Groupon stock sinks to new low, investors sue - <AUTHOR> http://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20120404/NEWS08/120409912/groupon-stock-sinks-to-new-low <comment><USER3> As a Silicon Valley native currently living in Chicago, I've always found it disappointing that Groupon is the poster child of innovation and entrepreneurship in Chicago. They seem to lack a solid business plan and have a history of deliberately misleading investors and businesses. Far more impressive companies, such as 37signals or GrubHub, are based here that deserve that kind of attention instead.

I very much doubt the legitimacy of this story, but I was in a barbershop a few weeks ago, where the owner told me about one of the Groupon executives who was in the shop earlier. He was saying we shouldn't expect Groupon to be around in 10 years because the company's plan is to collect as much cash as possible, fire everybody, and shut down, keeping the money for the investors. While I doubt a Groupon executive would have actually said that in a barbershop, I can believe that actually was their long-term plan, but if things keep up at their current rate, I'm not sure if Groupon will even last that long.

<comment><USER4> > I was in a barbershop a few weeks ago, where the owner told me about one of > the Groupon executives who was in the shop earlier

Great source!

<comment><USER5> I don't know why this was downmodded. It's trenchant. Nobody on HN seems to like Groupon, but that doesn't make this kind of ridiculous hearsay more valid.

<comment><USER6> I'd guess it's due to the sarcastic tone. If he had your made your post instead I think it would be faring better.

What really gets me is the barbershop post actually admits that it's very unlikely for the source to be telling the truth, then goes on to give it credit anyway because it agrees with his own speculation.

<comment><USER7> "He was saying we shouldn't expect Groupon to be around in 10 years because the company's plan is to collect as much cash as possible, fire everybody, and shut down, keeping the money for the investors."

Because the problem isn't the source (the barber). It's the idea that a groupon executive would have said something like this to his barber, physician, plumber etc.

Maybe bragging to his call girl, maybe to a friend when drunk (and was overheard) but it's ridiculous to think someone would say something like this even in jest.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> They should have unloaded this fraud on Google when there was a $6 billion cash offer sitting on the table (assuming that was true).

The fact that Google even offered that much leads me to believe that they have jumped the shark with that offer.

Anybody who knows anything about retail would have studied the business model and realized that this was not sustainable. Obvious red flags: 1\. Heavy reliance on field sales (the largest expense), which is NOT scalable 2\. Exclusive reliance on repeat sales as the key driver of sustainability: this being the obvious case, did Google not do its due diligence and actually surveyed past Groupon customers? Such a siimple survey would have easily revealed the issues of this "local deals" model. 3\. Heavy reliance on "small business" owners as the driver of revenue. This is a sensitive and fickle market, where even slight movements in the general economy will cause huge moves in spending patterns.

These 3 points were readily available to anybody with some insight into this segment; Google with all its money must be surrounded by "yes" men, nothing else could explain it's willingness to part with $6 billion so quickly.

<comment><USER9> I'm not sure if they actually could have sold the company to google even if they wanted to. My understanding is that you must open your books to the prospective buyer after a certain stage and it is likely that once the google accountants had a look at Groupons books the deal would have fallen through.

That could have created negative press and damaged their pump-and-dump strategy for the IPO.

<comment><USER8> Excellent point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> My perception is that these kinds of shareholder suits are trivial to file, and that they occur regularly any time the stock of any public company drops significantly after some event about them hits the news.

It would be interesting to see someone chart this.

(No comment about Groupon's long-term viability is being implied here).

<comment><USER10> As someone who builds legal matter management software for large publicly traded companies, I can confirm that your perception is correct.

Public companies are sued all the time for this kind of stuff. These lawsuits often allege misrepresentation in a company's SEC filings.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Who would have imagined that groupon had a future? It worked on the novelty effect and it was doomed to fail.

On the other hand, Chicago business is full of bugs. Ghostery block 13 (!) calls to different websites such as: Quantcast, 24/7 real media, Outbrain etc... I won't visit this website again. I wish I was warned of that before hand not when I go to the website, I value my privacy more than going there.

<comment><USER12> _It worked on the novelty effect and it was doomed to fail._

A little premature to write an obituary of a company that finished 2011 with 1.6B in revenue.

<comment><USER13> 1.6B in revenue is pretty meaningless if you're not even making a profit. They are simply really good at losing a lot of money.

<comment><USER12> It's "scary" and "even" dangerous one may say, but _not_ meaningless.

<comment><USER13> You are correct, it's not meaningless, I should have said: Simply having revenue isn't a defense for a company if they are spending more money than they are bringing in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Who would guess that there could be an integrity issue with a company that tried to invent new accounting rules where marketing costs don't appear on the balance sheet? You'd have a crystal ball or a brain to see this coming.

<comment><USER15> Marketing costs are not supposed to appear on balance sheet.

I don't really watch this company but if I remember correctly, their way of doing accounting was to show all received money from customers as income instead of liabilities since they were collecting half of it on behalf of vendors.

They were simply inflating their revenue but it's not like it matters, because profit (loss) would be always the same regardless.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Please. As if anyone with half a brain couldn't see this ponzi scheme on the blowup train of doom. Who are these magical investors?

<comment><USER17> It's not a ponzi scheme.

<comment><USER18> Simply stating it is not a ponzi scheme doesn't advance the conversation in a meaningful way in my opinion.

It's really just semantics at this point. There is a lot of evidence here that suggests systematic misleading (if not out-right defrauding) of investors. So you while you are technically correct, I think what Groupon has done is in the spirit of Ponzi even if it is executed differently. What's happened here is more than just a bad business plan executed honestly producing poor results. Just because we don't have the exact word for it doesn't make it any more ethical.

<comment><USER8> Jason, your gut instinct is correct. Groupon is a Ponzi scheme in every way: last customer in gets no money out. I feel sorry for that Mom & Pop pizza that paid $1,000 to run a Groupon deal, and expecting $300 back in 60 days, only to see Groupon go belly up and get nothing but a letter that says "Please send your creditor claim to the bankruptcy trustee listed below".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> People I know who currently work for Groupon say that the culture there is falling apart. To get the numbers investors expect the sales people need to reach unrealistic sales numbers. Management is grasping at straws, trying every trick in the book to not let the whole thing fall apart. The Groupon model is simply not sustainable, it was a onetime gimmick.

As someone who lives in Chicago, I am worried about its failure and with that the future of the tech scene in Chicago.

<comment><USER20> Groupon is a large part of the tech scene here in Chicago, contributing a lot to the scene.

But they're not our sole pillar any more. I think we all know that pillar is going to come crashing down in the near future, and we're ready.

Groupon helped propel us to where we are, and we're standing on our own now. In my opinion, the future of tech in Chicago will not solely depend on Groupon's activity.

<comment><USER21> I chatted with some engineers from BrainTree and I was impressed at their commitment to helping build the tech scene in Chicago.

It's an exciting time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> They should be going after the SEC for allowing this company to IPO in the first place. Going public used to be a privilege, now it seems too easy.

<comment><USER23> Since SOX successful tech companies have been avoiding going public for as long as possible (ie Google, Facebook).

I wonder if there was some pressure from investment bankers who want to encourage more IPOs as well as government types who want the law to seen as a success.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> _The first two shareholder lawsuits were filed Tuesday in federal court in Chicago after the markets closed, seeking class-action status for people who bought stock before the company restated fourth-quarter financial results on Friday._

Perhaps those people should have been reading Hacker News:

[http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=groupon&...](http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=groupon&sortby=points+desc)

(The first post is rather long and fairly neutral, but check out some of the posts (and their dates) right after that.)

<comment><USER25> Thanks for the link. What I find troubling is to read so many articles pointing to shady business practices from Groupon and bubble valuation, and still the SEC lets the IPO go through and investors lose their money - <USER2> part did not happen yet but it seems written on the wall.

<comment><USER26> Could the SEC really do that? Just outright stop an IPO?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I remember hearing about how this company ran, and figuring it was nothing but a giant boiler room sales pit and a gimmick. I am not surprised.

<comment><USER8> Anecdotally, the first generation of sales rep have nothing but depressing things to say about this entire market segment now. The first year sales numbers were gangbusters, until their clients called back complaining, swearing never to do another Groupon deal, ever again.

It's not just Groupon, this entire business model is unsustainable: asking a retailer to discount his products for a fee in the hopes that he will attract new "local deal" customers willing to pay full retail next time, when the ONLY reason these customers came in the first place was because of the discount.

<comment><USER28> Not only that, but I suspect that people who _are_ loyal to businesses and like interacting with local business owners are less likely to use sites like groupon, because they know that the businesses often get screwed, and because they don't want to be thought of as bargain-shoppers.

<comment><USER29> A friend sent me a Groupon for a local bakery. It was something ridiculous like $20 worth of food for $10. Since I had heard about the bad relationships between businesses and Groupon, and since I actually like this little store, I declined to get the Groupon. I'd rather pay full price to support a local business!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> GRPN was a always a short sellers dream come true. Next up, ZNGA.

<comment><USER31> Why do you say Zynga? It was my understanding that their financials are a good bit more stable, even if they are Facebook-dependent.

<comment><USER8> Zynga's business model is like any other gaming publisher (such as EA, Blizzard, etc.). To succeed in gaming you MUST have a pipeline of games that continue revenue growth. If you cannot create your own, then you must acquire indie developers (OMGPOP recently). In time Zynga stock will be no different than any other gaming publisher stock. Look at Blizzard: other than Diablo, Starcraft and WoW, it has created nothing in the last 4 years beyond sequels. Homegrown innovation is nearly impossible.

Rovio was in the business for 5 years before Angry Birds, and I doubt they'll have another hit like Angry Birds ever again.

Id fell apart when it couldn't come up with something better than the Doom franchise.

OMGPOP was very smart to sell out to Zynga, because there is no way it would have come up with something even close to Draw Something in another 5 years.

Unlike rock stars and pop singers, creating a string of gaming hits is so much harder because it requires the perfect storm of so many variables each and every time, whereas a single person like Adele, Amy Winehouse, etc. can rely on their genius alone to create a hit.

<comment><USER32> > Id fell apart when it couldn't come up with something better than the Doom > franchise.

Except for, you know... Quake.

On your other point. The difference between Zynga and EA is that Zynga's games have a huge turnover rate and a very low percentage of paying customers. EA's games -- at least most of their games -- have 100% paying customers and have a large _returning_ customer rate year after year (Madden 11, Madden 12, Madden 13, Fifa 11, Fifa 12...).

So in other words, Zynga's business model is completely different than EA's.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> And this is what happens when inventors invest in a company they know noting about. This is what happens when you listen to the hype, and the street and NOT do your own due diligence. There's a reason why the big banks backed the IPO but didn't take a percentage.

When it all comes down in flames, (I think it's already begun - if you haven't gotten out, get out now) the only saving grace is that the CEO and board will be embattled in court for years. The investors might get a few pennies on the dollar.

<comment><USER34> "There's a reason why the big banks backed the IPO but didn't take a percentage." Morgan stanley has 19 mil shares. Goldman has 2 mil shares. They backed the IPO and took a percentage. Am i misunderstanding your statement?

<comment><USER35> they didn't invest cash, they just exercised their green-shoe.

<comment><USER33> Exactly. They never invested cash. It's all vapor. In other words, both banks lose nothing except the promise of future profits.

Both banks already made their money (and then some) on the IPO and associated fees. Now of course, assuming the banks had no knowledge of Groupon's true financial health; they did nothing illegal.

BUT ethically, brokers/traders have a responsibility to informed their clients when it's time to cash out. A lot of people made money off this deal. And lot didn't.

But Groupon, if what I'm hearing is true, is committing fraud. I mean, my god, are they cooking the books? Sort of reminds me of Enron. But only time (and many lawsuits later) will tell.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> The problem with Groupon and other local deal companies is that they have to manage fluctuations on both the consumer as well as the merchant side. Even if one side of the equation wobbles a little, Groupon will feel the impact. I think at this stage, Groupon is fighting a dual (losing) battle:

1) Merchants perception of the whole daily deal market is very negative. Repeat business is quite low and it mainly attracts the spendthrifts who are looking for a deal. Given the margins that most local businesses have, running a daily deal means taking a hit on those margins.

2) From a consumer perspective, the novelty of the daily deals market has really worn off. Consumer fatigue has set in and more and more people are tired of having their inboxes flooded with emails. Personalization is still a joke and ticks people off even further.

It wont be long before the whole local deal market implodes (think of it -- the 2nd largest player - LivingSocial is not yet profitable). Groupon is well aware of this and so is trying to ramp up its technology platform via acquisitions to eventually evolve into something more. Its just a matter of time that the whole thing comes crashing down.

<comment><USER37> The local deals is analogous to department store clearance sales. Retailers have perfected the art of the sale and they know that clearance sales are a different animal. If someone comes into you store and heads straight to clearance they can't be upsold. Don't waste your time on them.

This is different from your event sale, which _are_ an excellent way to gain repeated customers (and upsell them). There is a future for local deal sites but it needs a different hook with customers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I think there are so many ways technology can help mom + pop type small businesses inexpensively stay competitive with the numerous forces working against them (including retail giants with substantially better technology), and the huge interest in daily deals justifies this assertion--at least in some small way.

But the technology needs to help the small business actually improve. Groupon doesn't do this. For the most part, it plays smoke and mirrors with revenues and the costs or profits are not entirely known because the small business cannot measure them.

</comment><comment><USER39> A TV network is going to Pilot with a new fictional sitcom -- called "Friend Me" I believe. It's about a man who packs-up and moves so he can work at Groupon (not made-up). Perhaps making it a comedy isn't such a good idea. ;-)

</comment><comment><USER40> It seems like everyone and their mother are trying for IPO. If the rumor about an offer from google was true, they should have taken the money and ran

<comment><USER41> I'm starting to think that it was google who ran away from this deal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> So it's official - Groupon is this bubble's Pets.com.

</comment><comment><USER43> When your boss is your shareholders, the seat of your pants accounting doesn't really cut it.

</comment><comment><USER44> I see why some already jumped off that boat. Started pretty good but, it could do better.

</comment><comment><USER45> I wonder how long it will be before we see Yahoo style head lines for Groupon and RIM.

</comment><comment><USER46> Would they have sued if they stock had gone up?

<comment><USER47> I don't understand why you'd ask. How would that injure them?

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Investors sue? Really?

So basically, I want to drink the koolaid but god damn you if it makes me sick...

You should not be allowed to sue as a method to correct your own stupidity.

<comment><USER49> I think in this case it makes sense. Groupon restated a sharp drop in their reported revenues over three years.

People don't necessarily invest in things they think are particularly good business models. They invest in things that are undervalued. If you looked at the revenue/price and thought it was undervalued and then Groupon changed 3 years worth of data on your after you made a stock purchase, you'd sue too.

Just look at these reductions. They're more than just a minor correction from Groupon:

\- For 2008, revenue was reduced to $5,000, from $94,000.

\- For 2009, revenue was reduced to $14.54 million, from $30.47 million.

\- For 2010, revenue was reduced to $312.9 million, from $713.4 million.

<comment><USER48> _People don't necessarily invest in things they think are particularly good business models._

If you can't figure out the business model generating the reported millions, it's your own fault for thinking those millions are undervalued.

How many of these investors didn't actually care about the value of the stock, so long as there was somebody around tomorrow that would buy it for more?

Sorry, but I have no sympathy when you willingly play the game and then get burned by the same things you intended to inflict on someone else.

<comment><USER50> I'm not entitled to lie to investors just because they should be smart enough to disbelieve me. There's a point beyond which it's not feasible for third parties to know how realistic my financial statements are, so the SEC has mandated I'm on the hook when I write them.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How many emails do you get per day? - <AUTHOR>

I'm building some software that integrates with email (Exchange/IMAP). I'm trying to get an idea of how some of the workflow concepts would scale to people that get large numbers of emails in a day and frankly, what constitutes a "large number" these days.
Right now I average around 150 a day. I think that is average for most people I know, but low in comparison to some email-centric corporate cultures. Obviously there will be outliers that are much higher, especially amongst people in very public roles (evangelists, VCs, etc.), but for the rest of the rank and file out there, are you seeing volumes significantly higher (or lower) than that?
I'd appreciate some feedback. <comment><USER2> As a denizen of an email-centric corporate culture, my daily email volume is in the 200 range (not including spam, which is filtered out).</comment>


Microchimerism: how pregnancy changes the mother's DNA - <AUTHOR> https://aeon.co/essays/microchimerism-how-pregnancy-changes-the-mothers-very-dna <comment><USER2> Bad title - it doesn't change the mother's DNA. Instead, foreign DNA floats around in mothers' bodies. Read the article next time.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, I thought we are multitudes didn't really convey anything so I just quoted the url.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Article title is "We are multitudes".

The submitted title accurately quotes the clickbaity URL.</comment>


The Bearded Gods Speak (1971) - <AUTHOR> http://www.whiteindians.com/diffusionism/bearded-gods.html

<comment><USER2> Thor Heyerdahl, author of that piece, is well known for his diffusion hypothesis. His work with Ra and Kon-Tiki shows that migration was _possible_ with even early technology. It doesn't mean it happened, or that the hypothesis has any truth to it. (FWIW, I enjoyed his books about the two journeys, and his book on Easter Island.)

The idea of an Egyptian/Aztec connection is often categorized as "hyperdiffusion", and has the unfortunate tendency to highlight similarities, without estimating if there were independent origins, or investigating differences. See [http://scienceblogs.com/aardvarchaeology/2010/11/04/thor- hey...](http://scienceblogs.com/aardvarchaeology/2010/11/04/thor-heyerdahl- and-hyperdiffus/) for a more modern commentary on Heyerdahl.

Hyperdiffusion is nearly abandoned by academic research, for lack of evidence.

<comment><USER3> The irony of writers like Rundkvist lumping Heyerdahl in with frauds like Von Daniken is that Von Daniken's theories were predicated on the assumption that "primitive" peoples didn't have the ability to accomplish such achievements, and critics of Heyerdahl predicated their criticism on the same assumption. He also didn't make any truly ridiculous leaps of plausibility that the ancient astronauts theory requires. Hyperdiffusionism doesn't have any adherents today because there wasn't enough evidence to sustain it, and inside the confines of the scientific method Heyerdahl was not a scientist. But for the life of me I don't understand the continued pathological need of people to disrespect the man and his accomplishments.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I thought this was going to be about Unix administrators.

<comment><AUTHOR> I hear you, man. That's why I intentionally changed the title to "Ever wonder about Egyptian / Aztec connections?" so people would understand what it was roughly about since the real title is so opaque. A moderator apparently did not appreciate my intentions.</comment></comment>


Hacking for Defense in Silicon Valley - <AUTHOR> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-blank/hacking-for-the-defense-i_b_6976656.html

<comment><USER2> Please don't use the titles of Hacker News submissions to editorialize.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)</comment>


Why I Wear Shorts and a T-Shirt to Work - <AUTHOR> http://blairlivingston.wordpress.com/2012/08/08/why-i-wear-shorts-and-a-t-shirt-to-work/

<comment><USER2> tldr: Because I want to and because I can, I do.

Reason #1 is the lamest reason I've ever seen: "I am taking that mental capacity and putting it elsewhere." -- yeah, that capacity is spent writing a 700+ word rationalization for not dressing up.</comment>


Limits of programming by interface - <AUTHOR> https://blog.frankel.ch/limits-programming-interface/ <comment><USER2> Article misses the obvious solution name the interface for its contract. e.g. SortedMap can have the exact same methods as Map but has an additional bahavoural contract. TreeMap may be a concrete implementation but using the interface is preferable.</comment>


Elliott Management buys stake in Twitter and seeks to oust Jack Dorsey - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/feb/29/paul-singer-elliott-management-twitter-jack-dorsey <comment><USER2> I read the article, and as much as I see a lot of Elliott Management's tactics as personally odious, this action seems very much par for the course for them. That is, I don't see the political angle having much weight.

Elliott has always been very clear the absolute only thing they care about is making more money, and finding companies that they believe have a management team that is not 100% laser focused on increasing shareholder value have always been a target for them. Given Dorsey's dual CEO roles and his persona as the tech-male version of Gwyneth Paltrow's lifestyle brand, not out of character at all that they'd be eyeing a change in management.

As an aside, would someone who is more versed in the world of finance explain how these PE companies are able to have so much leverage when the stakes they take are still relatively small (e.g. single digits). Management in firms across the world shudder with fear when Elliott takes a sizable stake, but I don't understand how Elliott can wield so much power without having a greater percentage of shares.

<comment><USER3> >absolute only thing they care about is making more money

That is a political angle.

<comment><USER4> You're right. The problem is people in their thinking silo and try to differentiate to claim that not everything is political - when in fact, someone who only is interested in earning money is inherently impacting politics.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Republican mega-donor"? Elliott is one of the most famous activist investors in the world. Nobody talked about the "Republicanism" when Elliott started pushing Softbank around. And it's absolutely no surprise that an activist would push on Twitter; its CEO isn't even full-time.

<comment><USER6> > And it's absolutely no surprise that an activist would push on Twitter; its > CEO isn't even full-time.

For those to young enough to remember (you do) there are so many things that happen in this day and age in public companies that would never fly years ago. Part time CEO and for that matter Dorsey's planned move to Africa means he can't be fully focused on what is right for twitter. Which has been the case for some time.

I remember when Obama took office and in the first few weeks he found it necessary to go to a meeting at his kid's school. I can think of many ways political spin wise why he might have done that (people mumbled something about setting a good example for other fathers iirc) but honestly the angle seemed to be 'important that I know what is going on with my kids'. As if his wife Michelle wasn't good to drive that event. Or that somehow the kids of a President need to be hovered over at all lest at that age.

<comment><USER7> He had kids before he was president, you don't think it was routine for him to go to his kids' parent teacher conferences before being president? I think both of his kids were around late elementary or middle school age at the time of being president which is also an important developmental time for kids. Being a CEO or any job shouldn't mean that it clones at the sacrifice of being a good parent. To me it sounds like it's someone keeping up the routine they had before they got a new job. Being president is just another job, albeit far more high profile.

<comment><USER6> Development time? He is President. You make as if they are going to have some kind of normal life in any way shape or form.

> Being president is just another job, albeit far more high profile.

Just another job? More high profile? You are joking right?

<comment><USER8> Bill Gates drove his kids to school.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> There seems to be a strong desire around the world to implement the Turkish media business model: Operate the media as a loss leader and make your profits from your other businesses by being favourable to the politicians in power and get just as favourable treatment.

This also scales nicely because you can start getting way overpriced ad buys when other companies also want to get favourable deals with the politicians, so you become a direct broker for access to the government.

Of course, the quality suffers and other media begins to emerge but you can keep buying the challengers or the govt can take care of them.

In Turkey, the pro-govt media is called "pool media" because a bunch of businessmen close to the ruling party created a pool to buy out newspapers and TV channels and an audio recording of them discussing the details was leaked(which is also very complicated, way out of the scope of this comment).

<comment><USER10> I find it ironic that now that a right leaning investor might influence [which we don't know if it would have an effect but may] Twitter people are having a fit, but not many have a problem with Twitter when it favors the leanings of its left-leaning management.

When Twitter suspends people it's always been "but they are private company!" We'll see how they pull that same line if this goes through.

<comment><USER11> The false equivalence between left and right here is the issue IMO. I truly believe the left-lead media largely acts in good faith, and the right-lead media largely does not.

I understand that people on the right feel the opposite, that's fine. But I don't feel like I should be obligated to complain when the media behaves in a fashion that I feel is appropriate, just to appease this both-sidesism.

<comment><USER12> > But I don't feel like I should be obligated to complain when the media > behaves in a fashion that I feel is appropriate, just to appease this both- > sidesism.

You're saying that you want the media to be a political instrument, but you want to make sure it's a political instrument used only by the party you prefer?

Because the alternative wouldn't be "it should be used by both sides", the alternative would be "it shouldn't be a political instrument".

<comment><USER13> The alternative is "tell the truth". The truth as of late has a strong preference for left leaning positions.

<comment><USER14> > The truth as of late has a strong preference for left leaning positions.

Can you give 3 examples?

<comment><USER13> I can give you hundreds lately. If you didn't notice you're probably part of the problem.

I'll give you one for free, the rest you're going to have to bother googling by yourself:

[https://www.gq.com/story/coronavirus-trump- conspiracy](https://www.gq.com/story/coronavirus-trump-conspiracy)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Well, maybe it'd be wiser to start with keeping media platforms as platforms for the media rather than outlets for opinions, political or otherwise.

I remember the days when Twitter was weird and diverse and interesting. There was a group of people making *-ebooks bots for strange content, there were people walking in traphouses in major cities and basically doing photo essays. There was so much interesting, unique content on Twitter back then.

Granted, Twitter is certainly imbalanced from the political perspective and it'll be good to see a better balance, but I think that the platform will almost inevitably sway further from the coolest things that they were doing before.

I LOVE politics, but damn if it ain't ruining all kinds of cool tech.

<comment><USER16> Well there's no moat so anyone can make a Twitter competitor

<comment><USER17> Until the hosting provider de-platforms the competitor for differing political views. Or the competitor's payment processor de-platforms them for their political views. Unless the competitor is it's own cloud provider and it's own payment platform they're at risk.

<comment><USER18> I really hope we can get some more serious decentralized infrastructure mainstreamed so this sort of partisan platform stuff becomes a non issue.

Centralized, corruptible bottlenecks like political payment processors and political big cloud providers are eroding the open nature of the internet.

Although I think it's possible to replace and/or reform some of the current sore spots, the pessimist in me is worried we have deeper social and philosophical problems that will prevent things from moving in that direction. Many people now seem to reject the very idea of apolitical utilities. They consider it immoral to allow the existence of services for people they consider to be severely harming others through their use of that infrastructure, despite the often political and highly debatable nature of that harm.

A free and open internet is built on the same philosophical principles as the first amendment. The spirit of the first amendment is something the people as a whole need to respect in order for it to work.

People forget how much religious sects hated each other when the Bill of Rights was drafted. Europe had been fighting a seemingly endless series of religious conflicts since the protestant reformation, and adherents believed allowing opposing adherents to spread their corrupting influence would literally damn the world to hell.

The first amendment was about allowing others to practice beliefs despite sincere fears that such beliefs would damn the world to hell. If we can't allow people we consider corrupting to operate, and need to bar all of those corrupting influences from access to core utilities, we are failing to live up to the principles underlying the first amendment and risk plunging back into the kind of sectarian and philosophically based conflict the enlightenment helped us to escape from. If those we dislike and may consider evil are respecting our property rights and are not committing physical violence against us, we should be tolerant and allow them to exist and operate in society and seek to change them only through open dialog, not forceful coercion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'd be curious to know Scott Galloway's response to this.

Is this action that of a mainstream media channel being bought and control shifted way from Jack and current board's leadership, where they seem to be trying to at least do good - even if they are faltering some?

I'd speculate that they will push for political ads to be allowed, and false information to be perpetuated. To me this situation is highlighting that we can't depend on platforms that depend on advertising revenue as its operations budget.

<comment><USER19> Galloway bought $10 mil worth of Twitter shares with the goal of doing the same thing Elliot is doing.

Don't let the political clickbait headline fool you, this is all about profiting off twitter by removing Dorsey and bringing in a CEO who _actually works full time at the company he runs._

This has absolutely nothing to do with politics.

Activists get a bad rap but they make our economy more efficient. The reason we're having so many governance problems with big companies like Uber, WeWork, etc is because they stayed private for so long with zero accountability. If they went public earlier, activists could have made them a target much sooner.

*edit: I see mods changed the headline to something more accurate

<comment><USER20> Those big public companies are really being reined in by their shareholders: Comcast, Verizon, Exxon Mobil, Valeant, Equifax, Wells Fargo. Oh wait...

The public equities market has failed and will continue to fail to punish unethical behavior. Elliot, Scott Galloway, all the biggest equity funds all only care about returns. Scandals and misbehavior can affect returns but it's often more efficient to cover them up or lobby to make them legal than actually fix the issue.

I almost feel like CEO owners have more of an incentive to prohibit bad behavior to protect their individual legacy. Adam Neumann made out great from WeWork but it's rumored he left America and I don't blame him. Jack probably doesn't want to be the guy who led to the downfall of the American democracy, and I'd trust him to do more about it than any combination of nameless funds.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Kind of a misleading headline. Elliot has a long history of activist investing primarily motivated by profits and having nothing to do with politics.

<comment><USER22> it made you click on the article though ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Oh wow, getting Argentina to make good on their defaulted bonds is about as Mission-Impossible as activist investing gets. Not much productive to say about the political aspect of this move on Twitter, but I can say I would not want to be fighting Mr. Signer.

<comment><USER24> He even deposed a democratic government. He was a big Macri supporter, and several 'ongs' supported by him where presided by members of his government (for example, Laura Alonso). If this guy gets Twitter control it will make Twitter complete trash.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> This could lead to good outcomes. Mr. Dorsey is effectively an absentee landlord, metaphorically speaking, for this online property. I am hopeful.

</comment><comment><USER26> Here is the original source, can we update link?

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-02-29/singer-s-...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-02-29/singer- s-elliott-is-said-to-seek-to-replace-twitter-ceo-dorsey)

</comment><comment><USER27> The bit where he said he wanted to 'move to Africa for a few years' was such a big red flag, I can't imagine any CEO without a retirement horizon ever saying that.

It's like he was signalling to the market he wanted to get taken over.

Of course, it's not an unreasonable sentiment, but from a corporate / investor relations communications perspective it's fatalistic.

</comment><comment><USER28> people are bad & should be avoided

</comment><comment><USER29> Fucking YESSS!!!! Get in there my son!

</comment><comment><USER30> The Guardian would like it if Twitter wrangled to retain Democrats at the helm. And apparently whoever opvoted this to #1

</comment><comment><USER31> Come on, this article is the poster child of unnecessary politicization. The Guardian isn't claiming that the buy is about politics, and there doesn't appear to be any evidence it is, so why call Singer "Republican mega-donor" or talk about what Trump has to say about him?

<comment><USER32> Calling him a Republican mega-donor is if anything an understatement [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Singer_(businessman)#Poli...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Singer_\(businessman\)#Political_activity)

<comment><USER31> I'm not saying it's inaccurate, I'm saying it's irrelevant. Not every story is about national politics.

<comment><USER32> I think the politics of billionaires attempting to take control of the engines of discourse is quite relevant, especially given the current political landscape where no less than two of them are dumping an enormous amount of their own money to attempt a brokered DNC convention and push out a progressive candidate.

<comment><USER31> I don't agree with the fundamental premise. "How might this news affect political elections" is usually not a question we should even try to answer.

<comment><USER32> It is completely plausible given his political track record that he is attempting to take control of Twitter to inhibit a progressive movement addressing wealth inequality issues. I don't think you can cover this story honestly without addressing the possible motives of a very active actor. This is a major public social network, not an oil refinery. It feels really inappropriate to treat this as an apolitical business move and I think the speculation on motives is more than warranted, that the story would be incomplete without it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Singer is primarily a vulture capitalist, operating on a nation state scale (he resurrected Argentinian national debt he bought and forced payment for example and his wealth exploded after 2008 buying up distressed assets and business). The 'Republican mega-donor' aspect is a tiny droplet of his corporate wealth, I suspect the main reason for the Twitter pressure is for Singer the globalist and his elite colleagues to control a global medium and manipulate it to a much greater extent than it already is, cracking down on free speech and with much stronger surveillance and data tracking.

<comment><USER27> "he resurrected Argentinian national debt" ... wait, so the money Argentina borrowed, they have to actually pay back?

FYI this is not 'vulture capitalism', it's not even really capitalism. It's just basic financing.

<comment><USER33> [https://www.gregpalast.com/rubios-billionaire-wins-ransom- fr...](https://www.gregpalast.com/rubios-billionaire-wins-ransom-from- argentina/)

<comment><USER27> Or maybe we should redefine 'vulture capitalism' to be borrowing money from naive Americans, Europeans, and Japanese by blatantly lying to them, then corruptly stealing and squandering the money, then refusing to pay it back all the while claiming that _you_ are a victim and that the people whose money you stole are 'imperialist colonialist aggressors'.

Now that's quite a playbook.

<comment><USER33> I don't think you understand the formal use of the term 'vulture capitalist' [https://prospect.org/economy/vulture-capitalism-killed- sears...](https://prospect.org/economy/vulture-capitalism-killed-sears/)

<comment><USER27> 'Vulture Capitalism' is not a 'formal' term, and yes, I'm well aware of how it's generally applied. I obviously don't agree with it. Particularly, in this case, the vulture is the corrupt government of Argentina.

<comment><USER33> [https://www.investopedia.com/terms/v/vulturecapitalist.asp](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/v/vulturecapitalist.asp)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Peter Singer is the world's worst billionaire.

<comment><USER35> Competition is narrow, but scurrilous.

OTOH, as a capitalist, if the oligarchs aren't breaking laws, then it falls to the dissenters to offer peaceful, appropriate resistance.

#StickItToTheMan

<comment><USER34> I enjoy the fruits of capitalism but Singer makes me look up the various stages of the French Revolution.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Say what you will but I would love to see some balance and tolerance.

<comment><USER37> Balance is a false paradigm, not all ideas are valid, ie. just because some people believe the earth are flat doesn't mean that in school we have to teach the earth is both flat and round. (a more 50/50 idea would be evolution or carbon dating)

I would also say Jack Dorsey has been pretty fair about the platform. I don't think the left feel like Twitter is exceptionally more open to them.

<comment><USER38> When you get banned for simply posting facts that one group dislikes, while "KILL ALL WHITE MEN" is totally fine and acceptable, there's definitely a balance problem. The idea that one socio-political viewpoint is objectively correct, and another is the same as believing the earth is flat is not a reasonable analogy.

<comment><USER39> Source?

Also, I remember when Twitter was getting really big one of their prominent founders (May have been jack but I can't remember) did an interview in which they positioned themselves that social media platforms should use "constitutional logic" (for those not in the states, that's the USA constitution) when regulating speech in their platform l, which, for better or worse, depending on context and things, "kill all white men" would pass the fee speech test.

Interestingly enough I actually can't find anything that supports the example you're referring to here. On the other hand I've seen tons and tons of sexist, misogynistic, white supremacist tweets that are super prominent on the platform.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Money is a measure of labor you own from an average human. A billionaire owns labor from about a million humans perpetually to practically any of his/her whims. With so much labor available at hand, a person can control entire governments, major companies, social pipes, news channels, elections, policies, laws, land use, resource distribution, economic priorities, arts, science and culture. The billionaires are the new monarchs in pretty much all sense. I shudder to think of powers vested in a trillionaire.</comment>


Our Fate Is in the Stars - <AUTHOR> https://theamericanscholar.org/our-fate-is-in-the-stars/#.XPZ2Xi2ZMWo <comment><USER2> There's no "fate" and no contract we've signed that guaranteers we're an interplanetary species.

It's just that we wish we could be in the stars, but wishing doesn't always make it so. And in some cases, wishing never makes it so.

Especially without installed bases, big haul ability, etc, it takes trillions and has zero to no returns (except the glory, curiosity, and scientific value) for companies to go to the planets, even more so to the nearest stars (which also can take decades).

So while satellites lunches can make a profit, there's not much financial incentive to go beyond (real, tangible, the kind somebody will invest in, not future prospects which might take 2-3 generations to even pan out), absent state funding them (Space-X style, paid by NASA/the government).

And contrary to popular belief, climate change problems will make it even more difficult to secure such space spending, not less (e.g. people will demand urgent Earth supports, states will go each to fight on its own survival, there will resource and trade wars, and so on).

<comment><USER3> Wishes make profit. What is the use of an iPhone beyond satisfying people's wishes? Yet Apple is a $1bn company.

<comment><USER4> And yet the iPhone doesn't work on the Moon. Explain that!

<comment><USER5> [citation needed]

I think there's a good chance it would boot, especially while still within the crew compartment of the lander.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There are currently four living people who have walked on the moon, the youngest of which is 83: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_who_have_walked...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_who_have_walked_on_the_Moon)

It is probable that we will return to there being no living humans who have walked on the moon - something which must have been unimaginable at the end of the Apollo Project.

<comment><USER7> The incredible thing is that nobody born after 1935 has ever walked on the moon!

<comment><USER8> And they were all Americans, which underlines what a rarity moonwalking has been in the history of humanity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is an odd piece of nostalgia, unfortunately representative of a genre. The Apollo program grew directly out of a panic about nuclear weapons, and the technological race to build rockets that could rain those weapons down on an adversary on the other side of the planet. No nuclear bomb, no Apollo.

The same geopolitical conflict that produced the space race also gave us the war in Vietnam, which in turn made the expense of ongoing lunar exploration unappealing (the war cost about 4x as much as the Apollo program) after the prestige milestone of landing on the moon was completed.

The space program was a fluke of history. We had a frightening new weapon that gave an overwhelming advantage to the side that could develop orbital rockets, a rough balance of power, and a natural satellite just close enough to get to without having to learn to assemble stuff in orbit.

Unfortunately, all the other destinations in space are far away (it's called space for a reason!) and sending primates to those places is expensive and hard. There's also no reason to do it (given advances in robotics and autonomous systems) unless you subscribe to a kind of cultish belief in humanity's manifest destiny to become an interplanetary civilization.

If there had been an intermediate destination between the Moon and Mars for us to work towards after Apollo, things might have gone differently, but you work with the Solar System you're dealt.

<comment><USER9> It is well understood that history not a nice, neat, little linear progression. It is full of stop and starts, stagnation, dizzying S-curves, revolutions, backlashes and regressions.

Apollo was a wonder, yes an outgrowth of the arms race, but also a manifestation of a purposeful and unified nation that just doesn't exist today. It was unsustainable, but it was also very long time ago.

I find your views that "things are hard, so we shouldn't do that, and we should never get off this planet" unfortunately common. Here's two things to consider:

\- Sending people to space is not just fancy. Today's robotic missions are like trying to fill a swimming pool with a pipette. In 7 years Curiosity has driven a total of 8.6km - an slow afternoon stroll for a person. Every single little action is planned and executed at an excruciatingly slow pace. Nothing can be fixed or adjusted. InSight ran into a rock and now it might not be able to burrow it's instrument down. Digging down 3m might prove too much for that robot, a trivial task for any human.

\- If humans don't have outward goals, we're much more likely to just look inward and spend our collective energy tearing each other apart. Without looking outwards, the entire Earth will become one giant vapid high school.

<comment><USER4> Apollo was not the product of a 'purposeful and unified nation'. The period 1961-1972 was one of the most politically turbulent in American history, to an extent we forget today. Politically motivated bombings were routine news! Apollo was the product of its time in interesting ways, but let's not deceive ourselves about America in 1969 being any more unified and purposeful than it is today.

I have nothing against doing hard things, but I think sending people to Mars is a hard, dumb thing, and that the money for that will be better spent on mechanized probes to more interesting places (like Ganymede or Europa) along with space telescopes. Other people feel differently!

But I am tired of the amount of special pleading in this debate. Everything is hard on Mars, because it is _on Mars_. Antarctica has water and all the air you can breathe, and yet we can barely function there. If we send people to Mars, it will be a one-shot deal like Apollo was, and then all the space nerds will be sad again. Better to fund robots at 1/10 of the level of a manned mission, and get to explore the entire solar system instead. If people are dead set on humanity having a 'backup plan', then the Moon is right next door and we can even set it up with wifi.

<comment><USER5> > _Better to fund robots at 1 /10 of the level of a manned mission, and get to > explore the entire solar system instead._

The unfortunate reality is, once people settle for this, the 1/10 will get cut to 1/1000 because "all you do is send robots to dead rocks". Funding science isn't sexy these days.

> _If people are dead set on humanity having a 'backup plan', then the Moon is > right next door and we can even set it up with wifi._

For some x-risks Moon may be just a bit too close. I understand that the x-risk avoidance argument is a niche one, though. IMO we should absolutely do the Moon - and then Mars or Venus (or both).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It is probably a good thing that Asimov, Clarke, Feynman, Sagan, and Tesla don't have to see who inherited their legacies of thought, ambition, and deed.

Imagine explaining to any one of them that the imagination and impetus of the future man, imbued with technology and options, is completely given over to spam email, ICOs, and dressing up 90s code as "innovation" so they can cash out early.

I've been feeling this place degrade over time, and this thread is a red flag.

SlackerNews: we know better; we won't change.

<comment><USER11> I think they might be surprised it isn't worse. The fact the internet exists at all is insane. The internet in some form maybe was inevitable, but most likely alternatives would be companies growing ever larger walled gardens until interconnection was a necessary next step. Instead we got a ton of infrastructure for military and academic work allowed use by public resulting in a huge free network for all. Sure facebook is trying to undo that, but the fact they have to put in effort at all is awesome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> > "NASA commissioned two studies, with the twist that each team had to flesh > out the other's plan. Making the engineers step into each other's shoes > unstuck the debate, and Huntsville came around to Houston's approach. That > one decision ended up saving billions of dollars."

I love this. I find that so many people get emotionally attached to a decision, simply because it was theirs or their teams.</comment>


How Fast The 'Windows Monopoly' Is Getting Destroyed - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/windows-monopoly-is-getting-destroyed-2013-7

<comment><USER2> Wow, what terrible link-bait.

>Microsoft's "Windows monopoly" hasn't been so much destroyed as rendered irrelevant.

> But only 15 years after the government went after Microsoft for anti-trust > violations, the idea that the company ever had a "monopoly" on anything is > hard to even understand.

It was never disputed that they had a monopoly. Why all of the scare quotes?

> In terms of market value, Microsoft's loss of power has long been visible: > The stock is still trading at about half the level it hit at the peak of the > tech boom 13 years ago.

Really? Stock price is the indicator? Does it matter that they had a stock split in 2003? Or that they pay dividends now?</comment>


Chinese Entrepreneur Takes On the System, and Drops Out of Sight - sahin-boydas https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/09/world/asia/china-scandal-xi-jinping-private-business.html <comment><AUTHOR> This is pretty big news in China although the West doesn't really report much on it (Search Wang Linqing and you will find nothing), people are citing this as an example again of the extreme magic realism that is in China and how CCP and their corruption needs to be tackled.

</comment><comment><USER2> Feels like matrix delete method

</comment><comment><USER3> s/Drops/Is Dropped ?</comment>


WeekendHacker.net - A place for very small projects - <AUTHOR> http://www.weekendhacker.net

<comment><USER2> I generally refuse to join or explore any further a site that requires me to enter my email before allowing further access.

From other comments I realise that this appears to be a mailing list, so an email is kind of the point, but still it could be made a lot more clear.

Just a bit of advice.

<comment><USER3> It's just like the websites that require you to login with Facebook first, I don't like that.

I think it's important to be able to gauge a website without giving out personal info.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why not just create it as a Google group?

Edit: seriously, unless you plan to somehow monetize it, having Google do your sysadmin work, pay for your hosting, and present a well tuned web/email interface at no cost is a no-brainer. It's early enough in the project you could ask people to switch over.

<comment><USER5> How would they curate it?

<comment><USER4> "Announcement only; Anyone can read the archives. Anyone can join, but only managers can post messages." -- from the create-a-new-group page.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Less than 48 hours ago there was a discussion in #startups on irc about getting help for small projects. It often happens that someone needs help for something that might take a few days, hours or maybe even less. Often someone is helpful, I have done my share of quick design mockups for someone and been helped by others.

But I have also been involved in slightly bigger projects for instance BrainRacer where I helped getting a landing page up and running fairly quickly. In exchange mahipal will help med with coding a small iphone app I want to do.

It just comes up enough that it must mean that more people than me and a few other would like to participate in small projects like this. So in the spirit of the WeekendHacker ethos i quickly put together this service and hope that other people might find it interesting.

<http://WeekendHacker.net> is for those tiny projects or cries for help. You sign up, get one email a day curated with cool little projects that people will post. No spam, no BS. Just cool little projects you can join.

<comment><USER6> How about making the frequency once a week (every Thursday or Friday), and let the user specify his area of interest?

<comment><USER7> By Friday, I've already got plans for the weekend.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I just signed up, and this appears to be a mailing list rather than a website. You should probably tell people that.

<comment><AUTHOR> It will be a website it's just that I post through the mailing list. I do write it in the FAQ but maybe I should be a little more specific. Let me know if you want to be taken of the list.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> So far almost a thousand signups. Never would have thought so many people would be interested. I will send out a mail to kick it all off and once I have fixed the sendmail quota problem I have right now.

<comment><USER8> What's the ratio of coders to designers?

<comment><USER9> Probably 1 coder : 10 designers -- at the very least.

Off topic: Would be a _great_ idea to have a "design school for hackers" with some assignments/critique!

<comment><USER10> Should have it set to both instead of same id as designer for designer and both.

Join the Network <form action="email_processing.php" method="post">

    			<input type="text" name="email" value="firstname.lastname@example.com"/ class="default-value">

    			<input type="radio" name="skill" value="1" id="developer"/>I'm a developer

    			<input type="radio" name="skill" value="2" id="designer"/> I'm a designer

    			<input type="radio" name="skill" value="3" id="designer"/>Both

    			<input class="submit_button" type="submit" value="">
    			</form>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I made an account just to post this. Hi everyone!

First, I think this is a fantastic idea and I signed up instantly, privacy issues notwithstanding. Not only can you exchange coding favors and build a reputation, you can also practice your design and development skills in a variety of projects, which might be an additional major draw. I can't wait for this to get underway. This is one of those ideas that I wish I thought of.

That being said, I really think you should explore this idea further and create a dedicated website for it. A mailing list is great and easy to maintain and all, but a reputation-based service has to have the appropriate mechanisms to work well. It wouldn't take that long either.

Envision a site where jobs are listed as they're approved and removed as soon as they're completed or claimed, with discussion and advice flowing freely between parties. The site would keep track of projects both requested and completed by each member, and award appropriate kudos within the community to encourage and reward participation. People would be able to link to their profiles, which would display which projects they completed for which sites, on their resumes or facebooks or whatever. You could make a leaderboard of top contributors, and perhaps a provider request system that may eventually involve money. It would be like Elance except eroding the barrier between "service providers" and "employers" - instead, everyone would be both.

There's tons of potential here. Once you get critical mass, monetization could go far beyond ads: off the top of my head, you could skim paid projects, offer premium filtering capabilities and other services to paid premium users, or even get paid by companies that come knocking on your door wanting to hire some of your more skilled members. You could maybe even provide a service for members to tutor other members (serving those who go to your site for practice) and take a % of that $ too.

I realize this goes far beyond a simple "scratch my back and i'll scratch yours" paradigm, but I really think you might have something. The cherry on the top is that some of the smaller features that you might want to add to the site can actually be crowdsourced to your community :)

So yeah, great idea. A community of developers that interact with and work for other developers in exchange for the same being done for you? Sign me up.

</comment><comment><USER12> A potential issue here is agreeing on value. Coding tasks can look _really easy_ when in fact they can be incredibly complex. I'm not sure a design for a landing page is the market equivalent of an entire iPhone app.

Edit: typo

<comment><USER13> Design tasks can look really easy too. It cuts both ways.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Argh. Lot's of signups. Dreamhost only allow for 100 mails an hour. Will work on expanding the quota and rest assured you will receive a signup mail soon.

<comment><USER9> Dreamhost specifically has a "mailing list" feature (called "discussion lists"). These have no limit on the number of outgoing mails and give users the option to opt-out of the list.

You can create multiple such lists for different subjects (and there's an API for managing them in addition to the usual DH Panel controls)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I like this idea. I currently have a full-time job and am doing 15-20 hours of consulting a week so my projects are more like "late at night and weekend nights" projects. This appeals to me.

I would like to see some type of standard agreement around this along the longs of "I spent 2 hours contributing code that you're using, I get 1% stake if this thing every gets sold / gets funded".

<comment><USER15> I would prefer it if the agreement were "the code will be released under the GPL or BSD or MIT licenses and the art will be released under a Creative Commons license". That way there's no arguments later on about commercialization of it because the licenses would allow anyone to commercialize it. So your work helps the world, helps the other person _and_ it helps you if you want to start selling it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Following up on someone's suggestion to make a Google Group, why not make it a group on RiseUp? <https://we.riseup.net/>

Yes yes I know, it's an activist social network, but the _software_ that runs it is pretty cool. It's called Crabgrass, <http://crabgrass.riseuplabs.org/>

and it's a nifty social networking tool. The thing that might be useful for your site is that it has wikis and discussion forums and task-lists built-in. Another nifty thing is that you can have networks of groups. So you can organize projects based on things like whether it was for a CodeJam or a weekend Hackathon or whatever.

</comment><comment><USER16> Small feature request: include a plain text version of the email for those of us still using clients like Mutt. This is what we see at the moment: <http://d.pr/rj1F>

<comment><USER17> I also use Mutt, and just in case you don't know, you can use lynx or elinks to see html emails inside the client. It's very simple to setup [1]. Nevertheless, it would be nice if people could include plain text versions.

[1]: <http://www.mutt.org/doc/manual/manual-5.html#ss5.3>

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> So how do I add my project/idea? I didn't see a big flashing 'got a project?' button.

I really like the idea and can't wait to see how it plays out.

<comment><USER7> Once you get the email (he explains why you haven't gotten it yet in the comments here) it gives and email address to send the info to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> <input type="radio" id="designer" value="3" name="skill">

should be:

<input type="radio" id="both" value="3" name="skill">

</comment><comment><USER20> I can't get over what a great name choice this is.

can we ask for other kinds of favours? I could use a copywriter with some design skills…

</comment><comment><USER21> I will sign up, but here's a problem I forsee: How many here are hoping for help with your project? (I raise my hand here) Now, how many of us have free time to spend on other people's ideas? Maybe I'm projecting, and I hope I'm wrong, but I fear that things will be stacked in the first category.

</comment><comment><USER22> based on all of the feedback here and some of the good ideas that people have come up with, maybe one of the first projects sent out should be to help you build out some of the smaller/more simple features. contributing to weekend hacker will, in theory, benefit everyone involved.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> 1500 signups. Projects are beginning to come in. The confirmation mail is an issue that I am working on solving. So please be patient working in a car on my way to Berlin. Gotta love technology.

</comment><comment><USER23> Your signup form is way at the bottom of the page when I load it in Chrome. <http://i.imgur.com/C70La.png>

</comment><comment><USER24> You forgot email validation, 'signed in' with blank email.

<comment><USER25> I did the same thing, actually, the value was pre-propagated with 'email@example.com', so that is the email we signed up with.

<comment><AUTHOR> sorry it was done in a hurry. I am not a developer just a humble designer.

Is fixing things as we speak.

<comment><USER26> I think I know what the first weekend project should be...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Over 2000 signups!

Lots of ideas under way. Will tell more when I send out the first mail.

(Confirmation mails slowly getting out)

</comment><comment><USER27> Signed up. Quick observation; your landing page call to action is below the fold on sub-27" displays.</comment>


Toward non-blocking asynchronous I/O - <AUTHOR> https://lwn.net/Articles/724198/ <comment><USER2> Previous comment on Async I/O: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9584269](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9584269)

Offtopic: I wonder if we can go the _other way_ , let NT handle the async IO and via the newly released WSL and keep a GNU/Linux user space.

<comment><USER3> Well wasn't that a pleasant surprise to see you were quoting me :-)

I was about to say it's so disappointing reading articles like this (about trying to improve AIO on *nix) because no-one ever seems to want to look at the details of how NT does asynchronous I/O.

On the other hand, I'm not that surprised -- it's been about six years and a lot of study since I started looking at NT's async I/O implementation (or rather, their I/O request packet driven subsystem). The thing that stands out the most is how pervasive the architectural difference is with NT to afford such functionality -- you need coordination from the file system, cache manager, object manager, driver code, and executive at the kernel level, and a large swath of userland support (thread pools, overlapped I/O, completion ports, RIO etc) in order to leverage the functionality.</comment></comment>


The Effect of Network and Infrastructural Variables on SPDY's Performance (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://arxiv.org/abs/1401.6508 <comment><USER2> [https://docs.google.com/gview?url=http://arxiv.org/pdf/1401....](https://docs.google.com/gview?url=http://arxiv.org/pdf/1401.6508v1.pdf)

So would the same apply for HTTP/2.0 since they are so similar?

         In summary, we deduce that SPDY loses its performance gains as a
         website is sharded more. However, these negative results are not ubiquitous
         and vary remarkably depending on the number of page resources. This
         raises a few questions about SPDY deployment. Are the benefits enough for
         designers and admins to restructure their websites to reduce sharding? What
         about third party resources that cannot be consolidated, e.g. ads and social
         media widgets? Can SPDY be redesigned to multiplex across domains? Is
         proxy deployment [29] rewarding and feasible as a temporary solution? The
         success of SPDY (and thereupon HTTP/2.0) is likely to be dependent on
         the answers to precisely these questions.

<comment><USER3> That would apply but it's somewhat odd to see the tone of surprise for something which has been widely mentioned as an optimization-turned- antipattern for SPDY or HTTP/2 since at least 2012 or so. I believe at least Chrome has also optimized so addresses which share the same IP (or SSL cert?) will be collapsed into the same existing connection rather than opening new ones.

Opening all of those connections is also something of an anti-pattern even for HTTPS depending on how much data you're exchanging relative to the SSL handshake cost – see e.g.:

[https://insouciant.org/tech/network-congestion-and-web- brows...](https://insouciant.org/tech/network-congestion-and-web- browsing/#Google_Kitten_Search)

<comment><AUTHOR> The tone of surprise (in the paper as well as this thread) might have something to do with how the whole HTTP/2 stack has been sold as an unmitigated "good" for all and sundry. The paper also mentions how the SPDY whitepaper [http://www.chromium.org/spdy/spdy- whitepaper](http://www.chromium.org/spdy/spdy-whitepaper) presents exactly the opposite results in presence of packet-loss. The language in the paper falls short of an outright accusation but there's an implication that the promises of the new protocols have been oversold by the backers (mostly Google).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hello, I am Yehia the lead author on this work and the published paper: [http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/IFIPNetworking.2014.6857089](http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/IFIPNetworking.2014.6857089) PDF available from my webpage: [http://www.comp.lancs.ac.uk/~elkhatib/](http://www.comp.lancs.ac.uk/~elkhatib/) Feel free to ping me for any queries.

</comment><comment><USER5> hmm… this caught my eye… "Immediately, we see that SPDY is far more adversely affected by packet loss than HTTPS is. This has been anticipated in other work [29] but never before tested. It is also contrary to what has been reported in the SPDY white paper [2], which states that SPDY is better able to deal with loss."

<comment><USER6> Yup, Each dropped packet pauses the _entire_ connection until its retransmitted.

Moving forward to a time where the average webpage is 10-100megs in size[1] in around 5 to 10 years time, SPDY will be the bottleneck, not the network or serving infrastructure.

Of course five to ten years is about the time that HTTP 2 will start to see wide spread adoption.....

Multiplexed TCP is just not a good idea for high bandwith, low latency file delivery. (HTTP is basically a very wordy file system interface)

If you look at any of the systems for moving files about, they all either use a custom UDP protocol, or many streams of TCP. (or rely on being in a LAN)

[1][http://www.websiteoptimization.com/speed/tweak/average- web-p...](http://www.websiteoptimization.com/speed/tweak/average-web-page/)

<comment><USER7> * Yup, Each dropped packet pauses the entire connection until its retransmitted. *

Yeah, that's why the next step after SPDY/HTTP2 adoption is QUIC, which moves the web to UDP, and solves the head-of-line blocking.

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

<comment><USER8> _which moves the web to UDP_

That sounds like it'd just cause more congestion and dropped packets if not used carefully - and they'll eventually end up reinventing TCP on top of UDP...

<comment><USER6> or just create one virtual stream across multiple sockets

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "Ironically the biggest sufferer is Google with a 20.2% increase in ToW"

</comment><comment><USER10> Indeed I'm tired to read articles on how awesome SPDY, HTTP/2 is. Why nobody publishes fair benchmarks on various networks with packet loss ?</comment>


Ask HN: Looking for accounters who know bosnian accounting to improve platform - <AUTHOR> We are looking for people who know bosnian accounting system to develop further a powerful accounting platform. It is already designed it remains adding features also fixing bugs. The ones who join us will have a percent of the profit. Such a percent will be split equally among the members of the team. <comment><AUTHOR> You can email me at firstname.lastname@example.com</comment>


Twitter is built on open source software - <AUTHOR> http://twitter.github.io/ <comment><USER3> Twitter is also a leading silicon valley tech company with hundreds of extremely intelligent employees. You could easily argue that they may have one of the best engineering staffs in the world. Given that, of course they would use open source versus buying enterprise products.

In terms of engineering staff, they are the exception, not the norm. A company like home depot or kelly moore paints would have a tough time relying on open source for all their operational software.

<comment><USER4> I might put SpaceX, Google and even companies like Boeing very far ahead of Twitter when it comes to "one of the best engineering staffs in the world"

EDIT: I added Google because of robots, AI and driverless cars, I'm not really sure Twitter is on that level.

<comment><USER5> What you're doing is stupid. All you're doing is placing software engineering behind all of the classes of engineering. Why not mention companies like BP, Pfizer or Toyota ?

In terms of software engineering Twitter is absolutely one of the best around.

<comment><USER6> Calling what Twitter does -- SMS with ads and RoundRects -- leading software engineering is an insult to software engineers. If twitter built cars and planes, I would walk.

<comment><USER7> It's no insult. Given enough scale, simplest things like posting 140 character messages become engineering challenges.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Shouldn't it be "Twitter is building open source software"? Pointing out the obvious since most of the software companies are built on open source software but only a few build one.

<comment><USER9> True dat.

I think close to 100% of the internet is built on/with open source software.

But it's a major headache to get your in house libraries/software released as open source. There's reservations because by default everything developed is considered proprietary and a trade secret. It's difficult to convince management to give stuff back and/or see a benefit, the larger the org the harder it gets. Then comes legal with the legal derp.

And finally you can't just put stuff on Github and expect it to thrive, you need resources to maintain your open source projects and again convince management beforehand that it's not just a liability.

<comment><USER10> Can you list a few benefits of releasing custom coded solutions to the public?

The only one I can see is building culture/name for yourself (which I don't consider a trivial thing), but I can't think of anything else.

<comment><USER11> Sure. Your grateful users might add a feature you didn't have time for. Or they might find a security issue and send you a patch as a part of responsible disclosure. Or they might start hacking on your codebase and actually do something cool. Then you can hire them/buy them out, turning your codebase into a nice recruiting tool.

Think about this: if Twitter open sources 100% of their code, what would change? Would Twitter clones pop up all over the place? No, because Twitter is the software + infrastructure + name. Most companies think that their code contains some type of secret sauce that makes it special. In reality that's not true. Sure, Google may hide their exact PageRank algorithm, but they don't need to hide their web server code. Or their indexing algorithm. Companies like Twitter are even better for this: they do absolutely nothing that's really proprietary.

For an example of this on a much smaller scale look at TheTVDB ([http://thetvdb.com/](http://thetvdb.com/)), their entire site source is OSS, yet there are no clones.

<comment><USER12> For some companies where the barrier to entry is very high or requires a lot of market share to compete, this may be true. But for others where the investment in actually building the thing was the only barrier, giving the code out to the world can be a terrifying prospect.

<comment><USER11> You are right, it's not always appropriate. However, in most cases, it's just fine. Here's a list of companies that I think could open up at least 95% of their code: Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, Tesla/Ford/GMC/Toyota/BMW/any car manufacturer, Apple, Home Depot/Walmart/Safeway/any retailer, Mint, Twitter, Facebook, Google, and many more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I actually built this page a few years ago when I was working at Twitter during a hack day (bonus points if you can find the easter egg!). It's fun to see it on HN again.

Anyone who is interested in Twitter's current open source contributions should definitely check out the open source section of their engineering site as well:

[https://engineering.twitter.com/opensource](https://engineering.twitter.com/opensource)

<comment><USER14> Amazing work! :)

<comment><USER13> Thanks! :D

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> There's some undue harshness in this thread. Twitter have been _huge_ open source contributors to the Scala and big data communities with original works like Scalding, Summingbird, Scala School, twitter/util and tons of other code. The work they have shared has been a big part of us at Snowplow being able to build a scalable open source analytics platform.

Keep up the great work guys.

</comment><comment><USER16> It's worth considering the value of IP to a business like twitter. Fundamentally the mechanics of twitter are exceedingly simple - <USER2> when you consider the complexity of apps like Facebook and Google+.

They key difference between Twitter and a would-be competitor is scale (and that's why the _actual_ mechanics are not simple at all), but you don't get to that scale on the strength of technology alone. More importantly, once you're at that scale you become exceedingly hard to dethrone, for primarily non- technical reasons.

That is why Twitter can afford to be extremely generous when it comes to releasing IP. Of course they don't have either, so thanks Twitter!

</comment><comment><USER17> While Facebook and Google are constantly one-upping each other with their open data center designs and open server architectures, Twitter contributes project after project that are applicable to a far larger group of people. Very much appreciated.

<comment><USER18> I don't mean to put down Twitter's contribution to open source – which is substantial – but I think you're underestimating Google and Facebook's contributions when you suggest that they are only "one-upping each other with ... open data center designs".

I'm more familiar with Google's contributions, but I would imagine both high- user-visibility projects like Android and Chromium and more developer-oriented projects like protobuf, the Closure Compiler, the Dart and Go programming languages, googletest, Guava, Guice, WebM/WebP, V8, Breakpad qualify. I could consider all of these "projects that are applicable to a large group of people". This, on top of large contributions to other key projects like the Linux kernel and LLVM.

I know less about Facebook's contributions, but I do know that their open source projects includes HipHop/HHVM, and they contribute significantly to Hadoop, LLVM and Mercurial (among other high-profile projects).

<comment><USER19> Gumbo as well:

[https://github.com/google/gumbo-parser](https://github.com/google/gumbo- parser)

(And LevelDB, Snappy, Angular, GoogleTest, tcmalloc and google-perftools, lmctfy, etc.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Interesting to see that Twitter Bootstrap isn't on that list.

<comment><USER21> That's because it's no longer _Twitter_ Bootstrap. @mdo works at Github, @fat at Medium.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> [https://about.twitter.com/press/brand- assets](https://about.twitter.com/press/brand-assets)

The first rule of the Twitter bird is: You do not change the form of the Twitter bird.

The second rule of the Twitter bird is: You DO NOT change the form of the Twitter bird.

The third rule: If someone Tweets without referring back to Twitter, the game is over.

The fourth rule: No speech bubbles, no inadequate portions of space around the bird

The fifth rule: If this is your first experience with the Twitter bird, you have to Tweet with Twitter.

</comment><comment><USER23> A walled garden built on open source software. Thanks Twitter!

<comment><USER24> It's one thing to take advantage of open source software, but it's another to contribute back to open source. The point of this page is to show the latter…

<comment><USER25> Yes, that may be so, but perhaps (in some cases) it is because they feel legally obliged to:

"This repository is published in order to share code and information and is not intended to be used directly outside of Twitter. We provide no guarantees of bug fixes, ongoing maintenance, compatibility, or suitability for any user outside of Twitter"

[https://github.com/twitter/mysql](https://github.com/twitter/mysql)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> the world is built on open source software...

</comment><comment><USER27> This is cool and they should probably do something so that things like [https://github.com/twitter/killdeer](https://github.com/twitter/killdeer) are no longer listed on the page.

It was a strange experience to scroll down, see something that sounded interesting and then end up at a repo like that.

</comment><comment><USER28> I don't get why they won't just open source their main app code. It's already been mentioned, it's not like the concept is difficult or couldn't be cloned...it's simply not practical for many reasons. But being able to have the code if really cool from an educational aspect.

</comment><comment><USER29> What is the significance of the color in the top right hand corner of each repo-box?

<comment><USER30> It shows the language that the majority of the code is written in.

For example, go to [https://github.com/twitter/twitter-text- js](https://github.com/twitter/twitter-text-js) and click on the red bar.

More info at [https://github.com/blog/1037-highlighting-repository- languag...](https://github.com/blog/1037-highlighting-repository-languages)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Twitter uses open source because they do not have the resources to build and maintain custom infrastructure, nor do they think infrastructure is what distinguishes their business. It's that simple.

<comment><USER32> Only half that statement is true. Twitter has tons and tons of custom infrastructure. Most of those projects are largely built and maintained by Twitter. But their business is built on network effects not trade secret infrastructure, so releasing it as open source helps more than it hurts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> We owe Twatter a big thanks for showing Rails on Fails doesn't scale (via so many fail whales), and so guided many a new startup to explore Scala, Erlang, Python, C++11 - basically things with a good chance to help not hinder your startup.

Thanks Twatter!

</comment><comment><USER34> And how much of IPO money is going back to open source ?</comment>


Should Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson be fired for falsifying his resume? - <AUTHOR> http://www.wepolls.com/p/9639606/Should-Yahoo%21-CEO-Scott-Thompson-be-fired-for-falsifying-his-resume

<comment><USER2> No, he and the board should all resign.

</comment><comment><USER3> No.</comment>


Ask HN: Which Functional Language to get a job? - <AUTHOR>

I've been hacking away in Erlang for 2 years and thoroughly enjoy it. I'm a Java contractor by day and an Erlanger at night and the weekend (and days off, and lunch time). Having done this for two years my day job is dead to me. I want to work with functional languages.
However there are very few jobs for Erlang, and even fewer in the UK.
Is there a most-likely-to-get-me-employed functional language? Is Caml going to allow me to work in a functional language? Lisp? Thanks in advance.
(PS I have (and do) get to work with JavaScript and have enjoyed its functional nature, but the money: she was no good) <comment><USER2> <http://homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/wadler/realworld/>

<http://cufp.galois.com/2009/schedule.html>

_google "production app in clojure | ocaml | scala| f#| haskell| SBCL | schem"_

[http://groups.google.com/group/clojure/browse_thread/thread/...](http://groups.google.com/group/clojure/browse_thread/thread/906def10678fda87)

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/141985/why-should-a- net-d...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/141985/why-should-a-net- developer-learn-f)

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/33744/is-scala-the- next-b...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/33744/is-scala-the-next-big- thing)</comment>


Man = Virus - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/satorification/status/1244126007327469569 <comment><USER2> Well by that logic - Somewhere far far away, in a distant galaxy, someone must have gone.

Let's engineer a virus for the virus!</comment>


WikipediaP2P - <AUTHOR> https://www.wikipediap2p.org/ <comment><USER2> I understand that this is an early implementation.

Nevertheless, I have a question: how does it make sure the site you receive is actually the

a) correct one (someone could distribute incorrect pages e.g. about controversial topics like North Korea or Climate Change; or inject some malicious code that e.g. uses your account to submit changes to wikipedia)

b) most recent one (or at least a reasonably new one).

I imagine the first one could maybe be somehow guaranteed through the protocol. Maybe you can just solve the second by invalidating your local copy after it is more than one day old.

The github link on the homepage does sadly not work for me (firefox on linux), so I can't check.

<comment><USER3> > controversial topics like [..] Climate Change

You're making me sad on a Friday afternoon.

<comment><USER2> Let's reformulate it then: topics where some actors have a strong incentive (monetary or emotional) to manipulate other peoples opinion.

<comment><USER3> I guess that's better :)

To expand a bit on my previous comment, the sad part is that even though we know that the topic is not really controversial scientifically, we somehow, subconsciously, refer to it as one.

Elections and all that.

<comment><USER4> Even accepting the science, there is plenty of room for controversy over what actions should be taken as a result.

<comment><USER5> Yea the true controversy isn't weather the climate is changing but rather the rate at which it is occurring and the degree to which humans should intervene to take corrective action.

<comment><USER4> And amongst the options of ways to intervene which ones to choose? Some of which are probably mutually exclusive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A better way to support Wikipedia would be to donate. $10 probably covers more than the strain you put on Wikipedia for a year.

[https://donate.wikimedia.org/](https://donate.wikimedia.org/)

<comment><USER7> I encourage a repeating donation. If you work a tech job you can very likely afford 5/month. The site has changed my life for the better and I constantly find myself on there satisfying whatever is piquing my curiosity at the moment. To be clear, I'm not affiliated in any way just a huge supporter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> For the sake of testing it, I have opened nearly every link in the introduction of the Nikolas Tesla [0] page, the one used in the example. It should now be possible to at least obtain all those articles through me, and hopefully also through other people.

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

<comment><USER9> It burns CPU like crazy for me. Would not use it on battery.

<comment><USER10> > _WikipediaP2P uses WebRTC for all Peer to Peer communication._

Is this a sign that WebRTC isn't optimised yet, or is it the extension itself that needs some love?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I feel like I should contribute more than a pun, but this is a missed opportunity for wikip2pedia.org. The domain is available.

<comment><USER12> thats gold rfrank, gold

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> We'd be better off by putting wikipedia on IPFS and IPFS into p2p cache.

<comment><USER14> The problem is that it requires installing third-party software to function (the IPFS client) or putting load on some IPFS gateway.

<comment><USER15> Not necessary. Either Wikipedia can help out with hosting their own gateways in addition to the ones running on ipfs.io, OR they can include a js-ipfs node in the browser.

<comment><USER14> >Wikipedia can help out with hosting their own gateways

Which kinda defeats the point of saving bandwidth on their side.

>js-ipfs node

That could work, though I was under the impressino that the js-ipfs implementation was WIP/Experimental (last I checked)

<comment><USER15> > Which kinda defeats the point of saving bandwidth on their side.

Traffic doesn't only need to be served by Wikipedia but could also include other volunteers (think archive.org and others) and the setup for helping out would be easy.

> That could work, though I was under the impressino that the js-ipfs > implementation was WIP/Experimental (last I checked)

That is absolutely true, which WikipediaP2P is as well, and IPFS for that matter. I was simply pointing out some ways you can make the whole "Wikipedia on IPFS" thing to work in the future.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I've been wondering, would one reach the same principle if one would pin the root folder of wikipedia on their own server using IPFS and then if wikipedia would point their domainname to the ipfs.io gateway with a hash for that folder, would Wikipedia auto update on my server and would IPFS provide the load balancing/p2p part?

Or am I understanding IPFS or the ipfs.io gateway wrong? Does everything go through the ipfs.io server in that case? Or is it still distributed/torrent- like?

<comment><USER17> For Wikipedia it would probably be more useful to embed js-ipfs [0] into pages, and fetch additional pages and assets after first one from ipfs. js- ipfs can currently speak WebRTC to peer with other js-ipfs nodes, and websockets to peer with go-ipfs nodes.

[https://github.com/ipfs/js-ipfs](https://github.com/ipfs/js-ipfs)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Here's the cacheP2P discussion :

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12752168](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12752168)

</comment><comment><USER19> I remember thinking about a similar concept a few years back. It would be good to have a p2p archive of human knowledge for end of the world scenarios.

The problem is Bittorrent isn't the protocol for it, it doesn't allow incremental changes. You also don't want the complete history like git, you want something that passes a diff around.

It would be great to have a p2p network with Wikipedia, a load of academic papers, maps and recipes, which anybody with a computer could contribute drive space to storing.

<comment><USER20> The database dumps are surprisingly small - can store the whole thing on 2 TB hard drive incl media - or 64GB SD card if you just want the SQL database with text and metadata

<comment><USER9> If you factor in the overhead of p2p, it is probably cheaper, if operating systems come with a few hundred MB of the more popular Wikipedia pages.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> It's a pitty it doesn't have a firefox plugin.

<comment><USER22> Should be easy to do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Why the "Read and change all your data on the websites you visit" permission?

Also, the "Fork me on GitHub" banner on your website is behind the fancy canvas so we can't actually click it (Chrome 54).

Great idea otherwise!

<comment><USER24> Also, a separate domain, wikipediap2p.org, not (obviously) affiliated with wikipedia.org. If it were p2p.wikipedia.org, it would be fine for me.

<comment><USER25> It says on the page: "This is an unofficial extension and not endorsed by Wikipedia in any way, it's just an implementation of latest web-technologies towards sharing of knowelege."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> There is no way I'm installing this with those permissions requests. All data on all websites I visit? No way.

</comment><comment><USER27> This seems like a decent project that has the potential to become very popular. I just tested it and it worked well; however, it clogged my CPU and the extension crushed in the end.

</comment><comment><USER28> how does it handle cache invalidation, eg when a page gets updated?

</comment><comment><USER29> I wonder if this concept could be extended to site aggregator such as HN or Reddit? The amount of bandwidth saved could be significant.

<comment><USER30> I don't think it would work all that well with content that changes so often.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Hmmm, maybe thats the option for saving twitter?

<comment><USER32> Check out mastodon.social :)

<comment><USER31> Look nice, but problem with social network services is usually all about number of users :)

Remember diaspora?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> GDI, I just flipfloped to Firefox... I guess no P2P goodness until Firefox supports Chrome addons or the addon gets ported...

<comment><USER33> Try [https://addons.mozilla.org/fr/firefox/addon/chrome-store- fox...](https://addons.mozilla.org/fr/firefox/addon/chrome-store-foxified/) (not guaranteed to work, I didn't test it)

<comment><USER14> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I tested it in Chromium really quick. I have one small remark: when opening an article obtained by a peer (a green link) in a new tab, it just opens it in the same tab.

</comment><comment><USER34> So if I wanted to donate my computing resources and bandwidth to hosting this, should I just install the plugin and leave chrome running on my "server"?

</comment><comment><USER35> This seems to be introducing synchronisation issues or something. I've just made an edit on an article, when I go back to it I see the edited version only if I manually refresh the page.

</comment><comment><USER36> Slightly related, there's Wikiwand: [https://www.wikiwand.com/](https://www.wikiwand.com/)

</comment><comment><USER37> fixing a typo on the main page would help improve its apparent legitimacy.

>""This is an unofficial extension and not endorsed by Wikipedia in any way, it's just an implementation of latest web-technologies towards sharing of knowelege."" <\---knowledge

</comment><comment><USER38> The guild of censors disapproves..

</comment><comment><USER39> No Firefox support?

</comment><comment><USER40> Is it just me that gets put off by typos and other errors on a homepage? I feel like putting a little effort in to checking for obvious errors isn't too much to ask, but I may well be being overly snobby about such things, I'm curious.

The two examples here are:

> This color means it's rearching for that article.

I assume that's meant to be 'searching'

And: > This is an unofficial extension and not entitled by Wikipedia in any way

I'm assuming 'entitled' is meant to be 'endorsed'.

<comment><USER41> I'm assuming non-native writer rather than sloppiness per se.

<comment><USER40> I'd considered that. That would explain the second, but the first has to be sloppiness. If nothing else, if you want to produce english content, set your spellchecker to english.

<comment><USER42> I think the first one is meant to be "reaching"?

<comment><USER43> Both fixed, was my bad, if you see any other please tell me. Indeed non-native over here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> wouldn't cloudflare be more effective?

<comment><USER45> Could you see any reasons why people want to explore alternative options to Cloudflare?

<comment><USER46> I can see that not everyone likes Cloudflare, but generally a CDN that allows cheap delivery of the bandwidth heavy parts (e.g. images and scripts) makes probably more sense in reality than P2P.

While the P2P idea is very nice, most residential lines are heavily geared towards download speed. Upload speed is often only 5-10% of the overall speed. Using a P2P network outside of your Lan will probably lead to a slower experience than using a CDN that has PoPs very close to you.

Now I'm pretty sure that Cloudflare would save Wikipedia at least 95% of bandwidth with the free tiers. And I don't think that Cloudflare would complain, the gain of having them as clients would be larger than the costs for bandwidth. Similar for other providers, Wikipedia and their traffic levels would probably get very cheap offers.

But I can also understand that it would somehow question the independence of Wikipedia from corporate interests. That's why they didn't do it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Stop using my internet connection without my consent!

<comment><USER48> How is a browser extension you explicitly have to install, from a page that explains what it does, "using your internet connection without consent"?

<comment><USER47> Not this, but cachep2p, which works in normal webpages.

<comment><USER49> You consent to it by visiting the site. If you're so incensed, block the cachep2p js file with your "hosts" file or extensions.

<comment><USER47> You don't know what you're saying.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>