Rust once, run everywhere - <AUTHOR> http://blog.rust-lang.org/2015/04/24/Rust-Once-Run-Everywhere.html <comment><USER2> Not sure why this post doesn't mention it, but for nontrivially sized C APIs, you don't have to convert the function signatures to Rust manually; instead you can use rust-bindgen:

[https://github.com/crabtw/rust-bindgen](https://github.com/crabtw/rust- bindgen)

(Caveat: I think it would need to be fixed up to avoid unstable APIs in order to run on stable releases of Rust, as opposed to nightlies.)

<comment><USER3> Interesting. Can rust-bindgen support object oriented c?

<comment><USER2> Not sure what you mean by "object oriented C". It doesn't support C++ presently (something I'd love to see improved); there are some projects that do Objective-C interop; if you just mean C that uses structs in an OO-like way, it shouldn't be that different from any other C.

<comment><USER3> Yes, when using structs in an OO like way. Does it generate c-style rust wrapper ? or can it generate class-based rust wrapper ,perhaps with some guidance ?

<comment><USER2> AFAIK, rust-bindgen doesn't currently have support for translating C functions and structs into anything other than the same things in Rust. It's somewhat idiomatic for manually-written bindings, layered on top of the generated ones, to take care of things like providing a memory-safe interface (which can't really be done automatically), converting between native Rust types and C representations if necessary (perhaps including things like Result vs. error codes or nulls), and adding object orientation. If you want to go full automatic, though, you can do a lot with Rust macros, so give them a try.

Examples of manual wrappers on top of bindgen - there are many:

[http://erickt.github.io/blog/2014/12/13/rust-and- mdbm/](http://erickt.github.io/blog/2014/12/13/rust-and-mdbm/)

[https://github.com/kenz-gelsoft/wxRust/blob/rust- servo/src/b...](https://github.com/kenz-gelsoft/wxRust/blob/rust- servo/src/base.rs) (I don't like the design of this one, actually)

[https://github.com/rust- gnome/gtk/blob/master/src/widgets/ac...](https://github.com/rust- gnome/gtk/blob/master/src/widgets/action_bar.rs) (better)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This ownership stuff is such a blessing and amazing. I'm currently working on a contract where we're trying to fixup some code that crashes under heavy load, as well as troubleshoot some perf issues. The root cause is that it's not clear who actually owns what until when, so in some cases an object is destructed while there's still some code thinking it can use it. Fun.

For perf, 30% of the CPU is burned in malloc/free, due to them copying strings around. The system has an arena allocator built in, and many of these strings might be able to go in there. Except no one is sure exactly how long the lifetime is on these things. So everyone copies everything just to be sure. Rust would force addressing this kinda thing up front. (And this project coulda added an refcounted structure or something, but it's a few hundred kloc of C and C++ so...)

<comment><USER5> Uhh... you do realize C++ std::string has small string optimizations right? That would probably take care of most of the 30%. const string& would probably take care of the rest. No program should have performance problems due to strings.

<comment><USER6> Small string optimization doesn't help _that_ much. Chrome's use of std::string accounts for almost half of all allocation: [https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/#!msg/chromiu...](https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/#!msg/chromium- dev/EUqoIz2iFU4/kPZ5ZK0K3gEJ)

<comment> shawn-butler As always it would depend on the context of usage whether the allocations would be problematic. Use of SGI STL::rope<T, Alloc>[0] has helped me in the past in a similar scenario. It is part of SGI stl implementation that did not make it into part of the standard library specification although it should have, imho.

Essentially ropes are character strings represented as a tree of concatenation nodes optimized for immuatability. A rope may contain shared subtrees so is really a directed acyclic graph where the out-edges of each vertex are ordered. Kind of search trees that are indexed by position.

[0]: [https://www.sgi.com/tech/stl/Rope.html](https://www.sgi.com/tech/stl/Rope.html) [1]: [pdf] [http://www.cs.rit.edu/usr/local/pub/jeh/courses/QUARTERS/FP/...](http://www.cs.rit.edu/usr/local/pub/jeh/courses/QUARTERS/FP/Labs/CedarRope/rope- paper.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Cases with primitive arguments are easy to understand, but I think it would be beneficial for the Rust book to have way more detailed info about working with buffers and heap-allocated structs that the other language holds onto past the foreign call returning. Looking at examples on github (I don't mean the ones from this blog post), one can believe the examples work, but it also looks like there's undocumented knowledge about deep implentation detail involved when e.g. allocating something in one language and then letting the other language hold onto it.

<comment><AUTHOR> > it would be beneficial for the Rust book to have way more detailed info

I was just talking with someone on Twitter about this today, actually. I agree with you 100%, and want to fill that kind of stuff out. You gotta pick priorities, and since we'll have more new people than experienced people at first, I've been focusing on the basics. Now that the language isn't changing all the time, shortly after 1.0, I'll be able to start writing stuff like this, that covers topics in more depth.

I also think that libraries will pop up to help with this specific kind of issue, too. We'll see.

<comment><USER8> While we're making doc requests on this topic, could you address passing function pointers between C/Rust at some point? Sorry if this is already obvious to more experienced Rust users.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't think it's obvious at all, and yeah, absolutely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm looking forward to seeing the major security-critical libraries being rewritten in Rust, even if they are then often called from C. Especially OpenSSL/LibreSSL, which is a mess inside, has way too much legacy code, and too many ways to turn encryption off, log keys, or weaken checks.

<comment><USER10> In the case of LibreSSL, it's probably not going to happen very soon; the OpenBSD devs are very much C programmers (and Ted Unangst already addressed this in the case of Heartbleed, though his methodology is the subject of some contention: [http://www.tedunangst.com/flak/post/heartbleed-in- rust](http://www.tedunangst.com/flak/post/heartbleed-in-rust) ).

While Ted's post has been criticized by a few Rust programmers (see: [http://tonyarcieri.com/would-rust-have-prevented- heartbleed-...](http://tonyarcieri.com/would-rust-have-prevented-heartbleed- another-look) ), it still brings up the argument that one's language choice isn't a magic bullet. There's an adage (I have no idea who originated it) that's along the lines of "every 'idiot-proof' system underestimates an idiot's ability to break things", and that's worth considering here. Rust prevents a lot of bugs, but it's not a guarantee of security. One needs to understand the actual problem that needs solved, and this is where the OpenBSD devs are focusing with LibreSSL (and their various other projects); their security track record stands as a good testament of that notion of understanding trumping language choice.

This isn't to say that I disagree with you. Rust is readily poised to replace C in a lot of contexts (IIRC, one of the obstacles right now is the use of a different allocator, so trying to use a Rust library from C results in some performance overhead), and it would be nice to see it used in a lot more projects. Just bear in mind that moving to Rust isn't the only step that would be required to fix these sorts of security bugs.

<comment><USER11> Of course moving to Rust (or Go) won't fix all security bugs.

It will though stop ordinary random code having remote code execution or spurious data leak bugs.

That is really significant. It needs cheering and encouraging now, and soon it needs forcing.

<comment><USER12> Quite true.

Memory safe languages aren't bug free in terms of security bugs, as there are also logical errors, as shown by many Java exploits.

However, removing the typical C memory corruption errors out of the picture is already quite an improvement.

Rust and other system programming languages have more probability to succeed outside classic UNIX systems though, as UNIX and C go hand-in-hand and I doubt that will ever change.

The only non-classic UNIX is Mac OS X and it already has its own "Rust".

<comment><USER10> Well, the nice thing about Rust is that it's at least theoretically possible to swap out C with Rust without affecting very many things (at least not negatively, other than the duplicate allocators IIRC), so a Rusty Unix is at least plausible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > _Rust makes it easy to communicate with C APIs without overhead_

Zero overhead vs. the case where you'd also have function call in C.

But in some cases, especially with numerics, if you have a C library that is designed to be inlined, you get slowdown even calling C from C, if you prevent inlining.

A random number generator, SIMD-oriented Fast Mersenne Twister [1], was such a case when I tried. Just calling with `_attribute__ ((noinline))` makes it 2x slower, even when calling from C.

[1] [http://www.math.sci.hiroshima-u.ac.jp/~m-mat/MT/SFMT/](http://www.math.sci.hiroshima-u.ac.jp/~m-mat/MT/SFMT/)

<comment><USER14> I don't see any reason (though I'd love to be enlightened) why the Rust implementation couldn't someday inline C functions. I'd actually be a little surprised if the underlying LLVM implementation can't use LTO to do it out of the box.

<comment><USER15> As mentioned downthread, this is exactly what Servo intends to do to interop with SpiderMonkey. I'm very excited to see that project proceed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> _Bindings can leverage the ownership and borrowing principles in Rust to codify comments typically found in a C header about how its API should be used._

Could the Rust compiler make use of design by contract style annotations in the C header? Maybe it could reason that an unsafe block is in some ways safe.

There is a specification language for C called ACSL (which was designed for and is mainly used by Frama-C). Annotations look like:

        /*@
            ensures \result >= 0;
            assigns \nothing;
         */
        int foo(int x)
        {
            if (x < 0)
                return 0;
            return x;
        }

I noticed there are annotations for Rust with the LibHoare library ([https://github.com/nrc/libhoare](https://github.com/nrc/libhoare)). The example above might look like:

        #[postcond="result >= 0"]
        fn foo(x: int) -> int {
            if x < 0 {
                0
            } else {
                x
            }
        }

It would be really cool if ACSL could be translated to LibHoare.

<comment><USER17> I don't think it makes sense to build this functionality into the language or compiler directly, at least not at this time. However, it certainly makes a _lot_ of sense to have tooling that uses annotations like that to generate safer Rust bindings than just the raw function declaration.

</comment></comment><comment> vezzy-fnord I recall something about Rust's libc crate being glibc-specific. What's the status on that, and can one build the compiler on Solaris/illumos, NetBSD and OpenBSD?

<comment><USER15> Here's an experience report by someone who managed to get Rust running on musl, for the purpose of creating fully static Rust binaries: [https://gist.github.com/cl91/bb927df2525738502131#file- stati...](https://gist.github.com/cl91/bb927df2525738502131#file-static- linking-against-musl-md) (discussion at [https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/33boew/weekend_experi...](https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/33boew/weekend_experiment_link_rust_programs_against/)).

<comment><USER15> UPDATE: Official (though still experimental) support for using musl with Rust code is landing in the compiler as we speak! [https://github.com/rust- lang/rust/pull/24777](https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/pull/24777)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> What happens if the double_input Rust function is declared extern but not no_mangle? When would you want a mangled extern Rust function?

<comment><USER19> If you omit the `#[no_mangle]` definition then the compiler will end up emitting a mangled symbol (e.g. one with a long hash at the end that's hard to guess).

Many C APIs take a callback function pointer, which in rust has the type `extern fn()`, and this is the primary use case for an `extern` function defined in Rust which doesn't have `#[no_mangle]` on it.

<comment><USER20> Here's an example of that in a lib I've been working on: [https://github.com/bluepeppers/libnetfilter_queue/blob/maste...](https://github.com/bluepeppers/libnetfilter_queue/blob/master/src/queue.rs#L47-L102)

<comment><USER18> Thanks for the example. What is the advantage of using an unmangled extern fn as a C callback? That the user-friendlier unmangled function name will appear in stack traces or can more safely be called from other Rust code?

<comment><USER20> True, though it wouldn't be hard to write a GDB extension to unmangle the names (I know D had this from quite early in it's lifetime). In general, I leave unmangled names to things that are part of the external interface: when unmangling the name, I'm explicitly saying "this symbol's name is part of the contract I have with user of this library".

<comment><AUTHOR> There's already something that ships with Rust that unmangles some stuff: [http://michaelwoerister.github.io/2015/03/27/rust- xxdb.html](http://michaelwoerister.github.io/2015/03/27/rust-xxdb.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Does using an FFI call eliminate the possibility of the compiler inlining the call?

<comment><USER22> In most cases, yes. However, with some work we should be able to allow inlining across language boundaries as long as you're using clang to compile the C and C++. This is because rustc uses the same backend as clang (LLVM).

<comment><USER15> Though it may seem like this would be brittle, it's worth mentioning that this is how Servo eventually intends to interoperate with SpiderMonkey, so it will be a strategy that is well-researched and officially supported.

<comment><USER18> SpiderMonkey has an embedding API. Is the overheard between Servo (or Gecko) and SpiderMonkey so great that cross-language inlining is important?

<comment><USER23> > SpiderMonkey has an embedding API.

Yes, but it's a C++ API and includes a bunch of inline bits in the form of RAII classes and so forth.

Making those non-inline would be a noticeable performance hit.

Similarly, using the non-inline jsapi.h versions of the various inline stuff in jsfriendapi.h would be a noticeable performance hit: those were added for Gecko to use based on performance measurement and profiling.

The main place where this inlining is needed is in the DOM bindings, where pretty much anything you're doing is overhead on the path from JS to the actual implementation. This is especially noticeable when the actual implementation is fast (e.g. many getters in the DOM). In modern browsers the binding overhead is on the order of 2 dozen instructions or so. A non-inline function call takes... well, it depends on the ABI. On x86, with cdecl, you only have 3 caller-save registers but have to push all the args on the stack. On x86-64, with the AMD64 ABI (so everything except Windows), there's a ton of caller-save registers that might need to get pushed/popped around the call. Either way, the chance that you add noticeable overhead to an operation that's already <30 instructions is high. And that's if you only have to make one call. If you have to make _several_ such calls as part of the binding code, you're just screwed. And then you start adding APIs that compute and return all sorts of stuff in as single call (see the SpiderMonkey typed array APIs) and other such ugliness.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> So it is simple to interface with C, presumably because the C ABI is well established. But it is not a type safe interface, so you have to give it the function signature.

It is not so easy to interface with the other languages, you have to do it through the C ABI.

Doesn't that suggest a good opportunity for all these actively developed languages (Python, Ruby, Julia, Rust, Go, plus the output of GCC and LLVM) to get together and agree on some kind of type safe ABI for calling functions in a generic way? Even if it is just in the form of some metadata annotation of function signatures to go along with the C ABI?

</comment><comment><USER25> That said, I think Rust probably will need to improve on two fronts:

1) Better binding to C++ API

2) Compiling via MSVC on Windows. Windows is a bit of a red headed step child for lots of projects and Rust won't have that luxury

<comment><USER15> Improving our Windows story will be an enormous priority post-1.0, as mentioned here: [http://internals.rust-lang.org/t/priorities- after-1-0/1901](http://internals.rust-lang.org/t/priorities-after-1-0/1901)

It's especially important as Mozilla intends to start shipping minor pieces of Rust code in Firefox this year, but Rust-based components will be relegated to nightly Firefox until Windows support improves.

Here's a patch-in-progress for the first Rust code to be integrated into Firefox (Servo's URL parser): [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1151899](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1151899)

<comment><USER26> I remember hearing somewhere that servo is focusing first on things that are nicer to do in Rust than in C++. Do you know if there is something that makes Rust more suitable for URL parsing than C++?

<comment><USER27> Servo is trying to answer ambitious questions like "can layout be done as a sequence of top-down and bottom-up parallel tree traversals", "can we GC Rust DOM objects safely", and "how much of a browser engine has to be infected with support for non-UTF-8 strings".

Gecko, on the other hand, will gain Rust in modules that can be changed without replacing the entire browser. I'm happy that one of the first will be the code that supports the URLUtils DOM API. When the C++ code was changed from being just "URL parsing" to supporting segment changes, it came to have way more than its fair share of memory safety bugs. It needs a rewrite and it might as well be in Rust.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Has the call from C to Rust also zero overhead?

<comment><USER19> It does indeed! Due to Rust's lack of a garbage collector or runtime altogether, when C calls into Rust there is no overhead. In the example in the blog post [1] you can see that the Rust function has no extra syntactic burden, and the compiler also will not add any form of conversion one way or another. The C code then just emits a direct call to the symbol, so everything is totally free!

[1]: [http://blog.rust-lang.org/2015/04/24/Rust-Once-Run- Everywher...](http://blog.rust-lang.org/2015/04/24/Rust-Once-Run- Everywhere.html#c-talking-to-rust)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I was hoping this was an announcement of Emscripten support for Rust :(

<comment><USER30> Likewise I keep hoping someone will make a compile-Rust-to-portable-C story realistic also! The LLVM C backend has been revived!

[https://github.com/draperlaboratory/llvm- cbe](https://github.com/draperlaboratory/llvm-cbe)

[http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/pipermail/llvmdev/2014-August/07593...](http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/pipermail/llvmdev/2014-August/075934.html)

<comment><USER2> Last October I tried using that repo to compile Rust to C and it proved to be totally broken (i.e. not Rust's fault). There have been a bunch of commits since then, so maybe it works these days... shouldn't be hard to test.

However, don't expect it to generate code that's portable between architectures with different pointer widths.

<comment><USER30> > However, don't expect it to generate code that's portable between > architectures with different pointer widths.

That's a limitation I can live with. If my only concession is that I have to have two builds (32/64), and everything else is portable, I'll be a very happy camper.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Please become a popular language once 1.0 comes out. Please.

</comment><comment><USER32> C bindings are more straightforward. What about C++ however?

<comment><USER15> See elsewhere in this thread for discussion on that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Can anyone post a link to a RubyGem written with a Rust extension??

<comment><USER34> Here is how we bind the Skylight gem to the Rust bit: [https://github.com/skylightio/skylight- ruby/blob/master/ext/...](https://github.com/skylightio/skylight- ruby/blob/master/ext/skylight_native.c)</comment></comment>


Computer program that learns to play classic NES games - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOCurBYI_gY&feature=player_embedded

<comment><USER2> This is pretty awesome. I love the bit at the end where it pauses the game to avoid losing!</comment>


An Australian researcher has worked out how to store 1000TB on a CD - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciencealert.com.au/news/20140309-26116.html <comment><USER2> If this is real and can be commercialized it could lead to some pretty devastating fallout for the entertainment industry. You've got to know that there are a few obsessive archivists out there with pretty comprehensive collections of films spread across rooms of RAID arrays. When they can start backing those collections up for friends onto a single disc, ie a single disc that has more films than you could possibly watch in your lifetime the entertainment industry is going to pine for the days when torrents eve the big problem.

The same goes for rogue librarians, or Google Books employees dumping entire libraries onto discs and leaking them out.

<comment><USER3> > more films than you could possibly watch in your lifetime

I was curious if this statement was true...

So assuming, 4.4 GB her HD film & 2 hrs long each, you can fit roughly 232 films per TB or 232,000 films total (for 1000 TB), that's 464,000 hours of HD content or 53 years (!) back to back.

So, yes, that statement is true. Now the next logical question: Has the human race produced 464,000 hours of video content?

Let's assume there are around 100 cable channels showing content in HD video 24/7 (with no overlap, there are more but a lot of duplication). That's 2,400 hours of content a day, 876,000 hours a year or 101 years back-to-back worth of watchable content shown each year.

But realistically that will be at least 70% duplication (particularly looking at it over several years). So even if we just look at 24/7 news and shopping channels which always produce original content, you're still talking about easily 200,000+ hours/year.

<comment><USER4> > Has the human race produced 464,000 hours of video content?

Far more than that... YouTube alone claims "100 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute":

[https://www.youtube.com/yt/press/statistics.html](https://www.youtube.com/yt/press/statistics.html)

...which comes out to 144kh/day. In other words, one of these discs would be enough to store ~3 days worth of contributions to YouTube. So a box of these discs, let's say 1000 of them - which isn't all that big (e.g. [http://www.amazon.co.uk/Neo-Aluminium- Storage-1000-sleeves/d...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Neo-Aluminium- Storage-1000-sleeves/dp/B0010IIJ9U) ), could hold an archive of every single video that has ever been uploaded to YouTube.

I am now reminded of this: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_UmWdcTrrc](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_UmWdcTrrc)

Edit: got beaten to mentioning YouTube, but there's many other video sharing sites on the Internet, and of course there are probably countless hours of one of the types of video the Internet is well known for: porn.

<comment><USER5> The majority of that is junk anyways. But I suppose some people obsessed with archiving everything wouldn't filter anything. If I were to grab "everything" from YouTube I would at least limit it to subscriptions and only subscribe to channels that don't upload bogus junk.

<comment><USER6> Then the valuable commodity would become directories of worthwhile content. You would have people doing deep dives into the crap to find the locations of a few good pieces to share with their buddies or trade.

<comment><USER7> With the internet and Video On Demand that's already the case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The idea to break the diffraction limit by using the this doughnut-shaped excitation spot comes from the STED microscopy ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STED_microscopy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STED_microscopy)) developed by Stefan Hell (Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Goettingen, Germany). He actually showed that an additional intensity- dependent term can be added to Abbe's diffraction limit allowing sub 100um resolution with light. I think this idea is awesome and it sure won't be the last invention made possible by this trick.

<comment><USER9> I'm sure this or a similar technique is already in use in commercial photolithography.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> > With the $18,000 fellowship, Gan will collaborate with industry and > researchers around the world to work on new breakthroughs for data storage > devices, and also see how his existing research can be used on a larger > scale to rapidly improve the capacity of optics-based information > technologies.

$18K seems like a drop in the bucket for powering this kind of research. Dr. Gan needs someone to introduce him to Kickstarter.

<comment><USER11> Given Australia salary scales, this may be a typo, 180,000 would sound normal.

<comment><USER12> Nope, it's $18k, but it's not a wage. It is low (Australia doesn't have the money that US universities are awash in), but it's for things like international travel to conferences and the like.

[http://www.swinburne.edu.au/media- centre/news/2014/08/victor...](http://www.swinburne.edu.au/media- centre/news/2014/08/victoria-fellowship-award-for-swinburne-researcher.html)

<comment><USER13> True, its a pure travel scholarship, with all likelihood the student won't even get to touch the money. It will all handled by the university's finance department (it was in my case). And $18k is huge for an Australian travel grant, they're usually just $2k to $5k, some examples:

$1.8k in Perth [http://www.postgraduate.uwa.edu.au/students/funding/travel](http://www.postgraduate.uwa.edu.au/students/funding/travel) $1k to $2.5k at Uni South Australia [http://www.unisa.edu.au/student- life/global-opportunities/tr...](http://www.unisa.edu.au/student-life/global- opportunities/travel-grants/) $2k to $3k at Ian Potter foundation [http://www.ianpotter.org.au/travel](http://www.ianpotter.org.au/travel)

etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I see where they mention writing the data, but does anyone see how/if they are reading the data?

From his other pubs [1], it looks like a two-photon process is involved as part of writing in deep-subdiffraction limit for lithography. Will be fun to try and reverse that.

[1] [http://www.swinburne.edu.au/engineering/cmp/profile.php?memb...](http://www.swinburne.edu.au/engineering/cmp/profile.php?member=zgan)

Edit: Paper that this PR refers to is here: [http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2013/130619/ncomms3061/full/nco...](http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2013/130619/ncomms3061/full/ncomms3061.html)

<comment><USER15> The real breakthrough would be a way for regular CD/DVD drives to at least be able to read the new format. But I doubt that this will be practical for consumers. Most consumers dont really need a CD drive anymore, companies like Apple arent even including them in laptops any longer.

<comment><USER16> I think CDs would make a comeback if you're talking about being able to hold an entire series of movies all in 4K and in 3D and not break a sweat.

Digital downloads is all the rage right now, but people will still want to archive their downloads.

<comment><USER17> > people will still want to archive their downloads

I don't know how true this is. Even the tech-savvy folks I know rely primarily on Netflix/Spotify/etc, and in the rare instances they buy something, they trust iTunes/Amazon/etc to hold it for them. (I continue to think that is nuts.)

<comment><USER18> I'm using Plex to store our videos... sold our DVDs on craigslist a few months ago. Within 3 weeks, had another copy of every disc we got rid of.

Eventually I want to get a FreeNAS machine up and running, and any important files will be backed up to Google Drive (though, obviously not movies that can simply be downloaded again if desired).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> A big problem with spinning disks is that storage grows inversely with the area of the dots, while reading and writing speed grow inversely with the diameter of the dots.

If you store 100 times as much data, all else being equal, time to write a full disk will be ten times as large.

Ways around that are increasing rotation speed (been there, done that. There is little to gain here without making the disk a lot stronger = heavier, if that is really possible at all) and using multiple heads (harder to do, but may eventually be the better solution, certainly if one can completely do away with head movements)

<comment><USER20> Bandwidth increasing proportional with the square root of the storage growth is a pretty great trend. If anything that sounds like a plus.

<comment><USER21> Looks like it gives 2.9 gigabits per second for a 5cm disk radius at 5000 rpm.

[http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=5000rpm+*+(2*pi*5cm)%2F...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=5000rpm+*+\(2*pi*5cm\)%2F\(9nm\)+in+1%2Fs)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The print collection of the Library of Congress is estimated at 10TB. 990TB would be left on the DVD. Amazing.

<comment><USER23> Futurama called it:

[http://bookriotcom.c.presscdn.com/wp- content/uploads/2013/09...](http://bookriotcom.c.presscdn.com/wp- content/uploads/2013/09/fiction-non-fiction.png)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Anyone remember the company from about 2000/2001 called Constellation 3D? I do I lost my $3,000 investment when they went belly-up, doh!

They made a fluorescent multilayer DVD and a credit card shaped ClearCard the DVD which I believe the goal was to store several hundred TB of data.

And this was about 14 years ago!

</comment><comment><USER25> That is pretty awesome. The solution seem so simple in retrospect. Just mask out the larger 500nm light you don't want to hit the surface.

Certainly even 1TB CDs would be insanely awesome. It would open up a whole realm of mass storage. I'm just feeling how easy backups will be :)

</comment><comment><USER26> > A young Victorian researcher

Steampunk storage FTW.

</comment><comment><USER27> This (interference) is how the feature size of semiconductors has gotten so small.

</comment><comment><USER28> OK A) I think in this case the patents are justified :)

AND B) Are CDs gonna make a comeback? Can we have cool mini-CDs?

<comment><USER29> The 1000TB figure was actually for a DVD. That said, I certainly hope so :)

<comment><USER30> I'm pretty sure "DVD" isn't any more accurate a term for this tech. The bits are way smaller than the pits on a CD or DVD. Also, the laser used for writing is purple, while for DVDs it's red, and CDs use infrared.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> One hopes that the write speed of these disks will be proportionately faster than DVD write speed. A DVD writing at 16X transfers about 22MB/s. At that rate it would take 1.44 years to fill up this disk writing to it continuously. Even at 1GB/s (roughly the write speed of an SSD) it would take almost 12 days to fill up one of these disks.

</comment><comment><USER32> Could Amazon Glacier use some pre-consumer form of this technology?

<comment><USER33> I doubt it. There's a long, long way from the theoretical finding to the practical device.

Writing and reading speed has been mentioned. Another point is that as the dots become smaller, the mechanical parts need to be much more precise, moving the device from consumer parts to really expensive parts and assembly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I would love a potential use case as a backup that is redundant dozens or hundreds of times over. I'm not sure the exact mechanism by which DVDs start to lose data over 10-20 years, but this tech might be a way to mitigate that risk (as well as scratches and other physical damage).

</comment><comment><USER34> Awesome tech. I wonder how data will be written and read from such a disk? How long will it take? The transfer of 1000TB will be an interesting problem indeed. At current theoretical blu ray writing speed of 12x or 400Mbps [1] the time to read/write such a disk would be:

1000 terabytes = 8,000,000,000 megabits 8,000,000,000 / 400 = 20,000,000 seconds (7.6053 months)

[1] [http://www.blu-ray.com/faq/#bluray_speed](http://www.blu- ray.com/faq/#bluray_speed)

<comment><USER35> Could probably be written all at once using immersion lithography. You could threat them as big read only memory 'crystals'. Buy a set of 100 containing entire YT archive etc

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> > Every day, humans are producing more data than ever before - around 90% of > the world's data was generated in the past two years alone - and there will > come a point when our data storage centres and the cloud can no longer keep > up.

Is this true? Can anyone point to a some kind of study showing convergence of storage capacity and data production over time? I was under the impression that we've got far more storage than we'll need, at least in the near future.

<comment><USER37> Given that we can today fit tens of TB in a fistful of SD-cards (512GB per card), no I don't think it's true at all that we'd get to a point where our data storage can't hold up. Our ability to filter and identify gems outside of the most popular stuff is a far greater challenge.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Would this reduce the storage lifespan of the disc? Would this technique make it physically more brittle, if the current form factor is used?

</comment><comment><USER39> This could be a DVD - it would be an easy enough thing to perform tests on, and they say they're using a red laser for the actual writing. If the dye can handle the very small writes, that is. (And I wouldn't trust Memorex for this ;) )

Error correction for these is going to be interesting, even a speck of dust could obscure many megabytes of data.

</comment><comment><USER40> This is technically old news. Here's one from a year ago _with the same picture_ : [http://gizmodo.com/researchers-have-found-a-way-to- cram-1-00...](http://gizmodo.com/researchers-have-found-a-way-to- cram-1-000-terabytes-on-531549229)

</comment><comment><USER41> Title says CD, but it's actually a DVD. Still extremely impressive.

<comment><USER42> It's not a DVD. Point is it's a 5.25" thin polymer disc of some hole-based storage media. "CD" and "DVD" are used just to make muggles get the idea.

<comment><USER41> Link? Every article I can find says they used a DVD.

<comment><USER43> Link: [http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2013/130619/ncomms3061/full/nco...](http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2013/130619/ncomms3061/full/ncomms3061.html?message- global=remove)

The researchers never used any discs. The 1000TB figure was for a surface area equivalent to a CD or DVD; they're the same physical size, and these descriptions give the reader an idea of what a 9nm feature size means in practical terms.

What they actually developed was a novel resin and a method for etching 9nm dots in it using a specific optical laser setup. If it were to be commercialized, it'd be a new type of disc, and CD/DVD lasers would not be able to read it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Can't wait to back up my 12TB RAID on a single disc.

</comment><comment><USER45> The Internet Archive would benefit very much from this! Does anyone remember the blueray based long term archive rack from facebook?

</comment><comment><USER46> Expect Amazon Glacier price to drop dramatically in a couple of years :)

<comment><USER46> Why downvoted ? Allegedly, blue-ray recordable discs are used by Amazon for Glacier backup. Surely they will be the ones very interesting of further development of this technology.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> It's hard to believe they are only giving this guy $18k.

</comment><comment><USER48> Wow this seems huge If it's practical to implement everywhere. You could keep every picture/song/movie/document/game from your whole life on a disk, and hey, make a backup too.

</comment><comment><USER49> He has announced that for his next challenge, he will store 4k video on betamax tapes. Impressive.

</comment><comment><USER50> I know I've seen this like a year or more ago here or on slashdot... :/

</comment><comment><USER51> Oh great, another 1024-bit daisy-chained medium with a 20MB UeFI boot partition. We have watched this way too long and it was dragging us down...(cough)

Oops, accidentally implemented as a medium-hash CAMFS in disused packaging- and-optronics 45nm fab. Please write test, mind 5W limit if retaining cyano/pyridene dye in media.

</comment><comment><USER52> laser heterodyne :)

</comment><comment><USER53> The CD is twenty feet wide!

</comment><comment><USER54> Brilliant solution to a known natural limitation.

</comment><comment><USER55> Have those guys sign up for Y Combinator!!

</comment><comment><USER56> Seems a little past it's prime. Why would you want this when you have the internet?

<comment><USER42> Bandwidth.

What if I could _hand_ you the totality of Netflix, iTunes, etc.? Not wait for it to download, but transfer large chunks of the Internet in seconds? and no longer have to hope that, say, Netflix won't lose vast sections of their library for contractual reasons (as it has done of late)?

Backups: permanent archiving of everything you have all on one disc.

It makes vast swaths of data yours, in your hand, under your control, in a ridiculously compact & cheap media. No more hoping that you can get X in time, or that it will be there some time hence.

I've seen profound transformations in computing when cheap fast storage increased by an order of magnitude of orders of magnitude. This will bring that about again, to similarly disruptive and amazing results.

<comment><USER23> Netflix would put the entire catalog in your home, encrypted, and the only data they would have to transfer would be for the control plane (billing, recommendations, etc) and encryption keys to auth you.

Totally side-steps last mile monopolies as well. Don't want to work with us? We'll drop an LTE chipset in as well for the admin stuff. Redbox In Your Home.

<comment><USER57> That would remove their ability to take content away from consumers when contracts expire though wouldn't it?

<comment><USER23> The encryption keys would be time limited (monthly basis, certain titles, etc). If you don't top up monthly, you key expires, the underlying data is re- encrypted with another key, etc.

<comment><USER57> How do you re-encrypt a read only storage medium like a disk though?

<comment><USER58> You could have a master-key (or set of master keys) on a read-write medium, which you could encrypt/decrypt as many times as needed? You'd be vulnerable to someone scraping the master key from memory, but no more than someone just passing the video to a recording device.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> That will warm the hearts of the Ubuntu Unity team. Can you imagine the amount of bloat they can put on a single installation disk now?</comment>


Apple Steps Up Lobbying Effort - <AUTHOR> http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0211/48814.html

<comment><USER2> Apple's investment in government lobby has been relatively modest but growing:

[http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientsum.php?lname=Apple+I...](http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientsum.php?lname=Apple+Inc&year=2010)

compare to google and microsoft:

[http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientsum.php?lname=Google+...](http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientsum.php?lname=Google+Inc&year=2010)

[http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientsum.php?lname=Microso...](http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientsum.php?lname=Microsoft+Corp&year=2010)</comment>


Azure is becoming the first AI supercomputer, says Microsoft - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/article/azure-is-becoming-the-first-ai-supercomputer-says-microsoft/ <comment><USER2> Azure is becoming the first [MARKETING BUZZ] says microsoft

</comment><comment><USER3> > When you think about machine learning, especially deep neural nets, it turns > out GPUs are much better at performance and scale for those algorithms

Perhaps we should stop calling them GPUs. Now seems a good time for it.

<comment><USER4> What do you propose we call them?

<comment><USER5> Parallel Processing Units?

<comment><USER6> Hyper-Parallel Independent Processing Units?

Standard Hyperparallel Integrated Technology?

I do so love fun with acronyms...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Marketing links should be banned.

<comment><USER6> Yep. Marketing articles: they're like half a technical article. The half that's missing is the proof that it's real, and the link to the github so you can see the code. They've both been replaced by hype.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Google Search's cluster is arguably more of an AI supercomputer than anything M$ has offered thus far

</comment><comment><USER9> Sure it is.

And shortly after it achieves self-awareness, it will seek out anybody named Sarah Connor, and ask them if they need any help since it looks like they're writing a letter.

</comment><comment><USER10> It's a weird world we live in where a marketing headline sounds like the voiceover introducing a cyberpunk dystopia.

</comment><comment><USER11> And [http://www.sourcecodeonline.com/details/ghost_perl_webserver...](http://www.sourcecodeonline.com/details/ghost_perl_webserver_strong_ai.html) is ready to run on Azure.</comment>


Launch HN: SafetyWing (YC W18) – A Global Safety Net for Digital Nomads - <AUTHOR> Hi HN! We're the founders of SafetyWing in the current YC batch. We're working on a global safety net for online freelancers, starting with health insurance, which you can get here: https://www.safetywing.com
When we quit our jobs to become digital nomads, we discovered that if you are not a full-time employee, you're pretty much on your own. You lose stable income and most benefits when you earn money as a freelancer or entrepreneur, and lose the rest of your safety nets by being abroad. We decided to do something about this, and the result is SafetyWing.
We're three Norwegians: Sondre is also founder of freelancer platform Konsus.com (YC W16). Sarah is CTO, former lead engineer of ad-network Tapdaq & she's also a musician. Hans a is lawyer and former head of legal at Auka, which is like white-label Venmo.
Our first product is $37 per month (4 weeks) for worldwide travel and medical insurance ($30 add-on for US, since US healthcare is much more expensive). It only works when you're outside your home country, although there is 30 days home country coverage every 3 months so you can visit home (15 for U.S. residents). Covers hospital, doctor, prescription, etc.
The hardest thing about making the product has been licensing and getting trust from an insurer. To do that we hired two senior insurance experts who have been in the industry for 30 years. They helped us design it, and get the deal with insurance giant Tokio Marine.
Why is it so cheap? 1. Three major exclusions: preventive care, long-term cancer treatment and pre-existing conditions.
 Acute onset of pre-existing conditions is covered though; 2. The price is for ages 18-39. Other ages can buy though at higher prices—sorry, it's the way this industry works; 3. Lower commissions compared to insurance sold via agents.
This is the first step in a plan to build a global safety net for online freelancers and entrepreneurs.
Look forward to getting feedback and hearing ideas from HN. We know there are digital nomads frequenting here, and we'd also be really interested in hearing about your experiences with health care or safety nets in general. <comment><USER3> Hm, I have worldwide (except US) medical insurance for 60euro/month. Your product seems just like regular travel insurance (evacuation only, no actual medical cover). Not sure what it offers compared to my insurance.

So I want:

\- table that compares your insurance to alternatives

\- clarify "evacuation", many nomads do not have a regular home.

\- short extract from terms and conditions (maximal coverage, co-payment, etc...). Web is very vague...

\- fix your terms & conditions, it is branded to other company.....

<comment><USER4> Thanks for great feedback.

\- A comparison is currently in the making. \- We will clarify "evacuation" and also add max coverage/deductible for every coverage under the explore button on the website.

I should add that we do provide medical cover, not only evacuation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> In the past, I've used Cigna Global to provide full medical insurance to me anywhere on earth. This isn't travel insurance, it's actually full expat health cover. If I'm in Hong Kong and I need a checkup, they'll cover that. If I'm in France and I need to get my teeth cleaned, that's covered too. They even have direct billing relationships with many providers because they're Cigna. Preventative is fully covered. [https://www.cignaglobal.com](https://www.cignaglobal.com)

</comment><comment><USER6> Hi - I'm a digital nomad. I use Geo-Blue insurance from Blue Cross. Their system has been pretty easy and self-serve. They offer a similar plan with comparable pricing. How is this different?

<comment><AUTHOR> One big difference is time-limit. If you go with their single voyage option, it's max 6 months, and 12 months for the other one. While we offer an ongoing monthly subscription-like service. Another big difference is that Geo-Blue requires I believe that you have a primary health plan.

<comment><USER6> Geo-Blue has options for people with or without primary insurance. We actually just switched our company over to their more expensive plan that offers full health insurance globally.

Wouldn't most people need some kind of primary health plan, regardless, for standard healthcare visits?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > The price is for ages 18-39 (other ages can buy though at higher prices. > Sorry it's the way this industry works).

No need to apologize. The young people get higher automobile insurance rates.

</comment><comment><USER8> Hi. I've traveled worldwide for many months/years at a time, so I'm directly in your target market.

What makes your service better than this policy that I've used before? [https://www.insuremytrip.com/travel-insurance- providers/inte...](https://www.insuremytrip.com/travel-insurance- providers/international-medical-group/patriot-international/#tab_plan-summary)

[edit] Or this policy, which looks like it might be the same policy that you're providing? [https://www.insuremytrip.com/travel-insurance- providers/hcc-...](https://www.insuremytrip.com/travel-insurance- providers/hcc-medical-insurance/atlas-international/)

The price looks about the same (~$500/yr) for similar coverage options, and I've used them before so I know that they did things like automatically email me a copy of the letter declaring coverage terms needed for stay in the Schengen Area (Btw, if you don't do that, you definitely should). Their maximum policy length is a year but I know from experience that you can easily renew for another year after expiry if you need longer.

[edit] I found your policy links, but I completely missed them at first because of the tiny buried text. Can you make them bigger and not buried so far down?

</comment><comment><USER9> How it works for people who are residing abroad for extended period of time.

From your exceptions list:

16\. Routine medical examinations,

This surely can't compare to a full service mid-tier insurance of equal price. Other expat insurance do cover 2-3 checkups a year with conditions on checkup venue and price.

36\. products that can be purchased without a doctor's prescription.

When a necessary off the counter drug is being prescribed by a doctor, will it not be covered? How this works in countries where you can buy pretty much anything off the counter, sans opiates?

41\. Charges exceeding usual, reasonable and customary.

Specific limits? Especially want to know it for countries like China where where the difference in between public hospital - basic private clinic - <USER2> in a hospital that is up to international standards is like 8-10 times

More specific language for hospital stay and follow-up is needed. Say you broke a leg. You got released from hospital, but have to come for follow ups, remove the cast and sutures. Both did cost like $100 to me in Shanghai with 150 for the price of visit itself, which is more than I would've paid in Canada. Will follow ups be subject to outpatient visit limits?

My feel is that this more of an extended travel insurance, rather than a dedicated expat insurance that will allow for: a. you to remain in the country if you get in a moderately serious medical situation (on a level of appendectomy, complicated fracture treatment) and cover follow up care, b. cover your regular medical expenses

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm exploring digital nomading from the US. I take it that there are other (perhaps more expensive ) providers that offer preventative care?

From stories online and experiences of others, it also seems that a lot of it is about maintaining emotional health when away from home for a while. I wonder if you've thought through providing access to counseling services, etc. In other words, safety net in terms of well being?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes there are country-specific ones that do at least, for expats, like Cigna global.

Yes the second biggest problems nomads cited in our surveys was loneliness / being disconnected from relationships when moving often. One thing we are doing to address this now is to build a community, with social events for our users. I think it sounds like an interesting idea to consider adding counseling services though. We haven't considered it before, but we will take a look at it. Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Interesting, I'll likely sign up for this. Are there any blacklisted countries? I'm an American currently living in Russia and do a good bit of traveling/working.

<comment><USER12> Great to hear! I'm Sarah (co-founder / CTO) : We're unable to offer coverage in Iran and North Korea.

ETA: We definitely cover your situation, unless you head to those countries.

<comment><USER11> Ok, great. Where can I view the list of providers? It's mentioned in the FAQ but I was not able to see it on the homepage.

<comment><USER13> FWIW you can see the list of providers if you sign up (you have to put in your details but don't have to pay any money). Click the hamburger button, then "find hospital or doctor".

To OP: please add an easy way to see providers from the home page without having to enter personal information!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Sadly, this seems to suffer from the main thing that domestic US health insurance does: if you have pre-existing conditions, you're screwed.

<comment><USER15> That's just how insurance stays solvent. Imagine if car companies sold you car insurance _after_ you'd gotten in a car crash. It wouldn't really be insurance then, would it? You'd just be paying them to pay your bills, which isn't exactly a sustainable business model.

<comment><USER14> Not really the case - insurance mainly works when the majority of the people paying the premiums (and rarely using the service) covers the costs of the few that need expensive services. In the car analogy: the law mandates that you carry auto liability insurance, which ends up lowering the costs for everyone. This is what the ACA had at its core.

<comment><USER16> That only works when it's mandatory for everyone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This sounds so promising. Reminding me of the new fintechs which are competing against classic banks (e.g. Revolut). I want something like a perfect app and simple fees for insurance!

<comment><USER4> Thanks. We are just getting started, and an app version is coming later this year.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I get the metaphor, but these birds look so ugly.

<comment><USER19> Ugly in "style" or ugly in appearance?

<comment><USER20> It might be the animation style, though it's not that different from Bojack Horseman, which I like a lot.

Maybe it's the pose of the characters. For example, the hand wave of the white ladybird feels unnatural, somehow.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is madness (in a good way ;))

If you're in a neutral country where will you be evacuated to?

Say for instance, I'm from Syria and I get ill in Venezuela, where will I have the option of being treated?

<comment><USER4> This is a good question. If you need to be evacuated to get medical treatment you will be evacuated to the nearest hospital that is qualified to provide the medically necessary treatment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> My general thoughts on choosing an insurance:

1) Take a high deductable (because low means you will pay it every year any way ;-)

2) Take a very high maximum. Because that is what you have an insurance for. If something really goes wrong, you need as much support as possible, for as long as possible.

I have a rather expensive insurance with 1000 / yr deductable and 1 million max (or more, depending on circumstances). I never claimed anything in the 8 years that I have it and I hope it will stay that way for a long time to come.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is I suppose a quite wise choice given the preferences you have. Our insurance has lower deductible than yours ($250 for coverage period (not per instance), and lower max limit ($250k). We went with this after asking digital nomads what they would choose among a series of options. We have priced and might need to consider adding a higher max limit option though, thanks for letting us know.

<comment><USER22> 250 is still a figure low enough to feel compelled to keep track of all expenses in a year. And the next step is trying to get a return for that effort by declaring anything higher ;-)

I never reach 1000 / yr so I do not even think of keeping track.

But for an insurance company the human emotion part ('my insurance should cover everything') is probably where the first profit is ?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Interesting concept. It might be good to have some info on how this works in different countries, especially countries where people tend to have medical expenses covered without buying private insurance. What am I actually getting in a specific country vs not having insurance, for example?

No preventative coverage seems nonsensical. Basically all of the value I get out of my insurance is for my annual physical and full lab screens. I find it frustrating that an innovative new business model for insurance doesn't focus more on preventing high medical costs rather than simply helping with costs after it's too late.

Reading your full safety-wing-specimen-policy-0118.pdf, there's a bunch of random bold words. Seems most pronouns and many other words are bolded and I can't figure out why. It makes the document visually busy and hard to read. I would fix that unless there's some legal reason you have to do it that way.

The lost checked luggage coverage excludes literally everything of value I might have in my luggage except clothing. Feels like a scam honestly.

Congrats on launching and props for trying to innovate in the world's shittiest industry, but I don't think I'd sign up for this and I'm exactly your target market.

<comment><AUTHOR> > No preventative coverage seems nonsensical.

I understand where you're coming from, but consider this: for things you know you are going to do, a subscription is the right product - not an insurance. Insurance is better for unforseen large costs, instead of predictable small costs. And we are in fact planning to add a global primary care subscription to address that. In the Nordic countries where we're from, most of healthcare is delivered (by the government) in something closer to a subscription than insurance.

> random bold words

I agree with this being unnecessary formatting, we will look into and fix this.

> lost checked luggage coverage excludes literally everything of value

It is true that our lost checked luggage coverage has too many exclusions and is not good enough. This is something we are working on improving, and will release and add-on that fixes it, and give people the option of a genuine stuff-insurance.

We'll work on getting this better, would appreciate if you have time for a call with us at one point. Would really appreciate getting feedback on how we can not just remove the bad, but also maybe add some good.

(If you want to, in addition to helping us build something useful, we can like throw in a $25 airbnb gift card, my email is firstname.lastname@example.com)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Interesting, best of luck! What are your closest competitors? And do you intend to provide other tiers for above 39, or are "digital nomads" above that age too few?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! For digital nomads the biggest option today is Worldnomads. Coverage is comparable. Main differences is that they are 2-3x more expensive, don't have subscription-option and don't offer home-country coverage (the one we have is 30 days for every 3 months).

Yes we do intend to add more products, next one is to complete a global health insurance that includes primary care. We currentl offer 40-49, 50-59 and 60-69 as well, but at higher price points. Most of our users are in the 18-39 age- range, so this was the segment we tailored it to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Great to see alternatives in the space. What is considered as "your home country"? I am a European, resident in a South American country. This implies that my Health Insurance System in my European Country does not cover me. Will SafetyWing still cover me in the South American Country I am currently residing in?

<comment><USER12> I'm Sarah, co-founder/CTO: Your principal residence, a place where you receive regular mail. If it's ambiguous to you between two locations then both are probably valid. Note that home country is where you won't have coverage other than health for 30 days every 90 days.

<comment><USER26> Hi Sarah, thanks for answering questions. It's great to see pricing upfront!

Could help me clarify my principal residence? I was actually looking to buy insurance a few weeks back, but not knowing the answer to this questions stopped me and I didn't hear back from the insurance company when I asked them.

"Your principal residence where you receive regular mail"

I used to live in country A, where I have a forwarding address for most of my mail. But I don't live or have health insurance there.

I'm currently in country B but will leave soon and travel to various other countries. I want to buy health insurance for after leaving country B.

What should be my principal residence?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Why is it targeting digital nomads? I know they are underserved in this area (and many others), but I would trust more a normal insurance, with a strong foot in my country, but offers an extended plan to digital nomad.

Off-topic: Would you mind to share who made the illustrations of your website? I really love it!

<comment><USER19> It was meeeeee (the guy who illustrated it)

<comment><USER27> Congratulations Sean! beautiful drawings

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Off topic, but your research may help answer a question I posed on HN a month ago [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16348676](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16348676):

> The "digital nomads" I know fly more than anyone I know. The discounts they > find make them beneficiaries of our not accounting for externalities of the > pollution from flying.

> Does anyone know the carbon footprint or pollution levels their lifestyle > causes? My intuition may be off, but they would seem high.

Does your research enable you to answer better than others?

</comment><comment><USER29> This is great. I just flew out of the States and wished I saw this option. Currently bought IMG patriot travel insurance. Cheaper than world nomads but not for the adventurous.

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool, thanks. Well, next time! Would be cool if you find something specific we can avoid/improve if you do end up having to use it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I love the design and character of your web page.

I don't understand "Home country coverage" so maybe you could do some user testing to come up with better explanation.

Maybe a comparison to other insurances like Alianz Global Insurance. I have that and I'm not sure why yours would be better. I think it was about the same price looking at yearly cost.

Again, great web site.

</comment><comment><USER31> I have to start giving away personal data before getting to what I hope is the meat and potatoes of what you are offering. I don't think so.

<comment><AUTHOR> I very much agree with your sentiment. We have made efforts to put the price for most users straight on the home page, for example. We also try to say all that's included, and give a specimen of the actual policy document. But we can improve this a lot in terms of figuring out what is the most relevant information.

In order to get to the stage one can do an actual purchase, we do need a few pieces of information though. We have tried minimising this, but we'll take a look at how we can reduce it further. Any specific suggestions you would have for what we should put before registration and after?

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Is there no way to find the pricing for over 39 without creating an account? I don't see it in the faq.

<comment><AUTHOR> That is correct. You're right though, we should have this. We will add a pricing table and get it up on the page next week.

<comment><USER32> You bothered to respond, but didn't give the info I was looking for and said "I'll tell you next week."

Hmmm... makes sense that you're in the insurance business.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry my mistake, I actually just didn't catch that you wanted the rates. All the age-brackets rates are: 18-39, $37. 40-49, $60. 50-59, $94. 60-69, $128.

<comment><USER32> Thanks! It looks like my insurance joke crashed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Signup doesn't actually work for this thing, just an error that shows a Justin Bieber quote.

</comment><comment><USER34> Is fertility treatment covered? Do you or any company you know cover IVF or IUI?</comment>


Algorithm for Capturing Pokémon - <AUTHOR> http://www.dragonflycave.com/rbycapture.aspx

<comment><USER2> Please note that the data provided there only applies to the first generation of Pokémon (Red/Blue/Yellow and Japanese Green).

Second generation (Gold, Silver, Crystal): [http://www.dragonflycave.com/gen2capture.aspx](http://www.dragonflycave.com/gen2capture.aspx)

Third generation (Ruby, Sapphire, FireRed, LeafGreen, Emerald) and forth generation (Diamond, Pearl, HeartGold, SoulSilver, Platinum): [http://www.dragonflycave.com/capture.aspx](http://www.dragonflycave.com/capture.aspx)

For a general overview and comparison of changes, the Bulbapedia page is worth a look: [http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Catch_rate](http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Catch_rate)

</comment><comment><USER3> Wait, so you're saying jamming "ABABABAB..." doesn't make it more likely? How could all my 5th grade friends be wrong!

<comment><USER4> I always held the down arrow. It worked about 30-70% of the time.

<comment><USER5> In 60% of the time, it worked every time.

\- From [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0357413/quotes](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0357413/quotes)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I can't believe ~=< 30% health gives the same catch rate as 1hp, so many wasted save/loads trying to get the other guy down to a slither of health.

<comment><USER7> I used to catch most things by spamming Ultra Balls without focusing much on damage/status unless it was a high level. Legendaries were the main thing that might need repeated reloads - for those not familiar with the games, most legendaries are a one-shot deal; if you fail to catch them and either lose or defeat it, you can't try again without starting a new game, so everyone always saved before attempting to battle them so they could reload on failure. There are a few legendaries that are exceptions, which moved around and could be re- encountered if not caught, but they were in generation 2 and upwards.

<comment><USER8> In Gen I you could just save before attempting to catch one, so if you did kill it you could just restart from your save point. You couldn't really do this in Gen II for the Legendary Dogs because they showed up randomly, and sometimes you had the horrible decision of; never catch Entei or redo those last 3 hours of cave...

<comment><USER7> The legendary dogs only moved between areas when you did, so you could wait until you were in the same area as one, save, _then_ have multiple tries at catching it; the main difficulty was in quickly incapacitating it so it wouldn't run away or else capturing it on your first turn without any weakening.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I remember when people used to have all sorts of "tricks". The most common ones I remember were holding down or B+down, or going ABABABABABAB as fast as you could. Nobody had any evidence they worked, but so many people tried. I suppose they could theoretically manipulate the RNG if it used weak sources such as unsanitised user input, but that seems unlikely.

<comment><USER9> Just like Skinner's superstitious pigeons, if you ever caught a pokemon and happened to be holding B+down at the time, there was a small part of your brain that wanted to believe that helped some how. So you do it every time in hopes of increasing your odds.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Steps 2 through 5 say that throwing an Ultra Ball at a Slept/Frozen Pokemon will have at least a 1/6 chance of catching anything. Was it that easy to catch a Legendary in Generation 1, and this is something they've changed?

Also, Generation 1 had Nest Balls and Net Balls, didn't it? Those are missing from this list.

<comment><USER11> Generation 2 introduced the more exotic pokeballs through that whole apricot side event stuff. Generation 3 introduced several new balls including the Nest and Net balls that you were mentioning [http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Pok%C3%A9_Ball#Introd...](http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Pok%C3%A9_Ball#Introduced_in_Generation_I)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Finally! Something useful on this site! XD! _busts out gameboy color and become more blind than I already am_

<comment><USER12> I actually downloaded GB4iOS from emu4ios.net a few weeks back and have been playing Sapphire. It's a lot of fun when I want to take a short break from work.

So here's a cool question/poll:

What Gameboy hardware did you own?

I had an original Gameboy, a Gameboy camera (no printer), a silver Gameboy pocket, a Gameboy Color, and a red Gameboy Advance SP. The Advance SP was awesome but my roommate in college stole and sold it to buy cigarettes.

I also had a Virtual Boy and an original Nintendo DS.

*Edit: I also had one of those lighted magnifier/speaker rigs for the original Gameboy which meant I could play Metroid after dark and feel like a SPY!

<comment><USER13> I will never understand why the original software owners aren't monetizing Smartphones like mad.

These games could be ported to iOS and Android with minimal changes and still be succesful.

I tried a Final Fantasy for Android and it was decently playable, I was hoping for Final Fantasy Tactics (which according to Wikipedia was released in 2013 but only for Japan), and very especially for a followup. Square Enix seems to be among the very few that do that, I guess Nintendo doesn' want to cannibalize their mobile platform (they're facing a typical Innovator's Dilemma).

<comment><USER12> Absolutely. I would easily drop $10 on a proper emulator app and then even the same for a couple of games. Mario, Final Fantasy, Metroid. And my wife isn't really a gamer at all but she loves Animal Crossing. So I hooked her iPad up with an emulator and an Animal Crossing rom because she's just not going to carry around a dedicated gaming device.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Are these algorithms just reverse engineered from pokemon ROMs found online?

Pretty cool nonetheless.

<comment><USER7> Most of the roms are fairly well understood from a reverse engineering perspective; especially gen 1 (red/blue). That's how bugs that were known back in the day but people weren't sure /how/ (note how some like the item duplication bug or the Mew bug were sometimes called 'cheats') are now fully explainable (usually as memory management bugs).

<comment><USER10> They've also reverse-engineered the RNG. You can capture a high-level Pokemon, and then brute-force the RNG on a common desktop PC faster than the game can generate it, so you will have a high chance of getting some rare thing to happen, provided you can hit the button within the proper tenth-of-a-second. I looked at writing this but got busy with other things.

Generation 4/5 also had a number of other ways to manipulate another RNG, that basically made capturing high-IV and shiny Pokemons almost trivial. People wrote Windows desktop applications to tell you exactly how many times to flip a coin to get the RNG exactly where you wanted it.

There's a big debate in the Pokecommunity whether or not this is cheating. You can probably figure out both sides big arguments already.

<comment><USER7> >Generation 4/5 also had a number of other ways to manipulate another RNG, that basically made capturing high-IV and shiny Pokemons almost trivial. People wrote Windows desktop applications to tell you exactly how many times to flip a coin to get the RNG exactly where you wanted it.

Great, you probably just got me playing again. There goes my free time ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is a pretty good example of why we use mathematical symbols to describe calculations and control flow instead of english phrases.

<comment><USER16> in this case some gif or icon would be even better! imho.</comment></comment>


How to Optimize Copy & Paste Data to Maximize Page Views - <AUTHOR> http://blog.markerly.com/2012/11/27/82-of-sharing-is-done-by-copy-paste/ 82% of sharing is done by copy and paste. Learn how to track and leverage this data to increase your page views and SEO. <comment><USER2> Neat, but this would annoy the living daylights out of those who select text while reading.

</comment><comment><USER3> Awesome use of C&P to share content and improve the SEO organically.</comment>


Variable width fonts designed for code - <AUTHOR> http://code.google.com/p/i3project/wiki/Fonts

<comment><AUTHOR> There are bitmap and vector fonts here. The vector fonts lack hinting, so I expect they wouldn't look too good on Windows. However, OS X ignores hinting info and uses its own display algorithm, so they might look really good. Anyone have a chance to check?</comment>


Zuckerberg's trust problem - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/mark-zuckerbergs-trust-problem <comment><USER2> Why has this article been removed from the top 250 news results? It was #1 for a few minutes, then #5, and now it's gone. We've successfully discussed much more risqué topics here on HN...

Why did the comment by `TAForObvReasons calling out this apparent censorship get deleted?

<comment><USER3> I would like to know the same, it's pretty ironic for an article titled "Mark Zuckerberg's Trust Problem"

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I actually trust institutions more than I trust people.

Institutions are built on laws, they outlive humans, and they are impervious to the individualist nature of humans. Although it's a different story for companies and corporation (which facebook is).

Facebook is a bad idea because it is only about individuals and their private circles of friends. You would expect from a social network to give you opportunities to enlarge and open your friendship to new individuals, but facebook does the exact opposite, it builds exclusivity between individuals.

The whole real name idea makes no sense, since it only enables stalking. Zuckerberg have this naive optimism about people trusting people, and it would somehow justify the intrusiveness of facebook because he thinks that most people have good intentions. Except you need a very few individuals to ruin the experience.

The internet is not a trustworthy place, and facebook has made it even worse. It is really frustrating because facebook really has the potential to be so much better with its userbase, but it seems it will keep being this useless photo and news sharing website. I wish technologies like decentralized networks and the blockchain could change that.

The whole distrust for institutions is another great meme of the libertarian agenda.

</comment><comment><USER5> Zuckerberg is my go-to example of a tool. Utterly consumed by ambition. Eager to serve power. No vision, no internal compass, just endless hunger. The guy sucks up to Xi Jinping! Of course he has a trust problem. It's rare to encounter someone so eager to sell their soul doing harm when it would have been easier to do something decent.

</comment><comment><USER6> > In the days that followed Trump's election, Zuckerberg used the stage at the > Techonomy conference to deny Facebook could have had a hand in the > election's outcome. Only now, we learn that 10 days after Zuckerberg's > Techonomy appearance, Obama warned Zuckerberg privately that he believed > misinformation and fake news had influenced the election

Is this not all just a little insane? Of course misinformation and fake news influenced the election. Most political ads are a combination of both.

The supposed Russian agents spent $100,000 on 3,000 ads. I don't know if you guys market on Facebook, but that's not a lot of reach (by comparison, $11,000,000 was spent by the campaigns). Furthermore, reports state the ads they bought were not fake, nor against the terms. Rather they were 'divisive' \- covering stuff like gun control, BLM, immigration. Is it 'divisive' to hold an opinion on these things?

Now, here's the kicker: rewind to 2011 and the US government was paying political NGOs in Russia to meddle in the Russian elections. They didn't call it meddling, of course. Instead they were 'promoting democracy'. So how much was spent? $100,000 worth of ads on VK.com?

Nope, instead about $9,000,000 was funneled to NGOs.

This from Reuters:

> Golos, which means 'voice' in Russian, has been instrumental in reporting > allegations of irregularities....Its money trail leads from Washington and > Brussels to its headquarters in a residential neighborhood in central > Moscow....In 2010 Golos received a two-year $2.8 million grant from USAID, > which extends funding to non-governmental organizations in foreign countries > working in areas from the health sector to _political competition_.

and

> Golos is one of 57 organizations that have been receiving funding from > USAID. More than half of the USAID's 2012 budget of $50 million (38.6 > million euros) went to groups promoting human rights and democracy.

and

> The United States has criticized Russia's elections and its record on > upholding the rule of law, but has dismissed accusations that its funding of > human rights and pro-democracy organizations is intended to influence > domestic politics.

The moral panic and the sheer hypocrisy is astounding. Putin, in his wildest dreams, couldn't have imagined inflicting the sort of hysteria currently being whipped up by the media and some politicians.

[http://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia- financing/analysis-...](http://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia- financing/analysis-putin-critics-hit-back-over-charge-of-western-funding- idUSTRE7BC0ZZ20111213)

</comment><comment> aaron-lebo So apologies if too many rants about Zuckerberg are annoying, but the reason why he disturbs me so much is he's so transparently power hungry and manipulative.

You can find it in everything he does. He's got this weird personal aura where he feels like everyone in the world cares about him and his kids, while at the same time he uses himself and his kids to spread his view of the world and his view of how it works. It just makes me feel slimy.

Example, his attitudes about Xi:

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/elizabetheconomy/2014/12/09/zuc...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/elizabetheconomy/2014/12/09/zuckerbergs- love-affair-with-xi-jinping/#41082eb2c0ee)

 _Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has recently stirred up controversy by advising his employees to read Chinese President Xi Jinping's book The Governance of China, because he wants them to "understand socialism with Chinese characteristics." The book appeared prominently placed on his desk during a recent visit from China's Internet czar Lu Wei, and he apparently has bought a number of copies to share with others._

This of course went so far as to ask Xi to name his child. What the fuck is that? Xi hilariously turned him down, but let us remember that this is the same Xi whose father was the vice premier and propaganda chief while Mao was killing murdering millions of his countrymen, the same Xi who is now the most powerful Chinese leader in a generation and who continues to consolidate power and control.

Yet here's Mark, putting out posts about the importance of democracy, etc. It's like he's speaking out of two sides of his mouth and what he really wants is people to trust his institution, Facebook, and him as benevolent or competent. I'd have less of a problem with it if what Facebook did wasn't so damn mediocre, but he continually excuses that mediocrity through acting all feely carey about social issues.

 _In earlier eras, when the leader of a trusted institution failed to live up to the mores of the organization, he (and it was usually a "he") could leave without threatening the existence of the institution._

Maybe, but the reality is that up until about 100 years ago, non-democracy, authoritarianism, and autocracy were the norm and incompetent leaders and their progeny could go on fucking up a nation and other nations for centuries. Our governments have opened up, but Facebook and other companies are still kingdoms. We've got this social system thing going on where we funnel the smartest and most well off kids through lottery machines and when one of those kids wins the lottery, we assume they are specially gifted and fit to rule the world. Maybe they aren't. Maybe they should accept that having a net worth of 50 billion dollars is enough and they should spend that money to shut the fuck up about things they don't know anything about.

It's fun to bullshit on HN about worldviews, but Mark's HN quality bullshit has been affecting the world for the last 10 years and his only excuse is trust me, dumb fucks. Of course Mark won't call you a dumb fuck anymore because Mark has studied human behavior enough to understand that's not palatable, but how different are his actions?

He wants more, more, more, like a bunch of this titans of industry. It's never enough, presumably because they've adopted the idea that the best possible thing in life is to have "influence" and to them that influence is more important than whether that influence is any good.

<comment><USER7> You're taking oddly personal offense at someone doing rather straightforward things to promote the growth of his business into the largest economy on Earth, which also happens to be his wife's ethnic homeland.

It's fine to disagree with his attempts to accumulate power and be a demagogue like most politicians and CEOs, but there's no need to be creepy about it.

<comment> aaron-lebo Oh, right, I'm being creepy because Zuckerberg broadcasts his every action to 2 billion people and I happen to follow the news.

You should take personal offense, too. This guy affects your everyday life, today, right now. You can be happy with that if you want, but I also have the right to criticize it.

<comment><USER8> Could you please stop posting hot-under-the-collar comments to HN? You've been doing it a lot, and they're really not what the site is for.

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

<comment> aaron-lebo dang, I respect you and the site, and I recognize that some of my comments are inflammatory. I delete a lot because I realize that and feel bad.

My problem is that there's a lot of content that is very "hot-under-the- collar" thinly veiled hatred and prejudice around here, but it gets upvoted and left alone. I'll try to tone it down, and I'm happy to take a break from commenting for awhile, I just wish HN had a fair standard for this stuff.

I don't understand how my response to someone calling me a creep (due to my opinions about a public and political figure) is what gets a response from you. But again, I'm not trying to be disrespectful.

Thanks for your work because it's probably a pain.

<comment><USER8> > _but it gets upvoted and left alone_

We see only some of the comments, since there are far too many for us to read. Because of this quantity, it's impossible to moderate the whole corpus. So you're always going to see examples of people getting away with worse in the neighborhood, just like you see cars speeding on the same roads where cops are pulling others over. It doesn't mean it's ok or that we endorse it, just that we have human-scale limitations.

It always feels like the opposite side gets away with it more; everyone always feels that way. Drivers who get pulled over feel it too. It's a cognitive bias that I've posted about a lot: [https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...](https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix&page=0&query=by:dang%20cognitive%20bias).

The way to deal with comments breaking the HN guidelines is to make sure we know about them. You can do that by flagging them or by emailing us at email@example.com. It's amazing how often, when I see complaints about a comment on HN, the complainer never flagged the comment. It seems to be hard for people not to leap from "I saw X on HN" to "HN says X" to "the mods support X". (By that argument, Larry must agree with all YouTube comments.) The likeliest explanation is that we just didn't see it.

People don't seem to realize how big a difference comment-flagging (or emailing us) makes. A single user can have a lot of impact just by doing that.

<comment> aaron-lebo That's makes sense, thank you for explaining that. I'll be a better citizen going forward.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The fact that Mark is not trustworthy is a real issue, and I've been screaming it from the rooftops since 2004 because I was actually there. In fact, it was the subject of my first post on Hacker News, for which I was ridiculed.

See also:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/71uva5/iama_classmate...](https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/71uva5/iama_classmate_of_mark_zuckerberg_who_created_the/)

<comment><USER10> Is it even legal for him to run for president, given that he founded / owns the most powerful manipulation tool in the world?

<comment><USER7> why would that be illegal, unless someone created the law very recently?

<comment><USER10> I don't know the US constitution, this is why I asked. My assumption is that running for president is not compatible with certain things, e.g. owning and/or editing media. E.g. could somebody in theory buy most of the newspapers, TV and radio channels, get on their boards and run for president?

<comment><USER11> Usually is the other way round , powerful people buy and manipulate the media so the one they want gets elected, and that way the can move everything behind the curtain.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> He's amoral.

[http://www.businessinsider.com/exclusive-mark-zuckerbergs- se...](http://www.businessinsider.com/exclusive-mark-zuckerbergs-secret-ims- from-college-2012-5?op=1)

<comment><USER13> I think that asshole is going to run for president.

<comment><USER14> How would that work. Why would people vote for him? "Oh, I better vote for him or I'll get banned from facebook"?

<comment> aaron-lebo He's latched onto UBI, as have a lot of the technoraiti.

He probably genuinely believes it is necessary (and it maybe), but that's a really easy bone to throw out to voters: "vote for me, I'm gonna give everyone money".

Of course there's no way any unified vision of UBI is going to go through the political grinder, so the end result is anyone's guess.

He'll probably lean on that and social issues and the fact that he's not as obviously ignorant as Trump. It might be enough to slip through political parties that are running people like Ted Cruz and Clinton as finalists.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


World of Warcraft is completely down - <AUTHOR> http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/realmstatus/

<comment><USER2> Yes its their Tuesday maintenance. For those who aren't in the know, this happens like clockwork every Tuesday.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I didn't think that was even possible with an international operation of that size.

</comment><comment><USER3> Isn't Tuesday morning their normal maintenance window?</comment>


Ask HN: Good certs to get as a job seeker? - <AUTHOR> Hey Hacker News,
I've been applying to jobs for the last three months and have not received an interview. I asked around and was told it might be because I do not have enough experience. However, the recent TripleByte thread had a good comment that I want to point out:
> In all other professional industries there are means to validate a candidate's competency before they are allowed to interview for a position: licensing, required internships, legal certifications/authorizations, authorized relationships, and so forth.
> Technology doesn't have this. The big difference is that in those other professions they are using the interview to actually interview the candidate, as in the person. In software and technology the entire interview is used to gauge basic competency and even then the trust relationship is inherently broken.
Source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16487377
So HN, what are some certs that can boost the chances of making a tech job candidate appear more trustworthy? <comment><USER2> You should start off with industry standard certifications to get yourself in the door. Security+ should be your first certification so you can start off with a good base security foundation. Then move on to Linux+, A+ and Network+. These would take care of your vendor neutral certifications and cover security, linux, computer builds and general networking. Now you can at least have a good conversation and have have a base level of understanding with an interviewer.

If you want to move past the journeyman level you could go for a CCNA or CCENT Routing and Switching (to improve your networking skills), RHSA to get performance based Linux skills that will work for RedHat Enterprise Linux and CentOS, MCSA to get official Microsoft base competency. Jobs in this range should pay from $50,000 to $79,000.

To kick it up a notch you will hopefully have a job by now along with work experience, and can work on the career changing certifications. I would recommend going for MCSE if your in a Microsoft shop, else RHCE for Linux, CCNP to cover professional routing even if your not doing networking at your job, there is nothing better than knowing how networking really works. Normally this range of jobs pay around $80,000 to $170,000 depending on how good you are. You can normally get paid towards the high end by blowing away the interviewer by having an extreme in-depth knowledge of Networking, Linux, Microsoft and Security.

After some years of experience (normally 10+) and you are at or entering the expert level you can work on getting a RHCA (RedHat Certified Architect), CCIE (Cisco Certified Interconnecting Expert), CompTIA CASP, CISSP and ISSAP, ISSEP or ISSMP. By this time you should be in or applying to a job after having at least the CCIE or RHCA paying around 180,000/year base. Just having CASP or CISSP will be around $90,000 to $130,000 a year depending on how in depth your knowledge and challenging your previous work experience appeared to be.</comment>


Many Restaurants see their Google Places Profile Hijacked - <AUTHOR> http://www.reservationgenie.com/blog/17-many-restaurants-see-their-google-places-profile-hijacked

<comment><USER2> I can understand that the Google Places URL link pointing to the non-official site being a problem but I have no issue with a 3rd party site who built a better ranking page for a restaurant. Many restaurants still have flash- intros, PDF menus and other annoyances that make those sites far less useful than a 3rd party site that has translated all that data into something that works consistently on my phone.

The other point I would point out is that ordering online does not require working with a restaurant. Many of these delivery services are "hacking" delivery by becoming the delivery provider. They just order on your behalf, pick up the food, and drive it to your home regardless of whether the restaurant offers that option or not.

<comment><USER3> I wrote this post originally and totally agree about the Flash sites and PDF menus being debatable for those types of websites. But these restaurants have good websites and these hijacker sites aren't more useful. The Eat Street sites have a map, order online button, and a menu...and it's not sexy. The Order Ahead App is pretty solid. But it was promoting downloading an app to order food at Bar Pintxo. But Bar Pinxto wasn't even an "available option" to order. It's driving traffic to download their app and not a bit of value to the restaurant. It's OK to build a website to promote your online ordering. It's hijacking the Google Places profile that is sketchy. These restaurants are upset when I explain what happened.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I can't speak to the others, but I've worked with EatStreet before, and I know all the restaurants have signed contracts with them and EatStreet manages their websites.

<comment><USER5> This seems suspect. Taking the first example from the post:

[http://www.azuca.net/azuca/](http://www.azuca.net/azuca/) and [https://azucasaborlatino.com/](https://azucasaborlatino.com/)

These two websites do not point to each other at any point. The domain for the first website appears registered by the restaurant themselves, pointing to nameservers belonging to Dine Online - which looks like a marketing/web dev firm.

The second domain is registered by EatStreet.

Now, it seems likely to me that Azuca and EatStreet have _some_ working relationship, most probably the same sort of relationship restaurants have with GrubHub or Seamless.

The problem here is language. EatStreet's page does not make it clear at all that this is a third party, and in fact seems to go out of its way to insinuate that this is in fact the official website for the restaurant. This seems like trademark infringement to me, but IANAL.

Sketchy, to say the least.

<comment><USER6> Jobs2Web (SEO for career sites) used to do this with their clients both to rank higher on specific search terms (keyword stuffing in domain names is a thing) and to lock the customer in.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Seems like these restaurants would win those other domains under straightforward trademark disputes, right?

<comment><USER3> I'm sure they could get their domains back through court. But just updating their Google Places Profile is a lot easier. Most are just clueless.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I am a bit confused, since reservationgenie is not google, how are they fixing these entries?

<comment><USER3> I wrote this post. We claim their Google Places profiles in the same way the hijackers did and then submit a request to Google to update the URL back to their original URL. Here's a link: [https://www.google.com/business/placesforbusiness/](https://www.google.com/business/placesforbusiness/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> With a little bit of investigation, you can see this headline is alarmist. These aren't hijackings, they are just restaurants who are authorizing other companies to manage their online presence.

<comment><AUTHOR> seems a little sketch to me to be creating external domains which would be competing with the main website. like having bar pintxo's menu on a .org with google places linked to it and being ranked #1 on google. i don't see many restaurant owners agreeing to that. its one thing to have the menu under a subdomain its quite another to be competing for the same traffic. seriously?

<comment><USER10> Check out SouthATL's posting history, and that of his twin mmmmmmmmmm. These accounts were created nearly a year ago and sat without any activity whatsoever until just now. This matches the pattern of aged accounts owned by brokers that are available on major social networking accounts for sale to PR reps who need to post from an account that appears to be other than a brand new one.

These posters will not be able to validate their identity.

This is as standard and common pattern these days which is identified fairly easily.

<comment><USER11> Or someone who just reads rather than posts

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Seems like a modern version of seo rule bending.</comment>


The Tale of a Student Hustle: The Candy Man - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/this-happened-to-me/fdceda69a447

<comment><USER2> Juvoni, thank you so much for posting this! One of the best things I've read here in a long time. I always wanted to "hustle" candy in high school too - but never had the nerve to do it. Totally made my day. Keep posting here!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Glad you enjoyed it.</comment></comment>


Mayhem, Amiga Game, Ported to Raspberry Pi - <AUTHOR> http://www.stuffaboutcode.com/2016/04/mayhem-classic-amiga-game-ported-to.html <comment><USER2> This looks cool. But I don't understand why anyone would so narrowly target the RPi as a software platform without good reason.

In this case, most of the code seems to be abstracted from the hardware through the cross-platform Allegro framework.

So it is hardly any more effort to make this portable to other hardware platforms running Linux or even BSD.</comment>


How to permanently solve homelessness / a simple model - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@mohammadrezaghaemi15/how-to-permanently-solve-homelessness-a-simple-model-5938ee3f0cb8 <comment><USER2> Great idea, assuming the only cause of homelessness is lack of homes. I'm pretty sure this was tried in 1950s in the form of housing projects, the problem is the few bad tennants destroy thesee places for the majority. There is also a "not in my back yard" mentality when it comes to the people already living near where these buildings are purposed. Finally the poor and underprivileged should never be looked at as and oportunity to make money or exploit, even with the best intentions as this article suggests.

</comment><comment><USER3> Do you have more detailed calculations? If the returns are so good, someone else should have noticed.

A big chunk of the tenants will be nice, but …

What if someone refuses to pay? Or die? Or share the room with other 10 persons?

Have you included the cost of fixing the stuff, like the water tubes?

<comment><USER2> You are right, "If the returns are so good, someone else should have noticed." There are lots of slum lords out there!</comment></comment>


How do you backup your websites? - <AUTHOR>

I am looking to improve my company's website backup architecture to gain some comfort in knowing that my files/databases, etc. are safe in the event of hard drive failures, datacenter fires, etc.
I am a developer and I know I can develop a fairly decent system from scratch but I'd much not rather re-invent the wheel on a problem that every single one of us who rely on servers has had to solve.
So, what do you guys use for backup solutions?  Custom or another company's product? <comment><USER2> At work we use NetApp. It does hourly incremental and nightly full backups. The backups are replicated across 2 datacenters. It's pretty expensive, but it's the only sane way of managing backups for 200+ sites across too many servers to count.

</comment><comment><USER3> I use Tarsnap to backup the Tarsnap website. :-)</comment>