Motivating-Uncertainty Effect - <AUTHOR> http://coglode.com/gems/motivating-uncertainty-effect

<comment><AUTHOR> They have links to real studies at the bottom. It's not marketing, they're just trying to makes studies seem more interesting.

Links at bottom of article:

[http://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/ayelet.fishbach/research](http://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/ayelet.fishbach/research)

[http://www.econ.ucsb.edu/~tedb/Courses/GraduateTheoryUCSB/Be...](http://www.econ.ucsb.edu/~tedb/Courses/GraduateTheoryUCSB/Bernoulli.pdf)

[http://www.princeton.edu/~kahneman/docs/Publications/prospec...](http://www.princeton.edu/~kahneman/docs/Publications/prospect_theory.pdf)

[http://press.princeton.edu/titles/7802.html](http://press.princeton.edu/titles/7802.html)

[http://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/ayelet.fishbach/research/Kle...](http://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/ayelet.fishbach/research/KleinFishbach.pdf)

[http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sensation-Seeking-Behavior-Marvin- Zu...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sensation-Seeking-Behavior-Marvin- Zuckerman/dp/1591477387)

</comment><comment><USER2> Stopped reading, felt like way too much of a generic marketing pitch.

Shouldn't I be compelled to read all of it if the claims were true? :P

<comment><USER3> No.

It wasn't a marketing pitch, it was interesting.

If you want to incenvitize some behavior you can offer an extrinsic reward. Certainty in an extrinsic reward causes overjustification.

An uncertain extrinsic reward seems to mute the overjustification effect increasing the intrinsic motivation within the process, while still affording some of the incentives that you're looking for.

When we are outside of the process we weight the certain reward more highly than the uncertain reward. But a certainty in the reward means we lose our intrinsic motivation within the process and replace it with direct motivation towards the goal, for instance you might stop doing something because it's not worth the 2 dollars you'll get. An uncertain reward lets us stay motivated within the process. For instance, something might not be worth the 1 or 2 dollars you will get, but you might be motivated to stick it out till the end just to see whether you'll get 1 or 2, or because it's fun, and you're not necessarily going to get 2 anyways.

When you can abstract a process down to "Do x, get y" your enjoyment of x can get caught up in your value of y. When it is "Do x, get y or get z" then your enjoyment of x might stand alone, because you can't relate it specifically to y or z.

If it's worth it to do x for y, and z is more, then you might be interested to see if you get z, so you be excited to do x to see if you will win z, and be satisfied with y if you don't.

If it's only worth it to do x for z, then you have to take into account that you might get y. If you might get y, and it's not worth it, then there's some cognitive dissonance, one way for you to resolve that is to say that you just enjoy x even if you do get the lesser prize.

Either way, you're not thinking about abstracting the whole process into a routine to get y. It's either y with occasional exciting bonuses, or it's doing x because it's enjoyable and sometimes getting fair compensation for your time.

Think of it this way. Think of an employee paid hourly, $20/hr. They can come to work for as long as they want, and they have a budget of $400/week. They work 20 hours a week, except on the odd occasion when they want to save a bit more or splurge.

Then consider an employee paid hourly $15/hr. They can also come to work for as long as they want and have a budget of $400/week. The difference is there's a 25% chance every hour that they will get an extra $20. They're going to feel differently, If they get $400 in their first 15 hours, they might be excited. They might keep working and make themselves a bit of extra cash, or they might go home early. If they don't make the bonus at all, they know that's a possibility and they will work the 27 hours they need to make ends meet.

On average both employees need to work the same amount to reach their budget. The second employee is more likely going to work more than 20 hours per week on average. They've already resigned to the fact that 27 hour weeks might happen, but that will rarely happen. They will justify that $15/hr is OK. The rest is gravy. They're lucky to get it. The job's not so bad at $15/hr. The bonus is nice but not something you have to live off of, 27 hours isn't a bad work week in the worst case.

Both employees have the same average wage, but I think the second is more likely to work more hours over the course of a year. If the budget of the first person were to shrink or grow, they would more directly adjust their schedule than the second employee would. If the second employee were to actually like their job, they would be more motivated to go to it just to see if they could get more bonus regardless of what was needed.

In some ways you ironically feel more in control of the latter scenario. I don't need to go into work this week (because I earned a lot of bonus) but I want to because I choose to see if I can earn more bonus, if not, the job's not so bad anyways.

On the other hand it's easier to sell someone on the idea of a job that's $20/hr than a job that's $15/hr and randomly $35/hr.

<comment><USER4> I think you've certainly got under the skin of the effect with these thoughts. As you say, the hardest thing might be the initial requirement to convince practitioners of whatever system you're designing to not focus on the reward to the extent that it dissuades them from opting in in the first place.

Thanks for the comments. Ps the content on coglode.com certainly has application to areas like marketing, but it's more broad than that, with a focus on product and behaviour system design. Knowing how we think is critical to help promote any kind of behaviour: charitable donation, greater health and wellness, stronger loyalty and customer satisfaction, achieving life goals and so forth.

Would be great to hear if ou guys have any ideas on what we could improve.

Cheers,

Jerome, Coglode writer</comment></comment></comment>


The Founder Of BuySellAds On How He Bootstrapped A Profitable Business - <AUTHOR> http://mixergy.com/buysellads-todd-garland-interview/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Mixergy-blog+%28Mixergy+-+Where+Ambitious+Upstarts+Mix%29 <comment><USER2> Cool to see Todd's business taking off like this. I worked with him for a while at HubSpot and he was a top-notch guy, definitely deserves some success.</comment>


Life is gradient descent - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@rtotheohan/life-is-gradient-descent-880c60ac1be8#.epxm3zfs2 <comment><USER2> But what if your objective fn is some kind of cross-entropy?

<comment><AUTHOR> totally possible, you can view the output as a pie chart, and compare it to the ideal pie chart, and make changes based off that. My analogy is flexible and quite loose. We're not actually taking partial derivatives here</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Post goes from #1 to #30 in 1 hour with 170+ points? - <AUTHOR>

Is there something in the algorithm that would make a post go from #1 on the front page to #30 instantly?
Can it be semi-flagged?
It's a popular post with lots of thoughtful comments, no politics, and certainly on-topic. 170+ points and 100+ comments.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2116062 <comment><USER2> If I recall earlier discussions about the decay of posts, age of the post + age of last upvote is modified by the number of total votes.

As new posts get upvotes, their ranked score is enough to push older posts below. It is lunchtime in California, mid afternoon in the Eastern USA... it is entirely likely people are upvoting newer content.

<comment><USER3> A good way to help old content "decay" is to multiply the votes/relevance by the current timestamp (which is always greater than previous timestamps). If you, say, round to the nearest hour -- then there would be an inflection point come the next hour when a 59 minute turns into a 60 minute old post and gets its point total multiplied by a smaller bin than posts coming in during the current hour.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> When people flag submissions that acts as downward pressure on the page position, similar to how a down vote would. There doesn't appear to have to be any moderator involvement (though if there is that will weigh heavier)

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm assuming it was flagged because it looked like blatant blog spam: A repost of a post you wrote and submitted a year ago with a linkbait title.</comment>


How a call girl can earn far more by actually working far less - <AUTHOR> http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/book_extracts/article6879237.ece <comment><USER2> Disclaimer: Freakonomics to me embodies modern business writing at its worst. Anecdotal, single case half-correlations that try to pretend they're something more than fluff entertainment.

In this article, they truly don't disappoint.

A hilarious and misguided glorification of what, I imagine, is a soul crushing business for 99/100 prostitutes.

Written like a recruiting pamphlet, to boot.

And the answer to how a prostitute can earn far more by working far less?

Price elasticity of demand!

Stunning discovery Freakonomics.

/End Rant

<comment><USER3> _is a soul crushing business for 99/100 prostitutes_

How is that conclusion much better than the one you're attacking?

<comment><USER2> Fair enough.

Me vs. Professor of Economics Steven Levitt:

Levitt:

1 hand-picked prostitue that was a guest lecturer in his college class.

Me:

\- PROSTITUTION IS THE MOST DANGEROUS JOB IN AMERICA. The murder rate is 1 in 490. Compare that to the fishing industry, where the death rate is 1 in 775.

\- Eighty-two percent of prostitutes reported having been physically assaulted since entering prostitution.

\- Women trafficked to the United States have been forced to have sex with 400-500 men to pay off $40,000 in debt for their passage.

\- Statistics show that at least 2/3 of prostitutes began working in prostitution before the age of 16

Like Levitt I decided to provide points that suit my argument.

Sources are from top 3 results in Google for "prostitution statistics":

<http://www.bayswan.org/stats.html>

[http://kiss951.radio.com/2010/04/29/seven-statistics- about-p...](http://kiss951.radio.com/2010/04/29/seven-statistics-about- prostitutes/)

[http://womensissues.about.com/od/rapesexualassault/a/Wuornos...](http://womensissues.about.com/od/rapesexualassault/a/Wuornos.htm)

<comment><USER4> I think high-level and low-level prostitution are two almost completely different businesses.

<comment><USER5> Yes, one is on-demand by phone, and the other is on-demand at the street corner. In both cases you don't know how they got there (whether by choice or force) and most johns don't care to ask.

<comment><USER6> Totally different clientele.

Ask this lady <http://www.realprincessdiaries.com/>

<comment><USER7> If you're at work you probably don't want to click that link.

<comment><USER6> Yeah ... sorry guys, NSFW.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Problems with the article:

> Throughout history, it has invariably been easier to be male than female. > Yes, this is an overgeneralisation and yes, there are exceptions, but by any > important measure, women have had it rougher than men.

This one is a PC-friendly thing to say, the opposite point of view is not. If you haven't read it, I _must_ urge you to check out the excellent "Is There Anything Good About Men?" essay by Roy Baumeister:

<http://www.psy.fsu.edu/~baumeistertice/goodaboutmen.htm>

Across history, it's estimated that 80% of women all-time had children, whereas only 40% of men did - the majority of men died without descendents. Things like that. Definitely check out Baumeister's essay.

> In any arena you look — education, legal and voting rights, career > opportunities and so on — it is far better to be a woman today than at any > other point in history.

At the risk of being controversial, I would point out unhappiness, depression, and suicide are all massively up in those countries among women. I think - I'm hoping - that we're in a transition phase while society gets acclimated to having women as equal participants in the labor market. For a while, being traditionally feminine (focusing on beauty, kind temperament and disposition, managing a household, and raising children) was out of fashion and seen to be a lesser choice, despite the fact that women who act in that traditional role actually have higher happiness levels, lower depression levels, and lower suicide levels than women who are working in so-so positions. As the risk of being controversial, I'll say I firmly understand why a woman would give up these traditional pursuits of being a good wife and mother in order to be an excellent scientist, architect, artist, or entrepreneur, but I have no idea why a woman would rather be a low level middle manager or a clerk instead of being a wife, mother, and active member of the community. Motherhood seems to me like it'd be more enjoyable and more rewarding than all but the most satisfying and self-actualizing of professions. I know this is controversial, but I'm hoping society will adjust to a point where traditional femininity can peacefully coexist as a respected choice for women on how to live their lives, because I think it can be a suitable, powerful, happy, and meaningful for choice for many women, and it'd be a shame if a woman was peer-pressured to do a job she hates because "just getting married and being a housewife" is stigmatized these days.

<comment><USER7> > it'd be a shame if a woman was peer-pressured to do a job she hates because > "just getting married and being a housewife" is stigmatized these days.

The pressure does not come from being stigmatized but from the fact that a single person income is not enough to feed a family of four in plenty of places.

And if you don't have children and your spouse is out working you might as well go to work yourself, rather than to hang around the house all day, and increase your expendable income.

edit: Yet another factor, it makes you feel good to not be a dependent but to bring in your own share of the household money.

<comment><USER3> Funny. An assistant at my Dad's work figured she was paying almost her salary in babysitting costs and other expenses for things she could do herself if she had time. So she quit.

My dad calls it the pay-your-neighbor-so-he-can-pay-his-neighbor phenomenon. Uncle Sam makes the most money in that relationship. He makes nothing when you babysit your own kid; he makes plenty when you hire someone to do the same thing(and someone hires you to do their thing).

<comment><USER9> So high taxes make people more likely to maintain traditional family (husband works and wife runs the household).

<comment><USER10> Or hold back on having children, or lowering the number of children that they have.

<comment><USER7> Possibly lowering that number all the way down to 0.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Allie is not "earning far more by actually working far less." That implies that working less causes her to make more money. Rather, she's earning more by _charging more_ , and she was able to do that because she had complementary skills that she didn't know to market until price experimentation attracted a different kind of customer. As a side effect, her higher hourly rate gives her the freedom of working less.

Perhaps there could be a market for prostitutes who don't have sex very often, if there were a way for prospective clients to verify this. But that's not Allie's business strategy.

<comment><USER12> The point wasn't that she was underpricing herself: it was that by charging more she gradually found herself offering quite different services.

For $300/hour her clients were still wishing to physically get the most out of her (and, apparently, themselves) during the one hour; for $500/hour she started to find clients who were more interested in high-class flirtation, having a wife replacement for the evening, and the sex portion was reduced to a lot less.

<comment><USER11> Thanks, I've edited my comment. You're right that it's less an issue of underpricing per se, and more that she had complementary skills that she wasn't taking advantage of. The fact remains that working less did not, in itself, add value for the customers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This reminded of an App Store developer I met a few months ago who had an app selling for $10. He was working too much answering too many technical support questions.

What he did was increase the price of the app to $25. Less people purchased his app but his revenue is about the same. The volume of technical support questions dropped significantly because he has less users.

<comment><USER14> I used to play a MUD called DragonRealms. They charged $10 for a basic account and $30 for premium. The servers were quite crowded and there was a fair bit of lag.

Suddenly they announced a price hike to $15 and $40. Many of the old-timers left. The servers weren't as crowded and laggy.

Everyone called them greedy at the time, but I theorized that they did it because they couldn't scale their servers any more and they had to find a way to earn as much money but have fewer customers. Since they're still in business and haven't lowered their prices yet, I'd say it worked.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I found the second article (hidden beneath the credits and the book ads) about monkeys adopting currency much more interesting. I know people who do primate research and it doesn't surprise me in the least, but it's much more interesting than the first, which can be summarized as "high-end prostitutes have a good life and make a lot of money, low-end prostitutes have a shitty life and make no money" with the rest being a mix of stereotypes and overconvoluted explanations of the demand curve.

</comment><comment><USER16> I'm not sure if what they are saying applies to the first girl they speak about. A street hooker cannot easily transition to a highly paid escort. You need to be pretty and young at least, to earn that much. And the street hookers, if they increased their prices, would have no customers.

<comment><USER17> I'd bet it's a lot harder than simply looking good. The article stated that the incidents became longer and more complex the higher the price rose. The customer expected to have a conversation. Given that she's now charging something only affordable by the upper/upper-middle class, one can expect her population to be highly educated. I doubt that if she were not already highly educated (and probably well-read, as well) she wouldn't be nearly as competitive. Of course, isn't that the market acting? How common is a highly educated prostitute who could choose between dozens of alternative, legal, well-paying professions. A lifetime of education is one hell of a marketable asset (and competitive advantage).

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> "So the real puzzle isn't why someone like Allie becomes a prostitute, but rather why more women don't choose this career."

Most women don't do this because of the social stigma, and those that don't care about the social stigma don't do it because they don't want to contract STDs--in particular, Genital Herpes which can be transmitted through skin-to- skin contact. I'm surprised that the article didn't examine the health risks of the business.

I'm certain that a high class escort is safer from health risks than someone who works on the street, but how much safer? That is information I'd be interested to learn.

That said, I have several friends--women and homosexual men--that have done and do this type of work. When they talk about it, they always say that they "love it." They do it for awhile and pay off some debt. Then they inevitably age out of it or go onto work that they find more meaningful. This article confirmed the stories they told me.

<comment><USER19> > Most women don't do this because of the social stigma, and those that don't > care about the social stigma don't do it because they don't want to contract > STDs

You know, some people don't do it because they don't want to, just like there are plenty of people who don't collect garbage because they don't want to.

<comment><USER18> I took that as a given, kragen.

Perhaps I should have prefaced my remark with: "for those women who are interested in the profession...."

[edit] it's interesting though - amongst homosexual men, there's significantly less stigma against prostitution AND significantly less care about the health risks. There's also more men who are doing it and they make less money than the women.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The article misses everything that isn't economic. That might sound appropriate for economics, but economics is influenced by human behavior, and human behavior is influenced by a lot more than economic factors. For instance, to say that a high-end prostitute working fifteen hours a week is more like a trophy wife than like a street hooker is utterly oblivious to the many, many obligations a trophy wife has. Being a trophy wife is, if not a full-time job, at least a half-time job. A trophy wife has to fulfill all the expectations of a wife of her social class, and fulfill them exceptionally well. She has to entertain. She has to manage a household. She has to manage her social life and social image, and often her husband's as well. Often a trophy wife has to bear and raise children. Of all the duties of a trophy wife, having sex with her husband is among the least essential. I would wager it is the most negotiable, the most often neglected, and the least likely to cause serious dissatisfaction on the husband's part. After all, a husband can develop other sexual interests, but his social image is built around his one wife.

</comment><comment><USER21> Hmmmf, $500 is a little less than what I get for one month full time as an English teacher :-/

<comment><USER22> Well I guess that the comparison is meaningless with someone who lives in a 2nd tier Chinese city...

<comment><USER21> It's got me thinking on changing professions.

<comment><USER23> You do not seem to have got the point at all. It is not about the profession, it is all about decommoditization.

The first and most important thing she (unknowingly) did right was to avoid having a pimp in the first place. The second important thing she did was to differentiate her service and offer it to the premium market.

You can follow the same strategy as a teacher. Refuse to lecture a class of 50+ students* (where the break even point for the school is 5-10). Seek instead to position yourself as a personal tutor for the children of the wealthy.

You will find out that you need to provide a quality of service way beyond what is expected of an average classroom instructor, and also you will have to tolerate your customers idiosyncrasies. But, hey... you would have to do that anyway!

* I am going to the outliers here. 50+ students is the low end of a continuous. I am just trying to draw a parallel to the other example in the article (the $18k/yr street hooker).

<comment><USER21> Changing professions doesn't mean into prostitution. I'm not too sure of the demand here of balding, slightly overweight pale western men.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> very long-winded.

essentially, she charged more and became a high-end sex worker.

</comment><comment><USER25> I wonder how she does her taxes.

<comment><USER26> Ha ha, a little while ago The Times did a reader's questions interview with Belle du Jour and all anyone wanted to know was if she'd paid her taxes. Yes, she said, her accountant does it as any other professional services.

<comment><USER25> Then if it's legal, why the implicit threat of police raid is in the article?

<comment><USER26> IANAL but while prostitution isn't illegal almost every supporting activity is (e.g. soliciting). The British police are always looking for easy ways to boost their statistics.

PS This tells you everything you need to know about Times readers (of which I am one). We don't care what consenting adults get up to on private property so long as their civic duty is fulfilled.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> "There is one labour market women have always dominated: prostitution."

Uhm. No. The most common prostitute is a man selling sex to another man.

<comment><USER28> [citation needed]

<comment><USER27> I only have links in Swedish but there was a report published a few years ago about prostitution in the Nordics saying that 2.0% of all men and 1.6% of all women had ever sold sex: [http://nyheter24.se/nyheter/utrikes/160704-fler-man- an-kvinn...](http://nyheter24.se/nyheter/utrikes/160704-fler-man-an-kvinnor- saljer-sex)

It also concluded that most of these men were homosexual.

Here's the report (actually it's in Norwegian): [http://kilden.forskningsradet.no/publikasjon/vis.html?tid=58...](http://kilden.forskningsradet.no/publikasjon/vis.html?tid=58067)

<comment><USER29> You have what percentage of each gender have ever been prostitutes, but what are the comparative market shares of either gender? What percentage of paid sex in a given year is satisfied by female prostitutes, and which percentage by males?

Maybe that 1.6% of women sell way, way, way more sex than that 2.0% of men. It's certainly plausible, since there's a higher demand for heterosexual sex than homosexual sex. So while more prostitutes seem to be men, perhaps most _prostitution_ still involves female prostitutes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I posted a critical view of sentiments expressed in this article a while back:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1573319>

<comment><USER31> Useful post. It addresses some of the facile comments above that the Freakonomics article is just about business/pricing strategy, by calling out some of the _non-economic_ opinions pushed in the article. ("Allie is like the ideal wife", Allie is successful because she sees good in everyone, etc.) It's glib and myopic -- concentrating on this little aspect of pricing, and highlighting all the sunny and upbeat sides of being a prostitute, passing over the bad stuff almost completely.

<comment><USER18> But what are the bad things for a high-end escort? They wrote about how she felt like she couldn't communicate about her career. They also wrote that a lot of the safety issues that plague low end prostitutes weren't issues for Allie. The main bad thing that they didn't speak about were health concerns.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> $300/hour? That is one of the highest paying job i ever heard of.

<comment><USER33> Better to go to law school and specialize. I once worked with a big time tech lawyer. For three hours work, we paid him what I made pre-tax in two weeks, and I wasn't doing terribly for that point in my life.

Pretty sure he's not getting beat up by any pimps when he strolls into work each day, either.

He worked really hard, too. I mean, I wasn't paying the bills, but he definitely seemed worth the cash. Filed some awesome stuff for us -- you don't often read legalese that entertaining.

<comment><USER34> There is a difference between 'charge-out hourly rate' and 'hourly rate of pay'. Even high end lawyers are unlikely to be paid more than one-third of their charge out rate, unless they're partners (ie, business 'owners').

You probably took that into consideration with your response - I'm not disagreeing with you, just making it clearer.

And yes, there are many jobs where the pay rate exceeds $300 / hour. In my field (business coaching - no formal qualifications necessary, though they may help) a Harvard Business Review study found the average charge-out rate is $500/hr, the top measure is $2400/hr, and most practitioners work solo so don't split that fee with anyone else.

<comment><USER35> I find this true for just about every professional services field. Hiring a lawyer, an accountant, a doctor, or a consultant often comes at a rate multiple times their own salaries.

But the difference is that the lawyer was probably working 50-60 billable hours a week, whereas an escort (or a business coach, presumably) will work significantly less than that.

<comment><USER36> If you can bill $craploads per hour, why work 50-60 hours a week? I'd work 30. Maybe 20.

<comment><USER29> Yes, this is what economists call the "backwards-bending supply curve for labor". Turns out if you pay people craploads per hour, you get _fewer_ hours out of them, not more. This is unlike every other supply curve--if you pay $1,000 per hour of labor you get less labor than if you pay $100 per hour of labor, but if you pay $1,000 per gross of self-sealing stem bolts you get way, way, way more self-sealing stem bolts than if you pay $100 per gross of self- sealing stem bolts.

The worst you get from ordinary supply curves is diminishing returns. If you paid $1,000,000 per bushel of apples, well, you're just throwing away money-- I'm sure we'd max out the earth's apple-growing capacity well before $500,000 per bushel. Labor's the only supply curve that actually bends back.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> The best part is at the end when the monkey pays another monkey for sex.

<comment> daniel-cussen I think that's part of the origin of human evolution (this started happening after women started having hidden estrus).

<comment><USER38> or seeing the same thing the other way around: hidden estrus was evolved in order to get more for less

Schroder, Inge. "Concealed Ovulation and Clandestine Copulation: a Female Contribution to Human Evolution." Ethology and Sociobiology 14.6 (1993): 381-89.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> It is all about 'to find a [micro] niche', using Internet or other 'connections'. ^_^</comment>


Encryption is the first step in your cybersecurity strategy - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2020/06/23/encryption-is-the-first-step-in-your-cybersecurity-strategy/#3848cf9ee24d <comment><AUTHOR> Data encryption is an essential piece of your company's cybersecurity strategy. As governments put new regulations into practice and data breaches become widespread, encryption is a necessity as you minimize risks, build trust and stay compliant.</comment>


Evidence that Oppenheimer passed secrets of Manhattan project to the USSR - <AUTHOR> http://www.unz.com/article/was-robert-oppenheimer-a-soviet-agent/ <comment><USER2> The actual accusation -- if you read further down -- is that not only was Oppenheimer a spy, but so were Fermi and Szilard and Bohr. The evidence for this comes from a Russian ex-spy who was imprisoned in the Soviet Union and tried to cash in during the 90s on these accusations. You can get the fact check if you dig around enough, I won't bother here.

Based on some Googling, it seems these unfounded accusations have been a popular theme for some decades. Makes me wonder what all four of those scientists have in common, that would inspire such reactions.

</comment><comment><USER3> Nothing brings out the loonies quite like such an article.

The comments section has to be seen to be believed. "Russia will be the last refuge of the white race"?

</comment><comment><USER4> alternative media? with comments about how jews are responsible for everything and how russia will save white race? Dear HN, really?

</comment><comment><USER5> Nutty article. After the US exploded the first atomic bomb, every other country that had been working on one knew it could be done, and that was the last "secret" of the bomb.

The reason the US did it first was due to its industrial capacity and commitment to doing so. None of the technology involved was particularly unknown or difficult, the only "hard part" was for each nation interested in the weapon to determine how to obtain the materials for one in a reasonable amount of time and without destroying their economy to do so.

Even Nazi Germany had an atomic bomb program, they just had no hope of completing it before the country with the largest industrial base in the world.

There weren't any "secrets" to share with the USSR in the 1940s about the bomb. Hiroshima announced to the entire world that it was possible to do, and the bits and pieces of the program that couldn't be hidden (the methods used to produce materials) told them the rest. At that point, it was just a race to be the second nation with the Bomb, and that race was won by a large industrialized nation with a command economy that wasn't completely in ruins from the war.... which is no surprise at all.</comment>


Ask HN: Does anyone do SEO out there? - <AUTHOR>

We are looking for someone in SEO to work on our online retail site.  We got semi-burned by the last group we worked with (they over promised), so I want to get HN's thoughts on doing SEO before selecting someone.
Would appreciate thoughts on who has worked for you, how to best pick an SEO contractor or any SEO people out there: We have money, a good little niche, if you would take on another client.
Thanks! <comment><USER2> I did SEO consulting for about a year and a half up until a few months ago. My employer was pretty happy with the results -- though I haven't kept up with the field recently as I've been trying to focus more on software & web development (being a Computer Science major). If you're interested let me know what your goals are and I'll write up a proposal. I could use the job but if I see that you wouldn't benefit much from my services I will reject your proposal. In the past I've told potential clients that they would be better off going to SEOMoz (or whatever site is popular these days) to read some articles and do it themselves.

As far as promises (or guarantees rather) and SEO goes, I don't make them. A search engine is basically a "black box" as far as I see - making a guarantee would seem a bit disingenuous. The only promise I can make is that I would do my best using whatever knowledge I have.

<comment><AUTHOR> Shoot me your details, my email is in my profile. Thanks!

<comment><USER2> Maybe I'm just blind but I can't seem to find it in your profile. I'll add my AIM screenname to my profile just in case you would rather IM me your email address.

I have class for few hours in a bit but I'll try to give you a proposal either today or tomorrow.

EDIT: Found your gmail address by following one of the sites listed in your profile. Thanks -- I'll email you later.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I think you'll find your experience with an SEO firm was fairly common (if not universal). They over promise and can't possibly deliver without a longterm (ie. prohibitively expensive) involvement with your company. The company I work for hired some of the bigger companies (SEOInc.com, Bruce Clay) and they provided some good advice. However, at the end of the day, it was up to me to implement the technical side of things and our SEO/SEM manager to work on the long term stuff. Plus, the knowledge they provided is either readily available or some new trick which is prone to change over time. Both firms cost a fortune (well, I consider it a fortune).

Save your money, hire someone junior but clever, give them 6 months to work on it part time--tell them not to try anything blackhat/fishy. I think you'd get way better bang for your buck. (They can start by adding METATAGS to the first (most important?) category (Egyptian Hookah) in your menu--Google says that keywords/description aren't that important anymore but every SEO consultant is going to tell you to do them first)...

You are sitting on a goldmine having a copy writer. Most longterm SEO is developing legitimately interesting content to encourage high-quality, inbound links. Have your copy writer colleague spend an hour or two a week writing Hookah Articles (I'll read them--always been a bit intriqued by them) and in a year your site will be killing it....

</comment><comment><USER4> I don't post much on here, so I'll just briefly say that I run a web marketing consultancy in Denver that has worked with several start-ups and e-commerce stores. Email in my profile if you want to talk further.

Since the discussion in this thread is turning toward whether SEO should be a "buy or build" decision, I'll throw my two-cents in there, as well.

If your website is a hobby or just a side-project, I think SEO is something you can pick up by reading some of the better guides out there (SEOMoz's "Basics" guide comes to mind). This will ensure that your site doesn't have things like <title>Home</title> or inaccessible navigation.

However, all of "what there is to learn yourself" is what our firm would take care of on day 1. The real SEO (the kind that commands 6-figure salaries or 5-figure monthly retainers) is much, much more in depth than the average internet user realizes. The reason you can't learn those strategies in a day is because most successful SEO practitioners keep them private, for obvious ($$) reasons.

</comment><comment><USER5> phpnode here on HN is pretty good: <http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=phpnode>

Satisfied customer here. Not cheap but worth every penny.

</comment><comment><USER6> Takrupp - I recently started my own SEO/SEM firm and one of the reasons being I have seen lots of businesses get burned with high fees and promises from SEO guys.

Here is my companies site <http://www.digitalbaltoro.com/> (site is a work in progress)

We are a small shop but we have great experience. Here is the link to my Linkedin profile to give you the overview <http://www.linkedin.com/in/gforst> as you will see lots of experience in e-commerce.

Give me a buzz if you are interested in chatting some more. 312-566-8944 ext 102

</comment><comment><USER7> Free SEO advice. Guaranteed replies within 24 hours. <http://www.page2sucks.com>

It's like a StackOverflow, but for SEO and SEM.

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm an SEO & SEM consultant with <http://piconsulting.com> (excuse the page rust, we're launching something new in the near future). You can contact us via the website or you can email me directly (steve@)

</comment><comment><USER9> Why not just learn what there is to learn yourself. It's not exactly rocket science.

<comment><USER5> One of the first major lessons of being an entrepreneur for me was that even though I probably _could_ do everything myself it was not economical and not feasible to actually _do_ everything myself.

That probably was the first lesson, but I still spent another two decades before it fully sank in.

There are many things that, even though not rocket science, are quite specialist in nature and it takes time and experience to get to the level where you can do just as good a job as a specialist.

<comment><USER9> I worked for a guy who set up a _very_ successful online business here in Padova, and, yeah, he certainly didn't try and do it all. "SEO" was something he very much had a handle on though, because the site lived or died by its web presence. He brought in a couple of potential consultants to interview, but they all seemed to not really have any knowledge that we didn't already posses internally.

So - yeah, delegate, but some things you can't delegate. No idea about _their_ business in particular, but for a lot of online businesses, keeping track of the basics is probably something you ought to have a feel for yourself.

It's similar to the idea that tech startups are most likely better off not outsourcing their development work.

<comment><USER5> The golden rule seems to be 'trust but verify', and a little bit of knowledge goes a long way during the 'verify' stage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> SEO is a business based on fear and confusion. The only thing that matters is high authority backlinks pointing into your site. All the on-page stuff matters, just not as much. And we throw the on-page stuff in for free. We build backlinks to your site using our proprietary algorithm developed by studying the google patent filing and extensive trial and error. All sites hosting your link are PageRank 4+. Give me a shout and I'll send you our two- pager on who we are, what we do, how we do it, and expected results (we've ranked for the keyword "diet" before). Holla! :)

</comment><comment><USER11> maybe you could share your site url?

<comment><AUTHOR> <http://HoboHookah.com>

<comment><USER11> well, is there any reason why you keep asking for emails on a site you sell products? Users don't even have time to find out what you sell and they already have a popup on their faces, not a great UX , drop me a mail if you wish ( see profile ), I will review your SEO for free and send you a report, if you feel comfortable with my report, we could go further, if not you can pick someone else, you may also try Patio , but he's most probably overbooked.

<comment><AUTHOR> We do a lot of web marketing ourselves (just not SEO): This is a pretty proven method in building an email list. We have double opt in and our conversion rate is through the roof. We make a lot of money off of that pop up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Paras, I know a great SEO guy, hit me up on Skype.

</comment><comment><USER13> Send me a message (AIM sn in profile) I'll help you out, no charge. I'm the technical founder of a top 100 and top 500 site and picked up some SEO along the way.

<comment><USER14> Wanted to reach you, but frankly AOL won't let me create a new AIM account. Captcha here is broken [https://new.aol.com/productsweb/?promocode=825960&ncid=t...](https://new.aol.com/productsweb/?promocode=825960&ncid=txtlnkuswebr00000040) (I'm baffled how can they afford to have their signup form broken for the past half an hour I have been trying)

Any chance you could contact me instead? I'm paras {at} wingify {dot} com

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I specifically do link building services for aggressive internet marketers and most recently local small businesses. I built a full web app to handle all orders and tasks and have a full staff of workers that can pump out orders quickly and efficiently.

Register an account for free here and you can check out what I offer. We can discuss things privately if you need a strategy put together.

<http://members.layeredlinks.com>

</comment><comment><USER16> Try www.pearanalytics.com. We scan your website in 30 seconds - no signup or email required. (We optimized that process by running through HN before :)</comment>


Ask HN: At which point is it worth extracting the front end into its own app? - <AUTHOR> I am in the process of implementing my startup idea and was wondering if/when it may be worth making the frontend its own app consuming the backend API.
Currently, my approach is the one I see most often with Rails/Django apps and that is to have a MVC approach, but other than that to have the Bootstrap front-end be part of the same app as the back-end.
While this is currently easier for me to implement, I've been wondering whether having one app being the Rails app and another one being an Angular.js/Ember.js client consuming the API provided by the back-end, wouldn't be a better, more modular approach, which would allow me; greater separation of concerns, the ability to make visual changes without touching the back-end; the ability to later on hire a front-end developer without also having to share my back-end code, which would make it easier for him/her to maintain the front-end.
I am capable of working with both of these approaches, altrough I have a bias towards the backend side of things.
How do you do it? Is it worth it? Does it only benefit larger enterprises? <comment><USER2> That's how I prefer to structure my apps these days. It lends itself more naturally to the "disposable front-end" idea (a la Guy Kawasaki's writings). I prefer to push as much business-logic into the API as I can, and have the client be thin and quick. I also prefer to have the API be rock-solid (well tested, documented, etc) while the front-ends are more experimental and less stable.

In the very early stages of a startup (MVP phase) this might arguably be overkill. But as the team grows, you'll be happy that the backend and frontend folks are in different repos (as they probably have very different development methodologies). And as your userbase/traffic scales up, you'll be able to allocate server resources very efficiently.

An added benefit is that (depending on the front-end you use) porting to PhoneGap/Cordova and making a mobile app out of it is a breeze.

One word of caution as you jump into single-page front-ends: It's worth your time and effort to figure out an elegant SEO solution early on. I prefer prerender.io, but there are many good options.

<comment><USER3> I would also add to your comments that it really depends on the startup idea I think. If its not anything that really needs to be realtime, or has minimum interactivity on the frontend and web is the only platform that matters, or if its an idea with lots of textual content i.e. newssite then separating it out into a pure frontend is probably not the right choice.

I'd also add that running full integration tests and getting a continuous deployment solution working becomes a very non-trivial tasks the more separated your services are. Just something to keep in mind.

Having said all that I agree in the general case and for everything I build these days as well its a backend api with various gui components (mobile/desktop/web) that consume it, which has all the benefits you enumerate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> In the Lean Startup order, going by canon, you should start with your front- end and then build the back-end to make it work. So you can actually start right away with the microservice oriented architecture. This will buy you a lot technically in the long-run, so it's usually the best choice. The basic pattern is an app/api split, but it can be extended to describe other parts of your app.

Separation of concerns at macro scale is a great idea just like it is at functional level. Even something like dependency management works so much smoother. But yeah, I agree with all the benefits that everyone mentioned in this thread.

</comment><comment><USER5> There's other advantages to separating it, like:

1) if you make your api public then you dogfooding ensures it's robust and functional and full-featured

2) if your front end is static, you can throw it up on amazon s3 or I'm playing with a static site hosting service I found here on hn called [http://netlify.com](http://netlify.com), you never have to worry about how much traffic that part will get.

3) you can bundle your html interface for mobile apps

</comment><comment><USER6> You have to do that choice on start because it's so annoying and a waste of time to do the switch later on. Particularly, that's definitely depends of your app. Is your app really heavy on the frontend side? If yes it's worth it to start with a frontend framework. Otherwise I prefer to have a traditional approach.</comment>


ChromeOS will no longer support ext2/3/4 on external drives/SD cards - <AUTHOR> https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=315401 <comment><USER3> First you have to void your warranty to properly dual boot now this? They want to drop support for a file format so they can make renaming drives easier?

I'm actually in the market for a new laptop/netbook. I was very close to purchasing a ChromeOS device as I work primarily on a desktop and have a laptop for travel but its pretty old, heavy and battery unfriendly. Then I found out I had to void the warranty to properly dual boot.

Seems like a giant fuck you to the Linux community given how much Google has benefited from Linux(ChromeOS even runs on the Linux kernel) and they put out laptops that are more locked down than your average windows laptops? Pretty disappointing.

I am assuming the write protect screws are there at the behest of Google.

<comment><USER4> It makes sense if you think of what the purpose of Chrome OS is. The point is not to make inexpensive hardware to run any OS on. The point is not to create a new general-purpose open OS that people can build on. The point is to get people to put there stuff in the Google Cloud to become bigger Google customers. Period.

That's why they make it difficult to dual boot and allow all your files to be wiped with a single key. That's also why anything you do on the Chromebook before you login to Google for the first time isn't saved. The point is to make everything on the laptop appear impermanent and to get you to think of the cloud as the place your digital stuff is actually stored.

<comment><USER5> I'm actually wondering why would people spend money on a chromebook - <USER2> hardware is crap and the price isn't that great. If I was looking for a cheap portable web browsing device I'd get something like : [http://www.onda- tablet.com/onda-v975w-quad-core-win-8-tablet...](http://www.onda- tablet.com/onda-v975w-quad-core-win-8-tablet-9-7-inch-retina-screen-ram-2gb- wifi-32gb.html) \- that's a 10 inch Windows 8.1 tablet with 2048*1536 resolution, quad core atom and 2 GB ram for 220$. Throw in 20$ and you can find a USB case with keyboard.

Portable, better performance, better screen, can be used as a "internet machine" with Win 8.

<comment><USER6> But is it locked to Win 8? Can you easily install ubuntu on it, or is all the hardware drivers closed source?

<comment><USER7> No, it's not locked. But you can't install Ubuntu there (at least not easily). Google for "32-bit UEFI" if you need any more details about the sorry state of affairs with booting Linux on latest crop of Atom Bay Trail hardware. The only out-of-the-box working distro for it is "fedlet" \- some obscure fedora 21-alpha fork.

<comment><USER8> >Google for "32-bit UEFI" if you need any more details about the sorry state of affairs with booting Linux on latest crop of Atom Bay Trail hardware.

There is at least one product with a Bay Trail CPU in it that runs Linux: [http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=19836](http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=19836).

Unlike most Atom CPUs, the graphics driver for Linux on Bay Trail CPUs is completely open (like it is on Intel Core CPUs), which I guess makes it doubly sad that some manufacturers of products with Bay Trail CPUs in them are screwing up with the boot loader.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The title of this article is needlessly inflammatory. Can some mod change it? _ChromeOS_ is not dropping support ext* at all; its _files application_ that is meant to be used with external drives is. That's a pretty huge difference.

I actually think the rationale for this is pretty good:

> Re #19, we understand that this was an undesirable decision for some users, > but we sometimes need to make a product decision like this. Chrome and > Chrome OS strive for simplicity. Every feature comes with complexity. > Complexity adds maintenance cost, QA cost, slows down development, and adds > surface of security exploits (as mentioned in #12). We should add a feature > only if its benefit clearly outweighs its cost, but this particular feature > was slipped in for some historical reason.

It's a shame for the people who were actually using this. But lots of people are overlooking that _this is just about the ChromeOS files application_ : ChromeOS can still mount and access ext* drives in general through its Linux kernel and utilities, Crouton and the likes can still use it, and people who specifically need to use the files app for whatever reason have plenty of choices for a file system.

<comment><USER10> If the worry is that ext* support widens the attack surface, how does removing support from the files app but not the OS, actually help much?

The security argument sounds like excuses being made on the fly if a feature is left in and just hidden from userland.

<comment><USER9> > If the worry is that ext* support widens the attack surface

Clearly, security is not _the_ worry. _The_ worry is that they have to lose time, effort and code simplicity on making te files app work with ext* systems. Additional code complexity has many downsides [1], only one of which is the security concern. Security is a concern that the ChromeOS developers and end users share, so that is why it is mentioned. Maintaining code dealing with ext* in the file manager app has many small disadvantages, of which the security risk is also one. This is not about the risks of "having ext exist in the system in general", this is about the disadvantages [2] of maintaining "your own additional code to handle ext systems".

[1]: I feel this issue is waved away so many times, while HN _especially_ should know better.

[2]: I'm aware that these things appear to be really small disadvantages, but the ChromeOS developers argue that the advantage of supporting it in the context of a program meant for external storage are even smaller, which I think is understandable.

<comment><USER10> The way I look at it is that if ext* support is left in the system, it still needs tested thoroughly. Removing it from UI tools just means that it will be tested less, so while it may reduce complexity and increase security in one app, it actually could make things worse for the OS in general. It feels that mentioning security as part of the reason was just trying to justify the decision after the fact.

<comment><USER9> > The way I look at it is that if ext* support is left in the system, it still > needs tested thoroughly.

Could you explain why? Especially 'thoroughly'.

> It feels that mentioning security as part of the reason was just trying to > justify the decision after the fact.

No doubt. The actual reason is "we don't want to maintain this piece of code anymore because of the added complexity". Security concerns are merely a consequence of this added complexity. That does not mean it is false to say it, though.

<comment><USER10> Say there is an exploit in the OS ext* implementation, if ext* is not included in userland, then it will be subject to far less testing, so the exploit is less likely to be discovered.

edit- the way I look at code security is that trying to write good code in the first place is not as important as the testing regime to find bad code, so while there is a risk of introducing new bugs by supporting ext* in the files app, this is counterbalanced by the risk that the underlying ext* implementation will not be included in as many tests.

<comment><USER9> > Say there is an exploit in the OS ext* implementation, if ext* is not > included in userland, then it will be subject to far less testing, so the > exploit is less likely to be discovered.

If you want to mount an external ext* partition yourself in ChromeOS from now on, you'll have to do some manual work going down to Linux using a terminal or Crouton. If there's an exploit in _any_ of that, it will also affect millions of other Linux computers around the world as ChromeOS is no different from any other Linux distro with respect to ext* anymore (just Linux + ext kernel modules + e2fsprogs). Google will not feel obliged to cover that use case in their tests, and rightly so I think.

In fact, they have described their "support" of ext* as accidental in the original thread, so it doesn't appear they ever tested it in the first place.

<comment><USER10> That sounds like the same approach that everyone used with openSSL. The fact that code is open source is not a sane reason not to test it.

<comment><USER9> I sympathize with the general sentiment, but it misses the point.

Linux + ext kernel modules + e2fsprogs is tested daily by developers of many Linux distributions. There's really no problem with verifying that some module works. Furthermore, Google tests this system implicitly by haveing ChromeOS use ext4 as its root file system. So everyone is right to be confident it works correctly.

However, testing whether or not something _works_ is totally different from testing whether it is _secure_. Many people testing whether OpenSSL works correctly (which happens every single day) would not have shown Heartbleed at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> ChromiumOS developers can't even implement a script to relabel EXT volumes? No wonder their kernel tree is such a mess, they must barely know what they're doing.

Also, I'd say you can safely assume that those 1-2% of users that use EXT volumes externally(which by the way, is a LOT of people, several million at least) are developers, and this will surely piss them off.

<comment><USER12> Obviously no one can defend this decision with the labeling non-issue while keeping a straight face, so time to guess:

What they are probably bitten by is the issue of ext4 actually keeping proper uid/gid associations with files. The other FS they seem to support [exFAT, FAT, UDF, NTFS] all are (as far as I know, and under Linux) completely agnostic to permissions and user-IDs: everything gets squashed to one uid/gid and fixed permissions.

Probably _that_ is the actual problem they want to get rid of and which causes pains? They only mentioned the labeling as "features such as...", so there might be more bugreports/requests...

Android (at least the Cyanogenmod variety on my phone) works around it with a small fuse-shim that fixes user-visible permissions on the fly, for all FS, including ext4. And ext4 makes for a very nice and well-performing fs on my phone.

<comment><USER13> > FS they seem to support [... NTFS] all are (as far as I know, and under > Linux) completely agnostic to permissions and user-IDs

Uhhh... On Windows this definitely not true. The NT security descriptiors are kind of complex and I could imagine nobody wanting to sit down and map them to a Unixy system. But they are definitely there.

<comment><USER12> That's why I added: ...and under Linux.

I'm well aware of NTFS permissions, and use them daily, both in UI and programmatically. Under Windows, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > On a related note, we may want to re-evaluate whether we'd like to continue > supporting ext2/3/4 filesystems (~2% of users, and the majority is probably > Chrome OS developers) in File.app.

Yes, please, drop support for something the developers use, what could go wrong?

The title seems misleading though, it seems that only the built in file manager will drop support for ext, and even then, maybe only for a specific feature?

<comment><USER15> >~2% of users

2% seems pretty high! If you make 50-70 kinds of these project management feature-drop decisions, then if the groups are mostly distinct, you'll have dropped 100% of your users (2% * 50 or 1.42% * 70 = 100%.)

Think of it this way. If only two percent of your users have a first name that isn't in the top hundred first names in America, would you drop support for first names that aren't on your whitelist, in some form field? (because you want it to contain real data.)

I think it's better to think through the rationale for dropping support (for example: If the people using this feature have a clear alternative, that is also better, and that they know about and will try and like. Then it might be acceptable In the first name example, the only rationale would be if this were some kind of game or something and people weren't expected to use their actual first name, and you also present them the list. Then it might work.)

The rationale presented here is very weak. "Only highly-paid people (developers) trying to get work done use this, about 2% of our sales." Marketing win?

<comment><USER12> It's not that bad in practice ;-)... Let's assume random distribution of used features among your customers.

If you shoot randomly at your users with a 2% hit rate [alienate them by dropping a feature], your user will stay with your product with 98% probability. Do it 50 times, any user will have a 0.98^50 = 36% chance of not having been hit [having at least one important feature taken away from him that makes him stop using your product...], so only (100%-36%) 64% of users will drop your product and go elsewhere.

<comment><USER16> Someone should have explained this to the GNOME team.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> And thus we returned to the stone ages of unjournaled FAT(-like) filesystems or bad NTFS driver implementations (the only good one is Microsoft's, and I doubt they'll be handing over the code for Chromium).

It's not even something consumers see, it's a driver for crying out loud. It doesn't even make sense to remove it for "product simplicity" as they are claiming now.

Edit: Left a comment with another argument about FAT being a bitmap filesystem (versus ext4's binary trees) and that developers are the people that are going to code for their OS. Ignoring the 1% is not the smartest move. [https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=315401#c...](https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=315401#c45)

<comment><USER18> >It's not even something consumers see, it's a driver for crying out loud. It doesn't even make sense to remove it for "product simplicity" as they are claiming now.

I may be confused, but isn't the discussion about removing support in the files app UI (while actual ext support remains in the console)? That would mean the exact opposite of what you're saying: it's a UI change, not a driver change.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Of course as per Comment #21 someone has to make project management decisions, but decisions like "Chromium OS is for consumer devices which should not need support for mounting external ext4 storage" is just so painful to read. It's just a pile of assumptions that goes against the evidence of given my a lot of comments.

<comment><USER20> "is for consumer"

Generally speaking whenever someone starts speaking for the "other" they're doing something wrong and they know it and the othering is just CYA speech.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm disappointed to see Chrome dropping features but it's even more disappointing to see the comments after this hit HN front page:

>#37 vitalifs...@gmail.com

>Are you idiots to remove ext support? Don't want to explain more than that.

>Today (5 hours ago) #38 StromCl...@gmail.com

>Sounds very very stupid (to remove Linux standard file systems)!

>#42 Shve...@gmail.com

>Sorry but you guys are mentally retarded at best.

<comment><USER18> Seriously: I was reading through the whole bug and finding the conversation (both complaints and responses) to be quite informative until I hit 100 posts of angry lunatics with nothing to contribute and often a misunderstanding of the issue in the first place.

<comment><USER22> It probably correlates to when it made Slashdot.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Given that this is the main filesystem in Linux, and is thereby automatically well supported by anything that leverages Linux, this choice makes absolutely no sense. Somebody in Google decided this; somebody in Google is a total idiot.

<comment><USER24> Looks like Google have a politic to drop support for external storage and push the cloud (or force it on us depending of your PoV), same story on Android: [https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=65974](https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=65974)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Security. Simplicity. Convenience.

Does it seem like these words are being used as a generic reason to justify almost anything these days? I think that and the continued trend of removing "developer-only" features are really going to decrease the number of future developers (because of all the hoops they have to jump through), so they're basically shooting themselves in the foot.

<comment><USER26> Yeah... the following (which I assume that you're referring to)

> > Re #19, we understand that this was an undesirable decision for some > users, but we sometimes need to make a product decision like this. Chrome > and Chrome OS strive for simplicity. Every feature comes with complexity. > Complexity adds maintenance cost, QA cost, slows down development, and adds > surface of security exploits (as mentioned in #12). We should add a feature > only if its benefit clearly outweighs its cost, but this particular feature > was slipped in for some historical reason.

Sounds reasonable enough. But it could be used to justify pretty much anything.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> It looks like this ticket was opened a year ago, during which almost no discussion took place. People only started to voice objections after the patch was already written and submitted.

I think it would be useful if tickets with breaking changes could come to the public's attention a bit earlier than this time.

I have no idea how to find such tickets of course. The search function of the issue tracker doesn't seem very helpful...

<comment><USER28> Very good point. It seems that this was tagged "Type-Feature" which is meant to mean "Request for new or improved features".

I'm not sure how _removing_ functionality is a "new or improved" feature, except from the developers POV due to reduced complexity. This is probably not how the users would define "new or improved".

They possibly need a new tag for "Type-FeatureRemoval" or similar.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Thereby entrenching the FAT patent fee scheme.

This is a very odd decision that originated in the difficulty of renaming external volumes ( why was this considerd important? ) and then became conflated with 'security'.

I believe the kernel modules are still there, though, so you can mount ext _x_ from the command line in dev mode. But not much use for everyday users.

<comment><USER30> BTW, when will those patents expire? Shouldn't be long I guess..

<comment><USER31> The issue is exFAT and Fat32 long filenames. exFAT was introduced with Windows Vista and is what 32GB+ flash media tends to be formatted in. It'll be a long time before this one expires.

<comment><USER32> Does anyone know exactly what innovation(s) in exFAT is/are newly patented? Which patents read on it?

<comment><USER31> From wiki:

>exFAT is a proprietary file system. However exFAT is protected under US patent law, and its initial application was issued on 10 July 2009 under the application number US2008168029.[7] On 12 November 2013, the patent was granted by the US patent office under US8583708.

Patent length is 20 years, so we're looking at least until 2033 before exFat is expired and (safely) freely usable.

<comment><USER33> > Patent length is 20 years, so we're looking at least until 2033 before exFat > is expired and (safely) freely usable.

Nope. For the dates this was filed, length goes from filing date. Depending on how dangerous you want to be, you could argue it expires anywhere from 2024-2028.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Yeah I was wondering why I suddenly couldn't load my crouton on external 64 gig stick, really annoying google blew off my entire android development environment.

<comment><USER35> Is there any reason why you want to keep ChromeOS at all?

[https://www.distroshare.com/distros/get/14/](https://www.distroshare.com/distros/get/14/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I wonder how the cost of maintaining ext2/3/4 support compares to the revenue loss from Linux developers abandoning your platform in droves...

</comment><comment> mike-cardwell Even if I didn't care about Ext support, there's no way I'm going to buy into Chrome OS now. Who knows what other important features they'll remove in future for the sake of "simplicity"

</comment><comment><USER37> One of the comments said that there was some sort of security exploit because of extra features. I really have to question what sort of reasoning this is, and what sort of maintenance burden they expect from this?

<comment><USER38> It is true that the ext4 filesystem driver is a large attack surface that is probably not well-vetted for the possibility of a maliciously-crafted filesystem (since the usual threat model comes from the opposite direction). If it has vulnerabilities, this could allow someone to create a USB stick that pwns the host system when inserted.

This is, of course, equally true of all the other filesystem drivers. But fewer total drivers available clearly means less attack surface.

So, yeah, it's a legitimate concern.

<comment><USER39> _It is true that the ext4 filesystem driver is a large attack surface_

The problem is that reasoning can be applied to any feature you want to get rid of. A good reason would be, _we had N vulnerabilities in ext4 in the last six months, which is more than the kernel FAT support, which had only M vulnerabilities_.

Besides that, the attack vector seems fairly theoretical to me. Most users will take a blank SD card and format it as ext4 themselves.

<comment><USER38> > The problem is that reasoning can be applied to any feature you want to get > rid of.

Well, of course it can. That's more or less the Chrome team's point: they want to remove any feature that isn't widely used, because every feature is an attack vector.

> A good reason would be, we had N vulnerabilities in ext4 in the last six > months, which is more than the kernel FAT support, which had only M > vulnerabilities.

Not really, no. The absence of reported vulnerabilities in a time period could mean that there are none, but more likely it just means no one has looked, like with Bash. The things you need to ask yourself when considering attack surface reduction are:

* How complicated is this piece of code? (More complication = more bugs.)

* Is it likely that this code has been well-studied with respect to the proposed threat model? (For ext4, probably not -- it's designed to be used on your internal disk, which is not an attack vector.)

* How painful would it be for users to simply remove it? (Obviously, removing ext4 harms far fewer users than removing FAT, developers notwithstanding.)

> Besides that, the attack vector seems fairly theoretical to me. Most users > will take a blank SD card and format it as ext4 themselves.

Theoretical? Flash drives loaded with malware are an actual, widely-used attack vector, used by everyone from simple identity thieves to governments (look up Stuxnet, which was used to damage Iran's nuclear infrastructure).

Things have gotten better since Windows stopped auto-running software on such drives, but a filesystem exploit that kicks in on mount would be more effective and harder to detect (no telltale files visible in the file browser).

<comment><USER38> OK, I actually asked a kernel dev friend about this because it affects my work on sandstorm.io, and he says that defense against malicious filesystems is in fact something Theodore Ts'o, the ext4 maintainer (and Googler), cares deeply about. Awesome!

Now, that doesn't automatically mean it's safe, but given this new piece of information, I'd say that the case for removing ext4 for attack surface reasons is significantly weakened.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Android KitKat and ChromeOS SDCard blunders pretty much show Google's policy. They have me searching the forums for another unnecessary rooting procedure.

Simplicity should be optional and easily disabled through a checkbox in settings. I am afraid FirefoxOS will make the same assumptions.

<comment><USER41> > I am afraid FirefoxOS will make the same assumptions.

I'll punch myself in the face the day Mozilla stops supporting patent unencumbered free and technically better filesystems for patent encumbered proprietary Microsoft specific crap.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> I am actually left speechless. Who on earth thought this was a good idea?

</comment><comment><USER43> Because they can't relabel an extX volume? How does that make any sense?

</comment><comment><USER44> Is is possible to just wipe chromeOS off of a chromebook and install a full Linux (with reasonable driver support)?

<comment><USER45> Yes, you can. And Chrubuntu has great driver support for the c720 and other popular models, but I still ran into some bugs with suspend and Wifi, so I stick with a chroot.

<comment><USER44> Is chroot just using the built in command line?

<comment><USER45> [https://github.com/dnschneid/crouton](https://github.com/dnschneid/crouton)

Crouton is a install script that uses a chroot to install Ubuntu through the shell on ChromeOS. You still need to enable developer mode, and it uses the ChromeOS kernel, but other than that it looks and feels like a "normal" Ubuntu installation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> All I have to say is fuck Google. I would never use a Chromebook, for a hundred reasons. However, sabotaging Linux support in this way is both shortsighted, aggressive, and moronic.

Our kids need to learn to use computers. Not just use Word and Internet Explorer, but learn to hack. Not just consume, but create. Computers 30 years ago were tinkerable. Google is doing everything in its power to take away that tinkerability, and worse, to undermine tinkerable systems.

</comment><comment><USER47> I'll be glad if ext* support is removed from Files.app. I once had it corrupt my externally mounted ext3 hard disk and lost a ton of data. I never should have been doing that kind of thing with Files.app in the first place. It's really only designed to be used with your "Downloads" folder where there's a warning that all your files might be auto-deleted anyway.

</comment><comment><USER48> A member of the team has just opened a potential solution to the problem through the new chrome.fileSystemProvider API: crbug.com/422764

<comment><USER49> And, as I already posted, it's a rather idiotic one. Does the project member not understand the issue? Kernel support hasn't been removed yet, just the userspace stuff. Last thing we need is to rewrite existing, solid code in JS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> what is the root filesystem in ChromeOS?

<comment><USER51> ext4

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> This issue was closed July 21st, 2014 - anybody care to comment what inspired its discussion today?

<comment><USER33> pushed out in the last week as part of stable release version 38 of chromeOS? There are hundreds of thousands of tickets, end users won't follow those, they care once stuff lands on their systems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Does it support F2FS then? That would be for the best.

</comment><comment><USER54> luckily notices this before my trip... what the hell?

</comment><comment><USER26> I guess that chromebook laptops are cheap (?). Chrome OS seemed appealing to me initially, because of the short start up time. But then, reasonably sized SSDs became affordable[1], and any faster boot times than what Linux + SSD can give me is kind of _meh_ , to me.

What are the advantages of ChromeOS over other operating systems?

[1] And if you are considering a Chrome OS laptop, chances are that you won't be needing something like >500GB storage for it, I would presume.

</comment><comment><USER55> The important takeaway:

" _Chromium OS is for consumer devices which should not need support for mounting external ext4 storage._ "

<comment><USER51> Am I not a consumer then in their eyes? I use ext4 on all my external media and I don't develop for Chrome OS.</comment></comment>


Want a House Like This? Prepare for a Bidding War with Investors - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/06/20/business/economy/starter-homes-investors.html <comment><USER3> Everything on the Beltline is gold.

Atlanta is very car-centric, but the Beltline corridor that surrounds the city is a pedestrian / cyclist heaven. Atlanta is already one of the greenest cities in the world - there are so many trees you'd be hard pressed to find a comparison. The Beltline exemplifies this - there's a park every single mile you walk. Businesses, restaurants, bars, and residences have sprung up along the entire track. Each bend has a bit of the flavor of its neighborhood. Entire weekends can be spent on the Beltline.

They're expanding trails out and into the suburbs. The Palasades, a hilly oasis by the Chattahoochee river. The Silver Comet bike trail even goes all the way to Alabama.

The Beltline has reinvigorated the entire city of Atlanta and captivated the minds of urban planners around the world.

If I had the capital, I would be buying so many homes here.

<comment><USER4> I think it goes to show how starved most American's are for public space. I'm all for the Beltline and looking forward to it being completed in my own neighborhood, but you could also look at it and see it as a simple sidewalk. People come from far and wide to enjoy this amazing sidewalk where you can stroll and patronize businesses without cars harrying you. Imagine being able to walk with your children without the constant fear that you will all be run over at any moment!

I love the Beltline and all that it's doing for my little corner of Atlanta, but I can't help but feel bittersweet about it. One of the major negatives besides gentrification is that it does increase car traffic. The neighborhoods are becoming denser and the new folks are still bringing their cars. Lots of people drive in from far lung suburbs to enjoy the Beltline and that creates more traffic too. Hopefully the model will be reproduced in more places.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The dream of owning a house, owning a car, owning land is disappearing with more and more lease contracts, investors scooping up everything with large sums of money.

Our society is fastly moving towards a feudal system. It will not take long until everything is owned by rich overlords.

<comment><USER6> And this is why everyone my age jokes about eating the rich.

(Ha ha, only serious!)

<comment><USER7> What should these rich people do? Quit buying houses? Sit on their money? Buy yachts instead? You could argue that buying and renting out houses directly helps the proletariat, because it lowers rent.

<comment><USER8> Ideally they would invest in the production of something new rather than trying to corner a limited market to engage in literal rent-seeking. I'm not anti-real estate investment by any means and own a few properties of my own but I think it has all gotten a bit silly and needs a cold shower.

<comment><USER7> If they buy houses and prices go up, doesn't that incentivize building?

<comment><USER9> Not necessarily. It seems to incentivize more buying. If real estate prices keep going up and actually building anything new is too much work why bother?

<comment><USER7> > _actually building anything new is too much work why bother_

If prices rise above the cost of building a house, you could make money by paying someone else to build a house, no work required.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > Angel Oak announced it had completed a $90 million securitization of similar > fix-and-flip loans — meaning it had packaged the loans and sold slices of > them to other investors

Sounds like another effect of the way-too-low interest rates, and an interesting crisis to come.

<comment><USER11> fix-and-flip loans have extremely short terms meaning of course they have to be refinanced/paid off typically within a year. This represents relatively low risk but also yielding minimal returns.

It's an interesting securitization to be sure, but I don't know about this doom and gloom crisis scenario you are speaking about.

Long term buy and hold type loans meant for investors are typically based the on debt service coverage ratio meaning the tenant's rents need to cover the mortgage payment by a certain %. These are hovering around ~%8 which usually makes for a pretty thin margin on a cash flow basis. As with any investment, if you are banking on appreciation and that is all you've got, I'd worry. Perhaps not so much so in the booming area this article references - <USER2> funding dries up for all the hot commodities coming in.

</comment></comment><comment> pickle-wizard I bought my house in Austin 4 years ago.

I was looking toward to the low end of the market around the 140K to 150K price point. I found that I kept getting outbid by the investors. They would come in and offer a cash deal and a closing in 7 days. I just couldn't compete with a 30 day closing and a financing contingency.

I ended up having to up my range to 200K. Once I did that I wasn't competing with the investors. Which over 30 years I guess spending the extra 50K isn't that big of a deal. I still ended up buying below my means. However I know several who that would price them out of the market.

<comment><USER12> I've lived in Northern Virginia, and I've seen all-cash bidding wars for houses worth north of a million. I'm glad you were able to get to a price point where you weren't competing with flippers. Where I am, I can't see myself ever reaching the point where I can make an accepted bid on anything.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> It sounds like individual buyers could use a service that purchases homes in cash for them and then handles financing. I also wonder if a wholesale buying club would be viable in these markets.

<comment><USER14> I thought that was the idea behind the current bank-mortgage-realtor system?

<comment><USER13> It is, but closing a mortgage is more time-consuming than the buyer handing over a check and requires some delay. There is also a chance that a mortgage sale won't close.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I may be biased (I'm a Real Estate Investor) but Investors aren't the vultures that some people make them out to be. We are putting beautiful homes back out on the market. Sure, this is pricing out people who would have been keen on making improvements over time instead of realizing payments on this all at once - but the end result is if people are willing to pay, there will continue to be a market.

<comment><USER15> It's more about the ridiculously favorable tax treatment which is the subsidy that makes your business possible.

<comment><USER11> I assure you tax treatment/subsidies are not what make my business possible. The retail prices (comps) for the neighborhood the product exists in, drives profits. Yes a house is just a product (other than my own home)

You have to live in a house for two years before you can avoid capital gains tax. Otherwise, as an Investor, I am paying capital gains unless I do a 1031 exchange (meaning I am just delaying the inevitable)

<comment><USER16> Yes, but you can pass those houses onto your children (and they can pass to theirs, etc.), and keep avoiding taxes until it actually sells (that's when there actually is a gain). So, just never sell it and keep it in the family and never pay capital gains.

<comment><USER17> That's a lot of capital to keep locked up in an investment that doesn't pay off until one or more generations later.

<comment><USER16> They're bringing in a nice cash flow with tenants, and appreciating. You just put 30% down, so not much "tied up"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I can't even afford NY Times to read the damn article.

<comment><USER19> This was my last free article :D

You can afford a free VPN or Firefox Focus or ignonito mode :) One is these should work :P

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> The article is pretty light on details, and doesn't do a good job of separating out the different categories of real estate investing. It's easy for the reader to confuse one category with another.

Turnkey investing - where companies have worked it all out for you and you merely deal with the cash end of it - is usually not profitable for the investor. If you hang out around RE investors, they'll caution you on how it seems very alluring because you don't need much knowledge and someone else is managing everything else. But these companies need to make a profit, and so you'll get less of the pie - and they have every incentive to make a deal look better than it is.

The exception is in up and coming neighborhoods.

The article mentions this, but doesn't go into detail: Many of the houses being sold were never on the market. Aggressive marketers contact existing owners and ask if they want to sell, and some small percentage of owners will agree (need cash quickly, etc). Had this not happened, the houses would still not be available as the owner did not intend to put them on the market. It's like complaining that I am screwing up the used car market by asking people if they want to sell their car.

When someone makes $40K+ on a flip, it's almost always the case that the house was in a bad enough shape that a bank wouldn't finance it. So once again, had they not bought and flipped the house, none of the people profiled in the article would have been able to buy it anyway (nor would they want to, being in bad shape and all). They're not stealing houses to make a good profit. They are making it easier for people to buy that house, while they make a profit. It's not a zero sum game.

Almost all flippers hope to sell at market price, and probably at least half list the house at slightly below market price as they need to sell fast. Why? Because most flippers are not using much of their own money. They'll get a hard money loan at, say, 10 or 12% interest to buy the property, and possibly also to fund the repair. Every month they have the house is costing them big bucks. They aim to fix and sell fast to minimize their interest payments. So it's not a case that they are aiming to inflate housing prices. Quite the contrary, it often works out better for them to sell it quicker at a slightly lower than market price.

Now when it comes to investors sweeping up houses and renting them - yeah, that could be a long term problem.

But really: As someone who has an idea on how real estate investing works, my criticism is that one can read this whole article and still not have much of an idea.

<comment><USER21> > Now when it comes to investors sweeping up houses and renting them - yeah, > that could be a long term problem.

"Fix & Rent" is where the market is headed, for two reasons:

1\. the market for single-family fix-and-flip projects is compressing, meaning the profit margin is getting slimmer.

2\. the data points to younger people preferring to rent. my own opinion is that it points to them not being able to afford to buy, but regardless: house rentals is a big market, much bigger than many expected.

my take is that the main drawback is that within a certain price range this is bound to drive prices up, making it harder for normal people to purchase a home. and nearly impossible for normal people to find a deal.

<comment><USER20> Without any strong opinions on the matter (I am not a RE investor), I do find it weird that all the blame is going to the investors when, as you pointed out, the reality is that the market prefers to rent vs own. Should we not "blame" younger people who prefer to rent as much we blame investors? If "normal" people are having trouble purchasing a home, isn't it because a lot more people prefer to rent?

Personally, though, I don't believe that younger people preferring to rent is making that big an impact. That's something you see in only a few cities in the US, and most investors who are trying to make money via rentals actively avoid those cities (saturated market).

<comment><USER21> My point is that 'prefer to rent' is inaccurate. 'In no position to buy' is probably more precise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This doesn't look like another housing bubble AT ALL.

<comment><USER23> It depends. If the investors have the money and no crazy loans it just means that the lower price range is not available for the individual buyer anymore.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Build. More. Places. To. Live.

<comment><USER25> Move. Somewhere. Else.

I'm not trying to be hateful, but those are both very real solutions.

<comment><USER17> Or move in next door, tear down the house, build a 4-unit, and rent out three of them.

If the influence of NIMBY really was limited to the BY (backyard) these issues would be moot. The frustration is that owners are attempting to control land that they did not purchase.

<comment><USER20> >Or move in next door, tear down the house, build a 4-unit, and rent out three of them.

Depends on zoning laws. In my state, this was not allowed until legislation came about this year allowing it. You could not have a multifamily property in a single family residential neighborhood - not even a duplex.

<comment><USER17> I'm beginning to think this issue might self-correct.

As more properties end up being owned by investors, the voting power of owners (as a category) is commensurately lower, since a single investor usually owns multiple properties, yet gets only one vote.

As the number of renters increases, they can support zoning changes that add supply and reduce their costs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I bought a house like this in Austin. I paid a $15,000 premium to beat a cash offer. My real estate agent was incredulous.

</comment><comment><USER27> Interesting... NYTimes used a play button instead of autoplaying the top video graphic. IIRC they used to autoplay in their more advanced media articles.

I'm curious if the graphics team has some UX insight into this.</comment>