><USER6> Why aren't there e.g. 16 GB of L1D$ inside our CPUs? It'd be blazingly fast! :)

Although memory access patterns of typical GPU workloads are very different than those of CPU workloads, there _are_ GPU-local, hierarchical caches similar to CPUs for different purposes that are exclusive to shader cores/computation units, which can be even partitioned dynamically. The struggle on the GPU side is keeping all the cores busy while servicing memory requests efficiently. Sharing memory across small group of threads run in lockstep, for example, is a great way of doing it.

<comment><USER5> > Why aren't there e.g. 16 GB of L1D$ inside our CPUs? It'd be blazingly fast! > :)

I didn't say the memory necessarily has to be moved into the GPU. The other way around would also be a possibility.

<comment><USER6> Yep, that's not what I intended to hint at, either. What I mean is, it boils down to the familiar problem of diminishing returns to have huge caches inside GPUs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The author is now at NVIDIA. I guess we'll never find out more on how GPUs work!</comment>


Nvidia's new graphics cards are a big deal - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2016/5/7/11615806/nvidia-gtx-1080-1070-pascal-specs-price-release-date <comment><USER2> Earlier discussion about an article that goes much more in depth: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11648110](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11648110)

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm really skeptical these cards will be cost/perf competitive with AMD's upcoming Polaris.

The 1080 is the only card with GDDR5X, which from what I've read has twice the bandwidth of GDDR5. The 1080 and 1070 both have 256-bit buses, meaning if the clock rates are equal, the 1070 will have half the memory bandwidth of the 1080.

In contrast, the _current gen_ AMD R9-290, R9-390 and higher have 512-bit GDDR5 buses, and the leaked Polaris cards have 256-bit GDDR5X buses (eqivalent).

AMD cards tend to be priced lower than NVidia cards, so we're very much in a wait-and-see mode right now.

(We do datacenter level cryptographic compute and our workloads are very memory bandwidth constrained.)

<comment><USER4> You do cryptographic compute. You're about the only HPC application that benefits from AMD architecture. Most other scientific compute and deep learning applications have horrible performance on AMD compared with NVIDIA (usually for software reasons that are in principle fixable, but it is what it is).

<comment><USER5> There is a lot of applications beyond crypto that depend on an integer performance. Even in graphics, not just scientific/engineering compute.

<comment><USER6> sure, but if you're not integer performance bound, which most graphics work won't be, it doesn't usually matter.

<comment><USER5> Yet, a lot of stuff beyond crypto depends solely on an integer performance + memory bandwidth. Graphics included. 2D image processing is better done in integer or a fixed point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I worked as an intern on some stereoscopic/multiview R&D maybe 12 or 13 years ago. It was similar to the work in this video, except meant for autostereoscopic displays like the 3DS and displays with more viewing angles than 2. ( [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acIe1vlpd84](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acIe1vlpd84) )

The multiple projections feature is cool. Aside from saving the double geometry/draw call overhead, they're probably also clipping/transforming/rendering each stereoscopic pair of fragments at the same time to encourage cache coherency and reduce bandwidth requirements on the GPU.

Overall, the overhead of rendering the same thing twice from slightly different projections shouldn't cut your rendering capabilities in half, it's mostly the same stuff. So this feature should make a big difference for VR.

I was waiting for something like this from the Sony PS3 when they started introducing 3DTV compatible games but I guess the market wasn't there at the time for that driver development effort considering most of the games released in 3D were PS2 ports. Seems like they missed an opportunity to have a killer app for 3DTV, nearly every PS3/PS4 game could have had built-in 3D with only a 25% or so performance hit that can be compensated for with downsampling/upscaling.

</comment><comment><USER8> After adding a 4K display and Nvidia shield to my home theater I was a bit disappointed that the recommended way to max out 4K games was two gtx 980ti in SLI. $1200 is out of my budget, but I can't fit 2 cards in my micro ATX case anyway. The 1080 is definitely going in my build.

</comment><comment><USER9> Anyone know when the Mobile Fiji, Polaris, Zen, Pascal hardware is coming out?

<comment><USER10> All but Pascal are only best guesses:

* Pascal will arrive with GTX 1080 end of this month, this is covered in OPs article

* Polaris is scheduled for summer/autumn, but as with Pascal the flagship models will come later

* Zen will be at the beginning 2017

* Mobile Fiji – no idea, have read nothing about

 _Edit:_ Just realizing that maybe you meant to prepend mobile to all of those?

<comment><USER11> Was Zen 2017? Last I saw had it dropping in October of 2016. I actually decided to hold off on an upgrade for it.

<comment><USER10> I'm not actually sure. It might very well be Q4 2016.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is cool without a doubt. However it's fairly well understood that Nvidia have gfx's tech about 5 years ahead of current market level. This allows them to eek out small increments to customers and stay ahead of the curve. It's a smart move, and model used by many of the big hardware manufactures (Intel for example).

However VR has forced their hand to release a significant upgrade. So if VR turns out to be nothing more than a trend that we forget about for another 20 years, at least it results in some amazing graphics cards.

Just not sure there's any PC focused games developers left to push these cards...

<comment><USER13> I've always heard these "conspiracy" rumors since highschool. They never made sense to me because of competition... I can't believe that they have the engineers formerly known as ATI that far in the rear view mirror especially since the manufacturing processes everyone in Silicon works with are the same. So where does this "fairly well understood" assumption come from?

<comment><USER14> Heres the deal, now both Intel and AMD are operating on 14nm 16nm, things are going to rebalance out in both cpu and gpu markets. After much deliberation, I have decided to wait for Zen for all my future builds, because I have this strong feeling AMD is about to be back and stronger than ever before.

Basically, Intel was ahead of AMD(ATI), but not anymore...

I welcome more competition in the market either way.

<comment><USER9> I love AMD and I'm rooting for them, but I'm not sure we are going to have another Athlon run here.

AMD is still having trouble beating out nVidia, and Intel. The Zen architecture could in theory have HBM for the system CPU/APU, but I'm guessing they won't.

Finally A lot of Intel performance comes from compiler optimization and design, and last time with Athlon it took years for that to roll out. Unless Zen is years ahead of Intel, I don't know if they will be able to edge that far ahead. Intel has been doing CPU-GPU pairs now for more than 5 years, and they are getting better.

I think for AMD to win this round, they would need to have a power ratio that allowed them to dominate the laptop space, with APUs and eliminate the GPU as a component, and right now AMD and Intel are both on 14nm, so I think it would be hard to win there, but we will see.

nVidia is on the 16nm process, so if AMDs chips are equal in performance, they might draw less power. However, for VR, nVidia has been working very closely on the software with the various companies and I think they will have a strong software advantage for a while.

<comment><USER15> For Zen, they don't have to be the best, just good enough. Frankly, for consumer Intel has been good enough since the 2600 days (except on the mobile front). So Zen should be fine in that market.

<comment><USER16> Good enough or, "we're #2!" might be all that's needed to chip off some server shares. Which is good for AMD. But for my machine I'm not sure I'd give up _any_ single threaded performance for the promise of 8 physical cores with SandyBridge level IPC.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Buttercoin (YC S13) US Bitcoin Marketplace – Free Trading Through Dec - <AUTHOR> https://buttercoin.com/#/setup?r=D6YDrSLZ6GX <comment><USER2> I am a bit reluctant to trust another Bitcoin marketplace. So many of these marketplaces have failed the past year, what reason should people have to trust Buttercoin or think that they are more secure than the likes of Mt. Gox? Being a funded marketplace just means that you are more than likely to be the target of hackers trying to prove a point. I've already lost a little bit this year because of various marketplace collapses.

What protections are in place for losses? What are you procedures for storing coins (hot wallets, cold wallets, etc)? Do you have a guarantee you are willing to publicly stick by? Has your marketplace been audited and verified by a third party security firm? How often will you undertake auditing of your marketplace to ensure that it remains secure and funds are safe? If customer coins are ever compromised, will you cover 100% of the losses?

I have a few BTC, I would be more than willing to try this out, if you were more forthcoming in regards to security and your guarantees. Being a funded marketplace, I would like to think you built a decent and secure environment for Buttercoin as well as got the site audited independently by a third party security firm who perhaps specialise in financial/marketplace scripts.

I am not trying to be cynical here, Buttercoin looks great, but you can understand given the losses I have endured the past year, that I am very very hesitant to trusting another marketplace and I assume there are many out there like me who have been burnt the last year. My trust in all coin marketplaces has been broken, I just need the public reassurance you will do things differently and your policies/procedures before I move any of my BTC.

<comment><AUTHOR> We have been audited by independent security professionals and will continue to undergo frequent security testing (both code reviews and adversarial testing). I'll try to make the results of that more public, since you obviously shouldn't just take my word for it.

To protect against losses we're working to get insurance for deposits setup, but it's not in place yet. We're also looking at the possibility of letting people maintain custody of their coins if they don't need realtime trading. Proof-of-reserve is also planned soon to guarantee that all accounts are fully funded.

Right now, the vast majority of coins we control are in cold-storage wallets that require 4+ people to access, with most of the rest in cold-storage wallets that require 2 people to access. Only a very small amount is in a hot wallet. We're working with a partner to add custodial multi-sig to our hot wallet (and maybe cold wallets) so that even if someone compromises our machine, there's an external signatory which will be able to prevent transactions from processing.

You're right to be cautious. Even though I keep most of my bitcoins on Buttercoin, in general I wouldn't recommend that anyone use a centralized service for long-term storage. We know that people will do that though, so our security has to be up to par. Hopefully the features we roll out over the next 3-6 months will create enough transparency that you can trust us.

<comment><USER3> I like your openness. What's your role at Buttercoin? Also, how do you differentiate from Coinbase?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm one of the founders/CTO.

Our main difference from Coinbase is that we have an order book and real-time trading. Coinbase is great for people that want to buy some bitcoin at a fixed price and don't mind waiting a few days to get them. We focus more on businesses and traders that need to buy and sell bitcoin in real time. Adding USD is also very fast with us, usually 1 or 2 days. I think that's slightly faster then Coinbase, or was last I checked (unless you add a credit card for instant buy with lower limits). It doesn't matter as much in Coinbase's model, since they're fronting cash to lock in a price.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Very annoying that they break the browser back button... (it just reloads the page)

<comment><AUTHOR> Oops, that's a bug with how we're using Angular. Thanks for pointing it out!

<comment><USER5> Yes, typical single-page application bug where you need to handle it by itself.

Take also into account the possibility of having many tabs opened with different navigation paths.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> We're finally open for anyone to signup, so we're celebrating with free trading. Please write bots, we've got a pretty good API.

The open source re-release of the engine is also back up for anyone that wants to play with it: [https://github.com/buttercoin/engine](https://github.com/buttercoin/engine)

</comment><comment><USER6> "Unfortunately Buttercoin is not accessible from your location" [0]

Europe/Spain

[0] [https://s3.amazonaws.com/static.buttercoin.com/location- not-...](https://s3.amazonaws.com/static.buttercoin.com/location-not- supported.html#/setup?r=D6YDrSLZ6GX)

<comment><USER7> AML, presumably?

<comment><AUTHOR> It has to do with banking and regulation. Adding new regions takes a lot of time and effort to get right, but we're working on it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Isn't this the one that turned out to be a scam?

[https://github.com/buttercoin/buttercoin/issues/71](https://github.com/buttercoin/buttercoin/issues/71)

<comment><AUTHOR> Nope, although PartTimeLegend is obviously quite disgruntled for some reason I've never entirely been clear on. Nobody was removed from the project on GitHub for over a year after there was last active development. We only took people off of it when some started acting in a disruptive or aggressive manner. Anyone that still wanted to work on that project (buttercoin/buttercoin) was invited to let us know and we would give them access or transfer the repo to them.

That repo was the initial open source attempt at a better trade engine in node. It suffered from too-many-cooks syndrome after being started as an announce-first project. There was no clear direction, some people wanted it to be a distributed market, etc. After a couple of months, we thought it would be best to start from scratch with a small team on a focused implementation in Scala. That's available at [http://github.com/buttercoin/engine](http://github.com/buttercoin/engine).

The other contentious point was bitcoins that were donated. We posted a couple of times over the course of the year that anyone who had donated should get in touch with us to have their coins returned as the original project looked dead. Nobody contacted us, so we decided the best course of action was to simply return the coins to the address they came from. That irritated a couple of people, but I still think it was the right thing to do, especially as the person who had originally collected donations had left and there was no clear governance setup for their use.

The original impetus for the project was to create a more robust and secure way for people to access bitcoin liquidity. Specifically in the US, since that's where people seemed to be having the hardest time getting money in and out of other platforms. In that respect we've succeeding. We're also still committed to open sourcing as much as we can and will continue to expand the buttercoin/engine repo.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's a bit strange that Alexis Ohanian is listed as an "investor" in the page and also as a "founder" in the footer. I guess the footer isn't intended to mean that he's a founder of Buttercoin, but it sure is easy to misread it that way.

<comment><USER10> Also I am not sure how this[1] fits in. I remember Paul Bohm being the founder or co-founder of Buttercoin, but his name is absent.

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

<comment><USER11> At one point he was a co-founder. He has since left.

<comment><USER10> History was rewritten, then? You can't just un-co-founder someone. In unrelated news, we have always been at war with Eastasia.

<comment><AUTHOR> Paul left after a couple of months and hasn't been involved with the project for about a year and a half. None of the design or code is based on the original open source effort which he started. We're not trying to hide history, he just doesn't want people thinking he's associated with it anymore.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> 1) What makes you better than the many existing Bitcoin exchanges? The website doesn't offer any explanation about why a potential customer should choose you over the alternatives.

2) What guarantees or protection do you offer customers for the Bitcoin that you hold? I don't mean in terms of security systems, encryption or any technical details, just what happens if you are hacked and lose coins. Will you reimburse customer losses at all?

<comment><AUTHOR> 1) Compared to exchanges like Bitstamp, we have US banking relationships and can fund accounts via bank transfer in 1-3 days. Generally, wiring funds internationally is much slower and more expensive.

Compared to brokers like Coinbase or Circle, we have an order book, so traders can quickly adjust their positions.

2) We're working on insurance for held coins and the ability for customers to maintain full custody of their coins (possibly at the cost of slower trade completion times).

<comment><USER13> 2 could be done as some sort of super-fast escrow service.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, that's basically the idea, probably using some multi-sig protocol. It will never be as fast as our internal ledger though, since I think we'd need to wait for at least one confirmation before funding the trade.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Free trading, but "There is a fee of 0.5% + $0.38 per transaction" charged by the payment processor to add money to the account.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep. That fee is still competitive even if you're just buying and holding, but we're geared more towards traders.

We're working with our partners to improve the cost structure so that we don't have to charge deposit fees.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Thanks for the talk (Bennett Hoffman) yesterday @ Bitcoin meetup yesterday. Looking forward to the additional features to be rolled out.

</comment><comment><USER16> We've been using Buttercoin for a little while now- very pleased with the service so far!

</comment><comment><USER17> I wonder if Professor Chaos had a hand in this...

<comment><AUTHOR> Ha! I wish ChangeTip supported HN.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> > a team that cares about it's customers

*its

[http://grammarist.com/spelling/its-its/](http://grammarist.com/spelling/its- its/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Good catch, thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Congrats! Looking snazzy.

</comment><comment><USER20> Congrats on the launch!</comment>


Monsoons proof customer service in the broadband age - <AUTHOR> http://blog.kitebit.com/2013/03/21/customer-service-monsoons-proof/

<comment><USER2> This is a nice approach to customer service, I have always had many bad experiences when dealing with call centers or email customer service, always felt abandonend.

Problem is can you manitain that level if your rate of failures gets bigger and you need to deal with say 100 cases like this each month?

I can't see this being sustainable in services like Paypal or Amazon who I imagine deal with thousands of differents issues everyday.

But anyway I whish it was always like it's been reflected in this story, we'd be at least conforted that someone cares about our problem.

</comment><comment><USER3> Nice story. His friend traveled to Thailand to get the file?

<comment><AUTHOR> As Xavi (the author of the post) told me, the engineer had to fly to Thayland for business reasons. He managed to get a good connection overthere and get the file back to the guy who bought the documentary in a pendrive.

Disclaimer: I'm the founder of KiteBit service.</comment></comment>


FCC urges 7 voice gateway providers to support robocall crackdown - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-robocalls-fraud/u-s-agency-urges-u-s-voice-providers-to-support-robocall-crackdown-idUSKBN1ZY2D0 <comment><AUTHOR> Good to see a bit of pressure on some of the entry points that allow spoofed numbers into the phone network.</comment>