There is no WiFi allergy: newspapers misreport PR as science - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2009/07/there-is-no-wifi-allergy-newspapers-misreport-pr-as-science.ars

<comment><USER2> Funny this should come up today, I just met somebody that claimed that this was the case and used a very sensitive (< 1 uW/m^2) field strength meter to verify their claims and even if I could not disprove it they could not prove it either.

As far as I'm concerned the jury is out on this one, but one important thing to remember is that the nervous system is essentially an electrical aparatus using very low powerlevels so interference would be expected by default rather than the opposite.

We're sensitive to exposure by sunlight, we're sensitive to hard radiation, it is not too much a stretch of the imagination that we're sensitive to HF too.

For much interesting reading about one positive sensitivity:

<http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=367925>

<comment><USER3> With science, the jury is always out, but with the total failure of anyone to demonstrate "sensitivity" in double-blind studies, it's not a hard provisional call to make with very high probability.

There are _all kinds_ of wonderfully and terribly potent effects that mysteriously disappear in the harsh light of double-blind testing. That's because they are chimeras in the dark. The fault lies with the darkness, not the light.

If more evidence comes along in the future, I'll change my mind, but right now the evidence is of a kind with water dowsing.

<comment><USER4> You are showing a significant bias by laying the burden of proof on those saying this has an effect on people. 'Innocent till proven guilty' is a principle of the justice system, not science. You could have made these same comments about the health problems associated with smoking in the 60s and you would have been wrong. The original poster laid out a reasonable argument for why the default position should not be to assume there is no effect.

A less biased and more useful statement would have been "there have been enough studies done on this to show that wifi 'sensitivity' is unlikely to exist". If that was the case I'd like to know.

<comment><USER3> When I said referenced "double-blind studies", I was referring to the ones that were _done_. See [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_hypersensitivit...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_hypersensitivity#Etiology_and_evidence) . The burden of proof is indeed on those who continue to claim it exists in the face of strong, peer-reviewed evidence to the contrary. Science has done its bit.

A scientist goes _into_ the experiment with an open mind, and is ever mindful of the possibility of future evidence causing the most likely hypothesis to change, but is not obligated to keep their mind so open that they never decide anything, even after the evidence is gathered and the peer review is done.

I _think_ you are criticizing me based on the belief that there were no experiments done, and since that is not true, you would agree your criticism is invalid. If that is not true and you still think these experiments are not adequate, and "science" still has some sort of obligation to continue investigation, I would say, what _would_ discharge that obligation? By which I mean, give me a concrete, immobile standard for what it would take to convince you before the fact that the investigation has been done, regardless of the outcome, not after the experiments. As I referenced in another message, you can _always_ move the goalposts, but this is a sign of weakness in a position, not the strength some people seem to take it to be.

<comment><USER4> OK. firstly I don't have any particular belief in EM-sensitivity. I am just as much a believer is science as you. What I objected to was the clear bias you demonstrated in your post. The readiness to declare the 'total failure of anyone to demonstrate "sensitivity"' rather than to provide any references suggested an extreme partisanship on one side of the argument.

The link that you finally provided has some useful information. To me it reads that suggest mixed results but mostly favouring no effect. If I where a betting person I'd say maybe there is a 10% chance that the effect does exist in some form based on my reading of that information. Maybe your interpretation of the probabilities implied by the studies is different to mine. But it leads me to agree with the conclusions of the authors of the meta study that "more research into this phenomenon is required".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Technically, electrosensitivity could still exist as a condition even if wifi sensitivity is disproved, since the definition of the condition is much broader.

Also, the tests administered which disproved the so-called "wifi allergy" failed to account for the possibility that the effects take time to develop. I could disprove cat allergies easily using the same method, provided the exposure time was less than the time needed for symptoms to set in.

<comment><USER3> 'Also, the tests administered which disproved the so-called "wifi allergy" failed to account for the possibility that the effects take time to develop.'

They used the self-reported time for symptoms to develop from the sufferers themselves. It's not actually science's job to exhaustively test the state space here, since that's not possible. Consequently, there's always another goalpost that science didn't hit ( _no, wait, it's only 64-bit WEP encryption!_ )... but it's not logical to thus conclude that the problem is the science. When the goalposts are getting shuffled around the field, the logical conclusion is that the problem most likely lies on the side moving the goalposts, not the side that keeps hitting the goals.

Maybe there's a real problem that is actually something else, though at the moment, "psychosomatic symptoms", Luddite-ism, and superstition seems to cover the observed phenomena pretty well. Like I said in another message, if more data comes in I'll examine it, but right now there is no reason to believe there's any reason to believe that such data will be forthcoming.

(Following up on my first paragraph: This is why "more study is needed" is an information-free statement. There's always more state space to examine; the question is, is there any reason to believe there's anything interesting there? There's so many interesting things that studying things extremely likely to be uninteresting is a waste of time. The exceptions that you might think are leaping to mind, like "Well how will we ever discover anything new if we never try new things?", are not exceptions. Things we have no idea about are interesting. Things that we have a _very_ good idea are going to be uninteresting are what I'm talking about.)

<comment><USER5> This is a pretty good summation of the issue. Well said. From a _strictly_ scientific standpoint, designing the tests around the claims of the participants is only useful so far. The anecdotal claims of people who claim to suffer from this condition would be suspect at best.

What is know is that electromagnetic energy can and does effect the human body, it is just a question of what thresholds we are talking about. It would stand to reason that some people are effected at different levels than others for various reasons. (Hydration, PH balance, even height could be a factor when talking about specific wavelengths).

All that is to say, the wifi thing may very well be bollocks, but I still would love to see more rigorous research done.

<comment><USER6> Why don't you just do that math? E=hf -- you know the frequency of the radiation, so you know the energy. Go ahead and assume that people are all water, you will be mostly correct.

Then, when you're done, compare E to the

+2 NAD+ + 2 ADP + 2 Pi -> \+ 2 NADH + 2 H+ + 2 ATP + 2 H2O

(simple glycolysis reaction and synthesis of NADH and ATP).

Hint: The amount of ionizing energy of a 5GHz signal is noise in the amount of energy created by normal biological processes. Ars is careful not to say "it can't happen," but I'm going to come out and say -- it can't happen.

<comment><USER4> I haven't done the math but I'm prepared to bet that when it actually comes to the crunch you aren't as confident as you say. 'it can't happen' implies 0% probability. Well I'll go you one better as I'm prepared to bet on it at 0.01% for $1. I'll even send you the dollar as long as you agree to the bet. So that's my $1 vs your $10K. Talk is cheap.

What I'm trying to demonstrate is how certainty can vanish when faced with actual consequences.

<comment><USER7> When someone says "it can't happen" in a scientific context, I don't take it to mean "I believe it is impossible to happen." I take it to mean "according to our current understanding, it's not possible."

The implication being that while it's possible, if it were true it would require fundamental changes in our understanding. This is so unlikely to be incalculable.

<comment><USER4> Well according to the constructs of the English language and logic, "it can't happen" does actually mean "I believe it is impossible to happen.". (Can't == can not == impossible). Your statement implies the 'scientific context' is bullshit which I certainly do not agree with.

So in your alternative world of logical meaning what does "it can't happen" equate to anyway? Does it simply mean less than 50% probability or what? If you aren't prepared to put an actual mathematical meaning to probabilistic statements then they are worthless. I certainly am and I am prepared to back them up with cash. What about you? Do your statements mean anything or are they just worthless oratory?

<comment><USER7> The intended meaning always depends on context. People are rarely precise with their words; it's takes too much time and doesn't improve communication if all parties have a shared understanding.

At the start of my thermal physics class, my professor spent a lecture to define what a thermal physicist means when they say "never." We spent time calculating things like the likelihood of Hamlet emerging from 6 billion monkeys banging on keyboards for 13 billions years. This sort of understanding is important when talking about entropy and the laws of thermal dynamics.

For example, a thermal physicist would be comfortable saying all of the molecules in a room will never spontaneously exist on only one side of that room. With simplifying assumptions, we can calculate the probability of that happening. While it's non-zero, it's so infinitesimal that physicists are comfortable saying "never", and we have the second law of thermodynamics.

Your insistence on putting a dollar number on my confidence is strange, since even in your case it's rhetorical. No one is asking you to put money up, nor does the infrastructure or even rules exist for how to handle it. Further, my entire point was to demonstrate that _certainty_ in science is impossible. All we have is _confidence_ in something.

<comment><USER4> > All we have is confidence in something.

Yes but if you can't define what confidence is what does it mean? When I studied physics we learned to provide confidence intervals for each measurement and subsequent calculation so every variable was of the form X +/- Y. From memory the confidence was a specific number of deviations from the mean. That meant something. Saying 'roughly X' doesn't.

All the examples you provided are so improbable that 'never' is of course appropriate in most contexts. But what do you think 'it can't happen' means in a case like the existence of a phenomena like EM-sensitivity?

10% probability, 1%, 0.1%, 0.01%, 0.001%?

None of these are at all appropriate to describe as 'it can't happen' in this context. I think that in your heart of hearts you know that chances of EM- sensitivity existing could well be better than 1%.

> No one is asking you to put money up, nor does the infrastructure or even > rules exist for how to handle it.

Check out <http://longbets.org> . Otherwise I'd settle for a proof of ID from whomever wants to take the bet and a public and signed statement to the effect that they'll pay up if the conditions are met within a certain time period. I'm pretty sure this type of bet is legal in most jurisdictions.

<comment><USER7> A confidence interval is a different beast than saying that you are confident that current understanding is correct. One can be quantified, the other cannot.

<comment><USER4> > One can be quantified, the other cannot.

I've just described a method for quantifying probability. How hard is this to understand? Neither really exist. The measure of X is some exact amount just as a clearly defined proposition is either true or false.

You can actually simplify the confidence interval case to a boolean proposition (e.g. is X greater than 7).

<comment><USER7> I must not have been clear in my previous post: there is a difference between an objective confidence (such as from experimental measurements) and subjective confidence (such as my own personal confidence that something is correct). Objective confidences can be meaningfully quantified. Subjective confidences cannot.

For example, I am confident that special relativity is correct and that the speed of light is the unreachable-ceiling for the speed of matter with mass. A century's worth of observations and experiments support this. However, trying to quantify that _subjective confidence_ is meaningless.

<comment><USER4> I don't believe the your notions of objective and subjective confidence really stand up too well. I think you'll find that the more you try to define the exact difference between them the more it will fade away. Perhaps it is a philosophical question. Similarly the only reason to look at measuring the length of a rope as 'objective' versus the combination of the many measurements that make up the supporting evidence for special relativity is because the former is subjectively (intuitively) simpler. .

However the main point is that probabilities are required for decision making. Whether you like it or not, any statement must be interpreted probabilistically to be incorporated into decision making. You need to multiply the probability by the risk/reward differential to have basis to work things out. You do this internally without realising it. 'What are the chances that this movie will be good versus the cost of going to see it'. Exaggerated statements can hurt people's decision making capabilities. That is why I oppose them.

You need to replace the Booleans in some of your mental constructs with fractions.

<comment><USER7> Let's say I measure a rope many times, and come up with a mean value and a 95% confidence interval for the length of the rope. That is, assuming my "experiment" is constructed correctly, I say that the true length of the rope lies within that range, with a 95% confidence. That's an objective confidence.

But in order to come up with that number, I had to assume my experiment was correct. I very well could have had a systematic error in the experiment such as misusing my ruler, accidentally holding the rope such as to artificially shorten it, or completely misunderstood the concept of length. My confidence that my experiment is correct is both independent of the confidence interval I reported, and not quantifiable.

<comment><USER4> What about measuring the speed of light? or measuring the distance from the earth to sun? Where do these fall in your neat divisions between subject and objective?

Is there a certain class of proposition that is too complicated to be called objectively true? Are all medical theories, for example, simply subjective and have no real meaning in terms of predicting likely future outcomes?

Any statement or theory that does not have predictive power is meaningless. Predictive implies probability. Probability implies odds. Put up or shut up up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Wifi allergy? I'm glad I missed another meme.

</comment><comment> onreact-com In Germany the government office for radiation control asks people not to use WiFi in children rooms and where people sleep.

<comment><USER9> Sounds a little like "fan death", which is apparently a major concern in South Korea (and pretty much nowhere else):

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> just like global warming...</comment>


Verisign seizes .com domain registered via foreign registrar - <AUTHOR> http://blog.easydns.org/2012/02/29/verisign-seizes-com-domain-registered-via-foreign-registrar-on-behalf-of-us-authorities/ We've just posted this on the easydns blog, we think this is a very troubling development. State of Maryland went straight to Verisign to seize a .com domain operated outside the US via non-US registrar. <comment><USER2> The domain seizure is nothing out of the ordinary. At least a dozen have been seized over the last 12 months, including those during the indictments of Black Friday (nb pokerstars.com, fulltiltpoker.com have been handed black) and Blue Monday (at least 10 domains still under seizure including truepoker.com).

The domain itself (bodog.com) was unused. The operation continues under bovada.lv (for US) and bodog.eu/co.uk for European custom.

Nearly all US-facing gambling operations have been moved to non-dotcom domains (dot.eu, dot.co.uk and dot.ag - for Antigua and Bermuda - the most common) for this very reason.

To read more from an industry perspective [full disclosure, i am co-editor of this site]: [http://pokerfuse.com/news/law-and-regulation/undercover- inve...](http://pokerfuse.com/news/law-and-regulation/undercover- investigation-spanning-six-years-leads-bodog-indictments-domain-name-seizure/)

The domain seizure itself was of interest only as it showed the DOJ/DHS have a continued interest in trying to take down what it sees as illegal online gambling operators; that they can order a dot-com domain name seizure is par- for-the-course these days.

<comment><USER3> If you read the article, you will discover that the author asserts that this situation is different, because it's the first time that a .com domain registered through a foreign registrar has been subject to seizure by US authorities. I don't know enough about the history of domain seizures to know whether this is true or not, but if so, it definitely represents an increased level of enforcement by US authorities -- if I owned a company operated and registered outside the US, I'd now think twice about using a .com name as my primary address.

<comment><USER4> "if I owned a company operated and registered outside the US, I'd now think twice about using a .com name as my primary address."

Why? Is that just on principle? Or do you see this behavior by the government as rising to the level of the US taking down sites that flout or even break the law in a de minimis way?

Keep in mind that to do what they did there is a level of case preparation required to get the proper signoffs to make this happen.

I think if someone is doing something illegal they have something to worry about, sure. But for 99.9% of the web sites out there why is this a cause for worry?

Edit (since I can't reply to below):

"the "convenience factor" of owning a .com no longer outweighs the potential risk"

The reason to own a .com is not convenience. It's ubiquity at least in the US. Speaking as someone in the business who deals with customers of registration domains all the time (and also with people buying valuable domains) at this time using a non .com domain is a non-starter for the majority of people.

<comment><USER3> "Why? Is that just on principle? Or do you see this behavior by the government as rising to the level of the US taking down sites that flout or even break the law in a de minimis way?"

I think it's a combination of several factors. One is definitely principle. The other major reason is that if I'm running a business from outside the US, and do not deal with US customers or business partners, why should I waste my time figuring out whether what I'm doing is contrary to some law in one US state, just to ensure that the US doesn't steal my domain from me?

Especially in some industries, there are vastly different notions of what is considered appropriate in the US vs. Europe (see the sports betting example). My opinion is that based on cases such as this, the "convenience factor" of owning a .com no longer outweighs the potential risk of losing the domain on the whim of the US government.

<comment><USER5> Exactly.

This can only be a boon for the .EU domain, ccTLDs and all their registers, especially those which allow second-level domain names like .de.

There is simply too much uncertainty with using American-hosted domains already and it is increasing every week.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> mike-cardwell Seems to be down. Here's a clickable Google Cache link:

[https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http:/...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://blog.easydns.org/2012/02/29/verisign- seizes-com-domain-registered-via-foreign-registrar-on-behalf-of-us- authorities/)

<comment><USER6> Bad redirect. Here's the URL: [http://blog2.easydns.org/2012/02/29/verisign- seizes-com-doma...](http://blog2.easydns.org/2012/02/29/verisign-seizes-com- domain-registered-via-foreign-registrar-on-behalf-of-us-authorities/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm a bit confused by this thread. Can someone check this?

i) Doing trade with someone who is located in America means you have to obey those American laws? This seems reasonable, unless you've taken measure to exclude Americans ("Click here to agree that you're not in US" and using filters etc) and you're still getting done.

ii) It doesn't matter what domain name you use. But if you use a .com (and some others) the US can seize the domain names.

iii) Depending what country you are in the US may ask for an extradition because you broke an American law; even if what you did was legal in your country. Depending what country you're in (UK) that extradition request may be granted.

<comment><USER8> i) and iii) are pretty well established in American jurisprudence. ii) is less so and is the reason for the uproar. The article is making the proposition that ii) is true, but I don't think that's actually correct. On the facts of this case i) and iii) are sufficient to lay charges here, but the indictment is written to look like ii) is true.

EDIT: I want to add that there is not very clear case law on the .com issue - that was what SOPA was in part designed to do, make a statutory provision to allow assertion of jurisdiction. I think it's important to keep in mind that the filing of the indictment is _not_ a judicial ruling and is not necessarily "the law of the land". The quotes the article used were true, but taken out of context. They are referring to funds being transferred outside of US but related to business done cross-border.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This seems to be the same issue as megaupload. A company outside the US, marketing a service that's illegal in the US to US citizens. Money paid for the service is then moved overseas. (I understand there may have been users in other countries, like megaupload)

While not something I necessarily agree with - I don't think this particular move indicates all .COMs are now threatened.

<comment><USER10> It indicates that anyone using a .COM domain must either: 1) Not do business with American customers. or 2) Be aware of every U.S. law to avoid allowing their American customers from breaking one of them.

<comment><USER9> But that is already an issue - whether or not you have a .com domain name. The domain name is just an asset and the government routinely seizes assets when filing criminal charges.

<comment><USER11> If .com domains weren't considered to be USA based though then a USA citizen would be the one that was being charged for breaking the law wouldn't they?

Flip it around. Suppose someone is selling online under a Somali .so domain rather than a .com; the law should operate in the same way as long as the web servers themselves aren't located in USA.

Isn't it the assumption that any transaction with a .com is essentially under the purview of USA law that is at issue?

This just emphasises the need for .com to be considered neutral territory. It's only a redirection mechanism - USA can have and apply their laws to .co.us and of course any server that is based in USA.

<comment><USER12> .co.us is Colorado. .com.us?

<comment><USER11> Yes, .com.us. Sorry, we use .co.[ccTLD] here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> There is a difference between a Canadian company doing business with Canadians on a .com domain and a Canadian company doing business with Canadians _and Americans in the United States_.

The analogy for finance, my industry, would be a hedge fund registered in the Caymans either trading US securities or trading with Americans in the United States (it gets sketchy if an American citizen comes to Switzerland to do a transaction) not getting to ignore SEC rules just because they're "not based in the US".

I'd get concerned about jurisdictional over-reach if a Spanish company doing business primarily in Spain (where American customers aren't specifically marketed to but may be picked up indirectly) got DMCA'd :). Though at this point I'm starting to think any content-based company should have a non-US domain and server at the very least ready as a fall-back in case of regulatory lunacy on the order of SOPA/PIPA.

<comment><USER14> >The analogy for finance, my industry, would be a hedge fund registered in the Caymans either trading US securities or trading with Americans in the United States (it gets sketchy if an American citizen comes to Switzerland to do a transaction) not getting to ignore SEC rules just because they're "not based in the US".

That comparison doesn't seem to quite fit. If a company violated SEC rules it would have to be trading through a US exchange and would therefore have agreed to abide by US rules. In this case we have US _users_ who are breaking the law by doing something illegal in their own country. They should be punished, not the foreign website.

<comment><USER13> _If a company violated SEC rules it would have to be trading through a US exchange_

Not necessarily. If ABN AMRO markets Turkish bonds to US investors it will have placed itself under SEC jurisdiction just as much as Lehman Brothers marketing mini-bonds in Indonesia placed itself under Indonesian jurisdiction.

The US government has gone further with financial institutions. Take, for example, the Swiss banks helping Americans with tax evasion. Let's exclude those with US branches, e.g. UBS. Here you have American citizens travelling to Switzerland and opening accounts and the Swiss company is held responsible merely for doing business with an American.

I'm not making specific arguments on whether this is jurisdictional over- reach, but characterising the .com seizure in the OP an un-precedented move by Luddite judges isn't fair.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The gambling charges are pre-internet jurisdictional law. By doing business with citizens of Maryland, you bring yourself within Maryland's jurisdiction, at least to the scope of that business. Domains have nothing to do with why Maryland can enforce its gambling laws against a Canadian company.

The internet-age wrinkle is that by virtue of ".com" domains being property located in the US, they can be seized pursuant to these charges. Jurisdiction over property is very specific to the locality where the property is located. Maryland couldn't, for example, seize the company's real estate assets in Canada pursuant to its criminal charges for violation of Maryland law. Since all ".com" domains are logically located in the United States, that becomes a pretty substantial piece of leverage the U.S. has over other countries.

</comment><comment><USER16> Aren't there two elements to the question of jurisdiction here? The fact that .com is managed by Verisign is one (on which this article focuses), but the other is that Bodog was executing financial transactions with residents of Maryland. Thus, by doing business in the state, they expose themselves to that state's jurisdiction.

The big question is whether U.S. jurisdiction can extend beyond U.S. based border based solely upon the fact that Verisign is located in the U.S. For instance, if a Canadian set up a .com gambling site, but only did business with other Canadians, could MD prosecute the site owner based on MD state laws against online gambling? I would guess no. But I'm not a lawyer.

<comment><USER17> So if I have a European company that sells widgets online, and I ship to the United States I now have to comply with US laws at my expense?

<comment><USER18> Yes, with at least these consequences:

1) Any warehouse you have in the US that is part of your widget operation can be seized (this is the equivalent of the .com being taken over)

2) The US can request extradition of you and it is up to your countries courts to decide if they will comply

<comment><USER17> Except I don't have a warehouse in the United States. All I have is widgets located in Europe, I put them in a box and I ship them using parcel post to anyone anywhere in the world.

Yet you are saying that I am now beholden to US law because I interacted with a customer located in the United States ...

<comment><USER19> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_O%27Dwyer>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> At least a warrant was filled. In the recent JotForms takedown no warrant was filled. It just disappeared off the face of the planet. That is mainly my argument: the US Secret Service or any government organization has no right to make sites, it JotForms's case a legitimate business, just disappear from the face of the planet without due process.

</comment><comment><USER21> What is the safest ccTLD be for businesses to register under? .se?

<comment><USER22> Probably .info, it's not managed by any national government.

<comment><USER23> I missed the whole thing where .com was managed by the US, i thought that's why the .us domain was invented... i don't think anyone outside the US associates a .com meaning US based.

Regardless, stupid law, Team America strikes again!

<comment><USER24> The company which manages .com is headquartered in the US. This is also true for .org and .net and .us and .gov.

Under US law it is now possible for the US to seize any of these domain names -- and it will continue until the international organization in charge of this system (ICANN) says "oh, that's retarded, we're changing the system so that the US doesn't host .com and .org domains."

We had to fight against two acts proposed in the US which would have made it possible for the US to build a sort of DNS firewall to deny access to other domains from users working within the US -- our own rough draft of the Chinese firewall, if you like. (That was SOPA and PIPA.) But this other right was granted earlier than that, and is now being used to chilling effect.

<comment><USER23> Wow, thanks, I didn't know that. Why this stuff isn't decentralised is crazy, but at this point I guess there is a lot of vested interest to keep it that way.

EDIT: Just read about BitCoin! Sounding better and better now!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Title of the article is

        Verisign seizes .com domain registered via foreign Registrar on behalf of US Authorities.

</comment><comment><USER26> How long before they pull something from the root zone using the same reasoning?

<comment><USER27> You would have to pull a whole TLD if you're removing something from the root zone.

<comment><USER28> Given that the floodgates on new TLDs are opening, it seems quite possible that a TLD operator could run afoul of the law and put thousands if not millions of domains at risk.

<comment><USER12> You just know someone's going to get .torrent, and then all hell will break loose...

<comment><USER29> No, if you look at the byzantine gTLD application process and the history of .xxx it would be hard for anyone to get .torrent.

<comment><USER12> If only that were true. <http://newgtlds.icann.org/en/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Good to see that the .com tld will finally start to become a non-priority thanks to this. People/startups/companies in other countries will hopefully start to think twice before they purchase a .com domain name and consider using their own countries tld or a tld more appropriate to their website.

</comment><comment><USER31> One of the building blocks of developing an internet more resistant to abuses of power, alongside efforts such as Tor, is a distributed directory service as an alternative to the centralized DNS service.

I hope to be able to contribute toward some real progress in this area.

<comment><USER32> Like NameCoin? (<http://dot-bit.org/Main_Page>)

<comment><USER33> I can't upvote this enough.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> >Of course, the replacement of ICANN will never happen

What's the reasoning behind this? I agree that we will likely not see a new body in charge of that which ICANN currently does, but there's no reason why a parallel system couldn't arise should DC go overboard with its malfeasant retardation.

ICANN has inertia, but if it continues to fail to protect the Internet, something else will pop up.

<comment><USER19> The funny thing here is that all of this big-money big-government international strategic arm twisting is over DNS settings, something users can change as easily as changing two numbers.

If things get bad enough, users will simply point their resolvers to some alternate root. Trying to block DNS requests to alternate resolvers is a laughable proposition from a technical perspective.

<comment><USER35> _If things get bad enough, users will simply point their resolvers to some alternate root. Trying to block DNS requests to alternate resolvers is a laughable proposition from a technical perspective._

ISPs can block outbound port 53 like they block port 25, or use DPI to detect DNS packets headed out of the ISP network. The only way around that is universal encryption, which the ISPs can slow down but not stop by blocking any high-entropy packets.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Hypothetically, how difficult should be for civilians build root servers? After that what we need is to update the bind package right?

<comment><USER29> Yes, it's trivial to run your own root server. Convincing other people is the hard part.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I have a doubt, if megaupload would have been megaupload.hk instead of .com, could the fbi have acted the same way?

<comment><USER38> I think so, because they also claimed Megaupload had some servers in US. But their case would've probably been weaker then. I think this power to take down .com, .net .org domains comes mostly from the Pro IP Act from 2008 that passed right before our noses, just like SOPA almost did. If we want DHS to stop doing this, we'll need to get the Pro IP Act repealed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> At least it should now be clear to anyone purchasing a .com domain that they have to comply with all US laws and regulations or risk suffering forfeiture of their property.

If you want to work under the laws of the UK, acquire a co.uk site.

</comment><comment><USER40> Everyone everywhere is subject to US law. On the extreme end of the spectrum, the US will send their military and remove your government if you are non- cooperative.

</comment><comment><USER41> Could this set a precedent in the SOPA vein of things?

</comment><comment><USER42> Next, U.S. Government declares anyone buying a non us domain (.com, .net, org, .biz and maybe .info) will be considered a terrorist.

</comment><comment><USER43> Not just .com. US law applies to any TLD managed by a US registrar. An example is .tv which is managed by Verisign.

<comment><USER44> Do you have any examples of that? As far as I know while .com/.net/.org are under US jurisdiction, it isn't the case of other TLDs managed by Verisign.

<comment><USER43> <http://www.firstrowsports.tv/>

They moved to <http://www.firstrowsports.eu/>

<comment><USER44> Thanks. I'm surprised by that, are there more details about the seizure? What it through Verisign or the registrar?

<comment><USER43> Verisign is the registrar for all .tv and .cc domains.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> playnow.com is a gambling website operating in Canada but registered in the US through Verisign/Netsol. The only difference in this case is the BC gov't owns and operates playnow.com. I wonder if the US will seize this domain name too because gambling is illegal in the US?

</comment><comment><USER46> High time to relieve verisign of their .com registry freeride and move it to an international body.

<comment><USER29> ITU would be happy to take it over, but they'd double prices and allow every country to censor domains instead of just the US.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> I can live with this. DNS is an insecure and non-robust system, and the modern Internet has broken it. The good news is, we know the weaknesses and how to defend against them, so at some time in the future, DNS buggery will no longer be possible.

</comment><comment><USER48> It looks like all Bodog did is relaunch as Bovada.lv

<comment><USER2> Bovada.lv has been active since November; but even before then it was operating all US activities from Bodog.eu. The dot-com domain name has been 'dormant' (i believe it redirected to one of the two).

The dot-com domain name seizure is symbolic and will hurt their SEO; it will have little effect on their business.

[but indicting 4 top-level execs and aggressively pursuing their payment processors, however, will certainly have an effect]

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> I was waiting for this to happen.

</comment><comment><USER50> "Sports betting is illegal in Maryland, and federal law prohibits bookmakers from flouting that law simply because they are located outside the country," DHS said.

LOL what? "You can't flout the law just because you're outside the jurisdiciton of the law".

\---

Also, the crux of the article is that a .COM domain registered an operated by Canadian entities was "taken over" by Verisign at the behest of DHS. Verisign added NS records at the root to redirect the affected domain to a takedown page.

<comment><USER51> Are they saying that an English company (where sports betting is legal) taking bets from English punters is running afoul of Maryland law? I doubt it. What they are saying is that doing business with American citizens is subject to American laws.

EDIT: An interesting read... [http://www.vegassportsmasters.com/?q=article/feds-arrest- eng...](http://www.vegassportsmasters.com/?q=article/feds-arrest-english- shore-bookmaker-del-mar-begins-67th-season)

<comment><USER7> But why aren't they going after the Americans who are breaking American law, rather than the non-Americans who are just doing business?

But see also this (someone else posted it on HN, but I can't remember who or where):

([http://cphpost.dk/news/international/us-snubs-out-legal- ciga...](http://cphpost.dk/news/international/us-snubs-out-legal-cigar- transaction))

<comment><USER19> They could easily go after Americans, but then they'd having things like due process and trials by jury to worry about.

Instead, DHS would rather set precedent that a judge's signature in Maryland (a suburb of Washington DC) is all that is necessary to seize .com/org/net domains anywhere in the world. It's a fait accomplit against a foreign company, they're less likely to fight back, and the precedent extends their authority.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> isn't it ridiculous??????</comment>


Stripe Partner Program - <AUTHOR> https://stripe.com/partner-program?v2 <comment><USER2> Strange that the partner needs to be pay, with most payment gateways is the other way around. The developer works to bring more customers and a higher sales volume and the payment gateway in return does revenue sharing.

<comment><USER3> It might be worth it. In our case being listed on Stripe's website brought a non-negligible number of new customers.

For Stripe, it may be a way to filter out not serious applications.

Other payment gateways often need you more than you need them ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Having a lot of trouble parsing this buzzword soup. What the heck even is this program? Very uncharacteristic of Stripe.

<comment><USER5> (I work at Stripe.) This program is designed for platforms (specifically platforms that use Stripe Connect with standard accounts) and extension partners. The new benefits for partners include best practices, resources to help them promote their integration, and new ways to reach customers. Happy to help clarify if there's anything in particular!</comment></comment>


The New M4 Instance Type - <AUTHOR> https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/the-new-m4-instance-type-bonus-price-reduction-on-m3-c4/ <comment><USER2> Just how custom is the E5-2676 v3 processor?

I see this paticular model is not in the Intel's list of models [1] nor in the Wikipedia [2].

I suspect that, as the model number suggests, it is virtually identical to E5-2670 v3 [3] and 100 MHz higher base clock rate and 100 MHz lower Turbo Boost frequency is all customization there is (but what about the exact turbo profile?), but the fact that Intel does it at all, even for a customer as large as Amazon (how much are they ordering, actually?), is an interesting development.

[1] Intel® Xeon® Processor E5 v3 Family [http://ark.intel.com/products/family/78583/Intel-Xeon- Proces...](http://ark.intel.com/products/family/78583/Intel-Xeon- Processor-E5-v3-Family#@Server)

[2] Wikipedia: List of Intel Xeon microprocessors [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_Xeon_microprocess...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_Xeon_microprocessors#.22Haswell- EP.22_.2822_nm.29_Efficient_Performance)

[3] Intel® Xeon® Processor E5-2670 v3 (30M Cache, 2.30 GHz) [http://ark.intel.com/products/81709/Intel-Xeon- Processor-E5-...](http://ark.intel.com/products/81709/Intel-Xeon- Processor-E5-2670-v3-30M-Cache-2_30-GHz)

<comment><USER3> All those different models you see in the E5v3 product line aren't separate products, they're bins of probably just 2-3 different CPUs. Many of the chips made will have defects, and the number of working cores, their maximum stable frequency, and their thermal properties determine which product number they get sold as. Amazon probably just gets one of these bins: the chips that come out of testing meeting their specs are sold to them as a 2676. Intel doesn't actually have to custom design any hardware.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Product_binning](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Product_binning)

<comment><USER4> It's probably easy for Intel to reclassify the processors since Amazon probably provides the exact thermal conditions they will be in. If you say that the CPU temperature won't exceed X degrees due to the cooling systems, you can push the core clock speed higher.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't have a great need for VPS, but I still like running a few.

I have never tried Amazon VPS because their pricing calculation is really confusing, especially when I just want smallest VPS to play with. This announcement is just as unclear on actual price than any other pricing page in Amazon's site.

I like the way Digital Ocean makes it simple to understand how much it costs to try their smallest VPS. Why can't the Amazon do something like that? Simple chart for monthly payment.

<comment><USER6> I use both VPS providers (for my own little experiments), and deploy to AWS at scale. There are two major reasons I can think of that, from the perspective of "I just want a monthly VPS", that AWS's pricing feels so opaque. At the end, I'll also answer your actual question of what the dang thing costs.

1\. Short Instance Lifetimes

An idiomatic system running on AWS (with autoscaling, load-balancing, and CloudFormation managing AMI changes to enable _immutable infrastructure_ ) has average instance lifetime (much) lower than one month.

In my current operation, most instances live a few days at most, many far fewer (some are literally just "background processes" instantiated as whole machines, and terminate themselves when their job is done. When instances are charged by the hour, this costs far less than it would seem!)

AWS isn't a VPS provider, really. You don't use it to run your snowflakes ([http://martinfowler.com/bliki/SnowflakeServer.html](http://martinfowler.com/bliki/SnowflakeServer.html)). It's for building systems, living bodies made out of cells that are created and die without affecting the body as a whole.

A pretty valid comparison is that AWS encourages you to use VMs in about the same way that Erlang encourages you to use processes.

You might also consider that hosts like Heroku _consume_ AWS and then _provide_ something with monthly fees. When AWS calls itself Infrastructure- as-a-Service, it means it; it's not for end-user developers, because end-user developers don't need control over infrastructure. AWS is for ops-teams who need to declaratively instantiate an entire virtual data center.

If you want to _play at being_ an ops-team (and I'm not knocking that desire; it's fun and educational) you can use AWS for your tiny web-app. But it's the wrong fit, precisely because you won't _need_ most of what AWS is trying to give you, or have answers to the compromises it wants to know your position on, because those compromises only matter at scale.

AWS also has ...

2\. A Heterogeneous Substrate

AWS has both old hardware and new hardware laying around, and both older and newer data centers, and their regions (collections of interlinked data centers) are either over- or under-capacity. The prices are played with to incentivize you to use whatever currently costs AWS the least to give you.

The us-east-1 region, for example, is more expensive to launch instances in, mostly because it's pretty hard to find more places to put new DCs in the area it's in, so they want to prevent everyone from crowding into it (especially given that it's the oldest region and the default.)

AWS spot instances are another example; if you're willing to take whatever people are using the least of on AWS whenever it becomes available, you can boot up an instance for even cheaper than its nominal price, because you're running it using machines that would otherwise be (pretty much guaranteed to be) idle.

One interesting thing AWS does, is make newer instance types only compatible with newer parts of their computational substrate. AWS never truly _deprecates_ anything: non-VPC instances, 32-bit instances, PV instances, and instances with ephemeral public IPs, are still all there for systems that were designed way back then with those in mind and are expected to stay working. (This is also _why_ us-east-1 is still the default, by the way. Old orchestration scripts assume they'll continue to get us-east-1 if they leave the region off. You don't want your new instances suddenly sneaking off half- way across the country from your old ones...)

But AWS isn't gonna bring up any _new_ hardware to run the legacy stuff if they can help it. There are only so many e.g. 32-bit boxes in the AWS DCs, and AWS isn't going to allocate more, since one legacy customer moves away from 32-bit instances at about the same rate that some other legacy customer scales up to need more 32-bit instances. So 32-bit instance types (which are all legacy instance types, now) all stay the same price.

The new instance-types, meanwhile—like t2.micro or this m4 series—can afford to be cheaper, since they're restricted to only launch on the modern parts of the substrate. This means both that they will get cheaper over time (because AWS will continue to grow the modern part of the substrate), and also that they start out cheaper, because the modern designs are more efficient for AWS to run in terms of computational/network overhead, power consumption, cooling, cost of replacement parts, etc.

\---

Anyway, to answer your question, I didn't bother with the docs; I used the AWS calculator ([http://calculator.s3.amazonaws.com/index.html](http://calculator.s3.amazonaws.com/index.html)). (Side note: it's "AWS calculator", not "EC2 calculator", for a reason. It's _very likely_ some cost other than compute will swamp your compute costs. Bandwidth, for example, or S3 storage, or RDS Postgres instances with provisioned IOPS.)

Anyway, in the _us-west-2_ region (a new-ish region with modern DCs), a _t2.micro_ instance (the newest tiny instance type) run _on-demand_ (no prepaid reservation) costs $9.52/mo. The cheapest you can get is a _t2.micro_ run with a _3-year upfront reservation_ : it's $4.20/mo, or $151.00 total to get a VM that will sit around for three years.

But if you just want to try AWS, all of this is irrelevant: you get a year of hobbyist-grade resources (including e.g. one year of t2.micro instance-hours) for free ([http://aws.amazon.com/free/](http://aws.amazon.com/free/)) when you sign up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I wonder why the m4 instances are less expensive than the m3s: m4.xlarge is $0.252 vs m3.xlarge $0.266. The c4 instances are more expense than the c3 instances.

<comment><USER8> I think the m3s were cheaper than the m2s when they we launched.

<comment><USER9> Yeah, I think Amazon does this on purpose to encourage people to move to the new lineup, so that the old, underperforming, energy-inefficient lineup can be decommissioned sooner.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm curious how the C state control works. What does /proc/cpuinfo look like? Are they letting mwait through for real? Are these Xen or real virtualization? I wish Amazon would document their virtual hardware platform more clearly.

</comment><comment><USER11> Is that core count right for the big instance? The same cpu is used on the data-heavy nodes [1] and it says it maxes out at 36 cores. Or does amazon save some cores for their own uses on those boxes?

[1] [https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/next-generation-of-dense- st...](https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/next-generation-of-dense-storage- instances-for-ec2/)

<comment><USER9> There doesn't seem to be any official specifications for the Xeon E5-2676 v3, probably because it's a custom CPU made just for Amazon.

Random sources found via Google seem to suggest that they have somewhere between 10 and 12 cores, which would translate to between 40 and 48 hyperthreaded vCPU's with a dual-socket setup.

So perhaps Amazon has found a way to set aside fewer (or no) cores for their own uses on the new m4 lineup. Or maybe it's the other way around and the data-heavy nodes require more cores to be set aside than usual.

<comment><USER11> Yeah, it is possible that amazon does the latter there. Save some virtual cores for their own purposes to dedicate towards parity, etc, to get IO higher.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> A bit surprising that these instances are EBS only and don't have any ephemeral disks at all.

<comment><USER13> That's been the norm for all new instances launched by AWS in the last couple years. They often follow that up after 6-12 months with ephemeral versions of these instance types.

Hopefully they continue to release instances with ephemeral storage, because most distributed systems design assumes uncorrated failure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> MB/s is probably incorrect for the EBS throughput instance limits; those values make more sense if they use Mb/s.

<comment><USER15> Blog post author here - you are correct, I was wrong, and the fix is rolling out now!

<comment><USER2> Glad to see you following the discussion, Jeff. Maybe you probably could address my and others' curiosity re: the exact nature of the _custom_ Intel Xeon E5-2676 v3 CPU? I don't think Intel could justify making any serious customization even for a customer as large as Amazon, but I would be very interested to know exactly how _custom_ it is.</comment></comment></comment>


Latest Twitter Bug: "Misdelivery of Direct Messages" - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/04/23/latest-twitter-bug-misdelivery-of-direct-messages/ <comment><USER2> must be great for twitter to have an entire blog donating such vast resources for QA. i'd read the article, but TechCrunch is currently (and probably will remain) mapped to localhost in my /etc/hosts</comment>


The dangers of uniformity - <AUTHOR> http://agiletesting.blogspot.com/2012/08/the-dangers-of-uniformity.html

<comment><USER2> Hopefully people will add more of their own approaches to alleviating issues of uniformity by commenting here or directly on blogger.</comment>


6 US Cities Amazon Should Consider for Its Second HQ - <AUTHOR> https://www.pcmag.com/news/356056/6-cities-amazon-should-consider-for-its-second-us-headquarte <comment><USER2> Pittsburgh might be a nice place except for the continental winter weather. They could pick up many of the the CMU graduates.

On the other hand if foul weather is not an issue Boston metro produces lots of talent, a significant portion does not remain but a cachet company could suck them up and keep them.

</comment><comment><USER3> "Great airport" in Charlotte? I was there on a layover a few weeks ago in the American terminal and thought I had traveled back to the 90's.

</comment><comment><USER4> I would take Kansas City then Charlotte

</comment><comment><USER5> Not Dallas or Charlotte

<comment><USER6> why

<comment><USER5> Charlotte and Dallas are not well setup to handle more people, imo

The sprawl around Dallas is already bad - and Charlotte just isn't really setup for the number of people it has (plus, CLT is a lousy airport, in my experience)

<comment><USER7> Charlotte's building a crapload of apartments though.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Bitcoin nodes surged to 200k - <AUTHOR> http://getaddr.bitnodes.io/chart/nodes/

<comment><USER2> This is _highly_ misleading. The actual number of nodes that they're measuring is 11,664, which is a sudden increase from a slowly declining level of about 4,400 as of a month ago.

The 196,123 number is a count of the number of distinct IP addresses being rumored between nodes. Most of them are never working garbage sent into the network by confused software, misguided would-be DOS attackers, etc.

<comment><USER3> If the actual number is still doubling rapidly from a recent nadir, isn't the implication the same?

Also, for people who don't see this as natural (and I agree that it looks almost mechanical), is this a misguided "51%" attack? (Seems unlikely given that if you have the resources for that, you also probably understand how it works.) Just curious what people see this sudden change as representing.

<comment><USER4> > Also, for people who don't see this as natural (and I agree that it looks > almost mechanical), is this a misguided "51%" attack?

No. The whole point of the POW mechanism is to frustrate cheap easy Sybil attacks where someone sets up a few thousand IPs and dictates what the network says.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> People keep asking me "What is the best way to convert my bitcoins to cash?"... anyone know a good answer that you know works (first hand)?

<comment><USER6> It depends _heavily_ on where you are, which bank you're with, with whom you're a citizen of, and a myriad of other factors.

Canadians may have an easier time than Americans, but Britons will be SOL.

<comment><USER7> > Britons will be SOL

Is it that hard to set up on BitBargain?

<comment><USER8> It is not smooth at all: [https://bitbargain.co.uk/trade-bitcoins- app](https://bitbargain.co.uk/trade-bitcoins-app)

Not to mention the 0.4XBT non refundable seller application fee.

For a one-off "I want to cash out" use case this is completely unworkable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I was watching this through the year, wondering if the decline was due to people moving over to web wallets. Clearly not. I bet this is a good indication of price. The more there is online, the more natural interest there is. I think over time it will start meaning less and less as people do INDEED move over to other wallets.

<comment><USER10> The problem is that this doesn't quite look like natural growth. Maybe it is, but it's pretty quick, constant, and unnatural looking. People don't generally behave that way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> First the surge in Tor nodes, now this? I bet the Feds did this.

<comment><USER12> how generous of them

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I think that perhaps a large portion of Bitcoin nodes are "dormant," i.e. offline until the owner feels like updating in order to make a transaction.</comment>


The US Army is developing AI missiles that find their own targets - <AUTHOR> https://www.newscientist.com/article/2212982-the-us-army-is-developing-ai-missiles-that-find-their-own-targets/ <comment><USER2> How can we look at the error rates of current AI (especially the ones dealing with human aspects) and subsequently think that this is the right time to make an AI-controlled weapon?

Absolutely stunning. I guess it doesn't matter what the error rate is when you think everyone else on the planet is your enemy.

<comment><USER3> "We didn't reject your credit application, it was the AI" becomes "We didn't blow up that hospital, it was the AI".</comment></comment>


Marriage turns genius off like a tap. - <AUTHOR> http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/scitech/SciTechRepublish_898675.htm <comment><USER2> I've always been the type that in order for me to learn something, I adopt a pet project. It brings context to the concepts.

I can remember staying the night at my girlfriend's apartment (she's now my wife). We enjoyed each others company. But when she would fall asleep, I would hop on to her computer and begin working on my own projects.

And she use to complain, in fact, get extremely angry that I was up "typing away" and that I needed to come to bed. My contention is that she's asleep so why should she care? I finally said, "Get over yourself. I have enjoyed working on late projects before I met you and will continue to do so for the rest of my life. Programming is my life. Deal with it."

And after a few fights and with me not backing down, it was no longer an issue.

The point of the story; if something is important to you, grow some balls and stand up for it.

To make a broad generalization, women have a tendency to put the relationship before anything else. But if in your world coding is just as important as cuddling, speak up and stand your ground.

Relationships and intellectual development do not have to be mutually exclusive.

<comment><USER3> 1) Einstein ended up getting divorced over his work. Is it worth it?

2) Sex is exhausting. Having it regularly is the real issue.

<comment><USER4> I feel great for coding after sex, if it's with a partner that I haven't just started with. It's like a cloud has been lifted from my mind. A world of distractions are suddenly gone.

<comment><USER5> Reminds me of Cryptonomicon

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> My startup cofounder is my wife. Things are going splendidly. Generalizations are pretty useless in making decisions for your own life.

<comment><USER7> I'm also working on a startup with my wife as cofounder. We haven't launched yet, but her skillset is a fantastic complement to mine. I'm a very strategic thinker, whereas she's a great tactician and good at organization. She's also brilliant (Ph.D. student in I/O psychology), which is one of the reasons I married her. :)

I think that most couples aren't capable of running a business together, but I also think we're particularly pragmatic and don't let emotions get in the way of our goals.

I also have found myself becoming MORE creative now that we've been married. That might just be because I didn't move out from my parents' house until a few months before the wedding, but I can say that the broad generalization of marriage destroying creativity doesn't apply to me.

<comment><USER8> uhh .. what is I/O psychology? maybe there is some obvious abbreviation that I am missing. but I/O .. well to a programmer that is always input-output and I am having a hard time thinking about what psychology might be involved in reading/writing to disks for instance.

<comment> barry-cotter Industrial organisation

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Doesn't jive with my experience. A wife and family increaased my drive tremendously.

When i was single, I was a slacker mostly interested in partying. I would work just enough for rent and pot.

After our first son arrived 5 years ago (unplanned), I realized I had to make up for lost time, and have been extremely productive ever since, finishing my engineering degree, finally getting a "real" job in the industry, and then leaving that for my startup.

However, my wife constantly says I dont give enough time to the family. If I gave as much time as she wished, I doubt I would be successful.

<comment><USER10> > After our first son arrived 5 years ago (unplanned)

Sounds like you should hire a project manager! ;-)

<comment><USER9> If you are married then you will know, she is clearly the manager.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> A few more anecdotal data points:

I had a philosophy teacher who was known for being something of a terror. However, he became a lot more placid after getting married.

A fellow student was very driven, he was on track to becoming a SEAL at one point (changed his mind due to the psychological effects of being a SEAL). However, he too became much more laid back after getting married. He told me that he noticed married people lose their drive.

On the other hand, I had a classics professor who is married with 4 kids, and he is very prolific.

Besides the biological aspects of getting married, I think marriage makes life more emotionally comfortable for people. So, if a person's drive doesn't come from a lack of emotional stability, then they'll remain productive even after becoming married.

</comment><comment><USER12> Here is the original paper [PDF]: <http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/MES/pdf/JRP2003.pdf>

A very important article for any aspiring young man.

</comment><comment><USER13> Interestingly, the female genius stay fairly consistent across their life spans. It does not exhibit the sharp peak in the of their male counterparts. Unfortunately, the paper does not address the impact of marriage on women's productivity, only on mens.

</comment><comment><USER14> It's all about time, time, time. I'm not suggesting there aren't extremes at both ends of the intelligence spectrum. But for the bulk of us in the middle of the curve, it all comes down to time. The problem is society pulls for our time on one end and family pulls for our time on the other. Unless your independently wealthy you can't be uber effective at both. I've actually known a number of men who have tried to advance there careers or get advanced degrees after they were married and had children only to end up getting divorced. I'm not advocating one path as superior to the other but having a family myself I know something has to give. Over time I've learned to value my accomplishments as a husband and father over those of intellect and career.

<comment><USER15> Ditto. You couldn't develop much of a career in a couple hours a day, so why expect to be successful at a family with the same minimal contribution? It's about balance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> PG, any thoughts on this? Are you married? And dare I ask, are you celibate? ...No pressure, of course. It's a touchy subject to some.

I ask because you're more successful than most of us here, and I know of many people who claim that celibacy is crucial to doing anything great with your life, for whatever your definition of great is. Scientific evidence is hard to come by though, and even still, most people don't seem to accept it.

<comment><USER17> I'm not married yet. Engaged though.

I wonder if this study controlled for children. From what I've seen, having kids affects people's lives a lot more than getting married.

<comment><USER18> remember that most of the scientists surveyed lived before effective birth control, when marriage usually led to children.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Will divorce restore the genius, or is it irreversible?

<comment><USER12> According to the findings in the paper: Yes, it will to at least some degree. Testosterone increases after a divorce and therefore so does competitive effort and overall productivity (Genius + Effort = Productivity)

<comment><USER20> I think it does. I am divorced, therefore I still have to compete for the babes. As a result, I am in better shape than most guys my age. I also must be (somewhat) successful. The most successful you are the better babes you can get. I know is a somewhat cynical position but I think sex is an important motivator.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Marriage doesn't only stop scientific genius. It also stops musical genius. A good example would be The Beatles. Consider them like a start-up. They had a phenomenally productive phase but it stopped after they got married. This could be because the number of decision makers grew and the number of relationships grew even more.

<comment><USER22> According to Wikipedia, John was married to Cynthia from 1962-68; then to Yoko. Ringo married in '65; George in '66.

<comment><USER23> Stunning counterexample.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I think some portion of "genius" is the ability to recognize and run with ideas, some of which come from others. Geniuses not only need to actually have an idea, they need the freedom to pursue it and get recognized.

Getting settled in to a family need not diminish the capacity for ideas, but following the established social conventions of ordinary people will reduce the chances to pursue them. Settling down may also make geniuses less social and as a result they may not pick up as many new ideas from others and they will limit their chances to be recognized.

</comment><comment><USER25> Seems like a good material of the Divorce Magazine (www.divorcemag.com)... Now what the hell is that... The other I walk in the BestBuy and see this free magazine, fuckin divorce lawyers and shit...

And fuck the geniuses life! My wife born me a beautiful son, he's already 45 days, the hell with geniuses and their lives...

<comment><USER20> Why the downmodes? malkia is just so happy about his new son that everything else (including being a genius) seems unimportant.

<comment><USER11> Agreed, being a genius doesn't matter in a vacuum (a point RMS apparently doesn't get).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> The article doesn't say that marriage turns genius off, it says that marriage and _children_ turn it off. BFD

My bet is that children alone absolutely destroy productivity and further, that marriage without children would (at least initially) enhance productivity.

<comment><USER27> Strange as its increased my productivity. Kids do take up a load of time, but its been THE most focusing effect of my life :- 1\. Any spare time I have, I work immensely hard - no creativity suites with bean bags for inspiration; no procrastination on which direction I take or how elegant/short my code can be. If it works, its in. 2\. My product (or subsequent ones) HAS to succeed. I'm simply working to keep a roof over our heads and now have another mouth to feed. "Necessity is the mother of all invention" a smart chap from across the pond once said. In short - I do not suffer from motivational problems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I know that counterexamples will not disprove the trend, but... What about the Curies? Or Thelonious Monk. Without Nellie to make his lunch and get him dressed in the morning, he would never have achieved the things he did.

</comment><comment><USER29> It seems to me like this result would be true for anything a person tries to do that requires a significant amount of time investment.

For instance, I'd like to see this same study on people who have discovered Warcraft or the like.

</comment><comment><USER30> That's really not that surprising. If I feel that nagging 'it would be unhealthy to stay up any later' feeling, staying up and putting in those extra hours just seems less appealing if the alternative is a bed with the warm body of someone who loves you. Guess it's a matter of motivations/priorities.

Alternatively, maybe it just means that, once you have a family, you're less likely to take the risks that are sometimes necessary to produce those genius contributions.

</comment><comment><USER31> Note the differential between discovery and engineering. OMG, Paul, think long engagment, at least until the crazy creative part of Arc is wrapped up... ;-)

</comment><comment><USER32> i know something else it turns off: freedom

</comment><comment><USER33> depends who you marry

</comment><comment><USER34> The tap leaked extensively in the case of J. S. Bach: two wives and 21 children.

</comment><comment><USER35> Is this desirable? Maybe it helps you give more attention to your family.

</comment><comment><USER36> Marriage turns other things off like a tap ;)

Maybe that contributes? 0.o

</comment><comment><USER37> Personally, my productivity went up after me and my wife separated. No kids involved. It was a focus issue with me. I simply could not manage to fully focus on what I was doing when having to deal with another person's constant issues, whether it be this or that. Constantly having to pay attention to someone, having to go along with weekend activities I was not in the least interested in. Now, I love the woman, and we are still husband and wife, but I personally can't handle living with someone and therefore having my life intertwined with another person's life.

</comment><comment><USER38> the past != the future

statistical "facts" != your own experience</comment>


Corporate Ipsum - <AUTHOR> http://www.cipsum.com/

<comment><USER2> It's cute, but isn't it just showing the same text over and over again?</comment>


Game theory leverages my userbase with badges to exploit and monetise them - <AUTHOR> http://slavin.tumblr.com/post/6635551377/this-video-of-jp-rangaswami-speaking-chief#gamification <comment><AUTHOR> Intro starts at 01:00, talk starts at 02:00.

I hate videos, and desperately wish there were a transcript, but I haven't found one. Sorry.

</comment><comment><USER2> Probably want to put [video] in the title. Also, the title has nothing to do with the subject of the video. It's a good talk though, and worth watching.

<comment><AUTHOR> Couldn't fit "(video)" in the 80 character limit.

Care to suggest a better title?

EDIT: Now too late to change the title.</comment></comment>


High throughput Java actors--much faster than Akka - <AUTHOR>

I worked in Scala for 2 years and was constantly frustrated with the speed of the actors. So I rolled my own, in Java. Orders of magnitude faster, though the speed increase really has nothing to do with the choice of language.
Most of the speed gain comes from avoiding thread switching as much as possible. I developed the idea of commandeering, where an actor which sends a message to another actor that is idle can safely process the message sent on the same thread.
Additional speedups came from message buffering and the optional use of 2-way messages for implicit flow control.
Message passing between actors runs between 80 and 200 million per second on an i7, depending on the mode of delivery.
Currently looking for early adopters as I believe this is production ready.
https://github.com/laforge49/JActor <comment><USER2> Sounds interesting, good luck!

Thread switching is certainly costly and not really necessary for high- performance systems as proved by the the LMAX/Disruptor architecture.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll admit it, the disruptor architecture was my inspiration.

I've since put together an in-memory database built on JActor that processes a million ACID transactions a second (on an i7 with ssd). <https://github.com/laforge49/JFile>

What I didn't like about the disruptor pattern is that it seems to require a lot of architecture, and I like to keep things as fluid as possible.

My proposal is that a high-throughput actor framwork (like JActor) is close to ideal for building vertically scalable server software.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Hey Guillaume, looks nice. I'll try to benchmark it against the famous Akka Pi.scala example.

Btw since, language is not important, why didn't you write this in Scala?

<comment><AUTHOR> I had only 2 years of experience with Scala and was not always able to foresee the overhead of various language constructs. As this was my first project where I considered performance critical, I decided to stick with Java--with which I have decades of experience and a more in-depth understanding.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: has anyone used a crowdsourced SEO service? - <AUTHOR>

Has anyone used crowdsourced SEO?
What is the leading service in this space?
Anyone care to share their experiences? <comment><USER2> I think the reason it (might) not work would be: 99designs - the designers are protected from someone else using the design they produce as just a few small examples are shown on the site. Someone could pinch them, but they aren't getting the full whack.

With SEO advice a competitor could just take everything shown and apply it. Or if they just give you a small amount how do you ensure you get what you want/paid for? How does the SEO 'provider' protect themselves against someone just not being happy with the rest of the (good) advice.

But I could be wrong ;)

</comment><comment><USER3> SEO for big money terms is difficult, time consuming, and expensive.

I would only use something like this for trivially competitive terms.

Blueglass' product is worth looking into (I believe it's called SecondStep) as is Optify.

I don't really know what you mean by crowdsourced SEO - if you're crowdsourcing your onsite stuff, you're probably making a bad decision.

If you're crowdsourcing your link building, you're paying someone else to spam for you.</comment>