How We Found All Of Optimizley's Clients - <AUTHOR> http://blog.nerdydata.com/post/57308630996/how-we-found-all-of-optimzleys-clients

<comment><USER2> So this is a search engine for HTML/CSS/JS code instead of content? Seems like a really useful idea, well done. It would be great if you could give an outline of your infrastructure and process, particularly the indexing strategy. Maybe another blog article?

</comment><comment><USER3> NerdyData Our mobile site is still under development.

Please visit from a desktop browser

Why would you go to the trouble of blocking Mobile visitors instead of serving them the full version?

</comment><comment><USER4> Hi chaps, some heads-up

when I tried to access your naked url to get info about pricing, I got flash message that in summary says that your https is broken, then I got this

[https://nerdydata.com/](https://nerdydata.com/)

"This domain has just been registered for one of our customers! Domain registration and webhosting at best prices."

Probably you should fix it.

Otherwise, good idea and useful tool. Also, probably 10 creds is not enough for test-drive. Would suggest to move this up to accomodate occasional users - i.e. if I need/use a couple of times a month I will not bother to register/use credit card/etc. Charge regular heavy users ;-)

<comment><USER5> I get the same error with https, but the http version of the homepage works just fine. See also, [https://search.nerdydata.com/](https://search.nerdydata.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Really cool stuff - though I wish the result limit was moved up to 100 cause a lot of the first page results are repeats

</comment><comment><USER7> Great site guys! We've been tracking Optimizely and 5000 other technologies for a few years. Optimizely is doing really well - [http://trends.builtwith.com/analytics/Optimizely](http://trends.builtwith.com/analytics/Optimizely)

</comment><comment><USER8> This looks like a really bad way to find Optimizely's clients. You can just download all of their .js files from their CDN, then parse the domain names.

<comment><USER6> How do you do that?

<comment><USER8> They are integers. You increment the integers. The two second version is: wget -m -np [http://cdn.optimizely.com/{1..100000000}.js](http://cdn.optimizely.com/{1..100000000}.js)

<comment><USER9> Just be careful to not change your user-agent when doing this one, otherwise you would be committing a felony.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Great lil biz intelligence hack.

Bravo!

</comment><comment><USER11> You guys are doing some interesting things, but you desperately need to kill your credits system and slap some adsense on there for the time being. Any buzz and growth you could be building at this stage is going to be seriously hampered by charging for a search service, even if it is to a specialized audience.

<comment><USER12> That is an incredibly bad idea. The people who would use this value the data and are willing to pay a lot of money for it. Secondly they are not going to be doing many searches. The Google search monitization strategy will not work. This guys have the right idea, copy the way BuiltWith.com makes money.

<comment><USER11> I don't know, there was _a lot_ of griping about the credits in the previous NerdyData threads on HN, and HNers are their target market.

I think having the service free, or providing 90 day free trials, would help their adoption significantly at this stage in the game.

I know Patio11 would disagree, but I think trying to monetize at this stage is unwise.

Just to be clear, I'm not really suggesting that they're going to make serious money with adsense. Maybe they could cover their hosting for the time being, though.

<comment><USER13> lol you developers sound so entitled. "90 day free trials" hah, when its your product you may want to price it though i bet?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> getting https cert error</comment>


Microsoft's Embedded Learning Library - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Microsoft/ELL <comment><USER2> This is a practical deep learning library with applications for low power / low end hardware. I'm wondering why there is so little interest in discussing it.

</comment><comment><USER3> see also [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14669904](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14669904)</comment>


The Art of Decision-Making - <AUTHOR> https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/01/21/the-art-of-decision-making <comment><USER2> > Before having children, you may enjoy clubbing, skydiving, and LSD; you > might find fulfillment in careerism, travel, cooking, or CrossFit; you may > simply relish your freedom to do what you want. Having children will deprive > you of these joys. And yet, as a parent, you may not miss them. You may > actually prefer changing diapers, wrangling onesies, and watching "Frozen." > These activities may sound like torture to the childless version of > yourself, but the parental version may find them illuminated by love, and so > redeemed. You may end up becoming a different person—a parent. The problem > is that you can't really know, in advance, what "being a parent" is like. > For Paul, there's something thrilling about this quandary. Why should > today's values determine tomorrow's?

I hate arguments like this, PARTICULARLY when the topic is becoming a parent. Sure, you might become a new person and love being a parent far more than missing the aspects of life you sacrificed to be there. OR you might hate it - I have at least one friend that told me "I love my daughter, but I hate being a parent" in a terribly gut-wrenching way. To say you don't know - that you CAN'T know - what it's like to be a parent without being one doesn't mean you should just shrug and give it a try. Ditto the same rationale for other arguments - there are many things you can't know if you'll like until you try it, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't try to decide if you will in advance.

Of course you'll never know if you'll love being a parent, you won't know how it can change you, and EVERY parent has moments of frustrations that are not the same as regretting having a child/children. But if you become one, there's at least two lives that can really really suffer if you hate it, so it's worth dedicating some effort to thinking about in advance.

Finding parenthood worthwhile is a very very common state for humanity (for good reason!) and most of us have benefited from that. But we shouldn't assume that it will just work out that way, for ourselves or for others.

<comment><USER3> I think you may be missing the point here. It's not don't think about whether you should or should not and plan as much as you can accordingly – your ambitions. I think it's actually don't expect you can know how you will feel – your aspirations. And more importantly don't deterministically tell yourself how you _should_ feel about what you aspire to become.

Allowing your aspirations to more flexibly become whatever the situation requires is important. As described in the finish with respect to the time between we aspire to do something and work toward those aspirations: > "what happens in the meanwhile is also life."

Life gets in the way, and as people we certainly can change for good and bad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I was slightly surprised by the author tackling such a time-tested knot as first-time parent decision-making and "OMG how do we make good decisions about _anything_" decision theory.

But then I realized that in an existential periodical like The New Yorker, there just can't be a final answer. More like some observations about various points of view. Which is cool. But the strange definition of an "ambitious parent" toward the end of the article does read a bit more like a misguided knock on ambitious people in general, ever the clowns of the infinite-pie existentialist world view. :-)

As a coach myself, I'm frequently in situations where clients ask me to weigh in on decisions. While I'm happy to do so, even the best news from me--maybe something like, "you are absolutely on the right track, and I know it, and I think you do too" is not nearly as great as a different sort of piece of news: The decision-making sphere _even after becoming a parent_ or making some other drastic decision is so wide open as to be essentially incomprehensible. Our senses so often tell us lies about our actual options. IMO this is why we have cultural archetypes like Doctor Who. People who come in and show us that our reductionist views and the resulting expressions of judgment are often just so childish and self-protecting. Dive in! It'll be OK and we'll just keep working on it. It's not like you make a decision and _then_ stop making other decisions.

And that's another really important thing that's often overlooked in favor of the decision-theory or intuitive spreadsheeting-weighting stuff: You can build a personal model for navigating change. Using such a model, you will simply be more bad-decision-proof on the negative side, and on the upside you'll be more prepared to capitalize on good decisions.

In fact you can in many cases derive from that change-navigation model a sort of time machine. Ziiip! The worst parts of the decision just got undone. Parenting might seem unique in this way because you probably can't undo that child--there's this new dependency that didn't exist before that now demands your attention. But really, here comes Doctor Who! Look, it's a fascinating new world, not a problem. And in balancing the needs of the subject (I don't know what I'm doing!) and the needs of the object (wahhh!) there is an incredible new world teaching us lessons that apply everywhere else.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm surprised to see no mention of decision paralysis. Hanging over every decision is a meta decision of how much effort to spend in making it (and so on, recursively). Given all the unpredictability the author points out, many decisions don't get much more benefit from much more thought.

</comment><comment><USER6> People who are interested in this topic might want to read Richard Pettigrew's "Choosing for Changing Selves":

[https://richardpettigrew.com/books/choosing- book/](https://richardpettigrew.com/books/choosing-book/)

He offers a response to L.A. Paul and a way to choose in light of changing selves. I am not sure how convinced I am myself, but it is very good philosophical work.

</comment><comment><USER7> Ruth Chang has by far the best approach to decision-making I've ever heard. Her TED talk is linked below. The key take away is determining first: "What do I stand for". And, afterward putting all your focus and energy behind your decision. In the end, if you lose, you lose. On that score I find Jordan Peterson tremendously helpful, and also linked below.

[https://www.ted.com/talks/ruth_chang_how_to_make_hard_choice...](https://www.ted.com/talks/ruth_chang_how_to_make_hard_choices?language=en)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NP5ohTF4epE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NP5ohTF4epE)

About parenthood I might add this... our brains are wired to minimize the negative where our children are concerned. All manner of rationalizations, identification, and denial works in favor of maintaining the parental bond. Its more important to decide what you stand for, than it is walk in the path of those of us so afflicted by the bias of being parents. It is great. It is also brutally hard and in the end, one way or another, you have to let go.

</comment><comment><USER8> I always look at it this way.

Both parents and non-parents are trapped on their own side of ignorance.

The childless because they haven't tried to the experience of having a child and the love that most feel.

The parents because they forget how it was to not have the obligations of a child.

My personal opinion on the matter is that children are 49% horrible and 51% of pure bliss and it's that 1% which makes the whole difference.

<comment><USER9> > My personal opinion on the matter is that children are 49% horrible and 51% > of pure bliss and it's that 1% which makes the whole difference.

In my head I think of it similarly: the mean of the experience of living before and after having a child is roughly the same, but the variance is much higher after. Which side of the mean I'm on varies, and I honestly don't know where it will end up over time. That's why it's so hard to know whether I regret it or not. Given all the positive stuff (ya know, the unconditional love and all that), I can never say that I regret it, but in so many ways life is also just objectively so much worse now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Do we have any real data on real-time parental happiness vs intentionally childless folks? reply

<comment><USER11> What do you mean by real-time here?

I beleive the prevailing studies are that parenthood is associated with less joy but more meaning in life compared with _voluntary_ childlessness. (Involuntary childlessness is not associated with increased joy or meaning, and is more associated with increased loneliness)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I liked the first part but then simplified the reasoning of the article and the philosophers it cites is: "there is no reason not to have children no matter how your life is now or how yiu want it to be" which makes sense if the author is trying deep inside to cope with his own decision.</comment>


Relentless.com - <AUTHOR> http://relentless.com <comment><USER2> This site automatically redirects to amazon.com for me. Is this the intended behavior?</comment>


Music student awarded $350,000 after girlfriend stalls career - <AUTHOR> http://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/mcgill-music-student-awarded-350000-after-girlfriend-stalls-career <comment><USER2> Sounds appropriate.

• Acting on a protected resource without authorization (one assumes she had read rights through receiving credentials from him, not delete rights or other rights to tamper with the data)

• Identity theft (impersonating the professor of the other school with the underfunded acceptance email)

Doubt any of these would be prosecuted given the burden of proof needed in any criminal courtroom, but the civil judgment seems to make sense.

This is the _prime_ reason for why I never share—nor wish to receive—credentials for systems I shouldn't access. Sharing credentials exposes me. Receiving credentials burdens me in the event that something happens with the account for which I know credentials. It's best to operate with a need to know, even if it's just for plausible deniability in the event that anything goes wrong.

(Disclaimer: not an attorney, just a security/privacy lead)

<comment><USER3> >Sharing credentials exposes me. Receiving credentials burdens me in the event that something happens with the account for which I know credentials.

Sometimes it's more or less unavoidable when you're helping aging parents and have significant access to financial information anyway. (But, then, that doesn't fall under "shouldn't access.")

However, in general, yeah. Good infosec practices aside, I just don't want to be in a situation where I have niggling suspicions of someone or they have of me because something weird happened and one or the other of us had credentials to the other's systems or accounts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> What a horrible person and I imagine he'll never see a cent from her.

However, what struck me was notification via email?? True. He did (apparently) respond and they'd probably have communicated with him through other channels had they simply heard back from him. But it all seems rather casual for something like this.

<comment><USER4> Depends on the country, but likely a judgement that will follow her her entire life unless she declares bankruptcy and forfeits all her assets. He really should push aggressively to collect on that, for the rest of her life. Based on the article she really seems like a horrible person.

<comment><USER5> If she is still in Canada court decisions such as this cannot be discharged through bankruptcy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hopefully for him he can collect that $350,000.

</comment><comment><USER6> NEVER. SHARE. PASSWORDS.

</comment><comment><USER7> The ending is a bit weird. As if blocking on social media will make her impossible to find.

</comment><comment><USER8> A good example of what happens you unnecessarily trust someone. Always watch out for yourself first.

<comment><USER9> Totally, the last thing you want is some sort of soulmate when you could spend you life living alone. /s

<comment><USER8> Giving someone access to your email is unnecessarily trusting someone, even your spouse in my opinion. Email is used as your identity, there's no reason to give someone that power.</comment></comment></comment>


LaTeX Templates - <AUTHOR> http://www.LaTeXTemplates.com

<comment><USER2> One of the occasional arguments we've had in the LedgerSMB community is whether to ditch LaTeX. The arguments in favor have to do with UTF8 support and internationalization, and the fact that 'everybody knows alternatives!'

In the end we've opted to keep it because LaTeX is so good at doing what it does, and because our dependencies can be hacked to use XeTeX (for UTF-8 input) and so we are working to ensure that XeTeX support gets back upstream instead. Additionally for documentation LaTeX source is quite easy to read compared to the alternatives like DocBook, and LaTeX is also much more expressive.

Sooner or later I expect we will factor out our invoice logic into document classes and packages and try to get that on CTAN. Maybe then it will be worth putting many of our templates on a site like this one (this site even)

<comment><USER3> pdflatex can handle UTF8 as well:

        \usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
        \usepackage[T1]{fontenc}

<comment><USER2> We haven't had a lot of luck using that for utf8. Also the character set is relatively limited (can't do Korean characters for example that way).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I use LaTex for a lot of my note taking (for typesetting all equations certainly). When I first started using it, I remember the absolute horror of trying to get it to work with BibTex. The learning curve is relatively steep for non-programmers (I learnt it basically in parallel with learning to code) but it's certainly one of the most valuable tools I've learned and one I continually come back to for a huge range of projects. Certainly in an academic environment it continues to surprise me that everyone isn't taught LaTex in their first year of a PhD.

<comment><USER5> I learned LaTeX the summer after my undergrad, and rely on it now. Nevertheless, I'm not surprised that few others in my department, outside of my group, use it. When work needs to be shared or collaborated on, the simplest, lowest common denominator (Word or LO) wins out.

<comment><USER6> What's LO?

<comment><USER7> LibreOffice, I suppose.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Permit me to be coarse for the sake of simplicity and tell you that the only LaTeX template you should spend your time and energy on is tufte-latex: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1572530>.

It even has a snazzy guide for setting it up on Stack Exchange: [http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/setting-up-a- lat...](http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/setting-up-a-latex- document-using-the-uggedall-or-tufte-latex-templates).

It's pretty much all you need, and configuring LaTeX can turn into a rabbit hole you will never get out of. Try writing your project in tufte-latex, and I am sure you'll find that it fits the bill perfectly. I do recall something about having to install an additional package to colour the hyperlinks or something to that extent, though.

I have some old templates—even some boilerplate lying around—so you can drop me a tweet or something, if it isn't working for you, and I'll throw something up in a gist.

<comment><USER9> Your suggestion seems direct and opinionated, even blunt, but I wouldn't call it "coarse". You're more polite and helpful here than a _lot_ of people are.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Always interesting to see some templates for LaTeX -- but if the "selection" made in the CV section is an indication of the overall thought that have gone into the rest of the site, I don't really see that it offer much over searching CTAN[1] and looking at the pdf-examples that are usually included with the useful packages/templates available there ?

As I've recently been looking at writing up a CV with LaTeX, I've seen quite a few rather awful templates -- and the site happens to list both examples of the worst and best I found after a quick search on CTAN...

For others that are interested -- the best resource I've found so far is actually a nice blog series on using the article-class for CV:

[http://www.texdev.net/2011/11/05/writing-a-curriculum- vitae-...](http://www.texdev.net/2011/11/05/writing-a-curriculum-vitae-in- latex-part-1/)

Also worth a read (but cover much of the same):

<http://texblog.org/2012/04/25/writing-a-cv-in-latex/>

[1] <http://www.ctan.org/>

edit: typo, minor clarification

</comment><comment><USER11> Just a nitpick: I had to look at the source for "professional table" and was surprised to see the booktabs package used because, to quote their documentation

> You will not go far wrong if you remember two simple guidelines at all > times:

> 1\. Never, ever use vertical rules.

> 2\. Never use double rules.

Violating half the 'nevers'!! But, more seriously, the documentation for some LaTeX packages is breathtakingly good (booktabs, amsmath, beamer, tikz, to name a few off the top of my head) and it would be really helpful if the site pointed newcomers to some of it. Especially in the case I mentioned, where the template is _just_ a demonstration of one package.

</comment><comment><USER12> I found LaTeXTemplates just a little over a year ago when I was looking for (shockingly) LaTeX templates, and it was /the only/ resource with decent usable templates (in terms of source readability and having actually-pretty templates). I'm the CTO of SpanDeX.io and we jumped on site integration shortly after we launched, because LaTeXTemplates is badass. I see many of you have hit our site after checking out LaTeXTemplates, so I'm glad some of you find the gallery & the integrations useful! Cheers.

</comment><comment><USER13> Is LaTeX only for academic papers?

I have a client who needs to put a large volume of brochure-ready technical specifications on both the web and rendered as attractive downloadable as PDFs, in a hopefully machine-readable format. Really curious if LaTeX is ever used as a solution in commercial applications where business users are most familiar with word - or is that the wrong application?

<comment><USER14> I once did this for a client that needed spec sheets with unit-specific test data from a database. LaTeX is great because it is easy to generate programmatically. Making nice PDFs is easy.

Exporting to HTML via htlatex is possible, but may require a lot of fine- tuning. Depending on the content, it may be easier to generate the LaTeX/PDF and HTML separately, or to generate only parts of the HTML using htlatex.

LaTeX special symbols are much easier to use than UTF8. It is easier to type -- and be sure that you have properly entered -- en-dashes, non-breaking spaces, fractions, degree symbols, directional quotation marks, and other non- keyboard characters.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I find writelatex.com to be immensely useful.

</comment><comment><USER16> I keep clicking the orange text below the share buttons, trying to get more info. I think it should be a link, to the same place as the title of the template links to.

I love it and I'm going to use the code template for my next assignment.

You have anything to draw DFAs?

<comment><USER17> tikz is awesome for this. I believe that DFAs are one of the examples described in the manual.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Wow, the Tufte template is an excellent resource .. I am going to print it and put it right alongside the real Tufte's, its that good! :)

This collection is definitely going to make me use LaTeX one of these days. Of course, I've been saying that for decades now.

<comment><USER19> I wonder though, where was the "real Tufte" typeset?

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> For UK, I have used: <http://www.gaussnewton.com/convert-word-to-latex-tex>

</comment><comment><USER21> love the site and 'What is LaTeX' and 'Why' are really informative for a beginner like myself

</comment><comment><USER22> Is my understanding correct that LaTex can not handle UTF-8?

<comment><USER23> Use lualatex

<comment><USER24> Or XeTeX for that matter, even though I suspect LuaTeX may very well be the future.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> If it was up an hour ago, it certainly isn't now.

<comment><AUTHOR> Just increased the VPS RAM to 1.2Gb, up again now ;) Not used to this kind of traffic...

<comment><USER25> Seems pretty interesting. Definitely a useful bookmark.</comment></comment></comment>


Microsoft considers multibillion-dollar overhaul to Redmond campus - <AUTHOR> http://www.seattletimes.com/business/microsoft/microsoft-is-said-to-weigh-multibillion-campus-revamp/ <comment><AUTHOR> Wanted to specifically point this out:

 _" The potential updates would be aimed at shifting away from private offices toward the more open-plan work spaces that are favored by today's technology companies, said the people."_</comment>


Ask HN: What was your first programming experience? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Watching my Mom who was a "typist"(google it if your too young to know what that is!) ,enter in page after page of code from a computer magazine into our family PC. Then watch my Dad spend the next few days debugging her typos and then finally transfer the program to a tape recorder. I'm pretty sure the first game was a text based version of lunar lander.

</comment><comment><USER3> Ten years old, typing BASIC games into a TRS-80 Model I from a book. Then at eleven, got a C-64 for Xmas, and taught myself BASIC and 6502 assembly. I had to learn assembly because BASIC couldn't handle the I/O speed of 2400 baud :-D

Now I write encryption libraries for a Major Cloud Provider

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Copying some BASIC programs from some magazine (PC World?) onto "QBASIC" in DOS on an IBM 286 in the early 90s. Or entering x86 ASM via debug.com in DOS from the computer manual (which contained a section on how to program using debug). I can't remember which was first.

Edit: It's interesting a lot of people seem to have a similar experience (thanks BASIC!). I thought there'd be more "I played with JS in the browser in early 2010", or "I attended a programming bootcamp after studying law to get an engineering job" type experiences as well.

</comment><comment><USER4> Typing in a page of Basic code from Atari magazine on the membrane keyboard of an Atari 400. After correcting all my typing errors (an even more tedious process) I was able to play a game where you would climb up a skyscraper, dodging hazards that were dropped on you.

I never stuck with programming.

</comment><comment><USER5> 1973 or 74, BASIC on a Honeywell 1640 at Northeast Missouri State University.

</comment><comment><USER6> My father taught my brother and I Visual Basic.</comment>


Ask HN: Did GitHub ruin Show HN? - <AUTHOR> I loved to visit the Show HN page to play with interesting new stuff made by the HN crowd. These days, the majority of the links go to GitHub. Then all I see is a wall of text and nothing to play with. Is it just me, or did that take the fun out of Show HN? <comment><USER2> This is an odd question since I'm reasonably sure GitHub predates the concept of Show HN.

Some projects aren't web-friendly.</comment>


Outsmart MIT- and Get Deported - <AUTHOR> http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/07/14/these-undocumented-teens-outsmarted-mit-and-still-cant-get-real-jobs-in-america.html

<comment><USER2> _Before agreeing to give the president the $3.7 billion he requested to hire more judges and otherwise handle the refugee crisis, Republicans in Congress want to toughen the bill and make it easier to deport children. To get the money, Obama will likely yield on the point._

Did you expect these states to be more welcoming to thousands of children from other countries showing up believing some myth about asylum?

</comment><comment><USER3> they were undocumented?

Of course they got deported, why does being smart give you special privileges that no one else gets?

If you're seriously that smart, then apply. You 'out-smarted MIT'. What do you think the chances are that you won't be accepted?

<comment><USER4> The chances are rather low, with a nasty latency even in the best cases.

[http://www.openlawlab.com/wp- content/uploads/2011/10/IMmigra...](http://www.openlawlab.com/wp- content/uploads/2011/10/IMmigration-Law-Comic-Terry-Colon-Reason.jpg)</comment></comment>


Amazon please stop supporting Del Monte - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/rodcul/status/513746989415030784 <comment><USER2> Not sure why @rodcul tweeted (and submitted) this -- or why it was up-voted -- his tweet links to an out-of-print publication on Amazon from...1978, i.e. 36 years ago.

And, to be clear, there wasn't any kidnapping -- the author of the publication that @rodcul links to -- Robin Broad [0] -- has an article (from 1980), "Our Children Are Being Kidnapped" [1] which would appear to cover similar ground (the title is the same as that of the linked publication on Amazon). And it's clear from the article that the kidnapping thing is the rural equivalent of an urban legend:

 _The people of Bukidnon are talking. They whisper their stories to me--in jeepneys riding, in rivers bathing, in fields plowing. One story is repeated time and time again. it becomes their theme: "Our children are being kidnapped," they say.

"Each night during the full moon, some disappear"._

Why? Supposedly because corporations building bridges have killed mermaids or perhaps because they've built buildings disturbing the tree spirits or Imelda Marcos angered the mermaids. The nature-gods demand sacrifices. Really -- Broad says she was told all of these things by different people.

 _" Is the tale true? On a literal level, perhaps not. But on a mythical level, undoubtedly so. The people of Bukidnon are wise. They see what is occurring around them. They see the destructions the corporations leave in their wake--the ecological and human damage. They see the tremendous costs associated with this form of development. They see the hard to their land, to their families, to their whole way of life._

The stories that follow, about land-theft and the like, are unpleasant, but are not about kidnapping children. And...they are from _decades ago_. Is there any reason to think these are still issues today? (From what I can tell, looking quickly, Google does not appear to think so).

[0] [https://www.american.edu/sis/faculty/rbroad.cfm](https://www.american.edu/sis/faculty/rbroad.cfm)

[1] [https://www.american.edu/sis/faculty/upload/our-children- are...](https://www.american.edu/sis/faculty/upload/our-children-are-being- kidnapped.pdf)

(A PDF of the entire issue of the journal with this article can be found here:

[http://criticalasianstudies.org/assets/files/bcas/v12n03.pdf](http://criticalasianstudies.org/assets/files/bcas/v12n03.pdf) )</comment>


Larry Page and Sergey Brin with Vinod Khosla [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wdnp_7atZ0M <comment><USER2> It's interesting how not even the founders of Google can come to a consensus on what technology is doing to jobs

Larry Page thinks most people will be part-time employed or not employed at all since human needs are fixed.

Sergey thinks human needs are endless, and jobs creation will always happen.

Perhaps no one really knows the answer.

<comment><USER3> I think Sergey was walking Larry's answer back in order to not seem so radical.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I love that these guys think of 4 years as short term and 20 years as long term. Young companies often set up this dichotomy as a couple months vs. a couple years, which just isn't enough. Long term thinking is a big potential advantage startups have over public incumbents that have quarterly expectations, but it's usually not taken advantage of. Not just on founders obviously, whole startup ecosystem fuels this.

<comment> k-mcgrady >> "Long term thinking is a big potential advantage startups have over public incumbents that have quarterly expectations"

I completely disagree. If a public company has a poor quarter their stock price might fall a bit and shareholders might get pissed off. If a startup has a bad quarter that could be enough to put it out of business. Startups can't ignore the long-term but naturally all new businesses live day-to-day, especially when relying on venture capital and not a reliable revenue stream.

<comment><USER4> I thought about this more and I think you're right. Some companies do become very short term focused when they go public, but when you not longer have to worry about short term survival you can plan much farther out in the future.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The transcript: [http://www.khoslaventures.com/fireside-chat-with-google- co-f...](http://www.khoslaventures.com/fireside-chat-with-google-co-founders- larry-page-and-sergey-brin)

</comment><comment><USER6> "it's amazing when the business people take over how rational they get focused on short term revenue and lose the long term vision"\- on why Excite management was having difficulty buying PageRank for $350k (or $1.6m, not entirely clear).

I think this is a problem at a number of established tech companies as the management layer evolves.

<comment><USER7> > on why Excite management was having difficulty buying PageRank

The big money was in portals not search during those days. If I am not mistaken even the Google founders initially had no idea how to monetize it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Here are a bunch of tweets with some highlights. Scroll down to july 3rd

[https://twitter.com/khoslaventures](https://twitter.com/khoslaventures)

</comment><comment><USER9> Plug: I'm one of the founders of Ginger.io, the healthcare company Larry, Sergey & Vinod mention. We're doing some really interesting things in healthcare and sensor data-- deploying across a varity of healthcare systems and driving interventions, and the best part is having a real impact on people's lives.

If you'd like to learn more, shoot us an email at firstname.lastname@example.com or see our Join-Us page.

</comment><comment><USER10> I personally loved Khosla's company building Talk here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRCoBgC_n1Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRCoBgC_n1Q)

</comment><comment><USER11> Khosla is an absolute scumbag.[1] Really disappointed to see Larry and Sergey hanging out with this guy.

[1] [http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/16/us/its-privacy-vs-the- peop...](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/16/us/its-privacy-vs-the-people-in- the-battle-for-martins-beach.html)</comment>


Ask HN: How long do you keep your emails? - <AUTHOR> I've been toying with the idea of deleting emails after x number of months/years.<p>Currently I have 11 years of emails that I can't say I ever reference. <comment><USER2> Pretty much forever.

Somewhere along the line my 1993-2002 archives went missing, but I still have everything since then. On average, I'd guess that it's about once a year that I need to access something more than a year old (and yeah, sometimes it's something from 2003).

Why do you ask?</comment>


Your iPhone can now alert you every time police kill someone in the U.S - <AUTHOR> http://www.cultofmac.com/407922/your-iphone-can-now-alert-you-every-time-police-kill-someone-in-the-u-s/ <comment><USER2> "containing only the victim's name."

This app reeks of propaganda. There is absolutely no context to how or why the 'victim' was killed and even if they should be considered a 'victim' in the first place.</comment>


Be Your Own Technical Co-Founder - <AUTHOR> http://codelesson.com/cofounder

<comment><AUTHOR> tl;dr - At CodeLesson we got sick of people whining about how to find a technical co-founders and realized that at least some percentage of people with the drive and focus to get an MBA should be able to learn enough code to put together a functional prototype. So we put together eight of our most popular web development courses together into sort of a do-it-yourself technical mentorship series. And there you go.

OK, maybe that was tl;dr as well. Anyway.</comment>


Can Hash Tables really be O(1)? - <AUTHOR> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2771368/can-hash-tables-really-be-o1 <comment><USER2> I remember a guy insisting hash tables were o(1). The resulting argument taught me a lot about computer science and its lack of relationship to reality- hash tables are only o(1) under very limited conditions which are uncommon.

Most of the hash tables I've used- ones that ran large-scale machine learning systems with sparse data- depend greatly on the nature of the hashed item, and much less on the length of the chains.</comment>


LinkedIn for Programmers - <AUTHOR> http://bantumu.com

<comment><AUTHOR> BantuMu lets programmers or developers stand out their working and freelance experience along side with their sample of codes (over Github) to get more opportunities or networks. It's a better way to connect great programmers with the best programming jobs than using LinkedIn.

</comment><comment><USER2> Wow, a blue login page and a registration form! How impressive!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you ;)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> hey guys, please try our beta site.. enjoy it ;)</comment>


I want to make a video demo for my website. What are good programs/services/compani... to use? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> I'm not sure what your website is providing but I would imagine that a screen capture video demo works best most of the time as it allows you to showcase your products nicely. For this on the Mac you can use things like SnapzPro and MousePose (take a look at the Firebug screencast).

I'm not aware of any companies to use for a full production video. As far as tools go you can probably use any decent camcorder, a tripod (handheld video doesn't look very professional) and some video capture software. There are plenty of options depending on your platform. Once you shoot your video however it should be very easy to outsource the editing if you're not comfortable with it. You can usually find talented individuals in other countries willing to do this cheaply (ask for samples, etc).

</comment><comment><USER3> I just did a screencast (ironically it's the item just above this one right now- <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=54774>). We pursued your "option 2" initially and ended up doing just the screencast for our homepage demo on jumpbox.com.

I work on a Mac and used iShowU for the capture and edited and produced it in iMovie. Our homepage video is just a quicktime file. For the screencast in the tutorial above I used the Adobe Flash FLV converter to turn it into an flv and wrote a small custom media playback swf to do what you see here-> <http://video.jumpbox.com/?app=trac>

good luck sean

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Me again. Elaborating on my question:

I'm thinking about 2 video types: 1) purely screen capture video demo to showcase software OR 2) a full-featured video with people, dialogue, transitions, etc--basically a full production demo.

I'm leaning towards option 2. In that case, if I were to do it myself, what are some high-quality software programs that I could use? If I'm looking for professional help, what companies or services would you be able to recommend.

In terms of quality, I'm looking to do something pro like Salesforce.com's video demos: <http://www.salesforce.com/products/democ..>.

</comment><comment><USER4> Please, whatever you do, don't host the video on YouTube. (Ahem, Wesabe.) To me, nothing says "I love compression artifacts" and "I can't afford to host my own site" more than YouTube.

As for software, check out these (which I have not used): <http://www.varasoftware.com/products/wirecast/> <http://www.adobe.com/products/visualcommunicator/>

I liked the idea of Snapz Pro until I discovered how difficult it is to edit footage losslessly. For our last screencast at the office I think we used Camtasia.

</comment><comment><USER5> You can take a screencast with Camtasia(pretty popular with internet marketers, not that bad...).

Then edit with basically any program...I like ArcSoft - ShowBiz for starters, it's easy and has alot of features. Or if you have a bit more video editing experience Adobe Premier or After Effects should help alot! Or if you're on a Mac...FinalCutPro for professional editing.

Hope this helped.

\-- Auston

</comment><comment><USER6> Camtasia (www.camtasia.com) is great, plus they have a 30 day demo so you can make sure it does everything you want.

I have only used it for simple purposes but it does much more. Here is a sample I made with it without trying any of it's advanced features

<http://www.userlinks.com/groupadmin/groupadmin.html></comment>


Ask HN: How will pure functional languages impact the web? (PureScript and Elm) - <AUTHOR> I've lately had some experience functional languages targeting web browsers, such as Elm[1] and PureScript[2] which feel very native to the web. Then there's some pure Haskell Compilers such as GHCJS[3] and Haste[4].<p>So now I'm wondering how HN readers think this will impact the future web environment?<p>[1] http://elm-lang.org/<p>[2] http://www.purescript.org/<p>[3] https://github.com/ghcjs/ghcjs<p>[4] https://haste-lang.org/ <comment><USER2> They won't impact the web because they have no side-effects.

(Sorry, couldn't resist the joke.)

<comment><USER3> Just model this as taking an old, immutable web to a new one.

        impact :: Web -> Web

Persistent data structures will let us reuse the best parts of the old web efficiently.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> In the short term, not much because there is a lot of inertia behind organizational programming knowledge, and the target runtime influences language choice (why JavaScript has become popular).

In the long term, I think expressive type systems will dominate programming. Simply because they allow programmers to provably generate correct programs without bugs. If the industry always used languages with a type system expressive enough to fit their needs, horrible errors like WannaCry would be eliminated (a classic buffer over-read due to programming with inadequate types). Of course, pure functional languages are at the forefront of type systems, though they aren't mutually exclusive (Rust for example).

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Update: Links in the article isn't clickable so I've attached them below as well.

[1] [http://elm-lang.org/](http://elm-lang.org/)

[2] [http://www.purescript.org/](http://www.purescript.org/)

[3] [https://github.com/ghcjs/ghcjs](https://github.com/ghcjs/ghcjs)

[4] [https://haste-lang.org/](https://haste-lang.org/)

\</comment><comment>

I've previously been programming in Haskell and lisps before that so I have some experience with functional programming. From my experience the Haskell to JavaScript compilers aren't great in practicality as they provide a quite clunky developer experience and does not feel native to the web.

Elm and PureScript however integrates almost seamlessly and Elm in particular provides a smooth developer experience. I also find a nice resource[1] which eases the transition for a haskell developer.

Would love to hear your thoughts!

[1] [https://github.com/eeue56/haskell-to- elm](https://github.com/eeue56/haskell-to-elm)</comment>


Stunnel and Airline Wi-Fi - <AUTHOR> https://potatofrom.space/post/viasat-airline-free-wifi-stunnel/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hey guys, thanks for all the comments! I realized that it was not an ethical idea to post, so I decided to take it down. I did not get a cease and desist, but I would appreciate if you could refrain from reposting it.

If you are interested in seeing some of my other (more ethical) work, check out Delphus [1], an open research study management platform which I am working on at my new startup ;)

[1]: [https://delph.us](https://delph.us)

<comment><USER2> I'm not sure about this, still. I'd consider it roughly equivalent to posting a POC for an exploit: it could be abused, could be uses for academic learning, or could be used to improve systems. It's not inherently bad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> In the USA this would be a violation of the CFAA [https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1030](https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1030). Specifically, the router is a "protected computer" and the procedure described here is "exceeding authorised access" because it routes packets around a mechanism that was designed to stop them. Maximum penalty 5 years.

(Some might argue that it was authorised because the computer let him do it. However the CFAA simply doesn't work that way. "Authorisation" is what the designers intended, and the initial paywall made that intention perfectly clear.)

<comment><USER4> How does this not apply to stuff like trackers bypassing anti-fingerprinting browser protections?

<comment><USER5> Because a prosecutor hasn't tried to use it in that way.

<comment><USER6> Which highlights a fundamental truth to law - it's only enforced to backstop the status quo. Routing around a wifi paywall rocks the boat, performing invasive surveillance on website visitors doesn't.

So practically yes, let's be aware that the author could indeed be persecuted under the CFAA. But let's not grandstand and pretend that following that law is some sort of moral imperative that benefits everyone. The common individual will be the target of the same attacks with or without that law.

<comment><USER7> Following the law may not be a moral imperative, but let's not pretend like the author did anything moral here. He knowingly and with intent stole services from the airline. It not only was illegal, it's blatantly immoral.

<comment><USER8> It's also immoral to force bad pricing down customer throats. And yet that is the definition of the inflight wifi business.

EDIT: I'm fairly sure at current prices a single flight could pay for a month's service for a single plane, probably several times over. The profit margins (& I imagine some the cut to the airline) must be enormous, & there is no pretense of fair terms at sale time because a single corporation can entirely monopolize your attention.

<comment><USER9> > It's also immoral to force bad pricing down customer throats. And yet that > is the definition of the inflight wifi business.

In what bizarro world are people being forced to buy inflight wifi?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Wow, this was an amusing read. I actually helped architect part of the system that was bypassed at LiveTV (now Thales). We had some serious hackers on the team and discussed how much probing & prodding it would take to find vulnerabilities like this, but made the conclusion anyone doing this should be worried about more serious consequences. I for one, wouldn't attempt this myself on the aircraft. The hacker side of me finds this Amusing, but I hope the author doesn't face more serious consequences, primarily for having made this public knowledge. I have a sense the defense company that now owns the system being bypassed/broken will not find it amusing in the least bit.

Disclaimer: opinions above are my own. I do not speak for or on behalf of any party in the article.

<comment><USER11> Definitely, but it's worth for them to defend against or go after the few people willing to use this method to get free Wi-Fi on planes? IMHO they'll spend more than what they'll gain.

<comment><USER10> I fear that this would be viewed thru the lens of "PR" & "brand", thing companies are rightfully keen in protecting. Unfortunately there's a legal component to all this also. The knowledge itself is cool & even actual instances of a handful of people getting "free" internet probably wouldn't register on their radar. But the publicity from being on the top of HN... that might be of significant concern

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Illegal and unethical: yes, in this use case.

But, let's give Kevin serious kudos on his clever approach to solving this problem. This is the true hacker spirit that reaches across the decades. Bravo!

</comment><comment><USER13> The site's down for me.

I got a 404 and a few minutes later a Firefox "Did Not Connect: Potential Security Issue" followed by this explanation:

      Firefox detected a potential security threat and did not continue to potatofrom.space because this website requires a secure connection.

      What can you do about it?

      potatofrom.space has a security policy called HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS), which means that Firefox can only connect to it securely. You can't add an exception to visit this site.

      The issue is most likely with the website, and there is nothing you can do to resolve it. You can notify the website's administrator about the problem.

<comment><USER14> The website itself is up [https://potatofrom.space/](https://potatofrom.space/) so looks like the author decided to take it down, odd. Maybe he got a cease and desist from Viasat.

<comment><USER15> Still available on the GitLab instance linked from the home page: [https://gitlab.potatofrom.space/kevin/potatofrom.space/blob/...](https://gitlab.potatofrom.space/kevin/potatofrom.space/blob/0f2048ff5124327e27aca76e2c98d16be076e400/content/post/viasat- airline-free-wifi-stunnel.md)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The comment about the 24Mbps is pretty impressive. My experience every month on the JAL flights SF to Tokyo and Tokyo to $SomeOtherAsianCity is pretty crappy. I wonder if doing this it also bypasses some QoS filters? For example on a flight I tried to open the XM app on my iPad and could not stream a thing (it's pretty low but rate). Slack connects and disconnects all time. Email works but is slow. Webpages take minutes to load. Every flight for the last few years so...

<comment><USER10> That's because you're traveling in airspace covered by different Satellite than the one that covers The American continent. Top speed should actually be ~74MBps.

I was one of the people who helped build the system (not at Viasat)

<comment><USER17> It's almost a 1Gbps over sat link, are you correct?

<comment><USER10> [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ViaSat-1](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ViaSat-1)

Apparently it's been benchmarked doing even better speeds. There was supposed to be new satellites launched over Europe and Asia, but at the time, this was the fastest one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> While interesting, I would have an uneasy feeling messing with the WIFI AP on an airplane. Perhaps there is a U.S. law this type of conduct would fall under specific to being on an airplane?

<comment><USER19> The author does not "mess with the WIFI AP on the plane", they exploit a weakness in the design (failure by viasat to maintain an checksum IP mapping to their domain for the captive service) to simply bypass a trivial TLS header check in order to tunnel their traffic.

<comment><USER20> This is almost definitely "hacking" under federal law.

<comment><USER19> The person I'm replying to specifically said "mess with the WIFI AP" in order to present this as harmful or dangerous (FUD), it is not. It's a trivial header check bypass - whether or not that is "hacking" is a question for lawyers and a judge.

<comment><USER21> I was just bypassing a some trivial key check on the door. To say I was "messing with the door" is FUD, and whether I was breaking and entering is a question for lawyers and a judge.

<comment><USER14> The owner gave me a key to the lobby so I could pay to get an all-access key. As it turns out, I can just walk past the lobby and that key actually opens all doors in the building. Whether or not it's illegal to use it to access whatever I want is a question for lawyers and a judge.

<comment><USER22> That's not what's happening here. This is more like trying the key on every door, finding a cleaning closet unlocked and crawling through the ventilation ducts to get in.

<comment><USER14> I think it's pretty close to the reality. The lobby is wide open (viasat's payment gateway), but if you just use the viasat lobby key (viasat.com SNI) on any other door (IP address) it allows you access. They could prevent you from getting to the doors in the first place (whitelisting MAC address to access anything other than a whitelist of IPs instead of just TLS SNI whitelisting) but they don't, as it's especially evident when they allow other protocols when the connection is not encrypted.

<comment><USER22> Try this:

The lobby is not locked. Neither are any of the doors leading out from it. There is a cashier in the lobby and a sign with ticket prices for the different doors.

<comment><USER23> In that situation, opening the doors without paying is illegal. It would be treated as trespassing or theft of services. You don't have the right to use other peoples' stuff without permission just because it's easy to do.

<comment><USER22> And that was my point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> If your flight has GoGo, it's easier to just remember which of your friends has a T-Mobile number, plug that in, and you're in. They don't actually verify it's your number.

<comment><USER25> They used to offer all flight passes as well instead of the hour limit. I'd open up safari on my Mac, spoof the UA and have free internet that way.

Also recently I think they've stopped giving T-Mobile numbers access to the higher speeds. Was fun while it lasted. I was able to clock over 50mbps on one of my flights. Kinda nuts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> An alternative to this is to scan for active Mac addresses on the WiFi and steal one and hope it's someone paying for the premium WiFi already :) This works on almost all hotel WiFi too.

<comment><USER27> Wouldn't than both devices "fight" for the access? Who gets the packages?

<comment><USER28> Yes, it makes both connections highly unstable. Not recommended.

<comment><USER26> It works flawlessly. You can go further to end up kicking them off with some more shady tools. Not that I'd approve of that.

<comment><USER27> I guess some friend of a friend told you?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> As someone who has created captive portal systems I have to say that this is a very poor system.

My system tagged you in a firewall so your packets were not getting out until you had authenticated and ended up in an ipset list that bypassed the tag.

<comment><USER28> I guess the collected readership of HN wished you didn't do your job so well then...

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Nice breakdown! This makes me curious of just how many "free" wifi hotspots that allow access to a specific site can be completely bypassed.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! I suspect the answer is "most", especially if they allow HTTPS in any way. The way to solve this issue is to either whitelist IPs/host the site internally on the local network (e.g. most captive portals).

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I've been able to get enough bandwidth to check email on delta by:

1) connect to WiFi and get to the sign up / credit card page 2) turn on PIA vpn client

Seems to work. Very limited speed though. Email checks and not much else.

</comment><comment><USER32> I'm actually surprised simple tunneling is working and they don't have additional protections.

From my experience most of public networks won't let you do much this way. However, it seems it (as most captive portals) has access to DNS servers.

There was this tool people were using to bypass VPNs blocking and throttling in China called kcptun. It was letting you tunnel tcp traffic over udp, then SSL tunnel on top of it. With a server listening on port 53, it was working awesome to avoid QOS and managed to 1- bypass authentication and 2- get absolutely amazing speeds on some airport wifis for example. You probably could do the same with an openVPN on UDP 53.

However, it seems most public wifis are smarter and would blacklist your Mac address if either too much traffic is going through, or you say for too long. You can change your address, but it's not really usable. Still fun though!

Also, it seems most public wifis now do more DPI and they won't let other traffic than DNS go on UDP 53.

This in minds, another one I haven't been looking through much is DNS tunneling - would love to hear anyone's experience about it (I've heard it's very slow...)

Edit: seeing a few comments about the unethical aspect of this. In some cases, it might be. In some others, it is about avoiding a system that tracks you and try to gather and resell as much information as it can about you (it varies a lot according to which country you're in).

<comment><USER33> > DNS tunneling

I've done it a bit (using iodine[1]) and while it obviously depends a lot on the DNS server they're using, it can be surprisingly fast. I think I got over 300kbps regularly, which while not great for video streaming, is more than enough for HN and such.

iodine in particular tries to use some less common DNS record types like NULL, which might support up to 65kb/reply, falling back to more common if those are not supported, so you can get decent download speeds.

[1] [https://code.kryo.se/iodine](https://code.kryo.se/iodine)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> It's always easier to just wireshark for an IP address that has access (in hotels too) and then clone the MAC adddress.

<comment><USER35> Yep, this is the easiest & most reliable method.

Other techniques include tunneling over DNS, tunneling over ICMP, finding flaws in the HTTP parser, scanning the default router for open ports, scanning intermediate proxies for open ports, exploiting bad proxy redirect rules, finding protocols and ports that the firewall doesn't block outbound, and finding holes in the paywall's web apps.

Once upon a time there was a pre-paid mobile internet provider that sold USB sticks. It turned out that once you had initially activated the stick, even without an account, it would always default to a paywall until you had an account paid up. The HTTP parser of the paywall proxy was so bad, it only filtered connections with CRLF as the line-terminator for HTTP requests... so a simple proxy that converted CRLF to LF bypassed the paywall.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> This seems quite unethical to me.

<comment><USER37> It is theft of services. Ironical in this website since ycombinator companies are mostly about selling services via the Internet.

<comment><USER38> Well, the flip side is that Y Combinator has no qualms about funding companies whose business model relies on ignoring laws that are inconvenient.

Here are two different YC startups that relied on tourists smuggling goods to avoid import duties:

[https://techcrunch.com/2014/08/13/backpack-connects-you- with...](https://techcrunch.com/2014/08/13/backpack-connects-you-with- travelers-so-you-can-purchase-items-in-other-countries/)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10998377](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10998377)

<comment><USER39> You will be happy to know the send it on "airplane as luggage with passengers" business models are now seen as failures by most Silicon Valley investors as well as some YC partners. It's been 5 years and there were many of these companies - the investors got burned

How do I know? I run a YC funded company that legally imports :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Nice write-up. Found it very clear (and thanks for the SNI primer) except perhaps the port-soup near the end. Might have benifitted from a little diagram or flowchart for that bit.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Let me see if I can add an mspaint diagram.

edit: added! try refreshing if you don't see it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> @HN admin I think it's a good idea to remove this post. The author fucked up, I think it's worth doing what we can to prevent further collateral damage to them.

<comment><USER42> Quick, everyone ignore the security issue, if we don't look it's not there!

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> I did this as well using Orbot (Tor software for Android) and an OBFS4 proxy.

In Southwest (the airline), you connect to the wifi for watching the movie and where you are in air. But if you want internet, you pay.

I have some of my applications always Torified on my phone. I opened my 3d printer app to view its status, expecting a hard fail. And... it loaded!

<comment><USER44> Genuine question here - isn't Tor traffic reputed for having a certain "footprint"? I would be worried about accessing the Tor network over public WiFi, but maybe that's just me.

<comment><USER43> Standard Tor, sure.

But when you start using pluggable transports, like Obfs4, you can defeat pretty much every captive portal or traffic analyzer. I'm sure there _might_ be a way to detect even these. But remember that the real test of detection is the GFoC.

Some piddly airline's offering of pay internet is not going to use nation- state level detection schemes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Nice write up. I am curious how DNS works, and if that is an alternative protocol for tunneling in this situation.

<comment><USER46> The latest iodine version is quick and works almost everywhere. Should work fine in the OP scenario. I also use SSH -D, then I use proxychains and it work fine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Sweet to see another guy that tests with zombo.com!

<comment><USER48> The infinite is possible!

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Last year I was on a flight and my phone buzzed, which was odd. I looked down and it had somehow connected to the WiFi without my doing anything and started getting chat messages.

I tested further and my WiFi was totally unrestricted. I was able to download a show from Netflix at 20Mbps+ ... does anyone know what happened? I didn't even think planes had WiFi that fast and I definitely thought they blocked all streaming video domains.

<comment><USER50> if you're on T-Mobile , then it's possible you got connected via their plan that allows for free GoGo inflight wifi.

<comment><USER51> No, GoGo is based on HughesNet, whereas OP was using Viasat

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> tl;dr: The Vianet firewall is trying to do filtering of TLS connections based on the arbitrary and client-controlled host name string and not the destination IP address. It has no network-level routing control at all, it will allow a connection to any host on the internet, but will then terminate it after it sees that it's not going to (strictly, "doesn't look like it's going to") a permitted host. So the author set up a ssh server on the HTTPS port and connected to it with a faked host name.

But seriously folks: this is (1) still a crime in basically all jusisdictions and (2) a crime _on an airplane in flight_ , so have fun in jail.

<comment><USER53> How is this a crime (in _all_ jurisdictions)? The CFAA is US-only, and few other jurisdictions have as loose terms (or history of abuse) as the CFAA, when it comes to "hacking".

<comment><USER52> It's straight up unauthorized access to a computer system. They tell you they don't allow it and you have to pay for it, the author clearly knew that, and evaded the protections. Cite me a legal environment where that is _not_ a crime.

<comment><USER53> Which computer system does this access that the user was unauthorized to access? The user's home server?!

The made-for-DRM CFAA that might classify fooling a flimsy filter as "unauthorized access to a computer system" is very much US-specific. Over here on the other side of the world, I'm thankful I'm not subject to such legislation or judicial system, but to one which still has a sensible definition of "hacking".

<comment><USER52> Sigh. Routers are computers too.

<comment><USER53> Sigh. There's no _unauthorized access_ of a router here; neither the wireless network nor the router login were cracked.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> I'm seeing a lot of people say that airplane wifi is overpriced, and I'm kind of baffled. Yes, compared to terrestrial wifi it's expensive. But... you're in a fast moving object communicating with satellites (satellite launches are expensive!) and I don't really understand why people are so eager to call this bad pricing.

<comment><USER55> I don't fly enough to care, but the pricing model has become a death of one thousand cuts. I can see why that is bothersome, even if it can be described as fair exchange of value or whatever.

<comment><USER56> Well it turns out people prefer to pay 10$ and 5*12$ instead of 70$ for a flight, probably because it feels like you can save a bit.

At the end the airline needs to get its bottom line green and airplanes and satellite wifi are not cheap, not to speak of the highly paid people needed to run it all.

It's one thing to call that unethical, but at the end the market decides and it seems that all-inclusive deals simply do not resonate as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> I was pleasantly surprised to see the appropriate NixOS configuration in the middle of the article. NixOS stream-lines the whole configuration process to a couple of lines of configuration which can be copy-pasted without changing anything.

</comment><comment><USER58> A bit off-topic but I'm curious: Which laws applies on a plane?

<comment><USER59> Whatever country's airspace you're in and whatever country the plane is registered in. (Probably an oversimplification, but IANAL and I definitely ANYL.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> I can't open this page on my chromebook, I'm getting a

NET::ERR_CERT_COMMON_NAME_INVALID

Subject: dns.google

Issuer: Google Internet Authority G3

Expires on: 10 Sep 2019

Current date: 20 Jul 2019

With a further message that

You cannot visit potatofrom.space right now because the website uses HSTS.

<comment><USER61> Cached view: [http://web.archive.org/web/20190720131624/https://potatofrom...](http://web.archive.org/web/20190720131624/https://potatofrom.space/post/viasat- airline-free-wifi-stunnel/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> Nice post and well written. I'll have to try something similar with stunner for my office connection (heavily filtered and firewalled), to allow me to reach my raspberry back home.

<comment><USER63> not sure office == work place, but most workplaces have policies around intentionally bypassing network security/firewall rules. If your workplace has any kind of security operations/threat detection, you could find yourself explaining why exactly your host is reaching out over suspiciously encrypted channels?

<comment><USER64> Specifically, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egress_filtering](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egress_filtering). If the OP's company has restrictive firewalling and filtering already, they also probably have egress filtering and monitoring as well.

<comment><USER62> I agree with you, this will surely raise a red flag in our administrators panel and this isn't my intention. I'm mainly interested on the technical side of things.

I know that most ports and traffic types are already blocked. What about outgoing https traffic, this is encrypted and should be allowed to pass...something like an https tunnel.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> Reminds me a of a 2600Hz article from the 90s.

<comment><USER66> Too bad that magazine has fallen to the way side. I still purchase it every now and then (when I'm in a Barnes and Noble).

The letters from readers surprise me quite a bit: seems like it has decent circulation in the prison population. wonder why that is...

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> Too bad he didn't try other protocols. I wouldn't be surprised if DNS or ICMP tunnel worked too.

<comment><AUTHOR> But iodine [1] is very slow ;) (Also with the satellite roundtrip, it probably would've worked, but super slowly.)

[1]: [https://code.kryo.se/iodine/](https://code.kryo.se/iodine/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> Reminds me of DNS tunneling. But this approach is probably faster.

</comment><comment><USER69> another way is to use DNS. Most captive portals allow UDP/DNS. You can craft a proxy to do proxy via 53/udp.

</comment><comment><USER70> Meanwhile the site is down (503)

</comment><comment><USER71> Anyone else getting a 404 error?</comment>


Global Disease Monitoring and Forecasting with Wikipedia - <AUTHOR> http://www.ploscompbiol.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1003892

<comment><USER2> This should be called Sick-ipedia :)</comment>


Why You Should Put Yourself Out There and Try New Products - <AUTHOR> https://bothsidesofthetable.com/why-you-should-put-yourself-out-there-and-try-new-products-4cd5a88510f0#.jfq97d5zy <comment><USER2> I'm trying to use Snapchat so I don't feel like a grandpa, but it's not easy. I suppose I will get used to the interactions, but the UX of the app gives me a headache. I often feel disoriented; it seems way too complicated for the the job it's doing.

<comment><USER3> I have the same with Twitter's web interface every time I land there to follow some conversation.</comment></comment>


Interactive Visualization for the Human Development Index - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/2010/11/17/human-development-index-interactive-visualization.html Check out Zimbabwe 1990 vs Zimbabwe 2010, China 1990 vs China 2010. More explanation here: http://blogs.forbes.com/jonbruner/2010/11/18/a-new-way-to-look-at-the-human-development-index/ <comment><AUTHOR> Check out Zimbabwe 1990 vs Zimbabwe 2010 (governance fail) and China 1990 vs China 2010 (governance win).

More explanation here: [http://blogs.forbes.com/jonbruner/2010/11/18/a-new- way-to-lo...](http://blogs.forbes.com/jonbruner/2010/11/18/a-new-way-to-look- at-the-human-development-index/)</comment>


Domain lolpenny.com for sale - <AUTHOR>

Email me if you're interested. I was thinking that this would make a great micro payments commenting service. Thought I'd share it with the community first. Not looking for much money at all. firstname.lastname@example.com <comment><USER2> I'll give you a buck</comment>


HTML is the new HTML5 - <AUTHOR> http://blog.whatwg.org/html-is-the-new-html5 <comment><USER2> This is from back in Jan, 2011. As in, last year. But I suppose one would never know.</comment>


Making Hadoop Work in More Places With Hadapt - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/cloud/making-hadoop-work-in-more-places-with-hadapt/ <comment><USER2> From <http://www.hadapt.com/about> (very slow to load right now), two of the guys are Daniel Abadi and Kamil Bajda-Pawlikowski. They worked on HadoopDB [1], which was an attempt at creating a parallel DB on top of Hadoop, that would leverage mapreduce scale, while taking advantage of the benefits of relational databases. I think the hope was to have some sort of system capable of taking on Vertica.

Looks like they've turned it into a product. Ah, more coverage here [2].

1: <http://db.cs.yale.edu/hadoopdb/hadoopdb.html> 2: [http://www.dbms2.com/2011/03/23/hadapt-commercialized- hadoop...](http://www.dbms2.com/2011/03/23/hadapt-commercialized-hadoopdb/)</comment>


Wasabi – Simple storage solution - <AUTHOR> https://wasabi.com/product <comment><USER2> Some quick observations:

\- Their performance claims are incredibly biased. Amazon S3 has far better write performance than their claims.

\- They claim 100% S3 compatibility but it fails a large number of API calls using Ceph's s3-test. I didn't dig into this too far but they do claim "No need to change your S3-compatible application" so changing my endpoint + credentials should have worked. To their credit - PUT, GET and DELETE did work but that is only 3 of 100's of API's.

\- Their durability claims are highly suspect. I would want to see a white paper breaking this down.

\- Their first round was debt financing.

Why this business model does't work...

Most people don't use S3 alone. S3 is a source for other AWS services. That being said, Wasabi becomes a more expensive option as you have a 4 cent egress fee to access data from the rest of your AWS infrastructure. The only place Wasabi becomes cheaper is for those using S3 direct/alone which is a very small subset of S3 usage. AWS is very open about this in white papers, conferences, tech talks, etc.

Wasabi is an economy at scale play that cast way too far a net. There is opportunity in specific vertical markets to sell a solution (object paired with compute) but a pure S3 endpoint will never take substantial marketshare away from AWS.

<comment><USER3> Yes, it's hard to find use cases where Wasabi storage could compete without compute.

But S3 originally launched by itself, before EC2.

If Wasabi adds a Lambda-like serverless compute layer that could be powerful.

<comment><USER4> It would be a great destination for cloud backup, where one of the concerns is loss of all your backed up data due to malicious action - look at the trouble the hackers had to go to in Mr Robot to take out their offsite tape backups. I'd be more concerned though with the durability of the company rather than their disk systems over the long term though.

<comment><USER5> Separate AWS account with write-only permission to backup S3 objects from production pushed out to the backup account. Enable versioning and glacier in backup account. Lock down backup account credentials appropriately. (And add alerting and periodic fire drills of course.)

<comment><USER6> Amazon is still a single point of failure when you backup S3 to S3.

What if they deploy a silent corruption bug next year?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There's also B2 ([https://www.backblaze.com/b2/cloud- storage.html](https://www.backblaze.com/b2/cloud-storage.html)), which is I think the cheapest of them all.

UPDATE: Well, egress is cheaper. B2 is $0.005/GB storage with $0.02/GB egress. But one thing to consider is that B2 storage is located within one single datacenter.

(Disclaimer: I am not affiliated, but am in the process of deciding to use B2.)

<comment><USER8> B2 is horribly unstable, has limits left and right and most of all, the latency is horrendous.

You will be better off using any standard OpenStack provider. That way you won't have a lock in, and great performance (in my testing). E.g. OpenStack Swift on OVH.

Sure it's a tiny bit more expensive. But you get a mature cross-provider API and better performance.

Even for huge chunks of cold data, I wouldn't want to use B2.

<comment><USER9> What are some good OpenStack providers? and are there any that can 11 nines durability?

<comment><USER10> I know at least that Rackspace has a hosted Swift storage service. Of the storage integrations I've worked on, Swift was probably the most error-prone to get your integration stable, though. I guess that's just a credit to the robustness of the S3 client APIs and services that copy it (Ceph, GCS).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> From the FAQ:

> 7\. Your website indicates $.0039 per GB per month but the pricing > comparison on the website indicates 1 TB is priced at $3.99 / month (instead > of $3.90 / month for 1 TB). Why is that?

> The Wasabi monthly price is $.0039 GB / month. Given that there are 1024 GB > in 1 TB (not 1000 GB), the price for 1 TB is $.0039 * 1024 or $3.99 per 1 TB > per month.

Come on you are a digital storage company let's call things what they are. There are 1000 GB in a TB. There are 1024 GiB in a TiB.

</comment><comment><USER12> If the goal is price reduction:

[https://www.ovh.com/us/public-cloud/storage/object- storage/](https://www.ovh.com/us/public-cloud/storage/object-storage/) (S3-comparable performance)

$40/year minimum

Outgoing traffic: $0.011/GB Storage: $0.0112/month/GB

[https://www.ovh.com/us/public-cloud/storage/cloud- archive/](https://www.ovh.com/us/public-cloud/storage/cloud-archive/) (archival storage)

Incoming/Outgoing traffic: $0.011/GB Storage: $0.0023/month/GB

[https://www.online.net/en/c14#pricing](https://www.online.net/en/c14#pricing) Storage: €0.005/Month

No traffic costs (because its archival storage)

The main downside is they are located in 1 physical area even tho they are labeled as multiple DCs.

But for high traffic uses, honestly, you can just double the storage costs (i.e. OVH CA and OVH France) to get redundancy while saving _massively_ on traffic costs.

<comment><USER13> does this work with django storages?

<comment><USER12> No. It uses the OpenStack API.

[https://github.com/openstack/python- openstacksdk](https://github.com/openstack/python-openstacksdk)

You'd need to use that to build it out.

<comment><USER14> Probably no need to do this on their own. Found two already existing implementations, and suspect there are more:

[https://github.com/dennisv/django-storage- swift](https://github.com/dennisv/django-storage-swift)

[https://django-cumulus.readthedocs.io/en/latest/](https://django- cumulus.readthedocs.io/en/latest/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Wouldn't it be funny if this was just a market test/exercise, using actual S3 as a backend, just to see if it gets any traction before building own HW/SW solution?

<comment><USER16> Kind of like how most wasabi in the U.S. isn't really wasabi, it's just horseradish? lol

<comment><USER17> Not just in the US. Real wasabi is very expensive. Even in Japan, unless you're seeing them grate it for you at the table, it's still just green horseradish.

(Source: Posting this from Meguro-ku in Tokyo ;) )

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm surprised the FAQ doesn't answer the question that immediately came to mind: why should I risk my data with an untested startup when the _only_ benefit is claimed performance/price?

Or my second question: wait, doesn't this sound an awful lot like Pied Piper's product from the newest season of Silicon Valley?

<comment><USER19> Exactly. Performance means nothing when the company runs out of funding and goes belly up... along with all your data.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> They're claiming the same 11 9s durability that S3 does. I'd be pretty suspicious of that claim without a track record but it looks like Wasabi's founders come from Carbonite. Bring on the competition, commoditization of fundamental building blocks is great for everyone except people trying to make startup-scale returns on them.

<comment><USER21> Those durability numbers for both Amazon and Wasabi are pure marketing and don't really mean anything even remotely important. Durability of data stored by a single company, even a company like Amazon, is actually very low, you should be scared of how low it really is. You could get kicked out from the service, lose data because of a bug or an operational mistake, be prevented from using the service by your government for political reasons and so on.

<comment><USER22> Do you have any evidence for these claims of low durability? (None of those issues, except for bugs in the service, would count against them, by the way.)

<comment><USER23> I think factors beyond the storage algorithm are pretty important to consider when thinking about storing data that's important to your business. To your specific point though:

1\. Amazon claims 99.999999999% durability of objects over a year.

2\. I store 1EB of data with an object size of 4MB for a year (so 250,000,000,000 objects).

3\. I can expect to lose 250 objects in a year, or 1GB.

Now to my experience:

I have stored in excess of that amount of data in S3. I have lost considerably more data -- solely because of data losses internal to S3 -- that these numbers would suggest. It was a tolerable amount of data loss, I didn't curse Amazon's name or swear vengeance, but it was definitely not 1 gig.

The standard S3 SLA provides credits only based on uptime. There is no mention of durability whatsoever. That tells you that Amazon is not willing to put their money where there mouth is on their 99.999999999% durability claims. The reality is the number is a design target, not an operational guarantee.

<comment><USER24> AFAIK, S3 only provides notification when reduced redundancy objects are lost, not regular objects. How did you detect your data loss?

<comment><USER23> All of my objects used standard redundancy. My recollection is that regardless of object class, you will get a 405 error if you try to fetch an object that has been lost.

I didn't use SNS notifications at the time (which might only work for reduced redundancy).

So that left two options: find out when attempting to fetch the object, or run bookkeeping jobs against the object catalog to periodically spider the data and ferret out any objects that are lost.

The second option may be a tad nicer, but it is also more complex and more expensive and the end result is the same either way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I wonder how this compares to rsync.net, especially with their HN discount and [http://rsync.net/products/attic.html](http://rsync.net/products/attic.html) if you're doing the kind of backups I'd imagine Glacier is used for.

<comment><USER26> After reading about [https://rsync.net](https://rsync.net) for years on this site, I signed up last week. Great service, and almost pain-free. I've only bought 100Gb but that's enough for my virtual machines.

(Completely replaced the use of [https://rsync.io](https://rsync.io) ;)

<comment><USER25> You should make rsync.io redirect to rsync.net with your coupon code and get a bunch of storage :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> They have a gimmick in their pricing: 90-day minimum storage. So for objects that don't have 90-day lifetimes, you can end up paying WAY more than S3.

S3 IA has a 30-day minimum, like Google Nearline, and Google Coldline is 90-day minimum. These make it very hard to predict and control pricing.

Backblaze B2 may not be as high performance, but their pricing is very low AND very predictable. No gimmicks. I've received many HashBackup customer emails mentioning that they use B2 and have never received complaints about their service.

</comment><comment><USER28> > Wasabi storage costs a flat $.0039/GB/Month with a 1 TB minimum usage.

so the only "catch" is $3.90 a month minimum?

<comment><USER29> Not only. There is also minimum 90-day charge for objects. [https://wasabi.com/pricing/pricing-faqs/](https://wasabi.com/pricing/pricing- faqs/)

<comment><USER28> According to that, there is an extra "9" they didn't show, so $3.99 rather than $3.90.

So then if you deleted your 1TB each month, and uploaded new data, you'd be paying 3 times more due to the 90 day minimum charge, so about $12/month in the worst case.

<comment><USER30> That is to be expected for bottom-barrel prices, to make up for the cost of maintenance (GC / compaction / rebalancing / etc of data). They might just wait 90 days before doing the first compaction, or whatever their system does to delete data.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Has anyone here done a migration from S3 to Wasabi, and successfully realized the lower total cost Wasabi is claiming?

</comment><comment><USER32> > Wasabi is built to be 100% AWS S3 bit-compatible (same AWS API constructs > for storage & identity management). No need to change your S3-compatible > application when using Wasabi

I often wonder how this works. With the whole Sun lawsuit with Google over the Java API making a clone of another platforms API sounds dangerous.

I'm curious what HN thinks.

I've wanted to have a "compatibility layer" that mimics my competitors APIs but have been scared of the possible repercussions.

<comment><USER33> Minio also has a S3 "compatibility layer"

see: [https://minio.io/](https://minio.io/) "implements Amazon S3 v4 APIs. Minio also includes client SDKs and a console utility."

<comment><USER34> [http://pithos.io/](http://pithos.io/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Lacking comparison with their closest competitor B2 ($0.005/GB, cheaper outbound at $0.02/GB). Also no information on DC location and zones.

<comment><USER9> They claim to have multiple data centers. It sounds fishy to me. I would like to see some pics / info af their setup before I trust them with 1 byte of my data.

<comment><USER36> My guess is that their data centers look exactly like this

[https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/global- infrastructure/](https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/global-infrastructure/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Storage is cheap on any cloud, the network egress is expensive.

1\. Wasabi: Storage: $.0039/GB/Month Egress: $.04/GB

2\. AWS: Storage: $0.023/GB/Month Egress: $.05-.09/GB (even lower if you're big)

Sending data one outside of AWS costs equivalent of 2-4 months of storage.

<comment><USER38> The benefit of S3 is that traffic is free within the same region. If you're hosting on AWS that alone is going to save you money versus the competitors.

<comment><USER39> A less seen cost is for the various operations.

Regularly pushing lots of small files on S3 can get expensive. $1/200k files ($0.005 per 1k PUT requests).

<comment><USER9> Not to mention the minimum file size charge, which I think was a few kb per file in infrequent access S3.

<comment><USER40> IA is only applicable for items that are 128kb or larger in size. Also Glacier adds 32kb of glacier data to each object as well as 8kb of standard tier storage per object. S3 is really inefficient for huge numbers of small files.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> LeoFS: A stable and scalable S3 clone with NFS support?

That you can host on your own infrastructure

[https://leo-project.net/leofs/](https://leo-project.net/leofs/)

<comment><USER41> Well they edited the title so this isn't as tongue and cheek as it was meant to be. The original title was something like:

"Wasabi - a faster, better clone of S3?"

That's why I see others quote the original in the reply.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Not affiliated, by just found out that's compatible with Arq and when I saw the prices I was stunned.

<comment><USER42> Same here though I'm leaning towards backblaze since there's no minimum.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> 75MB/5 sec benchmark results (using internal AWS network to pull from S3!) sound dubious. You can get 4Gbps+ down from S3 within the same region in my experience, that's 30x faster than these numbers.

</comment><comment><USER44> On the same page on HN there's another Wasabi that's a fire alarm for deaf people.

<comment><USER45> And I'm old enough to remember Wasabi as the proprietary vb-to-php compiler that FogCreek developed for a few years. And I think there was something related to OpenBSD or NetBSD, some company called Wasabi System...?

It's definitely one of the most common codenames in IT, together with Phoenix, Firebird and Panda (and in the enterprise, all greek/roman gods).

<comment><USER46> NetBSD, and also storage related[0], confusingly enough. Wasabi brought journaling (WAPBL[1]) to NetBSD.

[0] [http://www.wasabisystems.com/](http://www.wasabisystems.com/)

[1] [http://netbsd.gw.com/cgi-bin/man-cgi?wapbl++NetBSD- current](http://netbsd.gw.com/cgi-bin/man-cgi?wapbl++NetBSD-current)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> This looks great. Are there any client libraries for access, perhaps similar to AWS's `boto`? Having a hard time finding that on your website ..

<comment><USER48> Since it claims to be "100% bit compatible with Amazon S3", I would assume that you can use boto if you manually configure their endpoints.

<comment><USER47> Would be nice to see a note about that somewhere

<comment><USER49> This is Richard: a product manager at Wasabi. Yes we work with the boto SDK.

you can find all of the tested compatibility our PACT team has done here: [https://wasabi.com/help/interop-results/](https://wasabi.com/help/interop- results/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Depending on your access patterns, Backblaze B2 might be cheaper at $0.005/GB stored and $0.02/GB downloaded.

</comment><comment><USER51> Curious .. where (region) is the data stored?

<comment><USER49> This is Richard: a product manager with Wasabi

Presently our main data centers are in Massachussetts (home sweet home) and Virginia (similar to that of AWS east). Having our data located here has advantages in the present cloud ecosystem that we are excited to roll our in the months to come.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Neat job, keep up the great work! There is also OVH as competitor. Their panel and documentation is not the best but once you integrate, it works like a charm and I guess they are the cheapest object storage service out there in the market: [https://www.ovh.com/us/public-cloud/storage/object- storage/](https://www.ovh.com/us/public-cloud/storage/object-storage/)

<comment><USER36> Why would you say they are the cheapest object storage when it is significantly more than the very service you responded to?

Not to mention b2 and several others that are cheaper.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Worth noting the opportunity cost of not being in S3. Something like Athena won't be yours for the asking. It's been saving my butt lately. Nice to be able to actually see what's in your S3 sometimes :) [http://blog.ratelim.it/blog/log-aggregation-at-scale-for- che...](http://blog.ratelim.it/blog/log-aggregation-at-scale-for-cheap-with- aws-athena-and-kinesis-firehose)

</comment><comment><USER54> Would love to hear from someones perspective whom actually moved current infrastructure over to this provider. Would love a write-up and pros-cons after transitioning.

</comment><comment><USER55> There is also NodeChef object storage. NodeChef charges only by the storage size of your instance. No Data transfer charges. No additional charges for PUT, GET, COPY, or other operations. [https://www.nodechef.com/s3-compatible- object-storage](https://www.nodechef.com/s3-compatible-object-storage)

</comment><comment><USER56> The article states:

"Wasabi's durability is 11 x 9s, the same as Amazon S3. To put that in context, if you stored 1 million 1 GB files in Wasabi, you would expect on average to lose one file every 659,000 years"

Can someone walk me through the math here? I specifically curious about why the size of the file being 1 GB is relevant to the calculation.

<comment><USER57> It doesn't matter. This is marketing fluff. What companies like Amazon do is count how many hard drives would need to simultaneously fail to lose data, calculate the odds of a hard drive losing data, and then multiplying. This gets you to 11 9's.

In practice, this is almost certainly not going to be why you lose data. That will be because of a chain of human errors, or a code bug, or because the user accidentally deleted the data, or because earthquakes destroyed your data centers.

I don't know anything about Wasabi other than what's on their web page, but I half suspect that what they did was look at Amazon's durability guarantee and then write that number down as their durability guarantee.

<comment><USER36> Yes, I think is disingenuous to call it "data" durability. "disk" durability would be more accurate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> I am curious what their strategy is.

Cloud storage by itself (just like delivery) is a commodity, and if you look at the pricing trends per GB, it's a race to the bottom (will be interesting to see which CDN decides to become "free" first).

So, without a suite of offerings a la AWS - how will they make money in this market?

<comment><USER49> This is Richard: a product manager with Wasabi

We agree with you exactly: storage should be a commodity. The goal of making something like Wasabi is to be able to do cloud storage of datasets that were too large to be financially feasible before. Allowing data on the Petabyte and Exabyte scale to be easily accessible between institutions could be revolutionary and we are excited to be on the forefront.

<comment><USER58> Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> Just came here to say I think the design of the website looks great, colors, spacing, type etc.

</comment><comment><USER60> For me, when choosing an object storage service, the most important question is WHERE is my data is stored. If I cannot choose where my data is stored, I won't use the service. Why? Because my clients will ask me the same question for their audits.

</comment><comment><USER61> We just added Wasabi as a destination option in Arq Backup. Seems to do that job well.

</comment><comment><USER62> > 12\. How reliable is Wasabi?

> The Wasabi infrastructure has been built using industry best practices for > redundancy in data center design.

Sounds too generic. Maybe put in something concrete & technical.

</comment><comment><USER63> Isn't Wasabi a programming language from Fog Creek Software?

<comment><USER64> It was an in-house compiler that they're not using anymore. [https://blog.fogcreek.com/killing-off-wasabi- part-1/](https://blog.fogcreek.com/killing-off-wasabi-part-1/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> Does anyone have a suggestion for a cheaper CloudFront, not S3?

Preferably an option that can do S3 upstream, and support for signed requests with expiry is a must.

<comment><USER32> I know this doesn't add value but if you think CloudFront is expensive you should see how much CDNs used to cost before CloudFront came around. The fact it doesn't change you for the bandwidth between S3 and CloudFront is key too.

Try pricing it against Google [https://cloud.google.com/cdn/pricing](https://cloud.google.com/cdn/pricing) and Level3 [http://www.level3.com/en/products/content-delivery- network/](http://www.level3.com/en/products/content-delivery-network/)

As someone mentioned, CloudFlare initial seems cheaper but you give up some stuff like control of your DNS and they can shut you off or start showing CAPTCHAs at any time unless you pay for their higher plans. Which might be worth it, you have to weight the pros and cons.

<comment><USER66> CloudFront is one of the slowest CDNs out there.

CloudFlare is okay as long as you pay $200/month. That's nothing in the CDN world. Amazon wants $600/month just to deploy a SSL cert on CloudFront.

<comment><USER32> > Amazon wants $600/month just to deploy a SSL cert on CloudFront

That's a bit misleading Amazon SSL is free on CloudFront if you are OK with SNI. And almost every is now... browsers without SNI are virtually none. The only browser with any market use that does not support it is IE 8 on Windows XP!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> Am I doing the math wrong or is this $4/mo for me to dump 1TB of copies of my family albums and whatnot into for long term cold storage?

<comment><USER68> Can you make do with storing only 50 GB? That's $0.99/month from Apple. Can you make do with storing only 200 GB? That's $2.99/month from Apple.

No extra charge to get your data out.

The point is that for individuals it might make more sense to consider "friendlier" storage options. These types of services don't seem to be tailored to storing "family albums".

[https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201238](https://support.apple.com/en- us/HT201238)

<comment><USER9> Agreed. But I wouldn't trust Apple with my data; iCloud has lost some of my iWork files and has failed to sync important Apple Notes when changing phones. This was during the start of iCloud, so reliability might be better now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> If I am using Arq, will I have additional costs except '$.0039 per GB per month'?

</comment><comment><USER70> The biggest reason why I use S3 is not price or performance. Competing with them on price or performance is not going to work.

I use S3 because of convenience. Build something more convenient, I'll switch.

<comment><USER36> If it is an S3 API clone, doesn't that make it equally convenient?

</comment></comment><comment><USER71> What payment methods do they accept?

<comment><USER49> This is Richard: a product manager with Wasabi

Presently we accept all credit cards (via stripe of course), and are rolling out invoices for ACH / etc soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> Is there a web UI?

</comment><comment><USER73> BUT WHERE IS THE SUSHI?

</comment><comment><USER57> CTRL+F "availability". 0 results found.</comment>


How this millennial saved $1M by age 30 - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/get-there/wp/2017/03/29/6-money-tips-and-some-mistakes-from-someone-who-saved-1-million-by-age-30/ <comment><USER2> TL;DR: Gambled on the stock market and won. Next up, a millennial who made millions on the lottery.</comment>