Doing nothing is the hardest thing ever - <AUTHOR> http://swizec.com/blog/doing-nothing-is-the-hardest-thing-ever/swizec/1464

<comment><USER2> Sometimes what that guy needs is someone to bat ideas off of. Going away may not be the best solution.

When he says them out loud, things will happen in his brain. One of those things may help him solve the solution, even if you don't have any clue what's going on. Sometimes, -especially- if you don't know what's going on. The act of explaining something forces you to clarify it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah true, but he can bounce ideas on our irc channel, it's much less distracting.</comment></comment>


Twitter to begin charging brands for commercial use - <AUTHOR> http://www.brandrepublic.com/News/879748/Twitter-begin-charging-brands-commercial-use/ <comment><USER2> I just don't see this being embraced by more than a handful of companies. Some brands are still just trying to understand how to use this for marketing purposes. Then you have the headache of policing the personal accounts that promote brands of employers.

As much as I would like to see a unique web company succeed, this doesn't exactly inspire confidence that they (Twitter) have a solid 2009 revenue plan.

<comment><USER3> "We are noticing more companies using Twitter and individuals following them. We can identify ways to make this experience even more valuable and charge for commercial accounts." - Biz Stone

Sounds like opting for a commercial account would bring additional features, not just require businesses to pay for what's now free.

<comment><USER4> Exactly right, maxwell. Charging certain customers more, just because of who they are, is not a great business strategy :)

<comment><USER5> I think this fear is overblown. You already see educational institutions and individuals paying different prices for box software compared to business users. Large and medium-sized businesses also probably wouldn't cheat the fee system. Again, look to boxed software: would a major company run pirated copies of Office 2007? It would be pretty easy for them to, but it's not a huge expense and if anyone found out than it would be extremely embarrassing. (It would be much easier to find out about businesses cheating with twitter just by having some superficial distinction like a badge or icon on the twitter site for paid users)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> According to a recent story on venture beat, twitter has brought in $1m in revenues for Dell.[1]

So there thould be quite a margin, even when Dell's VP of communities says _"If it becomes complicated and costly, our instinct would be to move elsewhere."_

[1]: [http://venturebeat.com/2008/12/15/twitter-has-made- dell-1-mi...](http://venturebeat.com/2008/12/15/twitter-has-made- dell-1-million-in-revenue/)

</comment><comment><USER7> It's about time! I wonder what kind of premium services they'll start offering...perhaps some blend of analytics, Twittersheep, TweetRank and MrTweet...or perhaps even my old idea of paying people to be marketed to: <http://www.balsamiq.com/blog/?p=217> (BTW, I have stopped doing that until recipients start getting paid for it).

Anyways, I'm ready to pay, where should I input my CC data @ev? ;)

</comment><comment><USER8> Twitter is cool because you make an account and start doing whatever you want.

How do they tell the difference between individuals and "brands"? Will I have to pay for a commercial account if I start tweeting constantly about how much I love Apple? What if I only use Twitter to advertise my free software project?

Anyway, the article is low on details, and I just don't see this working out too well.

<comment><USER9> They'll probably keep the free stuff free for anyone. But there's a lot of space for them to provide extra services to paying corporate customers.

Remember that they've likely been marinating on this idea since they started up. It's also _very_ easy to provide more service than 140 chars.

Like a hyperlink that's separate from the tweet. Or customized tweets to different groups of followers. Or formatting.

<comment><USER10> You mean like a blog? So should Twitter strive to just replicate WordPress or Tumblr then?

<comment><USER9> For a microblog product, it's not a bad idea! A socially-networked microblog can stand to add some milliblog, possibly deciblog-style functionality for a price :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> _'If it becomes complicated and costly, our instinct would be to move elsewhere.'_

This is kind of ironic. You are in internet as a company to make business, but you don't want to use paid services yourself. How do you expect companies to make money if people isn't willing to pay? What makes you think that they will pay your service, if they don't want to pay for e.g. Twitter, Facebook, etc?

Obviously Dell would be a bad example here since they sell hardware, but I think this could apply to a lot of internet companies/start ups.

</comment><comment><USER12> The market segment for paying customers is small, largely due to little value added. Even with their set of "enhanced search/stream" tools, companies will only benefit if users are commenting on their products. That goes to say, if companies are popular, they will hear that they are popular. Little known companies will not hear valuable opinions on their products. Furthermore, analytics will be skewed since the twitter community is a particular set of people.

Also, a large question would be: Who gets to choose between personal and commercial? If I have an personal account where I talk about work, is this a commercial account? The "web evangelists", marketing, and branding "gurus" - do these guys need commercial accounts? Does the size of the company matter? C-Corp or Sole Proprietorship?

While I do want to see Twitter succeed, I feel like they have other, more appropriate alternatives that could be feasible.

</comment><comment><USER13> This would have to be implemented in a very sophisticated way. For a start Coke is a business, but then so is a start-up with three employees - are you telling me they should pay the same?

It must be the case that Twitter will offer bells and whistles to big companies and charge for them - otherwise entrepreneurs simply won't use it to build their businesses.

Also you have to think about a company's revenue streams. A car manufacturer, which could conceivably make a sale from a click-through, stands to benefit a lot more than a publisher that gets money through ad revenue.

I can think of about a million other problems too.

</comment><comment><USER14> This amounts to "good will" on the part of the potential customers to keep Twitter alive. I doubt we'll see any ROI calculations.

Twitter is just a feature of an information system and that feature can be implemented easily on a company by company basis and incorporated as an RSS feed or whatever.

Any other use would only be considered advertising and that is difficult to quantify and internet advertising isn't doing so well at the moment...

</comment><comment><USER15> Product/revenue ideas for Twitter for better or worse:

* Twitter Dating

* Twitter Auctions

* Twitter Q&A (crowdsourcing answers to your questions)

* Twitter Tube (links that actually open up YouTube videos on my iPhone which are thus easily discussed)

* Twitter Quick Pix (tweet out a quick picture from my iPhone, with photobucket/tinyurl integration)

</comment><comment><USER16> So, that opens the door to a free competitor that does not charge. The wheel turns once more...

<comment><USER17> A free competitor that doesn't charge might get the business of lots of businesses. So now you -- J Random User -- have: (1) Twitter, where all your friends are, and (2) Fritter, where lots of online marketers are. Which are you going to use? Hmmmmmm, difficult decision.

And then all the businesses on Fritter notice that no one is reading their freets (frites?), and either give up or go back to Twitter and pay the twax.

Doesn't really sound like that promising a business plan, to me.

<comment><USER16> Do you think twitter has such a huge population now that another startup along the same lines does not have a chance of succeeding ?

<comment><USER18> There has to be a very compelling reason to switch. Laconi.ca/Identi.ca might end up being somewhat successful, assuming it can survive it's growth. The win there is that businesses can start their own federated Laconi.ca instance to talk to other Laconi.cas out there.

But, there's still the problem of Twitter. There are so many Twitter based apps out there, that spread their brand which means there's about 6 gazillion sites other than blogs, and now news sources like CNN, that actually promote the use of Twitter. Twitter is big.

<comment><USER19> Twitter has a lot of mindshare (I can't believe how much I see it mentioned on TV or mainstream newspapers). However, in terms of user base they are still pretty small (6 million?). There will be more competitors, especially since making your app work with Twitter is relatively easy.

<comment><USER18> I think that the reason it's only 6 million is that everyone else is just using facebook. I use twitter/identi.ca to have conversations, ask questions, "microblog" but when my posts get pushed to facebook, my friends have no idea what I'm doing.

In other words, maybe the best way for someone to take down twitter is to create a compelling reason to not use facebook's status feature, and instead use the next new thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Of course, Twitter is not going to find the perfect revenue model with iteration one (and they may alienate potential customers) but at least they are getting started. I wonder if @comcastcares will have to pay.

</comment><comment><USER21> the whole twitter phenomenon is just a circle jerk of marketers and internet "celebrities". I doubt if even 5% of their population is "real" people. And even that 5% is nothing more but fanboys who wish to be the future internet celebrities.

I don't know a single "real" person who uses it, beyond that first minute. All of them come away with "WTF is the point".

Sure twitter has marketing power, because all the bloggers have convinced themselves that this is the best thing since sliced bread. But the real world could care less.

<comment><USER22> Twitter can definitely be a waste of time. However, there's often some gems of information in the midst of it all.

My twitter strategy as of late has been to catch up on tweets while sitting on the toilet. The iPhone helps with this endeavor.

Also, search.twitter.com has become an essential source of information.

<comment><USER23> > catch up on tweets while sitting on the toilet.

That is my email strategy, sometimes coding too.</comment></comment></comment>


Announcing Heroku Free SSL Beta and Flexible Dyno Hours - <AUTHOR> https://blog.heroku.com/archives/2016/5/18/announcing_heroku_free_ssl_beta_and_flexible_dyno_hours <comment><USER2> Dokku maintainer here.

I think this is a great idea. Companies have to sell a product in order to survive. At work, we pay a small amount of money for the 20 or so applications we deploy to heroku (nothing critical, just your run-of-the-mill chatbot/static landing page) and I'm impressed with the product they sell for such a small amount of money.

Here is some of what Heroku handles for you:

      - cluster scaling (docker swarm?)
      - resource scaling (docker-options?)
      - centralized logging (docker/rsyslog + papertrail?)
      - metrics support (diamond/collectd/dd-agent + external graphite cluster?)
      - web ui and external api (lol)
      - easy integration with tons of services (plugins/manual work?)
      - not having to maintain your own servers (hire an ops person?)
      - backups (cron + s3/dropbox/idk?)
      - security!!! (cron apt-get?)

Definitely worth taking a critical look at whether or not the applications you are running on Heroku aren't providing at least $7 a month in value to you, as the above doesn't necessarily come cheap when you roll your own.

<comment><USER3> Well that's right, but at one point you're bound to heroku service. Your app will be so deeply configured to work with heroku that migration will take you a lot of time.

With AWS at least you pay cents and then dollars when you scale. Heroku you pay dollars and then thousands.

Working with VPS seems so much better. Hire a freelancing Dev-ops guy to make your provisioning script then when you scale hire an employee for that. VPS change pricing... Change the VPS. Most of them has APIs so scaling can be configured programmatically and monitoring you can use service as new relic.

<comment><USER4> I disagree that you're bound. Most of the way you run your apps on Heroku works the same way anywhere, or can do with only the smallest amount of work. IMO if you want to migrate away, the biggest job is filling the gaps that Heroku provide for you, and don't realize they do until you don't have them anymore.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Flexible dyno hours" is some nice marketing spin. 550 hours a month works out to one application running 18 hours a day, whereas previously you could have an unlimited number of apps running up to 18 hours per day.

<comment><USER6> But you get 1000 free hours? (if you give them credit card data)

If you just want one 24h-app + a bit that's better, if you can live with <=18h for all your apps it is worse.

<comment><USER7> Nice, now I can just put all my apps in one dyno, and I get free hosting. This is actually better for me. With SSL!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> TLDR;

Before you got 18 hours a day per app on the free tier (5 apps max)

Now you get 550 hours per month in total for all your free apps (so 18 hours a day for all your apps instead of per app).

It's clear they are trying to kill the free dynos but who can blame them?

Heroku is still good if you need simple scaling and load balancing for commercial projects. Heroku main selling point use to be easy deployment , but with Docker and solutions like that, it's not longer true.

I wonder if there is some room for an ultra cheap "micro" PAAS, like 2$/month per instance, with 250 Mb space and 128 Mb RAM or something like that. With the development of new, efficient languages such as Go or Crystal which can operate on tight configurations, I wonder if this model would be viable.

<comment><USER9> Naah. I don't think they're trying to kill the free dyno. I think they're trying to prevent abuse.

I have one hobby app. I use it, maybe, a hour a week. So that's a dyno that's on for, oh, maybe two hours a week, but more likely less (since the sleep timeout is, what, five minutes?). Barely makes a dent in my free hours.

When I actually want this useable, I bump it up a tier for the week or two, and we're done. Cost of a good meal.

Beside, we're only seeing the tip of the iceberg: Could be this is a change brought on by deeper changes in the billing system, such that this method ends up being simpler.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Unfortunately, this kills my primary use case for heroku which is small personal projects. I have a dozen or so of them on the free tier right now. Heroku was great because I could throw them up for free and not really have to worry about hosting.

Now, howerver, I have to weigh any given project against my overall budget of hours. If I put up my weekend project, do I need to kill that project from a few months ago? Do I want to start paying for hosting for a site that will probably never go anywhere?

I suppose I'll just go back to hosting on DO/EC2/Etc. A single small instance of any major provider could handle the traffic for all my projects put together. It's slightly more work, although there are some cool projects like Dokku that make it less so. Heroku's main selling point for me was convenience and simplicy, and it's been progressively losing that over the last year or so.

<comment><USER8> > Unfortunately, this kills my primary use case for heroku which is small > personal projects. I have a dozen or so of them on the free tier right now. > Heroku was great because I could throw them up for free and not really have > to worry about hosting.

Well you're using their PAAS for free. Ultimately a minority of paid users are paying for all the free users, it can't go on for ever.This is true for Heroku, as well as any PAAS that has a free tier right now.

If you use Heroku for hobby projects you don't need scaling and load balancing, you might need a DB on your instance so a dropplet at DO, or using EC2 makes more sense than paying 7$ for a immutable app on Heroku servers.

<comment><USER11> I wonder if Heroku would have the userbase it does if it wasn't for them being the goto place for throwing personal projects for the last few years.

Clearly they don't believe that kind of marketing to be worth it now, but I'm sad to see that option go away.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Finally, charging $20 for SSL was just highway robbery. Pure and unadulterated money grab.

<comment><USER4> I heard it was also sold at cost (of an ELB). [https://twitter.com/johnbeynon/status/727375051331346432](https://twitter.com/johnbeynon/status/727375051331346432)

<comment><USER13> It's worse than at-cost: it's covering _fixed costs only_. If you push any bytes (a metered cost) through that ELB, Heroku finances that entirely.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Hopefully they might soon build in LetsEncrypt support, or something similar.

<comment><USER15> You might want to look at [https://github.com/dmathieu/sabayon](https://github.com/dmathieu/sabayon)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> > Starting June 1st, when you sign up for a Heroku account you will > immediately get 550 free dyno hours. In addition, we add another 450 dyno > hours for a total of 1,000 free dyno hours if you verify your identity by > providing us with a valid credit card.

Any thoughts on what Heroku gets out of identity verification / credit card info?

<comment><AUTHOR> I think it's mainly to prevent spam/multiple account creation. Having different CCs is harder than just multiple emails. It also makes it easy to upsell you to paid plans.

<comment><USER17> > Having different CCs is harder than just multiple emails.

Don't many banks issue virtual debit cards at negligible or even at no cost?

<comment><AUTHOR> They do but don't they have the same address & name ? At least it confirms identity.

<comment><USER17> I'm not sure a typical bank card detail form include an address. Usually it's card number, expiry date, CVV/CSC and (optional, as some cards don't have it!) cardholder's name. Not sure about Heroku and too lazy to remember a password and log in there to check right now.

Heroku may have address fields for invoices and stuff, but I really doubt they can validate it (except for country/state) with bank, as addresses are real mess. At the very least, not automatically. So, this probably won't work for abuse prevention.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> To answer a question that should have been in the FAQ, there are 730 hours in a month. So you can run one app 24/7 under the new scheme, plus have some left over for experimentation.

</comment><comment><USER19> (emphasis mine)

> We also help you keep an eye on your consumption by sending an email > notification if you consume more than 80% of the free hours in a month. > Should you reach 100%, we will notify again and all free dynos will stop > running until the end of the month. _At the beginning of the new month, your > free dyno hours are replenished and we spin the dynos back up._ You can > avoid running out of free dyno hours by upgrading your most successful apps > to Hobby dynos.

I wonder what the thundering herd[1] effect of this on AWS would be at month start.

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thundering_herd_problem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thundering_herd_problem)

<comment><USER20> My guess is that if this mattered the spot instances would be cheaper at the end of the month compared to the start. Not just from Heroku, but every business that has some monthly processing that needs to be renewed at the start of the month.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Already full for me: "Heroku SSL Beta is full, please try again later."

</comment><comment><USER22> The jump/effort/cost to just use AWS is lowered with every Heroku press release.

</comment><comment><USER23> SSL change is nice, but the rest is just another step in driving away hobby users. Why not just get rid of the free tier all together if it's just going to continuously be handicapped.

I'd rather see the free tier be done away with and have the numerous AWS price decreases passed on to the actual paying customers.

</comment><comment><USER23> How does this affect legacy dynos?

</comment><comment><USER24> 550 hours a month for ALL dynos is _too limiting_. Oh, and Firebase just got updated today. Guess what, I'm about to switch to Firebase.

</comment><comment><USER25> We are actually in alpha with an SSL add-on for Heroku, so I'm thrilled for SNI to be an option. I just hope it's supported by the API soon so we can integrate it.

We are looking for alpha users if anyone is interested. [http://www.sslfasttrack.com](http://www.sslfasttrack.com)

<comment><USER26> Interesting, do you have the pricing set so we know what it will be after the alpha is over?

<comment><USER25> We are still working on finalizing pricing. But we won't push any test users to a paid plan automatically. You will get your first year for free and then have the option to migrate or go a different direction.</comment></comment></comment>


Where Americans and Nutritionists Disagree - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/07/05/upshot/is-sushi-healthy-what-about-granola-where-americans-and-nutritionists-disagree.html?mabReward=A7&moduleDetail=recommendations-2&action=click&contentCollection=U.S.&region=Footer&module=WhatsNext&version=WhatsNext&contentID=WhatsNext&src=recg&pgtype=article <comment><USER2> I need to find these 1 in 10 nutritionists that say ice cream, bacon, french fries and cookies are healthy.

<comment><USER3> I can imagine explanations. Like maybe they think how much matters a great deal more than what.</comment></comment>


Verizon exposes estimated 6 mil records of customers. S3 bucket misconfig again - <AUTHOR> Looks like a third-party firm, NICE Systems, left an S3 bucket externally accessible. The data included PIN codes and phone numbers, which are used to verify customers. This info could be used to impersonate a customer and get a new SIM card. With the SIM card, the impostor could hijack the customer's phone and hack into personal and corporate accounts that use 2FA. Here's the full article: https://www.upguard.com/breaches/verizon-cloud-leak <comment><USER2> Currently doing something similar - I'm scanning over 1 million buckets looking for vulnerabilities and misconfigurations. I've already found and responsibly disclosed a number of public buckets containing user data or information that simply shouldn't be public.

I shall put a blog post together once the scan is complete, and post it here for reference.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Clickable: [https://www.upguard.com/breaches/verizon-cloud- leak](https://www.upguard.com/breaches/verizon-cloud-leak)</comment>


Throwhammer: Rowhammer Attacks Over the Network and Defenses [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.cs.vu.nl/~herbertb/download/papers/throwhammer_atc18.pdf <comment><USER2> "It is unclear whether existing hardware mitigations can protect against these dangerous network attacks. For instance, while clouds and data centers may (and sometimes do) use ECC memory to guard against bit flips, researchers have, from the first paper on Rowhammer [33], warned that _ECC may not be sufficient_ to protect against such attacks."

First, I'd be interested to see stats on data centers and public clouds _not_ running machines with ECC memory. I'd estimate that ECC prevalence in servers in data centers is closer to "ubiquitously" than "sometimes."

I see this sort of ambiguous language about ECC and rowhammer frequently when discussion of rowhammer comes up. Has there been any proof-of-concept demonstration that rowhammer privilege escalation works on a system with ECC memory? If there has been, that's interesting and worrisome. If there hasn't been, that's not very interesting or worrisome; it's the equivalent of writing "hardware may not protect against yet-to-be-demonstrated attacks" (which is trivially and always true.)

</comment><comment><USER3> Aside from how cool the implementation is, this is a fantastic name.

</comment><comment><USER4> Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together... mass hysteria!</comment>


With His Job Gone, an Autoworker Wonders, 'What Am I as a Man?' - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/27/us/auto-worker-jobs-lost.html <comment><USER2> I think the most important thing here is the difference in outlook. The people in this story lived their lives with the assumption that they will live the same lives as their parents. This hasn't been true since the industrial revolution (>80% of people working in agriculture shrunk to ~2%). This reminds me of British coal-workers striking over layoffs, even though they would receive the same paycheck for life if they were laid off. Their rationale is that they were striking for their _children 's_ future jobs in the coal mine. That just struck me as depressing, that parents just assumed that their kids' lot in lives would be a coal miner just like them. Maybe this is the immigrant mentality that people talk about, but

> Cheering the deal might check a political box for the president, but getting > hired by the buyer would probably mean making $11 an hour, he said, a wage > he last made in his early 20s. "It would be back to square one after 25 > years in the plant," he said.

Rick seems to be following the same line of thinking. The notion of working in a different industry just doesn't seem to be considered.

This is probably one of the best times in recent history to start looking for a job. Unemployment is at record lows, and growth is fairly strong. I think the biggest issue here isn't layoffs, it's people putting their sense of identity into their job instead of viewing it as a transaction. 80% of employees at the beginning of the 20th century worked in industries that are either non-existent or drastically smaller by the end of the 20th century. I see no reason why we should expect the 21st century to be any different. Rick's assumption that he would work in the same industry as his father for the entirety of his life seems to be the biggest culprit here, not NAFTA.

<comment><USER3> Part of it is an identity thing, part of it is an age thing, but part of it too is a location thing. When plants like this out in the literal middle-of- nowhere close, entire towns die. You might suggest that people just move, but what if they have a mortgage on a house that's suddenly worthless? And that's not even factoring in the "soft" costs of losing your community and possibly moving away from family. Given the U.S.'s aversion to social welfare, people end up stuck without any options.

<comment><USER2> Entire towns disappearing is a normal state of affairs.

> Hundreds of workers have already transferred. His nephew packed up his > family and moved to Flint. The alternative, working on natural gas wells in > Pennsylvania, paid him $13 an hour, about half what he was making at G.M.

> You might suggest that people just move, but what if they have a mortgage on > a house that's suddenly worthless?

Then he should blame his situation on his own gamble on real-estate speculation, and not NAFTA.

> And that's not even factoring in the "soft" costs of losing your community > and possibly moving away from family.

My whole point is, the emphasis on these "soft" factors are what's holding him back. When you move, you don't "lose" community, you swap them out for a different one. Moving away from family may be challenging, but it's probably worse to not have a job.

> Given the U.S.'s aversion to social welfare, people end up stuck without any > options.

I don't think lack of welfare is an issue here:

> G.M. is a lifeline for Mr. Marsh, too. It will pay him a pension, a rare > thing in today's economy. He may have given up raises, but he gets a share > of the company's profits — last year, about $10,000. Under the union > contract, he gets payments to supplement his unemployment check, and his > family still has health insurance

Ohio unemployment benefits pay half of weekly wages up to $424. Rick would be receiving $424 if $26 per hour was his wages while he was employed. So he's getting $22,000 per year in unemployment plus $10,000 from his GM pension on top of that. Is getting $32,000 per year in pension and unemployment benefits considered bad welfare? He's getting about 2/3 of his income while he was employed in unemployment benefits. Probably more if you take taxes into account. And health insurance. And the "payments to supplement his unemployment check" that the article doesn't explain in detail.

There's a good chance that abundant welfare _is_ why he isn't looking for work. If he took the $13 and hour job in Pennsylvania he may lose more in benefits than he'd be gaining in wages. I wouldn't blame him if this were the case, but the fact that our welfare system is actively discouraging people from seeking employment is the messed up part of this situation. Not the fact that manufacturing jobs are moving because of globalization.

<comment><USER4> >Then he should blame his situation on his own gamble on real-estate speculation, and not NAFTA.

Not everything is SV property greed. What if this person bought the home so he could just have a place to live? Not everybody buys a home with the intention of making money. Some just want a stable home for their kids.

> My whole point is, the emphasis on these "soft" factors are what's holding > him back. When you move, you don't "lose" community, you swap them out for a > different one. Moving away from family may be challenging, but it's probably > worse to not have a job.

In general your family is always better than a job. When you are on your death bed I can guarantee you that your boss won't be there holding your hand.

> I wouldn't blame him if this were the case, but the fact that our welfare > system is actively discouraging people from seeking employment is the messed > up part of this situation.

Then how do you explain our current low unemployment numbers? If anything it appears working is preferred over our welfare system. Many people want purpose and want to work.

<comment><USER2> > Not everything is SV property greed. What if this person bought the home so > he could just have a place to live? Not everybody buys a home with the > intention of making money. Some just want a stable home for their kids.

If you're buying a home on credit, then you're speculating on real estate. Whether or not your intent is to turn a profit is besides the point. If someone wants a home, then can rent or buy a home that they can afford with cash. You don't need to buy a house on credit to find a home.

> In general your family is always better than a job. When you are on your > death bed I can guarantee you that your boss won't be there holding your > hand.

If you don't have a job then it's hard to provide a good life for your family. You won't have anyone holding your hand on your deathbed if you can't provide for you family and your wife and kids have to leave you to find a man that can. The strain of having to move away from cousins, aunts, etc. is drastically less than not having a job - at least in my view of things. The example in the article isn't even moving very far - literally the neighboring state. Rick and his family could easily see their extended family on the holidays if they wanted to.

> Then how do you explain our current low unemployment numbers? If anything it > appears working is preferred over our welfare system. Many people want > purpose and want to work.

Unemployment tracks people who are looking for work but cannot find a job. If people stop looking for work, then they are no longer counted as unemployed. This is consistent with the fact that we're seeing low unemployment but also lower labor participation rates. Granted, lower labor participation is at least in part due to other factors like an ageing population.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Stories like this demonstrate that our idea of the "middle class" is a postwar anomaly. People ask why the middle class is shrinking, but really we should be asking why such a large middle class ever existed. It was never normal until after WWII.

In the postwar period, American manufacturing had far less competition than it does now. Most other industrialized countries were recovering from the war, foreign cars did not fit American consumer preferences, and China was locked into a decades-long cycle of self-destruction. Automation technology wasn't very good, so there were tons of factory jobs. All of that has now changed.

This man's job, and the other jobs like it, only existed because of historical circumstances that cannot be replicated. Politicians might be able to save some manufacturing jobs, but we will never have nearly as many as we did before.

I feel sorry for this man, because jobs like his aren't coming back, and because he is being lied to by politicians who say those jobs can be saved.

It's possible that what we are now seeing is the end of a historical and economic anomaly: a mass middle class. Our politics is not handling it well.

<comment><USER3> Much of Europe still has a strong middle-class. People there can work service jobs and live comfortably. The specific industries that created factory jobs may be in inevitable decline, but the middle-class itself is not. That problem is a political one.

History has shown time and again that capitalism left to its own devices does not create a middle-class. As long as Americans keep waiting for it to do so, the middle-class will keep shrinking. Until we get a new New Deal, this trend will not change.

Ironically, many of the people voting for deregulation and small-government are the ones being hurt the most by those things.

<comment><USER5> The rise of populism across Europe, including Brexit, has the same root cause as the rise of populism in America: people believing they have been left behind by the global economy and abandoned by mainstream politicians.

<comment><USER6> Abandoned by mainstream politicians yes, that's the definition of populism (politicians who position themselves against a general 'elite').

Left behind by the global economy, no, there's no evidence of that. It's a New York Times trope designed to make liberal readers feel superior. Polls showed quite clearly that Brexit was motivated by (a) immigration levels and (b) sovereignty, but these are hard to separate because if the UK was self-ruling and the political elite were more in touch with the population, immigration levels would have been kept lower a long time ago and the issue would never have become as neuralgic. People who are angry over ultra-high immigration levels are both annoyed at the quantity but also annoyed at being ignored and told to shut up about it by out of touch politicians.

In particular, there isn't much discussion of trade war in the UK, nor the rest of Europe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Disclaimer up front: I work for GM, and previously worked in a plant. Any opinions are my own.

Besides all the larger questions of politics and automation, it really awesome to be part of a team that builds 1000 vehicles a day. Seeing them roll off the end of the line never stops being cool. In IT, your project may last for months and you only see small changes happen slowly over time. In the plant you see parts come together into a complete vehicle over the course of a day.

In IT, if a site or service is down, you know it's a problem, but in manufacturing if the line stops you can see hundreds of people just sitting there.

\---

People talk about automation like it's new. Automakers have been automating from the very beginning. Designing and building cars is a big job. Designing and building the machine that builds the cars is also a big job. The machine that builds the cars is made of suppliers, trucks, railroads, robots, conveyors, information systems, and yes, people.

Line workers look like people to you and me, and they certainly are people; but to the machine that builds cars they look like extremely capable but slightly inconsistent robots.

<comment><USER8> You simply shouldn't believe the talk about automation. Most people don't even know what they are talking about. What do people think Chinese workers do? Mr. Marsh is right, it is about trade. If you can make something where workers are paid peanuts and have little, throughout the entire supply chain, without any penalties why wouldn't you? (except the obvious moral implications and long term effects).

What people really don't get is that hyper-automation, when you barely need workers at all, isn't going to come from the West. As we soon don't have anything to automate anymore. Most people here, including most engineers, are in the service sector.

<comment><USER7> Automation isn't all or nothing. It's a progression. That's what I was trying to say. Automation began with the assembly line, interchangeable (uniform) parts, and specifications.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The comments section on this article makes me sad to be a part of the HN community.

Show some empathy for a man who lost the best thing he ever had. He isn't asking for the world, actually in the article he didn't ask for anything. He was content to make $25 an hour forever and spend it on his family's health and happiness. That's a reasonable thing to want from life in America. Nit picking the particulars of his case isn't useful.

If you say "just move" or "get a new job" or "shoulda seen it coming" consider what you'd feel like if you lost your job of 2+ decades and that job had not helped you develop other marketable skills.

Not every person can have a high-skilled and transferable job like a software engineer.

<comment><USER10> I think the part that makes it hard to emphasize with this case rather than others (someone who became disabled and is unable to work and can't get social services, their work has been not fruitful enough for economic migration, or any of the other regular cases that pop up on HN that do draw out empathy). At what point do you understand the job is no longer secure? I feel like GM particularly has been such a popular dead horse to beat this article seems weird. 2008 financial crisis with the bailouts? The thousands of newspaper articles? When the majority of parts are made by secondary parties instead of GM? The constant layoffs and other plant closures?

I feel there is at least a minimum of 15 years of warning signs that the average person on the assembly line is going to get cut eventually and at least 8-9 announced layoffs that did just that. In that article he explicit references watching other plants suffer the same fate he later did. I have no idea how someone in his position would feel their job is secure other than blind faith, especially because the white collar jobs have been cut just as much as the blue collar ones at the auto manufacturers. He also seems to have actual skills (article references working in the paint shop) compared to others that he might not be quantifying accurately and I hope that he's able to figure that out after looking back on his tenure.

The only thing I feel is something I can emphasize with in this article is the part about feeling trapped in the local health care network that makes it not as feasible to do any sort of economic migration at the risk of not being able to recover the critical health services that they would have lost. If this was the primary point of the article I feel it would resonate better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Very interesting article. I see someone who won the lottery. They have built a huge house and family, based on the single skill of showing up for work, and having the right father. While this happens, this person thinks it is thier right, and they will fight politically with every ounce, wrecking whatever institutions and future health of the political system, to keep the privleges they inherited. No sense of altruism or giving back, just keeping what is theirs, justified as there is a child invoked.

The profile is very insightful, but depressing, as how can we have anything but a selfish fight of selfish people, is that what democracy devolves to?

<comment><USER12> What lotteries might you have won?

<comment> crooked-v I feel like you're trying to reach for some sort of 'gotcha' here, but there isn't one. The parent comment's point is that people should be aware of when they've gotten lucky and be able to engage with the world when that luck finally runs out (or, at least, engage with politics that can realistically preserve some of that luck).

<comment><USER12> We've all won considerable lotteries just in being alive. One out of 100 million sperm, avoiding perinatal death, a nurturing family, household, community, country, "choosing the right parents", a locally advantageous ethnic or tribal status, well-functioning social institutions (especially healthcare, education, general safety, law and justice, sanitation and infrastructure, environmental protections, clean water, safe food0, an encouraging relative, neighbour, teacher, mentor, or boss (vs. the opposite), a healthy or growing economy, personal talent, temperament, or skill, happening to get interested in a hot topic or subject, access to labour markets, access to entrepreneurial markets, suportive labour, professional, or entrepreneurial institutions, a social safety net, physical appearance, mental health.

These and many other factors have a high element of luck. Absence of any one can prove a tremendous (though not _necessarily_ unsurmountable) handicap.

But, and this is key: dashed expectations, _even where born of a lottery_ , can become huge personal _and societal_ problems. The stages and processes of grief: denial, bargaining, anger, depression, acceptence, are born from a dramatic shear in expectations.[1] (Differences across social groups, as in racism, are a related phenomenon, though different in that it is distenctions among- rather than within-groups but over time, that are involved.) Writ large over society such disapointments can be exceedingly potent forces, particularly politically.

Discover your own lottery card(s) overpromised and underdelivered, you'll likely feel similarly.

The exectations set up through cultural mythos can prove to have a tremendous downside debt of ther own; "rugged individualsm", "self-sufficiency", "meritocracy", "American dream", "technological progress", "free markets", "manifest destiny", "self-made (wo)man", etc. All of these have fascinating, if not widely known, ideological foundations. And historical literature on each often shown sharp, if buried, contemporary criticism.

________________________________

Notes:

1\. Kübler-Ross's initial research is notable. The precipitating event wasn't loss of a loved one, but notification of the _subject 's_ own imminent mortality. A dramatic shift in worldview.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Just wondering, how common is it to define yourself as your job? My job is as boring and globally pointless as making cars. I'm not going to be so presumptuous as to claim to have an answer to such a philosophical question of what it means to be a man, but I do know "having the same job in perpetuity" would be relatively low on the list.

I might even think the reliance on politicians, or belief in their obvious lies about such situations as decidedly _childish_.

<comment><USER14> Increasingly very common? Without religion and people going unmarried/without kids, your career has become the thing that you pay more attention to.

I don't agree with it at all, mostly because too often a job looks like a toxic relationship more than anything else, meaning you as an employee are expected to be fully emotionally invested in your work, while at the same time your company can fire you in the blink of an eye and not think twice about it.

<comment><USER15> I don't identify with my job, but absolutely with my profession. I'm a developer. Given the extreme level of specialization one needs to reach any heights in a profession, you kind of need to commit and go.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It is depressing to hear from people in the comments that they think a viable solution is to just abandon entire regions of the country. Yes, let's just pack everyone into NY, SF, LA, and Chicago.

</comment><comment><USER17> Automation, offshoring, and foreign competition have been happening for several decades. GM used to produce half the cars in the US. It's 2019, not 1989!

[https://knoema.com/infographics/floslle/top-vehicle- manufact...](https://knoema.com/infographics/floslle/top-vehicle- manufacturers-in-the-us-market-1961-2016)

<comment><USER18> Not to mention that they got beat into the dirt on price _and_ quality.

If you want to be respected (as a "man" or whatever), you've got to earn it, and sometimes your ability to do so is a team effort.

The flip side of this story is the intense grind and self-sacrifice in places like Nagoya, Japan, where auto workers have something to be proud of, but are always aware of how tenuous their future is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> One of the things that makes a (hu)man is the ability to learn. So what a "man" is after losing one job or career is a person who can learn something new and do something else. That doesn't solve short-medium term financial challenges, but I find it hard to accept that one's life is over if their primary job ends.

</comment><comment><USER20> We need a jobs retraining program that people like him can avail of. And companies who move jobs overseas must be made to pay for retraining these folks for other jobs. They shouldn't be allowed to just pull up stakes and move out without some repercussions.

<comment><USER21> If only these retraining programs ever showed much success. Finding real livelihoods for people who's industries have disappeared is a stubborn intractable problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> > Rick Marsh worked in the car plant in Lordstown his entire life. Now that > job is gone. What does that mean for his politics?

That's one heck of a bait-and-switch. The concept of "whence is my inherent worth or intrinsic value" is way more interesting than "how does automation affect my politics."

<comment><USER23> In my mind the two are closely related. There is a political school of thought that people's value is to each other, and that people's needs can be fulfilled by commerce. Automation frustrates this concept by removing our needs to rely on human labour.

<comment><USER22> If people's needs can be fulfilled by commerce then the poor are doomed and always have been. But people who have voluntarily chosen poverty such as Francis of Assisi and Ignatius of Loyola have shown that that's simply not true, and that commerce, while a necessary part of life, is not the fulfillment of our needs, nor are politics.

<comment><USER24> Did Ignatius of Loyola have two kids and a wife to feed?

<comment><USER22> I get what you're saying. I also have a wife and 6 kids to feed, and it's not easy to be low income. But I've never found my involvement or awareness of politics to in any way help me with that goal, however I have found studying and applying philosophical principles to my life to improve our quality of life significantly, despite being near the poverty line (honestly not sure which side of it we're on).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I've lived in 3 different states and 4 different places for work, in 5 different industries in the last 15 years, while having 4, now 5 kids. It's not something everyone can do, but it's not impossible. I have no idea why anyone would care so much to stay in a specific place and work in a specific industry.

Obviously, if you have sick family or other challenges I get it. I'm assuming able bodied and normal ties to places and things.

<comment><USER26> >I have no idea why anyone would care so much to stay in a specific place and work in a specific industry.

You're the unusual case here: the vast majority of folks in the US end up living within a stone's throw of wherever they were born. And you'd be crazy to deny that there are many legitimate reasons to do so: Deep local social networks and family ties? Long-term investments in housing or other local property? Rearing children in a stable environment? Niche subject-matter experience and expertise in a trade that isn't necessarily as portable as digital skills are? Belonging to a particular local subculture that doesn't necessarily exist elsewhere?</comment></comment>


Simulacra and Simulation - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulacra_and_Simulation <comment><USER2> At the time I read this I mostly understood his themes through the lens of mass production and product/lifestyle marketing, to some degree an extension of Veblen's _Theory of the Leisure Class_ and conspicuous consumption as class identity.

Lately I have begun thinking about this book again particularly in the context of Covid and the 2020 U.S. election, where the pandemic has made apparent the inability of our institutions to serve their functions (e.g. for the CDC to prepare and stockpile supplies in the event of a rare mass pandemic) or for either party to offer any authenticity behind their expressed purposes ("draining the swamp" by intensifying the culture of corruption in D.C. or helping Main Street through massive Wall Street bailouts). These institutions and parties are essentially emulating the familiar principles of the past while operating by the power structures that have captured them. We seem to take it for granted.

<comment><USER3> Baudrillard's point was beyond this - that Capitalist media technologies create a hyperreal blanket over everything such that these institutions are fully consumed by movement within its symbolic exchange that they lose what we would commonly think of as their "use value."

<comment><USER4> Is it not possible to express these ideas in ordinary language?

For instance, is anything lost by instead saying:

Capitalist media companies powered by modern technology are incentivized by profit motive to distort their portrayal of reality.

Specifically, their portrayals will paint a picture of reality more enticing than the real thing; this is self-evident since their revenue is tied directly to 'enticement'.

Once this fictional portrayal has been established and enough people believe in it, later fictional events of the fictional world may become as significant as actual events.

So, institutions affected by capitalist media portrayal will adjust their valuation of potential actions to take this into account. As a result, their behavior will deviate from its traditional role in the context of our real society when it can benefit more by playing a role in the fictional media- created portrayal of the world.

\</comment></comment></comment><comment>-

Of course the original version is shorter and sounds cooler, but it's also far more vague and will only be comprehensible to a much smaller subset of the audience here.

What bothers me especially is the original expression's framing in terms of an alternate reality. What does that add? It can't just be fiction but has to be 'hyperreal'? I get it, it's a particular type of fiction so it's more specific than that. The intention is probably like the sense in which a cartoon avatar of a woman with exaggerated curves might be called 'hyperreal'.

And I realize I'm revealing my own philosophical commitments here by suggesting there is a single shared reality to begin with, and I realize the author does not share this stance—but I mean... this is not a community of philosophers: why _implicitly_ adopt a stance which won't be shared 99% of readers as the base framing if there is any legitimate interesting in communication here? I could understand if it were actually necessary to communicate the core idea, but it does not appear to be so.

<comment><USER5> This was a breath of fresh air. Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The channel "Cuck Philosophy" on YT has a great explanation of both The Matrix and American Psycho using Baudrillard's theories found in "Simulacra and Simulation".

The Matrix: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bf9J35yzM3E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bf9J35yzM3E) American Psycho: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJfurfb5_kw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJfurfb5_kw)

<comment><USER7> Rumor is that the Directors of Martix were so influenced by this book that every Cast member was supposed to read it.

<comment><USER8> If I'm not mistaken, the hollowed out book in which Neo keeps his illegal floppy disk is _Simulacra and Simulation_.

<comment><USER9> It is, however, they were Mini Disc not floppies.

I really wished for some years Mini Disc took off, I loved it as a format; compact, rewritable, protected, storage capacity of a CD.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This concept was introduced to me and explained in simple terms by a car review out of all things:

[https://youtu.be/PA23qLvl79k](https://youtu.be/PA23qLvl79k)

There's more where this came from because the duo behind this channel are both English majors.

<comment><USER11> Hahaha! When you said "car review" I was like "what car is a simulacra... FJ cruiser?". Called it! It's like a confused Japanese clone of something that never existed and no one wanted. Like a horrible mashup of TLC + Jeep + Hummer + Subaru

<comment><USER10> Truly it's the movie subtitles translated via Google Translate of cars.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I notice two things about this:

1\. The language contains so many obscure words that the intent is unclear. I personally think that if you cannot convey your ideas in simple language you have failed at communication. That goes for philosophers, mathematicians and engineers (of which I am one).

2\. There seems to be an unstated assumption the reality we construct, examples including culture and society, are somehow less meaningful or less real than... the real world. But he does not clearly define what this "real world" is. And he's using the term "real" in odd enough ways, that I'm not sure what was meant. Perhaps the exploration of this assumption is what the book is driving at. I would find that a fascinating discussing, if it wasn't couched in such mystical sounding language.

Disclaimer: I have not read the book, only the article.

<comment><USER13> >I personally think that if you cannot convey your ideas in simple language you have failed at communication

Not everything can be explained using simple language. Try explaining monads in simple language, or ontology.

This video explains some of Baudrillard's concepts in a pretty clear way: [https://youtu.be/9zEtalr5pEA](https://youtu.be/9zEtalr5pEA)

>Perhaps the exploration of this assumption is what the book is driving at. I would find that a fascinating discussing

Alas it is not

<comment><USER14> A bit longer but here's another video that covers some of Baudrillard's concepts, in more of a lecture form but much easier to digest than Baudrillard's writing: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2U9WMftV40c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2U9WMftV40c)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's a great book, although some of it is very much of its time in terms of political references.

The basic idea is very simple - our society is being organized economically, politically and socially according to models, and the effects of those models are being measured by those implementing them through polling and other indirect methods.

This means that what we experience in everyday life is structured according to models that have drifted away from whatever they were meant to model originally over time. And that these groundless illusions are where what looks like politics is taking place.

There's more but that's the gist of it.

<comment><USER16> I think you miss the scale of the topic. He's not just talking about politics, but our entire culture.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> An instance of the main concepts presented by Baudrillard: The incessant coverage of the Gulf War by cable news. One could watch 24/7 coverage of fighter jets dodging anti-air and imperial palaces exploding. The key point is that the immersion was total. From the comfort of your couch, how could you claim that this is not essentially war? And yet its absolutism misses the mark completely, obfuscating the true reality that is more horrible and generally incomprehensible.

<comment><USER18> I wonder when people will be allowed to draw the same parallels with Coronavirus.

<comment><USER3> Is it not already happening with our "Reopening the Economy" triumphalism after demonstrating ourselves to be a failed state by most measures? Healthcare workers dying for lack of basic equipment, in the richest country in the world, while our leaders project supreme control of the situation across the airwaves.

The Pandemic Never Happened.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> There are two opposite mindsets you can take to a book like this.

One is to approach it like the book owed you something concrete. Like a calculus 101 textbook or worse yet, "Javascript the good parts". But if you approach anything sufficiently interesting (take a more advanced math book -- the "Baby Rudin" analysis textbook) like this you're going to be frustrated.

This is also the mindset of people who look at drip or color field paintings and think (or worse, say out loud!) that their toddler niece could have done this! Without even trying to see the painting.

There's also the narcissistic variation of this: the book apparently says some things that don't agree with your fundamental engineering-ly view of reality therefore _what a charlatan_. Imagine being a serious Christian who is this intolerant of eg. Buddhist literature.

The alternate mindset is that of an open mind willing to engage with the open- ended. It's very well possible that your pragmatic engineer worldviews are naïve to countless aspects you're even unable to think about right now. This doesn't mean you have to trade away your identity as a whatever you think you are to engage with different ideas.

</comment><comment><USER20> Another podcast about this subject. He points that social networks can be described as a simulations. Two persons can be physically at the same place looking to their phones into totally different realities. [https://philosophizethis.org/simulacra-and- simulation/](https://philosophizethis.org/simulacra-and-simulation/)

<comment><USER21> Which is why "fake news" or conspiracies are a big thing now. People are already detached from reality, where facts don't matter, everything is narrative.

<comment><USER22> I think that crying "fake news" and theorizing about conspiracies are a desperate attempt to call out and see past the simulacra. An example of simulacra would be Keeping up With the Kardashians - a representation of someone else's life that is not their actual life (there is no possible way that it could be their actual life, even if it was a 24 hour livestream, simply because of the fact that it is being delivered through a screen), same thing with social media. A conspiracy theory about the show could be "this is only being shown to me to make me want to buy makeup". The conspiracy theory is just an attempt to discover some aspect - however small - of the simulation that is based in reality, rather than just buying into the simulation at face value. Of course, conspiracy theories are usually spread through the same medium (a screen) so they are just as simulated as the other simulated content.

I don't think we should be discouraging people from trying to unveil the simulacra regardless. Imagine a world where everyone believed every piece of news as absolutely true. We'd still have a geocentric model of our solar system. As long as I can hear vocal disagreement about what is true, I can sleep at night knowing that some progress is being made.

<comment><USER21> Yeah, but the solution is to be skeptical, not get lost in your own conspiracy theories. If you're not skeptical you get manipulated any direction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Similar and older conceptual framework:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_(illusion)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_\(illusion\))

with links to many other similar and older concepts of the same...

edit: now playing Imagination - Just an Illusion (1982) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnfHdZrmMAw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnfHdZrmMAw) (4min4sec)

<comment><USER24> > In Vedas, Puranas and Tamil classics

> The term māyā occurs 70 times in Rigveda and around 27 times in the > Atharvaveda; and in all these places Yaska, Sayana, Dayananda Saraswati > agree the term means Prajñā, jnana-vishesha (specific knowledge). The term > Asuri-Maya in the Yajurveda at one place was translated by Uvvat as the > "knowledge of the vital air". With regard to the usage of the word Maya in > the Rigveda, Radhakrishnan opines it was only used to signify might and > power. Maya as the cause of illusion or as the sense of Avidya (lack of > knowledge) has never been used in the Vedas. According to Monier Williams, > Maya meant wisdom and extraordinary power in an earlier language, but later > the word came to mean illusion and magic.

So, depending, "Maya" can mean "illusion" or "mirage", but the original meaning might be closer to Prajñā, which means "non-discriminating knowledge" or "intuitive apprehension". According to Chan and most Zen lines, those "states" of consciousness are obtained by practicing non-clinging discrimination in a given moment. Maybe one way of thinking about this is not adding to the observation of something that has been discriminated already.

Chan texts mention holding vexation and the polar observations of the vexation (good vs. evil or light vs. darkness as examples) without "adding" to the metaphor. The "adding" is the part that can be considered important (to not do). Consider the highly polarized topics that result from unfettered discourse on the Internet: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc)

"Sitting with the rock is wet" without wondering how much longer it is going to rain.

Or, observing an imagined (in mind) scenario without "adding to it" in the moment that it is being perceived.

<comment><USER23> [https://dict.leo.org/german-english/Klar](https://dict.leo.org/german- english/Klar)

<comment><USER24> Yes, and maybe [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia)

<comment><USER23> _That_ is not clear to me, since i can't imagine that :)

edit: by that i mean having that "neuroarchitecture" which just percieves, but can't imagine anything(visually). Reminds me of the relatively recent (6 months to a year ago?) discussions about not having an internal voice while thinking, which was obviously new to a large set of people, while my whole state of mind revolves around thinking without vocalizing. Alas, i digress...

<comment><USER24> Hardly a digression when discussing the path to cessation of suffering.

Liberation of vibration (sound) must occur before liberation of form (images). Nobel effort spans lifetimes.

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

<comment><USER23> I think i wrongly described what i meant with _while my whole state of mind revolves around thinking without vocalizing._ and you thereby understood it as i'd try to achieve that. That isn't the case. I simply don't have it! While i have that whole "Palace of the Mind/Method of Loci" thing, that's not the whole thing either. I'd say it is on a lower level, and even below that is the language, and whenever i need to write or speak, there happens to be some sort of hyperdimensonal self-solving Tetris in fast-forward mode which gives me the words in the languages i happen to know in an instant, readily formed to write or speak. But without an inner voice speaking them first. I can't do it any different. That would be exhausting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> ^is the book turned into a book safe in The Matrix. Early in the movie, Neo pulls a mini-disk out of it to sell to his Mescaline-referencing friends, one of whom has the white rabbit tattoo.

<comment><USER26> I'm not an expert on this sort of thing, but it's funny how in the film The Matrix is kind of like Plato's cave rather than Baudrillard's idea. The Matrix "not real" and can be overcome by the protagonists, but I feel like Baudrillard would suggest that the protagonists wouldn't be able to tell what was and what wasn't.

<comment><USER27> Baudrillard himself was even more dismissive. He argued that 'the matrix' was the kind of film that the matrix would make, and that the film deeply misunderstood his ideas by drawing such a sharp distinction between the real and the representation.

<comment><USER28> This was solved in the sequels. The _real world_ in the first movie turns out to be just another layer of the matrix. You can try to peel back these layers but you can never know when you've reached the centre of the onion. Thus the real and the representation have been blurred together completely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I thought the book "Philosophy and Simulation" by Manuel de Landa did a really great job of tying together some threads around simulation and it's connection to reality. I haven't read Simulacra but it seems like Baudrillard has gone too far in the direction that French philosophy loves to go by claiming we have cannot have any connection "the real". While an amusing idea it just doesn't match up to our lived experience.

<comment><USER30> Have you ever shot a firearm? Have you ever played a video game where you shot a firearm? Given some assumptions of your demographic, based on your being here, this example should illustrate the issue Baudrillard foresaw in comprehending 'the real' in modernity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> A truly terrible book through and through. The best chapter is his review of JG Ballards "Crash".

Jean Baudrillard is the worst kind of intellectual charlatan and I am surprised to see folks around here who don't see that.

Actually Baudrillard, the gulf war DID happen. The phenomenon that he identifies in books like this (Tv news tries to show you an illusion instead of the truth) don't need post-modernist mystical explanations.

<comment><USER30> Who decides whether the gulf war happened?

<comment><USER32> International coverage, soldiers in the war, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Not an easy book to read, but very interesting ideas. I've put it down twice after trying to get through it, but do plan on eventually finishing it.

There is a Philosophize This! episode which is quite a good introduction to Baudrillard's ideas: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCgoKIT0Ufc&t=109s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCgoKIT0Ufc&t=109s)

</comment><comment><USER34> A useful overview of the subject which amde much more sense to me: [https://www.greaterwrong.com/posts/fEX7G2N7CtmZQ3eB5/simulac...](https://www.greaterwrong.com/posts/fEX7G2N7CtmZQ3eB5/simulacra- and-subjectivity)

</comment><comment><USER35> The article has a much clearer explanation of the ideas than the book itself. It was too hard to finish reading. What stood out even more than the ideas, were the method of thinking and the writing style. Diving into the original text even for several pages gives a different perspective.

</comment><comment><USER36> Another book I heard about from the Matrix behind the scenes was Out of Control by Kevin Kelly. It was pretty interesting to read especially in the context of machine learning now days. Its hard to believe that it was written in 1994. I was only in high school at the time but I could hardly put it down. I still would like to find more books that interested me that much. The reference to bees on the cover is that a simple bee has little intelligence but the a hive mind has much more.

I read Simulacra and Simulation after hearing about it related to the Matrix. It was a bit hard to follow and I lost interest.

<comment><USER37> Out of Control was the right book in the right place at the right time. Time has moved on, and the book is kind of stuck there, which in a way is a good thing in that it allows us to go back and see all the 'possibility' of the future in the book from where we have ended up.

How much control did/do we have anyway, and how much did we have back then?

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Actually Pewdiepie made a video about this book and its relation to Matrix, [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBwJF75wZnw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBwJF75wZnw)

</comment><comment><USER39> I attempted to read this book some years ago, the writing is very nearly incomprehensible.

</comment><comment><USER40> It's fun to see that most of the people here know only about the book because it appears in the Matrix (myself included).

Whenever I read philosophers like Baudrillard or that share similar ideas, I can't help it but to see their thesis for very complex, very elaborate and very ornate systems of epicycles around the concept of value.

A lot of them don't even acknowledge the assumption that there's intrinsic value, and just run with it, with expected results. From Marxism multipliers of labor to simulacra, to me it just sounds like constructions to avoid the idea of value being an emergent property.

</comment><comment><USER41> No one linked yet? [https://coronavirusstatistics.org](https://coronavirusstatistics.org)

</comment><comment><USER42> It's not mentioned expressly in the article (there's just a link to the movie), but the book is briefly to be seen in _The Matrix_. Neo uses it to stash cash and warez.

I remember reading about this, and being just astonished how many significant details the Wachovskis hid in those movies, even if they were only visible for a second or two.

<comment><USER43> I really enjoy all Matrix movies. I recently rewatched them and in parallel read and watched all the essays by v/bloggers I could find. Here's a few take- aways:

1) According to mainstream (I disagree), the sequels dropped the ball. It's somewhat popular to make fun of the Matrix movies that are not the first.

2) There's a lot of symbolism in the movies, and it's not less important than the superficial layer. You could say it makes up a second-layer in the movies, and if you don't get it you're missing part of the content.

3) The first movie referenced Baudrillard a lot, but it didn't (fully) follow Baudrillard's philosophy, as Baudrillard himself has said. To be more specific (but simplistic), Baudrillard's work that was referenced represented a supplantation of Plato's allegory of the cave, but The Matrix in many ways is an illustration of Plato's allegory, reaching Plato's conclusions, not Baudrillard's. Baudrillard was approached to work on the sequels, but rejected it.

4) The badly-received Matrix sequels examined non-western philosophies (which are hardly familiar to mainstream audiences). The well-received first The Matrix movie examined the ever-so-familiar Plato's allegory and Christian themes. The sequels broached a lot of new ground and required intellectual effort; the first movie by comparison was easy watching.

5) Some people think that The Matrix has badly aged CGI (not me).

<comment><USER15> Regarding 4, the dialog and plotting of the sequels seemed to build only on the flaws of the original. That some of that dialog was monolog about different philosophical themes was a problem, but the problem was the monolog not the philosophy.

<comment><USER43> I took it that the monologues were a problem because they were confusing to people. They serve as a major bridge between what I called the superficial and symbolic layers. For example the dialogue/monologue with the architect was great. I found it very stimulating, but most bloggers made fun of it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Congratulations to anyone for whom this makes the slightest bit of sense. I'm sadly missing whatever part of the brain is needed to understand what philosophers are going on about.</comment>


If you have an Android, you have … - Manas Tungare - <AUTHOR> http://manas.tungare.name/blog/if-you-have-an-android-you-have/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+manas-tungare-blog+%28Manas+Tungare%E2%80%99s+Blog%29 <comment><AUTHOR> I haven't used the iPhone extensively, so I'm curious as to which of these, if any, seem to be missing from the iOS experience.</comment>


Ars Technica reviews the iPad - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/apple/reviews/2010/04/ipad-review.ars

<comment> anon-e-moose Does it seem weird to anyone else that iTunes, ostensibly a music library program and music store interface, is now in charge of activating phones and tablet PCs, as well as managing their applications and shared files? Shouldn't there be a separate purpose built program for that?

Seems to fly in the face of Apple's vaunted design and organization.....

<comment><USER2> I think they're tacking on features to iTunes instead of creating a separate application because iTunes already works on Windows.

edit: well, for some definition of work anyway.

<comment><USER3> Perhaps more importantly, _everybody already has iTunes._ Apple can leave out an entire step from the user experience (and one of the more frustrating ones, at that): "install new software".

<comment><USER4> iTunes could be the bootstrapper that installs a slimmed down version of itself and the other broken out applications.

<comment><USER5> Yes, and then you have to teach your users about this new program... for what exactly?

<comment><USER6> You stop having to teach new users that a program called iTunes does a wide variety of non tune related tasks.

<comment><USER5> There's quite a large install base to retrain. The iPhone is, uhhh, pretty popular.

Also, iTunes opens automatically when you plug an iDevice in which mitigates some of this problem.

<comment><USER7> Mitigates? The fact that iTunes is going to load up ever time I plug in my ipod to charge it makes the software's bloatedness way worse.

<comment><USER8> I'm pretty sure you can disable this behavior with a checkbox.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Not being able to copy my files in and out is a deal breaker for me. That's sad as the device looks really neat.

I'm not interested in encouraging Apple to build an ecosystem where I have to pay every time I move my data around.

<comment><USER3> Dropbox (<https://www.dropbox.com/referrals/NTU0Nzc4MDQ5>) is cool, though the iPad only lets you save pictures.

Airsharing (<http://avatron.com/apps/>) lets you (sort of) use the iPad as a target drive.

<comment><USER10> Why should something that is _basic_ functionality require third party services?

<comment><USER3> The user experience gleans a lot of simplicity by abstracting hiding the filesystem. If you can't monkey with files, you can only break things programmatically.

It's definitely different, and frustrating for superusers, but I think it will be perfect for the majority of the population.

<comment><USER9> I'm sorry but you can both allow files to be moved (photo, music, movies, documents) and abstract the file system.

When I move the photos from my camera to my computer, I _don't have to_ deal with the file system at any moment.

<comment><USER11> Interesting choice of example, as loading photos from a camera _is_ something the iPad can do without third-party software.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The "base" Apple case is marvelous. It improves the usability by almost 50% by increasing friction and letting you place or hold it more easily. Outdoors, you can use the cover as a shade, and it is also two stands in one.

Before you complain about iPad ergonomics, get one!

</comment><comment><USER12> A moment of impressive slickness. I was watching this movie in iTunes on my Macbook. I sync it to the iPad and play it in the Videos app just to try that out, and _it resumes at exactly the point I left off_!

</comment><comment><USER13> Great plug in the review for a kickass iPad app called StreamToMe ($3). I've been using it to mount my entire video library on my mac mini (with external HD), and have access to view everything on my iPad. 1tb of movies / tv shows + iPad is an amazing combo.

BTW... anyone know a good site to get like an RSS feed or something for new ipad apps?

<comment><USER14> You could check out <http://landingpad.org/> but it doesn't seem to be updated that often. Pretty though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Apparently plugging in your device to a computer and mounting it like a flash drive is too sophisticated for Apple's customers. These device manufacturers need to get on the ball and start coming out with Android/Chrome tablets that compete with the iPad like the Nexus One competes with the iPhone.

</comment><comment><USER16> fwiw, the author of the iSSH app mentioned in the article is already working on better bluetooth keyboard support (<http://twitter.com/canadacow/status/11572336655>) and even implementing a split-screen mode with an integrated web browser to have a terminal next to a browser for remote web app development (<http://twitter.com/canadacow/status/11603198915>)

</comment><comment><USER17> > _The first is the arrival of the "app for that" era. Apple will provide you > with a free book reader and a Web browser with basic PDF rendering > capabilities. But if you don't like any of these, you can simply replace > them, or use a different approach entirely._

Excuse me, what? Are they really touting the fact that apple _allows_ you to install some apps that have been blessed by Steve The Jobs himself on a device _that you own_ as a feature? An _era_ even?</comment>


The code I'm still ashamed of - <AUTHOR> https://medium.freecodecamp.com/the-code-im-still-ashamed-of-e4c021dff55e#.vmbgbtgin <comment><AUTHOR> Link to a discussion in a thread that got a lot more attention than this one: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12965589](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12965589)</comment>


How Attention Goes Wrong - <AUTHOR> http://www.spring.org.uk/2009/04/18-ways-attention-goes-wrong.php

<comment><USER2> I have the "cocktail party problem". When in a noisy or crowded environment, it's nearly impossible for me to figure out what the person in front of me is saying. Even if I concentrate on them, what I get instead is an unintelligible cacophony of sound, with bits of conversation coming in and out of focus all around me.

I've tried resorting to lip reading, but I'm not that good at it.

Now I usually just get quiet and flee.

<comment><USER3> Ditto that. In a fairly calm environment I have pretty good hearing. I regularly pick up faint sounds that other people around me don't.

But add any chaos, say in a bar, and I'm pretty close to functionally deaf. I can give a drink order to a bartender and not even hear _myself_ actually speak it, let alone hear them tell me how much the round costs.

I run tabs a lot.

<comment><USER2> Yes, same for me in picking up faint sounds. I spend a bit of time hiking and the like, and can tell from the sound of a rustle of leaves whether there was a squirrel, a raccoon, or a deer.

I _think_ what's going on is that neurologically, my attention is always diverted by _new_ sounds. If it's quiet and suddenly something crinkles or shuffles, I hear it extremely clearly. I use this to my advantage -- I have my cell phones set to a very faint single "beep" for their ringtone. It drives other people mad because I'll suddenly get up and go to the phone or dig in my pocket, and they never heard it go off. It's even woke me from a dead sleep.

In a natural environment, this would be a pretty useful trait to have, but in artificial environments, all the sounds are "new" and I can't make heads or tails of what's going on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Interesting overview of attention disorders, but a misleading title. I though it'd be more about distractions affecting healthy people and how to overcome them, not about disorders.</comment>


Ask HN: What cloud provider do you use? - <AUTHOR>

After the incidences experienced by reddit (http://blog.reddit.com/2011/03/why-reddit-was-down-for-6-of-last-24.html) related to the reliability of EBD I'm wondering what are alternatives and which one do you have experience with/recommend. Maybe it's just EBD that has to be avoided?<p>(I've used AWS for some batch work but never for hosting a webapp, but now I was planning to use it for hosting a webapp (either directly or via heroku)) <comment><USER2> Here in Europe dedicated machines are so cheap (100$/month for QuadCore CPU, 24GB RAM, 2x1.5TB SATA) that most startups and companies just order a bunch of dedicated servers [1][2].

Hetzner[1] e.g. has pre-provisioned servers running that get delivered within 10 minutes (24/7) (if you're a customer). You can also cancel every server every month. And they have an API [3]), too (I made a Ruby gem for that[4])

This pretty much kills all needs to use AWS or any other cloud provider for 98% of all startups/projects.

Ah, btw, they've 10 times [5] the connection of e.g. AWS Europe and provide native IPv6.

[1] <http://www.hetzner.de/en/hosting/produkte_rootserver/eq8>

[2] <http://www.ovh.co.uk/products/dedicated_offers.xml>

[3] <http://wiki.hetzner.de/index.php/Robot_Webservice_en>

[4] <http://github.com/rmoriz/hetzner-api>

[5] check on <http://bgp.he.net/>

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks! hetzner was already in my list of options, and I think I'll go with them :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The issue with Reddit was that they designed their application for a single, on-premise data centre, with multiple layers of redundancy at the infrastructure layer. They didn't design for failure.

If you design your application such that single-availability-zone EBS must be as reliable as a hardened triple mirror EMC SAN, you're going to be disappointed. If you treat EBS as what it is - commodity virtualized disk storage with moderate performance - you'll be fine.

In other words, ensure you have replication of data across availability zones.

</comment><comment><USER4> Linode has great prices for 64bit instances. For all of my own projects I use mongoDB, which requires a 64bit os and amazon really doesn't compare price wise, at least for small 64bit instances. My servers have run there without issue and I've found their customer support to be great.

</comment><comment><USER5> <http://www.rackspace.com/cloud/>

</comment><comment><USER6> Linode, hands down. I've never experienced downtime there in more than 2 years.

</comment><comment><USER7> Heroku all the way.

</comment><comment><USER8> There's another thread round here (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2337313>) where shykes is allowing more people into the dotcloud beta. It's a brilliant product, and if you're lucky, you can get in.

I believe its backend is EC2, and it's completely normalized deployment for a variety of different projects - similar to Heroku, but for almost any language or platform.

The only downfall I've seen in using it for complete deployment is that it doesn't yet support naked domains, but it DOES support www.domainname.com, so I have a static page that just redirects from domainname.com to www.domainname.com where necessary.

</comment><comment><USER9> RackSpace</comment>


Playing Dirty: Automating computer game play takes cheating to a new--and profitable--level - <AUTHOR> http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/dec07/5719 <comment><USER2> Games like World of Warcraft now install spyware on your computer whose purpose is to try and catch the kinds of programs the guy used in the article.

If I were going to do this, I'd try and find a way to run the games in a virtual machines and have my hack software run outside it. Since that software would be free to generate arbitrary memory and i/o state changes, I can't see that the spyware approach will really work for long.

<comment><USER3> Trying to guard against the general menace of "bots" is a failed endeavor from the very beginning; it is not the bots themselves that trouble the other players, but rather their _behavior_. Thus, I would think the best approach would simply be a Bayesian analysis at the server level of all inputs into the game (at a slightly higher level than just "right, up, up, TAB"). Indeed, the end result of the proceeding arms race would be to create bots so human that other players would be untroubled by them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I remember running autominers in RuneScape that would automatically move your mouse and click - but I had no idea people were doing stuff like this. Pretty cool.</comment>


HNDiscussions: Merchant of Venice - <AUTHOR> Hi<p>There's not a single good discussion thread on art, of any form. Let's start with a Shakespearean and analyse the plot, the characters, and the underlying themes and motifs. <comment><AUTHOR> I think Shylock was betrayed by Justice in the end. The cry of the Jew went in vain.</comment>


Luck Favours the Procrastinator - <AUTHOR> http://www.friendlyanarchist.com/luck-favours-the-procrastinator/

<comment><USER2> I think of procrastination as "late binding for ideas".

<comment><AUTHOR> It is a good image of it. But it is not the mainstream, and we relate the potato couch mode with the idea incubator mode. And they may look the same, sometimes. Then we feel bad. Then we give up, and our ideas rot.</comment></comment>


Tips for a Splendidly Efficient MTurk Experience - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/mturk/comments/s4wk9/jamburgles_tips_for_a_splendidly_efficient_mturk/ <comment><USER2> A lot has changed in 7 years, my friend.

<comment><USER3> It would make for a substantive comment to explain some of the things that have changed.</comment></comment>


PeerPad – A realtime P2P collaborative editing tool powered by IPFS - <AUTHOR> https://peerpad.net/ <comment><USER2> Hi everyone!

Excited that you found PeerPad so fast. We've released its alfa just a week ago at Mozfest ([https://github.com/MozillaFoundation/mozfest- program-2017/is...](https://github.com/MozillaFoundation/mozfest- program-2017/issues/130)).

I see that there are some questions about PeerPad's architecture. If you would like to know how it works, I invite you to glance through the Architecture.md at [https://github.com/ipfs- shipyard/peerpad/blob/master/docs/AR...](https://github.com/ipfs- shipyard/peerpad/blob/master/docs/ARCHITECTURE.md) If there are things that are not clear to you please open an issue so that we can make it better.

Also, you can expect to see soon a video tutorial of how to build a p2p flipchart using the same underlying kv store that PeerPad uses, y.js + IPFS. If you can't wait you can always take a look at [https://github.com/ipfs- shipyard/p2p-flipchart](https://github.com/ipfs-shipyard/p2p-flipchart) and see how it works :)

We will continue working on PeerPad and add the remaining features necessary to make it usable for meeting notes, publishing and more. You can track the development and also help us built it through the Github Repo [https://github.com/ipfs-shipyard/peerpad](https://github.com/ipfs- shipyard/peerpad)

Thank you \o/

</comment><comment><USER3> Note that [https://peerpad.net](https://peerpad.net) is hosted right out of a go-ipfs gateway. You can instead also use [https://ipfs.io/ipns/peerpad.net](https://ipfs.io/ipns/peerpad.net) or [http://localhost:8080/ipns/peerpad.net](http://localhost:8080/ipns/peerpad.net), or use a specific version of it:

        > open https://ipfs.io$(ipfs resolve /ipns/peerpad.net)

</comment><comment><USER4> You should add org-mode as a document type and you would be golden. [http://mooz.github.io/org-js/#header-1-1](http://mooz.github.io/org- js/#header-1-1)

<comment><USER5> Great idea! Created a issue for tracking it: [https://github.com/ipfs- shipyard/peerpad/issues/106](https://github.com/ipfs- shipyard/peerpad/issues/106)

Thanks :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> It didn't work for me, but might be busy.

This is IPFS and it theory will use the javascript IPFS server in your browser unless it can find a local IPFS daemon on your machine. (Or perhaps it uses one of the gateways?)

How do they prevent the data from disappearing if everyone disconnects?

<comment><USER7> If you don't mind me asking, what browser and version did you use?

It uses WebRTC for peer-to-peer communication, which is yet unsupported / untested in some browsers.

To answer your question: The collaborative data is saved locally by every participating peer.

There are plans to add remote tracking and pinning, increasing the persistence and availability guarantees: [https://github.com/ipfs- shipyard/peerpad/issues/90](https://github.com/ipfs- shipyard/peerpad/issues/90)

<comment><USER8> How would remote pinning work?

If I understand correctly, each keystroke in the pad generates a new snapshot, which has a distinct IPFS ID.

Should the remote pinning service publish a list of all IPFS IDs on the p2p network, and store each individual document (each one keystroke away from the previous one) in the history graph?

Should it keep the complete list of CRDT operations, and map IPFS IDs to CRDT operations IDs, so that it can reconstruct any document when it is requested?

Is there a way to use the properties of CRDT that I am not seeing?

<comment><USER7> Remote pinning would work as any other node that you give the permissions to read the feed. This node would follow the CRDT changes, persisting them locally.

Each keystroke produces a change in the CRDT, which is then eventually propagated to all participating nodes.

Each CRDT message is signed and encrypted before being sent over the IPFS pubsub network.

This protocol is not IPFS-specific, but there are plans to change this: [https://github.com/ipfs-shipyard/peerpad/issues/107](https://github.com/ipfs- shipyard/peerpad/issues/107)

The snapshotting occurs over IPFS, producing a static and encrypted self- contained snapshot, published over IPFS.

It is possible to access the CRDT properties inside the core library, where the CRDT is formed: [https://github.com/ipfs-shipyard/peerpad- core/blob/master/sr...](https://github.com/ipfs-shipyard/peerpad- core/blob/master/src/backend/crdt.js) . This could be exposed if you would require it..

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Hey, David/others I'm very impressed with your work on Y-JS (the CRDT library powering this). I'm the author of gun, which is currently (as far as I know from stats) the most popular CRDT-based data sync (MIT/ZLIB/Apache2 licensed, 6.6K+ stars, [https://github.com/amark/gun](https://github.com/amark/gun) ).

Usually I'm pretty skeptical of most systems, but I'm rather particularly impressed with yours. I also do not think you are getting the recognition you deserve, because the truly novel work here is Y-JS not IPFS (even though is IPFS is great), yet Y-JS is almost just a footnote on the page which is sad.

The first couple documents (on architecture and stuff) didn't seem to explore the CRDT that is used. I'll have to follow-through on other sub- documents/pages to read more, but wanted to get your thoughts first (and BTW, thanks for all the documentation you have already provided, it is impressive, and I know how hard it is to try and get everything shipped, so the last thing I want to be is an annoying HN person whining about why you didn't already have X or Y or Z finished, and wanted to give you a chance to reply directly).

I was able to rather quickly ( [https://www.dropbox.com/s/8uxzq6d47szu4w1/Screenshot%202017-...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/8uxzq6d47szu4w1/Screenshot%202017-11-04%2011.42.00.png?dl=0) ) get the document to go out of sync, but I understand this could just be a trivial implementation detail (and often is) NOT a problem with the CRDT, but wanted to check. Given your bachelor thesis, I know you are all too aware of these things, P2P collaborative rich-text is one of the hardest problems out there in the space. Your Y-JS system seems fairly "generalizable", no? Which is unique amongst CRDTs (ours at gun is as well, so I get the nuance). If that is true, usually P2P rich-text then requires a specialized CRDT on top of the generalizable one, is this what you all did?

For instance, Martin Kleppmann did an excellent explanation of explaining theirs here: [https://youtu.be/yCcWpzY8dIA?t=16m26s](https://youtu.be/yCcWpzY8dIA?t=16m26s) . I was wondering if you did something similar?

We had to implement our own, which I did one of my infamous "cartoon explainers" on here: [http://gun.js.org/explainers/school/class.html](http://gun.js.org/explainers/school/class.html) . However Martin actually brings up an edge case I hadn't thought of after 4 years of analyzing the system! But thankfully he provides a patch on how to fix it. ;)

Anyways, wanted to again repeat I'm very impressed with Y-JS (and say that it is not getting the attention it deserves for this being on top of HN, given that it is what is novel, not the other stuff). But I also wanted to inquire more about the generalizable-ness of Y-JS and then hear about any specific specialized-CRDT you may be using for P2P rich text, because it looks like it could be a breakthrough! Would love to hear more! Excellent work.

<comment><USER2> Hi Mark,

Congratz on developing Gun! I've looked at it before and I was super impressed! The decision to use Y.js instead was done due to its modularity. We added IPFS support by simply publishing a connector [https://github.com/ipfs- shipyard/y-ipfs-connector](https://github.com/ipfs-shipyard/y-ipfs-connector) which Kevin Jahns later added to the list of connectors - [https://github.com/y-js/yjs/issues/77](https://github.com/y-js/yjs/issues/77)

We have linked Y.js from the page header, if you click the word CRDT it takes you to Y.js directly. Nevertheless, I agree that we need to make it more obvious How we appreciate all the work that Kevin has put into Y.js :) Do not worry, PeerPad nor our CRDT usage is finished, there will be a lot more! (In fact, PeerPad was built with little less than 4 weeks of actual dev time, there is so much more we can do).

I'm following up by email, I'm interested in testing Gun as well. Meanwhile, join the CRDT discussion on the Research CRDT ([https://github.com/ipfs/research-crdt](https://github.com/ipfs/research- crdt)) Repo, would love to have your input there.

Cheers!

<comment><USER10> It's good you welcome contributions to your open platform. In case your next demo is based on my work, please notify me in advance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Here's a writeable link to test this out:

[https://peerpad.net/#/w/markdown/39fhMVeoTgEVj2SjNARrv6/4XTT...](https://peerpad.net/#/w/markdown/39fhMVeoTgEVj2SjNARrv6/4XTTMJNBCbMc11HmJsVFtANHwit6G41irLPL7En2VoELYx9Ke/K3TgUADaH9JitamS7jEdGEWgWcMFjvc7PVWQYpKwTVvStmNACsoBBJ9HEkb98mgpizyQNPQVanACX3uv1gUDNsCk2n7VfLnV4b4DRL6rS63whUJyqxWScX6w2dVBBYGjZ1zVigWk)

</comment><comment><USER12> Where are documents stored? Browser cache on each client?

<comment><USER5> Currently, yes, it's stored in the client. We have some plans for being able to select a pinning service for making sure the data persists: [https://github.com/ipfs-shipyard/peerpad/issues/90](https://github.com/ipfs- shipyard/peerpad/issues/90)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Haven't looked at Y.js but does this have undo support? Yu et Al. Describes a CRDT [1] with undo support for editing.

[1]: [https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-19129-4_...](https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-19129-4_16)

</comment><comment><USER14> I see these websocket connections in my network panel.

wss://sfo-3.bootstrap.libp2p.io/ wss://nyc-1.bootstrap.libp2p.io/ wss://nyc-2.bootstrap.libp2p.io/ wss://ams-1.bootstrap.libp2p.io/ wss://lon-1.bootstrap.libp2p.io/

I'm going to guess this is to establish the connections between peers. So this isn't really p2p because while there aren't any intermediaries for data transfer, there certainly are to establish the data connections.

If you want a p2p system because you care mostly about removing servers as a bottleneck, then this may not be an issue, but if you care about removing servers because you don't trust intermediaries, then this only gets you half way there.

<comment><USER15> > If you want a p2p system because you care mostly about removing servers as a > bottleneck, then this may not be an issue, but if you care about removing > servers because you don't trust intermediaries, then this only gets you half > way there.

This is, actually, truly peer-to-peer. Those are connections to the bootstrap nodes, you can set your own bootstrap nodes if you want but you do need to be seeded with a few initial peers to find new peers. If you want to establish a browser-to-browser connection, you will need some server to help setup the WebRTC connection; this is the unfortunate reality of browsers. However, you _can_ (theoretically^) connect to arbitrary non-browser IPFS nodes over a websocket connection (that's what's happening here) without some "blessed" node acting as the rendezvous.

^Unfortunately, there's a bit of a wrinkle:

1\. Most non-browser IPFS nodes don't listen on websockets by default. The transport is still experimental and and has some bugs.

2\. If you load IPFS from an https origin, browsers won't generally allow you to establish connections to non-https websocket endpoints. Unfortunately, even if you enable listening on the websocket transport on your IPFS node, you'll end up listening on an http (not https) websocket. This is because IPFS manages the encryption of the connection itself (IPFS addresses, or "peer IDs", are cryptographic hashes of public keys) and doesn't use (or play well with) the CA system. To work around this, the bootstrap nodes have nginx proxies out in front that to handle HTTPs connections. Most (all other?) nodes don't.</comment></comment>