'Alien Alloys' in The New York Times' UFO Story - <AUTHOR> https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-truth-about-those-alien-alloys-in-the-new-york-times-ufo-story/ <comment><USER2> I totally buy it that there is no such thing as an "unidentifiable alloy." I also buy it that journalists, not being materials scientists or indeed scientists of any sort, do not know the difference between an "alloy" and "a hunk of some hard material," so at some point they wrote down "alloy" because the word sounds exotic, like something you'd find at Area 51.

This happens in the press /all the time/. Journos get specific terms of art wrong, and nitpickers nitpick and clarify. I know this because I made a career of such nitpicking and clarifying once.

My point here is that nothing put forward in this article means that there's not a building in Vegas with some kinds of materials that have strange properties and we don't know where they're from or who made them or how. It just means that said materials are not properly "alloys" and the journos got that word wrong, as journos often do when they're way outside their area of expertise.

<comment><USER3> > a building in Vegas with some kinds of materials that have strange > properties and we don't know where they're from or who made them or how

A lot stranger things have been found hidden in Vegas buildings than alien artifacts. Just a few weeks ago it started raining cheerleader uniforms in downtown Las Vegas because a demolition crew pulling down a hotel hit a sealed-off room filled with thousands of them.

<comment><USER4> It sounds like you're joking, but you aren't!

It'd kind of beautiful, actually.

[https://vitalvegas.com/excavators-hit-mother-lode-wtf-las- ve...](https://vitalvegas.com/excavators-hit-mother-lode-wtf-las-vegas-club/)

It makes me wonder what it will look like when they tear down the building storing old Star Trek: The Experience junk. The UFO conspiracy theorists are going to have a great time with those photo.

<comment><USER5> You know, I saw something like this in Boston just yesterday. They are tearing down a condemned parking garage near my office; I saw a room they had started demolishing that was packed chock-full with what looks like winter clothes. Like, they had been stuffed in it as insulation or something. Some had fallen out onto the rubble below. Very strange.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> As usual, the claim that #2 could possibly be due to pilots misinterpreting visual evidence is tossed out as a hand wavy excuse despite the fact that the cases investigated by the Pentagon are (allegedly) corroborated by targeting systems, radar and satellite images, and possibly more evidence not disclosed. The entire point of the revelations was that after bringing to bear the entire analytical arsenal of the Pentagon there is no obvious explanation remaining for these cases other that these objects indeed exist and have an unknown origin. (This doesn't mean "aliens.")

The entire story hinges on the credibility of the Pentagon officials and pilots interviewed. If they are credible with regards to the narrative around just how many resources were used to generate alternative explanations, then the media should stop building up strawmen that these specific cases were due to pilots being fooled by their visual system.

<comment><USER7> The problem is there is zero evidence of their credibility. Essentially it's an appeal to authority argument.

And the video itself doesn't show anything of the claimed behavior. No hovering over the ocean, no super fast motion, just a blob or smudge superimposed over a cloudy background as video pans around.

<comment><USER8> Which is one of many reasons we need total transparency when it comes to government. Every "state secrets" arguments falls well short when it comes to the need for the public to know everything in order to make informed decisions. Without informed consent we simply live in a police state. "National Security" is always a distant second to the need for transparency. Democracy dies behind closed doors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> My interpretation was that the origin of the material was simply unknown, which doesn't mean much.

If I wake up in the morning and there's an unexpected beer can in my yard that I did not place there, then that would be an object that arrived from an unknown origin. It doesn't make the object itself particularly mysterious, but you could have a lot of fun imagining how it got there or why it was placed there. And you can imagine that getting reported in an interesting way. Did a squirrel carry it into the yard? Did a neighbor drink a beer and toss the can into the yard? Did beer drinking aliens drop it from a space ship into the yard? Well, the latter is a fun story.

Of course it's infinitely more interesting to have a genuinely mysterious alloy or element that is inexplicable or just new and fascinating for whatever reason. I'm sure a lot of people felt that way about vanadium oxide, for example.

[https://www.chemistryworld.com/podcasts/vanadium- oxides/8838...](https://www.chemistryworld.com/podcasts/vanadium- oxides/8838.article)

<comment><USER10> There are still plenty of other degrees of interestingness in between "known" and "definitely aliens."

These alloys could very well be mysterious not so much for their composition, but for their condition, or their use at all in aircraft.

<comment><USER11> I could see them as hyper advanced metamaterials with effects we don't entirely understand. Materials science is still a very empirical field with lots of physical experimentation, trial and error. We can observe with SEM, x-ray etc. without fully connecting the dots to the end result. Sort of like dropping an iPhone X into the hands of a Victorian era scientist, who just dismantles it and sees it's a bunch of metal, without a chance of ever being able to reverse engineer it. It's just too advanced.

But this is probably nothing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I hate articles like this. Someone makes an extraordinary claim, journalist finds some experts to insist that claim must be false based on their current understanding rather than testing the claim. This is ridiculous. Either ignore the claim, or test it. Speculation is information-free and a waste of everyone's time. Same goes for the EM drive. I don't care about hearing some random expert's opinion on why it's impossible. I want them to either ignore the story altogether, or show evidence that the proposed effect or technology doesn't work.

This is the same sort of thinking as flat earthers, except that they happen to have the status quo on their side. Science and truth aren't based on opinion or emotion, but on test results.

<comment><USER13> > based on their current understanding rather than testing the claim.

The point is that there is no claim. It is very very straight forward to identify an unknown material (figuring out how it was made, what it's for, etc., is the difficult task). If you want to claim there's an 'unknown' material, show us your XRD patterns, your EELS/XPS/NMR/EDX/PL/SIMS spectra, your AFM surfaces, your electron micrographs, atom probe tomography, any number of a hundred other characterization techniques ... then you'd actually have a claim we could have an intelligent conversation about.

At this point, there isn't even a claim that needs an expert opinion to respond to, it's all just BS.

<comment><USER12> Right, so if they have no idea what the material is then what's the point of their comments claiming that they are impossible?

<comment><USER13> I read it as saying it was impossible that there were materials being stored that we couldn't identify[0], not that the existence of the materials themselves was impossible. The point being that if these materials exist it should be quite straight forward to identify them, and if they're 'unknown' then that's simply because no one's taken the time in a lab to figure it out.

[0] To be charitable, I have no doubt that there exist substances in the universe we can't currently characterize. But if you restrict it to objects that you can physically store in a warehouse (that is, they're stable under ambient conditions), I have little doubt we can figure out what they are without much trouble.

<comment><USER12> I think your interpretation of the article is incorrect, but to address your point:

> I have little doubt we can figure out what they are without much trouble.

How can you be so sure of that? Have we learned pretty much all there is to know about material science and physics at this point? Do you think someone from 500 years ago could analyze a microchip or some superconducting ceramic? Do you think we could figure out a material designed by a being a million years in advance of us? The physics as we understand it in 200 years is certainly going to be magic and "impossible" by today's standards, let alone alien tech.

Of course the materials could not actually exist, or not be of alien origin. But given the premise that they are of alien origin, it's not absurd at all to think that we can't figure out the nature of the materials.

<comment><USER13> > How can you be so sure of that? ... Do you think we could figure out a > material designed by a being a million years in advance of us?

It's a fair question, but I'm pretty sure we could. We have constraints: we know the object can be stored in a warehouse, we presumably can infer it can be touched, and can be seen.

 _Even if_ it were of alien origin, wondrously advanced, made of some kind of matter that fits outside our standard model of the universe, we would at least know it interacts with light, with the electromagnetic force. We understand that force very well, so we could still characterize it. And that's _if_ it's something deeply weird; deeply strange. (And if it were really that bizarre, it'd be the discovery of the century and obscene to keep it locked up in a warehouse somewhere.)

Far more likely, it's just made up of atoms (which is what we'd expect, given its temperature and density are within the realm of 'objects that can exist on earth in a warehouse'), and then we can use all our normal techniques just fine and it's not a problem.

> Do you think someone from 500 years ago could analyze a microchip or some > superconducting ceramic?

Again, to emphasize, this is a valid question -- but we've already gone past that threshold. We can see individual atoms now, so there's not much further to go when it comes to the question of what things are made of, at least to a rough approximation.

However, the next question would be "can we make it?" and the answer to that is very different. If someone gave us some electronics from the future, we could still find out what it's made from quite easily. Understanding how it works and how to re-create it would be vastly more difficult, and possibly beyond us. But this is true of the past too; there were ways of making steel and concrete in the distant past that we've long lost the knowledge of how to make.

<comment><USER12> > We can see individual atoms now, so there's not much further to go when it > comes to the question of what things are made of.

That may be true but also seems like a strong assumption and doesn't fit with our current trajectory of understanding. A paradigm shift in physics which replaces fundamental notions, such as the nature of fields, could make the current understanding become seem a rough approximation just like relativity did to Newtonian mechanics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This idea that we have a database that covers all possibilities for anything that would qualify as alien is delusional. It's like Neatherandals claiming that they have a complete database for hard things, and it contains exactly two entries: rock and stick. If they somehow stumbled across an iPhone, and ran a few tests, they would decide it is a rock (since it can skip across water - just like other flat rocks). In the very near future we will have complex dynamic alloys that do not fit neatly into any database because their characteristics will be change depending on the surrounding conditions. This is by a species that can't even build a space elevator. Who knows what is possible for a species capable of interstellar travel.

<comment><USER15> Quite simply, x-ray diffraction tells you the distribution of electrons in the unit cell of the alloy. So you just put an sample into your spectrometer and it will print out the chemical elements and how they are assembled. And even if there is another island of stability of super heavy elements or something like that, it will still just tell you the charge of the nucleus. So this side of quite literally magic, as in all of chemistry of the last 150 or so years fails catastrophically, there is no possibility of having an alloy sitting in a warehouse and not knowing exactly what it is.

<comment><USER16> What if there are no electrons, because there are no atoms?

The suggestion that all these alleged weird alien materials are "alloys" is just a placeholder for "looks and acts metallic, therefore made of metals."

But if we happened to be dealing with real alien tech, that's a naive and unscientific assumption. We already have people thinking about how to build programmable matter with variable properties, and it's a fair bet we'll have working examples within 50-100 years.

And there is no possibility that conventional x-ray diffraction will reveal how that kind of matter works.

<comment><USER17> Assume for a second this is real alien tech. No atoms, programmable matter, literal magic, whatever.

Why would this be in a warehouse of a $22 million (i.e. super small potatoes) government project? It would be the biggest budget and highest secrecy project on the books.

<comment><USER18> Also the NYTimes would not be allowed to print it, to the extent of the editor disappearing.

Also people posting on hacke

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> "Alloy" isn't the correct term when it comes to potential alien metallurgy. We can easily identify which elements are present in a sample. With a bit more effort we can identify the structure. That doesn't mean we can replicate the exact mix and structure.

Some metals don't mix. They mix as liquids but as they cool they crystallize differently, sometimes separating from each other. So an "alien alloy" could be a mix that was formed by some advanced tech (zero-g fabrication, strong magnetic fields etc) that we cannot replicate. Try getting a perfect crystalline mix of steel and neon. Maybe it is a miracle substance. But we don't know because we cannot fabricate such structures. If that showed up in a lab it would be "alien".

A few years ago any jet engine would contain "alien alloys" in the sense that nobody could have replicated the single-crystal structures now common in blades.

</comment><comment><USER20> The NYT article they are discussing -

[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/16/us/politics/pentagon- prog...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/16/us/politics/pentagon-program-ufo- harry-reid.html)

<comment><USER21> HN discussion:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15940674](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15940674)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Obviously there could be something we can't analyze.

But it would need to be based on a different structure than atoms, so not some new element or alloy but something completely different. Say some hard matter based on some condensed unknown field.

This sounds highly unprobable. But if true, this would have implications about all of physics, not just some new material science.

</comment><comment><USER23> Alloy Test:

Is it in the alloy database? yes : no

Is its isotopic ratio terrestrial? yes : no

Does it appear manufactured or natural in elemental distribution? yes : no

If the answer is yes to the first two, then yes, the alloy is indeed "mysterious". Simple as that. This article didn't debunk anything. It just corrected a wording technicality.

</comment><comment><USER24> One such "alien alloy" we still haven't been fully able to analyze or even reproduce: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damascus_steel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damascus_steel)

<comment><USER25> After reading that it sounds like they just haven't been able to reproduce the process of making it, not that it's an alloy that they don't understand the composition of.

<comment><USER26> Understanding the composition is just the first step of duplicating the process that made something. It can be as simple as melting two bars of different metals to etching elaborate patterns through complicated physical and chemical processes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Could it be we're confusing what an alloy (or some composite) is made of vs _how_ it's made?

For example (and it's just an example for the sake of discussion), many here couple probably analyze the skin of a stealth bomber and identify what it's made of. But that still leaves how it was made.

It seems reasonable to think we have things - which could be non ET - that we can't quite figure out and don't want anyone else to know either.

Obviously not a popular idea for HN but certainly not impossible.

</comment><comment><USER28> What does it actually mean by "unknown alloy"? All periodic table metal/metalloid elements can be extracted and detected. Even a standard high school chemistry texts include these processes with wet experiments to be done in the labs. Do they mean new element? If that is the case then those elements must be radioactive. Or do they actually mean "known alloy with new electromagnetic/crystalline properties"? Still it does not make any sense.

</comment><comment><USER29> If it exists, it's probably some facility where broken debris from research aircraft are stored. Edwards is always testing something, and when something breaks, it gets studied.

I once worked in a hydraulics R&D facility which had a scanning electron microscope. Parts which failed were examined to find out why. Their screen usually showed broken edges of something under high magnification.

</comment><comment><USER30> Let me break this down into a much simpler and more direct argument.

We have ways to very reliably identify the elemental composition of any material you can imagine. That doesn't tell us how to manufacture that material, but it does tell us what it's made out of. These are extremely robust techniques (x-ray diffraction and x-ray fluorescence) that work on anything made out of atoms.

The claim, any claim, of an "unidentifiable alloy" is simply _not credible_ without presenting x-ray fluorescence and x-ray diffraction data to back that up.

It is infinitely more likely that no one examining these materials had such instruments available to them, so they just sort of shrugged and said "I dunno what it is" which then got telephone-gamed into "unidentifiable alloys!" along the way. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. This is an extraordinary claim with _no evidence_. So it is not a credible claim.

</comment><comment><USER31> Given that we discover new elements[1] from time to time, it's not impossible that we'd discover a new alloy. However, something about this story is fishy and is likely being blown out of proportion.

It's a common trope that there exists a "God of the gaps" where we fill in our lack of understanding with God, ghosts, or aliens. If a door slams in your house, it's seen as a ghost, rather than pressure equalizing between rooms. This feels like an case where we attach our uncertainty to an explanation before we have enough data to form a viable hypothesis.

[1] [https://www.lenntech.com/periodic-chart- elements/discovery-y...](https://www.lenntech.com/periodic-chart- elements/discovery-year.htm)

<comment><USER32> > Given that we discover new elements[1] from time to time, it's not > impossible that we'd discover a new alloy.

It should still be relatively simple to identify each of the elements in it by it's atomic number. Our periodic table is complete to the 7:th row, and any unknown (un-named) element with a higher atomic number would be very likely to have a very short half life.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> This biggest qualm I have about this article is that it attempts to disprove alien tech using human tech. Any sufficiently advanced beings would appear to us to be magical of sorts since they would have mastered elements of the universe we don't even know exists. You cant simply say well since we've seen these combinations of letters in the atomic alphabet we can therefore deduce the meaning of all combinations. What if they discovered a noble gas in the compound? (kryptonium perhaps) It would completely change the way we view chemistry.

<comment><USER34> > it attempts to disprove alien tech using human tech

Not even that, it just goes babbling "impossible! Impossible!" - no trch nor science involved, they basically asked two random scientists if they believed in aliens, the answer was as predictable as pointless

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> It's not an unknown alloy.

I dug around a bit and it's a 3d layer printed nano-composite of very high purity bismuth and magnesium doped with some other trace elements and a crystal structure that they think indicates it was grown in a zero-G environment. Apparently even the wiring is baked in. I mean if we didn't know how processors were made, they would look like magic under the microscope as well. But I guess they genuinely don't understand how the layering was achieved.

What they say they don't know is how to manufacture it.

<comment><USER36> Umm, care to provide a link or source?

<comment><USER37> I would hazard a guess that someone with access to that info wouldn't provide a source were they to leak it, also that someone with access to a source wouldn't leak it in such a public way or on HN.

Regardless, this explanation is now head-canon, regardless of whatever facts or otherwise may present themselves.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> As Matt O'Dowd from PBS's Spacetime likes to say, it's never aliens.

<comment><USER37> thats the thing though, no one expects the spanish inquisition.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> For heaven's sake, we're not completely sure how Damascus steel was made, and that was done by humans hundreds of years ago, with thousands of samples lying around the world. And we're just supposed to assume that because we've tried all the combinations of alloys we can think of, there are no other possibilities?

Have some imagination. Think about nano-layering and quasicrystals, to say nothing of stable-island heavy nuclei and other exotic forms of matter not ruled out by physics as we know it. Come lecture me about impossibilities when you've finished solving solid-state physics, mkay?

Those aren't technically "alloys"? Fine, but that's a useless nitpick in the face of the actual question under consideration. Reading through the mistakes of science-illiterate journalists and politicians should be a reflex by now; you don't get any points for proving you have a better technical vocabulary than they do.

<comment><USER30> This is different. Any example of "Damascus steel" that you can point to you can use an XRF device on to figure out the actual alloy composition. That doesn't tell you exactly how to make it, it just tells you what elements it's made out of.

<comment><USER39> How is it different? You're practically making my point for me: knowing the composition doesn't mean you understand a material in any meaningful way. If the people supposedly running these warehouses are honest, we have to assume they've done all the obvious tests and are still confused.

Just to belabor the point some more, we didn't know until recently that damascus steel contains carbon nanotubes (probably derived from plant material). Was an XRF machine ever going to pick that up? Not in any detail, I'm guessing.

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

And this is all _without_ using any imagination. If you're dealing with the question of alien technology, that's silly.

<comment><USER30> What point are you trying to make here? Again, the claim of an "unidentifiable alloy" without XRF data backing it up is simply not credible. Period. Worse, the claim here is of an "unidentifiable alloy" without any evidence whatsoever. That is not credible.

The issue of being able to reproduce an alloy or material is an entirely separate one from being able to identify what it's made out of. _Nobody_ calls Damascus steel an "unidentifiable alloy". We know what it is, a type of steel, we know what it's made out of. Whether or not we can manufacture something with identical properties is irrelevant to whether or not we can identify it.

This whole "unidentifiable alloys" thing is a lot of meaningless speculation that hinges on a throwaway phrase with zero evidence backing it up. Show me the XRF data then we'll have a discussion. Until then it's just a bunch of hot air.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> mark-r Aren't there Carbon configurations that we wouldn't have been able to identify 20 years ago? We would have been able to identify them as Carbon, but not accounted for their unique properties. Maybe it's not completely far-fetched.

</comment><comment><USER40> I'm not sure what the initial claim was about this material, but it could be "exotic" even if it is identifiable.

If you sent a sample of carbon nanotubes to the 1950's, they'd say "this is carbon". That doesn't mean the sample wasn't exotic to them and hard for them to reproduce or understand.

An "alien material" or "alien alloy" would be one where we just didn't understand how it's made, even if we can see perfectly how it's structured and what it consists of.

<comment><USER18> Depends (on the CNT's) If you sent it to them anonymously in the post I agree, it would probably have been binned. But if you said "this is special and interesting, can you tell me why and here's $100k to do the work" then my guess is that about three days later you would get a visit from a red eyed and overwhelmingly excited person who would shout at you about allotropes of carbon that could be conductive.

Then you'd get the "so how do we make them long enough to use and have a reliable process that costs in" discussion, and I think that you'd be there for about 70 years. Sadly, maybe longer...

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Sad to see this (clickbait) story come from SI. No substantive refutation of the evidence, just speculation and the truism that atomic components of any alloy can be identified, which of course they can. But alloys -and nanomaterials- can and do have extremely interesting properties independent of their chemical composition and these are often non-obvious. SI completely glosses over that point.

</comment><comment><USER42> What if it isn't actually an alloy but instead is some kind of alien- engineered nanomaterial?

(This is purely scifi musing from my behalf, I don't believe in some kind of cover-up at this scale.)

</comment><comment><USER43> Hmm, the article has no substance besides speculation from external scientists based on the wording of the release. Not worth reading.

<comment><USER44> I read it as an extended argument for concluding that there is no such thing as an 'unknown alloy.' I have seen this as a tactic to pressure people to provide more details.

Simply writing "we don't believe them when they say this" doesn't carry as much weight as "we don't believe them because x, y, and z."

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Might be interested for layman like me to take a look:

[http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread976484/pg44](http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread976484/pg44)

Electromagnetism, UFOs, and the Weaponization of Alien Technology(page 44)

</comment><comment><USER46> Watch the Tom Delgone interview with Joe Rogan for some entertainment and conspiracy in this vein...

<comment><USER47> Careful or you'll have everyone in this thread screaming about blue beams.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> There is a very simple explanation for why the alloys are so mysterious.

Harry Reid was able to get the program funded, and directed most of the $22M in spending to one of his closest backers, Robert Bigelow so he could build a fancy warehouse. If that fancy warehouse wasn't storing super valuable alien artifacts it just looks like Reid filling the pockets of a close friend with government monies, and people might think Bigelow might be laundering that money to pay back to Reid after his retirement.

Since both of these upstanding citizens are known to have such high ethics that can't be possible, clearly the warehouse was full of priceless alien stuff. We can scientifically examine these alloys right now, except Reid agreed to cancel the program, because of deficits? or Harry's retirement accounts were fully funded.

But we also have an esteemed government director who can corroborate all of this, Luis Elizondo. He has no reason to make up sensationalistic stories, he's too busy helping Tom Delonge convince backers to fund the "To The Stars Academy of Arts & Science" to research alien stuff, and which supposedly is contractually obligated to pay Tom $100,000 a year once funded. What it's going to pay Luis is no-ones business.

Yep, completely on the level. Can't understand why these scientists are so skeptical.

<comment><USER3> While I don't doubt that Harry Reid is as corrupt a politician and as expert at funneling money to his cronies as, say, the late Robert Byrd was; there are A LOT easier and quieter ways of making it happen.

Especially for a sum as small as $22 million. Even county-level politicians can make that amount of money disappear without a trace and without leaving behind a warehouse and a paper trail.

To play the other side: What we have in the linked article is a couple of people who have never seen the objects in question stating categorically that they don't exist, or are ordinary. I'd believe the skeptics more if they'd at least _seen_ the objects. But it's just a couple of guys several thousand miles away second-guessing some other guys with actual access to the objects.

Thanks, for the clickbait, SI. Next...

<comment><USER48> I dunno, I read the article and the "guy a thousand miles away" gave pretty damn good reasoning why it'd be short work to identify and categorize "alien alloys".

Or do you have an actual argument as to why these materials couldn't be readily identified and studied by competent physicists using well known technology?

<comment><USER49> Would a material composed using highly advanced nanotechnology have strange properties purely due to its structure? Does it have to be an alloy?

<comment><USER50> Yes, and it doesn't have to be an alloy.

Structure is the basis for 'invisibility cloaks', materials with small-scale structures which confer optical properties not found in the same unstructured bulk materials. [1]

Another example of where structure confers strange properties on elements (not alloys) is light emission from indirect-gap materials like silicon. Make silicon particles small enough and you can get light emission that you can't from bulk silicon. See quantum dots [2] and other similar structures.

Structure can really change things.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metamaterial_cloaking](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metamaterial_cloaking) [2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_dot](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_dot)

<comment><USER51> One key point is that metamaterials have unusual _bulk_ properties, but they're still made from the usual materials, alloys, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> As a former scientist well practiced in x-ray diffraction it has been really fun watching these blatant flasehoods spread. We have mastered identifying the atomic structure of materials.

Sadly spreading these claims is how these programs self propegate. Luckily they don't do much real damage other than misleading the public and wasting government funding.

<comment><USER53> You don't think a civilization with sufficiently advanced nanotech could fabricate a material that would flummox x-ray diffraction? That seems a bit short-sighted to me. Our imaging and composition technologies are not sufficiently advanced to determine exact structures of anything - we still have to include many assumptions in order for the data to make sense.

For x-ray diffraction in particular, we assume all materials are made from atoms. However, we all know that quarks and more exist, so you don't think it's possible that an advanced race could make a material that skips that atom part?

<comment><USER54> _However, we all know that quarks and more exist, so you don 't think it's possible that an advanced race could make a material that skips that atom part?_

This sounds like pure sci-fi to me. AFAIK, everything we know about physics suggests that there are no stable substances made up of sub-atomic particles in a way that "skips the atom part". If that were possible, it would be in the realm of "entirely new physics".

Not to say that it's not possible of course... you don't know what you don't know and all that. But the Standard Model seems to be pretty firmly grounded and I haven't seen anything to suggest that it allows for such a thing. Personally, my bayesian prior on this being possible would be awfully close to 0 right now.

Then again, maybe it's Dwarf Star Alloy.[1]

[1]: tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Dwarf_star_alloy

<comment><USER55> Close to but definitely non-zero IMO. The quark model has been around for less than 100 years; push that out to, say, 1000 year time-scale, and I could certainly see it developing entirely new physics compared to what we now know. The Standard Model is well-founded, but explaining the things it currently doesn't (gravity/dark energy/neutrino masses etc.) could well require it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> This is kind of a ridiculous article. The main point seems to be that some scientists (who have nothing to do with this supposed UFO research) say that all known alloys are known, and that it would be surprising to find one that couldn't be figured out.

Well, no shit.

</comment><comment><USER57> Just to play devils' advocate:

I totally believe that we could identify any normal alloy, but what about more far-out kinds of materials? Humans have already experimented with metamaterials, weird composites made of many different kinds of constituents layered or interposed in various ways, materials with embedded electronic or even "smart" computational capabilities, etc.

Now imagine what a more advanced civilization might be capable of producing. I'm imagining a composite with embedded "smart" programmable behaviors that is 3d printed at the atomic scale. Every single atom is positioned intentionally to yield "smart matter" with incredible strength or other really exotic capabilities.

I can imagine it being difficult to identify or characterize such a thing without destructive testing, and if we did have such a sample we'd probably be very reluctant to do that.</comment>


KaiOS Technologies and Mozilla partner to enable a healthy mobile internet - <AUTHOR> https://www.kaiostech.com/press/kaios-technologies-and-mozilla-partner-to-enable-a-healthy-mobile-internet-for-everyone/ <comment> marten-de-vries Last I heard, KaiOS was working on migrating to Blink ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19012709](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19012709)). Looks like Gecko isn't out of the running yet, which is good news from a browser engine diversity point of view.

I'm curious how this'll work out, especially with Mozilla making good progress on the new Firefox for Android as well lately.</comment>


Show HN: Chrome plugin to rate and review sites' terms of use and privacy policies - <AUTHOR> https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/broccoli-for-terms-of-ser/fmbgfnapanennphegjjfjgdlopobepod?hl=en

<comment><USER2> How about a desktop plugin to rate and review browsers' terms of use and privacy policies ?

</comment><comment><USER3> I am trying it now

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool! Let me know of any suggestions to make it better :)</comment></comment>


Sometimes it pays to pay your web designer - <AUTHOR> http://winonachiropractic.com/

<comment><USER2> I think this trend is disturbing. I've seen a few "revenge revisions" here over the past few days, and though I understand the frustration of not getting paid (I've been freelancing for 8+ years), this is not the way to deal with the problem.

I'm a big fan of using a staging server that I'm in control of for changes to sites. We'll agree on a scope for an individual project or revisions, then I'll make the changes on my server and send you a link. If the changes are to your liking and the scope has been met, I'll bill you. Upon receipt of payment, I'll upload the changes to your live site, and we'll start again ad infinitum.

<comment><USER3> Great advice; I'll definitely put it to use.

I've heard that when constructing fireplaces and chimneys, masons sometimes install a plate of glass partway up the flu. When the final installment on the work is paid, the mason drops a stone down the chimney to break the glass. Otherwise it's a house full of smoke for the deadbeat client...

<comment><USER4> I wonder what happens to the chimney sweep years later, the person that clambers down the chimney through unexpected shards of glass sticking out on the walls. Presumably they are aware of this as a possibility and take precautions.

<comment><USER3> Most residential chimneys nowadays are too small for people to climb into. Sweeping is done with a brush on a pole :)

Also, the glass pane would not have to be anchored deeply in the masonry, just set in slightly, enough to support its own weight. Thus any breakage would likely remove it entirely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Sigh. I feel for web designers who don't get paid, but this is not the appropriate response. It puts you potentially in legal danger and loses you both this customer and anyone they ever talk to.

If you failed to pay a contractor building you a house, they can take a lein against the house or sue you, but it would be quite illegal for them to start tearing the house down. Similarly, unless you have a written contract saying that their website is merely a service you provide, defacing their property is not putting you in a stronger position, morally or legally.

<comment><USER6> No in the UK, if you do not pay a building contractor, court gives builder permission to "recover their goods" which is demolishing it.

<comment><USER7> "Recovering your goods" in the sense of a website is to take it offline or restore the original contents. I think filling the page with stuff like this goes beyond recovery.

<comment><USER6> I guess, it was a reply to "but it would be quite illegal for them to start tearing the house down".

Designer seems to have recovered his goods domain/hosting and used it for what he wanted. To slag off the debtor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think this does more to tarnish the reputation of the web designer as an immature, spiteful person, instead of being a true business person. The best way to handle situations like these in my experiences is to take the site offline and say it is due to nonpayment, and provide a means to contact you discreetly. Then send the bill to a collections agency with a 33% markup to cover the collections costs. Most clients are honest, eager to correct what is most often a communication or clerical error.

I've experienced non-payment only a handful of times over 15+ years of freelancing. Barring bankruptcy, I have ALWAYS been paid by using these two tactics. If they go bankrupt, you will be just another creditor, and a low priority one at that, since there are no physical assets involved.

<comment><USER9> What's the minimum amount that a collections agency will go after?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Chiropractors aren't doctors. That's tarnishing the good name of doctors.

</comment><comment><USER11> "Get bent", "This website is not yours anymore", "Deal with it"...

Frankly, I think a little "this website is offline because they didn't pay their bills" would be enough, given the web designer is being honest about the whole situation.

<comment><USER12> this is what i do, a simple rename of the index with a contact message.

although, the "get bent" is awesome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'd like to build a service where unpaid web developers can point DNS or redirect to, that on every visit to the unpaid website, would send an email to the owner explaining that someone visited the website, but only saw text explaining that they were a bad debtor.

</comment><comment><USER14> Harsh! ... but I love the humor in it and I actually think it's fair. Assuming everything in the article is true, it's not even slander/libel.

</comment><comment><USER9> Weirdly enough, I have a chiropractor client who owes me for hosting, and has been extremely rude about it. I have to resist the urge to redirect his domain to ChiroBase.

</comment><comment><USER13> I think the main intent of this isn't to simply seek revenge, but to hopefully pressure the chiropractic office into paying. I could be wrong, but that's what my intent would be.

<comment><USER15> Well yes, except that it is already revenge, and will presumably remain so until the developer gets paid.

...if in fact this whole thing isn't a hoax.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> The situation is one of the designer's own creation.

If the client never paid anything up front, that's just bad business practice. If the designer delivered and launched the site without having yet collected a dime, that's more bad practice. And if the designer continued to host the site while never getting paid, that's just stupidity.

Rather than being controlled by his emotions, this designer would have been a lot better off kicking those pesky feelings out of the building and viewing the situation as a learning experience, then creating business practices as a result.

For example, adopt a policy of getting 50% down at project start with the other 50% due within 30 days of site launch. If a client starts dragging their feet on payment, remind them of the clause in the contract where the penalties for non-payment were outlined. You did get a signed contract, right?

Sometimes clients don't want to pay and unfortunately nobody starts out in business with great judgment about who is and isn't going to pay. That judgment comes from experience, which is unfortunately built through exercising bad judgment.

</comment><comment><USER17> I'm not sure that's the way to respond. Wouldn't it scare away any potential future clients? We don't know the whole story, maybe the designer was asking for too much, or changed the price at the end. At any rate, it doesn't matter now, but future clients might hesitate if they knew the designer did this in the past.

</comment><comment><USER18> I've contemplated this measure a few times but the fear of legal repercussions is a little too overwhelming to go through with it.

At the same time - I feel sympathy for this designer and don't blame them. One overwhelming gesture of disrespect (devaluing ones work and not paying) sometimes deserves another.

</comment><comment><USER19> This is why you set up milestones to get paid instead of waiting for your complete payment at the end. Develop on a test server and then after the final payment, move to the production server. This is a highly inappropriate response to a problem, and I would never work with this designer because of it.

</comment><comment><USER20> To the designer, that is definitely not the way to go about your business. You are begging for trouble and doing more harm to yourself than the guy that is stiffing you on payment -

That said, after a quick double-take, I have to admit I laughed when I looked at the site.

</comment><comment><USER21> At the end of the day, perhaps the developer can at least use the website to show the power of SEO.

</comment><comment><USER22> Sort of classless, but funny. Someone needs to aggregate these on a site a la 404 page galleries.

</comment><comment><USER23> If I was in this situation I would just erase/kill the site, as the web developer is clearly in the position to do so, and most clients wouldn't have the know-how to do anything about it. Some of us try to maintain a little bit of class.

</comment><comment><USER24> Please, don't do this... If you are a webdesigner, just take down the site or put up a note saying "This customer did not pay their bill." This is never the right way to solve your issues.

</comment><comment><USER7> It's the "nice way" to go by replacing your stuff with the original design when you decide you're really not going to be getting paid. Can see just removing the page entirely, kind of. However, I don't think it's good for either side of the table if you do something like this.

If you take away what they gave or took down the site entirely you would be justified and perhaps quickly pay. Doing something classless like this is just going to make the client bitter and perhaps damage your personal reputation.

</comment><comment><USER25> The worst part is that the internet hive-mind may take hold and turn this chiropractor's life into hell for a little while. We're only getting one side of the story, and we can't be so quick to take sides without knowing a larger story. For all we know, the designer was lazy, late, charged unfair overtime, anything. But we can't jump to that conclusion either.

</comment><comment><USER26> This web designer is reflecting badly on him/herself and the webdesigner industry as a whole. The webdesign industry doesn't need a reputation for vengefulness and immaturity. In business there are norms for how to deal with non payment. If freelance web designers want to be seen as 'real' business people then.......

</comment><comment><USER27> Since they have never paid for the site, copyright and ownership of the site remain with the developer.

</comment><comment><USER15> This is as fine an example of burning a bridge as I've ever seen.

<comment><USER10> I agree, that chiropractor certainly burnt the bridge to use that web guy again.

<comment><USER28> As has the web guy for me too.

Now, I'm not ever going to need his services; I can handle the tech stuff just fine myself thanks and I know plenty of graphic designers. I also tend to pay bills when I receive them :-)

But there's no way I'd take a hosted service from someone who's pulled this stunt in the past. Let's say we have a small disagreement - happens in business, doesn't necessarily mean either of us is a crook. But how do I know he won't fly off the handle and do this to me too? That's not a liability I want to think about.

 _Our web designer has a childish sense of humor_

Indeed, and that's why I won't take his services.

<comment><USER29> It is inappropriate, and I'd never do it, but it never would have happened if the chiropractor paid their bills.

I can't imagine the particular designer will hurt for doing it - its not like his contact details are stamped on it.

If he does great work and it's what I need I'd use him, since I make a habit of paying my bills.

<comment><USER15> _If he does great work and it's what I need I'd use him_

To be sure, the site design as displayed is only average. Sure, he may do average work very well, but I'm not sure this is the best way to advertise that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> It's also been indexed to the top of the term "winona chiropractic" (probably not hard to do, but sucks for the chiropracter: [http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8...](http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=winona+chiropractic))

</comment><comment><USER31> I wouldn't pay for that design either. The reason you don't pay up front is to ensure you are delivered a quality product.</comment>


Myris: No more user names. No more passwords. - <AUTHOR> http://www.eyelock.com/index.php/products/myris/

<comment><USER2> > myris gives you 1-in-2-trillion security

41 bits.

<comment><USER3> :-P

Isn't that about the security that you can get from a 7-character password (alpha numeric, caps allowed, no symbols)? They can improve that if they use a KDF like scrypt, but it's unclear whether they do that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I see an invitation to "reserve yours" but, no pricing? All I could find was a quote from Engadget [1] that it'll be "under $300". And isn't this security still dependent on the security of each site you log into using this?

[1] [http://www.eyelock.com/index.php/in-the- news/ces/13-ces/213-...](http://www.eyelock.com/index.php/in-the- news/ces/13-ces/213-engadget-hands-on-with-eyelock-s-myris)

</comment><comment><USER5> Is the camera specialized? I wonder if the tech behind it could be used with existing cameras. I have a laptop cam constantly staring at me.

<comment><USER6> The problem with using a regular camera is you need a bright light shined at the iris in order to make sure you can see it well. Most people find this uncomfortable, which makes it hard to get people to adopt it.

Instead, most iris scanners use a near infrared camera and light instead. Near-infrared LEDs are cheap and and since you can't see the light it doesn't bother you. CMOS cameras can see near-infrared pretty well without any special processing. Typical CMOS cameras usually have a near infrared filter because without it images tend to look weird with the extra near-infrared light. So a standard sort of webcam or the camera in your phone won't work.</comment></comment>


Persistence of Coronaviruses on Inanimate Surfaces - <AUTHOR> https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0195670120300463 <comment><USER2> Nearly 40,000 infected, Approaching 1,000 deaths, and you can purchase the PDF for only $35.95 USD.

Elsevier Inc. is pure evil and greedy scum.

</comment><comment><USER3> Has the N log reduction fluence (UV dose) for 2019-nCoV been measured yet?</comment>


Show HN: Unix Permissions Calculator (Experiment with Backbone.js) - <AUTHOR> http://unix-permissions.appspot.com/ I wanted to learn how to use Backbone.js a while back but had problems grokking information from the docs and various tutorials.
This weekend I decided to buckle down and try to create a simple app with Backbone.js. This was the result!
I'm not really sure if I'm really using Backbone in the way it's meant to (I followed the Todo tutorial) but if anyone has any comments on how to improve on my Backbone code, I'd definitely appreciate it! <comment><AUTHOR> A while back I tried to learn Backbone.js but had problems grokking material from the docs and various tutorials. Today I decided to buckle down and create a simple app with it. This is the result!

P.S. One thing, I'm not fully sure if I'm using Backbone right (I followed the Todo tutorial). It all works but something about the way I implemented the model binding feels awkward. If anyone has any suggestions for improving the code, I'd definitely appreciate it!

<comment><USER2> Just FYI, the Todo tutorial app is horribly outdated. I'd check out some of the newer sources out there if I were you. Stackoverflow.com is a good resource.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the heads up, although I recall seeing that the Todos app was recently rewritten. Any suggestions for latest and greatest resources?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Simple but nice, good use of Bootstrap without looking like Bootstrap. How about a way to activate an entire column?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I had to resist the temptation to add the black nav bar at the top. Agree with the need to activate an entire col/row - I'll definitely add this.</comment></comment>


Yet Another Blog about Startup School (This one's pretty good) - <AUTHOR> http://www.andrewfarmer.name/

<comment><USER2> I am flattered, since I'm sure there are tons of more pleasant people :) Someone told me the Q&A troll would fall asleep during the presentations. Sheesh.

<comment><USER3> Mic-Troll FTW!! Thats the first reference I've read about the guy - I was a few rows behind him and yes, he was literally sleeping through presentations until Q/A time.

Mic troll, if you're reading this, take it as constructive criticism. Instead of pontificating your point, ask a quick, concise and relevant question.

<comment><USER4> I commented thusly on the site as well, but it bears repeating:

A friend of mine used to joke about rewriting the rules of discourse during Q&As so that instead of this: (P = presenter, T = troll)

       P: "Any questions? … Yes?"
       T: "Have you considered the effects of aliasing?"
       P: "We're using a bicubic blah blah blah…"

You would have this:

       P: "Any questions or comments? … Yes?"
       T: "I know about aliasing."
       P: "Thank you."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Wow, he really rolled up the day nicely. I especially liked the line about Jessica Livingston having an "elementary school teacher alter-ego". So true... could there _be_ a more pleasant person?

<comment><USER6> I'm sorry, but Jessica Livingston is a babe.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Action.io - 0 to Rails in 60 seconds in your browser - <AUTHOR> https://www.action.io/

<comment><USER2> This is how Heroku got started and they quickly figured out that the editor in the browser was an issue. No one liked it.

<comment><AUTHOR> The IDE is the first step. Our vision is to provide a set of tools so that your runtime is on the cloud (but can be sync'ed offline) and you can use whatever editor that you're most comfortable with.

<comment><USER3> Is everything going to be done "like a boss" or only tailing log files?

<comment><AUTHOR> all the things

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wow, I'm very impressed. There is definitely a killer app for this, and that is Windows rails development. While it's better than it used to be, it's still far from ideal, and time consuming to set up. Love the idea of being able to use a consistent environment across multiple platforms. Great job; looking forward to playing with this!

</comment><comment><USER5> Wow, I'm actually pretty sold.

One question though, is there delay when typing in the browser as there normally is when you ssh into a box? That kinda drives me up the walls, and I am an emacs person.

<comment><USER6> As long as you choose an availability zone that is closest to you when setting up the box, the latency will be minimal. In our experience with using Vim on our boxes, it was not a big problem. Emacs will run just as fine! (We aren't taking sides, I used Emacs a lot when I was doing Scheme.)

<comment><USER7> can you migrate boxes between zones?

in case you are travelling...

<comment><AUTHOR> Yup! Also on our todo list.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Hm. This is one of the rare times where a product actually does too much for me. If it gave me the ability to build and manage virtual envs for testing and development with ssh access (and maybe the ability to download them in say... vagrant box format) and nothing more, I would be sold immediately.

With the glossy IDE finish: not my thing :/.

<comment><AUTHOR> You can completely do away with the IDE if you want and Vagrant integration is in our todo list for sure.

P.S. Here's what Mitch (creator of Vagrant) has to say about action.io: <https://twitter.com/mitchellh/status/215491864080547840>

<comment><USER8> Saw the initial tweet, but I did not see the discussion. Vagrant integration would be great, as I am traveling frequently and need my offline dev environment.

Thanks for the info!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> When I first saw the logo, I heard:

"Winamp… It really whips the llama's ass!"

</comment><comment><USER10> This looks technically very interesting (how did you do the terminal emulation, is that an OSS library?).

However I'm almost sure I don't want my Vim and terminals in the browser, there surely will be all sorts of quirks with copy/paste etc.

Can the remote filesystem be mounted so that we can just hack with our local terminals and editors?

<comment><USER11> If you're doing things on your local machine anyway, is there that much benefit over just using heroku?

<comment><USER12> I guess full control over the VM stack is a big plus compared to Heroku

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Looks really good, I hope the rails beta goes smoothly because I would really love to have this for Django. Loved the demo!

PS. Why not: on console focus-loss -> file browser auto refresh

<comment><USER6> Good idea! We are adding that to our to-do list right now!

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> At the risk of being negative, I'm really sick of Show HN entries that go to a page where you can signup to a 'early access' mailing list but not actually get into the product and use it.

What exactly do you have to show besides the marketing?

</comment><comment><USER15> This looks extremely promising. Setting up and maintaining consistent dev environments are a time suck for any company. Companies like Quora are already doing this internally on EC2 ([http://www.quora.com/kstay/What-its-like-to- start-work-at-Qu...](http://www.quora.com/kstay/What-its-like-to-start-work- at-Quora)).

</comment><comment><USER16> The technology looks awesome but is this a pain point for people? I like developing on my local machine. Setting up an environment can be a pain but I only have to do it once. After that I forget about it.

Also, it worries me to depend on a third party service and my Internet connection to get work done.

<comment><USER17> The initial version of the platform will be really helpful to beginners, designers, and anyone who's a bit allergic to the command line.

We're working on some great collaboration features and sandboxing that will definitely make it useful for power users. We've also got a solution that we're working on that will allow offline development so you can use native editors and can work offline. Stay tuned.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This looks awesome. Congrats. Just wondering, why do you pick browser as the IDE? (as a background, I've been developing iPad IDE called Worqshop).

It's an honest question. How does the IDE perform using the iPad Safari? I thought about doing web-based IDE but found the performance very slow in my testing. Ultimately, it boils down to native vs web apps.

Nevertheless, kudos to you. I know that doing front-end web UI, dealing with AWS, and provisioning the boxes, are not trivial problems.

Edit: Just to preempt, yes, I know my app restricts developers to use iPad :)

Ups... reading the comments below... you will be providing SSH access to the VMs

</comment><comment><USER19> I really like what you have done. Having transitioned from a Windows/Visual Studio .NET application development environment to an OS X and Rails development environment within the last year, this would have been very useful.

</comment><comment><USER20> For those saying this isn't solving a serious problem: my colleagues and I have just spent weeks trying to get a reliable recipe for a Vagrant dev environment that encompasses our interesting (and in some cases a bit old) Rails-based tech. stack.

If we were starting again from scratch, we'd pretty much all agree to outsource most stuff: use Heroku, GitHub, etc. And there are several people intersted in Action.io now too.

</comment><comment><USER21> This could be a really awesome pair programming tool if you could have real time collaboration ala Google Docs.

</comment><comment><USER22> It looks really interesting, but one of the things I like about standard Rails dev work is I can work offline fairly easily. Mostly this a weird 'I have a really long commute' thing, so I will be keeping an eye on this.

<comment><USER17> Yeah-- we're working on a solution for this, so stay tuned. We're thinking that dev ops drudge work is going to go the way of sys admin (thanks to heroku).

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> 60 seconds?! It took me at least 10 seconds of looking for a 60-second thing to work out that the shortest one of the things you can see that has some meaning is almost five minutes long. Am I missing something??

</comment><comment><USER24> I just filled out a survey they emailed me and the thing I indicated as being most important was an online development system to support remote pair programming using tech like Apache Wave or Etherpad.

</comment><comment><USER25> I really like what you've done. Personally, not for me, I prefer programming locally using emacs, but I think it'll be great for lots of people, it also looks good, nice design :)

</comment><comment><USER26> I'll be sold when they give me access :) Seriously though, I have an old Laptop that I still keep around mainly because rails is "set up right" for some of my older projects

</comment><comment><USER27> It looks nice, btw I thought it was something from <http://iphone.appstorm.net/>, the icon/favicon is almost the same.

</comment><comment><USER28> Interesting idea. If this takes off, I feel like it'll end up in every developer's toolbox. Nicely done guys, looking forward to seeing the product!

</comment><comment><USER29> Maybe that will give Cloud9 a run for its money.

</comment><comment><USER30> >Run specs, change database configurations and tail logs like a boss...

That little tidbit made my day!

</comment><comment><USER31> It isn't 60 seconds if I have to wait two weeks for an invite code...

</comment><comment><USER32> email with a plus sign: "There was an error creating your invite, try again."

<comment><AUTHOR> Fixed, thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> remote pairing with a graphical editor?

yes please.

</comment><comment><USER34> the video is over 4 minutes..... just saying.

</comment><comment><USER35> action.io - awesome product !!

</comment><comment><USER36> Serious question from Python-land, that I think may illuminate the difference in mindset.

Why are Rails people so obsessed with accelerating the trivial?

I mean, the other end of the spectrum is to be focused purely on the obscure and utterly advanced, like category theorists trying to harness Haskell.

I've always felt the strength of the Python community is that it was able to let the idioms and cleanliness of Python stand for themselves while they advance of the state of the art for the work-a-day programmer. (The middle of the proverbial road)

Meanwhile, we've got Rails (and I mean this separately of Ruby. The non-Rails Ruby community is much more like the rest of us) at one end of the spectrum, and Haskell/Clean/etc. at the other.

What the hell?

<comment><USER37> '...web framework that's optimized for programmer happiness...' says it all right there, doesn't it? You know what makes me a happy programmer? Building things, not mucking about with setting up a new dev environment (and filling my machine with crap) every time I hop on a new client project. Make the 'trivial' shit go away so I can focus on the fun/interesting/creative/productive stuff...sounds good to me. I'm very interested in a product like this where I can configure on the fly and keep my machine uncluttered. (seriously, it just feels gross to have 6 different versions of rails and 4 different rubies installed on my machine, even if RVM makes it kinda easy)

<comment><USER38> Shameless plug here but Vagrant was originally built to address the issue of swapping environments between projects.

<http://vagrantup.com>

I believe Mitchell is going to talk to the action.io folks about possible collaboration.</comment></comment></comment>


Filecoin Breaks Record for ICO Funding - <AUTHOR> https://www.coindesk.com/257-million-filecoin-breaks-time-record-ico-funding/ <comment><USER2> This article shows the dark side of filecoin. [https://medium.com/token- economy/the-analysis-filecoin-doesn...](https://medium.com/token-economy/the- analysis-filecoin-doesnt-want-you-to-read-e60d5243f17c)

So many funds will prove a big competitor though, and sequoia Investments is well known for its success with investing in the past. But who wouldn't invest at such a discount (read article: pre sale discount is massive)

I think even more than the benefit of money (to hire talent,) Filecoin is benefitting from the advice and connections from their investors!

<comment><USER3> From one of the linked investor questions:

"..all our work has been funded by under $3.5M. We know how to deploy capital effectively."

Then don't raise capital like hell. Pure greed.

Money quote from your link:

"Call me old fashioned, but wanting to raise half a billion dollars for a pre- product endeavor is absolutely fucking insane."

<comment><USER4> Hey all the hottest startups do it:

Magic Leap ($1.4B), Theranos ($720M), Color ($41M), Clinkle ($25M)

<comment><USER5> Suddenly Color and Clinkle don't seem so outrageous.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> How does decentralized storage resist centralization? Backblaze B2 costs $0.005/GB/Mo (vs. $0.021/GB/Mo for S3). No reasonable person will have hardware at home that can compete with those prices.

All it takes is a single person with a few unmetered boxes and a proxy to B2/S3/etc to effectively pressure the price down to cloud storage levels.

As a user, how can I confirm that my data is being replicated properly if there are few big users? One of them might have multiple identities backed by a single cloud account, and if they stop paying their bill and run off with the coins all the data is lost. This will be those darknet market scams all over again.

Aside from the oodles of money that the early adopters will make, what am I missing?

Edit: Thought of another issue. The protocol replicates data, so if we assume a cloud provider does 3x replication, your data will be replicated again by the storage protocol. The extra overhead means that once the economies of scale kick in, only big players that can manage B2 style racks themselves will be able to host economically, just like how Bitcoin mining has consolidated on large mining operations.

<comment><USER7> > Backblaze B2 costs $0.005/GB/Mo (vs. $0.021/GB/Mo for S3). No reasonable > person will have hardware at home that can compete with those prices.

I don't get this. Suppose I have 1TB of data that I want to back up. That's $5/mo with Backblaze. I can get an external 1TB drive for ~$60. Some even have 3-5 year warranties. $60 buys me one year with Backblaze. There's a good chance the hard drive will last much longer.

An external drive also gives me the benefit of higher data transfer rates. I could even splurge and for another $50-60 buy a small fireproof safe to store it in. Then I'm pushing two years with Backblaze. The external drive approach also has the side benefit of not having to trust a third party (yeah, I know, encryption). It seems like a much better deal to me. Does this mean that I am an unreasonable person?

<comment><USER8> Your external drive may fail or be destroyed in a number of ways -- protection against this is a portion of what you're paying for.

<comment><USER7> Well, I did suggest a safe. But sure, there are other ways it could be destroyed. As for failure, presumably it's already a back up, so assuming the source didn't simultaneously fail, I can just replace the external drive.

If this makes you queasy, you could always buy a second drive. Two 1TB drives and a fireproof safe, that's equivalent to three years with Backblaze. Still seems pretty reasonable to me.

<comment><USER9> Or spend five minutes uploading to the cloud and be done with it.

This is such a ridiculous premise that wastes tens of hours (at least) just to save $10 that I'm pretty convinced you're trolling.

<comment><USER7> I'm not sure how you come up with $10. Drives regularly last 5+ years. A single 1TB drive at $60 saves me $240 over Backblaze if it lasts 5 years. Throw in the safe, and I still save $180. Two drives and a safe? Still saving $120. I have drives that have gone well beyond 5 years too - so the longer they last, the more you save.

And, what kind of connection do you have that allows you to upload 1TB in 5 minutes? That's spectacular. An ideal gigabit connection is going to take you a good two hours. Even that would be pretty amazing.

<comment><USER10> One thing to consider as well is that when you get to a certain level of storage, you need a dedicated box (so there is more hardware cost).

I have 50tb of storage in my home server. The electricity cost for this box is about $35 a month.

In my case it is so much strorage that it saves money, but if you have less storage and still need a dedicated box, it would be less so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is just insane. No code yet, closed to investors with at least 250k income or 1M in the bank (Per SEC rules), coins given to friends before investors could get in on it.

And what do you need this much money for?

<comment><USER12> Whenever irrational or weird things like this happen, i always tell myself that maybe people aren't stupid, maybe i just miss a crucial piece of information.

For example, who are the poeple lending that much money ? Why are they doing it ? Is this whole thing some kind of money laundering or tax evading scheme ? Is it related to central banks having 0% interest rates, etc..

You only know what happens after some time, but you always end up knowing.

<comment><USER13> I see parallels to the 1810s in America where an explosion of banks needed virtually nothing to get chartered and issue unlimited amounts of their own currency. That went great, until it didn't.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panic_of_1819](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panic_of_1819)

<comment><USER14> That's an interesting link. What's particularly noteworthy is the mentioning of the inflationary spread of paper money that the banks issued which had no gold/silver etc backing...and the role of the government facilitating this to finance their war. Now, the crypto world was created as a direct response to that problem - nobody can issue fake bitcoins/file coins. You will have to have the cryptographic key to a public address. In that sense while we might be back in 1810 we seems to be branching off into an alternative reality where 'banks' can't produce more coin-notes than they have. I am also not sure anybody would accept a paper note as a substitute for a Bitcoin.

<comment><USER15> OTOH a coin ICO seems to be exactly this sort of behaviour, the issuing of effectively un-backed tokens by anyone that wants to.

Bitcoin and other crypto-coins are also created without the gold or silver backing of course... they just aren't issued in quite the same way.

<comment><USER14> I think about it this way: if I get a 20 dollar paper note let's say in 1810 and believe it to represent 20 ounces of silver (simplified to make the point) but upon visiting my bank branch I only find 5 ounces - the bank is insolvent and the paper notes immediately near worthless. In the crypto world 5 filecoin will always be 5 filecoin- and I can see (and trade in and out of them) on a 24/7 basis. That's quite a different trust level to me. In fact I can 'shapeshift' them into hundreds of other coins that I deem more relevant or worthy as a value store at a moments notice. Does not that sound like a superior system, even when granted, it's not perfect (as long as we are dealing with imperfect knowledge of the future and human emotions)

<comment><USER16> This seems to reinforce the analogy rather than rebut it. Your coins can still very suddenly go from being worth X worth of goods or services to .01X. It's maybe even worse with crypto, since the only things you can currently buy are dollars or other coins.

The ability to "shape shift" your declining currency to better ones assumes you can out-speculate the market in knowing when to exit, and which coins to buy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I have a few legal questions (IANAL)

First of all, is CoinList a registered broker-dealer with the SEC?

The SAFT can take advantage of the 506(c) rule which the JOBS act introduced, allowing you to raise unlimited amounts from accredited investors, and do general solicitation. But I believe it requires the securities to be issued through a registered broker-dealer.

This guy seems to believe that the token issuance itself is not covered by 506(c) if the token is a security. Where does his reasoning come from?

[https://prestonbyrne.com/2017/08/04/thoughts-on-the- saft/](https://prestonbyrne.com/2017/08/04/thoughts-on-the-saft/)

But even when the next security is _issued_ to these investors, will they be able to trade them? The _Exchange Act_ regulates the sale and interstate (electronic certainly would be) exchange of securities.

 _If_ the tokens are later considered securities, then they may not be tradeable. However, I doubt that, in practice the SEC will go after anyone in particular on the exchanges, since there will be tons of participants by that time, and especially since the project has taken the most amount of effort to comply with the regulations, and many others didn't. All it might do is halt the trading, and confiscate the tokens of whoever is trading at that time. And the exchanges have already been trading all sorts of tokens, so they are more likely to take this one.

<comment><USER18> I don't think you need to issue them through a broker dealer - where does it say that?

<comment><USER17> It says that here - but might be a simple omission

[https://www.crowdcheck.com/sites/default/files/CrowdCheck%20...](https://www.crowdcheck.com/sites/default/files/CrowdCheck%20Memo%20on%20New%20Regulation%20D.pdf)

<comment><USER18> Ahh, if you use an intermediary, that intermediary has to be a broker dealer

<comment><USER17> So, if you use CoinList, are they an intermediary?

Where did you confirm they _have_ to be one?

<comment><USER18> It's in the document you linked to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> So Filecoin is intended to create a marketplace for the world's unused storage capacity. Is there a corresponding coin for the world's unused computation capacity? If there isn't, should someone create one? Probably using "deep learning" and "big data" as buzzwords, and somehow tie in with adtech / analytics / surveillance. I wouldn't buy it, but it seems like the kind of idea that investors would throw billions at!

<comment><USER20> Computation is much harder because it's not possible to do it in private and secure way. You could only compute public datasets. Even in 3D rendering this is the limiting factor. Still, I think such a network would be necessary for the creation of autonomous AIs.

<comment><USER19> It's possible, but expensive: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homomorphic_encryption](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homomorphic_encryption)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> ICOs are fraud IMHO. I want to ask why this is even legal, but then I think - why shouldn't it be? And then how can people be so stupid? There is no legally recognized thing as ICO is there?

<comment><USER22> No, an "ICO" is not a legal term. Filecoin, however, is one of the few folks that tried to comply with US law. They limited their sale to accredited investors and user a new legal document referred to as a SAFT (Simple Agreement for Future Token), analogous to the SAFE documents popular in startup land.

Most ICOs are unregistered securities offering that are violating US law by going public without an effective registration statement in place with the SEC, or an exemption therefrom.

Some ICOs may be legal to the extent they are not 'securities', I.e. the argument that you are buying a useful network token, not a security. In my opinion, this argument is BS for the majority of ICOs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> If you're interested in Filecoin, I suggest looking into Siacoin. It's been online for several months and actually works. Filecoin is literally vaporware at this point with just a whitepaper.

<comment><USER24> Exactly. Storj is another company with a working product in this space

<comment><USER25> StorJ isn't really in this space as the entire system is centralized. You can't buy storage from anyone other than StorJ, nor can you sell storage to anyone other than StorJ. They don't have a free market like Sia (or even Filecoin). The protocol technically supports it but it's not implemented and doesn't seem to be high priority at all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> What is the difference between Filecoin and Siacoin? I thought Siacoin already proved renting out storage space was pointless?

<comment><USER27> For what it's worth, I could not be more excited about Siacoin. I think both it and Filecoin are, along with the nascent self-sovereign identity providers, the most important projects in the tech industry right now.

<comment><USER28> Distributed storage is pretty neat definitely

On your second point self-sovereign IDPs are not going to become a thing, it's a huge chicken and egg problem, consumers don't care because there's no merchants on board and as a result merchants don't care.

The only real option is to extend out from something that already exists, has a large customer base, and that you true to be secure. That way you solve for the chicken and only need to make an egg. It could be social media (FB, LinkedIn, Insta, SNAP), private (teleco, bank, ISP) or gov but the point is ou already need that critical mass as identity is a secondary benefit to a consumer (at least right now).

<comment><USER27> I think we're about to see a whole new class of browsers and app platforms emerge in order to exchange small amounts of cryptocurrencies for incremental services on the internet. It will start with ideologues who believe in a distributed internet or whatever, but what will quickly happen is people will learn the value of their personal digital output and monetizing ones own data will become the driving incentive for adoption.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> People will only buy Filecoin because very well known VC firms are already backing it. And that creates trust somehow? I wonder how much it will hurt the reputations of these firms.

<comment><USER30> That's how raising VC money works too. You get a lead investor to do their diligence and set the terms. Other investors come in and go "So&So is leading this round, I trust they did their due diligence so I'll invest too"

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> This is the 2017 version of Color App where the team raised way more than they need.

</comment><comment><USER32> I really hope that IPFS will not be affected by this nonsense...

<comment><USER33> IPFS will be powered by Filecoin in future. Filecoin will incentivize miners/users with redundant storage to be a part of the network thereby increasing the size of the network itself.

<comment><USER34> I hope not, because the last time I tried it still ate a lot of resources just idling.

<comment><USER35> IPFS has been a frustrating project to watch. It's felt like it was 6 months away from being amazing for... over two years now. Despite their writing it in Go explicitly so they could get something working and usable quickly, rather than C/C++ which would let other languages and platforms wrap their lib, which is what I'd have expected them to do if they were serious about becoming an infrastructure-level protocol. This ICO may explain some of those choices, and makes me more worried about the future of the project than ever, which sucks because I _really_ want to use it and to be able to trust it'll still be around in 10 years.

<comment><USER36> From my perspective, they seem to focus to much on the technical side. E.g. they are working on P2P communications over the network formed between nodes and lots of libraries and features, but not much work in the way of making it user-accessible. People put all kinds content on IPFS, but the most common way to access it is through centrally run gateways, either the official ones or ones run by the individual project. No browser plugins that would upgrade sites from HTTP through gateways to using IPFS locally, no special IPFS- enabled browser (like e.g. dat has in beaker browser), no other applications accessing it directly...

It's possible that I'm missing something or approached it with the wrong expectations, but I'm underwhelmed by that side of it. E.g. I looked into using it on my website, but can't find an actual benefit to doing so.

<comment><USER35> That's where the choice of Go (which I like as a language, mind you) has hamstrung them. Anyone who wants to do anything with it must either 1) add an entire separate daemon as a requirement for their project/plugin/library/whatever, or 2) re-implement all of IPFS from scratch, and commit to tracking the reference Golang implementation forever.

Sure they have a Javascript implementation they're developing in parallel, but in a world where most end user devices are battery powered what the hell good is that for anything serious or interesting? The requirement of a daemon to achieve reasonable network performance is already asking a lot of anything with a battery indicator. And at the same time the stability/reliability's still not there to use it for infrastructure, which is the other way they could have taken it (though they _seem_ to stress that it's for end users).

Again, just a very frustrating project to follow. Oh so close to being awesome. Maybe in another 6 months...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Since SoundCloud I am extra cautious with USV investments. They invest, pump (pulling other investors into their great opportunity) and then nothing.

<comment><USER38> What does "and then nothing" mean?

Not every investment will succeed which is the point of risky startup investment. And USV has an incredible amount of success (Twitter, Kickstarter, Cloudflare etc)

<comment><USER37> > What does "and then nothing" mean

SoundCloud? Just look at the recent downround.

The 'incredible auccess' is decades ago. USV had its best times.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is pure madness. I wonder how long regulators in the western countries look before they act.

<comment><USER39> It will be too late when they act but I can't blame them - it is all about politics. With recent pyramid scheme it was something like:

1\. It is as scam, why the regulators don't do anything!

2\. Regulators added company to warnings list - people say it is not enough

3\. Regulators launch formal investigation - people still say it is not enough but another group complains that government tries to interfere with entrepreneur

4\. Some branches are closed shut down - people say it is regulators fault that caused massive withdraws.

5\. Pyramid scheme company is dead, everyone complains that regulators didn't do enough and reacted too late.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> ICO lunacy aside, did they break the funding record by virtue of holding a month-long ICO? How much has ETH gone up in the meantime? Do you value their funds at the start price, the day they got each coin, or the end of the sale?

<comment><USER22> They received most of the money in the first hour. Like $175mm plus.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I suppose the rest of the monies should be spend on advertising the service. At least, if you want to avoid people calling it a scam, Ponzi or pyramid scheme.

also:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15198854](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15198854)

</comment><comment><USER42> So this is basically pied piper?

<comment><USER29> Exactly their product [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nk0BT7tTWno](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nk0BT7tTWno)

Not as well received though [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lrv8i2X3gnI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lrv8i2X3gnI)

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> People are willing to speculate, and until this pops some people will make money, some will get seriously burned.

The credibility of the technology or adoption of it by users isn't really important at present.

</comment><comment><USER44> can't find Filecoin on coinmarketcap

<comment><USER33> It is because it hasn't launched yet. Their network will be ready in 6-12 months when the token will be released.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> When will filcoins be available for purchase at exchanges?

<comment><USER36> once the network launches, which is supposed to happen some time next year if I remember correctly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Why would this investment makes sense? Can anybody ELI5?

<comment><USER47> At a basic level, it is 1/280th the market cap of BitCoin.

So just a bunch of people holding BitCoin selling <1% of their holdings for diversity would cover it.

It is an error to compare it to an investment in a product. It isn't. ICOs are different.

I reckon it is a lot of rich early crypto investors who will happily throw $1 million into each of 20 different new cryptocurrencies that look the most plausible.

This one looks plausible, solves a real world problem, and covers a different set of use cases to Ethereum or BitCoin. It has VCs watching over it for management mentoring and control.

So worth the diversification of portfolio. Esp for someone whose crypto portfolio shot up a load this year.

Why are ICOs different? Because anyone (in this case, anyone acredited) can get in early. How many people in 2003 would have invested in 20 promising social networks if they could have?

<comment><USER47> I'm not sure I'm explaining this well - would love to see a proper psychological and economical analysis by someone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> can you spell "b-u-b-b-l-e" ?

</comment><comment><USER49> And China was crazy for banning ICOs...

</comment><comment><USER50> This ICO is shit it's basically for rich people only. Not decentralization friendly!

</comment><comment><USER51> Filecoin is VC money, it is a different type of coin because of it; after the first confidence crisis it might crash and never come back. I think VCs are too fickle and not idealistic enough to support the value of a cryptocurrency in the long run.

</comment><comment><USER52> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15195178](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15195178)

<comment><USER41> You are taking this place to seriously.

<comment><USER53> How so? He's pointing out that this article is a dupe.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> 257 million dollars is nothing, I don't know . PSG , REAL MADRID, BARCELONA, NFL TEAMS... they spend 100 times that in a single summer.

<comment><USER55> This is an absurd comparison—major sports teams bid for extremely scarce talent, and they generally have the revenue to support large talent purchases (which have never been anywhere close to the price of Neymar).

No file storage startup with minimal operations needs or deserves this much money. They're not in an industry with high initial fixed costs and they're not labor-intensive like an Uber or Instacart.

<comment><USER56> > This is an absurd comparison—major sports teams bid for extremely scarce > talent

If you watch closely, the increased prices payed by sports teams are calculated in such a way to lower operating profit for the "team" (i.e . company) to a tax friendly point.

<comment><USER57> Any links? I'd be interested to know more.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


IINA – A modern video player for macOS - <AUTHOR> https://lhc70000.github.io/iina/ <comment><USER2> I'm gonna be trying it out, since another commenter mentioned it's powered by mpv. Although, as I have very basic requirements, I'm already perfectly content with starting up mpv from the cli or by using mpv.app.

If you try this out and feel like it's not what you're looking for, I'd suggest trying out mpv [0] directly.

It integrates youtube-dl [1], so you can easily watch YouTube, as well as from the other hundreds of sources they support, very easily. For example:

        mpv "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ"

The most recent macOS update brought a picture-in-picture feature, where you could keep videos playing on top of everything else in one side of the screen. With mpv you can get a close approximation by using the "\--ontop" flag. Although admittedly it's not quite as nice as the new built-in feature.

And a bit tangential to the whole thing, I found mpv's C API [2] to be very approachable and well documented.

[0] [https://mpv.io/](https://mpv.io/)

[1] [https://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/](https://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/)

[2] [https://github.com/mpv- player/mpv/blob/master/libmpv/client....](https://github.com/mpv- player/mpv/blob/master/libmpv/client.h)

</comment><comment><USER3> Looks like this is powered by mpv, which is handling all the media parsing and playback, which is awesome.

I've been wanting "mpv with a modern UI for years now for mac" for years now.

<comment><USER4> Well, you can use mpv now -- build using homebrew and then make a config file (yeah, config file sucks, but then you get something you want) :)

        brew install mpv

<comment><USER3> I've been using mpv from the command line for as long as I can remember. Config file synced with the rest of my dotfiles.

The killer feature here is the modern native UI.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Looks really nice! I just played back a 1080p / 5.1 AC3 file, a 4K 5.1 DTS-HD file, and an audio ALAC file completely seamlessly. Only complaint so far is the playlist sidebar slid in from the side with every new track, obscuring 1/3rd of the content, and I kept having to manually dismiss it.

</comment><comment><USER6> Good to see VLC get some competition. VLC has a pretty decent UI (assuming you don't end up in settings hell), but hasn't really evolved to match modern software design. A reasonable competitor could light a bit of fire under them to get that fixed.

Edit: tried it out with some streaming media. Buffering seems to be more intelligent that VLC (saner default). It is really pretty UI too. Great start for a project.

<comment><USER7> > A reasonable competitor could light a bit of fire under them to get that > fixed.

Is there anything in particular that you'd have them change?

<comment><USER6> > Is there anything in particular that you'd have them change?

I'm no UI/UX expect, but here's my impression of deficiencies (as a fairly heavy VLC user)

\- Media player default window is super busy. I rarely use any of those options. \- Audio/subtitle sync is tricky. There are keybindings but I can never remember them. \- Open dialog is really complex for what you are usually wanting to do \- Preferences is just crazy. It used to be tough to configure caching, but that seems to be fixed now (cool!)

The VLC UI is a lot better than it used to be in fairness, but it still has a ways to go before I'd consider it to be modern and clean.

<comment><USER7> I'd be a fan of maybe reorganizing the options, but the flexibility of the software is _the_ reason that I use it over other players.

I like the idea of a cleaner interface, but if the choice turns out to be between a cleaner interface and the number of options in the software, I'll stick with the version with the ugly UI until it stops working.

And that's really what I'm afraid of. Most things that get labeled "modern and clean" are programs that I think of as "insufficient and featureless", and they're the ones that I abandon. I don't want to abandon VLC; it's been my good friend for 10 or 11 years, at this point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Feature suggestion: multiple subtitles, and subtitle time shifting.

It's theoretically possible in VLC, but failing after half an hour of trying to get the settings to work led to the movie being shown without any subtitles. This was for a group discussion, with mixed English & Chinese native speakers. It's publicly embarrassing for everyone, and I'm planning to write my own app to just show subtitles so this might work next time.

</comment><comment><USER9> I looked at the screenshots, and I am not sure what's more modern about it than VLC. Only thing attracting in the screens is the video being played.

</comment><comment><USER10> Supported formats would be good information on the website, also signing the app.

</comment><comment><USER11> Looks great!

You have a typo on your homepage, though. "A more stable release should be able in one month." should probably be "A more stable release should be available in one month."

</comment><comment><USER12> I looked at the docs but it's unclear what "modern" refers to? Does it just mean it's new?

<comment><USER13> Perhaps: it is written in Swift and supports the touch bar on the new MacBook Pros.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> PotPlayer is my favorite media+music player. Inbuilt file seeking interface like potplayer in IINA can be helpful.

Pinning playlist in front to drag and drop additional files is also required.

Support to take screen shot without quality loss.

Any plan to support mp3/flac files?

Thanks for this great app, looking forward for stable release.

</comment><comment><USER15> Works well so far.

Only complaint - it doesn't prevent the screensaver. That does seem like it should be a given.

</comment><comment><USER16> How is this pure swift? What about the codecs?

<comment><USER17> I would assume they mean every line of code in IINA is Swift code. It's using libraries which are presumably not written in Swift, but you could make the same argument about literally every Swift program ever (even if they don't use Foundation, they'll at least be using libc and that's obviously not written in Swift).

<comment><USER16> I can't agree with that. If you develop a videoplayer and you state it's pure Swift I think it's fair to assume the codecs and other core components (i.e. dsp) of the said player are not imported C libs. How can it be pure Swift if it imports C libraries? The std library and toolchain(i.e runtime) may make an exception because these are usually portable, maintained by the language authors and invisible to the end developer so I think your libc argument is not valid.

<comment><USER17> If you developed the libraries yourself, then you have a point. But if you're using someone else's library, which they maintain, then it seems reasonable to say your application is pure Swift.

Note that there's a difference between saying "my application is pure Swift" and "everything is pure Swift". If you're trying to make an argument about safety (as happens when people talk about writing things in Rust), then having the libraries written in that language is important. If you're just trying to say "this is a modern codebase using the latest tooling and APIs", then all that matters is the code you wrote, and not the pre-existing libraries that you link to.

<comment><USER16> You turn this into a blame game. If it's pure Swift then 100% of its source code should be Swift. This particular repository is mixed with C libs.

From the dictionary:

Pure - not mixed or adulterated with any other substance or material.

<comment><USER17> So, everything has to be Swift, except for the libraries that you personally have decided don't matter (such as libc)? That's not a very useful definition.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Australian mammal: First to go extinct due to climate change - <AUTHOR> http://www.sfgate.com/world/article/Australian-mammal-1st-to-go-extinct-due-to-8145079.php <comment><AUTHOR> Was this animal indigenous or was it introduced by settlers?</comment>


Ask HN: Who's seeking work? - <AUTHOR>

Who is seeking new work (full time / temp) that has skills startups in the HN community value? <comment><USER2> Machine learning guy looking to join a startup as co-founder / one of the first employees. I am highly experienced with Matlab and have at least touched most of the production-oriented programming languages out there, very good at working with data, and play with robotics and computer vision on the side. Long term, I view the lack of general-purpose robotics hardware in consumer homes as a tremendous opportunity (look at what Apple did for mobile with good hardware & dev tools). Short term, looking to join a startup focused on consumer applications of ML / CV or game theory that deals with "big data."

Contact seekingcoolstartup at gmail if you're interested in talking more.

</comment><comment><USER3> I am! I've mostly done Python web dev work and a heavy dose of Postgres admin and PL work. Have been recently into Node.js, Redis, wouldn't mind diving into that as a main gig.

Pertinent contact information is available via my user profile.

</comment><comment> mike-cardwell Always open to opportunities. First paragraph or two on <https://grepular.com/me> give an idea of my skills. Based in the East Midlands in the UK. Contact details are in my HN profile.

</comment><comment><USER4> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2719083>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2719028></comment>


5th RISC-V Workshop Preliminary Agenda - <AUTHOR> https://riscv.org/2016/10/5th-risc-v-workshop-agenda/ <comment><USER2> Very excited to see the V extension is already in a proposal-quality draft. It's the last big piece separating RISC-V from data-heavy consumer and server workloads.

<comment><USER3> >> Very excited to see the V extension is already in a proposal-quality draft...

And Go on RISC-V, and a JVM, and video decode instructions, and security work, VM work, thousand core concepts, dev boards, multiple hardware implementations, better simulators, and all the rest. This shit is getting real very quickly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Any more details available on this SiFive development board?

<comment><USER2> By the numbering, it seems like it would be one of their embedded form-factor platforms as a dev board. [https://www.sifive.com/products/freedom/](https://www.sifive.com/products/freedom/)

<comment><USER4> I wonder if it will be FPGA based or use an ASIC. Also if it will have a block device and network, which are the drawbacks of the current platform.

<comment><USER5> It wouldn't be that hard to have a network interface for the FPGA implementations. The Zynq SoCs have two network interfaces, though most dev boards only connect one of them to a connector.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> RISC-V has serious momentum.</comment>