Bookmarklet to emulate colour blindness - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Altreus/colourblind

<comment><USER2> Author here! I've created a page with a button so you can see how it functions: [http://altreus.github.io/colourblind/index.html](http://altreus.github.io/colourblind/index.html)

HTH HAND</comment>


Map of Pangea with modern-day borders - <AUTHOR> https://www.visualcapitalist.com/incredible-map-of-pangea-with-modern-borders/ <comment><USER3> Tangential: I've blocked pretty well all dedicated ad providers. It's very easy and enough people are doing it now that you can see the result - <USER2> ads are starting to be hosted on the same domain as the site itself. Small and static. I can tolerate that. I'm ok with it.

This site there's an ad for a book on leadership, a flickering animated "look at me!" advert. Not OK at all. Now I will take the time to look into how to block these site-hosted ads, animated or not. You advertising gits are simply unable to learn, you're too greedy.

<comment><USER4> I don't see this ad. But honestly you come across as rather entitled if you think the web should conform exactly to your preferehnces. The web and millions of people working on it are paid through ads. Many of the sites you use would not exist without ads.

Ads that are on the site and relevant to the content should not really offend anyone. Intense tracking is something else and should be downright illegal. But ads are part of what pays many things today - and in reality can also be a useful venue for promoting relevant and good products that otherwise no one would know.

I prefer ads any day over "content marketing", paid articles, paywalls or simply no content being available.

<comment><USER5> The internet existed before ads, too. This website we're on now has no ads.

Advertising is not the inevitable endgame of any particular forum. It's only there because we accept it. If I go to my public library and ask if I can put up a flier, they say "Are you a local non-profit? Then you can post it on the bulletin board in the back corner." Just because they can run ads doesn't mean they must.

It'd be great if the people who want an ad-laden web could have their side, and the people who want a free volunteer web could have their side. There was a time when I might have thought that .com/.org could do this, but clearly that distinction is long gone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm interested in how this was generated. There are some parts that are purely artistic (or overlooked), such as the presence of modern-day river systems, Lake Victoria, the Great Lakes, etc.

I built a lower-fidelity but more interactive visualization here: [https://dinosaurpictures.org/ancient- earth#240](https://dinosaurpictures.org/ancient-earth#240). The viz uses the modeling outputs of the Paleomap Project mentioned in the article. Reversing the model allows users to enter their city/town and see how it moved around over geologic time.

</comment><comment><USER7> Man, Europe is tiny, took me a good 20 seconds to find it. I know the about the Mercatorial projection thing but this highlights it even more.

<comment><USER8> But... it's almost exactly where it is on a modern map! It's just above Africa.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Fascinating to see India split in two here. So I guess the collision of the large Indian mass with the eurasian mass is what created the Himalayas.

<comment><USER10> Exactly. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geology_of_the_Himalaya](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geology_of_the_Himalaya)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Is this map accurate in terms of the equator and poles? And would that have corresponding effects on the weather? It looks like most of China and Japan, plus Australia, would be freezing while the equator is running almost directly through the center of the US.

</comment><comment><USER12> [2012] [http://capitan-mas-ideas.blogspot.com/2012/08/pangea- politic...](http://capitan-mas-ideas.blogspot.com/2012/08/pangea- politica.html?m=1) with commentary on the shortcomings

</comment><comment><USER13> What's the reason that the Earth had that form? And why not any more?

Did it speed faster around the Sun when it was a liquid lava blob so it got a pointy end that later had too much elevation to be covered in water?

<comment><USER14> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercontinent_cycle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercontinent_cycle)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I think saying "modern day map, transformed to look like Pangea" might be more accurate, as clearly Pangea did not have gaps between the (modern-day) continents.

<comment><USER16> "clearly"?

<comment><USER15> Yes, as in – this is clearly the land features of our present day continents mashed together, not a best guess at what the actual land of Pangea looked like, with borders subsequently projected onto that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Interesting twist for Bulgaria, Serbia, Greece & all that SSE part of europe

</comment><comment><USER18> Spains position relative to Morocco hasn't moved too much.

</comment><comment><USER19> I find this oddly touching.

</comment><comment><USER20> Wow, Tibet.

</comment><comment><USER21> It surely shows size does not matter.</comment>


Respect Do Not Track with Google Analytics - <AUTHOR> https://www.paulfurley.com/google-analytics-do-not-track/ <comment><USER2> Google Analytics purports to honor DNT, correct?

If Google disregarded DNT Headers _while_ keeping the option in Chrome, that would be some impressive cognorporate dissonace, even for Google.</comment>


In a world with .XYZ, .APP, .BIKE and more, will there still be love for .COM? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/p/88e8ca7f407c <comment><USER2> .COM is still the king. It's the first thing to come to mind when typing in a site and I haven't seen any new ".whatever" that has a chance of unseating it. Very limited niche uses for most of the new gltds from my perspective. Good luck to them all but I'll stick with .COM's myself.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd love to see some rules in the future where a domain has to be used. Something needs to be done about domain squatters. It's getting out of hand.

</comment><comment><USER4> I always would prefer a .com domain because people are used to it :-) .com sounds better than .whatever ...

</comment><comment><USER5> the .com domain is far too embedded into everybody's memory. So i dont see this going anywhere soon. The ONLY important domain that could challenge it or at least coexists in same importance would be .web

However due to stupid trademarks issues it is still not being used.

</comment><comment><USER6> I still like dot com. We all see how well .biz and .info and .travel has done...</comment>


Freelancers are not free - <AUTHOR> http://behindtheclock.timmyontime.com/post/92127257/freelancers-are-not-

<comment><AUTHOR> The problem with freelancers is that they don't see their situation as exploitation so they can stay. One of the best way to get out of the freelancer situation is by creating a company. Then, the way a customer view yourself is really different. They know they are talking to someone that wants to make it bigger. Even if people around you say that it's too expensive and unecessary, it will change your relation with your customers and the way you see yourself.

</comment><comment><USER2> This article goes something like this: * I thought being a freelancer would benefit me. * In fact it benefits my boss. * Therefore I was wrong and it doesn't benefit me.

The author assumes that employment is a zero-sum game, when in fact it would be entirely possible for an arrangement to improve the situation for both the employee and the boss.

It's nice for your boss to save money on office space. But it's no skin off your back, because you don't gain anything from your boss spending money on office space (unless you like working in an office).

<comment><USER3> I'm just trying to help new freelancers who are as naive as I was in the beginning. What I'm basically saying is : if you want to be a freelancer, be a freelancer. Have several clients, be the one in control at all time. This is what professional freedom is all about... it's not just about making your own schedule.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> So, wait the article says that freelancing benefits both employer and contractor?</comment>


Rather Than Saving Public Transportation, We Handed Millions to Lyft and Uber - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@ilyaberger/we-had-a-chance-to-save-public-transportation-instead-we-handed-millions-to-lyft-and-uber-and-77860ffdedfd <comment><USER2> It's one thing to try and quantify the collective "cost" of a hypothetical increase in traffic. It's another to lay blame for that increase on one segment of traffic user, and assume troubles would disappear if that segment were suddenly gone.

Especially as more studies show that most regular cyclical heavy traffic is ultimately supply-side controlled, given any chance to reach equilibrium.

>Finally, given 60 percent of rideshare users who could have used public transportation otherwise

"Studies" like this are worse than misleading. Just because people could have done something doesn't mean they would have.

And public transport ends up paying the price for it eventually, because when arguments like this end up funneling money to public transit projects with inflated demand: 1) they steal money from more beneficial projects based on realistic modeling of life choices, 2) they end up underperforming vs expectations, which makes public transport look bad, 3) if they aren't self sufficient, end up being an operating budget drain in addition to a capital layout drain.

<comment><USER3> The problem with these underperforming projects is also that you have a kind of bistable equilibrium here.

I don't use the bus to work because it only goes once every half hour, and since it's stuck in city traffic the schedule is completely random.

If there were more buses on this route (e.g. one every 5 minutes), I would not care about the randomness, since whenever I arrive a bus should be there soon. But the transit authority doesn't add buses because there's a low number of passengers on this route, even though there are thousands working at my company that may take the same bus but opt for a car.

Public transit only becomes viable once it's densely connected and frequent enough to be useful. But to get out of this rut you need massive investment.

For this reason any individual public transit projects in the US will always underperform IMHO. You're in one of two equilibria and it's massive costs with little return until you get to the better equilibrium on the other aide, but this would need broad political support to happen.

<comment><USER2> Yeah, multiple iterations of the chicken-egg problem.

Ironically the only way I see this problem ever being solved is via an extremely responsive, informative, and at least somewhat _on-demand_ version of public transport.

Which I don't really see happening, at least without some sort of competitive market of public private partnerships.

But as long as public transport remains the status-quo, it's not going to overcome that equilibrium battle in the vast majority of the US. And I suspect that would even be the case even given nearly unlimited resources to get there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Keep in mind that there is a large percentage of intelligent people that believe we will solve the transportation problems in Los Angeles by building tunnels underground that transport individual cars on tracks. The fact that so many people believe that Uber and Lyft solve transportation rather than making it worse is just the tip of the iceberg of delusion.

</comment><comment><USER5> There's hope though.

Drivers practically only develop enough margin if their cost per mile decreases - and the best ways to do that are for it to be a trip they are already making, it to be a pool, or to be delivering food at the same time - or shorter rides with fixed pickup costs.

And as prices rise as profitably is sought, passengers will look for ways to reduce their trip needs, incorporating public transit again.

Unfortunately, neither of these models supports the number of drivers currently in the system.

</comment><comment><USER6> It's my belief that everyone except the incredibly naive know that the "rideshare economy" by these companies in the u.s. are just an excuse to buying themselves time until they can smooth out fully autonomous l4-5 driving.

Cars are incredibly cheap compared to human labor and the investors subsidizing each of our rides know fully well that if they don't do so at the moment, people will complain enough and through mutual shared pain figure out effective ways of transportation which will make the costs of developing fully autonomous solutions way higher and increase the risk of people not adopting it when its actually available.

Because inertia and human conditioning.

This does not solve the core issue of inefficient implementation of public transportation, poor planning and bad road design.

As a developed nation, the u.s. has absolutely terrible infrastructure seconded only by its terrible healthcare situation.

However, my thoughts are that when I no longer have to drive myself through bumper to bumper traffic, caused by a few frustrated and short sighted drivers zig zagging during rush hour slowing everyone else down, an hour each way to work, I probably won't mind the effects of poor infrastructure, and neither would others. It would probably be the same as riding in a train to us.

That way I'm not losing hours of time a day doing something I absolutely dislike and abhor instead choosing to use that time productively for myself.

(I don't want to comment on whether remote working will alleviate this for this particular article.)

This is probably what Uber, Lyft, Google and their investors are betting on?

</comment><comment><USER7> who is "we"?

</comment><comment><USER8> Stop trying to make public transportation great again. It's over. The market has spoken, and no amount of self-righteous whining about Uber is going to change that.

It gets dreadfully old, in fact. I come here to read about new things, don't you?</comment>


Takeaways from Folding Our Startup  - <AUTHOR> http://grinn.it/WhyWeFolded We decided to unwind our startup; here's why.  Hope this helps others. <comment><USER2> 6\. Pick a better brand name. Sorry but GRINN.IT is a VERY bad name. Why? Because you have to spell it out for them every time. Just like pownce.

Hey, what's your new site?

grin it, check it out.

Grabs smartphone, types in grinit.com, nope nothing, grin.it, nope nothing. done.

Keep and understand the distinction between a bad PRODUCT and piss poor marketing.

<comment><USER3> In today's domain ecosystem, you're not going to easily find a name which is easy to spell, pronounce, remember AND is free (or affordable) to acquire as a domain name. The vast majority of non-technical users are just going to google for your company, so your example seems a little contrived.

The first part of the conversation would go more like this:

Hey, what's your new site?

grinnit with two n's. So grinn dot it.

However, there is definitely a problem when a search for "grin it" on google doesn't find your site. Moreover when a search for "grin it photos" or "grinit photos" is also unsuccessful. That's definitely a problem. If the spelling of your website isn't immediately obvious (a la reddit), you just need to ensure that users can still find your site.

I don't think it's a horrible name. Seeing it in print makes it instantly memorable which is always helpful, they just needed some additional work on seo for the typos of their name. Calling it "piss poor marketing" is disingenuous and unnecessarily inflammatory.

<comment><USER4> I think you're wrong. Yes, a lot of very good domains are taken, but you can spend as little as $200 in Flippa.com to get a decent one that people can at least remember.

<comment><USER3> I think ease of spelling was the problem I was getting at, not memorability, but after visiting Flippa, I can see your point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I appreciate this post but I disagree with it. I started my company in 2003. There were hundreds of times that we should have "folded." Last year we did $500k. This year we will do $1M. Turns out we were just too early, but because we were too early we made all of our mistakes before the market caught up to us. It was a tough road but now we are sitting in the catbird seat.

My advice to others is: never give up.

<comment><USER6> What specifically do you disagree with?

I think the startup ecosystem is woefully lacking in negative outcome posts like these. It's fun to write about your awesome traction, your latest funding round, but it's painful and bitter to write about failure. As a result, many new entrepreneurs get a highly distorted perception of the probability of success.

These new entrepreneurs look around and see guys/gals of comparable intelligence and think to themselves, if Jimmy can build a $500M company, I surely can build a $50M company. After all, he's not 10 times smarter than me, and I see everyone winning on every post I read.

What this assessment belies is that for every Jimmy, there are hundreds, if not thousands of other startup attempts that have acheived moderate results or outright failure.

So I welcome the author's post and ecourage more to do more self-reflection, if only to give a more balanced views as to really how hard this road is.

<comment><USER5> Specifically, I disagree with giving up.

<comment><USER7> Timing is always an issue, and it's awesome that you were able to grind it out and stay solvent while the market was able to catch up. We aren't proud of 'giving up' but we stand by our convictions. Every situation is different and our decision came down to a multitude of factors. We're not applauding our unwind, but more so trying to convey a little transparency into our decision.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> \-- When we arrived at the filtering problem, we realized that we had solved the collaboration problem. --

True to any consumer-facing startup. When you successfully scale up, you have to somehow keep the quality.

Note to self : think about this "beforehand" ...

</comment><comment><USER9> It's great to see such a positive retrospective. Keep your head up and thanks for sharing!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Not to be cliche, but it would been easier to keep going - but nobody wants to be a zombie. Lots of hard choices.</comment></comment>


Algorithms tutorial for beginners - <AUTHOR> http://adrianmejia.com/blog/2018/04/04/how-you-can-change-the-world-learning-data-structures-algorithms-free-online-course-tutorial/ <comment><USER2> See also Visualizing Algorithms: [https://bost.ocks.org/mike/algorithms/](https://bost.ocks.org/mike/algorithms/)

</comment><comment><USER3> > If the elements are already the program will perform fewer operations. On > the contrary, if the items are in reverse order, it will require more swap > operations to get it sorted.

I think you're missing a word in the first sentence.

<comment><AUTHOR> `sorted` was the missing word.

> If the elements are already __sorted __the program...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> >Another popular algorithm is PageRank developed in 1988 by Sergey Brin and Larry Page...

I think you meant 1998 there.

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha, sorry for the typo. It's fixed now!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This doesn't count as a Show HN, so we took that out. Please see [https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I didn't know about that</comment></comment>


Ask HN: I am going to setup an engineering team. What should I know/prepare for? - <AUTHOR> I used to be an accountant in practice (equivalent of a CPA in India). Became a web developer by accident 2 years ago. Currently building a web application for the accounting industry that automates a lot of reporting tasks. So far it has gone well and I feel like I should be adding more people to my team to handle the increasing workload.
My stack is Rails/Postgres on Heroku at the moment. And some C# for some small windows tools we have built. I did a lot of googling on this subject and made a to-do list of things to prepare for this. - I found the Joel test which I will soon be passing.
I was hoping you guys could help me with some advice based on your personal experiences regarding: 1. What I should expect/prepare for 2. What questions should I be asking, that I am probably not. 3. Anything else that you think I should do.
I think what I am asking boils down to: "What are some things you wish you knew before you set up your engineering org?"
Thanks in advance. <comment><USER2> Hire for problems you need solved as opposed to generalists. Hire for strength as opposed to lack of weakness. Hire for skillset but understand that a large portion is going to be learning on the job. Hire someone people who care about your codebase and are going to act like the custodian. Hire some who hack solutions which helps keep velocity in the team. People who complain about their previous company are generally poor hires. Most importantly hire people who get sh*t done.

</comment><comment><USER3> You need to have a programmer that is better than you atleast 1 or 2 in your team and go with agile. Finally your mission and vision :-)

</comment><comment><USER4> Ask yourself if these people can work well together</comment>


Coding bootcamp Fullstack Academy (YC S12) will fund alumni-founded startups - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2016/06/15/coding-bootcamp-fullstack-academy-will-fund-alumni-founded-startups/ <comment><USER2> This is not as good as it sounds. First these are inexperienced devs that will not have a chance to work with other developers and learn things.

Secondly, this is then financed with their own money :)?!

I think they do this so they place all this graduates somewhere and give them some work, instead of finding them promised well paid jobs.

If I sound negative, I am losing faith in ability of these schools to produce quality.

<comment><USER3> I have met some good bootcamp devs, and many bad ones, but I can say for sure that good ones do exist. That being said, I wouldn't give a fresh MIT grad a dime for a new startup. Some people will (I've met them) but it's just too risky. You need to learn from senior devs, I learned the most from grey beards.

<comment><USER2> Same here, which is why I say this, for bootcamp grads to enter profession, they really need to work side by side with other devs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hey Hacker News! I'm Mark Davis...the product hacker at Fullstack Academy, and the guy behind Fullstack Fund.

We're really psyched to start investing in our graduates, so they can create their own startups and make a dent in the universe.

AMA!

"Smart people should build things"

<comment><USER5> Intrigued to see where this goes. It would be great if you could post status of the companies funded every 6 months or so.

<comment><USER4> That's a cool idea.

We're big on transparency...e.g. soon we'll be publishing aggregate data about the outcomes for our students. We could apply the same approach to the startups that we fund.

Thanks for a great suggestion...we'll do that!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Awesome. I love it when these bootcamps put their money where their mouth is. It shows that they believe in themselves enough to risk money on it.

</comment><comment><USER7> similar to an example from "Das Kapital" :) - an incubator takes position in another incubator thus indirectly taking positions in the companies funded by that child incubator.

<comment><USER8> Somehow reminds me of Buffet's corp structure before the SEC forced him to simplify things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I brought up this idea to my employers at a coding bootcamp in 2014. It was met with mostly blank stares. Glad to see someone else doing it.

</comment><comment><USER10> hey Mark! how transparent do you want Fullstack to be? do you plan on disclosing graduation rates/standards and placement information?</comment>


How the Digital Camera Transformed Our Concept of History - <AUTHOR> https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-history/silicon-revolution/how-the-digital-camera-transformed-our-concept-of-history <comment><AUTHOR> > _Sasson's camera_ [in 1974] _was a kluge of components. He salvaged the lens > and exposure mechanism from a Kodak XL55 movie camera to serve as his > camera's optical piece. The CCD would capture the image, which would then be > run through a Motorola analog-to-digital converter, stored temporarily in a > DRAM array of a dozen 4,096-bit chips, and then transferred to audio tape > running on a portable Memodyne data cassette recorder. The camera weighed > 3.6 kilograms, ran on 16 AA batteries, and was about the size of a toaster._</comment>


Ask HN: How many programming languages need to learn? - <AUTHOR>

So many popular programming languages out there. Would you saying knowing one scripting language and one compiled language is enough? What would your choices be? <comment><USER2> Knowing only one scripting and one compiled language is a joke. To be successful you need to be able to pickup new languages quickly, like in a week. Sure, after a week you're not and expert in any language, or maybe even good at it, but you should be able to read and write it.

If you're just starting off, C (or something equivalent to C like Pascal) is the way to go. If you can understand pointers and memory management then you're better then many so-called programmers.

After C, you should then learn an objected-oriented language (Java's a good choice, but you could try C++ if you're insane) and a functional language like Scheme or Clojure. A logical language like Prolog may also come in handy.

Once you have C, Java, Scheme and Prolog, you're pretty close to unstoppable and picking up anything new is just a matter of learning some syntax, libraries and a few gotchas for each language.

</comment><comment><USER3> If I had to pick the most bang for the buck, it would be Python + C. One scripting language, one compiled, both work well together. You can easily cover shell scripting, 3D graphics, computationally-intensive algorithms, webapps, GUIs, network programming, and most other problem domains with it. The only weak area of this combination might be compilers, and it's still not _bad_ for that...

A lot of people will tell you "all of them", and it's true that every language you learn will (probably) teach you something about computing. But that ignores opportunity cost: learning your tenth programming language will probably teach you less than learning a new problem domain and a new set of algorithms.

</comment><comment><USER4> The most important question is if you want to find a job utilizing those skills. If you just want to work on your own projects then by all means learn on-the-fly.

There's so many different things you can purse with programming skills so the advice you get will be very diversified too. In the end it's all about reaching your goal, so identify that and look at how you can get there.

The definition of "learning" a language varies a lot too. I'd rather focus on particular functional areas. Generic knowledge of languages won't get you too far unless you want to be a teacher.

I've done this and that in many languages but if somebody asks me which I know I never know what to answer. I tend to say I know none and that I just know a little about programming.

Actually I don't find it that much different from learning spoken languages. When I know what I want to express/understand I find it very very easy to learn quickly. When I am in the "let's look for some new stuff I don't know mode" I tend to learn very little.

</comment><comment><USER5> No. You'll use different languages for different things depending on what you're developing for. And to improve on your programming as a whole, the more languages you explore, the better understanding you'll have about how to do things differently. There's a ton of threads on here already on recommendations but Python is a good starting language to go with.

</comment><comment><USER6> I just sort of end up learning stuff without actually making a deliberate effort to do so. Sometimes I learn because it interests me, sometimes because I need to, but mostly because I find it interesting.

I guess I don't really set out to learn, I just sort of gather experience

Edit: What I'm trying to say is that I don't see much value in planning out what you're going to learn as those sort of plans almost never work out. Instead, just try stuff and see what you like; what you have an affinity for. As you gain experience in one area you'll find yourself branching out naturally. Let your curiosity and enjoyment guide you. The languages you derive the most joy from are those where you'll be most productive

<comment><USER7> I think I'm the same as you and wonder if most people are

The OP question is something I would've obsessed over when I was in my teens, wanted to start programming, but spent more time planning my eventual entry into programming.

Once I started programming and making real applications, I became really confident in my ability to pick up any other language as needed. I totally agree that learning new languages are part of a natural progression that's hard to avoid if you're truly enjoying your craft in whatever aspect of the territory interests you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Well, it totally depends on what you want to achieve from learning any programming language.

IMHO, these are the ones you should know and they cover most of the scenario.

      1. A desktop programming language, compiled and robust like C.
      2. A regex wizard like Perl.
      3. A strong web based scripting language like Javascript.
      4. An interpreted and readable language like Python.

If you like to fire up your own codes from time to time, these are the ones you should know. Though, if you are into specific development fields, this list does not matter. You have to learn something specific in that case.

</comment><comment><USER9> Depends on what you define programming language to be. In all seriousness, some dont consider perl or bash or awk programming languages.

For every task, there are multiple programming languages suited for the task. You can get away with knowing one language (ie C) to do everything, but it's a pain for all but the most simple stuff.

Python and perl are nice languages in that they can do most things that you would use a compiled language for, and most things that you would use a higher level scripting language for.

</comment><comment><USER10> I thought if I was ever going to be successful at programming, I needed to learn a whole bunch of languages. Now I think that a language is only as good as the person writing in it. Learn algorithms and logic, and read code that other people have written, in all languages. Let it influence you. When it comes time to pick a language for a project, you'll be prepared to write it in the language that fits it best.

Of course, I've only been programming for 4 years, so feel free to reach for the salt :)

</comment><comment><USER11> I would put languages into classes, in the sense that if you can program in one language of this class, you can program the others. You won't be efficient or idiomatic, but you will be able to program.

* Python, Ruby, Javascript

* C#, Java

* Haskell, Ocaml, F#

* Forth, PostScript, Factor

* Lisp, Scheme, Dylan, Pliant

* C++

* C, Assembly

You'll need one of each, although you can do very well with just C + Python.

</comment><comment><USER12> Learn what you need to get stuff done. Depending on what you are planning to develop and how you wish to approach it is how you choose the language(s).

</comment><comment><USER13> If you're well-versed in C and Javascript, there's not much you can't do.

</comment><comment><USER14> Learn all of them. Yes, even Brainfuck and Piet.</comment>


Show HN: My first recursive program in x86 - <AUTHOR> https://gist.github.com/seisvelas/f4d9fe1ce72109b36f0fd3a26684f44a <comment><AUTHOR> Probably not that impressive to anyone else, but I did it without looking at any examples of recursion in assembly because I wanted to try to figure out how it could be done by myself. Yay.

<comment><USER2> You should blog up your learning journey. It might encourage others.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the encouragement, will do!</comment></comment></comment>


Notes on Distributed Systems for Young Bloods - <AUTHOR> http://www.somethingsimilar.com/2013/01/14/notes-on-distributed-systems-for-young-bloods/ <comment><USER2> Great article. There are just a few things that I would add to it.

1\. The metrics comment could not be more true. You cannot think hard enough about the actual problems you will encounter and what metrics you will have. Have a common way to pull information about each service, and to analyze it in some common place.

2\. Standardize, standardize, standardize. When someone is answering a page at 2 AM and has to deal with a component of your system that they don't really know, the more it resembles other components, the better. Think hard about how you can get every service to be written in such a way that the same critical information is available. Where is it documented? Who do I page? Where is the monitoring? Yes, random third party components won't follow your standards, and will be hard to integrate. But standardization is a good thing.

3\. You need to be able to send canary requests through that trace through your whole infrastructure. You should be able to flag a front end request, and have every single request that it generates through your entire system be logged somewhere so that you can see a breakdown of what happened. Hide this so that nobody can use it to take your site down, but build the capacity for yourself. (Standardization will make such a system much easier to build!)

4\. Randomly canary a small fraction of your traffic. There is tremendous value in having a random sample of traced traffic. When you're trying to understand how things work, there is nothing like taking an actual request going through a complex system, and seeing what it did. Furthermore if you've got intermittent problems for a small fraction of users, being able to look at a random slow request really, really, really helps you track down issues that otherwise would be virtually impossible to replicate.

</comment><comment><USER3> One of the most shameful moments of my career happened on the Saturday night before WWDC in 2010. I'd never worked on a system with more than one component or more than 20,000 lines of code. Drunk, I managed to stumble from Jeff's hot-tub to his roof and told him that Twitter's scaling problems were "stupid" and that "there were no good reasons why Twitter should go down".

I've apologized to him before, but after having worked on Minefold for the last 2 years, I feel like I need to apologize again. The work that Jeff and the others at Twitter have done has been amazing. I was also a massive cock.

<comment><USER4> This really did happen. And we're totally cool.

I refer to that as the Night of a Thousand Australians. Good times.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> There's a growing area where I see a lot of people starting to get involved with distributed system who didn't have to deal with it before: rich in- browser apps with their own permanent storage.

Once you have a Javascript application with state speaking over one or more APIs to your backend services, you're in the domain of distributed system design. Especially if you use the application cache and support offline operation. I frequently see people who are used to more traditional web applications underestimate the system design challenges this causes.

(Those challenges are totally worth solving, because the model is very powerful.)

<comment><USER6> curious question: how do you get people to even click "ALLOW" when the popup says "do you want to allow this website to use localStorage"

<comment><USER7> What browser does this? I've never run in to it.

<comment><USER8> It happens in mobile Safari IIRC.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Having done distributed systems for many years the only thing I would like to add is that all systems are not equal so some of the things mentioned in this article might not work. It was my experience that the real key to making a distributed system work was to identify the critical paths and segment and encapsulate the functionality of different components into the smallest possible implementations. Then define robust messaging between the components to allow for coordination. In my case we were making control systems for Naval systems so we had a much different set of requirements then websites, but it was a massively distributed system ( over 10K nodes ) with a strong requirement for redundancy and latency ( no ethernet here just field bus networks ). I even wrote and published a paper on it some time back. Point is this is not the only path there are other ways to implement distributed systems and there is still much to be discovered in the field.

<comment><USER10> Link to your paper?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Really great article...an instant classic.

 _Shameless plug_ It's validating that we mentioned over half of these points in an interview with startup founder Eric Lindvall on his Papertrailapp.com log management app: <https://peepcode.com/products/up-lindvall>

</comment><comment><USER12> that is an awesome article. And if you're paying attention a great way to interview potential engineers for your org who will be asked to build distributed systems. At Google one of the engineers was asked if the system they were building was 'mostly reliable' and his answer was great, he said "No, I assume that every computer this runs on is trying to bring down the service, and the service tries to dodge in such a way that it stays up anyway."

</comment><comment><USER13> The timing of this one is scary.

I'm working on a mobile app that does a key exchange with a server before allowing a server-based registration or login. It's nowhere near as complex as your average distributed system.

That said, I've run into a scary amount of the things mentioned in this article in my tiny little use case. Just trying to ensure a decent user experience (timing out a comms check after two seconds rather than waiting up to 60 seconds when the phone switches from networked to disconnected) in an async message exchange needs some crazy orchestration. Keeping the code clean means refactoring stuff I thought I had nailed two months ago.

I've been programming for a long time, but this stuff humbles me. And happily, I love it.

<comment><USER14> Just a heads up: here's a course taught by Robert Morris that goes through a lot of great stuff:

<http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/6.824/>

<comment><USER13> Going through it now!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Very glad that Jeff wrote this up and he deservers mad credit for documenting something that has been frustrating me for years. People don't realize how hard doing this right is and discount the hard work that goes into making large systems scale in a stable manner.

It isn't just load testing but more that the whole system should be considered suspect. If you don't act defensively at all steps you will be hosed by something you thought will never happen. Just had a good talk about this last weekend. Memory, TCP, and all other rock-solid things can and will have issues in large systems.

</comment><comment><USER16> > Implement backpressure throughout your system.

This is perhaps a point one cannot get to theoretically just sort of thinking about. This realization comes after observing the effects in practice. It is interesting to observe distributed systems, especially the ones that rely on asynchronous messages, thing go wrong and queues start filling up. Or even weirder machines start to synchronize for some reason. Like the size of the queues will oscillate in resonance of some sorts.

One way out is to reduce asynchronicity but that comes with serious performance penalties.

<comment><USER17> I view this the opposite way around. Message queues and asynchronicity are an alternative to backpressure as described.

If I synchronously hit some service then I need to build facilities into the service to say that it's too heavily loaded, and perhaps handle those responses on the client.

If I pop some job onto a message queue or asynchronous endpoint, things will just slow down for a while. Which is normally as good a way as any as soaking up load.

<comment><USER18> How do you keep the message queue from unbounded growth?

<comment><USER15> Arrival rate and dequeue/processing time are the keys here. Unbounded queues are easy.. Just limit the queue size. Of course this isn't what the user of the service wants and leads to a very bad experience

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Does distributed always mean a complex multi-tier web application?

<comment><USER20> No. That's only one example, depending on how the website is setup, but they're not limited to that. A distributed system is one that requires coordination among multiple machines to execute a task or set of tasks. A few examples:

\- A website using a load balancer to offset service to multiple machines

\- A hadoop cluster running a series of mapreduce tasks

\- A botnet setup to DDOS some target

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Great article. I've just recently started exploring distributed systems (specifically with Riak Core/Erlang) and I hit upon a solution to a problem I've been working on (I think) while reading.

</comment><comment><USER22> It was a great article but this sentence had me a bit confused: "Well, a typical machine at the end of 2012 has 24 GB of memory, you'll need an overhead of 4-5 GB for the OS, another couple, at least, to handle requests, and a tweet id is 8 bytes."

My Desktop has like 40 chrome processes, is running GeoServer on Tomcat (currently idle, but whatever), and the entire Unity desktop environment. I'm currently at 2.7GB. What kind of server OS needs 4-5GB?

<comment><USER23> One that has buffers.

<comment><USER22> Don't they all have buffers?

<comment><USER23> Yes. Depending on load and services, servers require a great deal more in buffers and cache than your desktop. Figure out the memory allocation for a single TCP connection on a default Linux 3.0 kernel and multiply that times (at least) 10k. Considering you probably want greatly expanded limits and bulk transfer, you might want to multiply that times 10 or 100. That's just TCP buffers for active sessions.

<comment><USER22> Thanks for the explanation

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> there are only 2 problems in computer science.

0\. naming things

1\. cache invalidation

2\. off-by-one errors

<comment><USER25> this is the truth

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I initially replied to a comment, but I'll post this as a direct reply: Robert Morris teaches a course on Distributed Systems that covers a lot of great stuff; a lot of which is available online:

<http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/6.824/>

</comment><comment><USER26> Great article; concise explanation of most of the points I would have expected to be there. Especially some of the more subtle things like backpressure everywhere, measure with percentiles, and the importance of being partially available.

</comment><comment><USER14> From the article: _When a system is not able to handle the failures of another, it tends to emit failures to another system that depends on it_

</comment><comment><USER27> Great article. Also I would like ton mention a point : implementing a "chaos monkey". As Netflix team nails it __"We have found that the best defense against major unexpected failures is to fail often." __[1]

[1] [[http://techblog.netflix.com/2012/07/chaos-monkey-released- in...](http://techblog.netflix.com/2012/07/chaos-monkey-released-into- wild.html)]

</comment><comment><USER28> _People are less finicky than computers, even if their interface is a little less standardized._

Brilliant, made me smile :)

</comment><comment><USER29> _Metrics are the only way to get your job done_

God, I wish I'd known this sooner.

</comment><comment><USER30> Great read. You can feel the pain he must have suffered.

</comment><comment><USER31> Man, good load testing never gets any respect.

</comment><comment><USER32> _"If you can fit your problem in memory, it's probably trivial."_

Intellectual honesty at its best...</comment>


Snapchat is a Government Contractor? - <AUTHOR> https://boards.greenhouse.io/snapchat/jobs/67422?t=a3nhwp#.VZC49BNVhBf

<comment><USER2> How does this job posting suggest that Snapchat is a government contractor? It sounds like they want to get into the news reporting business.</comment>


Don't document. Automate - <AUTHOR> http://www.koszek.com/blog/2016/04/11/dont-document-automate/#.VwvjlDhN3QI.hackernews <comment><USER2> I totally agree with this, even down to the library/framework level (where bootstrapping is 90% the same for most users).

Speaking of automation, I've found that doing automated releases in CI has significantly lowered the barrier for creating and maintaining open source.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah. For me too. I've taken 2+ weeks to just go and re-do some of my build stuff in all of my repos. Trying to get to 0 failures in Travis Ci now. 2-3 repos still to go. Thanks for the comment.</comment></comment>


Review My Book (Startup Field Guide: Mistakes To Avoid, Tips To Get Ahead) - <AUTHOR>

I published a book last week about what I learned starting Plixi (TweetPhoto). I share all the mistakes I made along the way and provide tips to avoid the many startup pitfalls. Review my book and tell me what you think. http://www.amazon.com/Startup-Field-Guide-ebook/dp/B00B8BVAG8 <comment><USER2> [http://www.amazon.com/Startup-Field-Guide- ebook/dp/B00B8BVAG...](http://www.amazon.com/Startup-Field-Guide- ebook/dp/B00B8BVAG8)

</comment><comment><USER3> What if I don't have a kindle?

<comment><USER4> You can always download a kindle app for the desktop or your smartphone.</comment></comment>


GitHub teasing a new announcement - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/github/status/531914601248882689 <comment><USER2> So, the octocat is wearring some sort of jetpack and a firing button.

A buildpack for launching GitHub on Heroku?</comment>


Headlinese - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Headlinese <comment><USER2> My favourite example was "Foot heads arms body" which was allegedly created although not perhaps used by the Times when the UK politician Michael Foot was put in charge of a disarmament committee [0].

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

[Edit: emphasised the ambiguity picked up Confiks]

<comment><USER3> However, Wikipedia suggests [1] (the primary source is unreachable for me) that "the headline does not, however, appear in The Times Digital Archive, which includes every day's newspaper from 1785 into the 21st century. It is found in a letter published in The Guardian in 1978. [2]"

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Foot#In_popular_cultur...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Foot#In_popular_culture)

[2] [https://www.newspapers.com/clip/39001580/foot_heads_arms_bod...](https://www.newspapers.com/clip/39001580/foot_heads_arms_body/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> In the clickbait era, I've also noticed everything amped to 11. One no longer "disagrees", one "slams". One no longer "loses", one "gets destroyed", etc.

Not a fan.

<comment><USER5> I think there's a similar effect in play to 1984's "Newspeak". While Newspeak was designed to restrict freedom of expression and quell any nascent revolutionary feeling, Headlinese seems to lend itself perfectly to these intensely polarised feelings. I don't think it's a new thing though, it's certainly been employed by the British press for as long as I can remember.

And the constraint does lend itself to some fun creativity in the sports pages at least, see "Super Caley Go Ballistic Celtic Are Atrocious"[1] and "Young Boys Wankdorf erection relief"[2] for example.

1: [https://www.thescottishsun.co.uk/sport/football/554447/where...](https://www.thescottishsun.co.uk/sport/football/554447/where- are-they-now-whatever-happened-to-that-inverness-team-who-went-ballistic-and- the-celtic-side-they-battered/)

2: [http://m.espn.com/soccer/story?storyId=337901&src=desktop](http://m.espn.com/soccer/story?storyId=337901&src=desktop)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Same in git commit message, we need to put as much information as possible in the fewest number of bytes to make it useful. I am looking forward to an article name "committese"

<comment><USER7> I use these 7 git commit message style rules [1] to establish my foundation of "committese". Things like "Use the imperative mood in the subject line" give commit messages a succint, consistent style.

Everything after that is finesse, personal effort, and ability to express things succinctly (much like the personalized "headlinese" styles mentioned).

[1]: [https://chris.beams.io/posts/git- commit/](https://chris.beams.io/posts/git-commit/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Interesting. Now I know why, as a non native english speaker, I sometimes get confused after reading english language online newspaper headlines.</comment>


Abandoned Places In The World - <AUTHOR> http://www.dirjournal.com/info/abandoned-places-in-the-world/

<comment><USER2> Maybe it's just that I'm in the U.S. but I found the story of Centralia, Penn. pretty fascinating. To think they had a fire burning underneath them for almosts 20 years and were completely unaware.

There was a documentary made that was apparently just released on May 19th of this year ([http://www.amazon.com/Town-That-Was-John- Lokitis/dp/B00208GJ...](http://www.amazon.com/Town-That-Was-John- Lokitis/dp/B00208GJ14)).

Check out this picture from their filming: [http://www.thetownthatwas.com/assets/0000/0802/setting-up- in...](http://www.thetownthatwas.com/assets/0000/0802/setting-up-in- smoke_large.jpg) And 11 people still choose to live there. Crazy.

<comment><USER3> I'd bet that there are quite a few places like this in the US. Check out Times Beach, MO: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Times_beach>

<comment><USER2> That's certainly disturbing too but what baffles me about the Centralia thing is the fact that it was a fire and it was right underneath their feet. I mean, Coal burns at 2800 degrees Fahrenheit and that's what was burning underneath them FOR ALMOST 20 YEARS.

I mean think about that. Coal mines usually top out at about 500 feet below the surface. So let me put that in perspective. The Sears Tower has 110 stories and stands 1450 fit. So this would be like standing on the 36th floor while a 2800 degree fire burned on the first floor and not even knowing anything about it.

It's crazy.

<comment><USER3> I'm not trying to minimize what happened in Centralia. It does seem completely crazy.

Dirt can absorb a LOT of heat. If you had to put out a fire, and you didn't have any water, you'd throw some dirt on it, right? We are all standing on a big ball of fire, anyway.

Having worked next door to the Sears Tower for several years, I can tell you that's a lot of dirt, distributed over the entire area of the fires. The only thing that surprises me is that it took so long for the effects to be recognized.

By comparison the carcinogens in Times Beach were on the surface and therefore easily measurable.

<comment><USER4> >> Dirt can absorb a LOT of heat. If you had to put out a fire, and you didn't have any water, you'd throw some dirt on it, right? We are all standing on a big ball of fire, anyway. <<

The fire is extinguished by throwing dirt because of lack of oxygen, not because the dirt "absorbs" heat.

<comment><USER3> We're talking about different phenomena. < Oxygen = < Fire, but > dirt & minerals = < perception of underground fire.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I find it interesting that this page says that it is "protected by COPYSCAPE do not copy" (plagiarism will be detected by copyscape)

It also says it was "Written by Anastasia on June 17th, 2009".

And yet... Much of the copy on Kowloon Walled City was lifted from Wikipedia. For example this passage:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kowloon_Walled_City>

The streets were illuminated by fluorescent lights, as sunlight rarely reached the lower levels. There were only two rules for construction: electricity had to be provided to avoid fire, and the buildings could be no more than fourteen stories high, because of the nearby airport. Eight municipal pipes provided water to the entire structure (although more could have come from wells).

<comment><USER6> At the end of the post however, it does mention "This post was prepared using Wikipedia."

<comment><USER7> It's blog spam. Created expressly for Reddit, because that stuff always gets voted up there.

<comment><USER6> Ah, I see.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Very neat stuff. Places like that have always fascinated me. I will never forget the website Kiddofspeed (<http://www.kiddofspeed.com/>) that I stumbled upon a few years back. A woman travels through the Chernobyl area and documents it. Very fascinating pictures and stories.

<comment><USER8> i stumbled across the same site awhile back and was dissapointed the whole thing (appears to be) a hoax..

from an ny times article:

About two years ago, Mr. Tatarchuk said, a Ukrainian woman booked a tour, wore a leather biker jacket and posed for pictures. Soon there appeared a Web site in which the woman, using the name Elena, claimed that she had been given an unlimited pass by her father, a nuclear physicist and Chernobyl researcher ("Thank you, Daddy!" she wrote) and now roamed the ruins at will on her Kawasaki Big Ninja.

source [http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/15/international/europe/15che...](http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/15/international/europe/15chernobyl.html)

<comment><USER6> Oh wow, thanks for sharing. :) As the last person stated, even though it is a hoax, there are still wonderful stories packed inside. I'd recommend it still to anyone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I wonder who owns these places.

<comment><USER2> In every case I know and I suspect in every other case the answer is "The Government". I'll run down the ones I know...

Gunkanjima, Japan: Owned by the city of Nagasaki but work is being done to turn it over to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization

San Zhi (or the Pod City): It was originally commisioned by the Taiwanese government so it's always belonged to them.

Pripyat, Ukraine: Obviously owned by the U.S.S.R. before the collapse. I have no reason to believe it wasn't turned over to the newly formed nation of Ukraine along with all the other land belonging to the ancient nation of Rus'

Kadykchan, Russia: Russia evacuated the citizens which means they took control of the land.

Centralia, United States: Congress provided "buy out" packages for the Residents so it's owned by the Federal Government (with the exception of the 11 people who still own their land and live there)

Kowloon Walled City, Hong Kong: Though Hong Kong is self governing for the most part it's still considered part of China and there's no private land in China so it's owned by...you guessed it...China

Oradour-sur-Glane, France: It's an official memorial site designated by the Government of France.

Kolmanskuppe, Namibia: As the article says it's owned by the De Beers group (the diamond company)

Humberstone, Chile: turned over to United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization

Wittenoom, Australia: No idea, I'd assume it's considered Government land but there are still 8 people living there who obviously own their own land. As the article says it's been removed from all official maps so it's not even really a place anymore.

Agdam,Azerbaijan: Azerbaijan was part of the Soviet Union and the Soviet Union had no private land so it became owned by the nation of Azerbaijan after the collapse. It was destroyed in the Nagorno-Karabakh War which was raging pre- USSR collapse and ended post-USSR collapse so it wasn't in a position to be purchased by anyone else before it was destroyed.

Varosha, Cyprus and the Two sites in Italy: I have no idea. They were deserted by their residents so I assume they reverted back to their respective governments but both nations allow for the ownership of private land so in theory someone could still own parts of it.

Bodie State park, California: Owned by the U.S. Federal Government as a National Historic Landmark</comment></comment>


NFL Gets Prominent Sports Sites Suspended From Twitter For Posting Vines & GIFs - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2015/10/12/gifageddon <comment><USER2> It's become impossible to ignore how terrible the NFL's decision making has been in the past few years, and I'm starting to wonder if a FIFA situation where every top executive is simultaneously removed is the only logical end- game for this mess.

Their hypocrisy about saying gambling is a major threat to the league, while simultaneously lobbying congress for fantasy sports loopholes in gambling legislation and ramming FanDuel commercials down our throats.

Ignoring concussion research for three years and actively trying to intimidate researchers. Then pretending to care about player safety while simultaneously pushing for a longer season schedule.

Making everyone in the NFL wear pink for a month to market to women, while simultaneously sweeping multiple cases of domestic abuse under the rug.

Ignoring federal labor law while trying to suspend their best player for something he didn't do wasting millions and millions of dollars in the process.

And now, declaring war against media companies and making it harder for fans to follow the sport because they want to run 30-second pre-roll ads in front of 6 second video clips which will never even come close to working. It's an utter disaster. I have no faith in the NFL to conduct itself competently in the modern media landscape. They are such an embarrassment of an organization. I've never felt that way about a sports league before but the 2011-present NFL is just so awful.

<comment><USER3> And yet profits continue to increase, as does the value of franchises.

Don't get me wrong, I agree with virtually everything you say, but none of it has hurt their business. Football fans don't care if the players are hurt, or have their bodies and lives destroyed (fun fact: the nfl is the only major american sport w/o guaranteed contracts. Get hurt and can't play? You're fired. Guess how that impacts reporting concussions.) Fans don't care if players beat their kids, spouses, or randoms. Fans don't care if players rape, particularly if you're a good quarterback, or commit murder. Until fans care, the nfl won't.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> How does a 6 second video or collection of images not qualify under Fair Use ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use))?</comment>


Create CSS3 animations in no time with bounce.js - <AUTHOR> http://bouncejs.com

<comment><USER2> Previous discussion [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7868806](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7868806)

</comment><comment> martin-adams Very slick and easy to create an animation!</comment>


Facebook wanted NSO spyware to monitor users, NSO CEO claims - <AUTHOR> https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/pke9k9/facebook-wanted-nso-spyware-to-monitor-users <comment><USER2> I'd like to suggest a fun project for Apple that might allow them to kill off this NSO malware: Apple should devote a few engineers to create honeypot iPhones that they could get into the hands of a few carefully chosen journalists and dissidents who would then "lose" their phones or allow the phones to be confiscated by governments or organizations who use NSO software. The objective is to get a copy of the NSO malware and figure out the exploit(s) they use.

The honeypot phones would behave exactly like normal phones but save all incoming data at the lowest protocol layer (whether by wifi, cellular, Lightning connector, and maybe even in-circuit attempts to reflash firmware) to hidden internal terabyte microSD storage, which it would later exfiltrate back to Apple at some point —- perhaps by even having a second hidden cellular connection. I'm assuming that Apple has all the talent it needs to reverse engineer and plug the NSO malware once it has an actual copy of the malware.

<comment><USER3> > governments

I'm sure you know this, but deliberately committing an act of espionage to directly or indirectly subvert the activities of government agencies would be a silly thing for Apple to try to do.

Their dollars are better spent on lobbying (make shit like this illegal), and engineering (make shit like this literally not work because iPhone is as secure as it can be).

<comment><USER4> Since when does a foreign government performing espionage give a crap about the target country's laws? It's naive to think some adversary is going to see "hacking is illegal" and just throw up their hands and say gee whiz I guess there goes our plans...

<comment><USER3> You're making some faulty assumptions about what I'm saying, which means I probably wasn't clear - sorry.

What I mean is: making software like this for sale to the highest bidder should not be something a company is able to do legally.

It should be as bizarre as the idea of incorporating a business in the US specifically, and publicly, to rob banks or commit securities fraud.

<comment><USER5> > making software like this for sale to the highest bidder should not be > something a company is able to do legally.

I disagree. There ahould be nothing inherently illegal about owning, making or selling such software to an entity that can legally use it. (I would assume any country employing such software would indemnify there agents using it against foreign adversaries).

Not that I like it, and as a private citizen, I dont like thw prospect of being spied on, even though I have nothing to hide.

To stop it, I think you'd need to take a step back into the 90s and early 2000s and classify such programs as munitions and restrict export (not that all offerings are from US countries).

<comment><USER3> > I disagree

Have just read your answer and I totally see your point! I don't agree but it's definitely a judgement call.

Perhaps this would be a better way of expressing my position (with a few simplifications of the current situation):

1/ It seems morally wrong for it to be possible for an American company to buy spyware which exploits security vulnerabilities in another American company's software. The act of exploiting those vulnerabilities is illegal in the United States and against the terms of service of the software developer. The outcome of the exploitation (mass clandestine collection of user data without any permissioning) is also illegal.

2/ The US government could solve this by making it illegal for US companies to use the software, outright. They and other nations could also solve or diminish the issue for foreign nations by precluding private companies within their jurisdiction from building commercial propositions around these vulnerabilities. So both a ban on domestic "import" of the product, and a ban on "export" too.

3/ Clearly government agencies need and will continue to produce and procure software like this in the same way as they need to produce and procure military-grade assault weapons, surface-to-air missiles, and stealth bombers. The production, trafficking, and purchase of these items is highly regulated and tightly controlled: I cannot simply start manufacturing firearms because I have the equipment! This regulation is in part a means of preventing widespread availability of dangerous items getting into the hands of consumers and bad actors.

4/ At the very least, the same ought to apply here: an infosec company wishing to auction exploits or sell spyware SaaS should have to be very tightly regulated by the state, and should be unable to sell any of its products or services to any domestic or foreign entity without state approval — a QUANGO of sorts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The original report is from Vice:

[https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/pke9k9/facebook-wanted- ns...](https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/pke9k9/facebook-wanted-nso-spyware- to-monitor-users)

"The Facebook representatives stated that Facebook was concerned that its method for gathering user data through Onavo Protect was less effective on Apple devices than on Android devices," the court filing reads. "The Facebook representatives also stated that Facebook wanted to use purported capabilities of Pegasus to monitor users on Apple devices and were willing to pay for the ability to monitor Onavo Protect users."

<comment><USER7> And here's the Facebook response from that same article that you neglected to include:

"NSO is trying to distract from the facts Facebook and WhatsApp filed in court over six months ago. Their attempt to avoid responsibility includes inaccurate representations about both their spyware and a discussion with people who work at Facebook. Our lawsuit describes how NSO is responsible for attacking over 100 human rights activists and journalists around the world. NSO CEO Shalev Hulio has admitted his company can attack devices without a user knowing and he can see who has been targeted with Pegasus. We look forward to proving our case against NSO in court and seeking accountability for their actions," the statement from a Facebook spokesperson read.

<comment><USER8> 2 notes about the parent. 1) The parent is written by an employee at Facebook and 2) it does not deny the claim instead redirecting the readers attention.

None of this makes the original claim true or false. I'll be curious to see what comes to light around that. I just like to notice these subtle things.

<comment><USER9> I work for neither, and the claim itself is vague, as it lacks any technical facts.

"purported capabilities to monitor users" can mean anything from full on CIA spy-mode with pema-enabling audio and video and 24/7 recording to logging their IP address when they visit a website.

<comment><USER10> Why should Facebook be doing any of that?

Even the best case outcome is negative here.

<comment><USER11> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onavo#Facebook_Research](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onavo#Facebook_Research) this should provide some background; this is the software referenced in TFA. Facebook bought a massively popular VPN service specifically to monitor their users' web traffic and app usage.

<comment><USER12> If all the users data was going through the VPN, Facebook defacto knows what the user is doing on the web making that suggestion moot. It's the on device activity they want.

<comment><USER11> Yup, and they wanted to shove nation-state malware in to Onavo to do it, it sounds like!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> You can see how important Onavo was to Facebook by the lengths they were willing to go to protect it, including the whole "distributing it to teens via enterprise cert" thing Apple slapped them down for. The data from Onavo is how they knew what up-and-coming competitors were popular, and allowed Facebook to buy them out before they could become fully established.

</comment><comment><USER3> Not much surprises me about Facebook any more. The leadership is tone deaf.

<comment><USER14> I'm baffled that, even with the horrible rep Facebook has, they somehow decided to put "from Facebook" splash screens into both WhatsApp and Instagram. Why? What possible benefit could it have? Most people already know who owns the services but now anybody who opens the app is faced with it. If anything, it should just make people reluctant to use the apps, surely.

<comment><USER15> Many people don't realize that WhatsApp and Instagram are the same thing as Facebook. Facebook's brand is somewhat tarnished, and they want to polish it up with Instagram and WhatsApp (which have been less impacted by the bad press).

<comment><USER16> I'd say most, at least not until the sticker appeared.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Facebook should buy Zoom.

Then we only need to hate one company.

</comment><comment><USER18> I wish I could stop using WhatsApp. It's the only FB service I use, and I because everyone else in my life relies on it, I can't just uninstall it and get away with it :(

<comment><USER19> Play dumb, say WA is broken on your phone, ask then to install Signal to work around. Use Signal with whoever agrees

<comment><USER20> I'm not sure you've followed OP. It could well be the case that his workplace and school activities are communicated via WA. His "playing dumb" results in him cut-off from valuable information he actually needs.

<comment><USER18> This is correct. Most workplaces and educational institutions use WhatsApp to communicate with employees/students.

<comment><USER20> <in my country>

Also in mine, but it's not a global thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The good news is this NSO thing appears to only work if it's not everywhere. If every FB app comes bundled with it, it'll be easy to figure out how it works in aggregate, and then NSO gets to move into the league of the common spyware/antivirus cat-and-mouse games.</comment>


My open source HTML5 puzzle game - adam-a http://ohgames.co.uk/pingpongspidermother/

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi OhGames!

Just a quick note that I tested the game on Safari (Latest/Mac) it the keyboard keys are not recognized.

Regards, HTML5

<comment> adam-a That is strange. I don't have a mac to test on until next week unfortunately. Thanks for the note though.

<comment><AUTHOR> Download Safari on Windows and give it a try. Also test it on iOS & Android if you can.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> It's not loading for me at the moment.

<comment> adam-a I don't know what was happening, it seems to be ok now, perhaps just a little busy. I only have a cheap VPS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Game plays great for me, nice job!

</comment><comment><USER4> Nice</comment>


Silicon Valley Arrogance - <AUTHOR> http://avc.blogs.com/a_vc/2008/02/silicon-valley.html <comment><USER2> I like SV. Most people outside of it, albeit smart and intelligent, "don't get Internet" and it's quite apparent. While there are always exceptions to any rule, it's still a rule nevertheless, therefore the original guy's comment _"... even for the east coast"_ IMO is still valid.

We're in Austin, TX - commonly accepted as 4th largest startup hub behind Valley, Boston and Seattle. And people here don't get Internet - everybody's busy inventing new ways of being acquired by IBM via producing yet another boring (but always revolutionary) B2B crap on J2EE.

</comment><comment><USER3> Don't take it to personal...I'm not even near the valley, but: * Politicians say this about Washington * Movie Stars about LA * Bankers about NY

You can be anything you want and excel at it anywhere in the world, but its the BIG LEAGUE perception in each respective profession of being in that city/region, take it as a complement not an insult ;)

</comment><comment><USER4> I totally agree.

And furthermore I think that it is not always good for entrepreneurs to be in Silicon Valley. I have noticed that a lot of valley people are extremely focused on whatever the fad of the day is. If your website doesn't have tags and RSS feeds, and is done in Ruby on Rails you are just sooo yesterday.

But guess what? Nobody cares. Most people that use the web (AKA customers) don't even know what any of these things are. They just want something that works.

And they don't care whether it is built with Ruby or assembler, or whether it has Megoo-ultraflash mashup components.

People from the valley often miss this.

<comment><USER5> Anyone who gets caught up in that mentality should go read Joel On Software. He gets some derision in technical circles because he uses [holding nose] Microsoft products, but he makes technical decisions based on how it will affect his business. And he has a successful business. Go figure!

And he's not in Silicon Valley.

<comment><USER4> I'm actually reading his book right now....

Yes he definitely gets it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I work for a non-Silicon-Valley company that was incorporated in 2001, has had several rounds of financing, and seems to be doing quite well thank you very much, even though we don't use Ruby on Rails _or_ have a Facebook app.

(Although my expense reimbursement checks are issued by "Silicon Valley Bank". Go figure.)

</comment><comment><USER7> I think it's like going to LA - yeah that's where most of the major deals go down, but 8 out of 10 waitresses are also aspiring actresses. If you take a random sampling of people in the valley, you are much more likely to find people trying to break into the business than people who have already made it.

I've talked to some people about _why_ silicon valley is where it is and some say it's pretty arbitrary, some even claim that a new "silicon prairie" if you will, could be started here. Then the temperature goes from 52 to 12 with -11 windchill and, suddenly, we realize all over again why we too want to move to California.

</comment><comment><USER8> I thought the midwest and east coast still used gopher?

<comment><USER9> ... and FTP to transfer their cave paintings? ;-)

<comment><USER10> No, man, they've upgraded to Archie.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Well this blog post has now been updated as the person who sent that email turned out to be from nyc

</comment><comment><USER12> I live in Holmdel NJ, home of telecom. Maybe not Silicon valley, but the people here are damn bright and all the people here are as savvy as the west coasters near silicon valley.

</comment><comment><USER13> I read this and agree that he has a good mastery of Silicon Valley folks.

</comment><comment><USER14> Who was the email from? Perhaps it may have not been worth replying to.</comment>


Ask HN: Review my site erwaittimes.us - <AUTHOR>

After a recent trip to a crowded emergency room, I put together this site to track wait times published by hospitals and to let people submit their own wait times after a visit to the ER.
http://erwaittimes.us
It's my first project and I (obviously) haven't put any time into design. I'm looking for some help kicking the tires and steering this project in the right direction.
Currently it aggregates wait times from all known US hospitals that advertise them online; that number is growing every day. However, the key would be getting people to post their own times when they're in the ER or after their visit. Think that's possible?
Would you ever use it? How could it be improved?
Also, I recently came across InQuickER, which partners with a small number of hospitals to track wait times and sell you a place in line for ~$25. What would you do in the face of this emerging competitor?
Thanks for the help. David <comment><USER2> This would probably be the last thing on my mind if I actually had to go to an ER.

The "use your location" button doesn't do anything when I click it (other than generate a Firefox message that you want to use my location, which I allow).

Seems like if there is a real app/use for this it should try to auto-locate based on IP, and maybe offer something for more granular location.

Have some ability to rate ER's by trauma type (broken bone, concussion, whatever).

When a user hits the page, show top 5 or 6 trauma types and closest ER with best rating for that type.

User can click a trauma type to pull up (pre-cached?) more local ER's ranked by wait-time and rating for that type. One more click gives map and macro driving directions to ER with click-to-print button.

Also has common patient handling instructions for various things (keep patient upright, sedated, whatever) based on trauma type.

Sidebar has, based on location, local ambulance companies, ER #'s, Police/Fire deparment phone numbers.

... quick top-of-my-head thoughts...</comment>


Why Gluten-Free Is a Waste of Your Time – And Money - <AUTHOR> http://www.thememo.com/2016/07/11/gluten-free-a-waste-of-your-time-and-money-serena-oppenheim-good-zing/ <comment><USER2> It's educational. Earlier I never thought about gluten. Heard but didn't try to learn the problem. Now I want to overview my diet.</comment>


Show HN: ColorizePhoto.com – WebGL Based Photo Colorizing Tool - <AUTHOR> http://www.colorizephoto.com <comment><AUTHOR> I just saw the front page post about automatically colorizing photos ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10864801](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10864801)) and thought I should share this website I built a couple years ago. It allows grabbing color from a reference photo and painting it onto the black and white image you wish to color. It was a fun learning experience and can make some pretty convincing photos with a bit of patience.</comment>


2012: The Year The Internet Ends - <AUTHOR> http://ipower.ning.com/netneutrality

<comment><USER2> "Internet providers have realized that the only way to not lose massive amounts of customers over [Internet balkanization] is to make sure there are no alternatives"

Or compete by offering full access for a low price, a bit like right now. Bad argument.

<comment><USER3> yeah i dont see why a company couldnt compete by offering everything, if one company does that how would the others prevail?

how could that company be shut out?

<comment><USER4> Presumably there are quite high barriers to entry, especially these days with broadband.

And if all providers went that route at once they'd probably all make more money.

This all seems a bit tin-foil-hatish to me, but I can see how it COULD happen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Let's give these guys the benefit of the doubt. Let's go ahead and assume that what they claim is going to happen. Let's look at what is necessary for that to happen:

1: Bandwidth providers will discover that their costs are rising (thanks to that evil Google machine).

2: and so they consider throttling or otherwise restricting access to various high bandwidth sites (Keep in mind that Google and other high bandwidth sites pay these companies for their end of the bandwidth usage).

2b: We'll assume that for whatever reason, the bandwidth providers don't mind the loss of their biggest customers. We'll also assume that regular users don't mind the fact that their favorite search engine, social networking site, and torrent sites are unavailable.

3: For step 2 to occur as planned, all (or most) bandwidth providers will have to collude to make this a simultaneous change, and to agree not to go back and un-restrict the access to steal customers (here is where you should read up on the Prisoner's dilemma <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner's_dilemma>)

The market alternative to this is to simply raise prices on the bandwidth hogs and charge maybe on a per GB basis. While I don't like that idea (I do use a lot of bandwidth), I doubt that our bandwidth supply is anywhere near to its full capacity, or that bandwidth costs to suppliers are going to go anywhere but down, as all technology has pretty much ever since the inception of the microchip.

</comment><comment><USER6> This will never happen and here is why: the more companies sign onto an agreement like this, the greater the economic incentive for the remaining companies to not sign.

The scheme would depend on every company signing and yet economics makes that a near impossibility.

I doubt very much that companies such as Youtube, google or Facebook would allow ISPs to effectively 'block' them without some legal challenges.

Add to that the first amendment lawsuits that are sure to crop up en mass and I think we can put the likelihood of this happen down to near-zero.

</comment><comment><USER7> Wouldn't this fly in the face of common carrier regulations and subject the telecoms to massive taxes/fees/penalties and congressional litigation for stymieing small IT/software businesses? The government would probably put a stop to this, if only for the purpose of competing economically against China/other countries (I'm talking about the US here). We'd be at a severe technological disadvantage, lose potential taxes on new business, and go against all of wall-street (internet ipo's would essentially cease).

<comment><USER8> Common carrier regulations do not apply to ISPs; in fact they buy whatever regulations they want.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> They need some pictures of tin-foil hats around the borders of their main <div>.

</comment><comment><USER10> Sensational title. Check.

Misleading title. Check.

Wild speculation. Check.

Lack of references. Check.

Ignoring all the data right in front of us. Check.

Activist call to action. Check.

Reddit, Digg, or National Enquirier. No Check.

Hacker News. Check.

Just "checking".

</comment><comment><USER11> In the 1980s, there were a bunch of online service providers like AOL and CompuServe that only allowed their customers to contact one another and only access services that those companies were hosting. All these companies (well, the ones that haven't gone out of business) have given up on the "walled garden" model of online access and let their customers use the real Internet.

Why will consumers in 2012 settle for any more restricted Internet access than consumers did in 2002?

</comment><comment><USER12> December 22nd, 2012 is the day the day the Aliens come and the whole world ends - I think the internet is the least of our worries. Hopefully Mulder has a plan.

</comment><comment><USER13> Did anyone watch the video?

I'm just saying ;)

</comment><comment><USER3> _pat on the back for these guys_

are they belgian?

</comment><comment><USER14> i am just laughing!

even if that speculation was true? you trully expect actually Google will allow this to happen?!

except that everyone will be running their own server by then! the Internet is only becoming more open. The rest is rindicilus fantasy.

the only thing i see happening by then is the cloud becoming a more user/consumer friendly concept/product, and ISPs grasping that concept and providing it.

therefore the only thing ISPs that are going to do is give cloud services to people.</comment>


Ebola outbreak in Eastern Congo is moving toward a major city - <AUTHOR> https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2019/1/18/18188199/drc-ebola-outbreak <comment><USER2> I'm not looking to incite a political flame war, but genuinely interested in how the current US government shutdown affects the response to this. The CDC is funded through 2019, but are there "non-essential" services whose absence will be detrimental towards combating a potential crisis like Ebola? Airport screeners? FDA? Research programs?

<comment><USER3> It's also worth considering whether the absence of these officials is a net positive or negative in terms of the overall response. Their response last time was _abysmal_. Be reminded, for example, that _19 days_ after Thomas Eric Duncan was treated without proper gear, the CDC still had a cheesy "under construction"-esque web page on the topic that said, "PPE Recommendations are forthcoming".

Hospitals were waiting instead of making their own preparations.

And they told Amber Vinson it was OK to fly with a slight fever, only later to vilify her in the press for "breaking protocol."

What an absolute shitshow.

<comment><USER4> On the other hand, Nigeria had an amazing response.

"In both cities, all the ingredients for an explosion of new cases were in place. That explosion never happened, thanks to the country's strong leadership and effective coordination of an immediate and aggressive response. As in Senegal, an emergency operations centre was established, supported by the WHO country office. Also like Senegal, Nigeria had a first-rate virology laboratory, affiliated with the Lagos University Teaching Hospital, that was staffed and equipped to promptly diagnose a case of Ebola virus disease.

"The government generously allocated funds and dispersed them quickly. Isolation facilities were built in both cities, as were designated Ebola treatment facilities. House-to-house information campaigns and messages on local radio stations, in local dialects, were used to ease public fears. Infrastructures and cutting-edge technologies in place for polio eradication, were repurposed to support the Ebola response, putting GPS systems to work for real-time contact tracing and daily mapping of transmission chains. Contact tracing reached 100% in Lagos and 99.8% in Port Harcourt.

"In what WHO described as a "spectacular success story", the country held the number of cases to 19, with 7 deaths. World-class epidemiological detective work eventually linked all cases back to either direct or indirect contact with the air traveller from Liberia. WHO declared Nigeria free of Ebola virus transmission on 20 October."

[https://www.who.int/csr/disease/ebola/one-year- report/nigeri...](https://www.who.int/csr/disease/ebola/one-year- report/nigeria/en/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm curious if the more people who catch Ebola increase the risk it becomes spreadable by an airborn vector. I assume that's the case, but does anyone know?

<comment><USER6> Ebola would have to change a good bit to become airborne. If that were to happen, it would be a very different disease and there is no reason to assume it continue to be nearly as deadly.

<comment><USER7> Why would becoming airborne make it less deadly?

<comment><USER8> Genetic/phenotypic trade offs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Here's another more detailed article that gives some history and context: [https://www.irinnews.org/special-report/2019/01/16/ebola- cri...](https://www.irinnews.org/special-report/2019/01/16/ebola-crisis- prevention-central-africa-congo-uganda)

</comment><comment><USER10> Vice had made several videos of the Ebola outbreak, they showed that there is a lack of trust in govts among the population as govts tend to be corrupt or ineffective so there is even groups of people who believe Ebola was a govt hoax, not sure if they still hold the same views but it shows the complexity of the situation.

</comment><comment><USER11> What I read is that most outbreaks spread a kind of linear while Ebola spreads exponetial.

That's what is scary about Ebola. And ofcourse the fact there is still no cure.

<comment><USER12> > no cure

Sort of, their are treatments that increase survival rates significantly. Supportive hospital care might not seem as useful as a wonder pill, but an IV drip can make a huge difference.

<comment><USER13> There are vaccines being deployed but stocks are extremely limited. If I remember correctly, they are focusing on inoculating the social circles of known infected. But you can only inoculate someone's social circle if you know they have it...

It also doesn't help that medical teams sometimes get attacked by locals.

<comment><USER14> EDIT: Ignore my question, apparently rumors and skepticism about modern medicine is why they attack medical teams: [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-ebola-congo- attack...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-ebola-congo- attack/attack-on-congolese-red-cross-ebola-ambulance-wounds-three-volunteers- idUSKCN1MD2DC)

> It also doesn't help that medical teams sometimes get attacked by locals

Who is attacking them for what reason? Anti-vacciners or something?

<comment><USER15> Rural Africa has had bad luck when it comes to white people coming in and telling them what to do.

<comment><USER16> Eating portions of their dead? I never heard that. I just heard that they weren't able to do traditional funerals. Presumably that could be part of the traditional funeral, but I've got close friends and family I would have expected to hear that from. Do you have a reference?

<comment><USER17> I just finished _Virus Hunters of the CDC_ , a 1996 book written by a couple of CDC epidemiologists, one of which had led a couple of Ebola responses in (what was then) Zaire and CAR. (He was even on the team that named the disease for a river near the town the outbreak was in.)

He certainly didn't mention cannibalism. They were most concerned about the ritual washing before burial. Apparently the bodies are cleansed, bowels washed, etc. Given how Ebola spreads, this was virtually a guarantee that anyone handling the dead would contract the disease.

Their biggest successes were in teaching families how to use gloves, masks, and bleach. Any danger the CDC teams were in seemed to be mostly limited to political instability.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> A fun read on Ebola and the outbreak in Virginia: the Hot Zone

</comment><comment><USER19> NPR has an article on the Central African Republic's scouts who promote vaccination, relay messages about the Ebola outbreak, and domestic chores — [https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2019/01/19/6808273...](https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2019/01/19/680827371/these- scouts-are-prepared-for-dirty-dishes-and-keeping-the-peace)

Twitter thread from a MSW/JD with some more info regarding the Ebola outbreak and interactions between DRC, CAR, and South Sudan — [https://twitter.com/geopoliticaljd/status/108699357731649945...](https://twitter.com/geopoliticaljd/status/1086993577316499456?s=21)</comment>


Former General Electric CEO Passed on Buying Apple for $2B in 1996 - <AUTHOR> http://www.macrumors.com/2016/03/31/ge-passed-on-apple-buyout-for-2b/ <comment><USER2> First, I have not read the article.

Second, if GE had bought Apple in 1996, that GE would still be our Beloved GE of now (in this timeline), but that Apple would have withered on the vine. Look at what GE did with another aquistion, NBC. Nothing. Maybe even messed NBC up a little bit.

Maybe all you Apple Fanboys would be fawning over NeXT or BeOS or some other status symbol. But you wouldn't be thinking that GE subsidiary Apple was so darn cool.</comment>


Ask HN: Good Alternative Email Service? - <AUTHOR> Does anyone know any other good and FREE email services besides TutaNota and ProtonMail but similar? Please no huge companies like Gmail/Yahoo/Zoho etc. Thank You! <comment><USER2> "If you are not paying for a product, you are the product."

Maybe think about getting a relative cheap but nice mail service.

<comment><AUTHOR> No request is for FREE email providers only. Any time you pay for email, your privacy is out of the window by default. Because you provide them your address and payment information. Unless they use cryptocurrency and even then, I would prefer FREE limited then paid with tons of features. So no thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Is privacy a concern? Free email services need to make money somehow.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes privacy is a concern. And it need to be similar to TutaNota. I've just found one good alternative Mailfence.com features and UI is very nice.

<comment><USER4> If you like privacy, Mailfence keeps your GPG private keys on their servers which should be avoided.

<comment><AUTHOR> So does TutaNota and ProtonMail. So I'm okay with this one :)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: support time / cost per user - <AUTHOR>

If you're willing to share, how much time does your company spend per client per month on customer service or technical support? How much does that cost you, compared to how much that user is paying? <comment><USER2> I've read some pitch for electronic document exchange system estimating 500 accounts per one full time support person. An account meant to be one middle size company.

</comment><comment><USER3> I wouldn't mind people doing this with throw aways.</comment>


How I Got More Than 4500 Visits Through Blog Commenting (with numbers) - <AUTHOR> http://www.mostlymaths.net/2010/11/how-i-got-more-than-4500-visits-through.html

<comment><USER2> For the two comments that account for 75% of your traffic, you should have included the text of the comments themselves. I'm interested to read them.

<comment><AUTHOR> I didn't want to show specific comments that publicly. I'm sending you an email with links to them in a moment.

<comment><USER3> I would love to check those out as well, if you felt kind enough to continue sharing :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm not adding this curmudgeonly comment to dissuade the OP from writing a blog he enjoys or sharing his experiment, but because I fear that others might look at this and get swept up in blogoxuberance.

Some important questions to ask: how much time did you spend reading & identifying places to comment, and then writing the comments? Doing some calculation, how much time did it take you to earn each visit on average? What % converted to subscribers? And what % of subscribers (and visitors in general, I suppose) clicked on the ads that seem to support this blog, since you don't appear to sell anything?

Or more succinctly: how much total time did you have to spend to earn however much money you've made from this effort? What was the opportunity cost of this action? My gut is: exceptionally high.

<comment><AUTHOR> Indeed, it was exceptionally high, but look at it more like just reading Hacker News, or Reddit or digg for interesting stories. I happened to read a lot of blog posts, quite a few really good.

I don't make any really interesting amount of money from the blog (I'd love to, but it is hard). The number of subscribers that resulted is hard to tell. At most, I can tell how many people clicked on my subscribe page after visiting, but they don't necessarily subscribe in the end. I have added event tracking, now I could do it... But in September I could not (Google changed its code).

It was exceptionally high, but from what I've seen, the blogging community suggests the best ways are guest posting "by far" and the blog commenting. And from what I've seen... It is false. Guest posting results in very few visits which result in very few more subscribers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Is 4500 visits really that much for the time that you invested? I am wondering cause it might be easier to get the same amount of traffic by writing some good post and trying to post it on your or someone's blog?</comment>


Cheap computer for programmers - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@boltmick1/computer-to-program-e91b1dc1c6c9 <comment><USER2> The vast majority of this submitter's submissions, including this one, are just lists of items with Amazon affiliate links.</comment>