How did we make the DOS redirector take up only 256 bytes of memory? - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/larryosterman/2004/11/08/how-did-we-make-the-dos-redirector-take-up-only-256-bytes-of-memory/ <comment><AUTHOR> I ran across this when I was reading about the "CALL 5" interface that exists in DOS. CP/M [1], the early cross-platform microcomputer OS, provided a set of BIOS routines that you could invoke by setting up a function number and arguments in the registers, then executing CALL 5. DOS system calls are done through interrupts, but in order to make it easier to port earlier 8-bit CP/M programs, you could also use a version of this CALL 5 interface in COM programs. To this day, COM programs are supported in 32-bit Windows, which in my mind means theoretically there might be some CP/M program that would run on Windows as well with a few modifications.

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CP/M](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CP/M) [2]: [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/16669352/call-5-interface...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/16669352/call-5-interface- on-ms-dos)</comment>


Google – My Location History - <AUTHOR> https://www.google.com/maps/timeline?authuser=0&pb <comment><USER2> This looks like a follow-up to [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20050764](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20050764).

</comment><comment><USER3> I used to willingly enable this and enjoyed this page. But it was recently revealed that Google shares bulk location data with law enforcement, offering the list of all devices that were in a certain area. That was the line for me. Disabled.

[https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/04/13/us/google- loc...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/04/13/us/google-location- tracking-police.html)

> The new orders, sometimes called "geofence" warrants, specify an area and a > time period, and Google gathers information from Sensorvault about the > devices that were there.

<comment><USER4> Unless you are planning criminal activity in the future, this feature could act as an alibi to absolve you of being in the place where a crime was committed. And, false positives aside, I think it's great that law enforcement has the tools to keep society safe and civil. Law enforcement is not always == bad

<comment><USER5> >Unless you are planning criminal activity in the future

it's a good thing all laws are just, then, huh?

<comment><USER6> And that constructing false narratives from meta data isn't a thing

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Honestly, I find this really useful and love being able to see where I've been, especially since I travel on almost a weekly basis.

It's an invaluable tool for me and I trust Google to safeguard the information. They haven't failed me yet, and if they ever do, it should be easy enough to delete the info.

<comment><USER8> I like it as well - but google is almost certainly using this data to target you. I also wish I more control. Is there a way to export to GPX? It would be fun to create a heat map of your daily locations over the course of years.

<comment><USER9> By "target", do you mean that they're using the information I voluntarily give them to provide me with more accurate and useful ads? Because, I mean, that's not a terrible trade-off.

<comment><USER10> You actually see nonzero value in more targeted ads? Genuinely asking.

<comment><USER9> Yes. I'd rather see ads for things I might actually buy than things I would never buy. If I could have an ad for a website I like instead of an ad for a website I would never go to that sounds like a good things to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> OwnTracks. Open source, self-hosted option that uses standard protocols. iOS and an Android apps available.

This is turining out to be quite extensive. It also have options for sharing with family (and friends). And triggering custom action when arriving/leaving a location.

OwnTracks: [https://owntracks.org/](https://owntracks.org/)

Docs: [https://owntracks.org/booklet/](https://owntracks.org/booklet/)

</comment><comment><USER12> Like many other comments, I like this and find it useful. Recently I took a Lyft ride late from SFO to home and it was late and I was tired and I didnt concentrate on the route taken by the driver but I was certain we took the 101. Later when I saw the charge, I was surprised to see the ride map showing me taking a roundabout way, heading on 280 and essentially doing a 70mile ride. I complained to Lyft and they refunded the money but I still wanted to know how I got home. Checked back on this and found that it was in fact a regular 101 ride home and I had proof just in case Lyft wanted it.

As others have mentioned, it is nice to look back at the trips I took and also share with others who might be visiting places where I have been in the past.

<comment><USER13> > it was in fact a regular 101 ride home

Confused... you make it sound like faulty location history led you to erroneously report your Lyft driver. But that doesn't jive with the tone and thrust of your comment.

<comment><USER14> It sounds like the Google map confirmed his intuition but the Lyft map had a lengthy bogus route. So he was overcharged.

<comment><USER12> Sorry my post was confusing.

Lyft had the wrong route (280 and longer) Google confirmed my suspicion that we took the shorter route (101) Lyft credited back regardless but it was good to know what really happened

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> My location history showed me as being on the strip in Las Vegas for 40 minutes while I was at google's Next conference in SF this year, which i found to be interesting. As far as I can tell my phone must have registered an SSID that caused google to think i was in Vegas. My history no longer shows this, but i did save some screen caps.

[https://imgur.com/a/eNBP5t7](https://imgur.com/a/eNBP5t7)

<comment><USER16> This happens sometimes with conferences. I was at one recently where it changed everyone's auto set time zone to Mountain time, because the conference set up came from Utah

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I've been wanting to disable this for years now but find it too interesting and sometimes useful to look back on.

I've ditched many Google services due to Google being Google yet I still have this enabled which is somewhat ironic.

One day I'd like to figure out how to implement some sort of private alternative to this without using Google.

<comment><USER18> Try [https://owntracks.org/](https://owntracks.org/)

<comment><USER19> That page needs a bit of help. The call to action to install could be more front and center and the docs link is buried in the last sentence. Arguably the docs link is way more important than github or Twitter

Docs here: [https://owntracks.org/booklet/](https://owntracks.org/booklet/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Just a quick note - if like me you deleted your location history then disabled it, all you'll see is a prompt to delete your (non-existent) location history, which confused me for a bit.

After disabling all Google history - location, web, search etc - I don't notice much of a difference in the usefulness of Google services, but the one thing that still hangs around is purchase and booking history because my company uses GSuite. When I want to delete that history it tells me to delete that email - I think I should be able to turn that off somehow, but don't know how.

Edit: To do justice to Google, they do seem to be respecting my wishes not to store any of that history, at least in any explicit form.

<comment><USER21> From other comments, it seems like that history is sourced directly from your emails; you'd need to delete the (archived?) emails to remove it from the list.

<comment><USER20> Yes, perhaps I wasn't clear - I did say it tells me to delete the emails, but given that it's a paid service I think there should be a separate setting where I can tell GSuite not to scan my emails.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I know it is not really advisable to share this info with third parties in general, but I'd love to have this data under my control, since it is has proven very to my-self.

A few examples on why it has been useful to me:

\- When did I go to the dentist last?

\- Where did that credit card charge I see in my bank statement originated?

\- Where did I go on the day I lost my umbrella?

<comment><USER23> Another user mentioned OwnTracks, coupled with a broker like Mosquitto. That might fit your needs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Does anyone know if turning this off turns off the restaurant recommendations? I don't really want my location data on here, but I do enjoy some of the convenient notifications that Google gives me like suggested businesses.

</comment><comment><USER25> I disabled it a long time ago

</comment><comment><USER26> Be sure to click on the nodes to get your full history.

This is why I 1) switched back to Apple Maps and 2) never say yes when Google asks for my location in Safari on iOS (it doesn't change the query results anyway)

<comment><USER23> Similar, though I switched to HERE WeGo on Android (but they have an iOS version as well).

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> It's another "I'm scared of google tracking this thing but can't give a reason why" episode. It's bad if law enforcement has your location data because...? Are you a criminal?

<comment><USER28> > It's bad if law enforcement has your location data because...?

I'm on the lax and forgiving end of the privacy debate but even I find this statement breathtaking.

Would you be as cavalier about giving up other similar protections? i.e. unwarranted search, self-incrimination etc. They can all be attacked with similar "if you've done nothing wrong..." arguments.

<comment><USER27> Tell me how someone going into your home and searching or self-incrimination is the same as law enforcement knowing where you are

<comment><USER28> Someone going into your home and self-incrimination are different to each other but they both exist for the same underlying reason.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> No data after march 2015. Good.

</comment><comment><USER30> It shows me driving over water. That's interesting. I'm not seeing a bridge.

<comment><USER31> To conserve battery, you phone only reports current location periodically. The location history then draws a straight line between successive plot points.

<comment><USER30> Would airplane mode or poor signal change that? I think GPS is still on during airplane mode.

I'm assuming it saves periodically and uploads when it acquires a connection.</comment></comment></comment>


PG On Fox Today - <AUTHOR> http://ycombinator.posterous.com/pg-on-fox-today

<comment><USER2> I was actually pleasantly surprised by the hosts. Was expecting them to come off as complete morons (having watched some of Fox Biz) but they did a decent job.

</comment><comment><USER3> Direct link: [http://www.foxbusiness.com/search- results/m/25897600/funding...](http://www.foxbusiness.com/search- results/m/25897600/funding-tech-start-ups.htm)

</comment><comment><USER4> What's interesting about this is seeing how something that we know a lot about is conveyed to the general public in a few brief clips. It must be difficult to choose exactly what to say.

</comment><comment><USER5> I was surprised that the hosts actually let Paul speak for more than seven un- interrupted seconds. When the interview first started, the game of "I'm going to say some stuff that I think you might say and ask you if that's what you want to say" seemed to have begun, but the hosts thankfully scaled back to occasional yapping.

</comment><comment><USER6> Watching the video reinforced my desire to apply to Y Combinator. I've read in the guidelines that submitting multiple ideas is acceptable, and even preferred. It's also clear the majority of accepted startups are product- oriented (I'm considering automated subscriptions to a web service a product in this case), rather than service-oriented.

My company is following the Guy Kawasaki method of offering services/consulting to generate immediate cash flow, while working on product- driven solutions in the background. I strongly believe the product I'm currently working on will succeed, though I don't believe it will ever be a good acquisition candidate for Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, etc. I'm wondering how important that is for acceptance into Y Combinator.

Even the services I'm offering have an extra entrepreneurial twist. With a nod towards Anomaly (<http://anomaly.com/>), I have one carefully-screened client with whom I'm essentially working for equity rather than cash. Thus far I've been impressed by his performance and contributions to the project.

In summary, I'm hoping that someone here will evaluate what I've written and respond with a convincing argument for why I should: A. Apply with my 'big picture' vision, incorporating most or all of the above - keeping my fingers crossed that what is essentially an agency with multiple business models has a chance at acceptance B. Apply with total focus on the app - even though it's not a good acquisition candidate C. Wait to apply until I have a product- driven idea that is a good acquisition candidate

Thank you in advance for any light to be shed. I hope my questions possess some semblance of universal applicability.

<comment><USER7> First, read this if you haven't. <http://ycombinator.com/howtoapply.html>

If you email me specifics I can give you some specific feedback as you start writing your application. However, (A) is probably the right answer: it is good to demonstrate to YC that you have multiple paths to success, especially because the ideas for these startups tend to change over the course of the Y Combinator program and behind. Just be very, very specific about what you're going to do.

Not being an obvious acquisition target for Big Internet absolutely does not disqualify you or even hurt you. Your basic idea is a good one that will make you money -- and if you have real revenue you can always sell a company.

Wufoo is the canonical example of a YC company going strong as an independent. So, my universal suggestion, would be to apply with your biggest picture vision, while focusing on that big picture as a specific, well-defined product rather than as services for individual clients.

<comment><USER6> Thanks very much for your feedback. As a Wufoo user myself, it is a very encouraging example.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It is not easy to be that natural in front of a TV camera. I wonder if pg's had training.

<comment><USER9> Is it just me or does he look mildly irritated by the end?

It seemed to start around the point where the host accuses Mark Cuban of duping everyone with broadcast.com then lumping Viaweb in with that... as if all founders made money by tricking acquirers rather than creating value.

Of course, maybe I'm projecting...

<comment><USER10> I didn't see irritation. I saw amusement when the host mentioned Mark. But then again you might be right.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Last question was good - and the answer. Must admit to learning stuff in the interview as an unlikely yc-applicant.

</comment><comment><USER12> Successful Pittsburghers:

Andrew Carnegie sold US Steel to J.P. Morgan and ended up in New York.

Mark Cuban sold Broadcast.com to Yahoo and ended up in Dallas.

Paul Graham sold Viaweb to Yahoo and ended up in Silicon Valley.

I'm determined to be next. Working on it.

<comment><USER2> Carnegie was a teenager when his family emigrated to Pittsburgh, do Pittsburghers count him 100% as one of their own?

I'd think the Scots would have something to say about that ;)

<comment><USER13> The Pittsburghers that worked for Carnegie certainly did not count him one of their own.

In a local PBS special about one of Carnegie's libraries, an elderly gentleman said that he would go to the pool in the basement of the library when he was a kid. But his father would never darken the door of any place with Carnegie's name on it. The father called Carnegie a "son of a shoe," apparently a grave insult in the father's home country.

<comment><USER14> The coolest thing about different cultures is that the grave insult that can get you and your family killed and your brother-in-law's tractor dealership bankrupted in one, is funny or no big deal in others.

A guy I know (here in US) got in trouble for beckoning a Fillipino coworker. Apparently only prostitutes are beckoned in the Phillipines as a solicitation. In some places in India, you -can- will get killed (or, if you are lucky, your dick cut off) for saying "Your sister is hot". In other places you will be considered enemy for life. In the US, I hear "Thanks man, I'll tell her". Cultural differences between families is also very interesting to observe. When I was a semi-kid, I heard one guy shout at his brother that he is son of a whore and my jaw dropped and remained dropped for a while.

I wonder how shocking alien cultures will be. Zaphod was(is?) his own great- grandfather due to a time-machine mishap and a defective condom, if I remember it right.

<comment><USER15> _In some places in India, you -can- will get killed (or, if you are lucky, your dick cut off) for saying "Your sister is hot"._

That's not the brightest thing to say to any guy, even in the United States.

<comment><USER14> My friends must just be very laid back people then, I guess :)

<comment><USER15> Apparently. :)

Of course, these things are probably situation dependent no matter what culture you're in. If you're good enough friends with someone, you can probably get away with saying nearly anything ... if they think you're joking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> "Paul, did you have a startup at one point?"

UM...yeah!?

haaa. I guess there is no reason to expect that she would know that...

(what?)

</comment><comment><USER17> Is this playing for folks outside the US?

<comment><USER18> Yes. I'm in Singapore.

<comment><USER17> thanks! For some reason it didn't play in Safari. It did work in Firefox though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I can see this becoming a reality TV. :)

<comment><USER20> Hackers are (almost) always male and don't get laid that much, so a reality TV with a bunch of guys and no sex is not going to attract a lot of viewers...

<comment><USER21> Web based show! I think it would be interesting if they made a little documentary following around 3 months of YC, commercially though I guess it wouldn't be overly viable, would be great to see though.

<comment><USER22> Joel Spolsky did something similar, except with a group in interns:

<http://www.projectaardvark.com/movie/>

There's also a little bit in there with the founders of Reddit and (IIRC) it briefly shows a bit of the first round of YC.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Oh geez, 1000 applications? Is ycombinator taking 60 this fall?

</comment><comment><USER24> Black Polos are serious business.

</comment><comment><USER12> I didn't realize it until I watched, but with a single word, pg tells you the answer to the question posed by one of my favorite books, "The Ultimate Secret to Getting Absolutely Everything You Want," by Mike Hernacki.

<comment><USER25> "No?"

<comment><USER4> "That's what you've got to figure out"

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k1uOqRb0HU>

<comment><USER12> Wrong video.

[http://www.foxbusiness.com/search- results/m/25897600/funding...](http://www.foxbusiness.com/search- results/m/25897600/funding-tech-start-ups.htm)

Answer at B4.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> he is posh haha

<comment><USER27> and fluffy!

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> PG for president!</comment>


Indian woman arrested on Monday over a comment on Facebook - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-20405457

<comment><USER2> This is absolutely disgraceful! I seriously doubt if I can call India a democracy after incidents like this.</comment>


Image Synthesis from Text with Deep Learning – Two Minute Papers [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAbhypxs1qQ <comment><AUTHOR> Paper: [https://arxiv.org/pdf/1612.03242v1.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1612.03242v1.pdf)</comment>


Can Planet Earth Feed 10B People? Humanity has 30 years to find out. - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/03/charles-mann-can-planet-earth-feed-10-billion-people/550928/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> >Alas, rubisco is, by biological standards, a sluggard, a lazybones, a couch potato. ... Years ago I talked with biologists about photosynthesis for a magazine article. Not one had a good word to say about rubisco.

That idea seems to have changed - and frankly was always a little unlikely. From the wiki page on RuBisCO ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RuBisCO](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RuBisCO)):

> A recent theory explores the trade-off between the relative specificity > (i.e., ability to favour CO2 fixation over O 2 incorporation, which leads to > the energy-wasteful process of photorespiration) and the rate at which > product is formed. The authors conclude that RuBisCO may actually have > evolved to reach a point of 'near-perfection' in many plants (with widely > varying substrate availabilities and environmental conditions), reaching a > compromise between specificity and reaction rate

Which seems more consistent with one of the highest copy number proteins around with a vital role to play.</comment>


Cloudflare's new DNS attracting 'gigabits per second' of rubbish - <AUTHOR> https://www.zdnet.com/article/1-1-1-1-cloudflares-new-dns-attracting-gigabits-per-second-of-rubbish/ <comment><USER2> I've seen some of the papers where people look at big chunks of unused address space and watch the probes etc. It is really quite amazing. Once I screwed myself royally by accidentally turning RIP on for the upstream side of my router (connected to the cable modem) and it advertised 192.168/16 which Comcast accepted and started routing random stuff from the local exchange to my router. It was pretty funny talking to their NOC staff who was mad at me for advertising the route but I pointed out it was pretty stupid of them to accept routes like that from their edge nodes. What if I had sent them a BGP route for China, then what would they have done? (Don't try that at home kids unless you don't want to use your network for a while)

<comment><USER3> Wow I'm surprised. That is such a low barrier to doing your own BGP hijackig.

<comment><USER4> It's even easier to steal a phone number.

Lots of phone companies still just approve a port if you send them the required paperwork to initiate a port. That means with zero verification from the account holder a number can vanish from your account.

<comment><USER5> Worse. Some very large carriers don't even look at the supporting documentation (bill, LOA) submitted with port orders unless there's a rejection from the losing carrier and they want to double check the address entered or something. Hijacking numbers is crazy simple. Same for hijacking the SMS functionality of any number in the US (voice traffic remains untouched). In about 10 minutes you can start receiving SMS directed towards any number you want, and also be able to send out texts originating from that number. Anyone who relies on SMS for any type of authentication should stop.

<comment><USER6> > Anyone who relies on SMS for any type of authentication should stop

Err. That's pretty much every implementation of 2FA around the world.

Why isn't this more well known ?

<comment><USER7> The beauty of it is cases like Google's. They have this bizarre 2FA security- theater Google Authenticator thing, but then nearly force everyone to have their phonenumber as a "backup device".

Guess what the send you when you forget your 2FA or password? Yep, an SMS. So out the door goes the _whole_ point of 2FA. Your three factors (account name / email address + password + Google Authenticator) have now been reduced to one factor: your email address.

I can rent a mobile tower in Malaysia or some other asian country, advertise your phonenumber as roaming there for about €10/h and start intercepting all your shit. Or just get your telco's inept service dept to forward your number somewhere else.

Lessons here:

1\. Even the giants get it wrong. 2\. There _is_ _no_ _security_ anywhere in the tech world. Literally _everything_ is broken. Your electronic car locks / starter system, your phone, your internet, everything is horribly horribly horribly broken beyond any imagining, even for hyper-tech savvy people. 3\. Remove your phonenumber as a backup device from your google account and _never_ use it as a backup device every again.

<comment><USER8> Once you add another factor you can remove SMS from your Google account. I've done it with all of mine.

Edit: Oh, you said that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> A German podcaster who has been working on networks for decades once said that he owns a large chunk of public IP addresses in the 22.214.171.124/16 subnet and it's impossible for him to use it because once he activates it he basically gets a DDOS of misdirected traffic. So many misconfigured networks out there...

<comment><USER10> I solidly feel it's a cop out for an ISP to not filter their traffic to block spoofed IPs. In my eyes, there's zero legitimate reason that this guy should get flooded, but alas, our industry gets lazier and more careless each year.

<comment><USER11> There is no spoofing involved there. We're talking about typos of 192.168 (private space) typed as 192.68 which is "real" space. It is not like ISPs are leaking rfc1918 IP space.

<comment><USER10> Very true that it is a typo, which I had noticed, and thanks for calling out. Still doesn't invalidate my point though. My theory is that a lot of that traffic is likely coming from spoofed IPs as I doubt there would be substantial _sustained_ legitimate, but improperly directed, traffic. My guess is a lot of it is shoddily written malicious traffic.

<comment><USER12> Google for "BCP 38".

This pain has been known for many, many years.

<comment><USER10> I don't need to Google it, I'm well aware. Part of why I said what I did.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I worked with my ISP, htcinc.net to fix routing to 184.108.40.206 this week -- Not sure how they had their core router mis-configured, but it was dropping the traffic.

<comment><USER11> Most likely had an old copied-pasted bogon filter in place for a huge chunk of previously unannounced APNIC IP space.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> > AT&T Gigapower using 220.127.116.11 on an internal interface on at least one model > of router-gateway, the Pace 5268AC

Yup. I can't use 22.214.171.124 because my AT&T router is responding to it.

<comment><USER15> "Whatever just use 184.108.40.206! Nobody will ever use that address!"

<comment><USER16> Because 10.1.1.1 is so hard to type or remember and is totally not a private range which is perfect for the purpose.

<comment><USER17> My router goes to 188.8.131.52.

<comment><USER18> Spinal tap?

<comment><USER19> This is networking, so its 'Spinal Vampire Tap'

<comment><USER20> Backbone Tap. The cover band by NSA employees. They play in venues, inside other venues, that don't officially exist.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Houston has run a study on the traffic being directed towards 1/8 before.

[http://www.potaroo.net/studies/1slash8/1slash8.html](http://www.potaroo.net/studies/1slash8/1slash8.html)

<comment><USER11> Very interesting how the volume of shit traffic to /24s which were not in the "typical" example/documentation ranges like 126.96.36.199/24 was much lower. When they announced the whole /8 and plotted the traffic only a few /24 receive huge volumes of shit, while others receive (relatively) little, like 8Mbps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I used to play a game where each kingdom had an address (kingdom:island) if you where on kingdom one on island one (1:1) you would get attacked all the time no matter how much defense you had. If you landed on 1:1 you where basically doomed.

<comment><USER23> Utopia, right?

<comment><USER24> Oh man, I remember this too. A friend of mine ended up leader of a huuuuuge alliance for a number of years back in 2004 or so and a few years ago I had a few sit down meetings with the current owners of the game when I was doing an analytics startup. (AFAIK the game is still running)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I noticed an issue with several public WiFi hotspots after setting 126.96.36.199 as my primary DNS:

The login/"landing" page when connecting to these hotspots would not load. Changing back to 18.104.22.168 fixed the problem.

<comment><USER26> That means they're intercepting requests to 22.214.171.124 (even if only before login), probably because of its popularity. It's a shame we still have to use these hacks to login; there's a solution for that in RFC7710 (which sends the captive portal information in DHCP), but who knows if and when it'll be adopted by most hotspots.

[https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7710](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7710)

<comment><USER16> > That means they're intercepting requests to 188.8.131.52

No, it means their hotspot uses 126.96.36.199 as internal IP. I've seen this in a bunch of places.

<comment><USER27> Cisco gear is probably the biggest culprit in my experience.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> So, the traffic is being sniffed and analyzed, and that service was advertised as privacy-oriented?

<comment><USER29> DNS traffic, no. Random garbage traffic misdirected to 126.96.36.199, APNIC is studying.

<comment><USER30> Does all this garbage traffic affect the performance of Cloudflare's servers? There must be some cost (performance and $$$) to filter this traffic. Was that a consideration when deciding whether to use 126.96.36.199 instead of some other IP address? :)

<comment><USER29> No. We have a lot of capacity. A lot.

<comment><USER11> For ordinary singlehomed users who don't get the "a lot". As an example cloudflare has 40Gbps of capacity to the SIX in Seattle. I would guess that they also have direct, at minimum, 10Gbps PNI peering sessions with other huge ISPs in the Pacific Northwest which never see the SIX fabric. So probably add another 20 individual 10GbE circuits at bare minimum to that 40 figure. All of which helps spread the traffic load out rather than shoving it all down a few pipes.

<comment><USER31> [https://peeringdb.com/net/4224](https://peeringdb.com/net/4224)

that's just the public stuff!

<comment><USER11> For huge entities like this and other top 5 CDNs it makes me wonder how many full time staff positions are dedicated to buying rack space, power and crossconnect in major colo facilities worldwide. How many contract law experts, telecom real estate analysts, etc. That before you even get into things like experts in Japanese contract law. Just for rack, power and facilities at layer one of the osi model before any networking happens.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Previously (February 2010);

"As part of an effort to de-bogonise this newly allocated address space, RIPE, in cooperation with APNIC, made some test advertisements to the global BGP table for several prefixes with 18.104.22.168/8\. Specifically, these networks included 184.108.40.206/24 and 220.127.116.11/24\. Why these networks? Because they contain the novel (and illegal) IPv4 addresses 220.127.116.11 and 220.127.116.11, of course.

"Shortly after announcing the routes to the world, RIPE's RIS was flooded with over 50 Mbps of traffic destined for what is still an unallocated network; it should not appear on the global Internet."

* [http://packetlife.net/blog/2010/feb/5/ripe-plays-with-1-0-0-...](http://packetlife.net/blog/2010/feb/5/ripe-plays-with-1-0-0-0-network-apnic-allocation)

</comment><comment><USER33> If your ISP doesn't support IPv6, just try sending RA packets upstream and see what happens. If they're doing it wrong using blacklist instead of whitelist, then it might well leak. It's good to notice, that this doesn't affect IPv4 networking in any way.

<comment><USER34> I'm not a networking guy, but I'd like to try this. Can you explain how you would do it? (which tools, or a link to some docs would be nice)

<comment><USER33> Using radvd [1] is the easiest way with Linux. Or you can get it done using ICS on Windows. Personally I used burner laptop, with live distribution and runned radvd. Or if you like details, you can use Python Scapy on Linux to send RA packets. [1] [http://www.litech.org/radvd/](http://www.litech.org/radvd/)

<comment><USER34> Thanks. I'm on Linux, so I'll check out radvd.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> > "Some folk, without any material to justify it, started configuring 220.127.116.11. > Now, I can start using your IP address, I suppose, but we're both going to > have a problem," Huston told ZDNet, laughing.

Ha, I was using 22.214.171.124/24 as my local intranet as an expirement with dnsmasq a few years back. I got scolded for it, rightly so, but I figured as no-one was using 188.8.131.52/24 at the time it was OK.

I see I am not the only one who did so.

<comment><USER36> Who scolded you for it? Wouldn't that just mis-route legitimate traffic to 188.8.131.52/24 locally instead of to the internet?... but you probably had no legitimate traffic there anyway, right?

<comment><USER35> Who? I don't remember. Someone on HN/reddit. It was a mild scolding in the same vein as in the article.

And yes, that's what it would do. And no, I didn't. Made it easier to type in IPS, that's for sure.

<comment><USER36> Oh, okay... I thought it was your ISP or something. That is why I was wondering how anyone would even notice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Get a better ISP.

</comment><comment><USER38> Using 126.96.36.199/24 for a DNS service was a bad idea. Now all this garbage traffic is being routed. (Before, it would just be dropped closer to the edge.)

<comment><USER39> That was part of the reason they used it. They partnered with the company that owned it and wanted to study the junk but couldn't handle the traffic. Cloudflare got 126.96.36.199 for DNS use and helped handle the junk traffic so they could study it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Awesome, the worlds biggest honeypot? There is literally a finite amount of bandwidth in the existance, let Cloudflare have as much cruft as it wants.

<comment><USER11> I have no idea where you get the idea there is a finite amount of bandwidth available. It is not coal or molybdenum. ISPs are continually being expanded.

<comment><USER41> Just because it is expanding, doesn't mean it isn't finite.

The current bandwidth is finite. The future bandwidth is finite. Even if we use all the resources available to us, expanding at the speed of light to capture those resources, it's still finite.

<comment><USER11> From a pure physics perspective, yes. But do take the time to familiarize yourself with the many THz of bandwidth that is available in one singlemode strand, and how many coherent modulated, 400GbE links can fit in a typical dwdm bandplan.

The internet is continually expanding at OSI layer 1. It is a construction project. The bandwidth is growing faster than our ability to fill it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> From a marketing point of view, I think it was a brilliant move from Cloudflare to get the 22.214.171.124 address. Clearly better than 22.214.171.124!

But from a user perspective, why couldn't they have just let that address be... So many things are going to break just because Cloudflare wants a pretty IP. Sure, the things that break were using a hack, but in my opinion that doesn't automatically make it okay to break it.

Now I'm just waiting for a startup to launch a Stack Overflow competitor on example.com...

<comment><USER43> example.com (and other example.*) is reserved for documentation purposes, i.e. you can't buy it.

<comment><USER42> Just like 18.104.22.168 used to be null routed?

<comment><USER44> Not exactly; example.com and .org are reserved in RFC 2606[1]. 18.104.22.168 is not listed in the special use RFC[2], it's just an address previously unused by APNIC.

[1]: [https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2606](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2606)

[2]: [https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5735](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5735)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: ideas for last weekend of a crowd-fund please - <AUTHOR> UK climate-impact start-up, round has been running a while, investments possible from a number of place not incl US.  What should we be doing (or where should we be posting) in the last weekend to attact some final £££?
Ta
https://seedrs.com/radbot <comment><USER2> see if you can find something here p: nebraska

[https://www.facebook.com/crowdfundingbot/](https://www.facebook.com/crowdfundingbot/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you!

<comment><USER2> sure, good luck</comment></comment></comment>


After 24 centuries, Google puts the Dead Sea Scrolls online for the world to see - <AUTHOR> http://googlefornonprofits.blogspot.com/2011/09/from-desert-to-web-bringing-dead-sea.html

<comment><USER2> If you're looking for verses to explore for yourself, start at chapter 45 verse 1 on the scroll of Isaiah, <http://dss.collections.imj.org.il/isaiah?id=45:1>

Here, Isaiah names Cyrus the Great, 150 years before his birth, and goes on to describe how the Lord ("HaShem" on the scroll) would use him as a foreigner to demolish the empire of Babylonia and restore the Jewish people out of exile (<http://dss.collections.imj.org.il/isaiah?id=45:13>).

Josephus, the Jewish historian, in his Antiquities, records that the Jews in Babylonian captivity showed Cyrus the prophecies of the Old Testament Scriptures which contained his name and described his role in the scheme of God. The historian says that it was this circumstance that motivated the ruler to fulfill what was written, and to issue his edict permitting Israel's return to her homeland ([http://books.google.co.za/books?id=kyaoIb6k2ccC&pg=PA359](http://books.google.co.za/books?id=kyaoIb6k2ccC&pg=PA359)).

Shortly after chapter 45, Isaiah writes in chapter 46:8, "Remember this and stand firm, recall it to mind, you transgressors, remember the former things of old; for I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done, saying, 'My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose...'" (<http://dss.collections.imj.org.il/isaiah?id=46:10>)

Then from chapter 49 to chapter 53, Isaiah foretells the servant of the Lord, Israel and its embodiment in the person of the Messiah, and his suffering and rejection by his own people, how "he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed" (<http://dss.collections.imj.org.il/isaiah?id=53:5>) and how "like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth" (<http://dss.collections.imj.org.il/isaiah?id=53:7>) and how "they made his grave with the wicked and with a rich man in his death" (<http://dss.collections.imj.org.il/isaiah?id=53:9>).

It is often said that the words of the OT have a remarkable weightiness to them. I recall reading that Ernest Hemingway at one time used to read the OT to absorb this quality in his own writings.

</comment><comment><USER3>
      After 24 centuries,
      Google puts the Dead Sea Scrolls online
      for the world to see

Not 24 but 21 or 22.

Not Google but the Museum of Israel.

Other than that, the title is not too far off.

<comment><USER4> ...and neither has been around for even 1 century? So "Fairly young institution puts ancient artifact on display"

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I am pretty ignorant of the Dead Sea Scrolls and related documents, but why is the translation not into modern English?

</comment><comment><USER6> Well, it was interesting to use an actual scroll bar

</comment><comment><USER7> © The Israel Museum.

I was talking to a Catholic priest years ago, and he told me that the Dead Sea Scrolls had more historical significance than religious significance. (I don't know if that was the church's position or just his.) Given that, and the fact that I'm even not religious, I don't know why the copyright bothers me so much, but it does. Placing a copyright on the images of religious documents strikes me as a contradiction in purposes. Imagine if God had inscribed the Ten Commandments with "©For All Eternity, God. All Rights Reserved."

<comment><USER8> Most universities do things like this. Modern Universities don't really get the whole 'sharing knowledge' thing (cf. the posts about academic publishers). I wish they had used creative commons or something for them, but instead it's "All rights reserved".

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Wait, wait,wait ... I read these online years ago... whats so special this time? just because Google is involved?

<comment><USER10> publically available scans are infinitely more useful than publically available text translations for purposes of research, as well as for coolness.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Haha, the post title implies that Google has been working on this for 24 centuries.

<comment><USER12> We invented time travel a few months ago and used it to undertake some really ambitious projects, like inventing time travel.

<comment><USER13> I _definitely_ want to be on that team. Though I'd settle for more information on Android@Home.

<comment><USER14> Also good for fixing timely releases of source code ... the Amazon guys are sticking the public with an old version fork ...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> When text spans multiple columns, the translation renders off the page: <http://i.imgur.com/c7xWZ.jpg>

</comment><comment><USER16> Didn't realize Google had been around for such a long time.

</comment><comment><USER17> i wish google translation work on those text</comment>


What's really going on with Spotify's fake artist controversy - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/12/15961416/spotify-fake-artist-controversy-mystery-tracks <comment><AUTHOR> A few thoughts: 1\. I definitely wish there was a way to filter out "covers" from Spotify. There are definitely a handful of times that Spotify puts covered versions of songs in their "Discover" playlist. 2\. If these songs are "fake" in that Spotify is commissioning artists to create original songs and then featuring those songs in Spotify-created playlists, is this any different than Netflix/Hulu/Amazon original content?

<comment><USER2> Re (2) the article concluded that Spotify is not commissioning songs. The "fake artists" are nothing of the sort, they are often just pseudonyms for leser known musicians legitimately releasing music though the Spotify platform. Mainly in the ambient/chill/piano genres.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> If I'm an enterprising bedroom producer (which I once was), I'd jump on this opportunity and go to Spotify with my music. Ten aliases, undercut the other filler artists, A/B test their performance, and see if I could use this dynamic to launch my own career.

In fact, with how valuable this could be to true indies, I'm surprised Spotify isn't soliciting this stronger.

</comment><comment><USER4> > After going through MBW's list of 50 artists, The Verge has learned that > most of the artists on the list are pseudonyms for real musicians.

Well, duh. What else could it be? Unless Spotify has been secretly investing a lot of money into cutting-edge machine creativity research a la Google's "Magenta" project, then of course these tracks are coming from "real musicians".

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm not sure if there's any controversy here. Fake news, fake artists, fake economy, fake everything. When does it stop?</comment>


Cheating Goes Global as Essay Mills Multiply - <AUTHOR> http://chronicle.com/free/v55/i28/28a00102.htm?

<comment><USER2> Ah, and another screen that firms use for potential employees turns to mush.

It's a really interesting situation to think about. If these foreigners (from places with much less opportunity) are able to produce work of this caliber (while the students paying for them are either unable or unwilling), it makes one wonder whether those foreigners should be in the students' places. For a long time, one's success was more a function of where one was lucky enough to be located rather than one's ability. Manufacturing workers in America would be paid better than skilled labor in less fortunate areas. However, that seems to be breaking down as advances in communication and transportation tear down the old barriers.

I can't imagine this situation staying indefinitely - those writing the essays must know that they are getting a pittance in return for the gains they're helping the students achieve. How long will people accept being outsourced to while others realise the gains of their hard work? That sounded a lot more "the people will rise up" than I meant. Like, it's one thing to be offered less than the value of your production - corporations won't take the risk of us not producing value without that and we, in exchange, get guaranteed revenue. It's a fine situation and I'm personally happy to have the stability. However, in this case the students getting their degrees are potentially gaining a few million in lifetime earnings and these essay writers are getting a paltry $2-3 per page. Sooner or later, more of the people with these skills will want to compete with those students - given the chance.

<comment><USER3> I think you have a valid point about exploited labor, but I think you're conflating education and essay writing.

An educational degree is supposed to be about _learning_ , not about of how many tests you have taken, homework assignments completed, essays turned in. I mean, when I was in college, I was highly aware of my credit requirements too and planned for them. My point is that the tests, the assignments, credit requirements all are simply proxy measurements of learning. Learning is what really matters. By gaming the system, and skipping the actual learning, the rich and lazy students are not getting anything in return either.

I guess it's a little naive but I'd like to believe that if you really got nothing out of your education, it will show. The paper only gets you so far.

<comment><USER4> But everything's a proxy for everything. Employers don't really want educated employees, they just use the college degree as a proxy for the skills and qualities they actually want. The college degree itself doesn't certify learning or the qualities desired by employers; it just certifies that you found a way to make it through college. Ultimately, anything anybody does is largely based on luck, their ability to game the system, who their friends are, etc. If some rich kid has an essay written for him, he's just equaling out the luck some other rich kid had in getting an easy teacher.

Personally, I found that my ability to write papers decreased as I wrote more of them. In that sense, I didn't learn anything by writing; in fact, I unlearned things. Maybe I would be a better writer if I had outsourced my papers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't understand how somebody could actually hand in a PhD dissertation from one of these places. Are there really schools where nobody would be suspicious that the student hadn't been working on this particular dissertation before they handed in the final version?

<comment><USER6> Even at many top grad schools, hardly any dissertation will be rejected. If you spend a long time there, grad schools will often be eager to hand you a PhD for a junky dissertation just to get you out the door.

<comment><USER7> Really? From what I've seen, if it's that junky that will request major revisions in the hope to either deter you enough just to quit, or to encourage you enough to clean it up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I cringed when I saw a quote by a student at my undergrad university. Not sure why anyone would respond to a reporter's inquiry on such a controversial topic that could get you expelled from school.

</comment><comment><USER9> Use a stupid metric - don't be surprised if that stupid metric is gamed.

</comment><comment><USER10> It's useless to fight this trend. Schools need to recognize the need for change. They can:

1) Understand that outsourcing this way is an important skill and start training for it.

2) Teach subjects that are so damn engaging that students actually want to learn them.

<comment><USER11> I disagree on both points.

Delegation is a good skill for a manager, but you don't go to a technical university to learn skills like this. You can pick it up in real life. (Also, it's most certainly unethical to delegate something and take complete credit -- and that's what the essay mills are supporting.)

On the second point, the subjects already _are_ engaging, it's just that people pick the wrong topics. If you think data structures are boring, don't get a computer science degree. If blood makes you ill, don't become a surgeon. If you think the law is boring, don't become a lawyer. Pick something that you enjoy, not something that you think will be "in demand" after you graduate. Predicting the future is not easy. Pick something you like instead.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Don't graduate students have to defend their dissertations? Should be pretty easy to spot those who didn't actually do their own research.

</comment><comment><USER13> I suspect that these are the operations that are causing my trouble with Google. I am punished yet they get through!

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=534249></comment>


My boys love 1986 computing - <AUTHOR> http://changelog.complete.org/archives/9269-my-boys-love-1986-computing <comment><USER4> I initially gave my two girls an old desktop computer with a linux on it. They started to use it before I showed them how and they started figuring stuff out without me and soon I was sitting riveted in the background watching them discover things and trying to learn about computer UIs and work out how they thought.

Here's an old blog post about it: [http://williamedwardscoder.tumblr.com/post/19500788060/my- te...](http://williamedwardscoder.tumblr.com/post/19500788060/my-tech-savvy- generation) \- I think its a fun read.

Fast forward to now; that blog post is hopelessly out of date!

I gave them old-but-decent laptops and, eventually, internet access.

As soon as they had internet access they stopped tinkering and exploring and started only using the laptop to watch repeat episodes of childrens TV.

And now they often want to use their mum's iPad - to play music and watch TV - but they are completely utterly uninterested in tinkering with any PCs.

Its sad but its true and I wish I knew what to do about it.

<comment><USER5> I've seriously considered setting up an old-fashioned automatic timer to control the power going to our DSL modem so that our Internet service is only available for an hour or so out of every day.

My worry, though, is that I'd be unplugging the modem from the timer and hooking it directly into the wall whenever I work from home, and that'd be a slippery slope to just having it hooked up all the time again.

<comment><USER6> If your router supports Tomato[1], dd-wrt[2], open-wrt[3], or similarly featured firmware, you might have a feature to restrict access at certain times of the day based on MAC address.

This would allow you to work from home, while restricting access for your children.

The only issue I might see with this setup is if your work-from-home PC is the same as the one the rest of your family uses to access the internet.

[1]: [http://www.polarcloud.com/tomato](http://www.polarcloud.com/tomato)

[2]: [https://secure.dd-wrt.com/site/](https://secure.dd-wrt.com/site/)

[3]: [https://openwrt.org/](https://openwrt.org/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There is something about 1980's-era computers which make them so much more accessable to kids than today's systems.

It's probably to do with how much simpler they are - if I can put my finger on it, I'd say it's because they don't have lots of Things which can tempt you to distraction; for example - if they had a web browser of some kind back then, you'd be tempted away from learning to program in BASIC, or learning how to load that simple-but-fun game.

They generally were single task machines that allowed you to focus on one Thing.

I'm looking at my Linux desktop right now on this machine. I have a web browser I'm using to type this reply. It also has 8 other tabs open - <USER2> tabs will be added later as I continue on my search for knowledge. I have a Konsole terminal open with IRC sessions to multiple servers and channels open. I have PyCharm loaded. I have a VM running, and more to run later. All vying for my time and energy. A child using this machine would be overwhelmed.

Even a Raspberry Pi can distract the user of it in the same manner as my desktop.

Perhaps it's time to reintroduce kids today to the CoCo2's, the VIC-20's, the C64's, the Spectrums, the ZX81's and so on. Perhaps getting kids to use single-task-at-a-time systems to learn instead of the distraction-inducing tech. of today, would be a very good idea.

When my son was 2.5 years old, I put in front of him an ancient old Compaq laptop running Debian. It had Tuxpaint running on it, and I just put it in front of him and let him go on it. Within a short space of time he was using Tuxpaint like a "pro", and then he learned how to power the machine up, and type in his login name and password. Sure, you can do this with today's systems, but they do make it so easy to provide tons of distractions.

<comment><USER8> I'm not so sure lack of distractions makes that much difference. I think on my C64 it was frequently the case that we'd switch games every few minutes. We were easily distracted with or without something specific to trigger it.

But these computers were simple enough to "mess with" and get a mental model of the whole. By the time I was 7-8, I started "experimenting" with pulling chips out of sockets (to my parents horror) and seeing what happened if I put them in different places (...). If you even could have done that on modern machines with almost everything surface mounted, you'd fry stuff. With those old machines that was usually fairly hard. Amazingly, I never burned out any chips that way. The simplicity encouraged meddling with things in a way that is harder to see younger kids do with most modern computers:

PCs are outright dangerous to let a young child dismantle on their own - whether or not you disconnect power (I'm afraid my C64's were more than once opened up while connected..); machines like the Raspberry Pi are simple and safe enough, but there's nothing to _do_ inside them. Likewise for tablets and smart phones: If you manage to disconnect the display without breaking anything, you're pretty much at the limits.

If you try to break into the black box as a child, you're faced with an image of something that is way beyond your comprehension.

The C64 and similar home computers, on the other hand, had clearly labelled diagrams in their manuals that even a child could understand. You'd open it up, and you'd see what the different things were, and you could tinker (at least if you didn't tell your parents) and see the effects.

It seems like it is harder to become "independent": Children learn a few "magic incantations" to get to the familiar things, and the knowledge required to bridge the gaps where exploration yields results that encourage further exploration seems higher. Or maybe that's what it looked like to our parents too.

A few years older, I soldered wires straight onto the pins of the CPU of my Amiga. You could make a "pause" switch and reset button easily that way - <USER3> could solder it onto the bus exposed on the left hand side of the A500's too, but I had a hard drive attached there.

Speaking of hard drives, considering the article mentions demonstrating floppy drives with the cover off, of course I did that with my 1541 drive for the C64 (and test what happened when moving the IO chips between the 1541 and the C64 - they're "almost" the same model; enough so that the C64 at least will run; same for the one from the Amiga - their differences are small enough to be inconsequential for most programs), but also with my first (20MB) hard drive out of necessity: I bought it used, and within 6 months it started having problems starting up. The solution? Open it up, and give the motor a helping hand spinning up the platter - after that it worked fine. The drive survived another two years I think after that.

<comment><USER9> That hard drive probably had "sticktion", where the read/write head sticks to the platter surface, preventing the motor from spinning the drive up. It can happen if you leave a hard drive running for a while and then shut it down without allowing it to park its head.

Modern hard drives are clever enough to park the head when they detect the power supply turning off, so it hasn't been such a problem recently.

The recommended solution for sticktion is to lift the comptuter (or hard drive, if it is separate) about an inch off the desk, and let go.

<comment><USER7> When I was a Customer Support Engineer for SGI way back, I had to swap out a load of IBM drives on lots of SGI kit at various customer locations due to this, which was dubbed "The IBM Stiction Problem".

Power off --> remove drive --> Sharply tap the drive on desk --> replace drive + add new drive --> clone

The look on customer faces at the "Sharply tap the drive on desk" stage was as priceless as the data on the hard drive B)

<comment><USER9> A while back, my workplace had a medium-sized disc array. That is, something like a hundred UW-SCSI 72GB drives, arranged into about twelve different RAID-5 sets. When we had to power it down because of scheduled electrical work in the building, about eight of the drives failed to come up again. It's a miracle none of the RAID-5 sets were broken. Hard drives don't like being switched off if they have been going for a couple of years.

And that is why RAID is no substitute for backups, people. A reasonable proportion of events that will take out a hard drive will take out more than one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is great. When my daughter was 11 and wanted a 'computer for her room' I gave her a VAX[1]. She had a lot of fun learning a bit of C programming and playing advent and rogue. And I had realized that for me and my generation we had these very accessible computers of that time and my kids did not. I think some of that need is being met by RasPi's and Arduinos (look at how successful the Kano Kickstarter was [2])

When you talk about folks like Gates or Jobs or Woz or pretty much anyone from the early PC days, the stuff they "learned" on was pretty straight forward. Any high school kid could write a driver for an ISA card in DOS, that is certainly possible in Linux but I find the learning curve to be much higher. And without those little triumphs to keep you going it is hard to stick with it.

[1] A VAX 4000/VLC which is a really compact and nice VAX, running netbsd.

[2] [http://www.kano.me/](http://www.kano.me/)

<comment><USER11> "I gave her a VAX" made me smile. You are awesome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> When my son was about four years old, I gave him an old electric typewriter which I got from Freecycle. I also gave him a stack of paper and some ink ribbon.

Within days, he was "typing" away, loading new paper, working the lever to return the carriage to the start and replacing the ink ribbons. By the end of the month, it was in pieces as he tried to dismantle it to see out how it works. Luckily, I was supervising him so that he does not electrocute himself. The mind of a young child is an amazing thing to watch.

</comment><comment><USER13> This is part of something I hope takes hold in CS education: ontogenous education. Ontogeny is the study of the development of organisms throughout their lifecycle. Technology develops in a way that often makes the present as dissimilar from its roots as a caterpillar and butterfly. So by starting at the beginning (or _a_ beginning at least), rather than the present we give kids a full grasp of why things are the way they are rather than the millions of other ways they could be.

For many learners technology is a turn-off because it seems 'arbitrary'. It is, in the same sense that a biological organism or historical event is arbitrary. It's only with context that these things start to become intelligible. So ontogenous CS education is about giving a historical context to modern technology.

<comment><USER14> I agree with this sentiment. Do you have any good recommendations for books on the history computer science? Lots of options available, but I'm looking for a technical overview of the subject.

<comment><USER13> In the beginning there was the command line (1999) is the best I know [http://faculty.georgetown.edu/irvinem/theory/Stephenson- Comm...](http://faculty.georgetown.edu/irvinem/theory/Stephenson- CommandLine-1999.pdf)

Happy to hear suggestions of others- I haven't found much and haven't looked lately.

<comment><USER14> I really enjoy reading Neal Stephenson, thanks for finding this!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I completely agree with this. A lot of the games seem to appeal more too, because they've been written simply, with straightforward rules.

The BBC Master (which my children love) was also a terrific platform to learn to program on. It's just a shame that a lot of the disk drives and disks haven't survived very well.

<comment><USER16> The Centre for Computing History runs school classes on BBC micros and Sinclair Spectrums which go down well with the children (& adults!) who take part: [http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/pages/12058/Schools/](http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/pages/12058/Schools/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I've been doing a similar thing with my 6 year old who wanted to learn to programming. I've been using JSBeeb (a browser based BBC Micro emulator) and have started to put together a Coding for Kids "book" based on our "lessons".

It's still very rough and only partially complete but I'd appreciate any feedback [http://c4k.rabidgremlin.com](http://c4k.rabidgremlin.com)

</comment><comment><USER18> My kids absolutely love our 8-bit rig!!

Fire up some Defence Force, Harrier Attack, Doggy, or Zorgon's Revenge, from the good old days! YAY, 8-bit party! Space 1999, 1337, Pulsoids, Skool Daze .. STORMLORD! W00t!

:)

What's really great, is that the 8-bit days are _not_ over. I see this now, with my kids getting attracted very much to programming on the 8-bit machines. "10 PING:WAIT 10 20 GOTO 10", represent!!

</comment><comment><USER19> Great read.

A big difference emerges in how young folks develop their skills are developed when spending one's time as a creating vs. consuming novelty/distraction in mindless screen time.

We know the path of seeking/consuming novelty and distraction is a limited way of engaging both abstract and critical thinking skills when imagining how the hardware/software/network stack comes together. There's lots of studies on gaming (I was a voracious gamer until it got in the way of my creation and learning time), but I'd wonder if spending time in someone else's virtual worlds helps people get out there and solve real world problems.

In a way, learning by seeing, and mastering a C64 is a timeless experience, only we don't have many C64's today as true, starter computers.

It's where projects like Arduino, Raspberry Pi, and others are so exciting, but there's little like seeing a physical floppy drive spin up and being witness to so many more steps in slow motion.

</comment><comment><USER20> I've long thought that the original GameBoy Advanced would make a great platform for kids to learn about hardware. Being solid state, it doesn't have the physicality that OP describes, but it does have a very understandable hardware and software model. Basically, 100% of the machine can be controlled via memory-mapped structs. No need to call a magical function from some Nintendo-sanction wizard. You can stomp the bits yourself and make stuff happen. I've written a toy program to draw on the screen in half a page of C. No includes, no libs. int main, vidmode=3, pixels[n]=255;

</comment><comment><USER21> Oh, nostalgic moments...

I owned an Spectrum, Atari St, Amiga, and Apple II. I learned 68K assembler and BASIC on them, to load programs from tape...

...and I hated them and got rid of them as soon as I could. Seriously, I don't understand how people love to use floppy disk or tapes that sounds like the machine is doing coffee or something, takes minutes to load a single program, no 3D, no Internet, requires a TV that emits X rays, small and ugly.

If I want my kids solving something hard, I will give them robots or 3D printers, not trying to force them to live the life that I lived 30 years ago.

</comment><comment><USER22> I love 1986 computing too! Everything was so simple. Just a single thread of execution to worry about.

Then again, Javascript is also single-threaded essentially.

Thus, from another point of view it looks like we're stuck in the 80s...

<comment><USER21> The fact that we live in multiple thread environments does not mean that we have to use them.

The same could be said about Internet, people say "there was no Internet distractions" when you could disconnect the network in any computer with a 3 seconds click.

In fact what threads do is make your life easier. I did program a multimedia program in DOS using INTs and it was the definition of hell.

Now you could make a simple audio thread, another simple picture animation thread and the more complicated thing you deal with is managing mutexes, that is super easy if you understand them.

<comment><USER23> multithreading programming is not "super easy." threads/parallelism give us power, but it definitely increased complexity and makes it harder to reason about the behavior of programs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This brings me back to my junior high days, when I bought a Centris 650 Mac at a yard sale for the express purpose of installing OpenBSD. That was my first real delve into open source operating systems, and it deserves much of the credit for my professional developer career.

</comment><comment><USER25> Nice post. I _loved_ my CoCo2 back in the day. I doubt their enthusiasm will last if they have alternatives, but it is fun to see the exploration, even if it is just for a little while. Planting the seed is important.

</comment><comment><USER26> Still have my Apple II in a box in the garage, hasn't seen any action in about 20 years. Maybe I should power it up and see if it still works...

<comment><USER7> My Amiga 1200 is still working. I had souped it up with a VGA adapter, a 68040 card, amongst other things. I had to adapt a PC PSU to feed it the necessary power after that.

It has been with me to Japan for 6 years. I forgot to reset the voltage from 110v to the UK's 240v and the magic white smoke from the capacitors escaped the PSU.

But the Amiga itself survived to tell the tale and is working happily with the new PSU ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Instead of burning a coaster, would it have worked to just play the .wav files out of the line-out jack on the more modern computer?

<comment><USER11> Yes. And in fact I tested it that way first.

But with the CD route, I trust them with something that cost a few cents, and with an interface they already know (play, stop, and next track buttons). Way easier for them and far fewer consequences for trips or spilled water!

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> My six-year-old enjoys games on the Atari 800 I cleaned up for a collection 10 years ago. Lots of this stuff is pretty timeless.

</comment><comment><USER29> a similar story: David Brin got a C64 for his son, because he thought that would be a better tool for learning how to code.

"Why Johny can't code" [http://www.salon.com/2006/09/14/basic_2/](http://www.salon.com/2006/09/14/basic_2/)

</comment><comment><USER30> You should get a CoCoSDC. It emulated floppy drives using disk images on an SD card.

<comment><USER31> The [http://www.sd2iec.co.uk/id14.html](http://www.sd2iec.co.uk/id14.html) SD2IEC does the same thing for Commodore disk drives.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I remember my old good days with a Spectrum ... I learned basic maths with it...</comment>


Testing your startup idea – how do you measure? - <AUTHOR> http://intranets-talk.com/tech/testing-your-startup-idea

<comment><USER2> Gabriel, here are some ideas for you how you measure your idea.

One approach is to list your assumptions (e.g. why does Evernote suck, why would they rather use your app versus writing on paper, they are willing to pay for it, etc). Find customers of your competitors (Evernote, paper-pencil), and validate those assumptions (or reject).

Another method you could try would be to create a landing page on <http://unbounce.com/> and start pimping that page and collect email addresses. You can also buy some Google Ads for "Evernote sucks". Once you get those email addresses don't get excited about build an app... that'll just be your initial list of customers to interview.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks a lot Maciej, these are a couple of good points there.

I could create my own landing page, but it will lack traffic and exposure. A landing page on <http://unbounce.com> (or any other similar service) sounds appealing as you can get some feedback as well.

Thanks!</comment></comment>


The Apple-Google shift - <AUTHOR> http://www.elliotjaystocks.com/blog/the-apple-google-shift/ <comment><USER2> If you want to learn how wrong this is just get a nexus phone or tablet and you too will experience the power of the dark side of the force.</comment>


Show HN: MidiPad 2 – A customizable Midi Pad Controller - <AUTHOR> http://midipadapp.com/ <comment><USER2> You shouldn't advertise your site the day you register your domain. Filters like WebSense block new domains. I've seen this happen multiple times here.

I wonder if there's a correlation between a domain name's age, and the HN rank of posts that link to them.

</comment><comment><USER3> Interesting that you use motion sensors to create midi velocity. How accurate is that?

Any reason for not adding midi sliders and knobs too? Most MIDI apps include those and are used by many composers/musicians.

<comment><AUTHOR> The accuracy is a trade-off between latency and precision. The touch event arrives as soon as you touch the screen, but the actual force of your touch still needs a few milliseconds to actually put the device into motion. Waiting a little bit while collecting measurements gives you quite an accurate indication of the force used, but the increased latency makes it harder to play.

Sliders and knobs will be added in a future version. I wanted to put an MVP on the app store first before adding additional features.

<comment><USER4> Sliders and knobs are one thing, but this format really invites the use of XY controllers where sliding a finger in the x-dimension modulates one parameter, while the y-dimension modulates another. I am certain more complex schemes should be possible, especially given the possibilities of multi-touch input. I would love to see something like this included.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Velocity sensitive pads on a touch screen? Wow, didnt know this was possible.

<comment><USER6> Garage Band for iOS did it on release back in 2011. Using the accelerometer it's possible to simulate some sort of velocity.

<comment><AUTHOR> Exactly. The general idea is that you get a measurement of the applied force, so integrating that value gives you an approximate velocity.

<comment><USER6> Assuming you worked on the app based on your other replies. Is 3D Touch applicable here?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, that works. However, you would be facing the same problems. You can read out the pressure of a touch but the initial pressure is not the strongest since the finger is still in motion. Additionally, 3D touch is not supported on all devices.

Another interesting thing is that there are also private APIs for reading out the estimated finger size of a touch. This can give you even more information to determine the velocity from, as light touches are usually done with the fingertips.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Only on ios.

<comment><USER8> Android has no chance of competing in the MIDI/Music field: choosing Java was an ill decision because of the huge latencies its poor performance imposes, which makes any serious Music application plain impossible. Google promised a low latency Android years ago which as predicted by many of us they didn't deliver: that would require rewriting entire layers of the OS from scratch migrating them from Java to C++ just to make some music freaks happy. Just no way.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Submityoursalary.com – Short company reviews with salary info - <AUTHOR> https://submityoursalary.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> This is my first sideproject using a serverless architecture, would love to hear any feedback you might have. Thanks!

<comment><USER2> What libraries did you use to make your site server less? Any gotchas during development that were noteworthy?

<comment><AUTHOR> Nothing noteworthy, aws lambda and api gateway with dynamodb to handle the submissions. Cloudfront/s3 for the static content. The only tooling i used was kappa which is a very lightweight deployment wrapper for lambda.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> > I put together this site after not being able to find a simple place to look > at salaries alongside of company reviews.

Maybe your key word is "simple", but the standard place to look these things up is Glassdoor.

<comment><USER4> Glassdoor could do with some competition, reviews hidden behind login is annoying, and the top review always seems to be astroturfing.

There review system is also quite harsh. If they consider you review "unbalanced" they reject it without much explanation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Is it fine to describe a small employer in general terms if listing the company name would effectively identify you?

<comment><USER6> Ha ha.. I did

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I like the site but maybe it needs a few graphs and maybe some analysis on most used adjectives.

</comment><comment><USER8> You might not want to use emoji to represent upvotes and downvotes.

<comment><AUTHOR> Wasnt intending to use them as that but rather as reactions.</comment></comment>


Self Replicating Computer Programs - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@calhoun137/self-replicating-computer-programs-8136bbbacc60 <comment><AUTHOR> author here! very interested to find out if anyone has any comments or questions or objections. going to start writing the next article shortly

<comment><USER2> Is this at all related to "Robust-first computing"? I first heard about it from this video[0]? He calls it a "movable feast machine".

What interested me about cellular automation is that in my reading of Neumann, it is said he was working on using cellular automata to construct fully replicating machines. It is also said he probably would have gone on to develop said architecture in full had he not died. Is your research in anyway related?

I'm interested but woefully lacking in formal cs training.

[0][https://youtu.be/helScS3coAE](https://youtu.be/helScS3coAE)

<comment><AUTHOR> my life's work is the continuation of von neumann's research on self reproducing machines. I just had a major breakthrough after 15 years and am just free writing a massive series of articles right now

i watched that video briefly and skipped around, it looked like it was based on cellular automata? I have never heard of this specific application, but am aware this type of application is possible for them. Cellular automata were used by John Conway in the game of life, and I have studied this subject pretty deeply and this is a major source of inspiration for what I am doing now</comment></comment></comment>


India Says Bitcoin as Risky as Ponzi Schemes - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloombergquint.com/markets/2017/12/29/india-says-bitcoin-as-risky-as-ponzi-schemes <comment><USER2> Aside from the fact that there are a steady stream of actual ponzis centered around bitcoin, many new coins and tokens are almost certainly hollow schemes designed to transfer wealth from the naive to the ICO creators.

Then you have the "mining" companies selling shares of mining power, but those sometimes turn out to be pure frauds - no mining nor equipment. Those behave just like ponzis.

It is probably in the average person's best interest to avoid it all.

<comment> chroem- It's been amusing to watch HN's overwhelmingly negative reaction to cryptocurrencies. Yes, there are absolutely some shady things going on with cryptocoins, but the response to them here seems pretty overblown. What I suspect is that many startup types have sour grapes over how they could have made nearly as much money speculating on digital tokens as they did building their web or app business. It's too bad, since there actually are some interesting technologies beginning to come out of the cryptocurrency sphere. These opportunities will get overlooked by everyone in SV apparently, though.

<comment><USER3> It's also amusing to see this straw man argument and rebuttal get posted in almost every single discussion about cryptocurrencies.

<comment> chroem- For what it's worth, this is the first time I've seen it. Not sure it's fair to call it a strawman though.

<comment><USER4> The "sour grapes" and "jealously" has been the go-to explanation, if it can even be call that on each of the cryptocurrency thread.

<comment><USER5> Bitcoin is just like any other investment I don't see how people can have "sour grapes" about it. So you knew about bitcoin or even had bitcoins when they were fractions of a cent? So what...most people would have sold when they reached $5 or $10 or $50 thinking they were at the peak.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> At the moment 50% of all Bitcoins are controlled by less than 2,000 people(assuming 1 wallet per person).

It is becoming exponentially more difficult to mine them, and there is only a finite number of bitcoins in that can be mined.

Buying bitcoins is making these 2000 people richer.

I really don't understand people who put money into Bitcoin. Actually I don't understand anyone that puts money in a cryptocurrency that is supposed to have "intrinsic value".

<comment><USER7> It isn't making them richer unless they sell, at which point the wealth is further distributed. Also exchanges and custodial wallets skew the distribution numbers.

<comment><USER6> > It isn't making them richer unless they sell,

Jeff Bezos is not the richest person in earth unless he sells.

> at which point the wealth is further distributed.

They basically exchange Monopoly money for real money. If that's what you mean by wealth being distributed, then you are right.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> How often was Bitcoin called a Ponzi scheme? When it was at 50, at 100 or at 1,000? Always.

If I look at my stock portfolio there are so many strange stocks and funds I once invested in. They feel much more like Ponzi schemes or pump and dump, especially the riskier funds.

If I look at my angel tickets into early stage ventures (done with FIAT) even worse.

And if I look at the countless ICOs based on Ethereum, this is the real pump and dump Ponzi Disney Land.

But Bitcoin? Seriously? I highly doubt that Bitcoin's founder or its early adopters intended Bitcoin as a Ponzi scheme.

<comment><USER9> To be fair the developers of Bitcoin seem to have abandoned the original vision of Bitcoin, peer-to-peer digital cash, and has moved towards being purely a store of value.

As transaction costs increase and Bitcoin's usefulness diminish it is becoming more and more like a ponzi scheme, a pyramid scheme or a game of greater fools.

For what is the use of Bitcoin when other cryptocurrencies can be a store of value _and_ peer-to-peer digital cash? I see none thus I see no value with Bitcoin.

<comment><USER8> > Bitcoin's usefulness diminish

No, you mentioned it yourself: Bitcoin is a store of value. Moreover, it's one with a high liquidity, strong brand, limited supply, available in 180 countries, without banks involved and super reliable (gold doesn't have that features and please show me any other asset that has these features). So, it has a use and value.

That it has evolved to this is no one's fault and btw this might change (the cash part) with the lightning network again.

> more like a Ponzi scheme

That would mean that all operators of Bitcoin, so everybody who is just investing or running local wallets with full nodes deliberately intend Bitcoin as a Ponzi scheme?? This is utter nonsense. If I launch an ICO tomorrow. Just a landing page and a BS white paper, you could allege that I deliberately plan my ICO/coin/token to be a Ponzi scheme. But you can't allege millions of BTC investors that they intend a Ponzi scheme eight years after this things started. Maybe you should check the definition of a Ponzi scheme again.

However, do you own or did you ever own any BTC?

<comment><USER10> > No, you mentioned it yourself: Bitcoin is a store of value. Moreover, it's > one with a high liquidity, strong brand, limited supply, available in 180 > countries, without banks involved and super reliable (gold doesn't have that > features and please show me any other asset that has these features). So, it > has a use and value.

As I've said before Bitcoin is absolutely a garbage "store of value". It's not going to exist for decades, let alone for centuries, because of the nature of technology. As you yourself have pointed out there's nothing inherent about Bitcoin other than a network effect that's made it a brand. It isn't backed and guaranteed by a government, there are no organization that are demanding to be paid only in Bitcoin as America demands to be paid only in dollars.

Furthermore There will be better technologies that will emerge and supplant Bitcoin. Land, Dollar, precious metals all far exceed as stronger "stores of value", both because of their historicity, and also because of their technology, that is a technology that is stable.

Not to mention the complete and utter lack of privacy of Bitcoin because of it's public ledger. Everyone knows everyone else's entire transaction history, and any large enough actor can find that out. Traditional stores of value don't have that problem, or rather not nearly as publicly visible.

Cryptocurrencies, and digital currencies do have place, but I don't think we've come to any sort of equilibrium as to what its role will be in society, which is why I don't think Bitcoin will succeed as "store of value", or currency.

<comment><USER8> > It's not going to exist for decades, let alone for centuries, because of the > nature of technology

How do you know, did you found a time machine??

> It isn't backed and guaranteed by a government

Even better. So many countries (basically 70% of all countries) have governments I wouldn't trust a single cent.

> there are no organization that are demanding to be paid only in Bitcoin as > America demands to be paid only in dollars.

Exchanges?

> precious metals all far exceed as stronger "stores of value"

Go and try to buy some gold, it's not that easy and also, oh which surprise, also volatile.

> Everyone knows everyone else's entire transaction history,

Pipe it through exchanges and it get anonymous again. Not that I like this feature but if you need it...

You didn't really convinced me.

<comment><USER10> I don't care if I can convince you or not. That doesn't matter. Realistically only time will tell which one of us is right, and give either one of us the satisfaction of saying "told you so".

With that said are you saying that there will be no other competitors, or technological advancements that will improve on Cryptocurrency technologies, and supplant Bitcoin? If so, I think that's a more irrational position.

If Bitcoin gets large enough you'll just have cryptocurrency legislation that will regulate it to oblivion, and make what are relatively private transactions today into Big Brother is watching. Perhaps that's the goal anyways.

Physical cash is still king in terms of privacy, but a poor long term store of value if that cash isn't invested.

Metal is difficult to buy, and it is tracked, but that information isn't public. The value of a precious metal isn't in its liquidity, but rather its theoretical long term value so volatility isn't necessarily a factor. Land is better because it actually has uses, but similarly it too is volatile, and as such viewing it as a long-term 20+ year investment is better. Again the current value of it doesn't matter so much.

I'm not saying Cryptocurrencies have 0 value, just that we haven't reached a consensus of what exactly the value of a cryptocurrency is, or its role in society, let alone having achieved a technological stasis to make a cryptocurrency a long term store of value. There are in reality no true long- term store of value, just that some are better in way than others.

In general though, I think, the problem is what we as humans consider "value". So far I think the only real value of anything is what a State actor demands, and enforces as valuable. Not land, not precious metals, not cryptocurrencies, or dollars, but whatever a government deems officially as valuable becomes magically valuable.

If tomorrow congress makes Bitcoin the official currency of the USA, and buys up all the Bitcoins then Bitcoin will become infinitely valuable in comparison today. On the other if it's made illegal to make Bitcoin transaction it won't be worth a penny.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Well this was a long time coming. It is not reflection on bitcoin per se rather the use of the coin.

Let me try and explain why this is happening. In India, people don't warm up to "internet" only companies easily. What this meant is while bitcoin and cryptocurrency FOMO has caught on, people don't go and buy coins online. There are exchanges but none of them are household name like Coinbase.

So, a new industry has mushroomed - people offering "investment" opportunity in bitcoin "funds". These guys are not authorized investment professionals. They collect any where between 25-50k and _promise a fixed return_.

No investment opportunity can claim fixed returns unless it is a Ponzi scheme. Hence, this announcement.

My personal take on these opportunities is that, if these "funds" are in trouble - prices increase or decrease lot \- they can simply claim that they have hacked. So, it is not even a ponzi scheme rather outright fraud.

Even though I have tried convincing otherwise couple of colleagues have invested in such opportunities. They find the whole bitcoin process - wallets, keys, pass phrases etc very cumbersome but can't miss out on the supposed gains. And these guys are software engineers.

Lastly, if a person with above average technology experience finds it difficult to use bitcoin, I think it shows how true cryptocurrency's dream of banking the underbanked in 3rd world country is going to be.

<comment><USER11> > So, a new industry has mushroomed - people offering "investment" opportunity > in bitcoin "funds". These guys are not authorized investment professionals. > They collect any where between 25-50k and promise a fixed return.

So scammers are using the Bitcoin brand to attract customers?

Sounds exactly like what ICOs are doing here in the West. Except they use the word "blockchain" instead.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's not a Ponzi scheme - it's worse. At this point it only makes sense to call it a Nakamoto Scheme.

[https://prestonbyrne.com/2017/12/08/bitcoin_ponzi/](https://prestonbyrne.com/2017/12/08/bitcoin_ponzi/)

<comment><USER7> Ridiculous. Pyramid and Ponzi schemes do absolutely nothing other than redistribute wealth. Bitcoin obviously has some value and if you can't see that you're willfully ignorant. The article suggests that Bitcoin "promises insane returns" but Bitcoin doesn't do that at all. Speculators want you to buy so the price goes up, just like a stock.

<comment><USER12> Do you honestly believe that most people buying bitcoin are buying it for any reason other than the hope that the price will increase?

<comment><USER7> How does that make Bitcoin a Ponzi scheme? A ponzi scheme is an organizational structure, not the people that exist in that organization. Bitcoin is a piece of software, and some people using that software are trying to profit. There is nothing inherent in the structure of Bitcoin that makes it a Ponzi

<comment><USER12> This comment makes me think you didn't read the article in my parent comment. Bitcoin is not a Ponzi scheme, it is a Nakamoto scheme.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> At least your Bitcoin isn't going to be yanked out from underneath you overnight by the government:

For example, [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/nov/08/india- withdraw...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/nov/08/india- withdraws-500-1000-rupee-notes-fight-corruption)

<comment><USER14> You're really twisting what happened here. It wasn't so much "yanked" as it was "replaced". I was initially against the idea, but soon got around to it. It was a very risky and daring move by the government, but it was a good one.

<comment><USER15> How do you even measure it. What's the metric. How do you classify it as good or bad. It was clearly short-sighted and the government even failed to account the size of the new currency notes and the inconvenience caused by it. All that was achieved was dip in the GDP and the loss of lives.

Contrary to the popular belief that BTC purports money laundering, it can actually mitigate the problem of black money and money laundering. The governments all around the world should try to keep up and they should themselves establish a separate think tank/research arm/department for blockchain and cryptocurrency space.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Ponzi or not, there is a new phenomenon where the ecosystem has created more individual millionaires than the ones created by startups in the last few years. Many people are reinvesting their funds in new ventures, spending more money than angels or VCs in the typical startup world. It is obvious that this is connected to the high exchange rate of cryptoassets but it can have good historical consequences: there are good projects that the general community is not hearing about because they don't follow the typical ICO marketing route.

</comment><comment><USER17> IMHO the one and only thing a government is to do to protect the people from Ponzi and other schemes is to make sure everybody leaves school with conscious knowledge of the following:

1\. Every investment is a risk, you may win or you may loose. 2\. The chance of loss is usually proportional to the potential profitability estimated. 3\. Never invest what you can't afford to loose easily. 4\. Don't be mad on the friend who has introduced you to the business if he didn't explicitly guarantee you will win - that was your choice. 5\. Whoever says there is no risk and the success is guaranteed - lies, don't believe them and don't rely on them.

Actually, if a person doesn't know this by the time they finish the school the time they've spent there has probably been wasted. As for me I've learnt about Ponzi scheme from a Khan Academy lecture (and yes, my time at school was a waste mostly, that's a pity there was no Khan Academy back in those years).

</comment><comment><USER17> What I can't understand is why do people demonize Ponzi Schemes so much while lotteries and bookies of all kinds are legally available on every corner. I know quite a number of people who have consciously taken the risk of investing in an open (so I can't logically agree it being scam/fraud/etc although legal authorities can insist it is) Ponzi Scheme and have quit it with rather serious profit some time later. And I don't know anybody who has ever won more than a couple of bucks in a lottery. In my opinion a Ponzi Scheme (unless the potential investors are actually told a false claim that it is not a Ponzi Scheme but a low-risk high-profit enterprise) is not a scam but a game, similar to fishing, and even much more nice to people than classic chance games played in casinos. Why not just teach people basics of risk management, warn them 3 times and let them play if they want to?

<comment><USER18> One difference between ponzi schemes and games of chance has to do with impartiality. Even if casino games are tweaked to give better odds to the house, once you roll the dice, neither you nor the dealer can influence the outcome in any way.

Another difference is that there's no requirement to bring more and more people into the game, so there's no risk of widespread adverse effects.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Not surprising they say that since many Indians are taking interest in cryptocurrencies due to the Indian central bank being unable to control inflation. It was at 10% just a few years ago! Also it isn't like something that has the potential of ever going up by any significant amount. Every year it drops 3-10%. Who wants to hold on to that to save their money? No wonder the Indians have so much interest in crypto. I don't blame them. Their government has failed them. At least with crypto it has the potential to go up.

<comment><USER20> Cool story. Have Indians heard of investments?

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Well is this Orwellian double talk? To some extent, I think that's wildly accurate. Buy stocks that are sort of a scam, but don't buy into a new technology like BTC which has imo by now proven itself to be powerful and legit, unlike the next crappy IPO. Honestly it's hard to take articles like this seriously when what's going on is a lot of misdirection. Just my 2c.

</comment><comment><USER22> The two motivators in this story: fear and greed.

The people have the motivation of greed, the government has the motivation of fear. Fear that the greed will lead to fear of losses and everyone exiting at the same time. It is a bit sad really as the governments should just let the people wanting to get burned in this harmless bubble lose all of their money.

<comment><USER23> Yeah, when the population is educated and has general awareness of technology, betting on ponzi schemes is up to them. When you have large, uneducated and poor population, letting people know of the risks is a decent thing to expect from a government.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> On the other hand you have Estonia preparing to launch its own crypto currency[1] called estcoin.

[1] [https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/23/estonia-cryptocurrency- calle...](https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/23/estonia-cryptocurrency-called- estcoin.html)

</comment><comment><USER25> The government want to be able to control the currency minting new money in cooperation with private banks. With bitcoin governments does not have that control. What says government central banks with zero interest rate creating new credit money out of thin air is not also a Ponzi scheme?</comment>